Posts by cyberdemon

Re: These services have to make money somehow

The Reg is a useful service. Facebook/twatter/ubend less-so

If the Reg were to embed some non-intrusive ads hosted by their own server that I could be sure weren't slurping my data to some ad-slinger company then I wouldn't block them. But as long as Javascript and cross-domain slurping is going on, i'm not having it.

Frankly I'd like to see the likes of Google, Meta and Microsoft broken up. If Google were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, the only part of it that I would miss is GMail - their search is rubbish these days and AOSP would become so much better if Google died. But even GMail I use less and less these days. Youtube is a increasingly a cess-pool to compete with TikTok. The only part of Microsoft I'd miss is GitHub (which they shouldn't have been allowed to pillage in the first place) the rest of it (LinkedIn, Windows, Office, OpenAI etc) can be incinerated. Meta, I'd only miss WhatsApp (which again, they shouldn't have been allowed to buy) TikTok, X, amazon, Apple*.. I wouldn't miss these at all.

* Of course, some people would miss Apple a lot. There would need to be some kind of fanboi rehabilitation programme

Re: Great Idea!

Here's a pile of very genuine high quality personal data and i'll even give you a picture of me. Now pay up!

Not every problem can be solved by inventing a new market. Just look at Ofgem. As soon as you invent an artificial market, someone works out how to defraud it.

What I'd rather see, is a general ban on targeted advertising, data brokers etc. Not opt in or opt out, just Out. If that means a few Trillion is wiped off the NASDAQ, so be it.

Re: automating the writing and clinical coding of notes, discharge summaries and GP letters

We still have other parties, we are not the USA yet.

Time to give the Lib Dems another chance?

Re: A new 'zero day'?

Because so many industrial control systems and HMIs run Windows, I would guess.

But also because they may have shut their whole network down to stop any further intrusion

The yeast is still fermenting, but if they can't pump it out into the next vessel in their process then the taste will be ruined. Or maybe it won't, and they will sell it as a 'limited edition' batch. They could call it Duvel Scumbag, with 'extra scummy' foam.

Re: Repeat after me:

Don't trust your staff? That's a good way to get shit employees, because all the good ones have left.

An evil boss of HR once (rather too candidly) told me "The role of HR is to protect the company from its employees.." I didn't stay there long.

Re: Repeat after me:

One good reason is not being beholden to Microsoft's release cycle. You can choose to stay on a version that works and install whatever subset of updates at whatever timescale you feel to be prudent. Whereas with Microsoft, you get "Welcome to the all-new Teams! We've made loafs of changes which we think you'll love! If not, well, fuck off" or Google "sorry this product is being sunsetted. We kniw you have nowhere else to go.. Ha ha fuck off"

Re: Repeat after me:

I've worked at a company that used Linux on everything, all the way up to the CEO's laptop. It worked very well, actually. It was a software/electronics company, with about 40 staff in 2011, so not a big company by any means.

But just because Microsoft has tools for lazy sysadmins and Evil HR, doesn't mean a company actually needs them, if it has a decent sysadmin and actually trusts its own staff.

If open source software doesn't fit your corporate culture, I'd suggest changing the corporate culture, rather than buying Kool-Aid from Microsoft.

Anyway, to play your little anonymous guessing game, I'd hazard a guess that some of the "missing components" you are referring to are:

• Distributed Filesystem (DFS), the corporate version of SMB. Not sure if Samba/CIFS supports this fully, but it's pretty close.. As for Linux-native alternatives, NFS sucks, I agree. There are better alternatives, though. Coda perhaps? Or else you can still stick with CIFS
• Device/TPM provisioning - this is an EvilHR(tm) feature that can be dispensed with, or can be provided by the firmware if you really need it
• Group Policy i.e. setting local user permissions at a fine-grained level. This is a LazyIT (tm) feature that can be dispensed with, if you trust and educate your staff.
• Software provisioning e.g. with the Win11 App framework - ensuring that local software is kept up to date and consistent - there are plenty of ways to do this without Microsoft, but it does require the sysadmin to have a clue and get out of bed once in a while ..
• Corporate VPN? That's well-covered by NetworkManager these days..

I don't know what else you could be thinking of.. Printer drivers? Nope, that works far better than Windows now.. Teams/Slack/etc are all there.. Libreoffice is there.. Maybe you'd miss the "interactive collaborative features" of MS Office, but if you want those (I don't), they are there on the Web version. There's even a OneDrive client for Linux that works nicely - But then again you are talking about "since 2005"..

so.. maybe you have an antique plotter that only works on GPIB with a kernel-mode Windows driver? Or some other unusual peripheral with proprietary Windows NT compatible driver support? Or antique software that relies on ActriveX/COM, or kernel-mode libraries for DRM reasons. I do have some software that works perfectly in Wine except for the USB DRM Dongle. If only there were some standard way of doing that! Well there are, but not enough vendors use them. Lack of third-party vendor support is a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom..

Re: It is not left wing extremists

Wow, talk about Godwin's Law for a thread about what was at first an anti-deforestation protest.. Frankly from the pictures, Tesla already had more than enough land to double the size of their factory.. This was at worst "nimby"ism / at best a genuine protest against a megacorp destroying a local forest. But now criminal acts by a few who joined said protest are being shown to damage the cause of the rest. The media and commentators can choose a narrative, but this has little to do with Fascism, yet.

Frankly, I do worry about the progression of polarised politics.. Inequality and Injustice turn to protest. Protest (amplified by thugs on both sides) turns to riot. Riot (again amplified by thugs) turns to insurrection, and insurrection turns to bloody revolution. Demagogues and nutjob trolls can accelerate this decay, but rarely can they prevent it.

Remember that while the first victims in bloody revolution may be rich, the next (the vast majority of victims - e.g. in the case of Pol Pot et al) are the educated-but-not-rich. I.e. every genuine human on this forum..

The world does feel unstable atm, but prematurely declaring "nazis" does nothing to help it..

Re: It is not left wing extremists

We don't know yet, my point is only to counter the idea that it was "obviously the protesters wot did it".

False flags do exist, and have done since long before the Trojan war.. He who claims that "anyone who talks about false flags is a self-discrediting conspiracy theorist nutjob" is a nutjob with an axe to grind himself.

Re: It is not left wing extremists

> So who is to blame? The 'far right'?

Could have been anyone at this point. Usually any protest comes with a fifth column of twats trying to get the whole group banned, maybe under the oversight of government / police / secret services

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

> Not subsidised, it's just a time of day tariff, as have been available for many decades, because electricity prices fluctuate throughout the day - even going negative.

It bloody well IS subsidised! How much do we have to pay those windfarms to stop running when the wind is blowing? So much that even Ofgem has rolled out of its bed. The only reason the wholesale price occasionally goes negative is so that NG doesn't have to pay so much in curtailment costs! But that is rarely passed on to the consumer, certainly never "decades" ago as you say..

I don't really see what a rectifier has got to do with it.. A bridge rectifier drops 2x 0.7V, plus minimal resistive losses.. And nevertheless a fast charger is still plugged in to 415V AC, so needs its own rectifier anyway ...

LED lightbulbs ... often quoted as an example of how energy efficiency is somehow an unstoppable trend, but it's bollocks. Especially if someone is using electric heating, for example. But even if not, the "waste" heat from their lightbulbs would previously have warmed them up enough to not need to stoke up the coal fire. Now, we have all these wonderfully efficient LEDs which produce no infrared and ironically cause people to turn on their gas-fired central heating because they feel cold.

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

People who charge at home often pay a heavily subsidised rate 7p/kWh apparently) whereas general domestic utility price is more like 30p/kWh. Wholesale price that chargepoint operators pay is somewhere in the middle, and charging infrastructure is a big expense, paid for by bankers expecting a return on investment.

Then there's the inconvenient fact that fast charging is inefficient. Both chargers and battery (and sometimes even the cable) need active cooling at >50kW rates.

So without a severe rebalancing / reversal of taxpayer/billpayer subsidies, EV charging is always going to be more expensive at a fast charger station.

For a slow charger, the charging is cheap but the parking is expensive.

The second problem with "slow" ~10kW public chargers is that they usually do not have a dedicated HV substation, and rely on existing heavily-strained 415V underground cabling shared with domestic and light commercial premises. It's increasingly common to see overheating transformers and cables, e.g. that recent incident near the Old Bailey

So increasing the numbers beyond 10% minority adoption, never mind "net zero" numbers is not trivial at all

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

+1 for app-less, bank-card operated chargers. They should all be usable to anyone, without sign-up. Same as unmanned 'pay-at-pump' petrol forecourts.

As for charging speed though, according to Prof David Bailey of Birmingham Business School (who knows all about electrochemistry and electrical power systems, of course) Solid State Batteries are complete game-changer, going to enable "much quicker charging"! Hybrid cars are doomed! (which is sadly a load of bollocks of course) (talking at the end of yesterday's radio 4 you&yours @ ~48mins)

Even if SSBs could charge faster (they can't) the limiting factor is usually electricity supply. So I can't see EVs 'filling up' in minutes at megawatt rates any time soon

Re: Pardon moi?

Subsidies are high, but are coming down due to finite resources

Demand is artificially inflated by current subsidies and green idealism, but is leveling off as the number of mugs^W early-adopters saturates. The rest of us are less idealistic, and more concerned about the cost i.e. the difference between price and future resale value (which is plummeting)

So demand has to come down, especially when the subsidies and loss-leaders dry up

UKXEPCTED TWITS

https://willyschocolateexperience.com/index_files/twilighttunnel.png

Perhaps the only part of the AI marketing that is not misleading, is its description of the management

*sigh* so it's LNG or bust, then.

And with only 3 import terminals plus the brouhaha in the red sea, that looks sketchy too.

Had OVO on the phone this morning trying to sell me a "heat battery".. Things are getting desperate.