* Posts by Malcolm Weir

1037 publicly visible posts • joined 23 May 2007

Apple reportedly planning to revive the MagSafe charging standard with the next lot of MacBook Pros

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Tempting fate?

Odd that you think USB Type-C is "obsolete".

(And the EU didn't, back in 2009, standardize on the Micro B connector; that was the manufacturers who picked that).

Here's the current thinking from the EU: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-law-and-publications/publication-detail/-/publication/c6fadfea-4641-11ea-b81b-01aa75ed71a1

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Magnetic adapters are a thing...

My LG V60 second screen has one, and seems to work OK. Of course, LG is a "far eastern" company, so maybe that's what you mean?

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Of course laptops get damaged. My point is that the intersection of (incidents that might damage laptops) and (incidents where the damage was averted by the magnetic connector) is smaller than is often implied.

Yes, it's not an empty set: Magsafe _has_ saved laptops that would otherwise been damaged.

Think about it, though: if the problem was as endemic as is implied, why don't other vendors come up with alternatives? Why hasn't Apple put it on their phones? (I previously mentioned my LG phone with a magnetic USB adapter). Why don't the business laptop vendors (Dell, Lenovo, HPE, etc) address the issue you describe by making the power socket easily replaceable? (I once dabbled with a design from theatre equipment from the 1970s, where the connectors were installed so even if the whole socket got ripped out, it could be replaced and its mounting was built to be enormously tolerant of misalignment).

Conclusion: while the problem exists, it's not terribly significant in the whole scheme of things, just like the problem of spilling coffee into a laptop exists, but it's not so common that there's a significant market for waterproofing mainstream / mass-market keyboards -- even though there are folks whose machines would have been saved by such a thing!

I'd much rather see the cost & effort go into things like less brittle plastic and more metal, etc.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: I like the Touch bar.

Had it been additive, I'd have agreed with you. But the implementation was truly lousy: it removed /complicated functionality (see the crack about the escape key and vim, which was a real nuisance).

It's also very dated now. Compare with the Asus "Screenpad Plus": an entire second touch screen that you can interact with while not obscuring your main screen. (Asus managed to retain the escape key, too). I'm not totally sold on the Asus solution (I'm a Wacom user, and like the "input" display to the right of the keyboard instead of above it, but that's a personal preference), but it's an interesting implementation!

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Magsafe was/is a really, really elegant solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Don't get me wrong, I like the thinking behind it, but despite the "cautionary tales" there really aren't blizzards of laptops hurtling around coffee shops, because (a) people don't trip over cables as often as the Magsafe fandom implies, and (b) even when they do, some proportion of the "trips" uneventfully yank one or the other end of the non-Magsafe cable out, resulting in absolutely no dire consequences.

Apropos of nothing much, my LG V60 second screen sports a funky little widget that had a USB Type-C socket on one side and a magnetically attached contacts on the other. It only supports the USB-PD signals (no superspeed lanes), but it changes the phone using a cable (for when a wireless charging mat is not convenient).

Interestingly, Type-C sockets can be bidirectional in terms of power delivery (at 100W, not some cut-down 31W that some vendors choose to implement), so you could have a system where a Type-C power brick could power a laptop via plugging into a Type-C socket, or through a magnetically attached connection (in which case it would supply power over the socket). And the same cable would charge your phone, as well as everything else that isn't Apple or wireless!

(Remember: the point of the USB power delivery concept is that you won't need a rat's nest of different cables. Also remember that Apple doesn't care, and likes unique magic cables for very limited technical reasons)

A little bit of TLC: How IBM squeezes 16,000 write-erase cycles from QLC flash

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

You won't get even 1.5x with, say, video...

On-device compression is largely a marketing con. One also has to consider the interface bandwidth issues: a NVMe/PCIe3 x4 has a theoretical throughput of approximately 4GB/s. There are multiple vendors of SSDs that can sustain speeds (at least for bursts lasting 10s of seconds) in excess of 2GB/s. So even if you did could achieve 3x compression on the data, you won't realize it. Better to put the compressor on a controller...

Remember the days when signs were signs and operating systems didn't need constant patching?

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Ah, a bout of nostalgia hits me.... remember when borked signs in airports and the like revealed that the guts were PDP-11s, which generally seemed to run RT-11, but occasionally you'd spot something suggestive of RSTS/E, and wonder what possessed them to use that when better alternatives were available...

Have no idea WTF is going on with the Oracle-Walmart TikTok deal? Don’t sweat it, here’s our latest rundown

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: 1984 was not the only instruction manual

Just FYI, there is no chance that a court will order his tax returns to be made public before the election. In fact, there is no chance that they will ever do that (as it's illegal). What might have happened (but won't, now) is that a court might order the IRS to turn them over to Congress (as the law explicitly requires, but Mnuchin is defying on some specious grounds that are not part of any statute) and Congress might leak them.

The most likely development in Trump tax shenanigans is for his accountants to turn over his tax returns to the New York Grand Jury, but public disclosure from that is very unlikely.

The more likely outcome of his tax returns finally reaching the NY Grand Jury is a criminal prosecution for tax fraud. But it's very unlike that that will happen before the election (unless the tax returns include documents like "Cash fraudulently hidden from tax authorities", but even so, the wheels of justice turn slowly).

And no, Trump cannot pardon himself from New York State criminal charges...

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Yes, the dems did say, in 2016, that the nomination should go forward. But McConnell, Grassley, Graham and others invented a brand new rule that said that it shouldn't. As they had the majority, it didn't.

But this current chapter started in 2005 when the issue of filibustering judicial nominees became a problem (largely because the R's had blocked most of Clinton's federal appointments in the last 6 years of his presidency). A bipartisan agreement was reached that limited filibusters to only the most contentious nominees, and all was kinda OK until 2013, when the D's changed the rules to eliminate (as opposed to limit) filibusters for all but Supreme Court nominees, and then in 2017 the R's changed the rules to eliminate filibusters even for them (to get Gorsuch in).

Fast forward 3 years, and the dems are now saying that, as the brand new rule invented by McConnell/Grassley/Graham/Etc said that nominations in an election year shouldn't go forward, McConnel/Grassley/Graham/Etc should stick to their own rule. But wait, claim the McConnel/Grassley/Graham/Etc cabal: the new rule had a secret codicil: it only applied when the president and the senate majority are of different parties; the "advise and consent" bit of the Constitution really means "rubber stamp or block".

So the problem isn't the substance of the "rules", but the fact that the Senate has become less collaborative and more partisan, so they act on short term gain rather than long term good. Once they had shifted into this mode, _someone_ was going to rewrite the rules to suit their objectives, and while the D's rewrote the rules first, the R's have run with the idea.

The snag is that if rewriting the rules is de rigeur, the rules will get rewritten, and someone might opine that as we have 12 judicial circuits plus the Federal circuit, making a total of 13, we should probably have 13 Supreme Court justices... and the rules can be changed at will....

Bad news for 'cool dads' trying to bond with their teens: China-owned TikTok and WeChat face US download ban by Sunday

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

... AND there it is:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.364733/gov.uscourts.cand.364733.59.0.pdf

"The court grants the plaintiffs’ motion for a nationwide injunction against the implementation

of Executive Order 13,943 (limited to the Secretary of Commerce’s Identification of Prohibited

Transactions 1 through 6)"

(I haven't digested the text, but it doesn't seem friendly to the government on First Amendment grounds. The lawsuit alleges several grounds to block the action, but on at least two the judge was not persuaded -- either the parties hadn't briefed the issue sufficiently, or the matter wasn't 'ripe').

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

This is hugely problematic: the US government is trying to ban distribution of someone else's intellectual property. This is no different from trying to ban a book.

Of course, had the ban been written to block the allegedly problematic traffic to Chinese servers, it would have had a very different complexion. But the First Amendment says that the government isn't allowed to prohibit publication.

Federal court injunction in 3, 2, 1...

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Tok for Tik (sorry, I mean Tit for Tat)

Nope. They're blocked. So they don't work, but that's a bit different architecturally!

This is how demon.co.uk ends, not with a bang but a blunder: Randomer swipes decommissioning domain

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

I think the frustrating thing is that _if_ a company offers email service (supporting, say, joe@foo.com), the incremental cost of adding an additional domain (say, for fred@bar.com) is effectively zero (when amortized over a few dozen users). Sure, the capabilities of the 'new' implementation may not match those of the 'old' one, but that's a separate issue from whether fred@bar.com stops working for incoming mail...

I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: No fair trial in the US

There are two issues that seem to get conflated: (1) did the effects of Wikileaks publishing everything (without review, unlike with the Snowden leaks) cause more good than harm? and (2) did Assange break the law in getting stuff to publish?

There seems to be a lot of noise about how Wikileaks revealed information about bad conduct, but less about the damage that the leaks definitely did cause, such as the identification of Iraqi citizens who helped the US forces,

If someone breaks into a house and reveals information about, say, a fraud being perpetrated by one of the residents, does that excuse the housebreaking? I would say no, but I would also say it would be a factor in mitigation of the sentence.

HOWEVER... what trials? Assange hasn't faced trial for the rape he was accused of, he hasn't faced trial for the leaks. The only trial he has faced is for skipping bail in the UK ("failing to answer his bail"), which we all know he actually did. Since the purpose of bail is to ensure that the accused shows up in a court of law to see the proof be offered and challenged, the fact that Assange deliberately evaded the process (with a pathetically incoherent rationale) seems to be pretty conclusive evidence that if Assange hasn't had a fair trial, it's because he's avoided them, which makes it rather his own fault!

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: The Much Bigger Picture Show ....

Quite true. There are sound reasons for the USA not to join the ICC, as well as good reasons for them to do so. To ignore either the "pro" or the "con" arguments is simply arguing in bad faith, although reasonable people may conclude that one side outweighs the other and disagree on which!

But since neither China nor Russia are members, it seems a bit of a contrived accusation that the US isn't a member either.

Personally, as I understand it, I think the US should join, and should take advantage of the fact that the ICC only acts when the other jurisdictions are unwilling or unable to act. Then accusations against US people could be heard in US courts subject to US laws and US rules of evidence.

(Accusations against US political leaders would never be heard by the ICC despite grandstanding like efforts to charge Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. Notwithstanding the lofty ideals, the only practical way a head of state gets to stand trial is when he becomes a deposed head of state...)

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Blackmailed

One wonders what you'd suggest the FBI should do if, say, they detained someone accused of mas murder who happened to be a single parent?

Taking the accused into custody would "threaten the well being and long term emotional stability of a child".

And the FBI didn't offer the guy anything. That's not what they do. The US attorneys to the deals, usually via their assistants (as there are only 93 of them, and they're political appointees). So if you want to blame someone, blame the USAA, not the FBI.

The language in the article is badly emotionally loaded. If the accused is offered a deal that allows for bail and the possibility of no jail time, they may well take it (regardless of actual guilt) in order to avoid the risk of losing their kid. In this specific case, it seems like there is no real question of "actual guilt", so one might equally frame the situation as the US attorney offering him a good deal that would allow him to raise his child. But again, that's emotionally loaded the other way, and the underlying truth is probably somewhere in the middle (they government threatened to add charges but also was willing to agree to a deal, one likely proposed by the accused's lawyers).

Meanwhile, what did Assange's outburst even mean? "I'm here and also by proxy" is not exactly coherent... the best I can come up with is that he meant he was in court and had lawyers, which seems a bit of a waste of breath...

Days after President Trump suggests pausing election over security, US House passes $500m for states to shore up election security

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: As If

That would be the Congress whose larger house has 235 Democrat Representatives and 200 Republicans?

And you do know that the Senate districts can't be gerrrymandered, as those are called "states"?

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

What a terrible headline! In English, the only possible target of the "just that" is "pausing elections", as "over security" is unarguably a qualifier to the first part of the sentence.

So the headline (in English) is parsed as "Days after Trump suggests pausing election (over security), US House passes $500m for states to do just that", which is factually false and obviously nonsense: the House has not passed anything about pausing elections.

A more accurate headline would be something like "Days after Trump suggests pausing election over security, US House passes $500m for security upgrades" (or something vaguely similar), or better yet "US House passes $500m bill states to improve voting security just days after Trump suggests delaying election".

Amazon gets green-light to blow $10bn on 3,000+ internet satellites. All so Americans can shop more on Amazon

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Global Internet

Vic, while Bezos is certainly not short of a few bob, have you looked to see how much of his wealth is tied up in Amazon? Because that's "paper wealth": if he announced he was selling his stake in Amazon, how much would Amazon be worth....?

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Kessler effect

Communications satellites are mostly in geosynchronous orbit.

Assume, with their wings fully extended, that such a satellite is about 150ft across. You could hypothetically place slightly over 950,000 of them along the equator.

Remarkably, you could place slightly under 950,000,000 of them along the orbital plane of geosynchronous orbit.

(I.e. the circumference of geosynchronous orbit is approximately 1000 times that of earth).

And that's only along the exact geosynchronous orbit... you could place satellites in "very near" GSO (say a few km above or below GSO), and use on-board positioning to maintain station (or near enough) for the life of the satellite. As DNA remarked, space is BIG. You may think it a long way to go down to the shops, but...

Now, part of a launch license (in the USA) includes end-of-life planning. With geosynchronous orbits, a common plan is to raise the orbit to a supersynchronous "graveyard" orbit. But experiments have (and are) being conducted for "servicing missions", which either extend the life of the satellite or clamp on to it and move it( higher) out of the way.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Educate me

Well, the Liability Convention, "LIAB", aka The Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, covers precisely what happens if any kind of damage is done by the space assets launched by a country (regardless of who owns the vehicle).

And, err, the Outer Space Treat reads, in part:

---

The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.

There shall be freedom of scientific investigation in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and States shall facilitate and encourage international co-operation in such investigation.

---

In the USA, if you want a permit to launch something into space, you need to talk to the FAA. Who will impose restrictions consistent with the UN treaties on space.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Educate me

The United Nations. Specifically, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, COPUOS, whose operational agency is the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, UNOOSA. (see http://unoosa.org).

All of the nations with actual or potential launch capability (including Iran and North Korea) are signatories to a treaty that refutes the idea of territorial claims in space (the "Outer Space Treaty", OST, formally "Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies") and are signatories to the Registration Convention. REG, aka "Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space ".

EU orders Airbus A350 operators to install anti-coffee spillage covers in airliner cockpits

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Amateur design and construction.

My understanding is that it's presumptively legal throughout the USA and Canada (at least), but subject to a "distracted driver" caveat. So if you're stopped at a red light, that's very unlikely to be a problem. If you're changing lanes at speed in fog, that might be a different story! (There's also the reality that most north American cops will have been sipping coffee at some point themselves, so even if they could write a ticket, they're unlikely to as a primary cause!)

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Design error

The specific issue here is that the A350 (and the A330, A380, etc) have pull-out keyboards with convenient wrist rests, which unfortunately are great places to put your coffee, which will promptly fall into the central console, which is where the engine controls are. The location Boeing picked for the cupholders on the 777/787 is on the outside (away from the center console) so coffee spills are more likely to wet shoes than mess up the systems, but Airbus can't do that because they keep the primary flying control (the joystick/side-stick controller) in that spot, and dropping coffee in that is probably just as bad (well, nearly, because there's a spare on the other side for the other pilot, which is not true for the center engine controls).

(The Airbus cupholder is more like the pop-out loops than the inverted cylinder, so is more likely to less useful)!

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: SImpler solution?

When? December 1994: AF8969, F-GBEC.

Green with NVMe: AWS adds more Arm-powered instance types

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

What's "Arm compatible" mean?

The first sentence has a weird phrase, "Arm-compatible". What's that mean... there have been many ARM micro-architectures, and of course the 32/64 bit evolution, but surely a CPU licensed from ARM Holdings is not so much "Arm-compatible" as, you know, and actual Arm CPU. And the Amazon Graviton2 is a licensed Arm Neoverse CPU, in exactly the same way as the Apple things are and the Samsung Exynos processors, so why not simply call it a home-grown Graviton2 Arm processor, because that is what it is!

UK formally abandons Europe’s Unified Patent Court, Germany plans to move forward nevertheless

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Well, Phil, I'm glad you agree that when Brexiteering politicians spew on about "Participating in a court that applies EU law and is bound by the CJEU would be inconsistent with the Government’s aims of becoming an independent self-governing nation” you're admitting that they're being hypocrites, because obviously courts like ITLOS and ECHR and the WIPO tribunals are courts that apply non-British law, and only a complete idiot would fabricate some qualitative difference between non-British-but-European and non-British-but-something else. Britain is never going to be an "independent self-governing nation" if that means adhering to only British courts.

Obviously, Britain will adhere to foreign/multinational courts (such as ITLOS). So not wishing to participate in EU institutions is not a matter of some grand principle, but just classic "hard Brexit" doggerel: it's because they are _EU_, institutions, not non-British... (A sane Brexit policy would have kept Britain in things like the JAA while diverging in other areas, but that doesn't fit the dogma).

Meanwhile, _which_ countries are lining up for trade deals? Be specific. Use names. And apply percentages of trade... Remember, you've got about 50% (depending on how you measure it) to balance what will be lost with the EU. Of course, things that were manufactured in the UK for EU consumption will fall, because the regulatory framework (even if the UK manages to agree a deal with the EU, which is as likely as pigs flying at the moment) adds cost that a plant in, say, Ireland won't have. Don't count on the USA. Trump is a fan, Biden has more rational priorities. Don't count on China or Hong Kong, either, given the current diplomatic chill. So that leaves places like JPN, AUS, NZL, SGP, IND, TUR, Russia, Latin & Central America -- not to be sneezed at, but all a long haul.

And yes, I agree the UK has done better than the Eurozone... but that fact rather defeats your thesis that the UK has been dragged down. Surely an equally valid explanation is that, being a non-Euro economy, the UK offers the best of both worlds.

I hope you're right about Scotland, but the evidence isn't compelling. Every objection you make applied equally to Scottish independence, and yet that was far closer than expected. And the Brexit decision proves that people vote for nebulous intangibles ("taking back control", who f'cking cares about whether Edinburgh, London or Brussels "controls" as long as the results are palatable?) in the face of obvious economic risks.

[ Incidentally, while the Channel Islands were indeed never formerly part of the EU, their trade with France was controlled by London, which was. And Channel Island/EU relations _was_ a part of Britain's EU membership, so they've already experienced the chaos caused by Boris's talk-first-think-later scheme. People in the Channel Islands and also Gibralta look at Malta and go "Hmmm..." the thought of an "associate EU membership" (which doesn't currently exist, but could be modelled on Norway or Switzerland) is not unappealing to many. ]

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: The Biggest Lie

True, that's an argument that could be made, but usually by stupid people with no grasp of facts or history. Eastern Europe was not occupied by Nazi Germany prior to WW2, which was kinda the point.

Yes, there was a post-war occupation of Eastern Europe. But the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Austria, Luxembourg and half of France were also occupied.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: The Biggest Lie

Which single set of rules were you thinking of? There are 27 countries with massively different rules in many areas, but harmonized in others.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

The simplest answer is in fact your own: _only_ being able to sign sign our own trade deals, for which no other country is rushing to negotiate. The USA has made it clear that they want to degrade UK agricultural standards to put US farm goods (lower standards and mass monoculture) on an equal footing with British farmers. But doing that would harm trade with the UK's largest trading partner. They've made it clear that they want the NHS to pay more for US pharmaceuticals.

Moving on, as you've obviously not been paying attention, the Irish situation is dire: either we have a hard border between NI and the South, or we have a hard border between two parts of the UK.

Another great problem is the fact that London has ceased to be the financial capital of Europe. The effects of this are being masked by COVID, but they're real. Similarly, as of January 1st, certifications for goods issued by the UK cease to be valid in the EU, which is going to cost British businesses over their European counterparts.

I agree that all of these are, individually, manageable. But turning the Brexiteer's tub thumping around: what benefit -- in pounds and pence -- is Britain gaining from having left? Yeah, Westminster loves being immune from having to follow rules they didn't (exclusively) write, but is that good for Britons, or good for politicians?

One factual observation: Brexiteers claim that Britain will not be subject to foreign courts, but just a lie: if we want to trade, foreign courts will be part and parcel of any deal, including (obviously) the WTO tribunals. Also EHCR (hopefully; xenophobes hate it, because it sets a standard for human rights that some petty tyrants can't disregard). ITLOS, and so on.

Lastly, the claim that "we're never going back" is suspect and inherently naive: Northern Ireland is the closest to "going back", but the Channel Islands and Scotland both recognize a different balance of probabilities...

Don'tcha just LOVE meetings? Microsoft does, too, so here are some new Teams features, you lucky, lucky people

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Double Key Encryption

Well, you kinda are: from a security standpoint, the Microsoft-controlled key is irrelevant and may as well not be there.

The only (nebulous) benefit is that if your key is compromised, MS may be able block access by withdrawing their key from the data set (aka dismounting the drive), but this could just as easily and safely be done by any means of taking the data store offline (or firewalling it to just your HQ).

From 'Queen of the Skies' to Queen of the Scrapheap: British Airways chops 747 fleet as folk stay at home

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Concorde

No. 9/11 hurt air travel in general, but not Concorde in particular. You'll recall that, following the Air France crash, Concorde's were grounded for modifications to the wing fuel tanks. This started in August 2000 (for BA) and the first return to commercial passenger carrying service after that was not until November 2001.

And while the 9/11 attacks killed almost 3000 and wounded twice that number, the majority were support staff and mid-level managers rather than the people who could justify Concorde's fares (and of course 9/11 didn't impact the British executives who flew on the service).

[ Random factoid: the typical Concorde business trip was Concorde LHR-JFK and a 747 JFK-LHR. They had the overnight JFK-LHR flights set up so that, for first class passengers, you'd get to the airport around 6 or 7pm, eat dinner in the terminal, board and sleep for 6 hours, shower and breakfast on arrival and be in the office by 10:30am or so. For LHR-JFK, you arrive at the airport around 8 am or so, and be on Wall Street by (again) 10:30am or so. The JFK-LHR services were great, but it took a whole day -- leave at 9am, arrive at 5pm ]

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Second Life?

Not quite.... the last one, msn 28859, registered as G-BYGG, was delivered in April 1999.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Concorde

Concorde wasn't retired because BA's load factors were dropping or maintenance was getting expensive.

Concorde was retired because Air France's load factors had dropped, and Air France's maintenance costs were problematic.

Because of the age of the design and the very few aircraft that entered service, spare parts were in short supply from about 1990 or so. In order to keep BA's twice-daily London-New York flights, BA needed at least 3 operational aircraft (one to operate BA001 and BA002, one for BA003/4, one spare), although they usually had 4 in order to support the odd charter and the winter Barbados flights (when they were doing those), which they supported by moving parts around their 7 aircraft.

New York-Paris was never as busy a route, so Air France only operated one round trip a day (needing one aircraft plus a spare) and did a lot more charter work, which needed another 1+1, but not every day. This was fine until the crash, at which point AF only had 4 aircraft remaining, so they couldn't move parts around as BA was doing.

And then politics entered the mix: once Air France decided they could no longer support their Concorde operations, they could have sold the aircraft to someone else (Branson publicly offered to buy at least one, but that was probably just grandstanding), and certainly BA was interested in buying parts from the AF fleet if it was going to be grounded. However, grounding the fleet would have pushed costs from Airbus (former Aerospatiale former Sud Aviation) and BAE (former BAC) all onto BA instead of sharing between AF and BA, plus French national pride/ego wasn't keen on the Brits continuing to operate the thing when they weren't (even though... "The E shall stand for England" -- an obscure reference to the naming of the thing). So AF refused to sell their airframes, Airbus pulled the plug on the airworthiness certificate, and the first supersonic age came to a close.

(Some years later, the USAF bragged that the F-22 could "supercruise" -- fly supersonic without afterburners -- at Mach 1.8. Whoo-de-doo: I've "supercruised" at Mach 2.0 while enjoying a Johnny Walker Blue Label, on G-BOAG and G-BOAF).

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Second Life?

The 747-436's (which are what BA's actually are) are quite old among 747-400s. If one were looking for a conversion airframe, you'd probably look elsewhere (e.g. find a 20 year old one instead of a 30 years).

Also, there have been freighter conversion programs since about 2000, and _those_ aircraft are now being (or have been) retired, too.

Privacy Shield binned after EU court rules transatlantic data protection arrangements 'inadequate'

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: More legal misdirection -- good try, but COMPLETELY BESIDE THE POINT!

This is exactly right. We discovered, in the post-Snowden brouhaha, that there was thriving cottage industry within the intelligence communities for fabricating plausible "sources and methods" narratives, so that information that had been gathered through dodgy channels would not reveal that the channels had been compromised, which served double-duty by allowing law enforcement to pretend that the information had not been collected with a warrant.

I'm thinking of rows of clairvoyants with highly-tuned crystal balls advising the local cops that they were getting a vision that the merchandise was hidden sixteen paces to the north of the old oak tree...

Boolean bafflement at British Airways' Executive Club: Sneaky little Avioses - Wicked, Tricksy, False!

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: the former World's Favourite Airline

I believe at one stage it was absolutely true: BA _was_ the world's favorite airline. The "trick" was in that "favorite" is not the same as "best". So world-wide surveys asking respondents to rank their favorite airlines, BA frequently came in as a runner-up largely for a number of reasons, including that a lot of people speak English as a second language, so might rank their national carrier first, then English-speaking carriers, etc. So long-haul Brits might rank Virgin then BA, short-haul Brits might rank BA first, Scandinavians might rank SAS then BA, Hong Kong residents Cathay then BA, etc.

All-in-all, it's like many proportional representation schemes: a candidate that's no-one's first choice may still rank highest...

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

If you happen, for whatever reason, to be paranoid about someone knowing your address, rather than faffing around with supermarkets or whatever, why not use a neighbors address?

(I'm sure there's anecdotal "evidence" of Something Bad that happened because someone stole a car and discovered the owner's home address and then perpetrated some ingenious fraud against the owner, or something, but the association between a number plate and the "registered keeper" will be all over the place anyway -- insurance, parking, speeding fines, etc. So to me the "risk assessment" puts car-thief-learning-address-from-car is way down compared to, say, every other way the data could leak.

(My car knows my address -- the girlfriend is the only one who uses it, but it means she can pick me up at the airport or wherever and get us home while I snooze!)

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: As I read that

A common wheeze is for vendors to parse the "free lifetime updates" as meaning that every update they produce for the device will be free to you (but maybe not everyone) for eternity. However, they'll stop producing regular updates in a year or so, but should they (in their sole discretion) decide to produce a special update ten years later, that too would be free to you (but maybe not free to everyone). They won't produce it, of course, but if they did...

Basically, "lifetime" applies to "free", not updates.

Think of a number: A tale of iffy discount codes, supermarket loyalty cards and Hotels.com

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: selling the discount codes for between £200 and £750

Of course.

But the article states "were found to be selling the discount codes for between £200 and £750" which is not the same as "were found to selling multiple discount codes for between £200 and £750", due to the different words.

Now, those words could also be interpreted by binding the currency figure to the qualified noun "discount codes", so it reads the same as "were found to be selling the £200, £500 and £750 discount codes", which avoids the issue.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: selling the discount codes for between £200 and £750

Never mind the profit: who would buy a £200 discount for £200? You can cut out the middleman and, you know, spend the £200 directly....

US govt: Julian Assange tried to recruit hacker to steal hush-hush dirt and we should know – the hacker was an informant

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Their case must be pretty weak, if ...

That's the way the US DoJ works: file with enough to get the ball rolling (in this case, the extradition request). Let the defendant disclose their arguments against the early charges, hopefully nailing their colors to the mast. Then file superseding indictments with charges that, ideally, contradict what the defendant has already claimed or which are careful to plug any holes that the had been identified.

Yes, it's unfair. But criminal justice isn't much to do with fairness, but with performative "art".

Wired: China's Beidou satnav system, 35th bird in orbit. Tired: America's GPS. Expired: Britain's dreams of its own

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Drones (related)

Not sure what the point would be? Many/most GNSS commodity receiver silicon works with all 4 systems, and so why would DJI degrade their product by using worse signals? What's in it for them?

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: There is no such country as Taiwan ...

That shows the basic misunderstanding of PRC/ROC relations. The PRC position is that ROC (Taiwan) is a bit like Hong Kong and Macau (or at least how Hong King was a few of years ago): It's got an autonomous government that sometimes/often does things Beijing doesn't much like... but that's an internal matter, and other countries had better not interfere with Beijing/Taipei disagreements (or Beijing/Hong Kong ones).

Taiwan thinks itself independent. But that's "just" another of those Beijing/Taipei disagreements.

So from Beijing's standpoint, of course Taiwan should be a customer of Beidou... they're just another part of China. Slightly odder is that Taipei decided to send their cash to Beijing, but its obviously the better value for money given the coverage.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: And next: commercial positioning

I'm not sure that Starlink _is_ compatible with a GNSS application. I think there are three main issues:

-- As I understand it, the individual Starlink spacecraft have some degree of autonomy in order to avoid each other. So a given article may not actually know, precisely, where it is! Maybe it will be good enough, but...

-- I also doubt they have a highly accurate clock, because that adds cost, and as the whole point of the constellation is to maintain low-latency connections, whatever timing information a given spacecraft might need would be amply addressed by an IEEE1588 clock synchronization system.

-- The terrestrial RF links are narrow, with the system working like a cell system handing off "calls" to different access points/satellites and beam-forming used to solve the power problem. This means that the footprint of a beam may be tiny, e.g. a 10km circle.

So a classic GNSS is probably not on the cards. But if a Stalink satellite "knows" enough about a ground-station's location to steer a beam to it, that would presumably make it theoretically possible to get the position of that 10km circle. And successive spacecraft could, over time, improve on that ... but this is all assuming that the system doesn't already depend on GPS to steer the beams to the ground stations (which may or may not be the case, but I wouldn't rule it out!).

What I do think is very plausible is that, if there's a good business case, that there may be a GNSS variant of the Starlink spacecraft. One very specific business case that I know SpaceX has put thought into is... how do you locate yourself on Mars? If the answer to that is a Martian GNSS, an Earth variant is an incremental and useful addition, and Starlink proves they have the technology to launch and manage such a constellation...

Remember when Republicans said Dems hacked voting systems to rig Georgia's election? There were no hacks

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Move on

You will never know if your vote has been counted... ballot boxes get lost, electronic voting machines may or may not report tallies correctly, your name may not be correct on the register so they mark your ballot "provisional", etc. Think about the chaos of the Democratic primary caucus in Iowa this year!

However, for those who worry about those things, California has ways to deliver completed ballots direct to the polling station or (in my city) large collection boxes at City Hall.

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: what do you expect when ...

A useful tactic I've used when (pro-Trump) colleagues complain about "presidential harrassment" and how mean people are being to the Cheeto-in-Chief is to observe that I think the 45th president should be treated no differently than the same as the 44th President was treated by Trump.

(Birth Certificate --> Tax returns, etc).

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Just one nose-picking minute

@codejunky... you appear to confusing whether both parties would be willing to engage in distorting the actual "will of the people" with whether both parties actually are.

I agree that there's not much daylight between the two on the willingness front.

But there's plenty of evidence that, as of right now, the Republicans are actually doing far more than the Democrats. This is maybe because the Republicans are better at it, but in criminal matters, most folks want the more efficient crooks convicted ahead of the less competent ones!

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: Coup, one small glimmer of hope

... and I've seen some churches conduct "social distancing" services in their parking lots or on the football field of an affiliated school. So you can still have some kind of community get together without violating the rules. Communion is tougher, though!

Malcolm Weir Silver badge

Re: A dry run for trumps loss in 2020

I agree compulsory voting is problematic, but "compulsory returning a ballot (possibly spoiled, possibly containing a rousing endorsement for "M. Mouse", possibly blank) is not.

I am required (by law) to return a census form in the US, and some kind of annual equivalent thing in the UK that worries about jury duty etc. And of course many people in many places have to file tax returns even if they owe no tax.

So why not require all eligible voters to acknowledge, even if they elect not to exercise, their rights?