* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Euro-telcos call on big tech to help pay for their network builds

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: telcos vs big data

"The customers of the ISP already pay for the fucking roads."

...and they built some very nice "fucking" roads. The problem is that now there are 50x as many cars trying to use those roads and those cars are being given away for free or very cheap to the punters. Now people are complaining they can't drive their new shiney because no one expected the sudden influx on the "fucking" roads. Roads aren't built to manage everyone using them at the same time, that would be silly. But if you suddenly give everyone free or cheap access to a vehicle, human nature shows that so many more will use them that the system become congested. The answer is almost always to restrict users in some way.

And yes, as always, car/road analogies break down more often than a 30 year old Ford Escort :-)

Of course, in this case, I don't know if it's really the telcos bleating or if this is a genuine problem. Maybe a bit of both. I doubt any of the telcos or ISPs predicted the levels of video streaming going on these days.

AI-enhanced frog stem cells start to replicate in entirely new ways

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Gobblers?

So, they built primitive Assembers, and instead of developing them properly to build diamond spaceships, they are just a stepping stone to their real objective...Gobblers. To "eat" radioactive waste. I hope they realise that people are radioactive too!!

Panasonic admits intruders were inside its servers for months

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A real pro crack...hidden for months

Why would anyone hack a server to access patents that are publicly accessible from the relevant patent office? I'm sure the NSA budget could stretch to the relevant few $$ fee.

James Webb Space Telescope may actually truly launch this century, says NASA

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Out of curiosity, how much fuel do the thrusters take?

Renting IT hardware on a subscription basis is bad for customers

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Subscription vs lease?

That's how it should work, but more often we see the beancounters being the ones in charge, not just "experts" to be consulted.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Confused

It's not the first debate where the voting is not obvious. It also seems a bit odd having the vote after only the first article, with no option to change your vote after the opposing article. I wonder how many people will wait for the second article before voting?

Project Union: Microsoft releases Windows App SDK 1.0, developers try to puzzle it out

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Eh...what?

With the mention of Windows SDK 1.0 and WinUI 3.0, I was expecting an article about MS open sourcing the original Windows SDK :-)

Probably because I just read the article about the Win 3.1 mouse driver

It's 2021 and someone's written a new Windows 3.x mouse driver. Why now?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Windows

Re: I remember a buddy of mine...

Or this ----------->

Indian government warns locals not to use Starlink's internet services

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Rockstars...

Rocketstars? The only way is up?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: it does not have a valid license

"because your gov (well, any) wants a finger in the pie, and an eye on the content provided from the sky. If the gov's not in control... CHAOS!"

Are there any countries which don't regulate RF Comms other than in limited bands at very low power?

You forced me to use this fancypants app and now you're asking for a printout?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Holidays

Yeah, they are usually not even licenced (to drive!)

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: circular history

Yeah, I met her once too. Once was enough!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Unfortunately...

"40% of UK medical students are creationists."

I've not heard that before. Where did you find that number?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: I thought this was ....

Oh, thanks for that! I mis-read it as intentional bad actors!

Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining because while hydroelectric power is cheap, they need it for other stuff

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I second that request.

Not my problem :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Quite

Maybe if you weren't being so selfish and self-absorbed, you might stop and wonder about all that hydro power being used in Sweden that could be used and/or exported to replace the fossil fuel generation. See? Some you CAN do about reducing fossil fuel usage.

As for your co-generation suggestion, almost all crypto mining not only treats the heat as waste, but spends more energy on getting rid of it because it's low grade waste heat. Of course, low grade heat CAN be used for other useful purposes, but that needs investment, location and equipment to turn it into something useful such as concentrating it for heating purposes, assuming there's somewhere nearby that needs heat. But it'd be even more efficient to just generate the needed heat directly for the end users rather than wasting it on a volatile currency system that can swing so wildly you can go from barely to comfortable to millionaire and back again in a swing of the pendulum.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I second that request.

Yeah, it's funny in a strange kind of way. All those protestors blocking Amazon warehouse access because of the Amazon Carbon footprint, but I don't see any big protests about cryptocurrencies and huge carbon footprint and/or "waste" of green power going on there. I wonder how much extra coal and gas have been burned because of all the cheap hydro power not being used to heat peoples homes.

Government-favoured child safety app warned it could violate the UK's Investigatory Powers Act with message-scanning tech

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"That might apply to outbound messages but TFA says specifically that the sender's permission is required, not the receiver's. On this interpretation it makes it illegal for inbound messages."

On the other hand, the sender is sending to a minor and the legal guardian is installing and authorising the checking of what is being sent to that minor. This is why lawyers get paid the big money to argue the finer points of law.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Almost every email service currently availble?

“…we were intercepting incoming messages, without the authority of the person that had sent it in the first place.”

Surely every email service available which does incoming spam filtering is also legally on shaky ground based on that? Only the recipient has signed the T&Cs allowing that filtering and only the recipient has the power to change the settings. In the case of a child, the parent or other legal guardian is the "legal authority" and is allowed to take measure to protect their charge, which may involve filtering their email or other incoming messages, either on the device or at the server end, including forwarding those message automatically to another filtering service. Just like everyone already does now.

Swooping in to claim the glory while the On Call engineer stands baffled

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sleep

On the rare occasions I've almost had to give up, I have phoned back to base to get help from the bench/workshop guys. Often, the answer arrives in my head during dialling, while the phone is ringing or sometimes as it's answered, at which I say "never mind, fixed it now". As you say, it's just getting away from the issue, away from the concentration on specific detail, letting your brain do it's thing and see the big picture.

Reviving a classic: ThinkPad modder rattles tin to fund new motherboard for 2008's T60 and T61 series of laptops

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: X330 FTW!

"and this X270 and the latter is my favourite so far."

Just make sure you look after that keyboard very, very carefully. It's a bastard to replace. One of the worst in the Lenovo range (not consumer range, I never see them, so don't know).

To replace, take the bottom off, then keep digging till you eventually have it almost totally stripped down to get the keyboard out. If you are careful and know the "trick", you can avoid having to remove the screen when removing the keyboard. It's possibly the most likely part to fail and pretty much the hardest to replace. Almost every model in the X, P, L and even E range is a 5 minute k/b replacement procedure. X270 and Carbons are a pain (and a very few others where the k/b is part of the cover/chassis/palm-rest, probably for spillage protection))

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

SpinLaunch

That SpinLaunch device looks interesting and wacky! Apart from the high tech control room, it looks sotra steampunk, like maybe the British Empire of the Victorian era may have used to colonise Mars :-)

Desktop bust and custom iPhone 13 Pro made from melted-down Tesla car for the Elon Musk dork in your life

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

""I think you are wrong. Stupidity knows no limits. I can think of lots of examples where stupid somehow gets money. I'll not go into examples but over the last few years there's lots of examples.""

You don't need to give examples. Just say "NFT" and that will cover a multitude of sins :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

It's "limited" to very few items. There are billions of people on this earth. You only need a limited number to think these items will be valuable in the future to make killing. Simple.

Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don't play ball in future

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: it's an "arms race" with "loony" protestors getting more and more extreme

"Blocking a busy road is not the same as bombing someone's house."

No, it isn't. I suppose we should be grateful for that at least.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"If accountability means abducting people until the local often-unreasonable demands have been met, I can't help but think that the correct response is "bugger this" and just walking away."

This! If doing business in a country becomes too onerous for whatever reason, then you up sticks and leave. In some cases, that might mean hardships in the affected country and cause change. In others, it will mean local companies will fill the void. But some of the big multinationals seem to think they can ride roughshod over anyone and it doesn't matter so long as they get their profits and squash the competition. The online tech companies are probably the worst for this because they don't always need a physical presence and feel they have a right to operate anywhere they see fit, in they any way they see fit.

Now, as per the article, the sub-text of what Russia is saying is not good for anyone, least of all their own citizens, but the obvious answer is to just pull out of Russia completely. Let Russia try to block their services and see what happens. That may be more difficult for MacDonalds or any other foreign business with people and physical assets, but then they aren't the targets this time because they already have the physical presence. Has MacDonalds been strongarmed into any actions they'd not normally take yet? Are they paying protection money as the "cost of doing business"? Being forced to use local ingredients or put special Russian-Only items on the menu (or is that just normal business anyway?)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Western governments detain people too"

Unfortunately, it's an "arms race" with "loony" protestors getting more and more extreme and so the response gets more extreme.

What happened to marching through a city centre with your 1000's of supporters? I know, there's only a few of us so lets just glue ourselves to the middle of a motorway!

Yeah, they have a point, but WTF?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Russia is gone

"Funny to think the Cold War was the calm before the storm, eh?"

Hardly! Cuban missile crisis and constant proxy wars. On the other hand, yeah, everyone pretty much knew who was on each side.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Making the world a better place?

"But make sure it works both ways. No Chinese hackers, no Russian malware operators, no vpn's letting them get out.

One Internet for them, one for the rest of us. Sounds like it would make the world a much nicer place..."

The internet is already moving in that direction, to the detriment of all users. There are already self-selecting people stuck in their own echo chambers, and places like China are doing it to their entire country.

Balkanisation is rarely helpful.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: reports of armed men loitering outside Google's offices in Russia

Are you saying Russians have spire envy?

ESA's Solar Orbiter will swing past Earth this week – sure hope nobody created a big cloud of space junk up there

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Maybe switch to Moon flybys in future

Has anyone tried it with a Kerbal-naut?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Maybe switch to Moon flybys in future

"the moon is much, much lower mass than the earth, so you'd get much less kick"

On the other hand, you can get within a few kilometres of the surface for a faster kick, just need to avoid any tall peaks, either by staying above, or going through! Could be tricky, but great visuals :-)

Robotaxis freed to charge across 60km2 of Beijing

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

will run from 07:00 to 22:00

Really? Are the RoboTaxi unions already that strong? I thought the point of a RoboTaxi was that it could run 24/7 without needing a break other than for charging, cleaning or maintenance.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

China wants to show the world how technologically advanced it is.

China has a very, very large population.

The Chinese government doesn't care about individuals.

The Chinese government is prepared to move entire villages, even towns, to suit their infrastructure needs.

I wonder how much they'll care if there are a few accidents? After all, with a population the size of Beijing, there are probably quite a few road traffic accidents every day. Will they care if the are more? On the other hand, maybe they got it right and there will be fewer accidents per mile driven? Maybe they are prepared (and have the power) to take the risk, while the Western democracies need to quantify a zero risk before letting robotaxis on the streets (or at least as close to zero as is economically viable giving the litigious nature of the people)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Also, why no option, Taxi? What's a taxi?

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s: Impressively average, which is how corporate buyers like it

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: old faithful

"Card readers! You can still find them, XPS15 has it. Lenovo seem to have gone microSD for T14 and T15 (none for T14s), which is less useful as you can fit a microSD into a SD slot, but not vice-versa."

He may have meant smart card readers. I see a lot of kit which have them, or the blanking plate because it's an option. Many NHS users have them because that's how they log into certain system. Even the desktops will commonly have a keyboard with a swipe card reader.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: old faithful

"Although, on second thoughts, T-users are not exactly top of the ticktock / insta-influencers club! ;) "

Exactly. Those people are NOT using cheap webcams built into a laptop. They have much better quality, near-Pro level (at least) add on devices like cameras, mic, lighting etc.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: old faithful

"- 720p web cam - wtf (yeah, I don't care, yeah, I know it's the 'standard', but still wtf, given it's 2021)"

As you so "I don't care". It's a webcam being used to focus on a face 12" away for 99.9% of it working hours. Why would anyone want more or complain about not getting 1080p? It's not as if anyone is going to be holding their laptop out in front to shoot HD video with it. Well, a very few might do so as the only option available at the time, but hey, who cares :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Likely removable

Yes, something I very much approve of WRT to Lenovo. Easy access to the harware manuals.

Here the one for the T14s, which confirms the SSD is in an M.2 slot.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes. The Lenovo official diagnostic tool is a live Linux USB image. The only device it doesn't appear to support for diags is the WLAN. So theoretically, there ought to be drivers for all hardware in all Lenovo laptops.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Get T14 instead

The vast majority of the ones I repair across multiple clients has RAM slots. It tends to be the smaller or slimmer models which don't. The daily driver for average users are not the smaller or slimmer ones :-)

NASA boffins seem to think we're worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they're shooting a spaceship at one

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Impacts are not always bad

No, I'm just saying look closely at what is being predicted and how they are predicting it. A linear progression based on relatively short term trends, such what the Club Of Rome model did, can be highly misleading. Many of the wilder predictions we get about climate change are being predicted ion the same way because the people pushing them have their own agenda. Climate change is real, it's not good, we need to do stuff to mitigate it, but just be careful of who we listen to and what we do so we don't waste time on the wrong stuff.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hollywood Fantasists

"I am commenting on why they are doing it, and how pointless it is considering all the ifs"

Considering all the "ifs" is why they are doing it. That's who science works. Postulate a hypothesis and then do experiments to generate data for a possible theory.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Impacts are not always bad

"Not to mention the forthcoming gas wars, oil wars, water wars, food wars, e.t.c.. Always assuming that a virus doesn't finish us off first."

And yet, every time some or all of the above are predicted, we dodge the bullet. Look at the Club of Rome predictions. We're already dead according to them.

Yeehaw, y'all! Texas done got itself a honkin' new Samsung semiconductor plant

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Epic line

"the risk they're exposed to in that state."

Would that be classed as East Texas? If so, then Samsung will be a "local" company if there's any legal shenanigans like patent disputes to deal with . The "locals" usually win :-)

UK Ministry of Justice secures HVAC systems 'protected' by passwordless Wi-Fi after Register tipoff

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

...or possibly a Commodore Amiga

James Webb Space Telescope gets all shook up – launch delayed again

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Clang!

On the one hand, it could be an overabundance of caution over an unplanned jolt of a $10B project. On the other hand, it's been tested for the sorts of vibration expected during launch, which are of known frequency, duration, magnitude and vectors. This "ding" may have been outside any or all of the parameters of what they tested for.

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"or this is willy waving of the highest order."

Or it's actually the early stages of a re-usable space plane project.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: a limitation of hypersonics

"Anti missile technology? The last time I read anything about this topic a couple of years ago then I understood that the USA had done up to that point in time something like ten tests where they had fired off a missile to intercept another missile warhead and they were successful in about half of those cases."

Anti-missile tech got a decent real world workout while Iraq occupied Kuwait and started launching Scuds and other missiles at various neighbours. I'm sure both side got a good idea of effective or ineffective the systems were at that time.

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