Re: Naming
And anyway, surely no bank would ever rely on just hoping to recognise someones voice as the one and only security identifier. Or would they? :-)
25341 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"Of course, the odd occasion this happens is just one of those things...but a perpetrator who keeps "going back to the well", is eventually going to be found out."
There are probably cleverer scam artists doing it, but they know to change products and tactics frequently and thus minimise the chances of being caught. ie going to a different well instead of the same one every day.
A lot of National Trust sites use two Postcodes, one for their official postal address and one for SatNavs showing where the vehicle entrance is. NT sites are often "off road" by some maps so the driving directions take you as close as possible by public road then say "drive off road to destination". Meanwhile, 3 miles away on the other side of the Estate is the actual entrance with the private driveway leading to the car park.
(Other public and private tourist destination with the same issues are available)
"the "centre" of the postcode, which is some shops about a quarter of a mile away,"
That sounds like a cheap, old SatNav still using only 5 character Postcodes. They only work properly if you enter town/street/door number and fail if the property doesn't have a door number. But will still get closer than using a 5 char. Postcode. A full postcode should generally get you on the correct street and correct part of the street if it's a long one and almost all modern SatNavs use full 7 char. Postcodes. It' helps if the maps are upgradable AND upgraded when available, not left "as is" for years.
"However Ahmed and Anya can crack on being example names in crypto and the like and surely do it without causing anyone offence."
The mere fact that a woman might be involved in crypto or just going out to work could be offensive in some circles when she should be back at home doing the washing and cleaning.
(awaits knee-jerk downvotes as certain peoples red haze drops over their eyes)
On the other hand, do we care really if we offend the new Afghan government?
Nearly 40 years ago, the local university suggested that faculty when in social gatherings on campus refrain from introducing their wives as *my* wife as it implied ownership. The female faculty were a bit put not just because "my wife" by definition includes "my husband" ie joint ownership, but they as female faculty had been excluded from the ruling. Only "my wife" was deemed offensive. "my husband" hadn't even been considered. Their successful argument was that either both or neither were offensive and it was quietly dropped :-)
And even back then, there were various types of couples anyway so it wasn't that unusual to use partner instead of wife/husband. The real problem seemed to with "my".
"some time in the next billion years or so I think we'll just move to a different neighborhood. How long does terraforming take... ?"
If some version of humanity is still around in a few billion years, why bother with terraforming? They'll probably be all over the galaxy by then, and/or either just stop the sun expanding by re-fueling it or just move the whole frickin' plant Earth (for sentimental reason, obviously) to a younger star.
Hey, if we're theorising future tech, why not think big, eh?
On the other hand, if their one custom chip replaces 10+ off-the-shelf chips, there's only one product to wait for instead of 10 which may be from different fabs with different lead times. I can't see it being an immediate solution, but long term it's a cost cutting measure and possibly a supply chain security measure. If it's their own chip design, they can supply the design and/or masks to any fab capable of making it.
University. Start of term after the summer break. Help-desk flooded with calls from academics who, having been warned constantly to report anything out of the ordinary, are screaming "have I been hacked?" because their desktop PC has been updated over the summer, maybe a new OS, maybe a new corporate wallpaper, maybe just some desktop icons changed because they got a new version of Office or something.
You don;t have to be stupid to not understand computers. You just have to be uneducated in that field. Of course, you should probably not go public with your fears without consulting your help-desk first. THAT is stupid.
"When they said that the checks hadn't turned up anything and the plane would be proceeding to destination (Oakland, CA) and anybody who wanted back on was welcome to do so, a guy near me remarked that there was no way he'd ever get on that plane. I turned to him and said, "Why not? It's probably the most thoroughly checked and safest plane you'll ever fly on in your life." I re-boarded and it was--after that--a completely unremarkable flight."
I see the others guys point too though. A bomb threat credible enough to go through what you described, and they found nothing. Does that mean there is no bomb or just that they didn't find it yet? Obviously there wasn't, since you'd probably not be relating the story, but, ya know, some people take more convincing than others :-)
"Although it's very tempting to send scathing sarcastic emails to team leaders, before you send any controversial emails, just think how you'd feel having the email read back to you in court. Then imagine how your team leader will react when you defecate in their email inbox while trying to deflect blame for the fuckup."
Once you reach a certain level of power, if you are not careful and a generally nice person to start with, arrogance can easily take hold. With great power and arrogance comes a huge self-perception of invincibility. We see it time and time again in industry and politics.
"If you are chief test pilot for Boeing and you say "this plane is unsafe" AND then they fire you = you get enough money from the settlement to never work again + you probably get to be next director of the FAA + you get on every talk show work and become a celebrity"
His appearance in court should be interesting. Will he suck it up and hope Boeing will "look after" him? Will he spill the beans on the higher ups?
Thanks, that's very interesting and useful. What about when doing, say 70mph down hill. In an ICE car you can just about take your foot of the accelerator and pretty much maintain speed for almost no fuel usage. Can an EV do that too or would that be like stepping on the brakes? I'm thinking here that even going downhill you may need to "drive" down, ie put energy into the motors to stop them becoming brakes. I'm trying to get a feel for eco driving methods here and how you can do that in an EV other than just being gentle and accel/decell. Is there an option for sort of coasting in gear downhill.
That's a good point, although I'd suspect there are very few 10-15 year old cars on the road with original brake pads. Those that are, are likely not driven all that much. The internet states car brake pads can last 25-60k depending on car and driving habits. In an earlier post, I mentioned average UK car miles driven, and 60K could be 10 or more years for people on below average mileage.
"Large batteries are heavy, no getting past that - my (loathed) eTron is 2.5tonnes, but that's partly batteries and mostly Audi's usual bullshit. I digress."
Sticking to your digression for a moment, I wonder how much extra tyre rubber and brake pad dust polution is being generated by your car compared to the average 1,5T ICE car? Yes, I know about regenerative braking, but having never driven an EV, anyone know how much of the braking is regen and how much conventional? Is it a matter of driving properly with anticipation so only the regen brakes are used or is regen braking good enough that only an emergency stop would use the pads/disks?
"I haven't researched it but I would not be surprised if a much smaller proportion of a modern car is recyclable."
If anything, I'd expect more of a modern car to be recyclable. Including the plastics. There's a lot of pressure on manufactures to move away from single use anything and has been for some while now. Likewise, new methods of recycling which can handle stuff previously uneconomic for anything other than landfill. Charging more landfill tax has skewed the economics more towards recycling too.
When you look at the amount of rock which is blasted or dug, moved, pulverised and processed for some quite small volumes of useful elements, it does make one wonder if it might become viable to "mine" some old landfill sites in the not too distant future.
And all that mining is done with very heavy machinery, primarily running on diesel at the moment. Boot-strapping that sort of industry into clean power will take a while. Not to mention the often highly polluting and high energy processing of the ores once mined. I think there's a long, long way to go before anything like a car can be truly be called "zero emissions". Zero at point of use, yes, but not zero lifetime.
"Battery owners would be able to say how much of their capacity can be used as buffer storage, so if you're about to go on a long trip you can be sure of starting with a full battery."
The payments for renting your battery capacity will need to take into account the reduced lifetime of what is a very expensive consumable with a finite number of charge/discharge cycles. Also, for those leasing their EV car batteries, does it void the lease? Or for owned batteries, does it void the warranty? With all the electronics and computers in EVs and their constant chatter back to base, they will know exactly your charge/discharge patterns and what, if anything, the vehicle was doing at the time.
"requiring re-refining to make into new cell materials."
I think that was Musks point about treating them as high grade ore. I'd imagine the processes to be a little more difficult though as it's not just separating an element from rock and other elements, not to mention as someone said earlier, the possibility of combustion in the process of breaking them down. After all, EVs are supposed to replace Internal Combustion, not cause it!
Some of us drive 100k Miles in 2-3 years. The battery likely will last longer, but the warranty won't. It's same with my ICE car. 7 year warranty expired at 100K miles, which was not much over 2 years in this case :-)
Those kind of warranties are aimed at Mr Average, of course, and my driving needs are not average.
FWIW, average mileage here in the UK...
2002 9,200 miles
2013 7,900 miles
2019 7,400 miles
...and, estimates for 2020, the year of Covid, it could be as low as 5,920 .
My annual average is around 40-50K miles per year these days.
No. I remember a box from LSI called the Octopus. It would run 8 and 16-bit CP/M executables both on the main console and as many dumb terminals as you had serial ports for. Oh, an you could switch virtual consoles on the main console too. There was, eventually, a PC "compatible" add-on card but we saw that as a huge downgrade since it turned a multi-user computer into a single user device. It'll never catch on :-)
That's why there should be a bit bucket by every desk! Unfortunately, due to recycling and waste reduction policies, most facilities managers seem to think there will be less waste if the bins are 30 feet or more from the desk in a central location so most people let the spare bits pile up on the floor.
"I think it's going to be a while before we need worry about this in the real world."
If you have an effectively unlimited budget and the motivation, almost anything is possible for a TLA. If no one is already exploiting this opportunity, you can bet at least some TLAs are at least assessing it and possibly working on developing it.
"Unless the pairs haven't been connected correctly (which happens when electricians dabble in networking)."
Got a call to a site. "Network never seems to reach full speed, can you take a look please?" It took a while, but then we tested the wall points. Seemed a little odd. Pulled the faceplate off and the wires were in the wrong connections. The entire building was wired that way. Clearly it was sparkies who installed it and came up with their own idea of which wire goes where and then stuck to that plan. The cost involved in re-doing it all was a little prohibitive and as far as I know, is still running like that now.
"it's a race to see who can grab alternative stock the quickest."
And, of course, the big boys with lots of money can afford to pay more on speculative parts they think may do the job while they carry on with testing. The smaller boys have to complete the testing first 'cos they can only afford to pay the increased prices on parts they KNOW will work. Remember the Thailand floods affecting hard disk production? Anyone smaller than Dell or HP or the other Big Names were scrabbling around for the leftovers 'cos the money men jumped first.
"Running the ports 24x7 isn't going to solve anything on its own, it is one piece in a huge jigsaw puzzle. Truck drivers are also in a big shortage in the US, so unless you can solve that problem you'll trade "lots of containers sitting on ships outside the port" for "lots of containers sitting in warehouses surrounding the port" and you're no closer to getting them to consumers."
Same in the UK re truck drivers. And our biggest container port is more or less logjammed with containers just now. To the extent that larger ships are now choosing to go to Rotterdam and others, offload there and the containers can then get to the UK by other means, eg smaller ships, truck/ferry or rail/tunnel. The big ships don't want to be laid up for a few days waiting for a berth.
Increasing the numbers of truck drivers will take time. Drivers need to be trained and licenced. And most companies want people with experience. Same goes for the comments about new chip fabs in the US and EU. Ain't gonna fix anything short term. new fabs take years to build and commission. New fabs are needed for supply security, not to solve current production woes.
I know at least one ex-truck driver who threw the letter from DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licencing Agency, UK Govt Dept in charge of UK drivers licences) )in the bin, he ain't going back to that life any time, ever. Another, is still waiting for his delayed licence renewal that he applied for in plenty of time so as not to be forbidden from working, but DVLA delays means he's been off the road for nearly two months now.
"People need to stop depending on these goddamn razor-thin just-in-time schemes. That's great when things are running like clockwork, but when shit does go down, it really falls apart in a big way."
The Suez Canal isn't quite a single point of failure, but a lot of deliveries and production was screwed when the Ever Given blocked it. Those not already stuck in the queue, or committed to ports at each end, were able to go the long way around. That was also a delay and cost increase. It affected Europe noticeably. Probably other countries along the route from China to Europe too. And that was a very short term issue compared to a pandemic.
Not quite. NASA threw away the multi-million dollar launch vehicle each time and didn't bother reusing the flight vehicle either. On the other hand, the electronics and computing powers probably wasn't up to a 1st stage landing with level of likely success, not to mention reliably re-lighting the engines. BO is going slowly compared to SpaceX and both are building on the shoulders of the giants who proceeded them (as NASA themselves did), and they are both doping it better and cheaper. I do hope BO catch up to SpaceX since it's clear the other incumbents don't seem to have a clue how to do re-usability.
Even ESA are looking at a re-usable demonstrator flight by 2023, although they only signed the development contract (a continuation of something already happing, possibly only in theory at that stage) last December. That'll be a while away, but their roadmap shows a first flight in 2023 and full "flight envelope" test flight in 2025. Sounds a bit optimistic to me. There's a list of all known reusable rocket programmes on wikipedia.