* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Tesla owners win legal fight after software update crippled older Model S batteries

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Say it ain't so, Joe..."

I just hope that their non-appearance is taken strongly into account if Tesla decides to appeal the decision.

Any defendant who fails to turn up and defend themselves should automatically be barred from appealing the decision unless the circumstances are very, very exceptional.

Virgin Galactic goes where it's gone twice before, for the first time in two years

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Space operators' Licences

Oops, Fireball XL5, of course! Although I'm sure there must have been earlier versions, prototypes etc :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: When does the final crash test dummy go up on a test flight?

That is the plan and pretty much always has been the plan. Where have you been the last 10 years or so? Living in a cave?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Space operators' Licences

And Thunderbird 3, flying up to the orbital space station, Thunderbird 5, even earlier!

And not forgetting the venerable Fireball X-1.

On the other hand, Salvage-1 needed certification and a flight licence IIRC.

Roam if you want to: China’s Zhurong rover begins trundling on Mars

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Picture taken by the front obstacle avoidance camera

Looks to me like they forgot to remove the shadow of the camera operator in that image. Clearly, the shadow shows an old style TV camera pointing to the left and the operator, also facing left, just behind the camera to our right.

More power for your Raspberry Pi: A new PoE+ HAT to sate power-hungry peripherals

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Maybe they still have a load in stock? Or committed to a certain production lifetime with the manufacturer to get a discount?

Microsoft: Purveyors of the finest BORK since the 1990s

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It always reminds me of the old...

"I think it was someone's successful effort to inject a little humour in to a stuffy organisation."

Or, more likely, a useful coincidence. There were a number of Resource Kits emanated from MS, all the way back to the original Windows 1.0 Resource Kit[1]. Even that may have been pre-dated by others for DOS or other products, but the Win 1,0 Resource Kit is the first I ever saw.

[1] IIRC it was a a bunch of libraries, tools and graphics resources for creating Windows based programmes, before they became known as Resource Kits became SDKs.

Conflicting messaging overshadows NHS Digital's attempts to inform public about patient data slurp

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sweeping under the carpet

"Just phoned my surgery "

And someone actually answered? Not an engaged tone or answerphone? Wow!

Seriously though, GP surgeries are generally pretty busy these days and I doubt that non-medical admin stuff is not high on their priority lists right now. Someone in Government probably thinks it's a good time to bury bad news.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "We do not sell data. We only seek to recoup costs"

"The charge is an admin fee, no additional charge is added on for the actual data. This is consistent with the claim."

How much does that admin cost? The "management" need their Ferraris!!

Look what happened to the non-profit Nominet and their "admin" charges!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "We do not sell data. We only seek to recoup costs"

"The (literally) poor academic scientists, who might or might not take advantage of that new data trove, are definitely not the cause of all that hassle."

FTFY. The rich scientists work for the big pharmaceuticals companies, and those companies have money to spend and profits to make.

Big red buttons and very bad language: A primer for life in the IT world

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: RM05s

S'Ok, I got caught by the TU77 reference and thought it was a Russian cold-war long range bomber! :-)

Holy margins, Batman: Pandemic tech prices balloon as demand outweighs stocks and suppliers get greedy

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Capitalism

Sounds like Yosemite Sams youthful sidekick (in alternative universe!)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Just In time

Yes, that had already been demonstrated many times over the last 15 or so months due to various COVID-19 restrictions in various parts of the world. It was more than amply demonstrated when the Evergreen jammed up the Suez Canal though. Not just for the many ships delayed by a week or more, but the Evergreen itself, one of the worlds largest container ships, fully laden, was then impounded while investigations and negotiations were carried out as to whose fault it was and who should pay.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

The shortages are very real

We're seeing increasing lead times on certain OEM spares for warranty repairs. Screen panels in particular. Heaven help anyone wanting a repair not covered by the warranty. The OEMs are quoting lead times of up to 2 months for some parts needed for user damage repairs. And with Work From Home, out of warranty, user damage repairs are significantly increased. They don't don't seem to be keeping as large an inventry of spares because they are using them to build new units to sell, making hay while the sun shines.

China announces ‘crackdown’ on Bitcoin mining and trading

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ponzi

"or the self-professed leader of humanity, the US, that seems to be taking the lead here."

That's because US style capitalism is currently based purely on greed and power. It's the American Dream.

Sadly, the American Dream that everyone can "make good" just by working hard has morphed into Darwinian Survival of the Fittest. Just working hard is by no means enough any more. You need money and power to "live the dream".

This week, Apple CEO Tim Cook faced surprisingly tough questioning from judge

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Cooke need s a better "prep" lawyer.

"I’m not familiar with the document you are referencing"

The document being referred to is in evidence, which both sides have access to. It's been brought up in the case already. If Tim Apple wasn't aware if, then he should be sacking his legal advisor,

American insurance giant CNA reportedly pays $40m to ransomware crooks

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Governments need to intervene here

"That would include things like hardened OS images, least privilege accounts, traffic analysis, segregated local networks, backups of important data, firewalls around servers and all that good stuff. It might be an effort to get there, but it's better than suffering an attack and having to do it any way."

But, but, but, all that costs money NOW. As opposed some vague, nebulous hand-wavey possible future risk that "won't happen to us".

Signed.

The Accountant.

Boffins improve on tech that extracts DC power from ambient Wi-Fi

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Proof of concept

Something that crossed my mind many years ago was placing a coil around the live feed to light an LED. I never tried it, but then it does pre-suppose a constant live pass-through ring, which it seems most light switches don't have anyway.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Proof of concept

"I do wonder if it could be improved with a plugged in device broadcasting at a specific frequency to enable over-the-air wireless charging."

I think that defeats the object of this particular exercise. They are looking to take advantage of existing "waste" RF energy, not build yet another power delivery mechanism. They want to see if it's possible to improve on the concept of a crystal radio set to do more than just receive AM radio signals :-)

Help wanted, work from anywhere ... except if you're located in Colorado

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ah, the good old days...

"Having worked in a number of different countries myself, it is kind of naive to assume that salaries, and the corresponding taxes, social contributions, QoL are similar to where you are."

So, if the job is worth $50K to a new hire in SillyCon Valley and the new hire can work from home full time and chooses to go live in Povertystan after getting the job where the $50K makes him/her more or less a millionaire, should the salary then change to reflect to local conditions of the new residence?

It's a pretty complicated situation when you start hiring across the world for jobs being done remotely.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Top Tip

"If you live in Colorado, rent a Post Office box in NYC so you can tell recruiters you're "in" NYC."

I know you are joking, but that could open a whole world of hurt when it comes to payroll and paying taxes, possibly leading to State or Federal charges and maybe, if "they" are really feeling aggressive, wire fraud and/or money laundering charges :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Ah, the good old days...

...when job adverts, by default, included the salary range offered.

When did it stop? I've not been on the job market for many years.

How much would you pay me to develop a COVID tracking app that actually works? Ah, thought so: nothing

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 24 years old - an old man!

His website is at https://coronaviruscymru.wales/

Should that not be https://coronaviruscymru.cymru/ :-))))

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 24 years old - an old man!

Death to vowels!!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: If Clouseau can get one

...or maybe there are other "Honours" which can be bestowed which don't involve bending or breaking the "rules".

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Tea....

Absolutely! It was blindingly obvious to anyone not American that it was a mickey-take :-)

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I once wrote "Telepathy Module failed, replaced with Data Cable" for a printer.

(This was pre-WiFi days too)

UK Computer Misuse Act convictions declined last year despite pandemic explosion in online criminal activity

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Incidentally

Exactly. The examples given were "simple" theft and vandalism. They just happened to use technology to carry out the crimes.

ESA signs off on contracts for lunar data relay and navigation

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Satellites in lunar orbit

"The advantage of satellite constellations is to allow smaller antennae and lower latency which is probably the intention here."

And there's no atmosphere to attenuate the signals either. Or a magnetic field, so the sats will need to be more hardened against solar weather.

Here's how we got persistent shell access on a Boeing 747 – Pen Test Partners

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: What Now?

"Then you ... what? ... Drive everyone on the aircraft mad by playing the same Celine Dion song over and over at full volume?"

Oh FFS! RICK ASTLEY of course. Who wouldn't want to rick-barrel-roll a 747 full of "captives"?

Hi, Congress. FTC here. It would be so wonderful if you could let us recover money stolen from victims by crooks

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: What's going on?

"Why doesn't Congress sort out the problem ASAP?"

Possibly, they are looking at what happens when Police forces find they can increase their "budget" when they get to keep the "proceeds of crime" when they win a prosecution.

It started as a great incentive, but rapidly introduced corruption and incentivised raking in as much as they can because that extra money is often available for shiny new toys they'd otherwise not be able to have, like military hardware, tank-like APCs etc.

UK data regulator fines American Express up to 0.021p per email after opted-out folk spammed 4.1 million times

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes, I was thinking that too. The comments from Amex quoted in the article seem to indicate that even after being found in breach, they still don't think they did anything wrong. Maybe the fine should be doubled every month until they see the error of their ways and admit the broke the rules?

ASUS baffles customer by telling them thermal pad thickness is proprietary

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: Pad is the least of the issues with this card

I wonder if Apple use propriety iPads for thermal interfaces?

Internet Explorer downgraded to 'Walking Dead' status as Microsoft sets date for demise

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Forcing that change won't be a bad thing."

You better hope that it gets an update before it's too late.

Apple seeks to junk claim that iOS is an 'essential facility' in legal spat with Epic Games

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It is

"However, obtaining those APKs and knowing that they are not cracked and piggy-backing some kind of malware? There's your problem..."

Google don't seem to be all that great at curating their app stores.

Pics or it didn't happen: First images from China's Mars rover suggest nothing has gone Zhurong just yet

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Nothing there...

It's also in a geologically different part of the planet. It's not like you drill for oil here on Earth and if you don't find any, give up because obviously there is no oil anywhere, eh? :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Likewise, "China is only the third nation to have successfully managed a soft landing on Mars after the Soviet Union and United States."

I'm not sure we can really call 110 seconds of operation after lander a "success" for the Soviet Union unless someone can prove that the failure wasn't caused by the landing. That it landed and managed to operate for 110 seconds using the technology of the day was an great achievement, but not really a success in terms of an operable lander.

Parliament demands to know the score with Fujitsu as Post Office Horizon scandal gets inquiry with legal teeth

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The one thing that no one

On the other hand, the first case of fraud brought by the PO was in 2007, just as Gordon Brown became Prime Minster. By the time Cameron came in in 2010, Labour had had 3 years of seeing multiple caes being brought and an action group being set up to contest the alarmingly growing number of supposed fraud cases. Even in 2009, back under Labour, at least one case was deferred due to questions over the IT system. It was known about and on the public record under Labour.

The Torys were worse thoiugh, they have presided of all of the rest of the process and not taken action, but as pointed out above, it did start under Labour and the warning flags had already been raised.

iFixit slams Samsung's phone 'upcycling' scheme for falling short of what was promised

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yep, the catch-phrase is Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, but most people seem to forget or ignore the first two. And "upcycle" can fit in nicely between Re-use and Recycle.

But yeah, "upcycle" sounds like a weird contrived word :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: you (...)(...)!

Maybe the Hexanippled Whore of Eroticon-5 is happy with the free publicity?

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "And then there’s the Digital Yuan"

Unlike China, the G7 and/or other Western nation will most likely slowly indicate their intentions, giving their "friends" plenty time to cash out, leaving the more greedy trying to see who can stay in the longest, making the most gains, before it crashes and the last out lose everything.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Bitcoin’s price has dropped around 1.5 per cent in the last 24 hours.

"Banning trade doesn't ban production..."

If the internal market is gone, who's going to keep producing? At some stage, it needs to reach a bank and have the value converted into something the Chinese producers can bank and spend.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Hu's on first!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: @HildyJ Self Interest, Public Interest

"Bitcoin finds itself in the same boat as the Dalai Lama and democracy in Hong Kong."

Marginalised?

Ex-Apple marketing bigwig tells Epic judge: Our revenue-sharing model is designed to stop money laundering

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's a good thing I'm not a judge...

I LOVE your warped imagination. Can I have some of what your on? I really need some about now.

UK pharma supplier put into special measures after new IT system causes almost 10,000 missed medicine deliveries

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

So, all those software devs...

...who shove shit out the door, maybe your software DOES affect peoples lives?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Just in time supply lines

On the other hand, "generic" drugs only exist because either there was never a patent or the patent expired, so not really in competition with drugs more recently developed with R&D cost to recover.

Déjà bork: BSOD fairy pays key-cutting kiosk another visit

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Err, yeah, I suppose so

"As for the error itself, it's another 0x000000F4 hinting at either duff hardware or misbehaving software."

Ummm...what else might be if not hardware or software?

Samsung shows off rollable and foldable displays, suggests they'll arrive in 2022

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Let's see where this goes...

The PHB, obv!!

Activist millionaires protest outside Jeff Bezos' homes to support tax rises for the rich

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: A useful little test

Even after yesterdays opening of "indoor service", there's still no queueing at the bar allowed so I assume the above is all hypothetical? :-))

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