* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25250 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Waymo self-driving robotaxi goes rogue with passenger inside, escapes support staff

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "unusual situation"

I'm struggling to think what is unusual about roadworks.

I went through some single file roadworks today. Being very temporary, they didn't even put temporary traffic lights out. Just a guy at each end flipping a hand held sign around from STOP to GO. I wonder how a Waymo taxi will cope with that?

Tor users, beware: 'Scheme flooding' technique may be used to deanonymize you

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Isn't that the point though?

"Happy to be corrected."

My impression from the article is that it can fingerprint you on your normal travels through the web and match that to a fingerprint when you use Tor. So the privacy conscious will use different browsers or instances in a sandbox/jail/VM and get a different fingerprint through "normal" browsing and Tor browsing.

Also happy to be corrected.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: web links like "skype://" or "slack://"

"Not everyone wants their browser to do everything, but having a mailto link is pretty darned useful."

That's the point though, isn't it. Others may not see the point in their browser being able to follow a mailto:// link because they never use a mail client, but are very happy that it will follow/launch a skype:// link.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: web links like "skype://" or "slack://"

"IMO this should include "mailto://" - either the browser should bring up a "not available" message"

This what my browser does,. hence the inability to use the "helpful" corrections link below the articles :-)

For the marketeer that has everything – except a CPU fan

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yep, and anyone who has run something like a dedicated Kodi install such OSMC or LibreElec knows, a build system can be pointed at an update server and auto-update on demand, from patches to a complete OS re-image.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Like netbooks used to be able to run WindowsXP? Until each service pack increased the base OS load on the resources and by the time SP3 came along, the OS took ALL of the resources.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"what on earth is it doing that it needs a Core i7?"

Facial recognition, matching Bluetooth and wifi identifiers with faces for personally targetted adverts?

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Bellowing Boss!

"The wilder the proposal and the more shocked response they get seems to encourage them."

No, that's a carefully planned strategy. It's been going on for years.

1) Come up with a plan no one will be happy with

2) Make it even more outrageous and announce it to the public as a proposal or speculation.

3) Bask in the outrage

4) Release original outrageous plan, which looks like a major back-pedal from step 2

5) Take the credit as the public gasp with amazement that this outrageous plan is more palatable than the insane one from step 2 and accept it with relief.

Protip: If Joe Public reports that your kit is broken, maybe check that it is actually broken

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: too many times

"adds a good 20 - 30 minutes to the install time"

That works is, on buying the new kit, you are doing your own install. But if you are buying the kit INCLUDING install-to-desk, the installers are usually being paid a small, fixed price and have to install a certain number per hour. Niceties will be skipped simply because there isn't time because the buyer didn't pay enough to have to job talk even 10 minutes longer per unit.

On the other hand, I've been in schools in the past where the screen had both VGA and DMI leads installed because, well, that's what came in the box. I've seen others where, a year down the line, the plastic protective film was still on the screen (both self-installs, not done by suppliers)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Civil service paying for excuses

I had similar on an MoD site. "Please leave all phones, cameras, laptops in the lockers, this is a secure area, we don't want data being taken back out".

It was only on leaving I remembered the small bag with about 200GB worth of pen drives in my pocket.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Angel

Re: Up time

" of course ive turned it on and off"

There's yer problem! You need to complete the cycle at the ON stage, not the OFF stage :-)

10.8 million UK homes now have access to gigabit-capable broadband, with much of the legwork done by Virgin Media

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Oops

incremental backups shouldn't be too onerous.

Oops, meant shouildn't, of course :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I'm the other way around

Well, as Werdsmith just posted above, he pays for 100 and gets 110.

I also pay for 100 and generally get 90-110 depending on time of day.

VM have problems, maybe what could be described as problem areas, but getting poor service in one area doesn't mean that everyone will agree with you. The problem with VM isn't so much the problem areas, it's how they own up to and deal with the problems. Unfortunately, like most companies these days, they deny there are problems and when forced to admit to them, fail to be transparent or timely in dealing with them. That's not a VM problem as such, it's an endemic corporate problem.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Gigabit...

"Nor if you run offsite backups to your friend's house..."

Unless you are doing a full backup every time, surely speed isn't that big an issue? Unless you are generating very large amounts of data on a daily basis, incremental backups should be too onerous.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Gigabit...

"Their marketing bumf mentions 52Mbps upload, so a fairly typical 20:1 ratio..."

It may vary, depending on the package. My package is 100/10, so a 10:1 ratio there.

Audacity's new management hits rewind on telemetry plans following community outrage

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Devil

Re: Audacity have announced a U-turn on plans to introduce "basic telemetry" into the product.

I thought uber were a relatively new company. I didn't realise there where dark hands behind both Google and Amazon.

China says its first Mars rover Zhurong has landed on the Red Planet

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Pint

Re: Today? At what time?

"Well done."

Absolutely! Whatever the politics, the science and engineering is impressive and deserves recognition. As per the article, a successful landing on Mars is a tough win to make.

NASA pops old-school worm logo onto Orion spacecraft

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The early ...

Does the Iron Chicken eat worms?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I don't know what all the fuss is about, least of all strange nicknames for logo designs like "meatball" or "worm". An organisation who is constantly reinventing its "branding" has too much time and money on its hand or has lost sight of the its primary mission. Especially when said organisation is notionally a public org.

NHS-backed org reacted to GitHub leak disclosure with legal threats and police call, complains IT pro

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

This really doesn't seem to be the sort of story to suddenly attract readers to sign up to be able to post and comment on. It's a not a huge story. And yet there seem to be people who joined up in the last 12 hours or so just to comment on this one story, in defence of Appertas. I'm not seeing a sudden influx of new posters for the "other side".

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I smell a rat here.....

"Oh, so a femaie has an opinion you don't like and she's automatically an imposter?"

Since you are new here, at least as a poster, maybe we can forgive you for not realising that there are quite a number of females posting comments, at least some of whom have been posting here for years. In general, they treat everyone based on what they post and in turn are treated the same by the male posters (and those who may not identify as male or female, some may choose to identify as dogs or cats. No one can tell who is who on the interwebs). What you say matters, not who you are or which name you post under.

Italian monopoly watchdog asks Google to cough up a few euros for illegally blocking an Android Auto app

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Integrating payment systems?

"Can you car sat nav understand, "Take me to the nearest chippie?""

Yes.

Well, not quite that easily, since it doesn't have the power of Google Cloud connected to it, just it's own itty bitty CPU and limited offline vocabulary recognition system.

But...

"SatNav"

"Find Category"

(defaults to near current location, but I can now say "Along Route" or "Near Destination"

"Fast Food"

"Fish and chips"

That search also looks through my extra POI files I've added too. And yes, I did find a POI dedicated to locating Chippies a while ago :-) (along with quite a few other POI files too)

Another week, another issue: Virgin Galactic mulls test flight restart as VSS Unity fixed – but VMS Eve might be borked

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "he expected demand to be so great"

Ah, thanks, my mistake. I was sure I'd read 500K somewhere.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "he expected demand to be so great"

They aren't planning on going to orbit at all with these flights. They'd need a whole new carrier aircraft and launch vehicle for that. They only promise to get you above 100KM for a few minutes so you can call yourself an astronaut.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "he expected demand to be so great"

"The US alone produces over 600k new millionaires per year, so there's no shortage of people who are going to be able to afford it."

I think you need to be a bit more than a mere millionaire if you want to spunk possibly half your net worth on a single short trip. Then again, plenty of people used to pay for those "experience" flights on Concord, even it was much more affordable.

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: PDF ?

"That does not appear to be completable online - unless I have missed something, have to print it, and then scan it."

I've not looked at that specific form yet (i will, tomorrow), but I recently had to fill out a government form which was only able to be fully completed using Internet Explorer. It worked in Edge up to the point where it had to be securely signed, where it failed. I couldn't fill it in at all with Firefox.

Not keen on a 5G mast in your street? At least it'd be harder for crackpots to burn down 'a flying cell tower in orbit'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: El Reg, do some analysis of sustained real world data rates/modelling scenarios.

"They're the government. They're not there to learn, they're there to govern, and years of experience have shown that learning is unnecessary to governing(*)."

Her Majesties Loyal Opposition are constantly harping on at the Government to "learn lessons". They've been doing it for centuries!

Rude awakening for O2 customers after network runs surprise test of emergency mobile alert system

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Self inflicted

On my Android phone I go to "Settings" then "Notifications" and "Wireless Emergency Alerts".

Is this only on the latest version(s) of Android? Mine doesn't have ""Wireless Emergency Alerts". It says the Android version is 9, and patch level is 1 Sept. 2020 and "Your software is up to date" as of 2 minutes ago.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Turn phone off or leave it downstairs, then go to bed without the possibility of the damn thing waking you up."

Mine gets plugged in at night, by the back door. Anyone who needs me in a real emergency has my landline number and that phone is by the the bed.

NHS App gets go-ahead for vaccine passport use despite protest from privacy groups

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: China-bug

"Pure BS to justify the millions spent on the app that didn't work properly,"

Which article did you read? The one you are commenting on makes it clear that the NHS app not only is NOT the Track & Trace app but is the standard patient access app released way back in 2019.

I think you need to go back to your anti-vaxxor facebook group and stop trying to play with the grown-ups.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: It's here now but ...

Yeah, but UK Police need "reasonable suspicion" while US Homeland Security just need you to be within 100 miles of a "port of entry". :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"But there's been speculation that could be 'needing' proof of vaccination to go to work, pubs & clubs, concerts, sports events etc etc."

The operative word there being "speculation" of course. The news media need to fill their 24/7 output with something, and in the absence of fact, will take speculation any day of the week.

Copper load of this: Openreach outlines 77 new locations where it'll stop selling legacy phone and broadband products

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I wonder if alarm companies are still installing kit that relies on "self powered" POTS lines? I can just imagine an installer turning up at a house or office that no longer has a POTS line and scratching his head :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: They're sitting on a gold, umm, copper mine

If the quantity is high enough, you can skip the stripping and just throw it all in the melting pot. The crap just burns off. Depending on where in the world you are, you might need some way of filtering the exhaust fumes though.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: We're moving house soon

I just read a story today on the Beeb about Cardiff needing 10,000 charging points.

"The city currently has fewer than 100 charging points and needs about 10,000 in four years."

Preliminary report on Texas Tesla crash finds Autosteer was 'not available' along road where both passengers died

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Was on a motorway and realised too late that the 3 lanes of traffic ahead were all stopped and had been stopped for long enough that nobody had brake lights on."

Most times I've unluckily come across a serious slowdown or stop on a motorway, the person "last" in the queue pretty much always has their hazard lights on. And like me, once you confirm the vehicle behind has also noticed and is slowing/stopping and put their hazard lights, the one in from turns theirs off. Anyone at the back, even if no visible vehicle approaching, will almost always keeps their on until they are no longer "tail end Charlie". The fear is that some driver not paying attention is barrelling down at 70MPH+

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Automation

"If that seems wrong to you, you're probably one of the vast majority who don't realise how unbelievably dangerous stopping on the hard shoulder is."

I do know, but it's still way safer than being stopped in a live lane. :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Automation

"If the driver feel asleep in that scenario, the car can pull over and stop safely."

Not if you are in the UK on an "all lanes running" motorway with no hard shoulder. Or anywhere else for that matter where the road doesn't have a hard shoulder.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Into the rear seat?

In your case, the impact caused a sudden and massive acceleration, so you were pushed back. The Tesla hit a tree, a sudden and massive deceleration, so they would go forwards. I can understand that stran ge things can happen in crashes as to where people or objects end up in some odd places, but the angle of the vehicle and direction of travel should allow investigators to back track where the "loose" objects were before the impact. I can' imagine a scenario where a body would end up in the back seat after a forward facing impact. But then I'm not an accident investigator and the last time I studied this sort of physics and Newtons laws of motion was in school about 40 years ago.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: No

At 70mph, you have my sympathies. On the other hand, hitting a tree at 70mph is basically an immovable object. If you hit another car, it will have moved, absorbing some amount of the impact, plus both colliding objects have energy absorbent crumple zones, something a tree doesn't have. Then again, at 70mph, I wonder how much energy difference there is between hitting a stationary car or a sold, immovable tree.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: As a motorcyclist....

If you run out of fuel, bear in mind that pushing a bike across a road may result in an AI driven car not "seeing" you, or at least not knowing what you are and therefore discarding you as a possible hazard.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: As a motorcyclist....

"Might be time to start planning your move to a very small island. One with no roads."

Sark? It does have roads, sort of, but only tractors use them. Cars are banned. Not sure about motorbikes. Although at only 2.1 Sq. Miles, you can walk everywhere in a short while :-)

43 years and 14 billion miles later, Voyager 1 still crunching data to reveal secrets of the interstellar medium

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sky is closing

"As a boy growing up in the 70s we knew nowt about this area of space. But we are growing our knowledge nicely. All very interesting. Well done all.

We not have known much about it, but we knew it was there. I started reading SF as a teen in the 70s and that's where I learned that there was such a think as the Oort cloud.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: Sky is closing

"it's not every day a probe passes the heliopause."

Based on the many and varied definitions of where the heliopause is, at times it did almost feel like a probe was passing it every day, albeit the same probe and different heliopauses :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 1977

"10,000 Osmans per second"

Oh, please, no! One can be quite funny in small doses. But not 10,000 per second, that's just going too far!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Often overlooked

Have you not heard of the Global Village we all inhabit?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Often overlooked

"We continue to pollute the radio spectrum on our planet like all the other things we screw up!"

Just a few short years ago, scientists engaged in the hunt for extra-terrestrial life, using our own current communications trajectory, were considering that advanced civilisations might not be detectable as they switched from "primitive" radio comms to wired and fibre for most wide band, wide interest entertainment etc.

Now look at us!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: A sign of (past) times

"It is like documentation: the more precise the detail - the more likely it is to be wrong at some future point."

Sometime details can be important. Such as, for example, are we using metric or imperial measurements :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Born nearly two decades after the spacecrafts launched"

Yeah, and like many here, I remember them being launched, and watching in anticipation as the first photos came in from each planetary and moon encounter.

Fuck, \'m getting old!!!

Accidentally wiped an app's directory? Hey, just play the 'unscheduled maintenance' card. Now you're a hero

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I use the super version, STRIM :-p

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