Posts by John Brown (no body) 25433 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"fined for not notifying the affected customers"
Yes, multiple customers at risk of having their cards maxxed out for 22 fricken days!!! Full card details including CVV exposed for those poor suckers.
Hopefully, this is not the end of the story and further fines will be incoming for Booking based on other GDPR violations.
"Not quite sure what the point of an inflatable habitat is."
A single, large unit that doesn't need a massively large rocket to get it there. It took a Saturn V to get SkyLab up.
Remember, it's not just a balloon. It's also got rigid sections for things like port holes, mounts for machinery to be attached, airlocks etc. It's all carefully folded almost like Origami in reverse so as it inflates all the relevant bits move in the right direction at the right time.
Thinking about it, with SpaceX multiple launch of 1st stages (their current record is 9 launches and landing with a single 1st stage), they could probably put multiple inflatables up which can be docked to each other as well all the gubbins that needs to go inside. I just got an image of a string of sausages. Piiiiiigs in Spaaaaace!!
The downside is that everything has to fit through an airlock.
"Honestly, OpenReach have no such plans that they're able to share with us."
Depending on how high up the totem pole you can get to ask your questions, it's worth specifically excluding the word "plan" in your questions and using words like "intentions", "road map" and so on. "plan" can have specific legal meanings when discussing business that could lead to legal implications when said "plans" don't materialise.
"They said the estimate was "off by an order of magnitude" - but they didn't say in which direction."
The "off by an order of magnitude" seems to be referring to the 1.3TB. Up an order makes it 13TB. Down an order "only" takes it to 130GB. Even a 130GB per day is a not insignificant amount of slurpage.
Also, what of those individuals on very low data tariffs? I'd expect those people in particular to want all slurpage turned off and will have actively hunted down all possible ways to turn off and refuse this wasted use of their limited data plan.
I did especially like Googles justification of saying that car companies do this too. "Look sir, the other boys are doing it too!" isn't a good excuse for being a shit.
What? Surely the courts are the final and ultimate third party arbitration service? Why should they be excluded because they tried for an amicable arbitration instead of immediately reaching for their lawyers? Or is this a punishment for not enriching the lawyers and legal system?
"It's almost like the kids want to have control over their own bodies."
Without denigrating some of the serious allegations currently in the news, I do sometimes find it a bit puzzling where girls in particular will rail against school uniforms and the imposed "uniformity". And yet, when they go out as groups, it's not uncommon to a group of girls wearing their own self-imposed "uniform", ie all wearing very similar clothing styles. It's all a bit ironic really.
"Are you honestly claiming the people working in the amazon warehouse couldnt work anywhere else if the job was automated? That it is such highly specialised work they wouldnt be able to do something else?"
No, I'm saying if there were better alternatives, they'd have already moved on. Clearly either people like working for Amazon or there or no/not enough alternatives for them to be able to pick and choose where they work. Would you stay in a job you either don't like or don't feel you get paid enough for if there was a better option?
"Robots are an attractive alternative, especially if the cost of unemployment can be handed off to gullible and greedy governments."
Hi, local governments, Amazon here, we want to build some new warehouses, who's going to give us the best tax breaks to locate in your town/city/county?
Local governments: What's in it for us? How many long term jobs will you be creating?
Amazon: Jobs? What jobs? You mean like for actual living people?
"The ones on the video looked similar to the standard industrial unit used for windscreen placement right down to the vacuum pads."
I wasn't impressed by them either. There was an assumption that everything in a container will arrive in well made cardboard boxes and can be picked up by the suckers attaching to side of the box. What if the supplier uses cheap nasty boxes or cheap nasty tape on the bottom or the contents are particularly heavy?
As with all automation demos, they only ever show the machines working under perfect conditions.
That seems a bit odd. Could it be copyright related or something? Calling most forms of competition a $something-Off is typically USAian so now a British show has used the USAian naming style, it has to be renamed when exported back to them?
No matter how you pay for goods, at some stage either physical cash has to cross a border or resident bank has to transfer the money over a border. Maybe they should be looking at taxing that instead?
Any FinTech people here who could comment on that? Personally, I have no clue other than knowing it's hard to work out what to do.
When the council put in the new street lights around here a few years ago, the night sky became much more visible, especially from the loft window above the street lights. I doubt the council seriously considered light pollution as a reason for choosing the lights they did. The primary reason for the new lights was the old ones needed replacing and the new ones are cheaper to run and there is far less "waste" light because they are much more directional, ie downwards.
I'm not sure why it being a "high pressure terrorism investigation" has to do with reducing oversight on password demands anyway. If the person they arrested has incriminating evidence on a phone or computer, why would they give up the password based on a 5 year prison sentence threat? They'd likely get more than 5 if the evidence is exposed.
And if, on release after less than 5 years (automatic tariff reduction(, they get asked again, they give the password because after 5 years it's not likely there'll be anything of use after so long.
"Meteor crater in Arizona, USA was estimated to be in around 30-50 meters wide. It made a crater 1200 m wide and 170 m deep. A really big hole. The impact energy has been estimated at about 10 megatons TNT. So the wind and heat blast would have damaged a bigger area then just the crater."
Wasn't that based on the assumption it was a single big boulder of nickel-iron while this one is apparently an aggregation of rocks? Would that make much of a difference?
"I'm afraid you're conflating two separate issues - the removability of the batteries should have zero effect on their flammability. Actually you could argue that making the battery removable increases the risk of fire due to the inherent risk of damage during handling of the battery and the potential damage to the connectors by repeated insertions and removals. (I'd still take a removable battery if I could, but not on the grounds of safety!)"
Based on the insides of modern laptops i've seen (too many!), batteries intended to be internal only and only user replaceable with difficulty if at all, I'd say that the manufactures of non-user-replaceable batteries have minimised the casing/container which the chemicals are wrapped in since theoretically they can't be accessed and the device maker wants it to be as light as possible. A swollen battery is therefore far more likely to burst and cause a more catastrophic episode than a battery designed to be user replaced.
"I would proceed to then remote into their system, bring up Task Manager, click the 'Performance' tab and circle my mouse cursor around the uptime indicator (which would usually show uptime in days or months)."
Knowing some users either have no clue or will lie to cover their ignorance, why didn't you just remote in check the issue is as described and if required, reboot it for them?
"unless we are in Quebec when we use Kg, unless we don't feel like it and so use pounds - the difference doesn't really matter anyway"
Wasn;t there a case of a passenger aircraft taking off without the fuel to reach it's destination because of exactly that difference? ie they asked for fuel in Kg and had it pumped in lbs.
FWIW, Scottish bank notes are not legal tender even in Scotland, never mind England. The Bank of England says so.
Legally, only Royal Mint coins and Bank of England notes are legal tender in England and Wales. In Scotland and NI, only Royal Mint coins are legal tender.
In terms of everyday usage, a shopkeeper can legally choose what to accept or refuse as payment for goods.
"You realize all the kids around you love it because they have never actually experienced anything better. Gnome 2, KDE 3.5. Heck even Windows 95's UI."
It's like fashion, or movie reboots. It's (usually) generational. The news kids on ther block didn't see the last but one incarnation and think they are cever becuase the (re-)invented something "new".
The most obvious is my Lenovo laptop. Years ago, if something failed hardware wise and the screen didn't display anything, the system would beep a short, memorable sequence of long and shot beeps. When everthing was placed on the main board instead of being expansion cards, the beeps went away because all the faults were the same thing. Main board. Now Lenovo have "invented" a new system of error beeps whereby it plays a little tune. Unless you have a eidetic memory and perfect pitch, you can't easily figure it out, not even from the manual. No, the "new and better" invention needs a few 100 quids worth of mobile phone and an app that can "listen" to the tune and tell you what the error is.
Likewise, if you need to set the date and time in the BIOS, there's no option to type the numbers in any more. You have to click the dropdown and scroll down potentially 31 rows to set the day!
All becuase new young "designers" think it's cool with little or no concept of usabilty,
/rant
(sorry, but it really bugs me when things change for the sake of "cool" and not usuability and don't at least retain the option to switch the shiny off - especially when it's Linux and the mantra has always been "There's a choice". Well, no, the choices are getting limited as more stuff depends on big projects)
Now, git of ma lawn!!!
"Requiring everyone who needs to validate the certificate to have access to the national secure database?"
Assuming it's for use as a "vaccine passport", people checking should only need to scan the code and get a verificstion response back, possibly with confirmation of the persons name. Medical people may get further levels of access.
"Reading something on social media isn't going to cause 100s of people to go running out into traffic!"
Just wait until the first person is killed by running out into traffic when the new meme/game is all over social media telling people how much fun it is to cause self-driving cars to stop. Except, of course, they won't all be self-driving cars, or the AI will, as we expect, be imperfect.
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