Posts by John Brown (no body) 25368 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
and ensure that the whole country is completely crime-free by the end of this year."
Of course, this will involve a one off charge of a few billion in redundancy payments next year, but that will, over the following years result in a large budget surplice allowing for many more work-place "events" with free wine and birthday cakes in Westminster.
...we have a car hire firm just started up after a claimed year of testing, which will be using remotely driven vehicle to deliver and collect hire cars to/from customers. Not self driven, not autonomous, but fully driven by a remote operator. And for at least the next 18 months, with a "safety driver" on board too. When questioned about the onboard safety driver in a radio interview, the company spokesdroid said they were still developing the safety system. WTF? They WHY THE FUCK are you launching the service if the SAFETY SYSTEMS are not ready yet? STAY OF THE FUCKING ROADS until it IS ready!!!
"vagaries of road conditions and load security."
Don't know about the US, but here in the UK and across the EU, the driver is 100% responsible for their load, ie that it is properly loaded and secured. And as any driver will tell you, it's not unusual to get a few miles down the road and have to pull over and check/tighten straps etc because no matter how well you secure the load while stationary, once you start moving, vibration and cornering will cause it to shift slightly, just enough to need all those straps checking and tightening again. Any issues such as an unbalanced or shifted load leading to it being dangerous or worse, causing an accident is entirely down to the human driver. Who is going to be legally responsible for the initial loading and subsequent en route checking if there's no one on board to carry that task out?
...it was fun reading those old stories linked in the article, especially Kierens email exchanges. I do note the the legally required "apology" by Apple on their website is long gone though. Not even a holding page. Just The page you’re looking for can’t be found.. I bet there was a time period specified by the judge on how long it had to be there and it was gone, to the second, as soon as they could legally delete it :-)
As a side note, if everyone reading this comment could please click the link above, it might be fun to mess with Apple and have some Apple analytics person too new to understand why suddenly see a spike for that now empty page and have to go around asking people why the page exists only as a "Not Found" message :-)
Facebook would probably be ok if they just showed the headline and a very short précis, all clickable to the source. From experience, quite a few people would still treat Facebook as the entire news source because the have such a short attention span they can barely get past even that much text before moving on to the next item, buy it would generate a lot more links to original article. On the other hand, I know people with very warped views of the world of new because they rarely, if ever, read beyond the first paragraph and as we all know, headlines + first paragraph is 99% clickbait that often implies the opposite of what you find when you read the full article. That plus Facebooks algorithms only showing what it thinks or wants you to see is still a recipe for a distorted world view.
Yeah, those numbers looked strange to me too as I read the article, so I also converted them to kp/h to check, and yeah, absolutely they are metric to imperial conversion. I bet that sticks in their craw :-)
What's weird is that it's all software, so it would be a doddle to set the limits to 35mph and 65mph without going for "odd" limits.
"If you're shot with a legal gun it is likely you were in the process of committing a crime."
Maybe, but I'll just leave this here;
https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2018/12/21/child-death
"For the study, researchers sorted through CDC and World Health Organization data on 20,360 deaths of children and adolescents in the United States in 2016.
The researchers found that motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of child deaths in the United States, comprising about 20% of all deaths among children in 2016. The chief reason for the crashes was cell phone use by drivers and pedestrians, the researchers found.
Firearms were the second leading cause of deaths among children and adolescents in 2016"
Curiously, Harry and Meghan have completely disappeared from the news in the last week. Clearly it's because they were NEVER important to start with because now we have Philip Schofield dominating the headlines with another non-story. Schofield will not be important next week/month when the next story du jour appears.
Anyway, summer is hear, governments will be going on holiday soon so it's time for "dead donkey" stories to appear.
Glad it saved you, but seriously? A major "feature" like that and you didn't know about it until it kicked in for the first time? Maybe it's just me that reads manuals BEFORE I get surprised by a new feature :-) I'd expect there to be some sort of indicator on the dash showing it as enabled or disabled, probably using an icon/symbol I've not seen before, which would immediately trigger my curiosity to find out what it means.
Someone upthread mentioned a recently expired Intel patent for something that seemed very similar. So, maybe it's no longer patentable, or maybe the fact Intels patent expired and we never saw a product, Intel maybe never solved the issues of making a functional device and so held back development for 20 years by sitting on it all that time. And maybe this new one does something special or unique and they've decided to go the "trade secret" route, at least initially but is probably built on what Intel patented and may not be patentable if not different enough. It may not be different at all, just this one seems to work, possibly thanks to better materials science or micro-scale engineering techniques, ie nothing new in terms patentability. Although this is the US, where almost anything appears to be patentable :-)
ISTR reviews of using Peltier coolers sandwiched between the CPU and a large heat-sink back in the days of 486 CPUs when people wanted silent cooling but CPUs were reaching the stage of requiring fans. There was enough extra benefit that DX2/66 or DX4/100 could still operate fanless with an added Peltier. I often wondered why they seemed to disappear from the market but the explanation of the poor efficiency explains it. There was a small window of opportunity for small amount of additional cooling before they became too inefficient to be viable inside a PC.
"Big Tech really needs to start taking security and privacy seriously"
They do. Anf they know how. You don't think their corporate accounts, sales and other relevant "business critical" systems are locked down and tracked/audited for their own protection? This does, of course, demonstrate the lie when they don't apply the same levels of security and usage tracking to customer data and then act all surprised when it's compromised, mis-used or stolen.
"If your housing, car, insurance, holidays and clothing was all paid for by your company, tax-free, a £100,000 annual salary would be pure gravy."
Is that actually how it works in the US? Here in the UK, and across the EU, any "gifts" like that from your employer or company is "payment in kind" and therefore taxable income, even medical and dental benefits. At least for us "little people". I'm sure our corporate masters have ways around those inconvenient laws.
"The attitude of most 'Big Tech' companies seems to be that if the profit in doing it is greater than the fines if they get hauled up for it, then they'll do it."
It's not just "Big Tech". It's everyone, in every industry. And we don't need fictional "Sauls". There are and have been real people fighting against $BigCorp and some have even won. There was even a Hollywood trope in the late 70's, early 80's of horror films with pollution mutated creature terrorising the locals, usually related to corporate discharge of mercury and or other toxic heavy metals into the ground water, something that is STILL going on.
One of the previous Presidents big "shout outs" was rolling back the powers of the EPA and reducing the hurdles to more coal mining and Alaskan oil drilling with fewer anti-pollutions measures. Regulation can be good, but the general populace has been brain-washed into thinking ALL regulation is bad because "muh freedumb!!!". Although we don't see many protests against regulated voltages supplied to homes and industry, or the regulations surrounding gas quality, octane rating and delivery methods to and at the pump.
"You basically have to hope it flies low and slow or hovers if you want a random citizen armed with a smartphone to record it."
Not to mention that 99/9% of smartphone users have no idea how to use a camera properly. Like trying it out in landscape mode, not rapidly waving it all over the place and most importantly, at least *trying* to find some way of steadying it.
Yeah, it still amazes my how many people volunteer, free or charge, to help charities, especially retired people helping out in charity shops. And yet all these major CEO type and other c-suite types who we regularly hear of retiring earl;y as young as 50 or so, never seem to offer their skills and experience as voluntary CEOs or board members for charities. You know, exactly the sort of people who not only have the skills, but have the time. There's a even a case to be made for those high flying CEOs on £200k plus to maybe take a year out and do this. It'd look good on their CVs, gain them moral capital and at those sort of salaries, could afford it.
The people who *actually* volunteer are mainly young people looking for experience to help them get a [better[ job or retired middle-class people, neither of which groups you'd class as well off.
"If the airline is doing it for weight distribution, then they would need to know the (approximate) weight before they allocate a seat."
About 40+ years ago , I was on a school trip to France. On the flight to London, the relatively small (BA Trident?) must have been weight sensitive. As we all boarded and went to the ticketed seats, the cabin staff came around and started moving us around. There was 30 or so of us kids, aged 12 to 18. I don't recall any issues with seating arrangements on the larger Tristar hop from London to Paris.
At first I thought was a US based story due to the use of "Emergency Room". Then I read that it was free to use so wondered where in the world hospitals have free to use "emergency rooms". Eventually I realised it was a UK based story using US terminology. Confusing since we don't have "ERs" in the UK, we have A&E.
"Now people in the know have said 'don't rule out the lab leak theory', which goes against several years of media narrative."
It may go against "media narrative", but it doesn't go against the science. Science has and continues to look at all the possibilities with varying degrees of confidence based on the data that and is being collected. Maybe you missed that word, science, in my comment and the quote I posted?
As for your other comments, marketing can always find "someone" to say what they need to be said, and then be distorted and "simplified" by "the media", eg "it must be a lab leak" is pure speculation. It *might* be a lab leak is science, where might is is a quantitative estimate based on evidence and experience. Maybe one day we'll know for sure, but if it really was a lab leak, China will sit on that for long as possible and without a major change in policy and/or regime there, long after we are all dead and gone.
"People in the know" who actually DO know what they are talking about, have not ruled out any of the possibilities. How those possibilities have been weighted has depended on available evidence, bit not ruled out. It's often a good idea to listen to an entire news report or read an entire news article because sometime "inconvenient truths" are often stated below the first couple of paragraphs because they don't match the publishers narrative. At least in most case, they actually publish the truth as far as it's known in most case, they just try to bury it far enough down that those of a short attention span will not see it.
"I must admit, I don't find the EU more attractive when they say that about their "voluntary" agreement "you can run but you can't hide". Sounds like a Mafia threat."
It's SOP for a lot of government regulation. "You're getting out of hand and the bad apples are taking the piss. Rein it in and self-regulate or we'll do it for you". In the case of the EU voluntary agreement, it's failed and the date has been announced long ago that it will become compulsory. This is NOT a reaction to Twitter withdrawing from the voluntary code, it warning of them of a consequence.
Of course people are entitled to their opinions, but anyone saying "it *must* be a lab leak" without factual evidence needs educating because clearly their opinion is misinformed and has most likely been formed by listening to "fake news". If it later turns out that it *was* a lab leak, that doesn't vindicate their initial opinion formed from incorrect facts and others misleading statements. It just means they made a lucky guess.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65708746"
Yeah, at the very beginning of the article, Prof Gao says: "You can always suspect anything. That's science. Don't rule out anything."
That's science. You'll rarely hear a scientist say "that's impossible". If pushed, they may say something is improbable or even highly improbably. So no, implying as you do that this article is showing the lab leak theory is likely is not the case, it's a possibility, which evidence and facts may either show to be true or show to be very unlikely.
I came here to say exactly the same thing! The article reads as if the 5 flight demonstrator is a vital and indispensable part of the rovers mission. I was wondering how much the original rover mission has been adapted to take into account the extra capabilities delivered by having an incredibly successful demonstrator helicopter hugely exceed expectations and maybe they actually have come to depend on it. I'd assume they have a plan B ready to kick in for when the helicopter fails due to dust build up on the solar panels.
You need to be root to add users to the sudoers group in the first place, although with some versions of Linux that may be done during the install phase when the person doing the install is de facto root user. I'd be surprised if there was no root password though. There's certainly a root user since root owns most of the OS files.
"First, it is an insanely boring task;"
Speak for yourself!
"and second, we regularly kill people while we do it."
Depends where you live. In most civilised countries, the accidents rates are dropping and relatively low already, apart from maybe the USA where it's 3-5 times higher than most European countries, inc. the UK. Much of the rest of the world, the vehicle accident/death rate seems to be higher the poorer the country, so exactly the places where there may be a case for self-driving but the least likelihood of being able to afford to do so for at least a generation or two, if it ever becomes practical.
Or, maybe it's just a reflection of the population distribution where the AI was trained? I assume there are other facial recognition systems being trained and used in other parts of the world where white people are in the minority. Are they suffering the same or different problems with bias? China is big on facial recognition cameras in their cities. I'm sure places such as India or South Africa, as examples, are also using facial recognition. We don't appear to be seeing any stories on their success rates or biases.
Maybe something for El Reg to look into?
Yes, as oldies, we can probably solve problems quicker than a young guy, but if that problem occurs in the evening, you're waiting 12 hours for that "quick fix"
Why do you assume that "oldies" never do shifts or go on the "on call" rota? You seem to have little real world experience.
You do raise some interesting and valid points, but your problem is you are generalising all "oldies" as stick-in-the-mud fossils and all "youngies" as eager, willing and able to dive in and "get with" all the new stuff. The bit you are clearly missing is that not all "oldies" are as you describe and most definitely all "youngies" are not as you describe. Being young, eager and willing, even at 1/3rd the salary, isn't always cost effective when the lack of experience shows it's ugly head. You just have to look at the constant "re-inventing the wheel" going on across much of industry, not just the IT industry. Remember, the vast majority of start-ups" fail. Often because they are built and staffed by "youngies" painting fresh lipstick on an old pig and they don't even realise that is what they are doing. But, of course, no one remembers them. They just point at the very, very few start-ups that succeed and go "oh look, all those young entrepreneurs, inventors and designers are amazing and incredible"
"One evening working late I over heard him complaining that after 3 months on his new printing regime he had used the entire print budget for the year."
Did some smarmy salesperson convince him to lease the printers instead of buying them and he severely underestimated the pages per month count?
Just tell them that is out of scope and they need to raise a purchase order for $nnn and they need to fax a copy to you before you can help them. There's a good chance they won't have a fax, or if under 35 not know what a fax is, and anyway, YOU don't have a fax either, job done and you get to mess with their head :-)
Or familiarity. It's been a well known, simple process for staff who really "don't want to start doing new stuff at my time of life".
That can be one of the toughest "sells" simply because *any* change makes life more difficult initially due to the learning curve of the new method or process, no matter if training has been provided in advance or not. For many users, "muscle memory" is a vital part of the job and that takes a time to change. Most people can't see past that initial "problem" of the change actually happening. Although if you wait a few weeks or months and tell them you''re reverting back to the old system, they'll probably scream in panic all over again because now they're used to the new system :-)
('I'd like the computers to log in twice as fast in the morning" "So would I, and believe me we've worked at it")
I remember doing a roll-out of WinTerm thin clients for a customer some years ago. Everything went great at the small test site satellite office, no issues at all. We did the rest of the small satellite offices, still no problems, all smooth running. Then we did head office. Over 500 WinTerms installed over the weekend. Come 9am Monday morning, 500 people all trying to log in at more or less the same time and the entire system ground to a halt for about 15 minutes and the support desk phones rining because the remote offices can't connect at all! They'd specced more than enough server capacity for estimated peak loads, but no one had considered the amount of data flow when 500 WinTerms all need to connect at about the same time.
Now, I'm no expert on WinTerms or how they work. I'd assume they have the bare bones of Windows in firmware and connect to an RDS session of some sort so there's likely some (significant?) data transfer to the WinTerm at login as well as the servers having to spin up RDS sessions.
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