* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25246 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Australia blames Russia for harboring health insurance hackers

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: And yet

"blaming Russia."

Clearly it must have been "rouge engineers" :-)

Yeah, the rouge one, thanks ------------->

Husband and wife nuclear warship 'spy' team get 20 years each

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Show sentence to gin up public FEAR

"I suspect this couple will spend no more than five years in prison."

Considering the FBI had enough to arrest/charge/go to court with the evidence passed to them from Brazil right at the start, I wonder what the sentence would have been then, rather than spending probably $millions on a two year honeypot sting getting the offenders in deeper and deeper?

It almost sounds as if instead of some minor FBI official getting a couple of brownie points, a higher up saw an expensive way of grabbing many brownie points for him/her self.

Cygnus cargo ship makes it to ISS with blanketed solar panel

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Re: the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia

So why not simply "Virginia Spaceport"?

On the other hand, I may have figured it out. M.A.R.S. Maybe they were being clever, or someone slipped it passed and is quietly sniggering :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia

How many spaceports does Virginia have that this one needs such a specific and distinctive name?

Or is that there are a number of "regional" spaceports such as North Atlantic and South Atlantic, possibly also in Virginia, with which we may get confused?

And why "Mid-Atlantic"? Why not West Atlantic? After all, they can't have an East Atlantic space port. That would be in Ireland, the UK, Spain, Portugal, France etc.

EU set to sign internet satellite deal, as UK frees up spectrum

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Re: I assume that

"On the other hand, I haven't heard much from/about him lately,"

I think he spends much of his time at his EU based holiday home dealing with his EU business interests.

I do wonder if some of the high profile Brexiteers didn't want Brexit to improve the UK, but secretly thought the EU would be better off after Brexit as many of them seem to have significant EU business interests.

OpenPrinting keeps old printers working – even on Windows

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Better at supporting old stuff?

A GDI printer perchance?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A whole fricken OS just to print

Came here to say the same thing. This "solution" is to install an enormously large amount of code and data, probably in the range of GB, just to make a printer work. A bit like current HP Windows drivers. Oh, yeah...as you were folks! :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Slight nitpicking

Although, to be fair, the odds are much better on this site than on many others :-)

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Terminator

We don't need Bruce Willis to protect us...

...but we may need Donovan and Powell to protect us from the robots "manning" the stations from going rogue.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You also get the problem ....

"Losses are greater if it's in GEO,"

Assuming the power is beamed tightly enough to keep it focussed on the receiving station such that it doesn't cook the people and wildlife outside the area, how much extra loss is there between LEO and GEO? Loss is normally defined as the inverse square law, but isn't that based on a point source with an ever expanding "zone of reception"? I'd think most of the loss would the the final leg of the journey through the atmosphere. Am I completely off base here?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You also get the problem ....

Yeahbut, those hedgerows are ecosystems vital to the survival of $something!!!! You can't save the planet by killing stuff, oh nooooo!

On a slightly more serious note, any field used only for sheep grazing should be good for solar panels even using the standard mounting systems used now. I doubt the sheep would care. They might even be grateful for the extra shade in summer or, more commonly, somewhere to shelter from the rain :-) Cows, not so much. They'd probably knock them over using them as scratching posts, even of they were built taller to allow the cows to move around more freely.

And then there's fields of solar panels mounted vertically, south facing which apparently only reduces capacity by a small amount but still allows the machinery to get in and plant/maintain/harvest crops. between the rows of panels.

Musk sows more Twitter chaos, now with Official policy snafu

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Re: "Blue check will be the great leveler"

Isn't that how shops mark the goods in the (fire) sale?

The one with the 30% discount on it ----------------->

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Grey is the New Blue

"a Mug."

Tea or coffee? I've run out of popcorn :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

With twitter.com and twing.com script blocked, all I see is a blue bird logo. View page shows 152 lines of code. I don't feel I'm missing anything. I really ought to remember to look at where a link is going before I click it :-)

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's arguments for new trial deemed spurious – just like her tech

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"pretty vacant?"

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Jailbirthing

"The US has never been a democracy. It is, and has always been, a constitutional republic."

Considering that, so far, 124 people have been elected to power that have publicly stated that Donald Trump "really won" the 2020 Presidential election, it may not even be that for much longer.

Wells Fargo, Zelle slammed by Liz Warren over rampant online banking fraud

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: RE: Wells Fargo

1. People have short attention spans

2. All publicity is good publicity.

If a name or brand is in the news, people quickly forget why, but still remember the name.

Here in the UK, a major ISP, Talk Talk, got hacked TWICE, losing large amount of customer information, and people are STILL signing up to them.

On another note, I see Chase Bank are coming to the UK.

Feel Luckey, punk? Oculus designer builds VR murder headset

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Play the game

The only way to win is not to play the game :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A boon for the death penalty

I can't remember how it went in the book, or when the book was first published, but the "art" bit is currently being broadcast as The Peripteral by William Gibson. (Now that I think if it, it might be quite recent, the book that is)

Feds find Silk Road thief's $1b+ Bitcoin stash in popcorn tin, hidden safe

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I Don't Get It...

It's surprising how much you really need to pack in and live a life of relative luxury in foreign climes. Most people severly underestimate how much they need to start how hard they need to keep "working" with their money and investments to keep that standard.

I remember naively thinking back when I bought my first house that if the mortgage was paid off and I had about £60,000 in the bank, I could live comfortably off the interest alone. Savings account interest was in double digits back then, as were mortgage interest rates. I was earning about £7k PA back then. Not a huge amount, but enough to be comfortable so with no mortgage, a 10% interest on £60k seemed adequate. Obviously I didn't really think it through or understand long term inflation and the decades of very low interest rates ahead :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I Don't Get It...

I wonder which, if any, cryptocurrencies could cope with cashing $3B in one go?

Stealing $3B in crypto requires a certain skill set. Cashing it out safely and hopefully anonymously and moving it somewhere you can then use it, is a very different skill set. And IIRC, it's tanked down to less than half it's value since it was stolen. And you'd not get the full value back in cash anyway if you have to start using middle men to launder it.

Microsoft tests 'upsells' of its products in Windows 11 sign-out menu

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Free model

I was going to suggest you forgot the joke icon or the <sarc> tags, hence the downvote you got. Then I took note of the username and realised you're being entirely serious LOL

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Windows Insider Program Team Senior Program Manager Brandon LeBlanc

Does have an extra wide business card?

Unlucky for some: Meta chops 13% of global workforce

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Two things...

"Yes men (and women), never get the sack..."

Sometimes, they do. When the boss makes a good call, the boss is right. When the boss makes a bad call, the boss was right but it was bad advice from the yes people who should have advised the boss not to do it.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes, latest one here in the UK is Made.com, mail order online furniture shopping website. It seems far too many companies who made out like bandits during the switch to onlne during lockdowns somehow thought that was going to translate to a permanent situation.

Another big part of it is how companies and the stock market operates. Once upon a time, a large wealthy company had money in the bank and could weather a storm. Nowadays, money has to be put to work, so companies invest their profits all over the place and then borrow money for expansion because their investments earn more than the cost of borrowing at the historically low interest rates we've had the last few decades. Not only is that borrowing now costing more, but for tech companies hitting a post-lockdown slump after the lockdown profits are seeing their stock prices drop because they can't maintain that high profit level now. The stock market demands growth. Fail to grow, and no matter how well the business is doing, the share price falls.

Obviously there are other factors too such as inflation, fuel costs, etc that are affecting all businesses, but the ones who expanded during lockdowns seem to be affected the most because they didn't plan for the obvious end of lockdown and people going back off-line, but now their external investments have fallen and borrowing costs have risen.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

While my inner cynic completely agrees, on the other hand, maybe the FB PR machine has been watching the clusterfuck of the Twitter lay-off announcement and managed to talk the Zuck into trying to appear a bit more human. His AI may have been upgrade to simulate some emotion and empathy.

China's first domestic single-aisle jet, the C919, scores 300 orders

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Historically

"Maybe, if the Chinese product is really inexpensive to buy and operate they might sell a few outside China. But not a lot?"

If they ramp up production to higher levels than their huge internal market can accommodate, or for "influence" reasons, they will be selling cheaper to non-traditional growing markets such as much of Africa and Asia. I very much doubt they will bet targeting the US or EU markets for at least a decade or two, maybe longer.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Historically

"Even then though, you'd have thought that the major markets are likely to be Russia and African nations, and possibly South American nations. I doubt that they'll be seen in Europe or North America anytime soon."

That's not really an issue for China. They have an enormously large internal market and plan in decades, not four year election cycles.

Microsoft's $69B deal to buy Activision Blizzard under investigation by EU regulators

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Re: Point of Order...

"I'm sure there have been some crazy fools out there who have done it, but anyone who attempts to play that game with a controller will rapidly run out of buttons to assign actions."

XBox and PS5 already support keyboards and mice.

This ancient quasar may be the remains of the first-gen star that started us all

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "the so-called Population III stars"

Until, of course,. you compress H under immense pressure and get "metallic" H :-)

I don't think that's been done, but IIRC it's been postulated that Jupiter may have either a metallic H core or a layer of metallic H around the core.

LG debuts thin malleable screens made from contact lens material

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Unhappy

I'm dissappointed...

...no comments about MOTIE watchmakers?

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"Maybe if people stopped buying the bloody things by the truckload they might be arsed to change them."

Isn't that why the article reported on LG losses? People not buying TVs and panels?

Tesla recalls 40k cars over patch that broke power steering

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My first ever company car was a Citroen BX. The only significant problem it had was the back box of the exhaust fell off the day before the car was due to be replaced at 180,000 miles (just over three years old!) :-) Oh, and the paint on the fibreglass bonnet didn't seem to adhere properly. Chunks of paint across our entire fleet had flaked off along the front edge.

Not having a turbo, the diesel engine was a bit slow to get up to speed though.

All the US midterm-related lies to expect when you're electing

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Thanks, I just did quick search. Looks like few tried for more than two terms although limiting to two terms was more a gentleman's agreement in the past, Teddy Roosevelt tried for a third and lost, only FDR had almost four terms, dying in office and the 22nd amendment happened in 1952 limiting it to two term whether consecutive or not.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You don't hack the count

So, no such thing as rehabilitation then? Doesn't the USA have one of if not the highest per capita prison populations? Sounds like there is a lot of disenfranchisement going on.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You don't hack the count

"throw out voter registrations because the voter is presumed to have a felony conviction and make it virtually impossible for the record to be corrected"

Whoa...wait...what? It's not just those in prison who can't vote, but even those who have served their time and been released, if it was a "felony" conviction, can NEVER vote again for the rest of their lives? Or is there some sliding scale where even after release, they can eventually become a voter after some length of time has passed?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Registro de votantes

Maybe American "Spanish" is like American "English". Almost, but not entirely unlike the original version :-)

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Re: 4chan still exists?

Maybe Musk will make an offer for it :-)

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"That is the law,"

Question from not in the USA. Is it the law that someone can only ever serve two terms across their entire life or is it that they can only serve two consecutive terms?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"The way the tories pick the next idiot in charge has been subject to much complaint from non-members."

How many non-members of the Labour got to vote in their leadership elections? There may be some minor procedural differences, but that's pretty much how all parties elect their leaders.

Swiss drone-busting eagle squadron grounded permanently

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Headline creativity

My I suggest "The eagle has landed - permanently"

Where Eagle Daren't?

At least that cable cars in it and many people associate cable cars with Switzerland :-)

Europe wants Airbnb and pals to cough up rental property logs

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It had to happen

Deploy? Why, when people are already installing them left, right and centre, voluntarily, at their own expense and paying to upload the video to "the cloud"?

Twitter begs some staff to come back, says they were laid off accidentally

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Does the Reg have anything to say about those reports?"

It does. Maybe you read a different article to me. They even point out that the "redundantised"[sic] people will continue to be paid and technically are still employees of the company on non-working notice.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Modest proposal.

Usenet still works.

Parody Elon Musk Twitter accounts will be suspended immediately, says Elon Musk

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Are you implying he may "do a Robert Maxwell"?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Free Speech!

"Olympus Mons is not an island. No point in having a lair if it's not on an island."

From an Earthbound point of view, it's an island in the sky. One which far fewer people could access than any terrestrial island in the seas of Earth :-)

Catching a falling rocket with a helicopter more complex than it sounds, says Rocket Lab

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

No extra rocket burns, it's hanging from parachutes when they try to catch it so falling fairly slowly. It still sounds bum clenching though.

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Re: On what scale?

The overall "mission" succeeded, they recovered the 1st stage. But the Plan A recovery method failed so they used Plan B, which did succeed :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Thunderbirds had magnets strong enough to carry entire aircraft!! And that was back in the 1960;s :-)

Run a demo on live data? Sure! What could possibly go wrong? Hang on. Are you sure that's not working?

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Re: chain ferry

Nah, they upgraded to an unbreakable block chain.

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