Posts by John Brown (no body) 25330 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"Apparently the master switch had to be located there rather than internally. It is now protected with a lock to prevent unauthorised switching, and better temperature monitoring..."
Sounds like the emergency isolation switch for use by the emergency services, especially fire crews. Putting a lock on it may not have gone down well at the next inspection, assuming they remembered they were supposed to check that.
"a proper aircon unit that was somewhat overspecced for the job."
There was this one customer I used to visit every now and then who had a freezing cold "server room". It was quite a large room, maybe 50 feet by 30 feet. It contained 7 servers, a couple of switches and the usual ancillary gubbins. One of the servers was in the rack with the switches and patch panels. The others were floor standing beasts from before it was standard to but kit that fitted in racks. And it was bloody FREEZING in that very large, almost empty room! Even at the height of an exceptionally hot (for the UK) summer, I always took a coat with me :-)
"Still it's always good to remind people average does not equal median..."
Yes, although I don't remember the examples given, I do very much remember a maths teacher at school demonstrating the difference between mean, mode and median and how vastly different the results can be using each method :-)
"I assume that at a minimu that gves people 60 days more salary, but we'll have to see how this goes."
I've seen reports Twitter will pay salary to Feb'24. That may satisfy US law, or at least ameliorate the fall-out, but I don't think it will fly as well in EU countries or the UK. I've no idea if or how it might affect things elsewhere in the world though.
"2) It breaches the terms and conditions of those sites to give them my credentials"
Maybe, just maybe, however unlikely, that was a test :-)
(Yes, I know, far to many reports, especially of US employers, asking exactly for those credentials in all seriousness.)
"The restriction of voting rights is a fever dream by the left. Even the lefts favourite socialist (but not really) European countries have restrictions on voting that are tougher than the US."
Evidence?
FWIW, most European nations have very few restriction on who can vote. At town/city level, proof of residence is about all you need, not even citizenship. Likewise when voting for MEPs at EU level. Most require citizenship to vote for national government representatives and that right is NOT removed just because some voters may be in prison, unlike most/all of the USA.
"I think the issue with very, very wealthy people is that they tend to accrue hangers on who simply say what they think the boss wants to hear, rather than what they really NEED to hear. So if someone close had said 'Elon, you are coming across as a fucking idiot, just stop now, you twat', it would all have worked out much better!"
Generally, they don't "accrue" people like that. It's more Darwinian. If you tell the boss things s/he doesn't want to hear, you don't last long in their employ. At least not when the boss is a sociopath type.
From the reports I've seen, at least in some jurisdictions if not all, Twitter will be paying full salaries till Feb'24. That might get him off the hook for some of the redundancies in some countries. They *may* be classed as still employed by Twitter until then, or at least "paid in lieu of notice". Skipping the legal notifications is a different kettle of fish though. Being notified of your redundancy by discovering you can no longer log into your work accounts is an especially shitty way of doing it.
Interestingly, on the BBC R4 news yesterday, someone now ex-Twitter pointed out the "one" person responsible for dealing with celebrity accounts abuse has been "let go". With the Football World Cup about to start in Qatar very soon. So, who's going to deal with that now? Will the "slebs" now have the same issues as the "plebs" when it comes to complaints about abusive tweets? That's not going to encourage them to pay for a blue tick.
" Fri 4 Nov 2022 // 03:44 UTC
...reportedly informed company staff that layoffs begin tomorrow."
If you are going to post an article that close to midnight US time/UTC time, regardless of the local time zone of the author or publishing mechanism, it's probably best to use a day and/or date than something as nebulous as "tomorrow". At the time of publishing, for most of the world, the word to use was "today" in this case. Even if the majority audience is in the US, many would not have seen it that late on Thursday night on the East coast. Maybe El Reg isn't so much US centric these days as US West Coast centric :-)
Having listened to the BBC R4 news report and interviews on the subject driving home on Friday night after a day on the road, it was a bit weird seeing the Reg article referring to "tomorrow".
"What negotiation? They downed tools to harm their employer that they wish to gain more money from. Ransom."
Well, clearly there were negotiations before strike action was started. There are laws around that specify that. So-called "wildcat strikes" are not legal in the UK and haven't been for a long time.
"If the TPM fails, it's fucked."
Agreed. As a field engineer, I've come across a number of laptops where it's the TPM that has failed. It means a new system board, every time. Luckily, it's not that common and the clients I deal with just re-image anyway when the system board is replaced. I'm guessing someone decided the few pennies they save by TPM not being a plug-in module is more than the cost of a few warranty replacements when the now integrated TPM module fails.
"we've been exposed to US writing for long enough"
I often wonder whether it's about cost savings or assumed intelligences levels of the audience or simple familiarity, but it does seem that English speaking nations are expected to understand "American" English, but more rarely the other way around. Exports to the US seem to be more frequently translated into "American" English or, in the case of some TV shows, completely remade for a US audience. Even show or book titles might be changed to suit the perceived US demographic.
I note that even Americans posting here are often dismayed by the apparent dumbing down of the education system.
Yes, considering science and space is primarily being done in metric units, I think maybe El Reg is going to far in it's "North American Style Guide" by converting from metric to "American" as the prime system. And this conversion is glaringly obvious that either El Reg or the press release it was based on did a conversion of a Very Large Number down the last significant integer place, make it look very, very silly. It might have looked a bit more clever if rounded to the nearest 100 or even nearest 10.
"So imagine my delight when email came along, and I was able to set up a ‘mail-merge’ from Word to Outlook, and the job was reduced to about 10 minutes of blissful pointing and clicking, from the comfort of my desk."
You were luck if all your recipients also had or got email at the same time as you did,
I was dealing with a client in the shipping business some years ago who not only were dealing with clients by email in the main, some still using faxes but even one somewhere in Africa that still had only Telex. There was an ancients PC (an IBM PC-XT IIRC) with a Telex card in it just for dealing with that customer. Luckily, because it was never switched off, it just ran and ran for years. I think I replaced the PSU once. Not sure how far back that was, but it was in the very early 2000's :-)
I vaguely remember an SF story about a Mars mission. The budget was stripped back such that it would only be given if they went with a cheaper unmanned robotic mission. It failed on landing, something simple. So budget was granted to send another probe to "fix" the first one. Pulling a stuck folding panel or something IIRC. That failed, so budget was added for a 3rd one. That failed and the only remaining option was to send a fourth one, but since the budget was for unmanned missions only, the bloke inside it was not, under any circumstances to step out of the vehicle onto the Martian surface. He was only to reach out and flip the panel, then leave. Total cost was at least double the cost of the original planned manned mission :-)
"Complicated, heavy, can damage the panels and probably not nearly as effective as you'd think (try brushing dust off of a statically charged balloon, you'll probably just end up adding more)."
I would have suggested earthing it, but then I thought about the long earthing wire that would be needed. It'd have to be quite stretchy too to cope with the changing orbital positions.
"What's needed is for a Martian to pop out with a bucket and sponge, give it a quick rub down and demand 5 Martian dollars."
It'd need to be stopped at traffic lights for that to happen. Have we seen traffic lights in any of the photos sent back yet? Click all squares which contain traffic signals[1].
If you see some traffic lights, then we have proof of life and can stop sending probes anyway.
[1] El Reg Americaizatio and that's what Google calls them too when they ask me[2]
[2] FFS, You'd think Google would know what they looked like by now, what with indexing most of the WWW!!!
"Short of an official government declared statement of "War", I find it incredibly difficult to prove a cyber attack was caused by a nation state."
I do wonder if there was any US Govt pressure brought to bear on the parties to settle out of court. It could be a tad interesting if a US judge found in favour of the insurers and declared the "cyber attack" an act of war.
That just shows how big Apples mark-up is on iThings if they can ship at least some of the goods by air.
Air freight is usually reserved for perishables and "really urgent". iThings are neither (unless you're an Apple Fanboi, I suppose)
Or is it that Apple are short of cash and so can't afford to have capital tied up for weeks on the open seas in shipping containers? :-)
"That said, such people do exist and I believe such a council can be created. In fact, I'd say that setting these things up usually isn't that hard...it's keeping them going that is difficult, as the members and their priorities change."
The problem with creating a council of sensible and fair minded people is that ir may produce results you don't like.
Facebook tried it.
And many more before him too. So many money grubbers who did questionable things to get their money in the first place and then "finding God" or whatever and spreading the kindness to buy their way into "heaven" or wherever. Carnegie comes to mind.
The ones who got rich without being utter bastards and tried to do good while getting rich are often less well publicised.
"A lot of it was, but the second in ownership stake is the Saudi investment fund. It wouldn't be all that good for Elon if he managed to burn the place to the ground and make them rather angry at him. At the very least, they wouldn't be as interested in going in with him on a project that might actually make money."
If it does burn, he'd be well advised not to accept any invitations to a Saudi embassy ;-)
"Technically the patent system is fine; it's the court system that's broken. Anyone attempting to enforce a patent that is non-novel should lose to a summary judgment"
Shirley your second statement belies the truth of the first? If the system is "fine", then non-novel patents should not need to be challenged as they should mostly be refused at the application process. The problem is the US Patent Office has outsourced the process of checking patent applications to the legal system at much, much higher cost to the economy than doing it themselves. I'd guess an MBA/Beancounter thought up that "budget saving" wheeze.
"I take it you are homophobic, racist and bigoted and far too cowardly to post even as 'Anonymous Coward'."
That's a hell of a leap top take!!!
Maybe people downvoted simply because it's not relevant to the science.
It's the past which is often very different to the present regarding social mores and most people are product of the past they were brought up in. In this specific instances, it's not even about Webb. The only link is the telescope is named after him and his science achievements. If we cancel everyone from the past who doesn't match up to current mores and morels, a lot of science and art will disappear too.
FWIW, I didn't vote at all on your post.
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