* Posts by Pen-y-gors

3782 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2010

Boffins build blazing battery bonfire

Pen-y-gors

Re: Interesting idea

@Cynic_999

Small-scale production is less efficient and more expensive than mass-production in just about everything, and energy production is no exception.

Very true. But it's also massively more flexible and extensible. Need more leccy? Add a few panels or an extra turbine of some sort. Or spend £30+ billion and wait 20 years for a new nuclear station. Base cost should only rarely be the most important consideration.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Interesting idea

@Jellied Eel

"Taking it further, if the EV was parked indoors, then waste heat from battery warmers & charging could heat the home"

An interesting idea. Hoe exactly does that work on the 6th floor of a block of flats? Bigger lifts? Crane outside the window to hoist the car up?

Pen-y-gors

Re: "cheaper"

How about 'Nuclear' instead? Nuclear doesn't generate CO2, the thing you fear the most. But wait, it's not in line with the POLITICS, now is it? Heh, yeah, pointing out the obvious again. I think I prefer FREEDOM.

Okay, I'll take the bait and try to explain.

Is your idea of FREEDOM being required to get your electricity from a single Japanese company who build and run a massively expensive and potentially lethal generation facility on your doorstep, which is liable to catastrophic failure (or even non-catastrophic failure) - one bad glitch in a nuclear power station and a million people have no electricity until it's fixed. One really really bad glitch and a million people probably won't ever have to worry about the electricity supply (or anything else) ever again. And when they're the only game it town they set the prices at whatever they want. The wonderful Hinckley C has a guarantee that they will get £92.50 per Megawatt hour, index linked, for the next 35 years. UK electricity companies are currently paying under £40 for French nuclear power. Large-scale wind currently costs around £50/MWh. Hinckley will cost UK consumers £50 billion more than it needs to. And you will pay it whether you want to or not. That's FREEDOM!

Not my idea of FREEDOM, but hey, whatever floats your boat.

Or maybe FREEDOM is having a large network of connected small-scale, varied, renewable generators with a range of doorstep and locally-ish storage to smooth things, so you have the FREEDOM to actually use electrical appliances when you want.

And on a related point - "Nuclear doesn't generate CO2" - only true-ish at the point of generation. Over the lifetime of a reactor, once you include the necessary construction, mining, refining, decommissioning and waste-disposal as well, then Nuclear generates a lot of CO2. Depending on the concentration of the ore it can easily exceed the lifetime CO2 outputs of every know current type of renewable. So, no, not a magic wand solution either.

Dine crime: Chippy sells deep fried Xmas dinner

Pen-y-gors

Re: Xmas dinner?

@Charlie Clark

Good gravy, good strong mustard and hot horseradish are all the condiments you ever need.

Possibly true if all you ever eat is roast beef. But with poultry? Gravy yes, but not horseradish.

But of course, a mild horseradish for dipping chips a la Belge...

Pen-y-gors

@AC

What's wrong with plain crisps and a bag of salt to shake over them, hey? Hey?

A bag of salt? A BAG of salt? I think you mean a pinch of salt wrapped in a twist of blue paper.

Pah....youngsters....

Pen-y-gors

Re: battered?

Our village shop is selling complete stalks of them. I believe they keep for ages if you leave them in a cool place on the stalk.

Pen-y-gors

Re: battered?

steamed...

and lots of them!

Pen-y-gors

Xmas dinner?

That's not xmas dinner! Where's the cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread sauce, bacon, prunes and roasties? I suppose chips can replace the roasties, but they're not the same. I suggest a proper, complete traditional full christmas dinner, with everything, wrapped into a filo pastry parcel, and then battered and fried.

Identity stolen because of the Marriott breach? Come and claim your new passport

Pen-y-gors

New passport?

How exactly will getting a new passport help? Will they change your date of birth? Your place of birth? Your name?

Expired cert... Really? #O2down meltdown shows we should fear bungles and bugs more than hackers

Pen-y-gors

V2X

I assume this is something to do with controlling autonomous vehicles.

If it is, then it's worrying. An autonomous vehicle must be able to work without a network connection! For emergencies and for areas without 5G. All it needs is to know what is around it - it doesn't need the latest news on traffic problems 300 miles away. It should be able to rely on its own sensors, and, possibly, short-range comms to chat to nearby vehicles. That's it. Updates can wait until it's next connected, like phones.

Peak tech! Bacon vending machine signals apex of human invention

Pen-y-gors

Re: The best bacon

and the sausage, tomatoes, cheese, and mushrooms. With Potteries oatcakes to transport it to your mouth - and dribbling down your chin.

Cheese???? And you forgot t' black pudding. And tinned tomatoes, not fresh.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Which is better?

The only bacon worth eating is homemade. Period. End of discussion.

Do you mean home-made or home-cooked?

It's a hell of a big job to find somewhere in your house where you can salt and smoke half a pig. I find the locally-cured bacon from our butcher down the road is excellent (and more like a steak than a 'slice'). And nicely grilled at home, in a soft white bap, with <insert sauce of choice>. Yum.

But having said that, a decent freshly-cooked bacon roll from a roadside van (fat trimmed off) is often a delight.

How the mighty have fallen: Anglian Water knocks Google off perch as UK's best workplace

Pen-y-gors

Major companies only?

I assume this is limited to 'best employer' with a value over $1 billion, and generally rubbish moral standards?

There are tens of thousands of small businesses which offer a better place to work than any of these.

My employer (me) has an office ten yards from my front door. No fuss if I'm 'late' in. Great coffee and use of fridge for snacks whenever. No problems with bringing my cat to work. Holidays whenever I like. The right to turn down jobs I don't like the look of. Only downside is the wages, but money isn't everything. That beats all the ones mentioned.

Adobe Flash zero-day exploit... leveraging ActiveX… embedded in Office Doc... BINGO!

Pen-y-gors

Qihoo 360?

Having the same sort of availability issues as Office 361.5 ?

European fibre lobby calls for end to fake fibre broadband ads

Pen-y-gors

Cogito ergo sum?

If you think you have a full-fibre connection, you probably don't

I'm pretty sure I do have FTTP. Otherwise what were the openreach guys doing running a special new cable into the new router thingy on the bedroom wall, which then gave me 300Mbps down? And what were all those coils of new something that were hanging off the local telegraph poles? Do you mean it's just a new bit of copper?

Here's the list of space orgs big and small sparring to send next NASA gear to the Moon

Pen-y-gors

Launch?

Presumably these companies will just be bidding for the last bit of the journey - getting the package down to the lunar surface, and not the full journey from Florida. With Boeing/SpaceX/NASA getting it into lunar orbit?

Marriott's Starwood hotels mega-hack: Half a BILLION guests' deets exposed over 4 years

Pen-y-gors

500 million?

Nah! 500 million transactions, maybe, but not 500 million customers. Even if it's worldwide, I suspoect a lot are in the USA, and a fair proportion of the population there can't afford to stay in decent house, never mind a Marriot hotel. And I'm sure a lot of their customers tend to be regular repeat offenders, so probably only 50-100 million, i.e. less than Equifax. Pah! Piffling small change!

Pen-y-gors

@monty75

Or possibly it was upgraded in Sept 18 to report additional types of activity as being suspicious. We shouldn't always assume the worst. Which of us has never upgraded software to make things better?

Pen-y-gors

Re: Card numbers

@wyatt

I've done the opposite before, flag that the card is going out of the UK.

It must be 10 years ago that I visited Chile. After a couple of days tried to use my debit card to withdraw cash - nope! Seconds later got a text from the bank telling me about it and saying to reply to unblock.

Had similar texts (but not blocks) when I used Lloyds CC to order stuff directly from a shop in Santiago. "Was this you? If not phone...."

But yes, why does anyone need to store CC numbers once the transaction has been verified - or even before if you use a portal like Paypal?

Canuck couple returns home after night on tiles to gaggle of randomers hanging out in their flat

Pen-y-gors

I remember reading an article recently suggesting that this approach is being frequently used to set-up "pop-up" brothels.

1) Book large house with lots of bedrooms with false credentials for a week

2) Move in

3) Start passing the word round the local pubs

4) Move out at end of week, don't bother changing sheets or clearing the mess.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Experienced something similar myself from the other side

Raises an interesting question, the same as the one in the article.

If it was the wrong place, how did you get in? No key? No key-safe code? No 'key under 3rd flowerpot from the right'?

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

Pen-y-gors

Re: Ah the Cloud

Where does rain come from?

$deityOfChoice is having a wee-wee

Blighty: We spent £1bn on Galileo and all we got was this lousy T-shirt

Pen-y-gors

Re: Well, who'd have thought it?

@ITFramer

If you love the EU so much bugger off and live there .. I have for over 10 years. At least I know what Europeans think of the UK.

I've lived in the EU for many years, still do. It's a little country called Wales. I want to continue living in the EU, but a bunch of mindless, selfish, gullible twats are taking that right away from me.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Well, who'd have thought it?

There are plenty spaces for heads on pikes on Westminster bridge.

No, we are a 48% civilised country, we don't put heads on pikes these days (although it has a strong emotional appeal, and would undoubtedly be a major tourist attraction for years - helping our foreign trade balance, which I'm sure they would appreciate, if they were alive to do any appreciating)

No, they should all spend the rest of their days in a 10x10ft cell in Dartmoor, only coming out for 12 hours work a day breaking rocks in an open-air quarry, regardless of the weather. The whole thing being livestreamed 24/7. Vindictive? Moi?

Pen-y-gors

Re: Well, who'd have thought it?

Well, just because you donated £500 to the Golf Club towards the cost of building a new shower block doesn't mean you get to use it after you've resigned from the club.

NASA has Mars InSight as latest lander due to arrive today

Pen-y-gors

Re: Information

Damn! They'll be spitting when that happens and they realise they hadn't allowed for such an obvious problem. That's what comes from letting inexperienced grad students design experiments.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Dusty

I wondered about having a little electric fan attachment, but I suppose with the thin air a feather duster on a robot arm would make much more sense.

HMRC: 30 months to prep Northern Ireland backstop systems, 24 for customs

Pen-y-gors

Shirley...

with all this chaos and all this ridculous insoluble problems, there MUST be some sort of alternative plan???

<whisper>pss sssh ssshhh</whisper>

What's that Sooty? Why not just stay in the EU? No, don't be silly. If it was that simple everyone would be calling for that, even the government!

<whisper>pss sssh ssshhhpp sssph</whisper>

What's that Sooty? You say that everyone IS calling for that, including pro-Brexit government ministers and ex-ministers like Raab C Brexit? Well! Why don't we all know about this?

<whisper>pss sssh ssshhhpp sssph</whisper>

What's that Sooty? Because the fascist owners of the main newspapers make sure it's not mentioned? Maybe you have a point. Good night Sooty.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Don't worry

@Ken 16

Oooh, wouldn't want them 'jumping the queue'!

Pen-y-gors

@Ian Johnston

It could be damage limitation. Basically putting it in writing now so when/if it is required and doesn't happen they can say 'told you so, don't blame us'

Pen-y-gors

@AC

no that was Plaid Cymru, the DUP (formerly UVF) just shot people.

No, that wasn't Plaid Cymru, Meibion Glyndwr (the Sons of Glyndwr) it was that did the 'come home to a real fire, buy a holiday cottage in Wales' thing. And no-one was ever injured. And traditionally they used "England's Glory' matches.

Mobile networks are killing Wi-Fi for speed around the world

Pen-y-gors

Re: Yes its cost...

Good to hear that WiFi is good in the UAE. What's reception like in the prison cells they bung foreign students in?

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

Pen-y-gors

Meanwhile in Welsh Wales

the preferred term for the day known by USAians as 'Black Friday' is Diwrnod Gwario Gwirion - Stupid Spending Day.

Well that's just spliffing: UK Amazon merchants peddling Mary Jane

Pen-y-gors

Laura Norder

So at some point in the past there was a time when the British public were all entirely law abiding?

A historian writes...

No, not really, but it's interesting how views on what is just law and how it should be enforced have varied over the years. I'm currently deep in the 19th Century (but not in a Rees-Mogg sense, I'm actually learning from it) - there were as many crimes then as now, possibly more. And basically the same sort of things. Drunk and disorderly, driving furiously (a cart), not having a cart licence, rape, burglary, assault, paying wages in a pub...the usual. Remarkably few murders though.

What is fascinating is how these crimes were dealt with. Many people in rural areas didn't want to see their neighbours banged up for something they considered quite minor, and cases were 'compromised' before the trial. In many cases matters were dealt with locally without the Cardiganshire Constabulary getting involved at all. There was a tradition that if the judge arrived for the Assizes and there were no cases to try, he received a pair of white gloves. It happened a lot round here, not because there was no crime, but because the locals didn't want outsiders interfering.

And of course what was considered a crime by the state was not what the people always thought. Justice was the purlieu of the landlords, and they wanted to protect what was theirs (which was just about everything), so crimes like trespassing after game & theft of property got stomped on hard, whilst beating up the wife got a 10/- fine. Another reason why the little people preferred to stay away from costly English justice and handle matters themselves.

Pen-y-gors

Cave?

Sigh... some bastard stole the cave I was living in...

Interesting, given that a cave is effectively defined by being the absence of a load of rock, surrounded by rock, how do you steal it? Did they come and fill it with concrete?

Microsoft: You looking at me funny? Oh, you just want to sign in

Pen-y-gors

I'm confused

I'm going to have to re-read the article. I didn't understand any of it apart from the nonce-signing, which I assume is what the "tough" lads in H.M.Privatised Prisons do with a sharp implement to any sex-offenders they manage to get alone in the shower block.

Talk about a cache flow problem: This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

Pen-y-gors

It should only take 10 minutes to negotiate a fix for this

Well, possibly a little more.

But shirley there are a number of defences and browser fixes possible?

It would have an efficiency hit but could the browser do a bit of random cache grabbing all the time? So the pattern is unpredictable? There are enough delays in loading and rendering a page these days that there is ample spare time to play around.

And does this attack work cross browser, so could you defend by using Chrome for the stuff you don't care about ('cos Google is snooping on everything anyway) and then say, Firefox in private mode for the banking site?

OnePlus 6T: Tasteful, powerful – and much cheaper than a flagship

Pen-y-gors

Re: Dumb dumb dumb

I must confess general ignorance as I don't use headphones, but surely a purchase of a 3.5mm to USB-C adapter (£10 on you-know-who) solves the problem?

5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1... Runty-birds are go: 12,000+ internet-beaming mini-satellites OK'd by USA

Pen-y-gors

What could possibly...

you know the rest.

And, out of idle curiosity, what gives one country the right to fill Earth's orbital space with junk? Does the government of Tuvalu have the right to authorise the deployment of 12,000 itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny yellow-polka-dot nuclear devices in low earth orbit?

Bloke jailed for trying to blow up UK crypto-cash biz after it failed to reset his account password

Pen-y-gors

Counter Terrorism Command?

I appreciate that language and the meaning thereof can change over time. But surely trying to kill someone in a business quarrel isn't terrorism? Terrorism is about attempting to create terror for political purposes, frequently involving violence. But violence != terror. Or have they just bundled bombs 'n white powder 'n stuff in with the Terror-plods for pay-and-rations convenience?

iPhone XR, for when £1,000 is just too much for a smartmobe

Pen-y-gors

Re: "when £1,000 is just too much for a smartmobe"

face it, there isn't a planet in the known universe where £1000 isn't too much for a smart phone, unless it has a solid gold case. And in that case it would just be bloody daft.

ICO poised to fine Leave campaign and Arron Banks’ insurance biz £135,000

Pen-y-gors

Re: Will of the people my arse

@David Neil

However the death penalty was removed as an option for Treason under 1998 Human Rights act, the via acceding to Article 13 of teh ECHR

And rightly so. But that doesn't prevent them spending the rest of their lives breaking stones on Dartmoor on a diet of GM bread, hormone-laced water and chlorinated chicken, or clearing landmines in West Falkland. Or even sitting in their own waste at the bottom of a deep bottle-dungeon.

Vindictive? Moi? After the deaths and misery they are responsible for?

Pen-y-gors

Re: Will of the people my arse

@John Smith 19

People should have asked "Why?"

The answer lies in some mediaeval legislation that is still in force, the 1351 Treason Act.

"be adherent to the King’s Enemies in his Realm, giving to them Aid and Comfort in the Realm, or elsewhere,"

Vlad has been responsible for killing the Queen's subjects in her realm. That sounds like it makes him an enemy. He will be happy if the UK leaves the UK as it will weaken the UK and the EU. Sounds like giving comfort.

So what does that make the people who supported Leave?

And if that doesn't deserve life in a deep dungeon in the Tower, I don't know what does?

[And on a historical note, when one William Joyce was convicted of high treason in 1945, he didn't get away with life]

Pen-y-gors

Re: £135,000

Electricity to send the e-mails: £4.63

Fine for sending the e-mails: £135,000

Getting the UK out of the EU by lies and fraud: Priceless.

Stairway to edam: Swiss bloke blasts roquefort his cheese, thinks Led Zep might make it tastier

Pen-y-gors

Lancashire?

No puns, but it has to be Gracie Fields greatest hits.

UK.gov to roll out voter ID trials in 2019 local elections

Pen-y-gors

Re: We don't want YOU to vote.

Not that our trustworthy and honourable Tories would ever consider something like that.

Pen-y-gors

Re: Lack of a secret ballot is a greater problem

Whilst it would be possible for a nasty government to go through the ballot and work out exactly how people voted, it would be a hell of a lot of work. Easier to just use the canvassing returns to plan retribution. [although, having said that, I do hope the referendum ballots are still available so that we can work out who gets the one-way ticket to West Falkland]

Anyway, the normal use of the numbering is as follows:

1) If someone turns up to vote and they appear to have voted already (they are crossed off the list) then they are given a pink ballot paper which goes in a separate envelope.

2) When the votes are counted, if the result is very close, i.e. majority less than the number of pink papers, the original papers are identified and removed, and the pink ones counted in their place. It's a lot of work!

I've seen pink papers used. I was acting as Polling Clerk and a little old lady came in. She'd been crossed off. Oh shit! Have we made a mistake? Then went through the pile of polling cards and found her card. Someone had used it. Had she already voted? No, but she had last month. Previous election was over a year ago. Dementia? Anyway she got the pink paper.

Google logins make JavaScript mandatory, Huawei China spy shock, Mac malware, Iran gets new Stuxnet, and more

Pen-y-gors

Prawn and malware

It's interesting that the user visited 9000 prawn sites and only got infected once. I remember an article a while back that suggested that said sea-food purveyors tended to be some of the safest and malware free, as they are really, really keen to encourage visitors to come frequently (I could probably express that better), and if they get an electronically transmitted disease every time they call they will visit a different emporium next time.

Pen-y-gors

Re: So not, Google

"'googleanalytics' - who needs that again?"

Google and their customers who want to sling ads at users.

True, but there are other more reasonable use cases. e.g. for someone who has built a website using AHRC funding, they really like to know how many people visit the website, from where etc. Same with local authorities justifying spend on websites - how many people actually visit them? Even businesses justifying costs to bean counters need numbers. It's not just ad-slinging.

Dot-com web addresses prices to swell, thanks to sweetheart deal between Uncle Sam, Verisign

Pen-y-gors

Yes, but, No, but...buying dot com for a new venture is open to competition from the new tlds. But renewing the existing dot com your business has used for 25 years is not open to competition. Are you going to switch all your email addresses to a new domain to save $2 a year, or $2000 a year? Short and curlies is the technical term.

The true spirit of US capitalism would allow multiple companies to sell and manage .com, with a simple single common database to ensure that two registrars don't sell the same domain. Let them set a price based on their management costs, and compete with each other.

But having said that, when I first registered my .co.uk in the late 90s, it cost something like £70 for two years. Should be back to that again pretty soon.