Posts by lglethal 3902 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007
There's a roundabout at the border of Thailand (drive on the left), and Laos (drive on the right).
This is about as chaotic as you imagine as people attempt to negotiate the roundabout to get to the Correct lane for the other country.
When we went through it was a quiet time, but still one of the craziest experiences I've had. We even managed to get through without any damage. But it was a close run thing...
All Ad providers (such as Google) which distribute ads to websites have to KNOW there customers, both up and down stream.
By KNOW, I'm talking legally speaking. Exactly as a bank has Know your Customer rules, so should the Ad Slingers.
They need to know, who is providing the ad they are placing, AND the owner of the websites where they are placing the ad.
They then need to be held responsible for providing details to authorities when bad actors place spam/malware ads. And be held responsible for placing ads on dodgy sites.
The legitimate sites will have no problem with this, the legitimate ad providers will have no problem with this. And most customers will have no problem with this.
Bring this in, and the profit will dry up for the AI Spam Site slingers, and they'll move on to the next scan, and we'll get a much better search function back and maybe the whole ad business might get a little bit cleaner.
But I guess they'll lose profit so no chance it will ever get implemented...
Does it takes into account the everyday experiences of the London Tube lines? Leaves on the track (space debris), bad weather (solar storms and CMEs), the lovely British Euphemism "People on the tracks" (I guess other satellites in your desired path), a driver's strike (failed propulsion systems, or lost communication systems)?
Handle all that, and you've got a winner!
Now I understand why the US is so screwed with medical, education and the whole social safety net. You guys pay sweet FA in tax. It's hardly a surprise then that there's no money for anything worthwhile.
I pay pretty much on the dot 40% of my wages in tax, medical, pension, etc. That doesn't count the extras I spend personally on various insurances. And I don't mind that, it's why we have great roads, a good (and almost free) medical system, and good schools.
It would be nice to pay a bit less in taxes, but if it means losing those benefits, then screw it. Call me a socialist, if you must, but I like having a good system that doesn't leave the poorest behind.
I wonder how most Americans would react if you told them they had to pay 40% in taxes but that would guarantee them free medical, well funded schools, and good roads. I get the feeling most would reject it as being "Commie Talk", but then again that's the view of an outsider looking in... Who knows maybe the majority are more sane then we give you credit for?
True. But how do you tame the wild west? You start by taking down as many criminals as possible. It takes ages and it feels like a game of a whack-a-mole, but eventually, those that might have taken up the criminal life begin to suspect that it's maybe not as easy and danger free as previously thought, and decide to avoid that line of work.
Banks used to get robbed on a regular basis. Banks upped their security, so that the take got less, and the danger factor went up massively. Those that might have though bank robbing was a lucrative profession, decided to go into other nefarious lines, like becoming lawyers... Now, I cant actually remember the last time a Bank got robbed, can you?
We're not their yet, but these takedowns might at least start the ball rolling...
Wow. I guess someone at the PC manufacturers forgot to send their usual Hype cheque to Forrester.
A completely rational take on an overly hyped product - maybe try again next year...
Although as it still holds out that these PCs MIGHT be beneficial at some point, I guess they didnt want to completely alienate the manufacturers and lose out on next years Hype cheque...
Cynical, Moi?
Go back to when musk took over Tesla and he was the Media Darling, Tech Saviour of the world, bringing this new EV technology* (I think he borrowed the Reality Distortion Field from Apple at the time) to the world.
And a lot of people bought Teslas back then, based on Musk and his pronouncements. That was still true going back maybe 5 years.
And then he went bat shit crazy... The stupid rescue Sub, the Paedo Guy comments, the smoking pot on a live stream, the various crypto shit, and then finally the screwed up takeover of Twitter, followed by a continual stream of controversial tweets (sometimes bordering on illegal - "funding secured!").
Musk is no longer the Media Darling, nor the worlds Tech Saviour. In fact, the people who are now most looking at EV tech, are likely the same people looking at musk, and going "ewww...". People like that are not going to buy a Tesla (and these days, there are a ton of alternative options). The people who support Musk in his controversial bollocks, are also the people who have zero interest in an EV.
So Musk the man, did probably help Tesla shift a huge number of units in the beginning, that they probably didnt deserve to shift. Now though, I'd suggest that he's personality is actively hurting the company. They'd be much better off ditching him, but we all know that's not going to happen when he owns so many of the shares...
I'm just curious, Musk holds a huge number of Tesla shares, as do the board members, musk's family, and friends.
Surely there is a conflict of interest if any of them get to vote on giving him such a substantial pay packet...
Then again we are talking America, we're corporations and the rich can do what they want, so...
Whilst your absolutely right about scams and Malware. That's not what's on discussion here, spam is.
And Spam comes in lots of different types. The most destructive from my point of view, are the a$$holes who scrape legitimate sites, repost the content (with minimal modification to avoid easy detection), and then use SEO to get there links higher up the search list then the original site.
The original site owner loses clicks, which means they will probably go out of business and stop posting articles that are of actual interest. Eventually we'll end up with AI copying AI to the point where you can't get good writing, and interesting viewpoints.
The Bastards behind that sort of spam really need a good kicking...
A friend of mine once worked setting up Stalls at Major Expos across Europe. He came into work one morning (early in his career at that job) and was told he had to deliver this stall and set it all up ready for start tomorrow morning, and just follow the Satnav, the boss had programmed the address in.
My mate quickly checked the Satnav, saw it was aimed at Frankfurt, nodded, and set off from London. At about 6pm that night he arrived in Frankfurt, found the address in the Satnav, but there was no Convention Centre. He found a nearby petrol station, and asked the man behind the counter where to find the Convention Centre. The Man pissed himself laughing and said about 7 hours southwest of here. My mates boss had plugged in Frankfurt an der Oder instead of Frankfurt am Main, and sent him to eastern Germany rather than the slightly larger and better known west German city. Queue a 6 hour panicked drive down the Autobahns and a very late night setup of the Stall.
Lesson learned, never trust the bosses to get anything right! ;)
I'm only speculating but...
Money transferred to a Chinese bank account (contractors are in China, so that's natural enough)... Then either transfer this money to a bank which happily does transfer money to Fat Boy Kim's personal bank account. Or if that's considered too obvious, then money extracted from Chinese Bank Account, gold or equivalent valuable goods purchased, given to a suitable North Korean Mule, and walked across the border to be delivered to the North Korean Treasury.
If China decided to crackdown, it would make this significantly harder, but they overtly support North Korea as a counter to the US/South Korean influence. They have lost significant influence though, as with Kim and Vlad having a little love in, if China shut the Pipes, Russia would simply try to reopen them... Whether that would be enough though, who knows?
If you're living in a country next door to another country which is run by a nuclear armed despot with a known penchant for throwing tantrums (and who may or may not be a few sandwiches short of a picnic), you would think that going out of your way to send money to him, might not be the best idea in the long run.
But then I guess that's the problem with idiots like this, no-one thinks the madman is going to start lobbying Nukes tomorrow, so why not get rich today? Muppets...
Space is such a bugger of an environment, it always throws up things you did not expect. The fact that this has likely been a problem on other optics, but that the sensors are now so amazing that we can pick up such a tiny effect is astounding.
I can remember on Insight, that the Mole was functioning amazingly in testing, and then we did a small test in Martian Atmosphere, and everything stopped. It turned out that even the small change in atmospheric pressure in a volume of a few cubic mm had an effect that we hadnt taken into account. We were able to fix it, but some things are just so unexpected, you dont know to test for them!
It's great that they think they can fix it... Fingers crossed!
Since Linkedin were hacked back in circa 2016, anyone who has had a Linkedin account longer than 10 years appears on Have I been Pwned.
So this is not exactly rocket science. You could also the right the headline as "Over half of people who list themselves as holding clearances have been on Linkedin for longer than 10 years...". But I guess that's not as headline grabbing...
In each case, they seem to be saying they installed an update and borked their systems. Now it could be an update of anything (maybe they changed to decaf in the IT room coffee machine), but is there any one program they all happen to be using for purchasing, that sent out an update to be installed this week, and they have all got around to installing it at different times...
Nahh... It was Putin... He wants riots on the street in the UK, and knows just how to accomplish it... If Wetherspoons goes down tomorrow, war will be declared by the end of the week...
There's definitely something to what you say, but since it seems to be all but impossible to actually hold individual CEO's to account, what else can you do?
What I would hope is that the remaining shareholders of Apple hold Cook to account by voting to reduce his salary for costing them money with his lying statement. But that's probably not going to happen...
The article does state that the action refers solely to the groups who bought shares in Apple in the two months after that statement.
So basically it applies to people who took Cook at his word (what other choice did they have) that all was rosy in the Walled Garden in regards to China. If just 4 days later, they cut production, then it seems pretty clear they knew that things behind the Great Wall were not so good. So yep Cook was blatantly bullsh&tting, and he's been called out on it.
Any Woolly Mammoths produced would absolutely be kept in Zoos, etc. and not released back into the wild. For exactly this reason. You cant release an animal into an environment not prepared for it without some really messed up consequences.
I'm not quite sure what a wholly mammoth is though, is it perhaps a whole mammoth? Or a cross between a woolly mammoth and a holy mammoth? :P
Look I know how much corruption there is in India (I lived there for 3 months), BUT Taxes do pay for the Roads, hospitals, medical clinics, schools, national parks, etc. Imagine how much better everything could be if it wasnt for the corruption. But paying taxes means you get those things, rather than everything having to be private and controlled solely for the rich.
As for not having a social safety net, yep it's messed up. But I guess it's following the American system which also doesnt particularly have any sort of social net worthy of the name. And guess what, America is another nation with notoriously low taxes (compared to the rest of the western world). And whilst two data points is probably not enough to show causation, if you dont collect a proper amount of taxes, you cant afford to provide the safety net.
Although I can see it's a chicken and egg problem. There's no safety net, so people dont want to pay any extra taxes, and keep the money to look after themselves. But because there's no extra tax money, there's no money for a safety net...
But lets just reiterate, if there was significantly less corruption then there is at the moment, India would be a significantly better off place. Maybe there would even be enough extra in the kitty for that safety net...
I doubt it. As it says in the article, AMD's mid range cards are actually quite decent and competitively priced. If you're not locked into needing NVIDIA (for example having a GSync Monitor) and your aiming to purchase a mid market card, then AMD is actually the better value purchase.
I can only imagine Linux support has a minor effect at best...
Sorry, but it just doesnt sound very realistic as a solution. Anything that requires multiple landings and cables laid for a 100km on the Moon, is not going to happen in any time frame we care about. I wonder if someone just bought shares in a Fibre Optic Cable Manufacture... :P
Why wouldnt you just deploy something along the lines of the Seismometer deployed with the InSight mission to Mars. It basically mapped the internals of Mars to a degree that everyone seems happy with and also detected marsquakes, meteorite impacts, and if I remember correctly was even able to pick up the effect of the Moons passing by!
Since one already exists, getting CNES to build another one using the same tech, should be (relatively speaking) cheap. It does mean dealing with the French though.... ;)
(Disclaimer: I worked on a different instrument on the InSight mission...)
I'm just curious why free oxygen on the surface would affect the chances of sea life when the top of the surface is frozen. I understand there's a significant transfer of gases between the atmosphere and the ocean here on Earth, so yes here it would have a big effect. but I would imagine that the Ice sheet would act as a significant insulator preventing such a transfer of gases.
Or (as is likely) am I missing something?
Oh no they are not! Tesla are the workers who build the products, and the engineers who design the products that they sell to make the firm it's profits. I'll even go so far as to include the Janitorial staff who keep the place clean, the HR and finance staff that keep the people paid and the middle management that keep the people moving in (more or less) one direction.
The Sshareholders and the C-Suite are the vultures who skim the cream off the top, without adding an iota of value to the firm.
On the topic of this specific article - The shareholders who brought this case should absolutely be the ones paying their lawyer's fee. They have stopped an additional (and hugely excessive) number of shares from going to El Musky, and so by virtue of a smaller share pool, the value of their stock has increased. They gain, so they should pay their own bloody lawyers...
These ambulance chasers have set such a high figure, probably to try for shock value, and so will "settle" for only 10% of that (which is still a ridiculously high value). I hope the judge comes down on them like a ton of bricks. Isnt there something like bringing the profession into disrepute with which to smack these idiots with? Threaten their licence to practice law unless they come back with a clearly reasonable value quick smart...
Tech journalists as a rule tend to have a pretty good idea about the latest tech. Especially El Reg Journalists. Maybe not so much the Daily Mail's tech journalist (but who goes there for tech news?).
Lawyers going to a professional to understand the latest tech. Seems like an eminently sensible idea to me.
No different from when El Reg Journalists turn to lawyers for comment on new legal rulings, etc.
Let the lawyers focus on the law, but give them an expert point of contact for when their cases cross into tech territory...
This seems like a ready made excuse for cancelling an expansion due to a combination of poor planning, higher interest rates, and an industry wide slowdown.
Expansions planned based on the levels of growth seen during the pandemic and the idiotic assumption that such growth would go on forever, as well as interest levels at effectively 0%, are now facing reality.
I expect a raft of such AI excuses to follow...
Yep. Hit a firm with a fine, even a big one, and the senior folk will shrug, moan about changing things being impossible, and put it down to the costs of business... Threaten to throw the higher level employees in prison, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible, and the implementation will happen so fast, it's a surprise the developers dont get whiplash...
"There is always space for banter in the right form."
In Australia it's easy to see if someone likes you. If they are happily taking the pi$$ with you (sorry making jokes about and with you, for the non-Aussie speaking folk) then they like you.
If they are super polite and formal, then they REALLY dont like you...
Probably the most obvious reason for why not, would be that the Chinese would likely decide that someone willing to disrupt the status quo (which China definitely prefers on the Korean peninsula) would probably be better replaced by one of their more manageable siblings.
Don't for a minute think that China couldn't orchestrate a NK regime change if they felt like it. Fat Boy Kim makes a handy puppet, right now. If he tries to move too close into alignment with Russia though and away from China, I wouldn't be at all surprised if a "heart attack" was to follow shortly after. Probably to be replaced by which ever relative, the Chinese believe is most easily controlled...
I'm still using Win 10. I wont be moving to Win 11 any time soon. Simple reason - my hardware says it wont run Win 11, even though it's still better than the recommended Specs on EVERY program/game /software I use or plan to use in the medium to near future.
When I built my machine 8 years ago, i bought a relatively top of the line, motherboard and chip, precisely so it would live a very long time. The memory has been upgraded, the hard drives changed to SSD's, new graphics card as well. But I bloody well wont be changing the motherboard and chip JUST to go to Win 11. When that Motherboard/chip combo starts proving problematic with the programs I use daily, then and maybe then I'll consider upgrading, but I dont see that happening for another 2-5 years. So probably I'll be using an unsupported version of Win 10, so be it... Maybe by then Win 12 will be out, and it will have ditched the hardware requirements. Or I'll finally jump to Linux.
But Microsoft can jump in the lake if they really expect me to buy new hardware for a new OS which does NOTHING more than the old one does...
Cant be used off road.
Cant go up hills.
Cant be used in the rain.
Cant handle a little bird poop.
Clearly this is the ultimate American All Terrain Vehicle...
I'm beginning to feel like calling Musk a Snakeoil Salesman is being unnecessarily insulting to Snakeoil Salesmen...
It comes down to work culture. If you email me, I wont know about it UNLESS I login. It doesnt matter when you send it, if I dont know it's there. However, if your Boss expects you to setup a system that notifies you that you've got an email AND expects you to actually login and deal with it, straightaway. This legislation will allow you to tell him to take a long walk off a short pier.
That's what it comes down to, if the worker feels pressured to be always online, this legislation gives them the power to say No. And it punishes managers that maintain those shenanigans.
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