* Posts by lglethal

3885 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007

We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

OK I've looked and looked...

... but I'm buggered if I can work out what the last infographic is trying to say. "This hill can give you a headache"? "Thinking about climbing this hill can make you sweaty"? "Our gardeners are really crap and havent gotten around to making the hill smooth yet"?

Come on someone help me out here!

FYI: FBI raiding NSA's global wiretap database to probe US peeps is probably illegal, unconstitutional, court says

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

Hmmm

So the court decided that using the database without a warrant is illegal, thats great. But how the FBI can say "oh but we never used that database in this case, but we're not going to tell you how we got the information for prosecution." and not automatically have the information ruled out as inadmissable is totally beyond me.

How can they get away with not revealing to the judge, where and how they got the information they used for a prosecution? Are the FBI, actually the Stasi? If a judge asks where info comes from, surely that must be handed over immediately? Sure the prosecutor can ask for the court to be closed to the public or hell that the information is provided to the judge only if its considered secret, but if a judge asks and gets told "sorry no were not giving you that." then how on Earth can it be used in court?

The mind boggles! (or it would if we didnt continually read about the lengths US law enforcement will go to "bend" the rule of law in their favour...

Someone get Greenpeace on the line. Boffins clock carbon 'pollution' cloud 30,000 light-years wide choking galaxies

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Probably if you asked the silicon-based life forms, they would definitely agree that we carbon-based life forms are a type of pollution...

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

"which shouldn't prompt any odd looks or condescension whatsoever."

You havent dealt with many old engineers have you? Asking anything, even what the weather is like can you get a look of condescension!

(I should know, I'm a middle aged engineer working my way to old engineer status, and the hours we have to practice being condescending is amazing...)

lglethal Silver badge
Stop

You seem to be forgetting that when your father first graduated and probably for the first few months of his career if not longer, he was also asking "how do i choose the right diode?". Back then, he would have been asking the older engineers and no doubt they looked down at him condescendingly and then gave him the answers.

These days, people try to avoid the condescending look and go to places like Stack Exchange for their answers. Is that really so much worse? Stack Exchange info can be wrong, but old guys can also be stuck in their ways and not using up to date info. Hopefully you take all answers with a pinch of salt, and check the results with others. But just because people are asking basic questions doesnt preclude them from turning into good engineers...

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

I call fake news!

As if any user in Australia ever hits 100MBps for even 5 minutes. Let alone for an entire month! I call fake!

;)

ICANN demands transparency from others over .org deal. As for itself… well, not so much

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Well done

hey if you can pile a whole bunch of obstructions (boxes, curtains, plywood, brick walls, etc.) in the way of a window then technically the window is still transparent.

ICANN is totally transparent, it just cant help that there happens to be all of these obstructions getting in the way of you actually seeing what you want to see. Totally not their fault... </sarcasm>

Icahn and I will force a Xerox and HP wedding: Corporate raider urges HP shareholders to tell board to act 'NOW'

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Hello IRS...

"as an activist I have made billions and billions of dollars not only for Icahn Enterprise...

Hmmm i wonder if those values much up to the tax he has been paying? Would that statement count as evidence in a court of law? Where are the IRS when you need them???

lglethal Silver badge
Devil

"What is that saving going to cost the workforce?"

Answer: Their jobs...

Oracle finally responds to wage discrimination claims… by suing US Department of Labor

lglethal Silver badge
Go

They seem to think this is a bad thing...

"... a group of unelected, unaccountable, and unconfirmed administrative officials have cut from whole cloth this adjudicative agency enforcement scheme.”

So they're complaining that the enforcement agency is staffed by non-political appointees? OK I guess I can see why Oracle things thats bad. It means they cant throw a few bribes, sorry Political donations, at the right people and get the result they want. Like the Telcos have with the FCC.

But why do regular americans have a thing against unelected officials? I mean surely the people you want doing a job are the people with the skills to actually do it? The fact you have elected law enforcement for me is insane. Surely, you should have highly trained cops with multi year experience leading your police forces, ones that dont need to focus on elections rather than actually, you know, working. Same goes with any government department.

I guess its just another aspect of the American psyche that I will never understand...

Christmas in tatters for Nottinghamshire tots after mayor tells them Santa's too busy

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: "Bare-faced lies are a critical component in the tool belt of parenthood."

Wait, so politicians only know how to lie right? So that means Santa is real!!!

Hooray! Everything's fine kids! Christmas isnt cancelled after all...

Iran kills the internet for its people's own good as riots grip the Middle Eastern nation

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

Is every dictatorial regime stupid?

I get it sanctions are hurting, cash reserves are dwindling and a large part of your budget is spent on fuel subsidies. You want to reduce that so you have more money to spend on, I dont know, equipping your thugs, sorry military. But EVERYTIME a dictorial regime ups its fuel or food prices massively by slashing subsidies, it gets massive riots. Often those riots escelate and the subsidies get reintroduced anyway, but the riots continue, and down falls the regime or at least it gets significantly weakened. EVERYTIME.

Cant you play the long game for once? You've been managing your dictatorship for years now, show some patience. Drop the subsidies by a couple of cents a year until they're gone. People might grumble but an extra 2c per litre is not enough to bring people out on to the streets. But add 50c per litre and boom instant protests.

Really how is this not in the basic Dictatorship for Beginners 101 course?

Email! HUH! Yeah. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: What a string of cockups

maybe, but then it's not your a$$ on the line when management descends months down the track for the system not working and you ignoring the reported failures. If you raised tickets, you can successfully point to the fact that you've raised tickets continuously and that the people whose job it was to fix it, were the ones not doing their job...

Congress to FCC: Where’s the damn report on mobile companies selling location data?

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Could some Journalist please...

obtain from these very same phone companies the real time location data for the wives and family of the Republicans on the committee that didnt sign this document?

Make that public and watch how fast they turn around when they realise its not just the plebs getting their data stolen...

What do you get when you allegedly mix Wireshark, a gumshoe child molester, and a court PC? A judge facing hacking charges

lglethal Silver badge
Stop

Re: Jeez

You say that like that's a good thing.

So rather then being appointed for being popular, they're appointed for what they can do for the people in power. Both are bloody awful concepts...

Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Robot Baristas already exist - you're behind the times Dabbsy

Havent yet tried one, but they do exist...

https://www.nanalyze.com/2019/03/robot-baristas/

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/01/30/robotic-barista-now-serving-really-fast/95888780/

Three UK does it again: Random folk on network website are still seeing others' account data

lglethal Silver badge
Joke

Well you know the old saying, these things happen on 3...

Baffled by bogus charges on your Amazon account? It may be the work of a crook's phantom gadget

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Cancel the account challenge

Just curious - but which country do you live in? I've heard others speak about Amazon defaulting to Prime, but I've never had that myself - Amazon often ask when making a purchase if i want to sign up to Prime but it definitely has never defaulted to Prime without my explicit approval.

It would be interesting to know if this is country specific behaviour. Maybe those lands with less stringent customer safety laws, as my current Abode possess.

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: ecards

Not to support Amazon or anything, but everytime with Prime, Amazon make it crystal clear that after the free month trial you will be charged. If you forget to turn the thing off, then frankly that's your own fault and nothing to do with Amazon. You dont have to take the free trial. You can also take the free trial, make your purchase and cancel it the moment you're finished. But blaming Amazon for charging you for Prime the following month after they told you they were going to charge you if you didnt cancel is just stupid...

lglethal Silver badge
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Re: It is hard to find

Just curious - if you dont have Prime can you still check that there are no video devices linked?

Sorry at Work right now, so cant check...

Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: I don't understand the diagram

Think of it like pulling something through water, you will always end up with a long wake trailing behind the boat. The same applies in gases and plasmas, even in the extremely low density of interstellar space.

The proportions in the artists view might be off, but you definitely would see a wake, trailing behind the solar system in its course around the galaxy.... It would be interesting to send out a Voyager 3 in the wake dimension to see just how long the wake is though... NASA hop to it... :)

lglethal Silver badge
Thumb Up

Some surprising results (for the layman)

I will admit I was surprised to read that the interstellar medium is higher density then within the solar system. My guess is that when the sun formed it sucked up a lot of the local plasma, dust, etc, and so led to a reduced local density. Although its somewhat surprising that just basic hydrodynamics didnt lead to an "influx" of the high pressure density plasma from the surrouding space to the now lower density pre-solar system. At least up until the point where the sun ignited and started sending out the solar wind to push back against the interstellar medium.

I love when Science throws up curve balls like that and makes you think about your basic assumptions on the universe.

Heads up from Internet of S*!# land: Best Buy's Insignia 'smart' home gear will become very dumb this Wednesday

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Somewhat curious...

How much would the back end for this system really be costing Best Buy to keep running? I mean if they just declared they wouldnt be doing anymore updates (security or otherwise) to the App/server/whatever, and just would be leaving the back end running, so people could continue to use their gear. How much would that cost them? I cant imagine very much. A server, and one guy working part time to press the reset button when it occasionally crashes. Is that really a huge expense? And by leaving it running you would be avoiding a ton of bad will, the inevitable lawsuits from the people whose products you've just bricked, plus all of the refunds.

I really struggle to see the business sense in this...

GitLab mulls ban on hiring Chinese and Russian support staff because 'security'

lglethal Silver badge
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Re: Is this legal?

I hate to break it to people but this is standard in many industries. Or at least any industry even partially related to the defence sector, and in quite a few high tech research groups similar bans exist. I've experienced this in multiple countries across Europe (UK and continent), Asia and Australia.

Depending on the level of security clearance you need for your work, even just having been to visit these countries can be enough to get questions asked. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are the main ones, but if you need tighter clearance expect questions if you've been to Cuba, Laos, Venezuela, etc...

For the high tech research groups it tended to be less about "national security" and more that actually verifying that people were who they say they were and had the training, education, experience they claimed was very difficult. Additionally, theft of research and IP was considered a real risk - I know of one case where a chinese person was given a job, and thankfully that countries intelligence service identified them as a chinese intelligence agent BEFORE they started working. The risk is definitely real.

So is it discrimination - yeah. But is it legal - also yeah. It's unfortunate, but sometimes nations put themselves out of the trustworthy bracket, and the costs are borne by their own citizens...

A stranger's TV went on spending spree with my Amazon account – and web giant did nothing about it for months

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

So they've tracked the Perp, right?

I kind of doubt that any TV (smart or otherwise) has the ability to start obfuscating its IP address or using VPN's to bounce around the world, so the rep got the IP Address for the TV, and passed it over to the relevant authorities, right? And they've got in contact with the ISP, and gone around to the address provided by the ISP, and collared the miscreant, right?

If none of this has happened, you really have to aks the question why not? It would seem this really does fall under the "low hanging fruit" branch, since the usual obfuscation that a crim can make is unlikely to be available from a TV. Go after them, and maybe you can learn how they got into the account in the first place and do something about it.

But I'm dreaming arent I? As if anything will happen...

Dammit Insight! You just had two big jobs to do on Mars and you're failing at one of those

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Seismometer?

Actually they can get some pretty amazing science out of the pair of them. By listening to the moles hammering, the Seismometer readings can be used to get a really detailed look at the local sub-surface conditions to quite a depth (sorry cant remember the values now).

Plus the Mole, once its on its way down, is pretty damn fast, so you're only talking a short time where the Mole's hammering is eclipsing the Seismometers search for marsquakes...

lglethal Silver badge
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Re: It's basically a jackhammer

No problem, just thought I'd clear up details. :)

We did actually see something similar to this happen during initial Earth testing under extremely low pressure conditions. Turns out taking the very small amount of air cushioning out of the interior of the Mole in low pressure conditions caused the internal spring mechanism to give a much larger reverse force then anyone expected (I mean we're not talking a huge volume of air inside the Mole even on Earth, but that was enough to provide some damping). We made changes to the Mole to correct this and it worked fine in later low pressure testing.

What we naturally couldnt test and which may be having an effect in concert with the dastardly soil conditions, is the low gravity combined with the low pressure.

Anyway, what has been seen is that with grip on the side of the Mole (from the arm on the lander pushing the Mole against the side of the hole), the Mole works perfectly. Going down until it disappeared almost completely into the soil. The arm was then moved away (out of fear that it might damage the tether), and pressed on the top of the soil surface near the hole to try and provide some force in that way, but that that wasnt enough to stop the Mole hitting reverse. There's going to be a lot of head scratching going on now to try and work out how to stop that happening again... :)

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Relocate?

Unfortunately not. It was never designed to be relocated, and the arm on the lander only has a scoop on the end, so no way to grip it. The arm does have a special magnetic coupling on it (which it used to put the Seismometer and the mole on the martian surface), but the coupling for this on the Mole was on its support structure, not on the Mole itself, so unfortunately that cant be used either.

We'll just have to see if they can get it back down in this location.

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: "Unusual" soil conditions

Based on the soil seen around the other landers and rovers, the soil has an extremely deep layer of Duricrust (low friction, high cohesion soil). In the other places where the rovers moved around and sampled soil, the duricrust was seen to be no more than about 2-5cm deep. Here we're looking at over 20cm. So unusual for Mars? Who knows. But unusual based on the evidence of previous missions. Definitely.

And the Mole is self propelling - it's basically a jackhammer, so No you cant put an auger bit on it.

Oh well if the team can get it down to about 40cm, then it should be able to go forward with out any further problem (once fully past the duricrust and regular soil conditions return). But yeah this is a set back. But thats Science, doing something in the unknown, under conditions no one's ever done them before, and then overcoming the problems that develop.

Good luck little Mole...

(from an ex-HP³ Team member)

I'm not Boeing anywhere near that: Coder whizz heads off jumbo-sized maintenance snafu

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

No it was just the Dumbos in management...

FBI extends voting security push, LA court hacker goes down, and more D-Link failures

lglethal Silver badge
Stop

Funny, that D-Link can just get away with just saying, "Tough sh%t. Go buy a new router".

If any of those routers are under 10 years old, then I would hope that there owners are going to demand that D-Link either replaces them free of charge or gets off its ar$e and fixes the gaping security hole in the router.

Imagine the uproar if a car manufacture came out and said, "Oh yeah we've discovered a failure in the airbags, where they wont actually work, but because the cars involved are more then 5 years old, were not going to do anything about. Buy a new car instead."

It's crazy what firms in the IT world can get away with...

We're late and we're unreliable but we won't invalidate your warranty: We're engineers!

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Ahhh just wait until after Brexit! Once all those polish plumbers, romanian roofers, czech caperters, bulgarian builders, etc. leave, there will be a tonne of new British tradespeople just waiting to take back their jobs (stolen by those bloody foreigners), and they wouldnt leave you in the lurch now would they?

On the plus side for Dabbsy, half of them will probably head to France (the other half Germany), so he'll have an even bigger selection of tradies that wont turn up to fix things as scheduled! Brilliant!

It's win-win right?

Fed up of playing Whac-A-Mole with network of SoftBank-owned patent holders, Intel hits court

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Not an Intel fan...

Not really. In that scenario you are producer (of research). It should be pretty easy to show that a) you had a meeting with the investors/customers, b) they signed an NDA (you did have them sign an NDA, right?), and c) that they are now producing your product.

That's a straight up case for patent protection and there's nothing stopping you bringing that case.

lglethal Silver badge
Stop

Not an Intel fan...

... but companies that dont actually produce anything (either produts or research) really shouldnt be allowed to own patents.

the case mentioned where VLSI just kept shutting down cases and opening them in new jurisdictions really should see there lawyers disbarred, but of course that will never happen.

United States of America - the Land of the (legal) Fee, and Home of the Ambulance Chaser...

Japanese hotel chain sorry that hackers may have watched guests through bedside robots

lglethal Silver badge
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Re: another thing I'll never experience

Funny, never had that myself and we stayed in everything from top hotels, to hostels, to itty bitty b&bs. Or are you just referring to squat toilets? You will find Squats everywhere in Asia and the Middle East. Along with the washing yourself rather then using toilet paper. Toilets are very much a western invention that hasnt penetrated that deeply into asia.

Still if the thoughts of a squat toilet are a bit much for you then travel outside of Europe or North America probably isnt recommended...

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: another thing I'll never experience

You really should consider going to Japan, it's great. Food is awesome, the people are polite and friendly, it has an awesomely wacky mix of ancient and futuristic technologies and buildings all mixed together to give a culture that is so completely different to anything you will experience anywhere else in the world. Oh and the toilets are... an experience.

But yeah you can definitely skip the robot hotels...

Luke, I am your father... which is why I must eject from JEDI decision, says US Defense Sec

lglethal Silver badge
Joke

No one ever got sacked for buying IBM....

... but they can recuse themselves beforehand.

Apple chief Tim Cook ascends to top of tech pantheon on Chinese biz school's advisory board

lglethal Silver badge
Go

CEO's seem to have so much time on their hands

It always amazes me how much time CEO's seem to have on their hands. Since they seem to be able to claim to work 80 hour weeks for their firms, but then they all have time to jump on various boards, lecture circuits, political round tables, etc. Do they all own time machines per chance?

Or is it that there claims of working hard are complete bollocks and they need 2nd and 3rd board jobs just to give themselves something to do in between negotiating pay rises?

Inside the 1TB ImageNet data set used to train the world's AI: Naked kids, drunken frat parties, porno stars, and more

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Trust of black box systems is overrated

By erasing them completely, not only is a significant part of the history of AI lost, but researchers are unable to see how the assumptions, labels, and classificatory approaches have been replicated in new systems, or trace the provenance of skews and biases exhibited in working systems."

If you cant understand your black box, then maybe you shouldnt be trusting the results quite so completely...

Don't look too closely at what is seeping out of the big Dutch pipe

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: 2. blacklisting sites we definitely did not need and giving those modem speed

for blackmail purposes of course...

I discovered the world's last video rental kiosk and it would make a great spaceship

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Recycling

Work? After Brexit? That's a good one...

Privacy pop-up exhibit shows people in The Glass Room shouldn't throw phones – though they may well want to

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Where exactly can i get that Zuck Rolodex? It might come in handy the next time there's a cock-up on one of my projects...

Hundreds charged in internet's biggest child-abuse swap-shop site bust: IP addy leak led cops to sys-op's home

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

Between June 2015 and March last year, the site is thought to have pocketed more than $370,000 in Bitcoin.

Am i the only one that looks at that and is a bit shocked about how LOW that figure is? In 3,5 years they only earned $370k. $100k a year? For running a site, that is heavily going to attract law enforcement scrutiny, and if you're caught, is going to see you locked up for the rest of your life (and have an extremely bad time of it in jail when the other prisoners find out what you were up to - no one likes a paedophile). For a $100k a year? There are soooooo many other criminal schemes you could run which would net you the same (and more) and run far less risk - scams, spam, malware, fake banking sites, etc.

Idiot must have been as into his product as his customers, in which case I hope they throw the book at him... (maybe not just the book. Throw the entire library at him as well...)

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Fair play to the authorities

What I always find funny when some American official goes on an anti-TOR rant, is that the American government both created (through DARPA and the Navy intelligence branch), funded (and continue to do so), and encouraged the take up of TOR. The reason - it makes communication for undercover intelligence agents significantly easier. but only if lots of other people are using it to. they knew all along it would also be used by criminals, but decided that was unimportant.

So going after TOR is basically going after US Intelligence. That should end well...

Some assembly required as Dream Chaser mini-shuttle's empty husk arrives in Colorado

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Windows are a pain in the a$$

And no I'm not talking about the Microsoft version.

They add significant weight, problems with sealing (doubly so in the space environment), significantly weaken your structure, and are an utter shite to install.

Stick a couple of cameras embedded in the structure on the outside and some monitors in place of the windows and let people look out the "windows" that way.

*grumble*grumble*old aerospace engineer*dang kids get off my lawn*grumble*grumble*

A spot of after-hours business email does you good, apparently

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Wouldnt that have meant that on the times you checked and saw things were really bad, that you would spend the rest of the evening worried about it and then have an incredibly shite night, and so have an even worse morning?

That doesnt sound particularly healthy...

Telstra chairman: If those darn kids can earn $5m playing Fortnite, why can't execs?

lglethal Silver badge
Devil

Re: All that we learn from history...

"Unlike 18th century France most of these companies are ultimately answerable to shareholders so there is a glimmer of hope that change can be effected without the help of Madame Guillotine."

Aww cant we please get out Madame Guillotine.... Please? I can think of a few very worthy recipients of her attention...

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Spectrum is green

No, No, No. You have to have at least a couple of yellows, and maybe an orange thrown in as well. Otherwise the customer knows you're bullsh%tting!

lglethal Silver badge
Holmes

hmmm

The bigwigs had spent the last year working on what Alban delicately described as "numbers totally unrelated to reality".

Since when have managements numbers ever been related to reality????

See you in Hull: First UK city to be hooked up to full-fibre broadband

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Deceptive marketing

ow is a consumer supposed to know what is true fibre vs. fake?

One is provided for in your cereal, and one is provided for by OpenReach.