* Posts by Kernel

766 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2011

Germany prepares to launch COVID-19 contact-tracing app 'this week' while UK version stuck in development hell

Kernel

Re: The Covid money pot

" along with work on treating resistant TB and they don't get side-lined by the first world's latest pet problem."

Indeed! - the latest figures I've seen (from 2017) indicated that someone, somewhere in the world, dies from TB every 23 seconds - with the Wu Flu it's only somewhere in the region of one every 58 seconds.

It is important that we don't loose site of the fact that there are other, older, diseases that are still killing at a far greater rate, many years after they have become an insignifiant issue for those of us lucky enough to live in the right countries.

In Hancock's half-hour, Dido Harding offers hollow laughs: Cake distracts test-and-trace boss at UK COVID-19 briefing

Kernel

Re: "......worst death toll in Europe"

"Until you open the borders... or is that not going to happen?"

If this question refers to NZ, then the answer is that no, it's not going to happen anytime soon - there was mention of up to 10 years before international travel is fully open again.

My understanding is that currently, to get into NZ, you need to obtain a specific permit to enter, isolate in your country of origin and undergo several CV-19 tests with negative results then, when you arrive here, you get quarantined and tested for another two weeks,

There is discussion around having open borders with countries such as Australia and certain Pacific island nations once both parties are able to establish that the virus is extinct in their country and that they have controls in place to keep it that way - so think isolation bubbles, but bigger.

Kernel

Re: "......worst death toll in Europe"

"Aspects of the Government response have been shambolic but to pretend that the Government have managed this any worse than their peers across the world, or indeed any worse than the cunts like Kneel to the Mob Starmer would have done (bearing in mind he has no answers - for anything, ever) is wishful thinking."

And yet, here in New Zealand we are back to normal life (except for border entry restrictions) and on track for declaring that the virus is extinct in NZ in about five day's time - so yes, it could be said that they've managed it worse than some of their peers across the world.

Dude, where's my laser?

Kernel

Re: "it did end up spending a winter at the South Pole."

"All very plausible, except that how do you keep the beam centered on the ice when the shark is shivering like that?"

By ordering sufficient quantities of 'Overall, thermal (water resistant), sharks for the use of' before you take delivery of the sharks.

Record-breaking Aussie boffins send 44.2 terabits a second screaming down 75km of fiber from single chip

Kernel

"Staggering - I was impressed when I started work in 1970 and we were squeezing 960 telephone channels down a 4 MHz coaxial cable! "

Aah - you're of the same era in the telecommunications business as myself (I started in 1972, retired October last year).

The good old days, when a supergroup was massive capacity and digital communications meant a VF telegraph system running at 30 baud.

Kernel

Re: Only part of the problem

"75Km is not very far. So you have crack regenerating the signal as an electrical signal."

No, regeneration only happens at 100's or 1000's of km intervals, determined by the capabilities of your specific fibres, error correction capabilities of the coding scheme in use, etc.

Analogue amplification of the composite optical signal is a different story though - yes, that does happen every 70km or so.

Kernel

DWDM on a chip

Very impressive!

The only problem I can see is that quite a large number of racks are going to be needed to MUX/DEMUX enough lower order trib streams to produce a single 44Tb payload for the single chip DWDM.

Facebook to surround all of Africa in optical fibre and tinfoil

Kernel

Re: someone explaining

"So for a US-UK fibre, the landing station in the UK might generate +1000V DC, with the 0V line from the power supply connected to the ground. Then the landing station in the US generates -1000V DC, with the 0V line from the power supply connected to the ground. "

I think you're missing a zero in those numbers - IIRC the Southern Cross cable, on its NZ to Hawaii section, feeds somewhere in the region of 12.5kV from each end.

A rough idea of the required total feed voltage (at least for the cables I'm familiar with) can be determined by the formula 'cable length'/n, where n = 50 (volts needed to power each amplifier) times 60 (km, the approximate distance between amplifiers).

Optical amplifiers are based on a short (a few metres) of optical fibre that has been doped with a small amount of Erbium atoms - hence the the fact that they are normally referred to as EDFAs - Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier. Other dopants can be used, which produce amplifiers that have a different working frequency range.

A 'pump laser' (up to three) within the amplifier is used to excite some of the electrons in the Erbium atoms up from their normal rest energy level to a level that is two steps more energetic. The electrons which have been pushed up then almost immediately drop back one level, leaving them in the level that is one step up from their rest state - they are comparatively stable at this level. The initial drop back from the highest level generates spurious photons, which cause noise in the optical signal and limit the amount of amplification stages you can have while still retaining a workable signal to noise ratio.

The electrons that have been left sitting in a stable state, one level higher than their rest state, will, when struck by a photon from the incoming signal drop back to their rest state, in the process of which they emit a photon that is an exact copy of the signal photon that collied with them. This new photon, plus the original one, then go on to repeat the process, causing the desired signal to be amplified.

Needless to say, there's a hell of a lot of devil in the details between my simple description above and actually building a field deployable EDFA, but in any DWDM system they are probably the most common optical block present.

No, I'm not the Orange Idiot at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., I just spent many years working for a vendor of such toys as a support engineer for DWDM systems.

Breaking virus lockdown rules, suing officials, threatening staff, raging on Twitter. Just Elon Musk things

Kernel

"(no more lies, damn lies, and tainted statistics, please)

"

You can add another 1701 CV-19 deaths in the US to the total since I posted yesterday - are you seriously suggesting that that many people die in the US from any of the other causes you list, in a 24 hour period? Remember, deaths from those causes are still occurring - the CV-19 deaths are in addition to, not instead of, any deaths from 'normal' causes.

Unlike a war where, when you get sick of people dying, a truce is agreed and everyone goes home to their loved ones, with this disease the decision to take the necessary steps is just the beginning and you still have several weeks of deaths ahead of you at that point. It took NZ seven weeks to get CV-19 more or less under control - and we have a much smaller population, very little in the way of truly high-density housing, easily closed borders and easily controlled travel routes around the country.

Sweden is a very different country to the US in many ways and what works there (and that's still under discussion) is unlikely to work in the US.

Kernel

"We keep telling you that we are NOT SUBJECTS. We're CITIZENS. "

You're also citizens who are dying from CV-19 at the 7th highest per capita rate in the world - you're even managing to die from this cause at a higher per capita rate than India; and from documentaries I've seen of the living conditions forced upon the lower levels of Indian society, that's likely to be quite an achievement!

You're having to keep bodies in refrigerated trucks because there's not even enough morgue capacity in some parts of the country.

FFS, you've lost more "CITIZENS" to CV-19 in the last three months than all the US troops that died in Vietnam (58,209 + 1597 MIA) and at the current rate of progress you'll be past the WW I total (116,516) in the very near future - like less than two weeks!

You've currently had 82,246 deaths, with 1,426 of those occurring in the last 24 hours (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html) - what sort of Federal action would be demanded if the cause of those deaths (at the same rate) was something else, such as contaminated food/drink, or military casualties?

Taking the steps needed to keep a highly infectious and dangerous disease under control is not Communism, Socialism, serfdom or slavery, it's just common sense.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Kernel

"Red as a colour for danger makes some sense"

I grew up understanding that - it took me a while to get used to the idea, when I started working in a civil service organisation, that red was used to designate current files/configurations on as built drawings, and green was for archive files and superceded configurations.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Kernel

"Before going back to the safety razor I tried the disposable BICs and also imported some blades from China to fit my Gillette handle. I'd thrown better blades out - had a face like chopped ham :-("

Check on-line for blades from reputable brands like Astra, Derby or Merkur - here in NZ I can buy a 100 pack of Astra blades for $NZ25.00, and I generally get a month of (daily) shaves per blade.

Cloudflare goes retro with COBOL delivery service. Older coders: Who's laughing now? Turns out we're still vital

Kernel

Re: Yes, but.

"Ah, Fortran. I think I still have the book on that.

A surprising language. I'm rather glad I never had to use it professionally."

My first attempts at programming were when I was still at school using a subset of Fortran known as "Portran" (Port-a-Punch Fortran).

This used pre-punched cards that you attacked with a bent paper clip to push out the required chads to create the code on the cards. We learnt a lot about 'hanging chads', long before they became famous as a muddying factor in election results.

Our completed stacks of cards were taken to one of the local banks, which would send them off to be batch-processed after their own jobs had been run (once a week and only if they hadn't used all their paid for machine time) - there is nothing like the disappointment of waiting 2 or 3 weeks to get your results back and finding the run had been sabotaged by a stray chad and that the result of all your work and patience was (IIRC) "Syntax error causes execution failure".

Control is only an illusion, no matter what you shove on the Netware share

Kernel

Re: "Or heard the sphincter-loosening words: 'What's a backup?' "

'"She's a good cook and my wife"

How very modern of you.'

Alternatively, rather than going for the cheap shot and a few easy upvotes, you could actually quote the full sentence - "She's a good cook and my wife and I got a good meal as a thank-you." - or does this not suit your personal agenda?

Reading the second sentence from the OP, "I was called to a friend's house with a plea to fix their broken PC - it wouldn't start.", it's pretty obvious that the OP fixed a friend's PC and as a reward that friend cooked a good meal for the OP and his wife.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Kernel

Re: "bending their knees in anticipation"

"They aren't standing on anything because their legs go "all the way down"."

No, the elephants are standing on the turtle - everyone should know that.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Kernel

Re: such craftsmen could not possibly survive

"I think there are a few Swiss watchmakers who might disagree."

Excepting the really high-end 'designer' grade Swiss watchmakers, I think you'll find most watches marked as 'Swiss made' contain movements of Chinese manufacture in a case of similar source, with just the minimum of work being done in Switzerland to qualify for the 'Swiss made' label.

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

Kernel

Re: I imagine humans could be tricked too

"Kids (usually) have been doing the tap thing on speed signs probably since the invention of the signs and black tape."

I've never seen a speed limit sign altered, but in New Zealand the addition of nipples to the 'uneven surface' signs* used here is fairly common - to the extent that one without nipples tends to trigger a "something's missing" response in the back of my mind.

* Similar to this one - https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/bumps-warning-signs-uneven-road-78390839.jpg

Please check your data: A self-driving car dataset failed to label hundreds of pedestrians, thousands of vehicles

Kernel

"I am the lawful and legitimate owner of the genuinely innovative and original invention known as "someones bungalow". "

While we all, I am sure, appreciate your humour, just for the record the extraneous apostrophe referred to is in "it's", not "someone's".

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

Kernel

Re: The same arithmetic when choosing an automobile

'You still need something capable of doing many miles with a fast "charge" time measured in minutes for that other 20%.'

Going a bit off topic here, but zinc-air cells (yep, those little ones used in hearing aids) have a greater energy density that any of the lithium technologies and, as recently demonstrated by a team from Singapore University, can be built in such a way that they can be recharged by dumping the used liquid fuel solution* out of them and replacing it with new fuel solution - this has the potential to be almost as fast and convenient as filling with petrol or diesel. The used fuel solution can then be regenerated by applying electricity at some convenient (eg., off-peak) time. Zinc also has the advantage of being abundant, cheap and relatively benign environmentally.

This technology is considered a good (or even most likely) candidate for the future storage needs of electric cars, house sized storage banks and national grid sized storage banks.

*Zinc-air cells are partly fuel cell and partly battery in their operation, which is why I chose to use the term 'fuel solution' rather than electrolyte.

Kernel

Re: One reason to replace and old desktop is power consumption

"Unless you want terabytes of disk."

The hard drive on my Asus laptop failed after about 5 years of use and abuse - it's now got a 2TB hard drive in it, divided into a 1TB Win10 partition and a 1TB Linux Mint partition. If I ever need more I can always remove the DVD drive and add another 2TB in the space that frees up.

Do you need more than 4TB in a laptop?

There's got to be Huawei we can defeat Chinese tech giant, thinks US attorney-general. Aha, let's buy stake in Ericsson and Nokia

Kernel

What's really amusing about all this is that there is already a lot of cutting-edge research and development of communications infrastructure carried out in the US - by Nokia Bell Labs at their Menlow Park campus.

US's secret spy payload offloaded: Rocket Lab demos missile muscle with second Electron guided home

Kernel

" Reply Icon

Fortunately NZ is equipped with some very good chopper pilots, experienced at hovering in tricky alpine environments to effect rescue, pluck injured crew off fishing boats in the roaring 40s and other less routine and more tricky things."

For the benefit of those who aren't aware of the history of aviation in NZ, the term 'more tricky things' included chasing deer over the hilltop scrub at low level, firing a net in their general direction from a modified shotgun, following which the net operator jumped off the still moving chopper onto the deer, wrestled it to the ground and prepared it to be airlifted out to a farm. Most of this activity took place in terrain where the chopper couldn't land, so the only way out for both deer and net operator was at the end of a rope.

I have, somewhere at home, a video of a mate, now sadly deceased (of natural causes), piloting helicopters in the deer capture industry.

How a Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25,000 AI contest with hidden code – and was fired from dream SV job

Kernel

Re: Do not use public information to test AI prediction.

"Volkswagen used the same principle on their cheating diesels:"

Why don't we stop with referring this issue back to VW all the time - Opel, Chevrolet/GMC/Buick, Daimler, Fiat Chrysler, Mitsubishi, PSA (Citroen and Peugot) and Renault have all been found to be doing something similar.

I've little doubt those manufacturers not on the above list are just yet to be caught cheating, as opposed to not actually doing it.

Thought 5G marketing was bad? Cable industry sticks with ridiculous 10G branding as another year rolls around

Kernel

Re: Meh - Old, slow technology

"100000G! It's the future!"

Before I retired late last year I worked with systems that could do multiple independent 500GbS signals on a single fibre pair at 100GHz spacing of the carriers - knowing how much my employer was spending on R&D each year, I would not be surprised if 1TbS per wavelength is not out in the real world in the next couple of years, max.

This isn't Boeing very well... Faulty timer knackers Starliner cargo capsule on its way to International Space Station

Kernel

"Both MCAS and this were depending on a single input."

Two clocks would have been a good idea - or, at the very least, two imps pedalling in the single clock used.

Google security engineer says she was fired for daring to remind Googlers they do indeed have labor rights

Kernel

Re: Companies have no God-given right to exist

'And here you are invoking a straw man on " businesses will find ways to not employ people, or not operate in your jurisdiction/market, or at all."'

Given the amount of manufacturing jobs that have been off-shored to countries where labour is cheap and plentiful, I'd say that a lot of companies have completely failed to identify this as a 'straw man' and have, instead, taken it as a serious suggestion.

Amazon Germany faces Christmas strikes from elf stackers, packers and dispatchers

Kernel

Re: ISTR

"If that's intended as a joke it isn't very funny. "Arbeit macht frei" was a slogan used in Nazi concentration camps."

While I agree that the comment wasn't very appropriate, we should also remember that that, like the song "Deutschland Uber Alles", the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" dates from the 1800s, long before the Nazi regime in Germany.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei

Wham, bam, thank you scram button: Now we have to go all MacGyver on the server room

Kernel

"I've spent a lot of time on the clock cooling my heels waiting for a key person to come back to the mess they made and then left without a care."

Yep - I once spent about 4 hours wandering around a beach at the customer's expense, while waiting for a fibre jointer to turn up to pull in and splice another pigtail on the line fibres of a DWDM system. Due to the analogue nature of the line optics of DWDM systems commissioning has to proceed in sequence from A to Z and then Z to A, it's not possible to miss a site and go back to it later.

The one they'd put in originally was brand new, but had a massive scratch across the core face at the connector which caused it to be rejected by the test software on my inspection scope. Supposedly the original pigtail had been inspected (as per documented work procedures) before being installed.

Space Force is go, go, go! Because we have a child as President of the United States

Kernel

Re: On the bright side ...

"Anyone who thinks that the Trumps will be leaving the White House in the foreseeable future is sadly mistaken. If it came to it, Trump would consider World War Three preferable."

On the contrary, I foresee them leaving some time in the next four and a bit years - I'm not mistaken about that, sadly or otherwise.

In some ways I will be a little sad to see the Orange Twatter go - he's not my president and so long as the 'murkins ensure there's always a grown up between him and any button that does more than ring the Whitehouse doorbell then let the hilarity continue. There's nothing quite like idiocy at some other taxpayer's expense to provide a good laugh.

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

Kernel

Re: DAB is shit

"Prior to transistors and tiny batteries, you needed a couple of huge, heavy, glass bodied lead acid accumulators to run your radio."

I remember from my early teens that my parents used to sell in their electrical shop very big, low voltage dry cells for the filament circuit (B battery, 6 volts?) and a very small (about the size of a modern 9 volt) 90 and 45 volt dry cells for use in the portable radios of the day - mid to late 1960s I think, but starting to become less common then.

Kernel

Re: Wavelength in kHz?

"What's the modulation method got to do with the frequency used?"

Quite a lot - I worked (until very recently) with systems that carried multiple wavelengths on a single fibre bearer - 10 years ago I was working with 10Gb/s systems using 100GhZ spacing of the carrier frequencies (Mach-Zender modulators, simple on/off keying of the carrier) - when I retired 3 weeks ago, I was working with DPQPSK (Dual Polarization Phase Shift Keying) systems that will do up to 520Gb/s at 50GHz spacing of the carrier frequencies - and the distance between regenerators (as opposed to amplifiers) has gone from 100s of Kms to 1000s of Km.

The money now days is in developing better modulation and error correction protocols - demanding more bandwidth for higher bitrates very much labels you as an 'also ran'.

Kernel

Re: Wavelength in kHz?

"AM to 30MHz? Just out of curiosity, are there many car radios that support analogue short-wave?"

The radio in my car supports 1.3MhZ to 438MHz, AM, FM, LSB, USB, CW (LSB and USB),and various digital modes on all wavelengths - doesn't yours?

The US Army recruits WALL-E Chris H as its next-generation bomb disposal robot

Kernel

Re: IED Detection

Just to show my age - does any one else remember the TV cartoon series 'Gigantor" from 1964?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZnV9REm-Eo

It was based on an earlier Japanese cartoon series, "Tetsujin 28," which apparently translates as "IronMan 28".

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

Kernel

Re: Just the start

Personally I'd struggle to conceive a deal which would convince me to travel thousands of miles to take up a job in a new country, leaving all of my friends and family behind in the UK, taking my kids out of school and transplanting them into another education system - possibly in a country where the first language is not their own......versus staying put and working under a different set of practices.

I consider myself fortunate that my grandparents took a more forward-looking view and came to New Zealand - at least I'm not another unemployed Durham coal miner now.

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

Kernel

Re: Long pig

If nothing else any attempt at this will attract patent related sueballs from the inhabitants of Ix.

Physicists are rather giddy after creating a rare type of laser using laughing gas

Kernel

Re: Pedantic time

"0.251 to 0.955 terahertz is not 1 terahertz so this would be 251 to 955 GHz."

True - and tunable lasers in the 1.9THz range have been around for years - before I retired I had boxes of them in a cupboard at work.

Not just adhesive, but alcohol-resistant adhesive: Well done, Apple. Airpods Pro repairability is a zero

Kernel

Re: That vendor's track record for reparability is miserable

"Though it really is too bad they can't find a way to make it possible for someone to replace the battery in the airpods - even if requires a bit of effort like phones do that's the part people care about replacing."

It's not only possible - at least one manufacturer's (Unitron) rechargeable hearing aids allow the rechargeable battery to be replaced by a standard battery if needed, simply by opening a little door.

Even more interestingly, I was told by my audiologist that Apple actually have a major stake in Unitron (very small advanced audio processing technology with a focus on minimising power consumption), so it's not as if they aren't aware that it can be done.

USAF spaceplane back on Earth after mystery 2-year jaunt in orbit. Jeepers creepers, what has it been doing up here?

Kernel

Re: Up here in space, I’m looking down on you

"US and others have plenty of satellites for that. Better equipped for the task and there's no need to bring them back on earth to retrieve the pictures for quite some time already."

They're not bringing it back to retrieve the pictures - as you say, that problem was solved long ago.

The limitation for spy satellites such as the KH-11 series is fuel for adjusting their orbit to cover changing areas of interest. A retrievable (and presumably reusable) platform such as this one allows for maintenance, including refueling of the in-orbit manœuvring systems, as well as hardware updates to the surveillance payload.

'Earworn Wearables' will save the day (wireless earbuds, but cool name for your D&D halfling)

Kernel

Re: Simple definition *but* doesn't sound futuristic (Fabtastic !!!)

"All I can say is 'Earworm Wearables' is more accurate !!!! :)"

I think most of us who wear hearing aids would agree with 'earworms' - the receiver-in-ear types, in particular, can worm their way quite deep into your ears during the course of the day.

Microsoft welcomes ancient Project app to the 365 family, meaning bleak future for on-prem

Kernel

Re: SAS = Software As A Service or Sex As a Service

"Microsoft is the hooker, a new one show up every 6 months and you have no idea if she is going to drink all your beer, do drugs when your gone and pee in your house. YMMV..."

This is Microsoft, so they'll be going for a variation of the ever popular empty your wallet and leave while you're still asleep the next morning.

Huawei with you! FCC's American Pai proposes rip-and-replace of scary Chinese comms kit

Kernel

Re: Shop Local

"It's the same reason most police units in the US drive Chevy/Ford/Dodge. Why would you want your tax dollars to be funneled to Japan so that the cops can drive Camry's?"

My wife has a Chevy - it was made by Suzuki.

HP scores $176m win in CD-ROM drive price-fix case – after one biz emailed rival with 'Price Fixing' as the subject

Kernel

So, now that that's all settled I guess the next thing we'll see related to this story is HP's announcement of how much everyone who bought an HP product with one of these 'price-fixed' drives in it will be getting as a refund and when they can expect to see the cheque slide into their mailbox - because we all know how keen HP is on not paying more than a fair and realistic price for something.

That lithium-ion battery in your phone or car? It has just won three chemists the Nobel Prize

Kernel

Re: What about Rachid Yazami?

"Nobel Prizes are never awarded to more than three people."

Not entirely correct - in 1989 the Nobel Peace Prize was collectively awarded to the UN Peacekeeping Forces that served in Korea back in the 1950s.

Uncle Sam punishes China for abusing Uyghur Muslims – by blacklisting top AI surveillance companies

Kernel

"“The U.S. Government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China until a permit for a new Trump hotel in China is granted,”

There we go, fixed that for him.

'We go back to the Moon to stay': Apollo vets not too chuffed with NASA's new rush to the regolith

Kernel

Re: Let's start with the basics and then work forward from there.

"How is that a reasonable position for a species that's supposed to care and have empathy towards other human beings?"

I think you'll find that that is a developed/learned behaviour, as opposed to what we really are by nature - an intelligent and extremely adaptable animal that got to where it is today by pursuing a programme of aggressive expansion at any cost, especially towards anything, including members of our own species, that got in the way.

The meek won't really inherit the earth and people are generally going to put their own interests ahead of some unknown's.

Kernel

Re: I'll give it a go..

"How am I doing at the tinfoil hat routine?"

You missed the one about the other 'similar to but not quite' humans that live in the centre of our hollow planet, with access to our world via a hole near the North Pole.

HP to hike upfront price of printer hardware as ink biz growth runs dry

Kernel

"Gillette model worked, but the razor stick is quite irrelevant to the user, what matter are the blades"

Off topic, but as a long time user of double edged Gillette-style blades for shaving I can assure you that the "razor stick" does matter to most of us - although it's all down to personal preference, the heft of the handle needs to be just right for you if you're going to get the best results and it's not unusual to try out several handles before that 'just right' one is found (and carefully hidden away from the missus).

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

Kernel

Re: An outsider asks....

You're right - without intending to be snarky, it is a silly question.

I'm guessing you're fairly young, so I suggest you do a bit of research into sectarian violence in Ireland. Given that part of the issue is a difference over religion it seems unlikely that any solution can be merely legislated, it needs serious comittment to a fundamental change in attitude by both sides.

How much is your face worth? Google thinks a $5 Starbucks gift card should be good enough

Kernel

Re: Starbuck coffee a reward ?

I believe they're not doing too well in NZ, either.

As sales crash, Gartner wonders who can rescue the smartphone market ... Aha, it is I! 5G Man!

Kernel

"What exactly are people going to use 5g for? "

Well, according to yetserday's new aricle, here in NZ the first deployment is being used to provide high speed fixed internet access for businesses in an area where there isn't fibre - not everybody has the same use case as you.

"Where is this 5g network equipment going to come from considering the current China spats over trade and spying?"

Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola?