* Posts by Kernel

766 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2011

South London: Rats! The rodents have killed the internet

Kernel

"Hmm, I thought it was standard practice to run armoured for all outdoor runs. The price difference has never been much for the runs we do."

Maybe for campus type work, where the runs are relatively short - but for telco use, where the distances can be 1000s of km, the price of armored cable would be prohibitive, so it's only used where necessary.

You can actually buy fibre cable with rodent repellent sheathing, but that adds to the cost per metre as well, so it's typically only used where there is an identified rodent problem.

Watch this nanochip reprogram cells to fix damaged body tissue

Kernel

Re: Technobabble?

" lets hope they next can create a chip that creates water into beer"

I can do you beer into water, if that's of any help?

You had ONE job: Italian firefighters suspected of starting blazes for cash

Kernel

Re: Not the first

Yep, it's been known to happen in New Zealand as well. Apparently it's not as rare as we'd all like to think it is.

HMS Queen Liz will arrive in Portsmouth soon, says MoD

Kernel

Re: wrongo

I believe in NZ the order of precedence is:

airforce

army

navy.

London Mayor slams YouTube over failure to remove 'shocking' violent gang vids

Kernel

Re: All they have to do...

" a group of yoiks goosestepping and cry "Sieg Heil" in the car park."

But just doing this is not actually racist, is it?

Be very careful to differentiate between expressing a political opinion and racism, they're not the same thing.

Don't make Aug 21 a blind date: Beware crap solar eclipse specs

Kernel

"If you are a moron that keeps looking directly into the sun despite it hurts because of magic glasses or something, you get what you deserve."

So you've never worked with infrared lasers then.

Dirty carbon nanotubes offer telcos chance at secure quantum comms

Kernel

Re: What happens when you amplify this photon

Fair enough, that explanation works for me. Thanks.

Kernel

What happens when you amplify this photon

An optical amplifier does its magic by emitting a second, identical, photon when an incoming photon hits an atom of the doping material which has an electron at a higher than normal energy level, without destroying the original photon - these two then go on to cause other photons to be similarly emitted, thus ensuring that the egress signal is at a higher level than the ingress.

I might be missing something here, but it seems to me that once the single photon has been through an amplifier there will now be considerably more than one of them, giving Eve plenty of opportunity to listen in without Bob noticing anything wrong.

On the other hand, the little I've read about soliton transmission systems suggests that perhaps a single photon traveling alone may have a range of thousands of km without amplification, so maybe this is the answer.

Sorry, psycho bosses, it's not OK to keylog your employees

Kernel

Re: What if...

"Germany is fantastic for personal privacy protection in the workplace. You're not allowed to film employee areas except for areas where money is being handled and the staff have to be informed beforehand about that sort of thing. "

Yep, in the company I work for, which has a worldwide presence, you're not allowed to record on-line meetings unless every attendee gives consent first - just in case there is someone from Germany attending.

'Real' people want govts to spy on them, argues UK Home Secretary

Kernel

Re: Ask her this

" use a GSM jammer to blanket the signal so no device within a 3 mile radius to me works, then thats my legal perogative and I am allowed to do that"

No, you most certainly are not - I can't think if a single country where this would be even remotely legal, it's even dodgy for the authorities to jam cell phones in prisons in many countries.

Your other ideas, yes, fill your boots as they affect no-one but yourself, but it's a brave person who would be caught jamming cellular (or any other radio) signals within a 3 mile radius.

GPS III satellites and ground station projects get even later as costs gently spiral

Kernel

"GPSIII - mmm, does that mean your device gives you three possible locations for where you might be at any given time ? (just asking)"

Strange you should mention that, as that's pretty much how the receivers correct their clock rate.

With four satellites in view they can calculate three possible positions, each position based on data from three satellites - since you can obviously only be in one place at a time, adjusting the clock rate to minimize the difference between the three calculated positions ensures the clock is running at the correct rate. This allows the receivers to provide accurate positioning with a cheap and simple clock chip, as opposed to needing an atomic clock.

Presumably the more satellites a receiver is tracking the more accurate this clock rate correction process is and hence the more accurate the final position calculated..

USA to screen tablets,
e-readers and handheld games before they fly

Kernel

Re: Pre-registration?

"Does america acutally recognise the IRA as a terrorist organisation though?"

I have a vague memory of being taught at school many years ago that the IRA was primarily a political organization that grew out of Sein Fein, not a terrorist group - the Provisional Wing of the IRA (Provos) on the other hand was an entirely different bag of ferrets.

'Coke dealer' called us after his stash was stolen – cops

Kernel

Re: Florida Man

"Hmm... This change from rise to drop wouldn't happen to roughly coincide with a world war and mass use of leaded fuels would it? "

Some years ago I watched a documentary about excavations at some ancient site in the UK - it may have been at Stonehenge.

Anyhoo, they discovered the skeletons of a woman and two or three young children which were duly dated to confirm they were contemporary with the structure they were found beside. Once that had been done, and isotope analysis was carried on the teeth out to find out where they had been born and lived and to try and benchmark how much lead modern children take in from leaded petrol and other evil things in modern society.

Unfortunately this came to naught, as the children's teeth contained as much lead (within the accuracy limitations of the instruments used) as a modern child's did at the time the documentary was made.

So now we know - when places like Stonehenge were built technology was primitive, so all the trucks, cranes and earth movers they used to build it had petrol engines rather than diesels, which obviously hadn't been invented yet..

Reborn Nokia phones biz loses its head

Kernel

Re: Hard to believe

"Nokia did well, . It's interesting Motorola are still around,"

Motorola Mobility, the spin off who make the handsets, were bought by Google in 2011, then sold on to Lenovo back in 2014, so while they're still around it's only for certain values of "still around". Pretty much the same as 'Alcatel' and 'Nokia' cellphones really - made by companies that have acquired the rights to manufacture handsets with someone else's name on it, but are not part of the original brand owner.

After the split in 2011 the rest of Motorola became Motorola Solutions - except for their cellular infrastructure business which had been bought by Nokia Siemens back in 2010.

"Where as Nokia could not keep the number one spot forever without some form of burnout?"

According to Nokia's 2016 accounts, they had net sales of 23.6 billion Euro in 2016 - is this some new definition of burning out? If so, where do I apply?

Kernel

Re: Where are Ericsson?

"Making infrastructure, and quite successfully I'm led to believe."

As is Nokia - who, like Ericsson, don't make phones now days and haven't for some years.

The curious case of a Tesla smash, Autopilot blamed, and the driver's next-day U-turn

Kernel

Re: Hmm

"Full Self-Driving Capability

... The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. "

But it's not is it?

"Read the fine print on that same page - 'Full Self Driving Capability' is not yet available, you have the option to add this capability if you were to order a vehicle today but there is no indication as to when this ability would be available or enabled in your country."

Am I the only person who thinks that this last bit is so important that the first part about the self-driving capabilities should not be there at all, until such time as self-driving is a thing?

If Tesla are going to roll out a software update in future that will fully enable the feature, then that is the time to tell the owners about it, not while it is still a dream for the future.

Juicero does to its staff what your hands can do to its overpriced juice sacks

Kernel

Re: Let me bring you up to speed.

"They wanted to be the Nespresso of fruit juice, but it looks they compared coffee to oranges Nespresso..."

FTFY.

Set your alarms for 2.40am UTC – so you can watch Unix time hit 1,500,000,000

Kernel
Pint

'

"So, shortly before beer o'clock Friday afternoon for us lucky few."

""So, shortly before beer o'clock for some of us.""

Well that time period passed swiftly !"

Well done! - you managed to sneak in there during an edit. Have one yourself.

Kernel

"Only downside to early Friday beers is that it's flippin' freezing in NZ right now."

Yes, I have noticed that minor defect - mainly because the cat has spent the last 2 days inside asleep!

Mind you, freezing or not, I'm still looking forward to a brisk walk to a good Irish pub and a few of the 'black stuff' with appropriate music in about 6 hours

Kernel

"The Unix epoch will pass its 1.5 billionth second in the small hours."

So, shortly before beer o'clock Friday afternoon for us lucky few.

Kernel
Pint

"The Unix epoch will pass its 1.5 billionth second in the small hours."

So, shortly before beer o'clock for some of us.

Got a Windows Phone 8 mobe? It's now officially obsolete. Here's why...

Kernel

Re: Could've been something...

"I like my windows 10 phone. It actually works well as a phone, doesn't nag me, doesn't burn up the battery when it's supposedly idle, generally does what it's told and the UI is consistent and simple."

So, pretty much the same as every Android phone then.

Kernel

I could take the p*ss but to be fair even though those two users are going to be upset android is cellular providers who decide they know better than you what you want on your phone are much worse with regards to security and updates - regardless of what phone OS it is."

FTFY.

Former GCHQ boss backs end-to-end encryption

Kernel

Re: Meanwhile ...

" I mean, what do you do when the message you have to convey is, "Normal window being observed. Switch to two buildings east, 4th floor, 2nd window from the left, and check again in three days." or "Target has had change of plans. Reschedule for one month later, at <insert new location>."?"

I think this problem was solved with the help of the BBC back in the 1940s - unless the Germans knew which was the normal window being referred to, or, for the second message the location was coded, what you're left with is a couple of strange but meaningless messages broadcast to millions but only making sense to one or two - and you don't even know which members of the population at large might have heard it.

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

Kernel

Re: Reminds me of an energy management company I used to work for

'"We never told them they weren't connected to anything"

I was taught this lesson by someone back in the 1980s. It may have been at a tyre company near Bath, it may not.'

I think the principle goes back further than that - Sir Christopher Wren was more or less compelled to add additional supporting pillars to the Guildhall in London, at the insistence of some of the councilors.

The additional pillars actually stop one inch short of the ceiling beams and are just there for decoration.

Back to ASICs: Mellanox pumps up Ethernet speed to 400Gbps

Kernel

Re: SFPs + Fiber = cost more than switch?

So, the obvious solution if you want to go much further than on-campus will be to use DWDM technology, where 100Gb/s on a single fibre, single wavelength is possible over a 1000km or more, and 200 and 400 can be done the same way up to a couple of 100 km.

I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see terabit speeds in the long-haul space within a couple of years, although I have no inside knowledge of such developments.

Brit prosecutors ask IT suppliers to fight over £3 USB cable tender

Kernel

Re: @Christian Berger, re: stupid bills.

"Clearly somebody decided that they couldn't be assed with the hassle of getting a cheque made out, approved and signed for one penny, and so had disposed of some shrapnel in their pocket to get tick off the job."

Many years ago when I was still enthused about being a team manager, one of my peers employed a new team member, for whom HR, in their wisdom, decided that $x999.00 would be the correct salary.

While that person remained on their initial salary, once each year, on the anniversary of them starting work, they were ceremoniously presented with a single dollar coin by my colleague to make the salary up to an even x+1 thousand..

Bonkers call to boycott Raspberry Pi Foundation over 'gay agenda'

Kernel

Re: The Bible

" Is he suggesting that improper acts occurred on the Arc?"

Let me guess - is this the aristocratic version of shagging while standing up in a hammock?

Kernel

Re: And ther rest...

"I used to work with a bloke with a big shaggy beard who wore womens earings every day that I saw him. Earrings definitely aren't a good indicator to rely on."

I'm a bloke with a big shaggy beard that wears earrings, although literally just 'rings', like a pirate and I'm definitely not gay, so that's at least two of us.

What I would like to do is explore the possibilities of a bigger, shaggier, beard, but I'm having trouble getting planning permission for that from the missus.

50th anniversary of the ATM opens debate about mobile payments

Kernel

Re: Cash still has some advantages

"Here in OZ TELSTRA will charge you a fee of $1 to use it to pay your bill."

Here in NZ using a debit or cash card to pay is the same price as paying cash - and credit cards often are too. We are starting to get places that refuse cash for security reasons and yes, there's also the occasional mention of a premium on cash payments due to the risk.

NASA tells Curiosity: Quit showing off, no 'wheelies' please

Kernel

Re: Cats on Mars

But yet they came.

French general accused of nicking fast jet for weekend trips to the Sun

Kernel

Re: OT

"Supermarine Spitfire.

The absolute pinnacle of -propeller driven- aeronautical engineering."

Really?

Also from your beloved Wikipedia.

"During the Malaya campaign in defense of Singapore, the Spitfire met its match in the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero. "The RAF pilots were trained in methods that were excellent against German and Italian equipment but suicide against the acrobatic Japs." as Lt.Gen. Claire Lee Chennault had to notice.[112] Although not as fast as the Spitfire, the Zero could out-turn the Spitfire with ease, could sustain a climb at a very steep angle, and could stay in the air for three times as long."

Given that the C-V Corsair was more than a match for the Zero, that would suggest that the Corsair at least was quite a bit closer to the pinnacle.

The Tu95 'Bear', which is also propeller driven, is capable of a top speed of 516 mph, slightly faster than the Spitfire's 370 mph - but all is not lost, a Spitfire at maximum speed would be able to eventually catch and overtake an ATR-72 at cruise speed (316mph), provided the ATR didn't have too much of a head start (otherwise the Spitfire is likely to run out of fuel in the process).

In touching tribute to Samsung Note 7, fidget spinners burst in flames

Kernel

Re: There's an opportunity here

A colleague has a simple procedure when charging R/C batteries - outside, on concrete, in a metal dish and with a large plastic bag of dry sand or cat litter on top of the batteries, just in case.

I gather one of their club members lost his house from leaving one charging inside and unsupervised.

Who botched Oz cancer registry rollout? Pretty much everybody

Kernel

Telstra, for its part, has complained to the department that Medicare data, a requirement for the project, was incomplete and unreliable."

Maybe, if they were to complete all the privacy and security related requirements, they might have less trouble accessing the complete data set? On the other hand, that would make it a bit harder to shrug off the consequences once it's been revealed that they've let the data escape out into the big wide world, as will inevitably happen.

I can see the potential benefits of centralized health records, but I don't have enough confidence in the security aspects to voluntarily allow any of my medical records to be part of them.

Search results suddenly missing from Google? Well, BLAME CANADA!

Kernel

The next logical step for Google

So,presumably all Google need to do is go to some other country and get another court to rule that Google must present these search results internationally and all will be ok.

How do you get to be a judge but still be stupid enough to think your authority extends outside your little piece of dirt?

Pwned UK SME fined £60K for leaving itself vulnerable to hack attack

Kernel

Alternative result

"The ICO hopes the enforcement action (pdf) will not prompt other small businesses to review their security policies sweep all traces all traces of future breaches under a very large and heavy carpet."

Researchers blind autonomous cars by tricking LIDAR

Kernel

"The lasers will be coded, just like in military laser designators."

Yes, the obvious answer here is secure encryption of the LiDAR and other sensor's signals - oh, bugger!

Never mind, only law enforcement will have access to the backdoors, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Breaking news, literally: Newspaper's quakebot rumbled for fake story

Kernel

If it had been my local paper

I wouldn't have been surprised - 83 years sounds about right for breaking news to make it into their pages.

Tesla's driverless car software chief steps down

Kernel

"What Tesla offer is a selection of driver aids which among other things incorporate cruise control, lane-keeping and auto braking, but to call it "driverless" technology is very misleading."

No, if the car can do a trip of 37 minutes before crashing and only 25 seconds of that is with the "driver's" hands on the wheel, that's more than a driver aid - that's something that was designed, intended and expected by the end user to operate as an autonomous driverless system.

US Air Force resumes F-35A flights despite not knowing why pilot oxygen systems failed

Kernel

To put it another way

"“This is a complex challenge that necessitates multidimensional solutions across a series of steps to get back to a full operating capability."

Or, as we would say in English, "We have no effing idea!"

Uber's New York competitor sued over driver equity scheme

Kernel

Re: I know it's a small sample but....

"I see a pattern emerging in the drivers engaged."

It's quite common for immigrants, especially those that have arrived as refugees, to end up driving taxis or in similar low pay/low skill work.

This is not because they're ignorant or lazy, in my experience, but because they have often left highly paid professional positions in their home country and their qualifications are not accepted in their new country. This can be because of things like academic and work records lost/destroyed, lack of the requisite language skills to practice their profession in their new home or simply that their alma mater is not recognised in their new country as a 'proper' university.

As a fairly regular taxi user I've encountered a number of drivers who had jobs with a somewhat higher status and pay rate before what ever happened, happened. I suspect there's a huge resource of untapped sjkills out there that could be harnessed if a bit more effort was put into helping these people become compliant with the qualification requirements in their new country.

Tesla death smash probe: Neither driver nor autopilot saw the truck

Kernel

Re: They still call it Autopilot?

"Maybe instead of issuing six audible warning alerts that he'd spent too long with his hands off the wheel it should have pulled over after 3."

Agree! - Tesla should be on the hook here because there is an established and obvious solution they negligently failed to implement in their "autopilot" system.

It's been many years since dead man switch mechanisms have been mandatory in locomotives - all over the world - and it wouldn't be hard to implement this in some form in of road vehicle that is designed drive without constant human attention - perhaps a warning every five minutes, with a second warning after 30 seconds if no action is taken on the first warning and automatic pull over and stop if no response to the second warning.

Alternatively, we could just wait until some vehicle with a non-responsive (drunk, dead, asleep) driver ploughs into somebody's family at speed, followed by much hand-wringing and 'thinking of the children'.

Report estimates cost of disruption to GPS in UK would be £1bn per day

Kernel

While you've addressed the issues raised, none of them are at all relevant - nobody will be calling ambulance, police or any other emergency services unless they physically turn up and knock on the station door.

The timing signals needed to make a digital 'phone network function are derived from and synchronised by GPS units - without them the network will degrade to a non-functioning noise generation device.

US voter info stored on wide-open cloud box, thanks to bungling Republican contractor

Kernel

Re: Data mining?

"Fortunately the only guaranteed fix for the problem - using SSNs - wasn't implemented or this list would include them."

Not a US citizen (and have no desire to even visit, much less become one), but I seem to recall reading once that the legislation that introduced SSNs specifically barred them from being used as proof of identity.

Now you can 'roam like at home' within the EU, but what's the catch?

Kernel

Re: Thanks EU! Landline Rental Fees Next?

"And I severely doubt O2 have built two parallel infrastructures serving the same area."

I would be surprised if they haven't - the two companies are separate legal entities.

They might (remote possibility) have a tower sharing agreement, but they would still need to provide their own transmitters, backhaul and centralized infrastructure.

Anyway, if they were exactly the same network why would your phone offer you the choice of a network that it is not its home network at random? The only way this can happen is if terrain changes make the available signal change from time to time, and that won't happen if it's the same network on the same towers.

Kernel

Re: Typical.

"Your bytes don't cost more going to Japan or New Zealand than ones going to Wales. "

Oh yes they do - submarine cables, the supporting infrastructure and their upkeep are not free, plus there is significant amounts of power being fed down each segment of a cable 24x7 that has to be paid for - much more than is needed fro a UK to Wales system.

Voyager 1 passes another milestone: It's now 138AU from home

Kernel

Re: "Once Voyager 1 runs out of power, it'll head towards ... Gliese 445"

I must admit that I've always wondered if the day would come where we, as a species, would come to regret sending stuff into deep space with directions on how to find us attached.

Nokia snatches clump of 16nm FinFETs, crafts 576 Tbps monster router

Kernel

"BT are apparently using these already."

Exactly these (7950XRS XC with FP4 cards) , or the earlier model 7950XRS with FP3?

The 7950XRS is in use in many parts of the world, but the XC version is, as I understand it from the article, a newer model that has just been released.

Fear the dentist? Strap on some nerd goggles

Kernel

No fear of the dentist here ......

The very worst they can do is say that serious work is required and can I come back and collect my teeth in a couple of days.

There is, however, a degree of enjoyment to be had from watching other people in the waiting room displaying various degrees of nervousness - yes, I am aware that this is not a very empathetic trait in me, but I can live with that knowledge.