Posts by Andy The Hat

Re: Hamster parchment

I believe A6 is Shrew ...

Re: And Wallace wanted Shaun to bring some cheese back

As there are no animals on the moon (except the odd rogue Clanger), is it actually made of vegan cheese-free cheese substitute?

Re: Energy has to go somewhere

My mate can grab a pulsing electric fence with no problems ... however that doesn't mean we're all stupid enough to test whether we have a high body resistance by shorting across the chest, whatever the voltage.

From my experience, 60V tingles, 120V ac hurts and can produce electrical burns but doesn't really cause clamping, 240V ac hurts a lot and does cause some clamping, and a low capacity 100kV dc jolt across the chest is a near-death experience.

Re: Could be worse

There have already been issues with USB-C connectors used for power and expecting 5V, and USB-C chargers which do not negotiate correctly and assume max power rather than minimum. Examples include Raspberry Pi which is a physical USB-C power connector but only expects 5.1V@up to 4A ... an incorrectly or non negotiating power supply which has a USB-C connector (because it's the law in the EU) but supplies 12V fits fine and blows its sock off. Multiple voltages on a single power supply ... great idea EU ...

Re: Wrong Target

You can legitimately ask why the cost of a digital resource, often produced by grant maintained research students with little other input, is relatively so high compared to the printed and physically distributed version? I don't suppose it could be that the publisher is profiteering?

I could immediately refer to the retail chain - a current book is £11.99 (Kindle), £2.99 (audio) and only £10 hardcopy ... something obviously stinks

Got a title for that?

Re: High School Paper?

"Not so smart countries will build Drax power station powered by 'wood waste' then import thousands of tons of wood pellets from virgin (or near virgin) forests around the globe"

Actually they built Drax on top of a coal mine with direct access to "clean coal" ... Nasty miners cost money so they shut the mine and imported open cast, brown "dirty coal" from Poland ... Nasty brown coal is not very green so they then converted 1/6 to burning wood as an "experiment" which they import from "not at all" virginal forests and they are assured that the forests are "fully replanted" as plantation monocultures ... So that's cleared that up then.

I thought the coverage was quite poor. One thing that SpaceX do and, so far, nearly all the other launchers fail to do is deliver is decent, sometimes spectacular, live video feeds from the launch stages along with a few bits of telemetry (great for throwing at the kids to get them enthused and pump into equations of motion!). Public engagement is not a requirement for a commercial organisation like SpaceX - arguably only providing some good publicity - but for "public" organisations, like ESA and NASA, I think this should almost be a prerequisite. Cartoons/3d models are great if directly driven from telemetry data but only as an addition or when video is unavailable (JWST was a good example where it worked) but isn't an excuse for only providing broken video feeds and wobbly ground based tracking of a bright dot ...

Re: Not enough range.

Actually not a bad range for Britain and the top speed is ok for most of Britain's roadwork-choked main roads. Biggest questions: is there boot space for golfing sticks and can I fit extension mirrors and tow bar for the caravan?

Re: Consenting adults. (Consenting by default?).

But what were these investment companies investing in?

With banks it's generally loans, property, development, stocks etc. which, although some would argue the stock market is a gambling den, mostly investment is tangible.

With crypto, where do they even pretend to invest funds to go to make investors capital gains? If money is promised and made simply on the back of new investment that is, by definition, a Ponzi scheme and illegal so it must be more that that ... surely?

Can't help thinking any investors deserve what they get ... unfortunately, as always, those like "pension scheme managers" will be quite happy to take their trading fees, even when they are making massive losses for their clients who generally have no control over those trades.

Re: No honour among thieves?

The Feds were simply chasing Silk Road money ... The question is, what happens to it? Surely they can't trade it to raise money for the Government as it's doubly-illegal currency? On the other hand, can you actually delete crypto (the digital equivalent of burning it) or is it always omnipresent and just needs the key to own it?

At least it's not Bazza and Sunazza ...

Why can't they just use their damn names?

Nobody uses Jeff (Knobhead) Bezos' nickname ... I stand corrected ...

Re: An interesting game of tug-of-war has started

no

Re: The Russian elephant

It would be MAOA (mutually assured orbital abandonment).

It's not necessary to blow much up in orbit in order to make it such a messy environment it would be unusable by anyone ... replacements rapidly available or not.

coal fired power stations have been water positive for ever ... so all they need to do is buy more polluting electricity! Not too sure they'd get away with that one though.

Better solution for AWS is to coordinate with Amazon retail and collect workers' sweat ... or do they do that already?

A "loose cannon" is something you own and lose control of.

Musk is not a lose cannon but he is a private individual with his own views and aims which the military do not control, and they don't like that.

If the military wish to have any control they have the option to buy access to the system for a stupid amount of money (that's what the military do) with whatever support it requires. NO military operation (and this is clearly part of a US military policy) should work on the basis of "helping out" as opinions or views on both sides may change.

SpaceX is sailing close to the wind by "voluntarily" taking action to support "freedom of speech" but could be seen by others as the company being at the beck and call of the US military/government, something the US roundly complains about when opposing regimes/companies do the same thing.

Re: It's official

Unirregardless of whether irregardless is a word, the worstness of a word is difficult to quantify, depending as it does on the variationisms of language uttered by the speakist at the time. I.e. the most englishnessist of the English proseologists may scream at misuseisms of a word whereas GWBush, whilst willfully demonstrating more opportunisticisms, would probably be actively encourageist in the use of multiple other derivations.

"That's been the case in the UK (with a very few exceptional edge cases that I personally have never come across) for as long as I can remember."

Actually since UK registration plates were invented ... personalised plates to generate income from muppets are the only exception.

The only variation on this theme is the possible colour change of the plate in relation to historic registrations which some DVLA droid mucked up a few years ago.

Re: So much for privacy

On the other hand, when it shows a CEO pulling $10mil out, coincidentally just before things went tits up, it gives other creditors' lawyers something to get their teeth into.

Re: Windows - why is it always crap++

You say it was always crap then give 2K 10/10 ... doh!

In general, early to mid-term adopters usually found resource/performance problems as that was always the Wintel yo-yo model of software driving hardware upgrades to get reasonable performance.

What is interesting is that we hit the buffers - a 5-7 year old machine can run most of the stuff users want to run pretty well so, to push more hardware, MS had to invent artificial barriers to os upgrade that require hardware upgrades but are not reliant on perceived performance hikes. Win 11 is a just a failed cash machine.

A great many people would run Win7 with security updates and be happy but that doesn't make Wintel money ...

Re: "just" static

I know that now! The bottle was full and I'd carefully discharged the surface of the bottle that was connected to the eht. I failed to discharge the inside directly to the outside ... until I connected the outside to the inside via two hands, a spill of electrolyte and the medium of my chest cavity ... THUMP! ... :-(

Re: 5G Ohhh Ahh!

I thought about writing am sms of complaint but haven't got a 2g signal at the moment ...

I find it confusing that people paying for a landline will complain about noise on the line yet those paying a lot more for mobile services seem to accept total lack of, or very intermittent, mobile connections as part of the service ...

Re: Reg unit of power

"The Truss" - at least 4 What?'s per policy ...

I believe that's exactly the sort of accident that Public Liability Insurance is for ... along with paying compensation for colliding with a pet dingo or impacting a cuddly Koala.