* Posts by the hatter

157 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Feb 2009

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Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

the hatter

Re: So let me recap...

Then flip it back over and try the first way again.

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

the hatter

I could never quite place why my old broadband was (more) shonky sometimes. Turns out that it still had paper-insulated cables, terminating in the chamber underground beside the poll. A little water would obviously seep in when the weather was inclement, and the insulation would become a little less insulating. None of that became apparent until an openreach van came to fix some neighbour's more blatant phone problem. Said engineer did not properly place the foam or cap properly on the chamber, a day or so before there was a proper downpour, and the paper insulation on the cables in there went from theoretical insulator to just not. That followup job was a more involved job than the initial fault/fix.

Digital Realty: We hear you like your racks dense, how does 70kW sound?

the hatter

Re: 250kW per rack

Can't say I've heard a credible offering to host servers at home, sounds like a logistics nightmare not worth the potential cost savings. But there are several, I'd go as far as saying many, projects where waste DC heat is channeled into local civil use, either directly supplying warm water to consumers (simple heat exchange to make it a reliable 50-70degC output from the DC) for heating or general use, or output to generator turbines, where the water starts much hotter than mains supply, so needs less external energy (fossil, biomass, etc) to convert to steam.

You'll [BZZ] like Intel’s [BZZ] NUC 13 Pro once the fan [BZZ] stops blowing

the hatter

Re: Interesting idea...

"the puck would need to be bigger to allow for a battery." - not so much, these days. With the advent of both USB-C power, and more accessibility to lithium cells in general, it may be that for occasional use you just hook it up to the USB power bank that you carry anyway/carry when it might be needed. Whether that's just dangling from a cable, or some custom clip-on pack to the puck, that happens to also have USB-C ports to use as a regular power bank other times,

For me, someone who's always owned big power banks, for a day of playing demanding AR games, it's been curious to see those larger units now being touted as a solution to someone's chromebook/ultrabook/etc needing a top-up without tethering themself to a wall socket.

Inaugural flight of first (mostly) 3D-printed rocket aborted

the hatter

Re: Thanks For The Effort (SI Unit Whinge!)

Some irony that the 2 original major manufacturers of rocket motors I used both build them around Si units (the hobby rocketry system classes motors by letter, C is 10N, D is 20N, E is 40N, F is 80N, etc) and has then always graphed their thrust profiles in N too. And those have been working that way for decades.

My whinge is that they keep saying first 3D printed rocket, then need to add some qualifiers because hobbyists have been 3D printing rockets either most components as with this one, or even whole rockets printed in single pieces (for smaller models, where designs suit that better than more complex, larger systems). Uni and school student teams have also been huge users of 3D printers for their rockets, it being the magic answer to all of 'don't know how to combine single components to achieve desired results' plus 'this is the future' and of course 'someone else is paying for the hardware/filament/lab tech who deals with the things that go wrong'.

Programming error created billion-dollar mistake that made the coder ... a hero?

the hatter

Re: Pages and pages of old code commented out

Luckily (in this case), we live in the 21st century, and 'delete' can mean many, many things. And very few of those things actually mean 'all traces purged from the universe'

Rackspace customers rage as email outage continues and migrations create migraines

the hatter

OVH to hike prices, blames 'l'inflation'

the hatter

That would be assuming your DDoS supplier was paying the bill for the resources the attack hosts were consuming.

Mozilla founder blasts browser maker for accepting 'planet incinerating' cryptocurrency donations

the hatter

Re: In a desperate attempt to remain relevant …

Previously whatnow ? Have you been on this internet thing ? I mean apart from to save some money on shopping ? He did enough before, and enough after, and he's certainly never been one to hide in the background, or keep his views quiet about things that don't work as they should.

the hatter

Re: "the gambling instrument and ecological disaster that we know as cryptocurrencies"

It's just like gambling in that people often end up with than they started. And then they keep going, and end up with much less money. But the house wins, regardless

Predictive Dirty Dozen: What will and won't happen in 2022 (unless it doesn’t/does)

the hatter

Re: Can we try and get HMG to join the crowdfunding lark

For all peoples' upset in england about the trouble getting a jab, things pretty much lined up with the planned outcome. Those desperate to book 30 seconds after announcement got their appointments ASAP, those willing to keep hitting reload and try all sorts of options got one with as much time as they wished to invest to get it a couple of days sooner than they otherwise might. And as more centres came online, it became an option to check if you can move your appointment to somewhere nearer or sooner.

It's still going to take a finite time to jab 30M people, so sure, they could have spent a fortnight, probably

more, making sure they had enough appointments already on-hand (no doubt with a chunk of wastage especially as then it was all getting on for christmas) and then open the floodgates. But instead they made what was available available, some people got some jabs sooner, and everyone (ish) has got their jab. Kind of like the LFT situation - some people claim 'none have been available for weeks, but what they actually mean is that none have been available at the specific times they've checked every few days. Is that unfortunate for their specific circumstance ? Sure, but they may not have got any, any sooner, if supply and distribution was assured, and supply/need increased weeks later.

the hatter

If you haven't paid all the money for the car, you haven't bought the car. Whether it's styled as a proper lease, a lease to own, or credit (especially for those with poor credit), then it's only if you think the credit provider has a generous nature that you should be surprised that failing to pay means failing to be able to drive said car, one way or another.

However much you or the people taking up the offers might not like the down sides, there's obviously some up sides else people wouldn't be accepting the terms, and such schemes wouldn't be worth offering.

You've stolen the antiglare shield on that monitor you've fixed – they say the screen is completely unreadable now

the hatter

I do recall realising that mice didn't start to fail because the 'rubber' was coming off the rollers, but that the rollers were pure metal (or plastic) and the black rubbery layer round the middle was a well-processed buildup of human grease deposited from desks, via the ball, onto the rollers, or years/months/weeks (depending on which particular user).

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

the hatter

Re: No! No! N2O!

When I'm explaining it to folk with a scientific background, but not up on their rocket science, is that I'm sure they're familiar with the horrible smoke from burning plastics, but they also know from simple flames such as candles, that when you get badd smoke that's just because you're not doing an efficient burn. That problem with burning plastic is fixed in hybrid motors because they're no longer oxygen-starved, hence none of those bad combustion products get to hang around, due to the heat in the reaction, breaking down most of those, and outputting more energy as the bonds holding the complex chemicals are destroyed.

A tiny island nation has put the rights to .tv up for grabs – but what’s this? Problematic contract clauses? Again?

the hatter

Career-limiting move

Sounds like (obviously is) a shonky done deal. Until one of the other possible competitors files court proceedings there challenging the process, and hires some local PR to explain to the local news media how the minister is not working in the best interest of the country, and leaves a dangling question of whose interests he is working.

Locked up: UK's Labour Party data 'rendered inaccessible' on third-party systems after cyber attack

the hatter

Re: If there's a ransom request they must not pay!

You registered under your true identity ? I just picked 40 names from the university's latest intake - only 15 of them were already registered so that left plenty more for my use.

the hatter

Re: PR speak

"Can spell 'password', or at least copy the label above the box into the box". Luckily the more complex 'administrator' was prefilled in the previous box.

Schools email marketing company told us to go away when we told them of exposed database creds, say infoseccers

the hatter

The weakness will be disclosed regardless of any services purchased or not. Either the compromised company will disclose the personal data has been compromised, as legally required to, or they will be reported for failing to disclose it. The technical weakness will be reported because it's in the public interest to ensure others can learn from this mistake and avoid leaking people's personal data due to poor practices or common mistakes.

This company says 'we're sure no data has been lost or misused' but it's hard to believe a company that makes this mistake in the first place has such complete network and system logging to accurately determine this claim, in act quite the opposite. Exactly which outfit they choose to hire to help with their information security is up to them, they're not obliged to do that but they're going to have an even harder time brushing it off next time, to their directors/shareholders, to tee ICO, to their customers, and to the people whose data is leaked, if it happens a second time, having already been warned their processes are insufficient.

the hatter

That the problem wasn't fixed with the first several emails, and they eventually sort it then whine you'd contacted them several times prior is arrogant, it's not admitting they should have fixed something sooner, not acknowledging that you helped them in pointing this out. If I tell you that you left your car unlocked, you don't need a 'prior relationship' with me to thank me for pointing out your carelessness. if it had your laptop bag sat on the passenger seat, I've just done you a favour. if it had thousands of other people's property sat on the passenger seat, I've done them a favour, and you're doing them a disservice to not acknowledge you've been negligent to leave other people's things unsecured.

Council culture: Software test leads to absurd local planning SNAFU

the hatter

Re: This seems like a real legal loophole

Then applies for change of use, along with a large grant from the council to create precious housing resource, 6 months after the pigs move in ?

Oh! A surprise tour of the data centre! You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have

the hatter
FAIL

Re: year 2000

Seems to be a weird failure more in several triggered noise-making toys. I guess at a too-low battery level, it fails to be able to keep a transistor path open, so the noisy bits trigger - but with so little current available it just drones at a low, sinister frequency because that side can't power it's oscillator well enough to get a kid-friendly squeaks and beeps you'd expect. Evidence as to how they knows to start only in the hours of darkness is beyond the explanation of electrical engineering/the laws of physics.

Hacking the computer with wirewraps and soldering irons: Just fix the issues as they come up, right?

the hatter

Re: Computer O Level

I think you mean A** - and these days you'd get that just for switching a computer on in fewer than 3 attempts of pressing the power button.

Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse

the hatter

Because when your iphone is stolen, you can disable your iphone - the hypocrisy from samsung extolling societal benefits, yet they only use it to protect their own assets, won't extend the same courtesy to their own customers when the customer is in the same situation.

the hatter

Re: This seems normal

The difference is that you can't disable your samsung tv if it's stolen. If samsung's property is stolen, they'll press a button so it's got no resale value... but they won't let you press the button when your property is stolen, even though clearly that could be an option.

the hatter

Re: Seems pretty lenient

They tried that a few generations of smartphone ago - not a formal rollout, but random user tests showed a less than positive response for samsung products unexpectedly erupting in a fireball.

8 years ago another billionaire ploughed millions into space to harvest solar power and beam it back down to Earth

the hatter

Re: Cool idea, but...

From what ? Are you thinking that bootstrapping refinery and semiconductor manufacturing facilities in space will be cheap, or even feasible at any scale in any worthwhile timeframe, once you identify the asteroids you want to mine ?

the hatter

Re: Bzzzzzzz - phut!

Aircraft ? If amateur pilots won't read their NOTAMs, that's on them.

Northern Train's ticketing system out to lunch as ransomware attack shuts down servers

the hatter

Re: One Needs To Ask

Most tansomware isn't targeted, they simply hit any and all machines they can find a way into. Then data on the size of the target organisation probably based on both what the software says it sees and what google says about the identified org, is used to give them a price to pay.

UKRI denies pulling funding from Newport Wafer Fab over Chinese ownership concerns

the hatter

Re: Reciprocity

You can't trade in china unless you have a chinese company, and you can't have a chinese company unless there's a large chinese stakeholder. There's a very limited pool of chinese investors who will take on those 'partnerships', and you may guess that their influence isn't limited to simple business interests.

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

the hatter

Really depends on your circumstance, but how often does wall power fail ? If you don't have UPS redundancy, then one PSU plugged into the wall and the other into the UPS gives you redundancy for PSU failure, for mains failure, and for UPS failure, Dual feeds cross-feeding dual-input UPSs, feeding in twin-psu boxes is nice and all, but a small office with one server sound like 9 times out of ten (if not 99//100) would be better off with mains+UPS, and if anything, putting extra budget into a better or bigger UPS rather than a matching pair.

Teen turned away from roller rink after AI wrongly identifies her as banned troublemaker

the hatter

Re: Using it wrongly

Sensors, just like film before, don't just take a pure, level view across the entire spectrum and brightness. They are designed and picked, and similarly at the lowest image improvement level, to take absolutely any scene, and hopefully make it most intelligible to the viewer. What this means in practice is that flesh tones, which feature in many pictures, are enhanced. And by flesh tones, obviously I mean the pinky pixels in pictures. And similarly, detail is more readily available from enhancing light sections, people want detail that their eyes also do similar with; the darker parts of whatever random view the picture includes are more easily lost. Dark tones contain more noise, so look better if they're evened out, rather than 'detail'/noise picked out. This approach means that for any million random photos you take, the majority will look better than that even, pure, imaginary sensor - you're a winner. Except it means many specific circumstances will likely always end up doing worse, because they are different from some platonic ideal picture in ways this approach does not favour.

tsoHost pleads for 'patience and understanding' as sites borked, support sinkholed

the hatter

Thanks for the reminder. Tso long and no thanks for all the godaddy

Like most people, a few of my bits ended up over there via a long chain of acquisitions. Moved everything important a very long time ago, but I'm not giving godaddy another penny (think these were all last renewed before then), nor any more voting weight on Nominet matters.

I might add something about the last one out turning off the lights, but too many people lap up GD's adverts, and tso seem quite willing and able to switch stuff off without any prompt being necessary.

What job title would YOU want carved on your gravestone? 'Beloved father, Slayer of Dragons, Register of Domains'

the hatter

Re: Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph

"Despite popular rumour, not all cockroaches were bound to outlive humanity" ?

Space junk damages International Space Station's robot arm

the hatter

Except the galactic centre.

the hatter

Re: Zeroes

What would china gain from that ? They don't need anyone else's help, so they don't need to do anyone any favours.

Bribery charges against Apple's global security boss dismissed in iPads-for-gun-permits case

the hatter

Re: "he is carrying a concealed weapon"

The US is a total mess with it's gun control/gun law, obviously. However, the security services, like members of the public, don't conceal their guns, they're all still just open-carrying (except LEO will be carrying loaded, not just 'expressing their constitutional freedms') So if his case is that he's been thoroughly vetted for trustworthiness and mental stability, but doesn't want to be seen carrying a gun a lot, then it doesn't make the world of difference imho. And thanks to these stories, an even wider circle of organised undesirables are aware they wouldn't be attacking an unarmed target, should they target him.

iFixit slams Samsung's phone 'upcycling' scheme for falling short of what was promised

the hatter

Re: Its a problem of volume

> How the hell is everyone buying that many phones?

Because first world phones are only a small part of the picture. Markets like china, india, most of south america and africa are being sold phones for a pittance, because the R&D and tooling costs have been covered already - not just the phones overall, even components like chipsets and radios - where someone else already designed and perfected them, and clone parts at various levels (from straight piracy, to new implementations but based on the optimisations to performance and production cost learnt from the market leaders). That lets you build phones from runs-just-well-enough to passable, and then to the flagship models from those suppliers that often slip into the EU marketplace as high-spec, comparatively budget pricing offerings that a lot of geeks will choose, instead of the latest samsung marketing tool at twice the price (even after the extra costs passed on to us that make that possible)

Copper load of this: Openreach outlines 77 new locations where it'll stop selling legacy phone and broadband products

the hatter

Re: They're sitting on a gold, umm, copper mine

Someone did the maths some years ago of BT's value at the time vs the scrap price of the copper they owned, and the copper of course won. But getting it all (a) out of the ground and (b) minus the insulation takes away far too much, with most of it in such a thin web across pretty literally the entire country.

Perl changes dev's permaban for 'unacceptable' behaviour to a year-long lockout after community response

the hatter

Well perl's only had 4 decades to form factions and interpretations of rules, the jews obvious have much more time to finesse this inevitability of human nature.

FBI deletes web shells from hundreds of compromised Microsoft Exchange servers before alerting admins

the hatter

Re: Whose bloody computer?

Whose bloody country ? The good guys will tamper with your computer if it's in the national/their interest. Always have done, always will do. The time to install strong security was forever ago, and it still won't keep anyone determined, good or bad, out. If your takeaway from the feds removing one piece of malware from your computer is that you need better security, you're not wrong, but you're not competent.

the hatter

Re: FTFY

I can't say for sure, but sounds like they removed the shells and possibly notified the companies at the same time/shortly after (likely with a demand for secrecy). Just that the sealed order has now been unsealed, giving all the cleaned and warned parties a tiny fighting chance to sort themselves in the meantime.

Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

the hatter

Re: EGM v2

Most of the votes to retain the status quo were from a very small number of very big companies. They weren't voting because they think the board are doing things right, they're voting in their own self interest, which may well be even stronger now they've propped up the incumbents, so can push for things to work even more in their favour. Plus most of those companies are not merely not known for their strong grasp of ethics, but in fact for actively making highly unethical choices.

Perhaps a few small/smaller members who didn't vote may be sufficiently outraged and shocked by what happened after the vote to throw their weight in. I can't imagine too many smaller members voted against the EGM except out of self interest, but perhaps a closer choice between profit and ethics - maybe they will see the campaign's words about the character of the board were not mere hyperbole. All these will require a good amount more effort to reach out to though, along with those who voted for, but only because they were sufficiently reminded to make the effort.

the hatter

Re: When you're stuck in a hole...

Whatever else may be lurking, the board will need to make sure their pension plans are secured, because it's going to be a tough sell for any of them to take up senior roles elsewhere, once they finally get the boot. And if they do, t's going to be a hostile welcome from anyone not involved in the hiring, because why would anyone get that sort of person involved ?

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

the hatter

Re: Where’s the effing handbrake!?

If the users had called to say "I can't find the brightness control" that would have been a different matter. And likely resolvable with a google for the monitor's manual, over the phone.

the hatter

Be kind, rewind.

the hatter

Re: When turn off/turn on fails

A physical button that only logically turns the machine off does have it's uses, but as the imac case shows, it's rather limited, when you can often achieve the same from inside the running OS, or from a key on the keyboard. I do like a physical switch on a psu - lets me isolate the power but keep earth connected when I'm doing some quick fiddling with it's internals in situ. Most tech here is plugged into socket-dense power strips so no switches at the other end.

Scottish National Party members found among list of names signed up to rival Alba Party after website whoopsie

the hatter

Shocker

Some members of the only party for scottish independence interested in an alternative party for scottish independence shocker

Maybe not the way those members wanted to let the cat out of the bag, bur hardly surprising. Much as I find both sides merely popcorn fodder, this particular nugget is not where I'd anchor the story.

BOFH: Bullying? Not on my watch! (It's a Rolex)

the hatter

Re: "Not without write access to the HR archive they can't!"

Even better when they don't even have read access to the archive. Due to various corporate changes over time, the only actual archive was physical, and housed in an office drawer no longer under any care, which got cleaned out sooner rather than later to avoid all sorts of other perils to the company.

Fast forward a year or two, and being the only person i possession of (my own copy of) my contract, HR eventually realised they'd shot themselves in at least 6 or 7 feet before we'd even made it into our first meeting about my redundancy. HR could maybe have checked with other who signed identical terms, excet obviously they had parted way sooner, and there was a severe deficit of gruntle between those parties and the company at that point.

With Nominet’s board-culling vote just days away, we speak to one man who will publicly support the management

the hatter
Mushroom

> Firing five board members at once will be “hugely disruptive"

Well yes, all the attempted and actual changes before don't seem to have changed the company's tack very much, so clearly it needs something substantially seismic to set things back on course.

First Verizon, now T-Mobile: US carrier suggests folks use 2G to save battery

the hatter

Re: hmmm

FWIW, went from a 2x SE household to an SE2 and a 12 mini. Both do the job, and going from two well-abused batteries to new ones is something of a revelation. However, at least for out hands, we've got from a phone you can comfortable one hand (while actaually gripping, not just resting in your hand) to ones where neither can fully be comfortably one-handed. Also, getting rid of the home button/touch id was a terrible, terrible idea, I'm hoping the 13 brings back the button (at least a haptic button, with under-glass fingerprint scanner). because the mini is mine, and I'd upgrade it in due time to 13 that did. And I'd upgrade it today for something in the 5/SE sizing.

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