Posts by John Brown (no body) 25376 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"changing lanes is one of the most dangerous things you can do"
No, it really isn't. It may be for inexperienced or inattentive drivers or during rush hour, but it's a lot safer changing lanes on a motorway than on most other types of roads for most of the time.
I suspect this mantra is one of the reason so many idiots on the motorway don't follow the Highway Code rule of keeping left unless overtaking and sit in lanes 2 or 3 even when there's a a clear half mile or more of space back in lane 1. Those same people are also the ones most likely to NOT get up to the speed of the lane they change into when overtaking too so we end up with lane 1 almost empty, lane 2 going a little faster than the HGVs and lane 3 doing about 60-65 and far more congested than lane 1.
Oh and one last point THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS A FUCKING "LORRY LANE"!!!! (Saw a car+caravan just last week being undertaken by an HGV who was in lane 1 and doing a proper 56mph. Car+caravan driver still couldn't work out what he was doing wrong or even that he was in the wrong)
Thanks, I feel better now. (I never let my rage out while on the road. It's much nicer to do it from the comfort of my armchair - current car, 250,000 miles accident free, ie none from new. Ditto for the million+ miles total in previous cars :-))
"However, it doesn't look like these makers are concentrating on learning from experience like humans do."
That seems to be the case with pretty much all so-called AI that has been foisted on us. Even ChatGPT and equivalents comes in "versions" as they train new ones. With the chat ones, it's been made abundantly clear that they can't tell right from wrong and can easily be "trained" by users to become highly offensive, so now they don't do that. In the case of "AI" controlling cars on the road, there's a chance one car will "learn" some bad behaviour and pass it on the rest of the fleet thereby leading to the enormous likelihood of autonomous cars causing accidents, injuries or death where the operating company has no idea why or how it happened. An insurance nightmare. Passing on information about roadworks and traffic jams is one thing, but passing on behavioural reaction type learning in a live environment is something that they simply can't do. It needs to be in a consistent and known state.
You won't be allowed to buy one. You'll hire one like a taxi or, at best, lease one.
I see Ford have now been allowed to sell their "partial self-driving" cars in the UK now (geo-fenced to certain motorway routes) and while you buy the car, the level 2 hands-free driving is only "free" for a short while and then becomes a subscription only service.
"censors"
And there'll be no swearing, "making out" with your "friend" or watching smutty videos on your phone while in one due to all those censors :-)
Isn't the shorter wavelength the stuff that's used in meteorology to detect rain clouds and stuff? So it it detected the water in humans? Would that be affected by dense fog?
It's all well outside my area of knowledge, so, you know, just asking for some help here :-)
I'd also assume LIDAR doesn't work too well in dense fog either.
I absolutely agree. But when classed a "trusted" person with multiple security clearances to work on customer equipment, it seems a bit bass ackwards that the same "trusted" person is treated as a "generic user" with such restricted access it impairs their job function. That's not security. That's laziness for rolling out a generic security policy without actually checking what staff NEED to do their jobs first.
We've all seen comments about people switching off the ancient, "unknown" server that no one remembers what it's for to see if anyone squeals. But this sort of security policy is like firewalling off the main DB server to everyone just to see which users actually need access and not having a process in place for months to grant the needed access.
"my frustration of being an IT support engineer who didn't have the rights to fix my own company laptop kind of grated on me"
I feel for you, being in precisely the same situation. I've even got admin credentials (legitimately so!!) for a "secure" government organisation but my own company phone and laptop is so locked down there are times I can't actually do my job properly because I can't access or update the OEM tools REQUIRED as part of the job. It's been months now and our infosec team still have not resolved the issue.
For "consumer" parts, considering the conditions it's in, it's doing amazingly well.
I wonder what we will be sing from Mars in 5-10 years if Starships launch today (livestream starts in a about 7 minutes) goes to plan?
(Not seeing the El Reg story on Starship yet. Are they waiting to see whether to report success or kaboom before pushing the publish button?)
"my expertise was in knowing the clients and their needs)...and actually had a working system when it went live."
Well done you! That is what needs to happen more often these days and the first statement is probably a major reason why the second statement is true.
Too often systems are created with little to no input from the "coal face", let alone testing by those people.
"And if there happen to be any such chargers available on the route, that might be a persuasive argument."
IF and only IF the new emissions standards are mandated by law, the earliest it will happen is 5 years down the line according to the article. The article also states that this is not a forced switch to EV so your gas cars will still be available.
How many chargers were you seeing 5 years ago compared to now? Probably not that many, if any, in more rural areas. In cities? Probably lots nowadays compared to 5 years ago. As demand increases, so will supply. It's the American Way :-)
I'll still be sticking with ICE for the foreseeable future too for similar reasons, but I can see the trend happening now. The majority of people who live in cities rarely need to worry about where to find a charger and many will be able to charge at home or work. Similar will apply to long distance haulage. EV is no where near ready yet for that use case. But large haulage companies with local depots can transfer loads to smaller EV vehicles for the "final mile" local deliveries in many case. Or there's an opening for change in the haulage business. Big trucks to city to city, interstate etc to out of town depots and a local company does all the in-city deliveries for multiple haulage companies and local businesses, especially if citys start charging ICE trucks for coming in and polluting, but not Evs.
"She was already delusional as a student before she dropped out, convinced (by upbringing and sheer force of will) that she was the next tech messiah. By all reports she was rather mediocre."
At least part of it is probably the indoctrination of the simplified version of The American Dream. If you just work hard enough, you will succeed. Well, as any right thinking person will know, there's a lot more to it than that soundbite! On top of that, there's the sort of quotes we keep hearing from "self made millionaires" self-help books that people hear and believe without ever reading the actual books. Quotes like "First, have a great idea". Many rarely read or comprehend the steps after that.
This woman seems to fir that pattern perfectly. She had a great idea, convinced others of the great idea, raised some money, hired people and said "Make it so!" and then sat back and waited for the product to be built.
Ideas are piss easy! Good and practical ideas, less so. I remember a dream I had many years ago which I related to my work colleagues of the time, when 8-bit computers were still the rage, of walking into a shop to buy a "TV", which was basically like a roll of wallpaper and you just cut off the length you wanted. My colleagues all thought it was a wonderful idea but none of us had a clue how it might work. I think, just possibly, flexible electroluminescent panels were just appearing as research experiments with the hope of finding some practical use if the manufacturing could be made economical at the time. Of course, we're actually sorta, almost, if you squint a bit, getting there, 40 or so years later with e-ink readers and foldable or roll-up phone screens :-)
The answer is in the part you quoted "keep the data leak confidential despite their obligation to report it."
That kinda say the survey was asking about breaches where is a requirement to report it.
And the stats for the US just re-affirm why it's not a good idea to let your data ever go anywhere near a US server if you can possibly avoid them.
I wonder if they started with the intention of screwing up so badly, ie had malice aforethought, or is this just a bunch of frat boys who's business surprisingly took off and they not only had no idea how to run a real business, but didn't even realise they didn't have the skills or knowledge to do it. On the other hand, it did become clear to them eventually, when they started trying to hide stuff from people who actually did know how things are supposed to work.
As IT people using systems every day, we already know the answers to the questions you pose. We're screwed. System only ever cover the majority cases. Edge case are ignored. If the "system" doesn't work the way you want it to, then YOU have to change what you do to match the "system".
Oddly enough, washing machines, dryers and ovens, despite often coming with "connected features" these days exhorting the "convenience" or being able to control them remotely, still come with warnings not to operate them unattended due to fire risk. Of course, that warning is "dark patterned" into all the other safety advice and warnings that most people never read because they really don't want you to see the hypocrisy of a warning telling you not to do something used as a major marketing hook.
The safety warnings are mandated by Government usually and any fireman will tell you exactly the same, having almost certainly attended fires caused by those unattended appliances.
On a more serious note, that's not really a joke. US software intended for an international audience, almost always completely misses the cultural differences of English speakers in other parts of the worlds and assumes they understand "American". Case in point. Our company ran a staff survey some years ago. Most replied on the 1-9 scale under the assumption that 5 is average. The results, analysed by the US based survey software reported pretty much the entire company as failing and moral incredibly low in all the graphs and charts produced. It turned out the actual results are severely weighted to the top end of the scale and anything lower than 8 was "bad". It seems this sort or scale and metric is fairly normal in the US and highly unusual in most other English speaking countries. Culturally, at least to the US MBAs, anything less than perfection is a serious issue to be dealt with. Might as well just have yes/no answers to all the questions than a scale of 1-7 = bad, 8 - 9 = good
Of course, when the survey was run again and instead of adjusting the survey to suit the local culture, the local respondents were given clear instructions on how to pretend to be American when responding to the American survey :-)
If anyone is interested, I've seen this particular survey used in a number of different companies and organisations over the last few years. It's called Peakon and it's had the same problems in every one of them I have witnessed and they all come up with the same "solution".
All of the above is leading me to the conclusion that all of these AI chatbots coming out of the US are going to have some interesting effects in non-US cultures. The differences can be significant, but the US rarely seems to take them into account. And that's another cultural difference in and of itself :-)
Other reasons for "train captains" include vandalism when there's no one "in authority" to deter it.
It is estimated "mothballing" the Ebbw Vale Cableway...will save Blaenau Gwent council £41,000...the lift had to be stopped 252 times between its opening in 2015 and 2017 and following the link from that article to the earlier report, "Blaenau Gwent council said some of the breakdowns were due to vandalism and incidents had reduced since the introduction of "on-site personnel""
Likewise, look at the mess of e-scooter hire, people leaving them all over the place in some case, and even when they must be "off hired" to certain places, are often left badly parked and can be trip hazards. And many have suggested the likelyhood of autonomous taxis being pigstys, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.
Many people are dirty and/or nasty bastards if they think they can't be seen or caught[*]. And that;s not even starting with the lowlife, low level criminals in hoodies and balaclavas avoiding even the best CCTV.
[*] many stories here from readers regarding the filthy staff toilets and kitchen areas in offices caused by people you'd not really think off of "vandals".
"A signal on the 68000 microprocessor"
An excellent bit of fault finding. Especially under a CPU that didn't make into personal computers till a few years after :-)
The PET had an 8-bit 6502, not a 16-bit 68000 that later turned up in Amigas, STs and Megadrives :-)
"The actual past masters of information warfare are the House of Windsor; that they aren't absolute bollocks/monarchs is a tribute to other players occasionally outsmarting them."
I think you'll find the British monarchy haven't been absolute monarchs for a very, very long time and haven't been in a position to become so for most of that time. There's a thing called a Parliament, and a constitution even it it can be a bit difficult for some to access, what with it being a collection of multiple documents rather than a single one.
"and we have a wide range of nutjobs who do this kind of thing for their 'cause', or just publiciity or notoriety."
While that is true, they are also the people who will make sure you know it was them, either publicly or in their circle of peers. We'd almost certainly know by how if that was the case. It's far, far more likely to be a nation state and their military than any form of nutjobs.
"It's still strange that despite it being the biggest act of sabotage in history, none of our leaders seem very keen to tell us who did it."
Maybe they don't know? Sometimes, in real life, it can take a long time to work out what happened and who did it. And the consequences of pulling in the "usual suspects" for a session with the rubber truncheon can be a bit severe when you get it wrong and the "usual suspects" are nation states. It likely won't be all tied up with no loose ends in a hour, before the credits role. And even if some of "they" do know, there might be $reasons, political or strategic, not to blab about it while there's still a related conflict going on, but if "they" do know, "they" will have made sure the "them" know that "they" know, by various subtle, possibly diplomatic, means. :-)
"some were not bothered by the practice because customers had been informed about company data collection while others found it troubling."
And this is the entire US date protection system(s) in a nutshell. Companies can do what they like with any data they collect so long as users are informed the data is being collected. The only opt-out is to not do business with them. But since they are all doing it, the only way to mostly opt-out is to go off-grid and live in a cabin in the wilds of Alaska.
When it costs $millions if not $billions to get elected to high office, no one is going to upset the campaign donors.
Hey, conspiracy theorists! THERE IS NO DEEP STATE!!! it's just the rich and greedy wanting to hold on to and increase their wealth and power while fighting each other. It's Game of Thrones being played out in modern times on Wall Street and in the Capitol!
I remember years ago when my MIL bought a wireless doorbell and asked my to fit it. It had only 3 channel options. Tried Ch. 1 and the neighbour next door, who had recommended it to her, came out wondering who was at her door. Tried Ch. 2 and another neighbour, two doors down the other way came to the door. Last chance, tried Ch. 3 and a neighbour across the road came to his door, wondering who had rung his bell. Took it back to the shop and had a bit of an argument convincing the shop assistant that no, it was useless since it could not be set to a channel that didn't ring other peoples door bells. "We've sold loads of them and no one ever brought one back before"" she tells me. LOL, well expect more if you sell lots of them.
It's just as well I was installing at the weekend when the neighbours were at home. If I'd done it mid-week, it might have been days, weeks even months of confusion and hilarity in that street before anyone twigged :-) Absolutely no security of any kind in this case. And bell push could operate any bell with a 1 in 3 chance of already being on the correct channel. Great for kids playing knocky door neighbours with far less chance of being caught!
"Sorry but I don't see holding the retailer liable as a viable fix."
That's how the law stands. The customers contract is with the retailer, not matter what any included "warranty cards" in the box might say. The manufacturer may have no presence in the local country so how is the customer supposed to get any sort of warranty service if not from the retailer?
Under current EU and UK consumer law, this may well be a "manufacturing defect" and allow owners to return them to the retailer for repair, replace or refund if less than two years old or a partial refund if 2-5 years old assuming repair or replace isn't an option. Unless the manufacturer provides a firmware update to remove the defects. If any of the marketing, advertising or user manuals refer to anything like "secure login" or mentions "secure" almost anywhere, that's a good place to start with reference to "of merchantable quality" or "as described". IANAL, if taking on the retailer or manufacturer, do your own research and/or get proper legal advice :-)
"Amazon (cardboard) and Ikea (flatpackery) could combine and make one for much less."
But, but, but, Amazon already have form for delivering packages by drone. It'd be easier just to order the payload to the required "address" and let Amazon supply the drone. They may charge an additional shipping and handling fee if the drone doesn't return though.
"The cost of the cardboard should be effectively two tenths of bugger all."
True. But how much of the cost is the cardboard bits replacing and saving if they'd used something more robust in the first place? £3,500 still seems like quite a lot for a drone with an estimates service life of only 20 missions[*]
[*] that may even be optimistic in a war zone, but they are also targetting emergency responders too.
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