Posts by Some Random Kiwi 20 publicly visible posts • joined 20 May 2019
I had to go and find the US Embassy statement to check that you hadn't mistranscribed it, but no, they really did write "ensure" rather than "assure" in
"Therefore we want to ensure the good people of the UK that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain's national drink is not official United States policy."
Just goes to show that their skill in language matches their taste in tea-making!
After the Alto was the D0 aka Dolphin, then the Dorado, the Dandelion (on which Star was first released), a Dandelion variant with a floating-point coprocessor and larger control store known as a Dandetiger, and the Daybreak.
You can run Interlisp in your browser (via VNC) at http://online.interlisp.org/ or get the source for everything from https://github.com/Interlisp/ and compile the VM implementation (C, mostly POSIX syscalls, X11 for graphics). The resurrection is still a work in progress.
Heh, yeah. But that *is* what a Tesla model S battery pack looks like, except 18650 instead of AA cells and 444 to a rectangular pack.
Unfortunately, it turns out the Enovix solid silicon electrode isn't amenable to packaging in any cylindrical format, which is why they're going after things that can take a prismatic battery (EVs, laptops, phones, smart glasses)
Honeywell's CP-6 OS, the successor to Xerox' CP-V (itself following from BPM/BTM/UTS OSes, on Scientific Data Systems, then Xerox, Sigma series hardware) was implemented almost entirely in a new designed-for-purpuse high-level language, PL-6.
As the CP-6 preliminary design review (http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/honeywell/cp-6/CP-6_Preliminary_Design_Review_Sep77.pdf) described it, PL-6 was:
* PL/1 LIKE SYNTAX
* BLOCK STRUCTURED
* SIMPLE DATA TYPES
* MINIMAL RUN-TIME ROUTINES
* NO HIDDEN OVERHEAD
* INTERFACES TO SYSTEM SERVICES
* FACILITATES CODING IN NSA ENVIRONMENT
* USES CAPABILITIES OF L66 INSTRUCTION SET
It lasted for at least a decade, but I doubt there are any systems extant.
I file the GDPR complaints either with a "right to be forgotten" request, or a "you've commingled my PII (e-mail) with someone else's PII, stop that!" request. Sometimes it gets the desired result, other times they want you to cough up *all* the PII to identify you as the "real" account holder -- which of course I can't do since I'm not the other person.
It's not just the signing on the application, if you try to install the HP Printer Utilities 5.1 DMG from the HP website, the installer is signed with a certificate that expired a year ago. You can tell the system to trust it... but it doesn't help -- various bits won't install because the individual executables are borked too.
Re: your builder example. Don't know what country you're in, but in the USA a subcontractor who is not paid by the contractor can place a lien on the property where the work was performed. You'll have to pay them, even if you *already paid* the contractor if the contractor didn't pay their subs. You then are left suing the contractor to recover the money.
Not unique to lightning ports -- I have a microUSB device that behaves that way. If you don't wrap the charge cable around the device to put pressure on it in the right direction it won't charge. It's the socket in the device that's flaky, but can't for the life of me see exactly what's wrong with it.
For the US, you can download a free copy of the Signal Timing Manual, DOI 10.17226/22097 which presumably will change at some point because of this case. Another generally interesting guide is the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices which details the US standard signs and road markings and their permitted usage and placement. Some US states have state specific additions to this, but they're generally small. If you're arguing with city government about the idiotic placement of a sign it generally works pretty well to be able to quote the MUTCD section it.
Got a GMail account that got associated with someone in the UK's PayPal -- except that I've had it since day 1 of GMail when it was invitation only.
PayPal says they can't possibly have associated the e-mail with the account without the user proving they have access, so they're unwilling to do anything about it. And yet...
All attempts to break the association have failed, even invoking GDPR to have them forget any personally identifiable information.
We had contactless cards, but when you can use a contactless card without PIN or signature it's ripe for ripoffs. Most of the contactless cards went away at the next refresh.
We do have cards that present two alternative authentication methods (1) chip & sign, (2) chip & pin. Most terminals aren't smart enough to use anything but the first method presented. Most European and Australian terminals choke and suggest a signature even when they're unattended and have no mechanism to accept a signature -- some just go ahead without any authentication.
I put the blame squarely on the terminal manufacturers (who seem to be mostly American, so yes, that's the USA's fault)
My iPhone works just fine on the contactless terminals (which are many places now)
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