* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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'Baby Al Capone' to pay $22m to SIM-swap crypto-heist victim

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

On the other hand...

...How much would the original owner have now? Would he have cashed in or transferred his TRIG coins before they crashed? Would he be worth more by being astute and moving the value around through various cryptos over the years? Or broke?

Junk cellphones on Earth would stack higher than the International Space Station

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hmm

It's already being done. But AFAIK, it's rarely profitable in many jurisdiction because of the nasty chemical processes and resultant toxic waste used to extract the valuable metals. And the labour intensive part of separating the cases and batteries from the boards etc.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: We used to have deposits on bottles...

Do you trust your average phone shop employee to wipe or destroy the phone without have a rummage around the data first? Most people don't seem to know how to wipe their old phones and that, I suspect, is another major reason why people hang onto their old phones.

Boffins grow human brain cells to play Pong

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

No, it's a character IN Doom :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: And yet,....

There's many more to choose from nowadays. Apparently, there have been more Chancellors of the Exchequer in the last 5 months than were in government for the 20 years preceding the last election! Strong and Stable indeed!!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why?

Did it look like a Dalek?

(No, not their mobile "tanks", the actual creature inside that operates it)

Japan space agency blows up eight satellites aboard Epsilon rocket

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Why does non-foaming toothpaste mean no need to rinse?

Is it ok to swallow, along with all the rotting debris you just dislodged? And isn't toothpaste only foamey because they add a foaming agent anyway?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Windows

Re: Sensitive image

Agoraphobics and/or Acrophobics?

Mormon Church IT ransacked, data stolen by 'state-sponsored' cyber-thieves

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

breach happened in late March 2022

This is why US "data protection" laws will never be compatible with EU data protection laws, Privacy Shield 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 whatever point zero, without major changes in the US. How the fuck is a data breach of this magnitude and scope allowed to be kept from those affected for so long without some sort of legal punishment? It's entirely possible that data has been used maliciously in identity theft already with those affected completely in the dark as to how they lost their money.

Microsoft HoloLens proves to be a headache for US soldiers

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Telepresence

"The killer drones are also extremely tame, they wouldn't be competitive whatsoever on "drone racing league," for example."

Killer drones need to loiter and have the capacity to get to where they are needed. Drone racers are stripped of all excess weight and the battery has just enough capacity to run the race before it falls out of the sky. You'd not use an F1 racing car for a military mission! :-)

Sony, Honda collaborate on 'premium' electric vehicles that are born in the USA

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sony Playstation Car?

<Has image of Maggie Simpson from the title sequence "driving" with her toy steering wheel next to Marge>

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Honda only offers a single EV currently, and it's not for sale in North America.

"but the rest of us are just waiting on reliable infrastructure."

I suspect it will be a long while before all use cases are covered by EVs, if ever, other than people needing to change their behaviours and expectations. Something that may never happen. But a significant majority never tow or travel long distances. They are the current target market. Even my fairly high annual mileage driving is almost covered by existing EVs. It's fairly rare my daily drive exceeds 200 miles one way with a number of hours stop at the other end but is commonly 200-300 total per day. I just can't afford an EV at that higher range capacity yet and leasing isn't an option. Prices rise sharply at the higher annual mileage allowances for leasing and none of the ones I have looked at go above 30,000 miles per year. That means phoning them up for a quote. Which basically tells me it's in the price range of "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "When I purchase a car, my cash outflow is done with that one transaction"

None of those are fixed monthly outgoings and generally depend entirely on how you use the vehicle. Don't use it for a week? No cost, no wear and tear. Subscription based apps, heated seats? You pay whether you use them or not.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "continuous relationships with customers across the entire value-chain."

Have you tried buying a non-"smart" TV recently? The options are very limited, if available at all. That's how they "force" you. Take what's on offer, do without or try for a less optimal workaround.

My TV was purchased as an "end of line" dumb TV at about the time when there were no new models of dumb TVs available other than cheap tat. Today, pretty much the only option would be a computer monitor at a significantly higher price for a similar screen. That's doable since I don't actually use any "over the air" services so a display with a tuner is redundant in my case anyway. On the other hand, few computer monitors come with remote on/off and I might have to get of my arse to turn it on :-)

SpaceX reportedly fed up with providing free Starlink to Ukraine

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Putin has some dirt on Musk?

Not much the species, more certain parts of society in some countries. After all, look at the USA. Blood and gore all over the TV, but the slightest hint of a nipple brings down the full wrath of the censors and boycotts, especially in the Bible Belt.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I wonder how much paying capacity there is over Ukraine and surrounding areas the sat can work with while dealing with "free" Ukrainian data and therefore are there actual paying customers getting less than they paid for or unable to connect? I find it hard to believe that Starlink isn't just using excess capacity and so apart from the hardware cost, there's little actual ongoing cost to Starlink. that can be directly attributed to Ukraine as "lost income".

I suspect the biggest problem is that Starlink is not in profit, so they can't write off these costs as losses against tax so it is actually costing them money. On the other hand, how much free advertising and kudos are they getting for that money that might otherwise have been spent in tradition advertising?

Inmarsat gets $1b from US Navy for 10 years of satellite data

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Commercial teleport services?

Yeah, $1B for 10 years worth of teleport services. The navy doesn't need ships any more!! What does an aircraft carrier cost these days?

It's official: UK telcos legally obligated to remove Huawei kit

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's official

Whilst I applaud your effort, the most scary thing about it was that I understood the meaning.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Gimp

Re: It's official

Of course. Failure may incur a disciplinary.

Water pipes hold flood of untapped electricity potential

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: More proof phd's can't look beyond their nose

"There is no such thing as free energy. The water in all these lines has pressure for a reason. This is created by pumps."

Depends where you live Not all water deliver is pumped. I'll grant thet there is no free energy, but hydropower does actually exist. There are some big, world recognised places that have it. Hoover Dam, Aswan Dam to name but two. Now, technically that's not "free" energy since there are laws of physics describing that. But from an everyday practical point of view, it's "free" in that it's tapping gravity. The paper refers to "gravity fed" systems. There may also be places where water needs to be pumped up and over a geological feature such as hills or mountains. You ar paying to pump it up and over, so why not stick a turbine at least part way down the other side and reclaim some of the energy being imparted by gravity as the water falls down the other side? As others have mentioned, think about regenerative breaking. Why waste energy as heat if it can be recovered in a more useful form? That's what's happening as the water comes down a gravity fed pipe. It might even be that the pressure at the bottom is too high and has to be reduced. Without using a turbine to reduce the pressure and reclaim some energy, you need to use baffles and constrictors to reduce the pressure. That's the car equivalent of wasting energy by converting it to heat through break pads and disks instead of regen breaking taking the momentum back as electricity.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: This is ridiculous.

"Extracting electricity from the flow of water in pipes will reduce the flow of water to where it needs to go."

There are situations where the pressure has to be reduced. Not everyone gets water from a water tower. Having said that, would the pressure in the pipes at the bottom be lower if the generator "stealing" energy was at the top of the pipe directly under the base of the towers tank? Think about regenerative breaking on EVs. Yes, you paid for electricity to get the water up into the tower and turned that electricity into potential energy so why not see if some of that potential energy can be recovered when it turns kinetic at the top of the drop pipe?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Just no

So, obviously that means your area is one of those not considered suitable for the suggestions put forward by the authors of the paper. That doesn't mean it's not possible to do so elsewhere. Such as the existing 500+MW already in place referred to in the article. Clearly your area isn't an ideal site for building dams for hydropower. But it may well be suitable for wind turbines if it's all wide flat empty space :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: entirely gravity driven

Yes. Another apt comparison would be the current HS2 project compared with the creation of the motorway network. At one point I think they were building a mile per day of motorway.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Grammar, please...

It's the new "North American Style Guide" used by El Reg these days. AFAIK, that means "anything goes" now since US grammar seems to be whatever the person speaking or writing wants it to be ;-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Back to the Future

I suspect that's the sort of thing the authors are on about. After all, even a "low ball" estimate of 1.41GW across the entire US is a relatively small amount. That indicates either very few places it could be done or very many places where the output is too low to make any economic sense. It might be they are suggesting generation from gravity fed pipes to generate power for use within the water supply system, eg running control valves, powering telemetry or possibly even powering pumps further down the system, especially in out of the way places where they are using generators or batteries.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The elephant in the water pipe?

"That, and it's illegal (?) for end users to use water for power generation because it increases water loss."

I think I recall seeing a shower-head that used the water flow to power either LEDs or a radio. Some sort of silly gimmick anyway but I suppose it did work and generated power from consumer water flow :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The elephant in the water pipe?

If you are talking a rural cabin in the woods such the one in Vermont the OP mentioned, I'd assume he has a local stream (or creek now El Reg is American) with enough of a drop in height to give a constant flow to a generator. Depending on location and local planning/conservation regulations, he might be able to divert the stream and create "mill race" and divert some or all of the water via a pipe in the turbine. As he says, if he can get 1-2KW from it 24/7, that's a decently useful amount.

There are also Archimedes screw type generators for slow moving, low drop rivers where a portion of the water is diverted to drive the screw using a much more significant mass of water depending on the length of the screw so can still generate a decent amount from a slower rotation passed through a gearbox. These are actual devices out in the field now and have been for some years.

Here's an example at Cragside House a few miles up the road from me and covered by El Regs own Geeks Guide back in 2019. Back in the day, it was "the house of the future" with many "modern" gadgets mainly powered by either hydraulics or electricity generated from hydropower, so nice to see it getting up to date with modern hydropower.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The elephant in the water pipe?

"Avoid flooding how? The only way to do that is to build a reservoir to hold the water upstream, which means trading unplanned flooding downstream for planned flooding upstream."

Some points, nor especially related to the Mississippi or other large rivers, but slowing down the overall flow helps with flood control. Whether that be by adding back meanders that used to be there until people straightened them out for whatever reason, allowing "natural" damming, not dredging ,or creating flood plains/reservoirs upstream where people etc won't be flooded out, are all ways of helping. reduce the levels or amounts of flooding downstream where people and businesses could be affected rather more badly. Planned flooding is always better than unplanned flooding since you know exactly where it will happen and be prepared for it. That probably won't work near the coast where the flooding is sometime caused by storm surges, that's a whole different problem.

Prison inmate accused of orchestrating $11M fraud using cell cellphone

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why can't they solve this problem?

"Or hey, build the prison as a Faraday cage, with the microcells inside if guards need to use their cell phones within the prison."

I've done some work inside high security prisons in the UK (the sort who contain inmates you might have heard of in the news). No mobile phones allowed at all. Prison staff also hand over everything not required for the job and go through the same metal detectors/x-ray units on the way in and out that everyone else goes through. Are US prisons not operated like this too?

GM races after Tesla with battery pack tech and solar deal

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Swappable battey packs

I was reading an article the other about EV taxis in China using swappable battery packs for a 5 minute "recharge" instead of being laid up and not earning for hours at a time, or killing the batteries with too many fast charges. I wonder how that happened? Some sort of government mandate? All taxis are the same make/model? Manufactures actually co-operated? Whatever the cause, it seems "standardisation" can work.

From speaking to local taxi drivers (only a sample of two, so not exactly a useful sample size!), it seems their biggest concern is the charging time meaning they aren't earning if they can't do a full day on a charge. That may depend on where they work/drive but could mean turning down longer journeys. Apart from that reference to Chinese taxis, I don't think I've seen any other EV advertised as being easy to swap out a battery. It's be nice if GM decided to go down that route and potentially make the "standard" open source. That'd help them and everyone else who chose to follow.

Musky scent? Billionaire launches fragrance: Burnt Hair

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: What a Complete Prat!

"Most overrated man in the universe, except possibly for Liz Truss."

Liz Truss is a man? That may explain a few things. Does her husband know?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Facepalm

Years ago, when my sister was little, she had long hair to her waist. She decided she wanted short hair and cried and cried until mum cut it for her. There was so much, mum chucked on the fire (we still had an open coal fire back in the 60's). The SMELL!!!!!! The entire street and probably all the nearby street knew about it. :-)

Microsoft leaves the Office, rebrands everything as 365

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 365

There will be others who are saying "Excellent"....in Monty Burns voice?

Delta Air Lines throws $60m at flying taxi startup Joby Aviation

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Theranos Mk2?

Scientists model turbulence to boost space propulsion

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

direct numerical simulations (DNS)

DNS. It's always DNS.

Oops, sorry. Wrong article!

How Wi-Fi spy drones snooped on financial firm

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I think we're reaching a point...

"Surely that is a much bigger target?"

Unless you can find a way to access the home addresses of employees of the target company, then WFH might make it harder to target a specific company. But with lots of people working from home, finding a random juicy target becomes a lot easier. Most people seem to use WiFi at home, and even if they do use a wired connection at times, they almost certainly have WiFi access switched on on their ISP provided router with full access to the internal home network. A bit of security by obscurity for anyone with a "not on the ball" IT department.

California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Let us not forget our friends in the gig economy

Those people are already tracked. The app on the phone that dispatches the tasks[*] will already be tracking their every move.

[*] not jobs. That might imply they are employees. They are piece-workers. "Gig economy" is just a new "cool" name for something most people thought was abolished years ago because of the shit pay level equivalent it gives.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Not in CA.

"Standard plate stays with the car/trailer/whatever for its life on the roads."

And the odds are, that plate will last the full life of the car, probably even outlive it. I wonder how long these e-ink plates will last? Thousands of tiny electromechanical "pixels", the associated electronics, all those tiny solder joints, out in all weathers and temperatures and built to maximise profits, no doubt with components from the cheapest suppliers and eventually outsourced to the cheapest manufacturer, probably in China where most of the manufactures of e-paper displays are

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ok being a Brit....

"The urban myth that Napoleon had anything to do with RHT vs LHT is just that, a myth."

True, but the "cheese eating surrender monkeys" did help to bankroll the 1776 insurrection so you should still be grateful to them :-p

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ok being a Brit....

"Why does an employer have any need to track your personal car."

That would answered by the last line of the article :-)

"if strictly necessary for the performance of the employee's duties."

eg people who drive as part of their job and use their own personal car on mileage allowance or car allowance instead of a company owned vehicle.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Comment from California

"The local news was showing the plates flipping through advertising. Joy."

Hit and run:

Police office to witness: Can you identify the vehicle sir?

Witness: I was a red tesla.

Police Officer: Did you see the number plate? Can you remember the registration?

Witness: Yeah, it was an advert for Dunkin Donust.

Police Officer: D'oh! Mmmmmm....doughnuts[*}

*He's an ex-pat Brit :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

The current abortion issue probably being the best example of States disagreeing over laws, jurisdictions and extra-territorial enforcement.

China could use Digital Yuan to swerve Russia-style sanctions

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: @Fleming: Control The Fire, Reduce Technology Flow

"This is clearly insane and must be stopped. We must not deliver any more petrol for this prospective fire, free trade ideologies be damned.

Delivery of Material, Education, Technology Services to China must be strictly controlled and strictly limited, or we will see a hot war between us and China. Let's get our priorities right."

It's way too late for that now. China bootstrapped years ago. They play the long game. That's why they appeared to switch to a form of capitalism for a while, and in some ways, still are. But the "heavy hand of control from the top" and central planning is still and always has been, there. "Capitalist" business leaders who "go native" and step over the line very quickly get stomped on. As for education, they have world class universities. Some of the very best will still go abroad to the likes of MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford etc. Peking University is just outside the top 10 universities in the world. Most of their best students study in China. It's mainly those who didn't get into the top Chinese universities who then travel to Europe, UK, USA etc.

They may be behind in some fields, but are ahead or on par in other fields. Anything they are behind in, they can throw money and resources at like no other country can. Trying to stop them is like Canute ordering the tide to stop coming in, ie a demonstration that it's not possible. Sanctions, at best, can only slow them down a bit.

This maglev turntable costs more than an average luxury electric car

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Showing my age too

By the time CD players came to the masses, the difference was huge for most buyers. Even a bottom end CD player was orders of magnitude better than the a bottom end record player like a BSR or Dansette or some no-name "music centre" they were replacing.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Changing the record might take a bit of time at your next party though. I suppose to keep the music flowing you'd need to have at least two, one playing while setting up the next record. Best stick to 12" LPs though as you don't want to be starting the next play with a substandard vacuum. Oh, the shame when your party guests leave in disgust because the vacuum was only partial!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Egoteric?

"Carefully winding the frequency knob up until I got to 'silence' then stopping - I looked around the class to see every hand still up."

That sounds exactly like the sort of situation where the competition nature of humans takes over from reality. No one wants to be the first to admit their hearing is not as "good" as their peers. Or maybe they all had tinnitus?

It's probably work a little better if starting from silence and then introducing a high frequency and ramping down. But not much better since once the first hand goes up, the rest will follow very quickly :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Egoteric?

"At the end of the day, you hit diminishing returns pretty fast"

Exactly! After all, just how well made is the actual record itself? If the reproduction equipment is orders of magnitude better than the recording equipment, are you getting more quality out than was put in in the first place? Does GIGO apply?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Meh

"the, er, magnetically sensitive pickup coils?"

Maybe it's a crystal pickup?

People still seem to think their fancy cars are fully self-driving

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Elon says

I think he's doing that to himself. Have you seen the "handles" on Tesla cars? They don't really have handles as such on some of the models and those that do have been re-invented to be something other than a door handle. So yeah, I don't think he's got a handle on it :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Maybe someone should point him in the direction of net positive output fusion power? Of course, he may think that's "just" another problem for him to solve rather than an object lesson in how hard it actually is.

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