Posts by Jellied Eel

Re: Domestic cross breeding is the real problem

- Climate change, operating on two levels: it promotes the demographic vitality of wild boars via the abundance of the acorn, which has a direct impact on reproduction; it reduces winter and spring mortality.

Bah humbug. Sure, CO2 fertilisation is beneficial to wildlife given it increases crop yields. But boars are far less sensitive to the teeny amounts of global warming than the average Bbc or Grauniad writer/reader. But by the same reckoning, it also reduces winter & spring mortality amongst humans, because cold tends to lead to more excess deaths than warmth.

Biggest impact is lack of predation and anti-hunters. But boars are a pest in Europe and the US, causing much damage to crops, wildlife, and the occasional human who discovers that boar tusks vs femoral arteries is bad.

Re: This is news

That seems to be the real challenge, ie the push to recycle is one thing, but whether there's a market for the recyled stuff. So cost vs using 'virgin' materials. That seems to be a problem with paper waste, ie there's a limited market for it, and recycling yards have a habit of catching fire. Then again, I've also seen council laying block paving using crushed glass as a base layer.

I don't know how current recycling schemes work, other than there appear to be some problems. I guess one way with vehicles is maybe to have a recycling liability. So manufacturers know what goes into producing a car. That kind of creates a scrap liability. Then I once had to get a certificate of destruction for a car. So I guess that could be linked to the liability, and the scrap value reduces it.

That would incentivise manufactures, but I get the feeling it'd end up 'orribly complicated to track a car from delivery to destruction and transformation into a pile of ingots. But I think it'd incentivise producers to work with the recycling industry to balance the books.

And in other news, my favorite mad chemist demonstrates how to recover cadmium from a NiCad battery. Pretty colors, but shows some of the challenges involved-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8g7qy4SSDA

And it also looks like Tesla's got their autonomous self-driving working on it's newest Plaid-

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/07/01/brand-new-tesla-model-s-plaid-drives-up-hill-while-ablaze-just-weeks-after-model-with-new-battery-went-on-market/

Which is a bit curious. Presumably the driver made a swift and fortunate exit, but why the car kept going uphill. I'd have thought temperature sensors showing an oopsie, plus absence of driver would've made the vehicle stop and shut down.

Re: Privacy assurance cannot be trusted

No such assurance can ever be trusted, as the government can always change the law later on.

It's just digital bells. No vaccination? No pubs, clubs, concerts or travel for you. But now this has become a pandemic, what we're seeing is simple gain-of-function research. The population has been conditioned into giving their location information. Especially now exciting new variants have become available. See for example-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57610998

The 43% figure relates to deaths only - so it misses all the vaccinated people who were exposed to Covid but did not catch it, or caught the virus but did not become very ill.

Test them, count them as cases anyway. Case=Case+1, publish headline with daily case count.

And by now, almost everyone at risk of dying from Covid has been vaccinated (more than 90%).

Or they might have died in the 'first wave'. Or second. Regardless, the new normal fixated on cases being positive test results, not severity of illness.

And in a world where every single person had been vaccinated, 100% of Covid deaths would be of vaccinated people.

Ermm.. quite. But then you'd need to just adjust your messaging to try and explain why people who've been vaccinated are stil dying of Covid. Or mebbe just tighten up the coding of deaths so vaccinated people don't appear to be dying of the thing they've been vaccinated against. The CDC has done this, along with tightening up on PCR cycle counts and the definition of 'case'.

And there is another reason you cannot currently just compare the number of Covid deaths among vaccinated and unvaccinated people and come to any conclusions about how effective the jabs are.

Because most fully vaccinated people are over the age of 50 - and therefore more likely to die - while most unvaccinated people are young and healthy.

Well, quite. Or as the recently departed Donald Rumsfeld once said, it's about known unknowns. Like it's unknown how many people developed Covid antibodies, triggering overly sensitive Covid counters without actually getting more than mild symptoms. The herd immunity thing where once everyone's been exposed, tests become less meaningful. But a known known is that young & healthy people are much less likely to get seriously ill from Covid. But let's vaccinate them anyway because we've got millions of doses, and they've got expiry dates.

Of course then it's back to vaccinated people dying, and running the risk of being miscounted. Death by tombstoning on a hot day is likely in <50's than >50's, but might still get counted as a 'case'. Can't be having that.

But such is politics. Herd immunity also becomes herd conditioning, helped along by Minitruth and the media. Which conditions people to just accept that it's for your own good, or a public good, and why won't you think of the children?

Not think about more awkward stuff, like how vaccine passports would work in pratice. Or why they couldn't be added to the chips in biometric passports we now have to have. Or...

Every government, everywhere, that offers a check-in app must agree

.. that a simple flaw exists. Like people not bothering, or forgetting to check-in. Or possibly worse-case, if services are withdrawn for the unclean, checking in with false ID. Thank you for checking in Ms Mallon, may I call you Mary?

Re: Define 'plastic'

Not forgetting, of course, that there has been an increased demand for plastics in general over the last 18 months as people and companies bought facemasks, hand sanitiser dispensers, the bottles of sanitiser themselves, those Perspex partitions you see at shops and suchlike.

Facemasks seem to be becoming the new single-use bag. In my travels, I see lots of masks dumped on the pavements. Which could be a problem because AFAIK, they're plastic and have convenient loops to catch wildlife. Also see a fair number of dumped potion dispenser bottles.. But the biggest issue is along my probably 2 mile walk to the shops, there are no litter bins until the shopping precinct.

So that's one reason why there's so much litter. Compare and contrast to somewhere like Singapore where there are bins everywhere. Plus of course pretty stiff penalties for anyone too lazy to walk a few meters to a bin.

Re: Sincerely, Good Luck

The wild card in all this is Starlink. I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk. He seems more than a bit unstable, and is not overly devoted to truthtelling, and is prone to wildly overpromise. But he does have remarkable organizational skills.

Errmm. Nope. If he did, he'd have been able to deliver on all the stuff that's been promised. Hypeloops, Tesla semis, the Roadster Mk2, fully autonomous self-driving etc etc. And not been having a series of unfortunate recalls.

He is, of course the salesman that delivered the Vegas Loop. Flashy CGI ends up being Teslas in a drainpipe. Truly remarkable and revolutionary! Especially why, even with fully autonomous self-driving the cars still need a driver. Factories manage to guide vehicles around their plants without drivers, Tesla.. can't.

And SpaceX is throwing a LOT of money at the project. And as far as I can see, there's nothing Starlink is trying to do that couldn't be and surely was costed out with fair precision on a cocktail napkin before work began. So it seems possible that he and his company will come to the rescue of those of us who don't live in big cities.

Ah, well, that gets a bit more complicated. SpaceX possibly isn't spending money, various SPV subsidiaries are. So they're paying market-ish* rates to launch satellites, not the rates being charged to SpaceX's government contracts. But what has probably been costed on a napkin is the $3-6bn+ government pork up for grabs to provide broadband for the rural US.

That's the goal. Grab as much of that subsidy as you can, then figure out how to scale the network and deliver a service. Easy enough to do when you've only got a few beta customers. They'll report stuff like lightning strikes, or terminals overheating** and shutting down. Those should be simple engineering fixes, providing you don't have to re-work a few thousand sitting in a warehouse somewhere. Some of it's 'Gigafactories' have plenty of space now Panasonic's moved out.

But that's always been the challenge between visions and reality. Musk is good at one, not so much at realisation. And if the market suddenly comes to the same realisation, Tesla's share price collapses, and margin calls follow given most of Musk's wealth is backed by his stock. As would be any loans. But SpaceX has been successful in attracting government pork, along with regularly tapping the market for more debt. But an IPO may be due soon, and it's investors can cash out.. Although a prospectus would have to reveal financials that are currently hidden.

As for execution, OneWeb's problem was they had the satellites, but couldn't seem to deliver the service. I had several meetings with them on behalf of a large carrier. We wanted a simple, turnkey solution that'd be easy to order and provision.. And OneWeb couldn't do that. But it's a hard thing to do right, which is where partnering wiith BT makes a lot of sense. They have field engineers & ops people that can do the provisioning.. And potentially outside the UK given BT's international relationships.

*Government contracts often have annoying stuff in them, like wanting 'most favored nation' type pricing deals. So they get the lowest price, and then might want open book accounting*** and permit a modest profit margin. So if Starlink's paying X per launch, why is US government customers paying 3.14X?

** That pesky Warble Gloaming again. But fear not, Musk will save the planet. Possibly multiple planets. Or just be rather well placed to extract billions more in subsidies..

*** Simple solution is to have more than one set of books. But Musk does seem to have a problem with retaining CFOs.

Re: Shipping channel

Pragmatically, if he did become president, Navalny might find he had to make some accommodation over Ukraine.

That's an extremely unlikely prospect. Navalny isn't exactly popular or even well known inside Russia. Yet for some reason, the West has decided he's a future Russian president. Or martyr. The real, main opposition party in Russia is still it's communists.

Re: Well tried and comprehensively already field tested .....

Various different types of both lethal and non-lethal weapons, including a remote control gyroscopically stabilised 12.7mm machine gun / 40mm grenade launcher can be fitted to Barracuda.

Oh. Yes please! Both! Or a stretched Barracuda with a twin GAU-8s.. Although that may result in a loss of forward motion when firing, along with needing to adjust trim as ammunition depletes. Now, if HMG decides to save money and outsource by re-introducing Letters of Marque, British small businesses and entrepeneurs could help out. Or just deal with annoying yachties.. Not sure if the Admiralty still has a Prize Board, but it's a tradition that could be resurected!

Because that small nation still has a very large military force (though much of it a bit out of date still dangerous),

One of the 'problems' is that Putin/Russia has been spending a lot of money (in relative terms) modernising and training it's forces. See-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel

And this bit-

For example, the United States Armed Forces has a tooth-to-tail ratio of 17%, meaning that for every combat unit there are around five support units.

Which is a problem for the US military. And other NATO members, eg Germany decided investing in creche facilities was more important than having working tanks. Or modernising it's tanks. The UK is, but although it'll be fitted with a new, improved German gun.

and a rather large finger in the pie in European continental politics by way of the backdoor through it containing large amounts of oil and natural gas?

Yes, well, the black gold has always been a problem. Like Ukraine getting a tad worried that Russian oil & gas will bypass Ukraine, and thus it'll lose the transit revenues it skims off. Or just taking gas and not paying for it. Not sure if those disputes have been resolved yet. But the big man can always ask Hunter, given he worked (allegedly) for one of Ukraine's largest energy companies.

But then Ukraine's in a rather tough spot. It lost Crimea and the break-away regions, and it's got a bit of a problem with neo-Nazis. So that doesn't exactly endear them to the EU. That makes Ukraine's accession about as likely as Turkey, despite it's 'color' revolution to pivot away from it's previous main trading partner to the EU. Who naturally imposed tariffs and quotas on Ukrainian produce.

And then of course the US had a bit of an energy revolution with shale gas. And produces more than it can use, so built a bunch of LNG export terminals.. And then of course would rather prefer the EU got American gas. Even if that's more expensive than simply piping it from Russia.

But such is politics. Russia is a rather huge country that is very rich in natural resources. It's gone from being a large importer of grains to a large exporter. Which also means it competes with other countries agricultural sector.. Which could end up being rather ironic, if the US is heading towards dust bowl conditions and would need to import. And of course there's California. Large producer of fruit & nuts, but running out of water. It was a great idea to grow water heavy crops like soft fruit & almonds in a state that's got a lot of desert, and not much water. It could fix some of those problems with a few nukes* and some desalination plants to water it's population.

But Russia exports fun stuff like titanium, which is a rather handy metal. Ok, so there's a bunch of sanctions preventing US companies from trading with Russia. But the US has worked around that, like during the Cold War when it need titanium for some of it's strategic projects Russia can always sell strategic minerals to China or India instead.

And of course if Biden decides he's going to live up to his Time magazine cover image, he might get tougher on both Russia and China.. Who of course might retaliate, and the supply of minerals and rare earths dries up. That would be awkward..

*power stations, not glassing some of it's problem areas.

Re: Yet another push for us to all go work at Tesco

Spot on, the rest of us whose whole income is pulled into paye are subsidising these tax dodgers.

You really don't understand IT. It's often project based. So in my case, designing & installng networks. Once that's done, so is my work, and it's on to the next project. Sure, that could be done via PAYE, but that's more complicated for the client, who then becomes an employer for 3-6 months. It's the same with a lot of contracting, ie design/install an application or system. That's short-term work that suits a contracting model.

Re: In the town where my mom lives, someone proposed community broadband WiFi.

And while a lot of the blame does lie with big corporations, a large number of right-leaning, socialism-hating, 'red under the bed' paranoid citizens makes sure the status quo is maintained.

Or am I just being cynical?

Nope, it's just business. Telecomms has long been a natural monopoly, often burgered up by attempts to create 'competition', or just award franchises/licences to entities that end up being a monopoly. So a small, rural ISP that could be happy living off USO money and it's subscriptions. Naturally they'd not want competition either. And it's also incredibly expensive and inefficient to duplicate infrastructure, especially if it's duplicate technology. Customer ends up being able to chose a provider because they've got 2 lines to their house. But that means one line is idle, generating costs but no revenues.

But being a natural monopoly, that means towns should in theory be able to provide a better service given they already own/control a lot of the assets needed. So when roads get resurfaced, run ducts and fibre. But then the muni-net becomes a competitor, and competitors complain.

But such is business, and politics. I'm a big fan of muni-networks, and competitors should be pacified if they're built from standards-based services like Ethernet. Munis can then lease VLANs to other ISPs, who don't then have to build out their own infrastructure and maintain it.

But WiFi isn't the answer, and generally sucks given range limitations, interference and congestion or just the need to provide, power and maintain enough AP's to generate coverage. Fibre is waaaay better, and cheaper in the long run.

Be Gone Protocol

Not sure it would have been BGP. Thinking being that-

a) They're depresssingly common, so avoidable

b) It was a customer configuration that borked things

So I don't know how Fastly built/runs their network, but generally it's a ReallyGoodIdea(tm) to limit any BGP advertisements outside of their domain/instance to prevent routing fun.

Re: Who is Susan Rosenberg?

Technically, Swalwell couldn't given he's obviously a party to the case. But working for the same company, shouldn't have been too hard to get someone to serve papers at the office. Not sure if Swalwell's staff would count as being parties. But Swalwell is presumably smart enough to have figured out how to prevent his case being SLAPP'd down, yet not smart enough to ensure service.

Re: Guess what we found!

Whatever the facts turn out to be this should be one hell of a warning against social media companies deciding what is 'truth'.

Problem is the truth can be rather elusive. Problem is also that 'fact checkers' often aren't, and can't be in posession of the facts. Or the way the narrative can be distorted, or that old chestnut 'taken out of context'. It could still be entirely coincidental that the outbreak originated at (or very near) a lab doing work on SARS-type coronaviruses.

But the denials came swiftly, eg the letter Daszak organised for the Lancet denouncing a 'conspiracy'. Now there's a paper trail seeming to show a money trail. But that still might not have anything to do with the outbreak, just a tad inconvenient. Vanity Fair's done an interesting report, but I think there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Like if the lab wasn't the origin, what was?

Facepalm can afford to shed a few pounds, providing there's no remedies attached that would prevent them from hoovering up zettabytes of people's personal information for fun & profit. So if the case(s) go anywhere, I'd expect the deal to be a few billion in 'penalties', in exchange for carrying on mostly as before.

Also suprised why there was official suprise about the way Facepalm heavily promoted it's single-sign on system, especially pitched at public sector customers. What better way to link data than becoming the official way to link data to people, and help lock them into the Facepalm ecosystem.

Re: You know what

If small, modular, molten salt, reactors actually worked outside of PowerPoints with pictures of green fields with containers on them, the millitary would not bother with their 1950's U235-burning designs!

Ok, so not an MSR as such, but a lead-bismuth cooled reactor was used in the Russian Alfa class speed boats.. A long time ago. Took me a moment to figure out where they'd been used. But guessing there were doctrinal differences, ie US & NATO subs perhaps being expected to be out on extended patrols, whereas the Alfas seemed more of a defensive boat that could surge out & hunt incoming hostile warships.

But drawback was I guess that if a liquid metal reactor cooled, metal solidifies and reactor can't be restarted without first re-melting the metal.. Which would seem difficult/dangerous to try and do at sea, especially in wartime. So I guess it made sense for the West to go with reactor designs that could be restarted rather than risk losing a very expensive boat + crew.

But that wouldn't be as much of an issue for civil reactors, and a 'fail safe' mode has obvious advantages. Think there was a YT channel showing Russian nuclear submarines, and a reactor being lifted out of one. Always impressed me just how small they are. Which I guess is a big part of the reason why I like the SMR concept. Even though the reactor is.. err.. a critical part of a nuclear submarine, it doesn't seem to take up that much hull volume.

And then there's the fuel efficiency, so a nuclear submarine can go a decade or more on a single tank of 'gas' before needing to be refuelled vs conventional submarines or surface ships that need a lot of logistics to keep them mobile.

Re: EV's still need both fuel & servicing

For 6 months a year, my EV is mostly powered by the electricity generated by my Solar Panels. In May, that gave me 590 miles of travel at zero running costs.

I think that's one of those fun economic challenges. So you've essentially built your own filling station, rather than simply using someone elses, ie 590 miles is a couple of tanks of gas, and probably <$100. So you could spend $20-30K+ on solar to get that 'free' 590 miles. Then it gets complicated depending on subsidies for solar PV, and ROI calculations that can be based on 'free' domestic electricity usage and being paid to export electricity.

I wonder how many El Reg commentards really know their energy use pattern? I'd guess at very few.

I think that becomes energy use both domestic, and then driving patterns. So kinda curious how your production ends up being split, ie does it mean your electricity increasingly gets used for car fillng. Then how that changes usage and billing, so if your electricity bills increase. But that's also dependent on how much you've invested in solar. So basic PV might mean you're producing when there's low demand, ie daytime and you're not home & car isn't home either. Or then night time, when you might want to charge, but solar PV is useless.

And then of course there's batteries. Buy a stack of PowerWalls to store that solar at 13kWh a slab and a 5kW discharge to fill an EV with it's own 100kWh battery pack. So then it's how many Powerwalls you need based on your driving patterns, and if your solar PV can keep up with the charging. But charging batteries to charge batteries isn't exactly efficient, even if it makes for fun TCO/ROI calculations.

My EV had its first service back in April after 2 years and 20,000 miles. Total cost £226.00 inc VAT.

I think that's comparable to an ICE, especially given they've improved in reliability a lot over the last couple of decades. Which is something Tesla's also discovering, ie how much it'll cost to service wear parts, like tyres, brakes, suspension etc given EV's can be rather heavy. Also curious if fluids will become an EV thing given there's a lot of plumbing in a Tesla.. And more to come with the new heat pump system. But that's something ICEs have been doing for decades, ie using 'waste' engine heat for cabin heating. And another challenge with EVs, so energy used for cabin heating/cooling eating into range. Which is also true for ICEs, although semi-free via an alternator.

I do expect a mileage base VED to be introduced but quite how they will get around charging for miles driven outside the UK is something for the Politicians to mull over.

I think that's been done & dusted some years ago with all new EU cars having to have a 'black box' that records mileage, and can transmit that.. somewhere. Which could be combined with 'smart' meter networks to pull data from EVs and ICEs and produce a bill.. Which probably won't care where those miles occured. That'll probably end up with another EU bunfight about revenue distribution.

But it's also one of those policy challenges. ICE's already pay road charges, and already distance based. So the more fuel used, the more fuel duty and tax paid. EV's currently get a free ride on those costs, but that will have to change unless governments are content to lose billions from transport duties and taxes. But also has wider economic implications, mass EV adoption will require mass increases in electricity production, and someone has to pay for that.

That may end up being socialised, and all electricity bills increase to prop up EVs.. But obviously that will be rather inflationary, and regressive given the impact on energy poverty. So one of those wicked problems. Governments have been massively subsidising EVs and 'renewables' already, and announcing road charging for EVs will blow holes in marketing claims for low-cost motoring. So the situation in Texas at the moment with EV owners claiming it's unfair to charge them for road usage.

I think it depends how you read it. So I tend to work on traditional fibre being 0.7c or around 4.7ms/1000km. So I'm assuming the 30 & 50% numbers are for the remaining 0.3c, so around 0.85c. It's funky stuff, and I remember when Soton first announced it, but production runs were in the cms. They were also doing some interesting multi-holed cores, which I guess wouldn't pass a dope test..

Re: Indyvote 2

Does England still have any shipbuilding dockyards?

But that's the point of national projects like this. It provides stimulus, and jobs, and helps save the shipyards. Plus has the potential for upsetting McKranky, unless the plan is to donate a partially completed yacht to the SNP as part of a future divorce settlement.

Otherwise, in the interests of the environment, reducing commuting times and building a new centre of excellence for English ship building, senior civil servants have proposed a new shipyard in Fenny Drayton.

(Also in the interests of the environment, it should obviously be a sailing ship. Best start replanting trees now so they'll be ready to use. Be like back in the good'ol days when forests were a strategic reserve to keep the Royal Navy afloat.)

Re: Ready salted packets

Yup. I can kinda see the point to QUIC inside datacentres or in supercomputer environments where parallelism can be handy. On congested public networks, far less so. Or even in congested private/virtually public. But that's always been one of those challenges with the IP suite compared to alternative protocols.

Re: "Not one of these is a bad game so when you add them all together..."

7DtD has been in Alpha since Steam first launched on the ZX81. Which is no bad thing. It even managed to release on the PS4, witness the demise of the porter, get the IP back and may be geting the versions back into line. I do wonder if console porting is a good/bad thing. Old Alphas weren't the best optimised, so console ports may have incentivised that given consoles often have fewer resources to play with.

There's also a fine modding community for 7DtD from simple mods to radical overhauls.

Re: Artemis 3 does not require gateway

SpaceX launching to Mars in 2022 is nearly impossible but cargo to launched to Mars in 2024 is possible and it might even land in one piece a year later. I think NASA can get cargo to the Moon well before 2024 even with a large amount of help from congress.

One snag might be ongoing litigation around Boca Chica, part of which is documented here-

https://rrctx.force.com/s/ietrs-public-file-correspondence/related/500t000000Z1gRsAAJ/Public_Files_Correspondence__r

Quite why Texas railroads handle petrochemicals exploration is probably lost in history, but curious none the less. Although Musk via SpaceX and it's Lone Star Mineral Development LLC entity have applied for licences for oil & gas exploration, there's now two cases ongoing. One's related to Musk's lease of 806 acres of land, much of which is rather soggy. Dallas Petroleum Group (DPG) LLC had leased their chunk of land, which was dry.

Then along came SpaceX, and allegedly decided to help themselves to DPG's lease on the grounds that it wasn't being used. The court filings show DPG disputing that and having paid $6m to lease their parcel, they're entitled to the quite enjoyment of that land. Give or take loud noises and the occasional rain of stainless steel (not of the rat variety).

So there's a seperate case going in a Texan real-estate court over possible fraud and the terms of the lease. Can't find filings for that one.

So all a bit strange.. Ish. Musk's claimed that he's planning to fracc for gas. Fairly quietly though because that's un-green. I think DPG argue that SpaceX has already done some drilling stuff without the correct permits. But DPG seems to have been using it for a disposal well, ie not production, so it seems a bit unclear what the prospects might be for extracting gas there are anyway.

But the site in question also seems to be part of the new construction at Boca Chica, so if court(s) rule DPG's claim holds, that could be a slight snag for SpaceX. Not sure if it's where the Musk's new erection is rising (the 'orbital platform') or it's just part of the expanded tank farm.

But being real-estate, I'm guessing brown envelopes are in play. In telecomms (and probably general real-estate) there's a concept called a 'ransom strip'. Want to cross this bit of land? That's going to cost you. Situation seems complicated by Musk and DPG being lease holders, so not sure if eminent domain could be used, without risking the whole 800 acre parcel. So an 'amicable solution' might be found instead if a $6m+ envelope passes through the land owner to persuade DPG to vacate the lease.

TL;DR, don't get involved in complicated real-estate transactions unless your attorney lists 'shark wrestling' as a hobby.

Re: "in my opinion, he should have been fired for that thing alone"

Oh really, Mr Cummings ?

And you have no such skeletons in your closet ?

Well, there's always Russia. But such is politics that any skeletons are likely to get dug up and spun against the super-spad. Although it was a nice idea to have a UK version of swamp draining, he was up against people who like the swamp just the way it is.

I think the biggest problem was Cummings setting himself up as a chief of staff, rather than being a senior policy advisor. Hancock was still in charge of health, so ultimately responsible, and vaguely accountable for health policy.

Re: Hang on

"silly season" is in the summer. If you mean over Christmas then that seems unlikely as the Chinese themselves didn't sequence it until Jan 5th, releasing the sequence to the West on Jan 11th.

Possibly a better timeline and report here-

https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-health-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-public-health-3c061794970661042b18d5aeaaed9fae

By Dec. 27, one lab, Vision Medicals, had pieced together most of the genome of a new coronavirus with striking similarities to SARS. Vision Medicals shared its data with Wuhan officials and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, as reported first by Chinese finance publication Caixin and independently confirmed by the AP.

...The next day, Chinese CDC director Gao Fu dispatched a team of experts to Wuhan. Also on Dec. 31, WHO first learned about the cases from an open-source platform that scouts for intelligence on outbreaks, emergencies chief Ryan has said.

WHO officially requested more information on Jan. 1. Under international law, members have 24 to 48 hours to respond, and China reported two days later that there were 44 cases and no deaths.

I guess it can depend on when it became 'official', ie did submitting sequence data to GenBank count? But despite some deserved criticism of the WHO, it looked like the outbreak detection system was pretty quick off the err.. bat.

Re: Flim Flammery

Except it turned out IoT was total BS pumped up by twitter famous devs and ISG was a total dud of a product.

And then there was WeWork.. which didn't exactly work out for Softbank

Re: Green vehicles...

Oil production started before ICE were in general use, it will be able to continue after most of ICE have disappeared.

Yup. Once fuel oils have been banned by the neo-luddites, we could go back to using tar on the hulls of sailing ships. Except tar's probably considered an environmental hazard now. I know Wright's 'traditional' coal tar soap now isn't, and just has a distinctly synthetic smell. If it gives people a headache, 4-nitrophenol can be turned into something that can help.

But I'm sure other phenols are available... assuming we're allowed to cut down pine forests. Before they die from pine borer & burn. Ah, California.

But I digress. It's fascinating just how many things can be produced from a barrel of oil. And if neo-luddites get their way, no oil production, no products. Luckily Musk has applied for a licence to fracc at Boca Chica, although it's not clear if he actually owns the land.

Re: Jargon in rubbish out?

We live on a near sphere. Lines of longitude converge at the poles. The view point of a satellite image will emphasise this. This is the way it is and no amount of crybaby wailing can change it.

But the Bbc is supposed to inform, educate and entertain. So yesterday there was a story about the UK's weather. Rather than being text and images, it was a video. In which the presenter basically said it's because it's Spring, and being in between Winter & Summer, we get a bit of both. Not an isobar to be seen. It did devote a bit to waffling about global warming, because obviously when low temperature records are broken, it's global warming.

But then global warming is an area where the Bbc is incredibly biased. Possibly due to it's 'experts' not being scientists, just arts & (oh the) humanties grads. So we get stories about weather 'extremes' interspersed with stories about how we simply must build more windmills and solar that are most vulnerable to those extremes. But although watching the Bbc trying to explain how CO2, a 'well mixed' gas could lead to extremes would be entertaining, it probably wouldn't be that informative.

Re: wth is it with always dns?

It makes me feel like "it's always DNS" is like the folks who try to blame the network for every little problem when it's almost never the network either(speaking as someone who manages servers, storage, networking, apps, hypervisors etc so I have good visibility into most everything except in house apps).

I don't blame the network. DNS isn't the network, it's an app that allows wetware to make use of a network. If DNS is down, the Internet isn't, it's just those cat vids have gone into hiding.

But I have in the past had good cause to blame DNS. Usually when the pager went beep while I was dreaming of new ways to torment sysadmins. Mainly because they controlled the ping to beep software and decided that inability to ping the domain name of a DNS server meant it was a network problem. I'd ping the server by IP address, it'd respond and I'd get to try and wake a sysadmin. That particular issue was eventually solved by a combination of billing for overtime, and creating a shadow ping box that would ignore those, test for both network and app reachability and wake the right person. Sysadmins may like to think they run the network, but that's a neteng's job.

But I digress. DNS isn't my speciality, but curious about a couple of bits. Like why it would be necessary to restart servers for a DNS change. AFAIK that's still a thing if you want to change a server's IP address, but I'd have hoped that in the 21st Century, that could be done on the fly. Then the good'ol push vs pull isuse, like manglement not always understanding that DNS changes aren't pushed. So usual routine of dropping TTL ahead of changes, and hoping resolver/client caches play nicely. And why stuff fell over under load. By stuff, I've seen issues where anti-DDOS systems have caused problems when DNS activity increases due to TTL being lowered, but a decently configured DNS setup should have been able to cope. If not, bit of an oops in Salesforce's capacity management.

Sysadmins again.. :p