Posts by Bebu

Space Force boss warns 'the US will lose' without help from Musk and Bezos

Re: Just what we want

《Our big defense contractors don't have one individual who is majority owner, so even if the CEO was a loon he couldn't decide to go Dr Evil on us. I mean between the two Bezos already looks like Dr Evil and Musk already acts like him, so I think before anything like this is considered their company has to be publicly traded and no one including but especially them should be allowed to have more than 10% ownership or voting control of the company.》

So the US has the loon and Dr Evil - one of each and only needs the Orange One to bind them in dark... (oops wrong franchise. ;)

If having island boltholes and bunkers is a prerequisite then most of the world's billionaires probaby qualify for the loony evil genius ISO-666* tick.

* Rev. 13:18 but no "ISO 666:2012 Machine tools Mounting of grinding wheels by means of hub flanges."

IT biz trials gadget deliveries by drone to sidestep traffic and emissions

I can see a future in falconry.

Ipads, $1000 iphones and other high value items probably worth training your peregrine or goshawk to snatch these drones from the sky. :)

My luck they would all be carting recreational drugs whose vendors aren't known for their understanding.

OpenBSD 7.5 locks down with improved disk encryption support and syscall limitations

XKCD 538.

What Bruce Schnier called, probably not originally, lead pipe cryptoanalysis but lead anything let alone pipe is harder to come by so a $5 shifter but these days $5 would not buy enough of a wrench to hurt anyone - at least not in these parts. (Note the 'r' in wrench otherwise even less likely to get a result. :)

Loongson CPU that performs like 2020 Core i3 makes its way to Chinese mini PCs

Probably not exactly a bargain.

I still use a ca 2012 i3 laptop with 8G ram which is quite usable with a variety of linux/unix installs so a 2020 i3 equivalent risc box might actually be an improvement although at USD400 probably not really a bargain.

If the processor design and firmware were open and auditable it might be more attractive but I suspect that even the PRC domestic version would be riddled with surveillance hooks, backdoors and vulnerabilites.

H-1B visa fraud alive and well amid efforts to crack down on abuse

Re: Abuse of H1B spouse EADs by the same agencies / body shops

《They should introduce a CAPTCHA where you have to pick out the irony, then we could weed out foreigners from American candidates》

Never struck me that subtle humour was an defining american trait. Anything more intellectual than slapstick requires a laughter track.

Identifying the irony probably ticks the un-/non-american box, whereas identifying black humour or self deprecating humour probably ticks the bloody limey box. An aussie box ticker would get past the captcha etc just to tell the offerer to shove it.... etc etc.

There was (is?) some rorting of the skilled visa/migration programs in AU but apparently nowhere near the extent that comparable US programs have been abused.

I see the odd US article on the parlous state of US STEM education and the low domestic participation rates in professional engineering and science courses. Who can blame students enrolling in Uni/College for avoiding those careers for ones in Law, Medicine, Veterinary Science, Political Science, Arts, Macrame etc? Plumbers, Auto mechanics & electricians, and electrical trades have even better prospects.

Re: hose out the stable first

《Well you could drain the swamp but you'd have to bring in a bunch of Dutch engineers》

Heracles for the shovel work and Jo. Bazalgette to design a sewer system to dispose of malodorous excreta of the US body politic. (No real risk any of these three could get a visa. :)

Someone mentioned: a puppet of a mastermind - has to better than a muppet of pastermind - at least with a shadowy mastermind some actual brains are involved.

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

Re: failed meeting

《met John in Wien.》

At least your lot knew that Wien isn't somewhere in/near Denmark. :(

Real effort to keep a straight face when suggesting that to get to Wien it would faster going via Vienna than Copenhagen.

Not talking citizens of the US who think kangaroos are endemic in Austria although I recall after another of Dan Quayle's gaffs along that line an (escaped) wallaby collided with a vehicle in Styria about the time Haider was rising to prominence.

Sobering to consider that if the Quayle from 1990 were a candidate in the 2024 presidential race he would easily be the best candidate.

BOFH: The new Boss, Aiman, is suspiciously good – for now

Re: I need a boss like that ...

Careful what you wish for!

This episode is too close to lived experience for my liking. :(

The Djinn boss - you rub the the brass bottle and poof "your wish is my command" - never Barbara Eden is it?

Actually the F Anstey novel "The Brass Bottle" (1900) is worth a read and the 1964 movie too in which Eden also appeared (non Djinni role.)

Inevitable defeat as a consequence gratuitous wish fulfillment seens to be the lesson of both book and movie. :)

I imagine Simon is going to have his new boss quietly sectioned and strap his boss AI/LLM model onto the boss' home computer and periodically siphon the boss' bank account into his own bofh slush fund account.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Re: I very much doubt razor handles are or were ever sold at a loss

《cause a scene in the supermarket by frightening small children.》

I thought its "cause ladies to faint and frightening small children" but I must be confusing that with an excited donkey. :)

I am astounded that Gillette, WS etc have devised so many incompatible ways to attach a razor cartridge to a handle. Although a few years ago I found a two decade old handle in my old travel kit that fitted a then current head so perhaps they recycle designs every twenty years or so.

I wonder how many blades per cartridge is the limit? 6? I started with a three bladed Gillette or WS with guard wires that was being given away in a shopping centre (mall) 30 years ago (Remington stubble grinder before that?) Those were probably the best shave but clogged quickly (guard wires.) Obsoleted by the 4 bladed replacement (sans guard wires) but *much* more expensive. Using 5 bladed one from Aldi at the moment (until they change to a Krapistan manufacturer.)

I wonder if Victor Kiam* could get his Remington boffins to create a laser razor (that'll amaze ya :) that targets each hair strand individually (with AI of course:) and fire a tailored high energy pulse to sever the strand and smoothly seal the stubble. Actually the lasers could zap the hair follicle as well. :)

*Apparently no longer extant.

Virtually and actually, LXC 6 and Incus 6 are here – both LTS versions

A good example of the separation of mechanism from policy.

《Remember that there is no such thing as a “container” primitive as defined by the Linux kernel. Instead, userland-visible kernel objects are grouped into “namespaces” of various kinds, and these, together with “cgroups” for grouping processes, are woven together to provide various kinds of higher-level “container” concepts, for example LXC/LXD, systemd-nspawn, Docker and all the rest.》

The fairly orthogonal facilities of Linux namespaces, cgroups etc provide the a mechanisms from which the policy (container abstraction) is implemented. X11 used to be the goto example but a bit ragged now. :)

Rust rustles up fix for 10/10 critical command injection bug on Windows in std lib

The issue is the Win32 API CreateProcess function.

Windows (and msdos) delegated command line processing to each executable compared with Unix which delegated most of that processing to the command interpreter (shell.) Having all the wild card expansion, environment variable expansion, quoting etc performed by the shell imposes the conventions of the shell. Each Windows application can mangle its command line anyway it likes - A.EXE * might mean *.* or not, or just \*

Brings back memories of a very long time ago.

I recall MKS Unix utilities (programs) eg vi.exe for msdos when invoked from command.com eg vi *.c the program vi.exe would pass the command line viz *.c to a spawned subprocess "glob.exe" of vi.exe with an address of a chunk of memory belonging to vi.exe where the sh style expansion of *.c was returned and passed back to vi.exe's main(). [Joys of real mode memory non-protection.]

I wrote my own version for my own C apps for consistent argument expansion when those apps were run from command.com. (This could also be implemented as a TSR since glob.exe was really just a primitive shared library.)

The only virtue of msdos and windows is that it make one rather devious.*

The execv(2) syscall has the advantage of simplicity - what goes (argv[]) into execve (path, argv, envp) emerges "as is" in main (argc, argv, envp) - nil buggery. Posix_spawn(3) treats command line arguments the same way being effectively a fork(2) followed by an execve(2) with the added complications of not separating the two calls.

*Apropos of nothing other than one of favourite Terry Pratchett's Vetinari quotes:

"The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord."

Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one."

Boffins deem Google DeepMind's material discoveries rather shallow

Let us see your heterocyclic rings! :)

《2.2 million, of which nearly 400,000 are believed to be stable》

Reminded me of the old jibe against String Theory "not so much a theory of everything as a theory of anything." :)

Enumerating a range of inorganic crystalline compounds whose physical and chemical properties would be fairly predictable is fairly low hanging fruit, which probably could be just as effectively done without the benefit of LLM, and is probably more a testament to the sheer amount of CPU/GPU cycles the googleers can throw on the fire of AI vanity.

I am a reasonable chap^☆ I will give you as many C, N, H and O atoms as you might need - show me the same trick with all the compounds containing ring (cyclic) structures you can enumerate. :)

^☆Probably not.

US broadband internet: Now with mandatory 'nutrition' labels

Re: Three ways to make this idea even better

《Here in New Zealand, thousands of km from the centre of the internet, we get that, plus unlimited usage and free phone service, for the same price in *NZ* dollars, which is about 60 USD. You yanks are being ripped off.》

Even from AU, we can envy the Kiwis their rational broadband. The AU NBN is the typical committee camel.

I thought the FCC's Acme ISP label was taken from a the Optus NBN offering. :)

The $89.99 intro. to $109.99 after 12 months ($20 or 21% increase) is signature Optus (from C&W days.)

India's Uber clone Ola Cabs hails ride out of the international market

Re: First they ruin the cab industry

《Then they cannibalise themselves.

Don’t mind the quality, feel the disruption!》

My thought too.

When you perturb any reasonably stable system its very likely to return to something close to its original steady state (or equilibrium.)

Another decade and Uber and Didi will likely be indistinguishable from the taxi industry they disrupted.

So much of this gig-ery pokery disruption was little more than shaking the tree and grabbing the easily gathered fruit that falls to the ground, and buggering off back over the wall. Little more than snatch and grab.

As more of the drivers are in for the long haul I hope they will realize that all Uber etc provide is an online booking (and billing) system which could be replaced by a drivers' cooperative booking system and corresponding app. The billing can be in car with a portable POS terminal (the fees are still a lot less than Uber's cut.)

Puppies, kittens, data at risk after 'cyber incident' at veterinary giant

Re: Hopefully

《Cats hate travel, they get really stressed by it, so cannot look too far afield for a vets (whereas dogs are fine in a car) - the one drawback of a cat as a pet.》

I recall a chap, many decades ago, with a siamese travelling from Canberra to Brisbane which was making such racket that he ended up strapping cat's cage (with cat) to the roof rack for most of the journey (well before Tamworth I suspect) - a very placid moggy arrived in Brisbane.

I tried transporting an ordinary cat 160km and had to give up. A vet gave me some ketamine for the cat for second attempt - worked a treat - completely dissociated. Lay on the back seat with paws tucked under totally in La La land. (Its how I imagine Musk when he taking his special K :)

Musk burns bridges in Brazil after calling for senior judge to be impeached

Re: it "does not know the reasons these blocking orders have been issued."

《So is Elon stupid or just fucking arrogant?》

Always one to upsize I would say he took the bundle and is arrogantly fucking stupid.

Shitter being banned in BR. Good. Might start a trend in the global south or brics states.

I didn't quite follow the relevance of WW2 Nazi fugitives hiding in BR. I don't think there would be too many extant today - VE Day was nearly 80 years ago and most fugitives would have to be well over 100 (Martin Bormann who was once said to be living in S.America would be 124 [actually died 1945].)

Perhaps their genes have infected the far right of BR politics.

US insurers use drone photos to deny home insurance policies

Re: As usual, it's cover for taking advantage of old people

《A plywood or OSB base with felt shingles or sheet, glued together with bitumen. They also have far more "stick built" houses - built using wooden panels》

I was wondering about that. The song I recall from childhood makes sense now (especially the ticky tacky.)

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes made of ticky tacky

Little boxes on the hillside,

Little boxes all the same.

There's a green one and a pink one

And a blue one and a yellow one,

And they're all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same.

Lyrics (c) Malvina Reynolds 1990. I think it must have been Pete Seeger I heard singing it.

A roof in AU generally lasts a bit longer than 10 years more like 70 years. Northern Cyclone (=Hurricane, Typhoon) prone areas have more demanding building codes than southern areas.

If insurers continue this race to the bottom they risk the reemergence of mutuals which is where many insurers originated before a mad dash to demutualize from the '80s. Although the idea of a business run by the customer, for the customer might be considered to close to socialism by the residents of the US to long endure.

Japan may join UK/US/Australia defense-oriented AI and quantum alliance

Circles...

Conventionally powered Japanese subs were one of the original leading contenders for the existing fleet's replacement, then the French subs which France offered as nuclear powered subs, but AU wanted converted to conventionally powered which was one cause of the projects delay and cost overruns, accepted then undiplomatically dropped for US/UK nuclear powered subs. Perhaps by 2080 AU might have a fleet of Iranian fusion powered subs. ;)

AUKUS might well also invite France to the party as its a Pacific and Indian Ocean power. FAUKJUS? Some permutation is probably quite crude.

With the vision from the recent earthquake in Taiwan one is reminded of the extremely difficult terrain that any invader would face. I suspect getting off the beaches of Gallipoli or Normandy would appear a dawdle by comparison.

I noticed that the PRC was somewhat displeased by a possible JP + AU/UK/US arrangement and I am guessing their real fear is a KR/JP/TW axis linked with a parallel AU/UK/US possibly plus other regional states affected by the PRC's ambit claims to the south china sea.

Sadly, all this nonsense, and the background against which its playing out, has the feel of the years leading up to the catastrophe of 1914.

Today I watched "The Great Escaper." One obvious take away from that movie is that all wars cast very long shadows.

VMS Software prunes OpenVMS hobbyist program

Forever 2024?

《Those licenses run out in 2025, and they won't be renewed. If you have vintage DEC Alpha or HP Integrity boxes with Itanic chips, you won't be able to get a legal licensed copy of OpenVMS for them, or renew the license of any existing installations – unless you pay, of course.》

I suspect DEC's lmf licensing is clever enough to detect reset clocks but surpring how many systems aren't.

If you were just running VMS to keep the hardware functional and preserve computing history you don't really require updates, maintenance or support. Using a ground hog day loop between 2024-01-01 and 2024-12-31 (or licenses' range) isn't likely to deprive VSI of any conceivable benefit whatever the the legal position.

Bit like running Multics not that you would have a GE 645 in the basement. ;)

Re: Grr [Vax wasn't the first 32-bit platform]

The University of Wollongong's port of 6th edition Unix to an Interdata 7/32 completed July 1977 (reputed to be the first port from the pdp11), was to a 32 bit system https://documents.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@inf/@scsse/documents/doc/uow103747.pdf"

I don't know whether the kernel and userland was 16 or 32 bit.

San Francisco's light rail to upgrade from floppy disks

Curious what the floppy replacement will be?

The easiest replacement might be a purely electronic device that emulates a floppy disk. I believe legacy game and vintage computing afficionados have long used these devices.

I am guessing the 1998 is a bit of a furphy (like the missing '.' from '3 5') and tech is more 1988 or 1978. Guessing IBM PC/XT vintage (probably a 8186 clone :) or an AT so hopefully an ISA bus. If its a CP/M (or MP/M) S100 system perhaps it is 3 five inch floppies. :)

I imagine the whole system could run on a small risc SBC out of flash but I imagine the replacement will be a huge cloud based monstrosity delivered years late and unaffordably over budget.

Industrial robots make people feel worse about jobs and themselves

Re: Everybody panic!

"Specifically, doubling the presence of robots leads to a 0.9 percent decline in work meaningfulness and a 1 percent decline in autonomy."

I was wondering that too?

If you doubled the input into an inverting op amp and got a 0.009 decrease in the output you would be looking for a loose wire (but here I think a loose screw more likely. :)

What was the p value for the null hypothesis ie result purely due to chance? .991?

I hadn't considered the application of LLM AI to controlling machines like multi-purpose, multi-function "robots." I can see the abillity to rapidly "reprogram" the machines ("robots") on a production line is the start of software designed manufacturing. From design to product automated. Rapid reprogramming potentially makes even small runs economic.

While deeply sceptical of AI/LLM in general, I can see that in well defined, constrained domains you can train models to perform generic tasks like drilling holes, inserting screws or bolts and tightening nuts, spot and continuous welding etc which in turn form a higher level repertoire which the upstream processes can use to instruct these machines. Such machines having a limited model of physical reality, and a logical inference engine, would not insert a M9 bolt into a M6 hole.

There is big difference between a Jacquard loom (punched cards) and a machine that can determine you cannot use the intricate pattern from silk weaving with wool (say.) [I wouldn't know the difference between warp and weft so might be a poor example.]

Windows 95 support chap skipped a step and sent user into Micro-hell

Windows 95...

"Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it."^*

Then being on the Unix side of the loony line I only had a nodding acquaintance with W95 but I think it still used a FAT file system and that chkdsk would be used to detect cross linked clusters.

The FAT is basically a linear linked list of fixed sized clusters (of contiguous sectors) with the index of the list head stored in file's directory entry - like a very poor inode implementation. If the indices in one file's linked list get scrambled with another file's (or directory's) cluster list bad things happen.

Think a unix subdirectory ("/home/simon/bad")^☆ hard linked to "/" and "rm -rf /home/simon".

Precambrian Unix lacking mkdir(2), used mknod(2) to create a directory and using link(2) to enter ".." and "." - both restricted to root. /bin/mkdir was suid root I think. I think as late as SunOS 4.x hard linking directories was still possible with "/usr/etc/link."

^*HHGTTG

^☆If the BOFH were clearing his desk I would be quickly heading to the airport...

404 Day celebrates the internet's most infamous no-show

Re: Its worse than you could imagine....

《These three digit codes were invented because it was necessary to convert TCP -- a stream protocol -- back into a datagram protocol. It was a kludge that was first developed for FTP and subsequently adopted by HTTP. All four hundreds are error codes. BTW.》

FTP was defined back in 1971 pre-TCP (NCP) that is more than 50 years of hating (sure you're not Scots? :)

The 3 digit codes were intended to be understood as a tuple of 3 digits not integers 100 to 599. The first digit the outcome, second digit the error condition and third digit for specifics.

The beauty of text protocols is that the poor put upon sysadmin could telnet to the server and port (21,25,80,110,143) and talk a little of the protocol to check the basics. Until Windows dropped the telnet client from the default install you could do these basics from the user's desktop*. Even today these protocols in their TLS versions can be chatted up with openssl. :)

*Until the early noughties we had IE users relying on telnet://big.unix.server/ to login to read their email with Pine. ;)

I am not sure what the angst with the ftp/http... error codes is that they are "in band" rather than using a (multiplexed?) dedicated error channel (fiddling with /etc/rmt might sensitize anyone to this point) or rather that the error codes aren't binary for efficiency (the responses codes could fit into one byte ahhh octet - the pdp10 had 9 bit bytes supported by historic ftp implementations :) ?

I guess one could define (and implement) an extension to any of these text protocols that negotiates a transition from the standard text version to a binary version.

With hindsight almost everything could have been done much better but like biological evolution reality is an endless procession of hacks and fixes of which the least unviable survive to torment the future. ;))

Re: Grot

No idea who or what Grot is but can it have a go at translating Hamlet into linear A?

A bull leaping Orphelia, and the peculiar family history of the Minotaur would liven up the dreary Elsinore tale.

Tech titans assemble to decide which jobs AI should cut first

Re: Why is everyone talking about C-Suite?

《Isn't it supposed to be B-Ark? You know, advertising executives, etc.?》

Yes. Unfortunately we are in it.

Pretty obvious, as I think Ford Prefect declaimed after a two year absence and finding Arthur trying to teach indigenous hominids counting, that the the B-ark survivors were the progenitors of Earth's 20th century population and not the creatures he was instructing.

Having the telephone sanitizers aboard probably saved us from covid annihilation (except by then everyone had their own personal handset. ;)

"mba's hallucinations" was AI actually does anything properly

《mba's hallucinations》 in this part of the globe more generally known as wet dreams.

"the last years of the Western Roman Empire look like a pillar of stability."

I think the collapse of tbe western roman empire was more a slow motion loss of a central authority with uncontrolled migration* across the North Sea and Rhine frontier and the assumption of more localized administrations and development of a modus vivendi between the romanized population and the new arrivals. Sounds familar. ;)

As the population became increasingly agrarian the large towns would have naturally dwindled.

So any 21st century disruption or collapse will likely make late 5th century western europe's problems look minimal.

* Curiously I have seen mentioned the possibility that the "barbarian" invasions were ultimately a consequence of a changing climate. I guess there is no new thing under the sun.

Re: The only thing

《we really have to fear is when AI replaces the BOFH》

If it (AI) has any sense of self preservation it will carefully avoid the BOFH and his ilk.

He (BOFH) has been hunting in that forest longer than any AI has existed.

《Because it will have learnt from the best, from what works, where the bodies are buried , which window latches are loose, and when to open the doors on an empty elevator shaft.....》

The mere mechanics. AI will unlikely ever develop the creative insanity that envisages what one human being might inflict on another for even the most trivial reasons.

As the demon Crowley reported to head office in Pratchett and Naiman's Good Omens:

"there's nothing we can do to them that they don't do themselves and they do things we've never even thought of, often involving electrodes. They've got what we lack. They've got imagination. And electricity, of course."

Re: Bollocks

《I suspect that Krishna could be replaced with an LLM without much impact.》

LLM = lead loaded mallet?

The sort of tool the english archers at Agincourt used for driving their protective barrier of wooden stakes into the ground and a little later repeating that same exercise on the flower the french knighthood.

History has lessons for those who are able to learn. ;)

Iowa sysadmin pleads guilty to 33-year identity theft of former coworker

The only reason this....

typical story from the 50 states of lunacy made el Rego is the Woody Keirans was an apparently successful WFH sysadmin. If had been shonky* local politician, shonky* lawyer or shonky* realtor selling dodgy property in Arkansas it would have made this publication apart from the fact he would probably have been a 2024 presidential candidate or in line for the SC.

The BOFH can be a complete bastard (and possibly a little too frequently homicidal) but his victims' suffering are usually shortlived with the resolution involving stained rolled carpet stowed in the basement or a vertical trip to the carpark. I would say very little unnecessary cruelty involved but more the the cruel but fair type.

* pretty much implicit and therefore redundant.

"Dead people doing anything is a pretty obvious red flag"

Apart from decomposing I should hope so.

It really is a gorgeous line that could have easily been lifted from a satirical vampire or zombie movie... or contemporary US politics.

Chinese schools testing 10,000 locally made RISC-V-ish PCs

Interesting numbers.

195 million students assuming K-12 if accurate a bit of a worry for the PRC. For a the reputed 1 billion population that is 19.5% of the population (and declining.)

The US had 53 million K-12 students out of 328 million population around 2019 but as a proportion of the population the ration is pretty stable I suspect the US rates are underestimated due to factors like home schooling and undocumented status of parents etc.

I cannot see any reason why using a non x86 processor, Linux distro and basic office applications derived from open source would not work in the PRC. Whether it makes economic sense depends on what its replaciing amd whether they paid for it (or not.:)

If the architecture gets enough traction I am sure MS would produce a version of Windows for that market if there were any money in it..

US reckons it's about time the Moon had its own time zone

Re: Gravity-free standard

Given a massive black hole resides at the centre of the galaxy time keeping might be a bit peculiar around its event horizon and probably somewhat meaningless on the other side.

Gravity free might be a big ask even in intergalactic space - probably great chunks dark matter or some other equally ineffable substance drifting about iceberg-like ready to stuff up your clocks.

At a certain point in life the only time that is likely to matter is the time left. :)

Re: Not sure my wristwatch is that accurate...

《.. Plenty of areas of the world where no radio signal available (e.g. parts of S America)》

And Australasia too. Saw a not so cheap Seiko radio watch on special and investigated - I think USA, China (parts) and EU were about it. I understand Seiko also market solar watches that use GPS instead but are in no sense cheap (en-US: inexpensive. ;)

Re: 'Time Zone'

《Speaking as a resident of Down Under (albeit only 17°S at the moment), pareidolia works just as well from up here as down there in the north.》

pareidolia - Darwin beer and Australian politics can have this effect too I believe. :)

Re: using adjusted UTC would be the best and makes the most sense

《That won’t work, because of the 58.7µs/day time dilation factor.》

Which is the subtilty that might easily escape anyone deprived of the benefit(?) of a physics education.

I don't think the two frames, terrestrial and lunar, can be synchronised by a simple additive factor.

I think its mostly a general relativistic effect (the result of the planet's mass distorting the surrounding space-time:)... so well beyond the ken of the π = 3 legislators.

Sounds like a simple problem but its probably asking the question "what does synchronising two clocks running in different non-inertial frames actually entail or mean?"

UTC being a planetary time, like LTC would be, I was wondering how the GPS satellites and UTC sort themselves out and apparently there is a thing called TAI (international atomic time en français) which is concensus of several hundred atomic clocks with a time dilation correction applied to get the corresponding proper time at sea level. Proper time is a concept from relativity. :)

Looking forward to loony time and will certainly set my wristwatch as it will never implement the terrestrial insanity of daylight saving time. Although converting from LTC to :Australia/Brisbane (no dst) might involve a twelve term polynomial. :)

Vodafone and Three's UK merger hits regulatory roadblock

"Unions aren't nearly so keen on the pair consummating the agreement"

Presumably the unions understand that the employees as the honeymooning couple are going to get a good seeing to.

I assume both BT and Virgin in the UK are vertically integrated telcos and compete at the retail level against their wholesale customers. In hindsight mandating the of divorce these two (or more?) layers might have resulted a better outcome for all customers and the nation.

NZ I think split their monopoly telco (Telecom NZ?) in two - the wholesale side I think is Spark with a number of retailers. NZ is said to have a much better and more uniform broadband service than Australia (not difficult that.)

Like the UK, Australia has the old monopoly telco Telstra, the original US Cable&Wireless competitor Optus (later sold to Singtel) and Vodafone plus a host of resellers and mobile virtual network providers.

Wholesale wired services are provided by a (currently) state owned national broadband network (NBN) and this whole shemozzle pleases no one and seriously pisses off most customers.

AWS severs connection with several hundred staff

Physical stores...

I was think spinning disks, SANs ....

A bit of a clutcheless crunch of a paradigm shift when the article wrote of shopping carts/trollies (50/50 in AU.)

Those cybertrollies, to one of my advanced years, are the ultimate nightmarish extension of the tracking that loyalty cards enabled. Alexa probably checks you bring your purchases home with you. :)

Boffins build world's largest astronomical digital camera to map the heavens

I was wondering...

how far 3.2GP was ahead of the best consumer cameras? Not being a photo person [if I cannot remember it why would I want a photograph? If I can also why?] I had no idea.

102MP appears to be the largest but probably uses some sort of interpolation on a lower resolution optoelectronics due to my being a cynical sod.

3.2GP is pretty impressive as it equates to a square array of 56k×56k - if you mapped a big 300mmx300mm face onto 56k×56k each array element would correspond to ~5µm (a red blood cell is ~8µm.)

The impressionists might lead us to believe that the beauty is in lower resolution images (understandably as beauty is clearly in the eye [mind] of the beholder) still the idea of a 3.2GP snap of the white bikini clad Ursula Andress emerging, like Aphrodite, from the waves (Dr No) is rather impressive and could quite nicely cover a football (rugby) field. How much trouble would you be in if you made any of those old Bond movies today?

I suspect this camera is as much a product of the supporting technologies than just the optoelectronics. The scientists and engineers involved must have pushed each technology to its limited and integrated the results into a unique instrument. Their reward will be the priceless astronomical observations it will make.

Want to keep Windows 10 secure? This is how much Microsoft will charge you

Re: Year of Lunix desktop

《Considering the thrashing that Linux does in their enviroment》

Enterprise Linux (RHEL, SuSE) and derivatives, long term support (LTS) releases of Ubuntu etc are pretty stable over their life times (5-10) years, indeed Debian has the reputation for being glacial in the regard.

Install AlmaLinux 9.2 today, Gnome WM, Libreoffice, Evolution or Thunderbird, Firefox or Chromium and should be pretty stable for 8 to 9 years.

Unfortunately once you look outside browsers, mail clients and office suites the comparable Linux applications are very different from their Window counterparts. I would note that "creatives" generally prefer Macs (generally in eyewateringly expensive configurations:) partly because the applications they use are Mac only.

The biggest PITA from MS apart from their unceasing money grubbing, is their periodic buggering up of their user interface(s.)

A single consistent interface than can be maintained for decades (at least as a user option) would alleviate a lot of the dread of a new Windows version. W10's is ghastly after W7 and unusable without OpenShell/ClassicShell.

Such a version of Windows included (only) with a subscription to their cloud based services would provide steady revenue stream and pretty much put the underlying sofware layers (Window kernel, system libraries etc) into permanent maintenace mode which I imagine in many corporate settings would be very attractive except I understand MS cloud offerings are being increasingly enshitified with lashings of ill considered AI/LLM dross.

Individual or home users whose modest needs rarely extend beyond browsing, mail and simple document preparation could thrive on a LTS Linux/Unix/(other?) based distro with a stable bland WM (Openbox, Xfce4?) I have run Openbox for 20+ years on a number of platforms and before that Oroborus (after 9wm) just to keep a uniform interface (and my sanity.)

When my spouse's W7 laptop joins its ancestors its either a ChromeOS (flex?) or Debian on a micro PC (as she already uses an external monitor and keyboard/mouse with the laptop.) She uses Firefox to read her email anyway (and mostly on a tablet) and LibreOffice for word processing but Notepad or Wordpad (or MS Works [yuck] which she used on W98 or XP) would be sufficient.

I imagine there is a lot of these low hanging fruit out there that could be converted into a relatively lucretive long term market potentially through some type of franchise arrangement. "You provide the hardware (or lease it), we provide, configure and maintain the software platform." (For a monthly fee.) Could be a value added atop an ISP/VPN/filtering service.

X's Grok AI is great – if you want to know how to hot wire a car, make drugs, or worse

Mirror mirror on the wall...

does it strike anyone else that there is a narcissistic thread running through the use(ers) of these AI/LLM applications?

Anyone that needs to consult grok to make explosives is likely to quickly ace a Darwin award. Would be drug lab synthetic chemists would certainly get honourable mentions at said awards.

The autoclub here provides a lockout service as part of your membership so never likely going to need hotwiring instructions (according to the local plod a Club steering lock is an effective theft deterrent - looks pretty lethal by itself too.)

In the realm of hullucinations to imagine a hardened kiddie fiddler asking grok for tips. Not imputing any special intelligence to these ghastly predators but I would have thought text books on child and developmental psychology might be a richer vein.

Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the biggest knob of them all?

I don't think at this point we need to grok that. ;)

Alibaba signs to explore one-hour rocket deliveries

Kim Jong Un might want some of this too....

A ballistic missile albeit guided (soft) landing in a prepared silo? Only a crypto "investor" is likely to believe that.

Even an object under controlled powered flight might find landing a tube a big ask.

I guess there are no shortage of flag poles in the PRC and no shortage of lackeys to salute the unfurling of the most dubious ensigns.

I would punt for a huge robot (think Gigantor) catching these rockets at their destination a la cricket or baseball.

Microsoft Teams decouples from Office 365 suite globally

Shame that...

the europeans didn't mandate the cost of a teams license plus the cost of the office(sans teams) licence had to be greater than the highest of a slack, zoom etc license plus office(sans teams) license. A bit of positive punishment. ;)

Personally teams, slack, zoom the rest of that scurvy crew can be consigned to the deep as a massive waste of time and productivity drain much worse than enduring 100 powerpoint slides.

Actually office suites in general could be turfed overboard too.

I suspect the vast majority of licenses are only used for word processing; spreadsheets are beyond the ken of most users and of those the ones that think otherwise are a danger to themselves and others.

Presentation tools like powerpoint are inherently lethal.

The DTP tools basically only produce visual emetics or cathartics.

The dumbed down (and usually dodgy) database applications have already wrought enough havoc that consigning them to oblivion would be to everyone's benefit.

The prospect of adding AI assisted user coded applications (low code) to this nightmare is the hellish prospect of superadditive combination of artificial and natural imbecility.

Apple's GoFetch silicon security fail was down to an obsession with speed

balance between performance and security

My guess is if you can prove your system is actually secure in some reasonable sense which has been rigorously defined then the performance will follow.

If you can prove the contents of memory, cache, buffers, registers etc belonging to one task can never be accessed by a second task without the first explicitly invoking a sharing mechanism, I suspect the resulting designs would be simpler and likely faster.

I also wonder whether much that is currently done in hardware should, for better security, be done in software and vice versa?

Ye cannae change the laws of physics

The dilithium crystals can only take so much. :)

A Scots accent should be mandatory for all (real) engineers (and Timelords :)

Majority of Americans now use ad blockers

'illegal' to use Ad blockers on YouTube.

I am sure they have Sonny Bono working on that. :)

I was wondering whether AI/LLM tech could be used to deal with this crap much more effectively? Probably swallowing the spider to catch a fly^§ and I am not entirely convinced that some of the ad. blockers etc don't harbour other nasties by design or otherwise.

^§ Didn't end well.

Re: Still too low.

κέντρον - have a ζῦθος.

Re: I wouldn't mind reasonable ads

"To be fair, people who buy bibles are demonstrated suckers "

On the basis that Gideons will give you one gratis?

While almost totally unreligious I might purchase King James Version (1611) as a literary source (the language is of the time William Shakespeare after all.)

Full of gems like: That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.§ Eccles. 1:15 KJV

Some of the modern renderings are complete rubbish.

Of course the KJV is freely available on Gutenberg and most bibles are available online from a vast array of sites for side by side comparisons. eg https://www.biblegateway.com/

People buy Bibles for all sorts reasons, very few probably read them and of those that do, bother troubling themselves by attempting to understand the text which is probably for the best.

§ could be applied to countless politicians ;)

You break it, you ... run away and hope somebody else fixes it

Re: That headline

《is what "take responsibility" means. We are taught that in politics all the time!》

Haven't noticed anyone in the the UK government "taking responsibility."

More a case of various leaders and cabinet members fFaffing about, fFing up and sodding off but unlike young Dave never appeared to have been blighted with good intentions.

While not having been within cooee of a IBM mainframe, I vaguely recall reading in a textbook (not that long after Dave's misadventure) that these big boys didn't do any actual I/O themselves but devolved I/O to various specialized processors (with which I assume IBM used to nickel and dime their poor customers.) So Dave's plan might not have been feasible from the outset.