Posts by Like a badger

Space Force tech mission threatened by staff and funding black hole

Re: A more lethal military

And typing skills. Somebody's got to follow in JD's footsteps, bravely knocking out toilet paper requisitions in triplicate, 30 miles away from any fighting.

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

"Well that's self-serving bollocks for a start."

Actually it's not. The UK has frittered enough on renewables in the past ten years (circa £350 billion) to have built ten twin EPRs that would have given a total output of 32 GW. We've got just over 5 GW of existing nuclear, so 32+5 is would meet total demand with plenty of reserve for 95% of days of the year. Instead we've got a fleet of wind and poor quality solar that are erratic and cost as much per GWh as nuclear, and we have rely on French exports and CCGT to keep the lights on.

Estimating AI energy usage is fiendishly hard – but this report took a shot

Re: Five second video equals 38 miles on an ebike?

How much power is involved in AI image generation? And does it get higher asking things like "Produce me a very high resolution picture of a ten armed octopus climbing a tree in the rain forest; the octopus has a fractal pattern on its skin, and the trees have leaves where no two leaves are the same colour"

Trump announces $175B for Golden Dome defense shield over America

"as they exile all their criminals, wankers and frauds to the US to be amongst their own kind"

It's already started: You've been burdened with Harry Markle for four years already. Could we persuade you to take Boris Johnson as well?

Re: So...

Surely no enemy needs attack America now: No military weapon could be more damaging to US interests than having the Orange Felon in control.

M&S warns of £300M dent in profits from cyberattack

Re: A £300million reduction in profits

On the contrary, we'll get little official info, because it will be deemed "price sensitive", and the press and investor relations team will work hard to suck any facts out of official announcements.

Nvidia part of plans for mega 1.4 GW AI datacenter near Paris

"I'm glad "EDF will provide some piece of land they've got close to some nuclear plants [for] direct capacity" as that makes the most sense indeed"

Perhaps near Penly near Dieppe. There's already a 2.7 GW station there, and early works started for an additional pair of EPR. Plenty of water, cooler climate than southern options, looks to be low value farmland all around, and stuff all local demand that I can see on the map. Roughly equi-distant from Paris, Brussels and London as well.

Of course, if France goes big on AI and DCs, then there will be less export capacity, even allowing for new build. That would be really bad news for the UK, Ireland and Italy, whose flawed energy policies rely on imports mostly from France. So does Germany, but not to the same extent (leccy imports 2% of German demand, 9%.of UK demand, 11% of Irish demand, 18% of Italian demand).

Nvidia sets up shop in Taiwan with AI supers and a factory full of ambition

Re: Necessary Infrastructure

When it reunites with China that won't be a problem.

Whilst I don't see that as a good thing, Pooh has been building a purpose-specific invasion fleet to be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027, and that's likely more about pressuring Taiwan's leadership to "voluntarily re-assimilate with China" than real desire to invade and trash the place.

To progress as an engineer career-wise, become a great communicator

Re: Reality check

"The idea that engineers should have to wrap every technical insight in a TED Talk just to be heard is a symptom of how broken things are."

You've misunderstood. Doesn't need to be "every technical insight", it is about knowing your audience and communicating with them on their terms. Discussion with coders or tech architects is very different from sharing insights with non-expert colleagues, or time poor senior leaders. Some of your audience you want to bring problems to, others solutions, others options for decision.

"Being able to understand critical information even when it’s dry is part of the job"

In your perfect universe, perhaps. But if that were true, we wouldn't see corporations getting hacked day in day out due to under-investment in ITsec. The reality is different, you need to adapt for human nature, and then also for other issues like power politics, budgets, prior knowledge. Now factor in that any senior leader actually has a large span of control and lots of plates to keep juggling, and have very little time then no, it's not their job to understand all critical information when poorly presented. That's the job of the people who go to them.

Some people send papers to a board meeting accompanied by "pre-read" materials that the sender thinks are important; This shows these people don't think about their audience, and don't attend (even in silent capacity) any senior level meetings, because for every senior leader who reads the pre-read, I'll find you around 50-100 who won't.

It is simple: Know your audience, present your information concisely to get the right outcome, telling them only what they need to know, in terms they understand. I'm not sure why you're fighting against this?

Re: Engineering English is not English

"When I reached the level where I was reviewing resumes, I quickly had to dispose of the old "throw away any resume with a spelling or grammatical mistake" rule, because they all had grammatical and spelling mistakes. "

Grammar and spelling we now have pretty good tools to check. There's some jargon that those tools miss, but aside from that, if somebody submits an application with errors in it then clearly they didn't use the functionality included in any office suite, and in several browsers. That's a doubtful mark in itself. Often though, these are the same people who clearly have not read the job advert, and/or have not followed the guidance on what they need to demonstrate in their application. I recently had to sift 134 applications for a junior admin role (because it was working for a director, not because it had anything to do with me directly). The advert was long, but very clear on what the job was, what experience and qualities we were looking for, and how our assessment process would operate and what the candidate needed to do to demonstrate their skills. We struggled to get six people to interview, because most people applying for this not-very well paid job did not meet the essential criteria that were clearly laid out, or because they didn't comply with the simple process. Several were clearly heavily over-qualified, they were out immediately. Several others used the same AI that spat out the same examples of things that the AI thought demonstrated competence in this type of role (any perceived use of AI in this manner was a straight fail). A good few had zero experience in the required field but still applied. Others ignored our process that included the statement "in the event of a large number of applications, the first sift will be on the basis of the candidate's personal statement". And others had massive errors of their own making - numbered paragraphs that didn't follow, or went a, b, c, 2, g, or employment history that had no logical order, or was missing huge chunks of recent time, had personal statements that referred to jobs that weren't listed in the employment history.

Re: Reality check

advice that sounds noble but is wildly out of touch with how things actually work. It assumes engineers have the time, energy, and incentive to become polished presenters,

Nobody expects any engineer (or other functional specialists like accountants, logistics and the rest) to naturally have world class presentational skills, but it doesn't take long to polish what you start with. The problem is that most people simply don't even think about it and don't try. In reality it's basic stuff: If we bore our audience, their attention wanders, and we've lost them. Speaking in great technical detail will mean they don't understand us. If we don't work on it, most of us default in presentations to the corporate monotone of death. What to us is a compelling case is to other people often an assemblage of random facts and a conclusion that doesn't persuade. Everything needs a narrative, a story, and it needs to be projected. Anyone can get 95% of these skills via free "Tell it like TED" videos.

Of course, good presentation is vital but can't help if the audience are not receptive. Imagine you were Marks & Sparks CTO in February. It's budget time, and again you put in a big uplift for security, with new hires, pricey expert ITsec consultancy and pen-testing. You make a strong case, backed by evidence, and grim warnings about how everybody is out to get you. The board become the bored, the CFO tells you just like last year that there's only so much cake, and you have to slim things down - headcount has to go down not up, and after all even when retailers get hacked it's usually just a modest fine from the ICO and a few customers data gets stolen, isn't it? Then Easter arrives, and Bad Saturday follows on from Good Friday.

when in reality, most are treated as disposable headcount on a spreadsheet

That's the reality of being either an employee or a contractor; We live with it, or go and become monks. I must say there's times when simple order and routine, a cloistered life away from the family, and a life involving no technology more advanced than the Middle Ages sounds fantastic. Are there any Trappist orders in the UK?

IT chiefs of UK's massive health service urge vendors to make public security pledge

Re: Clueless?

"Does this mean a rethink of the entire network architecture? Probably. Is there money to pay for that - not just in the NHS? I think not."

Well, you'd hope that plenty of people are now looking the M&S breach and its huge corporate impact, and thinking "that could be us...what do we need to do to make sure it isn't". Then again, back in the real world, the chickens will stop clucking pretty soon after the fox has carried off today's victim, and go back to pecking at the ground because that's their natural instinct.

Annual electronic waste footprint per person is 11.2 kg

Re: Entering the life cycle...

"I'd prefer that people (including myself) only buy new (to us) devices if these do add (or improve) functionality we want. Not for being in the vanguard of a fashion or hype."

That could be read as quite judgemental. Some people (not you, not me) enjoy fads and fashions, having the latest accessory, but who are we to deny them? It would be a very drab and technologically limited world if the early adopters were effectively dissuaded from indulging themselves. Am I to assume that you'd apply the same logic for clothing, interior decor etc?

Re: If only we didn't appear to be trapped

"If only we didn't appear to be trapped In a never-ending search for the new shiny..."

You're not familiar with the human race I see. A few hundred thousand years of evolution have given humans an eye for something that's new, different. As a species we're not alone in that, but seems to me that predatory species and/including humans see novelty as interesting, new opportunities. Prey species see novelty as risky, threatening, and are far more cautious. Change a small bird feeder and it'll be a few days before they'll use it, likewise sheep are offended by change. Offer a dolphin, human or a dog some new trinket and its "boy, this looks fun!"

The solution to e-waste is simply to have decent recovery and recycling arrangements. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re: I need (well, want) a new (to me) laptop

Because most consumers buy cheap, most businesses buy sensibly.

I'm still using a 2013 Tosh Chromebook 2 (now running Mint Linux) largely because the performance is adequate, but the IPS screen is a joy. But most private Chromebook (and PC laptop) punters didn't splash for a decent screen, and instead saved a few shekels buying devices with cheap nasty low spec TN panels. Sadly my Tosh is living on borrowed time because its eMMC storage won't last forever, and I don't have the skills to de-solder and replace an eMMC.

Re: Used

Last one I dismantled, replacing the keyboard involved drilling out plastic rivets as well, and as nobody could source OEM keyboards, you'd have to buy a secondhand one.

Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson wants AIs fighting AIs so those most fit to live with us survive

"As for students taking writen exams,"

Like spelling tests.....no ignore the snark, I will make a typo soon enough.

But of relevance, would a return to rote learning, and handwritten exams really help us? In my experience, handwritten exams don't identify the talented in the subject, they identify the talented in taking exams - people who can write quickly and legibly, have good command of the language of the exam, and have a very good memory. Problem solving, social skills, innovation, collaborative working, common sense don't get a look in, but who wants those?

Stephenson has a valid point, that society is well on the way to a point where we couldn't achieve a "black start" of our technology or economy. That is perhaps the penalty of building systems that are so big, complex and clever that the individuals within them cannot comprehend the whole. I offer no solutions as to how we might address the modern global economy's vulnerability to a catastrophic event, but suggest that hand written exams won't be enough.

Re: Handwriting

You've not seen mine.

Trump says he has a problem if Apple builds iThings in India

Re: manufacturing in poorer countries

Don't have any data to help the debate, but I would note that both Samsung and Xiaomi claim to have fully automated manufacturing for some of their latest phones, Nvidia and other say the same thing about their manufacturing. So we're already seeing far fewer manufacturing jobs, and those that remain won't be hand assembly but production engineering, and maintenance, plus any interfaces that the machines can't yet do such as unloading components from trucks, driving said trucks.

If Apple moved manufacturing back to the US, there would be very few jobs involved other than the short term construction of facilities. But China is still the first choice for manufacturing, followed by nearby Asian countries - cheap land and easy planning rules, world class skills in manufacturing engineering, excellent infrastructure and logistics, and relatively close to the global expertise and production in semiconductors and displays (Taiwan, South Korea). The US never had modern manufacturing engineering skills in the way China does, and if it were just about cheap labour then there's other countries cheaper than China.

Anthropic’s law firm throws Claude under the bus over citation errors in court filing

Re: Latham & Watkins has implemented procedures

"Presumably the cost of Claude and its friends will appear as line items on the bill, so that the clients will know what they're paying for?"

Done properly by international law firm custom, Claude will be charged as a disbursement, then the client gets charged the time for the junior staff that operated Claude, and another line item for the law firm's own view of the "equivalent staff value" of the work Claude did. Obviously they'll then build up the costs with lines for mid-grade staff allegedly overseeing the juniors, then the partners leading the case. Plus any opportunity to cross refer to other partners in the firm - "you asked about finance restructuring, but I needed to consult the partners who specialise in tax and intellectual property, so you'll pay for their time too". I was technically "non-fee earning" and worked on back office business intel, but on occasions a partner would ask me for an analysis of what a big client did and where we might expand our offering to them, and they said client got billed for my time on how we might ream them better.

And then they add 20% to all lines as a matter of principle.

Re: Latham & Watkins has implemented procedures

There's been a few major law firm collapses, but in general they're remarkably difficult to kill (and unlike vampires, garlic and sunlight don't work). The law firm business model is that normally clients take all of the risk and the law firm still gets paid whether the client's case is won or the client benefits from expensive legal advice*, so for the few occasions when the law firm might be held to account it doesn't create any existential risk. of the small number of major law firms that have collapsed, it seems to me that the cause is not directly related to poor quality advice or misbehaviour, but down to buggering up their own finances - borrowing more than they should to (in effect) support a partner pay-out, and then being unable to repay. US law firm Dewey and LeBouef went down for this reason back in 2012, perhaps the most high profile law firm collapse in the past half century. Because law firms are owned and managed by the partners, they're in quick trouble if their star partners leave - clients tend to follow these top names, and if a law firm starts looking like its in trouble then it's the best partners who bail first.

* Most top law firms earn a fraction of their total fee income from litigation (contested cases in court), there's a whole lot more money in "advice" for debt transactions, whether working for corporate borrowers or the banking lenders, in advice on M&A, intellectual property and technology advice, competition law advice to regulated businesses or regulators. In the case of advice, it's usually not tested in court, and the client has to rely on the expensive legal advisor, meaning that the law firm gets paid whether the advice is good or not. In practice, it's also the case that corporate advice work is often simply a money-go-round for investment banks, lenders, law firms, consultants and other specialist advisors - the corporate clients would be served just as well and more cheaply by getting a third tier** law firm in for their needs.

** In law, everything is about the professional reputation of the individual partners involved, and there's a range of trade bibles that cover this. In my view paying top rate for a big hitting attack-dog litigator (sometimes for legal defence) can be justified, likewise the top barristers on specialist matters can often justify their fees, and sometimes competition lawyers. But corporate advice on a lot of the other stuff is often money for old rope***.

*** There is no three asterisk comment.

Re: Latham & Watkins has implemented procedures

That may be so, but there two simple drivers for the law firm that to an extent make the risk worth taking.

The first is rapacious profiteering. Large law firm structures involve a lot of equity partners and are thus "flat", and that means that the partners control everything, and take home all the profits. They are (from personal experience some years ago at a large law form) acutely aware of the cost of everything. By using AI, they can re-deploy the office juniors on other billed work (and any cynic who knows anything about US law firms will conclude that the clients will still be billed as if the juniors worked on the case that did in fact use AI).

The second driver is that AI offers a considerable speed benefit. I've been using both Claude and full fat Copilot lately for work, and as you undoubtedly know they're both impressively fast (my use is low risk, and checked), and effective when they do work. Now, the clients of top law firm clients place a truly inordinate value on speed of response, I know this as my role was amongst other things overseeing client and market research. So using AI at a law firm helps faster turnaround of briefs, court documents, sifting and searching opinions. Does make you wonder how many court cases have already contained AI-generated errors which weren't picked up by the court or the opposing law firm.

The legal sector does need AI, but it needs an implementation that is prepared to trade the risk of missing something in return for never hallucinating and never getting facts wrong. We're a long way from that goal, because of the way that LLM are created and trained.

Royal Navy freshens up ships' electromagnetic warfare defenses

Re: Archimedes and Wallis

"Monty was just a realist who cared about his troops."

I never met him, but my grandfather tended Monty's extensive collection of clocks when both had retired. But before he retired, said grandfather worked on early airborne electronics, and was awarded the Imperial Service Medal for that work - I have a picture of him at RAE, in a large mob of colleagues standing in front of an Avro 707. Ahh, them were the days apparently.

Europe plots escape hatch from enshittification of search

Re: distributed search

"After all this is now an utility like water and energy. Having this in private hands is an idiocy (see UK water or rail debacle)."

You evidently don't remember the days of nationalised rail and utilities. I do. Shit customer service, huge under-investment in assets, poor technical and operational performance, and massive inefficiency. I've also worked for a decade in the water sector, and in the energy sector. The companies are far from faultless, but vastly better run than the various unaccountable and badly run public authorities that preceded them.

The problems we've seen in energy, water, and rail come down to a mix of ineffective regulation and calamitous government policies, rather than a failure of privatisation in principle.

Microsoft boots 3% of staff in latest cull, middle managers first in line

"That money will likely sit in accounts, doing nothing for any local economy."

Except that money never just "sits in accounts". If you leave you money with a bank, regardless of whether they're paying a return on it, and even if it is nominally "cash" rather than investments, it's STILL mostly used to lend to third parties (or private equity or capital markets gambling by the bank itself). As a broad brush, only 10% of bank's total assets comes from it's own equity. This is why, when the banks periodically fuck up (as they do) it hits the real economy hard. Look at the impact of the Great Depression on business and normal people - the cause was a bubble in the US equity market, nothing to do with the real economy. But when it all went south, investors tried to pull money from banks who couldn't easily turn their assets into cash, the banks were hit hard by losses on securities they held, the banks tried to call in loans, businesses went bust, people lost their jobs and a vicious cycle set in.....all because of Wall Street greed.

You mention the local economy, anybody who has a bank loan, personally or for business is being largely provided for by those people who leave money on deposit, or invested through the bank.

US tech titans rejoice in $600B Saudi shopping spree

Re: Unsurprising

@nobody who matters: UK government debt was coming down fairly consistently through the 1960s and 1970s:

https://articles.obr.uk/300-years-of-uk-public-finance-data/index.html

But don't let any facts sway your opinions.

Re: Unsurprising

I'm not sure of the specifics, but the data shows that the tax as a % of commercial North Sea revenues collapsed under the 1987 Thatcher government, and then again under the Cameron government, so I think it's fair to say the Tories gave it away to a greater extent than Labour.

https://obr.uk/box/the-evolution-of-north-sea-oil-and-gas-receipts/

Re: Unsurprising

Incorrect. The Middle East states may not be run by people we like, but they're run by intelligent people. The goal of the oil states has been (as per the article) to build an alternative economy, and that's not based on extracting every drop. As Sheikh Yamani said a few decades ago, "The Stone Age came to an end not for a lack of stones, and the Oil Age will end, but not for a lack of oil".

Whereas countries like the US, Britain, Holland, Venezuela used oil revenues to fund day to day spending and then found it didn't last forever, most of the Middle East (and Norway) put a lot of the money into sovereign wealth funds invested in other regions and non-oil activities. As a result they've got a vast nest egg of professionally managed investments that will continue to pay off. The Norwegian SWF is worth $1.7 trillion, and the main Saudi, Kuwaiti, Abu Dhabi funds are each worth around $1 trillion.

I wish the UK government hadn't pissed North Sea revenues away on whatever it was they pissed it away on....

Boffins warn that AI paper mills are swamping science with garbage studies

Re: Pollution kills

@AC: I think you've missed Tron's point quite impressively.

Re: Way Back...

Machine foulage?

Everyone's deploying AI, but no one's securing it – what could go wrong?

Hahahahahhahahaaaa!

"we expect the largest technology companies, who are often their suppliers, to adjust to the future threat and deliver on their corporate social responsibility"

I appreciate he couldn't say anything else, but seriously?

I'm sure IT buyers will happily place their trust in their suppliers because assuming somebody else will take care of difficult stuff is a business norm. It will also prove they've not given the issue or relying on somebody else's goodwill any critical thought whatsoever. The ONLY way of ensuring that big tech "adjust to the future threat" is to make it a legal obligation on the tech suppliers. That would likely result in higher costs for buyers, but there is no other way. Big tech have no sense of responsibility.

Attackers pwn charter airline helping Trump's deportation campaign

Why Airbus?

Boeing not good enough for the Unfriends of Donald Trump, who appear to be the pax?

Britain's cyber agents and industry clash over how to tackle shoddy software

Re: Shock capitalism strikes again

"Since when in the entirety of human history has any publicly company done anything when not forced to buy government regulation. Volvo only prioritised safety because it wasn't an American company. "

Well... seat belts were invented and offered long before regulators insisted. Indeed, the first car maker offering them that I can see (wiki) evidence for was US maker Nash, in 1949. And apparently customers didn't want them, and some had dealers remove them. Anti lock brakes, likewise offered decades before they were mandatory, first mass produced car perhaps the Chrysler Imperial...fog lights, dual circuit brakes, radial tyres, airbags etc etc.

There's a reason many cars don't have all the safety toys, and that's simply that a good proportion of the public won't pay for them. Whether it's beer, cars, clothing, chocolate and everything else, most buyers are happy to pay less and get less sophistication. What regulators don't do, but the car industry does deliver, is technology trickle down. As volume builds, prices come down, toys become cheaper, and are offered more widely. My dull lower-middle range estate has performance, comfort and safety sophistication that would have been real high end a few decades back.

Organisational buyers should hold vendors to account - name, shame, and withhold business (or refuse to sign new contracts unless there's punitive re-charge arrangements in the case of a breach).

But for the hoi-polloi, information about security practice doesn't help. They don't understand enough to make sensible choices, and for many of them price will trump all else. Lets face it, Talktalk are infamous for several data breaches. They're also infamous for their poor customer service. But they offer bargain basement pricing, and they've still got 3.2 million customers. A NCSC "brown label" isn't going to make any difference, in the same way that there's a good number of low-end takeaway joints still in business with one or two star ratings for food hygiene.

It is the job of the ICO to hold companies to account on behalf of retail customers, but I think most people would agree that the system is not working. The usual chant is "fine them more, imprison the directors", but there's little evidence that works either so there needs to be further thought about how the data (and service) protection system should work.

OS-busting bug so bad that Microsoft blocks Windows Insider release

Re: Where is the website suggesting more outlandish uses for AI ?

I'm pretty sure the Donald J Trump flavour could be very popular.

You think ransomware is bad now? Wait until it infects CPUs

"Of course, we won't release that, but it's fascinating, right?"

Makes you wonder how securely held that PoC code is. I'd imagine every spy agency in the world that doesn't yet have its own microcode tool will be targeting Rapid7, and I know which way I'd be on a battle between a smallish US corporation versus the globally massed ranks of state funded bastards.

Yolk's on you – eggs break less when they land sideways

Re: re: bouncing eggs

"There were school kids throwing eggs out of second storey windows onto grass and they bounced! I did it in the back garden and it worked."

Many, many years ago I was sent on a graduate training course in the Lake District. One of the "bonding" session included the challenge of getting an egg from the second floor to the ground unbroken, and with three eggs and a few sheets of paper. Cue much group arsing around with attempted parachutes (failed), catching devices (failed). With the final egg, the group continued to argue about how a couple of remaining sheets of paper would help, so I did the logical thing, ignored the fuckwits, and indeed the egg survived. But according to the dweebs overseeing the course, this was a failure because we hadn't worked as a group. I've never liked "process people" since.

UK Ministry of Defence is spending less with US biz, and more with Europeans

Re: Logistics is the real killswitch

"Wiki says ~ 3000 planned non-US F35 for an equal(ish) number in US"

I doubt that was ever feasible. Europe's total fast jet count is around 1,700, but roughly half of that is recent aircraft (inc a few F35), but it would never be feasible that Europe would order more than say 600-800 F35. Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Canada aren't going to take more than a few dozen (ignoring any possible cancellations). Not seeing a big queue of remaining countries available to pay the asking price. So I'm seeing total international sales at around 1,000.

Lockheed-Martin aren't idiots, they'd never have planned on 3,000 international sales. Whether the Pentagon were stupid enough is a different question.

Re: The GCAP is (currently) a British/Italian/Japanese project.

Maybe. But look at the British MoD's clusterf*ck over software for the Chinook for the RAF Chinook Mk3, or indeed the doubts over the FADEC software on the Chinook Mk2. As things stand, the UK having physical access to F35s means nothing, because the organisation can't find it's own arse with both hands.

The biggest boost to future British defence capability would be to fire the entire 58,000 civilian oiks employed by the Ministry of Defence, and make the military responsible for their own equipment planning and procurement.

US Transpo Sec wants air traffic control rebuild in 3 years, asks Congress for blank check

Re: highly regarded AI

Bollox, mate. The decay in US air traffic systems has been going on for decades, and if you're looking for a trigger point, that would be when a pea-brained Hollywood actor fired a whole load of air traffic controllers back in 1981, and the system never really recovered from that. It might have, but Covid effectively repeated the body blow of losing a lot of experienced staff. And once talent walks out the door, it rarely walks back in. And rebuilding from the inside is sloooooowwwww.

Re: Amazing ..

I suspect the fact that Newark lost radio contact with all aircraft AGAIN this evening won't do any harm to the likelihood of the money being approved.

VC behemoth Insight Partners fears top-secret financial info swiped by cyber-miscreants

Secretive VC outfit has data ransacked? That's regrettable...

...said nobody.

Microsoft wants us to believe AI will crack practical fusion power, driving future AI

Re: "It's sort of foolish to imagine that we'll do fusion by trial and error"

"You may not like this, but it's also what science is."

You'd better take that up with Sir Simon Cowley, as it was a quote in his name.

"It's sort of foolish to imagine that we'll do fusion by trial and error"

Surely that's exactly what AI is?

"Here's a solution to your problem. It may be right, it may be wrong. The solution may be conceptually right, but the underlying training data wrong, or the other way round. Or I may have just made it up. So anyway, now you can get some real scientists to try and work out whether it's actually a solution, or a mere illusion. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

ESA feeling weightless and unwanted amid proposed NASA cuts

Re: Lets restart Hermes...

"Spending money on something like ESA is probably more efficient than many other projects"

How so? There appears to be little strong research to show that science spending drives increased growth; there's plenty of wordy narrative and claims of correlation, and obviously if you're a wealthier economy you can spend more on science, but I'm not seeing much that persuades me that spending more on science is a particularly efficient investment compared to say eliminating .

"Many big ticket defence items will take much longer to funnel the money into the economy."

Reasoning? If we were talking about (say) a European strategic nuclear deterrent, I can see little economic difference to making rockets to put satellites or people into orbit, and similar potential for science spin-offs. If building tanks, ships or drones, then the money filters through to real economy much faster than any form of rocket science because they use proportionately more basic materials and labour than fancy science projects.

Re: Lets restart Hermes...

"We have the technology, it was just easier and probably cheaper to hitch rides here and there"

But do we (Europe) actually have the money? The return on science investment is usually very, very slow, and Europe needs to look at spending a fair bit more on defence as an immediate and future priority, it needs to consider the broader technology investment needs because US companies can't be relied upon now, there's other science than simply spaffing rockets into orbit, and big investment needs for day to day nuclear (or renewables and storage), plus fusion research. Meanwhile, most European states are seeing health and social care costs rising dramatically as people inconsiderately live on long after they stop contributing economically.

I'm sure plenty of people will be voting for the downvote button, and feel free: But at least rationalise where Europe (in its continental sense) should spend its limited resources. We can't pick up and mend everything that the Fat Orange Felon is breaking, and the bits that we might, we certainly can't mend as fast as he's intentionally breaking them.

If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?

Re: How about spinning it off?

"why not set it up as a separate independent company?"

Google (if forced) would do what makes it most money. They'll evaluate spin off (essentially an IPO) compared to selling to whoever has got deep pockets. They'll also listen to their investors (a little bit) as to whether those investors want cash, or to have shares in a standalone ChromeCo.

My guess it that a standalone ChromeCo has notably less value to existing investors than it does to some deep pocketed, VC-fueled AI company, and that current investors would want to get their hands on a bag of cash, in which case the best option is to sell it. Let all the AI techbro outbid each other, take a handsome prize, and then laugh when the winner finds the sums don't add up.

Nvidia boss gets 45% pay bump, but is the billionaire happy?

"Fortunately all those generational assembly line jobs of putting Nvidia GPU cards into boxes will be returning to the USA."

Indeed so. According to my basic searching, the typical hourly rate in China for that type of work is 46 yuan, or $6.40 an hour. Hope all the Republican voters are going to form a queue to work at those rates.

90-second Newark blackout exposes parlous state of US air traffic control

Re: Bare wire

"Mind you those Victorian's did some pretty good and sturdy constructions in many places."

They certainly did, but that compounds the problem, because the owners decide to spend money simply doing a fix to an asset where they'd never build that capacity/design/route now. A good example is the Victorian railway embankments, which after a century of service are starting to need refurbishment, but that's all that is done, rather than thinking about new purpose built assets that can offer fast, safe transport between places people want to go, for the volumes that want to travel. France doesn't have this infrastructure constipation - they built plenty of 18th century railways too, but unlike Britain they got off their arses and built the world's best high rail speed network using new routes. There's similar things to say about Victorian sewers, bridges etc - good and durable, but reflecting environmental standards of the time, needs and capacity limits of the time.

A further though about Britain's inability to design and build infrastructure, some of our best aligned roads remain those built in about AD50-180 when certain Italian types had colonised Britain.

Re: Bare wire

The majority of infrastructure is kept in service far beyond any reasonably expected asset life. If it's installed and working, who wants to spend money until it breaks? Cases in the UK include Victorian era railway civils works, Victorian sewers, 1940's and earlier water pipes, decrepit and long-written down copper telecoms networks, there's still mains cable in service with paper insulation. Rather than build new road bridges it's preferred to keep using not really adequate structures built hundreds of years ago - I occasionally use an A road that runs across Swarkestone bridge. The new bit of Swarkestone bridge dates back to 1795, the oldest bits to around the 13th century.

If somebody does a decent estimate of what's needed to update US ATC assets and creates a ten year plan to fix all know obsolete systems and infrastructure, then I guarantee you that somebody else (especially the airlines) will bleat that it is too expensive and should be deferred, and what is to be done should be lashed up on the cheap.

Whether you're a company boss or a politician, faced with the option to splash money on new shiney stuff, or the replacement of unseen, poorly understood assets that are just about working, you know what they'll plump for.