Posts by Burgha2

Musk has never built a wafer fab, but he wants to burn $119B on one anyway

Re: like rockets?

More like Hyperloop and Mars

Not sure why he doesn't build the fab at his successful Mars colony and use his robots to build them

Magnificent irony as Meta staff unhappy about running surveillance software on work PCs

Re: Keyloggers???!!!

I've never had the choice of OS on a work computer, as a humble user.

That's over a 30 year career.

Whitehall seeks lone C++ coder to keep airport passenger model flying

Wait until I tell you what us engineers who design physical objects use for our calculations...that bridge you're going over...

NASA pencils in fresh Artemis II Moon launch attempt for April 1

Re: It just goes to show

Apollo peak spending was something like 2% of the entire US GDP. Hardly comparing the same scale of project

NASA's Artemis II Moon rocket arrives at the launch pad

Why...

Now Musk's Superheavy is regularly flying to the Mars colony he established in 2016, why do we still need this project?

At least the astronauts will get there on Hyperloop.

(Yes, /s)

Users prompt Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot to remove clothes in photos then 'apologize' for it

Your last sentence is the important one, whether there end up being any prosecutions. You can pass all the laws you like, but if you don't enforce them, well...

Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit

Re: Airbus??? Excel??? Twenty Million Cells???

I'm an engineer who works on the physical world. I read The Register as I have a passing interest in IT, and it's often amusing

I hate to tell you all, but roughly 90% of the calculations civil, structural and mechanical engineers do involve excel at some point. Even when we do something fancy like FEA or CFD, there's a good chance that we'll postprocess the data in Excel.

A big part of the appeal is that it's built up visually and that you format the output as you go. Programming in something like python is hard for most of us - we don't have the time or inclination to learn it.

Meta can't afford its $600B love letter to Trump

Have to have somewhere to spend all that money

If all this money were actually to be spent, can the physical world actually supply materials to support that spend?

Just because your plan says it, doesn't make it happen. The worst thing about tech bros running the world is that their brains have been destroyed by being software people. The physical world has actual limits.

'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it

Who has a choice anyway

I'd guess 90% of people have zero choice as to the OS they use most of the time.

Heck, I can't remember the last job where I was even able to install software on "my" computer.

Anthropic to pay at least $1.5 billion to authors whose work it knowingly pirated

Re: So for clarity....

"do we want "AI" trained on works from a hundred or more years ago when attitudes were somewhat different from today"

Forsooth, verily we do not. Mayhap, should such a misfortune befall us.

Australian university used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors

Re: Not exactly the brightest bulbs

Did you read the report? AFAICS, the investigation wasn't commenced because of any student complaints.

The WiFi tracking was reported in a newspaper, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner investigated because the information reported indicated a potential breach of the relevant legislation.

Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?

Companies making a profit...

...from open source software could perhaps fund it.

Australia finds age detection tech has many flaws but will work

Well

From all the hyperventilating about how this will destroy everything, you'd think that the system we currently have was working well.

OTOH, given the damage Facebook and Twitter have done maybe it would be better to ban social media for anyone over 40. It's the age group that seems to get most sucked in by the lies on it.

Put Large Reasoning Models under pressure and they stop making sense, say boffins

Hmmm

I think the author is a bit too sanguine about how LLMs being terrible will stop companies from using them.

A lot of companies seem to exist now purely to be seen to be doing something. What that thing is, and more particularly how well they do it, doesn't seem to be much reflected in their value.

I think many CEOs will be more than ok with replacing staff by LLMs, even if it means that the output of the company is terrible. In the short term their profits, and company value, will go up. That's all they care about.

Slapped wrists for Financial Conduct Authority staff who emailed work data home

Obvious solution...

...is to stop employees accessing any data, ever. If you really need something, then someone in IT security can review the request and send you the data if they think you need it.

I've worked at a few places where I think IT would quite like to do that. They seemed to enjoy pretending they were secret agents.

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire

Re: Code talks

The *very next sentence* is: "Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed."

For a definition of acting nicely that means acting like an arse.

AROS turns any PC into an Amiga with USB-bootable distro

If we want simple

I'll take OS/9 on a 6809. 16 bits? Bah!

Saudi CubeSat gets golden ticket on doomed SLS rocket

Starship will never be practical

It's starting to look a lot like his tunnels

"Recent reports indicate that the actual payload capacity of Starship might be closer to 50-100 metric tons, rather than the 150 metric tons initially targeted"

https://www.spacedaily.com/m/reports/Starship_Unpacking_the_Complexities_of_SpaceXs_Two-Stage_Vision_999.html

"A NASA official said Artemis will need 20 SpaceX Lunar Starship launches per moon landing."

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/12/nasa-says-up-to-20-spacex-starship-refueling-launches-per-moon-mission.html

None of this is sounding practical at all.

US tech titans rejoice in $600B Saudi shopping spree

Re: For the Saudis,maybe , maybe not

"I'm sure they've convinced the US that there's no way that could possibly happen. Pinky-swear and everything"

Being worried about Russia is so 2024. Not sure the US government would care if they went to Russia these days.

'I guess NASA doesn't need or care about my work anymore'

Re: NASA's website

"Sadly the best organised web site I have visited requires an exorbitant subscription for ongoing access"

Yes, because doing all that properly actually takes time and hence requires money.

Having been on the other side, working at a University in a past life the other option is saying to people who have a full time job "here's how you add content to the web site, get to it".

Of course you're going to end up with an inconsistent mess. And updating older content to new formats and layouts? Yeah, that's not happening.

30 percent of some Microsoft code now written by AI - especially the new stuff

Re: Full Circle

"Problem was I have never encountered anyone that wanted this behaviour and most would find it a complete embuggerance if it were the default."

Indeed. Nothing worse than the text of the report not matching the graph and the excel snippet, because someone's been working on the spreadsheet after you finished the text.

Yes, you could do proper document control and the like, but for 99.9857% of reports that effort simply isn't justified.

A single

A single program for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations?

Isn't that excel?

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Re: Not just the US

"OK..."

Good to see you did the goal post shifting as expected. You basically made up a story and when shown to be wrong went "look over here".

Your substantive point was that the UK government didn't allow VAT to be broken out so as to hide the tax component. That was demodulated to be false.

Why not just apologise? Why are modern day conservatives so casual about the truth?

Re: Not just the US

"It isn't just the US. In the UK, you are not allowed to print prices showing ex-VAT* and ex-Duty or subsidies because that would show how much goverment is screwing consumers"

Appears to be wrong, though I guess you'll just shift the goal posts and claim you meant "final price" or some such.

"On bills and receipts

Sometimes VAT is shown on a separate line. This does not mean you’re paying extra - it just shows how much tax is included in the price.

Invoices from suppliers like builders, painters and decorators must show a separate amount for VAT and their VAT registration number."

From https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/where-you-see-vat#:~:text=On%20bills%20and%20receipts&text=This%20does%20not%20mean%20you,and%20their%20VAT%20registration%20number.

China is using AI to sharpen every link in its attack chain, FBI warns

There's other goons

I'm more worried about the US ones these days, with their President threatening daily to invade other countries and trying to interfere in their elections.

(Luckily he's quite bad at it, so far....)

Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, economists claim

Re: Wrong Jobs?

"We know what happened to the planet where the B-ark _landed_..."

We actually do know what happened to the planet where the A and C ark people remained

"Fate of Golgafrincham

A notation in the Guide about Golgafrincham after the departure of the B Ark states that the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone."

Had a meeting...

Had one of those group all day talk-fests today. The type where you write things on flip charts and senior managers say how great it was at the end of the day.

At one point someone had the idea of taking a photo of one of those flip charts and getting co-pilot to summarise the top four points.

One was a straight repeat of the largest thing written up. It misinterpreted an acronym, replacing it with something from an entirely unrelated activity and the rest was just recasting apparently randomly selected points in "better" management speak.

The interesting thing was the facilitator seemed to think it was great.

Re: Wrong Jobs?

"Anyone up for building a B Ark?"

You do know what happened to the last planet that did that, right?

California sues President Tariff

Courts and power

I suspect the people bringing the case are well aware of the limitations of the Courts, but know this is a step you need to go through.

Ultimately no court has the power to force the executive to do anything - that power ultimately rests with the people. If people are happy voting in governments that ignore their courts, then that's what'll happen.

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

Re: Good practice

"The wording on the ESTA application still indicates that you do not have to supply that information"

And they don't need to let you into the country.

Basically if they decide that need to see your device you either let them or get back on the plane.

Billions pour into AI as emissions rise, returns stay pitiful, say Stanford boffins

I bet a LLM...

...didn't write that report.

You see, they can't really think. Or do complex tasks.

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: Trump is easy to model

"Containerisation"

As detailed in this book, "The Box", which is actually quite a good read

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(Levinson_book)

Meanwhile, in Japan, train stations are being 3D-printed in an afternoon

Re: Erm, but why?

"Also, it IS steel reinforced concrete, so how can they claim it costs half as much as building it out of ... steel reinforced concrete? They used half as much?"

Saving on setting up the formwork on site I presume. Most of the cost is in labour, not materials.

Rather than assembling formwork boards piecemeal, you just quickly erect the pre-printed formwork panels.

Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

Re: /Maybe/ a Nice Candleflame in a Room Filled with Exploding Grenades

"Centralising purchasing under the GSA might be an improvement, if..."

This will obviously be about maximising the purchase from Trump aligned companies, Musk ones in particular

Privacy warriors whip out GDPR after ChatGPT wrongly accuses dad of child murder

Re: No care, no responsibility

"Because the media told you to hate Musk and publicise any failing"

Um, the media in the US is mainly at worst neutral in Musk to positively spaffing over him (Fox).

The media in Australia, where I am, barely mentions him

I felt favourable to Musk when he appeared to support traditional thought. Once he started acting like a jerk, I no longer took a favourable view of him. Your side won, you need to stop pretending everyone is against you.

No care, no responsibility

The whole world of modern IT is based on no care, no responsibility, innit? IT related to control systems might be the only area where developers seem to actually still care about quality, though Tesla is challenging that idea I suspect.

As a non-IT engineer, I wish my mistakes didn't have the potential for people dying.

Dept of Defense engineer took home top-secret docs, booked a fishing trip to Mexico – then the FBI showed up

Bathroom

Was the problem that he didn't keep them in the bathroom?

Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

Good

As per title

OpenAI asks Uncle Sam to let it scrape everything, stop other countries complaining

Re: New technology calls for new a new copyright paradigm

"Clearly we need a new copyright paradigm. In today's world the old one no longer works."

Ok. The AI companies use that vast computing power to track which information they assimilate and every time they use a bit of it they pay the original author for it.

I mean it's pretty inconvenient (and expensive) for me to remember when to pay for a software subscription, but I have to do that.

Google's Chrome divorce still on the cards as Trump's DoJ plays hardball

"will be a monopoly too"

Not sure what that has to do with anything. Google simply wasn't nice enough to Trump historically, so he's going to punish them.

Meta has probably gone full bro enough to get a pass.

Eutelsat in talks with Euro leaders as they mull Starlink replacement in Ukraine

Re: "The US also reportedly paused offensive cyber operations against Russia"

IDK, given Russia now controls the US, they may just have stopped...

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

Re: It's a bit small

400 MWh is middling. Half the size of Collie stage 1.

Here's a nice map of Australian projects

https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-battery-storage-map-of-australia/

As to how much a nuke produces, that's all well and good, but a battery isn't the only supplier, there also the rest of the renewable generators. You really need to look at the system as a whole.

Here's a chap who runs a simulation to show how much storage would be required to make the Australian grid 98%+ renewable.

https://bsky.app/profile/davidosmond.bsky.social/post/3ljmdgqavhs2q

It's a bit small

That seems a bit small. To replace the coal power station at Collie, in Western Australia, we're getting this:

Collie Battery is currently being built in stages, two of which are currently under construction:

Stage 1 is sized at 219 MW / 877 MWh

Stage 2 is sized at 341 MW / 1,363 MWh

Why is coal getting replaced? Basically the coal mine is about done.

Xi know what you did last summer: China was all up in Republicans' email, says book

Huh

I just assumed the repubs were cc'ng in China anyway

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

All those billionaire scientists

All those billionaire scientists just grifting away so they can afford another private jet.

Just listen to those poor freedom fighters at the oil companies who we've always known out the welfare of everyone else first.

(Do I need to say /s?)

As Amazon takes over the Bond franchise, we submit our scripts for the next flick

Not another one

Bond is sent to the evil villains lair. On the way he sees a Twitter post saying he's a misogynist. This breaks his brain. When he gets to the villains lair, he finds the evil plot is about to fail, so he pitches to make it work. The US now controls Canada.

He returns to the US, where he takes control of the CIA by eliminating all the people who aren't white men.

NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

Re: The plan...

'The "Home Alone II extra" said he will start brining down interest rates day one, this is how.'

Dude, c'mon. Trump doesn't care about anything he said before the election. He DGAF about interest rates. This is about making the US into a right wing, one party state.

Federal judge tightens DOGE leash over critical Treasury payment system access

Re: One of them hasn't even lasted a day

Maybe he resigned to make way for his promotion to cabinet?

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

Re: Not really a time to be owning a Tesla

Tbf, that stereotype never hurt Audi or Beemer sales though.