Posts by graeme leggett

Elon Musk pukes over pork-filled budget bill with Tesla subsidies on the line

Are we talking about Musk or Trump at this point?

Ukraine strikes Russian bomber-maker with hack attack

Employee disatisfaction drops

So, you are a middle-ranking employee of Tupelov in the aircraft maintenance and parts supply department.

At the start of the week, you might have felt disconnected from the Special Action with Ukraine. Obviously the news tells you its Ukraine's own fault and you might feel a bit of pride in your work for the Russian nation but the actual combat is happening far away.

Now, Ukrainian intelligence know your name, possibly a photo, where you live, your bank account details, possibly things about your family and health.

You'd be foolish not to think what that might mean.

Perhaps the next parcel delivered to your apartment will not be a box of chocolates from your parents but something spicier.

Perhaps someone will stop you in the stairwell and suggest, strongly, that making copies of aircraft status reports and uploading them to an anonymous web server might be in your best interests.

It might well weigh on your mind.

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

Re: Tears of nostalgia

Will I become a left handed mouse user again too?

Tears of nostalgia

If I try it, will it just remind me of "better" (different) times.

Or will trying to recall how to use a GUI I was once competent if not actually fluent in (and some scripting too) hit a barrier of 25 years of PC overwriting skills?

Meta's still violating GDPR rules with latest plan to train AI on EU user data, says noyb

Re: Legitimate interest

They sound more like things that can be covered by "contract".

Bosses weren’t being paranoid: Remote workers more likely to start own biz

Re: Spying tonite!

Factor in people who don't update their LinkedIn.

People who only just remembered to update their LinkedIn and actually left companies years ago.

People who were in point of "go consultant"

Workers who aren't on LinkedIn

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

Was that when Swanwick took over from West Drayton six years later than planned due to issues sorting out software ?

Corruption - all the way down

Oh. now the executive recognises that congress aportions funding for federal agencies.

Am currently watching latest Legal Eagle (featuring Liz Dye) on YouTube - general tone is Project 2025 is using Trump seizing control of the spending (and not spending it on anything) as means to reach their ends.

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"

Listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe and this sounds similar to what they are doing with gravitational wave detectors.

The AI generates designs based on performance targets rather than copying existing designs. All very technical so I may have not followed it wholly

https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-1034

https://scitechdaily.com/when-machines-dream-ai-designs-strange-new-tools-to-listen-to-the-cosmos/

Palantir loves the smell of DOGE budget cuts in the morning

GDPR does allow for some information to be collected without express consent.

And you can do a lot of good with aggregate health information.

So long as it's done properly and carefully.....

Data watchdog will leave British Library alone – further probes 'not worth our time'

Re: The ICO - busy not making work for itself.

First they would have to treat the occurrence as diligently as the BL.

Elon Musk's X revenues in the UK crashed in 2023, down 66%

Re: Still, there IS a chill8ing effect,,,

or incitement to riot

Google goes cold on Europe: Stops making smart thermostats for continental conditions

Re: Bollocks

I was surprised this wasn't an offered add-on/replacement for the wired bi-metallic strip

If you know the hot water tank temperature at any time then you can decide if

1) hot enough for a shower right now

2) not too hot for using the sink

3) out of legionella zone

4) worth using the electric immersion heater rather than gas/oil/propane

5) being superheated by an out of control boiler

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

Who remembers 2000AD robot revolution

no reason at all to worry about equipping robots with dangerous equipment around "fleshy ones"

Especially carpentry.....

Tesla's Optimus can't roll without rare earth magnets, and Beijing ain't budging yet

Re: Robots used internally in Tesla factories.

NTNOCN also had "Built by robots, driven by Italians" to the tune of Rossini's Largo al factotum

Japan serves Google a cease and desist order over its Android bundling deals

The Japanese style

That slide seems typical of the content dense "busy" graphic that Japanese culture uses.

Older Japanese culture (eg tea ceremony, noh, martial arts, woodprints) is portrayed as calmly-paced, mindful, measured but modern presentation looks like a 5-minute infomercial compressed into 5 seconds.

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

Re: re: Chris Krebs

At a minimum, the SAFE act is performative. Creating a solution to a problem that doesn't exist and supporters can say "of course its a real problem otherwise they wouldn't put a law in about it"

Self-driving car maker Musk's DOGE rocks up at self-driving car watchdog, cuts staff

Perhaps the states will go after them.

50 years ago the last Saturn rocket rolled out of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building

I could listen to the mission control audio from Apollo 11 all day. Can't remember the one who shouts "Go" though.

Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

Re: ps f47

As I understand it, the Pentagon paused the NGAD project last year to assess whether against rising costs (never a surprise in military aviation) it should go ahead or not.

Presumably the internal assessment came in recently and the Orange Buffoon made maximum media out of the decision.

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/07/air-force-taking-a-pause-on-ngad-next-gen-fighter-kendall/

Tesla Cybertruck recall #8: Exterior trim peels itself off, again

Re: You love to see it

Kelly says the Chevy was built by unionised labour (labor)

No big changes to UK broadband regs, despite no real competition for BT

One word

"fibre"

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

Re: Hmm

Others have suggested its not so much the money as being the most famous person in existence rather than transactional for money.

Obviously the money helps.

And yesterday I heard an explanation that does fit, If you view his activities as the continuation of the reality TV format, new constant "conflict". Stirring the ants nest every day with something intended to get people talking about him. US doesn't need to take over Greenland, through NATO and simple diplomacy it could easily get whatever extra bases it wanted established there, but saying they want to take over, then he becomes the news focus.

Re: Hmm

" Ukraine can't beat Russia. It's a nuclear superpower and it's just too big. They can keep throwing troops and weapons at it till the end of time if they wanted" Like in Afghanistan?

Trump says US should kill CHIPS Act, use the cash to cut debt

Re: As Trump said there is nothing he can do to make them happy or smile.

In 2017 she got hold of a couple of pages from his 2005 tax return. Unfortunately it did not seem to prompt Trump to volunteer any further information.

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

Re: they're not like us

Both the original Fiat 600 Mutipla (a 1950s minivan) and the reuse of the name from the turn of the century are....distinctive, I'll give you that.

So … Russia no longer a cyber threat to America?

Re: Neville Chamberlain

Munich was 1938. Chamberlain had started rearmament before then.

The Spitfire prototype flew in 1936 and orders placed but delays meant first production aircraft delivered in 1938. The Hurricane was delayed by a change from Mk 1 Merlin engine to Mk 2 but were reaching British squadrons before Chamberlain hopped on a plane to see Adolf.

The expansion began in 1934 with a plan to increase number of RAF airfields from ~50 to ~140 and orders for new aircraft types.

Re: Neville Chamberlain

A bit of disagreement on the analogy.

When Europe faced the Munich crisis, none of the participants were in a position to actually project force into Czechoslovakia to defend it or strike at Germany. The other nations were all building up their armed forces. (UK had a powerful navy but apart from applying external sanctions in the form of a blockade, a navy can't stop one country's army crossing a shared border). Coordination between the (major and minor) countries in Europe was also limited. In those circumstances and the recent horrors of the Great War, the possibility of averting another European War by trading land or at least buying time to prepare for a coming conflict made some sense and was popular.

But in this situation the differences are that the war has already started, we have seen appeasement can be a bad choice, and countries are prepared to work together.

30-year-old NHS supply chain system hit by 35 major alerts in 11 months

Each GP practice is an independent contractor to the NHS - that's how.

As Tim Hartford would say "it's a big number, but is it a significant number?"

Incoming deputy boss of Homeland Security says America's top cyber-agency needs to be reined in

Re: good

She won't be in charge of Musk. She's in charge of the organisation that gives a veer of respectability to the "DOGE Temporary Organisation" that is the vehicle for Musk's Twitler Youth group

They had to name someone to be at the top of the organisation because the Whitehouse press secretary looked even more of an embarrassment claiming they couldn't give out their name while at same time claimed to be totally transparent.

But now they have. And courts can name her in proceedings.

Trump’s cyber chief pick has little experience in The Cyber

A wise man once said

A quote that can be turned on its originator

When Trump sends his nominations, he's not sending the best... ..sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems

India's banking on the bank.in domain cleaning up its financial services sector

I like jam.in, I hope you like jam.in too.

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

I think that should be "run by someone who ACTS like a child with ADHD".

There's no get out clause for him without a valid diagnosis. Money and influence and ket and poor habits probably fried his synapses.

Re: No new car models is the problem

With torsion bar suspension and interleaved wheels.

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

USAID is helping keeping the lid on the HIV/AIDS situation in South Africa by providing around 20-25% of funding for medication through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (initiated by the famously socialist G W Bush)

About a week after freezing US aid, PEPFAR was given an exemption - that there was a delay at all in providing an exception shows the initial action was not thought through.( A week is a long time in anti-retroviral medication)

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

Re: Scrapped Direct File, which allows taxpayers to file their returns electronically to the IRS

Rather than create a new department which would have required following the law of the land, Trump renamed an existing department and handed that over to Musk and his Twitler Youth (a bunch of Musk/Thiel interns from sound of it)

As Trump slugs Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs, industry groups hope trade war weapon isn’t pointed at their feet

Re: It's all in how you look at it

HFCs is only about 50% fructose. It's "high fructose" because regular corn syrup is 90+% glucose

And if you are just using HFCS as a cheap (ie subsidized) substitute for sucrose, then the amount of fructose involved is the same.

Re: Canada?

I've seen around 20kg quoted for total Fentanyl seized at US-Canadian border in a year.

Re: Why the fuck do they think they have the right to dictate to us

Same dilemma as Julius Caesar faced.

Caesar's dicatorship lasted a couple of years after the defeat of Pompey before his opponents, including some of previous supporters, removed him from the political scene

sic semper tyrannis

Re: It's all in how you look at it

1) HFCS is not of itself bad - it's much the same saccharide profile as Golden Syrup/invert syrup.

2) Oreos sold in the UK are likely made in UK

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

Re: Thunderf00t sez, Musk as head DOGE, had his role clarified as IT head of US government

Not sure what a self-coup is but if something does happen, which Republican is taking the Ludwig Beck role?

And history takes a different angle, which one is Doenitz?

"employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward"

Where suitability = loyalty to Trump

Conduct = anticipating the Great Leader's edicts

China's DeepSeek just emitted a free challenger to OpenAI's o1 – here's how to use it on your PC

Wolf goat cabbage - where did that come from?

The riddle I'm acquainted with has the three incompatible entities and a river but the human can only fit two items on the boat with them.

Have the AI developers re-framed the riddle to make it easier for their creations, or more difficult?

Musk torches $500B Stargate AI plan, Altman strikes back

Re: <loud swearing noises>

the 1.5 trilion USD for F-35 program covers from now to 2088.

Re: Yeah maybe

So there's no catch?

Trump hits undo on Biden AI safety order, EV mandate, emissions standards, and more

Re: Yes...but no.

Trump "I'm going to stop this thing that you think happens" (waves bit of paper with his signature on it)

<sounds of crowds cheering>

Courts "You can't do that"

<crowds murmur>

Trump "These partisan judges are enemies of the people. You wanted me to do this thing and they won't let me"

<crowds boo. Sounds of sharpening of pitchforks and torches being lit>

(probably followed by email to Trump supporters asking for monetary donations)

1) Tesla has a head start on other manufacturers, removing incentives will hit their competitors more.

2) It's all performative for the twisted anti-environmentalism that pervades his voter base, they want clean water and clean air but don't want to be told they need to change to get it. An EV mandate could be reintroduced under the guise of promoting AMERICAN! industry and countering the ENEMY Chinese manufacturers and Trump's supporters would cheer it in the streets

What happens when someone subpoenas Cloudflare to unmask a blogger? This...

Re: Not a free speech case

Chiroquackters ("Jedi bone wizards") not homeopaths

Elon Musk's galactic ego sows chaos in European politics

Re: A week is a long time in politics…

Does Musk even know that the Reform Party (prop. N. Farage) does not select its leader?