* Posts by Christoph

3349 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Dec 2007

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Christoph

I hope there will be an exception for items charged from a shaver socket. I would rather not have to take my electric toothbrush etc. out of the bathroom every time I want to charge it.

BBC weather glitch shows 13k mph winds in London, 404℃ in Nottingham

Christoph

Which is very odd, as there's nothing on the planet which could drive those winds to that speed.

National Public Data files for bankruptcy, admits 'hundreds of millions' potentially affected

Christoph

Re: No, absolutely not

That's liable to mean "We don't have to worry too much about security because our insurers have to pay out anyway".

And everybody else's insurance premiums will massively increase to cover the loss.

Incumbent congressman not turning up to debates? Train an AI on his press releases

Christoph

But can they make an AI that can babble disconnected mumblings like Trump?

Cops love facial recognition, and withholding info on its use from the courts

Christoph

They accused someone from a different state. So they are searching across the entire USA for a similar face. That's pretty well guaranteed to find a match somewhere!

How long before they are extraditing people from the UK because they look vaguely like a criminal in California?

Canon ships first nanoimprint chipmaking machine to R&D lab

Christoph

Re: At least they got their naming right this time.

But you can get a Laser Canon!

Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis

Christoph

Re: The beginning of a robot uprising

The US version will produce something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

US Army orders next-gen robot mule to haul a literal ton of gear

Christoph

Re: Seems unnecessarily complex and expensive

They defined themselves to be a foreign state.

Look! About chest high! Is it a pallet? Is it a drone? No, it's a Palletrone

Christoph

Re: Whilst I enjoy the novelty...

To go over rough ground and stairs it would be much better to build a pallet with hundreds of little legs.

Intuitive Machines shoots for the Moon with NASA's $4.82B lunar relay jackpot

Christoph

If they are building a "lunar satellite constellation" they should include from the beginning switching off all unnecessary transmissions while over the lunar far side.

The far side is the only accessible place shielded from all of Earth's radio transmissions, and is therefore the ideal place to build future really big radio telescopes.

But this would be sabotaged by multiple satellites blasting out signals.

So start as you mean to go on - do NOT rely on "Oh, we can always add that later once it becomes necessary".

Foot-thick wall workaround: Gigabit network links beamed through solid concrete

Christoph

I wonder if this would work through thick stone walls in old houses - or even castles!

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

Christoph

Re: Hard Hats and Hi-Viz...

When the (never used) Nightingale hospitals were being built during the pandemic, they called in the army to help build them.

Being in the army they wore uniforms - in camouflage designs intended to make them difficult to see.

Being on a building site they wore hi-vis jackets over their low-viz camo.

'A moose hit me' and other ways people damage their gizmos

Christoph

My mother "Look at the funny animal on that big sign."

Me and my older sister "What sign?"

Philadelphia tree trimmers fail to nip FTC noncompete ban in the bud

Christoph

The problem is that the non-compete is not framed in an equitable way. If the company bans for a year an employee who leaves from working in that field, then naturally the company must equally be banned for a year from hiring a replacement for that employee.

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

Christoph

We think there's a bomb nearby which might blow up and collapse the building. So for safety's sake we will lock you in a small room with no way to escape.

NASA tests the ups and downs of air taxi comfort with VR

Christoph

Re: Are flying cars a good idea?

There's also security problems, when everyone has the ability to land inside a fenced or walled enclosure.

Meta won't train AI on Euro posts after all, as watchdogs put their paws down

Christoph

Re: Claims versus what they do

You don't even need that much detail. The reply accepting my objection was so quick that they may have a bot looking for the string "data protection"

Molten lunar regolith heats up space colonization dreams

Christoph

"requires lots of power to keep the heat up"

Why not use a solar furnace? No clouds or atmosphere to get in the way.

You can only use it 2 weeks out of 4, but the power is free.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Christoph
Mushroom

Dave Langford used to work at the place that makes Very Loud Bangs. He wrote a very funny novel about the security there. The Leaky Establishment.

Christoph

One of our people had to visit a certain establishment in Cheltenham. Apparently getting in wasn't too bad but getting out again was dire.

A thump with the pointy end of a screwdriver will fix this server! What could possibly go wrong?

Christoph

Pick was so long ago that the inventor's name was perfectly innocent. "Dick Pick".

Computer modeling deepens scientists' understanding of solar cycle

Christoph

Re: Excellent work

That assumes that entirely alien species have closely similar responses to music. Since we only have a single example there is no obvious evidence for that assumption.

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Christoph

LLM = LCW

Loud, Confident and Wrong

Boffins suggest astronauts should build a Wall of Death on the Moon

Christoph

Re: Next step....

And there's the story "The Day We Played Mars" (the match being played on the Moon) in "The Exploits of Engelbrecht"

Christoph

Will it ever be possible for humans to be gestated, born, and grow up in Lunar gravity? Or how about Mars gravity?

If not, any colonies will have to permanently rely on immigration from Earth or from rotating space colonies such as O'Neill cylinders.

UK lays down fresh legislation banning crummy default device passwords

Christoph

Re: Default passwords are allowed?

"That leaves the issue of how they supply that to customers."

On one gadget I have the default password is the device serial number, which is on a label.

Voyager 1 regains sanity after engineers patch around problematic memory

Christoph

Re: Difficult to comprehend that...

A lot of code used a jump table - a list at a known address of jumps to each routine, so you could move the code around without changing external access. Some people at work once managed to hex dump the computer's code on the screen and were going "Wow, that's computer code". I took one look at the list of C3nnC3nnC3nn . . . and said "No, that's a jump table".

Rarest, strangest, form of Windows saved techie from moment of security madness

Christoph

Re: Reminds me of the old "I love you" virus

And there was the story of the tech support who didn't open it because NOBODY tells tech support "I love you".

Zilog to end standalone sales of the legendary Z80 CPU

Christoph

I was running complicated factory machinery using hand-crafted Z80 assembler. It all fitted into about 20K, most of which was screen & keyboard control. Then there was a data table listing all the ports for the components, which the index registers scanned through each cycle. The actual operating code was very small except for the most complex components.

Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after car wash

Christoph

Elsenet someone pointed out that the Cybertruck has yet to match the sales numbers of the Sinclair C5.

Judge refuses to Ctrl-Z divorce order made by a misclick

Christoph

Does it work the other way round?

Could people be unknowingly married in this way? For instance if two couples are already in the system, and the wrong couple gets married. Or even if the partners get switched? A&B, C&D get married but they input it as A&D, C&B?

Hyundai picks Palantir to help it build automated navy ships

Christoph

"combining accumulated autonomous navigation technology with cutting-edge defense AI."

Does this imply shooting at anything that the robot calculates might be a threat? Such as a passing fishing boat?

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

Christoph

Re: Sixty microseconds a day, eh?

We now have clocks which are accurate to much better than one second absolute.

That's one second in 13.8 billion years, the time since the Big Bang.

Do not touch that computer. Not even while wearing gloves. It is a biohazard

Christoph

Re that tobacco tar in the computer - now imagine the state of the user's lungs.

Boeing top brass stand down amid safety turbulence

Christoph

Re: Always open

If they are properly apologetic the plane will land before they are kicked out.

European Space Agency to measure Earth at millimeter scale

Christoph

What are they using as their zero point?

Plate Tectonics and weathering move places on the Earth by more than 1mm a year relative to each other.

Presumably they have their grid's origin defined as one particular point and measure movement relative to that?

Does anyone know what that point will be?

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Christoph

Re: Device Names

Alpher, Bethe and Gamow.

Cutting-edge robot space surgeon makes first incision in Zero-G

Christoph

"I'm not a doctor I'm a miniaturized in vivo robotic assistant !"

WATSON picks up slack on Mars for SHERLOC as Perseverance gadgets show age

Christoph
Alien

Does this mean that the rover can no longer zap Martians with its Heat Ray?

Venus has a quasi-moon and it's just been named 'Zoozve' for a sweet reason

Christoph

There has to be one

named Clanger

When red flags are just office decoration: Edinburgh Uni's Oracle IT disaster

Christoph
Trollface

Why weren't they warned?

Why didn't Edinburgh University's Koestler Parapsychology Unit warn them that this was going to happen?

India to make its digital currency programmable

Christoph

Re: A tyrant's dream

Does the programmability allow them to make the money expire after a certain date? Forcing everyone to spend rather than save.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

Christoph

Re: I once had ....

Back in the 80s we had to install a bridge to isolate the consultancy section of the office. They all used the then new Amstrad PC compatibles, which would randomly stop forwarding the tokens on the Token Ring Network and bring down the network for the entire building. We separated them with the bridge and let them get on with it.

Leaked email: Unit4 ERP system leaves some school staff with 'nil pay'

Christoph

But it's hardly their fault that they have trouble with such a new and unconventional function as computerised payroll. I mean it's not as if running payroll went all the way back to the very first ever commercial use of computing and should have been totally sorted many decades ago?

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

Christoph

See also: mail-in rebates, HMRC tax refunds, etc.

And way way worse than that - any kind of Benefit payment.

Wait, hold on, everyone – Mozilla thinks Apple, Google, Microsoft should play fair

Christoph

Re: What “market share”?

If there is no value in using a particular browser then please explain why the other browser makers are so intent on excluding Firefox.

OSIRIS-REx's stuck asteroid sample canister finally cracked open by NASA

Christoph

Re: Finally

They should have used percussive maintenance.

Poor communication led to complete lack of communication

Christoph

Did he seriously not think of that? It seems so obvious that I would expect it to be in the initial spec, not missed until after the system went live.