Posts by David M

UK government plays power broker with small modular reactor suitors

Re: Hmm

There's also geothermal, which might be worth a try, if we could find a way to make deep enough holes.

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Re: I have one problem with USB C

I had the same problem, but then found that little blanking plugs were available, and work very well, so no more fluff!

The Europa Clipper stretches its wings as launch nears

Mirowave oven efficiency

"Together, the arrays will produce approximately 700 watts of electricity at Jupiter, or just enough to operate a small microwave oven."

The magnetrons in microwave ovens are only about 60% efficient, so a 700W microwave would consume around 1100W. This could be a problem for anyone on board the Europa Clipper who fancies a jacket potato.

What do Uber drivers make of Waymo? 'We are cooked'

Re: Taxi

The in-car conversation problem could easily be solved—with AI! If I was in charge of Uber, right now I'd be secretly recording all of the conversations going on in my vehicles, and using them to train a giant LLM so that it could hold optimal 'taxi driver' chats with passengers. "Do you know who I had in my cab the other day...?"

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: C128 the Hero!

I did know one person (in the UK) who owned a TRS-80. I also saw a fair few being sold, as I had a Saturday job in Tandy around 1980. Which also meant that I got to play with one quite a lot, as nobody else in the shop had a clue.

Gamers who find Ryzen 9000s disappointingly slow are testing it wrong, says AMD

Re: Software Optimization...

All modern processors optimised for themselves, with out of order execution, executing multiple instructions in parallel, elaborate branch prediction, all manner of caching, etc. I think the problem is one of diminishing returns - we've got so clever at all of this optimisation that further improvements require increasingly complex hardware and only give marginal benefits.

Former Fujitsu engineer apologizes for role in Post Office IT scandal

Where were the tests?

Where were the tests? Surely a system like Horizon would have had thousands and thousands of tests—unit tests, integration tests, directed tests, random tests, etc.—plus coverage analysis to ensure that everything was being tested, and a regression system to run the tests regularly. So Mr Jenkins wouldn't have to 'accept' that everything was working, he could just look at the most recent test results. Or am I being naïve?

ASUS creates a substance: Ceraluminum, which fuses aluminum and a ceramic

UK spelling

I wonder if they'll call it ceraluminium in the UK.

PumpkinOS carves out a FOSS PalmOS-compatible runtime environment

Still alive

I still use my Palm T|X. And sync it to linux with pilot-xfer.

Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs

Sweating assets

My 1982 HP-11C is still working fine.

Welcome to 2024: Volkswagen really is putting ChatGPT into cars as a gabby copilot

Oh dear

I recently acquired a newish VW, and I'm already fed up with the amount of unnecessary technology in it, complete with very poorly-designed user interfaces, and so-called 'assistance' features that don't work properly and just end up being distracting, which is the last thing you want when you're driving. I don't want to think about how much worse the driving experience would be with an AI assistant trying to 'help'. It's tempting to say that I'll never buy another VW, but I fear that by the time I need another car, all manufacturers will have gone the same way.

Scientists mull Solar Radiation Management – a potential climate-change stop-gap

Totally agree. We need WW2-scale sacrifices, from everyone. Unfortunately no government would ever consider this because it would be be political suicide. It's possible to get support for sacrifices on this scale if there's a really obvious and immediate threat, e.g. an evil army massing on the borders. But climate change is happening too gradually, and it looks a lot like the danger won't appear severe enough to justify the necessary drastic steps until it's too late to turn things around.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

Ditto with my 41-year-old HP-11C. A beautifully-made thing, slightly battered but still working perfectly. And I remember back in the 80s/early 90s, there would be labs full of HP test gear that was totally solid and reliable. And expensive, admittedly (hence HP = "High Price") but you felt you were getting your money's worth. Those were the days!

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

My understanding was that Wirth designed Pascal to be a teaching language, and gave us the more flexible Modula2 for real applications.

Governments resent their dependence on Big Tech

Re: The benefits of hindsight

Government departments clearly don't have the skills or resources to build their own IT systems, but what they do need is a few senior people who understand both the workflows and the technology well enough to ask the right questions, to define appropriate requirements, including for security, and to be able to monitor private sector development and deliverables to ensure those requirements are being met. I suspect that a lot of problems stem from the fact that nobody in the organisation has much of a clue about IT, so it's easy for suppliers to pull the wool over their eyes.

China's top EV battery maker announced a breakthrough, but top boffin isn't convinced

Charger power rating

Quick calculation - EVs seem to get around 6..7km to the kWh, so 400km would require at least 60kWh of charge. To get that in 10 minutes would mean a charge rate of 360kW. Even the fastest chargers don't currently get anywhere near that. And I believe the highest charging voltage currently in use is 800V, at which 360kW translates to 450A, which would need a rather hefty cable and connectors. None of this is insurmountable, but it's going to need a lot of infrastructure improvements to make this new battery technology viable.

Post Office Horizon Inquiry calls for compensation to be brought forward

BBC investigation

The BBC radio series about this (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jf7j/episodes/guide) is very well-researched and informative. And horrifying.

Amazon Prime too easy to join, too hard to quit, says FTC lawsuit

YES and NO

I was impressed (in a bad way) by the Amazon checkout dialogue box that said "Would you like a free trial of Prime?" with big YES and and NO buttons. On the 'NO' button in tiny text it said "NO, I don't want to miss the opportunity to try Prime!" So effectively it was another YES button. I eventually found the real 'no' option, which was even tinier, and lurking in the corner of the screen.

Decision to hold women-in-cyber events in abortion-banning states sparks outcry

Re: Mixed Feelings

I sort of see the point you're trying to make, but to me the victims of these laws aren't just those who are directly affected. I would never visit one of these states—I'm not LGBTQ+, but what about my friends or colleagues? The idea that someone I know (or even someone I don't) could be punished for this is horrific, and I wouldn't want to be somewhere where that might happen. Conversely you could argue that the abortion laws don't affect 50% of the population, but only the much smaller proportion that might actually seek an abortion, but again that's not the point—these laws take away every woman's rights, whether they're directly affected or not.

Study recommends mandatory 3-year vacation so astronauts' brains can recover

Reduced gravity

I wonder how this would affect those in reduced (but not micro) gravity, e.g. in a Lunar colony at one-sixth g.

Excess profits on Motorola's Airwave estimated to be £1.3B

Market not working well

"...concerns that the market might not be working well."

I confess I don't understand much about economics, but it seems to me that if you have a single monopoly supplier for an essential emergency service, that's not a market at all, and it's hardly surprising that the customer is in a poor bargaining position.

Surely Airwave should just have been a set of open protocols, plus a compatibility testing regime. Then multiple suppliers of the actual equipment could have been appointed, giving some opportunity for a competitive market to operate. Or am I being naïve?

NASA's electric plane tech is coming in for a late, bumpy landing

Re: My plan

Thank you for your comments. You're all correct, of course - it's a rubbish plan, and would never work. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

My plan

I have a scheme for reducing aviation CO₂ emissions by 50% - fly half as much. There we are. Job done. Just organise some kind of voucher system to limit the number of flights anyone can take to (say) two return flights per year. Much easier than all these technical solutions, and could be introduced very quickly. It would only be temporary, of course - the scheme would be withdrawn once truly zero-carbon aircraft are available. I know it wouldn't be popular, but sacrifices are going to have to be made if we want to save the planet.

Uncle Sam sounds like it may actually do something about rampant visa H-1B fraud

Numbers

"The number of H-1B visas available annually is capped at 65,000..."

It so should be 65536.

Cruise emits software fix after self-driving car slams into bus

Unique error

The speed with which Cruise analysed and rectified the problem is impressive.

But I wonder how many other 'unique' situations these vehicles are going to encounter. I reckon that pretty much every time I go for a drive, I see some weird event that I've never encountered before. Some random recent examples:

(1) When joining a large motorway-junction roundabout, met a vehicle that was reversing back round the roundabout.

(2) Had to slow down to let a peacock cross in front of me.

(3) Had to go the wrong way round a traffic island because someone had parked in such a stupid place that I couldn't get through on my side.

(4) Had to disobey a red light at some roadworks, as it became obvious that the lights were stuck on red in both directions.

Really not sure how a self-driving vehicle would have handled any of those. And they're just a few examples.

Wow, so they actually let AI fly an F-16 fighter jet

Weapons hot

I notice it said that "firing weapons" was one of the things the pilot would still do. It's only a matter of time, though...

ChatGPT talks its way through Wharton MBA, medical exams

Full duplex

Education is a two-way process - real students ask questions, whereas the current crop of AIs don't, and you can tell a lot from what questions they ask. Perhaps this could be the basis of an AI-proof exam, where the question doesn't provide all the necessary information, and the student is expected to ask for it.

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Re: The ICE will be with us for...

They'll continue to be on the roads for many years after that, as people hang on to their ICE vehicles, and then sell them into the second-hand market.

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Re: Human Versus AI Drivers

I was also taught not just to allow enough stopping distance for me, but also for the vehicle behind. So if something is following too close, I try to allow extra space ahead of me so that I can give the idiot behind more chance to stop. A rear-end crash in those circumstances wouldn't be my fault, but it would still be damned inconvenient.

This seems like a precaution that 'full self-driving' software could handle quite easily.

Financial authorities fine UK bank nearly $60m for platform migration disaster

Will it help to fine the bank?

I'm not clear how taking £48.6 million away from the bank is going to help them to improve. Won't this just impact their customers, in reduced services and/or lower investment returns? It seems to me that we should be directly punishing those responsible, rather than the bank. A year of community service for whoever made the decisions and/or ignored the warnings might make those in a similar position in other organisations sit up and think.

Sirius XM flaw unlocks so-called smart cars thanks to code flaw

Re: Different emphasis

Any software should start with some requirements. In this case, one of those would be "only the legitimate owner can unlock the vehicle." Then there's some software engineering to implement the requirements, then a coder can write the code. And then, crucially, it's subjected to a barrage of tests to ensure it meets its requirements. For anything security-related, that should include penetration testing. So there's a whole bunch of fails here, but the lack of proper testing seems the most egregious. This software is protecting a valuable asset, and ought to have been treated accordingly. Or am I being naïve?

Tesla recalls 40k cars over patch that broke power steering

Re: Power steering

Power steering that has lost power is indeed very heavy. Steering that was never powered in the first place is only heavy at manoeuvring speed, otherwise it's fine.

Cops swoop after crooks use wireless keyfob hack to steal cars

Progress of car security

When my friend's Vauxhall Viva was stolen around 1980, the police found it abandoned and managed to get into it with a Ford Cortina key. Pretty much any small flat piece of metal would unlock it. On top of which, it was possible to open the Viva's bonnet from the outside, and under the bonnet was a button labelled 'push to start engine'. Since then car security has steadily improved, with proper keys, alarms, deadlocks, immobilisers and so on. Until recently, that is, when technology seems to be returning us to the 'push to start engine' stage.

City isn't keen on 5,000 erratic, traffic-jam-causing GM robo-cars on its streets

Re: Isn't it their own damn fault

How about this... all self-driving cars must have a safety driver. The car logs every occasion when the safety driver has to intervene. When every car in the fleet has logged no interventions at all for a period of, say, a year, then maybe we begin to think about allowing vehicles without a safety driver.

Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down

Seems reasonable

I can't really see a problem with this. Surely better to get people to moderate their speed, even if by mild subterfuge, than to fine them and/or put points on their licence.

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Re: 07734

My Sinclair Cambridge Memory (1975-ish?) is still going strong. OK, it randomly turns itself off occasionally due to an iffy power switch, but given its age, I think that's forgivable.

AI's most convincing conversations are not what they seem

Boats

Asking "can a computer think?" is like asking "can a boat swim?" In other words, no it can't, it merely mimics certain aspects of that behaviour in a possibly-useful way.

Concerns that £360m data platform for NHS England is being set up to fail

Re: Misunderstanding the NHS

Sadly I can only give one upvote. This is exactly what I've been saying for years, not because I have any special insight but because it's the obvious thing to do, supporting genuine competition, and not allowing any one company to monopolise things. But when did common sense ever play a part in major government procurements?

TomTom to chop 10% of workforce, blames automation tech

Still use mine

I still use my seven-year-old TomTom GO. It works pretty well, it still gets map and firmware updates, it has a much better windscreen mount than any phone bracket I've been able to find, and it doesn't constantly report my location to Google or Apple. If it broke, I might even consider buying another.

Take this $15m and make us some ultra-energy-efficient superconductor chips, scientists told

Déjà vu

I'm sure I remember Josephson junctions being 'the next big thing' back in the ... 90s, or 80s, was it? It's nice to see them back again. But I'm now wondering how big your supercomputer has to be for the energy saving of this new technology to outweigh the energy cost of the substantial cryogenic cooling plant that would be needed to get everything down to 4.2K. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Govt suggests Brits should hand passports to social media companies

Don't blame the messenger

I've used Facebook for 12 years or so, and have never seen a "tidal wave of hate". A couple of overly-heated discussions, but that's about it. But then I choose my FB friends carefully. All that's needed is a bit of education in how to use the platform and guard against abuse. Take care over sharing settings. Unfollow or unfriend people if necessary. Problem largely solved.

Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans

Just another compiler

Isn't this just a new sort of compiler? We used to write assembler, but now a compiler does that for us, based on some input in a high-level language. This AI is doing much the same, translating an even-higher-level description into something that can be swallowed by a traditional compiler. If this catches on, the programmer's job will become the writing of that natural-language description, in a sufficiently precise way that the AI can understand and solve it.

One area where this might get interesting is in software testing. If the AI 'understands' the problem, it should also be able to generate suitable test cases. But would you trust a system where the code and the tests were derived from the same source? Or do we assume that the AI's code is always correct, and therefore doesn't need testing?

US Navy in mad dash to salvage F-35C that fell off a carrier into South China Sea

Re: F35 A, B & C models

The F35B isn't quite VTOL as, unlike the Harrier, it cannot take off vertically - it needs a short airstrip, or an even shorter airstrip plus a ramp, as used on the Queen Elizabeth. It is able to land vertically, though.

Russia blows up old satellite, NASA boss 'outraged' as ISS crew shelters from debris

Re: People In Glass Houses.....

US hypocrisy does not make the Cosmos 1408 action any less dangerous.

Happy birthday, Sinclair Radionics: We'll remember you for your revolutionary calculators and crap watches

Sinclair Cambridge

I still use my Sinclair Cambridge calculator. The power switch is a bit dodgy, so it has a tendency to cut out mid-calculation, but that just adds to the excitement.

Ex-health secretary said 'vast majority' were 'onside' with GP data grab. Consumer champion Which? reckons 20 million don't even know what it is

Simple solution

Make it opt-IN. That way only people who have heard about it and are happy to have their data shared will be affected. It would then be up to NHS Digital to convince everyone that it's a good idea, and that their data will be kept safe and not be misused.

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

Some things that would help the situation

Some things that would help the situation:

1. Standardised cables/connectors so any EV can charge from any charger.

2. No 'account' or special card needed, so you can just turn up, charge and pay, just like with petrol.

3. Breakdown services (AA, RAC, etc.) have a mobile recharging service, so that if you do run out, you can call them out and get given enough charge to make it to the nearest charging point (or, alternatively, just get towed there).

Data collected to promote public health must never be surrendered to police

Privacy assurance cannot be trusted

"Every government, everywhere, that offers a check-in app must agree — in law — that our freely provided data can only be used for public health."

No such assurance can ever be trusted, as the government can always change the law later on.

UK health secretary Matt Hancock follows delay to GP data grab with campaign called 'Data saves lives'

Opt-In

If the data sharing is so great, make it opt-in. Problem solved.

'Vast majority of people' are onside with a data grab they know next to nothing about, reckons UK health secretary

Re: "the vast majority of people are strongly onside"

If most people are onside, then make the process opt-in. Have a form that states what will be shared and with whom, and have people sign that form and send it to their GP. This should be fine if most people are so strongly onside with the plans.