Always worth remembering Trump is one of the few people to have bankrupted a casino. Mind you it was one he owned.
Posts by SkippyBing
2367 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2008
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Trump teases 25% semiconductor tariffs that will go ‘substantially higher’
UK government insiders say AI datacenters may be a pricey white elephant
UK watchdog hints Voda-Three merger will likely pass
Brit broadband subscribers caught between crappy connections and price hikes
Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris
Touch Typing for the Win
Many years ago I worked in tech support in France so long ago I think el Reg had only just started. I found it much easier to set the keyboard as QWERTY so I could still touch type rather than learn how to do it on an AZERTY one. With the bonus it drove anyone who tried using my machine mad.
This also helped many years later when a colleague tried to get revenge for some minor misdeed by moving by keys around. Took about a week before I noticed.
Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine
I have to assume they wanted to minimise/eliminate through hull openings. So the Bluetooth controller allowed them to communicate through hull to all the stuff bolted on the outside without having to seal a gland. They probably thought it was a genius move that the world's navies are idiots for not using...
Re: So the sub has not been certified
I am idly wondering which legal jurisdiction any contract/waiver fell under? If they signed at sea would it be the state of registration of the ship, international waters in which case no jurisdiction, or have they explicitly stated on the paperwork it's considered to have been signed in a favourably lenient location?
It’s official: Vodafone and Three to tie the knot in the UK
NASA to tear the wings off plane in the name of sustainability
About ducking time: Apple fixes up autocorrect in iOS 17
First-known interstellar Solar System visitor 'Oumuamua a comet in disguise – research
NASA wants a telescope on the far side of the Moon
Huge lithium discovery could end world shortages ... Oh, wait, it's in Iran
UK space faces cash freeze unless watchdogs step up
Re: Civil Service
They are also the only organisation I know that takes four weeks to mark multiple-choice exam papers, with a computer. Whereas at the time the German equivalent would tell you that day if you'd passed.
Or the time they told me they couldn't issue my licence because I hadn't crossed their palms with silver. Which was odd as I had a month old receipt saying I had...
NASA finds crashing spacecraft into asteroids is a viable defence strategy
Who needs sailors? US Navy's latest robo-ship can run itself for 30 days
Having been on a few warships I'd be impressed if they go 3 days without some sort of electrical or mechanical break down that needs human intervention, never-mind 30. Also although minimal crewing sounds like a great idea if you're on fire or flooding you want as many trained people as you can to throw at the problem to make it go away. See HMS Nottingham vs Australia in 2002.
NASA: Yup, thousand-pound meteorite exploded over Texas
NASA, DARPA to go nuclear in hopes of putting boots on Mars
Re: Project Orion
From the book on Project Orion by Dyson's son the estimate was 1 additional death, somewhere on Earth, per launch. For the time at least the 'bomb' designs were relatively clean in terms of fall out as I understand it, but a lot of the project is still classified as small lightweight nuclear propulsion systems may have other non-peaceful uses...
Lockheed Martin demos 50kW anti-aircraft frickin' laser beam
Uncle Sam greenlights first commercial nuclear small modular reactor design
Laser-wielding boffins bend lightning to their will
Let me X-plane: Boeing R&D unit sheds rudder, ailerons, flaps for DARPA project
Re: Stop me if you heard it before..
Good explanation of how it works here: https://breakingdefense.com/2021/09/blowin-in-the-wind-a-new-x-plane-program-to-revolutionize-aircraft-maneuverability/
Quite different to the reaction control system on the Harrier which pushes the aircraft around rather than messing with the airflow.
Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name
FAA sets 2024 deadline for preventing 5G crash landings
Elon Musk's cost-cutting campaign at Twitter extended to not paying rent, claims landlord
UK cuts China from Sizewell nuclear project, takes joint stake
Re: Rough timing
Re weapons it would appear due to the boom and bust nature of defence procurement it seems a lot of the sub-sub-contractors no longer exist so getting some niche parts for more advanced stuff like Javelin is basically impossible. So it's basically a case of starting from scratch.
Re: Priorities
The App was not £37 Billion. That was the total put aside for two years, including all those test kits that were being freely handed out. Is £37 Billion a lot of money? Yes. Was it all wisely spent? Probably not, it was a global pandemic*. Was it all spent on an App? Definitely not.
*If you're one of those types who likes to compare it to a war you should see how much was wasted in WW2 buying aircraft that weren't fit for their intended role and just went to be target tugs or similar.
FAA wants pilots to be less dependent on computer autopilots
Time Lords decree an end to leap seconds before risky attempt to reverse time
Biden wants SpaceX to beam internet to Iran amid uprising
Now you can't even scale Mount Everest without a drone buzzing overhead
Drones in Nepal
Went trekking on the Annapurna trail in 2018 with a friend. We were carrying our own gear so fairly minimal, a couple of changes of clothes, washkit, and a kindle for me. He sacrificed everything to pack his drone and SLR, to capture the sights. You can imagine his delight at discovering the whole area had been made a No Drone Zone about a week before our arrival...
Scientists, why not simply invent a working fusion plant using $50m from Uncle Sam
China's single aisle passenger jet – the C919 – likely to be certified next week
Re: Should we be making lots of airplanes ?
Airlines wouldn't be replacing old aircraft if it wasn't cost effective so you can guarantee the new ones use less fuel and are less polluting.The improvements in terms of fuel burn/seat km over the last few decades are pretty impressive. e.g.
1998 Boeing 737-600 75mpg/seat
2017 Boeing 737-Max 115mpg/seat
Woman forced to sell 4-bed house after crypto exchange wrongly refunded $7.2m
Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down
Re: feels valid to me
I'm also convinced half the country forgot how to use motorway lanes during COVID. Travelled from Dover to the South West and it was as if someone had covered the inside lane in landmines, meanwhile the outside lane was a train of white vans with a 1mph advantage on the queue of traffic in the middle.
Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid
Re: After looking at all the smart thermostats...
Connecting it to the internet lets you check the settings while you're out. It's amazing how cold a teenager can get with the windows open, wearing only a t-shirt, in winter. Once they learn where the thermostat is you need to make sure you can turn it back off before they bankrupt you.
With the app on your phone it can also tell if you're on the way home and pre-warm the house (which was handy when I had an erratic schedule). Not vital but it did stop me heating an empty building and make me feel like I was living in the 21st century, not the 1900s like some luddite who had to turn things on themselves.
Re: Smart?
I'd say they're smartish. Mine didn't require programming, I just set the temperature to what I wanted it to be for the first few weeks and it learnt what I liked when. It's certainly smarter than the 7 day timer I had before as it doesn't bother heating the house when no-one is in it.
Chinese drone-maker DJI suspends ops in Russia, Ukraine
There are military applications and military applications. i.e. using a drone to observe the fall of artillery is at one end of the spectrum, using one to check for missing tiles on the roof of an accommodation block is another.
DJI doesn't design its products to do the former, the US Armed Forces are banned from using them for the latter.