Posts by Charlie Clark

India launches two ESA sun-spotters that will fly in incredibly precise formation

Re: Neat - Diffraction

Thanks for confirming with details!

Re: Neat

Not necessarily depth of field, but the sun is not a point source which is why we get penumbras so the occlusion has to be far enough away and big enough for that.

But I think there are probably other reasons for the arrangement: having any kind moving arm is going to cause problems with alignment as both have constantly got to be adjusted to match each other. But there may be other benefits in being able to orchestrate this kind of synchronised stargazing™.

Elon Musk tops US political donor list with $270M+ for Team Trump

Re: This is how America works

US elections have been a combination of state fair and outright bribery for most of the country's history. The state fair bit is the snake oil salesmen do their bit for the voters. The money spent on advertising, etc. and now lotteries is really only the tip of the iceberg and the ticket to the Lobby for the real bribery: legislation, where billions can be spent on a single bill. As a result, while the Democrats may have lost the election, the most important donors have made sure the right people have got their visting card. The, er, House always wins. Okay, it's the Senate that makes the money, but this is the better quip and people like Mike Johnson do have some impressive PACs with some rather shy donors.

Musk won't care: he's already made more than enough money on the deal and NASA has no real alternative for launches and the DoD is busy signing contracts for Starlink.

Arianespace's Vega C delayed after gantry throws a tantrum

It did get rescheduled for later in the same day.

The launch was successful

https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Double_win_for_Europe_Sentinel-1C_and_Vega-C_take_to_the_skies

Having Vega working takes some of the pressure off Ariane while it works on fixing Ariane 6.

Europe's Vega C rocket cleared for launch tonight, first since 2022

Like I said, are other countries that much different? Yes, we all know about SpaceX, but SES seems to be following the same tried and trusted path that was established in the 1960s.

And ESA and NASA have a lot in common down to the politics, funding and the awarding of contracts. It's a miracle that anything gets built at all, and yet they stilll manage to get some very good stuff done. I'm not deeply au fait with the details but I seem to remember that it was about 10 years ago that it all went to hell in ESA and lots of projects went into stasis or were asked for very expensive overhauls.

You can knock Ariane but, for a while, it held the most impressive record in reliability. Going forward, they will have to embrace both faster innovation and more private enterprise and cooperation with other agencies. I won't be holding my breath for great achievements, but I think things will improve.

And in which country is it signficantly different? Pretty much every country considers space of "national" importance, is prepared to throw money at it and add riders that ensure priority for military use.

Besides, ESA and Arianespace are related but not the same and Arianespace can be credited with developing international commercial launches.

Oracle's Java price hikes push CIOs to brew new licensing strategies

Oracle to Postgres migrations have been possible for years – won't always work, of course – but you can get professional support if you're interested. And, of course, since Amazon did the same thing the other year, it's also happy to help.

The process for any reasonably maintained* environment will be the same: check whether particular features are available on the target platform; define performance metrics; see what works automatically (could be most) and what needs to be done. In 2010 this might have been considered risky, but now I think there are plenty of examples showing that it's fairly straightforward and things often work better than before.

* Yes, I know that PoS that was done by cheapr outsourced from contractors a few years ago might be a bit of a challenge.

Re: Why still using Java of any kind?

The Java code was largely replaced by Python because the developers were worried about what Oracle might do. Even though I prefer Python, I don't think this was necessary – it's still in OpenOffice – and it took a lot of resources. Still, that's one of the points of open source to be able to change the implementation details for any reason.

Thick brown envelopes do wonders for gravity…

Trump tariffs transform into bigger threats for Mexico, Canada than China

Re: Don't repeat the Trump lie!

I never claimed there was anything special about the election. That could have been claimed in 2016 when he quite heavily lost the popular vote, but seeing as the it's the electoral college that does the electing, that's merely an observation.

And in your second paragraph you're agreeing with me: the House tends to flip in the mid-terms.

Re: Don't repeat the Trump lie!

And your point is? The House has frequently been lost in the mid-terms, at least this millenium. It's on a knife-edge at the moment and I don't think anyone would be surprised to see it swing in 2026, which might make Johnson's task of herding cats, even harder. Okay, that git Gaetz has gone, but MTG and her friends are still there, along with a few from the suburbs who are probably already looking over their shoulder.

Re: Don't repeat the Trump lie!

Voting for "change" is very different from a ringing endorsement of the other side – see also the UK General Election. Electorates are fickler and vindictive. Sure, Trump even managed to win the popular vote this time, but he's going to have to deliver improvements in the standard of living quickly, not to lose the mid-terms like he did in 2018.

Re: Don't repeat the Trump lie!

They also seem to have short memories and frequent cases of buyer's remorse. I think 2026 favours the Democrats for the Senate anyway and the House usually swings in the mid-terms.

Indeed, and before that the fairly disastrous mercantililism of the mid-19th century, including coin-clipping. If the exploitation of the resources opened up by the railways hadn't saved it, America would probably have gone bankrupt.

There are already factories all over the world that simply rebadge incoming Chinese wares so that these can be imported by America without tariffs.

Most of the products for which tariffs have been propose are either not replaceable by domestic products or are not price sensitive. In which case, the tariff is just a sales tax.

Brits are scrolling away from X and aren't that interested in AI

Re: It's not just Brits...

In which case they're all in deriliction of their duty to inform the public. However, seeing as the integration was probably set up years ago by some PFY who's since "moved on", they don't have any idea how to change it.

What are they smoking?

For May 2022, Ofcom measured X's adult reach at 26.8 million…

How do they come up with this? Twitter always was a niche service that rose to prominence largely through the combination of celebrities and journalists. I don't know anyone who's been using it seriously for years as other forums are much better suited for the jobs: celebrities have largely moved to Instagram, niche fan clubs have Reddit or similar, which really only leaves the codependency of politicians and journalists, and a couple of companies who failed to get the memo that it was never a good medium for announcements.

Foursquare to close, but Swarm game will live on

Re: How did the company manage to last this long?

What do you mean "record your presence"? I can do this with a press of a button on my watch, but all my apps have options to record the current position, eg. car parking space.

How did the company manage to last this long?

I'm always amazed at how long "businesses" like this manage to survive. Did anyone use it seriously for a sustained period of time? Or was it just those saddos who enjoyed the game?

Ten years under Dr Su: How AMD went from budget Intel alternative to x86 contender

While it's true that most of Intel's problems were of its own making, we shouldn't ignore the deals it cut with manufacturers to make sure there was Intel Inside™. AMD remain cash-strapped because it was barely keeping its head above water in the fight with Intel.

Going forward, nVidia should be looking over its shoulder at anything that is "nearly" as good, but as uses less power as its main customers all have more than enough cash to build entire data centres using different architectures if total power consumption is siginifcantly lower.

Kill Oracle's 'JavaScript' trademark, Deno asks USPTO

Re: For clarification: This is an old SUN Microsystems Trademark from 1995

A more modern one would be "to google". As I said, I'm not sure of US practice here: in the UK Hoover famously lost its case, for both reasons: genericism due to lack of assertion. I think, but could easily br wrong, Scotch Tape and Kleenex have both successfully defended their trademarks. You can normally tell by mentions in TV shows.

Re: For clarification: This is an old SUN Microsystems Trademark from 1995

There could be problems over whether the old agreements are sufficient defence of the trademark today. I can't remember US jurisprudence on generics, but I think it's less consumer friendly than the UK.

Given the rise of the use of ECMAScript and TypeScript, it might be a good idea for Oracle to settle, before a new name is chosen and Java loses relevance as a result.

and a normal person might think they are related in some way

US law doesn't have the man on the Clapham omnibus, so this will be down to technicalities such as whether Oracle is asserting the trademark sufficiently to warrant its protection.

To be fair, when time JavaScript was developed, the name was chosen to suggest a similarity with the language and platform was very successfully pushing at the time.

However, retaining a trademark does require actively using it. This would be easy enough if Oracle released, say, a runtime. But in the absence of this, it could be difficult to argue for it.

FTC urges smart device makers to disclose software update lifecycles

Re: Knobbled, smartly.

Software – sold as such – has limited exemption from strict product liability, but hardware containing such software doesn't.

But, it's okay, because Elon is coming to help "beleaguered" manufacturers from such overburdensome regulation…

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

Re: Sounds far too familiar

Sex sells and anyone who pretends otherwise deserves all they get.

Study suggests X turned right just in time for election season

Re: Keep getting notifications from Musk

It's been shown to be in the source code: all twits are are equal, but one twat is more equal than the others.

Move along here, nothing to see

Journalists and researches might like Twitter because it's fairly easy to get data about it, but it's never really been that popular even before messenger apps appeared, after which it started a slow decline in popularity that was accelerated by Musk.

Looking at the results of the American elections, it's fairly clear that there, while there was a general shift away from the status quo, it was more pronounced among organised labour and immigrants (not mutually exclusive and not comprehensive): not generally the groups associated with Twitter. I'd expect TikTok, YouTube and messenger groups to be more important. My own anecdotal evidence is limited, but when using YouTube anonymously I notice that most of the suggested political videos I get, even when looking for completely unrelated stuff, tend towards the extremist.

Tesla Cybertruck, a paragon of reliability, recalled again

Re: Good news folks...

Of course, I'm aware that the correlation is usually the other way round, but I think there are also a certain amount of "affinity customers" who buy stuff from people they admire; I think this bound to be the case for the Muskmobile, though this is also increased by some astute financial inducements. How else do you explain Cybertruck sales

And, it works in the other way as well: if a company's stock starts to tank, it can find itself losing customers, cf. Intel's recent developments.

Re: Good news folks...

Or, sales will go up as more people buy the stock because the guy's a genius, right?

Re: Optics

Hey Elon! Have some more of our money! screamed several thousand adoring fans as he left the courthouse having been convicted but upbeat because, as he said I've forgiven myself. And just look at these government contracts!.

Europe glances Russia's way after Baltic Sea data cables severed

Re: Why would they bother?

Thanks for the map.

Russia and China have, at various times, willingly ignored UNCLOS. But then so does the US when it feel like it. Russia has also sent vessels where it definitely shouldn't – one of the reasons why Sweden decided to drop neutrality and join NATO. And the shadow fleet breaks the law almost by definition. I think we may well see more assertive coastguards in action and requests that vessels move away. When it comes to navies, it's one of the few areas where Europe really does have the edge over Russia, especially with Finland and Sweden onboard.

Sweden and Finland are now treating the events as sabotage, so you can shut down your smoke cannon: Russia is definitely probing and provoking to see whether and how the West reacts.

Re: Why would they bother?

No one is denying that accidents, and natural disasters (a vulcano cut Tonga off for a couple of weeks last year) do happen, but that also does not mean this wasn't sabotage.

All the Baltic and North Sea countries have reported an increase in Russian "scientific" ships close to important infrastructure over the last couple of years and, the aim of terrorism is to inspire terror, including of fairly mild attacks. This means more costs for repairs, surveillance, coastguards, etc. Cheaper to start banning Russian vessels from our waters.

Google changes Android release cycle so new versions arrive in Q2

Re: Nope

I don't know which phones you've been using, but I can't remember hardware problems with any Android updates over the last ten years or so. I have had issues when switching ROMs

I don't mind criticising Google for stuff, but their software releases have had very few issues. When it comes to Android, I think this can be put down to it being open source, but also the close relationship they have with manufacturers. Though, in the past, this has often been typified by a lack of updates!

Photoshop FOSS alternative GNU Image Manipulation Program 3.0 nearly here

Re: Another chance

Not when it comes to a GUI toolkit: GTK is written in C, whereas nearly every other toolkit it written in C++ and for good reason.

AI PCs flood the market. Their makers hope someone wants them

Re: No thanks

I'm sorry, Dave. I cannot let you do that.

Re: I can tell you exactly who will buy them

Ah, pity those in a world without Brians…

Re: An AI PC is ...

Don't forget the purple button for "AI Boost" mode!

Lenovo China clones the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an old, slow, local x86

Re: Headscratcher?

It also looks like a reasonable proof of concept in case the US start sanctioning CPUs.

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: Multi-Fail

Oh, so that's where the ticking is coming from.

Stevens! You can call off the bomb squad now.

Re: Multi-Fail

That's what they did with my hand but they were getting ready to draw on the other one! Mind you, you also need to treat what patient's say with some degree of professional scepticism because most of them have less than no idea but want to be helpful.

Re: Multi-Fail

I've experienced that going into theatre… fortunately, I was still awake enough to say "LEFT HAND!"

Re: Multi-Fail

Hang on… has anyone seen my watch.

Re: Multi-Fail

It's one of the things you notice with properly trained tradesmen: they will always take the time at the end of a job to check that they haven't left something behind, which is one of the aims of cleaning up after themselves. Yes, this will mean going through an apprenticeship that comprises of endless rounds of making the tea, being sent on quests to find spotted paint, etc., but also the chance to make mistakes, learn from them and learn how to avoid making them. Then the MBAs come along with their time and motion studies and ask for those tend minutes at the end of the shift could be used more productively…

Managers and customers also need to appreciate this. Or learn the hard way.

Broadcom makes VMware Workstation and Fusion free for everyone

"Desktop tools are, we suspect, not very lucrative any more."

Tell that to Parallels who've moved to yearly, more expensive subscriptions, assuming that everyone on MacOS loves them.

I think Broadcom is doing this to try and reverse some of the adverse PR it's licensing policy has caused and try and get small developers back on board. But, making it free, also allows them to drop support whenever they want.

Microsoft 365 Copilot goes monthly for a 5% premium and annual commitment

Re: Copilot annual commitment

The short answer is: yes. I know a few people who've switched from using search to GPT and are reasonably happy, though I personally don't think the answers are that much different to be honest and we might see Google catch up fairly soon. I also suspect numbers are nothing like as good as Microsoft would like, which is why it's being so generous…

Apple hit with £3 billion claim of ripping off 40 million UK iCloud users

Re: Who do I trust most? Cook, Bezos, Zuckerberg or Nadella?

Trust Apple? In one of the recent MacOS updates the keychain was magically synched with I-Cloud even if this had previously been disabled.

As for "just works" – seems quite difficult to use if you're not a member in comparison with, say, Dropbox or Google Drive. It's your money and should be your choice, but whether £2.50 a month is a lot depends very much on how much you earn. The strong-arm freemium tactics shouldn't be required.