Parachute
Thanks for clarifying that; it seemed such an obvious thing if only to give someone standing underneath it when it decides to come down time to step smartly to one side.
A ton and a half landing on you can ruin your whole day.
Posts by Neil Barnes
6255 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007
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Balloon-borne telescope returns first photos in search for dark matter
US Supreme Court snubs that guy who wants AI recognized as patent inventors
ChatGPT creates mostly insecure code, but won't tell you unless you ask
Friday 21st April 2023 06:01 GMT 
Am I missing something here?
We have an allegedly 'intelligent' bit of software which is basically regurgitating scraps of texts its training found to be close to each other in existing text, and people are surprised that it regurgitates unsafe code - of which I'm sure there's an awful lot in its training data?
Is this any different from autogenerating hate speech and abuse, for exactly the same reasons?
Guy rejects top photo prize after revealing snap was actually made using AI
Wednesday 19th April 2023 07:23 GMT
Thumbnails...
And did no-one notice that the hand on the foremost person's left shoulder (viewers right) appears to have the thumb at the wrong side (bottom of the image). In fact, it looks as if the rearmost person has two right hands (a trick not replicated since the cover art for Jim Steinman's album Bad For Good).
Rust Foundation so sorry for scaring the C out of you with trademark crackdown talk
Firmware is on shaky ground – let's see what it's made of
Tuesday 18th April 2023 13:34 GMT
Re: Firmware in my MONITOR
I have a Samsung monitor here which cheerfully goes into standby when the computer goes to sleep, then wakes itself up for a couple of seconds... to tell that it's going to sleep.
I suppose it makes as much sense as the power led on the TV which goes off when the thing is turned on, and turns on when the TV is turned off, with random flashing in the wee small hours - I assume when it has a bit of a sulk upon discovering that it can't contact the mothership.
Deplatforming hate forums doesn't work, British boffins warn
UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence
Tuesday 18th April 2023 06:32 GMT
Re: The existing ones don't even meet the spec
Some years ago a traffic police friend pointed out that the half-life of a car on the hard shoulder is about twelve minutes before someone drives an HGV into it. Stay in the car, or even on the same side of the barrier as the traffic, is not a wise move...
OpenAI CEO confirms biz is not currently training GPT-5
Mars Helicopter completes 50th flight, 45 more than NASA planned
Pentagon super-leak suspect cuffed: 21-year-old Air National Guardsman
San Francisco fog defeats pack of Waymo robo-taxis
Thursday 13th April 2023 05:45 GMT 
Each is armed with...
four spinning LiDAR sensors, six radar sensors, fourteen cameras, and eight ultrasonic sensors, and assorted telemetry sensors monitoring the wheels, steering, brakes, and so on.
And yet the fleshy meatbags manage with just two (sometimes fewer!) eyes and the seat of their pants... sounds like these robot thingies have some way to go.
Microsoft's Garage band offers album of experimental Excel jazz
Arm, Intel make it easier to churn out Arm SoCs from Intel fabs
Wednesday 12th April 2023 14:15 GMT
Interesting though
that we're starting to see entry-level (at least) ARM chips having some availability, even in development/hobby quantities, after a couple of years of 'stock: 0; expected 9/2023'... not all yet, by a long shot, but stock is finding its way back into the channels. Maybe we'll start to see the Pi available again?
Move over, Google Earth. Caltech's here with a fresh 3D tour of Mars
Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond
Saturday 8th April 2023 04:04 GMT
Re: The last thing the world needs
An issue that arose when we were doing the PARIS and LOHAN stuff was that by agreement, domestic GPS receiver chips are designed not to work if they're moving too high and too fast, precisely to avoid their use in guided/cruise missile scenarios.
Since we needed one that would work at high altitude (though low speed) we had to find a chip where the maker had actually used 'AND' instead of 'OR' in their logic, which it seemed at the time many did.
Friday 7th April 2023 06:01 GMT 
costs less than $3,500 apiece
I wonder if it comes in two packs? The flatpack cardboard, and the electronics/motors/batteries?
I can see situations where removing the electronics from an airframe which is full of holes, has had a hard landing, or just plain too many flights through rain and has gone soggy, makes a lot of sense - and they already point out you can mix and match parts. The cost of the cardboard should be effectively two tenths of bugger all.
Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system
Parisians say au revoir to shared e-scooters
Tuesday 4th April 2023 02:47 GMT
Re: E-Scooters Speeds
In Berlin, the problem seems less of moving interaction - there are many shared cycle/pedestrian paths and most people stick to their bit, wheels or otherwise - but of people just dumping the things in the footway when they're bored with them.
My wife was recently fairly severely injured - surgery required - after tripping over one such dumped scooter; she is, I suspect, not alone.
Google denies Bard trained using OpenAI ChatGPT responses
Amazon opens its ad-hoc Wi-Fi-sipping Sidewalk mesh to all manner of gadgets
How Arm aims to squeeze device makers for cash rather than pocket pennies for cores
Sunday 26th March 2023 08:20 GMT
Re: Licencing Per-Device
I wonder if they're thinking about following this policy on low-level processors/controllers? That's going to upset a *lot* of people; there are illions upon illions of just-smart-enough with just-enough-pins and just-enough-peripherals out there. Managing that would be a complete nightmare.
As a previous commenter said: brace for RISC-V.
Time to look more seriously at RISC-V dev boards.
GitHub Copilot learns new tricks, adopts this year's model
Earth is running out of places for stargazers to do dark deeds in the name of science
Eufy security cams 'ignore cloud opt-out, store unique IDs' of anyone who walks by
UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what user now?
Saturday 18th March 2023 05:16 GMT
Re: ...on the feeble pretext that he designed the C language.
Reminds me of the good ole days[tm] on alt.folklore.computers when people would argue about some fine point of C semantics, and DMR would weigh in with a flat statement about it.
Which of course led to the question: "What makes you think you know about it?"...
We read OpenAI's risk study. GPT-4 is not toxic ... if you add enough bleach
Feds arrest and charge exiled Chinese billionaire over massive crypto fraud
China’s Baidu claims its ERNIE chatbot reinvents the computing stack
Reg fashion: Here's what the well-dressed astronaut will wear on the Moon in 2025
Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla
Anyone want an International Space Station? Slightly used
Thursday 16th March 2023 05:30 GMT
Re: Can they make the next one a proper spinning ring please?
I don't see a spinning structure as any more complex than a stationary one, other than the need to rotate any incoming craft at the same rate and dock at the hub. Which may lead to a design for an exit in the side of an incoming craft rather than the nose?
It'll make it heavier, sure, but that's just engineering; it's effectively a suspension bridge, no? Or a bicycle wheel? It needs to be able to support its own weight against whatever value is chosen for effective gravity but that's not difficult.
Hmm, if only they'd carried all those shuttle fuel tanks to orbit and joined them nose to tail.
China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck
Wednesday 15th March 2023 07:41 GMT
Does that thing really have the supply and the return both delivered by cables
Instead of using the ground, as it were, as the ground?
Given that trolley busses and trams require effectively diagonal wires to avoid the lines cutting through the collectors, steering them is going to be interesting.
Amazon: Behold our antennas, which you cannot use just yet
OpenAI claims GPT-4 will beat 90% of you in an exam
The US would sooner see TSMC fabs burn than let China have them
Wednesday 15th March 2023 07:27 GMT
Re: In order to stop another country from destroying you ....
With apologies for the paraphrasing of Douglas Adams (I can't find the original quote):
1) defence: I'm going to kill you because you're trying to kill me
2) revenge: I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother
3) diplomacy: I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that you did it.
Cloud upstart offers free heat if you host its edge servers
Wednesday 15th March 2023 06:36 GMT
It strikes me that this would also be effective
with the Fernwärme district heating systems that are common in Germany (and to which our house is attached). Although the heat load is obviously less in summer than winter, the same hot water delivery provides both house heating and hot water (via a heat exchanger in the cellar) so there is a year-round requirement for heating at source.
Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you
Tuesday 14th March 2023 16:37 GMT
Re: Re - speedometer accuracy
It's a long time since I've had to look at my copy of the construction and use regulations for vehicles upon the queen's highway - but having built a car or two I was once intimately familiar with them. Regarding speedos, in the UK as stated by jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid a speedo may not under-read and must no over-read by more than (iirc) 15%. So in practice, a manufacturer will design his speedo to work around 7.5% fast. The indicated speed decreases with respect to actual speed as the tyres wear, though not by much, and the older design cable-driven speedos were fighting a non-linear induced magnetic effect against a vaguely linear spring and I think resulted in an S-shaped response.
With all that going on, even though they could get a speed accurate to a couple of decimal places these days, I don't think anyone actually does.
Japan Post closer to replacing snail mail with autonomous drones
NASA wants a telescope on the far side of the Moon
LockBit brags: We'll leak thousands of SpaceX blueprints stolen from supplier
Windows 11 puts 'disgusting' Remote Mailslots protocol out of its misery
Tuesday 14th March 2023 08:19 GMT
ERROR_REMOTE_MAILSLOTS_DEPRECATED
Surely if it's merely deprecated, that should be a warning, not an error?
adjective:
- spoken or written about with disapproval: The much deprecated preference of poorer people for less nutritious white bread over brown has to do with price as well as palatability.
- Computers. (of a software version or feature) marked as not recommended for users and developers because of the risk of damage or compromised security, the existence of superior alternatives, or an impending upgrade: This routine removes all deprecated tags and obsolete elements from the code, replacing them where appropriate.
But anyway, I still haven't forgiven MS for the replacement of known unsafe C calls with equally unsafe (but you feel better about them) calls.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
