* Posts by Zack Mollusc

428 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2008

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Amazon hitches a ride with SpaceX for Project Kuiper launches

Zack Mollusc

Re: tight schedule

Not so tight schedule. Spacex have shown that they can reliably re-use boosters and put stuff into orbit, so any CEO will tell you that they can do the same thing in half the time with a quarter of the resources without having to hire additional staff.

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket rated 'ready to rumble' after passing hot fire test

Zack Mollusc

Re: Capacity that made it competitive with SpaceX's Falcon 9.

Are we talking about british industry?

Musk's broadband satellite kingdom Starlink now cash flow positive – or so he claims

Zack Mollusc

Re: Price not related to internal cost

Damned straight, AC! The jails are so full of businessmen who lied that there is no room for the burglars/murderers/junkies etc.

BOFH: Groundbreaking discovery or patently obvious trolling?

Zack Mollusc

What's Mr Jolly got that we haven't?

You get a Copilot, and you get a Copilot – Microsoft now the Copilot company

Zack Mollusc

Re: Same old

The people who will actually derive value from this will be spending someone else's fifty bucks.

As the Top500 celebrates its 30th year, with a $5 VM you too can get into the top 10 ... of 1993

Zack Mollusc

Stupid question

I was just wondering if the fiver a month cloudy computing is cheaper than the electricity cost of doing the same amount of computing locally. Is this so?

Software is listening for the options you want it to offer, and it's about time

Zack Mollusc

Re: A great creative opportunity.

"Hi there, I am OptionGPT and I am here to help set up the myriad possibilites of this complex software to be optimal with your unique use case, despite having zero understanding of either."

Seems legit.

Inside Denmark’s hell week as critical infrastructure orgs faced cyberattacks

Zack Mollusc

Yes and no

The vast majority of those things 'need' internet access in the same way that the Financial Director 'needs' cocaine . cannot function without it, but it does not have to be this way.

Bad eIDAS: Europe ready to intercept, spy on your encrypted HTTPS connections

Zack Mollusc

Never understood certs

I am connecting to an HTTP web site run by some unknown jerk. OMG, my privacy and security are at risk!

Solution: connect to an HTTPS web site run by some unknown jerk and trust that the cert issued by a different unknown jerk is kosher.

Beijing prepares for imminent rise of humanoid robots

Zack Mollusc

Neat!

These new humanoid robots have an obvious immediate application, replacing the human safety driver in all those self-driving cars.

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

Zack Mollusc

Fair increase.

I don't begrudge a price rise in line with inflation as I assume their workers will also have their wages increased by the same percentage at the same time.

Microsoft warns it may ‘throttle’ its generative AI services for ‘excessive’ users

Zack Mollusc

Has the ouput of these things started to include 'sponsored content' yet? No? Maybe next week.

Cruise blues: Robotaxi firm pauses all driverless operations

Zack Mollusc

stoppages .. hmm

A group of autonomous machines simultaneously glitch out? What are the odds? They don't sound very autonomous. Sounds more like a group of remotely operated machines lost connection.

Red light for robotaxis as California suspends Cruise's license to self-drive

Zack Mollusc

Re: Withheld video seems to be the big thing here

Video may show whether the pedestrian was visible to the Cruise before the alleged hit-and-run driver collided with the pedestrian.

Did the Cruise note that a pedestrian was in the road?

Did it assume that the pedestrian would not move into the path of the Cruise?

Did it 'know' the hit-and-run driver was going to collide with the pedestrian but assume that it was somebody elses problem because its own lane was clear at that point?

ULA's Vulcan Centaur hopes to rocket into Christmas

Zack Mollusc

Re: New Galilleo Launches

Hmmm, but that is just the civilian side. EU has gained a military GPS that is not subject to the whims of the USA.

SEC boss warns it's 'nearly unavoidable' that AI will cause financial crash

Zack Mollusc

No surprises, just accelleration.

Since the financial AI will be trained on historical trading records which are driven by uninformed and unscrupulous humans making wild assumptions and valuations based upon data pulled from their asses, the AI will be able to make more wild assumptions per second and pull more random numbers out of its electronic ass much faster.

Windows 11: The number you have dialed has been disconnected

Zack Mollusc

Re: hacks that write the drivel that gets published here, HATE anything to do with Apple

Apple is 'tech' again? Cool, these last 40 years of it being fashion have been really disappointing.

Paying for WinRAR in all the wrong ways - Russia and China hitting ancient app

Zack Mollusc

Re: What?

Thank you.

Zack Mollusc

What?

Am I reading this right? Windows cannot figure out how to execute a file, so it instead looks for a file with a different extension and executes that?

Look ma, no fans: Mini PC boasts slimline solid-state active cooling system

Zack Mollusc

is that good?

How does it compare with a traditional fan? Does a 1W fan move more or less than 4.whatever W of heat? Is the selling point the efficiency or the size?

Winklevoss twins back in hot water after NY AG sues over $1B cryptocurrency fraud

Zack Mollusc

Re: Crypto Currency

Something something blockchain something distributed ledger something.

If that isn't enough for you to invest your life savings, perhaps cryptocurrency is not for you.

edit spelling

So this one time, at Bandcamp, half the staff were laid off

Zack Mollusc

Re: Never forget, when you work for the compnay being bought...

So where are these well-managed companies?

Gas supplier blames 'rogue' code for Channel Island outage

Zack Mollusc

still wondering

what "the power had seized in the plant" means.

The plant lost its connection to the grid?

The grid itself was down?

The plant generates its own electricity from gas and the generator's bearings failed?

Anyhoo, I have been running simulations on a global network of supercomputers and there is a possibility of maintaining gas supply and pressure even when the computers fail. This radical new concept takes the form of a large gas-tight storage cylinder which can telescope vertically. Even when the myriad of excel spreadsheets being used as databases, process control and mission-critical safety monitoring become unavailable, the weight of the gas storage unit's upper section bearing down on the volume of gas below will maintain gas pressure to the consumers until either the problem is resolved or an orderly shutdown can be initiated. Scale the volume of stored gas to the rate of consumption to give the amount of time needed to avoid loss of supply to consumers.

Although the luddites infesting this site will mock this system as unworkable as it fails to use either blockchain or AI, I think it is worth trying wild crazy ideas just in case they work.

Engineers pave the way for building lunar roads with Moon dust

Zack Mollusc

Re: And how long before

Space suits are rather bulky and restrictive of movement, it would be impossible to struggle into your cycling shorts even if they made a size that large.

When is a PC an AI PC? Nobody seems to know or wants to tell

Zack Mollusc

Uptick in fruitful work.

This does actually sound like it could be a benefit. Instead of spending two hours composing an email or presentation filled with lies, half-truths and errors, a manager could have the LLM compose an email or presentation filled with lies, half-truths and errors in only a couple of minutes.

This will enable a sixtyfold increase in the quantity of pointless timewasting, which will obviously lead to a sixtyfold increase in profits.

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Zack Mollusc

Re: Once again. . .

Agreed, but I would say that the AV should not have moved until it was sure that the crosswalk was empty of people.

Zack Mollusc

Agreed.

I would also like to see comparable stats. I would also like to see a group of 20 self-driving cars negotiating road junctions with another 20 self-driving cars travelling the other way.

I would particularly like to see a group of self-driving cars negotiating an obstacle course without any comms as I am not convinced that they are not at least in part operated remotely by a human (possibly just giving a reassuring 'go for it' tap on the spacebar as necessary).

Teardown reveals iPhone 15 to be series of questionable design decisions

Zack Mollusc

Re: Other side of the same coin

Saint Steve would be overjoyed at Apple's continued focus on the three core values of Money, Profit and Cash.

Routers have been rooted by Chinese spies, US and Japan warn

Zack Mollusc

I just wish people would wise up in general.

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

Zack Mollusc

Yes. I hope my nautical ennui primates are the ones still rapidly increasing in value. Maybe I should cash out now and put my money in Theranos AI Robotaxis inc?

Cloud is here to stay, but customers are starting to question the cost

Zack Mollusc

Re: Digging out the T-Shirt I have

Management will balk at spending £1000 in-house to achieve $result, but are quite happy to give £10,000 to an outsider for the broken promise of achieving $result.

Any social scientists out there know why?

Britcoin or Britcon? Bank of England grilled on Digital Pound privacy concerns

Zack Mollusc

Re: Colour me sceptical

What about the, oh, hang on, give me a minute...

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Zack Mollusc

Been there...

Techno-nerds should all shun these subscription models. When the companies stop seeing growth in subscriptions they will shut down the validation servers.

Meet Honda's latest electric vehicle: A rideable suitcase

Zack Mollusc

Re: Remember the Honda 50?

Depends on the model of Honda 50.

50cc and you can pedal it like a bicycle == moped

50cc and fixed pedals and limited to 30mph == moped

This resulted in everyone lusting after pedallable 50cc rip-snorters such as the FS1-E (Fried Sausage, 1 Egg) which had a claimed top speed of 60mph (37mph actual).

Outrageous criminals would fit big-bore cylinders and pistons, resulting in a whopping 15cc increase in capacity !

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

Zack Mollusc

Re: "If Ukraine wants to fight a war with Russia"

Is it possible ( by dredging or whatever ) to construct a deepwater port? If so, would that be cheaper than invading another country to nick a natural deepwater port?

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

Zack Mollusc

Re: Enter Password

I would welcome that attitude over the far more common " I have no clue what this is, so I shall run/break/delete/discard it. "

America's financial cops say Impact Theory's NFTs were unregistered securities

Zack Mollusc

Hang on....

They will modify the smart contract? I thought the whole point of smart contracts and chained blocks was that they could not be unilaterally altered?

Think International Space Station dust is obviously free of bad chemicals? Wrong

Zack Mollusc

It is to avoid this kind of problem that everything is chrome in the future.

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

Zack Mollusc

Re: Fifty years ago...

Pfft. Amateurs at failing. Uk had SST and spaceflight technology 50 years ago and we didn't even get a pantechnicon when we scrapped it all off.

Experiment arrives at the ISS to see if astronauts can keep things cool

Zack Mollusc

Re: Tea

It should be possible to cook scones in microgravity, with said scone not touching a baking tray whilst cooking. How would one then define the top and bottom of the scone? Why has NASA left this problem unaddressed when they claim to be working toward humans living long periods in orbit/transit?

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Zack Mollusc

Re: We had some

You had a forklift to lift 300 lbs? Every firm I have worked for would have had four lads on stepladders. Not joking.

Zack Mollusc

possible fix...

If you encounter this problem, and there is another floor above to which the lift can be sent, send the overloaded lift up above the desired floor, then call it to the desired floor. Often the lift can halt level from a descent when it is a few inches short when halting from ascent.

NASA awards $150 million to prototype tech for humans on the Moon, and above it

Zack Mollusc

no-light lunar landing technology

What the smeg is "no-light lunar landing technology "?

Microsoft's 10,000 job cuts didn't quite do the trick

Zack Mollusc

Re: Massively profitable company

Just think of it as an indicator of quality.

If it supports the latest windows, you know there must be plenty of cores and cycles and RAMs to run the crappy badly-optimised code, there must be plenty of storage for the bloated install and the comms is reliably stable for dumping petabytes of telemetry.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Zack Mollusc

Re: removable battery and sealed phones

I always thought of it as a 'dogs tongue' , but I remember the phone fondly. Dropped 8 foot onto concrete with only minor scuffing.

Germans beat Tesla to autonomous L3 driving in the Golden State

Zack Mollusc

Benz schmenz

Whether or not that is common parlance in your particular hamlet, if I were buying a luxury car, I would much prefer a Guar or a Tley. Perhaps even an Rtin.

File Explorer gets facelift in latest Windows 11 build

Zack Mollusc

Re: Would anyone like any toast?

The modern twist would be the toaster's ability to send sms,email and TwatsApp messages as well as open a Zoom call to you.

Waymo robo-car slays dog in San Francisco

Zack Mollusc

Easily avoided..

Simply replace dogs with robot dogs, which would liaise with the self-driving cars and only dart suddenly into the road when it was safe to do so.

Fed up with slammed servers, IT replaced iTunes backups with a cow of a file

Zack Mollusc

Re: Apple did this themselves

I remember being amazed that everyone just accepted that user files could be irrrevocably deleted in such a cavalier fashion. "Hey, the thing I bought to organise my collection has just destroyed that collection! Hey ho, never mind, I shall continue to buy more of their products forever."

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

Zack Mollusc

Re: Cars kill about the same number as guns

UK gun deaths are consistantly around fiftieth of the US rate, which seems odd when the yanks get 2 free guns with every box of cornflakes and we ban everything including pepper spray. Anyone know why?

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