Posts by Derek Jones

It's in their DNA: Nobel Prize in chemistry goes to pioneers of the CRISPR gene-editing tool

There is a great summary by Derek Lowe: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/10/07/a-nobel-for-crispr

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

The moon orbits the Sun

The moon orbits the Sun and is heavily perturbed by the Earth, i.e., the gravitational pull of the Sun on the Moon is twice as great as the gravitational pull of the Earth on the Moon.

Bipartisan Kumbaya: President Trump turns Obama's open govt data policy into law

Wot, evidence-based software engineering?

No need to panic, software people, there's not a lot of evidence to worry about: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2018/12/28/foundations-for-evidence-based-policymaking-act-of-2017/

New Python update slithers into release

Python 2/3 usage and transition (or not)

Most developers are still working in a Python 2/3 compatible world (where is a billionaire, to fund continuing support, when you need one).

https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~malloy/publications/papers/esem2017/paper.pdf

Microsoft commits: We're buying GitHub for $7.5 beeeeeeellion

Register reader predicted this 2 years ago

One of my list of predictions waiting to become true, has become true. I have added a new one to the pending list:

http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2018/06/02/edg-and-github-are-both-logical-purchases-for-microsoft/

Someone's phishing US nuke power stations. So far, no kaboom

NRC does not want its inspectors to need to know technical stuff

My one experience with dealing with the US NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is that they want the software to be so easy to use that its inspectors don't need to know anything technical:

https://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2012/06/27/trying-to-sell-analysis-tools-to-the-nuclear-regulatory-commission/

From drugs to galaxy hunting, AI is elbowing its way into boffins' labs

Clueless button pushing

Machine learning can be a very useful tool, but the flip-side is that clueless button pushers can use it to produce seemingly interesting output: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2015/11/23/machine-learning-in-se-research-is-a-bigger-train-wreck-than-i-imagined/

Uber's Movement dumps data on city planners

The authors unquestioning copying of Uber press releases needs to be tempered with som background reading:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-four-understanding-that-unregulated-monopoly-was-always-ubers-central-objective.html

GitHub gets all grown-up with better code review, project management, etc

Getting ready to be bought by Microsoft

"...contain your entire history of work on GitHub,..." is just the kind of feature that will make them even more attractive to Microsoft to combine with the Linkedin purchase.

Linkedin+Github is Active directory for the Cloud.

Schrödinger's cat explained with neutrinos

Neutrons change flavor but Leggett cannot contain fewer gs

In my universe Legett-Garg contains 4 instances of the letter g.

A month to save cryptocurrency Ethereum?

The code is the definition of behavior

Ethereum's 'smart contracts' are essentially programs whose execution is intended to have a contract-like nature. Existing programs, err contracts, include lotteries and other fun stuff.

Of course a new language was needed for the new age of smart contracts. Solidity is its name (essentially C plus extras that were thought to be a good idea from Python and other languages that presumably the Ethereum people have used). God forbid anyone would design a language with reliability in mind: http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2015/03/15/ethereum-is-it-cost-effective-to-create-reliable-contracts/

Of course the key to code reliability is following the Ethereum smart contract coding style guide, which of course the majority of people don't seem to be doing: http://hackingdistributed.com/p/2016/06/16/finding-unchecked-send-in-live-ethereum-contracts/

The site has not been hacked. The terms of service quite clearly state that what the code does is the definition of the system. Somebody simply put the time into understanding what a 'smart contract' did and executed it appropriately.

"The terms of The DAO Creation are set forth in the smart contract code existing on the Ethereum blockchain at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413. Nothing in this explanation of terms or in any other document or communication may modify or add any additional obligations or guarantees beyond those set forth in The DAO’s code. Any and all explanatory terms or descriptions are merely offered for educational purposes and do not supercede or modify the express terms of The DAO’s code set forth on the blockchain; to the extent you believe there to be any conflict or discrepancy between the descriptions offered here and the functionality of The DAO’s code at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413, The DAO’s code controls and sets forth all terms of The DAO Creation."

Weight, what? The perfect kilogram is nearly in Planck's grasp

6.022 140 82x10^23, plus or minus 180,000,000,000,000,000

Some might say that an error of plus/minus one hundred and eighty million billion atoms is not that accurate.

Well YES, Silicon Valley VCs do think you're a CRETIN

Re: Long tail licensing

Not-Spartacus, you are right. While storing large amounts of data in the block-chain is frowned upon, there is not a lot stopping people storing whatever they like. There are various projects using the blockchain to store a key-value pair:

https://github.com/namesystem

Long tail licensing

One use of the block chain is low cost licensing, as implemented in a recent hackathon (http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2015/02/16/long-tail-licensing/).

Toasters might not want to license IP, but TVs might.

Perhaps your fridge will be able to order supplies when it detects items have been removed. But would you trust cryptocurrency based contracts to work as advertised

http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2015/03/15/ethereum-is-it-cost-effective-to-create-reliable-contracts/

Secure microkernel that uses maths to be 'bug free' goes open source

These people should be reported to the Advertising Standards Authority

Would the claims being made by these researchers stand up to the same level of scrutiny from the Advertising Standards Authority that a soap power advert has to survive? I suspect not.

There is a group in France working in formal verification that I think would also have trouble getting their claims published in a Soap power advert.

EMC on XtremIO SSD brickup ballsup: Its lifetime downtime is under 3 minutes

A sample size of 200 with 1 failure?

Lets see, we have:

"...we have shipped hundreds of XtremIO X-Bricks to customers..."

"...less than 32 Seconds of unavailability in a year,..."

"...field-measured to be 922,240 hours, or 105 years."

which suggests they have sold just over 200 units in 6 months, one of which developed a fault.

Not the most statistically reliable of claims.

Mozilla accuses Gamma of dressing up dictators' spyware as Firefox

Re: Where can we download the source?

I imagine that Gamma would like to be covered by that clause, but arn't they just a commercial company with no special privileges?

Where can we download the source?

Firefox is distributed under the Mozilla Public license, https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/, which as I understand it requires distribution of "... any Modifications that You create or to which You contribute, must be under the terms of this License."

Where can I download the source code of the changes and updates Gamma has made?

Second Higgs possibility pops up in CERN data

Re: KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON INCREASING STANDARD DEVIATIONS (away from the null hypothesis)

A detailed discussion of why there is really only one Higgs boson here:

http://profmattstrassler.com/2012/12/17/two-higgs-bosons-no-evidence-for-that/

How are we going to search our hard disks now?

Possible alternatives

Some possible alternative to consider:

RECOLL http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/

and for the more technically oriented

Sphinx http://sphinxsearch.com/about/sphinx

Southampton Uni shows way to a truly open web

Bus routes and vending machines

Drilling down to the actual data I find information on bus routes, vending machines and a short list of other stuff already available on the Southampton web site, hardly worth a fawning two page article on El Reg. Come on guys where is your customary cynicism?

Java daddy says Sun engineers ran 'goofiest patent' contest

"mixed mode" patent is potential JIT killer

While it may be possible to design around what you refer to as the "mixed mode" patent the workaround may have a sufficiently large overhead that JIT compilation is not worthwhile on Dalvik. See a a blog posting of mine, http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2010/08/15/oraclegoogle-java-patents-lawsuit/, for more details.

Chinese go beyond binary with ternary molecule

Base-4 is good enough for humans

Base-3 is closest to the most efficient encoding representation which is base 2.718..., but fractional bases are not possible in practice. Heat dissipation is a major problem for chip designers and base-3 would enable them to use a lot fewer components (assuming the power consumption of a base-3 device was comparable to a base-2 device), so there could be a major cost/performance incentive in years to come to use base-3 devices.

Us human are are derived from a base-4 encoding, i.e., DNA.

Hacked climate Prof stands aside

They should now release all of the source

The leaked files do not include the makefiles needed to build executable programs (I'm assuming that these do exist) and so it is proving difficult to get this right manually (at least for the Fortran code). I think the CRU should come clean and release a complete development snapshot. Of course if they would rather that people not have the ability to actually run their data analysis software they might not want to do this.

Uni students invent 'radiation-proof' cloth for Moon tents

Win your Darwin award here

If this material were lead it were 1cm thick incomming gamma radiation would be reduced by 50%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_protection

Perhaps they should be invited to wear a cloak of this material inside a nuclear reactor (along with the gullible journalists), at least they could get a Darwin award for their troubles.

C dominated 2008's open-source project nursery

Lots of ways to measure popularity

Measuring language popularity is a difficult task, quality data is hard to come by and what exactly is meant by popularity are some of the issues.

http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2008/12/how-widely-used-is-a-language/