Posts by James Hughes 1

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Re: "We are still very keen to donate some of the proceeds to the cause"

Isn't that any public companies modus operandi?

Belgian boffins dump Starlink dish terminal's firmware, gain root access and a few ideas

Why does Musk need to be taken down a peg or two?

Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language

Re: There are two hard problems in Computer Science

Actually not that far of a stretch. Certain areas are dictating what people can and cannot say. Do what they want or get crucified on the cross of social media.

It's not just leaders who can be dictators.

Re: There are two hard problems in Computer Science

Still better than "Commander of United Nations Taskforce". (which was a real thing in Gibraltar I think)

Nature is healing: Shhh. It's a lesser spotted Pi Bork nesting behind the bushes at IKEA

raspi-config now has an option for setting up a R/O FS that should make things much more reliable. Although in our testing (RPT), Sandisk cards are extremely robust anyway.

'A massive middle finger': Open-source audio fans up in arms after Audacity opts to add telemetry capture

Re: Democracy?

I'm just a parish councillor, which is unpaid and takes up a load of time, which I am happy to give as a benefit to the community. It actually costs me money to be a PC! The number of people who think I am in it to line my pockets and are really quite rude about it is non-zero. Yes, they are vile, nasty, and have no idea what they are talking about.

SpaceX's Starlink: Overhyped and underpowered to meet broadband needs of Rural America, say analysts

Re: Current user here

"All new wireless based systems look great before an economic number of users are added."

So ask yourself this question. Why are SpaceX/Starlink launching, if it's not economical/profitable in the long run? They have better access to the numbers than you do, yet you seem really confident it's not economical. So what do you know that they don't, which means they continue to spend huge amounts of money on satellites and launches for apparently no reason?

Re: What's the problem?

Are you familiar with how much of the world has no mobile and no broadband coverage. The answer is a LOT. There's easily enough people out needing it there to max out the Starlink capacity even as it grows.

Another successful flight for SpaceX's Starship apart from the landing-in-one-piece thing

Re: Why the negativity

Tell that to all the people who started out with lots, and now have much less. Trump for example.

Thing is, Musk is very good at spotting where improvements can be made - Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, Boring Company. These are all going to make a HUGE amount of money, because HE spotted areas in markets where there was money to be made.

Re: SpaceX have turned rocket science into Spaghetti Engineering

The SpaceX approach is STILL cheaper than the NASA approach, and much quicker. These SS prototypes are not expensive at all in the general scheme of things. Look at SLS, in development for over a decade, still not flown, and estimated to cost a billion per launch at least. Now look at Starship, started development less than 5 years ago, already had four launches, albeit not fully successful, but the progress rate is WAY faster than SLS. And it will be reusable, and cheap to fly.

Re: SpaceX have turned rocket science into Spaghetti Engineering

Which is exactly what they are doing - the Raptor is brand new tech using the FFSC cycle. But they won't go for wings, they are a heavy waste of payload.

Re: SpaceX have turned rocket science into Spaghetti Engineering

There won't be a source, it's nonsense.

You only need to apply common sense. People are flocking to use the F9. SpaceX use the F9 for Starlink. Musk is not stupid and doesn't suffer from the "sunk cost fallacy". If it wasn't cheaper to reuse, they would not be reusing. And it's certainly cheaper than all the other providers.

As for the comment above about using solids. Just no. You cannot turn them off once lit. They are a dead end for manned spaceflight and more expensive than the Kerolox they use on the F9.

Re: Why the negativity

It's odd that he's been in the right place so many times. What a lucky guy...

Whether he's a dick? No idea, never met him. I do appreciate his openness in broadcasting so much SpaceX stuff when he really doesn't need to. I'd say he was well planted in reality though, compared with the others you mention.

Ruby off the Rails: Code library yanked over license blunder, sparks chaos for half a million projects

Re: @Apprentice of Tokenism - This is where GPL is bollocks

The corollary is that if someone issued code under MIT or similar, rather than GPL, then they INTENDED for that work to be freely available. They WANT people who are too lazy to write their own to use it, they WANT it to be free.

If they want GPL they should use GPL.

'We're finding bugs way faster than we can fix them': Google sponsors 2 full-time devs to improve Linux security

Re: 2 engineers?

They have many many more engineers working on Linux than just those two. Just check out the commits to the Linux tree. Old figures but Google sign off on the tree were over 5% in 2017.

Raspberry Pi Foundation moves into microcontrollers with the $4 Pi Pico using homegrown silicon

We've run VSCode on the Pi, Linux, Windows and MacOS, so already multi platform. Instructions all in the getting started guide.

Re: Neither fish nor fowl

Uses VSCode for C, although you don't need to use an IDE if you don't want to. Command line compile and drag and drop works fine. Eclipse also works.

There are a number of (mostly) unique features. Twin cores, PIO, HW PWM, HW interpolators, sophisticated DMA, HW Dividers. All combines to give the ability, for example to drive two DVI displays...

Re: What a shame they didn't go down the RiscV route...

The exciting and unique bit is the PIO. Worth reading up on it. Dual core is also quite interesting.

SpaceX wins UK regulator Ofcom's approval for its Starlink mobile broadband base stations

Re: Dish...

AIUI, the tracking is only for initial installation, Once set up the dish doesn't moved. (Phased array). I could be wrong.

Re: I hope it never happens, but.......

So what you are saying is that you hope that a launch on a exactly predefined trajectory, doesn't crash in to a satellite, also on a exactly predefined trajectory.

I personally don't think hope comes in to it, just maths.

Also note, the satellite are released below their final orbit and climb up using onboard thrusters, so the actual launch itself could not have this happen.

Re: Torn

Starlink is all LEO, so if their inbuilt deorbit capability fails for some reason, they will still burn up within, IIRC, 5 years. So they won't leave junk behind.

Open-source contributors say they'll pull out of Qt as LTS release goes commercial-only

Re: This is how it's meant to work.

Indeed. For years, OSS advocates have been saying the income source for software should be the maintenance side of things. But as soon as someone implements it, it all goes to shite.

So where are the companies that run these projects going to get the money needed to stay afloat? And we really need over arching control, because otherwise the devs just go off and do what they want, not what needs to be done - because maintenance is so "BORING".

Uncle Sam sues Facebook for allegedly discriminating against US workers in favor of foreigners on H-1B visas

Yup, defo. autocorrect! State's. I mean, really. I should know better.

I should also have added that the UK education system also seem to be producing its unfair share of anti-science people, as shown by the number of people who don't want a COVD vaccine, and are willing to risk death or long term impairment rather than have what is a tested vaccine.

Sorry, done on a tablet and I never get on with the keyboards on those things. Although I could claim an ironic statement?

Let me try again, on a proper keyboard, and with more time.

In the times when I have worked in the State's, for an American tech firm, the number of foreign employees greatly outnumbered home grown talent, EXCEPT in management which was a different split altogether. I still think the education system is to blame; Indian and Chinese systems really seem to produce people targeted at these tech firms, whereas the homegrown US system appears to be producing flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and religious nutjobs. And management.

When I have worked in the state's, 5 years ago or so, not for FB, the skew towards foreign workers was very apparent. I've always pressumed due to better educational systems.

A cloud server with no network, no persistent storage, and no user access – what is AWS thinking?

Methinks that if you don't see the benefits, then this product is not for you.

If Amazon didn't think there was demand, they wouldn't have done it.

2020 hasn't been all bad – a new Raspberry Pi Compute Module is here

Re: Still needs cooling

Run the latest firmware and most heat problems go away unless you are really hammering the ARM's. In general use they do not get hot enough to burn anything. So no, most people don't need active cooling. You are more than welcome to use it of course. It will prevent throttle under high constant workloads ARM (ie not video playback which runs cool as its done by the GPU). Not sure why you are seeing dropped frames, things like Kodi should run without anything like that.

Video encoders using Huawei chips have backdoors and bad bugs – and Chinese giant says it's not to blame

FFS, RTFA, FM.

UK space firms forced to adjust their models of how the universe works as they lose out on Copernicus contracts

Re: EU - Do what we say or you will pay.

Idiot.

Re: Answer is simple

Have you ANY Idea how expensive our own constellation would be? Any idea at all?

About £15B minimum to get it up there, and a couple of million a DAY to run it.

All that money just to replicate something that ALREADY exists.

Might be cheaper if using a LEO constellation like Starlink, but LEO is getting crowded.

Here's a headline we'll run this century, mark our words: Alien invaders' AI found on Mars searching for signs of life

Or perhaps a shit in a KFC box.

Can't get your Pi fix online? The Cambridge shop's back open for business, Brits

Re: An idea for allowing hands on action...

Unfortunately, gloves prices have gone up by a factors of about 2-3 in the current crisis - what used to be 50 pairs for 4.99 is now 20 pairs for 5.99 (YMMV). So supplying gloves is an expensive business. But then so is masks I suppose. Just have to put prices up to cover the costs.

80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds

Re: Fixing the wrong problem

Odd, I find longer lines much easier to read and comprehend than split lines. Especially when that split has been forced by a specified line length and may not be particularly logical.

Re: Excessive complexity

Whilst EXCESSIVELY long lines can be a pain to follow, the 80 character limit makes code harder to follow because you were forced to split it when it really didn't want to be logically split. 100 seems sensible, I can comprehend lines of that length.

How generous of GitHub to slash prices and make all its core features free. So what gives? Oh right, GitLab

I use both

I prefer Github's UI, Gitlab seems quite clunky in places in comparison. But there are pros and cons for both. I'm absolutely not bothered by who owns either of them, or who monetises either of them. They are just tools to get the work done.

The show Musk go on: Tesla defies Silicon Valley coronavirus lockdown order, keeps Fremont factory open

Re: Yeah, voluntary

Ah yes, YouTube, that bastian of accurate reporting and fact checking.

Nothing wrong with electric cars that isn't worse with internal combustion - you heard it here first.

Blimey, the Musk haters are out in force today. Bunch of twats. He's just a bloke who runs a few companies. If you don't like the way he runs them, don't work for them. If you don't like his products, don't buy them. But in all other respects, haters and deniers, please just fuck off and self isolate, and that includes the internet.

After 1.5 million days of computer time, SETI@home heads home to probe potential signs of alien civilizations

Re: Sorry, too late...

Sorry, it's really isn't hard for 'us' to know that the signal could be from long dead civilizations. And astronomers are all entirely cognisant of the fact. The concept of the speed of light really isn't that difficult to understand.

Death and taxis: Windows has had enough of clinging to a cab rooftop in the London rain

We sell shitloads of Pi's in to the signage market.

Get in the C: Raspberry Pi 4 can handle a wider range of USB adapters thanks to revised design's silent arrival

Re: Forget the 'Osborne Effect':focus on the "Upton Effect".

Of course people buy them for 'other things'. And that is entirely the plan. All the profits from selling Pi;s go to the Foundation. So selling to as many people of possible is the right choice to make. And for example, making a cheaper desktop, increases the market hugely. As for hurrying out of the door, no, not really. Some issues with over heating that we eventually figured out, although all they do is throttle when hot (just like phones), the USB mistake has been fixed. Spectre? Not seen that exploited yet, I expect the dangers are somewhat overblown.

I reckon just three flaws on launch, 2 quite minor, isn't too bad.

Come to Five Guys, where the software is as fresh as the burgers... or maybe not

Re: upstart?

Really? Five Guys burgers really are good in my experience. Not cheap, but very good. Family agrees.

This AI is full of holes: Brit council fixes thousands of road cracks spotted by algorithm using sat snaps

Re: A man a plan

Because that results in a shit repair.

WannaCry ransomware attack on NHS could have triggered NATO reaction, says German cybergeneral

Re: NATO response

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barras

Good authority that 'thinning out' was used in this case - the fact there were some survivors is lucky for them.

15 years on, Euroboffins finally work out what it took to send the Huygens Titan probe into such a spin

Re: seems sloppy

I always look forward to the comments from people who know better than the people who actually designed and built a probe that spend 7 years in space then landed on a moon of another planet.

I guess climate science is also anathema to them, all those know it all scientists, giving it large.

World's richest bloke battles Oz catastro-fire with incredible AU$1m donation (aka load of cheap greenwashing)

Much jealousness here

At least, that what I assume this is. Whilst Bezos is strikingly rich (and deserves it; his company, he started from a garage), he has, at least, donated some money. Surely the percentage is irrelevant?

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd

And that's a problem why? You get a cheaper product because of it.

Re: Systemd = Marmite

Says AC. Weaksauce defined.

I use Debian (well, Raspbian), I presume that uses systemd, no issues.

That's not to say there not issues, there probably are, but for me, no problems. Why does that seem to rile anti-systemd people?

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

You can plan for known and unknown circumstances. It's the unknown unknowns that get you.

Which is why I will always believe that software will have bugs in it, not matter how much time you spend on it. Even some of the most robust software ever written, used on, for example, space probes, occasionally reboots itself because something somewhere got in a state that was entirely unpredictable.

So never expect software written to a schedule to be bug or crash free. Because that schedule means you can never take care of everything.

$13m+ Swiss Army Knife of blenders biz collapses to fury of 20,000 unfulfilled punters

Re: Stop backing gadget products, you twits

Majority of Raspberry Pi manufacture is Wales, although we do have quite a bit of stuff made in China. But we do have people over there a lot, and have a Chinese/Hong Kong guy there permanently looking after stuff. And we still have problems....

Kickstarter people NEVER realise how much work is involved in taking a product from concept to full scale production. We get quite a bit of stick because of how long it takes us to get stuff out. But it's really because we do it properly and try not to release stuff before its ready and because doing it right takes HUGE amount of time and money. We do have occasional glitches before anyone brings them up!

High-resolution display output or Wi-Fi: It seems you can only choose one on Raspberry Pi 4

Re: I didn't bother buying a pi4 to complete the set

Not entirely sure what you are trying to say.

No, that's not the only fix.

And I doubt we will move back to full size HDMI.