Posts by James Hughes 1

Raspberry Pi 4 takes a trip to Vulkan, sharpens 3D vision

Re: Availability

We are actively trying to prevent scalping, so I suspect most are just second hand.

Well, that was a tedious read. I wish when people try to tell us how to run a business, they could at least get the name of the company right. It does make you wonder if they can get something so simple so wrong, then what else is wrong in their post.

AIUI, you just want us to try and stop scalpers by putting our prices up?

Not going to happen. We have a price, we stick to it. We are not in it to make ridiculous profits (which we could if we wanted), we are not an energy producer. What we do is actively try and prevent scalping - our commercial team work very hard on that, along with trying top spread the production over as many companies and resellers as possible.

It may come as some surprise, but we are making between 400 and 450k units a month at the moment, but demand is exceptionally high, and supply problems (you know, the ones everyone is seeing) mean we cannot make as many as we would want. We have the capacity, but not the parts.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Re: FOSS is a cash cow

And what is wrong with the above? Perfectly legal according to the FOSS licences. Both MS and Google both contribute lots back to OSS. So why is this "bare faced cheek"?

Re: Optimist or pessimist... what am I supposed to be

No, not as far as I am aware.

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

Re: I like 7Zip.

Strawman arguments, the last resort of the imbecile.

And he was in Finland I presume.

SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter

Re: Who FORCED you to work for Elon?

What does this actually mean? Trigger? Do you have anything useful to say?

The writers of the letter just got sacked btw. Not to anyone's surprise.

And.....sacked

Look like the letter writers have been shown the door.

I am not surprised.

Had I written something like this, I suspect for ANY of the companies at which I have worked (big, small, in the middle), I would also have been sacked. You don't write open letters like this and think you can get away with it.

Re: Who FORCED you to work for Elon?

Actually, I think you 'll find that to all intents and purposes, the man is the company, and the company would certainly not be where it is without the man.

Musk owns the majority SpaceX, it's his company. I suspect that without his drive and dictatorial leadership, its would never have survived its early days, and certainly would not be where it is right now. Musk is the chief technical guy, so he tells them what to make, and they make it. The decisions are his.

If people want to change that, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Re: March

TBH, it's quite a big rocket.

Clustered Pi Picos made to run original Transputer code

UEA?

Wasn't Roy Dowsing at UEA? I vaguely remember the name...and I vaguely remember delivery of a transputer based device to the graphics department, would have been 88/89 I guess..

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

When you have errors in the first few lines of an article...

He doesn't have $200B in his back pockets. That implies cash. It's all paper money, tied up in shares. This is such a common mistake, but even for an opinion piece on El Reg, one would hope that the writer would understand this.

French court pulls SpaceX's Starlink license

Re: re: decent broadband internet access at a decent price

And if people still buy at those prices, he has made exactly the right commercial decision.

If they don't he did the wrong thing.

So far, it's the former.

Re: French court freezes out non-French competition

You clearly know nothing at all about it. Just look at the costs of laying fibre/copper, compared with satellite. Satellites are WAY cheaper in remote areas. They also don't suffer from people digging up cables and selling them....Also more environmental friendly. A few satellite launches, vs digging up hundreds of thousands of of miles of trenches with oil driven excavators.

Put it like this. Musk is not stupid. He is not going to be doing this unless he knows it's going to make money when compared with all the other systems available.

As for "sky pollution", AIUI, these satellites are not visible to the naked eye once at altitude, or at least, very faint.

Alphabet's Wing drone unit inks supermarket delivery deal

Re: "the next evolution in delivery technology"

Without some energy use figures, that you have failed to supply, how do you know these drones are "worse" that whatever you were comparing them against?

Out of beta and ready for data: 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS is here

Re: I just wish they hadn't renamed it.

We gave the rename a hell of a lot of thought. But it's not easy find a suitable name, so we ended up with Raspberry Pi OS. Or PiOS for short. Does exactly what it says on the tin.

And by we, I mean Raspberry Pi Ltd, not the Foundation.

One decade, 46 million units: Happy birthday, Raspberry Pi

Re: Where are they?

Is that the same supply chain problems that have affected the rest of the world in exactly the same way?

Really odd how people think that Raspberry Pi should be immune to the supply woes out there.

Read the article, we are making 500k a month.

Re: Interesting.

You don't NEED cooling of any type. You can add it if your particular workload causes thermal throttling but the latest DVFS firmware does a great job of keeping things cool.

Passive cases work fine, we sell a case fan if you want one. But it's not essential. I never use any extra cooling.

Re: "I can't go out today and license a RISC-V core,"

Wrong conclusion. We ARE interested in open source, which is why so much of the latest software has replaced the proprietary firmware blob with open source alternatives. KMS, DRM, libcamera, V4L2 etc. It just takes time to make this transition, and make that transition easy for users - we like backwards compatibility.

With regard to RISC-V there clearly is not a core available that is better than that in the Pi4, never mind the more recent Arm architectures.

Indian government tells Starlink to refund pre-orders placed before licences approved

Once again, the Musk hate appears. He's rich, got there by his own efforts, get over it.

Re: The problem with ... most American companies is they see the world as their "market"

The next gen Starlink satellites are much larger, so that will increase capacity. But I agree that their market is NOT cities - fibre will always be faster/cheaper. But not all the world is cities, and Starlink works on planes and boats...

Where I live, in Sunny Fenland, within commuting distance to Cambridge, tech capital of the UK (my opinion!), broadband is really patchy, so for many people around here it would be a godsend. And its not like the UK is a third world country. Apparently.

US Army journal's top paper from 2021 says Taiwan should destroy TSMC if China invades

Re: We've been here before

2nm isn't due to start production until after 2023, if they are lucky. And the current crisis is on much larger nodes anyway, which is where the majority of production is needed.

Online retailers delaying sales of Raspberry Pi 4 model until 2023, thanks to a few good chips getting scarce

Re: Hmmm - Pis were being built in Wales

Still built in Wales. Some Chinese passives, but silicon is mostly Taiwan iirc.

So why the whole conversation about China above I am really not sure.

Intel's mystery Linux muckabout is a dangerous ploy at a dangerous time

Not convinced the article is looking at this the right way

The premise is that you need a key to unlock a piece of hardware, and that people who don't have the key are going to be pissed they paid for silicon that can do something but doesn't. The people who have paid for the feature look on the cheap one and think "same hardware, but cheaper".

This is not the way to look at it. It's much simpler to ignore that fact it done by enabling parts of the silicon, just look on it as paying for a specific feature, irrespective of how it is supplied. The fact the HW is there to support it is a bonus! It means you CAN upgrade in place.

Of course, Intel being sneaky with regard to getting the kernel support is a different kettle of fish, but I see no problems with the premise of keys to unlock extra features. It's done in many other industries after all, with great success.

Not sure why you got the downvotes, you are correct. Although the key is no longer necessary on the Pi4, as it can software decode well enough without the need for the HW.

Intel updates mysterious 'software-defined silicon' code in the Linux kernel

Re: Keep going Intel

But someone has to pay for the development costs of that extra silicon. Should you charge everyone for it from the first release, even if most people don't need it? Or should you allow people to only buy what they need? A scheme like this means cheaper silicon for the basic users, and people who want better performance simply pay more for it.

Isn't this a pretty standard thing in a lot of industries? Cars? Software?

Boffins demonstrate a different kind of floppy disk: A legless robot that hops along a surface

Re: BBC Reith Lectures - Autonomous Killer Robots

Please listen to the Reith lecture, by a world leader in the field, before commenting on it.

I heard nothing in that lecture that wasn't already possible, or possible in the very near future.

The shoepolish drones sound entirely possible NOW. You only need 3g of explosive to kill (apparently), and with current MI and tiny drone tech, it seemed completely feasible, and VERY cheap. You could make hundreds for very little outlay, you can target individuals (for example people with particular facial features; gingers, people with bad hairstyles etc), and a single container can hold 1 million of them.

And they would work fine in a city, where the breeze will have little effect.

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Of course, this is a major security leak. That's what I would be concerned about.

Do not try this at home: Man spends $5,000 on a 48TB Raspberry Pi storage server

Re: A real engineer..

Not this. The gigethernet on the Pi4 is not on the PCI bus, so there is no usb3 contention. It's a peripheral on the SOC itself, so easily hits speeds close to the theoretical max.

As System76 starts work on its own Linux desktop world, GNOME guy opens blog, engages flame mode

In my (2nd hand) experience...

Gnome and GTK3+ are a PITA. They care nothing for backward compatibility, they care nothing that people use features they then remove, they care nothing that their idea of what is "Correct" is actually "Not correct", but provide no ways of correcting without hacking the code. Sadly we still have to use it.

Rolls-Royce set for funding fillip to build nuclear power stations based on small modular reactor technology

Re: This is good

He's AC, he is never going to provide proof of anything, Ad hominem is all you will get.

Bullseye! Debian-based Raspberry Pi OS scores an update with 'less closed-source proprietary code'

Now that the huge amount of work needed to get Bullseye out is done, we can spend a bit MORE time on the 64bit version. Fortunately a lot of the work done for Bullseye is directly applicable to a 64bit version (libcamera, V472, KMS etc). Try out the latest beta released the same day. Bound to be some issues, so the more testing done the better.

Re: Back to the Past

At the same time the 32bit version was released, we also released a new beta of the 64bit version to match it. You should try it out. The more people who test it the better.

AI algorithms can help erase bright streaks of internet satellites – but they cannot save astronomy

Surprising lack of knowledge exhibited by posts here

Considering El Reg generally attracts technically competent people, there are surprising number of posts on this topic that are clearly horribly informed.

I mean, not understanding long exposures? Not understanding latency? Not understanding that fibre to everyone is WAY more expensive than a bunch of satellites to everyone? Not understanding that the tech required to launch all these satellites is the same tech needed to launch BIG space borne telescopes? Not understanding the space is BIG, and these satellites are not going to be close together? Not understanding that these LEO satellites decay naturally? Not understanding that getting internet access to third world countries drags them out of poverty? Not understanding high frequency trading? Not understanding that there are people who don't have power lines to their huts? Not understanding Kestler syndrome is not all its cracked up to be? Not understanding that all satellites launched nowadays have to have a deorbit mechanism (or at least the ability to park out of the way)

For Christs sake people, at least do a little reading before commenting. It's not rocket science...or is it?

Truckload of GPUs stolen on their way out of San Francisco

Re: GPUs or Graphics cards?

That quote was practically the first thing in the article....did you simply not read the article in the normal order?

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W: Nippy stocking filler for the nerd in your life – if you can get one

Odd, not something I have seen reported at all, and I see the vast majority of reports. I'll have a play when next in the office, as I don't have a Zero case handy WFH.

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

Re: Hmm

The long term problems caused by continued fossil fuel burning will greatly outweigh any EV problems.

IBM US staff must be fully vaccinated by December – or go back to bed without pay

Dumb fuckwit. Just get vaccinated and save some lives.

Re: Hmmm

Exactly. The anti vxxrs are the sheep here. As well as being idiots, morons, easily lead, lacking in cogent thought. The list goes on.

I tried making sensible arguments with these cretins. It's not possible, so now I am just calling them what they are. Fucking dumb idiots.

Re: Vaccine skepticism: A problem fueled by ubiquitous data and rarefied understanding

It's not scaremongering IF ITS TRUE.

Which it is.

Don't be an idiot/antivax sheep/whatever. Get the vaccine. Save your own and possibly someone else's life.

Texas cops sue Tesla claiming 'systematic fraud' in Autopilot after Model X ploughed into two parked police cars

Re: Which group kills more people?

Wow, you really hate Tesla. "Criminally marketed system" - If you feel that strongly, take them to court and prove your case.

I think you are wrong, but hey ho.

Re: Drunk driving is illegal and dangerous

In the UK, there are often reports of lorry drivers crashing in to the back of stationary vehicles whilst driving down the hard shoulder of motorways, causing a number of deaths. So humans have done this multiple many many times over the years. Why do you expect a computer controlled car to be able to achieve zero when humans cannot even achieve it?

Want to feel old? Aussie cyclist draws Nirvana baby in Strava on streets of Adelaide because Nevermind is 30

Only discovered Rick Beato recently - well worth watching his stuff.

As Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

Re: Toy extensions won't mess with their revenue stream.

Nobody prevented Firefox from making that the default, but they didn't....

Spraying a boot error up the bathroom wall

Yup, we recommend a RO FS for this sort of thing, and a ram disk for log files if you need them. We've also done lots of tests of SD cards, and Sandisk, as long as they are genuine, seem to be exceptionally robust when it comes to unexpected power downs i.e No failures after thousands of random shutdowns.

US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses

Re: To be fair ?

All of my bosses are techies, including the CEO, who is exceptionally competent.

Leaked Guntrader firearms data file shared. Worst case scenario? Criminals plot UK gun owners' home addresses in Google Earth

Re: amanfrommars's regular nonsensical ramblings"

I suspect the vast majority of these guns are shotguns, used for clay shooting or pest control in the countryside. Storing shotguns away from [private homes makes it almost impossible to do either. And the rules for shotgun storage are very strict.

Just so you know, shotgun/clay shooting is an Olympic sport, it's "playing" in the same way cycling is "playing", or rhythmic gymnastics is "playing".

Having trouble getting your mitts on that Raspberry Pi? You aren't alone

Re: Pi Zero W

Nope, none of those available now and not available until q2 2022. Sorry.nThe supply chain really is "on fire"

More Boots on Moon delays: NASA stops work on SpaceX human landing system as Blue Origin lawsuit rolls on

Re: Changing horses in the middle of the stream

@machdiamond The problem you have is that you appear to be old space, a system that is no longer fit for purpose, and I suspect that the contents of your post will come back to haunt you. SpaceX are clearly ahead of BO (although not by as much as many people above seem to think). They are clearly ahead of everyone else as well. There development strategy is to test real stuff rather than paper trails. This has already proven to be a faster way of getting to the require end result. Their flight performance and history is pretty impressive, and the negatives you quote above are simply part of their testing process - they test, when something doesn't work they fix it. And much much quicker than any one else (The Boeing farce with the stuck valves comes to mind)

Whether SS succeeds or not, and I suspect after a few launches, it will, SpaceX have certainly shown a clean pair of heel to their competitors. Reuse has been shown to work and be more cost effective than expendable, and that INCLUDES the hit you take on payload to carry the recovery gear. And that is despite people from an old space background saying it could not be done.

As for the EIS, that is a point that needs to be sorted out, I suspect it will be sorted out, and fairly quickly.

Re: The next deadline for Blue Origin is 3rd September...

@Machdiamond

Rockets like this don't explode, they deflagrate. Which is much more benign (but still impressive).

So you cannot compare energy released, as its needs to be "amortised" over the time if takes to oxidise. Which is short in an explosion, but long in a deflagration.

Following Torvalds' nudge, Paragon's NTFS driver for Linux is on track for kernel

Re: It's still the Linux boys' club

The file systems you quote have been in development for many many years, they were not introduced to the kernel as monolithic chunks of code, as happened in Paragons case. They have gestated over many years and many commits, each (mostly) small enough to be properly reviewed.