Posts by HCV

Trump launches America.gov with AI chatbots at its core

Nomenclature

Any word on when xAI will change its name to "xSI" (presumably pronounced *sigh*)?

AMD's AI director slams Claude Code for becoming dumber and lazier since last update

Literally? No. But, c'mon. They're a 35 beellion dollar company, and the "and" for AI hardware after NVIDIA.

Quicksort inventor Tony Hoare reaches the base case at 92

Credibility gap

an incredible two-thirds of a century later

Huh. So I was born the same year as Quicksort. Thank you for reminding me what an incredible length of time that is.

Every day in every way, passwords are getting worse and worse

Re: Apple taxes the fingerprint sensor

I've been on the verge of upgrading my Intel-based Mac Mini, and figured I'd have to buy the Magic Keyboard. Now I know there's an alternate solution that may or may not involve Lego® brand construction parts.

HPE scores $931M contract to make DoD’s cloud migration a little less public

Re: DoD?

The HPE press release (linked to in the article) bends the knee and calls it the "Department of War". Kudos to El Reg for not following suit.

I guess Hegseth hasn't bothered to rename DISA to "WISA", consistency not being his core competency.

No notes on your link photo. Pete's never looked better.

AMD taking AI fight to Nvidia with Helios rack-scale system

"We're making plans to buy stuff to make things to, you know, sell."

China starts building world's largest fully steerable radio telescope

I expect fully steerable radiotelescopes to be a major element of the next Mad Max movie. Please don't let me down.

Apple throws shade on pokey AI PCs, claims its maxed out M4 chips are 4x faster

Mac Mini ports

the port selection has been cut back considerably

Not really, especially depending on what you're comparing it to.

My current Mini is the 2018 Intel, which has 6 USB-ish ports -- plenty for what I need.

Its successor, the M2 Mac Mini, cut that down to 4 USB-ish ports, which was kind of obnoxious, especially since it also only supports 2 monitors. So I've been holding off on upgrading.

The new M4 Mini, as you note, has 5 USB-ish ports, so that's one more than its immediate predecessor, and only one less than the Intel mini, plus it's back to supporting 3 monitors.

(All three also have an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack).

I'd rather have USB-C by default than USB A going forward.

Oxide reimagines private cloud as... a 2,500-pound blade server?

The most important question

What happens if you shout at it?

Microsoft's code name for 64-bit Windows was also a dig at rival Sun

Also, the article itself: "Oracle said (in April) the boards of both the firms had given the transaction the thumbs up. It’s expected to complete this summer." Summer in Australia, it turned out.

I suppose it could be worse: the Broadcom VMware acquisition took a year and a half to close.

IBM to create 24-core Power chip so customers can exploit Oracle database license

LJE speed test

There's fast and there's, "Oops, revenue impact ahead; time to change the licensing rules" fast.

California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles

What could possibly go wrong?

A license plate that can be controlled by the authorities, for only $19.95 a month? By Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings!

Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid

Click

PG&E creates incentives for subscribers to limit power usage from 4 to 9 PM, and I'd been wondering what was happening at 9 PM when everyone's air conditioners click on in synchrony. Now I know.

Pentester pops open Tesla Model 3 using low-cost Bluetooth module

Re: Always-on Security Hole

You might as well ask, "Why build a single-car rail transport tunnel?"

400Gbps is the new normal for biz networks

I'm still betting on Token Ring. No one's leapfrogged that awesome connector since 1985.

Oracle creates new form of free Solaris

Re: digression

Those are all consumer hardware manufacturers. The Power architecture seems to sell mainly in the more serious space. Here you go, a cluster with 31424 Power cores spread over 1964 processors.

You may be missing the point here. In the mists of history, the Power architecture used to have some interesting volume markets, such as Macintosh, OS/2, and Nintendo consoles. 31,424 cores is super-cool and awesome, but 1,964 is fewer than the number of Arm processors sold every three seconds not so long ago ("842 Chips Per Second: 6.7 Billion Arm-Based Chips Produced in Q4 2020", Tom's Hardware). I imagine the numbers have grown since then.

You've got to have a hell of a lot of margin to make that kind of market math work in your favor. You can be serious AF, but at some point you need to make money.

International Space Station stabilizes after just-docked Russian module suddenly fires thrusters

Next fast-track mission

Emergency cargo flight with replacement underwear and cleaning supplies.

Blue Origin sets its price: $1.4m minimum for trip into space

" I do still feel there is scientific validity "

"Are a fool and their money soon parted? In this experiment, we..."

Texan's alleged Amazon bombing effort fizzles: Militia man wanted to take out 'about 70 per cent of the internet'

Isn't this basically "Live Free or Die Hard"?

Oracle exhumes ‘Older, Still Useful Content’ penned by Solaris and SPARC veterans

"... a bit of trapped gas?"

Wooooo!

Meet the ‘DPU’ – accelerated network cards designed to go where CPUs and GPUs are too valuable to waste

East/West (between racks) than North/South (up and down a rack.”

"East/West" refers to traffic between servers in a data center, "North/South" to traffic going in and out of the data center. That's a more useful distinction than whether traffic is staying within a rack.

Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' being shown to pilots

I remember they were very excited to announce that to mitigate problems like this, Windows now included a feature where you could schedule an automatic reboot.

Oh goody! You've invented cron!

iFixit surgeons dissect Apple's pricey Mac Pro: Industry standard sockets? Repair diagrams? Who are you and what have you done to Apple?

Stinking Bishop

It's a kind of cheese, and by the "name like Smuckers" test, I'm guessing it must be awesome.

Oracle leaves its heart in San Francisco – or it would do if, you know, Oracle had a heart

Re: At what point will San Francisco realize ...

In 2014, the City of San Francisco spent $167 million annually on housing homeless residents. By 2016, total spending (including housing and treatment) was believed to be $241 million annually.

Internet jerk with million-plus fans starts 14-year stretch for bizarre dot-com armed robbery

SME

...two convictions for disorderly conduct and public intoxication...

...Adams’ “entrepreneurial spirit” in gathering photos and videos of drunk students...

Do what you love, and you'll never work a day in your life.

Pentagon beams down $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft: Windows giant beats off Bezos

As Babylon Five once said, "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal."

Scott McNealy gets touchy feely with Trump: Sun cofounder hosts hush-hush reelection fundraiser for President

Re: Seriously WTF! ???

Argle bargle freedom wargle how dare you say things that I don't like why do you hate freedom

Apple kills iTunes, preps pricey Mac Pro, gives iPad its own OS – plus: That $999 monitor stand

Re: only 1200x1600

Yes, the pixels weigh more

...right?

Catalina

Will you be able to scan directly from Photos, or do you still need to do that from Preview?

only 1200x1600

Well, there you go. If you had more pixels, you'd need a better stand.

Wondering why 'Devin Nunes herp-face' was trending online? Here's the 411: House rep sues Twitter for all the rude stuff tweeted about him

If I mention here that this is conclusive proof that Nunes is not the sharpest doorknob in the bag, will I be getting El Reg in trouble?

Boeing... Boeing... Gone: Canada, America finally ground 737 Max jets as they await anti-death-crash software patches

*whispers*

Boeing is not an airline

Tech bosses talk kids' books! Could they show a glimmer of humanity? You only get one guess

the most coveted school in Silicon Valley is the Waldorf School of the Peninsular

Golly, I really hope that isn't true, because Waldorf schools are kinda... messed up.

Great salads, though, as long as you go light on the mayo.

(Also: "Peninsular"?)

'We broke a few things and will continue to do so... in a careful way' – Oracle's Reinhold on Java renovation work

Re: Microsoft should sue them.

Wait, what, publicity says good things about thing they're publicizing? Tell me more!

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

Re: FIXED: Halted machine on other side of the planet

Thank you! I've been trying to remember the "girl the plastic cover is named after" name on and off for years, and for whatever reason both my Google Fu and my friends' memories have failed me. I must travel in the wrong circles, or live in the wrong country.

Oracle's new Java SE subs: Code and support for $25/processor/month

Re: Shutting the Stable door

I think you're ignoring the enormous success they've seen in jacking Solaris licenses into the stratosphere.

I bet this will be a hot topic at JavaOne.

...too soon?

Julian Assange said to have racked up $5m security bill for Ecuador

Re: 'There once was a time when [INSERT NAME HERE] were heroic figures'

Reminds me a lot of this

I guess it does if you squint just right: misuse of a thing in the service of a goal. Only in one case the goal was an odd stab at getting the United States to promote peace, the other's goal was stabbing the United States to promote Julian Assange.

Re: Heroes

There once was a time when Wikileaks/Assange were heroic figures.

See: Milkshake Duck

Oracle pledges annual Solaris updates for you to install each summer

Re: I guess its time to dump sun hardware forever

Exactly what "Solaris 10 mess" was fixed by Solaris 11.3?

Oracle ZFS man calls for Big Red to let filesystem upstream into Linux

Re: time to buy shares in high grade memory fab then

"Query, whats happening to Reiser FS these days ? It did seem better for OLT with lots of small frequent transactions."

It turned out to be murder to keep development going.

Vibrating walls shafted servers at a time the SUN couldn't shine

Re: "SUN"?

Just no. As a corporate name, it was never "SUN", and absolutely never "S.U.N."

The original SUN workstation project at Stanford preceded the formation of Sun Microsystems, and was never a Sun product. The first product from Sun Microsystems was the Sun-1 workstation.

"SUN"?

WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING?

Behold iOS 11, an entirely new computer platform from Apple

The Dock is now more like the Dock on MacOS – namely, something that's trying to do two different things: launch apps and keep track of running apps. That was a huge criticism of Mac OS X for years

Huge. Huge, I tells ya.

...really?

Itching to stuff iOS 11 on your iPhone? You may want to hold off for a bit

"And yes backup beforehand you fools."

Thank you, Gandalf. Mind the landing.

Oracle softly increments SPARC M7 to M8, then whispers: We'll still love you, Solaris, to 2034

tick tick tick

...and talk of delays for Solaris.next

Screven said during the webcast: "Fall of 2018".

That's pretty delay-ey. If they hit that mark, that'll be 3 years between Solaris 11.3 and Solaris.next. It'll be 7 years after Solaris 11. Can you feel the continuous delivery?

Confirmed: Oracle laid off 964 people from former Sun building

It's a bit more than a "building"

The Santa Clara campus was Sun's headquarters of record at the time of the acquisition. It's something like 60-80 acres, IIRC, and has 20+ buildings.

Oracle staff report big layoffs across Solaris, SPARC teams

Phipps didn't say "all". He said:

Oracle laid off ~ all Solaris tech staff yesterday

"~ all", as in "approximately all." It's a geek thing, which is appropriate, don't you think?