Posts by james 68

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

... because Japan.

Come to Japan where depending on where you live in the country you'll be supplied with power of a different frequency, Eastern Japan has one frequency and Western Japan has another, both are nominally 110 volts, plugs are the same for both areas. Whilst 90% of equipment doesn't really care and will work regardless the other 10% will have all kinds of issues from intermittent faults to releasing the magic smoke.

And sods law requires that the one item you really need to work is the one that'll crap it's guts out.

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

Re: So Musk has blood on his hands

And yet the ratio of smouldering Russian tanks compared to smouldering Western tanks completely disproves your argument.

A room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor? Take a closer look

Re: Apatite

Spoilsport :-P

I wanted to see how many people would come here ranting after trying it.

Re: Fake News!

Room temperature superconductors already exist (google superhydride superconductor) they just don't exhibit superconductivity at atmospheric pressure, so I'm gonna call hokum on the "laws of atomic physics" claim which probably should have been "the laws of thermodynamics" anyway even though they don't rule out room temp atmospheric pressure superconductivity.

Re: Apatite

Rounded corners are a regular expression. Didn't stop the Jesus fruit company from patenting it though.

Re: Apatite

So instead of licking a 9v battery to wake myself up after my boss has given the daily "motivational pep talk" I should actually be applying the contact points to my teeth?

Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs

Re: What I cannot understand ...

@Rafael #872397

Don't know what they are specifically, but I know that they are grown on a beach in Norway.

https://www.boredpanda.com/donald-trump-hair-growing-prairie-dropseed-tromso-norway/

FTC pulls emergency brake on Microsoft's marriage to Activision Blizzard

Re: Pity

To be clear, you want every game brought to PC to be a shitty, rushed console port?

Because that's all that comes out of Microsoft owned games companies.

NYC Mayor: Robo-pup 'out of the pound' and back to police work

Auto correct can be bothersome

"to protect his beloved kickbacks."

Fixed that for you.

China aims to pair J-20 stealth fighter with 'loyal wingman' battle drone

Pew pew

The Royal Air Force announcement that Mosquito had been squashed saw the Royal Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) state it had made "substantial progress" in understanding and harnessing a range of future uncrewed capabilities, and that it would "aggressively pursue" the RAF's commitment to integrate advanced uncrewed capabilities "with more immediate beneficial value" into the force mix.

Isn't this just a long winded way of saying they're going down to the pub to make paper airplanes?

Is Neuralink ready for human brain implants? Allegedly so

Danger: conspiracies ahead

How long before they're ad supported? Tickling the brains pleasure center every time you see a twitter ad thereby making ad watching addictive? Because lets face it, that's the only way Elon will make twitter profitable.

Firefly gets nod from NASA to deliver Lunar Pathfinder to the Moon

Why oh why

So they're giving the contract to a company which has no track record of success, is already a year behind on its prior contract and has no rockets of its own to launch anything anywhere. At least they have a spiffy name.

Another normal day for the geniuses in government procurement then.

NASA spots first evidence of an active volcano on Venus – in a big pile of CD-ROMs

Re: In Vino Veritas

It does, however it's not an internally generated magnetic field like Earth (much lower iron content in the core) but externally generated by the ionosphere interacting with the solar wind and is much weaker.

It's interesting stuff.

Tesla hits the brakes on rollout of Full Self-Driving code to new users

Umm..?

Wasn't Musk complaining to all of the twits who follow him that the FSD recall shouldn't be called a recall as it would be an over the air thingamajigger? If what Musk claims is true then why should any of the Tesla owners have to wait in a queue? Could he perhaps be exaggerating? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NASA starts assessing Orion capsule for refurb

Re: Would I fly to the moon in a reused spaceship?

My biggest worry would be the mounting points for the parachute lines and the sections of the main body to which they mount, They will be experiencing pretty horrendous shock loads on a low cross section on every use, plus the thermal cycling of said parts. However I'm pretty sure that the folks at NASA know a thing or two about x-raying materials for stress fractures and would hopefully see these as "consumable" components.

Cisco wriggles out from $2 billion bill for ‘willful and egregious’ patent infringements

Re: Can you imagine the headlines if Huawei had done this ?

Kind of similar to how Cisco has been shown to add NSA backdoors to their equipment but that's fine and dandy, Huawei on the other hand has not been proven to do the same for Chinese "intelligence" services and have in fact shown their hardware and software to prove it but OMG WTF CHINESE BAN THE BUGGERS!!!!!!

One might think there is some kind of double standard at play and perhaps security is not the issue.

Tesla Megapack battery ignites at substation after less than 6 months

Re: Look to Dinorwig

Indeed, "old school" can be very very good indeed - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell

These dry piles (fnar fnar) have been in constant operation since 1840 and will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.

Chinese researchers make car glide 35mm above ground in maglev test

Re: Bumby rides ahead

Look at the last section of the video, the car is sliding diagonally off the rail to the left by a large margin. I'm guessing that the clip stops at that point to hide the resulting crash/rollover.

Japan to change laws that require use of floppy disks

Re: It's pervasive.

Yup, that's why on hot days at low tide half the damn city stinks like there's a leak in a sewer.

Currently I'm living in Sakura and travel through Funabashi every day for work, I in fact use the Toyo line which services Kaijin-eki. You got some local knowledge though, did/do you live nearby?

Re: It's pervasive.

Yup, I get the phone part (at least for those working in the boonies), but the pager........?

And worse the combination of pager AND intellectually challenged phone? If they can contact him on the phone by voice, SMS or email then surely the pager is redundant?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's pervasive.

I was standing in the smoking area of a familymart convenience store in Funabashi last week, I heard an archaic Nokia-esque alarm from the Japanese guy next to me who is furiously smoking and playing some kind of game on his smartphone. Lo and behold he pulls out a pager, reads the display and then pulls out an ancient flip phone to reply while still holding the smartphone in his other hand.

I can only guess that the pager and flip phone were required specifically for his job.

Could a leaky capacitor be at fault on ESA's Sentinel-1B?

If you consider electrons moving from one point to another where or when they aren't supposed to go, then yes.

DARPA says US hypersonic missile is ready for real world

Russia = Ouroboros

Add to that: they have a limited supply of aircraft and missiles and unfortunately for Russia they can't currently build more/repair what they've got because the components and spares were all made in Ukraine. Ooops.

Re: Sooo...

The Americans have been testing hypersonic missiles at the Woomera RAAF test range in Australia since at least 2015 many of which have been openly reported, my guess is that the two mentioned are essentially "final design" concepts or demonstrators from two different manufacturers using the data gained by numerous previous tests.

Pioneer 10 turns 50: Remembering humankind's first jaunt to Jupiter

Did you miss the part where this is a story about space flight and bit rockets etc?

Agreed but.... Don't forget however that most of the technology used came directly from trying to find faster ways to kill more people.

Salesforce sued in attempt to block release of Capitol riot info

Re: All parties

@Cederic

"Yes, the Democrats have been accused of being complicit. Pelosi explicitly, for instance, relating to multiple curious decisions made."

Would these be the Republican accusations which ignore that she does not in fact control the Capitol Police and has little to no input on how they perform their roles? Or the accusations that blame her for not calling in the National Guard which she doesn't actually have the power to do?

You realise that you are accusing Pelosi of trying to help Trump right? How exactly does that fit into your worldview? Does it make you lay awake at night in sweaty dilemma wondering if that means you should in fact be supporting her because your conspiracy theories claim she actively tried to support Trump?

O

M

G....

Maybe she's Q!!!

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

They would also have needed to apply a reverse spin, but one would presume so.

Milspec is marketing wank for civilian grade overpriced tat sold to rambo wannabes.

MOD approved (or DOD approved if you're a yank) is the marketing wank for overpriced sub-civilian grade tat foisted upon actual military personnel at great taxpayer expense.

617 Squadron are the "Dambusters" if memory serves, well.... damn they've busted this one.

Good Grief! Ransomware gang has only gone and pwned the NRA – or so it claims

Thoughts and prayers folks ...

Thoughts and prayers.

This is AUKUS for China – US, UK, Australia reveal defence tech-sharing pact

Re: buy gold now

Whilst I agree with almost everything you wrote, I feel the need to point out that as Australia is a democracy then people have every right to protest, however daft said protests might be. Otherwise it would be a tad more similar to China than you might like. Besides, if memory serves its the various world governments that sink protesters ships in dock, even going so far as to set off bombs in the buggers.

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

Eh?

Windows and stability in the same sentence....have the trumpets sounded? The end of the world is nigh and all that.

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Research, it's a thing.

Someone didn't do their research before writing this article.

https://www.pcgamer.com/high-end-gaming-pcs-are-exempt-from-the-cec-power-regulations/

United, Mesa airlines order 200 electric 19-seater planes for short-hop flights

Re: Do electric aircraft have regenerative braking?

For some reason your post made me imagine them using the props as wind turbines while parked, letting them spin in the wind as it were. Put a smile on my face.

Re: I wonder

It wouldn't add much to the range per flight, but it would add to the longevity of the batteries making total ownership costs potentially much less for the operator. The batteries wouldn't need to dump large amounts of current over the short periods required on each takeoff, my reasoning for this is drones, if flown in normal mode batteries have a much longer lifespan than if they're flown in sport mode.

Michigan Micro Mote works well escargot: Tiny computer makes it into the field strapped to backs of predatory snails

Re: Slow news day

Much like "too fast too furious" except the snails are better at conveying emotion, scriptwriting and acting in general.

We’ve found them! Govt reinstates records previously missing from the Police National Computer

Re: Well, the data was recovered

Assuming that there was a backup. The time delay might suggest that there wasn't and they had to rely upon forensic prodding of the drives that contained the data.

China all but bans cryptocurrencies

Replace "China" with any other government and the result is exactly the same.

Preliminary report on Texas Tesla crash finds Autosteer was 'not available' along road where both passengers died

Re: Best just make a full size scalextric

A quantum singularity, swiftly followed by a series of rapid fire Musk tweets and an unfathomable rise in the value of dogecoin?

GCHQ boss warns China can rewrite 'the global operating system' in its own authoritarian image

Re: About "...weaken and backdoor cryptography...."

But I'm not just talking about the cryptography of service providers, GCHQ want all crypto provided in the UK to be compromised, be it Joe public, universities or companies. When any of the above can and do work on projects which fall under the umbrella of "national security interests" it shows how daft the idea of compromised crypto is when they say that they need compromised crypto for national security but they also need strong crypto for national security. There's a logical fallacy in there about snakes eating their own tails.

Cryptography

"Cryptography is important and necessary so give us all the money" says the GCHQ guy who wants to weaken and backdoor cryptography.

A facepalm moment of epic proportions.

China has a satellite with an arm – and America worries it could be used to snatch other spacecraft

Re: dead tumbling uncontrolled objects leading to a chain reaction yadda yadda.

Would make for a pretty light show, the explosions and the resulting aurora.

Re: Why nuclear?

Nuclear would give off a hell of an EMP turning many other sats into dead tumbling uncontrolled objects leading to a chain reaction yadda yadda.

FSF doubles down on Richard Stallman's return: Sure, he is 'troubling for some' but we need him, says org

Re: Offensive

Downvoted for being against pedophillia? Wow, a new low for the register comments section.

To be perfectly clear the guy is a sex offence waiting to happen. He's even for necrophillia and sex with animals. Downvote all you like, he shouldn't be on the streets nevermind helming an organisation.

https://stallman.org/articles/extreme.html

Re: Offensive

Totally agree, the guy is scum.

While I cannot say without proof that he's an actual pedophile, he certainly has no problems voicing active support for pedophillia.

Sloppy data compliance sees Japanese government cut out its own use of LINE messaging app

If you're a Japanese national sure, if you're an import like me then you may never get it regardless of if your medical insurance is fully paid up, as in every official release to date the shot has only been promised to Japanese nationals.

WiMAX? 'Dead with no known users': Linux tips code in the recycle bin

Umm..

"Nobody uses wimax!"

Seems like they failed to check countries outside of the US/UK, Wimax is all over Japan, from trains to convenience stores. Admittedly bog standard WiFi can also be found at these locations, but the locals often prefer Wimax because they get a better connection.

Japanese bank botched data migration, which somehow turned its ATMs into card-eating monsters

Like a box of clowns being slowly immolated.

Having lived in Japan for the past 6 years, I can state with utter confidence that the entire Japanese banking "system" is a complete shitshow.

SpaceX Starship blows up on landing, Elon Musk says it's the data that matters and that landed just fine

Anyone else notice that the exhaust from one of the rocket motors changed to a bright green flame many seconds before the BOOM?

You could get such a green coloured flame by burning copper (an unlikely material in a high temp rocket motor) or by burning boron (a very likely material given its much higher melting point and other features) either way it suggests that the motor was in effect "eating itself" prior to the fateful landing.