Posts by Denarius

Biden administration to dole out $900m for electric vehicle infrastructure

nonsense. Follow the Science !. Subsidising the mostly well off is always a good thing. </sarc> BTW, why are 10 year old cars getting more popular ?

California Governor signs child privacy law requiring online age checks

Intended unintended consequences

sounds like massive data harvesting tactics dressed up as the usual

Food security group, Linux Foundation working on crop data standard

may be cynical

But, this also looks like a misguided attempt that will document where and whom to target when doing mass land grabs specialising valuable commodities. Local rice and cassava growers not so much, but small holder coffee, cocoa should be wary. Governments and their bureaucrats can know too much. As for standardising APIs and units of measurement, good idea, but isn't that already done. Its called the metric system.

China can destroy US space assets, Space Force ops nominee warns

Outsourced again

Great, adversaries have no need to fight, just send in the clowns beancounters and manglement

US, Mexico to align chip and lithium supply chains to amp EV production

nationalised ?

So government run firms do better ? Not generally the case.

Climate change prevention plans 'way off track', says UN

natural ?

there is something natural going on. Two big countries building coal plants and buying or digging up more coal. Hint. Such countries are not western. One of said counties is building coal fired power stations in Africa. What West does is irrelevant, nuclear or not.

Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂

Re: Hazardous Customers

An IBM AIX box that had served in a car park basement in Bejing as worst I have seen. After unit replaced and freighted back to Oz, I took it outside after I took a quick look under top cover. How it worked under the cm+ of black dust/grit/dirt speaks volumes of the hardiness of old kit.

Shook out dirt, brushed it before it was safe to bring inside.

Cleaned an early IBM keyboard in South Asia somewhere that was erratic due to peanuts and paperclips somehow jammed in it. It worked flawlessly after cleaning and vaccuuming. Those old keyboards were tough.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Oz republic

we are effectively a republic as the remote nominal head of state has nothing more to do than appoint the Governor General, aka president. Get best of both worlds. As for an Oz head of state, altho I have been republican minded since early teens, the models suggested by the Canberra/Sydney bubble suggest a status quo is by far preferably.

As it is, the Queen did her role competently for decades. That sort of person I respect. RIP Your Majesty.

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

Merkin Outsoucery company meetings were like this. Are they still infested by PHBs ?

Scientists pull hydrogen from thin air in promising clean energy move

Re: Storage ? Transport ?

maybe, but the nervousness I saw around putting 4000 psi O2 tanks for high altitude flying in wave makes me think 2.5 times that for a gas as slippery as H2 is unnerving. Add idiot humans into mix seems a step too far. If a solid state storage eventually worked adequately ( recall a couple of announcements, then crickets) then fuel cell cars may be a good way to go for vehicles IFF cheap hydrogen can be made. That, as posters above have enumerated, isn't happening. If large modern nuclear reactors, uranium or thorium, go online that may change. That is still being blocked by superstition.

As for your point on fire, on highway, OK. In an enclosed space the kaboom will dwarf an LPG leak explosion. Garages, large maintenance depots would be at higher risk. BTW, the H2 is stored as high pressure gas, not liquid so it would disperse very quickly, probably to nearest cigarette or toker

another problem

An Oz idea following current fashions. OK, got to get funding somehow from gullible governments. Covering deserts with solar panels? How much CO2 is produced making these short life things with no recycling plan known of to deal with the toxic metals ? Right....

Also a far bit of Oz is now magic dirt whenever something needs to be built in a large area, as well as the (oh the irony) environmental reports. One ACT "solar farm" if not all, actually had to document the risks of scattered sheep manure on the ground during construction. Sheep manure from previous use of land.

And dont get me started on why solar thermal fails due to dust and why this is a big risk in dry times in most of Oz. Deserts elsewhere will have same obstacles plus the usual political instability south of Europe.

Re: Storage ? Transport ?

10,000 psi fuel tanks is "solving" it ? In a vehicle controlled by humans ? Ah, in California. Says it all. Icon is most appropriate.

Japan's NTT claims it's built 1.2Tbit/s optical comms that sip power

wow

more advanced real time tracking and monitoring with faster phishing distribution. Might even make streaming reliable at peak times. Sounds too good to be true.

LG makes a TV roughly the size of a queen-sized bed

Meh

Pointless as still nothing to watch ? Sticking with dead tree carcass.

Reruns free, able to meditate upon contents if required, and will still work in 10 years. Even have a couple over 100 years old still working. Aside from that, the IO rate is orders of magnitude faster.

Best of all, the older books don't trigger my irritation at grammar and spelling errors. The blundering ignorance displayed by the limited vocabulary afflicted talking heads of last 20 years is too much to bear.

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Re: Not Just A British Problem.

what makes you think Oz has a functioning government, in either states or federally ? As being like pomland upside down. Cant be. Droughts and floods taking turns are normal here. If the land is green its because its drying out for next drought, or this year, a brief respite before going under again. And we rejoice in our lethal wildlife. Ever hit a skippy at 100 kmh ? Or feral cattle or much, much worse, a feral 4WD newly escaped from the suburbs. The snakes and spiders just give us comparisons for the party droids who make our pollies stupid.

I digress. Wheres Dabsy and Tim ? Keep the BOFH along commentards. Sometimes they can be entertaining or enlightening. I fear a Merkin manglement member will kill commentards off too as not core activity, disregarding the love of abuse and IT drollery that brings us back. Who knows, some may even read the "sponsored" articles.

you owe me

another keyboard with the "locksmith to recut our SSL keys"

Spluttered my tea all over. Brilliant managlement managing

California to phase out internal combustion vehicles by 2035

mmmm, more movies of trucks running down hill

or will freight stick with something that works at large scales ?

Google Maps, search results to point women to actual abortion providers

Re: The US Conservatives make the Amish look modern

do you mean the atheist religions who still believe in 18th and 19th century myths also ?

Scientists use supercritical carbon dioxide to power the grid

Re: recuperator == heat exchanger

See Triple Expansion Steam engine as used in tourist steam ships these days

Excel @ mentions approach general availability on the desktop

Re: Gerrof my lawn!

exactly,

Excel has grown from competent spreadsheet to can do anything if tortured enough software. After V5 I think it became a desktop publishing tool more than a spreadsheet.. Even Office Libre is following (slowly) this trend. I migrated to Kingsoft to get work done

DARPA seeks a few good AI coders to help America find its own rare minerals

cant be

bringing industry back to USA ? why reverse policies that have worked so well, for others anyway ? </sarc> for the impaired. Its like the current administration is copying Bad Orange man concept.(NON-$DEITY forbid)

The trade ban that wasn't: US allows 94% of restricted tech exports to China anyway

no surprise

"national security" or a few bucks. No contest.

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

Re: Exclusion Zone

you mean the place where the equivalent radiation of 100,000 bananas was mixed with the Pacific Ocean ? This worries you ? Dont go near granite rocks then. Dont fly above 2000 feet. Dont eat bananas or any high poassium fruit.

Twitter unveils US midterm election integrity plans, upsets almost everyone

Re: world leaders and politicians should be held to a higher standard when tweeting

dunno about poms and yanks, but all parties in Oz are destroying democracy because their constituents/funders want some form of privilege, IMHO. The terms left and right are mere distractions for the itchy keyboard types. The choices of freedom, responsibility and accepting consequences versus versions of bureaucratic hell holes are not given.

The resurgence of censorship, or worse, complete non-reporting In Oz it is so bad one has to go to German and French TV channels or websites to find out any news outside of vapid "celebrities" and panic of the week stories. Even ElReg has lost its bite since the Great Cleansing

Wave of corruption claims crash into China's chip Big Fund

utopians

really ? What evidence for such a collective nightmare ? Speaking as one who has lived with barely post contact tribal people. Freedom begins with private property. If you mean a sense of community spirit, why would a devoutly winner take all materialist outlook produce anything but theft, corruption and incompetence ? Honesty in such a society simply means not getting caught.

President Biden signs CHIPS and Science Act into law

business as usual for modern corporates

dont make anything customers want, get taxpayers money and bonuses all round, plus a few donations, wink wink. What could possibly go wrong ?

US car industry leads the world in production cuts over chip shortages

Re: Here's an idea -

agreed. Hearing this sort of comment among all ages in my backwater, even by residents of Oz crapital. As it is I want to upgrade current vehicle and not wanting anything less than 10 years old which seems to be optimum. Enough electronics for great engine and transmission management, none for attention hogging audio or navigation controls,

Battle of the retro Unix desktops: NsCDE versus CDE

crash ?

Odd, my HPUX workstations stayed up for months. My personal one got worked hard adminning multiple HPUX servers running payroll and development of said payroll application. Eventually bought my own as they were great to code on. Never did get my head around dtksh but liked the idea. CDE in 32 meg or 64 MB RAM worked OK and had a far better display than any PC I saw until early 2000 in an office. Miss it today, but due to HPs inane decision to allow only "HP" disks to be detected I went with AIX 4.3.

Philippines logs on to Starlink for remote area internet services

if Oz NBN anything to go by

Starlink will be cheaper, faster and available nationwide before heat death of Universe. Nice to see a government being reasonable with infrastructure in remote areas for once.

China seems to have figured out how to make 7nm chips despite US sanctions

Re: "Close copy"

not looking hard, are you ? Same physics, similar solutions so similarity of shape is no proof of copying/spying. Arresting humans carrying security classified documents is evidence of probable espionage. Aside from this, aeronautical engineers may face something other purveyors of ideas (academics) dont. If a passenger plane fails due to bad design ideas, the engineers have legal consequences to face. Even Boing (sic) lately. So concepts that are known to work adequately tend to be emulated. So the Herc has remained roughly the prototype for every military non pure jet cargo for about 65 years. Under the skin there is big difference but tube and wind shape is constant.

FWIW, I dont think it matters. Thucydides Trap is operating and no side sees that as a common threat. Build a bigger vege patch, learn basic survival skills and hide precious metals, like good steel and iron working tools.

Five accused of trying to silence China critics in US

old news

Roman Praetorian Guard once "protected" the Roman Senate, became Emperors bodyguard and ended up selling the Emperors position to highest bidder. methinks the TLAs and associated spookeries are becoming similar institutions.Anything for sale for the right money

Tech world may face huge fines if it doesn't scrub CSAM from encrypted chats

Another Clipper Chip episode

Of course no dodgy user would ever avoid official implementations of encrypted chat. {S} So eventually an open source coders comes up with multiple client side software. Said coders living in a country that does not support general snooping and remain anonymous for their own safety? Existing chat coders are in what legal position ? Next, support for complete packet analysis looking for the use of unapproved encryption data streams ? Its as if TLAs have plans for big Data retention and real time analytics and bought the right pollies. Regardless, asking Big tech to snoop is another Fox guarding Hen House scenario.

Is a lack of standards holding immersion cooling back?

building load capability

Not just racking issues. Liquids are heavier usually. Itirc the story of an IBM water cooled mainframe dropping two stories when water was pumped in after installation. Took floor loading to over failure limit

China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows

Re: UT

One set of bugs to be exploited. OTOH, Zos won't shrink that easily. (If IBM collapse sooner rather than later). QNX already exists, is open source, why reinvent vthe OS? Lastly, keep PS out of TVs. The things are slow enough to start already. It's like valves are back

NASA delays SLS rollback due to concerns over rocky path to launchpad

Re: Scavenging pad 39A

If Starship catch tower works, it adds meaning to phrase, "Hang in there "

Re: making rocket tracks is so crushing ?

Too fast. At the speed of the crawler, the launch site Zimmer's in the distance

making rocket tracks is so crushing ?

Lets hope the maintenance crew are not stoned. Is the old stuff sent to nearby Pebble beach? Mines the one with the gravelly voiced MP3 playing

Old-school editor Vim hits version 9 with faster scripting language

Re: Old school editor fans, rejoice

Yeah, wot about using ed scripting? It is useful when borked machine is barely running and very short of ram

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

Re: Pottering around not doing much

A common complaint from engineers in the civil works department I worked in decades ago. Competent engineers or architects got turned into clerks, usually unhappy ones

Trouble hiring? Consider loosening your remote work policy

In Oz

A few of the outsourceres pursing their death spirals brought in hot desking, thus losing two hours a day for each of their staff. One would think WFH would fit right in but apparently not.... Modern manglement must take lessons in foolishness. It cant be natural, surely

ZTE intros 'cloud laptop' that draws just five watts of power

Re: Netbook anybody?

more a diskless workstation. An X-Term with CPU and some local memory perhaps ? I think Metastasis would love it

Bipolar transistors made from organic materials for the first time

Re: Gatekeeping

woke? poke fun ? oxymoron.

Re: Gatekeeping

you dont "build" a computer in your shed. You assemble parts

Re: Gatekeeping

not afraid, puzzled. What problem are you suggesting be solved ? Do you realise that there are only 300 people approximately world wide able to create and modify chip designs ? Sure there are a few Open designs and rumours of software to assist in changing designs, outside of Intel. Fine, but how many hobbiests understand what could be changed and know enough to do it. Lastly, why bother ? Some firm, somewhere will have a chip or chips that can be put together to do what is needed if it cant be done effectively in software or, for the the deep geek, programmable field gate arrays.

Always read the comments: Beijing requires oversight of all reader-generated chat

Re: Too risky

Indeed. People might have to start meeting in coffee houses in dingy side streets, plotting to put up posters. Look how that turned out in Europe

Re: That would be a huge change

Re Last Generation. Your assessment is correct AFAIK. By 2100 the population is likely to drop about 50% Japan is in same hole. It is one reason the PRC leadership is likely to remain bellicose because it is the only "nationally unifying" card left.

My fear it will be seen as a good idea by the equally failing western elites and academics, but I repeat myself, so another Ministry of Truth effort is a year or two away. Probably administered by Zuck

Airbus flies new passenger airplane aimed at 'long, thin' routes

Re: try to go to Australia by train...

you all will be pleased that due to the last two wet years means spiders and lethal snake populations have boomed. Almost routine to brushoff redback webs in my shed. For your own safety, stay away. Local Met office also think the long Wet is not over and the cold is continuing. In the last 2 weeks I have seen blue sky and sunlight for 1.5 days. I am beginning to think a temporary job in the center of the NT might be A Good Thing.

As for air travel, only if I must. Getting crammed into a Covid haven like Sydney is too much to bear. Prefer 3 days drives to warmer climates up north. Somewhere like Mareeba where they grow coffee. Nearby locals have begun small scale cocoa growing and started a chocolate industry, right next to a dairy town with sugar refineries down on the coastal flats. Whats not to like. For the poms, tea is grown a bit further south.

SpaceX reportedly fires staffers behind open letter criticising Elon Musk

Re: Big tough snow flakes...

which Petersen ?

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

Re: Anyone who thinks this is AI

Given that anyone can now be insulted/hurt/triggered/fearful/upset/threatened/demeaned over anything said or implied, it sounds like an impossible job.