Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

9 years after SpaceX strode into Texas village, Elon Musk floats name change for Boca Chica: 'Starbase'

Re: Starbase, Texas

primarily motivated by a desire to avoid regulation and government interference personal state income tax

'Incorrect software parameter' sends Formula E's Edoardo Mortara to hospital: Brakes' fail-safe system failed

Re: Looking to the future

>Let's go back to simple dual-circuit hydraulics that work.

But not use them in 1000bhp cars doing 200mph around a tight race course with other cars a few inches away.

Re: This would imply...

>It's even more pointless if the brake failure is mechanical,

I was thinking of a cartoon style anchor

Re: A failure of testing

In the shuttle case it would seem to be bad project management at the top.

If you spend all your budget making insanely safe software at 1000x the cost of normal software you haven't really benefitted anyone.

The shuttle was still dangerous because of solid fuel boosters and nobody in industry benefits because none of the lessons of wiring one line of code/person/year with nines-nines safety were usable in the world.

Re: Fail safe systems...

In this case it looks very similar to the A400 transport plane crash.

Config file for the brakes bad/missing so the failsafe disables the system = in this case the system being brakes.

In the transport plane the config file for the engine was missing so the failsafe system disabled the system safely = in that case all 4 engines

Homo sapiens: Hey you, Neanderthals! Neanderthals: We heard that

>As the name is derived from the "Neander Tal" (Thal)

Which was itself presumably the Latinized version of Neumann.

Ironic that these ancient ancestors are called "new man"

Re: Species or specious?

>we all have some Neanderthal genes in us

Isn't that only true for European/Middle-East/North-Africans?

IIRC that was some of the push-back for accepting Neanderthal DNA theory, it sounded dangerously like claiming that "Aryans" were a different species

Flagship Chinese chipmaker collapses before it makes a single chip or opens a factory

Re: Are you shilling for the Communist Party of China?

>That puts the hard line anti-Chinese voices in a very strong position to start military action.

I assume the first question on the entry exam to US military academy is

Fighting a land war in SE Asia = good idea ? Y / N

Re: Herr Schadenfreude here

>Penal labor is economically important

Penal labor is economic suicide, you have a worker paid 60c/hour but you have to have a guard paid $50/hour watching them and since you know that they are going to do all they can to sabotage the work you need to have 2 QA inspectors paid $80/hour checking the product.

Ask that Von Braun chap how well it worked out on the V2.

Amazingly the US had military helmets made by prison labor, in combat they found that there were "fatal manufacturing flaws", even the Nazis had the sense not to have camp inmates pack parachutes.

Re: Herr Schadenfreude here

>has caught the Western disease of incapability. Now we can compete as equals."

In the west the plant would have got a multi $Bn bailout and tax-breaks which it would have used to buy back shares and purchase bitcoin

Re: More to this than meets the eye

>The lithography equipment used by Intel/Samsung/TSMC tends to run in the order of $250-300m/unit,

It is also developed alongside the customer and so requires a decades long relationship.

You can't just order a 7nm plant from ASML's website for immediate delivery

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

Re: Now I don't know what to think

No, programming is now much easier.

Instead of forcing your will on the computer you now merely have to empathise with the computers point of view and let it do what it wants.

Re: How about them black holes ?

We call them "stars of restricted radius"

So is ExFAT somebody who has been on diet and is no longer plump ?

Re: Ebony and Ivory

Except in Britain, Black is good and calling a black person "African American" would get you punched/

In the USA colored is bad, except the NAACP (National Association Advancement of Colored People) is good

Black is almost as bad as coloured except for HBC (Historically Black Colleges)

>It's the Indians who get credit for Zero

What have the Indians ever done for us?

Nothing !

Can we just go back to calling them Spaz characters?

When the Spastic society renamed itself to SCOPE to avoid the negative connotations, I loved that it took schoolkids about 0.2s to start calling each other "scopey".

Re: Kill

>Thank God (probably offensive entity) that I can still Kill (violent) a process.

I think if you're G*d you have to "smite" a process

ps G*d apparently gets mad if you say G*d, and given his(or her) anger issues you don't want to take any chances

Re: Doh!

For example, use "peer" instead of "slave".

I use Commissar and Serf

"Splunking" is doing it in a cave right ?

Re: I'm self-created I am

Try entering "Sprang fully formed from the forehead of Zeus" into the date of birth field

So ECC memory is binary shaming

"treadmill" is offensive to the handicapped differently-legged

Linus Torvalds went six days without electricity, swears smaller 5.12 kernel is co-incidental

Re: No Backup Gen?

>Hard to tell when a left-pondian is being sarcastic, but somehow I think you are not.

In europe the power cables are normally buried.

In the off-shore colonies they prefer to give nature a sporting chance and so the power lines are strung from little wooden poles right upto your house. This is especially true in places that get frequent snow, ice and winter gales. The same places normally have lots of trees alongside the roads that have branches that also get covered in snow and fall down across the lines.

Ironically the cable-TV cables are often buried so if you have a UPS the internet stays up even if you can't make a cup of tea

Apple, forced to rate product repair potential in France, gives itself modest marks

Re: I admire the French for this but

So you wouldn't be able to buy a computer anymore, but you can lease a one for only 100/month

Re: In days of yore

And the PC came with socketed ICs. I demand that my iPhone comes with the CPU in a 512pin DIP package (although I might need slightly longer pockets)

Re: Extend to cars

The answer as ever, is steam trains

Steam trains, at least in their early "Rocket" form could be built and repaired by a blacksmith with a hammer.

In the glorious future the only form of transport allowed will be "The Rocket", each family will build their own from weekly plans printed in The Radio Times and be assembled in their shed.

If you want a self-driving version, there is always the option of owning a horse instead.

Bloody Dell! The humble notebook made the difference between a crappy fiscal 2021 and a good one

Dell must be glad it's still in that game.

Except there is no margin in selling notebooks to work from home minions. Even macbooks aren't very profitable.

It has probably just brought forward the next 3 years of laptop buying.

There is no brand loyalty in laptops, Every peripheral is USB-c and i can switch from Dell to Lenovo next year with no real overhead compared to swapping out server/SAN brands

The real money is going to be in all the cloud services to support all these mobile users

Half a million stolen French medical records, drowned in feeble excuses

Re: Alistair, you have my sympathies

>and it's taken a while to find suitable sugar free flavourings in Germany;

I believe they manufacture a sugar free "water, malt, hops and yeast" traditional beverage that is available in litre amounts

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Re: Should not have Netherlands VAT ...

No it's a sale but Seagate eat the price.

With computer brains in short supply, President Biden orders 100-day probe into semiconductor drought

Re: Car companies screwed up....

And at the same time a billion people suddenly needed a laptop at home for the whole family

Re: So Mr. President

So if we put tarrifs on Taiwanese and Korean semiconductors it will enable US companies to invest billions in building fabs state-side

Re: What

I have voted you up while totally condemning your treasonous behaviour

Re: Chips is so vague a word

>Corporate socialism? It is EXACTLY THE SAME THING CHINA DID TO BUILD THEIR FAB CAPACITY.

And China is communist so therefore socialism == communism

So we can't have transit or healthcare

Re: ......but what are these chips ACTUALLY DOING?

So ideally they would spread a cloud of chips in the case of accident so when the car knocks you off your bike and then zooms off - you can trace them from all the tags left behind

HP loses attempt to deny colossal commission to star sales staffer

Re: This is far more prevelant than most people know

>Top sales people are often screwed by their employers as they climb higher up the sales ladder.

And then they quit and go and work for a competitor, with the existing client list, knowledge of the flaws and margins on the previous firms products and a deep motivation to fsck over their ex-employer

And thus capitalism triumphs...

The bank of Bitcoin: MicroStrategy's share price rides high on the back of cryptocurrency investment

Re: Taxes

>I suspect that the reason these companies are putting their money into Bitcoin is for tax avoidance purposes.

Microstratgy is basically a way to buy bitcoin in a share account (pension/IRA/ISA etc) by buying shares in a company whose only asset is bitcoin.

Telsa is Musk taking the piss. He buys bitcoin, tweets about it, everyone else buys it, price goes up, he sells

Re: Investment? Speculation!

Bitcoin = an imaginary made-up currency with strict mathematical controls on how much can be produced and a value set by the market

Dollar (or Pound) = an imaginary made-up currency with politicians controlling how much can be produced depending on what their poll numbers look like and a value set by the unemployment figures going into the next election

Chill out, lockdown ain't over yet – perhaps FUZIX on the Pi Pico could feature in your weekend shed projects

Unix ran in 32kb of ram on a PDP-11.

Portability though was a challenge

Samsung shows off next-generation big-pixel camera sensor tech, coming to an Android phone near you

Re: I wonder why this great tech doesn't trickle down to real cameras?

>So why doesn't this tech ever get transplanted into real cameras?

It does, it's called Photoshop/Gimp

The phone does a lot of processing for you because people want to click and have instagram ready shots - even if they look like every other instagram shot.

"Real" cameras assume you want the flexibility to capture the best raw data you can and then fix it later for your requirements.

Most interchangeable lens cameras already do non-artistic corrections - for things like lens distortion

Re: Pixel binning

Or more low-light photos are taken indoors and you don't need 40MP shots of some kid's birthday party

The perils of non-disclosure? China 'cloned and used' NSA zero-day exploit for years before it was made public

Re: failure to take long view

> Not sure they gained much from it

Depends on the "they", if you mean politicians/generals who became heroes because of their brilliant strategies over the hun, rather than being able to read their mail = quite a lot

Planespotters’ weekends turn traumatic as engine pieces fall from the sky in the Netherlands and the US

Re: Quick turnaround for the 777?

That's dumb, it would be like having an emergency release handle for a nuclear bomb be just where you needed to grab to climb into the bomb bay

Re: RE: engine failure

>Larger operators tend to buy, smaller ones lease. This is purely because of financing cost, not any technical advantages.

Probably also if you have a legacy of service bases around the world.

If you are a new airline it may be convenient for RR to tell you that next time your aeroplane stops anywhere it will get serviced - rather than having to return it to your base.

Worryingly, the planes are now made of "cardboard derivatives"

It didn't explode - the front fell off.

That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.

Australian government fights Facebook news ban by threatening 0.01% of Zuck's ad revenue

Re: The problem is

>This could be a learning opportunity for them. Especially "them" in the Australian govt.

The same Australian govt that claims that its laws overrule the laws of maths ?

China sets new rules for Ant Group to play by if it wants to think again about a float

Typical Aliexpress

Building a dodgy shadow bank with the potential to wreck the national economy - stealing our IP again

The chips are down. We need your support, semiconductor industry tells US President Biden

Re: The case for government intervention?

> expect leaps in automation to create these items if it is repatriated. The work is just too expensive for the developed world.

You really think you can build advanced 5nm semiconductors with automated machines - rather than using cheap below minimum wage 3rd world labour ?

Re: Wisconsin, not Minnesota

Did they have to change the state because Trump mis-spoke in a TV spot ?

Or did they just amend the map with a sharpie ?