Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Why did Microsoft just buy fiber optic cable company Lumenisity?

Re: This is close enough to their core business...

Your fibre is installing updates.... please wait 0% complete .....

Re: I had similar thoughts years ago...

Would be easier to just flood the core with argon/nitrogen or similar. Speed light in normal gases at STP is pretty close to c

Re: Good Luck

The stuff is fairly common in laser labs because it preserves polarization - it's called hollow-mode (like single mode and multi mode)

But it's expensive and hard to make in high quality, will be great if they've made a breakthrough

Re: Great product, but...

Because they have an infinite amount of cash in the bank that is losing money.

They can't but a software company without worrying about monopolies, they can't buy a railroad or oil company without worrying about the SEC.

This is close enough to their core business to not make them a hedge fund but far enough not to be anticompetitive

China files complaint with WTO against US chip export controls

Re: Victim blaming

That's why we don't let Saudi Princes buy strategic assets like football clubs.

What did Unix fans learn from the end of Unix workstations?

I'd quite like an X-term

Might just be nostalgia for Sun's 19inch flat CRTs with crisp black/white text over the 14" VGA displays on PCs at the time

But a modern 32" black/white 4K flat panel with a key+mouse and no fan noise ....

Uncle Sam needs novel memory for nuke sims. So why did it choose Intel?

It's their turn

The point if this is to hand out taxpayers money to support the national semiconductor company without it looking like communism or raising the eyebrows at the WTO

Bahamian rap: Crypto villain Sam Bankman-Fried arrested

Re: And yet

Of the point if crypto is to hold your own currency with control your own wallet - the failure of a dodgy 'bank' that was holding money for you but was a crook should reinforce that ?

request from US authorities

Don't they have sovereignty?

They should obviously leave the Commonwealth, then they wouldn't have to accept foreigner's demands

US Dept of Energy set to reveal fusion breakthrough

Similarly a hand grenade is Q>1 if you don't count the energy to make the explosive.

Italy, Japan, UK to jointly launch sixth-gen fighter jet by 2035

Re: Promising precedent

He was undercover

Re: A Quantitative Easing Program in Military Guise?

>No monies for welfare and wages and food and heating and homes

Hey shareholders deserve welfare too

Re: Promising precedent

>Because the French know they can do a better one in half the time and for a fraction of the budget.

And yet they join every European fighter aircraft project with enthusiasm

The airframe is designed, only moderately late and over budget

Then in a spirit of cooperation the French request that if can be used on their carriers

After another long and expensive redesign it can fly from carriers

Magnifique! exclaim a delighted admiral de la Armée de l'air - if only it had a smoking room we would buy a lot of them

As the designers go away to consider fitting a salon - the French announce the launch of their new French built fighter and pull out of the project.

The project then scrambles to find partners for the French share among countries that were considered too small, poor or insufficiently mustached to be part of the original partnership

Bizarrely this seems to have been repeated for every european aviation project since WWII

Re: "What could possibly go wrong?"

But how is the drone pilot supposed to appear enough of a hero to run for office and get further funding

Re: Promising precedent

And, as another plus for a collaborative fighter project, the French aren't involved.

ChatGPT has mastered the confidence trick, and that's a terrible look for AI

Re: The emperor has no clothes.

Worse is the Economist on any science topic

Re: The emperor has no clothes.

Or of course, all those pieces are already written by ChatGP.

Re: How much leccy does ChatGPT consume?

Training it =lots

Running it = bugger all

UK lawmakers look to enforce blocking tools for legal but harmful content

Re: This "shield" already exists

How dare you sir !

You demean the delight of my childhood (and in the persons of Beaker and Animal - my role models) by comparing them to such cockwombles as the member for West Suffolk

Re: Machiavelli

The US megacorps will comply, or at least have an official compliance officer. Because small homegrown organs, such as el'reg, wont be able to afford to comply, or afford to take the risk, and so will close or simply transfer to being a Facebook page

Re: Freer today?

The new game of England or Russia

Re: It has become dangerous to chat online

Simple solution: social media will only allow you to message someone older than you (*)

This prevents all forms of child exploitation, while ensuring that the young can learn from their older and wiser betters.

* Presumably the oldest person alive will be a bit lonely, but if you reach 115 you are probably glad of being banned from el'reg anyway.

Re: Anyone remember 0898 ?

But now in order to access 0898 on your phone you will simply have to register as an official pervert viewer of adult material with your local Office of Unseemly Behaviour.

The registers will only be available to the police, army, security services, local council, parish council, dog wardens, pta, etc - just like RIPA.

Re: This "shield" already exists

Obviously a "parliament of punts"

Re: Grow a brain

And make sure they aren't looking at any of that "Last of the summer Wine" stuff online.

Next thing you know they'll be racing down Dales in bathtubs on wheels

Re: RE: verification

>You can't be "free" and "overseen" at the same time

Of course you can - this will only be used for your own safety and protection against naughty things, promise.

Re: Grow a brain

I think the Taliban have similarly caring policies around child rearing, so if we can only get the Christians onboard (and offline) we will have brought unity to all 3 fans of the same imaginary being

Re: Grow a brain

>Children are killing themseves due to what they encounter online

I thought children were killing themselves because of hidden messages in that Rock Music ?

> the government that has to step in and stop the minority from ruining things for everyone else.

The same government that grew up in the 80s when the then government was banning "Frankie goes to Hollywood" from the TV

Raised by parents who grew up in the 50s when the government was banning Elvis

Re: Grow a brain

>Who gets to say what harmful content is? Who gets to say what kids can and can't say to each other? Who draws the line between bad taste or things we don't agree with and things which are harmful?

That's not the point. The point is we need official ID cards that can be used to verify your age online and track which websites you visit.

We also need to ban VPNs so your can't just go and see naughty foreign websites.

We then need a law that lets us close down 'harmful' websites without having to specify why.

Oh well the clock just struck 13 so back to work....

TSMC founder says 'globalization is almost dead' as Asian foundry giant expands in US

Re: Export-Acceptable Laptops

Just a single DECsystem?

You can have an entire VAXcluster on a rPi

Re: Globalization is almost dead

The risk is blindly enforced US ITAR export rules. It's quite possible that a computer/phone made with chips fabbed in the USA can't be exported (even to friends) without State Dept permission, while the same machine made with identical chips fabbed in Taiwan can be freely bought anywhere.

Imagine you buy an iPhone, you might want to ask the store if taking it to Mexico gets you 25years in club fed.

If you are a US corporation you might feel pressure to buy laptops with home grown chips but then have to buy identical Lenovos from China to use on any foreign trips.

Re: Globalization is almost dead

So isn't an European company selling to a Taiwanese company in the USA, globalisation ? Or is the world flat (for legal reasons) ?

Globalization is almost dead

I wonder where TSMC are going to buy chip making equipment from in the USA?

First-ever orbital satellite launch from British soil will be delayed

And hasn't been massively successful - for a variety of technical and business/political reasons

Re: Plane taking off from British soil will be delayed

I quite fancy the idea of a replacement airship service.

Re: Why are they doing this?

>Launching from such a high latitude increases the fuel required to establish orbit.

Only for equatorial orbits - mostly GSO

The main limitation for the typical polar or swarm orbits for the small LEO payloads this can carry is that you don't want anyone living down range.

Being able to get away from potential downrange lawsuits is one of the alleged benefits of air launches.

Guess which Fortune 500 brands and govt agencies share data with Twitter?

> little chance of some foreign thread actor coming along and just taking everybody's data.

investors who put up more than $100M (IIRC) for Musk to buy Twitter get free access to all the data

Saudi Govt owns 4% of Twitter and Qatar another big chunk

Theranos' Sunny Balwani gets longer sentence than Elizabeth Holmes

Re: Lawyers, eh

Off with their goolies

Re: Why not in the clink now?

Also they aren't exactly an immediate threat to society.

If we don't keep them in custody they may go out and defraud other investors before April

Re: Another lesson

Or your racist assumption that ethnic minority males don't face any discrimination in the legal system compared to pretty blonde women ?

Persecute the hereritc, burn the witch.....

Taiwan bans state-owned devices from running Chinese platform TikTok

Re: PS

More posts are also being banned for a level of sarcasm which would be obvious to a stunned (British) herring - or a working group of USA based professors of advanced irony

Re: Reiterating

Meta is a public listed company, not willingly sharing your data with a PLC so they can make money is the very definition of communism

San Francisco terminates explosive killer cop bots

I thought there might be a significant el'reg / stross crossover

Re: US logic

Once again machines taking jobs from honest hardworking American serial killers

We prefer the term "residual human resource" in the laundry

Barge off: Nautilus to bring floating datacenters to two new sites in US, France

But at least the pirates have to put some effort in, its not just some kid in a basement ripping off Lars Ulrich

Energy being expensive and trickier to source is good news ... for renewables

Re: How much electricity ?

The difference between me doing nothing and me doing the maximum to reduce my carbon emissions would be less than 0.00000000001C

I only emit 1/8billion-the of world's greenhouse gases!

Re: In before . . .

> If their energy is 'renewable' why has the price of gas inflated their bills so dramatically?

If there is a shortage of components for new cars - why have used car prices increased ?