Posts by annodomini2

Nvidia welcomes Intel into AI era: Fancy a benchmark deathmatch?

Re: So...

Think we need to make the turd polish more toxic

'Flying Bum's' first flight was a gas, gas, gas

Re: Sorry how much?!

"Obviously it's more than just helium, but what the hell has cost $100 million?"

Engineering cost + nice fat pay off for military contractor.

Ford usually spend around $2bn developing a new generation Transit van.

VW spend ~$13Bn/year on R&D.

Boeing spent $32bn on the Dreamliner.

So $100m for a prototype is cheap TBH.

Tech support scammers mess with hacker's mother, so he retaliated with ransomware

What's needed

Custom malware to put backdoors in their system, hunt for the victim/payments db, refund all the victims and corrupt the DB.

Investors to be allowed to sue Volkswagen over emission row

Re: "required to make disclosures of their engine software"

At which point all the Tier 1 suppliers will start legal action.

Vodafone bins line rental charges as it moves onto TalkTalk's turf

About 10 years too late...

See above

Re: Not the first though..

Also Virgin have been offering pure BB with no phone line for quite some time.

Missile bods MBDA win Brit military laser cannon contract

Power draw indeed

Most LASERs are 10-20% efficient, so your 100kW unit is going to need IRO a 500kW to 1MW power supply to run it, not mentioning chemicals etc. Depending on the type.

Revolutionary Brit-made SABRE hybrid rocket engine to burn in 2020

Re: Just so long as jealous yanks....

They are already in talks with US aircraft manufacturers for supplying pre-coolers.

Re: Precoolers

No the air is slowed to subsonic speeds, that is why there a inlet cones on the front of the engine.

Slowing the air causes compression and resultant heat. Hence the need for the pre-cooler.

There is a compressor stage which feeds the rocket engine with air.

It does not compress and cool to liquid, for the icing problem.

HOTOL is a LACE engine Liquid Air Cycle Engine, this is a VACE Vapour Air Cycle Engine.

It is not a Jet in the traditional sense, that is just poor understanding on the part of the reporter.

It's an air fed rocket engine. They just happen to use a turbine to put the air into a format the rocket can use.

ZTE Axon 7: A surprise flagship contender

It's all waiting for the folding screens, until then nothing much will change.

VW finds US$15 BEEELION under the couch to pay off US regulators

There is a political issue as well, the extreme greenies want a much greater reduction in emissions (for obvious reasons) than can realistically be achieved with the technology available at a cost effective rate.

Automotive OEMs are driven by their markets and cost.

The purchasers (in general) want a fast, cheap car, that doesn't break down and does 100mpg.

Most governments are being pushed on AGW, which is pushed on the OEMs, who want the cheapest solution that appeases the regulators and their market.

Sharing your work cubicle with robots may not be such a bad thing

Re: I have yet to figure out why people are afraid that an AI would want to kill off humanity

1. Radiation out in space is much more damaging to electronics than under this nice atmosphere and magnetosphere.

2. There are a lot more computers on Earth for the 'AI' to infect and make use of, greater power, from the perspective of the AI.

Supermassive black hole devours star and becomes X-ray flashlight

Some of it yes.

Supercomputers in 2030: Lots of exaflops and LOTS of DRAM

Re: What's the current estimate of the computing power of the human brain?

Current estimates are 100PFlop equivalent (brain is mostly analogue with digital elements), and 20-40w.

Do you have a 'co-working mindset' and 'ephemerally involve others' in work?

GigJam

So have they actually made a word diff tool that actually works?

Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick... Hang on. They're back

Key point missed - Standards

While not all code is required to meet a standard many systems in use do.

Aerospace/Automotive DO-178B/C and ISO26262, explicitly require the use of waterfall.

This is just one example, but I would bet there are more.

NASA 'naut to boldly enter pump-up space podule

Re: slow puncture

Pressure is roughly 0.6-0.7 bar, same as most passenger planes

UK.gov's promise to pour cash into SMEs was just hot air

This was and is purely a headline grabbing exercise, are there many efficiency savings that theoretically could be made - YES.

Will they do it - NO.

Labour asks for more concessions on the UK's Snoopers' Charter

Re: Labour's "discomfort" over the Snoopers' Charter

Watch Yes minister, most of it still applies today.

The bulk of the government is run by Whitehall and subsidiaries.

These requirements will probably be coming from GCHQ etc, rather than whichever political party is involved.

Gillian Anderson: The next James Jane Bond?

That Idris Elba record is not official as they used the wrong timing gear.

Laser-zapping scientists will save the Earth from meteorite destruction

Re: Or an anti-matter beam!

Positron beam is probably cheaper and much easier to generate.

A UK-wide fibre broadband investment plan? Don't ask awkward questions

Re: This is the free market at work ...

Re-nationalise OpenReach

Android's security patch quagmire probed by US watchdogs

Political Grandstanding

"Hey look were doing something"

Result: Lots of talk and headlines, no reaction.

Small broadband firms aren't fussed about getting access to BT's ducts and poles

Re: BT

"The key to business is not to provide the best service, but the only service!"

Reacher Gilt, Going Postal, Terry Pratchett.

FCC urged to pause its fight against America's $20bn cable-box rip-off

Re: FREE BOXES IN THE UK??

Virgin boxes remain property of Virgin, and you have to return them if you cancel, so they are in effect rented.

Daisy-chained research spells malware worm hell for power plants and other utilities

Re: Errr

This assumes the same type and version of PLC, many mission critical systems will run multiple redundant HW/SW from different manufacturers.

If it was capable of infecting a multitude of systems, then there would be significant risk.

But, there are also other mitigation strategies.

Ultra-cool dwarf throws planetary party

Re: How old is that system / how long does an ultra cool dwarf last?

Depends on the atmosphere if they have one.

A relatively dense atmosphere could transfer energy from the star facing side of the planet to the side facing away.

SpaceX adds Mars haulage to its price list

Re: Let's take up a collection

Change the mars approach angle so it hits the planet, there it's landed, nothing about landing intact.

Must listen: We've found the real Bastard Operator From Hell

Re: Far too lenient.

Add "System failure, reinitialising queue, you are now x in the queue"

Whitehall waste: Cash splashed on consultants and temps up 90% in half decade

Re: "access to these skills in-house"

Ah but...

Waste in political terms is "money is being siphoned off to my predecessors backers"

Improvement is "money is being siphoned off to my backers!"

One million patients have opted out of Care.data

RE: OP

"This is only for the government to make money selling our data and will make no difference to our care."

The Gov has no real need to make money, however current party funders are generally in the business of making money somewhere.

Pair programming: The most extreme XP practice?

Good teams...

...will use pairing and mobbing as required.

A good team will adapt to changing scenarios and use the method they deem appropriate for the solution, so rather than a one approach fits all solution, it's a more flexible approach.

Nest bricks Revolv home automation hubs, because evolution

Re: Are they legally allowed to do that?

Legally it's 2 years for electronic goods in the EU.

Elon Musk takes wraps off planet-saving Model 3 vapourmobile

Re: Service Intervals

@Geoff Campbell,

"and they were quite happy with once a year even at 40,000 miles per year"

Can you charge one from a normal socket fast enough to do 40K a year?

Brexit: Time to make your plans, UK IT biz

Re: Why are you so worried about legal matters?

Most of them are in Ireland, for tax reasons.

Blighty's nuclear deterrent will get a software upgrade amid cyber-war fears

They're launched out of the tube and subsequently the water by compressed air, once clear of the water the rocket motor ignites

Microsoft GitHubs BotBuilder framework behind Tay chatbot

Awaits to hear...

This has been used in some next generation ransomware.

Ransomware scum sling PowerShell, Word macro nasty at healthcare biz

Re: Job recruitment offices

They want to stick their own headers and crap in it before sending it to their customer, their concept is that it stops other recruitment companies stealing their clients.

Three-bit quantum gate a step closer to universal quantum computer

Re: Byte me!

Waves then crumples up some old CS coursework.

Silicon photonics boosted with UK fabrication research

Re: 105mW

I think this is for interbox comms, so metres rather than mm.

I don't think this is intended for optical computing.

Judge orders Universal Credit internal reviews must be disclosed

Re: From here to there, eventually

The problem with big projects is they have feck all to do with efficiency or saving money or improving things.

They are about those in charge making appearances as though their tenure actually achieved something and feeding money to those party sponsors who assisted them in getting elected.

IEEE delivers Ethernet-for-cars standard

Limited use

There are functions that will need this kind of bandwidth, but not that many.

It will become more prevalent with autonomous vehicles, with potentially high bandwidth sensors.

Question is does it offer more than say CAN-FD or Flexray if there is this need?

One of the main advantages of CAN is that a large portion of the bus management is done in HW. When operating on lowest cost Microcontrollers this can make a big difference!

Especially when they can be running between 80-90% CPU load when operating, adding extra communications processing is going to be greater cost add.

Watch six tiny robo-ants weighing 100g in total pull a 1,769-kg family car

Re: Obvious thought.

@JS19, think you have your numbers backwards.

Mechanic computers used to pwn cars in new model-agnostic attack

Re: Signed firmware

There's a distinction between firmware and tune. Most systems will have one firmware and multiple tunes, basically they will use the same system on different models of vehicle and so the tune is selected for the vehicle. They generally modify the tune, rather than the firmware.

Both have signatures, but the signatures need to be capable of being updated, as the systems sometimes need updates, the firmware generally checks the signatures at runtime to check for memory corruption among other things.

How they get around this I do not know.

Re: Signed firmware

They do and have done for many years, the problem is there is no way to have independent verification of the signatures, except during programming at the dealership.

We're doing SETI the wrong and long way around, say boffins

Re: IANAA (I'm not an Astronomer)

Another active theory is it was a comet reflecting Earth borne signals.

Men in Black covered this best "A person is smart, people are dumb panicky animals and you know it"

Define intelligence

Ofcom should be the BBC's ultimate overlord, UK.gov told

Ah

So they want to flog it to BT when they privatise it then...

Wakey wakey, app developers. Mobile ad blocking will kill you all

Awaits to hear...

The operator is not removing the Ad's, but just replacing them with it's own.