* Posts by cavac

47 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2010

Rust for Linux maintainer steps down in frustration with 'nontechnical nonsense'

cavac

Re: New kernel seems like a good idea

I would also count the whole Arduino landscape as more or less a basic OS. It supports many different hardware implementations, has bootloaders for them, sets up timers handles serial buffers and so on. Plus it comes with a ton of abstractions and loads of libraries ( basically"drivers" for all kinds of hardware).

And it's used by millions of prople for their electronics projects.

Starliner's not-so-grand finale is a thump in the desert next week

cavac

Re: And now it thumps, *literally*. Butch heard pinging noises coming from Starliner's speaker...

People who completed high school are probably too expensive and would lower the year-end bonus of C-Level staff...

cavac

Re: And now it thumps, *literally*. Butch heard pinging noises coming from Starliner's speaker...

"HAL 9000". It's Starliner, so it's probably more on the level of ELIZA ;-)

cavac

Re: Pneumatic connectors

Spacesuits don't use all that much power. You can probably find the correct buck/boost converter on eBay. As for things like audio circuits, any someone competent amateur can probably click together a converter circuit in KiCAD and have it manufactured within a few days on a service like PCBWays.

Add the correct connectors and a bit of potting material and you're done.

It's not as if these things need to last for decades, you only need them for an emergency return from orbit, so if you can guarantee that they work for 10 hours before failing you're golden.

cavac

Re: Pneumatic connectors

And if you need to convert between two standards, you can buy adapters online.

The same goes for many/most data and electrical standards.

cavac

Re: NASA wastes so much money

Back in the 1960s, of course such an emergency rescue thing was studied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

I can't imagine this would be a comfortable ride, but that's why NASA hired test pilots in those days...

Silicon, stars, and sulfur make Apollo's unlikely legacy

cavac

Let's not forget: Since Apollo, we changed the orbit of an asteroid (or rather, its moon), just to show that we can in case we need to. We "caught" a comet and watched it closely as it went through perihelion and we even landed a small probe on it. And we sent two probes into interstellar space, and in the process proved that we can build spacecraft that last 47 years and counting.

And, oh, we proved that people can survive in microgravity for over a year.

Unfortunately, humanity also proved that they can't be bothered to do basic preventive maintenance and repair on one of the biggest radio telescope ever buid...

EU officials say X’s paid-for blue check deceives users and breaks law

cavac

Re: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Usually, nothing is farther from my mind than defending 4chan. But, as far as i know, 4chan never had to add pay-to-win "verification" checkmarks to their usernames to make the site work...

OpenAI slapped with GDPR complaint: How do you correct your work?

cavac

Re: OpenAI claims to be true

Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI.

Musk said Twitter would open source its algorithm – then fired the people who could

cavac

Terry Pratchett wrote a good commentary on the whole god/religion theme in "Small Gods". It's technically a fantasy novel, but when you compare it to the real world, he is pretty much spot on from my point of view.

Basically, it boils down to "A god can't be smarter than the people who believe in it. The most devout followers aren't necessarily the smartest and most learned ones. Resulting in gods that are very powerful but might need help reading words with more than four letters."

Switch off the mic if it makes you feel better – it'll make no difference

cavac

Re: Linux, as well

I have a few bash scripts that do some pulseaudio configuration for me. You can add multiple audio mixing channels with different sources and sinks.

There are also ways to fake video sources

A bit of work (and a lot of headbanging and googling) to get it right, but it's fantastic. Basically, let's you participate in a meeting while playing minecraft. All the people could see you programming and occasionally cursing (playback of a recorded work session) while in reality you are in the kitchen cooking and listening to the session with your wireless headset.

Just make sure to wear the same clothes, so as to not arouse too much suspicion if you have to answer a question and have to switch streams to live mode.

Zlib crash-an-app bug finally squashed, 17 years later

cavac

It's important that you can not avoid using that compression algorithm these days. It's not only in HTTP, but also in standards like PNG files, among others.

It doesn't have an amazing compression ratio, but it's lightning fast compared to most other algorithms.

And zlib is the easiest to use. You don't even have to find and then use whatever zlib library your operating system provides, oh no. You just copy a few .c and .h files into your project and you are pretty much done and guaranteed to work, no matter what OS you use.

Of course, you are supposed to track the zlib changelog and security announcement, but nobody got time for that, right?

cavac

Re: And people like to shame companies

It's probably even worse than you think. If you have a complicated library that's hard to compile (complicated configure/make/cmake whatever), people often use the system library.

With zlib, you just copy a few files into your project. It just compiles, and you don't have to worry about external dependencies. So half the stuff out there that uses zlib uses its own local version that doesn't get updated with a normal system update.

I just wrote an email to 60+ Perl package maintainers, because they all used their own local copy of those files. It doesn't look much better for projects in other programming languages.

A quick stroll through various search engine results resulted in me facepalming often enough to give me a decent headache...

cavac

Re: Zlib in embedded

Yeah, like half of the flagship phones you can buy right now ;-)

UK arm of Sungard Availability Services goes into administration

cavac

Re: The real issue is that their business model is currently dead in the water.

In many cases, Colo makes more sense than cloud, especially regarding money.

For one, the service provider can't blackmail me into artificial price hikes. When using a big cloud provider, the software if oftentimes designed to work against their specific API. With Colo, i don't have to do that. If they want to increase prices, i can just take my hardware, plonk it down somewhere else and i'm done.

Also, since it's my hardware, i can buy upgrades and i pay only once - instead of monthly for the rest of the decade. I have seen stuff like getting charged 50 Euro per month for a RAM upgrade, where the hardware costs less than 300 Euros. Why would i basically want to pay for new RAM every 6 months?

It's important to remember that colo and cloud are not only used by companies but also by individuals and open source projects. You can get decent second hand hardware quite cheap and run it for a decade and just buy cheap upgrades/replacements on Ebay when/if they are needed. And of course, you can the operating system of your choice and also run multiple virtual machines.

My private Colo server is now 10 years old, and except for a couple of additional harddisk still runs the original hardware. I run multiple virtual machines, 24/7, sometimes pegging the CPU at 100% for hours. Doesn't matter. gets the job done without having to worry about getting a huge invoice because i "used too much CPU" or any of the isht.

Gospel according to HPE: And lo, on the 32,768th hour did thy SSD give up the ghost

cavac

"Power on hours" in S.M.A.R.T.?

This looks suspiciously like the "Power On Hours" counter in S.M.A.R.T. (attribute 0x09).

eBay eBabe enigma explained: Microsoft bug blamed after topless model slings e-souk's emails at stunned Brits

cavac

For a moment there..

..i was thinking "Ebay is going for the used mail bride market."

You know, "mail bride, double-D, one previous owner, slightly used, private sale - no waranty".

Guy is booted out of IT amid outsourcing, wipes databases, deletes emails... goes straight to jail for two-plus years

cavac

Re: Just like divorces, there's rarely a good outcome for all.

That doesn't prevent the IT version of a dead man switch. Like a system wipe that goes off unless some specific action is done every few weeks.

This can be designed even a passive version that can't be interpreted as malicious. Something like having to do a manual cleanup of the backup storage so new backups can be archived. And due to a accidentally-on-purpose forgetting to configure the warning mails nobody will know until they need to restore a critical server....

2,500 years ago, these folks weren't cremated – but their funeral-goers were absolutely baked: Earliest evidence of pot smoking discovered

cavac

"Further analysis required"

Let me speculate, the next step for those scientists is to find weed that closely matched the observed signature and run a long term test (on themselves) to find out it's effect on humans.

Nice way to get baked for months on end on government grants "for science".

That scary old system with 'do not touch' on it? Your boss very much wants you to touch it. Now what do you do?

cavac
Facepalm

Microservices...

...yeah, the buzzword of the day. How does this make a business solution less complex? The maintenance IT guy in a decade will just complain about the myriad of undocumented data connections between hundred or even thousands of programms.

And how all those hundreds of programs need to be rewritten to into a single modern application, because the communication network complexity is unmaintainable, undocumented and so complex that you need fifty times more processing power to run the communication between the microservices than to run the actual business code.

History tends to repeat itself.

ZX Spectrum reboot scandal: Directors quit, new sack effort started

cavac

Hire a better spin doctor!

Come on, how hard can it be to make thing look good? It's not a war, it's a pageant. We need a theme, a song, some visuals!

Boss helped sysadmin take down horrible client with swift kick to the nether regions

cavac

Best wished

Good luck in your new job!

As Tesla hits speed bump after speed bump, Elon Musk loses his mind in anti-media rant

cavac

Re: unexpected honesty

"It's really odd, that kind of remark often comes up. Can one point me to some specific date for that mythical Golden Age when people did in fact respect journalists more than now?"

It ended on March 6, 1981 at the end of that days CBS Evening News.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5tdqojA26E

Stephen Hawking dies, aged 76

cavac

The world has lost a brilliant mind today :-(

Sneaky satellite launch raises risk of Gravity-style space collision

cavac

Guess who gets audited my every U.S. government agency this year...

Sorry, Elon, your Tesla roadster won't orbit for billions of years

cavac

Re: Douglas may have been right

"Cherry red" just doesn't have the same style as "everything black, including black control lights on a black panel". Shame, really...

But i guess SpaceX realized early on that making a video of an all black car in front of the vast blackness of space might prove... somewhat difficult.

cavac

Re: Tesla commercial strategy

From the June 2050 issue of consumer reports: "After trying to fix the traction control and GPS issues of their space-Tesla for over a thirty years, the Tesla marketing department (the last surviving department of the otherwise long gone and forgotten company) finally gave up and declared chapter 7 bankruptcy".

Boffins foresee most software written by machines in 2040

cavac

Re: Clippy

"Sometimes you look at 100,000 lines of code, and feel it in your bones that it could be rewritten in 20,000"

I hear that a lot. But while writing the new code, more often than not, you will discover all the edge cases and special requirements the projects also needs to handle[*]. And in many cases, you will end up with the same amount of code, anyway. Except that it will be less reliable, because it is still missing about, uh, 25 years of bugfixing.

[*] Things like "didn't you know, every other year we have an ISO-somethingorother audit, and we need to run this very complicated reporting thingy that would us take weeks to do by hand". Or the always fun "Ok, we upgraded all the systems to use your new API, except of course that Doohikey2000 thing back there in the corner. Changing that would cost too much and cause a downtime of weeks because of the re-certification required"

Sputnik-1 replica used to test the real thing goes under the hammer

cavac

Re: Not quite

That's because everyone look at various complicated, expensive technologies for heatshields. Thing is, one of the materials tested by the Chinese was wood. And it seemed to work quite well:

https://vintagespace.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/can-a-wood-heat-shield-really-work/

I know they probably used modern (for the era) fabrication techniques, but in my mind i can't shake the image of Tom Hanks sitting on the beach of a lonely island, knife in hand, proclaiming "I made a heatshield!!!!".

WannaCrypt: Roots, reasons and why scramble patching won't save you now

cavac

Problems are the equipment suppliers, mostly...

If you buy equipment that is supposed to last a few decades (medical equipment, production line systems), then you might get support for a few years, BUT you get only support with the operating system you bought your machines with.

Also, there are quite a few hurdles, even in the cases when you can upgrade. Many such machines are calibrated and certified. Touch any part of the software, and you are in red-tape hell, as well as a prolonged downtime until your equipment is re-calibrated and re-certified (which could take *weeks* to *months*).

Code-sharing leads to widespread bug sharing that black-hats can track

cavac

WP Code Snippet

Of course the code in the snippet is insecure: It's related to WordPress.

If you want a webserver full of holes, WP is always first choice...

Firefox 52 kills plugins – except Flash – and runs up a red flag for HTTP

cavac

and making it all SSL enabled simply means nothing is cached anymore

Not entirely correct. Browser caching is not affected by the use of secure connections.

But true, classic proxies are pretty much impossible for SSL connections. That is a tradeoff for security and privacy.

It would theoretically be possible to use a validating proxy that blocks all insecure connections (invalid and self-signed certs etc) and have the browser trust the proxy that it does the right thing... nightmares galore!

I can sort of understand your problem with the traffic volume. But (at least here where i live), this is mostly when you run stuff in expensive clouds like Amazon. I use some colo servers where i have enough monthly traffic included in the colo rent for a fixed price. Currently i could use 50TB a month, and i never reached that limit, not even close.

Frustrated by reboot-happy Windows 10? Creators Update hopes to take away the pain

cavac

Re: Serious question here...

Both Windows and Linux use Memory Mapping to load executables into memory, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_file.

The fundamental difference is how the VFS and the underlying file systems work. On Windows, applications require an exclusive lock on the file for some writing directory operations (like move, delete and truncate, if memory serves correctly), because they are *immediate* operations.

On Linux/Unix, some of those are scheduled operations. In case of move or delete, the files fall out of the visible directory immediately, but the block are only freed *after* all filehandles are closed. Although applications CAN request exclusive locks, for example having multiple SQLite programms changing the same database file at the same time would be a Bad Thing(tm).

LOHAN embraces handsome young autopilot

cavac

Re: Two stage autopilot

Ok, this might sound a bit stupid, but why doesn't the autopilot *initiate* the rocket burn?

This would cut down on the number of electrical connections from the launcher to the plane and make "detection of launch" easier.

If you need to communicate between the launcher box and the plane, for example to initiate launch early, you could do it via infrared (IR-transistor on the recieving end, transistor+resistor+IR diode on the sender; easy as PI).

If you really just want to passively detect the rocket ignition, looking for a sudden, 3 second forward acceleration followed by a rather steep temperature increase of the rocket casing and a rather steep fall in altitude[*] should be a good indication.

[*] If you detect a rather steep fall *followed* by a sudden deceleration it means to waited a bit to long.

LOHAN's mighty thruster poised for hot coupling

cavac

Re: KISS again

I agree, i was thinking the same principle.

But instead of having spring loaded contacts with flat bottoms, you could have something like multiple bend wires or pieces of steel wool pressing against the contacts on the fuselage.

This way, there would be a number of smaller contacts brushing and moving against the contacts plates during ascent, pretty much making sure that icing wont interfere with the connection. Also, this should lessen the forces required to make a good connection, therefore lessen the forces holding back the plane after ignition.

Another way to help making better contact resistant to icing and "bad spots" when the plane moves slightly during ascent would be to put some electrically conducting paste inbetween the contacts. Something along the line of silver based thermal paste springs to mind.

Of course, this would need proper testing in a local meat warehouse freezer or something...

BOFH: This buck's for you

cavac
Alien

Just to be sure..

"You've given me some ideas about our backup plan."

If your company somehow makes the "error" of approving the plan: Make sure to name an external consultant as the responsible party for making it all work. And since it was your boss who approved the plan, you pretty much know who the two fall guys are going to be...

cavac
Flame

and it makes sense.

It' how every multinational company works: Better use established stupidity procedures than invent your own. This way, when sh hits the f, external consultants can take your money without having to write their own nonsense documents (but reuse existing ones). The cycle begins again, everybody is happy and got their money.

Saved the world another day and all that...

Vulture falls asleep in front of Christmas TV

cavac
Thumb Up

Merry Christmas!

And thanks for another entertaining and informative year!

PARIS in 89,000 ft climax

cavac
Black Helicopters

Next project: Solar Plane

Here's a little idea for a follow-up project: Release a proper RC glider (controlled by one of those thumb-sized embedded computers) from a similar balloon. For a longer flight duration, one of these electric prop gliders equipped with some thin solar cells on the wings might work.

In essence, this thing might fly for hours on end at a great altitude. Which means you just build your own reusable high altitude spy drone for probably less than 2000 Euros (beer & vine not included).

I'm not sure if this will work, but it would be an interesting project, don't you think?

Vulture 1 sprouts wings and a tail

cavac
Joke

Balsa wood is paper...

...or so. At least it has the potential to. So, it's pre-paper raw material.

Using glue to bind multiple layers of paper is basically reversing the paper-making process, anyway ;-)

cavac

Don't worry...

...even if it has a very good glide ratio at groundlevel atmospheric pressure... there essentially is none at the starting point.

Which is rather worrying in another way. If the plane plummets to earth for the first part of the trip, the sheer speed will rip it apart when it enters the denser parts of the atmosphere - possibly letting the electronics freefall the rest of the way.

So, i'd attach a small parachute to the electronics and leave it inside the plane. If something goes horribly wrong - and it most likely will (this *is* the maiden flight of a prototype airplaine) - then there's a chance the parachute will come out and at least slow down the electronics and leave enough parts intact to get some pictures from the flash card.

cavac
Go

"Vulture 1, this is ElReg Tower,...

you're Number One on the runway".

PARIS unveils impressive box

cavac

Ice-Problems

I'm more worried about the lenses than the electronics, especially that big UV Filter. When it gets cold, the air inside the box will cool and the lenses might freeze over.

BOFH: Robot wars

cavac
Thumb Up

Nice..

...though i'd also given the robot a little tune up. Never hurts to make your killer bot a little bit more speed.

I'd also rewire the remote control so the "Off" button turns off the user (instead of the robot) through some high voltage magic ;-)

PARIS launch go for 23 Oct

cavac
Go

Best wishes from Austria!

"T minus 31 seconds and we're go for auto-sequence start"

BTW, love the jingle in your videos...

Perseid meteors 'thrill star-gazers'

cavac
Thumb Up

Got two on photo...

...probably some more. I still have to go through about 2000 images. Does anyone know an open source software for meteor detection in photos?

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13817&id=100000892850346&l=6469c9b67e

BOFH: Lies and the lying liars who lie about them

cavac
Grenade

Well, if you didn't touch anything...

...why are you still "working" here? Let's call human resources, shall we?