Posts by druck

IBM pulls up the ladder behind some supercomputer customers

Re: Lousiville Ladders

(250+ US pounds)

US and Imperial pounds weight the same, they just look a lot bigger ;)

UK tells UN that nation-states should retaliate against cyber badness with no warning

Re: Unintended Consequences (Facts not Fakes)

Belgium attacks Cheltenham? Well I suppose they could up the mortality rate from obesity, by sending us lots of their delicious chocolate.

Pre-orders open for the Mini PET 40/80, the closest thing to Commodore's classic around

I tripple E

The original Commodore Pet might have seemed expensive at the time, but it was bar far the cheapest way of controlling industrial equipment which had an IEEE interface.

FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld

Re: Just think and consider for a moment ...

Zero, it's not something you could buy, as the article says; it was supplied by criminals exclusively to other criminals.

Chinese app binned by Beijing after asking what day it is on anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre

Re: They're weirdly touchy

This presents certain rather obvious problems with food, housing etc so they then panicked and went from one extreme to the other with population control and have managed to keep the population down to 1.3 billion at the expense of China sitting on the worlds biggest demographic time bomb as the older people die off, which they can currently hear ticking.

No, the time bomb is due to older people not dying off. That single child has to look after 2 parents, and 4 grand parents, i.e. a working population supporting a much larger retired population, with all the healthcare costs that brings.

Ethernet standards wonks eye up speeds beyond 400Gb/s

Re: In the meantime 10Gb/s has been available for years now ...

Even a Raspberry Pi 4B can saturate 1Gb/s Ethernet.

How many remote controls do you really need? Answer: about a bowl-ful

Re: Mother knows best

Our old 2009 Samsung TV came with a very large standard remote with lots of buttons, and a pebble remote which was just on/off volume up/down channel up/down.

Arm has another 'most powerful CPU to date' – this time, the 64-bit-only Cortex-X2 for laptops and smartphones

ARM A710 or ARM710

It's a bit confusing they've gone full circle on the naming. ARM710

Tesla owners win legal fight after software update crippled older Model S batteries

Re: ICE - still the way to go

Main difference is that none but me is going to f**k with it to reduce performance. Not VW, not Tesla (the company doesn't even exist any more).

You've not heard about the change to E10 petrol then? By increasing the proportion of Ethanol, it will reduce the power output and mpg, worse still on a car of that age it may destroy some parts of the fuel system and carburettors.

Guido van Rossum aiming to make CPython 2x faster in 3.11

Re: The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

This is very welcome and will more than reverse the small loss of performance when migrating from Python 2.

43 years and 14 billion miles later, Voyager 1 still crunching data to reveal secrets of the interstellar medium

Re: Progress...

That's about twice the average DAB channel bit rate, or so it sounds.

As another vendor promises 3 years of Android updates, we ask: How long should mobile devices receive support?

There's nothing wrong with my 5 year old GalaxyS7, battery is still good for a day or more, it runs everything I want at a decent speed, photos and video are decent. Now I've cleared the pocket fluff which was preventing the charging cable connecting securely, it's got years more life in it. The last firmware update was September 2020, but I don't think its getting any more, as they've announced the S8 isn't.

Quantum computing: Confusion can mask a good story, but don't take anyone's word for it

Re: Quantum Computing

The IET did a lecture on QC last week, lots of hand waving about how it will (in theory) revolutionise certain areas of computing, but light on any details. In the QA afterwards he admitted the only practical use you are likely to see from it is a better random number generator.

Chinese rocket plunges into Indian Ocean, still lands sharp rebuke from NASA

Re: Perhaps,

I'm reminded of when a Long March 2 went a bit sideways at Xichang

https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/disaster-at-xichang-2873673/

China sprayed space with 3,000 pieces of junk. US military officials want rules to stop that sort of thing

A quick chorus of Imagine, and then back to the real world.

The Wight stuff: Marconi and the island, when working remotely on wireless comms meant something very different

Re: Inspiring review

Well I was circling around to get a picture of my boys (then 3 and 5) enjoying the Dino Jeep Safari, when I saw the monument and was pleasantly surprised to read about the history of the site. The chair lift down to the beach was great too, the boys were terrified and thrilled at the same time.

Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably

Re: Black magic

Yes you are right, I think it was a Pyramid there anyway, the Prime was at a different site.

Re: Black magic

At our university it was VT220s to an old Prime mainframe. We explored just about every control sequence for mischievous purposes, including ending the victims session by ending with a stty 0 > /dev/ttyXX

UK watchdog would cease to enforce data protection law if Supreme Court sided with Google, its lawyer tells judges

Re: Class action

Well that's how it played out for Microsoft, every single time.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

Re: Bloody Developers and memory

Then again, no!

Appeals court nixes online blueprint sharing ban on 3D-printed 'ghost guns'

Re: Why bother with 3D printing

I think the point of a 3D printed gun would be to produce a very realistic replica, however it would get you shot just as well as if you we brandishing the real thing.

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

Re: Microsoft’s new default font options, rated

At least Tenorite has proper 'a's and 'g's, as for the others, who really cares.

Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this

On top of the rocket

The Lego Saturn V comes with three micro-figure astronauts, Neil and Buzz are on the moon next to the LEM, but I keep Mike on top of the escape tower never to forget him.

UK government gives Automated Lane Keeping Systems the green light for use on motorways

Idiocy

This will do more to set back road safety than smart motorways.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Re: It'll be alright...

No, traffic lights on roundabouts indicate that the roundabout should never have been put there, but those responsible can't lose face by ripping it out and making it a normal traffic light controlled junction again, so they make it both which is far worse than either.

Ofcom 5G auction ends with UK carriers spending £23m for choice spectrum positionings

Re: Remember the 3G spectrum auction of 2020?

But this isn't about buying any new spectrum, its about putting the purchased blocks in a particular order, therefore the far smaller cost.

UK Court of Appeal rules Tiny Computers' legal remains can sue Micron and Infineon over 2002 DRAM price-fixing cartel

Re: Mother fuckers....

Is it ethical for the ethics training to include how not to get caught in the future?

SpaceX flings another bunch of humans into orbit in reused capsule atop reused booster

Re: One careful owner...

If SpaceX were used car salesmen, they would have at least valeted the thing before selling it on. It was still covered in soot from the last flight, and just like with some old van rear window, the astronauts had scrawled their initials in the muck.

Exam-monitoring biz Proctorio tried to silence a critic using copyright law. Now EFF sues to put an end to this tactic

Proctoring proctologist

It would seem installing proctoring software on the computer is about as pleasant as a visit to he proctologist.

Greener Windows? Microsoft previews EcoQoS and Task Manager Eco Mode for would-be power-sipping devs

Save energy?

So this saves energy by making an application slower? Well apart from wasting my time (when I could be out planting trees or something) and burning more electricity to power my monitors, wont this give Windows even more chances to decide to do a burst of unexpected activity, suddenly spinning up the fans to full speed when you aren't doing anything? Strange how the same hardware doesn't do that when running Linux, so if you want an eco mode close your Windows.

Microsoft loves Linux – as in, it loves Linux users running Linux desktop apps on Windows PCs

Without ... managing virtual machines

In the dark ages when I was forced to have Windows as my base OS for work, running Linux is a VM was the only way to get things done. My Linux VM could have an uptime of months, as I could just suspend and resume it every time Windows needed a reboot for an update.

Ah, you know what? Keep your crappy space station, we're gonna try to make our own, Russia tells world

Re: It does have a finite life

The ISS has a finite life though exactly how old it could get before it became hazardous is anyone's guess.

Unfortunately the Russian contribution was original two modules the ISS is built around, and are MIR era technology, and that station didn't age too well.

Lego's Space Shuttle Discovery: No trouble with Hubble, but the stickers will drive a grown man to insanity

My 5 1/2 year old didn't wait for me to help with the stickers and did an amazing job on a pair of Lego city racing cars, his 7 1/2 year brother still got me to help with the ones on his Lego Ninjago dragon.

BTW: I know what I'm asking Santa for this Christmas now.

Listen, son... Monster trucks just aren't cool anymore. Real winners drive Tesla Roadsters

Re: Honestly

You've obviously never been close to either a coal or nuclear power station, as you'd know the difference between one which continually belches out tons of slightly radioactive waste in to the environment, and one which is spotlessly clean, meticulously monitored, and only produces a small amount of radioactive waste which is very carefully disposed of.

'There was no one driving that vehicle': Texas cops suspect Autopilot involved after two men killed in Tesla crash

You mean the US habit of changing the oil every 3000 miles like it was still the 1930s?

Elon Musk's SpaceX bags $3bn NASA contract to, fingers crossed, land first woman on the Moon

Re: HUGE slam for SLS

If they are going to use Starship to land on the moon, I really see no point in developing SLS just to get the astronauts along side for a transfer.

Google proposes Logica data language for building more manageable SQL code

Backticks

It uses backticks, smaller and more difficult to see than a single quote and needs two key presses on most Linux systems - just say no

Jackie 'You have no authority here' Weaver calls on the UK to extend Coronavirus Act provisions for online meetings

Re: Why, tho?

The problem we had wasn't with councillors moving away, but with those living locally failing to turn up. Attendance by some was abysmal, but at least with online meetings people would be able to see they weren't there week in week out.

There was one independent (Liberal Democrat until the coalition) who had a very well organising leafleting campaign opposing just about everything we did, which would get him elected but then didn't turn up for the crucial votes. When talking to people on the doorstep they always said "he does so much for the community", and wouldn't accept that you had to be at meetings to achieve anything.

Intel offers to produce car chips for automakers stalled by ongoing semiconductor supply drought

Spare capacity

Does this indicate Intel fabs have spare capacity? Maybe its due to Apple moving to their own silicon, data centres deploying their own ARM based SOCs and even AMD taking a tiny bit more x86 market share.

Jensen Huang's kitchen gets another viewing as Nvidia teases Arm-powered supercomputing chip Grace

Buy?

All very exciting stuff, but none of which they need to buy ARM to do. I'd feel far more comfortable if ARM was independent of any of their custiomers.

United States' plan to beat China includes dominating tech standards groups – especially for 5G

They did it before, and they'll do it again

The US, or rather Microsoft, did it before in 2008 when they packed out ISO and IEC committees to get "works like word 95" Open Office XML declared as a standard, to compete with that gawdamn commie ODF from Open/Libre office.

Software in space race heats up: Microsoft eyes satellite image processing with Thales Alenia Space's digital image analyst

Bit Barns in Spaaaaace!

I was hoping the story was about launching a data centre into orbit, to process all the satellite images before sending them back to earth.

Intel accused of wiretapping because it uses analytics to track keystrokes, mouse movements on its website

Re: How many times?

Some sites are almost impossible to navigate, due to confusing loops of links, hamburger menus, or not even being obvious some elements are links. If there was analytics which detected the users mouse rage, and flagged it up to the company, I might be tempted to enable their script.

Blockchain may be the machinery of mischief, but it can't help telling the truth

Re: Why blockchain?

Blockchain has the advantage that anyone paying millions for a NFT is indelibly and undeniably marked as plonker with more money than sense.

Samsung aims first 512GB DDR5 DRAM chip built on High-K/Metal Gate tech at HPC, AI markets

Fully Stacked

Hopefully this will greatly increase the amount of RAM which can be stacked on in a SOC (like on the M1), as well as increasing performance.

Backblaze on the back foot after 'inadvertently' beaming customer data to Facebook

Blocked

At least you know now why Google tag manager and Facebook scripts should always be blocked.

Inside the 1TB ImageNet data set used to train the world's AI: Naked kids, drunken frat parties, porno stars, and more

Re: Pictures of bikini clad women

I was trying to generate pictures of bicycles and got bikini girls instead, is not an excuse my wife would believe.

Fire takes out Japanese chip plant, owner Renesas warns of more silicon shortages

Re: Their chips are down

If there is a shortage of chips, maybe this is an opportunity to go back to producing cars which are just cars. Ads for small cars now don't feature driving at all, it's all about how you can hook up your phone to the entertainment system to continue consuming social media.

Safety would be greatly improved by dropping distracting touchscreens and going back to tactile buttons and dials, removing "driving assistance functions" which encourage you to lose attention behind the wheel such maintaining lanes, and autopilots which aren't.

Get rid of all that superfluous stuff, and there would be enough chips for the essential function of controlling the engine.

Boldly going where Elon Musk will probably go before: NASA successfully tests SLS Moon rocket core stage

Re: Musk

Ironically it's the French that have kept a Concord in an almost flight ready state in an air conditioned museum, while all ours have either been chopped up for transport to an old shed, given to the US to put on a barge, or left outside to corrode.

DARPA picks Intel to automate conversion of FPGAs into ASICs for military applications

Buying spree

Isn't this because Intel bought up a lot of the PGA and ASIC specialists such as Altera, Omnitek and eASIC?