* Posts by G Mac

127 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2011

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Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

G Mac

Re: Not really a surprise

I can see an argument made for peak vs. off-peak electricity use where the cycle is predictable and rapid, but the non-baseload capability adds far more variability (days/weeks?) that I thought would be a concern (apart from shutdown//startup):

* Manufacturing inventory would idle (=cost)

* Manufacturing output would be tricky to manage (=cost)

* Workers would have to be furloughed/laid-off

* Return on Investment is tricky - getting into insurance risk areas

* I have not heard of debt payments that have a random stop/start capability, which would increase interest rate charged

Obviously storage helps here but that is also additional cost.

Do you have an industry case study for such a variability problem that takes into account above?

Uncle Sam sounds like it may actually do something about rampant visa H-1B fraud

G Mac

Re: Easy fix.

In a certain way I agree, but I cannot help getting the feeling that THAT will be abused to eliminate other candidates - how they would find those other candidates I don't know but where there is a will...

Tesla jettisons 75% of Bitcoin holdings, boosting cash balance by $936m

G Mac
Stop

There, fixed it for you...

"presumably making its remaining holdings worth less."

->

"presumably making its remaining HODLings worth less."

You are welcome.

More than $100m in cryptocurrency stolen from blockchain biz

G Mac
Thumb Up

Slush fund for hostile nations Vs ...

"Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, expressed concern that the poor security of decentralized finance ventures amounts to a slush fund for hostile nations."

When it was really meant to be a slush fund for insiders.

Plot to defeat crypto meltdown: Solend votes to seize, liquidate whale account

G Mac
Gimp

No no you have it all wrong:

It wasn't the centralised authority that made the decision - it was a democracy (with whatever quorum) that decided to 'liquidate' somebody else's account (and who didn't vote).

Now, doesn't that make you feel a whole lot better?

Safari is crippling the mobile market, and we never even noticed

G Mac
Facepalm

Re: mobile screens too small?

The problem with this is that with iOS everything falls through to WebKit and Safari. In some cases you cannot even use Chrome/whatever because it doesn't have the right access to the device to be able to operate. Case in point is WebRTC (yup needs a network - check) - you can only use Safari on iOS because the other browsers don't get enough access to iOS.

Another case in point: PWAs work 'fairly' (not perfect but not terrible) well on Android and desktops, but they have limitations on iOS which makes them behave differently. Again, don't bother with other browsers on iOS because it is Safari/WebKit that is the gate (which makes the author's point re monetization).

We are a small company (2 devs) with a web based platform. The effort expended to make what is in essence a web based application work as a native app in iOS (and Android, tho PWAs work better there) is debilitating. We could have offline access for some stuff, but keeping information up to date for folks is what we do and being online is the way that works. Having a native app for the minuscule time the user is offline is pretty think gruel.

Human-made hopper out-leaps rival robots in artificial jumping contest

G Mac
Joke

Red Dwarf Hopper?

When I saw the headline my first thought was the sequence when Lister dropped his cigarette between legs while operating his Hopper. That comedic sequence had me weeping with laughter.

Triton malware still a threat to energy sector, FBI warns

G Mac
WTF?

Bored Ape tokens...

It is almost as if - hear me out here - that this sort of token theft FU was in fact on purpose, given that this kind of thing happens over and over again. But each time different in a certain subtle way that only, and I am wearing my foil hat here, an insider would know about.

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."

Blockchain powered stock market rebuild started in 2017 delayed again

G Mac
Devil

Re: Immutable record

Actually, if my memory serves, what happens when something fishy/buggy/something folks don't like occurs in that immutable record is that they fork the blockchain.

"Sorry mate, that stock is on the old blockchain and is now worthless."

Machine learning the hard way: IBM Watson's fatal misdiagnosis

G Mac

Re: started in Jeopardy

"So does it ultimately matter when the model is able to apply itself hundreds of thousands of times faster than any human?

The answer is still yes, but it's a very different kind of explainability that's needed, more concerned with things like informing subsequent manufacturing pathways and outcome prioritization than justifying a decision."

Yes, it does ultimately matter that the knowledge has a why. That is because knowledge should not siloed. That is, knowledge of A in field B leads to discovery of X in field Y.

Without understanding why, you have created yet another knowledge silo, but one that nobody (at least human) has visibility into.

G Mac

Re: started in Jeopardy

Actually, in my limited view it could be doing LESS than just pattern recognition.

At least with pattern matching, you can take the pattern and discern why something did/did not match.

With AI/ML, it may discover the 'pattern', but from what I understand of the current state it cannot explain why.

Don't get me wrong - I think it can be very useful as you mentioned. But I think that until it has explanatory power for why it is in a way less than pattern matching.

Microsoft rang in the new year with a cutesy tweet in C#. Just one problem: The code sucked

G Mac

Re: Not all Yanks are wrong.

The request in question came from Maine, US. My suspicion is that the user has set Etc/GMT+5 so that they WON'T EVER get DST switched on via an OS update or some other shenanigans. Windows allows Etc timezones (although interestingly I can set Etc/GMT+8 where I am but not Etc/GMT+5). I would expect other operating systems to also allow it.

Yes we also store everything in UTC. However, we do use the current timezone sent by the browser to correctly query the database for snapshots, in this case, by the user's current 'day'.

G Mac

Re: Not all Yanks are wrong.

No place is safe when dealing with date/time, having just run into the IANA timezone of Etc/GMT+5 actually meaning UTC-05 (sign reversed). The sign is reversed for all Etc/* timezones.

Age discrimination case against IBM leaks emails, docs via bad redaction

G Mac
Black Helicopters

I wonder how many email system old-hands were in the discard bucket?

If there were any, maybe they can offer their services (at a suitable compensation level).

NYPD puts down $94k robot canine contract after outcry

G Mac
WTF?

It is not a dog

“The contract has been terminated and the dog will be returned,” the NYPD told The Register, declining to elaborate.

Judge strikes down another attempt by President Trump to force a TikTok US sale

G Mac
Joke

Not completely incompetent

You are incorrect.

In Australia we have a measure of incompetency whereby someone is classified as 'incompetent' if they are unable to procure services in a brothel with a pocket full of $50 bills.

Trump has, in this regard, been successful. Thus, not completely incompetent.

Chuck Yeager, sound barrier pioneer pilot, dies at 97

G Mac
Pint

Re: ?

To be honest, do read his autobiography (I read the first). That was about as much fun as you can have reading a book. The guy was 'balls to the wall'.

What is missing from most discussion on his breaking the sound barrier in the X-1 was that he did it (if memory serves) with fractured ribs. From very past memory:

He had been riding a horse with his wife the NIGHT before the flight and had fallen off (it was dark...) and fractured some ribs. He didn't report this...

Problem was he could not close the door of the X-1 with his fractured ribs as it required quite a bit of torque. Solution: with the help of one of his flight buddies, he sawed the handle off a broom and used that as lever to close the door. Problem solved, sound barrier broken.

Google Safari Workaround case inspires campaign to sue Facebook in UK's High Court over Cambridge Analytica app

G Mac
WTF?

Wait, is this some kind of private equity investing in lawsuits?

"The Lloyd case is being bankrolled by Therium Capital Management Ltd, which stands to receive a share of the financial proceeds if Lloyd wins."

I didn't just go down the rabbit hole, nor did I wake up in the rabbit hole. In fact, I am both the rabbit and the rabbit hole at the same time.

Nurse, it's time for my medication!

If you suddenly can't print to your HP Printer from your Mac, you're not alone: Code security cert snafu blamed

G Mac
Joke

Well, some work done at least...

"Trying to continue just loops you back round to the error message, with no work done. "

Except for the fraction of a calorie you expended moving the mouse...

Google screwed rivals to protect monopoly, says Uncle Sam in antitrust lawsuit: We go inside the Sherman parked on a Silicon Valley lawn

G Mac

Re: Well, the US was Borked (literally) quite a while ago with anti-trust

"Hidden pricing is not the same as underpricing"

Underpricing is just one way a monopolist operates with monopoly power.

"And actual violation of consumer rights does not occur until the screws are turned."

And now all the competitors are bought out and/or failed due to previous under pricing. Hence why the price argument for consumer "welfare" is bogus when using "price" as a measure for consumer welfare.

"Google hides the price of their services, and as such is being deceptive in the marketplace"

Holy smoke pretty much every price you see is made up of "hidden" pricing...

G Mac
Devil

Well, the US was Borked (literally) quite a while ago with anti-trust

The tricky part is that the US has moved from the concept of "monopoly power" to "consumer welfare", really starting with Robert Bork (yes as in Borked):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork#Antitrust_scholar

His idea, picked by conservative philanthropy, was to teach this basic "economics" to judges so they could then apply this thinking once installed into courts.

The upshot is that a company may not be regarded as a monopolist even if it drives out competitors due to under pricing goods and services because the consumer "welfare" is not harmed but in fact enhanced - AKA they are paying cheaper prices (even if in the future they are going to be jacked because the monopolist can raise prices due to no competitors being left).

With that thinking, how could Google be a monopolist given that the consumers are paying NOTHING?! (Even though they are paying in more insidious and opaque ways).

President Trump to slap fresh restrictions on H-1B work visas, refuses to hear public comment on changes

G Mac

Re: Another abused system

Hmm. As an Australian, you definitely DO need a US visa to work in the US, and the E-3 is a visa for Australians. It lasts 2 years and can be renewed after that. Unlike the H-1B, there is no quota that I know of.

You might not need a visa if you are a US citizen, or married to a US citizen, or otherwise have a Greencard...?

Note: I am Australian on an E-3 work visa living in the US.

G Mac
WTF?

This has been abused in the past, but guess who it leaves out...

"In response, we must do everything we can within the bounds of the law to make sure the American worker is put first."

No word on H-2A visas, AKA agricultural workers (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/agriculture/h2a). Funny about that... A couple of recent news items:

https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/h2a-visa-program-for-farmworkers-surging-under-trump-and-labor-violations/

https://www.epi.org/blog/trump-administration-reportedly-looking-to-cut-the-already-low-wages-of-h-2a-migrant-farmworkers-while-giving-their-bosses-a-multibillion-dollar-bailout/

Cross-platform app toolkit Flutter lead Tim Sneath aims Dart at an ambient computing future

G Mac
Joke

Luxury!

What I wouldn't give for 0.5GB of memory!

Proposed US fix for Boeing 737 Max software woes does not address Ethiopian crash scenario, UK pilot union warns

G Mac

Re: Why

You missed the 'with same effort' part...

G Mac
FAIL

Re: Clean sheet design

Made and then sent to investors for short term gain. If memory serves:

$40B in share buybacks to juice the C-level shares so when it all goes pear-shaped they will already have cashed out nicely.

$20B in share dividends to help the above and pour some oil on the water of investor distress that *maybe* management is taking a short term view for management gain and not investing in the future of the company for the long term.

https://www.ft.com/content/f3e640ee-b537-11e9-8cb2-799a3a8cf37b

G Mac

Re: Why

"because the 737 is one of the few planes left, that still have a backup that can be manually activated by people power"

Right, because that is how old it is.

The questions would then be this:

In the *original* 737, did *both* pilots have to move the trim wheels together and with the same effort as proposed now?

Have I Been Pwned breach report email pwned entire firm's helldesk ticket system

G Mac
Pint

Wow that is so meta

We need a new site called Have I Been Pwned Pwned.

Document? Library? A new kind of component? Microsoft had a hard time explaining what its Fluid Framework is

G Mac
Thumb Up

Re: OLE, oh-lay oh-lay oh-lay (and not forgetting OpenDoc)

Yes! Although my first thought was that this is "Internet based DDE". DDE still gives me nightmares.

Zoom goes boom, Teams tears at seams: Technology stumbles at the first hurdle for this homeworking malarkey

G Mac
Stop

And please mute yourself...

before going to the bathroom.

Deadly 737 Max jets no longer a Boeing concern – for now: Production suspended after biz runs out of parking space

G Mac
Coat

Minor edit...

"The jets have been gathering dust since March 13, 2019, when America's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an emergency order grounding all 737 Max models in response to every other aviation authority in the world having grounded the models after two crashes with the new aircraft that killed a total of 346 people."

There, fixed it.

White Screen of Death: Admins up in arms after experimental Google emission borks Chrome

G Mac
FAIL

Exactly. The Command Line switch should be --experiments to switch it on vs. default off.

How four rotten packets broke CenturyLink's network for 37 hours, knackering 911 calls, VoIP, broadband

G Mac
Angel

...they were generated by a switching module in a node ... for reasons still yet unknown...

A broadcast packet greater than 64 bytes with a valid header and checksum and no TTL magically appears ex nihilo from the quantum soup in the transmit buffer of a switching module?

Kind of puts the Infinite Improbability Drive to shame.

Or it could be a bug... nah.

An upset tummy and a sphincter-loosening blackout: Lunar spaceflight is all glamour

G Mac
Facepalm

As time goes on the space program gets more amazing to me

From a time When America Got Shit Done(TM). Not to dismiss the Ruskies, but in this case...

Now, the aspiration of the US is build a &@%!#$ Wall.

Seeing as Bitcoin is going so, so well, Ohio becomes first US state to take biz taxes in BTC

G Mac
Pirate

Made for money laundering?

One would hope they have taken into account the money laundering angles.

* Overpay tax in bitcoins, get USD back as a refund

* Setup a 'Pay OH Tax in Bitcoin' business, where the bitcoin payment firm pays an OH business's taxes in bitcoin (from various dodgy sources) and gets paid in USD by the firm whose tax is being paid, maybe at a discount since you are washing dirty bitcoin.

This would be a boon for those businesses in the US getting side-lined by banks because of incoherent federal/state laws - for example those states with legal marijuana where the banks won't take the business proceeds due to the fear the Feds will crack down and nix their banking license. Now they can get paid in bitcoin and wash it through OH, or so at least it would seem at first blush.

Sneaky phone apps just about obey the law, still have no trouble guzzling your data, says Which?

G Mac

Re: Nothing new, nothing will ever change

You would think the AI/ML types out there would do something amazingly useful by being able to identity the WTFs and Gotchas in T&Cs.

You know, something folks could use everyday.

Prepare to have your minds blown, storage industry. 5 words: Client access Optane DIMM caching

G Mac
WTF?

IO Elimination???

'The use of host persistent memory is, for Peglar, a milestone on a longer journey to IO elimination: "Having said that, I look forward to further development of systems which actually help to, or completely eliminate IO, rather than just make it faster, i.e. with reduced latency, greater throughput, etc. by the use of persistent memory in true memory semantics, pure CPU load/store. This is the ultimate benefit of persistent memory."'

So the end of the Von Neumann architecture as we know it or marketing bafflegab bullshit?

Hackers manage – just – to turn Amazon Echoes into snooping devices

G Mac
Stop

Hmm 'permanently'...

"What isn't clear is whether Amazon is capable of overriding its system to listen in permanently, rather than require it to wait for the "wake word" before listening, and so act as a live bug (the device holds a two-second audio buffer)."

I think it is a bit slippery to say that the device is NOT listening permanently. Obviously it has to 'listen' to recognise the 'wake word'; the hope here being that that two second audio buffer is not released upstream regardless of the trigger word presence, which I believe was the point here.

Internet overseer ICANN loses a THIRD time in Whois GDPR legal war

G Mac
Joke

Is this related to the Bear Hunter joke...?

''You're not in this for the hunting are you?''

Indictment bombshell: 'Kremlin intel agents' hacked, leaked Hillary's emails same day Trump asked Russia for help

G Mac
Mushroom

Re: anonymous coward

And what if your hand was caught in the cookie jar over 80 times? If once was not "doing it right", what is 80?

And by inference, it seems that if you DON'T get caught it's all good sport, right?

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-interfered-in-elections-of-at-least-85-countries-worldwide-since-1945/5601481

"It's about securing the West's systems"

Ah so for Johnny Foreigner well he will just have to look at the ceiling and think of...

This is not to say doing this kind of thing IS ok by anybody. But it does mean that the immediate pearl clutching and heading to the fainting couch needs to take rest.

More jaw-jaw less war-war.

G Mac
Mushroom

Re: anonymous coward

Absolutely there has to be whataboutism.

That is because there are a bunch of elected folks, along with neocon pundits, that say this is "an act of war". Try searching for "russian hacking act of war".

For example, try this from this Intercept article https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/a-consensus-emerges-russia-committed-an-act-of-war-on-par-with-pearl-harbor-and-911-should-the-u-s-response-be-similar/:

'The claim that Russian meddling in the election is “an act of war” comparable to these events isn’t brand new. Senators from both parties, such as Republican John McCain and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, have long described Russian meddling in 2016 as an “act of war.” Hillary Clinton, while promoting her book last October, described Russia’s alleged hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email inbox as a “cyber 9/11.” And last February, the always war-hungry Tom Friedman of the New York Times said on “Morning Joe” that Russian hacking “was a 9/11-scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy. That was a Pearl Harbor-scale event.”'

Yikes. Keeping in mind that the US has been meddling in other countries elections quite a bit since WW2 gives some perspective that hopefully (but of course won't) will give these folks pause when calling out the Marines, literally.

Of course the US is the big dog so it can expect to give all a good beat down. Except in asymmetric warfare, AKA Afghanistan and Iraq.

So yes, this is whataboutism, but only to allow us to say STFU to the war-happy nutjobs who want to pick fight with the 2nd biggest nuclear power on the possibly short-time-to-live planet.

And ESPECIALLY given that nobody seems to deny that the leaked documents are genuine.

Icon for obvious reasons.

Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian

G Mac

Re: Turkey was this way.... not sure it it still is

I lived in NYC 20 years (moved to CA two years ago) and I can tell you the cabs know their **** will be pushed in if they hit somebody - its not those guys I had an issue with.

It was the wankers in nice cars that would try to bust through the crosswalk when the pedestrian sign says WALK. Those bastards would try to barge past, though the true NYCers dared the mongrels to try it, whereby the car owner's **** would also be pushed in.

Amusingly the last time I saw a cab in an accident in NYC (non-injury is why it is amusing) was when a courier bicyclist blew through a red light and plowed into the side of a yellow cab, getting a bent front wheel for his effort.

Airbus ditches Microsoft, flies off to Google

G Mac

Re: "and switching to plain text"

At least for .docx (and .xlsx etc) it is binary only insofar that it is compressed ZIP format.

If you uncompress a .docx (say by renaming it .zip and unzip), there will be a directory structure of XML, which if you desire (but don't - you will lose the will to live) you can examine in any text editor.

There's more to blockchain than dodgy cryptocurrencies

G Mac
WTF?

Is that a bit of a minimization of the CAP Theorem?

"...he explained, noting that techniques for dealing with issues like network latency – which can mess up a distributed database – still have to be refined."

Is that a bit of hand wave re the CAP Theorem? Distributed databases aren't much of problem EXCEPT for the fact of a dodgy network.

Android P will hear no evil, see no evil, support evil notches

G Mac

Profiterole

Mmmmm...

Disengage, disengage! Cali DMV reports show how often human drivers override robot cars

G Mac
Childcatcher

Paradoxically, yes

Check this article about Air France flight 447 that crashed into the Atlantic:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/06/25/air_france_flight_447_and_the_safety_paradox_of_airline_automation_on_99.html

The gist is that because so much regular airtime is on auto pilot, when the system disengages the pilots are less able to assess and take over the plane because they are out of the loop and out of practice.

So with a car that disengages every mile or two the driver will at least have retained most driving skills, and in fact will be pretty much waiting for the disengagement.

On the other hand, if it disengages every 5,500 miles, the chances that the driver will be able react (and is even able to! nap time right?) would be pretty slim.

After reading the Slate article, I came to the conclusion that for self driving cars it is a case of all or very little: either 0 disengagements, or so many that the driver is still pretty much engaged. Of course I could be pessimist about this.

Uber saddles up for a new cycle of controversy

G Mac
Trollface

Er, another cash burn effort?

"Uber hasn't mentioned any upfront charge and, by bringing its huge user base to JUMP, might just be able to muscle other bike-share companies aside."

Sounds like they have found another way to burn cash without any idea on how to make a profit. With a huge user base.

If Australian animals don't poison you or eat you, they'll BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE

G Mac
Joke

New hit song for Oz?

I hope your chooks turn into firebirds and burn your dunny down

Hitchcock cameo steals opening of Oracle v Google Java spat

G Mac

Re: Nostalgia

They're baaack:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/02/ibm_vs_sco_revives/

Voyager 1 fires thrusters last used in 1980 – and they worked!

G Mac
Alien

"...until something nasty stops them."

Well, it could be "Something wonderful".

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