Posts by fishman

Ariane 5 to take final flight, leaving Europe without its own heavy-lift rocket

Driving costs down.

The way to drive costs down is through reusability and a high launch cadence.

The high launch cadence means that the costs of the rocket development and the costs of the launch, landing, and test facilities can be spread over more launches. The problem for an "Ariane 7" is that they will be competing not only with the Falcon 9 but also New Glenn, Neutron, Terran R, reusable rockets from China and India, and ..... Starship. Now I'm not saying that there isn't a market for an Ariane 7, but unless someone wants to use it to deploy a massive satellite array like Starlink it will have trouble getting a high launch cadence.

Wind tunnels for fluid dynamics boffins among UKRI's £72M funding

Re: Wind Tunnels. 11 of them?

10 years ago I used a large eddy simulation code to analyze a simple cylinder in a flow - basically a 3D version of a 2D problem. It took 4 days using 128 cores to run it.

NASA to tear the wings off plane in the name of sustainability

Limits to size

Airports are designed for a maximum wing span for a plane. The MD90 is a small plane, but scaling this up to a much bigger plane might not be possible or at least limit the number of airports it could fly to/from.

Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon

Trampoline

Rogozin probably was using his trampoline and ended up landing on his head too many times.

Cisco Moscow trashed offices as it quit Putin's putrid pariah state

Re: "Where were you when the USA murdered 1 million Iraqis?"

The Reg was around in the early 90's before the web - it was an emailed newsletter sent every two weeks.

India flies – and lands – reusable autonomous spaceplane

Launch costs

"ISRO hopes the vehicle one day makes it possible to launch payloads to orbit for just $4,000/kg – well below the cost of competing launch services."

I'd assume that their launch cost estimates are for a rocket with a reusable first stage. By the time they have the full stack flying SpaceX will have Starship/Superheavy, RocketLab will have Neutron, etc - all fully reusable. But currently the Falcon 9 costs $67M and can take as much as 17,400kg to LEO in reusable mode which works out to $3850/kg.

China crisis is a TikToking time bomb

It's not the data.

The real problem is the algorithms that suggest videos to watch. Subtle promotion of pro-chinese, anti outgroup videos.

How to get the latest Linux kernel on your Ubuntu box

Re: Latest Kernal

If I was running Windows and the current version of Windows didn't properly support my hardware my only choice would have been to buy new hardware. At least with Linux I have other options.

Latest Kernal

I'm running Linux kernel 6.1.13 on Linux Mint 20. I grab the sources from the Linux kernel archive and compile it. I started doing it years ago when my wifi chipset was dropping the connection - using the latest and greatest kernel fixed it. Then later I moved to a new CPU with GPUs that weren't supported by the stock kernel.

I've got it set up such that it takes just a few minutes to set it up to compile, and then just a single command to install it once the compile has finished.

I usually take the current stable kernel but wait until it has received a number of revisions. I have never had any problems even though I've done this dozens of times.

Second-hand and refurbished phone market takes flight amid inflation hike

Wait on buying new

If you wait a few months after a phone's introduction you can often find pretty good discounts. Buying used means you don't know if the previous owner abused the battery.

Soyuz leak puts a stop to planned ISS spacewalk and work on Nauka module

Escape pod

Hopefully they can get it fixed - after all it's how the Russians will get back to earth.

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

Re: You also get the problem ....

If you put it in GEO you have the problem of those pesky LEO satellites zipping through the beams - will they get fried?

RIP: Kathleen Booth, the inventor of assembly language

Re: Good long life and a lasting legacy

Took IBM 360 assembly in college - a short one credit course where we used punch cards - it was the 1970's. It really taught me how computers work. Later (almost two decades) I used my understanding to rewrite some CFD codes more than doubling their speed. And there were plenty of other "hacks" I was able to do especially back when computers were 16 bit and memory was precious.

One of the most "cost effective" courses I ever took.

Calamity capsule: Boeing's Starliner losses approaching $1B

And limited use of Starliner

Another problem for Boeing is that they use the Atlas V booster to launch Starliner - which is going out of service. They will have to get it requalified on a new booster (Vulcan, New Glenn, ....) if they want to use it on future missions beyond the current number contracted with NASA.

The new GPU world order is beginning to take shape

Recession?

If there is a worldwide recession Nvidia may end up sitting on a whole lot of product. And if they slash prices to move it, they will piss many off those who paid the original price.

Scientists find gasses from Earth in rocks from early Moon

Re: Sounds sketchy

..... And then the journalists either get it wrong, or try to sensationalize it.

Russia: Hey, don't act surprised if we're still on the ISS in 2030

They're broke

With what money are the Russians going to build a space station? Their economy is in shambles and the sanctions will take years to end even if Putin is deposed. There is a huge brain drain away from the space program to other fields even before the war, and now there is a brain drain away from Russia due to the war. Their military is a mess - depleted material and manpower - which will have a higher priority than a space program. And their space program has lost its profit centers - commercial space launches, selling Soyuz rockets to ESA, and flying other countries astronauts to the ISS.

Demand for smartphones is drying up

Good enough

It doesn't take that new of a smartphone if all you do is surf the web, text, make phone calls, and take some pictures. After almost 5 years the battery is still in good shape - I try to keep from going below 30% very often, and never below 20%.

Dmitry Rogozin sacked as boss of Russian space agency Roscosmos

That agreement doesn't change the number of flights or seats SpaceX will be flying - it's a 1:1 swap of seats.

Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid

Electric car rebalancing

Electric cars will become the main type of vehicle in the future. To help the grid just control the charging of the cars - when the spikes occur reduce the charge rate on the cars.

Five accused of trying to silence China critics in US

Re: Double standards

"A first amendment argument could be made by those whose reviews were deleted because critical of the xi book, less so by Amazon."

First amendment only applies to the US governments (federal, state, local) and not to companies.

How a botched kernel patch broke Ubuntu – and why it may happen again

Stock kernels

I'm running a Ubuntu variant, Mint. It's been years since I've used the kernel that comes with the distro (except during initial installation), I just download the latest release from kernel.org, compile and go. I started doing that when I had some problems with the distro kernel.

Graphical desktop system X Window just turned 38

Re: What I like about X

Bring back NeWS!

EV battery can reach full charge in 'less than 10 minutes'

Re: Full charge in 10 minutes?

If it is easy to swap, it is easy to steal.

NASA awaits approval of $24bn 2022 budget

The irony...

It's always amazing to see politicians who expouse cutting spending turn around and vote for endless pork like the SLS........

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

Re: (eventual) refund?

On the other had this will make it more difficult for Roscosmos to get future customers.

OK, boomer? Gen-X-ers, elder millennials most likely to name their cars, says DVLA

Named just a few..

Had a Mercury Sable station wagon (estate). My sister told me that teenagers like her son wouldn't get caught dead driving one (irony is that they had a minivan). So I named it the "chick magnet".

Bought a red Miata. Wife named it the "Little Red Car".

Bought a red Golf Alltrack. So I named it "Big Red".

Of course we've tried turning it off and on again: Yeah, Hubble telescope still not working

Re: Hope

As I understand it the cost of sending the shuttle up to repair Hubble was similar to building a new Hubble and launching it into space. Sort of makes sense when a shuttle launch cost $1B or so.

When you finish celebrating Linux turning 30, try new Linux 5.14, says Linus Torvalds

Re: Who cares..

You sound like someone who didn't have the opportunity to work with the various flavors of Unix 30 or so years ago if you are trying to equate the differences between the flavors of Unix back then to the differences between the Linux distros. I had the fun of dealing with 6 different Unix flavors and I've used 9 different Linux distros. No comparison.

More Boots on Moon delays: NASA stops work on SpaceX human landing system as Blue Origin lawsuit rolls on

BO losing top management

Quite a few of BO's top managers are leaving - even on projects not directly related to the HLS. Losing key people has to hurt.

And Tory Bruno is wondering "Jeff - where are my engines?"

SpaceX Starship struts its stack to show it has the right stuff

NASA wants to have two providers for sending people into space. Which makes sense if you consider the history of the space shuttle - any problem and it gets grounded for months or years.....

Good news: Jeff Bezos went to space. Bad news: He's back

Re: Ban it!

New Shepard burns hydrogen and oxygen - the byproduct is water.

Focus on the camera, mobile devs: 48MP shooters about to become the sweet spot

I'd prefer a 10MP normal lens and a 10MP 3x telephoto. A 48MP is too much considering the quality of the lens they use.

Toyota reveals its work on an honest-to-goodness cloak of invisibility

Easy peasy

Add cameras on the exterior to record the images that are blocked by the pillar.

Use sensors to determine the driver's eye position.

Cover the pillar with screens.

Compute the amount and position of the video to show and display it on the pillar screens.

The Epic vs Apple trial is wrapping up, but the battle has just begun

No sympathy.

So if Epic wins, will users see a 30% discount? At best there may be a small discount at first, and then the prices will go up to the "what the market will bear" level which is probably what it is at now. 30% is probably too high but it's not like consumers will see much savings if any if it is reduced or eliminated.

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

All that I care about is getting security updates to my Android smartphone - I don't care about running the latest version of Android.

When software depends on a project thanklessly maintained by a random guy in Nebraska, is open source sustainable?

Happens with closed source.

Years ago we had a project that used Informix. They got bought out by IBM who dropped some of their products - including one that we required for our project. To "fix" our problem would have required a good chunk of funding and manpower - something that wasn't available. So the project got shelved and died.

Who'd have thought the US senator who fist pumped Jan 6 insurrectionists would propose totally unworkable anti-Big Tech law?

Sprint - T Mobile merger

It should be noted that during the worst recent large merger - Sprint / T Mobile - Hawley was silent.

Oracle vs Google: No, the Supreme Court did not say APIs aren't copyright – and that's a good thing

Oracle. How to make Google to be the good guy.

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

Re: My favorite screw-up

And SCO had stripped out the atributions to that BSD code - in violation of the terms of use.

Linus Torvalds worries kernel 5.12 might be ‘one of those releases’ that lands a tad late

The kernels that came with my distro didn't handle some of my hardware well. Newer kernels do. And once you start on the "rolling your own" kernel track, the only way to get the new security patches are to download a new kernel.

I use non-LTS kernels all the time. And when I use LTS kernels it isn't the reason why - I just pick the newest production kernel every couple of months, compile and go. Never had a problem. But I wait until the kernel has had at least 5 or 6 updates. Right now I'm running 5.10-11, but before that I was running 5.9.8.

Recovery time objective missed by four weeks, but Parler is back online

It's not that they deserve it - it just makes it easier for the FBI to track them.

'It's dead, Jim': Torvalds marks Intel Itanium processors as orphaned in Linux kernel

Itanic

The article author must be relatively new to the Register - it was called "Itanic" by the Reg authors back in the day.

And what with the removal of "Biting The Hand That Feeds IT" slogan?

This place is heading to Hades.

And stay off my lawn!

We regret to inform you the professor teaching your online course is already dead

Re: And get a better education...

My father had a professor who later got the Nobel prize in Chemistry. He said he wasn't a good teacher.....

Samsung tones down sticky stuff in the Galaxy S21 series, simplifying repairs massively

Re: A revolutionary new idea

I have a Samsung Galaxy Active Tab 2 that is waterproof (up to 5 feet up to 30 minutes) and it has an easily replaceable battery (that has to be installed when you open the package). However a replaceable battery would make a phone slightly thicker - something that isn't an issue for a ruggedized tablet.

Salesforce relieves Republican National Committee of its tools citing 'risk of politically incited violence' across the US

Re: Everyone of these moves

In the last election, Hillary Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump. Trump didn't try for accommodation.

Parler games: Social network for internet rejects sues Amazon Web Services for pulling plug on hosting

Re: Thank god

https://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

"However, the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion"[10][11][12] but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts.[13][14][15] It also identifies links between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government,[16] about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations.[4] Mueller later stated that his investigation's conclusion on Russian interference "deserves the attention of every American".

Titanium carbide nanotech approach hints at hydrogen storage breakthrough

Re: I hope this isn't like fusion

Hydrogen as a fuel for recreational boats has been discussed in a number of threads on a number of boat related forums. The tankage has to be 5 to 10 times the volume as diesel fuel to get the same range and the tankage is heavy since hydrogen is kept at high pressure (5000 psi or more). There are 2 publicly accessible hydrogen fueling stations in the US outside of California as of August 2020 so it will be a long time before there will be sufficient fueling stations that are boat accessible. And you can't do with hydrogen what I do with diesel - I have a 5 gallon fuel can that I put in the trunk of my Miata, hit the gas station on the way to the boat and fill it with diesel, get to the boat and dump it into the boat's tank, and I've added 60+ miles of range.

US Government Accountability Office dumps sack of coal on NASA's desk over Moon mission naughtiness

Re: Infinite loop

Yes, we spent alot on Apollo. But we went from a suborbital 15 minute manned flight to walking on the moon 8 years later. Orion isn't doing anything new, and is just the capsule.

NASA contracted with SpaceX to design, test, and send crew to the ISS in the Crew Dragon capsule. The testing included an abort test, an unmanned test mission to the ISS, a test manned mission to the ISS, and up to 6 crewed missions to the ISS. The contract is for a maximum of $2.6B. While the Crew Dragon is smaller than Orion and isn't currently moon capable, it costs pennies relative to Orion.

And then there is SLS........