Posts by Jim Mitchell

Foxconn builds stuff for everyone. Now it finds vaccines for Taiwan, and TSMC's chipped in, too

Re: anti-vaxers

That gives me an idea. Can they develop a feline version? I would like my cat to be a bio-powered wifi repeater when he insists on sitting on my lap whilst in part of the house without good reception.

Your spacesuit ran into a problem and needs to restart

Re: There Are Three Things

" a vinyl bubble "

I seem to recall that NASA had plans for emergency rescue balls to be used on the space shuttle. They were really just plastic spheres with a handle. You relied on somebody with an actual space suit to move you out of harms way.

'Welcome to Perth' mirth being milked for all it's worth

Re: Question

I'm more confused by the sudden realization that this means there must be European and Africa koalas.

Google's diversity strat lead who said Jews have 'insatiable appetite for war' is no longer diversity strat lead

"Remember that of-colo(u)r joke you used to tell in the frat/sorority house? "

As far as I can tell, these statements were not meant as jokes, so that is a bad comparison.

Space junk damages International Space Station's robot arm

Re: Why the drama?

So a second puncture is due in two weeks from this one?

Tesla agrees to follow Beijing's rules and build a data centre in China

Hmm, since China thinks Taiwan is part of China, does that mean Tesla has to store Taiwan drivers' data in mainland China as well?

I guess I could just ask John Cena about this...

Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told

Re: TV manufacturers

Wait, what? You bought a surround sound system with a proprietary interface that only works with LG TVs? Why? When?

This isn't something I would mention in public, it seems rather embarrassing.

Blessed are the cryptographers, labelling them criminal enablers is just foolish

Re: Really ????

"I'm using signal for local council communication, like votes, various discussions"

Government transparency, you've heard of it?

Telcos crammed 8.5m fake comments against net neutrality into FCC's inbox

Re: ROI

I'd insist on pizza and beer, not just pizza.

Spent Chinese rocket stage set to make an uncontrolled return to Earth

"Far less kinetic energy is involved in this instance – "worst case," he said, "is like a small plane crash.""

Is less reassuring than perhaps the author thinks. Small plane crashes usually kill at least one person, sometimes more.

'Chinese wall'? Who uses 'Chinese wall'? Well, IBM did, and it actually means 'firewall'

"Also, from what I remember the terms white hat and black hat don't have racial origins at all, they come from the old Hollywood westerns where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black hats. "

White == good, black == bad has been a thing for millennia in Western culture.

DoorDash delivery drivers try to manipulate the food biz's payment algorithm to earn a living wage in gig economy

Re: Sharecropper economy

This seems a rather ... optimistic ... description of "real sharecropping".

'Our hosted pools are under attack by abusers': Azure DevOps enjoys a midweek TITSUP*

Re: Sounds about right

I've seen Caddyshack, the abuse in the pool was just a candy bar. I think the greens keeper took care of it...

Director, deputy director, CTO of Free Software Foundation quit after Stallman installation

Re: We need a new foundation

Generally, "at-will employment" means the employer can fire you for no reason, but not for certain reasons. Having an opinion on pedophilia is not one of those reasons.

Re: FSF representing who ? .. or what ?

"RMS has Q to answer about his behaviour towards adult women"

Wait, what does Q have to do with this? Is RMS a follower of Q? Hmm, ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ....R! Now it makes sense!

where did I put that tin foil .....

Facebook's new hookup: A pair of submarine cables to link North America, Indonesia, Singapore

Arrgh, why can't I proffread?

A past wrong doesn't make the a wrong any less wrong.

Another successful flight for SpaceX's Starship apart from the landing-in-one-piece thing

Re: SpaceX have turned rocket science into Spaghetti Engineering

"Look at SABRE and Skylon for the radical, new and innovative."

Let me know when they have their next launch live-streamed on YouTube!

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

Re: Well...

In some jurisdictions, recording ("wiretapping") can be legally done with only one party's consent (ie, Intel).

This seems more like one party using the other party's phone (some browser script) to do the recording, which is an interesting spin on things.

Sitting comfortably? Then it's probably time to patch, as critical flaw uncovered in npm's netmask package

Re: ancient history

Yes, leading 0 means octal for constants within certain programming languages. Extending this to user-input data, where the user might be totally unaware of this, seems to be the issue.

This isn't a comment on the package or npm, but using a leading 0 to indicate a number is octal seems like a really bad idea.

The silicon supply chain crunch is worrying. Now comes a critical concern: A coffee shortage

"Scotch coffee" (has no Scotch) was burnt bread crumbs and hot water. Chicory might be an upgrade.

John Cleese ‘has a bridge to sell you’, suggests $69,346,250.50 price to top Beeple's virtual art record

Does the "selling the Brooklyn Bridge" joke work outside the US?

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

Re: What about the fire?

I'm penning an epistle to my Congressional delegation post haste regarding the need to start and fill a National Emergency Cork Supply, which would, of course, require establishment of a cork farming industry.

Re: What about the fire?

Does the USA even have indigenous cork production? I thought cork was mainly from Portugal and Spain.

What's in Fedora 34? GNOME 40, accelerated Wayland, PipeWire Audio, improved Flatpak support, and more

Re: 'scuse me?

I'd rather consume flapjacks than flatpaks.

US Office of National Intelligence says Russia, Iran tried to mess with 2020 elections, China sat it out

Re: Important Distinction

I'm pretty sure some "local" actor did try to alter the reporting results in Georgia. We have the calls on tape!

Holes patched in Russian segment of the ISS though pesky pressure loss continues

They just need to use this product: https://aeroseal.com/aerobarrier/

Should naturally find and seal the holes! Of course, it would leave an atmosphere full of aerosolized caulk, but they describe it as "non-toxic"...

Huawei CFO's legal eagles take HSBC to court in Hong Kong to obtain evidence against US extradition

"Additionally, they have argued that the case against Meng is in violation of international law, which prohibits nations from asserting criminal jurisdiction over conduct unrelated to that nation."

Yeah, no.

Japanese bank botched data migration, which somehow turned its ATMs into card-eating monsters

Some banks here in the US still offer passbook accounts (assuming "passbook" means the same thing in the Japan as here). Alas, I don't think any still offer a toaster for opening an account.

Half a million stolen French medical records, drowned in feeble excuses

Re: The 8 glasses of water a day myth

"One bloke I worked with had a bottle containing something that looked like a piece of charred wood"

Charcoal filter!

No fair! Space Launch System gets cool stickers even though monster rocket failed test

Re: 2nd Trump term "send off" ?

At this rate, the SLS->Moon landing will take place in Trump's third term.

House Republicans introduce legislation for outright ban on municipal broadband in the US

Re: Republicans

There is a distinct difference between pork and banned municipal broadband.

Re: see Texas private electricity

If you signed up for a spot-market price plan for electricity in a deregulated arena, you had better know what you are doing. They didn't know what they were doing. I think this is called a marketing success for Griddy!

Texas blacks out, freezes, and even stops sending juice to semiconductor plants. During a global silicon shortage

curtail means to restrict. It implies they cut/reduced gird power supply to those with backup power available.

Terraria dev cancels Stadia port after Google disabled his email account for three weeks

Re: Google

It sounds like he also uses one account for personal life and business. Doesn't sound like a good idea.

This space is intentionally left blank

Severe bug in Libgcrypt – used by GPG and others – is a whole heap of trouble, prompts patch scramble

What does

There's also a lot of reliance on distant state invariants, which is unsafe even by C standards.

mean?

Judge denies Parler an injunction to force AWS to host the antisocial network for internet outcasts

Re: Censorship by Private Companies

"Amazon was not supporting Parlor in the sense of Facebook. They were merely providing server infrastructure."

Rule one of free speech: If you don't own a printing press, you don't have free speech. You're borrowing somebody else's, and they just might cut you off.

Top engineer who stole trade secrets from Google's self-driving division pardoned on Trump's last day as president

Re: So..

"If the second amendment doesn't cover modern firearms, why does the first amendment the internet?"

Very good question. Maybe it doesn't?

Re: Disgusting abuse of power

Marc Rich? Small fry.

Carter pardoned Jefferson Davis.

I do not approve of that, or this pardon.

Debut firing of NASA's Space Launch System core stage cut short following 'Major Component Failure'

Re: converted from being reusable units

Unknown, but the point I was trying to make is that RS-25 "reusable" is more like a high-strung race engine. Reusable, yes, but stripped down (and inspected and refurbished) after each event. While SpaceX "reusable" is more like a road car engine: open the hood, check for leaks, change the oil, top off the fuel tanks and launch it again.

<insert Ferrari joke here>

Re: converted from being reusable units

Wikipedia has: "Following each flight, the RS-25 engines were removed from the orbiter, inspected, and refurbished before being reused on another mission."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25

Re: converted from being reusable units

"reusable"? More like "rebuildable".

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Re: Goodbye Parler

Multiple people reaching the same conclusion at the same time is not collusion.

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

Re: AWS now liable?

"They cannot pick and choose which AWS tenants they enforce their policies with"

Why can't they? (Serious question)

Loser Trump is no longer useful to Twitter, entire account deleted over fears he'll whip up more mayhem

Re: An elephant in the room

Yes, he still has access. The military said they will ignore any unlawful orders from the President, and then inform him of lawful options, same stance as previous.

United States Congress stormed by violent followers of defeated president, Biden win confirmation halted

Re: Unfortunately ...

Those are signs it failed, not that it was not attempted.

Re: Unfortunately ...

"If any US Vets took part in this attempted Coup, at Trump's behest, shame on you."

If I recall correctly, in theory, veterans can be recalled to active duty and then court martialed for actions taken while not, technically, in service.