Posts by imanidiot

Airbus gets a new freighter – and its giant door – into the air for the first time

Re: deeply modernising the Antonov 124 fleet

The main oversize cargo market is served well by AN-124 sized aircraft. The 225 was a welcome addition to the Antonov cargo transport services for very large oversize cargo, but afaik it was never even fully booked and finishing the second hull into a flyable aircraft was never considered economically viable. No-one knows what the current state of that second hull is. Likely it is riddled with bullet and shrapnel holes from the attack on Hostomel airport that also saw the destruction of the original 225.

Re: Alternative to 747F / Antonov AN-124?

Exactly this. The 747 was basically a freighter designed to also be used as a passenger jet. Any 747 ever built could be converted to a freighter after it's use as a passenger jet. The A380 on the other hand was designed solely as a passenger aircraft and structurally is incompatible with conversion to a freighter. It's hull and the floors aren't strong enough for cargo use and reinforcing those is basically akin to building a new hull. Just not worth it.

Windows 11 update sends some desktops into an unwanted goth phase

Why wait?

And this is why I DON'T install windows updates until they've been properly beta tested by other (l)users or a few weeks.

Exec couldn’t identify a photocopier, which made for a fax-inating tech support call

I have sent exactly one fax in my entire life and that was as an intern some 20 years ago. An account request form to a Japanese origin firm (Misumi). Funnily enough the account details were sent back using email...

Code fixers have fired up the AI warp drive. Strange new worlds await

Resource allocation is the issue

No matter how good LLMs are at fixing bugs and generating bug fixes, there will never be equal amounts of resources spent on LLM tokens for those purposes as will be invested in pushing the next feature. Generation of new slop will always outpace fixing of the old slop. And in the end we will all drown in slop anyway.

And that supposes that using LLMs for bug fixing patches doesn't just generate more bugs than it fixes, which... I wouldn't be sure about either.

Be a hater all you want, AI's here to stay

House of cards

The entire premise of this article, and AI as a whole is build on this one premise:

"AI will still be standing and fundamentally change our lives and work"

Hard disagree.

Nigel Farage wants to scrap 'suffocating' UK GDPR

To translate:

Farage wants to make sure his US cronies can hoover all the data they want. The only laws that the UK needs to repeal is the horrendous age verification bullshit now getting foasted on all of us just because the UK now requires it (And that I absolutely refuse to comply with).

GitHub Copilot: Sorry Dave, I can't do that harmful thing - unless you ask me in code

Re: The good example says it all

People keep confusing LLM output with "giving asnwers" instead of "providing text that sounds right" (and further ignoring that an LLM has no concept/understanding of "right" or "correct" in the first place).

The AI that spawned MechaHitler and deepfake porn puts on a suit to become legal advisor and Excel jockey

No thanks

If your excel sheet is so complex you need A"I" to build it for you, you probably shouldn't be using Excel in the first place!

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Welcome to the real* cost of "AI"

It's going to take a while but most other "AI" are likely going to follow suit and costs will rise precipitously. And then the majority of use will stop.

*Note, not actually the real cost yet. It's going to get much more expensive.

'Resistance is futile,' says Qualcomm CEO. AI agents will be become invisible, inescapable, follow you across devices

Re: Panopticon

Because they know they're rich enough that they can afford to opt out of the panopticon. It's there for the plebs, not them.

FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after another launch mishap

Re: Commercialisation ...

Lucky for you there's no plans to "fully commercialise" SpaceX. The IPO is for a tiny fraction of the company (less than 10 percent) and the shares will have very limited voting rights.

Entirely as expected. This is just the standard procedure. SpaceX will investigate what went wrong, make a report and file it with the FAA, the FAA will go "yeah I guess you know what you're talking about", rubberstamp the report and allow Starship to return to flight. That's how it has gone for basically every single flight that Starship has made. AFAIK every single one of them has been declared a "mishap" by the FAA, and every single time the rocket has returned to flight with no delays due to the FAA.

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out

Re: "none of us can have a "VR room" in their house"

the handwavy explanation given so far has been, the floor is made of treadmills combined with localized inertial dampeners and gravity generators to avoid issues with the inner-ear/balance

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

Re: Material Properties

The "3d printed guns" that actually work and the one shown in the title image are actually 3d printed lower frames with commercially made (metal) components for everything else. The barrel, bolt, firing pin, springs, mag, ammunition, pins, screws, etc are all just standard firearms components for guns like the AR-15 or Glock. The 3d printed plastic part is LEGALLY the firearm, but is actually very low stressed and doesn't take any of the force/pressure from the actual firing of the bullet, just the reaction forces of the recoil on the gun recoiling into the person firing it.

Re: What are firearms?

Actually, that's how 99% of "3d printed" firearms are made. They're printing lowers and frames that they then just drop commercially made barrels, slides, triggers/triggerpacks, firing pins, springs, mags, and everything else into. The M16/M4/AR15 platform is also well suited for this. The lower is a very low stress part as far as the firing parts go, all forces are taken up in the upper (which is not legally "a firearm" in the US).

Re: Why 3D Printers?

Nobody outside of actual industry is 3d printing metal for "ghost guns". That's not an easy process and not something the average crim is going to bother with. The ones that could afford to run an operation like that can very likely obtain traditionally made commercial firearms much easier than running a metal 3d printer operation.

Japanese rocket part came unglued, leading to mission failure

This rocket that was involved in the incident in Japan. The one the front fell off?

Yeah. Yeah, This is not very typical, I'd like to make that point.

BOFH: If the meatbags can't agree on aircon, AI will decide for them

Yeah, but in winter it feels "cozy" while in summer it feels "hot".

(Things like humidity and cold drafts might also play into this)

Commercial space pleads with NASA to stop moving the goalposts in orbit

Gateway cancelled, now they have to do something with the modules being built for it.

It looks to me like NASA is having a bad case of sunk cost fallacy and wants desperately to find another place to put the habitation module it is building for the Lunar Gateway (that rightfully is getting abandoned). So suddenly NASA want's to "build it's own space station" and require others to dock to it. The only thing that really makes sense is going to the space station providers it was already contracting with and asking them "hey, we've got this fully designed an nearly built module, can we do something with it by connecting it to your station?" Find one of the commercial destination partners that has the best plan of "doing something with it" and then do that something with it.

While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

Goes to show even the Finns don't want to live in Finland

NASA sets 'impossible' ground rules for relocation of 'flown space vehicle'

Re: You keep using that word…

I believe they were in the bidding, it's just that their bid basically amounted to "give shuttle plox, ktb" and was listed very near the bottom of the rankings.

The drone swarm is coming, and NATO air defenses are too expensive to cope

Re: Yes this is an important one

Iran lacks the one force multiplier that Ukraine has access to and the US has built. Starlink. Ukraine shipped the containers into Russia and apparently none of the drone operators were actually in Russia when the attacks actually happened. They were all remotely operated over the internet via starlink from what I understand. If Iran wanted to run a similar attack against the US it would need to get local operators into the US and either use the cellphone network (Which I suspect would get jammed the instance a US base finds itself under drone attack) or be local enough to use it's own local wireless network.

Re: Yes this is an important one

basically all air bases worldwide outside of Ukraine, including those in the US are poorly defended against the sort of attack that Ukraine pulled against Russia. Because it would entail the same sort of in depth drone defense that NATO is now finding out they're sorely lacking and the rest of the world still needs to invest heavily in. Only those bases that can keep their aircraft under hardened cover are defended, but US aircraft like the B-52 are currently required by treaty with Russia to stay out in the open so that they can be checked on by spy-sat. Many other aircraft and helicopters spend most of their time outside simply because hardened shelters are expensive and until not very long ago largely unneeded.

Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’

Re: ‘People don’t like wearing things on their faces and don’t trust those who do’

Some people apparently wear frames without prescription lenses just for the fashion and I've met SOME people who wear glasses who like the fasion aspect of it, but for me, if I could NOT wear glasses without having to deal with the issues that come with other solutions to visual impairments I would do so in a heartbeat. (Prescription) Glasses are annoying but unfortunately a necessity

Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo

Re: The junior kept his job.

Whether moving someone to such a job is even legal is... questionable. In the Netherlands the courts would take a very dim view of someone getting moved from what sounds like a junior engineering position to "toilet cleaning duties". Companies have a lot of lee-way in assigning new jobs/functions, but they can't just expect you to do work that is not even close to the the job description in your contract. My contract states Engineer, which means I can't be put to work as a janitor. Putting someone on a window seat and thus denying any chance of promotions is also likely going to get a company sued. There's also a certain subset of people that would be entirely A-OK with driving a window seat all day every day as long as they get a paycheck

Desktop tech sent to prison for an education on strange places to put tattoos

Re: Hazing = abuse

No downvotes from me. Having a bit of fun that doesn't actually harm anyone (least of all the victim) is fine, but as soon as it crosses into potential physical harm it's a definite "hell no". That Cold Store site manager deserved what he got. And I hope anyone else involved in that little incident got an ear full as well.

'Ralph Wiggum' loop prompts Claude to vibe-clone commercial software for $10 an hour

Re: Sounds awful

This is why you use Notepad++.

Re: Sounds awful

But there is a massive difference between not understanding every layer in the chain and not understanding even your own layer at all. You as a developer/coder at least have an understanding of the interfaces you're dealing with and what their requirements are. You understand what functions your bit of code are using or implementing. With todays "vibe coding" slop, these "coders" don't understand a single thing about what their program is doing. They don't know what it talks to, they don't know what it does, they don't know what it doesn't do. They just know that the end result they're expecting is happening. There's no care for efficiency, there's no care for standards, there's no care for potential bugs or backdoors. Oh, shiny window appear, good times.

Bork ventures to the Middle of Lidl

Middle of Lidl

While it might seem that the assortment of tat that gets put there is just a random assortment of whatever the buyers managed to scrounge up that week, I've been told very solidly (by someone that does the job, so I expect they'd know) that the stuff really isn't random. They have tons of market research to put together that crap to make sure they sell as much of it as possible and the tat that will go on sale is locked in minimum 10 months ahead of time, to have enough time to arrange all the needed logistics and distribution. Usually it's more than 12 months when they've already decided what's going to go on sale. That means that the tat that's going to be in the shops for easter NEXT YEAR is already ordered and locked in by now.

Re: Swap out

Stella Artois...

If I wanted to drink horse piss I don't think I'd need to pay for the privilege. It's rare for me to get hangovers from beer (especially since I'm a very light drinker) but Stella? Guaranteed pounding headache after a few hours, no matter if I drink just 1 (drinking more just prolongs the suffering).

Irony alert: Anthropic helps UK.gov to build chatbot for job seekers

If the experience in the UK is anything like I've heard it described in the Netherlands then having to deal with an AI chatbot as a jobseeker is going to be absolutely infuriating. Over here you're required to do a minimum number of applications and if you don't find a job yourself within a certain period they start recommending "job openings" that you HAVE to apply to. Those job openings are very, very often for completely bullshit jobs that don't match a persons background or training level (think steel construction worker for someone trained in precision TIG welding, because "it's both working with metal 'innit? Or a trained engineer to apply for a job as a gardener). With humans, they're very often inflexible and unwilling to listen, but sometimes can be reasoned with and usually can be made, through sheer force of will, to see the errors in their logic. You'd have no such luck with a chat bot.

Maker fight! SparkFun cuts ties with Adafruit in harassment dispute

A crap show indeed

After having read up on exactly what the background drama was that started this *hrrkk* on .. *Barf* social media.. I'm inclined to go with the view that: mr. Torrone needs to take a nap and possibly see a psychologist about untreated or badly treated mental health issues flaring up due to newborn child induced lack of sleep. It really looks like MAYBE someone (formerly?) associated with Sparkfun said a few bad things about him once, they had an internet tiff that died out years ago, then someone ELSE (unnamed) recently said something bad, he "internet sleuthed" the wrong person, concluded the first guy (formerly? associated with Sparkfun) was his target and then went on an internet crusade to dox and spew misinformation about this person. Sparkfun apparently got involved in the back-splatter from this due to the (former) association to this person and decided they didn't want to have to do business with someone acting in this manner.

Given that afaikt he's got a history of... less well adapted social behaviour shall we say, I'm not entirely surprised this happened.

Re: Soap opera

This assesment seems closest to the truth. Adafruits founders have been in this sort of drama before and it seems often at least in part self-inflicted. Seems like someone in Sparkfun might have liked poking the bear a little bit and PT has reacted... poorly.

NASA's Artemis II Moon rocket arrives at the launch pad

F*ck Facebook

anybody have a link to that "Button moon" post that doesn't require logging in to Farcebook?

Royal Navy's helicopter drone makes its first autonomous flight

Re: Britain will capitulate

Nationalising ASML is just not going to work short term or long term. Short term there's a lot of US origin parts and tech in the ASML litho systems (lasers, cameras, a lot of stuff in the EUV source if we're talking EUV litho, etc). Excizing US parts and trch would take a few years I suspect. Months at the ver least for DUV systems. Long term nationalising it wouldn't go over well with customers outside the US. Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China (older DUV tech), Israel, Ireland would all have a problem with such a move and in the DUV market Canon and Nikon are just waiting to make a move and knock ASML out of the market again

Re: Britain will capitulate

"well, Trump is gone in 2.5 years, and even if Vance or similar take over, there will be a POTUS with a non-Trumpian viewpoint within a decade or so, when sanity (and freedom for the Greenlanders) will be restored"

You presume sanity will return when well over half the US voters voted FOR the idiot currently leading them down the sewer slide. There is little sanity to be found and little reason to assume thing will get better.

Techie banned from client site for outage he didn’t cause

Re: I wasn't even there.

Powerwalk in the other direction and look to power on the SEP field.

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

Re: Neat trick

You stopped reading BOFH because of the killing? Honestly I think you missed a lot of earlier stories or you're just misremembering but the BOFH has always been a homicidal maniac. That's not something of "the last for years". I'd say the reactions have become LESS murderous with time in fact.

Reddit sues Australia to exempt itself from kids social media ban

I see no reason why being able to READ the discourse but not be able to take part in it would be much of a hinderance. In the days before the interwebs kids were likely not exposed to anything going in the world either, just whatever was being discussed by their fellow youfths and whatever adults were in their lives. Even just being able to read the online discourse is a massive step up from that

Parachutists told to check software after jumper dangled from a plane

Re: Better mockup needed...

The reserve toggle (gray) clearly gets caught on the rear edge of the flap at around 0:37 in the video. It never drops to the level of the "vestigial" door hinges (they should have been removed when the sliding door was installed imho) so it's unlikely it's due to the left-over hinge.

Re: Better mockup needed...

On note 2, not a problem so long as the pilot is aware of the potential issue and stays on top of his airspeed while the throttle is cut. (Otherwise, you get stuff like this. That pilot also clearly needs to practice on spin recovery.)

Baikonur's only crew-capable pad busted after Soyuz flight

The structure basically rolls on 2 rails on either side of the vertical supports under the launch platform and has a large blast shield fitted on the flame trench side that prevents the exhaust gasses from damaging the structure when in the retracted position. If the platform isn't locked down this shield basically acts like a giant sail and pushes on the whole platform and pulls it from it's alcove and into the flame trench.

There's more photos of the construction and damage here: https://russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_r7_31.html#cabin and more info on the service platform itself is here: https://russianspaceweb.com/vostochny_soyuz_ko.html

You are correct that taking a "spare" from anywhere else is basically as much work as just building a new one at Baikonur.

HSBC spies $207B crater in OpenAI's expansion goals

AI company making wildly unrealistic claims and pretending it's entirely normal?

Say it ain't so! How can that be? Surely nobody would expect that!

SpaceX loses debut V3 Super Heavy in ground test mishap

Oh dear

That's a very significant event and one that is bound to set them back for a LONG time. The way it's peeled open seems more indicative of a materials problem or a manufacturing quality problem than an engineering problem. It's not a "clean" pop along a defined seam or section, and it's in an area that should afaik not have anything strange going on in terms of structural loads (ie, easy to calculate and engineer for). If this is indeed the case, fixing those issues is going to take a lot of time because it likely means EVERYTHING they've built is now suspect and if they can't verify what EXACTLY went wrong and inspect existing boosters for that defect they have to actually start building a new booster from the very start and throw out everything they have

Frustrated consultant 'went full Hulk' and started smashing hardware

Re: Make a stand

Stories like this is why I am so opposed to concepts like "lean" and JIT production when it comes to low volume production work. Certain persons at my job also keep pushing these concepts, entirely failing to grasp that when you're building 4 (or even 40) of something a year, concepts of how you organize your logistics and production lines are entirely different and sometimes stocks are necessary when lead times are measured in years. Similarly numbnuts throwing out test equipement because of "lean" and "clean desk policy" and "but you never use it"... Yeah, sure it's rare, but when I need to bypass something I used to have the cables necessary to bypass basically anything to anything else. You threw that away, so now we get to play the "swap parts until it works" game. Womp, womp.

China's CR450 bullet train clocks 453 km/h in pre-service tests

High speed rail is easy.

Easy if you don't have to worry about an existing rail network, don't have to worry about buying out peoples property to put in new lines, don't have to deal with Victorian era infrastructure and monumental bridges and buildings, don't have to deal with taking into account noise and other issues for those living in the area, don't have to worry about cities being close together and necessitating lots of start-stop running. In other words, high speed rail is easy(/ier) if you're not in Europe.

With all due respect to China, achievements like this are mostly down to being able to build the modern rail infrastructure in a way that most of Europe simply can't do and the US refuses (mostly for reasons only the US seems to comprehend).

SpaceX is behind schedule, so NASA will open Artemis III contract to competition

Re: Blue Origin?

Physics has a lot to say about what shape you can make that opening and how large you can make it. They had a lot of issues in earlier launches with the skin around the opening deforming and jamming the door. Iirc they went through like 5 different iterations of the door mechanism and door shape and they still rivetted on additional strengthening plates around the opening after assembly of the V2 airframes had already more or less finished (indicating they had figured out that whatever they had designed was not up to snuff)

Techies tossed appliance that had no power cord, but turned out to power their company

You are presuming that Steve in this story actually had to make do with sticks and duct tape. When it's highly likely that he DID have far better tools and materials available to him if he and his boss had bothered following proper protocols. I get the idea of "this doesn't seem to be doing anything, let's rip it out" but that's just not how it works in doing any sort of work in IT. Just ripping it out is the "big clubs, thick eyebrows, neanderthal" way of doing things. The only PROPER decision at that point is to leave it alone, take extensive photographs, do whatever other work you can, leave and then finally figure out what that thing is and whether you can remove it. If, after going through the proper process, it's decided it can go, you get another trip to the CoLo (hurray) and if THEN the SHTF you have the defence of: "we went through the proper process and no-one could tell us it was a problem".

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

Re: Doh..

I think I would dislike the aesthetic of having a bright yellow slider there, but at the very least they could put a red dot below the opening when the slider is covering the camera so that you can tell it's misaligned at a glance.