Posts by Spazturtle

Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off

Re: Tin men vs GPL

AI is just a tool, and the copyright belongs to the person using the tool.

Software bloat? This elevator needs an 8GB Core i5

This is likely a networked display, the computer is probably in a network rack in a back office connected to a AV over IP adapter piping it's output to multiple displays throughout the hotel.

Court tosses Microsoft's appeal in pre-owned software licenses battle

"customers could resell their licenses, even if Office contained clipart."

It's been long standing legal precedent that you cannot use copyrighted material to block people from exercising their rights. Nintendo lost this back with the original GameBoy, where the GameBoy would refuse to boot if the Nintendo logo wasn't the first thing on the cart, the courts ruled that 3rd parties could include the Nintendo logo without Nintendo's permission since it was required to make games for the GameBoy.

Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains

Re: Seems like nothing more than a money grab

Because China is classified as a developing country by the WTO and UPU which grants then certain benefits. When you in the UK buy something from China and use special rate shipping then that is subsidised by the UK taxpayer, as China Post bills the UK treasury for all or part of the cost of shipping.

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

Even if you replace all the code it is still considered infringement, the law takes a ship of theseus approach to it.

This is why Apple signed a licencing agreement with Imagination Technologies for this GPU tech. Apple developed this GPUs by over several generations replacing parts of the licenced PowerVR GPUs with their own design until no PowerVR parts where left. Apple then tried to stop paying licencing fees but resumed after Imagination filed a lawsuit.

Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module

Megawatt Electricity, which is always going to be lower than the Megawatt Thermal output of a reactor.

Large Hadron Collider goes offline to make room for its enhanced successor

Those little results continue to challenge existing theories. If we find another particle above or at the same energy level as the Higgs boson then that will finally break the standard model.

We know that the standard model, general relativity, and quantum physics must be wrong since they are incompatible and don't explain the whole universe, yet we have not been able to disprove them yet.

No more Java refills for Intel Macs after JDK 27, says Oracle

Re: On not owning what you pay for

Linux dropped support for Intel Itanium only 3 years after the last Itanium CPUs came out.

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

Re: emergency stop button

With the older self contained and isolated ABS? Yeah almost never.

With newer ABS controlled by the ECU? As soon as hackers target it.

Re: emergency stop button

If the Anti-Lock Braking System gets stuck on then it doesn't matter how hard you press the brake pedal.

Telling internet platforms where to stick public service media will serve nobody. Turn it on its head

Re: Young People and the news

I'm not worried about it, it is all self stabilising.

You already have 'influencers' whose whole channel is just curating, compiling and verifying the videos of news 'influencers', in effect acting in the role of an editor. Some of them are even banding together to share information and trade stories.

They are just slowly re-creating news media, but under their own control instead of under the control of legacy news.

Initiatives like MediaFaro and The Knowledge will fail because they are just desperate attempts by boomers to regain control.

Tesco is sprinting to quit VMware and Broadcom despite rapid migration risks

Re: is this the beginning of the end for VMWARE

USB passthrough can be spotty on VMWare too. The best solution is to just pass the whole USB controller through to the VM.

Capita is about to sail past deadline to fix civil service pensions scheme

Re: Perhaps Civil servants may learn

The idea that civil servants are beholden, or even listen to elected politicians is laughable.

Re: Oh it can easily be fixed.

Captia hasn't paid dividends since 2018 due to financial difficulties, so fines won't hurt the shareholders.

NHS patients can't opt out of Palantir's data platform – but their hospital can

Re: What About the Six LBPs?

GDPR doesn't protect you from the government. It has an exemptions for complying with the other laws, sharing data with law enforcement, sharing data with other government departments, and sharing data with intelligence agencies.

Bend the beam like Beckham to defeat anti-jamming tech

Re: Interesting

You can use AESA radars to do some very complex beamforming, like how the F-35 is able to use it's forward facing radar to send signals to other F-35's behind it.

Re: Interesting

The miliary already use this, it is one of the advantages of AESA radar.

Blue Origin's New Glenn makes a crater-sized dent in Artemis plans

Re: I wonder...

"when it was just NASA in the launch vehicle game for the US"

When was that? Because NASA doesn't make launch vehicles.

Broadcom gets early start on WiFi 8 with next-gen wireless routing kit

IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability

802.11bn has the same link rate as 802.11be, so for home users who have a good signal already this generation can pretty much be ignored.

As the name suggests IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability focuses on improving reliability and more efficient spectrum use, mainly in high density environments with multiple APs, it will also finally allow seamless handover between APs. One feature that might help home users is that it is aware of other 2.4ghz protocols such as Bluetooth and ZigBee and can detect them and avoid stepping on them.

Google users fight for refunds as unauthorized API usage bills soar

Re: Clarification

"The article doesn't say, but I'm assuming Danan was using an unrestricted key? "

When they were introduced the keys could only be used for Maps, at some point Google converted all legacy Maps keys to unrestricted keys, and if you wanted a Maps only key you needed to generate a new one.

EU hits snooze on AI Act rules after industry backlash

Re: Race worth running?

Whilst 99% of AI companies will die it is still a race worth running. Look at what Europe allowing the US to win the computer and internet race has led to.

Sure most AI is useless now, but we have enough examples of things like it's use in medical research and image analysis to show that it can provide generational improvements.

More missions, less money, higher risk: NASA's back to the '90s playbook

Re: More samples available

The core issue with the JWST was that it was designed to use technology that didn't exist with the expectation that technology would continue to progress at the rate it was in the 1990s. But technological progress slowed rapidly from the late 1990s to the early 2000s.

You could now build something similar to JWST with COTS parts for much cheaper and in a shorter time frame. Being innovative and at the cutting edge is not worth it if it means the project gets so delayed that your design is no longer cutting edge.

By the time JWST launched it's expensive bespoke main imaging sensor was outdated and the manufacturer was selling an updated, more sensitive and higher resolution version commercially. And if you designed a new telescope to launch using Starship then you could forgo the expensive, complicated and high risk origami system.

Bad news for OpenClaw stans: Apple’s Mac Mini now starts at $799

Yeah the Mac Studio was the only Mac with 512GB of RAM, and they no longer sell that option since 512GB of RAM now costs over $10k which is more than Apple were charging for the whole Mac Studio.

NASA boss: make Pluto a planet again

Re: Still seems arbitrary

It's orbit is simply too big to clear. If you swapped the orbits of Jupiter and Pluto then Jupiter would be classified as a dwarf planet since even Jupiter would be unable to clear and orbit that big.

UK govt dept sent a document 'in error.' Now it's being used in a £370M contract lawsuit

That would create the possibility of embarrassing situations though, like when people spotted that the Russian government put out the contract for the 'liberation of Crimea' medals months before the Euromaidan protests even happened. Which completely dismantled any argument that the west provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, since they were planning on invading even when their puppet was still in power.

Two men charged over series of arson attacks on 5G masts

Re: Technical insight

You are thinking of mmWave masts. Normal 5G masts use the same frequencies and cover the same area as 4G masts.

Murder, she wrote: Ex-FBI chief wants some ransomware crims charged with homicide

Re: Manslaughter, she meant?

Murder in the UK is not a statutory offence and has no fixed definition, it is a common law offence. Manslaughter becomes murder if 12 reasonable men and women agree it is.

Re: Manslaughter, she meant?

It qualifies as murder in the US as a reasonable person would understand that their actions could result in death and they still decided to carry them out, thus demonstrating a "depraved indifference" to human life.

NASA Inspector fears new spacesuits won’t be ready for Moon landing

Re: spacesuits won’t be ready for Moon landing

"It's like the carbon dioxide filters in the command module and lunar module on Apollo 13 all over again."

That wasn't a design issue, the command module needed flat filters to go against the walls, the space suits needed round filters for their backpacks. So it was decided that the lunar module should use the same filters as the suits so that if there was an issue on the Moon they would be able to use a suit filters in the LM whilst they try and fix the issue. If there was an issue in the command module then they could just retreat to the LM.

Users complain that UK Azure is having capacity problems

Re: Users forget

Simple, you just don't implement a customs boarder and accept that a small amount of goods will get driven across the boarder. Now if the ROI decided they want one then they can implement their own but that would put them in breach of the GFA.

NASA gets the ball rolling on its part in Europe's jinxed Mars rover mission

New RS-25 engines have already been produced.

Attention data hoarders: Alexa loses its Plex appeal as voice feature gets canned

Re: Open Source!

Only the media player which nobody really uses is a Kodi fork. The server software is developed by them.

IPv6 carried half of internet traffic – for one day, according to Google

Re: IPv6 introduced new problems, so slow uptake shouldn't be curious or confusing

IPv6 does make it easier to have multiple local networks since it auto configures itself, so you can just plug shit in and it should work (famous last words in networking).

For example if you use Matter over Thread Internet of Things devices then Thread is also an IPv6 network, but there is no risk of address conflict since all your Thread devices use the Thread Border Router's prefix, and devices on either network can talk to each other since the TBR connects to your regular network's router, so your Apple HomePod can talk to your smart light bulb.

That is the theory anyway, I haven't had much success with it myself.

QUIC will soon be as important as TCP – but it's vastly different

Re: elephant in the room (or web page)

No, in fact it is even more important. The bigger a page is and the more 3rd party resources a page uses then the more benefit you get from reducing connection overhead.

Microsoft sends Outlook Lite to the great inbox in the sky as memory costs skyrocket

4 Surface tablets, Christina's bricked itself on the first day which is why she was doing a lot of the radio work since she couldn't do any of the tasks that required a tablet. Both Classic Outlook and New Outlook stopped working on Reid Wiseman's tablet.

But 2 out of the 4 Surface tablets were working correctly, which is pretty good for Microsoft hardware.

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

Re: WTF

Also pollution, your body stores toxins in fat around the belly and is very reluctant to burn it and allow those toxins back into the blood stream.

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: Do yourself a favour - Buy a decent e-reader

Kobo engineers made the great decision years ago to use components that have unstreamed drivers in the Linux kernel, that massively reduced the cost of continued updates.

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

Re: systemd-free distros

At the moment nobody, but I suspect future legislation will require an Android style system to validate the system, combined with age verification services. On Android Play Protect runs in the ARM TrustZone and downloads a daily binary that it runs to validate your system.

Your next car might need 300 GB of RAM, and so will autonomous robots

Re: New cars, I've seen them

Emission regulations on individuals is stupid and pointless, it's like councils in the UK which regulate against BBQs and pizza ovens. The amount of emissions an individual emits from personal use of hydrocarbons is tiny. Most of your contribution to emissions come from things like buying food or loads of tat on Temu.

Targeting people who have a wood burning pizza oven or who modify/build their own car, is not effective at reducing global emissions, it is purely punitive.

Re: New cars, I've seen them

Unfortunately the historic car 'experts' lobbied to make it so that cars lose their historic status in the UK if you swap the engine, install a roll cage or use aftermarket/reproduction body panels. So if you do any of that then it needs to pass a modern MOT.

Re: over 300?

20 * 15GB LPDDR6 chips (each being 5*3GB dies stacked internally) would be 300GB.

Or if they are using HBM then 5 * 60GB HBM chips (each being 20*3GB dies stacked internally).

Ofcom sees no need for overhaul in next phase of fiber rollout despite BT domination

Re: The horse has bolted

Running a dedicated cable from the exchange to each house is hideously inefficient and is only possible for them because they are a small ISP offering that service to a small number of customers.

Also as they say themselves since their switches have a 100Gbit/s backhaul that means that their 25Gbit/s service is overprovisioned at a ratio of 1:10 to 1:50.

PON is overprovisioned at a ratio of 1:32

With some ISPs now offering 50G-PON I don't see much advantage.

Re: Its a mess

OpenReach's customers are the ISPs, households have no business relationship with them.

It is your ISP's job to deal with OpenReach.

Iran's 'chosen users' get 'privileged access' despite internet blackout for masses

Re: "Civilians relying on Dutch shortwave radio broadcast for outside information"

Good thing the Iranians speak Persian and BBC World Service still transmits radio in Persian.

Apple's budget-friendly MacBook Neo is bursting with color and compromise

Re: Down with the cool kids

You can't safely put screen protectors on the new Macbooks, the tolerance when closing is so small that the screen protector puts pressure on the screen risking cracking it.

Re: Down with the cool kids

Buy bulk liquid damaged Macbooks with fried internals, buy bulk second hand Macbooks with damaged cases. Swap the internals of the one with the damaged case over to the liquid damaged one with a nicer case.

Dev stunned by $82K Gemini bill after unknown API key thief goes to town

"Your server is, and then presenting it."

Google do not provide the option to host your own copy of Google Maps, the only option is to imbed a frame to their website, and they require the API key to be public.

Hubble in a death spiral that could end as early as 2028 without a reboost

"Hubble has a narrow field of view"

Which is good for studying things, but bad for surveying since you can only see a tiny part of the sky at once.

"extreme low-light capability"

KH-11 and Hubble have the same mirror size, so they collect the same amount of light. The mirrors are just ground differently giving different focal lengths.

"extreme long-exposure capability, and sensitivity on wavelengths important to astronomy. "

Those are features of the instruments, not the optical assembly.

That was one of the proposals back when it was called WFIRST, put it in orbit of Mars and it could do both ground and space observations, it would also mean we could survey parts of the sky that are blocked by the Sun from Earth (for the period when Mars is on the other side of the Sun obviously). Would have required the use of a SLS as the launch vehicle though.

It's near failure anyway, unless you commit to a full servicing mission a reboost alone won't do much good.