Posts by Spazturtle

RAM supply set to worsen, says Micron, as CEO celebrates ‘much higher’ prices

Re: disgusting!

It's just 2006 style debt shenanigans.

Broadcom give Anthropic $42B, Anthropic buys $42B of Broadcom chips, Broadcom bundles the debt up with other debt and sells it on.

Re: disgusting!

Were you complaining when they were selling RAM at a loss a few years ago and warning that they won't be able to build new fabs with prices so low and warned of future supply shortages?

Or did you like it when market conditions were to your advantage and are only now complaining when that has changes?

What eldritch horror lurks behind Heathrow's information screens?

It's not very convenient to use PCI-e graphics cards with raspberry pis.

Professional digital signage graphics cards tend to have ethernet ports on the GPU itself. The host Windows (or Linux) computer has no network connection, the video data is sent straight over the network to the GPU which then outputs it. Example: https://video.matrox.com/en/product/video-walls/quadhead2go-q155-card/

For single signs you can just use cheap FPGA boards, but these airport signs are not single displays, the flight data overflows one display onto the next, when you are making video walls you need a proper GPU.

Southern Water taps fiber network to sniff out leaky pipes

Re: What's the point?

Ofwat puts caps on the amount of leaks that water companies can fix in a year, so they have to leave the smaller ones.

https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/publication/determining-capital-maintenance-allowances-at-pr29/

Thoughts return to forbidden RAM upgrades as Raspberry Pi OS gets fresh lick of paint

Re: 'Authorised devices' and fixed RAM...

It's even worse than Apple. Macs will detect if the soldered RAM has changed and automatically reconfigure.

The myth of killer AI is a self-serving attempt at regulatory capture

Re: A good example...

"safety-relevant parts had been removed from the production line for failing to meet defined quality standards... and were subsequently retrieved from the "defective" storage area and *put back on customer aircraft*. "

This is normal, you can't have an airframe sitting idle on the production line waiting for a part. So putting a not to spec part in so that you can finish building the aircraft and tow it to a parking area, and then when the working part comes in swapping it, is normal practice.

Compsci grads facing recession-like job prospects thanks to AI

Re: Old jokes revisited

So about $54k/yr in today's money, even at 64 hours a week you are not going to be making that much in restaurants today.

Green Party wants to slam the brakes on UK datacenter construction until water and energy use are sorted

The water companies 'allow' leaks because Ofwat puts caps on how many leaks can be fixed per year.

Windows XP was released to manufacturing a quarter of a century ago

They reverted a few things from Windows 2000 and then never brought them back. For example the Windows 2000 which was 32bit only supported 64GB of RAM (36bit PAE), with 4GB allocated per program. XP originally supported 128GB RAM (37bit PAE) with 4GB allocated per program but XP SP2 32 bit only supported 4GB with 3.5GB allocated per program. This 4GB stuck with all future versions of 32bit Windows.

Casio decides it's about time the simple digital watch got a little smarter

Re: Tempting.

They are actual going backwards in time design wise. They recently added a lacquerware calculator to their lineup: https://www.casio.com/jp/basic-calculators/premium/en-s100x-jc1-u/

No lift for Swift as NASA abandons orbital rescue

Re: Dodgy reaction wheels

Something damaged the thrusters causing them to fire putting the craft into a spin, the computer automatically attempted to use the reaction wheels to stabilise and this caused the power circuits for the reaction wheels to burn out.

Almost nobody pays attention to web standards anymore

Re: Dead Internet Theory

It's only a tragedy in the classical Greek meaning of the word where a person's downfall is caused by their own personal flaws.

Guy was a fraud who got exposed and couldn't take the shame. There is nothing wrong with calling people out for their lies and deceit.

Linux 7.2 debuts, Linus Torvalds says ‘new normal’ means he had to do it now ... or never?

With all the old stuff being removed since 7.0 I guess 6.12 SLTS will become the standard for retro PCs, that will keep your 90s PC supported until 2035.

Japan kind-of completes its sovereign satnav constellation

Re: I don't recall ever having a GPS problem in Japan.

This system also reduces Time To First Fix, a GPS cold start can take 5-12mins.

Now your phone will (almost) never do a cold start since the mobile towers are transmitting assisted GPS (A-GPS) signals telling mobile devices which satellites are above which speeds up getting a lock.

But for other devices it can take a while to get a lock, this constellation helps that, if the GPS receiver sees one of these new satellites it can immediately narrow down where on the planet it is.

Say you are hiking and get into an accident and need help, you activate your Personal Locator Beacon (which of course you have purchased since you are a sensible person), it does a GPS cold start, and then once it gets a fix it starts transmitting your location over 406 MHz emergency radio and if it is a newer one it can send it to satellites as well.

Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

Love the hypocrisy

So he is perfectly fine with LLMs taking away the jobs of translators, but doesn't like it when they do the same to his job.

If he is so against AI in art then why not put his money where his mouth is and pay for translators to translate his book?

NASA Swift rescue mission spins into trouble during commissioning

Re: reaction wheels again ?

Because this was a rapid mission. They were given a small budget and 10 months to design and built the craft.

Signals are grim for Jodrell Bank Observatory after UK science funding decision

Re: criminal

That is the point, the elite ruling class of this country hate the country, and are trying to destroy as much of it's history and culture as possible.

Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory

Re: It wouldn't be an exact simulation

Post 2013 remasters generally have better dynamic range as that is when Apple introduced Sound Check which is a "Loudness units relative to full scale" (LUFS) volume equaliser, which is now the standard.

Google meets the neighbors and gets both barrels over its new UK datacenter

Re: Suggested Condition

Foreign direct investment should be banned anyway.

Foreign companies don't invest in the UK because they want to help the UK, they do so because they plan to extract more money from the UK then they put in.

Flock cameras go up in flames as cops hunt suspected firebugs

Re: appealing for help from the local community

"A private company isn't necessarily bound by the US constitution as that document applies mainly to the government."

Private companies are part of the Government, it is the Government that issues and manages corporate charters.

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 8 GB 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 spat

"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.