Posts by fpx

Lucky 13: SpaceX aims for July 16 Starship flight test

Really, did nobody get the sarcasm in my comment above, about the left-pocket vs. right-pocket dealing that Musk does to bury losses? I guess that proves the point about Musk's reality distortion field.

SpaceX can be very profitable company because it can just increase the launch price for Starlink to whatever it feels like. And Starlink can be a very profitable company because, it can sell interconnect capacity to xAIs data centers in Space. And xAI can be a very profitable company, because every Optimus robot will require a subscription. Losing a few billions on Twitter is just a rounding error when you're thinking in trillions.

Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module

Re: So many questions

It's not that easy. When you push the big red button in a regular nuclear power plant, control rods are inserted to stop fission. Problem is, there is still significant decay heat from unstable fission byproducts on the order of 1% even one day after the shutdown. So in a 4 GWt power plant, you still get 40 MW of thermal energy 24h after shutdown. See Fukushima -- the reactors were successfully shut down as the earthquake occurred, but with the cooling circuits not functioning, decay heat melted the reactor anyway with disastrous consequences.

So it's a valid question to ask what happens if the neutron source is unplugged _and_ coolant is removed.

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

ETCS, LZB (Linienzugbeeinflussung, the German predecessor) and plain old visual signals are still in operation everywhere. Is that not enough of a backup to keep at least some trains running?

France and Germany agree to disagree, ditch joint next-gen Euro fighter

The EU and the rest of the world is painfully aware that all American tech has a kill switch that could be used against us when a certain President is offended.

There are innovations and expertise coming out of these bleeding edge projects that have benefits beyond just fighter jets, and there is some good in just talking to each other to get such projects off the drawing board.

However, in Ukraine, the only use for fighter jets is to fire weapons that were designed for air launch, far from the front line. Elsewhere, fighter jets are only useful against stone-age adversaries that can not afford modern anti-aircraft missiles. Keeping the meat bag safe limits what a fighter jet can do, in more ways than one. The number of missions where it is beneficial to have a human brain in the cockpit, rather than in a FPV VR dome half a world away, is shrinking.

HP customer claims firmware update shoved printer off support cliff

Reminds me of my experience with Sport Tracks from Zone Five Software, which allowed me to download and analyze tracking data from my Garmin GPS offline. Then they introduced a shiny new version that was cloud based. All your tracking data had to be uploaded to the cloud, just like Strava or Garmin's own offerings. I did not want that, and the old version was working just fine.

Then came a final mandatory "security" update for the old version that first started nagging "This version is obsolete. You must upgrade!", and a few months later, disabled the import of new device data, rendering the otherwise perfectly functional software useless.

For some reason, that stunt did not convince me to throw them more money.

SpaceX scrubs Starship launch with seconds to go

Economics 101

Even if you can solve the "easy" parts of self-sufficiency like air, water, food, and energy, there is a whole host of items that are, for now, impossible to produce on Mars. Nobody is going to build iPhones on Mars. Or TVs. Furniture. Mattresses. Glass. Steel. Medicines. Condoms. Imagine the supply chains going into the products that you see all around you.

All of these items will have to be shipped from earth at Millions per kilogram. And what has Mars to give in return? Nothing of value. Maybe you can sell a few guaranteed-Martian made space rocks as souvenirs.

A Mars colony would have a trade deficit of Trillions of dollars per year, depending on Earth to subsidize it indefinitely -- until we can maybe find some unobtainium on Mars.

Bots are taking over the internet and AI users are to blame

Google (choose your poison) searches have become futile "thanks" to search engine optimization. Now we do not get relevant results but those that advertisers want us to see.

"AI" searches have the benefit that the companies behind them are burning through trillions of venture capital and do not have to show a return on investment. Yet.

When these companies find out that they can tap into advertisement revenue, it's just a matter of time until AI search is just as ad-driven and enshittified as regular search.

Surrender as a service: Microsoft unlocks BitLocker for feds

Frankly, I find it hard to blame Microsoft here. Like the article says they are torn between demands to keep data secure and demands to recover user data legitimately. And they are focused on the demands of businesses where their revenue comes from. My employer requires me to use Bitlocker, and my employer is scared both that confidential data is stolen and that important data is lost to the digital void when an employee forgets their Bitlocker password. Storing a backup key with the corporate user account makes sense here. For better or worse, my employer must trust Microsoft (OneDrive, Teams, Outlook, etc.)

I applaud Microsoft that they also allow storing the Bitlocker recovery key locally, which avoids this trust issue here. For many users it still makes sense to trust Microsoft with the recovery key, because it allows recovery, e.g., when a laptop breaks and you want to move the drive to another PC.

Like the comments above says, if storing the recovery key on paper only is not good enough for you, there are other options available.

Windows 11 update leaves Blu-ray and TV apps stuttering

Re: When are MS going to be prosecuted

Another user who has not bothered to read the terms and conditions.

I did. And it said that if anything fails, Microsoft's liability is limited to the amount that you paid for the license. Except in case of gross negligence. Good luck proving that to a jury against their army of lawyers.

Well, that's what it said years ago, when I last bothered to read through the license. T&Cs change faster than one can read them.

Small nuke reactors are really coming online by next year, US energy secretary insists

Re: I'm surprised. Almost.

Agree and disagree. The current large nuclear power plants suffer economically because there are no economies of scale. There's relatively few of them, every site has its challenges (both in terms of geography and governance), and the workforce to build and operate them is different every time. As you say, SMRs have the promise to profit from economies of scale, when you build (and tear down) hundreds of them in a specialized factory where talent is retained, and then ship and operate them easily and nuclear-maintenance free. This would apply more to the double-digit MW range rather than three or more digits. I think the jury's still out on whether SMRs can deliver on that promise, and whether the costs will be comparable to wind and solar, but I do see the potential.

NASA bars Chinese citizens from its facilities, networks, even Zoom calls

See, we got to the moon first! Now, sorry to say that we had to scrap the Human Sample Return mission to remain within budget .... but don't worry, we sent them astronauts a couple potatoes to farm.

Does that ban also apply to green card holders? It sure sounds like it, but this article only talks about visas, which the green card is not. And how about golden ticket holders?

Crypto-crasher Do Kwon admits guilt over failed not-so-stablecoin that erased $41 billion

Obviously today's tech bros have not learned the lesson from George Soros crashing the "stable" British pound sterling. Or rather, one should wonder why investors believe that tech bros have a better grip on financial stability than the Bank of England.

Air Force buying two Tesla Cybertrucks so it can learn to destroy them

I would assume that the US government can just nicely and quietly ask Elon for the remote kill switch for any Tesla vehicle. And close the windows, lock the doors, and set the heated seats to maximum.

Haven't they watched the early Top Gear episode that all baddies drive Toyota Hilux? Or the episodes where they drive a Hilux over an active volcano, or to the North Pole? Good luck trying that with a Cybertruck.

Nothing to see here: Brave browser blocks privacy-busting Microsoft Recall

"Signal Desktop for Windows 11 includes a default Screen Security setting that tells the operating system that messages are protected with digital rights management (DRM), thereby blocking any and all screenshots from being taken - including the automated screenshots Recall uses."

The lesson learned here is that copyright is stronger than privacy.

Hey, Microsoft, remember that _I_ have implicit copyright in everything that I write, including this comment.

Struggling to sell EVs, Tesla pivots to slinging burgers

Re: Meh.

"McDonalds earns more money from real estate than it does from selling burgers."

That's the case for pretty much any franchise, isn't it? I remember reading that the IKEA mothership makes money by licensing the brand name to the franchise stores. The license fees are so high that the furniture stores struggle to make a profit, while the licensing fees accumulate in a double dutch tax haven before the profits are passed on to the shareholders, tax free. It's a role model that all franchises -- those big enough to afford a global army of lawyers -- like to copy.

Apple-Intel divorce to be final next year

I was working for a hardware/software company that specialized in digital signal processing. A lot of signal processing. They liked to use PowerPC chippery, because their floating-point units were superior to Intel's.

In the mid-noughts, they started drooling about new processors being designed especially for this niche by a little-known start-up called P.A. Semi. They had early prototypes and good rapport with the chip designers.

Then Apple came in, and bought P.A. Semi, not for its products, but for their expertise. The engineering team started working on what is now Apple's own designs, never releasing their own products.

Russia expected to pass experimental law that tracks foreigners in Moscow via smartphones

Here in the West

The laws are already on the books for the NSA to track all foreigners' cellphones, no app needed.

Never mind that the government also has warrant-less access to all "business records" including mobile carriers or ad tracking companies -- though probably not in real time.

Qatar’s $400M jet for Trump is a gold-plated security nightmare

I'm sure the NSA still has the blueprints where all the bugs were installed before the aircraft's delivery to Qatar.

US Transpo Sec wants air traffic control rebuild in 3 years, asks Congress for blank check

Problem Solved!

No problem, our DOGE geniuses can easily train an AI to replace all human air traffic controllers. And the best part is, it gets better with every crash!

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Make Aerospace Grotty Again

"I'm sure after many years, and many billions, you can tell me (ie, cite) the exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, the exact amount of anthropomorphic CO2 & methane emitted by human activity vs natural, the amount of warming over and above the expected following an Ice Age (large or small) etc etc."

Once upon a time, a very religious family friend gave me a small book about science in the bible. One of its lines of reasoning was that "carbon dating is imprecise, therefore we must discount all science based on it. There is no need for carbon dating, because the chronology presented by the bible is perfect." It used this argument to disprove the notion that dinosaurs lived many millions years ago -- a figure implied by "bad" carbon dating, when the world is proven to be just 6000 years old.

Fundamentalist christians reason that, because Science cannot put precise numbers on anything (see above), it can't be true. Better believe the bible, which is obviously very precise about everything.

America's National Science Foundation tells DEI, misinfo studies: You're fired

Re: tragedy and farce

Slow motion? Not at all. The movie was set 500 years in the future. At the moment we are on track to accomplish that in just four.

Pentagon needs China's rare earths, Beijing just put them behind a permit wall. Oops

Problem solved ... once and for all!

"a single F-35 contains 900 pounds of rare earths, while a Virginia-class submarine uses more than four and a half tons of the stuff"

There's your alternative source of rare earths. Just recycle a few jets and submarines. Don't these F-35s sit on the ground most of the time, waiting for service, anyway?

PIRG's 'Electronic Waste Graveyard' lists 100+ gadgets dumped after support vanished

"Again, the end of support means that your Windows 10 PC won't suddenly stop working, yet running Windows without the availability of security patches isn't considered wise."

That's just the half of it. My home PC is still running Windows 7. It still works perfectly well for me. It hasn't received security patches in a while, but it runs behind a firewall that is configured to let in absolutely no traffic. Safe enough for me as long as I don't install any malware myself.

Most applications have also stopped receiving updates. I wouldn't mind, but of course the rest of the world is moving on, and many Web sites now insist on using new features that aren't supported by the old browsers that I am using. For about two years I've been getting banners that my browsers are not supported; now, there's some features that do not work.

The same happens with cloud-based apps. Just to quote one specific example, the Dropbox app will be the next to go; it keeps reminding me that it will cease working in May.

I can still run ancient Commodore 64 software from 40 years ago in an emulator, but some apps that are less than 5 years old -- no chance.

Self-driving car maker Musk's DOGE rocks up at self-driving car watchdog, cuts staff

Re: Self-driving is a fallacy

I would be happy to delegate driving to my car. I don't need FSD that works everywhere in all conditions. I wish manufacturers would focus on the tedious parts of driving first. If the car would drive autonomously in clear highway conditions, and in stop-and-go-traffic, that would be a major relief. If the driving conditions are more complex, I am happy to take over, but please with an advance notice in minutes, not fractions of a second.

Trump kills clearances for infosec's SentinelOne, ex-CISA boss Chris Krebs

"Matters such as the contents of a laptop belonging to Biden's son Hunter that allegedly containing evidence of corruption and proof that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.”

What a bombshell. Hunter's laptop also had definitive proof that the election was stolen!

Oh.

You know, I'm a great fan of the Oxford comma. Corruption COMMA and proof. Makes this so much clearer.

SpaceX scores $5.9B lion's share of Space Force launch contracts

Funny that DOGE hasn't found any waste whatsoever among these missions. $10B is just the launch cost, who knows what we could have saved by cancelling the lot.

Oh well, it might happen anyway when they find out that the government employees that are essential to planning and launching missions have been terminated for "performance."

HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional

Security?

"Lores has also argued that using third-party suppliers is a security risk, claiming malware could theoretically be slipped into cartridge controller chips."

If that were possible, then the printer itself is the security risk.

VA IT contract cancellation DOGE boasted about ... was due to end in 10 days anyway

Re: Wasn't it ideal

But ... but .... but ... an organization that seeks out to employ disabled veterans is discriminatory! It must be sued to change its evil D.E.I. practices.

Move fast and break things. If this government ends up broken, Elon can find another to retire to.

National Science Foundation staff axed by Trump fear for US scientific future

It's not just the talent that is lost, but also the future talent that will never apply for a government or government-funded job.

But then, who needs talent when Elon's death star AI will instantly solve fusion, sea-level rise (don't call it global warming) and world peace the moment it is turned on, with no science involved.

Lightsail space tech gets tailwind from Caltech breakthrough

So the the lightsail, you can send a spacecraft to some other star system in a few hundred years? Great! And then what? After having accelerated to relativistic speed, the spacecraft will arrive at relativistic speed, with no means of slowing down. So it has a few minutes to observe, and then it's off into a much bigger void beyond.

Boom's XB-1 jet nails supersonic flight for first time

Re: 80 passengers?

It's an engineering marvel that will never be economical to run.

First, even if the ticket price were "just" 5k, there's a limited set of business and first class travelers willing to splurge on saving a bit on travel time. When you have the choice of 5 hours squeezed into a tight seat versus 10 hours in a fold-flat bed, and the ability to charge those extra 5 comfortable hours as overtime, what do you choose?

Second, you are saving significant time only on non-stop flights, and there will be few of them. If you have to connect, most of the time saved evaporates. Now the total time is 8 hours instead of 10, for triple the price.

Third, because of the factors above, only a few number of these jets will be built. Economies of scale will not apply, making the plane more expensive to build and run. All those airline options will evaporate when Boom will be unable to keep its promises -- just like Branson's pre-orders did.

This jet will certainly find a niche as a toy for the super-rich, though. "Nyah, nyah, your puny Gulfstream can't even go supersonic!"

Man admits to paying magician $150 to create anti-Biden robocall

Note the Twisted Logic Here

This guy got exactly what he wanted, media and regulatory attention, and he knows that this attention plays in his favor. He knows that in the end, very likely, he will not get fined, but just be told to be nice in the future. Which turns the entire exercise into a net win for him.

Too many politicians these days have swallowed that very same logic, that there is no negative attention. The negativity eventually evaporates when the media frenzy turns elsewhere, leaving only attention behind. Welcome to entertainment circus politics in the 21st century.

JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry

Not Without Your Consent

Ah, the old excuse. Of course your consent is buried on page 42 of a 100+ page document in legalese that you have to click through. The statement is just as nonsensical as "we take your privacy seriously."

US agencies warn made-in-China drones might help Beijing snoop on the world

In Other News ...

Using made-in-USA technology might help Washington snoop on the world.

Like using Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Tesla. Washington reserves the right to gain access to data collected by American companies worldwide or businesses operating in the greatestest nation in the inner solar system.

Sure, the difference is what you are doing with the data. I don't mind the data being used to solve crimes, but I'd prefer them to go in with a warrant based on probable cause, not to blame guilt based on association, rumor or what US citizens would refer to as free speech.

This could still wing its way to you, if you have the dosh: One Concorde engine seeks new home

Re: Asking for a Friend....

How long will it run at full thrust before it's sucked the Mustang's tanks dry? Or rather, to how many percent of full thrust will it be able to spin up before it runs out of gas?

Branson's wallet snaps shut for Virgin Galactic

Credit where Credit is Due

Give Bransom some credit for getting this venture off the ground. He has no obligation to fund this business indefinitely.

There's no ticket price for going to orbit yet, and once there is, it will be at least 100x as expensive. There's a significant slice of population who can afford a $500k joyride, but not a $50M one.

I'm not part of either slice, and even though Branson says that he doesn't have the deepest pockets anymore, I'd still be happy to trade him for mine.

Google Chrome coders really, truly, absolutely ready to cull third-party cookies from 2024

Re: I have this browser open to read El Reg and nothing else

Yes, it's a pain in the ass.

But, unlike merely refusing third-party cookies, it is actually a solution to the problem, which is that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook etc. are all tracking you with their first-party cookies.

I wish browsers were able to sandbox cookies into windows or tabs.

I Don't Care

I don't care about third-party cookies. I flush all my cookies down the drain after each browsing session, and each session is to one site only. For example, I have this browser open to read El Reg and nothing else. When I'm done with El Reg, I close the browser, which is set to delete all cookies upon exit.

As the commenter above already said, the big advertisers have no problem to track you across the entire web anyway.

AMD's latest FPGA promises super low latency AI for Flash Boy traders

The commenters above appear to misunderstand the nature of these trades. It's about detecting minuscule price differences between trades. I.e., if you see an offer for stock of company A at $10.01, and a purchase order for the same stock at $10.05, these traders will step in and buy the stock from the first trade and sell them to the second trade.It's a guaranteed profit, you just have to be a few microseconds faster than the competition. This guaranteed profit is sucked from the other market participants, since of course the fair thing would have been to let the two trades settle directly at $10.03.

Cryptocoin Ponzi scheme AirBit Club co-founder jailed

Roulette table

Give me your money, I offer a guaranteed 90% ROI, way better than any casino or lottery!

Airport chaos as eGates down for the count across UK

No Layovers

LHR was already on my list of airports never to layover in. The threat of missing my connection is way too high. Also on the list are PHL and ORD in wintertime, and all of the greater NYC area airports any time of the year.

NASA, DARPA enlist Lockheed to build nuclear-powered spacecraft

Having dangerously limited knowledge of the subject, I wonder why you would use hydrogen instead of, say, liquid nitrogen. Wouldn't that be easier to handle and more efficient, given its higher mass?

Rocket Lab wants to dry off and reuse Electron booster recovered from the ocean

Re: Probably just as well

How hard would it be to stick some small wings and wheels on the rocket, and have it come gliding down, Space Shuttle style? No fuel needed.

It would not have to be a very soft landing, since there's no people onboard, and the structure can withstand quite a few G's.

You're too dumb to use click-to-cancel, Big Biz says with straight face

Re: How about a simple rule?

Seconded. Also require clear information, on an easily reachable online page, about when the next payment will be processed, and offer an option to forward-cancel on that date, or better yet, on a specific future date.

Attorney sues Microsoft for $1.75M, claiming his email has been useless since May

Re: $6 per month service

Once upon a time, about a decade ago, I read the T&Cs for Microsoft Windows.

There was a clause that, if anything goes wrong, such as Windows eating your homework, and unless you can prove gross negligence, damages are limited to the amount of money that you paid for the Windows license, or US$ 50, or the actual damages incurred, whatever is less.

It wouldn't surprise me if a similar clause applied here. So good luck attempting to prove gross negligence against an army of lawyers.

'Joan Is Awful' Black Mirror episode rebounds on Netflix

That may be true but does not apply to my point above, which was about updates. A software provider -- like Apple in this case -- is free to attach new T&Cs to an update. It's a bundle. You have the choice to accept the updated T&Cs and install the update, or to decline the update, in which case the prior T&Cs remain in effect.

To use some more concrete examples, if you do not like Windows including more forced advertisement, you can remain with unsupported, vulnerable legacy versions. If you do not want to agree to new data collection terms and conditions with the latest WhatsApp update, you are free to remain with an earlier version -- that will be disconnected from the network in 30 days.

See, you have a choice! Or not.

Let's not forget that you not just have to read the T&C once. There is software (looking at you, Apple) that makes you re-agree to the new and improved T&Cs whenever you install a minor update.

With software updates now coming at you pretty much round the clock, new T&Cs are essentially coming to you faster than you can read them.

Amazing that this is legal.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

These days, the only way to get attention from customer support is by raising a stink on Twitter. Have less than a million followers? Forget about it.

And if you read all the fine print of the license agreements that you had to agree to in order to use your smart devices, you will find out that Amazon, Microsoft, Google can disable your accounts for essentially any reason. And of course you've given up the rights to sue them or join a class action suit along the way.

Sure, some of those clauses might not stand in court, but who's got the deep pockets to fight them about it?