Re: This feels like an own goal...
On other news: The UK Government is studying how to change their country's name to Elbonia...
Posts by twellys
57 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Nov 2013
We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners
Security pioneer Ross Anderson dies at 67
CERN is training robot dogs to spot radiation hazards at Large Hadron Collider
Intel spices up its FPGA game with open source and RISC-V freebies
Monday 18th September 2023 16:48 GMT
Re: Giving Away Free Stuff?
No, Intel (Atera) were bundling their own Nios2 32-bit CPU for ages before. With Risc-5 advertising that 32 or 64-bit, free, and a potential of customers for Risc-5, then it's a no-brainer for Intel.
As FPGAs are an expensive way of doing things at scale, I agree. However, FPGAs have their place:
* Cheaper than ASICs for small/medium runs: Medical/Industrial/Aerospace/Test
* Re-configurable: Any prototypes
* Massively parallel: Crypto farms
As for Intel & AMD buying the FPGA companies, both Intel & AMD have incorporated their FPGAs as part of their CPUs - c'mon they don't want to re-spin their CPUs for every exploit they find?!
Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye
Grant Shapps named UK defense supremo in latest 'tech-savvy' Tory tale
Raspberry Pi production rate rising to a million a month
Monday 5th June 2023 15:57 GMT
Well, I make the trip down to Cambridge each week from Yorkshire (Wetherby way) 'coz I'm a grunt, sorry, contractor. That journey is around 150 miles.
However I get your point of not knowing if there's stock, although you can telephone the shop before you go. Also there's the petrol/diesel/train fares/etc. to consider - Saying that though are there any museums (Computing Museum / Duxford / etc.) or other things in the Cambridge area as well? Just a thought, that's all.
CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules
UK health minister confirms data platform worth £480m will replicate Palantir dashboards
The CES tat bazaar: Bike desks, AI-powered bird feeders, and the smelloverse
UK lawmakers look to enforce blocking tools for legal but harmful content
Tech contractor who uses an umbrella company? UK tax is coming after them
Monday 5th December 2022 18:59 GMT 
HMRC have switched tactics...
For IR35 and VAT (Making Tax Digital), HMRC have switched tactics from prosecuting the little person to strong-arming big companies and big departments.
* IR35: Instead of the contractor, it's now big companies or umbrellas who decides the PAYE/VAT/etc. - so HMRC can fine or prosecute the big companies.
e.g. HMRC fining DEFRA and MoJ - https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/21/defra_moj_ir35/
* VAT - Again turning self-employed/small businesses doing their own VAT, it's now the big accounting firms.
* Any case, the umbrella/accounting/big companies, if caught by HMRC, can dump most of it on the self-employed/contractor/small businesses
Win-Win eh?
I hear the Income Tax is next...
Version 252 of systemd, as expected, locks down the Linux boot process
Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of
Physics Nobel Prize in a superposition between three quantum physicists
Asus packs 12-core Intel i7 into a Raspberry Pi-sized board
BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons
NASA wants a hundredfold upgrade for space computers
Dell and Ubuntu certify latest model of XPS 13 ultrabook
The Raspberry Pi Pico goes wireless with the $6 W
The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs
Tuesday 17th May 2022 11:56 GMT
Open Look?
I'm surprised no-one has talked about Sun's Open Look (olwm/olvwm) that didn't have a task bar, didn't have a start menu, et al.
(and Sun keyboards had their own keys for Cut/Copy/Paste on the left hand of the keyboard - Very Useful!)
Also, I remember using olvwm for Linux when using Slackware 3.*... (Middle Aged person alert!)
Samsung unveils hardened SD card that can last 16 years if you treat it right
RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81
In the lab: Robotic AI-powered exoskeletons to help disabled people move freely without implants
Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?
UK minister tries to intervene after Government Digital Service migration mangles Ministry of Justice webpages
British govt emits fuzzy vision for UK version of American boffin special forces group Darpa
Looking for an IT person? Searching for a job? Sign up for free ads – or browse through these job openings
Uncle Sam says it's perfecting autonomous AI-powered drone, vehicle swarms to 'dominate' battlefields
UK tech spending in 2020 will be hit harder than in France or Germany with little prospect of growth next year – analysts
NASA mulls going all steam-punk with a fleet of jumping robots to explore Saturn and Jupiter's mysterious moons
The UK's favourite lockdown cheese is Big and Red but doesn't require a stinking great audit after consumption
Snapping at Canonical's Snap: Linux Mint team says no to Ubuntu store 'backdoor'
80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds
Could it be? Really? The Year of Linux on the Desktop is almost here, and it's... Windows-shaped?
Oh Hell. Remember the glory days of Demon Internet? Well, now would be a good time to pick a new email address
Don't panic! Don't panic! UK IT job ads plummet as Brexit uncertainty grabs UK tech sector by the short and curlies
Another rewrite for 737 Max software as cosmic bit-flipping tests glitch out systems – report
Monday 5th August 2019 10:46 GMT
Re: Not Cosmic Rays
I agree entirely. Personally, I think the MCAS was classed as a DAL-D device (Device failing is minor inconvenience), so safety critical requirements were not needed.
Now, FAA have, I think, upgraded the DAL to DAL-A/B (Device failing is hazardous or catastrophic), causing to add many checks to the process. One of those checks is to simulate bit-flips/stuck-at faults etc. (That's why I reckon the MCAS is a SRAM FPGA because the most common bit-flip failures is in the State-Machines).
YMMV
(Have done > 7 years doing DO-254, going up to DAL-B in severity)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
