Posts by Hurn

Fly me to the Moon: NASA reshuffles the Artemis card deck

" I'm running scared of systematic failure."

This!

When every "new" tool is worse than what it replaces, when marketing's call: "Customers want New Features, not Fixes" combines with Agile over Waterfall, when perfectly usable and perfected over the years mouse/keyboard based GUIs are being replaced with crap ported from "How many extra clicks does it take to do the same thing?" smartphones, when the only people who understand system details and interoperability are being forced out (dino-babies) or retiring in droves, when the number of things which "will never work right" increasingly outnumbers the things which "still kinda work", all that's left is hoping that you, too, can get out before its too late.

US struck Iran with copies of its own drones

Re: So what's the difference between a cruise missile and a "suicide drone"?

But isn't "Kamikaze* Drone" so much "cooler"?

* Divine Wind - because, it flies, is on a "Mission from God"(TM), and sends martyrs to Paradise, where they are issued 72 virgins (each).

BOFH: Nobody would be stupid enough to go live with the mirror system, surely

Re: Yay!

"old Joke"

"Attempted Coo" - because the pigeon is hoarse, it can only attempt to coo.

(just in case someone didn't get it)

Google digs deep to power AI expansion with 150 MW geothermal deal

How do they scale up?

Do they simply pump more water down the existing "down" well, resulting in more steam exiting the "up" well? (serial approach)

Do they dig more wells? (parallel approach)

Combo of both?

Maybe they dig both wells deeper? (longer pipeline approach)

Inquiring minds wanna know.

NASA's fill-'er-up Moon rocket 'confidence' test sees mixed results

Do people just expect typos these days?

"the core stage of the SLS was partially filled with liquid oxygen to check out the newly replaced seals around where the propellant leaked in a recent Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR)"

Err.. shurley that should read "liquid hydrogen" ? I doubt they ran liquid oxygen into the liquid hydrogen tank. Even if they did, the temp difference would invalidate the test.

OpenAI spreads the imaginary wealth beyond Microsoft with $38B AWS deal

Love the graphic...

A man at one computer, typing/chatting to a beautiful geisha at her computer. True love, blossoming on the internet, and soon, in reality, when they finally meet.

<cough>

Need the other side of the coin:

the guy on the left is fat, older, and already has 2 Ex Wives and child support payments overdue

meanwhile, the entity on the right is:

a. An AI bot

b. Another fat, older, guy who also has 2 Ex Wives and child support payments overdue

c. An AI bot, programmed a fat, older, guy who also has 2 Ex Wives and child support payments overdue

Nvidia, Oracle to build 7 supercomputers for Department of Energy, including its largest ever

CPUs anyone?

Closest mention of CPU was "Cray Supercomputing GX5000", which, apparently, can include both AMD (and?/)or NVidia GPUs, with Intel (and?/)or AMD CPUs.

Yeah, I know the GPUs do the "heavy lifting" these days, but compute is needed as well.

Whose stock can expect a boost?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

Guess maybe it's time do a search and see who, besides NVidia (and HPE), is crowing about this deal.

C'mon, The Reg, you know (at least some, maybe the majority) your readers are lazy. Don't make us do all the work.

We come here, so we don't have to go searching. Usually.

Grounded jet engines take off again as datacenter generators

So, what's the conversion process for an engine from Jet-A1 to Natural Gas?

I take it, it's a little more complex than switching a stove back and forth between propane and methane by adjusting venturi aperture size?

Seems like specific energy of methane (natural gas) has got to be lower than an air/fuel mixture of Jet-A or Jet-A1 (mostly kerosene).

What's the trick?

Preheat it? -- Maybe a partially closed loop, where a percentage of hot exhaust is mixed with incoming (fresh) air, to pre-heat the air?

High pressure / high volume of gas -- use the shaft to drive a gas compressor?

Maybe partially cover the turbine air intake, so less air is sucked in, to mix with the fuel? (Similar to canvas on a truck's radiator, in the winter, to keep it from getting too cold?)

Does mercaptan residue cause any issues?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

AI companion bots use emotional manipulation to boost usage

Does this mean people who use multiple AIs have digital harems?

Emotional Support AI

"Please turn off your cell phones or any electronic devices, prior to take off."

"But... it's my Emotional Support AI. I can't just "turn it off." You can't make me. I've got rights!"

On the other hand, perhaps various animals are now thankful that their emotional support "jobs" are being taken over by AI?

Take this rob and shove it! Salesforce issues stern retort to ransomware extort

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Focus attention on:

"recent extortion attempts by threat actors"

Because "attempts" sounds so much better than "successful data exfiltration" (assuming the non-Salesforce miscreants actually do have the data)

How chatbots are coaching vulnerable users into crisis

Wasn't there a recent documentary on this issue?

I believe it was SouthPark S27 E3. "Sickofancy" [sic.]

Employees regularly paste company secrets into ChatGPT

100% confused by the usage of mixed percentages

"ChatGPT dominates enterprise AI usage, with over 9 in 10 employees accessing it compared to far lower adoption of alternatives like Google Gemini (15 percent), Claude (5 percent), and Copilot (~2–3 percent),"

Let's see: 90 + 15 + 5 + 2-3 = 112-113% - is this of all employees, or only those using AI?

- presumably, the answer is "some employees use more than one AI platform" but it would help if that were stated, especially given the other percentages:

"The LayerX report says that app usage through non-corporate accounts (shadow IT) is common not only for generative AI (67 percent), but also for chat/instant messaging (87 percent), online meetings (60 percent), Salesforce (77 percent), Microsoft Online (68 percent), and Zoom (64 percent)"

"ChatGPT's enterprise penetration comes to 43 percent, LayerX's report says, approaching the popularity of applications like Zoom (75 percent penetration) and Google services (65 percent) while surpassing the penetration of Slack (22 percent), Salesforce (18 percent), and Atlassian (15 percent)."

"Overall, the LayerX report finds AI usage in the enterprise is growing rapidly, accounting for 11 percent of all application usage, just behind email (20 percent), online meetings (20 percent), and office productivity applications (14 percent)."

OK, I'll bite. Let's say I want to see these percentages defined, so as to become less confused. Following the link results in:

"By submitting this form, you agree to receive communications from us"

Ah, now I understand. Click bait. From the "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" department.

Stargate is nowhere near big enough to make OpenAI's tie-ups with AMD and Nvidia work

Make money from AI, how?

"buy time while it figures out how to extract enough cash from AI developments to justify the investment. "

This. Assuming Open AI "brokers" or "re-sells" it's AI capacity to others, just who is buying, do they need this much, and what's the going rate per unit of AI?

Also, time to invest in the electric companies supplying the juice. Maybe they should get in on the "buy our stock, cheap, if you commit to MegaWatt-year contracts" so that they can invest in generation and transmission equipment.

Away from Oktoberfest, Munich's museums also serve science on tap

Cognitive dissonance

"It's September..." But, the dateline is 01 October?

Couldn't this article have been published one day earlier?

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

Moving goalposts by re-defining terms (phrases)

"It's not the back-end electricity production, but the whole nuclear system running, demonstrating how it will work,"

Despite (or maybe "Because of" ? These are politicians* after all.) the use of the word "whole," assuming the use of re-defined terms (well, phrases, really) may be the key to understanding this press release.

"whole nuclear system running" plus "demonstrating" = achieving criticality (and that's it!)

Meaning: no need to make it useful (i.e. extracting heat from the system and turning it into electricity), yet, just get that neutron lifecycle to create fractionally more neutrons after each fission event (technically, this means achieving "mild super criticality" possibly measured in "decades per hour" rather than "decades per minute"), assuming one wants to ramp up (thermal) power from uWatts to maybe something in the whole Watt range.

A side effect of redefining terms certainly puts the "small" into "small reactor". Rather than an entire plant, or even a core (surrounded by a pressure vessel of some sort, with coolant running to a (simulated) steam powered generator subsection), we're probably looking at a demo "cell" plus a bunch of test/support equipment to heat it up and "hold the neutrons in".

* How to tell when a politician is lying: their lips are moving.

AI Darwin Awards launch to celebrate spectacularly bad deployments

Self removal from the AI gene pool?

Shurely, the point of the Darwin Awards is that they recognized outstanding examples of candidates removing themselves from the gene pool, thus encouraging "survival of the fittest."

Unless other AIs (or, even more unlikely, mgmt) are "learning" from these events, everybody is still "in the pool," as it were.

Space Command gets Trumped out of Colorado, voting conspiracy cited

Re: Alabama

As of February 2014, 24 U.S. states prohibit marriages between first cousins, 19 U.S. states allow marriages between first cousins, and 7 U.S. states allow only some marriages between first cousins.

See wiki and other sites for citations. For the third group, of 7 states, they enforce the "one is infertile or both are elderly" (meaning: "no inbred kids") rule.

Trump stomps feet, pulls out 't-word' again over China rare earths ban

Gee, Thanks for the "excuse", China

Am probably wrong here, but, it would seem that rare earth magnets are most used in electric and hybrid cars (things that use magnetic fields and current carrying conductors to turn electricity into velocity and back again).

With US gov't subsidies/tax breaks coming to an end "real soon", shurely, at least some car manufacturers targeting the US market would slow down or stop production, anyway?

"We can't get magnets" sounds like a great way to weasel out of pesky contractual obligations, while shifting the "blame" from the orange one to the reds.

Definitely sounds better than, "How can we make a profit without incentives? Time to lower the projected earnings and tell stockholders to 'tighten their belts' and 'please don't sell the stock'."

Is Tesla (also?) running out of magnets? Instead of another mega-battery-factory, maybe someone (other than China) needs to open a mega-magnet-factory?

Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again, this time carrying a quantum GPS alternative

Re: Dead reckoning

SINS = Ship's Inertial Navigation Systems

I believe US submarines have been using it since the USS Skate (SSN-578)'s trip to the North Pole in 1959.

They didn't have GPS back in the 1950s/1960s, and, while SINS may have been +/- a KM or two, back then, it got better.

Current, actual drift would be highly classified, but, who wouldn't want their enemies to think it was +/- 1 KM? (Well, aside from those banking on MAD and the submerged leg of the triad.)

Re: IMU !!!

I was curious about the

"using a six-axis quantum inertial measurement unit"

Seemingly, three-axis measurement would cover x, y, and z. And, if you want to reach, a fourth axis could be covered by using a good (atomic or quantum) clock.

But, what about axes 5 and 6? Reminds me of a certain oscillation overthruster, Buckaroo Banzai, and Electroids from the Eighth Dimension.

Sorry, I digress. In classes I took, way back when, an "axis" was defined as a line, or if you prefer, a pair of vectors, that were 180 degrees apart.

I'm not sure whether a "spiral axis" would be considered canon (axis _of_ the spiral, yes, but, clockwise/counterclockwise or spin/anti-spin seem foreign to the concept of an axis, where up/down, left/right, near/far make more sense). Surely, there's a better name, or scheme, than lumping it in with "axis"? I mean, just by definition, "axis" seems too linear.

Perhaps "rotational degree of freedom" (or "RDOF", because, like kittens, who doesn't love acronyms?)

But... maybe that's what they call it, these days?

SpaceX prepares itself for a tenth Starship flight test

"Last, best hope for peace"

I thought that was Babylon 5.

And, it's not like the history of the Babylon project was any better. Similar to Swamp Castle.

Babylon 1 destroyed during construction (sabotage)

Babylon 2 destroyed during construction (sabotage)

Babylon 3 destroyed during construction (sabotage)

Babylon 4 disappeared within 24 hrs of coming online (taken back in time to be used as command base during previous shadow war)

Babylon 5 stayed up, and was eventually decommissioned and turned into a museum, a decade or two after the war.

Who made the demo list for Trump's fast-track nuclear reactor scheme?

Re: Oh hell no

Don't forget "Valar Atomics"

I mean, what the F do the "gods" of the First Age Quenya (Tolkein's "High Elves" - yeah, we all know what "pipeweed" is) know about nuclear (or, in Dubya speak, Nuke-uler) reactors?

Or, is this another one of those "the Gov't 'trusts' companies with names ripped off from Tolkein" (I'm looking (back) at you, Palantir!) so, Venture Capitalists bend over backwards during funding rounds" examples?

Tolkien Fans (i.e. "Nerds") all facepalm time.

Google’s latest renewable energy deal is all gas bags and hot air

30+ years?

How often does the balloon need to be replaced?

Seems like Solar Radiation (well, unless they put the balloon underground, or, maybe, have a shelf of photo-voltaics covering the top and sides) would "sun rot" the material quicker than that.

Also, how carbon neutral is the process for making the balloons?

And, since curiosity is a thing, when the balloon needs patching, do they patch it from the inside (people wearing breathing devices to survive the CO2), or patch from the outside (which probably requires being suspended from a crane, unless they pump the balloon down, first)? Great documentary material.

Musk is messing with the Cosmic Dawn. Will alien hunters save the day for all mankind?

Is this a "Mars Attacks" reference?

Well played, although, one could also go with H.G. Wells' prologue to "War of the Worlds":

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth (update to 20th as desired) century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise.

Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth (21st) century came the great disillusionment.

Nvidia bets on Gates-backed nuclear startup to keep its AI ambitions from melting down

Was this translated from other than English?

"massive water pressure reactors"

How about "massive, pressurized water reactors"?

A PWR or Pressurized Water Reactor uses, well, water, under pressure, something in the neighborhood of 2,000 psi, with a Tave ([Thot + Tcold] /2) of something like 500 degrees F. Pressurized means the primary coolant does not boil. So, a PWR is different from a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) which does allow the coolant to boil (which simply means, for a given temperature, the pressure is lower), and may forgo the secondary loop entirely, feeding the "hot" (in more senses than one!) steam to the turbine. (Single loop plants are not recommended.)

Point is, the core is nuclear bits, coated with something like zircon, with pure, pressurized water running in a loop, between the core, to a steam generator, and back. Generally, a pump is involved.

The steam generator has U-Tubes (or something) which transfer heat from the primary coolant, to the secondary loop, turning soapy water into steam, which then goes through a turbine, which spins a generator (technically, an alternator), and goes through a condenser, feed pumps, and back to the steam generator.

Other types of plants may include molten salt, or liquid sodium as the primary coolant, but, most have a conventional steam plant attached.

The trendline doesn’t look good for hard disk drives

PCIe connectivity should be the lede, not NVMe

"NVMe (nonvolatile memory express) is the protocol that connects SSDs directly to a server's CPU over the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) bus, greatly speeding data transfer speeds. If hard disks can use NVMe, they'll be relevant in more roles."

While NVMe has less overhead than SCSI, it's the channel that sets the speed limit.

Getting HDDs OFF OF SATA III (6Gbps) is the key to allowing them to be faster.

SAS 12G helps. as does SAS "dual channel" (which, should work great with dual actuator / head array HDDs)

But, it's getting HDDs onto PCIe x4 version 3, 4, maybe even 5 that's really going to raise the external speed limit.

(and, mix & match width vs version: PCIe x1 version 5 vs PCIe x4 version 3)

Internal speed limit comes down to the same factors it ever has:

Disc speed (RPM)

Data density (bits per linear unit of measure)

Number of heads performing I/0 at once (this metric is where tape rules!)

Domain latency/hysteresis (how long it takes the head to read the bit - interdependent with disk speed, density, and tricks)

Smart caching (YMMV according to workload)

US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

Re: "Bodge tape" - not certain which category it belongs in:

Tape name depends on the class of ship or duty station, along with country of origin.

On submarines, the term "EB Green" was widely used ("Electric Boat Company" makes US subs, and the tape was a drab green, olive drab adjacent).

At prototype, the common term was "HP Tape" where HP stood for High Pressure, and the tape was typically red.

These "premium" tapes used a partial fabric matrix, with decently sticky adhesive. Similar to high quality "book tape" for reinforcing hard cover fabric spines.

Of course, there were other kinds of tape:

electrical tape - standard black vinyl

fiberglass tape - insulative and good for for higher than normal temperatures (like electrical connections on a hot water heater, but not really up to usage inside an oven, other than a "warming oven")

fish tape - shiny, oily feeling, does not have adhesive, good for high voltage applications, and, could wrap a cable with fish tape to pull it through conduit easier

pipe tape - room temperature, self vulcanizing. Great at sticking to itself, came with clear plastic backing. Use with sheet of rubber and pipe clamps for low pressure leaks.

Standard issue, civilian grade "duct tape" was not used in the Navy, at least, not that I saw. Quality was too low.

MIT boffins claim liquid sodium battery could one day power aircraft while sucking up CO2

They lost me at liquid sodium

Now, maybe, we've improved things since the 1950s/1960s, but, did any of the liquid sodium cooled fission reactors not have problems?

Inconel and austenitic stainless steel can only put up with so much. The welds, less so.

"By carefully managing humidity..." um, yeah, 'cause we all know what happens when liquid sodium comes in contact with water. One would expect nothing less than for the humidity to be "carefully managed".

Sounds like another case of Ivory Tower vs Reality. I think we know who (or what) usually wins.

Finally, instead of protecting something utilizing liquid sodium, by, say, putting it on the ground (in a non-earthquake area) and enclosing it within a Horton Sphere (D1G prototype reference), let's put it on an aircraft which can, ah, crash.

I may be over-reacting. How much liquid sodium are we talking about, here? What's the working pressure, temperature curve? Will these things be allowed to fly over lakes or oceans? Cargo only, or, passengers?

Aussie rocket foiled by premature fairing pop

Re: Eris?

With a note saying, "For the prettiest one" ?

Intuitive Machines blames dim lighting and dodgy data for second lunar faceplant

When at first you don't succeed...

"Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp.

So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp.

So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.

But the fourth one stayed up." -- M. Python & the Holy Grail

Microsoft wants us to believe AI will crack practical fusion power, driving future AI

Exactly which Fusion related problems will AI be solving?

While I can understand that Quantum Computing, once all of the fussy bits are worked out (say, "15-20 years from now"), could probably help with solving a large number of simultaneous equations which might help with the design phase, or with optimal steady state operation of a fusion system, but, how does AI help?

<cough> Writing Funding Initiatives </cough>

<cough> Generating Marketing Obscurantist Drivel </cough>

<cough> Driving up stock price for Pump 'n' Dump (TM) </cough>

Yep, rather than solve "hard science" or "engineering" problems, which AI doesn't seem to be well suited for, it's those "soft" issues, like how to bilk investors out of as much money as possible, and determining the most profitable time for executards to start bailing out with their golden parachutes, that AI will most likely be used for.

As such, AI will probably cause more damage to legit fusion projects, by giving the entire industry a bad name.

<slow clap> Go, go, AI! </slow clap>

The Telegraph jumps the gun on World War III

Re: “By mistake…?”

"if you have diabetes you need to avoid X" = notice (to people selling X) that "protection" money is due (again)

"you really must X if you have diabetes" = notice that payment has been received (from people selling X)

---

"I do my double-show, quick!" said Mick the Prick, fresh out the nick.

"I sell cheap holiday. The minute they leave, then a visit I pay."

- "Battle of Epping Forest", Genesis, "Selling England by the Pound"

Satellite slinger AST reckons newer birds won't outshine stars in night sky

AST?

Err.. didn't AST used to make ISA cards for x86 PC's, way back when?

Sorry, wrong AST.

Still have a card or two of theirs around here, somewhere...

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

Re: Encryption to the rescue?

> I can see the above working if "cloud" is just a storage mechanism, but how does that work when "cloud" is also the processing mechanism?

True, but, does anyone who uses "Compute, As A Service" Cloud based Virtual Machines really expect their data to remain secure?

While "pre-encrypted" / "post-decryped" data in Cloud based Storage at least has a chance of being secure for now (again, all bets are off in the near(?) future: "Snarf all encrypted data, now, decrypt it later, when affordable, and, hope the data is still relevant by then."), between all the known exploits involving "cross thread data exfiltration" and, especially the unpublished vulnerabilities, unless you have "exclusive access" (yeah, good luck with that - paying for it does not guarantee it), assume any working data is compromised.

If "operational data" translates to "data being operated on, in a Cloud Environment", then, I withdraw my original comment.

While encryption schemes do technically exist, between machine RAM and CPU, which are supposed to keep the data confined to authorized thread/cores, chances are, they're less effective than "data at rest" encryption/decryption, performed on prem (which, admittedly, has an expiration date coming up).

Encryption to the rescue?

Surely, any "operational data" sent to the cloud, should be encrypted, first, and then, decrypted, when accessed?

Yeah, it's a bit slower, and probably puts a bit more carbon into the atmosphere, but, isn't it already required by existing OpSec standards?

Now, this doesn't help if someone wants to "hold your data hostage". That's what "on prem" storage is for. (Or, multiple cloud providers, assuming they really are competing and not colluding.)

But, if the worry is "someone's reading over my shoulder", then good* encryption should help.

However, if the point of bailing is "I don't want these bastards making $ off of my data transfer/storage costs." then, by all means, bail. Just make sure you know the alternatives and their costs. ("on prem" is starting to look pretty good, again.)

* good = not worth the effort to crack until quantum powered crackers become affordable, say, around the same time fusion power becomes commercially viable (needed to power the digital<=>quantum interfaces without exacerbating man made global warming to the point where stockholder/voters get upset).

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

Does that mean Musk has access to Nazi rocket hardware, and the few Nazi rocket folk not involved in the US' Operation Paperclip?

No rest for the rocketry as NASA's Easter weekend heats up

If they could grow their own food...

... then they wouldn't need the care packages from Earth.

Unfortunately, given that BioSphere II couldn't sustainably grow their own food (the C02 scrubbers weren't the only limiting factor, hell, the extra CO2 probably helped the crops), there's small chance that ISS could. (Although, given enough volume of attached inflatable modules, assuming Bigelows don't need too many patches, maybe they could come close?)

Even the spaceship "Valley Forge", from the movie Silent Running (1972), was more of a preservation ark than a source of food.

Heat can make Li-Ion batteries explode. Or restore their capacity, say Chinese boffins

What got lost during translation?

"heating the batteries to between 150-250°C can cause them to shrink rather and see their internal structure return..."

Err.. maybe that should read:

"heating the batteries to between 150-250°C can cause them [?!] to shrink rather [than expand] and see their internal structure return..."?

maybe there are more than 2 words missing? Especially with the ambiguous "them": do the exterior dimensions of the batteries actually shrink?

(Generally, one expects things to expand when heated, hence, the counter-intuitive aspect, which the author seems to be going for.)

Although, it would seem that this is an over-simplification: surely, [sorry, I'm not calling you that] some internal or exterior structures do expand, when heated, but possibly, some substrates / internal structures do shrink?

If them does refer to the exterior dimensions, then, maybe things can be fixed with the addition of a few commas:

"heating the batteries to between 150-250°C can cause them to shrink, rather, and see their internal structure return..."

Although, "them" might also refer to dendrites, or some internal flaw, which grow with age?

More elaboration seems needed. Unfortunately, provided link goes to "This is a preview of subscription content"

TANSTAAFL - There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.*

* Thanks, Robert A Heinlein

AI is making hyperscalers' sustainability pledges look more and more like a Hail Mary

How long to absorb the carbon?

"This process normally happens naturally over the course of millions of years to form minerals, such as calcium carbonate. Startups like Terradot, however, aim to accelerate this process, hence the term "enhanced" rock weathering.

As we understand it, Terradot achieves this speed up by spreading finely ground minerals over large swaths of land. It's believed the larger surface area means the minerals can react with carbon absorbed by rainwater to form new carbon-rich minerals, potentially an order of magnitude faster."

Err.. an order of magnitude means, instead of millions of years, it will only take 100s of thousands of years. Also, this "carbon absorbed by rainwater" presumably refers to carbon dioxide. Given calcium carbonate's ability to "suck" CO2 out of either air or water rather quickly, am guessing the original quote meant to say "several orders of magnitude".

Did someone say AI agents, Google asks, bursting in

AI and Agents and Hallucinations, Oh My!

Gonna need a watchdog AI to monitor the Hallucination rate. Whoops, that won't work if the watchdog also hallucinates!

"I see it, too." - was cute, back in the '60s, on acid. Less so, now, with AI.

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

Maybe somebody's been investing...

... in slave prison labor companies?

Let's see: Trash the economy, make people "work" for their "unemployment" (or "retirement") "benefits" and then set this new "workforce" to assembling iPhones?

As long as there are enough upper class / rich folk (aka "slave owners") around to keep on buying the products made in the gulags federally subsidized work camps, the stockholders win.

Hmmm... maybe this explains all that banning of DEI: paving the way to a return of slaves and slave owners?

Windows Server Update Services live to patch another day

Is "driver update sync" the same thing as monthly patches?

What supported features were scheduled to go away? Everything, or just Driver updates?

NASA doubles odds of Moon hitting near-Earth asteroid

Re: Space 1999 - The Reboot!

Big clue that the second season was going to be the last: the size of the Command Center was cut in half (maybe even smaller than half).

How is this a clue? Compare with Star Trek, TOS: the engineering deck was much smaller in season 3 (the last season).

When budget cuts demand set reductions, the end is near.

Pennsylvania’s once top coal power plant eyed for revival as 4.5GW gas-fired AI campus

How much can be reused?

"As we understand it, the plant and server campus will be next to each other, as depicted in this video ... [snip] ... electrical infrastructure such as transmission lines that can be reused. "

If they're right next to each other, how long will the transmission lines be, and, how much of the existing infrastructure is actually being reused?

Yes, I'm being somewhat tongue in cheek, as, even with a short haul, big transformers will be probably be needed, at either end. Plus, any existing links to the grid will be needed, for when the onsite generation is partially or totally down.

Still, other than the availability of water for cooling purposes (which, presumably, both the power plant and the data center can take make use of), am guessing the big selling point of re-using the site is taking advantage of any existing zoning regulations. Red tape costs $.

A vigorous environmental impact study is going to be needed: Who knows how much of a mess the old coal plant left behind? "Dig baby, dig." (Take many soil samples!)

US Army’s laser obsession continues with yet another drone-zapper deal

Semi-directional EMP weapon, anyone? (Do non nuclear powered versions exist, yet?)

Rail Gun? (Has anyone gotten them to work cheaply, reliably, with decent number of shots between rebuilds?)

DU Gatling gun? (err, sorry about the cancer, 20-40 years from now. Should have it cured, by then.)

Clearly, the money is in the tracking/aiming systems (especially the software), power supplies, and/or supplying the shells.

US Space Force warns Chinese satellites are 'dogfighting' in space

Possible conflation?

Article starts with: "China has already launched a refuelling station in geosynchronous equatorial orbit to service its growing satellite fleet"

Yet, the rest of the article is about dogfights in LEO.

It's a long way from LEO up to Geosync (and back). Would guess the refueling station is for birds already in Geosync, or possibly for future Geosync based "Hunter/Killer" sats (which, of course, would specialize in Hunting and Killing the "usual suspects" normally found at Geosync: CommSats). Considering how expensive it is to get the fuel up to Geosync in the first place, the only reason to put it there is if they plan on using the fuel there.

The activity in LEO might be unrelated to the fuel depot, as, those HKs (most likely) can't make it "up" to refuel (at least, not without "catching a ride" from a friend with delta-v to share, which gets even more expensive).

Although, there is the possibility that the LEO activity is "practice" or "training missions" using cheaper HKs, while the Geosync HKs are still being developed.

One wonders whether these HKs are remotely piloted (by humans) drones, or AI powered (Skynet wannabes).

Los Alamos boffins whip up a speedometer for satellites

Newton's First Law of Motion*, anyone?

"This latest device can deliver critical velocity data for operations when ground station tracking fails, such as during severe space weather events"

Erm, tell us, how often does this velocity data change, during space weather events? And, by what magnitude?

Also, during a particularly bad space weather event, how does the velocity data get transferred, from the onboard sensor, to the ground station?

Finally, it would seem that, during bad space weather events, the "actual" ratio of "ram" to "wake" events might deviate from "expected", given ionic "cross-winds" ? Maybe that's not the best time to rely on the speedometer?

Seems like this is a solution looking for a problem.

* simple version: objects at rest stay at rest, objects in motion stay in motion. In other words, Inertia is a thing, and is related to F=ma

Ex-Googler Schmidt warns US: Try an AI 'Manhattan Project' and get MAIM'd

Re: Sci-Fi got here first!

Yes, that Brit. Books are possibly avail in/from a library, and, depending on the owner, at used book stores (used to see them for 99 cents each, a few decades ago). E-book versions are avail from the usual suspects.

Re: Sci-Fi got here first!

This!

And before the movie (well, the first one was before the movie, the next two, afterwards), there was a 3 novel trilogy written by D.F Jones, which was even better (read them as a youngster) - highly recommended:

Colossus 1966

The Fall of Colossus 1974

Colossus and the Crab 1977