Posts by LeftyX

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

Here's an easier alternative

I used to use Ninite but switched over to the PatchMyPC Home Updater (https://patchmypc.com/product/home-updater), which figures out what you have installed and updates as needed -- no need to tell it what you have. Highly recommended!

NASA wants a hundredfold upgrade for space computers

Re: Did someone..

My first thought was "PICs in Space!"

Photonic processor can classify millions of images faster than you can blink

So it's a perceptron

This sounds like an all-optical version of the perceptron, invented in 1943 (!), but of course much smaller.

The nightmare is real: 'Excel formulas are the world's most widely used programming language,' says Microsoft

Shouldn't that be "a horde of spreadsheets"?

Or is there some other term for a group of them, like a murder of crows?

What did they do – twist his Arm? Ex-Qualcomm senior veep joins SiFive as CEO, RISC-V PC for devs teased

SiFive's HiFive1

SiFive now sells the $59 HiFive1 Rev B board, which looks like a good entry point: https://www.sifive.com/boards/hifive1-rev-b

RasPad 3.0 converts Raspberry Pi 4 to a tablet – be prepared for some quirks

I was hoping "wedge-shaped" meant triangular!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZBVnjXp7GQ

Only true boffins will be able to grasp Blighty's new legal definitions of the humble metre and kilogram

Why not hydrogen as the basis?

Every galactic civilization knows about hydrogen, so let's use it. The mass of H1, scaled-up by some nice exact decimal* multiplier, becomes the mass standard. The hydrogen line (21 cm wavelength) becomes the unit of length. (The Pioneer plaque used this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque) Etc. etc.

* Yes, I know not all civilizations, even here on Earth, use base-10 numbers, but we have to start somewhere!

Open wide, very wide: Xerox considers buying HP. Yes, the HP that is more than three times its market cap

"The company has tough challenges...

...on multiple fonts." FTFY

Early to embed and early to rise? Western Digital drops veil on SweRVy RISC-V based designs

Re: Good to see some practical RISC-V products...

They already exist: https://www.sifive.com/boards

I believe there are other manufacturers too.

WD to move all its stuff to RISC-V processors, build some kind of super data-wrangling stack

Re: Significance

Already available: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1

Mappy days! Ordnance Survey offers up free map of UK greenery

Don't forget:

http://www.theonion.com/article/alarming-report-finds-only-6-earths-surface-indoor-51405

You've seen things people wouldn't believe – so tell us your programming horrors

Back in the late '80s, I worked for a guy who had written a program in the Procomm Plus (serial datacomm software) scripting language to collect status data from a group of about 200 network interface devices (Sytek 2502 boxes).

He had a separate loop to collect and store each parameter.

All 53 of them.

It took almost all night to run (if I remember, this was on an IBM PS/2 Model 60, under DOS 3.3), but at least it was ready the next morning for his BASIC program, which summarized and formatted the data and printed a report.

I rewrote the Procomm script into one loop, and it finished in about an hour.

Qualcomm proposes brain implants for IP cameras

Qualcomm has just recently "partnered" with FPGA-maker Xilinx, which could provide the horsepower to implement some of these capabilities in hardware.

Royal Mail's Colossus move gets ex-WREN's stamp of approval

Re: Royal Mail website #fail

Do a Google image search for "Inventive Britain stamps 2015" and you'll find considerable larger pictures.

Shape-shifting box shifter Systemax made cash... from non-IT kit

Systemax = TigerDirect

Systemax is the owner of the TigerDirect online sales site and CompUSA retail stores.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/campaigns/welcome.asp?site=cp