Posts by pdh

Someone just blew over $190k on a 4GB first-gen iPhone

Might actually make some sense as an investment, as long as the Greater Fool machinery continues to operate...

Ex-Twitter employees owed half a billion in severance, says lawsuit

Re: A Twitter lawsuit database

There's a wikipedia page for "Google litigation" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_litigation but oddly, I don't see anything similar for Twitter.

Obscure internet boutique Amazon sues EU for calling it a Very Large Online Platform

Fairness

Something does seem amiss if the VLOP designation applies to Amazon but not to the "other large EU retailers" that Amazon mentions.... it seems likely that those large EU retailers could easily reach 10% of the EU population too, doesn't it?

Should leaders place bets on new PCs or generative AI?

AI is certainly something that most companies will want to keep an eye on, in case it ever evolves into something useful. But I really doubt that many companies are planning large-scale production projects based on LLM's or generative AI.

China chip material export controls just the tip of the iceberg, warns official

Re: Obvious or not?

What you said. Don't confuse "Country A is currently the main supplier of X" with "Country A is the only possible volume supplier of X."

Metaverses are flopping – hard – says Gartner

Re: Noooo! Reeeally? Who would've seen that coming.

> OK, they could have the manuals in the van, or know a few models, but the AR headset could contain details for thousands of models.

Or they could have a tablet or laptop computer with thousands of manuals in PDF form.

Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine

Re: Transponder

> Besides, the company themselves are unlikely to be absolute idiots. They are going to risk assess and mitigate risks as best they can to ensure their business has a future.

Not to mention -- their CEO was onboard. That has to be interpreted as a strong vote of confidence on his part; you'd think he would know if the craft was dodgy.

Where are we now, Microsoft 362.5? Europe reports outages

Yes, exactly. In my many years of experience with on-prem systems, I never saw a single one that could boast of 100% reliability over any medium or long term timeframe. But when ABC Co's internal network goes down, they don't post the details on a public status page like cloud providers do, and their employees don't take to Twiitter to bash the IT department. I'm certainly not suggesting the cloud is always better than on-prem -- it is not -- but I bet that the major cloud providers' overall uptime is way better than almost all on-prem facilities.

AI promises vendors 15 minutes of fame with investors

We've seen this before

This reminds me of the situation a few years ago where companies would re-brand themselves by adding "Blockchain" to their names. I seem to remember that a few of them saw huge surges in market valuation after doing that, even if they had no blockchain expertise at all, nor any specific plan to use it.

How do you boost server efficiency? Buy new kit, keep it busy

Re: Efficient in what way?

Definitely need to consider the energy and other resources needed to build those new servers. I've read claims that for automobiles, about 60% of the total lifetime energy cost occurs during manufacturing. So if you want to reduce your total resource consumption, then you may be better off keeping your older vehicle on the road, even if it has relatively poor fuel efficiency, as opposed to buying a new one. I wonder what the breakdown is for servers: i.e. what percentage of the necessary energy and etc is expended during manufacture, during useful life, and during disposal.

Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?

Re: Lucky you.

YES! For many of us, one of the attractions of Linux is that it runs well on older machines where Windows won't run. I am typing this on a 2015 Lenovo W500 that I inherited when my wife tried to move from Windows 7 to Windows 10 but found it unusably slow. And this is not my oldest Linux laptop.

Scientists think they may have cracked life support for Martian occupation

Scientists?

Not boffins? Has there been a change in El Reg's style guide?

Cry-pto: Feds bury Bitcoin exchange giant Binance in 13-count fraud lawsuit

Another one bites the dust

Ever since Mt Gox ten years ago, it seems like whoever is "the world's largest crypto exchange," isn't able to retain that title for more than a year or so. Has anyone been keeping close enough track to know what the longevity record is?

Windows XP's adventures in the afterlife shows copyright's copywrongs

Re: Make like trademarks, not patents or copyright?

If they still offer support, then I'd say it's not abandoned, but I'd include bug fixes as part of "support." I wouldn't want to penalize the publisher of a small app that "just works" without any ongoing changes (if there ever was such a thing), but I'd insist that there should still be a working support line and that the publisher still stands ready to fix any significant bug or security vulnerability that might pop up.

Make like trademarks, not patents or copyright?

The U.S. trademark system includes a rule saying that you lose rights to a trademark if you don't use it for a period of time -- 3 consecutive years I think. Maybe that's a better model than patents or copyrights? If a publisher continues to distribute and support the software, then they retain their rights indefinitely. But once they abandon it, it automatically moves into the public domain.

Microsoft Windows latest: Cortana app out, adverts in

A related problem: recently I was searching for men's cargo pants in a particular tall size. After just one Google search (which did not pan out), I started seeing ads for cargo pants -- from companies who don't make them in tall sizes. And ads from big and tall retailers, who focus on "big" not "tall." And from companies that sell women's clothing in tall sizes. And so on; many ads but none that were of any value to me.

The ads might not be quite so bad if they were tailored to things that I'm actually looking for, but they hardly ever are.

Re: Microsoft Still Up to the Usual Antics

Well, the Windows EULA says explicitly "The software is licensed, not sold." You've paid for the right to use the OS, but you don't own it.

Re: Microsoft Still Up to the Usual Antics

"you are going about your business... and Microsoft deign it acceptable to distract your workflow with adverts"

I don't like ads any more than anyone else, but that's how ads work on the radio, on TV, in magazines, on billboards, etc., right? You're listening to music on the radio, or watching something on TV, or reading a magazine article, and every now and then an ad interrupts the music or the story or the sporting event. Why would you expect the online experience to be any different?

NASA experts looked through 800 UFO sightings and found essentially nothing

Experts?

How exactly does one become an expert on UFOs / UAPs? I have to wonder whenever I see someone described as a bigfoot expert, or an expert on the Loch Ness monster, etc.

Twitter now worth just a third of what Musk paid for it

Re: Just fucking die twitter

Definitely some media organizations still use it. I follow sports on a big-name website, and whenever they have an article about somebody making a great golf shot, or hitting a home run, or scoring a touchdown, the article is sure to include a link to a short video clip onTwitter. That's my only use of Twitter (I don't have an account but sometimes I want to see the home run flying out of the park) and I have noticed no change whatsoever in the last nine months.

Nearly 1 in 5 academics admit close encounters of the anomalous kind

Re: Sigh

https://xkcd.com/1235/

Electric two-wheelers are set to scoot past EVs in road race

Re: What do these give you that an electric bicycle does not?

Dual disk brakes are common on eBikes; they're capable of very very quick stops. And eBikes are much lighter than these eMotorcycles so stopping requires less force.

What do these give you that an electric bicycle does not?

Better acceleration for sure, and maybe more storage (bigger saddlebags). And higher top speed, but that may not be relevant in a dense urban environment -- electric bicycles that I've seen typically top out between 25 and 30 mph, which may be fast enough in the city. So really just better acceleration, right? Am I missing anything else?

Elon Musk finally finds 'someone foolish enough to take the job' of Twitter CEO

Do you people really think she's that naive?

Reading some of these comments, it sounds like the general opinion is that clever old Elon is leading this innocent little lamb to slaughter. Is that really likely?

I mean: one has to assume that she'll be making very good money -- it seems unlikely that a "hard-nosed negotiator" would be taking her entire salary in stock options. As for her future prospects... suppose Twitter goes down in flames, as seems likely. Nobody whose initials are not EM will blame her for the failure, and in her next job interview, it will be "Well, yeah, Twitter failed, but not because of me. It was... you know..." And if by some miracle Twitter survives and perhaps even morphs into X, she'll not only become very rich, but she'll be able to write her own ticket anywhere else that she chooses to go.

To me, it almost looks like a can't-lose scenario for her. She's not the desperate one here, and based on the (admittedly small amount of) information we have about her, it doesn't sound like she's a pushover. I don't think Twitter is likely to succeed long-term, but success or failure, as long as she acts with a bare minimum of integrity, I suspect she'll come out OK.

Amazon CEO says AWS staff now spending ‘much of their time’ optimizing customers’ clouds

This surprised me

"about 90% of Global IT spending still on-premises "

That's much higher than I would have guessed. Does anyone here know if that's really true, and if so, what sorts of enterprises are still mostly on-prem?

When will regulators get serious on datacenter emissions reporting?

How to lie with statistics

Much depends on how you choose the starting point for your temperature graph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/media/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png

Russia has a stash of scary malware? We're shocked

Re: Talk about non news.

Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems

India-based cybergang busted for selling fake KFC franchises

Read somewhere but I forget the source: "People in funny hats have been a menace throughout the ages."

Critical infrastructure gear is full of flaws, but hey, at least it's certified

Re: ALL of it

So why aren't there more high-impact attacks? That's meant as a serious question, not as snark. Some ideas that come to mind (maybe the true reason is a mix of all of these):

(a) It's not really as bad as it seems to security specialists. I mean, a fitness expert looks at the population of a modern industrial state and sees mostly overweight people who eat badly and get almost no exercise; the expert believes this is deadly but somehow most of these people manage to live fairly long, contented lives, despite the fact that they're doing almost everything wrong. Is something similar happening with respect to computer systems security?

(b.1) That which cannot be said in polite society: sometimes security by obscurity works "well enough," especially if (as I suspect is often the case) it's only one aspect of a multi-faceted security strategy.

(b.2) Sure, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but maybe there are other links acting in parallel to the weaker links; so maybe the fact that some aspects of your security strategy are crap, doesn't actually mean that the total system is easy to penetrate.

(c) The Bad Guys are not very competent, or not very motivated, or there just aren't that many of them.

(d) There are in fact a good number of successful attacks, but most of them are not made public (e.g. ransomware payoffs where the criminals do restore access after being paid off). Also perhaps targets are deliberately chosen so as not to yield catastrophe. (Do *not* be the one who hacks Colonial Pipeline or similar targets.)

(e) It takes a fairly long time to successfully hack an average system, even though average systems have plenty of security holes, and this limits the overall number of successful hacks.

I am in no way dismissing the legitimate security concerns that are raised almost constantly these days. I just wonder why, if things are so bad, there aren't more truly high-profile failures.

Student satellite demonstrates drag sail to de-orbit old hardware

Yeah, I'd like to know more too. I've seen a number of articles about it, and they all mention the drag sail, the Arduino, and the AA batteries, but no additional details. I gather it was supposed to act as a repeater, accessible by hams, but that part evidently didn't work out.

Hubble images photobombed by space hardware on the up

It's all relative

... to the number of satellites, no? The total worldwide number of satellite launches per year has grown by a factor of 10 or more in the last decade. It's kind of surprising that the number of photobombs has only doubled.

Kremlin claims Ukraine hackers behind fake missile strike alerts

Ukraine inherited a substantial number of nuclear weapons after the USSR broke up. They gave them up in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US, the UK, France, and China. You can see how that worked out...

Twitter algorithm to be open sourced 'next week,' says Musk

Re: Make Twitter a public utility

You trust the government to impose "appropriate" restrictions? If you're a Democrat, imagine what restrictions a Trump government would find appropriate. If you're a Republican, imagine what a Clinton government would do. (Non-US residents feel free to substitute your own nation's equivalents.)

The second dust bowl cometh for America, supercomputer warns

Re: How is the machine learning trained?

Improving the resolution is certainly a worthy goal... wikipedia tells us that the average thunderstorm has a diameter of 24 km, so I wonder if they can really be modeled by the existing 12-km model. If not, then you're trying to predict droughts and flooding via a simulation that doesn't include thunderstorms, which makes me suspicious of its accuracy.

That's the whole problem with this kind of modeling of course, and it's the reason that you need a supercomputer to do it. But unless they have validation results that show otherwise, I have to suspect that the current model is too coarse to be reliable.

Re: How is the machine learning trained?

The article doesn't say that the model uses machine learning, does it? It says: "forecasts climate patterns in blocks down to 12 square kilometers" which sounds more like a conventional finite element model, not AI.

The question still stands though: how did they validate this model? What successful predictions has this model made in the past?

US and EU looking to create 'critical minerals club' to ensure their own supplies

Re: What about Canada and Mexico?

The article says "it requires that a certain amount of components or critical minerals for electric vehicles be sourced in the US or from countries that have a free trade agreement;" that sounds like it already includes Mexico and Canada via the NAFTA.

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

Maybe he really doesn't care about the money at all

Suppose Mr Musk loses all $44 billion that he paid for Twitter, or whatever the amount is. What would he lose in real life? I mean, what actual real-world things would he no longer have, or be unable to acquire? What would he no longer be able to do as a result of that loss?

Don't confuse money with wealth. Property and services and such are wealth; 44 billion tallies in a ledger are not. A person who starts with $150 billion can lose $40 billion and literally not notice it at all in day-to-day life.

Ah, but he's lost reputation, you say. I'm not so sure about that either. The world now knows that he's willing and able to throw $40 billion away, simply out of annoyance. Or $44 billion, if that's the number -- he doesn't even have to care about $4 billion one way or the other. That's a reputation for you -- something that anyone who messes with him in the future will have to consider.

NASA Geotail spacecraft's 30-year mission ends after last data recorder fails

Re: Say what you want about NASA's inefficiencies

I'd like to think that when they build something like this, the design specs are something like "we'll be disappointed if it doesn't last at least X months/years; but we're hoping to get Y months/years out of it; and if all goes really well, it might last as long as Z years." But for P.R. reasons they only announce the X value publicly.

The Voyagers for example had announced design lifetimes of around 5 years. I wonder what the Z value was for those craft; and would NASA have done anything differently if they had known that they might survive for several decades?

Nuclear-powered datacenter throws open doors to tenants this year

Re: SCRAM???

Nuclear reactors need periodic maintenance for e.g. refueling, which I understand is typically scheduled every 18 to 24 months and involves downtime. They must have a plan to keep the data center running during those outages -- I bet you're right about the backup feed to the grid.

Wyoming's would-be ban on sale of electric vehicles veers off road

Re: 52nd in population - they just want attention

Tension between densely-populated urban areas and sparsely-populated rural areas has existed ever since America became independent. The census bureau says that rural areas cover 97% of our land area, but include less than 20% of the population. That's exactly why each state gets two senators, no matter the population -- to help balance the dominance of the urban areas in the House of Representatives. Most laws require the approval of both chambers, so neither side can force its will on the other. It gets messy sometimes, but for the most part it has worked as intended.

Half of environmental claims about products are full of crap, says EU

All natural

"All natural" is my favorite, including "made from all-natural ingredients."

The covid virus is all natural. Arsenic is all natural. My poo is all natural. When something is described as "all natural," what exactly is being asserted? What would be an example of something that is *not* made from all-natural ingredients? Even plastics are made of all-natural ingredients.

Haiku beta 4: BeOS rebuild / almost ready for release / A thing of beauty

W500

> Just for reference, this article was written on Haiku itself, on the bare metal of an old ThinkPad W500

Best laptop ever. Mine is 13 years old, running Ubuntu Linux. I dropped an SSD drive in it last year, to perk it up a bit. Hoping to get another decade out of it.

FAA sets 2024 deadline for preventing 5G crash landings

What about the other 320?

So 420 reported altimeter anomalies, and of those, 100 *might* be related to 5G. What caused the other 320 anomalies?

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

Re: Hmmm

I don't think that was a lead-acid battery, because there's nothing in lead-acid batteries that's very flammable. Damage to lead-acid batteries can cause a huge surge of current if the battery shorts out, and that can be very destructive, but they don't tend to burst into flame like lithium batteries can.

NASA selects 'full force' for probe into UFOs

Re: Is it neccesary?

https://xkcd.com/1235/

Preliminary report on Texas Tesla crash finds Autosteer was 'not available' along road where both passengers died

What's old is new again

An old quote from Steve Grand: "[W]e used to have intelligent cars; they were called horses. And they used to know stuff that our cars don't know. They used to know where they lived and how to get home and how not to knock people over. Even how to refuel themselves. The amazing thing was that they could even make new copies of themselves. The intelligent car would be like a horse. Something that really enjoyed a good drive and prided itself on not knocking people down."

Cisco intros desktop switches, one with USB-C to power your laptop

Approval?

> not much bigger than [a] stack of five smartphones

So is this a new official unit of measure? Reg Standards Bureau, we look to you...

Boeing, Boeing, gone! CEO Muilenburg quits 'effective immediately'

Re: Cascade failure

> I'm not sure how changing CEO is going to brush this under the carpet. It's not as if they can lay the blame on the outgoing CEO for the MCAS palava that has cost hundreds of lives!

Perhaps it's not a question of: was he directly responsible for the original problem; but rather: how did he handle the situation after the problem occurred?

Um, excuse me. Do you have clearance to patch that MRI scanner?

Re: "but when it comes to human life..."

> In banking, for example, you can accept a few glitches but when it comes to human life you cannot have that, of course

I'm surprised that anyone can say that with a straight face, given that hundreds of thousands of patients die from medical errors every year.

Off with e's head: E-cig explosion causes first vaping death

FEMA? Why FEMA?

Anybody besides me wondering why FEMA of all people is investigating safety hazards from e-cigs? I would have thought that was the FDA's turf.