Posts by Locomotion69

Tesla admits it was asked to hand over Autopilot, Full Self-Driving docs to investigators

IANAL

But I think the issue is not technical in this case.

It is a legal issue.

Who is in the end responsible and/or accountable when "operating" a self-driving car? And to what extend?

FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

No panic - it looks like ordinary business

The regulation applies to the finished product - this means that (FOSS) components themselves do not necessarily have to be compliant. The end product has to be, and, as new threats may appear and be applicable to the product, this regulation stipulates that the manufacturer has the obligation to fix vulnerabilities. If the problem comes from an imported (FOSS) component, the resolution has to come from there. In many FOSS projects, the manufacturer of the end product may be able to commit a corrective suggestion.

In any way, the manufacturer needs to be keen on the risks of using third party components in its product. Are these maintained? Is it stable? Is it trusted? Can it be assessed prior to integration?

Common questions to ask (I would. In fact, I am)

In the end, if the vulnerability cannot be fixed, the product is to removed from the market.

Stranded ISS astronauts are getting a new Soyuz to ride home

Re: Suit or seat?

The next ISS module will be a dressing room....

FAA wants pilots to be less dependent on computer autopilots

The FAA must be mad....

.... to demand that trained professionals should be in control!

Aviation regulators push for more automation so flights can be run by a single pilot

Madness

Three basic rules of flying an airplane (in this order):

1. Aviate - keep the thing up in the air and under your control

2. Navigate - determine where you are, and where you are going

3. Communicate - tell traffic control/others what you are doing/going to do

For 1 and 2, modern systems are great help, and in most cases better equipped to do the job then you are.

But if one of these systems goes astray for whatever reason, it is all up to that single pilot in the front seat.

Multiple pilots can divide 1 till 3 among them in emergencies, making them focused on the job, which is saving the lives of themselves and everybody behind them,

And emergencies WILL happen.

I'm happy paying Twitter eight bucks a month because price isn't the same as value

Your value has increased - or has it?

Twitter has been "free" (as in free beer) as the asset to the company is "you".

But Elon has found out that "you" are not profitable enough, and "your" value is now increased with $8 / month - to be payed by "you".

If the service provided by Twitter suits "your" needs, than that is fine. If not, "you" are free to sell/give away "yourself" to another service.

Sorry for being too sceptic.

Unlucky for some: Meta chops 13% of global workforce

A new standard coming up

11,000 - that is about 3 Twitter Emailed Layoffs !

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

Re: HTML is crap

Basically, what you are saying is that both HTML and PDF are crap, in their own way. FTFY.

Although I disagree.

In essence, neither HTML nor PDF is crap. The clue is in how the information is to be presented. That requires particular skills. A Web Monkey is not the same as a graphical designer, or an useability expert. Very few master all required skills. Many (most) of issues with HTML and/or PDF are related to bad formatting, poor choices of typefaces (fonts), unreadable images, undesired or unwanted (mis)behavior.

I recommend this a good read on the topic of useability: Steve Krug's "Don't make me think!"

Most Metaverse business projects will be dead by 2025

If there is some lesson to be learned from COVID-19, it is that humans (that's us) need physical interaction. The need to go out and physically see eachother has never been so big as during (and after) the various lockdowns. We do not want, nor need, yet another on-line reality faking "app" that in the end is only after our money. Or soul. But probably both.

The only Windows 10 updates for the year are coming. Spoiler alert: It's just security

It's just security

Great! Most stuff is expected to be still useable after the update! Yeah!

Just $10 to create an AI chatbot of a dead loved one

Too little ambition in this proposal

Why a chatbot only? Why not go in for full 3D representation of the beloved deceased (b.d.), with multiple selections of possible ages and looks of the b.d, so you can have a conversation at any age, any time, more (or less) living experience and look eachother into the eyes (ehmm- one of you actually).

This sounds so bad, it must be a good idea

Toyota dev left key to customer info on public GitHub page for five years

Public cloud service

With public cloud services, to difference between "share" and "leak" is small. Too small in this case.

Why did somebody within Toyota decided that a public Github sounds like a good idea ??

AI co-programmers perhaps won't spawn as many bugs as feared

But in the long term

Code tends to live a long, long time. And gets modified. Sometimes over and over again.

Every now and then a human may touch the AI generated code - and may be even understand why it is there, what it is all about and what is to achieved by it. But probably not.

I am afraid that such code gets partly rewritten, and then AI-ed again, up to a point that neither a human nor AI can make any sense out of it anymore. This is when the software is no longer maintainable by any standard, yet no budget exist for a proper rewrite.

I see a value in these tools though - I just would not call them AI, as I do not consider these tools "intelligent".

But then, when writing this post I realize the above phrase may just be as applicable to humans....

Is it time to retire C and C++ for Rust in new programs?

Re: Let's see Microsoft take the lead

3. Rewriting code which works well in another language takes time.

Don't. It does not only take time, it is probably going to end up with less functionality you had before.

3. Writing code for new applications takes time.

FTFY

Rust is eating into our systems, and it's a good thing

Yet another kid on the block

My background is with C/C++, and I like it. Not the most easy languages to master though (and I definetly do not claim I do).

Over the years, many other "languages" have been released to challenge the position of C/C++ - and failed, however most of them collected a lot of enthousiasts and find their place in the IT ecosystem.

I expect this to happen to Rust too. I am curious to learn more about it (although I am not employed in "IT" anymore).

But I doubt it will challenge the position of C++, let alone C. C emerged in 1972-1973, and is just as normal to be as, say, breathing.

Rust is not going to take my breath away....

Startup wants to build a space station that refuels satellites by 2025

Charge for additional services

What about cleaning the "windscreen", or camera lenses as a premium service ?

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

IT4ever

Any IT solution is out there because it just "works", it fulfils a need today as it did for the last >put your number here< years. So why spend money to bring it up to date with current technology? It will take long to complete, extensive training, many trials and even more failures and in the end we end up with something less we had before and users complaining that the previous version was far better.

This is why "old" languages like COBOL and (forgive me) C are still around and alive.

Your software will only "deorbit" when the need for it is gone.

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

There is a reason for those extra transistors

as they make your device not only doing Job X for you, but restrict it doing so only when there is a hidden connection to some cloudy space on the Interweb which is cut off one day and updates your device to yet-another-brick.

I grab my coat....

First rocket launch from UK soil now has... a logo

Not the first design of its kind

It is not the first design of this kind I have seen in my life.

I remember LOHAN Vulture 2 with its exterior design: https://www.theregister.com/2014/04/19/vulture_2_paintjob/

Hope this one will reach the stars though.

Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans

Hope for less rubbish specifications

This is an interesting development.

Although I wonder how it would react to the standard quality of natural language problem descriptions aka "specifications", as from experience I can tell there are few who are excellent but do not address real problems, and none that are actually good in describing the problem in the first place.

YMMV.

Hubble memory errors persist despite NASA booting long-idle backup payload computer

"it is highly unlikely that all individual hardware elements have a problem"

Last time I heard that statement while troubleshooting a problem it made me go right there to look for it.

And for good reason...... Statistics are just "numbers".

Needless to say it was indeed a bunch of malfunctioning units which was supposed to be statistically "impossible".

Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language

Re: There are two hard problems in Computer Science

No no no

- Users

- Those who claim to be an "expert" of some sort

- Did I mention "users" ?

Azure services fall over in Europe, Microsoft works on fix

Can I have a copy? Please?

"We have identified a transient issue impacting a backend service and we are actively scaling out our backend resources to mitigate the issue."

I am dying to receive a copy of the software capable in generating this kind of sentences - event politicians cannot be this vague...

Subaru parks plans to make 58,000 cars due to brakes on silicon supply chain

Except that from the middle of next year, everything electronic which is now considered a gadget of some sort will be compulsary on a new car in the EU:

intelligent speed assistance,

alcohol interlock installation facilitation,

driver drowsiness and attention warning systems,

advanced driver distraction warning systems,

emergency stop signals,

reversing detection systems,

event data recorders,

accurate tyre pressure monitoring,

advanced emergency braking systems,

emergency lane-keeping systems,

enlarged head impact protection zones capable of mitigating injuries in collisions with vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists.

My Subaru from 2018 has most of these already installed, not sure about the alcohol interlock thing though.

Cons: more weight, more electronic reliance, and definitely (a lot) more cost.

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

Not the solution.

Agile development is not the solution to this IT problem as it is too complicated to be understood by the ordinary human being assigned to solve it.

As, unfortunately, in most cases.

Last stop before MAUI: Xamarin Forms 5.0 released for cross-platform mobile, new features, new bugs

Re: Another week, another version of another unwanted Microsoft framework...

I read it too quickly: ... much shittier with more lawyers.

Bad software crashed Boeings. Now it appears the company lacked a singular software supremo

Re: It was not a software problem

No sir,

The problem was that the software was relying on flawed information from a defective AoA, the pilots not being aware of the presence of this particular software feature in the first place, and therefore not thinking of the option to just switch it off (button was provided, yet not documented anywhere).

Like Uber, but for satellite launches: European Space Agency’s ride-sharing rocket slings 53 birds with one bang

Great!

More crap in space to increase chances for satellite collisions.

GitHub redesign goes mobile-friendly – to chagrin of devs who shockingly do a lot of work on proper computers

Up the ladder

Of moving from a useful tool for some towards useless for everybody.

Azure-hosted AI for finding code defects emitted – but does it work?

But did it check itself?

Before I would burn any money on this: let it check its own source code first.

If it shows defects: it probably works, but has code defects so it cannot be trusted.

If there are no defects: it probably does not work.

Nine in ten biz applications harbor out-of-date, unsupported, insecure open-source code, study shows

O dear

Only to realize someone is not maintaining an app that should legally not exist in the first place...

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Pane

Just "Pane". As in Window pane.

It wants to be regarded as a "transparant" company. And in most cases, they start that way but soon the dirt settles.

And it sounds similar to "Pain" which is also applicable.

Cheers.

Are you writing code for ambient computing? No? Don't even know? Ch-uh. Google's 'write once, run anywhere' Flutter is all over it

Great solution!

But what is the problem it does should solve ?

14 sailors die aboard Russian cable spy, er, ocean research nuke sub after fire breaks out

Re: Nightmarish stuff

For those on the continent: Submarine "Tonijn" is on display at the navy museum in Den Helder, Netherlands.

https://www.marinemuseum.nl/en/

Complex automation won't make fleshbags obsolete, not when the end result is this dumb

That is exactly why planes fly themselves - but professional pilots are still there in order to take control if anything goes wrong.

That is also the same reason why self driving cars is an ultimate dump idea as there will be a lot "underaverage" skilled drivers behind the wheel when things go out of control.

IoT worm can hack Philips Hue lightbulbs, spread across cities

We are screwed

The concept is good as a concept, but every implementation so far proves to be bad. Even worse, nothing will change until someone actually exploits a massive hack and shuts down an entire city/traffic network/airport/hospital/... Once we figure out that securing will be a. extremely expensive, b. make IoT devices going offline all the time thus crippling it functionality and c. does not provide 100% security we are forced to accept to be pwned every now and then.

Microsoft offers Linux certification. Do not adjust your set. This is not an error

The end is near

Windows 11 = Linux core with WinXP desktop windowmanager.

New edition of Windows 10 turns security nightmares into reality

Actually this makes sense. Now you can test before you deploy. Consider the unlikely event of an update being so crap that it makes your thingy unable to boot. I mean, this has never happened before and, oh wait....

Google spins up 'FREE, unlimited' cloud photo storage 4 years before ad giant nixes it

Re: I pay nothing too.

Same here. And this "service" is something I am definitely not going to use anyway.

Pay to play: The hidden cost of software defined everything

Options extra?

Go buy a car. Basic price may seem OK, but the option list is enormous, and so is the total price at the end of the quotation :(

Nothing new. Happens everywhere.