Posts by StudeJeff

Happy birthday, Putin – you've been pwned

Re: "Collective West"

The Soviet Union was an empire... and putrid Putin is trying to recreate it.

Emperor is just a title and has no more meaning than that.

Re: Msg to Chris Williams

It's not just people who don't like Trump. Someone suffering from TDS rants and rages about pretty much anything and blames it on Trump.

And it's not unique to Trump haters.

There is BDS (Biden Derangement Syndrome), or 0BS (0bama Derangement Syndrome), and on your side of the pond no doubt there are people who behave the same away about your politicians...

Re: Unprecedented

Ahh... so the Russian version of "The View"?

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

In my previous life I worked as an process engineer in a North Carolina (USA) plant that refurbished computing equipment for a big, blue computer maker. If you had a problem with equipment you got from us and called our hotline you'd actually reach people in our building.

Once in a while they would get stumped and ask if I'd mind talking to a customer, it wasn't my job to deal with customers, but I was always happy to help.

They would also contact me if there was an dodgy attempted return. They called about a guy trying to return some rather pricey server hard drives, and when I heard the name I told them that under no circumstances whatsoever should they do anything for him. The guy was a former employee and had been fired for stealing parts, now he was somehow a broker. I'd be willing to bet real money that he'd stolen those drives from us to begin with.

US govt hiding top hurricane forecast model sparks outrage after deadly Helene

They created a tool, that didn't take resources? The resources put into creating that tool with the expectation of a financial gain as a result is pretty much the definition of an investment.

Re: Yet another way Trump admin fucked the public

There is one thing Harris has been extraordinarily successful at... getting power by providing personal services to powerful men.

(I'm bet I'm going to get a LOT of downvotes for that factoid!)

China claims Starlink signals can reveal stealth aircraft – and what that really means

Re: I'm skeptical

Yes... and the Chicoms are liars.

Scientists demonstrate X-rays as a way to zap asteroids out of Earth's path

I don't think radio telescopes would be much help in detecting asteroids.

However, what Musk (SpaceX) is working on, the Starship, will make access to space much easier, which in turn will make it that much more likely we could actually DO something about an asteroid heading our way.

Amazon, Tesla, Meta considered harmful to democracy

The unions really aren't fans of democracy.

I believe it was the UAW where it was shown about 75% of its membership supports Trump, and yet the union endorsed Harris.

The thing that is most important to the major unions is keeping their leaders in power, and those people really don't care much about the rank and file members.

Iran's cyber-goons emailed stolen Trump info to Team Biden – which ignored them

Re: We can all agree

Biden got the nomination because the DNC wanted him to have it and blocked any candidates that could have been serious opposition.

So we wind up with a Democratic candidate who has never won a single vote in a primary... and the Democrats claim to be the party that will "save democracy".

Re: It's a little funny, as an outsider...

Harris would be the weaker President and support policies that arguably would weaken the United States, so it's only natural the Chicoms would support her.

Boeing union workers in US reject contract: 96% vote to strike

A 25% raise isn't good enough? Sounds like it's time for Boeing to move more production to non union plants... or ALL of it.

Re: replace them all

Add a zero to that and it's probably closer to the real number... and the best thing to do with them is send them back where they came from.

Japan to put a small red Swedish house on the Moon

Re: Spelling nazi here...

And some of us are just stubborn... I still call the capitol of Red China Peking.

SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission completes first commercial spacewalk

Nahh... they will claim it's fake.

SpaceX blasts being stuck in bureaucratic orbit as Starship approval slips

No doubt I'll get a lot of downvotes for this one but I suspect that a lot of Red Chinese money is going into environmental groups for the purpose of bollixing things up. Not just SpaceX, bridges, pipelines, power plants, highways, any sort of needed infrastructure.

The groups themselves are likely not aware of where that money is coming from, it's surely being filtered through several layers of front groups, but I've no doubt it's happening.

On both sides of the pond, not just the US.

And seriously, if you had that kind of money isn't that the sort of thing you would do to weaken an enemy?

Re: November

That's actually kind of... odd.

SpaceX aims high with Polaris Dawn mission

Cool stuff... if I came into a (big) pile of money I'd love to go on one of these trips to space.

That being said, in a generation or less, it's very likely people will be able to experience a trip into space and even a space walk if they like, for around the price of a nice vacation... and that would sure be an out of this world vacation!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be gone in ten years – for chump change

Re: I applaud their actions

I don't know what their plan is, but considering that stuff is well mixed and of very low value I expect the best way to deal with it is to burn it. The heat could be used to generate electricity, and of course the smoke would go though scrubbers to clean it up.

Tech support chap solved knotty disk failure problem by staring at the floor

Early in my IBM days I worked on refurbishing machines called RAMACs, named after the original magnetic disk drive. (Which had the delightfully 50's name of Random Access Method of Accounting and Control).

Anyway, these things had up to 16 "drawers", each one with four SCSI drive modules. When we first powered these up we'd check to make sure the lights on all the drives were blinking. Any that were not we'd pull, hold out at arms length, and the raise it up high, swing it down, and stop suddenly. That usually worked!

We'd then put the drive back into the machine and "rebuild" it (I suspect that reformatted it).

To patch this server, we need to get someone drunk

Re: Prison

If I'm not in a hurry I avoid the big roads... Interstates on this side of the pond. As the late, great Charles Osgood was fond of saying, "The Interstate Highway System makes it possible to drive from coast to coast and not see anything".

No doubt your motorways are much like that... if I ever get to drive in England I'll avoid them as much as possible, you have some amazing countryside, but that driving on the wrong side of the road would take some getting used to!

'Error' causes Alexa to endorse Kamala Harris, refuse to discuss Trump

Amazon will never tell, but it would be REALLY interesting to know the real reason this happened.

I've no doubt that if the Alexa team were polled they would be solidly behind Harris.

Elon Musk’s Starlink won't block Elon Musk’s X in Brazil, as required by court order

Re: Tantrum boy

Tesla is selling a LOT of cars. These shots of Tesla's "piling up" are largely because unlike the legacy automakers Tesla does have dealers to force unsold cars on.

Zuckerberg admits Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

On this side of the pond we have this thing called the "First Amendment", which protects our freedom of speech, even, and especially speech the government doesn't approve of.

The government was WAY out of line "pressuring" social media companies to shut down or restrict speech the government didn't like... and it was pressure like the mobster saying to a shop keeper "nice business you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it". Except instead of something like a Molotov cocktail through the window it would be a horde of IRS and Dept. of "Justice" agents.

Re: "I'm not trying to play politics or foment controversy"

Bernie Sanders, the millionaire politician who's never had a real job in his life, used to complain about millionaires not paying their "fair share" until he became one.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

In a book I was reading the main character described breaking into a server room, which he described as being full of "cowbox Pentiums". I have to admit it took me a minute to get it, but once I did I about died laughing.

Things that go BANG and let the magic smoke out.

Back around the turn of the century I was working at a plant that refurbished used equipment for IBM. One of the devices I worked on was an AIX box… looked like a PC, that ran a tape library.

We had two of the ones I’d worked on returned as defective. Investigation showed one had a blown power supply, the other a smoked motherboard… or planar in IBM speak.

These boxes had that same voltage switch, in the tape rack they ran at 220v, but we’d switch them to 110 to work on them.

The instructions for the CE specified that he check that switch as part of the installation process to make sure it was set at 220v. He failed to do so, causing the damage.

The CE thought he could blame us… ME... for it, but I was able to prove it was because he didn’t follow his procedure.

I took it upon myself to write a new step into our work instructions, that once testing is complete switch the power supply back to 220v. I’m pretty sure that’s the first thing that I ever wrote that went into a work instruction.

SpaceX tries to wash away Texas pollution allegations

70 years ago...

People were saying no one would ever go into space, and that putting men on the moon was just nutty science fiction.

And then we did it, and now we are working on going back.

Exploring new places is part of what makes us human, unless we do something stupid we will go to Mars, and then on to the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn... and then who knows.

We DO have a theoretical design for something like Star Trek's warp drive...

Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?

Western Billionaire vs the Chicoms...

If the billionaire is Musk I'd have no problem making the choice. He's pretty much not going to care (or be involved) in what anyone is sending over his satellites.

The Chicoms are another matter, start sending stuff over their satellites about freeing Tibet, the persecution of the Uyghurs, or their use of slave labor and you'll likely get shut down pretty fast... and if you are in a place they control YOU are likely to get shut down more permanently. Communist dictatorships aren't fond of criticism... just as the survivors of Tiananmen Square, if you can find any. (Oh, and don't talk about that either).

Re: Will they allow VPNs?

No, you can use a VPN with Starlink.

... which just wants to make you a slave.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

Re: Pedo Guy to the rescue!

Most people have no idea what fascism is... it's likely the most incorrectly used word of the decade.

Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in Full Self-Driving mode

Re: Not entirely true

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV. However, I DO drive a Tesla and have tried the FSD system. The technology is impressive, but Tesla makes in clear IN THE APP that it's SUPERVISED self driving.

No matter what system the car has the driver is solely and wholly responsible for what its doing.

Re: Not entirely true

Ahh... so that explains why my Mustang has been so well behaved... I haven't been 23 for several decades.

Kamala Harris's $7M support from LinkedIn founder comes with a request: Fire Lina Khan

Re: Incumbent Joe Biden stepped aside :o

So... you are telling us you don't know anything about Project 2025 other than what you might have heard on CNN.

The kind of nonsense the Democrats pulled first in making sure there could be no serious opposition to Biden in the primaries along with lying and conspiring with the legacy media to tell us he was perfectly OK is classic banana republic stuff.

As is the Democrats lawfare against President Trump, going back to the Russian collusion hoax if not further.

The only way you could get any more banana republic would be if the United Fruit Company was the biggest donor to the DNC.

How a cheap barcode scanner helped fix CrowdStrike'd Windows PCs in a flash

Re: Working Smarter Not Harder

I remember the CueCats, I had one that came from Radio Shack. It was a neat idea that didn't go very far.

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Holidays

Naturally it's Windows that gets hit with this kind of thing the most often, the vast majority of companies use it.

And you're right, this could have happened to any OS that Crowdstrike supported... well, in this case I'm not sure "supports" is the right term!

EU's renewable hydrogen plan needs a 'reality check'

White hydrogen

Has the EU started looking into white hydrogen? It's naturally occurring and apparently there is quite a lot of it, we've never really looked for it before now.

It also has the advantage of being renewable, at least to a point, as it's created by natural reactions with groundwater.

I was wondering where the push for hydrogen was coming from, your comment about the oil companies explains a lot!

How low can you go: Tesla's US market share dips below 50% for the first time

Re: New models

I bought a new Model 3 the end of last year and it now has about 26k miles on it. It was cheaper, by a fair amount, then the average price for a new car in the US, I've had ZERO problems with it, and the panel gaps are tight and even.

This car is a blast to drive and cheap to run. So far maintenance has consisted of one (free) tire rotation and three jugs of windshield washer fluid.

Net neutrality in danger again: US appeals court puts FCC's resurrected rule on hold

Re: Surely the people are sovereign

No one is saying the agencies can't create rules, in fact creating and enforcing rules is just what they are supposed to do. However, those rules have to be reasonably consistent with the laws passed by Congress.

One example is this whole kerfuffle over transgender people. When Congress passed Title IV in 1972 it was specifically to address discrimination against women. The current administration has written rules requiring schools and other organizations to treat biological men who "identify" as women as natural born women. Forcing these organizations to allow men into women's locker and rest rooms, along with competing against women in sports.

Not only is this grossly unfair to the women and girls, but it's also dangerous. Some of these claimed transgenders have evil intent and rapes have occurred, they are also bigger and heavier than natural women and have caused injuries.

Congress NEVER passed a law allowing that, it's certainly not a part of Title IV, if it was the bill never would have passed. The Executive Branch just decided that's what it wanted to do.

The Chevron decision was one that actually made a bit of sense at the time, it is logical that people in the agencies who were experts on some topic would write the rules. But like any human endeavor all too often you give someone a little bit of power and they can't help but abuse it.

That's what happed here, and that's why the ruling overturning Chevron was the right thing to do.

SpaceX's Falcon anomaly could have serious implications for the space industry

Re: FAA?

You could make that argument, but the evidence shows Boeing is more interested in the short term bottom line, SpaceX is trying to change the world... you might say SpaceX has a higher calling than Boeing.

And it's a real shame, the old Boeing would be behaving like SpaceX when problems crop up, instead of trying to sweep them under the rug.

Texas court blocks FTC noncompete ban, and you can blame SCOTUS

Re: Contradiction

So instead of Biden we'd have Charles? Not much of a trade, I don't think either one of them is capable of running the drive thru at a Burger King.

Tesla parental controls keep teenage lead feet in check

Parental control thought

When I first got my Tesla naturally I had to play with all the features.

One is you can use the Tesla app to see inside the car.

I can just imagine a parent letting their teenager use the family's Tesla for a date, then checking in on them and if the kids are engaged in any... inappropriate behavior, use the car's speaker system to say "knock that off"!

It would also be a good way to ensure the kid never asks to use the Tesla again.

One pedal driving is a great feature.

Chinese space company accidentally launches rocket in test gone wrong

Re: Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines

GREAT movie, it's about time I watch that again.

Julian Assange pleads guilty, leaves courtroom a free man

Personally I don't care about his politics, just his actions. Because of his bad behavior far better men than him have died, he should be rotting in prison for the rest of his life.

Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

Re: Not really a surprise (wind and solar cheaper?)

I don't think that's really the case.

When you consider all the land required, the extra infrastructure to connect all those windmills and panels to the grid (including big inverters), and some way to supply power when the wind isn't blowing and the sun not shining. All of that ads up.

For the most part wind and solar are economically feasible because governments are propping them up.

China creates LLM trained to discuss Xi Jinping's philosophies

Re: Can't wait for this to be jailbroken

"Free Tibet"

Starlink offers 'unusually hostile environment' to TCP

Re: What's his definition of hostile -- ships at sea

Earlier this year I had my first experience using Starlink. I was on a cruise with about 3,000+ other people and paid an extra $25 a day for Internet access.

Wonder how much Royal Caribbean pays Starlink every year to be able to provide that service?

How much do the other cruise lines pay? And all the other ships and aircraft out there?

It might not be a huge amount of money, but it's a lot more than a drop in the bucket!

Oh, and it worked just fine for me.