Posts by bombastic bob

Meta materials: Facebook using AI to design green concrete

making concrete

Other than pointing out the reality of CO2 vs its "mythical" properties that make it an alleged planet killer by allegedly changing climate in the shape of a hockey stick, the reality is that concrete (and it's cousin cement), invented by the Romans, is at the core of construction world wide. Without it, get used to living in HUTS. You cold not even build a brick wall or stucco a house without it.

It is, after all, liquid stone that dries into a very durable material.

Concrete works by using Calcium Oxide (CaO) mixed with water, sand, rock, and frequently a lattice of steel rebar. Sometimes it is pre-stressed to give it extra rigidity.

To make the Calcium Oxide, you take limestone (Calcium Carbonate) and BURN it. With fire. Heh. This releases the CO2 (which was THERE ALREADY) and forms Calcium Oxide. Simple. When mixed with the water, sand, etc. it chemically reacts (producing heat and steam) to form CaOH which binds the sand and other materials into solid concrete.

Carbonate formation begins in the ocean, where RAIN depletes atmospheric CO2 and the resulting carbonic acid (H2CO3) reacts with Calcium and Magnesium to form CaCO3, Mg2CO3, MgHCO3, and CA(HCO3)2. These precipitate out and form carbonate layers at the bottom of the sea. Additionally limestone can form from acidified rain (rain has a HIGH affinity for CO2 absorption) dripping down into caves, where it reacts with calcium and magnesium in the soil to form things like stalagtites and stalagmites. This rain+CO2 thing is why ther is only about 0.04% CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, part of the equilibrium reaction that stabilizes CO2 concentration. It's basic science.

When the oceans were displaced by rising continents, the carbonates were exposed as limestone and calcite and other such things, which can then be mined (and also from caves if you wanted to) and heated to form CaO that can be used to build EVERYTHING that constitutes buildings, roads, parking lots, and so on. Modern cities, yeah.

So I have to wonder why the big deal about CO2 anyway, since I just described how and why it is at equilibrium, and because we're simply putting it back into the cycle of rain depletion and CaCO3 (etc.) production. In fact a vast amount of the world's carbon is "stored" in lake beds and the bottom of the sea. Shellfish bubble CO2 exhalations through sea water to form their own shells. When ocean temperatures rise, some of this is dissolved and then "effervesces" into the atmosphere. It's all part of a natural cycle, in other words.

But if the "new process" results in BETTER concrete at LOWER prices, I'm willing to listen...

Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex

Re: holy mother of god - what is this abomination?

At that point VirtualBox should run Win-10-nic well enough to do anything that still requires windows.

(only because Wine still isn't an option in many cases)

Re: Why bother?

STOP. you are making too much sense.

(heh heh heh)

Re: Seconds out... round 3

MS seem oblivious to the financial problems that people are experiencing all over the world.

They stopped trying to understand their customer base a LONG time ago... culminating in "Windows Update" installing GWX to NAG you until you "UP"graded. And do not EVEN get me started on the whole 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE look crammed up our asses down our throats by Micros~1, Gobble, and every OTHER big tech bozo with that 'light blue flatty on blinding white' "Mouse/Keyboard Unfriendly" interface 'design' EVERYWHERE... *cough* [ran out of air for a bit]

Yeah, just wait for it, they'll cram NEW GW11 into the forced Win-10-nic update schedule. And you will NOT be able to turn it off nor ignore it, this time. Hourly "have you upgraded to windows 11" nags. Oh did I say HOURLY? Not frequently enough!!! And of course, a minimum of 2 days of downloading and updating to follow your capitulation to their marketing strong-arm techniques. Bring a deck of cards and a slinky to work with you so you are not completely bored.

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

Re: I have literally seen some of this happen.

at one company I was at, each desk got its own small UPS which is not a bad idea... until the cleaning service plugged vacuum cleaners directly into them.

(NOT a "power strip" - and if it were, and it had a line filter, the results could be JUST as BAD)

Microsoft points at Linux and shouts: Look, look! Privilege-escalation flaws here, too!

Re: SystemD + Linux

Ain't no "systemd" on MY Linux workstations. Devuan.

I call *THAT* Linux.

Re: Cry me a river

I saw 163 posts. So, no.

Re: Auto update and reboot anyone?

occasionally a boot might seem cleaner but normally you just stop and restart the various daemons and/or applications. Re-start of desktop might be a good idea, though.

Recently did fix for customer embedded system after I had fixed an irritating bug in lightdm (source is published on product's GPL page). The updater has to jump through some hoops but no reboot is necessary. however, re-starting the GUI is. Takes about a minute.

Re: Auto update and reboot anyone?

ahem - re-read, it was a DISTRIBUTION upgrade, similar to going from Windows 8 to Windows 10.

How long would THAT have taken, Win "Ape" to Win-10-nic, I wonder... WAY longer than half an hour or so, In My Bombastic Opinion!

Re: Ugh! Scripts.

have you even USED Linux?

icon, because, facepalm

Re: Hey Microsoft ...

Micros~1: Hey Linux, let me get that spec of sawdust out of your eye

Linux: How can you even SEE it with that LOG in your OWN eye?

(obligatory bible reference)

Study: How Amazon uses Echo smart speaker conversations to target ads

Re: Not Just Amazon

The sick sad thing about monsters like FaeceBan is that they have cookies and script on various sites (web bugs or similar) that track you based on your FB info. If you use something *LIKE* FB it should only be from a sandboxed browser that is ONLY used for that purpose.

The beauty of Linux and FreeBSD (especially FreeBSE) is that if you are creative with ssh and creating logins and using X11's capability via the DISPLAY environment variable, you can write a script (I have) that will ssh into a different user, run Firefox entirely from that user's context, and then turn off plugins and have the entire cache, cookies, and history DELETED ON EXIT. Then, just access FB or Tw[*]tter or whatever from THAT browser, which will dump cookies and history and other things automatically when you exit.

(So far I have 3 logins for this purpose, one generic, one for Slack which $CLIENT needs me to use, and one for Tw[*]tter which I got an account for ONLY because Musk bought it but the logins are all guest level and unable to su directly to root because of FBSD and NOT in the sudoers file etc. etc. etc.. The generic one dumps history, the other two do not, for now...)

Re: Amazon are gonna Amazon

until the AI needed to interpret general human speech is housed in a device that does NOT phone your details home to momma, then we can assume that everything going into their cloudy speech interpreter is interpreted for whatever reasons they deem appropriate...

which is another reason i do not want ANYTHING like that ANYWHERE near me. unless I wanna troll it.

Re: Get a grip

The voting and arguments on this thread are ridiculous !

Graham Chapman in a police uniform. That's what i thought of when i read that.

Re: Bears in a forest

The rabbit considered the alternative - being lunch - and decided that having bear shit on its fur was a deterrent.

Fedora starts to simplify Linux graphics handling

Re: Long live NetBSD

or FreeBSD

Re: If these people made cars ...

well they ARE making a library that has the same functionality. hopefully a drop-in replacement

Eventually, X.org itself will be removed, as the various desktops that Fedora offers shift over to Wayland.

**YIKES!!!**

There are nearly half a billion active users of Start news feed, says Microsoft

Re: Fixed it for you

"Start News Feed". Does anyone REALLY want Micros~1 OWNING their NEWS FEED? Maybe the same people who watch [P]MSNBC might, but it's currently one of the WORST RATED CABLE NEWS STATIONS based on viewership.

This from 2020, suggests 'Resetting' the News [CR]app so that it no longer directs its ouput to the start menu, in order to get rid of it. Not sure if that's the same in Windows II or not. My guess, NOT.

Microsoft partners balk at new licensing scheme, dent growth

Re: Let me see now

Related, from the article: "some clearly struggle to see the benefits"

It is hard to see "benefits" in a monthly subscription fee (rent) for the rest of your life when you used to be able to OWN things...

"The Emperor's clothes are WONDERFUL!'" they say. And then they question why WE cannot see them, too...

Heresy: Hare programming language an alternative to C

Re: It won't have Bugs

Nyaaaa, what's up, Doc?

Re: No moving targets

Harrrrre

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

Re: Improve Twitter?

that might be 'Plan B'

eh, what would THAT be anyway?

Re: GOP-ping

Trump has apparently been un-banned already on Twitter, but he said he was going to stick to his own 'TRUTH' network and not post on Twitter.

I doubt that pejorative, libelous, or otherwise illegal content will ever be allowed. But with any luck, all such things will receive equal treatment, now.

Re: Popcorn time

I actually signed up. you can guess what name I used. Posted a bunch of stuff that is civil and informative, but would otherwise get "flagged" just for being "not woke". Let's see what happens! And some Fox News people got un-banned today. YES!!!

Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters

Re: What do you mean nobody reads the source?

reading every single bit of source code is more like an AUDIT.

A quick scan looking for things you know to be problematic, or focusing on changed sections: This is extremely helpful and does not make your brain (as) sleepy.

Re: Devuan

If Devuan and Debian were to merge, and then you get a choice of init during setup (and not after), wouldn;t THAT be AWESOME? But that might require double-sets of certain packages, one with systemd, one without, as too many key packages depend on systemd being there, or its features being implemented some other way (and the two may not be compatible).

Similarly Gnome and Mate, though I believe that by now it is FAR less likely with the latest GTK forcing ADWAITA. Just NO on that.

I'd say this is why forks exist.

Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.

that thing you say about inventing a new wheel... car makers do that EVERY year.

it is not necessarily a BAD thing. may the BEST wheel WIN!

Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place

Do we really need a license discussion, now?

US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth's geosynchronous orbit

Trump for 2024 with De Santis as VP. Truly a dream ticket.

yes

Re: For those wondering "Why?"

Right, Royal Marines were apparently a standard part of the crew of a British Naval vessel back in the exploration days. i once toured a modern replica of Captain Cook's ship that went to Australia and new Zealand during an exploration in the late 1700's. It had a deck set up specifically for Royal Marines.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are based on the Royal Navy and Marines.

Re: For those wondering "Why?"

Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine missions (with aircraft) are completely different.

Air Force - air to air engagements, long distance bombing runs, and related support to the other services from land based aircraft.

Navy Aviators: Aircraft carriers, remote island air bases, and "First Strike" long distance air to air and air to ground combat missions, as well as at-sea operations (including at-sea rescue).

Marine Corps: Ground support, air to air combat, "first strike" and beach landing support (as well as general support of Naval operations)

Army: Mostly helicopters for air to ground and recon in support of major land engagements.

So each has aircraft, but they are different because the missions are different. I do not think Air Force needs carrier-capable aircraft nor to practice carrier landings. Similarly short range bombers launched from carriers should not be expected to fly long distances nor carry huge payloads like a B-52. Different missions.

When I was on a sub back in the day we would occasionally have Marines on board. Their mission was to guard and defend. I generally stayed out of the radio room and other places they were involved in so did not see them much. But sometimes 4 or 5 marines would be on the ship for a given mission, whatever it might be. Jokingly we patrolled "the sewers of Moscow" back during the cold war. And so my job was to help push the mobile surveillance and weapons platform through the water. The marines probably had to guard things that probably had much higher classification than I was allowed to know anything about, and to defend that equipment and/or secret and see to its destruction in the event of capture (and possibly shoot anyone with intimate knowledge of it including themselves). So there you have it, different mission, so different service, and they ride on ships when needed to perform that mission.

[That's kinda how it works in the U.S. military]

Re: For those wondering "Why?"

I sort of mentioned the funding angle. It's easier for lawmakers to apportion money this way, and have a general idea of what it's going to be spent on, rather than "one big pile" to be fought over and apportioned according to bureaucratic whims of the moment.

Re: For those

Having a separate service that can focus on space IS a good idea. It helps to avoid the "monolithic bureaucracy" issues and the tendency to re-apportion funds if everyone must share from a great big pile. The pile will most likely be allocated according to the current whims of the bureaucracy...

Space Force, I imagine, could turn into something a lot more science-fictiony at some point. But will they use Naval ranks or the traditional Army-based ones? That is, will a Captain be an O6 or an O3 when there are actual SPACE SHIPS? Or will their be Privates and Sergeants, or Spacemen and Petty Officers?

Then again, 'Stellar Navy' could end up being its own service, too... to combat those "space pirates".

Harrrr!

Insteon's vanishing act explained: Smart home biz insolvent, sells off assets

Re: I do think....

you defined some actual good product ideas.

Now, instead of making them contact an outside server, run something on a PC or your phone to contact the device. Make it open source so you sell the hardware, and the software supports it as long as there are people willing to maintain it (including customers). This becomes a selling feature.

Re: Appropriate Legislation

Perhaps a better take on that: the requirement to publish the specification so that competing services can support those devices (including non-profits and home-grown).

So if 'example' company goes titsup and the 'example.com' web service is no longer available, hackers should be able to produce an equivalent service, upload to "git repo someplace", maybe ask donations like with phone apps and firefox extensions, and then you do a config change on your device to point to "example.org" instead (or whatever, maybe even an IP address on your LAN) and then you get the functionality back (or a good portion of it, depending). And ISPs could even help by making it possible to tunnel and get a listening port for things _LIKE_ this.

That's how I see it, anyway. And the requirement to publish, and make firmware updates available (or source so that they can be MODIFIED) could be an "escrow" requirement before being allowed to sell the product, so that it only kicks in if the online service being provided is in any way discontinued. Then, customers have the opportunity for 'relief', which is better than having to throw "that useless brick" away, now that the company that manufactured and/or sold it dies.

Buying a cloud product has AN IMPLIED CONTRACT. It should be ENFORCED that way. At least, in "common sense" world...

Re: D-Link does it better

Still, "The Cloud"™ is _HIGHLY_ overrated...

A few years ago I was given one of those intarweb radios as a present for christmas or something like that. Cool idea, used it for years, then find out, no longer really works right any more, always dropping the connection and getting network errors [I can watch them with wireshark].all because Broadcom (who apparently had a closed source firmware thing going on all of these radios for a while, several different brands even) dropped ALL support a couple of years ago, and will NOT even allow the radio makers to SUPPORT IT THEMSELVES by UPDATING THE FIRMWARE on these devices and thereby keep the service going on their own... and therefore the radio effectively *DIED* because, hardcoded URLS (which I can observe in wireshark) and things like that. yeah, there are some hacks availoable to "make it work" but I do not want to do that. Making an RPi do its job instead.

So, if "Cloud" tech is SO FRAGILE and only lasts a HANDFUL of years before it effectively goes titstup, then UNLESS there is an OPEN STANDARD or OPEN SOURCE way of FIXING it ourselves, I'd say:

DO! NOT! BUY! CLOUD! TECH!!!

And THIS hurts their entire business model, not just because of me, but the bad taste that MANY OTHERS get in their mouths over the UNRELIABILITY of future support for something that SHOULD last for DECADES.

Plans for Dutch datacenter to warm thousands of homes

Re: I cannot resist...

Unagi. YUM! (it's my favorite Japanese food)

you can use hot water to produce chilled water using an Absorption Chiller. However the temperature you would need is probably a LOT higher than that from the hot side of a cooling system for electronics. Still, there may be a way to recover the heat from cooling the electronics within the process.

Similarly, recovered heat from a data center cooling system could (in theory) at least reduce the electrical load needed to create chilled water in the summer by pre-heating or otherwise injecting recovered energy into the system.

Alternately, it may also be possible to use Peltier devices to generate chilled water from hot water, though I am not sure if there are any existing devices that have that kind of scale. Does NOT mean they cannot INVENT one!

So "solutions exist" but may require some cleverness and/or "scaling up".

The cogeneration system I worked with back in the 80's used engine jacket water and exhaust gas heat recovery to power an absorption chiller, pre-heat hot water (for a hotel), while generating electricity using a diesel generator running on natural gas. Excess electricity went on the grid, and it ran at full power all of the time.

Apple geniuses in Atlanta beat New York to the punch, file petition to unionize

Can't believe the US is so backwards on worker's rights.

See icon

Re: It is interesting to see the moves to unionise

I hope they are not as stuck in the past as the ones here frequently are.

It depends on the union. Many are actually beneficial to both management AND employee, but this comes from many years of partnership, stock ownership plans, and a realization that pricing yourself out of a job is bad for EVERYONE.

The idea is to bring a "win" to both sides of a labor dispute if you want to be a SUCCESSFUL union. In the far past, when unions were needed to right social wrongs, it was "robber barons" vs "the exploited". Nowadays, not so much.

I hope a union does better than non-union for Apple Store employees; otherwise, they will become victims of exploitation on BOTH sides of the union (i.e. both management AND employee).

Some years ago the Baker's union here in Southern Cali-Fornicate-You priced the Hostess bakers out of a job. Hostess went belly-up and sold all of their intellectual property to "Little Debbie", who did NOT re-open the union bakery in Cali-fornicate-you, but instead took up new production under the Hostess brand and used their newly acquired recipes to re-establish the brand. Successfully.

Lesson learned: If you price yourselves out of a job, you might kill the company in the process.

OK less likely with Apple, but still...

Microsoft plans to drop SMB1 binaries from Windows 11

I was thinking that SMB v2 support was available earlier than that...

and then i found release notes for SMB 3.6 which confirms 2011

https://www.samba.org/samba/history/samba-3.6.0.html

Re: That NAS under the stairs

Samba has supported SMB versions greater than one for quite a while now. If the NAS was designed before 2008 then maybe it would have SMB 1 only on it. But as hard drive sizes have improved so much since back then, I wonder why anyone would be using the old ones still... (my hard drives that are as old as that have all gone titsup long ago)

Vista was the version that introduced SMB v2 (along with server 2008). So XP and earlier have V1. I would guess that if you use '9x for old games or XP for any reason, you _might_ have trouble if SMBv1 stops being supported at all...

/me has an old XP-based book-sized Lenovo that does 3D printing occasionally

Departing Space Force chief architect likens Pentagon's tech acquisition to a BSoD

Re: He's not very involved with his work.

an overheated CPU would do it - BSoD may be the least of the outcomes. Seen it, dust in the cooler and you're doing a long build or something.

Re: COTS

back in 2010-ish i worked on a system that used drones and wifi and mesh networks for ground-air-ground battlefield communications. It was part of a proposal to the DoD. It did not get the contract, though. Point is, like many such DoD contracts, you have competing businesses offering their solutions, and as long as the specification is clear and the solutions meet the requirements, they pick the one to go with, etc. (usually the lowest bidder, but not always).

Re: COTS - Crap Off The Shelf

eh, your list is less than satisfactory since OSs like Linux, being open source, can be forked and maintained domestically.

However, _I_ would focus on the HARDWARE. Think of this: how MUCH of a typical computer is MADE FROM OVERSEAS MANUFACTURED COMPONENTS?

And THAT is the crux of the problem, as I see it. In a war, your "friend" could become your ENEMY, and with the CCP [consider their current posturing] and the Russia/Ukraine war, this is even MORE evident.

FreeBSD (and the other BSDs) were at least FORKED from things invented in the USA. I thought I might just mention that. And, again, open source makes it possible for DoD to maintain it themselves.

keep in mind that the Pentagon needs to consider a few things:

* Foreign made equipment is not under their control

* Foreign made equipment can have design features NOT conducive to national security (back doors, kill switches, things the CIA has ALREADY [allegedly] done to others I might add)

* If a war breaks out and they need MORE of this stuff, an embargo would SERIOUSLY screw things up [a single EMP might make that a necessity]

and stuff like that. "Not Invented Here" is a BAD thing for national defense.

Re: reinventing the wheel

as Henry Ford said, "you can have any color you want, as long as it is black" (with reference to the model T).

Or he said something very similar to that. It made sense when he was trying to significantly lower the average cost of ownership, which was his primary goal at the time.