Posts by bombastic bob

Climate model code is so outdated, MIT starts from scratch

I just have to LAUGH at the level of cluelessness here...

FORTRAN code, when properly written, is as efficient (and possibly MORE efficient) than code written in any OTHER compiled language.

I taught myself FORTRAN back in the late 70s on a university computer. In the early 90's I was in the M.i.S. department at a company writing stuff in FORTRAN for the ASK/MANMAN system. NOT! HARD!

But the problem is NOT the lingo in which these "climate change" models were written. IT! IS! THE! FACT! THAT! THE! ENTIRE! PREMISE! IS! JUST! PLAIN! WRONG!

WHY does ANYONE believe that these FAILED CLIMATE CHANGE MODELS, that have been WRONG time and time again for DECADES are worth ANY kind of creditibiltiy? BLAMING THE PROGRAMMING LINGO is *JUST* *PLAIN* *LAME*

Making an issue about FORTRAN is MEANINGLESS. It's those nearly-always-wrong algorithms that are BOGUS that need to JUST GO AWAY.

It's JUST as bad as claiming that CO2 is causing anthropogenic climate change in the FIRST place, *ESPECIALLY* when you look at the REAL science, that CO2 is at equilibrium at about 0.04% of the atmosphere (refer to basic chemistry when understanding an equilibrium state) both biologically AND chemically, is at a STABLE LEVEL that varies a bit according to temperature (and does NOT cause the temperature change) because of solubility of gasses in large bodies of water, *AND* has a *TERRIBLE* infrared absorption spectrum for IR radiation that normally escapes the earth to cool it at night, specifically THOSE FREQUENCIES corresponding to ACTUAL TEMPERATURES found on earth. in short, a TERRIBLE greenhouse gas that VARIES VERY LITTLE from ANYTHING that humans do, and is basically a NON-FACTOR unless your goal is to CONTROL PEOPLE by making it EXPENSIVE to do normal every day things with travel, electricity, and FREEDOM.

Sea levels NOT rising, not flooding coastal cities by 2000, or 2020, or any OTHER time for that matter.

Just HOW MUCH hype and nonsense (to justify price gouging on energy and restricting our freedom) must we COLLECTIVELY SWALLOW before WAKING THE HELL UP?

Intel commits to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040

Why is this HOAX still being treated like it is RELEVANT?

This whole "greenhouse gas" nonsense (note: CO2 is a *TERRIBLE* greenhouse gas - just look at the infrared absorption spectrum for IR frequencies that correspond to temperatures on earth, as compared to something like WATER) is a bunch of touchy-feely PAP for the UNSCIENTIFIC "experts" to CONTROL "compliant" people with, claiming that TECHNOLOGY and FREEDOM (i.e. use of fossil fuel energy) is "damaging": the planet somehow... and so we must EMPOWER "THEM" to control OUR LIVES or some other equally *EVIL* plan.

Does ANYONE *STILL* buy into this *NONSENSE* ??? *SERIOUSLY* ???

Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop

Re: The joys of Linux

And Linux has so many patches that practically every day is patch day.

and you have personally enumerated these WHERE exactly?

See: https://www.logicalfallacies.org/ look under "burden of proof" "anecdotal" and "Argumentum ad Populum"

Re: "Linux Desktop"

Choice of desktop has been one of the main reasons for failure of Linux on the desktop

No.

* Linux on the desktop is NOT a failure. Otherwise, there would not be so MUCH choice since nobody would spend time on what's needed to make choice even POSSIBLE

* Micros~1 and Apple spend BOATLOADS of money on MARKETING. A good marketer could sell ice cubes in Siberia.

The only reason we are using Windows on our desktops is because of marketing, which included pressuring computer makers to ship the OS pre-installed on all of their computers, and NOT offering alternatives.

Re: "Linux Desktop"

No I don't, never have, and never will, play Stairway to Heaven - not in a guitar shop or anywhere else.

It's that 2nd chord in the riff that irritates the staff, because people usually mess it up. If they could play it as well as Led Zeppelin did (most do not) nobody would mind. (my mother owned a music store until she retired a decade or so ago)

And the shop will do best if they have a wide range of guitars with different neck, pickup, and body styles, because different human hand and human body shape and personal desire for "that sound". 12 year old girls and 40 year old men probably want different guitar shapes, let alone colors etc. - and ALL of them need to be set up properly with new strings to be easier to play. And you always tune them to E flat because everyone always has to re-tune it and cranks up the pitch so at the end of the day you quickly tune them back down so you aren't always replacing broken strings...

(/me wonders if there is a Linux equivalent to playing 'Stairway to Heaven' in a guitar shop)

you did cause me to realize that the UI "designers" at Micros~1 that seem to *FEEL* (not think) that ONE SIZE FITS ALL, are _NOT_ guitar musicians, nor JAZZ musicians (or anything involving improvisation) because of their apparent 'collective vs individual' approach favoring 'collective' and "one size fits all".

Re: re. Anyone who tells you Linux is hard to use wasn't paying attention

unless both tests involve similar video hardware, its an apples to oranges comparison.

The RPi's video hardware and/or broadcom's video core may be wut dun it.

(there are often issues involving refresh rate that can cause Xorg to pick a particular resolution. The monitor reports its capabilities and the video driver picks the right mode. You can edit the Xorg config to manually set resolution, which I have occasionally needed to do. Usually the culprit is a video adapter trying to use an unsupported refresh rate for the monitor for some odd reason. Since this is a config issue it is not somthing a newb would be able to manage without assistance. Fortunately a search engine generaly finds the solution in the form of 'edit this file' if you spend a minute or two searching on the monitor name and the computer hardware and the words 'Linux' and 'video')

Beijing approves first new video games in nine months

Re: Starving for it

I'm glad SOMEBODY said it. Human rights abuses INCLUDE *RIDICULOUS* *LOCKDOWNS*

Re: Do books need to be approved as well?

Just like communists to pick winners and losers.

No freedom under communism. No "Equity" either. NO fairness. Social credit score is likely to be a factor.

All gummint can do is gum up the works, and COMMUNISM is the WORST form of gummint.

(I am saddened!)

Nokia quits Russia over Ukraine invasion

Re: Western governments have expressed concerns...

the problem is the Russian government (specifically Pootie) and not the Russian people.

I think the sanctions and whatnot are being applied in the wrong places.

Microsoft's huge Patch Tuesday includes fix for bug under attack

why NFS ?

If Micros~1's NFS implementation (assuming WSL, and maybe Ubuntu/Canonical) then HOW/Why an NFS vulnerability?

Micros~1 must have screwed the pooch on the implementation, or is this a Canonical/Ubuntu problem as well?

(I am saddened)

PC sales start to ebb as pandemic buying spree ends: IDC

Re: Reports of the death of PC have been greatly exaggerated

right - a lot of marketing hype that's based on "PC Sales of the moment" gets it wrong. A big example, just a few years ago, was the assumption that the PC was "dead" and EVERYONE was either using a slab or a phone now. Micros~1 wrongly risked everything on "One Windows, everywhere" and made their desktop OS (8.0 i particular) look like a PHONE OS, obviously getting it WAY wrong.

So yeah. What you said. From a slightly different angle.

And having or NOT having the money to buy a new computer, with or without "the need" [like working from home, for now, and needing a newer one], is a major factor as well. When people have the money to spend, they are more likely to spend it and not simply "make do" because they cannot afford a new(er) computer.

DO not underestimate

DO not underestimate the effect of inflation factors, increases in energy costs, and the unfortunate predominance of the *kinds* of thinking that uses tax increases on the so-called "rich" (really those trying to BECOME rich, the rich already HAVE their wealth and won't be affected), restrictions on oil drilling, unimpeded illegal immigration, carbon taxation, artificial supply line shortages, yotta yotta yotta... where REAL people and struggling-to-make-a-profit business have to RE-CONSIDER whether buying new computers is actually NECESSARY, remote or on site work notwithstanding.

E-bay still has used boxen last I checked, and I have purchased them multiple times with a pretty good longevity and success rate. My last major purchase was a re-conditioned Lenovo THAT CAME WITH WINDOWS 7 ON IT.

If you ask me, the economic boom caused by LOW WORLD-WIDE ENERGY PRICES (thank Donald Trump's U.S. oil drilling policies for THAT) coupled with the (unfortunate) need for work-at-home computers is what was driving the market.

NOW that the economy is ABOUT TO JUMP THE SHARK (thanks to Biden-Nomics and RIDICULOUS "green" "carbon footprint" nonsense which SENDS OIL MONEY TO RUSSIA and OTHER nations that hate NATO and "the west" in general), REAL people will have LESS money to spend, inflation will reach ANOTHER ALL TIME HIGH (remember the 1970s under Carter) and PC Sales are *JUST* an INDICATOR of what's to come.

There IS a way to fix it. Just STOP it with the LIBERALISM, LEFTISM, SOCIALISM, and START DRILLING for DOMESTIC OIL and MINING for DOMESTIC COAL wherever it is in WESTERN nations. We do this, energy prices drop like A ROCK and the economy will be saved. That and cut spending, cut gummint regulations that get in the way of JOBS and profits for SMALL business, and so on. Yeah, it's the usual Supply Side Economics argument. But, you KNOW i am RIGHT.

It's true. THIS is what is driving the decline in PC sales. That, and Windows 11. Just like Win-10-nic they are giving people NO! REASON! TO! UPGRADE! HARDWARE!.

Unless... you choose Linux. OR FreeBSD.

OpenSSH takes aim at 'capture now, decrypt later' quantum attacks

"legacy" SCP protocol and SFTP

what I am not quite sure about is whether or not the scp command will still work as expected... (or is it JUST the protocol being used that's changing?)

Frequently I specify absolute paths to things to scp around and usually for good reason, such as copying things to an archive on another box.

Sure SFTP is fine too but it may not do exactly what I want. Or is it just the PROTOCOL that is changing>

Given the use of '-O' to keep any existing behaviors I hope nothing truly breaks.

And does this have any effect on rsync? Yeah I use THAT a lot, too.

Direct lithium extraction technique for greener batteries gains traction

Re: How green?

as far as I am concerned the only thing that REALLY matters is a combination of safety, efficiency, and not polluting the environment with toxic chemicals.

So if they can extract lithium at the lowest possible cost, with a high safety record and no gross pollution, I'm all for it, and if it results in lower prices on Lithium, so much the better!

Pretty much "that" for any industry, really.

(I thought it was pretty interesting in the article overall since I was unaware of how Lithium was being mined, or from where in the world it comes)

First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

Re: Paper beat Beta?

if you thermalize neutrons [reduce energies to 'thermal' energies, like that of the ambient temperature] with hydrogenous materal (water, oil, plastic) you can absorb it with natural boron. "Borated polyethelene" is commonly used for this, but after a time it depletes and needs to be replaced.

Typically you'll have a shield tank of water (or oil) closest to the source (or surrounding it), then a layer of regular polyethelene. and for the remaining (now thermalized) neutrons, borated polyethelene that will absorb the vast majority of them.

Thermalized neutrons are also a lot less dangerous, less likely to cause ionizing radiation damage, or activation of materials.

Keeping in mind fusion potentially generates a pretty high neutron flux compared to fission. But if the fusion reactor is surrounded by a tank of water (read: boiler) the heat from gamma AND neutrons would be captured. About 1 foot of water will absorb 90% of neutron, and 3 feet 90% of gamma. So you use a 6 foot border of "boiler": around the reactor to absorb >99% of energy radiated from it, and produce steam. Shielding AND boiler in one! (take boiling and foaming and bubbles into account as well, maybe make it thicker to compensate or pressurize and use a heat exchanger boiler like a fission plant).

interesting idea, but impractical. However, the decay heat could be captured by something similar to a solar cell or peltier device. I think this sort of thing could offer a way to use decay heat from fission waste in a practical way.

Nuclear waste safely encased in concrete generating electrical power and/or hot water for downtown buildings. It's an idea.

(can't be any worse than recycling sewer water and pumping treated water into the city's water supply, which is jokingly called "toilet to tap" but if it is cleaner than the reservoir, who cares where it last was?)

and plutonium is not the problem in nuclear waste. Usuallty it's Cesium, Rubidium, and precursor gasses like Krypton and Xenon, as well as Iodine (which is biologically dangerous when radioactive). But the worst radioactivity problem is Iron when exposed to a neutron flux (rusty water passing through the core) creating Cobalt 60 which accumulates all over the piping in areas of low or unstable flow (the radioactive material is technically known as CRUD, and the places it accumultes, CRUD TRAPS). With a fusion reactor you can expect this to be significantly lower, though I expect it will still be a problem.

Fission products are typically short lived materials that eventually decay to less dangerous materials that have longer half lives. There is a curve, known ad the Mae West curve, that indicates the relative distribution of fission products and in general they're too heavy (too many neutrons) and will usually beta decay into materials with higher atomic numbers and longer half lives. The danger is posed when it becomes a gas (like Xenon and Krypton) which then becomes particulate matter (Cesium and Rubidium) which accumulates in the lungs and sticks around for a few years, doing radiation damage in the process. There is a biological half life that is shorter than the nuclear half life, but still takes quite a while to getr it out of your lungs.

So yeah, dangerous material in fission products. encase in concrete, maybe use the decay heat for something useful, but they need to be stored for >100 years until they can become "less dangerous".

Not against fission power, just being realistic. And concrete would make pretty good shielding material.

And with fusion, if you cause tritium gas or tritiated water to be released, same kind of biological danger in your lungs, etc.. So you have to be careful with it. Not as bad as Cesium and Rubidium, but still bad.

Re: "the gun would shoot a projectile every 30 seconds"

How about a Ma Deuce instead??

"Happiness is a belt-fed weapon"

Unfortunately when the goal of the funding is 'research', actually SOLVING the problems is less important... than "Research" ad infinitum. Seriously.

(unlike the Manhattan project, which focused on RESULTS)

yeah well that claim was never really substantiated in any significant enough quantity.

But it would be my PERSONAL favorite if they were to "bunch" the H-2 and/or H-3 using something similar to a travelling wave tube at an energy level that had a high microscopic cross section for fusion, slamming into a hard targetr (maybe even carbon) or another "bunch" (from multiple angles even).

Travelling wave tubes work by 'bunching' electrons. With a sufficient field and electric potential, you could theoretically atom smash the fusion reaction. Whether this is power efficient or not is less important than to consider doing this as opposed to a tungsten projectile containing fusion material.

Anyway, 'nuff I guess. I lack the funds and resources to test my theory. Maybe someone else will see this and give it a "shot".

Oh, and a beta emitter is only dangerous to skin and eyes. Paper can shield it. The gammas it also emits might be problematic, though. Just do not breathe it in or it will affect lungs, etc..

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

Re: GFP

GPF could often be avoided by use of an undocumented API call, "GlobalHandleNoRIP()" - which would not GPF if you passed it a bad handle. But 'GlobalHandle()' and related memory functions WOULD.

Windows 3.1 documented these formerly undocumented functions. I think it was related to an anti-trust investigation, though. Many software devs accused Micros~1 of providing insider knowledge of such things to the software groups responsible for Word, Excel, and so on, giving Micros~1 products a "does not crash" advantage over Word Perfect, Lotus 123, and others.

At least, at that time, it was like that.

(I had to use this function as well, to validate handles passed via messages with DDE, so that random crashes would not happen - DDE with a VB application, was a little buggy)

"Microsoft Bob" - add a 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE interface, and it could become Windows 12...

Re: Windows 3.1 had a Registry? Huh; I had no idea.

the registry in 3.1 was not NEARLY as polluted as it is now.

OLE 2.0 was in its infancy...

Re: Happy Birthday!

Yes, the first developer conference I went to was Windows 3.1 in beta. "toolhelp.dll" and common dialogs were a HUGE win for everyone, as was the documenting of previously undocumented functions (though some of that was related to anti-trust investigations).

From the article: Windows 3.1 sold very well, with an appealing user interface.

I *HAVE* to say it. Before Windows 3.0 the user interface was *VERY* 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE.

After Windows 3.0, it was all 3D SKEUOMORPHIC, as was OS/2 1.2 . *IT* *WAS* *THE* *WAY* *THINGS* *OUGHT* *TO* *BE* !!! And, the rate at which people ADOPTED THIS NEW WINDOWS INTERFACE was *EVIDENCE* *OF* *SAME* !!!

Windows 3.1 made Windows 3.0 *BETTER*, more stable, and so on.

But of course I also liked the Start menu in WIn '9x, particularly because it allowed you to have hierarchical menus. As computer systems getr larger you NEED the hierarchical menus, and Program Manager was getting CUMBERSOME. So evolutionary changes like that are welcome.

BUT! THE! REGRESSION! BACK! TO! 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS McFLATFACE (in "modern?" versions) IS! TOTALLY! UNAPPRECIATED!!!

There. I said it.

Happy Birthday, Windows 3.1, which came at a time when I was looking forward to things Micros~1 was creating. At that time, they had a true grasp on the future of computers.

Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter, sends share price to the Moon

Re: ONCE IT IS GONE WE ARE DOOMED

you failed to do your research...

Re: Truth Optional

to use a major share-owning lever to force Twitter to allow Trump back on their platform

I'm hoping for that anyway. I'm sure it's on Elon's list.

Re: No, sorry

"Projecting" - in this particular case, when you assume those you are opposed to are doing THE VERY SAME THING YOU ARE, and then you point fingers and accuse them of it, often FALSELY.

Happens all of the time, from the WOKE, the LEFT, and those who seek to SILENCE OTHERS that disagree with them.

Sad.

(here "brother", ignore the log in my eye, while I remove the spec of sawdust from yours)

Re: No, sorry

see icon

Re: Alternative headline.

from the article: to freely impugn Twitter for exercising its constitutionally protected right to moderate speech on its platform

Or, as I see it, "for exercising its power to control the narrative across its platform by silencing, shadow banning, and outright banning anyone who disagrees with the WOKE LEFT"

Which, of course, is why Elon is buying an interest in it, enough to be on the board, and maybe even a CONTROLLING interest, if need be. He even said so.

I say GO for it.

The alternative: to do what Trump is doing, by making a competing platform. Buying Tw[a,i]tter is probably faster.

DARPA says US hypersonic missile is ready for real world

eh, keep in mind that the Soviet Union (and now Russia) are big on claiming that they can do certain things but do so ONLY to invoke fear. On the other hand, the USA and its allies typically release information on the UN-classified capabilities of a weapon, ship, aircraft, yotta yotta yotta.

Now... HOW long was it before the stealth fighter and stealth bomber were confirmed? They flew for years around places like Area 51 and were claimed to be UFOs but aside from possible REAL tech that is like a space alien aircraft might be, I would assume that most UFO sightings near test ranges are probably "OURS".

/me thinking of an old dog food commercial...

My bomb's bigger than your bomb

My bomb's bigger than yours

My bomb's bigger than your bomb

And it's faster and makes a bigger boom!

GitHub tackles leaks by scanning for secrets in pushed code

no, it's my assumption from that description that they want to identify what a 'secret' would look like for a particular provider.

I have a script that I use to send information via inter-company mail with a daily cron job but of course it needs a user and password to contact the mail server to send it. So before checking in the script I sanitize the user and password, but I imagine it might get flagged now, depending. It's just a simple Perl script using the Mail object (as I recall) but if that's one of the 'patterns' used to find secrets I hope that it simply asks "are you sure" and lets it go through when you confirm it.

Then again I always use the command line 'git' to push things so who knows...

Amazon internal chat app that censored talk of unions and ethics may 'never launch at all'

Re: What an idiotic waste of time and effort

hence, labor union because they (apparently) do not listen and/or respond to grievances from employees.

With a union, they'll HAVE to.

A happy work force makes you profitable. Non-elitists know this.

Re: Slack can already do this...

censorship at all. that's just stupid.

WORSE if you try to violate the law with it (i.e. blocking attempts to unionize). That is VERY illegal inside the USA. Proving the violation of the law, on the other hand, may be difficult...

It's quite literally a VERY old law that an employer can not punish employees nor in any way block the establishment of a labor union within the company. The ONLY thing they can do is offer incentives like higher wages lor better conditions to COMPETE with the unions. Censorship would most likely qualify as a violation of the law in this context. But then again, social media IN GENERAL needs to be SERIOUSLY PUNISHED for its censorship efforts (in general).

I look forward to seeing some SERIOUS consequences for Amazon over this. Unfortunately it will probably mean price increases for consumers.

Bank had no firewall license, intrusion or phishing protection – guess the rest

Re: What I don't understand...

who exactly made all those ATM withdrawals?

People wearing masks, no doubt. ATMs have cameras but it does little good if you have a mask on.

Re: What I don't understand...

Assuming that you set up shell companies someplace that's difficult to track you down in, you can assume you will be traced but not care a lot. Caiman Islands is one of those places you can set up this kind of money laundering scheme. It's a typical money laundering technique used by "the big time": crooks. YES, you CAN trace it with difficulty, and if the criminals know what they are doing, they will probably get away with it.

I mean how do drug cartels and organized crime bosses "get away with it" ? Pretty much "that".

Re: Root Causes

may just have been cluelessness coupled with being cheap

Re: What I don't understand...

Maybe they were too cheap to fly to the Caiman Islands (or wherever) to set up an account for a shell company there??

I would expect wire transfers, cashier's checks, some basic money laundering, and other organized crime techniques may also have been beyond their skill set. It only takes a semi knowledgeable script kiddie to use phishing attacks to set up a RAT trojan...

which ALSO means (the obvious) that proper bank security SHOULD have prevented this.

(I hope that no depositors lost their funds, but I expect they did)

China rolls out bots to enforce ‘temporary closed-off management’ of Shanghai

CCP tyranny - now with ROBOTS!

This is why we do not want to be like THEM.

("Droid Army" - 'Roger Roger')

Remember when Huawei's CFO was detained in Canada? She's been promoted to chair the board

Re: US soil

OK maybe we can come up with an alternative:

U.S. earth? dirt? ground? non-oceany-stuff?

Re: "The US is so convinced Huawei's products represent a security threat"

you sure they wouldn't have a button to MAKE it stop beating?

"About your social credit score..."

"Make decisions collectively" - how CCP of them!

Why am I NOT surprised that a CCP dominated company would have some form of communism embedded in their management policies...

(as I see it, a recipe for failure)

GitLab issues critical update after hard-coding passwords into accounts

Re: Hard coded passwords

run by gits. heh.

Amazon warehouse workers in New York unionize in historic win against web giant

Re: Do not forget, Ronald Reagan WAS a Union guy!

As I recall the air traffic controller's union had it in their contract NOT to strike.

And there was apparently (along with an existing law) a federal judge who ordered them back to work (essential services for national security or similar) and they violated that order. THAT is why they were fired. See link. The article says it better.

You really should get ALL of the facts on this. Seriously. You're welcome. Omitting key details is sometimes called "lying by omission". But I give YOU the benefit of the doubt in not having a good information source (i.e. YOU were lied to about it somewhere up the line).

As for "FBI Snitch" what proof do you have? (I think that's just typical anti-Reagan propaganda)

Re: Amazons options?

4. Amazon buys more warehouse robots

5. "Grunt" level employees are laid off, being replaced by robots

6. A portion of the laid off employees are re-hired as 'managers', no longer blue collar, no longer in the union

That possibility exists as well. The union should be wary of it. If they price themselves out of work this WILL happen.

Volvo car sales tumble amid ongoing chip shortages

Re: I like my chips

I once experimented on an old big-block Ford LTD (429) by modifying the carburator such that it idled on 4 cylinders, on the mains (idle jets were closed off). Since half the cylinders got NO fuel, essentially, it needed regular fuel flow (not idle jets) to idle and do city driving. Gas mileage was significantly better, though I could not measure it other than noting how less often I had to put gas in. Highway mileage went up by about 20% though. And the car stopped "coughing" and running after I shut it off.

This is not a new idea, and maybe a car computer could alternate cylinders around on a modern engine to accomplish the same thing with EFI (just rotate which half of the cylinders get fuel) once the engine warms up. Or if you wanna tinker in your garage with a 40+ year old car that stlil runs, go for it.

As for engine trouble, the ODB-II (or later I guess) stuff usually tells you exactly what went wrong. But some time ago I had to step in to get the diverter valve assembly replaced on my current vehicle. It was building up water in an electric air pump (smog device) and causing it to fail, within the warranty period. I was tired if it failing and so I thought about it, did some online study, and determined that the diverter valve was leaking back into the air pump, and as a huge amount of car exhaust is water vapor, condensing inside the air pump and making it fail.

I figure if you can troubleshoot I.T. problems, you can use the same know-how and online earch ability to at least assist the mechanics with fixing your ride. (But I like the "ask a question" method so they do not get pissed at you doing their job for them - "What would happen if THIS component were to fail? Would it XX and YY and cause THIS to happen? Can we try fixing ZZ to see if it helps? I bet there's something wrong with it.")

Re: Chip shortages

I like my chips deep fried and served with ketchup

(But lemon and salt is ok, too.)

Taters are still cheap. Cutting them up not that hard. Use abrasives (like a 'greenie' cleaning pad) to get the worst of the skin off, then cut taters into the appropriate shape with a big kitchen knife, boil for 6 minutes in salty water, then immediately toss into a deep fryer for 8 to 9 minutes. Mmmmm...

And don't forget the beer.

(but what DOES this have to do with I.T. ??? I guess you made me hungry!)

Re: a non chip filled would be bliss

Other than EFI and a few other efficiency improving innovations, you are correct.

It might also help to have multiple alternative designs [functional, not specific] for sub-assemblies (provided by third parties) available, from intermittent wipers to heater and A/C control. And like another auto maker (I think it was Ford) recently announced, maybe just buy (at a discount) a car WITHOUT the electronic bells and whistles and thereby keep the revenue stream going...

Or is this REALLY all about making EVERYBODY own an ELECTRIC car??? (and HOW much of electric vehicles are made in China?)

Also worth pointing out: If your second source is down the road from your first source, it's STILL "all eggs in one basket". Right?

Any fool can write a language: It takes compilers to save the world

Re: KISS 2: Generic Code

M4 - I just deal with it for autoconf (etc.) and that's about it

Let's not complicate things TOO much ok?

Microsoft backtracks on lack of easy Windows browser choice

Re: Only because..

Yes. Short summary: "They Got Caught". Again. Unnecessarily long "pointing out the obvious" commentary follows. With snark added for pleasure.

[possible conversation, somewhere in Redmond]

"Hey let's make it more difficult to switch away from Edge. Then we can capture the entire browser functionality and put in more ads, more spying, and 'enhancements' that only our browser can do, to lock every into our browser as WELL as our operating system!"

But when the newest generation of 'children trying to be software engineers' arrogantly said "It is OUR turn now" they lacked the experience that was learned in the mid 90's, in particular that anti-trust lawsuit that FORCED them to stop integrating Internet Explorer in a manner that makes it harder to use something ELSE. This started with Windows 3.0 (use of undocumented functions by Micros~1 aka 'insider knowledge' to keep their OWN applications from crashing and burning) to "Active Desktop" and everything that went with it. And do not forget the 'Media Player' issues (that may only be an EU thing though).

But yeah, from the 2D FLATTY to the ad slinging, I have been convinced that Micros~1 is not being run by the engineers that made Windows 3.x, but instead by a bunch of CHILDREN that want to make everything "their way" (customers be DAMNED!).

Web3 'contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare' says analyst firm

Re: Sorry.....I've known about the 'dystopian nightmare' for many years.................

I suspect the "new, shiny" anyway. Not only has it been a SERIOUS DISAPPOINTMENT since around 2010 (windows 8, gnome 3, Australis, 2D FLATASS in general, spyware and adware in WIndows 10, yotta yotta yotta yotta the list goes on), it shows a HORRIBLE trend that "modern" means less choice, less freedom, less privacy, less functionality, being driven by corporations rather than individuals driving THEM (because WE are CUSTOMERS), and so forth.

So the moment someone siren-sings "Web 3.0" I wanna mistrust it JUST ON PRINCIPLE ALONE.

(even if the article was an April 1 joke)