Posts by bombastic bob

US House passes bill to boost chip manufacturing and R&D

it's most likely just another form of "Corporate Welfare" with "strings" attached to "solve" a problem that may very well be directly related to government regulations and policies in the FIRST place...

"Doing like China" (government money and interference in private business) is NOT how you COMPETE with China.

I suspect that one of the biggest cost savings "over there" comes from the ability to do things _LIKE_ dumping all of that toxic waste "over there"... (not saying to grossly pollute, which NOBODY wants, but making it easier and less expensive to dispose of such things that are necessarily a part of fabricating semiconductors, as an example, re-processing and transporting the stuff being two major parts of this)

icon, because, facepalm

Out of beta and ready for data: 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS is here

RPi 3 and 4 are more ;powerful than an old Toshiba laptop that I occasionally use from time to time (has an older Linux kernel on it that supports the older hardlware)

(We used to get by just fine with 1Ghz and less than 512M of RAM)

I guess it depends on what you're trying to do...

Re: FreeBSD13/aarch64 runs on them too!

I was workiing with FBSD 12 (64-bit) on a RPi 3B a while back, while it was pre-release. All of the 3 support has been 64-bit as far as I can tell.

I think one of the main reasons Raspbian/RPi OS had not gone 64-bit before now is due to WiringPi (which will not work in 64-bit as far as I am aware, 'word of god' from its creator on IRC even).

12-year-old revives Unity desktop, develops software repo client, builds gaming environment for Ubuntu...

Re: Your reporter was very fond of Unity

yeah maybe he hasn't learned the evils of systemd and flatty interfaces yet... we should teach 'im

Mint+Cinammon, or my favorite Linux desktop, Devuan+Mate. But for a REAL hacker, there's FreeBSD!

Re: burn out

They they would burn out.

if you look at the reasons BEHIND burn-out you may find that holding a kid's self-motivating ambitions BACK "for his own good" to "prevent burnout" is the OPPOSITE of what needs to be done.

I bet the kid does it because it is FUN.

I bet if he had to do "the 'normal' path" he'd be BORED, and *THAT* would cause the burnout!

This was college, for me. BORING classes that were REQUIRED for a degree. I go in the military and learn much harder stuff in a way shorter time (nuclear engineering and power plant operation) and it's ALL relevant, NO B.S., NO liberal indoctrination or "feeliness" or any of the OTHER nauseating CRAP, and I thought it was AWESOME and was near the top of my class (because being AT the top took too much work and I was busy playing my guitar and building electronic things with my spare time).

Let the kid do what makes him happy, and he will turn that into a MONEY MAKING SKILL, and THAT is all that is important. Money gets you everything else. And if doing something that EARNS A PILE OF MONEY makes you happy, the MONEY will make you EVEN HAPPIER.

(too many forces in the world try to stop this, probably out of envy)

Re: What is there to say?

Here;s what I'd say to the kid:

a) get your GED, and apply for college. forget degrees, just improve the skills you need to...

b) start a business based on what you have already done

(how many millionaires dropped out of college to run a business? Yeah, that)

Rapid path to success. School is ONLY valuable if it helps you get a good paying job. And last I checked, Jr. High was about dealing with bullies and talking to girls. I didn't really learn anything else, and someone THAT smart is probably not going to learn anything either, except "do what we tell you" and "the nail that sticks out gets the hammer", and also get HELD BACK unnecessarily so un-achievers won't *FEEL* bad about NOT achieving. And even back THEN, it STILL had WAY too much liberal indoctrination shoehorned in... (I cannot imagine how bad it is THESE days).

(so circumvent the "normal" process, because if you are already good, all that schooling is JUST IN YOUR WAY - kinda like hacking it)

Chip shortage: Buyers sign multiyear, no-take-back deals to secure supplies, says NXP

Re: Preserving the legacy

it could be WORSE if some idiot in a regulating agency decides that EVERY VEHICLE now "needs" some irritating or limiting feature, and suddenly the performance curve or other inherent capability (affecting your ability to drive it or travel in general) suddenly changes without warning...

(I am sticking with my old dinosaur burner)

FBI says more cyber attacks come from China than everywhere else combined

Re: Trumpeters always say CHINa

a very long I.

Strangely, the font rendering the capital 'I' looks the same for 'l' and l was initially confused...

Re: Pin the tail on the donkey

or, his son

Right-to-repair laws proposed in the US aim to make ownership great again

Re: The Problem

Or maybe the tractor itself you get to own, but then there's "Tractor OS" which has a monthly subscription fee and some kind of security lock to prevent a 'Tractor Linux' from being used in its place... OK starting to get too close to home now, right? Yeah we can all see THAT coming. Next it's your car, then your computer, then your TV, oven, washing machine, ... (I suppose phones are already that way with locked in carriers requiring an unlock code they will not give you until you pay for their service for a year)

(and I'm not even mentioning the data being 'phoned home' and monetized - oh wait I just did!)

[and then, gummint gets to apply a USE TAX of some kind, tacked onto your subscription fee, applied to whatever you do with what you own. In a sane world this would be written off as a crazy conspiracy theory. Still, I should probably stop giving gummint the ideas]

Second Trojan asteroid confirmed to be leading our planet around the Sun

Re: BBQ

1.18 Km of carbon would make a hell of a barbeque.

I wonder if it contains DIAMONDS...

Re: BBQ

(re: entire planet switched overnight to just using coal, doomsday by 2100 etc.)

if you scrub the coal stacks, probably not. This isn't the 1800's after all... black smoke from coal burning steam plants darkening the skies of every major city (etc.).

Then again, rain usually washes the skies enough to avoid a complete doomsday scenario. And strangely enough, the gasses emitted by fossil fuel burning plants (having an affinity for water), in addition to the particulates, would ALSO tend to seed the rain clouds, helping to wash it all out of the atmosphere. With luck, it doesn't become a serious 'acid rain' problem and actually helps plants to grow better (nitrates and sulfates) as well as maintaining the CO2 equilibrium.

(But yeah, using scrubbers means you can extract the nitrates and sulfates and turn them into fertilizer)

Re: Doing stuff at scale is hard

Are we transmuting every atom in the sun to carbon?

Actually there are 2 basic fusion processes in the sun, one involving carbon. Depending on the star's size and temperature, one of those two reaction chains is the dominant one, but both typically exist. So carbon production IS a part of the Sun's normal operation, and it gets transformed back and forth as hydrogen is added and helium is spat out (to form carbon again).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle

America's EARN IT Act attacking Section 230 is back – and once again threatening the internet, critics say

in some places, so-called benevolent dictators end up being capricious and tyrannical, just in different ways - like making chewing gum illegal (Singapore)

Re: Its an alternative to doing anything useful

they cook up badly thought out, intrusive legislation to distract us

That describes pretty much ANY politician, In My Bombastic Opinion.

if they're going to attack section 230, they need to focus on the provisions that allow CANCEL CULTURE and ONLINE CENSORSHIP to exist without legal ramifications... meaning that if some 60's era burnt out musician wants to censor someone, and if that person GETS CENSORED, then THAT PERSON SHOULD BE ABLE TO SUE OVER IT. But suing (or prosecution) over what THAT PERSON said or posted should not happen at all, except to the one who posted it (assuming the content is libelous or illegal).

But you know politicians - doing THE RIGHT THING doesn't manipulate voters.

(I'm not too happy with Lindsay Graham these days anyway, no surprise to see his name on this)

UK government told to tighten purse strings or public will have to foot the bill for nuclear decommissioning

why can't they just do some upgrades instead?

why can't they just do some upgrades instead?

Wouldn't it cost LESS to do some refits, repairs, and upgrades to EXISTING systems?

'Shirley' it makes a LOT more economic sense for the electricity to pay for the retrofit over a couple of decades (including the storage of radioactive 'old reactor parts' and nuclear waste) than to just tear it down and pay for it all through tax money...

The refit/repair/upgrade path means it PAYS FOR ITSELF and continues to supply needed electricity. Win-Win

And yes, I HAVE operated nuclear reactors. I pretty much know how they work, I've worked with radioactive material, done many contamination surveys with radiacs and swipes, worked in high radiation areas, and wore different types of dosimeters depending on the conditions. And I'll yell it from the cheap seats if I have to, that NUCLEAR ELECTRICITY MAKES SENSE. It should not just be "decomissioned" because SOME people FEAR it.

Website fined by German court for leaking visitor's IP address via Google Fonts

who needs an icon font. I just make one as a PNG or JPG - probably takes less time than searching a stupid font for ":just the right thing". Use an 'img' tag with some style things and it lines up just fine. And you can make it look like whatever YOU want (and not some 2D FLATTY google chrome thing with poor color contrast that lets them track your IP address).

I mean how hard IS it to use gimp to make something like that? Oh wait, that's not "modern" enough...

icon, because, FACEPALM

Re: At Cornetman...

or you can use a set of vice grips clamped onto the spinny steering rod thingy instead.

"not a wheel"

Hosting your own copy of a free font is NOT that hard.

However, if you MUST (for some copyright reason) ALWAYS get the font from the owner's server, you can most likely have some server-side code fetch and cache it on behalf of the web page that uses it... (then the IP address of your web server would be recorded, and not that of the guest visiting your web site)

Other than that, if you must do a cross-site load of a font, consider using a DIFFERENT font instead (and host it yourself). Many such freebie fonts exist.

Attack on Titan: Four Japanese Manga publishers sue Cloudflare

Re: Cloudflare has denied that its services assist pirates

well, to their credit, Cloudflare appears to take at least SOME complaints seriously, but as they're NOT some kind of police force or "enforcement arm of the CANCEL CULTURE" (thankfully) it appears that if they are satisfied the content they host was pirated they'll take it down from their network.

Isn't that ALL you can REALLY ask ANY reputable service provider? (anything BEYOND that can quickly become CANCEL CULTURE, or worse, PREDATORY TAKE-DOWNS of COMPETITORS)

And, I would guess, that it might be a good idea for manga publishers to do MORE (English) translations of their works (or license it to those who do it), so that the fan-scanners won't need to do it FOR them. Often these quasi-pirate organizations exist ONLY because the works are unavailable to the rest of the world through any other (legal) means.

Happy birthday, Windows Vista: Troubled teen hits 15

Re: You forgot

It's hard to remember them all, as the list is SOOOooo long...

Re: 512MB ram minimum memory requirement

To be fair, it's not the first time MS have screwed up system requirements.

yeah, they did again just LAST YEAR

At least Vista was not...

At least Vista was not:

* All 2D FLATASS FLATTY FLATSO like'Ape', 'Ape point 1', 'Win-10-nic', and 'Win II'

* Embedded with SPYWARE and ADWARE

* A marketing platform for "The Store"

* A strong-arm tactic to make you use a MICROSOFT CLOUDY LOGON

* Plagued with forced updates that are often time bombs waiting to stop you from using your computer for several hours or render it un-bootable

(and so on)

I once did a graphic showing Max Headroom saying "C-c-c-catch the Wave! New WIndows!" with a Vista logo.

Thing is, Coca Cola quickly realized THEIR mistake with 'New Coke' and LET CUSTOMERS HAVE WHAT THEY WANTED. Microsoft appeared to release 7 as a sort of 'Windows Classic'. THEN they doubled down on STUPID with everything that followed...

"Modern" - it does NOT mean what THEY think *FEEL* it means.

You're fabbing it wrong: Chip shortages due to lack of investment in the right factories, says IDC

JIT manufacturing is dead.

JIT manufacturing is dead.

I hope you are right. Decades ago I partnered with a materials management guy to produce software to assist with improving inventory control by developing more accurate sales forecasts. I'd like to resurrect this. Being re-done as a cloud-based system is probably a good idea, either private OR public cloud. Or maybe just a web-based system. I think I'll look into it...

Re: Sounds like a fine business model

Maybe an 'open spec" for car computers is in order? You know, like PCs.

Problem is that gummints seek to REGULATE TOO MUCH (especially Cali-Fornicate-You) when it comes to engine performance and whatnot. With minimal safety standards, and NOT insane regulations on fuel utilization, having people (and car dealers) able to shop around for better 'after market' equipment that plugs right into the vehicle might be the BEST option overall... and a potential "2nd source" for stuff that's currently in short supply.

As for electric cars, it will be a VERY long time before they replace gasoline and diesel. In my opinion they are still HIGHLY overrated.

/me pointing out that car computers and other related components most likely have to be "approved" by bureaucrats before they can be put into cars. Therefore, swapping out a part with a minimal design change to use something that IS available is no longer an option. Bureaucracies are JUST too inefficient to allow for that kind of flexibility. And so a shortage on a 2 cent part stops the line...

Re: Sounds like a fine business model

The solution seems to be to NOT make things like this [exclusively] in China any more...

looks like we need more companies doing things like Rochester and T.I. do, _ESPECIALLY_ if they build fabs in UK, EU, USA, Mexico, Canada, and Japan. Big ones. Lots of robotics and automation. Without the need of a swarm of slave wage minions to get work done, building things OUTSIDE of China becomes profitable again.

Idea of downloading memories far-fetched say experts after Musk claim resurfaces in latest Neuralink development

Re: I don't see a problem in his statement.

I have seen some evidence to suggest that actual memories are not contained within the brain itself, but the brain contains "pointers" to those memories [such that damaging the brain causes you to lose the pointers, and therefore, cannot access the memories]. Memories may, in fact, be hyperdimensional and more metaphysical than physical. If this is the case, downloading them may be impossible with ANY technology that cannot access things outside of a 3D+time perception of the universe.

Still, I like the idea of the machine/human interface. "Ghost in the Shell"

And being an 'optimistic futurist' might lead to OTHER cool things.

Re: Not gonna happen any time soon.

When did he become the richest man?

Maybe when he moved his car company from Cali-Fornicate-You to Texas?

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

a rider wearing a helmet does not protect the other person/property when he crashes into someone or something... so who cares about HELMETS anyway? Best to focus on what is important, like NOT injuring pedestrians or making their phones (and other things) fly through the air and break into pieces when hitting the concrete.

In my part of the world anything on wheels (bikes, skates, scooters, etc.) on a walkway or boardwalk or anything similar can not exceed a certain speed (8 to 10 mph as I recall) but they are not disallowed. As long as people use them responsibly there should be no problem. Bicycles can exceed 30mph and weigh more. So same rules should apply to scooters. But I still like the warning noise idea. It's been floated around for a while now with electric cars.

Back when I was a kid, large luxury cars ran so quiet I could not tell there was a car behind me sometimes and so I did not get out of the way and the inevitable horn honk nearly made me wreck my bike a couple of times. Don't wanna do THAT noise to pedestrians on the sidewalk, THAT's for sure!

Re: Repeating:

Mentioning Flash Gordon made me think of Buck Roger's rocket (in those old 1930's era movie serials [as well as a possible full length feature film] with Buster Crabbe) that sounded a lot like the low droning sound of a pulse jet (not to be confused with the sound of a V1 during the WW2 blitz on London, which only posed a danger when the noise STOPPED)

(either that or it was the sound of a multi-engine airship of the same time period)

How to get banned from social media without posting a thing

a) wide mouth soda bottles (like the kind you find at roadside convenience stores)

b) a funnel

either one of which can improve your chances of success

(cat and coffee and spit-take alert)

When I was in the Navy, on one of those long lonely duty section mid-watches while in port (requiring gallons of coffee and a huge bladder) we would occasionally use a 1 liter chemical sample bottle for this purpose. The idea of course was to DUMP IT AND RINSE IT when your watch relief showed up after you turn the responsibility over and can leave the space to properly relieve yourself, Under the desk where it was kept was ANOTHER bottle, very similar, containing a disinfectant for use with emergency air breathing masks (used often in drills for fires etc. or actual casualties). One particular individual, "that guy", forgot to dump it and the Engineer Dept. head grabbed the pee bottle instead of the disinfectant after supervising a re-qualification drill the next day. Yes, he was PISSED.

Re: She needs to have an active social media presence

Beer, sir!

Re: Influence this

This reminds me of a few years ago when I refused to have a social media account on a well known platform that I like to call 'Faece-Ban', even though articles and radio personalities and people I knew were suggesting that NOT being on this platform would hurt my future employment and business options. I figured owning my own web site was sufficient "social media" since I could pretty much post whatever I want and I didn't have to deal with trolls and Karens.

I have NO idea where this kind of "thinking" came from... must've originated with "The Influencers"

Microsoft's do-it-all IDE Visual Studio 2022 came out late last year. How good is it really?

Re: The Microsoft naming department

To be fair, both VB and VBA are evil and should be destroyed with fire.

here ya go (see icon)

Re: "The top request for Visual Studio is a Linux version. Why?"

I find that pluma (the Mate version of gedit that uses the older (superior) interface) does what I generally need for development on Linux and FreeBSD.

I've been using gedit (then pluma) since 2005-ish. Works VERY well. And with an RPi you can use DISPLAY to make it work across a network so you can run pluma on the RPi directly but have it display on a proper WIMP display running Linux or FreeBSD (along with some ssh sessions for building and testing etc.).

But if people want the MS IDE that's fine with me. I just do not like the 2D FLATASS look. Maybe I could get Micros~1 to use something like 'TraditionalOK' for the Linux version...

Throw away your Ethernet cables* because MediaTek says Wi-Fi 7 will replace them

Re: I'll Believe It When I See It

FYI the Faraday cage that makes up the inside of your microwave is probably good for 40db attenuation at best. 100W may drop to 1W or 0.1W (60db) but 100mw is what a typical AP emits and so Mr. Microwave screams all over the band... even when it is perfectly safe for nearby humans.

Also magnetrons drift around and so the affected channels are pretty wide. Radar systems need to use the outgoing signal applied to an AFC circuit to make sure they can receive the echo, as every pulse is likely to be on a different frequency within a relatively narrow range,

Re: You can pry the ethernet cable out of my cold dead hands!

wireless can be:

a) sniffed

b) replay attacked or similar (these methods have been around for quite some time)

c) cracked to gain illegal access

d) abused to engage in illegal activity online

e) DoS'd via RF interference (maybe a nearby arc welder?)

no thanks for the ENTIRE network to be wireless. Just remote devices that might need it. Everything else gets a CABLE.

Re: You can pry the ethernet cable out of my cold dead hands!

From the article: allowing data to flow seamlessly even if there is interference or congestion on some of the bands.

even in a neighborhood of single-family dwellings, there is considerable interference from AP devices on adjacent channels, etc.. Doing the multi-band multi-channel bonding thing is ONLY going to make YOUR router fast, at the expense of EVERYONE NEAR YOU. Or what would happen when EVERYBODY does this and streams high bandwidth content at the same time... ?

I can't imagine how bad it would be in an APARTMENT BUILDING.

Linux distros haunted by Polkit-geist for 12+ years: Bug grants root access to any user

Re: Bury it in the desert. Wear gloves

Fortunately, systemd is NOT Linux. I would say that some of the desktops (talking about YOU, Gnome) resemble the rag bag etc. in at least SOME ways, but fortunately Linux itself and the standard POSIX utilitiesl do NOT (they seem very well designed and reliable, to me).

polkit is really only necessary if you have a GUI and something like Gnome or Mate uses it for whatever reason. Although I think systemd may need it, it may also be optional without a GUI installed.

So most (if not all) of those Linux appliances may not be affected. But RPi OS would be, if you're using it as a touch screen. So there you have it.

(risk assessment as needed if the device is networked or not)

FreeBSD appears to be affected

I checked the pkexec.c source (from a recent install) and it has the flaw in it. Also verified that under FreeBSD it's possible to use execve() with zero arguments causing 'argc == 0' (which is a valid condition as someone else pointed out). Assuming argc must always be >= 1 is just bad code.

Fortunately, with the source available, I can patch it myself.

APNIC: Big Tech's use of carrier-grade NAT is holding back internet innovation

Re: I've said it before and I'll say it again

how did IPv4 vs IPv6 become a religious war?

Other apparent religious wars:

a) emacs vs vi

b) gnome vs Mate (or KDE)

c) 2D FLATSO vs 3D Skeuomorphic

d) Windows vs Linux

e) PC vs Mac

f) sysV vs systemd

g) pulseaudio vs OSS

h) apt vs rpm

a long list, yeah

Re: PEBCAK

your theory breaks when you look at an IP header structure and realize that each digit of the IP address is a single byte in the header. When the binary structure format changes to accommodate a 10 bit value it is NO LONGER IPv4.

And then every bit of hardware that expects IPv4 will have to be upgraded.

might as well adopt IPv6 which has available hardware already.

Re: That old chestnut

Google or Facebook (which almost everyone keeps a live connection to all the time).

I do not think 'almost everyone' is an accurate assessment. Your perception may be grossly inaccurate.

Consider the popularity of search engines like 'Duck Duck Go' for starters. Add to that the large number of people who REFUSE to have anything to do with Faece-Ban. Or Tw[a,i]tter for that matter.

Although a typical 'droid phone may have applications that attempt to stay in contact with Google or Faece-Ban, I rarely [if ever] use those applications (which would do that) and make sure that many similar applications are ALWAYS OFF. And I do not use phones/slabs much anyway. So no TRACKING MONSTER breathing down my neck. And I am pretty sure I am NOT alone.

Re: That old chestnut

it is true that ALL IPv6 addresses are public. Without adequate built-in firewall and network stack reliability in windows workstations and servers (your 'ping of death' comment for example) universal IPv6 rollout could be THE reason why ISPs do not want to support it, translating into "not available".

I've had an IPv6 tunnel for (probably) more than a decade. I think it was 2010-ish when I set it up through a free tunnel service. Works fine.

(and I very carefully firewall the incoming IPv6 knowing the effect of publicly visible IPv6 addresses on any windows machines that might be running - all of those OPEN PORTS)

NASA's Curiosity finds signs of ancient life on Mars. Or maybe not. More data needed

Re: I can help with that...

cabbage and pears and really good chili con carne with beans!! That would DEFINITELY be biological.

/me pointing out that C14 is created in the atmosphere by cosmic radiation (or that's the theory). C12 generally stayed closer to the ground. Although nitrogen is responsible for C14 it is likely (due to the presence of nitrogen throughout the solar system) that Mars once had lots of it in the atmosphere, as does earth. Jupiter and Saturn have a lot of ammonia, i.e. NH3, in their atmospheres. But CO2 is much heavier than most other gases and so when Mars lost most of its atmosphere, the lighter stuff virtually disappeared, leaving the heavier components like CO2 in higher relative concentration than you find on Earth.

Version 7 of WINE is better than ever at running Windows apps where they shouldn't

would never suggest to someone to use ReactOS for anything.

Sadly honest. ReactOS isn't reacting very well... (sadly so, I like their potential, as well as the traditional look)

run both 64-bit and 32-bit Windows apps side-by-side

run both 64-bit and 32-bit Windows apps side-by-side

a VERY welcome feature. A couple o' years ago I evaluated Wine on Linux and this major deficiency (inability for 32-bit and 64-bit to coexist properly) kept DevStudio and certain other things from working at all...

Now, if they make sure that you can ONLY "corrupt up" the desktop of a selected user on your system with windowsey things, then I'll once again consider evaluating it. I really DO want a way to RELIABLY run Windows applications WITHOUT WIN-10-NIC including tax and accounting software.

(and if I uninstall Wine I do not need to have all of those desktop menu items pointing at it, or have it in my path, either)

Google says open source software should be more secure

the 'Amway' multi-level marketing approach? Wow that could get complicated...