Posts by bombastic bob

ISS? More like HISS, am I right? Space station air leakage narrowed down to Russia's Zvezda module

Re: Or would the airflow be too weak or too strong?

you have to ask how they found the leak in the Soyuz a while back.

That one was apparently caused by an inaccurate drill hole, followed by a sloppy patch job (if I remember correctly). once found, it was patched in space and apparently had no additional leaking.

I wonder if coating the entire outside of the module with the equivalent of soapy water. would reveal bubbles, like when a mechanic checks for a leak in a car tire. (yeah US'ian spelling)

Other possibilities, turn off the fans, seal the room, use a small smoke source at various points, and then watch where it leads. An extinguished match would probably be enough. What, nobody's got a light on the ISS? [such simple things on earth]

US comms watchdog calls for more scrutiny of submarine cables that land in 'adversary countries'

Re: Look in the mirror

Conspiracy theories (and whistle-blown revelations) notwithstanding, it's "spy vs spy" out there.

But when I see news stories like this, I think of it as a likely negotiating tactic.

Perhaps a STRONG treaty will fix it?

Where are we now? Microsoft 363? 362? We've lost count because Exchange Online isn't playing nicely this morning

Re: "recent configuration update"

* Micros~1 Upgrades - highly overrated

* The Cloud - highly overrated

* Universal Desktop - highly overrated

* RDP workstations - highly overrated

Micros~1 "Solutions" (in general) - HIGHLY OVERRATED

I recommend Libre Office instead. And if you MUST do the cloudy thing, google has something (google docs) that _ALMOST_ works.

Airbus drone broke up in-flight because it couldn’t handle Australian weather

Re: Zephyr is fragile

fragile air frame, the down side of having to make it uber-lightweight for solar panels to power it.

(back to the drawing board, or in their case, probably a cube farm of workstations running CAD software)

I bet there were similar design problems with that human-powered aircraft from a while back. It took many tries before a "working" one could be built [and I think it actually flew on ground-effect]

there are probably some interesting "exotic material" possibilities with making it even lighter weight than before, so that the rest of the airframe could be 'beefed up' a bit... hybrid materials involving carbon fiber, boron, aluminum, and so on. Maybe even use SMT tech inside the motor [example, a 'folded' inductor] and some kind of uber-light-weight electronic solder for the electronics (like maybe conductive glue?) Dunno if they're doing those things.

yeah, a soldered circuit board weighs quite a bit more than one without any solder on it... especially when soldered by someone who thinks "the bigger the blob, the better the job"

Director of nuisance-calls company ordered to cough up £114k after ignoring £40k fine from UK data watchdog

Re: Good.

I wish they'd added an extra 0 to the total amount...

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

actually "sanctioned by Microsoft" so that the support and compatibility will be there.

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

A cutoff point where using Linux costs less than NT kernel development...

yes, I've been thinking that maybe that cutoff point is NOW...

Also worthy of mention though: X11, and *NOT* WAYLAND!!! If Micros~1 requires Wayland for "Windows on Linux" it would be YET ANOTHER example of "getting it wrong".

And, also important: NOT take over the desktop to run Windows applications. Let them run SEAMLESSLY on your Mate desktop, for example.

and wouldn't it be nice if "the registry" were stored in "~/.config/Windows" as the Open Desktop might suggest, either in XML or plain text "INI style" form, using actual files and directories? Especially NOT using a "Big ol' BLOB" that you can't easily back up... (whereas tarballing a '~/.config/Windows' directory would be trivial)

(I'm surprised nobody brought these up, yet, or did I miss them?)

Re: Am I the only one?

Even though, Microsoft have successfully shoved a ton of unchecked code into the kernel, .NET (mono) onto most GNU/Linux installations

I call FUD on the first part, and "only if you let the installer do it" on the 2nd. Last I checked, on Devuan with Mate, there's no mono or ".Not" core.

I was VERY angry about 10 years ago when I discovered that gnome installer on Debian was including "tomboy" (a worthless postit note application that I'd never use) in its top level gnome-desktop (I think that's right) package, which dragged in MANY MEGABYTES of MONO CRAP to satisfy the dependencies, JUST for tomboy [insert pejorative here]. Needless to say, it stopped being that in the next rev, (as I recall), or maybe the one after.

Getting rid of it unfortunately required marking everything (except tomboy) below 'gnome-desktop' as manually installed, and then removing gnome-desktop as well as tomboy, and all of the MONO crap along with it. Or something like that. Ugly ugly hack, but satisfying once complete.

in any case, I think that the devs and "mono fan" maintainers have "learned their lesson" over a decade ago, with the 'tomboy' fiasco. So maybe FUD on the 2nd half too, I guess.

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

The only place left to go will be BSD.

Apple has been using a fork of FreeBSD's userland for years. Hardly "taken over".

I think you fail to see the clear advantages here, with a choice [or not choice] to run some kind of Windows emulation on top of Linux (I'd like mine working with FreeBSD as well, please, and no required systemd hooks, k-thanx). But such a move might also explain why 10's of thousands of lines of code were recently attempted to be dropped on kernel devs for updates to kernel-side NTFS support... [not sure what exactly happened with that, though]

I'd actually PAY MONEY for something _similar_ to Wine or Steam's game emulator, running on top of Linux.

I just hope Micros~1 won't FORCE A WIN-10-NIC APPEARANCE (or 'Settings' behavior) on the userland side... yeah I wanna keep my MATE desktop with 3D SKEUOMORPHIC LOOK. And no ads, either. And NO SPYWARE. [yeah good luck THAT happening, I bet]

Icon, 'cause, FreeBSD

(there's no systemd in BSD - YES!)

Re: Sadly... this is the beginning of the end

Any OS responsible for horrors like systemd deserves to die.

That was Poettering, not Linux. And rather than 'die' I was thinking of something involving a wrought iron fence and a rubber chicken, but oh well...

/me typically uses Devuan whenever I need Linux

Re: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

replacing the NT Kernel with the Linux Kernel would cost a lot in development and make no extra revenue.

not necessarily. All you would really need is a single translation layer library with all of the userland stuff running on top of it. As long as the USER32.DLL code (and related) can use glx extensions, AND the various video drivers support it properly on the back end, shouldn't be too hard.

Basically, what Wine attempts to do. Sadly, they're MISSING so many important features and compatibility that I can't get anything I want to run under Wine... but if Micros~1 does it, even just FIXING THE WINE STUFF [without b0rking the desktop settings of the user that runs it, AND allowing both 64-bit and 32-bit applications to run at the same time], shouldn't take too long.

Seriously, it would make good economic sense, NOT having to maintain the kernel and drivers.

And, with open source kernel drivers more or less REQUIRED by the GPL (i.e. re-compile driver for updated kernel config), then guess what? NO! MORE! STUPID! KERNEL! DRIVER! SIGNING!!!

Or at least, it *BETTER* not happen to Linux!!!! (it would take "tainted driver" and "tainted kernel" and re-define it in the most HORRIBLE way possible). I _REALLY_ _HATE_ that "tollbooth" that requires you pay Micros~1 to sign a driver, even if you want to GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE. and it's such a FALSE sense of security, too.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Crypto exchange cracked, Bitcoin burgled

Re: "new payment players [..] not allowed anywhere near its innermost workings"

Crypto exchanges are not banks and are not run by banking professionals. Anyone can set one up and, by the rich history of exchanges having been hacked, anybody does.

The new "dot bomb" revolution, I guess. reminiscent of the early noughties... and all of the hype over "dot com dot com dot com" etc.. And now look, crypto currency hacking ripoffs.

I wonder if deliberately creating a crypto-currency startup so that you could ROB it, later, has already been done (or at least considered). Good enough reason to NOT "go there". Hard to say whether it's worse to do THAT than to blatantly lie about a company's value (to prop up stock prices) until the bottom drops out [right after the startup's original investors sell off all of their stock].

Onwards! To the airport and adventure! And this rather lachrymose Linux screen

Re: A keyboard!

bluetooth might help with this...

(I blame chromium for this b0rk - on general principle - seen it herringbone an RPi a few times by crashing lightdm followed by a login prompt - and yet, still no better touch screen solution presents itself at the moment)

Humans suck so much at beating this pandemic that Microsoft has made an AI to enforce social distancing

Re: "uses artificial intelligence to count the number of people in a room"

Does Micros~1 foresee ADDITIONAL NEED for such an "app", in the future??? Something that would justify its existence, especially with 3 companies competing for vaccine trials at the moment...

In ANY case, I sure as hell *HOPE* *NOT* - this ONE time is *BAD* *ENOUGH*. NEVER AGAIN *I* say!!!

Future airliners will run on hydrogen, vows Airbus as it teases world-plus-dog with concept designs

Re: Hey, it works for Hotwheels

dynamic braking, and charge while going downhill. Like a Prius.

(they were pretty smart back then, too)

Re: Because the world is running out of hydrocarbons...

it is my understanding that pretty much any hydrocarbon-based substance (including rotting refuse and sewage) could theoretically be made into oil, Seeing as we aren't likely to run out of "those things" any time soon, I think we're good.

/me imagines growing weeds to make oil

Re: Because the world is running out of hydrocarbons...

And burning them has catastrophic effects on the climate.

No.l it does NOT. CO2 doesn't even absorb IR radiation for black body radiation corresponding to temperatures ACTUALLY FOUND ON EARTH. This means it is NOT a "greenhouse gas" because it is TRANSPARENT to the escaping IR radiation that COOLS THE PLANET. Water, on the other hand, is an EXCELLENT greenhouse gas. And HYDROGEN PRODUCES WATER WHEN IT IS BURNT.\

So, where's your logic NOW?

icon, because, this is the REAL science.

“four times more voluminous"

hydrogen fuel is “four times more voluminous than kerosene so naturally we aim at shorter distances to be flown,”

So, with increased fuel tank cost/weight and shorter flight distances (assuming the cost per Joule is still the same), WHY are we doing this again???

And, I'm NOT convinced that cost per Joule is lower for Hydrogen, either...

(not saying "do not use Hydrogen", but rather "use good economic sense", and last I checked, jet engines do NOT use fuel cells)

Because, increased costs coupled with less freedom of movement is ALWAYS a BAD thing.

Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology

Re: "This means Linus Torvalds has definitely won, doesn't it?"

"keep your friends close and your enemies closer"

I was actually thinking "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" but yours will do, too.

Even though it's based on open source technology, will the Micros~1 browser for Linux be OPEN SOURCE? Will it PHONE HOME? will it (eventually) REQUIRE A Micros~1 logon so you can be more easily TRACKED? Will it even WORK on FreeBSD? Will it require MONO and/or ".Not Core" ???

And I ~shudder~ to consider the implications of what a Micros~1 browser for Linux might haul in with its dependency tree... (and many of us REALLY hated it when Debian's gnome included 'tomboy' and hauled in ALL of mono, a decade or so ago - imagine what the Micros~1 browser will "need")

She was praised by the CEO and promoted. After her brother and mom died, she returned from compassionate leave. IBM laid her off

Re: @Beep54 Too technical

If IBM wants you gone... they will invent excuses for you to be gone.

This is how things appear on the surface, at least to me. Let's hope a proper discovery process reveals the truth, as well as "how deep the rabbit hole goes". If it's a really deep hole, expect IBM to "settle".

Hopefully these are isolated cases [large companies can have lots of isolated cases]. Systemic age discrimination wouldn't surprise me, however.

I bet that one woman who took the family leave went her entire time without using any of her benefits with respect to emergency leave, etc.. It's like having YOUR insurance rates increased for just being in a not-at-fault accident. Because if she HAD abused emergency leave policies, that would have been listed as a reason for termination.

Imagine working for GitHub and writing a command-line interface for the platform, then GitHub makes an 'official' one

Re: Same dev?

"feelings" are SO overrated. Although, you don't want _anger_ from customers/users...

And yet I'm still in "wait and see" mode. Last thing I'm going to want to deal with is a closed-source application that must be installed on non-windows (including FreeBSD) development systems, that have cryptic commands similar to Power[s[Hell, requires ".Not" or Mono to run, etc. etc. etc..

Did the article say whether this GitHub "hub" tool is actually OPEN SOURCE? I suppose I could go look at the site... ok - Build from Source instructions are at THAT link! So far so good, except you have to install 'go' 1.13 or later. and here I was thinking that REAL cli application developers use C and C++ ...

(but at least it's Open Source so kudos to the dev for doing that much and making it buildable on non-windows platforms)

Yeah no doubt it'll show up in FreeBSD's ports system soon, if it's not there already.

Thunderbird implements PGP crypto feature requested 21 years ago

Re: identity and encryption

As long as you have backups of your home directory that includes the .gnupg directory you are fine as long as you dont forget your keys password.

I have to wonder about Windows users, though... Backup? what's that?

There's always an old school way of doing it:

Fred: Hey Joe, what's your publc key? Mine is {alphabet soup}

Joe: it's {alphabet soup}. Let's mark our e-mail clients to send mail to each other using public key encryption every time from now on.

(old school "just ask for it" public key exchange)

but an automatic way would be better.

What I would like to see [if not done already] is an RFC on mail exchanges having their own public key database, maybe even part of the SMTP server itself. Maybe like this:

HELO example.com

PUBK [e-mail]

'PUBK' would tell the SMTP server to send back the public key for [e-mail], if in fact it is a canonical server for testing.com e-mails, joe is a valid mail user, and joe also registered a public key with the server.

Since I haven't seen how gnu public key stuff works [I definitely should look at what TBird is doing now] this may have already been implemented, or there might be an RFC for it already that I haven't downloaded AND looked at. In any case, making it automatic might require some additional infrastructure and protocol implementation by others...

Alibaba wants to get you off the PC upgrade treadmill and into its cloud

Re: Little question

But I'm sure there will be lawyers to find otherwise.

and maybe a subpoena or two for data and logs that get delivered without your knowledge or consent, like with predatory and/or divorce-related lawsuits, evidentiary "fishing expeditions", etc..

If your data is purely under YOUR control, you can always "object" to discovery. not so if it's "on the cloud" - those guys will hand it over without even a 2nd thought to a) stay in business and b) stay under the radar of regulatory agencies in general.

[yeah no corporations have EVER gone after regular people with high profile high dollar lawsuits in a predatory way using "evidence" provided by ISPs and content providers in some kind of apparent fishing expedition to "make examples" of people, right???]

Re: so, a 'Network Computer'?

yes this shift back to "big iron" from individual PCs has been tried several times. Don't forget the "dot bombs" of the early 21st century, too. And MS's cloudy version of DevStudio. All of these aren't doing so well, against the hopes of their developers (and the carnival and bandwagon appeal of their marketeers).

Long ago it was obvious that "big data" works best if you distribute the processing of it, but centralize the storage of it, no doubt with at least SOME niche exceptions but I'm talking about the general case.

There was also an attempt to do something *LIKE* this with "terminal services", and I haven't seen a whole lot of exploitation of THAT platform, either...

"But, but, but, it hasn't been tried by *US* yet!!!"

What was that definition of insanity again?

Bad news for 'cool dads' trying to bond with their teens: China-owned TikTok and WeChat face US download ban by Sunday

Re: banned from being hosted or delivered in America, or served over a CDN, or peered

well if China allowed their application to send data to/from servers hosted in the USA that were NOT forwarding it along to the Chinese Communist Party for spying and other purposes, this wouldn't be an issue. And that's pretty much my understanding of it. Same with the ZTE thing.

As for "Cool Dads" bonding with their teens. Just say NO to them. A *LOT*. "Dad can I xxx?" "NO". They'll be better off for it. As a dad, your job is to embarrass them and keep them from doing things that are stupid, which is pretty much EVERYTHING they want to do. So no need to learn the latest teen lingo. They can learn the lingo YOU used when YOU wre a teen. "Like, totally, NO!"

So who needs Tik Tok anyway... !

Re: Tok for Tik (sorry, I mean Tit for Tat)

also a bit different philosophically.

1. China bans U.S. applications because they're trying to censor and control and spy on everyone

2. U.S. bans China applications to PREVENT China from censoring, spying on, and controlling U.S. Citizens.

At least, that's MY understanding.

Net neutrality lives... in Europe, anyway: Top court supports open internet rules, snubs telcos and ISPs

"But I can also see that it could be seen as a slippery slope to only allowing blessed video streaming or social media companies."

Correct. An outright ban of "a fast lane" prevents people from buying better service than the next person. I would like to be ABLE to do just that. If I pay more, I SHOULD get better service. Right?

On the other hand, the potential for abuse is ALSO there. So the fix is NOT to outright ban a service in which you pay for faster streaming [as an example] or "priority" content in general, but rather to REGULATE it such that competing services won't be "throttled" [including peer-to-peer and non-commercial traffic]. A typical regulation might allow a 2:1 boost of priority traffic as long as it's below 70% total capacity [for example], and that non-priority traffic would still be at a service level equivalent to what it was before. So it's not being "throttled", just "not boosted". And the company doing it might have to explicitly disclose everything they boost. Then consumers can choose.

"Net Neutrality" is yet another case of possible "well intentioned" ideas becoming anti-freedom, anti-capitalist, or anti-progress. So we're all stuck in the SAME PERFORMANCE GHETTO. Wheee.

No solution is perfect. THIS one is probably the worst of all available choices.

£2.5bn sueball claims Google slurps kids' YouTube browsing habits then sells them on

Discovery process - let's see what we can get made public

The people filing the lawsuit could have all KINDS of fun during the 'Discovery' process, where information gets subpoenaed, testimony is deposed, documents are produced, and so forth. Maybe we can find out what's happening behind closed doors that Google doesn't want confirmed... something that could EQUALLY be applied against them in the UK as well as the USA.

But you know what will happen then - to avoid this from happening, Google will "settle".

I hope they do NOT! In the USA, matters in a trial, unless the judge orders them "sealed", are MATTERS OF PUBLIC RECORD. I hope that in the UK and the EU this is ALSO the case.

icon because "think of the children". heh.

At the very last Moment.js: Time-and-date JavaScript library fetched 12 million times a week ends development

advised developers to consider alternatives.

like, copy/pasta into your OWN version?

this live-update-from-online-repo thing is HIGHLY overrated... and has created a FEW problems in the past... just a few. OK MORE than a few. Old news, yeah. But a "teachable" moment nonetheless. (too bad devs didn't learn)

If you ask me, it's a maintainers NIGHTMARE to have such a moving target, especially if you like RELIABILITY and MAINTAINABILITY.

a) Dev says "I'm quitting"

b) you're screwed - or else

c) clone your own copy, to hell with 3rd party nonsense

icon, because, facepalm.

/me pictures a meme where someone hits his face into a palm tree. "Face Palm" - you're doing it wrong

and this live-code-update concept - YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

Worried about bootkits, rootkits, UEFI nasties? Have you tried turning on Secure Boot, asks the No Sh*! Agency

they should have said...

they should have said "do not boot windows".

Then you can leave 'Secure' boot OFF, and enjoy your LINUX or FREEBSD. Just don't allow anyone physical access to the device that shouldn't have it, and you should be fine.

(someone had to say it)

As if you needed another reason not to use Visual Studio, C++ extension for Visual Studio Code is live

Re: C++

I still use MFC for Windows stuff. It's gotten "bloatier" though. it also take some effort to REMOVE! ALL! REFERENCES! TO! CLR! AND! OTHER! SUCH! BLOAT!

And I still use DevStudio 2010, the LAST one that was NOT all 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE, which was ALSO oriented towards Windows 7, and NOT "Ape" nor Win-10-nic.

What I'd like to see is wxWidgets support, INCLUDING dialog editors, toolbar editors, menu editors, and other such things. THAT is TRUE cross-platform, very MFC-like (not 1:1, takes some time to port an MFC application to wxWidgets, but it CAN be done) and DEFINITELY suited for serious cross-platform application development.

I've run wxWidgets/GTK applications on FreeBSD and Linux. Should run the same on windows and Mac. In fact I put a nice "sort demo" written for wx out there on github if anyone wants to have a look. it was originally an MFC application, back in the 90's. It's since been improved.

/me points out, if you're going to haul around some monolithic library of excess, might as well static-link it and use something that's truly cross-platform. Sure you'll have to build a version for each OS, but with static link you get minimal dependencies and fewer support issues caused by anything resembling DLL HELL...

In any case, it would be _WISE_ to have wizards and editing tools for wxWidgets in VS Code. THAT might make it worth using, In My Bombastic Opinion.

Consolidating databases has significant storage benefits – and therefore everyone should be doing it

Re: Improving tech is bad?

"And when does the optimisation happen? When do we get to go back to make sure it's efficient? When something breaks and we have no choice."

if the bang-to-buck ratio is too low, it'll never be looked at again.

That being said, some inefficiencies can be avoided entirely by avoiding the platforms and programming lingos that tend to CREATE them. Yes, I'm talking about YOU TWO, C-Pound, JavaScript. Mostly JavaScript.

And sometimes, just doing things the old-school "shell script and POSIX utilities" way, gets things done the fastest, so you can focus on those few inefficiencies that make sense to focus on, deliver on time, stay under budget, etc.

I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst

Re: Blackmailed

The threat to take a kid away from a single father who's accused [and therefore coerced into testimony] sounds as though it's WAY above the jurisdiction of the FBI, and in light of OTHER alleged FBI abuses, currently being investigated by the D.O.J., could eventually work in Assange's (and others') favor. Convictions can be overturned as a result of evidence being declared "inadmissible" due to rights and even procedural violations by police.

That being said, I'm not really happy with the way Assange is being sought after by our F.B.I. unless the evidence they have is compelling enough to warrant it. So far I haven't heard any, and the media is making this sound like a political hit job. OK the FBI _has_ been informally accused of doing things _like_ "political hit jobs" as well (and is under investigation by the D.O.J.). All this could end up being decided by the U.K. court in Assange's favor, in light of these *kinds* of things.

I hope Assange isn't extradited. But he's definitely getting his day in court. We shall see. He needs to let his lawyers do the talking and shut up.

There's just NOT enough information to say anything else about it, in my bombastic opinion.

Pvt Manning goes by 'Chelsea' now I think. I have no sympathy for Pvt Manning. When you're in the military you have a duty. etc.. the ends do NOT justify the means.

Then again, Congress ALSO has a duty, and they've obviously FAILED at that, with respect to unconstitutional spying etc..

Re: No fair trial in the US

aren't there existing U.K. laws that might be involved? Couldn't the U.S. make a case in U.K. court?

or maybe that's the extradition hearing itself...

Zero. Zilch. Nada. That's how many signs of intelligent life astroboffins found in probe of TEN MILLION stars

Re: Surprise, surprise...

effective encryption looks like random noise

yes. and in theory if you analyze it and find 'peaks' or repitition in the distribution, it might suggest a weakness in your algorithm.

For an AM or FM receiver, modulation like spread spectrum or QAM look like noise, too. But in theory it would show up as a peak on a spectrum analyzer, if the frequency band were narrow enough. Unfortunately, Earth broadcasts spread across the entire radio spectrum all the way up into the 10's of Ghz without a whole lot of gaps... and would therefore look JUST LIKE NOISE. "no peaks" probably. (or no significant ones).

Receiving a signal requires that it be above the noise threshold, or that you have such a good error correction algorithm that you can base demodulation on "presence of a tone" whether it's noise or not.

Re: Surprise, surprise...

signals to/from spacecraft use microwave beams, as I understand it, a highly directional signal. Transmitters on setellites don't put out kilowatts of power as I understand it. You need about 3 or 4 times the radiated power to amplify it to that level, and that's a LOT of solar panels or fuel cell or nuclear power. One source says that Voyager has a 23 watt transmitter. Another source says that the current total power consumption is 249 watts for the entire spacecraft. Yet another source says that GPS satellite transmit at around 25 watts. In any case, it's not the kilowatts or megawatts you'd need to send an easily detectble signal out in an omnidirectional broadcast. [you make up for the low power by using high gain directional antennas, aka 'beams'].

But if you were _REALLY_ lucky, you might be listening within the cone of such a beam and so you might detect it. Might. And that's the point of SETI and others searching everywhere for many years. Various conditions may not allow us to receive signals for long enough so we just scan what we can. The earth has day/night periods and revolves around the sun, and you can't really listen well during the day on Earth, nor in the general direction of the sun with satellites. So there ya go. "When we can". Maybe do it enough times, you find something. [similar thinking in nuclear physics sometimes]

Re: Surprise, surprise...

some kinds of modulation would appear as "pure noise" to an un-initiated listener. Even the kinds of modulation used by cell phones would be COMPLETELY un-decodable 50 years ago, let alone the stuff we use for digital TV (like QAM).

So it may simply be we're not recognizing it. Either that or they found out that we could receive their signals and are doing "radio silence" like a WW2 sub running silent to hide from a destroyer...

And 30 years ago we had no proof of planets outside of our solar system. We do now.

The "Bozo Bit" - it's the bit that gets flipped on when you fail the bozo test, like asking really stupid questions one too many times, wanting to be hand-held through a process where a simple RTFM would get you going, or similar. Customer Service and Tech Support identify YOU as a "Bozo". it's not a good thing. So, in that regard, MAYBE they're sending us a signal that's been modulated in such a way that when our tech evolves sufficiently, we'll be able to demodulate it. Then the 'Bozo Bit' will be cleared, and first contact established. Just a thought.

Paragon 'optimistic' that its NTFS driver will be accepted into the Linux Kernel

Re: Whatever for?

My main concern is dumping 17,000 more lines of code into the laps of the kernel maintainers, for something that only a handful of Linux users will even need (greatly stretching the definition of 'need').

If Paragon improved the FUSE driver instead, wouldn't THAT be better?

Or were they hoping that people would boot Linux from NTFS...

Re: @DrXym - Whatever for?

Dual boot situations

Is ANYone still doing that in a SIGNIFICANT way?

external drives

FUSE driver works for that, doesn't it? you just want the files on/off of the external drive, so a reliable way of doing that is sufficient.

using Linux repair disks to repair an NTFS partition

Now, THAT is a legit reason. But wouldn't FUSE work for this as well???

The open source tools that they're offering might help, though...

(I still question putting it into the kernel to be maintained by the Linux kernel team)

Ghost of Windows past spotted haunting Yorkshire railway station

Got, Linux?

a better solution presents itself...

What price security? Well, for the US ban on Huawei/ZTE kit it's around $1.8bn, and you're going to pay most of it

Re: The long game

"There may not be any hard evidence that Huawei equipment contains the specific features needed to spy on whoever employs it"

long game might include "UP"grades later. You know, like how Windows was "up"graded to INCLUDE SPYWARE, etc..

Re: Evidence? Anywhere?

Yes, comrade, we must NOT anger our communist overlords...

</snark>

In the frame with the Great MS Bakeoff: Microsoft sets out plans for Windows windows

Re: They still don't get it do they?

From the article: In 2012 Microsoft decided to make a modern and more secure Windows system based on the Windows Runtime, or WinRT

That word 'modern' - they keep using that word. it does not mean what they think (feel?) it means...

And for as long as Windows supports running win32 apps, people will keep win32 code around,

Until Micros~1 finds a way to kill it - like they did the "classic" windows desktop!!!

(except for us anti-win-10-nic rebels who REFUSE to COMPLY and the many who switch to Linux or Mac instead)

Back in the day, HP tried to introduce new products at lower prices than existing ones, with better features etc. in order to motivate people to get new products. THEN they'd EOL the old ones. This was when Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard still ran it. (not so much any more)

What Micros~1 did is the exact opposite. They KILLED the old products by artificially "end of life"ing them, and swapped a PILE OF CRAP (Win-10-nic, TIFKAM, WinRT-ish foolishness) and told us we had to LIKE it, INSTALL it, UPGRADE to it, by FORCE (GWX) if necessary.

You Musk be joking: A mind-reading Neuralink chip in a pig's brain? Downloadable memories? Telepathy? Watch and judge for yourself

Re: Reductionist science, thus fatally flawed speculative tech.

well, when you consider how existing prosthetics like cochlear implants work. it would seem "the differences" from one person's brain to another might not be all that significant for this kind of tech.

My guess; a training period will be required.

Still it made me think of "Ghost in the Shell", and the kinds of 'mind hacks' that were possible. Some pre-emptive defense against THAT, or having your "cloud memories" altered [and then YOU convinced that the ones in the cloud are "the real ones"] and things of that nature, might be needed before this kind of tech goes, well, "live".

Dell: 60% of our people won't be going back into an office regularly after COVID-19

Re: We seem to have lost the point of commerce

"How many WFH people does it take to produce a Dell PC from scratch?"

It would depend on the number of "lights out" and heavily automated factories (etc.) there are in that process. It's coming, yeah.

"As for all that empty office space it will create"

Depending on how convenient it is to set up, they could do it like a mini-hotel for office space. All of the work-from-homers who want an actual OFFICE to go to could actually RENT an office room, store stuff there, get advantages of business internet connectivity, yotta yotta. Ideally it would be close to home and in an area where parking isn't a problem, etc..

But yeah this won't cover all of the opened-up office space in downtown areas, where people won't want a private office [most likely they'd pick one that's closer to home, as people flee the urban areas for suburbs even more than before]

Re: I get I'm in a microscopically small minority, but...

Those are all good points. But how about a hybrid solution where you have office space that's 1/2 as big as you would normally need (double up desks in cubes, etc., "hot desk" or even drop the walls, it's only for half a day a week), You can have 'designated on-site days' for different parts of the crew, who are relevant to one another's work, where you have meetings and do colab work.

that seems to work the best, in my opinion, for the vast majority of cases.

Re: Extroverts hate it

"Check in on your extrovert friends"

not sure that categorizes me very well... being as I score as a strong 'ENTP' on the Myers-Briggs thing. 'E' is for 'extrovert and so it's part of how I process things. But you may be on the right track, just labeling it as 'extrovert' rather than 'socialite' (which would be my characterization).

I would actually suggest (based on Myers-Briggs kinds of things) that ENFP would be "the talker", with the 'F' being 'Feeling' (vs 'T' for 'Thinking'). Not so much the 'extrovert' but the one who feels and is ALSO extrovert...

'ENFP' is categorized by some as "The inspirers" as opposed to "ENTP" "The inventors" or (my favorite) the MAD SCIENTISTS! [I love MAD SCIENCE!]. Yeah mad scientists don't need external inspiration - the science itself IS the inspiration!!!

Re: I get I'm in a microscopically small minority, but...

You're a talker, aren't you?

good catch, I guess [but I was entertained, so up-vote]

although some dynamics like the occasional conversation or joke helps relieve tension in the office, some people _are_ like that... all talk, no work, and from home, no excuse to consume "wall time" vs working in bursts (interrupted with enough goof-off time to stay sane) with flexible hours that help you put your peak performance on the clock instead of "wall time".

difficult problem arises - my head is foggy, I'm gonna think about it for a while - grab lunch and hit the game console for 2 hours - ok I think I know what to do about it! work, work, work... [much less of a drag than being confined to an office and dealing with creative block]