Posts by herman

Britain goes shopping for a rapid-fire missile to help Ukraine hit back

Re: Starmer sabotages peace process

That actually happened - many a yacht was built for Russian arms suppliers and the soldiers used cell phones on the battle field.

Re: The Cynic's View

Ugh... those emergency skunk projects were the worst. Yes, the damned things worked, but they were a pain to manufacture, impossible to maintain and a tremendous documentation and financial problem after the fact. Just try to get paid when the project is done and delivered (and possibly blown to bits already) and you don't have an order or even an agreed price for it. Then to add insult to injury, come review time, you get marked down because your project made a loss.

Re: Shit show likely

Sure. That is why the main job of a project engineer is to politely and firmly say NO, to any and all change requests.

Re: Shit show likely

I am sure GD will get it sorted eventually. I am retired now, but what I can gather is they need to sort out some foam padding, seats and helmets. This is always a problem in armoured vehicles. The crew gets tossed around a lot and bumped in places the designers did not expect and if the seats are too soft then they won't survive a mine blast - so everything is a careful trade off to get the shocks and vibration within a range that meat sacks can handle.

Re: Of course the real truth

At 1 million per missile, cheap it is not.

Re: Starmer sabotages peace process

I don't think anyone is playing Donny for a sucker - yes, Russia is the biggest country in Europe with a larger population than Germany, but it really is no better than Italy or Spain in practice. Ukraine has seriously demolished the myth of Russian military superiority.

Re: The Cynic's View

Ayup... Sometimes any NATO country can be just as incompetent as Russia, but it really requires careful planning, detailed systems engineering and perseverance to make a Royal F'up.

Re: Of course the real truth

The real magic of these toys is in the guidance system which must function with great accuracy despite various countermeasures - satellites, DSSS, lasers, optics - a lot of really fun stuff to work on.

Re: Shit show likely

Ajax is fine - the troops mainly need better helmets, something that is surprisingly hard to develop, as they have now found out again. It is not just a hard hat, there are headphones and things in there as well.

As for big mobile guns - the gun needs to be automated and completely outside the crew compartment. A big gun with its back inside a vehicle is very hard on the operators. When fired inside it feels like you were hit by a heavy weight boxer. Not fun at all.

ISS spacewalk postponed over mystery astronaut malady

Re: Sympathy

Norovirus will be rather problematic in microgravity

Historic NASA test towers face their final countdown

Texans are not so stupid to move and rebuild blocks of concrete. Try Lake Havasu City Arizona instead.

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

You could also use the remark command. You know, rm -f /log, to recover some disk space before shutdown. The log files will be recreated automatically on restart.

Re: Neat trick

I have actually been to the Stalin museum and have a picture standing with his statue. The people in town don’t like it, but they run the museum for the tourist income.

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

Re: C over 50

Uhmm, considering that C is Roman for 100, it still has a few years to go, but eventually, walking will also become harder...

Pencil, paper

Pencil and paper is still in wide use, but fortunately cuneiform on clay tablets faded away.

When the AI bubble pops, Nvidia becomes the most important software company overnight

Re: A couple of thoughts

Err... It is the Tax Man that determines the depreciation period.

Re: Follow the money

If the Artificially Inflated Bubble pops, whoever runs the NYSE SW will be the most important.

When the Artificially Inflated things pop, they will go back to minting Bitcoin.

How California built one of the world's biggest public-sector IT systems

Re: worse

Your TDS must be very bad, since you missed that this is a positive article about a Democrat run State.

So, Cali did a better job than Crapita?

Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord with Uncle Sam's big tech

Re: You can't have a sovereign digital cloud

Windows is a small, niche desktop system. Everything else runs Linux.

Re: You can't have a sovereign digital cloud

The European Commission runs its own cloudy systems in Belgium and it works very well. I access it from four countries over with no issues and it is all multilingual too.

Humanoid robots are still novelty acts, but investment is surging to make them real tomorrow

Statistics gone mad, sounds quite human to me

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

Re: There's more to life than Desktops

The desktop is a small problematic niche that MS can keep. Linux runs everything else.

Re: Happy Mint user here

I mostly quit Windows around 2000 - only used it for doing taxes. Then I finally gave up with it in 2009 and never looked back.

Re: snapflatimages

I think both lynx and links still work.

'PromptQuest' is the worst game of 2025. You play it when trying to make chatbots work

Re: I remember the original Hobbit On the Spectrum.

I got the stupid fish, but then got stuck in the dark on the Heart of Gold. That was very disappointing - after all that faf with the fish I really thought that I deserved to get a bit further.

Re: Humanity is a bug, not a feature

The same result each time? You should try MS Windows.

BOFH: The Christmas spirit has run dry – time to show some chiller instinct

Urk...

Who's tie was in the shredder and eaten by rats?

Garmin autopilot lands small aircraft without human assistance

Airbus planes use autoland all the time. Boeing does not due to their pilot unions who want the pilots to do something.

Re: R

Any landing you can walk away from, is a good landing.

Hmm, the ATC probably trusts the autoland system more than any pilot.

Absolutely correct, yes.

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Re: The code might be [cough][cough] finished

20 goto 10

One real reason AI isn't delivering: Meatbags in manglement

It is good for writing bed-time stories and prototypes. Not so hot for full size novels and production code.

Windows is testing a new, wider Run dialog box. Here’s how to try it

Re: Blimey

Wow - absolutely astonishing Microsoft innovation. Bill Gates will be so proud of his legacy...

Re: I wonder

I ditched Windows completely in 2009 and haven't looked back.

Keeping Windows and macOS alive past their sell-by date

Re: Hope Springs Eternal…

I have two 2012 MBPs and they work better than when they were new. I had to repair a niece's slightly newer MBP and it was very easy to replace a bad SSD and install from scratch. Eventually I would need to replace the trusty MBPs - not really looking forward to that!

X sues to protect Twitter brand Musk has been trying to kill

Re: Trademarks

The Trashmen were first: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rGeIX0kaMao

Trump Media jumps aboard the speculative nuclear fusion bandwagon

Company Fusion

Fusing the companies is a first step that likely will result in temporary stock price upside. So I bought $100 worth and will sell when it becomes $500, or maybe it will end up as 50c on the pink sheets. The odds are terrible, but you cannot win if you don't play.

Amazon blocked 1,800 suspected North Korean scammers seeking jobs

Latency

No high frequency trading for them

BBC tapped to stop Britain being baffled by AI

Re: Why a TV licence?

TVs still have aerials?

All aglow about DCs, investors launch $300M at microreactor startup

So one could replace that SMR with a single wind genny and a battery. That seems rather simpler to me.

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

Re: 650k is enough

A typical data center weighs a wee bit more than 1.5 tons

Re: Talk about flash·backs…

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyеlashes

Silver white wintеrs that melt into springs

These are a few of my favorite things...

Yup, an ancient 27.3V E-core transformer PSU could really hurt if it would fall on your head.

Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

Nothing sucks like Electrolux.

Space-power startup claims it can beam energy to solar farms

Re: Euro, UK, or US plug

Hmm, it must have been a European who invented the idea of press fit connectors.

Useless - no more lecce car mandates

Ultimately, this is useless since the 2035 lecce car mandates are going away. First in the US, then sort-of half assed in Canada (the usual Canadian way of doing anything) and now in Europe too. Drill baby drill will soon be back too: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/consumer/europe-scraps-2035-new-ice-car-sales-ban-report

Re: Daft question?

Yup, a black mirror (infrared black) will work. So the only electronics is for the beam steering system. It does not need to convert energy.