Posts by Red Ted

India's Moon mission pulled off another trick: an experimental orbital sequel

Re: Congratulations ISRO!

Smug mode *ON*

Lenovo's USB-C Power Banks pack more heat than expected

20,000 mAh

So that'll be 20Ah then?

A bit like the warning signs at model railway exhibitions: "Caution 12,000mV"

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

Re: in a 3-3 economy class configuration.

The 2-8-2 "Mikado" configuration can be quite powerful too...

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is returning with its first-ever asteroid sample

Re: Sample canister contents

Lane 7: Calvin, that little ball of Life

How about Calvin and Hobbs? Jumping out and shouting "BOO!" as the cannister is opened...

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Re: Not a lift but…..

"Yes, you've already worked out the punchline: They moved a server rack down the river on a punt."

I was rather hoping that the punchline was that the punt sank!

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's pop artifact stash now heads to a museum

Re: Kirk's Chair

I think you'll find that a lot of TV props of that era were to that quality.

I recall a tour of a TV Studios years ago when everything was still "Standard Def". Someone asked about "High Def" TV and the producers response was that it would quadruple the set budget as they would have to make everything to a higher standard!

OctoX is a radical Rust implementation of a very old OS for RISC-V

You are not expected to understand this.

Having looked at the section of code, my opinion is that it's not too awful.

Certainly not for task switching code whose job it is to context switch and therefore directly manipulate the underlying system state so as different code executes when you return, from the one that was running when the function was called.

Social media is too much for most of us to handle

Re: I did something similar

This is why people still pay (in one way or another) for newspapers and TV News.

Someone just blew over $190k on a 4GB first-gen iPhone

What strikes us as odd...

...is that 2007 doesn't even feel that long ago

I am afraid that is just a sign of you getting old!

The "Year 2000" used to seem *so* futuristic!

Let there be light ... based wireless networks: LiFi spec OK'd as Wi-Fi complement

Re: Waiting for version 2.1

With the bonus that the cup of coffee on your desk wouldn’t go cold!

NASA 'quiet' supersonic jet is nearly ready for flight

Re: "Concorde famously burned an awful lot of it's fuel just getting off the ground "

Being really picky (I know that’s uncommon around here), being a British jet engine design it’s technically called reheat rather than afterburner.

Whatever it’s called, it gives your more power, but at the expense of appalling fuel efficiency!

If they had built more Concordes they had planned to drop the reheat.

Twitter rate-limits itself into a weekend of chaos

Oh the irony

"Twitter tech lead also decided last week to block all users not signed in to Twitter from viewing any posts whatsoever, inadvertently killing tweet embeds in other apps. This, Musk claimed on Friday, would also be temporary."

He made the claim in a tweet that, unless you were logged in, you couldn't read!

Virgin Galactic finally gets its first paying customers to edge of space

Re: Rich people's toys I guess

"I don't know lad, it's like no other cheese I have ever tasted."

In other news: "Moon cheese shares soar!"

All with apologies to Nick Park.

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

Re: A fitting epitaph

Carbon fibre wheels at cycling events are the one I've seen. They go from super strong and round to floppy and un-wheel like in a few feet.

Multi-tasking blunder leaves UK tax digitization plans 3 years late, 5 times over budget

"Making Tax Digital (MTD) programme"

That should read:

Making Tax Difficult (MTD) programme.

FIFY.

Up to £895M up for grabs in UK Emergency Services procurement

Re: Missing something

A major part of the EE work is to expand their network to have high geographic coverage as opposed to population coverage, which resulted in them building a lot of base stations in rural parts of the country.

Professor freezes student grades after ChatGPT claimed AI wrote their papers

Citations/References and ChatGPT

"...half of the cited references did not actually exist!"

I suspect that in the other half the title didn't match the reference number, so were also made up.

This corroborates with my experience that ChatGPT knows what citations should look like, but not what they are. So it will put a statement in its text that has a reference mark against it and then generate a piece of text at the end in the reference list that is formatted correctly, but in no way ties up with a real article that made that statement.

It's treating them as a style of academic paper writing and making them up, as it has with the rest of the paper.

Owner of 'magic spreadsheet' tried to stay in the Lotus position until forced to Excel

Re: Better than a PM

"There was a (apocryphal?) yarn about an IBM 370/VM than ran for more than a decade after being accidentally bricked up."

Here is a real version of that yarn, reported in this very organ a mere 22 years ago!

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Embarrassed in to having a clear out...

...after having my partner say "oh look, the contents of our loft" every time we went to the computer museum!

NASA tweaks Voyager 2's power supply to avoid another sensor shutdown

Deep Space Network

The DSN Now page indicates that Goldstone is currently receiving 160bit/s data from Voyager 1 at an RSSI of -160dBm.

Given that the transmitter on Voyager is 23W (+43.6dBm) this means that they have over 203dB of link budget!

UK's Emergency Services Network unlikely to start operating until 2029

Retrospective?

Presumably there's no chance of applying this cap retrospectively to cover the five years since the ESN was supposed to start?

I make that a cool one billion quid.

Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

Near-Ultrasound

I wonder what frequency they specify Near-Ultrasound as?

There's a chance that my kids might be able to hear it, but I certainly won't (age and too many rock concerts).

Version 100 of the MIT Lisp Machine software recovered

RISC Machines

Nice article. I did have to check part way through that is wasn’t one of the better April fools.

The other famous vendor of RISC architecture to rise during the period was…

Acorn RISC Machines!

Microsoft promises it's made Teams less confusing and resource hungry

Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

Joo-Jantu 2000 Peril Sensitive Sun Glasses?

Japanese outfit's private Moon mission enters Lunar orbit

Re: Japanese transformable robot on the Moon

"Transformers - Robots in disguise"

China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck

Re: "Ground"

Why not reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels on this metal surface.

Then simplify the steering problems that may result by placing flanges on the wheels to guide the vehicle and voila you have...

...an electric train.

Meta chops another 10,000 employees, closes 5,000 vacancies

Yes, it's a public company, but one person own all the voting rights. I never did understand how he pulled this off, as he basically took a company public, but retained all the control.

"...the share holders could help end that but just selling all their shares..."

But, they would loose money doing that.

British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles

Autonomous trains

I think you'll find that there are already a number of mass transit autonomous trains in the UK alone.

Technically the Victoria London Underground line has been so from 1968.

Cop a load of this DIY e-ink calendar to help plan those projects you'll never finish

Timeframe - very cool

As you say he can certainly write well. His self deprecating style fits well.

Glad to hear that the author has a Joyce!

The Moon or bust, says NASA, after successful SLS/Orion test flight

Breaking things

"...cabinets broke, as did its elevators..."

The capsule is so tall that it has a lift?

Arm co-founder: Britain's chip strat 'couldn’t be any worse'

Re: Now there's a challenge

"...a reference to the tendency of successive governments to tear up the previous administration's policies."

Given it has been the same lot in power for over 12 years now, that isn't really an excuse either!

Hyundai and Kia issue software upgrades to thwart killer TikTok car theft hack

Re: Wait.... they did not have that?

A quick picture search suggests that the Hyundai Venue is probably the vehicle that is sold as the Hyundai Kona in the UK.

Personally, I miss the days when car companies put so little thought in to the names of the cars that Ford had a couple of cars named after porn mags[1], Mitsubishi had the Starion[2] and the Toyota MR2 didn't sell so well in France [3].

[1] Escort and Fiesta

[2] Although it's not meant to sound like "Stallion", it does if you say it with a bad Japanese accent!

[3] MR2 "Em -Err- Deux" or Merde, which more or less means sh*t!

Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI urge judge to bin Copilot code rip-off case

Re: you have to intend to facilitate infringement to violate the law

... and I wonder how long before the AI generated code comes with a Microsoft copyright notice (I presume it doesn't at the moment) and some sort of checksum-hash that allows them to trace it it back to their code generator?

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

Re: None of these people have seen "Eliza"

After a previous article I was pleased to discover that there are a number of Elizas on line.

My first encounter with it was via a proper 110baud teletype, yes, I am old!

Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi

Ditto my microwave oven, which was chosen on it cheepness from Argos about 20 years ago. It has two dials, one sets the power level and the other is the mechanical timer that turns it off when it runs down.

It also gives a satisfying clockwork type “ding” when it has finished, rather than the soul penetrating beeep…Beeeep….BEEEEEP!

Warehouse safety citations could cost Amazon seconds in revenue

Re: AmazonSmile

Oh yes, it was definitely a “charity washing” exercise. They didn’t want to make it too easy to use as that would have cost them money. As soon as the finances look tight, they killed it off.

UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail

Re: A Start

I believe the H&S laws do have the buck stopping with the directors of a company, where a director can go to prison.

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Re: Nobody

Very well done for getting that reference! The joke is something along the lines of:

Bluebottle: “When my Grandpa retired they got him one of those things what wakes you up in the morning and makes you a cup of tea.”

Seagoon: “That was nice…”

Bluebottle: “Yes, it was my Grandma”

Re: Nobody

'cos the current era of tech means that it would have to be connected to the internet and we all know how that ends (see original article)!

Re: Nobody

What, one of those things what wakes you up in the morning and makes you a cup of tea? If only there was a machine for that!

Boffins say their protective satellite paint job could harvest power from the Sun

Re: For totally unscientific reasons

All satellites now available with added bling!

Time to study the classics: Vintage tech is the future of enterprise IT

Re: "...rewriting Active Directory in FORTH under VMS..."

"...its actually quite useful for low level jobs like debugging complex bare metal, enabling complex functionality to be created, and used, with minimal programming effort."

Which is why a significant number of embedded systems I have worked on have had, at least at some point in their development, a Forth/RPN style command line interface.

"...rewriting Active Directory in FORTH under VMS..."

For those wishing to try, you may be interested in this little book on Object Oriented FORTH.

Fat EVs may cause 'more death on our roads' – watchdog

Re: More mass = more energy, right?

It depends on how the energy is generated.

If you just used the same fuel in a big power station, you could run it much more efficiently and so create less CO2 per kWh than you would in the car.

At the extreme, if you generated the power from a wind/solar/hydro plant then the CO2 created would be tiny.

Stranded ISS astronauts are getting a new Soyuz to ride home

SpaceX Dragon capsules require astronauts to wear one of SpaceX's tailored spacesuits

Now why does that not surprise me?

Perseverance rover drops off first sample tube on surface of Mars

A cute gif showing...

...that even JPL Rocket Scientists end up, at some point, crawling around in the dirt under a truck!

Boss installed software from behind the Iron Curtain, techies ended up Putin things back together

Winston's comrade

I'm trusting that the comrade was called "Julia"?

Theranos' Sunny Balwani gets longer sentence than Elizabeth Holmes

Re: We won't be seeing Sunny

Given he has been sentenced to just under 13 years, what’s the soonest he could make probation?

Assuming that, given his ability to fake medical results, he doesn’t pull an “Earnest Saunders” and gets let out early on account of a terminal illness that he miraculously gets better from. [“Earnest Saunders” is a British man convicted of significant fraud who developed Alzheimer's disease and had his sentence reduced. Mysteriously he seemed to get better from it.]

After lunar orbit trip NASA's Orion capsule is on its way back home

Re: incredible accuracy

Definition of accuracy:

Measure with a micrometer,

Mark with chalk,

And finally, cut with an axe.

Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened

Re: Not only two signs...

From the late great Terry Pratchett:

"If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”