Posts by vtcodger

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

"The 1990s were not kind to DEC, and the once-mighty tech giant faded from relevance due to a series of business decisions that, in hindsight, proved detrimental."

The 1990s were indeed unkind to DEC. But it wasn't management that killed them and competitors like SEL. What did the Minicomputer vendors in was that they occupied a market position that was devoured by substantially less expensive "desktop computers" The release of the IBM 5150 PC in 1981 signaled the start of a two decades squeeze on the minis. They couldn't move up very easily because IBM and its cousins had the mainframe market nailed down. They were slowly devoured from below as PCs became ever more powerful. Nothing much management could do about that. They were managers, not magicians.

Ubuntu 25.10 plans to swap GNU coreutils for Rust

Re: So far, the Rust coreutils pass approximately 500 out of 600 GNU tests

Most tests will presumably test a great many things so the failure rate is likely way below 17%. On the other hand, Unix core utilities are almost certainly used by millions of user shell scripts. Shell scripts tend not to be terribly flexible when it comes to dealing with even minor changes in input and output rules/conventions including stuff like spacing, character sets, and capitalization that probably wouldn't bother human users much. The tests that are being used best reflect the need for strict compliance with existing conventions or there will likely be problems for users.

Los Alamos boffins whip up a speedometer for satellites

Re: Relative to what?

The handful of systems I'm familiar with used Cartesian coordinates based on the Earth's Center, the plane of the Ecliptic, and something called the First Point of Aires (basically a line from the center of the Earth to the center of the Sun at the instant when the Sun appears to cross the Earth's equatorial plane in the Spring). But you can use any coordinate system you please although the math is likely to be messy if you were to choose, for example, an egocentric system based on the location of your stomach and a vector to the nearest pub.

Re: is there no GPS in space?

I think you're right that calculating speed would be easy. Except that the density of the plasma is constantly changing. Some of the changes are (e.g. those due to time of day) are predictable. At least in concept. Some (.e.g. those due to variations in the "solar wind") aren't.

Re: Kepler's second law

You're not entirely wrong,but it's a bit more complex than that. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipse and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_orbit for way more information than you really wanted to know about the properties of an ellipse and of elliptical orbits.

Re: is there no GPS in space?

I guess maybe this gizmo might tell the satellite how much drag it is experiencing since the satellite presumably knows its orbital parameters and what it's drag free velocity would be. But I'm having a bit of difficulty seeing how that helps avoid collisions unless the satellite somehow knows the ephemeris (a table of calculated positions overtime) of the objects it is trying to avoid. And if it knows their ephemerides, how come it doesn't know its own?

Interesting technology. And probably its good for something. But I'm not sure what.

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

It's Psychotic

Bob: It's psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity. Bob (Mr Incredible) Parr 2004

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Re: An increase in space junk...

Surely intelligent aliens would take a quick look at this place and decide in about seven minutes that they have urgent business someplace far, far away.

Re: Adjust the orbit

Yes, the paper actually discusses that. The downside is that dead satellites and miscellaneous junk in higher orbits will take even longer to burn up on their own if the thermosphere contracts or if future solar activity is lower than expected. There was a long period called the Maunder Minimum in the late 1600s and early 1700s when solar activity seems to have been very low.

Keep in mind that there are also factors other than collision possibility (actually rather low at present) affecting orbit choice. Coverage area, transmission delays, and such.

Re: Starlink?

FWIW -- Starlink satellites are mostly in 550km (give or take) circular orbits which suggests that they should last 10 to 20 years (depending on future solar activity) before re-entering on their own. However, the plan seems to be to deorbit them intentionally after about 5 years of service.

Judge says Meta must defend claim it stripped copyright info from Llama's training fodder

Re: What if ...

"a student uses an AI to generate ..."

And if that selfsame student goes to the library and generates the same product without the help of AI, is he/she guilty of doing anything other than practicing research? And isn't research exactly what the student is supposed to do?

Perhaps we're looking at fundamental problem with the concept of "intellectual property". With the exception of Trademark, IP seems to me a quite nebulous concept with an enormous gray area between clear "theft/misuse/abuse" and equally clear "fair/proper use". I have a lot of doubts about the ability of legal systems -- current or future -- .to resolve IP issues equitably.

On the other hand, I suppose it keeps lawyers employed. I reckon that's a good thing. Lord knows what mischief they'd be up to if they weren't arguing about IP issues.

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

Re: spoon-fed by media nonsense designed to make them hate Elon Musk and EVERY technology

Ah yes. But you haven't seen our block-chain enabled, AI capable spoonmwith regular OTA updates. We'll be rolling it out to a few select customers in a few weeks. To order one, just send an email with full financial details to [e-mail].

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

Re: Denialists - move 'm to the beach

Current Sea Level Rise is about 3 cm a decade. Not a lot actually. But you need to add/subtract local tectonics to that. In any case buying a house close to sea level isn't especially bright because with or without climate change it'll almost certainly be within the reach of the strongest storm that might come along, and insurance companies have finally noticed that and are adjusting their rates accordingly.

Elon Musk calls for International Space Station to be deorbited by 2027

Re: Follow the money

"I would say they have a contract to supply X number of missions until 2030. With no exclusion of the ISS not actually being there."

Plausible. But not likely I think. Typically US government contracts don't work that way. Amongst all the hundreds of paragraphs forbidding the hassling of endangered species, requiring the contractor to fill in any holes they dig in the landscape, forbidding discrimination against midgets, etc,etc,etc. there are clauses that allow the government to cancel the contract at will. When they do that, the contractor is reimbursed for any expenses already incurred in anticipation of future missions, and the government picks up a lot of the costs of relocating contractor personnel, cancelling facility leases, etc. At least that used to be the case in the 20th century. I doubt it has changed.

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

Re: Re-parse that response

"and we'll quietly reintroduce ..."

Of course not. That'd be dumb. Do you think all big tech managers are idiots? What they'll do is introduce a random delay with average delay of 15 minutes. Or they'll introduce a ficticious queue counter that will inform the caller every two minutes that their call is very important to HP and they are now 171 from the top of the queue. Then slowly count it down. Or they'll just turn the whole support thing over to AI agents that make Clippy look helpful by comparison.

Time to make C the COBOL of this century

Re: C is the new COBOL

I suspect that most folks who want to replace COBOL with some "modern" language have never looked at a real COBOL program. I am not, never have been, and I'm quite sure would not want to be, a COBOL programmer. But I have had to peruse COBOL code a few times and found it to be remarkably readable -- more so than any other language I have encountered in the 65 or so years I've been dealing with computers. I can't say the same for C

I really can't see much of a case for abandoning COBOL. I can see a case for replacing C (and assembler) with a memory safe language where security is an issue and where such memory safe language has adequate performance and will fit into the machine memory.

Mobile operators brace for bigger, faster headaches with 6G

Re: Tera-hurts

Of course they will. But how are marketing folks to peddle their wares without constant progress? Or at least the illusion of constant progress. Thinner devices and rounded corners have already been done. And it's not like the manufacturers can add bigger tail fins or more cupholders. Have you no sympathy for the (potentially) starving families of industry leaders without 6G ... And 7G .... And 8G ... And .... ?

Re: 4g is fine

But how will you get future bigger, more complex, higher resolution advertising if you only have 4G?

Methinks that perhaps the inmates have taken over the internet asylum.

The Doom-in-a-PDF dev is back – this time with Linux

The next BIG thing

And QUANTUM, BLOCKCHAIN, AI will rule all. Well, just as soon as we fix the last couple of bugs.

Lawyers face judge's wrath after AI cites made-up cases in fiery hoverboard lawsuit

Re: what are you paying for

"so I'm really surprised so many US law firms are doing this."

Why are you surprised? A massive hype machine led by blatant scam artists is pushing AI to the public in hopes of recovering huge investments quickly. Lawyers are clever. Probably considerably smarter than the average human. (But not necessarily smarter than the average dog. After all, how many dogs voted for Donald Trump?) Why would it be a surprise that some lawyers actually believe the hyperbole?

I would be surprised if lawyers don't learn very quickly that they need to actually check any citations found by AI and make sure the cases exist and that the cases actually say whatever AI agents claim they say.

BTW, can a lawyer sanctioned by the court for citing ficticious cases turn around and sue his or her AI provider for damages?

Only 4 percent of jobs rely heavily on AI, with peak use in mid-wage roles

"Speech recognition systems are "AI" now, are they?"

Only if AI stands for Artificial Incompetence.

Re: What a surprise

Exactly. AI can and probably will, replace most customer service operations. Assuming it's cheaper than humans, that is. And the results will surely be dreadful at least initially. Abandon all hope of intelligent response, ye who enter here.

On the other hand, there is some chance that the quality of AI response will improve over time (as long as improvement doesn't cost much money) and there seems to be no hope whatsoever that the quality of customer service at companies like Comcast will ever improve.

Does DOGE have what it takes to actually tackle billions in US govt IT spending?

Re: Going after federal government tech spending ...

Actually, downvotes notwithstanding looking in-depth at OMB and its results wouldn't be a bad starting point for identifying wasteful spending. Most likely better than the Ready, Fire, Aim approach Trump supporters find so appealing. Might even want to beef the OMB up a bit.

Re: Going after federal government tech spending ...

The downvotes are for a number of reasons. A few I can think of :

1. The Treasury dispersed 5.25 TRILLION dollars in 2024. A billion dollars a week would be a fraud rate of 1% which, if true, most sensible people would tell you is remarkably low for a large, diverse organization. The Internet assures me that 5% is more typical.

2. The notion that following procedures more closely seems quite naive -- especially if it involves bureaucratic nonsense like making sure everything on every form is completed no matter how silly and irrelevant to the actual situation. Odds are that would increase costs rather than saving money.

3. There is already a well respected organization, the Office Of Management and Budget whose job is to identify fraud. They have a website paymentaccuracy.gov you might wish to peruse.

4. The notion that setting a couple of sociopaths noted for debatable judgement off on a crusade to "fix government" will lower an already (probably) low fraud rate looks to many of us like a classic "You had one problem. Now you have two (or more) problems." situation.

There are probably other reasons.

Palantir designed to 'power the West to its obvious innate superiority,' says CEO

Grow up? And where, exactly, are the profits to be found in that?

China's DeepSeek just emitted a free challenger to OpenAI's o1 – here's how to use it on your PC

Re: "How many "R"s are in the word strawberry?"

Indeed. Who knows what fate might befall us if the Chinese were to find out how many "R"s there really are in "STRAWBERRRY"?

==========================

Seriously, One has to expect that any information sent to publicly accessible servers anywhere on the planet is probably an open book to the national intelligence agencies of most developed countries if they choose to look for it. It probably matters not at all if information is sent to Beijing, Buenos Aires or Topeka. If someone with resources wants it, and it's on the Internet anywhere, they can probably get it. As can the CIA, MI5, IRGC (Iran), Mossad, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention Google, Meta, etc, etc, etc. And millions (probably) of hackers.

Welcome to a world where everyone on the planet is your creepy next door neighbor.

Tool touted as 'first AI software engineer' is bad at its job, testers claim

Re: Is it a payment option ?

Just like with real programmers, 2 Devins give you 7.5% productivity because they spend 75% of their time discussing the day's news, telling war stories, bitching about the management and the working conditions, and arguing about the best approach to the task.

Clock ticking for TikTok as US Supreme Court upholds ban

Re: nearly tiktok

"But the instant request for invasive detail put me off."

Well, in the interests of scientific inquiry could you, like lie? I don't think providing false information to a social media site is a crime (yet) except maybe in Singapore.

Inquiring minds want to know

"It includes the website."

And your plan for enforcing THAT is ... what? Install a national firewall in order to protect the children? Remove TiKTok from every DNS provider on the planet? And what's to prevent users from simply using one of the site's IP address to access it? I expect that TikTok or friends could come up with new IP addresses a lot faster than ISPs and such can install blocks,

Re: Impossible to ban?

Maybe.

OTOH, anyone who has ever worked with teen agers will tell you that they are just as clever/smart as adults and are prone to regard rules as challenges rather than imperatives. All it takes is for just one of them to find an easy way around this ruling and 60% of the teen age and young adult population will quite possibly know how to stay on TikTok within 72 hours. A great many, and not just teens, might do exactly that.

Not all teen age mentalities are in the 13-19 year age bracket. One need look no further than the typical politician to recognize how many folks never develop beyond the maturity and social attitudes of a confused 13 year old.

AI datacenters putting zero emissions promises out of reach

"Building nuclear power stations is a terrible option."

Why yes, it is. However, contrary to your assumptions, It's probably the least bad of the available options. Hydro is or soon will be pretty much maxed out. Geothermal and tidal have very few appropriate sites. That's really true of wind as well. Solar is possibly OK in the tropics. But, when properly assessed, it's far more expensive than its advocates believe. It needs a huge amount of back up storage. And, at scale, it's ugly and really shouldn't displace farmland and/or forests except in exceptional situations.

When you do the arithmetic, nuclear (fission or fusion) seems to be the only long term option for supporting 8 or 10 billion people at a reasonable standard of living. See UCSD astrophysicist Tom Murphy's DoTheMath.ucsd,edu archived posts for the supporting arguments ... and the math.

Other than that, most of your ideas are fine. Really. They simply don't look to be adequate to make up the gap between what is needed and what other technologies can provide.

First of all, "Net Zero" has NEVER been a realistic goal except for a few places with small populations and abundant hydroelectric/geothermal or other non-hydrocarbon power. Published national goals are consistently missed -- everywhere and always. Whereupon the IPCC laments (yet again) that humanity is doomed. That's quite possibly true. But not from climate change I think.

However, I think the fear here, may be somewhat realistic. A few AI machines are probably not much of a problem any more than a few hundred supercomputers are a problem today. A world where everyone is using AI might conceptually have many millions of AI machines. I don't think that will happen. But I guess it could. And THAT would be a problem at least unless/until improved algorithms and better hardware reduce power demands to something tractable -- which may take quite a few decades

One answer, which almost certainly will not happen, would be an international agreement to limit AI to research on a one facility per 50 million people basis. That's something less than 160 machines worldwide. Smaller countries could form consortiums to reach the 50 million threshold. Germany and France would each get one machine, Japan 2, the US 6 -- maybe 7 by joining their excess population over 300 million with Canada for a joint facility. Such an agreement should also forbid any commercial applications until they have been thoroughly vetted and everyone agrees they are harmless.

But that'll delay AI . Indeed. So what? It's not like AI is anything the world actually seems to need.

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

I disagree. The mirrors are fine for keeping track of traffic in back of one. But when backing up, a rear view camera mounted lower down and including much more of the area in back of and near the car is far more useful. Of course, if you never have to back up, you probably don't need a rear view camera.

Design deficit disorder?

"... or maybe not designed at all, but just thrown together."

So, we're talking about AI here?

Just when you thought terminal emulators couldn't get any better, Ghostty ships

Re: Emulators?

"I tried vi once ..."

Exactly my experience actually. I tried vi back in 1992 or so and found myself looking at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. It let me type stuff and echoed it on the screen, but discovery of what to do if I wanted to do more than type was entirely lacking. Like you I ended up killing it with the power button. Of course, vi discoverability is much better now days. But the few times I've tried it because it promised some nifty capability, it looked usable, but the nifty capability turned out to do something that wasn't quite what I needed. So, I continue to use emacs. The good news. Emacs has great discoverability and configurability. The bad news. Many configuration changes require writing lisp code. Lisp is not even remotely my favorite programming language,

Trump's tariff threats could bump PC prices by almost half

Backwards

If the tariffs targeted only luxury goods -- Caviar, Champagne, and such, they would indeed be a tax on the wealthy. However Trump was talking about across the board tariffs on everything foreign including essentials. Aside from being a rather dumb idea with a long history of awful results, that would surely hit the working class harder than the wealthy who have a far higher savings rate and thus pay a tax lower percentage of their income than the average citizen. Since the tariff revenue would presumably be used to finance yet another tax cut for the wealthy, the result would be yet another transfer of wealth from lower and middle class Americans to the wealthy.

Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second

Re: Thought experiment.

Some English language speed readers can manage 1000 words per minute with reasonable comprehension. That is almost 17 words per second. And words are obviously way more than 1 bit each. I think these folks might have a very different definition of BIT than those of us in the computer and communication field use.

Starlink direct-to-cell is coming to Ukraine

It's complicated

"Have I got this right, a standard mobile phone can transmit a strong enough signal to be picked up by a starlink satellite orbiting at say -checks Wikipedia- 1100 km??"

Just spent 20 minutes plowing through numbers, I'm mildly confused and quite likely wrong, but I think the situation might be something like. The original plan was to put the Starlink satellites at 1100km, but they later decided that lower orbits were better -- presumably to reduce latency and/or the number of signals that might be contending for service at any given time. Anyway, they currently appear to have something like 3800 satellites orbiting in multiple shells at altitudes between 520 and 570 km. They do plan to use lower orbits for at least one later group.

From a signal strength point of view, there's not that much difference between 550 and 1150 km -- 6db I think. But half the latency.

Then there's the fact that it's only 550 (or whatever) km if the satellite is directly overhead. The further it is from directly overhead, the greater the distance

Anyway, I expect that the 2 or 3 watt output from a cellphone probably can make it 500 km or so if background noise is low and there's a satellite near overhead. But I wouldn't be surprised that you really did have to hold the phone just right to make a call.

And in the case of the Ukraine, I wonder how hard it would be for Russia to jam the cell phone channels.

Technical issue briefly grounds American Airlines flights across US

"American Airlines didn't address El Reg's questions as to whether resolving the issue could result in additional delays or disruptions over the holiday season."

Perhaps they ignored your question because they thought it was a bit dimwitted. Why would any 21st century American not know damn well that a system wide outage on Christmas Eve of a major airline for more than a few minutes is going to cause delays and disruptions over the holiday season?

One third of adults can't delete device data

Re: Working Out their Frustrations

"I usually use a hammer for hard drives. Be careful not to smash your paving"

If they still work, I generally use dd to zero them out then donate them to one of the local recycling operations. If not, I drill a hole through the case and platter then tie the platter off with a zip tie to keep it from rotating. Probably not as effective as a really thorough bludgeoning, but strangely satisfying.

Re: Working Out their Frustrations

"I can't recall if it burst into flame before or after the smoke though."

Yet another reason besides electronic waste and planned obsolescence to ban most devices with non-user-replaceable batteries.

Humanoid robots coming soon, initially under remote control

Re: Sounds Interesting

"I can't think of a use case for a humanoid brick."

Paperweight, doorstop, barricade to keep kids or dogs from going where they shouldn't. Probably dozens of uses. In the early years, those might well be the best and highest uses for humanoid robots.

Re: "A lot of the humanoids we see out there are a hammer in search of a nail,"

Actually, there's a rationale for six legs. When walking, a critter or device with six legs can plant 3 forming a stable tripod while stepping ahead or back with the other three. Then, once those 3 are planted, move the other three. No need to worry about balance which, one suspects, is a non-trivial problem for a 2 legged or even 4 legged machine.

Re: Neo will be paired with a human teleoperator

Allowing for weekends, vacation, illnesses, and emergencies, you'll likely need 4 operators per device to provide 24/7 coverage. If the operators need to be familiar with the specific home environment as in, for example, where stuff is stored, where the trash containers are, where the fire extinguisher is, etc, etc, etc. You may need more.

Re: "A lot of the humanoids we see out there are a hammer in search of a nail,"

Same question I had -- why humanoid? Bipedal works for us humans, but it's not a very stable platform. Four or six "legs" might work better. And why only two arms, three or four might be better for some tasks? Can't count the number of times I've wished I had at least one more arm. And a tentacle or three perhaps with with eyes on the end might be handy for many jobs around the house.

Would I want one around the house? If I were temporarily or permanently incapacitated, perhaps. Otherwise, no, I don't think so. And in any case, odds are that household robots that aren't more problem than solution are likely several decades and many billions of dollars away from realization.

Some future generation's problem one hopes.

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Re: This was predicted - in El Reg - years ago.

I disagree somewhat. As does the article BTW. Google's problem doesn't seem to be so much lack of innovation as letting the marketing folks take over the results page with somewhat profitable, but dubiously helpful to the user, sponsored crap. (Enshitfication as Cory Doctorow would have it).

Strictly speaking, that's kind of innovative. But it's perhaps also kind of dumb.

Trump administration wants to go on cyber offensive against China

The US and China signed a pact in 2015 pledging not to attack each other, but neither side has upheld its commitments, assuming US and Chinese allegations are accurate.

And who among us would doubt the word of US and/or Chinese intelligence agencies, for is not written that spies never lie?

Iran-linked crew used custom 'cyberweapon' in US critical infrastructure attacks

Re: The problemis

I should possibly have explained, but one can get only so much into one post. IMO, the problem isn't technology per se but rather the fact that it seems mostly to be built with way too much "Golly, Gee Whiz, Look at what THIS can do" and way to little "What could possibly go wrong?"

The result is all too often flawed attack surfaces stretching as far as the eye can see. We have what looks to be attack surfaces and flaws to last many decades already. The last thing the Internet needs would seem to be more flawed attack surfaces. You are free to think that more technology can somehow solve that problem without introducing as many exploitable flaws as it resolves. Maybe someone somewhere is smart enough to do that. It's not me. Or anyone I've ever encountered. No offense, but it's probably not you either.

Re: Compromised petrol pumps!

gravity feed gasoline pump ... and an abacus (try hacking THAT with the 16 function toenail clipper you have concealed in your belt buckle Mr MacGyver) for figuring the payment?

The problemis

If you ask me, the problem is that too many people think that not exposing critical infrastructure is simple. Y'know what? It's not simple at all. It's hideously difficult. Quite likely impossible with all the features of the modern Internet in place.

I doubt the answer is more/better technology.

I suspect the answer if there is one is likely to be a hell of a lot LESS technology.

And I'm pretty certain that the answer is not AI.

Keep in mind. Not only is the internet becoming a very bad neighborhood. It's getting worse. And, guess what, On the internet, every scumbag, sleaze artist, and malicious national agent on the planet is your next door neighbor.