Posts by vtcodger 2029 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2017
you can have liquid cooling without putting your computer in a bath.
Indeed -- CDC's supercomputers of the 1960s were water cooled. I know that because I was thrown off a CDC 6400 in one of their labs on a chilly May afternoon because -- as an agitated engineer informed me -- the computer had "sprung a leak".
In the distant past -- say two or three decades ago -- some folks cooled REALLY high performance PCs by dumping the whole device into a container of oil and cooling the oil with a heat exchanger. I never tried that. But I was told that it worked fine as far as cooling went. The problem that limited the utility was that the oil eventually found its way out into the environment through every minute opening. Like between the gaps between the insulation and conductors in the wiring leading to the power switch and indicator lights. Things got quite messy after a few hours I was told.
I don't do smart phones because I really don't seem to need one. I have a decade old tracfone that satisfies my occasional need for remote phone calls and text messages, costs less and probably only spies on me on those rare occasions when I turn it on. So maybe I'm missing the obvious.
But I'm curious. If you have no connectivity as a result of installing the latest manufacturer improvement, how are you supposed to download that fix that will be promulgated any minute now?
It's been 3 or 4 decades since I was involved in government contracting. But I doubt things have changed much. Every contract award is a bit different, but the general process is sort of generic.
The Gubmint comes up with a Request For Proposal (RFP) that defines the general parameters of the contract. Time span, The sort of price they have in mind. Some things they want done. Completion date. An incredibly lengthy list of laws and specifications that must be complied with. How specific the RFP is, is a function of what is to be done. If they are looking for 300 Tomahawk missiles, your proposal better specify devices the same size and range with identical or near identical capability, with the same interfaces. And they'll probably specify a test regime. In this case they probably specified workloads, data volumes, security constraints, reliability, perhaps acceptable OSes and programming languages, page after page after page ... lots of specificity.
You as a contractor will have to "qualify" yourself. You'll need to come up with a plausible story about how your operation has adequate staff, experience, etc,etc,etc. to do the job
Once you've qualified yourself, you then produce a lengthy work of fiction called a Proposal that explains in detail how you will do the job in the specified time period while fully complying with every relevant law and constraint. And how much it will cost. This is where it gets trickier. Different bidders will likely have different approaches, skill sets, hardware preferences, etc, etc, etc. If the contact is for 50,000 pairs of combat boots, the proposals may be relatively easy to compare and the contract will likely be awarded to the low bidder(s). For complex technical products, likely no one is completely sure what is being offered, when, and for how much. But tradition demands that everyone ignore that.
Anyway, the government may well come back with a few (or a lot or) questions. Revisions to the proposal may be allowed if it becomes clear that there is a genuine misunderstanding about what is desired and some of that is the government's fault. Eventually, the contract is (usually) awarded assuming that there is at least one (marginally) acceptable proposal.
Then comes the lawsuits and pontificating by guys with expensive haircuts and even more expensive suite. That's the phase we seem to be in now.
On top of which, it would be difficult to block ads served directly by the content provider. One might argue that it would be difficult for content providers to police the content of ads for malware and such. True enough. But since no one seems to police ad content anyway, would the situation actually be any worse?
I'm trying to think of a reason for not simply giving legitimate Russian, Iranian, Icelandic, Fenwickian etc. representatives user accounts that let them view any and all research info on Coronavirus. Can't come up with much.
Heck, why not just publish the information on Wikipedia?
what is this kind of article going to look like in another 20 years?
My guess is that at some point in the next two decades, some collection of crackpots like Donald the Useless and his cronies will sufficiently aggravate some pariah nation state like NK, Iran, or Cuba, that cyber hostilities will break out. The resulting chaos as electronic payment systems fail, power grids go into hibernation, travel becomes next to impossible, communication is temporarily reduced to hand written notes, etc, etc, etc. may change the way we do things. I don't think the cyber world of 2040 will be much, if any, more secure. But it may well be less dependent on digital communication for critical infrastructure.
FWIW, the logic behind the mask thing is that medical personnel who are in constant contact with the sick need "N95" level masks that filter incoming air and fit tightly in order to possibly protect themselves.
The rest of us are to get by with improvised masks that don't protect us much if at all, but which might -- if the wind is fair and the gods are willing -- protect others from any viral droplets we might otherwise be scattering about. Wearing homemade masks is a courtesy to others.
"I think you'll find that's true of most of the software on your phone now."
I wouldn't be surprised that you're correct since "business ethics" seems even more oxymoronic than usual in our current golden age. My question would be who is buying all this surveillance data. And why. The fact that I went to the hardware store and supermarket last Thursday strikes me as being a data point whose value to anyone is as close to zero as it is possible to come without violating the laws of quantum mechanics.
i always use duct tape and WD40
Those plus a hammer, a Dremel with a cutting disk, and a reversable Phillips/Flathead screwdriver from any model 1960-1990 Mazda and you have a complete toolkit suitable for almost all user level electronic, automotive or household repair tasks.
People want autonomous vehicles. And were I a gambler, I'd bet on them happening eventually. But, flawed though human drivers are, the technical problems of "safer than human" autonomous vehicle control are enormous. The record is clear. Tesla's "autopilot" system is not reliable and is a menace to innocent third parties. And Tesla apparently can not be trusted to deploy driver assistance with proper concern for safety. It's past time to turn their system off. Permanently.
If ("when" I think) some more responsible company eventually creates a vehicle control system that drives better than humans, Tesla can license the technology from them. In the meantime, Tesla's system should be turned off and left off. The $5000 folks paid for it should be refunded.
Tesla's license to kill should be revoked.
... solar panels ...
Max theoretical output about 1 kwh per square meter. In the tropics. At noon. On a cloudless day. Using far more efficient panels than we can make today.
Might be feasible on a 21st century zeppelin. On a conventional fixed wing airliner, probably not.
Maybe our great, great, ever so great, grandkids will indeed travel the world in gas filled bags propelled by solar electricity. But I doubt the groundspeed for lighter than air transport will ever be what air travelers today experience. Trains, however, may eventually go as fast as today's planes. Maybe faster. But probably not from Los Angeles to Sydney.
"- usable automated call handling"
A lot of them ARE pretty bad. OTOH, some are marginably usable. Especially the ones that let one key in information from the phone keypad instead of depending on voice recognition. Actually, I think the best automated call handling is less unusable than most 2FA schemes I've encountered.
Two things:
1. The principle problem with quantum computing if it ever works probably isn't updating security practices and algorithms -- although that's bad enough. It's all the previously unreadable stuff that folks have recorded and can now read.
2. Quantum decryption is at the it_doesn't_have_to_work_very_well_to_be_useful end of the computing spectrum. If it only works 1 time in 50 you can just try over and over until you get a result that isn't garbage.
My wife's car has Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). The sales people made it clear when we bought the car that the system was unreliable and more or less useless. (When was the last time THAT happened to you?) . Time has proved them to have been honest about that at least.
I have long since augmented the TPMS with a $5.00 set of indicating tire valve caps that actually tell me when tires are underinflated and refrain from reporting temperature changes as flat tires.
The US has a quarter of the planet's proven coal reserves. It's the Saudi Arabia of coal. And it is currently awash with cheap natural gas. I don't think Australia is going to export much of either to the US. I'm having trouble thinking of anything that Australia could export to the US. Decent beer maybe. That's about it.
I imagine that you'll have one or more delivery ports -- think in terms of a mailbox on steroids -- on your house or business. The delivery vehicle will robotically just slip your delivery into the port. I'm very old and I can remember that back in the 1940s in the US they actually did that (manually not robotically) with milk, bakery products and ice. I think they did it with coal in colder climates and they still do it (again manually, but it could probably be automated) with fuel oil or propane in cold areas beyond the reach of natural gas.
Now that I think about it, why not beef up the overhead utility conduit and using it as a track for delivery "drones". Sort of a 19th century solution. But it might be quieter, safer, less bandwidth intensive, etc than airborne delivery vehicles. Downsides? I doubt the pigeons will like it.
Mt GUESS is that 50 years from now, automated delivery will be ubiquitous. And some of it at least -- the light and/or urgent stuff -- will be by air. But the problems are legion and will take a LONG time to solve. And unlike autonomous cars -- which some people covet strongly and a smaller number of folks actually need -- there's no particular urgency.
"because small towns do not have the money to bury all wires and get rid of them in one go"
I live in an area with buried utilities. They are great aesthetically. And they are more reliable than overhead wires. But the do fail at times. And when they do, repairs are costly. And slow. And are prone to leave trenches in the roads and yards. My thought would be. By all means tidy up your overhead wiring if it needs it and you can afford it. But think long and hard about whether underground is really appropriate for your situation before you start digging.
Conferences will resume
Perhaps. This looks to be an involuntary experiment to determine if conferences have any real utility in the 21st century. If they do, then presumably the conferences will start up again. Or not. Or maybe they'll end up taking a different form -- likely smaller, less stressful, with many more remote options.
It doesn't help that modern air travel has degenerated into an experience about as pleasant as a weekend in prison and that the few venues capable of hosting a really large conference are not necessarily places one wants to endure more than maybe thrice in a lifetime.
Time will tell.
"But I don't have a so-called "smart" phone."
Then you won't have to leave it at home should you decide to go out. (Why would you go out other than for some reason that's permitted anyway? And if you did decide to make an illicit trip, why would you take a location tracker along?)
Aside from the civil liberties aspect of this idea, it strikes me as being just a bit clueless. There are almost certainly far better ways to encourage isolation and discourage virus transmission.
You'll probably enjoy this opinion piece. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/
His take: The data collection process for Covid-19 has been a more or less complete fiasco. The data at hand is so poor that it could describe anything from a new, not especially virulent, respiratory disease -- less severe than this year's seasonal flu -- to something comparable to the "Spanish flu" of a century ago that killed many millions of a much smaller human population.
Who is John Ioannidis? He is a Stanford professor and expert on medical statistics. who is widely known for his criticisms of reporting practices for medical research.
"then surely that data should have gone directly to a NASA data centre first anyway "
Well yes ... sort of. Back in the day, that was called a ground station. It took the data, unpacked the multiplexed telemetry data into structures that were/are a bit more conventional and added appropriate metadata. Again, back in the day, that was necessary because vehicle bandwidth was very costly and therefore data streams were as compact as possible. And data rates were often very high because the link could only be up during short time windows. So the ground station equipment was specialized, expensive, and often project unique. Then the data went to a project command center for analysis before being archived.
Assuming things are still much like that, the AWS part is presumably just the archiving.
"how can they tell one side of the planet from another?"
Doppler shift in Iron emission lines perhaps. It'll presumably be the sum of planetary rotation round its star, and its "daily rotation". It'll (presumably) be slightly different at different points on the planet's orbit (and at different points in the Earth's orbit as well). Can "they" really measure things that finely and sort them out? I haven't the slightest.
"Is this really a problem, or a proof of concept with very limited applications and concerns?"
Somewhere in between perhaps. Some physiological measurements are simple and straightforward. Temperature for example. Or pulse rate. Others are judgment calls. Systolic blood pressure (the second number in BP measurements) for example. I'm told that some folks don't genuinely have any well defined systolic cut off. Electrocardiograms definitely seem to fall into the judgment call category. Providing me with a chart of my EC wouldn't do much good. I don't have the slightest idea how to interpret it. And neither do most other people I'm pretty sure. I actually read up on that once. And I concluded that it'd take a lot more training than I have any intention of getting for me to make sense of ECs. So having a cheap device that can check it might be useful. But the device has to work properly for most people most of the time. And it'd help if it knew when its readings are unreliable.
"I wouldn't rely on any piece of kit doing a clinical job that is produced as a consumer item."
I understand the thought. But it's not at all clear to me that consumer grade thermometers, sphygnomanometers(blood pressure measuring devices), blood glucose meters, blood urate meters, etc are much if any less reliable overall than their clinical equivalents. It's true that the consumer products may have some corners cut in design. On the other hand, most of the things being measured depend on time of day, health, when and what the last meal was, etc, etc,etc. A home user is typically much better equipped to provide a consistent test environment than is a physician's office where readings are likely to depend on when the appointment is, how stressful the trip to the physician's office is, who makes the measurement, and in some cases how they make it.
In any case consumer grade measurements are orders of magnitude cheaper than lab measurements and are likely to reveal patterns of physiological behavior that won't be available to physicians unless they slap you in a well staffed, well equipped Intensive Care Unit for a few days. They're likely to be the first health screen that most folks get -- especially in developing countries and developed countries like the US with dysfunctional healthcare systems. So I suspect that consumer grade devices are always going to be an important element in healthcare. It's important that they work reasonably reliably and that their limitations are well understood.
"Are we to expect you suspect that a forlorn hope, vtcodger, and practically anything is then virtually possible"
Nope. This is way beyond my pay grade. The only clue I have is that if "anything is then "virtually possible" I should think there would be a **LOT** of excitement, hand waving, blame shifting, and preposterous "solutions". So maybe in practice having the management keys to most of the world's Intel CPUs become public knowledge is no big deal and nothing to worry about.
I'm pretty sure that I don't understand this. But it sure sounds like the miscreant doesn't need to tease out the management key on your PC. They can use the management key from their own PC if it has the same chipset as yours. Which suggests that it's only a matter of time -- weeks? months? years? -- before the management keys to every intel CPU with a management engine are available to everybody on the internet. The next question would seem to be what nasty things can they actually do if they know that key and somehow get access to someone's Intel CPU by, for example, by incorporating some malicious Javascript in an ad?
Let's all fervently hope that the answer is "Not much really." If it isn't, you may want to wait a while before sending that dust covered (ME less) 386DX out in the garage off to the dump, You may be about to find a use for it.
It wasn't clear to me from the article whether Broadband Now depended on the ISPs for anything other than pricing information. So I'm -- perhaps generously -- assuming that their speed numbers come from users. But yes, if they asked Comcast about speeds I doubt they got a straight answer. Even a competent, honest ISP is probably is going to quote you the speeds experienced by their most favorably situated users, not the folks at the distal end of a long, noisy wire that has acquired a number of patches over the years.
Bizarre internet access estimates for the US are nothing new. In 2008, the FCC described its own broadband statistics as "Stunningly meaningless". And I don't think things have changed that much. Nothing against Broadband Now. It looks like they are doing the best they can with a situation that pretty much defies rational analysis. And their rankings might even be roughly right. It's credible that residents of Alaska (outside probably of Anchorage) have pitiful to non-existent broadband access and New Jersey might well have excellent access overall. But the notion that rural Americans have much in the way of internet access is pretty weird. I doubt that the average rural American can stream low resolution video and upload digital images simultaneously. Assuming that they can do either.
Frankly, I doubt these people know what they are doing. It's probably possible to move the federal government -- at least everything that doesn't face the public, to IPV6. But this doesn't sound like the way to do it. We'll ignore the lurking question of why on Earth one would want to spend considerable money and resource to "fix" something that very likely isn't broken.
A few of you may recall the Ada fiasco of the mid 1970s. Back in the distant past, the US Department of Defense looked upon its ever growing IT budgets and said to itself. What we see is chaos. And it is growing. We must do something. We can't easily do anything about the hardware. We're stuck with what we own. But we CAN do something about the software. And we will. We shall convene a coven of wizards and have them conjure up a single computer language that will satisfy all our needs. Because we are such a large customer, we can coerce the craftsmen and their masters into using it for all purposes. And the economies of scale shall be enormous. And the OMB will be ever so pleased.
So the wizards convened and conjured up Ada. Let me say that there is nothing especially wrong with Ada per se. People can and do use it today. And it works OK. It bills itself as being ideal for mission critical, safety critical, yada, yada, yada ... applications. And maybe it is. If suspect a lot of that is BS of various degrees of purity, but maybe I'm wrong. And it's certainly not unsuited to such applications.
Having an Ada specification in hand, the DOD then told it's program offices (the folks who do procurement and manage development efforts). From this date forward, thou shalt use Ada or risk disgrace and being passed over for promotion. And the program offices told the contractors. Thou shalt use Ada. And the contractors looked around and said, "OK, where can we get an Ada compiler?" And they found that there were no Ada compilers. And it also turned out that writing an Ada compiler was a non-trivial job. So the contractors said to the program offices. "Look, we can do what you need when you need it, but not in Ada. How about writing us a waiver and we'll use Fortran (or whatever) and rewrite it later in Ada if you so desire?" So waivers were requested And granted. Lots of waivers.
Ada compilers were eventually written. But by that time, the enthusiasm for Ada had passed.
There was incidentally another problem with Ada -- which was that it somehow got advertised as a language for "embedded systems". What's an embedded system? The dimwitted, cheap little chips that run your coffee maker and the hygrometer in my bathroom and things like that are embedded systems. The military owns a LOT of those. And in the 1970s the digital hardware for them was extremely simple. Typically a few TTL chips, a bit of memory, and some custom circuits. You didn't program those in a higher order language -- especially not one with garbage collection which makes timing analysis next to impossible. You programmed them in assembler.
Anyway, Ada was a near total flop from the DOD's point of view.
I think this edict is likely headed down the same path. What would I do if anyone asked me (which they won't)? I'd take one government segment that no one cares much about. The folks building the border wall that no one but Donald Trump wants perhaps. And I'd promise them all the resource they needed and tell them to go 100% IPv6 and document all their problems (existing gear that CAN'T do IPv6 and has no off the shelf replacement for example) then write a conversion manual. Then I'd have two or three other organizations try to follow that conversion manual. Then I'd have them write a guide for the rest of the government. Then, and only then, would I start laying down mandates. And only if I still thought 100% IPv6 was a good idea.
Not only is its coverage area limited, QZSS satellites are essentially additional GPS satellites. If GPS is down QZSS is almost certainly down as well. What QZSS buys the Nihonjin is reduction in multipath precision problems in dense urban areas as well as improved vertical accuracy within its target area (Japan), Wikipedia says it's operational with 4 satellites with 3 more to launch shortly. Cost 170B JPY = about 1.2B pounds. Could Britain do something similar? Probably. But you'll still need GPS. Not to mention that it wouldn't provide coverage for most of the tiny specks of land that constitute the remaining British Overseas Territories.
I don't use Github because I don't need it. And for the most part it's too complicated for my aging mind. But my understanding is that Linus Torvalds wrote git to handle collaborative efforts that were too complex for RCS, Subversion, et. al. That kind of suggests to me that there are times when some folks really need the "official" version of code, not their local copy/copies.
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