Posts by vtcodger 2029 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2017
"The Chinese chippie's wares are modest and are a few years behind rivals like AMD and Intel, but this announcement nonetheless suggests Loongson silicon is ready to be used as a space-based cloud platform."
Project management in China, the US, the Grand Duchy of Fenwick, or anywhere else will probably feel some pressure to use local products in space going gear. Also, I seem to recall from reading and informal conversations with assorted folk that one doesn't particularly want to use the latest and greatest technology in space and other stressful situations except where absolutely necessary. Better to use technology with a few years track record. There's probably also the issue of cosmic rays and other ionizing radiation which I would think likely to be more of a problem with smaller feature sizes and lower operating voltages of state of the art chips.
Or maybe I'm a victim of old age and overactive imagination. Anyone who actually knows what they are talking about care to straighten me out?
I'm kind of in agreement with you that there is likely some substance to AI. Long term anyway, The problem I see is the timeline. We have an industry that is geared to constant improvement. And we have a technology that promises to someday improve a lot of routine stuff in our lives. And it might well. In 10 or 20 years. However the industry needs it to work in the next eighteen months -- 24 months at the outside. That's likely not going to happen. Worse, there doesn't seem to be anything else coming along soon that can be hyped into have-to-have technology. And the industry folks aren't stupid. They're looking at the vision of a world where people replace hardware and software only when it dies, or their business expands. And they don't see vast amounts of wealth flowing their way in that world. I think AI is being pushed even though the likelihood of it delivering much in the way of useful product anytime soon may not be all that great because there's nothing else at the moment to sell.
I have to admit that I'm not really all that familiar with cryptocurrency -- which I consider to be an "investment" supported only by happy thoughts -- or blockchain which has always looked to me like a quite clever technology in search of actual problems to solve. But my vague understanding is that whoever holds the current key has access to the asset. I'd suggest that while you do want to write the key down somewhere where your heirs can/will find it, you do not want the actual key spelled out in your will which,at least in the US, is a matter of public record. I could easily be wrong about this. If so, I wouldn't mind being told why
I hate it when folks downvote my comments without explanation. So here's my explanation for downvoting yours.
I don't think your post is moronic or anything like that. But I do disagree. The current fad in IT seems to be that data is great. One can't get enough of it. Never can tell when some trivial item you've collected will come in handy. The problem is that your operation is undoubtedly accessible online. if nothing else, purchasing and accounts payable probably are dependent on the Internet. And the Internet is wildly insecure. But, you say, our operation is secure. Not likely. In point of fact, the number of CVEs (potential vulnerabilities) has increased pretty steadily from 1438 in 2000 to 28961 in 2023. Are all your potential vulnerabilities mitigated? Or even identified? Almost certainly not. Sure looks to me like the internet is an ongoing threat that is not remotely under control. AI will, I think, only make the situation worse.
So, I think it likely that attitudes will likely slowly shift from "data is great, can't get enough" toward "data is toxic, save only what you need and get rid of it when you no longer need it".
An AI PC is a PC with a small plastic "AI Ready" sticker on the front panel. It sells for a 22% premium over the "legacy" model with the same motherboard, CPU, memory, and storage devices. As ifxit will report, it differs from the legacy version only in the color plastic used for the external ports and the presence of a 58 pin connector connected to a 57 wire internal cable which is not actually connected to anything on the proximal end. The cable says "reserved for future use."
I was also around for the Ada fiasco. Aside from the fact that the miniscule (by modern standards) embedded computers of the late 1970s probably wouldn't have had the resources to run Ada software which was purportedly designed for embedded applications, the first DOD must_use_Ada dictates were issued years before there was an available Ada compiler. And, in fact Ada compilers turned out to be rather difficult to build. It took several years for them to appear. By that time, applying for a waiver to use Fortran or whatever had become another few pages in the large stack of boilerplate forms attached to every proposal promising that one's software wouldn't pollute the local streams/rivers(much), no endangered species would be inconvenienced, any dedicated facilities would be constructed according to all applicable codes, etc, etc, etc.
Nothing against Ada although I doubt that when they first started "requiring" it, any sane contractor would have signed up to use it unless the government covered the risks via a cost plus contract.
I agree with CISA that memory unsafe languages are indeed a security issue. OTOH, I agree with the article that massive recoding of C/C++ into memory safe languages is improbable for economic reasons and that the switch over, to the extent it's actually possible, will be very gradual.
Before you get too enthused about Trump's possible demise/incapacitation, you might want to take a good look at the Vice-President elect. In 2016, Trump selected a VP who turned out to have principles. Doesn't look like he made the same mistake this time around.
Er. How on earth can something on your wrist measure blood pressure? ...
How? The answer, in my limited experience, is "poorly". Off by about 10-15%. But the inexpensive Chinese device I played around with did try and even though it was not very accurate, it did seem to change in the correct direction when the BP changed. And it did get the pulse rate right, This is not, BTW, all that unusual in my experience. Most of the digital healthcare devices (scales, thermometers, blood glucose meters and such) that have tried are perhaps a bit easier to use than their mechanical equivalents. But their accuracy and repeatability often leaves something to be desired,
My question would be, what the hell is the point in sending my (inaccurate) blood pressure and pulse rate off to Shanghai? Good luck on finding anyone crazy enough to pay you for it, Seems to me that money is being wasted on bandwidth, servers, server maintenance, etc that might better be spent on booze, drugs, lottery rickets and strumpets.
==== On a more serious note
There are wrist worn blood pressure cuffs that can produce pretty much the same results as conventional upper arm cuffs when used properly. And they are much less aggravating to put on and take off. But there's a caveat. Thanks to gravity, blood pressure is higher below the heart and lower above. Substantially so at greater distances above/below. When using a wrist cuff, one has to hold it at heart level. Don't ask me how one corrects for that when measuring with a wrist watch because I don't know.
Eric Schmidt, almost Muskian he is.
=========
Yes, capable drones -- airborne and probably terrestrial and naval as well -- will very likely come to dominate warfare in the future. Given any luck they will largely or entirely replace boots on the ground ... eventually . But not in a couple of years. More like 2 or 3 or 4 decades. My guess is that conventional weaponry can probably retain its position for longer than Schmidt, Altman and the like can conjure up funding.
If it's a device planted by the US three letter lads, My guess is that any parts with manufacturer's logo or part number will trace back to some nebulous company purportedly operating in a compound on the Bolivian Altiplano. Or something equally unhelpful in absolutely establishing provenance. Same likely true if it's Russian? Any country in the neighborhood probably used Chinese commodity parts with perhaps a bit of custom machining?
Only fishing? Absolutely!!! Modern technology demands that fishing boats have at least 15 antennae of various sorts. And there are a lot of fish downrange from rocket test/satellite launch sites and around Naval bases. Many, many fish.
Actually, I think it's mostly the Russians that disguise their intelligence gathering vessels as trawlers. I can't find much reference to Chinese intelligence gathering vessels disguised as trawlers. Lots of concern about the Chinese fishing where they aren't supposed to and ignoring rules intended to preserve fish stocks though. The Chinese do have several "research" vessels operating in the Indian Ocean. And some "Intelligence vessels operating in the Western Pacific. Since a boat bristling with antennae doesn't fool much of anyone even if it has a few nets, maybe the Chinese don't see much point in disguising their vessels. Neither does the US so far as I can tell.
from the article "... and bobbing on the waves"
This looks to be a bobbing on the waves gidgee. The black tank-like thing on top with the antenna (not much use underwater that?) would be the float I should think. The dark grey thing below is the payload? And the light grey thing with the casters is a cart to hold the device while it is examined/displayed? The "float" looks to have a rudder. And the "payload" has things that might be stabilisers of some sort. So perhaps this thing is at least somewhat mobile.
"It's like all new technology - eventually it will get embedded in our everyday lives and we won't even notice it."
I'd like that to be true, and I think SOME applications will be exactly as you describe. For example, I wouldn't be at all surprised that in a decade or three live humans in movies or on TV become uncommon -- actors having been displaced by artificial entities that look and act human, but don't demand raises, a cut of the profits, or even an occasional day off.
But I'm concerned that there are way too many potentially troublesome applications of the technology.
"Hey Igor, come up with a bunch of salacious photos of Melinda in Apt 3c. Sex with donkeys. That sort of stuff. I'll teach her not to turn ME down for a date."
"Hey Igor, print me up a stack of $20 bills"
"Hey Igor, how do I hotwire a Porsche?"
"Hey Igor, how do I hijack a nuclear missile and use it to wipe out Tel Aviv/Tehran/Kiev/Moscow?"
etc,etc,etc
Y'know, I actually read their paper. I found it long on opinions and quite short on facts -- which, they concede, are quite hard to come by. Do I think they are charlatans or fools? No. But, on the other hand I don't find them especially persuasive either.
Because I suspect that any benefits from artificial lighting might depend on a reasonable amount of shorter wavelengths in the artificial lighting. I don't necessarily agree with the OP either unless more folks than I think likely are using daylight (5000K or 6500K) CFLs or LEDs. in their kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.
"Objectively, we're going in that direction. We have machines to do the hardest parts of manual labor (aka mining, tunneling, farming, etc). These machines need human supervision, but humans do not need to do the hard work. We have robots for many aspects of manufacturing. Cars are made mostly by robots, with humans just checking things out."
Maybe someday. Currently, I think not as much as we're led to believe.
My memory says that Elon tried to build Model-3 Tesla's that way a few years ago -- with decidedly mixed results.
I could be wrong. I hope I am. But my impression is that much as I would like all boring, tedious, repetitive and/or outright dangerous jobs to be done by machines,it's going to take many, many decades for that to come about.
The Tesla charging network is a real, valuable, long-term asset. But it looks to be about the only one. The CyberCab is likely going to be two-years away for a long, long time. And I can't begin to figure out what, if anything, the CyberTruck is good for. Stump-pulling maybe. So yes, the stock market valuation looks wildly irrational.
Much as I agree with the thought, it'd almost certainly be quite impossible for many government agencies in China, Hong Kong or anywhere else to function that way. For example, how is purchasing to buy paper for the printers or find a cleaning agent that might kill that weird purple stuff growing in the urinals without access to the general internet? Use their cell phones? Do you really want a large part of your daily government activity operating outside the purview of IT? And what do you do if all the information on Mr Chang's efforts to procure new buses are in his personal accounts and Mr Chang (and his cell phone) have been run over by a tram?
I don't think there are simple answers to the problem. The systems I've seen to handle similar/analogous issues tend to be quite expensive and to have a set of rules and exceptions so hideous and complex that people either ignore them or find often dubious work-arounds.
Sounds like this is about the requirements for a specific model to even take off. Presumably the rules for how one gets from place to place come later -- after one is allowed to get their machine off the ground. Presumably one will have to coordinate with ATC if they plan/need to fly through controlled airspace?
IBMs OS/360 dates to 1965. There were a few problems -- most obviously JCL (dubbed, not entirely inaccurately, by one early victim as the world's first syntax free language) but it WAS a real OS in the modern sense. My vague memory is that there were a few other less ambitious OSes around even before 1965, but their names escape me.
OTOH, your description of the current situation seems pretty damn accurate. A Hydra-like nightmare it certainly is. And I don't see any sign of a mythological hero on his way to slay it.
I think there may be a confusion here because everyone is so used to systems designed to handle arbitrary workloads and diverse hardware configurations that it never really occurs to them that if you forego flexibility, systems can be MUCH smaller. The first large computer I ever worked with was the AN/FSQ-7 computer used in the SAGE Air Defense System. It was designed in the 1950s and was huge for the times -- 64K (That's K not M or G) of 32 bit words. Vacuum tubes,not transistors. Thousands of 6SN7 dual triode tubes. 6 uSec cycle time. i.e. 0.167Mhz clock. Somehow, it managed to process raw radar data from a dozen sites, track many dozens of aircraft, drive several dozen interactive display consoles, guide unmanned missiles, manage manned interceptions, talk to manual sites, and even communicate with adjacent sectors well enough to hand over tracked aircraft when they reached the edge of the sector. Even more amazing, it actually (mostly) worked.
How could it do all that on a computer roughly equivalent to an IBM PC with 256K of memory? Lovingly hand crafted code operating in fixed time slots with fixed time slots. Polled, not interrupt driven IO. No software data bus. My point, you can do a lot with very limited resource, if you don't use the ubiquitous modern system architectures and you forego flexibility.
Cheap? Heck no. It cost a fortune back then. And anything done similarly today is probably still going to cost a fortune. BUT, IF YOU WANT SECURE SOFTWARE AND DON'T REALLY NEED FLEXIBILITY, AND HAVE LOTS OF MONEY TO SPEND, you can possibly get pretty good results with a small, carefully curated, "There's only one way (at most) to do things" OS. Perfectly secure? I doubt it. But pretty good, maybe good enough, security? Maybe.
Couldn't be bothered to look up the cost of automotive lidar, eh? Try it. Google will be happy to help you out. As will other search engines I should think. If you think it'll be cheap, be prepared for a surprise. Or ... Here's an article. https://cdn.neuvition.com/media/blog/lidar-price.html (Is it going to be necessary for autonomous vehicles even if it boosts the vehicle cost by 3-4%? How the hell would I know?)
Hell, man. *I* can't cope with a busy roundabout. Especially an unfamiliar one. Like all sensible people, I HATE the damn things.
A Cybertruck, like the proverbial 900 pound gorilla, can probably just proceed. Really, who or what is going to argue with it? Maybe the software in more vulnerable autonomous vehicles will just find routes that avoid roundabouts.
And another factor. If an experienced human driver finds him/her-self looking straight into the sun, they will probably involve some strategy to deal with the situation. The simplest is simply to move their sensors (eyes) right, left, up, down, whatever. They may use a fold down sun blocker that most vehicles have mounted above their front window. Or they can invoke a filter (e.g. sunglasses). Or if it's safe, they may simply guide the vehicle a bit to a spot where the glare is less of a problem. Cars probably can't do easily do any of those things other than moving the vehicle.
Another possible issue, that really didn't occur to me until now. Vehicle cameras need to have a wide field of view. Vertically as well as horizontally if they are to deal properly with overhead traffic lights. (And there really are intersections near where I live that have only an overhead light in the middle of the intersection controlling traffic flow.). You aren't supposed to aim digital cameras into the sun because if the sun is anywhere in the camera field of view, the camera lens will focus its rays to a VERY hot spot that may damage some of the pixels in the camera's light sensor. Cars don't have the option of never facing into the sun. Are the optical sensors in vehicles going to turn out to be wear items that need replacement (and recalibration?) every X thousand miles?
Well yes, Musk's ego doesn't help. But there's also the issue of cost. Musk seems to believe, very likely correctly, that in order to dominate the vehicle market, he can't depend on just his current customer base -- the rather small segment that has more money than common sense. He needs to compete on cost. Lidar costs money. As does the software to process the results. And integrating the Lidar with the visual sensors will cost a bit as well. What do you do when the two sensors tell you conflicting things? Musk wants his vehicles to be inexpensive. More sensors don't make the vehicle cheaper. If anything ...
There's also something that people, especially bright people I think, are subject to. OMFS -- One More Fix Syndrome. People, for the most part, get by just fine with just their eyes. And they really don't need binocular vision for distance estimation. Because human eyes are so close together, that only works out to 5 or 6 meters. Teslae have "eyes" and "brains". No damn reason they can't work as well as people. Or better. Maybe much better.
OMFS is incredibly seductive. I've certainly encountered it many times in the past six decades. I've bought into it myself at times. And I should know better.
Just one more fix or maybe two -- can't be much more than that -- and FSD will be as good as Tesla has been claiming. LIke I said ... Seductive.
It's all quite hazy, but I think the density of 3-He in the lunar regolith is thought to be quite low. Maybe an order of magnitude less than the density of Gold in the Carlin (Nevada) trend sediments? In order to mine it one would presumably need to transport a massive mining operation to the moon at a cost of a good many dollars /gram FOB Luna. Further, one probably needs a substantial support facility. Lots more mass at quite a few thousand dollars a kg. And then there's the problem of actually extracting that Helium. Helium being a noble gas, chemistry -- what's used with Carlin's Gold --probably won't help. And finally, you have to get the stuff back to Earth. While the mass to be moved is small, the infrastructure to get it back here won't be cheap.
Nevertheless, that could possibly be done in this century at fantastic cost were the need for Helium-3 great enough. But there's another way if one is a bit patient. Common Lithium is a mixture of mostly Lithium 7 with about 6 or 7 percent Lithium 6. Bombard 6-Li with neutrons and it fissions(!!!) into one atom of 4-He and one of 3-H -- Tritium. The Tritium can be chemically separated. Or maybe mass spectrometry is cheaper. Anyway, if one then puts their cannister of Tritium on a shelf and waits a decade or so, about half the molecules of Tritium will have spit out a lethargic electron and become Helium-3. I suspect that's going to be the cheapest way to come up with substantial amounts Helium-3 for quite some time -- maybe a century or two.
Anyway, my GUESS is that space is not going to be a cost effective source of minerals of any sort any time soon. And my further GUESS is that by far the cheapest way to eventually acquire most minerals from space is to find a small "rock" rich in whatever one needs, nudge it into Earth orbit using solar sails, mine and process the stuff in orbit. Which leaves the non-trivial problem of getting the stuff down to the surface in a controlled manner. Not a big deal I think for stuff priced by the gram, but a significant cost factor I'm guessing for stuff priced by the tonne.
Anyway, I don't think I'd recommend buying a lunar mining stock any time soon. (Printing and selling such a security might make you some money. But I think you'd be well advised to base your operation someplace with VERY loose financial controls,)
Old science. The Ivanpah (CA) solar thermal power facility -- aka "The Ivanpah Bird Burner" has been incinerating flying critters and generating power (albeit considerably less than the design goals) using about a zillion (173,000 actually) mirrors for about a decade. It also managed to incinerate part of it's tower once. I suspect that means that if you are planning to play around with death rays, and they are computer controlled, you should not make the 0,0 point of your coordinate system anything that you value.
"Boeing has 6000 orders ..."
Yes, I should have checked that. OTOH, most of those 6000 orders are said to be for 737MAX. Most will be for delivery several/many years in the future and some of those orders will inevitably be cancelled, That happens even at the best of times. They are currently producing fewer than 500 737MAX a year with a goal of 600. It's going to take a while to make 3000+ aircraft at 500-600 a year.
I doubt Boeing is laying off the actual production folk most of whom are probably union and currently out on strike. At least not for the product lines for which they have abundant orders. Nobody except Elon Musk -- whose thought processes seem opaque to us ordinary mortals -- does stuff like that.
But it's a huge company and there's probably a significant amount of accumulated cruft in some of the departments.
If there's one thing I learned in three decades in the aerospace industry, it is that occasional layoffs are a fact of life. As a coworker put it, "It's all day labor. If you want job security, go civil service."
What'a China up to? C919.
Specs similar to A320/737MAX, Maybe 10-20% cheaper than competitors. Been in production for about two years. Maybe as many as a dozen actually being flown by paying customers. Takes a while for production to ramp up and for airlines to set up maintenance, supply, etc. Complicated processes and, unlike the computer industry, can't afford mistakes. Generally reviews are favorable. Lots of orders (as many as 1000?) all from within China. Customers outside China will presumably holding off for a few years to see if there are reliability, safety, or other problems.
Well there's not just one problem. There's a bunch. But two stand out.
1. Boeing doesn't seem to have that much product on their cart that anyone wants to buy. And the thing people might want to buy is several years from starting production. (which will take quite a while to ramp up BTW). If they don't have and don't expect to have the orders, they don't need the people to produce the products they won't be making.
2. The US economy is quietly resetting after a decade of easy money and easy credit. Boeing is far from the only company retrenching. Despite improbable promises from politicians, it's likely that some decline will continue, airline travel will fall off, and orders to aircraft makers in general for new aircraft will decline. Probable economic sloth in hardly a situation unique to Boeing or the US in general. China is, if anything, in worse shape.
Two Seater? It looks to be a sort of Electric Mazda Miata (MX-5), but with lots of cargo space and nowhere near as cute. There's surely SOME market for that sort of vehicle. But I doubt it's all that large.
As a taxi? Taxis are conceptually utilitarian vehicles designed to move random people and goods. I don't think this is or can easily become that.
Odds are that won't be a problem unless you live to be 117. It's highly unlikely that this weird vehicle will ever get beyond the occasional tightly controlled demo stage. And even that will probably take way longer than the 2 years or so that Musk is promising,
Looks to me like AI, as hyped by Microsoft, Sam Altman, and the like could best be described as "Clippy on Speed". I never found any use for Clippy and I doubt I'll like their "AI" any better.
Not that some of the things lumped into the term "AI" won't be useful. Real time language translation on your phone for example. But it seems to me that they are either of narrow utility (e.g. replacing live actors with convincing digital personae), rather far in the future, an invitation to legal difficulties, or outright illegal/immoral/unethical.
Might be time to start thinking about the next NEXT-BIG-THING just in case the folks they are trying to peddle stuff to start yawning or laughing out loud when the term "AI" comes up.
Fortunately for the liberals the Cybertruck forward facing machine gun is a $7000 extra that is currently inactive, but will be enabled via an OTA update in a few months. Or so says Elon. In the meantime there isn't much that can be done about the liberals except hope that the starboard bow falls off taking them with it. Kinda iffy. But it could happen.
But one of these days ...
It's worth pointing out that login.gov has no less than FIVE methods for multifactor identification. Face/fingerprint, security key, authentication app, text/phone, pre-established one time codes. With them, you don't have to use biometrics unless you want to. https://www.login.gov/help/get-started/authentication-methods/
AI seems to work well at anything trivial. Surely, the most likely AI answers to "How do I make a profit with this stuff? are
1, Buy a printing press and the cheapest scanner you can find. Beg, borrow or steal a "Benji" (A US 100 dollar note). Then ....
2. Put together a cryptocurrency scam. You will need access to a web server, an internet domain, and a spokesman with some amount of name recognition (Aside: A squeaky clean reputation would be OK, but a few modest felony convictions might be adventageous). ...
Am I the only person that recalls that the way you manually control printers with CUPS is to point a browser at port 631 on the computer running CUPS? MAYBE that's not that big a deal for some reason or other. But still given the fact that most users allow Javascript in websites because most websites won't work without it. And the fact that Javascript appears to be way too capable to be compatible with security, there may be some substance here.
I reckon we'll find out.
COBOL is easily the most readable computer language I've ever encountered. Seriously, I think most programmers could, with no training whatsoever, pick up the listing of a COBOL program and follow the logic. I did that once or twice many decades ago. On the other hand, I've never had to program in COBOL. I expect that doing so is mind-numbing.
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