Posts by vtcodger 2026 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2017
Austin (Travis County) is an island of liberal nuttiness in a vast sea of right wing lunacy. They've actually been known to try to ban firearms in some areas like their city hall. Austin is actually rather a nice place -- if you can tolerate six month long, 38C, high humidity, summers.
For years I've loaded the clipboard by marking the stuff I want there, cutting it to the clipboard (shift-del) then pasting it back (shift-ins). I'm pretty sure that I developed that because ctrl-C could do horrible things in MSDOS/Unix if the system state isn't what one believes it to be. Very rarely, the cut fails presumably because I've pressed a wrong key. In which case, I KNOW the clipboard didn't load properly because the stuff I want in the clipboard is still on my screen after the cut.
Would that practice have prevented this incident? Almost for sure. Is it always a good idea? I'm not so sure about that. There may be scenarios where something truly awful can happen. I haven't encountered one, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
"You will never know that AI database exists and that you are using it. You will just talk to computer as you talk to a person, explain what you want, demanding to change something."
I suspect you have never tried to manage people. Persuading people to do simple tasks can be spectacularly time consuming and difficult. The possibility of dealing with machines that behave like humans should strike fear into all but the bravest and/or most foolhardy.
And the underlying OS for Windows 9 -- MSDOS -- really would run for years. We once ran across a PC that had been used for some sort of lab measurement. When the testing was completed, "they" apparently unplugged the sensor, turned off the monitor, and pushed the PC -- still running -- back into a corner. When someone finally looked at it, it had filled up the hard drive with specious "data", but continued to try to write more. Based on the "data" collection, it had been running for at least 18 months, but it could have been there substantially longer.
I can only add, what happens when Quantum computers are commonly available. Nothing will be safe.
My very vague understanding is that quantum computers if we're ever able to build them should be very good at "This safe has 356,245,896 possible combinations. You need to open it or bad things will happen ... to you." type problems. But this is more of a "Go to Shinjuku 3-chome, building 15 in Tokyo, Japan and buy a drink for the blind begger who will give you your next clue" type problem. I don't think Shor's algorithm helps with those.
However, the second part of your observation seems to almost certainly correct. As computational capabilities improve, a lot of once "safely encrypted" stuff is going to become readable. And some folks who have overlooked that aspect of reality are to probably going find it quite inconvenient.
OK. Can you tell me the IP address for Google without looking it up?
No, but I **CAN** tell you an IP address for their DNS service from memory -- 8.8.8.8 I'm not sure exactly what that means other than that Google doesn't need to make their search IP memorable, but could likely do so if they wished
It appears that ICANN might be a bit confused about the nature of a "not for profit" corporation and why such corporations are encouraged. Perhaps a bit of taxation -- 100% of their net revenue, say -- might give them some incentive to research the topic. The revenues could perhaps be used to set up a not for profit domain registrar that is a bit less confused about whose interests they serve.
I dunno. Seriously. I wasn't great at parallel parking 65 years ago when I learned to drive. And it got a lot harder three or four decades ago when bucket seats replaced bench seats and the corners of the car vanished from the driver's field of view. I think, I'd be entirely happy to let the car handle the details of parking if my ancient Nissan had that capability. OTOH, I've lived much of my life in places that have long snowy winters and I've developed the skills necessary to stay out of ditches and avoid spinning out when stopping. In my experience, the systems in modern cars that try to do those things for me really aren't much good at it. I'd really rather do it myself.
How about we let machines do what they do well. And let humans do what machines can't?
That is exactly why planes fly themselves - but professional pilots are still ...
Would anyone feel comfortable flying in an aircraft where Clippy was the ultimate and final authority as to where the airplane was going and how it was getting there?
"How on earth do you think emergency services personnel manage then who do that constantly for years?"
How to I think they do? Badly. There's a vast literature on the negative affects of shift work. Bottom Line. Shift work isn't good for (most) people, and rotating shifts are worse than fixed shifts.
My experience, and I had perhaps entirely too much of it, is that an occasional 60 or even 80 hour week might be fine. But week after week of long working hours resulted in sub-optimal productivity as well as attitude problems. It wasn't good for me, and I wouldn't ask it of others.
The absolute worst ... rotating shifts -- days this week, evenings next, early mornings the next, then back to days. That'll reduce anyone to a gibbering wreck in a month or two.
Autonomous vehicles can probably be made to work in a few situations in the next few years. Long haul trucking is one. Get on the expressway. Stay in your lane. Don't run into things. Don't pass anything that isn't stationary or moving VERY slowly. And a couple of thousand additional rules will probably prove to be good enough. But what's the point? You'll need a human driver on board to handle unexpected situations. Eventually, perhaps the driver can be dispensed with and only dispatched when required. But that'll require vehicles smart enough to recognize situations beyond their ken, pull over safely, and call for help.
The other likely situation is campus shuttles, airport parking lot shuttles and the like. They move very slowly on fixed routes. As long as they don't run into/over stuff/people/pets, maybe they don't really need a full time driver on board.
But I think fully autonomous vehicles are likely a lot further off than most folks think. I suspect insurance underwriters are probably going to share my skepticism.
And something that troubles me. While some common vehicle safety features like seat belts work really well, others like automated braking systems and electronic traction control, notoriously not only don't work very well in some situations -- e.g. some unpaved roads, ice and snow. In the worst cases, they actively endanger those in vehicles as well as bystanders. Yet, the problems are ignored. In some cases, these things are hard to turn off, and in a few it is actually illegal to do so. Are we going to have similar problems with autonomous vehicles?
So, then, Level 1.9993 autonomy? Good enough for Elon and (too) many others. I am inclined to think that Silicon Valley success criteria -- "Works much of the time" -- are NOT going to prove in the long run to be adequate for autonomous vehicles.
Recommended reading -- Richard Feynman, Appendix F to the Rodgers Commission Report on the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt
There's no actual need to make a profit unless the IPO doesn't happen. The whole point of an IPO is for the initial investors to recover their money plus a bunch of other people's money. Whether the folks they sell their interest in the companies to eventually recover their bet plus profits ... ^h ^h ^h ... correction ... investment is not part of the deal.
You can't accurately calculate market share without knowing the competition's internal data
Ah, I see. Then only the companies themselves and Google ... and Facebook ... and the CIA .... and the NSA ... and the Russians ... and the Chinese ... and maybe a couple of bored teenagers in Bucharest knows for sure.
But somehow, the stock market will determine a fair price based on no actual data. Capitalism is indeed akin to magic.
in this day and age , yeah its normal
I must say that you folks have a hell of a lot more faith in users, Windows software, and Windows applications than I do. And unix isn't that much better except that users tend to be more sophisticated and therefore more likely to have at least attempted to back up their data in some sensible manner.
Indeed. C Northcote Parkinson commented on that phenomenon in "Parkinson's Law". IIRC the example was approving construction of a nuclear power plant in a couple of minutes then spending hours discussing construction materials for a shed to keep employee bicycles out of the rain. This he dubbed the Law of Triviality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
The Tesla fanbois surely have vision. But I think the optics are flawed. I think that in a few decades, there will be a billion or three electric vehicles on the world's roads. But the nameplates on most won't say Tesla (or Ford or Toyota). And they mostly won't be expensive electric sports cars or electrified versions of today's conventional cars. Mostly the nameplates will say Kung Pao Motors or some such and the vehicles will be glorified golf carts with a top speed of maybe 75 kph and a range of maybe 50 km. Their safety may be a bit iffy. In the developed world they will be used as a second car for shopping or short commutes. In developing countries, they will somehow be used for everything. Their attraction? They will be CHEAP to buy and CHEAP to own.
I'd worry about how neural network based guidance systems respond to blowing snow, sand, trash, leaves, etc. They usually don't look like lane markers to me, but to a computer? Then there's the issue of lane markers being erased by repeated application of snow, rain, road salt, sand/grit, freeze/thaw and scrubbing by rubber tires. By spring here in New England, I sometimes have trouble recognizing lane and road center markers. And I sort of know where they used to be.
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I have not heard it suggested that a neural network could be induced to implement, for example, Boston's "Vehicle with the least to lose in a collision has the right of way" driving practices. Seems well beyond the current state of the art to me. But I suppose all things are possible .. eventually
Shooting down a satellite looks not to be much more difficult than launching a satellite into a desired orbit. It's just a matter of launching into a desired orbit that intersects the target's orbit at the time the target passes by. It's less difficult than,for example, mooring with the ISS -- after all unlike the ISS situation, there's no need for the satellite killer to precisely match velocities with the target. Really, any nation capable of launching a satellite could probably shoot up a low orbiting satellite if they truly wished to. Per Google search, twelve countries whose have put satellites up on their own launch vehicles -- USSR, USA, France, Japan, China, UK, India, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Iran and North Korea plus the European Space Alliance.
My guess is that the USSR, US, and China at least probably are already prepared to disable everything orbiting not belonging to themselves they think to be a militarily useful vehicle (photointelligence, communications intercept, launch detection, radio relay, probably geolocation) on a few hours notice.
To what purpose do these government sites have trackers installed? What, exactly, do they (the sites) **NEED** to track?
The assumption seems to be that these trackers are stupid and/or pointless and/or intrusive and/or nasty and/or just plain dumb. Which may well be the case. But if so, why are web site designers including them?
I would rate current MS software as high quality
Ehrrr ... no. That's acceptable quality ... if your standards aren't especially high.
I submit that you would not be overly comfortable if your local nuclear power plant, MRI machine, or commuter flight were running on top of Excel or Word.
Why do we accept shit software?
For the same reason we accept the inconvenient need to breath air, eat food, and drink fluids if we plan to make it through the week. There's no viable realistic alternative. If folks actually insisted on true software quality, we'd still be patching bugs in MSDOS, Word Perfect and Lotus123. And GUIs would still be a pie in the sky fantasy.
That'd be OK with me actually. But the rest of you seem to be a bit impatient.
That means developing a base on the moon, and not just going there ...
Actually, No.
I'm not a fan of the High Frontier concept, but this version -- http://www.thespacereview.com/article/3568/1 -- just might be doable. For a few trillion dollars. Which almost certainly will **NOT** show up when requested. A more or less self sustaining lunar base would surely cost even more.
Supporters of lunar/martian bases tend to wave their hands and change the subject when the question of cost comes up.
If you really want the human race to be able to survive a cosmic disaster (why?) -- dig one or more large self sustaining hole(s) under the Pacific, or the Sahara, or the Australian Outback, or Kansas; equip it/them with fission reactors, staff it/them with a few thousand volunteers and you're done except for dealing with unanticipated engineering problems. Which will likely be numerous. And expensive.
That'll handle most eventualities, might have reasonable costs and be actually doable.
Space bases? Sure. Why not? Once the economics become reasonable. Which might happen somewhere between 60 and 260 years in the future.
Apple would probably mount the light on the bottom of the pilot's seat where it wouldn't interfere with cockpit aesthetics. And they'd power it with a non-user replaceable battery that had to be replaced annually by a $300 an hour Apple technician. 2 hour minimum service call. Plus drive time. Plus $2.00 a mile mileage from Cupertino.
(But, in fairness, I am not aware that Apple design idiosyncracies have ever killed a customer).
"They'd best not. Choose Your Own Adventure was published in 1979 .."
Well, OK then. How about the Colossal Cave adventure which dates back to about 1975? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure But I'm pretty sure that that was based on prior art of some sort. Maybe something from Avalon Hill? I can remember playing some of their games back in the early 1960s.
"They're suggesting that their stuff is being stolen because there are some rounded corners."
I imagine they are suggesting that the Netflix Bandersnatch product looks and feels enough like their products that a reasonable person might be confused as to who produced them. Is that true? Does anyone care? Maybe Netflix could kind of square up the corners or something?
How do you verify what you wrote?
Just like a disk or cloud file or a stack of punched cards for that matter -- parity, checksum, ECC, hash, etc,etc,etc? Or maybe you can deep fat fry it, then taste it? If it tastes off, or makes you sick or causes your toenails to fall off, assume it has been corrupted.
The University of Washington and Microsoft research team behind this latest experiment previously said DNA-based storage could fit the contents of an entire data centre into a sugar cube-sized unit ...an MIT startup called Catalog said it was designing a machine that could write a terabyte of data a day
It's cute. And if it ever comes to fruition, I'm sure that there will be applications. But allow me to point out:
. You can order sugar cube sized USB flash drives off the shelf today as well as 2TB units although to latter look to be closer to small coffee cup than sugar cube size.
. Existing storage technologies are moving forward steadily with regard to capacity and speed. By the time DNA storage actually is usable, semiconductor competitors will likely be much more compact, faster, and greater in capacity than today.
. DNA can develop defects -- cancer and mutations are the subject of huge amounts of medical research. Might want to include ECC in your DNA storage technology.
. DNA is pretty sturdy. It doesn't last forever. But a few decades/centuries/millennia is probably good enough for most purposes. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_DNA
I think there's a long story there. As I understand it, Tesla Motors once had an alliance with an Israeli Company called Mobileye which was and maybe still is a leader in collision avoidance technology. Mobileye will retrofit a Collision Avoidance kit to your older car for rather a lot of money if you so desire. A few years ago TM had falling out with Mobileye. The details of the dustup weren't made public so far as I know. So Tesla has gone forward with its own (similar?) technology. Mobileye was bought out by Intel in 2017 for rather a lot of billions of dollars.
I have no idea how well Mobileye's technology actually works or whether they were responsible for some of Tesla's problems.
Back in pre-retirement days when I had to pretend to work for a living, I did a wide variety of things. That included participation in a couple of attempts to transfer technology between players -- one of which knew how to do something and another of which wanted to learn how to do it. Turns out that transferring IP is not easy at all. It's damn difficult in fact. Attempts probably fail more often than they succeed. And that's with everyone trying to make the transfer work.
My opinion is that the insistent bleating of "They stole our technology" doesn't come from people who actually do things. Those who do things are presumably too busy doing stuff to worry about IP theft. I think it comes from those who have lost or are losing a technology race and feel a need to transfer explain how and why their efforts didn't succeed.
Given Tesla Autopilot's propensity for driving into large, stationary, objects -- trucks, bridge abutments, emergency vehicles -- at full speed, why would anyone WANT to steal the underlying technology? Seems to me that if I were running a company developing its own lane keeping/collision avoidance technology, I'd prefer to steal IP from some company whose technology works.
Stealing the technology behind Tesla Autopilot seems to me to be much like stealing Microsoft's Quality Assurance technology. I suppose one could do it. ... But why?
Devin's Mom is gone from Twitter I'm told. Or maybe "she" is back with a new handle. Accounts differ.
But Devin's Cow -- which purportedly has a few unflattering things to say about both his animal husbandry practices and his politics -- apparently hasn't complained or its mooing has been ignored. The corresponding Twitter account has gained several hundred thousand Twitter followers overnight. Left trending cable outlet MSNBC just (1300 GMT) said the account has 340,000 followers and encouraged listeners to sign up.
I am in no way, shape or form, a lawyer. But my understanding is that under US law, it is extremely difficult for a public figure to win a defamation, libel, or slander suit. It's OK in the US to say nasty things about politicians, athletes, actors, and other public figures. Grocery store tabloids have occasionally managed to lose such a suit, but they really had to work at it -- usually by publishing blatantly false stories utterly without supporting evidence and with no element of satire or attempt at humor. Here's a link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnett_v._National_Enquirer,_Inc.
I expect that Nunes is wasting his time and money.
assuming, that is, your attacker is not the sort of agency that can get away with very high power outputs without attracting attention from the authorities.
I doubt your attacker is likely to be around and broadcasting by the time "the authorities" get around to investigating. It's not like there are bright orange lightning flashes or other obvious warnings that someone is using an (illegal) power amplifier. How hard is it to amplify a 2.4GHz signal? Don't know. Never tried it. But my first hit on a search for "2.4ghz repeater price" is a "WiFi Signal Booster 2.4Ghz 802.11b/g/n Signal Extender ... Price: $30.99 & FREE Shipping."
$500M? That's the true cost of maybe half a dozen F-35s. Possibly fewer as Lockheed has been under pressure to get the sticker prices down and players in the US Military Industrial Complex are nothing if not cognizant of government wishes. They'll recover any paper losses one way or another. That's the way the game is played.
Anyway, a supercomputer seems to me a better investment than a few copies of an extraordinarily expensive, and likely unnecessary fighter aircraft. And it's good to hear that Cray is still around in some form. Seymour Cray's mid and late 20th century computer designs (CDC 1604, 6600, 7600, etc) were really quite remarkable and were a joy to work with.
Y'know. If this were a step back toward the days of distant yesteryear when "firmware" couldn't be modified except by replacing the chip, it might be a good thing. The modern notion that overly complex, poorly tested, logic can shipped broken then patched into a secure configuration in production doesn't seem to be working very well. But sadly, I doubt it'll work that way. Probably we'll end up with crap that is vulnerable to attack, is horribly difficult to alter, can only be (legally) fixed by the vendor, and can still be reprogrammed by any disgruntled, unemployed teenager anywhere on the planet.
Now we have two three or more problems.
Or do all of these cars still need a meatbag present to press the accelerator?
Probably not. I don't think there has been a purely mechanical connection between the gas pedal and the delivery of fuel to the cylinder(s) since carburetors went away several decades ago. Remember Codger's Law -- if it isn't mechanical it can (and probably will) be hacked.
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