Posts by vtcodger

Texas senators cry foul over Smithsonian's pricey Space Shuttle shuffle

Re: Risks?

Let's see. CyberTruck max load about 1.2 tonnes. Weight of Discovery about 80 tonnes. 80/1.2 = 66.6. Sixty Seven (67) CyberTrucks should be sufficient. Of course, we'd have to cut the shuttle into itty bitty pieces. But that's good because then we hopefully won't need to worry about lane widths and bridge height restrictions. Might take a while because the range of a fully loaded cybertruck probably isn't great and the vehicles are said to charge a bit slowly. And then there's the cosmetic issue of putting 67 or so pieces of shuttle back together with no visible scars. But a few million dollars can probably handle that.

By Jove!!! I think you've found the answer.

Re: Risks?

One substantial problem with the "barge thing" is that the Discovery apparently isn't at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in DC. It's at the Steven F Udvar-Hazy Center off the end of the runways at Dulles Airport about 20 miles (32km give or take) West of the Potomac River. Looking at the situation on Google Maps, it seems to me that absent a functioning aircraft capable of lifting the shuttle and carrying it to Houston, the Smithsonian cost estimate might even be on the low side.

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: side benefit for microsoft

One needs to call Microsoft Support? Around here, a gentleman with a rather thick South Asian accent calls every few weeks over a wretched telephone link, claiming to be from Microsoft and wanting to talk about my computer.

One problem, I haven't had a working Microsoft box around here since about 2006.

Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere

Space-X profitability

Maybe ... Probably? But one should keep in mind that Space-X is privately held and its finances are not public record. Do I think it's a legitimate operation? Yes ... mostly. But as far as I can see, it could be a massive scam (to what purpose?) and those of us outside the company would have no real way to know.

Satellite Mass

FWIW, while many artificial satellites do in fact approach 2 tonnes, Starlink satellites are significantly less massive than that. The heaviest Starlinks are the full size V2 at 1250 kg. But there's also a V2 Mini at 740kg. Apparently the V2 mini is a replacement for earlier units, whiile the full scale v2 is the future. My assumption is that they are kept small in order to maximize the number injected into orbit with each launch. I'd also guess that similar logic will likely apply to other similar communication satellites including the Chinese.

Senate report says AI will take 97M US jobs in the next 10 years, but those numbers come from ChatGPT

Re: People like people.

You seem to be envisioning something like the early 20th century Horn and Hardt Automats -- which were, in fact quite popular at the time. At least in the US. Ironically one of the many reasons for their demise was said to be the rise of modern, human staffed, fast food establishments in the 1960s.

Google goes straight to shell with AI command line coding tool

Hmmm

Actually, I'm a bit intrigued. My guess would be that it Jules and its cousins are widely used, the result will be that they'll help good programmers produce better code. And they'll be used by the DevOps crew and other nutjobs to produce vast amounts of dysfunctional garbage.

AI devs close to scraping bottom of data barrel

Help

Someone help me out here. I don't really understand how AI works. But if I'm trying to come up with a medication to conquer the heartbreak of psoriasis, why does my AI agent need to know all the wives of Henry VIII, the full text of Shakespear's plays, the geography of the Malay Peninsula, the dietary needs of the Galapagos Tortoise, the full score (words and music) to "My Fair Lady", and all the junk ever posted on Facebook? Shouldn't all the available knowledge of physics, organic chemistry, and medicine suffice?

BT promises 5G Standalone for 99% of the UK by 2030

Re: Good luck with that

What 1%? 5G+ will be damn near perfect. But if that's not good enough for you, summon a bit of patience and wait for 6G which will provide 5 bars with 10gbps bandwidth anywhere within the orbit of Neptune.

After 3+ decades of wading through this stuff, I find it hard to believe that any entity with an IQ higher than that of the average turnip thinks IT/Telecom marketing promises have any credibility.

Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project'

Re: Trapped

You're correct. lynx is now broken. I think rather than updating my browser, I reckon I'll switch to a different search engine. I'm not wild about duckduckgo.com, but it does seem to work with lynx although it complains about a self-signed certificate.

Re: Trapped

"Google ... won't work with text browsers any more."

FWIW, lynx seems to work fine with Google search. The interface can be a bit confusing at first. But it'll definitely do searches, display results, and display web site text if the website isn't an intractable mess of Javascript.

At least, it worked for me as recently as last week.

Windows 95 was too fat to install itself so needed help from the slimmer 3.1

Re: Nothing ever changes

Perhaps I misrecall, but I don't think "everyone" hated Windows 95. The problem was more that Win95 when first released was a massive (by standards of the time) bundle of bugs. It took a couple of years and two dozen or so "Service Packs" -- each fixing a bunch of problems -- to domesticate it into a reasonably decent (for the time) OS. It also was quite poorly documented.

Trump’s tariff‑shaped stick can’t beat reality on US chip fabbing

Re: Make 1, buy 1 chips

"Anyone making 555s and 741s in the US?"

At a guess, Global Foundaries. But even if they make them, their product would likely be Mil-Spec. Wider temperature range than commercial or industrial grade, but also more costly. And expanding a fab even for ancient chip designs surely isn't either cheap or quick.

Re: What would the world look like ...

A cafeteria food fight using nuclear weapons?

LockBit's new variant is 'most dangerous yet,' hitting Windows, Linux and VMware ESXi

Re: LockBit simultaneously targets Windows, Linux, and VMware :o

Well, OK then. For Unix, shell scripts. They are harder to write than Python, but they can be quite powerful.

YAUS

Yet Another Utopian Solution (YAUS). Sounds goob. But, in reality, the miscreants will predictably mostly find a number of ways to escape justice.

They may choose to operate from a country that doesn't much care if US/EU/UK operations are attacked -- North Korea, Iran, Russia.

and/or

They may choose to operate from countries where the local strongmen/authorities will overlook their activities for a cut of the revenue stream.

and/or

They may leave (a) trail(s) of digital "breadcrumbs" leading to some innocent party.

and/or

They may find ways to corrupt the enforcement agency/agencies.

and/or

They'll come up with some other protective scheme(s). It's not like they're stupid. If they were stupid, they probably wouldn't be a threat.

Like way too many simplistic "solutions" to complex problems this looks like the foundation of a Now you have two (or more) problems. The original problem and the unexpected consequences of the "solution".

Many employees are using AI to create 'workslop,' Stanford study says

Re: So, 95% of firms see no ROI

One good thing about AI. We're learning just how clueless the management layers of our society (the folks who are dictating the use of AI tools) are.

How many working level folks do we hear demanding more AI in their workplace?

EU probes SAP over alleged software support stranglehold

Industry Standards

... SAP ... argues it is in line with industry standards

The industry has standards? Who knew?

Google warns China-linked spies lurking in 'numerous' enterprises

more secure?

"and cloud is supposed to be more secure"

More secure than what? I suppose the cloud is more secure than using the same password for all one's accounts and publishing that password on their vanity license plate. But only marginally.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Re: Message to CEOs : it's hopeless

It's going to vary from business to business. If your company does retail, it needs employees to show up. If it makes widgets, it likely requires some live humans in the widget foundry to handle deliveries and make sure the machinery is working properly. But a lot of jobs really can be done remotely and it seems kind of dumb not to do them remotely. Why add to your costs and aggravate the staff by requiring them to show up at an office? Of course it requires skills to do that properly. If you lack those skills maybe you ought to consider acquiring them or maybe it's time to retire.

Google-sponsored DORA report reframes AI as central to software development

It's getting deep in here

This brownish smelly stuff is getting really deep. I suppose that if one dug through it systematically, one would eventually find the source -- presumably cows and/or marketing types. Difficult to tell the difference at times. And I'm not sure it matters. At least not to me.

Look folks. AI looks to be one of those things like GUIs around 1970, digital communications in the 1980s, or autonomous vehicles in 2010 that's relatively easy to demo and quite difficult to implement in a useful context.

I'm actually rather impressed with it. I'm surprised it works as well as it does. I wouldn't be shocked to find that decades from now when its costs are lower and its results more reliable, it turns out to be truly transformative. But for now it looks not to be fit for much of anything. Truly, it looks, for most situations, to be something between a near infinite money sink and an accident waiting to happen.

Boffins fool a self-driving car by putting mirrors on traffic cones

Re: Message from Elon Musk, CEO Tesla

"Full Self Driving will be ready by the end of 2025 ..."

Is there some mechanism to automatically update the year in that message -- 2020, 2021, 2022,2023,2024, 2025, ...?

Slack threatened to delete nonprofit coding club’s data if it didn’t pay $50k in a week

Modes of Reprehensibility

Upon further thought, it occurs to me that ransomware operates like the highwaymen of times past -- Stand and Deliver. Slack on the other hand looks to be operating like a drug dealer -- The First Hit is Free (Once you are hooked the price goes UP).

Ransomware 101

Surely a well run ransomware operation gives victims more than a week to pay.

Make Windows 11 more useful and less annoying with these 11 Registry hacks

Re: {86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}

See. Just as they promised us 30 fun filled years ago, the registry is self-documenting. What could be clearer than 86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2?

Re: Super helpful...

Equally if not more important, Unix configuration files almost all ignore lines lines starting with #. This means that they can (and usually do) contain abundant explanatory comments. The registry on the other hand was, when last I looked at it in 2003 or so, a humongous undocumented data base. Any information as to what key did what and what values were expected had to be gleaned from the often cryptic or incomprehensible names and/or whatever information could be found on the Internet and/or trial and error. I assume that's still the case. I have trouble understanding why people continue to defend this rather bizarre approach to system control.

There may well be better ways to manage system configuration than .ini/.init/.cfg files. But I don't think the Windows registry is one of them.

AI in your toaster: Analyst predicts $1.5T global spend in 2025

Re: Just a thought

Not wild about the collection of haze,smoke and mirrors known as The Cloud? You might find this interesting -- The Big Cloud Exit FAQ

Re: A dystopian future if ever there was one!

If it's any consolation, it'll probably be bad at all those things.

Small nuke reactors are really coming online by next year, US energy secretary insists

Unlike most of the bizarre collection of crackpots, weirdos and sociopaths Trump has assembled to foster his Great Leap Backwards, Wright actually has some credentials other than bombast and a generally rotten attitude. He has bachelors and masters degrees in Engineering and runs an energy company. It therefore seems conceivable that he could know what he's talking about.

Personally, I think Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) will prove to cost more overall and be more aggravating to permit, build, operate and decommission than a conventional reactor with the same total energy output. But it's clear that some SMRs are going to be built. And if that's the case, the US needs to get moving on them if it doesn't want to be buying the technology from China which is claiming they will bring their first ACP100 unit online in 2026.

Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates

Re: A strong case for two track OS development

STABLE?

Are you daft, sir? Stable does not sell product. (At least not more than once,) You must be some sort of communist.

It's AI all the way down as Google's AI cites web pages written by AI

Re: A Negative Feedback Loop...

Will an AI feedback loop oscillate? Seems likely doesn't it? Are there uses for an AI oscillator? Probably, although I can't really think of any offhand. Anyway, it sounds like a whole new tech opportunity. And it's an open niche. Best get started finding your venture capital. And get working on a patent application. Surely, that can be AI generated. It probably doesn't matter if it's nonsense. Most parents are incomprehensible gibberish anyway, and AI clearly can do that. The USTPO apparently gave up trying to make sense of them decades ago. Wealth beyond your dreams awaits you if you act now.

P.S. I wouldn't object to a modest finders fee for pointing out this opportunity to you. Six or seven significant digits would be fine.

Sky-high budget gap: FAA launches air traffic overhaul, lacks cash to finish it

You seem to be under the impression that this project will be approached rationally. That's not impossible. But that's not the way I'd bet.

You're also supposing that Elon Musk and his DOGE whackjobs didn't fire most of the government folks with institutional knowledge of the state of ATC.. Again, not impossible. But ....

Re: Never mind the budget:

You're dead right of course.

But you are assuming competence and this is a Trump administration undertaking. That collection of scoundrels, sociopaths, and lunatics is suffering from delusions of competence

If history is any guide, you can bet on a seriously flawed contract being finalized in 6-12 months. 18 at the outside. The project will of course run into major problems, be years late, and will eventually overrun by $100B or more. Then another $30B will be spent trying to save it. A few pieces here and there will be salvaged. That'll take six or seven years. Maybe a decade. That'll put the next attempt to "fix" US Air Traffic Control somewhere around 2045.

Microsoft inches toward Rusty Windows drivers, production use still a no-no

Re: But...but...but...

Can't they just get the Magic AI Copilot to rewire the entire Windows code base into Rust?

Of course they can (assuming they can identify the "entire Windows code base". Getting the resulting product to work. Aye ... there's the rub.

UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost

Re: "no discernible gain in productivity"‽‽‽

Marketeers lie. AI is good at lying. Ergo, Marketing can be replaced by Copilot. There's a productivity gain for you. The bad news? It's a productivity gain for Microsoft, not the user.

China launches new ‘AI+’ policy to ‘deepen information technology revolution’

Time will tell

I must say that the Chinese approach to AI sounds like it might be the first sign I've seen of anyone applying actual intelligence to deployment of the technology. However, it remains to be seen what they'll actually implement.

Kilopixel creator kills livestream switch before woodblock display hits Crysis point

Re: I was pondering...

"But of course the tariffs into the US would kill that market."

Not much of a market. Outside of NYC, the US has very little public transportation. And for what public transport there is, schedules are somewhere between advisory and pure fiction.

How does China keep stealing our stuff, wonders DoD group responsible for keeping foreign agents out

Re: "Our adversaries are adapting faster than policy,"

In their defense, it's not like Big Tech in general and Microsoft in particular flaunt big banners claiming Lucrum ante securitatem to be their motto. On the other hand, the MAGA dudes and dudettes seem to think they are the smartest people in the world. They ought to know that tech security is largely Potempkin flavored.

Re: How does China keep stealing our stuff ?

Probably out of a combination of greed and/or sheer lazyness...

Greed and laziness to be sure. But ignorance, stupidity, and incompetence play a huge roll as well. Fact is, now and for the foreseeable future, if you want to secure your data, you simply can't connect your computers to the internet as we know it. Decision makers at all levels need to have that reality pounded into them.

We have spent three decades creating a huge, intractable, unsecurable shambles while operating under the misconception that we are making progress (toward what destination one wonders)? Fixing that mess is not just a matter of a few bug fixes and some gimmicks. Secure digital communications are quite likely possible But probably not in the framework we've established. And, we're throwing in 'AI' which apparently needs to spy on everyone, everywhere, always in order to work and seems to depend on dubious output filtering to keep from shipping secrets to anyone who asks.

The best, and exceedingly painful, answer I can come up with is. Leave the current internet in place, It's fit for entertainment, routine communication, and low level commercial activity. Nothing more. Secure the transport layers (assuming that's possible) so that messages always go to their intended destination -- and only there. Establish a simple, text based, secure networking protocol for major financial transactions and command and control of critical infrastructure. Regulate the bejusus out of AI. For now, shut it down except for research. Release AI technologies for general use only after their capabilities are thoroughly understood and the risks are deemed to be acceptable. And finally. unless and until, a 100% foolproof method of identifying a compromised computer can be worked out, computers can only ever operate in one of the two modes -- general internet or secure. Never both. And no switching between modes, Yes, you'll need two computers for that and two cell phones (although maybe you can put them in one physical case) if you plan to use the secure net as well as the general internet.

Yes, I know, none of that is going to happen. Say goodbye to secrecy. Or don't use the internet (Good luck on that).

Japan exploring whether AI could help inspect its nuclear power plants

Re: "Japan exploring whether AI could help"

Seems to me that you've missed the obvious. Sure AI makes mistakes. Lots of them. Some really bizarre. You wouldn't want AI doing jobs where mistakes are costly and/or lethal -- Air Traffic Control for example. But mistakes in the design of nuclear power plants and other infrastructure items like dams and bridges were/are/and will in the future be made by humans. Asking AI to review the human generated design adds very little cost and might occasionally save money and lives.

I might add that there look to be a few other applications where being wrong sometimes isn't a big deal and AI might be useful. All niche applications as far as I can see. Nowhere near enough to justify the staggering investments that are being made. Seems to me that AI is a tool. And not a tool that a sensible person would want to use all that often. But still, something one might want to have in the toolkit.

Re: "Japan exploring whether AI could help"

I downvoted this because AI might actually have spotted two major design issues at the Fukushima-daiichi facility :

1. The Fukushima facility was designed at a time when the potential for huge earthquakes associated with geological subduction zones was just beginning to be understood. As a result the potential strength of tsunami at the site was underestimated, The seawall protecting the facility was not high enough, AI reviews of the facility in the decades after construction when the geologic risk was better understood might well have spotlighted that problem.

2. There was probably adequate backup diesel generation on site. But it was located in an area that flooded and it was not hardened against flooding. If it had been better sited and/or properly hardened, the loss of grid power to the facility probably would not have led to the catastrophic failure of 3 of the six reactors and severe damage to another. Again, AI might have identified that problem.

I am not suggesting that AI can/should replace human inspection and review of nuclear facility design, construction, and operation. It's hard to imagine a worse idea, But AI might well be a useful supplement to human review.

Anthropic teases Claude for Chrome: Don't try this at home

Rip Van Winkle Syndrome

Anthropic thinks a random crisis generator is the wave of computing's future? Really? After reading the article, all I can conclude is that I must have overslept a bit last night and today is April 1st. I wonder what year?

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

Re: Dot Dumb

So you think the damage will be contained to AI bubble stocks? Perhaps, but that's famously what Federal Reserve chairman thought with regard to subprime mortgages in 2007. Some of us out here are skeptical that big time market overpricing is confined to a few AI bubble stocks. Note that the s&p 500 Price Earnings ratio is hovering at about twice its long term average of 15.

US government snaps up 10% of Intel for $8.9B

The market is always rightt

I'm not sure what this "bail out" is supposed to accomplish either. From where I'm sitting, it looks like extortion and/or a permanent 10% tax on Intel shareholders future earnings. Clearly I'm wrong as the stock went up on the news. And the stock market is always right ... except in 1929, 2000, and 2008 of course. But I'd sure like someone to explain to me in simple terms why this deal benefits Intel rather than adding a few more problems to the company's already impressive problem list.

Re: The most socialist government the USA has had in ages...

More like Mao's Great Leap Forward I should think.

The Unix Epochalypse might be sooner than you think

Re: Attitude problem

YOU may have spent New Years Eve 2000 at a great party. I and many others I'm sure, spent New Years morning,2000 booting 100-plus PCs to make sure they at least sort of worked -- never a certainty with Windows-98 even on normal mornings.

Re: The bug is in the support library code (libc?) of a 1982 C compiler?

"I wonder what OS the machine in question is running"

RSX-11?

NIMBYs threaten to sink Project Sail, a $17B datacenter development in Georgia

Two sides to the story

Messenger: "The peasants are revolting."

King: "They certainly are."

Various sources apparently

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

It's probably because I'm old, grumpy and set in my ways, but I'm inclined to agree with the peasants on this one. There's no obvious reason to store vast amounts of "data" in multiple places. And it's hard to see who benefits significantly other than the wheeler dealers promoting the deals. Sort of like building magnificent cathedrals and monuments while the populace starves and lives in squalor.

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

Possibly relevant:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias: Percy Bysshe Shelley

Uncle Sam eyes slice of Intel in return for CHIPS Act cash

Re: Not Unprecedented

One precedent other than the GM/Chrysler bailout came to me overnight. In the early 1960s, the government organized Comsat Corp a joint government/commercial project presumably intended to seed the satellite telecommunications industry -- well, sort of anyway. It wasn't a runaway success, but neither was it an abject failure. It did put communications satellites into orbit and provide services. After a few decades it also acquired ownership of a couple of North American professional sports teams. (Mission drift?) It was eventually (2000 or so) acquired by Lockheed-Martin. Not sure how the taxpayers made out

Not Unprecedented

It will be recalled that as recently as 2009, the US government acquired a modest equity stake in General Motors as part of the bailout of GM and Chrysler. It later sold that stake. FWIW, the government lost a bit of money on the deal. $11.2B according to Google.