Posts by vtcodger

OpenAI loses another senior figure, disperses safety research team he led

Re: "remove the obligation to work for a living"

"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.

Musk claims Cybertruck has become profitable at last

Re: A symptom..

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.

China's top messaging app WeChat banned from Hong Kong government computers

No easy solution, I fear

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.

Flying taxis cleared for takeoff under new US aviation rules

Re: Legal to fly over red lights?

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?

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

Re: "the result of 40 years of technology"

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.

Re: 10k lines of code?

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.

Tesla FSD faces yet another probe after fatal low-visibility crash

Re: Lidar costs money

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?)

Re: Gimme The Sensors!

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.

Re: What a shock

A USAF officer stationed in Germany once remarked to me that Germans didn't really need an accelerator pedal. An AHEAD_FULL/OFF switch would be more than adequate for their driving style.

Re: What a shock

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?

Re: Gimme The Sensors!

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.

X to allow third parties to train their AI models with social media users' data

Re: Going to be fun

I wouldn't worry too much about an AI agents trained on Twitter posts enslaving humanity. With that background, odds are that they will be utterly demented as well as spectacularly incompetent.

China launches plan to lead the world in space exploration

Re: I can support that

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,)

Testing spacecraft material the Sandia way: Setting it on fire with mirrors

Old Science

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 again delays the 777X – the plane that's supposed to turn things around

Re: The problem ....

"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."

Re: Monopoly?

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.

The problem ....

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.

Tesla's big reveal: Steering-wheel-free Robotaxi will charge wirelessly

Re: Insurance

Actually, almost for sure, the owner. Who better have insurance for using the vehicle as a taxi. I suspect that the insurance for the combination of Tesla, EV, and taxi will not come cheap. If one can even find a company that will underwrite that sort of policy.

Re: Insurance

6 point? Naw, it's three point. But easily readable with +6.00 reading glasses ... if you hold your head steady about 12cm from the screen. The steady part is important. Not a lot of depth of focus on higher magnification lenses.

Re: Snakeoil

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.

No way do I want them on the roads near me

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,

Re: Insurance

Who's to pay? Why the passenger of course. It says that quite clearly in footnote 7 on page 43 of the 119 page terms and conditions document the passenger must agree to before the vehicle will go anywhere.

Re: who claimed he knew more about

Well, Trump IS a stable genius? Right? Who are you to argue with such as he?

Microsoft sprinkles AI 'magic' and additional storage tiers on OneDrive

AI equals

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.

Tesla Cybertruck recalled again. This time, a software fix for backup camera glitch

Re: Robo Cyber Trucks

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 ...

The fix for BGP's weaknesses has big, scary, issues of its own, boffins find

Applying modern software development techniques to the problem

Only 53 (known) vulnerabilities? It's ready. Ship it!!!

The vulnerabilities? We'll fix them in production.

Remote ID verification tech is often biased, bungling, and no good on its own

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/

OpenAI reportedly considering for-profit plans, but what would that be good for?

Re: So the world's experts on AI

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). ...

That doomsday critical Linux bug: It's CUPS. May lead to remote hijacking of devices

Re: Full disclosure has been released - its cups-browsed, link in body.

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.

Re: Full disclosure has been released - its cups-browsed, link in body.

My understanding is that Cloudflare's sole function is to make sure that nothing involving the internet works quite right, They seem to be pretty good at that.

Ancient US air traffic control systems won't get a tech refresh before 2030

Re: Banking infrastructure

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.

Re: Seems a common issue with US infrastructure

FWIW -- Wikipedia has a list of the world's busiest airports. I looked up the number of runways at a few of them. The only one with 7 runways is number 3 DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth). The busiest -- Hartsfield in Atlanta has 4. The second busiest-Dubai has 2.

Re: Shocking

I gave you an upvote because I agree with the sentiment that many/most IT industry ideas of "modern" are just plain silly. But really,the problems with Air Traffic Control are deeper and more fundamental. The reality: The system(s) have to combine inputs from many sources in many formats -- the aircraft themselves, ground radars of many sorts, pilots, ATC operators, weather information, many of those in multiple version (e.g. civilian, military(multiple autonomous agents), etc, etc, etc ... And some information is, of necessity verbal, not digital. And they have to do it in real time. AND THEY CAN NOT MAKE MISTAKES -- EVER.

It's a tremendously difficult problem. If you ask me, it's amazing that the "system" (if that's even the proper term for it) works as well as it does.

I've never worked with ATC although I did work on the SAGE Air Defense System in the early 1960s which had to deal with some overlapping issues. But it's been my impression that the ATC system(s) have always been in dubious condition and that it is something of a miracle that they work as well as they do.

I'm far from sure that we even know how to "fix" ATC even if there were adequate funding and a will to do so.

US proposes ban on Chinese, Russian connected car tech over security fears

Google streetview

Google fuzzes images of sensitive facilities -- at least in Google Maps and I would assume streetview as well. I would imagine that's one way that foreign spies know what facilities to focus their probably limited resources on.

Heart of glass: Human genome stored for 'eternity' in 5D memory crystal

One Question

Exactly whose DNA did they sequence to make this thing?

Re: Unfortunately

I believe this to be incorrect. Although some people do in fact refer to the memory crystal storage capability in Windows65536 and later as "6D", it is actually a Summer Coding Project spin off based on Memory Crystal 4D without the massive MC 5D fixes and additions and with some quite incomprehensible additions of its own. The actual (draft) 6D standard has been stalled in an IETF committee for 13 years.

Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

Re: Call me a fanboy if you will,

How do you explain git?

Well, it has always seemed to me that configuration management of a large system -- especially one with contributors scattered all over the planet -- is an incredibly complex task. I assume that Torvalds put together a system that he felt supported ALL the needs of that kind of effort including as many as possible of the weird edge cases. No surprise that what he came up with is complicated and obtuse. At least I find it to be complicated and obtuse.

But what I don't understand very well is why folks whose needs are simpler far insist on using git. I mean, you don't need $10000 worth of tools and diagnostic equipment to deal with a burnt out headlight or flat tire. I can only conclude that they are so smart that git seems simple to them or that they are too dumb to figure out that there are simpler answers to the problem that work fine for their needs.

Nano or Joe or ...

Agree -- Nano or Joe or any of a dozen other simple, straightforward, text editors.

Unless ... you are addicted to one or more of the features of emacs or vi.

In my case, it's emacs org mode. Outlining, simple spreadsheets, tables, links -- pretty much everything you could want in a Personal Information Manager. And if you aren't completely happy with some feature, you can change it yourself. Good news, bad news joke there. The good news -- Yes you can easily modify how emacs works. The bad news -- emacs is written in lisp.

Re: vi vs emacs?

I'm straining to remember what we actually used for text editing 4 decades ago. In the DEC rsx environment it was something called TECO which was, as I recall, easy enough to use but had a rather terrifying potential for destroying your file with a single keystroke error. On PC clones it was edlin -- not especially fun, but usable. Before that, was the era of punched cards edited by punching a new card which didn't seem all that onerous at the time. vi was around on Unix systems. But I, at least found it to be unusable. Don't remember what the alternative was, but it was less obtuse. At least so it seemed to me.

In profitability push Mobileye dumps LiDAR, slashes workforce

Re: It Worked for My First Camera

Prediction: A replacement pinhole will cost $300 at the dealer's service counter. Installation, should you let the dealer do it will get you a bill for 2 hours labor at well over $100/hr. You can replace it yourself (a 10 minute job), but you will have to get the dealer to reprogram the vehicle computer to accept the new device. The dealer's maintenance software will refuse to acknowledge or accept aftermarket pinhole assembles (available on Amazon from several vendors for $5.99). Isn't capitalism wonderful?

Let's see if I have this straight. Tesla -- which apparently can't build a lane-keeping/collision avoidance system that isn't perpetually just one or two more fixes away from working right doesn't like LIDAR. Waymo on the other hand -- which many people think to be the clear leader in the field -- uses LIDAR (albeit in conjunction with just about every other remote sensor technology known to man). Which would you make you feel safer if you saw it bearing down on you while you were crossing the street -- a Tesla or a Waymo Jaguar I-PACE?

We're in the brute force phase of AI – once it ends, demand for GPUs will too

Perhaps not the only overoptimistic ones

I agree that most companies outside of the entertainment industry and some parasites thereon like advertising will actually find "AI" to be cost effective. And their computing needs while probably massive will be localized. All in all probably less of a total resource sink than crypto "currency".

But based on what I've seen in the past six decades, I fear that outfits that have invested heavily in AI will insist on using it whether it works or not. I hope it won't happen, but I expect that in the not too distant future, we will see useless "customer service" operations replaced by even more obtuse AI agents. Not to mention oceans of crummy software of all sorts trying to anticipate our desires and then acting on its lousy "thinking." May God help us users, each and every one. We're likely going to need all the help we can summon from the heavens or anywhere else.

White House thinks it's time to fix the insecure glue of the internet: Yup, BGP

Re: Noibody with a clue ever said ...

No, the internet isn't secure by design. Neither, in all likelyhood, is it securable in practice. But that's not really a reason not to slap a few bandaids on some of the places where it's bleeding badly and maybe apply a little antibiotic cream as well. Regrettably perhaps the modern internet isn't all cat videos and crypto scams. It's being used by critical infrastructure. Might be best if that stuff kept working.

Big Tech: Malaysia won't let us set our own rules and that's not fair and makes us grumpy

If Western tech companies pick up their toys and stalk out ...

If US tech companies don't want to comply with Malaysian rules, who would one expect to fill the gap? If you guessed Chinese, you're very likely correct.

Telegram founder and CEO arrested in France

Re: Really, arresting the CEO

A quibble. Allen Stanford was indeed a banker. Strictly speaking Bernie Madoff was a broker not a banker although he apparently decided at some point that actually trading in securities was a hassle and quite unnecessary because claiming to trade was every bit as profitable and a good deal less stressful.

AGI is on clients' radar but far from reality, says Gartner

AGI? Now you have two (or more) problems.

I'd guess more like 30 years than 10. And that's the minimum. It could be a lot longer.

And why is the industry so sure that after investing a fortune, they will end up with a sort of digital Mahatma Gandhi rather than a bizarre collection of digital Elon Musks, Vladimir Putins, and Donald Trumps?

Choose Your Own Adventure with Microsoft 365

Just wanted to say

Just wanted to say that I found the article to be truly amusing. Congratulations to the author. Thank you for brightening up my morning.

Re: Do you have access to an IT professional for advanced support and services?

A single point of failure? Surely it adds a whole bushel basket full of potential failure points that you have no control over.

Elon Musk's X Corp faces $61M lawsuit over unpaid tech tabs

Re: i wonder if there's any relation to this recent little gem....

"Not paying bills was also Trump's MO..."

e,g "Bankrupt Rudy Giuliani Sought Trump Payment ...'

Newsweek

https://www.newsweek.com › donald-trump-rudy-giulia...

Jul 5, 2024 — Giuliani said that his invoices to Trump were ignored, leaving an outstanding total figure of "about $2 million."

And still unpaid as of yesterday apparently.

CNN

https://www.cnn.com › giuliani-trump-legal-bills

Aug 17, 2023 — With his attorney in tow, Rudy Giuliani traveled to Mar-a-Lago in recent months on a mission to make a personal and desperate appeal to ...

New York Magazine

https://nymag.com › 2023/08 › trump-giuliani-begged

Aug 19, 2023 — Lawyers representing Rudy Giuliani say he's broke, due to multiple 2020 election lawsuits and now Georgia criminal charges. Donald Trump ...

Intel's processor failures: A cautionary tale of business vs engineering

Re: "underinvestment in critical manufacturing technologies"

DEC wasn't killed by management, poor engineering, or poor marketing. The company lived and prospered for a couple of decades in a niche between mainframes and devices of many sorts that did useful stuff and needed a bit of dedicated on-board digital logic to function. DEC computers were, for the most part cheaper to buy and run than mainframes and, being programmable, quite flexible. Lots of market for that. By the late 1980s it was apparent that microcomputers could, or would soon be able to do the same stuff. Cheaper. Sure enough DEC simply couldn't compete and was bought out by a Microcomputer operation (Compaq) in 1998.