Posts by MajDom

Blue Origin gives up on New Glenn lift-off, 2 hours into launch window

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think New Glenn is competition for Falcon Heavy, not Starship.

Starlink direct-to-cell is coming to Ukraine

Hard to believe, but the perfect line-of-sight and the specialized gain antennas on board Starlink apparently can achieve this.

If this does 4G, I'll be utterly amazed, though.

FBI, cyber-cops zap ~1K Russian AI disinfo Twitter bots

Musk counts on those bots. And I suspect has quite a few of his own. As in, almost all of his lickspittle followers.

China shows off machine-gun-toting robot dog and its AI-powered puppy

Re: Defenses

Let's not...troubleshoot it for them. Just give them a slow clap.

Ah. The "evil West" develops new stuff.

The Chinese copy it and strap a machine gun to it.

<slow clap>

How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes

Re: Old school

Tell me more about typed in Eliza from 80.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

At this stage in his service to Moscow, he might as well just call it a Lada.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

Re: reducing the crew cost of operating the plane

How do you tell the autopilot that there's a crosswind ?

And how does it manage windshear ?

How does a pilot learn how to do crosswind and windshear landings? Doing them a thousand times in a simulator?

How many times do you think a deep learning system is able to go through simulations and how long before it can handle them absolutely flawlessly? If it takes a million, it will do them, and I doubt they'll be worse at it than humans.

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

Re: FSD was NOT ACTIVE

I wonder when The Register is going to rectify their miss-reporting.

Russian Debian-derivative Linux slinger plans IPO

Re: That Explains Things...

It's 100% Kremlin narrative. Purpose is to slowly lull you into believing NATO made Russia invade.

China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows

Every single API call piped through the CCP for approval. I smell some latency.

Microsoft pulls Windows 10/11 installation websites in Russia

Windows in Russia? Aren't those the things people keep falling through, over there?

Always read the comments: Beijing requires oversight of all reader-generated chat

Just another step in the same direction.

Soon you'll be rewarded when equipping yourself and your children with listening and seeing wearables. Your children will have access to better schools, you'll have a little pension.

Until the implants are ready for deployment.

All in the interest of "the people," of course, you subversive piece of undesirable.

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

Musk, on the one hand, wants to be a champion of free speech.

On the other hand, he once said "China rocks," and implicitly endorses and empowers a totalitarian regime that is as ant-free speech as it gets.

I'm a SpaceX and Tesla fan, less so of his abilities to solve social problems.

Russia's Putin out the idea of a broad cryptocurrency ban

Re: OMG

And wrestling people who have been told to act like limp dolls. I agree on that too.

Indian government warns locals not to use Starlink's internet services

Re: @MajDom - Wait for the draconian measures by China and Russia...

Why would they need to? All Chinese content is accessible in the US. Freely. Unless the Chinese dictatorship censors their own propaganda from leaving the country, because of embarrassing and proven untruths.

Wait for the draconian measures by China and Russia...

No way to plant a huge firewall between the truth and their minions, I'm sure the Chinese and Russian governments are planning quite the crackdown on dish boasting rebels. I'm sure the re-education infrastructure is underway.

In the '80s, spaceflight sim Elite was nothing short of magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done

Re: Anyone remember Aviator, before Elite...?

Had those very same joysticks. Impossible to land the Spitfire with them, but that was part of the frustrating fun. ;)

Anyone remember Aviator, before Elite...?

Before Elite there was Aviator, a phenomenal flight simulator (Spitfire). All wireframe graphics, just one bridge and a handful of buildings. But very difficult to land! Loved it, and preferred it over the first MS flightsim, years later.

Sir Clive Sinclair inspired me and 'whole load of others' at Arm, says CEO Simon Segars

Re: Maplin wasn't the only one

That's where I got my TRS-80 Model III, right after the ZX80, and before the Beeb B.

You win the Internets, of course.

A ZX-81, uh? Spoilt brat. Those of us on the ZX-80 had to settle with integer BASIC. And our heads are still nodding after every keystroke (ZX-80 heroes will know what I'm talking about).

UK's National Museum of Computing asks tunesmiths to recreate bleeps, bloops, and parps of retro game music

Re: fond memories of laboriously typing in lists of SOUND statements ...

I had programmed an EPROM to have the Beeb greet me with my name when booting up. Instead, it screamed in agony and I had to put it down. Sigh. (it wasn't as if I was going to code, burn, test, erase, code, burn, test for a couple of months)

But it was a blast, in every sense of the word.

Pics or it didn't happen: First images from China's Mars rover suggest nothing has gone Zhurong just yet

Why not Viking 1 and 2? Happened 46 years ago. Was US' first attempt to land a craft on Mars, far as I recall. With 1975 technology.

One can only shake one's head at all this desperate propaganda

What is it with Facebook and screwing democracies? Now calls for Prime Minister Modi to resign censored in India

I must admit I've always hoped for an enlightened AI to replace government. But I'm afraid it might end up treating people like we treat ants. And after a week of further growth...like we treat bacteria...

Why do people keep voting themselves out of democracy? Lack of education or engrained submissiveness?

We need a 20MW 20,000-GPU-strong machine-learning supercomputer to build EU's planned digital twin of Earth

If you're worried about power consumption, concentrate on cryptocurrency mining. We're talking terawatts. And utterly useless ones at that.

US court system ditches electronic filing, goes paper-only for sensitive documents following SolarWinds hack

Looking forward to the simple James Bond movies, that are all about microfilm smuggling. And Martinis.

Russia drags NASA: Enjoy your expensive SpaceX capsule, our Soyuz is the cheap Kalashnikov of rockets

The size of that chip on his shoulder is cosmic. What a bunch of drunken ramblings. This clown is the epitome of incompetence. As if he did anyone a favour with his Soyuz ferry service. Without its fat returns, Roscosmos would be a trampoline playground by now. Instead of investing that money in innovation, I'm sure it all went into dachas, women, and cars.

Watch an oblivious Tesla Model 3 smash into an overturned truck on a highway 'while under Autopilot'

Re: Call it what it is

Indeed. We need to make a distinction between AI (even narrow AI) and neural networking. The latter is very good at guessing, but just because it uses a mechanism that is similar to that of a brain, it is not exhibiting any kind of intelligence. You need at least another two layers for that.

Just the place you'd want to spot a BSOD: While waiting in line for a roller coaster that lifts you up 124ft

Slow news day?

"Butcher queue monitor shows BSOD. Meat must be off."

A million clickbait articles a day, coming up.

Prince Harry takes a stand against poverty, injustice, inequality? Er, no, Fortnite

Re: So 1-1 on the anecdote score.

Harry literally stated that shooting people from a chopper was like playing a video game (and not in a negative way, in his view). If anyone disqualified himself from commenting on video games causing real-life violence, it's this guy.

He doesn't like games, he prefers the real thing: shooting people from an Apache helicopter in Afghanistan.

Musk is in contempt of court, screams SEC after Tesla boss brags about car production rates

Re: "Rant"

If I recall, that British diver insulted Musk after the latter offered assistance, by suggesting he could shove it up his backside. No respect for that diver, sorry.

Brit Mars bot named while NASA 'nauts must wait a bit longer for a US rocket trip to the ISS

"Why would they mention Airbus?"

To inform people like you. Thales, which is a French group, delivered part of the rover's tech to AIRBUS, which is a European company (mostly non-UK) and built the rover (assembled in UK). Some of the involved sites happen to be in the UK. Calling it a "Brit" bot is acceptable (although slightly wishful thinking), but NOT mentioning Europe (with the exception of ESA) is specious.

Interesting. No mention of Airbus. Another article indicative of the new UK propagandistic "reality."

Chinese rover pootles about... on the far side of the friggin' MOON

The Moon certainly wasn't low-hanging fruit 50 years ago. It is today.

The Voyager missions were/are awesome. Sad you find them worthless.

What took what whom so long? Cassini-Huygens, a NASA/ESA collaboration, didn't get launched until 1997.

And what giants are you talking about? Wernher von Braun? NASA? Are you talking about the US? I am talking about the UK vs ESA.

Be precise, anonymous coward.

What would be even cooler is if Elon got his Starship ready for flight, flew to the far side of the Moon and had his picture taken by that Chinese rover. Or maybe just take it home and have it auctioned off?

Re: I can just imagine the timeline

"It's all dark"? No, it isn't. The side currently facing the Sun is actually pretty bright. No blue skies, though.

"Has the EU done much space travel?"

Hell yes! The EU neatly planted its flag on Titan. That's a moon of SATURN, not the low-hanging fruit that the Earth's moon is. It also has its flag sitting on a comet. Try and hit that softly as a target.

ESA, unlike the other agencies, is not into propaganda. It's into hard science. Also, you can't beat the European launcher Ariane in reliability.

Stroppy Google runs rings round Brussels with Android remedy

Re: I trust Google more than the EC

legally hamstrung by the EC we have no ability to hold to account whatsoever

By what tabloid did you enjoy your education, pray tell? Read up on it before perpetuating this lunacy..

Re: UK needs the EU

Politicians in the EU parliament can be voted out just as easily. And commission members are chosen by ELECTED nationals. Why keep perpetuating this fallacy that they're unelected? Sounds like scaremongering tabloid crap. Why not complete the farce and use the word "sovereignty" in there somewhere?

From Russia with(out) Zuck: Popular Facebook boss gets another invite to turn down

Endearing how Russia continues its important nation posture

Every time something gets the press' attention for a while, Russia gets all dressed up to express its opinion. As if it has any kind of authority beyond the mediocre fabricated image it tries to project.

It's Zimbabwe with a stockpile of weapons, a caption that should accompany all articles about Russia's opinion.

ZTE to USA: Sure, ban us, but you cannot afford such victories

Re: A bit too much threatening nationalism there...

I don't recall demanding justification anywhere. I hope you allow people to make their own judgements as how they regard a specific company.

Re: A bit too much threatening nationalism there...

It appears translating from Chinese is like navigating a minefield. ;)

If he indeed meant "domestic market," the meaning becomes entirely benign and factual. If not, my nasty nationalism allergy flares up. ;)

Re: A bit too much threatening nationalism there...

He could have mentioned what his market was like and not mention a "strong motherland." People who do that betray strong nationalistic feelings, and I can't feel pity with CEOs brandishing jingoism in an argument. Especially if you have customers outside of that little superior utopia.

A bit too much threatening nationalism there...

The ZTE CEO also said (not mentioned in this article) "We have a strong motherland and 1.3 billion people behind us, and they provide us with the confidence and determination to overcome all kinds of difficulties."

What's that threat with strength-in-numbers all about? Greater numbers equals greater righteousness? Big red flag there.

UK.gov: Psst. Belgium. Buy these Typhoon fighter jets from us, will you?

That's a bit like the Mini Cooper, isn't it? Version 1 was fully British too. But you can't really compare it to today's version.

There was no Belgium to defend when Napoleon was around.