Posts by zuckzuckgo

Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

Re: Axe

So you want them to axe ax? Think of all the labour, energy and bandwidth required to support that extra letter! Next you will have them adding extra 'U's all over the place for no explicable reason.

Re: Confused

Not so sure. The article says printer manufacturers can provide their own drivers under the new system, that does not guarantee that legacy drivers will still work. Since it seems unlikely that printer manufacturers will write new drivers for old printers it could still make old printers obsolete.

Judge snuffs man's quest to have AI-created art protected by copyright

Re: Hollywood beware

> No as the studio would be claiming that the operator of the computer was the creator.

If that was not so then your smart phone might be able to claim copyright of all the pictures you take, given all the image enhancement processing being applied to the image.

Re: Case law

It would be interesting to see if a current generation of AI trained on the case law history would reject AI copyright claims. Then again feeding it all the contradictory rulings might just drive it mad -- so pretty much like the current system.

Epic snub by Supreme Court in battle to escape Apple App Store payment prison

Re: "Seriously and irreparably injured"

They object to the ruling based on the argument they find it objectionable.

Boeing abandons plans for crewed Starliner flight in 2023

Re: Rather them than me

Any weight added to the capsule would reduce the payload capacity so replacing is better than adding. On the other hand the tape was probably not designed to be removed so removal could damage or stress whatever it is attached to so coating might be the only practical option. Also some taped items may not be directly accessible, so it is more practical to spray with fire retardant.

In the end the flight risk will never be zero so there is always a risk vs cost trade-off. Still a project management disaster, hopefully that is all it is.

Boris Johnson pleads ignorance, which just might work

Re: eyes too close together

Or too far apart, or too precisely in the "right" place.

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Re: Poor design in my opinion

I think he must have had some extremely low grade lighting circuit wire.

MIT discovery suggests a new class of superconductors

Re: Knok-nock, Neo

As good an explanation as any other so far.

Rocky Linux claims to have found 'path forward' from CentOS source purge

If the Red Hat contract is for support not for the code, then it is not part of the GPL agreement and they can withdraw or refuse to renew support at any time. Given that current customers have, up to now, had access to free distributions but still are paying implies that they would not want to lose Red Hat support.

But it would seem to me customers willing to give up future support could redistribute the code. So for each release if a customer can be found that is willing to give up support, then that release might be available for free distribution.

But could Red Hat also sell a separate a piece of proprietary code needed to make the distribution truly useful commercial use?

Re: Ignoring the big issue

With each new release could someone buy a copy then publicly redistribute it? Red Hat would then cut them off as a customer so it would require a new volunteer for each release. I assume Red Hat would try and vet customers to avoid this but would this be a possible work around?

Re: A bit of advance warning wouldn't have gone amiss

Yes and I suspect that some of their paying customers also make use of the free distributions, so unless Red Hat change their pricing structure, those customers could be facing much higher costs. At least that would provide some incentive for those customers to go shopping elsewhere.

NIST boffins shrink atomic beam clock to the size of a postage stamp

> "Recent fountain clock designs have achieved a one second drift over 100 million years. "

I assume that experiment was original set up by Slartybartfast if the one second drift has already been achieved.

AI is going to eat itself: Experiment shows people training bots are using bots

So what you're saying is we could just replace the monarchy with more cost efficient AIs?

Re: Garbage in...

Also like using AIs to detect email spam while others use AIs to create effective spam. Eventually it is just a battle of the AIs as messages become even more bizarre gibberish. The upside is that the spam that does get through may be easier to recognize for humans but with a lot of wasted CPU cycles.

Surprise! GitHub finds 92% of developers love AI tools

Re: 92%

... and to 99.9% when AI is involved.

Musk tried to wriggle out of Autopilot grilling by claiming past boasts may be deepfakes

Re: "Electric Jezus",

♪ ♫ Always look on the bright side of life - te-do -- te-do, te-do .... ♫

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

Re: All you need to know about Musk

Audio worked here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0SrC9eJpMNUmF6cFo0xauw

Starlink's rocket speeds hit a 50 megabit wall for large downloads

Re: 200mb/s for "10minutes or so" = ~15GB

There is also the issue of how many satellites are in view at any given time. During a long download the total available bandwidth could be changing as satellites go in and out of sight. It could also cause rerouting through different ground stations with different ground link capacity. Every time the routing changes the system has to reoptimize.

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

Root access?

But how do you secure root access? A fence?

Elon Musk hit with insider trading claims over his Dogecoin crypto-hype

Just because something started out as a joke or snide remark does not mean you cannot turn it into a crime by your later actions. If you cause unintentional harm to someone through negligence you can be charged with a crime even if you did not plan to harm.

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

They removed the radar system for some recent vehicles and are relying on AI and camera images, which I suspect is the issue. They are bringing back radar in newer products. I would not trust a camera only system.

Re: Unintended consequences

Seems like a AEB design issue.

My car disengages automatic braking as soon as I manually apply the brakes or the accelerator. The automatic system does not reengage until I tap the accelerator or press a button on the steering wheel. The downside is when the AEB is aggressively braking but I decide to take over by applying the brakes, but to to lightly, it feels like the car surges forward. I have learned that when I want to take over braking I must do so aggressively.

Mars helicopter went silent for six sols, imperilled Perseverance rover

Re: Wrong place for the solar panels?

But better placement of the knots - four corners - might afford more durable protection, even if somewhat less fashionable.

Microsoft up in Arms over data-loss protection in Windows 11

AI vs AI

And also to block it. So spam generating AI's will have to focus on fooling spam blocking AI's rather than fooling the meatware. As if spam subjects lines were not already weird enough, viewing the spam folder could get entertaining - if the shear volume of spam wasn't so damn annoying.

US bill to protect reproductive health data is dead. Here's why you should care anyway

Re: Be a man!

How about adding bone marrow transplants to the list?

Or they could just recognize that the rights of the fetus (or transplant recipient) don't trump a woman's (or mans) right to make the final decision as to what happens with their own bodies.

Neuralink says US OK's human experiments with Elon's brain chips

Minor correction

"the upstart claimed its brain chip helped train monkeys interns to perform simple computational tasks, such as playing Pong, moving a mouse cursor around, typing, and tracing numbers on screens."

Surely, they would never treat monkeys that cruelly.

Privacy Sandbox, Google's answer to third-party cookies, promised within months

Re: So my 10 second skim reading here

> They aren't called 'cookies' any longer.

They should be called nuggets as Google seems able to mine them for gold.

China lands mysterious reusable spacecraft after 276-day trek

Re: What a load of bull!

Could mean a lot more web traffic at PornHoof.au. Hope their servers can handle it.

Four out of five Uranus moons likely to have ocean under crust

Re: has...

I think we need a blue check mark icon for Elon fanbois.

Apple pushes first-ever 'rapid' patch – and rapidly screws up

Re: If at first you fail...

For any difficult tasks some failures are unavoidable on the path to ultimate success. However, some failures are just steps on the path to even bigger failures. Like a tourist stepping into busy London traffic while looking the wrong way.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Re: Complexity ≠ Reliability

Redundancy only makes sense when you are confident that one failure does not start a cascade affect - like an exploding engine or when your data centre backup generators can't carry the load of all systems rebooting at once.

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

Yes, but it was fun while it lasted. Hopefully they got enough data to diagnose the issue and it is not something to fundamental. They seemed to have at least 4 engines that did not stay lit and produced the occasional outburst.

I'm most interested in how the launch pad survived as they seem to be setup to replace rockets faster then they could rebuild the launchpad.

Linux kernel logic allowed Spectre attack on 'major cloud provider'

Re: Safe Primes 10,000++ Decimal Digits Long -- What's The Problem?

From what I understand the Diffie/Hellman protocol works between two entities allowing them to create an encrypted channel between them without private or public keys. But Diffie/Hellman can't be used to verify the identify the entities involved you still need a shared secret or a public/private key infrastructure, or some other means to do that. It is usually just as important to know with certainty who you are talking to as it is to have a secure channel to talk through.

Google to kill Dropcam, Nest Secure hardware next year

Re: Why would anyone with half a brain buy anything from Google?

>I know people who'd pay good money to have...

The One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the subscription bind them.

Take a 14-mile trip on an autonomous Scottish bus starting next month

> is the engineer Scott?

I would think the accent alone would cause passengers to revolt. Sounds like the no-win scenario.

Re: buses will operate with a "Captain" in the passenger cabin "to take tickets"

> drive like maniacs (for some reason!?)

Driving a bus is boring, driving a race car is exciting - driving a bus like a race car is a compromise to help stay awake. However, as a passenger I would prefer the boring ride.

Cruise emits software fix after self-driving car slams into bus

Re: Look like the back of a bus

> could make the whole vehicle appear completely invisible to a computer.

True if it relies solely on cameras. If lidar or radar is used graphics would have no effect. However, non-metallic vehicles or trailers could be a problem for radar, light absorbing paints could stymie lidar.

Best to have a mix of sensors. I don't think I would trust a system that relies only on cameras, it is more reassuring to know the car can also "see" in ways that I can't.

Re: Unique error

> Had to disobey a red light ...

It would definitely be annoying to be stuck in an autonomous car with no where to legally go. On the other hand it could inform the fleet of the problem so all other autonomous vehicles route around the situation. Public transit has similar issues when buses break down or subways are temporarily stuck between stations, you just have to wait for help to arrive or the issue is resolved. Then again you could just abandon the car and catch a taxi, after all the car can find its own way home.

Astronomers clock runaway black hole leaving trail of fresh stars

> while objects made of uncollapsed mass have an event horizon that is internal so can never be reached

Not really true. One could tunnel down below your hypothetical event horizon and still come out with a finite amount of energy, so not really an event horizon. Neutrinos pass through the centre of the earth without being trapped by gravitational forces. If the earth was compressed into a black hole it would trap neutrinos.

Re: Daily Mail Headline

>Former star runs away after fathering hundreds of illegitimate kids.

And remarkably they were all sons.

For whom the bell polls: Twitter voting is for Blue users only now

Re: How long . . .

Maybe they will rename it MySpaceX. See if they can attract a buyer.

Gone in 120 seconds: Tesla Model 3 child's play for hackers

>Most rich people are scumbags liars and a lot of other horrible attributes.

Gives us all something to aspire to.

ChatGPT, how did you get here? It was a long journey through open source AI

Other organizations are still free to assemble the same open source components into a competitor, they just can't access whatever "special sauce" was added by OpenAI. And it's probably just mayonnaise.

Terran 1, world's first (mostly) 3D printed rocket, lifts off ... and fails to reach orbit

Re: Are we having fun yet?

Since they launched without a payload I think they can legitimately claim this as part of the development process. Of course reaching orbit would have put them much closer to a commercial launch. Which I'm sure would have made investors happier.

And maybe they can just melt down the first stage and reprint it from the recycle material.

Microsoft to give more than microsecond's thought about your Windows 11 needs

It is always informative to read a post with a different slant on the issue.

First-known interstellar Solar System visitor 'Oumuamua a comet in disguise – research

"cooked by cosmic radiation, forming hydrogen as a result"

Sounds like that effect could come in handy in the long trip between stars. A little extra hydrogen to power the on board hibernation pods.

SpaceX tries to de-orbit Amazon's request for a satellite broadband shortcut

Re: Me frist!

So that's why Musk's Neuralink will come with the standard Starlink feature. Instead of autopilot controlling the car it could just control the driver directly.

Orbital domination, communication monopoly, mind control, robot army, automated giga factories. It is all starting to fit together. He can even use the Boring Company to construct a secret underground headquarters.

Capital crunch: Virgin Orbit confirms all ops on pause until Tuesday

Polar orbits or satellite killers

Launching from the UK makes sense for polar orbits since there is a lot of ocean directly north for stages or aborts to "land". The EU might get upset about the eastward launches.

As others have said westward launches are very inefficient but they might make for some spectacular satellite collisions (differential velocity > 50,000 km/hr) as orbital space get more crowded.

Re: Thoughts

I guess achieving orbit from the UK is just a tough cherry to pop.