Posts by BOFH in Training

US Navy scuttles Constellation frigate program for being too slow for tomorrow's threats

Re: You know what they really need...

Roaring success for some people anyway.

Taliban impose tele-ban and take Afghanistan offline

Re: So, Afghanistan is cut off from the Internet

Not just the taliban dieing off.

It will be the whole population dieing off, since taliban or not, the same rules apply to you.

Hardware inspector fired for spotting an error he wasn't trained to find

Sounds like you have been holding it all in

You must have some very interesting stories to tell.

;)

Trump stomps feet, pulls out 't-word' again over China rare earths ban

High tariffs

Just a few months ago, there was over 100% tariffs on China, and China basically told trump to get lost.

I dont think he threatening 200% tariffs is going to rattle China all that much. And as I understand, when the high tariffs were imposed on China, it actually united China population somewhat in telling US to get lost.

China holds all the strong cards and they know it.

India gets its turn on the Trump tariff train: 25% levy to start Friday

Trump escalating?

Trump just said some new stuff about India and Russia :

https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/07/31/trump-lashes-out-at-india-and-russias-dead-economies-and--responds-to-medvedevs-war-threat/

“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.”

And there are sanctions on some India companies cos of oil trade with Iran.

Sounds like negotiations are over and Trump wants India to join Russia (and China, even if India has problems with China).

BOFH: The auditor is asking too many questions. We have just the laptop for that

You mean the tape I use to stick ducks to beancounter / boss car is not duck tape????

/s

Starlink helps eight more nations pass 50 percent IPv6 adoption

List of IPv6 deployments by country

Is there a site with an authoritative list of IPv6 deployment by countries, instead of just the top 10 or something?

Meta offered one AI researcher at least $10,000,000 to join up

Use that offer letter as a selling point when you create a startup.

If Mark is valuing him//her at 10m a year, whatever the startup is creating must be worth alot more. Or at least tell that to investors.

And you will be owning / running a unicorn in a year or two. Sell your share for lots of money, retire, do whatever you want.

lol

Elon Musk pukes over pork-filled budget bill with Tesla subsidies on the line

Re: So who needs who more?

The problem is, did Trump's statement means that the government is cancelling the contracts or is it considered a "joke" as some of his statements have been explained away.

If it's considered as the leader of the executive branch issueing a cancellation, SpaceX is presumably in the clear.

Elon may not be able to take SpaceX out of the country, but you can bet that he has alot of sensitive info on SpaceX, from tech specs to manufacturing to pretty much everything else.

Am sure alot of other nations will be happy to have him "migrate over' and create a SpaceX 2.0 - maybe even fund him. Even if thats just China or Russia.

So who needs who more?

With the statement from TACO king about cancelling Elons government contract and Elon's response about shutting down Dragon spacecraft, who needs who more now?

I assume one can afford a lose of a few billions in revenue.

Can the country afford the lose of it's only crewed space transport?

China spawns an x86 supercomputing monster, with an AMD connection

Re: Interesting

Some of the sanctions on China are due to political reasons (so that they don't catch up with Western companies in terms of tech / dont take market share from western companies).

Only way to get those sanctions removed is if China agrees to never compete aggressively in whatever field that the US decides that China should not compete in.

Doubt China will agree to that. And if it's a matter of not respecting US IP, etc - don't forget that in the older days, US did not respect European IP, so they used to just do whatever they needed to do to catch up with European powers.

Sounds like China is just following US playbook.

Even a humble keyboard is now political in Taiwan

Smuggling

So, how long before vendors start hinting that they can smuggle whatever crap they are selling into US, so it's tariff free?

Wouldn't it be funny if the drug smuggling routes are used to smuggle stuff pass tariffs?

Very soon, "tariff free subs" instead of the narco subs.

lol

Chip bans? LOL! Chinese web giant Tencent says it has enough GPUs for future AI model training

US is pushing China to innovate

As title says, US is pushing China to innovate by putting various restrictions on them.

There is a decent chance that with all the engineering resources they have over there, they may figure out a better way of doing AI/chips/whatever else they are being restricted on.

In whatever thing they innovate, they will presumably have first mover advantage.

BOFH: There's a fatal error in the blinkenlights

Yeap, already giving me ideas on how to keep myself "occupied" when things are running too smoothly.

Everything works smoothly, they think we are not doing anything (when we do all the work in the background), need just enough hiccups in the system so that they see us as being needed.

OTF, which backs Tor, Let's Encrypt and more, sues to save its funding from Trump cuts

He said the D word - Diversity!

The food is a DEI product! Burn it all!!!

/s for those who don't understand

US stocks slip as Trump pulls trigger on Canada, Mexico, China tariffs

He was supposedly business friendly.

And they were hoping that he will cut their taxes.

He still might cut their taxes, but with tariffs as well.

Doesnt the monkey's paw always do something bad together with whatever you wished for?

UK biz dept overspent by £208M prepping to pay workers hurt in Post Office IT scandal

Re: They still don't get it.

Make sure the executives of the PO get to pay everything first, and once they get bankrupt, the PO does the same, for the balance sum.

If the execs get away, it just lets other execs know that they will not be punished for whatever stunt they pull.

BOFH: Don't sell The Boss a firewall. Sell him The Dream

Re: Firewall or AI

I got only my country's IP addresses allowed by default in my home router / NAS system.

If I am travelling, I will open up IPs for those countries.

Otherwise, everything else is blocked.

With Gelsinger gone, to fab or not to fab is the $7B question

Re: Sinking feeling

Nvidia is also selling TSMC produced products and is making huge profits.

AMD is also selling TSMC produced products and is making nice profits.

Only difference : Different types of chips for different purposes from whatever intel is selling (Nvidia GPUs vs Intel CPUs) or better designs (AMD CPUs vs Intel CPUs).

I know there is some overlap with both Nvidia / AMD and Intel doing GPUs as well, but Intel is such a small player that I don't think I should count it.

Cost of Gelsinger's ambition proves too much for Intel

I dont know if the requirement to hold over 50% of foundry business if spun off has an expiry date.

Not sure if the below USD 10 Billion from US Gov is worth it, considering it will probably lose that much within 2 quarters.

CrowdStrike still doesn't know how much its Falcon flame-out will cost

Maybe they hoping the recent bad experience has made them very careful and better?

Probably able to negotiate a bunch of discounts as well, pointing to the clownstrike incident.

DoJ wants Google to sell off Chrome and ban it from paying to be search default

Re: Google to be forced to sell Chrome.. But who would, could, should buy it?

OS may be the best option, cos if someone buys Chrome, they need to make money from it. That means paying for Chrome / updates / everything.

Of cos if going OS, there is always Firefox ..... no idea if Mozilla can combine both browsers together into the one.

Google and MS and whoever can always customise the OS Chrome. Or create their own plugins to the OS Chrome.

CHIPS Act funding in question as House Speaker waffles on plan to repeal bill

Re: I like the idea of the CHIPS Act

Apple, AMD, NVidia, TI, etc will be looking for the cheapest options which meet their quality / legal requirements.

That means I doubt they will be lining up to be big customers in a US based fab, unless they are forced to use US based fabs. Maybe US defence industry will use them due to legal requirements. Can't think of many other companies which has that as a requirement.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

World record?

Is that a world record, by any chance, for the size of a fine?

Anyway, I don't think that number is anywhere close to a googol.

;)

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Re: Ways to encourage payment

I have seen that happen with a small client some years ago. I was on site when another contractor came to do some pest control.

His invoice said X if paid within 30 days, and X - I think 3% if paid immediately. That client immediately paid in cash. And this is a client who has a history of holding invoices unpaid for as long as possible before payment.

Not sure if the original invoices are inflated, but it was something interesting to observe.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Re: As a good American...

I recall reading something years ago about Palantir doing something like that - thru a mobile app.

Someone demo'ed something where they take a pic of a random person and got all sort of details within seconds.

At least that was what I recall reading. If they could do it years ago, as a company, it will not take much for a couple of people to do something similar - with all the other services you can use to connect everything together.

Intel frees its Foundry biz – and that's just one of many major shake-ups today

Re: Malaysia

On a related note,

Does the DoD contracts also require packaging to be done within the US? If yes, does Intel has a chip packaging facility within the US?

Research suggests more than half of VMware customers are looking to move

Re: Open source replacements not good enough ?

Advantage of FOSS is that, if you are not paying / paying much less licence fees, you can always pay for a couple of devs to make whatever changes / features / updates you need. And if you are a large org, you will probably come out ahead financially.

Pat Gelsinger's grand plan to reinvent Intel is in jeopardy

Reminds me of Kodak and countless others. Assume you are the best, refuse to try something new (even if you invented it), and let the market change and slip away from you.

NASA's billion-dollar launcher is behind schedule and burning cash

Re: Cost Plus

I would provide you with the answer if you give me a cost plus contract to do research on this and report back.

:)

Intel enlists Morgan Stanley to defend against activist investors

Re: Intel shares have lost nearly 60 percent of their value since the beginning of 2024. ....

I think the value to society has dropped as well.

After all there are possibly millions of people from the above mentioned society who are concerned if their computers have a degraded CPU.

Oh yeah, society also includes the 1000s of Intel staff who were laid off. Even if the share price went up after a head count reduction (as it happens in some companies - but not in this case), it will probably be a net negative to society, since there will be 1000s of newly unemployed people due to Intel. Some will get new jobs. Some will have savings. And some will collect unemployment benefits (which are paid for by society via taxes and other means).

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

I know Dell (at least as of about a year ago) still used proprietary PSUs and even motherboards (some look like standard ATX stuff, but with power pins set differently) at least for some models.

North Korean chap charged for attacks on US hospitals, military, NASA – and even China

Re: Oops...

Rocket man is busy sucking up and getting close to Russia now.

He may think that China is not so important nowadays.

India ditches its 'Google Tax' after US waved a big stick

15% of revenue?

Some services may not even have a 10% profit margin, so how do you pay 15% and still stay in business?

I know that MNC like to move profits around so it's hard to figure out the actual profit per country, but 15% of revenue seems abit much.......

Cloudflare debuts one-click nuke of web-scraping AI

Still, I have to give Cloudflare credit for finding a way to ride the AI hype train without all the hassle of building/ training models etc. Full marks for crafty thinking, maybe next time do it without stealing visitor data. ------ they claim to be using AI to detect these AI scrappers. So presumably they have build models and trained them.

Ransomware scum who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption key

Re: Criminals with a conscience? I don't buy it!

Indonesia is hardly a super power when it comes to war fighting abilities.

Not to mention even US can't seem to do much when they get caught with ransomware troubles from bad actors linked to other governments.

And most of the nations linked to such bad actors are Russia (which has nukes although a crap conventional warfare capability), China (which also has nukes and unknown conventional fighting abilities) and North Korea (which also has nukes and does not seem to give a damn about what others think), who hardly fear Indonesia in the first place.

Atos shuffles debt around as curtain call nears for restructuring saga

Top in sustainability

They are having difficulty sustaining the business and yet they are rated top 11% in sustainability?

Wonder how sustainable are the bottom 89% of companies.....

;)

China warns citizens to stop posting info about spy satellites on social media

Re: It gets better

Yeah was wondering if it was related when I read the article.

Not a good look when a rocket engine test gets the rocket to fly off. They may be doing this so that next time something similar happens, the average person may not be aware.

For the record: You just ordered me to cause a very expensive outage

Re: Sometimes, when the stars & planets align just right ...

I would ask for at least 30 to 50% extra if I was to take that job now.

Starliner to remain docked to the ISS into July – with no new departure date

Re: Thrusters

Boeing has said they will not bid for any more fixed price contracts, especially if they building something new / modifying something to a new requirement.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/boeing-says-it-cant-make-money-with-fixed-price-contracts/

I understand they have lost a bunch in at least 3 fixed price contracts with the government so far.

Starliner which we are discussing now.

KC 46 air force tankers.

https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2024/01/09/cautionary-tale-how-boeing-won-a-us-air-force-program-and-lost-7b/

And the new air force one.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/25/business/air-force-one-boeing-loss/index.html

I imagine they going to have a tough time asking for a cost plus contract when someone else is willing to do a fixed price contract for the same item in the future. Thats probably where the millions they spend in lobbying will help.........

Re: Thrusters

They don't have spare boosters. They booked enough Atlas V boosters for the planned launches from ULA and ULA can't build more as the first stage uses rocket engines from Russia. And you can't exactly go to a nearby store to pick up a space russian rocket or two. Especially with Ukraine war and other issues.....

So once the currently available boosters run out, thats it.

In theory starliner can launch from Falcon9 as well I think (may need some modifications), but that will probably mean another demo or 2 on falcon 9s to certify that combination before it's man rated.

And since this is a fixed price contract, whatever extra flights are needed, Boeing is going to eat the cost. Last I heard starliner program is already about a billion in the red and Boeing is probably hoping to get the rest of the launches contracted for to go without issues so that they don't end up going another billion or two in the red.

They can always give up and not get the next milestone payments and finish off with just a billion in the red and probably alot of egg on their face. Not a good look if you want to get into the next government contract.

Or they can soldier on, do everything they have to do, no matter the cost, to make sure they manage to complete the contract, and hope they get another cost plus contract in the future so that they can drag that out to make back whatever they lost on starliner. This assumes that all the astronauts on this and future starliner flights are safe and nobody dies.

Malaysia stakes claim to become semiconductor superpower by luring $100B investment from … somewhere

Isn't this the same Anwar

who ordered the government not to entertain any enquiries from businesses in English?

https://www.pmo.gov.my/2023/10/govt-depts-reminded-not-to-entertain-letters-written-in-language-other-than-national-language/

That link is from Anwar's (Prime Minister's office).

I think there is even some controversy over what language is used to teach Maths and Science (last I heard the government schools are only supposed to use the local Malay language and not English).

And sure this will work out well when asking for international investments where you need to know alot of science / technical matters. /s

Tesla self-driving claims parked in court

Re: Buy things on what they can do

When Intel launched the Arc GPU, it kind of sucked, with driver issues, etc.

They promised/stated that performance and stability will improve in the next few months with some upcoming updates.

And they did as they promised. Performance improved over the next few months until it came to be considered as worthy of purchase as low / mid range GPUs.

The promises about improvements were not in a spec sheet. And they did not specify that they will improve the performance by X%. So people who bought it knew they will get some improvement, not how much. And the improvements came. I think in some cases it even doubled the initial performance for some games.

Elon, as the CEO, and the main / only public representative for Tesla was making all sorts of claims on upcoming capabilities of his company's vehicles. If his claims were not expected to be met, nobody in Tesla corrected what he said.

If I bought anything, and the CEO of the company that made and sold the item is telling everyone that it will be able to certain features soon, it better happen unless the company wants some very unhappy customers. I know Sony is on my blacklist for many years since they made some claims about upcoming capabilities and it ended up costing me a bunch of money.

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

Re: D&D

Not all police forces use "police system" software for everything.

Am familiar with at least 1 police force which used Lotus Notes for taking reports, investigation notes, records, etc- about 25 years ago. Of course they customised it to fit their needs, but still, it does not require a special licence or permission to buy licence Lotus Notes for police work.

And presumably if there was a problem with the software, they may not just want to reveal what data created the problem to a random support / developer.

How well it performed is another thing of course. I know they ditched Lotus Notes some time ago.

US wants ASML to stop servicing China-owned chip equipment

Re: The United States Of America are going too far...

Something to keep in mind :

Pass few wars that US has been in, they have been mostly attacking. So most / some of the local population saw Americans as aggressors.

If US actually steps in to defend Taiwan, I think most, if not all of the local population will be happy with US helping with the defence, and be supportive of whatever actions US took in Taiwan.

Re: The United States Of America are going too far...

Ukraine does not have TSMC. That may push US to step in, regardless who / which party is in power in the US.

Unless US wants TSMC to die / get captured by China. Even if the TSMC infrastructure is destroyed, China will suddenly have 1000s of experienced fab engineers who can "assist" in getting China's own fabs to a better level.

Re: The United States Of America are going too far...

The trick is, there is no formal defination of what "One China" means - Taiwan controls the whole of Greater China, or China (CCP) does.

That ambiguity allows most countries to agree to that policy. But I understand China is trying to push it's preferred meaning.

EU users can't update 3rd party iOS apps if abroad too long

Re: I hope they get sued out of existance

Just wait for GPS spoofers being used in some areas to trick the phones to think they are somewhere far away.

May be illegal but that doesn't always stop pranksters / criminals.

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

Do you need actual divers if you can send in remotely controlled underwater drones to place explosive at the cable area? Y

You dont even need the drone to return as you can just have it parked at the cable with the bombs and going boom with a timer. The "base ship" only has to hang around until the drone reaches the bottom, after that, once drone is attached to the cable, can just cut the control / power cable from the ship to the drone and just move off.

Depending on the depth, and the speed of the drone, it may take a few minutes to a couple of hours to get it done and the ship to move off.

US judge rejects spyware slinger NSO's attempt to bin Apple lawsuit

Re: "Suffered no loss"?

How do you ban individuals or companies from buying a mass produced consumer item?

Sure they can be officially banned, but they can always go to Amazon (or whatever local telco shops they have) and just pay for Apple products like any other person. Maybe they will be banned from buying stuff from Apple.com or from Apple Stores. Thats about the best that Apple can do, in terms of "banning them".

Unless Apple wants to ban the whole of Israel / block all IPs from the whole country, so that it will make it slightly more difficult / expensive(paying for delivery from some other shop overseas) to buy Apple products.