Posts by StrangerHereMyself

UK Online Safety Bill to become law – and encryption busting clause is still there

Invoke

They won't invoke it. They know the price they'll have to pay if they do: most popular messaging applications will leave the UK and millions of Brits will be without a secure way to communicate.

Intel thinks glass substrates are a clear winner in multi-die packaging

Bigger and bigger

Since it seems we can't go any smaller it now looks as if computers (and chips) will become bigger and bigger. They're packing more and more chiplets into a single CPU to keep the dream alive that every new generation of CPU's is faster.

I wonder if we'll all have small fridge-sized computers in our homes in a decade or two burning 2000 Watts or so.

37 Signals says cloud repatriation plan has already saved it $1 million

Re: Is it comparable?

The initial USP was to save money since you wouldn't need you own administrators and techies to keep things up and running. I guess know that has fallen through they're making up other excuses, such as geographical redundancy.

Cloud is darn expensive and we're already seeing companies (not just 37 Signals) pull back on deployments. Hopefully providers will slash prices to keep growth going forward.

Delete

I once read about this guy who made a programming mistake running his app on AWS over the weekend and ended up getting a $60.000 bill. There are no spending limits on AWS it seems and you have to make sure manually you don't exceed your self-imposed spending limit.

This is why I completely deleted my AWS account after I was done using it. I needed to create the account because Amazon required one for me to use one of their programming tools. Since it was registered to me (and not the company I worked for as a contractor) I was scared shitless someone would steal my credentials and rake up a huge bill.

Portable Large Language Models – not the iPhone 15 – are the future of the smartphone

Re: Sure, it's possible, but why would you want it?

It would be extremely worrying if people started LLM's for medical advice.

Purpose

For what purpose would I want a LLM to run on my smartphone? I can't think of any use since I'm not into generating useless text articles.

Maybe as an imaginary friend for someone to talk with? That would be sad IMHO. I'd recommend people start taking up a team sport of their liking and meeting more people IRL.

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

Elon: "I lost the full $45 billion...and I don't care!"

There hasn't and there never will be. This has nothing to do with productivity but about control and self-interests.

The self interests of managers who fear the undermining of their position if their subordinates are always remote.

We'll see smart companies and startups profiting from this by scooping up all the talent by allowing them to work from home! Dinosaurs like IBM, Zoom and Google will be left holding the bag. Their demise will be slow and painful, with layoffs after layoffs because the remaining staff are under-performing and unmotivated.

UK admits 'spy clause' can't be used for scanning encrypted chat – it's not 'feasible'

No it isn't. This is just some foobar to get them out of a rock and a hard place. Although the threat still looms, they'll never dare to use it since the consequences will be dire: WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger and Apple's iMessage will become unavailable in the UK. This would enrage the British public and calls will be uttered for someone to be hanged.

Re: Whitewash?

No this is BS. You can't prosecute anyone on metadata. At best metadata will give you some clues WHERE to look. It won't give you hard-evidence.

Dead

So the Online Safety Bill (OSB) is effectively dead? I find it disconcerting that they're now downgrading the scanning of CP to "best effort" at the very last moment. They should've simply scrapped the text regarding client-side scanning and saved themselves a whole lot of hassle and poohah.

I suppose the outlook of WhatsApp and Apple leaving the UK market was frightening even to MP's, who feared an uprising by their constituents.

Japan's 'Moon sniper' and its two ejectable landers make it into space

Precision landing

The Indian landing of Chandranaan-2 failed because they attempted a precision landing too and didn't have the means to target the landing site accurately enough. Therefore the soft- and hardware had to compensate for margins they couldn't, resulted in a failure.

Los Alamos finishes installing Crossroads super to test nukes without a big bang

Re: Credibility

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty also bans underground testing. Too bad the United States didn't ratify it and neither did China.

The CTBT is therefore only a pause in nuclear testing, not the definitive end. Note that Russia signed and ratified the treaty, but I doubt they'll keep abiding by it if anyone, especially the U.S., starts testing again.

Re: Credibility

He won't. He knows what will happen if he does.

Re: Credibility

Not the thermonuclear designs. Those came years later.

Re: Credibility

Most people don't seem to realize that aforementioned gentleman got the designs for these thermonuclear warheads from his Northern neighbor and didn't actually invent or develop anything himself.

Credibility

I've predicted the Test Ban Treaty will eventually be scuttled since at some point in time there will be the necessity to develop a new warhead and you simply cannot be sure that it works as intended without actually setting one off. There will be enormous political pressure to test since the credibility of our deterrent is at stake.

Simulations are nice but they cannot replace a real-life test.

The world seems so loopy. But at least someone's written a memory-safe sudo in Rust

Re: Mandate

Well that class of security issues encompasses about 70 to 80% of the total and can lead to unintentional exposing of information or a complete takeover of your systems.

No computer language will prevent logical errors but I believe Rust is a huge step forward in systems and high-performance programming. You see, up until now development of critical performance code required unsafe programming languages such as C, C++ or assembly. With Rust you can have your cake and eat it.

Re: SPARK ADa

They have runtime checks, but these can be turned off. Memory safety isn't an integral part of the language itself.

Re: Can we please stop fetishising rust whilst conflating C++ with C?

The drawback with C++ is its backwards compatibility with C. You can write 1970's style C code and compile it on a modern C++ compiler.

I always remind myself that C is merely "high-level assembly" and therefore has the same warts and dimples, i.e. no memory safety or bounds checking of any kind.

Re: Mandate

ADA was by no means a bad choice 30 odd years ago. It, however, lacked mainstream support because OO and C++ were the hotties of the day.

Besides, ADA isn't memory safe by any standard. It's merely an amalgamation of C / C++ / COBOL and Java.

Re: Mandate

The requirement for a specific (!) runtime version is extremely bothersome and the main reason why I ported some of my C# programs to C++ and Rust. Also, the startup times for .NET plus the bloated memory and disk space requirements are a hobble for smaller systems.

Re: Mandate

Also, Microsoft's effort on AOT compilation is too little, too late. They've been working on it for years and years and it still only compiles a small subset of .NET programs. And even then with many caveats.

Re: Mandate

If Microsoft had taken into account native compilation for C# this wouldn't have happened. They blindly copied Java and didn't see C# as a replacement for C and C++ (Microsoft was and still is a C++ stronghold).

The world would look completely different if they had. There wouldn't have been such a strong case for Rust, since manual memory management is a standard feature in C#, but one which no one uses. You can mix and match it with garbage collection, which is a much programmer friendlier solution than Rust. Although Rust has some modern constructs like monads and Typed structs.

Re: Mandate

I program in aforementioned languages too (replace Java with C# in my case) and I can tell you that garbage collection latency is not an issue in MOST cases, especially ones where things happen on human time-scales.

Rust was only invented for performance critical and systems programming, although just like C/C++ more and more people are using it for general purpose programming.

Mandate

How long before the U.S. government mandates that all its software be written in a secure programming language? I mean, Java has been available for almost 30 years and C# for more than 20.

If Microsoft and Sun had compiled C# and Java native code instead of a virtual machine I believe there would be little demand for a language like Rust. Alas, that ship has sailed and during the last two decades many people have attempted to modify or add extensions to C / C++ or came up with newer languages to make systems programming safer. None of those really solved the problem or took off. Rust is the only effort that seems to have a substantial following

How to ask Facebook's Meta to not train its AI models on some of your personal info

Regulations

This is not something individuals should ask Meta, but regulatory agencies should DEMAND from them.

From browser brat to backend boss: Will WASM win the web wars?

Re: Welcome back Java promise!!!

As far as I know Java has delivered on those promises. People just aren't willing to adopt it because the UI looks "off."

And for web-based application there are more and better alternatives, such as C#, Rust and JavaScript.

Surprised

I'm somewhat surprised that WASM hasn't already become the main compilation target on most operating systems. Its advantages are obvious and numerous and could substantially reduce software development costs.

Certainly it will take off in the cloud, allowing people to "bring their own binaries".

Concorde? Pffft. NASA wants a Mach 4 passenger jet

Re: Energy

I'm talking about $3000 for a cattle-class seat. A first class-seat will cost you the price of a luxury car.

Energy

The biggest problem IMHO is that the energy usage rises exponentially with speed and that this aircraft would therefore be economically unsustainable. Per seat prices would quadruple or more. That would translate into $3000 air fares for a NYC - LDN trip and well into the 5 figures for a ticket to Australia (if it's even feasible to fly such distances at that speed).

Just because it's technically feasible doesn't mean it will become a reality. Only if they solve the sonic boom problem will these flights become somewhat economically viable, since land routes are shorter and therefore cheaper.

Boffins reckon Mars colony could survive with fewer than two dozen people

Re: Why do people call a small outpost a colony ?

One thing's for sure: the Martian colony will not be self-sufficient for many, many years, maybe even hundreds of years.

Re: Why do people call a small outpost a colony ?

People are misguided about inbreeding. It's only a problem if the population carries a fatal disease in their genes. There are no mechanisms in our genes that can detect mating with a relative.

Many Europeans used to live and die in small villages with only a few dozens or hundred people and inbreeding must have been common then. It only died out in the late middle-ages as people started to move towards the cities.

Re: The most important question remains unanswered.

Because Elon had this nightmare where he and his numerous offspring would be killed by an asteroid so he couldn't spread his genes across time and space.

They'll die

People will go crazy spending years on Mars, which is basically a huge desert with no breathable air and deadly radiation all around. The constant fear of death (habitats could tear and leak air) and the huge costs and effort needed to keep them supplied with food and maybe even water will make the project become unsustainable. Even for billionaire Elon Musk.

I believe we'll hear the Martians on the radio every day begging us to bring them home. What will Elon do then?

India lands Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on Moon, is the first to lunar south pole

Re: Milestone moment

I'm not too sure about all this. First they'll have to demonstrate that the Lunar ice is actually feasible to mine and process into potable water. We're a very long way from doing so and it may take years and years before anyone is able to take a sip of Lunar water.

Precision landing

The first mission failed because they essentially wanted to do a pinpoint landing, without having any experience in doing so. The main thing they changed in the software is to allow for a much greater landing zone (4km x 4km) instead of the original 400m x 400m. If I had been in charge the goal would've simply been to land "anywhere but in a crater" and the first try would've succeeded.

Oh well, they stuck the landing this time, so I guess they've paid their learning dues.

Virginia industrial park wants to power DCs with mini nuclear reactors, clean hydrogen

Steelmills

Steel mills and chemical plants will no doubt also opt for SMR (small modular reactors) in the future. That's only logical.

Western Digital sued over claims of data-trashing SanDisk, My Passport SSDs

Just buy Samsung. I only have Samsung SSD's in my home and never had any problems for years and years.

My Sandisk MicroSD cards are holding up well, though. So it's not all crap they're selling.

Indian armed forces gives Windows its marching orders, but only for desktop warriors

First step

Someone has to take the first step to kick Windows off the desktop. In my opinion the military should be the main drivers since their software is mostly bespoke.

Software is these days much easier to port to Linux if its web-based (requiring no porting at all, essentially). But even native applications can usually be written to target multiple platforms using cross-platform frameworks like wxWidgets and Qt. You have to plan for it but it's certainly feasible.

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

Re: Stupid

And you haven't been paying attention to the news. China is squatting islands in the South China Sea and claiming it as their territory by putting military bases on them.

Nelson is merely postulating that China will do the same on the Moon. I hope he's wrong but if they do we'll have to evict them by force. I'm hoping the Space Force will soon announce that they're developing space-capable assault rifles.

Re: Stupid

We didn't claim it at all, mrerely stated that we came here in the name of Mankind. China isn't claiming it for Mankind but for China.

India launches contest to build homegrown web browser

Re: Nationalism for the sake of Nationalism?

I can sort of relate to India not wanting to give control of important parts the economy to Western tech giants. The problem is the country has very little to bargain with since most of its 1.4 billion populace is poor and its infrastructure decrepit. Western manufacturer sometimes have to deal with basic infrastructure being absent, making setting up shop there a difficult proposition. Compare with China where there are thousands of manufacturers that can pump out almost anything very quickly and at low prices.

How long before Western nations start to impose trade sanctions if India keeps hampering market access? As soon as the war in Ukraine has come to a conclusion the West will take punative action, is my guess.

YACBB

Yet Another Chromes Based Browser (YACBB) isn't what we need.

How about a Ladybird based browser?

Never mind room temperature, LK-99 slammed as 'not a superconductor at all'

Hoax

This entire spat is nothing but one big hoax. It wouldn't even surprise me if it started out as a joke to see if they could make the headlines.

IBM gives z/OS an AI infusion in major upgrade aimed in part at easing admin chores

Hate

I hate the IT business where everyone is jumping on the next hype bandwagon and adding it to their products to increase their stock valuation.

Sparkling fresh updates to Ubuntu, Mint and Zorin on way

They could

Yeah, they could come together. But they won't.

There's too many different personalities and self-interests involved. The company that conquers the desktop would win out BIG and there'd be too much money involved.

Apple, Samsung, and Intel to invest in Arm IPO, and emerge with some control: report

Re: “Apple, Nvidia, and Samsung have all bet big on Arm… “

That won't happen because Softbank is only selling a minority stake. They're not THAT stupid.

Re: Tory Britain

ARM's fate was sealed long ago, in the late 90's to be precise, when it was taken public. From that time on greedy shareholder were waiting to sell their stock to the highest bidder, no matter what the consequences.

It's just good fortune that RISC-V came along or we'd all be screwed. ARM would forever be locked in war for control by different licensees trying to get a leg up on the competition.

There's no way ARM is worth $60 billion, that's just a paper valuation. No one in their right minds would ever pay that kind of money now that RISC-V is making inroads. My guess the company is worth maybe $5 billion at the most. When this becomes reality Softbank will be left holding the bag.

Nothing to worry about

We're gonna jack up prices tenfold to ignite our stock price. Afterwards, everyone will flock to RISC-V and the bright burning candle will fade and wither.