Posts by Mishak

'Sharp' chip inventory correction looms on horizon, warns investment banker

Good news?

Lots of cheap(er) shiny shiny on the way?

Toyota cuts vehicle production over global chip shortage

Does Europe and USA still throw salt on roads in cold weather?

UK is supposed to, but "budget cuts" mean not quite as much - and never the hill past where I live, which means tyres that "like" snow are a bonus every few years.

I do hope flying deer haven't evolved by then

You should be safe if you wait until spring 2023, as all the seasonal, flying reindeer should have landed.

All this is impacting the second-hand market

My car was hit from the side and declared a "total loss". The insurance is paying out 9% more than I paid for it 2 years ago.

Not a good time to need a replacement though, as second hand are hard to find and expensive, whilst new have a 9+ month lead time.

Seriously, you do not want to make that cable your earth

Two hundred volts between...

Sounds like something was leaking to one of the "earth" pipes, but it wasn't connected to earth. Some equipotential bonding needed...

BT: 'Quantum radios' could boost 5G network range

True...

But it's the whole signal path that needs to be considered, and this is reducing noise significantly where the signal is already very low. A significant boost in signal to noise ratio will result, making it easier to detect the signal, even in the presence of other, external noise sources.

Pentagon opens up about its database of 400 smudges that may or may not be UFOs

Picture quality

Like him or hate him Elon Musk's tweet is compelling.

Micron dangles predictable memory price agreements in front of vendors

I wonder

Does this mean that there is going to be over capacity in the near term that means prices are about to fall?

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

Not breaking the laws of physics...

But I did once work somewhere where the algorithms for a physical system were based on "myths and legends".

The system worked much better when I explained the physics (mainly basic geometry and switching power supply theory) to them and rewrote the code.

Apple to replace future iPhone Lightning port with USB-C next year, this guy claims

"The UK Government"

The position of the UK Government is irrelevant; Apple will not produce a model just to sell it in the UK.

Apple's self-repair service finally launches after months of silence

I paid £49 to get the battery swapped in my iPhone 7, and that was at an Apple store (drop off, walk about for a bit, pick up).

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

Closest I've seen...

Was a user bashing the keyboard and screaming at the PC "why aren't you working"?

I went over and swapped the keyboard (without unplugging) with the one on the adjacent desk - cleaners had been in...

Space Launch System dress rehearsal canceled for repairs

Re: "If at first you don't succeed... you're probably NASA"

The reason there is a difference is down to the use of different development methodologies. NASA use design with modelling and simulation with the aim of producing a product that works "first time" (after some extended integration testing). SpaceX design a feature, build and test (without the long, drawn out modelling and simulation phase) - with the expectation that there will be failures leading to design iteration.

SpaceX used this for Falcon and doing the same for Starship (none of the test plans for the flights to date where required to land in one piece).

NASA's method should give a reliable, fully-functional vehicle on first launch, but the contract structure that's been used does not give any really priority to this being "on time" or "on budget"; SpaceX are working to a fixed price.

Each SLS launch is going to come in at something like $7.8B (vehicle and amortised project costs), and there are only enough parts for 5 (I think). Each flight dumps four engines in the sea that could easily have been reused something like 16 times.

Starship costs are not yet publicly available, but Elon has mentioned $2M per launch; even if they is off by two orders of magnitude, it will still make SLS a very expensive launch vehicle.

SpaceX launches first totally private mission to the International Space Station

Re: A pool in a space station

With an "interesting" failure mode when the spin stops ;-)

GitHub explains outage string in incidents update

It was MySQL, with the resource contention, in the database cluster

Has someone released a modern version of Cludo?

ITC judge recommends banning toner imports that infringe Canon's IP

New law needed?

To prohibit price gouging on consumables.

Client demo in 30 minutes. Just what could go wrong?

Re: What's in a name?

Worse still, the ones that are in but only work when pulled back a bit.

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

"experimental"

Nobody tries out stuff like this in different parts of the GUI unless there is a requirement - or do MS not develop to requirements?

It's a bit like 150,000 soldiers rolling up to your border "for exercises".

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

"it's too small for your cat to sit on"

Written by someone who doesn't own a cat? Mine can quite happily sit on a postage stamp.

Reg reader rages over Virgin Media's email password policy

The best password is the one you don't remember

I've used 63 random symbol WiFi passwords in the past - ok until you need to enter it manually on some device...

Browser password generators

The password generator built into Safari often fails on websites with these crazy policy.

I was on one the other day that agreed that the one that was automatically created was "very strong", but it wouldn't allow it because it was "too long".

Where are the (serious) Russian cyberattacks?

"discussing the 'swissification' of Ukraine, but we weren't"

Surely only the Ukrainians have the right to discuss that with Russia?

"Putin may not be insane"

Citation required.

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

RD-180 Engines

Russia has also announced that it will not be supplying any more engines (which get used for military flights, among other things) to the US. Support for those they already have has also been withdrawn.

Work was already under way to replace them (someone pointed out that it probably wasn't a good idea to have the defence of your country dependent on a hostile nation - duh! Really?), but the program is running late...

Updated to add:

Reported by Reuters

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Or if you have a user who "knows what they are doing"

rm -rf .*

Cisco warns firewall customers of four-day window for urgent updates

Server load

Let's hope the download server can take a bit of a beating over a short time window...

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

Not to mention a reference

Nah, references are C++

Your data centre UPS could feed power to the smart grid, suggests research

Could be another contender for a Virtual Power Plant

Provided it means there will always be enough power for the UPS to do its main job.

Octopus Energy in the UK have already teamed up with Tesla to provide a VPP (Tesla Energy Plan), with consumers getting charged a much lower rate for electricity for joining the program, so it looks as if everything is in place to make this happen.

Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites

"any satellite that dies in its final orbit will last much longer"

Only if it fails completely, as they are de-orbited (in a "controlled" way) when they reach end-of-life.

UK.gov threatens to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

"make it easy to identify foreign bot accounts"

Will the law require the sites to age verify everyone, or just those in the UK?

Chip shortage: Buyers sign multiyear, no-take-back deals to secure supplies, says NXP

Re: So now they do them?

Isn't that where distributors are supposed to fit in, as they can aggregate orders?

Working in Arm's engineering team? You're probably happy with your pay rise

Or

Book an afternoon off and roll in wearing a suit.

Website fined by German court for leaking visitor's IP address via Google Fonts

Re: My bank doesn't require JS

A few years ago, I was shown a First Direct investment platform that would only work with Internet Explorer, and then only in IE6 compatibility mode. You just can't make it up...

The way things are going...

He may "accidentally" get pushed on top...

UK government told to tighten purse strings or public will have to foot the bill for nuclear decommissioning

Re: why can't they just do some upgrades instead?

The problem with the AGRs is that the graphite core has reached end-of-life in four reactors (2 closed, 2 closing this year), with the others getting closer. There is no practicable way to replace the graphite. The reactors have all run well beyond their design life as it is.

There was a proposal to build a Thorium reactor at Wylfa (an old Magnox site) and use it to extend the life of the generators and transformers, but it was not possible to get funding.

Re: The Lakes with Simon Reeve

That's in the "legacy ponds" that are related to the early days of the nuclear weapons program; all that was important then was recovery of plutonium.

Things are much better when you look at current spent fuel processing and reactor decommissioning. BBC 4's "Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield" gave some great coverage of this.

Instant Ump: HP Inc's subscription ink services hiking prices from next month

Do you have to use HP ink?

I've not looked into how the printers work, but someone needs to start a group action to require HP to allow the use of other inks if this is the case...

Do you know what TikTok is? Then you might make a good magistrate, says Ministry of Justice

They would need to be able to demonstrate ‘good character’

Enough said?

Machine needs more Learning: Google Drive dings single-character files for copyright infringement

Surely a USB drive ... for backups

I guess it depends if "off site" is important to you.

Apple preps fix for Safari's web-history-leaking IndexedDB privacy bug

csam

I think you should be ok (for now), as I think it's been delayed?

Lots of new toys, caps lock still stuck on: ONLYOFFICE hits version 7

Re: I hate to bow to The Great God M$...

I just gave it a try under MacOS with a large ODT document. Whilst it managed to render the main content, it completely messed up the formatting:

1) Page numbering (in a table within the footer to control the position) was not shown.

2) Page headings (is a table within the header so they are displayed rotated within the margins) was missing.

3) The correct font was used, but the wrong face.

4) Character and page styles seem to be ignored completely.

Mind you, from memory this is what Word does when it imports the same document, so the "compatibility with Word" seems to be there ;-)

The pdf export is also inferior to that with LibreOffice (no TOC generation, ...).

A pity, as the user interface looks reasonable (on a quick play).

Arm rages against the insecure chip machine with new Morello architecture

The problem with C and C++ (possibly to a lesser extent when well implemented), is there is virtually no runtime error checking. This means it is very easy to run off the ends of something like a C style array, as these are accessed (at the machine level) using a pointer (possibly with an offset).

I have for years thought it would be beneficial if the CPU had registers dedicated for pointers, so that automatic protection could be built in that would do something like trigger a hardware trap if the pointer ever held an invalid value. For example, the pointer "register" would include the upper and lower bounds, so that any dereference of the pointer value would lead to an exception (hardware or software). This would obviously require some work within the compliers and would really need pointer provenance adding to the relevant language standards.

The real issue with the way things are is that programmers know what needs to be done, but it is very, very easy to make one or two mistakes when working on large, complex applications where the combinatorial explosion of control flow paths means it is not possible for a human or analysis tool to be able to detect all possible failures. Lots of explicit bounds tests can be added to try and stop them, but that can lead to serious runtime performance penalties.

Japan solves 5G airliner conundrum: Keep mobe masts 200m from airport approach paths. That's it

Re: Protectionism ?

Isn't the real issue that they will only be allowed (by regulation) to make Cat I approaches, so they will have to divert to their alternate if the weather is poor?

In reality, this may mean that the departure is delayed or cancelled as diversions incur costs and result in aircraft being out of position.

UK government backs away from proposals to remove individuals' rights to challenge AI decision making

Just another nail?

Seems like this government would like to remove the powers from anything that has the ability to challenge them or find against them (ICO, courts, ...)

Added: Whilst at the same time selectively "dis-applying" laws that they themselves have introduced (I'm looking at you, Boris).

When ERP projects go awry: Surrey County Council incurs £3.2m additional costs in delayed Unit4 project

"There is an additional cost because specification has changed"

When will they learn?

Nothing's working, and I've checked everything, so it must be YOUR fault

How does BT actually make any money?

By charging too much?

Blue flash

That would be the time an engineer moved a 1000A, 80V PSU (about 1m x 1m x 2.5m) without unplugging it, which ripped the three-phase socket off the wall, causing the phases to short together. Luckily, the protection for the circuit kept the bang reasonably local.

Another time, the same guy was having trouble getting some thermocouples to stay in place on a power board (open) he was working on (it was connected to one of above PSUs, but it was only set to 48v). He decided that a large lump of solid brass would do the job, so put it on top. The PCB was a charred, smoking mess by the time the block had stopped jumping in the air and throwing molten metal in all directions...

Indian government tells Starlink to refund pre-orders placed before licences approved

When is Musk ever expecting to see a profit from this?

Not until Starship is operational and can launch huge numbers of satellites in one go.

IBM bosses wrongly sacked channel salesman after Tech Data joint venture failed, tribunal rules

No one ever got sacked for buying selling IBM.

Remember Norton 360's bundled cryptominer? Irritated folk realise Ethereum crafter is tricky to delete

Glad I dumped it...

It caused enough battery drain without it doing so intentionally.