Posts by andrewmm

Swarms of laser-flown bots visiting a planet light years away – and more NASA-funded projects revealed

alpha is a must

We MUST go to the next star

its got to be the goal to aim for,

as to how, thats the question, this might be the way, there might be other, but we have to send something to see, its the next step!

Digital revolution at HMRC left 99,000 UK taxpayers on hold over five-day fiasco

UK GOV site in general

Just had to fill in a DBS for a job app

Used to be simple on line,

we now have the UK GOV improved site,

which needs you to use a phone app , or go to the post office to get paper work approved.

Turns out my phone with Android 9 , is not supported by the APP as its to old.

At post office, talked with the staff, seems to be happening a lot they say ,

surprise surprise, no place on the site to make comments !

Microsoft can't stop injecting Copilot AI into every corner of its app empire

yet more boiler plate email replies

Love the idea that AI can write the email reply for one based upon a document

wonder how long it is before some bright spark has two AIs responding to each other !

Broadcom CEO promises $2 billion annual boost to make VMware better at the things it already does

Everything paid for

This says it all

"to better unlock customer value "

Yukon UFO could have cost unfortunate balloon fan $12

Cost

Wonder how much the cost of keeping the pilot and F22 or what ever flying per hour is

I'd imagine the missile cost is minimal by comparison

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

TVs and cars

Purchased a Sony TV, especially so could watch iPLayer on it

2 years later, Sony withdrew support !,

now use a roku, much cheaper

The car I was looking at,

needed an app on the phone to open car door / turn it on,

how long would that be supported

Another car I was looking at , it had minimal displays, but uses your tablet

again how many years before car is no longer able to run with my tablet !

The car I have

each time it goes in for a service, it gets a software update

last one made it incompatible with the old apple OS on the phone, need a new phone !

Ahhhhhhh

Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out

heater

How long before you can purchase a blob ,that heats up the cooling thermostat when needed ?

A small heater, controlled by the real room temperature and the real temperature you want

if rooms to hot, heater turns on, and just heats heats thermostat !

or is that a business opportunity ?

Former AMD chip architect says it was wrong to can Arm project

AMD / XILINX

And now , AMD have bought Xilinx

that a have a good few chips with combinations of AMD CPUs, Memory and programable logic in them

Confirmed: Broadcom, VMware agree to $61b merger

There goes the neighbourhood

So there goes the free version of VM,

And going by past Broacom experience,

there will only be access to data / instruction / help after one has "registered" and had a "talk" with a sales person..

If you can get any data,

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

building earthed through ThickNet

No ones ever going to read this far down

but anyway

Worked in Sicily back in the 80's,

Interesting job for the local "family" , but thats another story

A large part / all there money came from European pots

one of which had paid for a lovely new building I worked in

Even had back up power , which was needed every afternoon

The two building , connected by a long path, with a flat roof above,

Laid on that roof, was the Thicknet Cable, to connect the two IT systems,

Cable nicely earth bonded at both ends to "ground"

But "ground" was many meters of sand,

All lovely, till an engineer had to move the cable and separated a joint,

resultant bang as guy was thrown form roof,

yep the connection between the two buildings was the screen of the cable !

SmartNICs power the cloud, are enterprise datacenters next?

High Speed traiding

These Smart NICs are used almost entirely

in high performance trading,

The few ns they save means a trade can be made ahead of the opposition

The trade is done "on the NIC"

which is following the rules set by the "AI"

Clustered Pi Picos made to run original Transputer code

Parallel processing

Bene involved on projects with parallel processors

including back in the 80's a big mil one with transputers,

The problem that I keep seeing , is resources

people,

Its like "RTL" design, VHDL / System Verilog etc,

these are really parallel,

and need a mind set to program efficiently

that's very different to C++ programmers.

In RTL world, there are for ever new ideas as how to take C++ and make RTL

they all have there place, but are generally "CR**" . not that good

Transputrers were fantastic

we just could not get the programmers to think parallel

as such the tools concepts were just alien to them,

If some one can invent a way to program in C++

and it run efficiently on parallel processors,

they would make a fortune,

Rivals aren't convinced by Microsoft's one-click default browser change

Windows as a service !!

Wait a few years,

and windows 365

windows as a service,

you'll y every year to rent a OS from Microsoft,

and have to use the tools they want you to use...

AMD to acquire SmartNIC and networking firm Pensando for $1.9 billion

Xilinx / AMD

so AMD now owns The FPGA company Xilinx

and a network NIC company that uses FPGAs

I see a theme here,

With 90% COVID-19 vax rate, Intel to step up return-to-office

wfh and US CV19

Two things come to mind

In US, As I understand it, one has "paid leave" per year, its up to you if that sick leave or holiday

As for WFH,

its been technically possible for decades

But, managers tend to be "older"

they did not work form home, and dont know / fee unhappy how to manage remotely

Think the entire HR industry could be "rationalised"

This despite every company talk to , productivity and engineer happiness went up during lock down working,

The only people I hear say they were un happy are HR and Snr managers,

I have even heard onw Snr Hr person say she misses the coffee morning chats so engineers must come back,

The excuse was they had to video meet with all people in lock down, and she was concerned it was being recorded !

10x prices, year-long delays... Life as an electronics engineer in global chip shortage

Last minute changes in orders

I get shortages

I dont get, how we can order say 1 million of a capacitor with 12 months delay,

and a week before delivery of the first batch , told thats its another 8 months away !

I get shortages

I dont understand how we got here

were we so close to the edge, that CV19 pushed us over the edge ?

Ukraine uses Clearview AI to identify slain Russian soldiers

Fallen soldier identification

Is it not against the Geneva convention to publicly identify fallen solders ?

There is the red cross crescent for this ..

If I'd lost my child in war,

I would want to know,

but I'd rather not find it looking on a web site,

or via an email,

AMD, Xilinx complete world's biggest semiconductor merger thanks to stock boom

It had to happen

After Intel purchased Altera

it had to happen

The Altera take over went well ( NOT )

Altera are now well behind the curve, not least due to the silicon lab problems of Intel,

but also IMHO the way Intel do not understand the FPGA business,

From what I have seen so far,

AMD are at least not fab constrained,

but have already during the take over,

devastated the Xilinx support system,

Cambodia cans critics of its snoopy Internet Gateway, says every nation has one

London internet exchange

Does the UK not funnel all internet through a government server system ?

What dis Snowden say about the US system ?

Sure, the James Webb Space Telescope is cool and all. But try making one out of Lego

paper plane to space

What ever happened to the paper plane to space

How can we recruit for the future if it takes an hour to send an email, asks Air Force AI bigwig in plea for better IT

Re: False economy hidden costs are

Military is very different to comercial

Some one mentioned the F35

that was / is COTS

Re: Big Biscuits

The equipment cost is not the problem,

in a secure enviroment , only "approved" computers can be used

You are not allowed / capable of connecting any computer to the network,

you have no USB ports,

It takes 6 months for any PC to go through approvals,

costs a fortune

and come out with so much "security" that

if your doing anything apart from typing a memo

its usless.

IR35 is the biggest threat to the contractor working model, survey finds

An old timers views

Worked as a contractor since the 80's

mainly around Europe,

Even back in the 80's

the European accountants called the UK Ltd company system as "a joke",

But

In my opinion

The Ltd company system suited those "with money"

but in the 80's

plebs like myself used it to our advantage

and those with money moved to other tax avoidance techniques

So we got stamped on

One thing I can tell you is IR35 has put the rates in the UK up at last

they have been lagging behind for 15 years

Now that's wafer thin: Some manufacturers had less than five days of chip supplies, says Uncle Sam

Bog Chips, little chips , ....

So manufacturers of chips could not produce chips on the larger / older geometries ?

or

was it may be that they could make more money on newer / smaller geometry chips,

and as a business, are law bound to concentrated on profit for their investors ?

Uhm,

No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

Protection from "bad" web sites

One thing AV on the PC does seem to do

is detect / protect to some degree from the kids going to "bad" web sites,

US distrust of Huawei linked in part to malicious software update in 2012

Enigma UK machine

After all,

its not like the UK ever sold encryption machines that we knew how to hack,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

NASA's new black hole spotter makes it into orbit

SpaceX Falcon 9 ,landing ?

Did the SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage land ?

or is that so standard now, it makes no news ?

Oregon city courting Google data centers fights to keep their water usage secret

Its a commercial choice how they cool

If they are using water / evaporation to cool ?

then they have chosen not to spend the money / energy on compressor coolers to air,

which take more energy ,

but save water

Shows the green part of there image as a falsify

Remember the 'guy in a jetpack' seen flying close to passenger jets? Probably just balloons, says FBI

Halloween balloons ? , when was first sighting ?

Was not the first sighting in summer,

Not many Halloween balloons around then me thinks

Dishing up the goods: Square Kilometre Array moves out of the theoretical and into the contractual

10 years of deign work ?

That means the electronics is already 15 years old ?

Give us your biometric data to get your lunch in 5 seconds, UK schools tell children

Finger prints

My kids, 10 years ago,

had to use finger print readers to pay for lunch ..

1984 ....

Microsoft does and doesn't require VMs to meet hardware requirements for Windows 11

Virtual TPM is evidently possible,

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.security.doc/GUID-3D39CBA6-E5B2-43E2-A596-B9A69B094558.html

They "just" have to port it from EFS to VirtualBox

Have you turned it off and on again? Russia's Nauka module just about makes it to the ISS

So launch from Uk

in which direction ?

East is best, as it gains the earth rotation speed,

but Europe might wonder about that

West is useless,

south , see East

Leaving north, o

from somewhere north, such as scotland,

or are the independent on this ?

After 15 years and $500m, the US Navy decides it doesn't need shipboard railguns after all

a good idea badly executed

The idea is IMHO great

The ability to put bang on target for minimal bang per shit is always an aim of the armed forces,

A ship , that can pop in, put say 30 rounds of 500 Kg bang each in a few minutes on target, is very useful,

The ability to not have the tonnes of "cordite" on board the ship to propel those 500Kg shells is a great saving,

the amount of work that goes into making a ship "safe" with all that bang on board is great.

The problem of ever increasing spec on this project ,

putting all the intelligence in the ever increasing costly shells was "mad" , but probably doen to us eon other projects.

then as the cost of the shells increased, the number to be purchased was decreased, meaning the NRE on each went up,

putting the cost per shell up, meaning less were to be purchased, etc etc.

Big red buttons and very bad language: A primer for life in the IT world

Flashing leds on PDP-11

Were they actually leds, or were they bulbs ?

I have memories of in the 80's updating what think was a PDP11 , to use leds in a socket that fitted like a bulb.

Does the boss want those 2 hours of your free time back? A study says fighting through crowds to office each day hurts productivity

Covid 19 and hot desks

A company I work for ,

is just implementing hot desk system, ( as ever late to the party )

the question every one is asking, is how are they going to CV19 clean each desk so its safe for a different person ?