Posts by Geez Money

Should open source sniff the geopolitical wind and ban itself in China and Russia?

So... China isn't an autocracy? I can't even begin to find the start of a point here.

US Air Force reveals B-21 Raider stealth bomber that'll fly the unfriendly skies

Re: B22 incoming...

Yes, just look at all the shot down F22s, F35s, B2s, etc. This is exactly how it goes every time. That's why nobody bought the F35 and the fleet is already retired. Also why we all speak Russian.

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

The B-21 shouldn't have any of the maintenance issues the B2 did. It's using a new RAM that hasn't been announced but is generally believed to be ceramic based and a whole lot tougher (the ceramic RAM project, which is publicly known, has requirements for space operation and reentry even). Ongoing cost is part of cheaper.

The B2, aside from bad completion timing wet cold war, had the issue that it was too expensive to build enough to amortize R&D costs. This means it never hit its cost criteria and ended up running well over 2 billion current dollars a piece. Then there's the high maintenance costs, the insane shelters that need to be built for it (B-21 is happy to sit mostly wherever), additional training load, etc.

Generally speaking the R&D cost will be spread over every unit when calculating the cost. That's the main driver behind each round of F35s getting cheaper than the last as new countries come in.

I'd guess the AF is happy having F35s instead of Raptors at this point btw. The F35 is getting better with each update and the Raptor's software side is a fucking disaster nobody wants to put new capabilities into because some DoD bot insisted on Ada. F35 uses C like a total Chad.

You genuinely believe you're the first person to think of this, don't you?

Re: So they finally understood the Horten Ho 229

Ok so the unpowered empty one they yeeted into a crash didn't technically kill the pilot. It also isn't a plane if we're apparently being smartasses now. The V2 killed its pilot and we know the V3 would do the same if anyone attempted to fly it. Spare me the both sides routine.

Also the charcoal was literally alleged to be RAM, care to guess what the RA stand for?

And yes, the Hortens started talking about stealth and other utter bs to try to get into Operation Paperclip, not before. That's correct but fairly irrelevant tbh. Why are we fishing for irrelevant positive things to say about Nazis? Oh right, I'm dealing with a good people both sides type.

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

The B2 probably gets F117d instead of really retired. The B1 is a pain in the ass at this point that the AF can't wait to get rid of though, and if they had enough other aircraft to cover the role they'd have already done so. If the B2 gets staycationed and the B1 retired then that's about 70 currently active airframes on the way out. The requirements for strategic bombers are currently increasing, seems unlikely to be a small run. Hell, half the point of this was to get a stealth bomber cheap enough to do big runs.

Re: Eye-watering

They named it Raider to honour the Doolittle Raid, stop being a jackass.

Re: Eye-watering

"they used b2 extensively in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc"

"Exactly my point, they didn't even use B2s!"

This bot is broken.

Re: How many more manned warplanes will there be?

The article mentions that it's capable of being remotely flown btw.

If the US lost every war after WW2 then so did every other participant lol. The US has less combat deaths in all wars post-Korea than Russia is picking up monthly right now. I'm not even American but that statement is such edgy teen nonsense. I can't think of any wars outside Vietnam where the US failed to make its initial strategic objectives (ie won) either.

Re: So they finally understood the Horten Ho 229

Ah yes, heaven forbid you watch a well researched and cited video by an actual credible military analyst who works in British intelligence that proves you wrong. You might learn something and stop being a wehraboo.

Re: So they finally understood the Horten Ho 229

This is actual Nazi propaganda from the 40s that you're repeating. Give your head a shake.

That shitty Horton plane: 1) wasn't the first design of that shape, and is predated by designs from Northrop itself, 2) couldn't actually fly, every prototype crashed and killed its pilot, Northrop's old flying wing designs were literally already better at the time, 3) the insanely bullshit stealth claims are straight up lies that were made up by Nazis, and the surviving prototype has already been RCS tested to prove it.

You are aware that the picture in the article isn't a render, right? Lmao. Serial production on the first 6 has already started.

Re: Shades of TV detector vans ?

There are about 100 B1s. I believe the intent is to replace them all. Unless Russia and China disappear tomorrow I'd guess US ends up making well over 100.

Re: John and Joan Wayne... Peace through Nuclear WAR.

Those are actually the least egregious errors in the post though. One million Iraqis being the most egregious.

I'll just point out that both the B1 and B2 are nuclear certified to do my part.

Re: Does it still show up on VHF weather radar...

I can't believe this embarrassing nonsense is upvoted. Stealth missions are literally flown preferentially in the rain for the visual concealment my guy. Maybe some early prototypes had some issues 40 years ago but I'd bet you have no clue why those radars were being turned off and are repeating a rumour.

The F117 is absolutely not detectable with 60s air defense. If the S125 could track an F117 there'd be more than one shoot down. You yourself demonstrate some knowledge of this fact by mentioning that they knew ahead of time where to shoot. Also the F117 is entirely obsolete today, including its RAM.

Re: I particularly Love the idea of “unmanned mode”

I don't know if it would be compliant to do so, but I suspect any actual nuclear drops are best done unmanned. I think the other situation is when it's unmanned because it's linked to an NGAD as a wingman, which should be a thing.

Re: There's something wrong with it.

I don't think making fun of you for using a tired and hackneyed joke was a whoosh there buddy.

Re: Just Brilliant .... Morons’R’Us on the Road to Nowhere Good and Great

Worth pointing out that the article from 1997 was based on preliminary/preproduction testing data and thoroughly debunked at the time. 25 year old misinfo is still misinfo.

How wrong is it? Let's just say B2s are flown preferentially in the rain by the Air Force, who probably would know.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0198bombers/

Re: Eye-watering

Nuclear submarines and bombers are complements not options. You need both. If you're not aware of why maybe don't talk defense because this is table stakes stuff.

Re: Unit Cost

The real gems are usually in the comments where people who write C# LOB apps are trying to sound smart by saying anything contrarian and just end up repeating stuff from Russian bots or RT.

And in case anyone doubts that, scroll up slightly with the knowledge that both "F35 expensive" (it's actually cheaper than many/most 4th gen planes due to volume production) and "F35 unreliable" (actually comparable readiness rates to any other platform) are rooted entirely in a couple interviews a fake defense expert gave Russia Today and have been soundly derided by everyone with any credibility.

Re: Eye-watering

Please please el reg commenters stop talking about military nuclear doctrine. It hurts so bad.

ICBMs without bombers are like a three legged dog at best. They're both a key part of the second strike story.

Nuclear doctrine is public, just look at wikipedia or something ffs.

Anyway this thing's main job is to be a missile truck anywhere the B52 can't go. Which is a lot of places nowadays, even Syrian militias have air defense.

Re: Eye-watering

If it helps settle your mind it's not a choice, the US is fully capable of doing both. Focus on the program you actually want to fix, don't gut random things just because you don't understand them.

Re: Eye-watering

"If only Ukraine hadn't funded a territorial defense force with man-PADS, but had instead spent all its budget on a stealth fighter it would have been able to defeat the Russian airforce"

I'll go ahead and tell you to look up the definition of deterrent again. Ukraine absolutely doesn't get invaded if it has a nuclear arsenal.

Re: Eye-watering

This take is deeply hilarious across many levels.

My personal favorite being that this is only the third or fourth most expensive plane project the US has going after ngad, f/axx, etc. Comparing annual spend to program cost is a close second.

Re: Eye-watering

Don't write such definitive statements if you're just making them up as you go along. I would suggest actually looking into nuclear doctrine and specifically the nuclear Trinity. Every word you said above is fully incorrect. Also you seem to be confused by the term "nuclear capable" which means exactly that: Capable. Its role as a missile truck for sixth gen fighters is probably going to be the most used.

Pentagon is far too tight with its security bug bounties

Amazing

Amazing how many totally false statements you can shove into one piece of propaganda lmao.

The best part is that if you actually click the links to the (highly biased) sources they straight up contradict what the article claims they say. You literally claim the F35 costs $120 million or whatever while linking an article saying it costs $71 million (the correct figure for the last batch). You also repeat any number of totally false, unsourced and unsourceable claims about the F35.

This shit is going straight to NCD This is somehow the worst defense take I've seen in months, and we're in the middle of a major war everyone is trying to write about. Truly impressive stuff.

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

I guess you're being downvoted for tone, but you're 100% right about the wages. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but in North America you do the same amount of school and go into an equally difficult job, but if you pick software you get paid double or so.

If Intel is worried about their supply of hardware engineers they should probably do something about salaries in the industry.

Intel’s first discrete GPUs won't be a home run

Re: To be fair...

This article is entirely ridiculous, implying "knocking it out of the park" means making a card nobody actually buys because it costs more than a car for the internet updoots. The *060 series has long been the most popular price point in nVidia's lineup, their performance in the current gen is pretty oustanding, and they're what actually make the money. If Intel can actually provide a competing product in terms of performance and quality in their first discrete gaming GPU they've knocked it into the stratosphere.

TikTok under investigation in US over harms to children

Re: At the risk of...

> How about taking a look at Instagram, Snapchat & Facebook?

I love that you didn't even get as far as the article's subtitle before coming in here to yell ism.

Trio of Rust Core Team members take their leave

Sorry we can't all be geniuses like you. Try to tolerate us.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Re: Nobody told me I wasn't allowed to do it.

Thinking only in terms of happy paths is the sort of thing that you expect from new grad devs maaaaaybe, anyone with a year of experience in industry still doing it is probably unemployed if I'm honest. Or at least unemployable at anywhere I've worked.

I recall an interesting stat, I don't remember the exact number but there was a fat metastudy a while back that showed a solid majority (well over 50%) of all outages that cost companies money could be attributed directly to missed error handling conditions. Even pretty bad engineers should be acutely aware of this.

EDIT: Thinking about it, most places I've worked if you didn't include automated tests for the error conditions or explanation of how they were tested in the pull it would be shut down without further consideration immediately.

Re: Nobody told me I wasn't allowed to do it.

This is a very dev-minded approach to the concept. The good testers I've met in my time understood black box and white box testing, understood the tradeoffs and came to the eng team with what they wanted to know about the system and what they didn't want to know about the system and in what order/when before a single workpiece came their way.

European silicon output shrinking, metal smelters closing as electricity prices quadruple, trade body warns

In my experience most politicians fail to realize that something doesn't magically become so by being written into the law. Feasibility, implementation, enforcement, these things are other people's jobs and therefore 'easy' and to be taken for granted. They'll just happen. Just write it down.

Open source maintainer threatens to throw in the towel if companies won't ante up

XKCD never told us...

that the man in Nebraska might get mad.

relevant https://xkcd.com/2347/

Intel ‘regrets’ offending China with letter telling suppliers to avoid Xinjiang

Re: Grow a pair

It's not really that bad of a bullet, we're just pretending it is because we're scared.

Companies have been moving manufacturing from China for easily a decade now, primarily to other East and South Asian countries but also back to their home countries. What we've learned from that is that China really is a fairly minor optimization at the end of the day, even more so once you account for the cost and complexity of moving all the goods back out when they're done, and the bullet is actually more of a bb.

China doesn't have anywhere near the lowest wages in the region anymore, the average annual salary of a person working in a Chinese urban centre is a bit over 15k USD. For an important point of comparison that's about the same as the average income in Mexico, and is comparable to or significantly greater than the average income pretty much anywhere on the planet outside North America, Australia, Korea/Japan and the EU. That's a lot of options in a lot of regions that don't require multi-month waits on boats full of crates to return the goods. Even within the EU places like Slovakia, Hungary and Portugal are actually quite competitive with China (slightly higher incomes but your goods get finished right in the EU).

Moto X probably provides one of the more illustrative examples of how small the gap can be (MSRP $400 for a mid-range phone made in Texas), and it has shrunk significantly since then.

That's without discussing the risks of operating in China, just on benefits it barely makes sense anymore. And if you want proof from the horse's mouth, look at the levers China is pulling. China is well aware that at this point their consumers are more valuable to companies than their labour, it's not their labour they keep threatening to cut off access to, it's their consumers.

Re: The funny things is.

Anyone who wants to go all in on China right now should be encouraged to do so and aggressively boycotted outside China. They won't learn until they learn the hard way. I'd love to see some of these companies that tried to fuck over workers there and consumers here simultaneously lie in their own filth and then violently implode.

Re: Learned Behaviour

I see this argument rolled out a lot and it's total nonsense.

Would a phone made in the West cost more? Yes.

Is it anywhere near 5-10x? No, it's not even 2x, I don't think it was even 1.5x. We know this for a fact because there are/were smartphones made in the USA and the premium isn't large.

Would the people in the US be getting paid more? Yes, why is bringing good paying jobs into a country a bad thing?

Would people in the US afford the phone? Well, the premium is tiny and it comes along with an influx of jobs and wealth back into the country. Your call.

There's a pretty significant difference between something some of us can directly remember and something historians are not even sure of the details on. Just saying.

Re: Grow a pair

Your slippery slope argument is not well taken. You've done nothing to show that one of those leads to the other or should, and those are a large number of situations you're referencing each of which is completely different from the other in every way.

To answer your question however? Yes. We shouldn't be trading with probably half the places you list. Exactly what response did you expect? Someone to say 'oh no, if I can't trade with those places slavery is fine!'? China is the most pressing because they're making the most threats and throwing the most military hardware into other people's countries right now. Until proof of full blown genocide came out (and to some degree covid) priority number one was Iran as your selective memory may recall.

Whoever is most likely to kill the most people soonest gets the attention. Right now that's China.

It's also pretty silly to frame it in America vs China terms tbh, practically the entire planet is appalled with China right now including many countries that do not see eye to eye with America. Only a vanishing few friendly dictators are throwing any support their way.

Re: Grow a pair

If I'm a spy that's exactly how I want to hear myself described. Keep digging over there, not over here.

So to be clear... Torturing Uyghurs is ok because if we stop it we'd also have to free Tibet? Oh no how terrible...

To be fair, the description applies to either crony capitalism or communism equally.

Re: Bully Bastards

Doesn't drawing equivalencies like this ever get embarrassing for you? I'm guessing you've also done a lot of comparing Trump to being "identical to Hitler" and other such disgusting and offensive takes? You're drawing direct moral equivalency between a tweet not any worse or more stupid than what you wrote above and raping a family to death. Meditate on that.

Trump is a dogshit politician and was a worse President, but even beginning to compare him to actual ongoing genocide is just fucking ignorant at best. You have so much to work with and this is the best you can do? Pathetic.

And throwing 50% of the American population casually in with the assessment is just the best.

Re: The only alternative atm.

We're tracking at almost exactly a 90 year offset, and it looks like the war might be over the same thing, it's very sad.

Learned Behaviour

Companies have no issue publicly kowtowing to China like this because ultimately, as much as there's some PR hit, there's no real cost to doing so. And there's certainly a cost to not doing so. Their home markets are still more important to these companies than China, if we as consumers were smarter about this companies like Intel would be terrified of pulling these stunts.

On Christmas night, a computer logs a call to say his user has stopped working…

Re: ALs?

I laughed way too hard, take your damned upvote.

Fisher Price's Bluetooth reboot of pre-school play phone has adult privacy flaw

Re: Youth of today

Not really the best logic. Something could be a frivolous complaint today but not yesterday, and also vice versa. If there are reasons to believe it might be different this time it's still a concept worth discussing.

As an example of a reason to believe it might be different, let me point out that in the past most of this moaning has been largely inter-generational where older people whined endlessly about how the kids today are different from them. Different was automatically assumed to be worse, but it was really about how generations differed. Now take a good look at the posts in this thread, is anyone complaining about the kids or their characteristics? The kids aren't being discussed at all, it's the parents. This is a matter of people looking at the other people /in their own cohort/ and saying 'jeez we collectively shouldn't have been parents'. That, to my knowledge, is somewhat novel.

And let me give you a second reason, millenials are the first ones to be raised with all this crap available throughout youth to varying degrees, and thus have a first hand knowledge of how technology interacted with their own development. This knowledge is likely to inform a stance much better than that of anyone older than a millenial. The simple fact is that if you're an Xer, boomer, etc you have no clue what kids really get up to where they intersect with technology because in this case 'I was young once too' is at best irrelevant and at worst leading you down the wrong path.

Not the kind of note you want to see fluttering from an ATM

Re: Its the graphics

> I believe developers are just more used to Windows.

Basically all CS programs teach in Linux and the vast majority of development on most platforms (including the currently dominant cloud dev) is done in Linux. Devs are plenty familiar with the OS, for the vast majority of us moreso than Windows because we also run Linux or an Apple device for our dev environment itself. I've worked in this embedded device area and while both OSes were used Windows Embedded was more popular overall for this kind of stuff because all tradeoffs considered it was usually the better choice. (edit: and to be abundantly clear, the choice in my experience was never "cuz graphics")

I know MiCroShaF$T BaD WinDOZZZZZE etc is the required attitude among the lay Linux users, but devs see two pieces of software which each have merits. Sorry we live in a nuanced world.

Developer creates ‘Quite OK Image Format’ – but it performs better than just OK

Re: Colour me impressed...

+1 every part of what you said, came in to write more or less this exact comment. Looks really promising, well done. Anything where you control the encode and decode sides (as opposed to something like a browser/server setup) could be converted today and see performance benefits and reduced code complexity. Having worked on the coding side of video software I can also attest to how many bugs would have been dodged and hours saved by a setup like this.