Posts by that one in the corner

Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed

Re: BOFH tampering..

> send out fake GPS coordinates to make it look like it was

in another country entirely, one that drives on the other side of the road...

ChatGPT, write a report about database glitches that crashed you today

"Have you tried turning me off - that is all. End of Line."

Chinese defence boffins ponder microwaving Starlink satellites to stop surveillance

Re: And then Elon. . . .

Yes - tungsten gives you the best result, with a really pointy tungsten carbide tip[1] to concentrate the impact, high melting point to keep it solid during re-entry and, being high density, you have a smaller launcher that can be tucked away in amongst the telecoms equipment.

Not that anyone has thought about this seriously, cough cough.

[1] some suggest a diamond tip, but simple carbon burns nicely, as well as having the problem of joining the tip and shaft securely; nah, just dope the tip of a single solid piece.

Re: Working

> If NASA conveniently wrote it down for everyone to implement why is SpaceX the only company that has done so so far?

Um, simply because the development costs were larger than any company felt like risking at the time? Particularly as the perceived "need" for launch capacity was, for a long time, satisfied by the various non-commercial launchers.

Then we just passed the point, as has happened with other products, that the perceptions about market potential versus costs, and simple belief in the sanity of the idea, tipped towards the "you know, with this much money upfront we could actually do this commercially".

At which point, we got multiple companies all working towards providing commercial launch capacity.

SpaceX managed to get the dosh from Musk, the advertising from Musk and enough people around who could actually do the job. The key thing being the dosh.

If it hadn't been SpaceX then it would have been someone else - although we may have had to wait a bit longer for the balance to tip even further towards commercialisation of space and/or someone else with a bucket of cash to come along.

> why is SpaceX the only company

Because they got the biggest skip load of readies

> that has done so so far

others are/will come along; some company or other has to first at anything, or that thing simply doesn't happen. Nothing much more than that gloriously trivial observation.

Plus a few trailer loads of lucre.

Re: Working

China, Europe - is there anyone you aren't going to accuse of trying to steal SpaceX's designs?

Is Tuvalu safe, in your mind?

Re: @khjohansen - actually....

> For a country like China is trivial do random checks of published information

For anything to do with checking published orbital data against reality, all China - or anyone else, even the US military - need do is ask around the astronomy community, especially the amateurs.

There are quite a lot of people looking up, many of whom are interested in Starlink satellites (even if that is only to get a clear view without any of the buggers in the shot).

Re: How many is critical mass

That does make more sense: so Clooney's super-experienced astronaut committed suicide because Bullock's subconscious was just fed up with him at that point.

Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, pals proclaim 'Japan Metaverse Economic Zone'

That's the fun of HHGttG: each version is subtly different, so all the quotes are correct: you get a "ghastly", he gets a "ghastly", everybody gets a "ghastly"!

Web 3.0 advisor

There is only one way to detect an honest "Web 3.0 advisor":

He is the one saying" Don't; no, really, don't".

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

Depends upon how much hot air and/or foul smelling gas they are full of - so expect Twitter to end with nothing but a stream of Muskisms as it rises from the surface of the pond, dripping scum, until it overinflates and bursts[1] in a shower of high-velocity screaming newscasters deprived of their main source of "stories".

[1] apologies if you are eating

HMD offers Nokia phone with novel concept: Designed to be repaired by its owner

Re: Lasts 3 years

> Owned by someone else,

How prevalent is that in reality - what is the analysis you find most compelling? URL?

Re: Weird

> And the cost of this phone would sky rocket if they had to set up a custom manufacturing line for the batteries.

There are still plenty of packaged batteries being offered for sale in sorts of shapes and sizes, HMD could find an affordable supplier if they wanted to (changing dies etc for forming cases isn't *that* expensive).

Heck, doing the casing must be quite cheap, compared to the foil packaged battery inside, as there are plenty of fakes around - nice case, decent printing, filled with air and a piddly battery glued inside.

Who writes Linux and open source software?

Re: Not all big corps contribute

Apple have a past of being antithetical to open source, back in the late 80s/early 90s, especially anything that might be cross platform.

Are commit numbers really of any interest to the big wide World?

According to the article, the study and everything that draws conclusions from it is based upon one single metric drawn from one single source: commits into Github.

To start, we all know Linux isn't hosted on Github, so nothing in the study allows you to draw any conclusions on that. Yes, lots of Linux work *is* done by employees of Red Hat and even the dreaded Microsoft, we all know this, but nothing in *this* survey is relevant to that discussion.

What is totally ignored is: how much of this material being committed is actually of any use to anyone? Do we actually *care* if Microsoft's name is attached to ten thousand repos if only one percent of those are ever actually compiled by anyone other than the author? Is it one percent? I have no idea and neither does this survey.

Companies like Microsoft, Amazon et al write some interesting code. They are also in the business of trumpeting to the world that they are good, concerned citizens and just look how much they give away for free. Github has some interesting code, it also has an enormous pile of half-finished homework (aka Microsoft experimental or "research" projects) and even junk pushed there just to be able to put a pile of URLs onto CVs.

Even if you are generous enough to assume that the numbers found on Github can be extrapolated to apply to every other set of repositories on the planet, you can not say one single word about how important any of it is without knowing how much of it is actually *used* by anyone. Back to Linux again, we can make a pretty good guess at how much of their commit history is relevant to the world: use any of the counts of how many Linux boxes are out there (and add however large a punch of salt you usually apply to *those* surveys).

The primary result of this survey is - to create a quick survey that pulls down one set of numbers, sorts it by three columns and counts the duplicates, makes no attempt to do any interesting analysis that would take any effort to design and implement (was this just an exercise by someone just starting to learn Google Big Query?).

As for the main thrust of the piece: OSS as your day job is old hat - the names associated with the origins of open source are Universities, research labs like Lawrence Livermore or CERN, and groups like DECUS, most of which was work they were being paid to do. The troglodyte coder idea comes from the media in the first place, exaggerating the worst stories from the days of the Hacker's Dictionary, with no little help from people like Microsoft in their Halloween email days.

Re: This is old news ...

> They've made a bunch of their proprietary math, HPC, video, etc accelerator libraries open source

The cynic in me wonders: are those accelerators by any chance (still) coded to run markedly better on Genuine Intel CPUs, subtly hinting about what your next purchase should be?

Re: Well well

Speak for yourself.

Microsoft: For better security, scan more Exchange server objects

Compiling? Hah, child's play.

Using Doxygen[1] to create HTML docs, that is when Defender really shows what it is capable of: when I forget to flick the "temporarily disable" switch, Defender's scans of the SSD will swamp a 24-core Threadripper and make the Windows 10 GUI stop responding. No way will it let go enough to allow access to Control Panel and that disable switch! Ctrl-Alt-Del will let Task Manager be started, fat lot of use as it is then as unresponsive as every other part of the GUI.

Running a slew of VMs or Stable Diffusion in CPU mode or a few other favourite things can push this desk PC, but letting Defender guard against documentation is, so far, the only thing that has left it unresponsive: getting flashbacks of Windows 2 or 3 with a stuck event loop.

America: AI artwork is not authored by humans, so can't be protected by copyright

Re: As a slight aside.

> Maybe some of the hackneyed tropes that can be found in his plays weren't so familiar in his day

Shakespeare is just one cliche after another.

Re: Free Rein

Electrical discharge machining by kids? "Now class, while we sweep him up, can anyone tell me what Johnny did wrong?"

With respect to artworks and randomness, please don't stab the electrode into a piece of suitably earthed damp wood.

Re: Good!

But Musk is not AFAIK any kind of duly appointed agent of the Courts, so if he does succeed in his goal to kill Twitter that would be corporateslaughter?

Cause for a LLaMA? Meta reckons its smaller text-emitting AI is better than rivals

Re: Cause for a LLaMA

Dunno about Keith, but keep away from llamas unless Jeff Minter is involved!

PS Llamas are larger than frogs.

Twitter algorithm to be open sourced 'next week,' says Musk

Re: Get someone else to do the work!

Try: not expecting anyone[1] to spend any time on it, but that still gives him the same result: "it was released to the community, but nobody found anything wrong in it".

[1] although it wouldn't be a total surprise if it was picked up as (part of) someone's genuine research project, but that'd take ages - years - to publish properly done results, until which he still gets his "nothing bad found".

> Problem is that peoples opinion vary on whether something meets that criteria

Which does not invalidate any of the arguments for working against the propagation of hate speech.

There is and always will be arguments over precisely where to draw the line - which is one of the reasons why we have courts and the whole jury of your peers setup[1].

[1] if you believe your setup is dysfunctional then this whole discussion about controlling hate speech is moot to you anyway

Get someone else to do the work!

> "Prepare to be disappointed at first," Musk tweeted, "but it will improve rapidly!"

> as Musk implied, help fight algorithmic bias by inviting others to examine the code and run it through algorithm interrogation software.

So it is "disappointing" now but by making it OSS we can shift the work needed to find its flaws onto "the wider developer community".

Presumably, if no-one finds any biasses in it (because, ooh, it is too badly documented to be reliably run and tested?) that will be taken as PROOF that it is actually the bestest algorithm really, so it isn't Twitter's fault, stop complaining.

Japanese balloon startup wants to 'democratize space' – with $180,000 ticket price

Re: So? Not space!

Looking at the linked article, 1.5m diameter is correct.

Random reality check: my office chair is only 60cm across, outside of one armrest to outside of the other; if you can manage to sit next to same person for an entire cinema showing of a Lord of the Rings film, including Pearl&Dean and trailers, you will be fine together in this capsule.

Raspberry Pi Foundation launches $12 USB Debug Probe

Re: Can a Pico debug a Pi?

I'm glad that you are looking to clear up anything confusing in the article, but you could still do better than to misrepresent what was said in these comments in order to make your point:

>> As far as I can ascertain, Raspberry Pis don’t have an SWD

> Yes, they do: you can use a few pins of the GPIO interface to talk SWD to another device

Hmm, sorry, but I think it was quite clear that was only asking about using SWD *INTO* the R'Pi, as he wrote (past the bit you quoted)

>> Raspberry Pis don’t have an SWD, while Raspberry Picos do. So you can’t use a Pico to debug a Pi

> if you run OCD software on a Pi Zero/3/4 you can debug another embedded type device directly, a Pico or Teensy or Arduino or whatever, without using a separate debug probe.

Yup, no-one disputes that.

> No, you can't probe a big Pi, because it's not an embedded device

Doesn't need to be embedded to be probable! Probing it will probably make a right mess of the OS timing, so you don't want to use a probe normally - unless you are trying to get into the Linux kernel and related bits (kernel modules). Which is what the other article I linked to is all about:

https://sysprogs.com/VisualKernel/tutorials/raspberry/jtagsetup/

Re: Can a Pico debug a Pi?

More than a little unclear!

Safest to read every mention of "Pi" as meaning "Pico", it all makes sense that way.

As to to your actual question, there are a few articles on the web that discuss using a normal Pico as a JTAG debugger - can not vouch for it as haven't tried - for example

https://projects-raspberry.com/need-a-jtag-adapter-use-your-pico/

Though haven't yet spotted anyone saying they used one to debug a Raspberry Pi (the only article I know of that does anything with JTAG into a R'Pi is

https://sysprogs.com/VisualKernel/tutorials/raspberry/jtagsetup/

and, again, just read it for curiosity, can not vouch for it).

So it sounds like it ought to be possible. Would be nice to see the two used together, Pico into Pi.

Re: STLink mini models are similar in price

True enough, but:

Getting a V3 *not* in the US always seems to be way more than $11 whenever I look, especially without a company account - although there are loads of (what clam to be) V2 clones for $11. If one is feeling trusting.

This also has the advantage of being a ready-to-go, guaranteed to plug into a Pico without having to figure out if the wiring is correct, device. That is probably going to be a big advantage when introducing OCD to beginners, which is still a big chunk of the the target market: expect plenty of step-by-step articles with pictures very soon.

Heck, it is tempting to get one of these just for that reassurance, instead of worrying about whether the jumper leads have been nudged again, are they in the right order, did I really remember to flash the probe s/w, then why isn't it making any connection *this* time, mutter, mutter (sometimes debugging can send one a bit doolally).

Pure convenience, ready made cables and a nice package with the case. Plus you don't risk staring at your Pico with the probe s/w loaded and be tempted to unhook it and plug it into a new project - which then needs to be debugged...

To be honest, I wish I'd known this was on its way - and when it would be available - as I only soldered a Pico onto a convenience "probe PCB" (which brings out the connections nicely arranged) in January and that, without any case, came to more to 12 quid in total. Sigh. Never buy tech - it will be cheaper tomorrow.

Re: Concentrating on the important stuff

Important stuff?

The Pico has been far more interesting to me over the last year or so than boring old fashioned R'Pis![1] Let's be honest here, with the R'Pi 4 everyone is talking about how good it is at doing "all the stuff a normal desktop can do" so just make do with a cheap (old) desktop in the meantime.[2]

Anyway, you want them to stop designing and selling stuff that *can* be produced in the current supply climate? Let everyone else in the organisation twiddle their thumbs because the supply managers can't get hold of parts?

[1] admission: yes, I do have a few R'Pis in use, PiHole, a couple of Augmented Marty robots and the like, but mark 2s are doing the job.

[2] yes, there are lots of uses, including industrial; just getting snarky at the idea of someone bitching that just 'cos what *they* need isn't available, especially for reasons beyond R'Pi's control, everyone else must also suffer.

China's Zhurong rover may be dead: NASA images show no sign of life

Still going strong, just going down

All we see now is the shell left on the surface to collect solar power, the rest is tunnelling its way towards the American probes. We've seen the documentary:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061387/ Battle Beneath The Earth

All NASA's fault: they started the Robots With Lasers On Mars race.

I can't do that, Dave: AI drowns top sci-fi mag with story submissions

Re: To be fair to the AI...

That Wikipedia link holds true terror: the page count went up from the original 23 'zine pages to 76 in book form!

Perhaps the extra pages are accounted for by large print (to read through the tears) and blank pages (to allow a few gasping, untortured, breaths).

Re: To be fair to the AI...

> about 180 books

and that was just the period in the 1950s and '60s!

Give the AI the whole of the Fortean Times, something it can really get its teeth, fangs, tentacles and assorted frogs into.

Ambassador Kosh, must you always be so portentous?

Titanic mass grave site to be pillaged for NFTs

To take away the unpleasant taste of RMST Inc

May I recommend the EP "White Star Liner" by Public Service Broadcasting as something that shows a hell of a lot more respect to the passengers, crew and ship.

Who needs sailors? US Navy's latest robo-ship can run itself for 30 days

Re: [D]isaffected English religious extremists?

Didn't we just go over all this? Oh, yes, a couple of scroll-ups ago.

Will we get any new arguments this time? Will the Quakers get away with quiet contemplation? Will Christmas be cancelled? Just who was bullying who from behind which pulpit?

Will Burt ever really make himself invisible? Confused? You won't be after this week's episode of ... "Mayflower"![1]

[1] calling the episode "Pope" would've made for a nice pun but none of the sides in this spat were fond of Il Papa.

Re: Religion bashing?

Popular Front of Judea?

He's over there. Splitter!

Open source software has its perks, but supply chain risks can't be ignored

So the problem is *really* just lack of professionalism?

> But he added that developers and executives are often surprised by how much of their applications' code comes from OSS

Developers don't know what is in their s/w? For pity's sake, go and LOOK!

Executives don't know? You're letting your devs get away with not telling you? I thought you lot thrived on making everyone write reports[1]

> The trend toward using OSS packages isn't new. Developers have been doing it for a dozen years or more

A dozen or more? Try 30 or more! Or is he just reporting from when anyone admitted they were doing it (in which case, see above).

[1] TPS cover sheets notwithstanding

Wipro tells freshers a job awaits - if they accept a lower salary than first offered

Re: lakh

> If I said my car was 20 grand, you'd understand that means £20,000 right?

Depends upon the timestamp - later in the day we'd suspect you meant $20,000[1]

[1] Eurozone could be at any time, but they are reliably polite and put the currency in.

"Turbo" looks good on my car, what about on my project?

> "Turbo" status, which makes them eligible for a 6.5 lakh (US$7,800) annual salary instead of the 3.5 lakh (US$4,200) offered to those whose marks are ranked as "Elite" - a rung down the ladder.

"Elite", meaning the best of the best, those who can really do a good job, ranks lower than "Turbo", indicating something that - goes fast?

So Wipro admits it *vastly* prefers to be able to do things fast than to do them well? Speed is better than Quality!

Sounds about right for Wipro.

NASA: Yup, thousand-pound meteorite exploded over Texas

TM-1

> it was sensitive enough to image an Apollo landing site and the Tycho Crater on the Moon.

Well? Don't keep us in suspense! Is it there or not?

Amazon mandates return to office for 300,000 corporate staff

The offie is a natural fit for the morning Scrum Standup meeting. The pub should be reserved for afternoon planning sessions (coasters are convenient stand-ins for the Kanban)

Re: Creepy

> just see how you get on with the people you work with...

Absolutely.

Re: Creepy

> Do you know that there is a term for that? It's called Nepotism.

No it isn't! Nepotism would be if the new employer was a relative (or friend) and gave the job because of that. A friend just passing on a name as a third party is just - what friends do. It has always been quite normal at every place I've worked for managers/team leaders to ask if there are any people we know who might want to put in an application for a job, if we think they'd be a help to the team.

>> when it's totally fine for boomers and older workers to have a "network" and "contacts"?

> Kind of false equivalence.

Again, no - your network and contacts can be some of your friends as well and by the time you are an "older worker" anyone who has been in your network for a few decades it is possibly inevitable.

Re: Creepy

> I'm beginning to wonder...

I believe you have hit the nail on the head there. Not a solo attitude either, going by the approval given to the statement on what constitutes "toxic" behaviour; it would be an interesting dynamic were those all gathered together in one office.

Behold Big Tech's mightiest new innovations: Minecraft Crocs, recycled cubicles

Re: OY!

Can't afford Genuine Crocs, so have a couple of pairs of black Craux.

Unfortunately, the straps parted company from the main shoe, but that was easily fixed with short lengths of dayglo orange paracord and a gas lighter (hah! Hackable footwear!). The advantages now being that I can now easily identify the unique design and they are useful for threatening the fashion-conscious nieces: behave or I shall wear them when we go out in public!

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Re: Really?

It is the easiest way to get the paperwork in order - just update and initial that item on the standard procedure instead of raising exceptions for all of the machines.

And they probably have everything set up to do the reimaging on a pile of boxes in parallel, instead of doing a non-standard operation one at a time.

Yukon UFO could have cost unfortunate balloon fan $12

Dastardly hobbyists

> NIBBB appears to enjoy tracking its balloons as they circumnavigate the globe. Pour one out for KY9O, which was on its seventh such journey after 123 days and 18 hours of flight

Seventh circumnavigation? How many times did it cross into Chinese airspace doing that?

All the Great Powers are chasing down hobbyist balloons and blowing them (up) out of all proportion.[1]

99 red balloons is looking scarily prescient now.

[1] Oops, only saw the post above that used the same joke after pressing "submit", but I claim it is a good enough play on words, or pune, to be suffered twice.

Clumsy ships, one Chinese, sever submarine cables that connect Taiwanese islands

Re: ...and there are probably innocent explanations for the outages.

Someone mistook the cable for a "weather balloon" flying suspiciously low.

What you need to know about the real-time capable edition of Ubuntu 22.04

Re: The key question maybe?

> So a system which guarantees that the garbage collection will complete by the end of the quarter is by defn. Hard Real Time

Yes.

The only question then is whether that time guarantee is workable in your specific use-case.

RT in a Nutshell.

Ok, "by next quarter" is out at the far end of what most people consider is RT, but as we've had RT systems since the early days of computer-control and clock speeds have increased quite a bit (Hard RT - whatever that means, it is really only RT or not-RT - on a CPU clocked at 200kHz is quite reasonable) the range of response times is pretty wide. Again, so long as it meets your needs.

Another daft one: How about a long-orbit probe that needs a precise boost re-calculated by its onboard systems every time it reaches apogee - so, once every few Earth years (one of its own years). No need to rush and do it all in the last few seconds if it can done slowly as the months go by, just so long as you can guarantee that it will be ready in time or the poor thing will go flying off who knows where: that is a pretty hard-as-rock RT requirement.