Posts by that one in the corner

Who writes Linux and open source software?

Re: Well well

Speak for yourself.

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?

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

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.

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.

Re: Here's a thought, Amazon

It is hard to see anywhere on the Amazon website that has been improved by any of their inventiveness.

I quite miss the old days of seeing a list of decent recommendations on the Amazon home page; even when it went awry it was at least amusing: I was convinced that only one other person had bought a copy of (certain huge book) so I was getting suggestions for lots of maths monographs (interesting, but way above my A-level results) and just hoped (s)he was fascinated by C++ programming.

Then again, I spent far too much money when their recommendations were good, so the changes have been saving wear and tear on the credit card: that was their intention, wasn't it?

There is a significant difference for some people between doing their 7.5 hours a day in isolation or within a group (or even a crowd). Note: a group. Not "a group of close personal friends" nor even necessarily anything they'd consciously describe as their "social life".

When they retire, such people are suddenly free to spend those 7.5 hours a day in places with people around them, so, yes, they will probably enjoy their retirement (more ability to *choose* the group, for example).

But, glad to know that you aren't in any way of that state of mind.

Re: Cat ... bag ...

> It's essentially a binary decision: which of two parties...

It isn't binary quite yet in England and certainly not in the UK - although publicising that attitude is a good way to reach that situation.

No doubt there are plenty of people who are jealous of the US political landscape and fervently wish we could have a basic two-party system here. (Would put in a sarcasm tag but it really does feel like many people do really, really, want there to only be a two party system).

Re: Depends on your co-workers

It doesn't fit through an Amazon loading bay door anyway.

Re: Creepy

> and he met his future wife at work

Good for them. Hope they have a happy life together.

Re: Creepy

> If you don't have friends outside of work and you only "bond" with people who are contractually forced to interact with you

Well, as the paragraph you quoted from made no mention of "only bonding with" co-workers, nor did it say anything at all about whether or not you have any friends outside of work

> have you not considered that you may have some sort of personality disorder?

Better to look at basic, and easily solved, literacy issues before starting to cast out unpleasant accusations of mental conditions.

Re: Creepy

> You don't need to be friends with someone to do the work

True, but who is saying that being friends is a necessity?

> Making friendships at work is unhealthy and toxic. Don't do that.

> Work is for work and make friends outside of workplace.

Toxic? Wow.

But that is the beginning of a perfect self-fulfilling prophecy: go in to a situation saying "I don't care who or what you are, I am determined that you'll never be a friend and anything that may indicate otherwise is Toxic Behaviour" and guess what, no-one there will ever be your friend.

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.

> I edited the hosts file to redirect lego.com to 127.0.0.1

So what was being supplied from the local webserver you installed? Homework or just a wagging finger "Uh uh ah'?

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.

Microsoft to cap daily Bing AI queries to stop the bot delivering daft responses

Architects can be replaced by SD and DALL-E?

> People can easily produce realistic renderings of houses, buildings, and rooms with text descriptions only, reducing the need to get architects to draw and model their designs.

If those outputs are good enough to replace architects, we are admitting that the architects' understanding of materials and even basic physics is as good as in those models? As in, non-existent?

Re: Dammit, Jim, I'm an architect, not a computer scientist!

You think merely closing a road will stop the full autopilot AI driven car (or just the bloke behind the wheel, in too many cases) from following the GPS along the route map that hasn't been updated?

That ford, and many another, will continue to take its victims. To the great amusement of the locals.

employees spend about two to four hours of their time on Bard

My immediate thought was "hope they all know what timecode to charge that to", having had my share of requests from on high to "just read and tweak this document", but come the end of the month...

Besides that, two to four hours a day talking to a chatbot and correcting its responses? I hope that they want Bard to become really, really good at discussing the Star Trek Wars and whether Shadows can beat Peace Keepers. Although round about hour three, the grammar will become obtuse, the verbiage more sesquipedalian and the subject matter would be rejected from The Mighty Boosh as being "a little weird".

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

Approximately 1/4 of the UK population are Content Creators/Influencers?

Huh?

What makes a Content Creator? Everyone who posts on FB when an email would do? Do comments on The Register get counted as well (though clearly only Gold Badges are getting the big bucks here)?

Maybe I'm a Influencer and didn't even realise (well, 'Er Indoors does day I tell everyone what the ought to be doing)? Let's try: "Buy Wheaty Bits, They're Grrrrrrruel!".

Meta to add verification to Facebook and Insta under scheme that should avoid Twitter's Musk-stakes

Re: Pull my other Clegg

How good are Stable Diffusion or its cousins at generating ID cards?

Bound to have been a pile of relevant images in the training data as it was borrowed from the web...

Re: Verified ID?

I too had an account shut because I wasn't able (let alone willing!) to prove Official ID to prove exactly which corner they needed to look. Oh woe, oh calamity, oh look, I can just start a new account from which to - well, no need to go into sordid details.

But that is the Pure Genius of Meta: previously, they were rudely demanding this ID and making us feel like criminal troglodytes if we weren't even able to prove ourselves to FB. No wonder we felt frustrated and angry, throwing a tantrum[1] and refusing to hand over our ID.

NOW we are being asked to pay to show that we are Super Special, part of the In Crowd - you used to be just another random Joe Bloggs, now you can be JOE BLOGGS! You are buying a service, no longer just being the product, so of course we need your ID, just like you show it for Other Important Life Events[2].

[1] from Zuck's p.o.v.

[2] FB is for life, it'll follow you forever and ever and ever

The second dust bowl cometh for America, supercomputer warns

Arrakis?

Not something to wish for around here; the Butlerian Jihad is not going to do the average Register reader's job prospects any good at all.

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

Re: ...and just how are people expected to log into a system?

> but try getting a signature from a dead guy!

Dr Hex welcomes you to this seminar at the UU department of Necrom^^^^^^Postmortem Communications.

Antivirus apps are there to protect you – Cisco's ClamAV has a heckuva flaw

Re: The most useless software in the world

Hmm, didn't think using Macs as email servers was that popular, let alone a fleet of them.

Live and learn.

The quest to make Linux bulletproof

Re: Snap is a single compressed file,

> then n copies of libraries get paged in

Where n is the number of those apps that are running simultaneously.

Compared to k, which is the total number of apps actually installed and k > n, by quite a large factor in some cases. Yes, sometimes k = n, particularly in specialised circumstances - but specialised circumstances get specialised treatment (lots of extra RAM if it is a one-off box all the way to hand-built-OS-why-are-we-talking-about-Snap at the billions-sold-and-who-updates-toasters-anyway end of the market).

It is all tradeoffs. I don't care if Blender, LibreOffice, Gimp and Steam etc all have their own copies of all the same libraries 'cos they aren't all going to be running at once.

Anyway, all the loaded libs are vastly overshadowed by the memory needed to open a couple of browser tabs!

Re: Blockchain

Well, if not, can we put together a project to get voting control over his blockchain, make it believe that his box has always been running WindowsME, so the next update that tries to install a patch fails, triggering a rollback to last known good?

Re: Columbus UNIX

> What is actually needed for databases is System V IPC - semaphores, message queues, and shared memory

Well, not quite. IPC is only *needed* if you have more than one process on the machine (can I get a "duh"?) and they need to safely and efficiently communicate with each other (as with the term "IPC" itself we're using the old meaning of "process" and avoiding arguing over terms like "thread").

"A database" with all the ACID you could want can be run inside a single process. There is nothing fundamental in the concept of "database" that needs anything more. You can even run it as a client/server setup - many ways exist, but just having a few serial lines and poll them every now and again will work.

Of course, even on a single CPU box you're going to find that method a pain in the arse to use, especially when you start whacking on pre-emptive multitasking because, guess what, you've just implemented processes and *any* robust & useful system with processes needs IPC. Databases just being one workload that can be made more efficient with IPC (e.g. we're running local clients now and is a bit wasteful to use up two serial ports on one machine with our original implementation).

IPC is definitely required by the time you are running your database engine across multiple CPUs in one box, otherwise it'll all get very nasty!

So for big databases on big machines, yup, you want your IPC. For big *anything* on big machines you'll want your IPC.

HOWEVER leaving all that aside, the line you are objecting to was saying that the ACID principles that were applied to the problem of OS updates were those that were built into the journalling filesystems - because no-one (we're aware of) had tried to put all of the OS files into a.n other "more obviously a database". If they had, presumably that'd be replacing the "dir" command by an SQL query? Otherwise, if it exposed the normal FS operations so "dir" (oh, alright, "ls") worked then you've just invented the journalling filesystem and we're right back to agreeing with Liam's original sentence!

Most Londoners would quit before they give up working from home

Re: Cattle

BTW, I'll take the protection from even a "short-term" vaccine - and top-ups - or other preventative every time. Even the prophylaxis against malaria, which wasn't what I'd call fun but was a heck of a lot better than the possible alternative!

And even though I've had my normal anti-tetanus, I'll gladly accept another if they ever need to pull a length of rusty rebar out of me (but really, really hoping it isn't needed!)

Musk says he ain't going anywhere as Twitter CEO until at least late 2023

Cognitive dissonance can be quite fascinating

Compare and contrast:

> engineers changed Twitter's algorithms to brute-force Musk's tweets to be more visible to tweeters

and

> "maximally trusted digital public square"

Clearly, Elon has the most advanced Electric Monk available:

“Electric monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe... The new improved Monk Plus models were twice as powerful, had an entirely new multi-tasking Negative Capability feature that allowed them to hold up to 16 entirely different and contradictory ideas in memory simultaneously without generating any irritating system errors.”