Posts by fg_swe

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

The Americans realize Telegram has been eating their business.

Noone needs U.S. Marxists censoring willy nilly. People moved off US platforms en masse.

Telegram founder and CEO arrested in France

Re: PRAWDA ?

During the Covid Operation, it was crystal clear that outlets such as NYT were mouthpieces of BigMoney, BigPharma and so on. No proper journalism whatsoever, instead rather silly propaganda in support of the PharmaMafia.

Freedom Internet Technology

+ Linux

+ xBSD

+ DeltaChat

+ Bittorrent for video distribution

+ Personal Web Server on an RPI at the DSL modem

+ LibreOffice

+ GNUpg for secure communication

+ Rumble Video sharing, uncensored

+ Bitchute Video sharing

PRAWDA ?

You prefer the New York Prawda ("NYT"), eh ?

CIA $hitting Their Pants

By means of the CISA shell they tried to censor the h3ll out of the internet during the Covid Scare, aka. GATES Cr4p Selling Operation.

https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/new-report-reveals-cisa-tried-cover-censorship-practices

https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

Telegram was then one of the few Free Speech Platforms. Highly valuable.

Now CIA leans on Paris to harass Durov.

Windows 11 Insider preview brings new Sandbox features and fatter FAT32

Useful Sandboxing

What is still missing is a *useful* sandboxing concept for MS Office and similar software.

For example, an Office Script's effects should by default be limited to the file itself. Especially when it comes in from a different organisation by Email or messenger. Office should never be able to touch unrelated files such as C source or CATIA drawings. Users should be able to Label files according to security aspects. Database connections should be off limits for Office scripts, except when explicitly turned on. Office script code should be cryptographically signed by the author, such that only "in house, approved" scripts have serious powers to do damage.

"CompanyConfidential" labelled files should not be accessible to scripts of external or unknown authorship.

But I guess we will need to see several more rounds of encryption attacks before MSFT gets this done. Too many customers will buy their wares no matter how craptastic they are. As long as they look polished.

Kaspersky says Uncle Sam snubbed proposal to open up its code for third-party review

Migration Weapon

Then they want to use Arab migrants to destabilize the EU, in true KGB thug fashion. Three days before KGB man PUTIN claimed he "wants to preserve Europe".

A little thug he is. No principles except raw power.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/11/world/belarus-poland-border-migrants#tensions-escalate-at-the-poland-belarus-border-as-migrants-face-dire-conditions

Plus: ABC Weapons

They also like to use ABC weapons against their traitors, in very dangerous ways. This already killed two innocent British citizens, because they disposed of the weapon in a highly unsafe manner. True Russian bumbling.

It Is Very Simple

There is a war ongoing in Ukraine, somewhat similar to Korean war. US weapons against Russian weapons. Two power centers duking it out.

Even if Mr Kaspersky is totally no longer a KGB man, some of his employees will be KGB and GRU assets. Even if he does not know, they can insert backdoors or use the gathered data for purposes of the Russian state.

Moscow threatens nuclear Armageddon weekly. They apparently want to kill more people than have died in Hiroshima, Dresden, Tokio, Hamburg and so on. Also, they like to complain about "Fascists", all while acting like such.

So, find a truce and then a peace and we can use your products again. Until then, no chance.

Getting up close and personal with Concorde, Concordski, and Buran

Transportation

In theory, almost each and every German village can be reached by train+bus. Google Maps knows the schedule. In practice, you should always assume unexpected delays of 2 hours or more for 5 hours of travel. And overcrowded trains, even ICE. Bad organisation.

So using the car is in most cases much more comfortable. Traffic jams can and do happen, though.

For airline travel to Swabia, Stuttgart is the main airport, but Karlsruhe+RyanAir is prolly cheaper.

From Paris and London you can use the TGV/ICE/similar.

You can combine all of these options by car renting.

Re: Eating Tips

If you are lucky it's two beers. 25 for proper lunch, 5 for a beer in the best case.

Of course you can use the butcher route, then it's just 15€: 10 for the lunch and 5 for six bottles of ALDI beer. Just don't buy much more at Aldi.

Or Maybe

It was typical Russian recklessness. If you want to rule an empire of unparalleled size, you must be able to take serious risk. There is a fine line between calculated risk and being reckless.

The Russians know that perception sometimes is more important than facts, when it comes to politics. This works often, but sometimes it fails.

Recently a russian test pilot flew a Sukhoi SuperJet into an Indonesian mountain, despite the ground-collision warning system alerting him. The dead prospective customers (who were in the plane) convinced the survivors not to buy the plane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Mount_Salak_Sukhoi_Superjet_crash

Google Translate

Whenever I visit France, GT is invaluable for me. I assume the same is true for English speakers in Germany, even though many basic words are almost identical to English (Arm, Finger, Hand etc).

Make sure you have a working SIM card in your smartphone, so that you can use GT and Google Maps.

Car Navigation is also best done using GM, to easily get around plenty of road building sites.

Re: Bavaria: Deutsches Museum

Been there, friendly soldier-guides. But this is in Prussia, far away ;-)

Eating Time, Bakeries

Proper German Gasthäuser are only offering meals between 11:30 and 13:30 and then usually from 17:00 to 21:00.

Only low quality fast food and prolly asian meals can be obtained at other times.

Breakfast you can get at local bakeries, also much better than fast food places. Use Google Maps ("Bäckerei", "Konditorei").

Cakes are also an important part of German eating. You usually go to a Bäckerei or a Konditorei from 14:00 to 18:00 to have a coffee and a good piece of cake. E.g. Käsekuchen(Cheese cake), Apfelkuchen(Apple cake), Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte(Black forest special with a bit of alcohol), Frankfurter Kranz and prolly 20 more types of cakes. Highly recommended.

When you are hungry "in between", I suggest buying a German sandwich (belegtes Brötchen) with Butter, Salami, Pork/Schinken or Cheese. The bakeries have them usually on offer or can make them on demand. Take the Vollkornbrot (full grain oat, dark-looking) as bred. Healthier and will keep you non-hungry for a longer time.

Re: Eating Tips

During lunchtime (11:30 to 13:00) many butchers offer "Mittagstisch", which is similar food as described above, but at much lower cost (10€ or so). You take it away and eat it e.g. at the autobahn parking site.

Definitely better quality than what you can get at almost same cost at fast food places.

Google Maps (query: "Metzgerei" or "Metzgerei Mittagstisch") can find you these butcher shops quite efficiently.

Autobahn restaurants are low quality and high priced compared to that.

Eating Tips

I suggest not to eat inside the Museums, as they are expensive and not the best quality. Also, town centres are often not the right place for good food.

Rather, enter "Biergarten" into Google Maps and drive a few kilometers to that location.

Then order something like

+ Schweineals (Pork) with Spätzle(Noodles), Bratensauce and Salad

+ Maultaschen

+ Rostbraten and Noodles or Knödels

+ Gulash from deer (Hirschgulasch)

+ Sauerbraten with Spätzle

+ local Beer

+ local fruit juice for the children

That will cost you about 35€ per person.

Bavaria: Deutsches Museum

This museum attempts to display all German(and some foreign) technology achievements from aircraft to Zuse computers. In Unterschleissheim they have an additional aerospace section with Tornado, Phantom, Mig 21, Do 31, Ariane rockets.

More Great Technology Museums in Swabia

+Dornier Museum in Friedrichshafen. It houses an aircraft which leads its class since the 1970s, the Dornier 31 VTOL transport.

+Daimler Museum in Stuttgart. The entire history of the inventor of cars.

+Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. History of Porsche and Volkswagen, minus the Tiger tank ;-)

LLM-driven C-to-Rust. Not just a good idea, a genie eager to escape

Re: Learning Takes A While......So.........

Hamburger recipes are shorter than those for Rinderroulade with handmade noodles ?

Re: Hey ChatGPT - pirate this app for me

That will be true as soon as the LLMs are more than worm-sized brains. Think of cat-sized brains with 1 billion neurons.

Re: Unix on acid

I guess it is a reference to California to be on the left side of most maps. And their desire to "innovate" in social things, most of which would now be called insane.

Re: Hoare: Fortran->Memory Safe Algol

That was OpenSSL, IIRC.

Also, how could a single guy change centrally important cryptographic code is a mystery to me.

But I guess it can be explained by "economics".

Re: Automate the testing

This could definitely work for safety-critical embedded systems, which must have such test batteries on all V-Model levels from Unit to System.

Re: FALSE

There would be lots of illegal copying of SW in industry and commerce without dongles.

Hoare: Fortran->Memory Safe Algol

He did this transpilation (using classic compiler technology) for customers. They then complained that their "perfectly working Fortran programs" experienced Index Errors.

In other words, people (including engineers and scientists) are lazy folks(like everybody else) who do not want to hear about the bugs in their "proven" systems.

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare/

Last time I used SUN Solaris make(2012 or so), it crashed with a memory error when the Makefile became "too big". Other Unix tools have been reported to be full of memory errors when they were first run under valgrind. So everybody is affected.

Real World Results ?

Has anyone done the LLM-based C->Rust Transpilation yet ?

I am at this point also sceptical, because ChatGPT failed miserably to create a correctly working Enigma for me. It created code that compiled and looked correct on the first sight. But on close inspection it missed the odometer style rotor mechanics and it incorrectly performed the "reverse signal flow".

Add: found this: https://galois.com/blog/2023/09/using-gpt-4-to-assist-in-c-to-rust-translation/

FALSE

I am actively using an automotive R+D software package that costs about 20k Euros per seat (Vector CANoe). It's dongled via Vector's CAN Adapter.

Similar things can be said about Lauterbach Trace32 debugger, the WinDriver(WindRiver ?) compiler and many other automotive SW engineering tools.

Vector seems to be thriving, when I look at their buildings and when I visit their cantina.

Intel's processor failures: A cautionary tale of business vs engineering

European Sluggishness in Information Technology

There were quite a few projects in Europe using Transputers. For example DAIMLER had an autonomously driving car in the early 1990s controlled by Transputers.

But there is no Industrial Policy in computer technology to speak of, while in the US CIA/Pentagon will ensure funding for promising startups such as Google, Facebook etc. HP was probably also a Signal Corps creation, back then.

What is needed is Airbus-style financing, developing, producing and marketing of such projects. There is plenty of scope, given Hambuger Technologies such as C, Unix and the Webbrowser/JS contraptions.

Inmos Inter CPU Links

I recall the inter processor links were rather slow TTL style links. No transmission lines. The problem is, parallel computing needs the highest speed inter CPU links you can think of, to be useful.

"Some"

In the IT business, Europe is mainly a failure. Civil Aerospace is excellent with Airbus. Cars are kind of OK. Generally industry is hit hard by insane energy policy. Krupp currently dying. That was once the heart of German industry.

But then, all of the "western world" has a truckload of strategic problems, like not having children and insane immigration practices.

Russia not better, they decided to worsen their similar issues by killing hundreds of thousands of men in a pointless war. A case of Imperial Butthurt.

Core Python developer suspended for three months

Welcome to Communism

It only works by controlling the Information Sphere. All commie nations have a secret police who will crack down on anyone who exposes the elite commie corruption.

And of course the NATO commies want to introduce this by stealth.

Soviet Of Python

So they essentially want the power to fire people INSIDE their little Python soviet ? No need to ask the plebs.

"arseholes"

So anybody with competence should be "cancelled" ? So that the insane NATO Communists and their oligarch backers can rule undisputed ?

"Shut Up"

In order to have oligarchs ram their agenda through, eh ?

Did you take the GATES $hot ?

DARPA suggests turning old C code automatically into Rust – using AI, of course

Re: Completely Wrong

You can write quite efficient code in modern memory safe languages; the problem these says is uneducated, self trained programmers developing software.

Combine that with feature creep and even less qualified managers and programs becone 10000x less efficient than possible.

Re: Not Magical - Sappeur

Type systems indeed sometimes force software engineers to use a different, often safer approach.

Re: Anti-Modular Feature C Preprocessor

Dont really get your point. M4 can run on any computer providing a Posix Api with or without shim ala cygwin. I assume it runs on zOS, too.

Re: Memory safety is a design issue

Heap allocation is neither hard realtime nor provably available. Consider heap fragmentation.

As pointed out in other comments, C++ has become a bit safer, but by no means fully memory safe. Just consider the accidently thread-shared global object problem.

Re: Ada

Actually Ada worked flawlessly in Ariane V first flight. It reported a variable overflow, instead of marching on. As written above, modern testing techniques will trigger such exceptions. Then software engineers can investigate the root cause and fix them. Which is exactly what you want from an engineering POV.

Compare that to C++ or C, where variable over- or underflows will go undetected until "funny behaviour" results. (Yes, I know you can bolt on range checking in C++, but Ada has it built-in)

80 years ago, IBM gave Harvard University one of the world's earliest computers

Re: Konrad Zuse

https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=613

Konrad Zuse

He designed and built digital computers in the same timeframe (or earlier?) without any knowledge of Anglosaxon efforts.

First mechanical, then relais based. After the war tubes and finally transistors.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(Rechner)

These computers were used for airfoil construction calculations.

The relais were supplied by the General der Nachrichtentruppe. Not sure about funding, but a good guess is OKW.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

Infineon announces layoffs as Q3 results disappoint

Re: Deindustrialisation

https://www.wsj.com/articles/worlds-dumbest-energy-policy-11548807424

After H2

To clarify: after H2 storage, electricity would be 5*8=40 times higher than in China.

Deindustrialisation

As predicted by whoever has three or more brain cells, the crazy German energy policy now hits home. The Green Maoists have killed off the last nuclear power stations almost at the same time America blew up the Methane pipeline in the Baltic sea.

Their insane "plan" is to also kill off the coal power and replace it by wildly fluctuating wind and solar. They have no clue about PROVEN energy storage for weeks and months, as would be necessary to handle these fluctuations. They hallucinate of H2 based storage, but simply don't care about the 80% or so loss from leccy->H2->leccy. Their "plan" is based on pipe dreams which are considered impossible by whoever has a clue about power engineering and physics.

After H2 storage, electricity would be 5x more expensive than it already is(due to 80% conversion loss) !

Electricity prices in Germany are now eight times higher than China !

All industries (especially semiconductor production and data centers) needed competitive energy and if they lose it, they are going to tank. But that’s OK for German commies, as they hate their own nation. The crazies have again taken control of Berlin.

AMD is a totally different business than Infineon. High performance CPUs for PCs and Servers vs. low power microcontrollers for embedded applications.

Upcoming US export rules on chipmaking tools won't apply to friendly countries

Re: So

There are plenty of corrupt customers of other power centers around.

Nations which prioritize the palace of their corrupt president over their nation's interest. They burn treasure on luxury cars and iphones for their elite. Then they complain about being treated unfairly by hard working, law abiding, rich countries. Lazy saloon commies, essentially. The U.L. BS will encourage them in their sense of victimhood.

These commies would love to make a quick buck by undermining sanctions. Thereby fueling the fire of very real war, Korea-style.

Boeing's Starliner proves better at torching cash than reaching orbit

Re: Space Junk,

It looks like Boeing is kinda OK in building F15s of various versions...

MUSK

He is getting stuff done. Unlike Boeing and similar.

Of course with each elephant there is also a big "ejection hole"...