Posts by Joey Potato

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

Dubious tape economy

This is not the first time the US Government made dubious decisions around tape storage. Remember when we all found out they overwrote the moon landing tapes?

Glitchy taxi tech blew cover on steamy dispatch dalliance

Re: Not so much over a dispatch system, but....

If they start shooting foxes in the chem lab they could!

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Re: Anyone who has a blanket rule banning GO TOs...

That is why we have the rule ... interns and junior engineers don't yet know how to program and write hard to fix bugs with them.

Stranded in space: Starliner crew to remain in orbit even longer as SpaceX faces delays

There is a reason a Navy pilot or two are selected to test new US spacecraft - those guys are used to having their deployments extended.

ESA spending €17M on spacecraft just to watch it go up in flames

Re: 200kg test system

The point of the mission is to see how a satellite meets its demise, not the launcher, so simply instrumenting the launcher would not meet the project goal.

CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made

Re: It worked on my machine!

The difficulty with staggered releases is that there is urgency to push out updates for security software. Who wants to explain to their customers that they had an update that would have prevented the breach they suffered, but had not given it to them beforehand for ... reasons. I surely don't want to be on the list for "Not-so Rapid Response Content" for my security software!

Truck-to-truck worm could infect – and disrupt – entire US commercial fleet

Re: Can of Worms

It is a bit hard to imagine that one would want to burden, say, the switch cluster in a car door with an Ethernet PHY. Even CAN is a bit much for an application like a switch cluster. That is why people have developed protocols like LIN.

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Re: Where's my share of the sale?

Well, you can get funding from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications Foundation for your project if you apply for a grant. ARDC uses proceeds of the IP address sale fund their whole operation.

Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

Re: Honestly

@aerogemns, note that both medicine and aviation go out of their way to implement changes in terminology and symbology methodically and only with good reason. While most of the rest of the world uses meters and millimeters, medicine sticks to centimeters, and the fanciest glass cockpit's attitude indicator is remarkably similar in appearance to its mechanical predecessor from the 20th century. Change just for change's sake would almost certainly cost lives.

CLIs are simply wizard at character building. Let’s not keep them to ourselves

Re: gruesome

Not nice, but interfaces are more more discoverable.

That time a JPL engineer almost killed a Mars Rover before it left Earth

The loss of telemetry was not a random event ...

... it was no Fluke.

Mars helicopter to try for new speed record on Thursday

Re: If only there were other units

It is roughly 60 kilofurlongs per fortnight

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

Re: I I be a-goin there, I be-n't start from here

Back in the days of 7 segment LEDs and moving needle meters, manufacturers would save money and panel space by using a little V/A switch instead of two large, expensive dedicated displays. If you didn't manage to blow up your project it was still a problem as the switch would always be in the wrong position for whatever test you were running, and the supply would be just beyond convenient reach to switch it.

NASA rockets draining its pockets as officials whisper: 'We can't afford this'

Never mind the rocket, why does the launch platform cost so much?

Nevermind the rockets themselves, NASA is throwing away its first mobile launcher and spending at least a billion for its replacement. It was supposed to cost $383 million when authorized in 2019. A rocket launcher IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!

Software guy smashes through the Somebody Else's Problem field to save the day

Re: Why cant you

Seals are surely the purview of marine biologists.