Posts by Charlie Clark

Re: he expects the major restructuring work to be done this week

Personally, I'm hoping it will soon become just a historical footnote. But, much as I dislike the antics, I suspect Musk knows exactly what he's doing, If he can bankrupt the company, he will probably be able to walk away from his debts. Bankruptcy might become inevitable if revenue declines and key workers have left the company on their own.

You can also, allegedly, disable them remotely. You know, out with mistress IT trainer and the car suddenly slows to a stop and the doors remain locked and a notification appears: you have five minutes to approve the emergency IT budget…

Re: Waste El-Reg Space

Telegram was popular in places with strict censorship long before it was discovered by the freaks. I think they were attracted primarily by the size of the groups and channels, which other services couldn't offer at the time, along with the robustness. Personally, I see receive almost no spam on it, and our local computer group has a low tech bot that keeps spam almost down to zero.

I've yet to see an ad on Telegram, though I know they're now techically possible, but funding seems to be biased subscriptions from heavy users. I suspect I and many others would drop it as soon as ads appear.

A bigger risk for any of these services, is how much data they actually store on their servers and who can get access to it. Telegram has been the source of much ire from governments for refusing to divulge any of this, though it has always agreed to act against certain types of communication. Protecting free speech inevitably means providing some room for the freaks so that others can still be heard.

Re: Too many paid too much

My understanding is that there have been no injuries associated with Waymo vehicle. This is due in no small amount to the practice of defensive driving: if in doubt, stop. As locational data is essential for the things to work properly, they must be driven in real places in real conditions (topography, lighting, unknown objects, unpredicted movements, etc.). This should be under supervision for as long as it takes.

The market going forward for vehicles will be dominated by a leasing or taxi model as this is a more efficient use of capital, especially when meatware is no longer required.

Re: $4 million a day isn't salaries.

It's a fantasy figure based loosely on last quarter's numbers. Basically, Musk is trailing the bankruptcy as inevitable. Bankruptcy will get him out of the debts and the WFH orders will reduce severance payments.

Re: Boeing, Boeing ... gone

But this is the FTC we're talking about: throw it some nice words and it rolls over and wants its belly scratched.

Re: Can they also stop ...

In pubs the aim of loud music, and salty snacks, is to get you to drink more.

In other environments, the idea is generally to improve the mood by providing a "bed" over either the warehouse like silence or irregular clatter of people and equipment. Personally, I do find that music that is just about audible does help me ignore external sounds such as traffic, because the brain tends to focus on it.

Re: The problem is usually with printers Linux never had drivers for...

I think that depends a lot on the printer and whether the manufacturers package the drivers for high resolution nicely. As long as the printer does PCL or PS then you should be okay. But an awful lot of cheaper printers rely on things like GDI. Ghostscript and CUPS do a fine job in monochrome but are generally shit in colour, and they're a real resource hog. You can blame the manufacturers to a certain degree, but virtualising the GDI shit would get better results.

I've currently got a Samsung MFP (HP inside) connected to my Mac that I'd like to put on a network with a spare RPi. Now, there is a Linux project for this kind of thing. Unfortunately, it's fairly x86_64 specific with support for ARMv7 missing the last time I looked and installation was the usual kind of mess on Linux. Fortunately, however, there is also a BSD package that's supposed to do the same thing and I'm going to give this a try when I have few spare hours. Even more fortunately, I only want to do this to reduce clutter.

Re: Oh, we know the value.

It's an unfair auction because only the advertisers know how much the other side is prepared to pay and, sooner or later, they always win: see Netflix.

Re: How big a backlog of 737's & A320's in time is?

It's not really a backlog. Many of the orders are for future delivery, for future demand. They can, and often are, cancelled if/when the market changes.

Re: It had to happen

Nonsense: Berlin's market was in turmoil long before the cap on rents, not least due to the privatisation of very large areas of social housing by the council looking to make some quick money, again. Then came the AirBnB "revolution", which has priced a lot of people out of the centre of the city.

Your comment about your friend suggests that the rent was already too low when she bought the flat: caveat emptor, especially on buy to let properties. Either that, or you're talking shit.

Germany is short of flats in many large cities and planning regulations are, indeed, part of the problem. But a far bigger problem has been the loss of social housing and rising prices due to lax monetary policy.

Re: Which makes me wonder

Zuckerberg retains over 50% of voting rights…

Re: More proof

If he said the other week we shouldn't trust the numbers, why should we trust them now?

Re: Daft

Not as much as closing many nuclear power plants for maintenance…

You mean completely reengineer its aerodynamics and centre of gravity? Nothing simpler…

Re: Crumbs, why so angry

To be fair, the article does spend a lot of time talking about the problems of MFA when it really means a combination of certain implementations and social engineering. Uber, not known for any kind of best practices, is also not necessarily a good example.

Tar pits, where delays between attempts grow, are a good way of dealing with any kind of bombing and are standard on many systems.

Re: not a bad idea

Yeah, simple, stupid ideas are always great…

Unions in America are a mess, and the teachers' unions are possibly the worst, but that doesn't mean that the system isn't a mess as well. PISA scores in America are abysmal and literacy is below G7 average. Somehow, I don't think teaching creationism is going to help.

Re: Don't the other investors get a look in?

Don't forget that losses can be offset against tax liabilities. This is one of the reasons for "going private". If this wasn't the case probably only a fraction of the deals would happen and, while that might not be such a bad thing, that's the world we live in.

So, Elon, just close it take the hit and start something similar with what's left after the bankruptcy.

Re: Use inclined solar panels

"Larger" doesn't quite cut it. Woth 44% less light in the first place, having the panels in an optimum position is essential.

Re: too bad

Given that AVIF is based the lossy AV1 codec, it shouldn't be expected to be the best lossles image format out there. But I suspect that well over 98% of people's imaging requirements involve lossy compression, I don't think most people will notice let alone care, especially with hardware acceleration, even if that means more 8k cat video frames.

And why doesn’t the whole buisness model collapse?

It generally does but only once the way through the courts has been exhausted.

"Disruption" has been the mantra of Silicon Valley VCs for the last twenty years and is generally based upon pursuing unregulated markets as long as possible but making sure you cash out just in time.

Re: The Boss got off lightly

Yes, but that was a government contract and not a fair comparison. On governement contracts, the minimum fiddle is £ 1 million.