* Posts by Pete 2

3483 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

NASA details totally doable, not science fiction plan for sending Mars rocks to Earth

Pete 2 Silver badge

Re: Won't Musk have started a city on Mars by 2033?

> stick them in the US postal system

where, upon their return, they will get stuck in US Customs for years, while various parties wrangle about how much and who should pay, the import duty.

That is, provided the postage was sufficient. Otherwise the USPS might just return them to the sender.

It would probably be better / easier / cheaper to send a science lab to Mars and analyse all the samples in situ.

NASA picks its UFO-hunting – sorry – unidentified aerial phenomena-hunting team

Pete 2 Silver badge

Just what we need

> unidentified aerial phenomena

Good! We've been looking for someone to fix our TV reception. So far none of the engineers have been able to say what was wrong.

20 years on, physicists are still figuring out anomaly in proton experiment

Pete 2 Silver badge

A smashing time

> bombarded liquid hydrogen with electrons

Although I have considerable interest in sub-atomic physics, I cannot shake the idea that current research is more like trying to determine the internal structure of an egg by firing ball bearings at it.

Bias toward office staff will cost you: Your WFH crew could walk, say execs

Pete 2 Silver badge

Re: You can't measure knowledge work

> If you are able to do that sort of thing a few times and you have a good boss you'll be recognized for it with a promotion and get more pay,

If you do that a few times your boss will take the credit for "motivating" you. You will certainly not get a promotion as you will have proven yourself to be far too valuable doing the job you currently have.

Pete 2 Silver badge

You can't manage what you can't measure

> 85 percent of business leaders said they have a hard time knowing if their staff are being more productive when working remotely

So basically they are admitting that they know nothing about what is probably the single most important parameter of the staff they employ.

Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

Pete 2 Silver badge

If a mistake is bad enough ...

> repeating the process through which it selected Truss

... it's worth repeating.

Global smartphone sales come tumbling down as reality bites

Pete 2 Silver badge

Setting priorities

In order of use, this is what my (4 year old) Android phone does:

1.) tells me the time. Including doing so automatlically when the clocks go back / forward

2.) Messaging in all its forms

3.) Web access, though using a phone for this is the last possible option

4.) Photos

5.) Maps and directions

6.) Calendar / alarm

7.) Shopping apps

8.) Home automation - or remote control if you aren't pretentious

9.) Bank access / bill paying

10.) Watching videos

11.) Contact list

12.) Making or receiving phone calls

13.) Weather forecast app

14.) Calculator

I do not believe there has been any functional improvement in smartphones for many years. Generally I only replace mine either when it runs out of puff (lack of memory), the version of Android becomes so old I cannot do stuff or if it breaks.

CEO told to die in a car crash after firing engineers who had two full-time jobs

Pete 2 Silver badge

Judge on results, not appearances

If people can deliver the results required of them (including confidentiality) while also working elsewhere, none of the companies they are working for has any cause for complaint.

Phishing works so well crims won't bother with deepfakes, says Sophos chap

Pete 2 Silver badge

Trust me, I'm a ...

> "People will give up info if you just ask nicely,"

And they will do that especially quickly if they think they are talking to a person in authority. Where "authority" can be anyone from a doctor down to a gutter-press journalist. Or anyone faking someone in those positions.

Until people develop a sense of wariness, scepticism and suspicion, this will continue to be the richest seam for scammers to mine. And it seems that every generation brings a fresh cohort of innocent, trusting, victims.

Just $10 to create an AI chatbot of a dead loved one

Pete 2 Silver badge

Dead as dead can be

> Users can pay $10 to create a chatbot mimicking the behavior of someone no longer alive.

So essentially it will be completely unresponsive to any stimulus the medical world can apply.

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Pete 2 Silver badge

Just maybe ...

> Phil's response was to suggest the user contact their facilities department and order a new stapler.

... check if it had run out of staples?

AI recruitment software is 'automated pseudoscience', Cambridge study finds

Pete 2 Silver badge

Blind testing

> trained to look for attributes associated with previous successful candidates, and are, therefore, more likely to recruit similar-looking people

So assess the applicants without looking at pictures of them!

Instead have the AI analyse what they write. How they filled in application forms. Ask them to write a paragraph about a non-personal (so they don't "leak" personal information) topic.

Lufthansa bans Apple AirTags on checked bags

Pete 2 Silver badge

Re: Once again facts and fantasies at play - once again

The article says that the issue is that the batteries in airtags contain Lithium and that the devices cannot be turned off.

It has nothing to do with GPS or bluetooth interference. Just plain old fashioned chemistry. The same as the rules that prohibit mercury thermometers from being carried in the hold.

Maybe it is nothing but security theatre. However, it seems to me that there are more nonsensical rules applied to passengers than this.

Pete 2 Silver badge

Re: Attracting unwanted attention

> Lufthansa mislays baggage, and RyanAir running ads saying that at least they aren't as bad as Lufthansa :)

I was under the impression that baggage handling was all done by ground staff employed not by any particular airline, but who were employees of the airport.

So the same people who "lose" luggage from Lufthansa flights will also be the people who lose them from BA, Ryanair, Quantas and all the rest.

Maybe people who fly Lufthansa are just noisier and complain louder than Ryanair passengers, who think of a bag that gets sent to the actual city (rather than the airport Ryanair flies people to) is all part of the experience.

Rookie programmer's code goes up in flames ... kind of

Pete 2 Silver badge

Vital detail missing

> the guinea-pig store to which Bernie had deployed the code burned to the ground last night

But what happened to all the guinea pigs?

Micro molten salt reactor can fit on a truck, power 1k homes. When it's built

Pete 2 Silver badge

> it will be in the middle of a fairly big building.

So size-wise, will this design be any more attractive, flexible or economical than a Rolls Royce SMR. Which is claimed to offer an entire power generator in the space of two football pitches? And that outputs 50 times the power.

Though I imagine all the transmission infrastructure would increase that considerably/

Hot DRAM, Micron promises $100b for 'largest chip fab in US history'

Pete 2 Silver badge

On the menu

> a $100 billion memory chip fabrication plant in New York State

Would you like some microchips with your pork?

Oh, you thought Micron was going to pay all that money?

Like the Boise facility, some of the investment for the New York megafab is set to come from funding made available through the federal government's CHIPS and Science Act

No Shangri-La for you: Top hotel chain confirms data leak

Pete 2 Silver badge

Relax!

> Asia’s leading defense conference.

Almost certainly a coincidence. Why? Because the intrusion was detected.

I would expect any "state sponsored" hackers to be far more capable.

DoJ ‘very disappointed’ with probation sentence for Capital One hacker Paige Thompson

Pete 2 Silver badge

Whose fault is it?

> millions of people who are justifiably concerned about their private information

Is that the fault of the hacker, or the host company that cheaped out on bad security?

Since the sanctions were probation and an $80m fine, respectively, it seems to me that the judge's message was clear - if somewhat naive the sentence he imposed was based, in part, on his belief Thompson will not commit further crimes.

As it is, a fine of $80m for losing the data of 100million people sounds remarkably low. That places a value of only 80¢ on each person's "justifiable concern about their private information".

Shall we see the company making good the $250million of damage done? Or was that an exaggeration for effect.

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

Pete 2 Silver badge

Free - as in "doesn't exist"

My major reason for using free / libre / gratis software is quite simple.

Most software is crap. I can pay for software - and it's crap. Or I can get the same level of crappiness for no money.

The areas in which software is crap can vary.

It can have a crappy design: non-intuitive workflows. Tabs that say Edit but that don't let you edit anything, Software that says it's OK when it has just coughed a fatal error. Software that doesn't save your work unless you explicitly tell it to.

It can have bugs. Functions that do not work. Ones that produce the wrong result. Crashes, lock-ups, windows that freeze.

It can have a crap-load of dependencies. Yes you've bought (or downloaded) product X - but didn't you know? you also need Y and Z - oh: and it only (or doesn't) work on Debian, sorreeee we thought you'd know that!

It can have crappy documentation. Stuff that was written for the beta version, when the author was young and idealistic. But was never updated. Software that was written as if it was the answers to a Bachelor's degree final exam, rather than for someone who has no clue what they're doing.

It can be slow. So slow you think it's crashed, when all it's doing is initialising. Software that tries to access a far-distant website and then retries and retries again and is still retrying when the heat-death of the universe is looming.

It can be stuffed full of advertising. Whether "free" or paid for, Popups are the very last thing I ever want to see. Although the ones that "pop up" behind some other window, or minimised, are even worse.

But even free (zero money) software has a cost. It takes time to install. It takes more time to customise. It takes time to learn to use. It takes time to search the internet for answers to problems ... and even more time to search for answers that work.

And for commercial software there is the added disincentive that apart from all the time you have to invest, you have to pay extra to even access the software to find out how crap it is.

Foldable smartphones crawl to one percent of global market share

Pete 2 Silver badge

The modern flip-phone

> whether foldables will become mainstream anytime soon? Unfortunately, the answer is no,

Why unfortunately? They are not a particularly good idea. I wouldn't buy one until someone can prove to me that the screen will be in the same state after ten thousand folds (in cold weather, with bits of grit wedged in the fold - as you'd get in your pocket) as it is when new.

Even then, what really is the point? It takes longer to access whatever you want to do and a screen that is twice the size is still pretty dam' small, yet with a greater area uses more power. And since it isn't as if the battery would fold, that will be constrained in size.

Quantum computer to be available from colo datacenter

Pete 2 Silver badge

Quantum? Pffft!

> the world’s first integration of a quantum computer into a colocation datacenter.

I know of many places that have been doing this for years. You just have to look at the rats nest of networking cables to know that entanglement is nothing new

Federal agencies buying Americans' internet data challenged by US senators

Pete 2 Silver badge

We know you know, you know.

> The Defense Department last year responded to his queries but applied a classification that prevents Wyden from making the details public.

But we can guess! Maybe something along the lines of

Dear Mr. Wyden,

We acknowledge your request for data, we knew you were going to ask that as we regularly monitor your email and web activity. If you want to know what it is that we know about you, just look at your own browser history. It's all there (though we suspect someone else has been using your computer, unless you are a fan of oiled-up bunny rabbits)

In closing, let me say that while you are now aware of this information, we have classified this report as Top Friggin' Secret. That means that the only copies are in our files, In your possession and scattered around Mar a Lago. Possibly now in Putin's dacha, too.

Have a nice day.

IT services giant Wipro fires 300 for moonlighting

Pete 2 Silver badge

restrictive conditions?

> working for Wipro and working directly for one of our competitors. We've actually discovered 300 people in the last few months were doing exactly that

Did their contract of employment explicitly prohibit that?

It also makes you wonder, how does Wipro know that they were working for them (Wipro) before starting work (moonlighting) for someone else. It could be that their Wipro gig was the moonlighting.

Still, it sounds like they have another job to fall back on.

You've heard of the cost-of-living crisis, now get ready for the cost-of-working crisis

Pete 2 Silver badge

Relative pronouns

> 41 percent complained that their organization had too many tools that do the same thing.

Should that be too many tools that who do the same thing

Wearables sales slacken as the novelty wears off

Pete 2 Silver badge

Missed opportunities

Almost everyone has two wrists, yet they are only likely to put a "wearable" on one.

I feel there is the chance for certain fruity marketing departments to fill that void.

Next up? ankle-wear for non-criminals. How about an electronic frivolity to hang from your nose ring, too?

SETI seeks amateur astronomers to find hot Jupiter-like exoplanets

Pete 2 Silver badge

WLTM HJLE

> Much better use of time than 'hot singles in your area'

And likely easier to find, too

Don't want to get run over by a Ford car? There's a Bluetooth app for that

Pete 2 Silver badge

Alternative uses

> lets drivers know if a pedestrian is dangerously close

Unless the users app is tied to a pulse monitor or something else that demands an actual living being nearlby, then all this does is warn the car there is a BLE beacon in the vicinity. Something that can be picked up cheap and in quantity. That could not only be placed at strategic points such as near to crossings, schools or other populous places, but could be put to use to slow newer Ford vehicles for any other purposes, Thus making them "think" they were always surrounded by people. (Just imagine if one of those was nefariously attached to someone's car)

It makes you wonder what would happen if a car encountered a "person" while screaming up the motorway?

Though it could have the benefit of making other vehicles keep a suitable distance from your own (non Ford) car.

Arm execs: We respect RISC-V but it's not a rival in the datacenter

Pete 2 Silver badge

Open or closed?

> acknowledged that RISC-V was driving “some competition” against the British chip designer.

> “It's a very exciting market right now,” he said.

> “It helps us all focus and make sure we're doing better.”

Which is precisely what you would expect to hear from a marketing department that was scared spitless of an upstart that threatened their very existence.

RISC-V could well turn out to be the hardware version of Linux. Whether that would be interpreted as something that stays in the margins for decades, or something that disrupts the cosy world of established CPU makers, is the more interesting question.

US bans some foreign investments in chips, AI, quantum computing

Pete 2 Silver badge

Spying in the 21st century

> consider is whether a foreign investor could undertake "activity designed to undermine the protection or integrity of data in storage or databases or systems housing sensitive data."

Is that how modern espionage works: "I've just bought a share in your company ... now you have to give me the plans to all your research!" I have a feeling it isn't quite that simple.

Or is this more about assuaging the feelings of politicians, detached from reality, who *think* that's how it goes.

Samsung investing $5b in efforts to be carbon neutral by 2050

Pete 2 Silver badge

Time to re-evaluate

> In California, $17.9 billion worth of residential and commercial buildings could be inundated by seawater by 2050,

Although I doubt they would be worth $17.9bn once that happens.

However, given the very high prices of beachfront homes in CA, that would be far fewer properties than you might think.

Ex-Googler Eric Schmidt's think tank warns China could win global tech race

Pete 2 Silver badge

Common goals

> the US urgently revise its innovation policies and practices to ensure the private and public sectors collaborate

Well, the private sector wants to make enormous profits for reasons of self-enrichment. The public sector (or at least the people employed in it) want much the same. With an added portion of recognition of how clever they all are.

So the question comes down to how much money is the USA-ian government willing to throw at the initiative?

Brain-inspired chips promise ultra-efficient AI, so why aren’t they everywhere?

Pete 2 Silver badge

Don't feed your AI any cheese

> a brain-like AI chip

The only problem being that when you "sleep" the machine, it starts to dream.

Just like when I put my phone into low-power mode, it keeps making noises like battery powered woolly grass-eaters.

Elon Musk claims SpaceX was in talks with Apple on iPhone 14 satellite services

Pete 2 Silver badge

Re: Only marginally useful

> may find this feature useful?

There are plenty of outfits thst already make satellite distress beacons which do exactly this. Garmin is one example and it works whether you have an iphone or an Android phone or no phone at all!

If you actually had a need, you would already be using one.

So no, I'm afraid all that has happened is that Apple have told you that you need something and you then rationalise a case for wanting one.

A complete victory for their marketing department.

Pete 2 Silver badge

Only marginally useful

> contacting emergency services where there is no coverage, such as an injured climber on a remote mountainside.

Providing that climber didn't land on their iphone and break it. And that it wasn't a caver with neither signal nor view of the sky

And then there's always the question of whether the battery has gone flat and the assumption that the caller can physically use or reach their phone.

In all, this just sounds like a marketing tool. I am sure they will find someone, somewhere whose life was saved by this, but I personally have never felt the need for this.

NASA picks a tailor for Artemis moonwalking suits

Pete 2 Silver badge

Robotics

> a $228.5 million deal to develop a moonwalking system

If I was developing a "moonwalking" system, I would not put a person inside it.

There will be people in the lander (capsule), but it seems to me that is where they should stay. If you want something outside, send a robot. Have it controlled in real time by the occupants of the lander.

Or better: leave the people on Earth and use Mars-style rovers. A 4 - 5 second round trip time isn't so bad. Without the need for (heavy) life support systems, the carrying capacity and return-to-Earth capacity of the craft would be much increased.

But where's the "swagger" and prestige in that?

Asus packs 12-core Intel i7 into a Raspberry Pi-sized board

Pete 2 Silver badge

Because we can?

> a 12-core/16-thread Intel processor with Iris Xe graphics into a 3.5-inch form factor.

Until you account for the size of the heatsink needed and the power supply for such a beast.

Having such a small board becomes a bit pointless with all the ancillary equipment it requires.

NASA's Artemis rocket makers explain that it's a marathon and a sprint

Pete 2 Silver badge

Covered in ... ?

> it's a marathon and a sprint

So a cross between the old-named Snickers bar and a knock-off KitKat?

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

Pete 2 Silver badge

Coding is the easy part!

> You cannot pick up a phone to Ubuntu and scream "Stop! Stop! In God's name, stop!"

And you cannot complain to any of the Word, or lookalike, designers that when you want to edit a document, that is the one thing the Edit tab does not let you do!

I am just waiting until the inevitable time when a user, looking for assistance, clicks on Help and the application just laughs at them.

The underlying issue is that designing a good interface is difficult. Making it intuitive requires talent - that almost all coders lack. And having it reflect a sensible workflow seems to be nigh-on impossible.

NASA sees our space future as both government and privately run

Pete 2 Silver badge

We do what we do, because that's what we do

> "We do Artemis for three reasons," said Zurbuchen. "There is, without a doubt, a reason to do science

> … a second one is a reason to inspire,

> and the third one is to show national and international leadership."

So how's that all going?

The H2 leaks which are plaguing Artemis and embarrassing NASA are lessons that were not learned when the same basic faults occurred with the Space Scuttle.

As for inspiration, SpaceX seems to be winning at the moment and in the future with Musk's "My rocket's bigger than your rocket"

It seems to me that all this leadership stuff is only going to inspire bureaucrats and administrators. People who can turn an 8-year project (Apollo) into a 17-year boondoggle (Constellation / Artemis) and still have nothing to show for it. Even though it was based on proven, if flawed, technology from 40 years earlier.

NASA scrubs Artemis mission yet again because SLS just can't handle the pressure

Pete 2 Silver badge

> this scrub was on the lines pumping the fuel IN to the rocket.

The worrying thing is that this (loading H2) is something that has happened many times before on this hardware. NASA should not be discovering that their equipment is broken at this stage in the preparations.

And the one part that cannot be tested is the SRBs.

Pete 2 Silver badge

Third time's a .... ?

OK, one scrub - that happens.

Twice - unlucky

but after that it's starting to look like incompetence is creeping into the picture.

Chances good for NASA Artemis SLS Moon launch on Saturday

Pete 2 Silver badge

Classic coding approach!

> If NASA encounters the same issue in the next launch, it will just ignore it.

Never test for a condition you don't know how to handle.

Man wins competition with AI-generated artwork – and some people aren't happy

Pete 2 Silver badge

> The stunning "AI-generated" images you see around on the Internet are an enormous selection bias, they are maybe the best 1% of what the tool actually does

TBF, the same applies to human-generated art, too, much of which turns a £30 blank, stretched, canvas into a £20 "artwork". However, it seems to me that what makes it into galleries and is considered "good" art by critics, is more a victory for its marketing and promotion, than of the skill of the creator.

The same applies to other "artistic" endeavours, too: acting, writing - success being largely random.

Here's how 5 mobile banking apps put 300,000 users' digital fingerprints at risk

Pete 2 Silver badge

The other 2%

> Worrying that 98% were iOS apps

Actually, as an Android user, I am hugely relieved to hear that.

Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down

Pete 2 Silver badge

Tools are what we use to get a result

> from those saying they've actually clocked cops where they were Waze markers, to those accusing the police force of devaluing the tool

So presumably no member of the public (not all of whom are happy with speeding vehicles in their neighbourhoods) has ever done the same?

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Pete 2 Silver badge

07734

> When was the last time you did some troubleshooting on 1970s tech?

A few years ago ... Okaaaay, maybe 10 years ago, I cleaned up the leaky batteries in my Sinclair Scientific calculator.

It still wouldn't work though :(

You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups

Pete 2 Silver badge

A maze of twisty little backups

Just don't create a long line of backups, each labelled "latest backup"

77% of security leaders fear we’re in perpetual cyberwar from now on

Pete 2 Silver badge

No more coding!

Software development is the process of writing faulty code.

Upgrading is a way in which new problems can be introduced into working software (even if it already has bugs).

Maybe the solution is a world-wide moratorium on software development: new O/S releases, new applications, upgraded "features" - until all the currently known and soon to be discovered bugs, flaws, backdoors, vulnerabilities and attack vectors have been shut down.

Doctor gave patients the wrong test results due to 'printer problems'

Pete 2 Silver badge

Never do this

> it is often easier to find and apply a solution than it is to educate a user

Pro tip: never try to explain to a user what the problem was. I know the urge to show off one's technical skills can be irresistible, but (from personal experience) the inner glow of superiority is brief and it is not worth the weeks, months and years of questions, queries and "how can I ... " that inevitably follow. especially as there is little chance they actually understood what you said,

Apart from that, there is a very practical point. One that anyone who has done any IT teaching knows: Teach 'em everything they know, but not everything you know

There is a follow-on rule, but I would refer you to the above.