* Posts by John Smith 19

16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

'Lambda and serverless is one of the worst forms of proprietary lock-in we've ever seen in the history of humanity'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

The 90's called. They'd like Tivoli back.

So it's enterprise management, without an actual enterprise, 'cause y'know, "The Cloud." Blah blah.

Your future data-centre: servers immersed in box full of oil, in a field

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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70cm x 70cm x 70cm is a reasaonably sized chip fryer.

Come on who is not thinking this.

Joking aside the question is how the costs stack up.

Dense, but highly cooled --> fast

But does

Not so dense, passive cooled --> cheap

Given that Google have talked about (have?) locating server bunkers in Iceland to side step the cooling bill this might not be so stupid.

However de-greasing the boards for trouble shooting purposes without CFC solvents could get messy.

A bit of vinegar with the oil could make a nice simple dressing for a salad.

Estonia government locks down ID smartcards: Refresh or else

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

"thankfully..we will have an I.D card in my lifetime,less chance now..out of the E.u"

You might like to keep in mind that Tony Blair wanted to introduce them at the time when the IRA (the last serious threat to British security) had just about put their weapons "Beyond use."

What makes you think leaving the EU will discourage this scheme?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

Now imagine that flaw being found in a British ID card system....

1) There is no flaw

2) There is a slight flaw but we have fixed it. Nothing to see here. Move along.

3) We have fixed it again.

.

.

.

n) We are invalidating all ID smart cards and issuing new ones starting Midnight tonight.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"They seem to have a clue."

Perhaps because all ID card file access have an audit trail to them?

Estonia was the poster boy for the UKG cradle-to-grave National Identity Register scheme (nothing to do with actually verifying you ID but a lot to do with tracking who you are and what you're doing for the rest of your life).

MIT boffins hope to speed up analytics with GitHub-style platform

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Oh, I thought finding the dependent variables was what scientists did as, well, science.

obviously not.

Biggest Tor overhaul in a decade adds layers of security improvements

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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No doubt the D will complain this helps the usual 4 horsemen....

One man's privacy is another man's secrecy.

One man's security is another man's fear.

OK, we admit it. Under the hood, the iPhone X is a feat of engineering

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"0.8 thou track and gap (20 micron) , "

That is rather more impressive.

"although the amount of waste from all those 'middles' seems sad."

LTCC also supports the creation of cavities inside a board and hermetic sealing lids. This is presumably the PWB way to do something like it.

"Also interesting that the BGAs are backfilled, but they haven't gone the next step and filled the whole assembly for thermal and rigidity reasons. "

Possibly. Air convection can be surprisingly effective at carrying heat (as anyone whose been on a draft hunt around an old house knows). Another option would be "thermal vias" under the BGA's just for heat transfer, as it's a shorter path.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"was manufactured with a 405nm track width"

405nm is 0.405 micrometres.

That's 0.000405 mm

The System/36 was part of IBM''s mid range hardware, so not a mainframe either.

If you meant 405 micrometres that would be about 16 mils (thousandths of an inch. Appropriate as nearly all PWB dimensions seem to use Imperial units).

8nm would be below the current smallest linewidth on computer chips.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

20 layers you say.

Sorry not really impressed.

I've been doing a bit of delving round printed wiring board tech. People were doing 50 layers for mainframes in the early 80's. This tech may include embedded (separate) or printed (onto, or into) the layer resistors/capacitors/inductors. Standard PCB tech (FR4) is usually stated as good to 36 layers.

This may be cutting edge in very expensive cell phones but has been around for most of the last 4 decades in Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic ("low temperature" is relative. It will also work quite happily up to >500c).

Birds are pecking apart Australia's national broadband network

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"Oz wildlife, deadly and tough in both sense of the word. "

Oh.

So one for the slow cooker then?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"There's about a bajillion cockatoos in Australia."

Wot? And no one's tried popping a few on the Barbie?

They sound like every other species of flying rodent, and I'm quite an admirer of the Korean rural rodent control policy

But oh dear what a glorious headline opportunity sadly squandered.

"Flying rodent tells NBN to flock off."

"Flock that. Cockatoos couldn't give a XXXX how much NBN cost"

Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Not very proffessional.

But if you're going to take down 1 account (I don't see anyone else complaining of losing theirs) that would have to be the one. A real "surgical strike" with no collateral damage.

Or as a Chinese commentard might put it.

"Trump silent. The running dog has been muzzled at last."

Wheels are literally falling off the MoD thanks to lack of cash

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"My top 3 of the most incompetent government departments are:"

And to think, you didn't even mention the Home Office...

The folk behind.

Unlimited Number plate, finger print, mugshot and DNA retention of everyone, regardless of criminal conviction.

The Snoopers Charter

10 year long asylum processing.

Inability to deport foreign prisoners directly home.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"British government can either.a competent, well equipped military and no strategic.deterrent, "

But, but,but

No nukes means being subservient to the rascally Fwench.

And even worse being patronized by the Americans, as (IIRC) the Foreign Secretary of the day was when he spoke to his US counterpart just after WWII. Getting his support to start an A-Bomb programme after that was no problem :-) .

But the real horror would be the UK admitting it could no longer keep up with the US and Russia.

I think it's interesting that of the G7 how many are world class economies without the ability to flash fry several million people, although they have very significant military forces.

Of course if push came to shove you could always hand a rifle to every one of the MoD Procurement branch. IIRC that would increase the size of the fighting forces about 5x overnight.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

" So why is Foxhound built by US based General Dynamics ("

Because they were cheaper than the (inevitable) BAe bid.

IIRC BAe gave the usual whine about "Thousands of British Defense jobs will be lost blah blah."

In fact the factory got transferred to GD and the same staff built the US design, rather than the Nx more expensive BAe thing.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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""Repeated incidents of Landrover wheels falling off""

That sounds like a sight gag in a silent movie.

IRL. WTF?

Tesla share crash amid Republican bid to kill off electric car tax break

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Good new corporations, you get to keep more profit. EV makers, you get to make less profit

to begin with.

But this being "The Land of the Fee (TM)" I'm sure Tesla knows a few people who can put their case vigorously before the Con-gresspersons and ensure the right outcome.

Cupboard of matrices looking a little... sparse? Have this delicious Taco

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Surprised the NSA are not also sponsors.

Where X is the array of personal details and Y is the array of information known about them to give Z the array of embarrassing personal information.

That said this may have astonishing performance improvements.

Atto, boy! Eggheads fire laser for 43 attoseconds, fastest Man-made spurt

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"chemical bonds..broken by stopping the charge shift at a certain location in the molecule."

That is (potentially) a quite phenomenal degree of control over a chemical reaction.

Of course doing it to individual molecules, instead of what would normally be a cloud of them, is going to almost equally difficult.

So very high order boffinry.

UK.gov: Snoop laws not 'significant' obstacle to EU data protection talks

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

Hopefully..realise..world exists beyond the EU without thinking they must conquer

How sweet.

Only the very young (and/or the very ignorant) can be so delusional.

This breakdown of the results suggests the vast majority were either old codgers or Conservatives (or both?) So, no I think quite a lot of them were dreaming of an Empire on which the sun never set.

You OTOH seem quite young. I think you're going to live a good long life.

I do hope that you're as proud of your choices in 20-30 years as you seem to be now.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

The UK, wheree "unlimited broadband" means

The capacity of the links between every phone service provider and ISP to GCHQ.

You said you wanted "security."

Well the best security is inside the cell of a maximum security prison.

How's that feel?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Because it really is in the interests of the EU to let us have our cake and eat it."

Is that a question or a statement?

The question mark makes quite a difference.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"The Leavers to a tee."

Indeed it just occurred to me.

Brexiteers bang on about how "The people have spoken, the decision is made blah blah."

Well the "decision" was made by the British people in 1975.

So Brexiteers have b**ched on continuously about it for 42 years (through how many governments ?), until "The People" made the "right" (by their standards) choice.

All the while incessantly whining about " We hate the EU. We can't do anything to change it.It's corrupt. It makes us do stuff. Blah, blah".

I wonder how many of them have realized that even leaving the EU will not in fact bring The British Empire back into existence?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Joke

"Should not? Confident? Significant? Whatever happened to evidence and certainty?"

He's got all his appendages crossed and stroking his lucky rabbits foot fast enough to start a fire.

What more do you want him to do?

Kubernetes bug ate my banking app! How code flaw crashed Brit upstart

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"They are regulated like a bank."

So not the "We are in the cloud. Your laws do not apply to us" BS of some other companies then.

Good to know.

But has to be asked after every other f**king chancer (Uber er al) has played that card.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
IT Angle

If they are an "internet bank" shouldn't they be regulated like a bank?

Or is this the "We're on the internet, your laws don't apply to us" business model?

Yes it does sound like they actually did take this seriously. Hopefully " Check/synchronize release versions of different S/W packages for known incompatibilities" will be on the "lessons learned" list.

I'd never heard of them before.

Let's see what happens next.

Two drones, two crashes in two months: MoD still won't say why

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"Airflow will *increase* the temperature of the airframe "

Not in any major sense below Mach 1.

Concorde (and any M1+ vehicle) got pretty hot due to skin friction, but it's a very minor factor sub sonically.

Mind you if you're going to fly over Blighty at high altitude (or indeed anywhere at high altitude) and fairly slowly anti-icing gear sounds like a good thing to fit as standard.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"seem to have been designed as if the aircraft will only ever fly in perfect sunny weather."

Toulouse, where a lot of the French aircraft industry is based perhaps?

Probably not bad over large bits of the Middle East as well.

Not so good over say Northern Europe, like that US "stealth" plane bought down in the former Yugoslavia when it's radar invisibility coating rusted.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"Meanwhile, in the hostile badlands of mid Wales, the..programme has lost 4 so far,"

Taliban Cymry?

Clearly more active than their counterparts in Afghanistan.

So, tell us again how tech giants are more important than US govt...

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

American corportate delusion "We are citizens of the world."

Bulls**t.

1) A Corporation is not a person, unless they are an immortal sociopath who's single goal is to make profit pretty much regardless of anything else.

2) You obey the laws of the country you were formed in. US corporation --> US laws.

3) WTF about "Can we be excluded from anyone knowing which politicians we fund?" Are you f**king kidding me?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"everything argued over last year..nothing but Kremlin-devised myths and urban legends."

Because there's nothing the Con-gress hates than realizing they have also been taken for suckers, just like a voter?

Tesla hits Model 3 production speed bumps, slides to loss

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Kind of them not to name the supplier.

If of course that's an accurate description of the situation.

America's 2020 Census systems are a $15bn cyber-security tire fire

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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IIRC a divison of Lockheed Martin did the last one, and also processed the UK data

Here's the thing.

Have you ever wondered where the raw data comes from for long term federal level policy planning?

Right here.

How valuable is being able to skew that to whatever direction you want that planning (and it's associated funding) to go?

Quite a lot.

So I'd like to think it's all encrypted from the moment of collection to the end.

BTW I think if everyone who completed it was automatically included in a lottery, with the prize dependent on the number who filled it in, the paper entries would have been more filled in.

Competition law could help solve data-slurping monopolies, peers told

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Here's an idea. If it's other peoples data don't they own copyright on it?

And hasn't Google made a specialty of f**king peoples right to get paid for their data (IE their "works") specifically for this purpose?

Astroboffins spot a fat 'monster' ALIEN planet terrorizing tiny dwarf

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Thumb Up

Or to put it another way...

Relying on heuristics with a formal model can lead you into false expectations.

IOW "We didn't think it could exist....but now we know it can."

So another data point for any model to satisfy, which should help to filter out models that don't work.

Although it is true at what point does a very hefty planet become a "proto sun" and at what point could one get so close to its sun (if any) that it ignites?

A draft US law to secure election computers that isn't braindead. Well, I'm stunned! I gotta lie down

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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Yes the US is big. Yes it has a lot of people. But..

Ballot boxes are not that heavy. Like pharmaceutical packaging they don't have to be tamper proof, they just have to make it impossible to tamper with them without it being obvious.

Ballots can be counted fairly quickly by humans.

Yes it might take whole hours more to do but SFW?

Comm links from counting sites are good enough. What do you need? 4 or 5 numbers at most from each site?

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

This seems a sensible, reasonable law with fairly modest goals which everyone agrees with

So what will stop it being passed fairly quickly?

I'm sure something will.

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"That's almost pronounceable. In Welsh."

Doesn't it have too many vowels for that?

NASA reveals Curiosity 2020's 23-camera payload

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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" video of a parachute opening on another planet" is not frivilous

Testing a very large (and it will be very large) parachute opening in an atmosphere < 1/160 that of Earth SL pressure is virtually impossible.

This could make a major contribution to better (smaller) parachute design

And how far we've come.

20Mpixel camera --> 450g.

Toyota picks Renesas SoC to power its first self-driving cars

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"Chipzilla's keen on any market that consumes silicon,"

True.

It's the massive loss of profit margin they can't deal with.

I'm not sure what hurts them (or makes them afraid) the most.

Realizing their hardware architecture is nothing special outside of the PC/Windows space or how low margins are when people actually have a choice and can dump your chips.

Disney-branded internet filter had Mickey Mouse security

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"is that is better to get the device built and out there. "

Ah, "The Microsoft Way" has indeed changed the world (of software testing).

We all owe such a debt to them.

Verizon whips out Big Johnson to lure FCC into axing US states' net neutrality, privacy rules

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Unhappy

"Playing the victim card." Indeed.

"It's just not fair <sniff> people hand over their whole lives to Facebook to slice and dice and sell to advertisers at massive profits and these state politicians want to stop us getting our slice as well."

That is what they mean, if not what they are saying, is it not?

Vlad the blockader: Russia's anti-VPN law comes into effect

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"Dobby" will not be mocked.

By anyone.

Ever.

Anywhere.

Personally I think one day he will be launded as a great gay icon. So butch.

But that's just me.

Advisory body to 'reconsider' ethics of hanging onto 'mugshots'

John Smith 19 Gold badge
Gimp

The UK Home Office, maintaing its status as the cause of most evil in the UK government.

"We want to share more data and we want to delete less (or any) of it so we can do so."

Their complete failure to handle asylum processing (is 10 years without a decision a record? I don't think so) and bizarre notions about what had to be done to satisfy EU rules were probably a major contributor to the Brexit leave vote.

Incompetents lead by data fetishist aholes.

Hells door-bells! Ring pieces paralyzed in horror during Halloween trick-or-treat rush

John Smith 19 Gold badge

Read the story and thought...

Hahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

But what does this teach us.

People use the the internet like a utility with 99.999% availability. It's not.

Server based systems are complex and need lots of capacity testing for edge events (But in principal high doorbell use during all public holidays celebrated in many countries at once is predictable).

Failover modes. Internet dies. Internet or servers die system runs straight and level (probably going to be needed as more companies go belly up and the hardware is bricked).

John Smith 19 Gold badge
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"The "R" in IoT is for resilience."

Excellent.

Yeah, Autonomy's ex-chief financial officer is still up for wire fraud

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

Their sales pitch "We're worth $11B, straight up, gov. Honest"

And HP believed them.

I truly can't figure out which were the bigger group of Aholes.

In any rational society the whole HP Board should have been shown the door for incinerating about $8Bn of stockholders money.

Even Silicon Valley rolls its eyes as controversial Zenefits ex-CEO reveals he's back in business

John Smith 19 Gold badge
WTF?

"more efficient onboarding "

I even have a tagline to go.

"Whatever Corp. Turning the Silicon Valley meatgrinder up to 11."

Because the no BS term for "on-boarding" is "Fresh meat processing."

But what's really important is when it all goes tits sideways.

"Whatever Corp. More efficient over-boarding" (of the company dead wood. Well, they are now).

Conrad's does not seem your neurotypical personality, although he maybe a rather more neurotypical CEO. Unfortunately.

UK industry bods: Re-train one million manufacturing workers to deal with new tech

John Smith 19 Gold badge

"A country that doesn't make stuff is truly fucked."

But, but, but.*

The UK is TAKING BACK CONTROL (C Linton Kwesi Crosby 2017) of it's borders. Soon it will be able to (metaphorically) sail the world under its own command, being able to make its own trade deals with whoever it wants (or does not, as the case may be) to.

Granted there may be a few mass redundancies staff adjustments but at last Albion will be free of the yoke of the hated Brussels Jack boot (or should that be Jacques boot?).

Shouldn't you be thrilled at the prospect?

(C Rabid Xenophobia Publications T/A The Daily Heil)

*IRL you are quite correct. Time will tell who is right, just as you find out if there really is a $deity about 1 second after you die, and can do f**k all about changing things.