Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward 21371 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009
I know in the USA dialing 112 (the GSM standard emergency number) doesn't necessarily connect to 911 - the 911 service is locally operated so everything varies.
Dialing 911 works in most european countries because the phone system routes it to the emergency services as a safety feature for US visitors
We aren't in the days of a 30,000 transistor ARM2 anymore - a modern ARM is pretty complicated and not very RISCy
Is there really that much difference in TDP between a 5nm TSMC x64 chip and a dozen core Apple ARM?
Or is the Apple M1 battery life mostly from smarter GPU use and better integration design eg shutting down peripherals?
>So far it's twenty times over budget. How bad would it have been without that redesign?
About 5% of the final cost
You hire a big defense contractor to make a complex unique project, they start a design, do research, hire subcontractors etc.
Then the next year you halve the budget.
The contractor writes off the previous work, hiding the sunk costs in misc additional charges to the new budget, they then start a new cheaper design from scratch.
So far this has cost 2x the original design budget with nothing to show for it.
Then throw in a requirement that it must use certain national champions - and throw out some partners.
Then invite new partners to help with the budget, redesign to accommodate them.
Repeat these steps 5x
If it wasn't China it would be something else
In the Kobe earthquake the world discovered that all the black plastic that coated chips used a chemical made by one Japanese chemical company - guess where it exported from ?
Then floods in Thailand wiped out the world's supply of spinning rust for 2 years.
It's not just where you make your product, it's where the people that make the products that go into the products that make the products that you use to make your product....
If anyone feels like worrying, the crucibles that melt the Silicon boules that are used for all chip wafers are all made from Quartz from a single mine.
Ironically a copy could cost much more.
This thing was built by a bunch of defense contractors over a decade, in plants that may have been shut down, by people who have left/retired, with components that are no longer made, with subcontractors that have gone out of business/been sold.
If you want to make an equivalent telescope, it's not too hard. If you want to make a precise copy, where you use this particular memory module from 1999 because it passed radiation tests and this type of kapton tape from this supplier is good for 10 years in vacuum - then it gets really hard.
It's why military aircraft projects tend to be very expensive, you build an order of x000 airframes and all the spares they are going to need for 30-40 years, because starting up a line to make a replacement PCB for 1980s fighter is $$$$$$
One colleague of mine was trying to get samples some particular astronomical emulsion - which Kodak stopped making because it contained Buffalo gelatin which was banned by BSE regulations. The Keck telescope, built in the 90s, has an entire team building replacements for 80/90s era control hardware.
And those are (more) reasonable.
If I watch F1 I don't mind the sponsors names on the cars. I don't mind ad images embedded in a magazine article, chosen by the magazine with some idea of their brand having some responsibility
I object to 1000s of pop-ups, random ads for stuff I'm not interested in, dating ads at work, autoplay video etc. that's why I have piHole and Brave
NASA had a spaceplane project for the ISS called Crew Return Vehicle - CRV. During the prototype phase this would have to have Experimental (X) appended, as per Nasa regulations
Somebody decide that CRV-X was too close to lady parts and the projected had to be hurriedly renamed.
Also back in those days we (or at least Jobs) thought of a phone as principally a phone.
Imagine if some buggy Microsoft app on an iPhone caused it to drop a call, or make the phone unable to call 911? That would be the end of the market - a phone that couldn't make calls would be a disaster, rather than a bootnote story on el'reg
Or in a joke dating back to the 1920s
Two economists walking down a road see a bug on a leaf.
1st economist says, I'll give you a $100 to eat that bug, the 2nd economist does so.
He then sees another bug and says to the first economist, I'll pay YOU $100 to eat that bug.
The 1st economist replies, but then we will both have eaten a bug and neither of us will be better off.
Ah, says the 2nd but we will have contributed $200 to the economy.
No there is no shortage of people who want to work for the wages they offer, they are just in India and will do so for the promise of a US citizenship.
So long as they don't find out that the wait time for H1B->Green card->citizenship is currently > 100years
>Let me guess. You dont live in the US, you have not interacted with l.e.o's for many decades
I'm white, middle aged, drive a Subaru and live in a rural town in the Pacific North West. The local LEO are most likely to stop me to hand over baked goods from their wife.
Ironically I'm way safer over here from a militarised police than I was being a catholic kid living in Belfast.
Thank you for being a black victim of a police shooting at a traffic stop.
Would you describe your experience:
A, Effiicient
B, Slow
C, Can't reply I'm a dead
Do you feel that being hit by a full clip of 9 bullets was
A, An efficient use of police resource
B, Wasteful of public money
C, Can't reply I'm a dead
If you had the opportunity to book your next police shooting at a time convenient for you
A, That sounds good
B, No I like the unpredictability
C, Can't reply I'm a dead
Hello 21st century knowledge worker, here is your company laptop.
If you need to do any of the things you normally do on your phone since you were 5 years old - just patch your laptop to the phone with GPRS, don't forget to reverse polarity on the frangipane converter when connecting to the hyper domain via wizzlebang protocols - that's much simpler for the accounts dept than giving you an iPad with a Sim.
Then block all attachments.
Allowing attachments, some of which are vital to getting any work done, and some of which are malicious and relying on the users to decide.
It's like having Boeing say to the production line, 90% of these parts are fake and will destroy the aircraft, it's upto you when selecting a bolt to make sure it's correct before looking at it
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