* Posts by werdsmith

7096 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2011

Just two die for: Apple reveals M1 Ultra chip in Mac Studio

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: I like the look of it but…

I’ve never understood why a company with basically unlimited resources is so happy to neglect that side of things.

I think the market for people who want to mess about with computer innards is negligibly small when compared to the market for switching the thing on and getting on with work.

Rate of autonomous vehicle safety improvement slowing – research

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Accident avoidence is the problem

I find that the problem on busy but fast moving roads is that the actions of other drivers have too much influence over the self driving. It responds in a way that is very frustrating. It’s superb on relatively clear roads, but it isn’t designed to cope with the erratic and selfish behaviour.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: @Filippo

And unload itself at the other end.

Not in scope, a truck can simply decouple its trailer and couple to another one and start another journey. The unloading of the container by automated process is easily solved. To some extent there is automated movement of containers in the big shipping ports in places that are not hampered by unions.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Ah, the old moving goalposts

That will only work if these cars are going to moving in feet per hour. The reaction time at any reasonable speed will be far too slow.

The robot delivery vehicles that operate in Milton Keynes work this way, because they are relatively low speed. When they encounter an obstacle that prevents progress they call home and a human operator gets a camera view and sorts it out. If the thing is in a pickle then a van is despatched.

So this situation is applicable to full size vehicles, because when they get into stalemate situations (like human drivers do when they don’t cooperate and nobody wants to back down) a remote operator can be used. If the passengers in the car, for some reason, cannot sort it.

Russia acknowledges sanctions could hurt its tech companies

werdsmith Silver badge

know about because all our spy planes are up feeding intel to Ukraine (and analysing Russian tactics for us for later

Not just spyplanes. B52s from the UK bases this morning are on aerial station over Buzau, Romania - easy striking distance of Odessa. The standard Rivet joint presence and also a battlefield command plane. These are just the ones with ADS-B on so we can see them. I'm sure that the US want the B52 presence to be known.

Also, Rzeszow-Jasionka airport is the busiest one in Poland at the moment due to C17 and C130 movements.

Here's why prolonged Russia-Ukraine war would be really bad for us, say chip designers

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Re: Risks

The problem started when politicians, having encouraged Globalization when it favored the US, decided to try to control the flow of commerce, work and information to suit their constituency (which is rarely "We, the People"). They did this by unleashing economic warfare on other countries, often using very tenuous pretexts that are chosen more because of how they sell to the often gullible public than for sound long term reasons

This is just empire, in a modern evolved form.

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

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Re: RD-180 Engines

1 year to copy the Rolls Royce Nene into the Klimov VK1 that powered the Mig 15.

BBC points Russians to the Tor version of itself

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Re: "shut down"

Your forget that you don't just "shut down" a nuclear reactor, it takes at least 3 days to moderate to a temperature where the loss of control or coolant doesn't lead to a criticality crisis. And that's at full pump flow; if the coolant system isn't 100% operational it will take even longer.

The Russians took a HUGE risk in attacking an active nuclear reactor.

Consensus of reporting suggests that all but one reactors are shut down, the one that is still operating is to maintain the critical systems. No attack on a nuclear reactor has been reported. Light shelling on a training facility on a nuclear

site has been reported.

Any reports have to be considered in light of censoring and filtering.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: The nuke power station attack was not accidental

Putin hoped to explode the reactor and spread its contents across Europe. The wind was heading towards Romania, Poland, Germany and Netherlands. NATO would do nothing, clearly, and he would establish that he can attack Europe with 'near'-nuclear weapons without any response from NATO.

Did he really? I’m impressed with your insight into Putin’s strategy. Do you have an inside contact in the invasion planning command? Or do you read tabloids and Faecebook?

You’d think they could do a bit better than a bit of light shellling on one of the training school buildings if they wanted to release nuclear pollution.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Ironic

“MAD stops working if one side thinks a nuclear war is winnable.”

Mad stops working if one side becomes irrational. Such irrationality may not care if a nuclear war is winnable or not.

Chinese rocket junk may have just smashed into Moon

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Gravity and mass...

The earth-moon tidal effect is pushing the moon further away from earth so it’s not coming down, probably this and other accretions make it go away faster. The result is to make earth days longer as we spin slower.

But on the scale of human lifespans, or even human existence a tiny tiny negligible amount.

Oracle creates new form of free Solaris

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Re: @VoiceOfTruth - OpenIndiana

Not difficult to learn to use a different packing system. But it’s seriously untidy.

Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire after Russian attack

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Re: Not fake news but…….

"Exaggerating? Shelling a nuclear power plant is a very frightening thing. It isn't exaggeration to call it out, or to highlight how dangerous it is."

This power plant is massive, enormous sprawling campus. It would be possible to shell within its limits and be nowhere near the critical areas. I'm sure that the Russians had a hand in building it and would know a thing or two about it. All of its fuel is supplied by Russian companies too.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Putin provoking NATO

We all only have the word of the military on the ground filtered through the media to understand what is happening. Lies are not a monopoly of the Russian government.

Details of '120,000 Russian soldiers' leaked by Ukrainian media

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Greenhouse madness

Of course, as a source of amusement RT is still allowed to broadcast in the UK

They on air yesterday, Wednesday. Seem to have disappeared today.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: The best way to eliminate an enemy is to make them a friend

How can you be sure this is not a staged event for the cameras?

I can't see it because I won't touch a sewer like Faecebook, but media in warfare will show you anything they want you to see.

One decade, 46 million units: Happy birthday, Raspberry Pi

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Hotspot!

I use Pi-Star with MMDVM on a zero, cross-moding from YSF to a DMR radio.

Absolutely amazing piece of work.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Interesting.

eMMC is on the Compute module, but it costs. If it increases the price too much then forget it. 40+ million says it's OK like it it.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Interesting.

Yes, Pi4 works nicely in a FLIRC passive cooling case. I use one, with a 1TB SATA SSD. Perfectly good.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: "I can't go out today and license a RISC-V core,"

Mango Pi also has the AllWinner D1. Tina OS and a single core XuanTie C906.

The Beagle SBC is looking around $120.

Risc V is not ready yet, but it's good that he is looking at it.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: "I can't go out today and license a RISC-V core,"

It's true if Sipeed have gone with the unratified AllWinner D1 (on their Nezha SBC) which is nowhere near as powerful as the ARM on a Pi4, and can't sell it for less than £87 direct from China (or £140 all taxes paid on Amazon UK) then obviously the economics aren't there yet.

Pi5 will be ARM just like all the other back-compatible Pis.

Plans for UK rival to Silicon Valley ditched

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Cart and Horse

The shocking truth about the "Motorsports triangle", which goes between Woking in Surrey, to Milton Keynes and across west into Oxfordshire is so successful in motor racing because in the UK we train engineers in universities then turn them out into a nation that barely any aero or motor industry left. So they are engaged in motor sports.

werdsmith Silver badge

I had always understood that Hollywood was chosen for the film industry because the early movie cameras and film needed didn't work so well unless there was plenty of bright sunlight.

UK internet pioneer Cliff Stanford has died

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Re: Demon Internet

Yes, I started with Demon in the 90s. It was them or the more expensive pipex. I had the US Robotics modem and I plugged it in and followed the instruction for ftp to "you are now connected to a computer in the USA" which I think was in Virgina,.

I remember that moment, I had trouble believing it.

Then into their little ASCII text based UI to usenet and pop email, never looked back.They did eventually become a victim of their own success and became too slow to use.

I think the other chap, Chris Goodall survived the LAdbroke Grove rail crash.

Govt suggests Brits should hand passports to social media companies

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Don't blame the messenger

“Problem largely solved”

Solved in your little world, but think outside you little world. You’ve managed to stay ignorant of the worse side of the sewer of the internet, but you continue to support it by using it. So what you really mean is “not my problem”.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: That is in the same category as "We stand for freedom of Ukraine but forbid RT at home"

Why says RT is forbidden? It’s on my TV, channel 113, one of the HD Freeview broadcast channels. I don’t get Fox News on Freeview, or any broadcast as far as I know,

It’s actually a laugh spotting the continuity errors and mistakes in their propaganda films.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Increased exposure for no gain

Repeating the same comment will not make it any less wrong.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: It's ID cards again isn't it?

This is crap because Faecebook are already demanding passport ID from their moron users.

werdsmith Silver badge

Of course data from a verified ID is more valuable and easy to monetise than an unverified one.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Crazy Idea

I think we can easily draw a distinction between a media outlet that allows commentary on its content which is presented under its editorially approved policies, and a social media company where anybody can contribute any content they like and decide their own levels of privacy.

For example, I can’t just post a picture of my food and a story about my visit to Wagamama on The Register and then decide which other commentards to follow whilst controlling which ones are allowed to see it. The primary content is under control of the editors. So this, “ahh but you are posting on here so you do use social media” is twattish.

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: ZX81

ZX Basic interface used a keyboard with BASIC keyword printed on them for shortcut typing with FN+shift combinations and didn’t lend itself well to standard keyboards.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Depends what you mean by computer and input device...

Why would they be not worth doing? Where did that come from? They would not affect Apple's patent claim.

werdsmith Silver badge

To really be able to ridicule this patent attempt, we need to look beyond the headline.

Who can name a previous example of an integrated computer and input device that folds up to a small portable package and doesn’t have an integrated display so no laptops, netbooks, notebooks etc?

Ukraine seeks volunteers to defend networks as Russian troops menace Kyiv

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Not optional

I think Belarus are Putin’s bitch because they are afraid not to be.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Sink 'em

Overt USAF activity over Ukraine has now moved to Romania and Poland plus the Black Sea. Rivet Joint patrols, RQ-4B Global Hawks, KC-135 tankers on near permanent aerial station. Those are just the ones that they let us see.

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: An illusoary stranglehold?

He became PM as one of the very few willing to actually get on with brexit

He became PM because of the resignation of May, May was in number 10 only because of the lamentable hopelessness of the opposition.

Arm China boss happy with Nvidia acquisition collapse

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Rogue? Can’t they simply revoke user account?

They have all that IP and the horse has bolted.

It will affect future investment in China, but it’s too late for ARM if the Chinese government aren’t interested in playing ball.

Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Erm... no...

"Can we do this" is the starting point for a lot of good things that less inquisitive folk would never find.

werdsmith Silver badge

@Andrew Hodgkinson

This is an early experiment by the LibreOffice people where I'm sure they haven't rewritten their huge codebase for optimal WebAssembly, but have lifted and shifted the existing code in, with adaptations here and there. Of course it's going to be slow, it's not supposed to be a new ready to go productivity tool. WebAssemby itself is still a work in progress. They are just experimenting.

Ridiculous expectations.

If I code something using rust, specifically for WebAssembly, keeping the bulk of the work inside the process without too much handing over to JS, then it's nothing like "grossly inefficient". It's by far the most efficient way to do it in a browser.The ratio of actual webassembly code to JS code is irrelevant, it's the amount that each of those is called into use that matters.

As as already been explained, WASM currently relies on JS for DOM interaction and has a clunky method to hand over in memory pigeon holes. When this is addressed that bottleneck will be reduced.

werdsmith Silver badge

Because it's good at forcing advertising on people who have absolutely no interest in the product being advertised, all the while extracting as much personal information from that person as possible?

ooh. I hope that never happens.

RISC-V keeps its head down amid global chip war

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: This article is so confused and ill-informed it's almost funny

Argumentative chap this ST, seems a bit triggered.

Needs to sit down and relax with some beer, but not that piss stuff that needs to be chilled so you can't taste how bad it is. ;)

WeChat, AliExpress added to US Notorious Markets list

werdsmith Silver badge

AliExpress and Banggood both 100% perfect in all my dealings with them.

I buy a lot of gadgetry, electronics project stuff, it's all been excellent. Oscilloscope, sig gen, frequency meter, bench power supplies all solid and excellent value.

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

werdsmith Silver badge

The law should be against using the unencrypted personal information in the page source on the client.

Is anybody looking into who created that abomination and who allowed it to be used?

Fibre broadband uptake in UK lags behind OECD countries

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: FTTC is plenty fast enough for many...

Your lags with zoom when people are streaming is more likely down to the terminal equipment than the actual 50mb/s feed. The broadband companies often use cheapo modems that get a bit overloaded.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: What is 'Fibre'?

The problem as I see it is that people can’t get less. I have the option of gigabit, but paying more for it would give me precisely nothing useful over the 110 mb/s I have now. I have 110 because it’s the entry level, I don’t need it. They won’t offer me a better deal, which would be 40 mb/s for half the price. I have to take all this unused pointless capacity.

I work from home with multiple remote desktops, while other people in the house stream video, gets nowhere near 40 mb/s.

Like having a 60cm diameter pipe to supply water to my home. Absolutely no need. So all this bragging or worrying about broadband speeds is idiotic, go and worry about something important.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

werdsmith Silver badge

Fully automated reverse parking works very well, though it often uses more forward/backward manoeuvres than necessary, I would normally do it in one backward movement, it takes two or three.

Car radios crashed by station broadcasting images with no file extension

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How is someone allowed to drive if they understand a logo more than text?

How is someone allowed to comment if they are this obtuse?

werdsmith Silver badge

It's a static image. Probably easier to read and recognise than having the station name displayed as text.

Securing open-source code isn't going to be cheap

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: "ensures that faults cannot* be denied, ignored, or kept unfixed."

You can’t say that about the sacred cow.