* Posts by werdsmith

7096 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2011

UK govt finds £200,000 under sofa to kick off research into improving mobile connectivity on nation's crap railways

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Re: West coast mainline

By other definitions Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester are in the south.

We're not all about rockets, says NASA: Balloon tech is good enough for economical star scanning

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What a spooky jellyfish like object in the image.

Great thing about HAB flights is ordinary people can get involved for far less cash than it costs for rocketry.

Less than six months after original release, Samsung reboots its Galaxy Z Flip pholdable for the 5G age

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Re: No.

4. Android OS.

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These “fools” always seem to have plenty of money to spare.

Russia tested satellite-to-satellite shooter, say UK and USA

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Re: respectable clone of the B29

Wasn’t it carrier launchedB25 Mitchell’s that we’re supposed to land in free China but encountered a headwind and the ones that weren’t ditched landed in Soviet territory.

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Re: Weapons in Space

Some high altitude balloon missions carry bears.

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The hard part is getting your sand shot into an accurate enough retrograde orbit to meet your target.

This has been looked at very thoroughly for the purposes of de-orbiting redundant spacecraft.

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Re: Sitting Ducks

Cosmos 2543 sidled up to another Russian satellite before releasing the object that moved at around 700 km/h.

Must be 700km/h relative velocity, because the sats in LEO are moving around their orbital path at over 17500 mph.

700kmh per hour at that distance from the earth is virtual straight down to re-entry,

Nvidia may be mulling lopping Arm off Softbank: GPU goliath said to have shown interest in acquiring CPU design house

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Re: This could make sense

Talent could be leaving ARM anyway, these people who mess around with the future of companies are often oblivious to the unsettling effect on staff caused by uncertainty.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: What is the point ?

Right now, when Apple have announced that their MacBooks will be using their own CPUs that are based on ARM cores, I’m fairly sure that other PC makers will follow and the progress of ARM moving but from small device territory and into productivity devices will be followed by makers of other computers for Windows and Linux etc. They will use SOC components from companies like NVidia who have the existing skills to supply and adapt GPU drivers.

Nominet shakes up system for expiring .uk domains, just happens to choose one that will make it £millions. Again

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Re: RE: The auction will be advertised and there's more likelihood of somebody noticing it.

I have tracked expired domains and been around on midnight after the grace period to try and grab them, only to see them swiped by auto-bots. One in particular stayed parked since, not used.

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Re: From the 'consultation'

That looks like it’s from the FAQ of a hosting provider with domain park services.

Predictably grim Q2 for mobe sales, but iPhone SE proves pretty moreish as gateway drug for Android defectors

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Re: There are alternatives

There are some absolutely wonderful phones out there for reasonable money, superbly executed hardware. Problem is that these lovely gadgets run a low rent OS, hence the continued popularity of the expensive iPhones.

Fortunately, the expense of these Apple devices is partly hidden when it is a monthly payment and not an upfront cost, which is good for me because I can pick them up on the cheapo when they become available on the used market.

Cheap phone, avoid Android. win win.

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Re: Gateway drug

There are loads of SE selling Europe. They are not easy to see because they look the same as older generation iPhones.

Incredible artifact – or vital component after civilization ends? Rare Nazi Enigma M4 box sells for £350,000

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Re: Cracked?

"As I understand it Enigma was never cracked."

Enigma was understood enough so that reel settings could be deduced. And when reel settings for a particular day were known, messages from that day could be read, even if they had to read them days or weeks later.

It took time for the signal listening posts to transcribe the morse and get it off to Bletchley and its outstations and the Americans at Eastcote.

It took thousands of staff working 24x7 to operate the systems at Bletchley that mined all the decoded messages and turn them into useful intelligence.

Many of the comments on here are asserting information that doesn't agree with the Bletchley Park version.

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Re: Right up to Nuremberg

Not to mention Hobart's Funnies.

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Re: A fine piece of German engineering

Bletchley Park were blind to naval Enigma for months on end, and two unfortunate sailors died recovering a cryptpad to finally enable the breakthrough.

Nokia 5310: Retro feature phone shamelessly panders to nostalgia, but is charming enough to be forgiven

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I love how people like to tell others what they require from a phone with the implication that everybody should be the same.

Twitter admits 130 A-lister accounts compromised to promote Bitcoin scam after 'social engineering' attack

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Social media is a net negative and the worst effect of it is yet to be discovered,.

Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!

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Re: Just love to see something that is not dusty, old and rubbish looking

As I understand it, the USA built a single steelworks in Pennsylvania with more capacity than all the steelworks in Europe combined. Nazis must have realised that they were up shit creek when that kind of capacity joined the fight against them.

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Re: Just love to see something that is not dusty, old and rubbish looking

Although it has to be said that in terms of technology, pilot less bobs such as V1, sub-orbital ballistic missile such as V2 and actual in service jets such as ME262 and ME163 Komet they were focused more on wonder weapons.

Constant bombing by the USAAF and RAF disrupted their production of anything and the P51 log range escorts also made life hard for them. The combined efforts of most of the world is a really daft opponent to take on.

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Re: Britain has been a staunch ally to its NATO partners

Attempting to defend Poland by invading to face the Wehrmacht from the Baltic would have been fucking stupid, the BEF was ill-equipped to face them on their own doorstep. There could not have been a Dunkirk miracle from GDansk, there would be no army left and the war in Europe would have been over in 1940. Thousands of deaths went into defeating the Nazis and eventually ridding them from Europe. The allies were barely able to keep Europe out of Soviet hands afterwards, so expectations of what was possible need to be a bit more pragmatic.

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Re: Poles at Bletchley Park

Not a statue of them, but a memorial that is like a giant book.

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Re: Poor video

I don’t think computers with valves were applied to Enigma breaking. Rather, a few hundred rotating machines built in Letchworth worked on a reduced number of possibles using brute force.

The computer was applied to a completely different cipher.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Well done

The Enigma Film was an adaptation of a Robert Harris novel of the same name.

Here in blighty we are used to seeing our own portrayed as baddies, so we would hardly have noticed. Even we are not so immature as to care about Hollywood’s output of vain drivel.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Well done

The Polish contribution is very well acknowledged at Bletchley.

What is not generally acknowledged is that Bletchley had to repeatedly break enigma again and again in its different versions, and spent months blind to naval enigma messages until the RN managed to capture a code book.

Then Bletchley Bille Tutte also reverse engineered the Lorenz cipher, a greater feat and with the work of Tommy Flowers at Dollis Hill in London they computerised the process of discovering reel settings. The code breaking was the key to it all but the real effort in collating hundreds of encrypted messages per day from a network of listening stations, and team of couriers into an industrial operation involving 24x7 shifts of many thousands of people to mine the messages and sift-pan them for gold. It’s too often portrayed as a couple of ramshackle huts with a few tank-topped boffins chewing pencils and scratching heads. A visit will open the eyes to the huge concrete blocks designed to look like a hospital. The processing of information that happened there was industrial scale. Sure the first commercial enigma cracks were important but it was a far bigger show than that.

Of course we all know but are ashamed to admit that what really happened was an American GI showed up there chewing gum, wearing aviator shades and hat cocked at a jaunty angle, looked at a couple of crypts, changed a couple of wires on a bombe and suddenly everything started working 100 times better. He then declared that this was what he was talking about and took the prettiest WREN away with him sweet talking promises of nylon stockings and ration busting quantities of canned beef and Hershey’s chocolate.

Nvidia watches Brit upstart Graphcore swing into rear-view mirror waving beastly second-gen AI chip hardware

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NVidia have low cost Jetson dev SBCs out there in education establishing them and CUDA as de facto.

It’s OK having amazing big iron but they need to start influencing students who will turn into professionals and be more comfortable going with what they know.

Apple: Don't close MacBooks with a webcam cover on, you might damage the display

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Re: 0.1mm

The length of the wheelbase not the base of the wheel .... ;)

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The reason is that the emotionally immature can feel they have a bit a power by clicking a downvote.

Downvotes always welcome here, I already have many thousands, fill your boots.

It's handbags at dawn: America to hit France with 25% tariffs on luxuries over digital tax on US tech titans

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Pay tax where users reside

“ How much of the French population is using US digital services vs. the population of the US buying designer french handbags and cheeses anyway....”

Airbus stopped making planes out of cheese years ago.

Four years after swallowing Arm Holdings, SoftBank said to be mulling Brit chip biz sale

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Re: One Word.

The USA would not be too troubled to migrate to RISC V.

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Re: Here’s a thought - UK.gov to purchase

It does much of its work abroad anyway. But a management buyout supported by a government load might fit the bill.

Spotted the ISS in the sky yet? How about pulling out some spare kit and giving it a listen?

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Re: Slow scan TV through Internet?

No ham license necessary if you are receive only.

btw, SSTV as part of amateur activity, for both send and receive, is decades old.

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Check out virtual audio cable.

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Re: Rats

“ Anyway always good to see stuff from space anybody can access.”

ISS has been doing amateur radio packet and voice for years. There are numerous other satellites that anyone can take a downlink from, starting with NOAA and on up from there. Two way space comes is also available through AMSAT work and these are all examples of direct downlink and in the case of AMSAT uplink (even images). Not through the receiving equipment at the WebSDR sites. If You want to work space, it’s all there ready and has been all along. If you look at YouTube there are videos of people working Sats using £20 Chinese transceivers.

The WebSDR software out of the Netherlands is absolutely brilliant, I do hope the various sites, which are volunteer operated are not swamped.

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

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Re: As I read that

Explain how? Sleepwalking.

If I’d given payment details been using a paid subscription service like Netflix for months, then I might have an inkling. Explain how I might not notice I was using Netflix? Precisely that.

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Re: Simpler than I expected

Doesn’t matter if it’s valid or not, I would know that I’d signed up for a service regardless of the device I used to sign up and I would have been aware that I need to end that service when I don’t want it.

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Re: GDPR

Yes he has the right. But TomTom need to be told if he is exercising that right.

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Re: As I read that

I expect to be able to stop my cellphone account from any web browser. But only if I bothered to do it.

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Re: As I read that

It’s like you signing up to Netflix through your tv then resetting your tv to factory and expecting Netflix to know you don’t want their service anymore.

People expect to have their arses wiped for them these days. It’s not healthy, it’s embarrassing.

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Re: As I read that

Everything on the car is wiped. The online account with TomTom is online, not on the car.

So many people expect to be spoon fed all the time, won’t understand what they are doing, won’t take responsibility.

A volt from the blue: Samsung reportedly ditches wall-wart from future phones

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Re: You're funny

I plug the iPhone into anything to charge it. PC or laptop outlet, the car, any old charger, USB outlets provided on buses, modern furniture and in public places. They all work and they all work with a charger cable from Poundland.

Apple are not going to supply the phone that can’t be charged from the USB socket in a plane seat.

MariaDB inhales $25m. 'People tried to get away with simpler' but now there's a 'relational renaissance,' says open-source biz chief

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Re: Overkill?

This is precisely how I use it, though Postgre is much better for GIS.

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Re: Best wishes

I think Widenius had dropped out of Helsinki many years before he started work with Axmark.

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Re: both the 'simple text file' method AND SQL databases

Databases like MongoDB take JSON data which in the end is just a text file.

Being unstructured it’s less complicated to partition and shard out at the database level. In practice the scaling out with hardware, redundancy and the nodes required to keep track of where your data is gets fiddly very quickly. Especially if you are in cloud and you need to make sure you are not having redundant nodes too close together.

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Re: Historically, it had been used mostly as a transactional database.

In context I think the quote applies to the pre-fork ancestry of Maria.

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

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Re: "Hardly any conventional planes are flying right now"

I use a FlightRadar often and the number of flights was much lower during the height of March April May and is now picking up but still much less busy than this time last year. I also live under a busy airport approach and life is much quieter right now. I enjoy watching the air traffic so I actually miss the planes. I don’t mind the noise at all.

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Re: Great timing

I always slept the red eye. The only way I could stand it.

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Re: Depends on the "boom"

In the UK we get the occasional boom from Typhoons scrambled because sleeping civilian pilots didn’t respond to radio contact.