* Posts by Terje

363 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Mar 2011

Page:

Sometimes shining a light on a nuclear problem just makes things worse

Terje

Re: Radiotelescopes also have tricky-to-find issues

There's also the case where a telescope doing VLBI would get out of position for no apparent reason, turned out to be a heater on one side of the "pillar" supporting the dish causing uneven heating and a slight bend moving the telescope a minute distance but enough to throw the VLBI off.

Windows 7 and Server 2008 end of support: What will change on 14 January?

Terje

Re: "Although it is not unreasonable...

Windows 10 run fine and do what I need it to, sure you have to black hole the telemetry if you don't want it, but aside from the schizophrenic control panel I find it significantly better then 7 (though I still feel that a bit of 3d would not harm anyone...).

You can't keep supporting for eternity, you have to drop the support at some time otherwise we would still have people clinging to windows 3.11

Cheque out my mad metal frisbee skillz... oops. Lights out!

Terje

Re: Oops

I would say that they are not really dangerous unless you have absolutely no idea what you are doing (something I believe the overwhelming majority of people frequenting these hallowed boards have). The only damage done on this occasion was the need to reset the breaker and throw away the old probes as the pointy bit's were strangely enough not designed to carry well in excess of 100A. Now I always check that no one has left the meter set for current measurement before I use it and always set it back to voltage after measuring current.

Terje

Re: Oops

I only vaporized the multimeter probes when I did the same when the leads were set for current instead of voltage. The loudness of the bang always shock you as well.

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

Terje

Rocket science is mostly easy though, it's when you get to actual rocket engineering that it gets real hard real fast! And if you are a scientist working on rocket propellants I definitely admire them for the lack of self preservation needed to work in that field.

Wham, bam, thank you scram button: Now we have to go all MacGyver on the server room

Terje

Re: Dont have your machine room at the top of a building

80% hydrogen peroxide (the oxidizer used in the Me163) is a LOT safer and easier to handle compared to ClF3 and there is no way to extinguish it if it starts to burn, and then we have not even started on the lovely combustion products you are likely to get.

Microsoft emits long-term support .NET Core 3.1, Visual Studio 16.4

Terje

Now if they would only finish some fundamental controls it would be nice (Yes I'm looking at you DataGridView...

As pressure builds over .org sell-off, internet governance bodies fall back into familiar pattern: Silence

Terje

In my opinion both ICANN and ISOC have shown for quite some time now that they need a firm and proper smack in the head as they have clearly lost all connection they ever had to "reality". As they in my eyes have lost all forms of trust they should be dissolved and the responsibilities given over to a new international organization with proper oversight and accountability.

Internet world despairs as non-profit .org sold for $$$$ to private equity firm, price caps axed

Terje

Re: Alternate Internet

Can I have cute pictures of sloths as well? I need those to stay sane during the work week!

Terje

Re: Fork, anyone?

I'm currently leaning towards the USA being a mix of oligarchy with kleptocracy by proxy :)

A bridge over troubled water: Intel teases Ponte Vecchio, the GPU brains in US govt's 1-exaFLOPS Aurora supercomputer

Terje

Re: We'll burn that bridge when we come to it

What makes it more likely now compared to the last couple of years to my mind, is that it aligns with a process shift as well, so they still have to do the redesign of existing parts for a the new smaller process. This should make the extra work/risk of shifting to another manufacturer as small as possible.

Terje

Re: We'll burn that bridge when we come to it

Nvidia is supposedly moving manufacture of Ampere to Samsung from TSMC, from what I read capacity constraints of TSMC would likely be a significant factor in that.

HP to Xerox: Nope, your $33.5bn bid falls short of our valuation

Terje

Re: "not in the best interests of shareholders"

The issue is that the best interest of shareholders seems to be evaluated over a ever shortening future times span, and not over the longer time span that would be the responsible thing to do for both the company and shareholders. It's a simple fact that the two questions "How do we give the shareholders the most money NOW" is very rarely compatible with "How do we give the shareholders the most money over the next ten years"

What a boar! Wild pigs snort and snuffle €20k worth of marching powder stashed in Tuscan forest

Terje

Re: "Coldiretti – Italy's largest farmers' association – led protests in Rome"

Wild boars are a problem more or less everywhere, they increase in population fast, they can cause a lot of damage to fields or lawns. To top it off they can also be quite dangerous. Since we have been very efficient at killing off all natural predators there is nothing but human hunting and food limiting the population.

Section 230 supporters turn on it, its critics rely on it. Up is down, black is white in the crazy world of US law

Terje

Re: "This will also lead to an angry mob trying to lynch you"

No they should not be above the law, the law should CHANGE to be appropriate as the current system is broken one way or the other, you just have to be careful not to make the reworked laws either to weak so they mean nothing to draconian so they remove everything or to wide/ narrow. Is this easy to do? Absolutely not. We also have to think about the fact that this is US law that have some inherently broken (from my point of view) views on what is suitable for children and basically rather skewed morality. A movie with quite graphic violence is fine for children but if there's so much as a hint of a nipple you can't show it to anyone under 18. It's ok to have guns lying around the house (I know this is not the way it's supposed to be in most places but this is all a hyperbole) but seeing your mother naked is sure to make you scared for life...

Terje

Re: The law of Unintended Consequences applies....

I think you are aiming a bit high in this instance. Let me use Youtube as my example here.

If you give Google/Youtube full responsibility for everything published on Youtube, it will be shut down before the ink would have time to dry as you correctly stated. This will also lead to an angry mob trying to lynch you probably including me as I no longer really watch ordinary television, but I do watch a large amount of Youtube videos as the channels I watch cater to my specific interests which no other media really do. While I would not cry for Google there are no alternatives as anything remotely like it would suffer the same fate. The exact same thing would happen to every social network (I use none so I don't care, but I think that horde would be even bigger and probably even have some torches and pitchforks in it!

The fact is that every single platform for non instant communication would be gone.

The reasonable thing to do is to require the platforms to make a resonable effort to police the content provided on it and force them to act on obviously illegal content brought to their attention. If they sling ads that would not be ok in another media then it should not be allowed for them.

Teachers: Make your pupils' parents buy them an iPad to use at school. Oh and did you pack sunglasses for the Apple-funded jolly?

Terje

One thing that makes a calculator different from phones / computers is that you can let students have them on tests without as much of a risk of cheating.

Personally I still use my trusty old HP48gx solid enough to substitute for a brick for self defense use.

To avoid that Titanic feeling, boffins create an unsinkable hydrophobic metal with laser power

Terje

Re: Hmmm...

It may be interesting for small boats though if it prevents water from leaking in through small holes or cracks

California’s Attorney General joins the long list of people who have had it with Facebook

Terje
Happy

I think that picture should be close enough.

Thinking of it, maybe the whole Facebook issue can just be sorted out with a priest and vigorous application of holy water?

IBM stands for I Block Money, says sales rep: Big Blue sued yet again by its own staff over 'missing' commissions

Terje

Re: IBM ....

Insincere Business Model

Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System

Terje

Re: Obligatory PTerry reference

I bow to your knowledge on the subject, just one question. What part was the dog and what part was the bear, or was it a centaur case where you basically stack a bear or dog on top of the other?

Terje

Re: Obligatory PTerry reference

Bears are just like dogs, they secretly love fireworks! The howling, whimpering and mauling (in the bear case) is just there to make sure we don't catch on!

I'm sure all big firework displays are just there to attract bears into the cities to increase the wildlife diversity in parks!

Terje

Obligatory PTerry reference

"And the probability of them running into anything is almost zero"

It wouldn't happen to be a million to one chance? If so I'm getting a bear for the fireworks!

BOFH: Judge us not by the size of our database, but the size of our augmented reality

Terje
Terminator

I forsee the nice gardening robot chopping off some of the corporate deadwood!

Remember the 1980s? Oversized shoulder pads, Metal Mickey and... sticky keyboards?

Terje

Re: PEBBAP

I hope that you took notes from this lesson and make sure to water/coffee/tea proofe any relevant electronics to avoid such a misfortune in the future!

Terje

Re: It was something we used to do in the 80s

Ahh Hydrogen suflide and the lovely smell of relative safety, if you can smell it and your eyes are not running you are probably mostly fine. If you can no longer smell it it's bad.

Discworld fans stake claim to element 117

Terje

Re: A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End

Shouldn't we just go for a trawl in L-space to see if we can figure out what the next couple of elements will be called, that way we don't have to worry about the suspence!

Got too say I'm all for Oook.

Don't fall for the hype around OpenAI's Rubik's Cube playing robot, Berkeley bans facial recognition, and more

Terje

The folly of multitasking?

I feel that we see the inefficiency of trying to teach one neural net to do two very different things simultaneously, i.e. solve the rubiks cube, and manipulate the hand/cube system. My guess is that if you used two different networks and limited them to one of the problems each, trained them and then fed the ouput from the solver i.e. do this move to the manipulator it would have been far superior at both tasks with far less time expended.

I'm assuming the real goal of this is not to make a rubiks cube solving robot but to investigate how to solve a much more complex multidimensional problem in this case solve the cube AND manipulate the arm and how to make it more efficient at those kinds of tasks.

Don't look too closely at what is seeping out of the big Dutch pipe

Terje

Re: Student exchange!

Rel media player, that magically managed to be a Master master volume control of the PC... lower the volume and everything got quiet, even though the master volume was still maxed!

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

Terje

Re: An alternative solution

Of course not, you should just imprison the current leadership for treason and remain in EU. I'm not sure what hallucinogens the people that dream up the ideas that you could have all the good parts of EU without the bad ones use, but I'm sure the street price would be enough to cover a significant portion of the GDB loss you will take from leaving.

Hey, I wrote this neat little program for you guys called the IMAC User Notification Tool

Terje

Re: Hardware Testing

Nothing wrong with ARS, nice Latin word!

Linky revisited: How the evil French smart meter escaped Hell to taunt me

Terje

Re: About cutting power

I think it's likely dependent on legislation and culture. If there's a large risk the utility may not get paid it will lean more towards being able to cut power if the bill is unpaid, or meters that you add prepaid credit to which is common in many African countries.

Terje

If you live in a civilised country the smart meters don't have any ability to cut power as they do nothing but measure the current and voltage going through them with no relays in the way (this cut cost as well as relays for such a use would add significantly to the bom.)

IT workers: Speaking truth to douchebags since 1977

Terje

To comply with the previous comment.

I'm sure the supercomputer just need to run with FTB enabled!

That should do for the obligatory PTerry reference

Quic! Head to the latest Chrome version and try out HTTP/3

Terje
Trollface

Re: /var

I would consider and apple product that fail to boot as a net positive!

Rolling in DoH: Chrome 78 to experiment with DNS-over-HTTPS – hot on the heels of Firefox

Terje

The question is not to encrypt or not but how and where to encrypt and handle the name resolving.

This application is doing it In the browser and over http which the consensus here seems to agree is a bad idea as opposed to the OS doing it over an encrypted channel honoring the host file etc.

i.e. Name resolving is an OS job, not a job for the application.

Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted its data, so it escalated its support ticket to a lawsuit

Terje
Alien

Re: Outsourced

I would actually have guess on the three first planets in the Sirius Tau system.

14 sailors die aboard Russian cable spy, er, ocean research nuke sub after fire breaks out

Terje

Re: Nightmarish stuff

There's also a submarine in Gothenburg Sweden for those interested.

https://www.maritiman.se/en/fleet/submarine-nordkaparen

A Register reader turns the computer room into a socialist paradise

Terje

Re: I spit on your socialist paradise...

All power corrupt, absolute power is even more fun!

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Terje

Re: I prefer PEBMAC

I used to use that, but after an actual case with a bad keyboard masquerading as PEBKAC I changed to PEBMAC and it somehow rolls of the the tongue better as well.

Terje

I prefer PEBMAC

I think the term PEBMAC (Problem exist between monitor and chair) has more of an IT ring to it, and sadly I run into them far to often.

Terje

Re: My fav

Definitely lacking the correct alternative, If I know the PFY the deep fake would probably involve either the family golden retriever or farm animals, possibly both...

Firmware update borks Bose boxes: Owners report crackles on Lex-i of the soundbar world

Terje
Joke

Bah humbug, you don't get a decent HDMI cable for £200, you need to get into atleast the £500 range before you get appropriate jitter and flutter free cabling which is the absolute minimum grade to be able to watch / listen to anything!!

Terje
Happy

I'm contemplating replacing the caps in my lovely NAD 306 amp as I think they are starting to crap out, I'm definitely not planning on buying a new amp though as one with remotely similar sound quality cost a small fortune today.

Water big surprise: H2O found in samples of 'dry' asteroid brought to Earth over millions of miles by plucky probe

Terje

Re: Handy to know

I usually just prefer bringing a towel with me, then I can usually get water and lift to the nearest galactic vacation spot.

What are we more likely to see? A smooth Windows 10 May release... or a xenon-124 decay? Oh dear, bad news, IT folks

Terje

Re: Interesting story, but...

Looking at the experiment homepage it seems like the mass of the detector is 3500kg, while the mass of Xenon is 62kg.

Terje

Re: Interesting story, but...

Right, I'm apparently more visually impaired then usual and it's not even beer o'clock yet...

Terje

Re: Interesting story, but...

You also have to factor in that only about 0.1% of Xenon atoms are Xenon 124.

Intel shortages, weak-ass consumer spending, 'peak' Win10 refresh. No, global PC market didn't grow in Q1

Terje
Meh

I would hazard a guess that one of the prime reasons sales remain low is that there's often no need to upgrade or replace existing computers. My work desktop is coming up on six years old now and there's still no reason to replace it from a performance point of view. At home I had to replace my 5930k because either the cpu or motherboard decided to go the way of the dodo forcing me to replace them. If I had not been forced by hardware failure I had no plans to replace it.

There has simply not been the same increase in cpu speed and memory capacity there used to be so older machines are still speedy enough.

Only one Huawei? We pitted the P30 Pro against Samsung and Apple's best – and this is what we found

Terje

Personally I prefer shooting pictures when it's dark using a properly cooled back illuminated monochrome ccd camera with a filter wheel and proper filters connected to a nice telescope on an overly sturdy mount. and then produce the color image in post processing on a good monitor instead. No smartphone has been able to mimic that yet :)

Page: