* Posts by Blank Reg

1089 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jun 2011

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

Blank Reg

Re: re. more blankets

If Putin goes far enough then they should start seizing all those fancy properties in London, Paris, NY etc. that are owned by the Russian oligarchs. Just take any asset within your country that belongs to them. If Putin goes to war then this all become fair game.

Blank Reg

Re: re. more blankets

And the irony is that gas is far less green than nuclear. Really dumb move

Microsoft details 'planet-scale' AI infrastructure packing 100,000-plus GPUs

Blank Reg

It's not just Microsoft

For example iphone existed before Apple's iPhone and gmail existed before Google's gmail

India's Reserve Bank deputy governor calls for crypto ban

Blank Reg

Re: The nub of the matter:

Demand for bitcoin goes up because people believe the price will go up, and the price will go up because the demand goes up. It's financial circle jerk

Blank Reg

No they are trying to protect you from your own stupidity. I futile effort I'm sure.

Blank Reg

That's right, much better to use a crypto currency that can be manipulated by anyone with a twiitter/youtube/etc. account and that can be wiped out the instant a couple of whales decide that the party is over

Blank Reg

Re: He nails it in one!

If you want to stop it then ban banks from dealing with anything related to crypto currencies, and any other banks that do. If the G7 did that then it would kill the crypto market. What banks are willing to be cut off from the G7?

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

Blank Reg

360° ? So when they are done you are right back where you started?

Blank Reg

Re: 16 going on 64

They are unique in that you could fire most of them and the company would just keep on running. On the other hand, if you start firing people at the other end of the pay scale to the equivalent total salary and the company quickly grinds to a halt.

Intel chases after Bitcoin miners with dedicated chip

Blank Reg

Re: If it's that good

or find a way to crack the crypto and cause a cryptocurrency apocalypse.

Though it would e quicker and easier to legislate it out of existence

Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites

Blank Reg

Re: No loss

But those handful of satellites have far less total capacity than a terrestrial solution. And a much shorter lifespan.

Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans

Blank Reg

Re: Only works if you have perfect specs

I saw such perfectly defined specs once, but bigfoot stole them and rode off into the woods on a unicorn

Alien life on Super-Earth can survive longer than us due to long-lasting protection from cosmic rays

Blank Reg

Re: "Earth’s magnetic field will disappear in 6.2 billion years or so"

If the density is uniform then I should think it wouldn't make a difference. But the density is not uniform and will further change as the Sun evolves.

Also the diameter of the Sun vs the distance to the earth makes a difference. It's current diameter is around 1% of it's distance from earth. So differences in density won't have a big impact. But as it grows then we'll see greater effects from the matter on the near side and less from matter on the far side. If it were all uniform then I guess it would balance out. But the Sun is a swirling ball of atoms so I expect we'll get much larger perturbations of the gravitational field as it expands.

Blank Reg

Re: "Earth’s magnetic field will disappear in 6.2 billion years or so"

I recall reading a theory that because stupid ugly people tend to marry other stupid ugly people, and because smart attractive people tend to marry other smart attractive people that we will eventually split into two separate races.

Unfortunately it seems that the stupid ugly people tend to breed more prolifically, and far too often end up in politics. So we're all screwed.

Blank Reg

Re: "Earth’s magnetic field will disappear in 6.2 billion years or so"

That won't save you from tectonicly driven catastrophes. While killer asteroids get all the press, modern civilisation is more likely to be wiped out by a particularly energetic volcano. A decade of global cooling would result in mass starvation and societal collapse.

Or just a really big burst from the Sun could wipe out the electrical grids around the world. Again society collapses.

We're not getting off this planet, we won't last that long

Idea of downloading memories far-fetched say experts after Musk claim resurfaces in latest Neuralink development

Blank Reg

Re: When did Musk become the richest man?

The sooner cryptocurrencies reach their true value of zero the better.

God of War: How do you improve on perfection? You port it to PC, obviously

Blank Reg

I think the main point of these ports is to show PC gamers what they are missing out on. Now with The sequel to GOW and HZD coming some PC gamers may not want to wait another 4 years to play them

Silk could tie up all-but-unbreakable encryption, say South Korean boffins

Blank Reg

You could embed a piece of silk in a security card to make it unclonable. you would just need a small clear window in the card through which to read the pattern

How to polish the bottom line? Microsoft makes it really hard to claim expenses, say staffers

Blank Reg

Re: Ah, yes.

The flight costs could triple when flying to Europe if I didn't stay an extra day or two so it was not only allowed but encouraged. They would even pay all the expenses for those extra 1 or 2 days. We even had an entertainment allowance when staying the weekend.

Blank Reg

Everywhere I've worked there was always the option to just claim the per diem meal expenses with no receipts. Unless you're rather extravagant in you choice of restaurants you usually come out ahead. And the company doesn't have to deal with a couple dozen extra receipts from your 10 day business trip.

Pop quiz: The network team didn't make your change. The server is in a locked room. What do you do?

Blank Reg

Re: Under the floor

Nope, I just often had to get in the server room in the middle of the night.

Blank Reg

Re: Under the floor

I found that with some of these locks no combination was required. I used to get into the server room by fishing a wire behind the plate that was meant to stop you from messing with the door latch and then pulling.

'95% original' film star Spitfire could be yours for a mere £4.5m (or 0.05 Pogbas)

Blank Reg

Re: Vulcans are more awesome than you think

The A10 is also an exceptionally tough bird being able to survive enough damage to take down several other aircraft

Intel plunking down $20bn for at least two chip factories in Ohio

Blank Reg

Re: What ? Ohio ? Not Texas ?

And I belive Ohio has a power grid that works most of the time, even when it gets chilly outside

Russia's Putin out the idea of a broad cryptocurrency ban

Blank Reg

Re: OMG

There have been something like 1000 failed crypto currencies, but they were small enough to not matter.

But even though BItcoin is the biggest the net impact of going to zero is also zero because it's all a zero sum game. The money that people have spent on bitcoin won't disappear, it's already in the pockets of those that cashed.

Blank Reg

Re: OMG

And it is gambling. I always laugh when I see the term "Crypto Investor". This is not an investment, it's pure speculation, a 100% greater fool market. There is no intrinsic value and no value being created.

everyone is just throwing their money in the pot and waiting for the right moment to take their share, wait too long and your share will be zero.

Autonomy founder's anti-extradition case is like saying Moon made of cheese, US govt tells UK court

Blank Reg

Re: Buyers’ remorse _ Ferranti

You're being far too generous with the economist, they are never that accurate.

Microsoft seems intent on buying the gaming industry with $68.7bn purchase of troubled Activision Blizzard

Blank Reg

The problem for Microsoft is that buying big publishers puts them in the cross-hairs of the DOJ anti-trust squad. So they need to tread carefully.

Buying them and continuing to support other platforms on an equal basis should keep them safe for a while. Start cutting out other platforms or giving them second rate implementations and they could see themselves in trouble with the DOJ yet again

Scam, pyramid scheme, environmental disaster: Vivaldi boss shares his thoughts on crypto-coins

Blank Reg

Re: It's called FOMO.

There another winning move, be the first to play. Then let the rest of the suckers fund your potentially very lucrative exit.

Blank Reg

Re: Wall Street?

Well maybe if you have a blockchain solution that can support 10's of thousands of transaction per minute instead of 10's of minutes per transaction then it could be useful. Until then it's pointless. Even at that point there are better solutions.

Blank Reg

Re: Wall Street?

The value of real currencies is essentially the value of the economy to which it is connected. So for example you want to buy something from Japan then you need Yen, so you buy Yen. Lots of demand for Yen then drives the value up. But lots of demand for Yen means lots of trade with Japan, so it's really the strength of the economy driving the demand for the Yen which in turn drive the value of the Yen.

Of course there is speculation in currencies like there is in many things, but it's a small part of the overall market

EthereumMax, a Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather Jr sued over alleged 'pump and dump' cryptocurrency scam

Blank Reg

Re: "I cannot 'appreciate' or 'understand' the value of crypto"

I'm familiar with both those projects, I used to run folding@home on my PS3. But I didn't need any incentive to do so. For the current crop of miners though we'll need to give them their fake currency to keep them at it. At least until they realise it's all a scam, but the seem slow to figure that out.

Blank Reg

Re: "I cannot 'appreciate' or 'understand' the value of crypto"

There are probably several super computers worth of computation being wasted on crypto. Those resources could be used for scientific research and we could pay them with a new fake currency. They will still have worthless tokens but at least they may have done something useful.

Blank Reg

Re: "I cannot 'appreciate' or 'understand' the value of crypto"

They would also need to ban share buy backs, that's just another form of stock manipulation, and it helps the wealthy avoid the taxes that they would have owed if dividends had been paid

JavaScript dev deliberately screws up own popular npm packages to make a point of some sort

Blank Reg

Re: "sign up for a support contract if it exists"

Who's going to pay it? The open source developers that decide to include those dependencies and all the dependencies those dependencies depend on?

All of web development is built on a house of cards. And not a shiny new deck of cards, some of these cards have been been flapping away on your bike spokes for so long that they are barely holding together

Blank Reg

Re: "sign up for a support contract if it exists"

maybe if you were programming in raw Javascript then you'd only have hundreds of dependencies. But start using React or whichever framework is the flavour if the week and you will have 1000's or even 10's of thousands of dependencies

No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

Blank Reg

Re: Norton's PR is Stupid

So is there free AV software that will have a real person try to remove your virus? If so do you trust giving them access to your computer?

Two sides of the digital coin: Ill-gotten gains in cryptocurrencies double, outpaced by legit use – report

Blank Reg

Re: outpaced by legit use

Well that makes sense, buying something that is fundamentally worthless with something that is fundamentally worthless.

Look, we did a survey that shows AIOps is ready for the primetime, says AIOps firm

Blank Reg

Well it's more believable than the surveys run by those owning lots of expensive and mostly empty office space that claim we all want to go back to the office

Remember Norton 360's bundled cryptominer? Irritated folk realise Ethereum crafter is tricky to delete

Blank Reg

Re: What does installing a crypto miner have to do with computer security?

It used to tell you how many days were remaining on your subscription at the bottom of the My Norton window, now it just says whether it's active or not. You have to click on it to take you a panel with the expiry date

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of fraud: Blood-testing machines were vapourware after all

Blank Reg

Re: Now, if only ....

Sure it will create quite a backlog, but the long term benefits are well worth it. But you also have to hold them to the same standards while they are campaigning, otherwise no incumbent would ever win when up against unfettered lying by their opponents.

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

Blank Reg

Re: Ha Ha Ha

except that your gold cross isn't actively working to kill you

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

Blank Reg

Any language is dangerous if you write stupid code. And what could be more stupid than providing a mechanism to execute remote code and having it enabled by default?

Blank Reg

Re: Don't forget the other bugs introduced by copy-n-paste software

if you think that's bad, check out the mess that is modern Javascript development. Endless layers of libraries calling libraries. Start writing something using React or Node for example and you will have 1000s of dependencies in the first hour, and that can easily balloon out to 10k+

The dark equation of harm versus good means blockchain’s had its day

Blank Reg

"creating a store of value, a la gold or btc, that is based on removing carbon from the atmosphere"

Remove carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into diamonds :)

But then if you're really good at it you might start to impact the value of diamonds, and then those with a vested interest in keeping diamond prices artificially inflated may arrange for you to have a little accident.

Blank Reg

Except much the "inefficiency" in banking is actually due to regulations designed to deter/prevent fraud, theft, and money laundering. The cost of fixing these minor inconveniences would be that it's easier for criminals to steal and transfer funds before anyone has a chance to stop them

Blank Reg

Re: Lack of comprehension and imagination ...

The difference being that gold has actual value because it actually exists and has actual uses. Unlike bitcoin whose actual value is 0 and therefore is 100% a speculative market. Even beanie babies and tulip bulbs have more intrinsic value than bitcoin, yet they both crashed and burned after flying very high

As for it being a store of value you need only look at what happens every time the markets take a dive. When the markets take a big hit you can usually see Bitcoin take an even bigger hit, sometimes by an order of magnitude more than the market decline. Gold on the other hand tends to go in the opposite direction, and by much smaller increments

Desktop bust and custom iPhone 13 Pro made from melted-down Tesla car for the Elon Musk dork in your life

Blank Reg

"Seems like a waste of a good car to us"

How could it be a waste of a GOOD car, I thought it was made from a Tesla?

Russia blows up old satellite, NASA boss 'outraged' as ISS crew shelters from debris

Blank Reg

Re: People In Glass Houses.....

It's not at all new, in fact it's SOP. We periodically have US governments whine about Canada limiting imports of US dairy. We don't subsidize our farmers, we have a managed supply system so that the prices are maintained at a level that farmers can stay in business. How could they compete with US farmers and their billions in direct subsidies?

There's joke that goes something like this

Two farmers are talking about next years crops, the first farmer asks the other if they are growing corn again next year, The second farmer replies that he's switching to alfalfa as the government pays him more to not grow alfalfa than to not grow corn.

There is a similar paragraph in Catch 22, though I don't know which came first

Blank Reg

Re: And they say the Americans are anti-social dumb-fucks ...

Better not let the Americans think that it is.