* Posts by imanidiot

4405 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2012

It was that gosh-darn anomaly again, says SpaceX as smoke billows from Crew Dragon test site

imanidiot Silver badge

The succes rate of SpaceX you are now harping on about is ONLY the recovery of the first stage of the launch vehicle. Something not ever done by NASA (or anyone else) and only sort of attempted in some experimental vehicles (not very successfully I might add).

If we look at primary mission succes they've lost 2 vehicles (one during flight due to a strut failing in the second stage LOX tank, one on the launchpad during a static fire test due to unforeseen cryogenic effects causing defects in the COPV tank). They further lost a secondary payload (but successfully delivered the cargo Dragon capsule to the ISS) due to an engine anomaly, which they could have recovered if the primary customer (NASA) had allowed an extra engine ignition.

67 out of 69 launches successful (not counting the 2 Falcon Heavy launches that use pretty much the same vehicle). A 97.1 % success rate for a new rocket program is nothing to sneeze at. During the 60s and 70s NASA didn't even reach 90% overal success rate. Counting all NASA vehicles it wasn't until the 90s that they reached about 95%.

Recovery of the first stage has never been a priority for SpaceX. They've freely admitted (before launching) on the first recovery attempts that they didn't think they were going to make it for various reasons. Many design changes were made to get to where they are now and every prang was giving them valuable information. Your comment "If we let them just say "Oh, we never intended to land that time"." Is just stupid. I already told you in my first post that they have always announced intent to recover the booster BEFORE launching. No takesies backsies there.

Please stop being intentionally obstinate. There's plenty to criticize Musk (and SpaceX) for, but this isn't the problem you're looking for.

imanidiot Silver badge

They've never taken out the drone ship. Heavily damaged, yes but never destroyed. And after a rough start (*Sarcasm* Surprisingly it's really difficult to land a 43 meter/140ft tall rocket on it's ass and keep it standing upright without it going boom. Who knew? */sarcasm*)

And they've now succeeded (when planning to recover the rocket, which they announce ahead of time) more often than they've failed. IIRC they've actually recovered the first stage booster more often than they have dropped one in the ocean INCLUDING the expendable launches now.

If you are going to have criticism on Musk, at least know what the heck you are talking about. There's plenty to criticize, but this isn't it.

California's politicians rush to gut internet privacy law with pro-tech giant amendments

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Sounds like classic Sacramento to me...

Remove the "Republican" and "Democratic" from that sentence. The US doesn't have a diverse political system and Republican v. Democrat is just a thin veneer over largely exactly the same cronyism, nepotism and corruption

FYI: Get ready for face scans on leaving the US because 1.2% of visitors overstayed their visas

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Easy options

If this is proper biometrics scanning, growing a beard or changing your eyebrows should not make a difference. Ear shape MIGHT make a difference but most full frontal "face-on" recognition systems don't do anything with the ears afaik.

Canadian woman fined for not holding escalator handrail finally reaches the top after 10 years

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Other escalator laws

Further explaining: "Dogs must be carried" => Anyone riding the escalator must be carrying a dog.

Facebook: Yeah, we hoovered up 1.5 million email address books without permission. But it was an accident!

imanidiot Silver badge

So perjury then?

"Last month it emerged that top management knew about Cambridge Analytica's shenanigans at least four months before the story hit the news. Facebook previously claimed, and testified in court, that it was completely unaware until alerted by the media."

Sounds to me like there should be some perjury trials and jail time incoming then.

Brit Watchkeeper drone fell in the sea because blocked sensor made algorithms flip out

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: pitot probes

Yes there has been. There's a reason we've been using the design since the 1730s. Because in general it just works. But there are caveats and conditions you have to be aware of when designing a system with a pitot probe or when operating a craft using one.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Dry, hot and dusty

Pitots are pretty much static solid state devices. It's just that there is a tube leading from the pitot tube to the pressure transducer. You don't want to put that transducer right in the airflow because of the icing and moisture problems (Temperature swings would also be very difficult to compensate for). That leaves you with a pitot probe that CAN have icing and water ingress problems. The fact they have so much problems when it is a pretty much solved problem in aviation (the problem is well understood and researched) is beyond me though. To me it indicated serious incompetence or willful ignorance. (Both unfortunately run rampant in government contracts in my limited experience)

A quick cup of coffee leaves production manager in fits and a cleaner in tears

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Do not unplug!

From a BOFH perspective any janitor that cannot be bothered to appease the powers that be is a problem to be removed. Then you use this as education for the ones that follow.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Not cleaner, but definitely a squeaky bum moment

I should not post late... HF isn't the flammable burn anything stuff, I'm confusing it with a tri-Fluoride compound. It's the "exposure to the dilute acid can poison you from the inside without you even realizing you were exposed" stuff. Alternatively the "Will straight up dissolve glass" stuff. As a gas it's even worse than as the acid.

Interesting/entertaining read on HF: "Things I won't touch"

And on the Chlorine Trifluoride I mentioned (also used in semicon fabs) "Sand won't save you this time"

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Never Turn up Early!?

The thing is that if you are already there when people show up they'll assume you only arrived 10 minutes before them at the earliest. Thus if you leave an hour before they can, they'll think you're taking the piss. On the other hand, people DO notice if they've made a long day and you are still there when they leave. They don't usually remember exactly when you came in so they just assume you're putting in some serious time. The only people that MIGHT acknowledge your early arrival are other "early birds" and most of the time they don't care either.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Not cleaner, but definitely a squeaky bum moment

I thought arsenic compounds smelled like almonds?

Edit: confused it with cyanide. Arsine does indeed create a garlic or fishy smell through reacting with stuff in the according to the info I could just find. The gas itself is supposedly odourless (I pitty the guy that found that out).

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Not cleaner, but definitely a squeaky bum moment

Yeah, plenty of compounds that will make you shudder and back away in a hurry, but Boron isn't the main one. Hydrogen Fluoride is one of those big time "Nope" for me in particular. Concentrated HF loves to set fire to things not normally considered flammable. Things like sand, concrete and, in the words of John D. Clark, rocket propellant researchers. For me though especially the health effects of exposure to the dilute stuff makes me nope out. You'd better hope the hospital has plenty of calcium gluconate on standby if you ever get exposed, because HF pulls the calcium from the blood to the point of the muscles like the heart or for breathing stop working. Definitely a shit way to go.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Why is it...

Because the comments are the main attraction. The article is just a thinly veiled prompt to bring us commentards together to swap stories.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Cleaners...

The subgroup that nicks stuff is part of any occupation. Sooner or later anything that isn't actively guarded gets nicked. If it's bolted down it'll just last a little longer.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Cleaners...

The thing is that nobody who's capable of doing any other job stays around doing cleaning work just for the fun of it. That leaves only the people who can't get a "better" job doing it. And those are often not the people generally associated with high intelligence (no offence intended to cleaners, they do an important and sometimes literally shit job). This is compounded by pretty much every company nowadays nickel-and-dime the job by outsourcing to the lowest bidder contractor. That means these people get literally 10 seconds per desk and one minute to vacuum an entire office. I'll leave it to the reader to decide how effective a job a cleaner can do in that time. On top of that because it is outsourced work often done outside work hours there is little to no oversight or management involved in their performance other than the amount of complaints coming in to the contractor and the amount of time they bill.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Never Turn up Early!?

Turning up late usually also means leaving later, meaning you are still around when the fixing finally comes in (or at least you are still around when others have left, leaving you to make a good impression for "staying late to help solve the problem"). It can have it's advantages.

Last week in space: Giant aircraft, asteroid impacts and exploding satellites

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Stratolaunch vs Skylon??

The heavier rockets that the article mentions for Stratolaunch have actually been canceled. They're focussing solely on Pegasus XL currently, which can also be launched by other aircraft (There's a Tristar already doing so I believe). Their argument is that they can carry 3 at a time to reduce cost, but given the cost per pegasus rocket this is a stupid preposition as it's a literal drop in the ocean in terms of cost. Stratolaunch will collapse soon. There is no market for what they plan to do as other small launch providers can do the same for similar or lower cost without all the headaches of horizontal transport, flight and launch introduced by air launched rockets.

So you've 'seen' the black hole. Now for the interesting bit – how all that raw data was stored

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: *shakes head in bewilderment*

Find furniture that fits in your overal budget and spread booking the payment over more than 1 month? Or buy a few tables and chair each month? This is mostly a problem that calls for creative bookkeeping to fit whatever arbitrary rules the organisation has put in place.

Watch Toyota's huge basketball robot shoot a hoop, and read up on how you should think about AI and, erm, Jesus

imanidiot Silver badge

Yes: "any other kind of sex besides that between a husband and wife" => Prostitutes have sex outside of a marriage so are immoral and should be prosecuted. Anyone that has sex with a prostitute does so outside of marriage so is immoral and should be prosecuted.

These people want sex to be strictly the wife laying down on the bed waiting for her husband to get it over with, the husband to "pump in his load" to get his wife pregnant then rolling over and falling asleep. No petting or touching allowed.

Kent bloke incurs the anchor of local council after fly-tipping boat

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Whaaat?

And since it was tipped it was probably also leaky, making it a deflated dirigible dumped double decker dodgy dinged dingy dinghy

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Whaaat?

Let's hope nobody stacks 2 of those. Then you'd have a double decker dodgy dinged dingy dinghy

Dutch chip equipment maker denies trade secrets theft was Chinese espionage

imanidiot Silver badge

No, NOT all six where Chinese nationals and not all funding for the company came from China. RTFA.

Need a Ferranti Pegasus board in your life? Brit computing history could be yours for four figures

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: On it own it's just scrap.

I was just going to point this out. That's really no indication of anything really. If these components are indeed common and regularly swapped at HAM-fests and swap meets then their lack of auctioning is really no surprise or indication or anything.

RIP: Microsoft finally pulls plug on last XP survivor... POSReady 2009

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: ReactOS (as the new XP)

I think he's trying to be clever and make a Titanic joke. As in Wintennic. *monotonous robot voice* get it? haha, very funny indeed. */robot voice*

Are brown dwarfs stars or planets? Boffins find evidence for proto-suns in a solar system

imanidiot Silver badge

Alt+0128 => €. I need that often enough to know it of the top of my head.

The Reg takes a trip over the New Edge. Mmmm... New Coke with extra fizz

imanidiot Silver badge

I can recall a thread about the move on this very reg that was filled mostly with moaning. Even here few Reg (l)users where happy with the move.

imanidiot Silver badge

Thanks

I'll stick with Firefox for now.

US government tells internet body to hurry the funk up on privacy

imanidiot Silver badge

Correct me if I'm wrong but,

Doesn't GDPR specifically ban handing over any PII to private 3rd parties (Companies or persons) without consent? IE, handing over Whois data to "security researchers" (What does that entail anyway, how does one get the badge? I've used basic google search terms to find open IP cams. Am I now a security researcher?) or to "IP lawyers" (Again, what does this entail? How do they check someone is a both a licensed lawyer and specialized in IP cases AND working on a case that involves those specific records?) would be illegal under GDPR afaik, no matter the processes they spin up for it. The ONLY way it can be legal is handing over the data to law enforcement ONLY with the correct court orders to demand that information. All the others will first have to prove to a court they have a legitimate case and then try to convince the court to provide the correct request for Whois data.

Back to drawing board as Google cans AI ethics council amid complaints over right-wing member

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Transphobia

Please don't tar all people with the same brush. Yes there are some complete nutjobs out there. That's not all of them. As usual it becomes hard to find the real (and reasonable) issues because a few blowhards are demanding all the attention and all the opponents aim all their attention to these same ridiculously overblown idiotic demands instead of the more reasonable center.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: That should be obvious

I didn't really know we had transgenders here at the Register? And why would they only single out Register transgenders? Seems like an oddly specific target demographic.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Transphobia

In theory yes, in practice a lot of those "rights" aren't actually written down anywhere and more or less socially decided. Since there are always people that like being contrary and believe their ideas are "the one true Truth of all Truths" this can get complicated. Simple things like what bathroom they're allowed to use are a hornets nest of opinion. It usually devolves into the argument between: "You should keep your filthy mouth shut and just allow these people to do as they want" and "They're all perverts and what is to prevent them from assaulting a woman in the bathroom just because they put on a dress?". An argument that can't have winners and knows only losers. Not in the first place the people whom it actually concerns that for the most part just want to be left alone and get on with their lives.

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

imanidiot Silver badge
Joke

Re: AS/400 UPS

Redundancies? You and the admin I presume?

Hams try to re-carve the amateur radio spectrum in fight over open or encoded transmissions

imanidiot Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Licence Conditions

But when is something encrypted? That is the whole gist of the discussion here. Is data compressed by some obscure algorithm encrypted or just compressed? The compression is there to reduce transmission time and improve reliability over difficult radio links, but if an outside observer cannot decompress the data stream, is it then the same as encryption?

Who needs foreign servers? Researchers say the USA is doing a fine job of harboring its own crimeware flingers

imanidiot Silver badge
Joke

But.. but... bu.... The RUSSIANS!

Lies, all fake news. It's all done by the Russians in a plot to overthrow the US government!

Boeing nowhere fast: Starliner space taxi schedule slips once again to August

imanidiot Silver badge

Read the link posted by Hopalong below. They're just trying to shift the blame for their own internal fuckups here. There was something tremendously wrong with the launch abort system, and they haven't even performed the pad abort test. ULA didn't even start stacking the Atlas, which they would have needed to start doing in februari to be ready in time for spacecraft integration to be completed for an april launch window. The fact ULA didn't start means that Boeing told them probably in January not to bother. It's at the very least not very nice of them to then point the finger at ULA for short launch window, which they knew about for a LONG time.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: BS

It's not a software problem. They bungled it months ago (before the 737 debacle) when they found a failure in the launch abort system fuel valves. They're not ready for a pad abort test, and this test HAS to be done before the OFT can be performed. If you have read the full article you have read they must have informed ULA months ago not to start stacking the rocket, again before the 737 debacle.

It's time to reset the 'Days without a Facebook data loss' sign after 500 million records left exposed on AWS

imanidiot Silver badge

Unless that personal information is required for the performance of the service.

Important little caveat there, as processing PII is pretty much what Facebook is/does.

imanidiot Silver badge

At the very least, under the loosest possible interpretation of GDPR they need a SPECIFIC checkbox for " I accept and agree Facebook may share my PII with third parties", which can not be mandatory AND they need to have specific agreements with third parties on how those third parties are supposed to store the data, what they are allowed to do with it, when they have to delete it and who gets access to the data. (The third party has to be GDPR compliant to begin with for it to be legal for Facebook to share data with them)

International Bullying Machine? Big Blue seeks exposure of corporate canary

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Well, hand it to a journalist then

Too late for that now. Should have done that BEFORE starting the litigation.

Finally, after years of dunking on Magic Leap, El Reg's Kieren tries out the techno hype goggles. And the verdict...

imanidiot Silver badge

The automated machines are pretty accurate if you have a "simple" prescription (No prism or a more difficult astigmatism). They're often used to get a baseline reading at opticians here in the Netherlands. If, like me, you have strongly differing astigmatism with the axes crossed about 90 degrees between the eyes they're not always accurate. In my case the cilinder reading is often off by half a point or more and the axis rarely matches. The speed of an optician working through

Then it comes down to the skill of the optician whether the placement of the lenses in the rims is done correctly. This can make or break a set of glasses with correctly measured lenses.

imanidiot Silver badge

Luxottica is actually MORE dominant in the US than it is in Europe as far as I know. But yes, it is ridiculous just how monopolized the market for something as simple as glasses has become.

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I'm an American citizen

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Could this work to avoid legal action ?

No, that'll just get you "obstructing an investigation" charges thrown in or at least marked as uncooperative. Which means they get to tighten the screws a bit more.

Dutch director cops roar deal after selling off lion-based schlock to China

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Dutch films made in the Netherlands, no thanks

Then either the directors suck or all the good ones don't bother making Dutch films, because the few bits of film and I've had to endure has been pretty much universally shit.

imanidiot Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Dutch films made in the Netherlands, no thanks

I see all six Dutch movie fans are out in full force here

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Dutch films made in the Netherlands, no thanks

Watchable, and that is high praise compared to most Dutch films as far as I'm concerned.

imanidiot Silver badge
Stop

Dutch films made in the Netherlands, no thanks

They're usually shit, both in story and acting. (Dutch actors are predominantly trained for the stage and everything they do is DRAMATICALLY ..... EXAGERATED! Which doesn't come off well on film.

Pull! Rocket Lab fires off another potential target as India joins exclusive satellite shooting club

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Weeks, months, years, decades

If the impact only accelerated it at the hit point the perigee would be at the impact altitude, apogee could be anything. On lighter objects solar wind and geomagnetic effects can then do funny things to orbits.

imanidiot Silver badge

Weeks, months, years, decades

Some of the debris of the Indian ASAT mission might very well have gotten blasted into very high orbits, where it will remain for years, if not decades. The resulting debris cloud of 2 vehicles smacking into one another at several thousand meters per second is unpredictable and very energetic. Parts CAN end up in highly eccentric orbits, carrying a lot of energy.

ASAT willy waving in this way is simply irresponsible. (Though less stupid than the Chinese ASAT test.)

FYI: You could make Tesla's Autopilot swerve into traffic with a few stickers on the road

imanidiot Silver badge

Not really, that actually had short enough response time to allow decent control. This seems to have about a second delay between input and the car responding. Good enough to thoroughly crash a vehicle, terrible for driving it while getting shot at by angry baddies.