* Posts by bombastic bob

10275 publicly visible posts • joined 1 May 2015

Inventor of the graphite anode – key Li-ion battery tech – says he can now charge an electric car in 10 minutes

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: There still remains......

This is ALL very true. Very often fossil fuel plants are the ONLY ones capable of handling that kind of electrical demand. There is NOT enough solar radiation on the planet to power cars, whether it is collected via solar panels, wind, or falling water.

The only real solution (if you are trying to eliminate fossil fuels, a position I wholeheartedly disagree with) is FUSION energy, which is the only thing that would make electric vehicles practical AND universal. The second possibility is FISSION energy, until we have working fusion plants.

(Other implications are obvious)

I would like to see worldwide fusion energy. I see it as the cleanest and most abundant form of electrical production. But nothing comes without cost. The question is whether the extremists are willing to shut up about their extremism long enough to get it done.

Seven-year-old make-me-root bug in Linux service polkit patched

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

you are right. I'll need to check to see if polkit on FBSD is vulnerable...

(it's actually a little convenient on FBSD - remembering you already were prompted for a password recently and not prompting again, for example - but now I'll consider disabling it)

An anti-drone system that sneezes targets to death? Would that be a DARPA project? You betcha

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: spraying pink spunk doesn't solve the problem

when high speed rotors are spinning, a sight out-of-balance is all you need to cause catastrophic failure in a short period of time. Severe vibration, blades strike shrouds, or blades break off. All bad for Mr. Drone, who will soon have a very, very bad day.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: .. spraying the whole city with small-arms fire?

yeah a 16 inch turret gun on an offshore battleship shooting silly string projectiles to take out a few drones...

(that would be *EPIC* and funny as hell at the same time)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: The Great Argle Seizure

* snot bot

* SN33Z3

* Autonomous Combat Helicopter Ordinance Obliterator (A.C.H.O.O.)

* The Pink Mist (Halo reference)

* Super Silly String Sting

(coat please)

Dealing with the pandemic by drinking and swearing? Boffins say you're not alone

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: The 5 rules of problematic drinking

A pot of coffee is "12 units" or that'd be my guess. I wonder what a quad cappuccino qualifies as? [my daily breakfast]

84 units of coffee a week - heh

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pint

Re: The 5 rules of problematic drinking

I got 1, 4 and 5 nailed down, but am still working on 2 and 3. Does it count as medicinal if it settles my digestion and makes tolerable the 'old age' symptoms?

BOFH: Despite the extremely hazardous staircase, our IT insurance agreement is at an all-time low. Can't think why

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Good one !

a while back someone did an online mini-series of videos called "Salmon Days". it had its funny moments, especially when the BOFH wrestled with the paperclip because it was repeating "It looks like you're writing a letter", and there was a lady that sounded like a modem or a FAX, and 'Microshaft' customer support froze up in mid phone-answer with the floating paper overhead... but unfortuately a lot of it just wasn't that funny, and it disappeared into the ether.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Strong arm!

you just need to use more cement

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: At a phsician's

just worth pointing out... vaccination _is_ a way of establishing herd immunity...

(either that or do what parents did in the 60's for mumps, measles, chicken pox, etc. - expose your kids when they're young and get over it faster, whenever there's a breakout)

I prefer vaccines, myself. Only reason I haven't gotten one (yet) is I probably had the virus in early Jan of 2020 when a co-worker came back from china and then had to leave work due to fever etc. and then a couple of weeks later I had the symptoms, which went away in a day or so, and came back just once a week later (but milder). And a relative that lives with me got similar symptoms in that time frame. And things with sugar in them taste funny, now (instead of sweet). And early on, I thought "I'll let others get it first" since I'd most likely had the virus, when it was in ultra-high demand. But eventually, when it's convenient, I'll probably get the jab(s) just to make sure I'm immune.

So yeah I'm not even remotely close to being an anti-vaxxer, but i still don't like seeing people turn into extremists on the either side of this, especially when the arguments deviate from actual science.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Alien

the problem with saying "the truth" is that both sides of an issue often make claim to exclusive ownership of it, often with no proof other than "feelz" and "wantz" and "afraidz". On BOTH sides.

science demands peer review and repeatability and modified theories when the results do not come up as expected (and there were no lab mistakes that might have caused it). Over time, something close to "the truth" becomes possible. I would expect this to be true with a LOT of things. Over time, the truth will eventually be known. June 15th comes to mind on this one... (see icon)

But of course mRNA had nothing to do with kernels and so Linus was 100% right.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Linux

equally appropriate if it had been SPAM

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: At Arthur 1, re: "Little Linus"...

you forgot your coat...

Fastly 'fesses up to breaking the internet with an 'an undiscovered software bug' triggered by a customer

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: And the bug was?

hmmm - that actually makes a LOT of sense depending on how the date/time math was being done.

more reason to ALWAYS store and work with date+time info as time_t (as GMT), or something very similar, to avoid [most] date+time math issues (then just tolerate any others).

I've done a LOT of date+time kinds of calculations with databases, etc. over the years, for decades even (from business analysis tools to capturing electric power waveform data to millisecond motion data capture) and the idea that a date+time calculation that crosses 0:00 might be responsible for a system-wide outage sounds VERY plausible.

I think AWS (and others), had a similar problem once (or maybe MORE than once) due to a leap second and its effect on the world-wide synchronization of data...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Aspberger’s

non-verbal cues

are highly overrated...

(except for icons)

Google says its artificial intelligence is faster and better than humans at laying out chips for artificial intelligence

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: "OK, we see where this is going"

nobody EVER listens to Marvin, even though he has a brain the size of a planet... (and sounds a LOT like Alan Rickman)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Terminator

but are they "3 laws safe" ?

Uncle Sam recovers 63.7 of 75 Bitcoins Colonial Pipeline paid to ransomware crew

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Another stake in the heart

sorta mentioned in the article, BTC apparently dropped quite a bit in value... and if it is THAT easy for the FBI to play 'follow the money' to find crooks, BTC has significantly less value at hiding them from Johnny Law.

(yet another reason why I don't invest in it)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Not your keys, not your crypto

maybe they could pay it out using those exploding dye packs...

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Blockchain

BlockHEADchain

('cause they thought it couldn't be traced)

DoS vulns in 3 open-source MQTT message brokers could leave users literally locked out of their homes or offices

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Patch a key

or you just drill out the lock cylinder with a carbide bit and replace it

(new mechanical door locks are pretty cheap)

Microsoft flips request to port Visual Studio Tools for Office to .NET Core from 'Sure, we'll take a look' to 'No'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Not Many Options

in theory, if you create a COM object that has proper thread support, it could still be for a remote process, or an internal process. It should not matter from the perspective of how the owning application uses it.

But performance demands might make it piggy if not designed carefully with "how is it being used" as the number one concern. So maybe THAT is it? Yeah all of that IPC and marshalling can slow it WAY down.

I am curious what it might be that would cause legacy MS Office COM handling to break if there are external processes supporting the COM objects [instead of them being in-process only].

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: What about a .Net Framework service?

you made me look at gRPC, and specifically the "Protocol Buffers" IDL, which I had not heard of until now and at first look my fingers formed the shape of a cross, and I ran away frantically looking for some garlic...

(It definitely reminds me of some of the bad things in the Android API, and I was never a fan of the OLE Automation IDL either)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Java version of .NET Core is OpenJDK

It was my understanding that COM-like IPC capabilities were being implemented in Linux and BSD by use of D-Bus, where CORBA is primarily for things across networks.

For the COM model itself, at least in concept (use of ref counts and querying the capabilities of an object) the basic concepts are good, though I would prefer to call 'QueryInerface' differently (have it return IUnknown pointer and get error detail elsewhere, if you actually care about it).

Use of ref counting also results in smaller/faster code from my experience.

Java has its own way of doing things, though, and the "garbage collection" vs "ref count" war might explain why "other object models" apparently aren't welcome.

(that might explain the low demand for that feature)

I've toyed with the idea of a simple compatibility layer for COM in Linux/BSD but have not actually written it... yet. But if I did it would probably use DBus as-is, and be small and statically linked open source without license encumberance - and be compatible with things like Libre Office.

Remember Anonymous? It/they might be back, and it/they are angry with Elon Musk

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

The fact that one man COULD manipulate crypto coins via opinion tweets suggests that investments in such things is, at the very least, UNSTABLE.

(which is why I do not do crypto currencies)

Also if someone(s) claims to speak FOR 'Anonymous', and does something lame like this, chances are it's NOT 'Anonymous' but someone(s) that is a pretender, an attention-seeker, or basement-dweller.

something like DDoS'ing the Church of Scientology [with all of the evidence about them] or going after rapists is the kind of 'vigilante justice' that would gain approval of a loosely associated bunch of individuals. Going after Musk or his companies because of a few tweets? No. That's lame.

Biden expands Chinese tech and military blocklist to 59 companies

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Mr. Biden, Tear Down This Wall !

breath of stale air

and deserves a "slow clap" for having done something right

Supreme Court narrows Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Misusing access not quite the same as breaking in

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

knee-jerk legislation, painting too broad of a brush, out of cluelessness, to the point of unconstitutional "umbrella" laws that empower DA's to abuse them for malicious or even vexatious prosecutions...

That sounds like "Con-Grab" CONGRESS members alright...

(What's REALLY fun is that the 3 most recent Supreme Court members sided with the Liberals on this one, and Barrett wrote the majority opinion)

Google's diversity strat lead who said Jews have 'insatiable appetite for war' is no longer diversity strat lead

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: But but

"more diverse" really only matters if you're being sued for discrimination [which Google is, last I checked]

What you REALLY want is a work force that GETS WORK DONE. But hiring practices need to NOT discriminate on factors NOT related to getting work done. So rock, meet hard place.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: The problem isn't whether he still has those views

The real problem was saying he "still despised" homosexuality in 2007

there IS a difference between disliking a behavior, a sub-culture, or similar, AND YET ensuring that someone is never discriminated for it. If he can guarantee that homosexuals are not discriminated against in hiring, firing, promotions, and so on [including his behavior towards people], what's the problem? "Thought police" goes WAY too far...

Now, if he's a card carrying member of the Westboro Baptist Church, or has made a LOT of online noise that suggest a pattern of pejorative or defamatory things against homosexuals, then yeah, THAT would be a problem...

I happen to REALLY dislike smoking. It doesn't mean I can't work with smokers, nor respect their basic rights [even if being near them after they've been smoking gives me a HORRIBLE sinus headache]. I see it as the same kind of thing, i.e. "I dislike what you do and it causes me distress but I'll respect you anyway". Policing my thoughts over this matter, because I do not embrace it and avoid smoke whenever I'm near it, would be a violation of MY rights.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

your description of 'cancel culture' needs to include: "no forgiveness, and no opportunity for redemption" for these 'cancel culture' people are NOT interested in improving human behavior, they are interested in executing the kinds of shunning power they had when they were in high school (i.e. "the jocks" and "the queen B's court" will NOT allow YOU to be POPULAR, and so on).

however you would normally expect that someone with the term "diversity" in the job description wouldn't have ever expressed any anti-[fill in the group] attitudes. As such, the discovery of ANY kinds of prejudicial attitudes raises questions about the integrity in bringing about any kind of 'fairness' from that job position.

Tech scammer who fooled Cisco, Microsoft and Lenovo out of millions jailed for more than seven years

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

And, in a recent BOFH

I was reminded of a recent BOFH when I read this article...

Tiananmen Square Tank Man vanishes from Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, other search engines – even in America

bombastic bob Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Call me paranoid....

occam's razor. you may have hit this one directly on the head

bombastic bob Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: What's in a phrase?

unfortunately, to the intellectual lazy people who all too often prefer wikipedia and search engines to libraries and dead-tree manuals, "disappearing" something on Teh Intarwebs is an effective censorship and revisionist history trick.

But if we're lucky, there will still be a proper card catalog at a nearby library where we can actually look things up "the old fashioned way".

(I suspect that most of us these days use the library more as a "last resort" though...)

Flying dildo poses a slap in the face for serious political debate

bombastic bob Silver badge
Trollface

I did a whois on that

seems to be an ISP or something. I originally guessed 'domain squatter'

bombastic bob Silver badge
Coat

Re: Misuse of Drone! What kind of Load?

he should've used a balloon - er, balloon-like... oh nevermind

bombastic bob Silver badge
Facepalm

From the article: filmed in portrait - the real crime

And, TRULY, a "dick move" - to film a, uh, moving dick, in PORTRAIT aspect

(these "4 inchers" who see everything through a 4 inch screen in portrait mode need to rotate their cameras 90 degrees so they can view the world properly, with BOTH EYES, instead of looking like they're peeking through a door gap or a keyhole...)

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Get em while they’re young

its something we have to do in a fast changing landscape and at our own expense usually.

Q: What were you doing during the time gap between assignments?

A: improving my skills and re-familiarizing myself with the cutting edge of technology in my field

(Turning the possible disadvantage into an advantage - and better than saying "video games, IRC, and social media")

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: The ones that really bother me. . ..

From the article: Delete the word “feel”

this can NOT be overstated nor overemphasized!!!

Recruiters who are "feelies" should probably be bypassed or avoided entirely.

Seriously, "What Color is your Parachute" [a book about job hunting], as I recall, talks about ways of getting your CV/resume past the eyes of HR and recruiters, and onto the desk of the hiring manager, things like addressing the envelope "attn: hiring manager", and finding out the manager's actual name.

But using CV authoring tricks to get HR droids and recruiters to "not circular file" your CV/resume is also extremely useful (so thanks for the article). The initial prioritizing of bullet points (and then picking different ones for each application) is DEFINITELY a good idea.

(pirate, er PRIVATEER icon, for the contractor in me)

FYI: Today's computer chips are so advanced, they are more 'mercurial' than precise – and here's the proof

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: re: Cuddles: Complexity: Another nail in the coffin...

maybe they need to use an encryption algorithm that isn't susceptible to (virtually) identical math errors during encryption and decryption. Then you could self-check by decrypting the encrypted output and comparing to the original. So long as the errors produce un-decryptable results, you should be fine.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Error detection

I dunno about half speed... but certainly limit the operating temperature.

more than likely it's caused by running at higher than average temperatures (that are still below the limit) which cause an increase in hole/electron migration within the gates [from entropy] and they become weakened and occasionally malfunction...

(at higher temperatures, entropy is higher, and therefore migration as well)

I'm guessing that these malfunctioning devices had been run at very high temperatures, almost continuously, for a long period of time [years even]. Even though the chip spec allows temperatures to be WAY hotter than they usually run at, it's probably not a good idea to LET this happen in order to save money on cooling systems (or for any other reason related to this).

On several occasions I've seen overheated devices malfunction [requiring replacement]. In some cases it was due to bad manufacturing practices (an entire run of bad boards with dead CPUs). I would expect that repeated exposure to maximum temperatures over a long period of time would eventually have the same effect.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Error detection

without revealing [classified information] the concept of "2 out of 3" needed to initiate something, such as [classified information], might even use an analog means of doing so, and pre-dates the space shuttle [and Evangelion] by more than just a few years.

Definitely a good idea for critical calculations, though.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Error detection

CPU redundancy may be easier than people may want to admit...

If your CPU has multiple (actual) cores, for "critical" operations you could run two parallel threads. If your threads can be assigned "CPU affinity" such that they don't hop from CPU to CPU as tasks switch around then you can compare the results to make sure they match. If you're REALLY paranoid, you can use more than 2 threads.

If it's a VM then the hypervisor (or emulator, or whatever) would need to be able to ensure that core to thread affinity is supported.

Japan to dangle as many Yen as it takes to lure chipmakers to its shores, because everyone else is doing it too

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: Join the club

most likely it will cause an increase in automated processes. China often does labor intensive things because they pay slave wages. Moving foundries away from China requires less labor in the process to be profitable. There are a lot of foundries already in places _NOT_ China. But yeah, this kind of move won't happen overnight. "All eggs in one basket" no more.

Stack Overflow acquired for $1.8bn by Prosus (no, me neither)

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

Re: there is an upside

I rarely see anything useful in Stack Overflow unless it involves:

* Python

* Javascript

* CSS

And even then, it's because I'm too lazy to actually read "all that documentation" first.

Code contributions to GCC no longer have to be assigned to FSF, says compiler body

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Apple and GPL

I'm not convinced that a GPLv3 license was the right way to go with GCC.

Perhaps a GCC project (that gets all of the 'ownership' from FSF) could revert to GPLv2 and add the necessary license exceptions to manage any other license compatibility issues.

That would probably fix it.

Least likely, that it would allow for proprietary closed-source versions. But, if it could allow linking with and/or running with closed source components, that should be the choice of the end-user. My $.10 worth.

(not that I would LIKE it... having a closed-source component for developing on a particular platform... I most likely would NOT)

then again there's also llvm

Surviving eclipse season and resurrecting 25-year-old software with Windows for Workgroups 3.11: One year with Mars Express

bombastic bob Silver badge
Happy

Re: It might be a race to see what fails first

ack. People who program microcontrollers and write kernel stuff often still use assembler.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Boffin

Re: air filled, so lucky!

hard disk drives require a working fluid (air) to elevate the heads above the spinning disk surface. Head crashes occur when there's not enough air or drive speed to float the heads.

Old style clean rooms were needed to work on them, to prevent hair and dust from getting on the drive, which would be thicker than the air layer between the disk and the head.

bombastic bob Silver badge
Devil

Re: air filled, so lucky!

I wonder if they have an address to which we can donate old hardware...

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

bombastic bob Silver badge
Meh

Re: Not another UI redesign please!

I'd prefer a RETRO-redesign - like "before Australis" UI.

(I wish *I* could get paid to do *THAT* - because if I were, it'd be done RIGHT!)

"simpler" UI is not necessarily the best unless there's an "Advanced" setting to get the full monty.

I'll probably still use it, though.

Dear Mozilla: try putting the lipstick on the OTHER end, not the end that goes "oink"

Space junk damages International Space Station's robot arm

bombastic bob Silver badge
Pirate

the laws of the open sea used to include salvage rights for derelict ships, no matter what flag they once flew. In space, it can be the same...

THEN, if salvage bots cruised around looking for "dangerous" objects, and either collected them (for salvage) or simply de-orbited them (for safety), it'd eventually clean a lot of it up.

Insurance companies and underwriters would definitely be interested in this.