* Posts by Red Ted

398 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2017

Page:

DARPA tasks Northrop Grumman with drafting lunar train blueprints

Red Ted
FAIL

Re: Halfway there

171 miles of HSR for $40 billion?

That's only $234 million per mile. We've managed to make ours cost about $500 million per mile! Costings from this article.

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

Red Ted
Pint

Pause for a moment…

…and open the desk drawer.

At the back are some rolls of punch tape that have been knocking about for around 50years…

Sigh nostalgically!

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

Red Ted
FAIL

Re: RE: the bottom of the tower is reached along a pokey, dull little alley

It was on OS Maps...

The National Library of Scotland host old OS maps and Sheet TQ 28/38 - City of London Published in 1971 has it marked as PO Twr

Red Ted
Thumb Up

Re: Good news....

I too have been up it a few years ago. Quite a splendid view and nice to watch it change, without having to leave your seat, at about 0.067rpm.

Famously has an exemption from the fire regulation about not using the lifts in case of a fire.

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

Red Ted
Coat

Something of a rum deal?

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Red Ted
Go

Re: Stainless?

Ah, but Jim was a rat gnawing at the ferro concrete wainscot.

Joint European Torus experiments end on a 69 megajoules high

Red Ted
Stop

Re: 69 megajoules

...and scaling up from there is thought to be relatively easy

This is why nuclear fusion power stations have always been 30years in the future for at least the last 50years!

India's Moon mission pulled off another trick: an experimental orbital sequel

Red Ted
Thumb Up

Re: Congratulations ISRO!

Smug mode *ON*

Lenovo's USB-C Power Banks pack more heat than expected

Red Ted
Go

20,000 mAh

So that'll be 20Ah then?

A bit like the warning signs at model railway exhibitions: "Caution 12,000mV"

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

Red Ted
Go

Re: in a 3-3 economy class configuration.

The 2-8-2 "Mikado" configuration can be quite powerful too...

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is returning with its first-ever asteroid sample

Red Ted
Go

Re: Sample canister contents

Lane 7: Calvin, that little ball of Life

How about Calvin and Hobbs? Jumping out and shouting "BOO!" as the cannister is opened...

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Red Ted
Go

Re: Not a lift but…..

"Yes, you've already worked out the punchline: They moved a server rack down the river on a punt."

I was rather hoping that the punchline was that the punt sank!

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's pop artifact stash now heads to a museum

Red Ted
Go

Re: Kirk's Chair

I think you'll find that a lot of TV props of that era were to that quality.

I recall a tour of a TV Studios years ago when everything was still "Standard Def". Someone asked about "High Def" TV and the producers response was that it would quadruple the set budget as they would have to make everything to a higher standard!

OctoX is a radical Rust implementation of a very old OS for RISC-V

Red Ted
Go

You are not expected to understand this.

Having looked at the section of code, my opinion is that it's not too awful.

Certainly not for task switching code whose job it is to context switch and therefore directly manipulate the underlying system state so as different code executes when you return, from the one that was running when the function was called.

Social media is too much for most of us to handle

Red Ted

Re: I did something similar

This is why people still pay (in one way or another) for newspapers and TV News.

Someone just blew over $190k on a 4GB first-gen iPhone

Red Ted
FAIL

What strikes us as odd...

...is that 2007 doesn't even feel that long ago

I am afraid that is just a sign of you getting old!

The "Year 2000" used to seem *so* futuristic!

Let there be light ... based wireless networks: LiFi spec OK'd as Wi-Fi complement

Red Ted
Go

Re: Waiting for version 2.1

With the bonus that the cup of coffee on your desk wouldn’t go cold!

NASA 'quiet' supersonic jet is nearly ready for flight

Red Ted
Megaphone

Re: "Concorde famously burned an awful lot of it's fuel just getting off the ground "

Being really picky (I know that’s uncommon around here), being a British jet engine design it’s technically called reheat rather than afterburner.

Whatever it’s called, it gives your more power, but at the expense of appalling fuel efficiency!

If they had built more Concordes they had planned to drop the reheat.

Twitter rate-limits itself into a weekend of chaos

Red Ted
FAIL

Oh the irony

"Twitter tech lead also decided last week to block all users not signed in to Twitter from viewing any posts whatsoever, inadvertently killing tweet embeds in other apps. This, Musk claimed on Friday, would also be temporary."

He made the claim in a tweet that, unless you were logged in, you couldn't read!

Virgin Galactic finally gets its first paying customers to edge of space

Red Ted
Go

Re: Rich people's toys I guess

"I don't know lad, it's like no other cheese I have ever tasted."

In other news: "Moon cheese shares soar!"

All with apologies to Nick Park.

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

Red Ted
FAIL

Re: A fitting epitaph

Carbon fibre wheels at cycling events are the one I've seen. They go from super strong and round to floppy and un-wheel like in a few feet.

Multi-tasking blunder leaves UK tax digitization plans 3 years late, 5 times over budget

Red Ted

"Making Tax Digital (MTD) programme"

That should read:

Making Tax Difficult (MTD) programme.

FIFY.

Up to £895M up for grabs in UK Emergency Services procurement

Red Ted

Re: Missing something

A major part of the EE work is to expand their network to have high geographic coverage as opposed to population coverage, which resulted in them building a lot of base stations in rural parts of the country.

Professor freezes student grades after ChatGPT claimed AI wrote their papers

Red Ted
FAIL

Citations/References and ChatGPT

"...half of the cited references did not actually exist!"

I suspect that in the other half the title didn't match the reference number, so were also made up.

This corroborates with my experience that ChatGPT knows what citations should look like, but not what they are. So it will put a statement in its text that has a reference mark against it and then generate a piece of text at the end in the reference list that is formatted correctly, but in no way ties up with a real article that made that statement.

It's treating them as a style of academic paper writing and making them up, as it has with the rest of the paper.

Owner of 'magic spreadsheet' tried to stay in the Lotus position until forced to Excel

Red Ted
Go

Re: Better than a PM

"There was a (apocryphal?) yarn about an IBM 370/VM than ran for more than a decade after being accidentally bricked up."

Here is a real version of that yarn, reported in this very organ a mere 22 years ago!

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Red Ted
Go

Embarrassed in to having a clear out...

...after having my partner say "oh look, the contents of our loft" every time we went to the computer museum!

NASA tweaks Voyager 2's power supply to avoid another sensor shutdown

Red Ted
Happy

Deep Space Network

The DSN Now page indicates that Goldstone is currently receiving 160bit/s data from Voyager 1 at an RSSI of -160dBm.

Given that the transmitter on Voyager is 23W (+43.6dBm) this means that they have over 203dB of link budget!

UK's Emergency Services Network unlikely to start operating until 2029

Red Ted
FAIL

Retrospective?

Presumably there's no chance of applying this cap retrospectively to cover the five years since the ESN was supposed to start?

I make that a cool one billion quid.

Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

Red Ted

Near-Ultrasound

I wonder what frequency they specify Near-Ultrasound as?

There's a chance that my kids might be able to hear it, but I certainly won't (age and too many rock concerts).

Version 100 of the MIT Lisp Machine software recovered

Red Ted

RISC Machines

Nice article. I did have to check part way through that is wasn’t one of the better April fools.

The other famous vendor of RISC architecture to rise during the period was…

Acorn RISC Machines!

Microsoft promises it's made Teams less confusing and resource hungry

Red Ted
Go

Re: Thank $deity, lowered shimmering

Joo-Jantu 2000 Peril Sensitive Sun Glasses?

Japanese outfit's private Moon mission enters Lunar orbit

Red Ted
Go

Re: Japanese transformable robot on the Moon

"Transformers - Robots in disguise"

China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck

Red Ted
FAIL

Re: "Ground"

Why not reduce rolling resistance by using steel wheels on this metal surface.

Then simplify the steering problems that may result by placing flanges on the wheels to guide the vehicle and voila you have...

...an electric train.

Meta chops another 10,000 employees, closes 5,000 vacancies

Red Ted

Yes, it's a public company, but one person own all the voting rights. I never did understand how he pulled this off, as he basically took a company public, but retained all the control.

"...the share holders could help end that but just selling all their shares..."

But, they would loose money doing that.

British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles

Red Ted

Autonomous trains

I think you'll find that there are already a number of mass transit autonomous trains in the UK alone.

Technically the Victoria London Underground line has been so from 1968.

Cop a load of this DIY e-ink calendar to help plan those projects you'll never finish

Red Ted
Go

Timeframe - very cool

As you say he can certainly write well. His self deprecating style fits well.

Glad to hear that the author has a Joyce!

The Moon or bust, says NASA, after successful SLS/Orion test flight

Red Ted
Joke

Breaking things

"...cabinets broke, as did its elevators..."

The capsule is so tall that it has a lift?

Arm co-founder: Britain's chip strat 'couldn’t be any worse'

Red Ted
FAIL

Re: Now there's a challenge

"...a reference to the tendency of successive governments to tear up the previous administration's policies."

Given it has been the same lot in power for over 12 years now, that isn't really an excuse either!

Hyundai and Kia issue software upgrades to thwart killer TikTok car theft hack

Red Ted
Go

Re: Wait.... they did not have that?

A quick picture search suggests that the Hyundai Venue is probably the vehicle that is sold as the Hyundai Kona in the UK.

Personally, I miss the days when car companies put so little thought in to the names of the cars that Ford had a couple of cars named after porn mags[1], Mitsubishi had the Starion[2] and the Toyota MR2 didn't sell so well in France [3].

[1] Escort and Fiesta

[2] Although it's not meant to sound like "Stallion", it does if you say it with a bad Japanese accent!

[3] MR2 "Em -Err- Deux" or Merde, which more or less means sh*t!

Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI urge judge to bin Copilot code rip-off case

Red Ted
Unhappy

Re: you have to intend to facilitate infringement to violate the law

... and I wonder how long before the AI generated code comes with a Microsoft copyright notice (I presume it doesn't at the moment) and some sort of checksum-hash that allows them to trace it it back to their code generator?

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

Red Ted
Go

Re: None of these people have seen "Eliza"

After a previous article I was pleased to discover that there are a number of Elizas on line.

My first encounter with it was via a proper 110baud teletype, yes, I am old!

Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi

Red Ted
WTF?

Ditto my microwave oven, which was chosen on it cheepness from Argos about 20 years ago. It has two dials, one sets the power level and the other is the mechanical timer that turns it off when it runs down.

It also gives a satisfying clockwork type “ding” when it has finished, rather than the soul penetrating beeep…Beeeep….BEEEEEP!

Warehouse safety citations could cost Amazon seconds in revenue

Red Ted
FAIL

Re: AmazonSmile

Oh yes, it was definitely a “charity washing” exercise. They didn’t want to make it too easy to use as that would have cost them money. As soon as the finances look tight, they killed it off.

UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail

Red Ted

Re: A Start

I believe the H&S laws do have the buck stopping with the directors of a company, where a director can go to prison.

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Red Ted
Go

Re: Nobody

Very well done for getting that reference! The joke is something along the lines of:

Bluebottle: “When my Grandpa retired they got him one of those things what wakes you up in the morning and makes you a cup of tea.”

Seagoon: “That was nice…”

Bluebottle: “Yes, it was my Grandma”

Red Ted
Go

Re: Nobody

'cos the current era of tech means that it would have to be connected to the internet and we all know how that ends (see original article)!

Red Ted
Joke

Re: Nobody

What, one of those things what wakes you up in the morning and makes you a cup of tea? If only there was a machine for that!

Boffins say their protective satellite paint job could harvest power from the Sun

Red Ted
Joke

Re: For totally unscientific reasons

All satellites now available with added bling!

Time to study the classics: Vintage tech is the future of enterprise IT

Red Ted
Thumb Up

Re: "...rewriting Active Directory in FORTH under VMS..."

"...its actually quite useful for low level jobs like debugging complex bare metal, enabling complex functionality to be created, and used, with minimal programming effort."

Which is why a significant number of embedded systems I have worked on have had, at least at some point in their development, a Forth/RPN style command line interface.

Red Ted
Go

"...rewriting Active Directory in FORTH under VMS..."

For those wishing to try, you may be interested in this little book on Object Oriented FORTH.

Page: