Posts by vtcodger

Re: 8-Bit Wars Redux

Indeed, writing code for the MC6809 was a pleasure, unlike coding for anything Intel compatible.

Re: So much for the resilience of Stainless Steel

"Would they even make a profit?"

A quick check says that's about half Tesla's gross profits for the past 5 or 6 years. I do think Musk deserves to be paid. Quite a lot. However $56B seems a bit excessive to me, but it appears that I'm singularly lacking in vision.

Re: "press the brake pedal if the accelerator ever gets stuck"

"some cars have the power to overcome the brakes with ease so all you would do in those cases is just burn up the pads

Correct. But kind of 20th Century. The Cybertruck surely has regenerative braking. So over and above to some (inactive while the vehicle is moving?) mechanism (pads?, pins?, tiny robots leaping from the wheel well to install chocks?) for locking the wheels when the vehicle is powered down, it would likely be trying to use the motor both to drive the wheels as directed by the accelerator, as well as trying to suck power out of the wheels to feed back to the battery as directed by the braking circuits. I don't have the slightest idea what it'll do in that situation. Industry standard would be to display an unhelpful error code on the console then do something weird. Maybe turn on the entertainment system at full volume playing something like Funeral March of a Marionette.

Re: Priorities. Decision time.

"Sample return is much cheaper than putting humans on Mars."

Indeed. And if Mars Sample return is really a 15 year (or more) effort, I'd suggest that very likely means that the costs/timeline for humans on Mars is wildly optimistic At least if we're planning a round trip for said humans.

A shovel

If nothing else, a shovel may come in handy when the AI BS starts to approach nostril level.

Re: Superiority

I don't think the F35 will be the last combat aircraft at all. Nor do I think that humans will be out of the loop. What I think is that future conflicts in spatially constrained airspaces will likely be conducted by flying Combat Information Centers with a pilot and staff of specialists controlling various aspects of the battle. They will presumably stand well back from the action and between the opposing CICs will be shields of defensive drones and a lot of offensive drones trying to get through to attack the CICs. Given jamming and stealth and counter-stealth measures, the whole thing will probably be a chaotic shambles. Not a healthy place for pilots and expensive fighter aircraft I should think. Nor a place where human fighter pilots are likely bring anything much to the party. Individual fighters will, I should think, still be around for patrols and some other missions. I just think that F35s (or cheaper F16s) will prove to be adequate for those roles.

Detecting Submarines from wake noises. ... Maybe. I'm a bit skeptical only because many decades ago, I shared office space with some folks who were trying (unsuccessfully) to automate ship identification from sonar data -- which was done manually back then. I have no idea how it's done today with far better tools. Probably it's automated? But I do know from chatting with them that the sea is kind of a noisy place to begin with and there are real practical limits to how much you can dig into the substantial random noise to extract a signal.

Re: Is it Just Me??

Certainly could be a maintenance issue, or a fastener issue, or maybe a cowling design issue or perhaps something really weird/unusual. How about we wait a while before assigning blame and see what the investigators have to say?

Re: The future sounds abysmal

I feel sorry for the young today. They seem to have inherited nothing of worth.

Yeah. But they have great video games.

Seriously, I'd wait a few years to pronounce AI the wave of the future or to write the future off. It may turn out to be quite a bit different than the media are projecting. It might even be kind of pleasant and maybe even fun.

Re: Won't be hard

Hmmm. We were wondering why the pentagram we bought at Target had seven points. And why the demons we summoned using it were so damn dumb. Apparently we're only getting the ones that can't count.

You know there's another key

As well as, quite likely, one or more physical "master" keys that open (most?) every door in the place.

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised that there are master electronic keys in more modern establishments with electronic locks. as well. BTW, if the power fails, do those nifty electronic locks, lock everyone out/in or default to unlocked?

Unix printing

Printing on Linux has improved significantly recently, in my experience.

Well yes. For certain definitions of recently anyway. It would have been difficult to deteriorate much from where it was in the 1990s when it would only (often) print straight, unadorned ASCII or -- on very good days -- to some very expensive Postscript printers. Although I'm a unix fan, I have to admit that my experiences with interfacing printers and scanners to Unix have been -- pretty much universally -- extraordinarily painful.

But I do agree that the situation seems to be much better today.

Re: Mixed bag

"Walled Garden"? My guess is that they are aiming for anything but. More like the undeveloped world. About half the human race even if they ignore India which will likely produce something similar. Probably cheap hardware. Likely dirt cheap if not free software. This looks intended to be competition for Google/Chromebook, not Microsoft, Dell, HP, Apple. A lot would seem to depend on how well the software supports alphabetic languages, (i.e. most languages other than Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese).

Re: Gmail

I'm genuinely curious. I don't doubt that you are correct and that gmail is for you a wretched hive of scum and villainy. On the other hand, I use gmail and I receive all the emails I expect to receive -- order confirmations, emails from friends, etc. But surprisingly little spam. I even check my gmail spam folder from time to time to see if there is stuff there I might want to see. Nope mostly newsletters from clueless politicians who I wouldn't vote for even if I lived in their jurisdiction (which I don't), and obvious phishing attempts plus some advertising I have zero interest in. How is this possible? What do I need to do/not do to maintain this happy state of affairs?

Re: I hope you know up front that's how your food is delivered

So, we've replaced the last-mile problem with a last-30-meters(or so) problem. Maybe getting the food from the vehicle to the customer is a suitable application for Elon's humanoid robot (price unknown and possibly, like full-self-driving awaiting just one more fix) or Boston Robotic's $75000 robodog. Or maybe Unitree's $1600 robodog (if it actually exists).

Re: NORAD is going to love this - not

Not all that much time. Especially since China unlike some advanced countries (in North America) has high speed rail -- 25000km of it. You can load a LOT of packages on a train.

Re: Now wait a minute

Surely, Microsoft will comply with industry standards. In this case, the industry would be free-lance drug distribution and the industry standard would be "It's free until you're hooked"

Re: Wrong approach

I somewhat agree. But having actually worked in DOD SCIFs, I can assure you that communication into the SCIF is straightforward, But outbound communication is extraordinarily painful and costly because everything has to be checked to make sure that nothing classified is being output to unauthorized destinations. That, and the associated costs is going to come as an unpleasant surprise to those who are used to the great freedom and near total lack of discipline characteristic of the modern internet.

Re: I like the question

I believe that Twitter's working subtitle this week is "The Island of Lost Sociopaths".

Re: Total garbage search results, even for simple tech search terms

Gee. I dunno. Do you think it could possibly be the internet itself that is going downhill? I know that is unlikely because everything is getting newer and shinier every year. And newer/shinier is always good. But still ...

Re: What are they using as their zero point?

"It's where the sun is at the vernal equinox. As it happenss, right about now. But it's really only any use for angles for navigation - not for 3-D positions."

Right and not so right.. Right in that it's the point on the (imaginary) celestial sphere where the sun (apparently) is located when the celestial equator's tilt with regard to the ecliptic plane is zero and the sun is (apparently) moving from South to North. And right that it was defined millennia ago because you need a fixed reference to do celestial navigation (as well as, I think, astrology). Not so right in that the line from the Earth's Center to the FPA is a perfectly OK 3rd element required to anchor an 3D coordinate system based on the Earth's Center and the ecliptic plane. What else would you use that would be any better? And maybe it simplifies conversion between Cartesian and spherical coordinates based on the Celestial sphere if that's necessary which it very likely is at times.

See Wikipedia for a probably clearer description of the first points of Aires and Libra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_point_of_Aries

Not so hard I think

What's so hard about defining "enemies"? As far as I'm concerned, ANYONE who sells data about me without my explicit permission is an enemy.

Re: <list of effective ways of dealing with threats>

Actually, most companies seem to care even less about their shareholders than they do about their customers. Check out share price to dividend payout ratios sometime. Their priorities appear to be -- in order -- executive pay, value of executive stock options, and executive perks. Welcome to the casino, mate. Where the house always wins. Bigtime.

Re: Helpdeskers are disciplined to be helpful

Helpdeskers are disciplined to be helpful

Although I am quite skeptical of many of the claims made for AI, help desks being helpful is one problem that I am confident AI will put an end to. (Whether an AI agent pretending to be a helpful human can be persuaded to dump your entire database in response to an innocuous looking query from a user is a somewhat different issue.)

Re: If ever there was a use case for LLM

"AI is the solution to everything!"

AI is the long sought Universal Solvent of legend and fable? Could be I suppose.

"Being a bit of a minimalist, I am convinced that Debian and XFCE is right for me."

Well, OK. But why bother with XFCE? I should think that Fluxbox or Openbox or maybe something even more basic would satisfy the needs of a minimalist.

Re: So I can run a local chatbot

Of course your cat has more brains than a chatbot. You are demonstrating a common misunderstanding fostered by marketing scum. The I in AI does not stand for "INTELLIGENCE". It stands for "INCOMPETENCE". Are you really submitting the argument that your cat (or wife for that matter) is more incompetent than a sophisticated modern technology that has been lovingly tuned by mankind's best minds to produce random, unreliable, and possibly wildly incorrect answers to just about any conceivable question? Really now. How likely is that?

Re: Airlines Being The Safest Form Of Transportation

Never thought of it before. Do you think airline food is the reason that the crew and flight attendants are always skinny and disgustingly healthy looking? Any possible urge to snack while on duty immediately stifled by one look at the available provisions.

Re: Is there anyone in El Reg land

My marbles most certainly are NOT lost. Just mislaid. I admit, I can't produce them just now, but I'm 100% confident they are around here somewhere.