* Posts by Michael H.F. Wilkinson

4245 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2007

Real life sci-fi: Massive exoplanet booted out of home by binary parents – then slipped back inside by passing friendly stars

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Could have been worse

The planet could have been knocked into a black hole in an intergalactic game of billiards

I'll get me coat. Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams

Official science: Massive asteroids are so difficult to destroy, Bruce Willis wouldn't stand a chance

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Mushroom

I would have thought that the bigger the rock, the harder it would be to shatter into completely harmless debris anyway. If the rock is big, the chances of seriously large chunks capable of seriously spoiling plans for the weekend would be higher than with smaller stuff, quite apart from the gravitational re-accumulation. Nudging a rock out of a dangerous orbit always seemed the more sensible, if not necessarily easy, option than going in with all guns blazing (which is the default Hollywood option for any problem, it seems).

Icon, well, because an H-bomb will seem like a damp squib compared to a major asteroid strike.

USB4: Based on Thunderbolt 3. Two times the data rate, at 40Gbps. One fewer space. Zero confusing versions

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: Use Case?

I have an ASI178MM planetary camera with 6 Mpixel, 12 bits/pixel grey scale running 60 FPS uncompressed and pumping the data to a Samsung T5 500 GB extern SSD at 400-450 MB/s, grabbing some 250 GB of lunar data in under 20 minutes. I would love to have the ASI183MM (20-odd Mpixel) running at the same frame rate. I would capture more quickly, and need far fewer panes for full-resolution lunar mosaics. Perhaps a niche, but there must be more use cases

Don't mean to alarm you, but Boeing has built an unmanned fighter jet called 'Loyal Wingman'

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

Re: Loyal?

Could be worse. If they had called it Grand Vizier you would be absolutely sure its GPP would be that of a scheming, homicidal maniac

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: So are we starting a pool?

Or Halma! Anybody fancy a nice game of Halma!?

I'll be going. The one with the HHGTTG radio play cassette tapes in the pocket

Why are there never free power sockets when my Y-fronts need charging?

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: Clothing generated electricity

It thaddenth me to thee all that electricthity going to wathte, doesn't it couthin Igor?

I will get me coat. The lab coat with Carpe Jugulum in the pocket pleathe!

Qbot malware's back, and latest strain relies on Visual Basic script to slip into target machines

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: One day...

The problem isn't necessarily a scripting language inside a word processor or spreadsheet. After all, LaTeX allows all sorts of scripting (made very easy with the ifthen package), and I am not aware of any security issues with that. The problem is allowing scripts like this to do anything not related to the document itself. That is a security nightmare.

Spooky! Solar System's Planet NINE could be discovered in the next NINE years (plus one to six), say astroboffins

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

Re: Future name?

"Nemesis" is still free, I gather. Seems to tick many boxes, but somehow I think someone will object

It was the best of times, it was the WFIRST of times: How NASA's next exoplanet hunter could find 1,000+ worlds

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: Never mind mapping...

A B-Ark might indeed solve the problem, and adding shitgibbons of all colours does seem a good course of action, but don't send all the telephone sanitisers, history (or at least the HHGTTG) tells us

Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams once more

Fan boy 3: Huawei overhauls Air-a-like MateBooks

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Well, I might give it a closer look

A compact machine with good resolution screen, nVidia graphics (if basic, but at least I can run CUDA stuff), and a non 16:9 aspect ratio screen ticks a lot of boxes. If it runs Linux, so much the better

In a galaxy far, far away, aliens may have eight-letter DNA – like the kind NASA-backed boffins just crafted

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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So ...

they are still not looking for super-intelligent shades of the colour blue?

Doffs hat (grey Tilley once more) to the late, great Douglas Adams.

Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has got the horn for space rock Ryugu – a sampling horn, that is

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Pint

Great stuff by JAXA!!

Mine's a pint of Sapporo Yebisu Black

Roses are red, this is sublime: We fed OpenAI's latest chat bot a classic Reg headline

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: So, hang on

I think speech writers for many politicians might be very, very afraid of this development

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

Re: We fed OpenAI's latest chat bot a classic Reg headline

I really, really wonder what would happen if you fed it Lewis Caroll's Jabberwocky.

Opportunity's mission is over, but InSight almost ready for a driller thriller below Martian surface

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Great stuff!

Looking forward to the results. Great international collaboration too.

The Lance Arm-strong of performance-enhanced CPUs: Armv8.1-M arch jams vector math into super-microcontrollers

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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With Helium added

will these devices get a silly voice?

Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist. I'd best be going.

A once-in-a-lifetime Opportunity: NASA bids emotional farewell to its cocky, hardworking RC science car on Mars

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Pint

Re: Opportunity---NNNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I remember years back when walking to the car with the kids (they must have been 5 and 6 at the time), and pointing at the bright red dot in the sky, telling them that that was planet Mars, and two little robotic cars built on earth were driving around there (Spirit was still up and running). They were astounded at the idea, and back home I had to show them pictures from Mars, and explain about rockets and robotics. Inspirational stuff from NASA once more!

I will raise a glass to the success of Opportunity, and all folks at NASA and elsewhere who contributed

From Red Planet to deep into the red: Suicidal extrovert magnet Mars One finally implodes

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: re: and we stopped it?

We could still send all of middle management on the Ark.

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

Or perhaps: "It's Death, Jim, but not as we know it"

"INTERESTING RED PLANET YOU HAVE HERE, REMINDS ME OF FOURECKS ON MY MORE USUAL BEAT, BUT IT'S EVEN MORE DEADLY, DESPITE THE LACK OF SPIDERS"

Holy planetesimal formation, Batman! Ultima Thule's no snowman – it's a friggin' pancake

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Planetessimal Pancakes

Sounds tasty. Feeling hungry now

Boffin suggests Trappist monk approach for Spectre-Meltdown-grade processor flaws, other security holes: Don't say anything public – zip it

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: So? Responsible Disclosure?

Waiting until exploits are out there would also be hampered if we do not know what exploits to look for. Of course it makes sense to alert the manufacturer of the vulnerable hardware or software before going public, and there is a case for waiting some time before going public, but only telling the general public about serious threats LONG after discovery is simply not on.

Using WhatsApp for your business comms? It's either that or reinstall Lotus Notes

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

... an Airbus A380 coming in to land.

Brilliant!!

I do however often feel that an incoming Airbus would be more easily avoided than that shit load of students cycling three abreast along the narrow bicycle path on the wrong side of the road as I cycle to work in the morning. The poor dears apparently find it too much of an effort to make a detour of AT LEAST TEN WHOLE METRES (shock horror) to cycle to their lecture halls on the right side of the road so as not to inconvenience other people.

</rant>

Boffins debunk study claiming certain languages (cough, C, PHP, JS...) lead to more buggy code than others

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Interesting, but ...

There are many complicating factors, many of which have been noted already. A point I haven't seen yet is the issue that maybe more of the code written in "old school" languages was written by older, more experienced coders, whereas the newer languages which might have better design of themselves are more likely to have been used by less experienced coder. Not sure if this can readily be tested, or whether it has an effect.

There is also the issue that compares to owners of safer cars tending to drive less safely, because they feel safe in their car. Likewise, I know that when I needed to program in assembly, way back when, I was FAR more careful about what I was doing, and checking and double checking my reasoning before even starting to write. Indeed, I was careful to limit the usage of assembly to an absolute minimum, to handle some hardware issues. Of course I managed to crash my machine a number of times (in the "good old" days of MS-DOS) a couple of times when testing the code, but the production code I delivered generally didn't cause any issues. "Back in the safety" of Pascal (the compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot), I relied much more on the compiler or run-time system giving me sensible error messages ("integer array index out of bounds" is SO much more useful than "segmentation fault"), than with either assembly or C. So maybe people writing code in "safe" languages don't pay as much attention to any remaining pitfalls as those who know they are walking in a minefield. I am not sure this is the case, but it might be worth considering.

Furthermore, quite apart from how difficult it is to fix things in brittle code, there is the issue of actually finding errors in poorly-written code, or hard to read languages. So number_of_bugs_FOUND != number_of_bugs_in_code.

Finally, I have had to write bug fixes that weren't fixes for bugs in MY code, but workarounds for problems either with a compiler or a run-time library that wasn't open source. I once was working on MS-Pascal code in which I knew the linked lists used had an even number of nodes. Therefore, if the "next" pointer in a node wasn't NIL, I could safely jump two nodes on, which in Pascal would read:

current := current^.next^.next;

which caused the program to crash. I replaced the above with:

current := current^.next;

current := current^.next;

so again, two jumps without NIL pointer test in between. This worked flawlessly. Clearly, the compiler couldn't handle the double indirection in the first version. I tried both versions on a different Pascal compiler, and both worked flawlessly. Again number_of_bug_FIXES != number_of_bugs

Japanese astronomers find tiniest Kuiper Belt object yet – using cheap 'scopes and off-the-shelf CMOS cameras

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Outstanding work!

It is just great to see what amateurs can contribute to astronomy. Well done to the OASES team

NASA's Opportunity rover celebrates 15 years on Mars – by staying as dead as a doornail

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: at present we don't know the rover's status

Alternatively, it wants to let us know it is feeling very depressed

I'd better get my coat

We did Nazi see this coming... Internet will welcome Earth's newest nation with, sigh, a brand new .SS TLD

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Strictly speaking, the UK stands for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (at least, that is what my passport says, so .uk actually refers to a wider area than .gb. Adopting .gb would probably give the DUP a fit

Everyday doings of a metropolitan techie: Stob's software diary

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

Re: Not from the Midlands...

Here in Groningen in the North of the Netherlands, the highest praise you might get is "Het kon minder", which translates to "It could be worse"

Different language, same idea

Dear humans, We thought it was time we looked through YOUR source code. We found a mystery ancestor. Signed, the computers

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: A clue?

Better still: "Migration is in our DNA"

Unlike coconuts.

Unless they could be carried by swallows, of course

I'll get me coat

It’s baaack – Microsoft starts pushing out the Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Share and Enjoy!

Oh, joy!! We “will have the best update experience based on our next generation machine learning model.

isn't this just management speak for "we have given the computer a list of people who screamed blue murder loudest last time round, so please install updates in increasing order of dB plus number of obscenities used."

Alternatively, it might mean "go stick your head in a pig"

I'll be going. The one with the HHGTTG radio play cassette tapes in the pocket

I used to be a dull John Doe. Thanks to Huawei, I'm now James Bond!

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Coat

Nice one!

I have recently found I too am a Chinese spy, with my Wha-Hey P9, named Kyrilo Sidorovitch Razumov.

I'll be going. The one with Conrad's "Under Western Eyes" in the pocket, please

RIP 2019-2019: The first plant to grow on the Moon? Yeah, it's dead already, Chinese admit

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Maybe they should have used sphagnum moss or lichens and tardigrades instead. The latter survive being frozen in liquid helium without ill effect, and the former survive Arctic winters

China's really cotton'd on to this whole Moon exploration thing: First seed sprouts in lunar lander biosphere

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Pint

Re: Biologicals

Don't forget, the yeast can produce beer for them (at least if they bring some barley and hops along next time)

The Large Hadron Collider is small beer. Give us billions more for bigger kit, say boffins

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Happy

One ring to rule them all?

After the FCC is built, no doubt they will want something even bigger. In astronomy, we have a related syndrome called "aperture fever" (and a tendency to run out of superlatives when thinking of names: what do we do after the Extremely Large Telescope? Outrageously Large Telescope? Obscenely Large Telescope? Humongous Telescope?). I wonder what they call it in particle physics? Circular fever?

Computing boffins strip the fun out of satirical headlines

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Ig Nobel prize in the offing?

Sounds like a good candidate

Huawei and Intel hype up AI hardware, TensorFlow tidbits, and more

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: That is no deepfake

So this is a fake deepfake? I sense a danger of infinite recursion here (which would by nature by very, very deep)

Sorry, couldn't resist. I'll get me coat

What's the fate of our Solar System? Boffins peer into giant crystal ball – ah, no, wait, that's our Sun in 10bn years

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Re: Glad they helped me understand

Assuming a core temperature of about 310 Kelvin for a standard Hilton, I obtain a value of around 32.26 kiloHiltons.

Before dipping a toe in the new ThinkPad high-end, make sure your desk is compatible

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Don't let my son see this. He will want one for his games! Of course I also want a couple, but that is for serious work. Really! Honest!

Smartphones gateway drug to the Antichrist, says leader of Russian Orthodox Church

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: Spin.

I think he is worried about people muscling in on the church's original racket: controlling what people may or may not do, and providing their own brand of opium for the people, to create a docile populace who accept authority based on the promise of a better life hereafter.

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Devil

Not so much bad, but more a wicked sense of humour, I would suggest.

Anyway, the only mild drawback I would see is that the Iron Maiden song is now playing in my mind on an endless loop. Quite like the song, and it is better than my mind for reasons best left uninvestigated hearing the aircraft engine on my flight back home distinctly playing "Jolene" by Dolly Parton for half of the trip. The other half it was playing Ozzy Osborne's "Crazy Train", so that was alright.

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: Not a problem here

ShutUp10 is a tool I am looking into, should I be forced to switch to W10. There are some amateur astronomy tools I haven't found good alternatives for (yet), otherwise mine would be a Linux-only machine in no time at all

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Smart speakers remind me of Sirius Cybernetics

I am more likely to staple my tongue to my desk than buy one of those. If someone gets me one, I will probably ask them to hand me the stapling gun (or the BOFH-modded cattle prod (disguised as a sonic screwdriver, maybe)).

SpaceX's Crew Dragon shows up at pad 39A, nearly 8 years after the last Shuttle left

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Thumb Up

Excellent stuff!

Fingers crossed twiddling of thumbs at NASA ends soon, and the test can go ahead

Bored IT manager automates Millennium Eve checks to ditch snoozing for boozing

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: !!AAEEHNPPRWYY

Genius

New Horizons snaps finish buffering: Ultima Thule actually two dust bunnies that got snuggly 4.5 billion years ago

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
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Brilliant stuff!

Great work by all boffins involved. I was also quite touched to hear (some of) Clyde Tombaugh's ashes were carried past Pluto, and now Ultima Thule aboard New Horizons.

50 years ago: NASA blasts off the first humans to experience a lunar close encounter

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Pint

Remeber those heady days of the Apollo missions well

I followed them all, 6, almost 7, years old when Apollo 8 launched, following the mission over Xmas on our B&W TV. Amazing era. I will raise a glass to those brave enough to venture so far from earth half a century ago. Real heroes

Introducing 'Happy Quit', where Chinese smokers are text-spammed into nicotine abstinence

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: "which of the two habits is more antisocial"

Besides, the smoke is also harmful to non-smokers. I have never smoked in my life*, being allergic to even small quantities of tobacco smoke (pot is even worse in that respect), so I am spared the difficulty of quitting. I will applaud anyone's effort to stop, however

* Tobacco, that is. I have smoked duck, chicken, salmon, mackerel and a few other species of fish. Whisky-marinated and cedar-wood-smoked salmon is to die for. Tobacco, by contrast is to die off

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Joke

Re: Phones are good mmmkay

Or in true American style sues the phone company for not supplying a cigarette-resistant screen (demanding new phone and several million for "emotional damage")

German cybersecurity chief: Anyone have any evidence of Huawei naughtiness?

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

Re: it's like RAAAAAIIINNN ....

Maybe these muppets are electronic monks, which can hold many contradictory beliefs without necessarily blowing a bank of illogic circuits

Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams

Memes, messengers, and missiles: From Twitter to chat apps and weapons, security is ho-ho-hosed this Xmas

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Mushroom

BMDS not secure?

As in: Ballistic Missile Defence System??!!!

What could possibly go wrong?

Almost sounds like Bergholt Stuttley Johnson was involved

Microsoft flings untested Windows 10 updates to users! (Oh no it doesn't!)

Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
Joke

"production quality"?

That is precisely what I fear