* Posts by FIA

1103 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

Page:

TrueNAS CORE 13 is the end of the FreeBSD version

FIA Silver badge

Re: Limited Exposure To BSD ...

OPNSense might be worth a look. It's a (distant) fork of pfSense.

NASA missions are being delayed by oversubscribed, overburdened, and out-of-date supercomputers

FIA Silver badge

Are you mad?

Who does that without first appointing the task force selection committee committee??

I knew you modern app developers were louche, I didn't realise you were all reckless too.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Buzzword Bingo, Anyone?

Maybe its just me but as soon as anyone uses a term like "Tiger Team" I know they're full of it!

Or they're good at their job?

There's a massive business speak feedback loop. Most people know it sounds bollocks, but they think they should talk like that, so they do.

Maybe I misunderstood, but the recommendations seem to be 'stop wasting money and create a centralised team to best understand requirements across the org and implement them'. Sounds like sensible (if obvious) advice.

Sometimes also you need someone else to say that, to give the necessary 'Ooomph' to the solution.

One of the best contractors I ever worked with told me that most of his job is listening. He'd go in to a company and listen to the staff there, as they understood the systems and the operational problems with them. He would then end up tidying up and presenting the staffs solution to the people who'd hired him.

He would get listened to when regular staff wouldn't as he was costing a lot of money per day, and as long as he didn't try and take credit for other peoples ideas it worked well, as the problem got solved, but also the existing staff felt like they'd finally been listened to.

It's amazing how many problems in business are human problems, not technological. Sometimes working out how to 'human' someone into doing what you need them to do is the best solution.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Let's just end the giant simulation circle-jerk called NASA

This does not include the Starship launches, which are explicitly considered to be disposable prototypes.

Even then, with their third test mission, they manage to do what all other rocket companies routinely do.

i.e. reach a stable insertion orbit with the loss of both stages.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Mind the GPU Gap

The "waterfall method"?

Trust me, that hasn't gone away. :(

Vector processing?

That's what GPUs do.

RISC?

RISC has pretty much (sort of) won.

Smalltalk?

Which (arguably) beget other OO languages like C# or Java (or the even more similar message passing ObjectiveC).

You seem to be saying because we did a thing once we should never strive to improve?

Is society to be denied the advances since the 60s? Many of which have come about precisely because of the increase in the availability of computing power. We may have put men on the moon back then, but I've got a much better quality of life, and a much better chance of living longer into old age, and doing that whilst being fairly healthy too. This is all thanks to improvements in technology.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

FIA Silver badge

It's always worth buying a good quality mechanical item, but I'd say good consumer drives* are as good as enterprise kit. (but without the same warranties).

It doesn't really matter if your HD fails if you have redundancy and good backups too.

TBH I thought that was the point about BackBlaze, they used consumer grade drives, but I suspect I may have made that 'fact' up??

Hmm, no, they do... found this whilst researching...

* I used to really like the IBM/Hitachi stuff, I had one of their consumer drives running 24/7 for over 9 years, which got replaced out of fear, not failure.

Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4

FIA Silver badge

Re: How is this not illegal ?

Because unlike the 90s, they're have 5% market share, not 95%.

To be fair to MS they're only doing what Google did, we forget it now, but if you go on Sourceforge and download something from the mid 2000s, it's a very good chance the installer will offer to install (and set to default) chrome for you.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

FIA Silver badge

Re: "He was also unable to do a decent wolf whistle!"

Okay, I'll admit I did mentally add 'Unsolicited' to the original statement.

Point taken. :)

FIA Silver badge

Re: "He was also unable to do a decent wolf whistle!"

because it's much better to overtly objectify anonymous strangers with no regard to how that makes them feel??

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

FIA Silver badge

It's simple, you lambush one then bleat it to death with some kind of martial arts style chop.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Ovine Park

I prefer the one where the sheep get their revenge....

"Lambo: First Blood"

FIA Silver badge

Well, it's happened. I've finally lost the plot.

I've just read this article about some man making a dangerous hunting quarry even more dangerous by genetic engineering and breeding simply so idiots can kill things for sport.

However, whenever my brain read whatever animal it's talking about I just saw the word 'sheep'. (You know those little fluffy docile cloud with leg things)...

I'm going to ring the doctors.

Japan's first private satellite launch imitates SpaceX's giant explosions

FIA Silver badge

Re: I can't get the video to work

I've said it before... I'll say it again... This site needs more trigger warnings.

Dutch government in panic mode over keeping ASML in the country

FIA Silver badge

I don't get this ASML stuff, it all just sounds like weird whispering to me.

The batteries on Odysseus, the hero private Moon lander, have run out

FIA Silver badge

Re: Well USA, you learned an important lesson didn't you?

Let's recap:

a) Moon landings and space exploration isn't something you get on a budget>

Inflation adjusted the Apollo programme (without ground support and salaries) cost over $200 billion.

NASA paid $118 million for this lander, and it nearly got there on it's first try. They paid $108 million for Astrobotic's failed one.

With rounding that leaves them about $200 billion left to try again.

b) No, the market will not fix it

But market forces will compel investment if it looks likely to return a profit. Hence the current commercial interest in space.

India did it.

..quite famously 'on a budget' too. And arguably partially to get a slice of the lucrative space launch market.

China did it. And they will likely do it again. How you ask? The same way you did in the 60s and 70s, by having an entire nations worth of backing and resources, and making this about national efforts and pride, and not about some companies.

But that's not sustainable long term.

It still a government body i.e. NASA that did all the basic research and development that the private companies are building on.

That's how any nescient industry requiring significant capital investment tends to get going though. The government puts in enough capital to drive the initial adoption, but once done the private sector takes over.

Why should people constantly re-invent things? It always amuses me how people build upon things that their fellow countrypeople have invented, but when it's others it's just 'copying'.

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

FIA Silver badge

Re: It's a shame

Ruined by drugs again.

Ruined by drugs, or opulence?

Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

FIA Silver badge

Re: I

How old is it? How full is it?

If it's a few years old and gets heavy use it could be the flash crapping out. My previous phone was several years old and when nearly full (as in a few gig remaining) would crash randomly. Since being passed on to a family member who runs it much emptier and it's fine.

If it's nearly full try removing some stuff see if that helps, if it does, sounds like your storage is going.

Also fucking :Safari won't always allow me to zoom in on certain websites.

There's a full screen/windowed zoom thingy in the accessibility options, can be enabled/disabled with 3 taps and set to do a region or full screen.

FIA Silver badge

Re: No problem

I guess on Monday we are going to have to tell the client who had to do a major upgrade of their previous system last year because they couldn't install the old app on newly purchased iPads that the brand new system that was specifically built to not have that problem has been blocked because apple are having a tantrum after losing a court case...

Could you write a small native app that just exposes a webview? If you're installing it as an enterprise app then you can self cert, so no app store requirement.

How did China get so good at chips and AI? Congressional investigation blames American venture capitalists

FIA Silver badge

What criteria did you use to select your manufacturing partner?

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

FIA Silver badge

Look, I know it's the Reg, and it's a red top, but "Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute" is just wrong.

But then 'Door opened with key' isn't so sensationalist is it. :)

FIA Silver badge

Re: Deliberate

And where do you store those keys? How do you ensure they're valid?

Fuck me, it's turtles all the way down.

Dell said to be preparing broad Return To Office order this Monday

FIA Silver badge

Re: The inalienable human right of WFH.

And surely pregnant women should come to you as a midwife

This is generally how it works. Less than 3% of births occur at home in the UK.

FIA Silver badge

Re: "if they want to keep their tax breaks"

LOL, tell that to accounts.

"Why is the drip machine now a jar that says 'Mellow Birds' on it??"

FIA Silver badge

Re: "if they want to keep their tax breaks"

You need something to go with the kedgeree.

Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users toward Edge

FIA Silver badge

Re: Unfortunately .....

...Ariston...

Ariston no longer make fridges. Isn't that ironic.

It took Taylor Swift deepfake nudes to focus Uncle Sam, Microsoft on AI safety

FIA Silver badge

Re: Just AI?

There's many in the entertainment industry that could be called 'vapid', not Taylor Swift though.

If you're not a fan of her work (I'm not) that doesn't detract from her obvious creative and business talents. For example, she's a Grammy award winner, including one for directing her own music video. (Becoming the first artist to win one in this category as a sole director). She has the business sense to pretty much own all of her work (she owns the production company that makes all her videos for example).

Even just having the gumption to go 'fuck you' to the recording industry and re-record her early work to regain control of it deserves some respect.

There's many vapid people out there, but she's not one of them.

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

FIA Silver badge

ICANN see what you did there. (This punning is really starting to rub off on people).

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

FIA Silver badge

Re: Tea?

(Different anon BTW) I stopped drinking tea after thinking "if it stains the cups that much, what does it do to my guts?"

Mixes with all the other brown?

FIA Silver badge

some loose leaf tea (M&S Extra Strong for me);

If you're going to bother with all that faf, at least get some decent tea.

The Buckingham Palace Garden Party is a personal favourite, but if you're after something with a bit more punch then the Dubliners Irish Breakfast or the Rukeri Estate Bio Op from Rwanda are both great too.

Apple has botched 3D for decades. So good luck with the Vision Pro, Tim

FIA Silver badge

Re: No Love For QuickDraw 3D?

Remember the Graphing Calculator? That was a PowerPC-only app that was bundled with those machines. Also quite an eye-catching demo, to show off what they could do.

The pretty much accidental Graphing Calculator you mean? The one that very nearly wasn't an Apple product?

Edit: Just in case you think that story not worth reading, from paragraph two:

I used to be a contractor for Apple, working on a secret project. [...] The project was so plagued by politics and ego that when the engineers requested technical oversight, our manager hired a psychologist instead.

NASA lost contact with Mars helicopter Ingenuity, then managed to find it again

FIA Silver badge

Re: Measurements

About 93,200 OSSP if my maths is right. :)

At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form

FIA Silver badge

Re: CUB Monitor

Interword?

What are our top picks from the vast world of retro tech? Let's find out

FIA Silver badge

Standby to be amazed: Lotus Notes is still being developed

Putting stuff like that in the subheading without warning is irresponsible. Even for this site.

<pulls up a chair>

"Hello Everyone, my name is FiA, and I suffer from post traumatic notes syndrome."

Microsoft braces for automatic AI takeover with Copilot at Windows startup

FIA Silver badge

As well as the Copilot experiment, Microsoft has added support for the latest iteration of USB4, which ups the speed from 40 Gbps to 80 Gbps, assuming one has the appropriate hardware to hand.

[...]

The latest version of USB4 can hit 120 Gbps.

I know technology moves quickly, but that's impressive!

Musk claims that venting liquid oxygen caused Starship explosion

FIA Silver badge

Re: Enough with the Elon Musk Snark

Try reading the article next time. The snark stays in the heading where it should be.

You and I read different articles. There's 2 or 3 little 'digs' peppered throughout it.

I think the problem (for me) is when you're snarky about things like Fujitsu getting yet another government contract then it's justified.

However, when it's about a company that over the last 18 years has become the default leader in the field, has been massively disruptive (American taxpayers are saving millions to get their spy satellites up there these days), achieved many firsts in the field and has shown that investment and improvements in commercial space flight are possible (therefore paving the way for some of the even more radical companies to exist.) it comes across a bit different.

"Hur hur they're too stupid to use deluge" is funny, but the reality is SpaceX have spent billions on starship. (Musk was quoted in 2023 as estimating they would spend about a billion on it in 2023), whereas the Apollo program (not counting ground facilities, overheads and salaries) cost over $200 billion (inflation adjusted). SpaceX can afford a lot more tests and launch pads before they get anywhere near that figure.

"The average cost for each launch using rockets from Boeing and Lockheed has soared to $420 million, according to an analysis by the Government Accountability Office.", a Falcon 9 launch is conservatively in the $150 mill range, there's been over 60 government launches by SpaceX, if you're saving $200m a launch that's not bad.

Lets be honest if SpaceX wasn't owned by the worlds biggest scrotum it would probably get a lot of different coverage.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Deluge

And in this case they were wrong, despite all that testing and thinking.

No... the testing showed they were wrong, despite the thinking.

Note: just because somebody is a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon (thank you, Mitchell and Webb) doesn't mean they are a good rocket scientist or brain surgeon.

...because only good rocket scientists get it right first time every time?

Terrible ones only build really rubbish rockets that have launched more than double the number of times of their nearest competitor?

FIA Silver badge

Re: Deluge

Whilst it's not impossible that this is them "thinking outside the box", it seems just as likely that there's a bloke at the top who's unwilling to spend to avoid mistakes that he hasn't experienced himself.

It's a fine line with these things, if you always bow to received wisdom you're building rockets you test and test and test and then throw away. There's always going to be some stuff where things get re-tried and the answer is still the same, but then others where it isn't.

Also, aren't we now at the point where SpaceX are actually the experts in this kind of thing? They've launched more stuff into orbit than anyone else, at what point are they no longer to be considered the upstart and actually considered the experts in the field?

That doesn't, though, make the team any less deserving of beer, because if my interpretation is more correct than yours, it means they're achieving things **in spite** of the gigantic twazzock at the top

I think with SpaceX it's just easier to forget about Musk. In my head Gwynne Shotwell deserves an award for being the worlds most accomplished shit umbrella; and that's before you even start to consider her not inconsiderable achievements in the space industry.

Cloudflare defends firing of staffer for reasons HR could not explain

FIA Silver badge

But damn stupid of her to take this to the internet: potential employers will be forewarned that she's "trouble".

Oh grow a pair.

They're the employers you don't want to work for.

FIA Silver badge

So never overinvest. And if you have to work Overtime, keep it for short term deadline runs, and make sure you're rewarded for it. Otherwise you're just screwing yourself...

I was once working late, I was single at the time, and I needed to finish something off.

I was chatting to another guy who was still at work, and often was at that time. I asked him why he bothered to work so late.

"I'm doing it for my boy" he said, and he meant it. He really was trying to get the best life for his child. The young child who was currently at home without his dad and was in bed most nights by the time he came home.

I remember being that kid, waiting for dad to come home from work.... I didn't care we didn't have as much money as some people (as I was a small child and I knew no different). I cared that dad was home.

The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128

FIA Silver badge

Re: "their substantial egos"

I think Gerald Ratner counts here..

To be fair to Ratner, that was more the media than him.

The joke he made in the context of the wider speech he was giving was amusing, and went down well at the time. What he didn't appreciate was there were journalists in the audience who (rightly) saw that single joke as a great story.

Out of context the comments were ruinous. Tim Harford does a good bit on it here.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

FIA Silver badge

"The company took no disciplinary action against me for my oversight, nor their former network engineer for his sabotage, but chalked it up to a lesson learned for everybody," Alvin told On Call.

What?

Alvin should not have faced any action, but action against the former network engineer should have been taken.

Unless you'd not prosecute in other cases of vandalism?

Just because IT isn't largely ephemeral doesn't mean it should be treated differently.

Apple sets new 16,000-foot iPhone drop test after 737 fuselage fail

FIA Silver badge

Re: Sucked?

See, that's kind of my point.

We tend to use 'sucked' when we impart a low pressure into an area and let the ambient pressure push things somewhere... think sucking up a drink through a straw, and blown when we (or something) is pushing from a high pressure area to a low one.

In this instance the ambient pressure is low, and we've taken a pressurised thing up there, which promptly exploded.

So surely the contents were 'blown out' of the plane? If someone had thrown a phone out of the plane we wouldn't say it was sucked out, but when the thrower is air then it was 'sucked out'??

Explosive implies outward too (we say things are 'blown up' after all).

I get it's all relative, and I'm being very very picky... just found it an interesting quirk of language.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Terminal velocity

You know how boring some IT jobs are right?

Don’t take our sport away. :D

FIA Silver badge

Sucked?

Everything I've read about this says 'sucked out of the plane', but surely it was blown out of the plane?

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

FIA Silver badge

Re: The real lesson...

How easy was that codebase to maintain? Especially long term? (I'm working on a code base in a 'dead language' at the moment, the code is very well written, but that's neither here nor there as we can't easily hire developers to maintain it. This is a high level language too, not assembly).

How easy was it for someone else to update it after you've left?

What architecture, does it run reliably on newer versions of the same? How easy is it to port it?

None of these may have been design considerations, but they may later turn out to be issues.

Teardown finds Huawei's 5nm notebook processor was made in Taiwan, not China

FIA Silver badge

Re: Much needed relief

It used to be the transistor size, so smaller nm means more transistors in the same space, and less heat per transistor. Hence faster clocks (more thermal headroom) or lower power at same speed usually.

However, as chip manufacturing has evolved the design of transistors has diverged between companies, and has also gone 3D the measurement point has become arbitrary. (If you're measuring the width for example, but most of your transistor goes 'up' then it's going to appear a lot smaller).

So as you say, the NM numbers are more marketing now, and seem to just mean more 'roughly compatible with' than 'actual size of a thing that's consistent across different manufacturers'. (Here's an article on about intel's latest process, to quote: "While Intel has managed to make something suitable of their 10nm process nodes – especially with their most recent 10nm Enhanced SuperFin variant, which we better know as Intel 7").

That's the process your CPU is made on, it's 10nm, not 7.

US fusion energy dreams edge closer to reality, Congress permitting

FIA Silver badge

Re: I'm glad we've finally found an expert on this subject to clear things up...

The only thing that concerns me is when people try to display their (non-existent) erudition of a subject by obfuscation and diversion.

Sure, I hear you, it's like when people break out the big words. ;)

Like the One example of this type activity might be the appeal to hyperlinks which add nothing to the highly scientific and technical questions and issues to hand.

Or that too, yes. (Well, I have read 'of [using] hyperlinks' rather than 'to hyperlinks' as I'm not making a request to a link).

However I'm not sure what you mean here? The first link I used was related to one of these 'highly scientific and technical' issues you raised in your first post, which after all is what I was replying to.

To quote (emphasis mine):

Strange, but the only stars I ever learned of are in outer space (yes; 93 million miles does qualify), separated by great distances--as in light-years--from other of their brethren.

From the first link I used:

"Are binary stars rare?

No. It is estimated that around 85% of stars exist in binary star systems or systems with three or more stars."

So, 85% of stars aren't separated by light years. Astronomically, most starts are close to other stars.

As for the other links, I will confess to inferring you seemed troubled by the attempts to create fusion on earth, and then addressing that. If that's not true then they are largely confusing, I apologise.

FIA Silver badge

Re: I'm glad we've finally found an expert on this subject to clear things up...

You could start convincing us of your technical and academic prowess (one must assume, at the very least, post-doc experience in astrophysics on your part)

I have no such expertise, but I suggest neither do you. ;)

But as the process of nuclear fusion is basically GCSE/A-level physics (which I do have) I'll try.... (NB: Building a fusion reactor most certainly isn't, but the basic principle is smash two hydrogen atoms together to get a helium atom and some energy, the physics and calculations for the energy released are A-level, erm, level).

on this subject by enlightening us as to which particular SUBSECTION of a star the 'fusion experts' are aiming to build. Please be very specific as to the particular "...small subsection of..." a star you refer.

The core of a G type star (like our Sun) has hydrogen atoms fusing to release energy and helium, this occurs due to the gravity from the star squashing the atoms so closely and imparting enough energy that they spontaneously fuse, ie. the star has reached critical mass where a chain reaction can start and continue.

You can do this on Earth, there was a popular film about it last year1, but it tends to end badly for anyone nearby.

The other option is to use magnetic constriction to create the same pressures in a plasma so the same thing happens. This is how tokamak reactors work, and as there's more of these springing up it seems to be the best approach? (The SPARC reactor from commonwealth fusion seems interesting, their fancy new magnets sound like they could really help things along).

Now as earth is much smaller than the sun[citation needed] but the exact same physical process is happening I'm happy to stand by my 'subsection of a star', specifically the hot high pressure hydrogen plasma bit.

You should really watch this documentary on it all, it's a bit old now, but very interesting. Also, the guy who presents it has a post doc in partical physics, which I assume will satisfy?

Oh, I'd argue we don't have any 'fusion experts' yet, but we have some very clever people that will hopefully one day become them.

1 Okay, technically the film wasn't about a thermonuclear device, so no smushing of hydrogen, but you get my point...

Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

FIA Silver badge

Re: Typing in the start menu

It may not help, but from an admin command prompt:

chkdsk c: /f

answer 'y' when it asks if you want to check on next boot, then reboot.

It's amazing how many little things this can fix. :)

If it does a reboot step after the checkdisk has run then it found and fixed errors.

FIA Silver badge

Re: Typing in the start menu

My usage has generally been to press the start/super let in the keyboard and type the first few characters of what I'm looking to run.

I recently installed NT4, the start menu not doing this confused the hell out of me for a while. :)

Page: