Posts by werdsmith

Re: Too much willy waving here

I don't think the unsuccessful launch is a such a big deal to us here, although the Virgin share price is now on a similar trajectory to the rocket.

The "historic" part of it is a silly stunt.

I think it’s for taking photos.

I must admit I have a CCD eyepiece and a goto mount, and a carefully fettled Raspberry Pi so I can observe indoors on a 65 inch TV. Because the clearest nights are the coldest nights. Loads of people use setups like this, the idea is far from new. You can share near live images on the web. It’s not like astronomers are lesser astronomers because they book an observation from a robotic telescope on a mountain top in Tenerife or South America and collect their image next morning.

But Saturn just looks the same as the first time you saw it, and Jupiter, changes a bit and its Galilean satellites move about. Mars is very consistent . Nebulae don’t change much. Galaxies are fairly inert. The real variables are the observation conditions and the opportunities plus the occasional cometary visitor.

Re: Polar orbit

If you look at the map you can fly to any part of the north atlantic from Heathrow or Gatwick and launch for any inclination. That's not the matter in hand. It's technically not SSTO, the first stage is made by Boeing a long time ago.

Re: Spying on Government Vehicles

A Chinese device found in a car.

Most electronic devices are made in China. If I bought one from banggood and put it in a government car, would it be relevant where it was made? An iPhone with find my friends enabled is a Chinese made tracking device

Re: University blues

How does Aston’s building compare to the wonderfully named Malbork Castle, which also claims the largest brick title?

Re: Seek and Ye Shall Find, has forever been the case, has it not?

Why, oh why, isn't there a way for me to block posts from a selected individual?

A little bit of browser extension fettling should see you right.

Re: Armstrong and Aldrin were lost.

They plonked down a LRRR laser reflector as part of the ALSEP or EASEP science package.

Re: So Rust is not memory safe then

The looking-over-their-shoulders C programmers will jump on anything like this to comfort themselves.

Re: A different perspective....

Tomatoes To mate ohs.

Re: Mature

I also predict that hardware people will extend RISC V implementations in a proprietary way in attempts to get a performance / market advantage.

This may lead to fragmentation that holds RISC V back, or if one comes to dominate then it will surpass ARM but put us back to square one with the proprietary ownership.

Re: Tesla could be in real trouble

I have my second EV, it’s not a Tesla and it was expensive. But I haven’t got it for the economics, that is not the first consideration, I know it would be cheaper to drive an old fashioned petrol car. There is no economic justification claimed.

But there’s no way on Earth I would ever willingly go back to driving an old fashioned ICE powered car, the EV experience is just so much better for me. I also like that my engine isn’t adding to local air pollution.

The problem for Tesla is that there are better alternatives now, and the alternatives are improving still faster. When I was buying the first EV years ago, I considered Tesla but found better. For my next EV car, didn’t even consider Tesla.

Re: If you wish to be a capitalist, you have to abide to capitalism rules

It's the classic Trump approach to business - refuse to pay bills and hope the creditors go bust before they can get you to court.

It will be the appointed receiver taking them to court. Does the same thing happen with chapter 11? I would assume so.

Anyway, a business that operated that way should have some difficulty finding suppliers willing to work with them.

It has also been my modus, for a long time, to develop automation to perform every task I can. I work 24x7 365, or so it appears.

They also don't worry too much about the cost either. If it needs funding it gets funded.

Re: As an aside...

The yellow Texas Instruments book I remember as The TTL Data Book.

I’m off to the web to see if I can find one from the 80s. Thanks for the reminder of such lovely times.

Re: What about the operational costs?

So, same thing happens. The point stands.

Re: Missed another

The give us a review idiotic things that just turn you over to Trustpilot or whatever, which then requires you to give your life story to sign up to a new account.

Re: VC

That being said, for the latter you need to have an experienced dev op to set everything up, but then you should have one anyway.

Indeed,

Putting together a secure, elegant and well managed/controlled Enterprise infrastructure within, for example, AWS takes an experienced person.

Re: Unannounced rumored products

Yes the self driving version is to treat all pedestrians as if they are pre-occupied on a mobile phone and about to step into the road. Which is how humans should also proceed.

Perhaps we could use AI to check the existing comments to see if this has been discussed already.

Re: Something’s not right here

I sometimes enter my login details for certain services and receive a text message saying that someone has just logged into my account in z location.

Though it’s obviously me, x location is sometimes 200 miles away. ISP has a big old network and chooses to break me out of their network to the public internet somewhere random.

Re: Pranking is abuse

If it’s abuse I’ve always found it to be welcome abuse. It always ends up in laughter and more creative ingenuity.

Whereas I cannot stiffbacked work environments for any length of time.

Re: FSD ≠ Autonomous

One can react in a fraction of a second. On balance, these systems prevent far more accidents than they cause.

This is not just a Tesla thing, it is becoming standard on new cars, but if you prefer more accidents, by all means fight it.

Re: So now that MariaDB is just another corporation

I don't know any reason to chose it over Postgres anyway.