* Posts by Destroy All Monsters

16005 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jun 2008

Internet of Things 'smart' devices are dumb by design

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Looking forward to the day..

You smartass!

Computer sales not a matter of life and death, they're more important than that

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Go

stabilising currencies

That's a new one.

"This parrot is dead"

"No, no. It's just stabilizing"

“Business sentiment toward Windows 10 looks very good, because it is not just relevant to the device but the IT department in terms of bigger projects around cloud, security and mobility”

I hope people are not getting paid for emitting this nonsense.

Comet halo theory for flickering 'alien megastructure' star fails

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Dark matter comets?

Dark matter comets. Ejected from gammay-ray bursting white holes!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: A theory

F-type means the star is hotter than our sun

That's right, but it could be anything from hypergiant to dwarf star. We need more info about this "K" baby.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Up

An outstanding entry in your arxiv paper download

Many wonderful treasures are saved in the Harvard plates, but the reality is that the current generation of astronomers are mostly unaware of their existence. J. Grindlay has started and lead the work to completely digitize all ≈500,000 plates (Grindlay et al. 2012; Tang et al. 2013). His program is called Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) . The products are top-quality digitization for each plate (plus the envelope, plate markings, and logbook entry), plus fully-calibrated magnitudes for each stellar image on the plate. Currently, DASCH has completed only ≈15% of the Harvard archives, and this includes all the plates covering the original Cygnus/Lyra Kepler field.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alien

fast-track engineering for anyone to encircle a star in just 100 years

There is a galactic IKEA just 2 parsec away

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

So, Window 7 marketshare is basically the West Bank of Microsoft?

Starve, make unliveable, occupy, control, lock down, settle, hope it dies by itself....

Trustwave failed to spot casino hackers right under its nose – lawsuit

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: framepkg.exe

Anything Windows looks like a highly suspicious application.

Considering how the mob controlled telephone switching gear in Las Vegas, I would not even START with a Windows installation in place.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Where is the gaming commission

“Framepkg.exe”

The lesson:

Been hacked?

Got Windows?

Sorry, can't help. You may want to contact other outfits ready to take on a disgusting, unmanageable hairball.

Test burn on recycled SpaceX rocket shows almost all systems are go

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Desparate or Greedy

The Nazi used that kind of unstable highly dangerous rocket fuel because they were desperate.

We had this stupid shit in the last thread. Fuck off, troll, die under a bridge.

For reference: Wehrmacht used Alcohol (from potatoes) + LOX. Here we are using Kero + LOX. None of these is "unstable".

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Why not a catcher's mitt?

The remaining fuel sloshing around in the tanks might be a problem with this manoeuver worthy of a dolphin. And how do you get the gravity center far below buoyancy center so that the engines STAY in the aire?

The problem with going into seawater is the seawater. Don't get it into the engines.

Retrieving the rocket? You will have to pull the upturned rocket out and basically cut of the maybe-not-empty tank section while the house-sized stage is hanging off a crane. In open seas. Not fun.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

> flexible webbing to catch it as it falls a short distance

The barge would have to be very large, the webbing very tough and able to withstand fire from above and the 1st stage able to sustain sudden lateral compression (plus major forces in a few points along the webbing lines) as it settles and topples

> docking clamp system with room for error

Again, a very large docking system would be needed, and the likelyhood of wrecking the first stage and the docking system both would be very high. An expensive loss..

Keep it simple! If you have a rocket engine on the object-to-land, use it!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Gotta wear shades

Cool people don't even look at explosions. They just put on their shades and walk away while the fire warms the back of their tuxedo.

Boffins baffled by record-smashing supernova that shouldn't exist

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: The surprising thing

Neither Marx hoovering up communist lore and writing economically ignorant gibberish nor The Prophet had been invented yet back then.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

"This is crazy in a box with a side order of fries"

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: "we do not know what could be the power source for ASASSN-15lh"

TFW you realize that Luke was a teenager and should have been in fucking high school along with his sister.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: The past.....

You can't see further than the moment when the universe was opaque and mixing the light quite tremendously.

This is what the CMB is: the light that started free-traveling as the universe became transparent, a few million years after GRIDFIRE EVERYHWERE (aka Big Bang)

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: 3,8 billion years ago is a long time ago

The other possibility is that it was just beam focused towards us, same as with gamma-ray bursts which apparently are not omnidirectional because that would imply ludicrous amounts of wattage; they are just doing a lighthouse impressions.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: No H or He?

it's 3.8 billion light years away, meaning it's also 3.8 billion years old

The part that we see is 3.8 billion years young than whatever is "now", or maybe a little bit less seeing how space expansion is accelerating, not sure about that.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: "a superluminous supernovae" (sic)

Latin was hell though.

I never got what Cicero was effing talking about.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alien

the explosion occurred 3.8 billion light years away

In a rescaled picture, if Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 mm away, that would be a whooping 3.8m away.

There is a LOT of Galaxies and Galaxy Filaments between us and that. Definitely a challenge for any Space Knights looking for a Space Holy Grail.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Alien

If Clarke were right, these things would be unobservable because the expanding bubble of vacuum decaying to a lower-energy state (thus liberating free energy while changing subatomic physics to something totally unknown) will be following in the wake of of the expanding bubble of light at a picosecond interval. You will never even know what popped your Standard Model.

Ground control to Major Tim! Brit's spacewalk halted after NASA 'naut takes unexpected leak

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Tasting water?

That's the fun part!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: He/O

This has been discussed at lenth (and competent) in the comments on the article announcing the Two-Tim-spacewalk a couple of days ago.

Checking there.

So it seems to be about reducing suit stiffness due to high internal pressure.

This means you have to increase the oxygen content in breathable air to keep partial pressure of Oxygen constant.

Helium is used to replace Nitrogen in high-pressure environments because Nitrogen has toxic effects on the nervous system at high pressures. So this is not useful here. Using Helium also increases the problem of outgassing ("the bends") when pressure falls, so this is even less useful.

So this is all about a slow decompression to get to spacesuit-agreeable low-pressure while avoiding outgassing while keeping partial pressure of oxygen constant.

Maybe one should switch to Arthur C. Clarke rigid suits...

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Astronauts have to purge nitrogen from their blood for hours by huffing pure oxygen before suiting up to avoid getting the bends

Is the pressure of the suits significantly lower than the one in the ISS? shouldn't the astronauts also decompress to suit pressure while living in the pure oxygen atmosphere (otherwise they will get oxygen poisoning)? Ho about using He/O mixtures then?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Coat

Roger! Waters in the spacesuit...

Aircraft now so automated pilots have forgotten how to fly

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Airline pilots used to be ex military pilots and knew how to fly the plane.

WWII is effing long ago though.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: The human pilots just do the easy bits...

The IT industry is on an interesting cusp as people who joined the industry in the still-pioneering 1960/70s are now retiring. With them goes a lot of wide and deep knowledge about what the evolved technology does - and why.

At first I thought "what a crock". But then I looked around me and found that not many IT people around me (and even at uni) are/were interested in system design, engineering basics, information processing basics, history of computing and the classics from the 80s or even the mathematics that you actually need to think about the systems in front of you. The assumption seems to be that somebody else does the hard job and good stuff appears from an information-generating magical font. We'll just overpromise and rake in money while outsourcing coding to offshore fly-by-night outfits. A recipe for disaster.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Pilots?

In the cockpit, nobody knows that you are just a dog.

Nobody.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

You, yes YOU: DevOps' people problem

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

> and whatever they choose will include C

Out. Now!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Torture

I hear Xanax helps with social anxiety disorders.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Regular releases

1) That's not how it works

2) There is confusion between agile delivery of the scrum sort and "dev ops"

3) This is not how agile is supposed to be done; it'a about having feeback on a pipeline of short actions (as opposed to a long stovepipe of large actions); it is not about ramming half-processed stuff into operations at fixed intervals. Plus building the artifacts that keep the mutating product in the "requirements funnel".

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

Re: You’ve no doubt heard of DevOps.

Where does CD fit in when bugs mean deaths and gaol sentences?

Nothing changes. If anything, you should have HIGHER assurance that your latest bowel movement meant to control information processing actually does what it says on the tin and that all requirements are being met.

Power plants, utilities 'just hanging right off the internet's tubes'

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Headmaster

On the correct usage of vocabulary

creating an irresistible honeypot for criminals

That would mean this attackable infrastructure was actually a trap.

But it's actually the real deal: a low-hanging fruit.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Windows

The solution will be to add a few "Priority 1" projects to the engineer's desks, to add to the pile of the other "priority 1" projects, some of which are even "urgent".

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Trump?

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Fortinet tries to explain weird SSH 'backdoor' discovered in firewalls

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Semantics

It's also subject to authentic shit management.

Sigh ... c'est la vie: France mulls mandatory encryption backdoors

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: 99.9%

I really hope the French public haven't forgotten how to be politically difficult, because they usually do a pretty good job of it.

LOLNO. Only if the EURO injections from Le Gouvernement are not forthcoming or the corruption becomes so evident that fish heads are rotting under politician's canapés. Otherwise, it's Le Gallic Shrug.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Trollface

Re: I hope this goes ahead

i CAN HARDLY WAIT TO SEE THIS IMPLEMENTED!

Open Web Application Security Project issues new secure coding bible

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: "Developers are responsible for insecurity."

> Perhaps something like ship's log should be kept for orders handed down

It's called a JIRA

Fan belts only exist, briefly, in the intervals between stars

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Nils

Nautilus is really an amazing magazine. Every paper issue is a work of art in itself and there are no addies. I don't know how they do it.

I recently came across a short biography of Walter Pitts, which I had only so far seen mentioned in a textbook on Neural Networks and maybe in a book by Marvin Minsky.

Also, this review reads like it has been written by "jake", how come?

It's replicant Roy Batty's birthday – but hey, where's my killer robot?

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: The real future

I'm throwing the money left from excessive taxation apparent and hidden, meant to prop up the military-industrial complex at my screen, but nothing happens!!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Your arsehole sthn. hemisphere 'moderators'

Sacré Bleu!

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Deckard

If Deckard was an android, why was he wandering around unchecked while Holden was busy trying to round up the Nexus 6s

Go back to bed, Lucas!

It's secretly a secret test by slimy megacorps in cahoots with the (possibly corporate-financed) cops where the guy who plays the future Admiral Adama knows what's going on!

plinkett_in_his_wheelchair.jpg

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Spinner Flying Cars ..

Being suppressed by the government, same as the water-as-fuel motor.

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Terminator

Military this and that

This article references DARPA work.

How about some Rodney Brooks instead? I haven't been following "Nouvelle AI" (described in "Cambrian Intelligence") during the last decade (too much webshit filling all available brainslots but I have been getting back into logic programming a bit ... Answer Set Programming sounds really sweetuseful). I remember reading research on "Cog" has been discontinued and Brooks & Company are now selling a sturdy, marketable single-arm manipulator robot.

Anyway, Papers, be sure to check out Elephants don't play Chess

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Re: Seems Herbert and Dick had similar ideas

"Duncan Idaho" was always a skilled "actual human". Not so the "androids" of PKD (which are different from the ones in the movie). Roombas looking like humans actually.

Cocky SpaceX will try another sea landing with next rocket launch

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

Up-Goer Engineering

This would only be half as exiting if there was a reactionless drive...

Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
Windows

Re: They land back to earh requires an ungodly amount of fuel

TFW you remember the first time your read about "Delta-v" in the novelization of "2001 - A Space Odyssey" back in the 70s.

"At the moment my closest approach is sixty miles; it will increase to about a hundred as Japetus rotates beneath me, then drop back to zero. I'll pass directly over the thing in thirty days – but that's too long to wait, and then it will be in darkness, anyway.

"Even now, it's only in sight for a few minutes before it falls below the horizon again. It's damn frustrating – I can't make any serious observations.

"So I'd like your approval of this plan. The space pods have ample delta vee for a touchdown and a return to the ship. I want to go extravehicular and make a close survey of the object. If it appears safe, I'll land beside it – or even on top of it.

"The ship will still be above my horizon while I'm going down, so I won't be out of touch for more than ninety minutes.

'Tm convinced that this is the only thing to do. I've come a billion miles – I don't want to be stopped by the last sixty."