Posts by Jon 37

Re: more than 150 diesel generators

It is completely normal for a data center to have sufficient diesel generators to keep running if there is a power outage. The generators and sufficient diesel will be on site and wired to start automatically if power is lost.

Once you have a working, tested design, you don't mess with it. Making the gas generators start automatically, and ensuring that is reliable, is just too much work and/or too risky.

So the data center has diesel generators for reliability, when there is an unplanned power cut. And it has gas generators for when running those is cheaper than buying electricity from the grid. But the gas generators are not mission critical, they are just there to save some money. If the gas generators fail, or are down for maintenance, that does not affect the reliability of the data center.

It means that if you accidentally use the cable that came with your mobile phone, to connect your laptop to your laptop charger, it will work and charge at the normal speed for your laptop.

This is good for consumers. If you want things to charge quickly, you still have to make sure you are using the right charger (or a charger that is more powerful than that). You no longer have to worry about "am I using the right cable".

You could move to new systems with better structured internals, without substantially changing the way the rest of the world interfaces with the tax office.

Then start making changes to the interfaces.

But The Register was originally British. It was a .co.uk site for a long time.

Re: Interested in whether its illegal

The design is intended to be "no regulations".

But actually, in the US, some cryptos are legally considered securities, and some DeFI stuff is securities or futures. (I think all of them are, but the regulators haven't taken that position... Yet).

Securities are subject to a bunch of rules. They are supposed to be enforced by the SEC. Even though it has done a poor job so far, it has taken some action, and can go after people for things they have done in the past.

Similarly CFTC and the crypto futures.

Re: Cloud values are shall we say rather terse

It was never designed to be human readable. As a way for a program to talk to a web server, JSON is fine. It was only later that it got used for configuration files, where the lack of comments is a nightmare.

Re: Racist?

The problem is that, no matter how well trained the AI is, there is no way to guarantee it won't make the same mistake again. At least with the current state of AI. So blocking potentially offensive answers is the only way to avoid future PR problems for the companies involved.

Re: I don't get it

1. Ponzi scheme was set up. Called "Celsius". You could deposit crypto there, and get a huge interest rate. Far more than Celsius were getting.

2. Ponzi scheme ran out of money, and went bankrupt, but still had a few tens or possibly (unlikely) hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.

3. Investors in the Ponzi scheme lost all their money.

4. New "Investors", calling themselves "Fahrenheit", offer to buy the assets, give some (unspecified) amount of them to the people who lost money, and keep ("manage") the rest.

5. Somehow the US bankruptcy courts are entertaining this craziness.

Note: Anyone offering you a low risk high reward investment is scamming you, or an idiot, or both.

Re: Regenerative medicine

Presumably if the cancer is caused by a genetic mutation in some cells, then fixing that would at least stop the cancer from growing and spreading?

(To be clear, I don't agree with all the nonsense posted above. Just curious about your total rejection of a genetic treatment for at least some cancers. I was under the impression that was actually starting to be done. But maybe I have misunderstood and this is a chance for me to learn something new?)

Re: Jam tomorrow

The UK government has been trying to build a long-term waste repository for decades. The "green" lobby has campaigned against it, successfully, just because nuclear is "bad". Meanwhile we have a lot of long-term waste being kept in "temporary" storage, and nowhere to put it.

There's also the NIMBY problem. No-one wants a garbage dump in their back yard, and no-one wants a long-term nuclear waste repository anywhere near them. But we need one somewhere.

The USA has the same problem.

It's not a technical or financial problem. We know how to do it and the government is willing to spend the money. It's a political problem.

Re: It both is and isn't a hard problem

That's just a way of solving part of the key distribution problem.

It does not protect against an active attacker that can modify the communications. The attacker can substitute in their own negotiation messages, so Alice and Bob both have secure communications with Eve, not with each other. Eve can then forward the messages so they don't notice.

It does not help with the problem of "is this really the person I think it is".

It gives companies time to prepare for it. E.g. stop investing in new equipment and wind down operations that will be unprofitable with the new tax, or find ways to be more energy efficient.

For most other new taxes it's a good idea. For this one, I don't think it is.

The problem is not that it's an autopilot. The problem is it's like a real world aircraft autopilot, not a Hollywood aircraft/spacecraft autopilot.

The real world aircraft autopilot flies a simple route, and should be constantly monitored by the pilot, ready to take over if it fails.

Hollywood autopilots are magic that can do everything a real pilot would, and can be left unattended, and are completely reliable unless the plot demands they fail.

It's also worth pointing out that real world aircraft autopilots are usually* used when there is plenty of space around the aircraft in all directions, so there is plenty of space and time to recover if they go wrong. Cars not so much.

(* Yes, autoland is a thing. But that is landing at a known, preprogrammed point, with radio beacons on the ground to guide you to the exact point. And both pilots are watching really carefully.)

They probably want to use AI to create huge numbers of vague and/or obvious patents, and then sue people, and make money from settlements.

Re: I may be wrong, but I think El Reg has gone the wrong way with this one.

Also, there is a difference between "taking a photograph", "enhancing the image", and "making stuff up".

If you want to use a photo in court, you really want to just take a photo. Minor automatic enhancements, such as brightness and contrast, are fine.

But this is an AI that is inventing details that are just not there. That is not reliable evidence to use in court.

Got a photo of a hit and run? Now, how do you know if the camera actually caught the correct registration number, or if the registration was an unreadable blur so the AI just made something up? How do you know if the drivers face was captured correctly, or if the AI decided to "fix" the glare on the windshield by inserting a random AI generated face? Did the AI misinterpret a smudge of dirt on the car as paintwork damage, and hence invent details of paintwork damage that are just not there, and can be proven to not match the car the police impounded?

Re: That's Inefficient

I think your sarcasm was too subtle

Re: Why should they feel obligated to refund anyone?

You don't get a refund on the first two as you can get electricity or Internet from another supplier.

You get a refund on the Twitter app as it only supports accessing Twitter, and you bought it specifically to work with Twitter, and there is no alternative that you can use with that app.

Re: Second Life

They tend to be a lot simpler.

Compare maintenance of a standard bicycle versus a reasonably modern car. Any competent mechanical person can repair the bike. The modern car will depend on specialist parts that are a lot harder to make.

(Ok, the example takes it to extremes. It's not that bad. But you get the idea).

Re: Dead bus

The "spacecraft bus" is the basic spacecraft that you add your sensors to.

It includes the power system, communications to control the spacecraft, and some sort of computer to coordinate what the spacecraft is doing. It also includes the mechanical frame of the satellite.

For normal satellites (not Mars Landers!), the bus can often be bought as a standard "off the shelf" part. The bus design will have flown on other satellites so is known to work. This lets the satellite designer concentrate on the part that makes their satellite unique.

Re: "an MLM scheme"

No, most crypto is not an MLM. It's a Ponzi scheme.

Re: Tiny...

It is EXTREMELY rare for a lake high up in the mountains to be tidal! It's not something that people would even consider.

Guess you are too young to remember Challenger?

Space Shuttle Challenger was launched by NASA on a very cold day. The engineers warned that the seals on the boosters would probably fail at that temperature. They launched anyway. The boosters failed and the spacecraft exploded, completely destroying it.

All aboard died.

Although after the initial explosion, the cabin was fairly intact, and if you look closely it can be seen on the video as a single large piece of debris. At least some of the crew survived the initial explosion and probably died about a minute or so later when the remains of the cabin hit the sea. We know this because they recovered the wreckage and observed that the crew had started the emergency procedures for depressurisation. There was no escape procedure for the crew - no escape capsule, no parachutes, nothing they could do.

The crew included a "normal person", a teacher, who was going up to demonstrate how routine and safe space travel had become.

NASA had done a huge PR effort for the mission, especially focused on schoolchildren. Lots of schools had been doing projects about what Challenger was planned to do, and had more projects planned including lessons broadcast live from the teacher in space. The launch was broadcast live to the world, and the schools had encouraged their pupils to watch it. So lots of schoolchildren saw the explosion live. It was far more memorable than expected, it left a deep impression on a generation of space enthusiasts. Not something I will forget.

Re: Why not use the backup generators.

I'd write down on paper:

"""

To whom it may concern,

I am aware that there has been a power outage, and the power is still out.

I have been told by IT that the documented, agreed, and tested procedure is to fail over the IT systems to the backup site.

I have been told by IT that restarting the IT systems here, on generators, is not the documented or agreed procedure, and has not been tested.

I am ordering IT to try to restart the IT systems here, on generators.

Signed

___________

<Name of senior Manager>

Date: xx/xx/xx Time: xx:xx

"""

Then I would give that piece of paper to the director and ask them to sign it to confirm the order.

Any sane person would take one look at that and refuse to sign it, and let the IT people follow the plan.

If the director is stupid enough to sign, then they get what they deserve.

Re: "Bitmanagement [..] disabled the copy protection software on BS Contact Geo"

You may not be able to have software on a classified network "phone home" to a license server.

Re: Stakeout

There are practical limits on the number of stakeouts that the police can run at any one time. They have limited manpower.

Using cameras works around that problem, allowing surveillance on a massive scale that would have been unimaginable to the authors of the Constitution.

So the question is is: does the constitution allow the police to do that without a warrant?

Re: "unprecedented"

He cannot write that in court documents unless he has evidence. So he's assuming incompetence until he can prove deliberate fraud

This is NASA and Musk.

They will both be far behind their claimed schedules.

So I agree that SpaceX isn't going to get boots on Mars for 10 years, but I don't think NASA will return the samples in that timeframe either.

So it is absolutely possible that a manned SpaceX mission is the fastest way to get the samples back.

(I'm ignoring the colonisation part - that is 100 years away if it ever happens. Before anyone could permanently move to Mars, we need 50 years of experience running a Mars base. And we need 50 years of experience building, extending and maintaining it. And 50 years experience of people living there long term. All of those can happen mostly at the same time, so only 50-60 years from starting construction. But we are 10-20 years from a manned Mars mission, and probably need another 20-30 years from that to the start of construction on Mars).

Re: Meanwhile at Apple...

Apple have a reputation for being safe. NFTs ... aren't.

I expect (hope?) Apple are smart enough to avoid NFTs.

Re: a "seven degrees-of-freedom fully dexterous end-over-end walking robot,"

That is avoided by careful material selection and/or surface treatments/coatings.

Re: Press the button

The problem there is that you fixed it.

You should have not changed anything, but prepared a document listing every problem, with photographs. Then insisted that the installers come back to fix their work.

That would have made it obvious to everyone just how incompetent they were, and what a bad decision hiring them was.

Re: Yesterday

To be fair, being a board member is not a full time job. The board has a full time CEO and other CxOs to oversee the day to day running of the company.

Re: completely functional without it

It's changed in the new version 7 that has just been released.

Re: Squeeze

There are two differences:

1) Fiat currencies have a sane monetary policy. That keeps their value stable and keeps inflation down. That makes them useful as a currency. They can be used to measure or store value. Prices don't change often or by much.

In contrast, all cryptocurrencies have experienced massive inflation. And their value changes wildly. No-one can price a Mars Bar as "this many Bitcoins" because the price tag would be wrong in less than a day.

2) Fiat currencies are backed by governments. Unless the country goes bankrupt, they will have value. Cryptocurrency is not backed by anything with real value.

Re: Here we go...

Newspapers have an editor that reads every story before publication. If a story breaks the rules, then the newspaper can be sued, because they chose to publish it.

Section 230 says that websites don't need to do that. They can publish without having to check stuff, and if a post breaks the rules they can't be sued over it, they just have to take it down. The original poster remains liable and can be sued.

Without section 230, websites would have to moderate every single post before it is visible on their site. This includes private messages. Also, they would be a lot stricter about what they allow, since they would be liable for the posting.

Cryptocurrency miners using GPUs pushed the prices up and led to a shortage.

I had heard it got a little bit better when cryptocurrency prices dropped recently. However, I stay away from that particular planet-destroying crazy. So I have no idea what cryptocurrency prices are doing now.

Re: Now you think of a suit?

The money went where intended: To supporters of the politicians involved.

That applies to the entire moon program, really.

Getting a working spacesuit and/or rocket would be a nice side effect, and there are lots of engineers trying their best to make that happen, but it isn't the goal of the people in charge of the funding.

Re: Can any American gun enthusiasts please explain

To the downvoter: Criminalising blacks has long been American policy.

Originally by passing lots of vague laws like "vagrancy" and having the white law enforcement only enforce them against blacks, who would be sentenced to slavery for a period of time.

Then Nixon launched the War on Drugs specifically to target blacks and hippies.

Re: Just stop there. That gets carried over to the UK. …

In the UK, a house can have a name instead of a house number.

Re: It's not just the OS...

It's not the technology that was the problem, it was a series of boneheaded business decisions.

Microsoft has a reputation for introducing stuff and then cancelling it, including dropping support for already sold hardware. Especially in the Consumer Electronics space. Multiple phone projects, their MP3 player, ...

That in turn means you can't trust Microsoft when they introduce a new platform. Regardless of how good the technology is. So people don't adopt it straight away, so Microsoft decides it has failed and kills it. It's become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Also, Microsoft needs to not compete with it's customers. When Microsoft bought Nokia, that killed Windows Phone dead. The other manufacturers were not going to buy a key technology from Nokia, their major competitor. And just Nokia phones was too small a market for Windows Phone to attract apps, and apps are essential.

ASML's equipment is in lots of fabs. Losing ASML would not affect that immediately. It would only affect the supply of new machines, and some parts. There would be time to deal with the problem.

Also, since ASML is very profitable, it's unlikely to go bust or be taken over by a new owner who makes major changes to it. And any chipmaker who tried to acquire it would fall afoul of regulators, since ASML is a monopoly.

Re: Straightforward solution

If you have a web site that requires a log in, or a shopping site with a shopping cart feature, then cookies are a reasonable solution.

And by logging in, or adding something to a shopping cart, you should be consenting to cookies for those purposes.

But most sites shouldn't need cookies.