* Posts by Zolko

994 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2010

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Odd

I rather think it's called Abrams M1

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Odd

Interestingly, hybrid vehicles had 26 percent fewer problems than conventional vehicles

easy explanation : because they're made by Japanese manufacturers (Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi), and they've been optimised for such hybrid use since 20 years.

Plug-in hybrids on the contrary combine the problems of BOTH platforms, with high power petrol engines (because these beasts are heavy) and new technology pushed to the extremes. Since they're so heavy they put more stress on all mechanical elements like brakes and clutches and dampers, since they are full of comfort gadgets these inevitably fail at some time, and since they're quite new and built in small numbers the manufacturers didn't have time to sort out all the issues. Plug-in hybrid drivers are the equivalent of beta-testers for Windows Vista.

I feel no pity for them out of my 20 year old, 300 000km Peugeot.

Cinnamon and KDE sync version numbers in desktop sibling rivalry

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Single-click to open...

Me too ... and then I have to use Google Drive, in a browser, and I have to double-click again to open files. Double-click IN A BROWSER !!!!! That's where they invented single-click FFS

America's ambitious Artemis III likely to miss 2025 Moon landing date, auditors sigh

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Delay

Given that a few more Starship stacks are likely to explode before they get it right

is there a natural law of physics that says that they will indeed get it right someday ? There was a joke that said that if you fail you progress, thus the more you fail the closer you get to success. But it was a joke.

The N1 Soviet rocket, which was similar to Starship, failed 4 times before they gave up.

Zolko Silver badge

Re: $4B, limit

are you sure that hey DID indeed re-open the production lines ?

From what I read, the SLS Program has an inventory of 16 RS-25 flight engines, 2 ground-test engines are somewhere, and a contract to produce 6 (six) new engines is placed to Aerojet Rocketdyne, bringing the maximum Artemis missions to 5

The six new engines will allow for full flight sets of engines through to the fourth flight, with a spare set ready to take over the fourth mission if required. Providing there are no problems during the early lifetime of SLS, the fifth engine set will fly with the fifth mission.

I wouldn't bet my money on the Americans to return to the Moon with that.

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Mission plan

Orion costs $4B per launch and is the crippling factor preventing a sustained presence on the Moon

I think that the limiting factor is SLS, because it uses Space Shuttle engines which exist in limited numbers, and contrary to the Space Shuttle are used only once. So the NASA has only so many SLS flights available in total (3 to 5 if I'm not mistaken). After that it's over, they can't make more of those engines.

Well, after that it's up to the Chinese to continue. With whoever they deem to be their friends.

Zolko Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Rocket science is hard and all that

Even the science is hard: "how in bloody hell does a rocket propel itself in space since there is no atmosphere to push against ? " was a question asked to me during an anniversary evening last week. Not by a blond beauty though, unfortunately. Where is the Paris icon ?

Today's 'China is misbehaving online' allegations come from Google, Meta

Zolko Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: 4000 accounts?

4,789 Facebook accounts ... a small portion of this network's accounts ... a further 13 accounts and seven Groups ...

So that's not even 4000, this report is Orwellian by its very definition. What's the *REAL* story here ?

Of course I know (China bashing by the CIA/NSA/Five-Eyes/NATO preemptively) but why does ElReg participate in that ? On the other hand ... considering how Julian Assange is treated here, may-be we're in usual propaganda territory.

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Zolko Silver badge

Re: more ads means more users ????????

but since they made up the bulk of Twitter's revenue

keyword being "made" , in the past. And if I remember well, Twitter never was profitable, even with all the ads. So apart that you don't like Elon Musk – even though I very much doubt that you know him, and you're making up your opinion entirely on rumors – I don't really see your point.

Zolko Silver badge

more ads means more users ????????

nobody wanting to advertise or even use the platform

this is contrary to my observation : the more advertisement there is, the less I personally use it. I have all ad-blockers and UBlock origin and the like, and if a site refuses to show me their page because of that, I don't deactivate my ad-blocker but simply go away. Somehow the author seems to conflate that if users stop seeing ads they somehow will stop using a site.

That being said, I don't use Twitter (nor any other social media), and ElReg doesn't show me any ads.

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket rated 'ready to rumble' after passing hot fire test

Zolko Silver badge

Ariane is not French anymore

You're right that Ariane began as a French endeavor, but is a joint European organisation since 2015, the same date that Ariane 6 was selected. So, unfortunately, it's the exact opposite of your petty remark:

Perhaps because they are French ?

no, because they're NOT french anymore. As long as space-research was lead by France, things worked quite well, and it's only since "Europe" – whatever that is – took over that it goes down the sewer. Tells more about you than the French actually

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Click, click, click, nothing happens

A colleague of mine did that to me, quite annoying, even scary. I've done that to myself on my phone also : take a screenshot inadvertently, then try to use the phone which doesn't do anything.

But this could also be done remotely with x-terms if you knew which screen:0 the colleague was. Was on HPUX if I remember correctly. Those were the days !

IBM-led advertising X-odus gains steam as more flee Musk's platform

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Nazis versus Leftists is the wrong paradigm

or the reason why east-Germany was called DDR : Deutsche Demokratische Republik. It was not democratic and not a republic. Germans are not very good at marketing.

X fails to remove hate speech over Israel-Gaza conflict

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Xitter has problems policing hate speech ?

Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews are genetically the same people

if you're really interested in the subject look up Sepharad and Ashkenaz Jews. As you can see, Israel is populated by "Special Jewish Group " (whatever that means) and not "Traditionally Sefaradic " (Semits) like the rest of the middle-east.

Zolko Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Xitter has problems policing hate speech ?

If I post one antisemitic and one Islamophobic tweet, do they cancel out ?

it depends on the specifics. Semits are the descendants of the original Jewish tribes, and today they're mostly Arabs. Most Arabs are Muslims. Jews are mostly from white caucasian European origin, not Semits. So "anti-semitism" is something against Arabs, how it became to mean something against Jews is not clear. Also, a "phobia" is an inexplicable fear – like agoraphobia or arachnophobia – therefore Islamophobia is not really something against Muslims, it's a factual term that describes a fear of Islamism, which in turn is a political form of the religion Muslim.

So antisemitism and islamophobia are 2 orthogonal concepts.

From yellow cabs to sky cabs: Air taxis take a Big Apple test flight

Zolko Silver badge

Re: On the bright side…

I'll wait for the anti-grav hyperdrive to be developed so we can have real flying cars like in the 5th Element.

SpaceX's Starship on the roster for Texas takeoff

Zolko Silver badge
Pint

(/s 'cos you really never know...)

good you mentioned that, I was going to reply about that space-pad to push against. It's actually quite easy : to prevent it from floating away, all they have to do is to attach it to the back of the vehicle.

(/beer to be sure)

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Clearing stage zero is again the primary aim...

it will uck this dust into its rockets basically destroying them when the dust melts inside

don't worry, this think will never make it to orbit, even less so to the Moon.

Why ? Look at the flight profile: it burnt ~3minutes of the first stage, at which point it reached 7000m altitude and 2000km/h. For the same time, a Soyouz or Falcon or Ariane reaches 70 000m altitude and 8000km/h. (approximately, didn't look up the exact numbers again).

Also, this doesn't make sense engineering-wise : no sane person would make a new rocket with new engines with new cycle with new ergols with new materials with new architecture, too many things that can go wrong and you'll not know what went wrong. If they really knew what they're doing they'd make a Falcon-like rocket with Raptor engines and Falcon upper-stage to minimize the number of unknowns. The Falcon is so successful because they use the same proven ergols and architecture as developed for Apollo and Soyouz. Falcon is an incremental evolution of proven and existing engineering, while Starship is a Hollywood phantasm. We'll have hover-boards and laser-sabres before Starship makes it to the Moon.

US Air Force wants to see some atomic motors for future spacecraft

Zolko Silver badge

Re: 1st law of thermodynamics

to the 2 ignoramuses who voted this down : you should have observed the icon of my message. "Space" is not cold, it's actually quite hot, especially if exposed to the solar wind. Also, "space" is not a "source" of hot or cold, it's in vacuum therefore well isolated. The only way to cool something down in space is by radiation with a huge surface turned towards the void ... which will be heated on it's other side by the sun. Just look at what the JWST has to do to keep the telescope cool, even though it's in Earth's shadow, and it doesn't have any particular heat source, unlike such a nuclear reactor.

Geeeeze, doesn't nobody learn hard physics anymore ?

Zolko Silver badge
Boffin

1st law of thermodynamics

use the resulting heat to drive Stirling engines

according to the 1st law of thermodynamics, you need 2 sources at different temperatures to produce mechanical work (ΔQ = W). If the first – hot – source is the nuclear reactor, what is the second – cold – source ?

Russia's Sandworm – not just missile strikes – to blame for Ukrainian power blackouts

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Like I've said before

if we fail to protect Ukraine

you call that "protection " ? I understand better now, I suggest you (re-)read 1984..

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Like I've said before

As for your stupid point about NATO - this is the reason countries join NATO

you somehow "forgot " my example of Austria. Would you care to elaborate why Austria wasn't part of NATO even before 1989 with the Soviets at their border (Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), so I can be less stupid ?

As a side-note, what do you think about the "right to exist " of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia ? Borders come and go, as the UK might find out quite soon in Ireland and Scotland.

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Like I've said before

Any independent and sovereign country should be able to join any economic or military alliance

1) agreed, but it would stop being independent. Remember Brexit ?

2) Ukraine and sovereign : are you joking ? It is following orders from Biden and the Nuland neo-con team since 2014. Zelensky was ready to make peace with the Russians in spring 2022 but NATO forbid that and forced them to fight "until the last Ukrainian ". How is THAT being sovereign ?

Spouting Biden's propaganda killed 1/2 millions young Ukrainians for nothing because they'll gonna loose part of Ukraine anyway. Just look at the numbers.

Now, who is this purported 'WE' ? Which country are you citizen of?

Why would that matter ? NATO won the cold war and should have been disbanded in the mid-90. Since then, it's a warmongers club without any "democratic" oversight.

Zolko Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Like I've said before

They are absolutely dreaming if they think they can conquer Ukraine

and you're delusional if you think that the Russians aren't aware of this. Why would they want to conquer a country that is 1) bankrupt and 2) hates them ? They don't want and never wanted to conquer Ukraine, all they wanted was for Ukraine to remain neutral, outside NATO. As is actually written in the Budapest Memorandum :

Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty

A NATO country is not independent anymore. Austria never joined NATO, even when the iron curtain and the Varshow Pact was at their doorstep. Are they worse-off for that ? Why is it so important that Ukraine joins NATO ? Hell, I wish WE would leave it !

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Zolko Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Dune

They are already trying to rein-in on AI, so we're halfway there. Also, it's thinking machines that were – will be (?) – forbidden, which this robot was not.

Zolko Silver badge

Re: You think it was just another isolated incident....?

plotting to kill you

ours is an inkjet, yet I doubt it has enough power in the jets to kill me. Still, I'll be careful

European Space Agency grits teeth, preps contracts for SpaceX Galileo launch

Zolko Silver badge

What causality ?

The former (Soyouz) is no longer an option due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine

wait ... what has one to do with the other ? We still buy uranium from Russia, NASA is still operating the ISS with Russia, why wouldn't we launch satellites with them ?

Atlassian cranks up the threat meter to max for Confluence authorization flaw

Zolko Silver badge

Re: What a happy coincidence for Atlassian

happy coincidence ? In times when they hike the price of Jira by 100% (or so), this is catastrophic : who will want to touch another of their products ?

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Humble question to those affected or at risk

Why is your Confluence server internet-facing ?

because that's the very purpose of it !

WhatsApp AI happily added guns to chat stickers of Palestinians, but not Israelis

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Well, stereotypes sucks

You mean the stereotype that the jewish CEO of Meta makes war propaganda for the jewish side in this war ? It would be interesting to know how AlJazeera behaves in this matter.

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Cognitive dissonance

Exactly. The funny thing about this is that huge amounts of money are spent by marketing directors of commercial companies, paid to other marketing directors of advertising companies. And I'm quite certain that these marketing droids switch from commercial companies to advertisement companies and back, with a CV that highlights their "competence " in advertisement brokering. So all-in-all, this entire advertisement business is a parasitic scam : if it disappeared overnight, we wouldn't even notice (since we have ad-blockers anyway). Wasn't there something about an Ark-B or something ? What about that Marsian base that Elon is projecting, who will be sent there ?

Trinity desktop's latest release snaps into action on Q4OS 5.3

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Very disappointing article

TDE does not use Qt any more, it uses a fork of Qt 3 called TQt

thank-you very much. But this is still an important information: another desktop is already quite an undertaking and maintenance challenge, but if it uses its own toolkit then it takes another level.

Zolko Silver badge

Very disappointing article

Doesn't even mention which version of Qt this uses.

NASA and Boeing try to chase the contrail clouds away

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Vapour trails

Those chemtrails by gliders are due to them releasing water ballast before landing. They're plain liquid water, neither vapor nor ice.

Linus Torvalds releases Linux 6.6 after running out of excuses for further work

Zolko Silver badge

Re: 7-th son of a 7-th son

Yeah, not something to have fear of

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Iron Maiden - Number of the beast

The 6-th stable upgrade of this kernel is going to be cult

There's no Huawei Chinese chipmakers can fill Nvidia's shoes... anytime soon

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Just testing Google search engine. Got plenty of juicy hits.

CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications

is that somewhat similar to CNN's claims that CIA pretended that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ?

What I don't understand : why is an Anonymous reader hell-bent on trying to prove that Huawei/China are bad/stupid people ? And doing this by quoting US propaganda ! How stupid do you think people are : are you from Langley ?

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Taiwan occupation?

You might be right – I dunno – but you're missing half of the story: in your scenario, China would not have access to TSMC production, but nor would the US have that access, so no Nvidia, Apple, Facebook, Google ... CPUs ?

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Taiwan occupation?

What Ukraine has demonstrated is that relying on US protections is worthless. Yes, Taiwan could resist for some time a Chinese invasion, but it would be destroyed in the process. Like Afghanistan 20 years ago, or Israel now. Is it really what Taiwanese want : being sacrificed for a corrupt senile man's ego ?

But even that prospect is actually bad for the US: their entire economy depends on TSMC, so if China really wants Taiwan all they have to do is destroy TSMC factories: the damage will be much larger to the US than China.

Web Summit CEO's comments on Israeli conflict 'war crimes' sparks boycott

Zolko Silver badge

Re: While Cosgrave is, of course, formally 'right'...

I would have expected them to clean Gaza out to the last Palestinian by either killing or forcibly deporting them

so you acknowledge that you think that Israel is the same type of criminal state ready for mass murdering as the Nazis were ? You should be careful, such discourse can land you in uncomfortable places

TSMC's outlook is so fuzzy it's reportedly stalling fab machine deliveries

Zolko Silver badge

Re: sanctions are working perfectly

@imanidiot : good choice of pseudo !

Twitter, aka X, tops charts for misinformation, EU official says

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Sorry but

disinformation is much more effective on people with right leaning politics compared to left. Very few people of a liberal persuasion were taken in by the whole QAnon nonsense

so, basically, what you say is that people who don't think like you are stupid. Says a lot more about you than you might want it.

Especially after the Canadian Nazi standing ovation fiasco (any-one seriously think that a random Canadian citizen would be let into the Canadian parliament to meet with the Canadian president and a foreign president on official visit, without being vetted by interior ministry ? Of course they very well knew who the guy was, they simply though it won't be noticed and was worth a good propaganda spin. Unfortunately, all the stupid Russian trolls were too stupid to understand the clever liberal plot and revealed the stupid historic truth)

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Twitter / X is a sewer

rhetoric designed to undermine our right to a happy life

like governments you mean ?

- fear the genetically manipulated Chinese virus, humanity will be extinct if we don't vaccinate 6 month old children to save 80 year old morbidly obese elderly

- fear the hot summer (and wet autumn), the climate must be saved

- fear the bankrupted banks, we must save them all with zillions of public money or we'll all lose our jobs (but don't need any inquiry of what happened why, and no need to investigate the banksters conduct that led to this)

- fear the monstrous Ben Laden and Al Quaida in their high-tech caverns in Bora Bora

- fear the monstrous Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction that can bomb UK within 45 minutes

- fear the Chinese telecom manufacturers, they're spying on all your communications (fear NOT the NSA and 5-eyes who ARE spying on all your communications though, they're the nice guys)

- fear ...

what did I forget ?

CERN experiment proves gravity pulls antimatter the way Einstein predicted

Zolko Silver badge

often ?

how "often" did you observe that large flash of light ? I'd be interested of the site(s) where this can be observed "often"

Zolko Silver badge

new matter

After anti-matter and dark-matter, scientist have discovered a new type : the doesn't-matter, which doesn't have any interaction with the universe whatsoever.

37 Signals says cloud repatriation plan has already saved it $1 million

Zolko Silver badge

Re: Is it comparable?

I think that that's how AWS started: Amazon's datacentres were designed for the peak of pre-Xmas season, and thus were sitting idling around 11/12 months. Then someone thought about renting out that spare computing capacity when not used, and that became a business of its own

Probe reveals previously secret Israeli spyware that infects targets via ads

Zolko Silver badge

Re: And I run mobile Firefox

UBlock Origin

Me too, and it sans "0 blocked on this page" : nice ElReg !

Washington left with chip on shoulder after Huawei exposes export loophole lapses

Zolko Silver badge

Re: the decaying empire attempts to stop the tide coming in

@t245t : your writing seems to imply that the world NEEDS some sort of world police, either USA or China. Why that ? Why couldn't the world live without any ? Me, from Europe, don't want ANY world police, not China, not Russia but also not the USA (and certainly not the EU with the corrupt VdL-gang). That would be called "sovereignty "

Long-lost 1977 Star Wars X-Wing prop discovered – lock s-foils in bid position

Zolko Silver badge

Re: X-wing is cool

Thank-you, I wasn't aware of this repulsorlift development. Explains a lot, of course. Did they develop it in-house, or did they steal it from the Empire ? Though I still maintain that the huge surfaces of the 4 wings would produce some aerodynamic forces that need to be balanced. And since these wings don't have any purpose in space, it's not quite clear why have them in the first place. Apart from the scientific fact that they look über-cool.

Zolko Silver badge

Re: X-wing is cool

well, yes, there is gravity in space. What there isn't is aerodynamic forces on the wings. But X-fighters also fly in the atmosphere, and there the aerodynamic balance is important. In this case, the CG would be too much forward, therefore too stable, and not unstable as modern fighter jets : R2D2 wouldn't be of any help