* Posts by eldakka

2353 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Feb 2011

Quantum computing startup probed in report, securities suit

eldakka

Re: Quantum startups

> Besides, I hate short sellers even more than venture capitalists.

I don't understand this hate for short sellers - naked short-selling I understand the hate as that's nothing but outright fraud - but 'normal' short-selling seems perfectly reasonable to me. All normal short-selling is doing is taking a position that a company's value is overinflated, and puts other investors on notice that some people are willing to put their money where their mouth is when making claims that a company is over-valued.

Disclaimer: I don't play on the stock market, only ever owned shares once, worth about $500, 15 years ago.

Elon Musk needs more cash for Twitter buy after Tesla margin loan lapses

eldakka
Happy

Re: If "Musk" does eventually buy Twitter...

> Will he personally own or control 51% or not?

That depends entirely on the agreements he has with each of those investors. For example, even though an investor might purchase 10% of the company, the agreement with Musk could be that he has a perputual exclusive proxy on those votes, and that the investor cannot sell them without his approval and/on passing on that proxy obligation to the buyer.

Unless you can view all of those individual contracts, then I'm pretty sure the answer is: NFI.

eldakka
Coat

> Didn't I call this? Didn't I?

Calling is so old fashioned. It doesn't count unless you tweeted it.

eldakka

Re: Genuine question

Why are there complex rules like this for buyouts?

Why aren't you just allowed to buy on the open market and then place your people on the board once you have 51%

These rules only apply to publically traded companies. I.E. Those that list themselves on a public stock exchange and agree to the rules of that stock exchange - and the laws surrounding being listed on a public stock exchange in exchange for being listed. Don't want to comply to the stock exchange rules and/or laws that kick in when you become lsited on a stock exchange? Stay a private company. No-one's forcing a company to become public or to allow the shareholder threshold to be passed (private companies have a restriction on the number of shareholders they are allowed to have before being required to become public. Again this varies country-by-country, the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934, section 12(g), generally limits a privately held company to fewer than 500 shareholders. This happened to Facebook, they passed the US private-shaerholding limit and thus had to become public, but Facebook could have prevented passing that limit, they chose to allow that limit to be exceeded. ).

Perhaps just some rule that you can buy out the remaining shares at the current price once you reach some 51-75% ownership.

You can. It's called forced/compulsory aquisition of outstanding shares. It kicks in when the appropriate share vote threshold is reached on accepting the takeover. It's different in each country/stock exchange, however it's more like 90% shareholder approval (maybe it's 95%? or 92%? something like that, again depending on the rules of the country/stock exchange the company is listed on). Once this threshold is met, remaining shareholders shares are compulsorily aquired at the takeover price.

Foxconn factory fiasco could leave Wisconsinites on the hook for $300m

eldakka
Coat

Re: Other options besides LCD?

> Maybe build luxury SUVs with 6.5L V8 gasoline engines that redline at 3000 RPM, standard cassette deck stereo system, and a VHS entertainment system that displays on in-seat CRTs.

That's a good start. But replace the cassette deck with 8-track and the VHS with Beta, then it's a winning product.

Version 251 of systemd coming soon to a Linux distro near you

eldakka

Re: Software Junk

> Blah blah blah. Never heard of rooting a device?

Blah blah blah. Never heard of presenting a coherent, reasonable, sensible argument?

eldakka
Coat

Re: "you can expect it to feature in the next version of your preferred distro."

> Besides, cancer doesn't begin with a D, even I know that.

No, but STD's that can result in a cancer (HPV -> cervix cancer) do begin with a D.

eldakka

Re: Software Junk

You are either missing - or being obtuse - the main point of the argument.

Chromebooks are locked down so it's not possible for someone else to support it via standard components or after-market efforts, unlike with the examples provided of boilers, HVACs, old cars, etc, that aren't locked down so support is in fact provided via 3rd parties in the form of standardized components that are still availalable or niche after-market manufacturers.

One of the options offered instead of the original manufacturer supporting it forever mentioned by the posters you are replying to is:

> Or, at the very least, when your product goes out of mainstream support, release the drivers to the Open community and allow updates using an alternative after market supplier.

The argument is that while the vendor deilberately keeps it locked down with the intention of preventing anyone else from supporting it they should maintain support. Once they decide to cease support they should open it up so it can be supported by 3rd parties.

Boeing's Starliner CST-100 on its way to the ISS 2 years late

eldakka

Re: Halfway there

> But no one can publicly admit this whole project was just an excuse to prop up the old guard in the aerospace wing of the defense contractors.

I disagree.

There must be two viable delivery systems. 2 different orbital launch systems, 2 different supply capsules, 2 different crew capsules, etc.

While Boeing has become a laughing stock for starliner, who else had any chance of being able to provide a second crew capsule in the timelines required? Sure, if a decade ago they had of chosen another bidder to be the 2nd supplier, that company may have succeeded. But I think NASA hedged their bets in that they chose one 'new space' company that had no track record of delivering a human-rated capsule - SpaceX - and one 'old-space' company that has a history of delivering human-rated capsules. The surprising thing is that it's Boeing who's flubbed it this badly, with SpaceX looking like the old-hand just producing yet another capsule, making Boeing look like the inexperienced upstart who makes lots of mistakes because it's its first such contract.

I don't think anyone doubted that Boeing would cost way more than SpaceX, but being an experienced - if somewhat expensive - hand, the expectation would have been that they were the 'safe' bet. Which has, of course, been shown to be have been wildly wrong. It's actually a sad indictment of new Boeing, of how far they have fallen in the last 20 years (since the McDonnell-Douglas reverse-takeover) as an engineering company, which at the time of the issuance of these contracts hadn't become as overtly visible as they are today.

GPL legal battle: Vizio told by judge it will have to answer breach-of-contract claims

eldakka

Re: There Oughta Be a Law

> Tell that to the owners of the TVs which refuse to turn on unless they're plugged in to the internet.

Citation needed.

Also, if there was such a consumer targeted TV, then buy one of the other bazillion models that don't have that requirement?

eldakka

Re: There Oughta Be a Law

> People should be able to match the screen they like with the receiving/decoding device they like.

They can.

Just because a TV incorporates 'smart' features doesn't mean your are obligated to use them.

I use my 2016 as a 'dumb' display. One HDMI port is connected to my computer for when I want to display stuff on a bigger screen (e.g. a Youtube Video or other streaming source that I prefer to access via a 'full' desktop computer), and another HDMI port is plugged into a $100 media player appliance (Kodi-based) that can play video from my NAS or via other streaming services that I have Kodi plugins for. When various tech changes with respect to video codecs and whatnot, I replace the $100 media player with a newer $100 player that supports the newer, fancier features (h.265, HDR, etc.) rather than replacing the entire TV.

Apart from picture settings/capability (HDR for example), I don't use any of the built-in smart features, it's not connected to the internet or any other network, just HDMI input sources.

Although I do use the built-in FTA tuner for the rare (about 3 hours in the last 6 months) times there's something on FTA I want to watch,

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

eldakka

Re: I would get it fired for inventing Powershell

> Go home, Stallman, you're drunk again.

Maybe you should read - and understand - the entire thread for context before embarrassing yourself?

Remember:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

- various unproved attributions including Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain amongst others.

ETA: But I never take this advice myself, so yes I am a hypocrit.

eldakka
Flame

Re: I would get it fired for inventing Powershell

> Isn't the whole point of Windows to have a window?

Something that always triggers me on any stripe of GUI (windows, X, whatever) are 'windows' that:

1) Can't be resized;

2) can't be moved;

3) prevent you from bringing to the foreground a window that is 'under' it that it 'spawned' from (modal? windows).

Each of those items seems to defy the whole point of using a 'windowing' GUI. The amount of times I've opened a 'config' window and think, "oh, what I need to configure depends on information that is on the window under it, but I can't see that information because I can't move/background this fsck'ing window that I need to put data into that is on the now-hidden window under it that I can no longer access".

I don't care if the developer thinks there's no point in being able to resize a window. It's a window, I should be able to resize it, maybe there's some use case they hadn't thought of, or the message it's to display is stupidly long and can't fit in the fixed-size window, whereas stretching it a bit might make the message intelligible? Barring any specific security considerations (maybe it's meant to hide some other information until some security check is passed), if it's a window, I should be able to move it, resize it, bring to the front another related window, grrr.

eldakka
Headmaster

Re: I would get it fired for inventing Powershell

> And, Linux shell is no peach either...

Mr "It is most assuredly NOT a DOS prompt." pedant, I can be pedantic too:

There is no Linux shell.

Linux is a kernel.

There are executable programs that can be run by the Linux kernel that give you a shell, Bourne (sh), Korn (ksh), C shell (csh), Bourne-again (bash), tcsh, ash, and more.

You don't like the shell that has been installed by the Linux distribution that you are using? Install a different one. There is even Powershell for Linux if you prefer powershell syntax over the more common default shells used on Linux distributions.

Why Marvell bought interconnect upstart Tanzanite

eldakka

Re: Oops

I had the same WTF moment.

US judge dismisses Republican efforts to block release of Salesforce emails

eldakka

Re: There is a lesson here...

No, you're thinking of the People's Front for Judea.

Problems for the Linux kernel NTFS driver as author goes silent

eldakka

Re: Light on the issue?

> Boo hoo. You don't like the fact that once upon a time it was closed source.

It's got nothing to do with whether it was closed source or not beforehand. The point was that you said:

> Paragon worked hard for a long time to get to the point when they first submitted their code. Twenty seven thousand lines of kernel level code of their own backs.

Implying that out of the goodness of their hearts they went and wrote 27k lines of code for the Linux kernel.

My point is that this is not true. Those 27k lines of code already existed in their original closed-source code. They did fuck-all 'work' for the Linux kernel. They did some updates to their already existing code to incorporate it into the kernel. They did a small amount of work "off their own backs" for the Linux kernel, namely the aforementioned modifications before integrating it into the kernel. Whether it was previously open or closed is only relevant to the fact it already existed, and the work they did previously to create that code was done for commercial purposes, that is, they were paid to do that work therefore it was not "off their own backs" as you put it. So crediting them with doing "27k lines of work off their own backs" to put it into the kernel is misplaced. They certainly get credit for open-sourcing what was previously closed-source code. Absolutely. But that is not what is at issue here, it is the way they went about it that is at issue. Therefore you throwing around "27k lines of code" and implying they did a lot of work for the Linux kernel in creating these 27k lines of code is revisionist history with the purpose of misleading readers, which leads one to wonder if you have a relationship with the dev team or organisation.

> No it isn't. Did you read the code? I don't suppose you did. Perhaps you are not competent enough to determine whether something is manure or not.

You understand that manure is a fertilizer, right? That it is actually good shit? My whole example showed how manure is good stuff, great for fertilizing plants. It has its uses. If used appropriately manure is awesome. However, something great if treated badly is bad. My usage of the manure analogy wasn't to speak to code quality, it was to continue using an analogy you and others had already started. It was to show that if an appropriate process is followed shit is great, but if shit is treated like shit, it's just shit - a stinky mess no-one wants and has to be cleaned up by those who didn't make the shit.

eldakka

Re: Light on the issue?

That's a bit revisionist, isn't it?

> Twenty seven thousand lines of kernel level code of their own backs.

They already had a closed-source NTFS driver. Most of that 27k lines had already existed for years in their closed-source, commercial driver. Those 27k lines were just a 'polishing' of what they already had to make it more open-source friendly.

Then, rather than contacting someone and saying "hey, we're working on moving this previously closed-source driver to open-source and merging it into the kernel, can you give us some process advice and code-review - or recommend those who could", they just decided to make a brand-new, totally unexpected out of the blue pull request of 27k lines of unvetted 'surprise' code. And expected it to be merged into the kernel.

The manure analogy above is entirely appropriate. Of course manure is useful. It's a great fertilizer for plants, so if you have a grren thumb and work to a nice garden, or even have a farm, it's extremely useful. If you know it's coming and you've had time to prepare where to put it, informed the delivery agency where - and how much - to unload it, and had preparations in place of where it is most effective on the garden, and how to get it there. Someone turning up and unexpectedly dumping 10 cubic metres of manure on the pristine, prefectly kept grass of the front display=quality--lawn you show off to visitors and passersby in the front yard of the house, rather than the 2 cubic metres you could find a use for around the back, next to the barn, on the bare dirt patch you could have prepared beforehand if you knew it was coming, next to the shovels, wheelbarrows, ferilizing equipment, etc., which you could arrange to have some assistance with distributing to the places you have prepared for it is not helpful. One might even call it arrogant, crass, ignorant, which is apparent from the tone of the kernel maintainers.

The blame here lies soley with Paragon and their attitude to the kernel developers evident in their actions and the way they initially went about adding their code to the kernel.

eldakka

Re: Hang on a mo ...

> Windows allows you to write a file system driver. In a way it is more open than Linux; you can maintain it regardless of what MS do. You don't have to persuade anyone else like the LKML...

You don't need to persuade anyone - or even discuss anything with anyone - on the LKML to write a filesystem driver.

You only need to do that if you want the fs driver to be incorporated directly into the monolithic Linux Kernel as an embedded - out of the box - open source featureset of the Linux Kernel.

Are you saying it's easier on Windows than it is in Linux to get your filesystem driver merged into the Windows Kernel and be released as part of the official O/S as distributed directly from Microsoft?

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

eldakka
Boffin

he has more than anyone ever in the history of mankind

Wish people would stop saying this, he hasn't.

You have to remember that historically, people could outright personally own countries.

Augustus Caesar/Ocatavian personally owned Egypt, lock stock and barrel. One of the richest countries in the world at the time. He is rumoured to have personally owned 1/5th of the entire Roman Empire's economy.

Rockefeller was worth more than $400billion inflation-adusted.

There have even been inflation-adjusted estimates of trillions for some historical figures.

Google Docs' AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire

eldakka

> but will certainly fail with "punchier"

That's a good point, because particular words/phrases could be being used deliberately for their specific effect.

e.g.: "All the policemen - because of course there were no police women present - were terribly denigrating at the scene."

So, would we expect this google feature to change (or constantly annoy me butting in with it's suggestions) the sentence to:

"All the police officers - because of course there were no police officers present - were terribly denigrating." ?

As someone writing something, especially something at least semi-formal, you should be able to recognise if language being used isn't appropriate, and make the active decision to go looking for better language, by for example, highlighting it and choosing a 'thesaurus'-type function to give a choice of other phrases. If you don't realise that you should be using alternative language to go looking for those alternatives, either it is a situation that it doesn't matter - dashing off a quick casual text to people you are familiar with - or a situation where the reciever of that communication may want to know that you can't recognise that. For example, a job opportunity, where the potential employer would want the 'unvarnished' communication to stand to help them assess the sort of person the author is.

Microsoft details how China-linked crew's malware hides scheduled Windows tasks

eldakka

Re: The registry is like a public toilet -

It's worse than a public toilet because in a public toilet you can at least smell when someone has shit in the corner.

AI-powered browser extension to automatically click away cookie pop-ups now promised

eldakka

Re: You need AI/ML for that?

UK fisherman, by law, have to log their catch on a government website before they land it. If, as you suggest, they landed it and drove it to the ministry of farming, fisheries and food and asked them to do the paperwork then they'd be breaking the law and risk a criminal record.

Fair call. I was thinking more in terms of personal situations rather than business-oriented situations where you already need some sort of license/permit to operate in the first place.

eldakka

Re: You need AI/ML for that?

So what do you do when it's your government website that requires it (that has no substitute)? Declare your intent to renounce citizenship and move to another country?

While I can't speak to your government, or most governments at all, while my government does have such websites, if I visit the appropriate office in person they will do the paperwork without me having to log in and use their website. It is very inconvienient, but possible. The government wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on in court if I said "I attended an appointment at office X, and they refused to do the work of that department, requiring me to use their website, and now they are taking me to court for not filling out form X online, despite me in-person giving them all the information".

Requring the use of the website, with absolutely no alternatives, would break all sorts of accessability and discrimination laws. This isn't to say that they make it easy to bypass the websites. I needed a new health card, lost mine years ago and needed it for some health services. I went to an office, where in the front area it was full of a couple of banks of computers. The 'greeter' at the door asked what services I was seeking, and pointed me to the computers and said words to the effect of "you can use one of these computers to log in to your government portal account, access the health services page, and log your replacement-card request", I told them no, I do not have and will not create a government portal account. I had to wait about an hour for a staff member to serve me in person, but it was done.

Japan seeks to decentralize datacenters

eldakka

China plans a massive migration of urban datacenters to its western regions, where land and renewable energy are plentiful and cheap.

Funny what happens to land prices when you round-up all the traditional owners and either lock them up in concentration camps or shift them off to the eastern cities as indentured labour, eh?

OpenSSH takes aim at 'capture now, decrypt later' quantum attacks

eldakka

Re: "legacy" SCP protocol and SFTP

> what I am not quite sure about is whether or not the scp command will still work as expected... (or is it JUST the protocol being used that's changing?)

I had the same thought, so followed the link in the article to the release notes, which say:

This release switches scp(1) from using the legacy scp/rcp protocol to using the SFTP protocol by default.

Which I read as saying that the command to be used is still 'scp', just the underlying protocol behind it has changed. However, there are some syntax/usage changes in the file/path specifications due to the underlying protocol being SFTP rather than SCP - I read it that the sshd daemon has an sftp-server built (or bundled with) into it:

Legacy scp/rcp performs wildcard expansion of remote filenames (e.g. "scp host:* .") through the remote shell. This has the side effect of requiring double quoting of shell meta-characters in file names included on scp(1) command-lines, otherwise they could be interpreted as shell commands on the remote side.

This creates one area of potential incompatibility: scp(1) when using the SFTP protocol no longer requires this finicky and brittle quoting, and attempts to use it may cause transfers to fail. We consider the removal of the need for double-quoting shell characters in file names to be a benefit and do not intend to introduce bug-compatibility for legacy scp/rcp in scp(1) when using the SFTP protocol.

Another area of potential incompatibility relates to the use of remote paths relative to other user's home directories, for example - "scp host:~user/file /tmp". The SFTP protocol has no native way to expand a ~user path. However, sftp-server(8) in OpenSSH 8.7 and later support a protocol extension "expand-path@openssh.com" to support this.

European officials reportedly targeted by NSO spyware

eldakka

Re: Why is there not such thing as a virtual phone ?

There is such software.

You can get virtual 'online only' phones - that is, they don't actually run on anything you'd recognise as 'a phone'.

There is nothing 'special' about the mobile phone system that requires a 'physical' mobile phone. If you have the technical know-how and/or access to the right software, you can use a deskotp computer to receive and make 'mobile' calls. All the phone network needs is an IMEI number and a SIM number.

It's just that currently this is a rather esoteric need, quite niche, therefore the alternatives aren't widely known, supported or available, and those that are, aren't designed with the average consumer in mind, therefore expect a certain level of technical (not just computers but telephone network expertise) knowledge.

eldakka

But it sent a statement to Reuters saying that it wasn't responsible, and that targeting EU commissioners and staffers "could not have happened with NSO's tools."

Just like they can't target US citizens or Israeli nationals?

Oh wait, NSO sold a version of their software to Israeli organsiation that could target Israeli citizens and offered to US government agencies a version that could target US citizens.

Not to mention that they are just totally wrong. NSO software can't just 'magically' know that the user of a phone is a US citizen, an Israeli citizen, or a member of the EU commission. What if a US citizen visits Brazil on an extended visa, work permit or long-term tourist visa and decides, reasonably, to get a local Brzailian Telco's phone and phone number so they domn't have to pay international rates for using their US phone in Brazil for contacting locals. Of course the NSO software won't know that that Brazilian telephone number is being used by a US citizen. Likewise, if an EU commissioner decides to get a personal phone from their local telco store down the road - to keep their 'work' and personal life/personas separate - how would NSO 'know' that that number belongs to an EU commissioner and thus not allow targeting of that number?

Lieing morons, the fucking lot of them.

Chip supply relief coming in 2024 when wafer plants open

eldakka
Facepalm

Nice. So now we've moved the bottleneck to the mining and refining of the raw materials (sand/silica plus various additives)? What's the capacity there look like, is it increasing to support this future demand increase for wafers?

Cooler heads needed in heated E2EE debate, says think tank

eldakka

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot

> For example, it seems likely that most mobile phones have screen capture and OCR available to governments so the Signal app may prevent in-flight reading but probably is vulnerable at both endpoints.

What happens once the communication has reached its endpoint is, by definition of what end-to-end means, outside the purview of E2EE systems. That's SEP. I can always take a photo of someone's screen, or even ask them (with the help of a rubber hose) and they could tell me verbally what the message they received was.

IBM highlights real-time fraud detection in z16 mainframe

eldakka

> So if they invest in a bunch of $5m computers at their own expense, and buy or hire someone to write fraud-detection software for them, they shouldn't gain the benefit of decreased fraud?

It's not "at their own expense". The money comes from revenue generated by customers using credit cards. Part of the revenue generated are the transaction fees, and a big part of those transaction fees is to cover losses made by CC fraud. So when a CC company 'covers' the cost of a chargeback or similar situation, they aren't digging into their own pockets, it's coming from that revenue generated from transaction fees. Therefore a large proportion of the fees a consumer pays to use a credit card is that coverage - an insurance policy if you will. But a reduction in CC fraud won't result in savings to the customer, it'll result in increased profit to the CC providers.

Companies are not your friend. Everything they do is to increase profits at the expense of customers. Even gestures with no obvious immediate financial benefit to a company are designed to return a long-term financial benefit to a company through 'goodwill' leading to an increase in customer base for example.

eldakka

It could deliver a reduction in revenue loss both for merchants and card issuers, IBM said, as well as cutting down on consumer frustration at having to deal with fraudulent transactions on their credit card.

Excellent, I look forward to a reduction in credit card transaction fees...

.

.

.

Oh wait, I don't know what came over me, I'm sorry, for a moment I forgot the sort of world we live in. Of course the companies will just take the increased profit margin for themselves.

The wild world of non-C operating systems

eldakka
Joke

Re: Another OS, not C or Rust, or anything like that.

Ahh, but you said it in English. There's the problem. It should have been written in assembly.

DoJ to Congress: Thumbs up for big tech antitrust bill

eldakka

businesses have a legitimate defense if they believe their actions were necessary to prevent a violation of the law, protect user privacy and safety, secure data, secure the platform or maintain or enhance core functionality of the platform.

That loophole is big enough for a Russian Oligarchs yet to sail through, sideways.

Aside: Hey, that might be a good el'Reg unit of corruption, the Russian Oligarch yacht.

Man arrested, accused of trying to track woman using Apple Watch attached to car

eldakka
Coat

> My watch winds itself with movement.

Hey! That's my excuse too!

"I'm charging my watch, leave me alone!"

NASA will award contract for second lunar lander to a biz that's not SpaceX

eldakka

And don't forget, NASA, that now you know any bid offered by BO will be padded by $2bn, so you can talk them down by $2bn on anything they offer.

Unless, of course, they know that you know that they know you know this, in which case they'll pad it by $4b so that it's still padded by $2b after the negotiation, therefore, NASA, you should have room for $4b in price reductions.

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

eldakka

Re: Nothing new, kinda pathetic really

Very interesting post, thanks.

My only criticism is that I don't agree with this statement:

Those who adhere to the sunk cost fallacy (which is a most people) would say "legacy base is too big, got to stick with what we've already spent a lot of time and effort on".

Mainly because in this case this isn't a 'sunk cost fallacy' situation. Sunk cost fallacy refers to pushing ahead with what you have because you already spent so much on it, even though throwing it all away and starting again would be cheaper.

This is not the case. It would not be cheaper to throw it all away and start again.

Let's take Windows for an example. It'd take a decade and cost billions - 10's of billions - to write a new, ground up version for a completely new architectural paradigm hardware that had the same functional aspect as Windows does today. It'd have to be completely re-written ground up, from scratch, all in one hit, as since the entire paradigm is changing, there could be no, zero, code/library re-use. Not to mention, that assumes you already have in place a skilled workforce who understand this new paradigm and are proficient in it.

And while you work on this new system, what happens with existing Windows on x86/ARM (current architectural paradigms)? Do you let it stagnate? Just drop it entirely? Or, since it's an active revenue stream as opposed to the new work that won't be a revenue stream for another decade, do you keep working on it, spending the same amount of money on it that you would have anyway if this new paradigm wasn't being worked on? So now you are spending the billions you would have anyway on maintaining/updating/improving Windows, while spending the billions (or tens) on the new paradigm version. And what happens when the new paradigm version comes out, works perfectly to the functional specifications of what is now a 10-year old version of WIndows, because while the project spent a decade making windows for this new paradigm, the existing parallel 'legacy' windows has moved on during those 10 years.

This will apply to any existing, substantial, software system. DBs (Oracle, DB2, Postgres, etc.), CRM's etc., SAP and friends, Linux (kernel), Office-type apps, Photoshop and friends, and so on. While it may not matter particularly to relatively small software packages (sed, grep, notepad), rewriting from scratch software that has had decades of development - of functional enhancements - will cost a mint.

So it's not a 'sunk cost fallacy' problem, it's a "how much will it cost to replace these systems (including parallel development while the new systems are developed) versus just keeping upgrading/enhancing/modifying what we'vre already got?", and is it worth it?

Hey, maybe it is worth it. But it's not a case of "we've already spent X", it's "we have system A, which costs us X/year to keep supporting/improving, to replace it will cost (X + Y) * years", where Y is likely to be some multiple of X. While the resulting product may be better, cheaper, more secure, what's its payback time?

eldakka

Re: Nothing new, kinda pathetic really

How many kernel developers are proficient in C?

How many kernel developers are proficient in Rust?

What's the existing library ecosystem in C like?

What's the existing library ecosystem in Rust like?

I'll bet you the answers to those questions will have C orders of magnitude better off than Rust.

Whatever the relative technical merits of either language, or any language, for any language to displace C in existing projects of the scale of the Linux kernel, it'll have to be approaching C in those aspects before it can a useful augmentation let alone a viable replacement.

That may very well happen, but not for a decade ot more.

eldakka

Re: Annnnd...you completely missed the point of the article

Nice strawman, responding to something the OP you are replying to didn't say. You even quoted what they said, then responded to something they did not say. That is, your response was to your own statement: (emphasis mine)

do we need to show that C doesn't really solve "all problems well or well enough"

Which isn't what the OP said - or even implied - as you very well know, since you did initially quote what they actually did say, which was: (again emphasis mine)

"C survives and thrives because it solves many problems well or well enough. "

Many (as OP used) != all (as you used in your response) and your entire argument is based around.

No one, apart from you, is claiming that anyone has said C can solve all problems, or that C doesn't have any problems.

Nothing is perfect. But because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it's useless, that it doesn't have a place.

Ford to sell unfinished Explorers as chip shortage bites

eldakka

> Ford to sell unfinished Explorers ...

No change then since the Explorer my father bought about 20 years ago?

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

eldakka
Coat

Re: Hmmm..

> but what does it *do*?

It goes "binngg!". Gotta have the maching that goes "binngg", all the cool kids have one.

400Gbps is the new normal for biz networks

eldakka
Holmes

Re: The eternal questions

> Meanwhile, in the real world, most users still struggle with a few Mbps

(ETA: Ninja'ed at least twice while writing this ;) )

You do understand this is talking about LAN/datacentre speeds, right? Not commercial internet connection speeds let alone home user internet connection speeds?

I have 1Gbps between my computers in my home (LAN). And I'd like to upgrade to 10Gbps. What my internet (WAN) connection speed is is irrelevant to that.

And I bet you are using either several hundred megabit WLAN or gigabit LAN between your computer and your internet gateway (modem/rounter).

Amazon Alexa can be hijacked via commands from own speaker

eldakka
Devil

Hey, this is awesome.

Now I don't even have to be physically present to run this test: https://xkcd.com/1807

Switzerland's SWIFT data centre under guard after Russian banks excluded

eldakka
Black Helicopters

The SWIFT messaging network is run from three data centres in Virginia, US; in Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands; and in Diessenhofen in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland.

You couldn't drop me some map pins on those data centres for me could you?

Asking for a comrade friend.

ICANN responds to Ukraine demand to delete all Russian domains

eldakka
Coat

> the old argument of my right to extend my fist stops at the end of your nose. Where is Russia's respect in this?

I think Russia believes it has the right to extend it's fist to your nose, down your throat, past you stomach to your intestines, grasp tight, then reverse course pulling your intestines out your mouth.

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

eldakka

Re: re. can Oneweb's balance sheet cope with writing off those satellites

> ps. yes, I'm a Putin bot and I demand my 5 roubles now!

Will you take a wire transfer? That's the only way to pay in fractions of a cent.

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

eldakka

Re: Millenials

The problem with your entire argument is you are comparing the attitudes and work practices of people who are 20 years older than, who ahve been in the workforce for twice as long as you, you with your own attitudes and practices.

You can't know the difference until you experience it.

Wait 20 years, then see what your attitude is when you've been doing that job for 40 years, rather than how you are after having only done it for 20 so far. 20 years is piss easy. Approaching 30 years is starting to wear one down. 40 years I can't comment on as I haven't been in the workforce for 40 years yet, that's more than a decade away.

There's a huge difference between having had to work and grind for 40 years vs 20. No-one can know until they've hit it themselves.

Toshiba reveals 30TB disk drive to arrive by 2024

eldakka

> It is but how often are you going to have to get it out to update it at 30tb? Back to MTBF you're taking a huge risk.

What's that got to do with the comment I replied to? I even specifically said "just not a very good one"

The comment was not about how good the backup scheme was, just if it was a backup or not.

A bad backup is still a backup, it's just, well, bad.

And if you were after a simple backup scheme, why would you 'update' it?

Make a new full copy and stick that in the safety deposit box. No 'update' required. And when it comes time for the next backup, get the oldest full backup out of the safety deposit box (so there is at least 1 newer set of backup media still there) and blat it and re-use the media for a new full backup.

We're not talking backups for multi-million+ dollar businesses that require auditable version histories of documents. For backing up a porn collection or family photos (hopefully not the same thing ahem), or resumes and receipts, it's perfectly adequate.

Otherwise I'd be talking about doing incremental forever (TSM né ADSM) to multi-offsite storagetek powderhorn 9310 tape libraries.

eldakka

> RAID is nothing to do with backups. RAID protects filesystems. Backups protect data.

Correct, but as the OP was stating:

"Never in a million years would I trust that much data to mechanical hard drive."

i.e. hardware reliability issues with a HDD, then since this is exactly waht RAID is for, then my answer was totally appropriate to mention RAID.

And, I also did mention doing backups. You seem to have stopped reading at seeing the word RAID and missed the "and backups" part of the same sentence ;)

eldakka

> Never in a million years would I trust that much data to mechanical hard drive. Impressive feat, but no thank you.

This is why god invented RAID (for localised HDD failures) and backups (for filesystem level issues - RAID won't help you there - or disasters that fry the entire chassis/room).

I currently have a ~50TB RAID6 array (thats grown over time from like 2TB 20 years ago with the addition of additional HDDs and/or replacing smaller drives with bigger drives) and have had a half dozen HDD failures over that span and not lost a single bit. I've come close, I'll tell you, but close isn't a loss in this case ;)

I do have (intermittent) backups as well, but haven't needed to use them to recover from HDD failures due to the RAID array surviving those failures.

While I don't (obviously!) have 30TB HDD, I could see upgrading to them in 10 years if other storage tech hasn't replaced it on a holistic $/GB + reliability/performance basis by then. Which, TBH, I am hoping for ;)