* Posts by imanidiot

4405 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2012

Sarah Silverman, novelists sue OpenAI for scraping their books to train ChatGPT

imanidiot Silver badge

"At no point did ChatGPT reproduce any of the copyright management information Plaintiffs included with their published works."

Nor would ChatGPT need to if it was providing a summary of the book. Because the "management information" is irrelevant for that (and probably has no legal standing anyway).

NASA 'quiet' supersonic jet is nearly ready for flight

imanidiot Silver badge

Averages are misleading

"which consumed approximately 5,638 gallons, or 25,629 liters, of fuel per hour of flight"

This was an average though and the overall number is a little misleading. IIRC Concorde used about as much fuel taxiing to the runway and climbing to altitude (at subsonic speeds) as it did for the entire supersonic ocean crossing. Afterburners are extremely fuel hungry. (And then it used another boatload taxiing to the gate on the other side) to the point where later in life they considered towing it out to and from the runway and starting up/shutting down there to save fuel.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Reminds me of an old (early '80s) AI koan ...

The big problem there is usually that previously they were either opening the wrong thing, selecting the wrong thing or not selecting anything, clicking the wrong button or all of the above.

Users are idiots. (And I can say that confidently because most of the time, I'm a (L)user)

Brits negotiating draft deal to rejoin EU's $100B blockbuster science programme

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Never forget that the original had the emphasis on "my"

I'm certainly not saying it should be a constant, but I also think there should be a very thorough discussion on what direction it should be headed and my firm opinion is that the EU is currently heading in the wrong direction.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Never forget that the original had the emphasis on "my"

While there's certainly a lot of good things in the Maastricht treaties, there's also a lot of bad things in there. On the whole imho it should never have been pushed through without an agreement of the people that would be subject to it. Most people at the time in NL for instance barely even knew about it or knew what their country had just signed up for. If it had gone for a vote its very likely it would have been a no (which is why they didn't ask. The few times we had a referendum, before they threw the laws back out for being inconvenient to the establishment, the people voted No to both (to the "Lisbon treaty" of the EU, which was literally just the EU giving itself more power and removing the requirement for unanimous voting so smaller countries could no longer block the will of larger countries, and once to a treaty with Ukraïne because it just wasn't the time for it yet. Both were "solved" by putting in a bit of paper with some toothless lies about some sort of "compromise" that changed nothing of substance and pushing things through anyway)

The basis of the Maastricht treaty is (from Wikipedia because I can't be bother to find the actual treaty): "Having "resolved to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", the Treaty proposes "further steps to be taken in order to advance European integration"".

The EEC was already doing fine with improving internal trading. There is and was no need to "create an ever closer union or "advance European integration" to the extend the pro-EU politicians want for trade or economic reasons. We don't need the enormous money incinerator bureaucracy in Brussels and Strasbourg full of useless "has been" politicians deciding to give themselves ever more (legally unopposable) power and ever more salary. Their end goal seems to be a "united states of Europe" with governments of the original countries having basically no power left. Much of what a countries citizens now can or cannot do is already strongly regulated by the EU with no way to say "No, screw you and your stupid nonsensical rules".

And the biggest problem is that even with all this advanced power grabbing that the EU is doing, they're still completely useless when it comes to things where it actually matters (like forcing Germany to stop polluting themselves and especially their neighbouring countries by forcing them to stop burning lignite or pay for the costs it creates for their neighbours). Or actually tackling human trafficking from the Balkans and Afrika.

SpaceX says, sure, Starship blew up but you can forget about the rest of that lawsuit

imanidiot Silver badge

"SpaceX also denied that there was any risk from keeping its farm of fuel and propellant tanks so close to its launch site despite visible damage to the tanks after Starship's April launch and concerns that climate change is putting the Texas coast at greater risk from hurricane effects."

When a rocket is actually launching, the tank farm is pretty much empty. All of the explodey stuff would be inside the rocket. The tanks in the tank farm serve as an intermediate buffer to store the propellant while the liquefaction and super chilling processes are running and the contents is then loaded into the rocket. The tank farm also only got mostly superficial damage. The tanks themselves were actually fine, most of the visible damage to the vertical tanks was to outer skins covering a thick layer of insulation and the rest of the damage wasn't sufficient to trigger any serious mishap. And if the launch pad hadn't disintegrated and been turned to high velocity shrapnel the tank farm would also have been fine. The tank farm is mostly protected by high berms at Boca Chica. The tank farm for the shuttle at SLC-39A and B was about 400m away but pretty much unprotected. A low level mishap there would probably also have damaged the tank farms.

The comment about climate change is just pure FUD. That's not a local effect nor is it very relevant to the discussion at hand.

Lamborghini's last remaining pure gas guzzlers are all spoken for

imanidiot Silver badge

I was more thinking about other race classes than F1. The sort where they're still fueling with a gas can and gravity, potentially while also swapping drivers.

Average pitstop time in F1 nowadays (tire change only, or potentially with only a wing adjustments) is under 3 seconds, usually closer to 2.5. They don't do mid-race fueling anymore in F1. Too many flame-y accidents

imanidiot Silver badge

Suffers from the same problem as FE. While that strategizing and energy saving is interesting from a technological viewpoint it just doesn't make for good spectator viewing or (imho) interesting racing. It's the same with time trials "rallying" (the sort where the driver and observer are trying to drive a certain course on open roads with very particular timing and the winner is the one that gets closest). It's maybe fun to do (for some people) but as a viewer it's like watching paint dry or grass grown. Not particularly riveting.

imanidiot Silver badge

I disagree with you and I think the majority of your arguments show a strong misunderstanding of the things your railing against.

"All the "motorheads" I know who say they love the speed and the acceleration and the wind in their hair, etc. won't touch electric cars or bikes. Despite the fact that they are the fastest moving things around."

They're not the fastest moving things around though. They accelerate fast (because of high starting torque) but that's about it. Purpose built race cars ARE making inroads (pike's peak hillclimb for instance) but that's VERY specific applications and they're very impractical vehicles for basically any other application. Electric bikes are also starting to get more adoption but the reality is that a lot of the ones currently on the market are quite frankly kinda shit for a variety of reasons.

As to F1 vs FE, the noise might have something to do with it (it's perfect to lull you to sleep) but that's only a minor factor. Biggest thing is that they simply don't put on good spectator racing. FE cars are nearly as heavy as F1 cars (FE: 760kg, actually on average 840kg including driver; F1: 798kg, actually 908 including full fuel load and driver) and most of that weight is battery, yet they can't cover even close to the same distance in a race, nor do they get even close to the same speeds as F1. The racing is generally done on tiny street circuits, shielding the so called "iconic" locations (which usually amounts to the back parking lot in a city far away from anything notable) from view with tall fences. And is quite frankly the racing is absolute shit-tier. I've seen better racing at my local karting track. Frequent stupid mistakes, silly crashes, cars running into each other, cars running out of energy. There's a large element of strategy and energy management (far more than F1) and while that is interesting from a technological standpoint it just doesn't make for interesting watching.

As to driving a high-performance sports car, range matters. Range matters a lot. On a track a petrol car burns through a tank of gas quite fast when racing, an electric car burns through a battery charge in the absolute blink of an eye. Instantaneous performance (actually only acceleration) is absolutely great, but it comes at the cost of absolutely blowing through a battery charge. Electric racing IS done, but the big problem is that most EVs would burn through a full battery in about a quarter of the laps it would take an ICE car to burn through a tank, after which an ICE car can be back on the track after a 5 minute refueling stop. A BEV most certainly wouldn't unless you had some sort of battery pack swapping system (which has been tried and isn't really a good solution either). Even just on a road, a heavy foot is going to drop a BEVs range considerably. Tesla's "ludicrous mode" is a fun gimmick, but it requires warming up the battery pack beforehand and absolutely devours battery charge (Iirc on a full charge, after conditioning the pack you only get 4 or 5 of those launches out before the battery is too discharged to get the performance out).

With proper maintenance an ICE performance car will also keep going for a lot of miles, while heavy use of a battery pack usually has strong negative consequences for their longevity.

I've driven different sorts of sports cars and BEV vehicles and the overal experience of "fun to drive" (SO FAR!) really is better in the ICE vehicles. That is not to say it will never happen or that all lovers of vehicular fun hate them, but the current crop of electric vehicles really just isn't there yet. They're fine for taking people to work, or to the shops, but that's not exiting or fun and the cars made for it aren't either.

Yahoo! comeback! continues! as! fresh! listing! planned!

imanidiot Silver badge

I have a hard time believing Yahoo! is still around, let alone relevant in any way.

Prepare for a meme massacre: Snap snuffs out Gfycat in September

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Once again

Let's be fair here, personal servers never last either.

The number’s up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111

imanidiot Silver badge

This reminds me

I should really get around to getting my HAM novice ticket. Even if it's just to be legally allowed to use a basic 2m handset in emergency situations. I've had some thoughts of organizing enough to be able to set up a basic emergency comms center but when I start making the list of what that would entail in terms of hardware needs it starts getting a bit steep.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Multiple redundancy

If it's a big enough emergency, there might not be any non-emergency calls to drop while the cell is still overwhelmed.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: How about 112 and Advanced Mobile Location?

If the caller has a GPS enabled phone there's also the (bad) option of What3Words or (far better) Open Location Code (Google plus code).

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: How about 112 and Advanced Mobile Location?

But would you use your VoIP app on your mobile phone to call emergency services? It makes far more sense to use your mobile telephone as a telephone and use the phone network. Which will likely give a far better indication of where you are located

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Why the down vote?

But most equipment that is interconnected over longer distances nowadays is likely to be connected over fiber, and the internal distances are unlikely to generate enough voltage during a Carrington even to kill things permanently. Thus our current infrastructure might well be far more robust than traditional POTS relay exchanges.

Microsoft puts profanity filter on %@!#ing Teams transcripts

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Pity Scunthorpe Tourist Board

You take that back sir! How dare you use such vile terms in polite company!

Mars helicopter phones home after 63 days of silence

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Ingenuity's initial mission called for just five flights,...

It's very easy to make sure a one off prototype product lasts well past it's minimum required lifetime since the material cost of exceeding engineering requirements is relatively minor compared to the engineering costs and related expenses. For mass produced consumer goods, material costs starts getting counted in fractions of cents, overengineering is no longer an option and things get cost optimized to the point that roughly 95 to 99% of products will last a minimum of the warranty period (The myth that they get engineered to fail just after is false, but optimizing to last a minimum of the warranty but with no "unnecessary cost" means that they're likely to fail very shortly after warranty so the effect is about the same).

Uncle Sam cracks down on faked reviews and bad influencers

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: How about review ransom?

This is why you NEVER write a review until services have been rendered completely and in full. So that they have nothing to hang over you (or someone else). I'd also be considering going to the police or taking them to court for breach of contract depending on the situation.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

The keyboard layout setting is entirely separate from the data format, location and language settings. I'm currently typing on a US international layout QWERTY keyboard, with time in 24hr format and date in YYYY-MM-DD (the ONLY correct way). I don't really look at temperatures, but if I did they would be in Celcius. I could have the system language set to my native Dutch if I wanted to (but why would I).

Fujitsu admits it fluffed the fix for Japan’s flaky ID card scheme

imanidiot Silver badge
Headmaster

"MCIJET application behind the remote printing facility and claimed it was complete.

Now the firm has admitted to "a failure in which data inconsistency occurred." It's asked all local government customers to stop using MICJET"

So it is MCIJET or MICJET?

Mummy and Daddy Musk think Elon's cage fight against Zuck is a terrible idea

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: From the moment this fight was supposedly a reality

I was going to say, even with martial arts training I doubt someone looking like this has any chance against someone who atleast on first glance appears far fitter and muscular (not to mention also atleast somewhat trained in martial arts). He'd not only have to drop serious weight, he'd have to seriously hit the gym to have any chance. And even then, in MMA style fights the smaller guy might be at an advantage.

Chinese balloon that US shot down was 'crammed' with American hardware

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: "tarnish US credibility"

Nah, the "Democrats" aren't doing the US any favours either. In fact, your entire political system has lately been a clown show for multiple reasons.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Really?

Radio transmission is (unless you get optimal atmospheric conditions) pretty much Line of Sight only, so it stops at the horizon. You might get further with a long wavelength and atmospheric bouncing but it's not a technique that can always be relied upon (especially during the day). My suspicion is that the Chinese were expecting a different weather pattern and for the balloon to start drifting far further north, to the point they'd be able to get direct comms with it or at least have it away from US surveillance again. A backup plan was probably to wait for it to drift out over the ocean and have a ship make contact and download the data, which was thwarted by it getting unceremoniously Kaboomed the second it went "feet wet"

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Red Spy Balloon Phoning Home

That would be REALLY, REALLY slow. As in, you'd probably not get more than one or 2 pictures out at dismal resolution slow.

If you're going to be doing optical comms you're more likely to go to laser, but that's a challenge and a half by itself. Not to mention there's a REALLY big balloon in the way so you have to transmit quite far off the vertical to get any LoS, putting even more atmosphere in your way to hinder comms

Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries work permits

imanidiot Silver badge

"far less blatant racism here"

Unless you don't speak French in Quebec, New Brunswick or Manitoba.

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

imanidiot Silver badge

Questionable premiss

"One of the most confusing aspects of the discourse is that people can hold both beliefs simultaneously: AI will either be very bad or very good."

First off, how is that confusing? Anything with the power to be a might boon to humanity holds within it the power to be corrupted and used for evil. Take nuclear power. Clean, long term, efficient power generation, or giant booms. In itself neither good nor bad, but at the same time "either very bad or very good". On top of that I don't see why this would be an either/or matter either. AI WILL be both very good and beneficial to society AND will be very bad too. This could be through humans pushing AI to do bad and immoral things for whatever purposes or it could be through humans naively pushing for something they believe to be good getting interpreted by the AI subtly differently and executed over the long term in a way that will in the long term have a very bad outcome for humanity.

Most people in this thread too seem to assume an AI will, if it turns "bad" bring out the nukes and killer robots to wipe out humanity as quickly as possible. I think a much, much more long term view of the problem is equally likely to be held by an AI. Effectively it's immortal. If it decides humanity has to go, it doesn't care whether that takes an hour or a century. Most humans don't really plan for anything further out than a year. Maybe a few years if they really have a long term view. It's rare for humans to think beyond the next 10 years of their life and even then it'll be in very broad strokes.

Thinking of the "Aschen" featured in TV series SG-1 for instance. Taking a long term view a malevolent AI might well tweak a drug for treating some simple illness (let's say the common cold to really make it likely it would affect as many people as possible) to cause long term infertility in humans. Before humanity would notice, most of them would be unable to reproduce and long term, those left form far less of a danger to AI. And the dwindling human population might well become MORE dependent on the AI to keep themselves alive, ultimately making them even easier to manipulate and wipe out if the AI wants it in whatever subtle way it thinks it needs to.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Evolution and power efficiency

Your comment mostly makes me wonder what arrangements have been made for long term upkeep of this little known backbone infrastructure. The internet is now roughly 40 years old. I'm assuming those in the rolodex to keep TCP/IP infrastructure running are probably about 20 to 30 years older than that. So we have between 0 and 30 years before transfer of these systems to new PFYs becomes a necessity. Is there an inheritance plan set up?

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: AP news

In addendum to my other post, you might find this article interesting: https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2017/05/the-myths-of-pilot-error/

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

"normal" submarines only go down to a few hundred meters. That makes dealing with a "cigar" instead of a sphere easier. While indeed a cilinder section makes it easier to make it bigger, it adds a lot of added complexity and strength requirements. Especially when you consider there's 400 bars of outside pressure trying to squeeze the end caps together, and buckling of the cilinder becomes a major factor to consider. OceansGate then proceeded to put the join in a rather vulnerable place (right on the transition from the spheres to the cilinder. And yes, those bolts DO pose a problem. The structure is only stiff and solid as long as it maintains its structure exactly and everything stays round/spherical. If we consider that there's a few thousand tons of force trying to reduce the length of the sub to 0 buckling of the center tube becomes a concern and for that to happen it needs to deform to "not round". When the (probably much stiffer) Ti end caps are properly bolted on (18 bolts is not really enough for this though, I'd expect double to tripple that) the spherical end caps provide hoop strength and help keep the round cross-section of the barrel section. With the missing bolt you get one section where possibly just a little bit more movement can happen, flattening off the round section there, reducing it's strength and allowing a minute amount of flex. This can then rapidly progress to catastrophic implosion as the round section does it's best imitation of a pretzel and disintegrates as the 2 hemispheres get squished towards each other looking a bit like this

I doubt they incinerated though. While the air volume would certainly have gotten extremely hot, the in-compressible bags of water and meat might only have gotten a little toasty on the outside before turning to mist and then dispersing in the water as a red soup.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: @Elongated Muskrat

Just because the practical outcomes were very comparable doesn't mean that the ultimate underlying political drivers/world view were the same. Yes, the Nazi's were very much extreme right.

Stalinist USSR was very much left wing as it's flavour of authoritarianism was full state control and abollishment of pretty much all private ownership. Stalin believed all people belonged to the state and thus the state could dictate what they could do, think, say and/or own. Nazi's believed that only their particular view of "uber-mensch" deserved any freedom or ownership and it was therefor the states perogative to dictate what those other "untermensch" could do, think, say or/own. And since the individual "ubermensch" lived to ultimately serve the state it was thus their duty to serve the state however the state required it, and by that reason the state should have full rights to dictate what they could do. think, say and/or own. The underlying philosophies are very different. The outcome (total state control over the individual) are ultimately pretty much indistinguishable. However, Nazi-ism, if you were born into the right group at least, allowed some level of individualism and allowed individual endevours and competition, whereas Communism/Stalinism was/is far more stiffling as all people are the collective, belong to the state and are "equal" (some more equal than others ofcourse).

imanidiot Silver badge

The reason is very simple. Everybody loves gloating at the "stupid millionaires squandering millions on stupid pointless hobbies" getting killed in the process and that sort of news gets clicks. The whole "will they, won't they" thing keeps driving eyeballs to the news. Nobody gives a shit about the migrants/asylum seekers/fortune seekers* drowning in the Mediterranean. "Stupid poor people will do stupid poor people shit". Alternatively people don't want to be confronted with such news items. Thus there's far fewer news articles.

The whole submarine thing also drove the news cycle for several days, while the sinking of the migrant boat mostly just resulted in a few singular news articles that people could ignore. Personally, I don't give a shit about either of these news items. If you don't want to drown, stay off the water. The sea is harsh and unforgiving.

*pick according to political affiliation.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: AP news

While there are a lot of accidents that are ultimately listed as "pilot error", there's usually a whole laundry list of "chain of events" identified that led to the cockpit crew making that error and subsequently fixed to prevent repeat accidents.It's rare for aircraft accident investigations to result in "Pilot error, unforced, totally stupid, nothing anyone could have done about it apart from the idiot pilot".

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Titanium and compression cycles

Much (Ti alloy) metallurgy was learned since the 70s and 80s and such limitations have largely been overcome. DSV Limiting Factor for instance (which represents pretty much the pinnacle of current deep submergence vessel design) also has a titanium pressure sphere and is rated for repeated diving to approx. 11km (full ocean depth as far as we currently know, design depth 14km for safety factor).

The titanium isn't the unknown here. It's the CFRP, as it's application in high compression pressure vessels isn't well researched or understood. Applications for high internal (tension) pressure tanks, even at cryogenic temperatures is much better understood nowadays. To the point we might be able to build an X-33/Venture Star type SSTO. High compression still requires far more research to quantify the problems and dangers. Most "traditional" calculations for the pressure hull of Titan would have said it needed an 8 inch thick wall, not the 5 inch it actually had. So there's already a mismatch there.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

That would only be true for a fully spherical vessel. In this case the round/barrel section is trying to squish flat and a missing bolt can create an area where it's slightly easier for that to happen (relative to the hemispherical end-cap) than everywhere it's bolted in. Think of it like trying to squash a toilet paper roll with round hoops in the ends. Hard to squish those ends if they're continuous hoops. If there's no bolt, for the stress lines it's more like there's now a missing section there where the round barrel section can press/dimple into the area where support is missing. Even if there's a lip around the material, that's not going to be thick enough to fully support those stresses.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

That rather depends on the janitors employment type though. Nowadays very often cleaning staff comes contracted from an outside firm and is barely there, coming in before or after normal working ours, rushing through a nearly empty building to "clean" things to just barely acceptable levels and get to the next job.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

"The joystick controllers in a serious craft are a sign of a CEO/EGO with weak underlings who can't tell him when he's being a twat."

The choice of controller is seriously only a blip on the jank-o-meter for that craft. It barely even registers against all the other things that are wrong with it (porthole apparently rated only to 1300m being used at 3800m down. Titanium bonded to CF with no destructive and minimal non-destructive testing. Dissimilar materials, Ti and CFRP, used for the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel being a cilinder with hemisphere endcaps instead of a sphere, the endcap getting screwed on with only 18 bolts, often only 17!, repeatedly with no exhaustive inspection between dives. The top bolt regularly getting left out "because it was hard to reach and not that important anyway". There was SO MUCH wrong with the thing it's a miracle anyone wanted to get in it to begin with. I doubt those that actually dove with it understood just how dangerous it was.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

The problem is that to get anywhere near ultimate compressive strength with CF layups, you need it to be absolutely perfect and flawless. In tension, any minor error is pretty much self correcting. In compression even the tiniest, microscopic flaw means that the CF does next to nothing (or worse, weakens the surrounding plastic). Thus the reality of it is that CF basically has no compressive strength because there will always be minor layup flaws, microscopic voids, kinked fibers, etc. Under compression the majority of breaking load/ultimate strength calculators I've ever encountered assume the maximum compressive force equals that of the epoxy matrix material (low-sh megapascals range, instead of low gigapascals range for CF). Because long term that's all you can really achieve. You might get more for a few load cycles until the lay-up errors start biting.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

The big problem is that in a vessel under compression the carbon fibre basically doesn't do anything. By the time it gets loaded enough by deformation of the epoxy matrix the vessel is already imploding and lost all structural integrity. CFRP works great for pressure vessels keeping high pressure IN because the CF is very strong in tension and a few strands failing just shares the load along all the other parallel strands (until they can't handle it any more either and the whole thing goes boom). In the design of the "Titan"s pressure vessel with high pressure on the outside, all the structural strength basically comes from the titanium end caps and the plastic of the hull. Plastic which was apparently never tested or inspected for fatique cracking.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: A fitting epitaph

"I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules"

You can only ever do anything safely if you understand the rules and the reason for their existence in full depth. And understand how you are breaking that rule, why you can break that rule and why you CAN break that rule.

These guys didn't have a clue. The front was attached with 18 bolts normally. Apparently the top one was hard to reach so the regularly left it out saying that it didn't really matter as 17 bolts was plenty strong anyway. Anyone who knows anything about stress risers and bolted connections in pressure vessels should understand that a single missed bolt is a concentration point for stresses and I'd even argue that 18 bolts wasn't nearly enough on that large a circumference. I would expect double to triple that on a pressure vessel of that size.

One year after Roe v Wade overturned and 'uterus surveillance' looks grim

imanidiot Silver badge

"But I have nothing to hide"

People are finally starting to wake up to the insidiousness of ubiquitous data harvesting and the stupidity of the "I have nothing to hide" argument. You might not have anything to hide NOW, but you might have something in your past or in your future that you don't want world+dog to know about. We should never have allowed data capture to get to the place it is now in the first place. And those now most keenly aware of it are those suddenly criminalized for a bodily function they don't really have much choice or control over. Especially in the religious extremist hell-holes of the US.

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: All that glitters ...

It's very easy to misunderstand why you're not allowed to pull more than (usually) 2 adjacent tiles. Most would assume it's some H&S thing about the size of the hole. Unless you're an engineer and understand the mechanics of how the floor works (a grid of separate pillars supporting floor tiles, otherwise unconnected. Thus the floor tiles are what provides horizontal rigidity to the floor) it's probably hard for most people to wrap their head around it.

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Clean keyboards

Can't entirely fault the MD though. Keyboards ARE filthy, filthy things and under ideal circumstances shouldn't be shared.

ASML caught in Dutch oven with China export restrictions

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: An Error?

ASML is currently selling (like hotcakes) their DUV machines in China, so no, they're not afraid they might get copied or pressing for rules for fears of it. (Chinese firms have tried and failed multiple times to copy even older stepper designs already. They're unlikely to get a copy of an asml high end dry or immersion DUV machine working).

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Its a cunning wheeze

"Tell me again, how many office workers have you seen with injuries due to being shot with a 50 cal round then falling onto a box of landmines?"

That doesn't sound the like sort of incident that requires first aid. Unless the landmines are unarmed or you send them in with a bucket and a rake (brooms not much use outdoors).

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Quite ironic

"their excuse being that the "What 3 words" was not accurate enough"

What 3 words is indeed bollocks and should not be used nor relied upon. It's got so many problems it's not even funny. (For an explanation see here for example: Cybergibbons.com - Why what3words is not suitable for safety critical applications)

So if, for whatever reason they misheard one of the words, it could very well be that "what 3 words" wasn't accurate enough. I certainly wouldn't rely on it. Even Googles +codes (Open Location Code) is a better system (It's not language dependent for example and it's not proprietary).

Elon Musk's Twitter moves were 'reaffirming' says Reddit boss amid API changes

imanidiot Silver badge

"normal" social media I'd agree with you but Reddit also has a large portion of reddits that are basically what the old style BBS forums would be, but in a centralized location. It's about sharing knowledge in the hopes that you and others will benefit from it in the future or because you enjoy doing it. And that is also what Spez doesn't understand. There is nothing that special about Reddit except ease of use . People won't shift because of lazyness and built up history, but once the push becomes big enough (and it will for a lot of subreddits once mod tools become ineffective) then shifting to something like Lemmy becomes the more attractive option.

Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Jerry-riggedness?

Not to mention the fact that the carbon fibre doesn't really do anything in this pressure hull. CF is strong in tension (for it's weight) but doesn't do much at all in compression. This pressure hull is basically made out of epoxy as you can pretty much disregard the CF for strenght purposes in this application. The entire thing was just a disaster waiting to happen and the interviews with the "designer" of the thing don't give me much confidence in his engineering capabilities either. The ballast drop system seems to rely on tilting the sub by moving occupants to one side or the other. Which doesn't work of the thing is sitting on the bottom.

Last reports I've heard is that a rythmic banging was heard on hydrophones at least 4 hours apart, which makes it likely they're on the bottom. And which makes it certain they'll die from either lack of Oxygen (the merciful way to go) or die from excess CO2 (Which will be agony). IF they still have battery power for heating that is, because if they don't they might well be dead from hypothermia before then. Even if they locate them, there is no way they can get any submersible capable of reaching them to the location, deployed and down to them in time. Not to mention it wouldn't be able to do anything. The only thing I can think of is attaching a floatation bag and putting a tiny amount of gas in, but that gas would expand to the point of bursting the bag within probably a quarter of the way up. And the ascend would be uncontrolled, extremely fast and extremely dangerous.

No-no cop: Illinois bans drones from using facial recognition or weapons

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Can armed drones shoot straight?

Put a shaped charge in the drone body and you're done, the drone IS the firearm/weapon.

After giving us .zip, Google Domains to shut down, will be flogged off to Squarespace

imanidiot Silver badge

Re: Rule 2? That should be Rule 1

Automakers don't really "do" with suppliers just deciding to call it quits. You can bet your arse Google is in some strict contracts when it comes to stopping development.