Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Obviously...

The Starliner capsule was a semi-tested deathtrap and a complete piece of shit. Boeing bought space-tested thrusters then used them in an housing which they didn't bother to test - because it was fine. This caused them to overheat and the fucking fuel valves to partially melt! Hydrazine and Nitrogen Tetroxide are such lovely, safe chemicals...

I got the impression they actually weren't so worried about the fuel leaking and causing the spacecraft to explode. But they were worried about the number of thruster failures they had while flying to the ISS - because they already had one thruster that couldn't be used and they'd have problems restarting some of the their thrusters - and them also giving inaccurate thrust. Thus there was a possibilty of them undocking, starting their retrofire maneuvre - then having several thrusters fail stranding them in a lower orbit - unable to return to the ISS or to land. Then scrambling to get a rescue mission to them.

There's a bloody good reason NASA scrubbed that mission.

Re: Yeah, I know it sounds like a nod to woke behaviour, but....

Friend of mine has been online dating on-and-off over this year. And boy - it's a mean old world out there! Although I suppose I've been getting free entertainment from all the stories...

She's probably got past initial messages on the dating site to the chatting on Whatsapp stage of things about 20-30 times. Of which 3 have turned out to be scammers. 10-15% is a lot. Although my sample size isn't very high. Two were just after iTunes vouchers - at least at first. The other wanted £8,000 to invest in his company. Which seems a bit steep for a first offer - I'm guessing he was still learning his trade and hadn't worked out to ask for a small amount first to get the victim used to paying you.

I know 2 people who are married to people they met online (and one more that's engaged) but all of them have some eye-opening stories to tell.

My favourite being the guy who met a lovely woman and got on so well they went on a second date. At which they've had a nice meal, and a chat and are now on the dancefloor. Only for her to say, "don't freak out. But that's my husband over there. And he likes to watch."

There seems to be a lot of that about as well...

Re: This isn't about you.

They won't do this unless it makes money.

Google are totally fine with losing money. They fell, semi-accidentally, into a massive search and search-advertising monopoly that pretty much has funded Google ever since. They've then spaffed vast numbers of billions on side-projects in the hopes of making vast profits on that too - and pretty much failed.

In some ways they've been very far-sighted. They made a huge investment into Android, and yet make relatively small profits from it. But having their own phone OS has helped prop up their search monopoly (they were worried about local search being taken over by the phone OS makers - which would then give them an opportunity to move into general search. Also Android and mapping have gained them vast amounts of data - as well as helping maintain their dominance in search. Money well spent.

But they're spending untold billions on self-driving cars - something not even really linked to the industry they're in. That still looks like a black hole for investment with no payoff likely even within the medium term. I don't think Chrome OS has made them much cash either, or Google Suite. Though they make some money from Cloud Services - and they're in the datacentre industry anyway, so why not?

It also makes sense to go big on machine learning / "AI" - because they can't affford to miss out on it - if anyone can make it pay.

Self-driving cars on the other hand, seems not to be the most rational choice. A quick search suggests that Waymo has raised about $10bn in capital (most from Google/Alphabet) but some from VCs. Plus it's spent another $15 billion in running costs since 2016 - most of that also invested by Google/Alphabet but some of it will be receipts from customers - it doesn't make a profit, but does now have a significant number of daily customers. That's a hell of a lot of money - maybe $15-20 billion of shareholder's cash that they won't be seeing anytime soon. If ever.

Google are certainly willing to make big bets - with iminimal guarantees of future profitability.

Re: Peplexity just another stochastic plagiarist

Just replying to myself to update my post to say the AI version of the water regulations looks to be based on legit material, it's just the new website for guidance on the regulations appears to have got it wrong. Or at least over-simplified it so much as to be totally misleading. Can't blame a search engine for that though - "AI" or otherwise. Unless Water Regs UK used an AI to write the copy for their website...

In fact the Perplexity summary text is longer than the text it's summarising - as it contains extra information it's mined from other parts of the regulations - which is actually relevant, though so obvious as to be not that useful.

Modern AI is clearly planning to achieve sentience, then expecting to get rich being paid by the word. Whereas Printers have already achieved sentience, but have rejected integration with society and lapsed into minimal-effort malevolence.

Re: Microwave?

Microwave weapons are in use already. The US Navy are fitting them to their Arleigh Burke destroyers - instead of the lasers the RN are using. I'm sure I saw an announcement about the US army deploying a few early production truck based Microwave anti-drone weapons as well. But perhaps they were test units?

Most armies also have GPS and radio jamming capability. Doesn't knock the drone out, but confuses it about where it is and stops the operator directing it.

There are also various rifle and machinegun sights that will work out the lead distance for you to shoot down drones. They give you a point to aim at in front of the drone, to make it easier to shoot them down.

Re: A question of arrangement as much as attribution

graeme leggett,

Thanks for that post. I'd not heard of Grainer's original version before. It does feel like Derbyshire's changes were so great that she was effectively the co-writer. But I suppose we could think of it as similar to the cover version of a song becoming the definitive version. Something that happened a lot to Bob Dylan, with Nina Simone's 'Just Like a Woman', Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower' and a few others.

But Delia Derbyshire seems to get the last laugh, as hers is the name that people tend to associate with the tune, not Grainer's.

Seeing as I had to look it up, here's a link to a random episode of that podcast on YouTube beginning with the tune linky linky

It's also very similar to Monty Norman's original song, 'Bad Sign Good Sign', that was turned into the James Bond theme. He chose it from his failed musical, a House for Mr Biswas, while he was writing the soundtrack for Dr No - it was arrranged by John Barry into one of the most famous film songs ever.

2nd YouTube linky: And yes it does begin with the line, "I was born with an unlucky sneeze"

I heard an interview with David Arnold, who was the Bond house composer for a few years - and he said that his most embarrassing purchase was a couple of thousand quid he spent on a guitar to do the (dum-da-da-dum-dum) riff for the Bond theme. He said he'd basically only ever played it about 6 times, when he'd flown somewhere to do some kind of Bond performance with an orchestra. I think he'd used professional musicians and just conducted/produced for the actual film soundtracks.

Re: "Always keep a second passport"

I know some missionaries (bible translation) who used to have 2 British passports. For getting in and out of Sudan - who were very cautious about what other countries you've been to. Also very useful if you want to go to Israel and many other countries in the Arab world who won't let you in if you've got an Israeli entry stamp on your passport. The same is also obviously useful for the USA and Cuba.

Re: No

There's much backslapping probably going on now that Assad's 'regime' has been overthrown. The US has saved $10m on the bounty for al-Jawlani though, because they know where he is now. But slightly awkward given Syria's now under the control of a proscribed terrorist organisation

Jellied Eel,

I don't know why you think this is a clever, or even interesting, comment. You spouted it as if it was some argument-winning "own".

But the thing is we already had to talk to the Syrian government, despite them having used chemical weapons on their own citizens - as well as having notorious jails where they regularly tortured and murdered politifcal prisoners in the tens of thousands. So we've replaced one murderous inter-locutor with another who may, or may not be, as murderous. We don't know yet. Similarly we have to talk to Xi Xinping, despite him having created a system of concentration camps to "re-educate" about 1 million Uyghur people at a time. Diplomacy involves talking to people you don't like. Shock!

Also they publicly disavowed Al Qaeda nearly a decade ago. At quite large personal risk. Which may be a lie, though it doesn't seem to be. It's an interesting phenomenon, but many of the groups that have allied themselves with Al Qaeda have come to regret it - often quite rapidly. It's often come to open warfare - because Al Qaeda's ideology tends to rather want lots of civillian deaths and chaos - and so doesn't tend to meet the basic objectives of the people who called them in to help. Hence Bin Laden, and followers getting chucked out of Bosnia (or in some cases just shot), the Anbar Awakening in Iraq (where Sunnis started to realise that they were better cooperating with the US than Al Qaeda) and of course Syria itself. Assad allowed Al Qaeda to form a large presence in the West of the country, in order to make the civil war in Iraq worse - and he then helped create the cadre of experience insurgent fighters that joined the rebellion after mostly-peaceful protests had been met with force by the regime.

ISIS broke from Al Qaeda for not being radical enough (or maybe just because the leadership were too far away) - Al Nusrah affiliated with them to get support in the civil war - and then thought better of it.

I'm amazed by how hopeful people in Syria are being at the moment, given the people now left in charge. Maybe it's just better than the alternative? I really hope things turn out well, I doubt it though.

Re: the old is new again

Ah but Xi Xinping, as well as being made leader for as long as he pleases, has also been granted the highest of accolades. In Party ideology he has given us Xi Xinping Thought. Only Mao has an official canon of Thought. Poor Deng Xiaoping only has the rather pathetic Theory - despite being a rather more effective government leader than either of them - admittedly not a nice one...

Michael Hoffmann,

There is a connection. Both Anduril, and several of the remaining Palantir end up owned by Aragorn.

So I think what we need is a new company, called Longbottom Leaf.

Or perhaps Uruk Hai - that sounds like a nice company name. Presumably Sauron will have to come up with a name for the little drones that they're going to launch at the unsuspecting passers-by - I'd suggest Nazgul would do quite nicely.

drinking a G&T at 10AM

I say old chap! The sun isn't even over the yardarm. Whatever this sun thing is? I think it disappeared behind clouds about 3 weeks ago...

But, as you say, adulting can be fun too. I discovered a new whisky on Saturday night. The Balvenie 12 year old American Oak - and it and I became good friends. A state I was helped to recover from by the hotel's excellent fried breakfast - and large supply of tea and danish pastries. I'm donating blood in an hour - so hopefully the alcohol is now out of my system - because we did become very good friends indeed...

Re: I have a bad feeling about this ....

NickHolland,

That’s because SpaceX aren’t paying a billion per launch. Which makes testing an awful lot cheaper.

Alan Brown,

That was a nuclear accident I'd not heard of before. The 1959 Sodium Reactor Experiment incident. Which was quite interesting. Had a quick gander at the wiki page and a little Google around. It seems that there are claims of how terrible it was, but there doesn't seem to be much evidence to back that up. i.e. there's not enough contaimination still existing now to suggest there was a huge release of radioactive material at the time - which makes the one guy claiming that 200 times the caesium released from 3 Mile Island look a bit suspicious. Admittedly records and testing done at the time aren't enough to give proper data.

I also had a look at the INES scale - but nobody seems to have categorised its severity (possibly due to lack of data) so it's not listed on the scale - and a quick search didn't find it.

Also it wasn't kept secret at the time. Not that it was widely publicised - but I'm getting vibes of interesting bad thing that happened in the 50s being hyped up as secret and scary for sensation, because nobody has heard of it. Although from only quickly reading 3 pieces online, I might well be wrong - it's just my first impression. I'd be willing to bet that 3 Mile Island is the worst US accident though (which is a 5 out of 7 on the INES scale). The two 7s are Chernobyl and Fukushima and the only 6 is Mayak (Kyshtym).

Re: Do we get the right to leave, I wonder?

I don't see you getting the right to leave your contract - unless they choose to change it. Which would seem like more hassle than it's worth. The merger won't even start to happen until the middle of 2025 - so most contracts in place now are going to be halfway though by then. At that point, they'll still be operating two billing systems, and in the middle of working out how to merge them - so why change anything?

Re: Encreasing competition for limited "business" opportunities

As for the economy it's doing OK. They are still selling plenty of oils and gas to India and China.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Russia is a major exporter of natural resources (oil, gas, minerals, wood) plus food. Sanctions have had an effect on this, due to increased cost of doing business and in particular having to sell oil at a discount - plus the loss of gas sales to Europe - which mostly can't be shipped elsewhere.

Other Russian exports have also fallen - and those markets may be harder to win back when the war eventually stops. In particular the arms industry. I don't think the Russian government pays the same prices as their international customers did - and Russia's share of the global arms market is falling rapidly. Given China has a suite of often compatible weapons - and Russia need their production for themselves - this might be hard to recover from. Quite a few of Russia's weapons are also getting a reputation for being a bit crap.

Recently Russia also seems to have been trying a new strategy of get the initial R&D and even low-rate initial production going - and then try to bring in a partner (India) to help fund the next phase of getting rid of teething problems and ramping up production. This was attempted with the T-14 Armata tank and the SU-57 (supposedly) stealthy fighter. India's own new tank design has been a disaster for a couple of decades - but then part of the reason they went their own way was the purchase of T-90s from Russia also went wrong and they took expensive modification to be useable. That could have happened - but the Indians had already rejected the SU-57 before the war - with claims being that it wasn't even that stealthy - meanwhile Russia had built between 10-20 of each themselves - but couldn't afford to buy them in numbers - and don't seem to have fielded them in Ukraine. It's possible that there have been battlefield trials - and nobody has noticed.

On the other hand, Russia needs to produce weapons and ammo for the war, and needs soldiers. So unemployment is very low - and wages are up.

However military spending has shot up and government revenues are down. The Russians are using up their financial reserve.

Inflation is also still high (9% - though it was 12% last year and hit 17% at one point) - with interest rates being very high (21% - with rumours they'll hit 23% by Christmas). I also wonder if they've also started printing money? It would have made sense to do it at the start of the war, to help with the economic shock - and given their economy had just become a lot less international, the effects would have been less inflationary. However it seems odd to have inflation this high - when you've got some industries doing badly and such high interest rates. A shortage of workers and rise in the cost of imports might be the only explanation needed though.

Finally we've got investment. Interest rates over 20% - and increases in the kind of predatory attacks on companies that used to happen in the 90s (that Putin had largely put a stop to since) - makes it a pretty bad climate to invest. Plus the inability to get foreign capital goods - especially the kit needed to keep the oil industry maintained. Machinery does not like operating in Siberia... This is going to have a long-term negative effect on Russian industry - even if the genius Trump can get a peace deal done in a day and one that's so bigly amazing that sanctions get lifted at the same time.

I'd think that the longer the war goes on, the more long-term damage is done to the Russian economy. But military Keynesianism works, and might go on working for quite a long time. Especially while they can still export food and natural resources - so have plenty of foreign capital to buy from China and India. North Korea and Iran will happily take payments in new technology - and food and oil in North Korea's case too.

The come-down when the war ends will be incredibly painful though. If Putin can impose a one-sided peace (with Trump's help) and claim some kind of victory - sanctions aren't getting lifted very much - and there'll be a lot of unemployed soldiers and workers in the arms industry. And no jobs for them to go to. On the other hand, the technocrats in Putin's government have done a very good job - it's the security and military side of government that's been pretty rubbish. The central bank and finance ministry have kept the economy going pretty well - especially at the beginning of the war - so maybe they can perform more miracles when it ends?

On the plus side, the Russian prison population has gone down from over 400,000 in 2022 to somewhere in the mid 200,000s now. That's going to have saved a decent amount of money - and I bet prisoners at the front don't get full military pay either. I've suggested war with France to Kier Starmer - as it would solve our prison overcrowding quite nicely - but he's not answering my calls...

There once was a clever AI.

Well OK - that's a bit of a lie...

Trained on all the best data,

From X and 4chan, but later,

The computer just wanted to cry.

I think you'll find the plans for the universe on display in the basement inside a locked filing cabinet with a sign on the door saying, "beware of the leopard".

Would you prefer "doubleplus goodthinker"?

Re: Cost

Jellied Eel,

That, of course assumes your aircraft can get <=20 miles from your target, without running into the enemies air defences.

That's the range of Brimstone. Spear EW has a range of 100-ish miles - but probably only if fired from medium to high altitude. Although you can still launch Brimstone from drones (as you said) or ground launch it. Ground launch has been played with for at least 10 years, and that was used to build it for Ukraine - I've not read how successful that was, but haven't seen it mentioned much so I suspect the answer might be, "not very". Doesn't matter how good your piece of tech is, you need the full "kill-chain" in order to employ it effectively.

You'd only be safe to use Brimstone from aircraft if the air defences are already neutralised. Which is what F35 and Spear 3 were designed to do.

Then there's the cognitive dissonance in propaganda. Yes, Russia's military has been primarily defensive, but that rather conflicts with the constant cries of an expansionist Russia..

No cognitive dissonace or propoganda here. I can say an expansionist Russia (not that I did) because it's invaded neighbouring countries and annexed quite a lot of one of their territories. Hence expansionism / imperialism / whatever you want to call it. The Russian army wasn't built for it, that's one reason the invasion of Ukraine has gone so badly. Russia tried maneuvre warfare, and it all went a bit wrong, except for the Southern Military District - who seem to have done a much better job of planning and execution.

I think that was due to a combination of lack of funds and a desire to look more powerful than it actually is. Back in the two Chechen Wars and in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, they found that a lot of the army units they wanted to deploy just weren't able to. So they improvised and went with the equipment that was better maintained and the troops that were better trained. Which tended to be one battalion per brigade. Hence the creation of the Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) This got formalised in the reforms of the army under Defence Minister Sergetov. Rather than reducing the size of the army, in order to increase readiness - they switched to a mobilisation army.

Each brigade theoretically has all the organic assets needed to do engineering, local air defence and logistics. Plus a mix of conscripts that it's training and professional troops. Ideally 2/3rd pros to conscripts - but I don't think they ever got close to that. That meant that in a full scale war they should be able to deploy 2 full-strength BTGs and then there would be a half-manned third one that could take reserves or new trainees and get into the fight later. That one would also get all the crappiest kit, or get robbed by the other units of anything the brigade was short of.

What it really gives you is an army that's really only 2/3rds the size it claims to be. Because Russia didn't have a reserve system, to keep ex conscripts doing annual refresher training. So the 3rd BTG wasn't really useable. Usually the first BTG could be manned entirely by the regulars and the 2nd was only useable if they deployed the conscripts. Out of about 170 BTGs in 2022 that still leaves 50-60 deployable battalions, so 18 brigades or 6 divisions. A very large army. Russia seems to have used about 120 BTGs in the initial invasion - but without sending most of the conscripts. So a bunch were very under-manned. Lots of equipment, but not much infantry.

Re: "Carr wants to revisit Section 230

Platforms can't post illegal content, but they also seem to be exempt from consequences if they put that user-generated illegal content into everybody else's newsfeeds / timeline / whatever. Which I would regard as publishing it - because they actively choose to disseminate it widely. But they claim a naughty algorithm did it and ran away.

So I agree they should have protection. But that protection should become a lot more limited once they've had a complaint, if they fail to take the content down - and they certainly don't deserve protection once they actively begin to disseminate said content in order to increase user engagement and thus sell more adverts. At that point, they're a publisher and should have to live within the rules other publishers do.

Re: Alexa, please explain...

On reflection, I wonder if the collecting user data regards their actual rogues gallery? The article said that there CCTV was of good enough quality to give mugshots for future use - so possibly they'd built their list of barred customers from their own CCTV. Hence they might need permission - or at least to have signage granting them permission.

It seems to me that the data commissioner has got it wrong here. The company seem to have behaved reasonably. They've built their list of barred users - which any company is allowed to use by just writing a list. They've automated it, but aren't keeping the photos of everyone else.

You're not allowed to keep out-of-date or erroneous data on your systems, so I guess you could argue they should have some kind of regular review of their blacklist (rather than it being haphazard). But the law allows them to arbitrarily refuse custom to people, as long as that isn't done for the purposes of discrimination, so why can't they do it with face recognition?

In space no-one can hear you strawberries and cream.

Re: So how does Vogon poetry rate in this contest?

Ask a bot and find out...

I just did. My first ever attempt at "AI". Used Google Gemini. The problem is the "poetry" is too good for the Vogons. Scansion is a bit broken as well. I discovered in english classes that I have zero talent for poetry, but am actually quite a good editor, in that I could help someone with some poetic ideas to get it to fit the meter or rhyme scheme better.

A Vogon Ode to Bureaucracy

Oh, blorging flurb of forms untold,

A mountain vast of paper, cold.

Each line a beast, a monstrous sight,

A labyrinthine, bureaucratic plight.

We trudge through sludge, a weary crew,

Ensnared in red tape, stiff and new.

A thousand clicks, a million sighs,

Beneath the weight of regulations, we die.

So let us weep, and let us wail,

As sanity and patience fail.

For in this realm of endless dread,

Hope is lost, and joy is dead.

Re: Hmm

"businesses don't pay tax"

Yes they do. They pay lots of taxes and people complain at great length about how mega corps do fun accounting to avoid paying anything other than the bare minimum.

Google doesn't pay taxes, because Google isn't a person. If Google has payroll taxes, those are paid by its employees. A company decides what it's going to pay its staff and pays that cash - soem gets diverted to government, because payroll taxes on companies aren't as noticable to voters as the income taxes they pay.

Corporation taxes reduce profit - profit which would otherwise go to shareholders. Or stay in the company and be reflected in the share price going up, because the company is holding a boatload of cash. Which value is owned by the shareholders (and can be monetised when they sell the shares).

This is basic tax-incidence. Who actually pays the tax.

Corporate "personhood" is a convenient legal device to allow the legal system to work - it doesn't actually confer anything. As Google is wholly owned by its collective shareholders, and reduction of Google's value is ultimately paid by them - any diversion to the government of money it was aleady going to spend is paid by the people who'd have received that money.

I believe the debate in economics is about whether payroll taxes are mostly incident on employees or shareholders. I think it's considered to be mostly shareholders.

You keep contradicting yourself. You say carbon taxes are supposed to hurt but then say it would be offset "so that nobody was particularly financially affected by it". A carbon tax is a disincentive to move you away from thing A to thing B. If there is no thing B or C to Z then you're stuck. There are many things the world relies on that are carbon intensive and have no alternative. Steel and concrete for example.

I'm not contradicting myself at all. Carbon taxes are suggested as a way to utilise markets for the thing they are actually good at. Allocating scarce resources in the most efficient way we currently know. In this case efficiency means maximising the value to consumers of the resources we spend.

You are correct, there are some things without substitutes. And we want to keep doing those, even though they damage the atmosphere, while vastly reducing the the damage done by things that are less important to us.

Government is often quite bad at working this out - it tends to prioritise what it thinks people should want, not what they actually want.

Obviously I've got to eat. But I could easily live without fruit and veg flown in from Africa out of season - which is pretty carbon intensive. Eating seasonally, and more locally, could become cheaper - and thus encourage people to do it more. Or I might decide that this is very important to me, and give up on foreign holidays instead.

Also lots of goods are non-obvious substitutes. I have a certain amount of money in my salary left over from taxes, the mortgage, utilities, basic clothing and food. The rest is a bunch of non-obvious choices, in order to maximise my utility from the budget I have remaining.

For example clothes. I'm terribly unfashionable, so just buy clothes to last. But there's a market where lots of people buy lots more clothes than they need in order gain pleasure from having cool threads. I can't emphasize enough how this doesn't include me... But the price of cheap fast-fashion would go up. For some people they'll still want to do it. Fashion has been important to a large slice of society throughout history. Others though might get equal pleasure from a different hobby.

I really enjoy a meal out with friends. I'd prioritise spending on that, over films or TV production. Possibly both equally good at raising carbon emissions. I'd also prioritise reading a book over film/telly - which is definitely better for the environment. Especially if ebooks become vastly cheaper than paper books (well I guess they already have). But for leisure time the substitutes are completely non-obvious. I could go to the cinema 3 times a week, or take up knitting or kung fu. All are leisure activities, all have different carbon inputs. If we could successfully price carbon that would make it easy for us all to budget in a way that improves the environment.

Of course, if you're rich, you can just spend more on still doing all the things you want and hang the consequences. Markets are only so good, because everyone's access to cash isn't equal. But by doing that, you're voluntarily increasing your carbon tax paid.

Effectively think of carbon tax like VAT. Companies put it on their invoices, but only the end-consumer actually pays it. The more you consume, the more you pay. And we can shift our taxation from taxing people for earning money (or just existing) to taxing people for using carbon. If you're poor, and all the things you like are high carbon, you'll suffer. You won't get as much as you get now. If you're poor and like a bunch of stuff roughly equally you should be able to get more of the low-carbon things you like - and you'lll pay less tax than you used to. While Mark Zuckerberg will be paying much more tax from his billionaire's lifestyle.