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Comment Re:Modern design (Score 1) 91

Either the Indian investigators did not like what they found (it implicated the crew, ground personnel, airline, etc rather than the plane maker) or they were unable to understand the data and were not willing to admit this and hand the boxes over to the experts. Why would I presume this? Simple. They've announced the recovery of both boxes, so we know they have all the flight data and voice recordings.

Unlike you, the various government agencies that investigate crashes have a responsibility to make sure they have everything correct. Analyzing the data is not instant. People seem to think investigations happen like in CSI. Determining the root cause could take months. Part of the investigation is determining if it could have been prevented, what steps can be done to avoid the cause in the future, etc. The crash happened on June 12, 2025. It has not been a month since it happened, yet you expect findings to be released immediately?

If there were data recorded to indicate a problem with the design or construction of the plane, there would have been immediate notifications to the American and European air safety agencies and the plane manufacturer, which would have been followed by airworthiness notifications and possibly groundings.

Your assumption again is that somehow investigator instantly know the root cause and are ready to release their findings. When the investigation determines that it was a design or construction problem, the appropriate agencies are notified.

When there's a known safety issue with the design of an airliner, the various safety agencies are not just gonna sit there on their collective hands.

Part of the investigation has to take into account how it has to be done. Suppose the root cause is a faulty design of a part. It will need to be replaced; however, the replacement part has to be redesigned first. Then it will take time to replace the part on all affected aircraft even if all the parts existed. Things do not happen magically.

Comment Re: "far too small to generate any lift"?? (Score 1) 91

He is trying to smear leftists with topics unrelated to this post. But as his name suggests, he is a right winger. If you follow his other posts, he uses every chance he gets to blame things on the left. Like this post where he insinuates that it is Obama's fault that touchscreens have replaced physical controls in cars."One could indirectly blame the Obama-era NHTSA for pushing a backup camera requirement . . . ".

  1. Obama made backup cameras mandatory.
  2. ????
  3. Automakers removed physical controls.
  4. Profit!!

It is his modus operandi.

Comment Re: "far too small to generate any lift"?? (Score 1) 91

Doesn't the 787 also have a battery for electrical power? I remember that early in its lifetime they had some issues with said battery, and tried to blame the manufacturer.

Yes the 787 has batteries. No the battery is not enough to power all systems for long. Yes there were initial problems with the lithium-ion batteries in the beginning as some of them caught on fire. I do not know the details of the investigation but batteries catching on fire under usage generally suggests a manufacturing issue.

Comment Re:I still get terrible results from "coding" agen (Score 1) 62

It's like visual coding or RAD all over again. Whenever suits and PHBs are told there's a magic wand that'll allow them to do without paying people for the nitty-gritty bits, they get all excited and convince each other in their echo chamber that their dream of a company of all managers and no workers is just around the corner.

Then reality says "hi", the hype dies down, a few scam artists got rich and the world continues as it was, with a couple new cool tools in the toolbox of those who know how to use them correctly - which is generally the same people that were supposedly being replaced.

Comment a free intern for everyone (Score 1) 62

That's how I see AI. I've been writing software for the better part of 40 years. What I see from AI is sometimes astonishing and sometimes pathetic. I would never, ever, ever put AI generated code into production software without carefull checking and refactoring, and I would fire anyone who does.

Code completion is mostly in the "astonishing" part. If I write a couple lines of near-identical stuff, like assigning values from an input to a structured format for processing, the AI most of the time gets right the next line I want to write. Anything more complex than that is hit-and-miss.

Mostly, I use AI the way I would use an intern. "Can you look up how to use this function correctly? What are the parameters and their defaults?" or "Write me some code that's tedious to write (like lots of transformation operations) but not rocket science by far.
Essentially, it does faster and a little bit better what previously I'd have done with Google and Stackoverflow.

I have no fear it'll replace developers anytime soon. Half of the time the code is outright wrong, most of the time it has glaring security issues or isn't half as fault-tolerant as it should be, and for any case where I know how to do it without any research, I'd be faster writing the code myself then going through several iterations with an AI to get it done.

Comment Re:bad news for us good news for China. (Score 0) 17

Indeed, Loonsong announced they have server CPUs that are comparable to Intel ones from a few years ago now. Chinese designed GPUs are catching up rapidly too.

No. According to the Chinese they are catching up. Until someone actually tests these chips, I would be skeptical. Both AMD and Intel have been caught exaggerating performance of their CPUs at times.

It's probably already too late, the decision was made and the Chinese government isn't going to pull back from pushing for high end CPUs and chip fabrication now.

There is still execution and implementation that remains to be seen. Remember when China announced they had 7nm chips to rival TSMC and Samsung? It was proof that China had surpassed the West some said. That is until people look at the details. First of which is that TSMC is now on 3nm. Second, it was done using older DUV not the new EUV.

But by using DUV, China was able to do what TSMC could not do according to some. That is not the situation. TSMC could have done 7nm with DUV if they wanted; however, it would have been costly as it would have taken longer, required more steps, and the yields would have been much lower. Also the transition to 5nm and 3nm would been even harder. It was easier to use EUV than DUV. China does not have that option as they have only and handful of EUV machines that are no longer serviced.

Comment Re:EVs are not a solution beacuse of (Score 1) 233

But not by as much as people are claiming. It's heavier by between about 5 and 25%. The morons driving wankpanzers make far more difference.

25% is not a small amount. If you were missing 25% of groceries/pay check/whatever, you would consider it meaningful. The fact of the matter remains that Tesla is heavier than a Camry by a meaningful amount.

Comment Few understand there are no rules with currency (Score 1) 237

Few people seem to know that there are almost no hard and fast rules with a currency: * There is no unacceptable debt to GDP ratio. Some countries have faltered at 60% others have sustained 200+%.

* Confidence is seemingly a factor, but this can be so fickle as to have little predictive value.

* It doesn't have to be backed by anything. Gold backed can increase confidence, but take somali currency. The government was never solid, and has been a basket-case since the 90s. Yet, people go to the market to buy/sell stuff using the "national" currency. For international trade it is entirely useless, so they use neighbouring or solid currencies.

* Once currency can be terrible, but people living under an even worse currency will find it attractive. I fully believe this is one of the things propping up the USD. Other people (in some countries) want it because they want their own even less.

* Too much of it isn't entirely a problem. It takes a confidence crisis to usually push too much over the edge. Going right to the edge of "too much" will stimulate an economy to produce things to mop up the ever growing amount of currency. I would argue this is where things like crypto currencies are becoming attractive. They are just a way to mop up the huge amounts of USD sloshing around. Some people argue these are a hedge, I would say at this point this is not the case.

* Most people are unaware of the velocity of money problem. Once various categories like M1 and its friends are actually crossing the line of "too much" people will dump their now inflating currency faster. This increases velocity, which effectively increases the money supply; which (everybody sing along) increase the incentive to increase the velocity. This is a positive feedback loop with very negative consequences.

* People forget that you have to pay your taxes in USD. This means that people will still do part or whole of all transactions in USD, so as to pay their taxes. This can place a support for a currency for a period. If the US federal government said that all taxes had to be paid in Leopard pelts, the leopard would go extinct in weeks.

* Most of the rich world is quietly dumping US debt, and only acquiring what is needed for basic trade.

* The USD debt is safe because the US can always print more. This is technically, and pedantically true, but the reality is that if you hold a 10 year bond with a 5% and a 10% one comes out, the first one is now only worth $69.30. That is a massive massive massive haircut. If you are thinking that 15% is on the table, then you are thinking your bond could go to $49.81. That is a halving in value if rates on a 5% bond go to 15%.

* Crises come along on a fairly regular basis. Not every presidential term, but pretty close. Right now the US deficit spending is at a crisis level (the level you would expect during a crisis like 2008, 2001, a major war, etc) This means a real crisis would require way more spending. Where is this money coming from?

* The world can't supply limitless money to the US. Think of it this way. If you have a trusted friend and they come to you looking to borrow $1,000. I think most people could manage this, some could manage $10,000, some could manage $100,000 or even a million if they mortgage against their house, etc. But a point would come for the vast majority of people where they could not round up the money to loan. If the US goes to the rest of the world looking for 5T, 8T 10T, a point will come where no matter how much they threaten, or the world even wants to desperately help, they can't cough up that much. Seeing that the US is not inspiring confidence, and is no longer a trusted friend; there will very soon be a point where bond auctions don't produce results. So, they will start cranking up interest rates

* Triggers. This is one many are actually worried about. If they screw with the fed's independence, this will trigger an instant bond auction failure. Minimally, this tags 2-5% onto the next successful auction. Other triggers include punishing some country by nullifying its debt in some way. This an instant confidence crisis and the world goes from quietly dumping US debt to quiet panic dumping of US debt. The US bond auctions have to compete with this debt.

* On this last, going back to the value of lower interest debt to higher interest debt, it gets weird. Many countries hold US debt from over the last 20 years. Much of it is at 1.5% or so. Thus, selling it into a market where the US is printing at 10% means you have to sell it at less than $47.77. Seeing you are in a buyers market, this could be far lower than that. Many countries would not be happy to have something which seemingly has a value of $100 and are dumping it at say $30. I say seemingly in that most people would see a bond with a face value of $100 as worth at least $100. The reality is far more complex. But this highlights that this whole event would not be simple.

* Revenge. Quite simply, there are a whole lot of countries in the world now who are still having to do business with the US but no longer want to. Beyond the financials, things like pension funds, etc are not inclined to be buying US anything. This is a little bit of a doom loop. If large pension funds are slowly exiting the USD, then it will drop, which makes the US stock market look less attractive; which makes all of them less inclined to invest in US anything.

* Quantitative Easing. This is a financial term we all learned in 2008. This was the pumping of massive amounts money followed by trying to slow down and mop it all up before the economy overheated. With the amount of money now being paid in interest payments on US debt; the amounts dwarf QE. With the new debt being issued at much higher rates, these interest payments are flooding the economy with massive amounts of money.

* Economic indicators. People are saying these are lies now. Who knows. But with organizations like ICE getting a budget triple that of the US Marine Core, and larger than the military budget of russia, that is a whole lot of hiring to produce a whole lot of nothing.

* Risk free interest rate. This is a foundational part of the math behind finance. Everyone was comfortable with this number in the US being the 3 month treasury. People are now realizing that while still low risk, it is no longer no risk. This has ripple effects on all kinds of things like options, derivatives, etc. I couldn't even guess as to how this could blow up; but these are massive markets, so if they do blow up or hiccup, it would be quite bad.

* Post WWII Britain is a very good analogy for what is going on now. They had too much debt, a crumbling empire, and a new world competitor. But, it really didn't come to a head until 1959. In the few years up to 59, it looked like things were on the mend. Did the UK come to a screeching halt and everyone died? Nope, but they were no longer an empire.

TLDR; various tropes about the US being sound, a world reserve, no alternatives etc, are all basically BS based on ignorance, misplaced confidence, and hope. As most financial reports say, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

Comment Re:Time to resurrect the old meme... (Score 4, Insightful) 237

Just to add some insight:

Trump, in a Truth Social post, said: “We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.”

https://apnews.com/article/tru...

So clueless.

The fact is that the trade imbalance is the largest single factor that makes the US dollar the world currency -- and also helps to keep the federal debt cheap. All of those countries that have a trade surplus with us send us lots of goods and in exchange they get lots of dollars. What do they do with them? They buy US-denominated securities, including treasury bonds. So many people and organizations around the world holding large reserves of US-denominated securities is what makes the dollar the world's default currency.

To the extent that he succeeds at "correcting" the trade imbalance, he'll undermine the dollar's status. And trying to bully countries into sticking with the dollar by threatening action that will make the dollar worth less to them is just... clueless. And that's assuming his actions to explode the debt while escalating financing costs doesn't result in enormous devaluation of the dollar, which would make it worthless rather than just worth less.

On balance I think I'm mostly glad that Trump is a moron, because if he weren't he would be really dangerous. On the other hand, if he had either a brain or the humility to listen to people who do, he might understand that he's trying to destroy what he's trying to control, and that winning that sort of game is losing. Probably not, though. He's amoral enough to be okay with ruling over a relative wasteland, because he and his will be better off.

Comment More details on the $900M error (Score 3, Interesting) 13

The background on the $900M error. Citibank was supposed to make a payment on a loan on behalf of their customer. They accidentally paid off the loan. The problem for Citibank (and their client) was the client did not have $900M in the account to pay off the loan.

They sued to get the money back; however, a judge ruled against them. Part of the judge's reasoning was the $900M was supposed to paid off eventually so the recipients were not gifted money they were not entitled to get. If they accidentally deposited $900M in my bank account, they probably could get it back. I do not know internally what Citibank had to do to make up the shortfall themselves but it was clear it was all on Citibank to fix.

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