This from the IEEE is really fascinating. It is the blog of a robot operator in the Fukushima nuclear plants. Some interesting things about controls,
Read moreWhy computers are more and more devices for generating heat from electricity
Why is it that the hardware interfaces of disk drives 30 years ago were simple and clear and they currently require enormously elaborate drivers? Imagine
Read moreDutch masters
Seen on Linux Weekly News. Ext4 maintainer Ted Ts’o has responded with a rare (for the kernel community) admission that technical concerns are not the sole
Read moreIndustrial robots state of the art
During the BP Macondo leak I was struck by the enormous level of skill needed by the robot submarine operators and wondered at the apparently
Read moreSecurity news
The lesson of this story is that even (particularly?) computer security companies cannot put up with the inconvenience of standard security precautions. Greg Hoglund’s nightmare
Read moreAirbus computer and electrical problems
Whoops! From Aviation Week According to a bulletin issued by the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), an electrical fault led to a series of
Read morewhy microkernels don’t work
You can almost just see it from this diagram of connected boxes. I want to think of the whole system as a series of connected
Read moreShocking advances in Operating Systems
And here I was complaining about the lack of progress in OS development “This will blow away any RTOS,” said Cauchy. “We speed up execution
Read moreProcessor architecture
I wish that processor architecture was not so committed to a obsolete model of software. For example, it has become clear over the last few
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