* Posts by Spanners

1613 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Sep 2009

AI models show racial bias based on written dialect, researchers find

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WTF?

Why would people write in dialect anyway.

When I write, I write in what is seen as "standard" in this country.

When I speak, it can often be less so.

Why would I write with an accent? Sometimes I may use regionalisms in written form but not generally in a CV or a work report.

BOFH: I get locked out, but I get in again

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Big Brother

Re: ChatGPT

Gemini seems to know even more about him!

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Pirate

Re: Swopping Locks

That reminds me of when I was in shared accommodation.

A lad used to chain his bike on the bannisters at the bottom.

Every morning, he would find it hanging by the back wheel from the top of the bannisters.

After a while he muttered that someone must know his (3 digit) code.

I showed him how to open it without the code because those, grey metal locks with the 3 brass number rings are hopeless.

Students...

Nevada sues to deny kids access to Meta's Messenger encryption

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Big Brother

We know they are lying, so...

Why have they a particular interest in spying on children?

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

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Big Brother

Re: Root causes?

They still banned Tom & Jerry!

I thought they banned the, rather racist, portrayal of the maid.

Jet engine dealer to major airlines discloses 'unauthorized activity'

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Big Brother

Passports

I still say that an employer does not need a scan of an employees passport. It needs to know

If they have one

What countries.

Expiry date

Any endorsements (like not allowed to come back here).

This would involve showing it to HR so they can look.

I think some countries have rules that nobody is allowed to copy or scan them. That, obviously, doesn't stop immigration functionaries doing just that but it should stop employers.

SAP hits brakes on Tesla company car deal

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Facepalm

Re: I doubt SAP buy cars at all

Not in Germany it won't.

Those things are designed to be lethal to pedestrians, cyclists and motorbike riders.

Probably not too popular anywhere in the developed world.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

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Boffin

What percentage?

We all know that a power cycle cures a lot of problems but what percentage and does it differ depending on what sort of kit?

I suspect it is higher for desktop level stuff, PCs etc than servers but they don't let me near them much!

Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope

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WTF?

Why then?

...our findings do not support the argument that managers impose mandates because they believe RTO increases firm values...

So what was their real reason(s)? They don't feel it makes you a better worker.

It has been known for years that WFH makes people more productive, It lowers company costs, electrical bills, rent etc.

It seems to be some sort of race to prove that companies see employee satisfaction as a negative. Does this mean that we don't have it quite so bad on this side of the pond?

I know that a certain Tory knight dislikes it but JRM is surely a self-parody?

Akira ransomware gang says it stole passport scans from Lush in 110 GB data heist

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Terminator

I'm sure

Long ago, I was told that it was against the law for employers to scan things like passports and driving licences.

As it was twentysomething years ago, is it possible that the current government changed the rules?

Or am I mis-remembering?

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

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Alert

Or "disnae" as they say where I come from.

(Not sure where to put the apostrophe in it though.)

Elon Musk made 1 in 3 Trust and Safety staff ex-X employees, it emerges

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Facepalm

One problem

Musk has the, common in the US, misconception that free speech includes hate speech, bullying, racism and so on.

I have free movement in my country but that free movement does not give me the right to abuse that freedom by wandering around hitting people, driving at 99 mph or waving my favourite body part out the window.

Do you see the similarity?

Not even poor Notepad is safe from Microsoft's AI obsession

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Pirate

Sounds like a job for...

Open Source?

Someone must already have written an OSS equivalent of notepad. It never caught on because there was already something perfectly suitable in Windows already. I wonder what.

Google to start third-party cookie cull for 30 million Chrome users

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Boffin

If I can stay in no groups?

Will that stop it downloading rubbish?

(Whatever I have not asked for is specifically unwanted rubbish.)

‘I needed antihistamine tablets every time I opened the computers’

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Alien

Re: These stories are crazy

Why would anyone wilfully place any kind of kit in a public area like that?

I suspect input from the Department of Bright Ideas - often full of accountants and professional suit wearers, both proud if their IT illiteracy.

CLIs are simply wizard at character building. Let’s not keep them to ourselves

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WTF?

you could buy (for a reassuringly high price)

I have never found anything remotely reassuring about a high price. I have been doing some mental gymnastics and the only example I can come up with is a spare part for a Rolls Royce is probably either expensive or fake.

I cannot think of many other examples and none in IT.

Superuser mostly helped IT, until a BSOD saw him invent a farcical fix

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Happy

Floppy

I used to get students. "My dissertation was on this, but it's gone!"

I think I would get about half of them. Sometimes off the floppy, sometimes from other places and a couple of times by OCR'ing a draft.

The funniest one was he had lost an opening photograph of his place of education. I used a well known Photoshop alternative. I had to replace whatever mess was at the front by extending the brickwork. Apparently, later, someone asked him why he had bricked up his university front entrance!

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

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Meh

Re: No imagination any more

I get the offer, whichever one I am using.

If I use the imperceptibly new version I get asked if I want to switch back and vice versa.

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Happy

"lunch-time Quake sessions"

I remember coming across an article on how they did this (?flood networking?). I showed the article to some of our techs to explain to me and they immediately stopped doing it.

Cybercrooks book a stay in hotel email inboxes to trick staff into spilling credentials

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Linux

"May only work in Windows"

That should immediately ring an alarm!

The thing that Windows, famously, does best is run viruses etc.

If I ever got a message containing such a comment, I would open it on a Raspberry Pi or some other unimportant device that would not run anything like them (I hope).

Google hopes to end tsunami of data dragnet warrants with Location History shakeup

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Boffin

Re: If you are up to no good or just protesting

...at least use a dumb phone...

So they just ask the phone companies who are more than happy to "help".

...non-identifiable phones (sims) so while the phones are tracked there is nothing to connect them with the phone unless they were apprehended with the phone ...

You should watch some shows like NCIS. Even if you pay cash for your burner phone, "they" know what phone you bought, where and when...

...Carrington event...

This is your best hope.

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

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Boffin

Re: Jedes Schrift'l ist ein Gift'l

Only that you can't write and say "ass" any more in the United States of America due to the extreme Political Correctness

In the more developed parts of the English-speaking world, we do not say "ass" to indicate what one sits on. The correct word is spelt A R S E. I hope spacing it out avoids some filters.

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WTF?

Re: Problematic pattern recognition

Is recording stuff like this legal?

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Happy

Re: Problematic pattern recognition

I had a... cow-orker..

Is it Delbert who referred to them as cow-irkers?

Microsoft floats bringing a text editor back to the CLI

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Boffin

I'd be happy with notepad++

It wouldn't take much effort to get

npp .\file.txt

to work.

Microsoft issues deadline for end of Windows 10 support – it's pay to play for security

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Facepalm

Every time...

Over the last few times that MS has produced a new version of Windows and made the old version (even more) obsolete, I have seen people announce that they will no longer touch this rubbish. I see people agree that there are suitable alternatives or workarounds.

Then I see big organisations spend billions on throwing away functional computers that are not up to spec and they go onto the next, short-term, solution. Whether it is corporations, civil service or the NHS, they all spend huge sums that could be better used on swelling the profits of hardware manufacturers and Microsoft.

There are alternatives. Why aren't we using them?

'Return to Office' declared dead

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Meh

Re: There it is

"Pension pots"

People under 50 don't need to worry about pensions. They will be well past 75 before the owners of the current government allow them to retire.

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

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Meh

Re: What about the hard of hearing?

One of the things that is causing me to keenly look forward to the demise of the internal combustion engine is the ones that are "specially modified" to sound like a tractor doing 70mph!

I'm not far from a main road and these things sound ghastly and then when they slow down they gough, pop and splutter because they are so badly tuned

There is a Tesla living near me. They do make a little noise. It wouldn't be hard to turn that up a little. Someone could make a law about it. The law could get them to be quieter in the evenings and at night. That is not something that the chavmobiles do,

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Meh

Tesla Build

Over the years, I have not developed a good impression of US engineering build quality. Tesla has merely confirmed this.

Do we know if the ones made in China are better? I expect that when they start churning them out in Germany, they certainly will be!

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

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Happy

Re: Every single time

We developed a habit of plugging the mouse and smartcard KB in a particular way because of this.

Now someone else often rolls things out so I assume it no longer matters.

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Pirate

Re: Every single time

My Chromebook only has 2 USB C ports as well. I just paid a fraction of the price.

We challenged you to come up with tech predictions for 2024 (wrong answers only) – here are some favorites so far

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Alert

Passwords

People will finally pay attention to the "experts" who advise them to use their product instead of an ever longer passphrase and 2fa.

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

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Boffin

Re: Too many to count

Are you insinuating Brownian Motion?

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Happy

Re: not "British English"

Whether they like it or not, you can't easily change the physical location of a country. The "British Isles" will remain after the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is gone.

In the same way, the UK remains in Europe even after "they" have got us (temporarily) out of the EU.

We are still here. We still have a lot of empty space - Dartmoor, Salisbury Plain, Scottish Borders, Highlands and Caithness to name a few. With our demographic shift, we need the immigrants that certain bigots are trying to keep out so we can slowly vanish like Japan.

Nope. We are still here but our skin is becoming less pale - a bit like the USA then!

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Boffin

Error names

I tend to think of it as an OSI layer 8 error.

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Pint

Re: Too many to count

I have had calls in the past that, when they start talking, I interrupt them and ask them to remove whatever is on their KB as the, recognisable, buffer overflow is drowning out what they say.

They do so and announce that I am magic as the noise is what they were calling about...

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Boffin

Re: @Korev "Well the Z in Regomised is still there..."

...a British English website.

Nope. We speak English, not "British English". They han have their US variation if they want...

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Facepalm

Re: Seems to me that ...

...and "anonymized" to indicate...

But they don't get to tell the world to spell "anonymised.

Windows users can soon ditch Bing, Edge, other bundleware – but only in the EU

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Happy

Teams

If the worst comes, you can do teams through your browser - whichever one you fancy.

Google dragged to UK watchdog over Chrome's upcoming IP address cloaking

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Black Helicopters

Re: Child protection

I'm surprised the marketing bunch haven't asked to ban those.

They will. I have heard marketeers say that the British habit of making the tea when the adverts come on is some form of theft.

It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

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Facepalm

It may be legal in the USA, but

<p>It sure as F. is illegal here!</p>

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

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Facepalm

Re: Depends.

British English

Calling a correct spelling "British English" is quite common in the USA.

Australians, South Africans and New Zealanders do not speak "British English", just English.

Yes, we all have our variations. Written English, however, is fairly standard, except in North America and I don't blame the Canadians.

Tenfold electric vehicles on 2030 roads could be a shock to the system

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Boffin

Re: If you bid too low

Because a granny charger has a 13 amp plug on it, it will be limited by that but it will be very sufficient for most people.

If we average the 30 miles per day described in another comment, that will need 7.5kwh. Your granny charger will do that in under 3.5 hours. You plug it in when you get back from work and you can unplug it before you goto bed.

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Mushroom

Re: increasing reluctance in the insurance industry to actually insure

unlike the older chemistries

Hopefully, you included the hydrocarbon systems so beloved of the uninformables?"

If someone "invented" it as a fuel source today, it would get nowhere and be banned in quick order...

"So instead of charging it at home or a handy lampost, I have to break my commute and pay how much?"

"You want it paid for in US dollars?"

"You want hundreds of billions of $ to go where? To who?"

"It stinks!"

"It puts what into the atmosphere?"

"We will put lead in it for a few decades?"

"So if the fuel tank is punctured that stuff will burn? How hot?"

"In a strong enough accident, it will explode?"

"and Hollywood showing how a car blows up if shot at will surprise few?"

"and you can put some in a milk bottle and use it as an incendiary bomb?"

The sooner we can get rid of this stuff, the better! Yes, we will still have the Daily Mail trying to persuade us that our batteries will catch fire if we go too fast over a speed bump. Will that make its readers drive more slowly?

Word turns 40: From 'new kid on the block' to 'I can't believe it's not bloatware'

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Facepalm

Re: first time I saw MS Windows

That's still very much the case today.

And we keep telling them this and we keep getting advice about it from the Department of Bright Ideas!

CEO Satya Nadella thinks Microsoft hung up on Windows Phone too soon

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Unhappy

Agreed

Despite not being a Micro$oft fan, I was sad to see them leave. At least there was an alternative to Android.

International Criminal Court blames spies for 'targeted and sophisticated attack'

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Black Helicopters

There will never be any evidence that Netanyahu engineered the whole thing.

No genuine evidence. I would not put it past certain criminal groups to manufacture some though..

The problem with Jon Stewart is that Apple appears to have cancelled his show

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Linux

Re: Who’s Jon Stewart

He is a minor TV personality in an insignificant country far away from the developed world.

Boris Johnson's mad hydrogen for homes bubble bursts

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Boffin

Re: Electricity for heat pumps

Fusion waste?

You mean Helium?

San Francisco mayor suggests police drones and CCTV can cure city's crime woes

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Boffin

Re: The name is fitting

"prohibition stops almost nothing"

It's worse than that. Prohibition creates and increases crime.

In 1918 USA, how many gangsters made a living from alcohol? How many were doing so 10 years later? It created crimes.

I would be interested to see how many drug kingpins there are in Portugal right now. Banning things makes them desirable to people. Illegal things are profitable. People get involved in illegal trade and push it.

Banning stuff does not lower the problem. It makes it bigger and more dangerous.