Posts by Brenda McViking

Re: Indian skills? What skills?

I'm in India managing a team that has been offshored here from Europe.

Staff churn is indeed an issue - I regularly see someone being offered 50 pounds/euros/dollars more PER YEAR to work for a competitor and they'll take it. Our own HR are stupid too though, we'll offer an engineer with 5 years of relevant experience, (and speaking 2 european languages) 15 grand equivalent a year (European counterpart getting 50k), having spent a load on a 3 month secondment to Europe, and then come pay review (when finally they're in a position to actually contribute useful work), they'll try to fob off the Indian with a 5% raise, even when wage inflation here is 10%+, as the "HR global maximum raise is 5%." We also "don't entertain requests for pay-rises outside annual pay-review." So we can't counter a 50 quid job offer with a 100 quid retention payment (which whilst would be taken as a huge insult in Europe, would be well recieved here).

I can't blame them, really. Simple, avoidable PHB management failure of cutting off your nose because corporate policy tells you to - one that RBS will undoubtably make too, given their track record.

Mathematically, encryption can be unbreakable, but in the same way that physics has theoretically ideal constructs.

In the real world though, you use engineering to break encryption - and indeed all the high profile encryption flaws uncovered have not been discovered as mathematical flaws but generally, breaking in by using flaws in which the encryption is implemented. It was true for enigma, it was true for heartbleed, and it's true today.

After all, it's theoretically possible to have a perfect key and a perfect lock. Add in humans and they can be lost, stolen, cloned, misdirected and intercepted during transit, replicas of similar looking locks and keys made to fool users, or rubber-hoses used to acquire said items. These are not mathematical attacks but engineering ones. The public want engineering attacks outlawed, and gummints want to be able to do them, so the easiest way is for gummint to try to outlaw mathematics, "prove" that encryption promotes terrorism and peadophilia and "compromise" on allowing engineering attacks for themselves only when the public have an outcry about it.

Re: I'm still lost.

I have an amazon echo dot. Yes, it listens all the time, but it's sat in my media room and it works brilliantly, and I use it every day, from dimming the lights by voice, looking up snippets of quick info "Alexa, what's the freezing point of mercury" was the last one, through to "play me some chillout music." some of the features - like the BBC flash briefing - are great, and I wouldn't have even considered them before owning it.

I use it far more than my smartphone voice assistants as it's at home and doesn't suffer the same social awkwardness that speaking to your mobile in public does. For me, it's no more awkward than a star-trek style "computer; lights" would be.

Though i'm still waiting for one of my friends to come over and do a https://xkcd.com/1807/

Re: Being on a placement myself...

If they're in for work experience (and still in school), there is every chance this will be the first time they're introduced to these bitter tasting adult drinks called tea and coffee. You'll be lucky if they've ever made one before.

Then again, when you're still a PFY straight out of university at 22, it's not always clear if "making the tea" is just a office prankster on a power trip trying to show the new PFY who is boss by taking the piss, or whether it's actually an important contribution to the team's daily ritual and it's your turn.

The way I dealt with it was to deliberately make the absolute worst cup of tea/coffee I could manage the very first time around (either use a heaped tablespoon of coffee per cup or break open the teabag so that it had bits swirling around in it and let it brew for a whole 2 seconds). This drink of course would be rejected within half a second of the first sip. The "power trip" types call you useless (but will never ask you again), whereas the "team contribution" types roll their eyes and show you how to do it properly, then they all have some minor ammunition to tease you with going forward which breaks the ice.

Re: Hmmmm

I too would have bought one had it had a removable battery. I'm on my 4th battery in the Galaxy S4 now.

It seems the only manufacturer to bother with making batteries removable nowadays is LG, which is a pity because whilst their hardware is nice, their software isn't and they cripple themselves by supporting things for a week before giving up.

I don't think we'll ever see removable batteries again from Sony or Samsung, high Ingress Protection ratings sell phones better than removable batteries. and apparently we can't have both. It has been years since they produced a flagship with a battery that could be removed.

Ironically, had the Note 7 had a removable battery, I reckon they'd have gotten away with a far cheaper, far simpler product recall and not lost 20 gazillion and their brand image in the process. If the S8 starts exploding too, they might be forced to re-think the stupidity of having an irreplacible low-cyclic-life consumable component. (Then again a counter argument is that if you make batteries replacable, people will replace them with the cheapest and most dangerous ebay combust-o-matic they can find, so maybe Trump is right and it actually IS all China's fault.)

Re: How to blow up a rat

The animals are organised I tell you!

Successful Cyber War Ops of Squirrels, birds, rats, snakes and racoons to date

Re: Good going cobber

Oh, we had a dangerous dual carriageway junction with a gap in the central reservation on a blind corner near us, and the speed cameras were put up after the 4th death. Then there was a 5th, and a 6th and they finally did what they should have done in the first place and engineered the solution using a roundabout.

The speed cameras are naturally still there, as is the 40mph limit. All for a danger that has been eliminated, over 10 years ago, by a properly engineered solution.

Plus the usual regression to the mean that the siting of speed cameras inevitably produces:

Have an unusally high number of accidents in 3 years. Place speed camera. Have average number of accidents next 3 years. Conclude speed camera was the reason for the reduction in accident rate. More on that if you want to read it

I'd have failed my degree statistics module if that was my reasoning.

RE:Confused of Canada

So to try to answer your question: there is very specific wording that governs the TV licence. The BBC have a charter, which ensures it is at arms length from the government, is not wholey funded by the taxpayer, and also has rules governing how it is to operate such as being available to all. This also prevents it using general taxation or subscription methods to be funded (though this could change with a change in laws). The charter is renewed every 10 years, and has been deliberately set up to preserve the status quo.

The rules:

In order to watch TV programmes as they are being broadcast in the UK, you must have a TV licence. As of last year, to watch iPlayer (the video on demand service of the BBC) you must have a TV licence.

If you don't fall into those two categories, you don't have to have a licence. So for me, I have Netflix & Amazon subscriptions and only watch TV on demand and not iPlayer - i don't require a licence. I have TVs but they're all for console gaming or watching DVDs. I still don't require a licence.

Personally I would object to having to pay the BBCs bills because I don't use their content.

Would it work out cheaper if paid via general taxation? probably. But then I would have to pay and the selfish type of capitalist I am, I don't want to pay for something I don't use, nor, in my opinion, find of benefit to the public at large. (Though you'd find plenty of my countrymen willing to argue it is of public benefit)

If they went to a subscription model, you'd still have people like me not paying, the effect of general inertia of the populace and the lack of people succumbing to their threats so it would almost certainly raise costs for those who wanted it if the BBC wanted to maintain it's current level of funding. Not to mention that plenty of people don't watch the BBC but do watch other broadcasters and currently legally have to pay the BBC, and wouldn't have to under subscription.

So we're stuck in this ridiculous situation where it's an apparently optional cost, requiring significant knowledge of the loopholes to avoid (as I do), and using threats and legally powerless enforcement officers to shake down those who are suspected of evasion. It is very deliberately kept vague as to what rights their enforcers have (actually very few, though they give the impression they are the equivalent of the police with search warrants) and as such, hundreds of people are prosecuted every year when their only way of catching such people is to get them to self-incriminate themselves. Whilst I object to freeloaders, I object more to the enforcement methods which no other organisation would ever get away with, and thus, I (legally) do not pay for a TV Licence.

Re: The pi-zero w is less than £10 and I bet it would do all they need and more.

Power factor is just about the degree to which voltage and current waveforms in AC systems are leading or lagging each other (they're both sine waves, but are they in phase - i.e. overlapping, or does the voltage wave peak before the ampere wave?). If you're measuring watts, it has no effect, as it's all real power and the power drawn will be the same no matter the phase between the two. You're averaging the sine waves then multiplying them. Power factor plays no part, and as a residential consumer, you're billed on real power.

Commercial premises might be billed on apparent power (kVA) rather than real power (kW), and hence they might benefit from looking at whether their power factor is costing them extra. (reason being, that current and voltage being out of phase increases losses and reduces capacity for real power to be delivered by the grid.) Nonetheless the EU are determined to start regulating LEDs because of their power factor, without understanding the subject (they're usually capacitive devices, the grid usually lags, thus low power factor LEDs in every home will make the grid more, not less efficient).

Your belkin adapter is not lying, modern lump in lead adaptors will be taking milliwatts when nothing is plugged in the other end. It's not the 90s anymore. Your phone charger might draw 10W at full chat. Greenpeace say you'll save the world by unplugging them. They're lying. You'll save more energy by switching off the oven/immersion heater 5 minutes earlier than you would by unplugging 20 mobile phone chargers every day for a year.

Re: I wouldn't....

Most pilots now fly with electronic flight manuals, something the rest of the world might recognise as an ipad, and hence a brick of lithium-ion which will combust if damaged. This is something relatively new in the industry but very commonplace now.

Pilots have supplementary oxygen masks right next to them,

And Halon is about the only fire suppression agent which wouldn't damage the rest of the avionics, which would still supress a lithium battery fire. This is not halon in the quantities that you used to flood the entire datacentre once upon a time. The CO2 used in this device is more dangerous to the pilots and avionics as it actually displaces oxygen. Halon doesn't work that way, rather it chemically inhibits the fire, not through oxygen displacement. Nor is it all that dangerous to Humans. There is plenty of halon on most aircraft anyway for cargo-hold fire suppression. And whilst the environmental concerns are valid, aircraft safety has historically taken prescedence, which is why we still use lead in solder.

Choice between Halon discharge + fly on supplemental oxygen versus a burning iPad on the flight deck? Ask any pilot.

Here is the FAAs current guide to fighting portable electronics fires in the passenger cabin.

and guess what fire suppression agent they reccommend?

https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_operators/airline_safety/safo/all_safos/media/2009/SAFO09013.pdf

Re: Happy 1Password User

Well that's a major security risk right there.

Don't give anyone potential access to your financial accounts. Banks, unsurprisingly, deal with people dying all the time, and will NEVER expect those still on this earth to have access to the passwords. Indeed, people have been dragged through the courts for accessing accounts of dead relatives thinking they're doing something completely innocent, whereas actually it is unauthorised access of a computer system and the associated terrorism acts that deal with these incidents. And you cannot explain that it's all a grave misunderstanding and that it was you, breaking the Ts and Cs and leaving said relatives the passwords, cause ye've kicked the bucket already, so the banks are duty-bound to investigate and prosecute for fraud.

By all means leave them a list of accounts you have. But not the passwords, you'll cause them far more hassle.

That's half the story though, isn't it - jobs and wages. What about those very same hardworking people who also want to utlise their free time and money? Or is the definition of paradise 24/7 employment at 800$/hr for everyone?

Simplifying commerce allows you to get far more from your hard earned graft, because you can buy whatever service or shiny product pleases you from whomever in the world makes it the cheapest and the best. It's kind of the point of trade - you get stuff that fufils your desires that would otherwise be out of your reach.

Sent from my Chinese computer, over Taiwanese made fibre optic cable, through Korean made servers using British designed semiconductors, running American software (coded by Bangalore), operated by a German ISP to a UK website, hosted in Ireland.