* Posts by Intractable Potsherd

4158 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Intractable Potsherd

Re: MV Rubymar is dragging an anchor in the Bab-el-Mandeb

That's a very interesting video - thanks for the tip! I've subscribed to the channel because the presenter seems knowledgeable and a good communicator.

Venus has a quasi-moon and it's just been named 'Zoozve' for a sweet reason

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Wallace

It would have to have a companion.

Linus Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem suggestion

Intractable Potsherd

If "You copied that function without understanding why it does what it does, and as a result your code IS GARBAGE.

AGAIN." is what counts as flaming these days, I begin to see why many people think the end of Western civilisation is imminent.

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Intractable Potsherd

Re: re: Don't make many (preferably no) long trips.

"This isn't much different from planning for gas stops..." Who plans for fuel stops in civilised countries?? I've driven many times from Scotland to the Czech Republic, sometimes doing the trip from which ever ferry-port on the mainland coast in one go, sometimes with one or two overnight stops. Since I know the mpg of my cars, and watch the fuel-gauge, and start thinking "fuel needed" once it gets to about a quarter full, I have never yet had a problem needing to "plan fuel stops" in advance.

Fairphone 5 scores a perfect 10 from iFixit for repairability

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Nice! Too bad about the price.

Second hand?

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Nice! Too bad about the price.

I'm with you on this. I've had an Ulefone Armor 5 for getting on for 5 years now. Waterproof, rugged, long battery life, SD slot. It cost £100 new, and my only (occasional) gripe is the poor camera module.

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Pardon?

Have you never been to Kirkcaldy??

SpaceX celebrates Starship launch as a success – even with the explosion

Intractable Potsherd

Re: I can't help but feel....

Why?

X fails to remove hate speech over Israel-Gaza conflict

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Xitter has problems policing hate speech ?

My experience is that you are wrong about that.

SpaceX's Starship on the roster for Texas takeoff

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Re-use

Isn't it lucky there's one Internet weirdo to think of all the things the very experienced scientists and engineers missed?

Suits ignored IT's warnings, so the tech team went for the neck

Intractable Potsherd

Re: One does wonder...

Ah, not just me, then!

US Air Force wants to see some atomic motors for future spacecraft

Intractable Potsherd

Re: What could go wrong...

I prefer nerds to catastrophising eco-nuts any day of the week.

Meta decides to Just Say No to Oversight Board requests and allow paid posts for ketamine

Intractable Potsherd

Re: "Licenced clinic"

I'm very sorry to hear that. My condolences.

Corner cutting of nuclear proportions as duo admit to falsifying safety tests 29 times

Intractable Potsherd

Re: All my sympathy.

No, they can't "go boom at any time". I'd happily live near any of the nuclear power plants in the UK.

Royal College considers no confidence move after Excel recruitment debacle

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Experts

Many of us can, but remember that we are talking about *NHS managers* here...

Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard

Intractable Potsherd

Big Red Switches have Molly Guards, keyboards need Moggy Guards!

Twitter, aka X, tops charts for misinformation, EU official says

Intractable Potsherd

While X remains the only platform tat allows me to state the objective reality that transwomen are men, I'll stick with it. Other platforms seem to think stating that obvious fact is "misinformation".

BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Rolled My Own....Yup...Please Decrypt!

... with large, coloured-footed sea birds.

Colleges snub Turnitin's AI-writing detector over fears it'll wrongly accuse students

Intractable Potsherd

My favourite is the patchwork of fonts, text sizes etc that come from cutting and pasting from websites!

Intractable Potsherd

I've been in discussions about this recently. My position (for my areas) is that we need to back to exams in controlled environments, closed or open book.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Turditin

Yes. Also, front pages with the question/assignment written on them.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: If it's as good as their other products...

A point made as expert witness in a research misconduct case a few years back. TurnItIn results requires skill to interpret, especially when the topic is very narrow, such as questions set for a degree or research results in a very specialist area of medicine. Of course there are going to be terms of art, specific phrases, and quotations and references common to the papers. My usual example is to consider a question about the definition of theft - a paper that doesn't have "Theft Act 1968", "Section 4", "dishonest appropriation of goods belonging to another", and at least one of three or four key cases is a failure, yet TII gives each one a really high plagiarism score.

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Ah, the 80's...

Hailing from that area, and being at school from the late 60s to early 80s, I went on school/6th form college trips down mines, into steelworks, oh, and at around the age of around 10, into Ladybower Dam (that was a lot of climbing that day!) I think RAF Finningley was the most exciting, though, standing coder than the usual airshow flightline whilst a pair of Vulcans took off. I don't know whether I'm more sad that school children would never have the opportunity to do any of those things today because of risk-assessment disorder, or that only one of those things still exist.

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

Intractable Potsherd

Re: But surely

What we need is a summary of them all - a condenser of all the puns.

Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

Intractable Potsherd

Re: My first question

I agree. Microsoft doesn't do anything that won't improve its bottom line and/or lock-in.

Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

Intractable Potsherd

Re: It just keeps getting better

The ultimate reason doesn't matter. Old ICE cars are going to be very valuable assets soon.

Scared of flying? Good news! Software glitches keep aircraft on the ground

Intractable Potsherd

Re: More

You usually have more imagination than that @elsergio!

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Great job!

So let's give them the chance - at least one of them might fail in cocking-up.

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

Intractable Potsherd

I'm torn

Overall, I like the idea of a word-based method of giving locations. This is based on my experience of people who cannot remember, nor are able to read out, any number with more than three digits, combined with those who cannot accurately write down/type any number with more than one digit. I absolutely agree that things like AML are probably the best way to give locations, but only as long as there is no transcription needed anywhere in the process - sometimes even 10 metres out is too much. However, any word-based solution has to be done right if it is to be used for emergency situations, and that isn't easy due to things like accents etc.

Until such a system comes along, though, many of the problems can be dealt with by a) getting people to enunciate the dots - dogs DOT toe DOT dearth is clearly different from dog DOT stowed DOT earth - and b) asking for spellings - W3E words aren't long, and can be spelled quite quickly. Again, there are accent problems if the speller doesn't know the phonetic alphabet, but it reduces the error-space quite significantly.

Intractable Potsherd

Yep. In my long rallying experience, I've had (and done) many "one square out" errors. Sometimes they're obvious when plotting, other times you only find out when you can see your intended location over that river/valley/railway line...

Right to repair advocates have a new opponent: Scientologists

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Expose

In general I agree, but I actually like "Battlefield Earth"!* There is something I find very playful about it, and the utterly mad change of direction from almost extinct, completely uneducated humanity to galactic superstars leaves me breathless every time!!

*The book, not the film, of course!

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Expose

Wasn't Robert A Heinlein also supposed to gave been there at the time, the result being the truly awful "Stranger in a Strange Land" as an attempt to start a religion? Or am I mixing up drunken sci-fi author lunches?

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Intractable Potsherd

Re: No sh!t Sherlock

There's no risk of that happening at this household* because if you ask for coffee I'll boil the kettle, transfer the brown granules from the jar to the mug, and pour the boiling water onto it. I'll even let you have milk and sugar if you wish :-)

* OK, I suppose there's a small risk depending on what can grow in/on coffee granules after >6 months in the cupboard (no one in the house drinks coffee, so it only gets used for visitors!)

Silicon Valley billionaires secretly buy up land for new California city

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Flannery Row.

I'm glad you are able to benefit from it. Just be aware that not everyone is.

India lands Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on Moon, is the first to lunar south pole

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Tell me again

A man with no aspiration whatsoever. How sad.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Milestone moment

Excellent! (Except for the very idea of putting cream in tea - ugh!)

Want tech cred? Learn how to email like a pro

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Its all about *efficient* communication...

The thing is, you never know what is going to become "need[ed] records or memorable details" somewhere down the line. Even minuted meetings can become disputed later if (as some employers do) the "official" report gets changed to the benefit of the employer. Contemporaneous records, such as emails, can be very useful.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Its all about *efficient* communication...

No. Emails provide a searchable and all-but-permanent (if one is sensible about backing up) record of who said what and when. Management wants telephone calls so that there is no record of who said what. I'm currently assisting a person with an employment tribunal in which the employer is getting its arse kicked because the employee kept records almost obsessively.

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Not holding my breath

To be fair, I live in (what is becoming*) a reasonable sized town. The older bit in which I live is very much a 15-minute town, taking in two supermarkets, what passes for a bus-station, the railway station (two trains an hour in each direction), plus a couple banks (for now), Post Office, library, couple of convenience stores, pubs, cafés etc. However, the nearest (State) schools we could get the children into was a) sink estate huge and just 15 minutes away on foot, or b) proper sized six miles away (10 minutes by car). Sounds heat, until you realise all those new developments are significantly more than 15 minutes from any of the things I've just mentioned. A car is an absolute necessity for people living in them.

*Lots of new develop ments going up around the edges.

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Getting stuck in a lift is no fun

I think figures show that cows are the most dangerous (to humans) mammal in the British Isles.

The choice: Pay BT megabucks, or do something a bit illegal. OK, that’s no choice

Intractable Potsherd

Re: 100m goes a long way

Exactly. Until last year I was a landlord, using a letting agent due to distance from the property. I thought having a local agent would make maintenance easier for everyone. When the last tenant left, I went down to view the house. It was in a terrible state, not as a result of tenant activity, but because of the agent not doing the job I was paying them for. The agent knew very well that my instructions were to tell me if anything needed doing, and I would get it done. However, it was obvious they hadn't actually visited the property in years (even taking into account Covid). In the unlikely event I ever become a landlord again, I will not be using agents.

Judge lets art trio take another crack at suing AI devs over copyright

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Whoops ... I Hear Solicitors Getting Rich

"So while I'm all for a world without lawyers... "

That's not even a sensible wish. Every society has/has had lawyers. Sometimes it is just one person (usually a man), such as a tribal chief, or shaman/medicine man/seer; sometimes it is a bunch of the leader's mates; sometimes (rarely) it is a profession with standards and the ability for members to be held to account by the public. Whichever model you choose, lawyers are a) powerful, b) influential and c) rich compared to other members of that society. By and large, we have the final category*, so which other model would you choose (not confining yourself to my examples)?

* I am not arguing that the current system is the best, but that it is one of the best so far.

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Agree but...

It's not just me, then! I've never been able to work out the putative link between the term and the meaning ascribed.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Real Sanitizers

I can't remember whether it was radio > books > TV, or books > TV > (recorded) radio. What I do know is that all my Douglas Adams books were destroyed whilst in storage during the most recent move, and I haven't the heart to replace them with ones that don't have the history. I am, though, working a quotation from TRATEOTU into an interview later today!

After Meta hands over DMs, mom pleads guilty to giving daughter abortion pills

Intractable Potsherd

Re: It's all fscking insanity - I'm embarrassed for my country

Pro-life positions an come from an entirely non-religious perspective, though in the USA it is predominantly a religious standpoint. For example, the precautionary principle can lead one to such a position, and I've heard arguments based on Kantian ethics. They haven't swayed me, but they are interesting arguments that made me thing how I justify my position in a way that "God says so" hasn't.

Liberté, Égalité, Spyware: France okays cops snooping on phones

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Yes give the police more power....

First, the disclaimers - I have only seen what has been shown in the UK press, and I am not overly familiar with the socio-political situation in some of the less salubrious parts of France. Having said that, nothing I have seen makes me think there was anything to warrant firing a gun at the young man in question. Dangerous driving - no. Not stopping - no. Maybe I have missed something (a post down-thread suggests that the police officer may have had reason to fear for his life), but this falls into my category of "reasons ordinary police officers should not be routinely armed".

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Maybe not.

I'm in the same quandary.

SpaceX says, sure, Starship blew up but you can forget about the rest of that lawsuit

Intractable Potsherd

Re: SpaceX

Aren't all rockets "possibly-expodey"? The only difference is the probability of rapid unplanned disassembly.

Boss such a tyrant you need a job quitting agent? It works in Japan

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Job quitting agent - great idea!

You may just have pointed out my new career!

Intractable Potsherd

I sort of agree with you, even though I feel guilty about it. Doing exactly what your contract demands shows that you can do exactly what your contract demands. It doesn't show what else you can do that makes you a choice for a promotion, or raise, or job at a different employer. There are a lot of people who think that simply being good at the job they are currently doing is sufficient to move along the career track (indeed, when I was younger I fell into that trap myself), but it can't be. There needs to be something to show that you are somehow developing the skills required for the new role.