Posts by heyrick

Re: scripts versus ads

"ignoring what I said in order to spout at high volume"

Oh, I'm just responding to a different part of your message than you think I'm responding to.

My USB-C plug is absolutely fine.

The cable it's attached to...not so much.

Like with headphone jacks, it's annoying that a big chunky plug ends with a fairly flimsy bit of wire. You know that right there is where it's going to eventually break. There should be, I don't know, some sort of flexible sheath for a centimetre or two to protect it. Like they used to do on quarter inch headphone jacks way back when.

"Then the apps need to figure out where their packets have gone."

This.

The joy of TCP is that I just open a connection and throw some data at it, then await a response. Granted, it isn't anything special like streaming video, but all the same the data goes in and different data comes out and all the magic that makes it work is absolutely not my problem.

To make things like flow control and resends become my problem, sounds like running in reverse.

Re: Causes

"And perhaps it's a deeply terrible mixture of the above."

I don't have an answer, however broken families and crazy people and feminism are not unique to the US but there are few other places in the world where people seem to think that the best way to settle their issues with others is to grab a gun and start shooting.

Maybe it's an unhealthy mixture of institutional paranoia and skewed religious dogma?

Re: And this is why...

My S9 is still on Android 8!

But that's kind of irrelevant as this stuff is part of the Google Play Services stuff, isn't it?

Perhaps it is being rolled out to different countries at different times? My Google Play Store is 30.6.16-21 [0] [PR] and a bunch of numbers that my dyscalculia doesn't want to let me remember...

Re: bean counters and analytics

Logical conclusion - there are too many managers (so let's lay off some of the workers).

Re: Illusion

"The plus side is that there is always going to be someone reading or watching your content."

Only if you trip some sort of alarm. With a population of around sixty seven million (UK, France), do you really think somebody somewhere is going to read your messages and look at your photos? It'll be a machine, some shitty AI that can't tell the difference between a petunia and a naked child. You'll only be "of interest" if you're flagged. And even then, what? Look how many terrorists are "known to the authorities", who did bugger all until loads of people got killed, by which point it's kinda far too late.

The bigger problem is not the government surveillance.

No, the bigger problem is shadowy AI making bullshit conclusions (did you Google anything medical recently?) which could be passed on to things like health insurers, if they pay the right money.

I look up various medicines if I spot the packets at work (usually in the bin). Tramadol, yes. Dothiepin, yes. Chlorpromazine, yes. And comically, one of my colleagues freaking out over finding a bunch of big white pills that said "FF"...until I Googled a picture of Fishermen's Friends. So...god only knows what "the system" makes of me. And since this stuff is analysed, collated, collected, and sold without us knowing what, how, or to whom.... that right there is the problem.

I don't fear my government. I don't live in the US, so I know my government has procedures that it is supposed to follow.

I fear the likes of Google. And Apple. These big tech firms that don't think they need to answer to us, governments, laws, democracy, or the Inland Revenue...

PS: I'd love to have a handler from the Home Office. Just the right person to tell exactly what I think of the void of humanity that is Patel. As frequently as possible.

I have a smart meter. Given that ErDF/Enedis is basically a state owned monopoly, people don't get a choice - the only person who can legally refuse is the town Mayor as for some reason the meters are the responsibility of the town; but most didn't because they were often able to wangle in some extra work. Where I live, the horrid old strung up bare conductors from the fifties were to be replaced by modern sheathed cables and within the middle of the town they agreed to bury the whole lot underground and remove the concrete poles.

It reports its consumption every night at 23h58. My mother used to tell me because there would be a blast of noise over Radio4 LW for about fifteen seconds.

I don't know whether or not it is accurate, nothing to compare against. That being said, we take it on trust that a spinning disc meter from 1968 (very sadly taken away and destroyed - I did ask if I could keep it) was accurate.

One thing that is useful is that it provides a report on a little screen of the current consumption, measured in VA rather than W. But anyway... Using that I've been able to track down some parasitic devices such as the printer when "off" and the old PC when "off"; to get my typical background consumption down to about 65VA. Half of that is the ADSL box, the other half is the Pi/Vonets WiFi and a couple of other things.

I suspect that seeing a number as a VA reading is easier to work with than trying to time the spinning disc. That being said, I never really paid that much attention to vampire devices, but since the price of a unit of electricity has just gone up by a third (so much for the 4% price cap), it's useful to look around to see if there can be any savings by unplugging lesser used things. The PC, for instance, seemed to be taking around 8VA when "off". If I only tend to use it for a few hours every other weekend (or less), those 8VAs per hour will add up.

"The display only shows gas usage not electricity."

I don't have a fancy display, only the little LCD on the meter itself. To have a nice display, you need to authorise Enedis to collect data at regular intervals rather than just once a day. I'm not okay with that.

In common with most French intelligent meters, there's a TIC terminal (some weirdo kind of serial port) so maybe some day if I can be bothered I might hook an ESP 8266 to it.

Re: How about..

"Commercial dev work is almost a guarantee of losing all the love of programming that made you want such a career in the first place."

This is why I weild a bog brush like a lightsaber. One of my first jobs was writing code. Early 90s, a device based around the 6502. I grew up with the Beeb so could get on with that (actually, the firmware was built on a Master). Problem was, the expectations were unrealistic to the point of utter delusion. The boss was the biggest arsehole I've ever met. He enjoyed tearing strips out of people for his own faults. And the hardware had "issues" that made reliable software damn near impossible. I hated that job so much I never went near anything tech related again. Had much more fun looking after old people in nursing homes. And now I work in a factory doing cleaning, restocking, and a bunch of other odd jobs. The pay is lousy, but my only concerns about the job begin at 9am and finish at 5pm. There's no work to take home, nothing to stress over when I'm supposed to be asleep. Come this evening, it's sunny so I'm going straight home, pull out the deck chair, and enjoy a tea with a good book. Later on in the evening, Stranger Things on Netflix. If all hell breaks loose at work, not my problem.

Thanks, but I'll take less pay for the freedom to do what I want when not at work. No reports, no deadlines, no getting shouted at because I can't match promises that the sales people made (having actually fundamentally misunderstood what the product actually does).

Re: E-sports professionals?

I'll just leave this here.

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/cat_kill

Re: I'm not a DBA...

Yeah, I know diddly squat about SQL, but I got the the DROP and was like "isn't that the part of little Bobbie Tables' name that caused all the chaos?".

Yes, it was. Uh oh.

Re: Can't patent an AI invention??

On the other hand, one can freely rip off all these patents without worry.

I mean, how is an AI going to sue, or give evidence in court?

Oh, the creator will do that? Well then, let's start with having the AI explain in its own words the contract that it has entered into.

Oh, the creator will do that? Then why isn't the creator the owner of the patent?

The entire premise is ludicrous.

Re: Next time

"More bigger explicit signs so even idiots know better then to think they know better."

I beg to differ.

They got to try out an emergency shutdown scenario, they got extra time to do their work, and they got rid of an impatient but clueless asshat... all in one go.

The sign was big enough to use him as the fall guy, but not so big that he would pay attention to it. In other words, it was exactly the size that it needed to be.

Because "It's about time Amazon got some control over them".

We both agree on where the problem lies (Amazon's work practices and unrealistic expectations), but we clearly disagree with how to deal with the problem.

Fitting cameras to monitor employees will be used to say "you didn't drive at the optimal speed between here and here, you're fired" rather than "we'll accept you were three minutes behind time because you were stuck at a roadworks light". How do I know that? Because they already pee in bottles. Any company that gave a crap about their employees would understand that humans have certain biological requirements.

Instead, this will be yet another way to squeeze squeeze squeeze.

(I didn't downvote you, by the way)