* Posts by heyrick

6566 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Dec 2009

Alphabet CEO tells Googlers: More job cuts on the way

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Coat

Re: Hmm

Responsibility?

What's this newfangled concept of which you speak?

We want none of that nonsense around here...

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

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All that article, all these comments, and nobody has mentioned teletext Elite?

https://www.bbcelite.com/hacks/teletext_elite.html

YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus

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Re: I can smell something... smells a lot like bullshit

"Ooh. Rocket science."

Okay, then. Here's one for you. I have an Android phone. The phone itself is linked to my Google account for stuff like app updates and so on.

Recently (like two or three years ago) Google changed something so now when you visit their site in Chrome, it is logged in under that same account.

Worse, there's no sensible way to log out. Instead one must log out on their phone to disconnect the browser from the account. The browser, a separate app running on the device, not the phone OS itself.

Add that to various Google Play Services updates (that are forced, you can't not update) which appear to like to turn data slurping options ON without notification. I told my phone not to back up its settings and such to Google Drive. Recently I've had to rinse and repeat when this turned into Google One. I'm sure in a couple of months something else will change and these sorts of options will "helpfully" default to being enabled.

So, feel free to continue being a fanboy/shill for Google but note that it's getting ever harder to defend the indefensible - that what they really trade in is people's privacy and they'll do whatever to get hold of information. Information. INFORMATION! (I feel like this is the point where I should slam open some large doors and say that I'm not a number...)

Google is changing how search results appear for EU citizens

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reduce the choices available to people and businesses in Europe

Given the decline of Google in recent years, where searches are stuffed with spam, it just stops trying after a few pages of results, and it's unable to "see" a phrase I'm looking at in another tab...

...I think choices have already been reduced. It's like "take this SEO junk and stop hassling me".

At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form

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Re: CUB Monitor

"for some word processing app"

View? Wordwise? EDWORD?

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Re: BASIC

"BASIC of the time didn’t really have distinct function blocks"

DEF PROC? DEF FN?

Admittedly, many of the books you could buy (like those Osborne ones) were GOSUB spaghetti due to having to cater to the lowest common denominator...

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

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"You just don't seem to see bangers any more."

Emissions testing has probably forced them off the road.

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Happy

Re: And after all the comments

"Do you have any problem with NOT inserting your hand down into the kitchen sink's garbage disposer once you turn it on?"

I think you've just pointed out which side of the ocean you're from.

I know of those things from movies, but I've never actually seen one in real life. So, thanks for demonstrating my point for me.

heyrick Silver badge

Re: And after all the comments

I asked around at work. Nobody knew what a block heater was.

I guess, in a place where the usual winter low is around -2 to -3 (rarely -5 or so) with highs typically -1 upwards, such things just aren't that big a consideration.

What applies in one climatic zone doesn't necessarily apply everywhere else.

heyrick Silver badge

Re: And after all the comments

My car has a little Kubota two cylinder diesel engine inside (Z402? something like that). It currently wants me to turn the contacts on for fifteen seconds, briefly off, on 15, briefly off, on 15 ... to get enough preheat that it's willing to start.

It's only -3/-4. God help me if it should ever hit double digits negative around here. Should I bung the hairdryer under the bonnet for half an hour before setting out?

heyrick Silver badge

I already pay tax on the electricity supplied, and tax on the supply of electricity (the actual wires), and here's the kicker - once those are added together, I pay tax on that, so effectively part of my bill is tax on the tax.

So if the car wants to meter its consumption for more tax, they can go stick that right where the sun doesn't shine.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

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Re: Compensation?

Can't upvote this enough. If they're there to cream off the profits when things are going well, then they can also be expected to be there to suffer the losses when things go down the pan. You know, it's called "incentive".

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Compensation?

How about heads on the block, actual bodies in cells. This shitshow and the many years of misery it has caused shouldn't be swept under the carpet with a monetary sum.

It must be that plus criminal proceedings.

Boss fight between Donkey Kong champ and leaderboard org ends with settlement

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Re: thereby increase the value of the company

I'm dyspraxic. They gave me a little award for managing to drop my egg before the race had even started.

Well, it's recognition, I guess...

UK public sector could save £20B by swerving mega-projects and more, claims chief auditor

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the government could save at least £20 billion by modernizing IT systems and other measures not giving dodgy contracts to mates and friends/family of mates.

There, fixed that for you.

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

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Re: "speach"

Allow me to introduce you to what the French call the "frelon". While it's technically a hornet, it's bigger than anything I remember from the UK. Evil fuckers too, they'll sting you for so much as looking in their direction, then they'll whizz around the building and get you again just to be sure. This pattern might keep going but any self respecting squishy meatsack wouldn't wait for a third go.

They're noisy in flight, and tend to fly point to point, so my crowning moment of awesome was smacking one out of the air (and out of existence) with a cricket bat.

Wasps? Meh. Wasps are just angry bees. It's the hornets that like to torture for the evulz.

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Re: I presume

Given that how you pronounce things is pronunciation... wait... hang on, where's the second 'o'?

I think the English language is trolling us when it comes to anything to do with vocal noises. Clearly one should only read English, not attempt to say it.

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

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Not so simple. You'd have to have a guy walking in front waving a warning flag, just in case...

Infosys co-founder doubles down on call for 70-hour work weeks

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Work is a painfully simple contractual arrangement. Your time and skills in exchange for money.

Overtime not paid? Bye.

Unless you're on the board or the CEO, the company won't do you any favours. You're simply there to fulfill a role that needs to be done. Your boss is not your friend, (s)he's a work colleague. Different dynamic (beware of favours, it's often a one way street). And beware of "team spirit" crap. Those usually happen when somebody screwed up and stuff needs to be done by yesterday. If it's a friendly group, then fine. But if it's a bunch of backstabbers who suddenly turn on the charm and start yabbering on about company values and team spirit, they're probably trying to guilt trip you into doing something they don't want to do. Beware, especially if it's one of those "overtime isn't paid" places.

Like I said - time and skills in exchange for money. That's what "work" is.

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

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Re: Building software is hard...

"The web was better with NCSA Mosaic than with any browser since."

Somebody wrote a better browser in BBC BASIC (Webster).

You try doing something like that now, where the browser is damn near a mini OS all by itself.

Adios, dead zones: Starlink relays SMS in space for unmodified phones on Earth

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Re: Now you'll never have an excuse for missing that weekend work text or call

"Should employees stand up to it if it happens? Absolutely. Is it that simple? No."

Depends on the country. Here, while there are obviously exceptions and loopholes, a manager hassling an employee out of hours is actually an infraction and can land the company with both civil and criminal repercussions... so a quick word with HR will often get a problem like that dealt with swiftly as the alternative is a bit of a shitstorm.

There are also rules on notice for shift changes. The actual rules depend upon the sector. For the place I work, it's one day notice in time of explicit commercial need (and, yes, the company has to justify this) otherwise five working days notice for, I think, any variation over three hours plus-or-minus normal work hours. Plus it is mandatory to have at least eleven hours between shifts.

(you and your manager can come to an agreement between you provided it's not forced; I usually volunteer to go in early on known audit days in order to get stuff ready before the inspection, and it is appreciated)

But, then, this is a country where a company with more than 50 employees must have a union representative to negotiate things with the employer on behalf of the workers.

So all those horror stories that turn up on Bored Panda just don't happen here. No, a boss cannot call you up when you're in the hospital and say "get your arse to work or find yourself another job". If (s)he did, they'd be the one facing disciplinary action.

So sometimes employees don't need to explicitly stand up, the rights are already there.

heyrick Silver badge

Now you'll never have an excuse for missing that weekend work text or call

We have the "right to disconnect". If you're not paid to be on call, the phone goes off at the end of the work day.

Data regulator fines HelloFresh £140K for sending 80M+ spams

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79,779,279 emails and 1,113,734 texts

And a £140,000 fine taken as "look, we're standing up to them".

No, you're not.

Try £1 per infraction (double for those who asked for it to stop), then we'll talk about having done something.

Silicon Valley weirdo's quest to dodge death – yours for $333 a month

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consuming no more than 1,977 calories a day

Which isn't really saying much when the recommended daily intake for a man of his age starts at 2,200 calories (how much is actually required depends on activity, a middle manager will need less than a brickie, for example).

And why the weird number? Given the vagaries of food, surely it would have sufficed to say "two thousand" rather than being so ridiculously exact.

AI flips the script on fingerprint lore – maybe they're not so unique after all

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the angles and curvature at the center of the fingerprint could be the same across an individual

How large an area are we talking about, because I'm looking at my index fingers and they're completely different. One does the usual swirly thing. The other sort of swirls at the tip end but the other goes down in straight lines until it suddenly veers off to the side.

insights that have eluded experts for decades

Was it really eluding the experts, or were the experts simply peddling the "they're all unique" line? I think uniqueness depends upon the accuracy of your equipment and what you're checking...a bit like the uniqueness of DNA testing.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

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Re: This has managed to scare my mother

I live downstream from an industrial pig farm. In terms of pollutants, mine is a probably I rounding error compared to that. And, trust me, a filter can only do so much - the water is only fit for a shower, washing clothes, and once in a while dumping onto the plants.

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Re: This has managed to scare my mother

I use bottled water for all drinking and cooking (the tap water is from a well and it's not great). I'm not overly worried about plastics in the water as there are many worse things in my food (while I eat organic meat now, I grew up with meat stuffed full of antibiotics and maybe the odd defective prion or two). I take comfort in thinking that the water I'm drinking has been through a few humans, thousands of animals, and the odd diplodocus...so I'm just another meatsack in the chain of life. It'll go in as tea, come out as pee, and continue its journey.

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

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"However, any subsequent failures attributed to that cartridge would be up to the customer to pay for."

Given the cartridge simply slots in and contains its own print head, that's some straight up FUD.

Asides from manufacturing faults causing short circuits, physical dimensions being incorrect, and possibly ink leakage [*], there's not really much a bad cartridge can do. It's not like it'll clog up the print head and wreck the printer...

* - I only rank ink leakage as a "possible" problem as my HP has always been with Instant Ink and, I'll tell you, there's quite a lot of it where ink shouldn't be. To the point where I'd advise you to buy a box of panty liners (the flat type) to lay out underneath the thing. You know, just in case. And, no, I rarely print borderless so I dunno why it spews so much ink around inside itself.

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Re: And they've just raised the Instant Ink subscription prices. Again

"You agree to not include items other than the Subscription Cartridges in any HP-provided postage prepaid return envelopes that You send back to HP."

Gee, I wonder why they added that?

<rotfl>

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Re: Fighting the install

"You got precisely one chance to do it, with no factory reset option."

Uh... Try pressing the wireless button and the cancel (X) button together for a few seconds (usually 3, aim for 5 to be sure). That usually resets the network settings on a cheap HP all-in-one, and should have been described in your user guide. Admittedly you might not have seen it given these things are often only available as PDFs these days, but "not knowing" is not the same as "not possible".

heyrick Silver badge

Back around 2010ish, that's exactly what I did as the setup cartridges were properly full in those days. There's a small pile of old printers in the shed. Useful if I need to salvage a button, LED, stepper motor...

Yes, it was crazy, but then the entire home printer market is nuts.

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

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Unhappy

Re: It is only Covid if you take a test

"Seems there's some viral thing going about this winter that's not covid but it really contagious."

This year, it seems there's Covid, RSV, and a rather unpleasant strain of flu doing the rounds at the same time.

Oh, joy. (see icon)

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Re: It is only Covid if you take a test

"Well Boris was ill enough with it to require intensive care"

He was pretty ill, but do note that he spent three days in ICU but was never ventilated. He was there as a precautionary measure in case it got worse (which sucks for anybody that actually needed an ICU bed...).

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"What mitigations should we put in place if there's a large surge? Another lockdown?"

The mitigations put in place depend upon the severity of the outbreak, specifically the virulence and number of people needing intensive care as a result of catching it. And, yes, they will need to consider the economic cost as well. And if in the UK, expect to be a sacrificial lamb if you're a pensioner...

So, what mitigations are put in place depends upon what situation they're looking at. But, you know, you buy a fire extinguisher for your kitchen as a precaution in case there's a fire, you don't wait until there is and then think "shit, I needed one of those". Planning what to do and having potential options backed by experts (doctors, economists, whatever) is a valuable thing to do, given that the main takeaways from the UK Covid enquiry are that there was no plan, no clue, and the PM was basically running on a wing and a prayer.

I hope, for the shonky state of the economy, that the lockdowns are behind us [*], but if such a thing should be necessary, then perhaps that is what should happen. At the very least, plan for the worst and hope for the best.

* - I'm very introvert, so the way we all lived in lockdown is "just a regular Tuesday" for me. However the inflation and spiralling cost of everything hasn't escaped my attention, and there's only so much they can blame on Russia...

heyrick Silver badge

"and does it have any better demonstrated outcomes than healing crystals?"

Covid did the rounds. Some people at work had it. I spoke with a social worker who phoned me in a bit of a panic because she felt awful (and tested positive) the next morning.

I vaccinated as and when it was available (actually, had my Covid and flu a couple of months ago) as it was important to me because I don't think my lungs would cope.

I never, to my knowledge, got Covid.

Now, maybe I'm really lucky. Or maybe I'm one of the naturally immune. Or maybe Covid wandered into my body, said "it's life, Jim, but not as we know it" and buggered off again.

Or maybe it was the vaccination.

As a person who groks science, I'd rather put my trust in research and development than a bunch of woowoo nonsense like healing crystals.

There is a reason the vaccine works like it does, there is a specific purpose to how it works (and why it targets the so-called spike protein (which, annoyingly, mutates...)), just like there is a rather nifty reason why soap destroys (disassembles) the virus.

Explain, then, the actual process by which dangling an amethyst (or whatever) in proximity to chakra points is supposed to elicit any reaction beyond "ooh, pretty!".

heyrick Silver badge

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

I fully agree on the calling in sick thing. Unfortunately, over here (France), doctors are more than willing to sign people off work for three days because the typical unimportant employee does not get any sick benefit until after three days have elapsed.

This leads to two things:

1, people who routinely get signed off for three days at a time (like, I've worked Monday and Tuesday, time for weekend). The state does not bother to check up on these absentee employees because they're just not paid and they can't be fired because a doctor signed them off, but... you know "oh, my dick hurts, I need some time off", here you go...

2, the lack of payment for the three days tends to mean that genuinely ill people living in more precarious situations simply cannot afford to miss the time. At minimum wage it's something like 3 x €65 (net) which isn't a trivial amount of money if you're living from paycheque to paycheque. So they come to work looking deader than an actual zombie, and kindly pass the bugs around. It's always a horror show after the holidays when all the kids mix in the enclosed germ incubator known as "school". Kids get sick, then the parents get sick, then all the rest of us. Thanks.

heyrick Silver badge

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

"And I have never known anyone dying from covid-19."

I'm sure there are people who don't know anybody who suffered from Covid. Doesn't mean it was "meh".

For my part, I know...

One middle aged person who got Covid three times (despite vaccination), the third time wiped him out for a month and a half, that he basically stayed in bed and had a community nurse feeding him as the one time he tried to do it himself he passed out halfway down the stairs.

One older person (refused vaccination), chain smoker, that had flu like symptoms that turned into pneumonia like symptoms that turned into a coffin.

And somebody in their mid twenties that exercised and kept themselves in good shape. Unable to be vaccinated (at the time it was only for "at risk" people), it went as above in a little over a week - somebody said he was basically drowning in lung secretions (WTF!?). Suffice to say his sister lost her marbles over how quickly he went from fit and happy to a burial service.

(oddly, everybody I know who suffered/died has been male)

heyrick Silver badge

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

"but we the public needn’t lose any sleep about it until it’s confirmed to definitely be A Problem"

And look how long it took until anybody "in power" took it seriously, and the harsh lockdowns that were introduced because, well, so many people in officialdom sat on their arses for far too long.

I think France was heading into its second lockdown before it became a requirement to wear masks in public. Now, you can argue whether or not they were actually effective, but I'd counterargue that maybe they'd have been more effective a couple of months sooner?

So, there's no need to panic, but this would be a good time to check you have stocks of that hand wash gel stuff and so on just in case.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

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Re: No Justice

"That is you and me, btw, in case you were wondering, 'proper people' do not waste their time reading web sites."

That is you and me because we probably didn't go to Eton to have that sense of entitled superiority beaten into us.

"(You can tell I'm angry can't you?)"

I went to boarding school, it wasn't even one of the known ones. The class system was painfully apparent even there. Consequently, I'm not so much angry as fed up and disillusioned.

I would say "vive la révolution!" but that sort of thing just isn't in the British psyche.

OpenAI: 'Impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials'

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If they want quality content...

...do what everybody else has to do - licence it (or pay somebody to make it just for them).

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

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Re: The real lesson...

C is better in that there's an awful lot of crap that you can dispense with.

You don't need to keep the stack balanced. You don't need to waste time wondering about the best way to optimise branches. You don't need to keep track of registers and, if using named definitions, make sure you're not using the same one for different reasons at the same time. You don't need to worry about stack frames so crash traces make sense. You don't...

Maybe in the '80s and early '90s with slow processors assembler was the best choice.

But these days? Let the compiler deal with all that crap, it's what it's there for.

After injecting cancer hospital with ransomware, crims threaten to swat patients

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Pint

I vehemently disagree.

Broadcast it on PBS, not pay-per-view. Everybody should be able to watch these bastards suffer (and anyway asking for payment just feels really icky).

Otherwise, upvoted and see icon.

heyrick Silver badge

Would it not be possible to give a patient list to the police...

...in order that, if a swatting should be attempted (given that it has already been threatened), the police can visit the premises in a slightly less gung ho method on the basis that it may very well be a fake report?

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

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Re: EOL characters

This.

I used to use it on Windows 3.1x when I had files on a floppy created with RISC OS that Notepad completely choked on.

I have a dim recollection that Notepad might also have choked on files over ~64K.

Wordpad, on the other hand, didn't choke, supported basic formatting, and when your output was the sort of lowish quality lasers of the day, it was fast enough and good enough.

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the application will be removed on upgrade

Why?

I get the idea of saying that it's no longer supported and won't be present on new installs, but to actively remove it?

Driverless cars swerve traffic tickets in California even if they break the law

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Re: If Corporations Are People

The company does. Who the company blames internally is a matter for the company to figure out.

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Thumb Up

Re: Like Company Cars in France

Multilingual bonus too!

(carte gris is the vehicle registration document)

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Re: How to improve AI training in one easy step

"the registered owner is always fined no matter who the driver is"

Same in France. It led to an interesting discussion with a traffic cop (routine stop, nothing bad) because I bought the car as I'm employed (my mother was retired at the time) but she was the driver as I don't have a licence. Which means if she's caught speeding, for example, then I'll have to pay a fine but she won't get points on her licence unless I specifically register an objection and drop her in it. Not that this was ever an issue, she was a much more sedate driver than the locals (who would often interpret the 80 sign as "under 100 is okay").

"Madness."

I'm guessing it is for simplicity assuming the owner is the driver unless they can demonstrate otherwise?

heyrick Silver badge

Re: If Corporations Are People

"The driver is the company board."

There, fixed that for you.

In the absence of an actual driver, the company should assume responsibility as it's their creation that is physically in control of the vehicle. How that gets handled internally (board, CEO, programmer, minimum wage bog scrubber...) is irrelevant.

People power made payroll support in putrid places prodigiously perilous

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WTF?

Equipment fails due to vibration shock... employee solution to hurry thing up? Throw rocks. Wow, that's bright.