Posts by heyrick

Re: This isn't that different than what the US did in the past

Yeah, my mother was basically Scout (To Kill A Mockingbird). She climbed trees, she stole and wore her brother's jeans. She was even besties with the people the Country Club refused entry to (Jews and anybody that wasn't white).

Her dad thought it was amusing but really he didn't care what she wore or who she made friends with. Her mother, on the other hand, went ballistic every time she didn't dress like a five year old or dared to talk to "one of Them", and frequently spewed so much venom during Sunday Service and that gathering of like-minded social assassins that when mom came of age (which coincided with her seeing the reality of 'Nam and what it was doing to her friends) she crossed the ocean to the saner side and never looked back.

Re: Wait for the big hit

Oh come now. We all know that the answer to this is a Blockchain-based Solution residing in the Cloud.

Re: The "inspector"

I knew a girl at college (a billion years ago) who would solder something, then tuck it behind her ear, the power cable dangling precariously.

She must have been into witchcraft because all the times I saw her doing that, the heart-stopping scream never happened. Not even singed hair. I have no idea how...

Re: Long hours <> productivity

"or feel the need to assert themselves by bullying others?"

Having recently watched a number of Korean dramas on Netflix, and marvelled at the values dissonance where it seems almost normal for bosses that fail to take it out on their underlings, usually physically, I would say very much this. The owner kicks the director who kicks the manager who kicks the assistant who kicks the dog.

The examples come from above, that's where change needs to come from. The problem is, convincing those at the top of the need to change. Because if you can get a sweet bonus for grinding your employees for six twelve hour days, there's not going to be much incentive to change anything.

"your productivity simply goes downhill"

So very much this too. People burning out just aren't effective. Better to work less to be better rested to concentrate more. Especially in a job where a good degree of concentration is necessary.

Re: 99.8%

"Now pass me that hamburger"

I'm British. I grew up in the eighties. Burgers had other issues back then. Issues that mean a lot of the world won't accept my blood (which works for me, needles give me the heebeegeebees and I can say no with zero guilt).

I'll take chips with mine, thanks.

Re: Milk Shakes or just Shakes?

I met an American in a supermarket a fair few years ago. She had a lot of trouble figuring out which sort of milk she wanted as she was quoting percentages. I tried telling her "no cream, a little bit of cream, lots of cream, and then there's the stuff from Jersey cows". We tried equating cream to fat, but she was fixated on, I think, 1% milk. I have no idea what that actually meant.

[note: pre internet days so we couldn't just Google it]

Re: Accused of altering data

"that the first responder can get access to"

I was involved in a near crash. Women on the other side of the road fell asleep, crossed the road, smacked into a phone pole. Luckily a metal one, so she survived.

The first thing the fire bridge did was wrench open the bonnet with big jaw things, then disconnect and remove the battery. This was a petrol car.

It shouldn't need any remote intervention to "disconnect" a battery, this sort of thing must be easy for the emergency services to do, as nobody is going to want to go near a vehicle if there's a risk of shorting out the battery, and all that follows...

Re: Imagine if

"Substitute another example if you want"

Voting machines?

Re: Not only games

Look a little harder...

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/releases/

You'll need to know which apk is required, and any and all updates are manual. Store takes care of this so it's easier, but if you want the underlying apks, they're still available.

Re: Flattering, but still nonsensical

"The majority of killings in America are"

Some dickwad shot six people in Plymouth recently and we're all losing our shit over it, and somebody's head had better roll.

Meanwhile, on your side of the ocean (from Wikipedia): As of July 31, 411 mass shootings fit the Mass Shooting Tracker project criterion, leaving 437 people dead and 1,688 injured, for a total of 2,125 total victims, some including the shooter(s).

Whether it's the loony left or the (self-)righteous right, gun owners, or recidivist criminals doesn't really matter. There are too many guns around, making it far too easy for deranged people to get hold of them. I'll stop here as the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.

"Hard to tell how the Taliban will rule"

Really? I thought their MO was basically "men good, women evil", pretty much since they existed.

They're likely not making any big nasty moves right now as they're having too much fun watching the West beat itself up over how they just pissed away twenty years of promises.

Re: Not my kind of humor, but

Depends upon your hardware. I had an Android phone with an emergency mode. Do some whizzy thing like press the power button a bunch of times and it would:

* Turn on GPS, await a reasonable fix, then text the coordinates to everybody in your list of emergency numbers.

* Pop up a notification telling you the location.

* Start calling your emergency numbers until somebody answered.

* It may or may not have then tried calling 112 if nobody answered. I think that was an option, but for obvious reasons I never tried it.

Really, if we can make phones that can tell us what three words to use, we could make them do something like the above so if you're in a car crash and half your face is smashed in and you're upside down, you don't need to give a toss about any three words other than "fucking help me!".

Re: A long way still to go

"It is interesting we prioritized those nearing the end of their full lived lives"

"Crusty and old" translates fairly directly to "crappier immune system".

Notice that many places still haven't bothered vaccinating little children and they aren't dropping like flies, whilst the older you get the more at risk you are?

That's why the priority.

Re: Lack of originality in curse words.

Yeah, I do wonder about people who use the f and c words habitually....what do they say when they're really annoyed? Because I don't think "double plus fuck" quite carries the gist of it.

Re: Ugh...

"I've always thought open source was a bit naive not to see these things coming."

Indeed. Most of human progress through the ages has been people walking on the backs of others. If you are involved in open source, it should be because you enjoy it, want geek cred, or have an employer that pays you to do it. If you're going to get stressed and start changing the terms of use, it's not really open source any more is it? It's "available but with restrictions", and adding checks into the code itself (more restrictions that as Geez noted, could be patched around, which would be an incentive not to update), we all know how that story usually ends up.

I think the obvious question here ought to be - why aren't uploaded photos encrypted using the account password or somesuch?

Re: WTF?

"Too much room for error in an object that has absolutely no use for civilians."

Could say that about most of the guns. If a person feels that they require some sort of weapon for protection, does that extend to assault rifles? (and besides, who the hell actually wants to live in a place where that sort of weaponry is considered normal?)

Re: Car makers are almost as bad.

"Google/youtube searches are flooded with irrelevant answers. I've lost my google mojo."

No, your mojo is fine. It's Google that has lost the plot.

Re: Hmm

Remember they are American. So "subjective and untested interpretations of European privacy law" is a really weird thing to say over this side of the ocean. If the law says "this" then "this" applies. It doesn't need to be "tested" or have a judge "interpret" it. It's the rule, it's quite clear, it's what is supposed to be done; period, full stop, end of sentence.

"and the proposed fine is entirely out of proportion with even that interpretation" - the maximum possible fine is 4% of annual global turnover, so if Amazon reported sales of $113.1bn and they're only asking for around €750M, they aren't going for the full whack. Again, it's quite clearly stated in the rules (and they use turnover not profits because of the creative accountancy that minimises the tax burden).

"Sony and Panasonic also did a CRT pocket TV"

The Sony Watchman with its 1 inch CRT was actually high enough resolution that I could power it up under the duvet (to not bother anybody else in the dormitory) and read the teletext carousel that used to be on BBC2 in the early hours. Well, it was something to do if I couldn't sleep. Just had to keep my ears alert for matron doing the late night round, because if she caught me I'd have something else to do that was much less enjoyable...

Re: I'm not sure

Downvote because this is the first year since forever that I've not had either the flu or a half dozen rounds of colds. I had, actually, exactly zero. So I have no problem with wearing a mask for the foreseeable future. It won't do a lot of good though unless everybody else does too.

Oh, and using children to make a point is a weak argument. Children won't be following proper mask wearing protocol (hell, half of them don't even wear masks as for the young ones it would be like herding cats), they habitually invade each others personal space, things shared around might be washed off once or twice a day and not between each child (and the quality of the procedure will depend upon whether the teacher does it alone or if she has to keep an eye on the kids at the same time), and parents will kiss and snuggle their own. It's no surprise that schools are little flu factories.