* Posts by Loyal Commenter

5761 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2010

20 years of .NET: Reflecting on Microsoft's not-Java

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Re: Easier games to play

I guess your idea of writing multithreaded code is to FORK and manually use IPC, rather than just using async and letting the runtime manage it.

Just because you can spend your life debugging race conditions, doesn't mean you should.

Or is all your code strictly single-threaded, and runs a single processor core at 100% whilst leaving the other 7 idle?

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"Oh no, I have to read and understand the documentation for a fully documented API. On occasion, I might have to google to find an example of its usage on Stack Overflow."

I've yet to come across any tech stack that doesn't rely on APIs, with varying levels of documentation, and stability. On the whole, 'Net stuff tends towards being better documented and easier to use, although with some things the level of abstraction can be a bit mind-bending when you want to do something simple.

As for Python. Well, whoever thought making indentation part of the syntax for any reason other than "because we can" needs a good thumping. Whenever I've come across it (for instance when tinkering with embedded programming), there has been a choice between Python and C/C++, and despite my C skills being somewhat rusty, that's still the preferable choice. Hell, I'd take PERL over Python.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

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I thought it was the California Roll, outside California.

I thought that was a hideous Americanised form of sushi that is full of fake crab meat. Give me a nice ikura nigiri instead any day.

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Last I checked use of, or even possession of functioning, indicators wasn't a legal requirement in the UK

I believe the law states that you have to signal your intentions (and it can be done by hand signals, which you have to learn as part of the driving test).

If you do have indicators fitted, they must be functioning though, or it's an MOT failure come test time.

Beware the big bang in the network room

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Re: Ahh the forest of cables

My work laptop didn't have a label on, so I stuck one on there. I was forever having to go and look up the host name (seemingly random alphanumeric string) whenever I needed to put the local SQL Server instance name into a connection string to test something (and no, "localhost" doesn't work in all situations). I got fed up with it enough to get the label printer out from the back of a drawer.

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And ideally, always use patch panels, never cable directly to a switch.

If I could upvote you more than once for this alone, I would.

Decent software engineering abstracts things into layers, which can be treated as modular and swapped in-and-out. This is the hardware equivalent, and should be standard practice. It's the difference between having your car's wheels bolted to the axle, and welded on.

Russian 'Minecraft bomb plot' teen jailed for five years

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Re: Charges etc

I was unfortunate enough, in my teens to grow up in the unnatural environment of an all-boys school.

I can categorically say that all 14 year-old boys are driven by exactly two things; sex (which none of them are getting any of but all like to pretend they are), and setting fire to or blowing things up. This is the natural result of being sexually mature, but not emotionally or mentally so.

I don't think I was any different to any of the others. The only variation is in the level of stupidity.

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Re: Guilty as charged

People in prison do not commit crimes against the general public.

Because no "crime lords" ever continued to operate their empires from behind bars.

The main problem of using imprisonment as the go-to recourse for offenders is that, even for violent crimes, sentences tend to be in the single-digit number of years, and people get released again.

If you imprison people as punishment, with no aim of rehabilitation, they often come out of prison and go straight back to committing crime. Typically, they make new criminal contacts whilst "inside", what with being locked up 24h a day with others who have committed crimes.

Criminology is a wide-ranging and complex subject. typically, the aim is to reduce the harm on society that crime poses, and the "lock 'em away" attitude has been shown, time and again, to be counter-productive to this goal. I won't profess to be an expert on the subject by any means, but your statement is both simplistic, and demonstrably wrong.

Unfortunately, it is the same simplistic attitude that is frequently taken by right-wing politicians, who tend to be led by "common sense" rhetoric, and the need to be seen to be "tough on crime", rather than being led by evidence. I'd dearly love to see some proper evidence-led policy in this area, but take one look at the folk we have in charge, and weep.

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Re: Guilty as charged

I didn't have a printed copy, wouldn't have done, and was never a 14-yo idiot. I can't even remember where I didn't get a copy I didn't have from.

However, the recent case of a 14-yo being imprisoned for having a copy of this, was more down to a case of "what they could get him for". IIRC, he was into all sorts of dodgy far-right extremist shit. It was probably the charge that was easiest to make stick in court. Unlike in the US, where multi-century sentences are commonplace, we tend to go for prosecuting on the most serious charge(s) and treating everything else as not worth the paperwork.

Sentences are typically served concurrently, not sequentially here as well. Funnily enough, we also don't tend to treat those who have been deprived of their liberty as a free source of slave labour, and consequently don't have both the world's highest prison population, and the world's highest per capita prison population as well.

"Land of the free," my hairy arse.

Having said that, there's plenty of politicians here who seem too keen on importing US-style justice, despite it having been proven unequivocally not to work to reduce crime. The mind boggles, eh?

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I knew people when I was that age who would make home-made explosives, pipe bombs and such. It's stupid, and it's dangerous, and looking back at it, it's remarkable that they didn't lose any body parts, but if this tells us anything, it's that 14 year-old boys are idiots, and some of them have a destructive impulse. Going from that to "try them as adults and put them in a gulag" is ridiculous, especially when they didn't actually blow anything up.

Facebook exposes 'god mode' token that could siphon data

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Re: Working as intended

The flaw, which is very much at the Facebook end, is to allow the extension to request a security token, without a notification to the user, while they are logged into FB.

It's like your bank having an API, that relies only on a cookie for authentication, that then issues a plain-text token that allows any third party to empty your bank account, change your name and address, and take out a loan for £1M and transfer the balance to a Russian bank account, while you are not logged in, and with no prompt when issuing that token.

Yes, it uses "standard browser security," insomuch that anyone can implement it wrongly and insecurely. You could have an API that operates over HTTP (not HTTPS) and issues a non-expiring auth token in plain text without any sort of authentication, and then go on to have other APIs that rely on that token to authenticate. That's "using standard browser security," but it's not actually secure.

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"However, he said, he'd consider removing his extension "if Facebook was more reasonable with my Facebook account and Instagram account and if they provided me with better reasons why my extension is harmful for others.""

I'd suggest that the reason that Facebook doesn't like it, is that it sounds like it allows you to do the actual useful things that Facebook provides (retrieving messages, changing post permissions, etc.), without subjecting yourself to all the click-tracking, "sponsored posts" and other adverbollocks that Facebook wants to make money from.

Remember, if it's "free at point of use" and relies on advertising for revenue, you are not the customer, you are the product.

France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US

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Re: Yes…..

It works for your business, by allowing google to collect data on your customers. It's the customers who get tracked, not you, so you don't care; it's an externality.

Most of your customers either don't know or don't care that they are being tracked and profiled by Google, either (on top of whatever traffic analysis you are using GA for).

This doesn't mean google isn't using visits to your web site, along with others to collate data on people across the web. It also doesn't make this right. It just means you don't care. Which doesn't make me want to be your customer.

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Re: Remember this word: Interstitial

Why would you need consent to load things like fonts from another site, unless a unique identifier is included in the request, which could be used to track you.

In which case, I do not consent.

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To be honest

I'm surprised it has taken this long. All that juicy tracking data being slurped to the US where it is aggregated and sold on to the highest bidder, with no way for the subjects to have any say about it.

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

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He packed up his "portable computer" (a sewing-machine sized contraption with twin 5 1/4" floppy drives and a 7" CRT) and headed out to the site, nestled in the mountains.

Sounds like an Osborne I? Was it an Osborne I? Bet it was an Osborne I...

Actually, come to think of it, the CRT on that was 5", but the rest of the description fits.

BOFH: The Geek's Countergambit – outwitted at an electronics store

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Re: tweet

Probably, yes.

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Re: Awesome staff

I foresee a new company Preferred Supplier, accompanied by a regular brown envelope under the table in the pub on a Friday.

Joint European Torus more than doubles fusion record with 59 megajoules

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Re: MegaJoules? Watts?

Yeah, fair enough, those are things I didn't consider.

I picked 20°C as the starting temperature. "Room temperature" is typically defined as 298K, which is 25°C, I've made an assumption here that the source temperature of the water is going to be somewhere between 0°C and this. It's going to depend a lot on a number of things, such as the season, and whether your cold water pipes are lagged, run alongside your central heating, whether your cold water is held in a roof tank, etc.

A typical kettle is apparently 80-90% efficient; I'm assuming this relates to heat lost from the body of the kettle.

Compared to the heat capacity of water, the amount of energy to drive out dissolved gases is minimal, and dissolved gas content will typically be low in a domestic supply. This is a more complex one to work out in detail, as different solutes will have different heats of dissolution (some even dissolve endothermically). We should also consider other solutes here as well, such as calcium and magnesium salts, but again, the energy requirements to precipitate them next to raising the temperature of the volume of water are minimal and can probably be disregarded.

As for the latent heat of vaporisation - a decent kettle will stop as soon as the water starts boiling. This might look like it is producing a lot of steam, but due to the large volume increase, it's going to look like a lot more than it is. Probably well under 0.1% of the volume of water being heated.

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Re: really ?

Well, for starters you've missed the point that JET is an experimental technology development system, not even a demonstration one, let alone a break-even proof of concept, and certainly not aimed at being something designed to reliably produce net energy output, as you seem to be implying.

What is being reported here, is an experiment that has shown the reactor can be operated to give a higher output than previously. Admittedly, that's not necessarily very exciting, but that doesn't appear to be what you are whining about.

I think that's the question you're asking. The phrase "Which facts given ATL I have missed out" doesn't actually parse. What do you mean by ATL? Are you trying to make yourself out to be all clever by throwing in random initialisations for things?

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To be fair, it's almost certainly a bit of both.

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Re: really ?

You hear that loud whooshing sound? That's the entire point flying by over your head. Yes, it's very loud, because there's a lot of point that you've just managed to miss.

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Re: 2040?

By now, it's probably just an O, if any of it remains, or it ever existed.

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Re: More megajoules

TNT is destructive because of the volume gain from the gases it releases, not so much from the heat it produces.

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Re: More megajoules

I think being immersed in 175L of boiling water would do for you just as much as being on the receiving end of 14kg of TNT.

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Re: MegaJoules? Watts?

I'm trying to work out how they got to that figure. The specific capacity of water is 4.2 KJ per kilo per kelvin. At STP, 1kg == 1 litre. Assuming the water starts at room temperature (20°C) and is raised to boiling point at sea level (100°C), that is enough energy to heat 175.6L of water (59,000,000 / 4,200 / 80). If that's 60 kettles, then the BBC is heating 2.92L of water in each, which is a pretty full kettle. I think mine holds 1.8L, and as any fule kno, you only boil the amount of water you need, because heating water is expensive (4.2KJ/KL expensive).

Maybe they could save a bit on the license fee by only boiling the amount they need for one pot at a time? 500Ml will make a couple of mugs of tea, so this is enough energy to make about 700 mugs. That's almost a week's worth in my household...

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Re: MegaJoules? Watts?

So energy would be Lg2 Badger / s2 and power would be Lg2 Badger / s3 .

Play Store class action has £15m budget for defeating Google in London court

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Re: "for-profit litigation"

It sounds like there is an argument to regulate the fees that lawyers are allowed to charge; either capping the hourly rate, or a scale of fixed fees depending on the type/scale of the case.

To be scrupulously fair, without any lawyers, we'd be pretty screwed. For starters, nobody would be able to get a fair trial, or see justice done when they are wronged. Add to that, that individual lawyers are entitled to make a living, have to train hard, and so on, and that some cases might require a lot of work, and multiple people on them.

What this seems to be in this case though, is lawyers as a vehicle for capital investment. Just one more thing that's wrong with unregulated capitalism...

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Re: The answer is more lawyers

The road to good intentions is paved with the bones of lawyers, or something like that?

Have you tried restarting? Reinstalling? Upgrading? Moving house and changing your identity?

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Not strictly true; you can get some very reasonably priced "basic" exercise bikes that also fold up so that they don't take up a whole room like a Peletoff bike. You'll also find that you can actually burn more calories by going outside for a walk.

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It's a feature I really wish FF would implement. A per-site cache of user CSS overrides should be trivial to implement.

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Re: Ah the joy of customer service scripts

Let me guess, your old provider had a name that rhymes with "stalk chalk"?

European watchdog: All data collected about users via ad-consent popup system must be deleted

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Re: Agree 100%

Then you realise what brexit was actually about. Especially when you look at the people behind it.

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Re: Current ads on Amazon are

OK, so you can draw a tenuous link between the "suggested items". Can you explain how they are "related to the item you bought", as Amazon suggested? A laptop power supply.

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Re: Ad blockers are as immoral as tracking

Poisoned ads are a major vector for malware. Most ads are not a simple static image, but are pop-overs, videos, etc, that hide the content. These have a script component which can be poisoned.

The simple solution is to block ads, and block scripts from third-party domains, whitelisting only those I need.

Sorry if this breaks your business model, but your business model involves opening me up to identity theft, so tough shit.

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Re: Current ads on Amazon are

For example, just today, I had to buy a replacement power brick for a laptop (done through Amazon as it's half the price of the one sold by the manufacturer, despite being the same item, and they got me with same day delivery).

"Products related to your purchase" that Amazon tried to tout included:

  • A plastic paper towel holder
  • A pulse oximeter
  • A diary
  • A roll of brown paper

Given that they know my purchasing history, and none of these things are those which I am likely to buy, let alone related in any way to the item I bought, I think their algorithms could use a bit of sharpening. I mean, a pulse oximeter is a bit of a specialised item that only someone in the medical profession is likely to want, and I'm pretty sure NHS procurement isn't done through Amazon.

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Re: Generates annual revenues of €41.9bn

Truly poor people, such as those in developing countries are not going to be getting any useful services provisioned for them, paid for by advertising, because advertising to someone with no money is utterly pointless. With the exception of adverts in the form of political propaganda.

I don't see anyone other than corrupt politicians benefiting from that, either.

And if this is 'generating nothing' why are people paying to advertise?

I'll flip that one around on you, and ask,"if people are providing goods or services that people want, why do they need to advertise?" Take a look at most of the ads on the internet and on TV and ask yourself, "would I buy this product if it wasn't for the advertising, and would I miss it if I didn't."

The fact is, as well, that products that are heavily advertised are often more expensive than those which are not, but are of an equivalent quality. You're subsidising that advertising when you buy the product. People will buy a product they have heard of, at a higher price than one they have not; advertising is exploiting a psychological phenomenon. Most people don't even think about it, and don't realise that they are being essentially being exploited by psy-ops.

Yes, advertising obviously works, but those who benefit from it are not the consumers, and in a world without it, nobody would be worse off except the advertisers and shysters.

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Re: Agree 100%

If I can specifically target individual visitors by Google/Facebook's data then I can advertise my speciality product to that subset.

The key word there, is "if". You can't target your ads at those who have opted out of data gathering, or don't use the sites that gather the data. The targeting data that is being used is also, importantly proxy data. That is, this isn't data about "does this person need XYZ specialised widget" because nobody is giving up this sort of information. That's more like tailoring search engine results, and paying for sponsored links for searches on"XYZ widget", which is a whole different kettle of fish.

The sort of data we are actually talking about is tracking data that stalks users across the internet making note of what sites they have visited. In this case, it's typically going to be far too broad for very narrow targeting as you describe. It's going to be along the lines of "is this user likely to be male, or female", "what rough age group do they fall into", "what country are they in", "what socio-economic group is their most likely one" and so on.

Importantly, these are all things I'd like to keep reasonably private, or at the very least, not gathered and stored persistently by some morally bankrupt marketing corporation situated in whichever country has the laxest level of regulation.

To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer

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Re: Sounds like an IP Conflict

So far, I've not managed to make some of the mistakes that I've seen others make first-hand. I'd probably put it down to the fact that I don't need to do much sysadmin type work, and hardly ever need to go onto client's live machines. Thankfully, where I work, those roles are suitable ring-fenced, so it's hard for me to actually screw up in that way.

Having said that, I'm just waiting for the moment when I accidentally delete the wrong Azure VM.

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Re: Step outside

Well it's called the recycle bin because that's where you put stuff you want to reuse later

Not where you put stuff that you convince yourself is going to be re-used, but is actually sent off to China and shredded, or to Turkey and burned?

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Re: Step outside

IIRC, "recycle bin" was the Windows 9x name for it, and Macs used "trash".

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Joke

Re: Step outside

I guess he was in a hurry to get to where he was going before they sold out of half-price doughnuts...

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Re: Step outside

The scariest driving I've ever experienced was a taxi driver in Naples taking us from the airport into the city (we later found out that the bus is a much better option, for various reasons). Hurtling round blind bends in tunnels at about 50-60 mph, I dread to think what might have happened if someone had broken down in there.

You are a brave, brave individual to drive in that part of Italy, although I suspect it's a little better as you get towards Sorrento. I'm fine driving over dangerous mountain roads in Greece, where there's a sheer drop and no barrier, but I don't think I'd like to drive in Italy at all...

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Re: universal?

This is what the indicators on BMWs and Audis are for. Certainly not for indicating intention, just for claiming ownership of a portion of a double-yellow line.

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Re: Step outside

I was trained to give a very light tap of the brakes (enough to light the brake lights, but not enough to actually affect the speed) to give a signal to the person behind you that they might be driving dangerously close to you, just as flashing your lights at oncoming drivers is used to indicate that, for instance, they are driving at night with their lights off, they have a flat tyre, or there is something hanging off their vehicle, etc.

Hazard warning lights are to indicate that there is a hazard that other drivers need to be aware of (such as an obstruction in the road, sudden queuing traffic on the motorway, etc.), not to indicate to another driver that you think they are a hazard, and a single flash of the hazards after being let out by another driver is pretty much a universal "thank you" signal in any country I've ever driven in.

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Re: Step outside

Well, at least it's not the brain-dead idea that old macs had, where you ejected a disk by dragging it to the "trash" (and no button next to the floppy disk drive to eject manually). Whoever came up with that UI idiom needs their kneecaps kinetically rearranging with a 12-bore.

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Sounds like an IP Conflict

No, not IP address, "Insufficient Paranoia".

When working with any sort of remote connection, you always need to double and triple-check the window you're issuing commands to.

And if you're not using that remote connection right now, for $deity's sake, disconnect for the sake of your own sanity.

No, I've not read the screen. Your software must be rubbish

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Re: Return code ignored

You've just described the difference between a programmer and a developer.

A programmer makes the software do the thing it's supposed to do, under ideal conditions.

A developer handles the other 99% of cases, when the planets aren't all in alignment.

Right-to-repair laws proposed in the US aim to make ownership great again

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Re: The Problem

As I understand it, that is what they are already doing, and partly what this legislation is about.

Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans

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As any experienced developer knows, "should" means "doesn't have to". Put it on the backlog for when we have some free money.