Posts by AK565

Re: Very good skeptoid podcast recently debunking this stuff

Royal families, aliens, and world domination: IIRC, this becam an issue when attempts at retinal recognition showed software errors; messages insisted eyes were reptilian, not human. A reporter's attempt to debunk this was apparently met by software engineers very eager to share their data. One point of which is that only individuals with royal blood caused this kind of error.

I mentioned the Audi Olympic rings to a friend once. He looked at me as one looks at a young child who's rather slow on the uptake, "No, those are 4 cockrings rings and if you'd ever watched any German gay porn you'd know that."

I'm still not sure what to make of his comment. I have sampled the genre a few times..... I found myself getting distracted by all sorts of ancillary weirdness, shall we say.

As for Audi drivers, 2 weeks after paying off my car a year early I was on a rain soaked highway one morning when this wanker couldn't decide whether to bear left or right at a split. He then chose to stop in the middle to figure things out. I was just congratulating myself on having avoided this A6 when I was rear-ended (and not in a good way) by van. Meanwhile the Audi wanker made his decision and sped off. I was not amused.

Re: "Working from home is a privilege not a right"

Exactly, and the most upwardly mobile tend to be the first out the door. And then management is mystified as to why quality and quantity of work completed drops. I'd like to say "pretends to be mystified", but all too often the puzzlement appeared genuine.

Re: Faster!

Those of us of a certain age were promised nuclear powered flying cars, colonies on the moon with excursions to the dark side. We were also promised vacations on Mars where we could ski down mountains of unimaginable heights. Oh, and long before anyone even thought of "The Energy Crisis" we were promised limitless electricity from nuclear power. Our ships and airplanes would also be nuclear powered. Speaking of airplanes, supersonic airliners were supposed to be phasing out about now in favor of sub-orbital hypersonic planes that would cut NYC - London from three hours to ONE.

THAT is why us folk approaching retirement age are so cranky all the time. We want the tech we were promised!

Make America Great Britain Again

The thought has occurred. The main 'donor states' (pay more to D.C. than they get back) might be interested. NY, NJ, Mass., Conn. are in the top 5 and the rest of New England would prob go along. Do you think the Queen would take us back? From this side of the pond it certainly looks like you guys are doing better than we are.

Re: I can type any language I want?

Agreed. Here's the thing. There are actually TWO Americas. The Coasts&Great Lakes and the Interior. Most well off, white, adult males in the interior have no idea that most of the white adult males in the world are nothing like them except for skin, hair, and eye color. Nearly all are non-ethnic, monolingual English speakers who are utterly convinced they are at the center, are the norm, are what's 'right'. There's no changing them. Their response to Covid19? I rest my case.

Re: Thailand is opening up

Agreed. The problem appears to be the word "so" in your second sentence. Most Americans don't have the background knowledge of how common sickness spreads therefore it's unlikely the cause/effect relationship you're pointing out will be understood or accepted.

More basic is that many Americans can't / won't process the fact that the spread of disease is not contingent upon what humans understand or accept.

Of course this makes no sense. Yet, here we are.

Re: It has been a strange couple of months

1 or 2 days in the office, the rest at home is my preferred compromise. While I miss the opportunity to bounce ideas off coworkers, I'm more efficient with the routine tasks home alone. My r/t commute was three hours and had almost a mile of walking so that might influence my view.

Re: i knew this thread would quickly devolve into sticks and stones

"Cis" (or not) is an objective fact. But I don't think that's your point. IMO, an ongoing problem is these kinds of issues tend to attract people who are more interested in ranting and railing than in addressing any actual issue. Regarding "cis" itself.... I'd say half the time I hear it, being cis or not is completely irrelevant to the conversation. So using the word simply announces the speaker has his own agenda and doesn't give a shit about the conversation. So you're probably right to be pissed off at its usage.

Fun fact: You know that nauseating LGBTQIA++++++ ? Most people who are members of those communities have no idea what 3/4 of those letters actually mean and don't care. Oh, and before anyone says anything, I'm 'G' myself so I'll call it nauseating all I please.

I'm getting offf my soapbox now.

Re: Well... Laptop as weapon

True. I had no idea when I bought my ThinkPad x200s I was buying the laptop equivalent of the Nokia 3310.

Re: It's not bad

You're referring to Opera Blink, I assume?

Do you perhaps mean 9x5? I ask because 5x9 sounds very uncomfortable.

Re: Microsoft has a long history of sabotaging products which they want their customers to replace.

Not only Nexus...

I had a Motorola Razr M which I loved. After an update (4.2 to 4.4?) battery life literally dropped by half. It only took a minute of searching to find this was a near universal problem.

Neither the first nor last time this has happened. Something New!Shiny! comes out and older models mysteriously start developing problems.

Re: „I use Macintosh“

For those of you der haben Deutsch studiert, a professor once told us, "For dative plural stick an -(e)n on the word, but if it looks really stupid just take it off."

Same professor: " -(e)n or -(e)m: you can't tell the difference at conversational speed anyway, so it really doesn't matter. Either one is sufficient for grammatical clarity."

Re: 'Facts' are historically situated

Part of the problem is what Dilbert called something like "automatic application of the corollary".

Eg. Most Corvettes are owned by males aged 35-55. Therefore most males aged 35-55 who own cars own Corvettes.

See the problem?

Here it's "Most of the time in most situations the power holders are mostly white men. Therefore most white men are power holders."

It's amazing how many people rake this mistake.

Re: So, Google is pulling a Microsoft ?

Several times in recent years I've toyed with the idea of moving everything to Google and a Chromebook. But each time I researched I seemed to get a totally different picture of what I had to do. Now I realize I wasn't confused; it really was different each time because Google kept changing. Thanks!

Agreed. I only left BB10 because work-related apps stopped working on top of the few social/reading/research apps I used.

It's been years and I still suck at touch screen typing. It's funny, I never thought of myself as having large hands until I tried to type on a touch screen. I've tried nearly every keyboard over the years and the only one I've developed any muscle memory for is MessageEase. It's the least frustrating for extended typing and probably gives me the highest net (after corrections) wpm.

I'd still go back to BB in a second if it worked for me.

Re: That is something the ICO is well aware of

This matches my experience. It often shows up in subtle ways. IMO, countless man-hours are lost by such things as having to explain to higher-ups that the weekly report can't be printed in color on the department's B&W printer.... And having to explain this to the same higher-ups every week.

Re: Google too

So of Apple and Google are crossed off the list, the alternative for a cell phone buyer is... ???

Re: Truly Amazing

IIRC the upper limit for healthspan is about 115 and lifespan is about 125 due to the general breakdown of neurons in both central and peripheral systems.

Re: Obviously they will increase the rates by the customary amount to compensate

My previous employer fired its staff interpreters to replace us with 1099 workers contracted through an agency. As employees we could be shuffled to cover in-house needs as they arose during our shifts and 1099 workers covered holes we could not. The 1099 workers cost 66% more per hour and have a two hour minimum even if they come in to cover a 20 minute staff meeting. Just yesterday I ran into a former coworker who informed me that monthly interpretation/translation costs have more than doubled since this change was made. Yet the director who made this decision still insists the department is saving money despite it being self-evidently not the case. Yes, there is an outside funding stream for 1099 workers but it is static and did NOT increase as a result of the decision to use only 1099 workers.

As stated previously, nobody does the maths.

What's scary is that there're actually quite a few people who actually do think this way.

OTOH, there're also quite a few people who think that learning (or failing to learn) a language is something that randomly happens to people. I see this often in 'heritage language' situations. Those who failed to learn it more often than not refuse to acknowledge that family members who did learn it actually put any effort into it. Yes, I'm aware that makes no sense, but there you go.

Actually, as a white, middle class, middle aged American male who chose a pay raise over writing a PhD dissertation I'm very confident that as a group we both spout and accept/believe a jaw-droppingly large amount of pseudo-science.

Re: That's horrible.

I hope you're with a new lady friend.

Re: A Modest Proposal

That'd never happen because there'd be too much of a chance of someone having to take responsibility and/or there being actual consequences in the event of a fuck-up.

Re: Sales 101: When you can't sell by adding new features, take away existing ones.

I wish I could give this more than one thumbs up. Software 'updates' that reduced battery life and/or caused my phone to become 'too old' for needed apps are the main reasons I've changed phones.

Re: no wonder IBM is dying

Erasure.

Exactly. They fire their doohickey expert and when the doohickey breaks down they have no idea what to do. So they scrap the doohickey and replace it with a thingamabob that costs twice as much to buy and run. This is followed by a claim that buying the dookickey was a mistake to begin with. Ridiculous? That's my point.

Re: Can this inform the 5G debate?

"Differently realitied" ... I am SO stealing that!

I'm forever searching for politically correct ways to convey concepts like "reality denial", "delusional", etc.

Thank you :-)

Re: Why do people put this in their homes?

This is a good point. After being an El Reg subscriber for several years I'm confident I'm one of the least tech-savvy readers. Yet i'm MILES ahead of John Q. Public, at least in the US. Most people have no idea that the privacy issues discussed here even exist, much less how such iasues could affect their lives.