Posts by Elongated Muskrat

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Re: All your QWERTY belong to us...

Which is why ISO 8601 exists.

A couple of points, though:

If you are storing dates in a database and sorting on them, store them as dates (or more, likely, datetimes, or datetime2s), not as string representations, then you can index on them to your heart's content without worrying about how they are represented.

If you are trying to sort anything on dates (such as filenames), and can't, for some reason, order them by date, but must put it in the filename, it is obvious to anyone with half a brain that if the filename needs to be a sorting key, then you put the largest / least variant part first, in any hierarchical structure, e.g. yyyy-MM-dd, or yyMMddHHmmss, etc.

When representing dates and times, never get MM and mm or HH and hh mixed up (i.e. don't confuse months and minutes, and NEVER user 12 hour times - in a quarter of a century I have never seen an actual requirement to represent times that way)

NIST boffins shrink atomic beam clock to the size of a postage stamp

Probably because, at the current rate of postage stamp price inflation, a basic phone which can send SMS and which has an online messenger app on it will soon cost less than a postage stamp.

In unrelated news, I found out, after a conversation with my postie, that my local Royal Mail delivery office is both short-staffed and has a hiring freeze on, which explains why ten days worth of post arrived in one bundle at once. All that money is going somewhere, could it possibly be that privatisation was only a good idea for those who got a slice of the pie?

Wind tunnels for fluid dynamics boffins among UKRI's £72M funding

Re: $10 million will be spent on building the ELT

It should be immediately apparent to anyone who knows how much things actually cost, that the numbers announced are ones that sound large to people likely to vote Tory ($10M would have been a lot of money when they retired), but are actually very small in the scale of things.

Actual numbers needed to do anything useful are in the tens or hundreds of billions, not millions. These are the sorts of numbers the other sort of people likely to vote Tory are intimately familiar with, and are desperate to remain intimately familiar with via the use of tax havens...

Re: Wind tunnesl aside, what's going on with the picture that goes with this article?

We'll have to be careful to moderate the use of the phrase, lest it lead to a runaway reaction...

Re: Wind tunnesl aside, what's going on with the picture that goes with this article?

To be fair, when handling lumps of "spicy rocks*," a fume hood isn't going to make a great deal of difference. Splashy things, and things that give off gases that might not be entirely healthy to breathe require appropriate precautions.

Back when I were a lad, in the mists of time, and I did such things, we kept two lab books, one for the experimental write-up, and one for all the risk and COSHH assessments. The second one was deemed more important, especially since the contents of the first were likely to be a litany of experimental failures...

*Thanks to the poster a few weeks a go who used this idiom, I am now stealing it.

Wind tunnesl aside, what's going on with the picture that goes with this article?

Presumably, it's supposed to show two "scientists" working in a lab. A few observations:

- No lab I have ever seen has a wall high window like that

- Why aren't they wearing goggles?

- Do your lab coat up, it's there to protect you from spills, not as a fashion accessory

- Don't wave your arms around with unsecured beakers of "reagent" lying around like that

- Ever heard of a fume hood? Even if they're not using them right now, it's a pretty shit lab with no containment.

- So much blue liquid

- WTF is your laptop doing on the bench, it should be in the clean room?

I could go on, but I fear I may have overstated my point already...

Way out in deep space, astronomers spot precursor of carbon based life

Re: scientists and not 'boffins'.

Depends what sort of party you go to; LAN parties, for example...

Re: Eh ?

Well, yes and know. CH₃⁺ is a cation, it has a positive charge; CH₃^. is a radical, it is neutral, but has an unpaired electron, making it very reactive, and CH₃^- is an anion with a negative charge because it has grabbed an electron from somewhere else. All of them can exist as species floating around in space, and all would interact differently with other molecules they come into contact with. If the article says it's talking about CH₃⁺ then I'm going to accept that this is what the article is talking about, and not CH₃^..

Chemistry in deep space is very different to terrestrial chemistry, because it takes part in a near vacuum. Even a protoplanetary disk isn't necessarily something particularly dense, like gases at atmospheric pressure, where all of these species would be very short lived, and parts of it are likely to be very rarefied indeed.

Chinese malware intended to infect USB drives accidentally infects networked storage too

Re: Is the vulnerability “AutoPlay”?

This might be true. However, Windows still does do something very stupid by default, which is hiding file extensions. That makes it trivially easy to disguise an executable file as pretty much anything else (readme.exe?) to the naïve user.

Re: What operating system ?

Whilst this might be true, it looks like it has escaped your attention that the current generation of Windows operating systems is not based on Windows 3.1

I'm not an advocate for any particular OS, but the way, and certainly not for Microsoft. I'm just advocating exercising caution when it comes to claiming that one's particular OS of choice is better or more secure than another, because whilst this might appear to be objectively true in some cases, all software can have flaws (buffer overflow in the Unix login command, anyone?).

It's massively simplistic to say "if you use Linux you are safe," because malware writers can be clever folk. Think about that the next time you type sudo...

Re: What operating system ?

Yeah, that's why there's no need for this Wikipedia page to exist, is there?

As market share grows, so does the size of the target to black-hatters. Just because the Linux Kernel is designed in a different way to Windows doesn't mean vulnerabilities don't exist, and OS vulns are hardly the only target for hackers, the software running on that OS is often the target, such as a database server. Is it Microsoft's fault if someone finds an exploit in the Apache web server, or is it Linux's fault if someone finds a vuln in SQL Server, just because those pieces of software will run on their OS?

Any OS can be used to launch an attack, if the user can be tricked into doing something to compromise their own security.

Re: What operating system ?

Nobody is writing malware for your Commodore 64, because it has a very small market share.

Meanwhile, malware writers target Windows, because it has the largest market share, especially in business*, where there is juicy data to be had.

*By which I mean, day-to-day desktop/laptop use, not server use, because the server is where the data is held, but the user's machine is where the weak point is (the user).

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

Re: There's a lot of outpouring of grief for the loss of five people at sea

Agreed, it's the sycophantic outpourings from commenters, and the press that trouble me. You'd think these people had single-handedly solved world hunger. The billionaire class could, but won't.

Re: @Elongated Muskrat

Stalin was a dictator, and controlled the entire Soviet Union. Despite what you might think, this is not left-wing, but very-very right wing. Just because the Soviet Union started out with communist ideals, that doesn't mean they weren't subverted (See also :The Democratic People's republic of Korea is neither a democracy, nor a people's republic, and National Socialists weren't socialists). Read literally any book on the history of the Soviet Union, rather than trotting out bollocks like that.

Stalin was just as right-wing as Trump, and the likes of Farage, and the likes of you.

Re: "craft's carbon fiber hull"

It's easy to work out. One cubic metre of water weighs one tonne. At 4,000 metres or so, that's 4,000 cubic metres of water above every square metre of surface, or 4,000 tonnes per square metre of pressure. The average human has a surface area of about 1.8 square metres, assuming that half of that area is pointing up, and half down (which it will be, once the pressure has flattened you), then that's about 3,600 tonnes on top of you, or about 500 fully grown bull elephants.

Re: A fitting epitaph

What would actually be crass and insensitive would be another billionaire financing an expedition to retrieve bits of the mangled wreckage from the seabed, and then using it to make his own sex swing, which he'd then offer as a prize on a pay-per view series, "America's Next Top Porn Actor".

Never underestimate the ability of a billionaire to out-crass another.

Yeah, yeah, that billionaire-owned media is DEFINITELY left-biased.

If "leftist billionaire" isn't an oxymoron, nothing is.

Pffft.

Re: AP news

If he had a PhD or even a Masters degree, I might give him some credit for it, but any undergraduate degree, even one in a "hard" subject such as the physical sciences, is an exercise in retaining and regurgitating information, and not really in applying it in any way (beyond maybe some "practical" labs where you follow a set series of instructions).

I can say this as someone who has physical sciences degrees from a decent university.

There's a lot of outpouring of grief for the loss of five people at sea

Whilst, on the one hand, all accidental deaths are tragic, I can't help but think that thousands of people die at sea in unsafe vessels every day, and the only real difference here, is that five of them were very rich and "on a jolly", and the others are desperate and fleeing death or persecution.

We shouldn't laud one group whilst demonising the other.

Mark Zuckerberg would kick Elon Musk's ass, experts say

Re: Money on Elon

Butch Cassidy was clearly written as an intelligent man, who would work around the "rules" to his advantage.

Musk is a rich kid, who thinks having enough money to buy clever people makes him a genius.

There's no comparison.

Re: This is apparently what the world has sunk to

Your average cage fight has very few rules (I think maybe "don't kill your opponent," and "don't go for the eyes or groin"), so it's pretty hard to cheat. To be honest, if they start breaking the rules, which are mostly about not making it into a deathmatch, I'm not too bothered.

Re: Willy waving

According to the article, the dicks are 5'11" and 5'7".

Re: "Threads"

Actually watched that for the first time a few weeks ago. My school wasn't one of the ones where they wheeled the telly out in front of the whole class and traumatised the kids with it, but I know plenty of people who did have that inflicted on them.

Also made a visit to Kelvedon Hatch earlier in the year, and I'm now firmly of the opinion now that I'd prefer to be in the blast zone than take the option of slow death underground...

Re: he starts his day with octopus, a bowl of ice cream, eight oatmeal biscuits, and a donut

Damn you, I know that reference, but can't think where from. Futurama?

Re: Musk is said to be 5'11" and weighs around 81kg.

Yeah, I'm a couple of inches shorter than that, a few years younger, and weigh something in that region, and I'm quite slightly built (apart from the middle-age spread, which, from the pictures I've seen, Musk suffers from more than I do). I reckon we can probably add about 25kg onto that "estimate".

but then again, Musk is "said to be" a genius, which goes to show exactly how much weight hearsay carries (pun intended).

Re: he starts his day with octopus, a bowl of ice cream, eight oatmeal biscuits, and a donut

I certainly feel more guilty when eating cephalopods than when eating chicken or even beef; some of them are remarkably intelligent, you wouldn't see a cow working out how to open a jar and remove items from inside, and the chicken would just try to fight its own reflection. However, this is tempered by just how delicious they actually are, so it's a toughie. Even though some of them may well be more intelligent than Musk, nutritionally, they'd be much better for me than eating saggy billionaire.

Re: he starts his day with octopus, a bowl of ice cream, eight oatmeal biscuits, and a donut

His blood glucose curve must be horrific. If he's not yet diabetic, he'll almost certainly be pre-diabetic, but never mind about that, the heart attack or stroke will probably get him first from his blood fat content (I'm willing to bet that "ice cream" is a luxury brand and heavy on the cream).

On the other hand, octopus is both tasty and not that bad for you. I wonder how many you have to eat before Cthulhu comes for you, though?

AvP

The tag-line to "Alien vs Predator" as "Whoever wins, we lose".

This is the converse; whoever loses, we win, as long as they both knock seven shades of *%^& out of each other in the process.

Inclusive Naming Initiative limps towards release of dangerous digital dictionary

Given the evolving nature of language...

...I reckon you'll have to wait less than a decade before one of their "replacement terms" gains a new common-parlance meaning that someone might find offensive. Knowing the internet, probably one involving a sex act. Rule 34 for the lot of 'em!

Perhaps they should focus their efforts on people doing and saying things that are offensive, rather than words which could be considered offensive in some contexts, but not this one? It’s not like there aren't myriad examples of execrable behaviour from human animals to pick from.

Re: Sounds typical

5 points is very generous for a reference that even a telephone sanitiser should get.

We're going to need a smaller dictionary

Let's go through, and remove all the definitions that aren't the first for a word. Never mind that it will royally screw with the syntax of the language, and the ability to convey subtlety and nuance, let's have Newspeak now!

And before someone points it out, yes, I know this is a classic example of the slippery slope fallacy, but it is illustrative of the ludicrousness of this endeavour.

Re: And by "solving" a non-problem ...

HPL is an interesting "problem". Whilst he did come up with some of the basic horror tropes in use today, he was also deeply racist (even for his time) and antisemitic. This all feeds into the "separating the art from the artist" argument, because you either throw out all his works, and everything based on them (including most of modern horror and anything which tangentially references things like Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, horrors from the deep, cosmic horror, etc) or have to perform some mental gymnastics to separate the author from the works (and also separate the bits of the works that are problematic, like those bits, you know the ones, in The Call of Cthulhu that are highly questionable concerning race)

Re: And by "solving" a non-problem ...

I would have put you down as quite a libertarian from your comments elsewhere, not as someone who wants to unnecessarily offend people.

I'll take it that you've never encountered any "libertarians" before if you don't think that doing whatever the hell they like with no regard to how offensive, inconvenient, or downright dangerous it is to other people isn't at the core of their character. It's the "cult of the individual" writ large.

“Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.

"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least-at least I mean what I say-that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

"You might just as well say," added the March Hare, "that 'I like what I get' is the same thing as 'I get what I like'!"

"You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe'!"

"It is the same thing with you." said the Hatter

Re: Alternatives for sanity check

The issue here is that different words have not only different technical meanings, but also different meanings in common usage, and in a cultural context.

Languages are pretty good at naturally getting rid of two words that mean exactly the same thing in all contexts, which means that you often can't just replace one word with another with the same meaning, and you have to settle with a similar meaning instead. "Sanity check" is a good example of a compound noun with a specific meaning, and trying to pretend that it is somehow offensive because you can shoehorn another meaning into it, that isn't common parlance, seems like it's completely missing the point.

Add to this that most language is naturally ambiguous, especially non-technical language and is open to misinterpretation and multiple meanings, and people should be aware that the meaning they took from a word or phrase is not necessarily the meaning the person who said/typed it meant.

Language also naturally evolves, and trying to legislate for meanings of words and pin them down has been tried before, and never worked. On the whole, trying to dictate how language is used is a fool's errand (that's probably an idiom that "they" would disallow, too; should we say, "Non-achievable task" instead?).

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Re: See also Watches

Allegedly, it's something to do with re-sealing the watch under pressure, so it maintains a positive pressure inside. You'd be surprised what the water pressure is at only 50m, and how quickly the glass on a watch face might implode if it's designed to be pressurised. Then again, this might all be bollocks, and an excuse to get more money from the mark on a Veblen Good. I need* a watch that tells the time, and nothing more. Spending a four or five figure sum on what is essentially a piece of jewellery is pure peacocking, and as anyone who has dealt with peacocks can attest, their brains are very small.

*Actually, I stopped wearing an actual watch years ago, I have a fitbit that also tells the time, and a phone in my pocket I also spend all day in front of a machine that has a clock in the corner of the screen, so the necessity of owning a watch is null.

Oh No! Cries Apple.

"We'll have to put a gasket round the battery compartment, or around the contacts."

If it's beyond their wit to engineer a gasket that doesn't leak, then I would suggest that they should spend more on engineering and less on marketing. The same goes for Samsung, and every other manufacturer of cheap and not-so-cheap gadgets with sealed in batteries. If nothing else, it would make recycling a lot easier.

Of course, the ability to replace a battery doesn't necessarily necessitate the availability of replacement batteries. The EU needs to mandate the availability of replacement batteries as well, along with allowing third-party manufacture, and limiting cost to a reasonable profit only, so a spare battery doesn't cost you as much as a new phone.

Re: This never gets old

Yet, the US still thinks it's bigger and more important, even though it has half the population.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

Re: Everyone is missing the point

You can still do it the old-fashioned way, by queueing up in a branch and handing it over to the cashier. It's just your "local" branch might be a 50-mile drive away.

Also, the only time I ever have to deal with a cheque these days is when my 77-year-old father writes one, and even he has managed to work out internet banking now.

Most personal bank accounts don't even offer the ability to issue cheques any more.

Re: Rent

The OP didn't say they'd cancelled their Amazon account, they said they'd cancelled Prime. I'd, quite reasonably, expect any Amazon-hosted media for which I had paid for a perpetual license, to be licensed in perpetuity regardless of whether I pay them a monthly fee for expedited delivery*.

*In reality, I've found it to be more like expedited estimated delivery, the number of times "Prime" items with "next day delivery" turn up two days later, and non-prime third party seller items with an estimated delivery time of 2 weeks turn up within two days...

Nah, antisemitism and murder are fine with Facebook, you probably inadvertently shared an image with one pixel of a nipple.

The number of times I have reported obviously far-right or deeply racist / sexist / homophobic / etc. hate speech to Facebook and got the "we found nothing wrong" response was quickly enough to make me stop bothering.

Re: What, no backup strategy?

I wonder which cloud supplier manufactures the Smart Rapist™ he has in his house?

Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity

My car is a 13 year-old petrol-driven on, I'm afraid. I might get an electric one, when that one eventually dies, but the main blocker there will probably be that I live in a rented second-floor flat, and my car is in a communal garage two floors below, so getting a charging point installed might not be easy.

As for barges, well, there's no canal going up the hill I live on, maybe you can send some navvies round to build a series of lock gates down to the nearest river, through a built-up city...

Re: Jeff Bezos is a communist, woke tyrant

Nurse! It's happened again!

It says something about Microsoft's offerings

The Microsoft engineer is using Amazon Alexa to control his "smart" home, and not doing it via Cortana.

Here, let me Bing! that for you...

Pfffft.

It's not like Microsoft aren't one of the three major players in the cloud game, with Azure, and actually have some quite interesting edge computing stuff going on, maybe they have just reached the conclusion that voice-controlled devices are inherently insecure and fundamentally just a gimmick?

The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves

Re: How times have changed..

With someone like Apple, you can be fairly certain that if they say something will be available in 30 days, it will be available in 30 days.

And superseded by the next version in 90 days, and no longer getting OS updates in 180 days...

*twitches*

Is the slope on the bottom row in the opposite direction to the slope on the top set? Every keyboard I have ever used (well, ones with proper keys on them) has the slope on the keys in the same direction on all the rows.

What is this, a keyboard for ANTS?

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

Re: Most misused list - where is "steep learning curve"?

It's a metaphor; metaphors don't need concrete implementations.

Well, that can be compressed into [pep talk] and we can all move on with our lives...

Re: Human Populations Are Not Quantised!

D'Oh! s/(5){3}/me/

Stupid finger/brain interface!