Posts by Elongated Muskrat

Marketing company chases Twitter for $7,000 over 'swag gift box for Elon'

Yes, that is a fair use For some reason, I always seem to manage to get paint, cleaning products, etc. on my favourite shirts, but at least attempting to sacrifice a crappy T-shirt helps.

Re: Elon

Yes, I blame the spiel chucker for that one, it was (hopefully obviously) supposed to say "wanton".

Re: Elon

The film "Forbidden Planet" had the famous "Monster from the id", the subconscious being of wonton destruction that could not be controlled and which finishes off the alien race that created it.

In a similar vein, Musk is entirely subservient to his own ego, and his ego monster would never allow anything like admitting a mistake, it would eviscerate him and leave him dead on the dusty ground of an extinct planet first.

It probably depends on what "use" that swag was put to. Arguably, if it was used for marketing purposes, and raising "brand awareness" it could be said it wasn't wasted money.

On the flip side, "freebies" given away at trade shows and the like tend to get thrown in a bag and then forgotten about. I'm sure I have any number of pens that have various brands emblazoned on them, that don't get looked at until I want a working pen, try to use it, find it has dried out, and throw it away. Ditto with the 16Mb memory sticks, T-shirts with company logos on (yuck, not wearing that!) and so on.

There's probably a fairly subtle line between "marketing freebies" and illegal inducements as well...

Re: $800 for a cheese board and cheese?

What I fail to understand is why they can call this "almond milk" but if you take milk, and add lactase to it, to make it lactose free, suddenly it has to be referred to as "lactose-free semi-skimmed dairy drink" and not "lactose-free milk". What dirt have the oat, soy bean and almond Mafia got on legislators?

Re: $800 for a cheese board and cheese?

That's "chocolate" milk

Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing

Re: This shouldn't happen

There's also a big and very real problem that isn't even mentioned in this article, which breaks both the security of using the phone number as an identifier, and with 2FA codes sent via SMS:

SIM spoofing.

What the article describes is an "accidental" vulnerability, but this is that vulnerability's big brother, which is actively exploited by criminals / three-letter agencies.

If using 2FA, you should be using an authenticator app wherever possible, and not rely on SMS one-time codes.

Re: This shouldn't happen

Phone numbers aren't even a good thing to use as a candidate key which is what the article describes.

As for using a non-contiguous range of numbers as a primary key... Do you want page fragmentation? Because that's how you get page fragmentation.If you must use something like that for an identifier, if it's a candidate key with an indexed column, at least you're only looking at page splits in that index when new records are inserted, and not at the clustered index, and the resulting updates on any non-clustered indexes to keep pointing at the right page. It's almost like there's a reason people use consecutive integers as PKs and let the database number them itself...

Also, phone numbers can be formatted in a number of ways and must be normalised on every use if using as an identifier, which, although not computationally intensive, is a big old ball-ache if you wanted to process a large amount of data (e.g. in an import).

For example, the UK mobile number 07123456789 could also be represented as [phone] or 00441234567890 or 0712 345 6789 and probably several others.

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Re: Other ways to justify access

Lynx Africa is an overpoweringly strong deodorant in the UK, marketed at teenage boys, and colloquially known as "Stinks Africa", or just "Stinks".

Re: WEB TV Boxes

I think "pervasive" is a relative term. If I remember rightly, dial-up internet in the US was usually done with a "local" number, which, due to the way local numbers are charged in the US didn't cost money "per minute". (Please correct me if this is wrong!)

In the UK, at least, and I suspect many other countries, dial-up was via a "local rate" number, which did get charged per-minute (often a double-digit number of pennies) on top of a monthly fee. This could rack up quite a fee if left connected. A "set-top box" which didn't have this restriction would have been economically preferable for a number of people, especially if they just wanted to check email and "browse the web" as it was then. So, people may have had "home PCs" but not ones connected to the internet via a modem. Remember, we're still talking about the days of ISA cards and external modems that took up your phone line.

Musk's view count antics are perfect cover for Twitter's paid API failure

Re: Am I the Only One to Quote the Original Ghosbusters?

The Giant Twinkie would do a better job of running Twitter.

Re: Who's left?

You forgot, "they lost all the advertisers when they unbanned all the previously-banned-for-hate-speech accounts."

And "they then compounded this by breaking the mechanism that proved people were who they said they are."

For some reason, major advertisers don't like to see their products associated with content that promotes antisemitism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of hate speech, or indeed with fake accounts from scammers. Funny that.

Developers

"...part of our efforts to create an optimal experience for the developer community."

Presumably these efforts are to drive developers away, to less hostile platforms, where their efforts won't be held hostage to sudden demands for payment. If I was a working with anything Twitter-related, this would be the optimal experience for me.

Creator of Linux virtual assistant blames 'patent troll' for project's death

It's a sci-fi/fantasy word, like warp drives, blaster rifles, and sorcery.

Re: Shame but..

Do you really believe that consumer TVs are going to try to "back-door" your home Wi-Fi (which presumably would either mean brute-forcing the password, or having a built-in backdoor password in the router. Either of these things would destroy the share price of the company doing it overnight, from the reputation damage, if they were discovered (which would be trivial using any network traffic analysis tool). It would also likely be a criminal matter.

Re: Shame but..

Well, it would need the Wi-Fi password for starters.

When my current TV dies, I'm seriously considering just getting a large monitor with several HDMI inputs.

Re: Shame but..

Yeah, we get to bait the Boomers AND the Millennials / Gen Z.

There's something to be said for being a part of the "forgotten generation".

Re: Another one bites the dust.

It's also worth noting that there was another heavily-hyped kickstarter boardgame project, which, although it delivered, fairly predictably, a couple of years later than expected, partly due to the pandemic, and partly due to a high-stakes backer turning out to be a scammer, is sitting on the table next to me waiting for me to play it. That box is completely packed with game components, which are weighty and of high quality. As far as I am concerned, the project delivered, and well.

As with all such things, there are plenty of scams and pipe-dreams out there, but there are also plenty of genuine projects that manage to deliver something. Just do a sanity-check that it's not promising to break the laws of physics first.

UK prepares to go it alone on post-Brexit science plan

Re: Democracy

Why the fuck should I? You’re a random RWNJ on the internet, not my employer. Get over yourself.

I'm under no obligation to argue with people who can't manage a sensible, reasoned, argument. It's a pure waste of my time, and to be clear: when I do so, it's for my own amusement, and to provide amusement for others. Nothing I say is going to change your mind, you've already decided what is the truth and go looking for "facts" to back that up. The fact that all you can ever manage in the way of "evidence" is opinion pieces from right-wing "think-tanks" makes me think you're probably based in Tufton Street yourself, and the only people you are "convincing" of anything are the terminally weak-minded.

Re: Relax. It's the final countdown.

By the way, I'm assuming your reference to the 1992 election is a reference to the "shock" result, described here, where the polls gave a slight lead to Labour / the Tories and Labour neck-and-neck. In the event, the Tories won a small majority.

It is now generally recognised that polling tends to favour left-wing parties slightly over right-wing ones (people who vote right-wing are more reticent to admit it), largely down to these "surprise" results, which were still just about within the "margins of error" shown in the polling in that wiki article. This is generally accounted for in polling now.

The polling now still has Labour well out ahead of the Tories, with the best-case polls for the Tories and worst-case for Labour still putting Labour at least ten points ahead, as shown in the meta poll on the wiki article here and in the Politico meta-polling here. Realistically, even if Labour's position were overstated by 5 points, this is still a landslide defeat for the Tories, worse than in 1997, when they were polling at 33% vs 43% just prior to the election, and Labour won by a slightly larger margin than that (by about 2.5%) due to a surprise showing by the Lib Dems. If a ten point lead in the polls, with a third party noticeably in the running returns a 179 seat majority, what do you think a 25% poll lead will give?

As I said, I really hope Starmer doesn't fluff it.

...I'll also reiterate, that FPTP distorts the vote share, and thus the results. If we had some sort of PR system, then we'd almost always end up with a left-of-centre, or centrist coalition government between socialist Labour, centrist Lib Dems, and left-of-centre Greens, and the Tory party would split into a moderate centre-right fiscally conservative but socially progressive party, and whatever the BUF/BNP/UKIP/Reform are calling themselves today, who would be a perpetual thorn with about 5% of seats, but without the ability to claim that they are unrepresented. There's probably be some fertile centre-left ground for a stable social democracy party, as with many successful European nations, probably as an offshoot of the Labour Party.

Re: Democracy

"Eh? Elongated Muskrat made a bogus claim and I burnt it down for being drivel."

Onoes, I'm on fire, I'm on fire!

No, wait, I'm not, it was just CJ's fevered imagination again, where he has convinced himself he has "proved" something.

As you were, folks.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

[Citation Required] throughout.

Thanks AC, for picking up this baton and running with it, there's little point in arguing with this particular one though, and I fear you are wasting your time unless you find it entertaining to troll him, or bait him into posting something that gets his posts removed by a moderator.

To butcher a proverb, "You can lead a brexiter to consequences, but you can't make him think." in this case, the entire world will be pointing and laughing at what a stupid idea brexit ever was before he'll admit to being wrong about anything. He'll argue with his dying breath that the EU is some evil monster determined to poison your well and steal your women.

Re: Relax. It's the final countdown.

I was a little too young to vote in 1992, but not in 1997 when Labour won the landslide under Blair. I didn't actually vote for Labour (I never trusted Blair), and our local MP who got elected (and kicked out the long-term Tory incumbent) was a Lib-Dem.

Now the party demographics have changed; the Greens might get more votes in strong Labour constituencies (which mine now definitely is) but not really in places where it might risk giving the vote to a tory. The Lib Dems are all but wiped out (which is a bit of a shame for Ed Davey who was a thoroughly nice bloke when I happened to meet him, randomly), due to the deeply inadvisable bed-getting-into-with that went on with Cameron. The polling shows the real far-right parties taking a bite out of the tory vote ("Reform" and what is left of UKIP), which is pretty remarkable, given that the tories have been adopting their policies wholesale, but still much lower than they were before the last couple of elections, so there's no real votes for the tories to pick up there during campaigning (which the far-right parties are thankfully very bad at).

Blair got in largely because he wasn't scary "Old Labour" and also was a reasonable alternative to the incumbent and, by that time, deeply unpopular tories. He had to contend with the Lib Dems as well, though, and Labour now really don't, except for in a few rural constituencies, which the Yellows might take from the Blues.

Starmer's Labour are all lined up for an even bigger win, unless be manages to completely bottle it. Personally, I'd like to see someone else in charge of the party; there are plenty of very competent and hard-working MPs in the party who are both left enough of centre to provide a genuine alternative to the tories, but not so far left that they scare people. Most of them are, wisely, keeping their heads down.

Re: Relax. It's the final countdown.

I'll just add, that due to the FPTP system, which the Tories would never change, because it normally favours them, due to the "anti-tory" vote being split between Labour, Lib Dems and Greens, will mean that 25% of the vote could end up netting them as little as 10% of the seats. They could well end up with no seats at all in London, and other major population centres. I'll raise a glass to that!

Re: Relax. It's the final countdown.

If you believe this, I invite you to check out any meta polling or predictions based on meta-polling.

Starmer would have to do something seriously bad, like eating a live baby on TV, to lose the next election. Even after their "new leader bounce", the Tories are basically polling at half the number of votes that Labour would get if there were an election tomorrow. This is with a leader of the opposition who is about as inspiring as a block of tofu.

As they go on, Sunak isn't getting more popular (he's getting less so), and more sleaze and scandals are coming out of the woodwork.

Their best bet would be to call an election now, and cut their losses, because the longer-term trend is for their vote share to fall, not rise. When the inevitable election comes, even with their electoral boundary rigging, gerrymandering, and programme of voter disenfranchisement (that's what all this "voter ID" bullshit is about), they are still going to lose hard. It might not be quite as bad for them as the polls currently predict, because they're bound to pull out some smears, pre-election tax cuts and false promises in their election campaigning, but I'd be surprised if they got even 200 seats.

Re: Democracy

Nope, the "remainers" are the ones who could see that all the promises were lies, the "quitters" were the ones sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting "Project Fear" every time someone pointed out that brexit might cause problems. As it turns out, pretty much every problem that "Project Fear" pointed out would happen, has happened. A loss of funding for academic research, and, just as importantly, cross-Europe cooperation and freedom of movement for the researchers is one of those things. You might not have been paying attention on the multiple occasions that the very erudite Dr Mike Galsworthy pointed this out, both prior to the opinion poll in 2016, and afterwards, but those in the scientific community have been telling you all along that brexit was going to screw them over.

Re: Not quite

I see someone down-voted you for applying facts to a religious discussion there. Doubly so, since it involves both brexit and the problems in Northern Ireland (thankfully, no longer The Troubles). Thankfully, for the younger generations of people living there, it isn't quite so much about Catholics and Protestants wanting to murder each other any more.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

I mean, you do tend to use a lot of the very-right-wing talking points that The Heil* likes to plaster on its front pages, so one would be forgiven for thinking that you read it. I guess you get your dose of hate from GB News and watching Youtube videos of Nigel Farage instead?

As for fact checking, presumably you only do this for things that you don't agree with, because an awful lot of your posts are woefully lacking in an attachment to factual reality.

*I am aware of the irony of picking someone up for playing the "you read the wrong newspaper" game. However, the Daily Mail is a special case; it was founded as a "gossip rather than news" paper, actively supported Hitler, and is very well known for having inflammatory content on its front page, which it frequently has to retract (usually in a tiny inset on p34) on the basis that it is completely factually incorrect.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

...I'll just add, that I didn't have you specifically in mind. There are two or three prominent posters I was very obviously trolling.

Your particular handle isn't on my radar, so my advice would probably be to steer clear of that particular set of bad apples and try to play nicely with the other kids who aren't known biters.

Re: ...what the EU wants in a completely separate area

Yeah, I can really see all those "fantastic trade deals" lining up after we do the international equivalent of standing on the table at a party and taking a big dump on it.

The logic, which is quite clear, is that nobody is going to want to go anywhere near making any sort of agreement with someone who publicly and obviously tears up the one they just made, which they, unnecessarily, backed themselves into making, before publicly declaring that it was the best deal they could possibly get.

To think otherwise is the true paragon of wishful thinking cross-bred with naïveté, and your loyalty to these clowns is both touching, and deeply disturbing.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

There's plenty of people in the middle (I'd consider myself a little to the left of centre, but pretty much there). To the likes of CJ, though, I'm probably some terrible Marxist-Leninist that wants to repossess his house and turn it into a tractor factory, or something.

There are only a handful of the real hard right-wingers, who are very vocal, but, as their ground has shifted further and further to the right, they have found themselves still standing on it, and I think it is not unfair to describe them now as far-right. They're the ones who'd advocate the sort of rhetorioc coming for the current Home Secretary when referring to those fleeing and seeking asylum. The sort of rhetoric that very much matches "a Very Well Known 20th Century Far Right Party That Must Not Be Named for Fear of Invoking Godwin". That one.

As for far-left? Well, yes, I do see some naive leftist "Take everything into public ownership" type posts, the sort of ideology that evaporates pretty quickly when it comes to the practicalities of actually governing. I see very little of it here, though, compared to the fascist drivel that some people spout.

Re: Democracy

They did, they decided it wasn't, and the headbangers kept on about it (over a period of about 40 years). It was the main thing that destroyed the tories in the '90s, I believe John Major referred to them as the "difficult bastards".

It is delightful, however, now to see the "difficult bastards" got what they wanted, and, like the proverbial dog chasing the car, have no idea what to do now they have achieved their goal. Their party, now so divided, that they manage to be 25 points behind Mr Beige himself Keir Starmer in the polls, is now polling considerably worse than they were before their historic landslide defeat to Blair in 1997, and say what you like about Blair ($deity knows, I have in the past), he had charisma. Hopefully, once this lot lose (hard) in the next election, they will all fuck off for good, and we can go back to having a government that isn't actively trying to steal all our money and move it into tax havens.

How about a real citation now?

That would appear to be an opinion piece "published" by a company of lawyers on their own web site. For a fiver, I could do much the same and claim it as a source if that is the level of integrity we're aiming for.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

Onoes, not the hellbeast that is the Grauniad! Run for the hills!

In other news, those whose best argument is to insinuate that their debating partners are reading the "wrong" papers, may be lacking something in their arguments. Especially if the paper they point fingers at happens to be a well respected one, and not, for instance, one that is repeatedly forced to print retractions for front-page lies, or which is likely to spontaneously catch fire if found within the bounds of the City of Liverpool...

Seriously, yes, the output of the Guardian is left-of-centre. I'd advise people to get their news from more than one source, but if being the target of right-wing hatred is a badge of honour, the Guardian wears it well, and if you're the one spewing that hatred, well, you've figuratively just stood up and shouted "I'm a plonker"* to the whole room.

*Or post-watershed equivalent for when the kiddies aren't listening.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

Not strictly true; it will show you the date they last changed their handle, and, as I discovered, if you do so, you lose your badge as well.

My own posts go back far before the advent of the likes of CJ, f'rinstance.

Bring back the moderatrix I say, she'll sort this out!

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

I don't know, did you down-vote the OP? Did their post trigger you? If the answer to these questions is yes, then I think you answered your own question.

Re: ...what the EU wants in a completely separate area

The person who "negotiated it" never intended to honour it. He's never honoured any other agreement in his life, which is why I'm still amazed at the stupidity of his paramour in actually marrying him, after he divorced his then wife, who happened to be undergoing cancer treatment at the time.

What a gent.

He just makes a mess and then fucks off leaving it for others to clear up. There's no hope for those who can't even realise that they've been taken for a ride.

Re: Not quite

Don't let those pesky facts get in the way of our Glorious Brexit. What are you, some sort of traitor intent on doing our country down?

Don't you know we should not listen to anyone who knows what they are talking about. His Holy Goveness himself told us so.

We'll send John Redwood to personally take charge of your re-education shortly.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

Looks like you triggered the resident far-right trolls.

"Thisands of yars"? I never knew Dr Roberts was a Kiwi.

Re: The Horizon replacement money ...

The thing is, that the NHS gets a year-on-year increase anyway, due to two factors: inflation, and changing demographics (whodathunkit, older people need more medical care).

The loss of income to the UK from leaving the EU far outweighs the "£350M a week" figure, by about £90M apparently.

Re: Not quite

I think you'll find they came second in the last election. They should have had another election by now, but our NI minister keeps kicking that can down the road (with dubious legality under the GFA). I can't imagine the DUP will do better than last time when the next election for the NI Assembly does eventually come along.

Re: Not quite

"Completely Unrelated" in this context means "part of the exact same withdrawal agreement", right? The one that the UK has already tried to break international law over because no amount of writhing, doublethink and lying will make Northern Ireland both fit entirely in the UK, without any borders, and also within the island of Ireland without any borders (as required by another, better drafted, and more important international treaty).

All this demonstrates is the staggering ignorance (of Irish history, basic economics, and several other matters) and fuzzy thinking displayed by brexiters.

Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong

Re: Dishwasher vs sink washing

If not wanting to eat from filthy plates is "squeemish" [sic] then count me out. I happen to have experience in both the fields of chemistry and microbiology, so I can assure you that rinsing things is very necessary to avoid contamination. I wonder if everyone in your household commonly has a "slight tummy bug" from the traces of rotting food they are constantly eating?

Food scraps get scraped into the compost bin (or fed to the hamster). AS far as I can tell, Bosch are pretty reliable, and I think I've just got unlucky with a waste pump problem. I've certainly been using the same Bosch washing machine for the last 20+ years with no issues, although I'm probably tempting fate by writing that.

The big problem with sponges, in particular, is that they don't dry completely between uses, and they provide an ideal environment for bacteria to thrive, with moisture, nutrients (food residue), and a very large surface area on which biofilms can develop. Once you've got a biofilm going on, they're actually pretty tough things to get rid of. If you use them as scrubbers, and properly rise the dishes, this probably isn't much of a problem, other than the fact that they're likely to smell like a baby has shat in one of your kitchen cupboards.

Another big problem with sponges, is that they are almost invariably made out of non-degradable and non-recyclable single-use plastics as well. If you regularly chuck them out when they get stinky (which can be in as little as a few days in warm and humid weather), that's a lot of waste going to landfill.

I tend to reserve for handwashing those things that need a really good scrub to get burned on food off-of them. I prefer to use a steel wire scrubber for this (as long as they're non-stick) because it is both more effective, but also doesn't go quickly stinky like a sponge, lasts many months, and can be recycled in the household waste stream when it has got really tatty.

Re: Dishwasher vs sink washing

I suspect the increase in gas prices will have pushed it more in favour of the machine. They fill with cold water, and heat it (with efficient insulation), whereas hand-washing, unless you want your hands to go blue, especially in winter when the incoming water temperature is below 10°C requires hot water for both washing (a bowlful) and rinsing (much more), most probably from a gas boiler. A dishwasher will rinse with cold water, and a lot less of it.

I have a Bosch as well, it has turned out to be pretty reliable (although as I write this, it is awaiting an engineer to come and fix a blocked pump, the first fault in 4 years of daily operation)

1) Pots and pans, and the insert from the rice steamer / slow cooker go in the bottom of the dishwasher

2) If my wife and I are in the kitchen at the same time, which is small, we get in each other's way. It is not harmonious.

3) Loading it "just right" means putting the plates and dished in the bottom and glasses and mugs in the top. I rarely need to put things through twice (maybe spoons used to stir porage, that sort of thing). If glasses are flipping upside-down, you are doing something very wrong.

4) That's why they have filters. Take them out and clean them every now and then. Also, dishwashers don't magically make lumps of food vanish, and more than washing by hand does.

5) How do you rinse your dishes, if not with running water?

6) Put it on overnight. Empty it in the morning. It takes two minutes while you're waiting for the kettle to boil for your coffee.

You're right about tumble-drier though. By far and away the most energy intensive appliance people own (and a fire risk if you don't regularly empty the lint trap), when you can hang your clothes on a drier for free.

Romance scam targets security researcher, hilarity ensues

Re: Murder

We didn't burn them

LockBit's Royal Mail ransom deadline flies by. No data released

They were going to release the stolen data

But then they realised it was just the Postcode Address File...