Posts by Elongated Muskrat

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

The reason the global economy hasn't yet suffered "the big one" is that the myth of eternal growth hasn't yet peaked. However, a good measure of how close it is would be to look at how much global wealth is concentrated in an ever smaller number of hands. There will inevitably come a point where the vast majority of human activity can no longer support the greed of a tiny minority, as it has repeatedly throughout history. It will get very messy for a while and then the cycle will repeat, but with fewer resources left to drive it the next time.

This was my point, the person complaining that "workers don't work hard enough" is almost certainly whining because he wants to exploit them harder, oblivious to the fact that he and his ilk have already bled the country dry.

Let me clarify for the down-voter there, who was too cowardly to leave an explanatory comment:

If you are 63, you grew up in a time when a single person's wage in an average job would be enough to buy a house and raise and support a family.

If, like me, you grew up in the following generation under Thatcherism, you got to see the generation before you draw all the cards to their chest, appoint politicians who sold off the family silver for their immediate benefit, and drive up house prices and the cost of living, to the extent that an average house selling for four times an average salary was a thing of distant dreams (it's now more like 10-12 times an average salary in most places, and that is before taking into account the fact that the tax burden is the highest since the end of WW2). The generations after mine are even more screwed.

As for employers; long gone are the days of just walking into a local business and saying "gizzajob!" Most employers these days are large businesses that treated their employees like faceless automata. Even worse, if you happen to work in the public sector, because what might once have been a "cushy" job 40 years ago certainly is not now.

To wander along and imply that those who came after you have the same opportunities as you did is either grossly ignorant or crassly insensitive. It's certainly a fantasy.

Most people have mortgages / rent / bills to pay. Chucking in a job doesn't make sense if you don't already have something else lined up that you know will be better (and not worse). Why make stress for yourself?

The adage is, "pay peanuts, get monkeys".

Ah yes, the US, proudly simplifying words so that their simple minds can spell them more easily.

See, two can play at that game, and it gets nobody anywhere.

To put that in context, When I was in school, I think there were two deaths amongst the student corpus of somewhere like 800 students, in the 8 years I was there. One was a very sad RTA involving a drunk sixth-former sitting in the road, and the other was an equally sad death from complications from leukaemia. Now, whilst both are tragic, I suspect the head-teacher had no involvement with the police or emergency services in either case. There were certainly no cases of terrorism or break-ins/arson that I knew of, either.

I expect the most likely thing to ever bother a head teacher / college principle would be to get a call when a burglar alarm goes off in the night. Maybe once, or twice a year? That's fuck all to do with leadership, and I'd happily take my CEO's salary to take on that responsibility. I seriously doubt he's a key-holder in any case, there will be someone in buildings/facility management that gets that headache.

I expect you bought your house for £5k as well.

Things have changed since the 70s, and there's a reason that subsequent generations are getting a bit pissed off with "boomers".

We call it "working to rule" which is basically the same meaning.

It comes down to whether management write their staff up on the books as an asset or a cost centre.

People are what makes a successful organisation, not penny-pinching.

Absolutely correct.

The work I do now, if I did it "full tilt", I'd burn out (and in the past, in previous employment, very nearly have done).

In contrast, when much younger and "between jobs", I took on some temp work in a council plant nursery. This mostly involved pricking out young seedlings. It's the sort of work that is repetitive, relatively unskilled, monotonous, and paid by the hour. We started at a set time, worked for a set amount of time, took fixed breaks at set times, and produced a steady rate of work. There was no problem with this, because it's not the sort of work that will "burn you out". It wasn't bad work, and gives plenty of time to get lost in your own thoughts, but poorly paid (still better than being on benefits though).

It's when an employer mistakes the first kind of work for the second that the problems arise. They're usually the same sort of employer who doesn't understand what the job involves, and certainly couldn't do it themselves, of the mindset that, "it's not what I do, so it must be easy."

The naïveté of his comment implies he is writing that from the deck of a yacht.

People like this is why the economy is doing shit and wages have flatlined. All people like this achieve is to make their fellow workers poorer.

People not being like this is exactly why wealth is floating to the top and causing the economy to stagnate, whilst the richest get appreciably richer off the back of reaping the profits of other people working for free.

If you work in a mutually-owned cooperative, then that is the only time when "not going the extra mile" might be detrimental to yourself and your co-workers. Most people these days do not, because rampant terminal-stage capitalism has taken over, and all the benefit from those extra hours you are coerced into doing is going straight to the billionaire class.

Doing interesting things and adding value are the things you do for yourself, when you’re not working unpaid overtime to pay for someone else's yacht.

That depends entirely on the organisation. In general, if your ultimate boss is someone who has an office you can walk into, that will probably work. If, as is much more common these days, it is a private equity shareholder, you can go whistle.

Dear Stupid, I write with news I did not check the content of the [Name] field before sending this letter

Re: This would be the flip side...

"NFN"

(I can use this, as my wife is from Norfolk, and a lot of things are indeed "normal" in some of the small villages there, as they are, no doubt, in small villages the world over)

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

Re: API?

Would it, though? Isn't displaying a tweet in any manner replicating (a portion of) what the "official" app does? Ditto with "tweeting"?

It's like having an API which hands over a phone number, but then saying "you're not allowed to actually call this number," despite that being the primary use case for a telephone number.

Re: Why should they feel obligated to refund anyone?

Bollocks, it will work with any API that has the same signature. Not much use if that API doesn't give access to the same content, though, is it?

Much like a monopoly electricity supplier cutting you off and then retroactively changing their terms to allow themselves to do it.

Re: API?

So you can't use the Twitter APIs to do anything "twittery". What the fuck else are you about to use them for? Testing the ping between your laptop and the Twitter servers?

Re: No surprise there then

Your first example there, MySpace. That went well for Rupert Murdoch when News Corp paid $580M for it, didn't it?

Changing of license conditions with no notice

Don't those licensing terms constitute a contract with existing users? In other words, by doing this, has His Muskiness left himself open to legal action from everyone who has now lost revenue due to this change in terms?

IANAL of course, but I do know that the US is a notoriously litigious country.

Devil's lettuce: Toxic weed harvested with baby spinach causing delirium in Australia

Re: Someone

I'm pretty sure that every town or city that has "civic" planters anywhere near a police station has experienced the same thing. I'm sure I've read several local news stories about it.

To be fair, "organo-phosphates" is such a broad term, it covers everything from ATP (an essential energy carrier found in every cell in your body, which you would die without) to some pretty horrific, and thoroughly illegal under international treaties, nerve toxins.

Punch-drunk Apple Watch called 15 cops to a boxing workout when it heard 'shots'

Re: confused

If the phone is moving down a hillside at fast speed, and bumping around all over the place, and the user is in a car, then they almost certainly are having an accident. Think going over the edge of a mountain pass and tumbling down a mountainside, a not-unheard of occurrence in mountainous countries.

The problem here is that Apple have sold this as a "feature" when the device really isn't gathering sufficient data to determine what is happening at all. It doesn't know if you're in a car, on a roller coaster, or if your unconscious body is being carried off by a mountain lion. It's the old trick of using fear to sell (just like all those awful TV ads for alarm systems, with people supposedly sitting and watching CCTV footage on their phone rather than doing literally anything else with their life). It's a case of "this could happen, and our device will save you" but such a flawed implementation and overstated use case that they may as well be selling insurance against being eaten by a fire-breathing dragon.

Twitter 2.0 signal boosts Taliban 2.0 through Blue subscriptions

Re: What?

You keep telling yourself that, buddy. The fact that the vast majority of people disagree with pretty much everything you ever post MUST mean that you are right, and everyone else is always wrong, right? You must have the worst downvote ratio of anyone here, and that includes Dave gibberish.

Re: What?

Where I make a claim, I provide a source. Where I don't make a claim, but offer my opinion, it is clearly an opinion, and as such, doesn't require a source to verify it.

Importantly, I do not present the latter as the former, because I can tell the difference.

As for taking issues with "sources". Yes, I might do so, if they are all not real sources. Being discerning is a positive thing, not a negative one.

Granted, I have seen you link to raw statistics, and laws in the past. Crucially, it is your opinion on what those show that you present as fact. Your lack of intellectual rigour is as startling as your recourse to name-calling and insults is predictable.

A good example is that, in the past, you have linked to the infamous "banana EU regulation" in an attempt to prove either that it means we cannot sell straight or bendy bananas (I can't recall which, and the exact point is moot, as both are clearly ridiculous claims), and that this is a justification for leaving the institutions of the EU, and giving up the benefits of membership.

The exact regulation (note regulation, not law, the laws are laid down by the member nations in national law, in order to fulfil the regulation) is about grading produce, and not mislabelling lower grade produce as higher grade produce. I have in the past actually read the text of the regulation, because I actually go and read things, to inform myself. If I remember rightly, the only mention of bananas is in the accompanying explanatory text, which does not form part of the regulation itself. Of course, the root of all this is a newspaper article from Boris Johnson, deliberately conflating the two. The same Boris Johnson who has been fired from multiple jobs for lying. Hardly a solid source, or primary evidence, I'm afraid.

Re: @CodeJunky - What?

Why would I say brexit was a bad thing?

My point is that you would not. Even once we get to the point where the vast majority of the human race agrees that it is.

Just like my point of comparing you to someone who is very obviously very intelligent is to compare and contrast, not to boast about "look who I know".

You go out of your way to not get the point.

Re: @CodeJunky - What?

So, you'll be admitting that brexit was a bad thing then?

Hahahaha, nope, of course not. You will only admit when you think that you are wrong, not when the evidence suggests it. You will go out of your way to cherry-pick and search for distorted "evidence" to support your views. You will twist and turn, and switch arguments, refer (without links) to supposed previous "proofs" but never be able to provide them. And if that fails, you will switch to ad-hominem attacks, or just lie.

Re: What?

@Androgynous Cupboard

I'm trying to work out whether the answer is "useful idiot" or "psychopath". Scarily, I'm beginning to waver towards the latter, because there doesn't seem to be any "theory of mind" there whatsoever. I hope he's on a watch-list, but the actual terrifying thing is that our current government is more likely to pander to him.

Re: What?

The existence of sewerage doesn't imply one should drink it.

The exact contents of the sewers should only be of interest to those tasked with cleaning them.

Re: What?

You can't keep up, but yet...

Re: What?

I have never, once, seen you provide a primary source, in context, for any assertion you have made. I suspect you don't even know what a primary source is. For reference, it is not an opinion piece, or an article reporting on what someone else has found, which does not reproduce the findings in full, and filters it through a lens of deliberate selection and unconscious bias.

It's almost as if you go looking for things that support your views, and explicitly don't go looking for anything that might contradict them.

Re: @CodeJunky - What?

Do you ever wonder that your opinions might be wrong, or do you genuinely believe that everyone who gives you a downvote is stupid, and you are cleverer than them?

Because I know some genuinely very intelligent people (for example, one of them still receives patent dividends on telecoms patents from the 1970s and is by far the most erudite person I know), and you are clearly not operating on the same level as them. I can accept that others are cleverer than me, or know more about a subject than I do. I can also tell, as can pretty much everyone here, that you do not fall into that class.

And before you decide to say something dumb like, "you are an idiot because you started two sentences with conjunctions," that would imply that I didn't do so deliberately, with full awareness, and it wouldn't make me look silly to point it out.

Re: What?

And strictly, the comparison was to Goebbels, not to Hitler, or to the Nazis in general.

It's also worth reading the whole wikipedia article on Godwin's Law (it's not a long one, fnarr), specifically the cases where Godwin himself has added his own thoughts.

For example, "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician."

I'd say that the post that had Godwin called on it meets those particular criteria (except, of course, it wasn't a comparison to Hitler)

Of course, this is all moot, I'm sure the commenter calling Godwin didn't do so to end the conversation anyway, but as a light-hearted aside (if any comparison to fascism can be considered light-hearted).

Re: What?

Both have paedo taches

Re: What?

Is it Godwin when the reference is appropriate? The guy literally wrote the book* on the type of propaganda that is being used, so it's at least fair to give him a citation.

*As in, I'm pretty sure he actually wrote about it.

Re: What?

I brought Minford into it, because when previously asked to provide evidence for your claims about how wonderful the economic benefits of Brexit are, he was the only economist you could quote. A bit of selective memory there to add to your litany of bullshit.

Re: Erm

It wouldn't surprise me if they don't contain a whole load of high-tech gubbins, such as satellite transceivers, that would make it trivially easy to make them go all 'splodey thanks to munitions launched from the safety of the next country over, if the previous owners so desired. In much the same way that Ukraine successfully tracked Russian troop movements in the early days of the invasion thanks to them nicking mobile phones from murdered Ukrainian civilians, combined with the wonders of cell triangulation.

Maybe the Taliban are just better at op-sec than Russia.

Re: What?

The first line that claims Labour* members agree with Nazi ideology. You're really going to have to provide a verified source for that assertion, which borders on the libellous. I suspect you can't, and once again, you are presenting opinion as fact.

I'd rather not read any more of your comments, the vast majority of which are complete nonsense. When asked to back up any of your various claims, your response is either "I've proved this before", or "here's a link to an unverifiable, un fact-checked opinion piece from a UKIP member / Patrick Minford** / random Youtuber".

If you can't tell the difference between facts and opinion (and boy are you full of opinions), you should have a good listen to yourself. Please don't inflict that punishment on us, I suspect it's in breach of the Geneva Convention for being cruel and unusual.

Wait a moment, ARE you Patrick Minford? That would explain quite a lot, actually.

*capital L please, it's a proper noun, I give the same courtesy to others I may disagree with, and to not do so is childish

**Even Thatcher admitted Minford's economic ideology, which he has been touting for decades is a load of old bollocks.

Re: Sponsorship, sponsorship...

You are aware, are you not, that medical morphine does have to come from somewhere. AFAIK, a good portion of this comes from poppies grown in Afghanistan, so it's not so much "a blind eye," as "approved supply chain".

Re: The Register, The BBC, "The State".........

Would you like it if the discussion here was a dry discussion of the technological merits of one mechanism of managing and recording "blue tick" subscriptions over another? Because I don't think anyone else would be reading that.

To be clear, up there is a link to the actual story, written by a journalist, about a tech news item on a tech site. Down here are a bunch of people, who are not (for the most part) journalists, and who are not writing news stories. Do you see the difference? Do we need to use some flash cards for you?

Re: What?

@Codejunky is exactly the same as Stalin.

Prove me wrong...

The thing is, when you are stood at either political extreme, anything else looks equally extreme to you.

Moderate social democracy is perfectly achievable, and functions well, but to the likes of our darling CJ, they look the same as Stalin. QED

Re: What?

From what I can gather, those at the top of the tree would have "Tory stooge" written through them in blue ink if you cut them in half. However, a lot of the people who actually work in the BBC (including those who I know personally) do tend to be to the left of the political spectrum.

This can be put down to the fact that intelligent, hard-working people tend not to swallow Tory bullshit, and the BBC has high standards when it comes to not hiring thickies.

Yes, I'm aware that this comes across as a mite patronising towards those who might like to think of themselves as right-wing. My advice would be to take a good long look at yourself and wonder whether your lords-and-masters in government are doing an especially good job of running the country into the ground and stealing all the money.

Re: What?

To be fair, technically, it's not the state interfering with the BBC, it's the Conservative Party who are (currently) in government who have been stuffing the BBC's board with political stooges, and have been doing that since the time of Thatcher, with Jacob Rees-Mogg's daddy.

In the interests of balance, I think Blair probably did much the same when Labour were in power. It's very hard to remove political influence from such institutions, especially when there is so much money slushing around from media barons in the rival "free" press that might influence things.

If your DNS queries LoOk liKE tHIs, it's not a ransom note, it's a security improvement

Re: and https:// ?

The problem is that there are some root certifying authorities that not entirely trustworthy. They can issue a certificate that purports to be a genuine one for the domain.

This is a real problem, although some work is being done to not trust obviously untrustworthy ones.

This is my point, the moment you try to poison all of them, it becomes obvious that you are as bad actor. ANY variation that doesn't match flags the associated IP address as bad.

The point is that you can't poison all variations, you must poison only the correct variation, if you try to poison even one incorrect one, the associated IP address you are trying to poison it with (which is highly likely to be the same IP address you use for all poisoning attempts, unless you have access to a range of IP addresses) is flagged. You would have to use a unique IP address for each poisoning attempt. Even for a three-letter domain (and this is ignoring the domain suffix), that means having 8 IP addresses to hand, and writing off 7 of them, or using a single IP address, and taking a 1 in 8 chance of guessing the right variation, and for the other 7 times out of 8, getting your IP address blocked.

I think the point that the article misses is that if someone tries to resolve nsa.gov, and the upstream resolution asks for nSa.GOv, the moment it gets a reply that isn't right, such as NSa.gOv, that's a massive red flag that someone is attempting a cache poisoning attack. You can then blacklist the IP address that the non-matching answer is pointing at and try again. The attackers would have to have use of a whole range of IP addresses to avoid this blocking them out immediately.

YouTube loves recommending conservative vids regardless of your beliefs

Yeah, pretty sure he was prevented from doing that by the lack of a majority in the senate. Some guy called Dick...

Re: Worth noting the dates

I heard you can go on a guided helicopter tour over the massive crater where Portland once stood. They're calling it the Oregon smoke-hole, or "the big anus".

No, wait, I just made that up, didn't I? Thankfully, most people can tell the difference between obvious bullshit and demonstrable fact, but sadly not all, and that minority does appear to be alarmingly large, if the keyboard warriors and MAGA hat wearers are anything to go by.

Re: Yes, Prime Minister

I'm pretty sure that checking on the objective truthfulness of something that has been published, and determining whether it is factually correct or not, is pretty much one of the few places where it is pretty hard for bias to come into it.

The only way this could be biased, that I can think of, would be if there was bias in the selection of the published articles that were examined. If this source of bias wasn't eliminated early on, I can't imagine the peer review process would have passed the paper for publication.

On the other hand, there is no verification, bias elimination, or peer review process for making claims on an internet discussion board that reinforce one's own bias, are there?