Posts by Fogcat

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

Many many many years ago I worked on a typesetting system running on a Data Genal mini computer (yes before the appearance of DTP systems) and the staff at one customer were ex hot-lead typesetters and regarded the computer system as de-skilling their job.

We would often get a mysterious crash on a Friday afternoon, always from the same terminal, and because of the time take to reboot and verify etc. the staff would be sent home early. We never did get to the root cause because any enquires of the user as to "what were you doing when it crashed?" were met with a "just normal stuff". They weren't giving up their leave early card.

When even Microsoft can’t understand its own Outlook, big tech is stuck in a swamp of its own making

Re: Adobe Reader

Sumatra PDF does all I need

https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

"Fact checkers have just been too politically biased "

So let me see if I understand this .... Facts are too politically biased?

Vivaldi gives its browser a buffing, adds a dashboard

Re: We need a User Agent that isn't Googled.

There is a completely new engine, not Blink, not WebKit, not Gecko, in development

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)

But don't expect to see anything until 2026!

From https://ladybird.org/ : "Ladybird is currently in heavy development. We are targeting a first Alpha release for early adopters in 2026."

Lab-grown human brain cells drive virtual butterfly in simulation

Isn't that what the "Far Zeniths" tried in Horizon Forbidden West?

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Re: In the days before t’interweb…

Way back, early in my career in the pre internet days, I was told to look something up in the timsboard. When I looked puzzled I was directed to a lever arch file.

It turns out that a now departed employee named Tim had originally kept all sorts of useful notes on a notice board. Once that was full the data moved to a folder but the name stayed as a piece of in-house jargon.

SpaceX aims high with Polaris Dawn mission

Can one of the space geeks please explain to me what is meant by the orbits 190 x 1,400 km and 190 x 700 km? Is that elliptical sizes? 190 x 1400 is very elliptical if so.

(I did try googling)

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

The number of sites that just don't work properly in Firefox seems to ne slowly increasing. Too many web "developers" only testing on Chrome. (long time FF user)

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

Re: Not tea

Back in the days when there were smoking rooms there was one in our building which was shared by everyone... cleaners to the board. I learnt so much about what was going on in the company just by sitting quietly in the corner with the reports I was reading and listening to the execs chat.

But on the other hand a different building that also had a similar smoking room that was used by all the data entry staff (yes it was a long time ago) on their 15 minute break. If you walked into that room just after one of those breaks had finished you could barely see the opposite wall! No need to light up.

The future of AI/ML depends on the reality of today – and it's not pretty

A long read but it gives you a good view of the approach of the "AI bros"

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-47/essays/an-age-of-hyperabundance/

Stargazing with the Beaverlab Finder TW2

Re: Planet X

When I was very young (50+ years ago), a next door neighbour had a reflecting telescope (no idea of size or spec but he had a concrete base in the garden to mount it on) and I remember one night him just saying "have a look at that" and when I looked through the eyepiece it took me a while to work out what I was seeing, because it wasn't round like Mars that I'd seen before. It was Saturn with enough ring tilt so that the overall view was an oval with a couple of dark spots. Really cool, still remember the wow factor.

Rusty revenant Servo returns to render once more

I'm keeping half an eye on https://ladybird.dev/

Mastodon makes a major move amid Musk's multiple messes

Re: Shame about Mastodon

I've thought about giving BlueSky a try - but it seems invites to join are a commodity (just check eBay!)

Bad software destroyed my doctor's memory

Re: "radically alter the workflow of medical professionals, without their input"

I first made a comment about this 8 years ago.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2015/09/02/nhs_to_go_paperless_by_2020_says_info_director/#c_2620739

System designers absolutely must talk talk to the users. And not just talk, watch them do their job, try and spot the things they do so instinctively that they would think to tell you about them.

To the Moon? Emojis can be financial advice, says judge

Re: Small correction needed in article

"While one investor had reportedly purchased Moments worth a total of over $15.6 million."

That was the bit that made my jaw drop, who has 15 million dollars just laying around that they splash on virtual cards? Or did they actually look at this, investigate, and go 'yeah I'll sell all my stocks and bonds and buy this new thing instead'?

Games Workshop once again battles scariest monster of all: ERP gone wrong

Re: The Horror

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/31/how-games-workshop-grew-to-become-more-profitable-than-google

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

Re: Nice to have.

There was an ST game ... "Midi Maze" that used daisy chained STs to create a 1st person multiplayer shooter (your avatar was just a big smiley face) in a very simple maze.

You could even have one machine with overview mode that showed where everyone was lurking. My friends an I had great fun with it in the pre doom days.

Killing trees with lasers isn’t cool, says Epson. So why are inkjets any better?

I previously posted this in 2015, and although i thankfully haven't been to watch any similar work activities I have no doubt a lot of this still goes on.

I'm not a reactionary but after having spent a few hours in the waiting area of a day surgery unit last week (where patients did have a wrist band with a QR style code) and watching the activity I wonder if the managers have any idea about the non-obvious uses of paper files?

These include:

* Attaching a patient's locker key to her file to keep it safe during the op.

* Provision of files to different theatre teams based on where they were on the central circular desk.

* At a glance checking of a patients position in the queue by where there file was in the array.

* Ad-hoc note scribbling (and diagram drawing) in the files.

* The good old fashioned thumb flicking browsing of old notes in a very thick file by an anaesthetist (presumably visually scanning for related info rather than doing a keyword search)

* Detaching forms/pieces of paper to take away to another location (colour coded forms by what I observed)

And then there's the signing of patient consent forms; and the showing them to the patient in theatre and asking "is this your signature". They'll need something better than the things I sign for parcel delivery!

All these things *can* be supported with technology but I suspect it's not as simple as people think.

'What's the point of me being in my office, just because they want to see me in the office?'

House!

Instagram star gets 11 years for $300m email scam plot

Re: I wonder how long Elizabeth Holmes will get

Apparently she *didn't* defraud the little people, you know people getting misleading results from her tests or anything.

"Holmes, 37, reportedly showed little emotion when the verdicts were read out. The jury found her not guilty of four charges of defrauding the public, though this was cold comfort when set against the other seven charges of defrauding investors and wire fraud. She has denied the charges."

https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/04/elizabeth_holmes_guilty_verdict_theranos/

Meta fined record-breaking $24.6m for deliberately ignoring political ad law

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindf-Inside-Cambridge-Analyticas-Break/dp/1788164997

Just because it's not Cambridge Analytica doing it it doesn't mean their methods have gone away

NHS data platform procurement delayed for a second time

Re: Money trumps humanity

Having just read MindF*ck by Christopher Wylie I would be VERY wary of Palantir. Although the book is about Cambridge Analytica Palantir always seems to be hovering just off page at key moments.

Well worth a read, the headlines don't even scratch the surface of all the crap that CA got up to.

I paid for it, that makes it mine. Doesn’t it? No – and it never did

Re: One Ring to rule them all ...

Yes this! - Streaming service fragmentation. To start with there was Netflix, easy, why bother (a-hem) torrenting. Then Amazon Prime, ok a second won't hurt. then Netflix when big on "home developed shows" and every studio started looking enviously at the customers (Disney, Apple) and you get things like Paramount pulling all the old Star Trek off of Netflix so they can start their own service. Surely they can't all survive?

California state's gun control websites expose personal data

Re: Our privacy laws only punish data blunders

That is scary!

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of fraud: Blood-testing machines were vapourware after all

Re: Sentencing will be interesting

And not guilty of four charges of defrauding the public (and most importantly patients).

Every Little Helps: Former Tesco boss Dave Lewis to advise UK govt on supply chains

Re: The main thing I observed about the (previous) CEO of Tesco...

Just because someone is the head of an organisation with a large supply chain does that really mean they are an *expert* in supply chains? I would have thought the person you really wanted was not a "suit" but someone like the national warehouse manager. But they they probably don't go to the right cocktail parties to get invited to apply.

Version 8 of open-source code editor Notepad++ brings Dark Mode and an ARM64 build, but bans Bing from web searches

Re: the text editor for granddads

I won't down vote you, because hey, personal preference; but I use Visual Studio and Notepad++

Visual Studio for the IDE, code hinting etc. Notepad++ for log files (some very big), XML and everything else (with a few plugins added). NP++ is fast, has a "classic" interface and does it's job very well.

Also NP++ is free Sublime isn't. When I trialled Sublime (a while ago I admit) it seemed more about "style" than usefulness.

Google's diversity strat lead who said Jews have 'insatiable appetite for war' is no longer diversity strat lead

Re: Out of context

Sorry if it came over that way, I had no intention of implying a "secret cabal" with all the associated historical and social baggage. All nations indulge in influence, public relations and propaganda to various degrees, some are better than others, and again in this instance I'm referring to nation states, not peoples, faiths etc.

And as for criticising on the "same issue" - some issues are very strongly geographically specific, I'm not sure how I could criticise Thailand for it's use of air strikes in the occupied territories. Or for that matter criticise the Israeli government for the treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar. The criticism needs to be applied to the agency carrying out the actions.

Re: Out of context

One of the things that seems to me to be prevalent today is the idea that any criticism of Israeli government policies is automatically anti-Semitic. Some is, because some people don't seem to be aware that Jewish ethnicity is not the same as the Judaism the faith and neither are equivalent to an enthusiastic support of the government. But valid criticism is often shouted down.

This conflation has, I personally think, been very carefully crafted and cynically encouraged over a length of time by a highly effective PR campaign.

Even typing this I'm trying to be very careful about what I say!

Harassers and bullies succeed in tech because silence is encouraged

Re: Tales from the Crypt

This will no doubt attract a number of down votes, but ... these sorts of things are an example of where the backing of a union can be very helpful, they have their own legal resources, unfortunately lots of experience in similar cases and more time and money than an individual can dedicate to fighting back. They're a bit like insurance, you hope you never need them, but they're damn helpful when you do.

Vote to turf out remainder of Nominet board looks inevitable after .uk registry ignores reform demands

I've only got one uk domain with an undecided registrar (easily) - any recommendations on who to switch to?

And it really really does seem like there's something to hide that they're clinging on so desperately.

How to ensure your tech predictions catch on in a flash? Do the mash

Re: Future Gazing

Votive offerings

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

Re: Where’s The Effing Ignition Lock!?

When I had a Saab the salesman told me that the ignition key was down by the gear stick because they'd analysed injuries from a lot of crashes and discovered that even in relatively low speed impacts there were an awful lot of damage caused by legs impacting the bunch of keys dangling from the dash.

No idea if that's true but it sure sounds good.

Backblaze on the back foot after 'inadvertently' beaming customer data to Facebook

Re: No customer dashboard should ever fire off a connection to Facebook, Google, or any 3rd party

I have had dealings and meetings with ONS about census data in the past (admittedly a long time ago now) and they always impressed me with their focus on not revealing any individually identifiable information. I'd trust them infinitely more that Facebook!

Oh, no one knows what goes on behind locked doors... so don't leave your UPS in there

Re: MicroVAX II Mayflower

Mapping Orientated Graphics Giving an Improved Edgeless System (I think). I had a layered approach with greater detail as you zoomed in to avoid overflowing integer co-ordinates as everything before had been based on paper sheets for engineering drawings.

Was actually marketed as DOGS Mapping though.

Re: Ahh Pafec

Written in FORTAN and overlayed to heck and beyond to get it to fit. I was there when they announced internally they were going to port to PC and most of us did a mechanic style sucking in of breath over our teeth.

Re: MicroVAX II Mayflower

I used to work for PAFEC, coming up with new names for packages was always fun. SWANS was a a bit of a effort.

We had PIGS (Pafec Interactive Graphics System), DOGS (Drawing Office Graphics System) MOGGIES (Mapping Orientated Graphics ...something something)

I seem to remember that the lubrication module for the finite element software was SLUGS

Apple to halve commission for developers turning over up to $1m in sales via App Store

I can understand the commission on selling an app through the app store. It's the commission on all future purchases related to the app that raises my eyebrows. Lets say for example you sell an app that lets you select pictures and request a hard copy is mailed to you at home. And let's say the initial price includes printing 10 pictures. If you want to print more pictures you have to buy more credit. As I understand it (and correct me if I'm wrong) Apples says that you can only buy that credit in the app (with 30% commission), if you have a website and let people buy credit there your app will be banned from the app store. That's what seems outrageous to me.

Iran's RampantKitten spy crew were snooping on expats and dissidents for six years

"extracting passwords from management software KeePass"

Is there a vulnerability in KeePass then?

Dido 'Queen of Carnage' Harding to lead UK's Institute for Health Protection because Test and Trace went so well

Re: Oh! God! It's you again isn't it!?

"children are unaffected and have been proven to NOT transmit the virus to members of the same household."

I can't find any PROOF of that, the most generous statements I can find are that there's just not enough evidence yet.

World's smallest violin to be played for opportunistic sellers banned from eBay and Amazon for price gouging

Re: Price Gouging: the free market libertarian perspective

And all the companies that bleat about regulatory interference are now suddenly very interested in government loans and grants.

Ah, night shift in the 1970s. Ciggies, hipflasks, ADVENT... and fault-prone disk drives the size of washing machines

This brings back several memories from the early 80s as a new graduate.

I worked as a programmer for some typesetting software, written in assembler on a Data General Nova. It was mostly for local newspaper small ads but also for a company that produced annual financial reports for other businesses. I occasionally had the job of visiting to install new versions which meant I had to travel with one of those disc packs in it's plastic cover. I was allowed to get taxis rather than use the underground as the wisdom in those days was that the electric rail could corrupt the disc!

The users of the system we re-trained from the old hot-lead typesetting systems (The London Science museum has one, amazing mechanical technology) and peeved at what they saw as a de-skilling of their job. So it wasn't too surprising that the company had regular system crashes on a Friday afternoon, late enough that by the time the system had been rebooted and initialised there would be no point in continuing leading to the workers being sent home early. Took us ages to find the bug as any enquires like "what were you doing just before it crashed?" only ever got very vague answers!

I also have memories of the photo-typesetter, driven by paper-tape. It contained an opaque glass disc with transparent cutouts for the letters and numbers. The disc was spun to select the correct symbol and light shone through the "letter" onto photosensitive paper, the paper was moved and the next letter spun into place. To change font size lenses were moved back and forward to change the size of the image on the paper. To change font you inserted a different disc! It made a hell of a racket when in operation..

Oi, drag this creaking, 217-year-old UK census into the data-driven age

I can't speak for other government departments, but in the past I've worked with people from the ONS and their "paranoid" approach to any one being able to individually identify any person or household from data they release is impressive.

If other data holders were like them our data would be a lot safer.

Bye bye MP3: You sucked the life out of music. But vinyl is just as warped

Re: Quality of vinyl

Aahhhh Selectadisc ... have an upvote for memories of a "real" record shop. (They actually had a branch in Soho for a short while as well)

3D printers set for lift off? Yes, yes, yes... at some point in the future

I don't own a 3D printer but a work colleague did and I used SketchUp to design a skeleton frame for an aquarium hood which he printed for me for the cost of materials. It did require breaking my design into "kit parts" because of the size limitation and then doing an "Airfix" assembly after. There was some, sanding, filing and cleaning up and spray painting required but I was very pleased with the result. far neater that my limited carpentry skills would have allowed.

Having said that I haven't since had the "need" to 3D print anything else.

NHS to go paperless by 2020. No, really, it will, says gros fromage

I'm not a reactionary but after having spent a few hours in the waiting area of a day surgery unit last week (where patients did have a wrist band with a QR style code) and watching the activity I wonder if the managers have any idea about the non-obvious uses of paper files?

These include:

* Attaching a patient's locker key to her file to keep it safe during the op.

* Provision of files to different theatre teams based on where they were on the central circular desk.

* At a glance checking of a patients position in the queue by where there file was in the array.

* Ad-hoc note scribbling (and diagram drawing) in the files.

* The good old fashioned thumb flicking browsing of old notes in a very thick file by an anaesthetist (presumably visually scanning for related info rather than doing a keyword search)

* Detaching forms/pieces of paper to take away to another location (colour coded forms by what I observed)

And then there's the signing of patient consent forms; and the showing them to the patient in theatre and asking "is this your signature". They'll need something better than the things I sign for parcel delivery!

All these things *can* be supported with technology but I suspect it's not as simple as people think.

Amazon UK conditions 'exhausting', claims union

Re: From the article....

"so please could some of those who are big on the huggy feely stuff like sympathy and empathy educate me on why you want or need such things at work?"

I'm going to assume that it was an honest question

Just for example... spouse/child/favourite pet falls sick, you're up all night waiting in ER. You go into work in the morning, you're tired, you don't perform your job well that day. Some sympathy and empathy means that people understand why you're having a bad day and you don't end up with loss of pay, "performance management" or notes on your HR file.

Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer found guilty of code theft … again

There's a good detailed report here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2013/09/michael-lewis-goldman-sachs-programmer

Japan showcases really, really fast … whoa, WTF was that?!

"and you will get a seat."

Not just a seat, but a seat that is comfortable for me (a 6ft 2in guy) and that I can stand up and walk away from without even folding away the seat tray.