Posts by uncredited

Boy riding bubble realizes what he's on, asks for more air

Re: I have a question

I think the frothing from your mouth might be clouding your vision or your reading comprehension, likely both. I literally said that it's not about the number of birds being killed.

Re: I have a question

The issue isn't how many birds are killed by windmills but which birds are killed. It's mostly small birds, but a considerably large portion is very large birds, which are also the most likely to be endangered species. Another issue is the loss of habitat, meaning indirect loss of birds.

https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

European Commission: Make Europe Great Again... for startups

New regulation to the rescue!

Surely they can just pass a new law and everyone will flock to the EU to create startups?

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

Trump? Really?

Fascinating how most are blaming Trump for this obvious spying and leaking of data when it has already been going on for a long time. Most companies have been willingly uploading their granular sales and behaviour data to companies like Google and Microsoft since the mid 2000s through Analytics, Office suites and BI tools, just to name a few examples. Lots of technical people along with privacy/security specialists have been warning about this for a long time and no one has listened.

If anything companies and governments should be thankful to the Trump administration for bringing this into light in a way that scares the excrement out of their collective rear ends.

Euro techies call for sovereign fund to escape Uncle Sam's digital death grip

Re: Mmm-hmmm.

> It also helps them keep hold of their pensions.

I'm so thankful for the Swedish regulation that helped Swedes lose parts of their pension to the Northvolt debacle scrapping growth requirements for the pension funds and force the funds to "invest" in more "green projects".

In more and more cases the only thing about pensions the government is helping people with is forcing them to pay more into it with diminishing chances they'll ever get anything out of them.

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

Re: Don't people test edge cases any more?

The number of times I've been told to remove tests that deal with edge cases "because that will never happen" is horrifying - and I've worked in a few financial systems...

We challenged you to come up with tech predictions for 2024 (wrong answers only) – here are some favorites so far

Still not here but...

I bet we'll have flying cars by then!

Theranos founder Holmes ordered to jail after appeal snub

Re: Never thought I'd see the day

> How some totally unqualified nobody managed to round up all those billions in investment money, and conned former cabinet members and generals to sit on the board of her imaginary company I'll never know.

Tell them exactly what they want to hear, either they're going to make loads of money or as is more popular now, they'll save the world!

Just because on-prem is cheaper doesn’t make the cloud a money pit

> And don't try the "hired sysadmins are expensive" bullshit.

Many companies hide the real system administration costs by passing it over to software developers in the "cross-functional teams", so instead of having a couple of competent system administrators you have a whole horde of backend developers with very limited understanding of running and maintaining servers setting up and running "servers" in cloud services.

The developers' time is wasted on effectively working as substandard sysadmins on top of often having to be database administrators as well, but it's fantastic because it's "cloud"

YouTube loves recommending conservative vids regardless of your beliefs

Not just your views

The study seems to have one fundamentally wrong assumption, that the recommendations are only based on what the user views. If that were the case a new user with fresh account that watches one video of a cat would only be recommended cat videos after the first video but that's not what happens.

Google has said that there are multiple factors that are in play, among them is "engagement", which they seem to mean how many users "comment" or "like" videos and based on other studies and content creator's own experiences, "right-wing content" generates more engagement.

Popularity in your region also weighs in heavily, Youtube recommends to me a ridiculous amount of "life-style(*) videos" from the country I live in, even though I systematically ask not to be recommended any of these channels.

(*) Life style - as in "hey, see how much I drank yesterday while wearing the clothes I was given as an advertisement"

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

Re: EFF' take

"They individually, and over a period of time came to their own conclusions about how to deal with a very influential man, and his frothing supporters, all calling for various people to be hung and the rule of law disobeyed."

This may be what they claim and might even have been true but the timing of these deletes and bans on not just Trump and Parler, doesn't do them any favours and might even get them in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission that specifically bans and punishes group boycotts.

Even Ron Paul was blocked from updating his Facebook page accusing him, of all people, of "repeatedly violating community standards".

Facebook also deleted, without any explanation, several hundred thousand posts from a group consisting of people that have left the democratic party.

This was a political takedown, nothing else.

BBC makes switch to AWS, serverless for new website architecture, observers grumble about the HTML

Re: "Instead, the BBC team devised a new architecture based on serverless computing."

Because, you know, it's better, somehow!

OOP there it is: You'd think JavaScript's used more by devs than Java... but it's not – JetBrains survey

It literally says in the article:

"The big part of the response are using our tools currently, it's about 60 per cent so there is definitely a bias towards our customers. "

OK, which Dombås stuffed Windows 10 to bursting at Swedish flatpack flinger?

Re: "Relationship-ending"

> Guaranteed to cement long lasting team resentments..!

Isn't that the purpose of all team building exercises?

Report: Women make up just 17% of IT workforce, paid 15% less than men

Re: one for you, one for me

"it's our fault we get paid less so perhaps it's men's fault they don't get many teaching jobs?"

You've completely missed that this is exactly the point! Men choose not to go for teaching jobs and therefore they don't get teaching jobs, women choose not to go for IT jobs and therefore don't get IT jobs.

NASA flies plane through Earthly shadow of Kuiper Belt object

Re: I'm lost

"in front of A sun" not "in front of THE sun", although "in front of a star" would probably have been clearer.

Xiaomi preps Linux laptops for the post Christmas sales rush

Would you mind posting a link to that computer? I've been looking for a decent laptop to run Linux (Fedora in my case) and so far I've not found many that are interesting.

So much for rainbows, Zuck: Facebook staff still overwhelmingly male and white

Re: Shock, surprise .. NOT!

If you had bothered to watch the video you'd have seen that it not only cites but interviews researchers that conducted some of the largest social studies ever made on exactly this issue and the results were exactly as Infernoz quoted them: In more gender equal countries women tend to stay away from technical careers such as in IT for the very reason stated above, they chose the career they were interested in.

Gates: Renewable energy can't do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D

Re: He's close....

Cooking the humidity in the air might be considered a breaking point yes...

Pirate Party leads Icelandic voting intentions poll

Polls in Iceland usually have a sample size of around 1,000 people, the same as in most countries I'm told. Apparently sample sizes bigger than that don't give a much better margin of error. I'm not a statistician so I don't know that for sure but considering that sample sizes are similar in Denmark and Sweden as well there's probably something in that.

Didn't the Left once want the WORKERS to get all the dosh?

Re: Captialism got rid of Racism!!

Well, that capitalist invented the spade, then found the resources (usually money, often from other capitalists) to make the said spade and finally had to travel to the farmer and show him the benefits of using the spade. Of course this is nothing but exploitation of the person that put the spade together and got paid for his time.

Scientific consensus that 2014 was record hottest year? No

Re: Propaganda!

" while there is a government subsidy (which is paid for by the tax-payers), it is entirely voluntary"

Eh?? So people get to choose whether or not they pay these taxes?

Sticky Tahr-fy pudding: Ubuntu 14.04 slickest Linux desktop ever

Re: A slice off the top

Pete 2 said:

"However, the principle still applies: that application design has not kept up with screen layouts and could do with a thorough overhaul to get it into the 21st century."

Maybe going back to the 90s web design and move the menus to a column down the left? No vertical space needed!

fWHoaR! Researcher crack eternal mystery of what women want in a man

I wish that only applied to women. My (male) roommate can't watch a properly set 4:3 aspect ratio on his 16:9 TV - he simply must have it stretched out.

US Republican enviro-vets: 'Climate change is real. Deal with it'

@FredBloggsY Re: Nothing To Worry About

Well, can you point to even one prediction that has been correct so far?

Re: Utter tosh

> The deep oceans ARE warming rapidly.

> Simple measurable fact from thousands of ARGO bouys.

> http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/AR4WG1SeaSurfaceTemp.jpg?711122

Well four out of five studies on the Argo data seem to indicate the exact opposite...

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/06/new-paper-on-argo-data-trenberths-ocean-heat-still-missing/

Partying, beer and C++: How to choose the right Comp-Sci degree for you

Re: Can somebody clarify...

I translate it like this:

"Women in general are piss poor at negotiating salaries and will take far lower offers than men which in turn will force the average wages in that particular field down." *

It may not be what the author meant but this is my experience and I'm starting to see it here in Sweden. Programmer salaries are slowly moving downwards at the same time as more women enter the field and when you ask them about their pay you weep silently, knowing what is happening.

* This was actually tested by a union in Iceland about 10 years ago, they posted an ad for a job and called everyone that applied in for an interview. During the interview everyone was asked what salary they requested and the male that asked the lowest was way above the average for the women. The woman that asked for the highest was slightly above the average male and the male that asked the highest wanted close to three times as much as female that had the lowest request.

Re: Maths

I've never understood that incredible hard-on people seem to have for Maths as some necessity for Computer Science. I've been working as a programmer for close to 7 years and have yet to see a single math problem requiring more than just basic algebra. Sure Maths can help with logical thinking but far more often what is needed is basic understanding of human behaviour.

Short-staffed website swaps DOGS for DEVELOPERS

Re: Good ideas

Maybe the programmers would have known that but they're usually not the ones doing the actual hiring.

Peak Facebook: British users lose their Liking for Zuck's ad empire

Re: Hotel Facebook

I do the exact opposite to what most people do - I click on at least one ad a day, specifically those that I have absolutely no interest in! Sure, that makes FB show me more ads but it's just too much fun thinking about how they are marketing me :)

IT salaries: Why you are a clapped-out Ferrari

Re: In fact

"there's a genuine bias against practical cleverness throughout AngloSaxon business culture."

If only that were true only with AngloSaxon business culture! I live and work in Scandinavia and here practical cleverness is frowned up on just as much as anywhere, probably even more. Companies much prefer a silent yes-man that will patch things up with duct-tape and chewing gum rather than solve the real problem at hand.

I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working

Re: This is all too familiar.

"I only use linux" is my standard reply - that gets me out of just about anything even though I'm writing this on my Windows desktop at home!

Oi, Microsoft, where's my effin' toolbar gone?

Re: There is a simple explanation

"The ribbon bar helps users to learn to use Word properly by presenting styles and other core features to them in a more understandable way."

The the way styles were implemented in Word was a complete and utter disaster which is why many of those that actually tried learning to use them gave up and went back to the "bold and italic buttons".

Iceland thinks long and hard over extreme smut web ban law

Re: The interesting thing here is that, from everything I have read, the Icelanders..............

I agree with that it sounds the same but unfortunately in Iceland there are precedents for exactly this. The law itself usually doesn't define the subject but states that the subject is defined in a separate regulation. The problem is that the regulation can be changed at any time by the minister in the given cabinet without the need to consult the parliament or in fact anyone at all. Thus "violent porn" can change to whatever the sitting minister feels like it should and could easily become just "porn" without any need for justification.

Re: If the lady is simply (according to you) some kind of "lefty lesbo" whose opinions.......

First off, the minister in question is male, hardly lesbian as such.

His party got their votes because of three things, knee-jerk reaction to the bank crash, promising to protect Icelandic households after the financial crash and promising to fight against EU membership, these promises didn't last through the election night, before voting was even finished they had reached an agreement with the socialist party to apply for EU membership and one of the first things they did (with help from the socialist party) after getting to power was to hand over one of the banks to hedge funds and venture capitalist groups that have since forced a lot of the very people the party promised to protect, into bankruptcy.

This almost wiped out the party in opinion polls, plummeting from approx. 20% following in the previous election to having recovered to just over 7% just before the "violent porn" play. So I'm far from alone in thinking that this party can't be trusted at all, most of their voters in the previous elections agree on that. The party itself has lost a lot of its members already and the credibility is completely erased.

Icelander's have experienced this party in charge, they don't trust them any more, and most of them are far from "tight thinking hairy chested hetero thinkers". This party has spoken on numerous occasions about the "need" for internet censorship, the current party leader has even seriously suggested a need for an "Internet police" that would be allowed to monitor internet traffic and block unwanted material. This is a totalitarian party by all definitions that is partly controlled by extreme feminist factions that even outspoken Icelandic feminists deny any connection with.

Re: The interesting thing here is that, from everything I have read, the Icelanders..............

Actually the minister's party is the communist/feminist party in Iceland which alone should raise questions about the "study" conducted by that same minister's work group. This party has repeatedly discussed ideas about the "need" for internet censorship on various subjects ever since the party was founded in the late 1990s and this latest is hardly any surprise.

They've finally realised that hardly anyone in Iceland agrees with their ideas on internet censorship so they've taken to the classic "Think about the children" argument hoping to gain enough support through that. This is simply a "gateway law" that will allow the "violent porn" definition to be widened by a minister at any given time, probably dropping the "violent" part sooner rather than later.

BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

Re: RIP

Sweden, Denmark and Iceland also still have teletext and at least the Swedish ones are still quite useful.

Purpose of RFID finally discovered: It's for pairing up socks!

There's a plastic alternative

Maybe this would be a better alternative, no metal banging around in your washer:

http://www.amazon.com/Cyclops-Sock-Clip-Keeps-Multi-colored/dp/B006S3Y4A0

Cook's 'values' memo shows Apple has lost its soul

What did Samsung supposedly copy?

Does anyone know exactly what it was that Samsung has been deemed to have copied from Apple?

PayPal is bleeding market share and it's all eBay's fault

Re: No alternative to PayPal here

Moneybookers and Dalpay can help you outside USA/UK and their prices didn't compare too badly with PayPal the last time I checked. I have helped a few people set up both systems and as far as I know all of them are quite happy.

There are probably a few other payment processors that aren't too expensive, it's just a question of finding them.

Facebook needs Opera - to rescue it from dependence on Apple

Positive news

Contrary to most here I welcome this with open arms, I don't even remember when I started using Opera, it's been my browser of choice for so long but I think this could turn out to be extremely positive for Opera as a browser. It could lead to a lot more people using it and as a consequence a lot more sites (read online banks etc.) will be available for Opera.

Android app sales skimpy, sluggish, slack, scanty...

Help on that!

I wouldn't mind knowing what you did to partition the SD card, would any linux do or can you do it directly in the phone?

'Upgraded' Apple iMacs lock out hard drive replacement

Tear down instructions

My cheap Fujitsu laptop came with instructions on how to open it and upgrade/change both hard disc and and RAM in seven different languages and so did the Dell I have at work (although the language count differs slightly) so my guess is it's quite common.

Apple's 'App Store trademark': A farce of Jobsian proportions

Apple didn't even invent "App"

Acorn had a special folder called "Apps", containing applications, in RISC OS 2 back in 1988 and it's been there in every version of RISC OS since so there's plenty of "prior use" examples and I'm pretty sure that the term "app" as an abbreviation of application is far older than that.

Jon Bon Jovi accuses Steve Jobs of murdering music biz

Fantastic coincidence

Exactly when I was reading this comment the song was running in my headphones (on shuffle)! Guess I'm Wanted: Dead or Alive :)

MPs call for crackdown on pre-paid credit cards

Pre-paid Credit Card?

Doesn't anyone see the fail there?

Microsoft finally debuts Euro-choose-a-browser screen

This "nonsense" must go on

The only reason this "nonsense" is still going on is because of the slow moving beast that the EU judicial system is - Microsoft has dragged this on forever in courts because that tactic usually works, the opposing party just stops bothering and gives up.

Whether or not this will have any effect on the browser wars remains to be seen and is in fact almost completely irrelevant in this case, this is a case against a large corporation attempting to corner a technology and eliminating competitors, not on merit but by abusing a monopoly.

By going all the way, the bureaucrats have managed not only to surprise just about everyone but also managed to show Microsoft and bidding monopolies that the costs will be severe if they don't do as the courts tell them from the very start. There is a legal precedence now that this has gone all the way and other similar issues are more likely to end the same way - the next time a big bully corporation might not be so tempted to try the "bind them in court for years" tactic but to settle early on. Far from me being an EU fan but the EU is big enough to keep big companies like Microsoft in court forever and coming out on top when it has the laws on it's side. In the end the only thing companies like this understand is the huge lawyer bill stacking up so that's the only way to really hurt them.

Opera cuts cord on first open-source baby

The silver bullet...

"Opening the source code would result in more specialized experts on all platforms and likely even better support on diverse platforms."

Now, how many times has this sudden flood of experts resulted in anything more than the "new toy" syndrome where the application is squeezed together on the new platform for minor functionality and then left to die because the original "expert" finds an even newer toy to play with for a while?

Safari, Opera browsers patch-shy, says study

Opera 10 will have automatic updates

This article reminded me to check which Opera version I was running here at work and of course I was one version behind, too many computers to keep track of :)

According to the Opera site, Opera 10 will fix the updating problem, I myself have been waiting for this simply because I'm too lazy to check for an update and almost always rely on the automatic checker.

Can you talk and drive?

Interesting test

Interesting test, have a person doing two tasks, neither of which he (or she) is likely to ever have done before, let alone simultaneously and if the person fails this test, assume that he would automatically fail at doing two different tasks, both of which he does several times every single day and quite often both at the same time.