Posts by Jason Bloomberg

Romania suffers Eurovision premature ejection

Re: If only

Eurovision is hardly the worst thing on TV.

It is probably 20 hours of TV a year tops which is considerably less than that given over to individual sports, let alone collectively. And then there are numerous 'soaps' which are on every night, repeated endlessly, then packaged into omnibus editions in case one hasn't had enough.

Strictly, Bake Off, The Voice, Britain's Got talent, X Factor, I'm a Celebrity, Big Brother, TOWIE, Geordie Shores... I have to put up with never ending shite I don't like so it seems only fair that others should return the same courtesy.

Besides; whatever else people would be watching if Eurovision wasn't on would probably be equally crap.

RIP Prince: You were the soundtrack of my youth

Re: Devastated

If we were more devastated over other deaths, then the world might become a much better place.

Google's 'fair use' mass slurping of books can continue – US Supremes snub writers' pleas

Re: Agree with the court

It is that "only a snippet" which makes it acceptable to me. Even if Google have wholesale copied books without permission in order to deliver those I do see greater good and fair use arguments in that.

The ruling is effectively that it is okay to copy a whole work as fair use in order to provide only snippets. That of course throws up issues of others doing the same, and how the principle applies with respect to video, audio and other works.

This may, in time, prove to be the first step towards more rational and fairer-to-all copyright reform.

UK authorities probe 'drone hitting plane at Heathrow'

Flying IED

Just what we need; terrorists floating 'air mines' in Britain's flight paths.

What's wrong with the Daily Mail Group buying Yahoo?

Woe, woe and thrice woe!

Given the commentards of Yahoo News are often as rabid as those of the Mail; that alone probably makes it a marriage made in heaven.

That said, it's rare to find any media publication comments section which doesn't get used as a platform for hate speech these days.

Australia's Dick finally drops off

Re: Never knew Dick Smith existed, back in the day ...

Kids these days have absolutely zero idea how electronics work

That isn't entirely true, and I am not sure it's that much worse than 40 years ago.

When I got into electronics as a kid in the 70s that was because I found I had an interest in it. There were electronic component shops and mags around but I suspect mostly serving an older generation. I don't think electronics as a hobby was quite as widespread amongst the younger generation at the time as we tend to recall now.

Electronics has become more digital than analogue but there are plenty of schools interfacing analogue sensors, LEDs, motors and servos to microcontrollers in Design and Technology and other STEM courses, building micro-mouse robots and the like. And that's been going on for many years, long before the Raspberry Pi arrived.

It's true; most people aren't into electronics, but I recall it was the same when I was a kid.

AMC sobers up, apologizes for silly cinema texting plan

"Aren't TVs big enough?"

No. I've got a 40-incher (ooo-er missus) which felt big when I got it but it's not.

I think I would have to go pretty large - and beyond the room and budget I have - to be able to appreciate the opening scene of A Clockwork Orange as intended, even Star Wars.

I could probably think of other examples which really demand 'huge screen presentation' and rather pale on anything smaller.

I suppose I could sit closer to the TV :-)

Google yanks Chrome support for Windows XP, at long last

Re: No problem here

However, it can no longer be downloaded from Google, so a system rebuild/reinstall will be problemmatic...

Bugger; forgot about that - Seems to still be available from here, though I can't vouch for the link -

https://dl.google.com/release2/h8vnfiy7pvn3lxy9ehfsaxlrnnukgff8jnodrp0y21vrlem4x71lor5zzkliyh8fv3sryayu5uk5zi20ep7dwfnwr143dzxqijv/49.0.2623.112_chrome_installer.exe

No problem here

Chrome still runs, just that it won't be updated. On the plus side; Chrome is no longer presenting a pop-up on my XP machines telling me support will end.

I am not sure many running XP will care. It may be another nudge towards upgrading but most XP users will be happy to run their systems into the ground, will swap to other browsers until they finally have to give it up.

Bay Area man forced out of his $400 box home

Re: Knickers in a twist

But if the same official were turning a blind eye to such things there would be plenty accusing him of not doing his job and there would be an outcry if it was revealed officials were effectively sanctioning such things.

It was, as others have said, his big mouth which brought the authorities down on him, and the same too for the Michigan mum who is involved in an incestuous sexual relationship with her son.

Blazing it all over the media means officials are forced to act in accordance with the letter of the law.

The 11th Commandment: Don't get caught.

And we can add the 12th: Don't dob yourself in.

Pair programming: The most extreme XP practice?

But is it DevOps?

It seems every methodology, practice or trick these days, no matter how old or well known, is being placed under a DevOps banner.

US bus passenger cracks one off for three hours

What sort of muppet sits there for three hours without complaining? While the accused shouldn't have started in the first place he might actually have some mitigation in his claim that he thought she was enjoying it.

I'm surprised at his managing a three hour wank. I usually pass out after two.

Half of people plug in USB drives they find in the parking lot

Re: Probabilities

I was going to say much the same thing. Nothing is guaranteed safe, nothing at all. But in the real world we have to accept a level of risk or we would stay in our beds and, even then, perhaps end up being crushed by a falling ceiling.

It really is no-win. And some people will get burnt. The best we can do is mitigate risk and hope to remember to do that even when we get excited by a freebie found in a car park or the shiny new box which arrives from the supplier.

UK competition watchdog gripes to Brussels about Three-O2 merger

BT+EE

Can someone explain why the BT merger with EE was considered acceptable but this is not?

Ultra-rare WWII Lorenz cipher machine goes on display at Bletchley Park

Re: I wonder how Silicon Roundabout would have gone about cracking Lorenz ?

With DevOps it could have all been done in a week.

Field technicians want to grab my tool and probe my things

TV Repair Shop

There is one on the corner of my street. I did drop in once to see if they could fix an analogue oscilloscope but the chap behind the counter showed no enthusiasm for doing so.

I imagine it is actually some sort of money laundering outfit, kept running for tax purposes, or simply an 'advanced garden shed option' for a man who really doesn't want to spend much time at home.

Google, Facebook's CAPTCHAs vanquished by security researchers

Re: Can you solve this Captcha?

"All our articles are generated using DevOps"

'Panama papers' came from email server hack at Mossack Fonseca

Re: Given the scarcity of items on our cousins in the material released...

The BBC in particular *did* concentrate on the Putin angle, especially in the first reports, despite the Putin link being nowhere near as strong as, say, David Cameron's.

Later reports seem to be restoring the balance somewhat.

Working from home when the first reports arrived; the BBC were being very vague and only reporting that the leak had occurred. It was notable that there was little substance as to what it might mean, what it had exposed, or who was due to get a good kicking. All quite odd when they were promoting the related Panorama programme.

There seemed to be 'an abundance of caution' in play early on, as if they were hinting at knowing something but weren't going to say until others had. And that seems to be how it played out.

April Fool decries Blighty's dodecaquid

"Sanwin had no real excuse to be so uniformed in their opinion and thereby made themselves fair game for a ribbing."

Oops. Looks like I'm up for a bit of a rubbing.

Damned keybeard.

It is understandable that someone might suspect it was an April Fool article but that has to be set against others having already explained in the comments that it actually wasn't.

Sanwin had no real excuse to be so uniformed in their opinion and thereby made themselves fair game for a ribbing.

Continuous Lifecycle: The final countdown

If it had been before midday I would have said I'd be buying a ticket.

India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent

Re: Dull

Wilkinsons/Wilko sell 22W bayonet LED (100W equivalent) which I find are okay but they aren't cheap.

I have been on the lookout for those bakelite Y-adapters my grandparents used to use to run irons, toasters, hoovers and everything else from the lighting circuit so I can double-up bulbs to get desired brightness but they are hard to find for bayonet fitting these days.

I have a stockpile of incandescents because I have dimmer switches and most LED and CFL don't like working with dimmers.

I got a bargain on my CFLs as I bought them just as VAT temporarily dropped a few years ago, old VAT inclusive price shown on shelves, adjustment made at checkout. My supermarket were selling CFLs at 50p each or five for a £1 to encourage up-take. Took five to the self-service checkout and I think they subtracted 17.5% of the 50p price times five or something like that because those five CFLs cost me around 25p all-in. Suffice to say I ended up with enough CFLs to last a lifetime.

'No regrets' says chap who felled JavaScript's Jenga tower – as devs ask: Have we forgotten how to code?

Risk reduced but not gone

The problem ppears to be that a company said "take that down, infringes trademark"; the author replied "GFY". The company told NPM, "take it down, infringes trademark"; NPM obliged. Author then took everything else away.

The good fortune here was that what many relied upon wasn't a direct target of the take down request, could be reinstated.

But what happens if what is relied upon is part of the take down request?

It seems the potential for something many rely upon disappearing is still there. Reduced, but still there.

Microsoft's bigoted teen bot flirts with illegali-Tay in brief comeback

Re: well...

I suppose whether one see it as a dismal failure depends on what one was expecting or hoping it would do. It seems to me its purpose is to ingratiate itself with those talking to it without any care as to how offensive that may be to others. It seems to have modelled social media 'hate amplification' perfectly -

"I hate blacks"

"And Jews"

"And feminists"

"And don't get me started on gays, commies and bankers"

"Hitler had it right"

US govt says it has cracked killer's iPhone, legs it from Apple fight

Missing the big picture

The bottom line is the FBI are now in a position to assert that Apple's unwillingness to help law enforcement endangered America and Americans.

It doesn't matter that it isn't proven or may even be outright bullshit; it is what will be said and what many will choose to believe. It reinforces the view that "encryption is the terrorist's friend", those providing encryption are aiding terrorists, endangering people's security and safety.

With "the safety and security of our citizens" as the number one priority, it will ultimately be a win for the FBI.

Microsoft did Nazi that coming: Teen girl chatbot turns into Hitler-loving sex troll in hours

Re: A Sweary AI...

How about giving it a job as a staff writer for El Reg?

Won't work. She didn't mention DevOps every second tweet.

Israeli biz fingered as the FBI's iPhone cracker

My god; it's full of stars

I think we can be guaranteed to be told that, once unlocked, the device was crammed full of evidence which will help the fight against terrorism. We won't be told what that evidence is - for national security reasons - but we can be sure it will presented to show that Feds were right to want to crack it open, and Apple endangered America in refusing to assist in that.

And we'll be told that whether they do unlock it or fail in that effort. There's a reason Israel and America are bestest friends forever.

Stagefright flaw still a nightmare: '850 million' Androids face hijack risk

850 million at risk

And 850 million people who haven't had a problem.

It may be "...yet" but it is likely one of the reasons people are resigned to whatever risk there actually is. And I doubt many of those 850 million could upgrade their Android version if they wanted to.

Oh, sugar! Sysadmin accidently deletes production database while fixing a fault

Been there. Got the T-shirt

Back in the day when not all computers had an OS I once saved memory to the system sector of the disk rather than the user sector it should have gone to. An all-nighter ensued restoring that from punched tapes - yes, it really was back in the day.

I am sure I'm not the only one who has used MS-DOS 'COPY' to accidentally move a whole directory into a single file, then deleted that directory before realising. Or more simply deleted the wrong directory. I still occasionally get caught out by "COPY . .\BACKUP" where I don't press the keys hard enough so the first dot is missing and I overwrite the latest from the backup.

With the best will in the world we all do something stupid from time to time. But there's nothing better than being screamed at that things have to be fixed quickly or heads will roll to make things worse than they already were.

How one developer just broke Node, Babel and thousands of projects in 11 lines of JavaScript

Re: Time Zones vs. Left Pad @ BinkyTheMagicPaperclip

I agree with what you are saying, but there is also the possibility a library is full of bloat and dependencies and 'who knows what' and, if an external resource as here, could disappear at any instant or change in some unexpected way which breaks things.

It's not a binary choice of use libraries or don't, it's a more complicated matter than that.

I was surprised how much broke for what is such a simple function which I would have in-lined myself. In this case the library could be restored, but it would have been a different matter if it could not have been.

Hopefully this will be a wake-up call for those who slavishly use third-party libraries without ever considering the consequences of doing so.

Apple engineers rebel, refuse to work on iOS amid FBI iPhone battle

Re: The end of Apple

"Pissing off the FBI" is not a crime.

I very much doubt it is consequence free and it may well be a crime, or at least interpreted that way.

I am sure there's an obstruction of justice angle, refusing to obey a lawful court order, contempt, and possibly treason and sedition if one digs deep enough. Oh and add on terrorism for shits and giggles.

Besides, once your work mates start turning up dead, maybe a spouse and their kids, and you've had a couple of visits from some quite nasty men who will explain un-American to you in plain and blunt terms, you will probably have a change of heart.

Successful DevOps? You'll need some new numbers for that

Re: Oh look, another DevOps article

I was quite impressed the article hadn't attracted a single comment when I looked late yesterday.

Perhaps what we need is restraint on commenting on DevOps; let's see if the lack of interest sinks in.

NASA celebrates 50-year anniversary of first spaceship docking in orbit

Re: On a positive note...

And the percentage of the world's population caught up in violent conflict is at a historical low.

Probably. A million caught up in conflict with a global population of a billion would be a higher percentage than 9 million and a population of 10 billion.

It does however feel like playing number games when the entire Middle East and swathes of Africa appear to be on fire.

Judge orders Universal Credit internal reviews must be disclosed

From here to there, eventually

The main problem with big projects seems to be that they don't just seek to fix a mess, make it work how it should, they seek to be better, and do more, and it's inevitably driven by promised cost savings rather than being the right way to do things.

That means that, rather than doing one thing, or two things done sequentially, projects encompass far more, and it all has to be done together. And that can be a recipe for disaster even in small projects

"KISS".

Or maybe DevOps :-) :-) :-)

UK Snoopers' Charter crashes through critics into the next level

Re: Abstainers

They will be pushing the "I was not for it" angle.

We should note they were not against it.

A typo stopped hackers siphoning nearly $1bn out of Bangladesh

$950m

It's enough to make me consider trying it. I'll make sure I invest in a spielling chucker firts.

German lodges todger in 13 steel rings

Fire! Burn baby burn!

It must be tempting for the fire brigade to rock up with a blowtorch and point out the usual way of removing metal rings is to heat them up until they expand and slide off.

Go DevOps before your bosses force you to. It'll be easier that way

DevOps - it's got electrolytes

It sure would be great if someone could actually explain DevOps, how it works and how it benefits, in a simple to understand format, which doesn't require an expensive indoctrination course.

That no one can has it looking like snake oil, simply labelled "new and improved" with evangelists once again telling us how it's better than the last snake oil we were sold. And, oh boy, have we all drunk a lot of snake oil over the years.

I am sure there is a germ of an idea in DevOps, something useful to be had, but there seems to be plenty of over-hype as well. Anything too complicated to be explained in a couple of paragraph always makes me suspicious about its plausibility. I can read pages and pages about how it's great but very little which shows how and why.

If it's so great, so fundamentally obvious, a no-brainer, I really shouldn't need to sign-up with the Great Profit Żeɳu to have it explained to me.

Austrian mayor spunks €40k on virgin-eating dragon

40K isn't a lot and if rebranding does save money or otherwise pay for itself then it's money well spent, certainly not misuse or abuse of public money.

Of course it's "our" money; it always is. We elect officials to do what they believe is best, and we have to take it somewhat on trust that they will. It is pointless to elect officials to make decisions and then seek to micromanage them.

What would you prefer; their spending 100K on public consultations and holding votes to decide if a rebranding is wanted or not by the public ?

Knackered Euro server turns Panasonic smart TVs into dumb TVs

Hi-Fi separates and the radiogram all-in-one

I have some sympathy but not a lot. It's not like we weren't aware of the problems of buying all-in-one 'smart' systems.

The convenience of integration and packaging is offset against obsolescence as technology changes. One either buys into having to eventually throw the whole lot out when it doesn't do what one wants or buy separates so the obsoleted parts can be upgraded piecemeal.

If people thought it was somehow going to be different when it came to smart TVs I am not sure what they based that notion on. Any expectation things would work for ever was just that, not a guaranteed promise. Caveat emptor.

How the FBI will lose its iPhone fight, thanks to 'West Coast Law'

Hyperbole

If Apple broke its own phone's security because of US legal demands, China would demand that right. So would Russia. So would every other dictatorship.

How are Russia, China and other dictators going to exercise that claimed right?

The US holds an advantage because Apple is a US corporation and Tim Cook is a US citizen under US jurisdiction and bound by US law.

It's a whole different ball game for foreign countries who can simply be told to fuck off with very little they can do to force compliance with their demands.

Rejoice, sysadmins, there's a new glamour job nobody understands

"Master of DevOps"

I wrote that on my business card. No idea what it means but as everyone who asks "what's that?" doesn't either, it's win-win.

Raspberry Pi 3: Four days old and already flying

Already FRYING

Considering the overheating problems some Pi 3 seem to have.

You're a cybercrime kingpin. You need a new evil lackey. How much do you tell them?

Seems what they need is DevOps

^ See title

Raspberry Pi 3 to sport Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE – first photos emerge

Re: Changes from Pi 2

On the underside there is a very curious white connector/header with 8(?) tracks going to it. It's below the HDMI connector when looking sideways on. So could that be some kind of SATA or other serial interface?

It seems the Wi-Fi connects to the SoC using an SDIO bus, which I would guess is why it's still four USB 2.0 ports + 10/100 LAN same as on earlier versions. I would expect the Bluetooth controller also attaches to the same SDIO bus and my guess would be this is a connector for additional, external SDIO devices.

So...what are the full specs?

Broadcom BCM2837 64-bit ARMv7 Quad Core 1.2GHz

1GB RAM

BCM43143 Wi-Fi on board

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) on board

40-pin extended GPIO

4 x USB 2 ports

4 -ole stereo output and composite video port

Full-size HDMI

CSI camera port for connecting the Raspberry Pi camera

DSI display port for connecting the Raspberry Pi touch screen display

Micro-SD port for loading your operating system and storing data

Upgraded switched Micro USB power source (now supports up to 2.4 Amps)

Re: Birthday soon!

Presumably. It looks like postings about the Pi 3 are being deleted on the official forum as soon as they are made, probably in an attempt to keep the announcement as secret as possible. I doubt El Reg will be the Foundation's favourite media outlet this Saturday morning.

Samsung off the hook as $120m Apple patent verdict tossed

US District Court

Appreciating that the court system is how it is because we accept courts make mistakes which can be corrected upon appeal; just how did the District Court get it so wrong that they made a $120m award which has now been overturned?

It would seem the District Court was entirely mistaken on something fundamental to this case.

BOFH: This laptop has ceased to be. And it's pub o'clock soon

A one-bit self signed SSL key

A three figure BMI

Two phrases which have put a huge smile on my face. At least it's some compensation for all the DevOps ads.