Posts by Tim99

Meta, Google learn the art of the quiet layoff

Re: "increase productivity"

Grim - I think you may be a bit too optimistic.

Re: employement tribubal.

When I did that stuff, I believe that the career grade was the one that you would spend much of your productive career on. Your final grade was considered to be one or two higher. One reason that I left the Scientific Civil Service is that my (pleasant, competent, and fair) boss told me in my yearly staff review that my career grade was PSO or possibly SPSO, but if I had been to an Oxbridge type institution it would have been SPSO/DCSO. Perhaps he was right; I left the SCS to work for a Public Utility, and then left there at the age of 40 as a PSO, with a written offer of regrading as an SPSO if I stayed.

Re: You can increase productivity if you fire the right people

I've thought that there are 4 types of employees (and people!). The doers and thinkers; the enablers; the masses; and the boat anchors. The first does the hard or the vision stuff; the second help/make it happen; the third go along for the ride and do a bit; and the fourth stuff it up, or are actively difficult. The proportion might be 10:30:50:10

In business (and life?) the Pareto principle (80:20 rule) is certainly real: 80% of "good things" come from 20% of customers/staff/people; 80% of "bad things" come from 20% of customers/staff/people (and not normally the "good things" ones).

We can then superadd Sturgeon's Revelation: That Ninety percent of everything is crud - This is why most of us can't have/do nice things...

iPhone 14 iFixit teardown shows Apple's learning on repairs

Your point is well taken, but some of the children think that their phone is their main/only computer (and it often is).

I'm retired now, but still do unpaid work, and even I found that I could travel and do work with a small iPhone, mouse and small bluetooth keyboard and an HDMI cable/adapter to connect to hotel TVs. YMMV as I could do much of it with an iPad too.

Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic

In the 1970s UK Civil Service, if you had not reached the appropriate rank for the carpet (or desk, hatstand, coatrack), had been moved into an office that had said items, and had use of said items (for a year?), you were then entitled to it; even if you were moved elsewhere.

My union rep insisted that details of the hardwood kneehole desk, 3 cornered coat/hatstand, and carpet square that were in my office were entered into my staff file so that I would be entitled to them in future. Apparently my lowly rank meant that I should only have had linoleum, 2 clothes hooks mounted on the wall/door, and a table desk with a single metal filing cabinet.

SWIFT to trial blockchain – but not for its core payment service

Re: What a load of blockchain

So we need to add "Agile" and "Web Scale" too?

Open source databases: What are they and why do they matter?

Re: MariaDb and BSL

If you are running on a Pi, have you considered SQLite? It is more capable than many think: SQLite.org - Appropriate Uses for SQLite (Websites).

NASA scrubs Artemis mission yet again because SLS just can't handle the pressure

Re: Hydrogen is HUGE

Beryllium and oxygen? The melting point of Be (~1300C) and the boiling point of beryllia (~4000) may be a bit of an engineering problem if you want to pump fuel, and have the exhaust leave as a gas (melting point of liquid ~2500C, which would still be tricky). Perhaps fluorine as the oxidiser, but then maybe lithium as the fuel? Both fluoride salts are liquid at <600C. Oh sorry, you said "sane" to handle, that takes fluorine out...

To be nearly serious: High impulse/low volume systems like those based on hydrazines/nitrogen oxides are useful in (extra)orbital craft, but their cost, handling difficulty, and toxicity make them impractical for launch vehicles. As an aside, I worked on this with some of them, including 95% H2O2...

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Re: Not Just A British Problem.

I emigrated there from England - It isn't.

Re: Classic BOFH

Teabags indeed! You don't deserve a teaspoon - If you have fallen that low, get the teabags with the string and paper tag...

Google shuts off IoT Core services shortly after announcing API stability commitments

Re: They may not have had many customers...

Google = "they" therefore "do"…

Re: They may not have had many customers...

This is what Google do. Why anyone would rely on them?

Python tops programming love list – but if you want a job, learn SQL

Re: Feeling smug

Some of us who started with FORTRAN still program in it, but now write in C...

Tesla owner gets key fob chip implanted in his hand

The beginning of the Apocalypse?

Revelation 13, King James: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

And that no man might buy or sell [drive], save he that had the mark...

LibreOffice improves Microsoft compatibility with version 7.4

Re: Sharing documents

Base; and Apple, or myself, no longer directly support JDK :-)

Re: Sharing documents

I have used LO/Open Office elsewhere, but made a decision a while ago to keep Java off my main Mac.

If I need a database I use SQLite; or (hardly ever now) PostgreSQL (I'm really not going to fight with this stuff anymore after: Ingres, POSTGRES, RdB, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, XDB, Revelation, R:BASE, SQL Server, etc...)

"mictosoft"

Was that a typo, or a brilliant portmanteau word from micturition and MicroSoft?

I’m stealing it anyway. Have one to ensure adequate micturition >>=========>

Re: Sharing documents

I’m retired from paid work, but knock out specialized spread sheets to help organizations confirm to a basic ISO standard. I prototype in Apple Numbers, then export to Excel. It is much quicker and easily matches requirements. Is Notes perfect? Certainly not, a couple of obscure statistical functions are not supported, and the inability to lock individual columns, rows, and cells is a pain.

One trap is that Numbers allows more than one table on a sheet - Which can solve the locking problem, as an entire table can be locked - If the sheet is exported it creates a separate sheet for each table. Obviously I check the exported file with a real copy of Excel, and sometimes have to make minor alterations: "lookup" and "vlookup" can be tricky, but "x lookup" seems fine; and for conditional format, "stop" can be in the wrong order…

NetBSD 9.3: A 2022 OS that can run on late-1980s hardware

Re: Here we go again...

OK, this may be somewhat contentious…

My only computer is BSD derived and works well with a PC keyboard. It uses macOS (via Darwin). Remembering Command/WIndows and Option/Alt wouldn’t be difficult if I used a USB connected PC keyboard. Certainly when I used PC-BSD, the PC keyboard was well supported by the CLI, but the OS was discontinued in 2020 (TrueOS). Perhaps the reason for BSDs low take-up probably wasn’t just an easy PC keyboard and partition compatibility?

I started with BSD on DEC, then SunOS, etc., which may be why I still prefer it to the many varieties of Linux that I have used. I’m retired now, but if I needed to build a Server, I’d probably still look at OpenBSD…

Our software is perfect. If something has gone wrong, it must be YOUR fault

The original (1927)

Might I suggest Blind Willie Johnson "If I don't read it, my soul will be lost", apposite blues?

Microsoft asks staff to think twice before submitting expenses

Re: parkinson

The bike shed?

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

Not perfect

My base 2019 model VW Golf 7.5 with "Driver Assist" applied the brakes (suddenly) when a child (8 years old?) ran around the back of an SUV in a shopping centre car park. We were travelling at <20 km/hr and would not have hit the child, but the car seemed to err on the side of caution, no damage other than putting my heart rate up. Is it perfect? Of course not. When the radar cruise control is on, it doesn’t understand that undertaking is legal here, so I have to touch the throttle to stop the car decelerating (fairly quickly), it also does this if a vehicle turns into a right-turn lane. The lane centring gives a slight writhing effect on curved roads so I’ve turned it off, but just using the lane assist does give useful feedback if you get close to the line without indicating.

One thing that I have found useful is driving in slow speed stop start traffic on a well marked freeway; it will control the stop and start of the car, but leaves a bigger gap between the car in front than a human driver would, and also takes about 4 seconds longer to move forward from stationary than I would (I learnt to drive in London). If we are stopped for more than about a minute, the dash gives an indication that you will need to depress the throttle to move off. If the driver’s hands are taken off the wheel for more than a few seconds, a warning sounds, and if no action is taken the car is brought to a halt. Self-parking is sort of OK, but I hardly use it except occasionally to reverse park into a tight spot. The car has automatic transmission (they nearly all have here) YMMV with a manual (pun, sorry).

If all vehicles had transponders to broadcast where they were, and what they were doing, it seems possible that an autonomous vehicle would be safer than a flawed human - Particularly here, where I have seen people on the freeway shaving (thankfully an electric razor), putting on make-up; and my personal favourite, undoing a Dewer flask and pouring a hot drink into its cup placed on the dashboard.

Parallels increases prices with Desktop version 18

Microsoft Access?

I've sometimes thought that MS Access was a bit of a red-headed stepchild, even at Microsoft. Anybody know if it will run on an M-Series Mac using MS Windows 11 Intel emulation?

DuckDuckGo says Hell, Hell, No to those Microsoft trackers after web revolt

Failing all else

DDG is my normal browser, much of the time it gets it right. When it doesn’t, I use a bang…

To search anonymously with Google: "my search" !g - - For Wikipedia: my search !w

Pull jet fuel from thin air? We can do that, say scientists

Yes, generally I would agree with you. As I got older, I realized that most of the stuff that I own was "unnecessary crap". I, too, cook. Most of my expensive knives sit doing nothing for 350 days a year, the one that I use most is Baccarat cuisine pro utility knife which cost me AU$5.95 on special. I have a decent set of 3 Baccarat stainless steel saucepans, and a medium frying pan which gets used most of the time, a couple of enamel plates and a few glass bowls. Most of the rest of the stuff that I accumulated in 50+ years of cooking like garlic presses, mixers, and fancy specialised cookware has gone to the local charity shop. I would probably have saved thousands over the years if I had learnt simple lessons like: Most non-stick aluminium pans are crap and have a very limited life before they start sticking…

My argument is based on local conditions where an average car costs AU$900 a month to own. Most households have 2+ cars which works out a car for every person in the State (including children). So, in future, are most households going to spend $19,000 a year to own 2 cars when 1 owned car will do? I remember in 1955 when my father bought the 4th car in our Norfolk village (population ~120); public transport was not ideal, but was better than it is now. Assuming that the wheels don’t come off (which is looking likely - pun intended) we are almost certainly going to have to go down the route of fewer private vehicles (pun again).

Something which to me seemed strange in these Covid times, is that our State government is getting behind electric scooters and cycles to help relieve suburban transport. Even though public transport is free in our city centres, many don’t like having to wear masks in public transport, travelling with potentially infected people. You can buy a scooter with a 30km/hr top speed and a 90km range for <$1,200 and recharge it for free from your solar panels (25% of our houses have solar panels). A faster 2 seater Vespa type electric scooter with a a similar range is $5,000 (Before COVID, I noticed Teipei has many thousands).

For longer journeys, I can use public transport, travel 45kms for $4 on all buses, trains and ferries; and commence the return journey within 3 hours on the same ticket. Outside commuter times, as I’m a pensioner, I travel free. Yes I have a car, a 46 month old VW golf, with 17,000 kms on the odometer - Mostly it’s used for shopping, recreation and medical appointments, I could Uber those, but as you imply it’s just convenient to have a car…

And a typical hatchback with one person does more than a million times the damage to the road as a cyclist (ref: my post above). We are not comparing like with like. Back in the 1980s when I knew a little bit about this stuff, it was suggested that for a better societal outcome (the numbers indicated) all local public transport should be free, but obviously this is "socialism" and probably not politically acceptable. An even better outcome would be "local hubs" where people's work, shopping and recreation should be within 4 miles of their homes; Other than people's need for social interaction, working from home should help...

Someone I know who is expert at lithium chemistry and transportation told us that he had seen some work for a Chinese car company that showed that if ever a safe autonomous electric vehicle could be made, cities would change dramatically. He pointed out that most cars spend much of their life stationary ("rusting"). People would not own their own vehicles, but would use a phone to call for one. The design life of an electrical vehicle could be much longer (<10% of the moving parts as opposed to an IC vehicle). If working and social hours were staggered there would be a need for far fewer vehicles and road capacity. Car parking would not be required and the road and parking space liberated could be transferred to public parks etc.

And roads come out of general revenue, but are also considered a "public good". As an example of subsidy, compare a heavy lorry to a car. The damage caused to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. A heavy car has an axle weight of ~1 ton, a 40 ton truck might have 8 axles, 5 tons/axle; so 5^4 = 625/axle = or 2,500 times the damage. A modern 2 ton car might have a Vehicle Excise Duty Band G of £220. A band G HGV costs £1,850 so just based on road damage the HGV "should cost ~£550,000. Obviously this does not include things like societal costs and benefits, etc. I wonder what the political fall-out woukld be from The Road Haulage Association if the Excise for a 40 ton truck was raised to say £100,000?

Bill Gates venture backs effort to bring aircon startup to market

Solved problem (but not necessarily cheaply?)

I live were it is hot for much of the year, we have reverse cycle air conditioners which also heat the house in the Winter. Obviously it is hottest when the sun shines - In Western Australia 25% of our houses have solar panels. Some of our neighbours have 10kW systems, 6kW is perhaps the most common new system at about £3,000 installed. Mine is older and "only" has a panel capacity of 3.7kW with a 3KW inverter and cost £2,300 installed. It was a bit more expensive for its capacity because it is part of a local micro grid. On the hottest of days it generates 24kWh, we use 14 kWh, the spare 10kWh is sold to my neighbours. Our grid electric cost is £0.15 kWh, the micro grid pays us £0.07 kWh for the spare that we generate. My buy-back time on the solar is less than 4 years. On a bad humid day, we buy 6kWh from the grid, mostly when the sun has gone down. A battery would fix that, but they need to fall by in cost by about another 30% to give us a good return on the capital investment. The aircon cost was £4,900 installed. If it was installed when the house was built the cost would have been less. We have an easy standard permit procedure.

I’m retired, which means that we are often at home during the day when the sun is shining and get the maximum benefit, but many people who are at work during the day leave the aircon off and bang it on when they come home, causing a peak demand when the sun is low in the sky. If our houses were better insulated, the numbers would be even better.

Our systems are owned by the State (unlike the rest of Australia, where they are privatised, and their costs have gone up significantly). Our biggest user is industry, our coal power stations will be decommissioned by 2030, and no new gas power stations will be commissioned after 2030 (we have large gas fields and 15% of capacity is reserved for local use). As climate continues to change, we expect that these targets will be modified. Renewables here are already significantly cheaper than coal and gas, but storage is still expensive.

Be careful where you install software, and who installs it

Re: Linux Bros'

Some of us started Using *NIX with BSD, we like it that way. Mutter, kids these days…

Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked

Re: IBM Selectric Terminals

I've just spent/wasted a couple of hours on a trip down memory lane...

Have one on me >>====================================>

Outlook email users alerted to suspicious activity from Microsoft-owned IP address

Usual MS systems behaviour?

and/or home grown spooks? >>=============>

Just because you failed doesn't mean you weren't right

Re: A miss is pretty obvious, no matter the apparatus

My father who was a WW2 RAF Bombing Leader had a photograph of a refined version. A triangular piece of plywood with a metal plate with a slit as an eyepiece near the apex, and two painted pins near each end of the base. The photo was marked SECRET. He showed it to me when I was working in a similar area of MoD in the 1970s. He was asked to stay on in 1946, but decided his skills were redundant because of the development of nuclear weapons.

CP/M's open-source status clarified after 21 years

Re: I had a client...

After some experience with Networking PCs, *NIX, minis, and (limited) mainframes, I realized that the explosion of Windows servers and clients may have been driven by a standard business model. The more staff and bigger the budget a manager had, the more powerful they were in an organization. Our rough support staff numbers (mid 1980s) were mainframes: 1 staff for 1,200 users; minis and *NIX (business terminals) 1 staff for 200 users; and NetWare networked PCs 1 staff for 50 users. The mainframe and mini staff did development as well as support. Why have an empire of 10 staff when you could have 240. These days PC support staff levels have come down a lot (mini level?).

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

Re: Heated seats?

Snowy Mountains: Wikipedia... Even here, in one of the hotter bits, this morning it was 6ºC (Winter). I haven't driven a BMW since the 2002 (1971 model) - I don't intent to start renting bits of one now.

Leaked Uber docs reveal frequent use of 'kill switch' to deactivate tech, thwart investigators

Or the BOFH, but then the Kill Button would probably be a bit more literal.

Even robots have the right to learn from open source

"Just because it's Microsoft doesn't mean it's wrong"

…but it would be an initial working proposition.

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Sottish Widows surely...

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

Re: "The office"

...we are all secondary , support , admin / parasites really BullshitJob:Wikipedia

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

Re: Ah yes...

A very long time ago there were two main types of Civil Servant: Established and non-established. People in Established grades served at "Her Majesty Pleasure" and were normally considered very difficult to remove (except for things like "Gross moral turpitude"). After about two years I was invited to apply for Establishment and went for an interview at the Commissioners. It was one of the hardest interviews I have ever had. I passed. When I asked my boss why it was so hard, he told me that they were looking for character and not knowledge - "skills can be taught". I realized that one important set of questions that I was asked was to name Capital Cities. I thought it was OK until we got to Mongolia "Ulan Bator", I said; They asked "Inner, or Outer Mongolia?" I told them that I didn't know, but would find out - That was what they were looking for. I believe that if I had obfuscated I would have failed, and if I had known the answer, the questions would have become more obscure until we reached the same point. If anybody cares it was Outer Mongolia (or "Mongolia"), Inner Mongolia is Hohhot.

If an Established Civil Servant was "difficult" one way of dealing with it was to use "Mobile" grading. Almost all Established positions were Mobile, which mean that you could be transferred anywhere. The story was that if you had spent a winter in a hut on Muckle Roe measuring costal currents, hadn't resigned, and had learnt "a lesson" you would be transferred back...

Re: Pottering around not doing much

Many years ago the Scientific Civil Service MoD grades had "Special Merit" positions. Typically at PSO (Principal = NATO Rank ~Colonel) or SPSO level (between Colonel and Brigadier) The holder carried on doing what they were good at, and avoided the administrative and managerial tasks that were normal at that level.

Re: Hobnobs - invented for mans pleasure

Heretic. The one true path is the original McVitie's Digestive biscuit. I've heard that some have been tempted by false prophets who preach the way of chocolate coatings.

Windows 11 22H2 is almost here. Is it ready for the enterprise?

Re: MS dropping peripherals support - AGAIN

I used to purchase a lot of scientific equipment. I noticed that after the Windows 8 debacle some manufacturers stopped using Windows for instrument control. Now many embed a small web server, which can talk to Windows, an iPad, Chrome etc. Typically the generated data is still manipulated by Windows, but is stored in a defined format, with a simple storage and transmission protocol to/from the equipment. I have personal experience of some equipment that never went back into full service after a Windows update borked the network stack causing a catastrophic failure of a high vacuum system.

Airbus flies new passenger airplane aimed at 'long, thin' routes

Re: Why

They've moved it back from Darwin to Perth without much notice. Two weeks ago our friends' daughter came back after living in the UK for 5 years. Her BA ticket was for Darwin then Perth - A few days before she was leaving they emailed her to say that the Darwin/Perth flight was cancelled and that they didn't code-share. She went online and found that the direct Perth flight had replaced it, and transferred to that. Looking online the Business Class fare has more than doubled since we did it to $17,700.

Re: try to go to Australia by train...

I agree. I emigrated there from the UK 30 years ago. We want to keep it secret.

Re: Why

From nearly egalitarian Perth we don't have First Class flights. We have been cut off from the rest of the Covid world until a few weeks ago, so the last time I bought tickets was Business Class for the nonstop Perth-London 787-9 (7,565 NM) three years ago. Mrs Tim99 and I were on either side of the aisle with our backs to the front bulkhead, just in front of the door. Take-off was 19:00 and after drinks, dinner, watching a movie and reading a book, the nice attendant made up our beds. I put on the supplied PJs and slept for nearly 8 hours. After breakfast we arrived at the LHR gate 17 hrs 20 mins later.

The return flight was similar and took 16hrs 40 mins. We are in our 70s and thought that the trip was worth the money. My rough rule is that if I'm paying, and the flight is more than 4 hrs (from Perth they nearly all are) I go Business Class. I volunteer for an organization that regularly books me on aircraft - They put me on the Perth-Melbourne flight with the same aircraft, but in cattle class at the back. The seats are small and not particularly comfortable with little leg room, I certainly would not like to be in them for 17 hours.

Leave that sentient AI alone a mo and fix those racist chatbots first

Re: Brilliant

Isn't that on opinion? Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Re: It gets more fun...

In my case it was the missus who had the golden ears. She claimed to have little interest, but definitely recognized the good stuff. For a birthday she bought "me" one of the first afromosia Linn LP12s fitted with the neon switch (1975?). Years (and stupid amounts of money) later it was a Trigger’s broom with new power supply, Ittock, and Asak driving Naim 250 etc., into Kans. We had clean records and did not notice clicks and pops. She bought a Nakamichi CD player after a brief audition and bought it home. Obviously we were used to the analogue system and both thought that the CDs she bought sounded weird. The shop took it back (minus a restocking fee). A couple of years later we bought a Naim CD player which was fine. I bought some bigger speakers just before I had a serious RTA that caused some brain and hearing damage. I found that I was no longer able to drive the system, so we sold it along with a thousand LPs, and bought a small all-in-one B&O music system which I could drive through its remote.

These days my hearing is worse, and music comes from a pair of Apple HomePod minis, which seem OK…

How one techie ended up paying the tab on an Apple Macintosh Plus

The Road Ahead

I'm in my dotage now, and this may well not be entirely correct... My wife "obtained" for me one of the very first (trade) copies through our company when we were frantically rewriting much of our software for Windows 95. As I recall, Gates was dismissive of the Internet generally, and didn't see the value of the world wide web. I suspect he thought that Windows 95 and MSN would allow him to create a proprietary version - A bit like an even more locked-down version of AOL. The later Australian Ninemsn Microsoft/Packer-PBL seemed to support that idea. As I recall the internet chapters were hastily rewritten to make it an important feature, but most of us were struggling to get 19-28 kbit/s and so almost everything was still local.

We talked to customers about "Software as a Service" on Xenix/Slackware/Debian that we could host for them, but the slow speeds for most (2400 baud), unreliability, and lack of the owners' control of their own data meant that there was little interest. Apple Macs were too expensive. Customers wanted MS Office - Screen-scraping, RTF files in Word, and CSV imports into Excel was not going to sell...

The next time your program is 'not responding,' (do not) try these steps

Re: Cynical

I have a similar outlook on cynicism to that some others have on violence. If it’s not working for you, you need to apply more…

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

Re: @ThatOne - Control Your Own Upgrades

I think that you are forgetting that mostly "Average" Window person has IT support - Even if it's daughter/brother/friend/man who comes to house at £100...