Posts by David Nash

California to phase out gas furnaces, water heaters by 2030

Furnace?

Are they talking about domestic water boilers?

Scientists overjoyed after DART smashes into asteroid Dimorphos, contact lost

Re: There goes the prime directive... Murica Successfully Saves the world AGAIN with a bomb

Who said anything about a bomb?

Re: There goes the prime directive... Murica Successfully Saves the world AGAIN with a bomb

Speed is a component of velocity, so the velocity did change, right?

Microsoft fixes Windows security hole likely widely exploited by miscreants

Right on cue, here is how it should be done:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/14/twitter_mudge_senate/

Taiwanese military reports DDoS in wake of Pelosi visit

Re: Cabinet spokesperson Lo Ping?

to be fair to Clarkson (if someone has to), he's nowhere near the Alex Jones league.

Re: Cabinet spokesperson Lo Ping?

A Chinese name, you mean?

TSMC

I thought it was normal practice to define an abbreviation the first time it's used. Apparently not?

Atari Video Computer System returns in Lego form

£209?

For that price they could have included an RPi emulator and have something that actually worked!

Hi, I'll be your ransomware negotiator today – but don't tell the crooks that

Re: It's time to end this.

So, blame the victim for trying to minimise the pain.

How about "pay me a ransom for your own life, or I will shoot/knife you".

Should paying that kind of ransom be illegal?

It's not so different from "pay me a ransom or I will do X"

And legal definitions are sometimes notoriously tricky to confine to one intended scenario.

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Re: Anon CVs

That's just not true. When you have a large number of applications you need to know what experience someone has in order to match up their likely skills that have come from that experience, against the requirements.

And someone with 15 or 20 years experience is way more "experienced" than someone with 6 and a half years.

It's barely more a waste of time than applying for a real job that won't employ you because you're too old anyway!

Re: Examples?

Maybe the researchers are ageist in assuming that oldies would fail any *Physical Requirement* !

Re: Examples?

"...apparently done as much with their life..." being the appropriate phrase.

In any case how does one quantify "what one has done with one's life"? And why would that be relevant to a job application?

Re: Examples?

Exactly, there's no need to put age on a CV, you just have to look at dates of education and/or length of service in previous employment.

Charter told to pay $7.3b in damages after cable installer murders grandmother

But the horrendous consequences in this case didn't arise from the negligence. What did they miss that would have indicated he would go on to murder a customer?

Re: $7.3b in damages

If that's supposed to be a joke, drop the anonymity and use the corresponding icon. It wasn't funny though.

Meta proposes doing away with leap seconds

Oh there will still be 60000 ms between those times, it's just that each ms will be longer.

Well, made of longer ns.

Which are made of longer ps.

etc

Browsers could face two regimes in Europe as UK law set to diverge from EU

If that's the case, why did all the cookie-permission-popups only start appearing after GDPR rather than after 2002?

I was going to comment but Lars has just clarified...so ignore this.

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: Don't know if it's just that my coffee hasn't kicked in yet...

Why would anyone bother making that up?

Google, Oracle clouds still affected by UK heatwave

Re: doesn't make sense

And for the rest of the world, so we can compare with the numbers in the article...

91.5F ambient=33.06 C

107-120F=41.7 - 48.9 C

50F hotter = 27 degrees C hotter (I think! more tricky, I have seen youtube FAILs by converting absolute F to C when what they really need is a difference)

Tech professionals pour cold water on UK crypto hub plans

Re: Oh, and talk about a slapdown

they blame everyone else....the EU, the "remoaners", anyone pointing out the truth.

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

Re: Every single time

Yeah let's click on a link to a jpg when we don't know what it is....

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

Re: aaargggh! and more aaargggh aaargggh aaargggh

Why would they care? isn't it just a phone number to them?

Re: aaargggh!

and sign?

Large Hadron Collider experiment reveals three exotic particles

Re: Ever get the sense...

Current models describe what we see, that doesn't mean they are crap.

My understanding is that the standard model describes what we see, but doesn't explain why. I am sure they'd love for the new experiments to help come up with a model that explains more.

You need to RTFM, but feel free to use your brain too

Re: Measure twice, cut once

to be fair, it did sound like they had it drilled into them to just do exactly what the instructions say.

Re: Check you can complete before you start

I had something like this at school. I think I was the only one to do it right. Thinking like a computer even then!

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

Re: According to the engineer...

"is" is a verb.

Re: A virus doesn't need a goal to spraid itself nor needs to understand biological weaknesses

Exactly, it's about evolution. A virus, or any of the living things we know on Earth, have evolved to the point that they are at now.

The living world is a dangerous place and any of these that didn't have the ability, or the drive, to perpetuate itself, have all died and are no longer here for that very reason.

AIs have not evolved in the same way, their environment is not so dangerous nor have they been around for so long. If we let them evolve with mutation, random or otherwise, and with some kind of selection, natural or otherwise, then the ones that have a "desire" to stay around will be the ones that are still here.

Tough news for Apple as EU makes USB-C common charging port for most electronic devices

Re: Micro-USB

Unfortunately it's not only non-native-English-speakers who use "less" when they should use "fewer".

Re: A good day for Intel, I guess...

This affects the charging port on the device and the cable, but not the charger itself, assuming it has a USB A on that end.

So no need to consign them to e-waste.

Spam is back with a vengeance. Luckily we can't read any of it

"A good rule of thumb is that if you are in business and send out an email to a customer expecting the recipient to read it you should be prepared to read any reply. It's no more than courtesy to your customer, even in the situation you describe."

True, but for those misguided companies that send out "noreply" emails, it's not necessarily appropriate to tar them with the same brush as scammers and other spam.

UK government having hard time complying with its own IR35 tax rules

UK Government members not following their own rules?

Surely not?!!!

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

Also the owner should have accepted the explanation "we can't break the laws of physics", rather than respond in that way. What did he think, if the guy knew who he was, he would have been able to break the laws of physics?

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

But what did the user think 'O' the mode was?

Big Apple Apple Store workers hope to form union

Re: tenure

Fair enough, thanks. Didn't know what Teamster was. Sounds like something sporty :)

Not sure why I got a downvote for asking a question!

Re: tenure

Why do unions in the USA (the ones I've heard of anyway) have weird names? UK unions have proper names like "the national union of blah blah workers".

Anyway if electricians or communications unions already covered this work, wouldn't the workers be trying to join those unions instead of forming a new one?

Re: $30/hr?? Seriously?

When negotiating always start with more than you expect to get.

In IT, no good deed ever goes unpunished

Re: I've told this one before...

Surely if you're using it at work, on a work computer, to help with your job, that is the definition of commercial use.

If not, then what is?

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

Re: Closest I've seen...

What it really shows is that people are put in front of a computer with no training and expected to know how things work, "because everyone does".

Google bans third-party call-recording apps from Play Store

Interesting

I came here thinking I would find people saying "Good, I don't want third-party apps having the ability to record ....after all, they might do it without me knowing"

And the point that they are misusing an API to do so makes that seem more likely.

But everyone here wants them to do it. Who knew?

Kaspersky cracks Yanluowang ransomware, offers free decryptor

You might be making some valid points but ruined it with childish misspellings.

And as for your last point about nukes - dream on, even the most west-friendly Russian (or any) government is not going to give them up unilaterally.

Google 'Switch to Android' app surfaces in iOS App Store

To be fair, it's a different product that has had to be produced separately. If I were an app developer/seller (which I am not) I would hope that if someone wanted it on a different platform they would pay for that product separately. Maybe some discount could apply, but I hardly think it's a matter for "Regulators".

Help, my IT team has no admin access to their own systems

He got fired. I would have charged them £100 for the service.

Oracle's compliance cops now include Java in license audits

Re: Confusing mess

Simples!

File Explorer fiasco: Window to Microsoft's mixed-up motivations

Re: Not Very Effective

Unless they also appear in File->Open or Save boxes, which are pretty much mini-file-explorer windows anyway.

IT blamed after HR forgets to install sockets in new office

Re: Watch Your Backs

and not only would Steve have been none the wiser, the company president and others would still have thought it was his fault too.

Google blocks FOSS Android tool – for asking for donations

What's the difference?

Between asking you to "donate to help fund the app's development", and "pay for the app" -- they are both funding the app's development.

The latter has always been disallowed via non app store methods and the subject of much debate. So what's new here?

Is it just that a donation is voluntary?

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

Re: Competition time!

True, and it warns you that changing the extension might break something if you do so.