Posts by Tom 7

Instant NeRF turns 2D photos into 3D scenes in seconds

There cant be more than a couple of dozen free programs that turn a few photos into 3d models out there without the need for a GPU. Google may be shit but it seems not as shit as most of its potential customers.

Goldman Sachs reportedly set to head up $60bn Arm IPO

Re: I don't understand capitalism

It could be they dont wont them to succeed. Perhaps they buy them to stop them reaching their potential and putting the investors other businesses... out of business. A bit like having the two world best centre forwards on your books. Whatever a centre forward is.

Re: I don't understand capitalism

I enjoyed his early TV work!

IT outage at Scotland's Heriot-Watt University enters second week

"They need to start investing in proper IT staffing levels, kit and stop outsourcing." Getting the proper IT staffing levels is easy, its the 5 or 6 times more guards you need to prevent outside 'experts and advisers etc' wineing and dining the VC and others and thus fucking everything up.

Remember, its only in code you can give the correct access to the objects that own the data and no-one else.

Re: In older times

The joys of the central mainframe! I started in 77 and we had an ICL 1902 (IIRC) and it spent more time on its arse than I did during freshers week. It was close to where most of my degree was done but as I didnt attend much and the machine was rarely working when I did or the card punchers were all occupied I used to hike over from my flat a couple of miles away in the evenings , enter and look up at the HARDWARE FAULT sign glowing rose pink and spin on a heel and depart for a bar. I'm sure the arthritis in my left hip is due to that heel being worn down from spinning on it in the computer lab!

Complaints mount after GitHub launches new algorithmic feed

Because running a service costs money? True but the expensive bit is not what the developers want. According to my calculations the average github project should cost less than its worth doing a bank transaction for. The expensive bit is MS trying to parasatise it.

At the risk of creating some kind of power hungry monster

I wonder if a cross between torrent and github might be the way to prevent predators screwing things up for everyone else.

Hooking up to Starlink might be pricier than you thought

Re: Cut this guy some slack

Presumably the bread is to protect the table from the impact of the wedges of bills crashing down on it.

But like drug dealers they like to get you hooked first.

Whats happening to all this Huawie eqpt?

looks like it might be cheaper to set your own 5G network up!

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

Re: Some incorrect assumptions

Not seen the Barr rules before. Over the years I built up a much larger set of rules which I found useful and could write bits of code to check for. I was playing with RHide on Freedos the other day getting all nostalgic and then found Motor which I might just have a play with to backfill with the old things I used to use on C/C++ code that made it pretty much bulletproof- if you can save a piece of code with potential error in it (and automatic idiots guides) then you're at least somewhere a bit safer.

Re: Nothing new...

the newcomers already have all the space they need. C is not stopping them - its just their language isn't really much better as it doesnt really shrink the massive problem space which is the hard thing to learn how to code in! The problems Rust and Swift 'solve' are all solvable in C and C++ build environments and software methods.

US is best place to be a software engineer, salary survey finds

Re: Erm...

Not any more there aint. This year our cottages are booked solid but if our cleaners are sick then the shit hits the fan, The local media are full of request for cleaners but covid seems to be knocking them down again and again.

How not to attract a WSL (or any) engineer

Re: A fail on both counts

It'll be earning more that you soon!

f you are a global technology company paying a head-hunter for a world class subject expert, perhaps modify the process ? Or get them to advertise for someone to do it for you?

How legacy IPv6 addresses can spoil your network privacy

Re: Every molecule can have its own IP address

"NAT'ing IPv4 to IPv6 is not trivial" if that really is the case then I'm sorry, IPV6 WILL have to be re-written until it is.

Re: I don't care what the experts say....

I'll stick to ipv4 then. Well I'm going to have to for quite a while because my ISP doesnt use 6 and I cant find anyone else to supply me here for anything realistic. Currently IPV6 offers me nothing and until it offers me something and in a way that means I can configure it securely and know exactly what I'm doing its not happening.

New Linux kernel bolsters random number generation

the kernel checks a new VM ID called vmgenid using ACPI. If the ID changes...

So you could build a kernel/vm combo to sidestep all of this.

UK's largest union to Arm: Freeze job cuts now

Re: "the right thing to do"

"role life expectancy at one FTSE100 for people at VP level was around two years" so they're getting in and out before they can reliably find a coffee machine without help and they claim massive salaries and bonuses for surfing their own paper wave.

Brit data regulator fines five cold-calling fiends £405k

A local hotel/pub/underagedrinkingestablishment was run by the same director for the 10 years I lived just down the road. He phoenixed it at least 5 and possibly 8 times while I was there! The only time it was shut was during power cuts.

Re: 750,000 unsolicited marketing calls

Being bankrupt doesnt seem to last long these days but then its never stopped anyone running a company by proxy.

Re: Still at it

I used to have a sort of script for callers helpfully fixing the faults on my computer remotely and sometimes took great delight in 'rebooting' a slow machine several times while being as apologetic as possible. I think I need to develop one for old people (the I have forgetfulness possibilities for hooking the caller are interesting here) getting help with their warranty renewals. I'll just go and check the washing machine...

Microsoft Visual Studio: Cluttering up developer disks for 25 years

I think I understand MS popularity at last.

I used to have a Systems Manager who spent as much time upgrading stuff and attending the associated training courses as he could manage. This article has reminded me of those lovely days when I was allowed to upgrade things like Visual Studio and other apps on my system I needed for work, that had to be updated because the main systems had been updated to provide 'new' facilities I'd done in code ages ago. ISTR you could get nearly a weeks rest while slamming CDs into the machine if you could slow the system down with some surreptitious gaming!

Re: Microsoft C 6.0

Just messing about with FreeDos (nostalgia ain't what it used to be) and tried RhIde on it. Seriously thinking of re-writing it for Android with a nCurses GUI designer.

Review: ASUS dual-screen laptop may warm your heart, will definitely warm your lap

Not sure thats going to be too easy on the

RSeye!

The IBM System/360 Model 40 told you to WHAT now?

Re: On a very old website..

You could flush the output IIRC.

Re: Ah, they'll never see this error message

I still remember the joy of finding the (IIRC) longjump so that any case list of problems could have the impossible exception added at a later date.

Re: how did that escape?

Being a believer that laziness is the mother of invention and working on computers I tended to write bits of code that help in debugging, checking for memory leaks etc. That also included a list of naughty words that I may have typed into comments so they could be searched for on saving a file. This of course caused great offence to someone who thought they could audit (i.e. copy and steal) others code. As the reason behind it was clear to most people I didnt get my arse kicked but the anti-social climber lost a lot of brownie points for breaching computer security rules.

That I had writted!

Epson payments snafu leaves subscribers unable to print

Just use freeflowing documentation.

HTML is a mere 42 years old and works well for pretty much most documentation and if you dont make it paper shaped then you can read it on most devices and dont need to set yourself up as a hostage.

ExoMars rover launch axed over Russia tensions

Re: The sensible decision would be to end the program

It literally burned on Mar?

Isnt the SLS having a burn on Thursday?

And full launch in June in theory?

Asahi Linux reaches 'very early Alpha'

53G of disk space?

Is there a Ultra HD video of the complete compile, build and install process?

Amazon to spend £1.8bn on UK infrastructure over next 2 years

Be intersting to see how they power it

A hospital in Wales is just commissioning its solar farm and has been getting power since Nov and has already saved £120k in electricity. It expected to save £500k a year for a £5.7M project! So it looks like it will pay back in 10 years and give them free power for another 15 years or so. And perovskite is coming soon!

Re: Typo

forget to email [e-mail] - corrections BTL can be the seed corn for a much needed wry smile at the moment!

Take this $715,000 and find security gaps in quantum computers, says NSF

Re: "Yes, the ones that don't exist yet"

TBF you can simulate them fairly easily (if slowly) so its a matter of chucking shit at the simulator and seeing what you can bugger up with it.

AI drug algorithms can be flipped to invent bioweapons

Re: Chemicals are scary...

Its like the screaming about thermobaric bombs because of the vacuum they create. Any bomb of that size does the same thing.

Re: No

Thats really working at the moment!

Coding in a war zone: A Ruby developer's life in Kharkiv

HTH

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/mar/19/russian-cosmonauts-board-iss-wearing-colours-of-ukraine-flag

Red Hat effort to shut down WeMakeFedora.org deemed harassment

Scared Cat Register!

https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/16/red_hat_fedotra/ !!

They'd stand a better chance of a legal victory

if they didnt try and stop people using a name that has been in use for the said hat for 102 years before you started the company.

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

Re: Usual answer

> Modern GUIs may chew up a lot more resources than they used to, but they're also

> dealing with a lot of stuff

often more than the user can or needs to. One thing I've noticed using multiple screens people never seem to organise themselves well enough to find things faster than they could re-start them.Its like having a proper desk!

Re: Lightweight WM

You can get the panels to hide away until you get the pointer right to the edge.

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

Re: Scary

One thing I discovered about programming in general is how much of it was inspired by business and other practical work, If you actually learn what you are coding about and why its not long before you can recognise good and bad business decisions made by those without the ability to sting together the tools they should have easily to hand. That's when the fun starts!

Re: How did it come to this?

Get the GNU Cobol Programmers guide - not read the standard but this seems to cover anything you need to know. I do agree with you on mafia pay-walls but there are often people who work round them and growing armies of open source offerings which offer a life time of free learning and sometimes a visit to a library can locate some of the stuff via their library share stuff - best in a large town or city!

but contain more ordure than your bottom!

Learning Cobol is easy

If you're old enough to be brought up on dry but fact filled manuals

https://gnucobol.sourceforge.io/guides/GnuCOBOL%202.2%20NOV2017%20Programmers%20Guide%20(US%20Letter).pdf

and you can have fun with some of the older free manuals on PDFs by setting up the machine simulators for the machines and DBs they ran on and accessed!

UK space firm Skyrora opens rocket testing site in Scotland

Re: Hmm

Missed that - I would have sent my interceptor drone to pick that up!

Half of bosses out of touch with reality, study shows

Re: Bollocks statistics

My boss once gave me a mobile phone. When asked why I never answered it I told him we hadn't discussed on-call payments let alone agreed them and until then the chances of me not being down the pub unfit for work or sleeping it off were near 100%. After that he used to call me from the pub when I was at work actually getting some work done while he was out and demanding I come down the pub!

Re: Bollocks statistics

ooooh too much context. This is a discussion forum and if everyone clearly states their intentions we are going to have to rely on spell checkers to keep the pointless arguments going!

Re: Hybrid work ?

TBF if I was still working FT the only way I'd go into the office is to set up the Jitsi server. Well I'd set it up at home with a smart arse config file and then test that round a mates and then install it with documentation so when the office closes they can stick it where they want.