Posts by Alan_Peery

Kyndryl bags short-lived HMRC mainframe contract

Re: Why the cloud ?

The workload is not as stable as youi might think. Consider even just the changes to your personal taxation over the last 5 years.

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

Re: "you have to wonder how they get home each night

There are theoretically schedules for London's tube lines, but to expect adherence to them at a fidelity close enough to matter is unusual. Was the person Swiss?

Re: I need my Trash

Years ago I was bitten by the discovery that HPUX *didn't* clear /tmp at each reboot. :-D Can't remember now what exact failure that triggered in my homebrew sort-of-Ansible...

Modest Apple talks up these 'incredible' advances in iOS

Re: Respond in your own voice?!

It sounds very useful for an assistive device.

It also sounds incredibly useful for social engineering attacks.

Three quarters of UK tech pros are ready to leave their jobs

Re: "Salary will always be key to any tech job seeker"

Another option is buying more holiday if your employer offers the option. I've done so and looking forward to extra holidays this year.

Defunct comms link connected to nothing at a fire station – for 15 years

Stripe notification

Was it just me that missed the notification from my card companies that this "sticky access" trick was being implemented? It is a big and probably sensible change, but I don't remember being informed.

Windows 11 still not winning the OS popularity contest

Missing Intel NUC support

When they support my Intel NUC on Windows 11, I'll upgrade it to Windows 11.

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: You get what you order

Put it on speakerphone, and record the conversation with the other phone.

Meta met a programming language it likes better than Java

Other major users of Kotlin?

OK, so Metafacebook has jumped in at the deep end -- who else has done so?

IBM withholds healthcare subsidies from some retirees

But IBM seems to take an unusual amount of pleasure in attacking its retirees.

Here's how 5 mobile banking apps put 300,000 users' digital fingerprints at risk

Re: It's Not As If Banking Is Risky Enough Already

"mobile phone A/C data" -> mobile phone account data probably. Telephone number, name, and address I would guess.

IBM ordered to pay $1.6b to BMC

Re: Not commenting on the business practices

If the "please rip this BMC crap out and replace it with less costly IBM" had originated from AT&T, then IBM would have presented that as evidence. Since the judge found against them, they must not have had that evidence.

Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment

Re: as you can't do that anymore.

There are times when the menu is abbreviated, and the "new -> " functions are hidden under a "Show More Options" layer in the menu.

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Re: powershell command missing

That lists each subdirectory, but doesn't total the size of each of those directories properly. I suspect it's giving the full disk usage of c:\some\folder because the totals are the same for each child directory.

cd I know it's behaving in your example, but here's my output:

PS C:\Users> Get-ChildItem C:\Users | ForEach-Object { Echo $_.Name ; Get-ChildItem -Recurse . | measure-object -property Length -sum }

apeery

Count : 1946

Average :

Sum : 38742310694

Maximum :

Minimum :

Property : Length

defaultuser0

Count : 1946

Average :

Sum : 38742310694

Maximum :

Minimum :

Property : Length

fred

Count : 1946

Average :

Sum : 38742310694

Maximum :

Minimum :

Property : Length

Public

Count : 1946

Average :

Sum : 38742310694

Maximum :

Minimum :

Property : Length

Directory: C:\Users

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name

---- ------------- ------ ----

d----- 08/02/2022 09:46 apeery

d----- 04/05/2021 16:15 defaultuser0

d----- 03/05/2022 12:56 fred

d-r--- 06/05/2021 00:04 Public

HMRC: UK techies' IR35 tax appeals could take years

Re: Same tax as everyone else?

Sometimes, not always. Very often before IR35 rolled around contractors were employees -- of their own limited company. This limited company took the risk of gaps in employment, paid for training, etc.

Re: Dumb question...

And remember, the Inland Revenue may tell you that "you don't have to file self assessment", and fail to mention that if you're a higher rate tax payer it's how you reclaim the additional 20% credit on any pension contributions you do outside of payroll. Or the additional amount you could save on tax due to charity contributions.

They'd rather keep that money, evidently.

Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

Just-In-Time compilation of Java code to native opcodes has been around for a long time -- first mentioned in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation#History

Apple tweaks AirTags to be less useful for stalkers, thieves

Re: What the hell ?

The description was missing the "and the iPhone of the person owning the tag hasn't been near the AirTag in question".

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

I think there's a second classification of e-bike that allows higher speeds, so long as the rider is licensed for motorcycles and wearing a helmet.

Re: It rings a bell

Luddite laws ban them on the streets specifically.

They can we recycled according the WEE, like any other electronic device.

And luddite laws once forced people to walk in front of cars waving a flag.

Stupid laws should be overturned.

Games Workshop has chucked another £500k at entrenched ERP project with no end to epic battle in sight

Re: job ads

What is this bargepole you speak of? We all know that the proper tool is a a 10 foot pole!

The monitor boom may have ended, says IDC

Portrait mode monitors

I'm running three screens -- laptop on a tilted stand, 4k monitor in normal landscape, and the old 1680x1050 monitor in portrait mode. The portrait mode is a very handy option, as some data is just better laid out that way.

A third of you slackers out there still aren't using HTTPS by default

Re: exactly

What is private or not is not just a measure of what's on the site, but also who is reading it.

A political example is Tianemen Square with a Chinese reader.

A religious example is atheistic discussion with a reader from Saudi Arabia.

NASA delays crewed Moon landing until 2025, citing technical infeasibility

Re: So NASA will *never* make it to the Moon

With what I understand the cargo capacity to be, perhaps they can have a spare Dragon in the Starship in case of rendezvous issues.

Re: Dust off Apollo

I think part of the reason the drive is less is exactly because the ambition is less. When we were coming up on Apollo 8, there were plans for multiple missions, locations, etc, that were being actively circulated in the main press. Now we see a less ambitious proposal, it sparks less excitement.

New year, new OS: OneDrive support axed for old versions of Windows from 1 Jan 2022

Re: At AnthonyHegedus, re: power down.

That doesn't fix the Windows fast-start/fake shutdown issue. You have to disable fast start, or hold down the shift key when selecting the shutdown menu.

Reg scribe spends 80 hours in actual metaverse … and plans to keep visiting

Better/different app for virtual cycling

While the gamification of Zwift can sometimes lead to pushing a bit harder and thus getting a higher level of fitness, it isn't my favourite virtual cycling app. BigRingVR focuses on bringing you beautiful landscapes from around the world that you can cycle through.

Recommended.

Re: Potentially expensive

If you want you *could* buy a dedicated laptop. Most people would use the laptop they already own. Or the iPad. Or the Android tablet. Or the iPhone. Or the Android phone. So £500 + subscription of £180.

I tend to use my entertainment PC hooked to the TV, but when that's busy getting an OS update, I'll fire up my Samsung phone, casting its screen to a Chomecast device to get a large screen.

IBM US staff must be fully vaccinated by December – or go back to bed without pay

Re: Vaccine skepticism: A problem fueled by ubiquitous data and rarefied understanding

Quoting adverse events from the vaccine without comparing to the danger of the disease without vaccination is rather like worrying about the bruises you get when your parachute opens.

Citing the results of a few days in one location doesn't outweigh the much larger epidemiology studies showing a clear result of lower infection rates from vaccinated individuals who have had breakthrough instances.

Blindly citing instances where infections have started from vaccinated individuals as proof that such infections are not markedly reduced shows you understand little about statistics.

Perhaps you should stand down on this argument unless you want to study a bit more about epidemiology and statistics.

Twitch increases bug bounty payouts after source code leak by... wait, is that it?

Re: It's a market; place your bid

Set your functionality targets low enough, and that elderly software is indeed quick.

I'm diabetic. I'd rather risk my shared health data being stolen than a double amputation

Re: Here’s why you might NOT want to disclose anything at all

Your first two paragraphs are exactly what I hope is happening, but you seem to regard it with dread. The doctors are maximizing good for the greatest number within limited resources.

Don't like the results? Then work to increase the resources.

British teachers' pensions set to be released from Capita's grasp after nearly 30 years

Re: Fully Digital?

And the ones that used to successfully use the internet and registered for online statements will cause great confusion to their executors when passwords are given only for the main email account. :-(

Thus making paperwork forever fun for someone who had pension contributions while on a temporary NI number that had been created with her maiden rather than married name...

Wanna feel old? It is 10 years since the Space Shuttle left the launchpad for the last time

Re: Good.

Why waste time explaining the obvious to an Anonymous Corward?

A song for the era -- Rush's Countdown

https://open.spotify.com/track/2rIyuURzVLDjENwkmhZ5Gf

Re: I always think of the great history of NASA backwards

The moon matters. Mars matters, The asteroids and their minerals will matter.

Systemd 249 release candidate includes better support for immutable OSes and provisioning images

Re: What part of "temporary" do you not understand?

What's the problem with creating a /tmp2 with the same permissions?

‘Staggering’ cost of vintage Sun workstations sees OpenSolaris-fork Illumos drop SPARC support

Re: Indigo?

I was looking for one last weekend. :-)

Or truth to be told, I was looking for an Indigo case, because MIPS hardware is old and you can get that level of performance and memory with an up to date and patched OS for much less money. The prospect of gutting the internal was still a sad one, and has stopped me from the project in previous times.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Windmill blade delivery

may not be a problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqR1qlsk2hM

Re: Yankees and roundabouts

There was a burst of minor accidents when Cheyenne Wyoming changed a major (for a town of 70k) 5-way intersection to a roundabout.

Because these were minor accidents it didn't matter that there was a nearby hospital -- it had been important before before the change.

What does my neighbour's Tesla have in common with a stairlift?

Re: EVs = bad for planet, bad for poor people, bad for practicality

In frantically compiling your listof exaggerated damages from EV cars, you rather forgot about the environmental damage from oil wells, fracking, pipelines or supertankers, refining, more pipelines or worse fuel tankers, leaking gas stations...

Re: EVs = bad for planet, bad for poor people, bad for practicality

There's also the basic fact that a lot of garages are too small for today's cars. The A4 Estate I drive would fit in my garage, but would require reversing in or climbing over the bonnet, and it's not a huge car.

I don't think you'd be able to even open the drivers door enough to exit an A6 Estate...

Re: Summon the lawyers!

Or perhaps use the more effective https://www.fixmystreet.com/, particularly as you don't have to carry a can of spray paint as mobile will suffice.

AWS cooks up Extensions API for Lambda serverless platform: Useful for monitoring, alerting

Re: that in a few years cloud services could be using about 6% of global electricity production

To some degree -- but if it's too centralized you have too much waste heat from cooling for it to be applied to something useful. In Stockholm the heat from at least one DC is used for district heating of business and housing, and this is an under-utilized synergy,.

With H-1B workers not exactly rushing to America this year, Uncle Sam plans to spend millions home-growing IT staff

UK knife homicides vs US gun deaths -> 1:10

sorry man, you really don't seem to know how to look at statistics. UK knife crime is both lower numerically per population than US gun crime, and much less likely to result in death.

UK knife homicides 2018: 283 from the chart here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42749089#:~:text=In%20about%20two%20out%20of,the%20highest%20figure%20since%201946.

US gun gun murders in 2017: 14,542 per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Adjusting for the US having roughly 5x as much population, that gives 1415:14542. The US DEATH TOLL IS 10X UK per head.

Latvian drone wrests control from human overlords and shuts down entire nation's skies

It's flying pretty low, so easier to miss on radar.