Posts by Glen 1

Stack Overflow makes peace with ousted moderator, wants to start New Year with 2020 vision on codes of conduct

Re: I Am Not A Number!

Shit just got ℝeal.

Re: pro-what?

"Treat people the way I'd like to be treated"

Directly contradicts

"Why am I forced to change my language"

Oh, and in answer, The same reason the N-word is not one I'm going to type.

If people kept calling you by the wrong pronouns, how long before you have shit to say about it? Not more than once, I bet.

Even if you let the first few slide, eventually you'd get pissed off enough to correct them.

Then to be told *you're* the one being overly sensitive? Get to fuck

Sidenote: religion *exists* because people *don't* keep their beliefs to themselves.

Re: They

"your never going to know "

Which was ultimately the point Monica was making. There's a lot of assumptions based on perceived gender of names.

If a preferred pronoun isn't specified, is guessing based on the perceived gender of the name a breach of the CoC? (Eg Micheal Burnham)

That was what initially got her(?) banned.

IRL, when in doubt, ask.

BOFH: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and the ransomware struck

Re: How dare they hide something from him!

TBF, given what most peoples passwords are like, you'd be in with a good chance.

UK's Virgin Media celebrates the end of 2019 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

Re: don't go with just one supplier

Its worth pointing out that it doesn't matter how diverse the lines leave your building are if the entry point to the backhaul (exchange, datacentre, whatever) is otherwise constrained.

If I put a spade through a cable outside my house, I lose my internet.

Put a digger shovel through some ducting outside an exchange...

We have heard the tales on here about "multiple points of entry" that ultimately come from the same duct.

Re: don't go with just one supplier

"What's the point of having two suppliers if they both use the same fibre ?"

" you're asking one supplier to lay a special cable just for you."

In cabled areas, that's pretty much what they did - except not just for us. They put new ducting down in the surrounding streets and everything. (I remember it being done). Yes it was co-ax, but it was a vast improvement on the wet string that BT often refuses to replace.

In the UK at least, the cable companies couldn't recoup their investment, got bought out for peanuts by increasingly bigger fish and rebranded to become... Virgin Media.

As opposed to the incumbent supplier BT that used telephone poles and overhead wires for the last few tens of meters. I have no idea if that's still how ADSL happens. I mean, the poles and wires are still there...

Just in case you were expecting 10Gbps, Wi-Fi 6 hits 700Mbps in real-world download tests

Re: My Mantra

"can actually produce enough data to make use of it."

With 4K video on phones now being a thing, and people juggling multiple VMs in homelabs, frequently moving 10s of GBs of data isnt *that* niche a thing. You are running regular backups right? Occasionally consolidating the incremental ones?

You don't need to get anywhere near maxing out a 10Gb connection for it to look more attractive than a 1Gb link. Especially if you spend longer than you would like staring at progress bars.

That said, I agree with you. If it fills your niche, it's worth spending the money on. $30 per endpoint would be a hell of a lot easier to justify than $100 though... *grumble*

Re: My Mantra

Had some TP-Link powerline adaptors, would occasionally lose connection then take 30 secs to reconnect. (1-2 times a day)

Absolute PITA when streaming video.

Finally connected the streaming box to wifi, no problems since.

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

Re: "Am I missing something?"

Edit to my edit:

Looks like they also use a central service out of the box (booo), but some of them can be reprogrammed (Yay!), but not all of them (booo). (Google keywords: Tasmota, SonOTA)

Kinda crossing the hassle threshold to just roll your own :/

Re: "Am I missing something?"

"Using a RasPi or Arduino to flip a switch is like swatting mosquitoes with a 12 gauge. Its complete; over-the-top overkill."

Depends on how they are controlled, and how far they are from the relay. If you have something like openhab or home assistant doing the communication (with *your* devices or phone, not to a 3rd party), then why add another device to flip the relay when you have perfectly reasonable GPIO?

Tinkering aside, those in the know (or so i'm told) seem to go for Sonoff devices like this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wireless-Universal-Automation-Assistant-Compatible/dp/B06WWNBD3Y

or if you have a deathwish/are feeling lucky:

https://uk.banggood.com/SONOFF-Basic-10A-2200W-WIFI-Wireless-Smart-Switch-Remote-Control-Socket-APP-Timer-p-1019971.html?cur_warehouse=CN

Works out quite a bit cheaper than ESP8266 + relay + enclosure + power (YMMV)

Edit: Looks like they *are* ESP8266s under the hood. Nice :D

EU wouldn't! Uncle Sam brandishes 'up to 100%' tariffs over France's Digital Services Tax

This, in a nutshell, is why the collective bargaining power of the EU is so important.

France is being singled out in this case, but having tarrifs imposed across the world's largest trading block would certainly have Trump (well, the people advising him), taking a more conciliatory tone.

PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen

Re: the UK will go to the polls amid ongoing disinformation efforts supported by foreign powers

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. "

Astroboffins baffled as Curiosity rover takes larger gasps of oxygen in Martian summers

Re: Tiptoeing around the elephant in the room

"Trump nor Brexit."

You mean like Brexit being a factor in Tesla building its european plant in Germany rather than the UK?

After all those "electric vehicle renaissance" platitudes from the Brexit lot. Inconvenient truth in more ways than one.

Serious point though - As we get closer to the election, things will get worse (more political) before they get better.

150 infosec bods now know who they're up against thanks to BT Security cc/bcc snafu

Want to feel old?

That song was released in... 1996. 23 (nearly 24) years ago

Without any apparent irony, Google marks Chrome's 'small' role in web ecosystem

Re: Slow web sites

I find vanilla wordpress perfectly responsive.

Idiot designers front loading massive images and 100k+ of JavaScript on the other hand...

That's before we get to janky ad insertions moving the content around *as your trying to read it*

Then there's the 'count the clicks' to get to the content. Cookie consent that makes you do multiple clicks to deny all, no I don't want notifications, as clicking no to that counts as a mouse leave event, it fires a 'before you go' pop over. No, I don't want to receive news letters (hint hint el reg).

I'm a few janky ad insertions away from using lynx.

IT contractor has £240k bill torn up after IR35 win against UK taxman

Re: I cannot understand why HMRC pursues contractors so much.

"Lets say I start Lout Corp in America. Its a massive success and I branch out abroad. I start Lout (UK) Ltd in England - these are separate entities so it needs to licence the branding, trademarks etc I established in America. Next up I branch out further into say, Singapore with Lout (SGP). Again, it needs to licence the existing IP."

Given that you control both sides of that transaction.The licence fees can be anything from zero, to some number conveniently made up to be just below last years profit. That's the complaint.

Add to that certain CEOs paying less in tax (as a %age of their income) than the lowest employee, it is little wonder where the animosity comes from.

SMEs are the lifeblood of the economy. Large multinationals are parasites.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

I found your description empowering.

Boffins blow hot and cold over li-ion battery that can cut leccy car recharging to '10 mins'

"delver that charging current simultaneously. How?"

The thing about overnight charging is that it doesn't have to be as high a power.

Take a single UK 'ring'

230V * 13A * 12 hours ~= 35KWh

Compare Tesla's model S 75KWh battery that gets ~250 mile range

Lose 20% to charging efficiency, possibly gain a few more hours if it's put on charge as soon as you're home.

A bog standard commuter could run the car without it ever seeing a fast charger.

As for load on the grid, the load is the equivalent of leaving a space heater or 2 on overnight. Not exactly nothing, but not the insurmountable problem it is inferred above.

If most domestic charging is done at home, there will be little need for charging stations. As for where they *are* needed, motorway services are not *typically* in built up areas where it would be difficult to run more power lines to.

Local petrol stations on the other hand could run into capacity problems.

The bigger problem I see is that comparatively few homes have places where any sort of domestic charging would be possible.

Europe's digital identity system needs patching after can_we_trust_this function call ignored

Re: Stack Overflow Code?

or not enough

Is HONK nothing sacred HONK? It's 2019 and an evil save file can pwn much-loved HONK Untitled Goose Game

Re: How it might work

So a bit like running eval() on JSON then?

Cringe as you read Horrible Histories: UK Banking Sector, sigh as MPs finger cloudy Big 3 as future risk

Re: Banks or Clouds

That only works when you have clean data.

One misspelling, or coincidental birthday could have you confused in the dB with someone else.

You then can't pass authentication because you need the same wrong answers as the DB. Pub Quiz style.

Some of the first hand accounts have been told in these very comment sections

Plan to strip post-Brexit Brits of .EU domains now on hold: Registry waves white flag amid political madness

"entitled to be treated as such..."

Tell that to the universities whos research grants are not being renewed and subsequent loss of staff.

I've already had friends move to the Netherlands as a result of this.

You'd think a gov with it's head screwed on would have stepped in to cover the shortfall.

A taste of things to come re agriculture. (Manufacturing is already screwed)

The sad thing is, even if we revoked today, it will take a decade to rebuild the trust we have lost as a result of this mess.

Rocket Lab plans to send small satellites to the Moon with Photon

Re: Only really, really little astronauts need apply

Some say he knew two facts about ducks, and both of them were wrong.

Three UK goes TITSUP*: Down and out for 10 hours and counting

Re: Gah

paper...

Is that like e-ink?

2001 fiction set to be science fact? NASA boffin mulls artificial intelligence to watch over the lunar Gateway

obligitory

"An Earth to Moon transfer and Moon to Earth transfer are very small amounts of Delta-V compared to getting into orbit."

Yes, but you have to get that fuel up there in the first place. The tyranny of the rocket equation and all that jazz.

If we could make the fuel on the Moon, that makes things interesting. It also influenced the fuel choice for Starship (for Mars)

We, Wall, we, Wall, Raku: Perl creator blesses new name for version 6 of text-wrangling lingo

obligitory

"Perl slowly dies, and Python lives on. The Python people were right: they may not be very good at language design, but they are better than almost everyone."

I have ranted (possibly somewhat unfairly), about Perl going the way of COBOL in these sort of threads previously. I am a sometime defender of Python - Mostly as a counterpoint to "If it doesn't compile to machine code, is it even a real language" type posts.

I make the point that we are payed to solve a problem, not marvel at how smart we are, and point at the layers of abstraction involved in web apps that some here believe "...should just be written in C or C++ to begin with..."

That said, I agree with you about how sometimes its the artistry that is satisfying. However that's our own personal gratification, not the client's. If you can find a client/patron to scratch that itch, then I congratulate you.

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

Re: Endless recycling

Pile Based Filing System sounds an awful lot like a stack.

Occasionally you get a stack overflow.

Excited about dual-screen laptops? Make your own with duct tape and the ThinkVision M14

Re: My workflow is fine, thanks

The Pi 4 only has a USB c socket for power input (and even then doest conform to spec, as documented elsewhere)

The USB 3 ports are 3.0, not 3.1

So I can't be certain, but looks doubtful.

Stalker attacks Japanese pop singer – after tracking her down using reflection in her eyes

Re: Unexpected result of digital cameras

The photos taken by the Nokia N8 were put on billboards. (2010 12.1 megapixels)

Not a fair comparison, but well past the point of 'good enough in most cases'

Father of Unix Ken Thompson checkmated: Old eight-char password is finally cracked

Re: Why only English?

Bonus points for non ASCII, triple word score for Unicode

'We go back to the Moon to stay': Apollo vets not too chuffed with NASA's new rush to the regolith

Re: Let's start with the basics and then work forward from there.

Bias doesn't. Data does.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence we went to the moon. Not least that the main competitors, Russia, believe it. (Y'know, people with radar and everything)

The burden of proof is on you.

Linky revisited: How the evil French smart meter escaped Hell to taunt me

obligitory

Spherical, and within a vacuum .

We're all doooooomed: Gloomy Brit workforce really isn't coping well with impending Brexit

obligitory

FFS "post anonymously" is pre-ticked. Twas me again.

Errata: population of EU is ~500 million, not 350 million

We are 6th, not 5th (india has slightly more GDP) Link

obligitory

Misclicked anon - twas me

Re: When to move abroad

"As a country we are a net contributor, one of the more successful countries and not in the appalling Euro currency. But yeah sure we have been had."

So you think going cap in hand to the IMF in the 70s was mark of success, yeah? We've been one of the more successful countries *SINCE WE JOINED* largely down to trade with and through the EU.

That's where you've been had. You think we've been successful *despite* the EU, rather than *because* of it. It's not difficult to point out the obvious. Just because a teenager can figure it out doesn't mean it's not true.

Re: When to move abroad

'Unabated drivel"

Contradict a single reference I made. Go on. Show us it's drivel.

"Professionals... Thicker than pigshit"

Think about what you just typed. Just like how the flat earth society has members around the globe. Trusting homeopathy rather than a doctor. Because hey, leavers have had enough of experts

"Only ones who have benefited..."

This has been refuted so many times I'm just gonna leave this link here.

What has the EU ever done for us?

"Backhanders to Slovenia"

Do you mean the regional development fund, that we also benefit from? Or are you talking about something else?

Re: Creating arguments

"cool, polite and rational"

Metaphorically machine gunning people with facts (or 'facts') kinda hides a lot of the nasty emotions behind the keyboard.

The counterpoints are ignored. You can absolutely demolish someone's basic premise with a whole host of references, and they just change tac. Piling on talking points as if that adds weight to a flawed premise.

Look at the opinion polls doing the rounds. 'Britain Elects' currently has the Conservatives >6% lead over Labour, but whatukthinks.org (aggregates several polls) has remain at 51%. It's quite easy to cherry pick surveys to get to whatever position you want. I recall channel 4 calling both sides out over this during interviews.

Whenever a politician would cite a poll to back up their position, they would be asked "Which poll?" It's rare that either side would have an answer.

Re: Project Fear

I didn't know the Daily Express had an account on here

Re: When to move abroad

"totally ignored their complaints."

Well yeah, when the complaints consisted of "too many furrners" when EU nationals are more profitable for the taxman *EVEN WHEN YOU INCLUDE THE ONES ON THE DOLE*

How do you address that? How do you address that ignorant fucks dont like accents?

Link in case you think I was making it up.

Other complaints:

"Something something sovereignty."

For every single EU law and regulation, the UK has not only had a seat at the table, but has voted *FOR 98% of them* In the whole history of the EU, there are 56-72 law the UK was outvoted on (depending on who you talk to)

Link in case you think I'm making that one up.

"The working classes were so screwed over they would take any opportunity to take down the smug elitists"

Yes, but not by the EU.

The EU pours millions into regions the Tories couldn't give a fuck about.

The EU (up until the referendum) funded a massive part of research in our universities the the govs of the day just wouldn't.

The EU is the largest market to sell the goods those industrial heartlands produce. Having trade barriers selling (say, cars) into the EU *will* hurt those regions that can ill afford it.

We have *always* been able to kick out EU migrants who were "a burden" but we're *STILL NOT DOING IT*, even now.

Perhaps you can tell us how many problems will be solved by leaving the EU when we will *STILL HAVE TO ABIDE BY THEIR RULES* if we want to trade with them.

They are >50% of our trade, were are ~10% of theirs.

When those screaming about sovereignty realise that they are worse off out, there will be trouble.

Behold the perils of trying to turn the family and friends support line into a sideline

Re: F&F discount

"always start with crappy cables!"

Ah yes, the old Layer One problem.

No amount of ping/traceroute/CCNA'ing can save you from a backhoe. Supposed separate points of ingress... grumble grumble

Mines the hoppyest thing they have that isn't Lager.

Tut – you wait a lifetime for an interstellar object then two come at once

Re: A comet is what they want us to think.

"The labour and democrat parties have vacancies."

Surely you mean the other lot.

Link for those from the future where the topical context will be lost.

#MeToo chatbot, built by AI academics, could lend a non-judgmental ear to sex harassment and assault victims

What's the betting that a better approach is to have an actual human - Turing test style - be the bot?

If pretending to be a bot helps the victims open up...? Naturally only by proper professional counselors (not the local gov kind)

For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020

Re: Nothing new...

'Thats why I said "for your own use".'

Which could have meant your own companies use. (I admit, it didn't in this case)

"might just as well write the whole program in C or C++ "

Hey Guys! Boltar is volunteering to write a full web application in C or C++! Good Luck with that.

As i've said elsewhere:

"I'm paying someone to solve a problem, not to give themself a blowjob over how smart they are - that's how LISP happened."

"Sure there are times when you *want* to juggle memory addresses, but a regular CRUD app? Nah. If there are performance issues somewhere down the road, there are several layers of abstraction to peel back before I start looking at (for example) C SELECT calls. That's commonly called "premature optimisation" is is frowned upon by those with a clue."

--

The above poster found a bottleneck, and solved it. They didn't "build the whole thing in C or C++" with the required (expensive) level of expertise and subsequent debugging issues. The resources were spent where they were measurably needed, not self flagellating about the tradeoffs of interpreted languages.

"Django 1.3, Python 2.6 sites to Python 2.7"

TBF a Web Application Firewall (WAF) in front of that and you're fine.

Keep that WAF up to date though...

Re: Nothing new...

Possibly, but the people writing the library are not necessarily the ones who will be using it.

Apple programs Siri to not bother its pretty little head with questions about feminism

Re: YES

Bat-Siri HAS no limits

Finally! A solution to 42 – the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything

Classic Parker Square

Royal Navy seeks missile-moving robots for dockyard drudgery

The kind of password that an idiot will have on their Luggage?

Outlook turned eBay into DD-Bay: Topless busty babe mysteriously fronts souk's emails

Re: Fallen Maddonna with the big boobies

Good Moaning!

Can you download it to me – in an envelope with a stamp?

Re: obliged to return to the commune of her birth

'According to numerous "Pastors" here in the USA, every single word in the Bible is the literal word of God.'

It always makes me laugh, then sigh, that people believe that.

I remember a documentary where Historians compared versions of the bible. They could date particular details/stories because *THEY WERE NOT IN THE EARLIER VERSIONS* .

*sigh*