Posts by Glen 1

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

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*

Re: Moved to France

That would be the difference between an independent cafe where it's the owner serving you vs a overworked (hungover?) student part timer who is in the middle of taking a delivery and hasn't had chance to put the tills on yet. (Think Costa/Nero/Greggs employee).

Sometimes I think it should be legally mandated that people work retail/kitchen/bar for at least a year of their life. Would probably be better for their worldview than National Service.

Re: Moved to France

The point of the nice round number is to not have a shedload of change. If you're paying by card, what does it matter?

I don't think the extra 0.075% revenue will have made much difference.

Re: obliged to return to the commune of her birth

Splitters!

Clutching at its Perl 6, developer community ponders language name with less baggage

Re: @Charlie Clark - Why exactly is Perl any worse than Python?

RE: Search queries

That comes from Googling a one liner to do what we want, without looking at the caveats.

Sometimes those caveats are not well documented, sometimes the call is an abstraction outside our expertise, sometimes the dev is just a bad dev.

I've never had to call LDAP before (or AD for that matter), so my search queries would probably suck. For the sake of our fellow commentards, how would I "construct an efficient search query"?

Re: @Charlie Clark - Why exactly is Perl any worse than Python?

"You know, I'd like very much to fly a Boeing-777 and I know that the auto-pilot can do all the job for me"

Can you name a modern jetliner that doesn't use fly-by-wire? All those assists and features that let you get on with flying the damn plane?

Compare to something like writing a web scraper in python, or even a simple 2d game engine. If it solves the business problem (flies the plane), then why would I pay someone to juggle memory addresses?

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. Thats commonly called "premature optimisation" is is frowned upon by those with a clue.

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

Re: Erm...

Ask and ye shall receive (sometimes)

"Microsoft has ‘fessed up to inserting the hexadecimal string “0xB16B00B5” in the Linux kernel."

Link

Raspberry Pi head honcho Eben Upton talks thermals, stores and who's buying the kit

Like a PiTop? (The link is to v3 with ~7 hours battery life, there is a v4 in the pipeline)

The top three attributes for getting injured on e-scooters? Having no helmet, being drunk or drugged, oddly enough

Re: Scooter stoopid

"10km commutes"

And If your only going 2-3 miles to a train station? Far enough to think twice about walking, ridiculously short for a car - which will then be left in the car park. Scooters look to be easier to collapse and carry, as opposed to the Brompton fiddlyness

Re: Scooter stoopid

"The number one cause of scooter injuries are scooters. Scooters for adults has to be the perfect example of how fekking stupid the world has become.

That they are a rental business is even more absurd."

Replace the word "scooter" with "bicycle", and you will have a not uncommonly held opinion around these parts (that I don't share). Yes, bicycles are more stable, but that means fuck all if some idiot who shouldn't be driving sideswipes you.

Hey, it's 2019. Quit making battery-draining webpages – say makers of webpage-displaying battery-powered kit

Re: notifications and popups

Have you ever played count the clicks?

Cookie consent

Notifications

While moving your pointer for the previous 2, it goes outside the browsing area, so the page launches a pop over about signing up for a newsletter.

Add insertions moving the content you are currently reading.

Auto play videos - that you can't immediately dismiss because of the other ads overlaying it.

The web is starting to look like Sky Sports during the football results with all the overlays.

Re: Web developers?

"Hardly any developers these days care about performance or optimisation."

Clients pay the bills, and if *they* don't say anything, is it worth spending the man hours on? It's the clients that are impressed by the bells and whistles, and that is ultimately what they open their checkbooks for.

When the problem hardware you speak of is a wet string internet connection, but the client still wants, oh, let's say a detailed background image covering the whole border (like el reg's ads), then you either piss off the client or you make it work. Add to that the fact the client probably *won't* have that wet string internet connection, and it becomes "someone else's problem" .

No its not great, but as long as clients want and pay for the bloat, that's what we will keep getting. See the Gawker sites as a prime example of this. That's when you have tricks like too-much-js used to lazy load then fade in images that weigh in at 100s of kB for a text based site.

"actually need to know all this unnecessary nonsense to be able to do your work."

Yep, when was the last time you saw somebody develop front end without jQuery? That's just the tip of the iceberg.

Re: At Charlie Clark, re: bells & whistles.

When hamburger menus started appearing, I had no idea what they were, and just thought the sites that used them were broken.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: Eh?

"Don't care to be insulted? Don't show up in public.."

Dont care to be called out for being a dick? Don't showup in public.

Re: Divide and rule

"Sorry, but I don't buy it."

Have you ever tried searching for "gimp" from a school internet connection?

Science and engineering hit worst as Euroboffins do a little Brexit of their own from British universities

Re: ICL..?

"Standards differ, and so do degrees."

Indeed, a Bachelor's is not a Master's but if you can't compare between bachelors degrees of the same subject by grade, then what's the point in the grade?

If I have a BSc (1st class hons) from the former Polly, and I'm up against some one with a 2:2 from a Russell Uni, how do they compare?

My point is that they should not be called the same thing. if they are held to a higher standard, it should be reflected in the qualification. Call them Russell degrees or something rather than Bachelors. Have the higher standard be reflected in the name.

Then you have to ask question: Is a Russel degree worth more than a Master's from a former Polly? phD?

Otherwise its like saying you have a CCNA from Oxford.

Re: Brexit bollocks

"The referendum was won", then the goalposts were moved.

Just as people who voted to "stay in the European Community" may have changed their mind when the goalposts moved with the Lisbon treaty.

By that logic as we initially voted to be a member of the organisation that became the EU, we should be a member permanently. It is, as you say, fairly boolean concept - and just as flawed. That's before we get onto whether a Brexit-in-name-only would honour the referendum*

"which of the various groups from various remain and various brexit do we bolster with their supporters?"

That is a matter for the electorate. If we end up with largely the same gov, or more Brexiteers, then no deal it is. However, I doubt it.

*It would, and was what Labour was aiming for. The arrogance of some of the politicians to complain that what was on the table in the withdrawal agreement was not as good as what we currently have (Duh). To have the mental capacity to realise that, yet still think its the EU that's going to come off worse... Idiocy.

Re: Brexit bollocks

"Why? The referendum result was won. The referendum question of remain or leave the EU."

The referendum was won by a *slim* majority on the basis that we would have an orderly withdrawal followed by a free trade agreement.

May called a snap election on the basis that she would increases her majority in order to have her deal through parliament. We ended up with a hung parliament that was only resolved through the confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP. Hardly a convincing victory.

Then we have the ERG arguing for no deal when EVERY leave politician I can think of dismissed it as scaremongering in the past. The same people who are now trying to say that's what we wanted all along. This was not put to the people until the European elections.

At face value, Brexit Ltds victory, looks fairly emphatic, until you add up the remain vote split across other parties. The question then becomes how much of the Tory/Labour vote would have been for leave or remain? The link I posted earlier admittedly takes a one sided approach to those sums, but then, so is screaming "we won you lost get over it".

"Amusingly to stop a no deal brexit there has to be agreement on a new course of action"

Indeed, and the only way *thats* going to happen is with a different set of MPs, and parliament is tantalisingly close to being able to enact a vote of no confidence. At that point, the only thing that would give any new arrangement a mandate is through a public vote (either a GE or 2nd Ref).

Johnson is quite obviously in GE campaign mode - suddenly there is a magic money tree, and has pledged to increase the number of police to a number similar to what they were before the tories came to power ..

Re: Brexit bollocks

'fantasy election result'

You mean like a General Election manifesto based on an orderly withdrawal suddenly becoming a mandate for no deal without a single vote being cast for the change?

If people wanted no deal, they would have continued voting for UKIP at the GE (Brexit Ltd having yet to exist then). Yet the Ukip vote collapsed. Yes remainers have to squint a bit to see a path to remain* , but to say No Deal is what the public want requires a whole lot of "lalala not listening" and outright denial that the things we were warned about are starting to happen.**

*(current squint is vote of no confidence, with whatever happens afterwards requiring either a 2nd ref os a GE)

**"Project Fear" and "Yes X, Y and Z, places are closing, that's nothing to do with brexit. And if it is, its short term. And if its not short term, our manufacturing industry well be leaner and more competitive as a result. What do you mean we are still competing with polish workers, except this time they are in poland will full access to the EU?" or one direct quote I heard "The UK is a service economy, the manufacturing industry will be run down like the coal mines were. It will be fine"

Re: ICL..?

"but I doubt very much if the experience and finals exam after 4 years at an Oxford college or MIT or Stanford is comparable to that from an ex-Poly."

Why?

If they are to a different standard, then they are *not* the same qualification. Does that mean *any* non Russell group/ivy whatever should not be allowed to award degrees? Or should what the clever rich people get be called something else?

Re: Brexit bollocks

Apoligies for the double post, my sentence:

"No amount of protection from the EU can protect us from our own gov" seemed a bit ambiguous.

No amount of older people "protecting" us from the EU can protect us from our own gov.

Re: Brexit bollocks

Then perhaps you can explain what they think they are saving us from?

Pretty much everything someone has said we needed "saving" from have been things our gov had a say in, and for the most part, was all for. No amount of protection from the EU can protect us from our own gov. (although thanks to things like the ECG, the opposite is not true).

As for reasons to stay, being able to tell China and the US to do one when they flex their economic muscles is just the first off the top of my head. Trump has already got his eye on the NHS, with Johnson quite happily bending over for him.

Re: Brexit bollocks

The young people see the older people taking advantage of membership of the EU through their working life, and now pulling the ladder up behind them.

Its not something limited to the EU, things like final salary pensions, house prices relative to income, retirement age increasing...

Re: Brexit bollocks

I chose the one where the remain parties got a higher share of the vote than the leave parties. Y'know, the most recent one - now the lie after lie of the brexiteers are being revealed for what they are.

Link

Don't get me wrong, there is a legitimate debate to be had, but when that conversation is being shouted out by "something something immigrants" and promises of Unicorns. Those arguments are met with the scorn they deserve.

Re: ICL..?

Ask Birmingham City University. Not to be confused with the University of Birmingham. One is a Russell Group Uni, the other is a former polly.

<rant>

What gets me, is that qualifications (of the same subject) are *supposed* to be worth the same. Private school kids sit the same GCSEs

The whole point of exam boards is to make sure grades are being awarded consistently. I might make an exception where Oxbridge folks go straight into a phD from being an undergrad, but otherwise... why do they think their 2:1 is worth more?

Sure, the degree only matters to get the foot in the door, but why does a degree in philosophy from a Russell group Uni give you more of a leg up in a software career than a comp sci degree from elsewhere. Jobs for the boys.

</rant>

#notbitter #maybealittle

Re: Brexit bollocks

While I see your point regarding people changing their minds as they get older, that assumes the distribution of people across all age ranges is even. It isn't. *cough*Baby boomers*cough*

Add to that the #remainernow people and how slim the original majority was, you can understand why the leavers fear a second referendum. I mean, if leave is the will of the people, the result will be pretty much the same, right? Like how May wanted to increase her majority with a snap GE... oh wait.

Re: Brexit bollocks

Wow. Just Wow.

1) "The areas that voted out are among those that have been hit worst by membership "

Apart from all that European development fund money that our own politicians would only give lip service to when there is an election looming. *cough*Johnson*cough* Areas with a large industrial base that stand to lose the most from trade barriers or tariffs with our largest market.

2) Leaving is not a left/right divide, it is a divide between those who can think, can read history, can look at the disaster of the last 40 years how the UK has risen from going cap-in-hand to the EMF in the 70's and become the 2nd (3rd?) largest economy in the EU... and understand its causes and the remainers leavers who just lap up the bbc bollox. {Why are they giving Steve Bannon airtime?} FTFY

3) I partly agree with you here, with the caveat that high wages for such workers mean higher prices.

4) "most of pension age have some pension provision so are actually pretty unlikely to be affected"

Depends on the pension. If it is sensitive to market swings, no dice. If you have an annuity and inflation starts to rise, there will be issues.

5) "No one reads the daily mail"

Number 2 newspaper by circulation. So no one reads the Daily Mail only so far as no one reads newspapers anymore.

6) I agree with you here. At the moment, Labour is hemorrhaging supporters because it is trying to not pick a side. It wants to be Leave for the trade unions, and remain for the Metropolitan Champagne Socialists. Brexit party and Lib Dems vote as increases because of this.

7) Meh

8) "There is nothing to keep you in the UK"

There is nothing to keep *skilled* people in the UK. Which is ultimately the point of the article. Why would other countries want more shop assistants?

"This will allow them to create the new plant, new machinery, new jobs that we need to compete"

You've basically described Labours traditional MO. Also - Who is "them"?

Last I checked JLR is foreign owned. Dyson the massive patriot is fucking off. BAE is mostly American.

Capital doesn't give a shit about borders unless it affects the bottom line. If it becomes costly to do business here (eg Tax, Tariffs, regulatory issues), capital will be re-invested elsewhere, nothing personal, just good business. You want to subsidise you industry? That's fine, well take some of those Tax breaks, thank you very much (*cough*Amazon*cough*) This is happening in the manufacturing industry right now. Sunderland being closed, Fords engine plant, New vehicles being manufactured in other countries, not here.

Re: Brexit bollocks

"obsessed with instagram and social media and will vote whatever way their favourite youtube comentator tells them to"

instagram and social media...youtube comentator

rewinding...

TV and Radio... TV/Radio presenter

rewinding...

Newspaper... Journalist/Author

rewinding...

The family patriarch/matriarch... Mom and Dad

Substitute as appropriate depending on era. Video killed the radio star, but the printing press killed word of mouth. Dickens was political AF. They would have gotten away with too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

Linux Journal runs shutdown -h now for a second time: Mag editor fires parting shot at proprietary software

Re: Yes , there are a few in print

The counterpoint is sites like Hacker News, or this Humble Establishment. How much are you paying for them?

Reading a double page spread on tool X where the first page is installing the tool chain vs a blog post with a link to the installation guide followed by the actual stuff you're there to find.

Where the blogosphere (does that word age me?) falls down, is in the WHY area. I search for "I want to do X" will be met with results of "How to do X in Y tool". Without much further examination as to why pick that particular tool. Would you even ask the question if you haven't heard of the other tools?

My point is that while I agree with you regarding the echo chamber of search results, hub sites fulfill a similar role to the magazines. With the bonus that you don't feel you've wasted your money if you only read 10% of the articles.

Re: Yes , there are a few in print

Linux User & Developer's swan song was Sept last year

Two weeks after Microsoft warned of Windows RDP worms, a million internet-facing boxes still vulnerable

Re: If you believe non Windows systems are inherently secure...

"least effort to stay secure"

What's the mac equivalent of gpo or WSUS? (Not a dig - Genuinely interested)

Hack-age delivery! Wardialing, wardriving... Now warshipping: Wi-Fi-spying gizmos may lurk in future parcels

Re: RFC 1149 FTW

latency is a problem though, and don't forget packet loss caused by Highly Agitated Winged Killers

Seems like you could do similar stuff with an ESP32 and an accelerometer for a fraction of the cost.

You don't need the GPS when a) you know where you're posting it b) the battery life can be measured in days. (More than enough to reach destination)

Also: if you're just sniffing WiFi for de-auths and recording the handshake, you can extend battery life further by only using 2G/Edge. You'd probably need 4G/LTE to spoof a full grown internet connection.

More Linux than Windows: El Reg takes Docker Desktop for WSL 2 preview out for a spin

Re: quo vadis ms :D

I've always liked the idea of Windows being a desktop environment for Linux

Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One's AWS S3 buckets got hacked?

Re: Bean counters only count beans

"That does NOT mean you can do it without a highly skilled cloudops engineer plus a couple of less senior guys. There is a bare minimum of human effort required.

But middle management read about "zero administration" deployments, and decided that means that at most you need an intern."

There is a whole spectrum in between, the end result of which might not be distinguishable until something goes wrong.

The first hit for a devops engineer job in my area pays 55K. That would be massive overkill for, say, a webshop punting *almost* custom wordpress sites.

While IT is thought of as a cost centre, manglement will mangle.

How to avoid getting burned at Black Hat, destroyed at DEF CON or blindsided by Bsides

Re: Don't Touch My Shit

I only regret that I have but one upvote to give!

Our hero returns home £500 richer thanks to senior dev's appalling security hygiene

Re: Ahhh passwords...

Yes they should, and don't call me Shirley