* Posts by Glen 1

946 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009

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

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

Re: obliged to return to the commune of her birth

Splitters!

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

Glen 1

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"?

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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

Glen 1
Holmes

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

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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 ..

Glen 1

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"

Glen 1

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?

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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...

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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.

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

Re: RFC 1149 FTW

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

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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?

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

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

Glen 1

Re: Ahhh passwords...

Yes they should, and don't call me Shirley

Glen 1

Re: Ahhh passwords...

I do wonder how many places accept unicode in the password field. Certainly would make brute forcing less probable.

Fed-up graphic design outfit dangles cash to anyone who can free infosec of hoodie pics

Glen 1

Re: Let's see if I can come up with a few.

Verity, is that you?

New UK Home Sec invokes infosec nerd rage by calling for an end to end-to-end encryption

Glen 1

Kapla!

NASA trumpets Orion completion as India heads to the Moon

Glen 1
Trollface

listen here PAL...

Glen 1

Re: Old people paid for the pensions of those who were claiming

If only there were a way to attract younger people to work here, y'know, after they've grown up somewhere else so we've not had to pay for their education.

They'd arrive, get a job, and be *immediately* profitable from a tax point of view. Shazam! The boomers are more easily provided for, unless there's a vote or summat to make the UK less attractive to migrants... In that case it might end up being the other way around...

Glen 1

Re: Glen 1

AKA underfunding the NHS? They wouldn't do that would they? /s

Glen 1

Re: India is going to the moon with my tax.

Old people paid for the pensions of those who were claiming when *they* were working. More people working, fewer people claiming.

As that changes with the aging population and fewer people around to pay for it, either the current workers will pay more, the pensioners will get less, or a mixture of the two.

It has already started with increasing of the state pension age... TV licences... WASPI women...

Glen 1

Re: India is going to the moon with my tax.

"I am going to have to work for the rest of my life to pay for it all."

Twas ever thus.

We only finished paying the US for Lend Lease in 2006.

Going cap in hand to the IMF in the 70's

The 2008 bail-out.

The big ticket item coming up however, is the millennials having to pay for the baby boomers pensions.

With the baby boomers being currently the richest generation, and birthrates declining, how do you think *that* will turn out?

Alibaba sketches world's 'fastest' 'open-source' RISC-V processor yet: 16 cores, 64-bit, 2.5GHz, 12nm, out-of-order exec

Glen 1

Re: Here's the funny part...

The place of origin matters less than you'd think.

Examples:

The number of nations working on the Manhattan project

The origin of the Jet engine

Von Braun's contribution to Apollo

Bletchley Park improved upon Polish work

SSEM Stored Program Computer in Manchester

Linux

Wind the clock back further and we are all just apes learning to hit each other with sticks.

Glen 1

Re: Right on the expected curve...

*COUGH*Transmeta*COUGH

Rise of the Machines hair-raiser: The day IBM's Dot Matrix turned

Glen 1

Re: Try a Lathe

sometimes its less about safety, and more about not letting the ambulance chasers getting a toe hold, and subsequently keeping the insurers sweet.

Glen 1

Re: I had the reverse situation

"However some women seem to think that any man who simply talks to them is trying a come on"

People aren't born thinking that, it's taught. Unfortunately in many cases it's taught by bitter experience.

Darkest Dungeon: Lovecraftian PTSD simulator will cause your own mask to slip

Glen 1

Re: I.T. Angle?

I was today years old when I learned about miskatonic university

Cyberlaw wonks squint at NotPetya insurance smackdown: Should 'war exclusion' clauses apply to network hacks?

Glen 1

Re: Cyberwarfare target is the network itself?

Depends on how you define network. A switch is simultaneously part of the network, and one of the targeted computing systems plugged in at either end.

In many (most?) contexts, the network 'begins' at whatever pipe you have to the internet. From that point in, there is at least the *possibility* of some control.

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