Posts by Glen 1

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Re: So?

Use velcro or slip-ons for shoes

Use a clip on tie.

This is the point I'm making.

There are assistive technologies/substitutes for many/most things.

I get that this is likely a sore point, but did you ask for help before quitting? If not, why? Was it a matter of pride? Did you actually quit on your own terms, or were you pushed?

There are *some* things that might take you out of the game - eyesight is quite important for example, but eyeglasses, loupes, and microscopes have been things for literally hundreds of years.

Whacking an arbitrary "must be able to lift 50lb" when the actual requirement appears to be dexterity only serves to prove our point.

Re: So?

"lift it onto the work bench... turn it on its side...I picked it up and looked it over "

Which could be accomplished by someone with one arm if they had the necessary equipment. or perhaps someone who could only lift 25 pounds. The 50 pound requirement seems arbitrary. You talk as if power tools/assistance is/are some heathen ideology.

As for, the "knowing where to hit it" thing.

If your expertise has value, presumably its worth a few hundred dollars of lifting equipment it might take say, a older gentlemen with the same expertise to lift the thing.

If it isn't, then how valuable is your expertise?

Explaining to someone how to lift (or help you lift) something so you can apply your massive ego expertise should be doable in a few mins. Maybe it takes a little longer. You are not on a production line where items per minute are measured.

Once your body begins to fail you (as will eventually happen to us all), do you think your knowledge stops being useful? Will you quit the job? Do you think you would be sacked? or will you insist on being assisted?

China's 7nm chip surprise reveals more than Beijing might like

Before the invasion of Ukraine (err... the bigger one), there was a case to be made that Germany buying Russian gas would make Putin hesitate to do anything too stupid.

Sadly, this has turned out to not be true.

Part of Germany's problem is that it decided to needlessly shut down its nuclear reactor fleet after Fukushima.

They have turned what should have been a carrot for Putin to play nice, into a stick that the whole of Europe (world?) is being whipped with.

Re: Work share

Similar to the US senate making sure their States get some of those sweet government contracts.

e.g. The senate launch system and the space shuttle

Germany is not only a net contributor, but contributes almost *Twice as much* as the UK did (Source)

Its as if the benefits are more than just financial or something...

Funnelling wealth to 'one' country by helping bankroll the others?

Why didn't *we* (UK) get a piece of that action?

Oh wait... /s

Re: Ours

Ahhh, classic Brexiter.

Never letting facts get in the way of a display of foaming bile.

BOFH: HR's gold mine gambit – they get the gold and we get the shaft

Re: Favourite CPU socket?

Surely the correct answer is socket 7/super 7?

Lasted for years.

Legacy IT to blame for UK's inflexible benefits system

Re: Interesting variant excuse

Sorry, maintenance *contracts*

Twitter preps poison pill to preclude Elon Musk's purchase plan

Re: Content moderation

Sooooo....

Holocaust Denial?

In quite a few countries that is criminal.

In other countries criticism of the ruler is criminal.

Advocating that 6 year olds can consent to sex? Not criminal...

What is deemed to be criminal is merely a matter of your lords and masters deciding what is criminal.

An early crack at network management with an unfortunate logfile

Re: Expert Sex Change

Ah yes, like a paid-for version of stack overflow.

Except for a while their paywall was merely "cover the answer with a signup sheet if not logged in", so you could still get to the info if you deleted the element from the dom.

I think the idea was that google could index the answer, thus thinking it was a good result, but hiding it from the user.

They eventually "fixed" that workaround. Thus making the site utterly useless.

UK spy boss warns China hopes Russia will help it take over tech standards

Re: IT Airbus

"It is high time for Europe (no EU needed for this purpose) ..."

True. However, when almost all of the major players are EU members, and the budget for such strategic thinking has to come from *somewhere*, the EU is the logical place for such an initiative to come from.

An alternative structure might look something like the ESA... but there is blatantly not the political will, nor the budget in post(?) COVID times to do that in this industry.

For those non EU European countries who might want in... well... nothing's stopping you doing your own thing. Perhaps the EU will let you join as a junior partner?

'Hundreds of computers' in Ukraine hit with wiper malware as conflict continues

Re: No Action

The difference is, as with the events you refer to, we have a treaty with Poland.

Hell, the RAF is currently patrolling Polish airspace as a part of the treaty.

Youtube link of News report

Re: "Of course you realize, this means war"

"No, it's to ask for citations for the null hypothesis and/or blindingly obvious, while making huge claims that actually require evidence and providing none."

Huge claims like Russia having very few working nukes?

Are/were you a supporter of Brexit, perchance?

Re: "Of course you realize, this means war"

Ah, so *thats* where they were going wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan. I wonder why we never tried that rather than leaving with our tail between our legs. /s

Re: "Of course you realize, this means war"

Surely the antivax similarity is to *not* have the citation when asked... Like you just did.

US Army journal's top paper from 2021 says Taiwan should destroy TSMC if China invades

Re: US Army plans to destroy world economy.

"In other news, Pinocchio cuts off his own nose to spite his face."

Its not like that doesn't have any precedent.

Look at Brexit. Now look at the folk who think Brexit didn't go far *enough*

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

Phorm Scandal

People decrying HTTPS on this comment section have short memories.

Phorm 'partnered' with BT (*Major* UK ISP) to inject ads to non-encrypted websites.

HTTPS kills it (and similar systems) dead. Bonus points if you don't use your ISPs DNS servers.

That said, if you're just going to switch to Google's DNS and continue using Googles' browser and mapping services...

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

Re: Difference?

"If a right can be taken away from you by something as capricious as a court, then it was never really yours to begin with."

Like a person's citizenship?

China plans to swipe a bunch of data soon so quantum computers can decrypt it later

"COMSTOCK"

GPU makers increasingly disengage from crypto miners

Re: miners - crypto, fiat, and reality

No moreso than the Fed.

Whenever automakers get their hands on chip supplies, the more expensive vehicles are first in line – NXP

Re: Run ..... ?

"Even without adding fluff (what is the point of lane following or vehicle-in-front-speed limiting, for a driver who is alert and knows how to drive?"

If the driver is alert and knows how to drive, why do you need cruise control in the first place?

Those reasons you're thinking of? That's what the "fluff" is for.

Love or hate your IT dept, money talks – and tech workers are getting more of it

Re: Laugh

Context for US readers:

According to Official Gov Statistics as of 2019:

The median salary here was £25k before tax

A salary of ~£50k puts you in the 86th percentile.

A salary of ~£70k puts you in the 93rd percentile.

£100k is in the 97th percentile

£150k is in the 98th percentile

A friend from Norway tells me that salaries there are twice as much as the UK, but everything is twice as expensive, so it evens out.

Sharing is caring, except when it's your internet connection

Re: I live half way up the hill ....

*ahem* The ThinkPad crowd will want a word...

Banned: The 1,170 words you can't use with GitHub Copilot

Re: Too few words

You must have been speaking to some mathematicians.

Rather than using *gasp* words, they use single letters to the point where they resort to adding superscript and subscript, sometimes with the same base letter.

I mean this somewhat tongue in cheek, but so many mathematicians would fail a decent code review.

British naval food doesn't look half bad... so we're going to try it out for ourselves

That joke was offal

Hacking the computer with wirewraps and soldering irons: Just fix the issues as they come up, right?

Re: The term 'noise' is a bit misleading

"thick as a bacon doorstep."

Good idea. I'm off to the kitchen.

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

Just adding to Books that explore this -

Ben Bova: Powersat

Underrated as an author. See the 'Grand Tour' series of books

New mystery AWS product 'Infinidash' goes viral — despite being entirely fictional

Looks like the Turbo Encabulator has gone all cloudy!

Hubble Space Telescope sails serenely on in safe mode after efforts to switch to backup memory modules fail

Re: Wishful thinking...

The reasoning for this is that when you are looking at the *really* far away stuff, its all red-shifted anyway.

The VLT was surpassing Hubble in optical wavelengths as long ago as 2012 (first interferometry - according to Wiki).

For a concrete (and more recent - 2018) example - Neptune

Tesla shows off the AI supercomputer training what it hopes will one day be an actual self-driving car

Re: Who makes money

If they could be *easily* replaced, they wouldn't be earning 6 figures.

Now that China has all but banned cryptocurrencies, GPU prices are falling like Bitcoin

Re: China bad

"needs subsidized power to function economically"

No. Subsidies just hand an advantage to those being subsidised. It doesn't need subsidies to *function* economically, you need subsidies to *compete* with those already being subsidised.

If the hashrate drops because the subsidies stop, the block difficulty is adjusted.

From Wiki:

"The on-chain transaction processing capacity of the bitcoin network is limited by the average block creation time of 10 minutes and the original block size limit of 1 megabyte. These jointly constrain the network's throughput."

Neither of those things are dependant on hashrate.

Remember, once BTC has all been mined, the miners are expected to continue based on the transaction fees alone.

Nominet is back to 'the same old sh*t' says Public Benefit campaign chief as EGM actions grind to halt

Re: "No, Virginia, ..." [Nominet's handing of EGM voting data to a market research agency, Savanta]

*shrug*

Perhaps "well" was overstating things, its certainly not a problem. As you amply demonstrate. Its no more a problem than the naked .uk TLD anyway.

My original (admittedly off topic) comment was on the basis of how shit do things have to get before things like facts and reality start to intrude on the Brexiter's delusions.

"hard facts accumulate until they can no longer be denied"

or put another way:

"'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

Re: "No, Virginia, ..." [Nominet's handing of EGM voting data to a market research agency, Savanta]

Pretty well.

The only problems I can see have been caused by Brexit related paperwork.

Re: "No, Virginia, ..." [Nominet's handing of EGM voting data to a market research agency, Savanta]

" But as time goes on, hard facts accumulate until they can no longer be denied, and they crack thru another layer of the scales on your eyes and another treasured myth crumbles away."

Something something Brexit

The server is down, money is not being made, and you want me to fix what?

Re: What kind of idiot do you think I am?

Asshole: a stupid, irritating, or contemptible person.

Bully: a person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable

While there may well be a large overlap, I would say the main distinction is the aggression.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

Re: Sometimes though....

Mr Moneybags wanted full duplex

Does the boss want those 2 hours of your free time back? A study says fighting through crowds to office each day hurts productivity

Re: Covid 19 and hot desks

"...how are they going to CV19 clean..."

"they" will provide a tub of alcohol wipes and leave you to it. Hand sanny if you're lucky.

Your hardware is end-of-life... and it's in space. Worry not, Anglo-Japanese sat to test new orbital cleanup method

Re: Fuel?

"exactly as much fuel"

A good ion thruster will use much less fuel than the hydrazine (etc) used in many station keeping systems.

Not only that, you only need to give the debris enough of a nudge to intersect the atmosphere... then let nature take its course (while our intrepid hero jets away). The shuttle did not need to carry a massive fuel tank to de-orbit.

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

Re: Loss of expertise

we have loads of backups, but restore? Whats that?

Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?

=1 could be an assignment...

Valheim: How the heck has more 'indie shovelware with PS2 graphics' sold 4 million copies in a matter of weeks?

Obligatory Factorio recommendation here. I have heard good things about SatisFactory, but not played it myself.

When you sink hundreds of hours into a game, it limits the number you can do justice.

Can we exhale yet? EU set to rule UK 'adequate' for data sharing in post-Brexit GDPR move

Re: "For now, those fears seem unfounded..."

"they are walling themselves off. "

They are walling *us* off from *their* money FTFY

Apple iOS 14.5 will hide Safari users' IP addresses from Google's Safe Browsing

Re: Tor, DNSCrypt, etc.

There are several open source distros for phones.

The limiting factors are drivers and getting the phone to boot from a non manufacturer sanctioned image.

As for stock android, I know there is a VPN API, so it should be possible.

How do we combat mass global misinformation? How about making the internet a little harder to use

Re: Teach people?

"removing time wasting rubbish"

One persons rubbish is another persons trigonometry/history

Personally, I think civil rights movements (eg BLM) are important enough to be taught about in schools. However some of them come under the heading of "Sociology" and is therefore sneered at by some.

ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

Compare:

Compare:

KU-1255 (wired keyboard with TrackPoint)

and

EBK-209A (Bluetooth KB with a not-Trackpoint)

The former is brilliant. However, I couldn't find a wireless version that wasn't silly money (>£100)

The latter is a PITA, the nub works like a very small trackpad - but waaay to sensitive. Accidentally touch it while typing, it moves. Lift your finger to press the left click button, it moves away from where you were going to click. As a compact Bluetooth keyboard, it could be worse - it has PgUp/Dwn and Home/End keys. However if you are buying it so you don't need a trackpad or mouse, it will frustrate you.

Chromium cleans up its act – and daily DNS root server queries drop by 60 billion

Re: hang on

"millions of ordinary people were perfectly capable of using the internet"

Before the omnibox shenanigans, how many of us regularly witnessed people type the full domain into google, then click the link for domain they have just typed in?

Nespresso smart cards hacked to provide infinite coffee after someone wasn't too perky about security

Re: To be perfectly fair ...

But I *like* overly hopped IPAs.

Re: Coffee and Mifare Classic

That's where the unsecured ethernet ports are...

How embarrassing: Xiaomi and Motorola show up to high school prom both wearing remote-charging tech

You can already do that with a strong enough light bulb.

Cisco intros desktop switches, one with USB-C to power your laptop

Not quite

you're going to be required to have a docking station

What you link to does not say what you said.

From the link:

Other points to consider when planning tasks involving portable computers are:

[...]

(c) Provide docking stations or similar equipment (see paragraph 11 of this appendix) at workstations where portable computers will be in lengthy or repeated use.

"Points to consider" is not the same thing as "required to have".

The rest is just saying standard ergonomics apply - i.e. your boss can't make you hunch over a laptop on a low table for extended periods of time. A situation that *can* be remedied by having a proper desk setup with a docking station, yes, but its also solved by having a £10 laptop stand on the same desk.

Also, look at the date of the document. If docking stations were required, they would have been required since at least 2003. Not "going to be".