Posts by Swarthy

Amazon sues 10,000 Facebook Group admins for offering fake reviews

Re: Reviews Business

I'd be more concerned about the "anonymous" part of the survey where they got back to you to critique your "anonymous" answers.

Apple to pay $50m settlement for rotten butterfly keyboards

In their defense

They tried to write out a full Mea Culpa, but the "o" and "e" keys were broken; the only thing they could write was "N0 WR0NG D0ING".

British boffins make touchless computing tech on the cheap

Fitness for programmers

No you can code via Interpretive Dance, swapping pirouettes for semicolons.

Uber to pay millions to settle claims it ripped off disabled people with unfair fees

Re: So now...

And having to disclose a medical condition... And given Uber's track record that HIPAA data will be up for auction very soon.

James Webb Space Telescope looks closer to home with Jupiter snaps

Re: Turtle ?

Not all shelled amphibians with feet are tortoises. As an example

Re: So this is what they spend our money on…

You forgot Poe's Law, and the "<sarc>" tag

..Not helped that someone made the exact comment you are parodying in a previous JWST article.

That emoji may not mean what you think it means

Re: Wha?

</pedant-mode>

It needed to be done.

SCOTUS judges 'doxxed' after overturning Roe v Wade

Re: All sense of irony aside...

The question is, is it revenge, or is it damage reduction? Are they being "attacked" in response to what they did, or are the being discouraged/prevented from doing it again?

If the FDA bans Martin Shkreli from buying any more pharmaceutical patents are they punishing him for past misdeeds, or are they preventing future misdeeds. A and B may both be correct.

Re: Privacy is mentioned nowhere in the US Constitution.

Language changes, and the writers tried to avoid using a word when a definition would do. They failed to do this with the 2nd amendment, and how many lawyers have dined out on the meaning of "well regulated"?

Re: The left no longer understand what democracy means.

If the fetus is a child, then why does child support not start until after birth? And also, why does a pregnant woman count for HOV lanes, but a baby in a carrier does, if it's the same number of people?

Re: This data storage thing..

The better question is how they'd handle it if their mistress wound up in an inconvenient condition.

It really depends on the level of fanaticism for the daughter/grandkid issue - some would say "God's Will", some will ship her across state/national borders or find a friendly doctor.

But the mistresses? Those always find a friendly doctor - even if they don't want to.

Linux laptop vendor Slimbook updates its ranges

Re: Keyboard choices

Ah, I did not read that correctly then. Thank you for the clarification.

Keyboard choices

This is almost half-way tempting. ..Almost. The inability to charge and run a second display at the same time, and the lack of a 10-key (why would you make a 15.6" without a number pad‽) makes it unsuitable for my needs.

And that makes me sad.

Twitter sues Musk: He can't just 'change his mind, trash the company, walk away'

Re: the world's richest man is no match for the economy

"He's not a genius, he's just a very naughty boy!"

Re: I'm saving my popcorn for the third act...

What I'm hoping for:

1) The courts force Must to complete the agreed purchase

2)The reputational damage that Musk inflicted on Twitter drives the company under

3)Twitter going over the edge drags Musk down with it, forcing him to sell off Tesla and SpaceX to more responsible parties

4) Twitter and Musk drag each other down to obscurity and their only lasting impact being examples of "What not to do" for future entities.

First-ever James Webb Space Telescope image revealed

Re: So how much of the night sky is that?

I would guess that the least visually interesting spot would be the dipole repeller, but that would, perhaps, be a very interesting spot to study.

Re: Larger still

I would say the chance of life in our galaxy is 1,as for the chance of intelligent life... Well, as the poet said: "And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space / 'Cause it's bugger all down here on Earth"

Re: Larger still

Even at "half", that is between 50 and 200 milliard stars, in the Milky Way alone. And there are a lot of galaxies in that picture.

I gotta agree with A Non e-mouse on this one: An almost certainty of intelligent life, and a near certainty of never being able to contact it, barring a significant shift in our understanding of physics.

Twitter claims Elon Musk bailed from sale with 'invalid and wrongful' reasons

Both days: "I'm outraged that Musk keeps playing silly buggers with the stock market!"

San Francisco cops want real-time access to private security cameras for surveillance

Re: what exactly is the definition of "Historical video footage"?

By my understanding, a better terminology would be "Warranted" vs "On-going"; so, "Historical" footage would be a recording that is requested after-the-fact, the minimum delay being the time it takes to file a warrant.

And have an up-vote for "The Dead Past" that is an excellent Short, and changed the way I thought about the past.

Re: Loopholes

It doesn't say that permission is required, true. It does not seem to imply that permission is required, either.

The proposed law does not place penalties for refusing access, but neither does it preclude methods of "encouraging" co-operation.

However, the whole point is moot, as this entire endeavour runs afoul of the 4th Amendment, and if SCOTUS is populated by justices that actually care about the Constitution, this would be shut down faster than cops can fail to respond to a crime-in-progress.

Watch a RAID rebuild or go to a Christmas party? Tough choice

Re: IBM Engineer...

Ah, my misrake, it's "purple plague".

Here's a wiki on it

Re: IBM Engineer...

RE: Tinned memory contacts

That one actually make sense. If the mount-points were gold (plated), when current runs through a gold/aluminum contact pair, they electrolize and you get a weird gold/aluminum alloy: purple, brittle, and very non-conductive AKA The Purple Rot.

On reflection, That would take time, and cause intermittent errors first, and I don't know how that would cause the KB to stop.

Microsoft's Dublin datacenter to help take pressure off Ireland's renewable energy

Survey Results

...many datacenter operators said they were satisfied that they had more than enough capacity to cope.

Did they ask the Operators, or did they ask the BOFHs' Bosses? I don't think I could imagine Simon saying "We have more than enough capacity" - not when the over flow could be used sold to the Helldesk to charge their phones/laptops, or - better - to run the espresso machine, during a power cut.

I could see the Boss wanting to sell it back, and The BOFH giving him an example of the poor re-usability of electricity, using a cattle prod as a demonstration aid.

Visual Studio Code Server untethers developers from their workstations

RE: Musk as a Bond Villain

I liked Musk better when he was practically a Bond Villain. However, he has slid into Billionaire Dementia, and makes most of the Bond villains (Including Dr. Evil) look personable, competent, and rational.

Comparing Elon to Bond villains is a disservice to Ian Fleming's works.

Wash your mouth out with shape-shifting metal

Re: I wonder how many people

A lot of them must: they're the reason it's called a toothbrush, and not a teethbrush.

Re: While the prospect of toothpaste that DOESN'T taste like mint is appealing

anus, anise - either way it probably tastes like ass.

Large Hadron Collider experiment reveals three exotic particles

Re: My Reaction

Scientific progress goes "boinc"?!

CAPSTONE mission is Moon-bound, after less rocketry than expected

Re: Cool acronym

They did say to buy one.

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

Or, A4 perforated for A5. Maybe a bit more than your standard A4, but no need to worry about wonky cuts (including blood spots from people who never learned {how|not|when} to run with scissors)

Misguided call for a 7-Zip boycott brings attention to FOSS archiving tools

Re: A couple of points

In the flavor of American English that I learned, it is "Different from" opposed to "Similar to".

Different than weirds me out.

Re: I like 7Zip.

I did read both comments, in their entirety, and at first I thought VoT was agreeing with Paul (I have a horrible habit of not reading handles first). I read it as "How would the readership here had their software/lives works blocked/banned because of the despicable action of your respective government - and your government has done some shady shit."

Reading further comments, I re-checked the handles and realized that, yeah, VoT probably didn't finish reading.

Whatever hit the Moon in March, it left this weird double crater

Re: Bouncy space junk?

Or maybe the fuel tank was less empty than expected? The rocket engines made one crater, the tanks fell over, mixed the fuel & oxidizer, and -boom- second crater.

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

Re: Blowback

Not in The Fine Article, but linked in an earlier comment, they plan to be able to drill 20km in 100 days.

@ThatOne: One of us is having challenges assessing depth in that picture; most of those look 2-3cm deep. I'm assuming that there are off-camera experiments (too big to pose with) that are in larger chunks of rock.

NASA wants nuclear reactor on the Moon by 2030

Re: So they're looking to put fissile material on a rocket

Will they use Project Orion ships to get it there? Then there's no need for debate about the material that will stay in the rocket.

Re: Are you stupid????

Having not read the article, nor watched the video, would this be something like Venus's Induced Magnetosphere or Electric Field?

Totaled Tesla goes up in flames three weeks after crash

Re: Am I the only one

I see your "Better for the environment" and raise you "Less Bad for the environment"

Amazon fears it could run out of US warehouse workers by 2024

And we have a Winner!

That is exactly the next step.

Workers win vote to form US Apple Store union

After a few of those, the NLRB will take notice, and might start fining Apple whole minutes of profit.

Re: "Standard of living" wages...

So, by your logic, people should quit working at "crap" jobs, and get into a more profitable position. What happens when everyone does that? We already have restaurants that close at 3PM, or are only open on alternate days, because they cannot keep enough staff to stay open. WalMart has already ditched the 24/7 business hours, and will not go back - citing labor shortages.

Will you be one of the ones yelling at the lone teen behind the counter at Burger King to hurry up and make your burger, because everyone else left to get a better job?

SpiralLinux: Anonymous creator of GeckoLinux puts out new Debian remix

Re: Couple of notes

Can we sic the developer of this on Devuan? Get a nice, spiffy Debian-like OS, without all that SystemD crap, and with an easy installer, Flatpack support, etc.?

US senators seek ban on sale of health location data

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

Addendum: If someone is seeking an abortion at 8 months, they do not want that abortion - they need it.

Late term abortions are usually used when the fetus is already dead or has developed anomalies that will make them non-viable outside of the womb, or the mother has developed complications that will kill her if untreated. No one goes through 8 months of pregnancy and then decides "You know what - I don't want to do this anymore"

Re: Control by men of the woman's uterus is based on ancient religious beliefs.

Is it murder if I refuse to donate a kidney? Or if I don't donate blood?

Is it murder to evict someone in the winter and they end up dying of exposure?

Is it murder every time a doctor, hospital or insurance company refuses medical care due to lack of funding?

If you class all of the above as "murder" maybe I will listen when you say that abortion is murder as well.

Extra Credit: When the choice is between an abortion or the mother's life, is the baby murdering the mother, or does it count as self-defense?

Brave roasts DuckDuckGo over Bing privacy exception

Re: I really try to like Brave

I haven't tried Brave or the DDG browser - but Vivaldi has been lovely, and it has about the same rate of ad-displaying as Firefox with Privacy Badger.

Re: These are not just data trackers

"Bing - the #1 way to search for Google"

SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter

Re: Shut up and do your job!

I don't get where these woke little children feel they have the right to tell their employer what to do or say!

Probably from the same place that makes employers feel they have the right to tell their employees what to do or say.

If they want to have a say in the company buy enough stock to become a voting shareholder, then you can have a say!

So you are only allowed to have an opionon if you're wealthy?! This is an example of equating the worth of a person with their net worth.

And what was his crime?

Let's see, he was accused of harrassing a stewardess, and paid $250K to make it go away, the post-script in TFA give another example, and I'm sure the SEC has another list as well.

Not exactly crimes, but definitely behaviours that warrant distancing.

Open source 'Office' options keep Microsoft running faster than ever

I have been on the look out for a decent e-mail client for home, and have settled on geary, though I am still not entirely comfortable with it (delete is weird, and the whole UI just seems "off").

I have also tried Vivaldi's e-mail client, and while not bad, it does feel uncomfortable and, yeah, new. It should benefit from a few revisions and updates. It is not helped by the fact that I use multiple windows (a window or two with tabs related to the task-at-hand for each workspace) and the e-mail can only be opened on one window - and I can never remember which one it is.

NASA to commission independent UFO study

Re: We're not advanced enough to understand "aliens".

" Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a big gun."

-Maxim 24

How one techie ended up paying the tab on an Apple Macintosh Plus

Ah, Geocities....

Citrix research: Bosses and workers don't see eye to eye over hybrid work

Re: Really ?

LiteStep is still around?! I know what I'm doing this weekend!