Posts by Swarthy

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

Re: Really ?

"You are the lens through which you see the world" Is close, but lacks the accusative nature.

Next six months could set a new pace for work-life balance

Re: I already do a 4 day week

What in the ever-loving name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is managers' obsession with scheduling Friday afternoon meetings?!

I had one manager who liked to schedule meetings at 15:30 on Friday (Core hours were 8A-2P, I usually got in around 6A). This was in a city with some of the worst traffic in the country, where leaving at 2P would take an hour to get home, leaving at 4P would take 3.

Majority of Axon's AI ethics board resigns over CEO's taser drones

Poe's law

I know this was meant as satire, but I have to cite Poe's law: "every parody of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied"

Or, "If you keep knocking on the devil’s door, sooner or later someone will answer you"

Brute force and whiskey: The solution to all life's problems

Hmmm

Shirley a better solution (well, solvent) would have been to use the Whisky to clean the corrosion? or Isopropyl.

Engineer sues Amazon for not covering work-from-home internet, electricity bills

Re: The law is the law, hurrah hurrah

I mostly agree, but I must quibble with your 5/7ths baseline. We all know that Amazon tries to extract maximum work for minimum expenditure, and I somehow doubt that they are holding their employees to a 40-hour (5-day) work week. That 71% (5/7ths) should probably be 85%, and may well be (on a case-by-case basis) 100%.

Amazon accused of obstructing probe into deadly warehouse collapse

Re: I feel dirty

I hate to agree with you, but I do agree that attorney-client privilege is one that should well remain sacrosanct. However, I don't see how Disaster policies and procedures could possibly fall under that umbrella. Neither should the post-catastrophic communication between managers, unless they are all lawyers, and each others' clients. It has been laid down in precedent that forwarding communications (letter, email, etc) or sending documents to an attorney does not put the communique or document under privilege.

Amazon may have done everything right pre-disaster (Probably not, but judgment withheld and all that) and obstruction is not a good indicator of guilt; but it sure as hell ain't an indicator of innocence.

Re: Tornadoes

It seems to me that the article s less about Congress investigating the fatalities, and more about Amazon withholding documents and obstructing said investigation.

We could have an eternal back-and-forth about weather (sorry) Congress should investigate, but it strikes me as funny how a lot of the commentards defending Amazon on this are members of the "If you have nothing to hide..." group; or at least use the same linguistic style and idiom.

Elon Musk orders Tesla execs back to the office

Re: @AC - Congratulations for understanding communism.

If the CEO's salary were only 500x the shop-floor salary, it could be justified (it would not be an easy justification, but it could be done). The problem is that the CEOs are getting paid 1-4000x the median salary of their workers. Not 4000% - 4000x. That is where the red banner brigade are getting their motivation.

California Right-to-Repair bill quietly killed in committee

Re: Time for CA to do what they do best - citizen initiatives

This bill was proposed precisely to stymie a citizen initiative. It was written in the 11th hour before the CI would have been submitted for ballot. The submitter agreed that the bill should do what was needed, and was better formed than their efforts, so they withdrew the CI.

We all called that it would be killed in committee, because it was only proposed to stop the citizenry from taking matters into their own hands.

Re: "died in committee" "despite broad consumer support"

You do have a point on the downsides of local legislation, but I counter-offer: will the current technological gatekeepers be able to bribe lobby all of them?

It is a though akin to multiple small-claims court actions vs. a class-action suit; some may slip through, beginning a death of a thousand cuts; failing that, it will cost the gatekeepers a fair wad of cash.

Fusion won't avert need for climate change 'sacrifice', says nuclear energy expert

Re: I hope that nuclear fusion will be too cheap to meter

a few hundred quid a year for all the electricity you can consume is an amazingly good deal for most consumers.

That is "Too cheap to meter".

The promise wasn't free electricity, but rather you pay a subscription and it's "all you can drink".

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

Re: "French guy here"

*Too late for an edit*

English has French "loan" words coming out our oiseau.

A modest proposal

I propose we change the term "Francophile" to something more fitting with the language: "Ouib" which easily pluralizes as "Ouiboux"

Re: It seems that previous people replying missed the joke : in French

And you were hoist by your own petard.

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

I propose "cul de semaine" as either Friday afternoon/evening (to replace fin de semaine, freeing it up to cover Saturday/Sunday) or as a replacement for "le Weekend"

Re: "French guy here"

At least three, and some of them twice!

Clearview AI wants its facial-recognition tech in banks, schools, etc

Re: A hundred and fifty years ago

KN95 masks help with that (and other things)

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Re: The curse of overchoice

Make a tiny effort: Ask your question, then log back in with a sock-puppet and give a wrong answer. No-one will castigate you for a "dumb" question, they'll be too busy ripping into the puppet for being wrong.

Lithium production needs investment to keep pace with battery demand

Re: Hmmm....

Be Positive! If only to anode the pessimists.

Arm CPU ran on electricity generated by algae for over six months

Re: Or..?

But we do have vast reserves of previously-smelted Aluminium on-hand. It may require crawling through land-fills and/or repurposing ancient computing gear (ancient meaning >2 years if an Apple product), but it would require far lower power levels than refining bauxite

How ICE became a $2.8b domestic surveillance agency

Re: Not "In-Car Entertainment" then

Ummmm... Well.

I don't know how to tell you...

OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

Re: I wonder how many people still remember how to use it?

The only thing I still remember about VMS is the in-build versioning and that it had a database-based filesystem.

That clustering though, that sounds tailor-made for a cloudy upstart.

Europe's GDPR coincides with dramatic drop in Android apps

Re: @cantankerous swineherd

Perhaps it should have been specified as "Useless to the User". These types of apps are very useful - to the creator, the advertisers, and the publisher, but not so much the user.

And here's the thing, they "Innovate the truth" when describing it, so that it appears useful(to the user) and then fails to deliver. If they are willing to ignore privacy law (as stated in TFA) and the ethics of informed consent, then why would these shovel-ware "developers" pause at truth in advertising?

Elon Musk flogs $8.4bn of Tesla shares amid Twitter offer drama

Re: Reputation system

Please proofread your article, perhaps resorting to a dictionary, and then re-post what you mean.

1) They said "fringe views are typically untrue" you responded as if they had said "all fringe views are untrue"

2) "espoused" means to have adopted or supported so your second line reads: "mainstream media supports fringe views until they become mainstream"

Strawmen and nonsense may well help in politics, but do not do well to advance your argument in these halls.

US appeals court ruling could 'eliminate internet privacy'

Re: Wrong Yet Again

"Hard cases make bad law"

And this is a perfect example.

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

Re: Saw that coming

"No-one ever went broke by overestimating human stupidity"

Rocket Lab to attempt mid-air recovery of descending booster

I would love to watch this!

Does anyone know where/if it will be streamed?

How not to attract a WSL (or any) engineer

Re: This process is widespread at Canonical

Roses are red

Violets are blue

The singular 'they"

predates singular "you"

Growing US chip output an 'expensive exercise in futility', warns TSMC founder

To paraphrase

"He would say that, wouldn't he?"

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

The bit I'm enjoying here is the derision of moderation, and equating it with censorship in these forums, which are moderated.

"Moderated services will silence dissenting viewpoints!" Obviously, provably, not.

What do you do when all your source walks out the door?

Stolen from an earlier comment

"Everyone has a test environment, some are fortunate enough to have a separate production environment."

First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

Re: Tokamak, or not tokamak, that is the question...

It is very possible that the "end to electricity bills" is exactly why it has taken fusion so long to get nailed down. Ford certainly wouldn't invest money in practical teleportation research.

Which seems eminently more "nuclear power" than using it to boil water....

And that makes me wonder if "they" can design a photovoltaic cell that could run off of Gamma photons.

Amazon internal chat app that censored talk of unions and ethics may 'never launch at all'

Re: Round of applause for common sense.

See Icon.

Amazon warehouse workers in New York unionize in historic win against web giant

Re: To summarise...

And do you know why those things are legally mandated? It wasn't from the corporations good will, nor from a politician's altruism. It was from unions banding together to close an industry if those abuses continued.

Ditto for not being paid in company script (yes, there are laws that require a company to pay in actual negotiable currency - because there had to be) and the people arguing for that simple right were frequently demonized and shot for their "socialist" views.

Re: To summarise...

The minimal wage warehouse worker should demand employment protection regulations

That is exactly what a Union is for!

The time you solved that months-long problem in 3 seconds

Not so much fixing it quickly, but fixing it on accident

Once upon a time, I was starting a new job. I got my computer, and proceeded to tweak the environment to suit my desires.

The build setup had project B being built, then A, then copying files from A to B and re-building B. I swapped the order of A & B in the build script with a file copy step in between, just to smooth out my workflow.

It seems the team had been struggling with this broken dependency for months, and it was going to be my Major Effort to resolve it.

...Ooops.

Debugging source is even harder when you can't stop laughing at it

"Charlie is dancing the Foxtrot"

Japan's earthquake disrupts already fragile tech sector

Re: Wednesday's 7.3 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Fukushima

Earthquakes are like busses: you wait ages for (read dread, and pray against) one, and then two show up practically on top each other.

Research finds data poisoning can't defeat facial recognition

Re: Arguably, swapping pixels won't be enough, but changing facial features digitally would

In all pictures uploaded, swap your left eye for your right, and have your mouth as a mirror image. That should do it.

Google buys threat intel giant Mandiant for $5.4bn

"We have found records that Basque Separatists have plans to target your company, if you upgrade to Platinum CYA coverage, we can help mitigate this threat.

With your current Gold coverage, we will help notify your insurance of the data loss and damage to your business.

If you upgrade to Iridium Triple-Bum Coverage, we will make sure your insurance will never hear of this."

BOFH: All hail the job cuts consultant

Re: Management Consultants

I did not expect that comment!

'Boombox' function sparks Tesla recall

Re: not really a recall?

I was thinking the same, but then again, the reason my car needs to go to the dealer for a software update is because they cannot change functionality over the air - Which is a Good Thing™

Re: Could be good uses for this.....

Stuck in traffic? Play Ludacris "Move Bitch".

This malware gang plants incriminating evidence on PCs, gets victims arrested

Re: Shocking but unsurprising

"I speak for the people! Everyone against me is an Enemy Of The People."

and

"I didn't loose the election, The People voted for me; the other 90% of the population are Enemies Of The People"

CIA illegally harvested US citizens' data, senators assert

I mean, legally, you are not wrong.

Re: "the Agency is very keen on protecting civil liberties"

No, the answer is "Us, and the people we agree with"

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

Re: Firefighters

Sounds a bit like an accelerated version of my career path. Except that you were actually given time to learn languages. I learned Ruby by debugging someone else's code (Originator had long since left the premises).

It's the kind of thing that makes a CV attractive, I can hear the eagerness in a head-hunters voice when they see PL/SQL & T-SQL, C# & C++ (and Java), and Ruby, PHP, and Perl all on the same sheet. They seem to read that as "Shove him into a hole, and he'll fit".

Face Off: IRS kills plan to verify taxpayers with facial recognition database

Re: What facial recognition technology?

They Scanned my face.

I needed to get the info off of a letter they sent that got "organized". I had to have the info (Tax season) and, well - My face is now in an IRS database. I guess if they get popped I'll have to make an appointment with a retrophrenologist to change my facial characteristics.

12-year-old revives Unity desktop, develops software repo client, builds gaming environment for Ubuntu...

Re: What is there to say?

In the interest of complete accuracy: CRT is a course that exists, but it exists at the collegiate level. No-one is teaching CRT in elementary, middle, or high school. That is not a thing that exists.

People calling anything that teaches "The US has a history of abusing/maltreating minorities" CRT IS a thing that exists. And those lessons are Marxist(?!) - somehow.

On another note: If you are lambasting the Democratic party pre-WWII you are calling out the Republican party of today. The US political parties gradually switched platforms between 1918 and the Great Depression. I can understand your confusion, as US history between the Civil War/Reconstruction and the Great Depression is completely untaught. Public School classes may have a day on World War One (I was an adult before I learned about the original name "The Great War"). More likely students get a day of Trail of Tears/WWI/Great Depression with the 1918 Influenza as a footnote and the day ending with "...And then Pearl Harbor".