* Posts by nematoad

1853 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Sep 2009

Ahead of IPO, Reddit blends advertising into user posts

nematoad
Pint

Re: Blending

(most efficacious in every case).

Have one on me for the "Lily the Pink" quotation.

UK minister tells telcos to share telegraph poles if they can't lay cable underground

nematoad
Happy

They do.

UK minister tells telcos to share telegraph poles...

Where I live they already are.

Our local telco has wired me up using the existing BT pole as it was not possible to run a cable underground due to the congested sewers, gas mains and electricity cables that run under the small area where the houses are. In other places they have put the cables underground, causing a considerable amount of disruption on the roads. For example, why would anyone in their right mind start digging up the road in one of our most popular holiday towns in the middle of the season?

Having said that the local telco is about five years ahead of Openreach round here and will be finished long before BT gets round to doing anything other than making promises.

Oracle AI buzz means Larry Ellison's worth $15B more today

nematoad
Devil

Don't think so.

...hadn't yet made a difference to someone special

It hasn't.

Ellison's not special, just rich.

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

nematoad

Re: Ranking

I too am irritated with the unnecessary switch to "International English" when as far as I can see it's only the United States who uses it as their first language.

However, taking umbrage at the title of Ted Cruz as "ranking member" is uncalled for.

The US Congresses' use of the title "ranking member" is correct.

It's like saying a junior MP is a "Private Parliamentary Secretary" which is used in the House of Commons.

It's just the way things are done.

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

nematoad
FAIL

Re: Oh, come on - this is elementary

"Just one of those things" if the software isn't calibrated for the event, which to us is highly suggestive of human error.

Wonderful.

The Antikythera Mechanism, had, as far as we can tell, built in features to deal with the variability of the temporal cycle. It's all way above my head but scholars have shown that the variability of the Moon's phases, intercalary adjustments and so on have been factored into the design of the mechanism and was, at our best guess, designed circa 200 BCE. See here

That's 2200 years ago so why hasn't the world learned to take things like leap years into account yet?

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

nematoad
FAIL

What the hell?

HMS Vanguard leaving HMNB Devonport last year after a seven-and-a-half year refit.

After seven and a half years and God knows how much money you would think that they could have at least given it a lick of paint!

My old N reg Corsa looks better that that heap of rust.

Google flushes cached search results forever

nematoad
Unhappy

What they really mean.

...but not something we'd do if we didn't have an agreement...

Or, in other words. "Not if we have to pay much if anything, for this service."

You know Google remind me of ticks. Fat, blood sucking parasites who contribute nothing and are very hard to get rid of.

Post Office threatened to sue Fujitsu over missing audit data

nematoad
Mushroom

Maybe not.

...bugs, errors and defects in the system had been known about by all parties

No, the poor bloody sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses didn't and yet they were forced to pay up, lost their businesses, homes,their liberty and lives.

Others got CBEs, bonuses and promotions.

Google Groups ditches links to Usenet, the OG social network

nematoad
Pint

Re: USENET IS DEAD!

" Try DDGing "

Plus 1 for saying that instead of "Google"

Like Microsoft, Google can't stop its cloud from pouring AI all over your heads

nematoad
Devil

Fear not!

"Like Microsoft, Google can't stop its cloud from pouring AI all over your heads."

Don't worry about it. Given Google's track record this stuff will disappear in a year or so.

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

nematoad

Re: Delusional narcissist

...a Yorkshire man's backside?

aka an arse, which Trump most definitely is.

AI offers some novel crystal materials that could form future chips, batteries, more

nematoad
Thumb Up

Quite right.

"The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's GNoMe-powered robo-boffin in action ."

You can tell it's a boffin as it has a white coat (of paint) on!

X/Twitter booted out of Australia's disinformation-fighting club

nematoad

Hmm, looks like someone has forgotten to take their dried frog pills again.

Watchdog bites back against blockage of $9M fine on US selfie-scraper Clearview AI

nematoad
Unhappy

Gah!

Watchdog bites back against blockage of $9M fine on US selfie-scraper Clearview AI

Look, it's one thing to switch to using "International English" a.k.a. American English. It's another to start to force a British courts decision into using a foreign currency. The fine was £7.5 million and the headline should reflect that.

O.K. qualify it in USD if you have to, but please treat a British court's decision with the respect that it deserves.

AI chemist creates catalysts to make oxygen using Martian meteorites

nematoad
Joke

Oh?

"...could lead to the automated production of catalysts using Martian meteorites,"

I may be mising something here, but if they are Martian meteorites then presumably they would not be on Mars.

If they were on Mars they would just be rocks, wouldn't they?

Google Bard AI contractors unionize amid anger over 'retaliatory' layoffs

nematoad

Workers of the world unite.

"...we simply do not control their employment terms or working conditions"

It doesn't look like that to me.

If these people have been sacked by Google then I would say that Google has a lot of control over these employees and I'm glad to see that the NLRB also thinks that way.

Google and others like Facebook, Apple and Microsoft make billions of dollars each year.

The question is: What do they do with all that money and why do they always want more?

Trinity desktop's latest release snaps into action on Q4OS 5.3

nematoad
Thumb Up

Thank you.

Trinity and PCLinuxOS have had an on and off relationship over the years.

In the past it was available on PCLOS but was a swine to install, then it was added as a community option, it then vanished for a while so I am very happy to see that is available as on option on PCLOS again.

Due to the on again off again nature of Trinity on PCLOS I switched to MATE but I always liked Trinity as the successor to my then favourite KDE3.5.

I will definitely take a look at Trinity the next time I have to rebuild one of my boxes and see how the old girl has got on since I last used it.

+1!

I also agree with Liam on Q4OS. It's slick and intelligent when installed under VirtualBox. Not many of the various distros I have tried install all you need to get a fully functioning OS and being Trinity it just works. At least for me.

Meta's ad-free scheme dares you to buy your privacy back, one euro at a time

nematoad
Happy

Re: I thought this was an Onion article

...defederated grumpy old wrinklies...

Or given your demographic here, it could be classed as anti-social media.

I know I am.

Stop what you’re doing and patch this critical Confluence flaw, warns Atlassian

nematoad
Unhappy

Time to go cloudy.

Risk of ‘significant data loss’ for on-prem customers...

Now this might be the old, crusty cynic in me but this warning looks very convenient.

Atlassian is currently trying to move customers to the cloud and given the vague details of the threat: "The Australian vendor hasn’t detailed the nature of the flaw or how it can facilitate data loss. The company has said it’s not seen any exploits." inclines me to think that good old FUD is being brought into play here.

I may be wrong about this, I often am, but something about this affair smells a bit fishy.

Former IBM Canada worker wins six-figure payout for wrongful dismissal

nematoad
Unhappy

Re: Oh, Now I Get It

Ah, the sounds of a true democracy.

No, Capitalism.

Windows 11: The number you have dialed has been disconnected

nematoad
Headmaster

Re: Tim Cook's punishment?

,,, has gotten worse since this site went all American."

As have you apparently.

British usage is to use the word got. A little clumsy sounding and does not roll of the tongue like gotten, but there it is.

The strange thing about got and gotten is that gotten was previously used in British English, and went over to America with the settlers. Here gotten fell out of use but continued in the US. There is a fossil usage still in British English in the form of "ill-gotten gains."

Buyer's remorse haunts 3 in 5 business software purchases

nematoad
Unhappy

An old'un but a good 'un.

Caveat emptor.

It holds true today as it it did for the Romans.

Are the decision makers in these companies unaware of the need for due diligence when making a costly purchase. If not, why are they getting paid?

See also: Elon Musk.

GNOME developer proposes removing the X11 session

nematoad
Thumb Down

Institutional bias?

There does seem to be a dirigiste strain running through the Gnome team.

Take for the example of the reduction in the utility of Nautilus. All in the name of simplifying the file manager. Or the imposition of Adwaita on Gnome users, no ifs no buts. So the devs handing down diktats on the use of Wayland despite reports that it is not a complete replacement for X does not come as a surprise

Still with Linux there are alternatives and if you piss off your users enough they have somewhere else to go. You can only push your luck to a certain degree and then people start to walk away.

We shall see.

NASA reschedules Boeing's first crewed Starliner flight for mid-April 2024

nematoad
Happy

Re: Intriguing....

"but then I am not a brian scientist..."

Is that a scientist of the Blessed variety?

When Microsoft complains that you're a monopolist you know things are bad

nematoad
Devil

Told you so.

Soon it will be Microsoft's turn to moan about the stranglehold Google has on the online ad business and search and how that is unfair to a struggling browser owner like themselves.

Wow! That was quicker than I expected.

In one way it's a pity that they can't both lose.

Norway wants Facebook behavioral advertising banned across Europe

nematoad
Unhappy

I see.

"Take back control."

And then give it to the likes of Facebook.

There's an old Latin saying "qui bono"

Do the Tories know something that we don't?

Like a nice little business in brown paper envelopes.

Switch to hit the fan as BT begins prep ahead of analog phone sunset

nematoad
Happy

Re: Waiting game...

Vows it won't 'proactively' shift folks who only use a landline or have no mobile signal.

Too late. I'm old and if I had to wait for the likes of BT or Plusnet I might not be here to use the 'phone.

Luckily we have a local fibre company who seem to be on the ball with this. I switched to them a month ago, so I have now got 3 times the speed for 2/3rds the price. I also have my landline with them. I don't have a mobile, most networks don't work around here and EE, the one that does, can be a PITA to deal with.

What's not to like?

Why Chromebooks are the new immortals of tech

nematoad
Happy

I'm a personal PC user these days.

My sysadmin days are long past so I don't have to worry about changes to the OS I run.

That puts me in a position where a rolling release makes sense. In my case PCLinuxOS. It's always up to date and rarely breaks so I have managed to get off the upgrade cycle which does away with worrying about how long the OS will be supported.

Not for every one but for me it just makes sense

Now IBM sued for age discrim by its own HR veterans

nematoad

Re: HR...

Hah!

The biter bitten.

Ain't karma a wonderful thing?

Menacing marketeers fined by ICO for 1.9M cold calls

nematoad

Gum them to death.

Since October 2021, the ICO has fined 16 companies a total of £1.45 million for dialing the phone numbers of TPS members,

Yes, and how much have they collected from these companies?

Not much I'm betting.

It would be much better if disqualification, personal fines and the possibility of jail time for the worst cases were put in place.

Otherwise these rogue companies will just be liquidated and replacements registered and the carousel will just keep on turning.

Uncle Sam names three Amazon execs as Prime suspects in subscription ripoff case

nematoad
Unhappy

"...deliberately made it hard for them to cancel a subscription."

You can say that again.

As recounted in previous threads here, it took me ages to try and navigate Amazon's cancellation process. After what seemed to be days beating my head against a brick wall I rang the "help line" and after again waiting an eternity got through to an agent who seemed to struggle with English. Eventually I got through to her that I never wanted anything to do with Prime and would she please put a flag on my account declining their kind offer,in the unlikely event that I ever did business with then again.

Even so, I trust Amazon about as far as I could spit it so have not been to their tat bazaar since.

Just in case they trap me again.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

nematoad

Re: Been there...

The trouble with your idea is that there are not enough "techno-nerds".

Yes, people here might be able to see the problems associated with a universal subscription model, but most people don't know or care. They want the shiny thing now, and never worry if it's costing them an arm and a leg in perpetuity.

My sister is like that. She sees something like Netflix, Disney+ and so on, pays monthly and after a while never uses the service again. Then she moans to me about not knowing where her money is going.

I must confess that I do have a couple of subscriptions on Patreon. Only £5 a month but it's worth it for me as I value the content offered and want to support the creators of the channels.

Shearing a sheep is one thing, flaying it another altogether.

BMW got smacked in the face and they deserved it.

Google exec: Microsoft Teams concession 'too little, too late'

nematoad
Unhappy

Pot meet kettle.

"Microsoft has so much market power that they can decide… how the market will evolve based on their rules,"

Well they would know, wouldn't they?

How anyone can come out with this bullshit with a straight face beats me.

Maybe that's why members of the C suite are so richly rewarded.

Soon it will be Microsoft's turn to moan about the stranglehold Google has on the online ad business and search and how that is unfair to a struggling browser owner like themselves.

Hypocritical, entitled and just downright loathsome the lot of 'em.

Linux distros drop their feelgood hits of the summer

nematoad
Linux

Maybe not.

We don't know what the artistic differences are between Mageia and OpenMandriva, but they continue to pursue very similar goals and we still feel that they should try to settle their differences and cooperate.

I don't know about that.

I've tried both Mageia and OpenMandriva when I was having difficulties with PCLinuxOS.

True, they still have the good old *drak tools available. Which, in my opinion, is a very good thing. But OpenMandriva seems to have moved farther away from its roots than the other two. The installer is Calamares, and for someone expecting the familiar Mandrake installer, that struck a jarring note right away. After that the presence of systemd and sudo made me realise that things had changed, and for me not for the better. When I tried Mageia I found out that Mageia also used systemd. That caused some difficulties when I ran into sound problems and although the Mageia forum was friendly and helpful I felt out of place.

I tried PCLinuxOS one last time and to my joy it worked straight out of the box. No wading through obscure, to me, error logs and mystic incantations to get stuff to work. I was home and glad of it.

One thing I will say is that all of the people I contacted when I had problems with all of these distros could not have been kinder or more patient. The Mandriva derivatives may be unfashionable and some what sidelined by the likes of MX Linux, Mint and Ubuntu but they are all still easy to use and configure with the *drak tools provided. It may be that a bit of cross-fertilisation would help but the basic approaches by the devs seem a bit too wide to bridge.

My choice is PCLinuxOS but the other two are just as easy to get started with.

Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

nematoad
Big Brother

Re: Obsolete

Well the article makes me regard my 25 year old Mini Cooper S and my older Vauxhall Corsa as even more useful than they are.

The Mini has an ECU which I suppose could be used for snooping on my driving habits but as far as I know nothing else. As for the Corsa, who knows, I don't delve under the bonnet of my cars and the Corsa was very much second-hand when I got it.

It may be either paranoia or the effects of old age but I have always steered clear of "connected" devices but reading the surveys that keep coming out I'm glad that I don't have such things tracking what I do, say or if the article is true think.

We're about to hit peak device count, says HTC veep, as AR takes over

nematoad
Happy

I needed a good laugh.

"What we're going to find is that by having a device on your head,"

I read that and laughed out loud. Everybody wandering around hooked up to a visor?

Let's leave that to films like Ready Player One and enjoy reality. It is as James Halliday says the only place to get a decent meal.

Seriously, I have enough trouble avoiding 'phone zombies wandering around with their gaze stuck to their 'phones' screen without having people loose on the street who are not really aware of what's going on around them. That, coupled with "self driving cars", seems like a recipe for disaster.

It's all self-interest and marketing. Like their visors it's not anchored in the real world.

And don't get me started on brain implants. I can see the governments of the world salivating at the prospect. Why bother spying on people when their implants are doing the job for you?

Rising labor and component costs lead to UK product and service price hike at IBM

nematoad
Facepalm

Well, duh!

"One of the challenges facing IBM was a spike in the cost of bringing new workers on board."

Then perhaps they shouldn't have sacked all those experienced, but older employees that they already had.

What are the top brass at IBM being paid for?

It's certainly not competence.

Graphene foam is the future of IoT power, maybe

nematoad
Devil

Uh, oh.

"...a reliable and cost-effective energy harvesting power source for autonomous sensors and electronics,"

Using humans as some kind of battery?

Where have I heard that before?

This sounds like something straight out of the Matrix.

Middleweight champ MX Linux 23 delivers knockout punch

nematoad

I am all in favour of distros free from systemd and might take MX Linux for a spin in Virtualbox just to see what it can do.

I don't think that I will be installing it permanently though.

Because MX Linux is derived from Debian I assume it has inherited sudo as well. Now it might be the old sysadmin in me but I never liked the idea of having a user getting admin privileges on a computer. It strikes me as asking for trouble if you are the got-to-guy for support with family and friends.

I think that Texstar and the folks at PCLinuxOS have the right idea and stick to the UNIX way of doing things and only allowing root have access to the sensitive parts of the system.

Now I have, in the past, been down voted for voicing concerns about sudo but cases differ and if you're happy with sudo then use it.

Part of the joy of Linux is that your boxes are your boxes and no-one can tell you what is right and what is wrong.

MX Linux does look good though.

SAP CEO push for cloud-only 'innovation' shatters users' trust in German-speaking heartlands

nematoad
Unhappy

Yes and no.

"Businesses are facing volatile macroeconomic environments and markets that favour flexibility."

Well he's right in saying that with this diktat the financial environment is going to be volatile. Companies will not know what they are going to have to pay. But he's wrong if he thinks telling his customers "The only way is the cloud." is offering flexibilty. That is a straightjacket for firms who use SAP products.

I also seem to remember SAP saying that firms will have to adapt their business to fit in with SAP's requirements not the other way round.

Who is paying who here?

Meta says it'll ask Euro peeps nicely before hitting them with personalized ads

nematoad
Unhappy

Nice one Boris

"We are assessing what this means for information rights of people in the UK and considering an appropriate response."

Looks like we "Took back control" and promptly lost it over the likes of Facebook,

The 27 nations of the EU plus the EEA carry a much heftier punch than isolated little Britain.

If Facebook can face down our puny regulators then I don't think we have a hope in Hell of stopping them doing exactly what they want.

As has been said "God favours the big battalions"

Soft-reboot in systemd 254 sounds a lot like Windows' Fast Startup

nematoad
Unhappy

"...faster system reboots."

Just as bloody well given that everything that Poettering has his fingers in seem to require a reboot a la Windows.

I recently moved distros because of all the grief I had with weird glitches showing up in PCLinuxOS. I went to Mageia but soon beat a hasty retreat due to the nightmare I was having with systemd and Pulseaudio. Talk about verbose, un-parsable diagnostics. And the re-boots! Systemd might be right for some people but I went back to PCLOS where at least I can read what is going on in the various logs and edit any config files I need to.

Talk about taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

MIT boffins build battery alternative out of cement, carbon black, water

nematoad
Facepalm

Ah, concrete. I get it now.

The article had me confused with ...45 cubic meters of the carbon-black-doped cement

I thought to myself how can a building or road be built on a loose pile of powder. Then the penny dropped, this piece was written by someone from the US who give different meanings to common words, like " gas powered". That could either mean powered by gas or by gasoline which is what they call petrol.

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who described the UK and the US as "Two nations divided by a common language."

GNOME project considers adding window tiling by default

nematoad

Don't think so.

As arguably the single most popular desktop environment across Linux distributions...

Widely used may not equate to popular.

I've seen a lot of adverse comments over the years about the habit of the Gnome developers habit of taking useful feature away and then when asked why the reply goes along the lines of "My way or the highway."

I think that the desktops coming from the Mint team are more popular even if not so common. Basically what these do is work with the user and do not issue diktats from the developers.

Yes, there may be times when an innovative approach is needed but remember the UI is a tool, there to do what you want and then get out of the way. Change for changes sake is not always a good idea.

Twitter's giant throbbing X erected 'without a permit'

nematoad

Re: Another..

I was mulling over this exhibition of Musk's ego and the thought crossed my mind. Why didn't he choose I instead of X for the new name?

It could have made a really phallic symbol to put on the roof of his HQ. That would show them who has the biggest dick!

Or, alternatively ME, reversed initials of "The Man" and let's face it this is all about "ME"

This man seems to have a lot of problems but self-regard and self-promotion really stand out.

nematoad

"...the bright, flashing sign bathing the area in intense light. "

That's real classy Elon.

What must it be like to crave this much attention, all of the time?

I hear that they have guns in the US.

What's the betting someone indulges in a little target practice?

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

nematoad

Re: Leap of faith.

No, no, no not Google.

I was questioning the sanity of people that think Google can be trusted in anything they do or say.

Infineon to offer recyclable circuit boards that dissolve in water

nematoad
Happy

"But Omdia Principal Analyst Manoj Sukumaran was more dismissive..."

Hmm, I smell special pleading here. It would be interesting to see who is pulling his strings.

As Pascal Monett says above, what price Earth's future?

We cannot go on like this and any possible solution, pun intended, is to be welcomed.