Posts by RyokuMas

India lands Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on Moon, is the first to lunar south pole

About time!

Hopefully this will spur on other nations and we'll start exploring again. Nice one India.

Meta to use work badge and Status Tool to snoop on staff

Re: The office

"People working from home will start earlier and work later..."

If you want to work more hours for the same pay, go right ahead! :P

No surprises...

"... engineers who joined prior to the pandemic and worked in the classic office setup were performing better than remote workers..."

... because these workers are used to interacting: in an office environment you can have the ad-hoc conversation in the kitchen that leads to a new approach or a problem being solved, you can see if the person you need is free to talk (does anyone actually pay any attention to those status indicators of messaging apps?) or if someone want to talk to you, you can guage if the new joiner is struggling with their setup or a team member needs a hand...

Of course, there were always the few who would just sit there with their headphones on, ignoring everyone, trying to pretend that the rest of the world did not exist and acting like interacting with other team/department members were an unneccesary distraction - the "not a team player" types, probably the same ones who are making the "if I'm forced back into the office, I'm leaving" noises now.

Individuals may be as or more productive at home than when in the office. But teams as a whole? It's debatable. I personally have seen days lost because someone "was productive" for the entire time but did not realise that they were working from out-of-date information or an incorrect approach, resulting in work having to be re-done.

Managers - as much as thse of us at the coal face like to moan about them - have the over-arching view; they can see that while individuals are being productive, teams are often not performing as well as they did pre-covid due to this lack of ad-hoc communication. So it's natural they want us back in the office (although I would not be at all surprised if some of them had other motives). And it's likely that companies that do get people back in the office, even only for a couple of days per week, will start to accelerate: not only will their teams' communication have returned to full capacity, but the refuseniks who would rather stay at home and not interact with their team on anything but a scheduled basis will have left.

And should this come to pass, the companies still trying to run fully remotely will most likely see that they are being out-competed and possibly be force to adopt the same policy.

I know I'm going to get downvoted to hell, but I'd wager that in another 5-10 years time, we will all be back in the office at least once per week.

Google 'wiretapped' tax websites with visitor traffic trackers, lawsuit claims

Oh what a difference...

Wow. I must be getting old - it feels like it wasn't that long ago that when someone mentioned this sort of thing on here, the stock response was "don't like Google tracking you? Don't use their stuff!" - despite how at the time approximately two-thirds of websites in regular use incorporated analytics...

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

Linguistic gymnastics...

"switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface." - sounds like it was lifted from Elon's phrasebook.

... I think we should go with the Dr Suess version: "R.U.D. with a thud"...

Zoom's new London hub – where 'remote work' meets 'we need you back in the office'

No less selfish than isolating yourself away from the rest of your department and not being available/willing to assist more junior members who may need the help of someone with specific domain knowledge that cannot be looked up on the web...

I have lost track of how many hours I've seen lost because of people either not replying to requests for help on instant messaging or due to misunderstandings because the person being called cannot see exactly what is happening on the caller's machine... and onboarding new starters takes days rather than hours.

But hey! who cares about the rest of the team these days, right? In fact, how about we all go back to waterfall and working all the hours under the sun to meet ridiculous deadlines just because our equipment is always immediately to hand?!?

Maker of Chrome extension with 300,000+ users tells of constant pressure to sell out

Re: Privacy on Chrome

I must admit, the irony of the statement "I'm fortunate to have a job that pays well enough to allow me to keep my moral compass and ignore all of these propositions." coming from the developer of a Chrome extension did make me chuckle...

Europe teases breaking up Google over ad monopoly

Bolted...

Horse... stable door...

Working from home could kill career advancement, says IBM CEO

Eh...?

Don't know what kool-aid Future Forum have been drinking, but since the pandemic and subsequent adoption of full-hybrid working at my compnay (which basically means I'm one of about five people regularly in the office), I have felt completely disconnected from my team and department - these days, I feel more like one of those stereotypical Indian subcontractors that so many have joked about in the past, just sitting in my little cubicle, isolated from the world, cranking out the code I'm told to make...

And company culture? You'd find more cheer in a graveyard!

SpaceX calendar marked with big red circle for 'first Starship launch' this month

Re: New Reg unit required

There's already a new uit for measuring power - "pirate-ninja"

... I'll get me coat - it's the one with a copy of "The Martian" in the pocket.

Shareholders sue Google, claim it hid anticompetitive ad practices

Probably listening to a significant number of IT professionals who - until as recently as five to ten years ago - were too preoccupied with their quarter-century-old grudge with Microsoft to see Google as anything other than the salvation of the IT arena...

It strikes me that the shareholders can see that there is no way out for Google in the long term - sooner or later, they are going to be hit with a lawsuit they can't just buy their way out of and that will result in major on-the-record financial and reputational damage.

So by suing Google like this first, it clears the shareholders of being party to these practices, leaving them still looking good when they decide on their next big investments. Yes, they might lose money in the short term, but to be dragged down by Google when the inevitable does finally happen would cost them even more.

AmigaOS 3.2.2 released for those feeling nostalgic

Modern version...

Whereas these days, it's "my iPhone" and "your Android"...

To explore caves on Mars and the Moon, take a hint from Hansel & Gretel, say boffins

Famous last words...

"My wifi is down and it's getting dark..."

Bosses failing to offer hybrid work lose out in recruitment

Re: Less productive when I come in

Funny thing... during/since COVID, my team has had three major projects which we have had to build from the ground up.

First one: despite spending hours on various calls, there were ongoing inconsistencies and concerns with the design which led to various team members changing approach on several occasions. Overall outcome was a half-finished MVP that was then shelved when business priorities changed.

Second one: still lots of times on calls (though not as bad as the first one), but because information wasn't relayed clearly, we ended up with two team members getting the wrong end of the stick when it came to the architecture, ending up in several wasted man-days due to code being written for an incorrect architectural view.

Third one: Whole team had been called into the office for a morning all-hands, so we decided to spend the rest of the day planning it. We got round a whiteboard, talked through and drew out the architecture, locked down the approach and broke the whole thing down into granular stories. The front-end proof of concept was ready to demo in two weeks, the MVP we're expecting to have in the client's hands by mid-end of the month.

BOFH: The PFY has won an award … for outstanding service?

Next step...

Anyone asking to speak to a manager, route them through to Tay?

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

Re: Pot, kettle...

"This is Microsoft ostensibly placing code on Google's page"

You do actually understand how the web works, right? Microsoft have not hacked Google's servers, they have not overwrittten any of Google's code - all they have done is detect the page that their browser is navigating to, and then inject a small extra snippet of markup into the top of the page, in much the same way Google did on their search results page when it detected it was being served up to browsers other than Chrome.

This kind of detection has been around since the early days of the web - anyone remember "Netscape crippled" pages? The only difference here is that Microsoft is working with an application they code and provide, whereas Google was working with a webpage that they code and provide. Perhaps you would prefer Edge present a modal popup box whenever you navigate to a Chrome download site?

... or is it that there are still those with their heads stuck in the events of over a quarter of a century ago?

Pot, kettle...

Yes, it's somewhat underhand, but how is this any different to when Google first launched Chrome and plastered "Download Chrome for faster/more secure browsing!" calls-to-action over their search results page?

Quite honestly, I'm surprised that Microsoft haven't tried this sooner.

Mozilla, like Google, is looking ahead to the end of Apple's WebKit rule

Re: Mozilla is dead

Being independent of Google is a pretty strong argument IMHO

Google works on Blink-based iOS browser contrary to Apple's WebKit rule

At least stuff in the Apple store has actually been vetted and checked before being made available to the public.

It's been a while since I last developed anything for mobile, but my experience was along the lines of:

Apple: Pay $99/year, typically a 7-14 day wait post submission before your app is cleared for distribution on the store, or you get back a comprehensive list of things to fix.

Android: Pay a one-off fee of$25, upload your app and hit "publish".

"Finally, it looks like Apple's customers will be able to benefit from actual browser choice and competition, which is bound to benefit the Safari team, iOS users, web developers and anyone who does business on the web."

Given how Google abused their effective monopoly of web search to make Chrome the number one browser, the hypocracy of this statement is mind-blowing.

Well that escalated quickly: India demos homebrew mobile OS

Re: Interesting at least

... as opposed to Google's corporate spyware. Guess the question is which poses the greater overall risk?

WFH can get you 40% salary boost in UK and US tech jobs

Alright for now, but...

I've said this a number of times; I'm really interested to see what the face of the tech industry looks like in about five to ten years time, and what correlation there might be between the leading companies and companies that pushed to get their people back in the office.

Spontaneous innovation doesn't happen when every conversation is to a schedule. Learning by osmosis is certainly slowed, if not stalled, when people aren't talking freely. And while we might be alright with our skillsets, I've already seen new joiners struggling to pick up the necessary domain knowledge to do their job in a completely remote environment.

Some companies will adapt, of course - but others I can see struggling and possibly folding as those with the knowledge move on and those who replace them take longer to get up to speed.

Oh, WoW: Chinese gamers to be cut off from Blizzard games next week

As if by magic...

Now I'll admit that I've been clean of WoW for over a decade now so my knowledge is pretty dated, but back in the height of my addictiontime playing, Chinese gold farmers were a blight on the game, making some resource gathering next to impossible. So if that is still the case, maybe this will be a nuclear option...?

I was reasonable to ask to WFH in early days of COVID, says fired engineer

Culturally dead...

I joined my current role about two years before covid hit. One of the key appeals to me was the vibrant culture of the business - pretty much everyone was friendly and had time for each other, the managers were on a level with and worked hand-in-glove with those they managed, and there was a decent level of sociability attached to the workplace.

These days, I feel like a contractor - just sitting at my desk, mindlessly hitting keys, all conversation strictly work-related and to a schedule. The few social events that have taken place since lockdown was lifted have seen almost no attendance by those who started with the company during covid, and it it feels like an almost weeky occurence that another longer-established team member leaves.

That amazing culture that made me feel that my company was great to work for - gone. Such a shame.

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

Only a matter of time...

How long before programmers are expected to take responsibilitity for this area too and we start seeing job ads for "ElecDevSecOps" engineers?

BOFH and the office security access upgrade

About time...

It's been a while since someone's been trapped in a lift or stairwell over an extended break... let's hope the boss has got socks for filtration and a container to catch the results in!

Video game players sue to frag Microsoft-Activision merger

"higher prices, less innovation, less creativity, less consumer choice..."

... sounds like the games industry as a whole for the last 25 years!

Why would a keyboard pack a GPU and run Unreal Engine? To show animations beneath the clear keys, natch

Challenge accepted...

"Completely gamer proof and able to withstand intense abuse"

Anyone else got a mental image of a particularly irate, German-speaking kid who wants to play Unreal Tournament???

Parental control apps prove easy to beat by kids and crims

... and for iOS?

Going by the content of the article...

"Android parental control apps prove easy to beat by kids and crims" (TFTFY!)

Facetiousness aside, I'm curious to know how the equivalient iOS parental control systems stack up by comparison - my kids are hitting the age where they'll be wanting their own phones soon, so I'm on a bit of learning curve again...

Brit MPs pour cold water on hydrogen as mass replacement for fossil fuels

Call me crazy, but...

For any given energy yielded by hydrogen, doesn't it require about three times as much energy in electricity to make the stuff?

That said, heat pumps aren't a viable alternative - at least, not until they're affordable.

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

"That has nothing to do with being able to work efficiently with my teams, and enjoy my work."

Just had a team lose two weeks of work because of a miscommunication that would never have happened had the team been interacting continuously and spontaneously. Such a simple little thing that got missed, but because nobody was talking beyond the scheduled or focused discussion between specific people in the team, it got missed.

On the flip side, being able to work from home fully has meant that some personal issues I've been facing over the last few months have had minimal impact on my work. But by the same token, when I hit the end of the working day, I don't feel like I've actually unplugged...

As one mission returns to Earth, three more make for the Moon

"Well, basically because NASA is an unwieldy bureaucratic jobs program, not a space program."

True. NASA's original plan for getting to Mars was hugely over-complicated because every department wanted their pet project to remain relevant. Had they gone with Mars Direct - or even Mars Semi-Direct - we'd have had boots on the ground on the red planet by now.

'What's the point of me being in my office, just because they want to see me in the office?'

Re: Contract clauses

"I find a lot of new starters are less willing to bother the "older guys" over teams or the phone, whereas they would be willing to ask them questions in person."

Absolutely - mentoring has taken a huge hit thanks to hybrid working... but as with the creeping overtime issue, it won't become visible for a few more years yet until a significant number of the "older guys" have moved on. And it's unlikely that said older guys will worry too much about the knowledge that isn't passed on when they leave the company.

Regardless of whether management realises this - or whether they just want bums on seats because they want that central control back, or because they've rented the office space for the next however-many years - if they want people back in the office, they need to make returning more appealling than working from home.

Oh, and I'm UK based, by the way... :)

Contract clauses

Pretty much all the places I've worked at have had a clause in the employment contract along the lines of "these are your contracted hours, but you must be willing to work extra to get the job done". In fact, this expectation of people putting in extra hours when needed - usually without recompense - seems to be the norm from my experience.

Similarly, I and every other developer I've ever spoken to has various horror stories of where management have come up with some half-baked plan that they've wanted implemented in a completely unrealistic timescale.

So yes, right now, working from home may be great for many who can, to the point where they don't want to go back - after all, who wants to eat up huge chunks of teh day with commuting, etc.?

But give it another 5-10 years and see how many extra unpaid hours we're all expected to put in because we have access to our work systems at any time of the day.

And before you all hit that downvote button, stop and think about what time you first logged into you company systems during lockdown, compared to your actual arrival time in the office before then...

UK competition watchdog investigates Apple and Google 'stranglehold' over the mobile market

Re: Shortsighted oversight :/

"promote, and dare I suggest invest, in Linuxphone."

... which is fine, until you want a Youtube app, or anything controlled by either Apple or Google.

Windows Phone could have made it - at one point, it had something like 10% of the UK market. But Microsoft did its usual foot-shooting exercise and that was that - although being blocked/dictated to over certain popular apps probably didn't help.

The only way that this situation is going to be resolved is to bring it to a court where the case cannot be bought... "settled" prior, and meaningful, ongoing fines imposed.

Windows 10 – a 7-year-old OS – is still having problems with the desktop and taskbar

Re: That's because it's shit

True. Think about when Microsoft announced that apps for WinPhone7 wouldn't work on WP8... disregarding those who refused to touch WinPhone "because it's Microsoft", how many developers were put off by that?

We still see devices running XP for god's sake!

That said, a lot of the issues are down to Microsoft's own lack of vision - failing to account for the rise of the internet and global device connectivity probably being the gretest.

Re: Exceptional service

I've actually broken* more computers trying to install Linux than had computers broken by Windows update.

There's always been some error come up that relies on exact hardware/driver/some other spec knowledge that I don't have and that I can't find a working solution for online. And, to be brutally honest, I've been put off by the patronising and/or elitist responses I've had previously from a considerable number of the Linux community (watch that downvote counter spin!).

* "broken" = "rendered unusable until Windows was reinstalled from scratch (where possible)"

tsoHost pulls plug on Gridhost service with just 45 days' notice

Complete clusterf...

I was one of the "lucky" ones that got notification with 45 days to go... but that was about as far as it went! The message as so garbled, it was impossible to tell exactly what was happening, ending up with my looking to tranfer my hosting to an alternate plan. And things went downhill from there - they were all too happy to take my money for the new hosting, but pointblank refused to assists in the migration of my websites and email accounts, citing that they were "too busy"...

Fortunately, one public shaming on Twitter later saw a number of alternative hosting providers getting in touch with me; a bit of research ended up in my selecting one of these who turned around the transfer of everything over the course of a few days - including some SSL and redirection setup that TSO had never managed to get working for me. And, happily, all done and dusted before I ran out of time to cancel the new hosting I had with TSO and get my money back.

I took great pleasure in sending the "too little, too late, close my account" email to them. Shame really, because about 10 years ago they did well for me...

Google agrees to $400m settlement in privacy lawsuit

Re: Pimp?

Yeah: "life".

Chump change... again

Once again, a result that's in Google's favour bought by chump change.

Where's a legal team with the conjones to refuse to accept any settlement and force the case through to its full conclusion? Where's a judge wit the guts to rule against Google, force them to admit to their activities publicly and on the record, and levy a fine appropriate to the magnitude of their operation?

Land of the free, home of the paid-off. God bless America!

BOFH: Don't be nervous, Mr Consultant. Come right this way …

It's been too long...

I still use the BofH standby of "put them all in a room with a sock and a half-brick each" explanation of how to deal with conflicting project managers to this day.

Nice to see that basics sch as bricks still feature. Too bad halon suppression is no longer a thing...

Oh, look: More malware in the Google Play store

Re: "before adding the malware back in a future update"

When last I was developing in mobile-space, it was pretty easy to buy a few hundred thousand installs to get the numbers up.

Re: "before adding the malware back in a future update"

Unless things have changed drastically since I was last developing anything in mobile-space (which was a few years ago, I'll admit), a ban could be worked roun easily enough with another $25 and some new personal details for a new developer account.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Been there...

A lifetime ago - my first role out of university - I was working for a startup-sized company (ie: me, the boss and the secretary) making HR software. In fact, I had been employed specifically to build what the boss had envisaged as the company's flagship product: a system for managing an organisation's training records.

Now this was around the time that the NHS had finally had enough of waiting for the long-promised, organisation-wide, "manage everything" system, and in desperation were starting to look elsewehere. And since we were cheap (trying to get a toehold in the market) we ended up with several hospitals on the books. And since this was the era of desktop applications, I typically had to go down and do the installations and setup.

So one afternoon at about 4:00pm, I get a call from a hospital that I had been at a week or so previously to install a system upgrade that included a huge summary report that they had specifically requested and I had demoed to them at the time. "The new report doesn't work!" the voice wails from the other end of the line, "we need you to come out and take a look!"

I ask them to read out the error message they're seeing - no dice: "I'm not at my desk, can you please just come out and take a look?"

After about five minutes, the boss intervenes - surprise, surprise, I'm going to take a look. Except that since the hospital in question is over two hours drive away: no problem, the boss gets me a hotel room so I can be on-site first thing in the morning. So I've driven out to the hotel and had a nice evening out.

9:00am the next morning, I'm on site bright and early - right, let's take a look at this error! The manager who had called in the problem takes me up to the HR office and back to the computer I had been at mere days before when I'd showed her the report. I fire everything up, kick off the report and - lo and behold - an alert pops up!

"That's the error!" says the HR manager, pointing at the screen.

It was all I could do not to laugh hysterically. The alert in question was the same one that I had demoed to her when I installed the update:

"This report scans all historical records and may take some time to run. Proceed? [OK] [Cancel]"

/headdesk

How Wi-Fi spy drones snooped on financial firm

Re: I think we're reaching a point...

"...you are a much bigger target... "

About six weeks into lockdown, I got a priority-one email from our security team insisting that I change the password on my router. Now I had already done this - did it pretty much the day we got it installed - but it makes me wonder how many of my co-workers had not done so - or had even bothered following up on the email, after all, there was no way for the security team to check.

In one building, your security people have focus: they don't need to worry about however-many independent routers, much less people working from their local coffee shop etc. So they can pour all their resources into protecting this one - admittedly big - target, rather than hundreds of little ones.

After all, the bad guys only need one suitable mistake to gain access to your firm's data...

Scanning phones to detect child abuse evidence is harmful, 'magical' thinking

Sponsorship...

What's the betting that Prof. Ross Anderson's work is being bankrolled by Google, Facebook and their ilk?

Nuh-uh, Meta, we can do text-to-video AI, too, says Google

So what happens...

... if you type in the text "We've always been at war with Eastasia"?

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Clockwork BOFH...

"There's been a terrible accident"...

My boss is lying in the middle of the road, bleeding to death!

...

...

...

Please tell me I'm not the only one who thought this.

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

If only it were that easy...

Right. Time to rack up some more downvotes!

I've tried to go to Linux several times over the last fifteen-or-so years on various machines I've had during this timespan. Every time, regardless of the variant I've been looking at, something has gone wrong during the installation process which has required information I don't have in order to correct - or worse, resulted in an error message so ambiguous that diagnosis has been impossible.

Maybe I've been unlucky, but on the occasions I have then asked for assistance on forums, I have been confronted by responses along the lines of "well, it's worked for me, so it must be something you've done", "did you make sure the machine was working before you tried the installation?" etc.

Ultimately, every attempt has ended in one of two ways - reinstalling Windows, or chucking the machine out because it was too old to support a minimum installation of Windows.

Now if there were a Linux distro that you could just install and it would get to the point of "functional desktop", regardless of any problems, followed by additional, specific information on the issues that have come up during the installation - that would get my vote! I don't know - maybe there is one now... but thanks to these historic issues, I'm reluctant to invest the time even looking for such a distro, let alone trying it out.

For all it's issues with telemetry, updates et. al., the extra cost of Windows is worth it knowing that your machine is going to "just work".

... mine's the flame-retardant jacket...