Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

This revolution will not be televised – but it will be sanctioned: Googlers walk out over 'sex pest' executive scandals

Re: What do all the staff at google actually do?

They have to be very quick to type the answers to all your search queries, and very clever to know those answers off the top of their heads

>You cannot contact to break the law.

Yes but I suspect that if you called 911 to report a cig lighter in the shape of breasts - they wouldn't send a SWAT unit. *

The point of the arbitration is to stop every HR issue turning into a civil court case and the original reason for forced arbitration was to stop the richer person automatically winning out of court. You accuse a VP of abuse, you go to court, they demand that you put up a $$$$$ bond to cover the VP's legal costs if you lose - you poor secretary drop the case.

(* Actually in Ca they might, unless you made it quite clear that it wasn't being used for tobacco)

Nikola Tesla's greatest challenge: He could measure electricity but not stupidity

Re: Anti-intellectual?

At the risk of being fair to the slithy gove

The 'experts' he had enough of were economists working for the world bank and friends who claimed that the financial crisis wasn't the banks fault, that the government always needed to bail banks out and austerity was a good idea to cut deficits.

A bit different from denying physics

>Yorkshire has its own currency?

Yes but for obvious reasons it doesn't circulate, so nobody has ever seen it

US government charges two Chinese spies over jet engine blueprint theft

The decision to charge/prosecute is political timing.

You don't find glaring human rights abuses while you are negotiating a new arms deal and you don't find evidence of state sponsored industrial theft until that state is taking you to court over trade rules

Bomb squad descends on suspicious package to find something much more dangerous – a Journey cassette

Re: Escalation

Remember: Home taping kills music

Probably explains why we don't have music today

Intel hits target: 27% of staffers are female? Apparently that's 'full representation'

At least in academia (alleged) positive discrimination has had two discriminatory effects.

There are a lot more women being hired for new junior roles by departments desperate to look good to funding bodies / reverse centuries of unfairness (delete as applicable). Senior roles of course go to other senior people where the candidates are almost all men.

The best male new PhD are still getting jobs at the most elite labs but a large cohort of "average"

women candidates are finding a lot less competition for jobs, especially at less prestigious institutes.

This is having two effects, the publication/citation score is diverging for male/female authors. To a first approximation new tenure track men are selected from top 10% while average new female tenure track are 'average'. There is also a bias (at least in physics) that men tend to go for the sexy/high-risk/Nobel worthy areas while women are more represented in more applied, likely to get useful results, but less press-worthy fields.

The other irony is that the average salary for male/female graduates, and more so for PhDs is becoming less equal. All the average male physicists (like me) are leaving academia after PhDs to get very highly paid jobs in industry/finance, while more women are getting relatively lowly paid post-docs/junior staff posts in academia.

Note: This is a my very UK/USA view. In most of Europe my branch of physics was traditionally the girly science option. Probably because in the C19 it involved sitting indoors doing tedious calculations by hand rather than doing dangerous laboratory stuff. The result is that depts in Italy/Spain are mostly female even at professor level.

Re: Complaining About Cause Instead of Effect

A lot can be done by industry to change this concept though.

Yes it is annoying to anyone who understands statistics to be told that they must make their math/physics dept 50/50% by next year or they are little better than child abusers. But it isn't fair for industry to entirely wash their hands and say "no women applicants - not our fault"

Here in Canada the resource industry has done a LOT of work to encourage women in science and engineering from school onwards. So much that when you go to many mine sites the majority of students/interns and new graduates are women.

Even the blue-collar jobs are done by women. 300 tonne haul trucks have power steering, you don't need rippling arm muscles to drive them and I have been told by a few managers that they prefer hiring women - they are more likely to turn up on time and sober on monday morning than the average guy in the oil sands.

It is going to take another generation for 11 year old girls to filter through to PhDs, and for it to become cool for a teenage girl to want to be a programmer but everytime you get a chance to talk to a school group or if you have kids - bear it in mind. And stop worrying about all the SJWs who couldn't program arguing about sexist symantics.

Discrimination

Assuming Intel started out with the typical male/female ratio of a technical company to achieve this level of equality it can't have been hiring all the new positions with a completely blind process - otherwise it would have 0.9 * (1990 tech company ratio) + 0.1 * (typical 2018 silicon valley).

The only way it has suddenly got to (typical 2018 silicon valley) ratio is if almost all the hires for the last few years have been women only or if it has been removing the predominately male older expensive employees.

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

Americans, and even Canadians, have big parties on 4-20 - to celebrate Adolf's birthday ?

Re: Future ARM laptops

Autodesk already have a full 3d cad running in the browser.

The nice thing about apps running in the browser is that they get to charge you monthly for access to your own data. Much better than hoping that you upgrade to the new desktop app every 2 years

Budget 2018: UK goes it alone on digital sales tax for tech giants

> if they book that revenue abroad and don't declare it to the Exchequer, that would be tax fraud

Why if they are a foreign company?

I buy email services from a US company, they book that income in the USA (or probably in Grand Cayman) I have that in my accounts as a payment to the US company. Where does the Inland Revenue get any of this ? Is the UK planing to tax any foreign company on sales from UK customers?

All Amazon have to do is close its AWS business in the UK, and have UK customers use USA hosted AWS zones and pay in $. It can still keep its UK shopping site - that makes no profit.

>..and the corporations will pass the cost of that tax straight on to us as higher prices. Thanks Phil.

No they won't. British Widgets Ltd will run the job on a cheaper foreign Amazon AWS zone (no GDPR for us now we are free of the ECJ jackboot), Amazon will book the AWS revenue abroad.

Or are we going to demand that British companies only use British suppliers for their internet stuff ?

Hi there, Hubble, glad to hear you're doing okay

Re: All the bbest, Hubble!

>My best wishes to the best telescope humanity is lucky to have.

Typical visible-chauvinist remark

To refuel something you have to stop next to it. Stopping takes the same amount of fuel as speeding up. So Tesla's rocket would need to carry another rocket the same size to de-accelerate to match Keppler.

But then you would need another half-dozen rockets bolted to the first rocket to lift the second rocket - that would be a big fsckign rocket.

Apple might be 'collateral damage' in US and China trade dust-up

Re: Might cause them to speed up their timetable for automation

The reason they make it in China is that the rest of the supply chain is local.

Corning make the gorilla glass next door, 90% of Siemens production of pick and place robots are in the city, the CNC machine shops for the case are local.

Apple could follow Foxconn to Wisconsin, but even if they sourced all the components in the USA they would have a complex supply chain of chips from Oregon, glass from NY, cases from Texas etc.

With all the raw materials and all the machine tools subject to tariffs, delays and politics

Confused

Components from China and raw materials from Canada for products assembled in the USA are taxed.

Products, like the iPhone, entirely manufactured in China are tariff-free

This is to encourage American companies to move factories to the USA ?

Not seeing the subtle econometrics of this is obviously why I'm not a billionaire business leader

Watchdog sceptical UK.gov's Universal Credit can handle 8.5m benefits claimants

Re: No wonder crime is increasing

When people have no income, they will find some way to keep themselves fed.

>You really believe that people turn to crime to eat?

I believe that global IT solution suppliers turn to crime to land government contracts that they have no intention/ability to deliver, just to keep the shareholders fed.

Re: Why bring in a political party?

So introducing a new system that effectively prevents anyone claiming benefits is a particularly effective method.

NHS is free at the point of care, today the point of care is on Rockall

Official: IBM to gobble Red Hat for $34bn – yes, the enterprise Linux biz

> IBM belief that a few offshore wage slaves can do as good a job as anybody else.

But this time it's different. Redhat is opensource so IBM won't have to pay the workers at all, they're all free - profit

Yahoo! $50m! hack! damages! bill!, Russian trolls menaced by Uncle Sam inaction, computer voting-machine UI confusion, and more

Re: Return to Sender ..... Re Cease and Desist or Seize and Persist?

Could we give the contact details of these Russian agents to amanfromMars ?

Yes, Americans, you can break anti-piracy DRM if you want to repair some of your kit – US govt

Midterms

Farmers in Idaho weren't happy at losing a crop because a combine shutdown because a sensor failed and it would take 2weeks until a service rep could visit

Uncool: Google won't be setting up shop in disused Berlin electrical substation

Re: Berlin is an odd place...

Same everywhere, cheap unwanted area attracts artists/startups. Area becomes cool and fashionable, more people move there, rents go up, people demand that the government do something to preserve etc etc

I'm a starving artist, the government must do something to allow me to buy a cheap loft in SOHO, Montmatre, Chelsea

It seems like a natural opportunity for A/B testing.

Split the city into two zones, allow unfettered US capitalism in one part and a commitment to reduced poverty and inequality in the other half.

That Saudi oil and gas plant that got hacked. You'll never guess who could... OK, it's Russia

Re: Circular reasoning

At least they are honest enough to only attack their enemies

We hacked our allies

F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs

Re: Google Culture

So now instead they probably have an official screen locking policy which is enforced by requiring colleagues to report your unlocked screen to HR and the number of incidents being reported on your annual review, and having an entire army of enforcement and reporting staff.

And somehow this produced lower moral than having your homepage set to Rick Astley !

Re: The evolution of euphemism

Odd really because the piece of female anatomy they are generally described as - I'm quite attracted to

Re: And then there are Spoonerisms

>There was also the Kenny Everett character Cupid Stunt.

Which was named such because the BBC executives saw through the original character name Mary Hinge

Barry Cryer has a wonderfully filthy mind for such a charming gentleman.

Re: Well I sure hope they also banned "Semprini"!

If enough of us use B***ium in that sense we could get it banned from Google search.....

Re: The evolution of euphemism

The word Donkey is relatively new, it only became common in the late C18 - allegedly because gentle people felt uncomfortable saying ass.

Re: The evolution of euphemism

The Yes Minister: CGSM - consignment of geriatric shoemakers = a load of old cobblers.

Personally I prefer a note asking if contributor X came from a close family, specifically did his parents have the same name before marriage?

The new marketing plan suggests that the executive in question has a heritage rich in inter-species diversity.

Spotted: Miscreants use pilfered NSA hacking tools to pwn boxes in nuke, aerospace worlds

Not outsourced then ?

frameworks are designed to be flexible and to extend functionality and compatibility with other tools

So why doesn't the government do all the other projects, NHS IT, MOD recruitment etc, in-house if it is so good at software development?

Apple boss demands Bloomberg Super Micro U-turn, Russian troll charged, NSA hands out cash, and more

He doth protest nowhere near enough

If this turns out to be:

A 3letter agency getting in the ground work for some future China tariff / ban

Intel putting in a defensive move to dilute any stories about its management engine

A short seller hoping to take advantage of a drop in share price.

It could be the end of Bloomberg. Why am I paying $25K/pa for a Bloomberg terminal that is about as trustworthy as Fox and friends ?

Microsoft points to a golden future where you can make Windows 10 your own

It can be done: how-do-i-remove-candy-crush-saga-from-windows-10 (stackoverflow)

UK defence secretary ponders £50m hit to terminate Capita recruiting contract

Re: Whilst I'm no lover of Capita...

Judging by the string of stories on el'reg about the specific faults in the Capita system the only possible conclusion is that Capita are some sort of militant pacifists committed to removal of all armed forces

SCISYS sidesteps Brexit: Proposes Irish listing to keep EU space work rolling in

Re: The big companies can mitigate this

>Just move HQ and most of the business to EU and leave a small operation in UK

But then you have to hire entirely new staff, in a foreign country, that you don't know if you as a ceo/director will be able to work in come March.

Much cheaper and easier to get a brass plaque on the wall of an Irish lawyer and nothing else changes.

Someone's in hot water: Tea party super PAC group 'spilled 500,000+ voters' info' all over web

Re: All of them, eh?

No some of them are totally ineffective and keep their scrupples - but never get anywhere near real power.

Dennis Skinner springs to mind.

Re: That's Nice

>As far as I'm concerned, a PAC is nothing more than a bribe aggregator.

Yes, I think that's rather the point.

Of course it would be much more efficient if you could just bribe the government directly through some official agency. Although that would probably make the bribes more expensive and less efficient

Google Cloud chief joins Saudi shindig exodus over journalist's worrying disappearance

Re: @Trilkhai re @amanfromMars 1

If amanfromMars is really a man from mars can they said to be a hominem?

(to the tune of Eric the half a bee)

Re: Follow the money

Wars, conflict, it’s all business. One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify my good fellow.

Mr Verdoux / Chaplin

Softcat warns of Brexit cloud forming over UK tech, vows: If prices rise, we'll pass them on...

Re: There's always an excuse to increase prices, but...

>All? Since when did 27 out of 180+ countries count as "all"?

Remind me how many countries the UK has an independent trade deal with as of April 2019 ?

We are still waiting to find out if our CE marking will be valid / what will replace it. But as a medical device manufacturer it is trivial to re-engineer all our testing / certification over a weekend at the end of march.

Re: There's always an excuse to increase prices, but...

>prices fall due to new tariffs

I'm not sure that negative tariffs on imports are strictly speaking "tariffs". I think the word you are looking for is subsidies

>or strengthened sterling

If splitting off all your export markets causes your currency to strengthen then we could do more of it.

Build a wall around each county perhaps ?

UK.gov to press ahead with online smut checks (but expects £10m in legals in year 1)

>Can someone tell me the difference between a pornographic image on social media and one on a porn site

The government would look mad if they censor that photo of that girl in vietnam with naplam / without clothes, or ban pictures of starving naked babies in an African famine.

The government doesn't want to look mad (allegedly)

Therefore they need an exception

Re: "Why can't we have both?"

>What do you think the kitchen table is for?

Making me dinner

Re: Government doesn't want a repeat of the Labour vote loss

>Both eclipsed by the Chelsea flower show though

The biggest display of floral genitals and open air reproduction

RIP Paul Allen: Microsoft cofounder billionaire dies at 65 after facing third bout with cancer

Re: @El Reg

That creates a weird incentive that people who remain working for the company get diluted while anyone that leaves doesn't.

Not directly equivalent but was involved in a company where one co-founder died leaving his widow owning half the business. She wouldn't give up any shares to recruit a new technical co-founder and the company died. VCs now typically have a first-refusal/claw-back clause if a founder leaves early or dies.

Re: RIP, Paul Allen

Microsoft made the modern computer industry what it is.

Imagine only being able to learn about computers by being hired as the lowest of the low at some company that had a mainframe, and gradually working your way up. Then if you left that knowledge was worthless because the next company had a different mainframe (or enough tweaks to the same one)

The irony is everyone being able to switch between jobs using the same apps on the same containers running on the same Linux on different cloud service is because Microsoft standardised the PC OS

Re: @El Reg

Don't know the details but it isn't a necessarily evil activity.

You have 4 staff, you lose one, you need to replace them to keep the business running,

You can't afford to pay the new hire enough to lure them away from HP/Ti/IBM so you offer stock. If the one you lose has 1/4 of the stock you don't have anything to offer the new hire.

It's why the incentive/vesting plans for founders are so complex now

GCHQ asks tech firms to pretty please make IoT devices secure

Re: Shred them

Once we renationalise the post office and put it in charge of internet and telephones again it will be able to enforce the rules that only GPO approved 300baud modems can be connected. And with internet calls priced per minute you won't want your lightbulb calling up to the server very often

Re: GCHQ need a big stick

It might first think about splitting the responsibility for securing computers from the agency also responsible for breaking into them.

GCHQ being in charge is like making bomber command responsible for the fire brigade.