Posts by geekguy

Creator of SSLPing, a free service to check SSL certs, downs tools

Re: The worst bit....

Unfortunately you are 100 percent right, I remember the ndoc debacle where people abused the author and he just shut up shop, and quite rightly so.

A Windows 11 tsunami? No, more of a ripple as Microsoft's latest OS hits 5% PC market

Re: Do I want Win 11?

This is incredibly naive, you are assuming that you will always be able to bypass the checks. Microsoft have stated publicly that you will not be able to going forward.

Re: Do I want Win 11?

Totally agree out of the 3 machines I own none meet the hardware specs even though they can blatently run windows 11, therefore I won't be upgrading anytime soon.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

Re: Want to run it?

Honest question, how do you play games which almost always want a windows platform ?

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Re: Excuses, excuses

Totally right, this is unacceptable in the extreme, a private landlord would be prosecuted for this, as should IKEA. A total and unacceptable invasion of privacy, monitoring of toilets by using drug wipes etc is doable, potentially videoing people in the loo.. criminal.

Microsoft does and doesn't require VMs to meet hardware requirements for Windows 11

fact is half the population of windows aren't going to be forced to upgrade their machines, the requirements are quite insane ! Fact is these should be features you can enable, not are forced to have

Re: All major OSes suck

Sandybridge 2700k here and its still a great day to day machine.

UK chancellor: Getting back to the altar of corporate dreams (the office) will boost young folks' careers

People are missing there has been a shift in peoples expectations, the workplace has changed and big business are going to have to suck it up to a certain degree.

This comment hits the mark, Sunak is again talking rubbish and protecting the interest of big business not the careers of people he cares so little about.

Microsoft welcomes 'raddest' and most 'feature-dense' Kubernetes release to AKS, shows 1.17 the door

Kubernetes has always had that sort of fast release cadence the fact is if you've bought into Kubernetes you have already bought into that fast pace of development and release. It does not make it a toy or not fit for production it simply means it needs much more attention. Whether your organisation is prepared to give it that sort of attention is another thing. Know your tool including its schedule and don't blindly implement technologies without looking into this in the first place.

GitLab latest to ditch 'master' as default initial branch name: It's now simply called 'main'

Re: RE: Master / slave

Thing is, that's a voluntary label they give themselves and their relationship style, so not the same thing really.

Re: RE: Master / slave

Aside no one ever said branches were slaves to the master branch. Its people projecting onto that wording, this is an example of things being taken a bit too far. I totally understand main, it's a good word and describes the branch well, but so did master. Maybe it's me and I'm out of step or a bit older now (46) but I don't see the issue with master at all. However if some people find it wholly offensive and want it changed then perhaps we should welcome the change to main I mean I might go the full hog and just call all my default branches weeble :)

the main degree ofc :) devaluing all "single" degrees at bachelors degrees will become known.

Python swallows Java to become second-most popular programming language... according to this index

Re: Sin tax

I'm afraid the idea that no-one should be using C/C++ now is part of the inherent problem. Assembly and its readable counterpart C should be taught as standing still. You cannot build on top without understanding what you are building on.

Don't worry, IT contractors. New UK chancellor says HMRC will be gentle pushing IR35 rules

Staggering indifference and uncompetence

Prooving that yet again the government simply doesn't understand the interim market or the fact that we don't do the same job or have the same benefits.

The rate the company collects (PSC) is not a salary it is a rate for services rendered, out of that a company has to be run and one of those things is directors and other employees remuniration, along with pension, holidays, sick pay and other things that the larger companies provide for the employees.

What is difficult to understand?

Google reveals new schedule for 'phasing out support for Chrome Apps across all operating systems'

Re: So, Google is pulling a Microsoft ?

Still using the desktop picasa years later, there is no replacement for it unless you really think lightroom is. Picasa was brilliant at organing your photos, I didn't much care for the online bit of it. I quite like google photos ironically, its a shame it (the desktop app) wasn't opened up so the community could develop it, but maybe that wasn't possible.

IT contractor has £240k bill torn up after IR35 win against UK taxman

Re: In case this is all confusing...

Anyone that signs a contract which states they cannot work elsewhere is controlled and inside ir35, these people are fools its exactly how Christa ackroyd was caught (amongst many other things) some of us refused work based on contracts like that

Re: How much has HMRC spent on this pursuit?

Clearly that's hmrc delivery centre

Re: I cannot understand why HMRC pursues contractors so much.

Sorry but the new laws aren't trying to stop long term contractors anymore they are trying to provoke companies to no longer engage contractors by passing the risk to the engager, as such large clients such as the banks are announcing they will no longer engage contractors at all. This is an own goal as people then forced into full time employment will no longer raise vat (most are flat rate vat), and will be paid less (less to tax) meaning a net loss to the treasury. Its stupid, a better way would have been to scrap ir35 and raise corporation tax, I say this as a now ex contractor

IR35 blame game: Barclays to halt off-payroll contractors, goes directly to PAYE

Re: Obviously they will increase the rates by the customary amount to compensate

This isn't accurate and is a myth, there are limited places to walk to, as the public sector has already had this applied. Unlike when it happened in the public sector and everyone ran to private sector.

Re: How many hours a week?

It has nothing to do with hours per week and everything to do with terms of engagement and working practises.

It should be noted that ir35 already applies to these positions its just who is responsible that is shifting.

How to lose a UK contractor in 10 days: Make them commit after upcoming IR35 tax upheaval, apparently

Re: Good.

True but you need to understand freelancers != contractors.

Industry reps told the UK taxman everything wrong with extending IR35. What happened next will astound you

Re: up to a 20 per cent pay cut overnight... For many, the cost of their current mortgage

I have to say thats not true, In the north in places like leeds and manchester there is plenty of opportunity.

UK should set its own tax on tech giants if international deal isn't reached – Chancellor

Perhaps the chancellor should start by learning what tax should be paid by people and not the persecution of small contractors as he seems intent on.

This chancellor has no basic understanding at all, its quite frightening.

Click your heels, um, mouse thrice and you've quickly got Ubuntu on Hyper-V in Win 10 Pro

Re: WSL dead then?

wsl scratches a different itch, to say it is dead would be silly, what if all I need to do is run aws cli and i prefer linux, wsl does that no need for a full blown virtual machine.

Apple web design violates law, claims blind person

Re: Good.

to be fair not having alt tags is inexcusable in this day and age.

Game over for Google: Fortnite snubs Play Store, keeps its 30%, sparks security fears

Or you could have made sure you had to enter a password before in game purchases happen. Can certainly do that on ps4, so when my kid goes into the vbucks screen or store he can hit "buy" all he wants but he can't get anything because there are two layers of passwords after that (both of which are different , at least 20 characters long and stored in an encrypted password vault)

Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

Re: It was aliens wot did it

Totally plausible response, clearly and Alien Cat energy collector.

RIP, Swype: Thanks for all the sor--speec--speedy texting

Re: You've GOT to be kidding me

Swiftkey

Re: tips & corrections

swiftkey

You can resurrect any deleted GitHub account name. And this is why we have trust issues

Re: Good.

Agree,

Besides if you're going to use open source in your own stuff, you should be working on a fork and possibly contributing to the main projects with pull requests. Never rely on someone else's repo always being there. That's just madness.

Java security plagued by crappy docs, complex APIs, bad advice

Re: Its one thing to find code...

I would have done the comedy of the following:

Written the white paper, posted it on a wordpress blog that was on the internet under a psuedoname, and referenced that :)

Activist investors want tepid Yahoo! to reboot crashed Marissa Mayer

Re: Typical vulture* capitalists...

Investing in companies is like playing cards in Vegas. It's got slightly better odds but it is definitely a game of skill AND luck. The CEO of yahoo is not a muppet, she came from an extremely successful company and was one of the founders of that company.

She knows how to make things work. Perhaps the fact that multiple CEOs have been unable to stop Yahoos decline says something more about their market positioning and brand rather than the actual product.

This sort of change takes many years to happen perhaps they, the investors, should withdraw their money if they expect it to be a steady income stream before market and product realignment are complete.

BBC shuts off iPlayer to UK VPNs, cutting access to overseas fans

Buy a decent router run a vpn server from it and connect through that. Simplez.

Re: Good.

Hulu does it, I don't see an issue.

Free Wi-Fi for the NHS, promises health secretary Jeremy Hunt

Re: Silliest thing I've read in a long time

I was in hospital for a prolonged stay this time last year. There was 0 wifi connection, this meant I had to pay for the expensive tv cards and browse on there. Those systems are ok, but it would have been a lot better for me to have my own device.

It was folly to suggest it would aid the takeup of health tools it would have been more honest and equally as saleable to say it would increate the quality of patient experience. Even though I was ill and sleeping an awful lot of the day I still got board, and streaming some music or reading a paper would have been nice, perhaps getting a book down for the kindle. Hospitals already have private wifi staff use.. so to have the guest infrastructure is just sensible.

The paperless office is a myth perpetuated by those who do not understand technology or the backup systems it requires.

Re: Your just a complainer who jumps to their keyboard

The simple fact is if you use a free wifi connection provided by someone other than yourself then you have to accept they have terms and conditions and filters in place, if you don't want that you simply don't have to use it or can use your own data connection such as 4g.

Skills crisis? Not for long: More and more UK kids gain STEM quals

Re: Good.

Only an element of this is true. Yes computing has got more complex and it is certainly true that you need to learn a lot of basic knowledge to be productive.

But that is all it is base knowledge. It is more important to be enquiring and adventurous. You do NOT need a comp sci degree to become a develoeper although society has convinced people they do. Some of the very best developers (old and new) I know are self taught, there is a wealth of learning material out there and very good industry standard tools are now given away for free.

its never been so easy or accessible to dive in. The real issue is attracting and retain people in the subject as they are increasingly treated like the factory workers of today by management.

What we do is a highly skilled job and when you join the industry you make a life long commitment to a very steep learning curve. That is of course part of the attraction.

Google pulls plug on YouTube for older iPads, iPhones, smart TVs

Re: Roll Your Own

Samsung already have slot in units.

Not googles fault

" In this case, Google has written bad software which brings about obsolescence."

Not accurate, Google has written good software which is now superseded, manufacturers, if they cared, could update their devices in someway to the new Apis. Samsung has a way of doing this. it is not a failure of Google but a failure of the OEMs. You cannot support aging software forever.

Ex-Windows designer: Ballmer was dogmatic, Sinofsky's bonkers, and WinPho needs to change

Re: Fix the stuff that is CLEARLY broken

"C# makes it harder to make UIs quickly than VB decades ago !"

Abject rubbish I'm afraid.

Microsoft: So sorry for NOT paying Xbox indie game devs on time

Its ironic

That when bill gates' software was being ripped off by Altair user groups he wrote his famous letter. The corporation he founded now doesn't pay software developers on time.

Irony ?

I’ve never paid for it in my life... we are talking Wi-Fi, right?

Re: Why??

There are apps to get around tether lockout, foxfi on android is one.

Banking apps: Handy, can grab all your money... and RIDDLED with coding flaws

Re: Not surprising

Point 1 is true,

I cannot agree with Point 2, it is not the case that either TDD or BDD leads to poorly tested bad quality code. It IS the case that people have bad practises around testing.

DANGER MOUSE is back ... and he isn't half a GLASSHOLE

This isn't going to work

Danger mouse had two brilliant things about it, David Jason and Terry Scott, who were locked in combat for the prize of best voice acting. You can almost hear them trying to out do each other on every line.

Without these voice actors the brand is simply a basic cartoon, kids are now way more sophisticated and will not latch onto such basics.

NHS website hit by MASSIVE malware security COCKUP

Re: Crapita should read this page

And again Capita do not run the NHSChoices website and haven't done for 1 year, it is run by HSCIC.

Doctor Who? 12th incarnation sought after Matt Smith quits

Re: New Dr.

John hurt could be the Valeyard.. The Valeyard wasn't a full reincarnation he was somewhere betweeen the 12th and final regeneration, and the doctor has always worried he has the potential to become that person.

Natwest, RBS: When will bank glitch be fixed? Probably not today

Re: Out-sourcing is bad

Sharpen your daily rates ex-employees and offer "assistance"