Posts by Dave 15

Rust-style safety model for C++ 'rejected' as profiles take priority

Too much

C++ seems to have become a melting pot for every idea from every other software language in the known universe. Every year yet another update e arrives with yet another idea or ten. You can't efficiently shield programmers from making mistakes, sometimes serious ones. The extra code required to shield someone from using freed memory is non trivial and just makes software slower. The use of static analysis should be top of the list for serious engineers, work out whether your code is right at the time of writing don't try and prevent it going wrong when running .. at best it will cause an error for the user when you haven't tested the flow through the broken part, God knows what will happen when it is caught. The language is far too complex now

Boffins carve up C so code can be converted to Rust

Rot

C++ is not a extension to C, sadly it has become a jack of all trades trying to include everything from every language ever created. Yes you can screw up memory management in C, you can even use pointers badly and trample things. However it is a very efficient language and when I started my 6mhz computer would start in under a minute to something I could actually use, my current upteen GHz laptop running Linux takes 5 minutes, windows is half a year. If you can't do your job properly and deal with pointers and memory then go and find a job shovelling shit which is where you should be. There are a myriad of static analysis and related tools to help if you occasionally make mistakes.

Germany cuffs alleged Russian spies over plot to bomb industrial and military targets

What about

What about the explosion reported briefly by some in a USA ammo works and the one in the UK, both clearly russian but no o e seems to acknowledge we are in world war 3 and should be worrying about buying planes, guns, ships, tanks shells and bullets not compensating women apparently too stupid to read the news as I, a male, did when I knew all about the women's pension age increase

Browsers could face two regimes in Europe as UK law set to diverge from EU

iBrowsers or webpages?

I am pretty sure the fact those pathetic block the whole screen with a bit accept button and allow a 3400 click system to say no to cookies is a feature of the website not the browser you use because its the same on all browsers. The companies with websites like it should be fined hugely, banned until they have fixed ti

Its simple

Make it ILLEGAL to cover more than 10% of the screen with cookie information, illegal to have 'must allow' cookies, illegal to not provide a reject all cookies and all 'legitimate interest' on the cookie notice with a single button.

I suspect the EU will be happy to follow suit.

British intelligence recycles old argument for thwarting strong encryption: Think of the children!

its all bullshit

Several things make it bullshit

First the country is not rife with billions of kiddy fiddlers all chatting via social media apps about what they are doing to someones kids.

Second when there is evidence of grooming and other unpleasant behaviours it is ignored - plenty of cases of that with media celebrities, politicians, rich and famous, members of the church and it seems maybe even royalty, sort those out with the evidence that is there rather than taking a tilt at imagined windmills

Third the security services are there to protect the UK, they would be better off sorting out what is going on in russia and china and making it clear to our bone headed politicians that while china and russia are both massively rearming and invading other countries it is not a good idea to further cut our puny military, not a good idea to make us more and more dependent on imported technology and equipment - particularly from china, taiwan, usa. It is also not a good idea to be exporting kit to russia that is directly used in their drones to destroy kit we have sent to ukraine.

These people are there to protect us, until they are seen to do that job with the information that is freely to hand then giving them more ability to snoop on the innocent is just not required.

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

very sad

Its come to pass that 'da management' want cheap people making mistakes the rest of us learnt to avoid 20 or more years ago rather than paying for experience.

US, Europe formally blame Russia for data wiper attacks against Ukraine, Viasat

shock eh

Then of course there are russian 'members of parliament' (or put another way paid sham merchants) who have stated publicly on video that Ukraine should cease to exist, Ukrainians should cease to exist and it should be expunged from history (I guess including the part where russia tried to starve the entire population to death after ww2)

Having been banned from linked in and quora for pointing this out and even for them pointing to the video on youtube I wonder how long before I am banned here.

Skills shortage puts SAP projects on hold

Re: Skills shortage

Not immediately of course but yes, if everyone was paid a decent salary then more people would look to their future at school and study science, engineering and IT and be available for companies to provide specific experience and training in their requirements.

As it is you can take on 40 or 50k of debt to get yourself through university to be faced with job offers of 20 to 25k, what the hell is the point? I can save myself the grief and just operate checkouts for Tesco.

Or maybe I can get my tits out for the sun, or online, unwrap chinese plastic kids toys, kick a round ball around or pretend I can act and get millions! The truth is we are where we are for three reasons:

a) As a country we dont and havent for decades valued engineers, though it is engineers that provide us with the tools we use every day like mobile phones and cars.

b) As a country we put far too much money into housing and a pitiful amount into any form of development whether thats people, machinery or just products.

c) We reward the wrong things... as listed above but also politicians and the like

Re: Skills shortage

It is not just IT it is ALL British 'industry'... no idea how to run a piss up in a brewery but they know how to take a huge bonus at the top each year until the company is shafted then they just move to another with their mates.

It has been like this for decades.

Its like the bleating about lorry drivers... you have not trained, you have used the cheapest you can find, now they arent available you are fucked... well, couldnt you have looked into your magic crystal ball, or read the paper and understood bringing in people from Poland might get harder in the near future?

Its not even as if IT has difficult exams to pass, just bring some decent engineers in and accept it will take them a bit of time to get the domain knowledge but that they will.

Options...

a) Train some non sap people in sap? You know that good old fashioned thing

b) Take some non sap but decent engineers, they will learn it pdq anyway

c) Pay a bit more to encourage people to think... mmm, maybe I can train myself a bit and apply

d) All of the above.

Whining doesnt help, you actually have to do something!

European Union takes China to WTO over smartphone patents

Re: Tit for tat.

What IP? They seem to just copy.

Simple

China has long been known for this.

If companies continue to outsource manufacturing to China then they should be banned from sale in EU (and UK though now obviously different). Companies (everyone it seems from car manufacturers, electric vehicle people through to toy train manufactures) have all moved to China because it is perceived as cheap (cheap energy, cheap labour, cheap capital) but in doing so they lose control of a lot. They should ALSO lose any support at 'home', they should lose access to markets at home as well. You dont make it here you cant sell it here should just be a simple factual statement. China makes it so why cant we

Nokia Bell Labs gets funding to cool down data centres

district heating?

How many megawatts of energy are being wasted here? Surely we can use it to heat homes, or factories, or any number of things

Google's Chrome OS Flex could revive old PCs, Macs

Got to be good

Mind, I upgraded my old windows machines to linux last year, great success, they all now work!

Need to upgrade my wifes old window laptop as well... Microsoft inflicted an update on it and now it takes at least 20 minutes to boot and another 30 to load youtube... the only use for it anyway given that it only has 32gm ram.

I will upgrade that to mint and it will suddenly become useful as a computer, not the doorstop Microsofts updates made it.

Time for Microsoft to quite the PC software space as they have clearly lost the plot.

When I used to work for them they actually used their own shit... I guess they dont any more.

English county council blasted for 'inept project management' in delayed SAP replacement

inept county council... what a shock

Bet the supplier isnt even a UK based one

If the supplier has agreed to produce functionality A by time B and failed why the hell is extra money being paid? The council should (if the contract was properly negotiated) be getting a compensation payment. If the council cant make up its mind about functionality then it is reasonable to accept an increased cost for your lack of clarity but again that is piss poor management starting with clearly failing to get the requirements right.

If this is a t&m contract then again we are in the realms of what richard cranium at the council thought this was ok?

Facebook fined peanuts after Giphy staff quit and firm didn't tell UK competition regulators

For a while we did

Then the rich got upset sotheir lackies changed it back again. I wonder when the UK will be the Republic of the UK Queenie knights the liar blair then want Barker howls to be on the throne with the non entity Charles,still unanswered questions about Dianne

Re: Surely we need a "totting up" system for corporate scofflaws

We are pussy footing round the yanks again. They finebp billions for some yank corporations fuck up and we find them a few pennies to avoid offending them. I would block them and fine them their annual turnover for a first offence, a second offence would be permanently blocked and their last 10 years turnover

This is going well: Meta adds anti-grope buffer zone around metaverse VR avatars

Re: FFS

Yes, would love that s a day rate, even bankers don't get that, how many of those heads were Bangalore engineers not paid that much a year, someone making a killing

Russia's naval exercise near Ireland unlikely to involve cable-tapping shenanigans

Check out

Check out on youtube the interview by NBC of Putin, the interviewer way out of his depth, also look into John Mearsheimer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4) and Potsnam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ) all of which give a somewhat different slant on what is happening. Basically it appears the USA has been throwing its weight around, breaking promises and keeping quiet about a lot that is wrong on its side. For example how well has it published exercises taking place in Alaska, right on the Russian border? What about the USA behaviour when a country (Cuba) wanted some Russian presence on ts soil? Compare that with the current state when the USA wants an excuse to put troops and missiles actually on the border of Russia. What would the USA do if Canada or Mexico formed a military alliance with Russia? Or even Brazil?

Brocade wrongly sacked award-winning salesman who depended on company insurance for cancer treatment

Re: A timely reminder

What privatization? It has not happened despite decades of bleating it might, in fact now we are out of the EU it is actually less likely to happen, the EU were looking at forcing privatization of health (health insurance is private in Germany for example) and if they had done one of their infamous directives the civil servants would have immediately started looking for whichever US based health company gave them the best back pocket returns

Broadcoms UK HR dept.

This group leaves a lot to be desired, not the first people to be made redundant and then have their termination terms changed as they were illegally selected

UK think tank proposes Online Safety Bill reviewer to keep tabs on Ofcom decisions

Lets stop messing around shall we?

Every person must have a government approved and employed political commissar sitting on their shoulder at ALL times (awake, asleep, on the loo, having sex, where ever and when ever) to ensure they do not say or do anything that isnt government approved. Any misbehaviour will first result in a severe beating followed by a long period in room 101 to adjust back to behaving.

The government will control all sources of information - news, internet, and even speech - to ensure you get only he information that is government approved as correct.

Waymo sues California's DMV to block autonomous car crash data from publication

What they really mean

Is that there have been a number of accidents created by badly written and designed systems at least as embarrassing as the mess Tesla is using and they dont want the humiliation to be out there

US Navy in mad dash to salvage F-35C that fell off a carrier into South China Sea

The Saab is a good jet, the sukov is a match for the f35 and you get a 3 for the price of 1. The Brits are finally growing some balls and going back into plane making, the tsrw of the 1950s would outclass the f35 in every way except it didn't crash. The Harrier didn't lose any operational time nor were any shot down in the Falklands. The yanks never could make a plane, even the Mustang needed a British engine to make it any good

Why not

Why not build fighter jets that fly? The Harrier is a good one.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel green-lights Mike Lynch's extradition to US to face Autonomy fraud charges

Even if he is as guilty as hell..

We should stop sending people to the yanks, they have no idea of justice and their citizens are allowed to slaughter people on our roads and run away to avoid justice here. So what if a few yanks lost some cash, it was stolen from the British empire in the last two wars anyway. Stop thinking the yanks are our friends, look at steel tariffs, look at the way they refused to share the nnuclear stuff with the people that helped them create it, look at the IRA, Suez and all the rest, the yanks hate us except when they need our help to spread their poison around the world

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

Re: Route Master

That will be very difficult, the Routemaster was an AEC bus not Leyland, it is also brilliant Nd much missed, curse the bonehead Labour mayor who replaced them with inflammable mercedes bendy buses that didn't fit but furnished him with a personal backhander

Obviously should be ride of the valkyries

How did no one think of this? However with people afraid of their own shadow and governments full of bullshit bring in pointless laws to restrict every facet we make in order to get backhanders from companies that benefit from the rules these scooters are going to be stifled, leaving people using cars for short journeys

You're fabbing it wrong: Chip shortages due to lack of investment in the right factories, says IDC

The UK is failing

We have people that design chips the world uses then we outsource making them. How totally stupid. We rely on chips in everything so it is a strategic blunder to outsource, same as it is a strategic blunder not to be able to produce steel, aluminium, nylon and all manner of other useful materials on UK soil. That we dont have to would be a relief, but that we cant is a danger.

UK government responds to post-Brexit concerns and of course it's all the fault of those pesky EU negotiators

Re: .....but in the "sunny uplands" this sort of c**k up never happens, does it?

Of course they lied, just like the remainers did (in the 1970s as well). The 350 million is probably around somewhere but try finding that in the morass of crap that is our government finances. The frictionless trade seems to be one way (them to us) not helped of course by the fact that no one in whitehall seems to have a clue about designing a website.... use their cock up to tell me what form I need to export cheese and I will mark you as a total genius.

Re: .....but in the "sunny uplands" this sort of c**k up never happens, does it?

yup, but after we all gave all our money to the USA we dont have any to spend on having a nice war any more.

Although the Balkans had a good go didnt they? Seems that there have been quite a few squabbles around Russia as well... and a new one about to start (though I did see a really good video where a USA university of Chicago professor very neatly showed why the USA is to blame for that as well.

The idiots in charge our side should be shot

I mean, the civil service negotiated what has to be the worst deal ever, we seem to be paying a thumping great bill and getting sod all back.

The civil service are also responsible for the farce that serves as a web crap pile (sorry, web page) apparently telling people what form to fill in to export goods to the EU, I know there are some total genius people reading this, perhaps they an use the website to tell me what form is needed to export a lump of cheese?

Court papers indicate text messages from HMRC's 60886 number could snoop on Brit taxpayers' locations

Re: The irony… HMRC using a company owned in a tax haven

Yup, no wonder the government are screwing us all with yet another tax rise, they call it national insurance but it goes from my pay packet so it is income tax...

I dont think the government needs all these tax types and tax agents, a single flat tax is all we need, and a single flat benefit to stop people starving to death (though to be honest given inflation in prices and deflation in the wages of 99.99% I am pretty sure we are going to see that soon)

Big Brother is watching you

As long as you are poor enough not to have fancy accountants and lawyers HMRC wants to know exactly where you are so they can come round and ream you.

Running Windows 10? Microsoft is preparing to fire up the update engines

Last update wrecked so much

I am down to one windows machine largely because it's so fatally wounded by the last update it's now in use as a door wedge. Others were converted to Linux of different flavours so they work

Rolls-Royce consortium shopping for factory sites to build mini-nuclear reactors

Re: Money for old rope

Because we don't design and build we just ask foreigners to do it. Those cheap and nasty Chinese toys that break as you unpack them... What makes you think a Chinese reactor or reactor component would be any better? Substandard crud

Re: SMRs are expected to produce 300MWe per unit.

Given how damned cold my feat are right now i would host one at home. Of course the next question has to be when we will build aircraft carriers and frigates round one

European silicon output shrinking, metal smelters closing as electricity prices quadruple, trade body warns

Re: Market Control Plus Scarcity Means Huge Profits

Even worse when the retailer and producer are owned by the same as is the case for most in the UK. The wgole thing like privatisation of social housing, trains and water was to make the rich immensely richer and the rest of us poorer

Re: Not only that

The truth i it is better under no one's thumb.

Re: The North African

Yes, unfortunately the electrical connection was too expensive. However that solar power could be used to make liquid and gas fuels from the atmosphere or seawater (fuel from air exists and is being used, fuel from seawater is proven and being researched by the US navy to fuel it's aircraft) this solution could be piped (easier than russian gas) and would allow Europe to be carbon neutral for transport without paying for millions of charge point and new cars

Re: turning off nukes

Merkal wanted to make Germany dependent on the east and Russia in particular so they would never be in a position to stop Russia retaking the eastern block. She succeeded

Stop the stupid green crap then

Look, even if you accept global warming is a real issue the unrestricted breeding and the continued coal use by China and others mean there is no point in destroying our industries especially when it looks increasingly like we will need them for war

BOFH: What a beautiful classic car. Shame if anything were to happen to it

Austin Cambridge

Lovely cars, would have had a dynamo though. Only ever had one car short-circuit and that was my own fault for having wired the radio in without having bolted it properly in place...

Mind at least the Cambridge probably had negative earth making fitting radios easier than in my older less rusty positive earth Morris cars

Big shock: Guy who fled political violence and became rich in tech now struggles to care about political violence

Re: Doh!

Not when bone headed employers still insist you attend their climate wrecking office... how else do you feed yourself?

Of course the simple replacing of fossil fuels with artificial fuels generated using the CO2 in the environment would mean we can become carbon neutral without the costs and problems of replacing everything But hey ho, doesnt seem that the environmental lobby are blessed with any brains either

Re: The land of the "free"

Made in China just means it will break tomorrow and your bargain becomes landfill.

But you are right, no one cares and people keep doing it.

Try finding a headset for your phone or computer thats not made in China... not a chance

Re: The land of the "free"

Too much greed.

why was he blasted, no one does care

Or at least an insignificant number of people profess to care.

Ask how many companies are still moving their production and even R&D to China regardless of these stories, despite the production being shite and just for profits

Ask how many people are still buying products from companies that are making second rate crap in China instead of products made by people who give a fig in countries where they dont bollox the environment and use slaves

The fact is sadly people dont care, we have been conditioned to not care, too many people buying crap products from crap companies again and again and again, often because there is no longer an alternative because every company has moved their stuff to China regardless of what they do,

Tesla driver charged with vehicular manslaughter after deadly Autopilot crash

Re: Who's Driving The Car?

Not true, tesla didnt sell him a cruise control button they sold him full self driving, they have crowed about it and how it will save lives and drive the car for you so it is reasonable to argue that you were NOT driving the car, the expensive self driving software was driving the car, thats what it was advertised as doing

Re: Who's Driving The Car?

with standard cruise control yes, cruise control just holds the speed and that is well known and has been around for several decades. Supposedly adaptive cruise control that they now have on lorries and maybe some cars is supposed to be able to latch onto and follow a vehicle in front.