Posts by TaabuTheCat

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

Torn

I am absolutely torn by this one. As an oldster who spent my entire life in an office, with all the unproductive distractions, I have really enjoyed working from home the last two years and just getting things done. But having recently changed jobs and working the 3/2 schedule, I'm around a team of less experienced guys and can speak to the benefit of overhearing conversations about troubleshooting an issue, new designs, etc. that were just so wackadoo that the experienced me had to say something to get the juniors back on track. If I was full-time WFH I wouldn't hear those conversations and the team wouldn't benefit from my experience, so score one for being in the office. I also feel some payback is due for the mentoring I was lucky enough to receive when I started my career. Still, working from home was great, so color me conflicted.

Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out

Re: Wait, what?

One major difference. Florida can import power from other states. Texas being Texas (no commy Feds will regulate us!) has next to no import capability so when Texas has a generation problem like they did last winter, they are completely screwed. By choice, despite what the Governor would like you to believe (it was all ERCOT's fault).

California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave

Re: Costs

What Elon is fighting for in the US is for providers like you to be able to join the energy market and trade along with all the other producers - at market rates. So when demand is high, you'll get paid accordingly. An extreme example is what happened in Texas last year during the freeze. Power that would normally sell for $40-$60 MwH was going for the ERCOT market cap - $9,999 MwH. Now that's an extreme example likely (hopefully) never to be repeated, but I've been watching spot prices this summer and seeing peak times where power is going for $400-$800MwH, so there's money to be made if you're allowed to participate in the market.

GM's Cruise revises self-driving software after San Francisco crash

Re: No way was the car turning

And that was my biggest surprise when I started trying to use Tesla's FSD - how poor it was (or choose not to) look far enough ahead to anticipate and react to what's coming. And that also explains why it drives like a 16-year-old. One of things I constantly had to remind my daughter when she was learning to drive was to look way beyond the car in front of you.

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

HP-16C

Not quite the 70's (got it when they first came out so 82,83?) but the original batteries are still in it and it still works. Amazing.

Software issues cost Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess his job

His mistake was pointing out the elephant

Diess simply couldn't ignore the fact that Toyota produces more cars each year that all of the Group, with HALF the employees. He pissed off the unions with the hard truth and was done. The problem won't go away. VW needs to address the disparity, with or without Diess.

Elon Musk orders Tesla execs back to the office

3 years and out

According to Musk, employees only have about three years of good ideas and then they're an impediment to change. Lots of turnover? That's a feature, not a bug. So if people quit instead of going back to the office I suspect he really won't care. Just accelerates the search for new grist for the mill. Can't imagine working for a company that thinks so little of its employees.

MIT's thin plastic speakers fall flat. And that's by design

Still around

They are very much still around: https://magnepan.com/ and once you give a listen to their 20 or 30 series you'll understand why. Even the 1.7s are really good if you add a sub.

Apple dev logs suggest 'nine new M2-powered Macs'

Logging laziness

I just think it's pretty funny that for all of Apple's secrecy and paranoia they can't even be arsed to feed the app logs bogus data about the (beta) hardware they are running on.

DARPA says US hypersonic missile is ready for real world

Dated?

I always wonder when I read stories like this how many years ago the press release was written. Hard to believe they would actually be announcing something that is current, but maybe we need to show how far behind we are to get more pork - er, sorry, funding.

Microsoft debuts System Center 2022

Re: I wonder...

See InTune for your answer.

IBM HR chief insists 'no systemic age discrimination'

Yeah, right.

"I doubt she has seen the mountain of evidence that lawyers around the country have been accumulating."

Seen it? She probably helped write it!

Use Zoom on a Mac? You might want to check your microphone usage

Oh, you're so clever.

"resolved an issue regarding the microphone light indicator being triggered when not in a meeting."

No. You resolved an issue where you were leaving the microphone on when not in a meeting.

What a bunch of disingenuous assholes.

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

Re: My first though...

"What happens to the one bubble in the center?"

Conception.

The future of work is hybrid, says Cisco, so here's Wi-Fi 6E access points and Private 5G

"It will be delivered on a "pay-as-you-use" model that minimises upfront infrastructure costs, while the monthly subscription includes 24/7 support and upgrades."

Ahh, I see. Cisco is finally revealing the endgame we all knew was coming - charge for every byte of data flowing through their equipment, forever.

Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans

What problem are you trying to solve?

That one little question, oh how it can stop someone asking for something in their tracks. Whenever I'm asked for something new or a change to existing process, procedure, software, hardware, architecture, etc., I guarantee you are going to have to answer that question before one single thing gets done. The number of times I've been asked for things that will not solve the problem is remarkable; the number of times I can't even get an answer equally so. All the AI in the world won't fix that.

Cyberattacker hits German service station petrol terminal provider

Re: Sounds expensive...

"Sounds expensive..."

Silly rabbit, they declared "force majeure", the universal get-out-of-jail-free card baked into every contract. "All beyond our control gov, honest."

James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at its new home – an orbit almost a million miles from Earth

Re: Years and money well spent

Thanks for the alignment explanation. I was wondering why $10B didn't get you some sort of auto-focus mode - just press the shutter release button half way and and wait for the image to get sharp!

Meta Platforms demands staffers provide proof of COVID-19 booster vaccine before returning to office

Re: Good.

"Even if you're going to worry, you need to recognise that the available vaccines have zero public health value: they are not effective at preventing infection nor retransmission. Their only value is to the recipients,"

Tell that to the health care workers dealing directly with the effects of this type of selfish thinking. Overwhelmed hospitals and burned out medical staff have a huge impact on public health value, especially if you need a bed for something other than Covid. If you think health care isn't being rationed right now in the US because of the overhelming influx of unvaccinated Covid patients, you are not paying attention.

Google advises Android users to be careful of Microsoft Teams if they want to call 911

Re: Time to lawyer up?

This is exactly what I used to do when setting up a new phone system, for three reasons:

1. We wanted to be sure 911 calls would actually go through.

2. We wanted to be sure the 911 operator saw the correct location the call was coming from.

3. We wanted to be sure our internal alerting that a 911 call was made worked and notified the right people on prem so they could respond.

But then again I worked for a company where life/safety was taken seriously. YMMV.

Don't panic about cyber insurers pulling up the drawbridge, says Lloyd's

"I read this as "Insurance companies speak in tongues, but don't worry your pretty little head about it. Just send in your money and you'll be fine""

Yeah, pretty much always been this way. You have a policy but do you have coverage? The only way to know for sure is to file a claim. And then the fun begins on the carrier side looking for any reason possible not to pay. Obscure language to the rescue. "You thought it said this was covered? So sorry, but you misunderstood and your policy doesn't cover that type of damage. Oh, and here's your premium renewal invoice."

Microsoft: What's that? A patch for make-me-admin vuln? Sorry – can't hear you. Have a new jumper instead

Patch an admin elevation bug??

Ha, ha. What are you thinking??!! They are waaay too busy adding BNPL to Edge. Priorities you know.

Riverbed Technologies files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following pandemic 'headwinds'

"Riverbed is great back in the day when most companies can only get 1.5MB T1 connections for site to site VPNs."

This. Lovely products back in the day - used lots of them when they were first released and they felt like magic over T1s, but those days are gone. Convenience blame the pandemic all you want, but the ongoing need for their products is the real story. It's all downhill from here.

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

Re: Can you opt out of the data collection on smart TVs?

"If it's logging anything about me it's 'Always watches HDMI 1'

Don't be so sure. Vizio sets will fingerprint the video that's being displayed to figure out what you're watching. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if they're all doing this now. No internet connection is about the only option left, and how long before the set won't even boot up without connectivity?

140,000-plus drivers sent $60m in compensation checks after Amazon 'stole their tips'

A person made this decision

Hide behind the corporate veil all you want, *someone* signed off on the decision to allow this. Find out who and charge them with theft, fraud, and whatever else you can make stick. Putting people in jail is the only way to stop this kind of shit.

It's 'near-impossible to escape persistent surveillance' by American ISPs, says FTC

This isn't hard, and it's not nuanced.

It's simple. Sign up for any service, app. etc with data collection capabilities and you are immediately presented a list the first time you use such service/app:

Here's what we collect, here's what we do with it.

Your viewing habits. We sell that to advertisers and use it to insert custom ads in your TV stream. You never have to leave your bubble.

Your race. We "share" that so others can discriminate against you without you ever knowing.

Your location. We sell that so marketers, your local divorce attorney and anyone else willing to pay can stalk you wherever you go.

Your buying habits. We use that to figure out how much all of your other data is worth.

Next to each item is an opt-in/opt-out choice, with opt-out selected by default.

If the provider wants to pitch the benefits of opting in, great, have at in plain language with no dark patterns or implied threats of reduced functionality allowed. Same for offering discounts to opt in or charging more if you choose to opt out.

I expect most consumers would be shocked to see the length of the list, just as they were when Apple started making apps fess up to what they were collecting. Consumers are largely choosing not to not participate in the data grab when given even a modicum of choice. Make disclosure and user choice mandatory.

Kyndryl, the artist formerly known as IBM's Global Technology Services, names 10-person board

Re: Value Added is negative...

You forgot their most important duty - awarding outrageous salary, bonus and severance packages to the top .01% of the food chain, and expecting nothing in return.

Texas cops sue Tesla claiming 'systematic fraud' in Autopilot after Model X ploughed into two parked police cars

Re: Drunk driving is illegal and dangerous

They are suing the Pappas restaurant chain because they own a LOT of very popular and profitable restaurants. They are no mom and pop organization - I think at one time (and maybe still) they were one of the largest employers in the Houston area. Just going where the money is...

Hey – how did you get in here? Number one app security weakness of 2021 was borked access control, says OWASP

Re: with other common weaknesses...

Because as the article noted, some orgs believe if they just follow this list (or the CIS Top 20, or Bob's Security 100 for Dummies), they've done their part. Truly a curse indeed when used this way. But it's *something*, and maybe at least gets people thinking a bit and addressing the low-hanging fruit. But as noted, it's reactionary, and that's never a good place to be in InfoSec.

Make-me-admin holes found in Windows, Linux kernel

It actually could have been worse if they "surfaced" the password. Talk about making me throw up a little in my mouth every time I see that word...

Say helloSystem: Mac-like FreeBSD project emits 0.5 release

Menus and application windows

"...application menus appear in the top system menu bar, not on the application window."

Even after years of using a Mac as my personal computer I still cannot get used to this coming from Windows all day at work. That a window can be in front of other windows but not be related to what's showing in the menu bar seems wrong from good UI design principles, i.e. the menu that's showing can be completely unrelated to the window taking up the other 95% of the screen. And don't get me started on the menu bar showing for an app with no windows open at all in that app - hello Messages, Finder, etc. - and needing to go to the menu bar to get to an app window.

Obviously there are people that love the way MacOS does this since it's being copied here, but I wish MacOS would allow a choice to attach menus to the application window. Maybe I just need some enlightenment on why MacOS has this "right"?

IBM pulls up the ladder behind some supercomputer customers

Re: A question about the CRU...

Stairway to Heaven

Women techs fume, offer crowdsourced fixes as Michelle Obama's online keynote crashes

That bus is still rolling

"We're performing a full investigation with our network provider and other partners to determine why the issue was not caught during quality assurance tests."

The wheels on the bus go round and round...

Excuse me, what just happened? Resilience is tough when your failure is due to a 'sequence of events that was almost impossible to foresee'

Re: The

When I worked in Texas we used to do bi-annual real production failovers to our backup DC, run for a couple of days and then fail everything back. It was how we knew we prepared for hurricane season. Interesting how many orgs don't consider failback as part of the exercise. One of my peers (at another org) said management considered the risk too high for "just a test". I'm thinking it's actually quite rare to find companies doing real failover/failback testing in their production environments.

Ransomware-skewered meat producer JBS confesses to paying $11m for its freedom

Re: Whoa there

You get the feeling restoring data wasn't the problem - more like the crooks got their hands on data the CEO really didn't want the public to see. Which makes you wonder...

Everything Apple announced: Tor-ish Safari anonymization. Cloaked iCloud addresses. Cloud CI/CD. And more

Forced unlock?

So let me get this straight... If your only copy of your driver's license or other government ID is on your phone, there would be zero chance you could keep your phone locked at perhaps the most important times - during non-consentual encounters with TSA, LEA, etc. Seems like a bad idea to me. Guess you could just refuse to show ID but I suspect that would do nothing than invite more scrutiny. Still going to be paper boarding passes and a physical ID for me.

Now that Trump is useless to Zuckerberg, ex-president is exiled from Facebook for two years, possibly indefinitely

Re: It's too quiet

But that's just it, isn't it? Are you not entertained??

Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably

Re: I'm a word wrangler...

Anonymous? You are clearly amanfrommars, unedited. I claim my five pounds.

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

From one cat to another...

You forgot the most important part - tie it to a subscription.

US aviation regulator warns of mid-air collision risk if Garmin TCAS boxes are not updated

Re: Can I just say that I love the euphemism there...

I've been in that other aircraft. Waiting at LGA to leave, plane after plane in line waiting their turn. We finally got to the front of the line, perpendicular to the runway but still on the taxiway so I could see the line of incoming planes headed for our runway. And then the captain decides to pull onto the apron, still hadn't made the left to point down the runway so my unobstructed view of an incoming plane about to land on that same runway was quite clear. Gear up, nose up, lots of smoke from the engines as he passed over us on a go-around. Bet he was pissed, and I was about shitting myself watching helplessly. Pilot never said a word, we ended up taking off immediately after that, and I'm not how many of the other passengers even knew what had just happened. You fly enough you get to see a lot of strange things.

But can it run Avid? The Reg hands shiny new M1 MacBook to video production pro, who beats it with Blender, Handbrake, and ... Hypercard?

Re: Incredible

Agreed, and it's only a matter of time until all of their devices are M1 and the ecosystem really sings.

Frankly, it's refreshing to see Apple, with more money stockpiled than God, finally using some of it in a really thoughtful and strategic way. This project had to be a huge undertaking, and if I'm honest I didn't think Tim Cook had it in him to strategically position Apple for the next 10-20 years. With the investment in M1 (and M2 and M3...) I take it all back. What he and his team did here is a massive long-term win for the company, and I hope it's just the first of many innovations. Goodbye Jone Ive. Welcome to the new Apple.

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

Figures

And the more I see the results of "design on the fly" (pardon the pun) in mainstream products like all of the 157 Microsoft portals, it's clear to me "agile", "CI/CD", and all the other cool buzzwords around this philosophy simply hide the fact that no one is thinking about the end before they begin. At least with waterfall you had to consider what "finished" might look like. Now? It's a dogs breakfast with constantly changing UI, levels of abstraction that make no sense, duplicate ways of doing similar things - none of them well thought out - and generally no cohesiveness at all to the product. And that's just O365, but I've seen it in other "go fast, break things" products as well.

Good engineering and design is hard. Being able to change your mind - and the product - every time it becomes clear you haven't thought something through, or living in your own little world and not thinking about how what you're doing interacts with the larger whole, well, that's easy. It doesn't require thought or imagination and it allows you to keep pushing difficult design decisions down the road until there's no way out but to start all over now that you have some clue what you are doing. How about we just admit that "fast" isn't the end-all. Real engineering, real design matters too. And thinking about a usable end state and what it will take to get there needs to be part of the plan.

I used to work with guys that thought of their designs as something that could be "elegant", and I saw that elegance more than once. Haven't seen it out of this new methodology, and I doubt that I ever will. Now get off my lawn.

Pat Gelsinger’s Intel will evolve from lone wolf to touting modular systems-on-packages with third-party foundry collaboration

How the mighty have fallen

I remember years ago speaking with a friend at Intel during one of the many AMD "back from the dead" moments, where it looked like AMD was going to eat Intel's lunch with new CPUs, and my friend said no one at Intel was the slightest bit concerned because they had something AMD would never have - tons of manufacturing capability. The thought was they could simply bury AMD with product. My how times have changed.

Google and Microsoft's public squabble over who's the worst is giving us life right now, not gonna lie

And two men enter, no man leaves please.

A borked bit of code sent the Hubble Space Telescope into safe mode, revealing a bunch of other glitches

Re: It depends...

Can it print?

It could until the last patch Tuesday.

Voyager 2 receives and executes first command in 11 months as sole antenna that reaches it returns to work

Re: It's a different world

In '74 as a youth, I had a part-time job repairing Canon calculators for a dealer. I still remember some of the machines having mechanical delay lines - a rather large tin box soldered onto the PCB, I assume filled with wire based on the schematics - acting as "memory". Didn't hold the data for very long and it was serial in bits, run around the wire for a while, and then serial out bits, but it took long enough to be useful.

Damn, did I really work on that stuff? I haven't thought about that in a really long time.

Chrome zero-day bug that is actively being abused by bad folks affects Edge, Vivaldi, and other Chromium-tinged browsers

Chrome is the new Flash

That is all.

ESA signs off on three more service modules for Moon mission – despite agency boss casting doubt on 2024 landing

The more I hear

about this program the more I can't help but think it's going to be another 10+ years of wasted effort to "do something" using yesterday's left-over parts and yesterday's recycled ideas. I really can't fault NASA with the stupid yoyo budgeting and political positioning that changes priorities every regime change, but seriously, can't we have a more ambitious effort than some franken-vehicle that will cost billions, be massively over budget, chronically late and barely able to repeat a trick we performed over 50 years ago?

Robinhood plays Sheriff of Nottingham as it pauses GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry etc stock sales, gets sued

Re: "the majority of those insurgents are in the process of losing their shirts"

It is a rebellion - beating these assholes at their own game. Patrick Byrne must be beside himself with joy watching these shorts get taken down, wishing WSB had been around when he was being put through the ringer. But don't worry - all the rules will change overnight to make sure the plebs can never do this again. Got to protect the neighborhood you know, or pretty soon undesirables will be moving in.

Five years after US promised crackdown on ticket-snaffling bots, the first prosecutions are in... and are a slap on the wrist

Re: There's a simple solution

Exactly. When I lived on Long Island I was just a few miles away from the Westbury Music Fair. Being able to go to the box office over lunch and buy tickets in person for an upcoming show at face value with no "service fees", "convenience fees", "delivery fees", etc. was awesome. You paid what it said on the ticket and not a dime more.

The exclusives that Ticketmaster signed with venues in the 80's ended any pretense that a ticket was just a ticket. Instead it became a vehicle for anyone who could get their fingers into the pie to extract their vig, with kickbacks for the venues and unlimited power by Ticketmaster to charge whatever the hell they wanted to for some supposed "convenience". As mentioned above by others, I too simply won't go to any event where Ticketmaster fees are involved. Fucking parasites.