Posts by Blank Reg

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

except that office building is also heated/cooled for the 1/2 to 2/3rds of the day when people aren't there. Better to just ditch the office completely.

BMW deems drivers worthy of warmth, ends heated car seat subscription

I'd be interested in a new old fiat 500 with its whopping 16hp and ~60Mpg. I bet with modern materials and manufacturing they could squeeze out a few more miles per gallon. There really wasn't much that you couldn't fix yourself on those cars

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

Re: So Musk has blood on his hands

Russia has no chance of winning, they just don't have the capacity to keep their troops armed. meanwhile, the west can just keep production going as long as they like.

Besides, it should be obvious by now that the Russian military is completely incompetent, they really aren't good at this war thing.

From browser brat to backend boss: Will WASM win the web wars?

There are about a couple dozen languages that can be compiled to run on the JVM, and that includes Javascript

Musk's latest X-periments: No more headlines, old posts vanish, block gets banned

What happens when there is no one left except for racists, nazis, and right wing trolls? They may have to turn on each other

Re: so blocking just blocks them from seeing you?

Maybe he's abusing something, or maybe he's just a fucking idiot

OpenAI's ChatGPT has a left wing bias – at times

Re: Not really

There are an awful lot of poor old people that vote conservative.

I've amassed more than enough to retire at any time if I chose to, but I'll vote for anyone but those wackos on the right

Re: Not really

I've always found it funny when conservatives claim that you will shift to the right as you get older. I like to point out that this means that there is a correlation between those likely to be in cognitive decline and the tendency to be right wing. But it makes sense, you'd need to be out of your mind to support the right these days.

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

With the astounding level of mismanagement, they will soon be able to claim to be an ex-company

Apple seeks patent for devices with roll-up displays – iRoll?

Re: Nokia

yes there were a number of companies working on roll up screens a decade ago if not more. I saw a few prototypes but as far as I know none ever made it to production. one likely problem is that bendy screens will tend to not lay perfectly flat after a while, then your very expensive phone would end up with a screen resembling a fun house mirror

Producers allegedly sought rights to replicate extras using AI, forever, for just $200

Re: Generate Extras for free

But Davy jones was very tentacly. with a CGI human face there is always something that gives it away as we are much more attuned to the subtleties of a human face.

Starlink satellites leak astronomy-disturbing EM radiation, say boffins

There aren't enough customers in such places to justify such a satellite network.

It would be better to run fiber, it will likely be cheaper in the long run as it doesn't need replacing every 5 years like the LEO satellites used by Starlink. If you're really so far out that fiber is never going to happen then there are terrestrial radio solutions that can get you higher speeds and fewer issues with less atmospheric signal loss.

Just bring them all down, its growth is limited by available bandwidth which makes it a poor business in the long run.

Former Twitter employees accuse it of holding up 891 arbitrations

Re: Letter grade

He has spent far too much time cultivating the myth that he is a genius, he can't now come out and admit that he is an incompetent moron that hasn't a clue what he us doing.

Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries work permits

Re: For once, Trudeau's government has made an actual smart move.

While it is certainly possible for someone without a degree to do well, the odds are low. The work we do requires excellent algorithm knowledge, the kind if stuff that is taught in university, not at some coding boot camp.

Re: Russians

I know dozens of former colleagues from Russia, almost of them left the country long before Putins debacle in Ukraine.

Re: For once, Trudeau's government has made an actual smart move.

I had a PhD and 2 MSc in comp sci tapply that failed miserably. One even did their thesis on a topic very closely related to the problem I gave them, it didn't help. Every candidate claimed to have a degree in software, and most had work experience.

And it's not like the test is a surprise, I tell them ahead of time the topic that they should study up on.

Re: For once, Trudeau's government has made an actual smart move.

half the applicants didn't even submit running code, and abour a quarter of them submitted nothing. Most barely showed any meaningful ability to write code beyond what you would expect from a first year comp sci student.

I had several that just gave up after 30 minutes, they had 3 hours.

There is no point hiring someone that doesn't even exhibit the potential to learn what I need them to do. I would hire someone that failed to get it fully working provided they showed that they at least understood the concepts and were on the right track. Sadly few managed even that

Re: Please do!

I was thinking the same thing. I would bet such people are overrepresented in what is left of twitter staff

Re: Short term visas

Actually, we also need people young enough to have children or that bring children with them. Our birth rate is quite low so we need a flood of immigrants to postpone some major demographic issues in the not too distant future

You must be listening to right-wing nutjobs if you believe that (apart from the rent, that part is true)

Re: For once, Trudeau's government has made an actual smart move.

Not around here in the Toronto area, there just aren't enough good programmers at any price. I had to interview over 30 applicants to find one that was suitable. Granted what we do is extremely complex and challenging, but more than half of the applicants couldn't even come up with a bad solution to the problem I gave them, and it wasn't that hard.

Parts of Texas were in the mid 40's this week, I don't think any sane person enjoys that sort of temperature

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

Re: A fitting epitaph

Carbon fiber does not usually fail gradually, I've seen catastrophic failure of carbon fiber, it's fine one moment and then jagged shards the next with not a lot in between

Elon Musk's Twitter moves were 'reaffirming' says Reddit boss amid API changes

Re: He needs an icon -->

IBM fires people according to the calendar, more specifically the employees year of birth

WFH mandates bad for staff morale and stunt innovation

Re: Some people work better WFH

Same here, I've worked from home for the majority of my career since the mid 90's. I've rarely had a manager that was in the same country let alone the same city. I've never even met most of them in person.

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

I believe aliens exist, they have just never been here. Some alien species just randomly finding earth is highly unlikely. The most likely scenario would be that they detected some of our radio transmissions. The tiny little bubble around earth representing the furthest any of our radio signals could possibly have reached represents about 8e-25% of the volume of the universe. If those odds aren't bad enough you need to also factor in that these visitors would have to exist at just the right time with sufficient technology to detect the signal, figure out where it came from and then travel here.

It hasn't happened, it won't happen.

Metaverse? Apple thinks $3,500 AR ski goggles are the betterverse

it's unlikely that you could comfortably wear these for a full day of work.

Smartphone recovery that's always around the corner is around the corner

Re: Latest phones

And not even a great camera. Just recently there was an article about how Gen z on tik tok had made the shocking discovery that cameras take better pictures than phones.

those tiny lenses and sensors can only do so much

Re: re. I'll replace my S10 if/when it ever fails.

i don't have any banking app on my phone, nor anything else related to payments or anything important. hackers getting into my phone wouldn't find much of interest

Twitter now worth just a third of what Musk paid for it

Re: ...

At the rate he's failing he may reach trumpian levels of failure

Leaked Kyndryl files show 55 was average age of laid-off US workers

Re: Some real oldie hate in here

It's sounds like some of the posters are angry that us old guys make so much more than they do. I don't make 2-3x what my junior developers make because I'm old, I make that much because I can do things that they can't. They just don't have the experience or confidence to pull it off. But I'm teaching them all I can, then when they are up to speed I'll move on to even harder problems

Re: Unfortunately...

And all too often that fad of the day is just a rebranding of something that was tried years ago and failed

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

Re: With two-faced "friends" like Dyson, Britain doesn't need enemies

The problem with democracy is that everyone gets to vote, even those that are incapable of understanding the issues or whose grasp of reality is shaky at best. That's how idiots like trump get elected.

Elon Musk finally finds 'someone foolish enough to take the job' of Twitter CEO

Re: Do you people really think she's that naive?

It's only the rupublicans that have shifted, the democrats are still mostly right of center with a few closer to center. The republicans though have gone so far right that they are bumping into the fascists.

Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon

Re: Whatever next?

We should have backed Ukraine when Putin annexed Crimea. Had we stepped in then with the same vigor that we are now then the current war would likely not have happened.

Fed up with Python setup and packaging? Try a shot of Rye

Re: No mention of pip and venv?

After the absolute stupidity of whitespace having semantics, installing packages in python is my biggest complaint.I wasted two hours yesterday with pip, and it's not the first time.

Microsoft cries foul over UK gaming deal blocker but it's hard to feel sorry for them

It's also enough money to fund the development of about 150 AAA games. But then MS have shown that they aren't very good at running game studios, so most of those games would likely flop

Re: I think

There have already been some US politicians coming out recently to bash Sony and their business practices. You can probably guess which state they represent.

Quantum computing: Hype or reality? OVH says businesses would be better off prepared

Luckily for enterprise folks, the talk of blockchain has died down, so maybe there aren't too many such projects in the works. The kind of PHBs that were pushing blockchain have likely all jumped on the AI bandwagon.

With a mighty hand, and an outstretched arm, Musk scraps Pope's blue tick

Re: Almost no one is paying for the blue checkmark

He's really not got the first clue about how T̶w̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶'̶s̶ business operates

Re: Good

Complaining about something that hasn't happened seems to be the main thing that conservatives are doing these days.

Seagate hit with $300m penalty for selling sanctioned storage to Huawei

What's ridiculous is that the fine is less than the value of the equipment sold to a sanctioned company. If governments want to make sure that sanctions are respected then make the fine at least double the value of the violating sales and jail time for those that approved the deals.

Stratus ships latest batch of fault-tolerant Xeon servers

Re: Close (but no cigar)

Sometime last century when I worked for a mobile operator we got our furst fault tolerant system. As I had some involvement in the selection of the machine I wanted to see it in action after it was installed. So down to the switch room I go and in talking to the guys that installed it I found out that our very expensive, fully fault tolerant system had both of its power supplies fed from the same UPS.

Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond

The world record RC plane flight was over 2000km, so he could be in range, but you wouldn't likely be able to carry a 3kg payload that far.

Re: costs less than $3,500 apiece

There's likely a lot of profit margin in that $3500. But it's not new idea. Back in the late 70s I built a cardboard RC biplane from plans in a magazine, The plane itself was essentially free having built it from free cardboard from a refrigerator box and some scrap wood. The only cost was the engine and rc system.

Diving DRAM prices are a problem not even AI can solve

Re: A problem?!

I expect they will stop charging £200 / $200 for 8GB of RAM, they will bump it up to £250 / $250 because inflation or something

UNIX co-creator Ken Thompson is a… what user now?

Re: ...on the feeble pretext that he designed the C language.

It was the trainer that wouldn't let me skip the class, the brought it on themselves, I have no regrets, and I don't like parties.

Re: ...on the feeble pretext that he designed the C language.

long ago at work I had to set up and install a system that would used by 100s of thousands of people. We also used it internally and so I was told I was not allowed access until I had completed the training. Even though I had more experience with it than everyone else in the company combined I was forced to go. I eventually did go and spent most of the time asking questions that the trainer couldn't answer