Posts by Androgynous Cupboard

'Beyond stupid': Linus Torvalds trashes 5.8 Linux kernel patch over opt-in Intel CPU bug mitigation

Re: git broke English

No no no, unpull clearly means "push". "git push" coming up Linus, thanks for the endorsement!

Twitter ticks off Trump with new 'Get the facts' alert on pair of fact-challenged tweets

Re: Ooh, fun!

It is, but it doesn't mean what the horse is saying is true. [jeeves, insert obvious joke about neighsaying here before you post]

NASA renames dark-energy telescope after its first Chief of Astronomy and Mother of Hubble: Nancy Grace Roman

Re: Politically Astute Decision

Sweet Jesus, what a thing it would be seeing the "USS Trump" take to the seas. I imagine it leaving the dock and plowing straight into a wall, accidentally sinking the wrong boat after firing its guns backwards.

Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War

Re: Huawei

As I recall, M&S were on the verge of failing themselves at the time. It's one of the very few corporate turnarounds of that type that actually worked.

Re: Huawei

Sorry, I'm not clear: are you making an argument against Huawei, or for Huawei and against Cisco? When you're talking compromised infrastructure kit I think you need to be a bit more specific.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

He's got my vote

Amanfrommars for president! U S A! U S A!

Node.js creator delivers Deno 1.0, a new runtime that fixes 'design mistakes in Node'

Er, not sure where that came from. ECMAscript has Unicode baked into it's strings, and as I recall it's number types are 64-bit.

Microsoft doc formats are the bane of office suites on Linux, SoftMaker's Office 2021 beta may have a solution

Zotero

I've not used it in anger, but did have a play with their free reference manager at https://zbib.org - it's quit neat, particularly the client-side storage of your references.

Wanna be a developer? Your coworkers want to learn Go and like to watch, er, Friends and Big Bang Theory

Hmm

Er... if you know Java AND Java 8, that's two languages? And JavaScript is subtitled (Node.js)? I find myself wondering just who are HackerEarth, and do they actually know anything about programming?

Forever mothballed: In memoriam Apple Butterfly Keyboard (2015-2020)

2015 13" Macbook here. Souped to 1TB of flash and with HDMI, USB-A, it's been my 60hr/week workhorse for 5 years and is still going strong. I can't see myself upgrading for some time to be honest, even now they've fixed the keyboards.

Data centre reveals it modeled interiors on The Hunt for Red October sets

Bah

I like to think when it goes to shit at some point in the future it will look more like Das Boot!

UK IT contractors slipping back into old ways of working now IR35 tax reforms delayed

I looked into getting a business loan a while back. The bank had a non-negotiable requirement that a lawyer sit me down and go through the contract with both me and my wife, who is also a director.

The lawyer (who happened to be a mate of mine) explained this was due to a case where the husbands company (the wife was also a director) took a loan out, then later divorced. The bank chased both for repayment. She successfully argued that although she was a company director, she was not aware of her husbands loan application and had no liability for it.

So there are very real legal responsibilities for SWMBO.

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

RTFM. A phrase so well known in IT, you can probably manage that one without looking it up.

No matter how good the design, there will always be the kind of user that would rather spend 20 minutes writing an email (or 5 writing a comment) to complain, instead of 2 minutes to read the documentation. Some people literally can't help themselves.

Re: Sounds unnecessary to me

The spec DOES accept both.

You can use just commas, or commas surrounded by spaces. And now, if you want, you can also just use spaces.

Re: Broken Web

ACID3 was well intentioned, but doesn't reflect the standards. Have a google.

It's literally in the spec. If you can't be arsed to read it, you - wait, you don't use vi OR emacs? Ah. I think I see the problem.

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Re: infrared thermometer without laser...

Replacing the laser in a laser range finder with a pointing stick leaves them surprisingly accurate, when measuring items that are the same length as the stick.

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

Re: Not just 'rural' connections

Can't you switch to FTTC? We had exactly the same problem - and when I say exactly, I'm 2 miles outside the M25 and had roughly the same speed - we're 4.3km to the exchange, but with a cabinet a few hundred meters away.

Switched to FTTC and literally as I type, the kids are doing stupid dances to their friends on Zoom.

French pensioner ejected from fighter jet after accidentally grabbing bang seat* handle

Losing kneecaps in the airforce, losing kneecaps in northern ireland... sounds like in the 80s if you wanted to join the services and valued your knees, you'd pick the Navy.

COVID-19 is pretty nasty but maybe this is taking social distancing too far? Universe may not be expanding equally in all directions

Re: Here's a bug report for cosmology

Better than "it's an open universe, you can always fork it and fix it yourself"

As an aside, I can't get past the notion that trying to divine the shape of the universe from earth is like trying to work out the shape of Albert Hall by peering through the keyhole.

WeWork sues SoftBank over 'AWOL' $3bn shares purchase – which included millions lined up for ousted CEO Neumann

Interesting article a few months back on what Softbank may have been hoping to get out of this:

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/then-wecame-to-the-end/

Already in final beta? That's Madagascar: Ubuntu 20.04 'Focal Fossa' gets updated desktop, ZFS support

Interesting. I would have gone for "Sin jin Ming-gis Beech-ham of Bur-tham Wooster-sher", which I suppose only helps the point I was making. I used to live near a Beauchamp road in Clapham, was told under no uncertain terms it was "Beech-ham" and staying that way.

Likewise the "th" sound in Burpham derives from a norse thorn - þ, which became a "p" in our spelling.

(I wonder how much of our differences are regional? I'm mongrel London area)

You win on Happisburgh, haven't seen that one. It's on my list.

Well done you. I'm reliably informed that spelling "Fossa" was chosen by St John Menzies-Beauchamp, late of Burpham, Worcestershire, who was well known for choosing the spell a word the way it was pronounced.

NASA's classic worm logo returns for first all-American trip to ISS in years: Are you a meatball or a squiggly fan?

Re: I'm a fan of meatball and spaghetti

Oh, to slip the surly bonds of earth and lick the face of god.

Internet Archive justifies its vast 'copyright infringing' National Emergency Library of 1.4 million books by pointing out that libraries are closed

Re: the poor authors! they'll starve!

For all the flaws of the copyright system, the IA's action is cynical bullshit. Particularly at a time when many people are short of money they are literally undercutting the income stream for a lot of living authors - the vast, vast majority of the books in their archive are published in the last 30 years.

Half the commenters on this thread seem to think that because a few - and I mean so few you can name them - companies that own rights have abused the copyright system, that somehow the whole thing should be torn down and everything be free-as-in-fuck-you.

Creative works are subject to copyright so the author can make money from it. This is fair because writing a book(*) takes time and effort. I have friends and family who try to earn a living as authors, pro-photographers, and other creative types. None of them are bathing in champagne after cashing their royalty cheques.

(*) I am not talking about the vast sea of cut-n-paste shite that pervades amazon masquerading as content.

Here's what Europeans are buying amid the COVID-19 lockdown – aside from heaps of pasta and toilet paper

Re: Thermometers too

I tried this, and after I drove the steel spike several inches into my abdomen it turned out I didn't have a fever at all. Which was nice.

Astroboffin gets magnets stuck up his schnozz trying and failing to invent anti-face-touching coronavirus gizmo

Re: Fixble in code

To be fair, bigger magnets seem to be the solution for lots of problems in high energy physics.

World's smallest violin to be played for opportunistic sellers banned from eBay and Amazon for price gouging

Re: Price Gouging: the free market libertarian perspective

The unholy hand of Ayn Rand from beyond the grave.

On an opposing and loosely related note, I find it telling that no matter how free-market-small-state your government claims to be, when faced with a crisis the response is universally - for lack of a better word - socialist. I look forward to reading the political theorising on this once it all dies down.

UK enters almost-lockdown: Brits urged to keep calm and carry on – as long as it doesn't involve leaving the house

Re: "One form of exercise a day"

> damning with faint praise!

I will never see a more perfect application of this response.

Tech won't save you from lockdown disaster: How to manage family and free time while working from home

Our local garden center today was also stripped bare - and by bare, I mean no seed left except a few weird ones or flowers,, no seedlings except a vast number of chillis (deemed too unnourishing I suppose), small herbs, and a some unloved pak choi which I snapped up, along with the last of the tumbling tomatoes - anything substantial had already gone. The chap I spoke to said they did well over £30,000 business on Saturday. Signs were everywhere saying "more vegetables are delivered between 2 and 3 each day" - presumably to answer the question "yes yes, but what TIME are they turning up?"

6 million old people expecting to stay at home for 6 months, it was kind of inevitable.

Re: You are *working* from home

Fines? 80 years ago, bulk buying loo roll and flogging on ebay for twice the price would have been called war profiteering. People got shot for it.

Mind, there are enough europeans I know querying our UK policies on the virus, if we start executing anyone with more than 500 rolls of loo paper it will just lead to more questions so maybe you're right. Fines will probably do it.

Peak greenwashing: SAP backs oil and gas giants with Accenture partnership, eco-credentials go up in smoke

Re: It's an interesting argument

At some point, if you're going to take a moral position you have to lose sales, or at least dump any revenue from them into something that mitigates whatever you've enabled.

Thought you'd go online to buy better laptop for home working? Too bad, UK. So did everyone. Laptops, monitors and WLANs fly off shelves

Re: Mr downvoter

First There is an increased number of deaths amongst health workers, which are certainly not 65+ - so dosing yourself with COVID19 might not be a great idea.

Second, while you're certianly going to have immunity for some time after infection. for how long? See https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1238837158007447558 - there's no reason to believe it's not permanent. A six month immunity would get you ill just in time for next winter.

Finally, the current tests do not identify whether you've had it (past tense), just whether you've got it now. Once those tests come along it will be easier to decide to head out in the knowledge you're immune, at least for a bit. For now though...

Re: covid 19 mutual aid

The flyers went out today, two calls in the first hour with the second being a 92 year old woman who's neighbours normally help her buy food, but she hasn't been able to get them on the phone for a couple of days.

I'm baffled by anyone that thinks Facebook is a solution to this. Even email is a bridge too far. It's sole purpose for us is recruiting younger folk to help out, or to let their parent's know.

Re: For furniture...

Google "covid 19 mutual aid" - there's probably a group of volunteers near you that will deliver food etc if you go properly self isolating.

We set our village group up over the last two days. Local call number, with a little JavaScript app we can use to route calls to different volunteers at different times. The phone company gave us the number and calls for free once they realised what we're doing.

In fact, given the tech industry is probably one of the most resilient in these circumstances, perhaps El Reg could do a little solicit to see what it's readers are doing and sum up the best ones? We're all going to have a lot of time on our hands, may as well do something useful. My to do list today is try to find someone with a tractor to plough the school field for vegetables. Greetings from Surrey!

The show Musk go on: Tesla defies Silicon Valley coronavirus lockdown order, keeps Fremont factory open

Re: Eh?

Read his comment history. It's way, way too late for that observation. The lunacy is so consistent It took me a couple of pages before I was confident he wasn't a bot.

Out with the old and in with the new as Java 14 arrives, bringing with it first Project Panama enhancements

Re: Two bad ideas

We sell a Java API and have been since Java 1.2. With the exception of applets and Java Web Start, there's really been very little of consequence removed.

I tested last night on Java 8, 11 and 14 across OpenJDK and Oracle and the differences were only what we'd expect - updates (in our case, to the level of Unicode support, and to antialiasing when rendering, due to changes under the hood in the AWT between 8 and 11). Nashorn Javascript is still available in 14, despite warnings it might be removed.

That said, I completely agree on stability being the overriding factor. The 6 month cycle is beyond ridiculous and it's only effect is to make sure no-one bothered with Java 9, 10, 12 and 13.

That upgrade from Java 8 to 11 you've been putting off? UK fintech types at Revolut 'quite happy' after a year in production

Re: Modern Problems require Modern Solutions.

I can recommend the GraalVM too, it's working well for us. You may not realise it, but if you're on JDK11 you've probably already got it:

java -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+UseJVMCICompiler

This fixed some segfaults we were seeing.

Re: Modern Problems require Modern Solutions.

I spoke to everyone you missed. They're also moving to OpenJDK.

We found significant differences between Oracle JDK8 and OpenJDK8. By contrast we found no differences at all between them when testing with JDK11. I see no advantage whatsoever to Oracle's offering at this point.

Looming ventilator shortage amid pandemic sparks rise of open-source DIY medical kit. Good thinking – but safe?

Very relevant

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2020/03/government-documents-show-no-planning-ventilators-event-pandemic

In case you want to flee this wretched Earth, 139 minor planets were spotted at the outer reaches of our Solar System. Just an FYI...

Unknown minor bodies?

What is this, the BBC? You keep them unknown. Perverts!

Broken lab equipment led boffins to solve a 58-year-old physics problem by mistake

Re: What's the difference?

> I think you'll find eggs are 0 sized at either end.

That's not the end of the egg, it's the start of the not-egg

California tech industry gets its first big coronavirus hit: RSA Conference attendee infected, in serious condition

Re: Its worse than you think

Chatting to a doctor friend yesterday about mortality rates (the estimated figure in the UK press is about 1% rather than 2-6% you quote, but whatever).

She pointed out that was based on the availability of ventilators and other emergency care facilities, which is not going to hold up for long. So "severe symptoms" figure is probably the more relevant one to note. This conversation caused me to reassess a few things.

UK Defence Committee probe into national security threat of Huawei sure to uncover lots of new and original insights

Unlikely, but I'm sure that wont' stop Ian Duncan Smith sharing his opinions with us as facts.

Like a Virgin, hacked for the very first time... UK broadband ISP spills 900,000 punters' records into wrong hands from insecure database

You can't opt out of "The Occupier" post, only post that is addressed to you. But if a suitably motivated individual changed their name by deed poll to Theo C. Cupier...

HMRC claims victory in another IR35 dispute to sting Nationwide contractor for nearly £75k in back taxes

Re: Ex-politicians

Nice try, but they also don't work for a single employer for seven years.

BAE Systems tosses its contractors a blanket... ban on off-payroll working under upcoming IR35 tax reforms

Re: BAe

> it's perfectly justified to do anything and everything to avoid paying tax.

As you clearly have no use for arts funding, schools, public hospitals, unemployment or sickness benefit, roads, parks or international aid, can I please suggest you fuck off and live on an isolated rock somewhere and let the rest of us try and manage our society? Thanks.

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

Candle made of meat

For some reason the phrase “corpse gas” has lodged in my brain. Making an already bad image, worse.

Auf wiedersehen, pet: UK Deutsche Bank contractors plan to leave rather than take 25% pay cut for IR35 – report

Caustic indeed