* Posts by Jonathon Green

483 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jun 2007

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BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

Jonathon Green

Re: Oh the pain!

I actually have some sympathy for “solved it now guy”.

Nobody wants to go on a technical forum and admit that they made totally unrelated changes to address an unrelated problem on a system which didn’t interface with the problematical one in any obvious way, and which wasn’t even in the same time zone, the original problem went away, and that they’ve now change freezed their entire corporate infrastructure across four continents in the forlorn hope that it doesn’t recur…

When it comes to Linux distros, one person's molehill is another's mountain

Jonathon Green

“ This led me to my current little project, which is to create a bootable image which has busybox, dpkg and apt-get, so that I can install a system by adding, rather than subtracting, packages.”

Isn’t that pretty much what Alpine is?

Red Hat layoffs spark calls to unionize, CEO wades in

Jonathon Green
Trollface

I like Americans. They’re funny…

Musk tried to wriggle out of Autopilot grilling by claiming past boasts may be deepfakes

Jonathon Green

“This seems unlikely to work. Folding your arms and saying, "yeah, but can you PROVE it?"

The legal equivalent of folding your arms and engaging autopilot in your Muskmobile at 80MPH?

UK PM Sunak plans to allocate just £1bn to semiconductor industry

Jonathon Green

Shipless ferry company, fabless semiconductor company. Same thing really isn’t it… :-)

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

Jonathon Green

Re: 90-second clip taken out of context and posted on social media

That’s the incident I had in mind… :-)

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Re: 90-second clip taken out of context and posted on social media

A video clip of her arrival at the airport and transfer to the venue so that we can all see that she’s downsized both the private jet *and* the helicopter?

Jonathon Green

Re: No awareness

"... and I'm getting no bonus either until you get a bonus"

Maybe she has just enough shame to draw the line at outright lying, because one way or another, sooner or later, there’s *always* a bonus to be had in the C suite…

Jonathon Green
Trollface

I’m sitting in my home office at a very nice, very large Herman Miller Abak desk to type this during a brief tea and biscuit break from my now entirely home based job.

I’m quite delighted with it, and even more delighted that having bought it at a bargain price from an office clearance specialist absolutely none of my money will have gone to the delightful Ms Owen…

European datacenters worried they can't get cheap, reliable juice

Jonathon Green
Boffin

Re: No Way!!!

I can’t believe it either.

A report commissioned, paid for, published by, and with its terms of reference set by a company who’s principal business is on-site power generation reaching conclusions suggesting that on-site power generation might be a handy thing to have…

I’m shocked I tell you, I imagine whoever at Aggreko signed off on it was on tenterhooks waiting for it to be delivered and then couldn’t put it down until the shocking, final page denouement…

NASA finds crashing spacecraft into asteroids is a viable defence strategy

Jonathon Green
Boffin

Re: From orbit?

“ How about a big circuit between a gas giant and the sun (angled off the ecliptic so we don't accidentally bomb ourselves).”

Big expensive (in delta-V terms) plane change[1] required to put the interceptor into an out of the ecliptic orbit and then another one to intercept an incoming threat which is most likely to be in (or close to) the ecliptic

[1] I don’t know much about orbital mechanics, but I *do* know that plane change is about the most energy intensive manoeuvre (short of actually putting something into orbit in the first place) you can do with a satellite…

Kremlin claims Ukraine hackers behind fake missile strike alerts

Jonathon Green
Mushroom

My money’s on a state sanctioned “false flag” operation to stir up discomfort, ramp up the paranoia, and facilitate the othering (and subsequent suppression) of more internal dissenters…

ISS rescue Soyuz launches this week, won't return crew until September

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Leaving another Russian craft in orbit for months ... what could go wrong?

Probably not as much as if it was a Boeing CST-100 Starliner…

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Re: foreign law

I’d love to see them try to make that one stick in the civilised world…

FOSS could be an unintended victim of EU crusade to make software more secure

Jonathon Green
Linux

Does this really have some kind of chilling effect on FOSS…?

…or will does it require corporations baking FOSS components into commercial products to be a bit more grown up about it and put some investment into making sure it’s properly configured and (where appropriate) regularly updated?

On the face of it I have to say this looks more like the latter than the former. And not before time.

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Re: Don't forget

I’ve generally found that when demons are invoked (along with witchcraft, devil worship, etc, etc) it’s generally by the right, more specifically the religious right. The left generally have difficulty *actually* demonising anybody because we tend to have no truck with such superstitious nonsense… :-)

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Jonathon Green

“The sticker price is of course inflated by many EV's being covered in (un-necessary) electronics and processors whose primary role is to make the car "less reliable" and therefore require servicing.”

Have you actually bought a new(ish) car recently?

Unless you’re looking at specialist stuff or very near the bottom of the range(s) it’s actually quite hard to find something which doesn’t carry a similar level of electronic trickery (cruise control, immobiliser, ABS, stability & traction control, autonomous emergency braking, etc, etc) in the form of driver “aids”[1] and comfort features (electronically controlled climate control, remote locking, entertainment etc) to what’s in my Leaf, and the stuff required to get an ICE emissions compliant probably adds at least as much to that as you’ll find in an EV drive train…

As it goes in the [counts on fingers] 8 years since I bought my first Nissan Leaf I’ve never been to the dealer for anything other than regular “”count the wheels and make sure nothing’s fallen off” level annual servicing and one recall for a mechanical component which was nothing to do with either the drive train or the electronics, and the same is true of my wife’s (now my youngest son’s) Micra which carries a broadly similar level of electronic bells and whistles…

[1] Which, to be quite honest I’m not entirely sold on either…

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Jonathon Green
Coat

Re: What is the scope of FSD?

Surely (assuming more or less constant speed) the only way of increasing the gap in front of you is by slowing down gently, making the distinction between the two purely semantic?

Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too

Jonathon Green
Alien

…or you could just save your money and go straight to the tinfoil hat.

Victims of IT scandal in UK postal service will get fresh compensation

Jonathon Green
WTF?

Re: Bring manglement to book

“ I'm in favour of them having the benefits of their criminal activity removed (Ill gotten gains) - a financial arrangement that removes padded pension schemes, bonuses, inflated salaries etc, and furthermore being saddled with a debt that is undischargeable by bankruptcy, but which can be paid of by a reasonable attachment/garnishment on their subsequent income until the debt (to society) is paid off. I don't think it'll happen though. Being forced to live on an income that is below median ought to be the minimum.”

If this was your regular corporate fraud or theft I might be inclined to go along with that, but what the PO and Fujitsu have done goes way beyond that. Their actions (or inactions) have deprived their victims of not just their livelihoods but their actual lives and their liberty. There is no conceivable financial penalty or recompense which can come close to being appropriate for that. It calls for more, and deprivation of liberty for an extended period for a significant period, even with the associated costs to society seems like an absolute minimum.

Jonathon Green

Re: Bring manglement to book

I believe that in the country Fujitsu was founded in there is a traditional way for individuals who have brought shame upon themselves, or let down those who look to them for leadership to demonstrate that they accept responsibility for their actions…

Windows 11 still not winning the OS popularity contest

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Re: The stats are wrong.

“And, it's not ACTUALLY MS that are wringing their hands. Guess what? It's the press! (Sorry Reg).”

I imagine the hardware vendors, distributors, and retailers who were hoping to ship a ton of boxes on the back of an unquenchable hunger for that sweet, sweet, W11 experience are probably quite disappointed too…

Sirius XM flaw unlocks so-called smart cars thanks to code flaw

Jonathon Green
Thumb Up

Re: Sirius Cybernetics Corporation

I’m just waiting for… “A spokesman for Sirius XM responded to requests for a comment by suggesting that journalists covering the story should go stick their head in a pig…”.

Musk: Twitter will have 1 billion monthly users inside 18 months

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Re: Quick poll

“I wonder how many do the "report to moderator" as well just because they don't like what's being said.”

All the fun went out of that with the departure of The Moderatrix.

Never mind Dabbsy, bring back The Moderatrix!

How not to test a new system: push a button and wait to see what happens

Jonathon Green

Doug is not the problem here…

…OK, so pressing The Big Red Button is not something to be taken lightly, or to be done without consideration of the consequences, but, given, that this is supposed to have been a resilient process if Bob doesn’t like the idea and can’t come up with a better reason than “the manual says not to do it, and there’s nothing in our procedures about it…” then someone ought to be giving him Hard Stares and asking him Awkward Questions, and other people ought to be answering Awkward questions about why Awkward Questions weren’t asked before Bob’s employer got the deal.

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

Jonathon Green

Re: And to think that 30 years ago...

I guess the trick here is that if you disagree with something but either lack the time or can’t come up with a new counterpoint of your own you upvote the rebuttals rather than downvoting the original post.

Personally I generally do both just to be on the safe side though… :-)

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

Jonathon Green
Devil

?

So, does anybody know whether the doors were open or closed this (Monday) morning?

Twitter set for more layoffs as Musk mulls next move

Jonathon Green

Re: Requirements

…and nor do you have the right to use someone else’s megaphone if they’d prefer you not to.

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison

Jonathon Green

Re: Because she had already suffered by being stigmatized.

If there is a genuine gender imbalance in conviction rates and sentencing for white collar crime then that should absolutely be addressed. By convicting more guilty males and giving them more appropriate sentences….

Jonathon Green

Re: How long before she ...

Were we talking about actual human beings you might have a point, however this is an alien from the planet C-Suite and ascribing human emotions and/or motivations to them constitutes a category error.

As a wise woman once said “ I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.”

FTX disarray declared 'unprecedented' by exec who cleaned up after Enron

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Much blockchain, very crypto!

“…employees of the FTX Group submitted payment requests through an on-line 'chat' platform where a disparate group of supervisors approved disbursements by responding with personalized emojis."

I’m assuming those “personalised emojis” are actually NFTs which are correctly recorded as company assets so that they can be sold off and the value realised used to compensate creditors… :-)

Twitter is suffering from mad bro disease. Open thinking can build it back better

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Meh…

[Shrug] My personal view of Twitter was always that if something could be said in 140 characters it probably wasn’t worth reading. Subsequent changes to the message length limitation have not not presented any reason for me to revise my opinion of the platform…

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Jonathon Green
Boffin

“ Hope that the unnamed company in question learned to place contracts with suppliers that have professional approaches to working with large enterprises…”

Or better still one which takes an equally professional approach to customer support whether you’re a small business (or end user) buying one widget or a large corporate taking 20,000 a year…

Jonathon Green
Holmes

Re: You get what you order

Does gruntled predate disgruntled?

All the US midterm-related lies to expect when you're electing

Jonathon Green
Trollface

I like American politics. It’s funny…

…but then so is ours at the moment!

Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

Jonathon Green
Trollface

Lettuce Prey

Content? We don’ need no steering content…

Qualcomm: Arm lawsuit motivated by greed, 'payback' for opposing Nvidia takeover

Jonathon Green
Trollface

“Qualcomm has painted Arm as a greedy, capricious bully that's fixated on extracting more and more licensing fees for its designs.”

Which of course Qualcomm would never dream of doing with its own IP…

Rust is eating into our systems, and it's a good thing

Jonathon Green

Re: Meh!..Meh, Meh

RISC instruction sets as a class literally are not intended for human consumption…

Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms

Jonathon Green
Trollface

I like Americans. They’re funny…

Google tells Apple to 'fix text messaging' in bid to promote RCS protocol

Jonathon Green

Excuse me a moment while I count the number of non iPhone using people who have reported a sub-par experience when exchanging text messages with me…

Ah, there we are. 0, None. Zero, Nada.

So that clearly needs fixing then…

Scientists use dead spider as gripper for robot arm, label it a 'Necrobot'

Jonathon Green

If this isn’t a strong contender for the next round of Ignobels I don’t know what is…

Martin Shkreli, out of prison for running a Ponzi scheme, now pushes Web3 thing

Jonathon Green

120 guns per head of population and Shkreli’s still walking around.

Maybe that second amendment to the constitution thing doesn’t do quite as much to encourage good behaviour amongst the populace as some of it’s fans claim…

DARPA seeks portable muon-making machine to see through almost anything

Jonathon Green

Well there you are then Your portable muon would be something which you could send by Parcelforce and have it arrive in usable condition. Although given their “We can damage an anvil or misplace an elephant” mission statement that might be a big ask…

Jonathon Green

Maybe they should just interpret the title of the article literally.

Instead of developing a portable muon making machine they could just develop a machine which makes portable muons. That way you can stick with Fermilab/CERN sized facilities and just send boxes of muons through the post to wherever they’re needed, or maybe order them through Amazon or do the drop shipping thing through AliExpress … :-)

James Webb Space Telescope looks closer to home with Jupiter snaps

Jonathon Green

‘’NASA compared this to being similar to photographing a turtle crawling when one is standing a mile away.”

Is that going to be a new El Reg standard unit of measurement?

Returning to the Moon on the European Service Module

Jonathon Green

Re: erm

Chee?

Big Tech silent on data privacy in post-Roe America

Jonathon Green

Re: The right to tell you what to do

…and yet some of those states are, telling adults what they can or cannot do with their own bodies.

Toyota wants 'closed loop' EV batteries in its future cars

Jonathon Green

[checks smart meter and car charger dashboard app] My home is currently exporting a couple of hundred watts of electricity from solar PV while my car charges at 8 amps (which is plenty for my current usage pattern). If there’s coal being burnt to run electric vehicles it’s not generally on my account…

Majority of Axon's AI ethics board resigns over CEO's taser drones

Jonathon Green

I like Americans. They’re funny…

UK watchdogs ask how they can better regulate algorithms

Jonathon Green

Re: There is actually a fairly simple answer to this…

Incidentally I think there’s a strong case for “right of review” even in the case of a nominally positive decision…

Imagine a situation where somebody is looking to make a major purchase, like, say, a new home which is close to the edge of affordability. They make a series of finance applications, a number of mainstream, big name lenders decline the application while one less well known lenders makes an offer, albeit possibly at a higher rate of interest. A curious potential customer might wonder about this press the “why was I approved for this loan?” button, and the answer which comes back might be something along the lines of…

“Our algorithmic decision support system reports that there’s a 50% chance of you defaulting on this loan within the next 5 years but we can still make money by packaging your loan up with a bunch of others and selling it on at a discount to a company you’ve never heard of based in a country you’ve never heard of, who have a considerably more robust position on default collections than you’d expect from a high street name, and who are not bound by industry codes of practice which high street names subscribe to. Furthermore there are conditions attached which make it prohibitively expensive, if not downright impossible to refinance the loan elsewhere at more competitive rates as and when your circumstances improve”.

That sort of response might make people think again about stretching a little for (say) a nicer house sooner. It might even lead to people taking more of an interest in boring things like financial industry regulation come election time…

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