Posts by Petrea Mitchell

BASIC co-creator Thomas Kurtz hits END at 96

Re: Thank you

Me too! First on a prototype for something the internet has never heard of (long story), then on the TRS-80.

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

Re: Turning off the “microservices” bloatware (like 2FA)

Just saw that too. At this point I can only assume there's a contest to see who can get the boss to repeat the most ridiculous technical statement in public.

So I’ve scripted a life-saving routine. Pah. What really matters is the icon I give it

A laptop with a cat on it.

Rockstar dev debate reopens: Hero programmers do exist, do all the work, do chat a lot – and do need love and attention from project leaders

Common volunteer dynamics

GitHub projects sound much the same as any volunteer group: you have your core of especially passionate, knowledgeable people that keeps the whole thing running, surrounded by a broader halo of people who pitch in to do whatever low-level stuff is needed as time and life allow.

When it goes well, this means you have a stable core which applies its institutional knowledge to keep things running, and to mentor new people.

When it's not working well, your project collapses because one key person left and they were a silo who never shared their knowledge, or they've already driven all their possible replacements away by being a toxic person, or they fell out with some other long-time person and decided to wreck things on their way out the door.

A sprinkling of Star Wars and a dash of Jedi equals a slightly underbaked Rise Of Skywalker

Three films

Indeed. And one pretty awesome radio adaptation of the first movie. Among other things, it's the only time anyone's been able to explain why there's sound in space...

I discovered the world's last video rental kiosk and it would make a great spaceship

Blockbuster lives!

One store, anyway. And it is indeed benefitting from all things retro becoming hip...

https://roadtrippers.com/magazine/last-blockbuster/

WeWork, but We don't IPO: Self-styled techie boarding house calls off cursed stock offering

The end of tulip, er, cash-burning mania

This feels like that moment I've read about in February 1637 when everyone suddenly collectively realized that tulip prices had gotten ridiculous.

Get the smell out of here! Gaming tournament bans players who raise a literal stink

For places that still need this rule...

...here's the handy poster.

( http://www.dorktower.com/2006/07/10/comics-archive-806/ , see also previous and following comics)

For places that still need this rule...

...Dork Tower has a poster for you.

( http://www.dorktower.com/2006/07/10/comics-archive-806/ , also previous and following comics)

Did you know?! Ghidra, the NSA's open-sourced decompiler toolkit, is ancient Norse for 'No backdoors, we swear!'

Ancient Norse, really?

Surely you mean Japanese? https://www.tohokingdom.com/kaiju/king_ghidorah_showa.htm

Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?

Switching off the oxygen

Some years ago, a past workplace of mine got one of those systems installed which could deoxygenate the server room in the event of a fire. The control panel was mounted right by the door, and unfortunately was very sensitive to jostling, like the vibrations from the door slamming because someone was carrying something bulky in and didn't have a hand free to close the door gently.

Luckily, this system would wait a few seconds before actually activating, giving someone the chance to stop it first. So those of us non-admins who worked nearby remained blissfully unaware of the hazard until the inevitable day when someone didn't manage to deactivate it in time. A lazy summer afternoon was interrupted by the almighty FFFFWRRRMMM of the system activating, followed by a couple panicky minutes of realizing what the sound must have been, trying to locate someone with server room access who was not actually in the server room at the time, visualizing colleagues passed out from hypoxia... (It was not until after this incident that we were told it didn't lower the oxygen level so far as to become totally unbreatheable.)

Google weeps as its home state of California passes its own GDPR

"California's unusual ballot measure system"

Not *that* unusual-- roughly half the US has systems like it: http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/chart-of-the-initiative-states.aspx

Of course a mystery website attacking city-run broadband was run by an ISP. Of course

Oh, *that* kind of attack

On first seeing that headline, I thought it was going to be about some kind of DDOS or other direct attack on a municipal network, trying to make it unusable. I guess we haven't quite gotten to the truly interesting part of the muni-broadband wars just yet...

RIP Ursula K Le Guin: The wizard of Earthsea

Re: Six Earthsea books

Muphry's Law (sic) strikes again-- that should be The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind.

Six Earthsea books

"The rather prematurely named Earthsea Trilogy (start with A Wizard of Earthsea – you've got another four after that)"

Five! The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, and The Other Wind. A fantastic (in more than one sense) journey watching a world evolve. She left Earthsea alone for a long time after the first trilogy, and again after Tehanu, and it's fascinating to see how her thoughts about it changed. Whichever one you missed, check it out!

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

How did PHP not win this contest

There are languages I don't want to touch unless someone is paying me. PHP is the first one where I've decided I never want to work with it again even if it comes with a good living.

PHP: a fractal of bad design covers a lot of it.

Google diversity memo: Web giant repudiates staffer's screed for 'incorrect assumptions about gender'

A simple scientific question

If I could ask the manifesto author one question, it would be, "How does your biological hypothesis account for the era when programming was a majority-female occupation?"

Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?

Focus grabbers must die

Slack is the most recent offender for me. Restart computer to allow patches to install, click a few things I always have open to let them get on with starting up, and when Slack was ready it jumped to the front and captured what I was currently typing. Which happened to be the end of my passphrase for my SSH key. Luckily it gave me just enough time for my conscious brain to stop me reflexively hitting Enter...

Spoiler alert: We'll bet boffins still haven't spotted aliens

Speaking of patterns

If you take a look at Borra's past papers on arXiv.org, you'll see that statistical fishing expeditions are one of his specialties. In fact there's one that claims to find almost exactly the same kind of super-fast pulses buried in the noise from galactic centers.

Arthur C Clarke award won by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Re: Incorrect and incomplete on the Hugos

"Seriously? Naomi Novik (female,) Neal Stephenson, Lois McMaster Bujold (Female,) Stephen King, Nnedi Okorafor (Female, POC) These are truly odious?"

Not those. Look up the Rabid Puppies slate. Novik, Okorafor, and Jemisin made it onto the ballot in spite of the Rabid Puppies.

There have been accusations that Hugo voters voted for all women because Hugo voters = SJWs; the bit I quoted from the Register story seems to agree with that. The Rabid Puppies have also been making that accusation, and they have spent the last couple years trying to stuff the ballot with works they deem less politically correct; ironically, the few non-slated fiction works that made it onto the ballot through true organic popularity have been by women and POC.

So I'm not calling the winners odious. I think they are all excellent and deserving. I'm trying to combat the implied narrative of "political correctness has taken over the Hugos".

Incorrect and incomplete on the Hugos

"All four awards for books at the Hugo Award"

I believe you're thinking of the four *fiction* awards: Best Novel, Best Novelette, Best Novella, and Best Short Story. Of those four, only Best Novel is likely to go to a standalone book.

(There is a second category, Best Related Work, which often goes to books, in which no award was given.)

"were won by women after it was plagued by claims, made by the group Sad Puppies, that it advanced a 'niche, academic, overtly to the left in ideology and flavour' viewpoint."

...and after another group, the Rabid Puppies, engaged in block voting to game a bunch of truly odious works onto the ballot, crowding out many fine possible choices with a variety of authorial genders. (Yes, rule changes have been made.)

fMRI bugs could upend years of research

Salmon's off

My first thought as well. (Though the study was actually in 2009.)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2009/09/16/fmri-gets-slap-in-the-face-with-a-dead-fish/

Intel preps for layoffs: Chipzilla sharpens axe for deep job cuts

Re: Home state of Oregon??

Yes, all that's in California is the HQ. Most of its US presence is here in Oregon, which is why it's big news in The Oregonian (front page of Saturday's paper, IIRC).

There are pieces of it in Beaverton, Aloha, and Hillsboro-- all suburbs of Portland, so from a sufficient distance (like El Reg Central), "Portland" is a reasonable enough approximation.

Also, those with allergies may be happy to know that development has displaced all the grass seed farms in between Hillsboro and Portland by now.

Why should you care about Google's AI winning a board game?

Don't worry, fellow humans...

...we've still got contract bridge!

Yelp minimum wage row shines spotlight on … broke, fired employee

Not Trump, but the GOP

The notion that poor people bear the blame for being poor has long been part of the Republican orthodoxy, but a large part of what's drawing the working class to Trump, and making the Republican establishment apoplectic, is that he's telling them it's *not* their fault.

The overall story of the current US campaign season is, in fact, poor people becoming tired of this crap. It's what's driving both Trump and Sanders, and why many of their campaign promises look remarkably similar. (Where they part ways is in deciding who is really to blame for poor people being poor: for Trump, it's immigrants and political correctness getting in the way of the Real Americans who should be winners, and for Sanders, it's the elites rigging the game so that no one else has a chance.)

Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe

Re: From the article

My thought at that quote was that I'd be hard-pressed to understand some Economist articles if I didn't have a solid grounding in history first.

Stop the music! Booby-trapped song carjacked vehicles – security prof

Coming soon: Ring

With a little more technological advancement, it's only a matter of time until someone can create a DVD with a virus that haunts you for seven days...

SciFi and fantasy titan David G. Hartwell passes, aged 74

Thanks for mentioning him. I didn't know Hartwell personally, but I know a number of people who did. The sf world has been flooded with tributes.

Unfortunately, I need to point out a typo: His widow's last name is Cramer, not Kramer.

And she's asking for donations in his name to the Elizabethtown Community Hospital so that it can get a mechanical respirator. Explanation why here: https://www.facebook.com/kathryn.cramer/posts/10153923650809853

And actual donation link here: http://www.ech.org/make-a-contribution.html

Help! Handwriting to text on Android?

Thanks for the details-- I'll pass them along.

Re: Help! Handwriting to text on Android?

"I am very disappointed with the build quality, and warranty service, to the point that I don't even consider Samsung products anymore."

Okay, that's definitely a warning flag. What exactly broke?

Help! Handwriting to text on Android?

I have a family member who is eyeing the Galaxy Tab + S Pen for the following workflow:

1. Enter text via handwriting

2. Export said text to a PC (via Dropbox or somesuch would be okay) as text

3. Do final polishing in a traditional word processor

I've having a suprising amount of trouble locating a suitable app. There are a number of apps that mention handwriting recognition, but I've yet to find one that will export files in some obvious format like plaintext or RTF. Anyone know of a good one I'm overlooking?

Alternatively, is there some other device/software combination that would be better suited to this process?

Death Stars are a waste of time – here's the best way to take over the galaxy

Why is there sound in space?

This was actually explained in the radio version of A New Hope-- the weapons system computers on the ships are generating the sounds to help the pilots and gunners visualize what's going on around them.

Cat discovers GNOME desktop bug

If this bug-finding approach could be scaled up somehow...

...this could bring a new meaning to the phrase "tiger team".

US Navy grabs old-fashioned sextants amid hacker attack fears

"But you can't hack a sextant, or the planets"

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

How do you know that your sextant is accurately marked, and your ephemeris is correct? There was probably software involved in creating both of them. And they've both probably spent some time sitting in a cabinet that multiple people had access to, and a supply depot before that.

PHONE me if you feel DIRTY: Yanks and 'Nadians wave bye-bye to magstripe

Swipe is still the rule

This article gives the impression that most US businesses have duly complied with the deadline and only a few lone luddite holdouts are sticking with swipe terminals. Nope. In the entire metropolitan area where I live (Portland, OR-Vancouver, WA), the only chance I've ever had to use NFC is when using the fare machines for the light rail system. Most of the readers I commonly encounter don't even look like they have ability to read a chip.

I seem to be ahead of most US-based commenters in this thread, though, in that all but one of my cards *have* chips at this point.

The remote control from HELL: Driverless cars slam on brakes for LASER POINTER

What could possibly go wrong?

1. Autonomous cars become common in an area which depends heavily on fines for municipal revenues (e.g. St. Louis County-- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/ )

2. Cars behave in predictable ways reacting to something that's invisible on cameras

3. Profit!

Vote now: Who can solve a problem like Ashley Madison?

Re: JMcA obviously!

Of course McAfee. Not that he'd be able to fix it retroactively, but it's all about "a good fit for the company culture" these days, isn't it?

New study into lack of women in Tech: It's not the men's fault

Re: "...it happens a lot earier than college"

"This is then reinforced at school - teachers offering different praise to girls than boys"

Or just offering flat-out bigotry. When I was in grade school (primary school, elementary school), the teachers were very clear that only boys were supposed to be good at math. Luckily, I hated that school and thus felt no need to conform to their expectations.

(The teachers were equally clear that only girls were supposed to be good at spelling and composition, with equally predictable results.)

I cannae dae it, cap'n! Why I had to quit the madness of frontline IT

Well said

And timely! I'm sending this link to anyone I see questioning the point of Sysadmin Day.

Super Cali goes ballistic – Uber says it's bogus (even though its contract is something quite atrocious)

Kudos

I wish to nominate this for Headline of the Week.

Bye bye, booth babes. IT security catwalk RSA nixes sexy outfits

Re: Attractive girls don't make me buy stuff

A/B testing supports this subject line. One example: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/booth-babes-dont-convert/

Drinking games: Tapper 1983, this Bud's for you...

Booze in games

One of the most essential game bars I recall was the chain of identical bars in the Bard's Tale games, where the only way to recharge your bard was to take them to the local bar and get them a drink.

Apple's Beats, Google, and Sony hammered with unpaid royalty claim

Re: Copyright law only

*Federal* copyright law does not cover sound recordings pre-1972. However, those sound recordings are still subject to *state* copyright laws, which vary hugely (part of the reason sound recordings were brought under federal law). Some of those state copyrights are actually more stringent than the current federal ones.

Pick a superior Christmas No. 1 from El Reg's computer crooning compilation

Re: Obvious missing entry:

Another couple: "All About the Pentiums" and "Virus Alert" by "Weird Al" Yankovic.

This week it rained in San Francisco and the power immediately blew out. Your tech utopia

Come to Portland, Oregon!

The Silicon Forest has your startup culture without the insane rents, decent mass transit for the US, PLUS the ability to handle rain, thanks to a climate every bit as drizzly as the UK.

Hi-torque tank engines: EXTREME car hacking with The Register

Amen!

"For what it’s worth, I think it is that all true hackers (no matter how that trait manifests itself) love problem solving. Whether those problems are manifest in code or engineering is essentially immaterial."

Or science, or any human technology or process. I loved reading this, and I don't even drive.

MOULDY DICK: France aims to snatch EXPLODING WHALE crown from U.S.

Whale? How about a ship?

Yes, France may beat us on exploding whales, but Oregon has long since set its explosive sights on much larger beach debris. Put "New Carissa" in your favorite search engine for all the details.

Amazon wants YOU to LOOK OVER its BOOKS – its slush pile, that is

Something missing

As a fan of MST3K and Thog's Masterclass, the feature I'm looking for is a way to nominate especially entertaining bits of bad prose for the delectation of my fellow readers.

Auntie hires API firm to manage new online BBC Store

Re: Fact alert!

I believe it's BBC America that actually cuts it up and inserts ads.

Either way, I for one would also welcome a way to watch it just as it appeared in the UK. Maybe even, dare I hope, just after it airs, instead of waiting for some arbitrary period for the news to get stale?

El Reg Christmas Lectures to span space, big data and GCHQ

Re: Webcast please?

Same here! Never mind what planet we should be on, I can't even manage to be on the right continent on this one...