Posts by MachDiamond

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

Re: OK, but what now?

"Vivaldi cannot sense some vital hotel login screens to get wifi access in. Firefox does so I can get in and able to revert to Vivaldi."

I get much better performance just putting my phone in hotspot mode and using my data connection. I also skip the issues with using a wifi connection where I'm not sure of the security. Is the hotel logging customer usage? They have your phone number and credit card info so they've got you identified and would know what you were getting up to online while away from home. Did you read all of the fine print carefully on the hotel login page?

Trump administration's whole-government AI plans leaked on GitHub

Re: AI promoted by the Trump Admin?

"Stupid in = tragically stupid out."

An enshitifiation machine/system/app?

UK students flock to AI to help them cheat

A shift in weighting

Teachers may start shifting their weighting of homework vs tests/quizes where you only get to bring a pencil, a blank sheet of paper and a brain (if available). For small classes, a teacher might pick one or two papers handed in that the student will be required to defend in class. They can use AI to create something competently put together that flows, but if they don't understand the content, they might get burned. Teachers might ditch homework except for long-form assignments and simply hold short quizzes in class. Better show up for class having done the reading.

There was one class I had in high school where the teacher also taught the journalism class and was Editor in Chief of the school paper and yearbook. That meant he had a largish office where he stored the tests that came with the textbooks. That office wasn't locked during the day and I knew where the tests were stored. I borrowed the file on period and spent a couple of bucks in the library making copies. Me and my mates did pretty well in that class. Not perfect, mind. That would be too obvious as only one of us was a greasy grind.

Spy school dropout: GCHQ intern jailed for swiping classified data

Re: Bethan David, head of the counter terrorism division at the CPS, said

"No one needed to sign the Official Secrets Act. It applied to everyone, whether they liked it or not - that was kind of the point"

They have people sign statements after hearing the good word directly to drive the information home. Yes, it applies to everybody, but that's hopeless. Does Singh at the corner shop know what it entails? He passed his citizenship test and is now officially a British Subject. Somebody that drives a school bus might not realize that there's a much different standard to the drink driving laws, but they are definitively told and will need to sign a form that they understand. Besides a difference in traffic laws, the employing agency might have a zero-tolerance policy on top and will need to explain that to the driver before they begin work. Whether they are told or sign a form, they are still subject to those laws. It just brings those things to the fore so there's no questions later or a "well, I didn't know".

Re: re: How

"and could go through months and months of checks - which is expensive, and meanwhile this, probably, excellent asset isn’t working for you.

At the end of the process, the conclusion can also be wrong. In the mean time, the person needing to eat on a daily basis, has found other work.

I've been through background checks in the US and it's very invasive. That was years and years ago and I'd not put up with it now. Even simple things such as signing up for the TSA pre-screen to be able to whiz through airport security lines is extremely open-ended. You give them signed blanket permission to look into you forever without needing to obtain a warrant even if you choose to not renew. US Constitutional rights are a PIA for law enforcement so tricking people into waiving them is very handy. Just like the border waivers that extend well into the country that allow a warrant-less search. It does happen very often as a judge might rule that it doesn't apply since while the extent is 150 miles from a border, 125 miles is sufficiently far to negate there being any smuggling suspicion in many circumstances.

Re: re: How

"I would be surprised if they let an intern loose on TOP SECRET information"

It sounds more like he was using a secret system/network/software and the information was "confidential" more than "secret". The article also says the software was "worth" millions of Pounds, but we all know that what the Crown will pay for something is often far in excess of it's "worth".

Re: "Signing" The Official Secrets Act

"The number of CV's I get (for normal work not requiring any clearance) where people boast about their clearance is unbelievable."

It depends on where you are. In the UK, it might be one thing and in the US, another. In the US, if the job has a security component which will be in the job posted, to state you have have or have held a clearance is a factor. If you've already had some sort of clearance, you are in the system and renewing it is much easier and faster than starting from scratch.

Armored cash transport trucks allegedly hauled money for $190 million crypto-laundering scheme

As designed

Isn't money laundering one of the applications of crypto? Besides illicit drugs and weapons, obviously.

User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died

Re: Phone down

"Apple would not replace the battery in my macbook without plugging their little magic dooberry in to run full diagnostics."

The vast majority of the time, if a customer comes in with a complaint AND a repair plan, they are wrong.

"Pay a visit to find they are running a speed test over WiFi and so it maxes out at around 50-something Mbps. Connect laptop to router via cable, low and behold, they get the 70-something Mbps the FTTC connection is supposed to give them."

The dumbed down TV shows that people watch equate the "internet" with "WiFi" with the "Web". If you don't have the correct words and concepts for a thing, you have no way to think about it properly. I also get that if anything technology related interests you as a child, you are automatically labelled a nerd and shunned. It promotes an "ignorance is cool" culture. It does up to the point where you don't have the money for a new phone and need somebody to replace a smashed screen on the cheap.

"70Mbps? Good grief. I have an actual underground laboratory in the rainforest on a pacific island and I get 1.5Gbps for roughly quid /month"

In the US they can't provide high levels of bandwidth unless the government gives those providers some sort of exemption, tax abatement or grant to upgrade the systems they paid so much for in the 1990's. It's very depressing when I see base level service in Japan that's 10x the speed I'm getting at 1/5 the monthly price.

Re: Phone down

"If the drive isn't the obvious cause of the problem, it can be temporarily replaced with a stock one for testing if that is required (rare). "

Not anymore, at least with Apple, but others will copy them.

Re: Phone down

"It was full-disk-encrypted, and I wasn't about to provide them with the pass phrase. "

Reason #655 why having a replaceable storage device is important.

A service facility could remove your drive, install something with a basic OS that can be used to boot the computer.

Re: Phone down

""Oh, we don't answer that one."

I have the number for that one. Very useful to have a working number that just rings and nobody answers.

"So I built her a gizmo with a few colour LEDs, one each for WiFi, "the Internet" (can ping Google), our email server (port 25 responds), and her solar system's web page."

Brilliant. Post the project somewhere!

"I need one just thinking about it!!"

Only one? Must be a big glass.

"refer to a USB cable as a phone charger. "

Use the old standby, "They're all over the house, go find it yourself".

Re: My Internet Isn't Working

""my internet" or "the internet", which is worse....discuss!"

The information I want isn't on the intertubes.

Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD

Re: Competive pay for experience

"You could make much more as a sparkie."

You can make twice that unblocking people's loos after hours. Tell them you charge $200/hr plus they have to make you a meal and the only question asked will be how fast you can be over. People will light a candle and pay $100/hr for an electrician to come over between 9-5.

Re: Crisis

"Newsflash: pensions are a 1980s relic."

They used to be a way for people that weren't all that responsible to have retirement savings done for them. The money would come out of each check with/without matching money and be invested in a steady fund that returns a reasonable interest over time. These days, the managers of the pensions are trying to make a killing when somebody isn't raiding the pension fund to pay for something at the company.

When I was young, I signed up for an annuity/life insurance that was paid from my semi-weekly payroll. It's still ticking away many years later. The company I was with when that was started is long gone and I haven't paid in for ages. I've instead put money into buying a home (paid) and not carrying long term debt. There's no point in earning 5% and paying 22%. Even with today's home loan rates, it makes sense to buy, if possible. The retirement savings interest and the mortgage interest might be a wash (if lucky), but the home/land appreciates in value over time for a net win.

After seeing how many pension funds are in lots of trouble, I'm glad I don't have money sunk in one that may not be there when I am eligible to collect.

Re: I have to wonder

"Rang after a week and was told I was rejected as I had no profile on "flavour of the week" social media and so they didn't know what sort of person I was."

They actually contacted you? Amazing. It was rare that I'd ever get as much as a "we received your application" form letter.

Re: Time was...

"Then you get turned down because they hired the owner's nephew instead, who once looked at a computer, but they're paying him $90k a year to start"

The last one I had like that, the manager of the program retired as he kept getting lumbered with dead weight. He really wanted to hire me for an aircraft support position and got some execs wife's sister or something that would show up in heels and couldn't marshal aircraft on the apron. The core of the job being hired for was data entry, but the boss really wanted me since I could be used all over the hanger as the job didn't take much time everyday, but needed to be done everyday. When I interviewed, we went out for a nice dinner (he was a friend of a friend), and talked about the job and how it would morph into more of an mechanic's assistant and test tech for the aircraft but he couldn't hire for that and getting me in via the data entry gig would give me a lot of on-the-job training doing that role. Mind you, this is a huge government contracting corporation, not some mom/pop store. Initially, the money was ok and after changing title, it would be quite nice.

Re: Time was...

"Under UK law, autism is a protected disability - so rejecting someone with ASD for lacking vague “interpersonal skills” that aren’t essential to the job can be grounds for disability discrimination under the Equality Act 2010."

That just means the company can't come straight out and tell an applicant they aren't candidate for that reason. That could be a reason why there can be odd requirements that are listed in the job posting. While they might accept somebody that doesn't tick all the boxes (but was smart enough to claim they did), they can down check anybody they don't like for not being suitable based on one of them.

Re: Its always

" ideally aged 21 or less"

Unless there is some legal requirement for a minimum age, you couldn't put that in. What you can put in is the job requires occasional or frequent travel at the last minute. Somebody with a spouse or young family would have a hard time with that. You would likely get more fresh-outs that are single and don't have after-work responsibilities.

Re: Let's be clear

" Its been a bit of a joke in engineering for a couple of decades or more that job descriptions were written that the only possible candidate could be someone employed in a key role in a competitor (who's hardly likely to want a junior position!). "

That's who those postings are written to attract. Acme widgets can't just put in the ad that they want the head of engineering from Spacely Sprockets straight out. If they write the ad for that and go one to say that it's a junior position with a salary bracket that is far too low, they've shot themselves in the foot and what might have happened is that once the posting was crafted, some other nob with approval authority didn't get the memo on why the position was being advertised. Hint: it wasn't to bring in a junior anything.

Another reason you will see these type of ads with odd qualifications is the company needs to advertise the position in-country and not get any "qualified" candidates so they can hire somebody foreign who will have the necessary qualifications for the job and will work for half the wage (that they send home).

Re: Security+

"Expect to work alongside people who bought their certs, memorised multiple-choice answers, or got waved through because HR needed a checkbox ticked."

I put the effort into getting good at taking tests. I find that most of the time, the certification doesn't have much to do with what the job is about and can often ramble off into edge cases. Having a stack of certs is nice decoration on a resume and it impresses the HR types. Get a few, lie about having a few more, get to the interview with the supervisor if it's a job you feel qualified for.

The trendline doesn’t look good for hard disk drives

Re: There is a lot of "non-active" data out there

"There was a joke decades comparing the speeds of different dedicated music processors, where the market leader bragged that "Our processor can play the Minute Waltz in 466ms; our nearest competitor takes more than 800ms"."

There's also the issue that a massive change in one spec can be completely meaningless in the real world. It's like 0-60mph stats for a car where better is the enemy of good enough. Not just in that it doesn't matter, it can be too much performance that can get one in trouble.

SSD's have their strengths. I use one in my MacPro as the system driver and another as my working disk for photos and video. Once a project is completed, those files get sent over to some regular HDD's. The cost of big SSD's is far too much to be financially efficient. I change over my HDD's every couple of years with the old ones becoming archive drives where I backup the most recent files and go back as far as there is space. I wind up with things being backed up over multiple drives as I'll prune away the obvious dead files to have plenty of space. The files left on the computer right now tend to go back too far. I have 5 years of photo jobs in Lightroom when I really only need to go back 2 at the most. Software goes back even more since it takes up far less space and I don't think I've deleted any of the project development jobs as they are handy to rob from if they are to hand.

Re: There is a lot of "non-active" data out there

"Once they go, they're gone."

NAND chips will often fail shorted which bricks the whole unit and the only way to try and recover something is to remove chips (if more than one) to find the shorted one and hope the others have complete files. It's a big issue with Apple's approach to having proprietary storage that can often brick the whole computer when it fails with no easy way (aside from sending to Apple) to repair.

US Army signs up Band of Tech Bros with a suitably nerdy name

The wrong people

The army will get a gaggle of corporate execs with the hope that they will bring qualified people that do the real work. If those people aren't keen on doing military projects, they'll be off to another position with somebody else (and likely a 10% raise).

Single passenger reportedly survives Air India Boeing 787 crash

Re: And Boeing gets blamed

"It did look like a mid-field takeoff based on ADS-B data from FlightRadar24, but that appears to have been a data issue rather than reality."

I saw that and some airfields require entering the runway along the length and doing a "back taxi" down to the proper end. I haven't looked at how that airport is configured. Taking off from mid-field is an issue and a problem if the required length calculations are off. I'm a big fan of having all of the runway in front of me for takeoffs and landings.

And Boeing gets blamed

Besides the issue with the flaps, a report I've seen tells of the pilot lining up mid-field rather than at the end of the runway and only having half the length they needed for a proper takeoff. It seems odd that the tower would have given permission for takeoff if they saw where the plane was spotted on the runway. I'd wonder why there wouldn't have been a warning in the cockpit about the flaps as the engines were advanced to takeoff power. For a ground test, one would expect that alarm and ignore it, but not for a regular flight.

The contents of the black boxes is going to be very interesting.

US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

"So you admit to making billions of unauthorized copies of the copyright DNA in the yeast you bought ?"

Well, it would have to be a Patent rather than Copyright. Since I'm using the product as intended (records going back thousands of years), I'm within the implied license.

"I have never seen a piece of military gear that wasn't full of non-standard (i.e.: not available from Digikey or McMaster-Carr) components."

I expect the parts are available from Digikey and/or McMaster, they just aren't telling you what the common industry part number is. I worked at a company that built rocket landers using a lot of parts from those two. McMC is often somewhat expensive, but they have it and can ship the same day. That taught me paying more and being able to get it was less expensive than buying from someplace else that took ages. Plenty of things we did order in advance and saved money, but if we needed to build something as quickly as possible, McMC was the go to place.

"Surely, as this is the US navy, they should be forcefully chaperoning the field service engineer(s) to wherever the vessel is in the world (*), its not like the engineer is at risk: remember all the performers who entertained the troops in Vietnam…"

Perhaps the manufacturer should supply a technician that will posted onboard. Since they aren't in the military, their privileges and places they are allowed to go on the ship are severely limited. Won't that be fun? Everyday the manufacturer is unable to have a tech present is a fine and several points. Points count against selection in further RFQ's and too many is a ban from being a supplier.

Re: Incredulous

"Certainly difficult to claim you have the world's most powerful military force when it can be stopped in its tracks by a patent lawyer."

In case of war:

Step (operation) one: Do as the bard says.

Re: Asinine

"Or anyone’s military. Look if push comes to shove any competent CO is simply going to order their staff to ‘just get it working’ and he or she will take the blame. Because in reality nothing will happen to them."

The problem then is the "food preperation - heat generating - Oven type" has been overly complicated and the manufacturer has either scrubbed the markings from devices or had them printed with in-house markings to complicate "reverse engineering" the product since we all know how cut-throat the oven business is in this day and age.

I wonder if the ovens are down to the point where they are like the convenience store microwave where there's a row of buttons and you choose the one that corresponds to the item you purchased. For standard white loaf, use recipe 7 and select oven program #348. The program will pre-heat the oven and have a readout that prompts the "cook" when to put the bread tins in and then beeps again when they should come out (done or not) and then resets the whole thing to zero/off. No manual controls and any anomaly shuts the oven down.

Re: Mil-Std Loctite

"used a $5 drop forged chineseium lump with unknown chemical compound handle."

Those are handy to use when you are doing something with a screwdriver that is not a good thing to do with a screwdriver. Also useful for lending out. I've got a box of them I've wound up with buying tool lots from estate sales. My expensive Xcelite screwdrivers I won't even let a neighbor look at. (We have a pool AND a pond. The pond would be good for you.)

Re: Mil-Std Loctite

"I once got to spend much of a day watching a mechanic remove (with considerable difficulty) several dozen screws from a piece of gear that had been installed with hardware store Loctite. They were reinserted using Mil-Std Loctite."

Loctite is a brand and they make, as a division of Henkel, a wide variety of different adhesives. 242 "threadlocker" is much different than 406 cyanoacrylate. If some numpty bought a bottle of "Loctite" down the hardware store, there's no knowing what they bought. Mixing up 406 for 242 can ruin a whole bunch of product as a customer of mine found out. I was asked to salvage what I could of the mess for them. Some noob was sent to get a bottle of "loctite" from the fridge.

Yes, I know the unwashed masses will call all thread-locker "loctite", but even thread-locker comes in many different varieties. Spades are not shovels and adjustable spanners aren't hammers. If a thing has a correct name, it's good to use it to be specific.

"The 'nuclear' element seemed to be that it was chlorine free."

With the sorts of special alloys used for nuclear stuff, pasting some chlorine based adhesive against the metal with a sealing surface to keep it nicely against the metal might be a really bad thing. Rather than holding things together, it may have been used to mark pipework so people know what's inside. Hospitals, Navy ships and commercial buildings often label the pipework.

"Remember it's Sourdough-As-A-Service"

I laugh at things like that which I'll take as a serious business idea. A moldy flour and water solution isn't very difficult to achieve and it's mostly a 100% certainty. I like to make long-rise breads that use a tiny measure of regular yeast and sit overnight picking up some help out of the air. The bread is amazing and doesn't last very long, nor a slab of butter to go with it. It's a lot like sourdough, but doesn't take the commitment.

"Authorized Bread". Is Cory right or what?

Google Cloud goes down, takes Cloudflare and its customers with it

Re: So...

"Because a Google Fail is not an 'act of God'."

As the personification of Evil®, it would be an "act of satan", wouldn't it?

Re: The cloud is just someone else's computer

"Worse yet, a bunch of computers and networks managed by someone else."

A "somebody else" that doesn't care that your company is dead in water and losing money every minute. If you aren't at least 1% of their business, they can afford for you to use somebody else and not even notice so there's little point to spending money on customer support. Besides, when they are down, all of the phone lines are down, their people can't access Xitter to announce they are having an issue and state some sort of recovery estimate. Of course their own web site is down if they even maintain a System Status page as that's so old fashioned. Even if you switch, chances are that the company you switch to is a reseller of their services anyway.

In the US, there are three major operators of mobile phone hardware. Everybody else resells those services. There's often some court review of a buyout proposal where two will merge leaving only 2 tower operators remaining and those, so far, have been swatted down. The cost for another company to come along and compete is too high of a bar so any reduction in the number of players will be permanent. Adding one more now might slice the pie too thin for any of them to survive as they've raced to the bottom of pricing to be able to absorb any hits to their business.

Re: Obligatory XKCDs

I'm seeing a lot of those things from companies that have based their software products on Google API's. For all intents and purposes, those vendors are indistinguishable from Google. I'm setting up yet another single application computer to run Chrome since I've boxed myself into a corner by offering a popular service based on one of those vendors and the Google API's are written to require Chrome. I picked up a ChromeBox at an estate sale for $1 so I'm not out real money for the hardware. I've stopped pushing the services so I only do it by request and that's mainly for my longer term customers. The downtime and other failures make those services hard to know if they'll work when I need them. I don't have time to install an unannounced update when I'm out in the field and have limited time on site to get the work done I need to do.

Waymo problems in La La Land as robotaxis set aflame

Re: Illegal, Not "Undocumented"

"Because they have no legal authorization to be in our country, we refer to them as illegal immigrants."

And there are people that protest that they are "law-abiding citizens" glossing over that they are in the country contrary to immigration laws so are not "law-abiding" by that and certainly not citizens. It's not like there isn't a proper path to applying for residency and citizenship. It's even biased for larger numbers of people coming from south of the border. Even when I have all day with nothing planned, I'm not pleased with queue jumpers at the shops/bank. Why would that be ok for something more important?

I might be able to argue legacy preference to obtain Scottish citizenship and have always had that at the back of my mind. It would take time and if I were to make up my mind to retire in Scotland, I'd do it properly. I'd not just move over and enter the country on a stated visitor visa/entry and then just stay. I could keep my US driving license so if I were ever pulled over, I'd just claim I was on holiday. How many coppers are going to demand a passport and make checks to see if I've overstayed? It's been at least a decade since I've been pulled over on a traffic stop. To top it off, I sorta speak the language.

Re: Trumpty Dumpty went off his rocker

"Yep, it's crazy. Last time I looked at LA, 'normal' family homes cost $2-4m putting them waay out of reach of normal families. "

Good grief, where are you shopping for a home? Bel-air? California is more expensive than many states, but it also varies a whole lot. You also have to look at the TCO. Some states have such high property taxes that a low purchase price isn't helpful. Especially since that tax goes on even after you've paid off the home.

Areas with rent control can be doomed to losing housing for rent. Those properties aren't saleable as nobody wants to buy them at market rate and then be handcuffed by how much rent they can collect to pay the mortgage, much less upkeep and improvements.

Maybe if real world math was taught in schools, people would see what I see when headhunters want me to re-locate to Silicon Valley. The cost of living is so high that even a salary that pays for a reasonable standard of living gets taxed to pieces. Many of the companies there fail to make it out of an investor funded startup phase and that can often end precipitously. One week you have a job and the next week you don't. You do have a lease on your housing that you will need to try to get out of and everything is super expensive. If you don't find another job in short order, you better have the money to move (in the dead of night if you can't break the lease).

If you can't afford a home, you aren't likely going to be able to afford the rent in the area either. Those landlords have mortgages to pay, upkeep to pay for and want to see a profit on top. You need to be able to work out if the salary you can earn will pay enough to live where you are or might move to. A job that pays $150,000/yr sounds grand, but not if you wind up having to put things on a credit card every month to live nearby. No holidays, no new car, no eating out, etc. I've run numbers with very similar salaries and it made zero sense to take the job. In other parts of the US, I could live like a king on that much money.

NASA to silence Voyager's social media accounts

Re: Much more damaging that is initially apparent

"Very true - I believe Arthur C Clark once pointed out that the cost of the Vietnam War would have paid for everything in "2001 - A Space Odyssey" and more"

The current estimate on the final cost for California's HSR is well beyond what it will cost to do the first 5 manned lunar missions. The difference is that given the budget, the lunar missions are nearly a sure thing.

"It's quite plausible that he'll now increase funding for SLS"

SLS is a done deal. They have a limited inventory of RS-25 engines so unless a big wodge of funding is put forward to restart production, that's the end once they've been used up.

Lots of high powered people knew and associated with J. Epstein. The pimping was a side hustle to his financial business and not everybody was in on that operation that shows up in photos with him. I would guess that everybody that did know and participate did show up in photos, just not the other way around.

Re: No need to duplicate

"or if they are simply updated in a minute or two of spare time by the relevant mission or department teams and therefore at effectively no cost to NASA."

In the beginning, I expect it was a spare time thing. That was such a hit that they started hiring people specifically for those roles and it snowballed from there to entire departments what used to be doing education to doing Tweets.

If anything of note comes up, news outlets pick it up anyway. A "science reporter" spends a good portion of their day combing space agency web sites looking for things to turn in to their editor. If the story is really close to cut/paste, even better.

No need to duplicate

NASA has web pages dedicated to its missions that have logs, background, commentary, all sorts of stuff. To pay somebody to summarize that and upload it to an InstaPintaTwitFace account is a waste of money. Just visit the NASA web site and have a look. It's government so once you've found the page, bookmark it as you'll never remember the path. I can pull up the Deep Space Network page and see what they are communicating with at any given time. I don't need a Xitt to tell me they're taking in data from MRO at the moment in Madrid.

Cops want Apple, Google to kill stolen phones remotely – so why won't they?

Re: Nice non sequitur there...

Why? Because the UK Police want the power to kill any phone on the planet they choose"

And MI5/6, TfL, the BBC weather service, name it.