Posts by SundogUK

Jeff Bezos adds some more overheads to his $485m yacht by taking down historic bridge

Re: No problem... just as long as Bezos is paying for it

"...local government/tax payers..." maybe not but Oceanco took the contract to build the thing ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BRIDGE, so I reckon they're up for some of it.

Re: Small man syndrome

He is, on and off, the richest man in human history. I don't think being small and bald bothers him much.

Re: Meh

"*He doesn't really - Bezos couldn't sell any significant number of shares, as (a) if the owner sells shares in their company, it's bad news and the share price would tank, leading to (b) the market probably wouldn't buy them."

Tell that to Elon Musk.

Well it's really Oceanco's fault for building their shipyard the wrong side of the bridge. Bezos has offered to stump up for the work, which, if it hadn't been agreed to, would mean his yacht being built elsewhere and Rotterdam losing his business. Can't really see how this is Bezos fault, to be honest.

America's EARN IT Act attacking Section 230 is back – and once again threatening the internet, critics say

Re: How about this instead...

How are you planning on getting rid of them? I doubt very much being on your wall will have any effect on their electability, so..?

Tesla to disable 'self-driving' feature that allowed vehicles to roll past stop signs at junctions

Re: California roll

France is pretty much 100% "STOP!" and they enforce it vigorously.

Instant Ump: HP Inc's subscription ink services hiking prices from next month

Re: Ink?

"...but it got hit by lightning..." I suspect that isn't a standard use-case!

Court papers indicate text messages from HMRC's 60886 number could snoop on Brit taxpayers' locations

Re: Funny...

Not me. All taxation is theft!

The robots are coming! 12 million jobs lost to automation in Europe by 2040 – analyst

Free market capitalism just is. It's not something designed, or that can be re-designed. What you mean is that you want communism. And the answer is no.

Re: If you have been inside a McDonnell recently in the US

That's what happens when you demand a $15/hour minimum wage.

Re: this is great news

No one 'deserves' any money. If you want stuff that is in any way scarce, you have to pay for it. It's up to you to find the money to do so.

Privacy is for paedophiles, UK government seems to be saying while spending £500k demonising online chat encryption

Not sure what you're trying to say here. Franklin is very clearly saying you should never give up your freedom and you should fight against anyone you tries to take it away from you.

Re: Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide....

Do you seriously think that Labour wouldn't be doing exactly the same? These campaigns are initiated by Home Office civil servants and they keep pushing for increased surveillance regardless of who is in government.

Re: Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear. Something to Hide, Everything to Fear.

Please stop that, amanfromMars 1. I understood every word you just said.

Re: Encryption

Well, and movie stars...

Web daddy Tim Berners-Lee on privacy, data sharing, and the web's future

Re: Solid?

That's only half the story. The other half is 'what are the consequence of failure?'

With banks, we have an insurance structure in place.

With Lastpass, you just have to pray you realize you have been compromised before too much damage is done.

With Solid? If you're compromised, you've lost everything.

No thanks.

Re: "bank transactions go to your Solid pod"

From Wikipedia:

"A script kiddie, skiddie,[1] or skid is a relatively unskilled individual who uses scripts or programs, such as a web shell, developed by others to attack computer systems and networks and deface websites, according to the programming and hacking cultures."

Seems perfectly apt.

Japan solves 5G airliner conundrum: Keep mobe masts 200m from airport approach paths. That's it

Re: Protectionism ?

The issue seems to be shoddy radar altimeters unable to guarantee they aren't picking up transmissions from outside their allocate spectrum. They didn't need to in the past, so they cut costs. That is now coming back to bite their arses.

Everything i have heard about this says it's the radar altimeters at fault - manufacturers cut costs because previously the spectrum they were bleeding in to weren't being used.

Billionaires see wealth double during pandemic as tech bros lead the charge

"...they are sitting on a large amount of wealth like Smaug, keeping it out of productive circulation."

No they are not. The wealth of these people is almost entirely in investments which are very much in productive circulation.

Epoch-alypse now: BBC iPlayer flaunts 2038 cutoff date, gives infrastructure game away

Re: The Tories fix for this

The Tories hate the BBC because they are too left wing; Labour hates the BBC because they are not left wing enough.

Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

Re: If you're a corporation using OSS, why have you made it so hard to pay the devs?

"Why should the maintainers bend to meet the needs of the corporation?" Because otherwise they're not going to get paid.

Worst of CES Awards: The least private, least secure, least repairable, and least sustainable

Re: "the marginal cost of sharing and making copies of things is pretty close to zero"

No we don't. Most of it goes into the pension pots of a load of free-loader unionized civil servants.

Re: "the marginal cost of sharing and making copies of things is pretty close to zero"

By the quoted logic, nobody should be selling anything on the Apple store, they should be giving it away. And then Apple's 30% is moot.

Could BYOB (Bring Your Own Battery) offer a solution for charging electric vehicles? Microlino seems to think so

"...and it is much more pleasant to be enclosed when it's raining."

This. So very much this.

Games Workshop has chucked another £500k at entrenched ERP project with no end to epic battle in sight

Re: Profit margin!?

It's nothing to do with the games, it's all about the figures.

Trust me: the private sector is better. Not good, mind, but shareholders get pissed off much faster than taxpayers.

Re: job ads

10 foot pole, please.

Google says open source software should be more secure

"The open source community definitely needs some form of universal basic income..."

If Google et al are going to pony up for this, then fair enough; if they expect my taxes to fund it, they can fuck right off.

Perseverance on the rocks: Pebbles clog up the rover's Martian sample collection

Re: Nothing there...

"...no-one owns."

So how come YOU get to demand they stop?

Feeling virtuous with a good old paperback? Well, don't. Switching to traditional media does not improve mood

Regarding Dune: stick with the original 6. The last three aren't great but are works of art compared to the crap his son has written since.

Re: f(X) == f(Y) for some f()

If your enjoyment of a book is driven more by the format it comes in rather than the actual words you should probably give up and watch a movie.

A fifth of England's NHS trusts are mostly paper-based as they grapple with COVID backlog, warn MPs

"...The select committee urged NHS England to respond to the Wade-Gery report on putting data, digital and tech at the heart of transforming the NHS..."

God help us.

We need Doctors and Nurses "at the heart of transforming the NHS" not IT. Clear out all the useless admin types, provide the simplest and most efficient IT tools they need, off the shelf and let the medical people get on with it.

Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of fraud: Blood-testing machines were vapourware after all

Re: Now, if only ....

The problem is the alternative are worse liars.

UK's antitrust watchdog is very angry and has written a letter telling Apple and Google how angry it is with them

Re: Depends on why he's using Firefox

Surely the rendering engine has a direct impact on extension compatibility?

Web3: The next generation of the web is here… apparently

The thing about Web1 and Web2 is that we defined what they were AFTER they had happened. All this defining what Web3 will be before it happens is just pissing in the wind and setting yourself up to look like a pillock.

Google joins others in Big Tech: Get vaccinated – or you're fired

Re: 'we shouldn't stigmatize the unvaccinate'

Not three times a year then?

Log4j doesn't just blow a hole in your servers, it's reopening that can of worms: Is Big Biz exploiting open source?

Re: Frameworks...

Who are you going to tax to pay for FOSS then?

Assange extradition case goes to UK Home Secretary as High Court rules he can be sent to US for trial

Re: Missing the point

The charges are not based on treachery. The charges he faces are that he conspired to illegally access US government computers.

Better CEO is 'taking time off' after firing 900 staff on Zoom

Re: Being a better workplace?

This has not been true at every company I have ever worked at. You have obviously made shitty choices about who you work for.

More than half of UK workers would consider jumping ship if a hybrid work option were withdrawn by their company

Re: Losing

Compared to today? You have no idea.

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

Re: Treat people like dirt...

The majority of these inmates are low to very low IQ, have poor impulse control and no sense of deferred gratification, and come from cultures that venerate physical strength and the ability to commit violence in men. What 'useful skills' do you think we should teach them that will make any difference whatsoever to how they behave when they are released?

The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers

Re: Not just that

I'm not.

Rust dust-up as entire moderation team resigns. Why? They won't really say

Re: If it's important enough to resign

The bureaucracy always becomes more important than the project itself.

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

Re: This development is concerning to us as it should be to all who seek peace and stability

The Americans aren't rounding people up and sticking them in camps like the Uyghur's, so I'm fine with US 'stability.'

Munich mk2? Germany's Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

Re: Not following

I doubt it. The process of switching has significant costs - enough that any benefit in reduced license fees from M$ would be wiped out.

AI surveillance software increasingly used to make sure contract lawyers are doing their jobs at home

Re: People

Meh. Where I work, you get a task and a deadline and no one in management really cares how or when it gets done. If you meet the deadline, you're good. I really don't understand why any management would work differently.

UK Department for Education to schools: Maybe delay signing that 3-year licensing deal for MIS with Education Software Solutions

Re: Well, maybe not directly relevant but it does seem sort of familiar...

Which is the correct response to this. Demanding a socialist takeover of the economy to stop businesses doing this is not the correct response.

Socialism is never the answer.

BRING ON THE DOWN-VOTES!

I reckon I'm on for a record with this one.

Re: Mark Brant is wrong

"To be honest, if you just assume that any words that come out of a union worker's mouth are lies or such a twisted version of the truth such as to be all but lies, then you'll be much closer to the truth than the union worker ever gets..."

FIFY