Posts by Indolent Wretch

US watchdog just gave up trying to get Google to explain YouTube's huge financial figures

Re: It used to be cool...

"lesbian communist social justice warriors"

Yeah Google are the mob... That's clear from your nasty rhetoric.

Re: Youtube has many uses

"They're proving incapable of cleaning up their own networks, so something is going to give way (probably the whole business model). They ought to be very worried about that."

Or they just don't tidy up. The world keeps spinning and everyone gets on with their lives including Daily Mail leader writers.

Communications systems will be abused. They always have been. They always will be. I don't want to live in a world where they can't be.

The misuse is only a threat if organizations like Google/Facebook and people like us allow the politicians and Express-reading-frothing-mouth-nazis determine what happens next.

Strange article. The author continually trumpets size, vastness and wealth as irrefutable reasons why the YouTube figures should be broken out.... and then nonchalantly drops in "... contributes roughly 10 per cent of Google's revenue". That's of revenue, not profit. Of Google, not Alphabet...

NSA boss: Trump won't pull trigger for Russia election hack retaliation

Re: What were they planning on doing?

"Things started to go downhill quite fast from there, until Putin kicked out..."

Yeah things have got some much better since Putin became a democratically elected dictator for life who runs roughshod over pretty much everything I consider to be important.

Google asked to take down 2.4 MEEELLION URLs under EU law

Although I think it's fair to point out that Google never wanted to be the judge and jury in fact they fought tooth and nail not to be.

As always my problem here isn't with Google refusing to take down pages as there's an appeals process for that. My problem is the ones they just take down. A complete abdication of responsibility from the EU to basically outsource censorship to a private organisation that didn't want to do it.

Neil Young slams Google, after you log in to read his rant with Google or Facebook

Re: "next generation of artists will come from. How will they survive?"

I'm sure he has spoken out endlessly about how the money from royalties should be split fairly to the whole band and not have the bulk given to the songwriter. I'm sure he has also waxed lyrically about how session musicians responsible in the background for so many hits deserve royalties and has personally paid royalties out of his own pocket to any on his music. While he sites in his massive mansion crying over the number of zeros on his latest royalty cheque.

The e-waste warrior, 28,000 copied Windows restore discs, and a fight to stay out of jail

Re: Oh, come on

Don't quote frameworks to me.

I chaired the sub-committee that convened to decide whether or not we should change the colour of the folder that framework is held in.

WE KEPT IT GREY.

UK Home Sec Amber Rudd unveils extremism blocking tool

Re: 99.995% is impossible

I'm being very sceptical. Everyone is talking about error rates, and neural nets, and such and such.... I wouldn't be surprised if the algorithm just checks the metadata for the word "(C) DAESH".

I look forward to when Rudd takes her piece of no name software written by a no name company with it's no brains logic, with the money spent mainly on team building exercises and shiny business cards and insists to the development labs in Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc that they have to make it the gatekeeper of their systems.

Will not go down well.

Getty load of this: Google to kill off 'View image' button in search

Re: Bad bargaining

Unless I have an option to choose I'd rather see the image that the algorithm thinks best matches my search terms at the top of the result. That's the bloody point.

Amount of pixels needed to make VR less crap may set your PC on fire

Maybe returning to the concept of a vector display (like asteroids and the old vectrex gaming system) would be a good idea. That didn't have pixels at all.

Admittedly the world would like your in Battlezone but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Apple's password protection in macOS can be thwarted

They've put a password dialog in specifically to gate access to a sensitive area and for an admin user it doesn't work as intended.

You could argue the dialog shouldn't be there but it is there and it's bugged.

1 in 5 STEM bros whinge they can't catch a break in tech world they run

>> Do you hire people? No? Then you're not responsible for the gender imbalance at work.

Well he still might be if he feels the need to express his imagined guilt by acting like an arse at his female colleagues and by even the slightest extent making them wish they weren't working there.

Re: This is absolutely true when it comes to gender balance

It seems likely that given a lot of barriers to women getting successful careers in STEM jobs that a higher percentage of them are going to be (a) the top of their game and (b) less likely to let other people stop them from succeeding.

Re: Has Been Happening For Years

Maybe it was because they were trying to benefit from a more gender diverse workplace and if they just kept giving out sponsorships to the same people time and time again then nothing would ever change.

I mean really? If you have a 90% male workforce and you give out 90% of your sponsorships to men then guess what you'll have 10 years from now.

Seems pretty obvious.

Re: Ignoring the gender element

Yeah those political views he felt the need to express in a google forum visible to everyone at the company and in a way that violated his terms of employment?

Ah diddums.

Memo man Damore is back – with lawyers: Now Google sued for 'punishing' white men

Re: Oh the misleading...

Balls. He articles basically sums up to "They aren't as good as me at what I do because I have a penis and they don't, silly ******* women! I'd be running this company if I was a gay, disabled, black, muslim furry". The fact that he wrapped it up in so much prosaic verbiage just shows he knew what he was saying was bigoted.

Voyager 1 fires thrusters last used in 1980 – and they worked!

Re: V'Ger

+1 for the Space 1999 reference

Germany says NEIN to purchase incentive for Tesla Model S

Re: Cost is relative

The subsidy costs money. Tax money. It should be targeted to where it does the most good. Gives the best incentive. Paying it to allow rich people to buy a Tesla as a second car to play around in when they aren't in their giant Merc is not a good policy.

Set the subsidy low. More of it to spread round where it's needed. Incentive for car manufacturers to produce cheaper alternatives. Win/Win.

AI taught to beat Sudoku puzzles. Now how about a time machine to 2005?

Re: Been there done that

Yeah the fact it can be brute forced isn't the issue. It can obviously be brute forced. The trick is to solve in a way analogous to a human being and not brute forcing it.

Want a new HDMI cable? No? Bad luck. You'll need one for HDMI 2.1

"Somewhat"

Wondering why your internal .dev web app has stopped working?

My previous employer had a large variety of test websites available in their intranet, many of which were using .dev. I switched them over 2 years ago as soon as I heard about .dev being sold off because something like this was clearly going to happen at some point.

SpaceX releases Pythonesque video of rocket failures

Yes they are both directly named after GCUs from "Player of Games". I think the "Of Course I Still Love You" is particularly apt for it's purpose here.

Hackers emit 9GB of stolen Macron 'emails' two days before French presidential election

Re: So, just another day in the office...?

By "their enemies around them" I assume you mean "their former victims".

Passport and binary tree code, please: CompSci quizzes at US border just business as usual

Re: No issues visiting India

>> Hold on - what exactly do you mean by "if"...?

Hang on he's just looking that up on Stackoverflow

Up close with the 'New Psion' Gemini: Specs, pics, and genesis of this QWERTY pocketbook

Re: Entertaining

In a years time when "Do No Evil" have done exactly diddly squat about it because they don't care will you be back here to admit you were wrong or will you keep your real face hidden?

Sony: Never mind the phones – look out at what our crazy lab scientists have done

Re: Sony should have ruled the roost

Maybe he grew up?

Microsoft slaps Apple Gatekeeper-like controls on Windows 10: Install only apps from store

Re: @Streaky First it's optional...

Don't be ridiculous, large companies, public services, etc, etc, will all be given or told to purchase a special license in order to re-enable 'off piste installations'.

It's everybody else that gets screwed.

Booming Android ad revenue shows it’s no longer the poor cousin

Re: Free as in... Oh, what's that over there...

Whereas the polar opposite and an amazing piece of chutzpah is the free version of the official Scrabble app on iOS (and probably Android too) by a money starved no name developer called "E.A".

In an app where you can have 20+ games on the trot easily the damn thing plays an unskippable 30 second video ad (badly) after EVERY SINGLE MOVE YOU MAKE.

And I speak from experience when I say the advertiser in question seems to ever only have 3 ads on rotation so you can quite easily get the same 30 second ad 10 times on the bounce.

Quite freaking extraordinary.

Oracle crushes Apiary's hope in slightly awkward email to customers

Ahhh sweet Larry, the thing that makes him a billionaire is the damn same thing that makes him a tosser.

US judge halts mass fingerprint harvesting by cops to unlock iPhones

Re: Weasel words

Surely simple logic would dictate that if the police are in the circumstance where they would be justified in taking the persons fingerprints they are also justified in trying to unlock a smart phone with them.

If they aren't in those circumstances then no-go.

And given collision rates it would seem some case law is in order to decide whether or not your finger unlocking a phone proves it was your finger used to lock it. More so if they are checking a great many people against a phone. I wonder in any large block or campus how many people are capable of unlocking how many phones that aren't theirs with their fingers.

Pack your bags! NASA spots SEVEN nearby Earth-sized alien worlds

Re: Tides and stuff

Very important for protection but then their star is a weak flame indeed compared to our own.

In colossal shock, Uber alleged to be wretched hive of sexism, craven managerial ass-covering

"I've instructed our CHRO Liane to conduct an urgent investigation. There can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber."

"You know Liane? That cute little piece in HR with the rack? Everyone on the board wants to smash her back doors in I can tell you."

Aww damn did I hit post on that too? Somebody go and sack somebody! But make sure you don't sack any Bros.

Google agrees to break pirates' domination over music searches

It's not fair I searched for "Download Illegal Kanye torrent mp3" and it took me to a torrent site!

"The BPI says 74 per cent of pirate downloads begin with a search engine"

Now that figure will slowly drop.... By figure I mean the percentage not the actual number of illegal downloads which will follow the same trend it was following anyway.

Batman v Superman leads Razzie nominations

Have to say BVS... what a pile of poorly directed, poorly lit, poorly cast, poorly written, poorly acted, utterly nonsensical garbage...

But I'm amazed Suicide Squad only managed 2 noms... As a movie I hate it more than BVS, thankfully it did get the worst screenplay nom:

"We need a team of super powered criminals to handle threats nobody else can!"

...

[several set pieces and poorly chosen songs later]

...

"Yeah we killed the bad guys with a bomb!"

Google hardwires its Android app store into new Chromebooks

Re: Not sure there's an anti-trust argument

Everything you've said there is absolutely spot on. I doubt the author nor any of the TFHWB will appreciate it though.

However I do find it funny that my recollection of "thriving" amounted to "oh No! Not f**king Realplayer again!"

Re: Just stupid

Not sure about MS but Google had a one off very low cost fee. And for that they distribute the damn thing for you for free. Apple on the other hand had a much more onerous higher yearly payment that you had to keep up with or your software would be removed.

So in any practical sense the Google store enabled competition because it made writing, releasing and distributing apps an absolute doddle and hardly cost a penny.

Microsoft quietly emits patch to undo its earlier patch that broke Windows 10 networking

Re: ,So there's an online fix for not being able to get online?

What it needs is a big red 'FIX' button in the centre of the desktop that can't be moved or removed and they press it for you before the software leaves the factory.

Higher tech prices ARE here to stay. It's Mr Farage's new Britain

Re: Brexit means brexit.

>> And a General Election would wipe out the Remain parties: Labour and LibDem.

You realise almost half the people who voted picked "remain" don't you.

You realise large swathes of the country voted "remain" don't you.

If you think that those places are suddenly going to say "were leaving the EU now so lets pick someone we disagree with" I'm not sure what logic you are using.

Re: Brexit means brexit. Mail & Express

It's owner.

One of the right-wing, billionaire elite...

I wish somebody would actually explain to me who the liberal elite actually are. Because strangely enough every time I see a member of the "elite" they are unequivocally right-wing, ultra-rich, lying, uncaring, gits busy kicking some tramp to death.

CIA: Russia hacked election. Trump: I don't believe it! FAKE NEWS!

Yep the damn establishment... and a majority of American citizens.

Re: There's a pattern here

Every time someone like you says that it makes me chuckle. Trump isn't one of the global elite? That's right the other billionaires don't let him play their reindeer games as yet another Goldman Sachs executive gets given a massively prominent Whitehouse role.

Wake up sheeple!

AMD virty encryption not quite there, claim boffins

Re: AMD SEV safe on trusted cloud provider

Yes that's what I thought they were targeting to. The researcher seems to have done a classic "this thing does the thing its meant to do well but doesn't do the thing I was interested in therefore its a failure" routine.

Either way it still sounds a lot better than not having it.

Apple Watch sales go over a cliff: Down 2.8 meellion per quarter in a year

As a bit of an aside from my viewpoint of owning a Fitbit and my wife owning a Fitbit. We both got the top end "Surge" model at Christmas 2015.... very happy with it. Then in mid October her one starting losing it's charge very quickly, and in late November my strap started to tear wear the strap meets the watch. Not great for watches that were around £150 each.

Didn't have the receipts but did have a screen dump of a bank statement showing a £300 payment to Argos from 11 months ago.

All praise to Fitbit, no arguments, no complaints, super fast response times and we both have identical replacement devices for free. Plus the original devices, my wifes watch battery started working again properly the day before the replacement turned up and I'm going to keep wearing my one til the thing falls off my wrist.

Very good customer service.

CompSci Prof raises ballot hacking fears over strange pro-Trump voting patterns

Wow that's amazing. Just imagine, despite the fact that you all and all the other Trump voting Breitbart loving tosspots told us that the election was going to rigged, that she was a criminal, that she was going to jail, that she secretly ran a paedophile ring from her pentagram inscribed email server, that the democrats and the Jews completely controlled the media, that the election was going to be rigged using every method from good old lies and deceit, through state sponsored computer hacking and ending with magic-mushroom-powered-mind-f**king-control beams fired from Satan's Democratic arse. We now find out that the Democrat lizards also had FULL control of the nations voting machines.

And yet she still lost!

I can only imagine what a bunch of strangely honest yet utterly criminal, mind-controlling, lying, vote-rigging traitor lizards the Democrats are.

Good luck with your complete-outsider, anti-establishment, old-white-billionaire.

Re: Vote Fraud? Are you CRAAAZY?

Democrats have been saying for years there's no such thing as voter fraud on the specific issues that Republicans and especially the Alt-Right have been spewing about. That of illegals and the "dead" voting in their zombie masses.

Paper ballots are a good idea.

Republicans want to require voter ID because it's known that any hurdle to voting causes issues for the poorest in society and the numbers have born that up every time it's happened. Since the poorest in society tend not to be stupid enough to vote Republican the motive is obvious.

It's also totally unnecessary. I've voted in elections 5 times in my country, every time with a paper ballot and I've never needed to show ID to do so.

The fact that you feel they are linked is telling.

No super-kinky web smut please, we're British

To be honest I'd like to know that they are being forced to do it, over and over in an endless nightmare behind a well locked solid door. But I have zero interest in actually watching it.

LAKE OF frozen WATER THE SIZE OF NEW MEXICO FOUND ON MARS – NASA

Hey... There's a New Mexico??

Fallout from Euro Patent Office meltdown reaches Dutch parliament

Re: Just another example of a harmonious and efficient European organisation

>> Shit just doesn't get done when you're constantly having to appease the fragile sensibilities of France.

Small but important correction

China gets mad at Donald Trump, threatens to ruin Apple

Re: Thin Skin

Well... until Pence got his feet under the table, the man would be happier in Salem burning witches.

Re: Trade War - FTFY

Well lets not forget the one ray of sunshine in the US, the forced labour in prisons making goods for pennies. That's at least one place where they can still be competitive:

"According to the International Labor Organization, in 2000-2011 wages in American prisons ranged between $0.23 and $1.15 an hour. In California, prisoners earn between $0.30 and $0.95 an hour before deductions."

"Over the years, the courts have held that inmates may be required to work and are not protected by the constitutional prohibition against involuntary servitude. They have also consistently held that inmates have no constitutional right to compensation and that inmates are paid by the "grace of the state."