Posts by ragnar

Are you ready to go all-in, head-first, on a laptop? ASUS's Zenbook Pro 16X asks for that commitment

Keyboard angle

Funny that they incline the keyboard that way for more comfortable typing - I thought a negative incline was most ergonomic, so the top of your hand remains at the same angle as your wrist and arm.

Tesla fires gigafactory staff after someone made the mistake of mentioning unions

Re: For a country that claims to be all about equality and freedom.

Freedom for corporations to maximise profit.

Tech job vacancies hamper England's digital health plans

Yep, this is the hidden (enormous) cost of Thatcher's internal market.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/billions-of-wasted-nhs-cash-noone-wants-to-mention/

Only just real terms increases, and far below the rate of increase of demand for its services.

The proportion of the population over 65 is rapidly increasing, where most healthcare demand lies. The collapse of social care is sucking resources from the NHS indirectly and directly and modern treatments cost more money.

The NHS ranks well with competitors for value for money - we spend far lower as a % of GDP than comparable countries. It's a miracle it still works at all.

Amazon mandates return to office for 300,000 corporate staff

Re: Creepy

> Making friendships at work is unhealthy and toxic. Don't do that.

What? You sound like some sort of asocial basement dweller when you come out with blanket statements like that.

Faking a friendship at work is unhealthy and toxic.

If you're lucky enough to work somewhere full of awesome people, making friends is normal human behaviour.

Some of my closest friends are people I worked with 5 or 10 years ago where we just clicked instantly - I can't understand why you would deprive yourself of the possibility of enriching your life with awesome people, just because you happened to meet them at work.

99 year old man says cryptocurrency is for idiots

Re: So right

It's great for reliable and auditable international transfers.

No eye-watering fees when sending money to a less common destination and none of the bullshit we had once with a high street bank sending the money to an overseas branch, it not arriving, and having systems incapable of finding out what the problem was.

Thunderbird email client is Go for new plumage in July

Don't be:

"as well as the implementation of more customizable options with a flexible and adaptable interface to allow veteran users to maintain that familiarity they love."

Zoom and gloom: Vid-chat biz sheds 15 percent of staff – by email

I am astonished to see a CEO actually take some responsibility when they say they're taking responsibility.

He's not getting fired, but forfeiting 98% of salary for the year and the annual bonus is at least a significant penalty. More than we ever see from other leaders.

What is Google doing with its open source teams?

How can it not be economically viable to keep these employees when they made 60 billion, that’s billion, in profit?

That’s an after-wage figure.

Hundreds of Spotify staff stream out the door in latest layoffs

"I accept full responsibility", while suffering precisely zero consequences.

I wish more media took El Reg's acerbic tone when they parrot this line without further comment. If you insulate yourself from consequence, you're not bearing responsibility.

Software devs targeted as British tax authority makes fraud allegations

Re: Cameron and Carr

This isn't really a corporation tax issue though - it's a cash credit far in excess of the CT deduction for the expenditure that's at stake

Punch-drunk Apple Watch called 15 cops to a boxing workout when it heard 'shots'

Re: Wow a Police response!

Link please?

Time to buy a phone as shops use discounts to clear out inventories

Re: Let's do the maths

PlusNet (EE reseller) have great £8/10 month rolling monthly contracts with no commitments. Even better, as they roll out better deals for newer customers, you can switch yourself onto them from the following month just using their website, with no need to do the telephone support dance of threatening to leave etc.

Ex-Twitter Brits launch legal challenge against dismissal

Re: A bit odd to focus on amount of redundancy pay

It's just a negotiating tactic.

Atos will be paid $29m over $1b UK Met Office supercomputer dispute

Re: Arcades Ambo

"I can never understand how people can sue for not being chosen"

They're suing because they believe the government broke the law and that they have enough chance of proving it in court that they can get a payout by threatening to do so.

Israel sets robotic target-tracking turrets in the West Bank

Re: Thanks to the commentards above

Blame is highly important. It's impossible to have a just post-conflict settlement without acknowledging and compensating for historical injustices.

As the article states, the Palestinians have tried both peaceful and militant means of resisting the systematic annexation of their homeland. Just saying "they should be non-violent" is ignoring their right to violent resistance which is protected under international law and asking way more of them than we would abide by ourselves.

Imagine a group of people setting up a country in the borders of a Western country and then systematically stealing land and ghettoizing the surrounding country, while supported militarily by a superpower. We wouldn't expect the occupants of that country to live with it and nor should we expect the Palestinians to do so.

The fact that you think this is a religious conflict rather than a land dispute coupled with ethnic cleansing indicates you might be a bit ignorant of what's really going on there.

G7 countries beat UK in worldwide broadband speed test again

Re: What is "enough"?

"What we need is a big initiative to get everyone up to the same level, with a catchy name. Any suggestions?"

British Broadband? https://labour.org.uk/press/british-broadband-labour-sets-out-mission-to-connect-communities-across-britain-by-delivering-free-full-fibre-broadband-for-all/

Amazon fails to overturn New York City union election

Re: Lord Of The Racism

"That also didn't happen in the Peter Jackson movies."

Gimli had a fake Scottish accent done by a Welsh actor who normally speaks with an English RP accent.

Cloudflare's outage was human error. There's a way to make tech divinely forgive

Re: beckups

A New Zealand accent!

Pop!_OS 22.04: New kid on the Ubuntu block starting to show real muscle

Re: The POP!_OS Store

So that people who don't know how or why to type "pkg list-all -vvvvv | grep something" can install software easily?

> instead bundling Flatpak.

> Oh dear. Off it can fuck, then.

A Linux distro, bundling some widely used software?! I've never heard the like!

Just uninstall it if you don't want it?

It's not like they've done a Ubuntu and insisted on putting the browser in it.

Man arrested, accused of trying to track woman using Apple Watch attached to car

Re: a misdemeanor violation of the state's prohibition on non-consensual vehicle tracking statute

You would have thought that there would have been lots of independent witnesses at the centre though.

Notable that if his old domestic violence case had been processed in good time then this may have been nipped in the bud also.

Ford to sell unfinished Explorers as chip shortage bites

Re: Thank god for small favors

Considering 65% of new cars sold in Norway are fully electric, I'm going to take a guess that you're just scaremongering.

Modern electric cars keep the battery warm in cold weather.

Europe's largest nuclear plant on fire after Russian attack

Re: Not fake news but…….

So your soldiers can see as they move in to take control?

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

Re: They actually believe the money exists!

This is a myth. Billionaires frequently liquidate enormous sums with no difficulty.

https://github.com/MKorostoff/1-pixel-wealth/blob/master/THE_PAPER_BILLIONAIRE.md

Another Debian dust-up with Firefox dependencies – but there is an annoying and awkward workaround

Re: "dangerously outdated browser"

Isn't running an outdated browser just begging for an exploit?

Re: Once again ...

Are you confusing slackware with arch?

Slackware doesn't have the latest and greatest versions - it has a glacial progression that prioritises stability.

Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don't play ball in future

Re: a state run by mafia

Governments don't evolve over thousands of years, they are formed in response to immediate political events. This particular government is the consequence of allowing capitalists to assume control of the lion's share of state assets after the fall of Communism.

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

Re: a limitation of hypersonics

You might be surprised. It took 4 weeks of weapon testing to sink CV-66, and they eventually had to board her to plant explosives to finish the job. They're extremely difficult to sink compared to battleships.

New World: Grindy? Check. Repetitive? Check. Fun? We hate to say it... but check

"Though the game starts off with NPC quest-givers fully voiced, this declines over time to the point that side quests just have some text."

That seems like a pretty cynical design decision to lure players in with a bait and switch.

The blowing up graphics cards ended up being due to poor manufacturing I believe though.

Data-breached Guntrader website calls in liquidators, is reborn as Guntrader 2 Ltd

Re: How does this work?

I'm also interested. I was under the impression that the corporate veil could be lifted when directors use liquidation as the means to avoid legal obligations.

Former SAP leader's lawsuit claims she was canned for pushing corporate diversity

Re: "Nothing to stop them"

I'd hazard a guess you've never talked to a female HGV driver.

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Re: Mitigation?

I don't think that should be a get-out for a company as profitable as Apple though, at least when it comes to security bugs.

They could spend $100m to build an amazing security team that does nothing but handle bug bounties and *still* have made $105bn in profit. Hell, spend $1bn and make it $104bn in profit.

The resources they have access to are utterly mind-boggling and it's shameful they don't care enough about security to use it.

I'm feeling lucky: Google, Facebook say workers must be vaccinated before they return to offices

Re: I'm not sure

There's a lot of people confidently spouting complete bollocks on here today. Your mask isn't there to catch COVID particles directly. If it did, you wouldn't be able to breathe, as oxygen molecules are several hundred times larger.

The masks prevent you spraying water droplets everywhere, which are a vehicle for transmission because those droplets can contain the virus. This is basic, basic stuff.

Re: I'm not sure

Wow, it's a good thing we have El Reg reader ForthIsNotDead to tell us how our medical professional know nothing and to dispute the countless documented cases of infections by symptomless carriers. Where would we be without you. /s

Re: FREeDomZ

It's almost like there's some sort of difference between flu and COVID.

A real go-GETTR: Former Trump aide tries to batter Twitter by ripping off its UI

Re: Litigiousness.

Well, I am not a lawyer, but you can't just sue for the fun of it. You sue to make amends for some sort of loss that you've suffered.

If Trump says he was cheated of the Presidency, Joe Bloggs can't sue him for that. If Trump says Joe Bloggs filed fake ballots to make him lose the presidency, then that would be a reputational loss that you've suffered, and perhaps you might have a case.

If you wanted to read up, then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort is probably what you're looking for.

Just when everyone thought things might be looking up, Dido Harding admits interest in top job at NHS England

Re: Check with the Anti-Corruption Champion?

Surprised this wasn't in the article actually.

Nvidia nerfs RTX 3080, 3070, 3060 Ti GPUs to shoo away Ethereum miners

Re: nVlidia is not a government agency

Look out, the soCiALisM is coming to get you!

The far simpler explanation is nVidia care about maintaining their multi-decade customer base of video gamers and don't want them to switch to a competitor or to a next gen console in case they don't come back.

Satellite collision anticipated by EU space agency fails to materialize... for now at least

Re: the 2007 Fengyun-1C anti-satellite missile test

All major powers have done this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon#Recent_ASATs

It's not a uniquely Chinese problem, and the US has vigorously opposed UN resolutions to stop this kind of thing.

Director, deputy director, CTO of Free Software Foundation quit after Stallman installation

Link please. I haven't been able to google anything about wanting to remove Sir Francis Drake from textbooks.

Red Hat pulls Free Software Foundation funding over Richard Stallman's return

Re: Let's be very clear here ...

You're on a really sticky wicket here. Only 14% of child marriages in the US are between people of similar ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States#Marriage_age

Between 2000 and 2015, over 200,000 minors were legally married in the United States,[10] or roughly six children per thousand.[11] The vast majority of child marriages in the U.S. were between a minor girl and an adult man.[10][12][13] Most minors married were girls.[10] In many cases, minors in the U.S. may be married when they are under the age of sexual consent, which is 16 to 18 for most states.[14] In some states minors cannot legally divorce, leave their spouse, or enter a shelter to escape abuse.[15][16]

Unchained At Last, the only non profit advocacy group dedicated to ending child marriage in the United States, found that only 14% of the child marriages conducted from 2000 to 2010 were between two children marrying each other.[12] In most cases, child marriages are between a minor and an adult.[26] In terms of spousal age, the majority of those surveyed, about 60%, reported being 18–20 years old. Less than 3% reported being over 29 years of age.[10] In over 400 cases, the adult was aged over 40. And in 31 cases, they were over 60.

According to data compiled by Anjali Tsui, Dan Nolan, and Chris Amico, who looked at almost 200,000 cases of child marriage from 2000-2015:

67% of the children were aged 17.

29% of the children were aged 16.

4% of the children were aged 15.

<1% of the children were aged 14 and under.

There were 51 cases of 13-year-olds getting married, and 6 cases of 12-year-olds getting married.[10]

Extreme examples include a case in 2010 in Idaho, where a 65-year-old man married a 17-year-old girl.[citation needed] In Alabama, a 74-year-old man married a 14-year-old girl, though the state has since raised their minimum age to 16.[10] According to Unchained At Last, the youngest girls to marry in 2000-2010 were three Tennessee 10-year-old girls who married men aged 24, 25, and 31, respectively, in 2001.[citation needed] The youngest boy to marry was an 11-year-old, who married a 27-year-old woman in Tennessee in 2006.[12]

Workday bets big on staff coming back to the office by splurging $172.5m on HQ and five more Bay Area buildings

Re: Nope

It's still quite eye-wateringly expensive for a non-business connection though.

Now that half of Nominet's board has been ejected, what happens next? Let us walk you through the possibilities

Re: The bottom line?

Do you mean profit?

Google emits data-leaking proof-of-concept Spectre exploit for Intel CPUs to really get everyone's attention

Re: Tried all exploits, none worked. Yawn.

You're really bad at reading comprehension. The exploit was developed on Linux. And the page specifically says it's not designed to test whether your machine is vulnerable:

"It was developed and optimized for Chrome 88 running on an Intel® Core™ i7-6500U processor on Linux. While it was confirmed to work on other CPUs (different vendor and/or generation), operating systems and Chromium flavors, you might have to adjust the configuration and it might work less reliably (or not at all). Note that the goal of this proof of concept is to demonstrate the feasibility of a web-based Spectre exploit. It is not a test to see if your device is vulnerable or not."

Cisco posts kit to empty houses to dodge NSA chop shops

Re: @Trevor Don't buy US kit

Heh, this comment didn't age well

Takes from the taxpayer, gives to the old – by squishing a bug in Thatcherite benefits system

Re: As they said in the 80s...

And to add to other comments, most benefit claimants are in work. The taxpayer is subsidising private companies who don't pay workers a living wage.

Be careful where you log into GitHub: Dev visits Iran, opens laptop, gets startup's entire account shut down

Re: relying on third-party services

You can't avoid US influence with banking services, which is why the EU has been unable to provide an effective shield for companies to trade with Iran in the face of US sanctions.

Google Cloud (over)Run: How a free trial experiment ended with a $72,000 bill overnight

That's probably illegal, if you live anywhere sane. People have wised up to the possibility of someone doing this and if you do it with the intention of avoiding paying your bills, piercing the corporate veil is a thing that absolutely does happen.