Posts by Doctor Syntax

Zoom's new London hub – where 'remote work' meets 'we need you back in the office'

Re: Commute should be considered contracted hours...

"part of our contracted hours"

Or overtime at appropriate overtime rates.

Re: If you

But then you're in Milton Keynes.

Re: 15,000 sq ft central London site??

It seems daft that anyone does.

Re: Zoom video meetings ..

...and the passive smoking lung damage.

Re: Writings on the wall for these companies

"that could just be creative AI and video editing."

OTOH he's a beancounter.

There's this thing called email. It's asynchronous. If you're zoned in on something else you don't even context switch to check email until you're finished.

Enquirers don't get instant responses? Well. why do they think their demand for an instant answer outweighs your concentration on your job?

The reality is that the owners are the thousands millions of small investors who have this included in pension plans, etc. I include myself in that - should have seen the obvious a couple of years ago and switched out. But if you have any sort of pension, personal or company, look carefully and you might have to include yourself in that category.

We really need the education system to reach people about the financial facts of life as well as the biological.

Re: 15,000 sq ft central London site??

I think the likely explanation is that they're stuck with it. Probably on a long lease and the landlord knows what their prospects of re-letting are so wants a large sum for early termination.

Re: commercial landlords

"Zoom really ought to think about what they are in business for."

They probably can't renegotiate the lease.

Re: I think it is the perfect time to start a new company : Gloom

There are several. The problem is they're likely to be in the wrong places. I think there would be good reason to set them up where people live so that those whose circumstances aren't reasonable for working from home - or who just don't like working in isolation - could rent a desk to work from without having to commute. We should stop seeing long commutes as no longer sustainable.

Re: Tastefully decked out with demotivational posters from despair.com …..

I eventually found one such meeting very motivational. It motivated me right out of the last job I had before going freelance.

An outwardly austere salesdroid? Never seen one.

That's rather like BT's idea of delivering text messages over landlines. Straight into reciting the number it came form and than gabbles the message. No idea who it was from, minimal comprehension of the message.

I have lost the ability to walk to people's desk and I find it quite annoying annoy them.

FTFY

"Things that could have been resolved in minutes take hours." And possibly the opposite for your colleagues. If interaction has to be scheduled it means that work also gets its time on the schedule.

I don't usually feel sorry for salesmen but you have to have a little sympathy for Zoom's. If a company bad-mouth's its own product it must be tough hearing all your prospects point that out ot you.

Lock-in to legacy code is a thing. Being locked in by legacy code is another thing entirely

Re: Screaming Alarms Included

They probably still saved money even after paying Old Dog's invoice.

office suite called "Smart Office" (which makes the product difficult to google, as the name is too generic).

Probably SmartWare which is googlable.

For some inscrutable reason Informix bought it. For an even more inscrutable reason they didn't make the database element a front end for the Informix database.

Re: So much fail...

In the event of a fire the only difference between having a hard locked fire exit and one opened by crash bars is whether, in event of a fire, the staff die. The valuable asset gets destroyed anyway.

The original Elite? Fibre-glass monocoque IIRC.

Re: vehicle detectors

"induction loop vehicle detectors for left-turn lanes"

Or right turn lanes in the UK.

The loop for this one used to be situated where the cement mixer is now: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6438468,-1.773666,3a,75y,328.58h,92.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1unTI35lU_eVQU5hVOqt_A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu i.e. past the stop line. It meant that when the lights changed for the straight ahead the leading vehicle for the right turn had to roll forward and then wait for the filter. If that vehicle was driven by a stranger it could take a few changed before they noticed the loop and realised this.

Re: Door Access Readers

With the rule that the emergency key had to be kept locked in a key safe in the security office?

Re: I've been locked out ...

And if it's locked it's not an exit. If it can be locked it's not an emergency exit.

Re: Completely different problem ...

It sounds like a bit of a pantomime...

""excuse me sir, you aren't supposed to be in here""

"Oh yes, I am."

"Oh no, you're not"

...

Re: I've been locked out ...

The security conscious have been known to lock fire exits.

"Had he seen a bump there, on the ramp near the exit? Asking because jumping on those often triggers the garage door."

The other mechanism, of course, is the induction loop. I often wonder how much is needed to trigger those. I've seen that on an exit-only gate and wondered if something like s few flattened cooking oil drums pop riveted together would do it. Throw it through the gate and, for good measure, reverse in so that if the guard looks up at the CCTV he sees a car apparently leaving.

FTX crypto-clown Sam Bankman-Fried couldn't even do house arrest. Now he's in jail

Re: He really can't just shut the fuck up, can he ?

The prosecutors could drop the hint that they'd settle for indefinite detention in a secure hospital.

Electoral Commission had internet-facing server with unpatched vuln

Simple question

Are you siting on data which you would absolutely have to get back if it was leaked?

Well, you can't get it back so the only option is to absolutely not let it leak.

Re: "highly privileged Active Directory accounts by default"

"That'll teach you a thing or two about actual security."

I'm not sure it would and I don't like to contemplate the consequences.

Want to pwn a satellite? Turns out it's surprisingly easy

Re: the larger the satellite ... the more vulnerable it was

"there are numerous international treaties regulating tech"

This argument depends on the assumption that peole who are determined to do something illegal will be put off by providing them with more laws to break. A third of a working lifetime in forensic science tells me they aren't.

The power budget is fixed. If protection takes some of it something else is going to have to be cut. You can't just send up a bigger solar panel.

Alibaba says demand for cloud has dipped – which improved its profits

Reduced demand brings bigger profits? Every cloud has a silver lining.

Microsoft OneDrive a willing and eager 'ransomware double agent'

Re: Relatively easy...

There seems to be a long history of "just" getting users to run executables. All you have to do is email them kittenpic.jpg.exe or invoice.pdf.exe. You might might not do so but others will.

Lawsuit: We've got the stats to prove Twitter ax fell unfairly on older, female engineers

OTOH the difference between those in their 50s & those in their 40s might not be that great. A positive correlation coefficient between probability of lay-off and age might be more convincing although I can see the problems in defining a class of claimant.

Re: A tough sell

"The age discrimination one is kinda flimsy."

For a start it relies on a magic limit. 49-year-olds who were fired might feel miffed at being left out of the claim. It would have been interesting to have seen how the percentages compared in each ten-year group.

Get your staff's consent before you monitor them, tech inquiry warns

Re: Outliers have minimal push.

"we will revert to the 1970s in our technology"

Ah, the good old 1904.

Re: Yeah right...

As per my previous psot: https://www.gov.uk/courts-tribunals/employment-tribunal

Re: "and freed them up to focus on more sophisticated tasks beyond the scope of automation"

And you have to buy the bottle from Amazon.

It depends where you are but in case you're in the UK I'll just leave this here: https://www.gov.uk/courts-tribunals/employment-tribunal

If employers should get employees' consent before monitoring them where does this put HMG in regard to installing monitoring devices on everyone's devices?

GNOME 45 beta: Less buggy, more colorful, and still not your grandma's desktop

Re: ....and what about BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY......

"and, of course, it's a pity that GNOME3 and GNOME4 are both completely unusable"

Given the lack of backward compatibility this is the saving grace,

Larry Ellison a major contributor to Blair Institute vaccine database plan

And people were worried about Bill Gates and vaccines.

X tries to win back advertisers with brand safety promises

Re: What happened next

If they've any sense they'll be demanding cash upfront. That's real cash, not Dogecoin.

Exlets? Exhalations?

Got it: excrement.

Maybe elReg needs a poopemoji icon.

Infosys launches 'sonic identity' – an aural logo to 'reinforce brand purpose'

A good reason to keep speakers muted. If only all marketing cobblers could be dealt with so easily.

Northern Ireland police may have endangered its own officers by posting details online in error

Chain of custody applies to potential court exhibits. This is likely to be clerical staff at Castlereagh or wherever HQ is these days. They may nothing about chain of custody but releasing information without sign-off seems incomprehensible. A sign-off of this is even less comprehensible. Someone might be in line for a posting to Rockall.

It seems incredible that there should be no process for responding to FoI requests that doesn't involve a review of the material released sufficiently careful to trap this.

Also the site which published it should also have known better giving that is personal data. In the circumstances I'd expect that at least there would be a DPA offence in there if not criminal charges given the data subjects.

Boeing abandons plans for crewed Starliner flight in 2023

A perk for Boeing board members

Have at least one member as a passenger on each of the early flights.

4 in 5 Chromebooks sold to US students in Q2 as demand rises

If it was EOL when it was sold it would already be due for replacement when you first open the box unless you have a policy of running kit that's not getting updates.

1. Learning depends on teaching.

2. If the kit is being sold at or near EOL It won't make much difference how it's treated, it will be EOL on that date.