Posts by Doctor Syntax

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Re: Dirt

Or they hated it so much they didn't want another. In fact i have a cheap keyboard like that which is years old - I got it to set up stuff which would mostly run headless so it's had hardly any use.

Re: Ah, the 80's...

An over-seas allowance? I'd have appreciated that. Instead I was up against the Civil Service/HMG mentality which says "We rate people who are qualified for their jobs by their education well below those who aren't, promotion comes with responsibility measured by direct reports, not by what the actual job is, and if we want a national pay policy the easiest place to start is with the public sector."

Re: Ah, the 80's...

Jake may well have been free-lance.

Re: Ah, the 80's...

There were a few occasions where I had to go to places where i needed an armed escort, either RUC or Army. At at least one later employer I looked back and wondered what my current HR would have thought of doing that without a team-building exercise first.

Re: "......the mine had closed."

It'll be intersting to see how it affects the fibre.

Re: Dirt

You really should have rised it as an H&S issue.

Re: Dirt

"I'll chuck it in the bin without a second thought"

And replace it with the cheapest you can find because it's not going to last long anyway.

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

If they didn't budgie fast enough the response times would be something dreadful.

Re: Nasty IT places

Scene of crime visits could be nasty and some of the nasty bits got brought into the lab. A colleague had a sofa brought in; it stood around for weeks for some reason and had to be given a wide berth - the little buggers can jump. In fact fleas were a (fortunately infrequent) occupational hazard. But the nastiest job was removing bits of a bomber who'd scored an own goal from bits of his clothing so the latter could be shown to his family for identification.

Re: Dickensian

Reprographics offices have their own black dust. I learned to take a replacement floppy drive if I thought I might have to reinstall anything. The days when you could install things from floppies...

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

At a guess - the maximum cable length for the terminal wasn't enough to reach from the surface and nobody thought to look into something carrier based and install modems.

Europe wants easy default browser selection screens. Mozilla is already sounding the alarm on dirty tricks

Choice screens are the least of the problems. Much worse is the growing habit of web sites checking the browser and refusing to play if it isn't one of their favoured ones - which is increasingly likely to be Chromium based.

Amazon 'protects' against junk AI e-books by limiting author-bots to three a day

Re: I'm happy

It would take a controlled experiment to find out but it may well be hurting their profits already. They may be making money now but it's quite possible they could make more by letting customers find wht they're looking for.

Re: "that limit protects its customers"

One book every three days would be too much.

Re: in order to help protect against abuse, we are lowering the volume limits

Amazon is going to show you what *they* want you to see and buy,

They may succeed with the first but fail with the second. Perhaps they could try an A/B test with an alternative search engine that does as it's asked to find out how much trade they're turning away.

Airport chaos as eGates down for the count across UK

Re: Current problems

Far from it. They're a perfect fit. even better than Rudderless.

Re: Current problems

It was a Labour Home Sec who declared it unfit for purpose. I don't know why. It's been super-efficient at house-training its ministers and that seems to be its prime purpose.

Nowadays they'd be on a subscription so they'd be Billed Gates.

UK-US data deal could hinge on fate of legal challenges to EU arrangement

Re: "permit the flow of personal data [..] without the need for further safeguards"

"Could someone please remind me why personal information needs to change continent ?"

Monetisation

If you're cautious about using ML and bots at work, that's not a bad idea

Re: tendency to generate false information – a phenomenon known as "hallucination."

They also know which is which. The AI knows nothing.

Re: "Who's responsible for the hallucinations?"

"Go get a lawyer to do the job."

We've already had the case of a lwyer using an AI to write his documents. It didn't go well because of hallucinations.

Menacing marketeers fined by ICO for 1.9M cold calls

"it's probably best just not to answer the call"

No, siita has the right idea. Get them to hang on. While they're doing that they're not bothering anyone else so you can put it down as a public service on your part, and it's wasting their time. Given how few such calls we get my belief is that there are lists circulating of numbers it's best not to ring.

Re: Spam calls

I keep saying this but:

The telco has records of at least who it took the call from. What's needed is a number, say 1476, to ring immediately after hanging up to report the spam. The telco records the number and with a bit of statistical checking to see if the source is being reported enough times it credits the reporters' accounts with a fee for their troubles (at least double for numbers on TPS), adds a fee for its own troubles and bills whoever sent it the call. If it's another telco then they can add their own fee and pass the bill back to the source until it either reaches the caller's account or a telco which has not yet learned to keep records. This will make it unduly expensive either for callers or for telcos who are prepared to handle the calls carelessly. One way or another it would kill the whole business stone dead.

In practice it probably wouldn't need to be implemented. It would put telcos to considerable upfront costs to set up the system. Once legislators or regulators started talking seriously about implementing it I think the industry would quickly discover other, effective ways of stopping such calls, ways which up to now haven't been practical.

Re: Spam calls

"although I never answer calls from numbers I don't recognise"

What you should do is answer ask them to hold on - you need to look something up to answer their question, have to go to answer the door, whatever - and then put the phone aside for 10 minutes. AFAICS that gets your number on an even more valuable list, the list of numbers it's best not to call. It certainly works for me as we get very few.

Re: Sweet FA for those of us harassed

Citation needed

Mastodon makes a major move amid Musk's multiple messes

The word you're looking for might be "monetised".

"One way to understand Mastodon is to consider each instance as an email server that can talk to other email servers!

Like Usenet?

Nothing new under the sun.

BOFH: A security issue, you say? Activate code tangerine

Re: Wonderful episode once again!

What? You're saying BOFH isn't real life?

Now IBM sued for age discrim by its own HR veterans

"Fines aren't enough. Actual jail time for these liars might actually change things."

An award of substantial damages against the actual executive from an individual who's been laid off might be even better. At least for the first claimant and the next few until the exec's been bankrupted.

Re: HR...

"Of course she has the box."

Even better might be the written instruction to destroy it.

Re: HR...

"One just can't help feel some Schadenfreude."

Yes, but whose discomfort are we celebrating here? HR know where the bodies are buried. They're the ones who really need to be kept onside.

Data breach reveals distressing info: People who order pineapple on pizza

Re: I don't understand...

Remember, functional requirements are always important. I usually buy pizzas with pineapple as that's the best way to ensure there's no garlic which SWMBO doesn't like.

Neuralink's looking for participants willing to be part of human trials

If self-experimentation was good enough for Neil Noakes it should be good enough for Elon Musk.

Robocall scammers sentenced in US after netting $1.2M via India-based call centers

"managed to convince her to give them her O2 account details"

Always ask them to prove who they are by telling you prt of the account details.

UK Online Safety Bill to become law – and encryption busting clause is still there

Coming next: a law to make pi equal to 3.

Re: Don't Understand......

And it's the recipient's key that's needed to decrypt PGP. That assumes the recipient has a key. Perhaps I'll create a key pair, thow away the private key and use the public one to encrypt a message for my MP.

Re: The biggest surprise...

But they didn't hide it.

"But the penny is still falling it seems."

Not isn't. It's been snapped up by an airborne pig.

Re: Blighty seems determined to cut itself off from the rest of the world

Given that MPs and ministers are quite apt to blab about Whatsapp or whatever messages they probably think that security is just a myth.

Re: Why?

"Such a notice could be served on Apple, who demonstrated such technology two years ago, and by extension can be served on everyone else, because Apple have proved it is technically feasible."

Have they? Having a piece of software that reads files and gives some answers falls short of technical feasibility. How many of those answers are false positives and how many are false negatives? What are the allowable percentages? If the allowable percentages of false positives is greater than zero what redress has an innocent user who is hit with a false positive and against whom, the service provider or OFCOM?

As TikTok surveils staff's office hours, research indicates WFH is good for planet

"renewables penetration for office buildings"

Does this mean defenestrated managers are renewables?

GitHub Copilot, Amazon Code Whisperer sometimes emit other people's API keys

It's just pure chance. Nothing at all to be worried about.

Unity talks of price cap and fees for only largest games developers

"Riccitiello said Unity could have handled the communication better"

Blaming the messanging, not the message.

'Small monthly payment' only thing that stands between X and bot chaos, says Musk

Re: But... he's right

"worst case is twitter fails"

You should choose your words more carefully.

"a subscription model makes sense"

It does if you've got a monopoly and something worth paying for - ar at least user lock-in.

"So much for rational markets."

Rational markets need rational participants.

Venture capital firm makes 'unsolicited' bid for MariaDB buyout

Is this going to mean another fork?

If anyone finds an $80M F-35 stealth fighter, please call the Pentagon

"people could have spotted an errant F-35 in their neighbourhood but not thought to mention it until asked."

If you live in an area where military send low-level training flights you wouldn't realise it was errant until asked.

Britcoin or Britcon? Bank of England grilled on Digital Pound privacy concerns

This Danny Kruger shows dangerous signs of thinking. If he doesn't respond to a meeting with the Chief Whip somebody might be having a word with his constituency party about replacing him at the next election.

Having read the room, Unity goes back to drawing board on runtime fee policy

So with hindsight he knows what he did wrong. Hindsight is what you rely on when you don't use foresight.