Posts by Doctor Syntax

Google advises Android users to be careful of Microsoft Teams if they want to call 911

Re: And when we are all FTTP?

And it's only when you need it that you discover age has reduced battery life to 6 seconds.

Re: Yes, it’s an annoyance

There are two answers to that.

First there's no excuse for not doing things properly. If you want to do things at large scale do them properly and if you can't scale doing them properly at scale then admit that to yourself and work at a scale you can manage.

The second is that Google also makes a big noise about its AI abilities. If they're that good then they can use their AI on sorting the issues. If they're not that good then stop the empty bragging.

One of the other things that Google need to investigate is to why the issue has to become a big issue on social media days after the it was filed with them before they respond by asking for a bug report. Should social media really be the only working method for reporting and the triage for a serious failure?

More than half of UK workers would consider jumping ship if a hybrid work option were withdrawn by their company

Re: Love being at home, hate working from home

"It breaks my heart to tell them I can't play with them"

But you can't because you have to get on your bike & cycle into work. When I worked in central London it was about an hour and a half each way on a good day so I didn't see much of my children. We weren't living like that for more than a few years but I think something got lost during that time that could never be got back.

The two might not be incompatible. Those who can't teach or manage become OFSTED inspectors.

One of the factors that can affect commute is the possibility of different members of the household having to commute to widely separate locations. There might be no good location where everyone can get a short journey to work whatever the house prices. But, yes, with successive Chancellors following Gordon Brown and ignoring house prices as part of their preferred measure of inflation the cheap money they've bribed electors with has force house prices up and up so it's going to force unsustainably long commutes as a consequence.

Think more local than that. Think walking distance. Here in the old textile area of the Pennines (sub-rural rather than suburban) the mills were built in the valleys (water power initially) and housing built around them. That housing represents the heritage that the areas are so proud of. OTOH the houses weren't built with car parking in mind; I don't know how anyone who lives in them is going to cope with charging EVs but without the mills on the doorstep the places to which they commute are so diverse that public transport is s non-starter.* There's such a location near me, cars parked nose to tail on both sides of the road overnight but with a large empty mill a few hundred yards away. That's scheduled to be used for more houses. It could well be re-purposed or replaced by some form of small workspaces. By the time that planners actually see the non-sustainability of what they've created they'll end up looking for greenfield sites for workplaces and there aren't many of those left in Pennine valleys.

*My last client before I retired was about 40 - 45 minutes away by car; I worked out the public transport timing: 2h 35 minutes and that assumed the there would be no motorway holdups to wipe out a 4 minute gap for transfer between buses and would still have been 10 minutes late for anyone needing to be at work promptly at 9 am.

"a few property developers looking at the workspace solutions ... in more suburban areas so as to mean there is no commute"

I think this should be the future. There would have been a good many more suitable sites for this if the planners hadn't spent years scheduling ex-industrial premises as brownfield sites to be built on as housing. These would have been the sites big enough to build such places even if the existing premises couldn't be converted. Once they've been split up into multiple house plots it would be a nightmare putting them bag into bigger units.

It was like that in the Civil Service for ministerial visits. Real work stopped so that demonstration material could be set up.

"talent is starting to leave because of it."

So management will stay on?

Re: Losing

It is indeed. But any government that tried raising taxes that way would discover it to be a vote-loser.

Re: Losing

"praying someone is not going to heat up their smoked fish before you"

The way round this is being the one who heats up the smoked fish.

"I have always felt that these long commutes are generally self inflicted though."

True, but after a while you get tired of living under Waterloo Bridge so you can be close to the office.

One of the things that will be a necessary part of accepting Covid as here to stay will be accepting new approaches to work that don't involve commuting by crowded public transport into crowded offices. Thinking about what to do with that massive amount of city centre property will be another.

People who really want to work in the office are those with a short, easy commute. The bigger the city where work is located the small the percentage will be.

Actual metal being welded in support of the UK's first orbital 'launch platform'

Re: Testing is good, but...

"Somewhere that it's expensive to get people and kit to and there are no local welding companies"

They're going to have to get people, kit and a welding company to the launch site before they go operational. But what's the planning situation regarding launch sites atm?

As Microsoft has proved so often there's absolutely no problem with anyone having a monopoly or near monopoly on something.

Resistance is ... cheap? Cloudflare, Mandiant, and pals form incident response 'n' cyber insurance borg

In order to assess the risk they'd need to know something about how the businesses are run. For ordinary business premises they should at least have some knowledge of differences of crime rates between localities, business types likely to suffer from fraud and premises more or less likely to go up in smoke. I doubt they have such meaningful statistics on infosec yet without taking a closer look at what they're covering.

"it seems insurers are mostly raising prices and looking for ways to stop paying out so much to attack victims"

The obvious way - obvious to most of us - to pay less would be to insist on advise customers about adopting better security. Is suppose that's not in the insurers' skill set for stopping payouts.

OK, boomer? Gen-X-ers, elder millennials most likely to name their cars, says DVLA

DVLA were having problems keeping up with renewals of driving licences. Have they now caught up and have time on their hands for this nonsense? Or was this given to somebody to stop them getting in the way of those who were doing the work?

Academics horrified that administration of Turing student exchange scheme outsourced to Capita

Re: How do they do it?

"How do companies like Capita time and again fail to deliver on government contracts yet get more of them?"

Because there are so few of them big enough to take on these sort of contracts that they can all pitch themselves as being no worse than the rest.

PC market pulls past peak pandemic demand, and IDC says it will keep growing

Are they sure the only reason the PC market seems to be cooling is the bottleneck in components?

Re: Well, this confirms it ...

"but tablets are turgid"

And weren't we told that nobody needed a new PC because they (or at least non-gamers) could now do what they needed on a tablet and cloud?

Don't panic about cyber insurers pulling up the drawbridge, says Lloyd's

"So the LMA said, anyway."

Why does the name "Rice-Davies" suddenly occur to me?

Oz Feds reveal distribution model behind backdoored 'An0m' chat app spread by crims

I can imagine the feelings of those who set the whole thing up having the details of their work being blown like that unless, of course, it's as distraction from a successor.

Meg Whitman – former HP and eBay CEO – nominated as US ambassador to Kenya

When I read the headline I wondered what Kenya had done to upset the US.

"it houses almost half a million refugees, is a centre for illicit drug production, and imports broadcasting equipment, video displays, and computers from China"

That explains it.

Big Tech's private networks and protocols threaten the 'net, say internet registries

Re: Splinternet

I'm not even sure that American and academic idealism survives now.

2033 is doomsday for 2G and 3G in the UK

Re: 4G, 5G I'll take fibre

This was installed some time before 1970. AFAICS it's just buried. There's no sign of a duct where it emerges through the foundations.

The estate where my daughter lived is a similar age. I don't think they're ducted either. Like us they have a good FTTC service.

I'm the only house round here not to have overhead cables strung (by neighbour across the road had a phone burnt out by EMP in a thunderstorm) & I'd like to keep it that way. On the daughter's estate all the houses have phone & electricity supplies underground. I'm not sure what the planners would say if that were to be changed.

Re: 4G, 5G I'll take fibre

Somebody made similar enquiries here a good while ago. I told him it follows the same route as the water and sewer underground: under the hedge, under the orchard, under the greenhouse which has a concrete base, under the concrete drive, under the concrete laid paving, through the concrete foundations and into a crawl space under a concrete floor. It's why I'm not keen on FTTP seeing as FTTC is Quite Good Enough. He left muttering to himself.

Not enough votes unless they're marginal constituencies.

Switching off 2G and 3G will enable operators to transition fully to more energy efficient and high capacity networks finally force customers with near-indestructible old phones onto a regular and profitable upgrade cycle.

UK and USA seek new world order for cross-border data sharing and privacy

If you run a UK business that depends on sharing PII with the EU - tough.

Flash? Nu-uh. Windows 11 users complain of slow NVMe SSD performance

Re: From Startup Mode to "Ultracompetitive Mode"

Now that everyone's a beta tester they can't afford to make all that fuss over them.

Microsoft signs settlement with US Justice Dept over 'immigration-related discrimination' claims

Much as it annoys me to support MS in anything later than FORTRAN for CP/M it seems to me that, given the government policy at the time this would have been a reasonable defensive strategy.

Virgin Media fined £50,000 after spamming 451,000 who didn't want marketing emails

Re: Wow!

I think the rate for marketing bumf - phone or email - should be £1 as a fee paid/credited to each recipient or £2 for opted out/TPS. Enough to make it financially infeasible. Any fines to go on top of that.

Microsoft gives Notepad a minimalist makeover to match Windows 11 style

Re: Real Ctrl-Z freaks

Those were the days.... when reading a file meant you had to actually know how things worked. getting out of the drawer in the filing cabinet.

Re: FFS. How slapdash can Microsoft get? It's Notepad one of the simplest Apps ever written.

If it's a back-lit screen the back-light will be working just as hard but more of it gets blotted out.

NASA installs a new and improved algorithm to better track near-Earth asteroids

Re: software used to protect humanity

If it's wrong debugging is the least of your problems.

Intel updates mysterious 'software-defined silicon' code in the Linux kernel

If this is against future H/W how can it be satisfactorily tested now? If they need it for internal development purposes then they can build their own kernel with it in.

It's primed and full of fuel, the James Webb Space Telescope is ready to be packed up prior to launch

Re: New! Improved! oxidiser!

A lovely description of a monopropellant: "a molecule with one reducing (fuel) end and one oxidizing end, separated by a pair of firmly crossed fingers,"

Re: I am feeling two conflicting emotions

Please stand right over there. No, further that that. Right back some more.

Thought NHS Digital's wind-down meant it would stop writing cheques? Silly you. It's gone on an IT buying spree

Re: IT helps administrate treatments

I might have excused her without the absolutely and only one of either needs or should. As the quote stands, however, it seems that her focus is in the administering rather than the medicine. Admittedly administration is her role but St Edward's Hospital looms rather large.

Even worse, lurking in the background is the suspicion that "digital" isn't about administration but about data fetishism or maybe about bypassing those medics with on-line self-service diagnosis.

"Digital needs to be – should be – absolutely at the heart of everything we do in the NHS,"

That's put me right. I was thinking medicine needs to be - should be - absolutely at the heart of everything they do in the NHS. You learn something new every day.

Tech Bro CEO lays off 900 people in Zoom call and makes himself the victim

Re: staying in contracting from now on.

"You still have to deal with wankers in management, what's the advantage?"

Not to anything like the same extent. If you're freelance and doing it right you'll be managing company finances to have a reserve. It's much harder to build up a FY fund as a permie - I know, I've been there. That reserve means that if need be you can walk bring the future forward a little quicker.

Re: Get ready for the permies to attack you though.

Could you explain that comment a little further. I assume from it that you're not freelance. In that case why do you stay on as a permanent employee instead of going freelance yourself?

Is there actually some difference between the two ways of working which means you're not able to do so? If so might that not account for the difference between rates?

And when you were looking at the difference did you take into account that the amount in your pay packet is net of employee and employer taxes whilst those remain to be paid from the freelancer's fee?

This House believes: A unified, agnostic software environment can be achieved

"How long will we keep reinventing software wheels?"

That's an easy one. As long as there's good money to be made repackaging old stuff by wrapping it in new jargon.

The Omicron dilemma: Google goes first on delaying office work

Re: On-again-off-again

"..., expectant mothers etc.

Many people in those groups can now be vaccinated."

The message to expectant mothers seems to be that they can and should get vaccinated. That keeps getting reinforced from mothers who put it off because they were pregnant got infected and came out of their induced coma to find they'd had a caesarean some time ago and are only now being reunited with their child. No such reports from those who didn't survive of course.

I suppose working in your home office is a bit like being in business in your own right in that you can make choices like that. Not in as many things but in some. If you prefer more expensive coffee then you can use some of the money you saved on commuting to buy it.

Personally, I'll keep to tea. Coffee's far too complicated with pods, flat whites & goodness knows what else.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

OK, tell me when and where the next one's coming from.

Would you prefer a different idiom such as "out of the blue"?

The dark equation of harm versus good means blockchain’s had its day

Re: Something will come of it one day

Answer: that it will have a use.