Posts by EarthDog

The death of the sysadmin has been predicted for years – we're not holding our breath

Re: Biased A.I models written by white men

The reason training datasets are biased is that the datasets from the beginning were biased. Only time can fix it. Until then GIGO.

Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office

Why not convert to apartments

Why not convert some of them to convert unused space to apartments? There has been a glut of office space over the years and not enough residential built. rezone to multi use and apartments can be leased out.

Scientists think they may have cracked life support for Martian occupation

Re: May??

the lack of nitrogen has huge implications for agriculture.

Re: How about plants ?

So it's an equipment fault. Personally I've lived and worked at 960 hPa, about 3k meters. I've lived and worked most of my life at over 1800m . Most people could adapt to 3k meters even if they've lived at sea level most of their lives.

Ukraine war blurs lines between cyber-crims and state-sponsored attackers

Let's call them what they are

privateers

Modular finds its Mojo, a Python superset with C-level speed

Re: Static typing in Python

In my experience requirements are also constantly morphing. I've spend time in scientific/academic computing and business computing. In my experience business requirements shift faster than scientific requirements. The people I've met that were doing the Sci. programmer had no real training, exp., or desire to develop software and therefore produced crap.

Apache Superset: A story of insecure default keys, thousands of vulnerable systems, few paying attention

Using what "random number" generator

They all have weaknesses. Best to not use one shipped with any major SW package.

To improve security, consider how the aviation world stopped blaming pilots

Re: Management response

I think he stole that from "The Orange Man"

Re: The Big Difference....

you forgot "after obscene bonuses".

Never play the "blame game"

It's unprofessional and gets you nowhere. I've worked in almost every aspect of software development over the years, including QA. QA should never be used as punishment, instead the attitude should be "let's work together to make better software".

If you find yourself working in a place where blame is matter of course, get out. If you are working in QA and interviewing for a job and they want you to be confrontational, don't take the job. Likewise if you are taking a role anywhere else in development and they imply QA is their police force, don't take the job.

In fact the same is true of almost any work place.

Colorado sends agricultural right to repair bill to governor

They need to take a lesson from MS

Make money certifying and "taxing" people to fix the equipment.

40% of IT security pros say they've been told not to report a data leak

The bosses are always the problem

Always. They cover up, hire monkeys to do window dressing, have no policies, fail to enforce policies, cut corners, etc.

IT depts struggle with skills shortages despite Big Tech layoffs

Twitter shouldn't even be counted

The layoffs there are the result of one meglomanical narcicist and not an attempt by a suit to make more money by mimicing others.

Workers don't want these humanoid robots telling them to be happy

Re: Asimov nailed it

Better yet a robot that fetches and pays for pizza and pints.

Happy Valentine's Day: Here's the final nail in Internet Explorer's coffin

Job security for those of us who know windows registry

The Browser wars

I got caught up in the browser wars of the 90's. I was doing web development at the time. We tried to support IE and other browsers but constant breakage in our applications due to IE constantly introducing incompatibilities caused me to quit browser application development. Never again, chrome seems like a replay of it.

It took a while but I finally got the twitching under control.

The US would sooner see TSMC fabs burn than let China have them

Re: Comparison to OPEC

the article says the opposite

Re: Comparison to OPEC

That's not at all what the article says or 10 years of weapons inspections. There were no WMDs

Re: Isn't that their plan?

Sorry you'll have to queue up. We can get you in after Liechtenstein.

Re: In order to stop another country from destroying you ....

It worked for the Russians and the Soviets.

The nodes have it in the Great DB debate: Reg readers pick graph

Re: Late surge?

After it closed? It sounds like it was rigged.

Re: Choice of database? Luxury (and yoy try telling the youth of today that!)

Changing relationships can be easily handled by a link table either by changing it (not recommended) or adding a new one.

Re: Democracy

I keep saying basically the same think but it doesn't sink in. Programmers are by and large NOT database literate. They are not data literate. I've worked as a Sys. Admin, DBA, SQA, Programmer, team lead, Department Head, Business Analyst etc. I am sick and tired of developers blaming others, esp. the DBA, for their crappy code.

They think their code will do the job better than a database engine developed and optimized by people smarter than most of us over a 50 to 60 year period. Oracle was invented c 1977 before the web, the internet, ethernet, and other tech we are used to today. It has a clunky mainframe feel to it but the core tech. is solid. A smart person will NOT blame the DB before have overwhelming evidence.

Good God man! you've asked people to do actual Science!

British monarchy goes after Twitter, alleges rent not paid for UK base

Re: So, his "genius" is mainly..

Like most AMerican Universities they are de facto owned by corporations

Globalization is over, and it'll cost you, according to TSMC founder

Re: De-globalisation not going far enough

Backyard foundries would be a Great Leap Forwards

Re: De-globalisation not going far enough

WHat's the Sherwood MIlitia up to these days? They just keep going on and on about the 1%

Make Linux safer… or die trying

Re: Men

what happened to just user? "Human" also works. Aliens could be human as well, just not terran.

Re: @AC - Technology & Economics

In German "welt" vs. "umwelt", in English "The wide world" vs. the world as in the planet.

Re: Men

+1 human

US government says Silicon Valley Bank depositors can get their cash on Monday

FDIC only covers 250k of corp. accounts.

Which is ridicoulously low. If you want more than that you need commercial insurance (which doubtless will go up now). ALso any insurance companies on the line to cover other accounts will probably start selling stocks and bonds to cover the expense.

Other limitations may apply.

Great Graph Database Debate: Abandoning the relational model is 'reinventing the wheel'

Re: Riiight

considering that the paper was written in 2023 maybe a year. Seriously, this isn't like coming up with a new power up pack in a video game.

I've said it once and I will say it again

First off +1 to @sudo-su and @Pascal Monett

A big chunk of the problem is most programmers are functionally illiterate when it comes database models. There is is trend to get rid of DBAs. In one case I commented on they got rid of the DBA and replaced them with a programmer on the team. Basically ending up with a programmer with possibly no background and/or interest in data who is actually and embedded DBA and bound to make all the same old mistakes and re-invent the wheel time after time.

Re: "there usually isn't any money available for a DBA"

DBs are complex because the things they model are complex. E.g. human relationships.

Atlassian to dump 500 – by email – in the name of 'rebalancing'

5 percent

Just like everyone else it seems +/- 1 percent

https://www.fastcompany.com/90843280/why-tech-companies-lay-off-6-percent-of-employees

The Great Graph Debate: Revolutionary concept in databases or niche curiosity?

Re: well-architected relational databases

+1 most programmers I've known are functionally illiterate at RDMS, or any DB model in fact.

Re: Relational often gets the blame for SQL's shortcomings

Too many people don't know the difference between a relational database and a scripting language interface to a database API. *cough* NoSQL *cough*

Marketing

Basically we have Graph Databases due to marketing. "Hey look at are new shiney shiney graph databases! Pay no mind to what the hot new shiney shiney graph databases were in the 70s".

Codd saw the problems with graph and hierarchical databases and defined the Relational Model that solved those problems and more. He also created the Mathematics to back it up.

I've worked with both Graph and (at least quasi) Relational Database models. Relational (at least quasi) wins hands down. But hey, if you want to waste your money on a Graph Database where things take longer to build than they should and they often require constant maintenance, then I'm happy to take your coin.

A Graph DB Model is a subset of a Relational DB Model because a graph is a subset of a relation.

Here's what I see graph DB are liked by those who:

1) Don't know databases

2) Don't understand graph DBs

and/or

3) Don't understand the relational model. Related: that SQL is a scripting interface to a DB API and NOT a way of modeling data.

Yes I sound like a cranky old codger. In fact I am a cranky old codger who is tired of seeing the same mistakes made over and over. Now get off of my lawn!

WFH? Google Cloud's offices like a 'ghost town' before new policy

Re: You cannot eat your cake and have it.

with fewer people fewer meetings, more exclusive use of conference rooms.

Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot

Re: It will write a positive poem about Trump

I wouldn't doubt he would find a way to leave behind some sort of "poison pill" we all have to deal after he goes.

Re: Meaning of "woke"

see also enlightened

Re: Anti-woke chatbot?

Adderal will do that. Look at how much he's aged in the last year or so.

Backup tech felt the need – the need for speed. And pastries and Tomb Raider

Re: Most tasks can be condensed onto 1 page of A4

and possibly puts the procedure in context and what to do if something starts to go wrong. E.g. faced with a problem you basic Windows user will want to warm start the machine. This could be a bad thing. Instead you get a warning "DO NOT REBOOT MACHINE!" a trouble shooting procedure to follow and who to call if said troubleshooting fails.

Re: Most tasks can be condensed onto 1 page of A4

you're confusing a check list with a procedure.

Ericsson pulls plug on 8,500 workers

Re: Elon leads the way

How good you are does not make a difference. I saw people with years of experince, solid code, and their names on several patents get thrown away.

Titanic mass grave site to be pillaged for NFTs

What's the big deal?

Grave robbing is a grand old tradition Amongst Americans and Europeans. Ask King Tut

Conversational AI tells us what we want to hear – a fib that the Web is reliable and friendly

Re: Google is the new Microsoft? Quelle surprise...

Part of their play was hiring away talent from potential competitors. the basically gave the talent toy projects to play with to keep them happy while putting them under long term contracts to keep them away from competitors or starting up a company which might compete.

Southwest promotes internal IT executive to CIO in wake of that Christmas meltdown

Re: It is not that easy

it's a basic principle in Operations Research to never fill your queue over 75% . this is true not only in business capacity but in networking e.g. ethernet. But of course a network is a network.