Posts by EarthDog

So the data centre's 'getting a little hot' – at 57°C, that's quite the understatement

Re: That reminds me...

defenestration?

US boffins: We're close to fusion ignition in the lab – as seen in stars and thermonuclear weapons

Re: Self sustaining

"Operation invade south east asia so they immediately roll over and become Capitalist and return the French their colonies"

So.

You have made 9 volt batteries.

Re: "a key aim of the NIF is researching the design and maintenance of thermonuclear weapons"

More about a massive obsession with over kill. As in "Massive overkill is almost enough". See also Curtis Lemay.

Re: I guessing ...

I think that was in the 1960's

Good news: There's a slightly increased chance of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth. Bad news: It's still really slight

I doubt it. But WiIlly Nelson is certain to be there.

Google: Linux kernel and its toolchains are underinvested by at least 100 engineers

Re: Fool

your statement strikes at the heart of Economics. It creates externalized costs, in other words freeloading which causes most Economic models to fail as it creates an unmeasurable part of the economy. You can't do policy with those models.

It also suppresses wages. I don't care if you are donating part of your wages. But if in the process you you suppress mine I do mind.

On this most auspicious of days, we ask: How many sysadmins does it take to change a lightbulb?

fair question actually

NoSQL Couchbase launches schema-like features to take on the transactional databases of the relational world

We support SQL transactions

Said the NoSQL database vendor.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

Re: As a Californian, all I can sat is "Who cares?".

I hear TX is a libertarians paradise.You might move there. No earthquakes either...

What is your greatest weakness? The definitive list of the many kinds of interviewer you will meet in Hell

Re: That Meme

Keep them around for a reduction in head count.

Former ad exec sticks Steve Jobs' 1973 job application in a scanner for physical-versus-digital NFT auction

the perception of doing something is of higher value that that of actually doing something. This comment is a perfect example.

You're not imagining it. Amazon and AWS want to hire all your friends, enemies, and everyone in between

Re: "talent Hoover."

Never let morals get in the way of a p3n1s measuring contest (in reference to billionaires in space...)

Report: 83% of UK software engineers suffer burnout, COVID-19 made it worse

Aleays remember

agile is an adjective

Re: Empty coffer

though in the US I was paying 25% of my monthly take home pay for health insurance.

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Re: Or.

Frozen hash browns are filth. If you want potatoes slice and fry the evening before with w/ onions, black pepper, and then salt to taste. Cook to desired crispness. Let the flavors meld over night then heat and serve in the morning. The only sauce they need is the egg yolk.

Seems incompleted

Needs a chopped up serrano pepper to sprinkle over egg and potato product.

IBM email fiasco complicates sales deals, is worse than biz is letting on – sources

Re: Unbelievable

18 m0nths of meetings you mean

Unable to schedule meetings

Productivity spikes

Big Blue's big email blues signal terminal decline – unless it learns to migrate itself

Re: not an IT company any more

Part of the goal is to keep researchers out of the hands of competition. That's it. Keep your competitors from innovating. MS often does this as well. There is less risk with the status quo than with introducing destabilizing new products. Assuming those projects take hold. Pay people well, put them under restrictive contracts, and let them tinker with pet projects and they will stay, effectively rendering their talents as useless.

This always-on culture we're in is awful. How do we stop it? Oh, sorry, hold on – just had another notification

Re: Not office hours? No contact

I wouldn't worry too much about axe wielding. It's just a spreadsheet game, "we need to eliminate 200 programmers to meet our goals", so the then grab 200 of the highest paid people and send them packing. Regardless of performance, how many patents they have thier names on, performance rating etc. I saw it happen at HP.

Once your done w/ the extra task send our an email saying, the effect, "I worked late so I'll be in late tomorrow. That way everyone, inc. boss' boss, knows you are a hero and deserve well earned rest.

Kubernetes a black hole of unpredictable spend, according to new report

WHo has time to optimize? The name of the game is to slap as many features together as possible as fast as possible and ship it!

Congestion or a Christmas cock-up? A Register reader throws himself under the bus

Not my code

Problem: crappy code

Programmer's solution: throw DBs and DBAs under the bus.

If a kiosk borks when nobody is using it, can it be said to have borked at all?

Never forget

POS also stands for Piece of $h1t

Surprise! Developers' days ruined by interruptions and meetings, GitHub finds

2 days a week free of meetings

That was my goal when I was leading a department, and when I moved over to other roles at other companies I fought for the same thing. I usually tried to get Tue. and Th. meeting free. Most of the time I could get it. I think it worked well.

That Salesforce outage: Global DNS downfall started by one engineer trying a quick fix

Why was EBF used in the first place?

There is nothing to indicate that there was an actual emergency. Someone wanted to cut corners to speed things up and someone, presumably a manager, decided EBF was appropriate sans an emergency. Several people are at fault here.

Google will make you use two-step verification to login

Re: Are these people real?

The irony is that anytime they require upper case, lower case, number, special character etc., they are actually restricting the keyspace making it easier to crack.

Perl changes dev's permaban for 'unacceptable' behaviour to a year-long lockout after community response

don't forget Jewsare not the only Semites

State of Maine lays off 15 independent consultants on $13k a month amid efforts to implement troubled Workday system

Re: "...the State's failure to provide clear direction to Workday..."

Here are your specs:

1) replicate working features

2) rip out unused or poorly function feature

3) add a list of new features.

You basically have a template or prototype to start with. You just have to ask the users what works and what doesn't. Ignore manglement.

Don't cross the team tasked with policing the surfing habits of California's teens

Re: Free school meals

Why not make all lunches free?

Atheists appeal to higher power for intercession over alleged sins against privacy

Re: The AAI and IAA should get some arbitration from the

I can hear much screaming involved

Turns out humans are leading AI systems astray because we can't agree on labeling

No one mentioned it but how are idioms handled? They are probably the hardest things to translate.

Re: And of course people are bloody minded ...

And pollute a huge number of data streams

GIGO

Garbage In Garbage Out. A saying as old as computing. When I was spending a large amount of time merging data from other sources into the databases of a company I was working for I made sure my juniors and the SMEs spent a bit of effort vetting those data. All our data had to be defensible in court. It is the cavalier attitude to data and assumption all data are perfect which caused to avoid those areas. There are no standards of quality though they wouldn't be hard to to develop.

Re: @TDog - Google Captcha

it was perfectly coherent.

No, it has to be the companies.

Programmers aren't professionals so there is no license to pull. Unlike engineers, doctors, nurses, etc. As such they have no liability. But the companies do.

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

Re: Basics

Why amounted to adapting to new information as it became available, making things up as you go along, ruthless testing, focused on doing one job well, attracting the best people, and being results focused. You know, being agile. Not "Agile", that's a product, but "agile" which is a paradigm.

SAP exec reminds the world that Microsoft is a customer

Re: A useful turn of phrase

And fire fighters always look good on paper. Ignore the fact they started most of the fires themselves through incompetence. Meanwhile, the competent manager is overlooked because "they don't do anything". Except for professionally and competently manage teams, projects, and departments.

I hear they are now the SCP foundation.

Watch it go: World's smallest self-folding origami bird that reminds us we were promised nanobots at some point

Re: could have some practical allications sooner, rather than later

there may be some heat disappation problems associated with that.

PayPal says developer productivity jumped 30% during the COVID-19 plague

Re: Meetings

SO many times I find that I was in the back of the room for 2 hours using my laptop only shifting away when I heard something said about something I was marginally involved with. As I was in a meeting I cold go on DND so my chat was turned off. I actually got quite a bit done

There may be not one but two new air leaks in International Space Station: Russian boss tells us not to panic

How do I know there even is a leak

Russian space stations do not leak!

Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party

Re: Locales and function names

It's not that hard to set up a server on an isolated network localized to Cinese with an NTP server designed to convince it it is on Beijing time. Or given a little cash obtain licenses through unconventional means. That's what black budgets are for, after all.

We don't need maintenance this often, surely? Pull it. Oh dear, the system's down

Re: An ex employer did that too.

Management is more about egos than anything else. Screw doing it right, do it my way because I can order you to do it. In the words of a famous TV series; "I used to work in a shoe factory, now I'm in charge. To the workers of the world."

Re: An ex employer did that too.

Good Lord. Working for 3 narcissists at the same time.

Oh sure, we'll just make a tiny little change in every source file without letting anyone know. What could go wrong?

Re: Ratelimiting

sounds like a real bastard

Cambridge student rebuilds Polish Enigma-code-breaking box that paved the way for Turing ... and Victory!

Re: Cambridge

apparently close to 50 percent of the voters didn't see the episode.

The reason they succeeded

Is that the Brits and US started out with a good pole position.

Re: Cambridge

Bah! Cambridge is a dump.