Posts by bombastic bob

Biden expands Chinese tech and military blocklist to 59 companies

Re: Mr. Biden, Tear Down This Wall !

breath of stale air

and deserves a "slow clap" for having done something right

Supreme Court narrows Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: Misusing access not quite the same as breaking in

knee-jerk legislation, painting too broad of a brush, out of cluelessness, to the point of unconstitutional "umbrella" laws that empower DA's to abuse them for malicious or even vexatious prosecutions...

That sounds like "Con-Grab" CONGRESS members alright...

(What's REALLY fun is that the 3 most recent Supreme Court members sided with the Liberals on this one, and Barrett wrote the majority opinion)

Google's diversity strat lead who said Jews have 'insatiable appetite for war' is no longer diversity strat lead

Re: But but

"more diverse" really only matters if you're being sued for discrimination [which Google is, last I checked]

What you REALLY want is a work force that GETS WORK DONE. But hiring practices need to NOT discriminate on factors NOT related to getting work done. So rock, meet hard place.

Re: The problem isn't whether he still has those views

The real problem was saying he "still despised" homosexuality in 2007

there IS a difference between disliking a behavior, a sub-culture, or similar, AND YET ensuring that someone is never discriminated for it. If he can guarantee that homosexuals are not discriminated against in hiring, firing, promotions, and so on [including his behavior towards people], what's the problem? "Thought police" goes WAY too far...

Now, if he's a card carrying member of the Westboro Baptist Church, or has made a LOT of online noise that suggest a pattern of pejorative or defamatory things against homosexuals, then yeah, THAT would be a problem...

I happen to REALLY dislike smoking. It doesn't mean I can't work with smokers, nor respect their basic rights [even if being near them after they've been smoking gives me a HORRIBLE sinus headache]. I see it as the same kind of thing, i.e. "I dislike what you do and it causes me distress but I'll respect you anyway". Policing my thoughts over this matter, because I do not embrace it and avoid smoke whenever I'm near it, would be a violation of MY rights.

your description of 'cancel culture' needs to include: "no forgiveness, and no opportunity for redemption" for these 'cancel culture' people are NOT interested in improving human behavior, they are interested in executing the kinds of shunning power they had when they were in high school (i.e. "the jocks" and "the queen B's court" will NOT allow YOU to be POPULAR, and so on).

however you would normally expect that someone with the term "diversity" in the job description wouldn't have ever expressed any anti-[fill in the group] attitudes. As such, the discovery of ANY kinds of prejudicial attitudes raises questions about the integrity in bringing about any kind of 'fairness' from that job position.

Tech scammer who fooled Cisco, Microsoft and Lenovo out of millions jailed for more than seven years

And, in a recent BOFH

I was reminded of a recent BOFH when I read this article...

Tiananmen Square Tank Man vanishes from Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo, other search engines – even in America

Re: Call me paranoid....

occam's razor. you may have hit this one directly on the head

Re: What's in a phrase?

unfortunately, to the intellectual lazy people who all too often prefer wikipedia and search engines to libraries and dead-tree manuals, "disappearing" something on Teh Intarwebs is an effective censorship and revisionist history trick.

But if we're lucky, there will still be a proper card catalog at a nearby library where we can actually look things up "the old fashioned way".

(I suspect that most of us these days use the library more as a "last resort" though...)

Flying dildo poses a slap in the face for serious political debate

I did a whois on that

seems to be an ISP or something. I originally guessed 'domain squatter'

Re: Misuse of Drone! What kind of Load?

he should've used a balloon - er, balloon-like... oh nevermind

From the article: filmed in portrait - the real crime

And, TRULY, a "dick move" - to film a, uh, moving dick, in PORTRAIT aspect

(these "4 inchers" who see everything through a 4 inch screen in portrait mode need to rotate their cameras 90 degrees so they can view the world properly, with BOTH EYES, instead of looking like they're peeking through a door gap or a keyhole...)

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

Re: Get em while they’re young

its something we have to do in a fast changing landscape and at our own expense usually.

Q: What were you doing during the time gap between assignments?

A: improving my skills and re-familiarizing myself with the cutting edge of technology in my field

(Turning the possible disadvantage into an advantage - and better than saying "video games, IRC, and social media")

Re: The ones that really bother me. . ..

From the article: Delete the word “feel”

this can NOT be overstated nor overemphasized!!!

Recruiters who are "feelies" should probably be bypassed or avoided entirely.

Seriously, "What Color is your Parachute" [a book about job hunting], as I recall, talks about ways of getting your CV/resume past the eyes of HR and recruiters, and onto the desk of the hiring manager, things like addressing the envelope "attn: hiring manager", and finding out the manager's actual name.

But using CV authoring tricks to get HR droids and recruiters to "not circular file" your CV/resume is also extremely useful (so thanks for the article). The initial prioritizing of bullet points (and then picking different ones for each application) is DEFINITELY a good idea.

(pirate, er PRIVATEER icon, for the contractor in me)

FYI: Today's computer chips are so advanced, they are more 'mercurial' than precise – and here's the proof

Re: re: Cuddles: Complexity: Another nail in the coffin...

maybe they need to use an encryption algorithm that isn't susceptible to (virtually) identical math errors during encryption and decryption. Then you could self-check by decrypting the encrypted output and comparing to the original. So long as the errors produce un-decryptable results, you should be fine.

Re: Error detection

I dunno about half speed... but certainly limit the operating temperature.

more than likely it's caused by running at higher than average temperatures (that are still below the limit) which cause an increase in hole/electron migration within the gates [from entropy] and they become weakened and occasionally malfunction...

(at higher temperatures, entropy is higher, and therefore migration as well)

I'm guessing that these malfunctioning devices had been run at very high temperatures, almost continuously, for a long period of time [years even]. Even though the chip spec allows temperatures to be WAY hotter than they usually run at, it's probably not a good idea to LET this happen in order to save money on cooling systems (or for any other reason related to this).

On several occasions I've seen overheated devices malfunction [requiring replacement]. In some cases it was due to bad manufacturing practices (an entire run of bad boards with dead CPUs). I would expect that repeated exposure to maximum temperatures over a long period of time would eventually have the same effect.

Re: Error detection

without revealing [classified information] the concept of "2 out of 3" needed to initiate something, such as [classified information], might even use an analog means of doing so, and pre-dates the space shuttle [and Evangelion] by more than just a few years.

Definitely a good idea for critical calculations, though.

Re: Error detection

CPU redundancy may be easier than people may want to admit...

If your CPU has multiple (actual) cores, for "critical" operations you could run two parallel threads. If your threads can be assigned "CPU affinity" such that they don't hop from CPU to CPU as tasks switch around then you can compare the results to make sure they match. If you're REALLY paranoid, you can use more than 2 threads.

If it's a VM then the hypervisor (or emulator, or whatever) would need to be able to ensure that core to thread affinity is supported.

Japan to dangle as many Yen as it takes to lure chipmakers to its shores, because everyone else is doing it too

Re: Join the club

most likely it will cause an increase in automated processes. China often does labor intensive things because they pay slave wages. Moving foundries away from China requires less labor in the process to be profitable. There are a lot of foundries already in places _NOT_ China. But yeah, this kind of move won't happen overnight. "All eggs in one basket" no more.

Stack Overflow acquired for $1.8bn by Prosus (no, me neither)

Re: there is an upside

I rarely see anything useful in Stack Overflow unless it involves:

* Python

* Javascript

* CSS

And even then, it's because I'm too lazy to actually read "all that documentation" first.

Code contributions to GCC no longer have to be assigned to FSF, says compiler body

Re: Apple and GPL

I'm not convinced that a GPLv3 license was the right way to go with GCC.

Perhaps a GCC project (that gets all of the 'ownership' from FSF) could revert to GPLv2 and add the necessary license exceptions to manage any other license compatibility issues.

That would probably fix it.

Least likely, that it would allow for proprietary closed-source versions. But, if it could allow linking with and/or running with closed source components, that should be the choice of the end-user. My $.10 worth.

(not that I would LIKE it... having a closed-source component for developing on a particular platform... I most likely would NOT)

then again there's also llvm

Surviving eclipse season and resurrecting 25-year-old software with Windows for Workgroups 3.11: One year with Mars Express

Re: It might be a race to see what fails first

ack. People who program microcontrollers and write kernel stuff often still use assembler.

Re: air filled, so lucky!

hard disk drives require a working fluid (air) to elevate the heads above the spinning disk surface. Head crashes occur when there's not enough air or drive speed to float the heads.

Old style clean rooms were needed to work on them, to prevent hair and dust from getting on the drive, which would be thicker than the air layer between the disk and the head.

Re: air filled, so lucky!

I wonder if they have an address to which we can donate old hardware...

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Re: Not another UI redesign please!

I'd prefer a RETRO-redesign - like "before Australis" UI.

(I wish *I* could get paid to do *THAT* - because if I were, it'd be done RIGHT!)

"simpler" UI is not necessarily the best unless there's an "Advanced" setting to get the full monty.

I'll probably still use it, though.

Dear Mozilla: try putting the lipstick on the OTHER end, not the end that goes "oink"

Space junk damages International Space Station's robot arm

the laws of the open sea used to include salvage rights for derelict ships, no matter what flag they once flew. In space, it can be the same...

THEN, if salvage bots cruised around looking for "dangerous" objects, and either collected them (for salvage) or simply de-orbited them (for safety), it'd eventually clean a lot of it up.

Insurance companies and underwriters would definitely be interested in this.

Re: everywhere humanity goes it seems to leave its garbage

unless we wake up sooner and change our ways.

to what, exactly... living in poverty on $2 a day? I don't THINK so...

(personally I make very little non-recyclable trash and nearly everything goes into the blue recycle can. what little is left over goes into a land fill along with everything else, and then houses are built on top of it when it gets full enough)

Nuke it from orbit, right?

No just a handful of "happy accidents" when objects too small to be detected (and leave a mark suspiciously looking like a bullet hole) "accidentally" strike the objects of interest and "accidentally" drive them into a safe LEO trajectory that decays into a safe splashdown someplace where no further accidents can happen...

(because knocking things into a higher orbit at escape velocity would be too difficult, and blowing them up makes even MORE dangerous space debris)

"Hey derelict space junk, come check out this view, right next to this open 3rd floor window."

Will the real IRC please stand up? Freenode’s forest fire leaves ashes – and fresh growth

Re: Kinda the opposite of Cancel Culture, no?

Cancel Culture is when the people in charge of social networks force people out

not entirely but you're at least 'warm'.

It's more like the clique groups in high school [the ones run by "the jocks" or "the queen B" specifically], or an "exclusive" country club that doesn't want to let the "riff raff" in...

very ironic, and even HYPOCRITICAL, in a world that is supposed to be "more inclusive".

Re: IRC was the CB of the '90s

and Microsoft had 'Comic Chat', which worked well as a regular IRC client when you turned the comic stuff off [leaving it on polluted the channel with various comic-related noise, though there WERE some IRC channels devoted to it for a long time]

In some ways I miss 'Comic Chat'. You could do funny things with the panels. But yeah for serious tech-related things, text-only works way better...

/me done migrating IRC settings to use Libera as official channels like #freebsd have moved there

Why did automakers stall while the PC supply chain coped with a surge? Because Big Tech got priority access

Re: They only have themselves to blame

also another elephant in the room:

Nearly all eggs in ONE basket (China)

I just wanted to point that out.

If your 2nd source is basically the same as your first source, and you cannot purchase capacity because demand is too high for both of your sources, then you didn't do your material planning correctly.

Just in Time deliveries only work when you can get the capacity from the suppliers along with the necessary on-time deliveries. It's putting a LOT of risk on the ability of your suppliers to follow through on their end of the bargain. And, apparently, they're not willing to hire temporary people and work extra shifts to manage the varying capacity. There was apparently no room in their plans that included the ability to ramp things up. The end result, what we see now.

I used to work in 'Material Controls' a while back, so I know how it all works. "Line Stops" due to missing components are BAD. VERY VERY BAD. It doesn't help when the supply chain is disrupted on a global scale like this.

TCP alternative QUIC reaches IETF's Standards Track after eight years of evolution

networking boffins rated QUIC as more vulnerable to web fingerprinting than HTTPS

I am also concerned about packet injection, impersonation, and other such security issues

TCP at least TRIES to make packet injection and impersonation difficult.

Four women suing Google for pay discrimination just had their lawsuit upgraded to a $600m class action

Re: If Google can get away with paying women less than men for the same job...

Considering they have over 100k employees

that's where the arguments for/against it being systemic come in. With that many employees, you would think the law of averages would compensate for, let's say, a lack of women in the sales force who aren't on "the sales ladder" track [or whatever they called it] but throughout the REST of the company it's "ok" [let's say].

Having ONLY MEN on the "sales force" track is compelling enough, at least for that part of the business, but if they made up for it (or explained it well enough, like 'too few applicants' etc.), then Google might have a defense against "this one case" with the promise to "handle it internally" and avoid the class action penalties, i.e. "The rest of the business is 'ok'" or "move along nothing to see here." That's the best outcome for Google I'd think.

However, past performance suggests that they DO have systemic promotion-related (and other) discrimination problems, as indicated by some of the other claims mentioned in the article, as well as past lawsuits, etc..

as I recall, she thought of piano chords and that's how she came up with the idea of spread spectrum modulation. Or something like that.

Big Tech has a big problem with Florida passing a law that protects politicians from web moderation

Private companies that are "common carriers" must abide by strict guidelines, some of which involve discrimination against individuals, organizations, and (yes) politicians.

If your phone company could disconnect your phone line because you LIED over the phone, according to their definition of "lie", it would be illegal for them to do so as they are a "common carrier". Similar for other public utilities.

There are also CAMPAIGN FINANCE laws, which would attribute a "de-platforming" or "censorship" or "flagging as incorrect" as CONTRIBUTIONS IN KIND, as if these actions in and of themselves constituted a form of ELECTIONEERING or "indirect campaign ads".

What Florida is doing is, essentially, based on these well tested precedents. And I agree with them.

The Audacity: Audio tool finds new and exciting ways to annoy contributors with a Contributor License Agreement

Re: Forking Hell

GPLv2 always enables forks (at least for the original code).

As long as you keep it open source, you can distribute modified source+binaries all you want.

'Audacity' is such a cool name, though.

Possible new names:

* Bedazzled

* Cacophony (ok that's being used but I mentioned it anyway for laughs)

* Personal DAW

* SoundWorkStation (or SoundWS or similar)

probably would have to google for other similarly named things [I already rejected several 'cause they were being used, but that's how it is with trademarks and stuff]

NASA to return to the Moon by 2024. One problem with that, says watchdog: All of it

Re: Hurry up guys

commercial interests will lay claim to everything they touch.

REASONABLE claims are not bad, as long as they aren't "in perpetuity" "because we claimed it".

Back in the day, a homestead in the USA required that the property be developed somehow, either by using it for agriculture or mining or "whatever" but you couldn't just claim it and then prevent others from doing so.

Similarly, on the moon or Mars. There would have to be an international committee of some kind to oversee it. I suppose it would be like doing things on Antarctica. So as long as everyone had equal opportunity, regardless of nation or any OTHER classification, AND the requirement that you must "improve it" within a set of guidelines, you could claim a reasonable and exclusive amount of moonland for yourself (or Mars-land for that matter).

Typical examples would be mining claims, i would expect. And there could be administrative fees based on surface area or location, to fund the program. I think a lot of prospectors would want to get in early on this and it woudl greatly advance space exploration IF it is run properly.

That last part might be hard. Look at the internet nowadays and can we all claim it is being RUN PROPERLY? And yet, the current system in its current form is a LOT better that what COULD have happened...

So yeah, lessons learned here, applied to space - Moon, Mars, asteroids, whatever.

Tesla agrees to follow Beijing's rules and build a data centre in China

exactly WHAT data is it storing?

This is a little disturbing. Exactly WHAT data is being stored. GPS data perhaps?

And this, in my view, is one reason NOT to get an electric vehicle, particularly one in which you can NOT disable this "feature".

I unfortunately can see a potential (dystopian) future where everywhere you go is tracked, and even if you get "free charging" in exchange for the data, it's like plugging your car into Fa[e]ceB*** or Tw*tter...

Who gave dusty Soviet-era spacecraft that unwanted lick of paint? It was an idiot, with a spraycan, in Baikonur

Re: Shame

It needs to become a museum.

Maybe they could do a full exhibit of the history of the USSR space program, considering Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin and other "firsts" they had during the cold war.

If it becomes a tourist destination, so much the better!

(I would like to visit Bletchly Park some day)

The unused Apollo rockets and surviving Space Shuttles have all become museums, as I recall. Why these Soviet shuttles (and mockup) have not become museum pieces already ctually surprises me.

After staff revolt, Freenode management takes over hundreds of IRC channels for 'policy violations'

Re: Entitled douchebag, much?

"not being entirely honest when they decry cancel culture"

yes, the _IRONY_ of it all! IRC can have such "drama"...

Re: What kicked this off?

Summary: When IRC pissing contests go horribly wrong

(I haven't used IRC in a while; I should check out the new place just to see what's up, and maybe the old one too...)

One advantage of IRC is being able to create your own channel whenever you want, and moderate it (or not) as you see fit. You just learn how to deal with trolls and bots.

What 'rasengan' apparently did does NOT sound like the "comforting" version of IRC that I remember since the 1990's. It more closely reminds me of what happens when a channel op decides to act like a tyrant. People leave the channel and go elsewhere because they can. And THAT is freedom!

Amazon puts an $8.5bn MGM in its shopping cart, clicks on checkout

disappointing quality of movies out of Hollywood

and I thought the quality of movies had ALREADY gone down the sewer. I used to purchase movies on DVD and go to the theater a LOT.

I almost NEVER do that nowadays. Remakes are often LESS than disappointing, and with the exception of 'Deadpool', even the Marvel Studios movies have become a disappointment (to ME, anyway).

I can't see a future of Hollywood movies (in general) getting _BETTER_ because Bezos owns the studio...

(can someone show some proof to the contrary?)

Contract killer: Certified PDFs can be secretly tampered with during the signing process, boffins find

Re: "secure document exchange format"

I tend to agree.

When I view a PDF on Linux or BSD it's with Atril, the default PDF viewer for Mate [I always disable in-browser reading whenever possible].

There's also a version of Evince that runs on windows. I installed it years ago when the (bundled) Adobe in Win 7 kept asking me for an e-mail address [so it went into the bit bucket]. I mean, WHY does a PDF READER need MY E-MAIL ADDRESS??

Now I checked the list o' tested PDF readers and saw NEITHER Evince nor Atril listed. Maybe they don't do the "enhanced certified" thing? I'd just as soon leave it that way, yeah.

What I do when I need to sign a PDF: print relevant pages, sign, scan, FAX or attach to e-mail (as PDF, yeah). Or just print multiple copies, sign & date one for myself and one for the other party, and use snail-mail or sneaker-net. There's NO school like the OLD school!

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

Re: Two meetings a day? That's still crazy.

didn't you know, they're just implementing AGILE...

Re: Two meetings a day? That's still crazy.

and make sure that "that one guy" *TURNS* *HIS* *PHONE* *OFF*

Invariably, the "ball and chain" call that (for some reason) everyone in charge of the meeting always pauses for, can easily ruin ANY meeting, and perhaps affect productivity along with it.

(Phone "emergency" rings are a curse anyway, even on vibrate. Just check for missed calls once or twice a day. Unless you have a receptionist, tell everyone to use e-mail or slack or even IRC, and DO NOT DISTURB you while you're coding)

Microsoft: Behold, at some later date, the next generation of Windows

Re: Cloudy future

it already has the strong-armed "Microsoft Logon" in the cloud, a failed idea since "Passport" when ".Not" first hit the scene during the "dot bomb" bubble of the early 2000's...

We can expect a "new, shiny" version of same. Except, cloud. And slower. And a MUCH higher bandwidth requirement. And more tracking to go with it. And you MUST be online to use it. And so on.

It's a bit like what they originally wanted [but could not manage to convince customers so they walked it back] for the XBox One, remember?

Why Python's pip search isn't working: We speak to infrastructure director about ongoing traffic overload

Re: Devops, Web3.0, Agile, CI/CD

well I suspect that open source OS and package mirrors are providing their services in support of open source (in general) and not exclusively one particular distro (etc) and if their repos have the source or binaries needed to support something similar, it's really just all part of the gig. My guess is that at some point it will all balance out.

Or we could host it on github (or similar service) instead, one that provides storage and bandwidth for free to publicly visible projects.

Patch me if you can: Microsoft, Samsung, and Google win appeal over patent on remote updating

So far so good, as far as the court is concerned...

* trivial patent derived from prior art

* add in a tiny nuance about host systems "deciding" something (rather than the client device)

* sit on it for a while and sell it to a patent troll

* new owner, use that nuance to try and prove the worthiness of the patent

* sue the bollocks off of every deep pocket that's already (even vaguely) doing this royalty free, shortly before the patent would expire, even (1995 plus ~20 years...)

* lose court battle (which effectively revokes your patent), and also the appeal

Yep. I think the court did the right thing, denying a patent troll his bogus claim.

Steve Wozniak to take stand: $1m suit claiming Woz stole idea for branded tech boot camp goes to trial

Re: My idea

what if the idea was suing someone for having the same idea you did but you had it first?

This guy has no case.

I think we need to know what contracts were signed before making that determination.

(But I suspect you are right)

Re: Woz all the fuss about

Woz is probably like many of us who have a background in electronics AND also got really good at programming computers. Being an expert on BOTH hardware and software gives you a lot of advantages, especially for system-level code and IOT things.

I have to wonder how many people getting EE degrees end up writing code instead...

(this is especially true when microcontrollers, FPGAs, and robotics are involved, and for that last part, mechanical engineering as well)