Posts by Robert D Bank

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

Re: Tedious snark ..

The last free speech zone is whatever Israel decides

Want tech cred? Learn how to email like a pro

Glad you appreciate the irony hahaha!

Loathsome eighties ladder-climber levelled by a custom DOS prompt

Re: When I were a lad

not as anguished as a computer operator (me) dropping one tray out of seven full trays of sorted cards that had to be input to a batch program. I had to put all seven trays through the card sorter machine three times to get them back in sort order which took ages, and then carry on reading into the card reader for input to the job. Almost inevitable at least one or two cards would get jammed so I'd have to extract them as carefully as possible and try and duplicate them on the card punch, then lift the whole feed hopper of cards to get the newly punched card into the correct position. I can't remember exactly as it was in 1977, but I know it took a long time. And on an IBM370/125 the job ran for ages as well.

Researchers build ML models to forecast food shortages

The problem is not just what is currently happening but how it came to be that way. Food systems and distribution is now in the hands of very few concentrated corporations and companies. It's estimated 90% of global grain trade is controlled by 4 corporations. They have weak points just as the banks had in 2008 so a systemic collapse will have dire consequences. The shock from the war in Ukraine has highlighted this already.

https://www.monbiot.com/2022/05/20/contagious-collapse/

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept22/end-cheap-food9-22.html?fbclid=IwAR0_P7YrmqZLyoXIUFK_jDWm7T2bn_uQjyVUARaPxQWUBNAEP-fHvLZ3gCQ

Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it

Re: Easy

just send the cnut to outer pace on Bezo's rock and jetison him into the 'verse.

DevOps still 'rarely done well at scale' concludes report after a decade of research

Re: The problem with DevOps . . .

It is also my experience that Dev's in general are terrible at dealing with Op's. They cannot comprehend, or probably don't care, that you cannot just treat an OS and hardware as throw away items without consequences. Or that changing it in favour of 'your current favourite thing' can massively impact other 'things' sharing the resource, or even break the OS and/or hardware itself. They're not even slightly interested in doing configuration or fixes at 3am on a Sunday morning. Many think they're entitled to their very own instance of a VM to do what they like. They'll get in there an tweak everything they can to the point it looks nothing like where the application will eventually be deployed and then wonder why it fails at implementation or causes wider problems. They'll usually blame it on Op's in this case.

.

Most Op's people I have known over the last 40yrs are not really interested in trying to force change on Dev's other than reminding them of common sense things like efficient use of storage for example. And generally Op's are always accommodating Dev's as much as possible, juggling the competing team requirements while being kicked from all sides. They will have some red lines though, particularly in production, and this is the thing Dev's cannot abide, they'll flail about trying anything to be the 'special exception'. But Op's know that exception would break something, and they know they will be blamed for it. Op's are stuck with this common piece of the puzzle, the OS's and hardware that ALL the applications run on. They cannot just say I've finished with this application and move on like Dev's. They support all the users day in day out and have a much wider view of how all the workloads affect the operations.

Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language

Would Priapic stand up as an alternative?

Indian government reverts to manual tax filings as new e-tax portal remains badly borked a week after launch

Given the silence from both sides it makes you wonder if there was some fraud or illegal data slurp or suchlike involved. Not a good look for either side.

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

DickDickGo!

VC's paper claims cost of cloud is twice as much as running on-premises. Let's have a look at that

Another interesting analysis of the cost.

"The exact savings obviously varies company, but several experts we spoke to converged on this “formula”: Repatriation results in one-third to one-half the cost of running equivalent workloads in the cloud. Furthermore, a director of engineering at a large consumer internet company found that public cloud list prices can be 10 to 12x the cost of running one’s own data centers."

https://a16z.com/2021/05/27/cost-of-cloud-paradox-market-cap-cloud-lifecycle-scale-growth-repatriation-optimization/?fbclid=IwAR1hpZphv8zFhyNfyYnczS_GNNCqOIa7KB-BqRleWSWyZ8-x0WadmbUXX5g

Facial recog firm Clearview hit with complaints in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and the UK

Re: Clearview provides search services to law enforcement agencies

So I assume you wouldn't mind law enforcement officers images being in there then, so when they shoot or suffocate someone illegally they can be identified? And the super rich, politicians, armed forces personnel and spy agency members images so if they're seen doing something illegal they can be arrested? And of course it's not problematic at all having children's photo's in there is it? Jeez.

Nope, I bet you NONE or very few of the above, except children, will be in this database. Even if they are they'd be excluded from the search because 'money and influence etc'. It'll be joe average including working class because they're less likely to argue against it, and therefore will be disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.

Clearview can fuck right off, they are in it for the money, end of.

India, Twitter brawl in public as latest content rules begin to bite

Imagine the beautiful silence from the absence of scam calls!

Re: Broad brush.

I have been to India twice, 2002 and 2011. Like anywhere a mix of good and bad, but there seems to be a stark difference between the much more relaxed south, from the Chennai/Bangalore line down, to the mid part of country above where we encountered a lot more aggression and just sheer hassle at virtually every step. Goa was a bit of an exception to that. Haven't been to the far north yet so not sure what to expect but Sikkim and Assam look nice.

Just reading this about the current situation there which is really scary, and how the Gov't is absolutely hiding the truth on Covid death rates etc. Seem like at least 10/1 more than reported, and most likely a lot more. For example in rural villages only 1 in 5 deaths are reported even in normal times.

https://qz.com/india/2009723/how-journalists-are-exposing-indias-true-covid-19-death-toll/

Snowden was right, rules human rights court as it declares UK spy laws broke ECHR

Re: So basically

Precisely, even more in context of this:

https://www.theregister.com/2015/12/16/big_brother_born_ntac_gchq_mi5_mass_surveillance_data_slurping/

not even health records are sacred it seems

Conflicting messaging overshadows NHS Digital's attempts to inform public about patient data slurp

What really fucks me off is that all the info you have to provide on these opt out forms is EXACTLY what could be used to link you to the medical records. This whole thinking really stinks, like the arseholes that came up with this scheme.

Big red buttons and very bad language: A primer for life in the IT world

Re: RM-05s

I remember destroying a CRT screen at work back in the 80's when I waved some magnets out of an IBM 3350 drive across it, it just created a smear in whatever direction you waved the magnet. There, I have finally owned up to it!

Big Tech bankrolling AI ethics research and events seems very familiar. Ah, yes, Big Tobacco all over again

Re: These programs are mostly giant filters

A large part of the problem is that there is no easy way to check and if necessary correct/challenge the veracity of these data sets as they are often held by private corporations. For things like credit reference agencies this can have a huge impact on individuals as you may be filtered out very early in the scoring and never be eligible for funding that you should be eligible for.

Another issue is the data sourcing. For example the aggregators that collect data from multiple sources may be making unjustified assumptions or connections that then trickle through the data sets of all who buy them. Even in cases where you're inputting your own data it is easy to make a mistake occasionally, especially on poorly designed forms, but can sometimes be very difficult to get that mistake corrected. If that data is in many companies and jurisdictions it is virtually impossible. Another even more concerning issue is where data may be collected from social media where people have their guard down and may brag about something that they never did for example, but if that is used in a profile of them it can be very damaging.

And then there is the issue of filtering out choices to narrow your options based on your profile of income and interests etc. It's pretty obvious how embedded that is already in the likes of Google search or FB ads. Essentially a list of who's prepared to pay the most to be at the top of the search results or profiling game wins and any other business are left floundering. So it affects both individual choice and viability of smaller competitive businesses.

Move aside, Technoking: All hail the Sweat Master and his many inspirational job titles

that was the name my dad gave our cat when I was little, 'the Fur king'

Re: Job titles!

A few years ago there was an ad for a job that was described as a 'Jacket Off Position'. It was there for a few months and on more than one of the big UK recruiters sites. I always wondered if it was a serious job or someone having a laugh.

Cloud builders hoover up 60% of ALL servers sold in 2020 as enterprise bit barns left to sweat

nothing to celebrate really, having so few managing the business of so many is a disaster waiting to happen....both intentional or otherwise.

Embrace and kill? AppGet dev claims Microsoft reeled him in with talk of help and a job – then released remarkably similar package manager

Re: All big guys have similar attitudes

like a venereal disease

you get the same sort of bullshit with 3rd parties scarfing software and ideas out of their clients. They'll resell it as there own either internally to the same client or externally to another. Never any attribution to the originators..oh no.

Transcribe-my-thoughts app would prevent everyone knowing what I actually said during meetings

Re: Bloody minutes of a bloody meeting

All to often these meetings with no agenda are a fishing exercise by the incompetent or brain dead trying to understand what is going on or to come up with an original idea of their 'own', which they duly plagarise and repackage as their own brilliance.

India’s top techies form digital foundation to fight Apple and Google

Re: I wish them all the luck

I also wish them all the luck. Anything that can reduce the reach of Google and Apple. not to mention FB needs applauding.

Unauthorised RAC staffer harvested customer details then sold them to accident claims management company

Re: Never free of these

Similar...between this Insurance bollocks and the 'Microsoft Department' saying I've been hacked, and my ISP saying my router has been compromised and will be cut off. So at least 3 calls a week, plus some other random ones at least 2-3 times a month. If I could get hold of these arseholes I would force them to eat fox shit for a month.

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

Re: Grauniad fluffed it again.

they have learned well from the Covid-idiots on Earth

US aviation regulator issues safety bulletins over flaws in software updates for Boeing 747, 777, 787 airliners

Re: Common platform?

what was it, the $9 per hour offshore software developers they were using...you DO get what you pay for.

UK union pens letter to data watchdog on icky workplace monitoring systems like Microsoft's Productivity Score

makes me laugh...you can spend 40% or more of your day these days doing soul destroying admin to maybe, possibly, if you're really lucky, actually do some productive work. Another 20% with pointless meetings, 10% listening to some corporate tosh being droned out or doing regulatory reading. So you have maybe 30% to be productive, if you're not having network issues or whatever other shit is thrown at you for the day. And then you have the next 'transformation' and related rearranging of the management deck chairs which happens with monotonous regularity, and destroys continuity and means lots of time wasted on reinventing to wheels and re-educating the uneducatable.

Cybersecurity giant FireEye says it was hacked by govt-backed spies who stole its crown-jewels hacking tools

Re: Beancounteritis

I think it's beancounteterrorists

Calls for 'right to repair' electronics laws grow louder across Europe

Re: Just because...

here's a tip about the Starlet...sometimes if the head is skimmed beyond a certain point then the studs that hold the head down can become too long...they tighten as they hit the bottom of the holes in the block, but not apply the right pressure on the head. Caught me out and had to replace the head gasket twice before someone told me about that issue and I bought the 'short studs' from 'Yota.. Right pain in the arse!

UK reveals new 'National Cyber Force', announces Space Command and mysterious AI agency

Re: Policy-based evidence making

getting the corruption out of the system first would save even more.

Re: Policy-based evidence making

I guess it's not that different to giving your mates £12 billion to create a Track&Trace system and other 'Covid' related activity without public tender, or announcement in advance. It worked so well that on £150m contract delivered nothing at all and they get to keep the money. That's what I call an agile delivery!

The Russians are at it again: Zebrocy backdoor malware is evolving, Uncle Sam warns close to eve of presidential election

Re: Russia wants war...

America sees in Russia what is true of themselves.

China sets itself 2035 goal for technology self-sufficiency and covets title as the world’s top innovator

China will TRUMP the US.

To stop web giants abusing privacy, they must be prevented from respawning. Ever

Re: And if that doesn't work.

love it...and they're so full of it they'd physically disappear, only to reform in a fatburg somewhere

Is it Iran or Russia's hackers we need to worry about? The Russians, definitely the Russians, says US intelligence

Re: "Meanwhile the big money and power rolls on unabated."

That's true, as does sarcasm. And you're asking or offering what? Do you feel empowered?

Yawn

The US Gov't and electoral system is so corrupted internally that the Russians would have a real fight on their hands to make it any worse. It makes no difference which party is in power either, so all this crap about interfering with elections is just a distraction.Meanwhile the big money and power rolls on unabated.

Iran sent threatening pro-Trump emails to American Democrats, Russia close behind, says US intelligence

same old

After reading that whole article it ends with 'For what it's worth, Reuters reported the emails are still under investigation, "and one intelligence source said it was still unclear who was behind them."', so it's basically bollocks by their own admission and they are the scaremongers. Jeez.

IBM to spin out Managed Infrastructure Services biz – yes, the one that was subject to all those redundancies

NewCo...very close to NukeCo....coincidence?

Global Privacy Control emerges as latest attempt to let netizens choose whether they want to be tracked online

Re: They just don't get it........but maybe that's the point!!!

I know nothing about the technicalities, but apart from the spooks which we can never realistically avoid, one would hope this might stem the slurping from the commercial side.

University of Cambridge to decommission its homegrown email service Hermes in favour of Microsoft Exchange Online

Re: Modern

times a million, that is EXACTLY the issue. The very same happens with outsourcing, it allows local management to just sit back with a cigar and point a finger. It is a cancer, a continuous diet of fat and sugar, nice and easy until your heart pops. And all the staff below take the same fucking attitude. We will quickly overtake the 3rd world in the race to the bottom of the intellectual void.

Hey there, want to break into computers like an Iranian hacker crew? IBM finds 40GB of videos that include how-tos

in bitcoin

Health Sec Hancock says UK will use Apple-Google API for virus contact-tracing app after all (even though Apple were right rotters)

Re: iTunes more important than pandemic?

Jeez, we must know the same 'august colleague!

Re: "we discovered a technical barrier that every other country [...] is also now hitting."

when it's degraded to the point where 'Rylan' is employed...time to switch off permanently, for my health

Re: "we discovered a technical barrier that every other country [...] is also now hitting."

what was it I heard....£11m spent on this crock? So someone will be smiling.

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Repurposing

I would prefer the £6k going toward a scheme to re-power existing diesels/petrol to electric. I really don't like the idea of so many serviceable vehicles being crushed when they could be re-powered, saving all the energy etc required to build a new car from scratch. Also, this sort of scheme would allow a lot more small scale operators to set up conversion factories, or local garages to set it up a useful side scheme. Also local electronic companies could start concentrating on building conversion kits and the associated 'smart' electronics to manage them. Other engineering firms could build kit for the KERS systems to be retrofitted. and battery storage kits to replace fuel tanks etc.

Re: Electric cars....

how many nuclear power stations have been FULLY decommissioned, with the old fuel stored safely for the next few thousand years, and at what cost?

and nuclear is not carbon free by any stretch. How do you think the fuel source is prospected, mined, transported and processed in the huge nuclear power stations that are mostly built and maintained using largely carbon generated energy?

UK govt publishes contracts granting Amazon, Microsoft, Google and AI firms access to COVID-19 health data

No choice?

It seems implied to me that these crooks (and GCHQ) will be granted access to NHS records regardless of whether you have installed the NHS App or not, or am I missing something?

The arseholes really are a piece of work aren't they. This whole App seems to have been conceived as a commercial opportunity first, with a possible side benefit to public health. They were so hungry to commercialise it that they forgot about the small issues of GDPR, security and that many people distrust them and keep an eye out for their tricks.

Expect a continuous stream of this sort of nonsense as trade agreements are being drawn up with the US and others.

Legal complaint lodged with UK data watchdog over claims coronavirus Test and Trace programme flouts GDPR

Re: Conspiracy time?

to me that is the real rub with this App, the fact it was designed to be monetised from the start. It seems there was more focus on that than making it attractive, trustworthy and beneficial to people.

After 30 years of searching, astroboffins finally detect the universe's 'missing matter' – using fast radio bursts

Re: average office

more like the density of sheep in offices

or rocking hose shit