Posts by Throatwarbler Mangrove

Sucks to be you, any aliens living anywhere near Proxima Centauri's record-smashing solar flare

Re: Guess what tune is going through my head?

It's cold outside

There's no kind of atmosphere ...

Was JJ Abrams involved?

Apple supplier Quanta Computer confirms it's fallen victim to ransomware attack

Poking the bear

Maybe it's just me, but I would be extremely leery of trying ransomware against billionaire tech companies. Surely, at some point, they start using cutouts to employ counter-criminals, possibly (and hopefully) including a wet works team who leave the malware writers in pieces at the bottom of a river.

Half of Q1's malware traffic observed by Sophos was TLS encrypted, hiding inside legit requests to legit services

Re: It had to happen

It would be a lot easier to detect nefarious traffic, however, if the traffic were not already encrypted.

We're moving to the point that deep-packet inspection at the edge of the consumer network is going to be a necessity. Basically, each home's router/firewall will also need to act as a Web proxy configured to decrypt and inspect all traffic passing through it to search for malware, as is currently common on enterprise networks. That should be a fun exercise.

Microsoft realises constant meetings stress people out, adds Office 365 settings to cut them short or start them late

Features

What is new here is the idea that organisational settings can prod employees into scheduling meetings that allow for breaks automatically. The counter-argument is that it is the human that should tell the calendar the time of the meeting, not vice versa.

There are always those managers who insist that a meeting should run right up until the scheduled end time and refuse to turn people loose, despite the lack of productive conversation occurring. Maybe this feature will help deal with those people.

Being able to reply to specific messages sounds great; it's remarkable how few chat programs implement it.

Finally, I would love to see a feature to automatically squelch notifications from new chats when the user is actively chatting with someone already. It could be called Take a Fucking Number mode.

Harassers and bullies succeed in tech because silence is encouraged

Re: I presume your comments are specific to the UK?

I think you mean "no contract provisions that are prohibited by law can be legally enforced." All an employee has to do to fight those provisions is find a lawyer who will take the case and then, of course, come up with the money to pay said lawyer and hope that the lawyer is good enough and the case strong enough that the complainant wins because the consequences for losing are being on the hook for very steep legal fees and possible damages from a countersuit. Strangely, relatively few people are willing to go through that process.

Far-right internet haven Parler to be allowed back onto Apple's App Store with added content moderation

Re: At least my...

[citation needed]

I did a quick DDG search, and the biggest anti-Fauci hit piece comes from noted right-wing propaganda outlet AIER. Articles from The Washington Post and LA Times indicate that Fauci was more willing to listen to AIDS activists than older scientists at the NIH and was instrumental in AIDS vaccine research and global AIDS outreach programs.

"Non-partisan"

I hesitate to deploy this initialism lightly, but ...

LOL.

Zorin OS 16 beta claims largest built-in app library 'of any open source desktop ever'

Happy Zorin user here. I think the Zorin team have done a bang-up job creating a slick UI that is both more consistent than actual Windows 10 and less amateurish in appearance than many other Linux desktop environments. I agree with the poster above, however, that WINE is kludgy and requires a serious commitment to running Windows-only applications in Linux.

University of Hertfordshire pulls the plug on, well, everything after cyber attack

Re: Learning without a computer

Oh, indeed. Explain to us this wonderful remote learning technique that employs only pencil and paper, or have you forgotten the pandemic?

Chrome and Chromium updated after yet another exploit is found in browser's V8 JavaScript engine

Re: This is why a monoculture is bad

Brave is still based on Chromium.

This is why a monoculture is bad

It's also why I continue to run Firefox.

Key Perl Core developer quits, says he was bullied for daring to suggest programming language contained 'cruft'

Re: Toxicity

"Communication based on respect is a lost art"

I think it's always been a little dodgy on the Internet, tbh. I recall highly contentious flamewars on Usenet back in the day. Possibly there is a difference between greybeards who perceive that style of communication as being natural and normal and a younger generation who don't. Even on this comment board, you can see a schism between people who think that civil communication is valuable and the people who think those people are a bunch of fucking pussy snowflakes.

Microsoft digs deep for chatty AI specialist Nuance, bids $19.7bn to bolster healthcare chops

Clippy MD

"It looks like you're having a heart attack. Would you like help with that?"

Hmm, upon consideration, that could be pretty cool, especially if it dialed 911 for you. Unfortunately, it will probably be more like:

"It looks like you're having a heart attack. Would you like to order some nitroglycerin pills?"

‘Can COVID-19 vaccines connect me to the internet?’

This cattle prod, gunny sack, and bag of quicklime would beg to disagree.

Feature bloat: Psychology boffins find people tend to add elements to solve a problem rather than take things away

Re: From the abstract

Both less and fewer.

CERN boffins zap antimatter with ultraviolet lasers in the hope of revealing the secret symmetry of the universe

Re: Another test of General Relativity

Don't worry, anonymous crank, I still love you! Your Dadaist interpretation of physics gives every comment thread you're in a delightful touch of whimsy!

Over a decade on, and millions in legal fees, Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle in Java API legal war

Re: Money well spent.

Username checks out.

Vegas, baby! A Register reader gambles his software will beat the manual system

Re: Look before you quantum leap

"Long story short, the building got set on fire."

Really, more stories need to end with this line.

Ship stranded in Suez Canal shifts, but not before spawning some choice tech memes

Re: I didn't sign up to twitter

Even worse, these memes all suck.

Rogue elements: Hades and Loop Hero manage to draw on the same legacy while having very little in common

Controller

Well, don't I feel like an idiot. I thought the PC version was keyboard and mouse only, so that's how I've been playing it. I've made it pretty far, too, but anything that involves a running special attack is quite challenging, so maybe the controller will help.

NASA's Perseverance rover in brick form: China set vs unofficial Lego fan design

Re: No, sorry.

"On the contrary, unique is always qualified"

Well, that's certainly a unique perspective.

We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. A halo of light polarized by a gigantic black hole's magnetic field...

Look, AC, I don't understand quantum physics, but I do understand English. From a logical perspective, you haven't proven anything. Your words are incoherent gibberish, which suggests but does not prove that your thoughts are also gibberish.

For example, this paragraph is literally meaningless:

"So either a) magnetic directly pushes against gravity as if they're not fundamental forces, or b) light (or your photons) and or matter, is internalizing the two forces without being ripped apart somehow, or c) magnetic is countering the compression of space time.... to stretch it, in some sort of blah blah blah way...."

And no, to forestall your immediate response, the problem is not my lack of understanding; the problem is that you are not explaining whatever you are trying to say in a comprehensible fashion.

The silicon supply chain crunch is worrying. Now comes a critical concern: A coffee shortage

A substance almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee, perchance?

Re: REM

". . . and I feel <snooooooore>"

The kids aren't all right: Fall in GCSE compsci students is bad news for employers and Britain's future growth plans

"*I* *AM* *NOT* *AN* *ENGINEER*."

Really? You certainly seem to have the personality of one (kidding, guys, I'm kidding--really).

More seriously, you seem to have defined "IT" very narrowly and "software engineering" very broadly. Someone on this very comment board made the point some time ago that many programmers couldn't really be said to be software engineers, in the sense that many programmers don't follow scientific principles when designing their code, whatever that may entail. I believe the same person may have made the point that, strictly speaking, there's no such thing as "software engineering," but I will let other commentards weigh in on that point. Conversely, many IT practitioners who would not consider themselves programmers or software engineers do in fact perform programming tasks, e.g. writing scripts (aka programs) in bash, Powershell, or Python. I would therefore argue that the line between "software engineer" and "IT person" is much blurrier than you propose.

All that said, I would agree that there has been title inflation in the technology field and that people will tack the name "engineer" onto any role that seems vaguely technical (much like the recent abomination "Field CTO") to give it inflated merit.

I would also suggest that you lay in a supply of dried frog pills . . . you appear to need them.

"IT/ICT ****IS***** Office Skills."

Wrong. In fact, so wrong as to be offensive. You may, like many engineers, look down your nose at IT support and operations staff, but the fact is that we do much more than type things into Word documents. Here are just a few of the things I have explained to "senior" developers over the years:

* Why using source control is a good idea, even for pre-release code (after said developer's hard drive died, costing him a month of work)

* How to use source control, like, at all

* How file system permissions work

* What a virtual machine is

* What a container is

* Why it's not a good idea to include passwords in plain text in configuration files

* How DNS works

* How networking works

* Load balancing

* High availability

* Latency

(Note to the moderators: look how good I'm being. I didn't swear once or insult this person, even though he comes across as a colossally condescending fucking toolbag.

...

Dammit.)

Re: Have they considered paying more for IT?

That depends on where you work. If you work for a dedicated software development or engineering house, you're correct: IT are the people who the developers shit on regularly. If you work for a company that makes or does something else, e.g. banking or manufacturing, IT is basically anything computer-related, whether programming, desktop support, or system administration.

Chairman, CEO of Nominet ousted as member rebellion drives .uk registry back to non-commercial roots

I'm sad it's over

This was some truly fine low-stakes drama. Hopefully there will be a nice juicy aftermath wherein terrible scandals continue coming to light.

IBM's CEO and outgoing exec chairman take home $38m in total for 2020 despite revenue shrinking by billions

Re: Obscene

Indeed. People should be paid on a complex metric related to:

A) Who their friends are

B) Which schools they attended

C) How much money they already have (obviously, people with lots of money should be paid more, otherwise it's not worth their time)

Following Supreme Court ruling, Uber UK recognizes drivers as workers, offers min wage, holiday pay, pension

Re: They've lost their USP

From a consumer perspective, their USP was reliable, predictable service and charges with a minimum of fuss compared to a conventional taxi. Hailing an Uber was a revelation in simplicity compared to getting a taxi. Taxi firms have somewhat risen to the challenge, but the experience of getting an Uber or Lyft is still superior to getting a conventional cab. Ironically, Uber could probably have charged more for their service and turned a profit just on the basis of working better than regular cabs.

Re: Hmm

I both agree and disagree with codejunky, which is an awkward position to be in. I agree that Uber and Lyft have forced the traditional taxi firms to raise their game and that the taxi firms had benefited from decades of government-mandated monopoly that Uber and Lyft disrupted, to the universal benefit of the consumer. Where I disagree is that Uber and Lyft's gross abuse of their drivers is the only way forward. If the business model is truly effective, then they can pay their drivers a living wage and benefits.

'Business folk often don't understand what developers do...' Twilio boss on the chasm that holds companies back

Re: Bottom line.

I assume the reverse is also true, that you believe that developers should stick to their knitting and not weigh in on the marketing and management functions of the business.

Apple's app transparency rules: Google's privacy labels for Chrome and Search on iOS highlighted by DuckDuckGo

Re: Now on to presearch.org

A new front end to Bing, now with blockchain!

Re: Google is the least of Apple's worries

"To quote a /. article"

Well, there's your first problem. There are lies, damn lies, and Slashdot.

Got a need for speed? New report claims iPhone 12's 5G performance lags behind that of rival Android models

The hidden difference

The 5G speed on my Android phone was really lagging until I got my Coronavirus shot. Inexplicably, the 5G speed on my phone radically improved the same day, which I can only attribute to the vaccine turning my body into one giant 5G antenna.

Biden administration reveals probe into government security has found holes, wants more private sector collaboration as the cure

Re: Throw money

Right-wing talking points are the stupidest talking points.

See icon.

Out of this world: Listen to Perseverance rover fire its laser at Mars rocks as the wind whips around it

Re: Nothing there...

Look, we get it: you have no sense of wonder. You don't have to keep demonstrating the fact.

Bah!

Don't tell that to Kimiko Ross.

'No' does not mean 'yes'... unless you are a scriptwriter for software user interfaces

Re: when to use the word "fewer" instead of the word "less"

By and large, I could care fewer (*snert*), but I do so enjoy taking the piss out the English when they get their pants in a wad over Americans having e.g. removed a bunch of superfluous vowels from various words.

ZIPX files that aren't: Keep a weather eye out for disguised malware in email attachments

Old and busted: summary execution

New hotness: worldline erasure

I would definitely support that punishment for malware writers.

Privacy purists prickle at T-Mobile US plan to proffer people's personal web, app pursuits to ad promoters

As a T-Mobile customer myself, all I can say is that the other networks seem to be worse, and all the competition has been gobbled up, so choices are few and far between. Of the major carriers, T-Mobile seems to have the best customer service. Also, when you buy a phone from T-Mobile, there's no contract: you can choose to pay for the phone on an installment plan, and if you leave T-Mobile, you obviously owe the remainder of the phone cost, but there's no penalty for early departure, and it's really straightforward to register a phone you bought separately. I'm definitely not saying this move doesn't suck or that I'm not disappointed in T-Mobile, mind you.

Memo to scientists. Looking for intelligent life? Have you tried checking for worlds with a lot of industrial pollution?

Username checks out

Also, isn't it *oontz* *oontz* *oontz*? Wait for the drop . . .

US newspaper's 'Biden will hack Russia' claim: A good way to reassure Putin you'll leave him alone

Re: Biden will not hack Russia

My last post was whacked. Let's see if this edit is accepted:

Biden was handed a total dog's breakfast on all fronts by the corrupt and incompetent former administration, so he may be a little busy for press conferences right now. You'll note that the Biden administration has been rapidly executing on a series of thoughtful and well-planned policies, and that takes real work, as opposed to simply denying that problems exist and heading off to golf or holding ego-inflating rallies.

Re: Biden will not hack Russia

Watch those goalposts move! You started with baseless ad hominem and conspiracy-mongering and then moved onto, remarkably, something resembling a valid and coherent point about Harris' past record as AG. How those two things are in any way related is completely unclear, unfortunately. If you want to criticize Harris based on her record as AG, go for it. Buying into the lunatic fringe conspiracy theories about how Biden is Harris' puppet (and how she herself the puppet of ... whom, exactly?) does your credibility no favors.

Re: Biden will not hack Russia

Yes, yes, we know: BROWN WOMAN BAD.

Re: Stop using windows for mission critical stuff

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT?!

Twitter sues Texas AG to halt 'retaliatory' demand for internal content-moderation rulebook in wake of Trump ban

Re: the far-right Twitter-a-like Parler

Interesting . . . so being called "far-right" is "legally indefensible publication or broadcast of words or images that are degrading to a person or injurious to his or her reputation." Do tell.

Google engineer urges web devs to step up and secure their code in this data-spilling Spectre-haunted world

Doomed

A friend of mine just got back into development after years of teaching high school and is getting back up to speed on coding Web applications. I suspect his focus will be on getting his code to work at all. The application he's writing might net him a small paycheck, but his focus is going to be on nailing down future employment opportunities. I suspect that the odds of him ruthlessly sanitizing his inputs according to this model are slim. Not saying that he's not to be held accountable for secure coding, but what are the new programmers (or old, set-in-their-ways, programmers) to do? What's being described sounds like a lot of hard, painstaking work of the sort that management won't care about when it gets in the way of adding features or hitting release targets. I know that the readership of El Reg are literally the best programmers on Earth (in their own minds, at least), so what's the answer, guys?