Posts by thomn8r

Google Maps leads German tourists to week-long survival saga in Australian swamp

Interesting tale about a pack of wandering Germans in Death Valley, California - a close second to Australia in terms of places you don't want to get lost

https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/

Southwest Airlines lands $140M fine for that Christmas IT meltdown

Re: It was horrible

We had a similar experience: the first warning sign was when were informed of *two* flight changes the day before our flight. We were going from Sacramento to San Diego, but got changed to Sacramento to Burbank, then back to Oakland, and then to San Diego. The next warning sign was we sat on the plane in Sac for over an hour before even pushing back from the gate. When we got to Burbank, it was an unholy mess. We talked to a pilot that was waiting for a plane and he told us it was highly unlikely that the flight was actually going to happen, so we decided to rent a car and drive. My wife immediately reserved a car online (which she does at least once a week for her work) but when we got to the car rental counter, they laughed and said there were no cars. We ended up taking an Uber from Burbank to San Diego, which cost almost $500.

We got to San Diego with the clothes on our back. Attempts to contact SouthWest about our luggage were hopeless, so we bought stuff locally in order to get by.

For the trip home 3 days later, we were notified the flight was cancelled, and we couldn't get ahold of anyone about scheduling a new one. There weren't any flights available on other airlines, either. Luckily my BIL had a car he was selling, so I made a deal that I would handle getting the car cleaned up and sold in exchange for letting us drive it home.

Our luggage was finally delivered to our home on January 5th via FedEx.

SouthWest eventually reimbursed us for the clothes and stuff we had to buy, and for the Uber trip.

IBM to scrap 401(k) matching, offer something else instead

Hewlett-Packard has joined the chat...

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

Re: Technically ......

alimunium oxide is actually protective

Tell that to someone with an early Land Rover

Totally shock claim: Comcast accused of gouging TV rivals

Re: FCC

s/comcast/$telecoms/gi

Why is Wikipedia man Jimbo Wales keynoting a fake news conference?

The biggest fake news story...

...is how Wikipedia is constantly running out of money

Intel ME controller chip has secret kill switch

Intel does not and will not design backdoors for access into its products. [...] Intel does not participate in any efforts to decrease security of its technology.

Technically this is correct: this function has been outsourced to the NSA

World Vasectomy Day: 15k men line up for live vent-blocking

there are already enough children to help to educate/nurture without adding any more to the population.

This! I think the desire to throw a little is the ultimate in narcissism.

HPE HQ to leave Palo Alto birthplace as it 'consolidates' offices

they've been taking the axe to their workforce for the last 5+ years!

s/5/20/g

Hells door-bells! Ring pieces paralyzed in horror during Halloween trick-or-treat rush

Re: Hmm ...

..and the terms "cloud" and "AI"

Biz quadruples value overnight by adding 'Blockchain' to name

Artificial Intelligence Blockchain Machines - FTW

Computers4Christians miraculously appears on Ubuntu wiki

kiddle - sounds like an app for Catholic priests.

HPE sharpening the axe for 5,000 heads – report

Re: All Meg has done is get rid of people, her answer to eveyrthing

She's effectively redesigning the commercial jet mid-flight.

She's effectively selling off the pieces of the commercial jet mid-flight, hoping that by removing the engines, wings, and landing gear it will stop losing altitude.

Kill Google AMP before it kills the web

Re: Don't be evil

And the big problem we now face is that too many in IT were too stuck on their grudge with Microsoft to realise that the same thing was happening all over again, albeit on a far greater and more insidious scale, right down to the astroturfers and cheerleaders.

This X1000

Ad flog Plus: Adblock Plus now an advertising network, takes cash to broker web banners

Re: Not really much of a market

You wouldn't refuse to go into a supermarket and buy food there simply because they also have other things on display you don't want to see on the way in and demand they only display the things you want

How about if the stockboys nicked your wallet, or you came out and your car was gone?

Re: Not really much of a market

So because you hate advertising, you find the the things you want by using a search engine, which displays ads (or sponsored results if you prefer to call them that) in your search results and which is run by one of the largest advertising companies on the planet.

Between uBlock and NoScript, I don't see said ads or sponsored results.

"That's quite a nice ad you've got there. It'd be a shame if someone were to block it..."

US govt ceases fire in legal spat with Twitter to unmask anti-Trump 'immigration official'

Re: Perhaps they had a chat with another tla?

They probably got the info some other way.

Rubber hose decryption

Carnegie-Mellon Uni emits 'don't be stupid' list for C++ developers

I've not done C++ since the late 90's, so I did not recognize most of the constructs in the list. Now I just feel old.

What a Flake: Congress mulls trashing privacy rules, letting ISPs go to town on your data

Until politicians are flat out murdered, it's same 'ol same 'ol here in the United States of Business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exnaY0l4XsM

Facebook, Instagram: No, you can't auto-slurp our profiles (cough, cough, border officials)

Developers cannot 'use data obtained from us to provide tools that are used for surveillance.' Our goal is to make our policy explicit

...because we are already selling the data and will brook no competition, thank you very much.

Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

Re: LDS Sure it will lower employer costs and promote an healthy workforce...

Unless you don't quite realize that precisely 100% (one hundred percent, I'm neither rounding this up nor making it up) of those companies' customers exist because, at some point, a woman got pregnant.

Which is perfectly fine - as long as it's some other company's employees that get knocked up.

Microsoft nicks one more Apple idea: An ad-supported OS

The Jobs' version would disable system features at boot time until the user had seen the advertisement, which could be "visual or audible."

To paraphrase HHGTTG, death was too good for him.

Marissa! Mayer! out! as! CEO! of! Yahoo! corpse! post-Verizon! gobble!

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Woody-Harrelson-Wiping-Tears-Money.gif

Oh, 3PAR. One moment you're gliding along. The next, you're in the rain as HPE woos Nimble

Re: Former HPE

For me HPE is a great company to work for, been here for 9 years

Don't get too comfy.

If you've only been there 9 years, then you missed out when it really was a great company to work for.

Meg is running out of people to lay off, so she has to acquire another company in order to have enough warm bodies to keep the wood chipper going.

Passport and binary tree code, please: CompSci quizzes at US border just business as usual

Re: No issues visiting India

more cows

If you can't eat 'em, what's the point?

Silicon Valley tech bro's solution for homeless: Getting himself in the news. Again.

Re: The thing people ignore about homelessness in SF and a lot of California

And before all the Defenders start with the "Reagan emptied the asylums" rhetoric-the average age of homeless in counties like Santa Clara and San Francisco is nowhere near old enough to have been involved in the State mental health system

I shitteth thee not - I saw a 20-something "homeless" kid a while back with a "Vietnam Vet - Please help" sign.

How to nuke websites you don't like: Slam Google with millions of bogus DMCA takedowns

Re: Simple Solution

And remember that pols that don't more or less do the bidding of the voters will be replaced sooner rather than later. That part of the system is basically intact and doing its intended job.

s/voters/donors/gi

HPE CEO Whitman says everything's 'on the right track' as sales are literally decimated

Re: There is a reason "INVENT " was removed from the logo

They should change it to "HP INVERT"

Yet strangely HPE is still one of the best performing tech stocks over the past couple of years

A) you should know by now that stock price has absolutely no correlation to a company's actual performance

B) how much of that performance is being subsidized by stock buybacks?

Did Oracle just sign tape's death warrant? Depends what 'no comment' means

Re: Obituary

Remember: 3/2/1

3 copies

2 different media types

1 offsite

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

Re: Bye Felicia

One of the things as yet seemingly not noticed by FB is the number of fake ads that keep popping up.

If you must use FacePlant, then install FB Purity ( http://www.fbpurity.com/ ), which will let you filter out 98% of the garbage.

Re: you asked....Ledswinger's Guide to Hating the Rich

Rich kids are universally more revolting and hateable than their parents.

This is almost universally true, actually.

GoDaddy CEO says US is 'tech illiterate' (so, yeah, don't shut off that cheap H-1B supply)

If there is such a shortage of American techies, then why in the fuck American companies laying off so many of them? On top of that, if the Americans techies are so behind-the-curve, then why do the American techies have train the H1-B's before they are shown the door?

Parents have no idea when kidz txt m8s 'KMS' or '99'

Your kids are complaining about KMS because their Windows licenses won't validate

Re: Too bad...

All I got were episodes of Get Smart.

Missed it by that much...

Perhaps we should focus on making kids to failure and capable of dealing with conflict [...]

How about we just stop making kids?

A non-Standards Soviet approved measure of weight? Sod off, BBC!

So how far is that in Smoots?

Why does it cost 20 times as much to protect Mark Zuckerberg as Tim Cook?

Re: Wow!

Something where Apple isn't the most expensive option

If Apple were providing the security, it would be the most expensive, and the bodyguards would have the "courage" to not wear shoes.

Trump's visa plan leaks: American techies first

It's taken two weeks of chaos, but at last Trump has got a policy that actually has some logic and sense behind it.

Don't hold your breath. As soon as those with the money and motives get to him, his position will morph. People seem to forget that his MO is to request something extreme, then "graciously" accept a more reasonable counter-offer which was what he actually wanted in the first place. The fact that he gets away with this time and time again - even after publishing his strategy, speaks to the idiocy of those that deal with him.

Zuck off: Facebook's big kahuna sues Hawaiians to kick 'em off their land

Re: Never liked him

jerk wad

Being a jerkwad myself, I take offense at being compared to Zuckerberg.

Re: Wouldn't it be awful if...

Hawaiian volcanoes don't mess around just leave some ash on your lawn - they take over the whole thing by force https://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/kilauea/history/1990Kalapana/19900429-JG15289_large.jpg

Fitbit kit not a hit

Fitbit kit is shit

My wife has gone through two of them - on the first one, the non-replaceable band disintegrated, the second one just displays the FitBit equivalent of the BSOD. Since it's past the 45-day "warranty" ( https://www.fitbit.com/legal/returns-and-warranty ) she's not amenable to the idea of buying yet another one. I bought one for myself at the same time I bought hers, but the thrill of watching its random number generator of steps and stairs soon wore off. I had also bought a fitbit Aria scale, which is supposed to automatically update your fitbit account with your weight and body fat data, but it only supports 802.11b - which means it's incompatible with any consumer-grade router built after 2003.

Oracle sues its own star sales rep after she wins back $200k in pay fight

Re: Oracle Corporation

I see this a lot in the US, companies set goals and when the sales people exceed

Moving the goalposts is a just another corporate pastime; it doesn't just happen with salespeople. If any goal is exceeded, it must have been too easy; conversely, if you don't reach said arbitrary goal, you're useless dead weight which must be trimmed.

Trump's FBI boss, Attorney General picks reckon your encryption's getting backdoored

Re: Back to MD5, et. al.

Like 64k of RAM, ROT13 encryption should be good enough for anybody

Facebook, Cumulus take on Cisco with 128 ports of open networking iron

My question is why does facebook feel the need to play in this space? All it takes if for the Zuck to get distracted by a squirrel and now you have orphaned hardware

Learn to code site Code.org loses student work due to index bug

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exploits_of_a_mom.png

Solaris 12 disappears from Oracle's roadmap

Re: SPARC/Solaris more expensive? Not anymore!

Spotted the Oracle PR hack or someone with a really bad case of Stockholm Syndrome.

What they fail to mention is once you're locked into the ecosystem - as with any proprietary bits - , you are really fsck'd

Trump fan Peter Thiel 'considering' CA Terminator role*

Only reason why Arnie got in was that he's a Tinsletown celebrity

Being married to a Kennedy didn't hurt, either.