Posts by Sykowasp

Word to the wise: Don't tell your IT manager they're not in Excel

Re: "Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

Or maybe the issue is MS Office is not fit for purpose and is only used through corporate lock-in and momentum.

Maybe they could integrate copilot into Word so that if someone enters something like looks like a spreadsheet formula, it offers to convert the table into an embedded spreadsheet (j/k that this needs copilot btw).

Embeddable documents are hardly new technology, it was done in the 80s and 90s, even in mobile office suites on Symbian.

The sweetest slice of Pi: Raspberry Pi 500+ sports mechanical keys, 16GB, and built-in SSD

I like this a lot.

My one niggle would be that at $200 the actual central chip is now a tiny fraction of the cost, and is a little underpowered at the price range. I know they can't do anything about this as the entire point is a range of products built around that chip, and they can't afford another chip design (with 2x cores or better cores, and a bigger GPU and memory bus to accommodate) for a 'fat Pi' lineup.

OTOH it's $200 for a new computer with mechanical keyboard and it does look like a good deal all told.

IBM boss Arvind Krishna pockets 23% pay rise to $25M

More executive greed

The people at the top are taking more and more of the earnings from the productivity of their workers, without sharing equally with those workers.

Those workers are living more and more as indentured wage slaves rather than free willed employees, as the cost of living overtakes their earnings and they essentially live to work, and their salary covers their existence outside work.

Linux royalty backs adoption of Rust for kernel code, says its rise is inevitable

NIH NIMBY developers

What a bunch of babies who wouldn't last past probation in any serious software development business.

Research (by Google) shows that older C/C++ codebases are often fairly memory safe because of years of use catching most of the flaws. It is the newer code that has memory safety issues, and that is exactly what allowing Rust based contributions will help with.

Rust lives in a separate subfolder in the kernel. It maintains a separate interface to interact with the C based components. The C based components aren't going anywhere, they aren't getting rewritten, especially the core proven components. It isn't a good use of resource to do so.

The size of someone's ego to get so upset at being called out by Linus that you resign from both Linux kernel maintainer and your own variant of Linux...

UK businesses eye AI as the cheaper, non-whining alternative to actual staff

It'll take a while for the first stories about "we migrated all our creative work to AI, three years later our customers were leaving us in droves" emerge.

Analytical AI is useful as a tool alongside other analysis tools. Generative AI is built upon theft and is disconcerting to look at (sure it will improve), never mind the absolutely shoddy quality of code generating AI - useful as a tool maybe, but not on its own.

The use of AI needs to be taxed significantly to cover both the human cost and the environmental cost.

Eurocops take down 'secure' criminal chat system known as Matrix

Thought this story was about matrix.org for a moment there.

Billionaire food app CEO wants you to pay for the privilege of working with him

Billionaires are really vile egotistical people.

The most we see their behaviour - space karen, Murthy, this vile specimen, the more I realise that the world is long overdue a correction, a la French Revolution.

AI hiring bias? Men with Anglo-Saxon names score lower in tech interviews

"Undergrad thesis" == Final year project.

It's good to get in the door into a graduate role (or as part of a PhD application). It certainly shouldn't be getting you roles above graduate.

91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship

Yeah but they pay more than most tech companies so I bet most stay and suck it up if they can't get a transfer to one of the rare equivalent payers.

Pat Gelsinger's grand plan to reinvent Intel is in jeopardy

At some point investors will have to consider if Intel's leadership is misleading them materially as to the health of 18A.

I hope for Intel's sake that things aren't bad, but two major customers turning up their nose at it is not a good sign.

On the upside, Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake made on TSMC are looking strong - great adverts for TSMC's 3nm process. Probably not what Intel want to be showing off, but it's clear that they have not got the volume in their own fabs to make them.

And volume of leading edge nodes has always been Intel's problem - or rather, they would keep a node advantage in the past by ramping very very slowly in one particular product area (usually mobile) until they sorted the volume issue out after a year. It was always a fake process lead, and it fell apart eventually.

Gotta say, skipping 20A for 18A reminds me a lot of Intel's bravado in the past on mode shrinks, 10nm being one that failed spectacularly because they went in too fast.

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

The valuation of Autonomy was for HPE to have determined at the time. They decided on the valuation, and they would have run that through a lot of checks and due diligence. This is what failed.

You don't go on what the owner of the thing being valued suggests. Everything that is said, you check.

The decision to buy was entirely down to HPE.

I would laugh if the conclusion what that yes, there was civil fraud, but the damages are limited to £0.

HPE couldn't even leave it a month before trying to take advantage of the widow who will be in a vulnerable state.

I certainly won't be buying anything again from HPE, nor HP by association.

'Right to switch off' initiative aims to boost economy by beating burnout

Re: Hmm

I mean a hierarchy of call urgency is not a problem.

There's critical - the company is willing to put £500 on your pay slip this month to contact you out of hours because the situation is bad-bad, or pay you £500 just to be on call each week even if there is no call.

Then there's non-critical - the boss wants to get some information - that can wait for the next day and is certainly not worth the £500.

Because of the power imbalance in the employer-employee relationship, and the change in technology since the 70s, we now need legislation to enforce the above.

Yes, if you want access out of hours, then you must pay for it.

My employer pays when people are on support rotas, it's not a lot but if you maintain your software the calls aren't frequent.

Still waiting for a Pi 500 and wondering what do this summer?

I hope it arrives by Autumn, and that it exposes the PCIe a little differently and conveniently since it will in inside a wide case, so hopefully room for custom PCIe expansions to have some space in there alongside (not on top of) the system board.

Founder of Indian ride-share biz Ola calls for 70-hour work week

Re: Dude's not wrong... (except where he is)

In India housemaids are common, and I'm sure he has several - cleaners, cooks, butlers, chauffeurs, and more.

This guy clearly does zero work outside his job. Ditto all the other billionaire twats that want to enslave their workers.

That's how he can spend more hours on his work - although 20 hours a day is clearly a complete fabrication unless he classifies a lot of what other people call 'wasting time' as work.

Microsoft touts Visual Studio Code as a Java juggernaut

Jeez, just use IntelliJ guys.

Critical Apache ActiveMQ flaw under attack by 'clumsy' ransomware crims

No, they don't, but OpenWire might.

Note that by the time you are in "a remote attacker with network access to a broker" type situation, you have bigger problems anyway.

But users of classic ActiveMQ have had years and years to move onto ActiveMQ Artemis.

Amazon unveils new drone design, plans liftoff of aerial delivery in UK, Italy

Re: 5 metres clearance?

I don't think the drones are meant for you.

They're meant for people who live slightly off the beaten track, who are messing up with the delivery van routing, i.e., fewer deliveries per mile/hour, which is inefficient.

Russian businesses want to party like it's 1959 with 6-day workweek

Ah I wonder how the pro-Russia, pro-Putin twitter tankies are going to take this.

Miffed Googlers meme on CEO's $226M pay award amid cost-cutting campaign

In a normal business, a CEOs single job is to grow the business.

So they should be paid according to the value they have added to the business. Nothing more (perhaps a subsidence wage in-line with other employees).

Their wage should be based purely upon the stock price gains their policies have achieved.

Bad luck if the stock falls.

I might be generous and allow some form of adjustment for overall market movements.

WFH? Google Cloud's offices like a 'ghost town' before new policy

Re: You cannot eat your cake and have it.

Exactly. And it has benefits - you might get a better desk location some days, or decide to use the perch desks overlooking the river, or sit elsewhere for collaboration reasons. Also the desks are clean, in theory, and you get a locker.

The opposite is also true - force hot desking onto your employees and expect them to WfH more often.

The main issue is people don't come in evenly over the week. Tuesdays and Thursdays are particularly bad, Wednesday somewhat - TWaT culture. Nobody wants to come in on Mondays or Fridays anymore. If they can fix that somewhat, then we might be getting somewhere that allows office downsizing whilst retaining utilisation.

Soaring costs, inflation nurturing generation of 'quiet quitters' among under-30s

The bigger issue is that stressed people work less effectively.

If people are stressed about day to day living costs because they don't know if they'll even be able to get by, then that will be on their minds at all times.

Giving these people an extra few days off a year (or more WfH) doesn't fix this - although it works well for people who are not under costs pressure at other times, if you can't afford to give a pay rise.

Clearview AI fined millions in the UK: No 'lawful reason' to collect Brits' images

Re: Please fine them until the pips squeak.

And keep on doing it until the data is removed.

The problem for Clearview is that this will probably mean re-creating their databases from scratch from the new input datasets (with removed images), which is a huge amount of processing work, assuming they iteratively add new images over time.

And yes, people giving personal images to Google/Facebook does not mean they ever consented to this use which is very different from why people upload to social media.

And also why we shouldn't upload to social media, unless we have locked things down massively, which unfortunately the social media businesses don't want to make easy.

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

I wonder how long it would take to adapt OneWeb to launching on Falcon 9 or alternatives.

It probably isn't as simple as just sticking the satellites into the space on top of the rocket. There's the size of the satellites to take into account, and how they are deployed from the rocket. The may be lucky and it is possible in a short time period.

I guess the 36 satellites ready to launch need to be written off, they aren't coming back, and the sanctions aren't stopping soon.

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

The engine sound from Amiga Lotus Turbo Challenge II.

When you turn it on, it can play the theme music.

(first thought was benny hill theme music, already mentioned, and then the screams of souls eternally trapped in hell, but I guess partially covered by the poll).

Normal bicycles are silent, and can go pretty fast too. Why can't the same solution be used for e-Scooters, a bell?

Have you heard the Get-Ir e-Mopeds? No, just a faint whirr, and again, no problem there apparently.

Just the singling out of e-Scooters, because they're more affordable to the common pleb. But I would support a lower max speed in consumer models (especially targeted at younger people who will use them on pavements).

Tesla driver charged with vehicular manslaughter after deadly Autopilot crash

Autopilot has never been advertised as auto-stopping at red lights, right? (this is correct, if you're wondering)

So autopilot is pretty irrelevant, the driver should have taken control prior to the red lights.

So seems a fair charge to me.

Nothing to do with Tesla or autopilot.

Time to party like it's 2002: Acura and Honda car clocks knocked back 20 years by bug

Re: GPS week rollover

Maybe the core code in this 2007 GPS module was written in 2002.

It includes a line like this to cope with the week rollover, perhaps some of the test cases were pre-1999:

if (year < 2002) then year = year + 20

because they knew at coding time that the year would never be under 2002, so this delayed the week rollover problem by 3 years (i.e., the cars have been thinking it's 1999-2002 for three years now).

but this wouldn't fix itself in August on its own. So there must be some other code that also munges the GPS date and week and that will return a higher year number prior to this code, come August.

Who cares about the year in a car anyway? But the time is essential, and day/month can come in handy.

Give us your biometric data to get your lunch in 5 seconds, UK schools tell children

Re: Nutshell

Remember these AI systems work fairly well for white people.

So in the main it'll be denying (or requiring multiple tries) mostly for BAME pupils.

Knowing the stubbornness of schools, they will probably put these pupils last or segregate them to ensure the processing of faces continues at speed.

In the real world, parents could stick £15 on a school meal card at the beginning of the week and the pupil can just tap to pay at the end (also the card won't work in the off-license down the road), in the 3s or so the cashier has to add up what you have, enter the figure, get the payment and move on to the next pupil. Covid doesn't last well on surfaces anyway, that's been proven, so all this 'biometrics because covid' is just a screen for future authoritarian rule.

Parents - just say no.

"In a secondary school you have around about a 25-minute period to serve potentially 1,000 pupils"

That's 40 a minute, 1.5s per pupil. Sure it's pipelined, and possibly superscalar, but this seems mad.

Yeah, because the combined brainpower of an entire nation of teachers hasn't worked out that they could simply stagger lunch 'hour' by a bit to create a 'lunch 2 hours', or at least extend the serving time to 55 minutes (+>100%) with a 1hr 30 window, with some years teaching over the first or final 30 minute period.

Sure, logistics of teacher availability (they need a break too) and in secondary schools they teach all years, so the classes still teaching whilst other years are eating, then the eating year needs to come back into class, but the teacher needs a break, that's a difficulty, I can't see how it isn't solvable.

Labour Party proposes raising UK Digital Services Tax (so Amazon can pass the hike on that, too?)

An International Corporation Tax is just not going to happen anytime soon.

So when we are back in the real world, and looking at things from a consumer and societal point of view...

""However, our fear is that the large companies would simply pass this extra tax on to the suppliers and smaller companies that trade on the platforms, and thus avoid paying any extra tax and avoiding reduced profits.""

Well, Amazon avoid it, but the tax is paid somewhere into the government and the cost structures and more equalised between high street and internet.

Right? ... right?

OTOH Amazon deliver in electric vans, one journey, hundreds of houses. Better than hundreds of journeys to the shops in fossil-fuel cars, so the carbon cost saving of internet shopping should also be a factor?

etc

etc

First RISC-V computer chip lands at the European Processor Initiative

Whilst this is clearly a test chip, if it works it could make an interesting SoC for embedded use with all those EU developed accelerators on it (even if they're weak), think Arduino or Pi Pico type devices. 22nm is cheap, it's a small die, so whilst it's not as small and cheap as some of those other devices, it might be more powerful if it does reach that 1GHz speed.

Chocolate beer barred from sale after child mistakes it for chocolate milk

It's not like the same hasn't happened in the UK regarding colourful nice can designs that some busybody thinks would appeal to a child.

Right. And that child, upon taking a sip (if they manage to open the can that is, ring pulls are difficult for the younger children) would continue to drink something that was clearly not what they were expecting or like? Nah.

GitHub's npm gave away a package name while it was in use, causing rethink

Re: domain name system

That's just a convention in the naming of packages, and Maven groupIds (which is how most developers manage package dependencies in a Java project these days, and what I think the article author was probably partially referencing).

You can eschew that entirely, and it's not a problem. But most dependencies are now following the format.

Sometimes the groupId changes - the common examples being when Apache takes over a popular bit of software and the groupId becomes org.apache.{project}, but the package names in the software will remain the same for longer for compatibility reasons.

It's not perfect. There's no API/incompatibility versioning mechanism (to manage incompatible changes in a bit of software between release versions) beyond sticking that in the artifact name *and* package names (to prevent collisions, even flipping hibernate gets this wrong and they knew they were making incompatible changes with v6.x!).

Hard drives at Autonomy offices were destroyed the same month CEO Lynch quit, extradition trial was told

Wow, an entire experienced expert team of HP lawyers, acquisition specialists, financial bods, and so on, were somehow hoodwinked by a couple of people. Amazing. This really reflects poorly on HP, even if Lynch did buff up the valuation (somewhat akin to someone wet wiping something shiny before listing on ebay). This is just a vindictive saving face move.

Personally I would stop the extradition because of the lack of reciprocity from the US when we ask for someone to be extradited. The relationship is high on abusive.

Teen turned away from roller rink after AI wrongly identifies her as banned troublemaker

Re: Using it wrongly

The problem is one where the AI has been trained to have ingrained racism of the "they all look the same" type due to the training dataset and input data quality.

It also relies on cameras, that have also been shown to exhibit ingrained racist assumptions in the design - the cameras pick up white/pale skin traits quite well, but not darker skin where they are not very sensitive.

So a poor image + poor AI makes a decision, then shows the photos (on a likely poorly calibrated monitor that is also poor at showing dark skin tones) to an employee, who themselves may have their own ingrained racist opinions (or their employer will), and this will fix the previous two issues?

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Would the manager have known that?

The script was so basic was that even needed? Maybe it could have had a better name, but once people had been trained on its use that would have been unchangeable.

In this case the input questions could have been a bit clearer, say:

Your Email:

Active Directory Site:

Maybe add a scary message about authorised use, although most managers seem to think they should be authorised for everything.

IMO the manager in this case wanted to whitelist the sites in whatever web blocking software their company used, and thought this would do it.

Evidence planted on laptops of jailed Indian activists, says forensics firm Arsenal Consulting

Can't see how the next election in India will be free in any way, given the trajectory of their current government and their desire to stay in power.

Fabricating evidence to put opponents in prison is a very Russian move.

The M in M1 is for moans: How do you turn a new MacBook Pro into a desktop workhorse?

Re: Why only M1? Also applies to Intel Macbook's

It's not like USB-C adaptors with USB-A ports and HDMI aren't cheap.

My work threw in a https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-MOKiN-MacBook-Surface-USB-C/dp/B086PQG2CW?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1&psc=1 with the new laptop.

Who would cross the Bridge of Death? Answer me these questions three! Oh and you'll need two-factor authentication

Re: An upvote for flagging the colour blindness issue...

You can order a colour blind tube map here - https://tfl.gov.uk/forms/12387.aspx

Re: Ah Captcha!

The crosswalks one was difficult, because they looked just like the areas we have in the UK at traffic lights for bikes to be safe in, and that was when you could actually see anything in the blurry image. Google really needs to sort out the cultural issues with Captcha.

Vissles V84: Mechanical keyboard hits all the right buttons for Mac power users

Re: ;: [{ etc

If the keys are backlit, then the letters are where the light shines through.

Re: Keychron

I very recently got a Keychron K8 (wireless gatorade red, might take into work so needs to be a bit considerate in the noise dept).

So far, so good.

Tech contractor loses IR35 tribunal appeal: 'Right' to substitute didn't mean he could, say judges

I guess he can at least ask Nationwide to pay him backdated holiday and sick pay as a result. I mean, a court of law no less found he was an employee, not a contractor.

Right?

Oh.

Want to keep working in shorts and flipflops way after this is all over? It could be time to rethink your career moves

Re: I do not miss my commute at all

And in London most people are saving 10 hours a week or more on the commute.

More time with family, more time to sleep - it's no surprise that productivity has not dropped for these workers.

And you can't really work on the commute because it's usually split between walking, train (standing/no room), and walking stages. So no advantage versus driving. Indeed those who commute from further are better off, they have a longer period of time on the train to make it worth getting the laptop out, if you have the space.

There is a well known phenomenon where people stay up later than they should because it's something they have control over (or by the time they get home after work at 8pm, cook and eat dinner, do some housework, and have some personal time, it's past midnight), even though they will be tired. WfH gives them more personal time, so they are also likely to get more rest and work more efficiently.

Re: I'm done

I'll be going back in two days a week, for the face to face meetings and collaborative work, and hopefully leaving the WfH for getting down to getting stuff done.

Big problem is having a split team between London and Bangalore, the meetings are still going to be online where-ever they are held. But at least the office has good air conditioning and a pub next door.

But certainly the commute was not missed, especially with the regular train delays. 2 hours a day, simply lost to reading a freebie newstrash or phone doomscrolling.

Conservative Party fined one-third of a luxury food hamper by ICO for nuisance email campaign

I found Conservative party propaganda emails in my inbox during the same time period. I certainly never signed up for any such thing, I never would.

I presume it's the same situation, they clearly obtained a set of email addresses from somewhere and used them improperly.

Whoop! Robot/human high-fives all round! Oh, my fingers have disintegrated

Yeah, 'big data' analytics are only as good as the data put into it, and the query built on top of it.

For example, Amazon should store a field 'is this item usually purchased often or rarely' for each item they sell, so that when I buy that once-a-decade clothes horse, I don't get recommended clothes horses for months afterwards - well, until a decade later - that's when I need the suggestion!

The only recommendation algorithm that does work well is the one that recommends music based upon what other people listen to, that listen to what you listen to as well. But even so, as soon as you have more than a single-track music mind, it starts breaking down, or being so limited in recommendations to be useless. And other people have their own eclectic range of music which leads to odd recommendations just because they listen to industrial and light jazz, doesn't mean I want the light jazz recommendations!

'There was no one driving that vehicle': Texas cops suspect Autopilot involved after two men killed in Tesla crash

Yes, it could be an additional course to get that on your driving license. Like you can get automatic and manual driving licenses in the UK, and additional steps for larger and specialised vehicles, self-driving (including autopilot and advanced cruise control systems) should be tested, to teach the limitations and safe use of these currently limited systems. It only needs to be a computer-based course rather than sit-and-drive.

Also it means some money for the course book creators, and the test centres to host.

Tesla (and so on) can unlock that feature in the car upon presentation of a driving license with that aspect done.

But ... big barrier to sales of electric cars? Well, no, the self-driving is an additional feature even here.

I am shocked that a fire department doesn't know how to extinguish an electrical fire from a car crash in 2021, and instead kept pouring water on it. This is absolutely appalling.

As for the accident itself, that's entirely down to the idiots within the car. It's a non-story (as regards Tesla and Autopilot or Self-Driving) as soon as their behaviour was described.

It turns out that it's likely these idiots only stuck the car in cruise control mode anyway (presumably with the seatbelt locked in the driver's seat, but no weight sensor in the chair to confirm someone was present), so no surprise it didn't go to plan.

Docking £500k commission from top SAS salesman was perfectly legal, rules judge

Indeed this is even better for the sales bod, assuming they makes sales a few times a year, but not all the time. It smooths out the income (which may be good for tax purposes as well, if you have good years then bad years). Some upfront payment should be negotiated into the contract though, or bonus at some early point of the contract.

Obviously you'd want a term in the contract about cashing in upon termination/quitting the role, or otherwise ensuring the money is paid over the time.

The downside is if your own employer goes bust, you won't have that money - on the other had the client isn't going to be paying your bust employer either, so what can you do.