* Posts by TheMeerkat

650 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2017

Page:

McDonald's ordering system suffers McFlurry of tech troubles

TheMeerkat

Re: Maccas closed?

> Anyone remember Wimpy in the UK?

It still exists.

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

TheMeerkat

> Apple actually bothered to keep it up to date with web standards

You mean if Apple simply blindly following what Google decided is convenient for Google to be “standards”?

Google should not be able to decide what is the standard by simply unulaterally including it into their browser.

TheMeerkat

Re: Be Brave

If you see no issue with woke agenda, you are one of those woke fascists forcing your ideology on others.

TheMeerkat

Re: Be Brave

With Brave you still help Google domination as Brave is based on Chromium.

And now the EU is seeking to kill the only thing that was holding this domination, Safari

TheMeerkat

> Maybe in the US where there are no laws to prevent that…

As if EU laws made sense… Just look at the stupidity of having to agree with cookies on every bloody website training uses to click OK without thinking or reading. This example clearly indicate that nothing good would come from EU rules, just a ton of unexpected consequences.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

TheMeerkat

Re: Traits are polygenic, genes are pleyotropic

> Even if there were a dozen of genes directly contributing to "violence" (e.g. testosterone upregulation) and we were to root them all out from the gene pool, the odds are we'd end up with a non viable genome altogether (e.g. testosterone has so many non-violence related functions).

If you understood science, you would know that finding a specific gene is not a requirement for stating that there is a genetic predisposition.

TheMeerkat

Re: Using phrases such as "Genetically predisposed to violence" ...

Predisposition to violence is genetic. Note the term “predisposition”, there is still a chance to ameliorate it by early childhood training.

Unless you prefer a religion on woke to the actual science and prefer to pretend that “inconvenient science” does not exist.

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

TheMeerkat

Re: This is where technology lets you down

> In which socialist country was that?

It might surprise you but Socialist countries tend to have very subservient to the management unions.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

TheMeerkat

Re: The first one is free

> We pay you for a day, you work with us for a day

I don’t think this is going to work for programmers.

And they will lose many candidates who would not be prepared to spend a whole day on an interview, even if it is paid.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

TheMeerkat

I don’t think majority of users will benefit from “normal installation” that would make it easier to install malware.

Phone/iPad are not computers, they are consumer products. If you want to be able to ‘install normally” get yourself a computer.

Year of Linux on the desktop creeps closer as market share rises a little

TheMeerkat

The company I work for mandates use of centrally administered Lunix on their laptops. It is Ubuntu.

While I like Lunix on servers, the desktop-related functionality is crap (at least compared to Mac, I am not a Windows user).

Before relatively recent upgrade my laptop had to be restarted every time I brought it into the office because it would not recognise that it was connected to an external screen. After the upgrade it keeps forgetting to take the size of the side bar after screen is locked resulting in maximised windows partially obstructed.

TheMeerkat

Re: Repeat after me:

> If you think Outlook is any good at email, you really don't understand email.

If you think Outlook is bad, you have never used Thunderbird on Linux for work (my current employer is cheapskate and makes us use Lunix instead of Macs).

Insider steals 79,000 email addresses at work to promote own business

TheMeerkat

Re: You what?

There is no way you can avoid some9ne to have an access, whatever “robust procedures” you invent. Someone has to administer the database and access to it and that person will be able to download.

There is no choice but to trust someone.

On the other hand the6 managed to find who has done it, so the setup was not that bad.

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

TheMeerkat

Re: Daily Emails are a luxury

For the majority of the planet’s population Internet did not exist until after 2000.

IT body proposes that AI pros get leashed and licensed to uphold ethics

TheMeerkat

And who decides what is that “ethics”?

AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

TheMeerkat

Re: Male Cow Ex ?

Even if Western AI is not prepared to retaliate, why would dictators like, say, Putin be afraid of attacking the West?

TheMeerkat

Re: Unsurprising....

May be WW1 was a fault of politicians, but modern wars starting with WW2 are wars of ideologies.

There is no way for a politician to stop a war that stems from ideology that drives people.

Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users toward Edge

TheMeerkat

Re: Unfortunately .....

This hatred of Microsoft is really childish. It is something one would expect from a student before they grow up.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

TheMeerkat

Re: A wasted trip

According to the text “there was no impact on customers”, so router continued working but something was not right.

It is quite possible that someone was afraid that the router won’t go back to live after the reboot and did not want to start having an impact on customers without a spare router being on hand in case the old one won’t come back after the restart.

JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry

TheMeerkat

Re: Bad expectations (was: Bad code)

If your test is written based on the code, you just test that your bugs were not fixed by the next developer.

You should use writing tests as an opportunity to actually test your code, not to generate “code coverage” that your management insist on.

TheMeerkat

Re: It’s not just C-Suite

EU cookie rule is dangerous for security as it teaches the masses to click “Yes” without reading.

It is a stupid rule that achieved nothing other than annoy people.

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

TheMeerkat

Re: Bog Zech?????

> We need to get away from the idea that manual labour is unskilled

The labour of a cleaner is unskilled compared, say, to the labour of a computer programmer. It is a fact. And none of your lefty ideology is going to change it.

CISA boss swatted: 'While my own experience was certainly harrowing, it was unfortunately not unique'

TheMeerkat

> Swatting only works because of how trigger happy yank cops are.

The reason they are trigger happy is that they are shot at by criminals too often. You would be trigger happy too if you were a US policeman.

Australia imposes cyber sanctions on Russian it says ransomwared health insurer

TheMeerkat

Re: Linked to ten-million-record leak

I am sure Australia would love to put him on trial, but he refuses to come to Australia while committing cybercrime against it while safe from any prosecution in Russia.

UK water giant admits attackers broke into system as gang holds it to ransom

TheMeerkat

Re: Iranian attackers are thought to be behind an attack on a Pennsylvania water authority.

> it's odd it's nearly always those countries.

Why it’s odd? If you live in one of those countries and do damage to the West while earning some money, you are safe from prosecution.

North Korea is a special case - you don’t keep the money and you are advised by the government who to attack. In the other 3 you are making money while being safe.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

TheMeerkat

> The law was changed in the late 90's that changed that made computer created evidence infallible

You misunderstand that law.

The law says the computer system results should be trusted unless there is evidence they should not. There was evidence, but Fijitsu people (including their software architect who should have known better) testified that the system should be trusted.

The law exists to prevent lawyers trying to derail trials by claiming you have to prove your calculator does sums correctly.

TheMeerkat

Re: Generous

So you want the same bad Fijitsu employees write the same bad code, but this time with some government top manager in charge? How it would be different?

TheMeerkat

Re: We need more articles like this one

> MPs live on a gravy train, they get a fabulous salary

MPs don’t get “fabulous salaries”. I spend 80% of my time at work actually coding and I am paid better than MPs. They have an awful job that I would never want to do. And many of them today are not sure they have a job at the end of this year.

This envy towards politicians is just stupid.

TheMeerkat

Re: It's still happening

No, managers simply using programmers’ who are not as good as they think and thus trying to show they are better by cutting corners.

The buck stops at you, don’t blame your manager.

Burnout epidemic proves there's too much Rust on the gears of open source

TheMeerkat

Re: "Burnout"

If you chose to work for free, don’t expect to be paid. And don’t expect the State to make the users pay.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

TheMeerkat

Everyone blames too PO brass or lawyers, but one expect them to be ignorant of the IT problems.

In my book the worst were Fujitsu IT people who were giving evidence that condemned the postmasters and who should have known about the issues .

E.g. the Software Architect Gareth Jenkins.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethjenkins

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

TheMeerkat

Modern EVs tend to have heat pumps.

Even plug-in Lexus (not a proper EV) has a heat pump.

Disease X fever infects Davos: WEF to plan response to whatever big pandemic is next

TheMeerkat

Re: Twats

Vaccination is a good thing.

Masks don’t work.

If you think everyone should wear a mask you are as ignorant as someone who don’t want to vaccinate their children from polio.

TheMeerkat

Re: Obligatory masks when coughing

e-coil is a bacteria, Covid is a virus.

These are completely different types of microorganisms.

TheMeerkat

Re: > [masks] didn't stop the last pandemic

Politicians of all colours love mask mandate. It allows them to show that they are “doing something” without actually doing anything.

This has nothing to do with whether masks work or not.

TheMeerkat

Re: Obligatory masks when coughing

There is exactly Zero actual scientific evidence that masks work against airborne viruses.

TheMeerkat

Re: WHO Is Too Much At The Mercy Of Political Winds

To give an actual power to a bunch of non-elected people who during Covid followed whatever Chinese government were telling them?

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

TheMeerkat

Re: ransomware

But people don’t mind their data collected.

How many are actually pay extra money to install a tracker in their car to protect it from theft, the device with only one purpose to collect data?

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

TheMeerkat

The main issue with IT is that there are too many non-programming “architects” and “product owner” who are paid good money but have no clue about actual programming and them hiring low status, low quality “engineers” to do the work.

Elon Musk made 1 in 3 Trust and Safety staff ex-X employees, it emerges

TheMeerkat

It is the left who propagate hatered today.

TheMeerkat

Re: One problem

The first thing that enemies of fire speech do is call all speech they don’t like “hate speech”, “bulling” etc.

This includes both National Socialists and Communists in the countries where they got power.

If you did not know North Korean propaganda insists that there is free speech in North Korea, they only “ban lies and hatered”.

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

TheMeerkat

Everyone seems to forget about Gareth Jenkins, a Fujitsu “Lead Deal Architrct” and other employees of Fujitsu who were used as an expert witnesses in the trials.

Politicians would not know much about computer systems, but they should have known the reliability of the system they have created themselve.

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

TheMeerkat

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

At this point Covid has already became just another flu-like decease. It is here to stay and it is as danegerous as flu.

As for “long Covid” - there is “long flu” as well (post-viral syndrome), just that it never got the same publicity and hence its numbers were not considerably enhanced by psycho-somatic cases.

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

TheMeerkat

Re: Shameful

But the Chinese will be even worse as there is a larger leaway to ignore safety in China due to the nature of the system.

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

TheMeerkat

Re: Think of the Grid!

Standard AC home charger for electric car takes 7kW

Electricity people had to upgrade my main socket breaker to higher current when installing it.

War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape

TheMeerkat

Re: Survival characteristics

> humans are the opposite: we evolved for a narrow temporary stable climatic band...

Only someone who have no actual knowledge but is completely captured and brainwashed into environmentalism can say that.

The humans are the only animals on earth who can adapt to any climate, because we have brains. We can survive and adapt in any climate because instead of being perfectly suited for the current one we happen to live in (like dinosaurs were) we can change our environment artificially to support our lives in any of natural ones.

What comes after open source? Bruce Perens is working on it

TheMeerkat

Re: Eclipse Versus Borland Delphi

> emphasized that companies could colllaborate on something

Companies don’t need Open Source if they want to cooperate.

They want Open Source to get stuff for free. And one can’t blame them - everyone of us like a freebie. It is the idealistic stupidity of those who support open source for ideological reasons that resulted in programmer’s work being undervalued.

TheMeerkat

Re: Sand in China

Yes, it is funny how out of all countries he went to China to talk about it. Does he really expect Chinese companies to ever pay a stupid western programmer who releases his software with source available?

TheMeerkat

Re: Let's say he creates this post-open "contract"

“Open source compliance” means companies ban their programmers to use any software that has a licence which might potentially make them either pay or make their code open source.

So whatever clever new licence one makes up it is not going to work - the software with a restrictive licence will lose to the current open source competitor.

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

TheMeerkat

Re: Hey, there's an idea...

> This has been compounded by BoE interest rate hikes

Actually, it is low interest rates that cause inflation, not the other way around.

Low interest rate means more money created.

Page: