Posts by Carpet Deal 'em

Linux Foundation, IBM, Cisco and others back ‘Inclusive Naming Initiative’ to change nasty tech terms

Re: I'm screwed

You brought up a point so many people have missed:"robot" comes from the Czech word for serfdom and is therefore wholly unacceptable to describe Mechanical Americans!

Re: What are we going to do about the embedded devices?

> Think about what it must be like to be "black", and then see thousands upon thousands of examples where "black is bad". What must that feel like?

Why do I get the feeling you're a self-important white person without any real problems?

> Then consider what unconscious bias that's instilled in you without you even realising it.

None? You're out looking for antlion dens to turn into mountains to assuage an underlying guilt without any sacrifice on your part to address it. I wonder what it is?

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

Re: So...

The TLD is owned by an American company(Verisign) and, assuming the whois is accurate, they're using an American registrar. So DHS didn't need to do any international faffing about to do what it did.

Re: US Homeland Security

A whois search indicates they're registered with Enom, which is located in the United State of Washington. This might be a case of overreach had they gone with a registrar based anywhere else, but this is firmly within Uncle Sam's jurisdiction.

Even if the company shouldn't have been a target, the domain was still seized as a result of a criminal investigation, so I doubt they'd have a leg to stand on.

Microsoft's Windows OEM, Surface sales looking a bit peaky as coronavirus takes toll on China supply chain

China is riding a technicality of only reporting cases confirmed before death - if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but takes off before the DNA test comes back, it's an aquatic bird - so it's hard to say for certain what the fatality rate is, but it's at the very least 2%(and if China quarantining tens of millions of people is anywhere near a reasonable response, that's apt to skyrocket as medical supplies run out).

Did you know? Internet money lender Opera also offers a free web browser

Re: Fintech concerns

"Origination fees" are charges tacked on at the start of the loan term(as opposed to servicing fees, which are tacked on on a periodic basis). For short term loans, they're frequently the main source of revenue, with the actual interest being a mere pittance(the absurd APRs quoted almost always factor them in); said fees are also frequently taken out of the initial disbursement, meaning a company loaning $100 with a $25 origination fee is only really risking $75.

Firefox now defaults to DNS-over-HTTPS for US netizens and some are dischuffed about this

Re: Good and bad

A VPN makes explicit, system-wide adjustments - it's got nothing to do with an application ignoring system settings. The rest of your post is just flailing to try and distract from an application's misbehavior.

Re: Good and bad

DHCP picks up a default DNS server, but that's not even in the same league as an application picking its own server in defiance of system configuration. If I do, for some reason, change my system DNS configuration, I damn well expect all applications on the system to honor it, not to have to chase down any and everything that can access the internet and hope I can change its configuration to match.

There's simply no justification for Mozilla's behavior - period.

How many times do we have to tell you? A Tesla isn't a self-driving car, say investigators after Apple man's fatal crash

Re: But how about those batteries?

Hydrocarbons aren't self-oxidizing, so a fire in a confined space will be self-limiting. Lithium ion batteries, on the other hand, are very much self-oxidizing and will continue burning until they've burnt themselves away or have been deliberately extinguished(which is just a bit more difficult than for normal fires).

In other words, just because the Tesla wasn't the spark doesn't mean it didn't take the fire to the next level.

'I give fusion power a higher chance of succeeding than quantum computing' says the R in the RSA crypto-algorithm

Re: Lovely quote

Blockchain does solve the problem of how you have umpteen thousand actors trust a ledger in a zero-trust environment(ie, cryptocurrency), but for anything that doesn't closely resemble that it's at best a suboptimal solution.

World Wide Web's Sir Tim swells his let's-remake-the-internet startup with Bruce Schneier, fellow tech experts

Re: Nice idea, not a chance

Decentralization could work with social networks: give everybody a standardized API and a dozen Facebook clones could talk to each other as if everybody was on the same site. You could try to mandate Facebook participate in such a scheme, but they'd probably treat it the way the cable companies treat CableCARD: something that meets the minimum legal requirements and restrict every possible feature to the company's boxes.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Re: Stupid is as Stupid does

What you call a "proper rocket" is properly called a "chemical rocket"(or "chemical booster", etc). These are the main design in use because of their high thrust:weight ratio; ion thrusters use non-chemical means to accelerate their propellant and are favored due to their high specific impulse(ie, they're highly fuel), but they're rather weak(and thus have only narrow applications). There are also nuclear rocket designs that have even reached the ground test stage, though none have flown.

So is a steam rocket a rocket? Yes, yes it is.

At least it'll counter-act the "Chinese biological weapon" meme.

Interestingly, just about everything about that theory is an independent quantity: if it escaped from the lab, then it could have been something they found, made or stole. If it was artificially engineered, they could have stolen it, made it as a bioweapon or were pursuing research in the area for other reasons. And, of course, if it is a bioweapon, it could have escaped from the lab or have been deliberately loosed in the area to make it look like it had.

Given how a la carte it is, there's a halfway decent chance some combination is correct.

MWC now stands for Mighty Wallet Crusher? Smaller firms counting the cost after mobile industry event scrapped

the GSMA reportedly describing the circumstances that lead to the event's cancellation as a "force majeure situation."

They'd definitely be right had the government put its foot down and prohibited the gathering, but I'm pretty certain this is, from a legal perspective, the same as if they'd cancelled it due to not liking the popular haircut(even if it's nothing like that from a moral perspective).

Breaking bad... browser use: New Mexico accuses Google of illegally slurping kids' private data via G Suite

Re: Nature

The farmer and the viper would be a better fit. It's not exactly news that Google gets its money by spying data harvesting.

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

Please let it be a joke.

So you say aloud, but we all know that, deep inside, you're lovin' it.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

Re: Okay

Anybody who uses any web browser on an iPhone uses Safari. All the others on the appstore are just skins since Apple won't allow anything more.

OK, which Dombås stuffed Windows 10 to bursting at Swedish flatpack flinger?

Re: "Relationship-ending"

It's also amusing with the rust on the so-called stainless steel.

Stainless steel isn't as rust proof as you might think: it won't rust on its own accord, but it'll "catch" rust from ordinary steel - and stainless things(even those meant for outdoors use!) frequently come with non-stainless fasteners.

Not a Genius move after all: Apple must cough up $$$ in back pay for store staff forced to wait for bag searches

Re: Minimum wage?

That seems like a weird thing to contract out for!

This isn't "contracting" in the sense you seem to be thinking of. Individuals brought in from staffing agencies are also known as "permatemps" and are shamelessly used to fill all sorts of bottom-rung positions due to costing less and being easier to dismiss. The better companies will use this as a trial period and hire the good ones, but plenty will simply keep them as permatemps and not bother actually hiring people for those positions.

Dual screens, fast updates, no registry cruft and security in mind: Microsoft gives devs the lowdown on Windows 10X

Re: Windows 3.1 / 95 architecture

32-bit compatibility is just a matter of keeping alternate versions of libraries installed and some extra syscall machinery around. The vast majority of compatibility issues Windows faces are from poorly behaved applications that either rely on undefined behavior or just plain do things they're not supposed.

S20 Ultra 5G: Samsung unfurls Galaxy flagship with bonkers 108MP cam, 6.9-inch display

Re: It may not be a full resolution image...

It's being served as a JPEG; the prompt to save it as a WEBP is Google using their browser to push an image format nobody wants nor needs.

Jeff Bezos: I will depose King Trump

Re: To be honest ...

The Dems have been braying about impeachment since before Trump was inaugurated(if they even waited until the election). The issue's been party-lined so long that they'd have to come up with something extra-heinous to make it stick(and I'm not terribly convinced the Ukraine business would actually rock a more normal president's boat in the first place).

Beware, Tesla might take away your car's autopilot if you buy its vehicles from third party dealerships – plus more news

Re: re dealership

Tesla has dealerships where allowed; the just-a-showroom model exists as a workaround for laws forbidding factory ownership of dealers.

Whoa, France. Take it easy. Wow. You're out of control. Fining Apple 55 minutes of revenue for secretly slowing down iPhones? Maniaques!

Re: I never understood why ...

Because it wasn't advertised or controllable, making it look to all the world like a subtle sabotage to get people to buy a new phone.

MWC now means 'Mobiles? Whatever! Coronavirus!' as Ericsson becomes latest to pass on industry shindig

Re: They needed an "extensive internal risk assessment" ?

As I recall, China only reports confirmed cases: if they don't get a test result that says you definitely have a coronavirus infection, then you don't get to be part of the official death toll, no matter how obvious it is. With them running low on test kits and hospital beds, that means that their official figures are going to become worthless quite quickly(assuming they aren't already - that China's already rolled out the entire apparatus of oppression to fight it suggests they're working off some far more severe numbers).

Artful prankster creates Google Maps traffic jams by walking a cartful of old phones around Berlin

Re: Performance? Art?

"Performance art" is pretty much a pretentious way of saying "doing something". This is at least useful, making it better than 99% of the things that are given the name(eg, one piece of "performance art" was a woman sitting buck naked on top of a house).

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

And in other cases one company proves what rubes customers are willing to put up with and the others follow.

Need 32-bit Linux to run past 2038? When version 5.6 of the kernel pops, you're in for a treat

Re: Can someone...

It depends on how you mean "32 bit CPU:s are enough": the extra word length is only really useful for heavier number crunching, but quite a bit benefits from the extra memory space. The only reason the two go together the way they do is because of the flat memory space model that prevailed for so long.

Google says its latest chatbot is the most human-like ever – trained on our species' best works: 341GB of social media

Google is holding off releasing the code publicly for now while it assesses safety and bias resilience to 4chan in the model.

No need to pretend otherwise, Google.

Brave, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla gather together to talk web privacy... and why we all shouldn't get too much of it

Re: Why it's absolutely necessary...targeted to individuals?

Presumably both parties make/save more money this way or the practice would have died out by now.

The problem there is that everybody's likely making the same assumption: if all the ad markets are doing something that supposedly increases revenues, it clearly does or else they would've knocked it off long ago. Add in the fact that it makes a certain intuitive sense and you've got a recipe for behemoth levels of inertia.

You know the President is able to shut down all US comms, yeah? An FCC commish wants to stop him from doing that

Re: It's legal

A lot of people are fine with it in theory, but I'd wager that's because most don't actually understand the implications. If the kill switch were ever actually thrown, lots of those who previously supported it will have a rather sudden change of heart.

Everyone loves our new desktop web search design so much – the one with ads that look like links – that we're tweaking it, says Google

About that caption of the original homepage

Shirley you mean

in! 1998!, Google! focused! on! being! the! smartest!, best!-indexed! search! engine!

Re: Wouldn't it be Loverly

You're only not looking to buy because you haven't realized you want to yet. Your friends in marketing are only looking to help you learn about yourself!

Protestors in Los Angeles force ICANN board out of hiding over .org sale – for a brief moment, at least

Re: What's going on?

Domain holders lack standing as they aren't party to the sale, so any suit they filed would be rejected out of hand. Creative contract interpretation might get them before a judge, but it's unlikely it would survive a motion to dismiss.

Curse of Boeing continues: Now a telly satellite it built may explode, will be pushed up to 500km from geo orbit

Re: Where will the bits go?

Given that a higher orbit needs more energy wouldn't slowing it down to lower orbit be better?

What matters is the delta-V: getting it into a low enough orbit that it wouldn't cause problems is tremendously more expensive than getting it into the graveyard orbit geostationary satellites are put into, which is going to be devoid of anything anybody care about anyway(so if it does explode up there, the most it can do is make flinging things to the moon or beyond slightly more awkward, assuming the orbit isn't avoided already).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare fragged our business VOIP: US ISP blames outage on smash-hit video game rush

I realize part of the difference is probably due to ZOMG 4K! textures, but I will never understand how they manage to make mere patches that big.

Two billion years ago, snowball Earth was defrosted in huge asteroid crash – and it's been downhill ever since

Re: Facepalm

I was getting ready to upvote it as such, but then I hit the "I may be AC but I'm not trolling" line. If it was meant as satire, insisting you're being serious isn't usually a good idea.

Re: Idea

Incidentally, this is why helium is a rare and valuable resource on Earth, despite being the second most abundant element in the universe, and why we shouldn't be wasting it on party balloons

Helium is obtained from natural gas extraction; sticking it in party balloons might be "wasteful" in a strict sense, but pretty much the only other option is to just vent it, which is wasteful by anyone's definition. And even when we do run out of dead dinos, helium's a natural product of radioactive decay; pass alpha particles through a long enough pipeline to eliminate beta and gamma radiation and you've got a perfectly serviceable production line.

Beer necessities: US chap registers bevvy as emotional support animal so he can booze on public transport

Re: emotional support animal

Yes. They've got no legal protection(that's reserved for trained service dogs and, to a lesser extent, miniature ponies), but some places afford them accommodation not available to pets.

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

Re: Why.

I can see the attraction of putting them in the same box, but only with an option to switch between the two(such as separate search buttons).

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Re: Ah, Aero

"Fisher-Price" is how I would describe XP. Windows 10's theme isn't anywhere near that good.

If you never thought you'd hear a Microsoftie tell you to stop using Internet Explorer, lap it up: 'I beg you, let it retire to great bitbucket in the sky'

and in Java Runtime Environment 8 environments

Credit where credit's due: this is entirely the fault of Chrome and Mozilla for blocking all plugins but Flash. IE is simply the last man standing.

Re: But don't LTSC versions of Windows 10 come with IE instead of Edge?

The article's mistaken - IE11 has no sunset date. From the FAQ:

Yes, Internet Explorer 11 is the last major version of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 11 will continue receiving security updates and technical support for the lifecycle of the version of Windows on which it is installed.

From WordPad to WordAds: Microsoft caught sneaking nagging Office promos into venerable text editor beta

Re: To be fair...

I agree with you 99.9%, but "Upgrade to Pro!" ads are old hat. As long as it doesn't turn to outright nagware, I can't call this much of a much.

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

Re: TLDs - I am confused

You left out .net, intended for ISPs and the like(who ended up preferring .com, leaving .net as the original odds and ends drawer); if you so choose, you can also toss in .edu, .gov and .mil(which are all US-specific).

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

Re: Linux has run into this problem, too

Microsoft dropped 16-bit compatibility because AMD did(they also axed the segment registers 16-bit code would need, leaving only two that Windows actively uses for other purposes). It's kind of difficult to support applications the processor refuses to run.

Who says HMRC hasn't got a sense of humour? Er, 65 million Brits

It has to be asked

“My mother-in-law is a witch and put a curse on me”

Did she turn 'im into a newt?

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

Re: What's wrong with a round power connector?

Given that universal barrel connector kits had at least four power settings(at least here in the US), I don't see that being an improvement.