* Posts by Twanky

630 publicly visible posts • joined 17 May 2017

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Twitter begs some staff to come back, says they were laid off accidentally

Twanky
Big Brother

Re: Modest proposal.

Mastodon may have seven employees but there are a great many server administrators and moderators running 'their own' federated Mastodon instances. It's a distributed system so little need for anything in the centre.

Although I very much like the idea of a distributed Twitter killer I'm concerned that a plethora of federated servers supporting the previous Twitter user base will result in less efficient use of resources (servers, power, administrators, moderators etc) than a centralised service. Would it be worth it? On balance: yes, probably.

Twanky
Go

Re: May the blue bird of crappiness

Oh man! I remember when I used to take drugs that good!

Oh man! I remember've been told about when I used to take drugs that good!

FTFY

Twanky
Go

Re: Tumbleweed

I joined Mastodon...

Did you join or stand up your own server? I was seriously considering setting up a 'friends and family' server a couple of years ago.

Twanky
Trollface

Re: Just a thought

- $4 million a day? Are they sure? As I understand it they couldn't even agree how many people were using it.

Twanky
Pint

In the UK you can't (or at least should not) make someone's job redundant (technicality) and then hire someone else to do the job. I'd expect that to be true elsewhere too. There are ways around that, of course. There always are.

I think at least part of Musk's problem here (apart from his arrogance) is that he has had to delegate the task of selecting who to 'let go' to people who probably don't like what he's doing. As such, they will 'quiet quit' and just do what they're told and submit a list of 50% of their team. They may even deliberately suggest the 'go getters' as the most likely to land on their feet at another employer. Worse yet, he may have based the selection on HR appraisal records; in my experience many people who get poor appraisals are actually very useful to the business (which showed me that the appraisal system I was required to implement was counterproductive).

A company I once worked for made my job redundant and then offered me a different, better paid job instead (including much training). A few years later my new job was made redundant and they paid me off based on my new salary. With my shiny new training I was very happy - though I recall it was a bit stressful at the time.

I can well imagine that the shake up at Twitter will see some winners and some losers - it is ever thus.

All of the norths are about to align over Britain

Twanky
Angel

Re: Plugholes

at some point the rotation would have to stop before it reverses....

Quite possibly not if the Dzhanibekov effect (https://rotations.berkeley.edu/a-tumbling-t-handle-in-space/) applies to the whole planet.

Mind you, we might want to hold on to something...

icon: my head after a couple of spin reversals.

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

Twanky
Angel

Re: A clock on a fridge?!

I used to think that was weird.

Then we bought a fridge which happened to have a 'Sabbath mode' which we found out was so that ultra religious people could have a peaceful holy day (see: https://www.hunker.com/13409700/what-is-sabbath-mode-for-refrigerators).

After that I thought it was weirder.

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

Twanky

Re: Lack of energy policy for 30 years, nuclear costs

AV has all the problems of FPTP, and a few of their own.

I slightly disagree: it offers the opportunity to upset the trend to tactical voting where people vote for the least-bad party because they worry that the candidate/party they really want won't win. In other words it gives an opportunity to shake up the current duopoly.

AV is not PR.

Yep. That's what I said.

I guess we'll just have to keep voting for the candidate of the party which supports the change to MMPR...

Oh, wait.

Twanky
Pirate

Re: Lack of energy policy for 30 years, nuclear costs

"Objection!"

"Overruled."

Twanky

Re: Lack of energy policy for 30 years, nuclear costs

...why FPTP must die.

When offered the chance to adopt AV - which although it is not PR is at least an opportunity to vote for 'anyone but the *whatever party you hate* candidate' - the Brits didn't take the opportunity. If we had done so we might then have had the ability to grant enough power to those who support proper PR to get that over the line. But I guess the LDs were already hated for sleeping with the enemy by then. I blame the voters.

(This reminds me - I wonder what the regional/national split was for what was the second UK-wide referendum ever held? Did certain areas feel collectively aggrieved because they didn't get the result they wanted?)

Elon Musk jettisons Twitter leadership, says takeover was 'to try to help humanity'

Twanky
Go

Re: so when I go to SpaceX/Tesla/Tweetter/Boring HQ

...and I see (as usual) that EM is not at his office, do I have, as a stockholder of these companies, the right to ask for his immediate dismissal with extreme prejudice?

Yes (you might need to clarify the 'with extreme prejudice' bit). You have that right even if you're not a stockholder. Perhaps you could even post your demand on Twitter?

Origins of mysterious marsquake settled: It was a meteoroid what done it

Twanky
Boffin

Re: Impeccable timing

If you're using brontosauri to measure the width of something do you have to use the (Reg) standard brontosaurus width? What's that in linguine?

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

Twanky
Pirate

Circa 1989 IIRC

While upgrading All-in-1 on one of our VAXes: Install British dialect?

Bloody cheek.

You think there's just the one?

Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

Twanky

Re: Please help me here

If "Boris" comes back I'll have a party, as it's the final nail in their coffin.

I know what the members want, but it doesn't match what the voters want...

Does that mean that what the voters wanted in 2019 shouldn't have been taken away from them?

I know we're not supposed to vote directly for our Prime Ministers (unless we're in their constituencies) but if ever a UK GE was a 'personality' contest then 2019 was it.

Of course, voters change their minds from time to time but claiming to know that what members want doesn't match what voters want is a bit of a leap in the dark.

My personal opinion is that Bojo might still be an attractive option to the voters who effectively put him in charge in 2019. I don't like that as an idea but it is my 2p opinion.

Twanky

Re: This article

I'm sure he has absolutely no ambitions in that direction.

Twanky

Re: Obvious solution

MAKES decisions.

You can take a decision only if you're offered more than one of them. If you're any good you make a decision out of original thoughts.

The connotation is that the people offering the menu of decisions really haven't finished the job so I had to take the least bad decision they offered.

I blame Tony Blair for this construction finding its way into UK politics.

Public cloud prices to surge in US and Europe next year

Twanky
Boffin

Predictable

Our CIO suggested that part of the 'benefit' of moving to 'The Cloud' was predictable regular OpEx rather than bursty CapEx. To be fair, he never claimed it would be cheaper - just the costs more evenly spread over time. The techs didn't believe him at the time.

Of course, it depends what you mean by 'predictable'.

One advantage of 'The Cloud' was the techs not getting suckered in to just 'squeezing one little experimental system in' onto existing hardware 'on a strictly temporary basis, of course'. You want to run something experimental? You apply for the budget to rent the cloud resources too.

Gartner thinks enterprise IT will be immune to recession

Twanky
Holmes

N.S.S.

...businesses that do struggle are going to find that, since the shift to the cloud, they are in less control of their IT spending.

See icon.

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Twanky
Boffin

Re: Hiring engineers to shovel snow

My first move into IT found me being given much training on the care and feeding of VAXes, VMS, DECnet and LAT terminal servers. It involved a day job working with a bunch of statisticians who used the VAXes and associated peripherals and some evening work watching tapes go around.

One evening one of the aircon units in the machine room started spitting water across the room. I turned it off and ran the room overnight without redundant aircon. The next day I got the site service guys to take a look and they diagnosed a blocked condensate underfloor drain run (the trough the condensate collected in and should drain from had several centimetres of water in it). They said the entire run would require replacing which would require a daytime shutdown and which I thought was ridiculously excessive and disruptive - and which was something they would get a contractor in to do.

I was pissed off about the delay and worried about running the room too long without redundant aircon. So I found where the drain exited the room, found an industrial wet and dry vacuum cleaner and pulled the blockage through that evening. Of course, it was mostly carpet tile fibres - why the hell did people carpet machine rooms?

Of course, I "shouldn't" have done it - but I avoided some expensive downtime for the statisticians. I was sure that even if I made the blockage worse it would be sorted out when they replaced the under floor drain run. When the contractor turned up to quote for the job he found both units operating and draining fine - no fault found. Of course, nobody knew but me (until now).

It ran fine for several more years until sadly, the company got bought by Engulf and Devour (Our Fingers are in Everything) and the site got closed down.

Lloyd's of London cuts off network after dodgy activity detected

Twanky
Meh

Profits

According to Lloyd's 2021 annual report, it took in £39.2 billion ($45 billion) in gross written premiums and took in £2.3 billion ($2 billion) in profit before tax.

So, 5.9% gross profit? Could do better.

An interesting bind: the insured are unlikely to be able to directly influence their governments' actions but those actions may provoke greater risk of other states' sponsored attacks on the insured. The higher the profile of the insured, the greater the risk of being targetted as a symbol of the bloc.

I imagine the 'rulers' of some eastern states might enjoy the disruption of high profile western trophy targets such as major telecoms providers or manufacturers/distributors of soft drinks or fast/junk foods.

I guess our best course of action is to tighten and compartmentalise our systems to make them resistant and resilient when the inevitable attacks occur - which is what should have been happening anyway.

Scientists overjoyed after DART smashes into asteroid Dimorphos, contact lost

Twanky
Pint

Re: NASA insurance hike

Nah, it was 'protected NCD'. Only one smash = No immediate increase in fee. If they keep doing it though... or if it ever gets out that they crashed it deliberately... Eh? Wassat? Oh!

Nice shootin' though.

Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms

Twanky
Trollface

Re: Ban cookery books!

A woman in charge of a kitchen! Never!!!

Excel's comedy of errors needs a new script, not new scripting

Twanky

Re: Clueless users

I really don't think anyone should be entering or storing credit card numbers in a spreadsheet.

Twanky

Re: From "Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors" by Matt Parker

Many thanks for the book recommendations.

it shows that Austerity should not have been the chosen route. horrific

Rather than the UK, I'd point to Greece to highlight the pain of Austerity as a policy. For Greece it was eventually imposed by the lenders (IMF and EU) effectively saying 'no more credit'.

Borrowing is not inherently wrong - ask boomers who now own their own homes how they got there and most will say they took on debt - and some fell foul of 'negative equity' and had to start over.

Reinhart and Rogoff's error in their spreadsheet weakened but did not destroy their central finding which was that high international debt is associated with low growth. They should not have been storing their data in a spreadsheet. It's the wrong tool for the job.

It seems entirely reasonable that paying interest on or paying off debt leaves less value to be spent on all the good things a country needs to progress - like medical care, education, infrastructure (and sadly, defence). Every now and then there is a push to forgive some international debt - which is a good thing when it's got out of control. It's a bit like a personal bankrupt these days may have their finances managed for them by an externally appointed administrator - but the law takes a very dim view if they bypass their administrator and take on even more debt.

Lastly, Thomas Herndon (the student who discovered the error) deserves high praise.

Twanky
Flame

Re: Brilliant article

Nah. Too many managers I knew would say 'Explain what this is telling me'.

There's a huge difference between managers and leaders.

Musk says Starlink will ask for exemption to US sanctions on Iran

Twanky

Re: Re-Wording Dept

Wait... Julian Assange chose a life in Russia?

Maybe moving to the UK was not in his best interests.

School chat app Seesaw abused to send 'inappropriate image' to parents, teachers

Twanky

Re: Passwords are a pain

Good start - but here's a radical thought: Maybe Seesaw has inappropriate functionality built into it?

Why should parents have the ability to send anything to groups of parents or students? Maybe such a feature should be earned rather than given by default? Maybe that would be a feature that requires MFA? Why are obfuscated links to off-site content permitted at all? Or for that matter any link to off-site content without moderation? If we want an interactive noticeboard for the school then maybe the school needs to review and moderate the content?

Any response along the lines of 'that's all too difficult' takes us back to the question about unique passwords for each site/service. If it's too difficult to use it properly then don't use it.

Twanky

Re: Quck Fix for Preventing Re-Use of Password

'Not good enough' is bad when you're dealing with other people's personal information. Even worse when those other people are too young to give consent.

Linking a login token to some other data slurping organisation ('login using Facebook' springs to mind) would just makes the compromise worse.

Twanky

I too dislike an article that 'forgets that the USA isn't the whole world'.

I don't think this article matches that description at all.

Twanky

I blame the parents

Seesaw – which claims more than 10 million teachers, students, and parents use its tech every month...

Less than 0.5 percent of users were affected

So, fewer than 50,000 users were affected. Is that the number who received the link, or the number who blindly followed the bit.ly link or the number of accounts taken over to send the link?

What's really rubbish is that people who have access to an account through which they can send messages to kids and access their personal information were so bloody lazy they couldn't be bothered to set a password they hadn't used before.

The BBC covered this story and included the following:

The head of one school in Milwaukee warned parents not to blame those who appeared to have sent the message.

"While specific parent names were attached to these messages," the school's statement said, "we know that these parents were not involved."

They bloody well were involved. Lazy bastards.

By Jove! Jupiter to make closest approach to Earth in 70 years next Monday

Twanky
Facepalm

Headline

I honestly thought from the headline that we were being told that Jupiter's closest approach was going to be on 19 Sep 2092 or 26 Sep 2092 (70 years next Monday).

Was there life on Mars? Perseverance scrapes up promising samples

Twanky
Angel

Re: This does not sound like a good idea

...If there's even a small oops in the lab, Earth might become lifeless practically overnight.

No it won't. It might not be the life that was there before the 'oops', but it won't be lifeless.

It could lead to some alternative creation theories: "In the beginning was the 'oops' and the creator said 'hmm, that's interesting'".

Can reflections in eyeglasses actually leak info from Zoom calls? Here's a study into it

Twanky

Re: Hmm, better stop using the 4k camera to stream...

furious masturbating

Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me if I got angry.

Retbleed slugs VM performance by up to 70 percent in kernel 5.19

Twanky

Re: Faster, better, cheaper, WWW.

Yes, things are faster, better, cheaper than when I started playing with computers in the late 70s. However if what you want is faster, better, cheaper than the current 'normal' then you're going to be disappointed.

'things that really need every last drop of grunt' are usually hugely expensive. If you really need security isolation then it will be expensive and may not be fast. As the article demonstrates, you can make IT cheaper by sharing resources (CPUs, memory, disks) but then you compromise security. When you try to improve the security, you compromise the speed.

Spectre-like attacks show a failure of imagination - a failure to imagine 'what could possibly go wrong?'

Twanky

Faster, better*, cheaper...

We really can't have it all.

*Better in this context includes being resistant to attacks by the bad guys.

China discovers unknown mineral on the moon, names it Changesite-(Y)

Twanky
Boffin

Re: Curly -- or Straight?

I'm fairly sure that the Linguine unit refers to the length rather than the width of the fundamental pasta particles. The other dimensions of the particle are ill-defined.

The dangerous practice of of 'splitting the Linguine' (for example, when feeding children) can cause serious leaks of the sauce and consequent irreversible changes to tablecloths.

NASA just weeks away from trying again with SLS Moon rocket launch

Twanky

Re: using a SpaceX lander to bring them down to the regolith

Bring them down? Not *take* them down?

I love that idea. Pre-establish a surface to lunar orbit shuttle service before sending folk down. They could have a choice of flights back up depending on how long they wanted to stay. Sadly, I don't think even SpaceX are at the 'just refuel and carry on flying' level of re-use yet.

Dump these small-biz routers, says Cisco, because we won't patch their flawed VPN

Twanky

Re: Really?

If the load/speed has increased over time then yes, the hardware will probably not be suitable unless it was massively over-specced when new. However, it is not unusual (at least, it wasn't unusual for me) to re-deploy kit to smaller sites in a multi-site setup. It's not great to hear when trying to standardise on kit from the same 'stable' to be told - yeah you've got a known bug in that gear but we've no intention of fixing it. It's the sort of thing that would make me actively look for a different 'stable' to standardise on.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs memorialized with online archive of emails, guff

Twanky
Facepalm

...in the decade since Jobs's passing...

The word you seem to be trying to avoid is 'death'.

You seem happy enough to refer to him as an asshole or jerk but you pussyfoot around the concept which is the great leveller.

Bye bye BoJo: Liz Truss named new UK prime minister

Twanky

Re: Confusion

The idea of a single 'universal' income tax has appeal - I'm assuming 'universal' in this context does not extend beyond our borders.

I think the complex rules have their origins in trying to encourage certain behaviours. So, there's a threshold before you have to pay capital gains tax, a threshold before you have to pay tax on interest, you can only put up to a certain amount into a pension tax-free. Because many of these behaviours are exploited by wealthier people the thresholds themselves have been made more complicated with different tax thresholds and rates depending on our main income tax brackets.

A single income tax with pre-established rules for distribution to the spending departments and regions would be easier for people to understand and to know what they're paying for and/or voting for.

I'm with you on reducing or eliminating VAT on basic goods but see a virtue in taxing the purchase of elective/luxury goods.

The situation where we get taxed multiple times (fuel 'duty' applied and then VAT on the resulting price is the obvious example) is iniquitous.

Twanky

How can anyone think...

There are people in the UK who believe in a 'low tax' economy with low government spending, who do not realise that the economy can be just as stimulated by government spending as by private spending, with the exception that government spending can generally be used to buy things that will genuinely benefit the general population (such as investing in public infrastructure).

I don't believe that government spending of my tax money efficiently stimulates the economy. I also think it rarely benefits the general population.

see: https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/06/public_sector_procurement_times/ - and yes I know that's mostly about USAians.

Yes, I'm one who believes we should have a small government and civil service - as efficient as possible. I'm seriously disappointed by recent governments.

Twanky
Facepalm

Re: she reminds me of another "Blonde Bombsite"

Agreed John Smith would probably have been a successful PM and good for the country.

Please can we bin the ridiculous phrase 'passed away'. He died. Rather sooner than was expected - but he died. We will all do it eventually - except possibly AMFM1.

Twanky

So is this the timeline?

1) Graduated with a degree in PPE from Oxford,

2) Born in Oxford

3) Moved to Scotland

4) Moved to Leeds.

Very precocious.

Where she was born or moved to before she left her parents care was not in her control... and you missed out a brief period living in Canada - if Wikipedia is to be believed.

Microsoft mistakenly rated Chromium, Electron as malware

Twanky
FAIL

Microsoft’s changelog...

...for antimalware products recorded a flurry of eight updates to Windows Defender dated September 4th, suggesting concerted action to resolve the issue.

That doesn't suggest concerted action, that suggests wild flailing.

Chances good for NASA Artemis SLS Moon launch on Saturday

Twanky
Pint

Re: "Flight-Critical Data"

Of course! Yes, I didn't think it through.

Twanky
Pirate

Re: Sausage Rolls.....

'You'll never leave' - I hope that doesn't apply to Artemis I.

Icon: the special stuff?

Twanky
Flame

Re: "Flight-Critical Data"

(Icon for rocket-engine flames ...)

Erm. If the rocket engine flames are pointing that way I think something's gone a bit wrong.

California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave

Twanky

Re: Har Har

Ferguson.

Twanky

Re: Har Har

55mpg? Is that 128 fl.oz gallons or the 160 fl.oz gallons we used to use in the UK?

68.75 mpg for UK gallons sounds more impressive and closer to what I get in my old baby turbo diesel.

Here's how 5 mobile banking apps put 300,000 users' digital fingerprints at risk

Twanky
Trollface

"In particular, developers should never reuse cloud shares meant for user data with internal corporate data, and should ensure all shares are appropriately locked down with permissions designed for the data being stored,"

Oh Maaan! Have you any idea how long that sort of stuff takes? You have to ask the guys in the other department to set things up and it can take hours... and they get all picky about exactly what you mean... and then when you need to change it it takes hours again.

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