Posts by Grooke

Uncle Sam names three Amazon execs as Prime suspects in subscription ripoff case

Encourager*

Boss such a tyrant you need a job quitting agent? It works in Japan

If there is slack when the clock runs out, it's a systemic lack of personnel that management should address. Especially given that OP describes them as a team of 10 "outstanding" employees.

That's giving a lot of credit to

1) The manager for having the correct metrics to truly judge if the employees' "side projects" are actually useful and

2) The employees doing "something" extra without neglecting their original responsibilities for additional visibility to management and leaving the other 8 to pick up the operational slack

In many cases, the 8 people doing the job of 10 are more deserving of promotion than the 2 twats working on some "revolutionary" bullshit.

Capita has 'evidence' customer data was stolen in digital burglary

Crapita

Have we stopped using the correct name for them?

Seagate hit with $300m penalty for selling sanctioned storage to Huawei

If they made $1.65bn profit off of $11.66bn revenue, I'm assuming $300mn is more than enough to offset any profit they made from selling to China. And bankrupting American companies to sanction other countries is sure to go down great with voters.

Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing

Re: This shouldn't happen

Facebook aren't idiots. They already have you e-mail for your Facebook account so getting your phone number is more private information they can gather.

They're assh*les, not idiots.

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

Re: I don't mind PDFs

From your earlier comment: "I uninstalled the browser and switched to Chromium"

Google is part of the Rust Foundation. I guess you'll be in the market for a new Browser.

Re: I don't mind PDFs

"I know the Leopards eating people's faces are evil, but at least they didn't go as far as standing up for WOMEN!"

OK, we know iPhones are expensive but... $11 a month for Twitter Blue on iOS?

Re: Don't rock the boat to much.

"they'd like Musk to focus on Tesla and SpaceX"

If I were a shareholder, I'd want to keep his attention as far away from Tesla and SpaceX as possible.

Musk roundly booed on-stage at Dave Chappelle gig

Re: One of the rare times he escaped his own reality bubble recently

"the lies of Fauci"

"I'm open to hearing a decent argument"

No you're not.

Letter to FCC: Why are US carriers locking handsets to networks?

Re: Buy from the Mfr

The low cost per hour is irrelevant if you can get the same utility & entertainment for half the price. No one is arguing that buying a smart phone isn't useful. The argument is that out of 30-50 cents/hour, you're paying 15-25 cents per hour for a logo (and the "design", and the notch, and the 56 cameras, and the "battery life", and the... bla bla bla, I've had both).

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

For those wondering

The furthest and closest approaches are about 44 and 27 G Brontosauruses respectively.

Backblaze thinks SSDs are more reliable than hard drives

It's a valid concern for consumer usage, but yeah disk recovery is likely out-of-scope for Backblaze's usage.

That's what they're referring too with "media wearout limit". That's the next thing then want to study

"we'll try to confirm on how far past the media wearout limits you can push an SSD"

Microsoft, Activision Blizzard have days to show merger won't harm competition

Re: World of Warcraft

The fear over World of Warcraft is about the independent subscription vs Gamepass.

Not sure how much it could change things, but it could make WoW cheaper on Windows than Mac.

WoW players on the other hand fear what could happen if WoW through the Gamepass isn't profitable enough for MS, and what that does to the in-game shop (which is currently only cosmetic).

UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits

Enough outdoor space to hang out your clothes?

Someone is doing quite well for themselves!

Twitter claims Elon Musk bailed from sale with 'invalid and wrongful' reasons

Not only has an account, but obsessively refreshes the app just to re-read what they just wrote. Probably couldn't stop if they tried.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

"Write stuff" roulette

Let's put LibreOffice Writer, TextEditor, Vi, Vim, SublimeText, and hell even Thunderbird (why should I specify if I want to write an e-mail?) under the same alias and just roll the dice every time we open it.

Don't be fooled, experts warn, America's anti-child-abuse EARN IT Act could burn encryption to the ground

Re: idiots.

Excellent tips for doing so:

https://www.lawsandsausagescomic.com/comic/402

FCC sucks its teeth, clicks its tongue, says: Yeah, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile US, Verizon gleefully sold your location data. Guess we should fine them?

Re: Read the actual regulation

This just means a company (processor or controller) from anywhere in the world can be fined for wrongly processing the data of a "data subject" (see definition in the post you replied to).

HP Ink: No way, Xerox. We're not accepting your takeover. Well, we'd never say never. Maybe even maybe? Hello, you still there? Please?

Re: "the current Xerox acquisition offer is not in the best interest of HP shareholders"

On the other hand, it's often advised to not hold too much of your employer's stock in your 401k. You already "invest" your future earnings in the company so it is better to diversify into, for example, an index fund. It's also a gamble that your employer will outperform the market during your entire career.

C'mon SPARCky, it's just an admin utility update. What could possibly go wrong?

I was today years old when I learned you could move to a regular file. I will try to use this newfound power responsible. Thank you.

Fake docs rock real docs: Ex-Wall St guy accused of conning medics out of £27m for bogus cryptocurrency fund using faked paperwork

"none of them are a bank or financial advisor so they can't be trusted with your money."

To be fair, I barely trust a bank to hold my money.

Starliner snafu could've been worse: Software errors plague Boeing's Calamity Capsule

Re: "Capability Maturity Model " A history lesson.

Agile may have become popular because of millennials and the start-up mentality, but the real problem is all the middle-age middle-managers trying to stick agile on everything to prove that they're still relevant.

Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers

Re: Surprisingly ...

And then you find a site that tabs out to invisible fields and you curse the developer and all his ancestors. Worst if it happens between username and password, but also bad if it happens from address bar to the first useful field.

Sidenote: the fact that F6 on most modern browsers selects the entire address field is probably the most life-changing thing I learned in the past 5 years.

NASA's Christina Koch returns to Earth as the longest-serving woman astronaut – after spending 328 days in space

Re: Question : What's more import ?

I agree with the sentiment, but you have to fix the underlying cause first. Record holders for this type of thing are disproportionately male because they historically had more opportunities. If this is fixed and women are given the same opportunities to break records and pass milestones, then the distinction becomes unnecessary. Until then, women deserve recognition for making these achievements despite the odds stacked against them. No one would write/publish/read an article titled "person fails to break longest spaceflight record".

Top tip: Using AI to detect alien civilizations is dangerous because if it spots anything, even just a blurry blob, people are going to go nuts

Re: AI could easily spot things we miss

The point of the article isn't that we shouldn't use it, it's that we have to be careful with it.

Current (dumb) AI is so good at finding garbage that we risk spending more time debunking its findings than developing new and actually useful methods of finding alien life.

Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers

"people being turned into "human joysticks" by hackers manipulating paths and directions in virtual worlds to redirect folks into harm's way."

Johnny English was a comedy, not a documentary.

No backdoors needed: Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt iCloud backups after heavy pressure from FBI – claim

Re: I wouldn't trust any crypto that I DID write

Remind never to e-mail you.

For anyone else: my pgp key is quite enough, please don't send me puppy pics.

Re: TL;DR - don't trust any encryption you didn't write.

I don't have a PhD in cryptography so I wouldn't trust any crypto that I DID write (or any crypto written by a random commentard on this site that didn't pass through intense scrutiny).

Whoa, whoa... Tesla slams brakes on allegations of 'unintended acceleration' bug: 'Completely false and was brought by a short-seller'

Missed a few

"As I was making a 90-degree turn to park, your record would certainly show that I pressed the breaks [sic] during the turn. The only way I could have put the car in the high acceleration - that my wife and I noticed - would be that I lifted my feet[sic? I only use one foot at a time on a given pedal] from the break [sic] and instantly pressed very hard on the accelerated [sic] paddle[sic]. I cant[sic] understand how that be[sic] feasible. If the record does not show this precise pattern, than[sic] it points to a potential software flaw."

I'd send it to corrections, but it's mainly mocking the petitioner.

The $4.3bn trial of the century is over! Now we wait for judgment

Re: Can't believe

Agree with everything except:

"even if they *did* make Company 'B' appear to be worth more."

Fraud is fraud. "They should have figured out we were committing fraud" is no defense.

Whirlybird-driving infosec boss fined after ranty Blackpool Airport air traffic control antics

Re: Arrogant dickhead

If the cashier was directing multi-ton metal flying machines to avoid them crashing into each other, no.

If at first you don't succeed, pry, pry again: Feds once again demand Apple unlock encrypted iPhones in yet another terrorism case

Re: Compliance statement

Adding 4D436679648159262E93C2C184DC4 to the list of passwords never to use.

(Not because of some inherent weakness, just because it can now turn up in searches)

Re: Yeah, sure

It's even worse. Apple should make it 5 inch steel, with a secret soft wood hole that only the good guys know about.

Lynch lied about Autonomy's accounts, rages HPE to the High Court

Re: Double negative

I was today years old when I actually looked up the definition of "Corn" and learned that the way I use it is an Americanism.

Intel! China! Sliding enterprise spending! Dell cuts forecasts by $1.2bn to $2bn for fiscal '20

Re: Yahoo!

You beat me to it!

Found on Mars: Alien insects... or whatever the hell this smudge is supposed to be, anyway

Re: If this professor emeritus had spent the last 50 years studying mosses

I almost wooooshed hard and pointed out your "misspelling" of duel.

Space-wrecks: Elon's prototype Moon ferry Starship blows its top during fuel tank test

How else would they have know the tests had over 2000 errors?

No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage with few limits, US senators complain

Re: The un-named PR gave half an answer of course

That's why a lot of models feature accelerometers and keep recording when they detect a collision.

Who loves Brexit? Irish distributors ... after their sales jump by a third

Re: @DontFeedTheTrolls

"Anyone who hides behind the referendum result, claiming that their hands are tied by it, is debating in the worst kind of bad faith."

In D&D, we call this "My guy" syndrome.

Video-editing upstart bares users' raunchy flicks to world+dog via leaky AWS bucket

Re: If something is free...

That bear looks more like Alec Baldwin's impersonation of Trump than Trump XD

The Feds are building an America-wide face surveillance system – and we're going to court to prove it, says ACLU

Re: The USA can't let China take the lead

Ummmm... I think OP just meant the government doesn't want it to be "worse" than the Chinese performance-wise, but we don't want it to be "worse" privacy-wise.

Reaction Engines' precooler tech demo chills 1,000°C air in less than 1/20th of a second

Re: Here We Go...

Would you settle for a drink "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea"?

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

Re: Building entry log

How do the wardens know how many people were in the building to begin with?

The access control logs should tell you. They don't have to lock the doors in an emergency to help judge if an evacuation was successful.

Oh dear... AI models used to flag hate speech online are, er, racist against black people

Re: “I saw his ass yesterday”

Use the profile picture and make biases work for you! If facial recognition thinks the user should go to prison, assume they're black and flag the text as AAE. Use bias to defeat bias!

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

Re: I'm having headaches

I can move a coat rack with my mind as long as a cute receptionist is sitting next to it with an umbrella.

US games company Blizzard kowtows to Beijing by banning gamer who dared to bring up Hong Kong

Re: Blizzcon

It would be 3.0.

2.0 was "is this an out of season April Fool's joke?" over Diablo Immortal.

1.0 was correcting staff regarding Falstad's death (or lack thereof).

RAF pilot seconded to Virgin Orbit for three years of launching rockets from a 747

"This programme is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of space"

A nice way of saying "re-defining where space starts to make your achievements look better"?

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row

Re: Good riddance!

> They do appear to have actively and vociferously announced that they utterly refuse to use preferred pronouns, after also repeatedly calling someone by a pronoun they really didn't like, despite being asked not to.

I'm curious to know where you got that idea. The mod was fired for asking for clarifications about the new policy. Namely: is it OK to avoid pronouns altogether, to use examples gender neutral examples while not referring to the "asker" at all. She didn't say she would misgender people purposefully, she asked if omitting gender altogether was acceptable.