Posts by Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff

Awkward. At Chrome summit, developer asks: Why should anyone trust Google?

If Your Product is Dependent on a 3rd Party Platform

You do not have a product.

SpaceX-powered trip to ISS grounded by 'medical issue'

Re: Boeing version of a "medical issue"

Boeing's problem is that they got taken over by McDonnell (ignore the Douglas) with Boeing's money, thanks to pressure from the Clinton Administration.

Boeing was a company where engineers built planes, and kind of muddled through on the business part.

McDonnell was a hedge fund trying to fake that it cared about building aircraft. (Literally only one [sort of] civilian project in its entire history)

So after a few years of Harry Stonesphincter, they no longer knew how to do anything but make stock buybacks.

50 years have gone by since the UK's one – and only – homegrown foray into orbit

Re: What could have been

The Germans used a Hydrogen Peroxide oxidizer and a Hydrazine and Methanol fuel in their Komet fighter.

Once some of the high test Peroxide leaked into a cockpit and dissolved the pilot.

Google deliberately throttled ad load times to promote AMP, claims new court document

If You Favor the Consumer Welfare Theory of Antitrust

1 second, x 10 million ads throttled a day x $7.25 minimum wage is Google stealing more than $20,000 a day from consumers.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Riffing on a Saturday Night Live Sketch from Its First Season, When it was Still Funny

Call it, "Painful Rectal Itch," with a name like that, it has to be good.

Chinese developers rebel against long working hours with crowdsourced tell-all on employers

Sounds a Lot Like the United States

No mandatory vacation time, no overtime for IT, etc.

I wish that I did not live in a 3rd world nation.

As Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow

If Your Business Depends on a Single Platform

You don't have a business.

The fact that Chrome is pretty much it for browsers (I use Firefox, and have written an extension for same) means that if you are writing extensions for it, and it is your livelihood, you are going to get screwed, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life. (I don't code for a living, as my coding is ugly enough to give Tardigraves cancer)

Yikes, tough crowd: Only 30% of German-speaking users are happy with SAP's cloud push

There are People who Don't Hate SAP?

That's a shocker.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

I Remember the Panasonic KXP-5400 Postscript Printer

Low cost for the day, early 1990s, of about $500.

The toner cartridge was just a toner cartridge, and the developer had a bin for spent toner that you could crack open and empty out, getting about 10x the life.

Eventually, I could no longer get toner cartridges though.

Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

Really Stupid

Desktops and laptops are largely production systems, while phones, and to a slightly lesser degree tablets, are consumption systems.

These different functions SHOULD drive different systems, but Microflaccid and it's delusional designers keep trying to unify two very different tools.

Trust Facebook to find a way to make video conferencing more miserable and tedious

Remember Zoom Bombing?

This will be way worse.

See, "Judge Richard Posner visited Second Life to give a lecture on civil liberties in the post-9/11 era in a Greek amphitheater, ended up befriending a furry, and was attacked by a fireball." (https://twitter.com/slhamlet/status/1428502160241688577)

Still, that is WAY cooler than Zuck's vision.

Google to revive RSS support in Chrome for Android

Re: Show me the money

I use Quite Reader myself, I dropped Feedreader after no updates in about 10 years.

Google Groups kills RSS support without notice

Expect to See a Proprietary Successor that Spies on You

That's how Google rolls.

Get ready to make processes fit the software when shifting to SAP's cloud, users told

Two Thoughts

First, I miss pencil and paper.

Second, I thought that this sort of one size fits all crap was why people ditched mainframes for PCs in the late 1980s.

BOFH: You say goodbye and I say halon

Re: Very good shot at the 'Headline of the Year' award.

Not even close to the best headline of the year. The best headline of the year comes from the New York Times, of all places, in an article about marine life hunting on shore:

When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That's a Moray.

The competition is now for second place.

Annoyed US regulator warns it might knock SpaceX's shiny new Texas tower down

Am I the Only One Who Wants to See Elon Frog-Marched Out of His Offices in Handcuffs?

Seriously, the brazenness of Musk's lawbreaking boggles the mind.

From PayPal (acting as a bank while ignoring bank regulations), to Tesla (selling non existent product and overselling capabilities + stock manipulation + labor law violations), to Solar City (Securities fraud, etc), to the Boring Company (promising capabilities are simply not possible), it appears his super-power is, "Regulatory Arbitrage" (i.e. crime).

Linux Foundation celebrates 30 years of Torvalds' kernel with a dry T-shirt contest

I want to see a penguin wearing a Linux McLinuxface T-shirt as the T-shirt.

FTC approves $61.7m settlement with Amazon for pocketing driver tips

Why is No One Going to Prison?

And it should not be white collar prison, it should be "Federal PMITA Prison," to acronym the movie Office Space.

Everyone in those email chains is guilty of criminal conspiracy, even if they were objecting, if they did not go to the authorities. Charge them, and get them to roll on higher ups.

China's ISCAS to build 2,000 RISC-V laptops by the end of 2022 as nation seeks to cut reliance on Arm, Intel chips

I'm surprised that they aren't going into servers with RISC-V before laptops.

The issues of compatibility and user reticence are less for servers than for personal computers.

Wyoming powers ahead with Bill Gates-backed sodium-cooled nuclear generation plant

This is a molten sodium cooled reactor using highly enriched (barely 20%) Uranium.

All this from the guy who brought us the Blue Screen of Death.

So glad that I live nowhere near Wyoming.

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Loyal Firefox User

And my complaints with it relate to the organization:

First, it saw Chrome's success and decided to imitate Chrome, even though Chrome's success was driven by Google's leveraging its search monopoly, so they have made changes which sucked.

Second, it has not been developing Firefox as aggressively as it should, instead trying to push things like its VPN service.

Third, upper management has been increasing their own salaries even as its financial situation became even more precarious. (https://calpaterson.com/mozilla.html)

As to Brave, I won't touch it, it's CEO Brendan Eich donated to the H8 amendment in California, and its business model (BAT, etc. screams crypto currency scam. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/brave-ico-35-million-30-seconds-brendan-eich/

Fortunate Son: Softbank chief took 50 per cent pay cut in 2020, but that's not the worst of his worries

How is He Getting Paid Anything?

He backed WeWork (transparent scam), Uber (no path to profitability), Doordash (ditto Uber), etc.

How do they keep attracting money backing business with no path to profitability?

Googler demolishes one of Apple's monopoly defenses – that web apps are just as good as native iOS software

In the Early Days of the iPhone, there was Support for Web Apps

I recall reading complaints from developers back in the day that once they opened up the App Store, they systematically removed features (like return from an app) over the years.

Apple's business model for the iPod/iPhone/iPad has always been hostile to interoperability.

Ex Netflix IT ops boss pocketed $500k+ in bribes before awarding millions in tech contracts

This is Not Embezzlement, This is Capitalist Entrepreneurial Spirit

So say we all.

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

I want a seraph font

They are just plain more readable.

Bank of England ponders minting 'Britcoin' to sit alongside the Pound

I had an idea for "Britcoin" a while back, and here is how it would work:

It's pre-decimalization, so All transactions must be done in pounds, shillings and pence, so So 5.898958333 BitQuid must be represented as £5 17s 11-3/4 d (5 ₤, 17 shillings, 11 pennies, 1 hapenny, 1 farthing)

It would be pegged to the USD on that day about $2.40 USD to £1 Sterling.

The currency can be subdivided no further than a Farthing.

You would have the BitGuinea/BitYellowboy, BitPound/BitQuid, BitCrown, BitHalf crown, BitFlorin, BitShilling/BitBob, BitSixpence, BitThreepence, BitPenny, BitHalfpenny/BitHa'penny, and BitFarthing.

I could never make up my mind on the BitGroat and the BitQuarterFarthing.

Best of FRANDs: Judge allows Apple retrial following $506m patent infringement ruling

How is judge Jockstrap ^h^h^h Gilstrap still doing this?

The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that forum shopping patent cases into his court is against the law.

This guy is a public nightmare, and a patent troll's dream, presiding over something like 1/3 of all patent cases at the peak of his BS.

Ex-Geeks staff lose legal bid to claw back withheld training costs from final paycheques

Nice to Know that Slavery is Still Legal in the UK

If you want to retain staff who get experience working for you, don't treat them badly.

State of Maine orders review of $54.6m Workday project as it alleges delivery failure and threatens cancellation

Reminds me of a quote from the quote from Taavi Kotka , former CIO of Estonia

He was asked how they wired their entire government spending only $100 million, and replied, "If you don’t use Accenture or McKinsey, you’d be amazed at what you can get done."

Privatizing governmental IT infrastructure never saves money over the long term.

Come to think of it, it never does over the short term either.

See http://40yrs.blogspot.com/2019/11/tweet-of-year.html

Android 10 ported to homegrown multi-core RISC-V system-on-chip by Alibaba biz, source code released

Re: Android on IoT?

More like Android to IoS. (Internet of Sh%$)

Techies start growing an Alphabet-wide labor union: 200-plus sign up, only tens of thousands more to go

It's Not a Farce, It's a Trap

I would bet you dollars to navy beans that Google management is behind this.

Someone is creating a fake union to forestall the possibility of a real union.

Red Hat defends its CentOS decision, claims Stream version can cover '95% of current user workloads'

Shorter Version of What Red Hat is Doing Comes from Good Fellas

F%$# You, Pay Me.

The nightmare is real: 'Excel formulas are the world's most widely used programming language,' says Microsoft

We Live in Hell

That is all.

No, your software ideas aren't copyrightable, US judge tells SAS amid its long-running feud with Brit outfit

Gilstrap Made this Ruling?

This guy is the most patent and copyright troll friendly judge in the federal judiciary, plaintiffs seek him out, and he presides over 1/4 of the patent cases in the US, and he ruled against the assertion of copyright?

That is odd.

Trump administration proposes H-1B visas go to highest-paid workers first

I Guess the Million Monkeys Chained to the Typewriters Came Through

It's not my favored solution, I would favor auctioning off applications (and doling them out on a monthly basis, so smaller companies can apply when they know they need someone), but it appears to be relatively well thought out and effective.

A stopped clock, is right twice a day, I guess.

Hydrogen-powered train tested on Britain's railway tracks as diesel alternative

Why Pressurized Tanks Rather than Metal Hydride Storage Tanks?

Just wondering.

Corsair's K70 MK.2 does nothing a cheaper keyboard can't, but the steep price gets you top-notch components

I Remember, and Love, the Old IBM Clickty Clack Keyboards

They were beautiful.

VMware staff in Silicon Valley can leave a pandemic, wildfire-ridden zone – if they're willing to accept less pay

Re: Take on a Roommate or 15

There is a movie about this starring Jack Lemon, The Apartment.

Re: Take on a Roommate or 15

The idea as that all the people "live" there, but only use the apartment if they are called into the office.

Take on a Roommate or 15

I expect people to start having 15 or so roommates in studio apartments at VMWare.

Mostly, they will just be there when they need meetings, and spend most of their time in "vacation homes."

Problem solved.

Fusion boffins apply plasma know-how to building thrusters

Are there any ISP Numbers

ISP = Specific impulse, not internet service provider.

It's a measure or rocket fuel economy.

For example the Dawn probe, which rendezvoused with Ceres and Vesta asteroids, had thrusters with a specific impulse of 3,100 s and produce a thrust of 90 mN.

Without ISP numbers, it's just a press release.

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Cars Should Be Air-Gapped (Except for Radios)

What happens when the next script kid hacks into 20,000 Toyotas and shuts them down during rush out, or worse, sets the throttles to 11 and disables the brakes.

Notepad++ website sent to China's naughty step after 'Stand with Hong Kong' software update

On the Bright Side

It's just about certain that some group of suits are not going to buy them out, because China will be pissed off for years.

We're suing Google for harvesting our personal info even though we opted out of Chrome sync – netizens

Shorter Goodle: That whole "Don't be Evil" thing is inoperative.

ICANN suffers split-personality disorder as deadline for .org sale decision draws close

What About ICANN Insiders?

The issue is not the financial benefit of ICANN, but that ICANN may be operating for the financial benefit of organizational insiders, such as current and former board members or their relatives.

This could be illegal, look at the case of the severance payments to the head of SADD.

What About ICANN Insiders?

The issue is not the financial benefit of ICANN, but that ICANN may be operating for the financial benefit of organizational insiders, such as current and former board members.

This could be illegal, look at the case of the severance payments to the head of SADD.

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

I Do Not Understand Why the Hostility Toward Systemd

Systemd is a great OS. All it really needs is a good init system.

ICANN't approve the sale of .org to private equity – because California's Attorney General has... concerns

I'm thinking that the AG is looking for evidence of self-dealing, which they probably find.

Self-dealing is unlawful, and in extreme cases, which this seems to be, is actually criminal.

I'm thinking that the if the investigation looks for evidence of self-dealing, which is a crime, they will find it,

The Foot of Cupid emits final burst of flatulence in honour of fallen Python Terry Jones

How Can You Not Mention his Documentary on the Crusades

It was wonderful.