* Posts by Red Or Zed

39 publicly visible posts • joined 30 May 2018

Despite Russia warnings, Western critical infrastructure remains unprepared

Red Or Zed

Re: An unfortunate necessity

It's not going to happen without legislation and budget from the government. And none of those actually care enough to do something.

Meta accused of trying to discredit ad researchers

Red Or Zed

Re: It's as if advertisers no longer care

Humans havn't changed in thousands of years, there are just more of us, and some have digital watches.

Found Thomas Tusser on archive.org, cheers for the recommendation.

Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station

Red Or Zed

Re: Yep, been there

Our shiny new office was built with super mega 8ft tall doors everywhere. Except the machine room, where they were normal height, and we bought 7ft racks.

They went through the door OK at an angle, it was just super annoying that IT was treated badly by artichokes ('tects) yet again.

Red Or Zed

I worked for a race car manufacturer. One of our Dell servers underwent unscheduled altitude change and unapproved chassis reconfiguration. The bits and bytes inside seemed OK, but it wouldn't go back in the rack.

The shop floor lads thought it hilarious when we went to borrow their user adjustment tool and a bench to pound against.

After nine servers he worked on failed, techie imagined next career as beach vendor

Red Or Zed

Re: Sorry, is it just me ?

This is a perfectly normal but terse style of writing. Not AI

First Brexit, now X-it: Musk 'considering' pulling platform from EU over probe

Red Or Zed

Re: Hardly surprising.

The companies could just get their shit together, but they'd rather lose advertiser money.

UK government slammed for Palantir 'free trial period' deal in Ukraine housing scheme

Red Or Zed

Re: Hold up...

How is the £1 one going do that now?

More UK cops' names and photos exposed in supplier breach

Red Or Zed

Of course not, that's completely ridiculous!

It'll be just down these stairs.

Mind you don't trip...

UK's proposed alt.GDPR will turn Britain into a 'test lab' for data harvesting

Red Or Zed

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"Participation in the EU was obviously a matter of removing citizens' rights."

What rights were removed? Which ones? What can EU citizens not do that suddenly "free" UK ones can?

No open door for India's tech workers in any UK trade deal

Red Or Zed

Re: This isn't the Brexit we voted for.

A bunch of proven liars told obvious lies. The only thing missing were hats & badges labelled "LIAR".

Not sure how it could have been clearer.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Red Or Zed

Re: Keyboard Confusion

On W11, Win+ caused the screen magnifier to appear

Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries work permits

Red Or Zed

Re: For once, Trudeau's government has made an actual smart move.

Yes, how dare people in "menial jobs" want a living wage. They should be grateful for the scraps and huddle together in hovels, like good little serfs.

There are no "menial" jobs, just ones you don't want to do because of snobbishness. Everyone working deserves a living wage, and those who can't shouldn't be forced to starve either.

Think of our cafes and dry cleaners, says Ohio as budget slashes WFH for govt workers

Red Or Zed

Re: It was only a matter of time

Oh no, won't someone think of the commercial landlords!!11!

Apple stomped all over NYC store workers' union rights, judge rules

Red Or Zed

Re: The other tactic

Did you read the bit about management not actually cleaning anything?

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Red Or Zed

Re: Multiple things lead to the conclusion

This sounds very suspicious - all the right things being done in the end?

Singaporean superapp Grab delivers massive job cuts with after hours email

Red Or Zed

"build our competitive moat for the longer term."

Anyone who writes, says, or even thinks such utter nonsense should be fired into the sun, for the good of the planet.

Thousands of subreddits go dark in mega-protest over Reddit's app-killing API prices

Red Or Zed

Re: Meh

Looking at their "trending" or "news" pages is depressing as hell.

Only joining subReddits that are specifically interesting and appear well moderated, is the key. Don't look at the weirdos and attention seekers, do not stare at the car crash on the other carriageway, and it is a valuable resource.

Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

Red Or Zed

Re: Its always the simple things

As ever, Tom Scott has investigated and debunked.

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

Red Or Zed

Re: Nipples and sonic screwdrivers

Fantastic!

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

Red Or Zed

Really? Someone taking home $million bonuses (plural) telling those earning far less not to worry about their pay, but to worry about hers instead - that's fine with you?

Are you her accountant?

Chromebook expiration date, repair issues 'bad for people and planet'

Red Or Zed

"train an army of BOFHs who have already learned to hate all users by working with children for years"

Not seeing any possible downside here. Action this day!

Red Or Zed

Spokesweasel

No Google spokesweasel from could be bothered to consider talking to anyone who didn't want to just buy more stuff.

Where's the profit in that?

Launching soon: ESA's Juice to probe Jupiter's moons for signs of possible life

Red Or Zed

How did you get there??

What if someone mixed The Sims with ChatGPT bots? It would look like this

Red Or Zed

Re: Few things AI might be useful for

Could they then be considered

Epic NPCs?

Anyway, it's a nice day for fishin'

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

Red Or Zed

Anyone who did get through to an agent this morning was told "no, no problems, everything is fine here, it must be a problem with your house or localised sunspots. have you tried changing those hideous curtains?"

Spoke to 3 users this morning and PRTG shows them all losing connections during the early hours, getting it back briefly and dropping off around 06:45.

Still, if they don't admit it, nothing happened, right?

The second dust bowl cometh for America, supercomputer warns

Red Or Zed

Re: what is it about post WW2 planned cities that make them so lifeless and forgettable?

"no thought for the people who would have to live in them"

Complete nonsense. They were carefully thought about and planned to make things easier and nicer for the people who would have to live in them.

This is estate is for housing, it has a mix of house types, paths away from the roads and they link to other estates, large amounts of greenery, with a local shopping area, local schools and a pub within walking distance.

Compare this to the developer "designed" hells with no shops, no schools, no surgeries, no greenery, no pavements and no parking.

Next to the housing estate is a commercial area, within walking distance of the houses but separated.

Compare this to the old towns with factories sitting next door to housing. Ugh.

Raspberry Pi hires former spy gadget-maker who baked devices into surveillance ops

Red Or Zed

Re: It's not gone well for them

Short but interesting read. Cheers.

Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened

Red Or Zed

Re: Not only two signs...

From your link:

"This makes this cover great for preventing those with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, special needs and children from tampering with dangerous plug sockets and switches."

It doesn't say they protect from the dangerously stupid though. Or those in need of a proof-reader.

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

Red Or Zed

Re: "Fun & pro, that's our motto!"

Upvote for this brilliant show, also featuring Burblesnoot Liftalatch. Not sure if I want to listen to the final episode, even after all this time.

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter staff: Go hardcore or go home

Red Or Zed

The one that says "woohoo we freed all the slaves, we are the best country ever, USA USA" except for the part where someone quietly whispered "what about the money? we need slaves for making the money" and the bit about "except for those guys, they can still be slaves"* leading to the prisons for profit system and the most incarcerated nation on earth?

*note for Septics without a sense of humour and other literalists: I was paraphrasing. Giving the gist of. Simplifying for effect.

Nadine Dorries promotes 'Brexit rewards' of proposed UK data protection law

Red Or Zed

A cunning plan

We have a whole government of Baldrick level thinkers.

"I have a cunning plan - we'll make our own data protection laws, that'll save us pennies and show those EU who's boss!"

"yes, except if we do that, we won't be able to trade with them, which will cost pounds. Go away Baldine"

Google hit with lawsuit for dropping free Workspace apps

Red Or Zed

Re: $5M for not getting something for free

And compensate them for their feedback which was used to improve the product.

Anti-piracy messaging may just encourage more piracy

Red Or Zed

Re: False equivalence as well...

I can recommend the ikorodu_bois of Instagram, a group of young men who do exactly that, shot for shot of film trailers and music videos.

They do it very well and it's entertaining fun.

FTC urged to protect data privacy of women visiting abortion clinics

Red Or Zed

Re: Hmm

Break the law? A law that says a person may not travel ?

how's all that Freedom going?

OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

Red Or Zed

Re: Aah, the memories...

Pathworks on Macs!

Eventually it worked, mostly. Huge amount of network storage available for Computer Aided Drawing people on Macs, down to the main servers. Lovely.

except when the Mac crashed and showed the Sad Face of "I have ennui" instead of, say, an actual error message.

Microsoft exposes glue-free guts of the Surface Laptop Studio

Red Or Zed

My Haynes manual story is getting to the reassembly part and finding a note "You would have noted the orientation of this part on removal."

No, I did not, because you did not mention in the disassembly part that this was critical. One way round stops the motorbike from starting, the other is fine.

Thanks Haynes!

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

Red Or Zed

Re: Closest I've seen...

Type K looks so friendly! Those happy Danes.

Amazon Prime Air flight crashes in Texas after 6,000ft nosedive

Red Or Zed
Thumb Down

The pilot will be blamed

It will be classed as pilot error. Unless it can be blamed on a lower ranking crew member. It's much easier for dead people to carry the can than for live ones to accept responsibility.

I'm in no way saying this is a good thing, just the traditional victim blaming.

OnePlus 6: Perfect porridge? One has to make a smartphone that's juuuust right

Red Or Zed

Apart from needing a replacement battery (cheap ones don't last. Who knew?) my Note4 is not terrible. A bit slow maybe.

I was waiting for the Psion/Gemini thing, but the reviews say it just isn't as good as the Note. The note taking bit is very useful and so is the camera - why replace it with something equipped with a rubbish camera?

Back to waiting...