Posts by holmegm

Cloudflare family-friendly DNS service flubs first filtering foray: Vital LGBTQ, sex-ed sites blocked 'by mistake'

And?

Just because it is *your* preferred style of kink doesn't mean that my kids should be wandering into it, if I don't want them to.

You're not fooling anyone on that vid-conference call: Walmart says shirt sales soaring, pants not pulled up

What is the point really of having video in remote meetings? Sharing desktops and documents, yes, video of faces, why?

Especially if we are in a world wide sudden bandwidth uptick, but honestly never saw the need in normal times either.

Amazon says it fired a guy for breaking pandemic rules. Same guy who organized a staff protest over a lack of coronavirus protection

Re: Troll

The key word is "if" on both sides.

Watching you, with a Vue to a Kill: Wikimedia developers dismiss React for JavaScript makeover despite complaints

Re: Wikimedia uses JavaScript?

Er, what's wrong with jQuery again? I mean, other than it being mature.

What's inside a tech freelancer's backpack? That's right, EVERYTHING

What you need is a *seabag*: insanely sturdy, tardis-like in its ability to hold far more inside than the visible volume should allow, and can still be worn on the back without (usually) falling over.

Roughly cylindrical in shape so it can be plopped in a corner and be more or less out of the way. Or you can lay it down and sit on it; just tell people that it is an ergonomic chair of some sort.

Maersk prepares to lay off the Maidenhead staffers who rescued it from NotPetya super-pwnage

Wait ...

Wait ... what's the etiquette here?

Can I still call them "jerbs" if they are techie jobs? Or can we only make fun of blue collar people for losing their jobs to outsourcing and immigration?

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

Re: Voting Machines

The Electoral College was explicitly *designed* to somewhat dilute the power of big population centers, and it does that just fine. It's working as designed. Some of the states wouldn't have joined the union without it (nor without the two Senators per state design of the Senate).

Just because the "right" (i.e. Left) people didn't like the outcome this last time doesn't change that.

Ironically, it was the losers who were floating a plan to manipulate the College. When that failed, they decided that they hated it again.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Well ...

Our tech has become consumable. Consumables don't generally last 200 years. The antiquities lover in me regrets it, but on the whole, that's a good thing.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

"and 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - here comes the CT nutjobs to say he was killed by NASA to stop him showing the truth "

(looks around) I don't see a single one ...

Crazy idea but hear us out... With robots taking people's jobs, can we rethink this whole working to survive thing?

Re: They toooock ewre joohbs!!!

Right ... and antibiotics killed us all because bacteria evolved and defeated everything, and all feedback loops are always negative and never moderate and doom is inevitable. You've noticed how we are all dead, right?

That's not how anything has ever worked.

Re: They toooock ewre joohbs!!!

"At some tipping point, it will cause an economic collapse if nothing is done, as there will be such a big divide between those that have money and jobs and those that do not, that the industries will no longer need to produce anywhere near what they used to, as no one can afford to by any of it."

This is the part where you need to show your work. It has always been predicted, and never happened.

There's a rather obvious moderating effect here as when *fewer* people can afford to buy (or as people in general become *less* able to afford to buy) that producing gets less profitable. This is not a static system, nor are the variables binary.

Not saying that what you foresee *couldn't* happen, just that it hasn't, and that there are reasons to think that it won't.

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

Re: it cannot discuss personnel matters out of concern for employee privacy

"The idea that short skirt and heels should be worn because it will turn male customers into drooling cavemen who'll then buy anything is very outdated in my opinion, and I find it a bit cringeworthy. Detailed knowledge of what you're selling is much more important for technology."

Riiight ... that's why booth babes don't exist.

Bada Bing, bada bork: Windows 10 is not happy, and Microsoft's search engine has something to do with it

No, but I use the Start menu. You are supposed to be able to type the first letters of your program and be presented with the program menu item so you can click and launch. Today, nothing.

Or if you are asking "why would an internet search be coupled with a Start menu search", well, that's a fine question.

Yep

Encountered this this morning. Having long since succumbed to the "search for your program" because the Start menus make little sense, I typed "Remote D ..." as usual, and got ... nothingness.

I will not admit how long it took me to get Remote Desktop finally fired up ...

GitLab can proclaim diversity all it likes, but it seems to have a real problem keeping women on staff or in management

"based on concerns about limited advancement opportunities, unequal pay, unfair treatment, or hostile, dismissive interactions. "

Given the current climate, there *could* be a problem, or there could not be. Any of those things could just be subjective perceptions.

Will Asimov fix my doorbell? There should be a law about this

Re: You are confusing EU with Europe

"And you know what, I even think it is this attitude that caused Brexit to happen."

Pretty much. You can only be called a racist so many times before you want the caller to shut up and leave you alone.

Vendor-bender LibreOffice kicks out 6.4: Community project feel, though now with added auto-█████ tool

A smart teenager who like usability and doesn't care for needless change? I'm good with that.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

Re: Immigration

It only appears like a mixed message to you because you imagine brexit to be racist.

Choosing who you want to let in is precisely what was desired.

"About to be"?

Re: I know, I know....

It would be better than the previous system.

Um

Amazing. Self confident bluster indeed ... on your part.

The only reason that you find this confusing is your belief that Brexiters are racist. I'm sure it is very difficult to let go of a belief in which you are so heavily invested.

The incongruity at which you laugh is that which is betwixt reality and your beliefs.

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

20 people? *This* is the firestorm of protest?

AI 'more profound than fire', Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai tells rich folks' talking shop

"Viewers of the slightly unhinged "Peloton wife" promotional video may beg to differ."

The only thing that was unhinged was the "woke" reactions to it.

"Well-off woman who is into fitness gets a pricey fitness gift; uses it."

Horrors!

Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer

Yup, time for the old story.

A high powered businessman was late to the biggest meeting of his career, a make or break thing. And his car wouldn't start! Panicked, he noticed a man walking up the street, carrying a toolbox, wearing coveralls which had a logo indicating that he worked as a mechanic.

"Please help me get this started, I'll pay big!"

The mechanic nodded, opened the bonnet, and peered around. Finally, after two agonizing minutes, he took out a little ballpeen hammer, took careful aim, and tapped somewhere on the motor once. Quickly closing everything up, he wiped his hands, started the car, found a napkin, and scrawled out a handwritten bill.

"200 pounds!" roared the businessman. "For tapping once on the motor with a hammer?"

"Oh," replied the mechanic. You want the *detailed* invoice." He found another napkin and wrote one out.

£1 - Tapping on motor

£199 - Knowing where to tap

Alan Turing’s OBE medal, PhD cert, other missing items found in super-fan’s Colorado home by agents, says US govt

Re: She sounds like a f*****g nutcase.

It *isn't* the only response. There are a wide range of mental health options in the US, public and private. They vary a lot by location, of course. (Nowheresville in the desert can't just magic up a psychiatrist.)

However, depriving you of liberty - *forcing* you to receive mental health treatment - can generally only be done if you are judged to present a danger to yourself or others due to your mental illness.

This determination is made by a judge (based on medical evidence), *not* because it is a crime, but because it is a legal process that deprives you (hopefully temporarily) of your freedom.

Microsoft boffin inadvertently highlights .NET image woes by running C# on Windows 3.11

"But here's an uncomfortable truth – it's a number of orders of magnitude worse in our community. In its current form .NET is for 40-year-old white men. That's the visual.""

What the heck is with the blatant racism?

Is there any other "visual" that it would be acceptable to refer to in this way, to indicate that something is just automatically repulsive?

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

Re: Adverts

It's a reasonable response when people *will* go on about the various dark alleys they insist on wandering into.

-"Doctor, it hurts when I do this"

-"Then don't do that."

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

"for the simple fact that neither ICANN nor the governments had actually stated their reasons for rejecting the application."

Reasons? We don't need no stinking *reasons* ...

To catch a thief, go to Google with a geofence warrant – and it will give you all the details

Re: This seems kind of reasonable?

On the one hand, I sympathize with this position.

On the other hand, if you can't trust your police, you have problems way beyond this. It's more of a political problem than a problem to be solved with technology.

Re: Sooo....

It's one piece of evidence, that can be used among many. It might not even be used at trial, but simply to give police a lead.

Anyway, that vast majority of criminals are not nearly as smart as TV makes them out to be. And even smart ones make mistakes. This is just one tool in the toolbox.

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away: Partner boss explains yanking of free licences

Re: Support

"It’s not like getting support for a Microsoft issue is easy. I’ve spent hours and hours on the phone as the script-reading phone monkey exhausted went down his list before declaring defeat. They are no more legally responsible for solving your problem than some random Linux guy."

This.

MS doesn't have to fix your problem. No, you aren't going to sue MS. Fallacy of the false alternative.

World's richest bloke battles Oz catastro-fire with incredible AU$1m donation (aka load of cheap greenwashing)

Re: Taxes versus Philantropy

I'd say that his gift here is a better choice than yet another Robert Byrd Pig Research Center (literal pork barrels). So there's that.

But that's not even the point. It's his money. Why *shouldn't* he decide where it goes?

Just how much of a special tax do you think Americans should be assessed to pay for Australian bush fires anyway? He handed over a huge chunk of cash to a need that isn't even in his country. The mature response is "thank you".

"And while none disclosed whether they had personally donated money to the same cause, that’s not the point."

It's not?

That's $690K (or whatever it was) more than I've donated to the bush fires (my donations have stayed closer to home).

He didn't have to give a dime, and had he not, we probably wouldn't be hearing about it on El Reg.

People need to grow up. Envy is a sad thing to let consume you.

Having trouble finding a job in your 40s? Study shows some bosses like job applicants... up until they see dates of birth

Re: So how do you hide your age?

but my age is pretty easy to guesstimate given my education and job history, and words like 'VAX' rather give it away : -)

So drop the oldest jobs from the CV, unless you are applying for running a VAX.

Re: So how do you hide your age?

So say "over 10 years of experience in ... "

It's still true ;)

Yeah, that part really strikes me. Someone born in 1950 is 70 now.

Saying "OK boomer" to someone who is 45 or 50 because they said something that you didn't want to hear is the equivalent of saying "I'm both stupid *and* innumerate."

A Notepad nightmare leaves sysadmin with something totally unprintable

Times have moved on, many kids call themselves "non-binary" these days...

So they are hex or octal?

IT exec sets up fake biz, uses it to bill his bosses $6m for phantom gear, gets caught by Microsoft Word metadata

Re: idiot

You could, but that would mean a vast proportion of the population are criminals, and also there'd be a lot of missing money and stuff, etc.

Can't prove or disprove a negative, but it's not like there is a lot of mysterious evidence pointing to these supposed comic book criminal geniuses. The simplest explanation is that most criminals are pretty dumb.

Stack Overflow makes peace with ousted moderator, wants to start New Year with 2020 vision on codes of conduct

"I will be donating any excess defense funds to the Pronoun Police Benevolent Association. Please don't beat me anymore."

"She has proposed donating fundraising proceeds in excess of her legal costs to The Trevor Project, which provides services for LGBTQ youth."

Well, isn't that special. I wouldn't want the movement that just arbitrarily crushed me under its wheels to go without funding ...

LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary

Re: ELEVEN YEARS to "succeede"?

You send resumes and important documents out in Word format? Why? Why not PDF?

But OK, let's say that a client or partner insists upon it for some asinine reason. You do realize that Word documents get corrupted all the time, right? That Word documents are often incompatible and differ in display and behavior between different versions of Word, right? That until competitors like LibreOffice basically forced them to change, that a Word file was basically a big ol binary memory dump, right?

"Succeeded"? It has succeeded at being an excellent free and open source office suite.

I assume the market share thing has to do with it being more lucrative to sell things that cost money. Hence people try much harder to sell MS Office.

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

Re: Don't need to SJW for me

Maybe he's interested in *actual* justice.

Re: these terms are "divisive and humiliating,"

"But that would be true of literally any descriptor used in that context. The problem with that scenario is the physical abuse, not that the attacker says "nerd" while doing it."

Hmm. Then why isn't that true of the words that *are* banned, which result in fines and imprisonment, etc.? Isn't the problem with *those* words the physical abuse, historical discrimination, etc.?

Space Force is go, go, go! Because we have a child as President of the United States

Um

Um ... splitting space assets off into their own branch is no more inherently nonsensical than splitting the Army Air Corps off into the Air Force was.

But yes, "orange man bad" ... I can't argue with that, er, logic ...

Amazon: Trump photon-torpedoed our $10bn JEDI dream because he hates CEO Jeff Bezos

Re: How To Win Friends And Influence

Democrats (and country club Republicans) have been openly dying to impeach Trump since before he was even elected. They did not and do not care about "facts, evidence, testamony or the laws of the United States" (in your words) themselves; they were willing to use *any* reason they could dream up. (They seemed offended to actually need a reason, in fact.)

They tried inserting Trump into their own bizarre sexual fantasies, that didn't work. They tried the Russia Russia Russia thing, that didn't work. Now they are trying this, and it will only (halfway) "work", if it does, because they control the House.

They didn't and don't care in the slightest about the actual "charges", they have simply been baying for blood all along.

Could also be that AWS is famous for open to the world databases.

Internet jerk with million-plus fans starts 14-year stretch for bizarre dot-com armed robbery

Re: Fearing he would be killed, Deyo pushed the gun away from his head

Yeah, he was actually complying, but the guy was still pistol whipping him and holding the gun right to his head.

Much like how it is with modern terrorists, it didn't appear that compliance was really all that safe of a course of action.

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

Re: Sigh

"On a totally unrelated note, I wonder what the jury members recent bank transaction look like?"

Believe what you like, I guess, but the idea that anything so blatant as that occurred is ludicrous.

There is simply a very, very high bar to defamation claims in US law, probably because of our whole bugaboo about not letting government (and damage awards from a court are government) restrain speech any more than necessary.

In this case, I can disagree with the outcome, but I can still see how it could happen. No fantasies about bribes are necessary.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: A quirky investigation into why AI does not always work

Re: more likely to have the relevant

"One of the most intelligent managers that I had the opportunity to work for was a woman....."

I have had (and currently have) wonderful women managers. I have had few woman programmer colleagues.