Posts by holmegm

'We go back to the Moon to stay': Apollo vets not too chuffed with NASA's new rush to the regolith

Re: "To simply go and come back and say that we've been there again is highly unsatisfactory,"

Don't we have to, er, go back at all first to go back to stay?

Online deepfakes double in just nine months, scaring politicians – and fooling the rest of us

It's so difficult to tell what is sarcasm anymore.

GNU means GNU's Not U: Stallman insists he's still Chief GNUisance while 18 maintainers want him out as leader

Remind me, what's he guilty of again? "Saying stuff that you don't like?" How many years should he get for that?

Surprise! Copying crummy code from Stack Overflow leads to vulnerable GitHub jobs

If the problem is that you don't understand the code, than *that's* the problem, not that you got it from SO.

It's not as though copying from your first year textbook is likely to be any more secure, out of the box.

The immovable object versus the unstoppable force: How the tech boys club remains exclusive

Re: Misguided

The child is being used to try to make her immune to any response. Any response that doesn't agree with her is going to be characterized as hateful and out of bounds.

"Could it be, as Harvard President Lawrence Summers publicly mused 15 years ago, that women just don't have the brains for such analytic tasks?"

That's not what he said, and you know it ...

I was told there would be male privilege!

"Pay no attention to the (er) man behind the curtain!"

IF women in tech on average have the same aptitude and are vastly underpaid (two popular premises, yes?) then you could make a killing with a woman-only tech company. Please get on with that?

Re: Misguided

And here I thought it would be so difficult to get kids to cut school on Friday. Well done, well done.

EU's top court sees no problem with telling Facebook to take content down globally

Re: Just

If people commit crimes, the problem is that they committed crimes, not that they read something somewhere.

Holding people accountable for their own actions can be tricky, but hopefully not as tricky as trying to regulate the thoughts and speech of everyone on Earth.

YouTuber charged loads of fans $199 for shoddy machine-learning course that copy-pasted other people's GitHub code

On the one hand, yeah - if everything is as stated here, what a jerk.

At the same time - you shelled out for course without a refund policy, then later you wanted a refund? And he gave you one (albeit reluctantly)?

Dropbox CEO: I will make your worklife a calmer experience

Re: Slightly ironic

Yes, the weird white guilt here is offputting.

Strange in any case - I mean, tech workers would almost certainly be the early adopters of this.

Q: "How are you going to make sure that your product doesn't work best for its target market?"

A: "Um ... "

Chef melts under heat, will 86 future deals with family-separating US immigration agencies

Re: Screw Chef

Your characterizations are false, and the previous administration (praise be upon it) did things largely the same way they are done now.

It's an amazing propaganda success to watch this.

Frankly, dragging your children across the desert to enter another country illegally should be grounds in and of itself for taking your children into some sort of care.

Mystery database left open turns out to be at heart of a huge Groupon ticket fraud ring

What's the crime again? I didn't read super closely, granted, but why is buying low and selling high a crime?

New British Army psyops unit fires rebrandogun, smoke clears to reveal... I'm sorry, Dave...

Re: Um....

Well, it's probably still better than Hillary Clinton's "this way to the hospital" logo was ...

Poetic justice: Mum funnels £100 into claw machine to win single Dumbo teddy for her kid

Re: I beleve in Unicorns

Yes, that's just so clever ... when you are 13 ...

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

Re: I smell too much moral outrage

Have to give you that one.

Though it's not exactly moral outage, it's a weird stew of modern confusion. See, you're a loser if you like naked pictures ... oops, wait, no, you're a loser if you like *fake* naked pictures ... because you should be using and not committing to lots of *real* women, because that's more admirable, or something ...

2001: Linux is cancer, says Microsoft. 2019: Hey friends, ah, can we join the official linux-distros mailing list, plz?

Re: I am getting worried

"In 2001 Ballmer guessed that FOSS threatened to lose Microsoft money. Today the cheeses believe it will make Microsoft money. That's all there is to it."

And ... that's fine. Isn't it?

Plenty of other vendors in the linux world are there to make money, and far more users in the linux world are there to save money (which is the same thing but even better from a tax standpoint).

The seven deadly sins of the 2010s: No, not pride, sloth, etc. The seven UI 'dark patterns' that trick you into buying stuff

Re: A Prime example

Are you sure you are using Amazon??

Their returns are insanely easy, at least in the US.

They give you your money back the second the carrier scans it, usually.

Heck, last time I did a return, they said just bring it to UPS and they will package it up for you! (I still felt compelled to put it in a box, but I did let them fiddle with replacing the shipping labels.)

Re: Parenting

Er, then who is running the "society/schooling" to educate the village, if not the state?

But ... but ... if *parents* teach their children things, they might teach some un-approved ideas!

Eggheads have found a positive link between the number of racist tweets and the number of racist hate crimes in US cities

Re: Just out of interest

I dunno, some guy at that location in that timeframe was going on about his "typical white grandmother", was leaping to racist assumptions about local police interactions, etc.

Re: But let's not forget...

The "fine people" thing is a hoax.

If you *really* believe that the sitting US president was calling neo nazis "fine people" ... well, not sure what to tell you.

Biz tells ransomware victims it can decrypt their files... by secretly paying off the crooks and banking a fat margin

I won't "defend" it, but I can say (at least tongue in cheek) that saving face and letting someone else do your payoff without you knowing might actually make some crazy kind of business sense, and be worth something ...

Cisco cleans up critical flaws, Florida city forks out $600k to ransomware scumbags, and more from infosec land

Not quite as bad as paying ransomware, but ...

We had a client whose business was maintaining a public searchable database of professional certifications for a narrow field.

After playing whack-a-mole with an ever-changing-IP-address entity that was scraping their data (and frequently bringing their web server to its knees), our client was contacted by the scrapers, who helpfully suggested that they make the data available as an XML file or RSS feed or something, just to save everyone unnecessary time and work (over what was after all in the end freely available public data).

I suggested that they seriously consider it ...

Hot desk hell: Staff spend two weeks a year looking for seats in open-plan offices

Re: Am I the only one who loves it?

Sounds like a win-win. I don't begrudge the suits a win if I get to win too.

Boffins' neural network can work out from your speech whether you'll develop psychosis

Re: What could possibly go wrong

No, that isn't at all likely.

There aren't even enough beds in inpatient units for those who clearly need them. And people are discharged way too early.

And in the US, at any rate, you need two psychiatrists and a judge to sign off on an involuntary admission. (At least in every state I've ever heard of.)

So no, that isn't at all likely. At most this *might* be a tool, to help identify if someone needs further evaluation.

Silicon Valley doesn't care about poor people: Top AI models kinda suck at ID'ing household stuff in hard-up nations

Not sure that bars really provide for so many more washes. One squirt does a wash; the bottles last for a long time. The generics are pretty cheap too, not to mention you can get large refill bottles.

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

"as that was, at the time (and it seems moreso now) the way in which it could happen in the US."

You really think that "right-wing Christian fundamentalism"... and "moreso now" (?!) ... is more likely to impose anti-woman totalitarianism on the US than the culture that *actually* covers women head to toe, deprives them of rights and "agency", has child brides, sets up exploitation networks, etc. everywhere it goes?

It's as though someone had read her novel and said "wait, I know where we can get some people who are actually like that!"

I dunno, it just fascinates me that because of our taboo against seeing anything negative in the foreign and exotic, that everyone still fears their familiar old local caricatures (of people they don't like) instead of the real deal appearing right in front of their face.

"For those unaware, Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel is set in a United States run by Christian fundamentalists who enslave the few remaining fertile women and turn them into baby factories for the regime's inner circle. It's horrible."

There *is* a culture that *somewhat* resembles this dystopian novel.

It isn't a culture that has ever held sway in the United States though. (Not that this stops people from wanting to import more and more of it.) And it isn't "Christian fundamentalists" ...

Wondering where that upcoming meeting with 'Cheap Viagra' came from? Spammers beat Gmail filters by abusing Google Calendar, Forms, Photos, Analytics...

Re: gmail broken

Maybe your friends and relatives are marking your emails as spam but not telling you ;)

Re: Does anyone still use GMail, or Hotmail?

Trust is a tricky thing that soon lands you in the fallacy of the false alternative.

For most people, your recommendation sounds like "no no, instead you should trust *these* people you don't know over here!"

This Free software ain't free to make, pal, it's expensive: Mozilla to bankroll Firefox with paid-for premium extras

Re: Oh dear

Consider PaleMoon?

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

Wait, I am confused - how many football fields is a Hawaii?

Barbie Girl was wrong? Life is plastic, it's not fantastic: We each ingest '121,000 pieces' of microplastics a year

Until there is evidence that this is 1. harmful, and 2. more harmful than the alternatives (i.e. forgoing the benefits of plastic) I can't get too alarmed.

Re: And we are all still alive.......

So were the guys who went into Chernobyl.

For a few days.

We've been heavily using plastics for way more than a few days.

Refactoring whizz: Good software shouldn't cost the earth – it's actually cheaper to build

Re: And what about the proliferation of languages

Wasn't it obvious that mozilla was playing a joke? Any person in the mid 90's would have known this, seeing as there was no java whatsoever in there.

I believe the original idea was using it to manipulate Java applets ... so, you know, "scripting Java".

Hmm, maybe

Hmm, maybe ... depending on what you mean by "good" and "quality".

Yes, of course a lot of effort put up front into design pays off. But the devil is in the details, and especially in trying to systematize it.

Just because the latest buzzword/framework/methodology/cult says that it is "more maintainable" doesn't automatically mean that it really is.

Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

Re: she's cleverer than him

Then we'd better get busy finding technological solutions.

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

Well, they have to monitor you - otherwise they might accidentally show you relevant ads. Sheesh!

Jeff Bezos finally gets .Amazon after DNS overlord ICANN runs out of excuses to delay decision any further

No!

How dare they!

Doesn't Amazon care that there is a sacred burial ground under that ... er ... TLD?

Uncle Sam to blow millions on mind-control weapon tech that can be fitted without surgery

Re: ...Making Coward Remote Murder All The More Quick And Easy!

I know, right? Fools!

We should find a way to *make* them grow up and make sense!!!

Russian bots are just for rigging US elections? They hit home, too: Kid stripped of crown in TV contest vote-fix scandal

Re: Singing, but folk too busy carrying on the cold war to notice.

Indeed.

Same reason I can scarcely listen to my country's anthem anymore.

Sung "straight", it is beautiful. Sung as ... well, as every soloist sings it now, it's truly awful.

She's not bad

She's not bad ... the "warble every note" style is not to my taste, but it would appear that she can sing.

Banhammer Republic: Trump declares national emergency, starts ball rolling to boot Huawei out of ALL US networks

Re: Since When Have US Boycotts Succeeded?

"Which part of the over 2,000 years of Vietnam's history? The part where the Vietnamese kicked out the Chinese occupiers after about a millenium of occupation?"

And that's ... success?

I mean, kudos and all ... but ...

Huh ...

... maybe capitalists won't sell you the rope to hang them with ...

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Re: As an iPhone user

Been very happy with my Moto - and E series at that!

Music, email, maps, memrise (language learning app), the odd stupid little game - runs fine. Works well for calls too ;)

Regular updates, none of which has done any harm.

People love to tell me what I'm supposedly missing; I just don't see it. I think perhaps they are mostly just justifying the price premium to themselves.

Hi! It looks like you're working on a marketing strategy for a product nowhere near release! Would you like help?

"Firstly that the engineer with a product that is, seemingly, delayed by a year has so little work to do they have to stroll the corridors trying to find something to turn their hand at."

How do we know that's his fault?

If I don't have enough to do, that's on the company, not me. I do look for useful things to do at those times, I try to come up with ideas to give marketing (not that they usually want any), etc. I work on housekeeping tasks that really need to get done but don't otherwise don't get done. I followup on low priority things. I may even walkabout and interact with my fellow humans.

And if someone gives me grief about it ... well, that's where the emoji shrug came from.

Timely Trump tariffs tax tech totally: 25 per cent levy on modems, fiber optics, networking gear, semiconductors…

So ultra cheap slave labor is good now, because Trump is opposing it ... good to know.