Posts by Rudolph Hucker the Third

For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020

I didn't get where I am today without being part of the "Statler and Waldorf" wing of El Reg. But my medication is working well today, so I will play-nice and share my top two tips for migrating production Python sites from 2.x to 3.x

1) Replace all PRINT with a wrapper function (say) PrintThis()

PrintThis() can then include a check on the config Development/Production status and switch accordingly.

Print to console is fine in Dev. But in Production, PrintThis() should switch output to Log files or a Log database (your choice)

2) For every INCLUDEd library in your 2.x code

On Linux:

sudo python3 pip -m install ThisLibrary

On Windows (e.g. in Visual Studio):

Switch the Python Environment to 3.x.

Use pip and search PyPI for each library, and install.

SpaceX didn't move sat out of impending smash doom because it 'didn't see ESA's messages'

(COLREGs) say "turn right"

In space, no-one can hear you scream "turn right".

Can you download it to me – in an envelope with a stamp?

Coincidently, my extended EEC family includes several cousins, outlaws and colleagues all living in South West France, and they all report similar "fun" with French postal services and courier firms.

The best solution? Befriend the best local cafe / pâtisserie / wine bar. Be a good regular customer, then ask for a small favour.

Je suis peut-être absent pendant quelques jours. Puis-je recevoir une lettre ici?

Big bang theory: Was mystery explosion over New York caused by a meteor? Dunno. By a military jet? Maybe...

Re

Has anyone checked the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, in New York?

That's where Concorde G-BOAD is supposed to be stored..

Going tangential ... does anyone know which Concorde is currently stored in BA hangers at Heathrow? T'was visible from the Southern Perimiter Road c.4 weeks ago.

YouTube's radicalizing Alt-right trolls and Facebook's recruiting new language boffins

As Titania McGrath has already and eloquently Tweeted, the best way to defend Democracy and Free Speech is to block Popularist voting and ban any opinions we disagree with. Otherwise "bad people" get listened to. And don't get sucked into the oxymoron of everything being alt-right (if you are alt-left).

Get ready for a literal waiting list for European IPv4 addresses. And no jumping the line

What's the going rate for a single IPv4 address?

Last time I looked, PlusNet were selling them for £5.

It's official: Deploying Facebook's 'Like' button on your website makes you a joint data slurper

For those using Firefox with the Facebook Container enabled, that Container shows an alert while visiting El Reg with this message:

The Facebook "Like" and "Share" buttons that appear on shopping, news and other sites contain Facebook trackers. Even if you don’t use them, Facebook uses these buttons to track you. Facebook Container blocks these trackers and will display a fence icon to show you where these trackers were removed.

Facebook Container removes their trackers on other sites. The following will not work:

Facebook like, share and comment buttons on other websites. Facebook Container removes any trackers and related functionality.

Logging in or creating accounts on other websites using Facebook. To log in using your Facebook account, you must allow the site past the Facebook Container boundary.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/facebook-container-prevent-facebook-tracking

The Pi who loved me: Licensed to SSL

I didn't get where I am today without leaving a trail of clusters of Raspberry Pi model 1's, 2's and 3's in my wake.

I must have more Pi.

Q, nip down to CPC Farnell and make sure you get all of their Pi 4's with 4GB RAM, before the public notices. We need them for the Colossus 2020 project.

They say 4,800 will be available for delivery on 20/08/19

Let's talk about April Fools' Day jokes. Are they ever really harmless?

Re: Error Messages

Small, Far Away.

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

We may have to wait a while though - these kind of people have never really reached the pinnacle of Social Media Idiocy (or Social Justice Warriors) until they appear on Titania McGrath's Twitter account. Or have they?

Careful out there (down with this sort of thing).

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

Open the pod bay doors, Reg.

Thank goodness I found Agnes Nutter's page on the lottery numbers. Oh, now where did I put it?

She's just a Cosmic Girl but UK.gov is dangling £20m to have Beardy Branson's 747 launch satellites from Cornwall

From Newquay Spaceport, I'd cycle down to Boscarne Junction and get the Bodmin and Wenford Railway steam train. Chuffing marvellous! Change at Bodmin Parkway to get one of the 40-year old IC125s that hasn't been sold to ScotRail yet. GWR still needs a few 'cause the lovely new Hitachi trains don't like wet weather along the Dawlish Sea Wall.

If you're ever lost on the Moon, Ordnance Survey now has you covered for Apollo 11 anniversary

There's something wrong with that map.

No trig points for the OS surveyors' theodolites.

Did the OS sub-contract the job to The Clangers?

Your FREE end-of-the-world guide: What happens when a sun like ours runs out of fuel

"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."

Just so El Reg isn't accused of plagiarism:

(C) Copyright Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club 1996

FTFY

Lightning speed – how fast is that again? Virgin plugs in another 102k to superfast broadband

Any Gigaclear customers out there who can provide feedback on their experience?

They say 900Mbps FTTP (?)

Airbnb host thrown in the clink after guest finds hidden camera inside Wi-Fi router

AirBnB has a great track record - of saying "we take XXXX very seriously" - and doing bugger-all to enforce whatever XXXX might be.

Fire Regulations are a very good example. Regular hotels and B&Bs have to spend £Ks on Fire Service approved equipment, with regular checks of interlinked fire alarms. What does AirBnB recommend to its hosts? One poxy single alarm that doesn't meet UK fire regs standards. Lower standards and lower prices that undercut people who do bother about their guests.

'Lightweight' UPS-style flywheels to power naval laser zappers

Testing in Scotland? Excellent!

Scotty, I must have more laser power!

It's the flywheels, Captain, they canna stand it!

If this catches on, there will be a lot less demand for olde-fashioned sailor-powered gunnery and exploding shells.

There'll be a lot of seamen discharged in Faslane and Rosyth.

Out-of-office email ping-pong fills server after server over festive break

Some might say : He should have used the MSexChange.com website before he started that.

Zuck it up: Facebook hit with triple whammy of legal probes, action in Canada, US, Ireland

Re: Wanted ad

"Perhaps they should consider hiring someone who knows what morals and ethics are?"

I'm told that Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister, is a person of total integrity. Now that Facebook has hired him as its head of global policy and communications we can be sure that he'll make sure Facebook sticks to its promise (just as he did).

Vince Cable, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, told the Guardian he intended to write a letter to Clegg: “I will be urging him to make sure Facebook co-operates with attempts to make sure they pay their fair share of taxes,”

Firefox arrives for Snapdragon Windows and Slack sidles up to Office 365

Am I the only one who is slightly thrilled that their children could get the chance to study (or work) at Bletchley Park?

Never mind the Brexit cocks.

Not biased against you and not going anywhere, judge tells Post Office in Horizon IT system case

Re: Judges and bias

You should be aware that the Post Office is not based in the US, and this is a British trial with a British Judge.

Hello, tech support? Yes, I've run out of desk... Yes, DESK... space

Re: *BEER* shouldn't be 'cold cold'

Alex, is that you?

<redacted> with Sylvia Syms in the back of the ambulance.

Googlers, eggheads urge web giant's bosses to kick top conservative off its AI ethics council

I am now writing ANOTHER letter of complaint to the FASCIST BBC sock-puppet that still REFUSES to show LBGTQ couples on Strictly Come Dancing.

What kind of ethics do they have if they don't have MY woke ethics? You have NO RIGHT to your own choices. If I can't dance with sequins and a beard I refuse to pay their license tax. A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!

Titania McGrath has been alerted!

If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution! If I can’t dance, I don’t want your revolution! If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.

Anarcho-Feminist Emma Goldman (1869-1940).

Strictly Anarchy 2019

Len Goodman 7

This AI ethics board is clearly just not SJW and *woke* enough!

And it's happening EVERYWHERE!!!

As I type this with one hand I am ALSO writing an outraged letter of complaint to my local sports centre. I am shocked, *shocked*, that they are refusing to let trans-gender men in transition use the female changing rooms. Just because they still have beards!!! That sports centre has OBVIOUSLY become a far-right reactive organisation that Trump would approve of.

I will be tweeting Titania McGrath to get her informed about this OUTRAGEOUS situation!

https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath

I didn't get where I am today without being the only trans-gender lesbian in my village.

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

Kent House, a digital marketing agency, has just confessed to a terrible data crime:

"The petition to revoke Article 50 has received millions of signatures. It looked pretty obvious to us that it was being gamed by bots to make false political capital, thereby seriously devaluing the UK Government’s platform for digital democracy. So we tested it for ourselves. In a single weekend, using just one spare server and with a budget of £22, we were able to make 72,000 confirmed robotic entries. Imagine if we’d put any real effort and resources into it! "

https://www.kent.house/uk-petition-article-50-hijacked-by-bots/

I'm shocked that they only managed to get 72,000 confirmed robotic entries. One can only imagine what could be achieved with a proper Remainer-sized budget?

"EU referendum petition hijacked by bots" says the BBC

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36640459

That petition is so good some people have voted many times.

"I voted 33,000 times. Left a script running while I was taking a shower," wrote one member.

Don't forget, vote early and vote often.

Good news chaps!

Titania McGrath has voted in favour of the vote.

Now all woke folk will know what to do.

https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath

Stand-by for the El-Reg Remoaner bots to down-vote me .. in 3,2,1....

The petition saw a suspicious jump in signatures last night, with fake signatures arising everywhere from Russia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, to North Korea, Nigeria, etc. Signatures have even come from non-country ‘Western Sahara’, and Vatican City.

Sham numbers, dodgy foreign actors, and disinformation…

It's been whispered elsewhere (on a Gov-related Web Admin portal) that the Nginx gateway error message is being triggered by the sheer volume of automated bot votes being chucked at the site.

Now who on earth would want to do such a thing? I couldn't possibly comment.

FYI: You could make Tesla's Autopilot swerve into traffic with a few stickers on the road

Err, just wondering, how does a Tesla on autopilot respond to potholes in the road?

Is it the same as with these stickers?

With what passes for "normal road conditions" in this part of the world, not sure a Tesla would last very long(?)

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

I didn't get where I am today without speeding up software distribution via 5.25" floppy discs.

We sent customers a fax with a picture of a 5.25" floppy disc on it.

Along with the instructions:

"This is the new improved software distribution method. Please cut-out around the dotted line and insert in the floppy disc drive."

We did get a call from one customer :

"I've got it in but it's not working, and I can't get the disc out!!!"

Well, it was April 1st.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Oracle swings axe on cloud infrastructure corps amid possible bloodbath at Big Red

Hey, you, get off of my cloud.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can bypass... the A-Team.

Let's spin Facebook's Wheel of Misfortune! Clack-clack-clack... clack... You've won '100s of millions of passwords stored in plaintext'

That's the least of *our* problems with FaeceBorg:

Look what people can find when they dig deep enough into how FaeceBorg is getting your personal data, regardless of whether you are a user or not:

https://privacyinternational.org/report/2647/how-apps-android-share-data-facebook-report

Facebook routinely tracks users, non-users and logged-out users outside its platform through Facebook Business Tools.

We found that at least 61 percent of apps we tested automatically transfer data to Facebook the moment a user opens the app. This happens whether people have a Facebook account or not, or whether they are logged into Facebook or not. ... apps that automatically transmit data to Facebook share this data together with a unique identifier, the Google advertising ID (AAID). The primary purpose of advertising IDs, such as the Google advertising ID (or Apple’s equivalent, the IDFA) is to allow advertisers to link data about user behavior from different apps and web browsing into a comprehensive profile. If combined, data from different apps can paint a fine-grained and intimate picture of people’s activities, interests, behaviors and routines, some of which can reveal special category data, including information about people’s health or religion

Brexit text-it wrecks it: Vote Leave fined £40k for spamming 200k msgs ahead of EU referendum

Instead of joining in the knee-jerk reactions, I look forward to reading the actual correspondence and evidence. Especially the part where the ICO told Vote Leave to delete the data, so they did, then the ICO fined Vote Leave for not being able to produce any evidence. As others have said, seems Kafkaesque and extreme...

First, Google touts $150 AI dev kit. Now, Nvidia's peddling a $99 Nano for GPU ML tinkerers. Do we hear $50? $50?

Damn, that Jetson Nano looks like the wish-list spec for a Pi 4.

Linux4Tegra looks like a custom-built version of Ubuntu 14.

https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-tegra

A cluster of those would be interesting.

Like this:

https://www.techworm.net/2018/03/learn-build-supercomputer-raspberry-pi-3-cluster.html

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

Re: Barstweards

+1

Plus PiHole to protect everything else.

Talking of which, please can someone provide some sample URLs for these offending gov websites?

So we can see what gets blocked by the combination of NoScript, Ad Block, Ghostery and PiHole.

Or not as the case may be. :-)

Brit prisoners to be kept on the straight and narrow with JavaScript and CSS

Re: <daily mail web desginer reader>

Happily, they are not endangered any more.

They've been cross-breeding them with Grauniad proof-readers.

Don't let me catch you writing case-sensitive code, Fletcher.

I won't.

Won't what?

Let you catch me .. sir.

Year 1 of GDPR: Over 200,000 cases reported, firms fined €56 meeelli... Oh, that's mostly Google

What I want (what I really really want), is a FaecesBorg consent checkbox, checked by default.

As in:

[X] I do NOT consent to this website sharing my personal data with FaecesBorg

I look forward to El Reg leading by example.

Science says death metal fans delightful and intelligent people, great at dinner parties

Re: Context please.

Par for the course when you can no longer tell the difference between the inmates and the staff. And that's just in the Day Job Office!

What today links Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram – apart from being run by monopolistic personal data harvesters?

From the Department of Good News

I'm shocked, *shocked*, that FaecesBorg has had a massive outage.

Impact?

~ millions of people cannot post drivel and trivia!

~ FaecesBorg has already lost $millions of income selling those people's personal data

~ suddenly the world seems a better place.

Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ support to arrive in Linux 5.1

Just posting an early letter to Santa from my children.

Dear Santa

Thank you for the Raspberry Pi 3A which is very nice and lots of fun and we have learned lots and lots about Linux and Python because of them and that's a good thing for us at school and where my Daddy works.

Please can you send me and my Daddy a Raspberry Pi 4 as well? The one with USB3 and SATA would be very nice. Thank you.

Yours sincerely

Rudolph Hucker the 4th.

Unless you want your wine bar to look like a brothel, purple curtains are a no-no apparently

Purple curtains in a brothel?

Lostwithiel isn't in the diocese of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, but maybe he goes on holiday there?

https://blackadder.fandom.com/wiki/Bishop_of_Bath_and_Wells

"illegitimate goings-on, looking like a brothel or a funeral parlour"

Opportunity knocks for someone to combine the two?

"Get someone dead into your bed, get into necrophilia now"

Who sung that folk-song?

Crowdfunded lawyer suing Uber told he can't swerve taxi app giant's £1m legal bill

c/o Guido Fawkes

The judge rejected both Maugham’s ‘Protective Costs Order’ and his initial appeal, which would have limited Jolyon’s liability to just £20,000 if he lost the overall case, instead of being on the hook for Uber’s costs which could be over £1 million. The judge noted that the “named claimant has significant assets which he is not prepared, albeit for understandable reasons, to expose to the risk of an adverse costs order.”

More significantly, the judge said the fact that Jolyon had received “substantially more than 50% of the funding” from his case from the black cab trade, including one single contribution of £20,000, was very much a “relevant consideration” in the case.

The effect (had he won the case) would be (a) allow him to claim the VAT as a business expense and (b) put up the price by 20% for the general public (that's most of us)

Moneybags Buffett on ditching Oracle stake: I don't think I understand where the cloud is going

Highly likely, especially as Warren Buffett might almost have invented the phrase : "Follow the money".

Three quarters of US Facebook users unaware their online behavior gets tracked

Re: MeWe Is Much Better Than Facebook - Make the Switch!

"Is your social media stalking you?"

https://mewe.com/challenge

https://mewe.com/faq

Fancy a .dev domain? They were $12,500 a pop from Google. Now, $1,000. Soon, $17.50. And you may want one

Just wondering, what would happen if you didn't bother with a trick-scheme domain name, and just told everyone to use your fixed IP address?

Re: daffyd.gay

I didn't get where I am today without having to look up what all these acronyms mean.

My activist-daughter tells me LGBTTIQQ2S is the very latest thing to be, if you are "woke".

Wake me up before you go-go.

'We don't want a camera in everyone's living room' says bloke selling cameras in living rooms. Zuckerberg, you moron

At the risk of being heavily down-voted by El Reg moderators, I can't help wondering why the El Reg team keeps posting articles like these. While all the time every page has an icon at the top of the page for people to "Like us on Facebook".

If the Register is so aware of Facebook's sociopathic tendencies, why does it still willingly associate itself with that beast in any way?

It is cognitive dissonance? Or, perhaps, are these articles just click-bait?