Posts by quartzz

Zuckerberg wants to create a make-believe world in which you can hide from all the damage Facebook has done

Re: Hope he's bet the company on this idea

buffering...

Snail mail would be a fool-proof way to inform patients about plans to slurp GP data, but UK govt won't commit

we'll (we have already) only send out paper mail, when we want you to vote for something

Troll jailed for 5 years after swatting of Twitter handle owner ends in death

Re: re: And people say 'there is no justice'....... They're right!

(sarc, not irony)

Windows 11: What we like and don't like about Microsoft's operating system so far

settings menu's seemed to be 2 or 3 columns (grey background, white box), which was fine. chrome and firefox now seem to have a single setting on each row. which to me wastes a lot of horizontal screen space, and the colour scheme is light grey on white. which sort of sux. maybe you're not meant to change the settings

Florida Man sues Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for account ban

trump's gold dust for data harvesting. it's a case of "can we get away with unbanning him"

just a pesky nucular button

it isn't freedom of speech though....it's freedom of broadcast

Re: There are two possibilities on how it turns out.

more Do 'J'ness

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all: El Reg takes Twitter's anti-mean algorithm for a spin

freedom of speech... - - - freedom of broadcast

The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software goes offline for good

Re: One of those programs cast a long shadow

I do know that in about 94 I attempted a backup of some files using MS backup to floppy. they spanned about 14 disks. one of the disk reads failed and I lost the entire lot.

I did learn things from that

a friend also did a hard drive backup in about 2010. he had two identical model and capacity disks, and he picked the wrong one to write to, and lost everything on that disk. X-s. I learnt things from that too - having different manufracturer hard disks can help you choose the right one

maybe slightly relevent, not myself, but s.w.i.m. might have had the *cough* only illegal thing he ever downloaded to his PC, in the form of the t3rr0r1sts h4ndbook, in about '94, from tucows? or somewhere else. s.w.i.m. can't really remember

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

do we want something that is 'world beating' or not?

innovstion. new boundaries. new science. going where no previously-RAF pilot has gone before

hope this can continue

Showering malware-laced laptops on UK schools is the wrong way to teach them about cybersecurity

Re: Damned if they do, damned if they don't

without reading the details, one scan of an up to date malwarebytes?

Re: Rotten at the Core

yeah to all of that.....

I mean also, someone who was 'tech admin staff' in an army barracks once told me officers were proud of not being able to use technology - cos they drive ships and captain planes. that's what they're proud of

I recently had some (totally inneffective) dealings with the police (someone committed something against me). the police were a.b.s.o.l.u.t.e.l.y u.s.e.l.e.s.s. and the officer who was "dealing" (h-a-h) with my case, declared loudly "this isn't my area of expertise" (in response to question about recommended CCTV).

any companies that deal with things that aren't tech-related (which is most of them, because tech is the specialised subject), appear to be loud and proud that technology isn't their subject

does this have to change? (does this have to change?) (does. this. have. to. change?) more, more, more, more subjects, technology is becoming *core and integral* to the job description

the only thing people can really do, is vote. and by vote, I mean spoil their vote, and if the entire country spoils there vote, see what happens.

and if the entire country spoiling their vote means the same political circus party remains in power, that confirms that the voting system is corrupt

and that's great

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

Re: Screwed the pooch and knows it

focussing on the comment about the government regulating soc/media

you can guarantee, that the reasons and the outcome that governments want "regulation" to have, are not the same reasons/outcome users want it to be regulated

ah...what's going on here. mho on something which has lots of angles...

soc/media is un policeable....

why was the most powerful man in the world making announcements on twitter anyway (because it's unfiltered thoughts)

is this proof that the big names combined, "are definitely" more powerful than governments. which we sort of knew......

twitter (and fb) was loving it. priceless publicity, priceless attention

if your average user gets banned, they get annoyed

if the guy with his hand on the nuclear button (or a crazed republican following) gets banned, it's 3...2...1...

Re: Non of us get to judge him now

you don't want to upset someone who can blow up the world tho - via nukes, or followers (followers who have guns - not soc/med followers)

Re: "a failure of ours ultimately to promote healthy conversation"

during the past 18 months, twitters alexa rank has gone from about 12, to about 40

daily users from about 4 million to 2 million

whatever twitter is doing, it isn't really working.

(whether the user number landslide is because people have lost the phone number they use to get access to their account and "appeals" doesn't reply, I don't know)

personally...I think all social media has become one big algorithm database experiment. the big names know they have enough users they can lose a few with a few wrong algorithms

Study: AI designed to detect diabetic eye disease blinks in the real world, makes more work for doctors

"It's better to be safe than sorry" - this phrase is being used to say "false positives" are ok. no they aren't. false positives can be just as negative as missing the real thing.

it's like email security*. keeping the right people out is just as harmful as letting the wrong people in. no.....false positives aren't good enough. great for capitalism, but not for that diagnosis.

*I can't let this one slide without mentioning instagram. who are currently/last few weeks locking loads of peoples accounts under the guise of "security", when it's actually under the guise of "your aren't uploading enough profit for us, so we're locking your account out". you know. pandemic. more people online. facebook wants more profit. (this is why your insta stats have gone down - cos other ppl have got locked out)

You've got to be shipping me: KatherineRyan.co.uk suggests the comedian has diversified into freight forwarding

Davetv channel has been about the same since 2016

tenuous link alert, but @Davetvchannel has sort of kill'd my enthusiasm for the half dozen or so staple diets of the channel. (seeing the 50th repeat of Rob Beckett or Jon R'son has sapped my 'want' to see any of their (new?) material

Google Chrome's crackdown on ad blockers and browser extensions, Manifest v3, is now available in beta

m.o. on chrome is it's horrible. it's got nasty config screens (what happened to white checkboxes on grey backgrounds (aka xp style) - works for anything else), one of it's main functions appears to make it harder for you to delete specific parts of your history. (tbh, even if a browser/application did allow you to delete individual history (firefox - also very rubbish cookie control in chrome compared to firefox), there's no guarantee that the only person who was losing access to the data you were deleting is you) - your "deleted info" might still go back to the large mirrored buildings, or buildings shaped a bit like circular radiation signs.

the advertiser will look at their bank balance, if it's going in the right direction, they'll think "he knows our product name, even if it's to avoid it. good enough for us"

tbh

and I say this from a "here's the solution, before I don't use the proposed solution"

if a webpage forces me to watch ads, with no way of disabling via ad blocker (eg, origin). I won't go on that page.

Cops raid home of ousted data scientist who created her own Florida COVID-19 dashboard

the only thing Elysium (the film) was inaccurate about, were the special effects.

'We've heard the feedback...' Microsoft 365 axes per-user productivity monitoring after privacy backlash

Re: Weird metrics

it's quite likely that Microsofts new ideas that they sell to your company, are designed to make them (Microsoft) money, not your company money[?]

Re: I don't understand

vaguely sort of half related

in the past year there was a company who made toilet seats for staff toilets, the seats were angled forward slightly (5 degrees). this was meant to prevent people from hanging around on the loo for too long (because they didn't have a flat surface to sit on) - and getting paid for your poo

no idea what happened to the idea, but I read a medical article (it was on twitter geeze, and reddit, total legits mate). apparently for effective poo-ing, your legs are supposed to be slightly up from horizontal. on the way to a 'crouch'.

the point (of this true story): not sure. companies don't always provide people-friendly equipment?

As if Productivity Score wasn't creepy enough, Microsoft has patented tech for 'meeting quality monitoring devices'

McFly, you're fired...

Arecibo Observatory brings forward 'controlled demolition' plans by collapsing all by itself

Re: Moichandising!

when's the next star wars movie? ewoks scavenge, don't they?

yes...but....extenuating circumstances.....only covers....dependent on maintenance checks...."the insurance clearly states on page 8 paragraph 6, humidity can be no more than 60%"

PC makers warn of battle for air freight capacity, will have to fight for cargo space with... the COVID-19 vaccine

I'm quite impressed that a 5 inch by 5 inch parcel with 2 sticks of ram, along with 5,000 other same parcels, can find their way from China to this address at the best of times. here's hoping..

Ad banned for suggesting London black cabs have properties that prevent the spread of coronavirus

Re: It's the ASA

don't know - I haven't bought an X-box

riight...

or they want people to pay money to get taxis

yeah. seriously. what about the previous 20 people who have been in the 1 metre by 2 metre space that you're currently sitting in?

yes you're isolated from the driver....

but what about the previous 20 people that used the cab that day?

Study: While text-generating AI can write like humans, it lacks common sense

Re:

yes

and that's why I said "thinking out loud" - the meaning of which is;

"these are facts".

thinking out loud...

one of the most important factors in using a tool (eg, screwdriver), is to know what it can't do. but no-one knows what AI can't do?

Bloated middle age beckons: Windows 1.0 turns 35 and is dealing with its mid-life crisis, just about

the first thing I do with a new gmail account, is turn the icons into text

the industry seems absolutely hellbent, on "removing details". it probably started off with Apple doing it right, then the industry copying it badly/un necessarily

one vaio notebook I tried once, the trackpad had the buttons integrated. but there were no indent lines to seperate/highlight the buttons, it was just a single surface, which had some clickable area at the lower left/right

no thanks. if something is a button, I want it to have some plastic molding/lines which show's it as such

I also *hate* the trend of putting buttons anywhere other than on the front panel (eg, underneath the border facing down, or on the rear of a flatscreen display)

Hundreds of Facebook moderators complain: AI content moderation isn't working and we're paying for it

Re: Ruining Pages

well.....'sucker' "?" (but I agree with the reason)....as in half the sites that are getting cr@pper and cr@pper are relying on the fact that people already have built-up profiles that they don't want trashed

1) site exists

2) people use it

3) people build up a profile over time

4) site infrastructure does not keep up with the increase in user numbers

5) site performance and useability gets less and less. site requirements might actually increase (while infrastructure doesn't) because it encounters new competition from other sites and has to introduce new features

6) people only continue using the site because they have already put time/effort into building up their profile

I also reckon there might be some silicon valley ego stuff....facebook and insta's s/w engineers get together over lunch, and boast about how their user numbers are going up despite rubbish interface

Re: Money talks

I mean absolutely. I'm sure there is some very 'interesting' image recognit going on to detect what's in the photo's. when fb had that hiccup and images were replaced by text descriptions for a few hours

"we have text descripts for the hard of seeing"

rule number 4 in doing stuff: always have a semi-plausible explanation, for doing something you don't want them to know about

also when I say 'everything else' there.....that includes actually having a website in the first place (this comment was prompted by facebooks recent 'facelift', which does less than it did before). tbh, I'm sure facebook's ideal business model, would be

"just send us your data. have a logo'd pencil that you have to leave on the premesis"

that way they wouldn't have the resource drain of actually having to maintain a website

1 - primary function - sell user data to marketing

2 - "everything else" - generally an annoying secondary consideration

the moderaters aren't the core of the business....they are an additional department that has had to be brought in, to facilitate '1'

When even a power-cycle fandango cannot save your Windows desktop

Re: Potted plants

bad earth.... (upvote 4u)

Re: a perfectly understandable error

I seriously cannot believe that chrome's entire 'undo bookmark delete' feature is a 5 second 'undo'. (I haven't investigated more bookmark managers)

until I was into my second month or so of using PC's (1993?) the 3.5 floppy disk, which wasn't floppy, was still a bit of a mis nomer for me.....:^)

Facebook sues to shut down alleged Instagram clone maker over scraping and sharing personal info for cash

Re: How awful

instagrams 128 (not verified) page Ts & C's. state that any data you upload to them, they can use

unless the "your" in "your" data means instagram.....in which case I fully support donations to unregulated social media corps

also....."you feel is rightfully yours" - has no relevence in law, at all. it's yours in law (which can usually be overturned by their lawyers), or it isn't

there might be an /s in your post...;-)

anything that turns instagram into a useable website, from the absolute. mess. it is at the moment. is a good thing

which won't happen....insta will just hold onto it's #sellhashtags even more

US government clears debt collectors to go after Americans through their social media accounts

Re: But why

if you think you might still have a chance of getting laid from there? (and you don't know they're wo_otching)

the only way to reliably get banned on Fb (in my exp - I've not regular'd facebook for a couple of years), is to not give your genuine details to data $harvest sell.

but I guess all it takes is to receive one message from the debt collector with some info, and the DC can officially record that you've seen the information?

America's largest radio telescope close to collapse as engineers race to fix fraying cables

Re: Send for Jodie Foster

or a Dr

but, Dr Who?