Posts by Dave314159ggggdffsdds

Bitcoin 'inventor' will face forgery claims over his Satoshi Nakamoto proof, rules High Court

"If Nakamoto mined those bitcoin, and Wright is Nakamoto, why can't he simply sell or transfer some of the bitcoins that he owns?"

Because he was employed at the time by the NSA, who own the products of his work.

Keyser Soze worked for the NSA? Suddenly that film has another layer of meaning.

Re: Are there any relevant patents filed or granted?

"there is no system for allowing anonymous inventors (except where the whole patent is classified for national security)"

The null hypothesis is that Bitcoin (and tor, etc) were created by the NSA. So the national security thing is hardly a problem.

Re: Old Nicknames

"I thought she was an idiot - that was my stupid mistake these days."

It wasn't a mistake, she was an idiot. Apparently a lucky idiot, but it's not wrong to e.g. tell someone they have a vanishingly small chance of winning the lottery, even if they subsequently get lucky and win.

It takes more clicks to reject their cookies than accept them, so France fines Facebook and Google over €200m

Rofl

Why don't they just ask nicely* instead of imposing ludicrous, unlawful fake penalties that will never be paid and are completely unenforceable?

[*If the ICO asks nicely, you still have to comply.]

Oh yes, because it's just political grandstanding.

I agree that wrist-slaps are deserved by companies who make it too hard to opt out, but this is silly.

Remember Norton 360's bundled cryptominer? Irritated folk realise Ethereum crafter is tricky to delete

"There was once a rumor that most of the computer viruses were written by the AV companies themselves to generate sales"

No. The rumour, since apparently backed up by evidence, was that they were written by one specific AV company - McAfee. Or Kaspersky, if you were an anti-Russian racist who believed what John McAfee told you.

"Anyone think that the Norton name has any residual goodwill left?"

Fans of old English motorbikes?

IBM bosses wrongly sacked channel salesman after Tech Data joint venture failed, tribunal rules

Re: This was in the UK. In the US …

Where do people come up with this ludicrous nonsense? It's entirely the other way around. The US has far more protectionism, Europe far less.

The entire EU (and also UK) have more freedom to sack people than 'at will' states in the US.

Really, it's very simple. Here, we give people things like medical care and food whether or not they keep their jobs, so we just don't care as much as Americans about being fired, fairly or otherwise.

A time when cabling was not so much 'structured' than 'survival of the fittest'

Re: Was there no conduit?

Perhaps. Those are broadly the same as for commercial. The point is that you ought to be able to drill holes pretty much at random without any fear of hitting a wire.

Re: Stuck a finger...

I mean, that's the joke. Who hasn't got it by the age of maybe 8?

I think the look of dawning enlightenment is when they realise something about you...

Anyway, the real solution here is to _keep looking after you find it_. That little bit of extra effort means things will not always be in the last place you look, and are now much easier to find.

Re: I managed to to this with a panel pin

And did you fix the cabling, having discovered your dangerous error?

Re: Was there no conduit?

No. That is wrong.

Cables must be loose - that is, not-fixed in position - or must be protected by trunking. It is not possible to drill into cabling where it is correctly installed* - barring switching drill bits and persisting until you get through the trunking.

*Well, except right next to sockets, switches, etc, where the cable is held by the socket, switch, etc. But there you can take the faceplate off and see exactly where the cable is, move it aside, and so on.

There are also rules about how to run cables, but they're belt-and-braces compared to how to _install_ cables.

If you do manage to drill into cables, it is almost - 99.99%+ - certainly a dodgy installation. Even idiocy of a high degree is rarely enough to manage it in a compliant building.

Re: Was there no conduit?

"Something built to standards or code at the time is still classed as "safe" and legal up to the point where you are refurbishing or modifying"

Sort of. Sometimes it's only that no-one knows, and as soon as it is discovered, the building has to be closed until it can be fixed. If an installation is dangerous, there are no grandfather clauses that protect the owners from prosecution.

As I explained above, it should not be possible to drill into cabling. If it is possible, it's a serious safety issue. Immediately turn off the power at the main breaker, evacuate the building, everyone can WFH until the building is entirely rewired. And yes, I have done that in a major office building in the West End, fairly recently (although pre covid).

Re: Don't mix power tools and alcohol

Those were always largely useless, and are even more so where metal studwork has been installed.

Very simply, cables should not be fixed in place without being protected by trunking. If you can drill into them, the wiring is not to spec - if they're loose, the drill just pushes them aside. So, if it happens, the one drilled cable is the least of your worries, because the entire building urgently requires a rewire.

In the UK, commercial buildings have to close pending rectifying work, when that sort of thing is discovered.

You've stolen the antiglare shield on that monitor you've fixed – they say the screen is completely unreadable now

Re: Nescafé

In French, n'est cafe pas :p

Wifinity hands customers bills for Wi-Fi services they didn't want but used by accident after software 'glitch' let 'fixed term' subs continue

Re: Should be outlawed...

"All subscription services should be banned from automatically rolling over"

I completely forgot to change my home ISP this year. It rolled over a few days ago. Fortunately it didn't get cut off, so I have internet between now and whenever a new contract with a new provider starts.

It's generally a good thing that stuff continues. Wifinity and similar are the exception rather than the rule.

And when it comes to car insurance, I think it's actually required by law that you affirmatively opt out if you haven't bought an alternative policy. It's easy enough to do. Unintentionally driving uninsured would be a very bad thing to do, because you will be caught pretty much instantly, and, in practice, that's the end of driving for you (for a good few years) unless you're very wealthy.

Re: Why are soldiers being monetised for profit like this?

This is for personal use. Soldiers living on base but off duty, etc.

Perfectly reasonable to have reasonable charges for stuff like that. Unreasonable to screw up the billing.

Wi-Fi not working? It's time to consult the lovely people on those fine Linux forums

My dad has a little plug-in torch holder and rechargeable torch, which sits in a power socket and lights up if the power goes off. Which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't seem terribly helpful unless you have one in every room.

Re: Similar problem with a moped

The first time I drove an automatic car, it was borrowed from my in-laws. Wife and I stopped somewhere by the side of the road to admire the view, then I jumped back in, turned the key, and the damn thing wouldn't start.

After extensive messing around checking the battery connections and so-on, I was about to give in and call my father-in-law for help. While getting my phone out of the car I finally noticed the gear selector was still in drive. Yup, won't start unless it's in park or neutral. Doh.

Re: Doctors waiting room?????

" a different, more political root cause"

You think Covid is political?!

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

Re: Rocky atoll for sale

That's a slightly embroidered version of something that happens all the time. Some of my neighbours were up in arms about the 'interference' from the '5g tower' that had 'just gone up'. Except it was a crane on a building site a mile or two away.

Re: Simple solution...

I keep telling 5g nutjobs that in fact all 5g phones have a protective device built in, and it's only people without 5g phones who are at risk.

You're providing the data to confirm my theory :)

£42k for a top-class software engineer? It's no wonder uni research teams can't recruit

Re: We pay 100k and struggle massively to get anyone with the right skills.

I mean, I agree, but... Learning to do those things, faking the self-confidence, and so-on are vital skills if you want to sell your services for what they're worth. I'd say every bit as important as the 'real' skills - but let's be honest, they're far more important, as we can see from the bullshitters in top jobs :)

"it is also hard to try to make a step forward if you don't have that confidence that you might indeed be good enough to try for a new role"

That ain't your problem. The only question for you is whether you got the job. Whether you're competent to do it is the employer's problem.

It's not about confidence as much as mindset. If your employer has made a major mistake employing you for a role you're unable to do well, you should be laughing all the way to the bank. If the reverse is true, and you're seriously underpaid, your employer isn't going to come and apologise and pay you extra*, are they?

[*As it happens, I think underpaying employees is every bit as bad for business as overpaying them, so in fact they should try hard to do so, but it's obvious that is not a commonly held belief - it is perhaps the most common error in running a business.]

Re: To those stuck in Help Desk jobs....

"If you feel that you are stuck on a HelpDesk making £30k/year now, then decide whether you can: become a software engineer, become a Cloud engineer, become a niche specialist"

Or, take a management position doing helldesk or some other frontline customer service job. Team leader -> team manager in helldesk makes you qualified for team manager in other frontline CS. Helldesks don't tend to have much in the way of career progression in that line, but call centres - I know, but we're already talking about that kind of thing - and complaints-handling in other areas does.

The tech skills required for frontline tech support just aren't worth very much, so if you're good at other aspects of the role it's better not to see your experience as primarily tech-related.

Re: It is almost as if the company does not test things properly before unleashing them on the world

You've evidently completely misunderstood what I said. Anyone who uses the term, whether to describe themself or others, is a twat.

US pay tends to be a lot higher than here. But even in the UK...

"Who really thinks that software developers and network engineers are in the top few percent of earners in the UK"

I do. Not all of them, but good ones, certainly. It's a well-paid professional career. Any senior professional in a similar field who is not earning that kind of money is either underselling their services, or accepting nonmonetary benefits which compensate.

Incidentally, the top 5% by salary starting at £80k is a true but misleading figure - it's completely true looking only at PAYE salaries, but at that level of income many people are in a position to be able to take part of their income as dividends or similar, and there are also unearned incomes. The top 5% by income is closer to £100k.

Re: Excel skills

I hear the sound of a sysadmin who doesn't know how to set Excel defaults...

Re: We pay 100k and struggle massively to get anyone with the right skills.

"such a terrifying level of debt, that they are pretty much forced to take the first decent-ish job they can find"

I was going to say that I don't understand that mindset. But I do. It's understandable, but completely wrong.

Your first few years in any new career should involve frequent job changes as you blag your way up the ladder. You can't put much of a positive spin on your experience with the employer you're still with, to that employer - but you can call it pretty much anything you like to the one you're interviewing with for the next job. Worst that happens is they don't buy the bullshit and you wasted time interviewing, or you get the job and they think you're a bit rubbish for a few months before you repeat the process when moving to a better job at the next employer.

Claiming you're a pen tester because you checked if your biro works is going a bit far. But if you have an eye out for things that can potentially be described beneficially, you can get a chance to add them to your CV by doing something that can be viewed optimistically and spun as whatever it is.

So says the far right, anyway. Facts say otherwise, but the far right ain't interested in those.

Re: broken

I don't think you can underestimate the reputation of universities for being the very worst employers, who are fundamentally dishonest and will try to screw you over to the extent of sometimes doing criminal things.

I've mentioned on here before about the time I did some contract work for an academic. His 'clever trick' was to contract lots of work from lots of people, and then refuse to sign-off the timesheets because the funds didn't come out of his budget until the timesheets were processed. He ran up a bill of many times his annual budget before the writs started arriving. The university actually tried to insist they didn't need to pay the bills he'd run up. The courts, of course, didn't agree.

I actually got the chance to ask him 'don't you think these people deserve to get paid for their work?' and his response was (paraphrased) 'they aren't people, they don't have PhDs'.

So, yeah. Shit pay, reputation for utterly toxic work environments; no, can't think why no-one would want to work for you.

If you want to improve matters, boosting the pay is less important than letting people know that you understand the reputation is generally justified and your department is different and does not do the scummy stuff.

Re: It's all about the banding

"service desk -> L2 support"

This is the stupidest part of all. Service desk career path is service desk -> service desk manager -> customer service oversight/consultant. It is a largely non-technical role requiring customer service skills. It is insane to start techs off in an unrelated field, and it's insane to 'promote' good customer service staff to technical roles they have no affinity for.

Re: Irt's worse than that Jim

It's astonishing how people like you believe that sort of thing. I don't know what was actually going on there, but that did not happen the way you think it did.

This is nearly 10 years old, but still generally good advice:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

To be blunt, you completely messed-up that negotiation.

Re: It is almost as if the company does not test things properly before unleashing them on the world

Don't worry, no-one wants to work with anyone who uses the term 'woke'. Like you. Clear sign of a toxic workplace, whether for or against.

The rest of us call it 'being a decent human being'.

Pen Test Partners: Anyone could view Gumtree users' GPS location by pressing F12

This was a vulnerability worth reporting?! I always assumed they'd done it on purpose. You didn't need to play with developer tools in the browser to get the postcode. You just had to click on the map.

Insurance firm Admiral fails to grab phone location data of 'fraud' claimant's mother

There's a difference between staying with family, and renting family's rental property.

If you're suggesting paying half market rates to those who stay with family for nothing, then I still disagree - it should be full market rates for a reasonable alternative if your accommodation is uninhabitable (and insured, natch), whether you spend the money on that, or choose to blow it on crack and hookers and spend the nights under a bridge.

Cryptocurrency 'rug pulls' cheated investors out of $8bn in 2021 – report

Re: 66,239

"Bitcoin: a naive experiment that precipitated countless scams"

Naive? Experiment? It was/is neither. The perpetrators are scammy scumbags who knew exactly what they were doing.

What came first? The chicken, the egg, or the bodge to make everything work?

Re: The chicken or the egg?

Identified, relatively common conditions like diabetes and hypothyroidism are much more likely to be recessives combining than mutations.

Re: Batteries not required

Offline copies? Are there devices that won't even run if was is down?

Re: The Bodge...

Tbf, any machining company worth its salt ought to be able to get the original dimensions, unless the worn part is truly buggered. Usually things are made to whole-unit* dimensions, and by carefully measuring what you have, you can make an educated guess, then test for fit.

('Whole units' including things like microns, thousandths of an inch, etc, on very small scales.)

For example, if you have something you know is worn and now measures, say, 9.7cm, it's possible it was originally 9.75cm, but much more likely it was 10cm.

Re: Batteries not required

I generally save offline copies to multiple devices. Airports (at least in Europe) always have 'internet cafe' pcs and printers available if necessary as a last resort, but multiple devices are unlikely to all fail together.

BOFH: Time to put the Pretty Dumb F in PDF reader

Several times a day seems a slight exaggeration fir general use - but it depended on the use, because in those days third party application crashes could take down the OS.

These days W10 is sufficiently bsod free to make it obvious that the remainder are hardware or 3rd party driver related. I have started to wonder what proportion of crashes back in the day were caused by the same thing, particularly on shonky consumer grade stuff from bargain bins on Tottenham Court Road.

Re: Can I get that in writing?

Huh? Were you new to IT? You order the laptop, and every few weeks it'll be so full of malware it 'has to be disposed of', and a replacement ordered.

Dev loses copyright appeal over forensic software after judges rule suite was owned by his employer

Re: From memory...

"It's entirely possible that they intended a licensing arrangement originally and are now reneging on that intent"

That's wildly implausible simply because it's such an unusual arrangement it would be obvious that there was a requirement to "make sure you have the contract".

It's rather obvious that the plaintiff didn't actually believe that agreement was made, they just thought there was enough money involved to be worth trying it on in court.

How do you call support when the telephones go TITSUP*?

Re: Divert

Oh, hello Karen.

"the sort of guy who objects to splitting a restaurant bill equally"

A perfectly normal one?

No-one wants to pay for your meal. There are two types of people: those who will refuse to your face, and those who will complain about you afterwards.

Swooping in to claim the glory while the On Call engineer stands baffled

Re: Hot hot hot

Er, the valve defaults to fully open. Take off the thermostat bit and it won't stay turned down.

Re: Hands On

An 18" adjustable spud wrench is well over 200 quid. I'll use the handle as a lever, there's no way I'm using the head as a hammer.

I've never seen a 'miner's wrench' style tool with a decent adjustable wrench end. But if they exist I'd still worry that you're going to cause impact-related wear on the adjustable part.

Re: Hands On

A good-quality - so useful as a spanner - adjustable spanner costs enough that you won't hit things with it. Cheap ones make rubbish hammers and are also crap spanners.

Now who wants to hear me rant about mole-grips? Where is a cloud for me to shake my fist at?

Sherlock Holme's detective skills are entirely Conan Doyle managing to carry you away with the story. If you ever stop and think about the stories, they're ridiculous. You can think of a dozen prosaic explanations for something Holmes claims has just one that, 'however implausible', must be the truth. (Or the entire story is hinged on something only Holmes knows, and not the reader.)

The character is brilliant, and they're excellent works of fiction. As detective stories, though, they're pretty weak, because the reader can't try and solve the crime.

Er...

You start with things that are possible. As you rule them out, they become impossible for various reasons. (E.g. is it possible the switch is broken? No, it's been tested, it's impossible that's the problem.)

Because you're not an idiot, you're testing things and ruling them out in rough order of plausibility. Having rendered all the likely things 'impossible', you're left with the implausible.

Joint venture: Uber Eats to offer weed orders in Ontario

Re: Uber is full of shit.

Uber, like every ride share company, has to ensure people have the correct insurance, a PCO license, etc. It's one of the basic first steps when signing up.

A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

Re: Not is such a tiny word

Was it a nickname, or on the packaging?

I find it odd there are no pictorial examples on the internet. Perhaps this one's a bit like the 'no dogs, no blacks, no Irish' signs that everyone thinks they remember, but don't appear in contemporary pictures - it's thought to be such a perfect summation of the real thing that people 'remember' it in place of the specific racism they experienced.