Posts by frankyunderwood123

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

Management wants to manage

I think one of the biggest "justifications" for demanding a return to the office is that a lot of middle Management at big corporations have suddenly been shown to be dead wood.

Something developers in tech have known for a long time.

When faced with empty offices and nothing much to do, because the Zoom call is a screen of mostly names, as most of the cameras are turned off, what's a middle manager going to do?

Demand that people show their faces more often so the middle Manager can arrange lots of meetings and "together time" to ensure they feel like they are doing their jobs properly.

Yes, there's totally a reason for some office time - no doubt about that.

But it needs to be hybrid time, rather than demanding "3 days at the office", get people in for important meetings - brainstorming sessions, a bit of a social, to reconnect.

Also, stagger the times, so you aren't forcing people back into a hellish commute - don't start a meeting at 9am in the morning, start it at 10.30am.

Allow people to return back home after the meetings are done, should they wish to.

Bodhi Linux 7 brings Enlightenment to Ubuntu

That screenshot - it's hideous

I guess my visual senses may be different to others - that desktop screenshot is so unbelievably ugly you may as well just use LXqt and have a very lightweight desktop that's also ugly.

I long for the day when there's a Linux distribution that actually produces a polished Desktop experience.

Some come close, but beneath the surface, horrors of design lurk.

That's why for my Linux needs on Desktop, I really don't give a monkeys about the Desktop manager - LXQt or XFCE does the job - ugly as heck, but super lightweight.

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

This is not even as close to as bad as acronyms are

At least with this Jargon, there's _some_ context present, even if it is obscure.

If you've never heard the phrase "Blue Sky Thinking" (lucky you), from the context of a sentence, you could probably work it out.

It all starts falling apart when that becomes an acronym - BST.

"British Summer Time" ?

Or it could be an acronym for some company software or division.

"Business System Telemetry"

_Every_ company has their own set of acronyms, as well as adopting more widespread ones.

The biggest issue is when an internal acronym is the _same_ as a widespread one - confusion reigns.

I'm sure I'm not alone in _pretending_ I know an obscure acronym people are bandying about in conversation - it gets to the point where, after a few years at a company, you become too embarrassed to admit you never learned that particular acronym.

Then one day, you find out the people often using them, haven't got a damn clue what they spell out either.

"Ah, yeah, if we just flick the switch on the POS, the AMOK should pull out of a nose dive and the BS will respond as intended and we're all hunky dory"

See, then we're getting deep into horror show territory - the combination of jargon and obscure acronyms.

"If we all pull together as a team on the FCK project, the cross-team synergy will help us out with the SHT systems and we can hit it out the park with the FUBAR rollout."

Leaked Kyndryl files show 55 was average age of laid-off US workers

Struggling with this illogical gibberish...

... perhaps it's because I'm an "oldie", I don't quite understand the thrust of the "argument" that this rather odd post presents.

The first rather large elephant in the room is this bizarre black & white concept of "oldie".

Last I checked, in my immediate team and also casting the net a little wider, we have a considerably large mix of different ages.

That's the amazing thing about humans - we can all be different ages at the same time as each other. Crazy, right?

So, we have developers in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and even sixties.

Can the OP please tell me at which point any of these groups could be considered "oldies" - and at what age he wouldn't hire one of these "oldies" that charges huge amounts of money?

39? 49? anyone 55 or older?

The second elephant in the room (there's a LOT of them), is the strange belief that all "oldies" are making bucket loads of money and want to earn more than those cool hipster young-guns.

Looking at the company I work at, I 100% know there's software engineers 20 years younger than me on the same salary or higher.

Heck, there's people 15 years younger than me who are 3 steps higher up the company food chain, probably earning triple my salary.

That's the amazing thing about humans, we're not all the same. Some humans earn more than others at an earlier age and have more responsibility. Crazy, right?

I can only assume that OP sees the entire world through the lens of their own experience alone, being unable to grasp anything outside of that tiny little bubble in which they exist.

In OP's world, there are only awesome young developers earning low wages and slow and rubbish oldies earning lots more.

What a strange world.

Samsung's Galaxy S23 Ultra is a worthy heir to the Note

Overkill

I'm still using a Galaxy s9 - something considered "ancient" at just 5 years old.

Every year, I've looked at what is on offer, compared it to what I have and shrugged - "I don't need a new phone".

Sadly, the device no longer gets security updates - so, planned obsolescence, despite the fact it's still got at least another year with reasonable battery life.

Diving DRAM prices are a problem not even AI can solve

Oh yeah ... didn't notice ...

The 2TB SSD I bought in September last year, is now £30 cheaper.

You can get an entry level 2TD SSD for under £100.

Rackspace racks up job cuts amid market downturn and talk of offshoring

Re: I'm starting an anti "let go" campaign

^^ What he said.

"Let go" is "made redundant", with all the legalities which come with that - workers will receive a payout based on their tenure.

"Sacked" or "Fired" is immediate dismissal - after following due process of course. There are immediate sackable offences, but also ones where a series of warnings and performance improvement programmes have taken place first, to no avail.

So, no, El Reg do not need to use the words "sacked" or "fired" instead of "Let go" or "Made redundant".

Investors start betting against Bitcoin with short-trade products

Spot the "whale" cryptobro's... and institutional investment.

If I've learned anything about cryptocurrency, it's led by media savvy "insiders" with many followers.

A circle jerk.

The media manipulation is far wider than social media posts, although those make up the bulk of the bait.

It's fairly obvious, a single whale with deep pockets and a social media following, can drum up support for the "asset" they have invested in.

They just need to post about it - and the price rises.

The more the social media following, the bigger the feeding frenzy.

Then we get to more abstract mechanisms - articles about cryptocurrency, news about it - "news" often being pretty much blatant bias.

We get the wonderfully inept "TA" or "Trend Analysis" - when used in the right hands, in the right circumstances, it totally has some value.

When used for cryptocurrency, it mostly doesn't - its tea leaf reading, bone throwing or just ... more hype.

Enter institutional investors - well heeled, soulless, incredibly savvy traders - behind the scenes, no social media needed, invisible = manipulate.

Cryptocurrency just becomes another asset to be used - and WOW, what an asset is can be - a total wild west, where under the right circumstances, a buy and sell can equal 10x profit in an hour - sometimes less.

Where you can just keep rinsing and repeating buy/sell, buy/sell when the volume is there.

A naive rube has close to ZERO chance in this speculative market - may as well go buy a lottery ticket.

Smarter folk can ride the coat tails, knowing full well that the entire thing is a casino, but it's a 24/7 soul destroying task.

Right now, it's a case of pass the parcel - last one gets the bags.

Institutional money is rapidly leaving - the super big bucks - but there may be one more "rinse and repeat" cycle left, one more stab at "tulip mania", to rob a few more dimwits from their hard earned money.

The emperor has NO clothes.

And now? - institutional investors are betting on the entire shit show going bust.

Obviously - wring the last little bit of cash out of it, emotionlessly, move on...

I didn't thumbs-down this, but in each case, hyperinflation was a result of government mismanagement, sometimes coupled with external events - such as War.

These countries you mention? - Their own currencies and economies faltered, in isolation.

They are linked to budget deficit, caused by printing money.

In each case, the productive output of the country - the exports - had suffered enormous damage, due to internal and external factors - generally due to running the economy badly.

It's a controversial topic and indeed, the global monetary system is considerably abstracted from the reality of actual value. There's a great deal of "futures" and "IOU's" and all sorts of horribly complicated infernal mechanisms at play.

However, it _does_ all, eventually, relate back to the trade of goods.

The elephant in the room for cryptocurrency is simple - it isn't being used as a currency to trade goods and services, it is being used for speculation.

Therefore, it has no intrinsic value other than what people are prepared to buy it for.

News Flash, until cryptocurrency is used for purchases and have no ties to traditional currencies - or FIAT as it is called, it is purely a speculative asset.

Yes, FIAT is indeed an abstraction, but it is an internationally recognised abstraction that's been around for ... hell, as long as 5,000 years.

Somewhat more than the 13 years BTC has been around.

I can actually BUY stuff with it. I can buy food, shelter, water, warmth, jelly babies, muppet videos.

Even if it massively devalues due to hyper-inflation, I can _still_ buy stuff with it - although a single Jelly Baby may cost me a months salary.

Yours Sincerely,

Cookie Monster.

Fancy a remix? Ubuntu Unity and Ubuntu Cinnamon have also hit 22.04

Re: Might be worth moving with the times...

The point is, who are you really getting mad at here?

It's fine to recommend Ubuntu to your granny - she doesn't need to know that it's Linux, just that it works.

And it does work.

The same computer problems will exist, whether your gran uses windows, macOS or Linux - "setting up networking" - I mean, have you seen the mess that is windows when it _doesn't_ work?

The wonderful "diagnose connection issues", that almost always does absolutely nothing.

The ridiculous array of menus to click through.

Add to that, microsoft, on a frequent basis, over the last decade, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, with a new UI, windows 8 and 11 being a case in point.

How is a non-technical user going to cope, being shunted from windows 7 to windows 11, in one fell swoop?

"Where's all my stuff gone?"

Is _this_ what standardisation brings us? Really? Is that what it looks like?

Seems like the biggest gripe here, is about package management - thing is, most modern distro's have a software centre these days. Not all of them are ... that good ... but they do work.

The key challenge, if you are talking about "how do non-technical users cope", is installation.

Given that the vast majority of computer users buy their computer with the OS already installed, how exactly do they "switch" anyway?

The reality is, a lot of this is still, unfortunately, too technical for the average user.

Then again, the average user probably doesn't really care that much - "can I get what I need to do, done?" "Cool, done now, turn off"

I challenge you to go and ask 10 random strangers, maybe in a supermarket or down the pub:

"Do you know what Linux is?"

Most people can't even tell you the version of the windows or mac operating system they are using.

And don't even try starting a conversation about "Free Open Source Software" and why it matters... ;)

Re: Just what the world needed - two more Linux distros

And exactly how is this impacting you? - does it ruin your day?

Pick a distro, roll with it - or don't - entirely up to you, your free choice. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.

Nobody is going to hold your hand, either dive in or, to be honest, STFU.

If you were being _forced_ into using Linux, you may have a valid point, but you aren't.

A great deal of this work is FOSS - done for the love of it, not the profit.

It's free. Totally free.

There's no big tech company calling the shots here, bloating your computer with junk you don't want, filling it with spyware that by default, reports "back home", deciding which software it only wants you to use.

It is entirely up to the end user - if you want an OS that you actually control and effectively own, the only thing you need to do, is to actually put the effort in to learn it.

Once you get over your little rant about "too much choice", you'll find there really is only a few "flavours" built on top of the same damn kernel, with the same damn GNU utilities - it's Linux under the hood.

Those flavours are generally the core "parent" distro's from which many variants flow.

E.g. Debian, CentOs, Slackware, SuSe

The main difference between these core distro's, is package management, folder structure and what they ship with in terms of software.

Personally, I find this choice liberating - I'm currently running the absurdly named Pop!_OS as my Linux based gaming rig - it's fantastic. And yep, it's based on Ubuntu, which itself is based on what can be considered the parent OS, Debian.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

... sinclair taught me how to touch type...

With the ZX81, if I recall, there was a serious supply/demand problem on launch.

My Dad had ordered one for us, as he was trying to get us into electronics - which was not difficult to do, because solder! Flashing lights! Beeping things! Radio!

It must've taken 3 months from placing the order to receiving it.

But the ZX Spectrum purchase was made at Radioshack, if I recall, after much begging and some heated discussion between my parents "All he ever does is sit in from of that computer!"

And indeed, I did. It got far worse with the Spectrum and my subscription to "Your Computer" monthly.

I learned to program basic, then started entering code from the "Your Computer" magazine, manually, painstakingly.

"It doesn't work", damn, check every single line of code again - "It still doesn't work."

Ok, I'll just start again from the beginning. "It still doesn't work."

In the following months magazine - an ENTIRE month, they would print code corrections.

To this day, due to the amount of time I spent typing - and the keyboard finger jujitsu that was required - I can touch type.

My typing speed is ridiculously fast - with zero formal training.

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

Oh, the memories...

3.11 (or was it 3.1.1) - "Windows for workgroups", I seem to recall, was the very first desktop OS I had access to - I'd seen the very first Macintosh in a department store back in 1985, but it was so far out of my reach. I was on my good old ZX Spectrum still.

In the years between 1985 and 1994, it was DOS and IBM clones, once I started working - heck, I didn't even use a computer at work until about 1992. (I was a draughtsman, using pen and ink on a drawing board)

I got a job at a company called "advanced cabling", with my new found draughtsman CAD skills. The company specialised in - yep, you guessed it, cabling for computer systems. As such, they were fairly up to speed with what was happening.

However, as a fairly lowly CAD guy, churning out boring diagrams of cabling installations, they gave me an old 286 to work on.

I mastered 3.11 in about ... heck, a day, just dropping right into DOS and poking about.

1995 rolled around, by that time, I'd been poking about on the company network.

In those days, very little was locked down - I learned to discover network shares in DOS - not exactly difficult - and found, oh my, windows 95 install files on a server.

Hmmm.

I upgraded from 3.11 to win95 on that 286, with a 512kb graphics card over the course of a week - I had nothing else to do - I finally somehow managed to get it running, although obviously it ran pig slow.

I knew one of the guys in the IT department who had access to hardware and he sneakily helped me with a 386 rig - all of this, completely behind the back of my boss.

He was clueless.

One day, his favourite secretary was given a brand new computer - yeah, she was young, sexy and sadly clueless, spending most of her time painting her nails, but it was decided that she should get an upgrade before the people that actually used computers.

I recall him parading the machine about the office, "Look, we've got windows 95!" - wh00t.

Some days later, he came into my poky little cubicle area just as I was booting up - big splash screen "Windows 95"

He was livid, he blew his top - "Why, what, WTF? - why are you using this?"

I was given a disciplinary and nearly lost my job.

Oddly enough, a colleague of mine DID lose his job for another reason, got drunk at a lunch work do on his final day - and the idiot keyed the bosses car before he left.

I got the blame for it, they couldn't prove it, I handed in my notice.

Good times.

SerenityOS: Remarkable project with its own JS-capable web browser

"Just for fun"

... I guess that depends on what you count as being "fun".

I'm sure it's an incredible achievement - but hell, its "just for fun" for the creator - the idea of dicking about compiling this and getting it running, to end up with an OS about 90% less capable than what I currently use, is not something I would call "fun".

I mean, I get it - working with code can be cool - just the achievement in terms of the hours of sweat and horror spent, when you finally make a breakthrough, is often worth it - because developers are masochists.

For the developer, the learning process has almost certainly increased their skill set dramatically - for most of the rest of us, "That's nice, well done. Moving on now...."

Unless, of course, you are into making your own OS - in which case, if you are in that niche market, this is probably the most exciting project ever.

I do wonder, however, whether that time would've been better spent, improving the offerings we already have.

But hell, people spend their time in all sorts of incredibly weird ways, so who am I to judge?

/me heads off to sort collection of gravel by size, date and appealing textures...

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

Time to switch OS, if you haven't?

I'll get shot down over this, no doubt, voted down out of existence.

However, it seems clear to me, that switching to Linux (or macOS if that's your thing), is probably a better option than going from win10 to win11?

I'm just looking at this from the sidelines, as I did BOTH when windows 8 shat itself onto the world - switched to macOS and Linux.

I finally cut ties with windows for a gaming machine, about 6 months back - that was my last tie to cut.

Thanks to Valve, every game I own, works as well under Linux as it did under windows 10.

Sure, for non-steam games, it takes a bit of geekery to make stuff work - RDR2 took me about 6 hours to sort out.

For anything other than holding on for gaming, the only reason to keep on using windows, is if you are unfortunately bound to it via the work you do - or if you are just a sucker for punishment.

The writing is on the wall, windows 11 is just another shit release of an OS that was once upon a time, actually bloody brilliant.

I *loved* win2k - and winXP/ win7 were pretty much that with some bells and whistles - no problem upgrading, back in the day - I was windows through and through, despite dabbling with Linux on the sidelines.

Then win8 hit ... splattering against the toilet bowl, as Microsoft, for God knows what reason, decided they could take on the mobile device space.

They failed so badly, so completely, it left windows 8 a turd floating around in the bowl.

An unloved terrible experiment in how not to make an OS both desktop and mobile at the same time.

There's a reason Apple has macOS and iOS - microsoft clearly didn't get the memo about the paradigm shift.

With each iteration since win8, for anyone using windows, it seems to be clear that control was being taken away.

It isn't *your* computer, it's microsoft's computer - if they feel like stuffing your start menu full of adverts, either suck it down, or learn to change the default settings.

It's an opt-out, rather than an opt-in.

Seriously, for any computer loving geek, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee - microsoft, in terms of a desktop OS, is a terrible choice in 2022.

Vote me down, whatever ... you know, in your heart, I'm right.

Adobe warns of second critical security hole in Adobe Commerce, Magento

That's ok, there's still time to realise the mistake you have made adopting it...

Sadly, my company are magento heavy...

What is it about this horror show of a platform that attracts big corporates?

It 100% isn't developer led, that's for damn sure - most developers avoid it like the plague.

It's a monstrous pile of scary spaghetti code that marketing people delight in using, because they can create monstrously bad experiences with it.

"I can does web!"

Fortunately, although the corporate entity I work for is persisting with this pile of unwieldily donkey poo, we've managed to convince them that we're just going to use just parts of the API and are building scalable modern frameworks around it, with a great deal of abstraction, ensuring we can easily just replace this glitter covered pile of elephant droppings once the corporate actually gets a damn clue. (the concept of strict boundaries)

In other words, we are indeed using that 10 foot proverbial pole, except unfortunately, we are touching it ... with enough distance to keep the stink at bay.

Consider it a 10 foot pole with a few 10 foot extensions, some tweezers, scissors, some little baggies to hold the poo and a decent layer of sanitisation between our actual applications and this stinking monolithic legacy that can bring developers to tears ...

Yeah, I'm not that keen on Magento.

As an aside, the original line from the corporate I work for, is that we're switching *back* to Magento whether you like it or not.

After being told they would lose 90% of the developers at the company, if they went down that route, sanity prevailed.

We provided a few POC's that absolutely owned Magento in terms of speed, reliability and security in very short order.

Everyone is kinda happy, the corporate can have their Magento monkeys, churning out whatever and we can hook into the API as just *one* of the touch points we need - the lightest touch possible.

This battle has raged at the corporate for years now, there's clearly a lot of "job protection" going down, and clearly a lot of lobbying at key levels from Magento/Adobe.

Heck, we have an entire department that refuses to switch from the total shit show that is Adobe Analytics - a dead duck, that a tiny percentage of marketing folk use - again, I smell the stink of protectionism within the corporate, some dicks have bet their careers on this and are too damn lazy to get off their backsides and learn a different way of doing things!

What, angry, bitter, jaded, ME? - too right.

Experimental WebAssembly port of LibreOffice released

Erm... no...

Fired up the URL, inspected the network and watched just how slowly 300MB "streamed" in - I say "streamed" as somewhat of a joke.

After 3 minutes of watching, on a connection that gets 60mbps, seeing it had loaded just 80MB ... this is ... ridiculous.

This is a concept trying to find a problem that isn't actually there.

Sure, we all know using Google docs etc., means you are paying the price with your privacy to some extent, but it loads pretty much instantly and is exceptionally powerful.

This, on the other hand, is DOA - it's a stupid idea for anything other than some kind of weird "can we do this?" reasoning - totally stupid.

Fibre broadband uptake in UK lags behind OECD countries

FTTC is plenty fast enough for many...

... at least for now, that is changing quite rapidly though.

It all depends on, I guess, your distance from the cabinet and the quality of the copper wiring infrastructure, plus, I would imagine, the volume of connections in an area!

Anecdotally, having had 200mbs FTTP in my previous house, it was overkill, even for my usage.

Sure, it was great having super speedy downloads, at the same time as streaming TV, but, hell, 100mbs wouldn't have made much difference.

I'm now on FTTC and average 50mbs, which is workable - only two people in our house, me and the wife.

It's only a problem when there's streaming TV and downloads happening - which tends to cause lags with Zoom.

They dug up the main road outside over a year ago to install fibre, but still not date as to when I can get FTTP - it was supposed to be October last year, but is now set for March this year, I don't hold out much hope.

But heck, for all of my neighbours, when I told them about FTTP coming to our road, they were pretty much "meh" - what's that?

They are all extremely light users ... for now.

Once pretty much all TV is internet based, they will soon notice that FTTC isn't quite fast enough.

In other words, the UK better get a wiggle on rolling FTTP out - specifically to areas that don't even have FTTC yet!

Nobara Project brings whole bunch of extensions so you can frag noobs on Fedora 35

Re: Wine

Yes ... and no...

Given Valve are betting a lot of money on the Steam Deck and given the fact that Proton is a modified version of wine ... and given the fact that games run as fast, sometimes faster or just a little slower (in terms of FPS), than on windows ... right now, it is the future of games on Linux.

However, should the Steam Deck become successful - and not end up being another abandoned hardware project from Valve - it may make developers sit up and take notice.

Pop!_OS - been doing the same thing for a while!

System76 has Pop!_OS - I've been using it for 6 months, completely ditched windows.

All of my Steam games work more or less flawlessly, although there's some FPS drops in GTA V.

Lutris is easily available via their relatively decent software installer.

I even managed to get RDR2 working perfectly acceptably using this - alas, I got my copy direct from Epic Games, so it wasn't as easy as using Steam.

Lutris is buggy, but it works with a little bit of fiddling.

Steam, as we know, is rock solid on Linux.

I've felt no need to switch back to windows, but if you are a competitive gamer and always buying new titles, I would exercise caution - it may not be for you.

For all other casual gamers who are sick of Windows, give it a try - very mature OS, very slick, keeps out of your way.

Crack team of boffins hash out how e-scooters should sound – but they need your help*

Limit the speed?

Bicycles don't make a noise either and although cyclists shouldn't be cycling where pedestrians walk, the reality is our infrastructure is in a poor shape.

But the average cyclist is probably doing 15mph at the most and there doesn't seem to be much clamour to change any laws regarding cyclists and pedestrians.

The issue is the speed, not the sound.

Microsoft brings Jenny, Aria, and more interface tweaks to new Windows 11 Insider build

Another beta foisted on the public, then?

So, I haven't moved over to windows 11 on my gaming rig, I moved to Linux from windows 10, my last windows rig now gone, after being part of that "family" since Windows 3.1.1

My observations, over the years, is that Microsoft release Beta's as production builds, in all but name.

Some of the worst offenders being windows ME, windows Vista & windows 8.

Up until windows 8, there was at least consistency in the UI/UX, but Microsoft, desperate to climb aboard the mobile bandwagon, made a pigs ear of the UI/UX in windows 8 - and they still haven't sorted it out.

They seem to be constantly fiddling around the edges, whilst leaving underlying issues unresolved.

The constant monkeying with the UI/UX is infuriating for end users, which is in turn, infuriating for tech support.

I consider myself fortunate to have been issued with a macBook for my role as a software engineer.

Yep, I know macOS is like marmite for many, but there's one thing they got right - consistency of UX/UI.

They understood, right from the get-go, to make small incremental changes and leave the core experience as it has always been.

The menu strip along the top, for example, has been in place since the very start - 1984.

MacOS X - the dock has been a staple since 2001.

The settings are still in the same place, after all this time.

Why is Microsoft incapable, these days, of understanding this fundamental principle of UI/UX ?

The sad thing is, right from win95 to win7, they had it right, despite some flawed releases.

It was never the prettiest desktop, but damn, it worked (mostly) - you knew where everything was.

Windows 8 was where it all went wrong, trying to unify two different paradigms, desktop and mobile, in the same OS. What a stupid idea.

This, coming from a company that may as well be none-existent on mobile devices - they totally failed to make any kind of impact in the market.

Sadly, I believe they are sort of stuck with having to support touch interfaces - by making a blundering bull in a china shop half baked move into that space, they are left with trying to pick up the pieces.

Windows 10 saw a reversal of some aspects, but it was just the most intrusive annoying experience microsoft have ever released - "Hmm, is this my computer, or is it microsoft's? - hard to tell..."

Microsoft previews free Visual Studio Code for the Web

Re: I just don't get it

Careful with that neckbeard chap!

There's nothing restrictive about VsCode - each to their own.

Seriously, if it was restrictive, then everyone would be using vi or emacs.

I have met very few people who can make vi or emacs "fly" like an editor such as VSCode or IntelliJ - they are a rare breed - and usually the "not invented here, not interested" types.

And heck, if you really want to, you can vim emulation for VSCode - what's not to like?

Embrace whatever tool makes your life easier - and seriously, cut it out with the quotes of "modern" developers, it's such a bullshit trope.

I know a LOT of developers in their 50's who have been coding for over 40 years - excellent developers - who just embrace whatever works for them.

No need to pigeon hole people into areas just because of your own narrow minded prejudices.

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac

Is there an inverse law for software?

The inverse law being, that as the power of processors increase, the optimisation of software decreases?

Anecdotally, it would certainly seem so.

I recall the absolute wonders that creative coders would apply with so little processing power and memory on a ZX Spectrum, back in the 80's.

Entire games with fairly complex graphics for that era, squeezed into 8k of RAM, optimised to an incredibly efficient point, using machine code.

That dedication is incredible, as machine code is ... very very difficult for humans.

Now we are seeing games of a similar complexity - little indie platform type games, that are consuming 100x the storage and processing power.

Sure, things are far more complicated than this comparison. A lot of those games are created on the back of game engines and I'd argue it is probably an order of magnitude easier now, to create the same level of graphical detail and logic complexity, than it was 40 years ago.

But the end result of that, is software that requires more raw processing power.

This is a simplistic completely anecdotal point I'm making, but I'm confident the argument holds.

When software developers are spoiled with more raw processing power, they often optimise less - and sometimes, the tools in the software toolchain aren't optimising, that developers rely on.

This is why I love projects like the "1k programming challenge", as they stretch the imagination of coders to find the most optimal way to run code.

Sure, the size of an application doesn't equate to how much processing power it uses - you can create a program of just a few bytes, that'll melt a CPu.

But it does encourage optimisation - and ultimately, optimisation can result in using less processing power.

I'll get my coat...

AWS adds browser access to its cloudy WorkSpaces desktops – but not for Linux

This is getting a bit Meta

So, on my Desktop, could I run a browser with a desktop in it and then, using a browser on that desktop, run a browser with a desktop in it... and...

I need a beer.

Could I run a virtual machine on my Linux Desktop, that runs windows and in that virtual machine, run a browser with a desktop in it ... and ...

Could I use that desktop in a browser, to VNC into my Linux desktop and crash the entire internet?

I'll get my coat ...

There is no escape: Atlassian to send Jira into places only Excel dares to tread

If in doubt what direction to go in, add more bloat

So, instead of focussing on what Jira is actually useful for - and fixing long standing bugs - hey, lets just add more features.

More features = more bugs = more bloat.

Eventually, a competitor will come along with the mantra of simplicity and the entire cycle repeats itself.

I wonder if they ever asked themselves "how many people will use these new swanky features?"

It reminds me somewhat of what happened to Netscape back in the day and indeed *any* adobe software - like Photoshop - just one big bloated beast.

Features are added that maybe are used by 1% of the user base and the other 99% suffer the inevitable confusion, sluggish performance and more bugs.

Our team have already gone through the pain barrier of a recent upgrade, which consumed many hours of time and confused everyone that uses Jira on a daily basis.

But hey, progress, right ...

It's official: Microsoft updates Visual Studio Code to run on Raspberry Pi OS

Get over the microsoft hatred...

... it's really old hat now.

VSCode is excellent - and it's free - what's not to love?

It has an incredible eco-system of user contributed plugins and runs on multiple platforms.

That is why it is so popular.

JetBrains make awesome products - arguably, their IDE's are more sophisticated, but the eco-system around it isn't anywhere near as good. That's probably a moot point for most users. I guess VSCode has become the darling of the ever changing JavaScript scene.

Not everything Microsoft does is "evil" - and not everything they do is "to kill open source".

Like many companies, Microsoft know that the money in Open Source is service based.

This absolutely isn't the same company we knew from the 90's and 00's - they have had to adapt to survive.

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

Something similar happened to me...

I was on the M5, back in the day when I was a Russian spy, masquerading as a British Telecom engineer.

A call came in to say that someone had got their bottom stuck in a telephone booth, or a telephone, or something.

I raced down the M5 at 100mph to try and get there, to be the hero, and extract the buttocks from the booth, but unfortunately, got arrested for speeding.

I was let out on bail and immediately phoned the client to find out whether the bottom had been extracted from the telephone booth.

It turned out that there was no telephone booth, or bottom and nothing untoward had happened at all.

I got no bonus that month, sad times.

Chairman, CEO of Nominet ousted as member rebellion drives .uk registry back to non-commercial roots

Re: One question

I think you should go into your shed, lock the door and throw the key out the window.

Then have just a little think about the ridiculous statement you just made.

All the upvoters of this particular clueless comment should join you - could get a bit crowded in there.

Running a registry of the size of .co.uk is an incredibly complex and involved process.

It is classed as critical infrastructure, for obvious reasons.

But, heck, I'm not going to do the homework for you - if you are truly interested in actually having a clue, go and research it, then come back and tell me you could run the same operation from your shed.

Good news! - now look at the books

This is great news, the fun times on the Haworth express gravy train are over.

Back to brass tacks and a focus back on what was always the real purpose - to run a registry as a non-profit organisation!

Hopefully a thorough financial audit will now be done, just to be sure everything was 'above board' over the last few years of money being thrown at attempts to diversify.

Also, hopefully .co.uk domains renewal prices will return at least part the way back to where they really should be, in time!

Desperate Nominet chairman claims member vote to fire him would spark British government intervention

The core tech team could run the registry without top management

Aside from requiring legal expertise and customer services, the tech team behind the running of the registry could easily operate without any of the "top brass" being involved at all.

There has been much talk about bonuses awarded willy nilly to all staff, which was never the case.

The bonus structure for the average employee at Nominet is at or below industry standards. I know, I worked there for years.

Whilst 99.9% of the revenue of the company was derived by the hard work of a core group of employees, maintaining the very purpose of Nominet - to run a registry - the "new shiny" got all the kudos once Haworth came onboard.

Those hard working employees were barely mentioned when it came to recognition, instead, it was all about "the shiny toys" - it was well noted and complaints were made that those doing BAU to keep the registry running smoothly - you know, the bit that generated 99.9% of the revenue - were largely ignored.

It was one big train set for the C-Team & board, as they strove to try to compete with the cool and shiny of the likes of Google or Microsoft - blinded by ambition, chewing through tons of money, cluelessly and ruthlessly pursuing a direction that in no way represented the core business or the not-for-profit nature of Nominet.

The arrogance was staggering, it really did seem like a fuck ton of coolaid had been drunk - that a medium sized company considered they were in the same ballpark as the likes of Microsoft or Google - or at least, striving to get into that game - playing out the part.

We would *always* get bonuses, regardless of how well the company did - somehow, finance managed to find something down the back of the sofa to ensure bonuses all around. For most the staff, that was just regular industry standards bonuses.

For the top brass? - well, you know the story.

The books could always be cooked to ensure bonuses for all.

Telecoms shack in the middle of Scotland put up for auction at £7,500

So, have a look at this 'shack' on the link

... you would have to be completely out of your mind to buy this.

The patch of land that comes with it, is possibly big enough to build a very small house, slap bang on the edge of an A road.

Sure, it's unlikely to be that busy, but the speed limit will be 60mph - and I doubt many people abide by it.

Then there's planning regulations - probably along the lines of having to leave X metre boundary around anything you would want to build there.

To all intents and purposes, it is a totally useless patch of land.

Google admits Kubernetes container tech is so complex, it's had to roll out an Autopilot feature to do it all for you

The problem is ... people like me

So, what's not to love? - the management of complex server architecture as a series of, on the surface, simple text files.

Hoorah for devops!

The problem here, is that understanding the complex architecture of networking and underlying resources of hardware, is ... quite an advanced skill set.

Sure, it can now be expressed with code, but that doesn't mean the underlying complexity is any less - it just means a n00b with hardly any knowledge of the complex architecture behind what they are doing, can construct a text file and fling it at, say, AWS, supposedly safe in the knowledge "it will just work"

More often than not, sure, it does. Layers of redundancy and hopefully some decent peer reviews will usually prevent serious P1 downtime.

But, as we all know, it's that 1% of cases that fling the shit at the fan - and the n00b coding infrastructure in a yaml file has zero understanding, really, of what has just transpired.

Devops is in it's infancy - and we absolutely need seasoned IT people who were around before these developments, to provide the understanding required to ensure the most uptime possible.

Out.

Healthy 32-year-old offered COVID-19 vaccine because doctors had him down as 6.2cm tall with BMI of 28,000

people replaced by algorithms ... or just poor coding...

I'd say this is a case of crappy programming.

Clearly anyone hired by the NHS is not going to be in the "idiot" range on the IQ score and would pick this up right away.

Obviously what happened is ... software.

Whoever coded that software never thought "Hmm, perhaps it would be a good idea to write some unit tests around the minimum and maximum possible heights in different age ranges."

... I mean, really, why would you ... erm, do something so incredibly obvious.

So, yeah, this entire event was an automation fubar - because lazy & shit coders.

Big Tech workers prefer 3 days at home, 2 in the office. We ask Reg readers: What's your home-office balance?

"In my experience, there isn't an online equivalent of bumping into someone in the canteen queue, and finding out about a new project they are working on which I'll need to be involved with later on."

For me, that's been a vanishingly rare event - usually in the canteen queue, it's been small talk and a laugh.

I've found more about new projects on slack and have widened my network too.

I've also found out more about my team mates during lockdown than I EVER would at work.

I can see their home surrounds, it is more relaxed, we talk more about our hobbies and our down time things.

Sure, nothing beats face to face, but virtual just adds so much more info about your team that you never would've really know before.

More nuanced for me...

I just want total flexibility when this shit is over.

If there's a reason to go into the office - a whiteboard session or an important PROPER planning meeting, I'll head in, say hi, do the meeting/session, then go back to work from home.

So, nothing to do with X days WFH and X days WFO - I go in when I need to.

Heck, I may be bored one day, hit up co-workers on slack - "who is going in today? - pub after work?"

There is NO way I'm going to sit in the office for an entire day anymore, not a chance.

I'm more likely to start WFH at 7 to 7.30am, get 2 hours in, drive to the office (25 mins journey), do a meeting or whatever, get back home for lunch.

Or heck, head in after lunch until 5pm then finish up for the day.

tbh, it was pretty much like this for me before the pandemic, to the point where I was once politely asked "You haven't been at the office for 2 weeks, we'd like to see you!"

My usual office time pre-pandemic was around 2.5 days a week at best, but yeah, there was that 2 week stint - still got a shit ton of work done, just wasn't in the mood for a noisy, busy office was all.

Totally onboard with my team lead saying "We need you at the office at XYZ time".

Bristol's bus stops can run Chrome and Internet Explorer, but no, Windows and public transport do not mix well

You have to love this, an almost entire operating system complete with task bar and applications, to display a bus timetable.

*everything* is wrong about this, *everything* - FFS, a tiny embedded Linux OS running on virtually no power, could do *exactly* the same job, probably using about 1mb of onboard storage. FFS, an Arduino could do it.

This is classic Sledgehammer to crack a peanut solution.

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

There's a much simpler way to do this...

Just make all providers 'not for profit' (within reason).

Also, don't make it free - just make it a fair price.

What that would mean in practice, is that shareholders don't call the shots, that rank profiteering can't happen and that the proceeds of success are shared by all employees of a company offering services.

The incentives to expand and rollout services would still be there - the C'team in a company and the upper management would still enjoy profits, but at a more reasonable rate. Profits would also be shared by all employees.

The market would still be a free market - competition still very much possible - there just would be no more fat cats reaping in billions by speculating.

You could argue it is these shareholders that are financing operations, if it weren't for the fact that they are raking in so much money.

No more bonuses in the millions to top execs - just a reasonable reward based on experience, responsibility and input.

Surely that is a far better way to operate than, I have to say, a crackpot scheme. I dislike Johnson massively, but he is correct on this one - it is a bonkers idea that is quite simply doomed.

Like a BAT outta hell, Brave browser hits 1.0 with crypto-coin rewards for your fave websites

I've been using it on and off since release.

I find it sometimes locks up - in fact, quite often it locks up on some sites.

I now only use it when a site I'm visiting blocks my ad blocker.

It just isn't reliable enough.

We're all doooooomed: Gloomy Brit workforce really isn't coping well with impending Brexit

Cheer up people! Cheer up!

After all, if Brexit continues to be the omnishambles it currently is - very likely - we have climate change to look forward to.

Just think how cool it's going to be to plan and implement a series of 'bug out' sites and a secret bunker in the far north of Scotland!

All that interesting logistical planning on how to actually get there if society breaks down and then, if you do, how long you can make your food last and what you could possibly grow as you eek out a subsistence level existence in the face of marauding hordes of migrating humans!

Lets face it, most of us geeky gamer types have spent many hours training for this, in various gaming scenarios. Sandbox survival games are such a close match to reality, we can rebuild civilisation in just a few weeks. All you need is an axe to start with and soon you'll be generating your own renewable geothermal energy.

So much to look forward to.

Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the renewal reminders...

Just emptied my cart

Total scumbags, Nominet and 123reg.

Just logged into my 123reg account to find .uk domains in my basket I never added.

I will NEVER again do business with 123reg and will never register another uk domain.

Remember the Nominet £100m dot-uk windfall it claims doesn't exist? Well, it's already begun

Why is anyone surprised?

The top brass at nominet knew the golden egg laying goose had a limited life span, so had a last big winner spin while the going was good, to fund diversifying into other areas.

There was a time when registries figured that numerous gtld's entering the market would make a pretty penny, until reality kicked in, that it was really only them who thought .horse, .vodka or .movie was a must have suffix - most people just didn't give a fuck.

So, what better ploy than to effectively hold .co.uk registrants to ransom in an attempt to force their hand at owning the 'new shorter smarter bollocks statement domain'?

Fail to register and you could lose your rights!

Such was the outcry over this, that 5 years was given to allow registrants to take up their new shorter suffix - an entire 3 characters.

Yep, this is business and in the grand scheme of things, whatever - you knew it was coming, did you REALLY think nominet cared for anything other than money? Surely not, they care a lot about all sorts of positive 'for the public good' stuff. Honest they do. Just ask the former Nominet Trust....