Posts by Azamino

Mars helicopter sends final message, but will keep collecting data

"Ingenuity's rotors were damaged by an unknown event."

First signs of locals resisting the gentrification of their planet?

Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

Re: Wouldn't suprise me

My experience was a little different to that described above. My situation came about at the end of dotcom, a large multinational bought out our tiny unit and I was surplus to requirements. I was left more than a little bit miffed by their intention to enforce non-compete clauses in my contract while ignoring other clauses which benefitted me.

I saw a specialist lawyer for 30 minutes (which was free) and it then briefly threatened to get serious before the firm agreed to honour my contract and pay the costs I had incurred. Far from being marked out as a trouble maker it placed a marker against my name as someone who could be trusted to stand-up for the firm, customer or team.

ChatGPT? Sure, I've heard it. But is AI coming for my job?

My shop is pushing the line that AI will not take your job, it’s your colleagues using AI who will takeaway your job!

Wikileaks source and former CIA worker Joshua Schulte sentenced to 40 years jail

Re: the list is growing

Is there a single proven example of an American asset being killed or captured due to WikiLeaks?

None were linked to Bradley Manning - https://www.courthousenews.com/military-fails-to-link-leaks-with-any-deaths

eBay tells 1,000 employees their days at company are numbered

I'm still in the wrong business

A net profit of $2.04 billion on a reported revenue of $7.55 billion?

Now that is a very nice margin, 27%. Or approximately $200,000 of profit per employee, who will be rewarded in the now traditional fashion.

Will AI take our jobs? That's what everyone is talking about at Davos right now

My interpretation of Filippo's point was that the reduced hours worked in the 20th century were due to collective action, people campaigning and politicians legislating, not the tech itself. Happy to be corrected by Filippo if I have the wrong end of the stick.

Be honest. Would you pay off a ransomware crew?

Nuance

As a mortgage free, lean FIRE, permie it’s an easy answer to say don’t pay. Roll back a decade to when I was running my own firm and heavily mortgaged… it would be a whole other ball game.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto stolen after Ledger code poisoned

Re: I'm sorry, what was that?

Number Go Up, heh heh ...

Europe inches closer to insisting gig workers are treated as employees

Re: Not difficult

If your plumber is spending 80% of their year servicing your boiler you probably need a new plumber!

X fails to remove hate speech over Israel-Gaza conflict

Re: Xitter has problems policing hate speech ?

"... they have to own what they say." Hmm, wind the clock back 35 years for how that worked out in the former Eastern Bloc, or nip into modern day China, Saudi Arabia etc to to see the impact it has on their citizens.

Props to you for walking the walk and posting under your own name rather than a handle.

BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown

Bells!

Quasimodo orders a whisky,

Bells alright? asks the barman

Quasimodo - Mind yer own business!

I'll get me coat...

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

That is certainly not the position I was expecting form someone with the handle Bloodbeastterror.

‘How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie’ guide updated by US and South Korean authorities

"flooded the global marketplace with ill-intentioned information technology workers"

Looking out for the "ill-intentioned" doesn't really help does it? I worked in IT for 25 years, mostly banking, and I cannot remember any other type of worker lasting more than a couple of months!

My bosses were invariably trying to lock our customers into disadvantageous contracts while using the wrong software on minimally viable hardware. I much prefer the idea that they were fiendish degenerates making deliberate choices than well-intentioned incompetents making cock-up after cock-up.

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Re: "Think of the children" is so last year...

You might want to look up Isla Bryson aka Adam Graham and re-think that last sentence AC.

Google launches $99 a night Hotel Mountain View for hybrid workers

No chance

Post IR35 the only way to make any serious coin in the UK is by working multiple gigs (>3) simultaneously at home. You can't maintain that illusion working from someone else's office!

Re: Possibly unpopular opinion, but...

> Except for people with families, perhaps?

There will be plenty of examples where the families will be more than happy with the arrangement!

Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress

Re: Thermodynamics would like a word

It would have had to be one hell of an hallucination considering that the object was caught on his aircraft's cameras. An optical illusion sounds more likely but would that not have been figured out by now?

Nothing to see here

Nothing worth seeing on this rock since Waldo "D.R." Dobbs and Ernest Errol Quinch re-arranged the continents.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/comics/2000adstrips/drandquinch/drandquinch01.shtml

Boss such a tyrant you need a job quitting agent? It works in Japan

See handle

Yep, I can relate to this having lived and worked in Japan for a Japanese firm. Putting in my notice was excruciatingly awkward, and I was a foreigner for a local it has to be worse.

The death of the sysadmin has been predicted for years – we're not holding our breath

Re: Biased A.I models written by white men

Comparison is the thief of joy.

@stiine Your last sentence is 100% correct.

Laid-off 60-year-old Kyndryl exec says he was told IT giant wanted 'new blood'

Let it go

By letting the guy go they are probably doing him a favour, https://flowingdata.com/2015/09/23/years-you-have-left-to-live-probably/

For the love of Gaia, once you have accrued an adequate pension pot go and do something more interesting. You will be happier and it creates room for the younger generation to get ahead too.

BOFH: Ah. Company-branded merch. So much better than a bonus

Would anyone care to share what WTCLOI is supposed to mean?

"And you just HAPPENED to have a tin of petrol (WTCLOI) under your desk?"

Elizabeth Holmes is not going to prison – for the moment

Adam Smith nailed it

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

Theranos founder Holmes ordered to jail after appeal snub

Deterrence effect

In the decade 2001 to 2011 thirty released killers in England and Wales were convicted for 29 murders and 6 manslaughters between them. That's at least 35 people who died unnecessarily.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16638227

The death penalty might not be working in the USA but is the system in England and Wales any better?

Royal Mail wins worst April Fools' joke 2023

See icon

Type your comment here - basic HTML and hotlinks allowed

BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

Not all that out there…

I know of at least one Big 4 accounting firm that has issued senior partners with smart watches to monitor their sleep, exercise patterns etc.

Silicon Valley Bank seized by officials after imploding: How this happened and why

Re: Federal Spending > Inflation > Rising Interest Rates

I'm not convinced by your Northern Rock analogy, SVB seemly failed due to a liquidity trap whereas Northern Rock foundered on Securitization. Happy to be convinced otherwise.

For those fortunate enough to be too young to remember, banks such as Northern Rock sold mortgages which were then bundled into CDO's for selling to investors as bonds. This is called Securitization and its theoretical strength is that illiquid assets, such as 25 year mortgages, can be made liquid while losses are diluted among a wider pool of investors.

Securitization is still a thing, but now for car loans rather than housing.

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

Re: Yeah but... No but

Many thanks ABC, are there any particular sources to which Snopes should be directed in the future?

Snopes are clearly missing a trick by not availing themselves of your knowledge and confidence.

Re: Yeah but... No but

Snopes: "Despite creating some confusion with his remarks, Trump did not call the coronavirus a hoax."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-remark/

And Snopes has never been regarded as particularly right wing.

Re: The dangers of certainty

I don't follow the alcohol connection, are you suggesting that those 103k unfortunates were particularly heavy tipplers...?

Most Londoners would quit before they give up working from home

Re: As somebody who vastly prefers working from the office...

Anti-car measures? Then buy a pushbike or an electric bike, an electric Brompton is near perfect for multi-modal commutes.

I have sympathy for anyone forced into the office. I prefer it over WFH but acknowledge that I am in the minority. I have a sneaking suspicion that the real enthusiasm for dragging people into the office is to try to stop people from working multiple jobs simultaneously.

BOFH and the case of the Zoom call that never was

Re: Far too close to home

Is it still the case that those Mac's have content protection? Back in 2018 someone plugged a MacBook directly into our video wall and the Mac' shut it down faster than my laptop at 4PM on a Friday.

I was reasonable to ask to WFH in early days of COVID, says fired engineer

Re: Essential industry

My shop issued me with a letter confirming my essential status, just in case I was ever stopped whilst travelling to the office. I don't know how official it was but I only ever produced it once, during my annual pay review in 2021.

OneCoin co-founder pleads guilty to $4 billion fraud

Re: ...and run.

Having her pursuers quit their hunt on the assumption that she is dead will suit the bent doctor very nicely.

SEC charges crew of social media influencers with $100m fraud

Little new in this world

You have to wonder how many of their audience were in on the act, ie hoping to buy and sell to a bigger idiot before the bubble burst?

Just 22% of techies in UK aged 50 or older, says Chartered Institute for IT

Isn't this a good news story?

Is the core of this story that a disproportionate number of techies grow rich enough to change career, reduce their hours or just plain quit by age 50, or that ageism is rife and that the greybeards struggle to find work?

HP Inc to lay off up to 6,000 staff, cut costs by $1.4 billion

Numbers

Maths is not my strongest subject but if cutting 6,000 staff saves $1.4 billion then the average saving will be circa $230,000 per staff member.

Is that a legit’ savings target?

I know that in addition to salaries there are tax and pension savings, plus buildings which can be released…

Swiss bankers warn: Three quarters of retail Bitcoin investors are in the red

Markets

Advising people to avoid the markets is very daft. Do advise against stock-picking or trying to beat the market, people should simply invest in a global tracker with the lowest possible fees (Vanguard for example).

For anyone in the UK I suggest taking a look at the personal finances blog monevator.com for how to best make your money work for you. Being on top of your finances is priceless.

People are coming out of retirement due to cost-of-living crisis

Re: Cost of Living?

I'll second this. I spent a couple of years away abroad and was lucky enough to find an IT job 'on the tools' when I came back. Straightforward hours, minimal stress and far more headspace for hobbies and private projects.

Sure it pays less and has zero prestige, but I'm on the glide path to early retirement and my long term health is taking priority over corporate headaches (tracking quarterly SLA's anyone?).

Post-Brexit 'science superpower' UK still hasn't appointed a science minister

Re: talking about nationalising stuff as if the gov runs things better

@Codejunky, I think that you need to check your water supply for hallucinogens!

Since privatisation the new water companies have extracted tens of billions of pounds by borrowing against their assets, money then apportioned roughly one third as profits, two thirds invested.

Should the nation decide to bring those assets back to the public sector the tax payer is, again, on the hook for those debts.

As to whether the industry has been well-managed I’ll point you to sewerage pumped into the sea, a desalination plant in the Thames that was scheduled to be offline during the Summer (you know, the time when it might be needed..) etc.

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

Re: Seeing it already

Forgive the cliche but if you want loyalty buy a dog.

The firms gratitude might Olympian but I have metropolitan expenses.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Re: She was a good one

Simply transfer the powers of the monarch to the Lord Chancellor. Minimal fuss and very efficient... it'll never happen!

Bye bye BoJo: Liz Truss named new UK prime minister

Re: That's It I'm ....

Japan, check the handle, the only downside is that after a couple of months living anywhere else will feel like a downgrade.

Oh, and the cheese supply was atrocious but that may have changed since the recent trade deals.

BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

Bloody hell!

I noticed the absence of SFTW but not the missing banner (I’m not counting anything that requires scrolling to the very bottom of the page) and the Paris icon clearly shows that time’s arrow is telling me it’s time to knock work on the head. I mean, if I’m missing stuff I’m interested in what has happened to my paid work!!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller

See above for explanation

Caver Dave posted this link a little higher up the chain:

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/these-10-rivers-carry-95-of-all-plastic-into-the-ocean/

Worth bearing in mind that some of that plastic will have come from manufacturing processes for goods bound for the West.

COO of failed bio-biz Theranos found guilty on all twelve fraud counts

Re: Methinks it's lawyers all the way down on this one...

Sorry Iron, what is the relevance of their nationalities? The rich are borderless citizens of nowhere, to quote Theresa May.

The sins of the father are not especially relevant either, Enron was a corporation not a crime family, so was the father even involved in the off-balance fraud that brought it down?

Re: Methinks it's lawyers all the way down on this one...

Oomph! There's some heavy handed misogyny in one comment, just maybe accept that a jury heard all the evidence and acted accordingly?

Both have been found guilty but the individual 20 years younger and just a teenager when she met her DotCom millionaire (back when millions were worth something) co-conspirator has been found slightly less culpable.

Japan makes online insults a crime that can earn a year in jail

Re: Japan's efforts to protect online rights might therefore harm its reputation for human rights

Japan was the safest place that I have ever lived, see handle, so whatever they are doing can we have some more of it in London please?

BOFH: Tech helps HR investigate the Boss's devices

Re: Inspirational!

That sounds about right, and often in properly devious ways. One firm I worked for was circling the plughole in 2001 and hired a very enthusiastic Aussie HR chap for an already over-staffed department composed of old friends and old flames of the exec board.

Cue the cuts with said Aussie in the lead sharing the bad news*, while also measuring up his new office as he was clearly expecting to head up HR once the superannuated HR team was shown the door. Barely a year later the fellah was out the door himself, with the old crew still in situ and blaming him for being over-zealous.

* I was in the first batch to go, but cannot complain because at least the firm still had cash for enhanced redundancy packages.