Posts by nekomoto

GitHub to replace master with main across its services

I'm personally offended by curly-brackets (AKA "braces"), since in my eyes they have a nipple.

This is obviously mammal-centric, so it's no-wonder reptiles and fish don't program in C. Why is no-one considering diversity in programming.

Wake me up before you go Go: Devs say they'll learn Google-backed lang next. Plus: Perl pays best, Java still in demand

Re: To be taken with a grain of salt

I started to learn Go, but then I found out that it forces you to put the "curly-bracket" on the *same line* as the function name (due to not needing as many semicolons supposedly).

As a victim of IBM's "Lines of code, per engineer, per month, metric" (as a junior engineer), I cannot put the "{" on the same line as the function name without PTSD-like issues, less someone line-counts my code and finds me under that magical 10,000-line bar.

So that, and the recent antics of google (yes I know Go is open source), prompted me to go learn something else.

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

In the 90's I was required to wear a suit and tie, but the engineers who happened to be female could wear just about anything, including jeans and not-quite a t-shirt. So maybe asking skirt & heels is a bit much in these "modern" times, but being told what to wear does go both ways.

To catch a thief, go to Google with a geofence warrant – and it will give you all the details

Re: Dumb, dumb, dumb

No, the IMEI of the device does not change then - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Equipment_Identity

Leaks point to Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra with mammoth 108MP camera and ... what? 16GB of RAM

Re: How big is the imager?

Maybe it's "108MP (interpolated)" like they used to say with Flatbed Scanners.

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

Re: Quick maths

Absolutely. internet providers in Australia commonly "double-dip", charging both downlod and upload totals against your quota. So the user in question may not have actually downloaded anything, just serving a bunch of data.

Newly born Firefox 71 emerges from its den – with its own VPN and some privacy tricks

Re: Javascript

I'm interested to know why you allow Google Analytics ? At best it's just a waste of bandwidth.

My setup sounds much the same as yours, except I keep google blocked since they're the primary armholes that initially weaponised the internet against us. Sometimes I need to allow the maps API to look something up, but then it's blocked again.

RDP loves company: Kaspersky finds 37 security holes in VNC remote desktop software

What constitutes a rish though

There used to be a version of a C compiler which would flag any use of a old-style C string function as a flaw / risk, even something like:

char block[20];

strcpy( block, "foo" ); /* safe because "foo" can always fit in 20 bytes */

Obviously "foo" can never be larger than the target buffer, so it's not possible to be a source of problems.

I wonder how much of their analysis simply counts these sorts of function calls in the code, without actually investigating whether it's a genuine problematic use or not.

Interpol: Strong encryption helps online predators. Build backdoors

Re: So, now it's back to Think Of The Children

You don't have to go back that far, Australia made being part of a motorcycle gang illegal.

Chemists bitten by Python scripts: How different OSes produced different results during test number-crunching

This is a standard numerical analysis issue

The core of this problem, is that with floating point calculations precision is often lost.

Consider the case of summing a (metric) truckload of small values, they *may* eventually add to something significant.

But with the case of adding a tiny value to an existing large floating-point number, it can quite often be rounded-away to insignificance.

So the common solution is to perform your arithmetic on the "finer details" first.

Sure sorting the input-filenames gives you the same result (at least on systems using the same IEEE-754 floating point hardware), but what they should be striving for is the most accurate result. If the ordering of the input files has a significant effect on this, then this isn't happening.

HP to hike upfront price of printer hardware as ink biz growth runs dry

My HP Cartridges and Printer certainly ended up in Landfill.

We had a nice HP network-tethered scanner/printer/fax, and always used HP branded ink. I was quite happy with it. It was even well supported under Linux.

Then we moved hemispheres. Genuine HP ink purchased in Switzerland refused to work in a Genuine HP printer bought in Australia.

Sadly, both ink and printer were junked, but happily I have never since bought another HP product.