Posts by elsergiovolador

Virgin Atlantic flies 'world's first fossil-fuel free' transatlantic commercial flight

Re: Greenwash

and plants should love it, but we somehow want to starve them.

Re: Greenwash

So the veggies grown for nothing?

Imagine being a vegetable doing your thing for the planet and then Virgin Atlantic comes in to ruin your life's work to make more profit.

Re: Price support mechanisms

and it's all designed to keep the poor off the planes.

The rich are sick and tired of the noise and smell coming from the economy class.

AI won't take your job, might shrink your wages, European Central Bank reckons

Re: Dramatic tax reform necessary

(flats in high-rise would be taxed proportionally less)

Did you mean it should be taxed more? We should discourage cage rearing. People without space can't grow.

For instance, someone finds interest in electronics. Where they can practice it? In the cupboard?

Flats should be for the rich who don't work and live off capital gains. They don't need space.

AI chat bot can be a nice trap to catch workers who are lazy in a wrong way.

Just link the number of sessions with the chatbot to the spreadsheet for sackings and let it check the box after 5 sessions automatically next to the idle bones name.

Central Banks

Central Banks, often seen as out of touch, operate in a world where their employees reach the apex of wage scales, a height unattainable in the private sector without doing 'favours' for major corporations. When these banks pontificate about lowering wages, it's a double-edged sword. Firstly, it's to ensure that the proletariat doesn't inch too close to their hallowed earnings. Secondly, it's a ploy: if businesses and workers naively swallow this rhetoric and suppress wages, it plays into the hands of corporations relishing in these "low market" rates. Such corporations might then cast a favourable eye upon these Central Bank workers, perhaps rewarding them with some benefits as they graze towards retirement. It's a self-serving cycle, where the only winners are those already sitting comfortably at the top.

Google goes geothermal to power some bitbarns

Greenwashing

While Google's foray into geothermal energy is commendable for its renewable energy initiative, it raises several ecological concerns that seem glossed over in this "happy-clappy" narrative. The disruption of unique subterranean microbial ecosystems, potential thermal pollution, and the increased risk of seismic activity due to fracturing processes are significant issues.

Moreover, the substantial water usage and possible contamination in arid regions are worrying. These factors, combined with the impact on local land use and habitat disruption, suggest that this project might not be as environmentally benign as portrayed.

Sustainable energy solutions should not compromise the very ecosystems they aim to protect.

AI threatens to automate away the clergy

at which point it's often cheaper to employ meatsacks (plus meatsacks are way superior to machines when it comes to switching to making a different product or maybe even something new).

That's a fine paradox, where meatsacks are superior to machines and yet are cheaper.

Plus the machine won't go for a cheeky spliff between sticking cherries and talk about string theory and how everything is connected.

Adobe's buy of Figma is 'likely' bad for developers, rules UK regulator

We don't.

The problem is more with regulation of existing monopolies. Particularly ones like Facebook or Google, who didn’t really achieve their market dominance by mergers.

There is no problem with that. Problem is with corruption. These things can be easily sorted, but there is always something getting in the way (wink wink).

Simply stating that corporations have to divide into independent entities once they reach certain capitalisation.

To be fair, it’s only had its powers for about 3 years. Before that it was subordinate to the European Commission.

And failed to achieve anything of substance. How many more years they need?

I don't think they have woken up, otherwise we would have actual clear set of laws preventing such thing from happening.

It's just CMA desperately wants to stay relevant without actually doing anything meaningful.

Pointless

Could there be more pointless organisation than CMA? (Well, probably SFO...)

What sort of ruling is that and what is the point of it?

All at the tax payer expense.

When CMA starts looking at things that actually affect competition?

Like that IR35 loophole where outsourcing businesses can get dirt cheap IT workers from overseas using faux shortage occupation list and then sell their services paying almost no tax (if they shift profit out of the country) using the fact they are exempt from IR35?

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

Re: Ban banning things

This is classic Sunak's hot air thing. Just announce something that sounds great on the surface, but doesn't actually achieve anything.

He and his government has voters in contempt if he thinks people are that gullible.

Ineptitude

"Our primary objective is to stop criminals accessing SIM farms – it is not our intention to disrupt legitimate business or hinder technological development in the UK,"

This is a brilliant example of government saying one thing and then doing the opposite.

Such ban won't make a difference to criminals, but it will make it more difficult for legitimate business to use these kind of devices.

I guess brown envelopes from companies selling text services flew in.

Brit borough council apologizes for telling website users to disable HTTPS

Nothing new

The tax man already tells people to bend over and he seized the lube.

Meta sued by privacy group over pay up or click OK model

Re: Stalking and financial abuse

Could be worse, like a LED fleshlight...

Caveman? My memory of doing these is quite fresh and I ain't got no cave.

I am just trying to keep in contact with friends, real friends, to check who is ok, and who will be where come the weekend

You can write a letter, you know using a pen and paper and if you want to see who is up for a sesh, just go to them. If you face no answer? So what, at least you done your 6000 steps.

Stalking and financial abuse

The so called "targeted ads" should be outright illegal.

It's like someone following you and then seeing you at your low, selling you a fix that you don't need.

I would go further and retrospectively tax any proceeds from targeted ads at 100% going back since the first time it has been deployed on unsuspecting population.

Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds

Re: Landlords

The "read more deeply to find real flaws" argument. Indeed, I could delve into the minutiae of the study, scrutinising sample size (anecdotal at best!), participant selection, and measurement tools, but why bother when the glaring omissions are so patently obvious? We're talking about a study that conveniently overlooks the vast spectrum of human experience - notably, neurodiversity and the nuances of personal circumstances like domestic environments. If we're to accept research as a reflection of reality, shouldn't it account for factors such as ADHD, which fundamentally alter one's interaction with learning environments? Or consider those who might find solace in remote settings away from potentially abusive situations. But sure, let's assume a homogenous sample in a controlled environment speaks for the diversity of human experience. After all, it's not like real-world applicability matters when you’re crafting a neat, tidy narrative that aligns with prevailing assumptions, right?

Re: Duh.

There were about five of us in a large building.

Works out cheaper than hiring security and anti-squatters full time.

Re: Duh.

You don't understand. If you are in the office, the office is being used which means it is worth more than unused office.

The sole reason of this WFH bashing is the investors losing sleep over the future of their commercial property portfolio.

If the workers were given a share of the capital gains they create by coming to office, then maybe it would have been a different matter.

Landlords

Was study sponsored by landlords?

That said, it fails to account for confounding variables - for instance those who went on the live conference, prefer to go to live conferences, because when at home they don't have to be in presence of abusive partner etc.

So there poor studies are published because they fit the narrative and journalists no longer question whether they are rubbish or not.

Logitech's Wave Keys tries to bend ergonomics without breaking tradition

Short travel and poor materials. Even "premium" Logitech keyboards have in my opinion pound shop plastic quality.

Tat

Logitech these days in my opinion is an overpriced Chinese tat.

Their products seem to have planned obsolescence built in. Not exactly green.

For instance, every mouse I buy, gets its outer coating disintegrate within a year or two. It becomes sticky and unpleasant to work with.

They don't seem to be offering replacement casings either.

Why I buy this carp then? I understand Logitech has a patent for flywheel mechanism and so no other company can make such a mouse.

I have Logitech in contempt, because if they can't make a proper mouse, they shouldn't be sitting on that patent and let other companies, who actually can make quality products make a proper mouse.

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

You also need a location entirely independent of your residence.

You can have as many backups as you want, but if your house catches fire it's like you didn't have one. (Unless you keep the drives in fire proof container, but still...)

You should also consider physical location outside of the jurisdiction you reside in and possibly even different continent or two.

Re: Take responsibility

And yet software companies keep pushing this cloud nonsense.

Presumably to train their AI on it or do other not so pleasant (to the owner) things with them.

Wait a minute

Are you saying that your data on someone else's computer isn't actually more safe?

Amazon says it's ready to train future AI workforce

Culture

Russia's status has meant that the country's language and culture are usually not a priority when generating the models that underpin the technology.

Don't know, ChatGPT with its censorship and hallucinations is quite up there with russian culture.

USB Cart of Death: The wheeled scourge that drove Windows devs to despair

Re: USB

Not sure why downvotes? For instance, take USB stack from ST and try to create multichannel audio interface. Post a comment how it went.

Re: They would absolutely test it nowadays.

Paid developers couldn't find a problem, so let's give it to "volunteers". Come on. Microsoft should be paying people for testing.

Re: USB

Many vendors provide stack that mostly doesn't work and is poorly written, basically just to have basic demos barely working. Any real world scenarios are typically not supported.

Re: They would absolutely test it nowadays.

This was a comment about beta testing in general.

I've seen this happening at a few businesses.

Yes, as long as the system has telemetry enabled.

Re: They would absolutely test it nowadays.

You may also find malicious beta testers deployed by the competition.

Their goal is to waste as much development and support time as possible.

For instance, they report bugs that don't exist.

They can give steps to reproduce, doctored screenshots, videos how they encounter the "bug". But the bug doesn't exist

USB

USB is still misunderstood by many.

If you want to create a device, the common way to do it, is to buy a similar device that is working fine and then copy its USB descriptors, then modify to suit your project.

I mean that is just a fraction of the hoops you have to jump through.

The actual knowledge is still guarded like a cat over its kittens.

push the build to be tested on the beta channel

Another thing regulators should look at. Basically they manipulate people into doing software testing for free. Any person taken on beta channel should at least be paid minimum wage for their time.

Tata Consultancy Services ordered to cough up $210M in code theft trial

Re: Don't worry Tata...

Or minister's hmm... line (wink wink) manager...

Do we really need another non-open source available license?

Re: Financialisation versus origination

No, you are completely wrong my friend.

Refer to Richard Stallman, “Four Freedoms”.

There is nothing about commercial use.

What you write about is how corporations appropriated open source for their own benefit, without any "trickling down" to people who actually done the work.

Wrong: There's any problem, legal or moral, with that. The only free work they get is from people who deliberately choose to do so. Nobody is making anyone do that. If nobody is interested in solving their problem, they don't get their problem fixed. They can hope that someone comes along and takes a liking to their code and they can snap that person up, but if that's their plan, it's not going to work too well.

That's quite a shallow view. Let my try to unpick this:

Legal - at least here in the UK it is illegal for for profit organisation to not pay wages. Use of open source without paying its contributors can be viewed as wage theft in the UK, however, there seems to be no appetite for regulators to enforce law nor I am not aware of any contributor taking companies using the software to court.

Moral - as I mentioned earlier, open source is dominated by people from privileged background, who can afford to "donate" their free time and skills for big corporations to use freely. On the surface, sure, it may look harmless, but many employers when hiring look if people have any contributions to Open Source and so more experience. They may be hired over someone equally talented, but without such contributions. This comes back to the problem we had in the UK with apprenticeships. There was a period when it was legal to take on apprentice without pay, but this created a situation where placements at sought after businesses were filled with middle class rich kids and giving them better prospects than people from disadvantaged backgrounds who can't afford to work for free. This contributed to widening of the wealth gap and caused other social issues like you wouldn't see minorities working at these firms.

This is the same problem with open source. It is not inclusive and is exploitative.

The notion of "freedom" is like a gold wrapper on a turd.

Have some self respect people.

Re: Financialisation versus origination

Open Source has always been about free for personal use.

The commercial aspect has been tacked onto it by unscrupulous corporations who figured out how to make money on someone else's work, without paying for it a penny.

Some businesses even using this illegally to bypass employment laws and rules around apprenticeship - where for profit organisation has to pay at least minimum wage.

Rather than taking an apprentice, they can publish "open source" project and let the public contribute. Then often if they like the work of some contributors they offer them work.

If they wanted to do it right, they would have to take them on as apprentices and pay wages.

Monies

All this overlooks the fact that companies are making millions and billions on the back of unpaid gullible developers who believe in "open source".

It's all great if developer comes from privileged background or still lives in parents' basement living spoon to mouth lifestyle.

But then the reality comes crashing down when they learn the bank won't accept their GitHub stars as a deposit for a flat nor the company that is building yet another space rocket, won't hire them, because why would they if they already got what they wanted for free.

Taxing times: UK missed out on £1.75B because of digitization delays

IR35

That IR35 is working very well for the government.

Expect more delays and disasters due to lack of competent people willing to work for pittance and then paying majority of income for services that don't work.

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket rated 'ready to rumble' after passing hot fire test

Non reusable

This could be a perfect tax avoidance scheme that rocket.

Quantum Flux Stabiliser, Graviton Archon Matrix, Cosmic Ray Diffuser to name a few.

Of course these wouldn't exist, but how would the tax man find out if the rocket had already blown to pieces?

Industry piles in on North Korea for sustained rampage on software supply chains

World is not Sims and if you venture out of the basement you may find there are people who care about ideals and there are people who don't and there is not much you can do about it. Crying and playing a victim is not going to make a difference.

Businesses should take the real world into account and allocate resources and act accordingly. You can't skimp on security and then go to mommy government for help because those bad people stole your toys.

Police these days can't even catch a crackhead breaking in to someone's shed.

I'm sure you can come with a citation or reference to justify this assertion, along with a concrete and robust definition of "reasonable."

Look at job boards that offer pittance for IT roles (if company won't come up with even "better" idea to outsource security overseas) and occurrence of these events.

Here's a counter-example: a company I've been working with had some severe financial issues and were struggling to stay afloat at all. During that period, they had some staff turnover and had just hired a new IT manager when they got hit with ransomware and had to basically rebuild from scratch. What you are saying is that they deserved to be the victim of a criminal enterprise.

It's like an owner of a sinking vessel hired new captain hoping it will solve the issue. If someone goes hiking to mountains only with slippers and underwear and they get eaten by a bear, do they deserve to be a victim? You are using wrong frame for this problem.

Re: Industry

Imagine a world in which it was necessary to put steel plates over your doors and windows and to defend your home and business from highly funded and sophisticated attackers at every turn

I think you are massively overestimating those people. Security at many businesses is an equivalent of leaving the backdoor open or having a key under a door mat and expensive stuff visible through the window.

In fact, as luck would have it, a gang of thieves has broken into a couple of businesses near me and uprooted the ATMs, which were bolted to the floor, in order to crack them open and take the money inside

This is false analogy. You can take all reasonable steps and still get done. What I am talking about is that most businesses don't take reasonable steps when it comes to IT security.

Actually securing a business with a significant technology base against all possible threats is incredibly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, and justifying those efforts when balanced against the core business can be challenging if the business has never been attacked.

Yes and businesses think of this only after they get attacked.

Plus, maybe if they started paying taxes, there would be some resources to help.

Industry

While this is a problem, I think the industry is more to blame.

Thieves gonna steal, burglars gonna break in and you can cry your eyeballs out, you will not get rid of the problem.

That is just how the world is build.

So industry, rather than paying engineers properly and hiring competent people and upskilling those lacking, they want someone else to deal with it, without paying a penny.

Then you have products with holes like swiss cheese and when someone manages to hack it, they run like headless chickens.

Buy hey, manager has pocketed very nice bonus for downscaling security and bumping the profits and he is already in Caribbean feet up, taking a break before another gig at another company looking to maximise profit.

Greenpeace calls out tech giants for carbon footprint fumble

They don't need to be bright - actually the more gullible the better, but their handlers is a different question.

They shill for Russia. They want to disrupt Western economies, sow divide and ensure we are not energy independent.

Re: Greenpeace is irrelevant and so is carbon dioxide

Please would you consider deleting your comment? You are ruining the scam.

Think of the people riding the green gravy train? What are they going to eat? Who is going to maintain their yachts?

North Korea makes finding a gig even harder by attacking candidates and employers

Re: How Many Gullible Programmers *ARE* There in the Wild?

Any remotely serious programmer:

Interviewer: I'd like you to review some code.

Candidate: Charge for this service is £150 per hour + VAT. Do you want to proceed?