Posts by elsergiovolador

Multiple billions up for grabs as UK government launches cloud services tenders

Re: seeking a tech firm to help public bodies "transition to cloud software or hosting services."

In house staff can't give brown envelopes worthy of consideration...

an elderly relative who is hard of hearing

Except when they hear even the lightest rustling of a brown envelope and the faintest whiff of cash... then their eyes light up.

To put things into perspective, for £7.5bn government could build state run state-of-the-art data centre (or two) that could probably satisfy the needs of most departments.

and then have small running cost for staff and maintenance.

In my opinion this is insane.

Keynes

allow for up to 36 months with an optional 12-month extension.

Given that you can't just move services from one provider to another either the "winner" will have de facto permanent contract or there will be another contract for migration to yet another provider... and so forth.

At least tax payer will know their hard earned money is up in the clouds somewhere.

That said, surely there should be some sort of investigation why cloud is needed in the first place and why nothing is being done to have services set up on premise or at very least run by British company that pays taxes.

With over 600 CHIPS fund applicants seeking over $70B, don't get your hopes up

Think different

Here in the UK we solved this quite elegantly.

We simply don't have any meaningful funding to apply to and still we have abundance of chips, just that they typically come with fish.

Man admits to paying magician $150 to create anti-Biden robocall

Magician

Why companies bother with job titles like developer, engineer. Call them magicians.

Back from the dead: LockBit taunts cops, threatens to leak Trump docs

NCA

So we have a really rare occasion to see that NCA is actually doing something (who cares if we have massive corruption in the government, PPE fraud, VIP lanes, IR35 changes to benefit certain businesses, written off loans and so on...)

...and they blew it.

xD

72 flights later and a rotor blade short, Mars chopper loses its fight with physics

Red kite? Probably that's why they can't see them, cause the reddish wings...

Intuitive Machines' lunar lander tripped and fell

On the side

Does it mean it will sent photos in portrait mode?

Do they know that is illegal?

Security is hard because it has to be right all the time? Yeah, like everything else

be the end of the world as we know it.

End of this world, sort of - and we are unlikely going to know it. The planet will keep spinning. New species will take over.

It's going to take them a fair bit of time to get to the point where they will be debating whether climate change is cockroach made or not and how much tax should they be paying for it to go away.

Microsoft catches the Wi-Fi 7 wave with Windows 11

Trick

Tired of fixing bugs in your specification and its implementation?

Release new "upgraded" specification!

Then claim it's new so it is normal it contains bugs...

Rinse and repeat.

LockBit identity reveal a bigger letdown than Game of Thrones Season 8

Re: Extraordinary

In the scammers world this is called confidence trick.

"We are tackling crime guv, don't worry about it."

I am bit sceptical given the scale of corruption we witness and nothing being done about it.

Extraordinary

I find it more extraordinary that you can see NCA actually is doing something.

Although it's peculiar they focus on - in the grand scheme of things - little stuff than go after things that have magnitudes greater impact like corruption in the government, PPE stuff, dodgy contracts...

Google co-founder Brin named a defendant in wrongful death complaint

Re: More than surprising

"lucky".

It's always the money behind the person, it's very rarely pure luck.

Effort

So much effort just so they cod forbid get exposed to the presence of the great unwashed.

If I may speculate, if this is indeed his private island, surely he could put the plane on a cargo ship well in advance and have it there permanently?

Or is he a tightwad and prefers to make a massive effort to save pennies?

Either way it smells fishy.

Are you ready to back up your AI chatbot's promises? You'd better be

Separation

Does it mean you can train your LLM to say whatever you need it to say, connect it to e.g. Twatter and if confronted say not me guv, it's LLM, sue that not me?

Meta seeks ASIC designers for ML accelerators and datacenter SoCs

Struggle

but appears to be struggling to find folks to design them

but appears to be struggling to offer wage high enough to get anybody interested.

FTFY

same old. If business says they can't find workers, they are just being tightwads.

Japanese Yakuza boss charged with nuclear trafficking by the US

Re: Misunderstanding

Wheat puns of mast construction are a serious matter!

Misunderstanding

What if he had unclear examples of wheat puns and photo of someone pouting at onion and that triggered some gaydar counters?

AI is going to need a global investment, just maybe not $7T, says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

Shiny object

Here look! Shiny object!!!

Now give us as much money as you can! It would be a shame if it stopped shining!!!

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

Re: Wouldn't suprise me

I supported someone I know through the process and it took about 6 months and cost a lot of time, stress and money. The support from CAB and the union was useless.

The person wouldn't be able to do much without a solicitor - also add time to find competent one, go to meetings, each time present the issue adding more stress.

It's not like you can say that employer done something wrong and they'll take care of it - you need evidence, details, dates, statements. Then you may be confronted with employer who misrepresent things, lies, gaslights, minimises etc. and you have to give such employer the opportunity to make it right before you go further.

In this case employer promised to do something about the issue several times, but each time made it worse.

You also need to get solicitor before you quit, so they can guide you what to do and how to do it properly.

Then you can pray the collected evidence and smarts of the solicitor will compel the rogue employer to settle rather than to go to tribunal.

Friend got settlement, but ultimately said they wouldn't do it again. They would rather just quit and find a new job than waste time and energy on this.

Maybe it makes sense if your job gets you strong six or more figures... and you have some money behind the sofa for events like this and PA to deal with it.

Re: Wouldn't suprise me

Constructive dismissal is much more complex than that. If the case goes to Employment Tribunal when you fail to settle, then it becomes public for everyone to see.

If you are bored - makes an entertaining read https://www.gov.uk/employment-tribunal-decisions

I used to read them when commuting.

Re: re: FTFY

Nothing speaks more to the enjoyment of life than staring at an empty wallet and a pile of unpaid bills.

You can get enjoyment from volunteering at your nearest charity.

Employment is to generate profit and capital gains for company owners and shareholders.

It's simply foolish to not want to receive as much compensation for this effort as possible.

Sure, there are people who derive pleasure from the thought that they helped some wealthy individual acquire another yacht, while they scour eBay to find a spare part for their rusty Vauxhall.

Oh and their wife left them for a guy who has his own house and drives BMW.

Re: Wouldn't suprise me

In the UK that I think kicks in after 2 years of working and still you need to find a solicitor which may cost you like 5 grand to guide you through, you need to keep documenting everything and so on.

What I am trying to say, it is not easy, costs time and money and outcome is uncertain. If you get settlement, it's unlikely going to be something to write home about and if the case goes to tribunal, bear in mind it is publicly available and if your future employer Googles your name, they may see you as a "troublemaker" and simply not offer you the job.

Depending on what you do and how you value your time, considering alternative cost, this may be something that sounds good on paper, but really not worth the effort.

My company (UK, aerospace, not IT) is struggling to get engineers

My company (UK, aerospace, not IT) is struggling to offer decent wage to get engineers

FTFY

Career advancement

Career advancement - what does that even mean today?

worker> Hun! I got promoted to a senior developer position!!!

worker's partner> Oh that's so great sweetie! Does it mean we'll finally go on holiday?

worker> Uhmm... I don't know. I'll have a lot of more work. They took onboard a lot of fresh people and I am supposed to mentor them on top of the things I already do.

worker's partner> But they got you a pay rise?

worker> Uhmm... so I got extra ten grand, but you know after taxes that wouldn't be much so I decided to put this into my pension.

worker's partner> Right. Can you say no? I mean at least we had more time for ourselves? You say you'll have to work more...

worker> I don't know, there is talk about layoffs... I don't want to rock the boat.

worker's partner> Just great. Oh I see a gray hair! Yup at least you look senior.

LockBit leaks expose nearly 200 affiliates and bespoke data-stealing malware

Re: Warning

Even if they done that then why stop?

Warning

Not only did the authorities expose the aliases of LockBit's affiliates, but they also defaced the affiliate portal with a message directed to them all, seen after logging in.

That doesn't sound professional. Did they do it to give perpetrators a warning so they can cover their tracks plus to score some internet points?

Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple

Dry

If you want to make your phone dry, tell Siri how much you earn.

I'll get my coat.

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

Re: What the hell?

Distressed look is now en vogue. It probably cost few millions to get an artist to create this.

Maybe they didn't put the "Please don't break the rocket" sticker on.

Trust me bro

According to The Sun, had this been a real mission rather than a test, the launch would have been successful.

That is very reassuring. I am certain that this will make the enemy shake in their boots.

Orgs are having a major identity crisis while crims reap the rewards

Re: Working from ... North Korea?

were from people with elevated privileges working in their home

As in people routinely letting strangers in to their home and let them play with their laptop?

Seems like its more likely for this kind of attack to happen in the office, where there is a lot of people and roaming strangers don't raise eyebrows.

People in their homes are more protective (it's their home after all!) vs being in the office (more lax attitude, they don't own anything there).

Insider steals 79,000 email addresses at work to promote own business

Re: Safety

No, this was a "bait" to lure readers into a sea of thought...

Safety

It's so reassuring to know that for instance our health records will be held in one place, so there is totally no chance that a rogue employee will download it and put it up on Dark Net, so that we could access them quicker without having to wait for Subject Access Request to be processed cod knows how long for.

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

Re: Ah, well...

There is about 2 trillion planets in observable universe alone. Everyone could have their own planet and then some. So don't worry!

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

Re: Arguments

Yes, to keep Germany out of it. The propaganda, however, intensified upon the invasion in 2022.

Re: Arguments

They are fighting to be free from the Russian world.

Re: Arguments

The "Nazi" spiel was created to dissuade Germany from helping Ukraine.

Politicians in Germany would use all means to not be accused of helping the Nazis and somehow that worked for the first few months as Germany was very reluctant in sending any lethal aid.

Of course people who reuse this Russian propaganda won't say a word that Putin is actually using Nazi playbook to advance his imperialist and racist agenda.

Re: Arguments

Oh no I heard plenty of defence analysts and military strategists who are naïve and see Russia as a peer they can reason with. Presumably those born after 1980 and have never visited countries who had to deal with "Russian world" for centuries.

For instance, when Putin says something, they think it is a legitimate concern that needs to be investigated and addressed and at the same time Putin laughs how stupid they are and carries on with whatever plan he has.

If his objective is to take Ukraine, he will say whatever that gives him advantage, invent reasons, create controversy to fuel infighting then he will watch how fearful leaders and their inept military advisers try to appease him and continue with his goals. If his invented concerns are not being addressed, then for sure he will find a congressmen or an MP with poor credit or simply a useful idiot to ensure his voice is carried. So you have people talking about ceasefire (to give Russia breathing space, to regroup, replenish the military and attack again and to slow down military help to Ukraine) or "peace" typically meaning Ukraine should cede their territories (which Russia can incorporate and use as a basis for future invasion).

The only valid response for Russian aggression is overwhelming military power anything else works in Russian favour.

Arguments

First, developing, deploying, and testing such weapons is illegal under international law. Treaties may be the last thing on the mind of a state intent on throwing nukes about.

Yes, this is something a genocidal regime like Russian cares about.

the good guys can put up something nastier to stop it.

Also unlikely, because we all see the pussyfooting of the West in Ukraine. They don't want to "provoke" Putin.

In short, quite poor analysis ignoring how Russian world operates.

Two days into the Digital Services Act, EU wields it to deepen TikTok probe

Re: Wonder what Beijing's instructions will be

It's their Opium...

Legal campaigners challenge UK.gov decision to redact NHS-Palantir contract

Protection

This is to protect the public, so nobody would get a heart attack when reading it.

City of London ditches Oracle for SAP in search of ERP enlightenment

Stitch up

from an established industry-leading solution supplier.

So I presume the winner is already pre-determined?

Is putting such prejudice in a tender even legal?

British businesses told: Compliance with EU AI law will satisfy UK guidance

Re: Hold your horses!

The EU wants more regulation, the UK less,

Not exactly. Tories UK wants less regulation for multinational corporations, while burdening SMEs with as much regulation as they can.

This kind of shows it - big corporation with access to legal teams (which costs peanuts in comparison to their revenue), will safely ignore this guidance, while small business will spend time and money on it - becoming less competitive.

Hot Air

Last year, the UK hosted an AI Safety Summit in its big pitch for relevance in this burgeoning tech landscape.

In my opinion that was typical Sunak's daft idea to show that his useless government is doing something and to get a photo with Elon Moscow. His detached from reality brain probably thought it will help him with the dwindling polls.

Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work

Where I live, the public transport is over saturated and not reliable, so throwing people who don't need to commute is counter-productive.

It still seems daft to shift large population of workers from home to office just so that for profit public transport operators can make their money.

It's like another form of tax that essentially fills the pockets of the rich.

Not to mention creates pollution, wears down the infrastructure etc and we will all pay for it while someone else will enjoy their another yacht.

People should put as much resistance to this as they can.

About city centres decline - I found it quite interesting - by the time you are back to your town from work, everything is already closed down. Even if I want to shop locally, when I was working at the office it was simply not possible.

I do believe it's also about keeping people moving in an economy that expects motion.

By making them waste time and capital doing pointless commute? Have you heard of alternative cost?

Nginx web server forked as Freenginx to escape corporate overlords

Re: Deal

For a fraction of the cost they could have created a new name and ensured it would pop up even in someone's fridge.