Posts by Phones Sheridan

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

Had that and came up with a response.

"It must be itching!"

Virgin Galactic goes where it's gone twice before, for the first time in two years

What a view!

Shiny space ships look so cool!

Ex-Apple marketing bigwig tells Epic judge: Our revenue-sharing model is designed to stop money laundering

Re: The usual doom and gloom FUD

“I proposed other commission levels even lower [than 15 per cent] and our finance and anti-fraud team was pretty adamant....” that they would prefer a 30% cut of laundered money.

FTFY

Philanthropist and ex-Microsoft manager Melinda Gates and her husband Bill split after 27 years of marriage

Mrs Merton said it best...

What first attracted you to millionaire Bill Gates?

https://youtu.be/Lj-9lSEBBm0

NASA’s getting really good at this flying a helicopter on Mars thing

I was half expecting at 45 seconds the video to splice in a screaming Zombie!

Or maybe Zelda :)

Jackie 'You have no authority here' Weaver calls on the UK to extend Coronavirus Act provisions for online meetings

In other news...

And on the same day, the guy she ejected from the meeting gives an interview to ITV news, and still maintains Jackie Weaver had no authority!

You have no authority here Jackie Weaver!

AWS straps Python support to its automated CodeGuru tool, slashes prices – just don't go over 100,000 lines

How long can a line be?

Mullet over: Aussie boys' school tells kids 'business in the front, party in the back' hairstyle is 'not acceptable'

Re: Schools are factories

Bill Bailey? Isn’t he the bald guy with the long hair?

Island in the Stream: AlmaLinux project issues first stable release of CentOS replacement

"figure out how we can keep Rocky Linux in the hands of the community."

Surely that's easy? Don't give a seat on the board to anyone from Red Hat.... IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc etc etc.

The kids aren't all right: Fall in GCSE compsci students is bad news for employers and Britain's future growth plans

Re: Never been a better time or a lower bar for entry.

“ go be a cleaner at the hospital, get my "foot in the door"”

I can verify this is true. I have several family members that have done this. No they haven’t gone on to become doctors or surgeons, but they have become lab assistants and physios. The NHS does seem to want to provide training to existing employees if they have the aptitude.

Re: this one is an easy answer

I think it's more to do with the fact that computers are now considered a commodity so interest is waning. No one want's to study other white goods such as fridges, microwaves and washing machines so why study that device every home has so many of.

When I was younger computers were rare, that was the appeal, if you studied it you got to play with one and it was fascinating (at least to me).

Missile systems software dev leaker has sentence almost doubled after UK.gov says 4½ years was too soft

Re: "The sentence for refusing to hand over his password was increased to 2½ years"

Ok well put it this way, I've never read the opinion of a professional defence or CPS lawyer that practices law day in and day out that agrees with you. I've never read of a single case where it has actually happened in the last 21 years, since the act came out in Y2K. But I've read countless conspiracy nuts droning on about the same thing. Provide evidence it is a credible possibility, or stfu and stop spreading conspiracy theory bollocks.

Re: "The sentence for refusing to hand over his password was increased to 2½ years"

“he can be arrested and jailed again“

This has not and will not ever happen. Stop spreading myths.

Listen to The Sound of Perseverance: Not the death metal album, but NASA's Mars rover on the move

Sounds like the wheels need a squirt of WD40 to me.

Chancellor launches £500m business software subsidy in the UK. What's 'approved' software then?

Re: mythbusters page

Yes, for phase 2, cut and paste went out the window, as did manually filling boxes in in, but I did find another link yesterday where HMRC stated that File-Save actions were fine and considered suitable "digital links" when moving data into bridging spreadsheets. Which is what I've been doing all along. I export as an XLS file from Sage 50, and import it into my suppliers web page by clicking "Upload" and locating the file on disk. The format of the XLS spreadsheet is pretty much 9 cells filled in with the VAT values.

I'll try and dig out that other link I found.

Re: Sounds great

Spoke to my bridging software, they have no plans on stopping, they pointed me to this mythbusters page on gov.uk, last update in November.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital/making-tax-digital-mythbusters

9 years after SpaceX strode into Texas village, Elon Musk floats name change for Boca Chica: 'Starbase'

Where's the floating head of Brian May when you need it!

"With multiple Starships will he rebrand to Starfleet?"

If he does, I can't wait for his next 2 constructions... X-Bomber and Dai-X. Oh Yes!

I'm fired: Google AI in meltdown as ethics unit co-lead forced out just weeks after coworker ousted

Corporate speak

"I understand we could have and should have handled this situation with more sensitivity. And for that, I am sorry."

Translation: "Oops, you were not supposed to hear about this"

"enact new procedures around potentially sensitive employee exits."

Translation: "Now we'll force NDAs on everyone to top it happening again"

UK watchdog fines two firms £270k for cold-calling 531,000 people who had opted out

"But I don't get the point of calling people who have literally opted out."

I answered this question many years ago, got downvoted to high-heaven and a stream of abuse about how stupid I was.

I used to work for a marketing firm many years ago pre GDPR, and they took the view that an entry on the TPS database, indicated a clean number. They literally used the list to filter out numbers on their marketing database, on the basis that if it was on the list, then it was genuine. They are still in business to this day, and have expanded from a small company in Manchester, to a worldwide marketing firm, so clearly it worked.

They also held the view that there was no penalty for non-compliance, Which pre GDPR was also the case.

Re: The scams will continue until things change....

Looking at the accounts data held at Companies House, the company went bust in March 2020, owing approximately 250K to HMRC + other creditors (the ICO was not a creditor at this time as it looks no fine had been raised until Feb 2021 almost a year later).

It looks like the company actually went bust properly, unlike other companies that go bust owing just the ICO fine as a method to avoid the fine.

Tesla axes software engineer for allegedly pilfering secret Python scripts after just three days on the job

Re: "Khatilov, also known as Sabhir Khatilov and Alex Tilov, "

When I went working in Singapore, I was surprised how many locals had eastern sounding names like Dave, Jack, Kevin and Bob. Turns out most people in business there carry around 2 business cards, one for use when dealing with other locals with their given name, and one to give to people who speak english with a name they opted for at the start of their careers to make it easier to develop relationships with english speakers. It turns out we are more likely to interact with people who have familiar names.

It's also very popular in China and India too.

Back to the office with you: 'Perhaps 5 days is too much family time' – Workday CEO

Once we have a high level of herd immunity, and the lockdowns end, we will see a return to working from the office as normal. There's simply far too many managers that require staff visibility and interaction in order to justify their own existence. If people can truly work from home without oversight or being micromanaged, then there's no need for all those managers.

Four women seek release from forced arbitration to sue Infosys for widespread gender discrimination

Re: Unfair contracts

For the past couple of decades I've had a habit of signing and numbering each page of any document I've been given. If someone gives me a single page document, I sign it and write "page one of one"* in the corner, even if it's already numbered. It becomes harder to insert additional pages after the event that way.

Obviously someone could mimic my handwriting and write the word "hundred" after it, but a 100 page contract of employment would seem ridiculous to any employment tribunal :)

What’s that in CES heaven, is it a star? Or is it that damned elusive flying car?

Barkeep, pour me a..... wow that was exactly what I wanted!

"In this case it was about pub robots that will "look directly into your eyes, calculate exactly what you want to drink, pour it and add it to your bill."

I think the author of this quote was ahead of his time. We're all so profiled now that I believe this to be entirely possible, that and AI probably could establish a correlation between a snapshot of your eyes, and your desired drink given enough samples. I volunteer to be a test subject!

Suckers for punishment, we added a crawler transporter to our Saturn V

Space management

"unless one has space to spread out the components into neat piles"

Any serious lego builder should have one or more draw string playmats.

I've been using these for decades now, starting off with one my mum made me 40 years ago from an old blanket with string sewn into a seam around the edges. You throw the whole set in, spread it out and pick the pieces out quite easily. Then when you want a break, pull the string, a nice little ball is created, and you put it to one side until you're ready to continue.

Probably work just as well for meccano too.

Brexit freezes 81,000 UK-registered .eu domains – and you've all got three months to get them back

Re: Not my best New Years day.....

The point made was that the registration address, and the billing address are now different. The OP updated their address using visible options on their control panel, but was not aware that doing so, did not change their registration address. There was also nowhere on the domain registration control panel where they could verify that. "Aha" you say, surely they could do a DNS lookup! Well they could up until GDPR came out, at which point all the registrars anonymised the feed. This appears to be one of the side effects of that change that no-one has noticed up until now.

I have checked with my registrar, who has also confirmed that my registration address does not change if I change my billing address, and indeed does not. They have also informed me that even if I request them to make the change to the record, it will not take effect until my next date of registration, i.e. some of my domains will not have the change made for up to 2 years until they are renewed.

Apple appears to be charging Brits £309 to replace AirPods Max batteries, while Americans need only stump up $79

Re: This is a crime against the planet

Give that man a medal!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56yN2zHtofM

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"

I think this is more like the garden gnome going missing, then for the next few years you get post cards from it taken next to various landmarks all over the world, followed by the obligatory Daily Sport headline "Mysterious metal monolith found on moon!" in a few weeks.

Arecibo Observatory brings forward 'controlled demolition' plans by collapsing all by itself

Re: ::insert moment of silence::

Interesting article here about how they maintain the cables on the Severn bridge. And it has sensors that listen for the pings too.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/suspension-surgery-severn-bridge-14-11-2016/

UK Court of Appeal rebukes Home Office for exceeding its powers with bunkum 'national security' GSM gateway ban

It's the fault of those pesky europeans!

Alleged Ponzi mastermind on the run from FBI hid in lake with sea-scooter, collared after he surfaced half-hour later

Re: Bollocks

Commenter might be referring to UKBLM who raised £1.2M on Gofundme, despite there being no associated company, charity, nor anything that actually states what they actually do or will do with this cash they are collecting. Their twitter is nothing but a retweet machine. https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund

UK's Manchester University seeks integrator to lead fiddly Oracle Financials upgrade

Re: Work Experience

I came on to say the same thing without the joke. When I was at Salford stuff like this tended to be dealt with during the work-experience modules of HND and BSc comp-sci courses.

Mr President? Donald?! Any chance you can actually decide if Oracle can buy us or do we have to leave?

Re: Contemporaneous notes

Upvote for this. An inexpensive shorthand course will work wonders for your note-keeping, and afterwards you'll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch's US extradition hearing will be in February 2021

Previous judgement delay

What happened to the HPE v Mike Lynch judgement? That was supposed to be due by May-ish.

At this rate he could end up being dragged over to the USA before he's found not guilty. You could bet the americans wouldn't be willing to give him back in that circumstance.

Remember Entatech? UK liquidators are still trying to seize founder Jason Tsai's assets

I think after one prison sentence and now 3 years later, if they have not been able to find it since he transferred it offshore to his family in a tax haven, they never will as long as he remains silent.

At 66 years old there is a good chance that Tsai may not out-live the liquidators attempts to retrieve his assets, and this may be his plan. That if he is screwed anyway, he may as well stay silent about where the figurative treasure is buried, take it to the grave, and his relatives live a life of luxury after he has passed away.

.uk registry operator Nominet responds to renewed criticism – by silencing its critics

Re: Other companies try to silence their critics

I could care less!

Proposed US fix for Boeing 737 Max software woes does not address Ethiopian crash scenario, UK pilot union warns

Re: Why

“ In the *original* 737, did *both* pilots have to move the trim wheels together and with the same effort as proposed now?”

The answer, is that at full stabiliser runaway, on all 737s and Airbus 320s, a single pilot will not be able to use the wheel to return the stabiliser in the event the actuators fail. The MCAS incident has brought stabiliser runaway to the attention of the aviation industry, it has not invented it. It has always been there lurking quietly.

Re: Why

The article is misleading. The issue being discussed in the NPRM at this point is not an MCAS fault, but a Runaway Stabiliser fault. Both the author and the Pilots group seem to have missed that.

The NPRM report handles dealing with MCAS programming so that it cannot cause a Runaway Stabiliser fault as it did in the 2 crashes, however the risk of a Runaway Stabiliser still exists even with MCAS removed, so the recommendation is that it now has it's own checklist. A Runaway Stabiliser can occur on ANY aeroplane be it controlled by actuator, hydraulic or plain old fashioned wire, that is, the stabiliser can end up at it's max, either up or down, so now all aeroplanes should have a separate checklist as is suggested in the NPRM.

There are several suggested steps in the checklist I will list 2 of them

Early step) The pilot uses a switch on his stick to instruct the actuators to return. This answers Julz question above.

Last step) If all else fails both pilots should manually attempt to bring the stabiliser back up. This is actually a good thing, because the 737 is one of the few planes left, that still have a backup that can be manually activated by people power. If you are in a plane that has no manual override once power to the actuators is cut then I'm afraid your only option is flapping your arms outside the window. If this happens I'm sure as you are flapping your arms wildly, you will be thinking "If only they had put a manual backup in the cockpit we could have tried".

Fighting an insurer over lockdown payout? UK policyholders just won an important COVID-19 test case

What an incredibly sensible, customer friendly judgement. Not only that, it was hurried through the courts in a speedy and efficient manner!

Such a travesty cannot be allowed to happen again surely! Somebody please, think of the lawyers!

Family wrongly accused of uploading pedo material to Facebook – after US-EU date confusion in IP address log

Re: FFS

Reminds me of when I was at uni in the early circa 1990, my email address was [e-mail] which to me made perfect sense, as email addresses back then tended to start with the country first, then narrow down at each step. Then late 90s a perfectly working system was scrapped, everything was up-ended and email addresses were reversed so that now it would be [e-mail]

Pension scheme cold caller fined £130,000 by UK data watchdog

Re: It's a con

And you are getting ahead of the process. Your post above is akin to reading in the paper that a local miscreant has been arrested, charged and scheduled to appear before a judge. You then complain that he could have been fined or he could have been sent down for life. However this is the first stage of the process, just as has happened with the ICO. The ICO has issued the fine, which is the first step in the process, if the company fails to pay by the date, I believe which is end of Oct 2020, then the ICO will take the next step in the process. A company cannot simply go bust immediately, there is a minimum time period which is at least 3 months if you have planned it ahead, or longer if you decided to do it today, but such steps are what the ICO are now monitoring, and intervene well before that going bust process can complete.

Re: It's a con

The ICO can also apply for an administrator to be assigned to take over the company, prior to it going into liquidation, once this happens, the directors are forbidden from involvement in any other company until the outcome, which usually results in the directors being banned from running a company for xxx years.

Where the ICO went wrong in the first year, was that they fined companies, and then did nothing until the company either paid or went bust. Now they intervene before that happens.

'A guy in a jetpack' seen flying at 3,000ft within few hundred yards of passenger jet landing at LA airport

Re: 3000ft!!

That wasn't flying, that was falling with style!

Seriously tho, his first crossing was more of a powered glide, he launched at 8000ft not sea level, people have been power gliding across the channel for over 40 years. For me, his best achievement was his hoverboard crossing where he did take off from the beach. Yes he had to make a fuel stop half way across, but maintaining a steady 30-40 feet requires a lot more skill than jumping out of a plane at 8000 feet and travelling downwards all the way.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/04/franky-zapata-crosses-channel-by-hoverboard-at-second-attempt

Zuck says Facebook made an 'operational mistake' in not taking down US militia page mid-protests. TBH the whole social network is a mistake

So Facebook is the new Blackberry Messaging and is responsible for the actions of adults?

One thing that isn't clear from the article, was the militia pro police or pro protest?

Dell: 60% of our people won't be going back into an office regularly after COVID-19

Re: I would hate to own commercial real estate

One of the things I believe will happen as a result of the current work from home trend, is that people will be taxed accordingly. If companies are no longer paying business rates (for non UK readers, "business rates" is a tax in the UK that companies pay to the local council for it's services. In reality there are no services, but the company gets taxed based upon a % of the valuation of the company's premises) then the local council in pursuit of it's normal income, will start to bill individuals working from home, for the "benefit" of working from home.

Currently in the UK we have "P11d" regulations where you are taxed because you are in receipt of benefits such as a company car, or a meal allowance, or a free vending machine that serves coffee in the office. I can see very soon that working from home will be considered by the tax office to be a benefit in the same way as free coffee*, and taxed accordingly.

*I worked for a company which decided that rather than have an office kitchen with a kettle and a cupboard full of coffee jars and tea bags everyone could use, we would replace it with a vending machine set to free-vend. Upon a tax inspection, the inspector decided that the vending machine was a benefit, and a tax demand was raised. Had we simply provided a kitchen with jars of coffee and tea bags, then no demand would have been raised, even tho the result would have been the same. All staff members got free coffee and tea!

Trucking hell: Kid leaves dad in monster debt after buying oversized vehicle on eBay

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/faqs/all/can-complain-paypal

Securus sued for 'recording attorney-client jail calls, handing them to cops' – months after settling similar lawsuit

Re: Intent

There was a story I came across earlier on in the year, where it was legal for a sheriff to keep money allocated to jails, if they came in under budget. The sheriff endeavoured to come in $2 million under budget earning a small fortune in the process. This sherriff and many others like him are claiming this is all above board and legal.

https://journalistsresource.org/tip-sheets/reporting/connor-sheets-alabama-sheriff-pocketed-jail-food-funds-goldsmith/

How do you solve a problem like Privacy Shield? US and EU policymakers kick off discussions

Re: Crazy thing

"They'll continue to do this until Schremms gets the gist and gives up."

They'll continue to do this until the US decides Schremms is a problem to be solved.