* Posts by Shalghar

280 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2021

Page:

AI PC hype bubble swells, but software support lags marketing

Shalghar

Re: Who are they?

"And just who are these analysts and why are the qualified to make a forecast?"

They are people in need for money, paid for their "analytics" by people who would lose money if this "AI" hype ebbed low before their AbsolutelyInsufferable design fails can be sold.

BTW: What gives you the impression that "analysts" or "experts" need to have a qualification instead of a marketing title?

Mozilla CEO quits, pushes pivot to data privacy champion... but what about Firefox?

Shalghar

Re: Firefox just does not work on some web sites.

The bad thing is that its not only websites but also ERP software, time clock software and other things, using the IE6 functionalities.

Since such software is usually quite expensive both in price/replacement cost and time to re train the employees, it zombies on as does IE6.

Luckily the companies with these issues i know have been reduced to two over the last decade. The others have finally moved on.

One of the two remaining ones has staff actually still covertly using a Win 3.11 logistics software in the background for reference and cross check whenever the not-so-new and shiny IE6 based atrocity "feels incorrect" or is so stuffed up it needs to think a minute per mouseclick until it deigns to react.

Shalghar

How about not letting the designer kindergarten run amok ?

"Firefox did not keep up with the market and what people really want"

The main issue is not "the market" but a total disrespect and inconsideration for the people who actually want to use it.

Instead, it mutated to a "surprise, another feature you dont want and we also messed up everything in the useability sections" russian roulette (with a fully loaded revolver without any empty chamber) after every friggin´ "update".

Keep it barebone, as others have so well said, a browser WITHOUT "surprise". Surprises like a nest of angered killer hornets in a wedding cake, surprises like sudden memory greed and performance hits, surprises like an ever mutating interface that starts to hide what you need most and instead pushes useless, unwanted (!) trash like pocket in your face.

Oh and accepting my choices to NOT reactivate $idontlike after the updates would also be nice.

Firefox is still needed, addons like the javascript blockers, privacy badger, ublock origin seem to work most efficiently on firefox. Too bad with all the bloatware and designer fallout cruft, firefox itself gets more inefficient as it tries to cope with too much fingerfarben* "design" while forgetting what a browser should do.

*(Kindergarten finger paint for smearing on paper, windows and the occasional playmate.)

Billions lost to fraud and error during UK's pandemic spending spree

Shalghar

Would be a lot easier for any real transitioning person (i have several friends and one in the family who suffered long and hard to finally succed in transitioning) who detest the excessive extremism that sullies every discussion. The outright ignorance and holier than thou attitude coming from the usual extremists who are themselves not affected but claim to be "activists" for those poor immature shy minorities that wont stand up for themselves (usually because they just want to be accepted, not praised and put on display) is disgusting.

Thats basic parenting. Tell one child it is somewhat more important and disrespect the other and there will not be too much love between the siblings.

Just let people live their lives without stuffing the "Those are our minorities of the day" praise and propaganda in everyones face.

Just like i experienced in Bristol. Theres an indian with the traditional headdress in a smart suit passing by someone in a kilt, half naked with pict tattoes all over his body, some women with a headscarf is passing by, some punkers in their usual attire, some people without any specific peculiarities and.... NOONE gives a damn about attire or looks of anyone else. THATS "tolerance" and acception and quite a better experience than imposing verbal minefields and dystopian newspeak just because some oversensitive unstable wannabe entitled person might want to feel insulted.

Strange, when you talk to those supposedly "empowered" by all those wokish extremists, they share my disgust for those parasitic jokers who abuse real or made up minorities to show their own made up importance and propagate their peculiar ideology.

And for those who want to feel insulted now, grow up and get a life.

Shalghar

Re: The REAL CRIME

Sorry to pop your aggro bubble but i deliberately did not read the extreme sides but the EMA report, biontechs own product description and correlated this to the ever changing "THIS is the ONLY truth" coming from above.

If you missed the ever changing "facts" like "one vaccination is enough to immunize for life" going over "one "booster" every 6 months" to the actual version "well it doesnt do shit to immunize but we have a mathematical model that "proves" it reduces the chance of severe outcome" then i understand why you agressively defend the official "truth".

Shalghar

The problem with "Experts" is that they often are not or are selected for politically compatible views.

What i have seen in the media, be it in the panicdemic where medicinal economist Lauterbach suddenly was proclaimed an epidemy expert (he is not) or in the current frenetic propaganda war against anyone not sharing the current governments attitude that economic suicide is a good idea where "experts" suddenly appear out of thin air who never studied but have a history with certain political organisations from parties to government cozy "N"GOs.

Buy yourself a loudmouth with or without a title, and you have your expert of the current ages.

Just take that bullshit word "renewable energy" and ask someone who knows about irrelevant things like laws of thermodynamics if energy can be renewed. If the questioned person says no, they know physics.

Show me one "Expert" who has taken the ill effects of the "renewables" into account, just the obvious things like 3000+ tons concrete foundation which messes with ground water levels and soil density, the infrasonics that permeate soil and water (for offshore) for the inefficient birdshredders, the compensation loss to connect to the AC network in the correct frequency, the impact on airflow and detrimental results for the environment when reducing the kinetic energy of the atmospheric air movements/wind by converting it to electrical energy, etc.

Its quite a lot of information for those wind generators alone and i highly doubt that even half of the negative effects of brainless "lets plant lots of those" are being taken into account.

I also doubt such complex information can be simplified enough properly enough to get the "news" consumers informed enough to make an informed decision.

I really like your idea that any media spouting lies must remedy this by publishing a correction as prominently as the lie, as was german newspaper law in the 1980ies. In reality, the corrections were printed in the commentary section (for more "integrity oriented" media) or in small letters and placed in between the sex phone adverts and similar paria printouts. If at all.

Nowadays... forget it. The best you can hope is a stealth recensoring like with the "fact checkers" from state and NGO sponsored media outlet "Correctiv" concerning a presumed "secret meeting for mass deportation" in november 2023. Which was neither secret nor discussing mass deportations but this fake news ignited mass protests "against nazis" while minister faesers idea to resurrect Adolfs "Sippenhaft" (punishing people who have done nothing because they are family members of criminals) or her idea to destroy the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" ("Unschuldsvermutung") strangely didnt trigger the nazi warn sirens.

Shalghar

Re: Typical Government Program

"Anything that can be done by private enterprise should be done by private enterprise."

As seen by the success stories from deutsche bahn /german railroad, the german health system, the german pension system, deutsche Post/Telekom, the german "autobahn GmbH" (autobahn limited) the airport fiasco BER, the railway station fiasco Stuttgart 21.......

Private industry is good at and interested in maximising profit for management and shareholders. The actual function for the customer is only an afterthought and neglected and ignored as much as possible as long as the profits are not affected.

I would not recommend a mix of both, though, as proven by the protection racket media AKA "öffentlich-rechtliche Medien" some pseudoprivatised frankenstein mixture of state privilege and pseudoprivate goebbels media, definitely not like the BBC (i wouldnt taint the still visible quality of the BBC by comparing it with the self serving corruption infested propaganda cesspit of its german counterpart).

Shalghar

Re: The REAL CRIME

"Anti-vaxxers are the criminals.

I have a zero tolerance for these unthinking Neanderthals."

Karl ? Is that you ?

I do approve working and reliable vaccines like smallpox, tetanus, rabies, measles but i do not approve enforced mRNA substances, much less if the stuff that got this questionable emergency certification was produced in vitro ("process 1") while the stuff injected into people was produced much messier and cheaper by genetically engineered bacteria ("process 2"), resulting in contamination and a severely reduced integrity rate of the mRNA.

As watchdogs are, this was ignored by germanys institutes PEI (which still refuses to do any independant testing of pfizers mRNA substance) and RKI . It did make the european medicinal watchdog EMA do something very important: lower the quality standards so the new stuff could be sold on and "forget" to tell anyone until the pfizer files were court opened in the USA and quite a lot of unpleasant information came to light.

While a normal vaccination practically gives your whole immune system "illness light" to teach it to cope when the full version comes around (or in case of vector vaccines, a sequence of the illness inserted onto a carrier virus, typically an adenovirus strain) with some additional substances mixed in so that your body takes the vaccination/pseudo infection a lot more serious than it is to augment the learning effect, the mRNA stuff enters an undefined amount of undefined types of body cells and reprograms them to produce a toxin ("spike protein") in an undefinable amount for an undefinable amount of time. At least if what pfizer and biontech claim is true. They produce this stuff, they should know.

If the mRNA integrity is sufficient. If its not, anything might happen.

So basically, real vaccinations aiding and immunizing are something i do approve. If the politicians hadnt changed the rules every few days and hadnt fetishized the mRNA substances, i would have gone with the single jab of J&J or the british vector vaccine that was valid as vaccination for a few weeks. Second choice - had it ever been approved - would have been sinovac or sputnik.

Then again, since a thrice mRNAed individual infected the whole company, i had my three day flu AKA natural immunisation which was also politically invalidated.

Experimental former cancer medicines like the mRNA stuff with questionable effect and principle are something i dont want. Tetanus and rabies vaccinations are refreshed regularly. Measles is unneeded, i had every child illness in its time.

Shalghar

Re: Oops, we stole it

"Countries should have plans for epidemics and they need to communicate quickly and clearly the dangers, the home truths that potentially millions will die, and the rules for the first 8 to 12 weeks (doens't really matter after then)."

And they have. But whats the best plan when the collision with reality isnt considered to be a reason to adapt it ? And whats the best plan if nobody cares to know it exists ? Whats any plan if panic preaching and "models" (lies) instead of reality dictate the "protective" insaneness ?

Whats the best plan if some pseudovaccine/mRNA bioweapon is politically enforced and vector vaccines and other better working and less risky vaccines are effectively prohibited (which means they dont count as politically accepted vaccination so if you dont like repression and factical incarceration at home better get your jab of snake oil) ? Surely it has nothing to do with von der Leyen being married to a high ranking pfizer guy or that the useless PCR "test" financially benefits the most prominent panic preacher besides Lauterbach, Christian Drosten, who is not only a bioweapons designer ("gain of function "research"") but also did profit during swine flu with another dodgy vaccine that had a lot of ill effects like neurolepsy.

Concerning corruption, germany has had its share with several parliament guys being involved in overexpensive procurement of useless PPE, then minister of health Jens Spahn being involved in donors meetings in high class restaurants while preaching to the plebs not to go to restaurents and designing a PPE contract so corruption friendly that the useless stuff was deemed unfit for purpose even before delivery.

Next minister of health, panic preacher Lauterbach closed more than 20 hospitals during a oh so dreadful panicdemic and let over 6000 "corona heroes" AKA nurses, doctors, those guys actually manning the closed hospitals get sacked, also devalued the "Pflegeschlüssel" (minimum mandatory amount of nurse per count of patients) so the profits for his long time "investor" friends with benefits could keep up. He also paid for emergency beds that either did not exist at all or did exist in a warehouse with no medicinic personnel to actually man them, should a patient be in need.

So yeah nobody actually knows how severe it would have been, which might be due to the fact that not enough reliable data to actually assess this mess afterwards was ever collected.

Situation in other countries does vary, i know, but in germany that was a pure panic terror glutton feast for totalitarians and corrupts of any kind.

Closure of Windows 10 upgrade path still catching users by surprise

Shalghar

Re: That means no re-installs?

I have found an external drive bay with two slots and a clone drive button. Works a treat everytime smart diagnostics suggest a drive may fail in near future to mirror the afflicted drive to the new hdd/ssd. The old drives are kept as backup, so if the new drive fails or the OS crashes beyond repair/recoverability, i just clone the near faulty old backup drive again.

Takes about an hour per terabyte but after you press the button you dont need to care about anything and have a working OS after the thing is done.

Should your mainboard or anything that windows deems "too much has changed" cease working, this will of course not help.

Meet VexTrio, a network of 70K hijacked websites crooks use to sling malware, fraud

Shalghar

commercial orientation is new ?

Whats this filler text of criminals getting more commercially interested ? Wasnt it always about the money, be it in legit commerce or any kind of organized and unorganized crime from mafia to politics ?

Amazon overcharges shoppers with Buy Box algorithm, fresh lawsuit claims

Shalghar

Re: No merit

I have experienced good and bad. Whats definitely bad is the amazon search function and it gets much worse when you set a price limit. The "buy box" imprecision however is much less enfuriating than the hidden shipping costs that only pop up at checkout, so to really find the cheapest option you need to go through the hassle to proceed to ckeckout for each option and thats just poor and lazy design that never changed.

The "adaptive" pricing also isnt nice. so theres another bit of unneeeded hassle, find the thing you search for without logging in, then login for the same thing with a non prime and a prime account to compare the level of RipOffiNess.

BOFH: Hearken! The Shiny Button software speaks of Strategic Realignment

Shalghar

Metric, Metric on the wall, who is most useless of them all ?

Has nobody learned from IBMs KLOC/kilo lines of code that metrics are not the sole and only infallible source of insight about anyones real worth to the company ?

I still have to see a KPI/metric/whatevermadeupnumberbullshyte that accounts for unbeancounterable things like creativity, ability to improvise, experience, knowledge (different from certificates) and even the much maligned "soft skills", ability to deescalate or to make a group work together instead of a collection of individuals working against each other.

So what if a call center person has twenty calls "solved" in under a minute each while another has "wasted" 5 Minutes per call when the minuteman calls are just slapping the customer away with the usual rituals (turining on and off,re install, send in the device, must be on your end, all fine here, etc.) and make them call again while the 5 minute "timewasters" actually solved the issue in the first call?

I also experienced a company that killed the option of rework/correction on the timesheet for prototypes because the manager said that those timecodes were abused to cover for the lazyness of the workers, since the designers were such smart guys and surely had thought of everything during the irritatibly long design phase. Somehow they seem to have found a way to disable the sprite collisions in their design software as we played the hymn of precision in the heavy metal angle grinder variant for quite some time at that specific project.

Metrics are sometimes useful, but metrics just to have metrics are just a waste of time.

And if anyone in "management" is unable to read and understand a CSV with all relevant data in it, let alone add, substract, divide, multiply (primary school mathematics), its not time to shine up the obvious with a dashboard but to boot out the obviously useless "managers" with a wooden board across the bum.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

Shalghar

Re: QLC wears out after 1600 cycles...

I do remember some concept of a roll of clear sticky tape as "holographic storage", using LASER and pretty interesting optics. Thats a few too many years away, though, might be in the late 80ies or early 90ies in one of the then pretty good computer magazines before they degraded from "hey lets build a coprocessor card for the amiga 500 with the new 68020" to "did you know that apple has a new browser ?" wastepaper of nowadays. :P

Shalghar

Re: QLC wears out after 1600 cycles...

"Today I would trust a 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy a whole lot more than these devices."

And your trust would be well deserved. Once every while i take out one of the C64s, one of the Amigas and the twice repaired RiscPC (CMOS battery dislikes prolongued periods of non use). Neither the C64 diskettes (5,25") nor the 3.5" from Amiga (880kByte/720 in DOS) or the RiscPC HD (1,6MB ADFS) have ever failed.

Concerning the C64 media, thats 40 years of storage reliability, even the few tapes i still have are still readable.

For Amiga and RiscPC thats still 30 years and the mechanical HDD in the RiscPC also still boots up without issues.

If you want it a bit older, the chip modules for the VIC20 also still work, but i believe ROM doesnt count here.

EU repair rights bill tells manufacturers to fix up or ship out

Shalghar

A better step towards "environment" and similar propaganda rubbish would be to prolong the warranty period for everything to at least 2 years, while adding a year with each price step (lets say every 200 euros or so)for private customers/consumer goods.

This will of course lead to higher prices but also to higher quality and less resources spent so instead of paying a designed to break product for superfluous "innovation" this would also re educate people to expect better from products and maybe lead to repairability as a spare part market is quite likely more profitable with goods that have a longer lifecycle than the actual stuff. The simpler the rules, the less likely they can be bent or exploited.

But OK, lets go with the lobbyists wet dream and burocracy monster EU and ignore the long and almost unbroken chain of total fails and "customer rights" initiatives that strangely disadvantage customers and protect companies. Not like apples walled garden already shows that despite a "clear" ruling that different payment methods must be allowed, the presumed intent of the initiative is already perverted. And just dont start with the purely fictitional "data protection" initiatives or even such complicated issues like abandoning the silly daylight savings time, which failed completely.

Shalghar

Re: I haven't read

"The resulting variation in efficacy caused a legislative mess (just for example) in data protection that forced the replacement of the directive with a regulation (the GDPR) that all states had to follow explicitly."

Ah the notoriously useless GDPR with its tons of loopholes like "legitimate interest" and quite literally noone even giving a flying f-bomb (except the also GDPR violating click-yourself-to-RSI textblocks and "checkboxes", all preselected for maximum "consent") due to it having neither teeth nor will to bite.

Lets see whats happening right now in germany with panic preacher Lauterbach rolling out the electronic health record (EPA-Elektronische Patienten Akte), which is opt out, violating both the useless GDPR as well as a verdict from the constitutional court/Bundesverfassungsgericht concerning a citizens right of informational self control /"informationelle Selbstbestimmung".

And the holy EU goes on with the next Version, planning to do a EU Wide Data aggregation of everyones health data, no opt out, mandatory, you will comply.

Both EPA and the massive EU data aggregation will be accessible to big pharma and whoever Lauterbach and EU think might like to have a copy. So much for data "protection". Smokes and broken mirrors all along.

Back on topic, some manufacturers of smartphones - not only fairphone - do offer replacement parts directly, Blackview being one of them. As the BV/outdoor series are all screws and threads and no glue and/or ultrasonic welding, replacement of the battery and the power socket sub board is doable with only two different screwdrivers (mini torx and mini phillips).

Snow day in corporate world thanks to another frustrating Microsoft Teams outage

Shalghar

Re: Outrage

"Its Microsoft, all of their error messages used to contain the word 'network'"

Really ?

I am tempted to resurrect and mistreat GWBASIC just to see a "syntax network error in 10". ;)

Shalghar

Re: I was wondering why things were so quiet today

"some kind of refund from Microsoft/Google/whoever if the cloud is down more than like 1% of the time"

Which means 3,65 days downtime until some sort of pseudopayout. And we are talking downtime that the "cloud" guys have grudgingly accepted to be their fault.

Now whats "downtime" ? Nothing works at all ? Comms down to acoustic coupler level,Semaphore level,Signal fire level (1bit/minute)? After all even when only the overhead crawls around you are somewhat "connected", you just cant use it.

And what about network outages not related to your cloudy guys ? Not sure if anyone will pay for that but i am certain that those will not be accounted for under "downtime" by your cloudies.

Apple redecorates its iPhone prison to appease Europe

Shalghar

Re: I think I disagree, but I’m not sure…

The so called "smart"phone of the current kind is a computer with some built in peripherals like camera, soundcard, microphone and telephone/modem/bluetooth.More exotic versions like from ulefone or blackview also may have stranger peripherals like LASER rangefinder, nightvision camera (as in "we have a set of IR LED for night mode") or even FLIR thermo cameras built in.

As USB C and whatever apple has goes, plugging a keyboard in, starting something like WPS office or even going full real screen via Cast lets us use the so called "phone" as any mini computer/barebone, whatever those little cigarette boxes are called by the diverse manufacturers.

Tablets are basically hardware reduced laptops and the vast legion of peripherals, keyboards being one of them, also shows that those things are computers and can be used as such.

As for the watches, although they are in a basic way some kind of computer, they are primarily designed to be peripherals for the "Smart"phone computer and many of those are really not much more than a glorified sms screen crossbred with a bluetooth headset.

But just because you can use something differently need not mean you must have the right to do so or that this would be a wise decision. For hardened veterans and kamikaze tinkerers this might be fun but imagine someone who just wanted to play around suddenly bricking his phone just because he did something unmentionable and unforseen. One would have to design the phoneputers in such a way that an internal factory reset or even a "works always" emergency reboot/system wipe/recovery mode would have to be installed.

Just think of anyone who "did nothing, honest" but "the internet is suddenly slow" and then you open a tormented browser with his tons of malware shackles AKA "toolbars", "optimizers" and the less legal trash that befalls the much too trusting "want shiny!!!" clicker and extrapolate this to every phone from every of your family, friends, acquaintances......

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Shalghar

Re: Another one bites the dust

Year ? I am afraid we passed that mark long ago. How about "decade" or "as long as gullible uninformed buzzword addicts keep spending whenever they hear this word" ?

Shalghar

Re: cleaning alcohol

"Unimportant" is much different from ignorance or lack of knowledge.

RS232 has a different signal voltage than RS485 ? Not really unimportant, as (-3VDC to -15VDC) is a bit unhealthy for a system that is designed for signal voltages from (-7VDC to +12VDC) and vice versa. Although many data bus systems share the same mechanical plug like the well known 9pin D-SUB, not caring what you plug in will get very expensive very fast.

Thats one of the easy ones. The more ethereal the issues are, the less the normal NIP (Non Interested Person) will be willing to accept that there might be more to those arcane rituals than mere egotrip and golddigging show.

Much worse if the marketingspeech suggests that its all the same, like security devices of any kind where self diagnosing NAMUR sensorics really dislike the short circuit checks of other security hardware or where non disactivateable short circuit checks of main and sub device collide and every part of the system irrepairibly insists that the other one is interfering.

There is a multitude of reasons why "the (seemingly)same but cheaper" equals "this combination will not work at all".

But of course, do raise the level of inherent distrust and paranoia (generated by technical incompetence) towards the working sub humans even more, they just make all those things up just to antagonize you.

Apple's on-device gen AI for the iPhone should surprise no-one. The way it does it might

Shalghar

Maybe metager ?

When it comes to tech searches DDG and metager have proven to be quite good, despite the financial interest openly communicated by DDG, the results were ok so far.

BT to spell out contract price hikes in pounds and pence

Shalghar

Re: Eh?

Please do not be offended if my idea is unrealistic but until the ties to the EU are completely severed, couldnt you try to get a South irish or continental provider with roaming ?

I might (and quite surely will) misremember but some of those EU regulations concerning mobile charges did not seem too bad.

Anyway my idea is that with a non british provider at least the price rates will not go up automatically, at least in germany "fixed contracts" are fixed for both parties.

Shalghar

Re: Where the fuck did UK journalists go to school ?

100% expensing for capital investment sounds like a present.

So that would mean you get anything you want to buy for free and reap the profits without investing any own money.

Funny, i suddenly get visions of private yachts or other necessities as well as overpriced normal stuff from goodoldchumpscorp being "capital investment".

Politicos demand full list of Fujitsu's public sector contract wins in wake of Post Office scandal

Shalghar

Re: Wouldn't it be nice

Except this doesnt seem to work.

In the 1970ies the german "FDP" was mocked as "Fast Drei Prozent" (almost three percent). Nowadays their support is dwindling again and the old mockery becomes actual truth. Which could mean they fall out of Bundestag again since you need 5 percent to be in.

This party was effectively voted out for a period but resurrected for reasons unknown although they never changed their key quality: promising one thing, then voting for the opposite and never standing their ground but submit completely to whoever lets them into any coalition.

Then again the FDP is not much different in corruption and incompetence from the other 5 neoliberal parties in the Bundestag (although the trigger happy anti environmentalists "Die Grünen" really take the cake (or the bacon of hope)when it comes to painfully obvious incompetence in any given field).

So instead of the amount of parties which share the same targets, maybe some long overdue alternatives might be better to keep out what proved to be poisonous.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

Shalghar

Re: It's still happening

Whats this "responsibility" you speak of ?

If anyone in production sees a mistake and reports it, if anyone in production sees an issue and reports it, then isnt allowed to fix it who is to blame ?

With no intent of insulting you but your current texts seem to be a bit too manager friendly and reality averse.

Every issue needs time and resources to fix. If you dont get neither, there will be no fix . Except in the few cases where simple correction actually works i have never seen anyone in production not openly reporting issues except in places where management actively discourages such reports and corrections and is solely fixated on timeline, ego issues and nothing else.

I have personally experienced way too many of such "managers" in my working environment, not even listening when you give them a printout of the real applicable standards of "their" project. With the applicable parts lit up with luminous marker and an additional written explanation in dummyspeech. They wont listen, they wont accept the necessity of any fix and they WILL make sure the printouts vanish as soon as the brown stuff hits the air moving thingy and suddenly its all your fault because you should have known and never said anything.

Shalghar

Re: It's still happening

As has been said that "managers" can manage anything lets switch from software bugs to comparably inconvenient machine issues.

Lets say (of course puuuurely fictitional, not that any such company might exist) there is a customer who wants a certain specialised lifting device for a specific purpose delivered on a specific date.

What might happen is that the date passes and the purchased machine doesnt exist. After a considerably inconvenient amount of time, a machine is delivered that cannot do what it should. After another delay and the usual blamegame tournament, additions and modifications are made to the machine, the cost explodes, any timeline decides to commit suicide, the amount of legalese threats and suchlike explodes.

In the end, the machine delivered and remodified is not quite what was purchased, cost a lot more and is a lot more expensive than any party involved ever assumed.

Oh, and i am talking about pure private sector, no government or suchlike (except of course when it comes to H&S and taxes) is involved.

So who is to blame ?

- The customer due to incorrect understanding and/or imprecise communication of his own needs ?

- The guys in the office who despite years and decades of working for the lifting device company somehow did not filter out uncertainties, imprecisions and/or outright irreal bullshyte in the contract and machine definitions ?

- The mechanical construction due to oversight of really obvious information blunders like said imprecisions, lack of definition of all kinds (including measurements, intended purpose of the machine and the functions it must deliver) ?

- The electrical/electronical construction for not clarifying the exact functions/processes/safety standards/ whateverlectrics ?

- The welders for not mystically getting visions that the construction diagrams include false measurements ?

- The painters for not mystically "knowing" thet the colour scheme in the papers cannot be the correct one ?

- The hydraulics and mechanics people who should have known better that to trust the orders and papers they were given as clearly a totally new customer is well known to want it in a specific way ?

- The electricians because they did not adhere to standards and regulations they were never informed of ?

and for the final question: Where in all this mess is the so called "management" happening ?

IMHO it all comes down to the issue of unclear/imprecise/false information that is never checked or corrected, milestones that only exist on paper to make haste, not to be used as checkpoints, no oversight or control, no checks, no corrections, noone to actually manage the project but a chain of seperate instances that cannot and do not question orders or the previous instances.

So they are to blame ?

Or is there someone to blame who actively discouraged any checks,tests, confirmations,correctures, someone whos only intent is to deliver anything regardless of its state so that he/she can say "i made sure we delivered" ?

Again: where is "management" in all this ? How does it prevent such blunders ? Whats it good for if it is unable to actually manage to such extent that everywhere in the production everything goes as smooth and well informed as possible ?

Last words: the described chaos is sadly not as fictitional as it might seem. The absurdity and irreality is hard to belive, i know, and only those who suffered similar "projects" may believe this can happen. But even if you think its pure absurd fiction, where in the descibed mess have you seen "management" ?

BOFH: I know of a small biz that could deliver nothing for a fraction of the cost

Shalghar

"Functional translator" is indeed a fine one. I think i am going steal it as the "mechanical document converter" or "non electronic processing device" i normally mention starts to get suspicious looks from those of the competence avoidance squad that still give me the occasional ink stained papers (they call it "optimisation concepts" or suchlike) every now and then.

ISS dodges space junk from satellite Russia blew up

Shalghar

Re: Now wasnt there some reagan-esque starwars stuff ?

I was actually thinking of threads/nets instead of glue balls. Even a spray of dirty water might work, if it clings to the target and increases its weight. SDI (had it ever worked) would need some adjustments but we are not talking full orbital cleanup effort. To protect the space station, some deflector satellites would be enough. LASER or MASER for small stuff, glue net or adhesive micro jets for bigger junk. Of course destruction will not be possible for most of the space junk but decreasing the speed of the junk will let gravity take the trash down.

Really with all those intermittent "too much junk in orbit" news snippets that keep coming up every now and then for at least the last decade, its a bit depressing that noone developed any space trash deflector system or similar things.

Maybe its because in contrast to SDI, it would have to work and not only one country would benefit from its effects. Plus its not a weapon so the desire to waste money is somewhat hampered.

Shalghar

Now wasnt there some reagan-esque starwars stuff ?

Anyone remember SDI ? Isnt it depressing that those ideas from the Reagan era are still not real ?

Ok we didnt get flying cars but LASER rifles ? Come on, even James Bond had some in Moonraker...

Jokes aside, i would suggest a stickynet or sticky balls substance to clump the debris togeter while also increasing its weight. If the space debris is too dangerous, clump gun it, fire a remote controlled rocket engine or blast device with small effect (not to destroy but to alter velocity) in the glued up mess and shove it downwards.

If you're still on Windows 7/8.1, it's time to say goodbye to Google Chrome

Shalghar

So what ?

I never used chrome. i still have some win(oldish) boxes for nostalgia games and/or hardware but i never "upgraded" anything beyond Win7. No win beyond 7 ever did anything i actually needed or wanted so why bother at all ?

So a browser i never used and dont ever intend to use can only be on its newest and shin/shitt_iest on an OS i also never used and dont ever intend to use. Both from companies i utterly dislike and distrust.

Seems like some sort of perfect match.

As Russia wages disinfo war, Ukraine's cyber chief calls for global anti-fake news fight

Shalghar

So whats new on BOTH sides ?

"We took a lot of lessons from cyber aggression for the last eight years,""

Ok, and when are you starting to pay license fees for copying these things ?

First thing to die in every war is truth. Every side involved can be found to spout lies, propaganda or utter nonsense, be it fictitional WMD in iraq,"washing machine chips" as the new Do-it-all weapons tech or made up chlorine gas attacks in syria.

If you are soooo concerned about critical infrastructure, why is it still connected to the internet ? This generates the impression that profits/cost savings matter more than functional security.

If you are sooo concerned about fake news why do you keep producing such media manure yourself ?

Educate your citizens to be critical thinkers, not dumbed down media consuments and fake news are no real issue anymore. But maybe thats unwanted because the "good" fakenews (like https://fragdenstaat.de/dokumente/4123-wie-wir-covid-19-unter-kontrolle-bekommen/) would also be reduced in effectivity.

Economic cold war looms as Chinese chipmakers feel sting of US trade restrictions

Shalghar

Re: John Wayne Flunks MATHS Class.

I dont have "intimate knowledge", i just tend to correlate the obvious things albeit not in todays typical style of only remembering the last three headlines and/or days.

Nothing secret here just a long term "connect the dots" (of available information).

Shalghar

Re: John Wayne Flunks MATHS Class.

While i agree to most of your points, let me add some more.

China has been buying up any kind of company it could get its hand on, one of the most remarked was robot company KuKa in germany. Funny enough, all those much criticised "blackmail" credits to fund co operative projects like ports in malaysia, plywood factories in africa (along with the necessary roads/infrastructure) shows some kind of friendly or at least somewhat symbiotic takeover, much in contrast to landgrabbing and extortion via "free trade agreements" that are mostly detrimental for the african "partners".

Human rights/ social credit/surveillance and other correctly criticized points dont change the fact that china always plays the long game, and most of it in a way that "sneakily" gives the impression of a friendly slow but steady invasion instead of the usual western approach.

Chinas hybrid approach to everything, always changing the current milestone target without losing focus on the long term goal and whenever hitting a wall like the forced pseudo sell out of TikTok, finding a way around has not been met with a working counter strategy yet.

Seppuku sanctions dont work at all here. Never have, never will. Economic hunger strike is met with amusement, maybe inconveniencing short term but not to be taken seriously at all long term. While china has been investing in schooling and "producing" engineers for decades, western countries have dried out their potential and "optimized" for overexpensive education and abysmal wages, reducing the quantity of engineers, programmers, whatevertechlers immensely. Outsourcing everything and his dog to low wage countries also destroyed a lot of any ability to be competitive long term.

I can remember the 1980ies, the sheer tech optimism, awe and inspiration coming from then still superior "american" technologies, like the C64, Amiga, IBM down to electronic games from Atari, Coleco, MB, a time when the USA was THE name for almost everything futuristic, technological wonders, THE stuff to have.

Well, nowadays, whats left and where is the daily high tech expected to come from ? Even in special effects and impressive movies, china has outrun the US productions.

Instead of relying on building walls of any kind, reverse the neoliberal short term lunacy and build up again. Economic warfare can only lead to a delayed demise but wont save "the free west" in the middle to long term.

Ubuntu 22.10 is out, with an extra remix in the family: Unity

Shalghar

Re: "As usual, there are various other desktops"

Strange indeed. Maybe i have to add that one of those machines is an ASUS laptop (thats the machine that cannot reboot but must be turned off) and the other three are HP Pavilion mini PCS, originally choking on Vista. Asus has 4 gig RAM and a 500GB HDD, the pavillions also 4 gig each, two with SSD, one with HDD, all 1 terabyte.

All three now on Mint 20, as they finally run again with the DRM the users want, i did not bother to update them further, much less as mintupgrade has stopped working on the Asus laptop and i really dont want to do a complete new install and lose all those pre stored passwords/logins/whatever the users refuse to store in their biomass computer where it should be. :P

Use case of all those devices is media machine (music/video/streaming/internet stuff of all kinds) and hotspot (the pavillions via additional WiFi card).

If it were only for kernel updates, that wouldnt mean too much hassle, but especially the asus thing is really hell bent on a reboot even with only gzip, python and firefox or likewise non system critical whatevers updated. And this misbehaviour is new.

All four have of course the ubuntu hotspot issue, circumvented in the usual way.

Shalghar

Re: "As usual, there are various other desktops"

I would really like to like mint better again and i still do the (somewhat) regular installs for people fed up with windows 8+ (or having changed their main video game system to a games console) as apart from some exotic annoyances (widevine, other DRM, amazon prime video) it normally runs hassle free even for tech allergic beginners.

However the upgrade from 19 to 20 and following implemented unneeded issues, even when using the mintupgrade package.

Apart from ubuntu issues like the hotspot no longer working until recently without circumventing by declaring a new wireless network (and giving out misleading error messages like "system policy was changed"), Mint has lost one of the best features it had for people who just want to have their media box running 24/7 and thats the live update. Ever since mint 20 you need to reboot, depending on the hardware involved even switch off and start anew to implement updates.

Now try explaining a non tech savvy person why the system that ran without issues continuously for 2 years uptime suddenly wants/needs to do the windows-situp every friggin week.

Intel sued over historic DEC chip site's future

Shalghar

Re: Huh...

Lets go real life to show that "industrial site" is not the same as "industrial site.

Vorwerk carpet factory near the center of Hamelin doesnt generate much traffic or air pollution. The same size of industrial site, "Heller Leder" around 40 kilometers away generates such a stink that it can be smelled up to two kilometers away, depending on wind direction which is luckily mostly going away from the village. The stink intensifies dramatically whenever they refill their biogas processor, a big cylindrical tank with a rubber seal on top.

When the winds die down in summertime, the whole village stinks of the tannery, the rotting biomass and whateverchem up to 500 meter higher on the hill, the range of the air pollution is up to 1500 meters without air movement, which doesnt help as that also means much more intense scent.

At least both facilities have a comparable traffic generation but apart from this and a comparable size, thats all thats similar on both industrial sites.

Shalghar

Re: Why Not Try a Classic "What If"?

"It wasn't an insult, it was advice. Seek help. You're having a psychotic episode."

While i cannot rule that possibility out, much less after 2 years of corona terrorism and the current trigger happy self destructing idiocracy called "german government" with all its extremely bad sideeffects for my personal life, your diagnosis (i admit i had to look at wikipedia and other freely accessible informations) does not fit too well as i do not experience the (aural) hallucinations and my DDLI (WimpDDLI is still a funny thing to have and i did another run just to see if you might be right.) did not change from a decade ago. Self diagnosis via mental training we received during NATOs yugoslavia attack also doesnt show too many deviances and i assume thats something useable since it was designed to alert a soldier equipped with an assault rifle that he might get unstable.

One teensy problem is, if i had the mental breakdown you suggest, the current waiting time for any therapist or psychologist is around 8 to 12 months until the first meeting and any emergency services are no longer available/totally overrun since year two of the corona hysterics.

As a few of my friends had mental breakdowns or similar grave issues due to the corona hysterics and the resulting personal catastrophes, this is sadly an information i dont even need to search for.

How about a classic ? "Just because you are paranoid doesnt mean that theres noone out to get you." ;)

But really, distrust in $bigcorps morale compass is something i wouldnt see as a sign of paranoia. Theres sadly too much evidence to show that trust would be a better sign of mental issues.

Shalghar

Re: Why Not Try a Classic "What If"?

"Paranoid schizophrenia, or undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia? You're having a psychotic break, mate. Get medical help."

I am not sure why you enjoy insulting unknown individuals but its just experience with companies.

Everything thats clearly defined can mostly be relied upon.

Whenever something stays undefined or vaguely defined, the probability that something fishy will happen later is sadly quite high. Much more for purely verbal agreements or verbal or otherwise not binding or enforceable "clarifications and explanations".

Shalghar

Re: Why Not Try a Classic "What If"?

As the article says, that site was a R&D facility and chip factory, which means traffic (assuming a 9 to 5 workday) would be pretty much limited to cars and the occasional SUV during the rush hours, the occasional delivery truck maybe but not a permanent parade of trucks.

Such a 9 to 5 business does not impact the quality of living nor the child care institutions as much as the traffic to and from a logistics center so i would assume that a revival of the R&D facility would not meet as much opposition. Even if the chip factory part had delivery traffic and workers commute due to a 24hour day, that volume of traffic would be limited in comparision to a logistics center.

But another point is the extremely vague project/intent definition. While "agile" may somewhat work on things that can be redesigned and reprogrammed on a (comparative) whim, laying bricks, plumbing,powerlines etc. is something literally set in stone/concrete so the vague definition seems to hint on a malicious intent to get something approved that would not be approved if Intel came up front with what they really want to do.

Texas sues Google over alleged nonconsensual harvesting of biometric data

Shalghar

Re: Mr. Meseeks

"That google statement seems to be irrelevant and more of a smoke bomb to confuse the issue."

The main issue is the automated opt-in of the device owner/photo owner IMO because thats where the crime/felony/rulebreaking/whateveritis starts. The secondary issue of unconsented use of "collateral biometrics" seems to collide with even more regulations/laws/whateverrules (Quite frankly i never understood the US judiciary system and i believe the lack of precision in the english language adds a good dose of WTF to it anyway.). If the base issue did not exist (provided google etc. play by the rules which i highly doubt.) then maybe the secondary issue you pointed out much better than i can word it would be greatly reduced. After all, if the photos may not be processed/stolen at all, collateral biometrics cannot happen.

Shalghar

Re: Mr. Meseeks

"For those of you living in other parts of the world, Texas is a place where being investigated for corruption means you had to really go above and beyond the expected level of corruption to have someone notice you enough to open a criminal investigation."

So its like in germany. Is it also necessary for the parliament to deactivate a politicians immunity for the attorney or police to be allowed to investigate properly ?

I also noted another thing, again showing the pseudoprotection of GDPR not helping much. Google said the data grab can be deactivated, so its activated automatically, which is pretty much in contrast to GDPR opt in rules. No surprise here. Pretty much the ever same "data protection" standard "once we stole all we can get, you may opt out to have an illusion of privacy".

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Shalghar

Re: Bad design

Normally, i could agree but as far as the article says, there was sufficient training for the users. the call on the airport is also described as having the question wether the button was pressed in it, so no excuse there.

I can relate that a new, shiny, horrifically technical blackbox is not something everyone would confidently touch as i have seen this tech allergic approach often enough but as the story is told, there really is no excuse for the prospective user left.

You dont even need to go high tech. I had the case of a landlord, completely helpless because a main circuit breaker was tripped. Inexperience was the issue here, he did not dare to press the lever above the tripping point, fearing the mechanical resistance might lead to a broken lever if he pressed too hard.

Dont mock him, he did everything right. Tried to assess and remedy the situation as good as he could and call for help before risking to do damage.

Inscription issues however, were not to blame.

Amazon hit with $1bn claim that secretive Buy Box algorithm screws shoppers

Shalghar

Re: And this is news to just about nobody?

If i understand the article correctly, its not only about the first twenty pages of "search results" before less favoured suppliers are listed (if at all) which is indeed §%$!!! obvious. If that sticks, i would very much like to see similar lawsuits brought up against google. bing and any other forced advertisment/"search" engine in the world.

The complaint is also about the fulfiller after the buy button, the secretive selection which company actually ships the stuff.

Issues can arise here, i had a case of a special battery charging device which somewhat never was shipped, calling the "support" after a month led to amazon removing the order without my consent, although it had been placed and confirmed at that time. No longer than a week later, the same product was available again, around 60% more expensive, from a different supplier.

The main issue with any news concerning amazons behaviour towards $whoever is the total intransparency and i highly doubt that will ever change.

Maybe its time any NDA is declared null and void whenever consumer watchdogs and other likewise institutions demand answers.

Oops, web trackers may have leaked 3 million patients' info

Shalghar

Re: Nobody cares

It seems a bit sad that even organisations who criticise mass data theft/aggregation also use google/meta tech for "performance optimisation".

Basically, the old fashioned "please tell us how ourr site performs" questionnaire doesnt exist anywhere anymore, except in some sort of after the act post processing like on the bottom of microsoft or other support pages the occasional "was this helpful ?/did you find what you searched for?" question.

Its so nice that you can tell google/meta what you dont want to collect yourself AFTER the pixel/whatevertech has grabbed everything it could but as soom as anything is transmitted, i would not count on the data aggregators honesty to delete evrrything you dont want to have transferred back to you.

So why does this performance-o-mania still exist ? Nobody able to send, lets say, some kind of ping/live bit to check wether your site is down or not ?

Public cloud prices to surge in US and Europe next year

Shalghar

Re: On prem hosting

"The waste product of running your own servers is heat."

While there are kitchen appliances that use excess heat from the refridgerators compressor to pre-warm water for the washing machine or even the shower, it is intended to build data centers that effectively use their excess heat for heating of residential areas and similar purposes.

Kitchen appliance:

https://efahrer.chip.de/news/pfiffige-warmwasser-waermepumpe-von-bosch-sie-nutzt-die-abwaerme-anderer-geraete_109532

Data center:

https://stockholmdataparks.com/2017/08/31/neues-rechenzentrum-stockholm-beheizt-10-000-wohnungen/

Lenovo reveals rollable laptop and smartphone screens

Shalghar

Maybe not the right implementation for roll-tech ?

I would find a wristband/underarm roller or any device designed for a specific usecase where roll-tech has a purpose more interesting than a normal, already existing device transformed just to implement this roll-tech at all.

Not that it would not be somewhat cool/hilarious to go town crier style, unroll a tech-pergament and go full "Hear ye!".

But apart from the mechanical issues, i also cant see much apart the powerpoint-poster mentioned by @HildyJ, much less so as tablets already show the downsides of not having a proper keyboard/input device implemented (bluetooth accessories not taken into account).

IBM Consulting orders staff back to the office for at least three days a week

Shalghar

Why does everyone copy and paste ?

As the news trickle in, every company seems keen on this 3 day a week religion. This might make sense for some companies but given the vast differences between IBM and, for example, BT i just wonder why this 3 day recipe is so universally liked by whoever makes those decisions.

Of course, if you intend to annoy people enought that they quit "voluntarily", having a two day at the office mandate might not be as annoying as a monday, wednesday, friday mandate.

But back on my first thought. How come so different companies all want the same mandate ? What exactly are the advantages against a company (and company part/site/work dependant) specific rule, ranging from 1 day a week to the old full week of appearance ?

Germany stands down cyber boss over Russian ties

Shalghar

Upvoted for giving me a direly needed laugh in these mad and trying times.

Thanks.

Page: