Posts by that one in the corner

Dead people could be designated authors of Atlassian Confluence docs and that can't be changed

Re: See it another way

Very true.

I've lost colleagues far too early; I keep around some old files & commit notes they made as mementoes that can still turn up occasionally in a "search all files".

Re: Pretty pretty rules, OK

> But that's developer thinking

Upvoted you for the "something's seriously wrong with the thinking" BUT

Excuse me, that is Atlassian bug triage thinking.

And as for your note about an invoicing system - well, that just sounds like that set of devs had insufficient domain knowledge; hey, they are devs, not accountants. In any project, you have to ensure that the devs are supplied with enough training/info to provide the domain knowledge. You did just update the specs and pass back some training materials, didn't you, rather than - as here - mock them just for knowing something you did but they happened not to?

Re: "we can’t build everything at once"

MVP is *really* not meant to be used like that! You're not supposed to expose the final end user to the MVP, it is for the client's internal team!

But it is, sadly, only too easy to see how the term was abused to mean, as you put it, MMP: "hey, we can point to this page that says that an MVP is a Good Thing" and quickly put the book away before they read the actual description.

Add it to the long list of badly treated and totally incorrect language that makes up "Management Speech", along with the old favourites "quantum leap" and the upstart "steep learning curve".

Re: Maybe there are other ways

That is probably workable if you see one Confluence page as roughly equivalent to a complete document, but becomes intrusive to unworkable if there are lots of shorter pages (intended to be easy to digest when read online) or even very short to tiny pages.

For example, I was working on a "company glossary entries" page collection, where each page was just one glossary entry - so generally tiny - and you could create a complete glossary with just the links to the relevant items for your immediate requirements. Some entries in a glossary are nigh on trivial whilst others (expanding an acronym to point to the correct set of industry safety standards) could be critical to get right.

Having an author section and contact details for an entry pointing you to the Pantone and HTML hex for "Goldenrod", as used in the project logo, would be laughable, but SOP has to be consistent so in it would have to go...

But any approach like the one you suggest is just papering over the crack in the basic product (one of many such) so you have to use what works for you...

Internet pranksters send hundreds of cabs to Moscow street, cause gridlock

Re: Moscow

Yeah, but phoning up and getting UK bobbies to pop round for a chat, see if everything is okay, your neighbour was a bit concerned doesn't have quite the same impact as US cops in full military gear going "hut".

Re: 99 pizzas

> SWATting the Kremlin

How do you avoid half of them just overrunning the town of Kremlin in Oklahoma whilst the other half charge off to Moscow, Idaho?

(Had to Google for those two, but I just knew that they'd exist somewhere in the USA)

Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out

Re: Control issues

> The only advantage of a smart meter ...

Another "advantage", that is frequently missed, is the opportunity for the smart meter to start taking into account the Power Factor of your house's loads.

Posts like this one https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=12645 explain it better than I would do (and you can watch a few Big Clive videos, his favourite Hopi meter shows the PF of whatever he is fiddling with today), but suffice it to say that the cheap LED lights using capacitive droppers have low PFs and that could (theoretically so far, but...) lead to higher costs if (when?) PF starts being used in the calculation of charges.

There are reasons for the grid to care about your PF (if it gets really low for everyone), so taking it into account may be justified, but then we'd be in a pickle trying to explain to Joe Bloggs why these LEDs may be cheaper to run than these LEDs over here.

Chances good for NASA Artemis SLS Moon launch on Saturday

Priorities

But that's a double-episode-of-Casualty night!

Well, at least it won't be interrupting Strictly.

Underwater datacenter will open for business this year

Re: Ode to an On-Call Engineer, whose scuba kit failed

That's it, you're bard.

Re: Correct terminology

Instead of "Cloud Computing" we can have "Protean Processing" (or "Pelagic Processing", but the shape-shifting aspect seems appropriate).

For "Cloud Storage", maybe "Salacial Storage" (as in 'of Salacia', careful not to confuse that with "Salacious Storage", as if) or maybe simply "Doris Data" (not to be confused with "Doric Data", which would be a spreadsheet).

Re: At 700ft Nobody can hear your data scream...

From the article: Inside, the servers are also immersed in a dielectric coolant, which conducts heat but not electricity.

That coolant is a liquid, as demonstrated on Tomorrow's World.

Re: Why the bleep dunk these things in salt water?

> Also worth pointing out, water pressure increases about 1psi per 2 feet...

From the article: Inside, the servers are also immersed in a dielectric coolant, which conducts heat but not electricity.

I.e. the pods are filled with liquid which is as incompressible as the water outside, so no need for any diesel pumps to pressurise them, just a simple equalisation mechanism (squeezy bag).

Though you do want to be careful of any gas pockets within the kit itself, so SSDs instead of helium-filled HDDs perhaps.

USB-C to hit 80Gbps under updated USB4 v. 2.0 spec

Re: EU will love this

I still have a couple of SCSI drives tucked under my desk that use the Centronics style cables, from Frog; used with an Amiga and then a PC. One day, will find out what condition they are in. Yup, one day, real soon now.

Can we at least stick to micro-USB when that is all that is needed?

So far, not one gadget I have[1] which uses a USB C connector actually *needs* that connector - they could all work perfectly well with micro-USB (just for fun, my usual "USB C cable" is actually a short mini-USB to C on the end of an 'old' mini to A cable: at the time, cheaper than buying a long enough C to A).

If you see micro-USB you know what it may demand from the other end. See a C and you have go check the specs to find out if it is compatible - only to find out that it doesn't uses anything beyond old fashioned USB 2! What a waste of time.

But we have some people that demand C where it isn't needed (and where it would add cost), often because they "just threw away all the old cables" (citations available if required). Aargh.

[1] I'm aware that there are gadgets that do make use of the facilities, I just don't have a use-case for them (and, fwiw, neither do any of my old fellow CS alumni I met up with last week; just my sample set, yours may differ). Monitors all happy on VGA, HDMI, DP; don't do video enough to justify a superfast external drive; happily bumbling along with a few dozen MCU boards and blinkies, smattering of 'phones and tablets around the house.

Re: FFS

You need to set up a database, with each cable QR coded and kept in an acrylic tube. Just dump all the tubes onto the kitchen table and start up your app (you do have the app, don't you?); tap on the image of the master device (PC, laptop, DVR) and the slave (memory stick, actioncam etc). The app then shows a video of the table and uses AR to highlight which tube contains the cable you want.

It couldn't be simpler.

Re: Oh good

You forgot USB 1.0 (aka "USB") and USB 1.1

I've still got bits around here with white plastic in in Type A connector!

Re: EU will love this

Why are your old cables suddenly not working and need to be sent to landfill?

Don't they still work with all the stuff they were working with the day before you bought the latest shiny?

Oh no, that James Webb Space Telescope snap might actually contain malware

Social engineering as part of the exe chain?

As I read the article, I think you have just fallen into a trap the bad guys set:

"There is a certificate involved, blame the OS for not protecting you"

or similar feelings expressed about the use of a JPEG...

The "certificate" was just used as a wrapper, so that if you spotted the download you'd not be suspicious. Then you'd see certutil.exe run: ok, what else would you use with a certificate? But it was just used to extract the next link in the chain.

(Similarly, the JPEG, abused to innocently carry a link in the chain)

At no point is the "certificate" intended to be handed 'properly' to the OS and hence, as you hoped, be validated: to the OS it is just another piece of downloaded stuff.

Now, you *could* demand that the OS examine every bit of data and validate it before letting any other process access it: now you have either invented the malware scanner or have effectively switched on autorun for everything that is ever downloaded (because you know full well that, for example, detecting that a file is "a certificate" and then running some autovalidation on it means another vulnerability will be found and the fake certs designed to exploit that).

But because of your reaction to the fact one link used a certificate, the bad guys now have you wasting time and energy talking about that - and, who knows, enough people follow suit and pressure OS writers, who add in the autorun scenario "as an extra precaution" (aka to be seen to be doing something) and bingo, attack surfaces grow and grow...

GM's Cruise revises self-driving software after San Francisco crash

And how much are both the article's and your statements going to increase the levels of fear above the point where the fear itself is more damaging than any realistic risk?

after 3 or 4 minutes, they're completely locked in

Um...

California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave

Re: Har Har

> So the smart thing to do is charge your vehicle at night.

So you *do* agree with the article then:

>> asked not to charge their electric vehicles during "flex alerts" designed to reduce stress on the grid

...

>> Load on the electrical grid peaks between 4-9 pm, during which time CAISO said it may issue flex alerts urging Californians to reduce their electricity consumption.

One man's battle to get patent rights for AI inventors in America may be over

no more rights than a toaster

Well, not even waffles for you, until you apologise!

Are you using a neural flame?

The linked patent describes something gloriously undesirable: a food container with a Koch Snowflake shape! Only an "AI" could claim that shape had advantages due to the increased surface area (and ignore all the obvious problems like material costs, ability to retain its shape from pressure of contents, difficulty of cleaning etc) and I'm pretty sure that you don't really want to interlock containers like that on a supermarket shelf!

Then the addition of attention-grabbing lights (including "neural flames" - I like my neurons non-inflamed, thank you) and fractal beeps!

If this is the quality[1] of invention expected, we don't have that much to fear from the AI Uprising.

> invent technologies that could tackle "a range of economic, ecological, and sociological challenges."

Yet this the example of its work Thaler decided to use?

[1] I know that a lot of other patents are low-quality, but a that is because they are just trivial changes or otherwise stating the blindingly obvious about a device that actually works, and has been working for some time. Like corners. This patent is for something you'd never want to see working!

No longer prepared to svn commit: WebKit migrates to GitHub

El Reg does know that Subversion is FOSS, right?

> The project said it froze its Subversion tree and transitioned management and interaction with its source code to the free and open-source software on GitHub on June 23.

Even if you access svn via https, that is commonly Apache..

Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down

Re: Fishing Expeditions & Dreams of FOSS Alternatives to Privacy-Violator Waze

Next time I'm in the US, I shall indeed take care not to talk to the Police.

In the UK, I shall continue my normal behaviour of smiling at the Police, saying "Good Morning/Afternoon", waving a Thank You to the damp plod controlling traffic around an RTA in the drizzle and not pulling back out immediately after the flashing lights have passed.

Re: Interesting difference in attitude

Hmm, you've been downvoted - maybe someone doesn't like your use of "yellow" when the cameras are, in fact, painted "canary with a touch of avocado" in the posher parts of town.

Re: feels valid to me

But is the one you found created using "atomic manipulation and nano-engineered surface treatments"? If not, it clearly won't be any use.

Woman forced to sell 4-bed house after crypto exchange wrongly refunded $7.2m

Congratulations

You have just created the worst mental image of the Summer!

(Reaches for mental floss)

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Re: Is Voyager becoming sentient in its old age?

Which reminds me, Saturday is National Cinema Day: three quid tickets and they are showing ST:TMP (and/or ST:WoK depending upon cinema chain)

Is Voyager becoming sentient in its old age?

Please, the name is V'ger

California lawmakers approve online privacy law for kids. Which may turn websites into identity checkpoints

Re: ulterior motives

> imposing controls over every adult

This is reaching quite glorious levels of paranoia!

Imposing *what* controls on every adult?

The article puts it quite clearly that the desire (however wildly optimistic that may be) is to aim for protecting your privacy, as adults, by applying by default the protections that children should always be afforded.

Sorry, what am I saying?

Clearly, you all want to protect your rights to be tracked, your rights to give up all your privacy and your deeply held rights to have sites use every trick and engagement mechanism that prolongs use.

"And I ran her ISP"

And you are volunteering to help all the non-tech-capable patents to run their childrens' ISP?

Nope, once again, it'll all be about how the Gummint aint got the right to tell you what to do and anyone without your skills ate just irrelevant.

Helping protect other people's children? Damn Commies!

Re: Won't somebody think of the adults?

You think that the comments above the one you're replying to are written by anarchists and/or the religious right?

Yikes.

Clearly I'm not impressed by the arguments, but that is one hell of a leap you are making!

The EU does seem to like to get its tentacles everywhere.

Yes, they do want to try and protect their citizens wherever they may be. Funmy that.

Re: ID checkpoints

How about because you are repeating "Pornhub" instead of "AgeId" and, presumably, trying to make some clever statement.

We all *know* that porn sites are major clients of age verification services, that isn't anything startling or new.

Many here may know that PornHub et al are the largest in that sector (or not - I'll take your word for it, never felt the need to look into their numbers).

So the largest client of a service provider owns that provider - quite sensible, if it is cheaper than paying monthly.

So, what was your point supposed to be? That PornHub know how to run a business?

Re: Whatever.

> It is asks for increased privacy and data protection for a subset of internet users, children

Ah, that is clearly where I've been missing the subtlety.

The UK has had the presumption that children's privacy is protected well before the Internet came about.

You are telling me that the US doesn't have that blanket protection for its children, which I'd been assuming was a constant in civilised societies. My mistake.

Re: Whatever.

It works to the extent that, of you are not being asked to age verify, then you have the assumption that the site is avoiding the sort of privacy invasion that is illegal to apply to a child.

If you find the site isn't behaving, it can be reported (then we get into how effective reporting is, but that is another discussion).

Re: Whatever.

> Access to the internet is not something that I want my children to have. I am not saying I am against it, just it is not a want.

Absolutely fine, in which case this whole discussion is pretty much moot for you.

> The easy way to solve that problem would have been to apply the privacy requirements to everyone not just children. Are adults second class citizens not deserving the same level of privacy as children?

Which, as I've been trying to point out, is exactly what the Californian bill says!

The whole age restriction thing is for those sites which can't manage to be that civilised.

Won't somebody think of the adults?

So, this bill would cause mandatory age checks (and look up to see how well that idea is received) would it?

This means that we are all agreed that no company with a website is capable of applying the part where it says "or apply the privacy and data protections afforded to children to all consumers"?

Re: Whatever.

> The bill ALLOWS the collection of such data, by law! It makes things worse, not better.

You mean the collection that is already going on? How does this make that any worse?

So now you are arguing against *all* age restrictions? Where are stopping that line of thinking?

And you are claiming that because *you* are the superhumanly-perfect parent there must be no protections to aid the offspring of any less parents with less judgement than you? Or less than your godlike ability to ensure that you children never access anything you have not sanctioned? Nah, screw the rest of them, why should you give a shit about those mugs?

You claim to be the uber-computer geek, and you can not see a way around this, to give your own children access to everything you want them to have?

Re: Whatever.

> The bill says online businesses must: "Estimate the age of child users with a reasonable level of certainty appropriate to the risks that arise from the data management practices of the business or apply the privacy and data protections afforded to children to all consumers."

You are using emotive arguments *against* a bill that asks for increased privacy and data protection?

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

Won't somebody think of the ducks

bouncing off with surprised look on their beaks "it was softer than this last year"!

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

We'll none of that here

Lessons learnt - well, we wrote them down and put that into the Document Store (cue choir of angels)

Then, TRADITION!

Each time a New Project to build The Next Generation of our product has started, the New Team has chucked away all of the preceding versions' work, including any tooling that may have been created to get the job done: "Everything important is in the new deliverables spec". Which, once again, only tells us what the customer will see, not how we got there.

Cross-platform Makefiles with features to fit our procedures (and extra builtin help)? Nah, we want to just start small, no need for all that. Put this guy on it; ignore that he has just googled all the basic how-to's and manuals that are already in this directory on the server.

Collection of OSS libraries that we've built on all the platforms already and have sorted by licence, collected in one tree and shared from there? Nah, to Github we shall go again; ooh, look, Fred's branch has a copy of the same library I'm just downloading, that makes the fourth different version of it in our new repo. Didn't the author change the licence from MIT to GPL at some point? What fun!

Compact scripting language? Nah, this one is all the fashion - see, yours doesn't even have has half as many books written about it!

You have a tested Over-The-Air firmware updating tool? Cool, always wanted to write one of those! Don't understand that the cryptographic signing though, but XOR is good enough.

Tool to generate Open Source compliance document? Doesn't work with our new build but don't worry, we can just do it manually in Word as we go along. So, did we use Fred's branch in the end?

Copy to go into escrow? Easy peasy, our build just gets all these libraries fresh from Github, no need to put *them* onto CD/USB, they'll always be there. Don't be so old-fashioned.

(At this point, I may be getting a bit ranty, so shall stop and lie down for a bit)

Re: I was hoping the re-entry would be uncontrolled

I fear that the solar panels are unlikely to make it down, but perhaps something like a ceramic would survive?

Although, at the speed it arrived, you may feel somewhat incommoded by the commode, a-ha-ha.

Re: I see what it means...

Maybe they have a plan to take it apart, turning it into a set of more manageable pieces to deorbit cleanly and, at the same time, train up more astronauts on space (de)construction techniques. Transferable skills for the Lunar Gateway station?

Maybe. You never know, it could happen.

(Or they could clear everything off the main truss and see how well the kinetic harpoon idea works?)

Re: A strange set of priorities

Elon Musk knows!

Starship running through a tunnel, just like the Total Recall remake.

(Gawd, hope I haven't just given him an idea; icon, icon, need an icon)

Record label drops AI rapper after backlash over stereotypes

Re: NI3

Our Lower Sixth decided to pull the NI3 trick during Parents Open Day: many a posh shoe suffered! So much riskier than pranking the cinema, as the Headmaster started to enquire who had been seen in the chem labs recently...

LG makes a TV roughly the size of a queen-sized bed

McGoohan Revealed

At last, TV set large enough that you can comfortably watch The Prisoner and spot the bits in the background that explain it all! Like the way that *other* pigeon flies across the screen in "Hammer Into Anvil" or - what? How did Rover fit in

Python tops programming love list – but if you want a job, learn SQL

Re: Python-- a transition from v3.9 to v3.10 breaks things

I upvoted your comment, but:

can someone please explain to me what the bleep you are plotting on your "learning curve" graphs that can make

> "steep curve" would be just a small ramp

a meaningful statement in the way it is used here?!

(It sure aint "amount learnt" on the y-axis against time on the x, or "ability to do task" against time)