Posts by mrGecko

Web archive user's $14k BigQuery bill shock after running queries on 'free' dataset

Big Query - Big Bill

Tough luck loser!

Hope Google will forgive the bill. Pretty unfortunate

PowerShell pusher to log off from Microsoft: Write-Host "Bye bye, Jeffrey Snover"

Powershell is very good

Being a python person and having used bash etc, I wondered, why the f*ck would I want to use powershell. But then, after a while, although powershell is quite quirky, it's consistent. And it's a far better shell scripting language than any of the stuff I've seen on unix. Unix scripting is so much black magic and old lore, plus continually loading files and reading streams. Powershell does have the advantage of being very consistent. Even if the documentation can be crap at times and some of the features of powershell can take a while to get used to.

For scripting on a windows box, nothing beats powershell in my experience. Bringing OOP to the scripting language and allowing your scripting language to really extend the commands you have in your systems shell, it's really great. Powershell OOP fits well with Windows api-first approach. I love gnu/linux. But I miss the powershell shell/scripting experience.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway buys 11.4% stake in HP

HP management will be glowing

... until Buffet say's he fat-fingered the buy button and thought he was purchasing the sauce company. Certainly HP sauce is much more his sort of business. F*ck knows if HP is a good buy or not.

Microsoft brings Cloud PCs and local desktops together in Windows 365

sounds cool

but there are so many people who have used and will only ever use Windows. Microshaft can make their pricing model more and more aggressive, and these people will just keep going with it. As long as Microsoft doesn't try to charge them too much money in one accounting period.

I still can't believe the audacity of Microshaft to declare Windows 10 it's last ever OS version. And yet here we are with Windows 11. I mean, it's just embarrassing.

They have no shame.

Arm to drop up to 15 percent of staff – about 1,000 people

But would the same have happened had the merger gone through?

If ARM are cutting 1,000 jobs without the merger, would Nvidia have planned to cut a similar (or larger?) number of jobs if the merger had completed?

I'm sorry to say it might just be that such a job cut was always on the cards. Perhaps the ARM board where just holding out, hoping Nvidia would get the blame instead of themselves.

Lapsus$ extortionists dump Samsung data online, chaebol confirms security breach

You wouldn't be suggesting that the very same governments might have required Samsung to build in backdoors, would you?

Skills shortage puts SAP projects on hold

Re: Really "skills" issues?

I assume once a company pays for SAP they have zero budget remaining for any other work.

HPE has 'substantially succeeded' in its £3.3bn fraud trial against Autonomy's Mike Lynch – judge

Re: "The finding is a massive victory for HPE"

What? Well, obviously HP and anyone should learn the lesson that you better do your due diligence otherwise you could have a huge and drawn out legal case to fight to get your money back and even then the reputational damage is big and you might not recover all the money.

Fraud is fraud. Don’t do it. Otherwise you could end up like Lynch.

Mike Lynch loses US extradition delay bid: Flight across the Atlantic looks closer than ever

Let's no loose the wood from the the trees

I'm quite sympathetic to Lynch. However, there are some things that go against him:

1) he seems to have inflated 'pure' 'software' sales figures by recategorising hardware sales. This must have been done because software sales appear to be more profitable than hardware sales. Why else would he have done it.

2) him or HP will surely appeal the civil case. Does the US prosecution need to wait until the appeals are complete before he is extradited? This could be a long time. And Lynch seems to be benefitting from this delaying tactic. Whether extradition is right or wrong, Lynch is avoiding the case in the US with this tactic. I can see why the US are getting pissed about that.

3) The UK case is just a civil case. Presumably Lynch's offence in the US on wire charges are relatively separate grounds. In that they'll be he gave misleading statements that facilitated his gain. Per 1), it seems probable that he's done enough to have done that. As a result, whether or not the civil case works out in favour of Lynch (which could still be years and years away given appeals etc), he probably still has separate legal issues to face in the US on wire charges. I.e. he might avoid paying out in the civil case on some technicality, but still have done enough to commission the wire fraud.

I'm as sympathetic to Lynch as most given that HP have been terribly managed and probably just have huge buyers remorse that they overpaid.

No-one comes out of this looking good. I suspect Lynch knows if he goes to the US his turkey is probably stuffed.

All I can say is best of luck to Lynch in the US. If I were him I'd probably take the plea bargain. I wouldn't want the US to throw away the key. How grim.

Brit analysts formed pact to crash Autonomy's market valuation, ex-CFO tells US court

Re: WTF

Because the finding against the auditors is that they were doing Autonomy's bidding rather than being impartial. Naturally, the judgment against the auditors uses somewhat different language: https://www.frc.org.uk/getattachment/f29f4517-5b81-4e54-a0c9-ef67ee487282/Tribunal-report-Autonomy-06-01-21.pdf. But in essence, that's what it means to 'loose your objectivity' as an auditor. You loose your objectivity _to_ someone else.

Mike's central defence in his case with HPE is 'but my auditors said it was all fine'. In fact, the auditors shouldn't have said that, and only said that because Autonomy had gained undue influence over them.

This is a case were autonomy was lost.