Posts by Tom 38

Re: Congratulations

A company that sells services around open source tools that anyone, good or evil, can fork and use.

Bit harsh - gitlab do a lot more than just host git repositories. There is quite a lot of custom tech in there.

Re: Where's the accompanying IBM layoff/rightsizing/workforce action article?

Is the right skill set "aged 21-29, willing to work for 80 hours a week in return for peanuts"?

Re: US ban is little to do with security

It's about the potential public disorder created by a foreign power switching off your mobile networks.

Want to buy a bridge? Seems you'll buy any story.

Lets say China fall out with the rest of the world. How does that equate to Huawei being able to turn off a UK operators 5G access points? Huawei have even given us source to all the firmware and software running on these access points, so we wouldn't be reliant on anything from them if things went pear shaped.

Re: Fortnite...?

Its already back. It was offline for about 12 hours, during which time people had meltdowns and withdrawal, and now its back with a new map.

Don't quite understand it myself, in counterstrike we had a new map every 30 minutes :)

Look how it can make existing code clearer.

Re: The CEO resigned

Not looking forward to Sausage as a Service

Re: Fixing the symptom…

The whole function is an example of their lack of programming skills! Its not a bad thing, I'd rather they were good at the science than the programming, but every time a scientist friend has said "hey, can you help check my code, I can't see whats going wrong" I prepare myself for an hour or so of "wtf... wtf.. why are you doing this?"

def read_gaussian_outputfiles():

____return sorted(glob.glob("*.out"))

[edits - there are no ways of putting code in a comment that ElReg doesn't make look shit

Re: Feel old

The purported benefits over IRC are persistence of messages when not connected, integrations with other services and group inboxes. We use flowdock at $JOB, its not the shittest thing in the world, you only get notifications for direct mentions, the group inbox means lots of things don't have to go to my actual inbox, and some of the integrations mean you can action things directly from the chat.

On the other hand, I don't think thats worth what we pay for it, I doubt it actually increases productivity any.

Re: This requirement for paper bills/statements...

Nice try Jacqui Smith.

Re: That's paying £4.5k per customer

Kcom's MD Sean Royce in interview with BBC:

He says the benefits of full fibre are already being felt, with £469m of incremental economic activity in the area that would not have happened without it.

From another piece:

Research from tech research consultancy Innovation Observatory found that Lightstream had contributed £469m of economic wealth to Hull and surrounding areas.

Small businesses which run from home have also benefited from in excess of £1m in additional revenues.

My lady friend runs her mainly online businesses from home, and when she moved in with me and my FTTP she found things which previously took her an age to do - like uploading content, backups etc - took significantly less time - things which she had allocated an afternoon to get done would be done in under an hour, freeing her up to do more productive things.

Re: Atari

They bought the rights to Atari's IP, and then they license it out to other people. They had to get the money to buy that IP form somewhere, I would imagine that most of the money goes on repaying the loans used to buy the company's assets.

Re: This was actually genius..

Can you unironically call someone a "dick" for doing a bad gender pronoun gag? Did you just assume their offensive genitalia?

Oh farmer farmer was on the other day about the price of his sugar beet drill

He reckoned he'd found the little green pound dont pay those big red bills

And tho he's got a private yacht, a racehorse and three cars

He'd always say the farm don't pay; that's how them farmers are

But I never seen a farmer on a bike

I've never seen a farmer on a bike

Whereever I've been I never miss a thing but I've never seen a farmer on a bike

He do complain about the rain, the greenfly or the drought

He say blackspot have ruined his crop, but I can't make this out

I seen him get on a jumbo jet, I've seen him on a train

But that'll be the day I see him biking down the lane

But I never seen a farmer on a bike

I've never seen a farmer on a bike

Whereever I've been I never miss a thing but I've never seen a farmer on a bike

I work for Farmer till I wore my fingers to the bone

But when I speak of another pound a week, you ought to see him moan

And though his combine cost a bomb, I'm sure you'll agree

I'm sure he could dispose of his volvos, and bike about like me

But I never seen a farmer on a bike

I've never seen a farmer on a bike

Whereever I've been I never miss a thing but I've never seen a farmer on a bike

Oooh, I've never seen a farmer on a bike

everything held online and accessed via a secure website

HR did this to us as well. Their chosen provider (ADP) provides payslips and P60 (end of year earnings statements) through a secure website.... that requires IE, and for you to install ActiveX controls in IE.

They do provide an app for phones that allows you to get them in PDF, but meh. Since work provide laptops for everyone, there isn't considered to be a barrier to access and is 100% legit in the UK, sadly.

Re: Nobody is quite sure what it was originally built for.

Dunwich being something of a disappointment when I learned it wasn't the Lovecraft version. Used to have a mighty fine chip shop on the beach, but also an early example of global warming.

Dunwich doesn't really have anything to do with global warming, the erosion of Dunwich is what gives us Orford Ness, and is down to longshore drift, where the prevailing wind causes waves to strike the beach at an angle, dragging loose material down the beach and depositing it. Over a long period of time, this erodes the beach enough that it reaches the cliffs, and erodes them too causing a collapse. That material is then dragged down the beach as well. At one point, the River Alde came out at Aldeburgh, now it comes out ~12 miles away. Wikipedia has a nice map with points showing the lengthening of the spit over time.

The people voted for cheese. They did not vote for Stinking Bishop.

Re: Nice in principle..

The three Reithian principles of the BBC are "Inform", "Educate" and "Entertain". This would fall under "Educate".

Re: Sorry, this is sad news.

If you're a Facebook moderator then you don't work out of Menlo Park, you most likely work for a contractor (Cognizant) in Arizona.

Re: Best choice here

It is however dependant on your phone to allow WiFi calling (most middle tier and up, modern smartphones do).

Thats another of the lies that O2 will tell you - "Your phone doesn't support Wifi calling" - translation "That phone supports wifi calling, but we don't support it on that phone, even though other operators do. Buy it anyway, and maybe we'll support it in 12 months time, but its REALLY HARD" - for them, maybe.

Example - thats 17 months after they started selling the phone.

Re: Why would this be faster?

I regularly take Ryanair flights to Milan to see my ladyfriend's family, and now we always have "Priority Boarding", because that's the only one you get a reasonable sized carry on bag. We always wait until everyone else has gone through the gate, then get up and board. The priority part of it is pointless, since they now limit how many customers can put their luggage in the overhead bins, so there is really no point in boarding first, the cabin crew will always find a place for your bag.

Re: Shoddyfreude

Dog bites man is not news. Man bites dog is news. These guys report the news.

In case you are too literal, the "usual thing happening" is not interesting, whilst the "unusual thing happening" is. I'm not calling you a dog.

Re: The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device,

You'd rather ask people to reply than search any search engine for "Douglas Adams Electronic Monk"?

And yes, I'd rather berate you than answer.

Re: Knee Jerk

I work for a small music tech company in California

If you work for them, you're an employee. Of course they'd like you to work for them like an employee, but be on the books as a contractor, they'd no longer have to pay SST, Medicare, FUTA and CA ETT.

Re: I hope they impeach his ass.

Emoluments

There were no extra newlines, that was just 3 lines in a < pre > block :/

Re: Wireshark is my shell...

The unlikely next step is that the user types in a SSH password. Who types in a SSH password these days? I might type in a keyphrase to decrypt my private key, but that doesn't go over the wire.

Re: Fahrenheit?

Metric system is based in absolute science, whilst imperial is based upon the size of some dead guy's foot.

Re: Perhaps you've not encountered the joy of rush hour at a major train station

Could you direct me to the bookstore that has the book "why is the train network not working again today", or "alternate routes home that are also not currently fucked"?

Got to love the tech-site luddites.

Re: A simple (but costly) answer

The maths doesn't add up to me - either the value of the copper is ridiculously high, or the cost of extracting it is so high, or something else?

If 1km is worth 20k, then 121m km is worth 2,420,000,000,000 - yes, thats 2.42 trillion pounds. Is my post Friday pub maths so far off, or could that copper pay to fibre up the whole of western europe many times over? Maybe not all the copper is as thick as the stuff that was stolen...

Re: Moved to France

Service in France isn't universally bad. I remember rocking up to a cafe in Calais very early in the morning (about 6 AM). It clearly wasn't quite open yet, but we asked and the Mssr said oui, so we sat down and ordered some coffee, hot chocolate and asked if he had some baguette and jam. He said "mais oui, bien sur", and went back inside. Shortly, a jeune fille comes bolting out the door, sprinting down the street, and comes back 5 minutes later with a handful of warm baguettes. Tres bien.

Try that in London - "Piss off, we ain't open yet, come back at 8".