* Posts by Tom 38

4341 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2009

Blast from the past: Mass birth of early supermassive black holes explained at last

Tom 38

Re: @Symon

Ah, I see. I thought you were saying that he was wrong that the universe at 800,000 years was much smaller and dense, but you were in fact pointing out that "size of universe in LY" > "age of universe".

Tom 38

@Symon

The article you linked to says that

...you have to remember: 13.8 billion years ago, our entire observable Universe was smaller than the size of our Solar System is today!

and then has a chart of universe age versus universe radius size in light years...

I don't see what inflation has to do with this either; inflation lasted for a fraction of a second after the big bang, this is talking about effects well after that.

What am I missing?

Scott McNealy: Your data is safer with marketers than governments

Tom 38

What if you do want to buy pantihose

What about when your secret hearts desire is to buy all the pantyhose in all the colours and run around the house with them wrapped around your face, but you don't want anyone else to know this?

I'm, er, obviously asking on behalf of a friend..

PS: Pantihose? Pantyhose surely?

Tech titan pals back up Google after 'foreign server data' FBI warrant ruling

Tom 38

Re: Bullshit

So you think an email only consists of a body and that 'communications' are not metadata?

Today's WWW is built on pillars of sand: Buggy, exploitable JavaScript libs are everywhere

Tom 38
FAIL

Re: Backwards compatiblity

Secondly, all versions below IE11 have already passed end-of-life. Nobody should be supporting or using them on the web.

Spoken like a true zealot. Hey Mr Chinese Man whose company still only uses IE 9, look I really can't accept that huge big bag of cash for accessing our website because AC said you should be using IE 11 already.

You can nudge, you can poke, you can plead, but the only time you can stop supporting shitty old browsers is when the users of your sites stop using shitty old browsers.

Linus Torvalds explains how to Pull without jerking his chain

Tom 38

Re: git shit

OP either doesn't do much change management in git or has never done much change management in other VCS. git is by far the best VCS available. I was going to say "open source" VCS, but I think its better than any commercial one I've tried (Perforce, ClearCase, VSS)

Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

Tom 38

Re: @Orv

If you had a pre-existing condition, depending on the condition, you may or may not be able to get coverage. The insurance company could write a rider so that you get coverage for everything but your condition.

So if you are ill and cannot work due to a pre-existing condition, not only do you get more expensive insurance premiums, but it won't cover the thing you are actually ill for, what do you do then? Go bust and then die due to inability to pay to treat your treatable condition?

What a delightful country you live in. Your medical insurance companies make more profit than most healthcare systems cost in total. You should be proud of how exceptional America is.

Tom 38

Re: "They still believe in Social Darwinism of course."

Maybe. But isn't Trump of the finest Teutonic stock? I'm pleased he's not making out that he's got any British ancestry.

Unfortunately...

'Password rules are bullsh*t!' Stackoverflow Jeff's rage overflows

Tom 38

Re: It only makes it easier to crack...

I don't think it necessarily implies the storing of failed logins.

One possible compromise would be that if the login is not successful, just delay the rejection response for a period of time, for example, 10 seconds.

So now you are open to DoS via resource depletion. What's your next plan?

Get a GRIP! Robolution ain't happening until TOUCH is cracked

Tom 38
Joke

Re: someone somewhere will have to pay the tax

Too right! Smash the looms!

Brit ISP TalkTalk blocks control tool TeamViewer

Tom 38

Re: Which way?

Its reasonably common for an ISP to block some inbound ports. Most consumer ISPs will block inbound port 25, for example.

Smut-scamming copyright chaser 'fesses up, will do hard time

Tom 38

Re: No sympathy for this guy

I guess the part I don't understand is how it is legally allowed? Can I waive my rights to freedom and sell my self in to slavery? Nope.

He hasn't voluntarily waived them, he has been beaten in to doing so. The whole plea deal malarkey is contrary to natural justice, because it encourages confession to avoid punitive sentencing. In this case, it is pretty cut and dry, but there have been plenty of innocent people sent to prison because it was not worth risking a longer punitive sentence.

Tom 38
WTF?

No sympathy for this guy

However:

Steele has also agreed to waive his right to appeal any sentence up to five years in prison.

WTF? What kind of conviction includes stripping people of their rights of due process? What kind of appeal would not be immediately struck out for someone who has pleaded guilty to the crime? Ridiculous!

AMD does an Italian job on Intel, unveils 32-core, 64-thread 'Naples' CPU

Tom 38

Re: @Titter

But here in Chicago, if you want good pizza, you have a lot more options. Thick or thin, or even as a Calazone or Oven Grinder. So call me a snob.

You can be a pizza snob?! I gave you a downvote solely due to my recollection of eating a chicago style deep dish at Pizzeria Uno on Wabash, being unable to finish half a "small", and spending the next 16 hours belching from reflux due to all the cheese.

Put me off pizza for months.

Help wanted: Uber boss Travis seeks babysitter for him and his execs

Tom 38
Joke

Re: Advice for Mr. Travis

Rebu

It would be just like Uber, but the drivers only use reverse.

Aah, all is well in the world. So peaceful, so– wait, where's the 2FA on IoT apps? Oh my gawd

Tom 38
Thumb Up

Re: "Multi user systems"

I'm still not sure what happens when there's a conflict between two authorised users e.g. who want the lounge at two very different temperatures. There are probably precedents for this as well.

Presumably similar to how it happens with a manual thermostat, but with less walking?

She feels cold, checks the thermostat, tuts, changes it up, I feel warm, check the thermostat, tut, turn it back down (repeat until we go to sleep and start fighting over whether we use the thick or thin duvet)

Tom 38

Re: Goolge can't even get their subsidiary use their own 2FA tools

2FA doesn't require cloud or interactivity. TOTP devices (like Google Authenticator) need to be given a secret key to be paired, after which the token device doesn't need any connectivity, it just needs to be able to tell/keep time effectively.

Admittedly, anything Nest related relies on connectivity, but limitations of connectivity are not a barrier to implementing 2FA on any service.

Trump, Brexit, and Cambridge Analytica – not quite the dystopia you're looking for

Tom 38

Re: 'False' problem?

This method is available to every political party and leaning

..that can afford it. The more you can spend on a voter, the more you can customise what totally-not-fake news you trigger tell them

Dyson backs Britain plc with $2.5bn AI and robotics investment

Tom 38

Re: Import duties

It's not about tariffs! If he wants to sell vacuum cleaners in the EU, he has to manufacture vacuum cleaners that can be sold in the EU, following all the EU rules - the rules he says we should leave the EU for. Which leaves only three outcomes:

1) He keeps making all his vacuums to EU specs, but without any say at all in those specs

2) He stops selling vacuums to the EU

3) He makes two different types of vacuum, one for EU and one for rest of world

Which one of those three seems most likely?

PS: The EU is not some arbitrary juggernaut that we have no control over. We send a commissioner to the EU commission, which are responsible for EU executive action and is the only source of EU legislation. If there was something that the UK government thoroughly objected to, it would not make it past the commission. After Brexit, we have no commissioner and no say.

Tom 38

Import duties? Who cares about import duties? He's arguing that we need to leave the EU because their daft rules for how vacuum cleaners can be sold. This will make him free to make and market his vacuums however he wishes in the UK and outside the EU, but if he wants to sell them in the EU, he still has to play the EU testing and regulation games.

Except this time, he won't have any say in what those rules will be. Doesn't seem that smart to me.

OTOH, most of Dyson's income comes from outside the UK, most of his costs (apart from his offshored manufacturing) are in pounds, so a big fall in sterling makes his businesses much healthier. cui bono

Post-Brexit five-year UK work visas planned – report

Tom 38

Re: Meanwhile...

until we've trained our own doctors and fruit pickers.

Hahaha, good one.

PS: Fruit picking, not that tricky. It continually amazes me that people won't move from areas with high unemployment in the UK to work picking spuds in Peterborough, but they will from Lithuania...

Tom 38
Facepalm

Re: If only..

@Conrad Longmore: you are more than welcome to f--- off to another EU country if you really think their economies are doing better than the UK.

Well that's the problem, we can't. Or we can for a month, then fuck knows.

Tom 38
Joke

Yay! H1-Bs come to the UK!

Finally proof that Apple copies Samsung: iPhone 7 Plus halts, catches fire like a Galaxy Note 7

Tom 38
Facepalm

Save us from teenagers

"So my iPhone 7 plus blew up this morning. Was not even using it, literally no explanation for this." ... The next day, while it was charging, the phone started to smoke.

She has literally no explanation for this?

Engineer who blew lid on Uber's toxic sexist culture now menaced by creepy 'smear campaign'

Tom 38

Re: artificial scarcity

your Uber ride is heavily subsidised in order to gain market share. The only way I see that Uber could make money in the long term would be to create exactly the same kind of artificial scarcity in order to drive prices back up.

Absolutely. I think they haven't taken in to account that Uber aren't doing *anything* remotely clever, their business can easily be duplicated by competitors and so they will never get to the monopoly point where they can gouge consumers with all their market share.

So instead, look at it another way: by using Uber, you will burn through all their money quicker, and some VC twat is subsidizing your fare.

I was authorized to trash my employer's network, sysadmin tells court

Tom 38

Re: Inappropriate charge

Authorization to destroy anything beyond routine stuff, though, usually requires specific authorization.

Usually is the operative word there. If the non IT people simply told him to "get on with it" or "you're the techy, you can't expect me to understand this, you make the decisions"...

Tom 38

Re: Easy fix

Add "don't be a twat" to contracts.

But he's not arguing that he didn't breach his employment contract, he's arguing that he didn't break the law. Thankfully, breaking your employment contract is still not illegal.

Radioactive leak riddle: Now Team America sniffs Europe's skies for iodine isotope source

Tom 38

Re: errant missile

Perhaps you should have made it funny, then you don't need the icon.

BBC admits iPlayer downloads are broken

Tom 38
Trollface

Re: Bah!

If my licence payments are good enough why should the fact that I use Linux disqualify me from something I actually pay for?

Pfft, consider yourself lucky mate, think of us poor VIC-20 users, we're still waiting too!

(Because it is a horrific waste of money to spaff a disproportionate amount of it on such a small special interest group like Linux users - and I say that as a Linux user. Besides: wtf, you never heard of get_iplayer?)

London Internet Exchange members vote no to constitution tweak

Tom 38
Thumb Down

Re: Abandon all Hope. They are all gagging for it.[1]

Thumbs down for talking about thumbs down

Gulp! Drones dodge spray from California's gaping moist glory hole

Tom 38

Re: "several reporting stations report over 500 inches"

I think the mother is still Llyn Brianne

Why I had to sue the FCC – VoIP granddaddy Dan Berninger

Tom 38
Stop

Does anyone realize that one reason the POTS system is still the way it is is because it's independently powered, which is one reason it's still usable (and sometimes essential) in the event of a power failure

So what? My "POTS" is a VOIP phone connected to FTTH with a BBU - it also works in the event of a power failure. Mobile phones work during a power failure as long as the base station has power. These are simply technical requirements for our phone service, they are not reliant on maintaining a separate 48V DC power network to each home!

Also, having lived in rural England in the 80s, I can tell you whether or not the phone line still works after a power failure depends greatly on whether the tree that fell down knocked over just the power line, or also the phone line.

UK recruitment biz Coal Intelligent Technology ceases trading

Tom 38
Joke

They're relaunching as Solar Heating Intelligent Technology

US visitors must hand over Twitter, Facebook handles by law – newbie Rep starts ball rolling

Tom 38

Re: Huh?

What mean is "I don't have any".

Now what?

The problem is never ever ever lie to them. Once they catch you in a lie, things get exponentially worse. So you can say you don't have any if you don't have any, but if you have one and say that you don't....

A webcam is not so much a leering eye as the barrel of a gun

Tom 38
Gimp

I have the solution for this

Every time I work from home, I'm either stark bollock naked or (if it is a little chilly) in my tighty whities. This has mostly led to significantly less requests for me to put the camera on when we do VC, apart from one Working Group who seem to only schedule meetings for me when I am working from home...

GoDaddy CEO says US is 'tech illiterate' (so, yeah, don't shut off that cheap H-1B supply)

Tom 38

"Have I just tripped over Poe's law?"

Please indicate your level of seriousness in regards to the above post.

This would be a "partly", I guess. I believe all those things are markers of a functioning fair society, but we are talking about America and it seems that these things are un-American, and interfere with the great American dream of having more money than everyone else.

Tom 38

Re: It's not about pay

Sounds like socialism - might as well say that there should be a minimum hourly wage, a maximum number of hours to work in a week, universal healthcare and free education.

Kids these days will never understand the value of money

Tom 38

Re: Is there any great change from our point of view?

If you cant learn to control your impulse spending when you get a list every month of what went where you are beyond help.

When you get your monthly summary it is can be already too late. You can only use that to inform on your future spending in the next month, it doesn't do anything to stop you spending too much this month.

In the past, I used to take out £60 cash on Monday morning; this was my discretionary spending to buy things like drinks, meals out, lunch, the occasional private eye - anything that wasn't home food, rent, power etc. With this system it was impossible to overspend on my discretionary needs; if on Thursday I'd already spent everything, you can't go big on Friday night.

Compare to nowadays, we just tap a card on a reader to buy a round of drinks... I have had several nights when I've spent WAY too much at the bar and only realised a week or so later. If I'd had to walk out the bar to find a beer* token vending machine, I'd probably have gone home instead.

Tom 38

Re: cash

I think Interac rivals universal health care for importance and I'm surprised I don't hear more about it. We just take it for granted and nobody else really cares what Canada is up to. If you want to see what a cashless society could look like then look into Canada.

Apparently this is because Canadian banks don't tend to issue regular Visa/Mastercard debit cards unlike most of the rest of the world. In Europe, (virtually) everyone with a current account will have either a Visa Debit (Delta) card or a Maestro card with similar ubiquity.

Tom 38

Re: Cashless society

- if the Gov't decides to 'bail in' some of your money (as happened in Cyprus) then you have no way to avoid it."

Deluded if you think that the government can't give you a haircut even if everything is physical currency.

IETF 'reviewing' US event plans in the face of Trump's travel ban

Tom 38

Re: For real sexism, anti intellectualism and racism...

The post does not exonerate Trump, it exposes the hypocrisy if those who would castigate him, but not a radical organisation that has killed millions and made the world a far more miserable and dangerous place.

No, you are wrong, I can castigate Trump and the US both at the same time, no problem.

Brexit could further harm woeful rural payments system

Tom 38
Stop

Re: Farm subsidy

Fact check: Those stats are a bit misleading, it shows the amount of money paid to entities in the UK, but it doesn't break it down to show how much was paid for land in the UK.

For instance, Tate & Lyle Europe is the EU subsidiary of American Sugar Refining, and has sugar growing farms all across the EU; all the subsidies for those farms are paid to the company in the UK.

Grumpy Trump trumped, now he's got the hump: Muslim ban beaten back by appeals court

Tom 38
Joke

I hate to inform all the liberal minded fools but your cell operatives are highlighting their allegiance. ...this will result in them being replaced (directly or indirectly) and 2 years down the line all the liberal fools will have been replaced with Trumps warriors and Trump will get anything he desires.

That's just disrespectful.

I bet you feel like a big man running around shouting names at people who don't agree with you.

Instead all you prove is how ridiculously stupid you are... please continue, I insist.

The more and more you try and take some kind of high ground on others, more will turn against you because... well... your[sic] a prick.

Irony - adj. a bit like iron.

USMC: We want more F-35s per year than you Limeys will get in half a decade

Tom 38
Joke

Re: Irrational

'The Harrier would still win a close range "dogfight" due to the well practiced freaky antics it can pull with thrust vectoring causing the opposition to overshoot, shortly followed by the overshooting aircraft getting a missile tossed up the ass. Tested and proved to work in combat conditions as well.'

Have you got a source for that, because despite it being practised I'm unaware of any occasion in actual combat where the Harrier used vectoring to cause another aircraft to overshoot it.

Yeah, there was an engagment with MiGs over the Indian Ocean, the MiG had a lock on Maverick and Goose, Maverick hit the brakes and the MiG flew right by and then Maverick popped him.

I thought everyone knew this?!

Euro bloc blocks streaming vid geoblocks

Tom 38

Re: Wonderful news!

And we can use our feel at home EU roaming on our mobiles to.... double bollocks!

Cattle that fail, not pets that purr – the future of servers

Tom 38

Thats the entire purpose (and challenge). That data is resiliently held, so you can kill one cow, but as long as you maintain the herd, you'll always have milk. Going from pets to cattle is not simply putting servers in the cloud with boring names, its taking technological steps to ensure that adding/killing servers does not lose data or require deep knowledge or effort.

Tom 38
Stop

Cattle vs pets is not really about cloud

So many wrong takeaways from this - having cattle makes running things in the cloud easier, but it actually makes running things anywhere easier - even if every single service you host is in house.

If you treat each commissioned box as cattle, with no precious local state on the machine, then a failure of that machine can be handled simply and easily by provisioning a new instance, that instance joining the cluster of servers and being prepared for service without any manual configuration.

This can be achieved by anyone with ops knowledge, and so doesn't require specialist team knowledge. In a medium/large organisation, the failure of a single physical machine can result in VMs needing to be re-deployed for a bunch of teams. I think there are 3 indications your servers are cattle and not pets:

* Creating a new one requires no manual configuration of the server nor anything related to the server. Eg, if you create a new server, you shouldn't have to manually configure monitoring of it.

* Destroying a server shouldn't require any special treatment of data. Eg, you should not need to transfer data off before destroying it. It should not matter if a server dies and is completely unrecoverable.

* Creating N running instances should take as much effort for the operator as creating 1 instance

Vapists rejoice! E-cigs lower cancer risk (if you stop smoking, duh)

Tom 38

Re: Bah!

My complaint about the vaping in a room with the cloud chasing sort, is the fact that I actually have been in rooms that have their own fog effects.

Most places won't let you vape indoors, which is fine. I do get miffed when told I can't vape in a club, and then they set off their fog machines, which basically are mains operated vapes without any tasty flavours added...

Tom 38

Re: Downvotes

While it it certainly more agreeable than than tobacco smoke, I don't want vapors breathing out over me with heavilly scented air (if the scents come out with their breath, what other chemicals are coming out too) any more than I would want to smell their bad breath or the exhaust of their cars...

Try and think of it like this. Vapers produce less fumes and smells than a car, but you aren't upset about someone sitting in their car. Vaping doesn't produce harmful fumes, so your opinion on it is really irrelevant.

While I'm all for people stopping smoking, and they should get whatever aids they want/need to do so, vaping seems to be being popularised. It's an aid to stop smoking, and shouldn't be touted as anything 'hip' any-moreso than a crutch helps you recover from a broken leg. I do think they should be availiable.

Two things:

1) Some people do use vaping as an aid to quit smoking, but most simply switch to vaping as a replacement for smoking. Why?

a) Quitting nicotine is extremely difficult. You have no idea.

b) Smokers enjoy the effects and social interaction of using nicotine

c) Its a lot cheaper than smoking

d) Vaping is non harmful. If there is any harm, it is minuscule compared to smoking.

It is "trendy" because more and more people realise that whilst quitting is beyond them, switching to vaping is not, and leads to a higher quality of life.

2) This isn't a dictatorship - we are free to do anything that we want that isn't proscribed - why should we change our behaviour so that your oral nicotine morality is satisfied?

Personally, I've tried quitting smoking and failed. I've tried switching to vaping and have had zero problems sticking to it. My health has improved markedly; I would probably have died already without vaping.

I value being alive a lot more than I do care about your moral opinions on nicotine.

Tom 38

Re: Unknown health concerns vs

Public Health England (government body) did such a study and concluded that:

* The current best estimate is that e-cigarettes are around 95% less harmful than smoking

* Nearly half the population (44.8%) don’t realise e-cigarettes are much less harmful than smoking

* There is no evidence so far that e-cigarettes are acting as a route into smoking for children or non-smokers