* Posts by TRT

9611 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2009

Driver in Uber's self-driving car death goes on trial, says she feels 'betrayed'

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Re: Who cares....

"the woman and bicycle were clearly in the wrong"

*sarcasm* Obviously deserved a death sentence then. */sarcasm*

In order to assert that accidents of that type must happen all the time, you have to ascertain how may incidents of that type don't become accidents of that type due to the presence and active response of a reasonably vigilant driver.

It would be impossible to prove beyond any doubt that had the driver been paying attention, the outcome of the event would have been different. It is similarly impossible to prove that it wouldn't have been any different.

It would be even harder to determine if the the driver HAD been paying attention that they would have taken action to avoid the outcome, seeing as though they were in a vehicle that supposedly would avoid such incidents of its own volition. In a way, I wish that this was in fact the case being tested. This will be an easy one... she wasn't paying attention, she didn't see the woman, she's liable. The harder case, and the one that puts the ball firmly in the court of the developer, is if the driver HAD seen the woman but the vehicle's control system either hadn't the sensor data to label it or if it had, that the vehicle's system would have taken avoidance action about it. How's a supervising driver supposed to know if something has been detected or not and if it has, how has it been classified? It's all well and good showing these videos of objects with green cuboids around them and vector arrows attached to them, but these aren't displayed in the vehicle, are they?! Superimposed over all the windows to show what the vehicle's view of the world is? We don't get to see a stream of machine code down the side labelling the possible responses and highlighting the selected response.

BOFH: Gaming rig for your home office? Yeah right

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There was a pilot who trashed their plane during a landing last year I think it was and blamed turbulence from a wind farm 1.8km away. To be fair, it could just about be feasible; or at least the air incident investigation board seem to think it's feasible. So you know... could be, could be. I'll have to watch those pinwheels kids stick in the sand.

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Indeed our labs were legendary for our Tanarus skillset.

To be fair, we were producing visual stimuli for use in various experiments, reconstructing tissue in 3D and doing a lot of artistic and graphic design work... so we DID actually use the machines for proper work, even the SGI-Indigo which, TBH, during after hours parties we mostly got used for the demo flight-simulator and for trying to break the physics model of the jello-ball demo thing (I forget what it was called now, but it was great fun).

Reg reader rages over Virgin Media's email password policy

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Re: TP-Link print server

Had that one before! It's more common that you would think.

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Re: Browser password generators

As I've indicated before, you can set field validity in HTML5 using a regex expression. This should or could be used to clue OS & other password generators in to the restrictions, but that should really come with a strength meter.

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Re: Something's not right here

There's something to be said for scary-looking strength meters on password entry fields.

Fujitsu: Dumping older workers will wipe out quarter of forecast profit

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Re: Disgusting..

Now now. Don't confuse ageism with experienceism. We'd be perfectly happy to employ anyone with 25 years experience, even if they're only 20.

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Re: Disgusting..

Come on now... don't be patronising. If they were designing websites specifically for the older user they'd have the colour control set to 100. And over the top colour palettes seems to be a feature of design for websites with a younger demographic.

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TikTok bags.

Oh, hang on... TikToks come in little clear boxes, don't they?

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Re: Disgusting..

I know what you mean! TBH, the design isn't that bad, it just doesn't gel with the UI/UX principles I picked up working in a media college circa early 2000s. That was all down to the research articles that used to come out of places like Xerox Parc and Don Newton's office. That kind of research seems somehow to have evaporated... I mean, I know it HASN'T, because it couldn't have done... but you just don't see it anymore. What you get is thousands of frameworks all trying to be slightly different and be the next big thing. There's no consensus, really.

NO that's not it...

What there doesn't seem to be anymore is any controlled testing of these things. At least, not published as scientific articles anyway.

Is there a Journal of Interface Design? I'll have to go and look it up... in the cardex at the local library.

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Re: Disgusting..

Even the RNIB website has missing alt-texts!

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Re: Disgusting..

I recently had to complain about a bus travel web-ish-app. I recall the previous time I had to complain...* and so THIS time when they asked for the version number of the app which available from the account screen, I remembered it was in the bottom right and in 9pt #AAA type on a #EEE background. The last time they had asked me for that it ended in a massive argument that it wasn't there, at least until I was proved wrong by one of them screenshooting their phone and scribbling a red circle around the number before sending it to me. I had to use a magnifying glass. I mean, who uses the bus mainly? The very young and the very old! And people without a car. Anyway, user demographic matters!

*That complaint was because the application included walking time to the bus stop. They still haven't fixed it by the way**. The travel planner says e.g. Travel time 15:47 to 17:40. Bus departs at 15:47 from xxx Railway Station. I live just under 10 minutes walk from the xxx Railway Station, so I start walking at a few minutes before 15:37. Arrive at bus stop at 15:45... check app again and it NOW reads Bus departs at 15:55. When I check the timetable, the bus is scheduled to leave that stop at 15:55, not 15:47. The planner screen should not say "Bus Departs at", it should say either "You need to leave at:" OR "Bus Departs at:" and give the scheduled departure time, with the travel time showing when you need to start walking. I mean, you might NOT be walking to the bus stop, or you might be a slow walker, so at least accurately describe the information.

**Not only are they bad at apps, communication, etc etc which might be forgivable seeing as though it's a bus company, they're also rubbish at running buses.

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Come on... get with the time... no-one posts letters anymore. They'll be sewing eMail bags.

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Re: Disgusting..

I find it particularly perplexing when they start mentioning DX/UX. If the population is getting older, then the USER bit of UX is getting older too. As a slightly older individual, I really don't get on with many modern interfaces; infinite scroll is a particular pet hate of mine.

Case in point, I just got handed the source code of V2.0 of our website ready for integration with our back end. Fired it up and the first thing I find is that my ageing eyes can't even read the bloody text because it's thin white text on a cyan background. Contrast fails all of the WAVE accessibility tests. And this is a company paid tens of thousands to produce a modern, fresh design. Mostly made up of young and upcoming individuals. It also failed the tests for screen reader accessibility too. It's going to take me weeks to get it into a fit state for release.

Just two die for: Apple reveals M1 Ultra chip in Mac Studio

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Re: I like the look of it but…

Uncompressed UHD video?

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Re: I like the look of it but…

Yeah, SFP+ might be a thing they want to consider if they're aiming at studio work. Wouldn't be too big an ask either.

UK govt signs IT contracts 'without understanding' the needs

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Re: "signing contracts [..] before it has a good understanding of the requirements"

Oh well... if it's expensive then it must be good. Very reassuring.

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Re: Piggy in the middle

The first requirement is to know what and/or who requires something.

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Re: "signing contracts [..] before it has a good understanding of the requirements"

It's almost as if the objective was to sign the contract and transfer the money, rather than the objective being whatever the IT project was about.

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Re: Only one person can save us

Dido Harding is in the library. Dido Harding has been saved.

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I was just going to say that I find it in some small way comforting that Government is representative of "The People".

BOFH: All hail the job cuts consultant

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Re: BOFH has excelled himself

Constructive ambiguity.

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Re: BOFH has excelled himself

I particularly like the way they set it up so they both had to be called up to the boardroom and be present and witnessed in the same room as Gerard, albeit live by video link, at the exact same time, thus neatly quenching any smouldering suspicions that this might be a set up.

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Botanist? Do you mean Antoine Magnan?

IT blamed after HR forgets to install sockets in new office

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Ah... Walsall gauge. Remember it well.

ARPANET pioneer Jack Haverty says the internet was never finished

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Re: What about IPv4?

Quite correct. BUT we're not talking about extending the IPv4 stack here. There IS a 4 bit version field right at the very start of the packet header. That immediately flags up the structure for the rest of the packet. How do you think IPv6 works?

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Re: What about IPv4?

I realised that (colons) just after my edit window expired. Hoist by (my own, but not) pedantardary!

I still find it incredibly difficult to read IPv6 addresses. One or two colons still blur a bit, and the compression rules allow for one address to be compressed to several equally valid compressed values.

I also find them quite hard to visualise as bit patterns. Again, that may be just brain rewiring that's yet to happen.

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Re: What about IPv4?

It's not the IPv6 address size that bother me... I'm sure my brain cells will "rewire" to be able to read them given time, it's the fact that my eyesight is nowhere near as good as it used to be and the blur created by a chain of 3 semi-colons looks more or less the same as that from a chain of 2 or 4 semi-colons.

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Re: What about IPv4?

The only problem with beer based development work is that IP buckets.

Amazon Alexa can be hijacked via commands from own speaker

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Re: Also an Alexa refusenik

Ah! My name is John Wellington Wells. Great song.

I still get odd looks when I refer to a certain part of London as "Simmery Axe".

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I have for so long wanted to release a single called "Hey Siri!", which includes a chorus of "Hey Siri! Play that song called "Hey Siri!""

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

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Re: More worrying, I find...

Indeed, they don't need to start in space... but that's where it will finish.

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More worrying, I find...

Is that it would be perfectly possible for Russia to effectively quarantine the planet forever... if they believe that space-based communications pose a threat, then they've already demonstrated that they could shrapnel any useful orbit for several centuries to come. The only thing that might make them think twice is that they've got as much orbiting infrastructure as everyone else does.

Co-inventor of Ethernet David Boggs dies aged 71

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I have to confess...

I'm of the age where if I'm being honest I'd have to admit that I was there at the time when us in tech thought the Internet was a pretty neat idea. You know the days. The days before social media. We did begin to start wondering though. As we trawled usenet.

Apple has missed the video revolution

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Re: Apple dumbed down and threw pros under a bus

Marathon was a great series!

I find Macs still offer the best all round versatility for my line of work - they can run Mac, Windows and 'nix executables with a minimal amount of tweaks. Windows is fast catching up with the Linux subsystem, but as the 'nix stuff is usually heavy lifting grunt work, WSL is unable to give the performance.

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Re: Apple dumbed down and threw pros under a bus

"the only reason Mac survived"

Not the ONLY reason.

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Re: Apple had spectacularly bad timing

"especially as those with Macs are more likely to be in a position where their meetings are a bit more important"

Genuine LOL.

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Your mileage may vary...

Many NLE suites are Mac based. But the grade of hardware required for that can be pricey nowadays. It's true that the Windows PC hardware is far more flexible, offering intermediate upgrade steps at a more affordable price point than Apple. And this drives the software development - there are some cracking Apple video production tools, but they're matched now. It's an arms race between platforms, and it always has been.

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Re: Apple dumbed down and threw pros under a bus

You're possibly thinking of DTP rather than video and audio.

Plans for UK rival to Silicon Valley ditched

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Silicon Valley?

That's in Essex, isn't it? Lots of silicon valleys over there.

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Re: has anyone told those that are building the line?

Pity it won't have a station interchange with HS2 at Calvert.

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Re: Does the Tory Government Actually Know What It Is Doing ?

I'm not entirely sure that such a venture would be a great idea - it would get referred to as Cam-Ousing Route. And you can't Google that! (At work anyway).

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

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Re: This has got to be some kind of decoy for something really evil they are planning.

They're waiting for the day that their time-travel project finally hits pay dirt and they can send the patent back in time and sue EVERYONE. Including themselves.

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Re: Output?

Will it have special feet for use in that role?

IBM cannot kill this age-discrimination lawsuit linked to CEO

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Re: Guilty until proven guilty

I expect that it's because "medical insurance".

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Re: Get out while and if you can

Sounds like shit. I'm not much taller than that myself; seems bizarre and horrible behaviour from a colleague(s) and a despicable lack of understanding and action by HR. Makes me feel glad to have not had to work in such a toxic environment, though I've had a bullying boss before now. My first one, actually, so I had no comparison and just accepted it as "the adult workplace" for years.

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Re: Get out while and if you can

I guess now I'm getting on a bit I'm seeing that age is a forgotten -ism.

Point to case: there's a poster doing the rounds of The Tube about zero tolerance to abuse on the grounds of race, religion, sex, gender-identity or sexuality.

So it's a clear no to calling someone a racial, religious, sexual, or gender slur but "geriatric fuckwit", as I heard one abusive asshole shout when they were refused entry at the gate line over an expired travel card, I guess is ok.

AI really can't copyright the art it generates – US officials

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Not necessarily applicable to the UK legal system, but Naruto et al v. David Slater would be a case that immediately springs to mind.