* Posts by Loyal Commenter

5761 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2010

Under that pile of spare keys and obsolete cables is an IoT device: Samsung pushes useful retirement project for older phones

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Just chuck it into the new one. Eat your gamma-ray burst, or you won't get any dessert.

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I find the lifespan of most phones these days is defined by how long the battery lasts, and how long you can continue to get battery replacements after that before the cost of replacing the battery exceeds the cost of a new phone...

Apologies for the wait, we're overwhelmed. Yes, this is the hospital. You need to what?! Do a software licence audit?

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FAIL

Re: Really??

Just because there's a pandemic on, doesn't mean petrol station attendants shouldn't stop any ambulance that is filling up and rifle through the paramedics' pockets to make sure they're not stealing any chewing gum from by the counter, eh?

Same logic, same stupidity.

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Stop

I think the clinicians may be busier, not their computers.

Just because a nurse is run off his/her feet and hasn't had a break in 13 hours doesn't mean you'll need an extra software license. Unless the person who came up with that licensing model is related to the BOfH. Or Jeremy Hunt.

Developers! These 3 weird tricks will make you a global hero

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Re: Regulations, sometimes they make things worse

To be fair, those accessibility regulations don't apply to historic buildings in the same way as modern ones, for the exact reason that you'd need some pretty serious structural alterations to some irreplaceable places. In buildings with plenty of space inside, you can often fit ramps in, but some old buildings are surprisingly cramped, and have things like steep spiral stairs that simply can't be adapted for wheelchair users or people with limited mobility. Places like cafés in Victorian shopping arcades spring to mind.

Your local rules about putting ramps on the outside of the building do sound pretty stupid though. I won't make any assumptions about the political tendencies of your local government officials, although I suspect they may be of the bluish hue.

What is more surprising here though, is that you still have a local bank in a historic building, and it wasn't turned into a wine bar 25 years ago.

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Re: Agile

To the downvoters on my previous post - do you actually know how software development works?

You do know that developers (in most case) don't get to set the requirements? Most software is built by teams of people, not by some neckbeard in his mum's basement making it up as he goes along.

If you start working on stuff that isn't in the requirements, questions are going to be asked. At the very least you'll end up in conflict with the person who set those requirements, trying to explain why you think you know more about what the person ultimately paying for the software has asked for, than them.

Courting that kind of conflict isn't going to make for a very pleasant, or productive working environment...

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Agile

If you're doing agile properly, then the developers shouldn't really be in charge of this stuff on-the-fly. You should have some user stories for it, and they should define what needs to be done.

It thus falls to being a BA job, and if your BA isn't considering such things, then a culture change is required there.

The underlying problem here is that accessibility isn't built-in by default into most software. Like security, and user access control, it is often bolted-on as an afterthought. It needs to be right up there in the requirements at the top, then we can start looking at a standardised way of implementing it.

Study: AI designed to detect diabetic eye disease blinks in the real world, makes more work for doctors

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Re: AI trial sucessful

A quick google tells me that a trained ophthalmologist can expect a salary of up to £75k. The salary for a technical role in the NHS is roughly a third of this.

Logic then dictates that those touting this software are going to be charging an annual licence fee of something in the order of £50k.

Cynical, moi?

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Re: Image Quality

This is actually a pretty good example of the creeping privatisation of the NHS, and the negative effects of doing so. The motivations of private companies (in this case, the "contractor") and medical professionals are quite different.

The contractor will almost certainly have been chosen either as the lowest quote, or as the only quote (in which case, the outsourcing has probably been put in place specifically to give work to that organisation, not because of clinical need).

Private companies are motivated by profit, so the person doing the scans will be the cheapest available, and thus will have been trained to the minimum standard required to do the job. Spending any more money on someone more qualified, or on more training will be seen as wasted cash.

Medical professionals, however, are motivated by a desire to try and help people. They will want to do the best job possible, to save them having to repeat the job later, and to make sure they don't miss anything and potentially get sued. The private individual doing the retinography doesn't have this worry, as it is their company that gets sued, not them personally.

In theory, outsourcing such tasks gains an economy of scale (e.g. multiple NHS trusts using the same outsourcer). In practice, it doesn't save costs, but instead ends up with corners being cut to maximise the bottom line. In the end, this make the people who put that outsourcing in place very rich, at the expense of everyone else.

If you're a WhatsApp user, you'll have to share your personal data with Facebook's empire from next month – or stop using the chat app

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Re: Really ?

This may or may not be correct. It's not exactly relevant to the previous comment though. The astute amongst us will notice an argument being switched and see it for the sure-fire indicator of an attempt to deflect attention from a disproven claim.

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Re: Does this apply here?

Does WhatsApp actually store that data or just use it to direct the call? I'm not familiar with the technical details of how it works, but if they are not storing it, then presumably you have already given consent for that person to have your number to call you?

If they are collecting and storing numbers without the consent of the people those numbers relate to, then it is pretty obviously PID, and they should be gaining consent from you to use it, along with informing you of the purposes of doing so.

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Re: Really ?

Several EU countries (notably France and Germany) have had some high profile successes in the area of data protection against global megacorps, such as the right to be forgotten and Google, so I'm calling bullshit. GDPR provides pretty strong recourse against privacy abusers.

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Re: Does this apply here?

My understanding is that GDPR requires explicit opt-in consent to the collection of such data, for each specific purpose. So, whilst it might be necessary to collect some information for the service to work, it is not a necessary part of that service to serve up personalised advertising, so, as I understand it, FB should be obtaining consent to collect that information for this purpose. Under GDPR, just saying "by using this service you give consent" is not allowable.

I wouldn't expect the ICO to have the balls to challenge it, but regulators in more privacy-minded countries such as France and Germany will almost certainly be champing at the bit at the idea of taking a big chunk of FB's global turnover as a penalty. 4% isn't it? Turnover, not revenue.

Failed insurrection aside, Biden is going to be president in two weeks. What does it mean for tech policy?

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Re: Follow the false flags

Reality is often in conflict with what Kayleigh McEnany says.

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Re: Rent a mob

we just cannot round up any and all to go through their entire lives.

Except, of course, that because you don't have Policing by Consent, police overreach means exactly that, along with things like disproportionate use of force towards people with a darker skin tone. Not that we don't have that here, but at least it is recognised, and to some extent, acted on, rather than promoting officers who commit acts of violence against minorities.

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Re: Rent a mob

And BLM is hardly the Black Panthers!

...

So I found a quick example of a 'black power' type movement that clearly is/was armed with assault weapons

So, you are simultaneously saying that BLM isn't like the Black Panthers, but that it is like a completely different "black power" movement, like the Black Panthers.

George Orwell would be proud to have come up with an example of Doublethink like that.

You seem to be trying to put forward the idea that a widespread, well accepted, and largely peaceful protest against inequality is equivalent to a tiny violent black power movement (which itself has arisen due to oppression of those people by a white majority), and appear to be doing so in order to defend white supremacist ideology. Next up, you'll be claiming that old white men are dangerously under-represented in Western democracies and that their voices are not being heard.

Falsely equating equality movements with supremacy movements, and cherry-picking examples of violence amongst a very large body of protesters, whilst ignoring widespread violence amongst a much smaller body of counter-protesters marks you out as one of ones in the wrong.

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Re: Rent a mob

I think, just maybe, the OP was employing irony.

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Why is the US the most desired country for those seeking immigration?

Got any figures to back that up, or do you just "reckon so"?

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The real danger to him will come from some of his "less-than-stable" supporters when they flip to the next conspiracy theory and start believing he has betrayed them in some way. We've already seen that they are willing to attempt armed insurrection and are stupid enough to ignore warnings about being shot in the chest. It will only take one "lucky" one.

Just to be clear - I am in no way endorsing that sort of behaviour, but those nutters are out there, and, it seems, in numbers.

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Re: Rent a mob

it was just the first one that came up in a search for 'BLM negligent discharge'

So, you're saying the top hit for those particular search terms is a web site nobody has ever heard of, with redacted ownership, based somewhere in Texas.

Given that it was the first hit, I'm assuming subsequent hits were less reputable, at least less referenced, which is a reasonable measure of consensus.

Decent critical analysis skills would allow you to make a reasonable hypothesis that your original implication of equivalence between BLM (legitimate) protesters and MAGA (illegitimate) rioters is a bit flawed. But then, if you had decent critical analysis skills, I don't think you'd be trying to put forward the opinions that you are.

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

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Re: four legged tripod

Didn't David Dimbleby get a tattoo of six-legged scorpion a few years back?

To be fair, it's easier to find an 8-legged scorpion and pull two legs off than to find a 4-legged dog and make it grow an extra leg (no smutty responses please!).

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Re: Grauniad fluffed it again.

looking at additional photos on the web, it is clearer that it is in fact a tetrapod.

Damn you. Now I've got to wondering why we usually say quadroped from the Latin root, rather than tetrapod from the Greek, and why we don't say triped rather than tripod. For that matter, why do we say octopus and not octopod, and gastropod not gastropus. Anyone?

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Re: Talking of getting it wrong

I had a "Royal Mail 48™" package (note 48™ not 48HR) sent to me at the end of November. RM's tracking sat at "with sender" when we all know full well it was in the middle of a heap somewhere in a sorting office. It turned up 15 days later, so circa 360 hours, not 48...

It's entirely possible that RM's track and trace is being run into the grounds by exactly the same bunch of profit-extracting tory wankpuffins as "test and trace".

Lenovo reveals smart specs that let you eyeball five virtual displays, with strings attached

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Re: Mark can't see a use case so the tech is junk?

Damn, read your comment after posting my own...

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Re: Mark can't see a use case so the tech is junk?

He later asked: [...] “Who needs five virtual displays tethered to a PC?"

Well, Terry Pratchett used a bank of six screens, and he wasn't even a software developer...

If I had room for that many monitors around my desk, you can be damn sure I'd be using that many, and it would save me a lot of time flicking between all the various windows (and browser tabs) I need for my day-to-day work. As it is, I'm having to make do with a measly three.

Be careful where you log into GitHub: Dev visits Iran, opens laptop, gets startup's entire account shut down

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FAIL

Re: Artificial problem generators

A little time spent actually studying history, rather than imagining what happened would illustrate that the rise of German fascism in the early 20th century was due to the exact opposite; Hitler gained power by promising freedom to people who were being economically constrained as a result of losing the Great War. It was used to justify the annexation of Sudetenland (Lebensraum).

If you're going to go around using the "slippery slope" argument and accuse people of saying the same things as the Nazis, it's probably best to check you're not doing it yourself first.

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Re: Artificial problem generators

I'll just add:

Freedom to transact without permission of third parties.

...is what leads to a tiny minority of the population hoarding all the wealth. It is what was the downfall of 19th century "liberal economics" (this is liberal in the financial sense, not the political sense, important distinction). It is playing out again with "neoliberal economics" and is why markets need regulation to prevent monopolies.

Freedom to exchange information without external governance.

...is exactly what is abused in price-fixing, again, another reason economic regulation is required, this time to prevent cartels.

As I said, failure to regulate markets leads to all the wealth ending up in very few hands, and a derogation of freedom for everyone else. Throughout history this has not ended well - think Madame Guillotine.

A quick aside about entropy: entropy is the measure of disorder in a system (not heat, in this context, that is known as enthalpy). Entropy always increases because more disordered states exist than ordered ones. A good illustration here is the number of disordered arrangements of gas molecules in a room where they are spread around randomly, as opposed to a single arrangement where they are all lined up in one corner. If you start with the latter state, you will, in practice, never end up back in that state, you will always have one of the higher entropy disordered states because there are vastly more of them.

Cats: Not a fan favourite when the critters are draped around an office packed with tech

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Re: The worst combination

Presumably someone else's garden so all your flowers don't end up smelling like cinder toffee, or candy floss, or whatever other hipster vape-perfume is popular this week.

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The worst combination

Is cats and smokers. Cat hair can be removed by vacuuming, unless it's coated in a fine layer of tar. For similar reasons, you don't want to place anything electronic in a kitchen, unless you would like a thin film of grease deposited inside it.

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Re: Dead mouse

Apparently a mouse can fit through a 6-7mm hole (they can basically fold their spines and ribs up). It would have to be a pretty tightly designed fax machine to not have a gap that size anywhere. Being rodents, they can also chew through pretty much anything they can get purchase on, so that 2-3mm vent in a plastic casing can easily be made into a slightly wider vent.

This product is terrible. Can you deliver it in 20 years’ time when it becomes popular?

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At the very least, a note in the box to tell you how to reset the pairing would be nice...

Indeed, as I recall it, this thing came in a lot of brightly-coloured cardboard, with a couple of four-colour-glossies about all the "amazing" stuff it can do, and detailed instructions about how to unwrap it and plug it in, which terminate pretty much at the point where you turn it on.

Don't get me started on the hideous UI this thing has, which looks like it was designed by an advertiser.

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The only ones I've ever seen all (and I mean ALL) had small squiggles on them in some place or another, where someone (no doubt in the marketing department) had used a permanent marker on them before realising it doesn't wipe off, and that it isn't advisable to use strong solvents on them.

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I think the idea behind the wireless pairing of the remote is so that the TV box can be put in a cupboard, or wherever, out of the way, rather than gathering dust on a bit of surface you could otherwise use to situate any other small shiny black TV peripheral, possibly one you can play actual proper games on.

Of course, that still requires the wired connections to both the TV and power supply, as well as the patch cable to the router (why would you put a $0.50 wi-fi chip in such a thing?) I, for one, won't be putting something that generates heat into a cupboard, it doesn't sound like a good way to extend its lifespan.

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

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Boffin

Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

I think you mean menthylate. If you managed to methylate your lungs, you'd be in serious trouble. See my post about diazomethane above, as this is exactly the risk you are doing your level best to negate when handling this stuff. That, and being blown up.

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Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

OILRIG: Oxidation Is loss, Reduction Is Gain (of electrons).

Ironically, on the grand scale, a lightning strike is actually the loss of electrons (The electron stream moves up the lightning bolt), but the result is your reduction to a pile of ashes...

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Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

As long as you run upwind.

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Re: Messing with oxygen-fluorine compounds

I lost too many hours to reading that blog.

The nastiest thing I ever worked with was diazomethane as a high-yield methylation agent, and that was quite nasty enough (acutely toxic, as well as carcinogenic and teratogenic, and a contact explosive is it ever comes out of solution or gets too warm). Reactions were done cautiously, in an ice bath behind a blast shield in a well running fume hood, and only in glassware with smooth joints (no sintered glass!), and if you ever smelt the solvent (ether, which is quite easily recognisable), you'd hit the emergency vent button and scram. Thankfully I never did. I'm glad I no work in a field where if I make a stupid mistake I run the risk of blowing myself up, or condemning myself to a slow death through chronic poisoning.

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Flame

Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

Fluorine sits there in the top right of the periodic table, snarling at the other elements, like a bobcat backed into a corner.

Most of its compounds are nasty stuff, such as HF, the only acid that has to be kept in a plastic bottle, because it dissolves glass.

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Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

In a similar vein, I was at school with a guy who thought it would be fun to pour petrol on a fire before lighting it, not realising that the vapour pressure of petrol is quite high and the flames therefore tend to flash back. In this case, to the empty can he was holding. He needed skin grafts from his thigh to replace the skin he no longer had on his hand.

Dutch officials say Donald Trump really did protect his Twitter account with MAGA2020! password

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Re: Here, FTFY

Indeed, when idiots who operate at the fringes of the law (when it comes to hate speech and violence) congregate, all this does is keep their echo-chamber away from susceptible innocents, and has the convenient side-effect of making it easier for law enforcement to know where to look.

They won't be recruiting the young-and-naïve on FB or Twitter if they're banned there, so the "new blood" would have to go seeking them out.

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Coat

Re: I see what's wrong

Ah, you see, Trump apparently doesn't understand the meaning of Shift. Yes, even when voted out.

Okay okay, my coat's already on...

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Re: Not just Trump out

I agree with most of what you wrote there, but this nugget: "Moderation is key; backed by education" isn't quite right. You can be as educated as you like, but if you start off poor, unregulated free-market economics leads to you staying that way. The key to that moderation is regulation. That doesn't mean a command economy, but it does mean such things as legislation to prevent monopoly abuse, which I believe is not strong enough, because it doesn't do anything to limit predatory capitalism whereby large corporations (your Alphabets, Amazons, et al) have free rein to absorb smaller companies, or straight-up outcompete them by economies of scale. This is good for those predatory organisations, but not for anyone else.

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Re: less than a month before no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again

I'd be surprised if most trumpies can read to the end of a sentence.

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Trollface

Here, FTFY

It’s worth noting there is less than a month before no one has to care what appears on Trump’s Twitter feed ever again Trump is no longer a "special person" and is permanently banned from Twitter for propagating hate speech.

Atlantic City auctions off chance to hit Big Red Button and make grotesque Trump Plaza casino go boom

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"Made a lot of money and got out"

In Trump's world, this apparently equates to "ran a casino into bankruptcy". A casino, where the business model is that people turn up and give you their money.

Now, if he did actually make money from it, I'm sure both his creditors, and the IRS would be interested to hear about how much, and what happened to it.

GitHub will no longer present a cookie notification banner – because it's scrapping non-essential cookies

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Of course this does nothing to stop other methods of tracking.

Since users of GitHub are likely to be authenticated, in order to access their repositories, it follows that any API requests include that AUTH info, and therefore the back-end will have no issues with recording who does what. The end user has no control over what happens to that data, especially in the US, where the concept of privacy is as screwed up as their date formatting.

On the plus side, this does potentially stop every advertiser and their co-spawn from tracking your every movement. Somewhat.

Unless they're paying MS for that data, of course. In theory, GDPR stops them doing that with data about users in the EU (and for now, at least, the UK, but who knows what will happen with the disaster capitalist race-to-the-bottom here). US users, legally, are fair game, so it remains to see whether Microsoft decide to be ethical with their data or not.

Cruise, Kidman and an unfortunate misunderstanding at the local chemist

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Re: Just a murder

I'm guessing they were experts in murder investigation if it took me two trips to the station for them to find out those crucial details.

It wasn't the West Yorkshire Police was it? If it was, it sounds like they were more on the ball than usual.

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Re: 3 times I've felt the long arm

They certainly are solid things, the heels of biker boots.

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Re: We did manage to raise eyebrows at Boots one time

If you live somewhere where you raise eyebrows buying nail varnish as a male, I'd suggest moving out of Stepford...

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Re: Hmm

You'd still have needed to get the film developed first, of course, and if you didn't have your own darkroom, that would mean taking them to Boots or A N Other film developer. If you tried scanning undeveloped film, you'd be getting an awful lot of all-black negatives.

edit - I'm also thinking that you'd probably want to look at the prints first to decide which of the many you'd want to scan. My memory of scanners in the 1990s is that they were not fast. This is pre USB-1, so you'd be talking parallel port, or, if you were "lucky", and also rich, SCSI. At a couple of minutes a scan, you'd probably be talking days to scan several hundred shots.