Posts by David Roberts

Give me the sword

And I'll take a stab at it.

Mail, of course.

So,

Nobody is currently bothering to police the agreement. Sounds effective.

All i can say is

I wouldn't want the job.

Not sound evidence that anyone both competent and sane wouldn't want the job either, but rumour has it that few if any with senior management capability would relish a job where there was so little chance of making a difference and enhancing your CV.

Expect similar jobs to go to those on the sinecure gravy train,

The "how to run a business" unit of the course

Was less successful than the coding parts.

Am I the only one.......

......who would have launched the photon torpedoes?

Because, well, security, meh, but, photon torpedoes!!!

So

When a bearing craps out on a drive the whole array shuts down in sympathy?

Router firmware updates?

That shouldn't take long.

They seek him here...

Be interesting to see if they manage to track the drone pilot (drilot?) down.

If not, the wrong lesson will probably be learned.

How long ago?

Having been to Ireland (N&S) in the last few months I would like to know how far back this breach goes.

Of course, if they are keeping historical records of card details the answer may be "almost forever".

Aesthetics?

What a load of bullshit.

Serious users would almost certainly be more than happy with a simple graduated scale which changed colour alongside the scale to show the current value.

For example blood glucose on a scale of 3 to 12.

I assume this would work nicely with a smart watch (or other bracelet) with a light source and camera to continuously record the values; first obvious problem is keeping the camera located in exactly the right place. Certainly good for scanning with a mobile phone app. Very good as a medic alert tattoo when an unconcious (or mentally wandering) diabetic goes low or high. Hypo or Hyper with suitable instructions highlighted.

I would be happy with one on the back of my hand showing blood glucose and blood ketone levels. Biggest task would be to source some backless cycling gloves.

No doubt Big Pharma would make sure you had to renew the tattoo every month just to keep the revenue stream nice and active.

Sullied their reputation?

Say it is not so!

I had problems with Google

When searching for Jew sons.

(Othe building supplies companies are available.)

As others have said the investigation should have been for all major religious groupings.

<rant>

Israeli is not a race. It reflects citizenship.

As far as I know you can be Israeli and, for example, Christian (atheist, agnostic, Muslim) so being anti Israeli is not racist, nor is it "religionist" but is a reaction to a particular electorate within a nation state.

It certainly is not anti-semitic.

Many semites are anti Israel.

</rant>

Sorry, started out as a lame joke then pressed the usual buttons.

Modifying test system?

IMHO once you do more than the tiniest of changes to a test system (such as in this case using a valid configuration option present on the live system to change screen colours) you are well down the road to invalidating the testing.

A variant of the common user support question "Did you change anything?" with the usual response of "No." followed by "Yes, but that isn't important.".

If you start adding code to make it obvious that it is a test system then you compromise the strategy of taking an exact copy of the live system then kicking the living shit out of it.

Or building a new version, testing, then flipping it to be the live system.

This problem reads like either a user communication error because nobody though a tester would change the colour scheme, or more likely the result of the kind of lunch break that results in the morning's work disappearing irretrievably into the mists of time such that two weeks down the line there is still no memory of ever having tested anything. Of course the user could just be irredeemably thick. Still, you would have thought the question "How is the testing going?" followed by the answer "What testing?" might have raised a warning flag.

Beer - the obvious culprit. (Not from personal experience, you understand.)

Unless they were very hygenic

I would think twice about drinking the coffee,

Especially with whipped cream.

Come to think of it, did they ever get round to serving coffee?

Mmmmmmm....Apple Turnover Tax

Mmmmmm......Apple turnover......

Sorry, what was the question?

I'm just off to get an apple turnover.

You know you are old

When all your heroes are dead.

RIP

F-bomb?

Had to look it up.

I assume that the code wasn't full of fat laden snacks.

Presumably bad language in the comments?

Existing known faults only?

Two downsides to this report:

(1) It is about monitoring a known fault and learning the sequence up to a quake.

(2) It seems to be easily confused by other near by faults.

In the South Island of NZ the last few big quakes seem to have been along new faults which have not previously been active. There also a huge number of minor faults in very tectonically active areas.

Any progress in prediction of earthquakes is good, but this seems to have a long way to go.

Firewall bypass?

This looks like the usual development software with all the hooks for a lazy developer still in place.

Quite a few back doors left in.

Savings?

Presumably calculated by the same people who did the smart meter numbers for the UK?

There is a school of thought which claims that (in a well inulated house) it is just as efficient to maintain the same temperature 24/7. You can turn the thermostat down when you are away on holiday, of course.

I suspect that the vast majority of homes in the UK only have the H part of HVAC so the projected savings from not running the A/C full blast whilst you are down at the beach may not apply here.

Icon for wood burning stove in the winter.

In the middle of a brown out at the moment

Sorry if this is TMI.

No problem.

Just join two Chinooks at right angles in the middle.

Simples.

Off to the Drones club as usual ->

Just me?

Or has this information been available to bad actors since whenever.

All that has happened is that the SPAM list has now been exposed to world+dog.

Anyone previously charging for access to this list will, of course, be slightly underwhelmed.

Of more use is details of recent data breaches where credentials have been released for the first time. Kudos, as usual, to HIBP for providing a very useful service.