* Posts by Doctor Syntax

32762 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014

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Microsoft tells people to prepare for AI search engine that goes Bing!

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That went well

I'm looking of an image, if one exists, of a specific mid C18th presbyterian clergyman ("Captain" Eden in Yorks Arch Soc Record Series CXVII on archive.org).

Search string to "Ask me anything" :get an image william eden 18th century presbyterian minister of holmfirth and elland not anthoney edan and not baron auckland

The first two entries are Dictionary of National Biography and ancestry for William Eden 1st baron Auckland, then People also ask about entries for Anthony Eden and his father, then Wikipedia entry for baron Auckland, then numerous entries for Anthony Eden.

An answer of "Can't find one" might have been a correct response. Scads of responses to what follows the word "not" isn't.

Back in the 1980s I was using a search engine that understood "not". I wonder how much more refinement is needed of AI before we get back to the functionality of those heady days.

A match made in heaven: systemd comes to Windows Subsystem for Linux

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Re: Better idea.

I'm not sure just when it was but I think the rot set in when stuff other than home directories started being stuffed into /usr.

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Re: "extinguishing systemd"

"the current patched up spaghetti ball crud that is Windows 10/11"

So slotting in a systemd-based Linux would be replacing like with like?

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Re: Better idea.

Much the same applies to being a stable-hand.

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Re: Better idea.

"see how far you get"

You get to my favourite, Devuan, and Jake's favourite, Slackware, for a start, plus one or two others. They all work perfectly well. (From what I read it may well be that they have a problem running current versions of Gnome but that doesn't disturb my idea of "perfectly well" and there are quite a few others of the same view.)

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Re: Can someone explain.....

"... what the issue is with systemd ??"

It is not minimalist in the way that Unix was designed to be. As such it doesn't really belong there.

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Re: Better idea.

As far as I can tell VoT sees only BSD is the true heir of V7 although I might have misinterpreted.

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Re: Better idea.

A lot of us Linux on the desktop people are old Unix hands and have been so since a time when "windows" simply meant something to keep the draught out.

This hero probe will smash into an asteroid to see if we can deflect future killer rocks

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"The DART impact will temporarily slow Dimorphos down, changing its orbital track."

Temporarily? How would it get back up to speed?

Boeing to pay SEC $200m to settle charges it misled investors over 737 MAX safety

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"little more than an administrative expense"

Just as well. This is punishment for misleading investors shareholders. Unless it's a personal charge on Boeing management or directors* it's shareholders' money. Shareholders are being fined for having been mislead.

* Or cab be recovered from them by shareholders.

Billionaire CEO tells Googlers 'we shouldn’t always equate fun with money'

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When money gets a bit tight it's not surprising if businesses start to cut back on discretionary expenditure and advertising is going to fall into that category. That sort of cutback will be restored when business picks up.

What's very likely worrying Google senior management is that their customers' senior management might start asking harder questions about advertising policy. Questions like "Does tacking really pay off? How much money are we spending showing adverts to somebody who once enquired about $PRODUCT, who's then bought it, isn't going to buy another and is more and more unhappy about having pointless ads shoved in his face?"

When those sorts of questions start to get asked Google's allegedly value-added services start to get questioned and that might be a hit from which it will be far harder to bounce back.

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Re: Google, the little startup that could!

"the size of the paycheck"

Adequacy of that might or might not be a significant part of job satisfaction. Inadequacy is a major part of job dissatisfaction.

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

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Coffee/keyboard

Re: Sh1t Planning

You forgot ->

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Re: I've seen worse

When my daughter was at grammar shool her class saw the no longer flat roof of the adjacent wing blow past their window.

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Re: Architect Smartitect

I remember the Beeb having a real fireman examine Zaha Hadid's famous award winning fire station. It didn't emerge well from that, there were comments such as the ends of handrails being dangerous to any one running through the building - which tends to happen in fire stations. In fact I think the building was repurposed not that long after it was opened but her reputation was unblemished.

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Re: Architect Smartitect

I will certainly blame the architect who insisted a corner office's windows should meet right in the corner so that it would appear that the wall above was magically floating without support (I think they award each other bunny points for this). It would have been OK if the walls were magically supported but in fact they were supported by a concrete pillar set a foot or so back from the corner. This blocked a good deal of the light from the windows but probably did little for the heat loss.

Just as well that was my boss's office. Mine next door was on a plain wall and had a reasonably sized, unobstructed window but it made his a miserable dark hole to visit.

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Re: Assuming facilities wasn't contacted

"Their boss is the one who said that the ceiling tiles were the only thing that would slow down the water in the case of a leak."

And even worse - assumed it would slow it down.

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Re: An exposed cinderblock ceiling?

I worked in a lab, built c 1970, where the first floor structure was a tubular steel framework supporting some sort of floor blocks above and a false ceiling below. I've no idea what the floor blocks were made of as they were hidden below vinyl covering.

It resulted in a sprung floor for our lab. Haematology had a rather sensitive top-pan balance for weighing out microgram quantities of reagent. Leaning forward to read it more clearly caused the reading to change.

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Whenever I hear tales of campus IT I'm reminded of KCL* where the outage of the central IT lost - permanently IIRC - large amounts of user data. Users who had made their own arrangements for data storage would, I assume, have been OK. After everything had been restored i was reported that in future users should store data centrally. I assume the message would have been received as "We didn't lose your data last time. You have to give us a better chance now."

* My initial IT experience was as a user in a University so I always view campus IT from a user's PoV and that goes double for KCL as that had been my original college some years earlier.

BOFH: You want presentation layer, but we're physical layer

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"some twat wanted is to deal with his personal laptop and then bloody moaned when I refused."

Other than the spiritual solutions suggested above there's always "I'll take a look at it but it will have to be charged to your department's budget".

Microsoft highlights 'productivity paranoia' in remote work research

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This is the Mogg measure of productivity: number of people I can see at desks. It's really a measure of inputs and as productivity is actually a measure of output for a given input it's a strong indication that they lack any means of measuring the output and hence the real productivity.

Good news for UK tech contractors as govt repeals IR35 tax rules

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"The new version of IR35 has simply served to pour glue on the economy and prevent growth."

Much like the original version which is still in place.

Meta accused of breaking the law by secretly tracking iPhone users

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This depends on circumstances. Legislation (e.g.GDPR) can make provision for personal responsibility to fall on the relevant officials of the company. And ultimately the relevant company law may make management and/or directors personally responsible causing the company to breach that law. There is, of course, good reason to think that these sanctions are not applied often enough or that they result in scapegoating when they are.

You've heard of the cost-of-living crisis, now get ready for the cost-of-working crisis

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Re: Email remains the most used communication method for work

"not to avoid "

Dammit. Effective double negative!

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Re: Email remains the most used communication method for work

Normally I'd suggest putting them on hold until they gave up. However, as your phone company they might think that by tieing up one of your incoming lines for a long time they might force you to add a few more.

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Re: Email remains the most used communication method for work

"And generally they have a dozen attendees where only 2 or 3 people will actually speak."

I found the typical work meeting would consist of:

One or maybe two user representatives.

Two other people* who would be the others** actually working on the project***

Any number of people with nothing positive or negative to contribute.

At least one sheet anchor**

* May also include user representatives

** Usually familiar faces because they'd filled the same roles in meetings on other projects

*** I would usually manage not to avoid wasting time with meetings where I wouldn't be working on the project

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You would need to drill down that "sometimes regret". Does it mean they sometimes miss some former colleague or the like? Does it mean they don't find themselves better off? Having moved out of science I did sometimes find myself missing working in a lab environment but not for one moment did I think I'd done the wrong thing.

That 66% is a meaningless statistic without a good deal more explanation.

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Re: 4 Day Week

That depends on personal circumstances. Someone living alone could well suffer from loneliness. Someone with a family gets to see them more if they're not commuting.

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Re: 4 Day Week

But four days where? At home or local? Or at the end of an insanely long, expensive and ultimately unsustainable commute?

Apart from Moggie we've learned that there are alternatives to the city-based long commute employment model that post-war planning regulations ave created. Now is the time to take what we've learned and start building something more rational.

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Re: The daily commute

"I had a 40 minute commute, through nice countryside."

So did I, at least for the half of it closest to home.

"I always found it a useful time to decompress and get work out of my mind"

So did I but only at the end of the day, not at the beginning.

I also, at one time, had about an hour and a half each way by train. A quick calculation showed it was the equivalent of working every weekend for no pay.

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Re: Email remains the most used communication method for work

No I don't want to know your name" kind of thing.

How about, "Yes, I want to know your name. I'll be quoting it when I complain to Dell."?

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How does the economics of hybrid working using public transport work out?

It's a very long time since I had to do this but as I remember it the season ticket was a good deal cheaper than day tickets on a 5-days-a-week basis but would it be cheaper for 3-days-a-week? Even if it would the cost per day would still be perceived as greater.

Also, if most workers choose Tuesday to Thursday as their in-office days what effect does this have on the costs of running the transport network?

Update your Tesla now before the windows put your fingers in a pinch

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"Fingers and elbows may get caught in the window when closing"

A different kind of digital problem.

Another UK tech company bought out: Schneider Electric grabs rest of Aveva

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Re: a "holistic approach to digitization"

Holistic is so yesterday. It has to be vegan as well.

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Re: Avast

The article referenced its LSE listing. Because of your selective quoting I had to review the Wikipedia entry myself to check that TFA wasn't in error.

The nationality of a company is a rather multidimensional metric, especially for a tech company. Where is it registered for tax purposes? Where is it listed (and where are its shareholders)? Where are its administrative offices? To which jurisdiction(s) are its data exposed? These can all be different. And where, in these days of remote working, are its employees and what are their nationalities?

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Re: Avast

"It was dual-listed on the Prague Stock Exchange and on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until it was acquired by NortonLifeLock in September 2022"

Same source.

Satellite operators want option to exceed deorbiting rules

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An obligation to insure is what I had in mind. And, of course, the premium would have to be large to take into account the collateral damage due to the fragmentation the A/C mentions. IOW, make it preferable to get an unusable satellite down. Why leave it there?

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Allow a waiver with a couple of conditions: 1. You can't replace it until it's down and 2. You're on the hook for any collisions it's involved in while in orbit.

GNOME hits 43: Welcome To Guadalajara

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Following the article's link I see Plasma 5.26 is looking rather fuggly. However Gnome still had the edge with Gtk4 making sure users can't customise the appearance to something better. And to think we used to be snide about Windows XP as Windows for Teletubbies.

Meta, Google learn the art of the quiet layoff

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Re: Sunday Pinch-a-Loaf, Baldie Zuckertart et al.

"You're right that HR is there to protect the company but, in the UK, that means treating employees fairly and according to the law"

Or at least it means ticking the boxes to present a case that employees have been treated fairly and according to the law and avoiding any documented evidence that they haven't.

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Re: Too many staff?

But don't miss out on future bast paying clients.

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It's easier to signal virtue than to posses it.

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Re: employement tribubal.

"Those whose roles are specialised, or vocational are shat on ever harder, because their skills are not easily transferrable to the private sector."

Back in the day it came as a shock to TPTB when I handed in my notice and I don't suppose for a minute things have improved. I'd had the temerity to develop skills that were transferable. Somewhere I still have the letter denying my stated reason for leaving.* It was sent at the same time as I was being offered instant promotion - no promotion board and outside the annual cycle - to stay.

* Essentially that they'd left me stagnating on top of the SSO grade for years when the so-called "career grade" was PSO, one grade higher.

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Re: An old trick in the US

"if you can even call the current ERG and Britannia Unhinged-driven regime a Tory government"

I don't think I could.

Meanwhile, in a move that may well win the Brass Neck of the Month competition, Rees-Mogg has been calling anti-frackers (largely in his own party) "Luddites". https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62993487

Alert: 15-year-old Python tarfile flaw lurks in 'over 350,000' code projects

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Yes, if it's an incoming archive from any source, whether or not you believe it to be trusted, treat it as untrusted and look where it's going to extract to. At the very least it saves you from having to tidy up a directory if you the archive's path doesn't start with a daughter directory - or even if it has a daughter directory with the same name as an existing one.

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It seems a bit garbled. I read it as saying that if you back up through enough parent directories you will end up at / but that ignores what happens if there are too many .. levels. Will it stop there or throw an error and do nothing? The latter would mean that malicious use would require either a lucky guess or steering the user to a specific level in the hierarchy in the first place.

The real problem here is running an untar out of immediate user control. It's best to run tar -t or use the equivalent functionality in a GUI archive manager such as Ark. That way you can be sure you know what might be affected.

Getty bans AI-generated art due to copyright concerns

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Re: Not just Getty.

Did you check that Company XXXX hadn't ripped off your work to sell as their own?

Tesla Megapack battery ignites at substation after less than 6 months

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Re: Li-Fe batteries aren't an ideal fit

"the lines of improved design safety and less explodey battery chemistry will cross about 2025"

As someone said in a previous comment, lead-acid batteries are less explody anyway and if you want something that just sits there and doesn't have to be carried about you don't need to worry about the actual weight. The real thing that's wrong with it is that it's old technology so nobody stands to make any money from the royalties.

Tongues wag that Softbank's Son may sell Arm to Samsung

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Re: Language easter egg

Concise OED lists this use of both shot & shut as "informal" rather than slang.

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Re: Wrong

"No one I know uses 'shut'. That sounds norvven to me. Like Newcastle."

Newcastle? Tha're movin' i't'wrong circles lad.

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