* Posts by LucreLout

3039 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2014

New age discrim row: Accenture, Facebook sued by sales boss for favoring 'new blood'

LucreLout

Re: We hired the other guy

Lately all I can get is helpdesk which pays squat and requires all sorts of knowledge. blecch. I've gone from CTO to peon in 20 years.

Clearly your skills & experience are being wasted. What a disgrace that there's simply no oversight or policing of the ageism laws. You will, however, laugh last, because you'll be retired right around the time ageism starts to bite the millennials on their soft right-on-unless-youre-old arses. They won't like it a bit, and it will be played for and got.

Millennials - realise you collectively know fuck all of any value, and that you need to learn from the older wiser people that do, rather than assuming that because we have grey hair we can't code anymore. The fact that we wrote everything they use seems to have escaped them. Oh, except farcebook, which, frankly, isn't very good, isn't very useful, and has the shelf life remaining less than some mainframes.

Patterns are still patterns, solid is still solid, functional & oop are the same as ever, and this weeks hotshit javascript framework will take us less time to master than it took you to learn the basics.... that its all new to you doesn't mean its all new to us. It isn't. The Cloud isn't anywhere near as difficult as putting together the same shit physically, then configuring it; it just isn't.

LucreLout

Re: Difficult to stop

As a 'mature' worker, I've seen this myself - not usually as blatant, but you know it when you see it (or become a victim)

Absolutely.

As a dev I always get tech tested far harder than the Millennials to prove that not only can I still cut it, but am at a level of capability that few, if any, of the youngsters have attained. The same people testing me in roles I've accepted, then go oh-so-easy on their own cohort, because they couldn't answer half the questions I was asked, or produce half as good a solution during the test.

The fact that the only ism that truly matters to us all, is ageism: even the one legged black transgender lesbians will get old. That the millennials are so keen to rush to ageism is going to bite them hard on the arse in the years to come - there's still going to be Gen Xers at the top of most large companies, and the new kids will be looking at 40 year old millennials 10ish years from now as being too far over the hill.

I'm not trying to suggest that racism, sexism etc don't matter, of course they do, but they affect less than 100% of people, whereas ageism will affect 100% of us.

Almost 1 in 3 Brits think they lack computer skills to do their jobs well

LucreLout

Re: If you lack the IT skills necessary to do your job...

If you lack the IT skills necessary to do your job...

... then your manager has failed and needs either retraining or firing. Because it's their job to make sure that this is not the case.

There's a wonderful little concept, not very popular these days, but one can only hope it will return to the fold sooner rather than later, known as personal responsibility.

My skills are no reflection of my managers (collective throughout my career) at all. They are reflective of my taking personal responsibility to ensure that I am as good or better than everyone I work with, and that my skills remain current with the wider marketplace.

The only job security anyone ever really has is their ability to attract another employer quickly if anything happens to the current role. I take responsibility for ensuring I can walk into several jobs at very little notice, which is why I get paid in what may be politely termed the premium segment.

Your skill set is your job, not your managers. His/her job is to replace you with someone better if you don't maintain an effective skill level. Sorry, but that is the really real world out there: get your game face on.

LucreLout

Re: Liars

Based on the constant stream of support calls I overhear in my office, it seems about 2 in 3 Brits are liars...

Charming. I mean that. It implies you still think that 1 in 3 people are honest. Charming. Or naieve.

LucreLout
Joke

Re: Just wait until all the old people die off

Is going from not using a computer to using a computer badly an improvement?

I see you've met my boss then!

Joke icon because current boss is one of the good ones.

LucreLout

Re: Just wait until all the old people die off

Surely the figure will increase above 89% as the 70 and 80 year olds who have never used computers drop off their perches, and nearly everyone who is alive will have had some computer experience?

The problem with that line of thinking is that it assumes that having had exposure to computers during a working lifetime, retirees will wish to continue said exposure in retirement. I'm not sure I've seen any evidence for that, which is why I've labelled it an assumption.

Dear alt-right morons and other miscreants: Disrupt DEF CON, and the goons will 'ave you

LucreLout

Re: "Please don't bring the bad stuff in here."

No, time to get your head out of the sand, and do something about it.

That ends up counterproductive on a non-politics forum. While many commentards are to the left of Stalin, we're not all left wing at all. Instead of focussing on technology, in this case some world class conferences, it simply degenerates into political bickering over which colour of rosette wearing fraudulent liars we prefer to pretend to govern us.

In the UK we've reached the point of having the institutionally racist labour party completely fail to make up its mind about Brexit while pretending to be all for it, and the lame duck Conservative government making a total hash of it because its led by Remainers who really don't want to leave the rEU. Thus nothing is currently achievable. Both parties are on the verge of civil war, and neither is equipped to lead us in the modern age; meanwhile the country is pulling further apart rather than closer together.

Politics has a place, but this is a place for technology, or its a place for nothing. There's much better places to go to play politics, whichever camp you prefer and whatever level of echo chamber or debate you most enjoy.

Amazon meets the incredible SHRINKING UK taxman

LucreLout

Re: How it works:-

forcing staff to not sell for 3 years also stablises the share price, an effective anti-short off your own stocks.

HMRC regulate the scheme and insist that staff not be able to sell until the end of the lock-in, and further that they forfeit any shares not held for 3 years at the time of resignation.

Most FTSE 100 companies have a similar scheme, so its not really an Amazon issue. All listed companies have the same opportunity; I'm not sure about unlisted companies, but I don't see why they couldn't set up a similar scheme.

Dust yourself off and try again: Ancient Solaris patch missed the mark

LucreLout
Facepalm

Please allow me to be the first to....

...bring the mock howls of rage:

It's 2018 and your Solaris box can still be owned by an 11 year old using an 11 year old bug!!!

As you were chaps n chapesses.

Form an orderly queue, people: 31,000 BT staff go to Openreach in October

LucreLout

Re: Anyone from BT got time...

The only thing that bounds us to the parent company is money - wages are paid to staff by the parent company, and our yearly budget is set by them too

That being the case I'd have to argue the split, isn't. There's a quote often attributed to Mayer Rothschild, with many variants attributed to others: "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws".

Hopefully the above should make clear my reason for concern.

LucreLout
WTF?

Anyone from BT got time...

.... to explain what possible advantage there is to the market, or even BT, in having a legal seperation, but not actually making OR fully independant of BT?

As far as I can see, the board of BT expect to be able to retain a heavy influence over OR, or there's no commercial advantage to them in not spinning it off. I also can't understand the regulators view in seperation being preferable to spin off. What real world benefits accrue to the cutomer?

I'm genuinely confused at the thinking and hoping there's an insider with enough context to explain please?

I predict a riot: Amazon UK chief foresees 'civil unrest' for no-deal Brexit

LucreLout

Re: Vogon

One pro-Brexit British chap I bumped into, in Texas of all places, didn't even know the referendum was non-binding and advisory.

Try not delivering it and see how non-binding it is. Sorry, but the referendum is binding, because representative democracy cannot survive if it is not delivered. And you don't really think the torughers in the commons/lords are going to go get a real job, do you?

LucreLout

Re: eh?

I find it interesting that the massively self-important 'defenders of the will of the people' are terrified by the prospect of asking them a more specific, less easily 'creatively reinterpreted' question now that some of the facts have become apparent.

No facts have become apparent, other than every single one of Remains economic arguments failed to materialise. Every. Single. One.

I've no problem with a new vote "Out on WTO terms or out on the deal agreed" We've settled the in/out question already, so now the only debate is about how we leave.

LucreLout

Re: Vogon

17.5m v 16m is not exactly a majority anyone should be celebrating. I'm thinking of the other C word.

Compromising.

Giving the losers what they want at the expense of the winners isn't a compromise, and it isn't democracy. Sorry, it just isn't.

Brexit won't go away, new referendum, stay in by other devious means, whatever. It won't go away - next time there'll just be an in or out today no deal ultra hard brexit option, to prevent remainers trying to steal it after the fact.

There's no version of the future where the UK stays in Europe or even close to it, without substantial reform of the rEU. You can't unite a country by ignoring democracy, whether you agree with the result or not.

Engineers, coders – it's down to you to prevent AI being weaponised

LucreLout

Re: If there's one thing that I've gathered

it's that even people cannot decide on the ethical standards that should apply in all this.

Yup - its why ethics, for all intents and purposes, is just a county of orange people near the sea.

Better to have everyone agree to some sort of normative standard of ethics before things get out of hand.

The problem is people have very different ethical standards and frameworks and everyone thinks theirs is the right set. Thus, people will never agree a common set.

Asimov's three laws seem uncontroversial enough.

You'd think so, but they're no use for an automated weapon - quite the opposite.

Take Toar Bora as an example - wallpoing it with bunker busting bombs (daisy cutters, if you will) means we want everyone inside dead, whoever they may be. A series of small autonomous drones that could navigate the caves killing those inside would have been ideal, and less destructive to the surrounding area.

Like it or not, Terminator style Hunter Killers are coming. And the people building and deploying them will consider doing so perfectly ethical when they do.

LucreLout

America wants their presidents to be fully representative, so killers.

Never judge a nation by their political leadership.

Most Americans are polite, civilised, and friendly. Same as the English. But I'd not want to be judged by the standards of old bloody hands Blair. Would you?

LucreLout

Re: Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...

You made the claim that whether one believes the troops should be there or not should not be a consideration with regards to their safety. I'm merely pointing out that the troops being in a war zone is 'de facto' the primary source of danger to them, and therefore it is by far the first duty of army leaders to only deploy soldiers if absolutely necessary. I think that is incontestable.

Uncontestable as you feel it may be, it isn't relevant.

You seem to be assuming, also with zero evidence, that these deployments do have some benefit.

Wrong. There's plenty of evidence that they do have benefit. How many attacks has OBL launched this year? None, because he's dead. How many of his own people did SH gas this year with chemical weapons? None, because again, he dead. And so it goes.

But history has countless examples showing that terrorists are more easily beaten by political dialogue than by military force.

No it doesn't. It suggests that military force to eliminate the threat works best, then dialog with the few remaining survivors - see ISI, AQ etc etc for evidence. Even the IRA were militarily beaten - split top to bottom by intelligence assets and with limited remaining funding, they had no choice to to end their "war".

LucreLout

Re: Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...

But the worst that happens is you shoot someone accidentally. That's quite bad, but it's better than following them home, dropping a 500lb bomb through their roof and killing their wife, children and extended family in the process.

Thankfully, that isn't what happened or how drone strikes are scheduled. Certainly it'd mark them as a person of interest and they'd be followed (likely from a drone camera) - the intelligence opportunity would outweight the benefit in taking out a single spotter after the fact.

When a drone lobs a bomb into a house (with - inevitably - a fuzzy number of occupants, with unknown identities), you risk enormous collateral damage.

Fortunately, they only bomb houses where there are known to be terrorists hiding. Yes, it is hard to account for collateral damage, but then, if daddy is a terrorist and insists on coming home at night, well, then daddy is a moron who has chose to put his family at risk. They have chosen to let him.

You can't simply allow terrorists to escape because they seek to use their own families for cover. If they choose to endanger them, then that is their choice. The drone pilots do their level best to reduce collateral damage, because when dropping a 500lbs bomb, there will always be some (same as the poor sod calling his mum that gets a bullet through the face).

then you'd fly in teams in helicopters (bypassing IEDS) for targeted snatch/kill missions.

Worked real well in Somalia, no? Blackhawk Down is a very prettied up - turn disaster into victory - illustration of why that doesn't work so well as a plan. On paper, its fine, but in the real world, its way better to send a drone.

LucreLout

Re: Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...

Well, thats' useful advice to the downtrodden citizens who are victims of a dictatorship. Maybe the French Resistance should have faced the German army, tanks and all, on the field of battle, just so it wouldn't be so inconvenient for Himmler to root them out?

In hiding amongst the populace, the resistance accepted there would be significantly higher French civillian casualties and collateral damage. You may or may not view that as legitimate after the fact, but that is the choice they made. Did it end the war quicker? Maybe, but definitively it ensured innocent civillians were caught up in the sweeps and fire fights.

Just as you say, everyone has their own moral code, so maybe your moral code is fine with blowing up people who may or may not be 'terrorists' (by whose definition, anyway?).

My moral code is perfectly fine with executing terrorists. I lose exactly not one seconds sleep over it.

The only definition that matters is the guy with his finger on the drones trigger. Beyond that, there are international conventions and definitions for these things. Drone strikes where civillians have been inured or killed have all occurred on battlefields where terrorists are hiding amongst the civillian population. If they allow that, or fail to leave the area, then they are accepting the risk of becoming collateral damage. Sorry, but we can't simply not shoot back - it isn't an option.

In my book, targeting people to kill them just because they have a different moral code than my own is not OK.

That's not what we're doing. We're targetting them because they are terrorists who are actively engaged in the murder of innocent civillians - those not shielding combatants of any variety for any reason.

If they do try to come to my country and blow shit up, by all means do whatever is necessary to stop them.

There are those that would argue that is precisely what we have been doing since 2001.

LucreLout

Re: Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...

So if the result of my campaign to block AI weapons development is that more innocent people are killed, and more civilian property is destroyed, then what is my moral position?

Has that been established? I've not seen anything remotely resembling a fact that suggests it has.

Before we can establish that "AI" is a problem here, or even part of a problem, or even that a problem exists, we have to first establish what the collateral to target ratio is for "dumb" weapons. Then we can work out per target eliminated, whether the collateral damage is better or worse. Then we can debate whether or not it is socially acceptable.

None of that work has been done yet.

LucreLout

Re: Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...

This sentence makes no sense at all to me.

That's because you're trying to conflate two seperate and unrelated issues.

If a country's primary responsibility (or one of them at least) in military matters is to take good care of the soldiers who put their lives and limbs on the line to protect our security, then surely the very first duty to those soldiers is not to send them into situations that have zero net benefit (and probably even negative net benefit) to the security of the country.

You've assumed, without any evidence, that the current deployments have zero beenfit, which is at best a debatable point, at worse pure ignorance. It simply doesn't matter whether you agree with the troop deployment, the duty once deployed it to protect them until they can be brought home safely. There's no room for variance or lefty whataboutery there. Sorry.

Secondly, you make the categorically wrong assumption that drones are supporting soldiers on the ground, but in fact in cases such as Yemen they are replacing soldiers on the ground.

Actually, you have misunderstood - that they replace troops ont he ground is precisely my point. Too many ground troops were getting blown up by IEDs, which led to drone development, investment, and deployment.

WTF is the US doing in the Arabian Peninsula anyway?

Utterly irrelevant to the debate at hand.

Oh yes, helping to prop up the corrupt dynasties that sell us their oil by running after a 'terrorist' group that has almost zero international scope and is really is a local insurgency.

You've fallen off the fact waggon and into the swamp of your own idealism and poltical views here. Lets staick to the facts that may be established and keep the debate on focus.

LucreLout

Sorry Cori, I respectfully disagree...

The public needs a healthy dose of realism about how America has used and will use these technologies, and how the war on terror looks on the ground where it is waged.

They also need to understand why drones are deployed so often. IEDs. If you want to blow up the soldiers while passing, rather than fight a ground war with them, then don't be so suprised when their mates blow you up with a drone. Our countrys first responsibility is to the men & women we send to war - whether you believe they should be there or not is completely irrelevant to that point - and we owe them the very best protection that may be provided them whilest deployed.

they never said why Salem and Waleed were caught in the crosshairs.

Well, most likely because of a mistake. Unfortunately in war, mistakes happen - like any other walk of life, just with bigger bangs and worse consequences. If the enemy combatants would stop hiding amongst the civillian population, or if the civillians would simply move away from the men with guns, then collateral damage could be greatly reduced. Expecting one side to not fire back is unrealistic and unhelpful.

A human fired the missiles, but did so, in part, on the software's recommendation.

And they did so in part due to standing orders, rules of engagement, and the situation in the given area. I don't follow all of resharpers bat shit crazy recommendations (or all I'd have are untestable static classes), and blaming the software for the human acting on its mistake is missing the point. It's why we don't allow automated firing by the AI.

in societies where most men are armed, and insurgents are interwoven and married into civilian populations, network analysis will always make mistakes.

Those societies and men have specifically chosen to have a higher rate of casualties amongst their neighbours and family by living amongst them as enemy combatants. You spend your day shooting at soldiers and blowing them up with IEDs, then seek to complain when a drone takes out your house while you're having dinner? Frankly, that isn't a reasonable complaint to make - you made your bed, now die in it.

Some of Google's people seemed less concerned about moral balance than they were to avoid public discussion of the contract at all.

Moral balance doesn't mean anything. You think your morals are the correct set. I think mine are. They won't always align, so whose morals get primacy? Thus, your morals mean nothing to me, in the same way as mine mean nothing to you. You can't expect the rest of the world to work per your own moral framework. It's astounding how many seemingly intelligent people cannot grasp that simple fact.

Weaponized AI is probably one of the most sensitized topics of AI – if not THE most.

It is, and rightly so. I'm not sure anyone is yet advocating rolling out Terminator style hunter killers that purge a location of all humans, but that day will come eventually, unless terrorism is knocked on the head as a means of conflict. If you wish to be martyred, stand and fight like a conventional army. If you're frightended of dying, well, stop picking fights with other nations, and stop blowing up their civillians. If you don't care about or are deliberately target their civvies, yours will one day become fair game, or at the very least collateral damage.

Lets take a moment to review what that phrase really means today. It means your civillians were viewed as being expendable to the achievement of the mission. If that mission is to stop your menfolk blowing up our families, then its wholly understandable why it is considered preferable for our drones to blow up your menfolk. Unfortunately for you, that may be after they pop home for lunch, and while aiding and abetting them, you might get killed too.

Under President Trump, the targeting rules have been made even looser, with predictable results: over 6,000 civilian deaths last year in Iraq and Syria alone.

As upsetting as that may be, how many lives were saved due to the deaths of the primary targets, the enemy combatants? Gross numbers aren't nearly so useful as net figures. How many of our soldiers lives are worth sacrificing to avoid what may be more or fewer civillian deaths if we use planes and tanks instead?

Do we even know if drones kill more civvies than bombers, fighter jets, helicopters, or tanks? Are some of the objections really just emotive, because there's no risk to life of the dorne pilot?

We all have a role to play in the debate about where AI should be used. But the most important audience is AI developers and engineers.

We do. And the number of soldiers I've met with serious injuries and dead friends due to IEDs leads me to believe that it is preferable to deploy drones to eliminate the terrorist threat rather than having our guys out their with their ass in the breeze. See, ethical and moral standpoints vary from person to person, so while you may feel they're a great decision filter, the filter comes up short when we account for interpersonal differences.

This is true mainly for the populations of wealthy nations. While you and I bicker on Twitter, buy crap on impulse, or do any of the things that figure in these TED-talk dystopias, Orwell is out there: for the poor, the remote, the non-white.

Race may be a correlation of drone strikes, but its absolutely not causal. The cause of drone strikes is terrorists planting IEDs, not prayer books or brown skin.

That's why some say engineering and computer science should be regulated like the old professions: medicine and law.

And I'd completely agree with you that they should be. However, don't for a second think that would prevent the development of autonomous drones or weapons.

Could unethical uses of AI land developers in hot water? Sure.

Illegal use, sure. Unethical? Not a chance. Your ethics have no bearing upon anyones actions but your own. Just as my ethical framework guides my actions. You've no specific expectation or right to think I'll act according to your ethics than I do of you acting according to mine. Its the main problem with ethics.

That's what could solve the AI ethics debate – for those with the gift to code to think about what they are building.

If what "I" build helps save the lives of our soldiers that would otherwise be blown up by a terrorist IED in some godforsaken part of the world, then I could sleep real easy at night. There is, after all, nothing that mandates these clowns to hide behind their wives when the drones come calling - in choosing to do so, they choose to make their families as expendable to us as they are to them.

I don't build drone software and never have, but I certainly have no moral objection to it. Quite the opposite.

If they chose to wield their power for good, who knows what they could do?

Define good.

This is the point where simplistic and emotive rhetoric breaks down. Is it good that drones save the lives of our troops? Yes, absolutely it is and they absolutely do achieve that. Is it good that drones end the lives of terrorists before they can kill more of us? Yes, absolutely it is, and again they do achieve that. Is it good terrorists hide behind their families in an attempt to avoid the consequences of their actions? No, it isn't, but who made that choice? So whose fault is it really?

I'll get more downvotes for this than a bacon sarnie in a mosque/synagog, but the point is there is always more than one view point, and a reason why emotion must be kept out of such debates.

Microsoft Visual Studio Code replumbed for better Python taming

LucreLout

Re: To enable it?

These aren't the truth values you're looking for. ... Move along.

Very funny you are. Upvotes you will have.

Fukushima reactors lend exotic nuclear finish to California's wines

LucreLout

And don't forget to wear sunscreen.

And remember, no matter what a stripper may tell you,

there's no sunscreen in the Champagne Room.

British Airways' latest Total Inability To Support Upwardness of Planes* caused by Amadeus system outage

LucreLout

Re: Why???

no verification, no backup and no ongoing quality control.

<mba>Isn't that what The Cloud does?</mba>

Brit tech forges alliance to improve cyber security as MPs moan over 'acute scarcity' of experts

LucreLout
Joke

Re: Money?

A gap on your CV listed as "not allowed to tell you" may as well say "in prison".

I thought "Travelling" was the correct euphamism?

LucreLout
Pint

Re: Phew!!!

In fact, I'm part of my company's senior management, and I've got an MBA, so by the regular moaning of commentards I know precisely jack shit.

Well done Sir! You've taken the first step to not being part of the problem.

My company has no problems finding and retaining staff - you just have to pay market rate and treat them in the same manner you yourself would prefer people treat you. Companies that are struggling for staff are getting one of those things wrong, and flooding the market with cheap low skilled offshore staff isn't going to help them correct their behaviour.

The thing most businesses get wrong is that they expect to pay someone with a lot of sought after skills, education, and experience less than their MBA type manager, because, well, (s)he's the boss. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they have skills the market values just because they're further up some notional hierachy.

People hate hot-desking. Google thinks they’ll love hot-Chromebooking

LucreLout

Re: Crisping the Grid

My electric has 30k miles on it now, never once charged off anything but my own solar array. If I'd put it on grid, there's a "feature" put in by the manufacturer that lets the power co disable charging selectively car by car (via that satellite/cell radio it has)

I don't want to piss on your chips here chap, and I'll readily admit that I might have this wrong, but won't your car simply refuse to charge from the solar array once the local power corp decides its your turn for the automotive equivalent of a hosepipe ban? The power company will probably just ahve a database of postcodes, customers, and leccy motors and simply rotate through those?

LucreLout

Re: If this becomes widespread

I think I'll buy shares in producers of hygienic laptop wipes.

Or penicillen?

LucreLout

Re: CME Holiday?

By making one's company, livelihood, salary, all entirely dependent on a low-latency high-bandwidth internet, one must ask: how many businesses and jobs will be lost when the lights go out?

Good news: I selfishly only care about one company, because it pays my wages.

Bad news: It'll be one of the dead.

I should have thought this through......

LucreLout
Trollface

Re: lowest common denominator

It's still crapware mostly written for a mobile phone though. In the enterprise people generally want proper computers, not close to useless toys.

And yet I can still see three mac's within line of sight. --->

LucreLout

Re: I don't see where it suggested anyone would love it

It's a standard MBA-like mindset to think that your workforce can grow flowers when given shit for tools.

LOL!!!

I love that expression. Yours or someone elses please? I'd like to give a correct citation when using it.

Who's leaving Amazon S3 buckets open online now? Cybercrooks, US election autodialers

LucreLout

Imagine being able to target the idiots that voted for Trump, this data is a goldmine.

The irony of believing everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot is truly breath taking.

The cognitive dissonance involved to establish your position is impressive in its density, and the lack of self awareness to then parade that in public is possibly the most entertaining thing I've seen all morning. So thank you for that.

LucreLout

Re: How?

The biggest danger of the Cloud is the morons

You could just have said "The biggest danger is morons", and you'd be right for most of human history.

Elon Musk, his arch nemesis DeepMind swear off AI weapons

LucreLout

Re: Pertly off the subject....

You need to put these things into context - it would no longer be ok to firebomb a city

Looking at the state of most of Syria, I'm having trouble accepting your premis.

LucreLout

Re: Pugwash 2.0?

Noble idea, won't stop the odd evil genius in his volcano lair, or any government bent on causing trouble, or just some run-of-the-mill idiot who wondered what would happen if you pressed this button

I'm not sure it matters. I mean, I applaud the intent behind signing, but if you make anything autonomous that moves or recognises people/faces then someone else can really easily strap a gun to it. Autonomous tanks are trivial once you have self driving cars, for example.

Its a bit like apple tech - what did they actually invent, rather than just combining other peoples ideas/tech into a new package?

Sub-Prime: Amazon's big day marred by server crashes, staff strikes

LucreLout

Re: Seriously snowflake?

>>The employer has the responsibility to provide for the physical and mental well-being of its employees?????

>No it doesn't; you do.

So if you found out that unknown to you your office had broken asbestos pipe lagging then you'd be happy with that?

You seem to have assumed that well-being means comply with minimal health and safety law. The asbestos pipe is a health and safety law issue, not well-being. Well-being hopefully has a little more to it than not willfully killing your staff, no?

LucreLout

Re: I did write to the Gates Foundation...

Sorry Terry, but that increasing prospertiy IS the "being more affordable" thing. What its not is waves of cash washing over everyone.

In the process of making himself the richest person on the planet, has Bezos also made me richer? Well, yes, on three fronts. Literally richer, due to owning Amazon shares. I've bought a lot of stuff cheaper than it was previously available (most of my MSc books were second hand and cost me £1), allowing me to redeploy the cash into more assets. And new technologies that have enabled me to roll out a ocuple of side businesses that are starting to bring home small amounts of bacon. And everyone likes bacon.

Trickledown is expressly not the idea that because there are millionaires today we'll all be rich tomorrow. The trappings of success accrue, as ever, to those that are successful. Those that never try to be more or achieve more will never have more, and well, whose fault is that really?

LucreLout

Re: Seriously snowflake?

Plenty of UK people with degrees who are doing "McJobs" (shops, restaurants, warehouses, cleaning etc.)- as lots more people with degrees than degree level jobs available.

With proper degrees? Anyone studying politics, history, geography etc may well earn a degree, but they know before they undertake the study it isn't going to be an economically viable choice - there's no career at the end of it to make use of it.

With a free choice of what subject to study, and a well documented shortage of good STEM people, I'm puzzled as to why anyone would be concerned that media studies and art history don't produce a lucrative career. Presumably they're studying for its own sake, which is a worthwhile endeavour, but conveys no requirement on their future employers to pay them more when the knowledge and skills gained have no bearing on the role being performed.

LucreLout

Re: Seriously snowflake?

No it doesn't; you do. How about this... listen better in school, buckle down, and get an education. Then you wouldn't have to work in a warehouse.

Spot on.

Everyone in this country is compelled to attend a school that the tax payer pays a heck of a lot of money for. Wasting that opportunity by fucking around has consequences. Some of those consequences are life long. This isn't secret knowledge. It isn't even new knowledge. There's no reason to feel sorry for such people; their work life is played for and got. In most cases it is literally nobody's fault but their own.

LucreLout

Re: I did write to the Gates Foundation...

Or in other words, trickle down only works if the cash actually trickles.

That's not how trickle down economics is supposed to work.

The idea is that things that are extremely expensive now will in future be affordable to people on the average salary. Todays lower earner can buy a faster, safer, more comfortable car than your 1980s rich man (Ferrari 308 vs Fiesta ST with Mountune pack).

Anyone can today buy a computer that would have been state of the art 20 years ago for nearly no money at all - less than £100.

£100 will today buy a web enabled phone that can stream live TV / movies and provide near instant access to information or educational opportunities on the internet. That wasn't available at any price 20 years ago.

There is no component of trickle down economics that suggests or implies that because "I" am a millionaire today, "you" will be tomorrow. "My" spending £200 quid on dinner in a poncey restaurant provides employment for the staff who then spend some wages in Gaucho grill, who's staff then spend some of their wages eating at Pizzahut, providing employment for their staff, who then spend some of their wages in Greggs, providing employment for their staff, and so it goes. That's as close to a cash component of trickle down economics as is intended to exist: it's more about hedonic regression than M0 transfers.

Indictment bombshell: 'Kremlin intel agents' hacked, leaked Hillary's emails same day Trump asked Russia for help

LucreLout

Re: Brexit bus disowned next day

The lie got votes.

Unfortunately that works in reverse too.

Remain lied every bit (at least I HOPE they were lies, rather than incompetence which is really the only alternative) as much as Leave. What happend to immediate A50? The punishment budget? The soraring interest rates, crashing housing market, deep recession, run on the pound, and decimated stock markets that were predicted and capaigned upon by Remain? Literally not one single Remainer economic prediction came true, which is a problem, because that was the core of their campaign.

Remain could have ran a positive campaign on the actual benefits of EU membership, rooted in fact, rather than a negative campaign based on lies. But they didn't. In my view, that was a massive own goal, and deeply regrettable. In the vanishingly unlikely event of any re-run referendum now, or on rejoining in the future, they're going to have to construct an entirely new campaign - because literally none of it was in anyway true last time out of the gate. Most remainers STILL seem to think that no trade deal with rEU means no trade, which is so deeply wrong as to be terminally stupid.

Next time, lets hopefully have a positive vision? Project Fear might work on the Scots (both referendums), but it's never worked on the English. And any campaign is going to need to in order to win the day.

There's 4 "indivisible freedoms" according to the EU. Why not campaign on those? Remain tried very hard to ignore immigration (freedom of movement) instead of illustrating the benefits it brings. Work/retire abroad, young skilled workers to help us compete globally etc. The City have done rather well at capitalising on freedom of capital movement - at least since Cameron sued and won at the ECJ to be able to clear Euro trades outside the Euro area; and it is the City that pays for the budget of the NHS AND education in this country. Has free movement of goods done nothing to help supply chains? (Balance of payments IS important but it's not everything).

I could continue, but hopefully the direction and message is clear - Remain should have campaigned positively and truthfully, but didn't, however they still need to start expressing some positives about close ties to the rEU once we leave, because the positive ties to America (economically at least) speak for themselves (incumbent Presidents are all transient).

Did Leave lie every bit as much as Remain? Absolutely. But lets not pretend it isn't a two way street, because that is simply ignorance and wishful thinking. JFK was elected because he had a solid and reasonably true positive campaign, where his rivals didn't.

LucreLout
Trollface

Re: anonymous coward

Doesn't matter - a hand was, allegedly, caught in the cookie jar. if you're gonna spy and do counter intelligence, then at least do it right.

Presumably you mean farcebook data slupring links all over your site while publicly decrying their behaviour?

Yes, to an extent, I'm slightly trolling you, but only because I've not seen a reasoned argument for why El Reg plays both sides of the farcebook game. Any chance of an article on that please? Who knows, I might even agree with your reasoning and STFU.

UK.gov is ready to talk data safeguards with the EU – but still wants it all

LucreLout

Re: ?

I prefer the accurate and full: extremely privileged New York born Eton boy and Oxford graduate, Bullingdon club member and gutter journalist, Alexander Boris De Pfeffle Johnson.

As opposed to the not so honourable, extremely privileged, rather hypocritical [sent son to selective school], Surrey born child of the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, and barrister, Lady Nugee of Islington? Wife of a QC, a high court judge, and tweeter of white van pictures?

Or Emily Thorbers as she prefers?

Lets not pretend rosette colour seperates the troughers, because it really doesn't!

LucreLout

Re: Conflicted

Over a hundred thousand people marched through London a few weeks ago to make their feelings felt against brexit.

This won't be a popular view on a left wing message board, which is why I've backstopped everything with references and facts. Reason matters, emotion doesn't.

I know that 100,000 sounds like a lot of people, but it really isn't. More people will go to watch the Rolling Stones in the UK this year. Labour ignored about a million people marching against their wars, without any mandate what-so-ever for what they were doing. [1] The biggest peacetime march in UK history, and it literally may as well not have happened for what it achieved. Hell, an awful lot of those people turned around and voted for labour at the next general election anyway.

At the last general election, over 85% of people voted for a party committed to Brexit (Conservative, Labour, UKIP). More than 27 million people on a turn out of about 32 million.[2] Only about a million voted for the one party offering to cancel Brexit (Liberal).

Whether you agree with Brexit or not, there is simply no mileage in pretending it isn't the democratically expressed choice of the population of the UK, both in the referendum and at the general election. More people voted for Brexit than have ever voted for anything in the history of the UK ever. [3][4]

Protest if it makes you happy. Protest if it makes you feel better. Protest if its your idea of a fun day out. Just don't protest because you think it will change anything. The shameful reality is that, when it comes to protesters, nobody is listening. And I'm not sure anyone ever has......

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests#United_Kingdom

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2017#Summary

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_2016#Result

4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_general_elections

Do you really want your kids' future in the hands of Capita? Well, too bad

LucreLout

I'm completely fine with this...

.... with just one stipulation.

Any data breach, any at all, results in the CEO doing one day in jail per record per person whose data is leaked; no parole. Obviously if the CEO has rock solid documentary evidence that they have given all required resourcing, support, and authority to a subordinate responsible for data security, then they may pass the buck to said subordinate, and so on down the chain to find the guilty party.

UK taxman outlines its CHIEF concerns for customs IT systems

LucreLout

Re: Brexit - The kick in the crotch that keeps on aching.

My, that money is working hard, isn't it?

If you think that's impressive you should have a look at how many times over McMao has spent "bankers bonuses". Last time I did a count he'd spent them 17 times over, assuming no losses due to tax avoidance.

Politicians talk a load of rubbish: Rosette colour is no exception. Anyone that hasn't worked that out yet, may wish to buy this bridge I have for sale....

US military manuals hawked on dark web after files left rattling in insecure FTP server

LucreLout

Re: the default password on the Reaper drones.

Gr1m

That, or Ch!11!

'Plane Hacker' Roberts: I put a network sniffer on my truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap!

LucreLout

Re: Insurance Black Boxes

Moral of the story: Don't trust those insurance black boxes.

Entirely predictably, they're causing traffic chaos on the roads. There must be 15 or 20 cars near me with apology notices in the rear window explaining they have to go slow because of the box. Unfortunately, the people behind are too often afraid to overtake, thus leading to everyone on the road being stuck behind some little boy in a Corsa/similar, going nowhere near the speed limit, and braking /cornering as though the whole car was made of eggshells.

As far as the gender pay gap in Britain goes, IBM could do much worse

LucreLout

Re: At the risk of being branded misogynst...

Agreed, but you solve it in the same ways you always have so realistically we could automate that.

No, I solve it in the most appropriate way for the current situation. It's just that I can see the dead ends and the millennials have to go explore them because they can't see its a dead end.

Inexperience brings fresh ideas

No, it really doesn't. Inexperience brings a lot of unworkable noise that those with experience can see through in a second. Fresh ideas come from fresh thinking, and theres no age related component to that, however much you wish there were.

which are at least as valuable as experience if not more so now we’re architecting for cloud which when done properly is completely different to standard architectures

Inexperience is free mate - nobody pays for it because its worth less than shit - that can be used as fertilizer at least. Architecting for the cloud isn't particularly challenging I'm afraid - certainly none of the millennials I work with can do it half as effectively or nearly so quick as I can.

Sorry, but young inexperienced staff simply aren't worth a lot of money because they're not bringing very much value to the role. Experience pays - it always has and it always will because its more valuable than anything else you can bring to a job. If you want to get paid for being young & dumb, then go be a sex worker - its about the only way youth gets paid more than experience.

You'll figure this out for yourself in another 15-20 years. Report back then.