* Posts by macjules

3426 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2014

Coronavirus conference cancellations continue: Google and Microsoft axe WSL and Cloud Next

macjules

Any chance of a refund guv?

A estate agent friend booked to go to MIPIM this year in Cannes which, in true estate agent fashion, has not been 'cancelled' but merely 'postponed' until May or June 2020 so no refunds allowed against tickets. No mention that the Cannes Film Festival, Midem and other events tend to take up much of May and June.

Bloodhound gang handles the pan again to get back to Hakskeenpan

macjules

Slightly Inept

Their concept of sponsorship seems to be to try and sell space on the side of the vehicle. Perhaps someone could mention words like "crowdfunding" or "Elon musk" to them?

I would gladly bung a few hundred their way to see 1000mph on land happen.

Scottish biz raided, fined £500k for making 193 million automated calls

macjules

Re: it's 2020

If you fail to comply with an ICO enforcement notice, assessment notice (for a compulsory audit) or information notice (requiring you to provide us with information for our investigation) we also have the power to impose more substantial fines of up to €20 million, or 4% of your total worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher.

Source: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-eidas/enforcement/

Hey, fatso. If you're standing desk-curious, the VariDesk Pro Plus won't break the bank

macjules

Unpowered?

I have a Liberty powered standing desk that only cost me £380 plus delivery. Comes with a choice of colours and is very easy to assemble.

RIP Freeman Dyson: The super-boffin who applied his mathematical brain to nuclear magic, quantum physics, space travel, and more

macjules

"Although he is only 23 he is in my view the best mathematician in England."

Quoted from my great uncle (GI Taylor). RIP Mr Dyson.

Ding dong Dell, servers in the well. Who pulled them out? Little PC stout

macjules
Coat

You could have used ..

A Dell, floating in the deep.

Southern Water not such a phisherman's phriend, hauls itself offline to tackle email lure

macjules
Devil

CEO problems?

Hope the new glass 4th floor windows are secure at Southern Water's HQ. Better move that Volvo as well ...

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

macjules

Prostiution is the oldest profession in the world. Advertising comes somewhere in the Middle Ages, alongside printing.

macjules
Paris Hilton

TITSUP?

Total Inability To Stop USA Prostitutes?

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

macjules

Contractor Testing

In your language of choice create a script that tests a range from 1 to 100. If the number is divisible by 3 replace the number with 'Fizz'. If the number is divisible by 5 replace the number with 'Buzz'. If the number is divisible by 3 and by 5 replace the number with 'FizzBuzz'. Otherwise return the number.

This should take about 5 minutes to complete. You would be very surprised by the numbers of "coders" who can not do this, especially PHP developers.

Sophos was gearing up for a private life – then someone remembered the bike scheme

macjules

Re: The usual suspects?

Looks like they are learning from Autonomy: do not even allow anyone to mention your company name and especially not in conjunction with the words 'due diligence'.

Breaker one-nine, this trucker's rubber ducked, facing a year in the slammer for Acer laptop thefts

macjules

Because, as Margaret Thatcher once observed, the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

macjules

1 year imprisonment?

That sounds remarkably lenient for a country which seems desperate to mimic the UK's 1723 Black Act.

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

macjules

Re: Down with this sort of thing

'polluted by too much verbal violence,' by so many 'offensive and harmful words' which are "amplified by the internet".

Quite agree. Verbal violence should be strictly limited to religious books that encourage smiting, stoning and crucifixion. After all, crucifixion is a doddle.

Spider-eyed Lite version of Huawei flagship flies out before actual P40 launch event

macjules

Camera Envy

I am going to wait for the iPhone 12sProMax. I really want a 600 megapixel camera with 8 lenses just in case I want to take blurry pictures of cute animals.

It’s a bit like razors: do we really need the latest Gillette 5x blade razors?

Aww, a cute mini-moon is orbiting Earth right now. But like all good things, it too will abandon us at some point

macjules

Re: So how long until this orbiting object destroys Washington DC with a death ray blast?

Resistance is futile.

Aria Technology loses Court of Appeal bid over £750k VAT dispute

macjules
Mushroom

A warning to us all.

Never piss off a vulture.

London's top cop dismisses 'highly inaccurate or ill informed' facial-recognition critics, possibly ironically

macjules

Re: Were the Met Police so 'highly accurate and well-informed' in the past?

Oh really? Nowadays there is a clear policy to shoot to kill a terrorist if they even suspect there is a bomb. The terrorists oblige by wearing fake bomb vests, as the recent London Bridge attack demonstrated.

In-depth: Deloitte and accounts expert both cleared what HPE described as 'contrived' Autonomy sales

macjules

... reached an out-of-court settlement with HPE prior to the start of the Autonomy trial.

I wasn't aware of that. So they could say whatever they wanted on the basis that "Psst, we already have our Get Out Of Jail Free card signed by HPE"?

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

macjules
Coat

That would be the "Flat-Earth community - a global community of believers"?

Don't worry, IT contractors. New UK chancellor says HMRC will be gentle pushing IR35 rules

macjules

And bear in mind that you will need to retain at least TEN years of records now if you work outside of IR35 at all. This is because it could take between 7 and 10 years to review the CEST for that particular contract and whether both you, as the contractor, the agency and the end client were telling the truth. Rishi Sunak will probably be a distant memory of a minor sex scandal by then.

Google rolls out Titan keys to Europe, Japan. Plus: Group Policy bug is a feature, not a flaw, says Microsoft

macjules
Facepalm

Re: Banned without appeal, you say?

'something he was involved in, people he had been in contact with, places he had visited, hotels at which he had stayed, or a pattern of relations among those."

Well, that easily narrows it down.

This is your last chance, HP. There's no turning back. You take blue poison pill, the story ends. You take the red Xerox pill, you stay in Wonderland

macjules

Re: Bit too late?

Exactly. And we would all love to see Meg arraigned on fraud charges once Xerox's auditors realise that they overpaid by $8.8Bn. Hell, I bet the QC's in London are already writing up their invoices.

Third time's a charm, maybe: Bankers suing Oracle over claims of exaggerated cloud sales have another go at convincing skeptical judge

macjules
Paris Hilton

Hmm, sounds familiar

Cooking the books to make HCM sales look more than there were? Threats to audit and withhold business?

Congratulations Larry! You are Mike Lynch in disguise and I claim my free 1 year's HP printer ink supply!

'Don't tell anyone but I have a secret.' There, that's my security sorted

macjules

Re: Nobody tosses any in my direction

Perhaps in tribute to Monsieur Dabbs we should refer to it as 'une liaison romantique avec Mme Main et ses cinq délicieuses filles'

macjules
Coat

Re: Nobody tosses any in my direction

Hopefully now he has given up polling the erectorate.

(Mine's the one with tissues and lubricant in the pocket.)

macjules
Paris Hilton

Freebies

I gave up expecting freebies many years ago after visiting an expo and seeing the staff of a rather large well-known company that makes graphic software re-sorting the goodies bags to remove anything they wanted for themselves.

Since then I have contented myself with the occasional unadulterated bribe such as free Wimbledon or Lords tickets plus the occasional "business incentive" trip that extends to "bring your whole family".

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

macjules
Joke

All candles at once

For the maximum nasal experience you have to light all 6 candles together. In addition this should be used in conjunction with a soundtrack chosen especially for your burger moment. Hopefully one of them isn't Candle In The Wind.

Those romantic evenings will just roll by ...

Google Cloud embraces GitOps with new Application Manager for Kubernetes

macjules

Bye GitLab AutoDevops?

Just spent several months developing a GitLab Auto DevOps strategy to do exactly this. So glad to know that I can do it directly in to GKE.

Now, about that incredibly complicated gitlab-ci.yml file ...

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

macjules

Re: Sigh.

You have obviously not travelled from London to Reading via the M4 recently. If you can average 30 mph then you are doing pretty well, always considering that your car has not been squashed by 2 trucks side-by-side in the reduced traffic width lanes.

Facebook tells US tax bods: Swear to God, we were only worth $6.5bn in 2010 because we were menaced by... MySpace and smartphones

macjules

IRS: "When are Facebook likely to achieve a disposable wealth of $9Bn?"

Facebook: "Oh, let's say in 2020 or 10 years from now."

macjules

Re: Zuckerberg's word is his bond

"The distance to the basement's stairs is 20 yards. The leprechaun can cover that in less than 5 seconds, can you?"

macjules
Holmes

Zuckerberg's word is his bond

And his bonds are in his dog's name. In a safe place. In a filing cabinet in the basement of Bank of Ireland marked "Do not allow the IRS access to this. EVER"

Larry Tesler cut and pasted from this mortal coil: That thing you just did? He probably invented it

macjules

Xerox NoteTaker

Could have mentioned that instead of the Newton. NoteTaker was a 7" touchscreen 5 Ghz 8086 computer complete with Ethernet developed in 1978. I would advisably skip the word "portable' as it weighed a hefty 22kg, nevertheless Tesler did once demonstrate using it in an aircraft.

Don't use natwest.co.uk for online banking, Natwest bank tells baffled customer

macjules
Coat

Slight objection

May I request that you do not show the Co-operative in the same frame as NatWest. One is a household name brand and banking operation with a disgraced former CEO famous for destroying it's assets and reputation. The other had Paul Flowers as it's CEO.

Assange lawyer: Trump offered WikiLeaker a pardon in exchange for denying Russia hacked Democrats' email

macjules

Sufficient grounds to dismiss?

Somehow I doubt that the vagaries of the Trump administration constitute a valid prosecution argument.

Let the man go and stop hounding him. Everyone has most certainly had their fair share of Assange pound of flesh. Believe you me, I am no supporter of Mr Assange.

And they said IoT was trash: Sheffield 'smart' bins to start screaming when they haven't been emptied for a fortnight

macjules

Re: Ahem

When my trees need watering I shall make a sufficient detour on the way back from my local.

I'm sorry, Elon. I'm afraid I can't do that... SpaceX touts robo-rides for orbital vacations, lift-off in 2021-ish

macjules
Headmaster

Check the small print?

Clause 22.1a: In the event of a rapid, unscheduled disassembly of the unit then Space X, their successors or affiliates may not be held liable for your demise, death or other minor or major bodily injury, discorporation or other dissemination.

Clause 22.1b: In the event of Clause 22.1a above no fee shall be refunded or returned.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a flying solar panel: BAE Systems' satellite alternative makes maiden flight in Oz

macjules

Re: we can rise to the challenge the UK government has set industry

No, that's the Transport for London variant. It demands a pilot and then asks for a pay rise or else it will go on strike.

Please check your data: A self-driving car dataset failed to label hundreds of pedestrians, thousands of vehicles

macjules
Paris Hilton

Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have sent Clearview cease-and-desist letters

Yes, only Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook should be scraping their users' images and selling them for profit.

Oracle staff say Larry Ellison's fundraiser for Trump is against 'company ethics' – Oracle, ethics... what dimension have we fallen into?

macjules
Paris Hilton

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter all have conduct codes

And in all those cases the "conduct code" is more of a guide for how not to conduct your company.

No great lover of American politics, but would there have been a similar outcry if Ellison had organised a fund-raiser for Sanders?

The virus curing the mobile industry's chronic addiction... and sparking an impressive algorithmic price experiment

macjules

Re: COVID-19

Bloody Timelords. Would have thought they had some imagination.

Call us immediately if your child uses Kali Linux, squawks West Mids Police

macjules

Re: Positive Diversions

I might add that a 12 year old girl just pen-tested a local estate agent in Chichester, demonstrated where there were fixable failings in their Response Headers and where there were injectable breaches in their Wordpress CMS WYSIWYG fields.

They have offered her £1000 to fix their website.

I am one very happy and very proud father indeed, so kindly take note West Midlands anti-internet police force.

macjules
Meh

Positive Diversions

I have just spent days teaching my eldest daughter (aged 12) how to use Kali with Metasploit and Postgres to run PenTests on websites. I suppose now I should teach her something boring like Python, although judging from that advert I suspect I could be arrested for encouraging a 12 year old to play with snakes.

Steve Jobs, executives shot down top Apple engineers' plea to design their own server CPU – latest twist in legal battle over chip upstart Nuvia

macjules
Meh

Foot meet gun, gun meet foot

Typical post-Jobs Apple if you ask me, “Innovation? Meh.”

Bloke forks out £12m, hands over keys to tropical island to shoo away claims that his web marketing biz was a scam

macjules

Re: One born every minute

More golden rules

#1 Any email into Hotmail or Outlook.com is a scam and usually endorsed by Microsoft since it sends the scams to your inbox and your genuine emails into spam.

#2 "Free" cloud vouchers (GCP etc) are usually not.

#3 AWS "free tier' usually isn't.

Can AI-enhanced virtual sports presenters do the job? It's a big ask

macjules

Re: To be fair...

Quite right. Sometimes I feel that those of us who understand what Wonko The Sane meant are few and far between since we now live in an age where you buy a £1500 device to control the remote control of the TV, the house thermostat and even control a toothbrush.

What do we want? A proper review of IR35! When do we want it? Last year! Bunch of IT contractors protest outside UK Parliament

macjules

Re: Offshoring IR35

UK accountant set it up. The UK umbrella employs the offshore which in turns employs me.

macjules

Offshoring IR35

Provided your employment agency is happy with it you can re-register your PSC offshore. This places an onus upon the agency to ensure that the CEST form is completed correctly but the end client does not have any further responsibility and thus can carry on as normal.

I have already set up a PSC in Belize, cost around £750.

Huawei to the danger zone: Now Uncle Sam slaps it with 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, money laundering, theft of robot arm and source code

macjules

Huawei to the danger zone

Definite +1 for the headline. Regarding Meng might I suggest ‘Queen of the Huawei’ (apologies to Jim Morrison).