* Posts by macjules

3426 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2014

Running joke: That fitness gadget? It's, er, run out

macjules
FAIL

Tried and tested model

Develop a product, service or app in a hot emerging trend such as fitness

Produce a great kickstarter-style video and make a presentation to one of the numerous vc funders/incubators who will introduce to you some angels after tweaking your plan a bit (for a fee/percentage)

Get angel capital, launch your venture, and hire the expertise you thought you had, but didn't

Get traction and then the first round of venture capital from one of the top VC funds

2 years down the line realise that you can not support the product but you are tied into a 5 year support plan and can not move on to the exciting new COVID-19 tracking app that you are building.

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

macjules

Hikers were warned to steer clear.

Especially those carrying towels and small yellow fish.

President Trump's rushed-through H-1B techie visa crackdown halted by federal judge

macjules

Re: This will end up in SCOTUS

"try being a Yank trying to get a work visa in the UK"

Not a problem at this end regarding visas. Provided you meet all the criteria then an initial 18 month work and residence permit can be issued within 2 days. You don't even have to print anything off - it is all dealt with upon arrival in the UK.

Of course whether you have the actual experience necessary to do the job is a different matter.

Don’t panic, but five jet drones just used their AI to chat and collaborate while in flight

macjules
Angel

Black hawk leader to A flight, turn to port and steer 230

"Repeat Please"

"I say again, 2 3 0"

"Repeat Please"

"For crying out loud, 2 3 0"

"Repeat Please"

"Now just shut up up the lot of you and follow me."

IBM warns Global Tech Services staff that 346 UK heads will roll in latest redundancy action

macjules
Happy

Re: On the first day of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas IBM sent to me.

12 weeks contractual notice,

11 days of consultations,

10 failed logins to Jira,

9 refused IBM Notes auths,

8 failures to launch Watson,

7 attempts to swipe your staff pass in the canteen,

6 six months' salary ex gratia payments,

one in 5 GTS staff aaaat risk.

4 action points

3 weeks "sufficient time"

2 hundred and 36 staff axed

... and a demand to go voluntaaaarily!

Arecibo Observatory brings forward 'controlled demolition' plans by collapsing all by itself

macjules

Didn't help with an operator heard yelling, "Yes, I am invincible" just after it had collapsed and just before the coolant leaked out.

Supreme Court mulls whether a cop looking up a license plate for cash is equivalent to watching Instagram at work

macjules

They have far more important things to worry about here

Is a Scotch Egg a "substantial" meal?

Scotch eggs ascend to the 'substantial meal' pantheon as means to pop to pub for a pint during pernicious pandemic

macjules

they couldn’t tell us what substantial food was

What a complete effing joke.

It is like this with the schools. They demand that every school provide a "substantial" school meal during the COVID-19 crisis but (as usual) leave it up to the head teacher to define what that meal should be or what substantial means. My lot come home and say that they get a pack of crips, a choice of sandwich, an apple and a small orange drink on good days.

Arm at 30: From Cambridge to the world, one plucky British startup changed everything

macjules

Err

No mention of Sophie Wilson?

Italian competition watchdog slaps Apple with €10m fine over allegedly misleading iPhone waterproofing claims

macjules

Re: After a short dive in sea water.

It depends upon lots of factors, namely:

The type of water you drop the phone into.

How long you left it in the water.

(Italian section)

How much you pay your lawyer

How well your lawyer knows the judge

How much money the judge would like as a small appreciation of his hard work.

Mysterious Utah monolith mysteriously disappears without trace

macjules
FAIL

Metal slab that looks like something out of 2001 appears and disappears. Makes headlines

And in other news .. Laurence Fox held a lunch party and invited more than 6 people and wrote about it on Twitter.

Isn't life grand?

Behold the drive-thru of the California Highway Patrol: Fry me a river, has 'CHIPS' stopped working again?

macjules
Unhappy

Since it is McDonald's ...

Computer Helps In Preventing Service

Thus ensuring you are blocked from receiving a dose of mechanically recovery chlorinated chicken, fries like soggy blotting paper and milkshakes that should come with the warning, "Animal of origin unknown".

After demonstrating a facial recognition system that works on cows, moo-chine learning pioneer seeks growth funding

macjules
Joke

AI?

Could this be the first time that someone threw loads of VC cash at an Artificial Intelligence startup, only to later discover that AI stood for Artificial Insemination?

Sopra Steria: Adding up outages and ransomware cleanup, Ryuk attack will cost us up to €50m

macjules

Ryuk attack will cost us up to €50m

Sopra Steria: Adding up outages and ransomware cleanup, Ryuk attack will cost our customers up to €100m

FTFY

Revenues are up, the boss is about to give his keynote, and results are due. Time to sell shares, says Salesforce CFO

macjules

Secondhand Paganini

Hopefully not as previously driven by someone's spoilt 17 year old son.

Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah

macjules

Simple explanation

Planet Earth’s backup USB stick. One one side it says “Do not pull out of the ground” thus ensuring that the current upright monkey species will do exactly that.

macjules

Re: The Sheep

As in, “So long and thanks for all the thistles.” ?

Pretty fly for a SharkEye: Salesforce sponsors AI drones to spot sharks before they attack California swimmers

macjules

And did they consider?

That the sharks might have frikkin' laser beams attached to their heads and could knock down the drones?

Millions wiped off value of Capita outsourcing deal with English councils amid 'further contract variation agreement'

macjules
Facepalm

expected savings of £18m in the shared services deal had not come to pass

They employed Capita and they thought they would save money? I suggest that next time they ask Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny to tender for contracts.

US Air Force deploys robot security dogs to guard base

macjules

"No offensive capability has been built into these puppies"

Yeah, right. They are really going to admit that each dog has a shotgun built into a leg, can fire tracking pellets, climb trees and remotely control vans.

Cool stuff: MacBook Air and Pro teardowns show thermal changes and missing T2 chip

macjules
Coat

I know where the T2 chip is

Sarah Connor dropped it in a furnace.

It's Friday ...

Cyberup campaign: 80% of infosec pros fear they might fall foul of UK's outdated Computer Misuse Act

macjules

Re: Those laws are still perfectly good

Can someone operating an S3 bucket give authorisation, within the CMA definition, to a pentesting firm looking to probe that?

Yes, you can. For Nettitude and NCC in particular I would ask them to provide their IP ranges for the servers carrying out the testing, the time and date that they would be carrying out the tests and an emergency telephone contact should the PaaS require to contact them to satisfy any security concerns they have. That more than justifies that there is no breach under CMA.

UK reveals new 'National Cyber Force', announces Space Command and mysterious AI agency

macjules
Joke

Re: World beating!!!

Á la Monty Python:

"Can you use a computer?"

"Yes"

"Good, then you're hired."

macjules

Re: Policy-based evidence making

I find it odd how a figure of billions can be decided upon before the review is completed.

You have, I take it, read about the exploits of Baroness Dido Harding on here?

Not sunshine, moonlight or good times – blame it on the buggy

macjules

Re: "It's the system"

That was the embuggerance of Mac OSX. You used to have this lovely step system of 1) Please restart the computer and 2) Can you please hold down the Option and Command key in order to rebuild the desktop? Never failed to solve 99% of problems.

Of course now we have 'Please hold Command S and at this stage I would like to know if you have any experience of UNIX systems as you will be asked to run fsck."

Internet Archive to preserve Flash content for posterity with Ruffle emulator

macjules

It's the only way to be sure

Can we please petition for a sub-orbital nuclear bombardment of the Internet Archive's headquarters and storage centre? It's the only way to make sure.

Watchdog signals Boeing 737 Max jets can return to US skies following software upgrade, pilot training

macjules

Re: How to convince people to get aboard?

Ah Ryanair, as in "Can we put your children in the overhead locker sir?"

Billionaire's Pagani Pa-gone-i after teen son takes hypercar out for a drive, trashes it

macjules

Re: Ask any actuary

Fiesta or VW Polo are best for teenagers: cheap to replace parts, service and a Fiesta can withstand the "What do mean Dad, why do I have to put oil in it?" long enough.

Test and Trace chief Dido Harding prompted to self-isolate by NHS COVID-19 app

macjules
Mushroom

Nothing like personal experience of your own products

Now publish all your personal data online so that you can experience what it is like to be a TalkTalk customer.

Worn-out NAND flash blamed for Tesla vehicle gremlins, such as rearview cam failures and silenced audio alerts

macjules

Re: Nail meet head

Gas-guzzling Audi Q7 SUV. Done my tree hugging bit by buying a Tesla. Now it's my turn to reduce the amount of fossil fuel left in the ground,

macjules

Nail meet head

Got rid of my 2014 Model S in late 2017 when lots of things started to go wrong with it, including loss of rear view camera, indicators not working properly and the entire Multimedia system repeatedly going into reset (not good on a long journey with 3 whining teenagers in the back of the car).

The part exchange reason I gave (to Audi) was "too many gremlins". Thanks for clarifying what it really was.

Shocking revelations from Huawei-commissioned report: Huawei is good for the UK's economy so don't ban them

macjules

Self-generating reports - what a great idea!

IBM: A report just out says that IBM is the world's greatest company to work at. Staff questioned were happy that there is never any chance of being made redundant.

Capita: A new report says that Capita is financially more solvent than Apple and goes on to state how marvellous Capita's applications are.

Tesla: All Tesla's cars are perfectly safe. A report absolves the board of Tesla from any responsibility for use of NAND chips.

As nearly everyone stays home for the pandemic, plunge in overseas charges dents Vodafone's revenues

macjules

Could not happen to a nicer company

My crocodile tears are burning down my cheeks. I suppose the next step is to place a large number of staff on warning, provide them with 6 months furlough and let the taxpayer pick up the redundancy package.

Pass us a tissue: Capita CFO calls it quits, talks of 'privilege' to work at 'centre' of biz that 'touches the lives of millions'

macjules

Re: 'touches the lives of millions'

In a similar, rather slimy way that Dido Harding has also touched the lives of millions.

The revolution will not be televised because my television has been radicalised

macjules

Re: Have you noticed anything recently?

"Like, 24/7 MISinformation campaigns"

You spelled MI5information wrongly.

macjules

So totally agree. I encourage my children to discuss what they read or watch in order that they can get an earthed view of some fool spouting race hate or walking around with an American flag with the Nazi swastika on it.

Panic in the mailroom: The perils of an operating system too smart for its own good

macjules

OMG. GiroBank, Bootle, Merseyside.

macjules

Re: Computerized billing ...

Exactly the same with the purchase order's department for HM Treasury in the late 1970's. The cheque runs were processed via the Burroughes with an auto recovery to the print queue in even of a failure.

Of course the fact that some people got 2 tax refunds was irrelevant .. this was a year before Mrs T came to power so we were in the glorious days of "Who gives a flying f**, it's only taxpayer's money"

Ex-missile systems worker jailed for breaching Official Secrets Act after last-second guilty plea

macjules

Mrs Justice Whipple

I suspect that someone in the Lord Chancellor's department promotes barristers to the bench based upon their names. Very Joesph Heller.

Images of women coerced by adult companies poison dataset popularised by deepfake smut creators

macjules

Police in Moscow are investigating ..

Is that what they call saying, "We are busy drinking coffee and will give the matter the urgent attention it requires"?

[Checks meeting agenda...] Where does it say 'Talk cr*p and waste everyone's time'?

macjules

"You're on mute mate"

Possibly the most used phrase this year, or at least a close second to "No mask, no entry". My favourite would be, "Could you switch off your video please? It's just that we can see your dogs having sex in the background."

Apple drops macOS Big Sur on the world – and it arrives with a thud, sound of breaking glass, sirens in the distance...

macjules

Simple solution

sudo vi /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 ocsp.apple.com

Tax working from home, says Deutsche Bank, because the economy needs that lunch money you’re not spending

macjules

Re: Fuck off, Deutsche Bank

+1. Shouldn't they be busy laundering some oligarch's dirty money?

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

macjules

Re: Squashed trees, in this century?

"You need to print out your COVID-19 test result and produce it with your passport, boarding pass and ESTA ID (if applicable) before you will be permitted to board the aircraft"

Of course, saying "I could not print it out since I have exceeded my allotted HP prints for this month" is not going to be a valid excuse.

Transport for London dangles £1.1bn carrot in pursuit of suppliers for new revenue collection deal

macjules

Give it to Crapita

They will only charge £1.3Bn for the first year and £1Bn thereafter, so TFL will start to make some money in Year 3.

Halt don't catch fire: Amazon recalls hundreds of thousands of Ring doorbells over exploding battery fears

macjules

Re: I screwed into a burning ring of fire

I thought Spaghetti Junction was the Birmingham Screwdriver. Certainly screws everything up for me when I drive through it.

Mr President? Donald?! Any chance you can actually decide if Oracle can buy us or do we have to leave?

macjules

CFIUS says:

"He who acts with a constant view to his own advantage will be much murmured against."

Apple now Arm'd to the teeth: MacBook Air and Pro, Mac mini to be powered by custom M1 chips rather than Intel

macjules

Re: Confusing much?

Possibly because the previous System OS ended at version 9?