Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Hey, Github!

"a certain other product might be if there is a person called Alexa in the room."

I'm an old git and have a wife :-)

Luckily, she's can barely program the PVR so is unlikely to ever come across a word like github and use it on me :-)

LetMeIn is one I remember from somewhere, somewhen. No idea what it was for, but it was the standard, default password for something and not often changed in deployment.

And yet another explanation is that the younger ones are still employed at a level where they won't admit to making mistakes that could get them fired if identified. It's a lot safer to recount a tale of disaster that happened decades ago in a different life under a different, possibly now defunct employer :-)

I'd like him to describe what alt-right is. Logically, alt-right would be left, but I don't think that's what he means. Maybe he has two rights and is getting a wrong?

Re: Close it Down and Get Out Quick

I've made that very same suggestion in comments on one of the many other El Reg Twitter articles. But on reflection, some of his investors such as the Saudi Wealth Fund and Qatar may be the types to take such losses personally, and both have form for "disappearing" people they don't like. Does he think he's "too big to disappear" or have that much trust in his personal security?

Re: "Shouting" at the wrong person

Probably for one of two reasons. The CEO's PA does all the CEOs email and so the CEO never saw it anyway. And even if the CEO did see it, I very much doubt the CEO would be informed of new starters at the now merged business unless they were C-Suite level anyway.

Re: Now ask me why ...

I used to go up to Glasgow quite often for various call-outs. I never, ever had an issue dealing with people in the various companies I dealt with, at all levels. One year, my wife and I went on a holiday up by Loch Lomand. Trying to have a chat with a broad Glaswegian in the bar (yes, he'd had a few) was entirely fruitless!! And I thought I was "tuned in" on the Glaswegian accent. Clearly I'd only ever met "posh" Glaswegians up to that point :-)

Re: You get what you order

It seems to be the case that not charging enough gives the impression the product or service is not valuable and the chancers will try to knock down the prices even further or demand more for the same. Good for him for seeing the light when it is pointed out to him.

Re: You get what you order

"It’s a trust that is only potential until a problem crops up, at which point the trust is affirmed or lost."

That's something I've always "known", felt in my bones, so to speak. When a customer has a problem, as I often say to them, the problem isn't the issue, it's how it's dealt with that matters. So I always try to deal with it in the best way possible. After all, if they choose to go with a different supplier, odds are they will have the same or similar problems somewhere down the line and may or may not get those problems resolved promptly and/or correctly.

For clarity, who is "we" and will you be quitting any time soon?

Re: If Twitter dies..

"All the ones I see on TV / Internet are just news readers."

Most of them aren't even that. They "read" 60 seconds of news then spend the rest of the "show" being opinionated twats ranting about one aspect of it with their like0minded "guests". There are very few actual sources of news that don't bury it in strongly biased opinions.

Re: Can a genius be unskilled and unaware

Edison? AC/DC wars?

Re: Employee memo number 2

You do know that "going postal" was coined after a number of postal workers randomly shot a load of their co-workers, don't you? IRC, about 50 people died over some years due to these incidents of "angry" workers.

Yes and no. The thrust of what you say is correct. His mistake was in actually calling it crap. There were many and better ways he could have described it without calling it crap and he would almost certainly have got away with it.

Re: 80 hour weeks

I wonder if he's bothered to read all their employment contracts? How many of those staff are hourly paid and entitled to overtime rates after 40 hours? Or, this being Silly-Con Valley, is that not a normal contract of employment? I'd be surprised if any of the EU or UK staff are on unlimited hours contracts without overtime rates, except maybe executive level people.

I thought he was suggesting that Twitter apply to be payment processor. That's not a bank. It's just cutting out the middle man in subscription payments AFAIK.

Even if salaried, in many jurisdictions, including the UK and EU, even with a Working Time Directive opt-out, you can't make those sort of demands with the only option to resign without falling foul of a whole raft of constructive dismissal cases.

I wonder why he thought he could just state that he wanted a blue tick subscription service and say "Make it so!" and it would be so without allocating time to design a system that worked, including verification?" That sort of system needs people to carry out, at the very least, random checking of automated verification. And you can't just knock up an automated verification system in a few days. It takes people and time and he gave little to no time and took away half of the people. Why does he think developing new ideas, products and systems at Twitter will be instant when it clearly isn't at SpaceX or Tesla?

Re: Meanwhile....

"a new chapter in the digital development of the Russian restaurant industry"

"What could possibly go wrong?"

Hmmmm....I wonder what happened to KFCs business in Russia?

Re: Shades of "The Producers"

You wish!!! In the Producers the plan was to lose money and it went wrong and made money. The exact opposite of what seems to be happening at Twitter :-)

Although it is a wonderful thought and image :-)

Re: A whole fricken OS just to print

Came here to say the same thing. This "solution" is to install an enormously large amount of code and data, probably in the range of GB, just to make a printer work. A bit like current HP Windows drivers. Oh, yeah...as you were folks! :-)

Re: Slight nitpicking

Although, to be fair, the odds are much better on this site than on many others :-)

Re: You also get the problem ....

"Losses are greater if it's in GEO,"

Assuming the power is beamed tightly enough to keep it focussed on the receiving station such that it doesn't cook the people and wildlife outside the area, how much extra loss is there between LEO and GEO? Loss is normally defined as the inverse square law, but isn't that based on a point source with an ever expanding "zone of reception"? I'd think most of the loss would the the final leg of the journey through the atmosphere. Am I completely off base here?

Re: You also get the problem ....

Yeahbut, those hedgerows are ecosystems vital to the survival of $something!!!! You can't save the planet by killing stuff, oh nooooo!

On a slightly more serious note, any field used only for sheep grazing should be good for solar panels even using the standard mounting systems used now. I doubt the sheep would care. They might even be grateful for the extra shade in summer or, more commonly, somewhere to shelter from the rain :-) Cows, not so much. They'd probably knock them over using them as scratching posts, even of they were built taller to allow the cows to move around more freely.

And then there's fields of solar panels mounted vertically, south facing which apparently only reduces capacity by a small amount but still allows the machinery to get in and plant/maintain/harvest crops. between the rows of panels.