Posts by Bucky 2

Never go live on a Friday

It's easy to imagine a team leader saying, "Let's do the upgrade Monday, first thing. If something goes wrong, we don't want to be here all weekend."

The upgrade in question might not have anything to do with the routers -- they might have taken the routers offline on purpose as part of damage control.

The fact that they're being super coy about what's gone wrong might or might not mean anything.

We could try to shame them into divulging the real problem by imagining a catastrophe that dwarfs anything plausible. They might be more willing to admit something if it were a trifle in comparison to the thing we imagined. That seems to be a gambit typical of Facebook users -- though I can't say I've seen it work effectively in practice.

If a client gives out requirements in dribs and drabs, the court agrees that the contractor isn't allowed to raise the price as a result.

Ultimately, that's my takeaway.

"Goodness, no, officer, I was just testing the convenience store's booze and pop-tart security. My poor, misunderstood heart is as pure as the driven snow."

A corporate network

The term, "corporate network", used to mean a portion of the corporate network that doesn't include distribution, together with the "weak passwords" comment, makes me think it's only fancy offices that were affected.

Full of business types who see network security strictly as a revenue stream.

Such a situation wouldn't surprise me enough even to be disillusioned.

Certainly no Daryl Hannah

The software did not do good hair.

He was hired specifically for his ability to do good hair.

Presentations were fictionalized against the belief that he would make the software do good hair.

He did not make the software do good hair.

He tried to take a work laptop out of the building after he was fired.

Old Movies

I'd like to see a comparison of how it might clean up an old movie, compared to whatever procedure they do now.

I'm surprised none of the information in last week's article:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/24/mariadb_tx_3_point_0/

...was referenced in combination with the other companies trying to make migration from Oracle easier.

Not just Facebook

In the olden days, a TV or radio network would take some responsibility for its ad content.

On the Internet, site administrators wash their hands of every side-effect of the ad networks they decide to use. That, more than anything else, drives the use of ad blockers for me.

If site owners can't be bothered to vet the ads they display, I don't see why I should do it for them.

Lock 'em up

Who looks at a picture of a penis and then immediately thinks of children?

I remember the 90s

Yay! VRML! I knew its day would come!

The word vectors revealed social constructs. These constructs affect every part of life. We hardly even notice them until we travel, and discover that they're different elsewhere.

It sounds like the first uses of AI are really more about identifying and reflecting social cues. That's a valuable use. It's not the use we were looking for, but that's progress for you.

Responsive design for the OS?

That's what it sounds like they're trying to do. "Fluent" at least trivially sounds like "fluid."

It would be a mistake to rely on nothing but design fluidity to address different kinds of behaviors for different form factors. But it doesn't sound like the worst place to start, if you're looking for consistency across devices.

Not much of a camper

Funny story. I'm not much of a camper. I had to look up "caravan." The mental image of all those camels and swingers didn't seem plausible.

All clients do this

My best guess is that clients resent when there is a problem so intensely, that they gather all their cognitive resources to determine the most effective way to transmit their anger and frustration to the developer.

The obvious solution is to wait until end of day Friday.

Clients who limit themselves to emotions no stronger than simple personal hatred only wait until exactly lunchtime.

Anti-Google is Not Anti-Tech

At least not any more than being anti-robber-baron is anti-railroad.

We've All Had This Client

"We want the application to do X. It must always do X. X must be perfect, reliable, and constant. Everything depends on X."

So you build it. You're down to the final review before final payment.

"Sometimes we don't want it to do X at all. Make that happen."

This all seems to me like a case of the wrong tool for the job.

If people are illegally taking into account spent convictions, those are the criminals that need to be stopped.

Playing with the truth instead feels like a failure to even try.

Arid Landscapes

The problem with arid landscapes is that they frequently have fragile ecosystems filled with at-risk species. They're not the barren wastelands that they seem to be at first glance, just waiting for the miracle of industrialization to make use of them.

This doesn't mean they're unavailable for solar farming altogether. But ignoring the issue is foolish at best.

This Comment Is Fake News

I tend not to infer an intent to deceive in a lot of articles with false information.

Instead, I tend to infer laziness on the part of the reporter, indifference on the part of the editor, and a staunch refusal on the part of the public to actually educate themselves on topics they purport to care about.

Which is to say, I fault adults for not behaving as adults.

I admit I found it implausible that a giant advertising agency like Google would be doing anything substantial against advertising.

I did not want to be right, though.

I'm confused by the gender politics.

I'm curious about the new crisps, but I'm not a woman.

Should I not be, because I'm a man? Exactly what is the uniqueness that women have, that I do not share, that would guide them to choose one snack food over another?

It's likely that my view is flawed and simplistic, but I don't know how to learn unless I ask. How is this not sexist? I don't get it.

I'm suspicious

Is there any genuine legal use for cryptocurrency that isn't better served with normal currency? They sure don't take it at the supermarket.

Criminals stealing from criminals doesn't really bother me that much.

Criminals stealing from rich people that can afford to accumulate a startling $20K in useless cryptocurrency against its possible future use doesn't bother me either.

Wow, that's pretty insulting

So, women are good at social skills. Just like Asians are good at mathematics, right?

You can't begin with a selection of stereotypes, assume they're all true, and then build that into something that's going to demolish stereotypes.

I'm trying to figure out how they managed to get the process so confused.

Surely keeping track of these things would be something an expert in "cognitive computing" would be able to do with its eyes closed.

Either they lack the expertise in information management necessary, or else it wasn't a good-faith offer in the first place.

I'm going to have to side with Zuck on this one.

What were his words? People who use Facebook for news are what again? Oh, yeah: "Dumb shits."

If people want to live their lives as insensate animals instead of rational human beings, there's really nothing any of us can do to stop them.

Over the past year, we in the US have been studying up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

It sounds like you've got a textbook example right there. The consequences of her own actions are clearly somebody else's fault. Wait until your neighbors elect her to public office, and then claim her admittedly tepid opponent was "just as bad."

Accountability

The test of the ad delivery system will be how Mozilla behaves if there is a dispute about the content of one of its ads. You know, porn, booze, violence, or malware.

Will it own the problem, or will it scratch its head and say, "Gee, we're sorry, but nobody has any real control over this thing?"

Everything old is new again

They told us this in the 80s.

It's time for career counselors in high schools to once again steer kids away from computing as a career. It's all going to be obsolete Real Soon Now.

Unless, as before, it turns out that the general public is just too staggeringly lazy to bother.

Sometimes a tort is not just a cake

It will cost him $100,000 to start if he wants to defend against the lawsuit. A huge laundry list like this, call it $200,000.

And a jury can find him partially guilty. Say they find him 95% innocent. That's $300,000 on top of everything else.

So in the above scenario, he's $500,000 out of pocket. For a lawsuit which the newspapers would report as a win.

We never started with a meritocracy

There's no meritocracy to go "back" to.

We believed the job market was a meritocracy because they told us it was. We believed them. We got jobs. We assumed it was because we had merit.

The presumption was flawed.

Naturally, that produces fear, uncertainty, and doubt. This is sometimes expressed as racism or sexism, but what it really is, is existential panic.

define:anxiety

My car is probably what my great-grandfather might have considered an AI.

I'm not certain I know what the new AI is, when it will happen, and what the world will look like just before, and then forever after.

I could freak out, but there's a new actor playing Dr. Who in the fall, and they picked up The Orville for a second season. First I've got to see those. I'll kill myself after.

I'm confused about the word "uncooperative"

Does this mean that corporations resist due process, does it mean they're requesting due process, or does it just mean that they simply can't do what the government wishes it could, under the table, for free?

I don't know how it is in the UK, but in the US, our congresspeople are so rich, they may as well be a different species. Their thoughts and motivations are alien and opaque. They use words in completely new ways, which at first seem to make sense, but fall apart with the barest investigation. At first it might seem that they're idiots, but you don't gain and keep power by being stupid.

My best guess, under the circumstances, is that when they say "expensive," they don't mean they don't have the money to pay for something. It just means they don't feel like it.

I weep for the lost art of journalism

I have little expertise in anything apart from technology. I have to assume that technology reporting is indicative of the accuracy of the rest of a publication's reporting.

I'd have thought that the "fake news" meme being spewed by The Incarnation Of Satan On Earth would have stung more publications into being more precise.

Guess not.

Mechanics

I do wonder if mechanics have to deal with people who not only don't realize that tires have to be kept inflated, oil changed, fuel tank full, and so on, but who also feel insulted should anyone suggest that they learn these things about their own car.

I can handle the ignorance. It's the astounding sense of entitlement that sets my teeth on edge.

Not nearly good enough

I advocate blocking all ads that the hosting website does not serve.

If I'm requested to download an ad under the auspices of a web site, I require that web site to take responsibility for it. If they don't want to risk it, then for goodness sake, why should I?

Hey, I got that phone

Except it was $300 (£225-ish, according to Google) and came with Nougat instead of Oreo. That's the T-Mobile variant. I still feel like it was a halfway decent price/performance point. I've been wrong before, of course.