Posts by My-Handle

Re: (Can't...stop...the... voices....)

Trust me, the IT director knows. He doesn't like being told to buy something specifically against his and his team's recommendation.

Re: I'm sorry, what?

I was also wondering how the machines confirm that you actually own the phone that you put in. Must make it pretty easy for thieves to cash in.

Hell, I can even see your "mate" (you know the one, the one who thinks he's great and that jokes like that are all in good fun. The one everyone hates but can't quite get rid of) grabbing your phone and putting it in the machine for a laugh.

Re: And then there is this janitor...

Late to the party here, but only just found this link and had to comment.

A humbling read. Thank you for sharing.

Re: SpaceX have turned rocket science into Spaghetti Engineering

The first road vehicle (the Puffing Devil) exploded when parked outside a pub.

The first jet engine couldn't be stopped, it carried on accelerating even after they turned off the fuel supply.

The Falcon 9 exploded regularly when attempting landing, and it's now the only rocket 1st stage to be regularly reused. And, you know, it can now carry people.

Plenty of new things are too dangerous to put people in, on or near. Then they get improved until they're reliable enough to do the job safely.

Re: MTBF

Depends. If the bet was "I bet I won't crash my car", then no.

If it was "I bet the insurance company will pay me if I crash my car - minus excess and anything else they can wrangle", then probably.

At best, you're breaking even.

Re: Fire and re-hire

"I've managed to avoid being fired so far in my career..."

Ah, I'm not so lucky there. I either end up getting a great reputation and lasting years with an employer, or I end up getting kicked on short notice. Thankfully, that has only happened twice.

First was a data entry role that a recruitment agency managed to drop me in to. Company didn't have any idea what to do with me when I arrived. During "training" (i.e. watching other workers for several days), I wondered aloud about automating some processes in front of a late-50s woman who spent her entire day copy-pasting figures from a website to Excel and back. She made 3 petty complaints about me to HR in quick succession, who then terminated my temp contract rather than deal with them.

Second was a dysfunctional IT dept for another large company. I ended up working on a project for a project manager who had real trouble communicating and hated being asked any kind of a question. Got thrown under the bus (despite doing well on a couple of subsequent projects) and didn't pass the probation term.

Thankfully, the other 5 employers I've had have all fought to keep me. Even the large company that made my entire team redundant (including me) ended up with a whole lot of in-fighting to keep me on board.

Re: The cost of education

Ah, now I am Cynical. I was in fact informed of this at the age of 18, by a mid-40s middle-manager, in a tone of mixed exasperation and respect. I've had years of real-life lessons since then.

These days, the barest sniff of an awkward client has me thinking "I know I'm going to regret this, but forward I must go. I wonder exactly how I'm going to regret it this time."

Re: At JGH re: checks...

Don't know, you might have to double-check your Czek cheque

Edit: Ninja'd

Re: Getting people to read is difficult too

I think that the article was pointing out that most people share these social media posts without stopping to think whether they're fake or not. When they're prompted to consider whether a random headline or post is fake or not, they begin thinking before sharing other posts.

I don't think this solution is designed to completely remove fake news, or to not be gamed at all. I think it's more designed to help modify people's behaviour by giving them a gentle nudge.

You can't drag a horse anywhere, but you can gently steer it.

Re: Sounds good, I'll start

This contest is open to mammals only, invertebrates need not apply.

Apart from the mantis shrimp, mainly because I don't want to tell him "no".

Re: Repulsive!

Yeah, my first reaction was "What!? WTF dude?". Then I saw the Troll icon.

For the record, I didn't downvote :)

I would agree. I was getting several spam calls a week about six or seven years ago. Signed up to TPS, and the calls tailed off pretty much to zero over the next week or two. I still get a couple a month, mostly automated "I'm calling about the accident you were in..." calls, so it's not perfect, but it's a big improvement.

Re: It's a different world

We also had a car-carrying hovercraft crossing the English Channel, until it became apparent that it was easier to bore a hole through the earth than maintain it.

*said mostly in jest

Re: a mere 4.3 light years away

Came here to say pretty much the same thing.

It's a very self-defeating attitude to take, to say "We'll never achieve X based on our current understanding, so don't bother trying or even waste time thinking about it".

In the pioneering days of locomotive steam engines, many believed that it was unnatural for people to travel that fast, and that travelling faster than 30 or 40mph (not sure which, my memory fails me here) would impart significant damage to the human body. Now we routinely travel at 70mph (if you're being good) on the roads.

It was thought to be impossible to split the atom. That's literally what it's name means; un-cuttable. That was disproven rather thoroughly, and violently.

We don't understand everything about the universe. A lot of what we think we understand probably isn't right, or at least isn't entirely accurate. It's probably best to say that travelling at lightspeed isn't possible for now, and to keep an open mind for later.

I was just thinking the same thing. I hope anyone with a Starlink antenna in Myanmar is keeping it well out of sight.

Re: Computer++ sentence

Theoretically speaking, a longer sentence acts as more of a deterrent.

Burglary may have a shorter sentence because less of a deterrent is needed. In most cases it's much harder to physically break into someone's house than hack their computer and you're likely to leave a lot more evidence behind. You're more easily caught, and that risk will act as a deterrent in itself.

Hacking, on the other hand, is much easier for a certain subset of people. The perceived risk is much lower, so there's less deterrent in committing the crime itself. So a harsher sentence may be needed to add that deterrent.

No, wait for a problem to develop and then fix it on the box. When the next person syncs to source control, fix goes away, they get the blame.

Re: The death of Google search

This one's mine -->>

Re: Created already

I got the impression from the article that they'd finally decided to act on the two-week-old requests and create the database. Then found that it had already been created and got stroppy about being asked to do something that had already been done.

Re: HR evaluations everywhere...

Said previous employer also had a similar scheme. Bottom 10 or 15% each month were put on a "performance improvement plan". If they came in bottom again, they were fired.

The kicker was that the targets for these teams were completely arbitrary and, for significant portions of a year, actually exceeded the amount of work coming in to the company. That's right, it was actually impossible for everyone to meet their targets because they weren't being given enough work to allow them to do so. And work was handed out pretty randomly, which made getting put on a PIP a dice roll.

As a side note, turnover for staff on the floor was about 2% -per week-. Some via the above rules, most by their own accord. Every Friday was a leaving do for a handful of people.

Re: Taiwan

I took on a project recently which served to show me how much I don't know about electrics. Out of curiosity, what's the failure mode of a cable like that?

I'd have thought that a higher voltage would mean less current, and therefore less heat created in the cable. Do you just get breakdown of the cable insulation under the higher voltage?

I had the opportunity to run my eye over a temporary manufacturing facility near the start of the pandemic. With a double-handful of computers spread over a large temporary space, you'd think WiFi would be a perfect fit, but we quickly ran into noise issues even with multiple WiFi points, partly thanks to an order of hundreds of mobile phones in one metal walled building.

Obv fibre isn't a solution here, but it did illustrate interference issues pretty damn well. We even got interference in the bloody network cables, even with comparatively short lengths. The lot had to be shielded.

Re: weekend e-mails

"There are few things an employer can do more annoying than phoning up at 5 minutes before knocking off time..."

Ouch, I felt that one. That's the favourite tactic of one particular high-up at our place. On a Friday, usually. He also has a distressing habit of chronically under-estimating the amount of time a job will take to do.

Re: seems odd

I imagine drones are denser, have sharper edges and have less sense regarding fast-moving loud vehicles on an apparent intercept :)

"Yeah, it was dead simple." The perp told the reporter. "I walked into the IT guy's office, typed 'Passw0rd' into the login screen, dumped the database onto a USB pen and walked out. Made a mint on the dark web."

The institution concerned said it was investigating the sophisticated cyber attack and couldn't comment further at this time.

Re: obXKCD

Free speech is the freedom to say what you like within the means you have.

It also carries with it the freedom to bear the consequences of your actions.

While you can say what you like, you do not have the right to demand that other people listen, or repeat / publish what you want using any means at their disposal. To do so would be to limit their freedoms.

At this point, I confess I don't have any firm idea of what "cancel culture" is supposed to mean. I hear it thrown around as an accusation or excuse an awful lot, but never any substantive argument or description to go with it, to explain why something is "cancel culture" or why that's a bad thing.

Re: That's a nice Justice System you've got there...

A quick dig about online shows that 0.65% of the population of the USA are currently incarcerated. One in every two-hundred people. Highest rate of incarceration anywhere in the world, and highest total incarcerated as an absolute figure as well (2.1 million).

"Land of the Free", everyone!

Data source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

Wikipedia's data source in this case seems to be the World Prison Brief, hosted by the Institute For Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck College, University of London.

Re: Stupidity vs Science?

By the sound of it she might have been right. They couldn't teach her anything.

Not for the lack of things to teach or ability of the teachers, of course :)

Re: Talking of getting it wrong

I find that software development is almost entirely a game of imagining all the bad things that might happen, then making sure they don't.

Re: It's not a funny event.

One of the reasons that the riot was so dangerous was that the security forces underestimated the rioters. I would recommend that you not make the same mistake.

Re: Pay still isn't great, but it isn't bad either.

And quickly get fired. Yep, that's a nice attractive prospect for someone who didn't actually have any on-paper qualification or experience in the industry. I hate to burst your bubble, but it's exceptionally easy for big and powerful companies to take advantage of individuals, whether you let them or not. Theoretically, we have employment law to prevent that going too far, but that only goes so far.

If it's any consolation to you, once I had a few years experience doing that role, I walked in to a proper software development job and did demand the market rate from them. Timing was the key, there.