* Posts by sisk

2455 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Mar 2010

President Trump's H-1B visa crackdown wiped $100bn off market value of America's largest corps, top study finds

sisk

So what you're saying is 1) You didn't read the article, which clearly says that these dollars are NOT being redirected towards employing domestic labor, 2) Don't even come close to understanding the scale of economic damage being discussed here, in the billions of dollars in one day, and 3) Won't let petty things like "facts" and "truth" interfere with your worldview. Got it.

Now if you actually have an intelligent counter, let's talk. But if all you're going to do is dismiss it because it seems to say that the great leader's plan is not working without so much as bothering to fully comprehend it, you should maybe take Twain's advice on staying silent and being thought a fool.

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

sisk

Re: Perhaps

I dunno. If my boss emails me something important and it takes an hour to reply she assumes - usually correctly - that I'm busy doing my job and am not at a good point to drop things and write her back immediately, If it's really urgent she calls my cell phone. And for context a call from her on my cell phone is usually something security related that needs immediate attention.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

sisk

Re: 1% are the 1%

Yeah, at the beginning of this I thought the Republicans were likely in trouble because of Covid. It disproportionately kills older people, and what age group is most likely to vote Republican? I dunno though, we'll see come November.

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

sisk

Smart person: "This is a temporary fix. It needs to be done properly soon."

Dumb person: "Nah, it's working now so we're good."

Smart person: "It'll work for a week or two at most."

Dumb person: "That's OK, you can just come fix it again, right?"

Yep. Sounds about normal.

Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much

sisk
Pint

Re: During my time in front line IT support I've seen things

For a while our email system was set up to forward student emails that violated certain policies - profanity and hate speech mainly - to my inbox so that I could forward them on for disciplinary action if necessary. Invariably the rule always got triggered after a long back and forth of one-line emails. I convinced them to let me change that setup to forward them directly to the principal after the fourth time I accidentally found out exactly which secluded nook a pair of too-young kids were meeting at between classes to work out their hormones. The one that sealed it for me was "Did you get a condom this time?". From a high school freshman. Ick.

I think I need some of that mind bleach, whiskey flavored please.

Microsoft staff giggle beneath the weight of a 52,000-person Reply-All email storm

sisk

So basically the new generation needs their own Bedlam DL3 moment to teach them not to reply all? Well, at least modern servers can handle it.

Remember the FBI's promise it wasn’t abusing the NSA’s data on US peeps? Well, guess what…

sisk

If you're surprised by this news, I've got a bridge to sell you....

Breaking, literally: Microsoft's fix for CPU-hogging Windows bug wrecks desktop search

sisk

So the update fixed both the high cpu usage and unnecessary disk thrashing behavior of SearchUI by disabling it? This sounds like the correct solution to the problem to me.

Big bang theory: Was mystery explosion over New York caused by a meteor? Dunno. By a military jet? Maybe...

sisk

I, for one, welcome our new incredibly loud alien overlords.

US soldier cleared of taking armoured vehicle out for joyride – because he's insane, court says

sisk

Re: So...

The legitimately insane rarely plead insanity themselves. Their lawyers usually do it for them on the advice of mental health professionals, whether their client likes it or not. And "not guilty by way of insanity" can actually be a worse verdict than "guilty". In this particular case he'd have probably gotten a discharge and a year or two in jail with a guilty verdict, but "not guilty by way of insanity" means he gets to languish in a mental hospital until he's no longer deemed a danger to himself or others, which can take a very long time indeed.

Green search engine Ecosia thinks Google's Android auction stinks, gives bid a hard pass

sisk

Re: "heir work was finished: Netscape was dead by then"

And anyway the same can be said about Google dominance in search engines outside Russia and China.

I'm not so sure. Netscape was well and truly dead by then, but there are three major players and several smaller ones in the search engine market in the US. Yahoo and Bing aren't as big as they used to be by any means, but they're far from dead. And Ecosia and DuckDuckGo are doing alright. And, let's face it, Android is nowhere near the dominance in the mobile market that Windows has enjoyed in the desktop market for the last 30 years.

Bad news: Earth is not going to be walloped by asteroid 2006 QV89. Good news: Boffins have lost sight of it, so all hope is not yet lost

sisk

I, for one, welcome our new invisible planet smashing asteroid overlord.

After years of listening, we've heard not a single peep out of any aliens, say boffins. You think you can do better? OK, here's 1PB of signals

sisk

They're looking in the wrong place. They should be checking their own systems for something trying to phone home.

President Trump sits down with Twitter boss for crunch talks: Why am I losing followers?

sisk

Re: Hellbanning

Hey now, I'll admit this nation has done some pretty crappy things, but NO ONE deserves Trump. I mean it's not like we voted for him (no, really, he lost the popular vote by a pretty big margin, but the electoral college is so screwed up that he won anyway).

sisk

It probably also never occurred to him that a lot of people might choose to stop following someone who never tweets anything but hate filled rants and political rhetoric.

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

sisk

I very much doubt that once the American Justi^W Revenge System has got its hands on him.

Nah. The case is too high profile for those kinds of shenanigans. They'll nail him to the full extent that the letter of the law allows and not one day more.

sisk

I thought the girls fessed to making that up and those charges got dropped. Or am I thinking of another case?

At any rate, Assange is undoubtedly a narcissistic tool and Wikileaks is just a tool to feed his over-inflated ego, a force for neither good nor evil. That said I'm of the opinion that overall it's done more good than harm. And I think you're reaching quite a lot in claiming that that it helped Trump at all. It was pretty much irrelevant by 2016 after all.

sisk

Anyone else read this and realize that if he'd just let himself be arrested and charged in the beginning instead of going and hiding in the embassy this would all be over and he'd be free by now? He's spent longer locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy than he could possibly face in prison. And while I'm sure the embassy accommodations were better than prison....well, he'd be free now.

Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly

sisk

......Hey Reg, I think you messed up. Wasn't this story supposed to be posted last Monday?

BOFH: Tick tick BOOM. It's B-day! No we're not eating Brussels flouts...

sisk

Honestly the fruit baskets aren't a bad idea.We get them occasionally and you really only have to beat one person - who will take the whole danged thing so that she can take it home. Maybe I'm just lucky to not have to work with a bunch of inconsiderate twits or maybe the people delivering them know and thus deliver a lot.

NASA 'nauts do what flagship smartphone fans can only dream of: Change the batteries

sisk

Re: Phones with replaceable batteries

my understanding is that you can purchase replacement batteries for all the top phones. Apple replaced the battery in my iPhone 6, plenty of guys in my local town centre offering to replace batteries and they are wildly available on line.

Not as easy to do as in the old days where the cover was designed to be removed without tools, but nonetheless still possible albeit a longer process now. Given the number of people who ever actually swapped batteries in the past, statistically its not really a problem nowdays.

If you have to take it to the shop and/or use specialized tools to replace the battery then it is not what any sane person would call a "replaceable battery". That's sort of like the popped capacitors in older electronics: Technically replaceable, but not really as far as 99% of the population is concerned.

sisk

Phones with replaceable batteries

You can still get smartphones with replaceable batteries. You just have to be willing to settle for one not made by any of the top 5 or so companies by market share. I make it a priority when I'm buying a phone since the battery's usually the first part to go.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

sisk

Re: not neccessarily very good at brown-nosing...

Why is ambition even a thing on job reviews? In what way does a desire or lack there of to climb the ladder have any impact whatsoever on your job performance? If anything I'd say someone more focused on ladder climbing than their current job should have a mark against them.

McAfee – the completely sane guy, not the biz – told to fork out $25m over 'torture, murder' of his Belize neighbor

sisk

I don't get it... why if he's guilty isn't there jail time but just a fine?

It's not a fine. Wrongful death is a civil case, not a criminal one. The money won't be going to the government but to the plaintiffs of the case.

Also, there's no burden of proof in civil cases, and even if there were it wouldn't matter in this particular case because he didn't bother to show up to the court date. If you don't show up to a civil court date in the US you lose. That simple.That's what they mean by a default judgement.

'It's full of beer!' Miracle fridge reveals itself to pals tuckered out from cleaning flooded cabin

sisk

Why am I not surprised to read that there's beer on tap in the El Reg office?

Also, any ideas on convincing my boss to allow that here?

Super Cali optimistic right-to-repair's negotious, even though Apple thought it was something quite atrocious

sisk

When was the last time you owned a phone with a replaceable battery?

I have one now. In fact, that's one of the things I make sure about before I buy a phone. Sadly most top of the line phones don't have the option.

sisk

Both major US parties should be behind this if their public stances are to be believed. The DNC claims to represent the little guys and oppose evil megacorps, so backing this and letting people repair their own phones makes sense for them. The GOP claims to support a free market, and what's more free market than having the option to take your device where you choose for repairs.

Of course, both parties are lying about what they represent.

Hey, US taxpayers. Filed your taxes? Good, good. $500m of it is going on an Intel-Cray exascale boffinry supercomputer

sisk

Re: Watch their lips move

Yeah, right - that climate modelling would be of changes that the current administration doesn't even believe are happening, presumably?

Fortunately Trump doesn't actually run the government. It's far too complex a beast for his idiocy to completely inundate it in the 4 years of his Presidency (the only way he gets a second term with his approval ratings is if the Democrats are complete idiots and nominate one of their lunatic fringe). Even if by some infernal miracle (or DNC stupidity) he gets a second term he STILL won't have enough time to completely take over all the stuff our government does. There are a lot of better heads between him and whoever gets to decide what simulations are run on the governments supercomputers.

For the record, I hold an equal amount of disgust for the GOP and the DNC. And slightly more for select fringe lunatics on both sides, of whom Trump is one.

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

sisk

Re: To err is human

Ted had the right idea as such repetitive jobs are ideal for automation. Unfortunately, it is too easy to screw as he discovered.

Indeed. I learned long ago that the first run of any automation script needs to have the line that actually does the thing commented out and replaced with an echo. Once you look over the resulting output and confirm it's going to do what you want it to you can go remove the comment and let it do its thing, but you NEVER run an automation script without first confirming that it's going to do what it's meant to do rather than something that's going to take a week of work to fix.

You. Shall. Not. Pass... word: Soon, you may be logging into websites using just your phone, face, fingerprint or token

sisk

I do the long gibberish password thing too, but I use a password vault rather than resetting passwords constantly. Introduce him to KeePass.

sisk

Yeah, no. Despite their (many) problems, passwords are going nowhere anytime soon. Facial or voice recognition are too unreliable, fingerprint readers are far too easy to fool and the methods for doing so far too widely known thanks to the Mythbusters, TFA is too inconvenient, and any other biometric authentication requires hardware that isn't yet widespread enough.

Unfortunately we don't have much chance of getting something better than passwords for a while.

After last year's sexism shambles, 2019's RSA infosec bash has upped its inclusivity game

sisk

Um....it IS a male dominated industry. Even more so than most of the IT field. The only way you can possibly get gender parity among the speakers anywhere near 50/50 is by making that a higher priority than having the best speakers, which absolutely should not be done. Get the best speakers right now regardless of their genders and you're going to have an 80/20 or 90/10 split, and that is fine as long as you're truly getting the best speakers. This idea that we need to have gender parity everywhere is stupid bordering on insane. The field is mostly male and the dominance of men in the field goes up drastically when you start looking at experience in the field. In 10 or 20 years when all those women who are getting IT degrees now (finally, and welcome additions to the field as far as I'm concerned) have some experience in the field we'll achieve better gender parity, but for now you'd have to force it and that never turns out well.

Now as for the sexual harassment of female attendees, that's not fine. That crap needs to stop. Men, act like men, not like horny teenage boys. That'll solve that problem.

YouTube's pedo problem is so bad, it just switched off comments on millions of vids of small kids to stem the tide of vileness

sisk

YouTube's systems are not fundamentally broken. They're working exactly as designed to maximize profit regardless of any questionable ethics that might need to be employed in order to do so.

Musk is in contempt of court, screams SEC after Tesla boss brags about car production rates

sisk

Re: Vetting process

But I doubt it will be within his first term.

His approval rating has been <48% since he took office. Presidents with approval ratings like that don't get second terms. Heck, the last President whose approval ratings even came close to looking as bad as Trump's was Gerald Ford and even he peaked above 50% occasionally. Hell, even Jimmy Carter had better approval ratings. Unless something drastic happens in the next year and a half or so Trump's first term will be Trump's only term.

Don't mean to alarm you, but Boeing has built an unmanned fighter jet called 'Loyal Wingman'

sisk

But did it download all the MP3s?

IBM so very, very sorry after jobs page casually asks hopefuls: Are you white, black... or yellow?

sisk

Re: Race Obsessed

First the excuse that blacks are racist against whites. Disdain for racist attitudes and actions against oneself by whites cannot in any description in English language be describes as reverse racism which is a false argument and lame excuse from white Americans.

Well you're half right. That wouldn't be reverse racism. It's just racism. Saying it's not is like saying someone who distrusts blacks because they were bullied by some black kids growing up isn't racist. Both are equally absurd statements. Having a what you feel is a good justification for your bad behavior doesn't make it any less bad. Nor is "someone who looked like you treated me poorly so I'm going to treat you poorly" even a halfway decent justification.

If you look at someone, see they have white skin, and immediately assume that they're racist then that is every bit as bad - and wrong - as assuming someone must be a criminal because they're black. Racism does not magically become something else when it's pointed at whites. It's still racism. Nor does it suddenly become OK just because someone was racist towards you. It's still wrong. It's that eye-for-an-eye thing that makes everyone blind. Or, in the case of racism, stupid, since it's just about the most idiotic form of insanity from which a human can suffer.

sisk

Re: Race Obsessed

Besides which, it is unrealistic for any sane person to expect great progress in racial equality after hundreds of years of slavery and racial animus against Native Americans, including Eskimos, Latinos and Asians.

I disagree. All it would take for us to make extreme progress in that direction is for people to let the past stay in the past. People who keep insisting that they're owed something more than equality because their great-great-great-great grandfather was a slave are part of the problem. People who insist on hating on whites for similar reasons are also part of the problem.

People who just ignore race and treat everyone the same are part of the solution. Removing the question of race from the application problem is part of that.

sisk
Headmaster

Re: Aren't we becoming too sensitive to everything???

stupid because humans first appeared in Africa

That was actually up for debate last I checked - the two possibilities being Central Africa and Mesopotamia. However they did manage to trace us all to a couple common ancestors through DNA - one male, one female, though they were separated by thousands of years - who were both African. So your point still stands, though not the reasoning for it.

Pedant icon because....well, isn't it obvious?

sisk

Oddly, every time racial slurs are discussed I see terms that either I've never heard of or didn't realize were slurs. Case in point, my only encounter before today with the term "mulatto" was in a middle school social studies text book, and I went to middle school long after most text books had been scrubbed of racial slurs. I just assumed it was an outdated term. It never occurred to me that it might be offensive.

Behold… a WinRAR security bug that's older than your child's favorite YouTuber. And yes, you should patch this hole

sisk

Unrar?? Does anyone still use that?

BOFH: Bye desktop, bye desk. Hello tablet and a beanbag on the floor

sisk

Is the supply of easily duped bosses getting low or something? It's not like Simon to give a boss a chance to stop being annoying before their unfortunate accidents.

WWW = Woeful, er, winternet wendering? CERN browser rebuilt after 30 years barely recognizes modern web

sisk

It handles most sites better than I expected it to. Then again I had really low expectations, so, you know, perspective. Interestingly, it handles El Reg quite well. All the articles are completely legible aside from a long list of links at the top of the page.

Accused hacker Lauri Love loses legal bid to reclaim seized IT gear

sisk

Is it just me or does the "You brought this on yourself" statement reek of a guilty until proven innocent mindset? I'm not at all familiar with the UK legal system, but I was under the impression that it was an innocent until proven guilty system.

Accused hacker Lauri Love to sue National Crime Agency to retrieve confiscated computing kit

sisk

My guess is they've been quiet because either they've forgotten about him entirely or they've been trying to brute force the encrypted data. I'm not sure the case was important enough to warrant a years-long decryption effort, but others might not feel the same.

sisk
Headmaster

Re: Representing himself

It's incredibly rare to represent yourself.

And I think it's even rarer to represent yourself and come out really well.

Of course it is, unless everyone representing themselves wins.

But yeah, a man who represents himself and all that.

Florida man's deadliest catch forces police to evacuate Taco Bell

sisk

Re: Idiot

Weren't they still using gunpowder for grenades in WW2? It doesn't dry out into less stable forms. Well, not when it's soaked with water anyway.

sisk

In his defense I think it's unlikely that a WW2 era grenade found underwater could explode. I suppose it's possible that it hasn't been underwater this whole time, but even so I'd expect the gunpowder in the thing to be thoroughly soaked and the igniter mechanism to be long since rusted into uselessness.

Then again, I'd not have taken chances on it by throwing it in my car just in case.

Should the super-rich pay 70% tax rate above $10m? Here's Michael Dell's hot take for Davos

sisk

Re: Rich Tax Paradox

I'll also point out that if Obama had been cooking the numbers and Trump wasn't then we would have seen a spike in unemployment numbers just after Trump took office. Such a spike is absent. Instead we see the steady declining trend in unemployment numbers that's been going on since 2009 continuing without so much as a hiccup.

So either the numbers were not cooked by Obama or Trump is cooking them in the exact same way.

sisk

Re: Rich Tax Paradox

Show me a reliable source for that and I might believe it. But despite looking for one for years now I've never seen any source for the claim that Obama's unemployment numbers were fudged that couldn't be traced back to a politician or a political commentator.

And, for the record, the GDP was also on an overall upward trend during Obama's Presidency. It had a couple dips, but was still upward.

Numbers don't lie. Political commentators do.

Also, for the record, I didn't like Obama and I don't like Trump. Of the two Obama was by far the better President and still piss poor at the job. In fact we've not had a decent President - or even a candidate I thought might be a decent President - since....well, before I hit voting age 20 years ago and maybe before I was born.

sisk

Re: Rich Tax Paradox

Not really. The unemployment rate started climbing from 4.5% in March 2007, peaked at 10% in October 2009, and has been on a downward trend ever since. These facts are very easily verifiable.