160563836
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
It would seem that a majority of managers have decided to launch a campaign of threats to force people back into the office. Of course they would — people getting their work done from home would make it obvious that the emperor has no clothes: the vast majority of managers are just dead weight and a resources drain in most companies.
160255792
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
A recent paper proposes a new way to put together a message for alien intelligent beings. It comes up with an elaborate mechanism to convey information in notably constrained bitmaps, but one can't help but wonder whether it is too elaborate — for example, for 1 + 1 = 2 the article proposes something far more visually complex than 1 + 1 = 2, which could also be, with small adjustments, easily coerced to have a representation as a bitmap with the limitations in the article. It is not clear why the representation that the authors are proposing would be easier for aliens to decode and understand than something much closer to 1 + 1 = 2: either representation would be — well, alien to them.
160144593
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
A reputed expert in the quantum computing field puts it in black and white: as of today, quantum computing is a paper tiger, and nobody knows when (if ever) it will become commercially practical. In the meantime, the hype continues.
157298579
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
It is often the case that I, like most people, have to fill out forms online providing all sorts of information. It is also often the case that, in the process of filling out such forms, I am led to wonder whether the programmers responsible for them are stupid, incompetent, lazy, or all rolled into one. Two examples that I encountered in the last few days:
In the first one, in a free text box limited to 1,000 characters (already stupid, arguably) the caption explicitly banned the following characters in the "free text": ~!@#$%^&*()|'. The caption explained why: because they can interfere with the correct processing of the input text. Excuse me? Are you bozos for real? Are you really that incompetent or lazy?
In the second one, I was supposed to enter the name of a company. Since I did not want to enter a real company name — I am sure I am not the only one who does this kind of thing — I made one up that happened to contain a digit. When I submitted the information I got a big fat error diagnostic about this box, to the effect that numerals are not allowed in a company name. So you know, people — no digits allowed in your company's name, or else!
Seriously — what's wrong with the buffoons who design such interfaces? How incredible stupid and lazy can they be?
150496457
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
Pi is now known to 62.8 trillion decimal digits.
115928360
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
According to this (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fstevedenning%2F2019%2F09%2F22%2Fhow-fake-agile-at-dod-risks-national-security%2F%23575bfb48fa81) Forbes article, the Pentagon is worried that many in the USA's military nerve center claim to use Agile methods, when in fact, they aren't. Those responsible for these things at the Pentagon have therefore come up with a Detecting Agile BS (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.defense.gov%2F2018%2FOct%2F09%2F2002049591%2F-1%2F-1%2F0%2FDIB_DETECTING_AGILE_BS_2018.10.05.PDF) document, so people can tell when they are doing Agile vs. when they are doing BS Agile. The implicit conclusion seems to be the usual "if it doesn't work for you, you are not doing it right".
114441256
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
An interesting Forbes article that posits that Agile is losing relevance, it is not the silver bullet that some claimed, and it has become a sort of religion — "If Agile doesn't work for you, you are not doing it right."
105691468
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
No link, for it is likely to be everywhere in the news.
103842245
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
A juicy systemd vulnerability. Let the fireworks begin.
103638220
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
A new article in Nature reports a new, extremely precise measurement of the electric dipole moment of the electron. The conclusion is that, within the margin of error of the measurement, the electron remains a perfect sphere. Which implies that supersymmetric theories keep running out of corners to hide, that another nail is driven into their coffin, and that string theory looks less and less compelling.
102965736
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
Sir Michael Atiyah claims to have proved the Riemann hypothesis. This is not some Internet crank, but one the towering figures of mathematics in the second half of the 20th century. The thing is, he's almost 90 years old.
93184703
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
After having used the services of CrashPlan for my backups for a few years now, I have just learned that CrashPlan is exiting the home backup business. Although this won't be happening for another 14 months, they have the chutzpah of recommending a provider (Carbonite) that does not support Linux. Looking in the net, there are not so many alternatives available — unless you go with somebody that charges you $5/mo and up for a measly 100GB, or (occasionally) 1TB. Fine for a little phone, but not for the several TB worth of video I have shot over the years.
Anybody aware of decent cloud backup solutions that support Linux, and that offer a maximum backup capacity that is not ridiculously small?
92574995
submission
OneHundredAndTen writes:
Systemd doing what it does best.
