Posts by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
(DIR) Post #B2CjVgeDY4xJh10EFs by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-12T09:12:39Z
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The only program that is a direct replacement for program X is program X. If you want to recommend program Y, you need to first understand the subset of the features of X that people use and what they use them for. Can Y do those things?Almost all uses I see in companies for MS Office or Google Docs involve some kind of collaborative editing. Whether this is someone sharing a document for feedback or people writing different parts together, or something in the middle, it’s a core part of the functionality. This is often done with track changes, for inline revision control. Oh, and access control to the shared versions is often a critical compliance requirement while doing this.Does your recommended replacement support that model? If not, you can’t use it in a lot of professional settings. For someone writing the occasional personal document, this maybe doesn’t matter. It’s been so long since I used a word processor or spreadsheet for anything except work stuff I am not sure (Python + Pandas is a better solution than Excel or Calc and LaTeX or Markdown a better solution than Word or Writer for any non-work stuff I do).
(DIR) Post #B2DE0TPfnlk4FSnPY8 by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-12T15:04:42Z
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@aral I mostly played the MTX-512 version and you died in that one as well. I played the arcade one a bit, but I don't think I managed to get on a log more than once or twice, because I was really bad at it.
(DIR) Post #B2IwctJLKVJ9LZlQRs by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-15T09:18:51Z
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@futurebird C has at least four kinds of zero. I’m sure there’s space for at least one more.
(DIR) Post #B2IxBv38rCuesIt9kG by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-15T09:25:10Z
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@futurebird @dancingtreefrog Semi serious, but the only real reason we use letters in hex is that they’re convenient. Modern Unicode has a load of digit-like symbols. There’s no reason you couldn’t use superscript digits. Or bold. And there’s no reason you have to use any existing symbols if your students are using pen and paper. You could start with Church numerals (good American number representation, none of this Arabic nonsense) and then have them define shorthand symbols for s(😶), s(s(😶)) and then build binary, decimal, base 60, or whatever out of those symbols. (No-face emoji is zero).There might be a reason I’m not allowed to teach maths.
(DIR) Post #B2JA52wAQqhSiMgBaC by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-15T11:49:37Z
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@futurebird I always feel like a bit of a fraud giving CV help to students. I've reviewed a lot of CVs in my professional life, but I've never once applied for a job where the CV was a major factor. Even when I was doing freelance work, all of my clients were people who knew my work before I worked for them.
(DIR) Post #B2JB0FY2DZxgKffUum by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-15T11:59:56Z
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@futurebird I should not give them beer to dip it inQuite right! That's what rum is for!
(DIR) Post #B2JRE5fNLwF70QivNA by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-15T15:01:44Z
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@futurebird @billiglarper At small and medium organizations “hiring” is extra work pawned off on already busy people Often this pressure works the other way around. At a small organisation, the person who is going to be responsible for the work that the person does is also responsible for all steps in hiring. This can cause issues with bias, but at least the incentives are aligned.In a larger organisation, CVs are typically filtered by HR / recruiters. At Microsoft, they had an annoying habit of filtering out the most qualified candidates because they lacked a traditional educational background (because they'd spent their time doing exactly the thing you were hiring for instead). You had to work quite closely with them to avoid this.The problem is that you get a lot of applicants for some posts, but you get very few good ones. Someone has to do a deselection pass so that the selection pass isn't overwhelmed. LinkedIn now has an AI thing that does this. For an LLVM compiler rôle, it filtered out 80% of applicants who had worked on LLVM previously and hid them in the default view. Utterly useless. And, at the same time, their one-button-apply thing meant that I was flooded with unqualified people.
(DIR) Post #B2N2wvpV3GXRJ7aGy8 by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-17T08:48:30Z
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@futurebird Fillings in the teeth or false teeth are a common trope in science fiction for spotting time travellers. So are other surgical things like replacement hip joints.
(DIR) Post #B2NGV79ojzLpgoiXBI by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-17T11:19:46Z
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Me, checking in for a flight: My passport details change once every ten years. Why do you need me to enter the same ones every time?Me, reading about the InterRail breach: You stored people's passport date? Why on earth would you do this, it's absolute toxic information to store, you should delete it as soon as you no longer need to provide it!And this is why we can't have nice things.
(DIR) Post #B2Rk5f2DewhiDsKfFQ by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-08T09:21:22Z
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@notjustbikes Around 2004, the iPod was ludicrously popular. People were using iTunes to compress CDs as AAC or MP3 and play them on a portable music player. By about 2005, the microdrives were big enough that they could hold a few dozen films recompressed as MPEG-4 video. Apple internally had a version of iTunes that would rip DVDs just as the public one ripped CDs and wanted to build a video iPod. They could do the CD version because the two-bit copy protection in CDs was deemed not to meet the bar for ‘effective copy protection’ required by the DMCA. This was not the case for the DVD version and they needed a DCSS license, which was not granted. The product was cancelled.A few years later when details of this were leaked, someone did analysis based on DVD and iPod sales and concluded that, if this product had launched, it would have added more to the economy (and to tax revenues) than the entire output of the TV and movie industry over the same period. And that’s a single product that the DMCA made impossible. Oh, and the kicker? A Harvard Business School study around the same time showed that the piracy that the RIAA was so concerned about from the iPod increased their sales, so if Apple had been able to build this product it would probably have made more money for the movie companies as well.It’s not just bad social policy, it’s also terrible economics.
(DIR) Post #B2T2OXgbCNCTGZKg6K by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-18T16:34:15Z
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My phone battery has got a lot worse since Apple rolled out Liquid Glass. Which is weird, since it runs Android.
(DIR) Post #B2VhGfUwkq6xcCAMXw by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-21T12:58:01Z
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@futurebird I didn’t see the poll, but I will not click on a YouTube link unless there is absolutely no other option (i.e. the video is the only source of the information)l
(DIR) Post #B2VinxpRiqwHydC9jc by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-21T13:15:15Z
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@futurebird I watch videos in the Fediverse that are hosted elsewhere. Normally I don't pay attention to where they are, YouTube is noticeable because you have to click through a bunch of 'Did you really want to opt out of all of the data have sting we do?' and then they show ads every few minutes. It's such an utterly wretched experience I avoid it. I also subscribe to a few streaming services.
(DIR) Post #B2VuhtRGKYdG4dks0e by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-21T15:28:36Z
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@futurebird The thing that bugs me about the TV model is that the first step of the chain works how I want the whole thing to work. A studio creates a pilot (cheaply, missing effects and so on), which they then shop to networks. If networks think they can make money from it, they commission the whole thing. If they're a bit unsure they may pay for the pilot to be finished, show it, and use the viewer feedback to make the decision on whether to fund the whole series.They then decide whether to renew the series for another season based on how well it does.I would love to see the pilots made public and the series funded directly by potential viewers, to be made available for free distribution. When you release the first episodes, announce how much you need to make season 2 (including your profit), and start making it if you raise that much. Fans are incentuvised to share the show as widely as possible because it increases the chance people will pay for the next episodes.Instead, we get two or more layers of indirection between fans and studios, and popular shows get cancelled because advertisers don't think its viewers will buy things.
(DIR) Post #B2XKAKaJghgSO0bgdE by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-22T07:48:36Z
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@futurebird I knew how to do a mail merge in the late ‘90s. I tried it in 2018 and none of the flows that used to work still did.
(DIR) Post #B2Xnyaa7Nq5P9JpagC by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-22T10:41:27Z
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@sil Microsoft’s share price peaked at 567 last year. It is now 444. Sounds like investors are starting to notice that throwing their money at capital investment that doesn’t drive revenue is a bad strategy.
(DIR) Post #B2Y2Y28YK8Zi6XjVPE by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-22T16:05:57Z
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@neanderthalsnavel @sil See my post from a week or two ago: Agentic means 'designed to remove agency from them user'.
(DIR) Post #B2cdWCdInq8F0wwhaC by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-24T19:36:50Z
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@LevZadov @catsalad @Em0nM4stodon Come for the cats, stay for the donkeys.
(DIR) Post #B2fvkwcghvVtfdGNIu by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-26T11:27:26Z
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@futurebird He's certainly bored of truth and has been for many years.
(DIR) Post #B2hmgW5GvUIIvpMnUO by david_chisnall@infosec.exchange
2026-01-27T08:55:16Z
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@futurebird @IngaLovinde I, too, made this mistake.