Things that don't deserve their own thread

[SaintK]

They start yung in N Yorkshire

Police who stopped a black BMW X5 towing a suspected stolen caravan along the M1 have admitted to being stunned by the identity of the driver: an 11-year-old schoolboy.
A spokesperson for North Yorkshire police said officers were “staggered” by the incident, which took place on Thursday.
The force said they received a call that a caravan had been stolen from a holiday site near the market town of Thirsk. The caller said it was being towed by a black BMW.
Officers managed to track the vehicle, which was using cloned registration plates, travelling south on the A1. The car was followed as it joined the M1 at the Hook Moor interchange near Garforth and was then stopped by police, 45 minutes after the caravan was first stolen.
“Nothing prepared us for finding the schoolboy sat at the wheel,” said the spokesperson. “A search of the car also revealed equipment typically used by suspects to carry out thefts and a selection of vehicle registration plates.”

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/20 ... -along-m1

[fishfoodie]

Probably does deserve a thread really !

Production of Duvel beer hit by cyber-attack

Production at four breweries owned by Belgian beer firm Duvel has ground to a halt after a cyber-attack.

The company says it fell victim to the suspected ransomware attack "during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday."

Initially, five of its production facilities were shut down - one has since come back online.

Duvel said it was currently unable to give further details "as the investigation into the cause of the cyber-attack is ongoing."

"The built-in command systems and alarms in the IT-system worked well, so our IT department was immediately informed of the attack," the company said in a statement.

.. let them fuck with multi-nationals, let them fuck with celeb "influencer" wankers, let them fuck with Social media; but if you fuck with my beer supply, & I will come for you, & I have a very special set of skills you script kiddie wankers, & I will burn you to the ground

[fishfoodie]

Residents of a city in western Japan have been warned to stay away from a cat after it fell into a tank of poisonous chemicals.

The warning comes after a factory worker found yellow paw prints leading away from the container.

Security footage was then reviewed and the cat could been seen running away, leaving a trail of paw prints.

Officials in Fukuyama have asked the public to stay away from the animal and report any sightings to the police.

It is thought the curious feline had been in a vat of hexavalent chromium, a highly acidic and carcinogenic chemical which is orange and brown in colour.

A member of staff found the paw marks when they arrived for work yesterday at the Nomura Plating Fukuyama Factory, according to news website Asahi.

Fukuyama city's environmental team warned the public not touch "a cat that seems abnormal" but also said the animal might have died as a result of the incident.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68547839

Fucking hell !

Hexavalent chromium is a horrific chemical, & having it stored in such a way that a cat can get in contact with it, means to me that this plant should be shutdown, & they remain closed until the secure this shit !

The fact that theres a dead cat somewhere with enough of it on it's paws to wipe out the entire town should make that easy to understand.

[Sandstorm]

Residents of a city in western Japan have been warned to stay away from a cat after it fell into a tank of poisonous chemicals.

The warning comes after a factory worker found yellow paw prints leading away from the container.

Security footage was then reviewed and the cat could been seen running away, leaving a trail of paw prints.

Officials in Fukuyama have asked the public to stay away from the animal and report any sightings to the police.

It is thought the curious feline had been in a vat of hexavalent chromium, a highly acidic and carcinogenic chemical which is orange and brown in colour.

A member of staff found the paw marks when they arrived for work yesterday at the Nomura Plating Fukuyama Factory, according to news website Asahi.

Fukuyama city's environmental team warned the public not touch "a cat that seems abnormal" but also said the animal might have died as a result of the incident.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68547839

Fucking hell !

Hexavalent chromium is a horrific chemical, & having it stored in such a way that a cat can get in contact with it, means to me that this plant should be shutdown, & they remain closed until the secure this shit !

The fact that theres a dead cat somewhere with enough of it on it's paws to wipe out the entire town should make that easy to understand.

Same shit in that Erin Brockowich film.

[Tichtheid]

[Slick]

That is fucking brilliant

[Guy Smiley]

'a succulent Chinese meal'... and 'Democracy manifest'. It's something of an urban legend in Australia and has enjoyed something of a resurgence lately. If you can find it, there's a clip of the arresting officer recounting the tale long after the event.

It's hilarious... he just went off on an impromptu rant.

[Tichtheid]

Wasn't it a case of mistaken identity too?

He was supposed to be some international fraudster or money launderer or something.

[Kiwias]

'a succulent Chinese meal'... and 'Democracy manifest'. It's something of an urban legend in Australia and has enjoyed something of a resurgence lately. If you can find it, there's a clip of the arresting officer recounting the tale long after the event.

It's hilarious... he just went off on an impromptu rant.

Then suddenly his penis was limp!!!

[Guy Smiley]

Wasn't it a case of mistaken identity too?

He was supposed to be some international fraudster or money launderer or something.

No... from memory, watching the interview with the cop involved, he knew they were coming to arrest him and had agreed already to go with them. Apparently, he just launched into the whole thing out of the blue.

Fucking marvelous.

[TB63]

[Tichtheid]

very good.

[Guy Smiley]

[inactionman]

Ouch.

There's road rage and then there's road rage



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -road-rage

BMW, obviously.

[fishfoodie]

Ouch.

There's road rage and then there's road rage



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -road-rage

BMW, obviously.

I thought all the worst cunts had moved over to Audi ?

[Kiwias]

Outstanding!!
Both TB63 and the road rage one.

[laurent]

Ouch.

There's road rage and then there's road rage



https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... -road-rage

BMW, obviously.

I thought all the worst cunts had moved over to Audi ?

Same level really.

[Guy Smiley]

[BnM]

[Tichtheid]

Tater Salad and the Bear are

[inactionman]

In a previous life I was interested in tools to capture and represent engineering information, and I remember looking into the tools Autonomy were putting together. These always seemed to promise a lot but actually do very little, in the rare cases I saw it used.

It turns out that it probably always just do very little, and the clusterfuck purchase by HP made Mike Lynch a very rich boy but left HP with a bit of a pup on their hands.

Allegedly Lynch and Autonomy employed some pretty cheeky accounting practices, and although HP really didn't do their due diligence there is a lot of talk about fraudulent reporting to up the sale price (e.g. counting RFPs a sales).

Anyway, 13 years later, the case finally comes to trial, and allegations of a lot more shady behaviour is coming out of woodwork.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-software

Might be of interest to anyone in IT.

[fishfoodie]

In a previous life I was interested in tools to capture and represent engineering information, and I remember looking into the tools Autonomy were putting together. These always seemed to promise a lot but actually do very little, in the rare cases I saw it used.

It turns out that it probably always just do very little, and the clusterfuck purchase by HP made Mike Lynch a very rich boy but left HP with a bit of a pup on their hands.

Allegedly Lynch and Autonomy employed some pretty cheeky accounting practices, and although HP really didn't do their due diligence there is a lot of talk about fraudulent reporting to up the sale price (e.g. counting RFPs a sales).

Anyway, 13 years later, the case finally comes to trial, and allegations of a lot more shady behaviour is coming out of woodwork.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-software

Might be of interest to anyone in IT.

Has there ever been a Tech merger/acquisition that was an unqualified success ?

I worked 20+ years at Intel, & I can't think of one that wasn't dogshit.

To be fair, Intel management had a particular skill at destroying any value in the companies they bought, by insisting that the company employees immediately adopt the Intel practices, despite these same practices being why the smaller company succeeded & developed the tech Intel wanted, while the much bigger company failed, & failed again.

Managers bang on about a companies, "culture", without ever taking onboard what that means, & why it makes companies different, & why trying to glue together two cultures is almost inevitably going to fuck one of them up.

I remember watching the HP/Autonomy thing at the time, & the comments in the Regs articles told the HP management all they needed to know, but the management of the time was dog awful, & had been for years, but they were working thru the playbook of failed tech "leaders"

[Dinsdale Piranha]

In a previous life I was interested in tools to capture and represent engineering information, and I remember looking into the tools Autonomy were putting together. These always seemed to promise a lot but actually do very little, in the rare cases I saw it used.

It turns out that it probably always just do very little, and the clusterfuck purchase by HP made Mike Lynch a very rich boy but left HP with a bit of a pup on their hands.

Allegedly Lynch and Autonomy employed some pretty cheeky accounting practices, and although HP really didn't do their due diligence there is a lot of talk about fraudulent reporting to up the sale price (e.g. counting RFPs a sales).

Anyway, 13 years later, the case finally comes to trial, and allegations of a lot more shady behaviour is coming out of woodwork.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-software

Might be of interest to anyone in IT.

Has there ever been a Tech merger/acquisition that was an unqualified success ?

I worked 20+ years at Intel, & I can't think of one that wasn't dogshit.

To be fair, Intel management had a particular skill at destroying any value in the companies they bought, by insisting that the company employees immediately adopt the Intel practices, despite these same practices being why the smaller company succeeded & developed the tech Intel wanted, while the much bigger company failed, & failed again.

Managers bang on about a companies, "culture", without ever taking onboard what that means, & why it makes companies different, & why trying to glue together two cultures is almost inevitably going to fuck one of them up.

I remember watching the HP/Autonomy thing at the time, & the comments in the Regs articles told the HP management all they needed to know, but the management of the time was dog awful, & had been for years, but they were working thru the playbook of failed tech "leaders"

EMC buying VMware went pretty well. There are others.

My last company got bought by HP. Exactly what you say above happened. HP took all the efficient processes and replaced them with HP's 30 year old dinosaur way of working. Things that used to take 90 seconds started taking 2-3 weeks. I have never worked for a more useless bunch of fuckwits in my life (apart from ICL obviously)

[laurent]

In a previous life I was interested in tools to capture and represent engineering information, and I remember looking into the tools Autonomy were putting together. These always seemed to promise a lot but actually do very little, in the rare cases I saw it used.

It turns out that it probably always just do very little, and the clusterfuck purchase by HP made Mike Lynch a very rich boy but left HP with a bit of a pup on their hands.

Allegedly Lynch and Autonomy employed some pretty cheeky accounting practices, and although HP really didn't do their due diligence there is a lot of talk about fraudulent reporting to up the sale price (e.g. counting RFPs a sales).

Anyway, 13 years later, the case finally comes to trial, and allegations of a lot more shady behaviour is coming out of woodwork.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-software

Might be of interest to anyone in IT.

Has there ever been a Tech merger/acquisition that was an unqualified success ?

I worked 20+ years at Intel, & I can't think of one that wasn't dogshit.

To be fair, Intel management had a particular skill at destroying any value in the companies they bought, by insisting that the company employees immediately adopt the Intel practices, despite these same practices being why the smaller company succeeded & developed the tech Intel wanted, while the much bigger company failed, & failed again.

Managers bang on about a companies, "culture", without ever taking onboard what that means, & why it makes companies different, & why trying to glue together two cultures is almost inevitably going to fuck one of them up.

I remember watching the HP/Autonomy thing at the time, & the comments in the Regs articles told the HP management all they needed to know, but the management of the time was dog awful, & had been for years, but they were working thru the playbook of failed tech "leaders"

EMC buying VMware went pretty well. There are others.

My last company got bought by HP. Exactly what you say above happened. HP took all the efficient processes and replaced them with HP's 30 year old dinosaur way of working. Things that used to take 90 seconds started taking 2-3 weeks. I have never worked for a more useless bunch of fuckwits in my life (apart from ICL obviously)

VMware is going to lose a lot of customer with the new licensing they impose. Add to that free software maturing in this environment. not sure it will be that good

[fishfoodie]

Has there ever been a Tech merger/acquisition that was an unqualified success ?

I worked 20+ years at Intel, & I can't think of one that wasn't dogshit.

To be fair, Intel management had a particular skill at destroying any value in the companies they bought, by insisting that the company employees immediately adopt the Intel practices, despite these same practices being why the smaller company succeeded & developed the tech Intel wanted, while the much bigger company failed, & failed again.

Managers bang on about a companies, "culture", without ever taking onboard what that means, & why it makes companies different, & why trying to glue together two cultures is almost inevitably going to fuck one of them up.

I remember watching the HP/Autonomy thing at the time, & the comments in the Regs articles told the HP management all they needed to know, but the management of the time was dog awful, & had been for years, but they were working thru the playbook of failed tech "leaders"

EMC buying VMware went pretty well. There are others.

My last company got bought by HP. Exactly what you say above happened. HP took all the efficient processes and replaced them with HP's 30 year old dinosaur way of working. Things that used to take 90 seconds started taking 2-3 weeks. I have never worked for a more useless bunch of fuckwits in my life (apart from ICL obviously)

VMware is going to lose a lot of customer with the new licensing they impose. Add to that free software maturing in this environment. not sure it will be that good

I think you've both hit on why these go to shit.

VMware made an Ex-Intel Engineer Gelsinger boss, & HP went to shit, & Intel too, when they stopped appointing technical people to Lead.

Broadcom are a bunch of fucking lawyers & bankers masquerading as a technology company, & are focused on squeezing blood out of their investments, & not innovating. IBM bought a company I loved too Red Hat, & are killing it with the same crap.

If you're a tech company, & you stop innovating you go backwards. You can't buy in innovation, & it's bloody difficult for a non-technical leader to herd the cats if they don't have a firm grasp of technology, & can tell when they're being bullshitted, & what trends to follow, & which ones are just transitory crap.

Intel lost it's manufacturing lead over ~10 years, & it happened gradually, but in a way that was obvious, but the people in charge kept on repeating the dogma of the companies excellence, to the point where I wasn't sure if they were just trying to gaslight their own engineers, along with the stockholders, or if they really believed their own bullshit.

If I ever meet the last Intel CEO, I'll have to buy him a pint, because after he offered me a redundancy, I had a moment of clarity, & realized that if I thought the management was as fucking awful as I did, then I'd be a fucking mug to hold onto as much of their stock as I'd accumulated, so I sold a shitload, & invested it in nVidia.

Can't beat a 1000% gain

Thanks to a fucking useless CEO firing me, I get to think about retiring in my mid-fifties

[inactionman]

In a previous life I was interested in tools to capture and represent engineering information, and I remember looking into the tools Autonomy were putting together. These always seemed to promise a lot but actually do very little, in the rare cases I saw it used.

It turns out that it probably always just do very little, and the clusterfuck purchase by HP made Mike Lynch a very rich boy but left HP with a bit of a pup on their hands.

Allegedly Lynch and Autonomy employed some pretty cheeky accounting practices, and although HP really didn't do their due diligence there is a lot of talk about fraudulent reporting to up the sale price (e.g. counting RFPs a sales).

Anyway, 13 years later, the case finally comes to trial, and allegations of a lot more shady behaviour is coming out of woodwork.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-software

Might be of interest to anyone in IT.

Has there ever been a Tech merger/acquisition that was an unqualified success ?

I worked 20+ years at Intel, & I can't think of one that wasn't dogshit.

To be fair, Intel management had a particular skill at destroying any value in the companies they bought, by insisting that the company employees immediately adopt the Intel practices, despite these same practices being why the smaller company succeeded & developed the tech Intel wanted, while the much bigger company failed, & failed again.

Managers bang on about a companies, "culture", without ever taking onboard what that means, & why it makes companies different, & why trying to glue together two cultures is almost inevitably going to fuck one of them up.

I remember watching the HP/Autonomy thing at the time, & the comments in the Regs articles told the HP management all they needed to know, but the management of the time was dog awful, & had been for years, but they were working thru the playbook of failed tech "leaders"

The issue with autonomy wasn't so much a larger dinosaur buying a new, successful company and wrecking it, it was of HP buying thin air. Autonomy was mainly just smoke and mirrors in terms of market penetration in particular - they paid $11B for something they had to write down by nearly $8B.

[fishfoodie]

In a previous life I was interested in tools to capture and represent engineering information, and I remember looking into the tools Autonomy were putting together. These always seemed to promise a lot but actually do very little, in the rare cases I saw it used.

It turns out that it probably always just do very little, and the clusterfuck purchase by HP made Mike Lynch a very rich boy but left HP with a bit of a pup on their hands.

Allegedly Lynch and Autonomy employed some pretty cheeky accounting practices, and although HP really didn't do their due diligence there is a lot of talk about fraudulent reporting to up the sale price (e.g. counting RFPs a sales).

Anyway, 13 years later, the case finally comes to trial, and allegations of a lot more shady behaviour is coming out of woodwork.
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... y-software

Might be of interest to anyone in IT.

Has there ever been a Tech merger/acquisition that was an unqualified success ?

I worked 20+ years at Intel, & I can't think of one that wasn't dogshit.

To be fair, Intel management had a particular skill at destroying any value in the companies they bought, by insisting that the company employees immediately adopt the Intel practices, despite these same practices being why the smaller company succeeded & developed the tech Intel wanted, while the much bigger company failed, & failed again.

Managers bang on about a companies, "culture", without ever taking onboard what that means, & why it makes companies different, & why trying to glue together two cultures is almost inevitably going to fuck one of them up.

I remember watching the HP/Autonomy thing at the time, & the comments in the Regs articles told the HP management all they needed to know, but the management of the time was dog awful, & had been for years, but they were working thru the playbook of failed tech "leaders"

The issue with autonomy wasn't so much a larger dinosaur buying a new, successful company and wrecking it, it was of HP buying thin air. Autonomy was mainly just smoke and mirrors in terms of market penetration in particular - they paid $11B for something they had to write down by nearly $8B.

That was the essence of the comments on the reg; it was techies just asking/suggesting that HP step back & look at autonomy & ask themselves where they were getting the valuation from; where was this income ?, & why were they concluding that this one company was magically able to generate 8,000%* of the revenue of the entire sector ?

This is one of the ones where the fail was non-tech management, ironically failing in their own alleged competency, looking at the books, & doing the sums. From memory, autonomy was playing from the Enron playbook, & booking profits based on nothing more than wishful thinking, & HP never reconciled actual billed services, versus claimed, let alone projected income.

* Number only slightly less made up than the autonomy ones

[laurent]

EMC buying VMware went pretty well. There are others.

My last company got bought by HP. Exactly what you say above happened. HP took all the efficient processes and replaced them with HP's 30 year old dinosaur way of working. Things that used to take 90 seconds started taking 2-3 weeks. I have never worked for a more useless bunch of fuckwits in my life (apart from ICL obviously)

VMware is going to lose a lot of customer with the new licensing they impose. Add to that free software maturing in this environment. not sure it will be that good

I think you've both hit on why these go to shit.

VMware made an Ex-Intel Engineer Gelsinger boss, & HP went to shit, & Intel too, when they stopped appointing technical people to Lead.

Broadcom are a bunch of fucking lawyers & bankers masquerading as a technology company, & are focused on squeezing blood out of their investments, & not innovating. IBM bought a company I loved too Red Hat, & are killing it with the same crap.

If you're a tech company, & you stop innovating you go backwards. You can't buy in innovation, & it's bloody difficult for a non-technical leader to herd the cats if they don't have a firm grasp of technology, & can tell when they're being bullshitted, & what trends to follow, & which ones are just transitory crap.

Intel lost it's manufacturing lead over ~10 years, & it happened gradually, but in a way that was obvious, but the people in charge kept on repeating the dogma of the companies excellence, to the point where I wasn't sure if they were just trying to gaslight their own engineers, along with the stockholders, or if they really believed their own bullshit.

If I ever meet the last Intel CEO, I'll have to buy him a pint, because after he offered me a redundancy, I had a moment of clarity, & realized that if I thought the management was as fucking awful as I did, then I'd be a fucking mug to hold onto as much of their stock as I'd accumulated, so I sold a shitload, & invested it in nVidia.

Can't beat a 1000% gain

Thanks to a fucking useless CEO firing me, I get to think about retiring in my mid-fifties

Did not get to get anything like that unfortunately.
Broadcom has a horrible reputation indeed.
I follow a really good engineer on youtube (no equivalent on english speaking world) that does reverse enginering video's he really does not like them as most of their designs are close source and not referenced publicly.
How you keep finding their chips in large telco products is beyond me. (Most routers in France have their chips).
https://www.youtube.com/@dexsilicium/videos
he dismantled all 3 main routers in French market

[TedMaul]

File under ‘I’m glad I saw this’

[Biffer]

She probably does deserve her own thread, but I thought I’d put it in here.

Jasmin Paris, a vet from Midlothian, has become the first woman ever to complete the Barkley Marathons. It’s 100 miles, with 60,000 feet of ascent and descent. It has to be completed in 60 hours to count - she made it with 90 seconds to spare.

Incredible achievement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... e-68643341

[Uncle fester]

[BnM]

[BnM]

[inactionman]

Good things come to those who wait.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... 6-stairway

Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia basilica has a new completion date of 2026, which will come 144 years after the first stone was laid.

They must have employed the fuckers who fitted my last kitchen.

[PornDog]

Hmm, so rather than taking a photo himself of the thing he says he saw in Aldi, he uses a stock photo from the internet instead. A stock photo, which amazingly doesn't appear anywhere else on the internet except for on his twitter post!!!!

Can I just state for the record that the anti-woke fuckwits annoy the hell out of me an awful lot more than the woke fuckwits do. Probably just because there are so many more of them to be fair, but still. Stop being annoying cunts, live your life and stop trying to find things (or in this case, invent things) to be offended about!!

[Random1]

Oz is the last bastion of common sense

I love this sort of chat - even for the woker members of the bored, I’d recommend a listen - covers everything from putin through to climate and the impacts upon democracy

[sockwithaticket]

Hmm, so rather than taking a photo himself of the thing he says he saw in Aldi, he uses a stock photo from the internet instead. A stock photo, which amazingly doesn't appear anywhere else on the internet except for on his twitter post!!!!

Can I just state for the record that the anti-woke fuckwits annoy the hell out of me an awful lot more than the woke fuckwits do. Probably just because there are so many more of them to be fair, but still. Stop being annoying cunts, live your life and stop trying to find things (or in this case, invent things) to be offended about!!

Woke fuckwits are generally coming from a place of good intent and trying to improve things. Makes them more bearable than the anti-side even when they're being annoying.

[Uncle fester]

Hmm, so rather than taking a photo himself of the thing he says he saw in Aldi, he uses a stock photo from the internet instead. A stock photo, which amazingly doesn't appear anywhere else on the internet except for on his twitter post!!!!

Can I just state for the record that the anti-woke fuckwits annoy the hell out of me an awful lot more than the woke fuckwits do. Probably just because there are so many more of them to be fair, but still. Stop being annoying cunts, live your life and stop trying to find things (or in this case, invent things) to be offended about!!

You do realise it's a pisstake?

[PornDog]

Hmm, so rather than taking a photo himself of the thing he says he saw in Aldi, he uses a stock photo from the internet instead. A stock photo, which amazingly doesn't appear anywhere else on the internet except for on his twitter post!!!!

Can I just state for the record that the anti-woke fuckwits annoy the hell out of me an awful lot more than the woke fuckwits do. Probably just because there are so many more of them to be fair, but still. Stop being annoying cunts, live your life and stop trying to find things (or in this case, invent things) to be offended about!!

You do realise it's a pisstake?

Yes Fester, of course, but its coming from a "world gone mad" anti-woke mentality; and of course, it's not funny (the larger of the two crimes)! My rant stands!

[Kiwias]

A container ship ran into a bridge in Baltimore. It seems that the bridge was closed to regular traffic for some repair work and some construction workers are assumed dead.