R2_v2 's BestNetTech Comments

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  • On the post: A 23-Year-Old Crypto Bro Is Now Vetoing NSF Grants While Staring At His Water Bottle

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 02 Jun, 2025 @ 06:38pm

    I respect this stance but disagree with the action taken. If you want to take a stand and are willing to resign then stay. Make them sack you but in the meantime be the sand in the gears. If the DOGE child is distracted, call it out, ask if he needs a rest. Be patronizing. If he's giving a 'thumbs down' chase him on the rationale. Every. Single. Time. Make him document everything and if he won't then 'forget' what he said. If he wants someone else to document it, read it back 'for clarity'. Push him to prove and assert his authority. Make him run back to Daddy Elon. That's the resistance needed.

  • On the post: Sixth Circuit Reaffirms It's A Fourth Amendment Violation To Chalk Car Tires For Parking Enforcement Purposes

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2021 @ 06:32pm

    Priorities

    Prosecution: The stop was pre-textual
    Court: Not a problem
    P: It was extended to allow a canine search
    C: What you gonna do?
    P: The officer shot and tased my client repeatedly
    C: No case on point for this - QI
    P: They scuffed the tires
    C: WHAT!? This is outrageous. Evidence suppressed.

  • On the post: Elon Musk's Pointless, Subsidized Tunnels Head To Flood-Prone Florida

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 08 Jul, 2021 @ 04:39pm

    You'll be proved wrong...

    Naysayers said the same about Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook but monorail put them on the map.

  • On the post: Limited Competition Means US Broadband Prices Can Vary Drastically On The Same Block

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2021 @ 06:44pm

    Implied knowledge

    Interestingly for companies who claim that more accurate broadband maps are overly onerous, this implies that these companies actually have a much finer grained view than is made available to regulators or consumers.

  • On the post: The Bizarre Reaction To Facebook's Decision To Get Out Of The News Business In Australia

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2021 @ 03:40pm

    Re: Oh you stupid, stupid fools...

    While I agree with you that now everyone will come knocking at Google's door cap-in-hand I don't agree that this will be bad for Google.
    Reportedly the agreement signs up the news orgs into Google's Showcase product at which point Google becomes the single largest source of income for all of these organisations.
    It will likely cost google a bunch of money in the short term but it potentially short-circuits the legislation and over time Google can apply the Youtube treatment to it's 'partners'. That is, screw them down, mess with their traffic and jump through new and arbitrary hoops.
    All the while, google starts to become the 'Where' of news.

  • On the post: The Bizarre Reaction To Facebook's Decision To Get Out Of The News Business In Australia

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2021 @ 04:22pm

    Some observations from an Australian

    From some conversations I've had in recent days with non-technical people there is an intuitive understanding that the decline of traditional news is existential and they're pretty sure it's the fault of companies like G/FB.
    What they struggle to articulate is where that nexus is.
    People literally don't know how G/FB make money.
    From that point of view a law that purports to transfer wealth from winners (G/FB) to losers (trad media) sounds just like a tax - something that gets extra support owing to G/FBs practice of shifting profits offshore.

  • On the post: 16K COVID-19 Cases Go Missing In UK Due To Government's Use Of Excel CSVs For Tracking

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2020 @ 05:26pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    It does. It pops a big box that says 'Significant loss of functionality' and then a decent blurb explaining exactly what's about to happen. I suspect the issue is probably that someone wrote a VBA macro that may not have the same safeguards.

  • On the post: 16K COVID-19 Cases Go Missing In UK Due To Government's Use Of Excel CSVs For Tracking

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2020 @ 05:10pm

    Not too much self reflection here

    Tech people on here who have worked with large orgs and government should really understand how 'new and emerging requirements' get handled in these situations.
    Firstly, almost no development will be getting done in-house. Your new reporting solution will need to go to an external party who is just dying to milk time and money from your government department.
    People are here talking about databases which might be part of the solution but then how are you extracting data and where's it going to? I mean, do people really think the contact tracers have SQL access/skills?
    No, contact tracers are a hastily assembled call-centre group with no CRM system who probably work by having a team-leader assigning cases out of a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet).
    The real story here is how, in the era of ubiquitous IT, it is still almost impossibly hard for technology solutions to respond quickly to changing circumstances in a way which is reasonable for front-line workers, manages data security, is flexible and is accurate. And that's not even considering cost.

    I'm not suggesting Excel is the 'right way' but there are very good reasons it gets used.

    As a footnote, I notice with interest mention of the XLS 'format'. I'd be interested to know more about that, it's a common data-analyst trick to add an XLS extension to a tab-delimited text file. File associations will cause this to open in a recipients Excel with a warning about file format. In this scenario you are not limited in the number of rows but I wonder what happens if someone tries to save said file. I imagine it will apply the 'correct' XLS format and truncate the file.

  • On the post: Brew Dog, Aldi Get Into Brand Battle With Good Nature, Not Cease And Desists

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2020 @ 10:48pm

    Re:

    Yeah, I noticed this too. I think it makes it funnier because they are more literally 'copying' the Brewdog beer.

  • On the post: Why Are There Currently No Ads On BestNetTech? Apparently Google Thinks We're Dangerous

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 13 Aug, 2020 @ 05:04pm

    Re: Re:

    Just anonymise the data before you release it. Everyone knows you can't deanonymise data.

  • On the post: Congressional Reps Want To Know Why The California DMV Is Making $50 Million A Year Selling Driver Data

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2020 @ 07:29pm

    Re:

    Agreed. Having done similar things in sensitive settings you can also use neutral 3rd parties to combine/match data and execute on sending letters etc. Also, you don't actually need personal information - you only care about the vehicle so a "Dear Owner" letter to a street address minimizes exposed data while still achieving the desired outcome.

  • On the post: In 10 Years Of Existence, The Long-Running French Farce Known As Hadopi Has Imposed Just €87,000 In Fines, But Cost Taxpayers €82 Million

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2020 @ 04:26pm

    Context

    Big numbers are hard to process so for context that amount of money would have funded a €20,000 grant EVERY SINGLE DAY for 10 years with enough left over to fund administration of the scheme.

    Starved (of funds) artists indeed.

  • On the post: Verizon Tries To Temper 5G Enthusiasm After Report Clearly Shows US 5G Is Slow, Lame

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 21 May, 2020 @ 07:12pm

    My new t-shirt

    "I bought into the 5G hype and all I got was this lousy coronavirus"

  • On the post: 5G Isn't Interesting Enough To Warrant These Stupid Conspiracy Theories

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2020 @ 05:00pm

    For some people...

    Fifth generation wireless (5G) is not magic. It's not witchcraft.

    I think for a big chunk of people modern technology is equivalent to magic. I also think that the overhype contributes here because people see something they don't understand being heavily promoted but which doesn't have any apparent effect.

  • On the post: Game Dev Torrents Its Way To More Sales, Not Less

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2020 @ 08:31pm

    Old man shouts into void

    This is no doubt unpersuasive to the 'Pirates=Bad' crew but as demonstrated here it can be the gateway drug.
    As a kid I spent any money I could get on games but pirated far more than I bought - pre-internet so all via (often multiple) disks.

    Illegal? Yes. Lost sales? Zero.

    Fast forward to now and I've bought almost every game I ever pirated - many multiple times. I'm also a games junky spending far more on games than any sane adult should and with my biggest problem now being my enormous and growing backlog of 'Bought but not Played' games.

    I don't pirate now because I don't need to.

  • On the post: Ghosh Yoga College Claims Copyright Infringement Over Netflix Documentary On Bikram Choudhury

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 22 Dec, 2019 @ 03:30pm

    Fair Use Yoga

    ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  • On the post: The City Of Baltimore Blew Off A $76,000 Ransomware Demand Only To Find Out A Bunch Of Its Data Had Never Been Backed Up

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2019 @ 06:32pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    LinkedIn completely checks out:
    Leads all digital transformation programs and supports the Mayor's ongoing efforts to modernize the City of Baltimore's IT capabilities, which also include scaling the local IT ecosystem to drive awareness & tech investment in Baltimore City. Now the city has to modernise and invest. Job done.

  • On the post: Your Money Or Your Life: Louisville Cops, Prosecutors Dropping Hefty Trafficking Charges In Exchange For Seized Cash

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2019 @ 05:12pm

    New advertising slogan...

    Asset Forfeiture - Bitcoin doesn't seem like a bad idea any more

  • On the post: Two Months Later, News Orgs Are Finally 'Allowed' To Report On Top Vatican Official's Child Molestation Conviction

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2019 @ 07:25pm

    Re:

    to preserve impartiality
    This is always such a terrible argument. That a juror would have such an infantile intellect that, upon hearing of a prior conviction, they couldn't possibly entertain the notion that the accused might be innocent. You've seen the exact opposite play out in the last few days with two(!) former Prime Ministers basically arguing that the jury was wrong. Reasonable people can make reasonable decisions even knowing about a prior conviction and bigots will be bigots regardless of what they know.

  • On the post: Police Union Offers Citizens $500 To Get Hurt, Killed, Or Sued As Amateur Cops

    R2_v2 ( profile ), 02 Sep, 2018 @ 07:20pm

    Re:

    This is exactly how it will play - cop needs to arrest someone so he calls up his off-duty buddy, tries to effect an arrest but (sad tale) suspect resists arrest. Voila - off-duty cop $500 richer.

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