Notices by Gary Parker :party_porg: (witewulf@cyberplace.social)

We (university IT Services) sent out an all staff and student email telling everyone to uninstall any Oracle Java products from their machines. Apparently the licensing terms were such that if Oracle came on-site and performed an audit, one single installation of a Java product (even just a JRE) would result in us having to buy a site-license (for approximately 25k users). There is no option for per install licensing 🤨

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/jisc_java_oracle/

Common Mythconceptions – World’s Most Contagious Falsehoods https://informationisbeautiful.net/2025/common-mythconceptions-worlds-most-contagious-falsehoods-2/

Loving the contrasting reactions to #switch2 I’m seeing in my timeline today. It’s all about expectations 😆

@GossiTheDog that's why ppl pay for Splunk 😏

@GossiTheDog And I was expecting the first vacancy to be CTO 😆

@greem @GossiTheDog meanwhile, Co-Op are still sending me emails apologising for the lack of products on shelves, with no almost no mention of data loss/appropriation

@GossiTheDog Ask me again when I’ve woke up ☕️☕️☕️

@GossiTheDog well, it's not *entirely* separate. The POS kit sits on the same LAN as the PDQ (card reader device) to tell it the transaction amount, and for the PDQ to signal whether the transaction was succesful or not. The traffic between the PDQ and the card processing company is encrypted, obvs, and typically transits the same local network as all the other devices in-store, and then over the public internet.

@GossiTheDog voluntarily, or has their card processing company got twitchy?

@GossiTheDog I got an email (as a member) at about 16:20 this afternoon on the subject

Got this nice shot of Columbus’s statue with a lion and some funky atmospheric optics in Barcelona today

@pavel it is not well known to the vast majority of users.

Oh, this is interesting (and a little scary)

tl;dr don’t use SSDs for long term, offline storage. The data degrades after as little as two years without the drives being powered up

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/unpowered-ssd-endurance-investigation-finds-severe-data-loss-and-performance-issues-reminds-us-of-the-importance-of-refreshing-backups

@GossiTheDog that…..isn’t even funny 😦

@GossiTheDog wow, that's impressive. Can't wait to see what they do with it, and how they format it

There has to be some sort of German-esque compound noun for the disappointment, tinged with amusement and admiration for skills, that follows seeing something really neat and technically nerdy, then realising it’s not real, and a @NanoRaptor job 😆

@GossiTheDog the Civil War will be one of bureaucracy

@GossiTheDog another example of “AI generated content isn’t evil if we find it entertaining”, right?

We’re a contrary bunch 😏

Saw this nice bit of Buber Nebz #streetArt in Loughborough this afternoon

@ryanc @HauntedOwlbear

No

I see what you’re trying to do, and broadly agree with the intent. But it’s a government department that is likely badly understaffed, overworked, and funded by the tax that comes out of *my* salary. I’m not going to make life worse for them, and everyone that genuinely relies on their services, in their personal and business lives, to make a point.

There are better ways to do this than giving this department more work to do

I’ll write to my MP instead