Posts by I could be a dog really

AFRINIC accuses litigant of trying to ‘paralyse’ it

Rule #1 of getting people on board with Shiny New Thing, make it backwards compatible with Crappy Old Thing

Rule #1 of networking upgrades - you cannot "upgrade" a network protocol without breaking everything that currently handled it. No, you CANNOT add a few bits to the address to get IPv4+ - 100% of the existing routers will not be able to handle it. However you choose to do it, it's a new protocol and will need new/upgraded routers, network stacks, whatever.

Rule #2 of networking upgrades - there will always be people who haven't a clue how things work who will say we "just need to ..." and ignore the basic fact that it cannot work that way.

Protocol designers had numerous options for meeting needs of the use case without resorting to a lazy fallback to global addressability.

really ?

"global addressability" used to be a thing, in fact it was the default before some idiots broke it.

Hey Bob, do you know where Fred lives, I've got something for him ? Yeah, he's at 15 High Street. That's such a stupid paradigm isn't it ? He lives somewhere in Anytown, but you can't go there, the only way to get to him is to go to the Town Hall and wait until he comes for you - he does know to come for you doesn't he ? That sounds like a great paradigm.

Yeah, I'll take the larger load washing machine, can you deliver it please ? Sure, where to ? 10 Low Street please. That's such a stupid paradigm isn't it ? Only $[megacorp-logistics] who I'm forced to subscribe to can deliver it. That sounds like a great paradigm.

In the case of SIP, it makes sense for endpoints to be able to talk to each other - with the registrar simply telling A that there's a call from B, and B can be reached at [address-port]. And it does work, except where someone decides to f*** up the networking so it doesn't. Now every generic VoIP provider is forced to run a big NAT proxy and consume lots of bandwidth to unbreak NAT.

A protocol to "understand NAT" would be great, but having spend a few decades in networking, I can tell you that the implementors of NAT have many ways to f**k that up - I have a special place in hell for Zyxel with their "don't care if everything is borked, it's secure" attitude and a NAT that actively borks pretty well any attempt to code around it.

Re: A consequence of IPv6's poor design and many failures

And if you want to, you CAN just use it as more address space.

More space was needed (is needed); NAT does not fix things, it breaks a shitload of stuff (that most users don't see because of the effort put into hiding that); NAT also pushes towards an internet that is run by corporations for their own ends because of the things it breaks which are "fixed" by relying on someone's servers; it's 100% impossible to add address space without breaking existing networks, so forget about those stupid "just add a few bits" suggestions because any such scheme would work with 0% of the installed routers of the internet; and IPv6 fixes a lot of things that people want to do but can't (either easily, or at all) with IPv4.

BUT that is all irrelevant anyway. For various reasons, including idiots suggesting we never needed to do anything major beyond add a few bits, IPv4 is going to be around for some time. And while it is, because of it's address scarcity, you will get greedy corporates like the one mentioned screwing with the system for profit.

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

Re: Insert unfocused rage here

Ideally a real computer so cheap a child could afford to own one allows 12 to 17 year olds a chance to learn without messing up the PC that Mom and Dad use to pay bills and send email.

Also cheap enough for schools to let kids loose with them, and hence actually teach something other than "how to do X in Microsoft Y". And as you say, it's reasonably easy to start each class with a fresh image (or just swap the card as required), so no worries about starting a class with a load of randomly borked systems.

Re: Would any of these dipshits like to suggest...

Since when has reality mattered. Given some of the people in control over there (and over here in the UK, we don't seem to be too far behind at times), I could well believe some of them could think they could ban gravity and pass a law to that effect. As previously stated, not enforceable, but that wouldn't stop some people arresting you anyway and leave it to the courts to sort out.

Watchdog boss calls Capita's £370M DWP win 'extraordinary' amid pension portal dumpster fire

It would be nice to think that the usual suspects who appear time and time again in the "$[governmentproject] f**ked up and over budget" headlines could be barred from future work. But unfortunately, the nature of $[governmentproject] tends to be that only very large businesses are capable of doing it. New entrants struggle as it's a massive investment just to tender, which means only quite big businesses can finance that stage. That means your choice of potential suppliers is somewhat limited - and hence they can get away with repeated f**k ups and still come back for another feed at the trough.

Atomic Britain: UK plans regulatory reset to boost nuclear power

Re: Nuclear ?

Yo do realise that yes we can keep the heating on...

Except for when we can't ? Such as when we have naff-all wind or solar for days on end - Dunkelflaute can indeed last for days, or even a couple of weeks. And in Europe, they typically occur during cold spells in winter. Even without the low cloud element of a Dunkelflaute, winter sun is weak and short in hours.

And nuclear is neither the answer to all problems, nor in itself a massive problem

Careful now, you're in danger of being rational ! Absolutely agree - no single energy source is in itself either a big problem or an answer to all problems. That's why we need a balanced mix - nuclear is good for keeping the lights on 24/7 but doesn't like wild variations in load, solar is good at ... working during the day, wind is good at ... working when the wind is neither too little nor too much, so between them that's still not a balanced system as there's nothing to balance the variations in demand and supply from renewables with the requirement to avoid constant load swings on nuclear. We don't have the locations left, not the political will to make them happen, for more pumped storage hydro, there's no other "cheap" form of lecky storage, but gas turbines are really good at ramping up and down - although the operators don't like it due to the thermal cycling which wreaks havoc on the turbines.

Of course, that would all change if (and I don't I'll still be alive to see it !) we ended up with enough nuclear to support the worst case demand*, and enough plant to do stuff with the excess lecky when renewables are abundant and/or demand low - such as use it to make hydrogen which can then be used for things like making synthetic hydrocarbons as fuels or feedstocks for things like plastics.

* After allowing for load side management (i.e. surge pricing when needed) and a realistic minimum output from renewables.

Openreach: Fiber can sniff out leaky water pipes – if anyone bothers fixing them

For me, it left a smudgy area on the screen.

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

Not only that, but it removes the "I don't care which screen you actually want your presentation on, I'm putting it on the one I feel like" problem with some software - if it's only got the external screen to use, then it's going to have a hard job using the wrong one.

Related problem, ever tried configuring PowerPoint to use the screens you want it to when you have three ? No, hint, Microsoft clearly don't think that's something we should ever have to think about. So in that case, again turning off one screen is the only way to force it to use your choice of screens - at least it does allow you to switch around which is your presentation screen and which is your crib sheet one.

Governments across Asia order work from home, thanks to Iran war

What most people you talk about are against isn't the renewables themselves, it's the totally insane claims made by many eco-zealots who seem to think they can power the UK without all the backup sources for when the sun isn't shining (which is at least once/day, on average over the year for at least 12 hours) and the wind isn't blowing (or is blowing too much) which happens far more often (and over much wider areas) then many will admit.

Yes, solar and wind do provide a significant amount of energy - and at some point I'll be putting solar panels on the house. But right now, there's not a lot of sunshine where I am (it's well and truly peeing down), though I suspect wind might be doing reasonably well. But when that wind dropped at night, we need all the other options - or we turn out the lights (which seems to be the preferred option given the effort put into what is euphemistically called "demand side management" via smart meters - or otherwise called "turning the lights out".

Don't get me started on the "waves hands vaguely" "just add battery storage" argument many make without a clue as to the scale or cost required.

Linux PC vendor System76 tries to talk Colorado down over OS age checks

Not as simple as that.

Suppose you are contributor to a project or distro and and unfortunately to live in one of these afflicted places. The committee that oversees the distro $[nicedistro] are where they aren't affected, their servers are where they aren't affected - but they offer a version of a distro without this enshittification. TPTB find out that $[nicedistro] doesn't comply with their law, so they look into who is responsible for it. Oh look, there's this person who calls himself doublelayer, and we've found out he lives in our state - he's clearly involved with $[nicedistro] so lets haul them in for a shakedown.

OK, after a few hours, or days, of "chat" you persuade them that you aren't responsible, you only contribute to some widget that's part of $[nicedistro] - but it's still been a bad experience for you, and possibly tarnishes your record - forever more you are in the system as having been arrested even if you weren't charged with anything. And don't forget, that you can be in trouble for telling people that such a modified system even exists.

So that's going to put a dampener on people in those afflicted places from contributing to FOSS.

And then there's the risk to those who quite legally create the modified software. After all, watching DVDs is perfectly legal isn't it - but that didn't stop years of (I suspect) serious problems for DVD John. Anyone thinking about doing the work will always have in their mind "what are the possible consequences ?". With DVD John, it was the media industry, but upset the "think of the childrun" brigade and the consequences could be far worse.

Microsoft Authenticator to nuke Entra creds on rooted and jailbroken phones

Re: Hmm, how long before Microsoft Authenticator goofs...

They'll just wipe it - the authentication method.

You can set up multiple authentication methods (e.g. app on a phone, Yubikey, ...) on an account, and there are ways for your administrator to provide a temporary method to let you in and setup a new one.

If you are affected, just tell your employer/school to provide a Yubikey (or other token device).

Users fume at Outlook.com email 'carnage'

Re: I dont believe it...

Seems I've reached that height of ElReg commentard status that I have my own downvote bot. I take that as an accolade.

Re: I dont believe it...

I can only assume from the downvotes to this and an earlier post that there are people who actually do think it's a good idea for a mail server to accept messages "yes, I'll take that and deliver it" - but then just toss it in the virtual bin. The mind boggles at the mindset who would rather have no idea if their message wasn't delivered than get a response (from their own mail server) to inform them about it. OK, there may be nothing you can do about it, but at least you know if it wasn't delivered.

Re: I dont believe it...

"The problem with rejecting spam is, what is the sender supposed to do with something time-sensitive needed by the recipient?"

Ring them, go to see them, send snail mail, send a carrier pigeon, anything but assume they've got it and wonder why nothing happens. At least you know they didn't do it so can try and mitigate the problem.

Re: I dont believe it...

But all of these junk messages have a red 'Unverified' label, so why pass them on to me in the first place? Just filter them out!

You've mentioned yourself about false positives - and I can assure you that filtering out false positives and not delivering them is a real problem that all the big oligopolists have built into their systems. It's really not hard to do "check a message and reject (refuse delivery) if it fails" filtering - and if everyone did that then spam would be a lot less of a problem. Or rather, the collateral damage from dealing with spam would be a lot less of a problem. As I've noted elsewhere, being able to look in your server logs and see a message was accepted - but know that the user might not get it - is "very irritating".

But if they all either delivered what they accept, or reject what they won't deliver, then life would be a lot simpler.

And "junk folders" are another complete p.i.t.a. which I turn off as best I can on any system I use. I'd rather filter the junk out of my inbox than find I've had something important sat there for weeks and I've not seen it. Even worse are those users who just nuke everything that's "junk" without even looking.

Re: Ip address blocking

Nah, from observation, all spam originates in the block 0.0.0.0/0 - so just block that and be done with it.

Re: That's actually a positive change

Indeed, they run a broken by design system - but strangely, few people seem to think that there's anything wrong with accepting messages and then not delivering them. It shows how good the "we'll deal with your spam problem" marketing has worked.

It's a real problem in that I can look at my server logs and see a message has been accepted, but have no idea if the user will actually see it. It's hard to get angry about non-replies (like paying a bill) when you know it might be as simple as them never having received it because I have the temerity to not use one of the oligopolists enshittified systems.

Palantir’s lethal AI weaponry deployed to find chairs for US government staff

Is Palantir the here and now version of Cirius Cybernetics Corp. ?

Techie was given strict instructions not to disrupt client. Then he touched one box and the lights went out

And an interesting fact about the A series paper sizes that you may or may not be interested in.

They are geometric, and all the standard sizes have the same length-width ratio. So if you take an A0 sheet and fold it (across the shorter mid-line) in half, you get A1. Similarly, A2 is half an A1, A3 half an A2, A4 half an A3, and so on.

Going waaaay back, when you needed a copy of a drawing, you'd put a requisition in to the tracing department. They'd get the master out of storage, and a tracer would spread it out with tracing paper over the top and copy it - line by line, character by character. YOu'd then get the traced copy and the master would go back into the store. Many of these drawings were A0 in size (no idea what that is in ElReg units), or even A0+ (i.e. A0 width but longer). And to trace them, you had to use a large drawing table, which meant leaning over a lot - especially when working towards the top of the sheet.

Most of these tracers were young ladies, and then the 60s arrived with very short skirts being the fashion - so naturally the engineers (almost all men of various ages) would find all sorts of excuses to visit the tracing office :)

It wasn't long until the manager of the office made the tracers pin dusters to the back of their skirts :(

Accenture down to buy Downdetector as part of $1.2 billion deal

And that's where it's such a shame we only get one upvote.

Desktop tech sent to prison for an education on strange places to put tattoos

Re: Was: Fire training, now tyre safety

Oh yes, split rims are deadly if the locking ring isn't properly seated. Many places have a cage to out the assembly in before inflating - there'll still be a big bang, and the cage may well be somewhat out of shape, but it should stop large objects impacting anyone.

Re: Basic Rule.

chap/he could be chapette/she but generally women seem to take this stuff more seriously and have no tolerance for hazing for obvious reasons

And what "obvious reasons" might they be ? I've worked in female dominated environments, and trust me, the women can be worse than the men on pretty well any measure of better/worse. In some ways, they can be worse because they know there's more tolerance - for example, if a bunch of men make lewd comments to the fresh meat woman then that's sexual harassment; but switch it round, and in many places it's just "banter". It shouldn't be, but that's how it is.

As an example of how there is still (OK, it's a few years old now, but attitudes haven't changed all that much) a difference in attitude, it takes all the way down to this post for someone to point out that things would have been different had it been men attacking a woman.

Brit dual nationals grounded by border digitization drive

Re: unsure whether she would be able to return to the UK

I recall an incident a few years ago now when I turned up at the hangar to find an often used (I'd hired it myself in the past) aircraft tucked away in a corner and with a copper hanging around it. I later found out that someone had hired it and said he'd be flying to somewhere on the south coast. When he wasn't back at the time he said he'd be, the people running the business started ringing round, and one of the south coast airports recalled him having talked to them on the way to France.

So as he'd not declared when hiring that he was taking it abroad, and they had no indication that he'd done the right paperwork, they reported it - covers their backside. So when he did get back, a young copper was waiting to give him some grief about paperwork and so on "oh, and while I'm here, I'll just have a quick rummage through your bags" ... "oh, what's these large blocks of white powder ?"

And the takeaway from the story, he'd probably have got away with it if he'd just got his return time right. Whether any systems would have joined up an ATC unit talking to him on the way with not having done the paperwork ... I doubt it. As it was, it was a young copper's lucky day getting a significant drugs arrest by chance.

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

Re: Prizes

Maaany years ago I heard of a similar thing with repmobiles - a.k.a. company cars for the sales reps.The story went that the reps didn't really look after the cars all that much, and there were many (mostly minor) bumps. The company bought an old Lada or Skoda - back in the days when there was a joke "Q:what do you call an open top Lada ? A: A skip !" The rule was that if anyone had a bump, they got the old wreck - either for a month or until someone else earned it. The accident rate halved immediately !

Re: Lock screen

Going back to the 80s and 90s, on a Mac you could do a lovely trick on people. You just needed to create a new folder (or anything) in a folder, then "select all" and drag everything down and right, unselect everything, then move your temporary icon to the top left of the window, then select all and move again until everything was well and truly out of sight. Then delete your temporary item.

As the icon locations and window scroll location were saved, everything persisted so the user could open a folder and find ... NOTHING ! Usually panic ensues until eventually they spot the scroll bars - but it means moving both of them before any files return to view.

Final step to put new website into production deleted it instead

Re: Delete

Back in the days of the Mac Classic I think it was, we had a client who did the same with files - she wasn't happy when the wastebasket got emptied. Icon suggests the fate of the files, and her response.

Re: Delete

You don't ever need to delete.

Hmm, how many ways is that wrong, lets think of a few ...

1) It's illegal to keep personal information that's no longer needed.

2) disk space isn't infinite, but the ability to use it is. For example, I tend to rip DVDs and store just the film/programs on my media server with the physical disks put out of the way - it's both more convenient, and a better experience stripping all the "coming soon trailers for stuff that came out decades ago, and the obligatory 'you're a criminal' bits". That takes "a few gigs" each time with stuff I will never need again (and if I did, it's on the original DVD). I only have a 2TB SSD in my laptop, spinning rust (if I could afford to waste it like that) would be a lot slower over USB.

3) In a past life, we had an accounting system I was sysadmin for - it generated gigs of data when 18G was about the limit if you had deep pockets. We often made copies of the database in order to test something. Ditto it not being practical to keep everything.

4, 5, 6, 7,...) Some of us have discovered something called ... a backup. Used to have cabinets full of the tapes for said system in #3

Definitely not with a wildcard. Definitely not with a -f.

Hmm, so are you going to delete hundreds, thousands, of files individually ? Ditto hitting Y "a few times" when the OS seems to think it's fun to keep asking ?

The general principle - move something rather than delete it - yes, fully agree. But unless you have an unlimited budget for storage and are willing to accept the risks of constantly upgrading the hardware, you have to delete stuff sometime when you're done with it.

UK.gov launches cyber 'lockdown' campaign as 80% of orgs still leave door open

Re: Platitudes

"Electrician" fitting a smart meter ? As a generalisation, that's a bit of an insult to electricians. While there are many experienced and skilled meter fitters, there's an awful lot of them who were "dragged off the street" (some were meter readers reskilling), given a few days training, and sent out to do the job. The guy that came and put an isolator in for me wasn't what I'd call a skilled electrician given the pigs ear he made of it.

Re: An SME just wants their IT to work

Well the analogy is - if you have a car and don't know how to look after it, then you take it to someone (e.g. a garage) who does and pay them to look after it.

The IT world is still that the "buy a car, at some point notice the brakes are only working on one wheel, and without bothering with any manuals (or these days, online videos) figure out how to bodge a bit of wood in place of the worn out pads" stage.

Re: Platitudes

The guy doing the work doesn't need to have any qualifications if he's adequately supervised by someone who does.

Also, you are a little out of date, the IEE merged with Institution of Incorporated Engineers to become the IET 20 years ago ! The IIE had itself absorbed the Society of Engineers the year before. See the history of the IET

When it comes to (installation) certificates, there are actually three signatures: the guy that designed the system, the guy that installed it, and the guy that inspected and tested it. They can be the same person, but in large projects you may find that it's three different people, each of whom is not qualified to sign off either of the other two. And again, as long as the guy signing the certificate at the end "adequately supervised" the other two, then there's no problem.

Log files that describe the history of the internet are disappearing. A new project hopes to save them

Surely a waste of time ...

All we need to know is that it was created by a small number of big corporates like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Faecesborg. They permit us to use it in order to feed their data mining and sheeple selling businesses.

Isn't that all we need to know now ?

Pity I can have two icons - it really is a joke as well as the big brother icon.

Fukushima's radioactive hybrid terror pig boom was driven by amorous mothers

Ah, I wonder if it was the pub I was in when I was offered some venison - there were 8 legs on offer. I turned it down as it was too deer.

Sudo maintainer, handling utility for more than 30 years, is looking for support

Re: A reminder

sudo is far far more than just "giving root access". It's giving access to a carefully defined set of resources - and not just to root.

Just adding a user to an admin group is just ... giving them full access to everything an admin can do. Adding them to a line in the sudo config file means you can let a user (or group of users - just add remove as required) access to specific commands. E.g. you could create a group for printer admins who have the ability to manage the print services (stop/start daemons, look at the queues) but nothing else.

Re: A reminder

A someone who currently has a few windows open to remote systems, all sat at a # prompt after "su -" ...

If you permit root logins, or permit the use of su. then eveeryone who needs it has the root password. That's inherently insecure. For example, if one person in a team leaves (or stops needing the facility), then you have to change the password and everyone else has to get used to a new one.

If you use sudo, then they use their own password which means (for example) blocking one user from the system also blocks their root access. OK, so far, only a small step up in security.

The big thing is that once people are using sudo, then it's logged who ran what - "jbloggs ran sudo $[somethingstupid]" v.s. "root ran $[somethingstupid]". And then you can control who can do what. root login or su is a blunt tool - it's all or nothing. You can (for example) give someone permission to only manage the mail system commands and nothing else, or restart the web service and nothing else, or ...

OK, all a bit moot on a single user system - but it's a step up from every tutorial starting with "login as root" or "run 'su -'"

Re: What fraction of Musk's $852 billion fortune ...

Which is why I do my best to not use Amazon and support more local businesses

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Over here we tend to have one, or more, networks.

Openretch networks mostly have few pluggable connections which will be rarely (if ever) disturbed. At the exchange there'll be a connector to the central concentrator. Form there, I believe it's fusion splices all the way to the top of the pole (or into the manhole) where there's another connector into the splitter. Then the plugged connection for the subscriber fibre, and the plugged connection into the ONT. None of these will routinely be touched - switching between providers who use Openretch infrastructure is done in software.

Other networks are much the same, except they tend to have some large street cabinets instead of re-purposing the old exchange buildings.

It's been interesting watching them put the two networks in where I live - we have Openretch and Fibrus. Several times I've seen a tech sat on a stool by a manhole, gently corralling a veritable mare's tail of fibres, fusion splicing them, and carefully tucking them into the holders.

I don't know why you've got downvotes for a factual statement.

At least there are few actual connectors in a full fibre network - most of the connections are fusion splices which are as immune to dirt etc. as the fibre itself.

Re: It worries me that *everything* is being forced to depend on the …

Light a fire under those responsible for comms; cell towers around here got extended life UPSes and generators after several hurricanes

Round here (UK), the most that's likely to happen is a lot of people complaining on twitface or whatever. But since everyone is preoccupied with "how cheap can I get it", don't expect the networks to spend money on meaningful battery backup that might never be used.

This report should be required reading for anyone with even the remotest responsibility for providing services - or interest in their own resilience. I would challenge anyone to read it and not find something they hadn't thought of that requires electricity and is essential or very important to basic living.

Tech support chap invented fake fix for non-problem and watched it spread across the office

Re: Did the same

Maaany years ago, when stuff got passed around the office by photocopying it and passing bits of real paper, a "Troubleshooting Flowchart" came around - you'll have seen a version of it, starts with "Did you bugger about with it ?" and at the other end has "Dump it in the skip". The copy of a copy of a ... looked rather rough, so I sat down at my new (to me) Mac and redrew it. And copies of that now neater version started going around. A few weeks later I was visiting a different department and found it going around there - having been up to the director's corridor and back down the chain !

Re: Wiggle the mouse

Indeed, having something moving to tell you it's working makes things feel quicker than "just nothing".

Something else to be aware of ...

Some OSs prioritise apparent boot speed. The time between switching on and getting to a login prompt is a key driver of user perception. But, having got to the login prompt, or after that, a desktop on the monitor, the system won't do anything for you as it's still busy loading all the background stuff it needs to work. When I'm working form home, I'll switch on and put in the bitlocker password before I do breakfast, then I'll log in and have breakfast (and/or switch to my personal laptop and catch up with ElReg) while waiting for it to get to a point of being usable.

Re: CRT Monitors and floppies

Those with memory from the era might recall that Apple often had photos of the Apple ][ with two dick drives on top, and a monitor on top of that. It worked just fine ... as long as it was the Apple monitor which had magnetic screening in the base. At the time, we had the local Apple dealership, and one particular client had problems with corrupted disks - but when the rig was brought in, we'd never find any problem. It was a while before we twigged that they had the monitor sat on top of the floppy drives just like in the pictures - but it wasn't an Apple monitor.

Before that we'd been looking at power problems, they had some powerful spot welding equipment in the factory ...

Re: Power without responsibility

At one place I worked at, we had a couple of occasions I had to investigate ... wobbly screens.

One occasion, all the screens (green, or some of them, amber Wyse 60 terminals hooked up to a Unix box) would wobble - not a lot, just enough to be annoyingly noticeable. And it didn't happen all the time. I tracked it down to only doing it when the curtain fan heater in the shop below was running - i.e. a 2 or 3 kW load. I asked the electricians if any work had been done recently - they found a neutral had dropped out of the back of a socket - so what should have been a ring, was only a ring for the live, and thus creating a single turn coil carrying about half the fan heater current. This was enough to make the screens wobble.

More fun was when the offices were being extended - steel frame building, and for good measure the builders welded all the joints as well as bolting them. This time, they connected the welding earth to a convenient point and wandered around with the welding torch. So the steel frame became a large coil carrying welding current (probably 100+amps) - this took the picture almost off the edge of the tube when they struck up a good arc !

And a tale I was told by our instructor at an electronics night school ... cough decades ago. He'd been in an apprentice training scheme where one day a week for practical experience, local would be encouraged to bring electrical stuff in that needed repair - repair was free, just parts to pay for. One day, a rather high quality German TV set was brought in - and being one fo the better apprentices, he got to repair it. Simple fault, quickly fixed - then time to "fiddle". Who remembers playing with the horizontal hold controls on TVs/monitors ? Well apparently this one could shift the picture a good way off the side of the tube ... so ... he wired in a slider pot with a lump of plasticine on it's slider, and put the back on.

So, called over the instructor, said he'd fixed the fault, but got this very strange one - when he tipped the TV on it's side, the picture "slid" downwards. Tilt it the other way, picture slide downwards again - onto the tube and off the lower side.Before long it was being held up in front of the whole group, and various theories were being put forward - including interaction with the earth's magnetic field. Apparently it was half an hour before anyone thought to take the back off and they discovered the trick.

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

Re: "I did a spot of Artexing"

I concluded it is UK perversion —Artex is a trademarked, now generic, a type of textured plaster ...

A wise choice of words - perversion is indeed a decent description. Our house has textured ceilings in almost all the rooms - but not the really heavily "swirls and whirls" typical of Artex, just a rough surface I assume was done by dabbing the plaster rather than spreading with a notched tool. It's a pain (literally, it hurts when you catch your hand on the sharp points while decorating), and I keep wondering what techniques might remove it - the most extreme being to rip down the ceilings and re-board them.

Ghost gun legislation casts shadow over 3D printing

Re: Idiocy

If it affects USAsians then it affects everyone - didn't you get that memo ?

It's a bit like DMCA and DVD decrypting being illegal only affects USAsians - it doesn't just affect them. I caused "issues" like having to make sure all development work took place outside of the USA, and it affected the ability of distributions to include the code - simply because they don't want to have to build USA-specific versions without it, and many developers are in the USA. Just stop and think about that for a moment ...

Say you are a developer who's contributed to a particular project, and lets say that project is actually based outside the US. You might have had nothing at all to do with the relevant functions, but if that project makes anything in the USA available to USAsians, then potentially the authorities might come after you for any failings. You only need to look at events over recent months to see that being on the wrong end of attention from government agents can be very inconvenient, uncomfortable, or even fatal. So project has designs for a printer (isn't there one where all the custom parts have a 3D model so you can ask a mate to print them for you ?), and some software to make it work, and if that design makes it's way to the USA then you risk having government agents kicking your front door in.

So, that still only affects USAsians right ? Wrong, anyone else involved in the project risks being on an "arrest on entry for terrorism" list. Most won't have any interest in going to the USA, but some might, some might be asked to go there for their day job, whatever.

And don't forget the providers hosting the project website with it's hardware designs and software - that's going to be a target for US authorities as well - so best avoid any that have any involvement/presence in the US at all (so that's most of them then !)

'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP

Re: And yet when I pointed this out in 2005

I recall discussions last century - when Microsoft was first making noises about subscription models, but failed. Even back then it was clear - subscription model == "sign blank cheques, the provider will decide what value to put on it when you want access to your own information". But as usual, too many people took short term convenience over long term freedom and jumped headlong into the mire we now see them in.

Techie's one ring brought darkness by shorting a server

Re: No KZZEERT, no activity either

Indeed, but (I thought) it's a reasonable assumption that it would be wired with neutral as the common, and vary the output between 0=neutral and 100%=live. Not wire it with live as common and 0%=both neutral and live of output at input live. But you know what they say about learning by experience - I never assumed that again !

Sword of Damocles hangs over UK military’s Ajax as minister says back it or scrap it

https://xkcd.com/927/

StopICE hacked to send alarming text messages, admins accuse border patrol agent of sabotage

Re: Good

I'd be good with someone posting their names, ph num, address, and DL/SS number

Not a good idea.

If you want the moral high ground, you have to be "better" than those you are criticising. Once you start down the road to assisting fanatics on any side to start attacking/SWATing/whatever the bad guys, then you've lost that moral high ground. Plus it plays right into the narrative that the anti-ICE people are criminals and terrorists.