Posts by Wobblin' Pete

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Bidets

smart bidets with added AI to give real meaning to the phrase

"copilot, my ar*e..."

Hello? Emergency services? I'd like to report a wrong number

Re: Really?

I have worked in telecoms for a while and this is VERY believable. And do not underestimate the abilities of the 'cisco certified engineer' left to set up a call manager system in interesting ways.

I can't remember the syntax but you can set the digit analysis to use the next digits in the called number, or if it CONTAINS a given digit string.

Here in the UK we use 999 and 112 (112 was a pan European thing, but not sure if all UK networks supported it due to high level of mis-dials it got)

So it was not unknown for the 'engineer', being very diligent in making sure they will never fail an emergency call, to set up the call manager so ANY dialled number CONTAINING either 112 or 999 will be routed as an emergency call.

So from a busy bank, or network of travel agents, that is quickly a lot of calls. Which in turn generates quite a lot of interest.

Then we had to try to explain to these certified engineers they probably had got it wrong, when as an uncertified no-one I was clearly talking nonsense. Until they checked and quietly corrected it (if you were lucky)...

The Reg builds official Lego Artemis and Milky Way sets

Lego, it's mine...

Lego have had a very "Artemis" like rocket in their range a couple of years now - Lego City Rocket Launch 60351 - so it seems a little strange that the new one's design was compromised at all to make it more playable?

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/product/rocket-launch-centre-60351

And I also miss the Playmobil re-enactments too - but note the Playmobil rocket is very much based on ESA designs, and so would not really fit in an Artemis story. Done a quick check and it's available in various shops but not in their current catalogue

https://www.smythstoys.com/uk/en-gb/toys/construction-and-cars/playmobil/playmobil-9488-space-mars-mission-rocket-with-launch-site-with-lights-and-sound/p/8023308

Probably should declare that I have both of these rocket sets - both great fun, but if you don't like putting stickers on bits don't buy playmobil (stickers on control panels and other fiddly bits), but then this is normal for their sets. And for me the playbobil wins, having a bi-lingual choice of cool sounds....

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

The RJ family...

I'm guessing there is a whole family of RJxx standards out there, but as just the 11 and the 45 cause enough work on their own never bothered to look that up.

But I am sure back in the 70's someone must have said to their mate 'you know, if we can get this adopted we'll have work for life just swapping them round and round..'

Case 1 - A few years back an elderly close relative called me at wits end - this was the 3rd "faulty" router he'd been sent and needed to get the broadband back up. Now this was someone who had been in computing all his life, the first two systems he installed were analogue. Yes, real analogue computers, before moving into mainframes. But I arrived at the house, instantly spotted the RJ11 plug in the RJ45 socket, as kindly as i could pointed out the problem. Then after a few choice words about the connection choices/design he had the internet connection back up and running in minutes. Now that was a black box with black sockets in it and the relatives eyesight was not what it was, and so I did agree about the design.

Case 2 - About a year after that a sibling called me, his family was about to lose it as he had disconnected the home broadband router so he could decorate. But the next morning when paint was dry and he reconnected it, nothing worked! Again quickly popped up there to see, and no, he had not painted the router, but it was a simple colour problem. The manufacturer of this box had tried to make things easy by colour coding the sockets and plugs - the red plug went in the red socket, the yellow plug in the yellow socket and so on. But said sibling had instead very carefully put them back in what he thought was the order he had pulled them out, not realising the colours were there for a purpose. Again that was fixed in seconds and peace restored - the kids xboxes were no longer ex-boxes...

Of course it may be my family might just be all idiots, but I doubt that. I have seen similar cabling faux-pas numerous times in all the offices i've ever worked in, offices full of very well paid supposedly clever people (my favourite was the RJ11 'network cable' between two RJ45 ports - well it had come with the laptop, hadn't it?) (for the younger readers laptops once had modem cards and came with a cable to connect them to a wall socket).

And I'm always surprised/disappointed we still get new kit with the RJ11's and RJ45's in nice little line hidden in the lower dark recesses of the back of a bit of kit in the hope people might notice that the cable that looks very much like it is plugged in ok is not really plugged in ok at all.

But then maybe, after all, it has kept a good few of us in a job over the years...

Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds

Duh.

Yes, but had they forgotten this is what it was like back in the office with hours of face to face pointless meetings? The Zoom/Team meeting are not great, but it's mostly the contents (or lack of) of the meetings which must be the major factor here...

Except back then after a day of face to face meetings we were then expected to be able to drive home safely in a semi comatosed state.

As i said, remote meetings may not be that great, but we will probably live longer.

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

Re: Burn the bodies

Things look very different depending on which end of the telescope you stand.

People say the Crem in Redditch is being used to heat the pool, but I understand reality is that the pool water is used to cool the flue gasses from the Crem. This condenses nasties like mercury out of the flue gasses, reducing polution. Was told this is all on the back of the number of tooth fillings that go into crematoriums, they have become mercury pollution hot spots. Local pool was 'obvious' source of cooling water...

As for the spare heat from a data centre, low temp makes it very hard to use outside agriculture - and then only one season a year. First step would be not waste space building it in a city in the first place....

Ho hum.

Boffins say they can turn typing sounds into text with 95% accuracy

I want one....

I know this article was supposed to be highlighting the security risks, but am I the only one who read it thinking why have i been dragging round all these cables, spare batteries, chargers and so forth for the various 'portable' keyboards all these years, when I just needed to bash the keys that little bit louder?

just need an old xylophone to use as a mouse mat now....

Mines the one with pockets full of old duracells

From cage fight to page fight: Twitter threatens to sue Meta after Threads app launch

Privacy? what's changed

I'm reading that treads wants access to nearly all of the data on your phone, but surely most users already agreed to give access to pictures/files/camera/microphone/location/address book/kidneys/whatever else is left when you signed up to instagram, which threads seems to be piggybacked on? And I'm sure twatter probably wanted the same when anyone signs up to it.

So what's changed? We all know the money is in the data they can scrape from us and then sell to the advertisers.

I don't have either of these, but i'm sure by the end of next week my partner will be adding it to the growing list of apps to scroll through - to me it all looks like a hard way to check what a few relatives and a couple of pop groups are up to.

Please can we just go back to having separate web sites for what interests us?

Workers don't want these humanoid robots telling them to be happy

So size matters after all...

So, when the users are given the choice of two equally un-desirable and annoying robots, they pick the one that will fit under an upturned bin.

I have to wonder if the exact location/conditions of these robots was monitored for the duration of this trial....

Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing

Re: this bizarre tale of inadvertent WhatsApp account hijacking

just what i was thinking. the beauty of whasap was it was tied to your phone number - break your phone, pop the old sim into a new phone and you can have whatsap up in seconds. Ideal for idiot yoof on skateboards, and their parents wanting to contact them. Great system fro that and why it was so successful.

So if you forget to tell your bank you have moved house it's not your bank's fault for not knowing. I used to get text messages for the previous owner of my phone number to authorise their credit card payments. No one at the bank was interested, and I had no way of contacting them. It kept happening until one day their elderly father called me in error (seems he still had their old number in his phone) and i explained to him that his daughter really should contact the bank and update her details.....

Mines the one with MY phone in the pocket.....

Unplug that Anker battery pack now: House blaze sparks recall

Are we the problem

While lithium batteries are really very safe, the problem is with the way we use them. All the other dangerours stuff mentioned above, propane camping stoves, petrol cans, even mains gas, tends not to be used in the bedroom over night while we are sleeping. In our house even the power packs for battery tools are charged in a corner of the kitchen (where there is a convenient power socket), and there happens to be a smoke detector between the kitchen and bedroom.

But our beloved phones, power banks and toys all get charged overnight (while we are sleeping) in the bedrooms from the wall wart nearest to the bed, where the very occasional fire is inherently more serious. I make an effort to place my phone while charging on an old ceramic plate on the bedside table, not sure how much that would help if it burst into flames, but my wife (and I guess most other normal people) are more than happy to put the phone on nay old nearby surface, regardless how flammable it is.

So while I would not want to set fire to the kitchen at lunchtime, it is likely to be less worrying than the bed I was sleeping in going up in the middle of the night.

And sudden fires at night around sleeping people are also more likely to make the news, and be very bad news at that...

FAA wants pilots to be less dependent on computer autopilots

This is what the Tannoy is for...

bing bong

"this is the head stewardess, does anyone know how to fly a plane?"

Shortly followed by-

big bong

"has anyone got an axe on them so we can open the cockpit door"

then finally followed by the icon

Sadly I bet most flights these day have at least one gamer on board who would quite happily give it a go, as they have already landed hundreds of aircraft and space ships from their bedroom...