Posts by RT Harrison

IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day

Re: Amateur

Logged in as root so don't need sudo. Was the flag '--no-preserve-root' available for rm back in the 90's?

Does anyone grok TFA or has clout chasing invaded El Reg.

NTP server that traveled back in time caused massive Aussie mobile outage

You can change the time server in Win 11 from time.windows.com going through the Settings app. Pick Time & Language, scroll down to additional settings. Expand the list (down arrow next to Sync now). Click Change.

I use uk.pool.ntp.org - full list at NTP Pool Project.

time.nist.gov is also a good alternative.

You can only have one NTP server as a time source. I think you could have up to 4 before Win 11.

Law firm insisted on one password to rule them all

Situation Publishing (a media firm) is the parent company of The Register amongst other publications.

It's at the bottom of all webpages.

Godot says bye bye AI, bans vibe-coded contributions

Re: bravo!!

Sounds like a job for the Cult Mechanicus.

Tech support chap hauled out to help SWAT team saw his life flash before his eyes

Re: Lake District

Wow! So the Yanks can fly lower than 30000 feet.

Duo who sold car crash victims' data must repay £118k

Re: Offence

That would be the Traffic Police.

Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

Re: The state of Utah may be surprised to discover

Please don't turn ElReg into Atheism+

Space factories edge closer after experimental capsule survives hypersonic landing

Re: How hot is it when it lands?

The same as a meteorite, cold to the touch.

GitLab promises a different kind of layoff as biz pivots toward AI

Re: Predictable layoffs

GitLab not GitHub

We've only gone and done it: Changed what you're used to

Re: Just…

I had to create a simple Tampermonkey script to highlight the visited links.

(ETA: Not sure how to do preformatted text in the ElReg comments section.)

<pre>

// ==UserScript==

// @name ElReg visited link colour

// @version 2026-05-06

// @description Highlights visited links on the ElReg site.

// @author Richard Thomas Harrison

// @match https://www.theregister.com/*

// @grant GM.addStyle

// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

'use strict';

GM.addStyle("body{a:visited {color: red !important;}}");

})();

</pre>

Japanese shipper MOL wants a floating datacenter, and Hitachi just climbed aboard

Re: Interesting idea

The Principality of Sealand once had a data haven so it is possible.

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

Re: 650k is enough

Other interesting quotes that fell flat:

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”

— Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”

— Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Baikonur's only crew-capable pad busted after Soyuz flight

Re: Not really

If.

Campbell's CISO canned after lawsuit alleges hour-long rant against staff and customers

Sweet!

China recruiting spies in the UK with fake headhunters and ‘sites like LinkedIn’

Re: News at 10 - Spies are spying

It's all those cats eyes down the middle of the road, too much curiosity.

Russia’s first autonomous humanoid robot staggers and falls on debut

Re: creepy

Really need to stop skim reading comments. Read the last line as:

"Bet it still has a terrible pain in all the dildos down its left side."

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

Re: a random character

~#@❯ python .\pwned.py icantbelieveitsnotbutter

icantbelieveitsnotbutter was found with 89 occurrences (hash: 28F02358C089B6CD46CA7C6AF3BF8A950345ABEF)

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Re: Hold your horses there, Pat

Are you sure that wasn't "phishers"

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Buy a new smart device. :p

(Added the joke icon for those who were in the queue for ice cream when a sense of humour was being handed out)

Amazon turns James Bond into the Man Without the Golden Gun

Re: To be fair . . .

Still managed to put a hole in the failed Austrian painter's head.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Re: Virginia, Texas ?

Nah! Assemble SLS at the Smithsonian and attach Discovery to it. Launch into space. Re-enter and land in Texas. Profit!!!

UK's digital hospital plan meets analog reality check

Re: Opthalmology

Vibe coding seems to be all the rage these days. How about vibe optometry.

Outlook takes another sick day

Re: The Cloud

That's what groupies are for.

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

Re: No need for the nuclear option

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/spacecraft/voyager.jpg

The RTGs (x3) are at the bottom left of that image. NASA probably did the calculations to work out the minimum distance they needed to be at the end of that arm.

This Hackaday article gives a run-down on the different types of RTG NASA has developed.

Google outfoxed by crafty squatters in $1B London HQ's rooftop garden

Re: Fox's or Fox'es?

Embassy of Austria - Embassy

3524 International Ct NW

Washington, DC 20008

United States

Technically Austrian soil, therefore Austria is in the USA.

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Re: It happens to the best of us.

Surprised you didn't have a gas cooker with grill above the hob as was common back then to do the toast. Along with a box of Cooks matches to light it.

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

Re: Humans

The dee dars* are going to think you are some posh wanker from down south if you do that.

*dee dars - Affectionate term for Sheffield locals for how they sound when speaking.

US Space Force warns Chinese satellites are 'dogfighting' in space

Never admit you know something until it is confirmed by the general public.

'Once in a lifetime' IT outage at city council hit datacenter, but no files lost

Re: a risk assessment has been carried out and it was deemed safe to hold the meeting

They probably do risk assessments on the use of paper. You can get nasty hurty paper cuts if you don't hold the paperwork correctly.

Re: Working differently

Reminds me of the Morcambe and Wise sketch where Eric Morcambe is explaining to Andre Previn that he is "playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order."

Morecambe and Wise - Andre Previn

DoorDash sued for allegedly branding customer a fraudster after delivery photo query

A quick internet search revealed where their registered office is. Using Google Street View shows it is just a regular office building that obviously contains other companies. Use nycompanyregistry.com to find the info, their own website doesn't list it.

Your company isn't special, you may have a shark tank investor, Mark Cuban, but he will just be in it for a large return on investment.

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

Re: Nah.

That one wasn't found.

I'm using Dr Mike Pound's (Nottingham Uni) python script to check these.

Re: Nah.

According to 'Have I Been Pwned':

4r5t6y7u was found with 6353 occurrences (hash: 2A80F07093F548A117B164334C085CF8B7CF6EAB)

AI pothole patrol to snap flaws in Britain's crumbling roads

Any road/street adopted by the council under a Section 38 agreement is a highway. They are maintained by the Highways Department of your local council.

Private shared roads will not be covered, those roads will be maintained by the local residents that are served by that private shared road.

Reddit rolls out AI-powered 'Answers' search feature, redditors don't rejoice

In before it turns into a sweary, racist bot that suggests you remove yourself from the gene pool and also suggests links to NSFW reddits.

Feature phones all the rage as parents try to shield kids from harm

Re: Great news!

Skibidyphone

Ohiophone

Rizzphone

Sigmaphone

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

Re: Any publicity...

The corollary to Rule 34 is that if there isn't pr0n of it there soon will be.

Boeing's Starliner set for extended stay at the ISS as engineers on Earth try to recreate thruster issues

Re: IT Crowd Solution

It's not how hard you hit it, it is where you hit it that matters,

Police allege 'evil twin' of in-flight Wi-Fi used to steal passenger's credentials

Re: "on condition he restrict his use of the internet"

He lives in Australia not the American mid-west... Oh wait...

From network security to nyet work in perpetuity: What's up with the Kaspersky US ban?

Re: Apple fixes two flaws used to attack Kaspersky employees ;)

Hiding inside Kaspersky's network for 3-4 years. ;)

Command senior chief busted for secretly setting up Wi-Fi on US Navy combat ship

That's the "E4 Mafia", that doesn't exist. Honest. They don't strategically transfer equipment to an alternate location because they don't exist, obviously.

Zuckerberg hunkers down in Hawaii to wait out apocalypse

Why build one when you can have a second constructed.

Apple becomes the latest company to ban ChatGPT for internal use

Re: utopia > dystopia

Where are they? They are nowhere.

Professor freezes student grades after ChatGPT claimed AI wrote their papers

Use a content versioning system.

Submit the repository if your work is questioned so that the history can be analysed.

Re: A simple solution

Use a content versioning system. Submit the repository if your work is questioned so that the history of the document can be analysed.