Posts by goblinski

BOFH: Nobody would be stupid enough to go live with the mirror system, surely

Pattern much :-D

...analyze TheRegister's series BOFH for the last five years, and output how many times someone was killed, fired or hurt at the end of each story. Ex: on the latest one, the beancounter flies out the window...

"Based on an analysis of the roughly 120 episodes published between 2021 and early 2026, here is the breakdown of the "casualty list."

Summary Table: 5-Year Casualty Report:

Category: Hurt / Injured Frequency (Est.): ~45 times Primary Causes: Taserings, "spontaneous" combustion, falling into the Thames, lift "malfunctions."

Category: Fired / Disappeared Frequency (Est.): ~30 times Primary Causes: "Operational Hoarse Pigeon," fake HR audits, relocation to the basement.

Category: "Killed" (Implicitly) Frequency (Est.): ~15 times Primary Causes: "Flying out windows, "The Gnasher" (macerator), or "the ninja clause."

Annual Highlights (Notable Outcomes):

2025–2026: The AI & "Innosplaining" Era:

Episode 3 (2026): A Loss Adjuster discovers liability is a "two-way street" and ends up in the Thames after a core network upgrade goes wrong.

Episode 22 (2025): Darryl, a "forward-facing" AI consultant, suffers "spontaneous combustion" when the PFY aggressively empties two CO2 extinguishers on him before he even catches fire.

Episode 21 (2025): The Head Beancounter is beaten down by a monitor mount during a budget dispute.

Episode 18 (2025): An HR representative is left stalled between floors 5 and 6 indefinitely during an "ambitious relocation plan."

2023–2024: The Return to the Office:

Hot-Desking Fallout: Several middle managers were fired after Simon manipulated the booking software to show they hadn't been in the office for six months.

The Window Incident: A particularly persistent beancounter was "assisted" through a high-rise window.

The "Ninja Clause": A salesperson was physically laid out after ignoring the warning to stay away from the server room.

2021–2022: Pandemic & Remote Bastardry:

Episode 23 (2021): A manager trying to track employees' home productivity is electrocuted via a rigged "smart" device.

The Lift Shaft: At least three "Bosses" were cycled through in 2021, with the majority ending up at the bottom of the lift shaft after attempting to cut the IT coffee budget.

The Vacuum Cleaner: A "homicidal" robotic vacuum was used to clear the boardroom of unwanted leadership during the Christmas party.

PS: I think it's about time Simon squeezes in some worthy HR nemesis. Like a starry-eyed intern or something. The battle is too uneven otherwise.

US struck Iran with copies of its own drones

Re: So what's the difference between a cruise missile and a "suicide drone"?

...So what's the difference between a cruise missile and a "suicide drone"?...

Weeelll...

THE MISSILE KNOWS WHERE IT IS AT ALL TIMES. IT KNOWS THIS BECAUSE IT KNOWS WHERE IT ISN'T!!!

By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile FROM A POSITION WHERE IT IS TO A POSITION WHERE IT ISN'T, and arriving at a position WHERE IT WASN'T, IT NOW IS.

Consequently, THE POSITION WHERE IT IS, IS NOW THE POSITION THAT IT WASN'T, and it follows that THE POSITION THAT IT WAS, IS NOW THE POSITION THAT IT ISN'T.

In the event that THE POSITION THAT IT IS IN IS NOT THE POSITION THAT IT WASN'T, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHERE THE MISSILE IS, AND WHERE IT WASN'T.

If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, IT IS NOT SURE JUST WHERE IT IS.

HOWEVER, IT IS SURE WHERE IT ISN'T, within reason, and it knows where it was.

IT NOW SUBTRACTS WHERE IT SHOULD BE FROM WHERE IT WASN'T, OR VICE VERSA, and by differentiating this FROM THE ALGEBRAIC SUM OF WHERE IT SHOULDN'T BE, AND WHERE IT WAS, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.

Whereas a suicide drone just goes "Prrrrrrrrrrrrr"...

Well, the circle is complete, or almost...

1980s: Germany's Dornier DAR (Die Drohne Antiradar) > Israel's IAI Harpy > South Africa's Kentron ARD-10 during the Border War > design data sold to Israel = all proud parents of the Shahed-131/136 (possibly spawned from either Chinese units - that Israel exported to China - or captured Israeli ones) > LUCAAASSS !!!

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

An application running on the server was malfunctioning," he told On Call. "The application vendor blamed the operating system. The operating system vendor suggested the hardware might be unstable. The hardware had just had a board replaced. Therefore, the man who replaced the board must be the problem.

So these two were contacted, queried, and provided relevant responses, in the time it took our guy to walk to the door to get out?

Me think the admin never intented to let him out one way or the other till all is up and running.

UK copper fired after faking keyboard taps using photo frame

I'm old enough to remember the AllAdvantage bar, and the $59 I made from it using mouse mover gizmos - just before they went belly up.

Hardly anybody bought Samsung's last smartphones for AI. It hopes this year's models change that

- Curved screen

- Not-curved edges.

The above basically boils down to the S23 Ultra.

Yes, I know, the three and a half online reviewers that seem to dictate all reviews and what users want find the curved display stupid. I don't. It looks good, and the edge tabs work for me.

Add to the dream:

- Thumb fingerprint sensor (on the side).

- Physical dual sim

- Dedicated micro sd slot

- Battery large enough.

The above was all covered by the Sony Xperia 5 Ultra. No curved screen, but good looking. Too bad it was extremely unreliable.

- Add wireless charging of any sort.

That's it. That's all I need.

My Note 20 Ultra was the last Note with an SD card.

AND the last one that can emulate a credit card's magnetic strip.

The look alone on the faces of the snarky cashiers in stores were phone payments are not accepted yet is worth it.

- "We don't accept ApplePay here"

- "It's not an Apple"

- "We don't accept any phone payments here. Won't work".

- "Ok".

BEEEP

- "?!?"

- "!!!"

Orbital datacenters are a pie-in-the-sky idea: Gartner

How much datacenter can an decommissioned ocean oil rig hold?

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

Re: Cheer up, kids.

...Oh, surely it has always been possible to wander from the male to female sections of American Harold without having to pass though any doors open is by any guards...

Ditto. This ^^^

Either that, or that little "female" word was added for good measure

I submit that the actual prank and most painful moment was Mike and the others showing up.

Fraudster hacked hotel system, paid 1 cent for luxury rooms, Spanish cops say

"...We all know that a £9 bottle of water doesn't cost them more than 50p and a tiny bag of crisps about the same..."

Blasphemy!!!

Do you have any idea how much individually wrapped cashews cost ?!? Those are bespoke items !!! The best of the best. They have to have an order of magnitudes longer shelf life as they are never used nor replaced, yet they have to taste just as stale when perfectly fresh. They have to be sound-resistant and not crumble when a parent screams at some lost kid who unrwapped them before they could stop him, they are individually and manually infused at the factory with purified guilt...Little idea do you have of the work that goes in crafting those.

DARPA's autonomous missile-firing missile advances toward flight tests

Right. We no longer need trains, because the Ukranians can build 50000 bicycles for the same amount of money.

I just hope they don't invent tactical kites, because then we'll be howling how stupid building drones is, when you can make 500 kites for the price of one drone.

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

...In other words, the "hybrid" bit is fading...

We were expats in Algeria for a few years in the 80's and one of the cons was that there was no real source of meat that suited our cuisine. There was goat, sheep, you name it, but it wasn't all that.

Eventually we hooked up with a group of local hunters who were protecting the potato fields from feral pigs that were doing a number. They'd go and cull as many as possible, we'd hang around till they were done and dispatch the pigs, then share all that with the rest of the local expat group. Freezers helped greatly. The sight of our little sedan, its rear sagging to the ground under the load, with blood dripping from the flush holes, was not something I'll forget. Would have made for a nice movie.

So - these pigs were supposedly the descendants of the pig population that was released out of the French farms after the independence. The French farmers flew, the farms were nationalized, and the pig pop was partly exterminated, partly released. They then supposedly cross-bred with the local wild boars.

One way or the other - 20 years after that event, while the boar population was large enough to require culling, nothing in these animals suggested "domestic pig" in any way. They were wild boars, big, ugly and strong. Decently tasty too.

Yes, backsies: Crypto exchange Bithumb claws back $40B in accidental payments to users

So what happens with the ones who sold them ?

Romanian rail workers accused of bribery turned to ChatGPT for legal tips

It is painfully local-centric, in all the wrong ways.

I have tortured most of the mainstream ones with local questions in local languages and I can confirm that they become as insane as the matching local society is.

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

Re: Good

Not to mention that once you stoop down to idiots' level - they'll beat you with experience. Once you dox people - you're fair game too.

AI security startup CEO posts a job. Deepfake candidate applies, inner turmoil ensues

q1: You have something on your face. Clean it please.

q2: How fat is Kim Jong Un ?

Re: Fake news?

Sounds valid. However, there's the thing that the talk won't do him too much good. He's shown himself as incapable to cut short a clusterfck of red flags and went on. No one will want to invest in a startup where benefit of the doubt is given at that scale.

I'm the same, or worse, then again I own no startup and I interview no candidates.

Felt uncomfortable...Felt uneasy...Felt uncomfortable...smelled fish... went along still...

Little joke for the road:

Husband gets home drunk at two in the morning. Wife is waiting, roller pin in hand:

- Where have you been ?!?

- Errr...

- Where have you been ?!?!?!

- Errr...

- Oh, ok, I see. You had to work afterhours, then it was cold, and you had to drink to warm yourself up right ?

- Uuuuhhh...Right, right, that's what happened !

- But then WHY do you have lipstick on your collar ?!?

- Errr...

- Ok, I see, the guys at work pranked you and put that so they get you in trouble with me, right ?

- Aaaa...yep. Yep. That's what happened.

- But then WHY do you have LIPSTICK on your underwear ???

- Aaaah...

- Huh ???

- ....

- SOOO ???

- Oh come on darling, you were doing so well - figure something out !!!

Ex-Googler nailed for stealing AI secrets for Chinese startups

Leon's actual name is Jian-Yang.

Challenger at 40: The disaster that changed NASA

An absolutely amazing read from Richard Feynman's work in the Rogers Commission.

All 17 pages of it. It's a PDF.

...For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled

Tech support detective solved PC crime by looking in the carpark

I distinctly remember it could. It's just that if you got in using Esc, it would disable network access.

Bill Gates-backed startup aims to revive Moore's Law with optical transistors

Re: Bill Gates, you say?

...after a couple of years of "we're nearly there, just give us some more money!...

ASML were at that stage with Samsung for about 15 years, it seems. Worked in the end.

Then again they had existing products before that. While these guys are new.

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

...Equally I'm rather impressed that someone in marketing actually knew what a pair of pliers was...

No guarantee.

It's all IT's fault. If they had given the guy a duster brush when he asked for pliers, he'd have gone along with it and we wouldn't have a story other than a very dustless printer.

It's like when I ask my wife for bacon. She turns into a Nutrimatic Bacon Dispenser.

ATM takes a kicking yet keeps on ticking

Can't be that old, that's an LED strip I see.

Help desk read irrelevant script, so techies found and fixed their own problem

Re: DIY

"What? You gotta explain this because your old saying is bollocks otherwise."

You mean it's going to be less bollocks once you understand it ??? :-D

Juliet works nights. All the old ladies in the building talk behind he back calling her a hoe - they see her leaving in the evening and coming back in the morning, so she must be meeting men.

She prefers this to having the old ladies realize that she's actually a cardiologist who works night shifts. Because if they do - they'll all be constantly on her back asking her for free medical advice.

Re: DIY

"...some people who were... more advanced in years shall we say... ... ...When they realised I was "Someone who's good with IT" I became their first port of call...

Monumental error to let them realize it :)

As the old saying goes - "...Juliet was absolutely ok with all the old ladies in the building calling her a H behind her back when she was working nights - as long as they didn't know that she was actually a cardiologist..."

FAA signs radar deals to drag US air traffic control out of the 1980s

"...Dear passengers, this is your aircraft speaking.

Now that we have reached 30000ft we can finally share with you that you are being flown in the very first fully automated commercial passenger aircraft. There are no human pilots in the cockpit.

Everything, from take-off, through flying and navigation, to landing, is automatic...atic...tic...tic...ttt..."

Researchers poison stolen data to make AI systems return wrong results

Can't remember who wrote that short story in the eighties...

It was about some cash money traffic in sealed briefcases from Istanbul to Copenhagen or some other Western capital. The briefcase was traveling by train and would be passed to a different courier at each border crossing. It was a mostly elaborate thing where the senders knew little about who the courrier would be.

The Bulgarian courier thought himself the smartest - he found a way to skim cash off the top without disturbing the seals, knowing full well that the theft would be discovered only at the endpoint once the briefcase gets unsealed and opened. So he got a little habit of doing it.

The story ended with news of a man dying in a briefcase explosion in a train in Bulgaria, close to the Serbian border. Turned out the organizers didn't need to know who the courier was. They just needed to boobytrap one shipment and let the end recipient know.

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

Re: Neat trick

...

What he represents is the collective feelings of us tech types who have to put up with just how dumb some users are, combined with the moronic optimism of the manglement....'

I know what he represents. I used to print all his stories on paper and read them in bed.

He was able, back then, to bring comedic relief to all of us, but applying punishments that were both funny, mostly light, and creative, to said characters.

He was advising idiots to rub Ram chips against their hair to make them faster, or to rub them against their polyester hoodies before inserting them in the Ram slot, at a time when static electricity was killer. He was locking people in elevators, abusing unscrupulous vendors, while actually doing some work. The worst I remember him doing was empty a rude customer's share and deleting everything to recover some space for them.

It was elegant jabs from a smart guy who was doing actual work while fighting the system. He was fighting idiots while helping the users.

Nowadays, he has full omnipotent control, everyone is an idiot in his eyes, and he's too godlike powerful to bother with creativity. He's basically one of the bosses, except he's not incompetent. He has become a nastier than life Terry Childs that has an ageing PFY (who should long ago have become just the PF) that is just as blasé by now.

He's way past Fonz jumping sharks.

Re: Neat trick

Ditto.

Been reading BOFH since 2002 - I won't put my hand to the fire on whether there were killings back then, but what I remember is BOFH having people purchase floppies to back up gigabites of data because floppies are safe, and stuff like that. Never the overly nasty stuff that happens in every episode now.

Even if the violence has always been the same (not my words) - the finesse it used to come with is long gone.

BOFH is a dick nowadays, to be very honest. Even if he has always been Stalin, he went from Stalin thumbing his nose to Stalin signing killlists.

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

The MTA in New York had pretty much permanent job offerings for VAX Mainframe admins and OS/2 jedis. As of 2015 and up. I believe they just recentrly got off this technology with the OMNY system.

Interesting stuff HERE

Banksy's Limitless limited by Windows Activation

Fleet laptops that have sat powered off in a drawer for a while and have not touched base with corporate mothership for even longer ?

Around 1,000 systems compromised in ransomware attack on Romanian water agency

Re: Critical National Infrastructure

...just how could any government not consider water supply and sewage to be critical infrastructure?

The first time I visited the place one could wonder which was which, so maybe some artefact from back then...

Naaah, just being mean. T'was back in a time when most of the country's metal was spent in metal boards on the side of the road every 100m that screamed "Traiasca Partidul Communist Roman". They came a very, very long way since.

This has nothing to do - I repeat - NOTHING TO DO with the subject of some of the news coming from Romania this last month or so:

- The decision that Russian drones "lost" over Romanian territory will be destroyed

- The decision to nationalize 320+ Lukoil gas stations, a reffinery, and oil exploration rights

- Another round of sanctions

- The crackdown on Russian influence networks (networks fraudulently granting Romanian citizenship to Russians, Ukrainians, and Moldovans, including Putin-linked oligarchs. By December 18, prosecutors raided 37 locations, seizing documents and targeting lawyers and officials aiding Russian access to EU travel)

NO-THING to do, once again. Carry on.

Infinite Machine e-scooter is like the offspring of a Vespa and a Cybertruck

New York City is as beneficial to such moneygrab incubators as it is to rats: there are so many leftovers and they are so juicy, that they thrive, where they shouldn't exist at all.

It's such a beautiful ecosystem of sustainable hipstidiocy, it's endearing.

And the origin story is top notch too. Reminds me of the Chobani founding: "...the guy was sitting on his desk going through papers, then something flashed in his mind, and he dug back through his trash paper bin - and THERE it was, that crumpled newspaper stating that a milk processing plant was for sale in upsate New York! Then it hit him: Hey, he NEEDS a milk processing plant ! So he bought it..."

Of course, THIS is what a Brooklym mother needs. A $10k atrocity to drive her kid to school with - because getting splattered with your kid by a taxi on a Chinese one is not classy enough.

Micron says memory shortages are here for the foreseeable future

It's Micron. Have to justify dropping off Crucial. Same as they did Lexar years ago.There will be more communiques about how bad things are, and how heroic Micron is.

Affection for Excel spans generations, from Boomers to Zoomers

... I suppose custom programs are more common in finance?...

It's not that much about Excel itself as it is about obscure, uber-expensive add-ins that are irreplaceable and only exist for Excel.

And not only obscure ones. Bloomberg add-in exists for Excel, not for Libre Office. That seals it for many.

Then, Bloomberg API would allow you to do plenty of stuff, including piping data to Libre Office or some boutique tool. Probably way better in a flexible environment. Not so for others.

We'll always boil down to best car vs best fleet car on that one.

IBM touts progress on tech stack for AI-enabled airline with no passengers or alcohol

Re: What?

Beancounters will call this and raise you an Ai to fire HR before HR fires them.

Sorry, but your glitchy connection might have cost you that job

Part of both the problem and the solution is that they seem to have super-flexible internet plan changes in India.Or at least they think they do.

I've been on calls where attendants claimed that they switched to a faster plan specifically for that day or half-day. Or maybe it's BS. One way or the other - they seem to be able to use different plans on different days, and expect the switches to be immdiate. At least - my guys do.

Micron ditches consumer memory brand Crucial to chase AI riches

Been there...Seen that

Micron ditched Lexar in the same way, in 2017.

For the sape capacity, they were charging for RAM three times what they were charging for memory cards, and apparently both were using the same chip (or the same something-something), which was already in short supply.

The Lexar name was bought out, and now exists under a whole different ownership (Longsys).

We'll see the same thing with Crucial. Someone will buy the label and slam it on something else

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

I was thinking - swimming with sharks, but - like for most things in life - Malcolm has it fully covered.

Speccy clone storms back for Christmas without a shred of Sinclair code

It had me at Exolon, but 99 Euros then figuring out shipping to US is a no go. Had it had Knight Lore and Jumping Jack...

Moss spores bolted to the ISS exterior laugh in the face of hard vacuum

...“And now I shall ask a few final questions to the esteemed Tarakanian federation!

Is it not true that a ship bearing your flag landed on the then dead planet?

That due to a refrigerator failure part if its foodstocks were spoiled?

That on this ship were two vacuum-dwellers - who were later struck from all lists because of their shady deals with the resniks? That those tow milky scumbags were called Ban and Pug? Is it not true that Ban and Pug - drunk - not only polluted the poor defensless planet, but went on a whim and jokingly rearranged its biological evolution in a a criminal and reprehensible way?

Is it not true that those two Tarakanians, did - on purpose - decide to make of Earth the incubator or nightmarish monsters, a cosmic circus, a museum of abominable pieces, who later became the laughing stock of even the farthest nebulae ?!?

Is it not true that those two, void of any sense of decency or moral guardrails, have trashed on the rocks of the then dead Earth six barrels of rancid gellatin glue, two vats of spoiled albumine paste, then added to this mixture fermented ribose and levulose?

And as if this wasn't enough - they topped it all with three jumbo cans of moldy aminoacids, then stirred it all with a coal shovel, bent leftwards, and with a poke, also bent leftwards, which made ALL the proteins of the future earthlings to be lefty?

And is it not true that at the end Pug, who at that time had a runny nose, encouraged by Ban, himself barely standing under the influence of alcohol, deliberately sneezed in the plasmotic embyo, contaminating it with viruses, while chuckling that "This is how you put some divine spirit in it", in that poor, unlucky organic yeast?

Is it not true that this leftiness has, to this day, been passed to all of Earth living organisms, including to the Artefactum Abhorrens race, who called themselves - by pure jealosy, I am sure - Homo Sapiens?

Is it NOT TRUE, that due to this, the Tarakanians should not only pay for the Earthlings' entry fee in our federation, in the sum of one billion metric tons of precious metals, but also should pay to the poor inhabitants of the planet a SPACE ALIMONY???..."

The very best one, as usual: Stanislaw Lem, The Star Diaries, Eigth Voyage

Cloudflare coughs, half the internet catches a cold

...this article will be updated. Hopefully, you'll be able to read it...

This ^^^

Developer made one wrong click and sent his AWS bill into the stratosphere

"... but the entity that sponsored the project's cloud bills was deeply unhappy and moved it to another cloud..."

It is not stated whether said other clowd had anything to do with Chase and his organization anymore, is it.

...Checklist is something for pilots on a plane...

I wouldn't like you to be my sysadmin, surgeon, car mechanic, trip orgnanizer...fortunately there's always pub-mate, so we're good.

As someone who has forgotten to check or uncheck options countless times, I am thrilled to see a full bag of comments blaming everything from hemorrhoids to hurricanes, but not blaming forgetting to uncheck an option, which should be part of...errr...a CHECKlist :)

The world is still a nice place to be.

Why Elon Musk won't ever realize the shareholder-approved Tesla payout

...a situation where you'd have to deliver if asked....

Precisely.

I am not stating whether Tesla stockholders are right or wrong. I'm just pointing out that there are a multitude of reasons for them to choose to vote yes or no. And for the ones who voted yes - being delusional is one very valid reason, but far from being the only one or the main one.

...Tesla's stockholders are delusional...

...Some day soon, and it won't be long, the money merry-go-around will stop spinning and all those dreams will come crashing to a halt...

Those two sentences are VERY valid IF and only IF they are strictly tied together in one sentence:

"Tesla stockholders are delusional, because they still hold Tesla stock. The money merry-go-round will stop spinning. Ditch it now".

This is a fair assessment, which will become reality, or will not.

Isolating the two in two separate sentences is just bandwagon singalong.

...Tesla's stockholders are delusional...

Because they voted for some impossibility ? Why is everyone so outraged ? It's not going to happen. It can't happen. What's the big deal ? That there's a risk it happens ? And if it happens - what will Hitlon be able to do with one trillion that he can't do now with 500 bil ?

Tesla's stockholders don't need to be delusional to vote for something that doesn't bite them if it doesn't happen, or hypotetically makes their stocks jump in the impossible event it does happen. Their stock is overevaluated anyway. De-muskifying the company will hit the stock harder than keeping it in the news. The abundant infinity of love they'll receive from society for doing the right thing should they kick Hitlon out will not raise the stock when Tesla's lie-dust and smoke and mirror glitter go away.

They would only be delusional if they think it could actually happen.

Does no one remember old jokes anymore ?

- If you had 9 castles, would you give me one ?

- Sure

- If you had 9 yachts, would you give me one ?

- Sure

- If you had 9 shirts, would you give one ?

- Absolutely not.

- Why ?

- Because I DO have 9 shirts

Tesla stockholders have been asked to promise one of their nine castles and one of their nine yachts. Knowing plain well that their nine shirts are threatened big time, one way or the other.

Any Tesla stockholder is tainted post-DOGE, no matter what. Because, errr, ...Some day soon, and it won't be long, the money merry-go-around will stop spinning and all those dreams will come crashing to a halt....

The guilt is automatic by the simple fact of stock ownership, not because they'd vote for or against. I haven't seen many articles or opinions congratulating the stockholders that voted against, for doing the right thing :-D