Posts by Rivalroger

Signals are grim for Jodrell Bank Observatory after UK science funding decision

It isn't just physics

All research in the UK is facing swinging cuts. It is all so amazingly short sighted.

Users claimed they'd never seen a spell checker and panicked at the sight of red squiggles

older generations

Two things come to mind for this sixties geek here.

Firstly I remember setting up a PC for my Mother in Law and then having to take ages to help her undertand that moving the mouse would cause the arrow on the screen to move as well.

Secondly, as I get older what new fangled technical wonder will come along that I can't cope with?

Next stop, C:\ ... Paris Metro screen goes off the tracks

side issue

Seeing the directory listing as /home/ set me thinking.

Could the IXs and linux change the directory name based on locale.

France: /maison

Spain and Italy: /casa

German: /haus

Dutch: /huis

Just a Friday thought.

Windows bowls a BSOD at sports fans

Re: The Rules of Cricket

That has to count as the best explanation of Cricket I have ever read. To follow the other reply though, what happens when the ball, which is actually a hyperspatial bomb that will end the universe, falls into the bag of a permanently confused hitchhiker?

Anthropic co-founder hallucinates ghost in the machine

In other AI related news

A deluded ex British prime minister has said that we must go all in on the silly valley implementation of LLMs because AI is The Future(TM TB). As in interesting side note said deluded ex-PM also converted to catholicism if I remember rightly. I wonder what he feels about the supreme pontiff warning against the blatherings of his new pay masters.

Experts pour cold borscht on Farage's Russian hack claim

Amazing

I am always amazed by the utter bollocks the maganuts, reformites and sundry other far right types manage to come up with and that some at least manage to believe it.

The latest innovation in UK public transport: Schrödinger's trains

Re: Adams not Schrödinger

Makes sense. After all trains (here in blighty anyway) are about as reliable as Kate Schechter's "alleged car"

BOFH: Arrr, I smell piracy ... and it's comin' from a machine with executive privileges

combined efforts

I feel that Simon should work to combine the new chilli enema with proximity to open windows.

Obsolete Google nag drowns out vital bar information at Swedish concert hall

Obligatory visit

You really do need to go and see the `Ukes!

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

Pick ARM up

You got the value wrong.

Three shillings, one penny and a farthing.

Ex-Microsoft engineer believes Azure problems stem from talent exodus

Not BS

Microsoft first came to power with the PC revolution.

Starlink sprays debris into orbit following another satellite 'anomaly'

more euphemisms

Why the hell do these types have to talk in bloody euphemisms? The thing blew up - likely a battery failure or fuel leak. An anomoly is a "something that deviates from what is standard, normal or expected..." Concise OED. So I think that exploding is a bit more than an anomoly.

</rant>

Artemis II countdown begins as NASA prepares for crewed Moon flyby

Windows for rockets?

All in the subject

Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros

downvotes

I have the theory that it is Musky pusky himself. Whenever I put something that suggests he isn't a genius and saviour of humanity it gets downvoted.

In the name of science: Boffins build fart-tracking undies

wrong century

They needed to have invented it when Le Petomane was in his prime.

For the uninitiated here is the fount of all knowledge article about him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane

Brilliant backups that kept data alive for ages landed web developer in big trouble

Gerald

You might also think of a similar situation with those same people with the line "I therefore have to ask the question, why the hell did she marry Gerald?"

Windows pays tribute to Britain's creaking rail network with a BSOD

Sussex?

I am going for the Pangbourne shell

Musk admits Starship V3 launch date has slipped as Super Heavy booster rolls into place

Built this city

Love the eighties reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1b8AhIsSYQ

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

Roger!

Oi! I'm Roger and I don't fancy Mary (not publicly anyway)

hot desking

I got moved to hot desking - without the freedom to work from home until a certain event in 2020. They had a sensor under each desk which, they claimed was a heat sensor but I called it the bollock sniffer. I presume Palantir has something way creepier in mind.

Britain spends £180M to work out what time it is

Limey internal prejudices

Somerset is a county in SW England. It has a reputation for being a rather "backwoods" area. When I lived in Canada they would make jokes about Newfoundland. I think people south of the 49th think about Louisiana in a similar way.

Although I would never live there now, I used to live outside Taunton which is the county town (kind of a state capital) in Somerset and it was pleasant enough apart from a pub called the Plough where the farmers would drink what they had made form selling their stock at Taunton market and things would get a bit lively.

NASA’s asteroid defence mission slowed targets by 1.7 inches per hour

Reg standard unit

I referred to the official standards bureau and I think we have 0.1929 linguine here.

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

power-off command

A distressingly long period of time ago I was working for a local authority. The facilities people had scheduled some power work in the Town Hall and we had to power off the computer room we had there. I, as the UNIX admin had cronned a shutdown on all my Solaris boxes and a few new-fangled Linux machines. To be sure, I had issued an init 0 to the Sun boxes and went in to enter power off at the OK prompt. I walked up to one of my test machines to do do the do. At the exact moment I entered return, someone flipped the switch for the whole computer room. I knew my Windows colleagues hadn't finished their carefullly timed series of power offs so I had a moment of (unfounded) clenched buttocks. The lead windoze guy laughed rather a lot a my expense when he saw the look on my face.

Users fume at Outlook.com email 'carnage'

ipv4 downvoter

Hey what is with the downvoter?

Do you want us to propose blocking ::1

Ip address blocking

Some bright spark will decide that the following ranges are not to be trusted.

192.168.1.0/16

172.16.0.0/16

10.0.0.0/8

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

locked in rooms

More than 2 decades ago I was a newbie desktop type. One of the areas I supported was finance and one of the people there was interesting. She had a third party install some software on her PC and for some reason took it into her head that things weren't working properly despite the support guy insisting it was. Her response was to lock the guy in the room until he "fixed" it. I never heard the outcome but was very nervous when it was my turn to upgrade her personal workstation to Win NT but I managed to avoid being held against my will.

Altman: You think AI is wasted energy? Try raising 100 billion humans

wood-graphite verification

You would need to break out 2 pencil and then 2 more to verify. Then he would say you had 5 pencils but that a gpu is much more valuable than a pencil so long as it is stealing content from the internet rather than folding proteins.

UK to demand social platforms take down abusive intimate images within 48 hours

Re: And not enough police

For clarity. The Andrew formerly known as Prince.

Doctors told to give Palantir's NHS data platform the cold shoulder

Re: BMJ - ICE

Sorry, I can't resist feeding this troll!

Ermm. I don't think you can accuse the British Medical Journal of being bedwetters whether you think the leadership of the British Medical Association are or not is entirely your opinion.

Were telcos tipped off to *that* ancient Telnet bug? Cyber pros say the signs stack up

telnet use case

It is a useful little tool to see if a port is available.

telnet somehost someport

I know there are other tools to do it but ...

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

nuclear boars

Was that the secret ingredient in Getafix's (Panoramix for the fracophones) magic potion? I could imagine Obelix falling in a Caesium solution would have a permanent effect.

Icon because there isn't one for Pastix

Dijkstra’s algorithm won’t be replaced in production routers any time soon

needless excitement

Before reading, I thought this might be that El Reg was getting interested in expedition aluminium sailboats designed by Gerard Dykstra but then found I was wrong. Oh well, I'm sure routing is just as fascinating. ;-)

EU looking into Elon Musk's X after Grok produces deepfake sex images

Re: Oh No

You are Nigel Farage and I claim my £5

Three is the magic number for Alaska Airlines: triple redundancy

Re: Cloud computing for an airline?

Funny how none of those tubes of you pilot types mention what it is like when a systems outage grounds them.

This atonal type also feels there ought to be a song in the line

"He's flying VFR in an IFR world"

Hacker taps Raspberry Pi to turn Wi-Fi signals into wall art

currencies and cool project

The Artist lives in Paris so wouldn't it have been better to say ~€850?

I do like it though.

An idea I have been playing with since hearing about flexible lcd screens would be to make a globe that shows all the continental movements over geological time. I suspect that it would take quite a lot of crunching power to work though.

Rocket Lab's Neutron schedule under pressure after unexpected tank rupture

That photo

It reminds me of the space ship in that Bond film where Connery was stopping some villain from snatching space ships.

Manchester ATM ups PIN requirement to full Windows login

Win 7! That is bleeding edge

Not so long ago, I saw one of these machines with a Windows NT bsod.

Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch

strange downvoters on this thread

I assume the downvote was for specifying 'full stop' rather than 'period'?

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app rebrand was bad, but there are far worse offenders

MS and rebranding

I wonder if they will have a brainwave and try rebranding it to "First Officer"?

ChatGPT Health wants your sensitive medical records so it can play doctor

Malcom Tucker time

Fuck the fuck off. When you have fucked off fuck off some more and the stay the fuck fucked off!

Sam! Step away from the GPU

You are an idiot and cannot be trusted with anything.

On a lighter note, I am reminded of a HHTG bit where Ford is arguing with the Golgafrinchams about fire and he suggests to the marketing person to stick it up her nose to which she replies. "Exactly, We need to know if people want fire that can be taken nasally"

The B-Ark is still going strong.

CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more

1978!!

Bloody hell. I was starting to flounder around with finding out about girls then.

The house we were renting then had an old sixties era which just worked. Thankfully we were in Canada at the time as the light socket at the back was empty and this then 12 year old wondered what happened when you put your finger in it.

Tis the season when tech leaders rub their crystal balls

I'm getting old

Most of the article came across to me as utter bollocks. The last paragraph quoting the Dell guy made went in one eye and out the other with me not understanding the least iota of it!

Icon because I am drinking one now and will have more as the evening progresses.

Cornish recycling drive sows confusion among Reg Standards Bureau

Tinners for me

I've only been able to find it in a couple of pubs in Fowey though and St Austell don't seem too keen on making unfortunately.

On the pasty front: could the runners one be a pasty while the stodgy foodstuff be a Pasty?

NS&I tech overhaul blows past Treasury spending limits

Totally OT

Every time I see that picture of Brian on our money I think he looks the way he would when informed that his Brother (The Andrew formerly known as Prince) has shat the nest again.

Hot for its bot, McKinsey may cut thousands of jobs

monthly

Don't forget the report will be generated monthly. ;-)

their super sophisiticated bot

#!/usr/bin/env bash

WORKFORCESIZE=$1

MAILEE=$2

let NEWWORKFORCESIZE=$WORKDORCESIZE*0.9

echo "You need to reduce your workforce to $NEWWORKFORCESIZE. This will deliver the necessary synergies to your business going forward and ensure a future ready organisation that can fully capitalise on AI developments going forward" | mail -s "reorganisation report" $MAILEE

Nvidia pledges more openness as it slurps up Slurm

At least it wasn't another company

Imagine if Broadcom had aquired it!

Snowflake jumps on agentic AI train with Anthropic tie-up

Snowflake!

Won't it just melt away until it turns into an avalanche? Been waiting to make that daft observation ever since I have heard about them.

Poop-peeping toilet attachment has a different definition of 'end-to-end' encryption

I expect an imminent tie up with a bunch of UK utilities

I am sure Thames Excrement will insist we all fit these so they can bill on a per shit basis.