Posts by John PM Chappell

Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way

Re: I did.

Those rules are not "Roman" they were mediaeval fashion. Romans happily used both, simultaneously in basically every period and the earlier form was definitely the form without implied subtraction.

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

Re: Wiggle the mouse

No, in this context they are synonyms, and in fact the vertical line is the cursor (as seen on sliders for, e.g. slide rules) long before the usage was extended to a blinking hash or underscore, etc.

FreeBSD 15 trims legacy fat and revamps how OS is built

Should have been drowned at birth ...

This "Eric 9001" is right pratt, recently. *sigh*

When the writer of the article has to take the time to correct you, and you still fail to take the hint ... priceless.

As to FreeBSD, good to see it soldiering on. It's always been my preferred BSD.

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

Re: Another example that open souice is a flawed model...

A long response would be wasted on the OP anyway, but for keeping track - I am well aware of Stallman, and I also think he's a dick. I suspect we're the majority of people who know about him, and yet also use and contribute to "FOSS". OP is an idiot.

Ubuntu Unity hanging by a thread as wunderkind maintainer gets busy with life

Re: Forced Child Labor in the Linux Mines

Speculation about the home-life of someone you have never met doesn't actually qualify as "sharing your professional expertise". Also, you're in no position to diagnose anything from such distance and were you actually in a position to diagnose professional ethics guidelines would prevent you from sharing such information about a patient. I know all this without being "a physician", what's your excuse?

Bullshitting on the internet or potentially criminally unprofessional?

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

No, that's not the etymology for it, in the sense in which we use it. The most likely etymology for its technically literate usage is a (deliberate?) misspelling of "broken" as "borken" and backformation of a verb from that.

The proposed usage from the failed political bid had very limited reach, even within the USA (and basically wasn't even heard of outside it).

Blockchain just became an utterly mainstream part of the global financial system

Re: "promise to bake it into international payment infrastructure"

"Trust the maths" was a phrase when I was still a child, mate, and that was before there were such things as "tech bros" or the tech they are associated with.

Texas man accidentally shoots cable, brings internet down

Texas will be Texas *sigh*

Though, tbf, this is entirely plausible in every state and even DC. However, to the "citation needed, hur hur!" crowd, the statistics are pretty plain. The majority of firearms owners, thankfully, are sane people who treat them as the tools they are, and have varying uses for them (some, few, people literally provide their food with them, for example). Unfortunately, and I say this as someone who owns firearms, in Texas, the requirements are laughable. Unless you're not white, of course.

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

Re: ......Airship.........

No, they're explicitly not 'narrowboats'. Both are still "canal boats", though.

Top spy says LinkedIn profiles that list defense work 'recklessly invite attention of foreign intelligence services'

Re: Job offers

It's an unfortunate gotcha, for sure, but if it is all working as it is supposed to do, the very best you could get for gaps like that would be temporary work they did on the side. There really will not be any official, disclosable, confirmation for the period in question. Sucks for him, but that is indeed how it is and how it is meant to be. Which industry, out of curiosity?

Back in black: Microsoft Blue Screen of Death is going dark

Re: A rose by any other name

Similar pedigree and only ever heard "bee-sod", literally. Non-technical people just said (and say) "crashed" or "broke" and anyone who knew of the acronym has always pronounced it as that, in my experience. Literally never occurred to me anyone would spell it out.

Doesn't reset the graphics drivers at all. That shortcut is for making the desktop compositor redraw the desktop, that's all. Usually, that is what is actually needed, anyway, but if you really do think your actual driver stack is borked, it is not going to help.

Linux kernel to drop 486 and early 586 support

Aye, same. My 286 had a 40 MB harddrive, which was double the size of the school server and *that* was just an 80186, too (Nimbus - education only supplier, IIRC). Some schoolmates didn't believe I actually owned such a beast. :P

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

Re: Useful information, FYI. I posted it on OldNewThing, so here it is slightly modified

Seriously underrated comment here. You're doing God's work, my son. :)

101 fun things to do with a locked Kindle e-reader

Re: If only someone actually did a A4 device

Aye, I have both of those actually. Kindle DX gets used a lot for technical e-books (usually PDF) because the large screen makes it readable, the lack of lit screen is not an issue (I'm rarely wanting to read them in the dark) and it's not much good for anything else anyway (it never had WiFi access and "Whispernet" went bye-bye). In fact, I am one of those people a certain commentard (emphasis on last syllable) thought did not exist - there is no way to get recent purchases onto this otherwise functional device without working around Amazon's current position.

The Scribe is great for being very nice to read from, and making a decent scratchpad in a pinch. It also has quite a lot of technical stuff on it, but it's my currently preferred device for recreational reading.

I also have several other Kindle / Fire devices and had more before trading a couple in and giving one away. I won't be buying any more, as it stands though. The latest move is just too far enough to push me into finding e-books elsewhere.

First all-Indian chips to debut this year, 25 more local designs in the works

Re: 40 years out of date, they were making chips in India back in 1984!

Interesting. I had no idea about these machines, either and I have interest in and experience with both Acorn machines and India!

Cards Against Humanity campaigns to encourage voting, expose personal data abuse

Re: I'm a US citizen and I didn't vote in 2020.

Welcome to the Nut House. You know what to do.

Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns

Re: Tax / Restrict Ammo?

No, the earlier commentor was correct. It's relatively easy, with a moderately large initial outlay but very cheap per round cost. For a simple hand press, no automated feed, etc, that cost is much lower still but at the cost of time and needing to do tasks in batches.

Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS

Re: Delightful

Probably hardware. ME wasn't actually that bad at all. I mean, it was bad (because it half-arsed stuff and was somewhat incompatible with earlier 9x Windows) but it definitely wasn't the unusable mess some people would have you believe. Typically, upgrade setups were flaky because, truth be told, so was the system prior to the upgrade. Clean installation has always been the way to go, as I think we all know.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: Good

I lost my nerve at around 160 MPH, and settled back to a steady 80 to 90 or so (which would be about the same as your choice). It was fun being able to open up, and it was fun flying along ... but I was conscious of the required braking distance and the fact that a misjudgement could turn me (briefly) into a light aircraft.

Techie saved the day and was then criticized for the fix

Re: If you have a secure server room

One of those "Sounds like something we should have" ideas that turns out to be unwanted in practice. Ultimately because it is an increased cost and whenever the alarms go off it was a fault or an accident and not a real incident.

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

Agreed, but also a prototype, essentially, so I can believe it. Still stupid (of the design, mostly).

Windows keyboards to get a Copilot key – but how quickly will users jump?

I remap the "menu" key to Wincompose, too. It's the only actually useful thing I have ever found to do with it.

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

Re: Telemetry

Good old Clive, a model of restraint, compassion, and enlightened governance of the masses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clive for those ignorant, or curious about details.

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Re: azidoazide azide

Azides are bad news ... so aye, definitely not one to go anywhere nears.

Dump C++ and in Rust you should trust, Five Eyes agencies urge

Re: Complexity

Apparently I "know C", or at least I know when you cannot know the answer. Interesting illustration, though; not seen it done so elegantly before.

Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

Re: Exactly what destroyed the UK car industry

Completely agree, I was alive for it too, though a little young to actually drive them, on the whole. My parents did have an Allegro and I recall a Metro briefly. They were both crap. Dad ended up with a Ford Sierra that lasted forever. They died because the cars they designed were crap, they built them crappily, and they ran their business and plants crappily.

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Re: I'm sure that measured IQ values are not worth anything

Press X to doubt ...

Standardized tests (depending on which specifically) top out at 150 or 160 (SD 15 or 16). There are no scores above either 150 or 160.

Re: Delusional narcissist

To be fair, heard both glottal stop (what you're referring to) and "in t' ", speaking as someone with Yorkshire family, and a father who considers himself a "dyed in the woll Yorkshireman" (but amusingly, has no real Yorkshire accent anymore, because he left years ago to join the RAF and then went into the Defence industry and spent most of his working life abroad or anywhere else in the UK).

Workload written by student made millions, ran on unsupported hardware, with zero maintenance

Re: A quick question

EVE has had something of a resurgence recently, and I was persuaded to come back for a while. I now back to letting the "Omga time" run out on a huge skill queue, but it was fun enough that I may yet revisit it when I get the urge in another couple of years.

Re: A quick question

I've had that experience with a touch of the other comment below, too.

Looking at some old code in a project, I came across something that worked, but could use a touch of modernization, which I began. In the course of doing that I came to a part that was pretty arcane and found myself muttering things like "Who the hell wrote this, anyway?" and "This guy knew his stuff, but his comments are awful".

Needless to say, at some point I came across a copyright block identifying my younger self as the author. I apparently knew things back then which would probably fox me today, and I was also much worse at writing code. :P

Yelp sues Texas for right to publish actual accurate abortion info

Texas resident here ...

So ... Paxton's acquittal was an embarassment, even to many Republican politicians here, who were disgusted with the outcome. At least he was actually facing impeachment, though. Progress?

Sadly, Texas has a long history (it's not alone in this regard, but it is very notable) of serious political corruption, including with law enforcement (Sheriffs running their county as personal fiefs, running liquor and drugs, etc), to the point that there have been many Federal interventions. It is worth noting that Texas is a *big* state, which makes a lot of this easier in some regards, and that it's by no means typical of the average Texan, but ... still, it is and has been 'a thing' for basically the entire history of the state, alas.

The abortion position has basically no real support on the ground - there are many, though not a majority, who support restricting abortion in some way, even prohibiting it at a state level outside some very narrow exceptions, but basically nobody supports hunting women down and prosecuting them for even trying to get an abortion - and many 'moderate' voters have been pushed into seeking to oppose those politicians who did back this. As 'jake' has noted above, only time will tell if they actually vote their professed positions, but Texas has never been a true 'Republican Heartland' the way many fondly imagine. The cities have always been largely Democrat voters, and the rural areas are mixed but shifted heavily to the Republicans in the 1990s with the whole courting of Evangelical Christians by the GOP. As of today, that is increasingly not holding, in no small part thanks to the previous resident of the White House.

You shouldn't be able to buy devices that tamper with diesel truck emissions on eBay, says DoJ

Re: Not since 1968

It varies by state whether openly carrying would be legal or not, but that is indeed the distinction. A concealed firearm, or indeed any concealed weapon, is one "not in plain view, and readily accessible by the possessor"; this means that having it in a container which you can immediately reach, rather than strictly on your person, is also concealment. Many states have a specific authorization for firearms in vehicles (where they are usually in the 'glove box' or 'centre console') for this reason.

Cops cuff pregnant woman for carjacking after facial recog gets it wrong, again

Re: "Facial Recognition" is no worse than any other kind.

That's not a police thing, that is the motto of one department (LAPD).

Scientists strangely unable to follow recipe for holy grail room-temp superconductor

Re: Based on what I've read of its atomic structure

TamahagAne, but that's my only real gripe. :)

Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress

Re: Don't tell me, show me.

Okay, I laughed. :)

Pint as is tradition.

Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond

Re: The last thing the world needs

Guided missile, sure, 'Cruise' missile? Not so much. I still upvoted you, though. :)

This US national lab turned to AI to hunt rogue nukes

Re: Officially recognised???

I think your humour went over the heads of some, comrade. ;)

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

Re: brightness adjustment needed

Excellent reference. Had to check the link to be 100% sure we were on the same page. :)

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

Re: Once upon a time, long ago..

Jake's mostly covered it, but just to say that '95 definitely didn't have TCP/IP built in until later, and early NT didn't have it, and for a long time what it did have was notoriously bad. I think NT 4 late SPs fixed that.

It almost certainly was Windows 95, given the time he identified and the mention of '486 based PCs.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

Re: We recieved one as a gift from a family member

Actually it was always possible to login to your Amazon account and deregister devices. It *might* have not been granular, a long long time ago, meaning you'd need to deregister all devices, but it never required physical access. Failing that call CS.

It's always been possible, precisely because they can be lost / stolen.

Tumblr says nudes are back on the menu – within reason

Re: Do you know...

Let's tackle "why?" first. Even in the UK owning a shotgun is hardly unusual, though it's nowhere near the level of ownership in the USA (more on which later).

Shotguns are useful for vermin control, sport shooting, some hunting, and 'home defence'. Rifles are primarily useful for sport shooting and hunting. Handguns are useful for some hunting, target shooting, and as a side-arm ("To fight your way to where your rifle is").

There is a saying here: "When seconds count, the police are just minutes away." Bottom line, the USA is not the UK. It's much larger, and though its population is about six times larger too, even in the cities population density is lower than the UK. In rural areas, even ignoring Alaska, it's very low. Self-defence is not all about "shooting the bad man", there remains dangerous wildlife close enough to settlements to be a regular, sometimes weekly for some people, nuisance. Go off the beaten track a little, or live on a ranch or similar situation and it's arguably negligent *not* to have fast access to a firearm for defence from dangerous animals, in many places.

Now the cultural stuff - It's enshrined law from a principle it inherited from the UK, specifically English law. It's actually the UK which has shifted hard in the other direction, not the USA that has suddenly gone "gun mad", though there was always more of a "gun culture" here, given the historical realities. That law is an amendment precisely because the original 'framers' of the constitution felt it was so blindingly obvious a right it did not need to be spelt out, but some states attempted to restrict access and ownership, resulting in the second amendment. A similar story exists with regard to the first.

In Houston, you could buy a shotgun or handgun, after being checked by the FBI against their database (the 'background check' you hear about a lot) to confirm that you are not prohibited from possessing or purchasing a firearm at that time. There are many ways to be so prohibited, from the essentially permanent prohibition for violent felons, to temporary ones for people facing certain criminal charges, etc. No "pass" from the FBI, no sale (and likely a visit to your home address from said FBI).

No private citizen can own an M16 - that is a military designation for a weapon based on the Armalite AR-15 rifle. It's also not an "assault rifle" (it's debatable if that term even has meaning), it is a ''battle rifle".

A nuclear weapon would be excluded by various laws, including the prohibition on owning "destructive devices". Basically, it is not considered a personal weapon, the law in question is about ownership and possession of personal weapons - "arms".

USB-C iPhone, anyone? EU finalizes charging standard rule

No, it doesn't. Ohm's law states that current between two points is proportional to the potential difference between them. (V = IR).

What you're talking about is the power equation, where the terms are voltage, current and power (not 'volts' 'amps' & 'watts', which are units for measuring those); P (sometimes W) = IV.

On a thin conductor, your concern is heat from resistance to the current, since it will reach a higher temperature from the same amount of energy; it will melt sooner than a thicker conductor carrying the same current. 240 Watts is not inconsiderable, and it is impressive to me, also, that USB-C will support it.

To directly address your assertion, for a given voltage, you can only control the current by controlling the resistance: if you increase the voltage, you need a higher resistance for the same current, and the higher resistance means more heat. You cannot really change the resistance of a conductor, you can change input voltage, and that will proportinally affect current (I.E. Higher voltage gives higher current). In short, No.

Microsoft warns of bugs after nation pushes back DST switchover

Re: The Chile Zone: Meat-Based, No Beans

"*Zulu time defines the baseline as the time “Zulu” was shown on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1980, that being stated as 00:00:00 Zulu time."

I realize (hope?) you were probably joking, but just for clarity of readers who might not know better, this is not the case. It is most likely based on Sandford Fleming's system, but in any case came from making official already existing usage in the armed forced of NATO, specifically the two most important (in practice) the UK and the USA.

Z (Zulu, from the NATO phonetic alphabet) is UTC (Historically, UT1/GMT), A through M (J - Juliet is skipped) are positive offsets (UTC+1, ... UTC+12), N through Y are negative offsets starting with UTC-1. Twenty-five letters used, one for each offset, and one for UTC itself.

Aviation exclusively uses it (UTC) in communication, to ensure nobody is confused about timing.

Terminal downgrade saves the day after a client/server heist

Seriously underrated comment :)

Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out

Re: "I'll let my badly-insulated apartment reach 82ºF (28ºC) but there are no people"

Also in Texas here. People in the UK have no clue about the climate here. I know. I'm originally from Scotland.

Getting off the plane, when I first came to Texas, the heat hit me like a wave, I stripped down to my tee shirt and asked my then fiancée if it was far to the car. It was nighttime, in November. The temperature was mid-seventies.

After about a month, I had acclimated, for the most part, to the point where locals putting on coats because it was sixty-something did not seem ridiculous to me anymore. The humidity is what make it unpleasant, for the most part - I'd spent time in Arizona years before and very much enjoyed the climate. I was there in summer, with daytime temperatures regularly approaching 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Re: AACS Acronym definition incorrect?

There is not 'altitude' without a gorund reference. Altitude is a flight thing, this is a spacecraft. Attitude is what matters - I.E. Where is it pointing? This is also a thing planes worry about and have controls for. You may be confused because attitude, to a large degree, is how you change altitude, but the control surfaces actually change attitude. (V'Ger uses thrusters, because - space).

Google Maps, search results to point women to actual abortion providers

Take your frog pills.

You're off your meds again, aren't you?

PanWriter: Cross-platform writing tool runs on anything and outputs to anything

Scrivener

Scrivener is good, and it does more than novels. It is, however, essentially focussed on creative writing and related media (screen writing, for example), rather than being a simple text editor with outlining.

It would cover, I think, what you want, but there is a lot of other stuff you absolutely don't need. It covers that because, as for you, a novelist / screenwriter / etc is not concerned with details of font and format per se, but with proper outline. The text is then submitted to a publisher, usually, who will handle those details, typically in several different versions (large text edition, paperback, etc).