Posts by Frumious Bandersnatch

That emoji may not mean what you think it means

Re: Eggplant

And of course this is highly variable depending on the country or your specific ingroup. In Japan the poop emoji can mean 'lucky'.

Yeah, but the kou'un -> unkou -> unko passage is pretty twisty...

China's blockchain boosters slam crypto as Ponzi scheme

Re: Dumb as a sack of rocks

(sorry ... wrong conman ... but still worth reading up on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Lustig)

Re: Dumb as a sack of rocks

Speaking of Ponzi and the Brooklyn Bridge, the Eiffel Tower is still standing as far as I know

(#onlyconnect)

Re: "Blockchains have a useful purpose outside of crypto."

which reminds me of a comment about religion and morality ... "name me one ethical/moral problem that religion solves that isn't solvable by Humanism?"

Bitcoin is just another cult, IMO.

Unbelievably clever: Redbean 2 – a single-file web server that runs on six OSes

Re: Clever work around for artificial incompatibility

"COM" is a "file format" in the same way as a Bash script is a file format: it's not.

All it is is a file extension to denote files that, by convention contain machine instructions.

I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well

Re: Computing smarts in the cloud

well if it doesn't hold for you, you're probably holding it wrong

Symbiote Linux malware spotted – and infections are 'very hard to detect'

Re: Detection is trivial

Even simpler: `touch apache2start; ls apache2start && echo ok`

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

Re: Vengeance

No, I think you'll find that he had a ragged right.

Perl Steering Council lays out a backwards compatible future for Perl 7

Re: Backwards compatibility

Feel free to report the broken example (politely) to https://github.com/perlorg/perlweb. The fix is "use feature 'say';"

Or use the `-E` flag to Perl somewhere. Or, more neatly, specify what the minimum required Perl version is for your code, eg:

use v5.10;

Use `perldoc feature` to see what new optional features are available in your perl and what version they first appeared in.

Original killer PC spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 now runs on Linux natively

Hmmm..

I dunno if I'm in the right time zone, but ... NJStar, MultiEdit and ... Freemacs?

everything's a bit hazy after DesqView...

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Re: At the risk of being downvoted to hell

> Bring back DCL

Rexx here, please.

The wild world of non-C operating systems

great memory lane

... but you had me at Wirthers.

IPv6 is built to be better, but that's not the route to success

Re: IPv6 is actually there in the home user worls

A possible reason for this is that home users who want to edit are stuck behind NAT, so if one jackass starts making joke/vandalistic edits, everyone who shares that IP address will get blocked. I don't think that you can draw many inferences from the stat you posted.

European Space Agency whittles wannabe astronauts down from 23,000 to 1,391

Re: Could there be a South Korean TV show somewhere in this?

I also watched it, but I found it quite enjoyable. Super obvious that they're mining various western sci-fi tropes (too many to mention), but I treat that more as "homage" than "rip-off". I'm sure they did a "Right Stuff" part at some point too... Anyway, despite all that, I thought it stood by itself in terms of story-telling.

For the OP, nice subversion of the obvious 10-legged diversion reference...

Mediatek unveils its first ARMv9 smartphone chip for advanced handsets

to affinity and beyond ...

man taskset

If anyone can explain why Jupiter's Great Red Spot is spinning faster and shrinking, please speak up

you know ...

Just your usual Storm and Drain ...

Tobacco giants don't get to decide who does research on smoking. Why does Facebook get to dictate studies?

Re: Oh Really?

Youth culture killed my dog ... and I don't think it's fair.

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

Re: “Re-wilding”

As opposed to the Spanish, where it means "very"/"well", as in frijoles refritos...

(I am the very model of a boring etymologist)

Re: With apologies to HG-

I still think Jeff Wayne put it better.

Oooh LA!

FreedomFi's 5G gateways will mine HNT cryptocurrency for owners who dole out coverage to passing users, IoT devices

Re: Weasel words

First I've heard of this Helium thing, so thought about it for a bit and then looked up the docs...

My first impression is that this couldn't be using a proof-of-work algorithm, which, as you say (or at least I think you're saying), is just an invitation to throw more power (leccy) at calculating the crypto currency.

Turns out, they use a "proof of coverage" algorithm. So I think that your complaint isn't valid in this case.

PS, as per TFA, the final lines suggest that it may not be a great idea to advertise the location of your 5g micro-cell due to nutters. If there's a complaint to be levelled at the scheme, it's that the above proof-of-coverage algorithm would help such nutters track down cell locations.

Crazy world we live in, eh?

Tech ambitions said to lie at heart of Britain’s bonkers crash-and-burn Brexit plan

Re: No track record in the tech industry?

came here to make the exact same comment :)

Anti-5G-vaxx pressure group sues Zuckerberg, Facebook, fact checkers for daring to suggest it might be wrong

Re: Welcome to the post-sanity world

like a tattoo of the number of the beast?

US govt proposes elephant showers for every American after Prez Trump says trickles dampen his haircare routine

<em>They new ones suck</em>

Well I can see why you're upset.

Re: Wrong lightbulbs...

I think that the short life of dimmable LED bulbs is to do with heat build up. As in, the light fittings themselves aren't really suitable for bulbs of that kind. CFL might suck, but they seem to be a better match for the kind of light fittings that people want to use with dimmer switches. Mood lighting.

Re: "followed closely by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson"

Upvote for going a little bit over the obvious "hair-larious." Can I join your fringe?

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

Re: Bill

I always doubted AManFromMars' provenance. I always thought of him as A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld.

Some first posts are good. Some are by people who blundered into the wrong forum by mistake.

Some gulls(*) wander by mistake / into the mess that scalpels make.

(* which I am using to mean "trickster", "fraud", "troll", etc. So Humpty Dumpty of me. Respondents can figure out their own role in this conceit)

You call Verizon. A Google bot answers. You demand a human. The human is told what to say by the bot

Ya tvoi sluga

Ya tvoi rabotnik!

Road trip on Mars: Thrill as Curiosity rover races up to 0.06 miles per hour. Marvel as it takes a mile-long detour

Note to Martian self

Remember to hide evidence of pre-Event civilisation on top of sand dunes.

One does not simply repurpose an entire internet constellation for sat-nav, but UK might have a go anyway

Is it "Hammer Time" yet?

(aaaw, I thought it was always Hammer Time)

Re: Full-blown kakistocracy

It was on glossy paper and they used HP ink.

So when they can't make the repayments it will be repossessed?

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

Re: 5$ wrench does not work

There's always https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis

Re: TSA locks

And then someone will have to release a photo of some guy with the master key written on a Post-It beside his terminal...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_keys.html

Re: "A trio of Republican senators"

an asynergy?

Chime after chime: Apple restores iconic Mac boot sound removed in 2016

At least it's not chyme after chyme

Have they fixed the winter vomiting bug yet?

Gulp! Irish Water outsources contact centres to Capita for up to €27m over 7 years

Re: "new software and digital capabilities"

I don't speak Welsh (Cymraeg, sorry), but I did happen to know this via gardening. Welsh Onions don't actually come from Wales. They are literally "foreign" onions.

Only true boffins will be able to grasp Blighty's new legal definitions of the humble metre and kilogram

Re: The 1959 International yard and pound agreement

Nah, it's all simple. You just have a leap inch every 8 miles.

Don't panic: An asteroid larger than the Empire State Building is flying past Earth this weekend but we're just fine

"but we're just fine"

... until we're not.

Staff in a huff, personal call with Trump, picking fights with Twitter, upsetting civil-rights groups – a week in the life of Facebook's Zuckerberg

Re: It's just business

Your TDS is front and center

I know I'm probably asking for it, but "top detective skills?"

After 30 years of searching, astroboffins finally detect the universe's 'missing matter' – using fast radio bursts

Re: average office

One Arcturan ant's space-fart?

Trump issues toothless exec order to show donors, fans he's doing something about those Twitter twerps

Re: Trumpetsters Trumpet Drumpfs Lumps

To whoever thumbed me down ... you do know what "reductio ad absurdum" means, don't you?

Re: Trumpetsters Trumpet Drumpfs Lumps

It's a private company and they can do anything they want!

So is Blackwater.

Pique Trump?

Nah, X=X is a tautology.

Clearview AI sued by ACLU for scraping billions of selfies from social media to power its facial-recog-for-cops system

The US produces a far superior strain of snake oil!

Accept no substitutes!

This oil was gathered from genuine snakes. Rubbernecking is not a crime! Even technologically augmented, slomo-enabled, contour-mapping, automatically-collating, market-finding and fractional-distillated rubbernecking is not a crime!

In fact, it is a constitutionally-protected activity. My right to record as I wish and relay my observations (in whatever way I wish to package them) is INVIOLATE!

I bring you the white Bronco. I bring you ... FREEDOM!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh0zw6hvqew

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

Re: Booo-ring

What is "boo ring?" I have get in this boo ring, yes?

Re: You supported a system...

God help & protect us.

Based on the "bang-up" job he's been doing so far, I hope he'll keep his nose out of it.

Re: They didn't vote for him

Only, we heard that song before in Europe and we are not impressed.

<bad taste>What, did Abba beat the UK in the Eurovision one year?</bad taste>

If someone could stop hackers pwning medical systems right now, that would be cool, say Red Cross and friends

While, um, ...

stories that have apparently been going around are worrying, I would be more worried if the appropriate paperwork wasn't filed in, um, a reasonable timescale. So, uh, if you could all file these TPS reports by tomorrow morning, that would be, um, great.

(what's the worst that could happen, right?)

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

"it in a way that only the NHS server can recover"

So it's like a one-way hash, except it's reversible. Give these guys a Nobel Prize!

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

I propose a hyphen-less rendering of "comma-less"

but then, I'd probably, logically, have to propose a hyphenless rendering of "hyphen-less"

You know it makes sense.

(You want to know how deep the rabbit hole goes? Well, you might want to take these Class C drugs. They come in red and blue ... but also purple!)