Posts by Frumious Bandersnatch

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!)

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

Maybe he could use that Wyclef Jean song as a campaign anthem.

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

And in case you want to retort with something like "Oh, but Finland always tops the rankings for happiest countries!", well what does that tell you about the existence of a thing called "happiness" in this world of ours? IT DOES NOT EXIST!

Your awl fecks yews.

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

Well if you believe America is real and not something made up on the internet

Finland! That's the "country" that was invented on the Internet. Do you not know anything? FFS!

Stripe is absolutely logging your mouse movements on websites' payment pages – for your own good, says CEO

I'm Irish ...

and Stripe probably pays a nominal amount of tax to the state (what has to pay for emergency SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 related expenses and such), so in theory I should be grateful/prostrate but I still find myself having to say:

Gwaaaan t'fuck

Astroboffin gets magnets stuck up his schnozz trying and failing to invent anti-face-touching coronavirus gizmo

Since you ask ...

perhaps Reg-reading shed boffins can discuss how they could improve Reardon's design

Forget magnets and the Hall Effect. Use capacitance instead. Dig up Léon Theremin and ask him. Or just look him up in Wikipedia. Less grave-robby and probably more instructive.

Practically* speaking, wear RFID earrings and tape the emitter wand part to your forearms.

(*anything involving duct tape counts as "practical")

A ferrule and his magnet

are soon joined.

If he had died ...

would the death certificate say "Death by Misinvention?"

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

Re: Follow

No! Follow the Monkey! MAGA!

'Azure appears to be full': UK punters complain of capacity issues on Microsoft's cloud

Experts advised "PANIC" ...

as, Slowly, One By One, all the copies of "Never gonna give you up!" Were Going Out.

Dell files to trademark 'Podference' – presumably the mutant offspring of COVID-19 and a virtual conference?

Isn't that the process of ...

replacing Donald Sutherland with an alien double in Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Apollo astronaut Al Worden – once named most isolated human being of all time – dies aged 88

perigee not in the gutters

(and with all due respect) still looking at the stars.

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

Re: Big Bad Dom

If you're old enough to remeber that, then you're old enough to be a candidate for his DNR Little List.

Opt-in by default, natch.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Black hole quasar tsunamis moving at 46 million miles per hour

Re: Oh the deadwood stage is heading on over the hills...

(which just goes to show that in an infinite universe, nothing is really original)

Oh the deadwood stage is heading on over the hills...

whip-crack-away!

Bad news: Coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the world. Good news: Nitrogen dioxide levels are decreasing and the air on Earth is cleaner

Re: tHIS IS yUr BreEN on DRhuGS!

Or was it N₂O? I've got a little bit of a problem hearing/thinking going on right now, what with all the flanging and shit...

tHIS IS yUr BreEN on DRhuGS!

Just say NO₂ <whatevs>