Posts by Glenn Amspaugh

Spotted in the wild: Chimera – a Linux that isn't GNU/Linux

Re: But why?

Think of it as evolution in action.

Guy accused of wrecking crypto exchange now hauled into court

I really do LOVE Crypto!

I can watch it for hours.

Scammers steal $4 million in crypto during face-to-face meeting

Ownership entry of said "coin" is something else.

Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building

Cleaners, amarite?!!

[small private US college in the '90s]

Had a late Friday page after a cleaner plugged their hoover into an orange "Do Not Use" labeled outlet outside the server room. [silence decends]

A new admin also plugged the old IBM chain printer (producer of much loved green and light green fanfold print outs) into an orange outlet and shut down the server room at 8:00 AM one day.

Reading signs is for chumps.

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

Old Tech Art

Heh, my kid (22) just came home with an old Gateway CRT, to mess around with. We're also planning a trip to local salvage shop to try and score an oscilloscope and amplifier parts. Some young folk are stil farting around with old kit.

But then she's a fine art major.

Not all vendors' Arm-powered kit is created equally, benchmark fan finds

Re: Really to get wider adoption....

Exactly!

Toy procs for toy computers that can't even run Doom.

CEO told to die in a car crash after firing engineers who had two full-time jobs

Re: Judge on results, not appearances

We need a router on the moon so there can be a 2-1/2 second delay in meetings.

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Re: Only Once...

Ewww!

IBM's self-sailing Mayflower suffers another fault in Atlantic crossing bid

Look To Earlier, Successful Work

Why not look at what makes probes like Voyager 1 and 2 so resilient and make your ocean going craft based on that ancient tech?

I mean, with all these generator issues, why continue using a diesel generator? Use what they put on space and Mars probes.

The sad state of Linux desktop diversity: 21 environments, just 2 designs

Re: Why are they all the same?

I wonder if Kai Krause has designed a desktop environment?

https://mprove.de/script/99/kai/index.html

BOFH: Something's consuming 40% of UPS capacity – and it's coming from the beancounters' office

Our college server room (1990s, a few racks of Sun Sparc 5s and 10s, Novell file server) had bright orange plugs for UPS, beige plugs for mains.

New guy decided to rearrange server room for some unknown reason and plugged the chain printer (pale green and white fanfold printer) into the UPS.

Save us from the eager clueless.

Star loses $500,000 NFT after crooks exploit Rarible market

Used Crater Sales!

NFTs remind me of those folks selling title to plots of land on the Moon and Mars or selling stars.

Yay, you gots yourself a fancy certificate!

Only with NFTs you don't even get a bit of shiny paper.

#Sad

If you fire someone, don't let them hang around a month to finish code

Re: Gardening leave

Early '90s, worked as GIS tech in St. Petersburg (sunny place with beaches and pubs). There were 4 or 5 GIS shops in the area and when one got a large contract (i.e. map all utilities of St. Louis), they'd hire a bunch of folks for contract duration and then let us go. Could quickly find a job at another shop. Or course, with large pool of trained cart/digi-techs, wages stayed low.

Still, gave me my first exposure to SunOS and then Solaris so moved on after a couple years. Still have my rapidograph pens!

Re: Fired...

Yup, heard of guy currently in prison after grabbing some code he worked on at previous employer. Said grabbing may have entailed actual physical trespassing.

Re: Unhelpful comments

Love those 'friends and family' hiring decisions.

Saw an entire help desk ruined after one guy with large, local family was made manager.

Took years for that to sort out after he was moved up management chain to where he's no longer dangerous.

Council culture: Software test leads to absurd local planning SNAFU

Re: Approving development without being bribed?

Eww!

Contractors argue umbrella companies need improved regulation, not outright ban

Difficult To Operate

Is this because of the brolly trouble that harlequin clown had at a funeral?

Troll jailed for 5 years after swatting of Twitter handle owner ends in death

Re: Sentence should have been far longer

Do they have to work at the Daily Mail or just read every article of every issue?

Re: the old classic ..

You are correct, sir!

Microsoft has a workaround for 'HiveNightmare' flaw: Nuke your shadow copies from orbit

Re: Time to 'Nuke' Microsoft

It plays Skyrim pretty well. Less than 1 crash an hour!

Huawei dev flamed for 'useless' Linux kernel code contributions

Code Fix Submission

"…and is no that hard to spot.”"

…and is not that hard to spot."

My quarterly performance review is in the bag!

Proof-of-space cryptocurrency Chia triggers HDD sales boom in Europe

Re: GPUs

I got a reservation at EVGA for an RTX3070 for daughter's machine. Took about 3 months for it to become available but that was back in Nov 2020.

You get an email saying "8 hours to claim reservation or it goes to next-in-line".

Re: Just great

Will Chia-pet drive space become more valuable than porn drive space?

The Newton lives, kinda: Boffin turns Apple eMate 300 into Raspberry Pi laptop

Idears

I have one of those swing-arm flat panel iMacs (square-Stick-Circle) with a detached monitor cable. Maybe replacing the innards with Pi would be fun?

PrivacyMic looks to keep your home smart without Google, Alexa, Siri and pals listening in

Roll Yur Own

I wonder how difficult it would be to set up your own local voice response system, air-gapped from internets?

When humanity perishes in nuclear fire, the University of Essex's radiation-resistant robots will inherit the Earth

Poor replicating robots just going around building one power station after another, until surface of Earth is covered. Battersea plants as far as the eye can see!

I'll see myself out.

Mullet over: Aussie boys' school tells kids 'business in the front, party in the back' hairstyle is 'not acceptable'

Re: It's the 1950s again (or is it?)

Now the Yanks are in on it?!!

BOFH: 7 jars of Marmite, a laptop and a good time

Re: US Customs, etc, was "Does what it doesn't say on the tin"

Dutch courage, what?

Homo sapiens: Hey you, Neanderthals! Neanderthals: We heard that

Great Artists Steal

So this is where old Bill got that great line for Mark Antony.

The wrong guy: Backup outfit Spanning deleted my personal data, claims Cohesity field CTO

Rules Testing

Reminds me of numerous stories going back to compuserve/AoL days; users would use a verbal/ad loophole to abuse a commercial offering and then be all rage upset over inevitable take down.

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

Re: Access

Power Point is the true DTP hero of MS Office.

Remember the days when signs were signs and operating systems didn't need constant patching?

In Vegas for a tech conference 8-10 years ago; fancy new Coke Machine in the mezzanine, BSOD rendering it useless as thousands of geeks streamed past in search of caffeine.

Busted out laughing.

So it goes

So it goes

So it goes

Google reveals the wheels almost literally fell off one of its cloudy server racks

Re: What were they thinking?

If they want whole-rack modularity they shoulda used small but strong turtles.

Apple reseller Solutions Inc pulls down shutters, calls in administrators

Re: One wonders...

Picture scenario, Monday morning: "All right folks, we're shutting down. No separation bonuses, no two-week compensation. Everyone, ya gots 15 minutes to grab your personal stuff and get out."

Five minutes later, bare shelves with just a tumbleweed blowing through.

Same here; Mom-N-Pop Apple/HP warranty repair place in late 90s. First couple of years, things were great, fueled in part by several school systems support contracts. Also helped there were lots of Apple recalls on monitors and such (popped capacitors plague). Third year, payroll was missed for new year. I left after a couple of months. Later, heard the store had been busted by Apple for doing too many unneeded warranty repairs. Hard business, Apple.

81's 99 in 17: Still a lotta love for the TI‑99/4A – TI's forgotten classic

Still Got Mine!

I have a beige Ti99/4a and it still runs great. Just wish I hadn't left my data cassette in the cassette player, and then stored in the attic for 20 years. It snapped, trying to read.

I'd coded a flat file Traveller ship database on there, with vector drawn deck plans, as well as a D&D character generator and of course, a dice roller. I also had a 4 channel conversion of Steven Howe's Mood For A Day. No, not a nerd, not nerdy at ALL!

Put your private parts on display if you want to keep earning a living

Re: Nazti

The ignorance of arrogance.

Watering Hole Monitoring

What's wrong with facial recognition built into coffee/tea/water dispensers? It's where the bodies congregate, right?

'Unauthorized code' that decrypts VPNs found in Juniper's ScreenOS

Will this impact the workings of the monitoring code burnt into the chipsets?

Man goes to collect stolen-car court docs found in stolen car in stolen car

Home Town Hero

Oh man, I lived in St. Pete for 10 years, doing both mobile computer repair (mostly businesses and schools) as well as IT at a small private party college. To help understand the west central Florida population: the entire area was settled by folks from other parts of the US, who screwed up and needed to start over. What a strange, jacked up town. So glad to be gone.

The late 2014 Apple Mac Mini: The best (and worst) of both worlds

Apple Refurb; save cash

At the bottom of the main Apple Store web page, you can find a link to their refurb store. For recent versions of hardware, can usually save $100-$200 dollars (3£ - 5£ if my conversion maths is correct). Refurbs come in new cases, with regular packaging and 1 year warranty like new stuff. In order to recycle components from returns and stuff (boards, drives, RAM, etc), they have to be labeled as refurbs. Just got 3 iPad minis for $200 each. They shipped directly from China factory.

Is living with Dolby Atmos worth the faff?

Re: So,

WHOOOSH!

Re: Dear Santa

With Klipschhorns in the corners.

Re: Well it's not just the hassle and faff is it?

I never finished the roof on my Man Shed. At least the rainy season is over for the year.

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

German Design

I prefer the Chemex. I don't mind the time spent pouring water over grounds as I'm already at the stove making breakfast (ham-n-cheese omelette, bacon, fried potatoes with green chile every day). Even with acidic coffee the filters do a good job of pulling the acid out and leaving it bean sweet.

Dungeons & Dragons relaunches with 'freemium' version 5.0

Re: I'm firmly...

I'm 46, with 13 year old daughter. Found my town has a gaming group (Abq RPG Gamers) and singed up for their newsletter. They do frequent one-shot games and game tests. Makes it easy to drop in on a Saturday afternoon for 4-6 hours. Ok, it is 30 miles away but this is all about geeking up my kid.

Re: Any suggestions

Got to do a play through of Firefly RPG a couple of weeks ago. It's running Cortex 2 rules, tweaked to make a game seem like a television episode. Basically, no matter what you have planned, trouble will pop up and improvising will be required. Comes with a bunch of base characters as well as the tv show characters so you can drop people into a game with minimal fuss. Looking forward to getting my printed copy, one day...

Re: Any suggestions

Paranoia / Call of C'Thulu mashup games are great. Will you die before you go insane?

Cambridge's tiny superconducting magnet breaks strength record

Superconducter?

I barely knew 'er!

/mine's the one with old joke book in pocket