Posts by The Jon

Earth's new mini-moon swings by, then ghosts us by late November

The closest we'll get is 1994 PC1, ...and will have a close encounter with Earth in 2525.

If man is still alive, that is.

(Mine's the one with a copy of Zager and Evans' Exordium and Terminus in the pocket)

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

The same guy who fantasised about summarily dismissing striking workers during a recent online love in with a former Home Alone 2 cameo actor. In direct contravention of pretty much all employment law, everywhere.

What the duck? Bloke keeps getting sent bathtime toys in the post – and Amazon won't say who's responsible

What's the French for duck?

It's "Canard".

Well, I wouldn't ask if it was easy...

ATLAS flubbed: Comet heading our way takes one look at Earth, self-destructs into house-sized chunks

Semantics

You say "disintegrated", I say "released its payload".

How do you do, fellow kids? Facebook now Boomerbook as British oldies outnumber teens

Re: Wrinkleface!

Facebook was invented by the Wrinkleface twins, wasn't it?

Criminal mastermind signed name as 'Thief' on receipts after buying stuff with stolen card

Re: What ?

I am reminded of why (British actor, famous for the Wicker Man and the Equaliser (80s TV Series)) Edward Woodward had 4 "d"s in his name...

... otherwise he would have been known as Ewar Woowar.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean Google isn't listening to everything you say

Re: False accept

As opposed to "Pete Cetera" who was lead singer with Chicago.

Insane homeowners association tries to fine resident for dick-shaped outline car left in snow

Sounds like she faced a stiff penalty

Fat chance: Cholesterol leads boffins to discover world's oldest animal fossil – 558m years old

David Dickinsonia

The creature in the video is a real bobby dazzler.*

*this comment may only work on British daytime TV veiwing public.

The Register's 2018 homepage redesign: What's going on now?

Re: Lipstick on a pig

Absolutely agree with this

https://www.theregister.co.uk/Week/

is the only way to know what stories I may have missed since yesterday / this morning / 10 minutes ago.

No lie-in this morning? Thank the Moon's gravitational pull

Thank you senor MacGyver...

Central American Villagers: Thank you senor MacGyver, you saved our village!

MacGyver: Don't thank me, thank the moon's gravitational pull.

(credit The Simpsons ca.1992)

UK pub chain Wetherspoons' last call: ♫ Just a spoonful of Twitter – let's pull social media down ♫

Re: Ever-shrinking menu options

Don't be taken in by this: it's a Scam-pi, chips, peas and tartare sauce.

Remember the Yorkie pizza horror? Here's who won our exclusive Reg merch...

Re: Northerners...

"...and I threw the gravy away"

What? Has tha' nowt moist?

New strife for Strava: Location privacy feature can be made transparent

Re: It's not the first time it's been said

Like rather than setting "Home" on your vehicle SatNav (GPS) to your actual front door, setting it to an address 2 streets away.

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

Re: it’s the first Sunday of February, which would make it the fifth this year.

Fourth of February, but fifth Sunday in 2018.

Mum's gone to Iceland

A side order of the fabled Chicken Tikka Lasagne?

Well, now Nuro: Former Waymo devs reveal cute self-driving van tech

R-1?

I'll wait for the R2 unit.

'Screaming' man fined $149 for singing 'Everybody Dance Now'

Ok, ok! Let's just wait a minim, and breve. No need to get all crotchety.

Boffin wins (Ig) Nobel prize asking if cats can be liquid

Re: Babypod

Perfect for listening to The Rolling Stones. You can't beat a bit of Mick 'n' Queef.

Apple’s facial recognition: Well, it is more secure for the, er, sleeping user

Could you now unlock $celebrity's phone by taking a trip to Madame Tussauds?

Further, I wonder if pointing this persons phone at this artefact would magically unlock it?

Lottery-hacking sysadmin's unlucky number comes up: 25 years in the slammer

Re: When Will People Learn? Halifax Banking...52% APR / 68.4% APY

Received that same letter the other day. I am not an accountant, but I have just modelled the charges, and I can only infer that the vast majority of bank overdraft charges must be levied on sub £50 overdraft values, as the equivalent percentage rates for these are much, much higher than on larger initial sums.

The 30 day percentage rate is anywhere between 2900% (£0.01 overdraft after 30 days) and 4.64% (£50.00 overdraft after 30 days). The 30 day percentage rates converge to be about 4.23% for values above £500.

If you were unlucky enough to leave your account overdrawn by £0.01 for a year, the AER would equate to 36400%. A £50 overdraft for a year would have an AER of 72.96%. The AER again converges to about 68.4% above a £500 initial overdraft.

Imagine if Wonga advertised that their AER for a £0.01 loan was 36400%...

Want a medal? Microsoft 7.2% less bad at speech recognition than IBM

Outlook Voice Recognition

Here's the last line (personally transcribed) from a voicemail received recently:

I'll drop you an email in this respect as well and hopefully we'll catch up before Thursday. Take care, bye bye.

And this is what Outlook automatically transcribed it as (see if you can spot the difference):

I'll drop you an email in this respect as well and hopefully will touch before fisted take care bye bye.

UK.gov is hiring IT bods with skills in ... Windows Vista?!

Re: What does "DV cleared" mean?

And I thought it meant that you hadn't had norovirus in the last 6 months.

One thought equivalent to less than a single proton in mass

I have had the tremendous misfortune to spend two evenings in the company of Ms Hopkins at two separate house parties. Odious woman even then, before she became the tabloid caricature pantomime villain.

Auntie sh!tcans BBC Store after 18 months

...launch director Andrew Scott

Moriarty-y-y-y-y-y-y-y!!!

Gravitational waves permanently change spacetime, say astroboffins

“orphan memory”

So, is this like homoeopathy, but on a universal scale?

Blighty's telly, radio watchdog Ofcom does a swear

Re: Smeg...

I have a Siemens refrigerator, and every now and again the magnets upon the door are quietly rearranged to cover the I and the second S for a childish giggle.

Rosetta spacecraft set for smash landing

Have you been involved in an accident that wasn't your fault?

Now you mention it, yes, my neck is a little sore.

Yes, and so are those of the 4 passengers who were also involved.

The next Bond – Basildon or Bass-Ass? YOU decide

Re: Where is this poll of which you speak?

I guess it must be For Your Eyes Only...

Brexit threatens Cornish pasty's racial purity

Now I'm hungry

Can I submit this recipe for Pasty and Eggs to the SPB Post Pub Nosh Neckfiller strand?

Get a day old pasty. Roughly chop it into chunks. Fry in a pan until sizzling. Slide onto a plate. Crack 2 eggs into the pan, fry. Slide onto fried pasty. Eat. Brown sauce optional.

Brits seek rousing name for polar research vessel

RSS Norman Stanley Fletcher

Am I the only one to equate the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with "nerk" a made up swear word from classic sit-com Porridge?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porridge_(TV_series)#Contributions_to_the_English_language

Happy birthday, Amiga: The 'other' home computer turns 30

Re: WINUAE

+1 on Twintris. Written by Svein Berge, who may or may not be the same Svein Berge from Röyksopp.

Although I am assured that Svein and Berge are both common Swedish names, I'm convinced it is, because their first album - Melody A.M. - contains tracks which use Amiga ProTracker style tricks such as tone portamanto (iirc 3nn on the effect code list).

Shadow of the Beast: Amiga classic returns from the darkness

Re: it was the music

+1 for the music. Sure the ST had midi built in, but the Amiga 4 channel stereo was head and shoulders above any other home computer at the time.

I think I spent more time using SoundTracker / NoiseTracker / MED etc. than playing games on my old A500. I managed to amass disks and disks of ripped Module files - memory could be scanned after a soft reset and a Module Ripper could save out the data - all to get at those precious samples for my own (terrible) tunes...

As for my favourite tunes, too many to list but include: Shadow of the Beast; Obliterator; Gods (amazing); Xenon 2 (naturally); Jesus on Es mega-demo; Pinball Dreams.

The Martian: Matt Damon sciences the sh*t out of the red planet

Re: I'm hoping for Castaway on Mars.

hmm.. compare Cast Away (2000, Tom Hanks) with Castaway (1986, Oliver Reed). I know which one I preferred.

Airplane HACK PANIC! Hold on, it's surely a STORM in a TEACUP

Re: Hrumph

- What do you make of this [story] Johnny?

- Well, I can make a nice hat, or a brooch. Or a pterodactyl..

DEEPENING MYSTERY of BRIGHT LIGHTS on dwarf world Ceres

or perhaps Adrian Goodhew?

Bloke hits armadillo AND mother-in-law with single 9mm round

Armadillo!

Crunchy on the outside, smooth on the inside. Armadillo!

No, the Linux leap second bug WON'T crash the web

Time delay

"The second the clocks ticked past midnight GMT, the bug awoke and took down Altea. 135 airlines had implemented the Altea reservation system by 2012 but the Australians were the first to go down once the clocks hit midnight."

Err, shurely everyone hits Midnight GMT at the same time?

Vulture trails claw across Lenovo's touchy N20p Chromebook

Re: half and half

Possibly the most northern thing I ever overheard:

- Chips and gravy please.

- Sorry, we don't do gravy.

- What!? Has tha nowt moist?

George Clooney, WikiLeaks' lawyer wife hand out burner phones to wedding guests

Re: Excuse me, but...

Is it just me that has a mental image of Don Cheadle distributing the phones to arriving guests, but giving instructions for their use in an appalling and unnecessary cock-er-ney accent?

Fanfare of trumpets as LOHAN reveals mission patch

@themoose

Seconded - why the 'Merkin continental outline and not a massively exaggerated Great British Isles outline instead?

Nipper rolls up at nursery with 48 wraps of HEROIN

Re: *Glassine, to be precise,

So glassine is like paper but is not paper. Therefore is imitation the highest form of philately?

What did you see, Elder Galaxies? What made you age so quickly?

Benjamin Button!

Benjamin Who?

Benjamin!

Who's there?

Knock Knock!

Booze and bacon sarnies: A recipe for immortality?

To paraphrase a well known curly-haired motoring journalist..

Bacon: the only known cure for vegetarianism.

SCRAP the TELLY TAX? Ancient BBC Time Lords mull Beeb's future

Re: Just a News Operation @janimal

"While you're at it grab the bastard who decided every show needs to give you a preview of what is about to happen, and then every five minutes remind you of what just happened and then at the end show you what will happen next week. Whoever you are please, please stop!"

You are aware that this is a method of turning 1 hours programming on the BBC into 1 hours programming on a commercial repeats channel by editing out the "coming up", "next week" and "previously" segments and replacing with 15 minutes advertising space, thus increasing resale revenue.

Likewise, when did you ever see the "news" section in a repeat of Top Gear on Dave?

Apple-hungry thieves defy sinking New York City crime stats

Stats

"...the targeting of Apple rose from just 25 cases in 2002 to more than 8,000 last year."

ZOMG, that's terrible! Oh, hang on, remind me: when were the iPod or iPhone released?*

*October 2001 and June 2007 respectively.

PANIC OVER DROOPING house prices hits MEMBER-shaped estate

End of George Road

Should be renamed as The Bell House?

MEGA ASTEROID could 'BLOW UP EARTH' - Russian space boss

Re: During the meanwhile ...

by my maths, if I buy a £2 lottery ticket then I am infinitely more likely to win the lottery than if I didn't...

Mac fans: You don't need Windows to get ripped off in tech support scams

Re: american accents

Seeing as though North American English accents outnumber British English accents globally by about 5:1 it's hardly surprising is it?

Have you tried turning it off and on again - oh, you did: IT Crowd RETURNS

Re: Don't forget Matt Berry

Almost. At. The. Station!