Posts by A. Coatsworth

Singapore's corona-crushing superhero squad grounded by football fans

The scary thing about this note, that nobody seems to mention, is that an online petition had an tangible effect.

Strange times indeed...

Fright at the museum: Bored curators play spooky Top Trumps on Twitter over who has the creepiest object

Re: School field trips that scarred me

As soon as you said "Medical Museum" it is certain the horrors wouldbe unleashed...

I remember doing a high school assignment at the local hospital and rummaging through their collection. The creepiest thing I recall was the trachea of a child who had chocked on a marble. The marble was of course, still on its final location.

Reg fashion special: Top designer says 'video chat accessories' are in for spring!

>>we present some shots of Register staff in their working from home outfits

Thanks heaven the corporate network won't load pics from Twitter! I was already reaching for the gel alcohol to wash my eyes.

NASA mulls restoring Saturn V to service as SLS delays and costs mount

Re: Props

A grain?

There is a Moon-sized sand trap of truth in this article!

By the way, is it April already? We were robbed of a full month this year. I completely had forgotten about calendars in this quarantine. The days simply melt and merge into one another.

It is 7 am over here, but what the hell... I need a beer.

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

and chill

No joy for all you Rover McRoverface fans: NASA's next Mars bot is christened Perseverance

Re: Alex and his classmates are the Artemis Generation..

That's a weird sentence when taken out of context, and the clarification that appears near the bottom of the note only raises more questions:

Artemis is NASA’s grand plan to send the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024

… so Nasa intends to send teenagers to the Moon... "Selenite Blue Lagoon" in theaters near you, Autum 2024!

What's inside a tech freelancer's backpack? That's right, EVERYTHING

Re: Freelancer? You forgot four items!

But Dabbsy is adopting the French ways, isn't he?

I'd expect he can now use the same one for the missus and mistresses, and that they know each other... no harm there unless he tries to run for mayor of Paris.

[with apologies to Ms. Dabbs]

Voyager suffers a power wobble as boffins start the final countdown for Spitzer

It already crossed the Dome of the Fixed Stars, so it is probably peering into the universe's inner workings now.

(Obligatory xkcd) https://www.xkcd.com/1189/

This isn't Boeing very well... Faulty timer knackers Starliner cargo capsule on its way to International Space Station

Re: Elon Musk was on hand to offer advice.

... said no one ever

Vote rigging, election fixing, ballot stuffing: Just another day in the life of a Register reader

Re: Electronics Boutique and free gift scripts

Kudos to the IT head (did I really write that?)

That was a well-thought punishment, and fitting of the crime.

I'm still not that Gary, says US email mixup bloke who hasn't even seen Dartford Crossing

More adventures on wrong emails

It seems Gmail is a real winner on this. As many other commentards, I've received my fair share of interesting correspondence... My email is SurnameInitial at gmail and I guess there are a few persons with variants of surname.initial.

The most interesting was a couple of years ago when I got an email with the security detail, and the schedule of the bodyguards, for a very big award ceremony in Los Angeles (I think it was the SGA)... one of my email dopplergängers is a private security officer in California.

I normally ignore these emails, but in this particular case I made an exception and contacted the sender back, just in case, even though I've never been to California, or to the Land of the Free, for that matter.

Other, less exciting include a person going late on their loan payments in Peru; and a very prolific internet buyer in Argentina, who seems hellbent on subscribing to every store newsletter they can find

One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark

Re: Oh yeah?

Yup, he got this gig after leaving Google. Back in 2012 he worked in the comms systems for street view cars.

He got massive good recommendations from his PHB at Google, too.

IT workers: Speaking truth to douchebags since 1977

Why the hell are you handing my life *back*? Don't you see I read these comments to escape from it?

Quick!! The! top! five! things! you! want! to! see! from! Yahoo! – what! are! they!?

Very! fitting!

If you read the gif out loud, it comes out as "WHY! Yahoo, WHY!" which I think is the most perfect reaction imaginable

Full of beans? Sadly not as fellow cracks open tin at dinner to find just one

Re: Similar

Close, but not cigar... for some immemorial reason[1], beans are inherently funny, and thus worthy fof a bootnotes article. Pastry sadly is not.

[1] icon unrelated... or is it?

Guess who reserved their seat on the first Moon flight? My mum, that's who

Fly me to the Moon

Going on a tangent, thanks to the video embedded at the end... Why the hell the version of Evangelion uploaded to Netflix don't feature the (many, many, and rather good) versions of Fly me to the Moon, as outro music?

Bloody copyright nonsense....

Imagine an Upside Down world where a vastly inferior OS went on to dominate... Stranger Things have happened

"upped the "ew" quota somewhat with regard to some of the ickier elements"

Are these ickier elements related somehow to excessive in-show advertising?

Never watched the show, so I don't know who it really it, but it seems all the news about I have read about it in the last weeks are about gimmickier and gimmickier marketing stunts, and not about the show itself...

Could an AI android live forever? What, like your other IT devices?

Re: Wonderful, have one of these...

Cracked? that name brings memories... used to love that site back in the day, haven't visited it in years.

I'll have to look for the article when I'm home. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Wonderful, have one of these...

It would be interesting to know how many brethren did Wall-e cannibalize in order to live 800 years. That's probably the most realistic depiction of an immortal bot in fiction... but then, how much Wall-e was still Wall-e after all those y...

...

No, NO! please let the Ship of Theseus sail and don't board it!

UK.gov whacks export ban on 'grotesque' crab made by famous Brit potter bros

Don't see the problem, they were simply making a mask of Falkor the Lucky Dragon[1], the mask fell down when still wet and got squished. No horrors there.

[1] the fact that they were in the early XX century making props for a 1983 movie is of no consequence. Don't ask how they got the secret of time travel, if you value your soul or sanity in the least.

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

As the article rightly points out, the greatest feature of Flight Simulator was the ability to run it in anything slightly more powerful than a toaster. I wish MS would do the same this time around, so more people can enjoy it without having to upgrade their pc. Sadly, I envision it to be always-online, and tied to the latest Win 10 build...

In unrelated topics, that pic of the restored Swordfish in flight really warms the heart of this commentard.

Those darn users don't know what they're doing (not like us, of course)

Re: Scoff not

Although I agree with your sentiment, this phenomenon is not exclusive to IT professionals, not by far. All professions develop their own jargon to talk about and mock the "normal" people they interact with.

I guess it is basic human gregarious behavior: It is "us" (who have this secret knowledge) vs "them" (who don't have it)

The worst offenders, in my opinion, are doctors and in particular ER surgeons... the terms a couple of friends of mine use to refer to people involved in car crashes are truly blood-chilling.

Oblivious 'influencers' work on 3.6-roentgen tans in Chernobyl after realising TV show based on real nuclear TITSUP

Re: Can someone explain...

I can say for certain that they influence me: Whenever some vapid waste of carbon calls themselves "influencers", I automatically stop hearing what they have to say, and look the other way...

maybe the radiation-induced mutations would help them grow a brain? not likely, but there's hope

DXC Technology exec: What should our brand be known for?

Re: !Spartacus Strategy to the rescue!

Is มาลัย (which means 'Garland of Flowers' in Thai), involved in anyway in this strategy statement?

50 years ago: Apollo 10 takes an unplanned spin above the lunar surface – and sh!t gets sweary

Re: Charlie Brown at the London Science Museum

Edit: Ninja'd by Aladdin Sane

Balls of steel? Definitely!

Isolation? not necessarily: (obligatory)XKCD

The plane, it's 'splained, falls mainly without the brain: We chat to boffins who've found a way to disrupt landings using off-the-shelf radio kit

No need to spend thousands of dollars in radio equipment to disrupt an airport, when you can achieve the same with Schrödinger's drones

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Not sure I like the tone of the review

But, again, do you really need your photos at full resolution? Or do you just hate the idea of not having the absolute best thing even when you won't notice if you have it or not?

No. What I hate is paying $300 or $1000 or whatever amount of my hard-earned cash for a piece of hardware and not being able to dispose of if as I see fit.

If I decide to save the RAW files to my pc or thumbnails to a cloud, that should be my problem, not Google's.

Crap band sues crap beer maker: Hair-metal rockers have an Axl to grind over Guns N' Rosé

Re: Elvis Juice

I'll side with the band on this one. Other acts have created their own beers (Iron Maiden with its decent Trooper and rather good Red and Black) or endorsed a third party (like AC/DC with some truly horrid canned p*ss), and given that Guns N Roses clawed back from the grave a couple of years ago, it is very reasonable to think this is a sponsored product.

Besides, what's the deal with a brewery selling bandannas?

Not that I care fro GNR very much, but copyrights and names must be protected...

Hi! It looks like you're working on a marketing strategy for a product nowhere near release! Would you like help?

That's what you get for having an extrovert engineer!

If he had followed the usual protocol (i.e. lurk in the dark, snarl at anyone trying to do small talk, keep earphones firmly on) all these problems would have been avoided

Uber, Lyft rides among the biggest reasons why you're probably sitting in traffic right now – study

But this happened in San Francisco, not in the real world. Everybody knows that normal laws of logic and reason don't apply to Silly-con Valley and surrounds.

The Reality Distortion Fields and massive egos of the companies and persons there provoke an alternate reality, not unlike an Event Horizon of idiocy.

Those outside of it shouldn't worry too much

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

Re: Most people do just speak in a mixture of idioms and clichés.

A bird in hand is worth any amount of beating about the bush, and the proof of the pudding is in breaking the eggs, so Dabbsy will have to try his theory live, and see how it goes...

Zavvi tells customers: You've won VIP tickets to Champions League final! And you've won tickets, and you've won tickets, and you, and...

Why are you talking football stuff with a football voice??

Personality quiz for all you IT bods: Are you a chameleon or an outlaw? A diplomat or a high flier? Vote right here

Well, I work at a financial institution, and my hair is way longer than that of any of my female coworkers, so at least that mindset has changed in the last few years.

Now, if the creators of this survey *think* there can be any sort of healthy work-life balance at a financial institution... well they must be on some very heavy opioids

Jocasta? Jocasta! Don't ram that trolley into the man: New tech promises an end to this scenario

Transportation technology applied to the field of pediatric behavioral correction has existed for some time: my mom's sandals (flip-flops / thongs depending on your location) used to do marvels when judiciously applied to me and my siblings' backsides!

Karma chameleon: Reg hack takes SUSE mascot plushy right in the kisser

The final selection for the mascot was already made: a trash can set ablaze.

Get the smell out of here! Gaming tournament bans players who raise a literal stink

"Convention Funk" was in itself a definite character in basically any anime/games/trading cards convention I've attended. Can't say I'll regret its demise.

Trend Micro antivirus fails to stop measles carrier rubbing against firm's Ottawa offices

Re: @A. Coatsworth

You're right! It is interesting how these infectious diseases seem to have lots of clashing names in a same language, or how different ones get mixed together. The amount of different names for influenza / flu is mind boggling!

I didn't know the word grippe, for example, but these examples you give actually look a bit more recognizable for a Spanish speaker! Just get rid of the annoying double consonants:

Grippe = gripe, ague = azogue, rubella = rubeola.

Thanks!

Re: @A. Coatsworth

Hi!

My native language is Spanish. Although my English is rather serviceable, or so I like to think, there are areas where I really know next to nothing... It seems disease names is one of them.

Re: @Jim-234

A pox on all of these poxes and their translations to other languages! I meant measles!

The disease I thought was called "measles" is actually "mumps" and what I thought was "smallpox" is actually "measles"

Having learned a couple of new English words today, the point remains: 3rd world country was free of highly contagious disease, 1st world travelers bring it back...

The FAIL icon? for me, obviously.

@Jim-234

That is basically correct, except that you have it the wrong way around.

My little 3rd world country had been smallpox-free for 11 years. This year we had 2 outbreaks. They didn't occur among the poor, or destitute, or in the very rural regions, noooo... They were caused by a family of French tourists and a family of USA-sian "missioners" who proudly hadn't vaccinated their spawn and managed to reintroduce the disease to the country.

The Social Security Institute had spent dozens of thousands of dollars taking care of these morons. So unlike El Reg, I don't wish them swift recovery: this is one of the few cases where stupidity actually hurts, so I hope they are enjoying the ride

Mayors having a right 'mare in Florida: Acting mayor arrested weeks after boss also arrested

Coming soon to a screen near YOU!

<film trailer VO>

"He enjoyed intoxicants.

He owned guns.

He socialized with people of dubious repute,

... He is... FloridaMan!"

</film trailer VO>

Tim Apple. Larry Oracle. Ginni Layoffs: It works so why the heck not?

Move over, Rothschild!

The Layoff family not only controls IBM, it is in charge of most, if not all, big companies, right now. Just look what the brothers did to the different pieces of HP!

Adi Shamir visa snub: US govt slammed after the S in RSA blocked from his own RSA conf

Re: So where would they move it to?

@herman

Yes, Costa Rica is a US protectorate... and Vienna is the capital of Australia...

Re: So where would they move it to?

>>Most of South America requires you to fly through the USA

My little backwater country (Costa Rica) has direct flights from Madrid, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Zurich, and also connections through Panama, Canada and Colombia to Asia, Australia and Europe. There is absolutely no need to pass through the "Land of the Free" if you don't want to. I'm sure the same applies to most of Central and South America.

YouTube's pedo problem is so bad, it just switched off comments on millions of vids of small kids to stem the tide of vileness

Re: theregister.co.uk

I'd appreciate that, if only because in Spanish "pedo" = "fart", so even though the topic is very serious, the article loses all gravitas thanks to my immature mind.

Spooky! Solar System's Planet NINE could be discovered in the next NINE years (plus one to six), say astroboffins

And now, for a dramatic representation of this article...

... cue Hitler screaming at the top of his lungs:

Nine!

Nine!!

Nine!!!

NINE!!!

I say, that sucks! Crooks are harnessing hoovers to clean out parking meters in Chelsea

Re: Useless crime enforcement

The answer is the clear as day: if hoodies defeat the surveillance, simply ban hoodies! That way everybody's faces will be caught on camera.

How I *wish* I could put the Joke icon here... but that is precisely the train of thought of the "think of the children" brigade and many lawmakers...

Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has got the horn for space rock Ryugu – a sampling horn, that is

Re: "Next step, to hadouken a crater"

I couldn't find a clever way to throw a Ninja Gaiden reference into the mix, despite the obvious "Hayabusa" link

"Next step, to hadouken a crater"

That's racist, you know? the fact they are Japanese doesn't mean they go about shooting hadoukens at random... some prefer kame-hame-has.

Bad jokes apart, congratulations to JAXA for this achievement! Being able to land a probe on a small lump of rock in the vastness of space is an cool achievement in itself... being able to carry a sample from the asteroid from the void back to Terra boggles this commentard mind!