Posts by Anonymous Coward

User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died

> "Wires will never go away."

Of course they will. Just at the point that you need them.

Single passenger reportedly survives Air India Boeing 787 crash

Pure speculation

The video shows it getting off the runway in what appears to be a normal manner, but then the speed drops off (despite maintaining the angle-of-attack) meaning that it lost lift and thus altitude.

To me that points to engine problems. Probably a bird strike, but possibly fuel starvation (pump failure, gelling, etc)

A loud bang could be from the engines. We'll have to wait for the black box data analysis to know for sure.

Google outfoxed by crafty squatters in $1B London HQ's rooftop garden

Re: Fox News

Don't be so dramatic - it's not like it's an opera.

They could just scare the foxes off with a big cat, such as a Lynx

Their "Master Stoat" (coffee stout) is very nice, but the relatively new Red Rascal is particularly apposite for this topic and also very nice.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 Start Menu updates

Re: Or.....

I'll still with bash, thank you

Apple goes glass whole as it pours new UI everywhere

Re: In the fall of 2025, users will therefore receive iOS 26

Seventy-five years?? More like forty-three. Do you really think they'll allow iOS 69 ??

Re: A fluidity that only Apple can achieve

It sounds like Dan 55 was referring to Apple famously "inventing" things that have been around for years. e.g. the smart phone, smart watch, rounded corners, ...

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire

Re: Li+ batteries

I haven't tested hypergolic fuels at absolute zero, but I'd be amazed if they ignited.

Anything above absolute zero has some amount of heat.

Re: Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road

Exactly this. And that's why the standard firefighting approach to electric vehicle fires is: disconnect the battery (to make it electrically safer), then get as much water as you can onto it.

The water is intended to cool things to the point of arresting the thermal runaway. Batteries are generally well enough sealed that you're not going to get water on the internal chemicals/plates anyway.

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

Re: Only the one lazer?

No. The problem may be that they didn't put in any "lazer" (whatever one of those is)

Perhaps multiple lasers would've been useful though. You need at least 3 for voting, just make sure they can't interfere with each other.

Need for speed? CityFibre punts 5.5 Gbps symmetrical broadband at ISPs

Re: I would be happy...

And because residential computers are more likely to host botnets and we deal with enough spam and DoS attacks as it is.

There's a lot of jobs that they have to do in order to deliver to an area.

They sometimes start with the residential area ducts as they don't know whether they'll be blocked or clear and therefore can't predict how long it will take to install.

In parallel, they'll start building the backbone etc.

Once it's all in place, they can test it. Only once tested will they make it available to order.

If they've installed cable to your chamber but you haven't seen anything else for a while, that probably means that your ducts were clear.

It's also entirely possible that the cable that was installed was for a private circuit, leased line, etc and nothing to do with a wider rollout.

They don't. But you just know some people will want the bragging rights.

From the ISP's point of view, the usage is unlikely to be much different than a 1Gb connection, but the revenue will be significantly higher. That makes it a win. Plus ISP bragging rights: "fastest consumer broadband in the country"

They probably heard on the grapevine that openreach were going to announce a 5.47Gb/s service and wanted to beat it.

Microsoft's plain text editor gets fancy as Notepad gains formatting options

Re: Correction

No no no. They're trying to get rid of control.exe and replace it with the abomination that is "Settings"

Sometimes you have to fight quite hard to get to the relevant control panel section to do the bits that you need to do and Settings completely omits. Print drivers, I'm looking at you.

Regulator sues product comparison site alleged to only compare products on which it earned commission

I use the comparison sites to find a baseline price, then go to my preferred providers and get a better deal.

Also: price isn't everything, but it's all the comparison sites look at.

Odd homage to '2001: A Space Odyssey' sees 'Blue Danube' waltz beamed at Voyager 1

Re: Waste

If more people did the "niff-naff and trivia", they wouldn't have time to inflict the problems on the rest of humanity.

Re: But think of the cost!

Anything to piss off the accountants

Re: "it is likely We Are Not Alone"

"Intelligent" by who's definition?

I mean we have had some great thinkers over the years - Plato, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, etc. But we also have Trump and now Nawrocki elected into positions of power, so the balance is tipping away from the "intelligent" label.

Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

Re: And the lesson we learn today is:

I wouldn't bother with the drill aspect of that. Just a hammer will do the job nicely

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Intelligently stupid people

I've told this one before on here, but not for a while.

Late one Friday afternoon (isn't it always‽‽) a university professor client rings up - computer is dead, he needs to submit something over the weekend.

I rushed over (10 miles away), walked in, pressed the power button and confirmed that the computer wouldn't turn on. I then turned on the switch on the mains extension lead it was plugged into. Turned the computer on. I hung around long enough for him to confirm that everything was OK (I think it was really just for his blood pressure to come down)

In fairness, he admitted that he should have been able to sort that himself but was flustered. He was even happy to pay the bill (for an hour on-site - our minimum charge for a visit)

Three ways to run Windows apps on a Linux box

Re: Some Of This Sounds Like Heavy Lifting!

Accept that the device manufacturer gets incentivised to include various things - not just MS crud, but antivirus, VPN, spotify, etc, etc.

As you're just going to wipe the drive anyway, that doesn't affect you beyond the fact that those vendors have paid something towards your device. It'll be a pittance, but it's something.

It's really not your money that's going to Microsoft (and it's definitely nowhere near $100 - closer to $10 for OEM) - all the other interested parties subsidise that so they can get their junk on more devices and therefore sell subscriptions.

Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates

Re: Cuckoo land

And I'd still prefer to walk or cycle around central London than get on the tube or a bus.

But even more so, I'd prefer to spend that time enjoying the countryside where I live rather than wasting hours every day commuting.

Re: Survey responses v. reality.

Yes, but 2FA is not the solution to all security problems.

Discontented staff present a huge vulnerability. If a hacker says "I'll give you £10000 for access to your laptop", I expect a fair proportion of the workforce would take that and hand over the laptop fully logged in already.

And the same attack vector works in a corporate office but probably cheaper: "I'll give you £100 to let me in the door" - once inside they could just walk up to a desk and say "I'm from IT, I just need to check something on your computer. Won't take long" and they're unlikely to be questioned.

Techies thought outside the box. Then the boss decided to take the box away

Re: Aquarium offices.... Window seat

Ah, THAT's where I left the surplus linear actuators.

Re: Aquarium offices....

They're really trawling the depths for these puns.

But where's the IT angler?

Re: Shredder

And child welfare laws require treating children nearly as well as a lot of people treat their pets.

Microsoft revives DOS-era Edit in a modern shell

Re: "superseded Edlin"

Sorry, I didn't read the thread properly. Assumed we were talking typewriters rather than teleprinters.

Re: I think there's a lot to be said...

You guys are producing puns with a lot of vim

But I think we're |more or |less done now

Re: "superseded Edlin"

The carriage holds the paper and therefore when hitting "carriage return" (which was a big lever on the carriage itself) the carriage would move to the RIGHT ready for you to type on the left edge of the paper.

Unless you had a right-to-left typewriter, which I've never seen but can imagine they exist.

The only reason to use it will be that it's built-in and therefore available on the machine without you having to do anything. If you were to make your own version that would need to be installed (or placed somewhere you can run it) and at that point you might as well use your favourite third-party tool.

User unboxed a PC so badly it 'broke' and only a nail file could fix it

Re: fixed a keyboard related 'fail to boot' remotely

I've had similar, but with a client on the phone.

"Hello, my computer won't start"

"Move that folder off the keyboard and try again"

"What. Oh... Yes, that's got it. How did you know?"

"I recognised the beeps"

It being a folder was something of a lucky guess, just from familiarity with their desk layout.

Russia's Fancy Bear swipes a paw at logistics, transport orgs' email servers

> "And to steal data from email servers, the operatives like to use server data exchange protocols and APIs such as Exchange Web Services (EWS) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)."

Wow, I'm astonished at the deviousness on show. Using email protocols to access emails. You'll be telling us next that they use HTTP to pilfer information from websites.

Virgin Media O2 patches hole that let callers snoop on your coordinates

Re: Big difference

Or 20m×5m (which would be approximately every lamppost on one side of a street)

Microsoft pulls MS365 Business Premium from nonprofits

Re: Fortunately...

Unfortunately a lot of charities have a high staff/volunteer turnover, so the IT needs to be as standard as you can make it to ensure familiarity. If the computers are seen as hard to use (because people aren't familiar with that software) people will be more reluctant to work on them.

And the figures that some of these places work with, £10/user/month is nothing. For other places it's unaffordable. I work with charities in both camps.

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Surely simpler to stick with correct English

A full-size pint at that

Uncle Sam claims H-1B fraud crackdown is working as registrations drop 25%

Re: Green card – which is itself a pathway to citizenship and freedom

El Reg is known for sarcasm. That last word is a prime example.

NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix

Re: Here's hoping that...

My maths puts it at just under 2 years away as well.

But I haven't delved into the specifics such as how many times it will make that transition - with Earth's orbit, for part of the year the distance is actually decreasing, so it may cross the threshold, then get closer and cross it again.

Next week's SpaceX Starship test still needs FAA authorization

Re: Picture of Elmo

Or at least show people who "swear on their honour" in that way that actually have any honour to swear on.

70-knot winds so far blamed for yacht disaster that killed Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch

The wind being suddenly gusty means the vessel didn't have time to reorient.

VPN Secure parent company CEO explains why he had to axe thousands of 'lifetime' deals

Re: This new company wont last long then will they!!!

But lifetime of what? That version? The product? The company? The device it's installed on?

Windows 11 24H2 now 'broadly available' ... complete with yet another 'known issue'

Re: Known Issue

They release it because one known issue is still better than seventeen known issues. (Just ignore the plethora of unknown issues that they've introduced)

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: Serial Comms

Twisted pair has an inherent immunity to such things - the induced voltage applies to both legs and as such cancels out. The network interfaces are also galvanically isolated (each pair drives a small transformer)

It's not completely immune, but it's a lot better than you think without any shielding.

I just knew that the commentards would manage to jam in a loaf of buns

Chris Krebs loses Global Entry membership amid Trump feud

Re: This is why..

I just wish the UK were big enough to grant asylum to all the Americans who need it.

BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

Re: Familiar!

The lease company finds an exclusion clause which means that the way your particular printer is broken isn't covered.

Booby-trapped Alpine Quest Android app geolocates Russian soldiers

They're Russian, therefore:

1. They won't trust the american app stores (google or apple)

2. They're probably conditioned to installing dodgy software from dodgy sources.

Trump blinks: 'Substantially' lower China tariffs promised

Re: Dementia

Being able to play the media is not synonymous with being a good decision maker.

Yes, Trump is a showman and enjoys the media attention. Biden was the opposite.

NTT creates a drone that triggers and catches lightning – then keeps flying

Re: Why?

You were so close to getting an upvote from me, but I just can't overlook the repeated use of "lightening" (so lighten something, make lighter) when you really meant "lightning" (sky spark)

Elon Musk makes another cut – to his time at DOGE

Re: Erm

I can think of one person in particular who could be laid off and it would be very popular. Unfortunately he's Musk's pet so unlikely to happen.