Posts by Anonymous Coward

Things are going to get weird as the nanometer era draws to a close

Re: Hold up!

But what is it in Linguine?

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity will fly no more, but is still standing upright

Re: Why not

What is there to gain? Well there's a possibility that the damage is minor enough that flight operations could potentially continue. They might also redefine altitude limits - pushing the boundaries to see what is possible. Testing to destruction achieves a lot, but they can't do that on an otherwise viable craft.

What is there to lose? It's not like anyone is ever going to go retrieve it and salvage parts.

Why not

As it is now scrap, why not command it to spin up as fast as possible and fly as high as possible just to see what happens? OK, it will vibrate terribly but as a final farewell it could be an exciting experiment.

Still a fantastic achievement to get this thing off the ground in the first place though.

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Re: "coloured pencil office"

Spreading your own faeces on toast is even cheaper. Would probably taste as good as the avocado too.

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

Re: potato potato

Exactly what I came here to say. I'm disappointed that I had to go so far down the comments to find it.

Poor communication led to complete lack of communication

> "Since we all know the cliché about what happens when you assume, we will not repeat it here"

Do we? Are you sure?

NASA lost contact with Mars helicopter Ingenuity, then managed to find it again

Why do you think he set up "the boring company"?

It's all a brilliant synergy.

Actually, just trying to launch a super-heavy might be a quicker way of digging down if you don't need the hole to be neat...

Asahi Linux team issues promising update on efforts to conquer Apple Silicon

Congratulations

From a software engineering/tinkering point of view... bravo. That's quite an achievement to add support for quite radically different processors.

From a practical point of view... how many people are going to want to pay the apple hardware premium but not want the apple software stack?? It strikes me as having a real-world (i.e. not just for tinkering) market of 2, maybe 3 people. (and I use linux daily, on several devices, albeit relatively cheap devices)

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

I'm personally opposed to the dissent shown by your pedantry which includes the used of "doesent"

BOFH: Nice air conditioning system. Would be a shame if anything happened to it

Bearing in mind the target market, what wifi are you expecting to use when the power is out???

Yes, I would also just stick a battery on the router (etc), but we're not the target market.

Adios, dead zones: Starlink relays SMS in space for unmodified phones on Earth

Re: Now you'll never have an excuse for missing that weekend work text or call

7) That's a work matter so not applicable outside of working hours. If you want me available for overtime, my out-of-hours rate is £x,xxx/hr

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Re: The real lesson...

It's impossible for C to be better than assembler for any specific case. When you run C through the compiler, the output IS assembler. So if a human was skilled enough (extremely unlikely now) they could product assembly code that's just as good. (Or indeed if you're skilled enough with your butterfly - 378)

HOWEVER

The overarching benefit of C (or any other high level language) is that it's processor agnostic. Assembly needs to be written for each target architecture, whereas in C the compiler deals with that (mostly)

BOFH: The Christmas party was so good, an independent inquiry is required

Re: Three point one pints please

Some people will be driving, so let's say the average is 3.75 pints per person.

"Oops", I just ordered 37.5 pints per person.

Superuser mostly helped IT, until a BSOD saw him invent a farcical fix

I have a dim memory of installing Norton's 3 month trial version on a machine with the clock set 10 years into the future, then resetting the clock afterwards.

Bingo! a 10 year extension to the free trial.

(That was when Norton was a decent choice of AV, so a long time ago)

Europe classifies three adult sites as worthy of its toughest internet regulations

Re: Now would be the perfect time ....

Or they'll "pull out" of the EU to avoid the stupid unworkable regulations. What a great time to not be an EU member state!

Manchester's finest drowning in paperwork as Freedom of Information requests pile up

"Manchester" sets a very low bar

Zuckerberg hunkers down in Hawaii to wait out apocalypse

Re: Why not?

What makes you think that he doesn't have similar bunkers in all of his houses? At least enough resources to keep him going long enough for 'the event' to subside enough for him to travel to the self-sustaining one.

Missing tomatoes ketchup with ISS crew after almost a year lost in space

Re: Pips….In….Spaaaaaaace!

... with a kernel of truth

You don't get what you don't pay for, but nobody is paid enough to be abused

Re: We refered to the CYA written confirmation as a "Shirt Tail Exercise"

You need to work that out in advance. And have a suitcase packed.

Re: is 10x $$$ normal?

In other parts of the world they don't have the infrastructure/service provider segmentation we have here. If ProviderA wants to provide service somewhere, they need to install the wires.

Mines tend to be somewhat remote, so I imagine the install fees would be quite high.

Openreach have different SLAs available to ISPs. Business grade connections are prioritised higher than residential. Leased lines are even higher. Yes, you'd still be "waiting for openreach" but that wait would be a lot shorter.

If it were 10 separate ISPs on the openreach infrastructure, there would be one cable fault taking out the whole bundle. That is not resilience.

Also, openreach aren't the only game in town; they're just the most well known and most widely deployed. If you're prepared to pay, there are lots of providers who have their own infrastructure that they can roll out to you. The fee may well be in the £millions though.

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

Re: Hey, there's an idea...

It's not collusion per se. It's that the regulator ruled that inflation+3.9% was the maximum they could increase without triggering contract breaks. They basically said "yeah, that's near enough the same price" and then inflation shot up.

So this is all just backpedalling from ofcom really.

Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970

Re: Yearly tasks....

Once you've realised that this thing needs batteries changing yearly or $things will fail, why not replace (or supplement) those batteries with an external power brick? Plugged into the UPS on the basis that if the UPS dies, that clock will be the least of your worries.

Re: Priorities

"Anything I can help with?"

Hubble Space Telescope is back in the game after NASA fixes gyro glitch

Re: Can't we just send a shuttle....

Or just send up a full replacement telescope.

I mean JWST was built and launched so quickly and cheaply that these space tescelope things are pretty much disposable.

Sysadmin's favorite collection of infallible utilities failed … foully

Re: Defragging isn't a big deal anymore

I wonder what you think the D stands for in SSD???

Solid State DISK

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Re: murder chickens

Your first paragraph applies equally to both the geese and the US army

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Re: bullshit detected

One of my pet peeves is when people refer to it as "CAT cable"

The "Cat" in "Cat 5e" is short for category. You're using both unnecessary capitalisation (it's not an acronym) and a nonsensical term (category cable)

Re: bullshit detected

The RJ series was even designed for that.

In fact, as far as I know, any RJ plug will fit into any higher numbered RJ socket. RJ10 into RJ11. RJ11 into RJ12. etc.

And that's why pair 1 is on pins 4+5 (the middle pins)

"Where it wasn't a perfect fit" would've been more accurate.

Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system

Re: NerdRageQuit

Doesn't every BOFH have spare accounts that they've created and not documented ready for such an occasion?

Obviously it's in case my primary account gets corrupt in some way, not intended to wreak havoc anywhere.

That time a JPL engineer almost killed a Mars Rover before it left Earth

The clear one is the earth lead.

Not applicable to the Mars rover ;-)

Virgin Atlantic flies 'world's first fossil-fuel free' transatlantic commercial flight

Re: Greenwash

The word is "pique"

Brit borough council apologizes for telling website users to disable HTTPS

Re: Dear editor

It's also true for websites which redirect the HTTP connection to HTTPS (which is most of them)

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Flying cars will finally become a reality.

The aliens will finally reveal why they were so obsessed with anal probing, yet stopped as soon as humans started carrying cameras everywhere they went.

A politician will tell the truth. Sorry, that one might be a bit too far-fetched.

Half a kilo of cosmic nuclear fuel reignites NASA's deep space dreams

And yet Apple still can't make a phone battery that lasts more than a day.

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

Re: GIF pronunciation controversy

You don't prefer "Jraphics Interchange Format"??

No, neither do I

Scientists use Raspberry Pi tech to protect NASA telescope data

Re: I'm reminded of early space exploration

Better to use a wax crayon really.

Waterproof, not affected by orientation, non-conductive, cheap, ...

Hell, they wouldn't even need training as apparently it's child's play.

Tool bag lost in space now tracked by garbage watchers

Re: Why

When I've had to use similar two-tether systems, the colouring has never mattered. Because each tether is either attached or in your hand in the process of being moved. If you only have one anchor point, both tethers attach there. When you move, it's one tether at a time - doesn't matter which way around.

It just gets very tedious.

But with these bags, I expected the tether to attach to the crew/suit rather than the spacecraft, so wouldn't need much tether moving.

Why

After the last time this happened, why don't the bags have velcro or some other form of attachment that is mandatory to use? Almost everything else has to be attached to someone/thing at all times.

Bright spark techie knew the drill and used it to install a power line, but couldn't outsmart an odd electrician

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

People with colour deficiencies tend to compensate by noticing other details better. There are lots of stories about military camouflage not working on colourblind people as they see the shapes much more than the colours. So as long as the limitations are understood, it shouldn't prevent you from hiring someone (and actually might be beneficial).

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Plus, certainly in the UK, the colours used are quite specific and the green is quite a blueish green. That makes it very distinct from the other two lights even for the common red-green colourblindness (deuteranopia)

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Re: And this is

Does the cage not have an interlock?

Surely a simple switch on the cage door to remove power would work. And to re-start it would need both the door closed and a button pressed on the outside of the cage?

Re: Enquiry or hearing of any kind?

Why was a robot that's intended to carry boxes strong enough to inflict fatal injuries? Surely the motor/ram should stall before that point.

Suits ignored IT's warnings, so the tech team went for the neck

What happened to (c) disable POP3 access ??

European Space Agency grits teeth, preps contracts for SpaceX Galileo launch

Re: Stupid idea

What would it take to configure a drone ship as a launch platform? They already land on them, so run a mission that lands on the drone ship and then refuel and attach a second stage on top while out at sea. In international waters.

Simples.

(I wonder how many people will miss the icon)

Major telco outage leaves millions of Australians disconnected

Switch?

> "government was considering switching critical services to other companies."

How about learning from it rather than repeating the same problem? Don't switch services, add redundancy from other providers.

So you have to scale your network to cope with at least twice as many subscribers as you have??

Yeah, can't see that happening.

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Re: Chrome

I stopped watching F1 the moment the rights holder signed a deal with Sky. I'm not giving Sky any money, so F1 was then not available to me. Haven't missed it since.

I wasn't bothered by all the adverts on the cars, tracks, etc; but me having to actively pay a company that I don't like so that I can watch it was a step too far.

Home of the world's longest pleasure pier joins public sector leak club

Re: Excel and FoI basics

And the resulting data should be in a CSV file, both to avoid proprietary formats and to exclude any misused formatting.

Shock horror – and there goes the network neighborhood

Not AC based on "The final measurement was supply voltage to the rack. This came from a standard telecoms 48V DC supply"

Otherwise you would've had an upvote from me

Even if it doesn't immediately break, it then becomes your responsibility if it ever needs anything. Because you're the one who knows what it was like when it was working properly.