Posts by WonkoTheSane

The lights go off, broadband drops out, the TV freezes … and nobody knows why (spooky music)

Re: Satellite TV is the more reliable option...

Have either of you considered sacrificing your first born to get Musk's "Starlink" internets?

All hands on Steam Deck: Fancy a handheld Linux PC that runs Windows apps, sports a custom AMD Zen APU and a touch screen?

Re: Does it have a SIM slot?

Your wallet is probably safe.

Connectivity listed as WiFi & Bluetooth only. The optional dock has ethernet though.

Re: Sounds interesting...

From what I've seen on other reviews, the display is a touchscreen, so an onscreen keyboard is provided.

Ouch! When the IT equipment is sound, but the setup is hole-y inappropriate

The best part about the BBC Micro was its RS423 serial port, as they used a DIN plug with 4-way rotational symmetry.

Pic goes here

Re: Laptops are good for this

They need a little black light that lights up black to let you know you're correctly plugged in.

Treaty of Roam finally in ashes: O2 cracks, joins rivals, adds data roaming charges for heavy users in EU

She could only be called "Chardonnay" if she comes from the Burgundy area of France.

If she's British, she'll have to be called "Sparkling Sharon".

Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it

Re: Sometimes, I just can't believe the gullibility of some people.

"The easiest way to become a millionaire? Well, just start out with a billion."

The Trump family can confirm.

Re: when it comes to cashing in

"Although I do now need a new warehouse or two to store the rather bulky cheesy wotsits in."

Or sell them to other warehouses for use as packing peanuts?

UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth

Re: Must just be me than

Meanwhile, in 2015, TfW selected Vivarail's Class 230 EMUs (Refurbished District Line trains, to the un-anoraked) for the Conwy Valley & Borderland lines, that we're STILL waiting for!

Re: Oh great!

There was a conspiracy theory a few years back, that said they got the dope mix wrong for the Hindenburg, and accidentally covered it with thermite.

Re: No all electric

On N Wales coast line to Holyhead for the ferry to Ireland, the wires end at Crewe.

Hubble Space Telescope sails serenely on in safe mode after efforts to switch to backup memory modules fail

It's currently scheduled for no earlier than Oct 31st 2021.

However, NASA is waiting for ArianeSpace to resolve an issue with fairing separation on the Ariane 5 rocket JWST is booked to ride on. Ariane hasn't launched since August.

Do you come from a land Down Under? Where diesel's low and techies blunder

Re: Checklists

"sudden environmental change"

Such as an EMP (Icon chosen for obvious reasons)

Deadline draws near to avoid auto-joining Amazon's mesh network Sidewalk

Is this USA only (for now)?

I can't find any reference to this on my Alexa or Ring phone apps.

EDIT:- This "service" is indeed USA only. BBC link

Nvidia refreshes GeForce RTX GPUs: More CUDA cores, crippled crypto mining

The cards are not showing on Nvidia's website because as the article says, the 3080Ti isn't released until tomorrow (Thursday June 3rd), and the 3070Ti won't be available until Thursday June 10th.

Seeking an escape from the UK? Regulations aimed at rocket and satellite launches from 2022 have arrived

Re: "we want to be the first country to launch into orbit from Europe"

At less than 8 degrees south of the equator, the UK territory best placed to be a launch site would be the appropriately named Ascension Island

This week in AI: Man arrested after cops say he rode in backseat of Autopilot Tesla

This likely won't end well for him

Repeat offending while out on bail will only make the judge want to find an even heavier book to throw at this absolute balloon!

Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told

Re: Epic Fail

Epic's game launcher can be run on Linux, using the Lutris front end for WINE.

Train operator phlunks phishing test by teasing employees with non-existent COVID bonus

Some are too easy to spot

I get "Phake Phish" emails too, but as I work for a UK subsidiary of a 'Merkin MegaCorp, any mention of 401K, IRS or Medicare is a dead giveaway.

WTH are NFTs? Here is the token, there is the Beeple....

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!

"The blemish on this utopian landscape is energy usage. Ethereum still uses proof of work for its consensus mechanism, leading to what data scientist Alex De Vries' Digiconomist site says is a 76.23kWh per-transaction footprint."

I could drive for 350 miles on 76.23kWh!

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

Re: Blame the Cable

The absolute worst version was the implementation of RS485 on the BBC Micro.

The problem was that instead of the usual 5 pins spaced around 180 degrees of the connector face, they specced the X version with a central pin and the remaining 4 spaced every 90 degrees, giving the connector 4-way rotational symmetry!

So what if I pay peanuts for my home broadband? I demand you fix it NOW!

Re: Well, yesterday night Wind3 network went down in the whole Italy...

The other option is to re-enact the party piece of 1970's comedian Norman Collier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA2aAFjQqL4

Re: Feature suggestion.

That's why I choose to route my webcam through free streaming software "OBS Studio" when on interweb meetings.

How not to apply for a new job: Apply for it on a job site

Re: LinkedOut.

Agreed. That's why it was the first thing added to my spam filter when work switched to Office365.

These days, the only thing that filter catches is my employer's marketing droids asking me to spam their drivel to my (non-existant) Linkedin contacts. Do I LOOK like a botnet? (Don't answer that!)

Quality control, Soviet style: Here's another fine message you've gotten me into

Re: Such value for money

"This is still happening in Japan and Korea. It's a major export business in both countries"

This is because it's almost impossible to get a 5+ year old car through their MOT equivalent.

That explains a LOT about British cars of the 1970's...

What's this about a muon experiment potentially upending Standard Model of physics? We speak to one of the scientists involved

Re: Douglas Adams

Just been listening to the first couple of episodes, in an effort to get away from the depressing radio broadcasts of the afternoon (and coming weeks!). I shall attempt to pipe the next couple through my phone to the car radio on my way home.

Re: Not a scientist

That way leads to the Cheddite Projector of the "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers"

ICYMI: A mom is accused of harassing daughter's cheerleader rivals with humiliating deepfake vids

Re: Checked the news source

"What the hell has happened to the world?!"

Enabled by an orange golf cheat.

Boffins revisit the Antikythera Mechanism and assert it’s no longer Greek to them

Re: Boffinry at its best

"It would take a talented clockmaker these days to build one, and the team propose to do just that using methods from those times. I will be very interested to see the result."

As the post above mentions, see Clickspring on Youtube, he's already on it.

He also has a second youtube channel - "Clickspring Clips", consisting of 1-3 minute videos of him using a specific technique or making a single item.

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Re: Smoking

I'm still waiting for the "Smokatorium" shown in a 2000AD Judge Dredd strip back in 1977.

https://judgedredd.fandom.com/wiki/Smokatorium

9 years after SpaceX strode into Texas village, Elon Musk floats name change for Boca Chica: 'Starbase'

Wenhop

"The next prototype, Starship SN10, could take flight as soon as today"

The attempt to not crash SN10 is indeed scheduled for today (Wednesday March 3rd 2021), between 9am & 6pm local time (3pm to midnight UK time)

It can be watched here:- NasaSpaceflight on Youtube (Not an official NASA channel).

Icon chosen for obvious reasons.

A word to the Wyse: Smoking cigars in the office is very bad for you... and your monitor

Re: Incentives...

"that’s an image that I really didn’t need."

Which is precisely why the UK government mandated placing such images on cigarette packets.

SpaceX small print on Starlink insists no Earth government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities

Re: What a surprise

Also the sequel Iron Sky 2: The Coming Race (2019)

Re: Don't mess with Mars. . . .

BigbooTAY! TAY! TAY!

*bang*

Voyager 2 receives and executes first command in 11 months as sole antenna that reaches it returns to work

Re: It's a different world

"Yeah, but where's my flying car??"

Somewhere between Earth & Mars.

Musk see: Watch SpaceX's latest Starship rocket explode while trying to touch down

They DID get permission to launch from the FAA the day before.

Transcribe-my-thoughts app would prevent everyone knowing what I actually said during meetings

Privacy?

So, electronically recording the audio from the meeting causes "privacy" issues, but having you manually record what's said doesn't?

Four cold calling marketing firms fined almost £500k by ICO

Sky used to do this. Someone would call my landline, then Sky would call me and a bot would say "So-and-so is calling, do you want to accept the call? Press 1 for yes or 9 for no".

However, the line is now only used for broadband and has no phone connected to it these days.

US cyber intelligence officer jailed for kidnapping her kid, trying to hawk top secrets to Russia in Mexico

Title goes here.

And yet the woman who stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop during the US Capitol invasion & tried to sell it to Russia gets sent home with a slap on the wrist!

On his way out, Trump emits exec order suggesting US cloud giants must verify ID of all foreign customers

Re: Just cancel them on mass

Biden has already done this:-

"Presidential memorandum: Withdraw the Trump administration's regulatory process executive order to remove needless obstacles to regulating in the public's interest

Issue a regulatory freeze to pause any new regulations from moving forward and give the Biden administration an opportunity to review any Trump administration regulations"

Openreach out: UK union asks all of its members to back disgruntled cable engineers

Perfect timing!

100 points to CWU for sticking up for their members.

Minus 90 points for calling a strike just as Openreach turn up to FTTP my whole home town!

Bye bye, said Trump admin to Huawei: You give a cheque-ie to our techies, but there's no licence to ply

Re: and no mention of why

I've long suspected that the whole "Huawei BAD!" thing stems from some Qualcomm lobbyist who managed to get Trump's attention for 30 seconds (which would be a new record!).

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Re: Trump's you-tube account has been suspended as well

He's banned from Twitch too.

Trump's overhaul of Section 230 stalls, Biden may just throw the web legal shield on the bonfire anyway

Blame Devin Nunes

He's the one who pushed this at Trump et al, just so he can sue an imaginary cow who hurt his feelings on Twitter.

Open-source contributors say they'll pull out of Qt as LTS release goes commercial-only

Pic

BOFH: Time for the MMOCC. You know, the Massively Moronic Online Christmas Call

Hum, and furthermore, Bug!

I am 100% with the PFY in his attempt to eliminate carol singing at the (virtual) office.

Belated seasonings to all here & at Vulture Central.

Not one, not two, but a trio of hinges to potentially break in OPPO's bendy concept phone

Last year, LG announced a 65" roll up TV, but it sells for $60k.

Re: Why?

Which the designers admitted was based on the Star Trek communicator.