Posts by Anonymous Custard

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

That's mean

Only if the clue-by-four has a nail in it to really get the point across (or in).

Re: Analogue clocks need to die?

I see that, and historically raise you this one

Re: Analogue clocks

Around here, the postal service seems to have more trouble with calendars than clocks.

Our "daily" (or rather weekday, to be more accurate) delivery of anything that isn't signed-for or similarly tracked seems to be now more on a weekly basis.

Painfully ironic given how much the price of stamps are these days.

Re: Analogue clocks

DNA was as prescient as ever...

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

Re: Analogue clocks

And so on downwards - to quote Wikipedia

In 1267, the medieval scientist Roger Bacon stated the times of full moons as a number of hours, minutes, seconds, thirds, and fourths (horae, minuta, secunda, tertia, and quarta) after noon on specified calendar dates.[45] Although a third for 1⁄60 of a second remains in some languages, for example Arabic ثالثة (ṯāliṯa /θaː.liθa/), the modern second is further divided decimally.

So in this case, does the concept of a weighted average indicate the heft of the 2x4 or baseball bat you need to use to get the concept across?

Re: Analogue clocks

Today is a good day, something new learned after all these years (and months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds)...

Indeed thanks for that, have a deserved upvote.

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

Around here, they'd be more at risk of security if they didn't provide the cake...

Re: Re "The law binds none of us unless it binds all of us"

Just be careful, or he'll get Sauron that point...

NASA boss: make Pluto a planet again

Re: Cleared orbit

Only in the absence of suitable cows.

The elephants and especially the turtle are classified as "all the way down".

And it can give you the age-old distinction of knowledge vs wisdom.

"Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad..."

Future holiday horror: ‘A robot lost my luggage in Tokyo’

Re: Airport robots

Yes, although the 1970's is calling and asking for them back.

Greece relaxes Euro biometric border entry rules amid airport chaos

Re: Damn impertinance

Step up to red alert, even if it does mean changing the bulb!

Re: Eurostar

In that case, I'll raise a pint of Guinness to my new passport when I get it, in solice that neither are actually black whilst appearing to be. My vote too would be metallic purple.

Oh and my eyes are either grey or red too, depending on how much of the aforementioned I've had the previous night...

Re: Eurostar

I was going by the pages of the govt and the BBC, both of which refer to it as blue.

To quote the former:

Changes from last version of this guidance

This guidance has been updated to:

• show the design of the standard blue passport books has changed to show ‘His Majesty’
• remove reference to specimen passports for entertainment purposes as HM Passport Office no longer provides this service
• align the terminology used for UK series C e-passport (blue e-passport) also known as new blue passports
• make minor terminology changes

and

The British passport is now a non-EU passport with a blue (soft cover) (blue e-passport) and a gold Royal crest.

(emphasis mine with the bolding).

But as I said, as I won't get one myself until next year, I can't vouch for it with my poor old decrepit eyes.

Plus I'm sure with the government's trend of u-turns, it's probably flipped between blue and black many times since that web page was last updated...

Oh and you are Lt Cmdr Data, and I claim my 5 pieces of gold-pressed latinum

Eurostar

Did St Pancras to Brussels last week (April 15th) and saw the new EES terminals there.

Looked very nice, in their little area behind shutters and completely closed.

Some of the staff were walking around and asking if various customers would care to be included in some pilot tests of them, but other than that the passport control etc to get on the train was exactly the same as it has been previously. The staff also said they didn't have a clue as to when the new stuff would actually start, apparently there's some issue with the software that the (French) suppliers of the terminals need to fix or something (details were vague).

Was a bit worried as to how that trip could go in terms of delays etc given some of the reports mentioned in the main article here, but for once common sense seems to have applied and the whole mess put on ice for a while. And my passport now carries another pair of stamps in it - getting rather full up but due for renewal next year anyway (farewell to the dear old red cover, hello blue!).

Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami

FTFY?

...the odd lapse in into coherence...

or is that too much to ask, even by random chance?

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

Reminds me of an old experience (back 15-20 years or so) of a customer who had just build a brand new clean room at their site for semiconductor manufacture.

Our tools were some of the first in, and were giving some issues with both particles and uniformity.

Particles we worked out fairly quickly was due to the "clean" environment not being so clean, as they'd put up all sorts of partition walls and secured/sealed them with mastic that was merrily outgassing siloxane and all sorts of other "interesting" solvents that got sucked into the tools or just landed on the wafers and screwed things up. They had a clean-up and things improved, and they got better over time anyway as the outgas subsided.

But the thickness (uniformity) problems were more puzzling. Then someone noticed that at certain times of the day (around rush hour) the tools were vibrating, and in the extreme cases were actually swaying (some of these tools are 3-4 meters tall but only a couple wide). Not exactly what you want when teaching tolerances and repeatability need to be in the sub-millimeter range...

Panicked checks were made by the customer with the folks who had built and hooked up the cleanroom and it was discovered that whilst the floating floor was in place (designed to remove such ambient vibrations from the environment) some bright spark had saved a few euro by making facilities pipework connection directly with solid pipe and without bellows. So their lovely floating floor was directly coupled and anchored to the standard floor, and so any vibrations in it.

Now consider that along one edge of the site was a major highway, usually full of big rigs and commuters, with an off-junction at the corner of the site with slip roads down another side of site...

Shall we say I learned a few more entries for my dictionary of foreign language curses and expletives, and urgent work to fix it was put in place.

We got the tools signed off and working in the end, but only after a couple of months delay and some new replacement facilities (and contractors).

NASA reckons the Artemis II heat shield performed like a champ

Re: maneuver

Only if he's recovered by a surfer...

Notepad sheds Copilot from toolbar as Microsoft gives subtlety a try

Whatever it is, it's too long...

BOFH: If the meatbags can't agree on aircon, AI will decide for them

Re: Thermostats

Indeed, never underestimate the benefits of the placebo effect...

Tech support chap's boss got him out of jail so he could finish a job

I had a Dutch colleague who lived there (York) and often had that very question back in the day when he was periodically supporting one of our leftpondian customers by transatlantic business trips.

His stock response was "No, Old York actually".

Doubled on the historic irony in his particular case, as he was originally from Amsterdam.

Re: Major disaster spotted at end of article

Orange is the new black white?

Brentry

One (small) saving grace of the whole Brexit debacle (for reference, I'm an Englishman who voted against it), that the Friday afternoon calls from disorganised and panicking managers in our various European offices of "we have an escalation at customer X, you need to be here first thing on Monday morning" could be simply responded to with "Sorry, I'm not European any more. I'll need a work permit to do that job."

Given said work permits can take anything from a couple of weeks to about 3 months to arrange (depending on precisely which European country, as there is no such thing as a European work permit, they're all still individual), it became a very handy veto. Coupled with the famous quote from our HR team that "oh, Brexit won't affect us at all...".

And always fun to point out to American and Japanese colleagues that even though I work for the European branch of the company, I'm technically no more European than they are in terms of bureaucratic requirements etc.

Samsung folds the Galaxy Z TriFold after just a few months

Re: It is over....

So Samsung's Galaxy TriFold project has.... well... folded.

Yes, they tried and then sadly had to fold.

Former Microsoft dev trains AI to survive the arcade's most chaotic stress test

Welcome...!

I for one welcome our old robotic overlords new overlord!

From what I can remember of the original game, a true simulation would need to include severe wrist cramp and trying to keep hold of the joysticks as well.

And no, that's not a double double-entendre...

Repopulate! Repopulate! Two lost Doctor Who episodes turn up in private collection

I'm obviously equally enough of a nerd to have the same comment.

And even if the Beeb don't find that the new discoveries make it viable enough to animate the missing 7, it would be nice if they can release the audio of them (which does still exist) as at least something to join things together.

Jury out on whether Americans love or hate datacenters

Re: Paint them!

Or at the very least, take a leaf from Disney's playbook on painting stuff green.

NASA pencils in fresh Artemis II Moon launch attempt for April 1

Tanking

Am I the only one who finds the usage of "tanking" to be a little foreboding, given it's other common slang meaning than filling with fuel that the quote is actually referring tor?

Or is it just too much association with certain Hollywood films of late doing it and going down in flames at the box office?

BOFH: What physics defines as impossible, sales calls a challenge

Re: That OS...

Etch-a-sketch is an OS now...?

NASA abandons delayed SLS upper stage for ULA's Centaur V instead

Re: Bah!

It's probably the modern update of the 60's theoretical work for putting spherical cows in a vacuum...

NASA safety watchdog says it's time to rethink Moon landing

Re: "too many firsts in Artemis III mission"

But all heros, since they pulled their bacon out of the fire.

And their Hanks and their Paxton...

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

There's a couple of decent vans on Manor Royal that do not just fairly decent burgers, but also a very nice chicken curry and a few other bits like the classic fish finger sarnie. Plus one in the car park of Wicks which also does a cracking burger.

That said, McDonalds, Greggs and Starbucks all opened up on Gatwick Road (side-by-side or across the road from each other) and they seem to be doing trade so I hope the vans don't go out of business as a result. There is a 4th one about to open in the same building as Greggs, but I forget offhand who it is (as I don't particularly care).

I'm trying to work out which building you're referring to, so I can see if the steak van is still there (or if it's one of the ones I mention above).

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

Re: Old Nokia phones

And of course, not forgetting this classic...

Re: Evil pranks

Bluetooth mice are also handy for the mirror prank of moving the mouse and clicking random icons/links, doubly so if the victim machine has a USB port that is discretely tucked away in some non-obvious place (monitor USB hubs or dock stations for example).

Re: Old Nokia phones

There are exceptions that offer Welsh

Probably the ones in or outside Tesco, Helston in Cornwall

Break free of Ring's servers, earn a five-figure bounty

Re: Why even bother?

Sadly that's not so unusual for that place.

I got a TV from them a while back, and initially actually had a refreshingly positive experience with a newbie young sales guy who did actually listen and steered me to a TV which fitted my needs.

Unfortunately as he was quite new (a trainee or probationary sales guy or somesuch), he had to get a more "senior" sales guy involved to finish the transaction, and that smarmy git proceeded to put down the young guy, and upsell me to some whizzy smart crap which I certainly didn't need. Then on top of that tried repeatedly to sell me the "extended warranty" and the usual blurb.

After the 2nd time I started to get annoyed, and just responded "so I need to buy a longer warranty as you seem to think what you're trying to sell me is poor quality and will break in a couple of years?". At that point he started to get a bit grumpy too but still kept pushing it, so I just apologised to the young guy and said that his colleague had just lost him a sale and started to walk towards the door.

"Senior" guy then flounced off in a huff, at which point I just said to the younger one "ok, where were we?" and he found another colleague to approve the sale without any further fuss or attempts at upselling. And in the few times I've been in the store since, I've seen the younger one a couple of times (now seemingly a full staff member) and the "senior" guy not once.

The TV is still going strong (about 5 years after this event) and proving that the warranty extension would have been a total waste of money anyway (as fully expected).

Artemis II headed back to the bay; helium issues force another delay

Re: less frequent windows

escaped cheetah at Chessington North, .

What, again...!?!?!

Infosec community panics as Anthropic rolls out Claude code security checker

Anything you can do...

Kurtz asked Claude if its new security tool could replace what CrowdStrike does (tl;dr: Claude said no).

What, cause total chaos and bring the internet to its' knees if things go wrong.

I'd have said that was a definite yes.

Copilot spills the beans, summarizing emails it's not supposed to read

Microsoft (and others) are testing the old adage "It’s Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission" to destruction...

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

Re: Quite a rare sight

But knowing what you did to break them is a very important part of being a tester.

And seemingly for being a user, so they know exactly what not to tell the poor helldesk person assigned to fix it (at least until afterwards).

Or is it just the ones I have to deal with occasionally (when the helldesk dumps it on me as it's non-standard tool specific software).?

OpenClaw reveals meaty personal information after simple cracks

In related news, if you drop a hot soldering iron, don't try and catch it.

Stash or splash? Lawmakers ask NASA to find alternatives for International Space Station

Re: Based on past efforts (Skylab)

Although could NASA afford another $400 fine for littering?

That said, it was only actually paid in 2009, and not by them.

Europe shrugs off tariffs, plots to end tech reliance on US

Yes Minister...

The UK, Brexit or not, is heading the same way, putting more weight behind domestic AI compute, cloud infrastructure, and homegrown chip efforts.

So the UK govt AI policy will be running it on a Raspberry Pi 5 sitting somewhere in Whitehall?

Or at least it was until this morning's price rise announcement, which has probably put the hardware beyond the budget...

UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything

Council Coprolite

Companies that have signed up to the scheme include Microsoft and Cisco, each – we're told – with a particular focus on AI skills in adult education and SME support.

So basically MS have run out of orifices in Windows to stuff Coprolite, and so they're now resorting to attacking local councils with it?

Still, all those former coal mines in the area offer a very good place to bury it somewhat more permanently.

NASA delays Artemis II to March after hydrogen leaks bedevil countdown test

Not to mention communications issues and crew hatch problems being horribly reminiscent of the lead-up to the Apollo 1 fire.

DIY AI bot farm OpenClaw is a security 'dumpster fire'

Re: Use case?

it seems to have migrated from building a better (digital) mousetrap to a better Post-it note.

Except at $1.50 per hour, it most definitely isn't...

Techie's one ring brought darkness by shorting a server

Re: Lucky to still have his finger

And even when it's not in the "wrong place" (e.g. anywhere near the heart), the same induced muscle contractions can prevent you actually letting go if you've accidentally grabbed something live rather than just come into touching contact with it.

Re: #Where's me Jumper?#

I haven't heard of any airbags in the seat bases

I think that's more getting into James Bond ejector seat territory perhaps?

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

You worked on Bullseye and I claim my speedboat (or at least my BFH).