Posts by Uncle Slacky

Unity and Trinity: New releases for forks of abandoned Linux desktops

Re: A new version of Trinity is always welcome

Q4OS Trinity (Debian-based) and EXE GNU/Linux (Devuan-based) both run well on old netbooks.

John Deere tractors 'bricked' after Russia steals machinery from Ukraine

ITYM Cornhub...

Worried about being replaced by a robot? Become a physicist

Re: Amen .....

The mice told me it was 42.

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

Re: Screen memory layout

I can understand the two-colour-per-character-block limitation, but why was the pixel "map" divided into three blocks instead of one simple top-to-bottom (or vice versa) block?

US Space Force unit to monitor region beyond Earth's geosynchronous orbit

Re: Don’t look up.

"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

https://youtu.be/kuPh6TfK4iY?t=92

Amazon warehouse workers in New York unionize in historic win against web giant

To summarise...

..."If you have a boss, you need a union".

GParted 1.4: New version of live partition-manipulation tool

Re: Low RAM tips?

Rescatux or Refracta might work better for you.

Debugging source is even harder when you can't stop laughing at it

Re: Window titles too

Yes, we had that one too!

Window titles too

A common window title in our department was "X blows goats" or similar. There were also conditionals or loop endings of the style "fat_lady = has_sung".

EU, US agree on Privacy Shield enhancements

Re: Wait and see ...

More worried about Priti Vacant:

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jan/13/how-will-the-police-and-bill-limit-the-right-to-protest

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Re: Linux on a foobared HDD

Testdisk (photorec) is what you should have used:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/testdisk/

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

Re: How did it come to this?

That's why Sci-Hub and Library Genesis exist.

BBC points Russians to the Tor version of itself

Re: Fahrenheit 451

My ISP seems to be blocking it, but Firefox (with DNS over HTTPS enabled) works fine.

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

"Fun" audio clips

> merrily rejigging System 6 with ResEdit to make my Mac SE/30 blurt out audio snippets

I made my IIsi play the entire intro from The Prisoner on bootup (the audio file took up a sizable proportion of the 80Mb hard drive - I'd recorded it off the telly). The error sound was Ren Höek saying "You eeeee-diot!" (actually taken from the resource fork of the game Maelstrom - still a great version of Asteroids, incidentally).

Re: The joys of modifying windows sounds...

I configured an SE/30 to say "I am completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfeectly" on startup.

Google to wind down pandemic work-from-home

Re: What I learned from the Pandemic

We've certainly had to retire use of the phrase "Avoid x like the plague", given the evidence that such a large proportion of the population wouldn't.

Amazon Alexa can be hijacked via commands from own speaker

Why give it house room?

Unless I was elderly/disabled, I can't see any reason for keeping a listening device in my house. I'm obliged to have a smartphone, but I run an audio jammer (PilferShush) on it at all times.

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

> Anyone noticed that _nobody_ is building a device like this right now?

Raspberry Pi 400 (mentioned in the headline) and ZX Spectrum Next are two that immediately spring to mind...

UK's new Brexit Freedom Bill promises already-slated GDPR reform, easier gene editing rules

Re: no checks are done when registering companies at Companies House

> p.s. I love those abbreviations, 4B here, 2.4B there...

Pretty soon you're talking real money...

New York Times outlays seven-figure sum for 1,900 lines of JavaScript – yes, we mean Wordle

Re: What have they actually bought?

Yep, "Word Mastermind" dates from 1975:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)#Variations

Re: hangman

It's a variation on Mastermind - in fact there was a "Word Mastermind" variant back in the 70s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)#Variations

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel green-lights Mike Lynch's extradition to US to face Autonomy fraud charges

Re: A question about her name.

I was thinking more along the lines of "Priti Vacant".

Wolfing down ebooks during lockdown? You might want to check out Calibre, the Swiss Army ebook tool

Re: Upwards thumb

On Android (F-Droid) I use LibreraPro.

Privacy is for paedophiles, UK government seems to be saying while spending £500k demonising online chat encryption

Re: Encryption

No, *physics* kills people.

BeOS rebuild / Haiku has a new feature / that runs Windows apps

Runs great on the original eeePC

In case anyone else wants to breathe new life into their old eee, Haiku works well on my 701 4G (even the wifi!).

Who you gonna call? Premium numbers, but a not-so-premium service

Re: 555

It was usually "KLondike" (for obvious reasons if you know where K and L are on the phone).

US distrust of Huawei linked in part to malicious software update in 2012

Re: Smellycat

"Everyone I disagree with is a Russian bot"

Re: Smellycat

Here's a recent summary of some of Bellingcat's work:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/04/30/war-propaganda-firm-bellingcat-continues-lying-about-syria/

I don't doubt that they do "good stuff" too, but that makes it easier to hide the disinformation/misinformation when required.

Consent manufacturing go brrrr.....

US grounds investors in Chinese drone maker DJI over 'Xinjiang human rights abuses'

Relevant: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/11/19/nobody-who-says-you-can-criticize-washington-and-beijing-actually-does/

"The US empire has killed millions and displaced tens of millions in its still-ongoing global “war on terror” since 9/11. It is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, its sanctions and blockades are starving people to death en masse every single day, and it actively works to destroy any nation whose government disobeys its commands.

Nothing China is doing rises anywhere near this level of evil, either within its own borders or on the world stage. This is evident even if you believe every single claim the western empire has been asserting about the Chinese government’s behavior (which would of course be a very silly thing to do)."

Re: "[China's] actions are designed to prevent terrorism"

The source here is the infamous Adrian Zenz, of course:

https://jamestown.org/product/sterilizations-iuds-and-mandatory-birth-control-the-ccps-campaign-to-suppress-uyghur-birthrates-in-xinjiang/

£42k for a top-class software engineer? It's no wonder uni research teams can't recruit

Re: Wait. what?

Don't jump to conclusions! At least, not without this mat...

Google Chrome's upcoming crackdown on ad-blockers and other extensions still really sucks, EFF laments

Opera, Brave and Vivaldi won't be implementing it:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-chromes-anti-ad-blocker-changes-despite-shared-codebase/

Re: deal breaker

Opera, Brave and Vivaldi have stated that they won't be implementing this change:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/opera-brave-vivaldi-to-ignore-chromes-anti-ad-blocker-changes-despite-shared-codebase/

Google joins others in Big Tech: Get vaccinated – or you're fired

Re: Unbelievably

> A certtain cult founded by a person rhyming with Elrond (tm) is now spewing anti-vaxx propaganda as part of their recruitment procedure.

Maybe the vaccine kills off your body thetans?

How to destroy expensive test kit: What does that button do?

Found the other Dataflex programmer! I did (local) government work too (careers services).

China's Yutu rover spots 'mysterious hut' on far side of the Moon

Re: Get the popcorn ready....

A whalers' hut, shirley?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8V2U7vTys0

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

Re: Gravity

Join us at APEC if you'd like to know more: https://www.altpropulsion.com

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

Re: Disappointing

I'm sure codejunky will be along shortly, or would be if there was an EU/Brexit angle.

Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don't play ball in future

Re: "Western governments detain people too"

> As soon as you start cracking down on people who say they don't like you or what you're doing, Democracy has gone out the window.

Just ask Julian Assange(tm)...

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

Re: Kerching

ITYM "Yellow Peril", shirley?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril

Re: History Repeating

I thought that link was going to be this: https://youtu.be/kuPh6TfK4iY?t=92

"Mr President, we must not allow a hypersonic gap!"

(relevant icon)

In the '80s, spaceflight sim Elite was nothing short of magic. The annotated source code shows how it was done

They were the most profitable items, apart from maybe gems and alien artifacts...

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Re: Back in the early 90's

ITYM Sinclair QL, not Spectrum.

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

Re: Right to repair?

Or reprogrammed with a large axe, to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams.

Say what you see: Four-letter fun on a late-night support call

Re: 800008

Given it was ICL, I'd have expected an "STC" error...

Re: The joys of the phonetic alphabet

Relevant Family Guy: https://youtu.be/4-ohJ6oXGkI?t=13

Labour Party supplier ransomware attack: Who holds ex-members' data and on what legal basis?

Re: Didn't Labour recently recruit a former Israeli Spy

For the downvoter: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/uk-labour-party-hires-former-israeli-spy

Remember when you thought fax machines were dead-matter teleporters? Ah, just me, then

Re: October 21, 2015

YOU'RE FIRED!!!!!!

50 years have gone by since the UK's one – and only – homegrown foray into orbit

Re: Previously on The Register:

Ignition! can be downloaded in PDF form here:

http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

Analogue tones of a ZX Spectrum Load set to ride again via podcast project

Re: Inner City Unit did this on vinyl years ago

So did the Buzzcocks:

https://bellyfeel.co.uk/2012/07/1983-buzzcocks-pete-shelley-and-the-xl1-zx-spectrum-program/