Posts by Evil Auditor

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

there's no fridge

Well, there sort of is although with huge restrictions. Like my isolated 80486DX2 on Win3.1 that runs some legacy hardware with a certain legacy software. Unfixable if anything breaks.

Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson

Re: Notes? How old school!

You arrive with a clear idea of what you do and do not understand -to clarify those questions- and are prepared to deepen your knowledge.

(At least for me, I don't need someone lecturing me on what I can just as well read in a textbook.)

Re: Notes? How old school!

And this is why you should attend prepared, i.e. already having a good understanding of what is being lectured. (That, of course, depends on knowing beforehand what topic will be covered...)

Scientists, why not simply invent a working fusion plant using $50m from Uncle Sam

Re: Given the average incandescent bulb is 60W

Where could you even find (buy) an average incandescent bulb these days?

Ever suspected bankers could just use WhatsApp comms? $1.8b says you're right

Re: Do as we say, not as we do

As much as this is indeed wrong, I would also question what kind of contemporary communication means are provided?

When facing the same WhatsApp problem, some military service on the other side of the pond responded with deploying a similar but more secure and more private app.

"Finance, ultimately, depends on trust..."

Yeah right. And why again do I have the impression that "big finance" has been doing whatever they can to destroy that trust?

Can reflections in eyeglasses actually leak info from Zoom calls? Here's a study into it

Re: IgNobel 2023

I'd rather we'd return to wearing masks. I feel that about 110% of all people look better with a surgical mask. Sunglasses is a plus (elevates the leak problem though).

Re: Hmm, better stop using the 4k camera to stream...

Oh it's you, Hank! Glad to hear you were watching porn. Until now we always thought you were wanking to the other participants or the Zoom call itself which felt a bit weird.

How one Ukrainian software maker planned for survival as invaders approached

...and we are in a major crisis when the automated coffee maker refuses to deliver auditors' fuel.

PC component scavenging queue jumper pulled into line with a screensaver

Had the guy any sense,

he wouldn't have behaved the way he did in the first place.

Exactly that one. And repeated offenders invite the department to after-work drinks or such...

Not a screensaver, but when we find an abandoned computer with an unlocked screen, its user might return to a fake (and endless) Windows update.

_{You'll surely find the corresponding website yourself.}

The secret to Sparrow, DeepMind's latest Q&A chatbot: Human feedback

...software, however, often picks up bad traits from the source material resulting in it regurgitating offensive, racist, and sexist views...

Simple criteria to detect a machine: if the answers given do not express offensive, racist, or sexist views, it will not pass the Turing test.

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

Re: Facilities 'so called' experts

So, when did they die in nasty workplace accidents?

Re: What?

So who starts a building refurb without consulting with the facultyfacilities dept?

Exactly. Had no issue with water but when an existing room had been newly appointed as data centre, we found that its concrete ceiling did not meet the required specs. So we had to reinforce the ceiling with glueing carbon fibre ribbons underneath (whatever the technical term for this is, idk).

Update your Tesla now before the windows put your fingers in a pinch

Re: Beauty or beast

This is exactly what scares the shit out of me.

Japanese boffins build solar-powered, remote-controlled cyborg cockroach

Re: Ethics

There are no ethical concerns.

What a load of manure! Of course, there are -and better be- ethical concerns. After all, it's a living being being used, maybe abused, for the pleasure of scientists. Now, with the electric stimulation of the cockroaches, it may very well be for the pleasure of the roaches, too. But that is beyong the point; we simply have to make sure that any possible suffering of the roaches is justified by the possible outcome and goal of the experiment - which I doubt in this case. I mean, rescueing people from a collapsed building, seriously?!

However, if, for example, we could make a swarm of roaches prepare me a cuppa in the morning an bring it to the bedside, that'd be quite something...

Re: Sunlight

Yes, and the cockroaches did indeed stay in the light. But the problem just shifted as then they've been quickly picked by birds.

US accident investigators want alcohol breathalyzers in all new vehicles

Re: Not again...

evolution took care of these idiots before their genes could be passed on

Evidently, this did not happen. My best guess is: contraceptive isn't foolproof either.

Chinese-linked cyber crims nab $529 million from Indian nationals

Re: Love when the Indian scammers call

The icing on the cake... Just imagine:

"Officer, they scammed three gazillion rupees out of me!" - "Erm, sir, how did you get that much wealth in the first place??" - "Scam. I mean: Microsoft Support Calls"

Re: There’s a twist

Well, I have generally not an awful lot of sympathy for people falling victim of scams - specifically if the scam relies on people's greed and/or belief in magic. And I do see it as a bit ironic that in this case it has been "India" being scammed. However, I have zero sympathy for your Dear India, I have zero sympathy as it somehow implies that it is the whole nation being scammers.

Chinese researchers make car glide 35mm above ground in maglev test

Re: Stopping

Hmm, rotate it 90 degrees* and switch the magnets off. What could go wrong?

_{* watching the video, it seems rather a challenge to keep it straight anyway}

Re: Cough

...this is just a PR/propaganda project to make CCP China look all sciency and technologically advanced...

If the great leader/party asks for a hover car, it gets a hover car.

Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂

Re: Better yet...

I had a laptop killed by Ovaltine

That's nothing. When I was a kid, Ovaltine nearly killed me! Yes, it took me a little while to realise that I cannot stand that stuff.

Re: Better yet...

I cleverly managed to pour the better part of a coke (beverage, not marching powder) into my work laptop. Off to the toilet and under the tap with warm water for a little while. Leaving it to dry, ie passenger seat while driving home, and all was fine.

Water usually is not that bad for electronics. Sugery, sticky, corrosive stuff is what gets it.

Meta disbands Responsible Innovation team, spreads it out over Facebook and co

approaching homeopathic levels of uselessness

This is exactly the objective.

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

I once worked for a company that replicated their acronyms in job ads. Not even I, as an employee, understood this manure.

Man wins competition with AI-generated artwork – and some people aren't happy

Re: Read this elsewhere and said

"Who decides that someone's childish scrawl is worth millions and another childish scrawl is just a childish scrawl?"

The art market. A highly intransparent market, that is. Take the example of some Young British Artist (not that young any more): they managed to stir up quite a hype resulting in art dealers to stock up on their art. Then some YBA started to mass-produce their crapart and in doing so, forced art dealers, who still had full inventories, to buy even more to keep the prices up in order to protect their own inventories...

In short: what someone is willing to pay.

Some years ago Banksy was selling his art, anonymously, in NYC for a few USD. Once word got out that they are original Banksys, their value increased to 10'000s of quid - a price no one would have paid in the stall in NYC. Somehow perverse, isn't it? Same madness with some people buying bragging rights via NFTs.

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

I have no idea what you're on about. But my medical incompetence asks: did you forget to take your pills?

scnr

Re: false comparison

Instead they get...

Nevertheless, their software still lives on for (too) long, sometimes decades. It will not die in glory nor rain fiery death. But it might cause some hot heads and creeping morbidly from under the floor to bite you in your bottom painfully.

_{I'd like to believe that I didn't create such legacy myself. I've seen some of those though which I wouldn't touch with a pole.}

Underwater datacenter will open for business this year

Re: On Call

And I was once worried with a fish pond on the roof of a data centre.

Doctor gave patients the wrong test results due to 'printer problems'

Guilty as stated. At least on some occasions. But I fully agree with you. Might it be that ICT people are not as smart as they'd like to think they are?

Thank you for reminding me of The Human Centipede. Not.

Zuckerberg: Yes, Facebook kept Hunter Biden's laptop under wraps

I see people...

Now my mind can't quite make its mind up whether it wants to read this Sixth Sense-like or rather understands it as in the Operating Thetan crap "walk around and counts bodies until you have a cognition." Creepy either way.

GitHub Copilot may be perfect for cheating CompSci programming exercises

Re: Use custom language?

The following decade, writing «pseudo code» on paper were many of my programming exams.

Keep your cables tidy. You never know when someone might need some wine

Re: So an annualised uptime of less than 75%

No yobbo's or lookie-lou's allowed.

Erm, yes. That is, until I came across that client: the complete staff was allowed to enter its server room. I did not like it and asked them to restrict access to those who actually need to access it. And their response: "We did." - ??? - "It's the coolest room and we store the beverages in there so everyone needs access."

BOFH: Who us? Sysadmins? Spend time with other departments?

Bullshit jobs

I'm in a bit of a bullshit job myself - advising people on how to do things they wouldn't need to do if it wasn't for people like me requiring them to do those things.

But what a fscked up fsck! There actually are Internal Relationship Manager jobs out there! Can people in such jobs even qualify as sentient beings?

Ex-CISA chief Krebs calls for US to get serious on security

Re: The comments section on this article is FUBAR

Erm, no. It's only that you've been successfully hacked.

_{Edit: sorry.}

You'll soon be able to ghost a WhatsApp group without making everyone hate you

Re: Thank god

I'd say: teach them a healthy handling of peer pressure. That your kids can join and leave as they feel like and not based on what they fear someone else might be thinking of them or, worse, how someone else is treating them.

Then again, it's easy to say for anti-social me. So it might indeed by a good thing what WA implemented

Electrical explosion at Google datacenter injures three

Well, years ago, in a different life, we had some Google appliances in our data centre. The Google draft contract had a disclaimer that they are not liable for any deaths resulting from the use of their appliances. We read, sniggered, and had it removed from the agreement. But now I start to understand why they wanted it in the first place...

Atari Video Computer System returns in Lego form

Re: £209?

I saw the price and then my brain refused to process non-functioning. So for a little while I tried to figure out how this bricked bricks work.

China allows robo taxis – without backup drivers – in parts of two major cities

Re: Shame

They could end up going round running everyone over...

Mao: "We have a very large territory and a big population. Robot cars could not kill all of us."

Yeah, we'll just take that first network handshake. What could possibly go wrong?

...before we had implemented much of a change management system...

There, that's the problem. Although in all fairness, sometimes it's a bit tricky to reproduce a full production load in a test environment and some problems may remain concealed during test...

Claims of AI sentience branded 'pure clickbait'

Re: Definition

Is your dog sentient/conscious?

Absolutely. It certainly has an understanding of himself as an entity, of belonging, and of food. For he surely believes that all food belongs to him.

NASA to send prototype robot surgeon into space

Re: Robotic surgery....

As tragic as this is, there is no risk-free surgery, being it humans or ribots doing the job.

Interesting to see how differently exactly it behaves in micro gravity.

Otherwise, wake me again when we see the likes as documented in the Alien franchise.

Scientists use dead spider as gripper for robot arm, label it a 'Necrobot'

So, a dead spider is more useful and successful than those arcade claw machines

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: UV check lamps

I wasn't exactly accused of counterfeit but when coming south to Devon and attempting to pay at a pub with a 20-pound note printed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the note got declined for "being expired". I failed to make the barkeeper understand that Scotland does in fact print perfectly valid GBP notes.

Security flaws in GPS trackers can be abused to cut off fuel to vehicles, CISA warns

Re: Cut off fuel ?

I lost all hope when realising how many fellow IT guys have had the attitude "There's a fridge connected to the internet? Take my money!" Or maybe I'm just part of the stupid section of IT...