Posts by Johnny Canuck

Humanoid robot takes a retail job, but not one any store clerk wants to do

The 3 laws

Will be put to the test when it encounters "Karen".

'Multiple security breaches' shut down trucker protest

Certainly, the Canadian government deserved attacking but, attacking science? How so? Attacking brown people? Again, how so?

Microsoft warns Direct Access on Windows 10 and 11 could be anything but

No DHCP

DHCP on my Windows 11 laptop stopped working last night after a reboot. None of the usual fixes for network issues worked. I don't need this laptop for work, so I downloaded Linux Mint and I'm installing it tonight.

After config error takes down Rogers, it promises to spend billions on reliability

CTO also gone

Jorge Fernandes will be succeeded by Ron McKenzie as the new CTO immediately.

If anyone can explain why Jupiter's Great Red Spot is spinning faster and shrinking, please speak up

My 3 guesses

1.Cthulhu awakening.

2.Solar fuse is burning down (when it stops Jupiter becomes a small star).

3.Planetary acne.

Windows 11 will roll out from October 5 as Microsoft hypes new hardware

I installed Windows 11 on my Windows 10 laptop (core i5 7th gen Kaby Lake). I bought a new hard drive for the install so I wouldn't screw up my Windows 10. Strangely, I had to disable Secure Boot in the BIOS to install it (probably because I used ISO+Rufus to make the USB). My Windows 10 was installed with legacy BIOS so I had to disable that and enable UEFI. Still have not enabled Secure Boot and everything seems to working OK.

Survey of astronomers and geophysicists shines a light on 'bleak' systemic bullying

"44 per cent of respondents SAID they had suffered bullying and harassment"

That doesn't mean they actually did suffer bullying and harassment. For example, just before I sat down to read this article I was walking down the street to my home. There happened to be a 30ish woman walking in front of me. Just as I reached the walkway to my door she turned around and said "What the fuck are you doing?". I pointed to my door and said "I'm going in here, what the fuck are you doing?". She just assumed I was walking behind her to "check her out" or otherwise harass her. She was mistaken, but I bet when she tells the story to her friends it will morph into an actual harassment.

Michigan Micro Mote works well escargot: Tiny computer makes it into the field strapped to backs of predatory snails

Slow news day

Heh, I see what you did there. Seriously, snails prey on other snails? That must be some gripping chase action.

PCs continue to sell like hot cakes and industry can barely keep up with demand – analyst

Can't buy a video card

I just built a new Ryzen system and I'm stuck using my old GTX 1050 because there are no new video cards available at a decent price.

Dam it: Beaver ate our internet, says tiny Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge

Its much more serious...

Than missing an episode of Due South. Saturday night is Hockey Night in Canada night!

Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network

TD may have seen the writing on the wall as they are into the cheque cashing by picture business.

Windows might have frozen – but at least my feet are toasty

xorg.conf

I discovered you could overdrive a monitor by editing xorg.conf in Linux (I think it was an early version of Red Hat Linux). This made a nice snap sound accompanied by flames shooting out the top vents of the monitor. Heh, good times.

A tale of two nations: See China blast off from the Moon as drone shows America's Arecibo telescope falling apart

Gravity

Is a cruel mistress.

Master boot vinyl record: It just gives DOS on my IBM PC a warmer, more authentic tone

retro computers

Many retro nerds boot cassette files on retro computers by converting the files to .wav and then connecting to the computer's cassette port with their phones or another computer. Of course you need a headphone jack for that. One guy even burned them as audio files on a CD. basically you can use anything that will output a .wav file. Or just use a cassette player.

Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party

lotus

Back in the late eighties my friend and I got our hands on Lotus 123. The very first thing he did with it was make a database of his music collection. I recall shaking my head and saying "That's not what you're supposed to do with it".

Microsoft doc formats are the bane of office suites on Linux, SoftMaker's Office 2021 beta may have a solution

MS core fonts?

In Linux you should install the "Microsoft Core fonts" otherwise your "office" program will make a font substitution which can screw with your formatting.

https://www.onmsft.com/how-to/how-to-install-microsoft-fonts-on-linux

Canada's .ca overlord rolls out free privacy-protecting DNS-over-HTTPS service for folks in Great White North

Maple syrup reserve

You might think that graphic depicting the hockey player in front of a white board is amusing, but we really do have a maple syrup reserve.

Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file

This is exactly what the internet was designed for

No, this is what the internet is for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4glrmcMhKU

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

How about

Converting 8 bit ASCII to 5 bit Baudot so you can use a 1930s mechanical teletype as a Linux terminal. A thing of beauty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLZ4Z8LpEE

Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much

Finally

I get to tell the story of the time I went onsite to fix a problem with a young woman's computer. This was around 1999 or 2000, maybe 2001. This was also when hi-speed internet was just becoming a thing in Canada.

She was complaining that her computer was very slow so I looked at the hard drive properties and saw the drive was full. While checking the file system I found a huge folder. Looking in the folder (with the woman looking over my shoulder), I discovered thousands of videos of her "performing".

It turned out the young lady was into the business of being a cam girl. She had joined a site which men would sign on to and use their credit card to view live webcam videos of the girls and also chat. The girls would receive their cut from the site.

I told her she didn't need to keep the videos and she should delete them regularly to keep the drive running smoothly - or get a second drive. Then I deleted most of the videos.

I got several more jobs from her and she recommended me to her friend who had a 2 camera setup.

Exchange some currency you want to? Guess the BIOS setup keyboard combination first you must, young Padawan

Battery

That is the BIOS build date. The current date is set to 03/25/2020.

Xilinx's high-end Versal FPGA is like a designer handbag. If you need to ask the price, you probably can't afford it

Goody

Can't wait to try out my 8 bit MC6809 on it!

One for the super rich fanbois: Ultra-rare functional Apple-1 computer goes on auction

Typical overpriced Apple tat.

After 1.5 million days of computer time, SETI@home heads home to probe potential signs of alien civilizations

Hmm

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

― Arthur C. Clarke

Love T-shirts, but can't be bothered to wash them? We've seen just the thing!

If you're a Bogart type sailing down the Ulanga river with an obnoxious female missionary.

Medical biz LifeLabs fesses up: Hackers slurped 15 million customer records – and we paid them to hand it all back

This was not NCIX (of Linus Sebastian fame). If I recall, the servers were bought somewhere? and the seller was offering to leave the data on for a pile of extra money.

I seem to remember a while back someone bought some servers at an auction in B.C. and there was a ton of data on them. Since the data is from 2016 or earlier the timeline would just about line up.

Following the wild, roaring success of its Snapdragon 8cx Arm laptop chip, Qualcomm's back with the 8c, 7c

...and a trip to Maui.

It woz The Reg wot won it! Big Blue iron relics make it back to Blighty

I hope they video everything and post it to youtube or something like curiousmarc does.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3bosUr3WlKYm4sBaLs-Adw

How much is your face worth? Google thinks a $5 Starbucks gift card should be good enough

Well, if they want to cough up a $5 gift card every time they access the image, then great.

Hey, it's Google's birthday! Remember when they were the good guys?

Back when Google first appeared it was the page load speed that hooked me. Previously I used Altavista and since I was using dialup the page load times were horrendous.

Pro tip: Plug in your Tesla S when clocking off, lest you run out of juice mid hot pursuit

Here n the Great White North we have a different problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsxV49pmnL8

Google age discrimination case: Supervisor called me 'grandpa', engineer claims

"calling him "grandpa","

Umm...at 72 he probably is a "grandpa". I'm 10 years younger and have been a grandpa for 15 years now.

Be still, our drinking hearts: Help Reg name whisky beast conjured by Swedish distillers and AI blendbot

CTRL/ALT/DEL

Techie with outdated documentation gets his step count in searching for non-existent cabinet

One of the guys I do work for asked me if I had a computer that could backup older IDE drives. He said the computer was used to control some kind of laser and they didn't want to buy a whole new computer and laser system. I do have older computers with IDE and floppy drive controllers on the motherboard so I said I could probably do it. He sent me pictures of some old cabinet with an gigantic MFM hard drive in it. It was a PDP-11. I declined the job.

Make America Infringe Again: Trump campaign video pulled over Batman copyright

In olden days...

We had empires run by emperors, and kingdoms run by kings. Now we have countries run by... er, you figure it out.

Want to tell the world what you’re doing with AI? You’ve got 12 days...

Check out this amazing AI powered robot painter!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEfpZYYX9p8

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

Younger days

I once returned to our work site (an enclosed space) first after lunch. I let rip and immediately realized my error. The enclosed space quickly became saturated with a thick gag-inducing stench (I'd been drinking the night before). Not wanting to be blamed for such a foul odor I quickly left the site and hid around the corner. My four workmates returned from lunch and walked right into our workspace, only to come running out moments later exclaiming about the stench and blaming each other. A few minutes later I joined them to innocently ask what the problem was. I still chuckle to myself whenever I remember this.

Super-crook admits he nicked $122m from Facebook, Google by sending staff fake invoices for tech kit

Old as the hills

Before computers were a thing, the company I worked for used to receive fake invoices for reams of typewriter paper.

Super Cali optimistic right-to-repair's negotious, even though Apple thought it was something quite atrocious

@DougS

People do desolder and solder tiny components on phones and laptop motherboards. See any number of videos by Jessa Jones and Louis Rossman. The Guy from "Parts Unknown" even added a headphone jack to his iPhone 7.

Liz Warren: I'll smash up Amazon, Google, and Facebook – if you elect me to the White House

I'd argue she is best known for claiming she is native american indian.

God DRAM, that's a big price drop: Memory down 30 per cent, claim industry watchers

desktop becomes an anachronism?

You'll have to pry my desktop out of my cold dead hands.

It's not your imagination: Ticket scalper bots are flooding the internet according this 'ere study

Solution - no online sales.

Roses are red, this is sublime: We fed OpenAI's latest chat bot a classic Reg headline

Hmph!

A Man from Mars is much better.

I studied hard, I trained for years. Yay, now I'm an astronaut in space. Argggh, leukemia!

I'll just leave this here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QD1GbIRavA

Canadians moot methods to embiggen moose monument and make Mac great again

Moose can be dangerous

And also delicious.

Crispest image yet of Ultima Thule arrives on Earth, but grab a coffee while the rest downloads

Silly

They should just "torrent" it instead.

Human StarCraft II e-athletes crushed by neural net ace – DeepMind's AlphaStar

I watched it.

It strangely had a problem with repeated drops in its home base. Alphastar would start moving out and MaNa would drop 2 Immortals in its mineral line. Then Alphastar would bring its army back and MaNa would retreat. Rinse, repeat. This allowed MaNa enough time to build a strong army and eventually roll over Alphastar.

Funnily enough, China fuming, senator cheering after Huawei CFO cuffed by Canadian cops at Uncle Sam's request

the Canadian president Justin Trudeau

Shirley you meant Prime Minister.

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

file sharing

Anybody tried to do workgroup file sharing on windows 10? What a screwed up mess.