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Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Re: been on many courses where the trainer has no answers

"*I confess to also being a 'Pure Mathematician'. we have strange and interesting personalities and senses of humour. See:"

Ha! If you think I'm looking up an unexplained Youtube link on my work computer at lunchtime, you're in the wrong forum! My employer (understandably) takes a very dim view of such things - and as ex-Desktop Support and having had to clear up several messes (caused by others, not me...) so do I.

But if it's a Youtube vid starring a Mathematician - it wouldn't be Tom Lehrer, would it? And if not, why not??

Nuclear center must replace roof on 70-year-old lab so it can process radioactive waste

Re: too cheap to meter?

If renewables are getting "too cheap to meter", why do our bills keep going up faster and faster?

Somebody. somewhere is lying to you...

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

Re: *!$#&@ Bluetooth

"These days people don't even know how and when to properly wave a rubber chicken."

Oh, stick it up your nose!

Oh wait, was that fire? (Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?)

Mine's the one with the towel in the pocket...

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Re: Starlink?

I saw an article on MSN (I didn't say it was a good one - in fact, just read on...) that was a pretty transparent attempt to add another smear against Elon Musk, implying as it did that this was some terrible string of accidents that were happening because Musk Id Not A Nice Person and he is obviously conning people into buying Starlink kit when he knows the satellites won't stay up.

Unfortunately, like a lot of propaganda (regardless of whose side you're on, that's what a lot of it is - and both sides do it), it was the sort of article written for people who do not understand what is going on and why, by people who either have no clue either or, worse, do know what is going on and stir up trouble because they don't like someone - in this case, Musk.

Also unfortunately, too many people trust and believe the media hype and scare stories and don't bother asking if, maybe, the publisher has a reason to push that view.

Google teases AI Mode for search, giving Gemini total control over your results

Re: This is something Google has heard that "power users" actually want

Hallucinations are caused by one AI summarising the summaries of a summary from other AIs and not knowing the difference between reality and fiction.

I can still remember the laughs when someone on a science fiction mailing list received enquiries from an organisation who should have known better about the man-portable fusion gun he had listed on his website. All it would take is one bad summary from an A! and it might not be just an email next time...

Glitchy taxi tech blew cover on steamy dispatch dalliance

Re: Not so much over a dispatch system, but....

One thing I have noticed with a lot of anti-hunting people - they really have no idea what foxes do to all the cute little fluffy bunny-wunnies and squeaky little meeses they catch....

And no, they do not always eat everything they catch.

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: Defend

Guilty until proven innocent? That is basically what you are saying here - Big Brother should have access to everything we do just in case one of the people in your town is a danger to others.

It's not just choosing "the side of a mega-corporation", it is the privacy of everybody to whom the mega-corporation provides services for that is under threat here. And in case you have not noticed, even when the authorities DO have detailed knowledge of what someone is up to they somehow fail to protect the public - not always their fault, to be fair; the Home Office has a long list of people they want to deport for such "minor" things as being convicted criminals in their homeland or crimes committed in this country but they cannot do anything about these scumbags because the "human rights" lawyers value the "rights" of criminals over the rights of victims and potential victims.

This won't do much to prevent serious threats (do you think terrorists are stupid enough to use plain language in their comms, or that an "enemy state" won't give its personnel tailor-made equipment that doesn't go anywhere near publicly-accessible data stores) but it will add another vector for potential spying on their own citizens.

Odds of city-killer asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth creep upward

"Hot Fudge Sundae falls on a Tuesday?"

That is all.

DXC paid 50% more than original contract value for disastrous public sector Oracle project

Re: Local authority incompetence

Given most local authorities are clueless when it comes to technology full stop, this article comes as no surprise.

There, fixed that for you.

As a resident of East Sussex, the news that this bunch of clowns wants to merge responsibilities with Brighton & Hove as well as East Sussex does not exactly fill me with confidence.

AI pothole patrol to snap flaws in Britain's crumbling roads

Re: I have the misfortune to live in Surrey..

Seven Hills Road? Isn't that the one runs past one end of the St George's Hills estate? I would have thought SCC were rather keen to keep on the good side of multi-millionaires..?

Meta, X sign up to Euro Commish code of conduct on hate speech

"When Musk decided to make Twitter his personal propaganda channel..."

When people you support ban things, it is justified.

When Musk gives free reign to the lunatics so everyone can see them making fools of themselves, he is a nazi. Even though he hasn't issued edicts banning people from talking about things like the validity of the Covid lockdowns, the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, whether Donald Trump is a fit President and even whether he is a nazi, you say he is a bad man and using X as his personal propaganda channel.

Compare and contrast that with the way social media behaved under the last Administration and tell me who did more to stifle free speech.

Intel pitches modular PC designs to make repairs less painful

Re: WTF

I can remember seeing PC sizes given as LxHxW but never in litres - I need to know if it will fit in the space available on my desk, not how long it would take to pour it through a pipe.

And what's with insulting America because someone asked a perfectly reasonable question - if anything, suggesting PCs have been around since the days of Ancient Greece, and that Archimedes worked in litres, suggests the problem might not lie with the Left-Pondians in this instance... (or was that supposed to be funny?)

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

Re: Just another example...

Headley_Grange asked "So - why is it OK that people aren't protected when they are on a hobby site?"

Protected from what, exactly? People showing pictures or posting comments that someone (*) might find offensive? What about all those horror forums where people regularly discuss dismemberment and other nasty actions? What about wargaming forums where players regularly discuss attacking real places? What about fantasy and science fiction forums where the conversation can cover literally everything from weapons of mass destruction to ways to assassinate a planetary governer or wipe out entire bloodlines of orcs or goblins?

(*) Just as there will always be someone who will find anything you can think of to be erotic, so there will be someone who will take offence at anything you can think of. And with no need for actual proof of harm, the scope of this legislation is frightening. If you think you have nothing to worry about, just remember how many people have been taken to task for things they said or did when they were just starting college or university...

Mail-out madness as insurer offers refunds to customers in error

AI? What could go wrong?

"I still have the greatest confidence in the mission, Dave..."

Apple offers to settle 'snooping Siri' lawsuit for an utterly incredible $95M

Why is anyone surprised by this??

How does your device know you are talking to it? Unless you have to press a manual control to start the process, the only way it can respond as soon as you address it is IF IT IS ALWAYS LISTENING. Why do so many people not realise this??

People learn at an early age to filter out conversations we are not part of as anybody who works in a busy office can attest (unless, of course, someone is eavesdropping on other people's conversations - but that's another issue entirely!) - we are also good at ignoring/forgetting things we hear but weren't really meant to, but our electronic "servants" have the annoying habit of always listening and often passing the conversations back to the mothership for "training purposes" or whatever other excuse the PR flacks dream up.

The only way to be sure your e-thing is not listening is to turn it off. Or stick it in a sound-proof case.

"95 million is “utterly incredible”?"

Yes. Incredibly LOW. Think of how many people own one of these automated snoops and then divide the payout by the number of Users...

That position you just applied for might be a 'ghost job' that'll never be filled

Re: Misleading postings originate from HR departments

I particularly loathe the ads from the sponsor of the UK's current main live F1 broadcaster - "X and Y, Finance and HR - partnerships make success", or something like that - X and Y being something related to racing that actually do go well together.

Maybe if some companies went back to treating their staff as people rather than resources to be strip-mined, they might do better...

Jupiter's Great Red Spot wobbles like Jell-o, according to Hubble snaps

I still have the greatest confidence in this mission, Dave...

"All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landings there."

Tobacco giants don't get to decide who does research on smoking. Why does Facebook get to dictate studies?

Re: Oh Really?

"Facebook isn't "The Media" or "The Press"."

Does Facebook emulate the press, or does the press emulate Facebook?

"At least in the times before Facebook, we had to actively seek out these people's personal websites or individual blogs in order to read their dribble"

As against opening a newspaper or switching on the television? Either you didn't understand that the original poster was comparing Facebook and the media as purveyors of misinformation and pointing out that, functionally, the end result is the same regardless of who carries the information, or you deliberately tried to suggest there was no similarity, nothing to see, please move along...

Either way, large parts of the UK media are proving that, once again, they consider their own agenda more important than their job of reporting facts and not just their own opinions.

Scientists took cues from helicopter seeds to invent tiny microchips that float on wind

rEvolution

Anyone else remember the slightly dodgy post-apocalyptic "drama" about the world without electricity? Well, obviously by "the world" I do mean it was all about America, the US in particular - who it turned out had caused the whole sorry mess in the first place. And then had a chance to fix it but decided they liked nobody ever being able to generate electricity again...

Hmm, using pseudoscience and moral blackmail to force the world back to the Stone Age - now that I think about it, I wonder if the show was the inspiration for Extinction Rebellion ??

Troll jailed for 5 years after swatting of Twitter handle owner ends in death

You have gotta be SWATting me.

"but he's age being under the responsibility threshold should count towards some mitigation"

Why? In a world where 3- and 4-year olds are apparently self-aware and intelligent enough to decide they want gender reassignment surgery, how old do you need to be to realise that sending SWAT teams to somebody's address - especially if you have explicitly told them the person is armed and will resist - is likely to end in a very bad way?

If he's smart enough to work out which Twitter handles are the most valuable for his purposes, and he can work out how to get a group of like-minded thugs to go along with his plan, and he can work out where to get addresses, telephone numbers etc, then how do you figure his age has any relevance on how guilty the little piece of human excrement is? If it had been the first and only thig he did, and it had been to a "random stranger", then maybe - just maybe - he could claim to have not fully understood the potential consequences of his actions. But as it was part of an ongoing campaign - which only ended prematurely as it did because the victim DIED - there is absolutely no room for doubt that Sonderman knew exactly what he was doing. Five years is nowhere near long enough, especially if you remember Herring wasn't his only target.

Still think his age is any sort of defence?

United, Mesa airlines order 200 electric 19-seater planes for short-hop flights

What's that, London to Manchester?

"up to" 250 miles sounds good but it won't all be in the air - don't forget all that trundling along taxiways and aprons, I assume the engines won't consume power unless actually moving, like for cars? Although I wouldn't be too impressed to see the props keep stopping and starting as we move from terminal to runway...

Any idea how much power will be available for in-flight entertainment? Or even lighting/heating the cabin... Self-loading cargo tends to demand both.

Mines the one with the "I was a Fitter before Pontius was a Pilot" and "We never forget you have a choice" patches...

Leaked Apple memo tells employees that they'll be coming into the office at least 3 days a week from September

Re: Tough Call

A git is an awkward or obtuse person - it looks like Apple has a lot of gits. The word has been around a lot longer than some dodgy* data repository ;-).

*poetic licence - if it was dodgy, people would not use it and it would not be as successful as it is.

Hmmmmm, how to cool that overheating CPU, if only there was a solution...

no such thing as a stupid question?

I always tell anyone unlucky enough to have me train/tutor/mentor them, "The only really stupid question is the one you don't know the answer to but don't ask because someone said "everybody knows that!" - you don't know so there is a good possibility other people don't know either.

Asking questions is never stupid if you do not know or are not sure - not asking them can be very stupid indeed.

Hubble Space Telescope may now depend on a computer that hasn't booted since 2009

Re: The mirror replacement spacewalk was streamed.

Maybe they hoped it might be superseded by a bigger, more capable model before that became an issue?

FIJAGH.

MI5 still risks breaking the law on surveillance data through poor controls – years after it was first warned

Re: Get a grip....the authorities are breaking the law.....and not keeping us safe either.....

AC, "EVERY RECENT OUTRAGE" was also committed by someone who claimed to be committing their crimes because of their religion. Are you suggesting that the people who say the authorities should not be allowed to monitor people who follow certain religions might be wrong? (Note: yesterday, literally billions of Muslims did NOT commit atrocities. What does that say about those who use their religion as an excuse?)

And which is why I said "...TRYING to keep the streets safe..." - the Security Services don't have access to 'Minority Report'-style precognitives so have to rely on the limited resources they have available. Diverting more people and (taxpayer, as you pointed out) money to box-ticking and away from the reason they exist in the first place (protecting us) doesn't seem a fair trade to me. It's hard enough to keep the training records for a department of 150 people in an office building up-to-date, how hard do you think it is for an organisation the size of MI5 to keep everybody and their records up to date - especially when some of those people are not exactly in a position to attend the latest Equality and Diversity training on why it is a Hate Crime to "mis-gender" someone - do you have evidence of exactly which training has or has not been signed off because there is a huge difference between the ins and outs of GDPR and the evacuation procedures for the specific building you work in - except both are only a checkbox on the Training Record... and either counts as a "fail" in the report.

As for terrorists being out of prison "under licence", do you really know what that means? The UK is both fortunate and unfortunate to have a legal system where convicted criminals in prison can be granted parole *if they promise to obey the law in the future*. Fortunate because people who have genuinely seen the error of their ways and will be law-abiding citizens from now on can be released early as a gesture of good faith - if they break the law again before their original sentence would have been served, back they go. Unfortunate because people can - and do - promise to behave but then go straight back to their life of crime. What do you suggest, punish those who have reformed simply because there will always be people who cannot "play well with others"?

Is that it?

If that list of "Recommendations MI5 hasn't complied with" is it, then what the problem? Unless I'm missing something, that little lot boils down to "MI5 can't prove everyone has had all the most recent legal training" (points 2 and 3), "MI5 haven't thrown a bucketload of money at the lawyers" (point 4) and "MI5 haven't handed information to the civil service that could be used to identify sources when (not if) someone flaps their gums because they disagree with something Box or the Government did and want to embarrass them without giving a damn about giving away secrets" (point 11).

If that really is the sum of the things that have got the pencil-pushers at the Home Office in such a tailspin then they should be ashamed of themselves - which is more important, trying to keep the streets safe for everyone or proving that James Bond can quote Section 3, Subsection 4, Paragraph 5, points 3-17 of the Terrorist Protection Bill and knows not to copy-and-paste from one warrant request to another (and just how many ways are there to say "We know this person is up to no good but we need to prove it before the do-gooders set them free on a technicality - and the blighter goes off and does something a tad unpleasant")?

Besides, since when did completing the paperwork prove anything? Last I heard, civil servants were supposed to be bound by all sorts of confidentiality and secrecy legislation but that doesn't stop them gobbing off when someone says something they don't like...

No digital equivalent to the impulse aisle found as online grocery shoppers buy fewer sweet treats than in real life

Treats? I never ordered these "advisors" or whatever they call themselves either.

Instead of trying to improve my lifestyle by making my life as miserable as theirs seem to be, maybe these so-called "experts" could just Foxtrot Oscar and let me enjoy getting fat and old in my own way? If I want some overpaid self-important mouthpiece like Jamie Oliver telling me what I can and cannot eat then I will ask them. Until then, they can take their nutritional expertise and stick it where the sun don't shine.

Now that Trump is useless to Zuckerberg, ex-president is exiled from Facebook for two years, possibly indefinitely

I welcome our new Social Media Overlords

and eagerly look forwards to them telling me who to vote for. Anyone they recommend will immediately be removed from my list of people to vote for, and anyone with a large amount of Upvotes or Likes (or whatever their equivalent system is) will go on the "think very carefully" list.

I find it rather amusing that so many commentards remark on the (alleged) stupidity of Social Media users then go on and say almost the exact same things as those Social Media users they have just been nasty about.

European Parliament's data adequacy objection: Doubts cast on UK's commitment to privacy protection

EU Commision <> EU Parliament

The Commission is - or is allegedly - composed of decision makers with subject matter experts as advisors. The Parliament is a bunch of self-elected, self-serving politicians with an axe to grind and a vested interest in "persuading" organisations - especially financial service institutions - to leave the UK and set up business in EU nations (normally but not always France and Germany).

The Commission says what the UK have is adequate (not perfect). The politicians disagree.

Quelle surprise.

Facial recog firm Clearview hit with complaints in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and the UK

Re: Copyright as well as data protection

"I would think about $100 per infringement would be fair compensation to the copyright holders? "

Unfortunately those "copyright holders" would be the apps Clearview acquired the images from, not the people who took the pics in the first place. So all that money would be split between the lawyers and the Social Media companies who suffered such a great loss of their private data.

Damn, where's that Sarcasm tag gone.

Re: Clearview provides search services to law enforcement agencies

Upvoted for pointing out the idiocy of removing ALL images from their database, but the problem is that most of those images will be of people who have not and do not intend to go out and commit crime. Clearview should not be allowed to profit off sharing MY image with law enforcement groups on the off-chance I might, one day, break the law.

It is not just "leftist crap", it is a valid concern for the law-abiding amongst us and on top of which it's a a damn liberty - why should they get all the money?

Whoop! Robot/human high-fives all round! Oh, my fingers have disintegrated

You want the Syrius Cybernetics Corp?

Because *this* is how you get the Sirius Cybernetics Corp.

Or the Frogstar Robots, and I'm not too sure which would be worse.

BOFH: But we think the UK tax authorities would be VERY interested in how we used COVID support packages

The request for the new staircase

Is in the filing cabinet. In the Basement. Behind the sign saying "Beware of the Leopard". Beside the request for the new Basement lights.

And the request for a new staircase down to the basement...

Mine's a pan-galactic gargle-blaster, thank you.

Be careful, 007. It’s just had a new coat of paint: Today is D-day for would-be Qs to apply to MI6

They could tell you, but then they would have to "terminate you with extreme prejudice" as they used to say.

Mine's the one with "The Bluffers Guide to Espionage" in the lining...

Big red buttons and very bad language: A primer for life in the IT world

Re: Flashing leds on PDP-11

I think they were "grain-of-wheat" incandescent lamps not LEDs - and bulbs are what you plant to grow vegetables! (or that's one of my training officers repeatedly told us whenever anyone called a lamp a 'bulb'...)

Re: Replacement hardware?

In the UK, records are supposed to be kept for something like [(useful life of airframe)+50 years] in case of any questions arising. Which is fine, you can keep that room full of 2400ft mag tapes from your ICL systems for quite a while. Of course, finding a tape drive and a computer that can still read them might be a bit more problematic...

(not to mention problems like bleed-through, heat/moisture damage, the effects of an air traffic control radar just over the road, and all those million-and-one "minor" issues the beancounters conveniently ignored...)

All that Lego has a purpose: Researchers find that spatial memory improves kids' mathematical powers

Education for the masses?

If you can work out how long it will take you to get to a destination, you are doing maths. If you can get from where you started to where you wanted to end up without hitting anything then you are doing maths (someone/something hitting you doesn't necessarily mean *you* failed). Hacks me off no end when someone thinks that, because they can't write down the "correct" sequence of operations to do "real maths" that they cannot *do* maths.

Schools should spend less time pretending they can teach children everything they need to know and concentrate on giving them the tools to learn for themselves and the curiosity to want to learn.

Any society that allows itself to fall into the trap that schools can (or should) teach everything you will ever need to know is setting themselves up for trouble - it's how you end up with Cancel Culture and statues of Sir Isaac Newton being torn down and his name erased from the history books because he didn't do enough to fight racism and slavery.

New IETF draft reveals Egyptians invented pyramids to sharpen razor blades

Re: Reiki

If you have ever had a Reiki 'practitioner' squeeze your foot and felt something go all weird* in your back, you wouldn't be so quick to mock. It might not solve world hunger or stop missiles unexpectedly turning into bowls of petunias but it can be very relaxing...

* a sort of 'crunch' followed by a pleasant warmth that spread slowly. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in *your* philosophies...

Preliminary report on Texas Tesla crash finds Autosteer was 'not available' along road where both passengers died

Re: Into the rear seat?

"But getting into the back seat from the driver's seat in most modern vehicles requires quite a bit of acrobatics. Not impossible for a sixty year old. I did the reverse (back seat to front) a few times when my front door locks froze. But it wasn't especially easy."

When there are flames licking around the outside of your vehicle, many seemingly impossible feats of agility become surprisingly easy. Opening twisted/deformed doors, not so much.

Many people seem to be assuming the driver was deliberately responsible for the high speed and collision but drive-by-wire throttle control has previous when it comes to causing accidents - I would like to think that, at 59 and 69, the occupants had gotten past the "boy racer" stage and either the autothrottle went wrong or the driver accidentally hit the wrong pedal (preferably the latter!) Other than a suicide pact or murder/suicide plot, there are not that many reasons for people to try to do 60 on a residential road.

Microsoft demotes Calibri from default typeface gig, starts fling with five other fonts

Re: Fun with fonts

He's not at this end and he wasn't at the other end... I guess he must be somewhere else?

Don't cross the team tasked with policing the surfing habits of California's teens

Re: Free school meals

"Because there is an idea going around that nobody should ever get anything without paying for it."

Everything has to be paid for, or nothing at all can be paid for. If I work 40 hours a week and you do nothing, should I get anything as a reward for working? Or what if it was the other way around - you worked for 40 hours a week and I did nothing - should I have the same as you even though I have made no effort at all?

"To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities" sounds very good in theory but it relies on people behaving in an 'honourable' way.

Not all leeches are invertebrates.

Does the boss want those 2 hours of your free time back? A study says fighting through crowds to office each day hurts productivity

Re: "... expecting minions to re-embrace the daily commute"

"Some of out Ex-Pat British executives brought over an attitude of treating employees terribly. "

We had the same problem - but the other way around; our new American bosses couldn't understand why we had nearly a month's worth of Annual Leave that we could take whenever we wanted (within reason) and wanted to halve it, along with a load of other ideas that seem reasonable when you have "free" "limitless" Internet (at home they had 'unlimited' packages, in the UK the company paid for their internet service) but were not so great on the very limited services available to us minions, or when they were used to paying well under a buck a gallon for fuel at home and got it all on expenses over here, and lots of other such "minor" differences. They wanted to change everything to how it worked in the States with no regard for any effect on the staff.

It took a lot of work from a couple of valiant and patient Personnel staff to persuade them that maybe what works well State-side might not quite work so well this side of the Atlantic. It also probably led to the entire Personnel department being "onsourced" to an (American) Human Resources company and moved off to other clients shortly after...

Apple faces another suit over its allegedly misleading water resistance claims

Re: Apple only needs to show...

"they meet this IP68 test (whatever that is). It is probably ok for rain and bathwater."

...but if they promise "waterproof to depth x for y minutes" then it should be waterproof to depth x for y minutes. Your comparison with crumple zones and airbags on a car is worthy of Apple themselves - are you saying the airbags and crumple zones don't need to work as advertised if you hit a tree - as against what, the tree jumping out and attacking *you*? You smash the car up, they have a good reason to refuse to replace the bumper/fender under warranty since it's not "defective bodywork". But those airbags and crumple zones still have to work as warrented.

Maybe she would have kept her old iPhone rather than splashing out(!) on a new one that promised to be much more likely to survive an accidental dunking if Apple hadn't promised an improvement they completely failed to deliver?

MI5 wants to shed its cocktail-guzzling posho image – so it's opened an Instagram account

Re: Has it been long enough?

Methinks you doth protest too much - go on, you did get the job and are realy working for Box aren't you? :-D

Mine's the one with the well-thumbed copy of "The Bluffer's Guide to Espionage" in the lining... (pockets are for Amateurs!)

We admire your MOXIE, Earthlings: Perseverance rover gizmo produces oxygen for first time on Mars

Re: However, carbon dioxide breathing space aliens

So in case we haven't messed up earth's atmosphere enough, now we go and start changing the martians' air too. And people wonder why we never get invited to off-world parties...

Apple stung for $308m in battle over patent used in FairPlay DRM software

"Anything created 40 years ago should be free for humanity to build on and innovate with[...]"

Good luck with Disney's lawyers on that one. Will you be supplying popcorn?

'No' does not mean 'yes'... unless you are a scriptwriter for software user interfaces

Listening to '1984' on audiobook

Newspeak is becoming a reality. And with the latest attempt to add misogyny as a Hate Crime to be punished by law, we move another step closer to Thoughtcrime too. And if the Scottish Parliament make good their intention to make hate speech illegal *in your own home*, will they be able to demand Alexa, Ciri, Cortana and any other current or future digital "assistant" be used to spy on their inmates... sorry, "citizens"?

It's wild the lengths Facebook engineers will go to find new ways to show you inane ads about tat: This time, AR...

Holographic interfaces

The Traveller role-playing game has had various types of holographic and holo-dynamic control interfaces since the days before Star Wars got renamed "A New Hope"...

Can Marc Miller and friends claim prior art and offer to licence it to Facebook for some eye-watering sum?

NASA shows Mars that humans can drive a remote control space tank at .01 km/h

"The name's Wells, Dry Martian Wells..."

"No-one would have believed, in the last years of the Brobnith Century, that Martian affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No-one would have believe that, across the gulfs of space, minds immeasurably inferior to ours would be trying to find the life that mimes and mimsies beneath the red dust of out homeworld.

Then those daft buggers on the third planet started chucking their robot probes at us, and started making rude drawings in the sand.