Posts by Lord Elpuss

BMW adds games to the 5 series but still ain't the Ultimate Gaming Machine

Re: Oh my.

Maybe you should stop trying to dictate to others how they should run their lives. Your way isn't their way. Mind your own business, and stop being such an arrogant nagging little busybody.

Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it...

Re: A complaint about complaints

” Or you could look at who wrote it.“

Your name means nothing to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: A complaint about complaints

Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it... World's largest laptop vendor releases whizzy x86 - but we could do with a better Windows rescue party

Title says it's about the ThinkPad Z13 and Windows, not about Linux. If you want to write about Linux, put it in the damn title. Or even in the subtitle. I have zero interest in Linux, so if it was mentioned I'd have skipped it and not wasted my time reading about somebody else's inability to use a product as designed.

Sooo... you shredded the Windows partition, overwrote the EFI and then spent half this article complaining about it. I'm Mac through and through and no fan of Windows, but even I was offended reading this trash. Either use (and review) it as designed, or STFU about how it wasn't able to recover from your butchery.

FFS.

Unlike your iPhone, Apple's batterygate controversy refuses to die

"The complicating factor is that Apples power management is absolute shit"

Evidence?

Thought not.

Apple pushes first-ever 'rapid' patch – and rapidly screws up

I really, really don't like the way this is going.

My device is my device. That means I get to decide what happens to it. And yes, if I fail to apply an update and it gets exploited, I end up in trouble; but I want to make the decision to solve it or not.

Any device that allows another entity to make critical system-level changes without consulting with you, isn't your device.

Mars Helicopter completes 50th flight, 45 more than NASA planned

Re: Cool.

Fully agree ;) and I'm not belittling the achievement; this is peak science. Just have to love the marketing though.

Re: Cool.

Meanwhile at the NASA engineering meeting:

Senior Mission Coordinator: "So, how many hops do you think the heli can realistically make?"

Copter design team: "Oh, 50 or so?"

Communications Director: "Right, divide that by 10. Put the word out that we're only expecting to do 5 hops or so."

Press: "NASA OVERACHIEVES BY FACTOR OF 10"

Funding for next mission assured. Beer o'clock, team.

School principal resigns after writing $100,000 check to Elon Musk impersonator

I see that there are 3 DHL employees here ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes I get the paperwork angle. The reasons I believe it's a scam (or more accurately, extortion) are:

1. I have no contract with DHL, and did not engage their services.

2. I am given no option to choose another party to handle my imports.

3. In my particular case, the vendor has already done the import paperwork at point of origin; DHL simply duplicate this (or 'verify' it, in their words)

3. I am not afforded the opportunity to submit my own paperwork.

4. The charges are out of all proportion to the "actual" cost of 'filling in paperwork', which in reality involves no actual paper and is fully automated in most cases.

It may well be that after consideration of the above I "choose" to pay the €7 or so to get it all handled for convenience' sake, but the point is then it would be my CHOICE. As it currently stands, I have no realistic choice other than reject the package and in all likelihood lose my money.

Very true...

Nobody said it was the same. The original statement was "I have NEVER heard of any legitimate transaction where you are hoping to get an investment from someone else, but where YOU have to pay first to facilitate the transaction." - upfront package handling fees are an example of where you have to pay first to facilitate the transaction. These become a scam (in my view) when they: A. Charge you to tell you there's no charge, and B. hold your package to ransom knowing full well that returning it is a practical impossibility.

Yeah I get the technical difference, but it’s hard not to see what DHL are doing as ‘legalised’ advance-fee fraud. Especially as they essentially impose charges for telling you there are no charges.

” Also can I ask, because maybe it's an American thing, but I have NEVER heard of any legitimate transaction where you are hoping to get an investment from someone else, but where YOU have to pay first to facilitate the transaction.“

If you’re in the EU and receiving a package from outside the EU, it’s pretty common to have to pay processing costs before you receive your product. This itself is a scam as companies like DHL will often extort a ‘handling fee’ before telling you that no import duties are due, and the only thing you need to pay is their handling fee.

Of course non-payment means you don’t get your package, and if it gets returned to whichever Chinese online tat bazaar you bought it from, good luck ever getting a refund either.

Re: "I am very smart"

” Same as when you see someone's online handle containing words as "king", "lord", "master" or the like, you can safely ignore anything they write as chances are it will be utter drivel.“

Ouch.

I will go out on a limb and tempt fate by saying there is zero chance that I would be caught by any of the tech scams going at the moment.

The same can’t necessarily be said for genuinely new scams using a previously unknown vector. Luckily those don’t come along too often.

On a semi related note, I got an email last year from my credit card company saying there had been a data breach, my records were exposed and as we really are very very sorry, here’s 2 years credit monitoring. Note; monitoring, not protection.

Last week I received an email from Experian saying yes my details had been spotted on the dark web, but I’d need to pay their consultants if I wanted any action taken as the ‘subscription’ didn’t cover that.

The line between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ scams seems to be getting more and more blurred.

Google to kill Dropcam, Nest Secure hardware next year

Re: You get what you pay for

At least when Google fuck you, they generally give you free lube and tell you how much they love you.

ADT & co don’t even pretend to care. They just roll out the jackhammer.

BBC to staff: Uninstall TikTok from our corporate kit unless you can 'justify' having it

Re: If they want to be consistent..

https://www.robertdyas.co.uk/media/catalog/product/2/0/205791.jpg

Re: If they want to be consistent..

25 minutes in and only 5 thumbs down; standards are slipping. Come on Fandroids, get voting!!

Re: If they want to be consistent..

Doesn't do that on Apple. I have mine set to Specific Contacts, and Specific Photos/Videos. It's a bit of a pain to manually 'manage' which photos it has access to whenever I want to send something, but at least I'm happy it's not just rifling through willy-nilly.

Maybe time to ditch Android and buy a real phone.

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

Re: Well that was unfortunate.

I can tell you that in the EU country where I live, you absolutely cannot just fire people because you want to without incurring severe financial penalties. WAY beyond stat min. You can make a POSITION redundant, at which point companies are required to offer alternative roles inside the company, and only when that process has been completely exhausted (usually taking years) then you can look to a redundancy. If there are no performance reasons for the redundancy, you're still then looking at a very substantial payout. In the specific case I was involved in (from the company side), close to 2 years salary plus a €65k transition allowance. And this is AFTER the years of basically doing nothing while the company tries to find you another job. This is from personal, actual experience; I'm not theorising.

I know of at least one other country where the situation is even more locked down. Companies like the one I'm currently working for simply cannot make people redundant there without documented performance reasons or criminal activity. They need to go through a redundancy process with the works councils and unions, which takes many many months, and after that IF they agree, the redundancy packages are penalistic.

Germany/Austria/Switzerland is a black hole when it comes to employment law; all I know is that contractor friends of mine who know FTEs there say they are essentially bulletproof in their roles.

Re: Well that was unfortunate.

"In the UK and most of the EU you can be fired for any reason other than the various protected characteristics, as long as they pay the statutory minimum payout when doing so. It is pretty much a US-only thing to be unable to fire someone without cause."

Did you intentionally get this the wrong way round?

Re: A very peculiar practice.

What in the Sam Hill are you on about.

IBM boss Arvind 'kerching' Krishna paid more than $16m in 2022

Re: Meanwhile at DXC...

Sounds like the Ginni time at Big Blue...

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

Wimp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZmqJQ-nc_s

Tesla's self-driving code may ignore stop signs, act unsafe. Patch coming ... soon

Re: Recall is right..

@Casca being a case in point. To hell with what’s actually correct, if you like the people I don’t like, or vice versa, you’re a minion.

The world is broken; and this kind of intolerance has a lot to answer for.

Re: Recall is right..

"That is a recall by any other name."

Recall = bring it back. To change it, replace it or refund it.

Update = it stays with the customer, and will be changed in situ.

Ergo not a recall. Musk is correct here.

Unplug that Anker battery pack now: House blaze sparks recall

Re: Argh!

"Hmmm...it's almost like lithium battery technology is fundamentally flawed and not fit for purpose."

What a stupid comment.

BT taps Kyndryl to migrate mainframe apps to the cloud

"some applications will be retired to get to fewer than 500 strategic systems by 2027"

When you have more than 500 strategic systems, you've lost track of what the word 'strategic' means.

Boeing bids the 747 a final, ultimate, conclusive farewell

747-8 may be technically true, but as the previous one was the 747-400 then you're right; 747-800 has a certain logical symmetry; and the 747+800 = 1,547 thing cannot be coincidence!!!

"last December's announcement of number 1,547's completed assembly."

Such a shame they couldn't push it to 1,747.

McDonald's pulls plug on Wi-Fi, starts playing classical music to soothe yobs

Re: So I will hoist the inevitable "OK Boomer"

"Money is not the issue, it's culture and lack of policing."

I'm sure Plod will be more than happy to come along and bring the youths a cup of tea, then arrest a few bystanders for misgendering.

Re: So I will hoist the inevitable "OK Boomer"

"You tell them to read a book they can't afford"

Can't afford a book? Your post hit rock bottom from the beginning, but this... now you've started to dig. Next you'll be excusing them wrecking a McDonalds as "just youngsters being exuberant" or "It's the fault of the Government for not giving them iPads". Jog on.

NASA Geotail spacecraft's 30-year mission ends after last data recorder fails

Re: Say what you want about NASA's inefficiencies

"When it comes to missions lasting many multiples of the planned life they are the undisputed champion."

Nasa planning meeting: "So guys, how long do we think the spacecraft will last?"

Engineering: "Probably 20 years or so"

Marketing: "Ok we'll tell everyone the mission duration is 6 months"

James Webb Space Telescope suffers another hitch: Instrument down

Is it wrong I heard that last bit in Admiral Ackbar's voice ;)

It's not derogatory in any of those dialects of the English language. Not one. None of them. Anywhere.

Don't like it or don't believe it? Prove me wrong.

"Egghead, in Germany, is a derogatory term, applied to smartass-es which overdo being s smartass. Therefore upvote from me."

As I wrote above, and will repeat here specially just for you: nobody gives a shit what it is or isn't in German. Somebody who takes the time to comment in English, on an English article, about an English expression, should also take the time to understand what the expression means. In English.

Re: R2 Unit

"What they should have included were Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

("Slient Running" drones)"

Hits right in the feels.....

"Well, in french, it IS derogatory. "tête d'oeuf" refers to stub-borns/incompetent/etc ..."

Well, nobody gives a shit what it is or isn't in French. Somebody who takes the time to comment in English, on an English article, about an English expression, should also take the time to understand what the expression means. In English.

It's not derogatory. Maybe try a little harder not to be so easily offended in future.

Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs

Re: Security Rules

It can still be your computer if you let them.

It becomes not your computer when it runs regardless of whether you let it or not.

Fuck. Off.

What I run or don't run is none of your business.

Time to buy a phone as shops use discounts to clear out inventories

Re: Several factors

The comment was about spending it on their kids. Buy your kids an iPhone 14 when you're not obscenely rich, and you're a fucking idiot.

Re: Never bought a new phone

"I have always bought second hand, I never need the extra megapixel camera RIGHT NOW, I can always wait at least a year to get it far cheaper but typically I keep a handset for 3-4 years."

Me too. Always had iPhones because I like them, but never felt the need to go for the absolute newest until I saw the iPhone 13 Pro Max; and decided it was time to finally treat myself to a new one. Had it a month, and dropped it. Never dropped a phone in my life until this one. Cracked a corner off the back glass. Just one corner, and just the back glass. Repair costs £699. For the first time in my lifetime of owning Apple devices I genuinely thought: Fuck You Apple.

Re: Several factors

"When you're poor, £45/month might be the majority of a weekly food shop. Imagine a couple with kids who both had these phones. £90/month just on a fashion accessory? Even people who are concerned about image have enough about them to know this is fucking stupid."

The kind of people that would buy an iPhone 14 for their (multiple) kids are those for whom £90/month doesn't even register as money. It's small change to them. The difference between cleaning out your pocket fluff, and.... not cleaning out your pocket fluff.

Nobody who has to actually think about money would do this.

"(nothing against iPhones personally, I had a work one a couple of years ago and it was quite good, not so many apps but everything there was worked, at least among the things I was interested in)"

Not so many apps???

IBM top brass accused again of using mainframes to prop up Watson, cloud sales

Big Blue execs didn't used to have to complete BCG as far as I remember; they had 'other' education to follow.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

""A dragonfly has phenomenal vision, the ability to see in 360°, and can recognize landmarks, which in turn help it to define its territorial boundaries," explained Airbus."

Translated: We wanted to call it Dragonfly, and looked for any and every reason to try to make this make sense.

Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name

"This frankly outdated spaghetti-Western 'romantic' presentation of a living and vibrant community as dead and gone in order to build a technology company 'for the greater good' is as ignorant as it is offensive."

Carry on like this and your community really will be dead and gone. Nobody will be allowed to speak your name, make reference to you, honour you, write about you... you'd better wish you don't get what you're asking for.