I think we could all see something like this happening sooner or later. He's clearly a five-star narcissist and and his mood swings and childish outbursts point to deeper-seated troubles. We can only sit and watch.
Posts by Andy3
90 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Sep 2009
Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos
'Corrupt' cop jailed for tipping off pal to EncroChat dragnet
Voyager 2 found! Deep Space Network hears it chattering in space
Great news, but I'm a bit confused. They lost contact with Voyager when the antenna was moved 2 degrees off beam, but they can still send a signal to re-align the antenna? Two degrees is quite a big error over such a distance. So they haven't lost contact? Or was it just a very weak signal due to the 2 degree misalignment and they managed to bash a signal into it by using high power? And another question - if Canberra can contact it, why can't the slightly bigger Jodrell Bank? Or maybe the angles are wrong at the moment? Sorry about all the question marks but I have a vast stock of them that I really must get through.
Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors
Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim
Healthcare org with over 100 clinics uses OpenAI's GPT-4 to write medical records
How long before patients are being prescribed drugs for conditions they have never reported, never suffered from? 'What's this stuff for Doc?' the patient might ask, 'I dunno, but the AI said you need it for your complaint, so there it is'. Err, but Doc I never said anything about a new condition, I only came to see you to have these stitches removed'. 'Oh well, you'd better take them or I'll be in trouble. Just chuck them away if you don't want them, but don't tell anyone or I'll be for the high-jump...'. Tell you what, I'll remove them from your next prescription....oh wait it's warning me not to tamper with its recommendations. Hell fire, it's reported me to the GMC!
Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …
'The button was on one of those membrane keypads, with little tactile feedback to indicate the positions of buttons. You were supposed to look at the keypad to see where to press'. Well that's a recipe for confusion and disaster straight away. I'd never design a safety system around something so crap. Membrane keypads are notorious for unreliability and having a single button for 'arm' and 'disarm' is asking for trouble.
Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed
Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved
Techies try to bypass damaged UPS, send 380V into air traffic system
Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture
I know how he feels. I worked in a busy and very male workshop for 20 years, and I dreaded the time of year when the 'Works Night Out' came along. Even though I spent most of that time as a well-respected service manager and got on with everyone, refusing to go would have me marked down as a 'miserable git', so I reluctantly donned the gladrags and went along with it every year. They all started out OK with just a handful of us doing the rounds of the local pubs, but as the night wore on the Boss (who certainly liked a drink) would engineer things so that we went for the obligatory curry at around closing time. I was never keen on the curry as it seemed a bit much on top of the booze, but once again there was no way out without having to face the derision of the crew. Trouble is it didn't end there, as Bossman by now had the bit between his teeth and happened to be in the local 'Round Table' which seemingly allowed him to knock up any local publican to get sneaky booze out of hours. So another session started. By this time I was flagging and wishing I could be home in bed. Awful nights, no-one should be forced into them. There were some fun times which we still talk about whenever we see each other, but generally I hated the whole thing.
Massive energy storage system goes online in UK
Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode
Ceefax replica goes TITSUP* as folk pine for simpler times
Oh man. I started as an apprentice TV engineer in 1969 and the excitement of colour was still in the air. Then in 74 came Ceefax! A very slow start, but it caught on eventually. I loved it, although it could be a bit slow to find the pages as they were transmitted serially in the vertical blanking interval. I recall some older TV's with a slow field flyback showed the 'dots & dashes' diagonally near the top of the screen. When I later bought a BBC Model B micro, I was delighted to see those 'mode 7' graphics. Happy times, simpler times.
Phone jammers made my model plane smash into parked lorry, fumes hobbyist
There is so much frequency-sharing now that this type of thing is becoming more likely. AFAIK, there are currently two model control frequency bands in use - 49 MHz and 2.4 GHz. The latter is crammed with signals from routers, wireless CCTV installations, bluetooth devices and baby monitors, plus microwave ovens which despite rigorous safety regs can radiate quite a potent signal over a distance. Some devices are designed to 'listen' on a frequency before using it but others use brute force, such as phone jammers. I'm a radio amateur and we have a band of frequencies at 2.3 GHz, but it is becoming very difficult to operate there with so much 'junk' nearby.
Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?
RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81
It had to happen sooner or later, but I still feel very upset at his death. I had several items of Sinclair stuff in my youth and so did my schoolmates. Between us I recall a Z12 power amp, two Micromatics, A project 60 pre-amp, a project 60 stereo tuner and several Z30s. Plus a few Cambridge calculators. All of them worked a treat, although I did manage to blow the backside out of one of my Z30's by shorting the speaker. We even had a disco amp made from two z50's and a PZ8 PSU. Despite some pretty aggressive use, it never let us down. Farewell Sir Clive, you'll have a bit more time in the lab now.
UK VoIP telco receives 'colossal ransom demand', reveals REvil cybercrooks suspected of 'organised' DDoS attacks on UK VoIP companies
Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland
Windows 11: What we like and don't like about Microsoft's operating system so far
What does my neighbour's Tesla have in common with a stairlift?
New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?
UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal
BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work
I don't know whether these BT devices work or not, but other boosters seem to work very effectively. Our house has several 'slow spots', two of which just happen to be on our favourite lounging areas. I took a look on my WiFi plotter app and it seems the wi-fi signals from some of our neighbours are considerably stronger than that provided by our TT-supplied router. So either our router is 'weak as p!ss' or our neighbours are running mega-watt systems....
Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program
Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?
Re: Not on the wall socket
I had a mains lead (from China that had ALL THREE wires connected wrong. I don't normally check mains leads, but this one looked particularly cheap & nasty, so I just did a quick ohmeter test and bingo. AND the error was in the IEC end, all moulded-up and inaccessible.
Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup
Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light
All you have to do to embarrass the salesman is to put a DAB radio and an FM radio side by side receiving the same station. Then ask him why the DAB is lagging about 2 seconds behind the FM. Superfast eh, Hmmm? There's also LESS information in a DAB broadcast (as the situation currently stands) as a lot of the sound is thrown away before transmission in order to keep the bandwidth low. ALL the information picked up by the microphone is present in an FM signal (up to 15 kHz). AND they've managed to confuse the transmission frequency with the deviation. Halfords should stick to go-faster stripes and smelly Christmas trees.
Bose customers beg for firmware ceasefire after headphones fall victim to another crap update
BOSE long ago stopped being a manufacturer of good-quality audio gear and has become little more than an over-hyped fashion brand. Their speakers and headphones are designed to appeal to the artificially-boosted bass & treble 'boom & tizz' brigade, a sound which bears little resemblance to reality. AND they have the gall to charge the Earth for it.
Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk
Oh the BBC-B. What a treat it was! I started off on a ZX81 (being a fan of all things Sinclair) and learnt BASIC on it. Despite its slow speed, I even wrote some simple games, including a somewhat tardy version of Space Invaders which was stripped down to just one invader and a gun that had to be fired in advance of what you might expect... Anyway, BEEB fever got hold of me and WOW what a machine! It went like the clappers and once I'd bought the floppy drive (hey, 100k on one disc!) I was in Micro Heaven. Sunday Mornings watching 'Making the Most of The Micro', what memories. Still got it and I fire it up every now and then to prove it still works. Bee-Beeep!
Dear hackers: If you try to pwn a website for phishing, make sure it's not the personal domain of a senior Akamai security researcher
Windows XP? Pfff! Parts of the Royal Navy are running Win ME
Haunted disk-drive? This story will give you the chills...
Not wanting to brag, but as a video engineer I would have been on this in a flash. It's a commom problem when a customer transports a tape in their car on a Winter's night and gets back to base and the tape is taken indoors, where moisture quickly forms on the cold surface. This can be disastrous for both the tape and the spinning head drum as the tape sticks to the drum and snatches at the tape. Usually this strips off some of the tape's oxide coating and in extreme cases will also crack the fragile ferrite heads.
Amazon Alexa outage: Voice-activated devices are down in UK and beyond
ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator
Oh dear, what an embarrassment. This kind of cheapjack, half-finished product may just about pass muster as a £30 stocking-filler at Christmas, but as a serious retro gaming machine it fails miserably. What a shame that it drags the much-loved Sinclair name (to those of us of a certain age) through the mud.
Hipster horror! Slack has gone TITSUP: Total inability to support user procrastination
Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain
Concorde was a beautiful piece of engineering both from a technical and an aesthetic point of view. It was way ahead of its time and employed many techniques which had to be invented for it. I find it hard to believe that after 25 years of an almost-perfect record it could be scrapped after one fatal accident. There are other types of airliner (hello Boeing....) that have crashed and burned multiple times but continue to fly. Obviously the bosses wanted rid.
How's your Wednesday? Things going well? OK, your iPhone, iPad can be pwned via Wi-Fi sync
What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs
10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10
Re: Over 40 and used one of these?
Hmm. I grew up making Sinclair kits and every one of them worked. The little radios (I had a Micromatic) worked fine and My stereo record player used two Z30's and a Stereo 60 pre-amp unit. All fine and lasted years. We even made an amplifier for our mobile disco using two Z50's and a PZ8. This may sound like a recipe for disgruntled dancers, but it only ever went off once - and it came back perfectly after a reset. I honestly think many of the complaints about Sinclair stuff come from people who built it badly.