Posts by Ol'Peculier

Trump admin pays wind developers to quit, back fossil fuel projects

The tin hat lot

The conspiracy nutters think that off-shore wind farms are there to blow the chemtraills in from the sea to land.

Nope, I'm not making this up. Sadly...

Artemis II blasts off on first crewed lunar mission since Apollo

Re: Boots on the regolith, 2028...

When I started reading this post I thought we're going to get men on the moon before we get two extra services to York, then your comment came up.

Going way off topic, but to think there were plans for a half-hourly service to York pre-COVID.

Back on topic, I "watched" an Ariane launch in Fylingdales control room once. Once it hit a certain altitude, it was added to their database of objects in orbit, which was a system my Dad was involved with when he worked there. Was quite a fun day out!

AI still doesn't work very well, businesses are faking it, and a reckoning is coming

Re: For now, ignore AI and the mountebanks selling it.

Modern version of Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)!

Mice to see somebody finally talking sense. There are bits of this I'm going to try to memorise to bring up at meetings if and when AI comes up.

Windows pays tribute to Britain's creaking rail network with a BSOD

They wanted to put in barriers at York, but in a suprise turn, the city council refused, saying it would harm the look of theh station.

There are also multiple ways in, so it would have been expensive to implement anyway.

Re: "The open barriers is very unlikely to be directly connected to the borked operating system."

Most times I arrive at King's X on the ECML the gates are open. Too many people leaving the station at the same time.

Smart mirror shows dumb Windows in elevator

“I go up," said the elevator, "or down."

"Good," said Zaphod, "We're going up."

"Or down," the elevator reminded him.

"Yeah, OK, up please."

There was a moment of silence.

"Down's very nice," suggested the elevator hopefully.

"Oh yeah?"

"Super."

"Good," said Zaphod, "Now will you take us up?”

- RIP DNA who's birthday would have been yesterday if it wasn't for his untimely spontaneous existstance failure.

GCHQ dangles up to £130K for a CISO to fight the world's most capable adversaries

Crikey, there's a huge cost of living difference between Darlington, London, or Manchester...

Your AI-generated password isn't random, it just looks that way

Re: Lava Lamps

...might be...

Lava Lamps

Easy solution, get a load of lava lamps, point a camera at them, and use the images to generate your passwords.

No I haven't, yet ---->

Starlink speeds past terrestrial networks – and regulators

Re: Zaroa Brewery by any chance?

Gold star to you, sir!

Was just a shame my knees were knackered by all the boat transfers. But it's on the list of places I'd love to go back to. They seem to have doubled the entry cost as well, but TBH if it gets rid of some of the more, um, crass people that were in the bars on San Cristobal then it could be only a good thing...

The pub on Isabela brewed it's own beer, and also was been visited by a very nice lass from Germany who I very much enjoyed talking to.

Here, I'm looking at somewhere on the Moors. The nearer to Blakey Ridge the better. If you know, you know...

I;ve only used Starlink once, in a remote bar on one of the Galapagos islands, and despite the fact I despise Musk and everything he tries to f@$k up, was hugely impressed with the speed.

If I was to move to somewhere remote with no broadband access, I'd need two things. Access to a decent pub and satellite...

UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything

Hope they bring a trainslator with them.

And that's coming from a (North) Yorkshireman...

Hope they bring a translator with them.

And this is coming from a (North) Yorkshireman.

BOFH: Every computer system eventually serves ads

Re: the Board members says. "That's from Hitchhiker's Guide."

I'd like to think that Last Chance to See was his best work, and his campaigning for environmental groups such as Save the Rhino would have been his passion if he hadn't decided to go to the bloody gym.

Re: the Board members says. "That's from Hitchhiker's Guide."

And there was a live tour, with (most) of the original radio series revisitng the scripts.

Was excellent. And everybody decamped to the nearest pub to the theatre afterwards, which even better!

Ofcom keeps X under the microscope despite Grok 'nudify' fix

Geoblocked

So it's Geoblocked. That's great now all the kids know how to use a VPN to get round the porn blocks...

Humongous 52-inch Dell monitor will make you feel like king of the internet with four screens in one

Re: Meanwhile, on top of Great A'Tuin...

I don't think he did write using a typewriter, certainly the monitor setup shows that! According to Wikipedia his first computer was a ZX81 - he outgeeked Douglas Adams if that really is true. It's worth a read, especially about the interview he did with Bill Gates.

Towards the end of his life he had to use dictation software too.

Also, after his death he had a bulldozer run over all his hard disks so they couldn't be read.

I'm currently running through the audiobooks in my car, currently on The Truth. Still/can't read The Shepherd's Crown though.

Re: Meanwhile, on top of Great A'Tuin...

Forgot to do a link: this is his desk.

Article

Meanwhile, on top of Great A'Tuin...

PTerry's setup was much better...

BOFH: All through the house, not a creature was stirring except the homicidal vacuum cleaner

Re: Robots, the gifts that keep giving

Mostly Harmless...

Cornish recycling drive sows confusion among Reg Standards Bureau

2.4 and 4 inches. But it seems pasties are also rather variable, from 280 to 350 grams.

Oh for Bob's sake. Make your mind up if you're going to use imperial or metric, please!

Welcome to America - now show us your last five years of social media posts

I wasn't planning on visiting the trainwreak that is the current USA until Tango is well out of office, but this would cement the deal.

Not so much about my posts, but if they find content made by one of my (many) American friends. I would not want to dob them in.

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

Nothing would surprise me about what Disney's IP lawyers get up to. True bottom feeders.

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

I'm going to say Windows 2000 Server. I had a local installation running dev versions of my websites far longer than I should have done.

Things have gone downhill ever since...

Landlord quirks leave thousands of flats stuck in the broadband slow lane

Re: Landlords!

When I asked my landlady about getting fibre she just basically looked at me like I was asking for a lift to Mars. All she said was "of course, why on earth would I say no?"

OBR drags in cyber bigwig after Budget leak blunder

Credit to the reporter who spotted the pattern in the budget filenames --->

UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B

I've already got a national identity - it's my NI number.

I also have a passport, a driving license and a NHS number. Surely a compination of those would already do the job?

Amazon's AI specs aim to stop delivery drivers getting lost between van and porch

A few days ago I was walking to the pub when I saw an Amazon branded van pull up to a door, driver gets out, delivers parcel, gets back in and driver about 2 feet before getting back out and delivering to the door next to it.

It gets worse. I'd walked past it by now but heard it start up again, and stop, after about 2 seconds.

Madness...

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

Re: I was ABSOLUTELY SURE

But, but, but... if it's been sent, why is it still here???

Texas senators cry foul over Smithsonian's pricey Space Shuttle shuffle

Just leave it where it is!

There's a lot more people go on holiday to DC than Houston I'd bet. I've been three times myself.

It's a grubby old thing though, although if I'd been round the planet that many times, I'd probably look the same.

And apparently saying "OMD?" when a tour guide is asking where the name "Enola Gay" came from is not an accepted answer...

(on another note, I asked same guide if there was anything about Sir George Cayley in the museum (he was born in my home town hence the interest). The reply? "Never heard of him"

Jeeze...

London cops unplug iPhone crime ring said to nick 40% of city's mobiles

According to the BBC they are been bought in HK and China because they can access the internet.

Apprently crims are moving away from drug dealing into this because it's less risk and more profitable.

I wish I'd have known how much phones were going for in Hong Kong though, I'd have sold mine when there and got a new one when I got home!

More needs to be done by the manufacturers to block phones once notified of been stolen, but of course they have no reason to do that. Every stolen phone that gets activiated is another user in their ecosystem.

Amazon grounds drone deliveries in Arizona after two crashed into a crane

Re: How to parse this?

I drove into the wrong house driveway and crashed into a tree I don't have.

-- Jasper Carrott.

Asahi runs dry as online attackers take down Japanese brewer

They dezserve all they get for what they did to Fullers...

Digital ID, same place, different time: In this timeline, the result might surprise us

Re: "how the system will work for those who can't use smartphones"

If thay had any sense they'd add it to your digital wallet, so no other software required.

Of course, that means they most certainly won't.

Slow Wi-Fi? Add houseplants to the list of suspects

But how many times do you see people ask "has everybody's <name-of-isp> Wifi gone down?

And you trty to educate them by suggesting they plug a network cable in, if possible and their eyes glaze over.

Attacker steals customer data from Brit rail operator LNER during break-in at supplier

Worthwhile pointing out that LNER is owned by the government as an operator of last resort.

As contracts expire, eventually ever rail operator in England (not sure about ScotRail, might already be owned by the Scots, or Wales) will become part of this scheme.

Cybercrooks ripped the wheels off at Jaguar Land Rover. Here's how not to get taken for a ride

I know a few people that work for one of their suppliers, they are furloughing workers due to lack of work.

Maybe add to this list

6. Don't rely on one manufacturer if you provide parts to the automotive sector

Microsoft open-sources the 6502 BASIC coded by Bill Gates himself

On another note, the school I went to had the CBM Pet that was the image in my feed reader for this article, the decals on the keyboard had all worn off so you needed to be able to touch type to use it.

I was the only person that used it in all the time I was there...

Android drops mega patch bomb - 120 fixes, two already exploited

Bloody 'ell, the update size is 0.97GB on my Pixel 9.

Is it upgrading the entire system?!

Hanging up: AOL to pull the plug on its dial-up service after 36 years

"A user would use a modem, which could encode and decode audio signals, to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) via a conventional telephone line."

Surely the correct term is modulate?

Thinking back to my days playing around with a 1200 baud modem, gawd knows who made it.

UK proxy traffic surges as users consider VPN alternatives amid Online Safety Act

Re: VPNs highly unlikely to be made illegal in the UK

I'm in the category of "work from the office but require a VPN to access remote servers".

So yeah, not going to work...

Microsoft eventually realized the world isn't just the Northern Hemisphere

Re: but humans don't

I have to use a website where the language is shown by a mish-mash of the UK and US flag.

Ug.

Trump surprises with TSMC $300B investment claim

How has America got to the point where one single deluded individual can cause such mayhem around the world, affect the prices his countrymen are paying, and just - well - make things up as he goes along?

I'm baffled.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

I've read this week, either on somewhere like here or Reddit, that someone got round the age verification by downloading a photo of a driving licence found after a quick search.

The people this is designed to block access to are the most technical literate people of their generation, ever. We should be hiring tehm to do pen testing.

Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress

Re: I'm not using it.

You've got me to look at the settings. Turned off.

A small win to start the day...

I;ve had a Copilot icon on my Outlook menu now, and it doesn't even do anything, just a popup with "coming soon". I don't care. I'm not using it.

UK Post Office names public inquiry as risk to £410 million Horizon replacement project

Pension payments

Passports

National Lottery

DVLA stuff

ForEx

Banking for several banks that have given up on having a local branch.

Oh, Stamps

And special delivery, parcels, eBay sellers and all that.

They do a lot.