* Posts by Manolo

406 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jan 2010

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People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Manolo
Facepalm

Catnaps

My father used to have a large CRT on his desk, which was one of the cat's favourite napping spots, with the toasty warmth of a glowing CRT gently heating the cat.

Until he replaced it with a shiny new LCD.

Cat jumps on the desk, hops on the monitor and of course immediately falls off on the other side of the now suddenly very narrow monitor.

Ah, progress. Not always a good thing when you are a cat.

Open source text editor poisoned with malware to target Uyghur users

Manolo
Headmaster

Re: Who could possibly be behind this ...

Despite all the downvotes, there appears to be a grain of truth regarding Uyghurs fighting in the Levant.

According to Wikipedia:

"TIP (ETIM) sent the "Turkistan Brigade" (Arabic: كتيبة تركستاني, Katibat Turkistani) to take part in the Syrian Civil War,[29] most noticeably in the 2015 Jisr al-Shughur offensive"

TIP being one of the Uygur separatist movements.

As for CIA involvement, that's probably just a random conspiracy theory.

Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark

Manolo
Alert

Re: office chairs from hell

I find it's not the clothes that matter, but the shoes. The only times I get shocked is when icy or snowy conditions make me exchange my regular leather soled shoes for boots with synthetic soles.

Microsoft to mark five decades of Ctrl-Alt-Deleting the competition

Manolo
FAIL

So that's why!

"The multibillion-dollar purchase of Nokia, on the other hand, was on Copilot's list of mistakes"

Never knew that. So that explains why Nokia tanked.

Also relevant: the enshittification of Skype since MS acquired it.

At least they have left Swiftkey mostly alone, although I sometimes wonder what it phones home about.

EU: These are scary times – let's backdoor encryption!

Manolo
Mushroom

Just some quotes from a Very Important European:

"We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back."

“Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?,”

"I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious ... I am for secret, dark debates"

On French referendum over EU constitution

“If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue’,”

Brexit may have happened for all the wrong reasons, but it's probably still better it happened.

4-day work-week pilot due in tech land by early summer

Manolo
Happy

Cloggies already doing it

Dutch software house AFAS has been doing that since the start of this year.

https://nltimes.nl/2024/06/12/700-afas-software-employees-will-move-four-day-work-week-pay

Manolo

Re: Question for the downvoter

Because criticism == racism, when it's directed at someone from another culture?

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

Manolo
Joke

Re: Makes sense

I thought PE stood for Pestilence Edition.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Manolo

I don't see the difference.

"The White House wants Uncle Sam to revert to "merit-based" hiring.

This is what The Register thinks equal opportunities should be all about, though: Recruiting people with the most appropriate skills for a role irrespective of race, gender, or background."

I read these two sentences a few times and still don't see a disparity between them.

Appropriate skills equals merit, no?

Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

Manolo
Headmaster

Re: Holy fucking stupid idiot

It had five partitions, not necessarily drives:

"the PC stored five discrete databases, each written to one of five disk partitions."

So his colleague probably forgot to clone one of the five partitions to the new disk(s) before taking the old disk.

CAPTCHAs now run Doom – on nightmare mode

Manolo
Joke

But what is it training?

The first captcha's were used to make OCR better.

The newer ones to train image recognition algorithms.

So presumably this will be used to train autonomous fighting robots?

Where is the ROTM icon?

Tesla sued over alleged Autopilot fail in yet another fatal accident

Manolo
Pint

Re: Not again...

Upvote for the Kryten reference.

In my mind I can hear him say it.

Manolo
FAIL

Social Darwinism

"Hey, I'm hurtling towards a stationary fire truck at sixty miles an hour, but it's okay, the car will eventually brake for it"

Does not sound like the type of driver I'd like to be around on the road, with or without Autopilot.

No, I can't help – you called the wrong helpdesk, in the wrong place, for the wrong platform

Manolo
Happy

We have an Whatsapp group for this. Anyone who is on call who runs into a problem posts the problem there and there will always be someone to help them out.

Maybe not in the middle of the night, but we're not in a line of work where nocturnal calls are common, it's mostly evenings and weekends.

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Manolo
Joke

Re: Order Order!

A machine that spouts a load of waffle, makes up random facts and says it wants to help despite doing anything but?

Talky Toaster! Now that would be a good place for Copilot.

Manolo
FAIL

OMG - Microsoft....

Me: How many R's are there in raspberry?

- There are two R's in the word "raspberry." One at the beginning and one towards the end.

Me: Are you sure there are only two r's in raspberry?

- Yes, I'm sure! The word "raspberry" has two R's: one at the beginning and one towards the end. It can be a bit tricky because the first R is silent when pronounced.

Me: So, if a letter is not pronounced, it does not count in writing?

- Actually, even if a letter is not pronounced, it still counts in writing. The spelling of a word includes all its letters, regardless of whether they are pronounced. For example, in "raspberry," the first R is silent, but it is still part of the correct spelling.

English can be tricky with its silent letters! Do you have any other questions about spelling or pronunciation?

Me: So, essentially, you just told me raspberry has three r's?

I see where the confusion might be! To clarify, "raspberry" has two R's in its spelling: one at the beginning and one towards the end. The silent R at the beginning is still counted in the written form, even though it's not pronounced.

So, the word "raspberry" definitely has two R's. English spelling can be quite tricky with its silent letters!

And people use this to get work done?

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Manolo
FAIL

Re: Ah....backups....

Our government spent millions on renaming the Ministry of Safety and Justice to Ministry of Justice and Safety (or the other way round, can't remember, to disgusted to look it up).

Nothing as easy as spending other people's money.

Your air fryer might be snitching on you to China

Manolo
Facepalm

Re: re: It needs it because the android API won't give it sufficient access to the radio

Somewhere I have a picture of the house I lived in in the Caribbean. Google has it geo-tagged as Ixelles, Brussels, because that's where my girlfriend and her router used to live.

Thanks, Linus. Torvalds patch improves Linux performance by 2.6%

Manolo
Mushroom

Website is no more

"you can turn this stuff off and enjoy better performance"

https://make-linux-fast-again.com/ has disappeared it seems.

Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em

Manolo
Flame

Re: Not that you'd know this from experts on YouTube or most retail sites

Look for Opentherm compatible hardware.

My house already came with a Opentherm compatible heater, so I bought a simple compatible thermostat.

It doesn't have Wifi, because it's not necessary.

I bought a Opentherm gateway for thirty euros and stuck a ESP8266 on it for the Wifi.

This connects it to Domoticz running on a Raspberry Pi.

It has been working flawless for over six years now.

No account necessary, no third party server necessary and an open protocol.

I can set the temperature from my phone, my PC or on the thermostat itself, but mostly it just runs a schedule programmed in Domoticz.

If needed, I can VPN home and operate the thermostat from anywhere.

Apart from setting the temperature I can also monitor outgoing and returning water temperatures.

NIST: New smoke alarms are better at detecting fires, but still go off for bacon

Manolo
Flame

Re: What we really <chirp> need........

My father in law, who is getting quite deaf (but is in denial, it's just the rest of the world mumbling) told me he had a cricket in the scullery. I told him to change the battery in the smoke detector.

Microsoft on a roll for terrible rebranding with Windows App

Manolo
Coat

Bruce?

So it's not called Bruce?

That's gonna cause some confusion then.

I'll get me coat hat. Mine's the one with the dangly corks.

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Manolo
Pirate

Re: Sweary secrets

"captain is barking down orders from on high and the rating standing next to the camera is saying some very NSFW phrases in describing what he thought of the captain."

Being neither a native speaker nor familiar with navy ranks, isn't the function of a rating to rate the captain?

Seems to uninitiated me he was just doing his job.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Manolo
Headmaster

And there's a London in Ontario, Canada.

Too late now for canary test updates, says pension fund suing CrowdStrike

Manolo
Flame

If it's mission critical..

... don't run it on Windows.

Facebook prank sent techie straight to Excel hell

Manolo
Joke

Re: Pranks I was lucky to get away with

An African or a European cabbage?

There is no honor among RAM thieves – but sometimes there is karma

Manolo
Joke

You spelled Minesweeper wrong.

Outback shocker left Aussie techie with a secret not worth sharing

Manolo
Mushroom

Re: Mick...

... the Master Farter?

https://youtu.be/FyMELL37CvY?si=dmSkuR80aG-sJkyQ

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

Manolo
Headmaster

Re: Blame-shifting gone mad

Nope: in Dutch soldering is "solderen" and welding is "lassen".

In German soldering is "löten" and welding is "schweissen".

You're wrong, I'm right, and you're hiding the data that proves it

Manolo
Joke

Re: Brian may not have been the messiah ...

But it was a mess allright.

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Manolo
Mushroom

Re: "Screw"drivers?

"screwdrivers are for situations requiring a wedge"

Except when you're handling a sphere of plutonium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

Icon very apt.

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Manolo
Black Helicopters

Softenon

As another commentard already pointed out here: this so called AI is like thalidomide (Softenon).

We don't really know what it is, what it does and how it works, yet we think it is good for everything and put it in everything and the consequences might be just as catastrophic.

Blue screen of death or Eurovision's Windows95man performance – what's less annoying?

Manolo

Re: Can anyone offer us a serious explanation

With the Philips commercial I always thought I'd wait buying Philips products until they'd actually succeeded in making things better. Very bad slogan indeed.

Manolo

Re: "the internationally renowned Straight Pride Festival."

"So how do you feel about straight couples holding hands in public?"

The same as gays holding hands.

You see, bragging about their sexual prowess & practices, or mincing around on screen being as revoltingly provocative as possible is not the same as holding hands.

Manolo
Joke

Re: Can anyone offer us a serious explanation

"All the component parts are excruciating, and it just shouldn't work, but the end product is strangely and thoroughly compelling."

Like the triple egg chili chutney sarnie from Red Dwarf.

Cops developing Ghostbusters-esque weapon to take out e-bike thugs

Manolo

Re: Solution to badly parked e-bikes

Dunno about the UK, but here, users have to take a picture of the vehicle after parking it and upload in the associated app.

The company say they do random checks and in case of complaints they check the uploaded picture.

Manolo
FAIL

Re: Solution to badly parked e-bikes

Yes, destroying a company's property because their customers are assholes, that's very ethical behaviour.

They all do have options to alert them to badly parked vehicles. Done it many times. First time offenders get a warning, second time a fine, third time lose the ability to rent.

Or so they say...

Here the council occasionally removes them when the assholery of parking is really off the scale, like the moron who parked on a pedestrian crossing, on the ribbed pavement that serves as a tactile guide for the blind. In that case I think you can be quite sure the rental company pases on the cost to the customer.

You break it, you ... run away and hope somebody else fixes it

Manolo
Trollface

Re: BJ130

In our computer lab in uni we had printers that would name their print job. So if you would print from WordPerfect, on the tiny screen of the printer it would say "HP job".

You can probably see where this is going, but I was never able to change the name of the WordPerfect executable or create a program with a suitable name.

3 million doors open to uninvited guests in keycard exploit

Manolo

I once staid in a very rustic hotel in Snowdonia, complete with a Victorian bathroom. The doors didn't even have locks.

Belgian ale legend Duvel's brewery borked as ransomware halts production

Manolo
Pint

Re: Stick to the real Trappist beers

I recommend Rochefort.

Also, having a Rochefort on a sunny terrace in the actual town of Rochefort.

Manolo
Devil

Re: 24% total

Should be per hour, no?

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Manolo
Joke

Why don't sharks bite lawyers?

Professional courtesy.

KDE Plasma 6.0 brings the same old charm and confusion

Manolo
Happy

Bloat?

The time that KDE was a memory and CPU hog was at least 15 years ago.

It is (especially for a full featured desktop environment) quite lean now.

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

Manolo

Re: sort of on topic...

He also did one on a tank simulator that works that way:

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

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

Manolo

No, in mashed potatoes, served with gravy and a smoked sausage.

Amazon on the hook for predictably revolting use of concealed clothes hook spy cam

Manolo
Childcatcher

Re: Another frivolous case

No, because growing poppies (you can't "grow" opium) has legitimate uses.

Where do you think the perfectly legal (but controlled) morphine comes from?

Your password hygiene remains atrocious, says NordPass

Manolo
Holmes

Pill pushers' password

Is the pharmacopeia included in dictionary attacks?

I tend to use passwords like methotreXate2,5mg.

Easy for me to remember, (hopefully?) not very likely to pop up in a brute force dictionary attack

Tesla goons will buy anything – including these $150 beers

Manolo
Mushroom

How about the flame thrower?

Didn't he once sell a flame thrower?

Or was that not Tesla branded and/or not in this store?

Nvidia boss tells Israeli staff Mellanox founder's daughter was killed in festival massacre

Manolo

"If I were in charge, Israel would never get another dime of aid from the US until they GTFO of all occupied territories."

I quote Yuval Noah Harari here:

"In the mid-2000s, Israel unilaterally retreated from the entire Gaza Strip, dismantled all settlements there and returned to the internationally recognised pre-1967 border.

......

Instead, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and turned it into a terrorist base from which repeated attacks were launched on Israeli civilians. "

Read his essay here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/12/israelis-palestinians-greatest-danger-since-1948

Manolo

Re: The thing people forget is...

I think you mean WW1. Look up Sykes-Picot Agreement.

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