Posts by Blofeld's Cat
1126 posts • joined 27 Jan 2010
This NSA, FBI security advisory has four words you never want to see together: Fancy Bear Linux rootkit
Face masks hamper the spread of coronavirus. Know what else they hamper? Facial-recognition systems (except China's)
If you think you've got problems, pal, spare a thought for these boffins baffled by 'oddball' meteorites
Re: POE
"... Thus a meteor can not be two things at once ..."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the [White] Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
(White queen takes Red pawn, check)
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. Hang on, the PDP 11/70 has dropped offline
Er ...
I once worked for a firm where the owner had a thing about equipment being left on and "wasting money".
It was perfectly normal during the Winter to emerge from an office into a pitch-black corridor or stairway with the switches at the far end. Everyone used to carry pocket torches for this reason.
The IT and telecom equipment all had labels over their sockets saying they must be left on, but he usually managed to turn off at least one server a month.
Evidently he worked on the principle that if there was nobody there, it wasn't being used.
Mysterious supernova is blasting far-flung galaxy with flashes of UV light – and astroboffins don't know why
Hmm ...
Place: A galaxy 140 million lightyears away. Time: 140 million years ago.
A red-necked alien stares beneath the bonnet of his friend's UFO. He tugs experimentally at the mechanism, provoking short flashes of UV light. He hands his drink to his friend and picks up a large wrench.
"Hold my Djinn N'tonnix, I've got this."
It's a Meow-nixed system, I know this: Purr-fect storm of 3,000+ insecure databases – and a data-wiping bot
Cabinet Office takes over control of UK government data: Mundane machinery or Machiavellian manoeuvrings?
Capita Consulting ditching more than a quarter of its workforce 45 days after consultations with consultants
Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds
Boffins baffled as supergiant star just vanishes – either it partially blew itself apart or quietly turned into a black hole
Beware the fresh Windows XP install: Failure awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth
NASA mulls going all steam-punk with a fleet of jumping robots to explore Saturn and Jupiter's mysterious moons
Hmm ...
"... using chemical propellants as fuel is out of the question ..."
Place: An underground bunker on Titan. Time: The near future.
A bottle green creature leans back in its seat and steeples four of its front appendages. A similar creature crouches before it.
"And the invaders? How are they progressing?"
"Reports say their mother ship is tearing up rock from beneath the surface, melting it and passing it to their attack ships. These ships in turn are vaporising the rock and blasting it down over the surface, before leaping away to attack another district."
"I see. A curious strategy."
"We are receiving similar reports from Europa and Enceladus, Emperor."
The bottle green creature sighs and furrows two of its brows.
"You realise, of course, this means war."
Detroit cops cuffed, threw a dad misidentified by facial recognition in jail. Now the ACLU's demanding action
Re: The problem is not the AI, it's the police
An actor I know took part in a reconstruction for a TV "Crimewatch" program.
Shortly after the program aired he was arrested on three different occasions, including one where a patrol car made a spectacular U-turn across four lanes of rush-hour traffic to grab him. He also got turned in by several neighbours and friends.
Although his innocence was obviously beyond doubt, he is still viewed as a "wrong un" who "got away with it" in some circles.
Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time
Re: Also works the other way round
Long before mobile phones, a friend of mine had a number just a few transposed digits from a taxi firm.
When drunks called to book a cab, she just used to say, "We're really busy tonight, so it'll be about twenty minutes".
This was based on the principle that they would not find the correct sequence of numbers to call back, and it saved her a huge amount of time and explanation.
If you're despairing at staff sharing admin passwords, look on the bright side. That's CIA-grade security
Developers renew push to get rid of objectionable code terms to make 'the world a tiny bit more welcoming'
Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it
Are you sure ...
... 'Are you sure you wish to proceed?' ...
I now add multiple prompts, each detailing precisely what is about to happen. This usually triggers the following sequence:
1 System prompts 'Are you sure you wish to proceed?'
2 User enters yes / clicks proceed
3 Repeat 1 and 2 until no more prompts
4 System produces hourglass
5 System removes hourglass.
6 User wonders what happened.
7 User wonders what the prompts said
8 User rings support to ask where their files / database have gone.
9 BOFH orders more carpet and quicklime.
If Daddy doesn't want me to touch the buttons, why did they make them so colourful?
Re: Many years ago...
Probably a bell push that summoned a porter (or similar).
Summoning a porter (or similar), without the usual protective spells in place, can be deeply unpleasant - especially when they appear holding a mug of fresh tea and half a sandwich.
"What now? ... You wondered what it did? ... FFS I'd just finally got sat down for my sodding snap. Can't you bastards read?"
Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands
Er ...
"Some of our customers are reporting that reservations are outpacing cancellations on their flights for the first time since the pandemic started."
The same effect would be produced when most reservations in the system had been cancelled, as fewer bookings with the potential to be cancelled would remain.
In such circumstances an actual drop in the number of reservations could still meet the stated criteria.
Coronavirus masks are thwarting facial recognition systems. So, of course, people are building training sets from your lockdown-wear selfies
Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes
Papa don't breach: Contracts, personal info on Madonna, Lady Gaga, Elton John, others swiped in celeb law firm 'hack'
'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up
Er ...
Not quite the same, but I worked in an environment where some control hardware was being developed alongside the monitoring software.
Failing to get a response from the test unit usually resulted in a walk down to the engineering workshop to see if the device was actually powered up and connected to the network.
Usually it was simply switched off, but sometimes you would find the safety cage open with bits of the test rig lying on a bench.
If there were one or more boffins prodding it, tutting, and shaking their heads, it was time for an extended coffee break.
Data centre reveals it modeled interiors on The Hunt for Red October sets
Hmm ...
I suspect that some of electrical installations I have seen are based on the Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
All they needed were some extras doing the rock-and-roll as fuses exploded in showers of sparks.
UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal
Hmm ...
require_once('sarcasm'); // Just in case
I can't imagine that anyone in authority would misuse this data. I mean knowing where people were and who they met has no possible other use to anyone.
You might as well suggest that the Parks Department would use anti-terrorist legislation to check on dog-walkers.
I also wonder what will happen when the first person who uses the app gets Covid-19 from a contact, without the app alerting them ?
My guess is "lawyers".
Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style
Uh ho ...
I have never seen an engineer in a purple haze, but I have seen them turn a whiter shade of pale.
I was part of a QA team testing an office machine that was about to be launched. We discovered it was simple to run the machine with the safety covers open. The chief engineer of the project said this was "absolutely impossible" and that we had made a mistake.
We gathered them around the test machine and opened all the safety covers - the machine stopped and the engineer smiled.
We left the doors open and cycled the power - the machine started and the engineer went white as a sheet.
Facebook's mega-chatbot has 'a persona, discusses nearly any topic, shows empathy.' Perfect for CEO version 2
ICANN finally halts $1.1bn sale of .org registry, says it's 'the right thing to do' after months of controversy
Tata Consultancy Services tells staff to go to their rooms and stay there, even after the pandemic passes
Dumpster diving to revive a crashing NetWare server? It was acceptable in the '90s
Chinese carmaker behind Volvo and Lotus ships first two satellites for planned IoT ‘OmniCloud’
Want to put a satellite into orbit for US comms? Whoa, says Uncle Sam: Where's your space crash risk assessment?
Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills
Interference ...
Many years ago I got called out to a mysterious issue that was bringing down a workshop's servers every Monday morning at about 08:30.
Systems were checked; cables replaced; even one of the power supplies changed, all to no effect. The environment was checked and it was established that nothing out of the ordinary was happening at that time.
Eventually it was decided that I had to go and spend a Monday morning on site to try and catch it red handed. For the first hour everything worked normally and then silence. After a few moments the servers came back to life and started rebooting.
It turned out that the workshop used a lot of air tools and had a huge compressor tucked away in a shed outside. Usually this cut in and out throughout the day with no difficulty to keep the air reservoirs topped up.
Over the weekend the ancient grease in the compressor's bearings essentially set, stalling its electric motor until it overcame this resistance, and stirred the grease back to a normal thickness - which it maintained until the next weekend.
During this period the supply voltage on that one, somewhat flaky, circuit dropped to about 30V, and needless to say, the servers were on the same electrical circuit.
My boss quoted for a complex solution involving UPS and the like, but the workshop simply oiled the compressor instead ...
UK government to take equity in struggling startups with £250m 'Future fund'
Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style
Intelsat orbital comms satellite is back online after first robo-recovery mounting and tug job gets it back into position
Re: Satelite designers missed a trick
Presumably an advantage of the "space tug" approach over refuelling, is that it can be used where the satellite's propulsion or alignment system has failed for a reason other than fuel, such as reaction wheels stopping.
Given that the tug does not need any sort of cooperation from its target, it could also potentially move (or de-orbit) dead satellites that didn't get to a graveyard orbit.
Academic showdown as boffins biff-baff over when Version 1.0 of Earth's magnetic core was released
Tribunal halts all Information Commissioner's Office cases because UK data watchdog can't print or organise PDFs
Reg fashion special: Top designer says 'video chat accessories' are in for spring!
Remember Tapplock, the 'unbreakable' smart lock that was allergic to screwdrivers? The FTC just slapped it down for 'deceiving' folks
NASA reveals the new wavy Martian wheels it thinks can crush the red planet
Don't stand so close to me ...
"... The ‘copter is equipped with cameras, too, so hopefully we’ll get some fabulous footage! ..."
I expect the Space Police will also use it to check that the Martians are social-distancing correctly.
My coat? It's the one with the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator in a pocket.
Bose shouts down claims that it borked noise cancellation firmware to sell more headphones
Er ...
"... Bose said that downgrading firmware can "create unexpected behavior in a product and negatively impact or reduce functionality" ..."
I would have thought that, unless the update blew firmware fuses or the like, restoring a product's original firmware would return the product to what the customer originally bought.
The concept that returning the original firmware would reduce the original functionality is puzzling to say the least.
Minister slams 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories as 'dangerous nonsense' after phone towers torched in UK
Apocalypse soon ...
"... burned her as a witch ..."
Alternatively the pandemic would be seen as a punishment sent by some deity for the unacceptable behaviour of the population at large.
Such visitations could be countered either by the villagers undertaking some farcical aquatic ceremony, or in the case of high-ranking members of society, showering endowments on to the local priests and their church.
The outcome was generally the same.
Smarter people would however send the local priests to intervene on their behalf ...
"Look I think it would be better if you went and had a word with Thor yourselves as you keep telling us he listens to you. The top of the sacred mountain looks like an ideal venue for this - the storm clouds are already gathering there. The rest of us will watch you from down here.
Oh and don't forget to take your ceremonial twenty-foot bronze spears of office with you."
Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much
Re: Paris...
"... a problem in a few weeks that necessitated a return visit ..."
Life can be so hard when you get these important clients in exotic locations with their constant problems. Sometimes they even become convinced that you are the only person who understands the thing, and insist that you come and fix it in person.
Just make sure that if the boss goes, he does get booked into the hotel with drug dealers in the lobby...
