Posts by Mint Sauce

Amazon turns James Bond into the Man Without the Golden Gun

A screenshot of a search for James Bond on Amazon (no idea why some non-Bond movies come up)

Whoever wrote the above caption has clearly not experienced the steady enshittification of amazon search over the last 10+ years.

Lloyds Banking Group says 'digitization' will power more branch closures

Re: Prroof (if needed)

Alternative view: If they want people to use branches they need to adjust opening hours so people can actually visit them. Example my local HSBC is only open 9.30 to 15.30 monday to friday. Got a 9-5 job that's not within a lunchour's travel time back and forth to the bank? Well you're SOL. Seems to be common in other 'nearby' branches too from what I can see.

"buh..buh... noooooobody viiiiiiiisiiiiiits... we'll have to cloooose the braaaaanch" <HSBC beancounter, probably>

'Technical debt' in police database built to respond to child murders causing a 'failing service'

Shitshow

Sounds like nothing has changed since the days of PITO running NSPIS. It was a shitshow back then as well. Sigh.

Vibe coding platform Replit's latest update is infuriating customers with surprise cost overruns

It's just vibe pricing, bro.

Or maybe they only did vibe due-dilligence before signing on the dotted line...

One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave

LP0 on fire

There's no international protocol on what to do if an asteroid strikes Earth

Re: FFS

Space is big. Like really big.

I dunno man, it's a long way down the road to the chemist's. How does that compare?

New GitHub Copilot limits push AI users to pricier tiers

The joke's on them!

I work for a university which is too poor to afford any of the existing licenses.

Hmm so if we add the money we didn't spend already, to the increased amount, that'll be free cash! To spend on.. well, blackjack and hookers is traditional, I believe.

Peep show: 40K IoT cameras worldwide stream secrets to anyone with a browser

Re: I was doing this over 20 years ago...

I was just thinking the same. I once managed to find a PTZ camera connected to someones model train setup. I admired their dedication if not their security!

<shuffles off to double check passwords and settings on own IP cameras, and to wave at whoever is watching from afar>

Britain dusts off idle spectrum for rail and emergency comms

Yep, I well remember the Acorn MOS screens showing when things occasionally went titsup.com

100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk

Tulsi Gabbard announced more than 100 people had since been terminated.

That seems.... actually probably on-point for the new Russian state of America. Probably quite a few high windows in the NSA offices after all...

Why did the Windows 95 setup use Windows 3.1?

Random Access Memories

Lots of fond memories unlocked after reading through the comments here, pints all round!

Writing scheduling algorithms on Tanenbaun's MINIX for my systems programming coursework at OxPoly...

Installing TamuLinux from 17 floppy disks...

Being impressed with OS/2

Being unimpressed with NEXTStep

Suntools!

Silicon Graphics - helping build a better dinosaur (loved 'my' Indigo :D)

The DLL Hell era of all the different versions of Windows 95 when trying to distribute our software...

Being the first in my company to switch to using Windows 2000 (beta) and finding it a vast improvement all round...

er, jumpers for goalposts? ;-)

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Sony Painstation

I remember something similar, working for a company adjacent to the games industry in the 90's. Shiny new playstation, straight from Japan.

Right let's plug it in and see what this baby can d.. *POP!*

Good job they had more than one ;-)

I also remember we were impressed with the Dreamcast as it looked like it had liquid cooling IIRC (was just a head pipe thing I think in the end)

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

Re: Here are the copies

Hih, I just discovered an old QIC tape in my loft. It'll have some kind of .tar on it, probably a backup of some software I was writing on IRIX back in 1993... I'm curious to see what's on there, but don't have (and have never had) any way to actually read it :-D

They've only gone and made Doom run in a PDF file

<AOL>Me too!</AOL>

Not sure how I sneaked it onto my managed laptop but I'm glad it's evaded the 'unapproved software' police so far ;-)

I use a browser for anything more complicated - e.g. a PDF form that needs to be filled in.

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

Re: Really?

You're being downvoted, but I mostly agree. Have 11 on my work laptop, and 10 on home PC. With some very minor tweaks they are essentially the same user experience.

What I don't trust is MS's ability to update my 10 machine withour royally fucking it up, so I'm holding out to the bitter end before trying that.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: When managers get involved in technical stuff - beware!

That sounds an awful lot like the 'Consignia' re-brand..... ;-)

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Do the monster mash

"Mash the keyboard" is my standard first test whenever someone foolishly asks me to test something... I have noticed they don't ask so often now :-D

Turns out sanitising inputs is apparently too hard to bother doing 99% of the time...

Google's Privacy Sandbox more like a privacy mirage, campaigners claim

Shocked Pikachu face

Asda IT staff shuffled off to TCS amid messy tech divorce from Walmart

Re: Thought this was a UK rag, albeit online

Sadly dear old El Reg is a USA focused site these days. Since the loss of .co.uk, we've had to live with English (simplified) as the default language. There are a few of the old writers still about but they are few and far between it seems.

I guess the almighty dollar always wins in the end.

Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, literally, something else

I well remember heading off to polytechnic in 1991, and recoling in horror at having to use Windows 3, after cutting my teeth on various Archimedes machines running RISC OS.

Context menus everywhere just made much more sense to me at the time. Win 3 didn't even have antialiased fonts as I recall.

Going to have to find an old PI and try this out... question is, can it run Crysis, er, I mean Zarch? :-D

Boeing-backed air taxi upstart Wisk plans to fly you across town at UberX prices by 2030

Re: Is it 'flying cars are just around the corner' time again ?

Yeah we definitely need a new 'Moller SkyCar' icon for these stories ;-)

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

I once contracted at a company who had a VERY expensive new server dissapear one weekend. From an internal secure server room. With multiple layers of security do to the fact we connected to other organisations who like to keep things very secure too. And 24hr manned security on site. On a site with only one entrance (past security). With electronic monitoring systems external to the building. And for various reasons the server would not be easy to sell on.

Security saw/heard nothing. The first we knew was when we tried to log on to said machine on monday morning only to find we couldn't connect..

Strangely there didn't seem to be a big fuss about it, and it was quietly replaced. Thinking back now, there was more than a whiff of anchovy about the whole thing ;-) I was just a lowly contractor - so I took my money each month, did what I was told, and kept my mouth shut :-D

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

"footballer (or soccer in Freedom Language)"

I see the enshittification of El Reg continues apace... :-/

The Land Before Linux: Let's talk about the Unix desktops

Jumpers for Desktops

Well this has all reminded me of being a callow yoof at polytecnic, and learning to use Sunview/Suntools on some kind of workstation with a giant CRT monitor. Also DEC Ultrix on workstations with those wierd round mice. THen worked for quite a few years with SGI Irix from the old Indigo all the way up to the days of the O2, Indigo2 etc.

Must dig out that Jurassic Park poster SGI were hawking around at the time, and get it framed. It's probably worth several hundred pence these days ;-)

Tesla Cybertruck gets cyberstuck during off-roading expedition

Re: Good lord, that was hardly even a hill

"It's that it's an 'in development' product but it's being sold, and the customers expected to do the beta testing."

See Also: Boeing.

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Whilst all around were learning Turbo Pascal...

...we were taught Modula-2 (TopSpeed, no less ;-)

I've probably still got the book on my shelf-o-memories somewhere!

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Shurly shome mishtake?

Those millions of smart meters are bricked already!

Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it

Re: So, shoot the messenger is still well and alive

Hmm, AdBlue needs to be topped up (fairly) regularly so is unlikely to be hidden. So I wonder if Ford were also using a similar system to Stellantis - i.e. a hidden fuel additive tank or pouch (Eolys, pat fluid, other names) that the car decides is empty after certain parameters are met (e.g. 100,000 miles travelled / x fuel ups, or somesuch). THat sounds more likely including the price to refill.

I had the emissions light come on on a Subaru once. Of course dealers want to replace lots of expensive parts. Some internetting later and I discovered the issue was that I hadn't closed the fuel cap enough 'clicks' after the last fuel up. This lead to a sensor somewhere getting upset and throwing the code...

Sadly main dealers no longer employ mechanics with diagnostics skills. They seem to be just parts-fitters who are presumably on comission for each unnecessary part they replace!

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

It's not about Windows 11

It's about "my system works just fine now, and I don't trust microsoft not to fuck it up with the upgrade"

My work laptop is Win11, its ok, its just windows, no different to 10 really.

My home machine is Win10, there's no way I'm upgrading until forced - not because I 'hate' win11, but because it works fine now and I don't want it broken by the upgrade (even if the chances are smaller these days of that happening).

YMMV of course.

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Shurely shome mishtake?

There's a typo in the article - surely it should say: "..Leading on the worrying statistic that 10 percent of McDonald's ice cream machines are WORKING at any given moment..."

UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system

Bobby

Oh no, their newest member of staff was little Bobby Tables, wasn't it???

ISP's ads 'misleadingly implied' existence of 6G, says watchdog

AOL

Biz says folks know the difference between fixed and mobile broadband. Do they, though, asks ASA?

I think anyone event slightly technically minded is well aware that most people have NO idea about their internet connection. As far as they are concerned 'WiFi' is the magic thing that allows them to see pr0n and memes, regardless of how they're actually connected.

Up to £895M up for grabs in UK Emergency Services procurement

Re: Missing something

"Plus, if you have an emergency in West Wales, are you on your own?"

I mean, quite often yes. But that's more to do with the lack of emergency services coverage here rather than any communications issues. Best to make your own way to hospital here, rather than waiting for an ambulance for example (and that's not a slur on the overworked WAS staff, there's just not enough of 'em).

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

Word-salad wankers

Gen X here, and I've no idea what the word-salad-wankers are on about either. Having run out of fucks to give years ago, I've no problem with telling them to start again and this time use English to explain whatever the hell it is they're on about. It's probably one reason I'm never going to get promotion :-D

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

They're just teasers

I wonder if I can cadge a lift from one?

Tesla faked self-driving demo, Autopilot engineer testifies

I knew it!

The dancing robot was driving it after all...

Bringing the first native OS for Arm back from the brink

Jumpers for goalposts

Ahh, I remember using RISC-OS at school on various A310/3000 machines. It was quite a shock to go to Poly and have to use Windows 3 instead - felt like somewhat of a downgrade ;-) Mind you, all my assessments etc in the first year were typed up on my Atari ST so... :-D

LG debuts thin malleable screens made from contact lens material

Re: Visors

Captain Cyborg! Time was he'd be popping up in the El-Reg pages on an almost weekly basis.

To preserve Earth's treasures, digital silence is golden

Re: a black sand beach

Vulcano, near Sicily.

Ooh, that looks interesting, I'll take a walk. 30 seconds later I'm hop-skipping across the sand like some kind of lizard, heading for the cooling refuge of some concrete that was merely blisteringly hot ;-)

I suggest you wear something on your feet if you visit such a beach in the summer !

(icon for the temperature)

Shape-shifting cryptominer savages Linux endpoints and IoT

Re: Show Me The Way To Go Home.

>1, On your planet are there such things a "IoT device managers"?

Well, there used to be. But, you see, we shipped them all off in the B Ark, along with the telephone sanitisers...

Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

Consequences

"...to deal with what it characterized as the security, privacy, and performance consequences."

Ah yes, Google were upset that people were using extensions to improve their OWN security, privacy and performance - at the expense of Big G's data siphoning, presumably.

Oracle staff share news of sizable layoffs

I refuse to believe...

... that "CX presales engineer" is a real job.

It is better for my mental health, I think!

Battle of the retro Unix desktops: NsCDE versus CDE

Jumpers for goalposts

Man, those images bring back some memories. Then again I remember thinking that Suntools was pretty amazing back in the day ;-)

RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well

Acorn Antiques

I have very fond memories of RISC-OS at school - we had a 'wacky' computer science teacher who made everything fun and interesting (and also let us take machines apart to fit hardware etc - I seem to remember we didn't destroy the Hawk V9 hand scanner :-D )

It was a bit of a shock when I went to Poly and had to use PCs running Windows 3.0 - it seemed so janky, and only 2 mouse buttons ;-)

I wanted a RiscPC but the price was too high for an impoverished student at the time, sadly.

Now I'm wondering if there's somewhere on the web I can go and play Zarch again, good times :-)

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Re: That's a demerit

"that's a paddlin"

feel the quality

So, either the UK's latest, greatest warship uses CCTV cameras that were originally bought from Tandy... or the person filming the screen was using their Motorola Razr...

I guess they spent all their money on the software licenses for the F35. (or not, in this case)

The day has a 'y' in it, so Virgin Galactic has announced another delay

Coffee and biscuits are served every ten years...

... whilst they continue to wait for their delivery of lemon-soaked paper napkins.

Twitter's AI image-crop algo is biased towards people who look younger, skinnier, and whiter, bounty challenge at DEF CON reveals

Whenever I see stories like this, I think back to my undergrad days, and a project to write a neural network to recognise patterns. (Written in Eiffel - is that still a thing!?) Long story short, when given a pattern it ought to recognise, it always came up with the inverse of the 'right answer' as the result.

When asked why, the lecturer's response was (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Fuck knows".

In summary, nobody ever knew how any of this stuff works, and probably still doesn't ;-)

Massive 3D catzilla gets crowds purring in busy Shinjuku district of Tokyo

Jeez - imagine the size of the Roomba...

At least the streets will be cleaned... of everything.

WTH are NFTs? Here is the token, there is the Beeple....

Well colour me dumb, but much like Aaiieeee, I've read the article and I'm really none the wiser. Perhaps someone would like to parcel up my confusion into one of these Notably Frangible Tickets, and let's get rich!