* Posts by Florida1920

1243 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jan 2011

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Today in tortured tech analogies: Mozilla lets Firefox loose in the hen house, and by hen house, we mean the tracking cookie jar, er...

Florida1920

"Quite like the Brave Browser.

"It's got an ad-blocker, cookie control and it syncs across my various Android and other Windows computers."

Sorry: https://brave.com/brave-ads-waitlist/

"Brave uses local machine learning with the browser profile to only place ads in optimal conditions. Ads are matched to opportunities, and users become partners instead of targets."

BOFH: What's Near Field Implementation? Oh, you'll see. Turn left here

Florida1920

Ketamine

Me, I miss the cattle prod. Was it considered too violent for El Reg?

When the bits hit the FAN: US military accused of knackering Russian trolls, news org's IT gear amid midterm elections

Florida1920
Pint

Why "trumpet"?

When your adversary does it for you? Glad to see the U.S. getting proactive against Putin.

Hungover this morning? Thought 'beer before wine and you'll be fine'? Boffins prove old adage just isn't true

Florida1920

Slightly OT but info requested

Back in the day, whenever I drank Jameson's, I'd wake up feeling as though I'd been strangled. JW, even Red, did not have the same effect. I stick to [country] coffee without [country] these day, but I always wondered why the Irish were trying to throttle me.

I helped catch Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht: Undercover agent tells all

Florida1920
Happy

Ignorance is bliss

Sure glad I'm not smart enough to set up something like Silk Road. I may be poorer, but I'm a free man.

Should the super-rich pay 70% tax rate above $10m? Here's Michael Dell's hot take for Davos

Florida1920

Eat the rich

That's all.

Whats(goes)App must come down... World in shock as Zuck decides to intertwine Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp

Florida1920
Pint

Tried to uninstall Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp

Only to discover I'd never installed them in the first place. Obviously not installing enough --->

Dozens of .gov HTTPS certs expire, webpages offline, FBI on ice, IT security slows... Yup, it's day 20 of Trump's govt shutdown

Florida1920

Re: Oh God

The numbers given for DHS furloughs are misleading. The U.S. Coast Guard is part of DHS, not the Defense Dept., and civilian and uniformed employees are also not being paid. Earlier this week, the Coast Guard was recommending affected personnel have garage sales, take up dog walking, or become "mystery shoppers" (whatever the hell that is) to get by. I'm sure we can count on the service to continue working, but what happens when they run out of fuel for the boats or food for the crews? Wouldn't you love to see a Coast Guard vessel hijack a cruise liner? In the name of national security, of course.

SIDEBAR: Trump should stop eating until his shutdown ends, in solidarity with all the people whose lives he's destroying with his childish tantrum. He could stand to lose several pounds anyway.

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

Florida1920

Re: How many Shuttles could have been kept operative..

Space Shuttle launches cost about $1.5b, so the wall would have paid for about 4 launches.
That $5.7 billion is only for starters. The entire wall project would cost a lot more. Maybe we should build a wall around the White House.

Encryption? This time it'll be usable, Thunderbird promises

Florida1920

FossaMail

Some time ago, someone at TBird decided the name of some field had to be changed. It looked like rearranging the deck chairs, so I switched to FossaMail. The cat-like carnivore was abandoned, but it still works for my minimal email and RSS requirements. Being abandoned, at least I don't have to worry about an update that changes something that didn't need to be changed.

New Horizons snaps finish buffering: Ultima Thule actually two dust bunnies that got snuggly 4.5 billion years ago

Florida1920

Re: speaking of blown away ...

(Self edit : Stop NOW)
That wasn't so hard, was it?

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Florida1920
Alert

Re: bbc quotes

So, we can expect some statements very soon (and it's almost Christmas)
Santa will not be visiting the Gatwick area. The reindeer are terrified of drones.

Mark Zuckerberg did everything in his power to avoid Facebook becoming the next MySpace – but forgot one crucial detail…

Florida1920
Holmes

Not surprising

That in a world where millions of people think wasting time on Facebook is a good idea, that we wound up with Brexit and Trump.

Chill, it's not WikiLeaks 2: Pile of EU diplomatic cables nicked by hackers

Florida1920

Re: Everybody Needs Read This for ::snippage, too long::

If they ever hack El Reg, as soon as they hit amfM's comments they will collectively resign and ask to be reassigned to work in the rice paddies.

Boffins don't give a sh!t, slap Trump's face on a turd in science journal

Florida1920

Too late

14 December 2018 Editors’ Note: The editors have become aware of unusual aspects to the ‘Extract fecal DNA’ illustration in figure 1. We are investigating, and appropriate editorial action will be taken once the matter is resolved.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20427-9#change-history

Wimps.

Taylor's gonna spy, spy, spy, spy, spy... fans can't shake cam off, shake cam off

Florida1920
Big Brother

What constitutes a "stalker"?

Someone who attends more than two of her concerts? Yeah, they should be detained.

Careful with this latest Microsoft release – tug too hard on the threads and it tends to unravel

Florida1920

I had an Adobe Flash jumper

But it was pwned.

Phew, galactic accident helps boffins explain dark matter riddle

Florida1920

Re: Surely it's easy?

@Neil Barnes

I seem to have upset a lot of astrophysicists - anyone care to explain why? Or was the coat not indication enough that I wasn't being serious?
It must be seasonal. The literalists have been coming out of the woodwork lately.

Latest Google+ flaw leads Chocolate Factory to shut down site early

Florida1920
Angel

Today Google+, tomorrow Facebook?

Well, we can hope, can't we?

Poor people should get slower internet speeds, American ISPs tell FCC

Florida1920
Pirate

Let them eat cake

Worked out well for the French monarchy. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Adobe Flash zero-day exploit... leveraging ActiveX… embedded in Office Doc... BINGO!

Florida1920
Headmaster

Re: Flash, ActiveX, Office doc embedding/scripting - should already be DISABLED

But then I also wondered why Linus didn't pause in his piano playing at Lucy's interruption
The piano player in "Peanuts" was Schroeder.

And lo! Tim Cook becometh tech Jesus. But with more awards

Florida1920
Facepalm

Re: Apple

There was no apple in Genesis. Look up the difference between the Latin mālum and mălum. The Bible is full of such translation errors.

It was a joke, okay?

Florida1920

Re: Apple

I think you'll find fruit is just what it was. The idea of it being an apple was just media garnish.
All right, then how about the poisoned apple in Snow White? I'm sticking to this metaphor, you see. Not that the Apple Core Corp will soon go into the Sleeping Death.

Florida1920
Devil

Apple

Wasn't there something about a certain fruit in Genesis, that led to Original Sin?

Tesla autopilot saves driver after he fell asleep at wheel on the freeway

Florida1920

Good thing they didn't program this feature

Suppose the Tesla had been programmed to pass slow-moving vehicles?

Wait for it: Robot car chased by robot police car. Skynet, coming soon to a freeway near you.

Support whizz 'fixes' screeching laptop with a single click... by closing 'malware-y' browser tab

Florida1920

Not quite IT

I got an expensive commercial ham radio power amp for free. Didn't work on one band, returned to mfr, who found no problems. User (licensed ham, as am I) gave up. When I went to get it, he had an expensive transceiver, with a microphone hooked up but no keys in sight. Correctly assumed the radio was accidentally in CW mode, so the transceiver went into Transmit when he hit the PTT button, but there was no audio and thus no RF. Sure enough, got the beast home and it worked perfectly. Could have straightened the guy out at his house, but sometimes you just get on that gift horse and ride it away.

NASA's Mars probe InSight really has Mars in sight: It beams back first pic after touchdown

Florida1920

Re: Wind

Windbreaker / Breaking Wind

The difference and similarity of these two terms has always fascinated me. Fair winds and following seas, InSight!

Great Scott! Is nothing sacred? US movie-goers vote Back To The Future as most-wanted reboot

Florida1920
Pint

I'm happy

Never saw the originals. Now I get to skip the reboot.

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

Florida1920
Coat

@macjules Re: Black Friday ?

Quite how one day can last a week I am not sure
I've had days at work that seemed like years.

The one with the obsolete big-screen telly in the pocket.

Technical foul: Amazon suffers data snafu days before Black Friday, emails world+dog

Florida1920

Re: I received this scam-like email - thanks for verifying El Reg

@GaryF

Oh, Amazon, please stop recommending cat food to me by email and push notifications. I don't have a bloody cat, never had and never clicked on anything cat-like. How can I remove this from your dumb AI's brain? :-(
They've obviously mistaken you for Julian Assange. Seen any black helicopters lately?

Microsoft slips ads into Windows 10 Mail client – then U-turns so hard, it warps fabric of reality

Florida1920

Re: Windows Mail gets worse and worse

The next iteration will remove the capability to send and receive email altogether.
That will definitely be a feature, not a bug.

Oz lad 'fell in love with' baby meerkat, nicked it from zoo, took it out for a romantic Big Mac

Florida1920

Cubicle rats

Here in the States, meerkats work in offices. I saw it in a GEICO TV commercial, so it must be true.

In news that will shock absolutely no one, America's cellphone networks throttle vids, strangle rival Skype

Florida1920

Deals between certain mobile phone networks and certain video streaming companies

Translation: Extortion

Russian computer failure on ISS is nothing to worry about – they're just going to turn it off and on again

Florida1920
Boffin

Food prep failure

"Comrade, computer is on the blink."

"Nyet, comrade, computer is on the blini."

Has science gone too far? Now boffins dream of shining gigantic laser pointer into space to get aliens' attention

Florida1920
Mushroom

Put it on the moon

That way the aliens will shoot their photon cannons at the moon instead of Earth. What could possibly go wrong?

Supreme Court tells Big Cable to shut up for once: Net neutrality challenge shot down

Florida1920
Facepalm

Federal rules should supersede state laws

And corporate rules will supersede federal laws. That's all you need to know.

Google: All right, screw it, from this Christmas, Chrome will block ALL adverts on dodgy sites

Florida1920
Pirate

It's out of control

One forum I visit allows the insertion of the typical emojis. But with uBlock Origin engaged, half of them don't display. No big deal. But just to see, I turned off ad blocking and, sure enough, ads started popping up left and right. Bye-bye emojis. Google's well-intentioned fix PR stunt is too little, too late. To paraphrase Bill, "First we kill all the ads."

Roscosmos: An assembly error doomed our Soyuz, but we promise it won't happen again

Florida1920

Re: I can't get the sensor to fit

We as the prefinal testers would regularly see amazing errors that people would do.
My first new car was a 1969 Pontiac, which I kept for many years until it was destroyed by another car striking it while it was stopped. I was still driving it when the state I lived in instituted emissions tests. It failed because of excess hydrocarbon emissions. Compression test looked okay so let's look at the carburetor. Removed top cap on carburetor, then the dried-out gasket. In the top rim of the main housing was a _serious_ dent, where something pretty heavy had fallen on it, or the carb had been dropped before assembly. That carb never should have found its way into a car. The gasket had sealed the dent for many years, until it dried out. Put a little dab of gasket sealer on the dent and let it cure, then replaced only the gasket, and the car passed its emissions test well below the PPM limits for that year. I forget which company built that carb, but that wasn't the only quality problem with the car. The first month I had it a rear-window regulator let go and the glass disappeared inside the body. Then the latch that held the seat in place front-back let go. Buy American? Call me a traitor, but I don't need the drama.

Space vehicles undergo rather more stress than that carburetor, so even if a problem isn't immediately apparent, poor QA can result in catastrophe later on. As John Glenn famously noted, every part of an American space vehicle was built by the lowest bidder. The problem is, once the thing is assembled, it's impossible to know if something was damaged or mis-assembled. As someone else noted, you have to trust in the quality culture of the organizations responsible for making the beast.

'He must be stopped': Missouri candidate's children tell voters he's basically an asshat

Florida1920

Re: There are some people that the

By 'just fine' you mean 'didn't have many roads'.
Only the plebs need roads. Smart people work from home.

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

Florida1920
Pint

I used to hate QA

They would do things to software no one in their right mind ever would. And blow it up. Then come to Tech Docs are suggest changes to the manual, to the effect of Don't Do That. Later in life I got into PC tech support and realized, people otherwise in their right minds are capable of doing anything. Viva QA!

Erm... what did you say again, dear reader?

Florida1920

Reading comprehension

Not being a Brit, I kept reading it as Thame Slink.

Google Cloud chief joins Saudi shindig exodus over journalist's worrying disappearance

Florida1920

Your RSS is grass: Mozilla euthanizes feed reader, Atom code in Firefox browser, claims it's old and unloved

Florida1920

Re: I've always liked RSS

My phpBB board has an Atom feed, that I read on Fossamail. I can monitor posts without having to keep refreshing the browser. A favorite site of mine, American Bird Conservancy, switched from RSS to Twitter. I don't see their updates anymore. I miss the days when everything online didn't have to be monetized.

Uncle Sam gives itself the right to shoot down any drone, anywhere, any time, any how

Florida1920

@Peter Christy

I can foresee some very angry US citizens when a cop shoots down an expensive (in terms of both money and time building it) model, just because he's taken a dislike to it!
Based on my experience with police marksmanship, the odds of one shooting down a drone are small. If they're shooting at yours, just hover until they run out of ammo, then retreat while they're reloading.

Laser-sharp research sees three top boffins win the Nobel Prize in physics

Florida1920

Nothing for the sharks?

Typical. Lab assistants always get screwed.

Attempt to clean up tech area has shocking effect on kit

Florida1920

Grease

Once had a contract doing a QA manual for a HD named Aztec. There were process problems, one of which was pretty clear. The person assembling the heads wore latex finger tips to keep oil from places it didn't belong. As she assembled the heads, she'd occasionally scratch the outside of her nose with a gloved fingertip. Then there were the tolerance stack-up errors when machining the base plate....

Working Apple-1 retro fossil auctioned off to mystery bidder for $375,000

Florida1920
Gimp

OMG! Maybe this will give them ideas as to where to price the next iPhone....
They need to get Jobs to sign one. I'm sure they're working on an app for that.

While the UN laughed at Trump, hackers chortled at the UN's lousy web application security

Florida1920

Re: I'm here all week, try the veal!

The seniors home entertainment circuit
A fancier name for Fox "News."

Florida1920

Scary Clown

Trump has finally found his calling.

Guilty: The Romanian ransomware mastermind who infected Trump inauguration CCTV cams

Florida1920
Pint

At least they had some fun before they got caught

From Observator, translated by Google:

But, surprisingly, they made a mistake that cost them expensive: they sent messages on these addresses from their personal mail and so they got naked, which relieved the work of the US authorities to identify the two Romanians .

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