* Posts by Steve Aubrey

318 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2012

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New solvent might end winter charging blues for EV owners

Steve Aubrey
Joke

I know why they didn't discover this earlier

From the article: "intercalation science".

This is obviously a reference to INTERCAL (the "Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym"), which is notably slow. So obviously. Please.

Microsoft Edge ignores user wishes, slurps tabs from Chrome without permission

Steve Aubrey
Facepalm

New name for a bug

"Unintended Feature Experience" - UFE.

Pronounced "oooof"'

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

Steve Aubrey
Happy

Rookies

My wife was a programmer at a company that saved disk space by using only a single digit year. While everybody else was worrying about Y2K, for her it was just another decade roll-over. Easy-peasy.

The week in weird: Check out the strangest CES tech of 2024

Steve Aubrey
FAIL

A square meter of air

. . . and one molecule thick?

Code archaeologist digs up oldest known ancestor of MS-DOS

Steve Aubrey
Unhappy

Oooooh, nice. I sadly sold my OSI C1P (with the upgrade to 8K). Still miss it, but prolly wouldn't use it if I had it.

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

Steve Aubrey
Facepalm

Buuuuut - who do they resign to ?

Is there anything tape can’t fix? This techie used it to defeat the Sun

Steve Aubrey

Re: I need my local printer

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058812/quotes/qt0214308

Stratus ships latest batch of fault-tolerant Xeon servers

Steve Aubrey

Re: interesting concept

Gotta be a niche market - not many need it, but if you need it, you need it bad.

Royal Mail wins worst April Fools' joke 2023

Steve Aubrey
Joke

Re: Erm

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Privacy fail: Pictures cropped, redacted by Google Pixel phones can be recovered

Steve Aubrey
Headmaster

Re: Really??

But whatever includes the name is atomic. The *list* of names is not atomic.

The PNG from the original problem is atomic.

Google: Turn off Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE to protect your Android from Samsung hijack bugs

Steve Aubrey
Go

Re: Google issued a fix for CVE-2023-24033 affecting Pixel devices in its March security update.

If you have a supported Pixel phone, they are supposed to give it to you when you ask. Settings | System | System update | Check for update. Now I did hear that the 6/6a updates were running late, so, as always, YMMV.

Requiem for Google Reader, dead for a decade but not forgotten

Steve Aubrey
Unhappy

This is a big list

Products killed by Google (in case the URL didn't tip you off): https://killedbygoogle.com/

I still miss some of them.

I can't do that, Dave: AI drowns top sci-fi mag with story submissions

Steve Aubrey
Go

My support

I don't know the answer to the problem of "AI" when it isn't an improvement or a help. But I backed ClarkesWorld with a subscription, to help them weather the storm. Three bucks a month and I get benefits. Hard to lose on that one.

What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage

Steve Aubrey
Joke

Re: Ouch

"old Ethernet cables" - man, are we living on internet time or what? So token-ring will be pre-history? Reminds me of:

After having dug to a depth of 10 meters last year, French scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1,000 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors had a telephone network all those centuries ago.

Not to be outdone by the French, English scientists dug to a depth of 20 meters and shortly after headlines in the U.K. newspapers read: "English archeologists have found traces of 2,000-year-old fiber-optic cable and have concluded that their ancestors had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years earlier than the French."

One week later, Israeli newspapers reported the following: "After digging as deep as 50 meters in a Jerusalem marketplace, scientists had found absolutely nothing. They, therefore, concluded that 5,000 years ago Jews were already using wireless technology."

Scammers steal $4 million in crypto during face-to-face meeting

Steve Aubrey
Stop

Re: Trust wallet think they know how it happened now

From the comments to the 17-part tweet: "With all due respect, you did not explain what happened but repeated the narrative."

And I'd agree.

California toys with digital vehicle titles on private DMV blockchain

Steve Aubrey
Happy

Re: Existing Computerized System (Subcontracted?) Already Error-filled

Oh, AC, I think you had the wrong part changed. You should have had the inspector transform the sedan into a Z-car. Worst case, you could have sold it (after a little speed run somewhere) and had some petrol money for the sedan you subsequently purchased.

Unix is dead. Long live Unix!

Steve Aubrey
Childcatcher

Re: Are you ok?

Possibly extracted from https://www.gwern.net/docs/cs/2001-12-02-treginaldgibbons-isyoursonacomputerhacker.html - from 2001.

Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable

Steve Aubrey

Re: Contacts on both sides

No, people who would do that are actually lesser people. There would also be fewer of them.

Linux Lite 6.0: It's quite pretty, but 'lite' it is not

Steve Aubrey

Has El Reg enabled the sarcasm font, and my browser just doesn't show it?

Ransomware the final nail in coffin for small university

Steve Aubrey

Re: Having backups

"An honest politician is one who stays bought"

Same for ransomware gangs?

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Steve Aubrey
Stop

Re: I would get it fired for inventing Powershell

"Shakespeare wasn't written by Shakespeare. It was written by somebody else named Shakespeare."

Blood pressure monitor won't arrive for Apple Watch before 2024 – report

Steve Aubrey
Meh

Which way?

"the system was able to detect atrial fibrillation correctly about 98 percent of the time"

Wonder if the two percent were false positives or false negatives. One could be a bit of a bother. The other could turn you into a long-term coffin inspector - inside job, of course.

If you fire someone, don't let them hang around a month to finish code

Steve Aubrey
Unhappy

Re: Fired...

I heard of a company who staged a fire drill. Once everybody was in the parking lot, the sheep were separated from the goats. Those being dismissed were escorted in to pick up their belongings.

That's evil.

Wozniak startup to share orbital space junk data

Steve Aubrey

Irony

"Privateer is planning to launch its own satellites"

Anybody taking odds on whether these fly-boxes may eventually add to what needs to be tracked?

Not suggesting he'd intentionally create additional bits for his company to track - would be expensive and dumb, and he certainly ain't the latter. But it's within the realm of possibility.

And it's a serious question - no matter how well-intentioned, putting a box up there means the risk is non-zero.

Fujitsu: Dumping older workers will wipe out quarter of forecast profit

Steve Aubrey

Re: This PR BS makes me puke

Animal Farm. All the animals were equal, but some were more equal than others.

IBM cannot kill this age-discrimination lawsuit linked to CEO

Steve Aubrey
Flame

Re: Semantic alert

"The cigars were destroyed in a series of small fires"

Tonga's submarine cable reconnects to the world

Steve Aubrey
Joke

"tenuously related news"

You're just stringing us along, aren't you?

To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer

Steve Aubrey
Happy

Re: Step outside

Because they're blind?

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Steve Aubrey
Happy

Re: Nobody told me I wasn't allowed to do it.

Absolute gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baY3SaIhfl0 (one minute)

AT&T, Verizon delay 5G C-band rollout over FAA fears of passenger plane radars jammed by signals

Steve Aubrey
Meh

He said, she said

Without technical clarity, there is no clear way forward. Based on the frequencies shown, it would seem that the telcos hold the winning hand. The government waiting so late in the game (and going all the way back to potentially licensing something unusable) is suspect. Seems like something more than the invisible hand of capitalism is at work.

You geeks have inherited the Earth, but what are you going to do with it?

Steve Aubrey
Meh

Selective archiving

"tossing my old Creative Computing magazines"

When I last moved, I downsized my PC Magazine collection, keeping only the January issue of each year, for just this reason. Can't justify keeping everything, can't stand losing everything.

Wi-Fi not working? It's time to consult the lovely people on those fine Linux forums

Steve Aubrey
Thumb Up

Re: "first read the fine forum thread until the end"

Stolen - thanks!

Better CEO is 'taking time off' after firing 900 staff on Zoom

Steve Aubrey
Thumb Down

Worse, but not as big

I heard about a company that, when time for redundancies, created a fire drill to get everybody out of the building and into the parking lot. Then the employees were separated into the sheep and the goats, and the goats were escorted back in one at a time to clear out their desks. I imagine those staying didn't have warm feelings of confidence in management after that.

When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere

Steve Aubrey
Coat

Re: Temporary hacks aren't.

Jake's contribution was a fact, not a denial. 8 years ain't nothing to a time traveler. Just sayin' . . .

Swooping in to claim the glory while the On Call engineer stands baffled

Steve Aubrey

Re: Hands On

Now that's the scientific method . . .

Should be easy to win the rights to .tv when you're name-checked in the contract's tech reqs – right, Afilias?

Steve Aubrey
Thumb Up

Bravo

Bravo, Kieren, for some awesome digging. They were able to search-and-delete the name Afilias, but they still missed a smoking gun.

Nominet names new CEO as new chair promises real reform

Steve Aubrey
Megaphone

Actions speak louder than words

That is all

BlackMatter ransomware gang says it's disbanding – again – after Ukraine arrests

Steve Aubrey
Joke

"part of the team is no longer available"

So supply chain problems?

IT god exposed as false idol by quirks of Java – until he laid his hands on the server

Steve Aubrey
Trollface

Re: For the non-programmers amongst us...

"You can write Fortran in any language . . ."

Amazon textbook rental service scammed for $1.5m

Steve Aubrey
IT Angle

Re: Portage...

"portage" is also the package manager for Gentoo Linux, providing a very tenuous IT angle.

Want a piece of GitLab? It's going to cost you: IPO price per share settles at $77

Steve Aubrey
Flame

Selling the sizzle

It's been selling today between 93 and 96. Current market cap is a shade under $13.5B. They can't keep this up forever (same as I said about BitCoin).

Firewalls? Pfft – it's no match for my mighty spares-bin PC

Steve Aubrey

And somehow, somewhere, your name was associated with that demolition in a negative way. You just know it.

Ukrainian cops cuff two over $150m ransomware gang allegations, seize $1.3m in cryptocurrency

Steve Aubrey

The times, they aren't a-changing

"ransomware criminals complaining that REvil's rentable malware was ripping them off through a secret backdoor"

Reminds me of the quote about an honest politician being one who stays bought.

No "joke" icon. It's all sad, but true.

Big Blue's quantum rainmaker jumps to room-temp diamond quantum accelerator company

Steve Aubrey

Timing

Always five years away . . .

Unsure whether to add joke icon or not. I'll stop back in five years' time and check if I was right.

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

Steve Aubrey

We had a power outage once, and I grabbed a movie DVD and a laptop, so we could watch "television" by candle-light.

Beige Against the Machine: The IBM PC turns 40

Steve Aubrey
Joke

Re: Progress?

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - in PowerPoint

https://norvig.com/Gettysburg/

(joke icon because there isn't one for crying)

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Steve Aubrey
Thumb Up

Kudos to Gareth

Subtle, but present, humor. Sly, even.

Apple won't talk to El Reg, "so asking it to comment on this is a fruitless exercise"

I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google

Steve Aubrey
Facepalm

Shakespeare

Methinks he doth protest too much . . .

No insight into the person nor the situation. But a 10k word "missive"?

Digital delinquent deletes developer's database during disastrous Docker deployment, defaults damned

Steve Aubrey
Joke

Re: my compliments

And noted by an author whose initial is "D". Of course he would notice!

Nominet is back to 'the same old sh*t' says Public Benefit campaign chief as EGM actions grind to halt

Steve Aubrey
Unhappy

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

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