Posts by NorthernCoder

If you're Russian to the Moon, expect traffic: Moscow's Putin a lander into orbit

Is that a Tom Lehrer reference?

Who's next?

Automakers continue to see chip-supply carnage as vendors talk of sales pain

Two Volvos, with different CEOs

"Announcing results last week, Volvo said it saw sales fall by 20 per cent amid the chip shortage.

Speaking to investors, Martin Lundstedt, CEO, said: "The fourth quarter was yet another quarter characterised by the shortages of material, mainly related to semiconductors and also then the lack of capacity, including freight."

The link in the first sentence refers to Volvo Cars, but Martin Lundstedt is CEO of Volvo Group, i.e. trucks, buses.

Shut off 3G by 2033? How about 2023, asks Vodafone UK

Not only phones

A big challenge for them will be to get people and companies to replace the devices which aren't phones, such as home alarms with 3G backup, 3G-modems for monitoring remote automation systems and similar.

Nature is healing: Shhh. It's a lesser spotted Pi Bork nesting behind the bushes at IKEA

Halp, I am stück în ëmërgëncy mødë

Hälp, I am stuck in emörgäncy måde

TFIFY

Twitter nukes AI-generated twits who backed Amazon and pushed anti-union rhetoric

No, Swedish truckmaker Volvo, which is separate from the Chinese-owned Swedish carmaker Volvo.

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Re: Dishwashers

Due to coffee-related incidents at work I have twice given my keyboard a good rinse in the shower. After drying over night it has worked perfectly. YMMV.

The keyboard isn't anything fancy, but I like it.

Campaigners demand judicial review of NHS deal with Peter Thiel's AI firm Palantir

So basically the campaigners are saying:

"They are not all accounted for... We do not know who else may be watching!"

For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice

Re: It's not just our business

Copied from the Wiki article for Honda Jazz / Fit:

"Honda had planned to use the name Fitta, and was released in Japan under that name in 2001.[165] Because Fitta in Scandinavian languages is slang for vagina, Honda instead used Jazz in most markets and Fit in the Americas.[166][167][168][169][170]"

Come to Malmö for St Peter's. Stay for the Bork

St Peter's

What has St Peter got to do with anything?

And the teeny-tiny bottle of AI whisky goes to...

HALcohol, continued

...capable of hacking our livers.

HALcohol

In this context, HAL should be read as Hardship Abstraction Liquid, right?

Be still, our drinking hearts: Help Reg name whisky beast conjured by Swedish distillers and AI blendbot

Re: Mackmyra

No.

Myr is a kind of wetland, the closest word I can think of right now is "bog".

From wikipedia page for Mackmyra (the nearby village): "Namnet Mackmyra är sannolikt bildat av ordet mack (ett slags knott) som brukade dansa över myrarna som omger bruket."

= > "The name Mackmyra is most likely formed by the word mack (a kind of black fly) which used to dance over the bogs surrounding the ironworks"

Amazon Alexa: 'Pre-wakeword' patent application suggests plans to process more of your speech

Pre-wake words

Does that mean we'll have stern words with Alexa?

Ikea hopes to spare shoppers the one-way Helvete of its stores with ÅR app overhaul

"The website has never been the easiest thing to use "

Isn't that depending on where you are, i.e. which franchise taker you are surfing to?

Swedish prosecutors request Assange detention: First step to European arrest warrant

As it is a criminal case, the burden of proof is on the prosecutor.

The Swedish courts have no jury, but a panel of judges.

From Wikipedia:

"In first- and second-tier Swedish courts, both in the general and the administrative hierarchy, politically appointed lay judges (nämndemän) sit alongside professional judges in district and appellate general and administrative courts, but decide virtually no civil cases.Lay judges are always in the majority in district courts, whereas the professional judges are in the majority in the appellate courts."

Re: whose district court?

Uppsala tingsrätt, i.e. first level court in the relevant geographical area in Sweden.

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

more convenient that having it on the front.

"this $400 phone has a fingerprint reader. And it's on the back which is actually much more convenient that having it on the front."

Ignoring the typo that/than; How is fingerprint reader on the back much more convenient?

To me it seems inconvenient when the phone is in a car holder or lying on a table.

Woman calls cops on shadowy baddie barricaded in bathroom... to discover: Roomba gone rogue

That sucked..!

I'll get my coat...

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

The Baltic has low salinity, especially in the Gulf of Bothnia.

Tim Apple. Larry Oracle. Ginni Layoffs: It works so why the heck not?

Re: Jennifer Government

Is that you, John Nike?

Civil servants 'Sir Humphrey' their way through grilling on UK.gov's digital transformation

Errare humanum est

To err is human

Customer: We fancy changing a 25-year-old installation. C'mon, it's just one extra valve... Only wafer thin...

Re: The dirtiest four-letter word...

Dilbert, about two weeks ago: https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-02-14

"There are no small software changes, only small managers."

Groundhog Day comes early as Intel Display Drivers give Windows 10 the silent treatment

Groundhog Day comes early...

Feels like it were only yesterday...

ETSI crypto-based access control standards land

Re: When the title said ETSI I thought it might be a standard for...

I thought it might be cryptography derived from extraterrestrial intelligence (but that was SETI, not ETSI).

First A380 flown in anger to be broken up for parts

Marketspeak bingo

"In light of this development, the concept that has now been finalised is an excellent achievement with a total revenue forecast of around 80 million USD per aircraft.”

Damn, if they had just thrown in a "synergy" or perhaps "leverage", I would have had bingo straight away!

PETA calls for fish friendly Swedish street signage

Ironically, the name is fish friendly

If you want to be literal about it (and I think you should in this case), Fiskargatan translates to "Fishes street" which sounds very friendly to me.

"Fisherman's street" would be Fiskaregatan, but my guess is the 'e' has been eroded by time and rapid pronunciation.

Icon for obvious reasons.

Skip-wrecked! Boat full o' rubbish scuppered in Brit residential street

Fly-tipping

Isn't it float-tipping in this case?

Help desk declared code PEBCAK and therefore refused to help!

Re: Memory Issues

TCP: Thumb Centrally Placed (The Swedish idiom for "all thumbs" is "having [your] thumb in the middle of the hand").

This article has been deleted

What was the game called?

"customers threw wadded cash and baristas caught it in underwear or bikini bottoms."

Was it a "Dunk 'n Donuts" type of deal?

Nest cracks out cheaper spin of its thermostat

"...the company's expansion into Scandinavia"

Is there a source to this claim?

You had ONE job: Italian firefighters suspected of starting blazes for cash

Re: Obligatory prescient quote from Sir Pterry

Don't you mean Inn-Sewer-Ants?

*Needs Pterry Icon -->*

Megacorp GSK inks AI drug development deal with Brit firm

I, for one, welcome our new AI drug overlords.

Steppe thugs pacified by the love of stone age women

Been reading Pratchett lately?

"It happens to the best of us: one minute you're raiding and pillaging on the Pontic-Caspian steppe, the next you're settled down with a stone age woman, have a mortgage on the hut and 2.4 kids."

That sounds like what might happen to Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde...

Don't spoil anything, I have only read up to the beginning of "The Last Hero"!

Mediaeval Yorkshirefolk mutilated, burned t'dead to prevent reanimation

Help a foreigner, please

I am slightly confused by the spelling of medaeiouyvaeiouyl (cross out as necessary).

Is it the British spelling in this article and is it slightly different from the spelling used in e.g. USA?

Android O my god! It's finally here (for devs)

Re: So what's the "O"?

Orgasm?

UK Home Office warns tech staff not to tweet negative Donald Trump posts

They should stick to the facts

...the alternative ones, that is.

Did webcam 'performer' offer support chap payment in kind?

Re: Love a good pr0n investigation

"a good pr0n investigation"

Is that like an in-depth analysis?

Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason

I read (at TechTales I believe it was) a story about a company with a 2+2 naming pattern in which the two first letter from the last name would be first, so John Doe would have [e-mail]. Alan Anderton was not amused.

Guess King Battistelli's plan to fix the Euro Patent Office. Yep, give himself more power

"Big Jim" Rennie comes to mind

If you have read the Stephen King book "Under the dome" you know whom I speak of.

Reg man 0: Japanese electronic toilet 1

Come on...

Google translate (the app) can translate the text on those buttons from a photo of my screen showing the picture in the article.

Wouldn't that be an obvious solution to a tech reporter; to use an automated translation service?

Angry user demands three site visits to fix email address typos

Obviously...

...she was off her dried frog pills.

Mine's the one with the Terry Pratchett book in the pocket

Swiss, geez: Robo-hooker coffee shop to be erected in Geneva

"all running Windows"

Obviously it has to be an embedded system, with an ARM Cortex-M type of processor.

You know, with a "Hard fault handler".

Burgundian iPhone wrecker hit with damages, suspended sentence

"outsized metal ball"?

Looks within pétanque regulations (70.5 - 80 mm) to me.

Dublin shopkeeper catches forecourt fouler with his pants down

Was it an IP cam?

No, an HePoo cam

Nork server blunder leaks Kim Jong Un's entire DNS – all, er, 28 .kp domains

"a special set-top box"

I assume this box must be placed near the TV, with an unobstructed view of as much of the living quarters as possible.

And the lens remote eye must be kept clean!

Icon for obvious reasons...

Tesla driver dies after Model S hits tree

Re: standard operating procedures

From Electrek (El Reg's source):

"Apparently, the problem wasn’t due to a lack of knowledge on how to handle a crashed electric vehicle, but because of the state of the wreckage. Ronald Boer, a spokesman for the firefighters, said:

“If the car was on four wheels, the fire brigade normally has no difficulty to turn off the batteries. However, this car is completely destroyed, hampering the recovery. In this situation, you never know what can happen.”"

I suspect milk floats don't go off country lanes at what from the pictures looks like "adventurous" speeds...

Swedish Pokemon teens terrorised by laser-wielding 'sex pigs'

Re: Should have stayed away from the water wheel...

It is somewhat lost in translation, but what is meant is if anyone was around and was offended by it rather than appreciative.

In other words, Google translate made a ham of it...

Bees bring down US stealth fighter

Perhaps...

...the bees thought it was an F/A-18 Hornet?

Here's how police arrested Lauri Love – and what happened next

Kafka's "The Trial" comes to mind...

Icon for obvious reasons ->

Air-gapping SCADA systems won't help you, says man who knows

Remote overview

There is always someone on the customer side who "needs" to be able to connect to the SCADA remotely and view status. Quite often people who think security is limited to a high fence and not telling anyone that the code on the electronic lock is 1234...