Posts by NXM

Minister slams 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories as 'dangerous nonsense' after phone towers torched in UK

I'm going to start some rumours about 6G, just so I've got them in early. It causes terrifying symptoms of gullibility you know. Oh hang on, maybe that's 5G.

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

Re: The people I know to be most affected are

I agree on the grounds of making the polluter pay.

Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers

Simon Stalenhag has a good take on this. Look for his paintings featuring the Sentre headset - nice & dystopian. I'd include a link but the site isn't that easy to search.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Re: DIY Electricians

Neutral is usually near, but not connected to (at least in your house), earth. I have an old clothes iron with a 'heating' indicator which can't be used on modern wiring because the bulb is wired between neutral and earth, about 4V AC. If you use it now, it always trips the rcd because it detects current running out of live which doesn't return via neutral.

On broken wires, I had to rewire a house because the cabling, installed on the 1940's, had rubber insulation. It had perished and exposed the copper. Entire areas of wall were live. I have no idea how it hadn't burned down.

Bose customers beg for firmware ceasefire after headphones fall victim to another crap update

Re: Criminal Damage

I think that would fail on the grounds that you'd have trouble proving Bose intended to destroy or damage the cans. You'd have a better chance with the Consumer Rights Act 2015, which requires an item to be fit for purpose for about 5 years after you bought it. Which it clearly isn't if it stops working.

Taxi for Uber: Ride-hailing app giant stripped of licence to operate in London

Newcastle

"so I'm guessing this Newcastle"

If they had less on /and/ it was snowing, maybe. I lived in Newcastle and the Bigg Market on weekend evenings was like Beirut, only covered in snow and powered by nuclear-strength curry and lorryloads of cheap lager.

Abdul Latif, who owned a curry house there, bought a title to become Lord Harpole of the Rupali.

Great times.

The silence of the racks is deafening, production gear has gone dark – so which wire do we cut?

Re: The big red button

I do that too, but it doesn't stop the site "engineer" (ie some bloke with a hammer and an nvq in bashing things with it) from removing the header from the board and plugging it back in the other way round. A dead board ensues, which I won't fix on the warranty.

Not LibreOffice too? Beloved open-source suite latest to fall victim to the curse of Catalina

Bring back WordStar

Japanese hotel chain sorry that hackers may have watched guests through bedside robots

Re: I'm staying in a Henn Na Hotel right now ...

According to The Meaning of Liff, the correct term for this is 'Shoeburyness', the uncomfortable feeling caused by sitting on a toilet seat warmed by someone else's bottom.

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

Re: Endless recycling

That's WORN - write once, read never

Take your pick: 0/1/* ... but beware – your click could tank an entire edition of a century-old newspaper

Subject line confusion

In the fairly small, proportionally-spaced subject line in my email client, this looked like "your dick could tank an entire

edition of a century-old newspaper".

I thought, well how could that be? My dick's not even been near any newspapers....

Techie finds himself telling caller there is no safe depth of water for operating computers

Re: Design deficiencies

Not just computers.

Our county council decided that fhe paper files should go in the lowest floors to provide much-need premium office space for one of the Nobs. All went will until the offices flooded and all the paper records were destroyed.

Users fail to squeak through basic computer skills test. Well, it was the '90s

optical mouse problem

I used to work in a industrial unit with skylights, and had a red mouse that was shaped like a ladybird. Every now & again it wouldn't work, and I realised that was when it was sunny outside. The infra-red was passing through my hand, and the red plastic, then swamping the mouse's optical sensors.

Holy crappuccino. There's a latte trouble brewing... Bio-boffins reckon 60%+ of coffee species may be doomed

cross bread

Mmmm, hot cross buns

Having AI assistants ruling our future lives? That's so sad. Alexa play Despacito

Density can be your friend

Years ago on a cold night I filled the car with petrol and drove the 20 miles back home. When I got up the following morning it was a lot warmer and the petrol had expanded and overflowed! So I ended up with more petrol than I started with. Not totally on topic I know, but I found it interesting at the time.

What a cheep shot: Bird sorry after legal eagles fire DMCA takedown at scooter unlock blog

Streisand effect

Noooooo! Teaching it would remove all the larfs we've had, and hope to get more of in future. Let the ignorant carry on in their misguided ways so the rest of us can get a bit of a smile in these dark days.

A year after Logitech screwed over Harmony users, it, um, screws over Harmony users: Device API killed off

automation in general

I made the point that heating via an app is a bad idea for many many reasons in a comment on the Grauniad a few months ago. Got totally shot down by fanbois who wanted the toys but didn't care about their own security.

LG's beer-making bot singlehandedly sucks all fun, boffinry from home brewing

Re: Of course there's a market for it

Here's a Juicero:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Juicero-Model-J1-c-juicer/143045258570?hash=item214e296d4a:g:uvkAAOSwq6Nb1Zcl:rk:1:pf:0

It's been relisted at least once and was (I think) about $600 last time. Useful for the Dead Format Museum, and as an object lesson in how to fleece venture capitalists.

Re: Beer in the Sodastream?

I tried converting white wine into prosecco/cava/champagne using the soda siphon. Didn't explode, but also wasn't nearly fizzy enough.

Re: Why?

I agree with others - bread machines are excellent. But I don't like the paddle-shaped hole in the middle, so I put mine on dough mode, take it out and put it in the cooker, then leave it to prove & cook on timer. All I have to do is take it out and nosh it. The machine's paid it's cost off many times over.

Similarly with the ice cream machine (a frozen bowl thing for the Kenwood) - makes ice cream that involves cream, not hydrolised vegetable protein and a bucket of E numbers. Don't look at the ingredients in most retail "ice cream" if you're going to eat it, because you probably won't want to.

Tech support discovers users who buy the 'sh*ttest PCs known to Man' struggle with basics

Re: It's 2018

How is that most people?

I'm middle aged. Everyone who went to school after me has had some sort of contact with computers, and absolutely everyone using a computer must know how to sort-of use it, at least. My mum's a dab hand with the things and she's 81.

Using a computer is a life skill now, so if people can't use one it must be deliberate.

Why millions of Brits' mobile phones were knackered on Thursday: An expired Ericsson software certificate

Bus timetables

People would've had to look up from their screens to look down the street in case a bus was coming.

My god, the horror.

Consultant misreads advice, ends up on a 200km journey to the Exchange expert

Mini brakes

Fixing a leaky master cylinder I followed the instructions in the Haynes manual to remove it, then got to where it said "using a pair of circlip pliers....". Did I have a pair of circlip pliers? No, I did not.

I had to put it all back together, drive to the shops and buy some, go home and dismantle it all again. Bugger.

Bright spark dev irons out light interference

Re: Have you ever put something apparently useless to good use?

I love greengrocers' apostrophe's. How the hell el'se are we going to get rid of the EU apo'straphe mountain?

Can your rival fix it as fast? turns out to be ten-million-dollar question for plucky support guy

Re: Ancient memories / current practice

I write assembler on PIC's because it runs faster. There's lots of this:

bcf status,carry ; jic

The jic is just in case. There's a lot of that too.

Assange catgate hearing halted as Ecuador hunts around for someone who speaks Australian

Move the embassy

They'd get a nice new embassy with a clean bathroom, and Julian wouldn't be able to either stay or go with them without being accosted by the rozzers. A win for everyone, and the Ecuadorians could keep kitty as their new diplocat.

'This is insane!' FCC commissioner tears into colleagues over failure to stop robocalls

Re: I use a blocker

supervoice.com did this, which came with a dsp-based modem card I had years ago. You could set up multiple voicemail accounts, filters, and all sorts. asterisk does that as well, but you need a proprietary phone interface card.

Brits pay £490m extra for mobes they already own – Citizens Advice

Re: Can someone please remind of the upsides of a mobile contract...

The bundle is part of the reason for the insane cost of the phone. People aren't going to fork out a grand for the latest iThing when they can gat an 'affordable' monthly payment instead. This allows the manufacturers, with their accomplices the network operators, to hike the price. Win win!

UK.gov: NHS should be compensated by firms using its data goldmine

care.data all over again

I signed myself out of the last 'anonymised' proposal because all anyone needed to identify me was age bracket and postcode - there's hardly anyone here at our postcode. I don't expect any new proposal to be any better, so its up to the government to *prove* my information is safe.

Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till

Re: Do you want fries with that?

/put hand in fryer/

Don't go there. when I was 16 I made the chips in a chip shop (perk: free chips. nice).

Someone who fried was convinced the fat was cold, but was told by the owner it was still hot. "No it isn't" she said, and put her hand in. Hello, burns unit.

Send printer ink, please. More again please, and fast. Now send it faster

Re: There are so many extarordinary stories

Button fly.

But then your trousers fall down when you're at the pisser.

Swiss sausage sizzler 4.0 hits 200 bangers per hour

Re: 1400 degrees?

I'm not so sure - it looks like the sausages are on prongs, which would also be hot and so cook the insides as well. A bit like a baked potato with a skewer through it.

But instant sausages are not a new thing - look up the Presto Hot Dogger, which connected them to the mains. What? Of course it's safe, dear...

Blighty: If EU won't let us play at Galileo, we're going home and taking encryption tech with us

Re: Fucking Brexit

I don't get why I have to be the victim when I didn't vote for it, and there was only a majority leave result because of repeated, egregious lies paid for with a tax avoider's money.

New Galaxy un-smartphone can’t go online because Samsung's thought of the children

Top pocket

I've got a knife & fork in mine, in case any food turns up unexpectedly

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

How to solve a problem

I used to get calls from my mother whose laptop settings, icon placement, and email account and so on had randomly changed since she used it last. I'd painstakingly help her through it over the phone, and sometimes I'd have to go to sort it out in person - an entire afternoon's worth. Though spending a bit of time with her is always worth it, this would invariably happen when I had no spare time at all.

Then I realised it was always be after my brother-in-law, also a techie, had visited. He'd piss about with the machine to suit himself or kids, and leave it in that state without telling anyone. Then I'd have to fix it. All so he didn't have to bring his own laptop.

I sorted it out by putting a password on it and refusing to tell him what it was.

Penis pothole protester: Cambridge's 'Wanksy' art shows feted

Boost to the economy

I'm pretty sure some clever government economist sees potholes as a good thing. Reduced spending on road maintenance causes increased economic activity in car repairs, which is clearly good for everyone!

Cambridge Analytica 'privatised colonising operation', not a 'legitimate business', says whistleblower

subliminal advertising

I'm certain they're putting blipverts on, but somehow they never appear when I watch it again on catchup. The fiends.

BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

I really can't stand facebook

Years ago I signed on to it, realised it was an utter utter waste of time, and deleted the account.

Then the other day someone wanted me to communicate via whatsapp, so I installed it. The *very first thing it did* was to slurp all my contacts, send them back to its servers, present me with a list of them who were also users, and presumably also sent the whole lot to facebook (who I'd forgotten had bought whatsapp).

Bastards. Too late, I deleted it.

Office junior had one job: Tearing perforated bits off tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper

Re: Stationery

A friend of mine reckons he saw a sign on a door of an office he was visiting which said 'The stationary department has moved'. That is just sublime.

Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?

No- one sits still on the floor

I've not only stayed still on the floor for long periods, I've actually fallen off after a particularly arduous 'board meeting' at the pub

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Re: Hmmm :(

Not on our Olympus camera it isn't.

Re: Flip phones & their users are evolutionary dead ends?

Top comment, Shadow Systems

We have a new-ish Doro flip phone on the farm. You can't break the shiney glass screen, or dial random numbers while its in your pocket (which used to happen with a 'tough' phone we had), and frankly you don't need to browse Just Eat for a takeaway meal while you're in the cowshed pulling a stick calf out of a cow's backside.

At least without washing your hands first.

In Soviet California, pedestrian hits you! Bloke throws himself in front of self-driving car

Re: Pedestrians - The Right Of Way

Viz comic had a Top Tip years ago which went something like,'save time when crossing one-way streets by only looking in the direction the traffic is coming from.'

On the opposite page was another one which said 'when crossing one-way streets, always look both ways to avoid being run over by a car going in the wrong direction.' It was addressed from Fulchester Hospital.

PC lab in remote leper colony had wrong cables, no licences, and not much hope

Re: Ré causing, not curing chaos

I've used the simple resistor/capacitor drop method successfully. Great for low-current stuff like a PIR but no good at all for anything higher current. But where it works its simple, cheap, and more efficient than you'd think.

The circuit I disapprove of most are the touch-switch lamps which use a 0.5p resistor to isolate you from the mains. Yeah, really safe.

Brit transport pundit Christian Wolmar on why the driverless car is on a 'road to nowhere'

Re: It's too Black and White

The driverless car that takes you home from the pub was invented by a bloke with a horse & cart years ago. The horse knew the way home so all the milkman had to do was lie on the cart and say 'giddy up, dobbin'.

Sadly he was banned from using this system (as far as I remember) by the court which deemed milkyman to be in charge and not dobbin. Killjoys.

1980s sci-fi movies: The thrill of being not quite terrified on mum's floral sofa

Re: CGI is killing sci-fi

But where do you put Eraserhead?

It isn't scifi, or drama, or even 'classic' horror. But imho its one of the very few horror films ever made. And Under The Skin.

Wannabe W1 DOW-er faked car crash to track down reg plate's owner

Best plate I ever saw...

.. was PEN1S on a mercedes in 1988 in Royston, Hertfordshire. I don't think you'd get away with that now.

We translated Intel's crap attempt to spin its way out of CPU security bug PR nightmare

"Disruption"

My translation of this is "not paying our taxes or the law".