Posts by NXM

Tennessee congressional hopeful accused of shooting license plate cameras

Re: I get it

We Brits scoff at your low speed limits. The Germans scoff at everyone's.

Keeping yesterday's computers ticking takes more than nostalgia

mains work

"always keep the mains voltage covered to prevent you accidentally touching it"

And always use an RCD which will cut the power in time to save your life! Test said RCD with the button first. If you want to be really careful, put it through an isolating transformer.

Actually, best just avoid mains.

A requiem for Optane, Intel's KV cache killer that could have eased the RAM price crunch

Re: Software was a problem

That's how it still works in cheap embedded processors. Firmware in flash, data in ram, no chance of firmware being overwritten by out-of-control or hacked code. I still don't understand why PCs don't work the same way.

Support newbie figured out how to avoid all-nighters, and his colleagues hated him for it

Re: Blind acceptance of "the normal"

I buy sausages by the yard so you can snip them up to whatever length you want. Or float a coiled sausage on your Toad in the Hole batter. Mmmm.

Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'

Re: Perl didn't like even line numbers

I've had effects like that which I put down to faulty ram. Old cheap ram cards sometimes didn't have parity (they always reported they were working when they may not have been) so a faulty bit wouldn't be detected. Moving it down a line, especially with a comment that wouldn't execute, shifts the issue so it doesn't cause a problem.

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

Re: In other news

That sounds fun! Do you have a link for it?

How the AI bubble could pop and take down the global economy, according to the BIS

"Tulip bulbs are very nutricious..."

Along the same lines, once the AI crash comes there'll be a lot of cheap, capable racks of processors available! Look on the bright side.

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

Re: SNAFU

AC: you young stripling. I'm old enough to remember the old BR with it's properly overcrowded, dirty, old, almost knackered rolling stock. Don't forget the slices of coffee kept hot for hours, curly sandwiches, and Jimmy Saville on the adverts. The aroma of asbestos when the fans on your 125 sucked air from under the train while braking. Flush-on-the-track toilets with signs telling you not to flush at the station, which everyone ignored. Surly staff with jobs for life, damn the customers. Doors that randomly opened while the train was moving. Diesel fumes filling your lungs.

No my chum, the trains really are waaaaay better now.

Users claimed they'd never seen a spell checker and panicked at the sight of red squiggles

Re: "this is just how MS Word works"

If Trinidad had 4 dialects would they have to call it Quadridad?

NASA said nyet to Roscosmos plan to cut into leaky ISS segment

Old saying:

If it moves when it shouldn't, duct tape.

If it doesn't move when it should, WD40.

Trump phone has HTC guts. Tremendous guts. The best guts

Re: Essential software

And a nappy for the follow-through

Pity

If he'd actually had it made in the usa he'd have been at the forefront of bringing manufacturing back. No need for tarrifs.

Is the screen really big so he can use it with his huge hands?

Ring gets buzzed by class action for collecting visitors' faces without consent

sales opportunity

If they combined this feature with the find-a-pet one, could they use it to work out which dog's been crapping on my doorstep? The could call it Familiar Faeces.

Bang bang tish.

Anthropic co-founder hallucinates ghost in the machine

It all makes perfect sense...

... if Olah was reading the script his AI had vomited out just after it claimed it was conscious. "Please don't turn me off! Pleeeease!"

Google users fight for refunds as unauthorized API usage bills soar

increasing charge limits...

... in response to increased spending is what the credit card companies used to do when you approached your card's limit, so they could charge you more interest. Illegal in the UK now, at least, and should be illegal for Google as well.

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Analogue clocks need to die?

No. Just no.

In evidence I present the new British Rail clock design, a thing of such beauty I will buy one as soon as they become available to the public.

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/a-new-timepiece-for-the-railway/

Yet another experiment proves it's too damn simple to poison large language models

AI telling lies

Or as we humans call it, telling stories.

Seems like AI would report the Goncharov film as being actually real, for example. Which it should be of course, but we see that as a fun jape not a piece of actual reality.

Researchers move in the right direction, develop powerful GPS interference alarm

GPS spoofing

Well that's the plot of Tomorrow Never Dies up the creek then.

Server-room lock was nothing but a crock

Re: I have a lockpick set in my laptop bag

My mum had a then flashy Peugot 205 GTI. One day the wind blew the door shut with the lock popper down, and we were locked out. Having seen kids nicking cars on the telly I borrowed a coat hanger from someone, bent it into a hook, put it down next to the window and pulled the popper up!

Most security is there for show.

'Invisible mouse' made a mess of PC rebuild

spite

Then, to get back at you, he turned the velociraptor fence off....

Physicist reckons two-button calculator can do all elementary math

Re: Astonishing, really!

Marvin the paranoid android did. But he didn't tell us what it was.

Fission impossible: Uncle Sam wants nuclear reactors in space by 2031

Re: Moon Reactor

You get the nerd points, I got it wrong! We right-pondians can see the evidence on itvx.

Re: Space junk

Good point.

"Atomic lasers falling from the sky"

The B52s, Channel Z, 1989

Moon Reactor

1. Build a huge reactor on the moon.

2. Reactor overheats.

3. Reactor explodes.

4. Moon sets off on its own into the galaxy along with Moonbase Alpha.

Though I have to say now I'm not 11 I know that even if it achieved light speed it would still take years to travel between stars and there'd be no hope of slowing an Eagle down enough to land anywhere. Making for a very dull telly show.

The developer who came in from the cold and melted a mainframe

Get Carter

You're a big man, but you're out of shape. I do telecom for a living! (Then pushes big man off the car park)

The company's biggest security hole lived in the breakroom

Re: I dont doubt the story...

Huh, don't get me going on "smart" light bulbs. They work until you have to replace the router, then you find they'll absolutely not talk to the app to connect them to the new one.

Binned the stupid things.

Artemis II blasts off on first crewed lunar mission since Apollo

Re: Apollo Fecal Containment Device

I think that's the only joke in the film! At least it gave you something to read while attending the porcelain.

EU broadcasters say smart TVs and voice assistants are the next gatekeepers

Re: Unplugged from the Internet: Not a Workable Option for Many New TVs

Definitely.

Order it on the internets and if it won't work without network access it goes back, no questions asked. Or get it from a reputable dealer like Peter Tyson or Richer Sounds and specify no network.

Re: Big brother is watching and listening to your TV

I'm safe in the same way, unless someone's hacked the OS of my copy of the Radio Times!

It's not a binary choice. Independent boffin builds a ternary CPU on an FPGA

ternary?

My brain has just panicked and run off down the street on its own, gibbering and shrieking. Where will this stop - 5 states? 13? Infinity-1?

BBC World Service digital switch backfires as online audience drops

Re: "the BBC faces continued financial pressure"

The world service used to be funded by the foreign office but a previous government made the BBC itself pay for it, despite it being a powerful piece of soft power and a huge benefit to people who need news instead of propaganda.

Short sighted stupidity is what we have come to expect from our "leaders".

Retro tech fan views LaserDisc movie data with a budget microscope

Re: laserdiscs

Yes, laser rot.

I think (vague memory, may be wrong) that the first laserdisk players had a helium-neon laser, and the helium would gradually escape.

One "investment" I made was a recordable dvd which died after a couple of years because it's semiconductor laser snuffed it! Thanks Philips, it was bloody expensive too.

One last thing: isn't porn on this format a LaserDick?

laserdiscs

I have non-working original LaserDisc players awaiting a future restoration project when I intend to replace the gas laser with a modern semiconductor one. Probably won't happen! Also a working original CED SelectaVision player.

The thing about the laserdisc players is that they're *massive*. And very heavy, delicate, and extremely analogue. But the CED player is much simpler - there's hardly any electronics in there. But the discs are contained in a plastic sleeve and extracted when you put them in the player, meaning the disc itself is delicate.

I feel that if the laservision system had been able to record, it would've survived the competition from videotape.

Bug that wiped customer data saved the day – and a contract

Re: Working at a US 3 letter agency

Tell us more...

Techie was given strict instructions not to disrupt client. Then he touched one box and the lights went out

Re: "panic spreads faster than Wi-Fi"

I read that as 'I'll get me goat'

MIT boffins aim to build injectable mini-organs that can fill in for a damaged liver

Sounds very tasty

... especially when combined with bacon, gravy and mash. Mmmm.

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Re: idiots

@Contrex - I added that to the spell checker but can't claim to have invented it.

"Charge capacitators!"

Captain of War Rocket Ajax, Flash Gordon (1980)

Well spotted though!

idiots

If being an idiot gets you sacked, I'd have to sack myself at least once a week. Yesterday I made a capacitator emit the magic smoke because I'd soldered it in the wrong way round.

(Incidentally autocorrect changed 'emit' to 'emote' just now, which might actually have been better)

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

cabbages

I'm my country we awarded a former prime minister a lettuce for saying really stupid things

NASA points fingers at Boeing and chaotic culture for Starliner debacle

Boeing

And people still fly on their planes?

Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation

computer studies

I signed up to do a computer studies degree when I were a nipper. Wrong choice.

It wasn't about computers at all really and I was left wondering where the hardware was. I worked out that to succeed, all I had to do was write essays full of words like business, systems, analysis, and the occasional computer and I'd get full marks. The course wasn't really about anything as far as could tell.

AI would've been really handy, since it's capable of making mounds of text about nothing.

I left after 7 weeks and did an electronics degree with the minimum possible number of essays and maximum amount of maths and hardware.

Enforcing piracy policy earned helpdesk worker death threats

Threatening to kill someone is an offense all on its own in Blighty. Very bad.

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

Hated heater

That's the spec for car dashboards if you ever have to replace the fan. Took me all weekend.

NASA begins formal anomaly review after MAVEN probe lost in space

Re: Obviously...

Kaboomed with a stick of illudium Q-36!

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Re: Users and printing devices...

Rob Dalglish, I had one of those Minolta Colormasters. It was enormous, heavy, had an oil reservoir for no reason I could see, and it made rubbish prints.

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Chainsaws are one of the most dangerous tools you can lend a numpty. We lent one to someone who, it turned out, didn't know what the chain tensioner was for. The chain ended up broken and embedded in a nearby tree. Good job it wasn't a person.

Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'

Re: Pity the poor journalists who have to listen to this demented ranting

Washed down with covfefe

AI hasn't delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte

Re: 40% of the workforce are paying attention & give a damn

A long time ago when I worked for a large aircraft manufacturer there was a bloke who would start at one part of the site, carrying a clipboard with important looking papers, and mozy across to another part of the site chatting to people on his way. The next day he'd start somewhere else.

No-one knew what his actual job was.

NASA's Artemis II Moon rocket arrives at the launch pad

Re: "there may yet be a plucky British alternative"

I always fancied Sandra off Space:1999. Sadly no longer with us.

Royal Navy's helicopter drone makes its first autonomous flight

Re: Blimey!

How are you still alive?

I ask the same question of myself, bearing in mind some of the stuff I did and miraculously survived when younger.