Posts by NXM

The AIpocalypse is here for websites as search referrals plunge

Re: Skip "AI" results in firefox

A clear case of Keming then!

Put Large Reasoning Models under pressure and they stop making sense, say boffins

Re: Researchers gave LRMs the exact algorithms they needed

Huh, they'll have to prise my Spangles out of my cold dead fingers.

User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died

Re: No need for the nuclear option

I had that chain of thought in Singapore once. I found a really nice antique aircraft clock in a second hand shop and was going to buy it. But then I realized the hands were coated in radium luminous paint, and I really didn't want to have a chat with the anti-terrorism department of customs on my return to the UK.

Trump guts digital ID rules, claims they help 'illegal aliens' commit fraud

Re: Addendum

Banned by the BBC for a while as I remember

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

Re: Not those Boomers.

We used to live next to the East Coast Main Line in Newcastle. You'd think that a Deltic with a load of freight wagons idling 20 yards away would disturb your sleep, but we actually found it quite reassuring for some reason.

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

I can imagine people going round with stickers to put over the QRs to spoof them

This happens in Blighty too. I had a conversation with someone in Kent who just didn't believe the sun goes down later in summer the further north you go. And another one was horrified to find that when he got to Scotch Corner in Yorkshire, it was still about 100 miles to Scotland!

I meet many people on such roads who are clearly not proficient in driving forwards, never mind backwards.

DARPA zaps popcorn with laser power beamed 5.3 miles through air

But can you..

... mount this frikkin laser on a shark's head?

More to the point, could you power an IP phone directly from the fibre? It rats me off that our phones are useless during a power cut, unlike the old analogue ones.

Boffins devise technique that lets users prove location without giving it away

Re: What's the point?

No. Horse OS was cracked years ago just by giving him an apple.

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

proper beer

Pfffft. My local pub used serve it's strongest beer in 1/3 pint glasses and you could only buy two. Otherwise you'd be totally off your tits in no time.

Other similar beers are Old Tom and those lovely Belgian Trappist ales. I had one of those a few years ago on a warm summer's afternoon and discovered my legs just wouldn't work afterwards. Result!

You think ransomware is bad now? Wait until it infects CPUs

Not just the bios

Couldn't agree more with the comments about write protect switches, but that doesn't go far enough. When I were nobbut a young lad, software was on eproms. You had to erase it (*) before you could rewrite it and variables were in ram. I've always thought the way modern pc's work is insane because there's no distinction in ram between code and variables. That's why you can (or used to be able to) overwrite code with a longer than expected command line.

Put code in write protected flash memory. Put variables in ram. Yes, I know everything arrives from the disk and gets plonked in ram on boot, but that's the source of the problem. Modern SSDs are all flash anyway, so connect them as a large parallel memory block and write protect it. Securely sign updates and make sure the user has to allow them. Don't allow constant automatic updates all the time, which are probably only there to fix bugs in the previous updates.

Code in flash means absolutely instant boot after all, instead of having to wait ages before the stupid thing gets it's arse in gear.

I may well get downvotes for this, but it's coming from how things _used_ to work, which admittedly isn't as convenient as it all is now. But what do people want? Either a reliable machine which does what it's told, or a total mess of constantly shifting functionality which can turn against you in a heartbeat?

(*) By taking it out of its socket and putting it into a UV eraser. This was only a few years after the big bang.

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Re: We had an issue with a rabbit

There was a bird that made a nest on the terminals of a 3-phase transformer that fed my old unit. Boom! Feathers everywhere and a power cut.

EU tells US scientists to dump Trump for a lab in Europe

Re: Universal Healthcare

Throwest then thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thine enemies, who, being naught in my sight, shall snuff it.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: No Surprise

Proof: the Bird's custard factory explosion of 1981.

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

"I've had three buttons to press in the last 500 light years, and that was just to put the coffee machine onto manual."

Hitch Hikers Guide, 1979. Nothing changes.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

A mate of mine moved into a new house and investigated the wiring. There was a channel across the ceiling in the polystyrene insulation (no, really), at the bottom of which was a 1.5mm2 Cale to the cooker. It got so hot it melt d it's way down.

Re: 30m drive radius from the site

John Prescott would've driven one of his jags then got a taxi back to get the other one.

Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back

@TheMaskedMan

Don't know why you got downvotes there. If I have a workshop with a fragile roof (In the UK at least) I must put signs up to warn scroats who climb up and try to break in through it, only to find themselves injured from the 10m drop that ensues. Otherwise I get arrested as well as the scroat.

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: A Worried Mother?

What?

Brit soldiers tune radio waves to fry drone swarms for pennies

Re: Sounds plausible to me!

So could you also use it to defrost your dinner?

Re: Some of you (drones) may die

Brilliant idea! If we could only get those pesky Russians to respond to a summons.

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

bits dropping off

There was a story about British Leyland which went that "workers" routinely nicked various car parts over time and assembled a complete car in their garage. The company only realised when cars they hadn't made arrived back for warranty repairs.

Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

Who's losing? I've gained a big bag of popcorn and am merrily munching through it whole the Orange Moron wrecks his own country!

Doesn't that put you in nip?

Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark

Re: Shocking experience

He was totally peed off about that

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

Wrong way round

"Home Office (the UK version of Homeland Security)"

No, the Home Office was formed 220 years earlier than the DHS.

Other than that, great article, thanks.

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

A driver for a company I worked for was asked to take something to Leeds Castle. Some time later he phoned in to say he couldn't find the castle in Leeds, Yorkshire. The boss has failed to tell hime to go to Leeds Castle in Kent.

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

Re: Nothing interesting to sell

Well yes, I had wondered about that.

What the UK the EU could do is wait till the US tech companies' shares totally tank ... and buy them. Then those companies would no longer be US ones. They do make money after all, and it'd be easier to regulate them.

It's apparently what the Orange Moron wants; although the tech bros fed him offerings before the election he still hates them.

US vs China

US: "Tarrifs!"

China: "That's a nice set of businesses you have there. Be a shame if something ... happened ... to them."

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

Re: Inverse problem, kinda ...

Oooft, I used to have to fit the controls to steam calorifiers and associated pumps in plant rooms, in the balmy Kentish summer. It was about 40°C in there. Try doing that in suit, which I didn't. I was pretty niffy at the end of every day.

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: From the "fact sheet", singling out Blighty

I remember when nobody in the UK bought US cars because US manufacturers couldn't be arsed to make right hand drive ones and their performance was measured in gallons per mile. They usually had a low-compression V8 with the acceleration of a drugged slug.

After a while we were offered the PT Cruiser, so ugly it rivalled the Edsel. These days they're not quite as bad even though they're the size of buses, but I'd far rather buy a UK or Japanese car than a US one.

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

Re: once upon a time at the pub

"keeping data in motion"

That's the mercury delay line! It sent serial data along a tube of mercury and the receiver at the far end recycled it back to the start again. Not much capacity for today's requirements though. I'm sure there was some setup involving high persistence CRTs as well.

GCHQ intern took top secret spy tool home, now faces prison

Re: How?

They left a machine lying around which would allow that as bait to see who'd be tempted. He took the bait.

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Re: been on many courses where the trainer has no answers

My A level chemistry teacher told us that when he were a nipper the age expectation of chemistry teachers ws about 55 due to the amount of toxic chemicals they played with. Then he gave us some mercury to play with.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Re: going passive-aggressive on a petty tyrant

I had that.

Boss: 'Why were you here at 9.15am?'

Me: 'Because I had to stay till 6 last night to fix that stuff you asked me to do.'

Boss: 'I want you here at 9am every day!'

Me: 'No problem, I'll leave at 5pm every day then.'

Boss: 'Rant rant rant rant.....'

After a few months we had the bailiffs in with a walking possession order following the company's failure to pay it's rent. I bought a key piece of equipment from the auction at 10% of what I'd previously ordered it for (logic & processor analyser - very expensive) and earned a living working for myself.

Oddly it went for coppers because nobody knew what it was. Oscilloscopes and computers went for more than their new value!

2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies

Re: Headphones!?

Try noise cancelling headphones with no music at all. Good ones will remove a lot of the pain. I use them when driving noisy machines.

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

my theory...

... is that just like the documentary "The Italian Job" someone threw a push bike onto the substation wires. Just wait for reports of a load of gold to have disappeared from Heathrow.

Judge orders Feds rehire workers falsely fired for lousy performance

Re: On the psychology of military incompetence*

I'm going to buy that. Thank you.

Britain dusts off idle spectrum for rail and emergency comms

Re: Good idea, ruined

What, those plastic balls on strings that kids like me used to injure themselves with in the 70s?

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Re: Horses for courses

I'm not a consumer! I'm a free man!

Junior techie rushed off for fun weekend after making a terminal mistake that crashed a client

"professional services"

Is this a euphemism?

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

The unit of measurement here is the C-60

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

Re: You also need control, and trust, the rest of the compile time and runtime environment.

Discrete logic? Pshaw. Real engineers use cogs powered by a steam engine.

One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee

Re: Not computer related NSFS

But then the guts stayed on the bus....

I heard a story (maybe apocryphal) about someone who wanted to suicide bomb Saddam Hussain and put the bomb up his fundament. Saddam survived but the bomber launched himself through the ceiling into a room upstairs.

yow

For me it was pics of a neighbour being naughty with someone who wasn't her husband. They split up a while later.

Does terrible code drive you mad? Wait until you see what it does to OpenAI's GPT-4o

Re: Evil

Change the graphics mode to text part way down a scan to save a bit of memory using a timed interrupt triggered by the new frame?

Ha - take that and suck on my 6502 code, graphics chip!

AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds

Re: Cake – it's a made up drug

You're talking nonce sense

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

Re: Oh, and...

Or take the battery pack out, fit an inverter to it, keep the charger and benefit from the cheap car charging electricity tarrif (7p/KWh I think).

Trump’s tariffs, cuts may well put tech in a chokehold, say analysts

Re: "And will be gone in four years anyway."

"like some giant unflushible orange turd"

Thanks, I'm not going to get that image out of my head any time soon.