Posts by DropBear

Duelling techies debugged printer by testing the strength of electric shocks

Re: Yeah

Wait, you worked on Toy Claw Machines...? SHAME...! SHAME...! SHAME...!

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

Re: Ouch

You mean you DON'T have a moat around your garden...?

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

Re: air CON

I would, but for some reason having my whole body covered in a thin insulator being the only thing separating it from a bunch of wiring at mains voltage genuinely scares the shit out of me.

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Re: A lot of El Reg Readers really are very old

I once wrote TSRs. Now I feel terminally exhausted at the mere thought of looking at one up close. But I swear I'm not old, nawww, not at all - it all happened a mere few years ago. Yes, in the nineties, a few years ago, that's what I said, did I not...? Those new bullet-time effects in this recent Matrix movie are pretty slick though - I've heard they plan to make it a trilogy...

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

Are there official training flowcharts for that...? Because if I have to use my multiple-decades-powered experience of thinking outside the box to find and fix the problem then "HP & Lenovo" can go eat shit and I'll fully claim any resulting success and any proceeds of it as my own.

Re: The hell that

I am greatly puzzled - if the interlocks held, why was there anything to replace...?

EDIT: for that matter, even if the interlocks FAILED, why was there anything to replace...?

Re: Audi electrics, oof

One evening I parked my VW B4 Passat just fine, only to have it crank but completely refuse to start the next morning. Turns out it's an openly known secret that the relay supplying the ECU (109 I think...?) has a bulk fabrication defect that WILL fail on you at some point, no exceptions. Replaced the relay, car started right up. Opened the old relay - there's this massive cold solder joint that failed to solder properly due to an obvious proximity to a larger metal bit soaking away all the heat. Jolly well done (and covered up), you VW fuckers...

Re: had a printer with the same fault

Now, I would be inclined to take this as a personal affront if only were I not aware that (completely useless) checklist-reading tech support was equally bad regardless of physical location.

Re: It is a fine idea

At some point, my old CRT TV suddenly just stopped turning on - investigation revealed that a large transistor in the PSU simply crater-exploded for some reason. I replaced it (and any suspicious passives around it), but I was the whole while scared shitless of working around an (even unplugged) CRT, for fear of touching something still charged. TV works just fine to this day, btw.

I have that reminder permanently engraved on an old set of tailpipes (and my leather jacket). I'm still amazed that there appeared to be precisely zero nanoseconds between riding normally and sliding on the asphalt behind my bike throwing off sparks like crazy. The human brain is a funny thing, and apparently impact sensitive, even in a full-face helmet.

When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration

Re: Well it's clearly working as designed....

Okay, admit it - it is YOU, little Bobby Tables, isn't it...

NASA's Mars InSight uploads its (probably) final image, shares it in a tweet

Re: Obligatory XKCD

Dang... last seen that movie as a kid somewhere in the eighties, still left its mark on me... gotta re-watch it one of these days for sure.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: Bad design

I'm still using the keyboard I got with my first 386. Still works perfectly. Zero signs of wear on the keys. It's a Mitsumi with a DIN-5 plug...

Re: If I have to look in the manual (absolute last resort of course) it's a really bad design!

Extremely questionable reliability. What you want instead is a DCF77 receiver.

Re: Press the button

Was the allocated IP 127.0.0.1 perchance...?

Re: Manual is optional,

Indeed, some people very obviously flat-out refuse to learn anything they don't want to, no matter how idiotically simple, insisting the entire time that they "can't". It doesn't matter that were that actually true they should absolutely not be allowed to get out of bed in the morning - they just are these special snowflakes who "can't" learn this one simple thing.

PayPal ditches passwords, at least on Apple devices

Yeah, well, no thanks. I have no interest in accessing anything that needs to be secured on a goddamned mobile device. Some hatchlings might find this hard to grasp, but some folks still insist on using desktop hardware for ALL their computing needs, which thankfully tends not to have any "biometric" hardware at all (much like my current smartphone, actually - it's a FEATURE).

Your next PC should be a desktop – maybe even this Chinese mini machine

Re: For about 10 years or so now...

Better yet, don't agree to BE available outside business hours, no matter on who's hardware. Getting a company-supplied phone to be bothered on instead of my own would give me less than zero comfort for ruining my day in the first place.

I currently use a second hand Thinkcentre M90 ultra-small form factor as my media server. By "NUC standards" it doesn't even qualify, but it DOES have room for a full-sized 3.5" many-tera HDD, and by desktop standards it's astonishingly small (and quiet). It even accommodates my PCI (sic) TV grabber card, which is a major plus for me...

SpaceX staff condemn Musk's behavior in open letter

Re: Shut up and do your job!

There's a place and time where to mock the whole "woke" thing, fully deservingly. THIS IS NOT IT.

Lightweight Linux distribution Slax rides again with v11.2

Please do excuse my late reply - sorting this out was nowhere near the top of my list of priorities. However, new developments suggest the problem (as usual) wasn't on my end - there is aparently a closed bug on the Slax bug tracker attributing this problem to, uh, "blkid" simply not noticing nvme partitions (until pointed out to it by explicitly running it with those as arguments (!!!)) in spite of the rest of the distro/kernel having zero problems with nvme on any level. It's as nice a demonstration of "only use any Linux variant if you LIKE having problems all the time" as I've ever needed or have seen.

Oh, good... CAN IT BOOT FROM A NVMe disk yet?!? Cause ever since I moved my previously WORKING setup (which still boots W7, W10 and Mint perfectly fine) the Slax boot option is the only one that still chokes AFTER managing to actually take control. No idea what its problem is, and it's not like there's any kind of help available.

Semiconductor average lead time breaks half-year barrier

"Grew"?!? WTF? We've been getting year-plus delivery terms on some fairly common ICs even back in January...

Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop

Re: LibreOffice, for example, is every bit as good as Microsoft Office

...and more often than you'd like - it's ONLY available as source. And frankly, screw that.

Re: LibreOffice, for example, is every bit as good as Microsoft Office

Except MS doesn't control or own most of the apps REAL LIFE FOLKS use.

FYI

Loophole: Windows AME.

Re: Simple? My arse!

XnviewMP. With absolute authority. It's so well established, it's one of the few image viewers that already has plugin support for the brand new QOI image format...

Re: ... and to a racing driver, F1 isn't hard, either

WTF? I absolutely CAN re-arrange my Win7 start menu just fine. Well, yes, it's actually "Classic Start Menu" but why on Earth would anyone use anything else...?

Re: The joys of Linux

HAHAHA. No. My boss won't even let me work on my PC unless I absolutely have to, or gets out of his way to turn the damn thing on LONG before I need to use it, because the win10 on it - not powered on every day - wants to apply updates EVERY TIME IT'S POWERED ON, and every time it prevents the machine from doing anything user-facing for any number of dozens of minutes. No, the machine isn't a many-core beast, but it isn't exactly obsolete either - this is just the nature of "YOU DON'T NEED TO WORK, I HAVE MORE IMPORTANT STUFF TO DO NOW" win10 updates.

NO.

Sorry, you're objectively wrong. And Linux is not so much hard to use, it's a **bitch** to use.

See, you're referring to the "appliance" use case. Let me browse, play some music, edit a document in Libreoffice - yeah, chances are you can do that with zero fuss on any hardware, any distro. The problem is, the SECOND you try using Linux AS A COMPUTER, IT WILL FIGHT YOU FOR AS LONG AS YOU KEEP ATTEMPTING TO USE IT. And I don't care about your counter-arguments, because whatever they are, they are invalid, full stop. Or maybe you'd like to explain how come one can't even check a file hash recursively with "rhash" on ANY distro currently seeing as how ALL releases bar the unreleased Github master branch are utterly broken...? And yeah, that's just the latest punch in the gut - as someone who does, in spite of all this, try to use Linux, I know for a fact that the number of those punches is legion, and they NEVER stop. Yeah, Linux is a sharp tool; but it's for card-carrying masochists ONLY.

EU, US close to replacing defunct Privacy Shield II

NO.

I am basically forced by financial circumstances to "live in my mum's basement", and I can't afford to buy food without looking at the sticker price; yet I am supporting NOYB because this bullshit HAS to stop somewhere, and right now they are the only ones doing anything about it. That's all. Oh, and fuck whatever new "agreement" they manage to come up with.

Microsoft says hello again to China, goodbye to Russia

Well, if all else fails I guess there's always ReactOS...

Intel energizes decades-old real-time Linux kernel project

...and this is why I still MUCH prefer a GRBL firmware running ON A MICROCONTROLLER (a humble Arduino Uno) to a RT-enabled LinuxCNC running ON A PC. You want real-time? Stop fooling the fuck around and use actual hardware fit for the job (which admittedly the quoted Arduino example is NOT the best example for in 2022, for that particular job (CNC) - even though it's still doing it in a quite honourable fashion...)

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Re: Guilty.

Maxed and... uh... well, by any metric of "how many years since xxx came out": also maxed...

Re: Concepts are hard to understand

Noooooo nonono. What you do is install the free Agent Ransack. And never have an issue finding anything ever again, ever.

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

Well...

Not after XP, whereas no action of any consequence has more than a 50% chance of you being allowed to perform it, regardless of what you try. Frankly, I'm way tired of not being able to tell my own PC "DO NOT EVER DARE TO ASK ME AGAIN ABOUT ANYTHING THIS PARTICULAR PROGRAM WANTS TO DO, EVER, NEVER. JUST LET IT DO IT. YOU FUCKING PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT."

Re: file extensions

...then you find yourself downloading a job to a modern laser cutter in 2022 which still insists the name CANNOT BE LONGER than eight letters. Then you sob. Simple as that...

Dunno about "nice" - I freak out instantly as soon as I can't see file extensions. On any OS. Whether or not they determine a file's fate, those extensions are meant to convey vital information that I need to be aware of.

Should we expect to keep communication private in the digital age?

No.

Fuck the theory. I fully intend to keep my private communications forcefully private, undisclosable to other parties whether or not they have legal support to access it, decryptable only via keys held solely by the intended recipient AND NOBODY ELSE. And I do this in spite of having nothing more exciting to discuss than where and when to have the next pint with my friends. And guess what, if they are insane enough to outlaw encryption I'm fully prepared to keep doing it nonetheless via steganography by sending lolkitty pics back and forth for as long as it takes. Because it's simply NONE OF THEIR GODDAMNED BUSINESS, no matter what I have to say to that other bloke.

Online retailers delaying sales of Raspberry Pi 4 model until 2023, thanks to a few good chips getting scarce

Re: 2023

"Not uncommon" is not the same as "not thoroughly motherfucking insane". This has gone on for long enough, and we don't even have a clear unambiguous answer as to why ALL chips are STILL basically unobtainium. One would expect human civilisation to get its shit together faster than this even after a nuclear winter, so no, sorry, this doesn't compute. Unless you are going to tell me that on january 1st 2021 ALL chip foundries were erased from the face of the Earth in the blink of an eye, I'm not interested in whatever their current excuse is supposed to be.

Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson

Your only choice is to ask "how high?"

"Pale Moon kept the pre-Australis UI, it's still single-process (so more memory-efficient), and it still supports classic Firefox extensions"

WRONG. Palemoon stopped supporting legacy extensions with <ICantBeBotheredToLookItUp> version, and I stopped updating it instantly. Also, the "Waterfox Classic" version that still supports those extensions IS DEAD AND UNUSABLE WITH HALF A BILLION WEBSITES RIGHT NOW. Roughly. So, basically, legacy extension support is DEAD. I HAVE to use Chromium just to access everything PaleMoon and/or Waterfox Classic simply utterly fails to access anymore. The writing is on the wall, it's up to you to read it, no matter how much one would try to hold out.

NASA advised to study up on what open source, free software, and permissive licenses actually mean

Well I know what I expect when I see software advertised as "open source"; then again, there's nothing technically in there that would invalidate the term should it turn out it's basically involving an NDA TO ACTUALLY DO anything with that source you're "open" to inspect.

D'oh! Misplaced chair shuts down nuclear plant in Taiwan

Picard facepalm

That a chair _could_ do this is absolutely asinine, and a full-blown design disgrace.

Myanmar Junta delivers harsh cyber law and more IP blocking orders

Oh my. I clearly DID get it right - Good to know Burma IS is still a shithole.

Samsung floats autonomous ships as ready to sail in 2022

So they got something that can steer things that are supposed to have nothing else around them for many many miles...? Genius, I tell you...

No joy for Julian Assange as Uncle Sam confirms it will keep pushing for WikiLeaker's extradition to America

To think that I kinda liked Biden so far. Well, fuck that peasant.

Companies toiling away the most on LibreOffice code complain ecosystem is 'beyond utterly broken'

Re: This is grim

I firmly believe expecting anything from the mainstream GTK team is insanity - that path is dead, full stop. On the other hand I would have exactly zero problems with a _template_ based solution for the under-a-dozen pieces of software I'm _forced_ to live with in my distro - I'd be more than happy to hand-craft their menus ONCE so I can finally live in peace, hamburger-free...

Windows might have frozen – but at least my feet are toasty

Did the custom ISA card thing too, and the pucker factor is notable indeed; but probably the scariest was turning on my ZX Speccy clone after plugging my hand-made Kempston interface in. Even the straight-to-PCB connector was hand-crafted (wouldn't even dream of where I might buy one back then), and you were connecting straight to the CPU's address and data bus: short/load/drive it wrong, and your precious, too-expensive-to-replace machine is now a brick. Well, apparently the Magic Smoke Gods were smiling upon me that day...

China's Chang'e 5 probe lands Moon rocks in Inner Mongolia

Re: I'm reserving judgement

I'm pretty sure this predates Wallace and Gromit though - I've first seen the cheese plot in "Se il sole muore" (1965) by Oriana Fallaci. It's a good book, worth checking out...

Dodgy procedures doomed Arianespace's Vega before it even left the launchpad

Re: Are they really saying there were no design issues?

FFS, we're basically an underground East-European sweatshop and we're still not allowed to deliver the cables we make without a full all-pins-to-all-pins connectivity test, for every single cable shipped...