Posts by Aaiieeee

Lars Ulrich makes veiled threats of another Metallica album during web chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Reload was the first album I ever paid for

They lost me at St Anger. Loved all their stuff prior but nowadays I struggle to listen to it.

Saw them live at Wembley after buying tickets off ebay for thrice the face value for me and a buddy, loved it.

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband

Drying

I absolutely hate the loud hand driers (usually by Dyson) that are everywhere now. Sure they get the job done but at the expese of my current pease of mind and contentment, and my ongoing ability to hear things; in a small tiled bathroom it can be excessively.

Second to that are the ones that (much like the one mentioned in the article) wheeze frigid air so that the rate of drying is extended to the entire afternoon. The trousers have to provide backup.

I am happy to report that at my current workplace the hand dryer is actually perfect; warm, resonable volume and timed to perfection. Its the more tradtional style dryer with the push button and the rotating nozzle.

Just the place you'd want to spot a BSOD: While waiting in line for a roller coaster that lifts you up 124ft

I hear that IT technicians who ride this often develop PTSD..

Perhaps the rollercoaster theming is inspired by working on the support desk?

Would-be .org gobbler Ethos Capital promises to keep prices down in last-ditch effort to keep $1.1bn deal alive

The very fact this is so secretive should mean auto-apply the brakes subject to full disclosure.

Secrecy = somebody is making a killing = this is not in the public interest.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

So in 10,000 years

Somebody will discover a load of rusted, decayed cogs at the bottom of a well and think 'wtf??'

Your McDonald's demo has expired. For full functionality, please purchase a licence or try another fast-food joint

Demo food

The food is what it is.. my main issue is that after consuming something from this establishment you are faminshed again within 30 minutes.

If I just need to get my teeth into something and I dont much care for what it is, a 99p burger doesn't break the bank and can be found basically anywhere.

Social media notifications of the future: Ranger tagged you in a photo with Tessadora, Wrenlow, Faelina and Graylen

Vanity names?

My peers who are expecting talk about possible names seemingly endessly but not having a child myself I don't really get it. Chose something sane and easy to pronounce and move on. Ideally chose a name that is 'normal' for the culture they are likely to be living in.

Some friends who are from the continent living here in the UK named their child something that is a common here and their home country so the child would fit in either place subject to where they want to live.

Come to Five Guys, where the software is as fresh as the burgers... or maybe not

"Naturally, we would not suggest that the premium patty flinger's wares were as time-expired as Windows 7"

Is there a name for the above kind of expression which rasies in the reader doubt regarding the quality of the burgers yet in the same statement absolves itself of any responsiblity of providing that viewpoint.

I quite like it.

National Lottery Sentry MBA hacker given nine months in jail after swiping just £5

The real crime here

..is that poor chap being publically exposed as playing the National Lottery. The shame!

Also, he lost £13, not £5??

Alright! Ma time to meet that shag quota! Alibaba chairman steps down at 55 with $38.6bn fortune

Communist

How does having £38bn work in a communist country? He is privately controlling huge wealth..

(Sorry mate, don't mean to dob you in, I'm just curious)

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

I understand that it's a quirk of human nature that everyone believes they are fairly unique.

You assumed the the above statement doesn't apply to you.

Lush scrubs its card-processing servers squeaky clean

Is it anywhere near the cheese shop?

I wonder if there is a collaboration opportunity here

Man cuffed for testing fruit with bum cheek pre-purchase

Just buff it on your trousers before eating, it'll be fine...

A good reason to wash unpackaged produce then!

Whilst I was brought up to not mind a bit of dirt, this is perhaps a bit too far. Grandma would probably have asked what all the fuss was about.

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

Yes, but

On some level you have to take personal responsibility such that if your money is important you will do your best to ensure it is well allocated. This includes checking in on your expenses and what you expected to pay for an item. Yes it can be boring but it is the money you spent a lifetime earning, take an interest!

My Nokia 3 cost £110 outright and monthly costs is £7.50. This is not particularly difficult to work with. I have no interest in phones and hunting for a phone wasn't fun, but I understand my arrangement and am happy with it.

On the other hand it seems entirely reasonable that after something has been paid off the payments for the item should stop without question or prompting.

Since companies are not looking out for my best interests I automatically assume I have to do everything myself, but I guess most people don't have this attitude.

NASA 'sextortionist' allegedly tricked women into revealing their password reset answers, stole their nude selfies

IBM slaps patent on coffee-delivering drones that can read your MIND

Vacant expression

I have these leg things which if I put one in front of the other I can move around. Its amazing really.

Acertaining my own state of mind and getting a coffee if I want one is entirely on me - I prefer it that way! I dont need anyone else deciding what I want or need.

Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!

At the very least the writer of the letter could have said "oops, sorry about that I was really busy and doing 2 things at once." Not only does this acknowlege the issue but sublty suggests that its actually a permissable mistake.

The fact they screwed up and then tried to blame someone else is just pathetic personal ethics.

Almost 1 in 3 Brits think they lack computer skills to do their jobs well

Dunning Kruger

They must be average since they are not feeling confident in their ability then they are probably not a complete amatur nor an expert. This is a fair assessment of most people generally and if you are in the younger group its also reasonable since you don't have experience yet. Seems like the normal course of things and not a problem.

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

My employer does not have the power to tell me when I can or can not use the toilets; I will go when I so desire.

So as the CEO swans around each site she only see a facade of perfection, a show put on by directors hoping to look good. Are CEO's generally so detacehed from reality they buy into this, or do they really just want to see their actual company and spend some time with the proles every so often and escape the hand wringing?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a giant alien space cigar? Whatever it is, boffins are baffled

"It is still a tiny and weird object"

Its not so tiny when it lands on this persons house. Especially if its upset at being called weird

What does it take for an OpenAI bot to best Dota 2 heroes? 128,000 CPU cores, 256 Nvidia GPUs

I would imagine the bots could possibly win a team fight at a pro level due to faster reaction times and precision calcuations (e.g. staying out of range by 1 pixel for the entire time then stepping 1 pixel closer to attack then back again before the human can react).

But I'm not convinced it would win at broader strategy and map management. I imagine the humans would need to ensure unfair fights by way of superior game insight that the bots can't know or communicate.

Uber robo-ride's deadly crash: Self-driving car had emergency braking switched off by design

This bothers me too. The situational awareness of the 'driver' was totally lost. Has it started to rain? Is the a HGV close behind? Is the driver aware of current speed so as to estimate and action stopping distances within 1.3 seconds? What are other cars doing? etc

Boffins: Michael Jackson's tilt was a criminally smooth trick

I could probably do it with some skiis

Brit IT contractor wins appeal against HMRC to pay £26k in back taxes

So confusing.

"I am satisfied that the relationship is consistent with a contract for services, not a contract of service"

I was led to believe (by HMRC of course) that IR35 is all about if you look like a permie (fixed hours, no other clients, no freedom not to work etc) regardless of your contract. This seems to confirm its definately about whats in the contract.

T-Mobile owner sends in legal heavies to lean on small Brit biz over use of 'trademarked' magenta

So if I trademark all combinations of RGB..

as a part of my company identity I can then licence the use to all other companies world wide. I won't sell anything, just recieve royalties. I will need a fairly strong legal arm for the bigger players of course, but hopefully after a few smaller companies cave without a fight and start paying I should have the cash soon enough.

Yes, people see straight through male displays of bling (they're only after a fling)

Were they called 'Flashy' and 'Frugal' in the study? Because 'Flashy' has negative connotations, and Frutal has positive connotations which obviously wouldn't influence the results..

It seems very simplistic. Or did I misunderstand?

Blame everything on 'computer error' – no one will contradict you

Don't give your opinion!

If I'm out and about and I see somebody having an IT Moment at a cash register or terminal and the solution is obvious to me.. I usually do not say anything otherwise it becomes MY problem!

An airy confirmation of how much of a nuisance computers are will do, possibly and a nervous laugh.

In a lot of walks of life being helpful or a decent person is staight forward and worth it. When it comes to computers just stay well out of it.

Size does matter, chaps: Oversized todgers an evolutionary handicap

Bigger may be better in the short term

I suspect on the whole people are concerned about the future of the species only upto the point when they (or a generation or so of dependants) will no longer be a part of it. The state of humanity in 50,000 years time isnt that high up on my circle of concern.

Therefore, school playground talk is still the way of it. Woe is me :(

You're a govt official. You accidentally slap personal info on the web. Quick, blame a kid!

Poor kid

Depending on his personality this may really affect his future. He may grow stronger and learn to stand up for himself, he may become paranoid and distrustful of authority, or he might shrink away, being fearful of any mistep. There is a remote possibility he may remain unchanged (especially if he has really strong and down to earth parents).

In the same way that you feel terrible when you walk past somebody in distress and don't help, there must be somebody involved feeling that way knowing they screwed up and deciding between 'do I speak up', or 'its done, don't think about it'.

The nature of being alive I guess

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

Ok so there are now 2 issues: potholes and graffiti. They are saying the graffiti is reducing their ability to address the potholes; surely addressing the potholes will have a direct impact on grafitti incidence and they will both be reduced?

As for the kids, its not ideal but its better they see graffiti than suffer a car incident due to a ruptured tyre or something.

El Reg needs you – to help build an automated beer-transporting robot

Ok so high level thinking is needed to start us off

The bot is always ready and connected to a power source in an alcove using some type of contact that can be decoupled without intervention. The PFY picks up an RIFD token (or its in his shoe) and loudly pronounces "BEER OCLOCK" which is the voice activated notification for the bot to home in on the token. The bot then proceeds to the token whilst avoiding obsticals; it may help if the PFY starts the proceedure infront of the bot so it can find him, or else have the bot learn of obsticals on previous visits so it can navigate to the PFY when there isnt a clear line-of-site path to him.

The bot should come equiped with a tray that is independatly stabalised and will account for acceleration and deceleration.

A further feature is that after the PFY anounces "BEER OCLOCK" anyone who wants a drink must loudly procalim "MAKE MINE A x" and the bot will note the relative location and drink type and attemp to deliver each drink to its recipient after it has made it back to a known location, or at least past the door.

It could potentially use all the millions of WIFI networks to help triangulate its position.

'Our way or the highway' warranty scams shot down by US watchdog: It's OK to use unofficial parts to repair your gear

I overheard somebody telling his buddy that he "gets 2 free screen replacements a year" under his plan (he pays £70pcm for his phone btw) and felt it was worth it. It amused me that he confirmed he hadn't had to use it yet when the buddy asked how many times he'd claimed so far.

It then occurred to me it is normal to expect screen damage on a phone, and therefore cover is normal too. This surprised me as I had my first smart phone for 4 years with no screen damage and therefore expect the same of its fairly recent replacement.

My first phone had a screen made of gorillas and the positive experience meant it became a core requirement for the replacement :)

My Tibetan digital detox lasted one morning, how about yours?

Rein in your notification settings!

I think there is value in managing the 'smartphone' element of life. For example I have very carefully curated my notification settings so that only SMS, phone calls and apps I explicitly want a notification from (authenticator tokens etc) have free rein; everything else is disabled. I couldn't care less if an app needs updating, or how many unread emails I have, or for any "you havn't checked into our app today" messages.

I have absolutely no message counters visible; as soon as I see one I have a desire/need to check it which ruins productivity, and otherwise its unsigntly, so they all are hidden. I'll check when I am good and ready thank you.

The scope of some permissions and notifications is quite extensive, requiring dilligent hunting in all settings screens both in the app, the app store, the phone, and hidden areas of the phone settings.

I really rely on my smart phone for organisation and managing my life and its utility (I have a metronome) is unequalled.

Everyone has different use cases, mine is more practical. I'm not in constant contact with anyone except my girlfriend and even then I prefer to just hang out and chat. I'm not really popular enough that the fear of missing out requires me to be plugged in; nobody I know is going to require me to respond instantly!

Managing head space is important to me and it doesn't have to be done in Tibet or with chanting.

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

With toffee sauce of course - its even in the picture in the article.

Sacked senior Intel sales head accuses IoT chief of perjury

Re: representing yourself in court

When is it a good idea?

GIMPS crack whip on plucky processor to find largest prime number

Thats my new password sorted

I'll just add 1 letter and symbol in random places and perhaps remove a few digits from the middle and I should be good to go!

Long Island Iced Tea Corp renamed itself to Long Blockchain – and its shares went bananas

Oh dear

My office is rife with trading crypto, everyone is egging everyone else on and you can see the fear of missing out in peoples faces as they get talked into it. The best bit is they don't realise they are not buying actual currency but rather opening long positions with outrageous fees on a gambling platforms that looks like a trading application.

Somebody is going to start leveraging their stake and its going to get messy with it all goes wrong

UK, US govt and pals on WannaCry culprit: It woz the Norks wot done it

So,

Since it impacted the NHS in a big way is it akin to dropping a bomb on a hospital? An attack against civilians?

Don't people usualy go to war over stuff like that?

Note: bombing brainwashed nork peasents isn't something I want to happen - I'm just wondering.

Windows 10 bundles a briefly vulnerable password manager

Ahh

Keeper makes me think of the game Dungeon Keeper which was my favourite game for a number of years.

One more credit insurer abandons Maplin Electronics

Re: Probably for nought but...

What a great idea. They could have a couple of traveling engineers who do workshops at all the different stores - It has to be someone who knows what they are talking about, not a sales rep. A couple of hours with a tangable goal and key learning objectives. Not just "build this kit-product we sell". No hard selling please.

Electronics is something I completely missed the boat on and and would love to be taught the basics

PHWOAR, those noughty inks: '0.1%' named Stat of The Year

7.7 billion: the number of active phone connections in the world

Google tells me that 1bn people do not have access to electricity globally. Its probably fair to assume these people also do not have mobile phones. So at least 1bn connections are made that are not between people? The point of a phone connection is to communicate?

I know that I am not currently on the phone so that rules me out, so who are making these calls?

Wait, are we talking dial-up internet in this figure?

YouTuber cements head inside microwave oven

Like me dammit!

Why do people refuse to think through the next steps of their action, project, email etc? Doesn't anybody consider the route down before deciding to climbing a tree?

Thinking that your buddy with an electric drill attempting to remove the plaster encasing your head is somehow a suitable mitigation of any dangers that arrise from this prank is scary!

The old refain is "what did they expect?" and I suspect they didn't get that far; they got as far as the idea of rising youtube views/likes

Bitcoin price soars amid technical troubles for exchanges

14,400 BTC?

Crumbs, someone has made a killing.

About 4 years ago a buddy and I lamented that fact we had missed the bitcoin boat. Oops!

I am wondering who is buying these up at current prices because they must feel there is still some further price increase to be had. Who knows, the sky is the limit I suppose.

I'll focus on paying down the mortgage for now and when its done I can blow the extra cash on risky ventures.

Creepy Cayla doll violates liberté publique, screams French data protection agency

Why though?

Not having kids I don't quite get why this feature would be desirable to a parent. Just let them play, surely?

User asked help desk to debug a Post-it Note that survived a reboot

CONTEXT PLEASE!

It amazes me how many people forget that English is context based. It drives me mad when people say "You know that problem we had yesterday?" and I seethe as they tell me nothing but believe they have given me enough to go on.

I usually say "no", or look at them blankly.

A couple of extra words and I will know EXACTLY what they are talking about.

"You know that problem with the firewall blocking access to x yesterday?"

"Yes, go on.."

My girlfriend recently said "you know that thing, on the thing?" when trying to describe a wisteria on an arbor in the front garden of a house we walked by.

Her native tongue is not English (although you wouldn't know it) so I let her off.

$10,000-a-dram whisky 'wasn't even a malt'

Does it mean anything that from the tasting they were unable to tell it was fake?

The fact I prefer to mix it with coke tells you everything you need to know about me and whisky.

I wonder what the bartenders expression would be at asking for $10k whisky and then mixing it?

Those IT gadget freebies you picked up this year? They make AWFUL Christmas presents

Re-gifting is an art

My aunt gives gifts that leave you unsure if you are a loved nephew or another name on a list; there is never enough evidence to be sure either way. My brother gives gifts and says "I didn't like it". After realizing he shouldn't have said that he says "its quite good though, it's one of the better ones available".

The most recent gift from my brother was an electric toothbrush from Lidl.

Fake tech support 'scam' husband and wife banned FOR LIFE from computer repair world

Re: Thats a plan...

Provided your hourly rate is sufficiently excessive there should be smiles all round :)

The UK's super duper 1,000mph car is being tested in Cornwall

1000mph is all very well but when you are stuck in stationary traffic on the M25 you will feel a bit silly, especially at 40lt/s fuel usage.