Posts by Martin-73

Hershey phishes! Crooks snarf chocolate lovers' creds

Re: Germolene

Even worse is the resin they use to bond the extra grip surface to roads at crossings in the UK. Ever thought 'i can smell burning electronics, oh crap' on a warm day while stopped at lights? If so, that's your culprit

To be fair, chocolate lovers wouldn't be on Hershey's database...

Openreach hits halfway mark in quest to hook up 25M premises with fiber broadband

There is a restriction on that

It has to be VERY close to the incoming point, as the o/h or u/g fibre tends to be flammable, thus is restricted from use within buildings. Same reason BT/OR always used to terminate the dropwire either on the outside of the building or as soon as it entered.

Re: It's here

Telephone extension wire will feck your speeds right up. Put the router directly on the NTE 5, (without a filter if you no longer use landline phones) and use the ethernet to distribute round the house to your wifi AP etc... a few feet of poor quality 1980s extension kit can really ruin your speeds

Still looks awfully patchy

Looking at the map linked, it's VERY patchy... unless they roll out loads of fibre REALLY quickly, the copper network is gonna live for another decade at least (so far as the customer is concerned, no doubt it'll be racks of VoIP ATA's at the exchange or cabinet)

Icon because I still remember the test codes for the strowger exchange that was replaced by a txe4 , then a nortel system (system Y, not system x), then ... i moved :)

I was assuming the OP meant the telegraph pole ones, which have between 4 and 12 individual fibre outlets. They DO make the top of the poles look cramped, especially when there may be a copper DP, a separate Toob DP, and maybe a couple of abandoned in place DACS II units (anyone remember the horror of finding your line was DACS'd during the dialup era?

Re: It's here

I have a segment of the o/r fibre they're using in the fareham area (an offcut from my work colleague's install). it is a mix of kevlar and nylon strength members, and a double sheathed single mode fibre in an outer black PE jacket. Looks very much like normal dropwire. I wouldn't have any worries about the initial strength, but over the decades, who knows with manmade materials?

Re: FIBRE

Yeah they're getting ridiculous with the septic spellings

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Re: Every single time

If ever dealing with healthcare, the Japanese, or the US govt, you'd need it for the fax functionality...

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

He's not autistic, he's a twunt.

Surface Duo crashes the party as Doctor Who celebrates 60th birthday

Re: Jodie Whittaker...

For once Bob, i agree... the Rosa Parks episode was one of the good ones

Re: Tom Baker

Two missing Concordes, shirley From memory ... Speedbird Golf Alfa Charlie and Speedbird Golf Victor Foxtrot.

Mines the one with the jelly babies in the pocket

OpenCart owner turns air blue after researcher discloses serious vuln

WOW

What a knob jockey :)

Bright spark techie knew the drill and used it to install a power line, but couldn't outsmart an odd electrician

There's a reason for that, every customer knows how to do our job ;) till they don't

Re: Not Unusual

Nope that definitely wouldn't count as protected. It must be covered in some way, unless >50mm deep. Simple capping /safe plates will NOT do, it must be earthed metallic coating (conduit, MICC, FP200 etc) unless installed within safe zones

Yes for sockets it's required i believe, but it didn't always work that way, the older MK surface mount 'minilogic' sockets could be opened with an upside down plug. They later fixed this with the unique to MK 'equal pressure on L&N' to open the shutter

Extension leads are somehow exempt

Re: Unmetered supplies

Oh ouchy! I found some fed from the PILC under the floor.... someone must have had testicli of ferrous metal to tap into that live!

Re: Other folks' DIY

Had same in our own loft, set my circ saw to the depth of the boards less 0.5mm to avoid ANY risk. Cut my access panel, and the lights went out. Some b****rd had gouged out the underside of the boards for the cables going over the joists..... embarassing for a sparky but it was our own house lol

Re: Other folks' DIY

Oh yes, this, 100%

Re: Other folks' DIY

Plumbers still do this, they have no 'safe zones' like we sparks do....

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Yes, 100%, the green is very blueish, i've been tricked multiple times by seeing them in the mirror and having to do a doubletake in case it was an emergency vehicle

Yep we remove them on EICRs (condition reports)

I should downvote you, being a sparky, but you're accurate, have hit many a cable installed outside of zones etc.

Black Friday? More like Blackout Friday for HSBC's online and mobile banking

That is an increasing problem it seems. Not that I'm in IT myself (other than the wiring side!) but the number of times some outage is 'we have no idea why this happened' seems to be increasing. Overly complex systems? Or they laid off the only guy who knows how it worked. Or both?

Have a beer on behalf of that insider, he or she will need it>>

Cheques are required for some customers (churches I know to be one, due to being run by a committee etc. They're not allowed to do electronic funds transfer. They can receive but not pay electronically.

What's really going on with Chrome's June crackdown on extensions – and why your ad blocker may or may not work

Re: This, coupled with YouTube's recent blitz

Thank both of you for this, i may well switch back to FF if i can have a normal menu bar instead of 'three bars... dots... seashellls, whatever it is today. How the HELL that says 'menu' idk

Re: This, coupled with YouTube's recent blitz

More like they ditched the entire UI and replaced it with a chrome looking POS lol

Watchdog bites back against blockage of $9M fine on US selfie-scraper Clearview AI

Re: Gah!

Lemme guess, owned by newsquest media... 'SUBSCRIBE FOR 1 POUND A MONTH TO VIEW THIS POORLY WRITTEN ARTICLE FULL OF TYPOS'

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Re: Sheesh

Gone 5pm? that's pub oclock!

That was my first goto, why was this not tagged ROTM... have a pint, (that is 568ml, for the septics) what has happened to this publication, yanks?

Apple swipes left on the last Touch Bar Mac, replaces it with a pricier 14″ model

Re: Hellorld

Indeed it is good stuff, watching his SHEER happiness when he fixes the Hawk drive... AGAIN.... is endearing :)

Boffins find AI stumbles when quizzed on the tough stuff

Re: High School Degree!

Not sure why the downvotes, I am guessing someone doesn't like dabbsy lol

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

Re: Ah yes...

Ta for the reminder to put the robertson driver back in my toolbag.... I'm a british sparky and I do it to STOP plasterers removing boxes!

And yes, I keep a cheap battery drill with a 3.5mm tap in it for threading the holes on electrical boxes, it never hurts even (or especially!) on brand new boxes

Re: Most-Inappropriate Computer Repair Tool

From my reading it was likely more a case of 'cold welding' if the contacts were in contact for a long time, no current needed... I sit ready to be corrected by OP though

Re: ChopChop

Ah yes, I've worked on such building control systems aka 'dumb home'... The switches are godawful and plasticky for the money, and yes, there are MILES of cable literally, every single light or bank of light has to be wired back to the distribution board. We had around 1200metres of mains wiring (1.5mm thank gawd, larger would have been unmanageable) and nearly double that of cat[x]. Switches only used RS422 or 485 (can't remember which) so only needed cat5, but everything else got cat6A. The building inspector was actually worried about the structural integrity of the joists due to the number of holes, so we had the builder double them up. Fun job but absolutely ludicrous price.

Re: ChopChop

I've had that in a more scary manner... on 240v power strips from cheap stores... came across a number of them that simply shatter if roughly handled, and that's in domestic use out of sunlight!

Re: Shocking!

yes, non dairy coffee creamer is basically sugars, that goes up like a bomb too!

Re: Shocking!

Also static damage isn't, to coin a word, binary ... it can degrade the transistors on the chips to the point they're more likely to fail earlier

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Re: No corruption here.

As I've mentioned many times, the remote disconnection thingy WILL be regarded by yours truly as a fault. If my volt stick tells me the supply is live, but the outgoing side is NOT, out comes the smart meter to be replaced by a meter I have which is calibrated.

Re: No corruption here.

Yep, we have several customers who've queried the accuracy of the meter, the usual reaction is to install a check meter... they're always in agreement to within that spec... [of course the main meter will be reading the voltage sense and power consumption of the check meter, but that's usually very VERY minimal]

Re: No corruption here.

They've not sent a meter reader to our place for 10+ years.... i've informed eon multiple times the meter and main fuse are unsealed (I'm a sparky, i could reseal it but not my place to do it)... they don't bother turning up

Re: No corruption here.

Tell them mais non

First Brexit, now X-it: Musk 'considering' pulling platform from EU over probe

Good riddance you petulant w@nker

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.... This guy is just a complete tit

Tesla goons will buy anything – including these $150 beers

Re: consider branding yourself with a Tesla Branding Iron

and even this i'm not sure of.. have a cheaper (and better) one

Gas supplier blames 'rogue' code for Channel Island outage

Re: This is becoming way too common.

Why not both?

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

Re: Amiga hard disk partitioning

Unlikely, it has to be actually USEFUL to a terry-wrist

Chinese smart TV boxes infected with malware in PEACHPIT ad fraud campaign

That was precisely my response to seeing one this morning.

CISA reveals 'Admin123' as top security threat in cyber sloppiness chart

Re: Amateurs

Admin 12345.... change the combination on my luggage

Re: Costruzioni Italiane Serrature e Affini

amateur, QWERTY is the username, ASDFGH is the password

5G satellite briefly becomes brightest object in night sky

Re: Astronomy tax

or just use SOX, which although being less efficient (not by much!) than LEDs, don't cost as much, and last for years as opposed to months