* Posts by Martin-73

1857 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2013

Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: And the lesson we learn today is:

2kw kango concrete breaker, plugged into the UPS outlet, naturally

BOFH: The Boss meets the unbearable weight of innovation

Martin-73 Silver badge

I can imagine it dispensing smiths crisps from before the walkers takeover, in the clearish packets that allowed them to go stale even IN their best before date

Europe plots escape hatch from enshittification of search

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: distributed search

Rail is actually better quality but at an ENORMOUS cost. It used to be economically viable for me to get a cheap day return into town for shopping. Now, i drive to out of town shopping centres

No big changes to UK broadband regs, despite no real competition for BT

Martin-73 Silver badge

Interesting to see the other side, i was briefly in BT in the early 90s, the old salts were like 'how dare they'. Which was legit, it was poorly handled

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: BT?

Or burgled and tossed, depends which side of the coin you;re on. I worked for BT (Briefly) in the burgeoning era of the early '90s. They had been state owned, Then privatised and told 'business as usual'... Suddenly other companies were allowed access to their equipment and premises, by LAW, private company bear in mind... with the added salt in the wound that they couldn't compete on the proverbial level playing field due to restrictions, USO, etc.....

Did it ultimately help the UK telecomms system hell yes

Was it handled well, and equitably, HELL NO

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: The problem is, what do ofcom mean

I believe cityfibre are open to fibre sharing, and as toob are interconnected (I'm a sparky not an IT guy, despite me being here) I hope A&A can negotiate something.. or OR put up poles.... I LOVE overhead stuff, but i'm weird, i think it looks nice

Martin-73 Silver badge

The problem is, what do ofcom mean

by 'full fibre' access... I technically have it, but only through Toob. I am happy with A&A so I am still awaiting openreach fibre. But because we have toob available, openreach haven't made my postcode a priority. All direct buried 1960s cable, so no ducting to the house, and all underground. Hence not a priority

Martin-73 Silver badge

Ofcom and their previous incarnation, oftel, did that all the time.... BT were not allowed to undercut the 'poor up and coming competition'. Initially it made sense, but now they're small fry (not including openreach in that)

The 12 KB that Windows just can't seem to quit

Martin-73 Silver badge
Windows

Today I learned

That moricons.dll still exists..... Oh my desktop will look so... normal

Icon, obvious

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

France and Belgium often don't bond because older sparkies are used to both lines being 'live', (2 phases of 127/220v 3ph). This is the reason a lot of .EU plugs are non polarized, and some older audio equipment (especially Grundig) has a 127v tap

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

NEC says 'first point of disconnect' which as you say, may be a switchfuse or breaker next to the meter.

Point of order to the ,DE poster, UK isn't ALL TN-C-S (with a combined earth/neutral). Round here we have a lot of TN-S from the 50s and 60s still, and rural areas are often TT (no earth at all supplied by the power company, you rely on your own rod/earth electrode, and need a time delay RCD on the main for fault protection

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

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: re: Chris Krebs

Indeed, I was REQUIRED to sign up to the selective service act as part of my US immigration, which I was most happy to do. Immigrants on the whole (illegals excluded) tend to be MORE respectful of laws and requirements as they chose to be there

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: re: Chris Krebs

How about perfectly legal aliens on US bases... they can't legally vote, but they're on base

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: re: Chris Krebs

Biden got a large and statistically anomalous number of votes because people wanted Trump gone. And unfortunately went on to become such an embarrassment, that Trump got in again.

Trump is well known to be corrupt in business, and a very poor statesman, but the dems dropped the ball

'Once in a lifetime' IT outage at city council hit datacenter, but no files lost

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Did they try turning it off and on again?

That is actually not surprising, dependencies exist, is this online, if not, fail....

Martin-73 Silver badge

Being the UK

I doubt the press release said 'datacenter'

yea i know, dead horse, but the register HAS to fix this 'bug'

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

Martin-73 Silver badge

Provided they fix it

I tried it the other week, it can't do half of what assistant can, as yet. 'show me my alarms'... assistant would list alarms. Gemini just said 'you can find that in your settings'.

Altnets told to stop digging and start stuffing fiber through abandoned pipes

Martin-73 Silver badge
Windows

Back in the 90s

... the local council contacted all the utilties before a large block of flats went up in our road. The council dug the entire pavement up, and allowed all the utilities to do their various things, BT, Gas, Water, Sewer, surface water etc. Then when it was reinstated back to flat hardcore, the council themselves resurfaced the entire pavement.

2 weeks later Videotron came along and dug a zigzag trench through the nice shiney new pavement for the cable tv.

The council were NOT happy

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Gotta love those elastic Microsoft minutes

I knew which one it was before i clicked :)

Dave plummer did a video explaining this, different teams did 2 sides of it

China ever-so slightly softens stance on possible US TikTok sale

Martin-73 Silver badge

He should name it 'Y'... as in Y elon, just y?

Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Almost the same here

these were 3 small panels off one main switch but you're right, i was complacent and didn't prove the NEUTRAL dead to earth

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Smug

oddly i get on well with win 11 on my laptop.... but that's because as soon as i got it i neutered almost everything except security updates. My desktop is staying win 10

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Reminds me of the defective Server 2022 ISO

I think steve would throw a chair... at least him and mr gates were behind TRYING to be better, just weren't that good at it on occasion. Now it's a race to the bottom, same with google.

Martin-73 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Almost the same here

As an example, i got zapped by a neutral on one distribution panel, because someone had it connected to a circuit from A COMPLETELY SEPARATE PANEL IN A DIFFERENT PART OF THE BUILDING. Me opening the main disconnect isolated half the building, but the backfeed from that made the entire neutral bar live.. People will do shit that should NEVER happen, you can't protect against that. Have a third beer

Martin-73 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Almost the same here

No downvote, even people with immense technical acumen can be caught out by stupid shite that should never happen and nobody would reasonably expect... have another beer, you may need it

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Martin-73 Silver badge
Happy

I was hoping this resulted in early Christmas for users

You're so bad at recycling, this biz built an AI to handle it for you

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Hmmm

Obviously not lived in Southampton then... our council is SHITE re: recycling. Can ONLY recycle bottles. No yoghurt pots, food trays, etc... :( Due to a 'third party contractor not having facilities'. Down the road, Gosport can recycle almost everything. ridiculous situation

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

Martin-73 Silver badge
Mushroom

Bit of stripped 2.5mm in a white wylex rewireable carrier doing an entire rack of chiller cabinets in a corner shop... they were surprised they failed the condition report

Andrew Tate's site ransacked, subscriber data stolen

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Hurrah

Indeed it requires a badge, can't remember if it's bronze or silver but i think it's to prevent spam and suchlike

America's drinking water systems have a hard-to-swallow cybersecurity problem

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Easy Fix Incoming

probably should've done the troll face or coat icon, but upvote to cancel the downvote

Martin-73 Silver badge

I on the other hand am not, people will be people, aka stupid. This makes it easier, why have 2 PCs when i can have one, mentality

Don't open that 'copyright infringement' email attachment – it's an infostealer

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: FFS

make it THEIR job to fix the mess, they'll stop

Martin-73 Silver badge
Windows

FFS

Don't open random attachments, this has been the rule since giants roamed the earth. and also email is plain text, html is for www

even if i... could form a sentence for how mind numbingly shit this is. DO NOT EVER USE AN EMAIL CLIENT THAT ALLOWS THIS SHIT

Yet another UK government seeks to reform GDPR

Martin-73 Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: BS.

Indeed, add to that a following popup offering a signup to a newsletter, then yet a third which suggests you follow them on faecalbook, which when you click the X re-directs you to the initial cookie popup but this time with the 'yes i'll take all the bloody cookies just show me what i was looking for' button offscreen, stage left.....

Icon: blood pressure

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

Martin-73 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Want to feel old?

You're only as old as the person you're feeling

icon: excuse for the comment

Tesla Cybertruck recalled again. This time, a software fix for backup camera glitch

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Robo Cyber Trucks

Breyten Breytenbach... but he's emigrated to Paris

Martin-73 Silver badge
Windows

Re: Robo Cyber Trucks

Paint your left knee green, then extract your wisdom teeth, form a string quartet and pretend your name is Keith

A working Turing Machine hits Lego Ideas

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Cosmological model

I highly recommend clickspring's series on youtube recreating it using period accurate tools....

Office 2024 unveiled for Microsoft 365 refuseniks

Martin-73 Silver badge
Pint

Yeah, no thanks

Office 97 still works on windows 11, (you may require a USB cd drive lol) and the .docx incompatibility isn't really a problem. All modern versions of turd..sorry word, can read .doc, and if someone sends me a .docx, not hard to read it with freeware.

Edit... it would become a chore if i used and edited dozens of .docx files a day, but that is not my use case, YMMV

Amazon, Tesla, Meta considered harmful to democracy

Martin-73 Silver badge
Joke

You're unique, just like everyone else ;-)

Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Not the only plant in consideration

I guess so, although it's not very dangerous. The 'safe limits' are hilariously low. Coal power station fly ash is way more radioactive than anything nuke stations are allowed to release. Nuclear power, done PROPERLY is one of the greenest forms of energy. And commercial pilots aren't overly bothered by radiation :)

The mystery of the rogue HP calculator: 12C or not 12C? That is the question

Martin-73 Silver badge

Why didn't you take the direct route

The ground

NIST: New smoke alarms are better at detecting fires, but still go off for bacon

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Venting the kitchen?

Indeed got one in the kitchen drawer, if only mum's carers would use the bloody thing

Martin-73 Silver badge
Flame

Re: Venting the kitchen?

I believe while not needed per BUILDING regs, the gas safety regs require them. Every heating engineer we have dealt with has either provided a battery one or requested a heat and co alarm in the room or cupboard the boiler is in, hard wired into the building's smoke alarms. Aico ones (the only brand we fit) have a different tone for fire or carbon monoxide

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: This is a specific US-Centric problem.

Ionization detectors I don't believe are even MADE anymore

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Inappropriate insults

maybe the person was just stating a fact

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: Never for rudeness, but..

totally different industries but yes, same experience, people can be so stupid. "I am scared of electricity" says the woman with 5 daisy chained power strips, and ' i don't understand computers'

Martin-73 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Never for rudeness, but..

I believe i'm slightly autistic, apparently my tone of voice varies from 'lecturing' to 'talking to the person like they're a fucking moron'.... In truth they often are

Starlink's new satellites emit 30x more radio interference than before, drowning cosmic signals

Martin-73 Silver badge

Re: I've got an idea!

equip them with weapons to take out musk's ego