* Posts by skswales

82 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Nov 2013

Page:

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

skswales

NaN == Not a Nan?

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

skswales

Re: My "support days" are hopefully over

I've had instances of electric fence interference on my totally overhead phone line.

UK ICO not happy with Google's plans to allow device fingerprinting

skswales

I love YouTube ads. Last year they were pushing me a commuter yacht to get from my private island to fleet of Maseratis to whisk me to my fractional ownership jet. Oh, and the ThermoFisher-equipped biolab (2 1/2 mins!). I have also been recommended to purchase super-modern infantry fighting vehicles, to attend a military satellite exhibition, and a Finance Conference in Doha. And buy cat food, of course (zero cats at last count).

Open source maintainers are drowning in junk bug reports written by AI

skswales

Re: I would argue that the Reg comment boards are antisocial media.

Ah, Dennis Hopper

D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify

skswales

Re: Good luck

Put a shilling in the meter to continue to use feature X...

Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework

skswales

Re: Is this news ?

There Will Be Blood

BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

skswales

Coworker A once spied Coworker B adding up two two-digit numbers on their calculator. Excuse given that the numbers were in hex. The numbers were 45 and 22.

skswales

My favourite use of the SUM() function was in a spreadsheet that I inherited from an accountant:

=SUM(A1+A2+B1+B2 etc.)

Happy birthday, Putin – you've been pwned

skswales

Re: "Collective West"

How will they learn if they don't?

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

skswales

Re: Two seconds ?

It's probably had to check for an OTA update first.

Windows: Insecure by design

skswales

Re: What other business could get away with having products so bad ?

I remember doing Gift Aid returns a few years ago - HMRC would only accept ODS docs prepared with their template.

Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, literally, something else

skswales

Did I just move that, or copy it?

Microsoft confirms spike in NTLM authentication traffic after Windows Server patch

skswales

"It was a new day yesterday

But it's an old day now"

Windows 95 support chap skipped a step and sent user into Micro-hell

skswales

Our company had the misfortune to purchase one of their systems. Trying to fix said system on receipt, got through and was put in what I can only describe as a conference call with around six other folk support were trying to help at the same time. Support were so useless some of the callers got their fixes from the other callers.

My issue was hardware related. Monitor was poorly focused. Support's solution was to only run it in VGA mode. It was a 21" monitor.

Law secretly drafted by ChatGPT makes it onto the books

skswales

Re: Brave new wrodl!

Citroen BX 19 TRD became DTR suffix in UK

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

skswales

Re: Assumptions

Yeah, remember crap cars? Friend 30 yrs ago had one where you had to run the heater full tilt in the middle of summer, or the engine would overheat - windows open all weathers.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

skswales

Re: snooty

TVR dealership lost a sale back in the 90s when we turned up after a karting session and were looked at as if we were scum even though wearing clean, but v casual, togs.

Pixies keep switching off my morning alarm, says Google Pixel owner

skswales

Re: Problem spotted, User Error

As usual, Zappa has already gone there ... https://genius.com/Frank-zappa-stick-it-out-lyrics

Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing

skswales

We once had a manual translated to German. Well, Swiss-German! Got a bit of flak from users in northern Germany.

Yukon UFO could have cost unfortunate balloon fan $12

skswales

Re: Cost

"Where the hell was Biggles when you needed him last Saturday?"

Tesla admits it was asked to hand over Autopilot, Full Self-Driving docs to investigators

skswales

Re: "the company's press mailbox is full and no longer accepting new messages"

Sensor overload - over to you right now, meat sack.

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

skswales

Re: Hmmmmmmm

I've had one of the 'speed sign recognition' cars as a courtesy car. Wrong far too much of the time. And GPS maps can't know what's right. I updated my satnav just before the car went out of warranty and quite a lot of the speed limits were wrong even then.

Up here a load of 20 mph signs were dropped seemingly permanently in place early on during COVID as the local council wanted to encourage people to walk locally on the roads without pavements. Of course the temporary speed order for these signs lapsed over six months ago but the council can't be bothered to remove them (I checked with them)...

GCC 13 to support Modula-2: Follow-up to Pascal lives on in FOSS form

skswales

Re: Acorn ARX and Modula-2

I still have my Acorn-issued M2 book from the days when EVERYTHING was going to be written in M2.

Even just before Arthur 1.2 came out, Acron manglement were still talking of the OS being written in M2, just that we were 'still working on device drivers in assembler' - or rather that was the lie that they were being fed!

The code generated by M2 was 'interesting'. For some reason it seemed to avoid using R6. In the early days of Arthur, one of us had fouled up something sitting on TickerV with the result that R6 was being corrupted at 100Hz. BASIC went TITSUP almost immediately but AAsm happily kept going. Found it never ever referenced R6.

University staff voice 'urgent, profound concern' as Oracle finance system delays payments

skswales

Re: Why Does El Reg Have A Picture Of The Assembly Hall Of The Church Of Scotland......

It even has a State Theme Tune

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

skswales

Re: HTML vs PDF

What's an ad?

Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable

skswales

Re: Upside down 3.5" floppies

Had worse with DAT drives and misplaced/non-adhering labels.

skswales

Second year physical practicals - breadboards with op-amps. What could go wrong? Many little puffs of smoke.

'Last man standing in the floppy disk business' reckons his company has 4 years left

skswales

Re: Speaking Of Ancient Storage Methods .....

Oi! My monthly archive is still to DAT!

A refined Apple desktop debuts ahead of Wednesday’s big iThing launch

skswales

Re: If only desktop environments...

Other fun fact - clicking in the scroll bar with the right button scrolled the contents of the window in the opposite direction, so it was easy to quickly scroll back a page, look at something, keep scrolling forward without moving the mouse to opposite ends of the scroll bar. And here we are in 2022...

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

skswales

Re: Best I ever used

Pretty much every single day in the 'modern world' of non-RISC OS systems I find myself with a window open showing the directory I want to save stuff in and curse the designers that don't allow a quick drag from an application to that 'directory viewer'.

California asks people not to charge EVs during heatwave

skswales

Re: What about crypto mining and gaming computers?

As a teenager, I used to have a valve oscilloscope. Sometimes in winter I'd turn it on just as a space heater.

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

skswales

Re: 07734

Unlike Sir Clive, my Sinclair Scientific Programmable (1977 vintage) is still with us. Bit of falling-apart foam in the battery compartment. Still got the sample program cards.

You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups

skswales

When I make payments on a business account, it attempts to verify the sort code and account number with the payee's name given. Somewhat amusingly, given GDPR, Data Protection and all that, it most often gives me the person's full name, which I was usually unaware of before. Some people do have very interesting middle names!

skswales

Re: Hardly on topic

When school got an RM 380Z with a floppy drive, our head of maths (isn't it always) was convinced that CP/M only allowed single letter filenames. His SOP was to have one floppy disc per class, and assign a letter to each pupil. Some pupils had to share their letter, with predictable results... He thought it was wizardry when I showed him what was possible. Didn't ever change though, as it was written down.

Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025

skswales

Re: a short law...

You've just wrapped it back to zero ;-)

Elon Musk considering 'drastic action' as Twitter takeover in 'jeopardy'

skswales

Re: Chilling effect ?

It has ads?

NOBODY PRINT! Selfless hero saves typing pool from carbon catastrophe

skswales

Re: Walk and talk

My boss used to fill out our timesheets for us each week!

Toyota, Subaru recall EVs because tires might literally fall off

skswales

I was sad to say goodbye to my 18yo H6 Outback

Original Acorn Arthur project lead explains RISC OS genesis

skswales

Re: RISCiX

Wasn't a 3B2 involved there too?

skswales

Re: RISCiX

It would have been on the A500 prototype systems. Happy days!

skswales

Re: RISCiX

I have a vague memory of Acorn purchasing a System V licence (for ca. £100k) before shifting over to BSD.

BOFH: The Geek's Countergambit – outwitted at an electronics store

skswales

Re: Electronics shop

Oh, that is really sad. We used to have to pop round to Gee's for bits when Acorn were on credit hold with RS and Farnell. Which was most of the time.

AWS power failure in US-EAST-1 region killed some hardware and instances

skswales

Re: Ever heard of a UPS?

Wrong. Where are *your* backups? What are *your* DR plans?!

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

skswales

Bought a Panasonic last year specifically for Freeview catchup over t'Internet. Which doesn't work unless it's plugged into the TV aerial, which I don't have. That one went back, and I got its cheaper sibling without this feature. Curiously this one regularly tries to find a software update, indicated by blinkenlight, which is quite difficult for it as the set has zero networking capability.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

skswales

Re: Memories (not RAM)

My Sinclair Cambridge calculator no longer works, but my 1975 Sinclair Oxford Scientific does. Only quibble was the cheap deg/rad switch: had to send it back for repair under warranty three times - the final time they resolved it by replacing the switch with a much meatier one. Thanks to my dad for that - it was probably what he took home in a week.

BOFH: I'm so pleased to be on the call, Boss. No, of course this isn't a recording

skswales

Re: Duplicate Asset Tag numbers!

Our MD once bought an engraver for this purpose. He tried it out on its case: 'Personnel Engraving Tool'

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

skswales

Re: Census data

(family) tree balancing

Terraria dev cancels Stadia port after Google disabled his email account for three weeks

skswales

Re: Wow

What are these "friends" of which you speak?

In wake of Apple privacy controls, Facebook mulls just begging its iOS app users to let it track them over the web

skswales

Pollute your Faecesbook account with inaccurate information first. You don't think it will actually be deleted, do you?

Apple: Magsafe on the iPhone 12 may interfere with pacemakers and cardiac defibrilators

skswales

Re: One can suspend MacBooks with a magnet too

What is this vegetable of which you speak?

Page: