* Posts by MiguelC

1707 publicly visible posts • joined 22 May 2014

We bought a knockoff Lego launchpad kit from China for our Saturn V rocket so you don't have to

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: It seems to have a bit of a lean going on

To me it seems it's only due to the camera angles, not every picture shows leaning

Elizabeth Holmes' plan to avoid her Theranos fraud trial worked out about as well as her useless blood-testing machines

MiguelC Silver badge
Coat

"psychologist Mindy Mechanic"

Anyone else read that as " Mind Mechanic"? Would have fit so well with the rest of the story...

Don't forget to brush your teeth, WFH staff told as Dropbox drops the office, declares itself 'virtual first'

MiguelC Silver badge
Angel

I blame The Register

As my primary source of distraction :)

(doesn't matter if in the office or at home, though)

'20,000-plus staff' could face the chop in spin-off of IBM's IT outsourcing biz, says Wall Street analyst

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: 10 more years...

Their reasoning seems to be that they'll be profitable when they manage to finally shed the very last employee

Morgan Stanley hit with $60m penalty for failing to properly decommission old kit hosting 'wealth management' data

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: I know the real answer, but I have to ask...

In America, you pay to have a clean sheet.

It's just a modern form of indulgence...

Facebook doesn't know its onions: Seeds ad banned after machine-learning algo found vegetable pic 'overtly sexual'

MiguelC Silver badge
Coat

Re: Should have gone to SpecSavers

Watch out when you go, though, you might bump into Dominic there..

India to build home-grown supercomputers, from the motherboards up

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: "Supercomputers can certainly do that. However The Register wonders if India might not be able to achieve those benefits rather sooner by using off-the-shelf kit rather than waiting to develop its own stack."

Yes, because depending on other's willingness to sell you cutting edge technology has absolutely no drawbacks. Just ask Huawei.

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: I had fun with access 2.0 in the 90's

I had absolutely no fun with Access in the (late) 90's. I was called to "rescue" a largish occupational health company that had all of their information (I really mean everything, clients, contracts, test results, payroll) in a single Access 700 MB application. They had an hardware failure that crashed the .mdb and their most recent backup copy was over a month old. Unfortunately (for them), we were unable to restore it, we only managed to salvage parts of tables, unlinked to anything else. They ended up losing several contracts over the issue.

Think they learned the lesson? Think again, they rebuilt from the backup copy and manually reinputed all that could be saved from the crashed file...

Pakistan bans TikTok because of its users not its owners

MiguelC Silver badge

It's not the solution; it may be part of the same problem, tough

Software AG hit with ransomware: Crooks leak staffers' passports, want millions for stolen files

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Ransomware

Paying a ransom could be construed as aiding and abetting, as it translates effectively to paying for criminal activity

A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong

MiguelC Silver badge
Coat

65536

How could anyone in IT(*) miss that telltale sign?

(*) Oh, an Oracle Consultant, I see...

If the Samsung Galaxy S20 Fan Edition doesn't make you a fan, we don't know what will

MiguelC Silver badge

A 600£ or 700£ price is now considered not hard to swallow? For a phone?

They have trained you well.

It's like threatening to hit you senseless with a hammer then saying they'll only use their hands to beat you up.

Oh thank you, how lucky I am to be treated like that!

How's this for overachieving? Man accused of running software outfit as a Ponzi scheme while on parole from previous fraud

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Scam artists

The problem is not only on the liars side, greed is the number one factor here.

Remember kids, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is

Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Good reason not to upgrade

You're right, I think the real losers would (will?) be Samsung.

If I bought a new TV and it spewed ads at me with no option to turn them off, I'd return the set and buy another brand.

If many do the same....

Bill Gates lays out a three-point plan to rid the world of COVID-19 – and anti-vaxxer cranks aren't gonna like it

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Does the plan include

This particular plan doesn't, as it's not its purpose.

But he also has plans for that

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

MiguelC Silver badge
Devil

Re: Ever solved a silly problem, but spared the user from office-wide embarrassment (...) ?

No.

Proposed US fix for Boeing 737 Max software woes does not address Ethiopian crash scenario, UK pilot union warns

MiguelC Silver badge
Joke

one could just imagine the board meeting

Baldrick "I have a cunning plan to allow us to return the planes to the sky"

CEO Blackadder, visibly disgusted "Yes Baldrick, go on then, tell us your brilliant idea..."

Tesla to build cars made of batteries and hit $25k price tag about three years down the road

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: resale value

It's only good until people realise the problems that may come with second-hand ownership of Teslas

Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

MiguelC Silver badge
Facepalm

News for you: the world doesn't end where you stop having acquaintances

Bad news for 'cool dads' trying to bond with their teens: China-owned TikTok and WeChat face US download ban by Sunday

MiguelC Silver badge
Terminator

Re: They should be banned globally

Come on, no Judge Dredd-like execution? You're going soft there...

How do you solve 'disruption' at the UK border after Brexit? Let's call Peter Thiel! AI biz Palantir – you're hired

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: the gov might have the best intentions with its covid advice

best intentions? but for whom?

Safety driver at the wheel of self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian is charged with negligent homicide

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Distracted Driving

A colleague of mine used to have a book to read while stuck in traffic. Once she was interviewed by a TV reporter who was doing a piece about the really bad traffic jams on that particular road As you might guess, she wasn't moving much if a reporter managed to have a conversation while standing outside her car...

Surprise! Apple launches iOS 14 today, and developers were given just 24 hours' notice

MiguelC Silver badge

"Incoming calls, for example, are now indicated in a small window, and no longer consume the entire display."

Hoo, hoo, did Apple just invent what Samsung (maybe other Android variations too) users have had for some years now?

Bad apples: US customs seize OnePlus earbuds thinking they're knock-off AirPods

MiguelC Silver badge
Trollface

Wouldn't it be funny if China customs also seized an AirPod shipment for looking like counterfeit OnePlus Buds?

Q: How does hydrogen turn into a metal? A: Hang on a second, I need to train my AI supercomputer first

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Another possible niggle

Mercury, gallium and indium are all liquid at NTP, and all are metals too. In physics, being a metal is more commonly regarded as being electrically conductive. Lots of elements not classified as metals become metallic under high pressures and temperatures, while other lose their metallic properties under those conditions (like sodium)

Huawei's supply chain squeeze tightens, as SK Hynix and Samsung set to stop selling chips to the Chinese bogeyman as of next week

MiguelC Silver badge

While I do generally agree with your idea, I think the pressure from the US would most likely be financial - if huuuuuge fines were to be levied against the companies unless they’d stop selling to Huawei, they would have no option but to comply (under their own investors’ pressure)

Upside down, you turn me, you're giving bork instinctively: Firefox flips as a train connection is missed

MiguelC Silver badge
Coat

Maybe that particular train was supposed to be sold to Australian railways but somehow ended up in Blighty?

India flies Mach 6 scramjet for 20 whole seconds

MiguelC Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Blue water navy?

Yes, there are

Salon told to change ad looking for 'happy' stylist because it 'discriminated against unhappy people'

MiguelC Silver badge
Devil

Re: Thought that the call was a "wind up"

I always answer those with "you called me, you must know who I am"

Borking all over the world: At home or abroad, you're never more than 6ft from a BSOD

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Depth of troubleshooting that ensued ...

Not really, you eliminated one step of (unnecessary) troubleshooting, so you actually gained something

Intel, Apple, Cisco, Google sue US Patent Office – Tech police, open up!

MiguelC Silver badge
Meh

Never expected saying this, but...

I hope Intel, Apple, Cisco & Google succeed

(in this case alone)

While you lounged about all weekend Samsung fired up its biggest-ever chip factory and started cranking out 16Gb LPDDR5 DRAM

MiguelC Silver badge

You say 16 Gb, the picture shows 16 GB

So, which is it?

China trolls Trump with tech export rules changes that could imperil TikTok sale

MiguelC Silver badge

Don't forget the grudge for the empty seats on his comeback rally in Tulsa, which many attribute to a campaign launched on TikTok

Ex-Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain loses US appeal bid against fraud convictions and 5-year prison sentence

MiguelC Silver badge
Facepalm

"We rather regard any resort to the privilege against self-incrimination as a black mark."

Wow, just wow.

They're basically saying that the whole point of the existence of that privilege (if you can call it that) is for defendants to imply their guilt by using it?

Google wants to listen in to whatever you get up to in hotel rooms

MiguelC Silver badge
Devil

Re: Reminds me of the time

marshmallows? what about 12 boxes of live crickets?

Facebook apologizes to users, businesses for Apple’s monstrous efforts to protect its customers' privacy

MiguelC Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Facebook Tracking

Same here (and no-scripted to hell)

A bridge too far: Passengers on Sydney's new ferries would get 'their heads knocked off' on upper deck, say politicos

MiguelC Silver badge

They're navigating like an Egypcian

When there was at thing called ‘tourism’ in the world, I did a cruise on the Nile river.

Enjoying myself on the top deck, I didn't understand what the fuss was about when the boat's employees started dismantling the tents that provided some well needed shade.

Then we passed under a bridge that I could touch with my hand if I'd wished to.

Watching more carefully, I noticed that every other boat we passed by also had those removable tents on top.

Never read about any accident resulting from that particular set-up, though.

Ancestry.com: Let arbitrator decide on auto-enrolling membership lawsuit

MiguelC Silver badge
Flame

News at 11: there are lots of scumbags on the interwebs

Just an example of one of those subscription scams a close friend fell for: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/bilablau.com

She had to cancel her credit card to stop payments being sent

They've been going on at it for years and the authorities don't seem able to stop them - although they've been reported to the police in 2018 (and probably earlier, they most probably are the one that has complaints from across Europe)

Android user chucks potential $10bn+ sueball at Google over 'spying', 'harvesting data'... this time to build supposed rival to TikTok called 'Shorts'

MiguelC Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: It is their nature

Just the other day I was talking to a friend about derivatives (the calculus type) and she asked how I'd define them. After I gave her a brief expo, I picked my phone to look for a more exact definition.

I typed d-e-f- into the google search box and the first suggestion was "Definition of derivative"

What are the odds?

On a side note, I don't have google's voice assistant enabled

MiguelC Silver badge
Coat

"The case is McCoy v. Alphabet, Inc. et al, case number 5:20-cv-05427"

But is it the real McCoy?

The results are in: Science says the Solar System's magnetic heliosphere looks like a deflated croissant

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: If the latter, it's not a croissant, ask any Frenchman.

From wikipedia "Mège-Mouriès made very little profit from the invention of oleomargarine, which never became popular in France", et pour cause.

I got 99 problems, and all of them are your fault

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: Ambush

There are offices we do our utmost to avoid, which we informally call Bermuda Triangles, if you get near them you'll inevitably be sucked into them where you'll be asked about countless old tasks status' and as many new requests will be made.

China slams President Trump's TikTok banned-or-be-bought plan in the US

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: I'm surprised he didn't ask for personal commission, to be honest.

It's not on record, as is par for the course.

A tale of mainframes and students being too clever by far

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: (not from the database, from memory)

ah yes, I remember sometime ago a coworker learning that deleting records from an in-memory array meant it could also delete them from the database, depending on the parameters used for creating the damn thing.... not a fun weekend for him, recovering information from backups and transaction logs.... at least he learned (as did others - natch - by example) that everything should be thoroughly tested before deploying in production, even seemingly small changes.

Brit retailer John Lewis to catapult 111 tech bods over to Capgemini weeks after dumping 244 on Wipro

MiguelC Silver badge

"(...)111 who will transfer to Capgemini under the Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment (TUPE) regulations.

The Register understands that of the 111, 80 former Partners could be made redundant."

Funny how the part about "protection of employment" doesn't seem to mean what it says...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a charred white dwarf star blasted across our galaxy by an ancient semi-supernova

MiguelC Silver badge

900,000 KPH (559,234 MPH)

I'm pretty sure the original measurement wasn't that precise...

UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm's 5G gear illegal from year's end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all next-gen kit by 2027

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: This will end in tears.

For the sake of the exercise, wouldn’t the British government be incensed if, let’s say, JCB was banned from selling its machinery in China? Would that automagically transform JCB into a government owned company?

Burn baby burn, infosec inferno: Just 21% of security pros haven't considered quitting their current job

MiguelC Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "The majority (64 per cent) claimed it was being forced to cope with fewer resources"

It might become #1 priority, but security won't get any more resources allocated because of that.

They'll hire some PR people instead.

Cornish drinkers catch a different kind of buzz as pub installs electric fence at bar

MiguelC Silver badge

Re: what happens to the drunk

What I really had on the back of my mind was this Ren & Stimpy episode...

MiguelC Silver badge
Alert

Re: what happens to the drunk

Don't Pee On The Electric Fence