Posts by Andy Non

Iran launches 'biological capsule' to low Earth orbit

Re: Too small

"GERBILS IN SPAAAAAAAAAACE!!"

Maybe Muppets in Space?

NASA engineers got their parachute wires crossed for OSIRIS-REx mission

Re: So easy to do...

Maybe a solution would be to use a different naming convention for wires, one not related to their function e.g. Elephant, Zebra, Giraffe, Gazelle etc.

No physical testing?

I'd have expected the (mostly) built systems to be tested prior to final assembly i.e. that the correct signals were being generated and going to the correct places prior to attaching to the mechanisms that deploy / cut parachute lines.

Microsoft confirms Smart App issue renaming everyone's printers to HP

Next step in HP's cunning plan

Automatically subscribe all Windows users to HP ink.

17% of Spotify employees face the music in latest cost-cutting shuffle

What do all the staff do?

I'm not a spotify user, is it something more than just a subscription based music player app?

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

Best move I ever did, ditching HP inkjet printers and switching to Brother laser printers. The printer itself and toner lasts for an eternity and no need to subscribe or sign up for anything. It just works... until the day it doesn't then I'll replace it with another Brother printer.

HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems

I'm severely allergic to to tea Mrs Doyle, a single cup would kill me.

... Oh, just a small cup then...

OpenCart owner turns air blue after researcher discloses serious vuln

It doesn't encourage other security testers to look for flaws in OpenCart. Sooner or later this will come back and bite OpenCart in the ass when hackers show more interest in their software than testers.

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

El Reg's suggestion

of Donald Duck seems fitting. I can just imagine his squawking tantrum rages.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean AI's not after you

Workers losing their jobs to AI

is a lifestyle choice. ;-)

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Re: Chrome

Path of least resistance, especially for those who are not technically savvy or who don't care about their online privacy.

Re: Nail, meet head!

Back in the day I used to buy electronics magazines and relished going through all the ads in there, looking for bargains like mixed bags of electrolytic capacitors etc. Online ads are just so irrelevant, intrusive and some a security risk. So I use an ad-blocker. If YouTube hits me with "Unblock Or Eff Off" I'll be effing off. I like YouTube to play background music while I'm on the computer, but not enough to turn off my ad-blocker. I'd maybe pay £2 per month for ad free, but no more. Even then I'd be reluctant to part with my CC number to Google, trust is in limited supply.

Shock horror – and there goes the network neighborhood

Re: When checking voltages...

Resist the temptation

Microsoft's 11-year itch: The uncelebrated anniversary of Windows 8

The beginning of the end

I'd used all Microsoft operating systems from the days of DOS 3.1 and earned my living as an application developer on all those platforms. Windows 8 went too far for me and it was the moment when I started dipping a toe into Linux. By 8.1 I was dual booting Windows and Linux on the same laptop. Then one fateful day a Windows update trashed the bootup and made the laptop 100% Windows destroying the Linux boot option. That was the final straw and I deleted Windows and went 100% Linux, eventually settling on Mint. Not looked back since.

Boston Dynamics teaches robo-dog to recognise speech, respond using ChatGPT

It would be a brave visitor who joined the tour wearing a name badge "Sarah Connor"

Someone missed a trick (or treat) there

They should have given it the personality of a terminator, removed the safeguards and given it a plasma rifle in the 40 watt range. ;-)

Windows CE reaches end of life, if not end of sales

Windows CE still alive but quite unwell

I encountered it during a hospital stay recently; both me and it were quite unwell. Each bed in the NHS ward had a small TV on an extending arm. It was pretty crap really with only a handful of TV channels and the rest were daily subscription based. It kept crashing. During its long tortuous boot sequence I noticed it was based on Windows CE. According to the technician who came around to fix it, it was in end of life care.

Pope tempted by Python! Signs off on coding scheme for kids

When the next pope is chosen

will your computer emit coloured smoke?

Tenfold electric vehicles on 2030 roads could be a shock to the system

Re: Never going to happen in the UK

"getting one (even if they could afford one) is a shit idea."

The stepson bought an EV, but has since sold it and gone back to petrol, citing lack of infrastructure, needing to plan long journeys around charging stations only to get there and find they either aren't working or there is a long, time consuming, queue. The final straw he got a parking fine for charging up his car "out of opening hours" in a supermarket car park.

It is 2023 and Excel's reign of date terror might finally be at an end

Sounds like the Access automatic case-conversion "feature"

An aeon ago, I inherited a rather complex application and associated access database. One of the tables had an index field of lowercase letters a to z. Then an Access update introduced spell chucker and similar features to Access. Unbeknown to me it changed all the lowercase letter 'i's to uppercase 'I's, trashing the index. Only came to light after hundreds of CDs had been shipped to clients.

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

Wouldn't be so bad if they actually worked

We had one installed just over a year ago as I was becoming too infirm to climb into the cupboard under the sink to get manual readings. The display unit has never worked since installation, so we have no idea how much electricity we are using until it appears on the bill. So not very helpful. I literally had to report the fault to Shell energy ten times before they even acknowledged the fault existed, only for them to say "tough luck" in so many words as it would never be fixed. The automatic sending of data also failed for a few months, reason unknown, so I had to climb into the cupboard again to submit manual readings.

Fair to say I've been left underwhelmed by smart meters.

Boris Johnson's mad hydrogen for homes bubble bursts

Hydrogen in pipes

Correct me if I'm wrong but as I recall from chemistry many years ago H2 is a very small molecule and tends to leak very easily, escaping through surfaces/pipes/joins that it finds to be somewhat porous compared to larger molecules like CH4. Could hydrogen even be safely transported along old pipes buried in the roads intended to carry methane?

Down and out: Barclays Bank takes unplanned digital detox, customers not invited

A letter arrived to my address but in the name of someone I'd never heard of. As there are so many scams going on I opened the letter and it confirmed they had been accepted for a credit card (at my address). Sensing attempted fraud I tried phoning the bank's fraud dept but they refused to speak to me because I wasn't the person named in the letter. A few days later a credit card arrived (I could feel it in the unopened letter) which I returned to sender. A day or two later a pin number for the card which I also returned to sender. A week or so later a letter arrived expressing confusion as to why the previous mail had been returned.

Re: Customers of the bank, whose values include "Excellence" and "Service"...

I tried to create a Euro account with them a few years ago, it had to be done in-branch with proof of ID etc. Got there and their computers were down, so had to fill in a long paper form. They then lost the paperwork, found it again some time later and generally went from bungle to blunder. I closed the account as soon as they got round to creating it as they were too late for my needs. They apologised for their incompetence and said they'd give me £20 compensation but I never got a penny.

Apple and Lenovo are dropping the ball for visually impaired users

I experimented by buying one of those trackball gadgets, but found it much worse than a mouse. My fingers just weren't steady enough or precise enough to control the pointer so it was wobbling all over the place while I tried to point it at what I wanted to click. Sent it back to Amazon after one day.

Another thing that peeves me is with games. In my twenties I was really good playing the original Doom on DOS, nowadays a lot of games on the PS4/5 don't make allowances for older gamers with slower reflexes or a little arthritis in their fingers. I can only play on "story" level nowadays. Often the so called "easy" level is impossibly difficult as my fingers just seize up while trying to fight a boss or I don't have the finger control required to precisely and quickly aim a weapon. I've had to abandon several games part way in when encountering a boss that you must defeat to proceed with the game. So frustrating when it is relatively easy to make an easier level for people with age related disabilities... just have larger values for the amount of health gained, your resilience or for the power of your weapons etc. It ain't rocket science.

Re: It's not just blind people

Thanks I'll look into those. I've used my phone's camera to enlarge tiny restaurant menus successfully, but not really suitable for reading books. I'll ask my optician about stronger lenses, thanks.

Re: It's not just blind people

I'm slowly heading into that category with some hand tremors and a little vision loss. What irks me is the tendency of websites to use small font sizes and operating systems and application interfaces to tend towards using tiny controls and shrinking scroll bars. It applies to physical things too, typically like user instruction leaflets that come with gadgets and household appliances, the text often is effectively illegible for me as it is too small even with prescription reading glasses. I even had to return a book to Amazon the other day as the text was too small to read - the frustrating thing there is that Amazon tells you the physical dimensions of books, how many pages etc but unless there is a "see inside" option, you are left with no clue how big the text is.

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

Agreed, sometimes it is best just to go straight to A&E rather than try to get a GP appointment. If I'd listened to the Rottweilers and waited for my cardiologist appointment I very likely wouldn't be alive to make these posts now. It is unfortunate though that there are medically untrained personnel (the Rottweilers) effectively making life and death decisions with their actions and instructions to patients, probably unaware of the severe consequences of what they say/do.

Re: "The NHS suffers from a chronic shortage of anesthetists"

"see and talk to, like, an actual doctor"

I was on a waiting list (a couple of months hence) to see a cardiologist at my local hospital. Feeling quite unwell one day I phoned my local doctor's surgery but couldn't even get past the not-medically-trained rottweilers manning the reception desk. "No, you can't make an appointment to see your GP, you've got to wait for your hospital cardiologist appointment". A few days later feeling very unwell I went to A&E where they stuck me on monitors and told me I was too ill to go home and needed to have a pacemaker fitted as soon as possible. Turned out my pulse kept dropping into the 40's, 30's and my heart was even periodically stopping completely for a few seconds and I was in imminent danger of a heart attack, stroke or death!

US govt talks up $2B X-ray photobooth to check its nuke weapon sims are right

Re: Pays for itself, really

ONE MILLION DOLLARS? That's more money than exists in the entire world!

FTC: Please stop falling for social media scams, you've given crooks at least $650M so far this year

I had an email today from my bank containing several clickable links, including one trying to induce me to download their banking app. Geesh, talk about encouraging dangerous behaviour.

Never mind SETI and NASA, if your Ring somehow snaps ET, Amazon might give you $1M

Re: While we analyze your claim....

Just bear with me for a moment while I put on dark sunglasses; I'd like you to look at this bright light. <flash> You didn't see anything abnormal, definitely no aliens, you will now go about your daily life as normal.

Aliens ringing the door bell

Hello human, we are here to tell you the good news about our lord and saviour the 9 tentacled green one...

Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard

Re: "their cat jumped on the keyboard"

Also on the positive side, while the cat is busy coding you can take a cat nap.

Re: I dunno

My German shepherd cross is well known to my Zoom associates, when he wants to go out he puts his front paws in my lap and his large head in front of the webcam and tries to push me out of my chair, once almost succeeding much to the amusement of my Zoom associates.

In response to the accusation, the cat said "Me-how?"

The technician certainly let the cat out of the bag. It should give him paws for thought unless he's since drunk himself catatonic.

Red Planet roommates have been stuck on 'Mars' together for 100 days

Re: NASA

X marks the target.

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

Re: Bluesky

Sounds worth a punt, so I've just joined the waiting list.

Re: Mastodon remains the most exciting alternative

I joined Mastodon a few months ago. On the plus side it doesn't spam your feed with unwanted crap but on the downside it hasn't reached a critical mass of people I'd like to "follow" e.g. various scientists who I find interesting. At least NASA is on Mastodon with regular posts on what they are doing or the latest JWST photos. As an end user of Mastodon I do find it a bit confusing that you have to select a particular server to join with, I guess that is due to the federated nature of Mastodon, but does that affect what people, organisations and content are visible to me? That isn't so obvious.

Mozilla's midlife crisis has taken it from web pioneer to Google's weird neighbor

Re: Thunderbird Calendar

Thank you!

Thunderbird Calendar

Due to data corruption I had to uninstall, wipe and re-install Thunderbird from scratch recently on Linux Mint. Oddly the Calendar / Events functionality appears to be missing. Can't find it in any of Thunderbird's menu options. Very odd. I suspect I'm missing a trick somewhere, just surprised it isn't available "in my face" any more. Don't know if they've removed Calendar/Events or just buried it somewhere unobvious. Or was it an add-on?

Twitter, aka X, tops charts for misinformation, EU official says

Twitter / X is a sewer

Out of curiosity I created an X account the other day. I selected various scientific and technology topics as my only interests. What I got was a feed with 99% unwanted crap, including conspiracy theories, verbal diarrhoea quoted from Trump's own platform, Alex Jones rantings, Q-Anon nonsense, republican political ravings, crypto currency scam posts and a flood of posts on topics I have zero interest in such as American football, baseball, formula 1 racing, actors, singers, soaps etc. Even after clicking the "not interested in this post / topic" the feed kept bringing the same crap up continuously. X is like an open sewer, with an endless supply of turds floating to the top. I deactivated my account less than 24 hours after opening it.

US military F-35 readiness problems highlighted in aptly timed report

Re: Optional Extras Not Included.......

Do the pilots have to pay extra for heated seats?

VR headsets to shift 30 million units a year by 2027, vastly behind wearables

Still too expensive

for general use. I've been a keen gamer since the days of the original DOS based Doom. I'm now retired and recently treated myself to a Playstation 5 with VR2 headset and controllers. Been playing Horizon Call of the Mountain which is fantastic in 3D game play. However, the setup cost over a grand, and there aren't that many VR games out there yet, making it a bit of a luxury. Can't see it becoming mainstream until the price comes down and there are more games available for it.

Why Chromebooks are the new immortals of tech

"Linux on my computers even if I do only get support for 5 years for the OS"

There are always new releases of Mint and it is no hardship installing or upgrading to the latest long term support version. I run my hardware until it fails, no arbitrary end of life determined by a manufacturer or OS supplier.

Neuralink's looking for participants willing to be part of human trials

I'd fancy that implant

about as much as a hole in the head. Folks having it must want their heads examining.

Meet Honda's latest electric vehicle: A rideable suitcase

So, Honda is now

on the case.

James Webb spies distant exoplanet that could be wet, wild, and Hycean

Re: Danger, Will Robinson!

Without oxygen present in the atmosphere you couldn't cause a fire, let alone an explosion. You can have hydrogen in large quantities or oxygen in large quantities but not both at the same time.

UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system

"waiting for a keypress to a modal window which was hiding behind something else"

I got caught out with one of those once. Didn't have a clue why a system had frozen, it seemingly had crashed. I was on the verge of doing something drastic like killing the process before I realised there was a hidden window waiting to be clicked on. Such windows really need to be displayed "topmost".