Posts by RobThBay

No-boom supersonic flights could slide through US skies soon

Re: With This and America Today...

I remember hearing about possible ozone layer damage as well.

Trump promises protection for TikTok, for which he has a ‘warm spot in my heart’

Re: Tiktok

I wouldn't describe him as little. Definitely strange though.

DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale

They also have problems with the letter U.

It seems to go into hiding with words like colour, flavour, neighbour, ....

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

Re: Let me tell you a few things

Canadanians??? Where the fuck did that come from?

We're Canadians!

Boeing 787 radio software safety fix didn't work, says Qatar

Re: with an estimated cost of $127.50 per aircraft

The patch plus 90 minutes of tech time is only $127???

Sounds like one of those lowest bidder gets the work jobs.

Re: 90 Minutes to install a patch????

Dont't forget the mandatory health and safety briefing including coffee & donuts. That's probably not included in the 90min to install timeframe.

China hits back at America with retaliatory tariffs, export controls on rare earth minerals

And try to make Canada the 51st state....

ISS resupply and trash pickup craft postponed indefinitely after Cygnus container crunch

Tariffed?

When the module returns to Trumpistan after being repaired will it be subject to tariffs?

Official HP toner not official enough after dodgy update, say users

Re: I remember when HP was a good company

I had a HP6L printer that I finally had to replace after 25 years. Toner is no longer available.

Replaced it with a HP M404dw.

As mentioned elsewhere, automatic firmware updates have been turned off, it works fine and doesn't need any "improvements" from HP.

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

Re: Unless a finger smear or a slice of cheese is enough to damage the Cybertruck

American cheese?? Ahhh you meant Freedom Cheese.

Feds: Army soldier suspected of AT&T heist Googled ‘can hacking be treason,’ ‘defecting to Russia’

The Orange One is a perfect example of D-K.

Amazon-backed X-energy bags $700M more for itty-bitty nuke reactors that don't exist yet

X.....

Doesn't Muskrat own everything X-related?

Trump hits undo on Biden AI safety order, EV mandate, emissions standards, and more

....ends up dazed and concussed.....

Would anyone notice?

Blue Origin postpones New Glenn's maiden flight to January 12

Gulf of ??

I guess it's still called the Gulf of Mexico for now. Until the Orange One gets into office and renames it to the Gulf of 'Merica.

Stranded in space: Starliner crew to remain in orbit even longer as SpaceX faces delays

Coming soon to a TV near you, Gilligan's Island in space.

Ambitious overclocker cools Raspberry Pi 5 with liquid nitrogen

You had an Intel 486DX-33 at the time??

Lucky bugger, all we had was.....

Monty Python skit goes here

Unbreakable Voyager space probes close in on a 50 year mission

Re: Closer to home

Didn't John Connor and his gang take out Skynet?

JPMorgan Chase sues scammers following viral 'infinite money glitch'

JP Chase makes all the funds from large deposits available immediately??

Serves them right for being so stupid.

The horror that is VHS revived for horror movie release

Collectors have turntables not record players.

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Re: Remembering dialogue boxes, and responses

Same here. Many years ago I had to install a Finnish version of PageMaker. I was used to installing the English version and muscle memory saved the day. Our customer was impressed that I knew his language. We had a good laugh about it later when I told him I didn't have clue what the Finnish instructions were telling me to do.

From windfarms to Amazon Prime, UK plans to long range test six drone services

Re: Really ?

You'd think they would be bragging about it if those deliveries were successful.

AI models face collapse if they overdose on their own output

overdose on their own output

That sounds like tRump and his MAGA nitwits.

FTC sticks a probe into 'surveillance pricing' Big Biz uses to gouge us all

Virgin Experience Days.

Hmmmm??

RIP: WordPerfect co-founder Bruce Bastian dies at 76

Amazing user support

I worked in a computer store mid 80's to mid 90's when Wordperfect sold for about $500 CAD, but for that price you got free support.

We'd get people coming in that had pirated copies of WP asking us how to do "stuff". I'd tell them to buy a legit copy and call WP's free spport line. They usually got mad and went somewhere else.

Google Translate now fluent in 110 additional languages from Abkhaz to Zulu

What?? mericun isn't listed

They're missing 'mericun with the maga and trumpish dialects.

Check?

Where is "check" used?

"...Dzongkha, check, English,.."

The origin of 3D Pipes, Windows' best screensaver

Re: Rock solid

Oh yeah, I remember those days. MS made that change (and other dumb ones) so NT would appear to be faster than OS/2.

Twitter 'supersharers' of fake news tend to be older Republican women

Re: Err...

And older women gossip even more. No surprise there.

That sounds like some people I know.

Tesla devotee tests Cybertruck safety with his own finger – and fails

Re: "The frunk is powered and shouldn't be closed manually"

Having the sensor under the rear bumper works fine until a trailer hitch is installed.

BASICally still alive: Classic language celebrates 60 years with new code and old quirks

Re: Anyone remember...?

Wow, talk about ancient history.

Supporting/programming those old Olivetti machines was the first job I had after finishing college.

Luckily BAL was on the way when I got there. I hated working in Assembly.

The new 8K machines with basic were much nicer. Do you remember only being able to have one operand per instruction?

If you wanted to add A,B & C together and store the result in D you needed to do it like this:

D=A+B

D=D+C

Variable names were limited to 2 characters, 1 character and 1 digit.

The other quirky thing was how it handled fractions of a penny. It always truncated the value rather than rounding up to the nearest penny. Which caused a lot grief when I had to write a daily interest savings account program for a financial institution.

I ended up learning enough Italian to be able to understand the tech manuals.

Ahhhh... the good days.

Re: PowerBasic, formerly TurboBasic (formerly TurboBasic)

That's for sure!

I did a lot of commercial programming using PB with Novell's Btrieve filemanager. What a great combination.

The chip that changed my world – and yours

ZED

Good idea using ZED80 instead of simply using Z80. That'll stop the Yanks from calling it a ZEE80.

NASA confirms nuclear-powered Dragonfly drone is going to Titan

Ahhh.. so not draganfly

A different dragonfly.....

https://draganfly.com/

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

Re: Don't people test edge cases any more?

Not quite.

It's a leap year when the year is divisible by 4, unless the year is divisible by 100 and not divisible by 1000. I think I said that properly.

2024 is a leap year.

2000 was a leap year.

1900 was not a leap year.

Plus, years that are divisible by 25000 are not leap years.

Rivian decimates staff to put a brake on spending

Re: The end of electric vehicles

You've only driven it 80,000 milles in 10 years?

No wonder the battery is as good as new. It's hardly been used,

Apple Vision Pro is creating a new generation of glassholes

Eye strain?

Wouldn't watching a screen that's so close to your eyes cause eye strain?

Or have some effect on possibly becoming nearsighted?

Stripe commuters swap traffic jams for hydrofoil glam

all with no carbon emissions

As long you don't include the source of the electricity used to recharge its batteries.

US Navy sailor swaps sea for cell after accepting bribes from Chinese snoops

Only $14K?

14 bribes at roughly $1000 per bribe? This guy is definitely lacking in the brains department.

Maybe the gov't felt sorry for him and gave him an easy sentence.

To BCC or not to BCC – that is the question data watchdog wants answered

Carbon...

I wonder how many of the "younger" readers have ever seen carbon paper and know why it's called carbon copy?

Will the carbon-free community try to rename it to carbon-free copy (CfC)?

China's SpaceX wannabe recycles a rocket after just 38 days

"I" stuff

Doesn't Apple claim ownership of anything that starts with an I?

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Re: Met my wife because of TurboPascal

I did a lot programming with TurboBasic. Borland eventually sold it back to the original developer Bob (forgot the last name). Bob renamed it to PowerBasic and it's still available. I wrote a mutli-user point of sale system in the early 90's using PB with Novell Btrieve as the file manager.

A friend of mine still uses Pb/Win to write custom DLL's.

Third-party data breach affecting Canadian government could involve data from 1999

Copied not stolen

Why do these stories always say the data was stolen?

The data is still there, so it was copied rather than stolen.

Rocket Lab sets sights on 2024-2025 window for Venus mission

A nightflight?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1WLq_127dY

How many remember Boney M?

Trademark fight: Brit biz Threads has a teeny tiny problem with Meta's Threads

Re: Rebranding...

Zuck should use a recently abandoned name.... how about Twitter or maybe Twits?

US Navy sailor admits selling secret military blueprints to China for $15K

They really don't get paid very much. They've been brainwashed into doing their "patriotic duty" for next to nothing. Just as an fyi, Canadian sailors make 3 to 4 times more than their US counterparts.

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

Just in time for Halloween.

Talk about good timing.

BlackBerry to split into two companies, foraging for tastier fare for shareholders

Re: QNX-OS by HERE

I saw the movie and wasn't impressed. It seemed to be an attempt at a childish comedy.

The book the movie was supposedly based on is a good read.

Boeing abandons plans for crewed Starliner flight in 2023

Here we go again.... remember Apollo 1 fire

...flammability risk of some of the tape used to protect wires...

Hopefully they're not planning to fill the capsule with 100% oxygen.

Tesla steering problems attract regulator eyes for second time this year

Emergency breaking?

"Tesla features did not help stay in the lane or break in an emergency."

I would the car would brake in an emergency and not break.

Why do cloud titans keep building datacenters in America's hottest city?

home to the largest nuclear power....

Where? The largest power plant in

- Arizona?

- USA?

- North America?