* Posts by GrumpenKraut

1842 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Sep 2014

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

GrumpenKraut
Trollface

"descriptions were far from technically rigorous"

Customer: My internet is broken!

Me: Mine is working fine.

A colleague was in the room and told me after the call "Maybe you should not be saying this". Seconds later he says "Heck, just keep doing it." I did, but only with a very small number of high maintenance customers that were particularly annoying.

Germany's wild boars still too radioactive to eat largely due to Cold War nuke tests

GrumpenKraut

Re: Meanwhile, in Japan...

Wind from the east is not rare in Germany: in summer it typically means sunny dry hot weather, in winter it typically means sunny dry cold weather.

GrumpenKraut
Boffin

Re: Meanwhile, in Japan...

> What could account for it being concentrated in Bavaria?

Having been there I can give you one reason.

Air moved from the disaster area over parts of southern Germany. There was localized rain at the parts most affected. The rain was just enough to bring down the radioactive stuff, but *not* nearly enough to wash that shit down the drains.

Therefore some places where the rain water collected (but, again, didn't go further) were quite radioactive. At the Uni where I studied we had a small amount of such dirt/sand in the spectrum analyzer (term? I mean the one for radioactivity; that thing needed to be cooled all times). Over time you could watch the half life of several elements you normal never encounter in nature.

P.S.: I'd not be worried about radioactivity unless eating fucktons of that meat (or mushrooms), even in the 'hot' regions.

Western Digital sued over claims of data-trashing SanDisk, My Passport SSDs

GrumpenKraut
Mushroom

Re: I lost 3 years worth of music and photography

Certainly a bot. Reported.

AVX10: The benefits of AVX-512 without all the baggage

GrumpenKraut
Meh

Re: flags

There is a problem that the x86 SIMD instructions seemingly are coming from some sort of insane random generator. The linked pdf (titled "Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 10") has 1310 pages.

Playing instruments, musical talent? Psh, this is the 2020s – Meta has models for that now

GrumpenKraut

Your handle equals 3 * 79 * 34741859 * 108970193390406341511991996777364618571790157695783210212070651472997691291195028786487349. You are welcome.

'Weird numerological coincidence' found during work on Linux kernel 6.5

GrumpenKraut
Mushroom

I looked at that numerology web site

and now I want to run over a kitten with a lawn mower. Why is that?

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

GrumpenKraut
Pint

LOL, how/why do you know this? Virtual pint for random facts =------>

Mint 21.2 is desktop Linux without the faff

GrumpenKraut
Angel

Re: What's not to like?

I boot into /boot/vmemacs and write my kernel drivers in elisp. Sadly, my system is somewhat slow.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

GrumpenKraut
Facepalm

The web server that wasn't

Mid 1990s: customer had his own bow with Linux and a web server running on it. Few month later, after a power outage, customer calls us "The web server is gone!", me: "So it did not restart, right?", "No, the *server* is gone!", "OK, I'll have a look". Upon inspection there was nothing at all on the disk. Customer had installed everything in the installation system in RAM, nothing had every been written to disk. Took me quite a while to figure that one out. After new install I made the customer reboot the box to make sure he did not repeat the error.

Free Wednesday gift for you lucky lot: Extra mouse button!

GrumpenKraut
Pint

Re: mouse that has a non-wheel middle key

Nice to know such things do exist, will keep looking. Thanks =---->

GrumpenKraut
Meh

Re: shift-insert for paste

MrXonTR faster by 2 minutes, dammit.

GrumpenKraut
Boffin

shift-insert for paste

For Linux users: As clicking the wheel tends to rotate it a bit (which messes things up) you can use shift-insert to paste. Apparently very few people know this.

I have long looked for a mouse that has a non-wheel middle key, found zilch. Why the heck does nobody build one?

The bonkers water-cooled shoe PC, hexagonal pink workstations, and IKEA-style cases of Computex 2023

GrumpenKraut
Thumb Up

Re: Squirrel!

> Does it drive in a circle when the driver spends all their time looking at their dash-mounted phone?

That actually sounds like a good idea.

Windows XP's adventures in the afterlife shows copyright's copywrongs

GrumpenKraut
Angel

Re: Coppyright length

Curious spelling of "decades" there.

Amazon finds something else AI can supposedly do well: Spotting damaged goods

GrumpenKraut
Facepalm

Re: "it's 3x more likely to spot damaged goods"

> Three times not much is not much better.

Really?

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

GrumpenKraut
Facepalm

Re: Weather?

> Clipping it neat and tight with no expansion loops...

That's *exactly* what they did. I looked at the cable going round the corner and was surprised it didn't just snap. Bending radius was below specs even when it was warm.

GrumpenKraut
Mushroom

Re: Weather?

> ...network would come to a shuddering stop whenever the weather froze...

Because the cold makes the cable shrink and the bends around corner get to sharp, bad with coax. Seen that a one place: -12 degrees or lower simply meant "no network today".

About lightning hitting outdoors cable, seen it once and it was spectacular. All computers in one building toast, network cards had scattered those little electronicy parts, motherboards and RAM were fried as well. Some computers in the other building somehow survived, no idea how. All in all pretty expensive.

Experimental brain-spine computer interface helped a paralyzed man walk

GrumpenKraut
Meh

Re: Regenerative medicine

From the article: "The brain-spine interface (BSI) implant used in this case seems to be helping him to grow new nerve connections."

Also read up on "Nirvana fallacy".

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

GrumpenKraut
Happy

Re: Clothing corallary

Ha, I do this. As a student I got two pairs of excellent leather gloves for about nothing. Turned out the are of *very* good quality, I am nearing sixty now and the spare pair is sitting in the drawer, still new.

Boffins claim to create the world's first wooden transistor

GrumpenKraut
Devil

The instruction sheet on how to build a 64-bit CPU will be ... interesting.

Baidu sues Apple and anyone else in sight over ERNIE chatbot fakes

GrumpenKraut
Meh

Yet another Ilya Geller acount? Would be number five at least.

systemd 253: You're looking at the future of enterprise Linux boot processes

GrumpenKraut
Mushroom

Re: I do wish systemd would just fuck off

Dear systemd

Fuck off.

Then keep fucking off.

Fuck off until you come up to a gate with a sign saying "You Can't Fuck Off Past Here".

Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever.

Techies try to bypass damaged UPS, send 380V into air traffic system

GrumpenKraut

Once had a water heater that maxed out at 16KW. During winter that was just enough power to make the water decently warm. "Deep fried in seconds" is off by about three orders of magnitude. You can do the calculation if you really care.

GrumpenKraut
Boffin

> 19,000 WATTS of power which can deep-fry ANY human body in mere seconds.

Dear Mr. pants-on-fire: 19kW is what a typical electrical shower heater is rated. Still I have never been deep fried within seconds of showering.

Should open source sniff the geopolitical wind and ban itself in China and Russia?

GrumpenKraut
Pint

Re: Here is an example of FOSS for SDR that vanished due to ITAR

Thanks for the link. =---->

GrumpenKraut
Big Brother

Re: Here is an example of FOSS for SDR that vanished due to ITAR

WOW. Could you (or somebody reading this) send a story suggestion to El Reg? My email may be black-holed as it is within the Hetzner network (I once send a suggestion to On Call and never received any reply).

Meet the merry pranksters who keep the workplace interesting, if not productive

GrumpenKraut
Facepalm

"MULTIPLE incoming lines of 400,000 Volts at 1000 Amps"

Yeah, right. In excess of 400 MegaWatt to power CPUs at that time, totally believable.

Google's Dart language soon won't take null for an answer

GrumpenKraut
Facepalm

Re: Go Multithreading Issues

Your language will certainly conquer the world really soon. I see that your youtube channel has already one follower.

Z-Library operators arrested, charged with criminal copyright infringement

GrumpenKraut
Flame

Re: Textbooks...

Wow, that makes my blood boil. Cars have been smashed for less than that.

Looking for a holiday DIY project? Build your own pen-plotter, for under $15

GrumpenKraut
Pint

Sweet

More like this, please.

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

GrumpenKraut
Pirate

> ... I don't see some user handles in the comments any longer.

Can only speak for myself, I have simply told the few things of interest I could tell. Now I am empty.

Me, dead-esque =---->

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

GrumpenKraut
Trollface

American English, British English...

ist there a difference?

Germany stands down cyber boss over Russian ties

GrumpenKraut
Pint

Re: Hexenjagd für Kleingeister

MOAR beer in your general direction! ----------->

GrumpenKraut
Pint

Re: Hexenjagd für Kleingeister

Thanks for your comment, I actually learned a thing or two. Pint for you ---->

CERN draws up shutdown plans to save energy

GrumpenKraut
Facepalm

Hello, Ilia Geller. Is this your third or fourth account?

If anyone doubts he's serious, he is.

Keep calm and learn Rust: We'll be seeing a lot more of the language in Linux very soon

GrumpenKraut

Technically a Type & is a Type * const, so yes. But still I have to see an instance of actually managing a (C++) reference to, say, nullptr. I have heard that by doing something yadda-yadda-circular-something this should be possible but never seen an actual instance of this.

GrumpenKraut

Re: The way in which this turd is being pushed “top down” makes me want to puke

> I find the std classes to be INEFFICIENT

Inefficient is not a valid critique about std classes. Used right they are more efficient than the vast majority of home grown solutions. Also more correct than the vast majority of home grown solutions.

If you can match std classes with your own solutions, congrats, you are quite a gifted coder.

> and CUMBERSOME

Erm, have you ever looked at C++ 11? It is out for ten years now!

Btw. I do come from the background of what was described as "dipshit C programmers" in a comment above.

Maker of ATM bombing tutorials blew himself up – Euro cops

GrumpenKraut

There is no "middle finger to corporations" element. This is all about the money.

GrumpenKraut

The counter measure against gas explosions is to fill all greater voids inside the ATM with some material.

CutefishOS: Unix-y development model? Check. macOS aesthetic? Check (if you like that sort of thing)

GrumpenKraut
Pirate

Re: We need a Windows simlation plugin

You forgot rebooting while in a video conference.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we should feel fine

GrumpenKraut
Trollface

Re: Does it work though?

> ... irregular verbs and three words for "the" ...

Dass die der Teufel hole! (your German teacher).

Technology has the potential to close the education divide. Key word: Potential

GrumpenKraut
Thumb Up

Your description is entirely accurate.

Here is a detail I'd like to add: we tend to over-plan everything and end up doing nothing or at least being terribly late to implement.

Covid-19 did change that in a way, things had to be implemented right away, basically no matter how. At Unis (I work at one) you got a license for Teams and Zoom and you had to start right there. I was lucky because I could emulate my usual style pretty well. Others (interestingly many who used a much more "multi media" approach) were essentially out of luck, some lecture simply did not happen.

GrumpenKraut

Re: Quieter kids can speak up in chat,

Thanks for the links. Have you ever tried "democratic mathematics"? That is, having a vote whether a statement is true or false. Optional: let students discuss, then take votes again. Can be mildly entertaining for everybody involved.

GrumpenKraut

Re: Quieter kids can speak up in chat,

> At Uni we had lectures of 60+ and there was no way you could ask any questions without disrupting the whole thing.

IMO a good lecturer should regularly ask for questions. The number of students is not that much of a problem in my experience. I never had more than 100 students in a lecture, though.

Getting no feedback from students tends to make me slightly nervous and I will ask whether the lecture was OK at the end.

> having seen one of my lecturers take all the copies of his book from the library 2 weeks before term started

Wow, that is completely unacceptable.

GrumpenKraut
Childcatcher

> what is the educational divide?

My personal view is that it is largely family background. If your father is, say, an engineer and has tons of books, this is a huge advantage against coming from a family where the only printed matter is the daily mail.

Nowadays with the internet offering all information for everybody one may think that the above is much less important. I'd argue this is not the case: kids still need guidance in order to find/pick useful stuff and not just sink in a torrent of crap.

> To my mind, the key to all success in education is teachers.

Yes, a thousand times. As far as I know this is the *only* parameter that significantly determines learning success. There is a current thought in Germany (and surely elsewhere as well) that if teaching becomes "digital" (whatever this means) everything magically gets better. Whenever I hear this, I really want to slap someone in the face.

Linux kernel minimum compiler raised to GCC 5.1, allowing potential C11 use

GrumpenKraut

Re: compiler masturbation

Whether in a project the default is GCC or CLANG, at least occasionally use the other compiler!

GrumpenKraut

Use -Wshadow with GCC, not sure whether -Wall and/or -Wextra imply it.

Measuring your carbon footprint? There's no app for that

GrumpenKraut
Meh

Re: Within limits, more CO2 would be better than less

> ...by association that places skeptics in the same camp as holocaust deniers.

Where I live the overlap between these two camps is substantial.