Posts by Paul Herber

Fission impossible: Uncle Sam wants nuclear reactors in space by 2031

"sorry Pink Floyd"

Ah, is that because they are obscured by clouds?

Re: RE: Will it work?

No, not seriously. Until the mid-20thC nearly all fission/fusion has taken place in space!

Should have told him they can do that but if the sand is too fine it clogs up the filters and if it's not fine enough it blocks the jets. But if they carry their own special military grade that is just right then all is well. They call it diesel.

Re: Nukes in orbit by 2031?

No NIMBYs, no bat survey, no pretty thatched cottages to be demolished, no road access needed, no seismic assessment, no protesters ...

That's the thing about nuclear scientists/engineers. They are all either splitters or joiners!

Nuclear fusion in space? Are we sure that'll work?

Waymo's self-driving cars face their toughest test yet: London

Re: Video recording needed

"I was fit as fuck"

I suspect you are now as <something else> as fuck.

My 2p.

Apologies to everyone else.

That's the first time I've seen the reverse double-back shunt played in over 15 years!

Well done.

Re: Video recording needed

Did you not get your SSC?

Re: Video recording needed

Loch Ness monster. yeti, cyclists who run red lights, bigfoot, aliens ...

If only there were some way of recording high-quality video ...

Re: Video recording needed

"...cyclists who run red lights..."

On the very rare occasion that I go to that London I have never seen that.

I hope Waymo can fully implement the

"bloody cyclists, pay some f***** road tax, you almost made me drop me phone!"

mode.

UK told its Big Tech habit is now a national security risk

Re: Palantir in Parliament

Palantir => Mordor => Sauron

Boeing deliveries soar past Airbus for the first time in years, but this is no time to unbuckle your seat belt

Re: How many of those orders will get dropped?

"Thank you, Earthling."

You don't know who I am, do you?

Re: How many of those orders will get dropped?

"Watch this space people."

Missing comma alert! I'll put it .... here ...

Watch this, space people.

Britain's atomic brain trust gives itself till 2030 to unpick fusion challenges

Need some brain-storming sessions down the pub. Let's call them JFDI nights.

You can finally control serial devices from Firefox

"I'll get the straight and crossovers mixed up"

You've got to be very careful of that in some jurisdictions. Loopback can get you a hefty jail sentence ...

P.S. is the loft at the top of the stairway?

If you do sell any then please wait for Request To Send to be set before posting.

NASA insiders oddly relaxed about latest budget threats

Re: What is the problem, at least for a couple of years.....

Award Recognising Space Exploration's Helpful Operational Leverage Ever!

"'Well, look, being in a NASA lab was once great, but how's the funding going to go in the future?'"

China probably doesn't have this problem. Long term plan. Stick with it.

Man suspected of Molotov attack on Sam Altman's home charged with attempted murder

Re: Intolerable

"We will not tolerate any attempt to change the way <nationality> live and work through fear or violence,"

FTFY

How is that working out?

Re: Guy doesn't like Artificial Intelligence

Here is my entry for the annual El Reg Bad Taste Awards ...

Altman Incineration is the new AI.

Claude Code cache chaos creates quota complaints

Re: At what price point does the shine wear off?

Do you want fries with that?

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

Re: "Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein"

I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

Apparently 3 people understood the Schleswig-Holstein question, but 2 of them were mad.

Re: probably nitpicking.

<.. checks records ...> 25 years here.

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

"how are Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein coming along?"

I think the results of the 1920 plebiscite should be in quite soon!

Adobe finally patches PDF pest after months of abuse

Phew! Now we can all relax and go back to assuming that any random PDF we receive is safe and will not compromise any computer.

<sarcasm mode reverts to off 15 seconds after you have read this message>

Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

Re: Case of acute cleveritis ?

Well, doesn't that take the pip!

What happens then if you have a password set in your own language, using characters only found in that language.

You then move to a different country and as most of your interaction is in a different language you change your default keyboard.

Tech support chap's boss got him out of jail so he could finish a job

Re: Business or pleasure?

Were you there for the Spinal Tap concert?

"i got a stern look ... the warm welcome"

A stern look is the closest approximation you may ever get to a warm welcome!

UK to spend £15M on AI-powered crime mapping in knife violence crackdown

Re: Admire

Most people here don't know anyone of the corrupt political class, let alone be close enough to admire them. You have your friends, we have ours.

"£26.25 million this year across 27 forces."

I wonder how many police officers Diane Abbott reckons could be employed for this sum? More than 10,000?

"hyperlocal knife crime pilots"

Is it the knife, the crime or the pilot that is hyperlocal, whatever that is?

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

Re: Manual

"So tea, ..."

Was this real tea, or something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

Cryptographers place $5,000 bet whether quantum will matter

factorise 35

They can't factorise 35 without errors. I'll start worrying when they try to factorise, to choose a number at random, 42 and with error correction they come up with 6 and 9.

Shots fired – literally – over proposal to build datacenter in Indianapolis

I hope the churches aren't diverting profits away from the prisons!

Re: He was probably radicalised online.

What about that Mr Jackson with his two datasheds?

Re: Pre-emptive self defence?

"with his own assault rifle"

with his own collection of loaded assault rifles

FTFY

Documents

There's always someone who wants to take document bullet-points literally. Indents should be in a paragraph, not in a door.

Stack Overflow abandons redesign after loyalists criticize it

Re: Nostalgia

'a more rounded perspective'

but should you round up or round down?

PrismML debuts energy-sipping 1-bit LLM in bid to free AI from the cloud

Re: 1 bit?

Is that signed or unsigned?

Google battles Chinese open-weights models with Gemma 4

Does anyone fancy trying to use one of the Chinese models in Tibetan?

Artemis II astronaut: 'I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working'

Ground Control are still using Skype.

Major Tom is on Zoom.

Have you tried calling the Microsoft helpline? We all know it would be an utterly pointless thing to do and they would be useless at helping you but at least you could then swear at them instead which might make you feel better and you could report back here how it all went and we could all have a good laugh about it.

Actually, they might tell you to turn it off and back on again.

Want to be the IT Crowd for the BBC? An £800M contract beckons

Roy: We all know how this is going to go.

Jen: Yes, you are so right, Roy.

Moss: No, I do not know how this will go. Will someone please tell me how this will go.

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

Re: Buy way into Irelands

'Is already in fucking English'

Excuse me. The word fecking is used in Ireland.

Gmail celebrates 22 years by finally letting users change their addresses

When was the last time you called a colonel 'pet' or 'bonny lass'?