Posts by Bluto Nash

Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory

I guess you then take the resulting output and run it through the Dolby simulator?

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

Re: Fucking idiots

This is still known as "calling shotgun" and used to this day.

Re: Fucking idiots

This is why "calling shotgun" needs to be brought back.

Techie expensed a bag of oranges and then juiced up a stupid security incident

Mango* ad man. FTFY

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

Re: Answers on a postcard to,...

Scrotepad, obviously.

Windows 11 needs an XP SP2 moment, says ex-Microsoft engineer

"Just for one release," he said. "Just till it doesn't suck."

Those appear to be mutually exclusive, unfortunately.

SIM city: Feds say 100,000-card farms could have killed cell towers in NYC

Re: "a pair of European youths"

I couldn't care fewer?

Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again, this time carrying a quantum GPS alternative

Re: Boeing-built

...or the front, for that matter.

Meta reveals plan for several multi-gigawatt datacenter clusters

Why are they measuring data centers by power consumption rather than something that actually, you know, relates to computing?

Microsoft cuts the Windows 11 bloat for Xbox handhelds

Re: Wallpaper and taskbar?!

That's "F. Frederick Skitty" to you, PLEASE. Keep it classy.

Bong's in here somewhere -->

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

The Model M

When asked about it - I describe in two ways:

1 - It's the keyboard for those that type for a living

2 - It's sturdy enough to beat the life out of someone, then turn around and write their obituary on it.

I have one at home, one I brought to use at work, and two spares, so I'm set for a lifetime. My kids each want one when I'm gone, since they have early recollections of hearing "that noise when dad was working."

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Re: We had an issue with a rabbit

"She was both a challenge & a delight to live with."

An apt description of having one or more cats in one's household.

Microsoft tries to knife passwords once and for all – at least for consumers

Re: Windows is no longer an option.

...and "Punch the monkey!"

Team Trump readies national security card to justify taxing Americans for foreign chips

Re: Tariffs, the tax that keeps on hurting

Astroglide handles the painful tarts aspect.

Or foreplay, y'know?

PIRG's 'Electronic Waste Graveyard' lists 100+ gadgets dumped after support vanished

Re: Buile it yourself...

Mine's only on its 46th year, but still quietly humming along, with no end in sight, even without security updates r web connectivity. It even uses components that you can see with the unaided eye - even mine. My oldest son wants it willed to him (really!)

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Re: install a Linux distro of your choice

Can verify - Quicken 2002 here under Wine. Super happy, does everything I need.

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

Re: You know, bad weather can sink bad ships

"I don't know what sort of magic shape-charged you are using to make the buckling of the hull due to the explosion occur in the opposite direction"

Pssh. Easy-peasy. You simply use high IMplosive instead.

Undersea cables must have high-priority protection before they become top targets

Re: @StargateSg7

Cistern* Chapel.

FTFY.

Payments firm accused of aiding 'contact Microsoft about a virus' scammers must cough $650k

Re: They've tried calling me before

My IBM Model M keyboard doesn't have a Windows key. That's blown their minds a few times as well:

"What's at the bottom left of your keyboard?"

"Cee tee arr ell?"

What is next to that?"

It's blank"

"??? You're lying"

...etc.

Did nobody tell them about the lockdown? Logitech releases new 'luggable' mechanical keyboard for LAN parties

Model M fo' life

One of the unpublished advantages of the Model M is the lack of a Windows key. It frustrates the hell out of random scammer calls. "OK, so what key is next to the Ctrl key on your keyboard?" "Um, a blank spot?" "You LIE!"

This aside from the obvious advantages of:

1 - LOUD - You KNOW when I'm typing

2 - Durable - I have three - one at home, one at work, one spare. The spare is unlikely to ever be necessary

3 - Heavy - Not gonna shift around while I whack on it

4 - Removable keycaps can be run through the washing machine in a lingerie bag

5 - Durable - Did I say that? Only have to rinse the blood of the user off before writing the post contact report.

6 - BEST tactile response of any keyboard, ever. Of course, I learned to type on a manual typewriter, so there's that...

Plus already paid for and less than 200 quid each to begin with. WTF are they thinking?

Latvian drone wrests control from human overlords and shuts down entire nation's skies

Re: Sounds like a job for Airwolf

"Quick, someone call Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine!"

Warming up my Ouija board now, sir!

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

Re: A real pizza

Got a decent recipe for Italian sausage? I've been looking for one...

Reg readers have not one, but TWO teams in Folding@home top 1,000 as virus-bothering network hits 2.4 exa-FLOPS

Yeesh. Had a fair number of WUs and points collected under my real name, then joined the team. Nothing transferred. Dammit.

So how do the coronavirus smartphone tracking apps actually work and should you download one to help?

Re: False positives could be off the scale.

Does that REPLACE my hat or just supplement it?

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

Re: "Now they are your best friends? sigh..."

Quite a bit of difference between "herd immunity" and "natural selection," the latter of which I take it is actually what you're implying. Get a vaccine together, inoculate the populace, and THEN you have herd immunity.

Assuming you don't allow the antivaxxers to get their say.

ISP Monkeybrains cries foul over coronavirus fees after requesting more bandwidth. Zayo says it was all a mistake

regardless*

Instagram influencer fools followers into thinking Ikea photoshoot was Bali holiday

Re: Clearly a cover up

It's better if you get Lyme disease at the same time

Curse of Boeing continues: Now a telly satellite it built may explode, will be pushed up to 500km from geo orbit

Stupid (I'm quite sure) question...

Why not take that last 70+ kg of propellant and just push the damn thing OUT of orbit and into the direction of eternal travel thataway? Plunge into the sun, etc., or into the cold void of outer space? If it decides to blow up then, it's heading outward (or inward if burny-burny fate is opted)? Why just park it out a bit and leave it?

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

Regardless of the technical content

That's a rockin' little number you linked to at the end there. Cheers!

'Literally a paperweight': Bose users fume at firmware update that 'doesn't fix issues'

Holy cr@P

This is why we use physical links like TOSLINK for audio. None of this futzing about with wireless and (oh, HELL no) EQ-ed to death to make up for audio insufficiencies hardware.

Aw, bad day at your air-conditioned, somewhat clean desk? Try shifting a 40-tonne fatberg

Re: From experience ...

Doesn't everybody? Geez. You people.

Chew it up?

Couldn't a collection point with some sort of a macerator be built prior to entry of the main sewer line? That way "flushability" becomes a moot point.

Re: Other places...

Previous head of the cafe was an idiot. Full stop. Hopefully their replacement has something aside from a lump of nappies for a brain.

Reaction Engines' precooler tech demo chills 1,000°C air in less than 1/20th of a second

Re: This is truely impressive

...walked into a bar. Much quacking ensued..

Nice work if you can grift it: Two blokes accused of swindling $10m from the elderly with bogus virus infection alerts

Fuck 'em.

Here's to beer, without which we'd never have the audacity to Google an error message at 3am

Re: Also, keep yourself current with Google's search operators..

Plain Text Linker Add-On for Firefox made it clickable the first time, too... :-)

That's a hell of Huawei to run a business, Chinese giant scolds FedEx after internal files routed via America

Fedex diverts tech docs through US?

Nooo, that's not fishy. Not fishy at all.

Germany mulls giving end-to-end chat app encryption das boot: Law requiring decrypted plain-text is in the works

Re: Honey, we're out of

"Just be careful not to slip while you tango"

Paris? That was the last one.

Honey, hive had it with this drone: Couple lived for years with thousands of bees in bedroom wall

Wait, wut?

I thought the cat took care of them?

iPhone gyroscopes, of all things, can uniquely ID handsets on anything earlier than iOS 12.2

People are just too goddamn smart.

This is obviously why we can't have nice things.

AND these people are apparently witches.

Taylor drift: Finally, a use for AI emerges? Cyber-smut star films fsck-flick in Tesla with Autopilot, warns: 'I wouldn't recommend it'

Re: Boyfriend???

"My fault, have not taken it out for a while..."

Not even to pee? Eeew.

Stage fright or Stage light? Depends how far you dare to open your MacBook Pro's lid

Another victim of the form factor "diet"

Has been the ability to drive a signal any appreciable distance. I have old(er) machines that will drive a 35-50' HDMI cable All. Day. Long. Forever. The bevy of new Ulltrabooks now have a hard time doing 10' on a good day with a following wind without external amps, sometimes failing to even put out enough oomph to drive a wireless HDMI adapter that's connected through a measly 3" cable to a level that the receiver won't just give up on after a few seconds of trying to link.

Give me a few MORE mm/grams and give the damn chassis some more battery, a half a volt more output on the video and a wireless card that isn't anemic and I'll be quite happy to support it. Too many things run on the edge of "working" at this point, just to get the willy-wagging rights.

Ooh, my machine is SO much faster than yours... Oh, wait, that might be a bit of a problem...

Re: Well that was an invisible problem

I did the same thing when we added another 4GB drive the the SCSI array on the primary file server - simply ran a script that generated 10MB files until I filled around 3GB of space on the drive. Excluded from backups, naturally. Then whenever the PHB noted that we were "running out of space," we would simply delete a few to make "found room" on the drive. Did that for a year or three, and nobody the wiser.

Windows 10 can carry on slurping even when you're sure you yelled STOP!

Re: diving headlong into the Registry

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System}

"HeyMSGetYourGoddamnMittsOffMySytemDammit"=DWORD:00000001

FTFY.

Lenovo tells Asia-Pacific staff: Work lappy with your unencrypted data on it has been nicked

WTF

Why isn't this sort of breach not only punishable, but encryption not REQUIRED for HR related data? I mean like REQUIRED sort of required, not "It'd be nice if you maybe did that encryption thing on that laptop we gave you."

Site IT needs to not deliver a laptop that hasn't already BEEN ENCRYPTED. Why does a user need an unencrypted laptop in the first goddamn place?

Jeebus.

Official: Voyager 2 is now an interstellar spacecraft

Re: 50 years

Thank your parents.

Re: I was around 50 years ago, just barely

However, when you come right down to it, there are very few problems that a generous infusion of cash WON'T solve. The will (and wherewithal) to APPLY said infusion has always been the issue...

Icon for all originally involved.

Dine crime: Chippy sells deep fried Xmas dinner

Re: festive fried food

I'll take a gross. Do they ship internationally?

That was a finely turned phrase, there. Don't taint it.

Regardless of the fact that Brussels Sprouts TASTE like one might imagine taint to taste like...

Bloodhound SSC reaches the end of the road for want of £25m

Toast sensitivity

or a toaster that is diversity sensitive.

Aren't ALL toasters diversity sensitive by the fact that they can create any number of shades of "not white" on your bread?