Posts by Zarno

US accident investigators want alcohol breathalyzers in all new vehicles

Re: Sounds like it could be

Wonder if methanol fumes will trip it up?

If I clean the windscreen a bit zealous with the demist setting pulling air in, I can get a whiff of it in the cabin.

Keeping printers quiet broke disk drives, thanks to very fuzzy logic

Re: Other things can get clogged too

If it's up for more than 4 hours, it's recommended to contact Dr. Watson for a checkup.

The joke wrote itself, I swear!

"Well there's your problem! Didn't anyone ever tell ya to never put your Wang in a box of red carpet?!?!"

Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C₈H₁₀N₄O₂

Re: Better yet...

You may laugh, but a common boating/rafting/fishing trick in the days of Nokia candybars was to use an unlubricated gentleman's sausage casing as a waterproofing device for ones mobe.

Oh Paris, how we miss your icon...

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

BINGO!

Yahtzee!

Mulligan!

Suspenders!

BISCUITS!

It's like reading a commentary of someone running through ten of those "word of the day" sticky calendar packs on a TAS... And I like it.

Icon because daemons like chaos...

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

Re: A strange set of priorities

If Bezos is up for more than 4 hours or less than 3 minutes, he must need a space physician...

Tesla faces Autopilot lawsuit alleging phantom braking

Re: Uncle Albert who brakes before every sharp bend "just in case"

BMW normal cruise will show brakes when it does a deceleration, at least back to 06.

It does seem to only put them on when on downhill grades when the Longitudinal Dynamics Management (All that to say "Cruise Control") module decides to do a brake application in addition to engine braking/throttle back-off.

So the usual "This hill is causing me to creep 5 over the set speed, engine braking not optimal, light brake lamps and apply brakes to gently slow a bit.".

Haven't looked to see if the light stuff can be coded out or not, but it does shed some light on the "Why is that person tap dancing the brakes down that hill???!!!"

Tesla owner gets key fob chip implanted in his hand

Re: I Have an Idea So Clever You Could Put a Tail on it and Call it a Weasel

One of the radio morning show jocks supposedly tested the then-new iPhone touch lock with nose, elbow, ear, gentleman's snausage...

Apparently the snausage worked, but had to be in the same state of sky gazing each time or it wouldn't register properly.

YIKES

I'm wondering if they even thought of a biologically compatible barrier...

There's a reason the pet tags are in glass, and the people who implant a hitag or similar go with the glass encapsulated ones without the antimigration coating.

The optimal placement for the hand is in the space of the thumb web, less chance of it tearing the skin/getting crushed than on the back.

I ultimately went with a NFCRing instead for my access control needs, easier to remove...

Smartphone gyroscopes threaten air-gapped systems, researcher finds

Re: Air gaps are all about physical security

Other options you could go with:

~2m of 16mm heater hose

A wet beach towel

A sack of oranges

Old C-SPAN footage of a filibuster, played at 2X and looped

A particularly cheesed off cat

Janet Jackson music video declared a cybersecurity exploit

Re: First seen in a test run on a certain mfgs tape drives

There's a fetch/seek/hunt joke in there someplace, but I can't get my head around how to serve it up on a nice platter...

Might be time to grab another cylinder of cold drinkable and work on the low level format for it.

Ok, Ok, I'll grab my coat and wander to another sector, stop reaching for the fragmentation grenade...

Re: Unbelievable

Or get some Custom kitchen delivery...

Maybe move a refrigerator, if it's interfering with the color TV?

Hackable hardware PineBook Pro finally starts shipping again

Re: No Thanks - PINE64 Community Rules and Code of Conduct

Well, I can say, the pinecil has become my every-day-carry soldering iron in my backpack.

Pairs with a beefy USB-C power pack and just works.

Fantastically good bit of kit, for what it is.

I'll keep the rest in mind though...

Lapping the computer room in record time until the inevitable happens

Re: I used

And people wonder why I put a whole bottle of cherry fuel perfume in my cars tank when I do autocross events...

It hides the raw fuel smell that a catless track car has quite nicely, but makes me want a fruit pie every time I open the boot.

Have a pint!

Scientists use dead spider as gripper for robot arm, label it a 'Necrobot'

This is how we get spiderdemons.

I'm pretty sure this is how we'll get the Spiderdemon from DOOM.

I wonder if next they're going to try a Goliath birdeater and see if it can be used for a crane game...

My smartphone has wiped my microSD card again: Is it a conspiracy?

I remember most android phones now defaulting to encrypted storage, so if the key somehow gets mangled, the card shows blank.

Same with swapping into a different device, key is different, files don't show up, card looks blank/unformatted.

It also prevents the easy copy of 15 minutes of 4K video by popping out the card, since a PC can't see it, and of course the end user can't get the key...

Tesla jettisons 75% of Bitcoin holdings, boosting cash balance by $936m

Read that as "unclean", and nearly needed a new keyb.

Icon because it fits with the theme of twits escaping twits.

Chinese boffins suggest launching nuclear Neptune orbiter in 2030

Re: Neptune eh?

Good news, there's now a suppository for that!

Sony responds to inflation with $3,700 gold-plated 'Walkman'

It's the sax solo in Urgent...

Hey, the gramophiles aren't too bad!

I for one am continually surprised with how good vinyl can reproduce dynamic range when mastered correctly.

It won't ever beat high bitrate high frequency lossless codecs for reproduction, but it's impressive for the time.

And sometimes there's a therapeutic value to literally shuffling through the stack of records, setting down, and vegetating to some Foreigner.

Confirmed: Broadcom, VMware agree to $61b merger

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

See title.

There goes the neighborhood.

Guess I need to hold onto my Workstation Pro 16 key, or upgrade to 17 if it's available before the inevitable price hike.

That's if they don't nuke activation of old keys somehow.

>.<

DuckDuckGo tries to explain why its browsers won't block some Microsoft web trackers

Well that's Duck Duck Gone

Guess someone got their goose?

Mine's the one with the tracking tag sewn into the hem, because the work shirts at a prior job had that for the industrial laundry...

Dell's rugged Latitude 5430 laptop is quick and pretty – but also bulky and heavy

"The machine did, however, struggle with one workload: running an Ubuntu VM under VMware Workstation Pro. The laptop just did not enjoy running that at all – the desktop hypervisor hung, and performance of the host OS suffered."

I'm wondering if that's using the Hyper-V shim, or the (in my opinion superior) VMware hypervisor?

My gut instinct is that the hoops were not jumped through to neuter Hyper-V, or that win11 doesn't allow for it.

I've ran Ubbunt/Debian/Win7 (Sometimes more than one VM) in Workstation Pro on some really anemic hardware with OK results.

It's currently chugging away with a Win10 host on a Intel Celeron J3160 with 4 gig of ram.

It's also ran just fine on a Core i7 i7-640M Fujitsu T900 with Win7 as the host.

Beware the fury of a database developer torn from tables and SQL

"I'll be back, need to use the little squirrels room." is one I sometimes use.

I've also learned that saying someone is "powdering their nose" can mean a totally different thing involving "snow".

Tends to tell you more about a site when someone makes that connection vs the normal "is using the restroom".

I have a utility that dumps "Something went haywire." to shell when it gets a dirty exit/unhandled input.

I've also left a "Hello Tim, what do you want me to do today?' (Tim being the project lead.) screen popup easter egg in a system once, that triggered whenever someone plugged in the programming cable after partially disassembling the machine to get at the port.

I figure if their name wasn't Tim, they didn't need to be in there, or know how to get there, so they would never see it, and if they did, they'd wonder who Tim was.

GPL legal battle: Vizio told by judge it will have to answer breach-of-contract claims

Re: Ah for the good old days...

'Besides, phones that are "just phones" are still available. They're called "land lines." Perhaps you've heard of them in history class...'

It's becoming increasingly hard to get a "true" landline these days.

Most new infra has them piggyback on cable TV infrastructure, using an ATA/POTS adapter inside a cable modem, with VOIP doing the backend.

The other ones use a cellular modem and ATA/POTS adapter combo, which may or may not use VOIP vs LTE voice.

The monthly cost for a copper pair line is also rather bonkers, upwards of $75 for basic service in some locations. I know of one line where it's still $0.25 a call connection fee to call out, then extra for long distance, and charged by the minute for outgoing too... But incoming calls are free.

I do like an analog line though, they don't tend to go out when there's a power cut. Unless the central office has a cut, or it's fiber to the cabinet on the corner, then only copper to you...

Icon because it may just be cheaper to yell it from the rooftops.

BOFH: You'll have to really trust me on this team-building exercise

Re: Oh god

"If you really want to get the best view of the process, just stand here and wait while I adjust some things..."

CAM processors do some really wacky things.

Instead of following the logical "this pocket is next to this one" they do a bazillion rapid moves that are faster on paper, but shake the machine like a maraca and look like someone traced the path of ten coked up ferrets, causing surface finish issues...

They also seem to never be at the goldilocks zone of feeds/speeds, or the proper finishing rate to keep a good surface...

Mastercam is pretty good though, but the fees keep me from entertaining it for my business.

Inventor HSM is acceptable, but the subscription makes me clench a bit.

Re: Oh god

That's where the twin arm tool changers on the more modern Mazak's are nice, they get pretty consistent on change times.

Random pocket return, staging of next tool or two, etc.

Just make sure your 100mm shell mill is set as "wide" in the tool data to nab the center of three consecutive holders, lest it tries to occupy the same position as a drill chuck and a hog mill.

Also a good idea to set it as and "heavy", so it doesn't go full MLB pitcher and throw it across the machine when it stops at the spindle...

And you can also pin the tools to a specific holder, which is what we did with the probes.

Just never manually swap tools in the mag without using the tool request interface, or you're in for living hell of reorganizing every pocket.

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

"What do you mean we can't use the armature voltage on a DC motor controlled in torque mode, with external field from rectified mains, tied to an operator changeable gearbox, without any way to know selected ratio, to get actual speed of the system?"

Or:

"The speed demand output from our system should match the actual product speed". Drive has 'X' second internal ramp, speed demand is 0-5000 RPM instant with no ramp...

Beer because it always seems to be needed after explaining.

An international incident or just some finger trouble at the console?

Re: Figured out what THAT meant

I like Neal Stephenson's bit from Snow Crash: "See, I told you they'd listen to Reason"

Reason being a hypervelocity railgun firing depleted uranium needles.

Upvote from me on DOOM being overused, and I'm a DOOM fanboy myself...

Switch off the mic if it makes you feel better – it'll make no difference

Re: linux

"all OS suck. Just in different ways."

I'd recommend the following song:

Every OS Sucks — Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

Worth a listen, if the speakers decide to function.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

Re: The joys of coax

I've got A spec stuck in my head.

GRW, GR, ORW, BL, BLW, OR, BRW, BR

And, everyone else seems to use the B variant with the orange/green swapped

When I did CCTV/door access cable installation, one customer had the lovely experience of the landlord's hired roofers sending 3 inch long roof screws through the sheet metal and right into the cable trunk from the DVR closet. Down the entire main hallway to/from said closet.

Was more cost effective to rip out most of the siamese CCTV cable and re-run the entire 400+ foot lengths than patch three times in one run. The Fluke Ts90 TDR meter earned it's keep that job...

Beers from a fellow former cable monkey!

Re: Full names please.......

*Ducks & runs for safety*

I read that as "Ducks & Nuns for safety", and nearly had a seltzer fountain incident.

Icon because it's that day, but not yet that time.

Oracle already wins 'crypto bug of the year' with Java digital signature bypass

One moment.

One moment while I check if I have the license to the patch, and how much it will cost if I don't.

Joke, obvs, but you never know with Oracle and their audit crew...

IT advice fuelled by beer is the best IT advice of all, right?

As a friend once said:

As a friend once said:

"I'm sure I've told you before the difference between "did you plug it into the 220v transformer?" and "you should plug that into the 220v transformer""

A tale of two dishwashers: Buy one, buy it again, and again

Re: Can confirm...

If I keep eating triple bacon cheeseburgers and downing pints, I might need a girdle.

Sadly the days of weighing 10 stone and not being able to put any more mass on are behind me.

Can confirm...

"Then one day you made the mistake of ordering a present for a cousin's newborn. Just the one, mind. Still, from that moment onwards, Amazon immediately stopped offering deals on three-phase isolation transformers and instead, for literally years afterwards, obsessively stuffed your recommendations with every conceivable edition of The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

For me, it was an overnight shipment (Prime) for a friends wife of some support underclothing needed for a wedding she was attending that weekend.

Amazon still think I need corsets, sports bras, and lipstick...

BOFH: You drive me crazy... and I can't help myself

Re: Quote

Limburger and onion sandwiches.

Cut limburger 6mm thick, onion 2mm thick, do one layer each on rye or pumpernickel with a skim coat of a hearty stone ground mustard on the bread. Wrap in wax paper, then bag.

Tastes divine, but can empty a room.

Fine Young Cannibals

Note to self, do not eat the BBQ pulled pork sliders at BOFH Bar&Grill.

Pulling down a partition or knocking through a door does not necessarily make for a properly connected workspace

Re: Working on that..

He's so far below (Above? Did he roll-over a 128 bit number?), that even Vogon poetry would be too lenient a punishment...

Icon because when faced with nuclear or fire, go with the nuclear fire.

Although the idjit would probably fizzle the detonation somehow.

Say what you see: Four-letter fun on a late-night support call

Re: The joys of the phonetic alphabet

I always get a chuckle on the ATL airport tram: "Next stop D gates, D as in David."

Can't use "Delta", because that would be confusing. (Ow ow ow, my eyes rolled back too far.)

Re: We all know the best Bond film

Sorry, there seems to be a rather high impedance to getting that done.

Re: X-Ray

There will be points when they turn to putty, too.

So it is possible for Jeff Bezos to lose: Court dismisses Blue Origin complaint about Moon contract award to Elon Musk

Re: What comes next?

Hopefully not a showing of the darker side of his moon...

Sharing is caring, except when it's your internet connection

Re: When you move to your own connection

I once had to set my phone hotspot up in open mode without wpa for a unfiltered test connection (was using old kit, weird circumstances), and got someone in the office block immediately connecting and pegging bandwidth.

Changing SSID to "crotchlessgrannypanties" got them to stop long enough to get the mac whitelist setup.

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

Re: Well written....

"I don't know what bought her silence."

Likely a platinum or black card, with a mysterious auto-approval.

Mine's the one with the Dine-O-Charge in the pocket.

Scoot on over for a wheely tricky mystery with an electrifying solution

Re: Yes, static is a thing

"The lice ... hate the sugar."

Now when you bring out the codpiece and blanks, or Ursula....

User locked out of Microsoft account by MFA bug, complains of customer-hostile support

I 2FAiled recently...

I left both my yubikeys 1600 miles away, because I wasn't used to needing them, and didn't need either ring of physical keys at my destination, so left them safely at home.

A week without access to some accounts is refreshing, or so I tell myself.

US nuke sub plans leaked on SD card hidden in peanut butter sandwich, claims FBI

And funny enough, bananas are mildly radioactive due to naturally occurring ⁴⁰K.

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

Disk Destroyer

One Halloween, I was doing a HDD->SSD conversion on my personal laptop.

While manually copying the cranky windows7 partition over inside the clonezilla shell (can't remember exactly why it was cranky...): dd if=/dev/sdd1 of=/dev/sda

Ctrl+c in an ohnosecond, but damage was done.

Yep. Double trouble. Blew out the MBR of the HDD with the allocated but blank partition on the SSD.

Only real loss was having to reinstall windows and some programs (data recovery and backups, woo...), and never getting the blasted fingerprint reader to work in windows because the OEM that made the reader thought it was LOVELY to have the actual drivers the installer needed be on a server that no longer existed after they went under.