Posts by Dabooka

Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too

Re: Blockchain next..

I hear you.

In footy circles there's 'Sorare' (think a posh digital Panini sticker album) and those punting it keep explaining it's secure unlike other football themed investments schemes (Football Index for one) because it sues blockchain.

Trying to ask how blockchain can ensure the market won't collapse typically gets answered with a sneer along the lines of 'If you don't understand what blockchain is, this probably isn't for you'.

Yeah, I'm the one who doesn't understand how blockchain works...

When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration

Re: Unanswered question

Not just me then, I think we should be told

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

Did the very same thing

As part of my GCSE.

I never mastered it (I am not a musical type at all) but it was a bit of fun in the class and everyone seemed to have a go

San Francisco investigates Hotel Twitter, Musk might pack up and leave

Re: No, way, they beat us?

Is nothing sacred?!

North Korea using freelance techies to fund missiles and nukes

Swing and a miss....

NK have a long history of thinking outside the box to be ahead of the curve.

Wait, does that make sense?!

Weep for the cybercriminals who fell for online scams and lost $2.5m last year

Re: "banned from the sites for being dishonest."

Just logged in to say the same thing!

UK arrests five for selling 'dodgy' point of sale software

More about their typical spend

The example could've been a 'beer and a burger' for £20 becoming chips and a coke for £9

A brand new Linux DRM display driver – for a 1992 computer

Re: MIDI Maze!

The return of chip skimming eh?

Re: MIDI Maze!

90s car nerd here so I have to ask...

...what make and model? Just curious

Meta threatens to stop sharing news in USA to protest publisher payment plan

Re: Having your Cake and Eating IT ..... Biting the hand that feeds IT

Three times I tried.

I gave up each time.

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

Re: With a little help from the server

You're lacking the joke icon, flaming incoming

Re: What!?

I agree, regular and / or frequent changes for the sake of it are old hat. Our workplace insisted on this until WFH triggered by Covid, despite me discussing this with our Head of IT. His response was he's been instructed to do so by one of the the senior managers 'who knows things about IT' and he was equally as frustrated. In fact I believe GCHQ even updated their recommendations to reflect this (for the reasons above, repetition and writing down creates weak links).

Also, 12 characters or more? Hard to do that when portals still insist on '6-8 letters' to create a strong password (yes City and Guilds I am looking at you). This continues to push the myth that 6 is enough

IT manager's 'think outside the box' edict was, for once, not (only) a revolting cliché

Re: Hide and seek at El Reg

Awful isn't it?

Why do they always insist on messing around with a winning formula?

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

It's the old adage

Never reuse a populated template (or cut and paste between the two).

I mean for run of the mill instructions sure, but anything serious like his? You just have to invest the time to do it right

BOFH: We're an industry leader … in employing idiot managers

Re: Industry Leaders

That's more idiot being given money by other idiots to manage a company

Artemis I isn't just a test run – there's science to be done

Re: such as spacecraft orientation [...] through simple voice commands

True but analogue meters on my amp and much nicer than the digital alternative. Time and a place for everything, right?!

No, no, hear us out, say boffins: Foot fungus to measure your walk

Oh well done

Great sub-headline there.

I wonder how many get the reference?

Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson

Re: Notes? How old school!

It's a balance, any decent trainer knows there's little on slides to take notes on.

They should act as a prompt for all concerns and any notes formed by the audience member's observations. That's how the act helps recall.

However in practice we've all been in sessions that are death by Power Point

Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable

Re: Can't put my finger on it

Still can;t believe Dabbsy has gone...

Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked

Re: Sarah? Is the Moderatrix back again?

ELEVEN YEARS?!

Resurrected Dundee Satellite Station to host quantum Optical Ground Station

Absolutely

An article worthy of his writing.

Let's all have a pint in his memory eh?

Leave that sentient AI alone a mo and fix those racist chatbots first

Re: It's Hard To Tell If It's Human...

At that's the true problem isn't it, not so much AI reaching our human levels of interaction but human levels of interaction dumbing down to 'Magic 8 Ball' levels of AI

End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it

Re: 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste

That services the debt burden they carry as opposed to paying taxes

Re: 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste

Completely agree.

My handset still fine but the battery is starting to be a bit flaky after three years. And of course it's no easy thing to switch is it?

That's what the EU should do, try and mandate a standard battery replacement strategy. No idea how and I appreciate it'd be impossible to implement but that would go a long way to help

Singapore's Grab enters maps-as-a-service market

Add just general bizareness

I have two roundabout near me Google insists I loop around before exiting back from the first exit. Also at least one junction where I am supposed to exit and then rejoin.

I hope Grab ensures it maintains a limited number of hilarious errors such as these, just for authenticity's sake.

AI chatbot trained on posts from web sewer 4chan behaved badly – just like human members

Re: It can be tricky to tell whether there is any intelligence, natural or artificial

I think it is more likely the netziens would fail the test .

Or rather they would not pass it

Re: So he trained an AI on 4chan

This is such a poor take...

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

We had a copier engineer once...

...who argued we had the wrong unit. HIs paperwork had a different serial number to the one on the device and he refused the service. It went on for weeks and weeks. I had to call them up about it (and I'm nothing to do with the IT, just happened to be the office manager) and even on the phone they were adamant it was the wrong machine.

'That's for a college in Stockton' they said, 'Have you moved the machines around without telling us?'

'No' says I, 'for although we too are a college we are different institutions and have absolutely nothing to do with each other'

'Are you sure you're reading the serial number correctly?' they respond.

'Yes. Is it possible I do actually have this machine in front of me and your records are mixed up, or are you suggesting I just happen to have randomly read out a matching serial number for a machine that matches that of a different college you supply?' Which sounds more plausible to you?'

I even had to take a photo and email it. To this day I still remember the Fujitsu PoS and the plate beneath the glass.

Oh, and their asset tag matched up, just the serial number was recorded incorrectly.

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Great read

Although this but surprised me; "And whilst simulating a reactor scram was not part of the tests"

Now I know nothing of such systems or indeed testing but I would have thought it would have bene part of the simulation? Or was it just meant as not part of the tests at this time

Lonestar plans to put datacenters in the Moon's lava tubes

Re: RE: Simple question: if knowledge is so completely lost...

I now need to watch this

Arm CPU ran on electricity generated by algae for over six months

I agree

However lately on here it's usually overlooked or written off if the solution is 100% viable and immediately in production. See hydrogen developments

IBM outlines first major update to i OS for Power servers in three years

Enough of these minority OSes

I've been hanging on on for years for my Warp upgrade floppies to arrive.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

Re: Different route here

Oi! The cheek...

Jesting aside the CPC was (and it was before the Speccy fans rock up) a far more accomplished machine with better upgrades and greater flexibility.

Loved mine

Different route here

Dragon 32 and then full on into Amstrads with the 464 followed by a 6128.

Did get a 48k+ in a playground swap too but that was an idle curio really although I much preferred the design.

Happy days and many a playground conversation did occur although mainly about who's was better. The Amstrad obvs

Swedish firms ink deal to make green hydrogen with wind power

Re: That's the future

Right now it does, but can you be certain that's always the case? Complementary tech will improve giving better efficiency across the board, that's basic progress.

Wind certainly does not blow all the time but when it does we may as well put it some good use no? Unless you alone can store excess electricity.

I am not sure anyone says come to rely on it either. Generally people come to rely on things whilst it's available or something better comes along. You are moving to extreme views with some of your extrapolations here mind, people freezing to death?!

Besides what's your proposition then, what would you see us moving towards?

Re: Efficiency

Thank you!

This 100%

Re: That's the future

Right, so the gist is (and thanks for taking the time to reply, much appreciated) is that right here, right now the tech doesn't support sustainable hydrogen creation?

Surely the progress that is needed has to start somewhere though right? It is not unreasonable to think the more the sector moves to this tech the more efficient they'll become, manufacturing costs reduce, process and techniques are refined. Plus wind blows at night when electricity is often at it's least required and seeing as we still can't store it at least it's going to something useful.

I take on board your points but in the broader scope of progress and development step change, public consciousness and culture is just as import in the early days. Still not sure any of the (accurate) negatives mean we shouldn't be pleased to see some progress. What's the alterative?

Re: That's the future

Not sure on the downvotes. For a technology focused website I am always amazed at folk downvoting progress even if small and beset with foreseeable challenges.

Ericsson pulls out of Russia 'indefinitely' to protest war in Ukraine

Re: Where was Ericsson during the war against Iraq?

Precisely, I do not understand the relevance in the post

Re: Where was Ericsson during the war against Iraq?

And what does this mean?

Or rather, what do you think it means?

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

Ah, fond memories

I think printer drivers were discs #12 and #13?

We must have all had a installation set of these tings either in a dedicated hard case, wallet or often a big sodding elastic band. In many ways I preferred it back then to now.

Fish mentality: If The Rock told you to eat flies, would you buy my NFT?

Ten years?!

You'd think I would have learned not to bother reading ti by now yet somehow here I am.

Keep up the good work. It's always a pleasure

Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless

Re: 50 for 40

I hear you.

I bet 95% of users on these boards have been there plenty of times to. Doing favours which somehow turn into my responsibility for ever, supplying free bit of salvaged hardware for minor upgrades etc

I recall telling the father in law of a friend of mine to FRO after the work I put in was met with a complaint, as I canceled a follow up visit because I'd been called in to work.

Bank had no firewall license, intrusion or phishing protection – guess the rest

Re: the Andra Pradesh Mahesh Co-Operative Urban Bank

I cannot be sure as to the reason but possibly because the individuals accounts getting rinsed would not be the ones paying the price; any losses would have to be made good by the ban.

Or it could be Loose vs lose. Who knows!

British cops arrest seven in Lapsus$ crime gang probe

Re: I'd say to hire them...

Swing and a miss

They don't appear to have relied too heavily on finding new exploits to, er, exploit.

I suspect after three days at work you would more likely find your wallet and car keys missing.

Coding in a war zone: A Ruby developer's life in Kharkiv

A downvote?

I did not know Putin frequented El Reg

Germany advises citizens to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Re: Just don't use ANY anti-virus

Thanks for the tip!

I'll let work IT know in the morning I want a Linux setup delivered and configured. I'm sure they'll be absolutely fine with that once I explain it is so I do not want to run AV software.

Meanwhile in the real world...

PayPal, Visa, Mastercard suspend Russian services

Re: Amex

Oh FFS, I assume this is fishing for comments.

You know, seeing as even Wetherspoons does.

Details of '120,000 Russian soldiers' leaked by Ukrainian media

Eh?

That's a bit of a leap isn't it, wishing they were dead because of support for the leak?

How do the two things even correlate?

Oh, and go easy on the "quotes" old chap, it really does nothing to assist the reader.

DIY Sinclair clones: Left it too late to back the Next? Build your own instead

Re: 464

I'm disappointed (although not surprised) at the downvotes here.

For once I hope they're in jest!