Posts by cd / && rm -rf *

Blighty's nuclear deterrent will get a software upgrade amid cyber-war fears

Enter this into your browser...

tacnuke://lat=47°38'51.1"N&long=122°08'21.4"W&yield=50MT&target="Microsoft HQ"

Oh, sugar! Sysadmin accidently deletes production database while fixing a fault

It's easy to take the piss...

... but having come very close to doing the same thing* one day, I can only say "but for the grace of $DEITY there go I".

* on a filesystem containing ten year's worth of scientific data. Yes, there were (proven) backups, but it would still have been highly embarrassing. Many a slip 'twixt brain and finger hovering over the Enter key**.

** ohnosecond, n: the shortest interval of time distinguishable by the human brain. It is thus named because it's exactly the length of time that elapses between hitting the Enter key and saying "Oh no!" (Thanks to Henry Law)

True believers mind-meld FreeBSD with Ubuntu to burn systemd

Can we call it...

Frankenux.

What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?

Although...

... I did like the suggestion of RSS What Iceberg?

Too Naked for the Nazis streaks to literary glory

Opportunity missed.

"with his masterwork Too Naked for the Nazis"

Golden opportunity to use meisterwerk missed there.

How Microsoft copied malware techniques to make Get Windows 10 the world's PC pest

Re: Windows 10?

Windows - less of an OS, more of a drive-by-mugging

Lovely. Have an upvote for that.

Re: You forgot to mention KB3123862

It more that on restore Windows Update goes back into its dumb mode of taking forever to check for updates

If the Windows Update servers detect a Win7 machine trying to update, they're delivered from a ZX81 with a wobbly RAM pack in Kazakhstan. On the end of a 300bps modem.

Millions menaced as ransomware-smuggling ads pollute top websites

Re: Anybody have...

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Used in combination with uBlock and Ghostery on Firefox. Ads? What ads?

German lodges todger in 13 steel rings

Re: Ringo

Why didn't the hospital just take him to the MRI department? Those steel rings would have soon flown off

Along with his todger, presumably.

Photographer hassled by Port of Tyne for filming a sign on a wall

Re: Jobsworths.

@chronos: another thank you. Bookmarked for future use. See icon.

Re: Irony

"A mate of mine sent me a web link ,years ago (which I've lost) which shows the movements, names, flags and cargo of everything coming in and out of British Ports"

http://www.shipais.com

HTH.

Jobsworths.

No further comment required.

Intravenous hangover clinics don't work, could land you in hospital

You couldn't make it up.

"Set up by pharmacist Shadi"

Er, quite.

Raspberry Pi 3 to sport Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE – first photos emerge

I do hope the Ethernet isn't hanging off the USB on this one.

Phorm suspends its shares from trading amid funding scrabble

So long and thanks for all the phish.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

And it's pub o'clock too. Could today get any better?

Patient monitors altered, drug dispensary popped in colossal hospital hack

"collosal hospital hack"

Please. Colossal.

Spool chucker on strike?

Plane food sees pilot grounded by explosive undercarriage

"The study (PDF) also found that procedures to keep flight crew safe are sensible and widely-observed. Pilots and first officers don't eat the same pre-flight meals, for example, a precaution the report says is widely-observed"

A victory for common sense, something sadly all too lacking nowadays.

Linux Mint hacked: Malware-infected ISOs linked from official site

Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it

What's the betting the hacker's IP address is in a range owned by M$?

Sir Clive Sinclair in tech tin-rattle triumph

I thought...

... Uncle Sir Clive sold the Speccy rights to that bloke from Amsturd?

Facebook tells Viz to f**k right off

Thanks, Barbra!

It's the Streisand effect - by blocking Viz, Faecesbook have given them more free publicity than they ever could have dreamed of. It's all over the papers and the online news sites.

Viz must be creaming in their pants right now. Either that, or they're in the pub celebrating. Or both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Ordnance Survey unfolds handy Mars map

I'd buy the dead tree version

<geekout>

It'd look awesome on my wall as a poster.

</geekout>

ps. Big version (67MB, 11574x9921 ) here:

https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1598/25012985956_9f518727ba_o_d.jpg

Send tortuous stand-up ‘nine-thirty’ meetings back to the dark ages

Re: Professional managers

Those that can, do. Those that can't, become managers.

Putin's internet guru says 'nyet' to Windows, 'da' to desktop Linux

Re: Or

Chernobylux.

Firemen free chap's todger from four-ring chokehold

Ahhh.....

... where would we be without Lester's knob jokes? This irreverent attitude is precisely why I read El Reg for my daily fix of IT news lightly sprinkled with something bit... different.

Thirty Meter Telescope needs to revisit earthly fine print

Re: Time to move to La Palma

I've actually been to La Palma and worked there for a number of years. I know what the sky there looks like at night, thank you.

$DEITY save us from pedants (see icon).

Re: Time to move to La Palma

Huh. Trust a pedantic scientist to wander along :)

I was trying to convey how, from the mountain top on La Palma, just how many stars one can see with the naked eye. Alright, "billions and billions" may have been a slight exaggeration. This YewTewb vid conveys some of the flavour. I don't think i've made enough posts to hyperlink, but hopefully the link will appear and can be cut'n'pasted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQasXHyCVNs

That's typical of what the naked eye can see on a good night. I rather think you can see more than 5k stars there...

Icon added because it's beer o'clock.

Re: Time to move to La Palma

Indeed. A beautiful place, I worked at the observatory sited at the highest point of the island (2500m) for many years. There is a Sky Law in effect, enacted in 1988, which ensures light pollution from streetlights, etc. is minimal. Think there is also a Lights Out event once a year where the local people switch off unnecessary lights, close curtains, etc. to make the sky that bit darker for the astronomers.

The night sky viewed from the observatory is stunning - you can see billions and billions of stars and the Milky Way, all with the naked eye.

Icon chosen for all the good science that goes on up there.

Who would code a self-destruct feature into their own web browser? Oh, hello, Apple

Re: re: (@ cd / && rm -rf *)

Thanks Smokey

Great fun, thanks, suitably NSFW given the general tone of the comments :)

I had to google Little Bobby Tables. Should have expected it to be an xkcd cartoon...

It's Friday. Have some (more) beer --->

Can we see the pic of the goat with the toilet brush?

Re: Has Mr Dabbs got much better recently?

They seem to have beaten a retreat on that, thankfully.

Little warning: Deleting the wrong files may brick your Linux PC

Re: Sounds Really Clever?

"It is not a file on the hard drive, just a set of special files that represent efi variables. I do not quite understand how this works"

The *nix paradigm is that "everything is a file". Once you get your head around that, it's all quite logical and goes some way to explaining how concatenating strings of commands by piping the output of one into another using a pipe | is so elegant and powerful.

Quick way to brick a system...

of course, this opens up all sorts of possibilities for naughtiness/malware.

alias ls="dd if=/dev/urandom of=/sys/firmware/efi/efivars"

for example.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Re: Sigh - Not again

Get GWX Control Panel. That'll sort it and prevent the downloads.

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

Re: Just wondering

Downloaded ReactOS live CD .iso. Burnt to disk. Booted machine from CD. Blank screen.

OK, it's an alpha, but I expected a little... more.

"Alternativly I would stock up on Broadwell era systems now if you wanna keep 7 around."

Haswell is OK too. It's Skylake et seq you want to avoid.

Icon = typical Win10 user.

'Here are 400,000 smut sites. Block them' says Pakistani telco regulator

blocking FAIL

"ISPs will be expected to implement the blocks at the **DOMAIN** level”

(my emphasis)

So that'll be a long list of IP addresses doing the rounds of pr0n aficionados in Pakistan, then.

[onehandedviewer@somewhereinlahore ~]$ dig +sho www.pornhub.com

pornhub.com. 31.192.117.132

Come on kids, let's go play in the abandoned nuclear power station

More please

More articles like this please. Thanks Bill. see icon ----------------->

ps. a nano-whingelette: this side of the pond, it's spelled "centre"

Lights out! Newbie IT manager's dark basement trip

Re: Nice read

"This is the stuff I come here for, thanks"

Agreed. Have an upvote.

What's going on with X.org? Desktop software body could lose domain

"reached out"... no. Just No.

"We have also reached out..."

Please don't be another online entity adopting this ugly Americanism. What's wrong with "We contacted..." ?

Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

Re: DisableOSUpgrade is insufficient

"While the "DisableOSUpgrade" registry value does indeed help to block the upgrade process it does not actually block the constant "OMG PLZ UPG NAO!!!" nagging caused by the KB3035583 update"

http://themetapicture.com/please-stop-it-windows/

Did North Korea really just detonate a hydrogen bomb? Probably not

Brush up those CVs....

There are some worryingly detailed explanations of how H-bombs work in this thread. Some of those posting here can expect the Norks to be along with job offers.