Posts by alferdpacker

No horrific butterfly keys on this keyboard, just you and your big, dumb fingers

Re: Ermmm

so pleased there's a typo in there

No, Illyrian, Naqaỹa, Mastika, Automex aren't Hollywood's hottest baby names – they're new monikers for exoplanets

Re: terminological inexactitude

I would call you a nerd but... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/18/nerds_hate_speech/

The Pi who loved me: Licensed to SSL

I went to school with a Roger Moore. And a Chris Brown :/

Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

Re: But who in their right mind would want to visit

While I get the same sort of feeling, I will say that when I visit the US I find the actual people are largely very pleasant and don't appear to be the same bunch of insane bigots we are shown on the telly.

I sure hope people don't judge the UK based on the things our government does!

Mozilla returns crypto-signed website packaging spec to sender – yes, it's Google

Re: Which, frankly, is untrue.

I think we are being trolled. I particularly like the (faux) lack of self-awareness in "You can't add arbitary circumstances to his situation to make your point. He probably never uses a public wi-fi."

Also, "He clearly mentioned "most web sites", not ones which you have to login to."... I can't think of any site I visit these days that I don't log in to. Logged into the reg right now. Even the likes of avclub or imgur.

Sex and drugs and auto-tune: What motivates a millennial perp?

Municipal Waste! Lamb of God! Another of Slayer's last UK gigs! TOOL!

Sunday has a hell of a lineup towards the end.

Salesfarce to Failsforce: Salesforce database blunder outage enters day three as fix falters

Re: Spare a thought for the teccies...

Quite. The fact that they keep fixing it and then breaking it suggests they should maybe take a step back.

Easier said than done, of course. I always get sucked in and forget to eat etc.

Woman calls cops on shadowy baddie barricaded in bathroom... to discover: Roomba gone rogue

How does it lock the door behind it? The article seems reticent on this important point!

Guess who's working on a health data-slurping digital tool? Bzzt! Nope, it's the UK Department for Work and Pensions

Re: Consent?

That's so specific that I have to ask. Why March 2013?

Hungover this morning? Thought 'beer before wine and you'll be fine'? Boffins prove old adage just isn't true

This is what my dear old father told me. "Eat a banana and drink a pint of water before you go to sleep if you feel too drunk. Of course, if you remember to do that you aren't too drunk."

Chinese biz baron wants to shove his artificial moon where the sun doesn't shine – literally

Bloody hell, give us some credit. "lunar-tic"? Geez.

1,300 customers of Brit bank TSB defrauded due to botched IT migration

Re: Another false claim...

"While our systems are safe and secure unfortunately fraudsters are increasingly sophisticated"

what an incredible response

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

Re: Cowboys

I sense a sequel to Event Horizon

Amazon's answer to all those leaky AWS S3 buckets: A dashboard warning light

Re: So basically an idiot light.

Or... buy some engine oil for a few quid and pour it into the engine? Look for the little oil canister symbol.

I last owned a car 10 years ago so I don't claim this information is up to date.

Signs of ground ice found on ancient protoplanet asteroid Vesta

Re: A bit late

Oppressing the OPA no doubt. Damn Earthers!

Another day, another British Airways systems screwup causes chaos

"Found out some muppet set the time to run at the exact moment the clocks skip the hour as they change"

Nobody could do that by accident. That muppet got you good on his last day in the office :)

BDSM sex rocks Drupal world: Top dev banished for sci-fi hanky-panky

Re: Idiots!

Not sure I 100% agree with that. I worked with somebody who had to leave when he was convicted of paedophilia. Hard to imagine working with him if we'd known what he was up to. "Great coding today, buddy. Fucked any kids recently?"

I hope he's getting help but it'd be awkward if he came back.

Re: Dries Buytaert is a joke

To be fair... were you considering working for Drupal beforehand? Blech.

Fraud detection system with 93% failure rate gets IT companies sued

FFS

Jebus wept! Just look at the names involved! These are so obviously cowboys. Who signs these people up in the first place?

durr, what good name for company? What we pretend to make? How about um "Fast Systems"?

Clever! How about name for system? Needs to have no meaning whatsoever. Put "system" in there though so they know it system.

Michigan Integrated Data Automated System

Amazon relinquishes data from Echo that could have dropped eaves on a killing

Re: Smart Meters...

So long as there's no camera on them I'm not too worried (just medium worried, the default level these days). I don't care if they know what I watch but I think what I do while I watch it is best left to the imagination.

Even better not to imagine it at all of course.

Why does it cost 20 times as much to protect Mark Zuckerberg as Tim Cook?

Wait... yahoo?

Hackers could turn your smart meter into a bomb and blow your family to smithereens – new claim

Smart Water Meter

We're getting the compulsory smart water meters installed in our street just now. What I can't understand is what makes them "smart". Don't they just measure the amount of water that gets used? Why would they need to connect to my home network?

Why does Skype only show me from the chin down?

Re: SPED???

Now I really want to know what's wrong with "sped".

Rogue One: This is the Star Wars back story you've been looking for

Re: Now if someone were to film Ian Banks culture novels

I really want them to make Diamond Dogs. That would be both an excellent self contained sci-fi-horror film and also works as an introduction to that whole universe and some of the recurring characters.

If they handled the reveal at the end properly it'd knock the stuffing out of people.

Jersey sore: Anchor rips into island's undersea cables, sinks net access

Re: "on the UK island of Jersey"

mmm, no, I think it's just that they were all called Norman

Robot cars probably won't happen, sniffs US transport chief

Re: I'm not sure I understand

Agreed. In the example is he saying that it's OK for humans to decide to mow down 15 people but it's not OK for a computer to decide it's better that only 1 person dies?

London's 'automatic' Tube trains suffered 750 computer failures last year

Re: Really?

The main thing is to take your bike on with you.

Your 'intimate personal massager' – cough – is spying on you

Re: Nitpick

Hawt!

Oz boffins cook quantum computing out of mothballs

"As well as being easy to fabricate, the nanospheres are also relatively easy to deposit onto a substrate, Dr Choucair, and the spin states on the nanospheres can be manipulated with an oscillating magnetic field."

The substrate is called "Dr Choucair"? That's so cool.

Scientists want you to know how to have sex with a hyper-long dong

Re: Hyper-long and quick

a revulva

Virgin Media goes TITSUP* in South London due to painful piles

Re: loved the sample tweets

I AM a customer but they still send me the brochures trying to convince me to join.

Hacker flogs '42.5m freshly stolen logins' for seventy-five cents

Re: SSO

You're not wrong but the real security leak you're experiencing is hinted at in "if I handed my phone to someone" ;)

Revealed: How NASA saved the Kepler space telescope from suicide

Aliens!

Obviously somebody doesn't want us to find these exo planets.

Ex-HP boss Carly Fiorina sacked one week into new job

Re: On behalf of the human race

I recall that they were disbelieving of that way back in 1955.

Galileo in spaaace: France's 'equivalence principle' satellite

"Microsoft's Payload Block" sounds more like a well known bug/feature than part of a satellite.

Samsung's little black box will hot-wire your car to the internet. Eek!

But now they can deliver to your car!

Admittedly this is not something that anyone has ever wanted.

Panama Papers graph database cracked open for world+dog

Re: "curated information"

You don't trust that guy do you?!

Job ad promises 'Meaningless Repetitive Work on the .NET Stack'

Wanted - Person for Job

should cover it

I am sending pouting selfies to a robot. Its AI is well buff

Re: Read it till this point

Wow! Who knew? When you submit your AI you can program this into it and win the prize.

That naked picture on my PC? Not mine. The IT guy put it there

Are you trolling? Dave didn't "ignore it", he told the guy and the guy tried to get someone else fired to cover his own arse.

Hubble spies supermassive black hole in surprising spot

Re: My theory on black holes

I'm not going to contradict your theory but I'm not sure you know how Hoovers work. They don't break your carpet fluff into elementary particles. Sometimes they do go boom.

Ever wondered what the worst TV show in the world would be? Apple just commissioned it

Re: Apple's version of "The Internship" (aka "Google goes auto-fellatio")

Where can one buy one of these Auto Fellators? I ask because a friend of mine...

Re: Any show about developers

I'm looking forward to them entering their ISO compliant 16 character paswords incorrectly every 15 minutes. The same rhythm of key presses 3 times in quick succession followed by an extraordinarily loud "motherfucker!" is the soundtrack of our office.

Re: yep

"Ballmer-at-his-sweatiest levels of uncool" is my new favourite insult. Thank you.

My devil-possessed smartphone tried to emasculate me

Re: Rose gold?

Sanity products I could do with.