Posts by XSV1

Welcome to America - now show us your last five years of social media posts

Re: Football

South African passport holders can have three active ZA passports, each valid for 10 years. I currently have two valid passports.

But that’s because we need actual visas (not just e-Visas) to visit a load of countries, including USA, UK, Canada, Oz, NZ, EU, China, Japan and ironically President Trump, Venezuela. Actual visas require the applicant to apply in person at a consulate or an embassy.

And whilst I am at it if anyone from the UK Home Office ever reads this comment, please could you do something about the outrageous charge for a 10 year visitor for a ZA passport holders to visit the UK. It is £1000. That’s just absurd.

The USA charges us less than 1/10th of that for the same length of visa.

KLM, Air France latest major organizations looted for customer data

The wankers lost 6 million client records, including mine.

I am one of the unfortunate to have had all my info leaked.

Unfortunately storing details like address, telephone, passport, etc, are all obligatory when making a flight reservation.

But this sort of leak is EXACTLY why I never let an airline store my credit card details.

New SSL/TLS certs to each live no longer than 47 days by 2029

Re: certbot

My hand (and Miss Hermione Granger's hand) shoot up!

Amazon to kill off local Alexa processing, all voice requests shipped to the cloud

Re: Put one in the toilet

"Dump in toilet"

Pun on dump.

DOGE helps Veterans Affairs end IT contract run by service-disabled entrepreneurs

Re: This just keeps getting worse

And the absolutely ridiculous part was the jury finding him not guilty of slandering the hero.

The US judicial system is fucked.

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Teams

Let's face it... Teams is the biggest heap of shit of any of the MS products. It's by far the worst communication platform available.

D-Link tells users to trash old VPN routers over bug too dangerous to identify

Re: Our old products are crap and full of security holes that we won't patch...

Exactly right. They can go and fuck themselves. I will never buy another D-Link product.

Amazon's nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

Re: There needs to be reckoning around this

"Datacenters should be barred by law from receiving preferential pricing"

Please remind your data centre providers, your mobile phone providers, basically everybody you deal with, to just add their additional costs onto your bill/account.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

F

They Russkies can really go and F themselves.

Cops cuff 22-year-old Brit suspected of being Scattered Spider leader

Re: Criminals in the West

Exactly. Ask the Gupta brothers. They raped the South African economy with corruption. There is an extradition treaty between South Africa and Dubai, but they remain firmly ensconced in Dubai.

It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

Re: I can see two cases here

LOVE the "personal art collection"!

Teardown reveals iPhone 15 to be series of questionable design decisions

Re: Fine

Where do we find a virgin?

Letter to FCC: Why are US carriers locking handsets to networks?

re: Locking should be banned

>> Locking should be banned.

I totally agree. I travel internationally extensively and my phone has two SIM card slots. I get a local SIM card for every country I visit. I wouldn't be able to do this if my phone was locked.

Network locking is a shocking practice. All it does is inconvenience the consumer... there is absolutely no benefit to the consumer. Weasels!

China discovers unknown mineral on the moon, names it Changesite-(Y)

Re: Curly -- or Straight?

We should probably ask one of the Pastafarians on the comments section to verify this (or not).

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

Liz Truss's hypocrisy

Is this the same Tory PM, Liz Truss, that is now gushing about Queen Elizabeth II, after previously calling the monarchy "disgraceful"?

California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

Re: 13GW

"Perpignan airport"

Sounds like a great idea. I want to propose the same idea to our local airports. I had a look at the Google Earth images of the Perpignan airport in southern France, but I don't see any solar panels on images that are dated 2022. Am I looking at the wrong airport?

https://www.google.com/maps/search/Perpignan+airport/@42.7397636,2.8672996,221a,35y,39.47t/data=!3m1!1e3

Re: 13GW

Good question. I have 24 solar panels on the roof of my house as well as two solar geysers. We have had no breakages yet (still holding thumbs). I live in Joburg, an area with regular hail storms in the summer months. The nice thing about the storms is they wash all the dust off the panels... it helps improve the efficiency of the cells. In the dry months we have to manually clean the dust off.

Re: 13GW

In South Africa (with all its sunshine) there are a number of shops/stores and office parks that do exactly this. The solar panels also provide protection to the vehicles in the event of inclement weather (e.g. hail storms that are all too common in the summer months).

Infosys reduces employee bonuses after execs promised better profit margins

Re: "competitive compensation revisions"

It's just typical corporate bullshit-speak.

Amazon puts 'creepy' AI cameras in UK delivery vans

Re: it's law in the UK! But it's under review by the UK Gummin't!

Try watching the interviews.

EU cuts off key Russian banks from SWIFT system

SWIFT

I don't get why SWIFT hasn't been suspended to ALL Russian banks? That way sanctions can REALLY hit hard. Ditto for all VISA, Mastercard, American Express and Dinersclub cards

Re: A spelling question.

Indeed. Also "The Maldives".

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

That bit about harming "ordinary Ru citizens" is utter bullshit. The average Russian is only going to do something about their reigning lunatic when their own pockets start to hurt. Every single Russian bank must be disconnected from SWIFT, instead of this selective disconnection of banks.

Severe sanctions against the whole of South Africa was the only thing that brought around the end of Apartheid. (I am South African).

And the bit about letting the Russian Athletes compete at the Paralympics is equally garbage. South Africa was TOTALLY banned from the Olympics during Apartheid (and rightfully so).

We weren't even allowed to watch British TV/comedy... now THAT was a tragedy ;-)

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

My ZX81 still works

My ZX81 still works

Bonkers rocket launch sees craft slip sideways, barely climb and tear up terrain

Vomit

A more comprehensive video with nauseating commentary by someone from the company's PR department is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfjO7VCyjPM

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: Only half the story

The Fluke 87 is a handheld, battery-powered *Vrms* digital multimeter. It was unique at the time it was launched (around 1996-1998).

South Africa's state-owned energy firm to appeal after court rules Oracle does not have to support its software

The DAA

Of course, with Sir Humphry at the tiller.

Ah lovely, here's something you can do with those Raspberry Pis, NUC PCs in the bottom of the drawer: Run Ubuntu Appliances on them

Re: Sounds like a solution looking for a problem to solve

You use the word "geeks" in a pejorative sense. I am proud to be a geek/nerd.

“Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.”

— Bill Gates

Keep it clean you lot: Samsung's created a hand-washing app for its wearables

Absurd

I am an avid Samsung fan, but this is just effing ridiculous.

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

Re: "65 chunks, littering Earth’s orbit with debris"

If they could modify the deflector array to emit a thoron pulse each time the vessel approached a piece of space debris, that would likely deflect debris away from the ship. Also, alternately polarising the warp nacelles could theoretically ensure that larger pieces would be transported into the delta quadrant with no loss of energy to the warp core.

Serial killer spotted on the night train from Newcastle

Token ring

> Token Ring is what you need for railways!

Exactly! Never any collisions :-)

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

Trolly dolly?

The politically correct term is "Flight Safety Attendant", as opposed to "Flying Mattress" or "Trolly Dolly".

Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

Re: Why is the company still alive?

<cough> Bombardier<cough>, <cough>Airbus<cough>, <cough>Embraer<cough>.

Deadly 737 Max jets no longer a Boeing concern – for now: Production suspended after biz runs out of parking space

Re: Welcome to Seattle

Yes and the fuckers in the Boeing boardroom still get to take home handsome salaries. The fucker-in-chief makes US$30 million a year. It's fabulous to watch him squirm in this video below:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/boeing-ceo-grilled-over-salary-accountability-on-capitol-hill.html

If you have a security alert, I feel bad for you, son – you got 99 problems but a hack ain't one

Wolf, wolf!

The alternative is that Kaspersky and other vendors could, you know, just produce better software that doesn't deluge admins with false positives

I couldn't agree more! We use Kaspersky on our network and the number of false "positives" is infuriating. It's a real cry wolf scenario.

WTF is Boeing on? Not just customer databases lying around on the web. 787 jetliner code, too, security bugs and all

Re: Board of directors

And the directors' families should fly with them too.

Off somewhere nice on holibobs? Not if you're flying British Airways: IT 'systems issue' smacks UK airports once again

We are reaching out...

At least "We are sorry..." is better than the American platitude, "We are reaching out...".

It's Prime Minister Boris Johnson: Tech industry speaks its brains on Brexit-monger's victory

Re: Stuck in the middle with you

75 countries drive on the correct side of the road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_left-hand_traffic

Amadeus! Amadeus! Pwn me Amadeus! Airline check-in bug may have exposed all y'all boarding passes to spies

Re: somehow get past security

where you just scan your boarding pass just before security checks

This is very common, especially for pax that fly without checked luggage.

That scan is just for the purposes a total head count and for a record showing that a pax is about to pass through security and will be entered a secure area. This also allows the airline to know if the pax has started to go through the security checks, or if the pax is going to be a "no-show".

The actual pax "identity verification" often occurs only at the boarding gate where the pax's passport/ID is checked against the name on the boarding pass.

Apple stock hits bottom ... as AirPod exits man's backside and still works after colonic travels

... this too shall pass.

Without a doubt... the best comment so far!

What today links Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram – apart from being run by monopolistic personal data harvesters?

The Cloud is the answer to everything. Or is it AI and the Edge...?

Or is it IoT or IIoT or AIIoT or AIIIoT?

Decoding the President, because someone has to: Did Trump just blow up concerted US effort to ban Chinese 5G kit?

Re: 6G?

My Toyota Rav4's radio goes zero to 62 (and then maximum). REALLY? WTF were the engineers thinking?

Go, go, Gadgets Boy! 'Influencer' testing 5G for Vodafone finds it to be slower than 4G

re: PR, marketing, hype,

PR, marketing, hype

Absolutely... marketing shite... the latest buzz word for the unwashed masses.

Fake broadband ISP support scammers accidentally cough up IP address to Deadpool in card phish gone wrong

Re: Dirty Scammers

A mate of mine kept the scammers going for half an hour. At the end of the process he told the scammer that a message had popped up on the screen. He asked the scammer if he had a pen and paper to write down the message.

He then spelled out the alleged message, “c u n t”.

“Now what does that spell?” he asked, “because that is what you are if you think that I am dumb enough to fall for your scam.”

Smartphones gateway drug to the Antichrist, says leader of Russian Orthodox Church

Thank God...

Thank God for Richard Dawkins!

Time for a cracker joke: What's got one ball and buttons in the wrong place?

Re: Smart Arse I.T Cnuts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpWhugUmV5U

Naked women cleaning biz smashes patriarchy by introducing naked bloke gardening service

Re: Not gonna trim the hedges in the buff

"And Australia gets a lot of sun, right? I'm worried about too much UV exposure and the skin cancer rates of these poor workers."

The bloke that is undressing in the icon is about to cover himself in sun block SPF 100 which blocks 99% of UVB.

Marriott's Starwood hotels mega-hack: Half a BILLION guests' deets exposed over 4 years

Au revoir Marriott!

Oh bugger. I have stayed in sodding Marriott hotels all around the planet. Their patently crap attitude to security really pisses me off.

No more Marriott hotels for me!

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

"one of the kids has an MBA"

Q: "How do you know if someone has an MBA?"

A: "They tell you, or in this case the parent tells you."

PS: I have an MBA.