* Posts by bartsmit

39 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2016

Intel pitches modular PC designs to make repairs less painful

bartsmit
Holmes

The future is already here with Framework

I am reading this on a framework laptop which arrived as a kit much the same as part-baked bread from the supermarket; insofar that creating the final product was quick and painless. Quality is easily as good as the Dell XPS it replaced and the documentation is better.

OpenAI to charge $200 per month for ChatGPT Pro

bartsmit
Stop

Never mind the cost, what about the slurping?

You know these companies have form in stealing data since that is exactly how they started.

If you can't self host your LLM, even with El Reg's sterling guide https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/06/19/proxmox_xcp_ng_gpu_passthrough/, I prefer to anonymise by pooling my queries. Much like its search engine and apps like FreeTube, DuckDuckGo's chatbot at https://duck.ai/ will do just that.

China claims Starlink signals can reveal stealth aircraft – and what that really means

bartsmit

Starlink? What about starlight?

How is this problem specifically from LEO satellites? I would think that most spaceborn EM radiation is from sources which have been there for eons.

Raspberry Pi OS 5.2 is here, with pleasant tweaks to Wayland-based desktop

bartsmit
Boffin

Re: 800MB

I have moved Pi 4 with PoE hats to PXE boot. It is faster and gets rid of the nagging worry about SD card lifespan.

Besides, it's just plain elegant to have a single wire take care of everything.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

bartsmit
Facepalm

Re: The saddest part of this story. . .

You could have said 'The Big Datacenter in the Sky" but then those cloud hipsters stole that concept

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

bartsmit
Headmaster

Daily!?! RFC begs to differ

Section 4.5.4.1 of the SMTP RFC 5321 states: "Retries continue until the message is transmitted or the sender gives up; the give-up time generally needs to be at least 4-5 days." https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5321

I so wish users would stop confusing email with instand messaging.

Bart...

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

bartsmit

2024 shocker

A Microsoft whistleblower will reveal thatt Minecraft is a cynical attempt by Big Coal to indoctrinate kids into acceptance of digging up fossil fuels.

Sure, give the new kid and his MCSE power over the AS/400. What could possibly go wrong?

bartsmit
Angel

Relevant IBM story

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7393654-a-promising-junior-executive-of-ibm-was-involved-in-a

Cloud upstart offers free heat if you host its edge servers

bartsmit

Re: Nothing new

Unfortunately they didn't manage to pull it off: https://siliconcanals.com/news/innovative-e-radiator-startup-nerdalize-files-for-bankruptcy-another-painful-end-in-dutch-startup-ecosystem/

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

bartsmit

Not easy to get rid of some standards based on the wrong system

Global shipping uses (non-k8s) containers measured in feet and PCB's are still riddled with parts in thou's (mili-inch) which is especially rife in connectors, i.e. their interfaces.

*Sigh*

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

bartsmit

Re: Right to repair

You are correct! Nothing cheaper than £12.95 for my phone. Outrageous! https://shop.fairphone.com/gb_en/spare-parts

bartsmit

Re: Nobody

You mean like this? https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zone/

Know the difference between a bin and /bin unless you want a new doorstop

bartsmit
Megaphone

Indy's were cool

From the cobalt blue case when most others were beige and the jazzy system sounds when everything else beeped timidly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH9saUP2460

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

bartsmit
Facepalm

Re: Closest I've seen...

First generation optical mice needed a reflective pad with a grid of black lines to read movement data. One colleague was used to the mechanical type and took the mouse without the pad to work from home. When she came back she complained that the mouse would only work on a scratched frying pan and even then, not that well. I can't imagine what surfaces she tried before settling on the cooking utensils but I suspect that her WFH was from the kitchen in lieu of a proper study.

Raspberry Pi goes back to the future with the CM4S

bartsmit

Raspberry Pi Locator

Keep an eye on https://rpilocator.com/ and its Twitter presence on @rpilocator.

You can usually score a Pi or two within a week or so, without the eye watering mark-up from some sites. They may take a bit longer and have more courier charges.

Hacking the computer with wirewraps and soldering irons: Just fix the issues as they come up, right?

bartsmit
Pint

Reminds me of Mel

From the jargon file: http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

Beige Against the Machine: The IBM PC turns 40

bartsmit

First black IBM 5150 mid 1980's

They weren't all beige; the submarine ones were black. They were delivered in beige but the only place to store them on hunter killers was a cupboard which was part of the diesel exhaust system. Whenever the snorkel went under a wave at periscope depth, the engine would have a mild cardiac arrest and belch out sooty smoke. The PC's always rotated back pitch black.

UK spends £36m on 18 little 'bullet-proof' boats to protect Royal Navy assets

bartsmit

Re: Feh.

These are the fastest ones I've come across: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus-class_hydrofoil

Makes it look like you're stopped in the water. Bit better armed and ocean going too.

How many remote controls do you really need? Answer: about a bowl-ful

bartsmit
Linux

Re: Just get a Harmony remote

Harmony hub works great with Home Assistant which means that it will keep working when Logitech inevitably retire the cloud service.

Your private data has been nabbed: Please update your life as soon as possible while we deflect responsibility

bartsmit
Boffin

Re: Fake PII FTW.

Too much work; there's a page for that: https://www.fakeaddressgenerator.com/World/uk_address_generator

Gone in 60 electrons: Digital art swaggers down the cul-de-sac of obsolescence

bartsmit

low cost book scanner

Same here; a book scanner does not need to cost much:

https://www.instructables.com/Bargain-Price-Book-Scanner-From-A-Cardboard-Box/

iFixit wants you to be legally able to break software locks to repair gizmos. Unsurprisingly, manufacturers are less keen

bartsmit

Re: Vote with your feet

Don't like Google - don't use it: https://www.fairphone.com/en/2020/04/30/keeping-your-data-safe-with-e-os/

bartsmit
Happy

Vote with your feet

Alternatives to the usual suspects are available: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Fairphone_3

I had the screen go blank after a drop, loaded the official youtube, grabbed the supplied screwdriver and fixed it in under ten minutes with a contact clean.

Nominet ignores advice, rejects serious change despite losing CEO, chair, half its board in membership vote

bartsmit
Joke

Handforth has been bested

Read the standing orders! Read them, and understand them!

Where is Jackie?

License to thrill: Ahead of v13.0, the FreeBSD team talks about Linux and the completed toolchain project that changes everything

bartsmit
Joke

Re: "we don't have one big dictator"

Bezerkely, surely

http://catb.org/esr/jargon//html/B/Berzerkeley.html

Transcribe-my-thoughts app would prevent everyone knowing what I actually said during meetings

bartsmit
Coffee/keyboard

Audacity to the rescue

You can set Audacity to record what your soundcard is rendering, rather than what your microphone picks up. On Windows, set your recording device to mix and Audacity to record from wasapi.

This allows you to safely nod off with the odd chat message of 'having microphone trouble'. For bonus points, change your screen name to Connecting... and switch your camera off.

Apple creates face shield for health workers, resists the temptation to call it the 'iMask'

bartsmit
Happy

Grass root projects

There is a lot of similar effort at a local level, such as Ricky El-Qasem in Manchester running his 3D printer at capacity: https://www.gofundme.com/f/northwest-ppe-project

We regret to inform you there are severe delays on the token ring due to IT nerds blasting each other to bloody chunks

bartsmit
Mushroom

Multi-monitor Doom

Network Doom was even better when I worked for a computer hardware manufacturer in the early 90's. With kit all neatly assembled for a trade show, it was fairly trivial to equip each player with three blade PC's and set their side screens to show left and right views in Doom slave mode to augment the main view forward.

Icon to mimic gibbing effects. Glorious!

Y2K quick-fix crick? 1920s come roaring back after mystery blip at UK's vehicle licensing agency

bartsmit
Holmes

Falsehoods programmers believe about time

This is not the only issue by far: https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca

Red flag: Verify to be marked 'undeliverable' by gov projects watchdog

bartsmit
Coat

World leading is hard

Just as well we're a major power. Imagine the difficulty for small countries

https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-identity/id-card/

https://www.digid.nl/en/

You were warned and you didn't do enough: UK preps Big Internet content laws

bartsmit

Re: Seems a bit mixed

We do have legislation. Google 'libel twitter uk facebook' for examples of British courts taking action against Brits for their published content on US services

What did turbonerds do before the internet? 41 years ago, a load of BBS

bartsmit

Re: I missed the beginning and almost the end

The big stash of software was Simtel20 out in White Sands Missile Range. The cheapest way to get files was through Trickle, a distributed file forwarding system. "Tell Trickle at Trearn /list" followed by a fetch that would get you the file in 24 hours. The internet was clunky, especially before DNS.

China's really cotton'd on to this whole Moon exploration thing: First seed sprouts in lunar lander biosphere

bartsmit
Alien

Andy Weir's dream come true

In your face, Neil Armstrong!

Begone, Demon Internet: Vodafone to shutter old-school pioneer ISP

bartsmit
Linux

Re: Sic gloria and all that

Forte Agent was good. Anybody use fresco - the floppy-based dial on demand router? Don't touch that phone!

nerdland.demon.co.uk

Wowee, it's Samsung's next me-too AI gizmo: The Apple HomePod

bartsmit

Samsung has been listening through their TV's for a wee while now https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31296188

IPv4 is OVER. Really. So quit relying on it in new protocols, sheesh

bartsmit
FAIL

Re: IPv6 Support by UK ISP's

I voted with my feet and left BT because of this. During the inevitable 'why are you leaving, what can we do to change your mind' phone call I stated my reason as 'you can't give me IPv6'. The reply was 'I don't know that channel'. I'm going to be kind and think that they heard ITV6.

New MacBook Pro beckons fanbois to become strip pokers

bartsmit
FAIL

Re: Strip or screen...

http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html

'Please label things so I can tell the difference between a mouse and a microphone'

bartsmit
Boffin

config.sys

Back in the days of config.sys and autoexec.bat a useful warning for other techs was to add USER=ID10T to the former

IPv6 now faster than IPv4 when visiting 20% of top websites – and just as fast for the rest

bartsmit

Re: Time to learn

Actually SiXXS no longer issues new tunnels as a way of exerting pressure on ISP's to offer dual stack to domestic subscribers. https://www.sixxs.net/signup/