Posts by elkster88

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

Re: Installation Image Fiddling

Quote: The company president wants the company fight song played during setup.

Believe it or not, there's a Honeywell corporate song.

Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

Re: replacement OS for old Chromebooks

I also have a Toshiba Chromebook 2, which I originally selected because it was one of the few Chromebooks available at the time that had an upgradable SSD and the bonus of having a backlit keyboard. I did put a bigger SSD in it and replaced the battery, which sadly needs replacement again.

I have yet to undertake the process of updating the BIOS to allow me to install a Linux distribution for some of the reasons you mentioned. I have gone through this process on another Chromebook (I forget which model) and I agree, it's not something the average non technical person could normally manage without encountering a fairly steep learning curve.

All that said, I believe the main thrust of the article was regarding an easy to use replacement OS for Windows machines, not Chromebooks.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Dry conditions cause trouble

I worked at a site in Saudi Arabia where there was a large collection of sensitive test equipment that would frequently have trouble taking low level measurements because the earthing rod for the building was not making a solid connection to earth due to the extremely dry ground. When it rained, all would be well until the ground dried out again.

Icon, because despite the local prohibition of alcohol, luckily the expat compound we stayed in had a couple of 'private clubs' where we could get a surprisingly decent home brewed beer.

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

Re: once upon a time at the pub

"He claimed to be inspired by mercury delay lines*, which really did store data in motion."

A number of years ago, I attended a talk at a Lockheed Martin building that used to be a Sperry Univac facility. The guests of honor were a handful of elderly gentlemen who were some of the first employees of Univac/(ERA?). They talked about the mercury delay line memories and how they created the first drum memory units by gluing magnetic tape to the drum.

Some of the engineering solutions to the problems of early computers were pretty elegant, if bulky... Witness the cathode ray tube dynamic memory devices used in the Von Neumann computer at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Re: Enterprise support?

"And, for those saying they wouldn't buy another HP printer. What multifunction inkjet do they recommend thats good quality but not so expensive to run?"

Epson Ecotank series. My ET-3760 is the bomb.

Microsoft vet laments a world where even toothbrushes need reboots

Re: How else...

Upvoted for mentioning Aerostich. Quality, and it's not cheap, but makes up for it by being durable and repairable.

I'm on my third Roadcrafter 1-piece, only because #2 got stolen in Pisa before what was to be an epic trip through the Dolomites.

Icon is obviously me getting my R3...

Stargazing with the Beaverlab Finder TW2

Re: Beaverlab finder?

I'm just going to leave this here...

Nice Beaver!

US starts 'emergency' checks on cryptocurrency power use, citing winter power demands

Re: Pay as you go

"If they are paying the bills then what's the issue?"

Reductio ad absurdum: If someone (e.g. Elon Musk) decided to build a giant electric powered heater in the middle of the desert, as a means of spending down his billions, would you still say it was an OK use of resources, so long as he was willing to pay the electric bill ?

There has to be some point where the cost/benefit ratio gets examined for the use of shared resources, especially ones that contribute to anthropogenic climate change.

There is no inherent need for cryptocurrency to use "proof of work", other methods exist to provide digital money without the enormous power requirement...

Here's a couple of possibly relevant links...

https://nextbillionseconds.com/2024/02/02/cryptonomics-final-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-grift

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364

<dons fireproof suit>

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

rec.motorcycles, AKA Reeky

> I still have my rec.motorcycles patch, and my membership number.

As do it.

But do you have your Geeky (tm) pocket protector? I do.

UKRM is still active. There's a couple of us refugees from reeky. Drop in and say hi. Reeky is dead, overcome with pharmaceutical spam.

I remember having some offline discussions with Dr. W, much different "IRL" to his reeky persona.

Fed-up Torvalds suggests disabling AMD’s 'stupid' performance-killing fTPM RNG

Re: Spluttering performance while producing random data

I've just had a eureka moment - a lettuce based seed generator.

Tokkers can Tok like Tweeters can Tweet – for now

Re: Text is the latest addition to options for content creation

"I hate it when you look for instructions for something and all you can find is a Youtube video".

And in 90+ percent of those supposedly instructional videos, the crucial thing you needed to see is badly lit, only appears for one or two frames, is out of focus, and the camera operator has an advanced case of St. Vitus' dance.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Re: As luck would have it....

I count three - Ireland, Malta and Cyprus.

Ukrainian cops nab suspects accused of stealing $4.3m from victims across Europe

Oxymoron alert

... and shut down a multi-country network of call centers selling fake cryptocurrency ...

Now we're building computers from lab-grown brain cells

Came to the comments for this reference...

... and I was not disappointed.

Have a jolt from my electrode.

PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis

Re: South don't work in the North

Believe it or not, it was due to the vertical component of the Earth's magnetic field being of the opposite sign Down Under.

Years ago I was involved in a project for an Australian customer. Part my job was to specify some high resolution monitors. I had assumed that all I needed to do was to make sure they would operate at the local mains voltage and frequency. I had plans to purchase a lot of monitors in the USA and have them shipped to Australia as they were much cheaper in the USA for the same model (shipping cost to Australia vs buying local was not a concern since the system components were all being put into a large shipping container).

During my research, I discovered that CRT monitors were "yammed" (AFAIK that is/was the correct technical term) for specific hemispheres, to allow for the difference in the vertical component of the Earth's magnetic field.

I was sceptical, so I figured if I turned a monitor upside down, it would be equivalent to operating it in the Southern hemisphere. Lo and behold, the screen now displayed a large rainbow blotch of colors that had not been there before. Restoring the monitor to its normal orientation and hitting the degauss button repeatedly, fixed it. But I couldn't ever get the blotch to go away when the unit was upside down.

If I hadn't seen it myself, I would never have believed it.

Microsoft to offer unlimited time off for US staff

This is all too familiar...

I am a recent retiree from a tech megacorp that instituted an "unlimited" PTO policy not long after I started working for them.

My boss said it was a good thing, as it meant that a couple of us new guys in his group could get a bit more vacation than we would have been entitled to (2 weeks) under the guaranteed entitlement plan. I was a senior engineer and had previously been entitled to 5 weeks leave at my last employer, so I regarded this as a welcome change.

That boss was laid off not long after the policy change, and my next manager announced that he interpreted the new "unlimited" PTO policy to mean "undefined" and that he consequently had discretion to dole out time off in accordance with the old guidelines, which meant I was back to 2 weeks per year. I did manage to squeeze out a bit more holidays than those 2 weeks per year but it was always with a bit of tension and it was obvious that my boss thought he was doing me a huge favor to allow it.

Of course the reason for doing so was to eliminate the financial liability of having to pay for accumulated time off when people left the company. The company also at the same time got rid of paying out 401k matching money on every check, instead making a one time payment in the next fiscal year only to those employees who were on the payroll post December 15th. This was also proclaimed as a benefit because they increased the matching percentage by one percent, but of course it was a huge "Fuck You" to the employees who left voluntarily or were laid off any time between Jan 1st and December 15th.

Extremely glad to be out of there, the most employee-unfriendly outfit I have ever worked for.

PS I made sure my last official day of employment was December 16th, and took the last week and a bit off as PTO...

Epson says ink pad saturation behind 'end of service life' warning on inkjet printers

Re: Brother

I have an Epson ET-3760 Ecotank and it's brilliant. Saved $100 by not getting the top of the range model with touch screen and fax (!) capability. Still working off the ink bottles it came with. Scanner with ADF, seems to work as well as expected. Previously had a Canon multifunction unit which worked OK but gobbled ink cartridges like a gobbling thing. And of course would refuse to print in B&W if any of the color cartridges were empty.

I also have a Brother HL-5250DN laser which is going strong after a handful of toner cartridge replacements with no hint of print quality loss.

And even though the Epson is not marketed as a photo printer, it does a very nice job printing photos on semi-gloss photo paper. Good to know that the ink sponges are user-replaceable and there's a utility to reset the maintenance counter.

Yeah, we'll just take that first network handshake. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: And Bill kept his job.

Never forget: the most important product your company makes is your paycheck.

Heineken says there’s no free beer, warns of phishing scam

Re: Heineken says there's no free beer, warns of phishing scam

Years ago at a Hewlett Packard training class in Fort Collins, my instructor was a Scot named Angus, who had lived in the Netherlands for some years.

He claimed that the Dutch had a saying:

"Dutch cows drink Grolsch and piss Heineken".

Which reminds me, I'm overdue for a refresher course of craft beer sampling in old Fort Collins.

Seriously, you do not want to make that cable your earth

Re: Of earths

I had to get a Fluke to prove it to him.

I hope that put him in his plaice.

Re: Of earths

I've recently become aware that building power entry earth connections in the middle eastern desert might as well be connected to nothing but free air, until / if it rains heavily, at which time the earth connection becomes functional. Otherwise it's just a big metal spike surrounded by dry grains of sand, which functions as a good insulator. This plays havoc with sensitive noise measurements.

Apple to replace future iPhone Lightning port with USB-C next year, this guy claims

Re: Still doesn't change anything ....

Oh, look. Now you’ve made Tim Cook Apple cry.

FAA to airlines: 5G-sensitive radio altimeters have to go

Qualifying new radar altimeters.

"The problem is that qualifying new stuff for aircraft is expensive, as is the swap out of kit."

Spot on.

Also- the qualification process is not terribly speedy. Which is why it's incredible that this was not being foreseen and addressed long before 5G was deployed.

ASML CEO: Industrial conglomerate buying washing machines to rip out semiconductors

From the title, I had a mental image...

Of someone throwing printed circuit boards into a washing machine and expecting a loose pile of ICs after the cycle ended.

China's top tech city Shenzhen locks down completely for at least a week

Re: eggs->basket!

"we had backup suppliers, just for contingency."

One of the very few things that Dr. W. Edwards Deming[1] got wrong, in my opinion, was his strong preference for sole source suppliers. Hard to implement JIT with multiple suppliers, and we've been hearing about the evils of keeping too much inventory/safety stock for many years. But sometimes, systems fall apart.

I would dearly love to hear what he would have to say about the state of our supply chains now.

Here's a video of Dr Deming talking about his famous "red beads" experiment. He doesn't utter his catchphrase, but the video shows his inimitable manner of speaking.

[1] Yesterday, upon seeing that the hotel my wife and I are staying in is located on Deming Way, I involuntarily uttered "off to the Milky Way", which was one of his favorite catchphrases when I attended his 3 day seminar in Washington, DC about 40 years ago.

How to polish the bottom line? Microsoft makes it really hard to claim expenses, say staffers

“ accounting folks had us use Concur but we also had to submit paper receipts for some reason.”

We’re required to keep the paper receipts for all expenses submitted for reimbursement under US government contracts. I also find that Concur is quite slick and easy to use with the smartphone app, simple and quick to snap a photo of a receipt.

UNFORTUNATELY, my expense reports are now being audited by a “machine learning” system, which has repeatedly kicked back every report due to expenses paid by cash, since the restaurant and commissary here in the secure compound we foreigners stay in, accept nothing but cash.

I’m convinced that the US government warehouse where the paper receipts are filed is the same one where the Ark of the Covenant is stored…

EthereumMax, a Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather Jr sued over alleged 'pump and dump' cryptocurrency scam

cryptocurrency scam

A principle of good writing: Never use multiple words, when one will do.

Redundant.

Aircraft can't land safely due to interference with upcoming 5G C-band broadband service

Re: A better explanation?

TL;DR:

See this diagram.

5G vs. Radar Altimeters

RAF shoots down 'terrorist drone' over US-owned special ops base in Syria

Re: Heat?

> What heat does a small, presumably battery-powered, drone emit?

Very little- but having seen some of the Houthi "drones" downed by the Saudis, they're more akin to an over sized radio-controlled airplane with a combustion engine + propeller, not a quad-copter style drone. Basically a conventional light aircraft, without a pilot, plus a cheap GPS guidance system and an explosive payload.

Big enough to cause actual damage, so cannot be ignored. Not expensive to produce, compared to the sophisticated missiles and the cost of operating the aircraft used to launch them, so as long as the Houthis and their backers can afford to keep producing and launching them, they will.

Ironically, the main danger on the ground is to be hit by drone debris from a drone being shot down, vs. from one of the drones successfully reaching their target, since the reported rate of success in downing them is pretty good.

Cryptocurrency 'rug pulls' cheated investors out of $8bn in 2021 – report

66,239

"The website currently has flagged 66,239 crypto tokens as potentially problematic"

I've got a better number- all of them.

How to destroy expensive test kit: What does that button do?

Ah, fond memories ...

I once added assembly code to an unused block of EPROM memory in an add-in PC floppy disc controller, that caused the PC speaker to say "Help! Somebody get me out of here, I'm trapped in this computer!" every time the system booted up. Said PC was a common use system in an engineering lab.

Didn't even have to change any of the existing code, just put the required 0x55aa signature at the beginning of the block, plus the size in 512 byte blocks in the 3rd byte, and an INT 20h at the end / or a RET instruction (IIRC). And not to forget- had to make sure the checksum of the entire collection of 512 byte blocks was zero.

It lasted a couple of weeks before I was asked to restore the original contents of the controller's boot ROM.

My copy of Peter Norton's "Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC" hasn't been cracked in over 25 years but I still have fond memories of playing in that domain.

Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

What's in a name?

I suppose replacing "Alice" and "Bob" with "X Æ A-12" and "X Æ B-12" might be going a bit _too_ far...

EurekAI... Neural network leads chemists to discover 'four new materials'

Are any of them ...

... (the finest) Green?

Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter

Is it difficult to build on Mars?

Nah. Piece of piss, mate.

Big Blue's quantum rainmaker jumps to room-temp diamond quantum accelerator company

Vapor something

“ A process called "plasma-assisted vapor deposition" is a promising candidate to get the job done.”

So, IBM are saying it’s essentially vaporware at the moment, got it.

8 years ago another billionaire ploughed millions into space to harvest solar power and beam it back down to Earth

Re: Cool idea, but...

Agree, solar panels in space to provide power on earth is a definite R. Goldberg solution. Technically possible, but at a huge cost. Maybe if that space elevator gets built... naw.

The obvious solution to reliable, reasonably priced solar power is to add energy storage, and/or use solar energy to create "green" fuels for vehicles, neatly meshing the intermittent nature of solar with the energy density/power/recharge time problems of current BEV technology. Could even be batteries, but doesn't need to be the expensive Li-Ion type since weight and bulk are not as important for a fixed installation.

Sure, there are increases in cost if you add storage. But it's GOT to be cheaper than lifting solar panels into geosynchronous orbit, PLUS needing the collector/converter equipment on the ground.

Redpilled Microsoft does away with flashing icons on taskbar as Windows 11 hits Beta

" ... make finding what you need easier."

> Microsoft said that "we've also rejuvenated Settings to keep pages from feeling overwhelming and make finding what you need easier." This was done with a "consistent navigation system," which sounds good, but also with "progressive disclosure, which allows advanced settings to remain hidden until you want to look at them."

Really?

How about just leaving the fucking menus and control panels alone for a change, and making everything work better under the hood?

The constant drive to move things around and change the user interface in Windows, simply for the sake of change, is infuriating.

It's akin to moving the letters around on a keyboard to make them easier to hit (yes, I know, Dvorak, etc.). Millions upon millions of us have spent literally decades finding the obscure places Microsoft put the various Windows controls, only to find with each new version, they hide/move them to new and difficult to find places.

Hungarian tech store closed by World War II bomb

I have a question...

Do you know what kind of a bomb it was?

UK celebrates 25 years of wasteful, 'underperforming' government IT projects

Re: Elephant in the room

" you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."

Or elephants.

Which are famously hard on keyboards and office chairs, hence the budget overruns.

That time a startup tried to hire me just to push clients' products in job interviews

Re: Current par for the present course of future event horizons

Anyone know if Google Translate is accepting nominations for languages to be added to their Translate product?

Asking for a friend. Mine's the one with the dried up babelfish in the pocket.

Thailand bans joke cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens

Re: Can we do the same here ?

I suspect you may have an objection to Monnetising some types of mathematical operations.

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

Re: Give me buttons ON THE TV!

> my next project: build a "remote control translator" out of an IR diode and an arduino

Hah!

I did exactly this. I have a Yamaha soundbar attached to the Samsung TV with optical cable. No integration of control codes over HDMI (CEC?). Lived with two remotes for some time until I hit upon the idea of using one of the unused A B C D buttons on the Samsung remote to operate the soundbar power, and translating the Samsung Volume + and - codes into codes the Yammy soundbar would understand. Arduino, IR photodiode sensor, IR emitter diode + a couple of resistors. Put it all in an old video camera battery charger enclosure so it actually looks like something a toddler didn't make.

It took a couple of weeks of fiddling with hardware & code but it's been working flawlessly now for years. Sure, I probably could have bought a universal remote but I learned a lot and that's worth something to me.

That Salesforce outage: Global DNS downfall started by one engineer trying a quick fix

"We have taken action with that particular employee"

Presumably involving a a shovel, a roll of carpet and two 20kg bags of quicklime.

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

Re: Don't blame Larry

The author Vartanig G. Vartan wrote a book called "The Dinosaur Fund" which I read many years ago.

The _only_ fact I remember[1] from that book is that the highest denomination US note to ever be in circulation was the $10,000 bill, featuring Salmon P. Chase.

[1] Besides of course, the name of the author.

Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

I would have thought...

...that normally on takeoff, the pilot would be using everything short of War Emergency Power, throttles to the stops. I would hate to clip an obstacle at the end of the runway because the airline was trying to save a few bob's worth of fuel, and the passenger cohort had more than the normal fraction of bloaters.

Every day's a school day.

Master boot vinyl record: It just gives DOS on my IBM PC a warmer, more authentic tone

Ah, happy memories...

I well remember saving programs to (and sometimes successfully recovering them from) cassette tape on my Timex/Sinclair ZX81. I don't think I ever had a program on a vinyl record, though. Still have the computer and the tape player, and I'll bet if I dig deep enough I'll find the primitive drawing program (1 bit graphics!) I wrote.

Mine's the one with the audio jumper cables in the pocket.

Bad software crashed Boeings. Now it appears the company lacked a singular software supremo

Re: Interesting spin

"What no one has asked or disclosed is who is making the [AOA] sensors? Name and shame."

Angle Of Attack sensors are reliable, up to the point that they suffer a bird strike or other FOD. Which is why all A/C have two or three of them. Only using one of them as a basis for actuating MCAS, or not adding a third sensor, is another discussion altogether.

More evidence your work/life balance has gone to $%£*: Atlassian says user-interface interactions show hours tacked on to workday

Work is work, and my home life is my own

I suppose I could be accused of being a 'clockwatcher' but the idea of responding to work calls and emails outside of work hours is a complete non-starter for me.

Voicemail and email is there for those times I am not 'at work', even when I'm working from home. Once you start down that slippery slope of essentially being on-call at all waking hours, it's hard to claw your personal time back. Before the pandemic, I might have taken my laptop home with me less than a half-dozen times in 5 years, while my co-workers did nearly every night. Still don't understand that mindset.

No need for more asteroid-blasting attempts, NASA's OSIRIS-REx has more than enough space dirt

Re: Units

"NASA hoped to collect at least 14 MilliJub 2 ounces (60 grams) of the asteroid’s dirt and soil."

Microsoft takes another shot at the Windows-on-Arm thing with a revamped Surface Pro X powered by new SQ2 silicon

Re: "frank self-awareness"

> I skipped mentioning his frank self-awareness

You're a better man than I. I'm afraid I would have no such degree of control should the opportunity ever arise to respond to such a low and slow pitch.

A virtual pint for priming the pump, so to speak ->