UP or DOWN?
with the only escape being to reach the 100th floor of the game's primary dungeon.
from ground level
is that looking up or down?
Posts by Pangasinan Philippines
172 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Nov 2016
Feel Luckey, punk? Oculus designer builds VR murder headset
Thursday 10th November 2022 05:41 GMT
Just like the movie
he opted for three explosive charge modules that he cryptically said he "usually use[s] for another project." Those charges are tied to narrow-band photosensors that can detect when the headset's display flashes red at a certain frequency "making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy," Luckey said.
When the right game over screen appears, "the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user."
No country for old men. Javier Bardem not needed here.
Saudi Arabia turns to HPE for AMD-powered Cray supercomputer
G7 countries beat UK in worldwide broadband speed test again
Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for slow Celeron laptops
The sins of OneDrive as Microsoft's cloud storage service turns 15
Thursday 11th August 2022 02:24 GMT 
Why all the fuss?
I pay for only two items of software.
One is Nortons
the other is Office 365
Not only do I get 1TB cloud which is more than enough for me, the software suite that is 365 does all I need (although Visio would be a nice to have).
But hey! There are five licenses to share with 'family'. They all get the same.
Considering my attempt with NAS went horribly wrong when Buffalo local drive went Titsup on me along with their powerful wireless router.
What with savings on international calls with free Skype, I think that 365 is excellent VFM.
I have nothing on my OneDrive that needs to be hidden from anybody.
Philippines logs on to Starlink for remote area internet services
Thursday 28th July 2022 06:43 GMT
Shaking up the industry
Speaking from Manila;
In my seven years of living here internet connections have improved from fixed LTE using home antenna to fibre (direct) to the home.
Am getting 200Mb/s down and 400Mb/s up links
5G phone is new but outside Manila is mainly 4G LTE.
Way out in the provinces phone signals may be hard to get.
Problem here is that Manila was the world's text capital due to the free texts added to any pre-paid load.
However, the cell networks were not upgraded to cater for data and video.
Big catch-up under way. Target is extra 10,000 cell towers in 5 years.
The telcos are selling towers to third party to raise money to expand.
The policy is for common towers but that is yet to happen.
Three networks are PLDT, Globe and Dito.
Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems
Tuesday 19th July 2022 01:48 GMT
Goalposts Move
I'll bite
I started my career training, full time, at a certain (cough cough) Govt establishment with day release at local college for C & G.
We studied pinch effects in FETs, PN junctions, transmission lines etc and made projects like Colpitts oscillators.
Other projects using DTL and early TTL ICs.
Not enough paper quals to call myself 'engineer' though.
Launched into the job and expected to fault-find down to component level.
Worked on teleprinters, HF radio (Racal RA17), progressed onto comms, then onto radar.
Tools were Spectrum Analysers, sig gens and scopes, and Time domain reflectometers RF and Fiber.
Was poached into a job in Saudi Arabia with mobile 5 metre satellite links chasing the king across the desert.
Installed PCs for users when they were Intel 486, then P60 and P90. Installing banks of PCs with Wordperfect.
The job later became box shifting and asset management. Any faulty kit returned to manufacturer or 3rd party for repair.
After much world travel retired and as a laugh put mu RF experience into LinkedIn.
Plenty of offers for C+ programmers but zero for any RF work.
US EV drivers won't be able to choose vehicle safety alert sounds
Pentester says he broke into datacenter via hidden route running behind toilets
Hangouts hangs up: Google chat app shuts this year
Salesforce staff back an end to its relationship with NRA
US, UK, Western Europe fail to hit top 50 cheapest broadband list
Google dumps interest-based ad system for another interest-based ad system
Ceefax replica goes TITSUP* as folk pine for simpler times
Can you get excited about the iPhone 13? We've tried
Monday 27th December 2021 02:07 GMT
My first iPhone
My two year old Huawei was dying. It has a 'huge' (I thought) 64 GB memory.
Where did that go? I couldn't update the few apps I had installed because of low memory.
It kept on bitching (non woke word) to me to clear memory space and defrag the disk space.
It lost its ability to connect to the phone network around the time iPhone 13 became available.
Apart from sitting in a queue for an hour to collect my pre-purchased phone, the change over was almost painless.
It was an early Christmas present. In January, my wife gets to replace her iPad.
I'm very happy with the phone (fast enough, nice display) and have relegated Candy Crush to my (now) wIfi only Android)
When product names go bad: Microsoft's Raymond Chen on the cringe behind WinCE
BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?
New Zealand spooks say satellite snooping is obsolete – better intel is found elsewhere
All I want for Christmas is a delivery address that a delivery courier can find
Check your bits: What to do when Unix decides to make a hash of your bill printouts
Hellfire and damnation: Two French monks charged over 5G mast arson attack
Thursday 23rd September 2021 01:36 GMT
Punishment
"The monks were arrested by gendarmes last week as they attempted to set fire to a second phone mast following a similar attack the night before"
They should be locked up and isolated from the world . . . .Oh . . . .
They should be made to do community service in a local brothel or casino.
Philippines approves digital services tax on streaming services, apps, even SaaS
Bonkers rocket launch sees craft slip sideways, barely climb and tear up terrain
Lost in IKEA? So, it seems, is Windows
Chinese auto-maker accused of altering data after fatal autonomous car accident
Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse
Wednesday 25th August 2021 00:55 GMT
Let's include DENON
My internet radio - Denon CEO Piccolo - I bought myself as a retirement pressie worked just fine . . . .
UNTIL the day I did a firmware update. This failed and the device would not function.
Denon Philippines fixed the update but the process lost all my presets including BBC, Classic FM and the others.
The scrolling message told me to open a Denon website.
That told me that Denon no longer support the web directory of radio stations and that I would have to pay a subscription yearly to some other company.
The amount is small, but I am not going to pay out every year for something I believed would work for ever. There is no technical reason why it can't be used.
I now have a brick in the stereo cabinet.
Similarly my Apple TV mark I won't connect to youtube. There may be a technical reason for that, but has put me off from buying a replacement.
Microsoft, flush with cash, raises cloud office suite prices for businesses
COVID-19 cases surge as do sales of fake vaccination cards – around $100 for something you could get free
Avast, ye takeover lawyers! NortonLifeLock to acquire security rival
We don't know why it's there, we don't know what it does – all we know is that the button makes everything OK again
Pre-orders open for the Mini PET 40/80, the closest thing to Commodore's classic around
Friday 11th June 2021 07:18 GMT 
My first computer - To repair, that is
My work, in a certain Govt Organisation (see icon), involved the repair of these.
I had a working Pet for comparison and drawers full of 40-pin DILs.
I put sockets on the working PET and found most faults by substitution.
Also had the calibrated floppy disks that generated the 'eye' pattern on a 'scope.
A few C64s came my way for repair, but the chips kept changing with each new build.
FBI paid renegade developer $180k for backdoored AN0M chat app that brought down drug underworld
Wednesday 9th June 2021 06:16 GMT
It's all about timing
The operation appears to be terminated now that the cover is blown.
There is probably a reason why the time is now instead of letting it continue.
I suspect that something big was being planned by the crims which had to be stopped at the expense of blowing the cover.
At least the police will have plenty of leads to follow up with.
So what will be the next tool for the law enforcers?
Philippines national ID registration portal opens, glitches out in first hour
Tuesday 4th May 2021 08:07 GMT
2FA? Normally SFA
Most people here in Manila use cash.
I once paid FoodPanda meal by card.
The meal never arrived but it took 6 weeks of me chasing the bank to supply written proof.
Cash is King.
My bank uses 2FA to log in and pay for pre-paid cell phone load.
The wait sometimes means the bank web site times out before the 2FA arrives.
Then I get a load of texts all at once with the 2FA requests.
Spy agency GCHQ told me Gmail's more secure than Microsoft 365, insists British MP as facepalming security bods tell him to zip it
Bless you: Yep, it's IBM's new name for tech services spinoff and totally not a hayfever medicine
For blinkenlights sake.... RTFM! Yes. Read The Front of the Machine
Saturday 10th April 2021 05:04 GMT
Re: Communicating with only obscenities?
I'm not one for for swearing, but I was down the pub explaining that the job I had just landed in Saudi Arabia was tax free.
Having checked all the UK tax info papers (1981, before internet) a farmer was trying to tell me that I could not return to the UK to visit without incurring tax, or so his brother said.
This guy became insistent that he was right. I knew different having read all the rules.
" I don't care what your fucking brother says". said I before going out to a night shift.
You could feel the shock among those propping up the bar.
The next visit to the pub the landlord was all smiles and gave me a free pint.
Printers used to be a pricey luxury in Asian homes, then along came ... you know what
Thursday 1st April 2021 05:15 GMT
Copy shops closed
Casualty of the lockdown (but don't call it a lockdown), are the low margin copy shops in the malls.
Thrived on students report submissions but no customers.
We have to use expensive book store copiers.
What used to cost 40 centavos now costs 2.5 Peso each copy.
Explains a lot of the above.
Remember Apple's disastrous butterfly keyboards? These lawsuits against the iGiant just formed a super class action
Faster than a speeding... tab opening? Vivaldi 3.7 is here
Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s
Barcode scan app amassed millions of downloads before weird update starting popping open webpages...
Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election
Friday 5th February 2021 09:05 GMT
I was watching on election night, both Fox News and CNN by switching the two channels.
Early results showed Fox presenters smugly announcing Trump leading.
When the postal voting results swung towards Democrats, the Fox team were firing of all types of accusations against the Dems and the voting 'irregularities'.
They were not happy bunnies.
It was a good popcorn session.
Missing GOV.UK web link potentially cost taxpayers £50m as civil servants are forced to shuffle paper forms
Attack of the cryptidiots: One wants Bitcoin-flush hard drive he threw out in 2013 back, the other lost USB stick password
Faster optic fibers and superior laser sensors set to descend from space
SpaceX blows away cobwebs at dormant California pad with satellite launch as a Falcon 9 makes touchdown number 7
Boeing 737 Max will return to flight after software updates, says EU's aviation regulator
Calls for 'right to repair' electronics laws grow louder across Europe
Friday 27th November 2020 07:52 GMT
Deliberate Brick
I have a Denon CEOL Piccolo internet radio that worked just fine for seven years until it needed a firmware update.
The update failed and it went to the service agency for the update.
When it was returned, all the radio stations were wiped. No problem I thought, just reload the stations.
BUT, there was a message telling me to look at radioDenon.com
That was a page run by Vtuner who have taken over the station 'tuning' from Denon.
They want a yearly subscription to enable station updates.
This is all new to me as I thought that Denon would supply the stations. My 'contract' when I bought it was with Denon.
So I now have a brick which is technically very capable of working except that I have to pay to use it again.
So the moral is don't buy a Denon as a retirement present to yourself. One day it will just stop working!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
