Posts by Chairman of the Bored

Fast food, slow user – techie tears hair out over crashed drive-thru till

You want fries with that?

My brother worked for an audio firm that made a lot of the radio kit used by McD's, and in particular their drive through operations.

Since cost is of concern and crypto in the public domain was perceived by the authorities as dodgy (maybe even satanic), the radios were simple VHF/FM, with at best analog spectrum inversion for "security".

So some guys took it on themselves to take over drive through ops using their own radios. Example(*)

McD: "You want fries with that?"

Guy, very quickly: "Good God, man! His ass is half the size of Texas already, why does he need fries?"

Drive: "WTF!!??"

McD "I'm sorry..."

Guy: "Dude, seriously. There's already a couple thousand calories in that feed sack..."

As drive throughs are a large fraction of gross receipts managers would call the audio firm and demand immediate fixes...

I imagine these days its digital radio and AES. Now if I just had a nice software defined radio. Oh, wait. I do.

(*) Any resemblance between these words and anything I might or might not have transmitted is ... simply a coincidence, your honor.

VMware 'pressured' hotel to shut down tech event close to VMworld, IGEL sues resort giant

Not just IT

Vegas has been getting weird, well weirder, for some time.

A family member has an on again, off again business relationship with USA Gymnastics. Back when Proctor and Gamble were still sponsors, USAG had some major events in Vegas. Then news about the pedo doctor Larry Nassar and USAG's cover-up hit.

I was hanging out near the venue and saw some people quietly and not unreasonably exercising their 1st amendment rights of assembly and speech against USAG. Hotel security engaged, followed by Las Vegas' own. Beat a guy who refused to leave.

I thought the goal was to "serve and protect" the public, not serve as the hotel PR office's goons.

Its almost as if the whole effen place is run by the mob or something. Oh, wait...

If you have to simulate a phishing attack on your org, at least try to get something useful from it

Re: Is the real problem...

Aye! A pint, sir, excellent comments.

My first thought is that having your ship together before blathering to the press should be considered a core organizational capability.

My second thought is... damnit! Those window washers were not Iranian spies?? I wasted some illegals for nothi..? Damn, brb... gotta call someone...

Detroit sh*t shifter's operating costs waste away with Oracle's cloud

A tale of two meetings...

I was in Dallas for a meeting of my own tribe and was quietly enjoying an adult beverage at the hotel bar.

Guy next to me thinks I part of the Civil Engineers' convention in the same hotel. He and his polyester tie swing around and he gives me a solid handshake, booming out "Hi! Sam's the name and $h!t's the game!" I think you could've heard him in NZ.

That was ... different.

I wonder of that's the kind of guy buying this Oracle shi..., er, KIT! I said "kit", ok?

UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

Re: All a bit unnecessary?

So if its just the crypto bits I can hear Turing rolling in his grave "Encrypted you say? Let me have a go!"

Muslim American woman sues US border cops: Gimme back my seized iPhone's data!

Re: Was travelling with a guy...

How tall was Bin Laden? If I remember correctly it was listed as 6' 5" / 1.95m. Bad old days. We had these playing cards with photos and descriptions on the back ... the theory being the information would get absorbed into your head somehow (dont ask). If I remember correctly he was the ace of spades.

My guy was only 5' 10" or so, otherwise I would have turned him in for the $ years ago.

Proud veteran of Operation Enduring Clusterf$ck...

Was travelling with a guy...

...who was US Govt employee, but looked *precisely* like a slightly shorter version of Osama Bin Laden. Same mannerisms, mode of dress, and so forth.

Flying into the U.S. we got pulled from the queue and my guy postures up a bit and says importantly, "I am a government employee."

But CBP Agent doesn't bat an eyelash, change expression, or anything. He just says drily, "Absolutely. If you say so, sir, you are. But the question becomes, for which government do you work?"

The future of humanity: A Bluetooth ball hitting your face – forever

No, I'm not going to throw your stupid e-ball back at your face...

...when my foot detects two perfectly good ones hanging right abou... GOAL!!

Southport: Come for a round of golf, stay for the flesh-eating STIs

Dude!

Gotta ask it... wtf did you eat? You don't know where that thing has been....

As porn site pounds hard on piracy laws, Cox pulls out prematurely

Subtitles!

Excellent as usual. I'm slightly surprised though that you didn't mention the porno firm's lawyers are the "up and coming" legal experts in this area of law.

Maybe a reference to their paralegals being busy little beavers.

Something about the fact the rights holders are not gonna take this lyin down...

Titillating content though. Damn, what were you talking about?

What happens to your online accounts when you die?

Sometimes you dont see it coming

Had a colleague shift himself off the mortal coil not too long ago. I make no judgement concerning his decision; I can't pretend to understand his battle. We all have one.

Only sign I saw and missed is that he sorted his office and gave me a couple of very nice hardbound handbook sets I've had a habit of borrowing. I just thought he was straightening up the space and being very generous. Seemed a-ok. No problems. Next day, he's gone. No note, no last words to family or anyone, just gone.

Nobody else saw a thing.

I guess the lesson is that we've got to let people know we appreciate them here and now; things tomorrow can be very different.

Re: Huh?? (Off Topic)

@ashdav, I'm sorry, that's really rough. Makes me look at my kiddos and think... no way I could deal with losing one

@Danny 2 - couldn't agree more

A tough part about getting old is seeing the mortality of those around you; at some point human needs break through the masks and we realize 'that forgetful guy' is really struggling with major issues, and we are not far behind.

Tough experience for me recently was when a colleague died suddenly. Going through another guys desk to separate personal effects from company property. Then going through the email spool for the same purposes and "curating" some of the archival record to avoid any upsetting the family further... just not a good task.

'Oh sh..' – the moment an infosec bod realized he was tracking a cop car's movements by its leaky cellular gateway

Re: Home Address?

Oddly enough, of the places I've lived in the US the only places I've seen where the police drive marked cars home are the relatively large and prosperous bedroom communities around Washington and New York.

The theory is that this deters crime. The reality is twofold: it makes the cop's house a target for petty vandalism when the car is not present, and it makes for a lot of whining about 'lazy ass gub'mpnit workers, never on the job' when the car is present

I'm in the boonies now and the theory is that money is tight and we cannot afford the luxury of one car per patrolman, so the car goes with the shift, not the man. I'm ok with that.

BUT! That said we apparently have enough cash for a plate camera on every traffic light and damned near every lamp post.

Annnnd, if you drive near the sheriff's office your cellular will on occasion get pushed down to 2G suddenly ...with no network connectivity and a cell ID that is unique and nonsensical... despite ample 4G signal. Sometimes this happens near their 'inicident command post' SUV.

Then again...

...this is an own goal for the same team who deploys mass surveillance technologies such as automatic plate recognition under the claim that "if you are driving a vehicle in public you have no reasonable expectation of privacy". Turnabout time, baby.

Now you can tell someone to literally go f--k themselves over the internet: Remote-control mock-cock patent dies

Damnit, Reg!

You're making me feel guilty about probing ports now.

Then again, I will say it again: the biggest threat to man is an independently wealthy woman with battery operated toys.

Who was it that hacked Apple? Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie, boy boy boy!

Got caught in a net briefly

Had to buy a "low boy" flatbed trailer for very large piece of gear. On this side if the pond one of the better manufacturers of tractor trailer equipment is the "Eager Beaver" company.

Needed to print out a data sheet, Fat fingered URL. And you know what? The web experience at eager beaver dot com is fundamentally different than that at eager beaver TRAILERS dot com.

Even though I killed the session after a single "damn!" I set of the pr0n alert and promptly had a long day on my hands....

Most staffers expect bosses to snoop on them, say unions

And when you're working for nutjobs...

...worked for a sociopath that required everyone "friend" her on facebook and she would spend evenings prowling contacts to see who's who in the zoo. Ditto linkedin.

Mental!

Drama as boffins claim to reach the Holy Grail of superconductivity

Epic podcast on superconductors

Listen to this and you will get an appreciation that zero loss is only half the story... Meissner effect is equally interesting and useful. But the field repulsion requires flux pinning... And flux pinning is the tip of the iceberg of nonideal effects that make practical application of SC very difficult.

Manufacture of superconductors to achieve desired pinning properties is a mixture of nano engineering and black magic. Black magic of the most evil sort. There is some decent discussion of the economics of SC and so on:

http://omegataupodcast.net/285-superconductivity/

Omega Tau's podcasts are by and large excellent. Except of course when they are extraordinary.

Why no excitement?

We are seeing how science is supposed to work. I propose, and others dispose. Last man standing is your winner. Its ugly but we've got a lot as a civilization to show for it. Where Pons and Fleischman left the script with cold fusion is when they and their uni went straight to the press and tried to short circuit the normal process.

High temp superconductors as we know them now are very interesting physically... the Nobel committee has certainly found that true... but they've not seen as much use as type 2 low temp materials. Look at the magnets in ITER, CERN, or even your local friendly MRI machine. Whats going on here is that as much as liquid helium is a pain in the tail to deal with, liquid He plus low temp material solutions are cheaper in terms of total cost of ownership than the current HTS materials at liquid nitrogen temps. This is subject to change as manufacturing engineering chips away at the problem.

Economics gets a vote. Even assuming these guys' claim is good... and from the looks of things thats charitable... given the extreme cost of HTS materials today the best I can give you is a warm, hearty "meh" until costs are understood for another material class.

Windows is coming to Chromebooks… with Google’s blessing

Re: The printer wars

Aye! CANON. Damn. I didn't see any intel these were coming in.

OK, I've got some Intel on what we do about these. It's not all bad news

Without drivers the CANON are immobile. At at present their Win 10 drivers refuse to work, and their Linux drivers are bloated and slow. Other drivers? Generally suck but occasionally the enemy gets a good one. At any rate maybe this buys us enough time for the boffins to get LART tested. Looks interesting but this is an effen battlefield, not a science fair.

Push your scouts in a bit, we need to know what sort of CANON these are. If its a single function laser CANON, that's a right nasty piece of work. We need to drop back, plan a bit and maybe engage with indirect fires. If its an all-in-one we're in luck - the enemy is almost never able to buy enough supplies for these units. Send 'em a black fax so they shoot their wad. Or if you've got a good man, have him run off 5,000 photocopies of his butt cheeks and leave them by the machine. No one will use it for days - psych warfare, mind.

The real question is, who the hell is funding the PLF to get these CANON in the first place? Ideas?

My guess is the purchase card office or contracts have got something to do with it. Fsck'em.

P-card is pretty small, you can probably reduce it with a couple 'o Javelin. Contracts? We do this the American way ... we're gonna blow it right off the map; I will go to higher authority and get the aircraft - make sure there is an FO team in place to start the music when I get a gig...

Thanks for the info. Mt regards to the men for a good job. Now we both have work to do...

The printer wars

Good report, soldier! It sounds like you and the men are making progress. Make sure they are rested today and have a man look after their kit. Tonight's mission will be rather special- I want you to figure out why the hell the big HP in HR is doing port scans. Doesn't happen often so make sure someone on point has an eye peeled.

Bloody sneaky bastards these new printers. Back in my day you could grab em by the Centronics cable and bash their heads into the fscking wall. Now they're wireless. But I've got total confidence in you.

Now remember, man. Got to keep your spirits up because this game is for keeps. We don't have an "lp0 on fire" error message for the hell of it. You may have to set a couple of the Lenovos on fire to degrade enemy morale. I guess they would do it to you, so make damn sure that any printer you engage becomes a dead 'un.

I shall report to higher authority that you are executing the mission successfully.

That is all, you're dismissed.

Re: Over 30 years of personal computing and printing is STILL and issue!

Quite. But remember that 30 odd years ago, men were men; women were women; printers only tried to print.

Today I've got something on my desk that tries to do a bit much. Its only really solid attribute is getting me to waste $ on ink cartridges

Sigh...

In my other life I do some education work. I like Chromebooks in the school environment because management is an absolute cinch. All the high maintenance and drama stuff happens on the random kit and OS jungle of the day job. At school I just use stuff and only occasionally have to wave a neuron in the general direction of an admin tool.

What fresh hell will having a bastardized Chrome/Win experience and associated dependency + patch management introduce?

When's a backdoor not a backdoor? When the Oz government says it isn't

Re: The Holy Trinity

@Oengus, +1 for coining The Holy Trinity of security agencies. When we were growing up The Man worried about me having too much sax, drums, and rock 'n' roll ... but I guess times have changed

Anyone see the word "component"....

...in the list of compulsory collaborators? What's a component? Obvious switch 'n' router vendors will become part of the state. But are we also talking semiconductor components (clipper chip redux, anyone)?

What about software components... lets say I write kernel drivers for a video card. Large, complex, hard to audit, can have interesting privileges... whats to say under this legislation a software developer doing something like Linux kernel driver or xorg development wouldn't get a tap on the shoulder...?

Phased out: IT architect plugs hole in clean-freak admin's wiring design

Re: The cult of the small BOM

@Martin an gof - nice! I did't know that rPi anecdote but it seems true to form for contract manufacture,

Have an engineer similar to the who left you. Brilliant man but cheap (financially efficient). Never can bring himself to throw out any kit, no matter how broken, and of course none of the bustication gets documented or labelled. Cannot be bothered to fix anything because to his mind nothing is ever broken. "This amp oscillates badly, but Ive got this crushed and corroded bit of coax. If I C-clamp it here to move its suck out ... ok! amp plus cable stable. Hey! Gain is now really low, so I sill just delete this attenuator and save a few bucks... Ship it." Im expending large amounts of technician and field support labor dealing with his cheap crap.

Revenge of the techs? Recently a whole skid of his favorite amps, cables, and broken cal standards 'accidentally ended up on a research vessel... and broke free (in sea state 0)... and fell overboard in really deep water'. I must confess I have a total lack of curiosity about how THAT happened.

The cult of the small BOM

All same resistor values... sometimes the manufacturing specialists have a point and we designers can do a better job drawing up something economical.

Where my PHB have caused me fits though is when a design is right at the hairy edge of possible: high freq, high precision, extended temp range, works to full spec in an EMI hurricane, smaller than any other solution on the market... simultaneously. Loading up the reqs will always drive a designer to use fairly unique parts with aggressive tolerances and perhaps expensive production screening.

And then when your design is deployed... the PHB will hire a bunch of Bangalore Banditos to "improve the value stream" by simplifying the design and cut production costs.., while still charging clients for full premium spec. This is usually done without informing the design team or customers. Customers become unhappy and quite rightfully demand their due per contract.

PHB pulls an innocent, "who, me?" "These designers must really suck..." as he sips his boat drink and thinks of all the ho's and blow his bonus will cover.

Re: Mechanically linked breakers..

+1 for "snipe hunt"

Two outlets only by the door?

That's not even code in most countries. US National Electrical Code requires no more than 6' (1.8m) between receptacles in most residential rooms.

Not just failed artists

Worked on some transmitter equipment made by a left coast firm that likes the color blue (*). REALLY likes the color blue. Every fscking wire and optical fiber in their control racks, hardware, etc is ... blue. Fun to troubleshoot? Not particularly. But another day, another hundreds of dollars.

(*) Name rhymes with 'ETM Electromatic, Incorporated'

Hackers can cook you alive using 'microwave oven' sat-comms – claim

Re: Geeks!

Outstanding proposed hack; I think I would opt for "Bad traffic. Dumbass with mobile got creamed"

Part of my commute went through a small town known for its aggressive traffic law enforcement. Some guy would put up large hand-painted warning signs such as "COP WITH RADAR 1/2 MILE". And he left a tip jar. A good man.

Re: Risk to people?

Shipboard systems are fun... You've got high power systems, lots of bang lying around in various launchers, atrocious environmental conditions, and some very young people running it all. Training is key.

I've only ever seen two significant RF injuries due to near field illumination - one I alluded to in my post was a sailor with a large piercing down under who elected to stand directly in front of a large UHF air search radar. Bad plan, poorly executed. "Jack's nut roasting over an open fire..."

At a shore installation we had another guy stand in front of the same type of radar while operational. Picture a very large building with an oversize cruiser mast stuck through the roof. Sailor was on the same level as the radar and decided to take a leak onto the roof below. Bad plan, poorly executed. We called him "hot rod" after that.

Sea story - don't know if its true or not. Radioman smoking on bridge wing of a destroyer loses his ball cap; it blows off and lands on a small deck just behind an aft AN/SPY-1 array. Does the gymnastics to get it. Doesn't think there is a radhaz because 'radars spin' and all the 'spinning antennas are on the mast'. Ends up losing a some of his vision as the proteins in the vitreous humor of his eyes partially cooked. Behavior consistent with the guys I know, but had that happened in RL I think we would have had an hour or two of mandatory "ball cap retrieval training" every year

Re: Cooked ALIVE? Seriously?

Hansen ... one of the senior scientists I worked with in the past insists that most of the "really good, scientifically sound engineering work was done from 1940 ... 1980. Everything since has been M&S induced psychosis" I always thought that was a way of telling me "get off my lawn", but Hansen's work is probably a good piece of evidence for his view. Elegant and effective, what more does a guy need?

Check out pages 26 and 27 of the following paper:

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a190569.pdf

A little cut-n-paste and gimp action and you've got your scanned Hansen curves back!

-CB

Cooked ALIVE? Seriously?

Gotta throw the BS flag on this one.

Let's do some simple analysis. Per international safety guidance (*) the controlled area (**) maximum permissible exposure level (PEL) for RF from 3GHz on up is 10mW/cm^2, averaged over six minutes. Note there is a factor of ten safety margin between the controlled area PEL and .any. observable effect. In this frequency range you're talking heating inside the eyeballs, and "effect" means a measurement signal just about noise in a dielectric simulation of a human. Your dangly bits will not tingle (***).

Typical SATCOM uplink frequency ranges are: 5.925 - 6.425GHz; 7.900 - 8.395GHz; 14.000 - 14.800GHz; 17.300 - 17.800GHz; 27.5-31GHz.

Typical SATCOM transmit powers? Hundreds of Watts. Extreme levels? 3.6kW at C band, 2.5kW at Ku band, hundreds of Watts in the mmW bands. See (****)

Antenna size? It matters. Commercial kit can go anywhere from man portable to a 9m monster. Let's assume a 4.8m compact cassegrain - typical of "large" SATCOM installations. This is not kit that you will just have lying around. Typical gain at Ku band is +54.6dBi. Note beamwidth at this gain is about 0.4deg (-3dB), so your attacker needs amazing aim.

What's the effective radiated power? 2.5kW * +54.6dBi = 721MW. Sounds scary. But let's see... power density at range in the main beam is Pt/(4*pi*r^2). At one meter(*****) the density is about 5,740,000 mW/cm^2. At 240m I'm down to 100mW/cm^2 and definitely safe. At 740m I'm down to the controlled area PEL, and legal as well as very safe.

What's the spot size at 240m? Length of arc S = r*theta; For 0.4deg the spot is ~5m across at 740m; at 240m downrange its 1.7m across. Enemy needs damn good aim.

Reality is no member of the general public will be within a inside 200m from the most powerful uplink sites - its called a 'controlled area' PEL for a reason. Most of the giant antennas are moved into position and then mechanically locked down; at these spot sizes you need rigidity. Smaller stuff that's actively pointed whilst going after orbiting vehicles moving around is ... smaller; ERP is lower and I care even less. For most large antennas I've seen I'm not even sure I can physically point them within 10deg or so of the ground; there's no point having the mount articulate that much.

Reality is the only real threat at these sites is to maintenance personnel exposed to open waveguides, feedhorns, leaking waveguide flanges. Slightly burned the meat INSIDE my hand one time on a leaking UHF waveguide flange ... Probably kW/cm^2 ... THAT hit about ten on my 'life sucks' meter. Eleven when the itching set in. But that's not an IT problem.

Life's hard enough without inventing problems.

(*) IEEE standard C95.11.

(**) Uncontrolled area PEL (general public) is a lot lower but I cannot be arsed to look it up at the moment. Gave you the reference. I've memorized only controlled area PEL and the real hazard levels. I don't have general public at my sites because ... its a controlled area.

(***) Except one dumbass sailor I had on a mast directly in front of a very large UHF air search radar - having failed to lockout/tagout same. Turns out he had piercing that had "boldly gone where no man had gone before". Holiday song time! "Jack's nuts roasting over an open fire...."

(****) https://www.cpii.com/product.cfm/4/13.

(*****) Yeah, I know this analysis is sketchy in the near field. Fraunhofer distance for 4.8m reflector at 15GHz is something like 2.3km. But this is a blog post, k?

And in current affairs: Rogue raccoon blacks out city power grid after shocking misstep

Long streamers?

Been near an arc flash. Just about emitted my own long streamer. Cannot blame birds for same but it makes me question the causal relationship...

Gemini goes back to the '90s with Agenda, Data and mulls next steps

Sounds like an interesting product,

And I wish Gemini success. I do like using a real keyboard... banging away on glass just doesn't give the same effortless satisfaction of a real interface. Palm was OK for what it was, but for real work you need real tools.

One thing Id like to explore is spinning a PDA from a Raspberry Pi, small touch panel display, and a decent Bluetooth keyboard. Attach Pi to the rear of the monitor, filling all remaining surface area with LiPol batteries.

You would get near desktop power that would fit in your pocket...

Also, check this out: gutting and modernising a Psion:

https://hackaday.com/2016/05/01/upgrading-a-20-year-old-pda/

Sysadmin cracked military PC’s security by reading the manual

Five button locks

Recently had one go intermittent and then completely fail. But we noticed a pattern... it would only fail when we were wet and cold. So we grabbed a blowtorch, a hammer, threw on some overalls and went to work "gently" heating the lock and providing percussive encouragement. Security patrol walked right by us, totally ignoring two men in somewhat battered clothing working on a lock with blowtorch and dead blow hammer. 2 min and we were in.

Pro tip

Buying a pick set just to learn a new, maybe useful skill? $50 and much fun

Teaching your secretary how to pick locks on filing cabinets and so forth so she can do parts of her job more effectively? Now they are worth their weight in gold.

And as soon as I get my new drill mill... bump keys!

IBM fired me because I'm not a millennial, says axed cloud sales star in age discrim court row

Best mentor ever!

Regarding the ability of an older employee to differentiate between 15yr old bad ideas on a second bounce vs the real deal...

Very early in my career I was taken under wing by a rather senior gentleman. 40 yrs of industrial experience after his already successful academic life, and I got the deal of a lifetime:

I went to see him to ask for advice on what I thought was a great idea and he barks 'Bad idea! already been tried. 1970s. Failed because of... here is the file...' He had dozens of cabinets and safes. He says, 'Hey! Not all the crap we tried and failed at over the decades was necessarily doomed. Im going to give you a stack of decent ideas to try. If they work, they're yours. If they don't work - blame me and run like hell; they think I'm senile anyways.'

And so my career was launched with a series of solid hits, mainly recycled good ideas that lacked proper execution or were beyond the contemporary technology. Tried to give Doc the credit, include Docs name on the papers and awards, etc, but he would always vehemently refuse saying "remember, keep the good ones for yourselves and blame me for the crap that fails. I'm too old to care and I'm out of here soon anyways..." Never did leave though, passed away quietly but not before being a work and life mentor to dozens of people.

If I could just be a quarter of the man and mentor to the next generation of hires... my karma balance would be a lot healthier.

When we discard our elders for some elusive "efficiency" what are we really doing?

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

Re: Label, Label Label

Saw KOME sticker on a large ETM Electromatic transmitter power supply in Indiana, circa 2001.

Speaking of which, I lived in Indiana in the early 90s and the police give out these public service announcement bumper stickers showing a seat belted stick man and the words "Indiana - buckled up for life" we would mod with razors so they would read "Indiana - f...cked up for life" Bonus points if the stick man was manipulated into an appropriate posture to receive...

Re: Label, Label Label

Good times! Probably as much fun as taking a razor blade, a stack of new bumper stickers, and then modifying the boss' 'US Navy Retired' bumper sticker to read 'US Navy Retarded'

Label, label, label?

Your $30 label maker is your friend, but ensure that you Trust But Verify.

War story- worked in lab with very good electrical lock out/tag out discipline. All of the 480VAC boxes that had more than one source of input power were clearly labeled. Except of course for the one I reached my hand into. In the aftermath I had a shattered forearm, a heart beating faster than a hummingbird on meth, and a lot of DNA evidence spattered everywhere.

I got lazy and didn't bother to use meter or chicken stick to check the box. Just because a label {is | is not} present...

Feds charge Man after FCC boss Ajit Pai's kids get death threat over net neutrality axe vote

Not sure why Pai wouldn't press charges...

...yeah, Pai's a prick. But does that justify threats against his family? Does it take away from his right to seek legal remedies - bearing in mind that its the legal system that will provide the adult supervision needed to ensure a just sanction? The tone of the article suggests that because he's a prick he needs to just suck it up.

I've definitely been insulted in my time and an apology... or better yet a pint... and we are good to go. But threatening assault? We have moved beyond a pint and a handshake, my friend.

Threaten my kids? Be happy and feel genuinely fortunate if you're arrested. I respect human life but I grade on a curve, and there are a lot of abandoned mine shafts nearby... None of my mates will see a thing.

Pi-lovers? There are two fresh OSes for your tiny computers to gobble

Thanks for the tip!

Small, no systemd... A pint, sirs, for a good find?

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

East/West coast culture

My dad worked for Westinghouse at the time it was purchased by Northrop Grumman. His team flew to the west coast to meet with new collaborators, all of his team wearing normal east coast business attire: suits. Uncomfortable meeting when half the group was suited and the rest pretty much ready to surf.

Next meeting was is DC and the left coasties all looked uncomfortable in their new, never used, off-the-rack suits and the easterners kept looking down at their new polos because it felt weird to wear ID badges with no tie.

Finally someone said "Ok, lets meet in the middle... khakis and polos or button down, no tie unless meeting with a customer..."

Foot lose: Idiot perv's shoe-mounted upskirt vid camera explodes

Is it too early to ask....

...who "foots" the bill for his medical care?

Drug cops stopped techie's upgrade to question him for hours. About everything

Re: Pretty sure some other bloke is having a bad day...

In US service the man stuck with this duty is called the "meat gazer".