Posts by SuperGeek

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

Re: Fraudulent too...

And modern crowdfunding isn't much much worse?

FTC bans 'brazen' stalkerware maker SpyFone, orders data deletion, alerts to victims

Zuck...

Why do all spying, scumbag arsehole's names start with Zucker?

Notice a pattern?

Cloud load balancer snafu leads to 3D printer user printing on a stranger's kit

"I'm thinking of a scenario where a Custom Adult Toy maker sends a design to a 3D printer, only it's someone ELSE's printer, maybe at a school. That'd TRULY be a "cock up".

And a dil-DOH! moment for Homer!!

See that last line in the access list? Yeah, that means you don't have an access list

Re: For the avoidance of doubt

"I just want to say it wasn't me.

Will."

Then when the proverbial shit hits the fan you'll hear "Fire at Will!"

"Will didn't do it!"

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Don't forget vehicle manufacturers such as Deere and Vauxhall. Deere don't want you tweaking ECU's because, well copyright code. Vauxhall don't want you replacing your own control units or vehicle configuration (adding cruise control or extra speakers etc) because of top secret VCI codes you need to do it to program the modules to "see" the added hardware.

We can't believe people use browsers to manage their passwords, says maker of password management tools

Re: password managers

"sharing your info with unwanted third pasties, such as"

Hollands? Greggs? Yummy, make my "pasties" a meat potato, and cheese & onion!

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

Re: Some things that would help the situation

@AndrueC "That would be shocking :)"

Add it to the list of "current" affairs "amp"lifying life ;)

OK, OK, I'll get my coat. Mines the one with the multimeter in the pocket.

Scam-baiting YouTube channel Tech Support Scams taken offline by tech support scam

Hehe

Hunter...becomes...the HUNTED!

SSD belonging to Euro-cloud Scaleway was stolen from back of a truck, then turned up on YouTube

Is everyone forgetting..

It was unencrypted? Why??!??

Age discrimination case against IBM leaks emails, docs via bad redaction

Re: The old tricks

@RegGuy1: Indeed. I'm 36 and as well as my employer paying in, and me paying for both my employer job and my business, I'm also putting £15 a week into my pot from earnings off my own back.

I'll thank myself when I retire, hopefully. Young whippersnappers, don't leave it too late! Especially with the state of State pensions in the UK (Ha, see what I did there?)

I'll get my coat....

BOFH: Oh for Pete’s sake. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself

Re: Idiot-Sensitive Glasses

".... I have not one but the 3 treat detecting cats."

Would they be Dreamies detector cats? My cat keeps breaking the catflap by cat-ramming his way through it before the solenoid opens it!

Apple's iPad Pro on a stick, um, we mean M1 iMac scores 2 out of 10 for repairability

Re: Recycling is now criminal

"Seriously, should you fish one of these repairable devices out of the skip before it gets rained on, you can be prosecuted. I think for theft, as the recycling company is on a bonus to meet their WEEE targets.

Our local tip has a sign warning of such."

Not always. I regularly salvage stuff from my local SUEZ owned tip, and as long as you ask permission from managers they will often allow you to take stuff, even buy it if you think it has value. Made a ton of money this way from washing machines, TV's, computers etc

Hard cheese: Stilton snap shared via EncroChat leads to drug dealer's downfall

Re: Hard cheese

Brie-liant work. All for the "grater" good!

UK data regulator fines American Express up to 0.021p per email after opted-out folk spammed 4.1 million times

Missing out?

"The bank told its customers: "We feel that Card Members would be at a disadvantage if they were not aware of these campaigns and promotional periods.""

So you're missing out having to spend £500 to get £50? Heh. Cloud cuckoo marketing again!

Spend £40 in store and get 5p off a litre of fuel!

ASUS baffles customer by telling them thermal pad thickness is proprietary

"I can clean a CPU with a bit of bogroll and then apply a bit of paste."

Not to be pedantic but you shouldn't use bogroll because of the dusty lint it leaves behind. Forms bubbles in the paste. Source: Experience :)

I use wet wipes very carefully, followed by isopropyl alcohol.

Unihertz Titan Pocket: Like asking Mum for a BlackBerry and she tells you 'but we've got a BlackBerry at home'

Re: New Blackberry phone coming soon

"Made by an American company (Onward Mobility)"

Sounds more like a company that makes powerchairs and powered mobility scooters for disabled people than a tech company :)

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

Re: Get your tin foil hat on!

Ask Chuck McGill, maybe he can get you one!

IBM says it's built the world's first 2nm semiconductor chips

Re: Sounds like it is time for a new standard

Thank you flea much for the best laugh I've had in a while! :)

UK Court of Appeal rules Tiny Computers' legal remains can sue Micron and Infineon over 2002 DRAM price-fixing cartel

Granville, hmmm..

G..G..Granville, fetch a cloth!

Does the boss want those 2 hours of your free time back? A study says fighting through crowds to office each day hurts productivity

Tap the downvote icon again it should go back to 0 IIRC

Welcome to the world.....

BOFH!BOFH!BOFH!

"Now a paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied Psychology may be riding to the rescue of travel-shy people everywhere. Sure, it states the bleeding obvious, but it might provide an opportunity to blind your dullard boss with science."

I sense another BOFH episode on the merits of home working.....

How not to apply for a new job: Apply for it on a job site

Magic Roundabout

Applying for jobs is sometimes like navigating the Magic Roundabout. You forget which roundabout you started on, and what was that exit I needed again? Second? Nope, I'm back on the first roundabout!

When all that is needed is a simple junction.....

Reg man 0: Japanese electronic toilet 1

Cigar clipper

Not going to stop laughing at that for a while! I'll never look at cigars the same way again!

No, no, let's hear this out, says judge waving away Apple's attempt to kill MacBook Pro Flexgate lawsuit

In all my years of repairing laptops, I have never had a repair in that was due to the backlight supply cable. The lamps wearing out, and the power rail to them, yes. Apple have set a new low, but then it's planned obsolescence.

I wonder how long it'll be before another class action over the way heat is vented AT the screen, causing screen bleed on some models is launched? My Dell G3 copies this but I've undervolted the CPU to lower temps. Why everyone copies Apple's crap design is beyond me.

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

Re: Where’s the effing handbrake!?

"If the users had called to say "I can't find the brightness control" that would have been a different matter. And likely resolvable with a google for the monitor's manual, over the phone."

Back in those days? Googling a manual? Downloading a PDF over 33k/56k would have taken years! I doubt they had even HTML versions back then.

While truly self-driving cars are surely just around the corner, for now here's an AI early-warning system for your semi-autonomous ride

Re: And the purpose of self-driving cars is..?

"There is a solid use case for self driving cars."

No. If an old person cannot drive manually how do you expect them to be able to take over control of an autonomous car when it hiccups?

OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting

Re: Serious question

"you'd want to boot up that server when you can and recover any useful information off of it or at least zero it to ensure you are covered for GDPR"

Run it through an industrial shredder, that will get rid of the server and data securely! Om nom nom! Crunch!

"Your data is very important to us."

All your data is belong to us, more like, in this day and age of incomprehensible T&C's.

Re: MTBF

"I would think the only way to refurbish smoke exposed electronics would be a bath in some inert cleaning agent."

A bath in contact cleaner, or isopropyl alcohol may work, they both evaporate quickly. You just need to watch out for certain plastics with IPA, as it can damage them.

Re: Worth saying again......

It's the same with backups to HDD. People use just one drive, instead of double cloning.......

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

Re: the one on the telly thing?

"My wife found two colleagues puzzled that the LED on the screen was lit, but waggling the mouse didn't cause anything to happen. She had to point out that this was a laptop docking station, and you needed to attach a laptop....."

And turn it on! Don't forget some people won't even do that! Baby steps FTW!

UK prime minister Boris Johnson reluctant to reveal his involvement in the OneWeb deal

Re: Be kind to Boris

"but I thought that it would be much better to head to the toilet and sit down for half an hour."

Different kind of rocket science?

Free Software Foundation urged to free itself of Richard Stallman by hundreds of developers and techies

Re: Oh how the woke wimper

Stallman? Is that you???

Thousands of taxpayers' personal details potentially exposed online through councils' debt-chasing texts

Re: Seriously indifferent

"When really they mean they don't give a shit, never have and never will. Except of course when it comes to the actions of others."

No, except of course when it comes to the aftermath of being fined. They then realise how serious it was.

Tech team trapped in data centre as hypoxic gas flooded in. Again

I can imagine. Smoke being sucked into filters of drives only gets filtered till the filter clogs then the drive suffocates and the head crashes due to loss of air pressure in the drive.

Intel CPU interconnects can be exploited by malware to leak encryption keys and other info, academic study finds

Re: I am really weird

"The exploits rely on you being able to run your own code on the machine. Xboxes & PS5s don't tend to allow this"

Xboxes and PS5's use AMD chips, whether these suffer the same we don't know. And, Xbox One X and Series X has a Developer Mode, so you could potentially run your own code using that. I'm not an expert on it though, just a possibility,

Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?

"He found an open window (the glass variation), an opened server, and all the RAM in the server had gone missing."

Literally a RAM raid! :)

Linux Mint users in hot water for being slow with security updates, running old versions

Re: Solve the Nvida problem and I'll be on board

I have a weird issue on my Precision M6600 where the Quadro 3000 locks up on Remote Desktop. Never been fixed. It isn't hardware either as it was a new card. The Radeon 6870 equivalent doesn't do it. Just a pain doing GPU swaps on these as the palmrest has to come off!

The wastepaper basket is on the other side of the office – that must be why they put all these slots in the computer

Re: The human mind is a frightening thing

Young Ones, again on the train

Vivian: Do not lean out of the window? I wonder why??

Precedes to stick head out of window and it gets lopped off!

Classic example!

We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important

It sounds like the contacts in the plugboard were not making contact properly? Unplugging them was jiggling the connection. The leaf connectors in the board were likely burnt/worn.

I have one here that occasionally crackles. Dismantling it I sanded all the contacts with wire wool, problem solved!

The laptop you bought in 2020 may stop you buying a car in 2021: Chips are going short

Re: Stop me from buying a car? Probably not.

"Happy to get some more counterexamples of useful in-car systems..."

Traction control (TCS) and stability control (SCS, other acronyms are used between manufacturers) are two more..

CD Projekt Red 'EPICALLY pwned': Cyberpunk 2077 dev publishes ransom note after company systems encrypted

Release the source

And let someone who actually knows how to develop a game fix the thing!

CP 2077 stinks as much as CD Project's bad PC port of Saints Row 2, which never got fixed properly. They still haven't learnt.

Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer, says sheriff

Re: For the love of the wee man

You make it sound like people in charge are heroes, they're not! It's the tech guys like me who have to fix their cockups that are!

ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

Re: Red pointy thing

"It obviously never took off."

No but with its rotation you could say it had a good turnaround! :)

How do you save an ailing sales pitch? Just burn down the client's office with their own whiteboard

"the lid failed so the steam detector couln't work"

Steam detector? You mean bi-metallic switch/disc? :) Invented by John Crawshaw Taylor. How do I know? He's a family friend :)

Re: Opps

"Once witnessed a junior tech tasked with recovering data off a harddrive blow it up. I'd never realised that a floppy power cable could plug in to the jumper (master/slave) pins. The client was told the harddrive had died with the PC :)"

Ah, I remember the drives where the jumpers didn't have plastic surrounding them.... :)

What happens when the internet realizes the stock market is basically a casino? They go shopping at the Mall

@NomadUK: 'Lose'. Not 'loose'. 'Lose'. Christ.

Be nice, come on now. Anyone can mess up a keystroke and tap twice. Chiclet keys are terrible, ya know. And they're everywhere (thanks, crApple!). And unresponsive (thanks, again, crApple!). My Dell G3 1779 here's looking at you! Great for gaming with a pad but the keyboard's god awful!

The Fat iPhone, 11 years on: The iPad's over a decade old and we're still not sure what it's for

Re: Phone for the living room

Well said. It takes a big (wo)man to admit his/her mistakes, and an even bigger one to correct them openly. Respect to you. We've all been daft in our younger years. Just that most don't admit it. :)

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

Definitely not Euro 6 compliant!