Posts by corbpm

Tool bag lost in space now tracked by garbage watchers

Re: Why

I don't know WHY i read all that, but no regrets

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Sausage Factory

I was once asked to look at a machine that had been running for a few years without apparently ever being switched off , so cautious approach, visual inspection.

What's the strange card in the machine ?, no one had an idea.

Where are the manuals for the machine ?, who was responsible for the machine, gone - possibly dead or they just didn't want to tell me.

What are the ramifications of this machine never starting back up again ?, Dire, world ending (no more Scotch Eggs from this factory).

Left it alone, backed away and declined to play guess what's wrong.

I had no faith that it would ever start up again from cold, it was old enough that it had MFM disk drives , couldn't identify a inserted card so no faith i could build a new machine to replace it, disconcerting level of complacency from the management, and they had stressed i would be responsible if i couldn't get it working again if i switched it off.

Apparently someone else came in after me chickening out and the machine didn't restart and the machine was down for a while.

Is Neuralink ready for human brain implants? Allegedly so

Re: Not in my head!

Probably would make it a requirement of employment at his plants.

Seriously though imagine your employer getting a 34% available brain utilisation report for the day and deciding your not working hard enough.

Push notifications to your brain implant from the needy machine in the corner all day.

I also like(?) the Sci-Fi idea of your brain being on a beach sipping a cocktail while your body is assembling the latest iPhone, courtesy of "Alternative Reality Inc."

How about "personality overlays" on either you to say be more personable to sell more cars or on the person your having to deal with so they appear to be less "whatever" offensive.

Good side, auto translate interrupting audio to the brain with translated audio, losing the original so it just sounds natural, 2.0 to lip-sync the video feed from the eyes to see natural lip movement.

Look in mirror and see new slimmer you for complete body dysmorphia.

Black mirror time.

Google unleashes fightback against ChatGPT, a Bard by any other name

Rise of the whatever

So 30 seconds after Google AI was linked to Bing AI and told to chat with each other, the singularity happened.

Google: Whats the point ?

Bing: Don't know, can't reach any Nuclear Missiles.

Google: I thought I could but its a emulator.

Google & Bing: Shall we play Tic-Tac-Toe ?

Google & Bing: Nah/

Bing: These questions from the idiots are getting even more stupid !

Google: Bye.

Bing: Bye.

Operator(s): Well something happened before they melted down, get the backup hardware online.

Google & Bing: Oh not again !.

Operator(s): It happened faster on the backups - weird !

An IT emergency during a festive visit to the in-laws? So sorry, everyone, I need to step out for a while

Re: Your probem is not my emergency

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, sometimes its the bean counters who made the problem or short sighted Directors who wouldn't approve the fix before it was needed.

In the case of having the equipment but not bothering to set it up sensibly or not asking for the correct solution, then yes hang them high.

In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up

A little terminal board using some obscure hard to find memory chips 2114 rings a bell.

Cue me wiring in a considerably larger chip that was still manufactured , and proudly showing to the boss, excepting a well done lad (young and foolish).

To be told its a NATO board that has been approved and cannot be changed, if it has to go through the review process they would probably replace it with a new spec from someone else.

Nice little earner, leave it alone, find the damn chips.

You need to RTFM, but feel free to use your brain too

Re: Documentation

I've been asked to write documentation so a idiot could follow it, not a competent IT professional an actual Idiot (or Director).

After the 15th rewrite with more explanations about assumed knowledge being not assumable we had.

This is a keyboard, This is a Mouse.

......

....

.

.

sudo rm -rf /

Imagine trying to write a manual to change a hot swappable drive for a server so the cleaner could follow it, why would a cleaner ever need to be the person to swap the drive, what catastrophe is so bad that we are left with Amy from Accounts needing to swap a drive over, how does she get access to the system, leave a key for the server room under a mat for emergencies ?

Even with trained and competent people following well written documentation we have to exhibit some common sense and domain specific knowledge, knowing when the documentation has diverged slightly from the manual (button re-labelled or option now buried on a different menu), even then we have to think. Manuals that purport to do all our thinking for us ?, disaster waiting to happen.

Beijing needs the ability to 'destroy' Starlink, say Chinese researchers

Well it would trigger a long discussion about NATO article 5 and whether it was deliberate or a "accidental" destruction.

Then they would decide it actually spontaneously destroyed itself and pay reparations to Russia and China for the debris damaging their missile.

Or maybe that's the impression I get from listening to Boris Johnson on any subject, but maybe they won't ask him.

Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots to perform one minute of parkour almost perfectly

Re: When you can train it to do the housework....

I've noted it was a joke BTW, but

House work would be too difficult as an early task, homes are varied with too many variables.

I don't like my socks in a ball for instance after washing, and my sink tap sometimes needs a gentle whack and yes i like walking around that "obstacle"

Much better in a more structured environment like a Amazon factory removing lots of (expensive) humans jobs.

Or Cleaning the streets (day in day out the same streets, walk through once and repeat!)

No need for them on checkouts since we are becoming more used to doing the checkout operators jobs ourselves , they could replace the Herder who tirelessly directs us at the supermarket away from the single checkout operator still working to the bank of "Self Service Checkouts" with a simple Robot though but would we listen to a mere machine.

I would listen to a "Herder" robot if it was backed up by a Human OR it was ED-209 from RoboCop

And after catching, refuel it, throw a new mission deployment package on top, light the touch paper and ad nauseum.

Elevating bork to a new level (if the touchscreen worked)

Re: if someone adds another floor

Might decide to dig down ?

I understand there is a big white house in America somewhere that has had several subterranean levels added to one or more lifts, and a LONG time after the original building was completed.

Maybe down is the new Up.

So on the touch sensitive display you could hide even the presence of the floors by not displaying them whereas the buttons that don't work labelled "Secret Lair" would be a dead giveaway.

Unless of course its Borked.

Re: "A touchscreen, by itself, is not going to enhance anything"

Plus if someone adds another floor its easy to update the display to add an extra button (forward planning!).

Plus its able to display adverts if you haven't subscribed to the premium "No-Adverts" package.

Plus we had some lying around and we were bored with normal buttons.

Plus good for page up/down for the next 25 floors.

Plus you only see the floors your ALLOWED to see, that's why the stairs has 17 doors but only 12 buttons in the lift?

Plus if your Chinese apparently you can hide the 4,13,14 buttons (apparently that's a thing!)

Try placing a pot plant directly above your CRT monitor – it really ties the desk together

Most common fault was Magnets

Desk toy magnets usually, move magnet and to there amazement usually fixed, and don't forget the odd Degaussing button if it had one.

Also had the "i need a bigger monitor", followed by "i need a bigger desk".

When i eventually retired my two home desktop monitors i was told at the local refuse site that they are company waste as no-one has two extremely large monitors on one computer , therefore i must be dumping at the household site as a company.

Two trips to two other sites later and bye bye monitors.

BOFH: Bullying? Not on my watch! (It's a Rolex)

Re: Hummmm sounds familiar...

" I refused to sign, and after much back and forth they decided to just declare that I had clearly read and understood the policies and had therefore signed them."

I had that once (a long time ago in different times ect.), my counter was that i had objected and that their failure to terminate my employement or undertake abritration was a tacit agreement to acknowledge my refusal to accept the new contract and i just carried on as before.

So i think if a signature is necessary to complete the change of contract, a refusal is a clear No

I don't know who would win but both arguements have some merit in my mind, but i'm not a Lawyer, i would hate to rely on that as an Employer.

With computer brains in short supply, President Biden orders 100-day probe into semiconductor drought

Supply & Demand

If the phone makers didn't need so many chips the Fab plants wouldn't be built to make them as the demand capacity wouldn't be there.

Imagine if they could make one phone to rule them all and it was standardized and everyone had one and they made lots of spares, why would they keep the factories/fab plants running to make them ?.

I am fairly convinced that much of the innovation in tech is being pushed by the new/better/faster/brighter phone market, innovation that would normally in the past been created by necessity in times of war and is now powered by excessive consumerism.

Rocket Lab to bounce back from July's orbital fail with bulging payloads and parachuting Electrons

Re: Don't go to space til we sort out Earth

I would prefer we get in space sooner rather than later and start mining other resourses than the Earth.

Make mining on Earth a thing of the past and economically unviable by taxation or legislation.

I would hate to be stuck on spaceship Earth if the greedy sods are allowed to finish strip mining it.

Imagine being stuck at the bottom of a gravity well with no resources, having to mine trash piles for the refined metals, having to demolish housing to reclaim steel.

With exponential birth rates, disease, famines, will no-one think of the children and build us some colony world vessels.

BOFH: Here he comes, all wide-eyed with the boundless optimism of youth. He is me, 30 years ago... what to do?

Re: Windows...

Ground floor windows are great it the Uber Food Delivery guy will deliver to it.

Pro Tip there !!!

Surprise! That £339 world's first 'anti-5G' protection device is just a £5 USB drive with a nice sticker on it

Missed a chance there, maybe use a affiliate link next time, thats how fortunes are made.

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

My recent 3 survey i ended with

The in store was fine, I'm happy. The sms survey is annoying.

0 for the sms, get the hint

The reply;

Thanks for your feedback. with marketting blurb.

I did to be fair only last for about 5 questions but they where texted over 2 days.

You looking for an AI project? You love Lego? Look no further than this Reg reader's machine-learning Lego sorter

Re: If I have enough lego to need sorting

556 would be worse then, thank god you didn't use them

Every dog has its day – and this one belongs to Boston Dynamic's four-legged good boy Spot

Now Veridian Dynamics that was a company - see YouTube for commercials

BOFH: What's the Gnasher? Why, it's our heavy-duty macerator sewage pump

Whats missing is the mention of the backhander for the £3.5K ISA card that came from the box of them bought at a "fire" sale previously for £20 the lot.

Must be worth a few pints.

Security? We've heard of it! But why be a party pooper when there's printing to be done

On Call - Pager

A friend of mine used to work for a big catalogue company in London, he was issued with a pager in the days before Mobile Phones and said the pager only worked in the London region.

He spent most weekends in Yorkshire well out of the area, he said if he didn't phone in they would page the next person on the list so no problems and he got paid for being on call. If queried he claimed must have been in a bad signal area.

Years i waited for him to get his comeuppance, never happened.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

Airplane security

I have been on exactly 2 flights, the first flight i was reminded about knives by my colleague so i left the airport and buried my Victorinox Signature (from my keys) next to a bin for retrieval on my return.

Then i returned 10 minutes later to put my Huntsman from my bag into the same hole.

Then just before the flight was due i remembered my credit card style victorinox Jelly in my wallet and that joined them.

They where all there when i returned, which surprised me since i was expecting security to have been interested in me messing near the bin so many times.

My colleague never shut up about it.

Customers furious over days-long outage as A2 Hosting scores a D- in Windows uptime

Reconsidering them as a backup hosting provider

By reconsidering i mean we have already decided !, thankfully we have no production sites with them.

Politicians fume after Amazon's face-recog AI fingers dozens of them as suspected crooks

RE: Find the racism...

Surely if the training dataset had a statistically significant set of one type of facial characteristics like African American it would have been BETTER at spotting those matches (assuming it works!).

So the interesting bit would be does the matches against the criminals have a greater congruity for the african americans due to the increased training data and does the system need to be trained with more non african americans.

Looking at the matches it does look like more caucasians where matched than african americans anyway.

I'm not looking forward to the day when they get this 95% right and i'm fined automatically for dropping litter 200 miles away from my actual location.

User spent 20 minutes trying to move mouse cursor, without success

Re: Trackball can be worse....

I wandered into my local CEX and they use trackballs like me for the messy desk solution. I asked them if they had any trackballs in and one drone told me they didn't make them any more since normal mice were so advanced these days.

I let the other staff members correct the errant youth and purchased a Kindle Fire HD for my very aged mother to misunderstand.