Posts by KittenHuffer

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

And that's why I drive around in a 20 year old car ..... to offset the fact that it has a 3.2 litre V6 engine!!!!

We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. An exoplanet building its own moons

That's no ....

.... moon!

Mountains on neutron stars are not even a millimetre tall due to extreme gravity

Re: Misnomer

Please put down the spliff and take three paces backward.

If you wish to challenge the "Light speed is a constant" theory (aka general relativity) please do more than just waffle on. Please explain how your new theory explains everything that the current theory does, something that the current theory doesn't, and then propose an experiment that can tell which of the theories is least wrong.

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-----------> The closest to a "WTF are you smokin'?" icon!

Boffins find an 'actionable clock' hiding in your blood, ticking away to your death

Re: So? What's his secret?

Taken rectally!!!!

I considered this but decided it was too much of a pain in the ass!

Twitter U-turns after conferring society's highest honor – a blue check mark – on very obvious bot accounts

Re: World Bollard Association

What a load of Bollards!

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Did he shoot out of his chair, or just ejaculate (second meaning) in surprise, at realising that he was no longer solo in his game of 'solitaire'?

The world is chaos but my Zoom background is control-freak perfection

Re: I've never met Olympus ....

In that case please meet Mons and Joke!

Re: Office background

The first time I had to visit the orifice during lockdown I did just that! Took a photo from the spot on my desk where the lappy camera would be located, and uploaded it to use as a backdrop.

As long as I didn't move too much it was good enough to fool a few people into thinking that I was actually back in the orifice rather than WFH.

The best was joining a bleating to have one person, who was in the orifice, do a double take where you saw them looking at their screen, then looking across to my desk expecting to see me, and then back again with a really confused look.

------------> Actually got them to say this in the Teams bleating!!!

I've never met Olympus ....

.... but I bet her Mons are spectacular!

----------> Other spectacular Mons are available!

BOFH: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can listen to you ... It keeps me stable for days

Re: Box Tickers Anonymous United .......

I thought they all said that .... just in Legalese!

Re: Unlike the £1 coin...

1. Try to pick up the coin

2. Kick the coin breaking the glue, and sent it shooting off in front of you

3. Profit!

Where's the boss? Ah right, thorough deep-dive audit. On the boardroom table. Gotcha

I'm sure .....

..... that they were just testing how the bank handled out-of-hours deposits!

-----------> Known for handling out-of-hours deposits!

Not a baaa-d idea: Embracing the eunuch lifestyle slows ageing – for sheep anyway

Re: What a ba-aa-aa-ad article!

Let's do what one shepherd said to the other shepherd ..... and get the flock out of here!

The splitting image: Sufferer of hurty wrist pain? Logitech's K860 a potential answer

Re: keyboard layouts

Go looking!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Keyboard-Company-KBC-3504-Left-Handed/dp/B000V5GQ8O/ref=sr_1_16?keywords=keyboard+left

International law enforcement op nukes Russian-language DoubleVPN service allegedly favoured by cybercriminals

Re: I use two VPNs ....

But I just can't resist the Ginger ones! They really mess you up!

I use two VPNs ....

.... both of them using ROT13 encryption!

I have to cos they're always watching me! ---------->

Updating in production, like a boss

Re: The random expiry time

I think it's more the case that the business class traveller is more able to step off the plane and get right to w**k.

If you been corralled with the cattle class on a long (12+ hours) flight then you need 12-24 hours to get your sh*t together before you're capable of w**king again.

Re: BOFH torpedoes the test environment

He didn't torpedo it .... he just you informed you that there was a lack of support for your new server!

What job title would YOU want carved on your gravestone? 'Beloved father, Slayer of Dragons, Register of Domains'

Re: "Amazing Stunts with Grapefruit"

I wasn't pointing out an error, I had seen the mistyped OCP and was making a Robocop joke. I hadn't even spotted the mistake.

Someone else pointed out the error and while it was being fixed my OCP comment was probably rejected as it was no longer relevant. And since then I've been in commentard hell!

Re: "Amazing Stunts with Grapefruit"

After 30 months without a single rejected comment I've suddenly had 3 rejected in the last 7 days. The first was rejected when I made an OCP joke, unfortunately the author had mistyped OPC, and when they corrected that they must have rejected my comment.

Since then every comment has to wait for moderation, and another 2 have been rejected, seemingly when they got stuck in moderation.

I wonder what I have to do to get out of this moderation loop!

"Amazing Stunts with Grapefruit"

I prefer my stunts to be cunning! Especially where grapefruit are concerned!

----------> Need I say more?!?

.

All of my posts keep going getting flagged for moderation, and some aren't even appearing after they've been moderated.

Guess I'll just have to stop bothering to comment.

Facebook, academics think they've cracked spotting deepfakes by spotting how they're generated

The war has begun!

What will happen now is that the deepfakers will introduce something like a post-processing layer to obfuscate the artifacts that this technique is picking up on.

As soon as you develop a deepfake detector the deepfakers will start working on better deepfakes.

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And what do I have to do to stop all my posts going in for moderation?

Stob treks back across the decades to review the greatest TV sci-fi in the light of recent experience

The BOFH only has one throne .... and I doubt if Verity wishes to claim that!

Intrepid Change.org user launches petition to make Jeff Bezos' space trip one-way

Re: poor phrasing ?

I am a oblate spheroid (semi-)denier!

If you take the Earth and shrink it down to the size of a regulation pool ball then for 'roundness' it would be within the manufacturing limits of a regulation pool ball. Though not smoothness.

https://ourplnt.com/earth-smooth-billiard-ball/

So you could use the Earth in a game of planetary pool!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hole_(Red_Dwarf)

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Let me put it another way....

When you get in your car and drive do you account for the fact that travelling at a different velocity and/or changing altitude (driving up a hill) will alter the rate at which time passes for you?

So why do people get all 'oblate spheroid' when someone says that the Earth is round (when they actually mean sphere), yet don't start waffling about relativity and time dilation when everyone agrees on what time it is?

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

Re: Fighting thermostats

I remember my first server room. You needed to wrap up like Kenny McKormick to go in there.

It turned out that the thermostat was set low enough (16 centigrade IIRC) that the A/C unit could never actually draw down to that temperature. So it would run continually (24/7) and fail after about 6 weeks. The second unit would kick in and during its six weeks the first one would get fixed. Repeat - ad nauseam!

When I figured out what was happening I slowly turned the thermostat up until the A/Cs could handle the load but the room was still easily cool enough. And the A/C failures mysteriously stopped.

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----------> The one time that both units failed at the same time!

Mounties messed up by using Clearview AI, says Canadian Privacy Commissioner

McDonald's AI drive-thru bot accused of breaking biometrics privacy law

Re: Your order.

And also something almost, but not quite entirely unlike tea!

An anti-drone system that sneezes targets to death? Would that be a DARPA project? You betcha

I for one .....

..... welcome our new flying, snot sneezing, robotic overlords!

'Vast majority of people' are onside with a data grab they know next to nothing about, reckons UK health secretary

Re: Not that I trust Cummings,

Upvote for the Freudian slip!

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-----------------> Cos she knows all about a stopped cock!

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

Re: Mother knows best

I believe (feel free to correct me) that the one on the left is IR, but the one on the right is RF or Bluetooth (or something that is not IR).

We bought a Samsung 'The Frame', and the remote with all the buttons worked very intermittently. This was reported to Samsung, and they sent a replacement ..... which was just as intermittent. Then I found that by moving the sound bar so that the lower edge of the screen could be seen the IR remote would suddenly start working fine.

Anyway the 'simplified' remote has never failed to work, and since we had to buy a Humax cos the Samsung DVR capability sucks the lack of buttons on the remote hasn't been much of an issue.

The server is down, money is not being made, and you want me to fix what?

Re: Tea

Are you ISO 3013 certified?

Contract killer: Certified PDFs can be secretly tampered with during the signing process, boffins find

I went to look at the PDF .....

..... but it had been tampered with!

Big red buttons and very bad language: A primer for life in the IT world

Re: Red Button

The photo was taken within the confines of Portsmouth Harbour. The horizon to the left would be part of Gosport, and the horizon to the right part of Portchester.

WFH I'm currently sat in my 'office' and looking out of the window I have a view over where that photo was taken.

Re: Red Button

I've just realised that I can see my house in the background ..... or at least I would be able to if it weren't for the scruffy plank leaning against the console!

Re: Today's misreading

On second reading I thought it would have been more fun as the customer stimulation department!

This department would dispense hookers, coke and booze right up to the moment the customer has signed the (binding) contract.

And of course the C-suite inmates would ensure that they were the ones to do the performance reviews for this department!

------------> HC&B? Who else!

Re: Today's misreading

My first read was that it was the customer that was being simulated!!!!

I figured they must be using fuzzy logic to the handle the dithering and constant changes to requirements. But then realised that a couple of PDPs would be capable of simulating the perceived IQ of the average customer quite comfortably.

The Home Office will need to overturn a long legacy of failure to achieve ambition of all-digital border by 2025

Just politics .... again!

By the time 2025 comes around the current gum'nt will no loger be in power ..... so they'll be able to blame the late/lack of delivery on the new gum'nt coming in.

How much would you pay me to develop a COVID tracking app that actually works? Ah, thought so: nothing

Re: Tea....

Part of my email signature at w**k states that I'm ISO 3103 certified!

And in the last 2 years nobody has questioned, queried or laughed about it!

---------> post 'launch' testing of my Friday tea!

New IETF draft reveals Egyptians invented pyramids to sharpen razor blades

Re: Patent 91304

That was ALL of them wasn't it?

Miscreants started scanning for Exchange Hafnium vulns five minutes after Microsoft told world about zero-days

Hobson's choice then!

Either patch fast and then have your systems go down cos the supplier has burped out a bad patch.

Or test the patches to make sure they don't bork your system .... only for the black hats to compromise your system before you're ready to apply that patch.

The future is now, old man: Let the young guns show how to properly cock things up

Re: Just move some disks...

I think he'd probably have struggled with these particular ones since he did say they were 'solid state disks'! I believe the 'walking' hard drive was only possible with the spinning rust versions.

--------> This one needs multiple Stop! Go! Stop! Go! icons.

Oops, says Manchester City Council after thousands of number plates exposed in parking ticket spreadsheet

Not quite as bad as the US of A though. Where the colo(u)r of your green will allow you to obtain the location of a mobile phone.

43 years and 14 billion miles later, Voyager 1 still crunching data to reveal secrets of the interstellar medium

Re: Often overlooked

I believe the 'too early' was referring to it being too early to correct the sobriety issue!

But then the sun is always over the yardarm somewhere!

48 ways you can avoid file-scrambling, data-stealing miscreants – or so says the Ransomware Task Force

Re: RTF?

I know the greybeards amongst us will get that one.

For millenials we'd have to backronym to JFGI before they get that one.

What I want ....

.... is software on my NAS that keeps each version of a file for a set (config) amount of time, and if all storage space fills up then it stops accepting updates.

That way if a member of the family gets an infection then it should be relatively easy to recover. As a previous poster noted, just rebuild the infected machine, and set the NAS data back to the unencrypted copy.

Brit MPs and campaigners come together to oppose COVID status certificates as 'divisive and discriminatory'

Re: Not "divisive and discriminatory", but essential

I thought that in the US it was a legal requirement for you to have your license, registration and proof of insurance with you when you were driving.

In the UK that is not the case.

A trip to the dole queue: CEO of $2bn Bay Area tech biz says he was fired for taking LSD before company meeting

Re: Stoned web design

I (sort of) remember in my youth partaking of 'drunken' coding on many an occasion.

Once in a while I'd get up in the morning, review my code, and realise that I'd never have thought of that way of solving that problem.

But most of the time I'd get up, review my code, and realise what I'd be spending the morning rewriting!

Words to strike fear into admins' hearts: One in five workers consider themselves 'digital experts' these days

To err is human ....

.... to really fsck it up you have to be a 'digital expert'!

Just glad that I'm no longer in the 1st/2nd/3rd line support chain.

Re: Buried the lede

I have met the enemy 'digital experts' and most of them are recipients of the Dunning-Kruger award! In fact I’ve started more than one new job only to find that the first six months involves clearing up the fsck ups that they’ve put in place!

Sucks to be you, any aliens living anywhere near Proxima Centauri's record-smashing solar flare

Re: Proxima Centauri is a glimpse of our own future

I'm afraid it's all over for life on Earth looooong before our Sun leaves the mainstream and becomes a Red Giant, if the Earth remains in its present orbit.

Stars in the mainstream slowly become more luminous (brighter), and this causes the Goldilocks zone (between the frost line and the soot line) to migrate outward during the life of the star. The Earth should cross the soot line (where all water boils away) in less than a billion years.

So, during the next billion years mankind (or whatever comes after us) needs to figure out how to move the Earth to a higher orbit, or to launch a giant space wig to shield us from some of the sunlight!