Posts by notyetanotherid

The amber glow of bork illuminates Brighton Station

You could try https://int.bahn.de/en. In the past I have found it to have a better grasp of UK train timetables than any UK site.

The Windows Control Panel joins the ranks of the undead

Re: It Would Be Nuts...

... but ... "streamlined experience" ...

The Clacktop: A Thinkpad Yoga with a mechanical keyboard

Re: Not Ian Fleming ... much older

Many of the Biggles books are available on the Internet Archive, but "Once is happenstance" does not seem to appear prior to Goldfinger in the texts available there.

However, "Once is an accident, two a coincidence, and [...] the third time it’s a habit." appeared in the Washington Post in 1926 (https://archive.org/details/per_washington-post_1926-06-22_18268/mode/2up?q=%22Once+is+an+accident%22), so versions of the quotation have certainly existed long before Fleming used it, as indeed the context in Goldfinger alludes to, "Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago:...".

SpaceX asks the FAA: 'Can we launch our rockets again, please?'

Re: Nominal

The trouble is that this use is a horrible bending of language. Nominal exists in many languages (not just French as noted above) and is derived from Latin meaning 'in name', thus "the Chancellor is the nominal head of the university", "I was only charged a nominal fee for the repair", "an AA cell is 1.5v nominal", etc.

With that derivation, "a nominal landing" means it landed in name only, not in reality. Whereas what they are trying to convey is that it performed in close accordance with nominal engineering values. Which is what they should say, rather than torturing the word 'nominal' to mean almost the exactly the opposite of what in means in every other common usage.

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Blame-shifting gone mad

> Beef is derived from the French word for cow, but in English refers to cow meat.

Surely...

"Beef" is derived from bœuf, the French for ox and also for beef, itself derived from the Latin (for ox), bos or bovem.

The French for cow is vache, also derived from Latin (for cow), vacca.

Apple finally adds RCS support after years of mixed messages

Re: SMS better for some?

If you're not using RCS, why not just dump Google Messages full stop and use something like Textra SMS ... and stop phoning home your message data to the mothership, https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/21/google_messages_gdpr/?

Chucking Trump etc off Twitter after Jan 6 provides key data for misinfo experiment

Re: Just a reminder, you know, facts

> Then he gives directions to the jury that they are to find Trump guilty no matter what the evidence.

Since you headed your post "Just a reminder, you know, facts"... for anyone interested, of course, the court transcripts are online and the judge's summing up can be read in full here, https://pdfs.nycourts.gov/PeopleVs.DTrump-71543/transcripts/5-29-2024.pdf

"It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here. It is yours. You are the judges of the facts, and you are responsible for deciding whether the Defendant is guilty or not guilty."

Uncle Sam's had enough of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, sues to end monopoly

Re: Ticket fee...

... and now they are using demand-led pricing too. I recently tried to get tickets for a popular stadium gig that was nearing being sold out, on Ticketmaster identical tickets were nearly twice the price of the venue's preferred ticket agent (before the fees had been added on)

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

Re: Not a good move

see https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2024/05/tax-policy-provider-hides-free-bottle-of-fine-wine-in-small-print/

Took three months before it was claimed!

UniSuper Google Cloud outage caused by an unfortunate series of events

Re: UniSuper

... context is provided by the linked story earlier in the week: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/08/google_cloud_misconfiguration_takes_australian/

First 9front release of the year is called DO NOT INSTALL

Re: shithub

... or perhaps depending on pronunciation of the 't', as Dabbsy suggested: "Pussy, I farted"... https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com/p/pussy-i-farted-what-else-would-you

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Re: Tail wags dog

> I'm sure it had spaces...

No, definitely hyphens, see e.g. https://flic.kr/p/VjZdQz

Microsoft confesses April Windows update breaks some VPN connections

Re: VPN

And why were they only broken "late on April 30"?

Space insurers make record-breaking loss as orbit gets cramped

Re: insurers are generally not stupid

> ... triggered the collapse of Lloyds Insurance?

Wires crossed?

Lloyds of London, the insurance market, did once nearly collapse, but that was back in 1991 following exposure to liabilities over the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster in 1988 and reinsurance of (mainly US) health policies which were paying out asbestosis claims.

Lloyds Bank had to be bailed out in 2008/9 having been strong-armed by the gov into taking over HBOS, which was on the brink of collapse due to risky lending in the UK and a reliance on wholesale money markets where funding dried up after Lehman Brothers collapsed in the US.

Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy due to over exposure to US subprime mortgages and CDOs (mortgage-backed derivative investments); but not really directly related to insurance though.

Or have I missed something?

Leicester streetlights take ransomware attack personally, shine on 24/7

Re: Connect everything!

Round here the pigeons seem to have learned that by roosting on the lamp head covering the photocell, they get free central heating for their pad...

When life gives you Lemon, sack him

Re: Ketamine

> It’s not and never has been a horse tranquilliser. It’s a dissociative anaesthetic.

Surely anaesthetics are just one type of sedative medication, and "sedative" and "tranquiliser/tranquilizer" mean the same thing...?

UK minister tells telcos to share telegraph poles if they can't lay cable underground

Re: I am not a NIMBY

Of course, members of https://www.telegraphpoleappreciationsociety.org/ would be ecstatic at the thought of a new pole being planted in front of their house...

How do you lot feel about Pay or say OK to ads model, asks ICO

Re: Sir Humphrey wrote the survey

>Up to last year, free form submissions on such issues were invited

"You can also respond to the consultation by contacting us at [e-mail]."

Judge orders NSO to cough up Pegasus super-spyware source code

Re: I'm glad

You mean this ruling (where the word continue does not appear at all):

78. The Court considers that, with regard to the situation described above, Israel must, in accordance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

The Israeli Law Professors’ Forum for Democracy (at https://www.lawprofsforum.org/post/pp24-e) notes of the power sharing agreement signed on 23 February 2023, "The agreement is an overt and formal measure that gives validity to claims that Israel’s practices constitute apartheid, which is prohibited under international law."

It was you that equated criticism of actions of the government of the state of Israel with being antisemitic, the inference being that you seem to consider that the government of Israel represents Jewish people or Jewishness. Should we also infer that you would similarly consider criticism of the actions of Hamas to be Islamophobic?

Cops turn LockBit ransomware gang's countdown timers against them

> I was thinking more along the lines of "They don't like it up 'em, Mr Mainwaring, they don't like it up 'em".

Surely that would be "Captain Mainwaring" to a mere Lance Corporal, or more likely "sir"...?

Microsoft Edge ignores user wishes, slurps tabs from Chrome without permission

Re: > I am really not sure if they are totally clueless or totally evil.

Like this?

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

Re: Bog Zech?????

> According to their own figures 45% of their membership earn more than £35,000/year

£35000pa being approximately the UK median annual salary in 2023. With 55% below that median, RMT members are thus relatively low paid.

> No argument that many MPs are overpaid for what they do, but so are train drivers.

> it's the usual question of supply& demand.

You have answered why train drivers are relatively well paid, and it has little to do with their unions. When the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the railways needed to be in the private sector following the dogma that competition would improve services and reduce ticket prices and cost to taxpayers, they (wittingly or unwittingly) created a market for train drivers. The train operating cos would rather poach a qualified driver from another company by paying them more, than to train up new drivers, creating a salary spiral chasing a limited resource.

JAXA releases photo of SLIM lander in lunar faceplant

JAXA on Xitter today: "Communication with SLIM was successfully established last night, and operations resumed!"

Post Office threatened to sue Fujitsu over missing audit data

It is rather worse that 736. That is just those convicted and does not include those who settled the money that it was claimed they owed without it going to trial. Last month on gov.uk was posted this: "The government has today [Tuesday 19 December] announced that circa £138m has so far been paid out to over 2,700 claimants across the three Post Office compensation schemes.".

For the last few years, the PO has had around 11,500 branches so basically the management appears to have been happy to accept that around a quarter of its branches' managers were on the fiddle without, as you noted, anyone seemingly questioning whether there might be an alternative explanation...

Deep Green gets £200M from power supplier to scale waste heat reuse

Re: The lawyers of thermodynamics would like a look at the contract.

> Err, nope. Burning wind remains the determination of cost.

Electricity prices dictated by gas producers who provide less than half of UK electricity

Elon Musk made 1 in 3 Trust and Safety staff ex-X employees, it emerges

You seemingly failed to attribute (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_political_violence_in_Washington,_D.C.) your copy and paste from Wikipedia.

As you will know, having presumably read that article, the stated aims of the 1971 and 1983 bombings were protest at the US bombing of Laos and the US invasion of Grenada respectively, so not really to do with trying to change the result of a popular vote.

But you did conveniently not quote other entries such as this one, etc:

August 19, 2021: A North Carolina man named Floyd Ray Roseberry parked a truck loaded with his attempt at an improvised explosive device near the Supreme Court and Library of Congress. He threatened to detonate his bomb unless Donald Trump was reinstated as president. He also claimed there were other bombs he had placed in the city

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Re: ""the system and licenses are not readily interchangeable or interoperable"

I would suggest starting at this wikipedia page and following the references as necessary.

"International Computers Limited was formed in 1968 as a part of the Industrial Expansion Act of the Wilson Labour Government. ... Upon its creation, the British government held a 10% stake in the company and provided a $32.4 million research-and-development grant spread across four years."

"ICL initially thrived, but relied almost wholly on supplying the UK public sector with computers. ... Until the 1970s launch of the 2900 Series, the UK government had a single-tender preferential purchase agreement wherever ICL could meet the requirements."

"The company had an increasingly close relationship with Fujitsu from the early 1980s, culminating in Fujitsu becoming sole shareholder in 1998. ICL was rebranded as Fujitsu in April 2002."

Enterprising techie took the bumpy road to replacing vintage hardware

Re: Copier Replacement

> Where I'm from they were called Fordigraph machines.

... in the UK the most common brand, to be found in most schools, was Banda.

Generically they are known as spirit duplicators, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator

Hubble science instruments still out after going down 3 times in a week

Why are we sending armed maintenance robots into space?

IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content

Re: Hamas

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-register-uk/

Bias Rating: LEAST BIASED

Factual Reporting: HIGH

Country: United Kingdom

Press Freedom Rank: MOSTLY FREE

Media Type: Website

Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic

MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

> ( ran by an antisemite who once praised the KKK )

[citation needed]

Tesla Cybertruck no-resale clause vanishes faster than a Model S in Ludicrous Mode

Re: Gotta love offroad capabilities in an EV

... given that it needs a wooden ramp to help it get up a curb/kerb ...

https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/170ivaa/cybertruck_struggles_getting_over_a_curb_wooden/?rdt=40722

Meta, YouTube face criminal spying complaints in Ireland

Offence

I know that El Reg has gone all leftpondian, but surely when directly quoting Irish law, it should have left the word "offence" alone, rather than converting it to American?

SpaceX accused of paying less to women and minority engineers

> How does that show that the government "should ban ALL public roads, along with fire services and the US military".

Perchance @CowHorseFrog was being sarcastic? That some US basic services are seemingly okay to be state run, but anyone suggesting healthcare should be is automatically decried as <profanity>socialist</profanity>...

Lyft driver takes off with cat, global search ensues

Re: That's criminal

>[1] Wild? They are *furious*

Surely, "absolutely livid"? [~01:05]

Ex-Twitter employees pull Musk back to money table over missing severance

Re: Who are you catering to who has been living under a rock?

... paid by the word?

UK rejoins the EU's €100B Horizon sci-tech funding program

Re: @JMiles

"This is not correct. Under European law, the UK was permitted to act independently to approve the vaccine in an emergency."

Source, Full Fact: https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-vaccine-brexit/

Re: @JMiles

> The remain campaign literally lied that voting to leave the EU would lead to WW3.

[citation needed]

But the official campaign Vote Leave said: “Britain will have access to the Single Market after we vote leave.”

Re: @JMiles

"The post-Brexit trading relationship between the UK and EU, as set out in the ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’ (TCA) that came into effect on 1 January 2021, will reduce long-run productivity by 4 per cent relative to remaining in the EU. This largely reflects our view that the increase in non-tariff barriers on UK-EU trade acts as an additional impediment to the exploitation of comparative advantage."

Source: Office for Budget Responsibility.

... and using an updated methodology that none of the other countries have yet adopted...

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Re: Easy win but challenging keep.

> That then leaves the door wide open for "career politicians" who toe the party line and simply do very little except to pay homage to their illustrious leaders.

That's a little harsh. Many also manage to vote through lucrative development planning applications for land owned by themselves, their families or mates. Or sell off council land to their mates on the cheap. Or otherwise shovel bucketfuls of taxpayer cash to cronies... see the Rotten Boroughs column of Private Eye, passim, ad nauseum.

Brits negotiating draft deal to rejoin EU's $100B blockbuster science programme

Re: Citation please ?

> A* at A-level did *not* come out in 2010. You had to be in the top ten of the country to get them.

Pray tell when they did, since you are the expert?

Try https://analytics.ofqual.gov.uk/apps/Alevel/Outcomes/ ... Is it just a conspiracy that Ofqual's analytics don't show any A* before 2010? Or is it, as they say: "You will see that there are no data points for the A* grade in 2008 and 2009 and this is because the A* grade for A level was first awarded in 2010. This explains the drop in the percentage of students achieving grade A in 2010."

Re: Citation please ?

> Hmmm….back when it meant something, I got 6 A* at A-level, 4 S-level grade 1, starred First (top ten in my year), and a PhD from Cambridge. I have fourteen patents to my name. What are your qualifications like?

Citation please?

I'll grab the popcorn while I'm waiting, especially seeing as the last S-levels were in 2001 and A* at A-level came in in 2010...

Hacking a Foosball table scored an own goal for naughty engineers

Snap

Sounds like we may have gone to the same school, or at least one with the same type of drinks machine!

My almost identical recollection is a bit further down the page, https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/07/03/who_me/#c_4690294...

At school there was drinks vending machine where a Spanish 5 peseta was just the right size to trigger dispense if one timed the button press correctly, but also the wrong size to be retained by the coin mechanism. Less obvious in the short term, but soon rumbled once the secret was too widely shared...

Re: Never trust an engineer

In my halls, half the rooms had just been refurbished including a desk with locking drawers. The lock was a tubular design with a key that also fitted in the the locks on the backs of the machines in the games room, so a goodly percentage of the students could open at least one of the machines and apply free credits.

Microsoft’s Azure mishap betrays an industry blind to a big problem

Personification

> Simple typos and their cousin, Mr Misconfiguration, ...

Miss Configuration, surely?

North Korea shows off surveillance satellite it claims it can launch

... the picture also appears to show two folks inadequately gowned and masked for presence in a satellite integration cleanroom. Even if he does manage to get it up, so to speak, how long it will be able to perform thanks to his photo op, is presumably in question...

UK cops score legal win in EncroChat snooping op

Re: Some Advice For The Unwary........

>(3) Use private encryption and Gmail (and avoid interweb service providers like SIgnal)

>(7) Read up on Bruce Schneier, Daniel Bernstein

Not sure what your beef is with Signal, but Bruce Schneier has said, "I am a fan of Signal and I use it every day." (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/10/interview-with-signals-new-president.html)?