* Posts by Precordial thump

163 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jun 2019

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We have redundancy, we have batteries, what could possibly go wrong?

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Re: cold start generators

Giant? Australia's Snowy Hydro 2 (same principle, under construction) will have 2GW capacity.

Where are the (serious) Russian cyberattacks?

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cyberattacks I'd like to see

Elon, if you're listening...

How about every oligarch-owned Tesla in the Moscow area decides to suddenly drive itself to one of the gates in the Kremlin wall and wedge itself into the wreckage of the one that did the same thing ten seconds earlier?

A tale of two dishwashers: Buy one, buy it again, and again

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Re: Kettle lead length 1m.

3rd reviewer: 1* the thing under the base that lets you adjust the length of the kettle lead is too confusing.

AI-created faces now look so real, humans can't spot the difference

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Re: Detail and perception

Nothing. In this bright sunlight, my pupils are so small the photons have to go through single-file.

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

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Re: !luferaC

Sophisticated hackers use tools to achieve the otherwise impossible.

Your Missouri-genius level abilities mean you can securely walk down the street in Kansas City or St Louis without fear of arrest... as long as you don't catch sight of the reflection of your phone in a shop window.

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!luferaC

.iruossiM ni evil uoy fi rorrim a ot pu siht dloh t'noD

Massive cyberattack takes Ukraine military, big bank websites offline

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Re: Parting Shot?

That sounds like a self-defeating strategy, though. By annexing Crimea and the Donbas, Putin has decreased the number of ethnic Russians in Ukraine and increased the number of ethnic Ukrainians in Russia.

Unlike ordinary memories of day-to-day politics, ethnic memories of geopolitics are long. Ukrainians already know what to expect from Russians geopolitically.

If Russians want sympathetic responses from Ukraine, they could start by behaving benevolently. Anyone Putin might install as a puppet should expect to have to behave like Lukashenko, but with their opposition already organised for them, by Putin.

Red Hat signals Intel's software-defined silicon will debut in Linux 5.18

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Re: New wine in old bottles

If DMCA exemptions for maintenance are just about to kick in, this could get interesting.

Prosecutor: You stole a copyrighted key.

Defendant: I was sold a crippled device. I was restoring it to its full specification. I fixed it myself.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

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And I have just one for you: Canberra.

Intel chases after Bitcoin miners with dedicated chip

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Re: If it's that good

Merchants made more money selling spades made out of cheap metal softer than the ground they worked to gold miners than actually mining for gold.

FTFY.

Have you tried restarting? Reinstalling? Upgrading? Moving house and changing your identity?

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1689, I think

That it is the Right of the Subjects to petition the King and all Commitments and Prosecutions for such Petitioning are Illegall.

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Re: Occasionally, you get a straight answer

He went into the military, which as von Clausewitz will tell you, is politics by other than political means.

At least Carl had the sense to be published posthumously.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

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And non sequitur as a user interface

Rolls-Royce consortium shopping for factory sites to build mini-nuclear reactors

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Re: SMRs are expected to produce 300MWe per unit.

Inverse fourth-power. No infrastructure needed for implementation, that way.

Privacy is for paedophiles, UK government seems to be saying while spending £500k demonising online chat encryption

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Re: Inrage and outrage

If the employee is WFH and the communication is properly secured, you have e2ee with the bank AND the employee has e2ee with the bank.

I own that $4.5bn of digi-dosh so rewrite your blockchain and give it to me, Craig Wright tells Bitcoin SV devs

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Re: Plot For A Film

Then the authorities would drop it by accident. Billions of shards of ones and zeroes lying quickly thawing in a puddle on the floor. How would we ever put it back together again? Come to that, why would we ever put it back together again?

First they came for Notepad. Now they're coming for Task Manager

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Re: Microsoft recommended a reboot

Another opportunity to remind ourselves of the difference between homophones (two words that sound the same or similar) and homonyms (two different meanings of the same spelled word).

I stand to be corrected, but Bill S could probably tell his arse (G. Arsch) from his ass (L. asinus).

It takes a septic to conflate the two.

EthereumMax, a Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather Jr sued over alleged 'pump and dump' cryptocurrency scam

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Re: Kim Kardashian: "This is not financial advice but..."

If she'd written IANAL, she might have been misunderstood.

Software guy smashes through the Somebody Else's Problem field to save the day

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Re: I recognise the story

The events of 1956 might lead one to question the sovereign integrity of borders definition of nationhood in Hungary's case.

Russia starts playing by the rules: FSB busts 14 REvil ransomware suspects

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Re: Political Theatre as always

My hovercraft is full of eels.

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Re: Three options

I think you mean Нет.

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Re: Three options

All of the above. Ukraine in 2022 is starting to look just like Poland in 1939.

Alexa and Webex to hitch a ride around the Moon on Artemis I – what could possibly go wrong?

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mediaeval units, please

NASA will be in trouble if, as the image shows, Alexa persists in miles, pounds and Fahrenheit.

Can see it now, Artemis 1 lost with its booster burning to depletion because Alexa failed a pounds-to-kilograms conversion. Good thing they're not going to Mars.

To err is human. To really screw things up requires a wayward screwdriver

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Re: is there a reason

No-one wants the lawsuit coming from its failure.

A time when cabling was not so much 'structured' than 'survival of the fittest'

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Re: Sounds like us (sic)

That rug really tied the room together.

Microsoft Paint + car park touchscreen = You already know where this is going

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Re: No one has mentioned...

And the merry sound of batters edging balls pitched outside the off stump...

Intel ‘regrets’ offending China with letter telling suppliers to avoid Xinjiang

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Re: Xianjing or Xinjiang?

East Turkestan.

Wi-Fi not working? It's time to consult the lovely people on those fine Linux forums

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This is the reference implementation of the self-referential joke. (There's an XKCD for that, too)

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Re: "first read the fine forum thread until the end"

USB drives are quantum particles with fractional spin numbers.

- two of them can't occupy the same space at the same time

- you have to turn them some multiple of 180° before their orientation looks like what you thought it would

China lists 100 topics citizens can't include in online vids

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Re: "Discussions of extreme nationalistic politics or fascism are barred"

The parallels are too obvious.

Bloke breaking his back on 'commute' from bed to desk deemed a workplace accident

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Re: 'risk assessments'

Singular ablative of ego...? That would be me.

What came first? The chicken, the egg, or the bodge to make everything work?

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Re: Re:Ambidextrous

Ambisinister?

Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining because while hydroelectric power is cheap, they need it for other stuff

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The aluminium in your foil hat took quite a bit of electricity to make.

You forced me to use this fancypants app and now you're asking for a printout?

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Re: Holidays

And your god (the one with the hammer) has a Dad who died nailed on a stick.

He just took nine days to come back.

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

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Re: Surfing nanobots

A-ha! So that's why they made disposable plastic shopping bags illegal... Just before the pandemic!

Robo-Shinkansen rolls slowly – for now – across 5km of Japan

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Re: A train, any train, not just the Shinkansen

"...and the London Underground is not a political movement."

-Wanda Gershowitz

From the studio that brought you 'Mortal Wombat' comes 'Pernicious Possum'

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Re: Pets? PETS?

Sadly, cute is their only redeeming feature if they're living in your roof space.

The possum-fur socks I bought in NZ are the cosiest thing ever, but I'd have to order new pairs from the other side of the ditch - they're protected species here on the mainland.

Wombats, OTOH: cuteness, personality, cubic poo, attitude.... What's not to like about the bulldozers of the bush? No wonder Wombat Wednesday became a thing when lockdown brought a hitherto unexpected need for emergency cute.

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

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Donald? We haven't heard from you in a while.

Remember when you thought fax machines were dead-matter teleporters? Ah, just me, then

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Re: A3? That's not big.

That beige box? Camouflage.

Orders wrong, resellers receiving wrong items? Must be a programming error and certainly not a rushing techie

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Re: Punch cards?

A true pedant would tell you that the D in doctorates' postnominals comes at the end (PhD, MD...). To become a DRIP, as opposed to a PedD, you would of course have to become a diplomate of that august institution.

Facebook sues scraper who sold 178 million phone numbers and user IDs

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No. Clever enough to get for free what Cambridge Analytica paid $$$ for? Sue his nadgers off!

Please try not to notice that Faecebook let him do it.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

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Re: Dis

New phone. Who dis?

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Re: Sparkling turd

I still laugh when I think of BOFH's adventures in that pastime.

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Or InstaMilgram?

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Malebolge.

As the eighth circle of hell, the point of division between the violent and the fraudulent.

Dorothy L. Sayers writes that the Malebolge is "the image of the City in corruption: the progressive disintegration of every social relationship, personal and public. Sexuality, ecclesiastical and civil office, language, ownership, counsel, authority, psychic influence, and material interdependence – all the media of the community's interchange are perverted and falsified"

Australian PM and Deputy threaten Facebook and Twitter with defamation liability for users' posts

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Re: Postal

Only the analogy breaks down when you realise that your local postie doesn't open and read all of the messages they deliver, enlarge the font on sentences they think are important, and offer to deliver you copies of similar letters they think you'll find interesting, based on the content of the letters that you've received and sent.

Faecebook quit Australia in 2020 rather than pay authors of news for linking to their content, albeit for about 12 hours. Best 12 hours all year, in my opinion. Imagine how many toys they'll throw out of the pram when the law requires them to behave like adults and moderate their content.

I say their content, because they have a world full of opinion to choose from and then select content to match the eyes looking at it. The act of selection, free of any obligation to fact, becomes authorship with that power in your hands.

If it's going to rain within the next 90 mins, this very British AI system can warn you

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Australia north of 20°S

Pr(rain) = 3 < month < 11 ? 0 : 1

A crypto-trading hamster is outperforming the S&P 500, Nasdaq, Bitcoin

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wouldn't be the first time

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?

Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.

Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.

Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.

Hamlet: Or like a whale?

Polonius: Very like a whale.

tz database community up in arms over proposals to merge certain time zones

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Aussies have AWCT (Australian Western Central Time, +08:45) as well. Another 15-minute offset from GMT, it applies only to Eucla, a spot on the map on the SA-WA border, to put it halfway between Perth and Adelaide, chronologically as well as geographically.

Except when Adelaide is on ACDT. One country, seven time zones.

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