Posts by The commentard formerly known as Mister_C

Word worm crawls into Copilot, spreads chaos

to borrow an old adage

AI / LLM

The S stands for Security

Waymo hits the brakes after robotaxis keep missing the signs for freeway construction zones

Re: Captcha

I think that they are using that method, but not enough of us are visiting "certain" sites on their behalf. Posting for of a friend, of course

Munch Museum Windows display gives visitors something to scream about

"recover your account"

that would be a scream saver then

Experts pour cold borscht on Farage's Russian hack claim

Re: Blatant attempt to distract from the fact that...

and any opportunity to observe double glazing installers or curtain fitters or window cleaners or ...

Marketing demanded IT add website feature that was already working

Re: BTW

Try dragging the whole page to the left.

The small and old tablet I browse El Reg on whilst having my breakfast shows the final "r" of "Datacenter" at the left end of the title banner and hides the "On Call" as an off-screen orphan beyond the banner to the right.

I've also noticed that the story age and number of comments line for each story don't render for several moments after the rest of the page. This happens on my PC too.

On-call techie decided job was done and hit the bottle – just before his pager went off

Re: Crash of a different sort

I worked in a company like that a long time ago. The printer had a boot print on the side. It was old and matched the boots I wore. I hadn't had any problems with the printer for quite a long time. I think we'd reached a level of mutual understanding.

Re: Words that strike terror in the heart of anyone oncall

"Half the time it wasn't even a tech problem"

Best spotted when the request contains the J word. As in "can you just..."

UK reloads artillery plans with £1B remote-control howitzer order

Re: Nice

If Goscinny and Uderzo had been consulted then that howitzer would've been called Balistix

NASA's Psyche mission set for a brief encounter with Mars

my easiest confuse is getting radius and diameter (plural radius) mixed up. Fortunately, I are not a rocket scientist.

US Army goes green-ish, wants soldiers munching on plant proteins

Semi-camouflaged food

Anybody care for Soylent Green?

You too can build a nuclear battery from junk you have lying around the house

Re: Anyone tried smoke detectors

You are right. They do, and it is.

The alarms can theoretically make a dirty bomb

https://time.com/archive/6739646/londons-dirty-bomb-plot

Although not exactly dirty. More like Sightly Grubby.

Raspberry Pi OS ends open-door policy for sudo

Exchanging glances

for the Sinatra fans

Tech support chap's boss got him out of jail so he could finish a job

Peru-ve it

Artemis II snaps eclipse, Earthset shots on first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo

Re: PARIS

A very tenuous and tortured first guess (just like all the good backronyms)

Paper Investigatory Idea Involving Infra Gravity Structure

so PIIIIGS in space

Cybercrime isn't just a cover for Iran's government goons - it's a key part of their operations

Re: Taste in goons

well played Neddie. Help yourself to a picture of a ten bob note.

Once upon a time, saving your bits meant punching holes in floppies

5 1/4" FD vs lever arch file

Back in the days when real Higher Education was available at institutions called Polytechnics, we had a classmate who didn't carry around the obligatory 10 x 5 1/4 disk cardboard* case with coursework. Instead, he'd worked out that _very_ careful positioning of magnetic media and double hole punch meant that he could store his floppies in the relevant section of his lever-arch file (minus slip cover, of course). I think he might've cut the outside edge of the actual disk occasionally but as it was an area outside the read window meant that there was no loss of data.

One of the lecturers was amazed that he'd managed to put two holes into the case without destroying the disk. We were amazed that he thought it a good idea to risk his coursework.

* retail cardboard pack for the average student, proper plastic case for the true geeks.

ʎɹǝʌoɔǝᴚ sʍopuᴉM ʇɐ sǝʇɐuᴉɯɹǝʇ snq sᴉɥ┴

Re: hmm

Kayakers paint "HELP" on the bottom.

Of their boats. Do stop sniggering at the back.

SpaceX wants to fill Earth orbit with a million datacenter satellites

Kessler syndrome won't happen

The orbital DCs will be Fully Self Driving.

Voyager 2's close encounter with Uranus wasn't in the original plan

Re: Every Futurama fan knows…

to err is human

to arrr is pirate

Kids learn computer theory with wood, cardboard, and hot glue

Re: Inevitable

I don't know how profitable Play-by-Mail (PBM) games were but they certainly made enough for one company to have a full page colour advert for "Tribes of Crane" in White Dwarf back in the early 80s. Inside back cover IIRC, so probably not cheap.

Lawmakers urge FTC to probe Trump Mobile over 'deceptive' marketing

Re: usual pattern of decline

I don't think it is apocryphal. I remember hearing it several years before I heard the phrase "urban myth".

I also remember when we cleared my grandmother's house whilst moving her into sheltered housing (at her request - she'd finally got fed up with an outside toilet). The only time she showed any emotion was when we moved the mirror above the fireplace as that was the first thing she and grandfather had bought together when they married "and we paid for it with gold". I still regret not having space to keep it at the time.

S Twatter: When text-to-speech goes down the drain

for all those who say "it shouldn't be this difficult". apparently it is.

still, it made my NYE slightly more interesting whilst escorting a poorly relative coz our local A&E uses a TypeToTripe speech system to destroy patients' names while it instructed them to " goton urses station pleas". Even those in obvious pain almost raised a smile.

UK backtracks on digital ID requirement for right to work

Re: National Insurance number

don't care. It's just a polite way of telling them to F off. My previous best option was to say "Don't ask me, ask the landlord", this one might be more fun.

Re: National Insurance number

"do you have anyone cleaning your windows, clearing your gutters or any other cash in hand type job?"

That's made me realise... Next time some scrote in a knackered van offers to clean my gutters or tidy the trees in the garden, I just need to ask to see proof of eligibility to work in the UK. There might be one or two who can but most will probably ask if I'm a nutter and walk away.

ISS spacewalk postponed over mystery astronaut malady

Re: Sympathy

I hope he doesn't look like John Hurt. Or have stomach cramps.

not that alien -->

Welcome to Wendy's! Before your order can be taken, you must first reset this kiosk

Re: slightly disappointing article

I just though my spam filter was being over zealous

Taikonauts inspect cracked Shenzhou-20 window during Tiangong spacewalk

Don't forget the pound coin

The windscreen replacement people will need to see it in the photo so they can gauge how big the crack is before they send the repair van

Pegasus XL rocket dusted off to rescue NASA’s Swift observatory from fiery demise

The film is making itself

A rocket that hasn't been flown in years.

The last remaining launch aircraft sits at the back of a derelict hangar, half its non-vital instruments missing and the others only working intermittently.

Only needs a washed-up flight crew arguing amongst themselves and a steely-eyed rocket man who knows that failure isn't an option...

Get your people to contact my people, we need to do lunch sometime.

First stellar Coronal Mass Ejection detected beyond our Sun

Re: It's locked and I couldn't find a preprint.

Don't worry about when it happened. I can guarantee that the evening it reaches us will be cloudy. Just like tonight is for our star's latest CME

Tesla board wants to grant Musk $1T in stock, Norway wealth fund says nope

Re: Hybrid Theory

maybe it's just AI hallucinating again

Equinix revealed as occupant of £3.9B UK datacenter campus

Re: water usage of office-building levels

bet you a pound against a piece of shit that there will be zero rainwater harvest on that 85 acres to cover the water requirement, all their water usage will be mains (i.e. drinking water quality).

and don't get me started on where their "renewable" elastic trickery could be better used.

TL;DR - taking lots , giving nothing.

Flight simulator fans revive a classic Boeing 747 cockpit

"it is also just as cool as it sounds."

That's a PoV comment if ever I saw one.

I know exactly what he means. And so does Mrs_C.

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

Re: Early On-Line Shopping

Fans of the highly steamed Goon Show will, of course, be quite used to photographs of currency being used to pay bills.

"

Seagoon: Well, gentlemen, I've read the meter. And you were quite right. You'd only put on one more therm - one and six please.

Grytpype: Right. Here's a photograph of two shillings.

Seagoon: Thank you. And here's a photograph of sixpence - change.

Grytpype: Thank you.

"

and later

"

Seagoon: But if you're President Fred, there's a gas bill here which now stands at four pounds.

Bloodnok: Oh! Right, I'll pay you. Here's a photograph of a four pound note.

"

(Foiled by President Fred, text lifted from https://www.thegoonshow.co.uk/scripts/president_fred.html)

Brits warned as illegal robo-callers with offshored call centers fined half a million

Update. Jo is still working, despite being told to f''' off several times.

Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere

Re: We used to watch out for an "Iridium flare"

Agreed. Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes is far, far better.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Re: Unless I'm hallucinating...

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/10/01/texas_internet_outage_gunshot/#c_5153928

what could possibly go wrong...

Away from Oktoberfest, Munich's museums also serve science on tap

Re: Remove the sub

The U boat is certainly not sea worthy. It was acquired by the then-director of the museum by clever negotiation at the end of the Great War. The German navy was required to dismantle all their U boats and the director presented the case that cutting a hole through the pressure hull would prevent it being usable, and putting it into the basement of a museum hundreds of kilometres from the sea would make it doubly unusable. The U boat was therefore acquired and displayed as a cut-away exhibit.

Extra Geek points available for anyone who cares to name the location of the "other" U boat in Munich?

Brit scientists over the Moon after growing tea in lunar soil

or perhaps a strong Brownian motion producer.

Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers

Re: Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers

Unless you are a Norwegian desk lamp company

https://www.theregister.com/2009/09/11/disney_pixar_trade_mark

Researcher who found McDonald's free-food hack turns her attention to Chinese restaurant robots

Re: Bobdahacker — she

Driver "Bob" Parkhurst perhaps?

https://blackadder.fandom.com/wiki/Driver_Parkhurst

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1QywDPkDjg

Microsoft keeps adding stuff into Windows we don't want – here's what we actually need

they never sell "Newer! Better!". they just make things slightly worse and claim it's an improvement - what I call "unprovements".

Desktops and printers in coffee shops? Starbucks Korea tells customers to 그만 해

Had the opposite over here

Our bank has closed its nearest branch, requiring us to use online banking. Mr C senior wanted to know how to do it (no smartphone but can use the web). The bank couldn't show him unless he took his device in with him. Would've needed to take desktop PC and monitor in. And probably the interweb connection too.

He's still having trouble with it. We try and help, but their instructions are shit and their helpdesk is clueless. It's caused him more stress than Covid did.

Antivirus vendors fail to spot persistent, nasty, stealthy Linux backdoor

Re: Wow, that's no script kiddie

https://sonichits.com/video/Jasper_Carrott/The_Mole

Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server

Re: Incorrect labelling

Or Bangor to watch the horse racing (actually Bangor-on-Dee)

See Caver_Dave's comment below as well...

Problem PC had graybeards stumped until trainee rummaged through trash

Re: Pharmacists

Mrs C used to work at a company that believed this, so when the cutback cull hit they targeted one particular individual based on that (unsound) metric. Problem was, that particular individual was very good at his job and also very focused on keeping everything tidy. Week or two after he was "let go because policy" they ran out of stock for producing their main product line (did I forget to mention he was the raw material buyer) and they had to shut the works down until the supplier could expedite delivery (at premium price)...

Moral of the story - judge the person on how well they do the job, not how well they fit your (prejudiced) profiles.

Microsoft Copilot joins ChatGPT at the feet of the mighty Atari 2600 Video Chess

Re: Turing Test

Unfortunately, if you're persistent enough to get past the chat bot then you end up with a talk bot, and their limited script set means that most will also fail the Turing test.

There's no international protocol on what to do if an asteroid strikes Earth

Re: "Approaching at Hypersonic Speed"

SPEAK UP. CAN'T HEAR YOU. UNLESS YOU SCREAM.

STILL CAN'T HEAR YOU. VACUUM AND ALL THAT

The Rock versus a rock? won't work. Needs paper to beat rock, as any fule know

Trump guts digital ID rules, claims they help 'illegal aliens' commit fraud

Re: Just read the article

and there was me thinking you'd answer with "that would be an ecumenical matter"

Microsoft's plain text editor gets fancy as Notepad gains formatting options

Re: Really pissed off with MS

"Word is now weird and not windows menu compliant"

I can't remember a time when their office suite WAS windows compliant. Menus, Save dialog boxes, Title bars - all different from the OS standard.