* Posts by Shady

391 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2008

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We've never even built datacenters using robots here on Earth

Shady

Protection against hostile ET's

Requires sharks with frickin' laser beams. In low gravity thruster suits equipped with saline based breathing apparatus. Sharknado 28?

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla agree on something: Make web dev lives easier

Shady
Megaphone

How about…

There have been symposiums, consortiums, thingiums all aimed at trying to solve the problem of why different browsers render different parts of the spec differently, and these efforts have been ongoing with varying degrees of success (and failure) for 20 odd years

I’ve got a radical idea which would side step this need - JUST IMPLEMENT THE DAMN SPEC!

It’s not rocket surgery. Some engineer has to rework a layout engine to render a box 2px smaller than it did yesterday to comply with the spec and the overflow will no longer occur in browser X, therefore behaving like browser Y, which met the spec yesterday

Problem solved

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

Shady

Re: Double take

I dunno, Ionising radiation in their pants would at least ensure that they’d be unlikely to bring any dimwitted inbred spawn into the world and kill off their cretinous bloodlines, so that makes perfect sense to me

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

Shady

Re: Punch cards?

I agree. The pedants should have better personal hygiene.

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

Shady
Joke

178 meeeeelion phone numbers?

That's a helluva lot of effort, wouldn't it be better to write something like for(var x = 07000000000; x < 07999999999; x++) ?

Canon makes 'all-in-one' printers that refuse to scan when out of ink, lawsuit claims

Shady

Re: No print? No buy.

That reduces device to a zero function doorstop

Shady
Joke

Re: No print? No buy.

Twelve? Twelve??

What next! Mono printers with 255 cartridges - one for each shade of grey??

Computer scientists at University of Edinburgh contemplate courses without 'Alice' and 'Bob'

Shady

Re: Poor little Alice.

She had a career in Cyber, but the Tories now recommend she retrains in Ballet

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Shady

Ikamupis

New IKEA product line

Airline meal-sized £700k awarded by UK.gov for green aviation: That's for eco-tech rather than planes, mind

Shady

Re: Emissions

But, and this is a serious question, I’m not trolling or a schill for big hydrogen;

Emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for years, decades, even centuries?

But won’t water vapour just precipitate in short order? Maybe a matter of days, hours, possibly even minutes if emitted in subzero temps?

Years of development, millions of lines of code, and Android can't even run a toilet

Shady

WTF…

…are they touching the touch screen with?

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Shady

I remember when…

… back the very early 80s, my dad treated himself to a very expensive Japanese hifi (my mum wouldn’t let him get a motorbike as he approached his 40s)

It came not only with schematics but also a parts list, and I pored over it, with the aid of a couple of books from the “big” library (remember them?) trying to figure out what went where, why, and how it all worked.

A couple of years after that, I leaned about this shop called Maplins….

If my dad had gotten himself a different hifi I might never have got into electronics and computing

Pair accused of turning photos into vids to crack tax dept facial recognition system in China

Shady

Re: Simple, easy implementation

That’s desperately optimistic. I fully expect them to produce an app that shows a mugshot alongside a phrase such as “I haz had vaxxxine, innit”

The Daily Fail will be first to break the story of how easily hackers can fake the app using Microsoft Paint. Microsoft will of course be monstered for selling a tool like Paint, which allows hardened crims to fake Vaccine Passports, the proceeds of which, an exclusive investigation can reveal, are used to fund human trafficking using hacked e-scooters

You only need pen and paper to fool this OpenAI computer vision code. Just write down what you want it to see

Shady
Joke

Perfect crime

Rob a bank whilst wearing a t-shirt with the name of your b*****d boss printed on it

Loiter nearby and wait for the rozzers

Smile like a Bond villain and enjoy the proceeds

UK tax dept's IT savings created 'significant risk', technical debt as it faces difficult conversation with Chancellor

Shady
Trollface

Maybe they could get some contractors in to sort it out?

Contractors of the UK, collectively: Fuck You

Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs

Shady
Megaphone

Samsung can F**K RIGHT OFF

I had a few banner ads some years ago, overlaid on top of the TV picture. At the time I was willing to believe it was an isolated incident, a test gone wrong etc, but it was shortly after I’d setup the smart hub.

Promptly reset back to defaults and removed network access.

Still a great TV - in dumb mode, but that’s all I ever wanted. A DUMB TV. A panel to attach to my Xbox and Virgin media TiVo (and apart from advertising actual TV programs in the TV guide, never had any issues there).

This smart TV stuff is irritating - they can’t (yet) replace my STB, they can’t play my Xbox or PS games (without the console) so they’re intrusive and pointless, slow and the UI is usually shit. Just give me a dumb panel, that has the same picture / sound quality, the same aesthetics, and at a lower price point as the smart equivalent, seeing as I won’t be paying for the additional electronics

Someone made an AI that predicted gender from email addresses, usernames. It went about as well as expected

Shady

100% foolproof gender identification method

Ask the punter

VMware to stop describing hardware as ‘male’ and ‘female’ in new terminology guide

Shady

Kill the orphans!

I once wrote a method that tracked and removed orphaned workflow tasks.

Understandably, I called it KillAllTheOrphans()

I was mildly annoyed when the local Code Nazi renamed it in a later commit to TidyWorkflow()

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

Shady
Megaphone

Re: Words matter...

“Though I'm not quite sure why "sanity check" is considered pejorative by any group.”

Perhaps people with mental health problems world consider it offensive. I would not (I have ASD and ADHD and know someone who is bipolar, they wouldn’t find offensive either, although I know that doesn’t speak for all those afflicted)

Regardless, Sanity Check should be banned for one very good reason. In my experience, everyone who uses it in every day language is a complete and utter cnut.

Couple wrongly arrested over Gatwick Airport drone debacle score £200k payout from cops

Shady

£300 per hour, rounded up to the nearest hour.

5-10 minutes of work per day.....

Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it

Shady

Next great idea

Very surprised HP haven’t yet started selling printers that recognise only the chemical signature, or invisible to the naked eye micro dots, or a RFID thread woven into their paper, so that they’ll only print on HP branded paper.

Counting the minutes until another commenter points to a link or patent that says this is on the way....

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Shady

Re: Bork! Bork! Bork!

The Bork Collective? As a Trekkie this works for me

Browse mode: We're not goofing off on the Sidebar of Shame and online shopping sites, says UK's Ministry of Defence

Shady
Paris Hilton

.... excluding search engines ...

PornHub is a search engine?!

Secret-sharing app Whisper shared secrets like last known location and actual password tokens in exposed database

Shady

Without Whisper....

.... what will the Daily Mail do for features?

Microsoft pushes out fresh version of '90s throwback PowerToys suite with plenty of fixes – and one nasty bug

Shady

Re: "Make it look like Windows 7"

+1 for DOpus - I’ve been (willingly) paying for updates since I first installed it on my Miggy 1200

Train-knackering software design blunder discovered after lightning sparked Thameslink megadelay

Shady

Re: Tell me about it

You have my sincerest sympathies.

I decamped to do a six month contract in Peterborough a few years back. The place was so dull I drove over to Milton Keynes in the evenings just to find something to do.

Late $440m Christmas present for HP: Judge triples damages windfall from Quanta in CD-ROM drive price-fix showdown

Shady

Next week

Dell sues IBM for overcharging on 386’s....

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

Shady

Re: Surprised

He got sued in his own backyard by a grumpy looking brit who dared question one of their gods.

The result was never in doubt

Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC: Howdy buck do you get a solid 60FPS in Rockstar's masterpiece?

Shady

Re: easy pickings

> In a month... it has crashed once and bugged out on launch twice – which for PC land isn't awful.

I've got an XBone - and that thing crashes more often than my PC does. Often, infuriatingly, when just watching Amazon Video or Netflix through it.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: A quirky investigation into why AI does not always work

Shady

Re: It's not AI...

Not limited to AI.

Wife: Should I wear black or blue leggings?

Me: Black

Wife: Why those ones? Do you like them more?

Me: Dunno. Just do

Close the windows, it's coming through the walls: Copper Cthulu invades Dabbsy's living room

Shady

I am so jealous of you right now. Not being sarky. I'm actually green with envy.

I haven't done a decent home audio wiring project since, as a teenager, I drilled about a million holes in my parents walls whilst they were on holiday :(

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

Shady

Re: There must be a few MPs ...

Get Brexit done! A hard Brexit will improve Digitalizational Analogousuously Broadspreading far beyond that of Europe!

ZTE Nubia Z20: It's £499. It's a great phone. Buy it. Or don't. We don't care

Shady
Joke

Half price

Could I have one with one screen and one fingerprint reader for £249.50? Ta lots

How to lose a UK contractor in 10 days: Make them commit after upcoming IR35 tax upheaval, apparently

Shady

Yawn, the "20% trope" of the Daily Fail reader

A contractor invoicing 100K a year is paying total taxes closer to 35-40%, once ALL company and personal taxation is taken into account.

FAIL

Shady

Re: Some are considering moving to another employer

"The vast majority of IT contractors are in fact either employed or self-employed"

All Boolean values are either true or false.

Margin mugs: A bank paid how much for a 2m Ethernet cable? WTF!

Shady

Re: Not just business

I've got a "bag for life" bursting at the seams with ethernet, disk drive, kettle, micro USB cables and jiffy bags full of screws that didn't quite make it into a PC build.

At these levels of mark up, that bag is probably worth more than the new beemer on my neighbour's driveway.

First they came for 'face' and I did not speak out because I... have no face? Then they came for 'book'

Shady

I've trademarked whitespace

SoYouCanAllPayMeMoneyOrFuckOffAndRemoveYourTabCommaReturnCommaAndSpaceBarKeys

Do you want fr-AI-s with that appy-meal? McDonald's gobbles machine-learning biz for human-free Drive Thrus

Shady

WTF?

"transcribing orders to help employees decipher customer requests if staff had trouble hearing what was said". Hahahaha! Have they ever used Alexa?

I want a burger.

Sorry, we don't sell boogers

A burger! With fries!

Our boogers don't come with flies

SpaceX didn't move sat out of impending smash doom because it 'didn't see ESA's messages'

Shady

I OWN SPACE

You move out of MY WAY.

But for an optional fee, you can equip your satellite with our Almost-Hands-Free AutoSpacePilot, and then you wouldn't need to ask! Would you? Huh?

Seriously - this is YOUR fault, and you're all a bunch of *****.

Yours,

Musky.

Fancy buying a compact and bijou cardboard box home in a San Francisco alley? This $2.5m Android bounty will get you nearly there

Shady

Re: easy pickings

If you encode "Z3r0d!ium" with a salt of c1a, 3DES encrypt, MD5 the result then use RSA256 on the output, the first three letters are NSA. Coincidence? I think not....

Our hero returns home £500 richer thanks to senior dev's appalling security hygiene

Shady

Password hygiene

I worked for a small biz where network admin was everybody's responsibility. After a couple of backup woes, they made one of the developers assume full responsibility of the network.

A month later, sick of fielding password resets, he enforced everyone having the same password - the name of the company.

I went back there as a contractor, some ten years after I'd left - and my username and password, with full rights, logged me in at the first attempt.

How they're still in business I'll never know.

Cyberlaw wonks squint at NotPetya insurance smackdown: Should 'war exclusion' clauses apply to network hacks?

Shady

Re: Its Zuric.....

A good few years ago a mate was getting into photography in a big way and spent loads of money on cameras and gear.

He called his insurance company (on the phone) and added "valuable items in transit" cover.

When his car was broken into and his gear stolen the insurance co. refused the claim - because he couldn't prove he was transporting his high value items to or from a safety deposit box, as specified in the small print.

How does UK.gov fsck up IT projects? Let us count the ways

Shady

Re: CoD

A few years ago I was contracting for a firm creating an application for an NHS body.

Somehow the NHS body had managed to wangle clauses into the contract that said if the firm made a mistake, it had to be fixed at the firm's expense. However, if the NHS body made a mistake, it had to be fixed at the firm's expense.

The people at the NHS body were spectacularly useless - they didn't know about the clauses and actually thought their jobs were on the line, as NHS england was threatening to close this body if the project failed - and they were still unable to deliver the simplest of requirements until after deadlines were missed or beta versions were delivered. And we are really taking basic stuff - what role of person would be responsible for progressing a document through a workflow, for example.

The firm eventually pulled the plug, after losing about £5m and being no longer able to predict clawing any losses back. Chump change I know, but big money for a smaller firm.

And the guys at the NHS body are still there, and they fucked up the next attempt to get their project implemented, too.

The point being, when the gov body has this power over the firm creating the deliverable, they will fuck it up anyway.

Baffling tale of Apple shops' 'non-facial' 'facial recognition', a stolen ID, and a $1bn lawsuit after a wrongful arrest

Shady
Mushroom

re: The one whodunnit is the culprit

The one who smelt it, dealt it.

The one that said the rhyme, did the crime........

Sorry, just started reminiscing about my yoof.

It's alive! Hands on with Microsoft's Chromium Edge browser

Shady
Happy

Windows 11......

Ubuntu with a Fluent Design skin?

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I'm an American citizen

Shady
Joke

"Gal, now employed by Apple...."

"You're detaining me wrong..."

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

Shady
Mushroom

Bootnote?

Buttnote, surely.

Don't strike a match! >>>

Blighty's most trusted brand? Yeah, you wish, judge tells Post Office in Horizon IT system ruling

Shady

My local postoffice closed and was re-situated in the convenience store a couple of hundred yards up the road.

It's open, including the PO counter, from 7am to 9pm. I don't use it often but it's handy if I need to call in on the way to / from work, as the "old" postoffice was strictly a 9-5 affair.

How many Reg columnists does it take to turn off a lightbulb?

Shady
Mushroom

Aliens

I was a contractor working on an NHS portal about 10 years ago.

One of the junior devs turned to me and asked "Shall I try to update my local database or start again from scratch?"

"Take off and nuke it from orbit" I replied "It's the only way to be sure"

"Huh?"

"Take off and nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure!"

"WTF are you talking about, Adrian?"

At this point, virtually the entire office rounded on the poor lad and meme-bombed him with quotes, ending with "Aliens is arguably the best sci-fi action film ever made"

30 seconds of googling, and he let rip an utterly contemptuous snort, followed with "I wasn't even *born* when this PoS came out..."

Gawd, I feel old.

Facebook blames 'server config change' for 14-hour outage. Someone run that through the universal liar translator

Shady
Mushroom

Re: Facebook was down?

"Did you give them a quote?"

Such as "f*** off, you clueless cretin" ?

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