* Posts by A Non e-mouse

3263 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2010

The mysterious giant blobs of gas around our galaxy's black hole are actually massive merger stars being shredded

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Re: And I quote...

It's still one body and hasn't been ripped into a billion pieces.

Yet.

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Binars

The stars at the center of the galaxy are massive and mostly binaries

Why binaries?

Boeing aircraft sales slump to historic lows after 737 Max annus horribilis

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Re: It's not just the 737...

I think ForthIsNotDead's point is that the ex-military guy saw that the civilian team's standards were way too low.

UK data watchdog kicks £280m British Airways and Marriott GDPR fines into legal long grass

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Re: Privacy legislation - a bit of a farce?

I think you'll find this isn't restricted to just the ICO. Many of the other regulators' legal budget is tiny compared to that of the companies they regulate.

Ministry of Justice bod jailed for stealing £1.7m with fake IT consulting contract

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Facepalm

Re: "Sophisticated." RU f**king kidding me?

The judge who sat at the trial of Oscar Wilde (for having gay sex) said the case was the worst he'd ever seen.

It was also the first case he'd ever seen for gay sex.

Rowhammer rides again as FPGA attack, RSA again reportedly up for sale, anti-theft kit to nuke laptops, etc

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Ransomware

Heritage Company will not be re-opening. It seems the cost of recouping the data and getting everything back up and running was too much

It seems crooks have yet to learn from nature. You only cause enough damage to your host to make them want it to stop. (i.e. Pay up) Killing your host lowers the chance of propagation (i.e. getting paid).

2 more degrees and it's lights out: Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix's toasty mobile bit barn

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Re: Overselling it

Was it Google who buy specially rated processors from Intel that can run at much higher temperatures so they can run their data centers hotter and hence pay less for cooling?

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Re: I'll never really understand...

I've read interviews with a couple of different team members about life during a racing season. The common theme was that it's not a fun or glamorous world. Very long hours, totaling several months away from home, family & friends.

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

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Facepalm

I had a user complain, after we replaced their faulty desk phone, that they lost all of their speeddials. This surprised us as speeddials were stored on the PABX and not on the phone. We popped over to take a look at the problem and discovered that what the user was calling "speeddials" was just the phone's call history: New phone, new call history.

A sprinkling of Star Wars and a dash of Jedi equals a slightly underbaked Rise Of Skywalker

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Mushroom

So, by my count, Star Wars is 4 films and a smattering of blah

There are only three Star Wars films.

LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary

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Re: "Has LibreOffice succeeded?"

Office is popular in business because so many business applications integrate into it.

UK's Virgin Media celebrates the end of 2019 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

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Re: Playing devils advocate...

There are numerous routers out there that can do this automatically. You just supply your own data-enabled SIM. Some ISPs can supply you the complete package as well.

These options aren't cheap - but if you can't run your business without an internet connection, then it may be worth it.

Starliner: Boeing, Boeing... it's back! Borked capsule makes a successful return to Earth

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Did Boeing write the software or did they sub-contract it out...?

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Just ask the Rusians. They used to use a docking computer supplied by one of the former soviet republics. They disliked this dependency on them and built their own. The only had one small problem with the docking computer: Docking.

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

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Context

I think any word used in the wrong context can be offensive. At school "nerd" was often used as an insult. But around here, "nerd" is complement.

Buzz kill: Crook, 73, conned investors into shoveling millions into geek-friendly caffeine-loaded chocs that didn't exist. Now he's in jail

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Mercedes

..over $11,900 at a Mercedes dealership..

What were they buying at a Mercedes dealership? It sure as hell wasn't a new car. (And with their lifestyle, I can't see them lowering themselves to get a second hand one)

You cannae break the laws of physics, cap'n... Boffins call BS on 'impossible' black hole, fear readings were botched

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However science unlike religion is prepared to accept that we might have the wrong picture and is prepared to accept change

"Science adjusts its beliefs based on what's observed;

Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved"

(c) Tim Minchin

WebAssembly gets nod from W3C and, most likely, an embrace from cryptojackers online

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Facepalm

The browser is the new OS

The web browser is becoming the new operating system: Intended to abstract the differences between different computers and "real" operating systems.

Which in turn run on hypervisors - which are mini operating systems.

And let's not get started on IBM's Ultravisor - a hypervisor for hypervisors.

Silicon Valley Scrooges sidestep debt to society through tax avoidance to the tune of $100bn

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Re: Ok but how much tax is fair?

I'm sure there was some kind of slight-of-hand where Starbucks (UK) pays a large licensing fee to Starbucks (Netherlands) to the use "Starbucks" brand. This makes Starbucks(UK) overheads high (so less profit to tax at UK rates), whereas Starbucks(Netherlands) has big income but in a low tax rate area.

We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer

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Re: And that ladies & gentlemen

As a boss, you have to stand up and take the heat when your team screw up, and step back and let them bask in the glory when they seemingly perform miracles.

RuneScape bloke was wrongly sacked after reading veep's salary details on office printer

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Re: Personal Usage

It depends on the employer. Some are more relaxed than others.

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Re: Not surprising

There are numerous stories of games development companies being sweatshops.

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Happy

I bet it's being discussed at many out-of-office lunches at Jagex!

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Facepalm

I haven't finished reading the judgement, but it's a bit damming when a tribunal finds an individual more reliable in their testimony over a well lawyered corporate.

This week, we give thanks to Fortinet for reminding us what awful crypto with hardcoded keys looks like

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Re: fortinet did nothing for 6 months !

I'm not overly convinced by Fortinet's support: We were on a supported version of their product's O/S and they refused to issue an update for a vulnerability. It tooks months for them to finally release the update.

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

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Re: This has all happened before and it will happen again

When I worked for a quango, we subscribed to a service which would scan all the newspapers and send us copies of articles that matched certain criteria.

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Re: Could you imagine...

With the larger format/higher end printers, you just buy 5l bottles of ink.

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

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Whilst the higher frequency used by DAB may allow transmission of data faster than the lower frequency analogue FM, all the digital processing (both sender & receiver) has a speed impact. Hence why, as others have mentioned, the pips on DAB are later than on FM. It's the same reason why the BBC no longer has an analogue clock showing the second hand before the news: Analogue viewers see it before digital. (And on Freesat, HD is even slower than SD - by several seconds)

Intel end-of-lifing BIOS and driver downloads for dusty hardware

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Hosting Costs

I don't think there's any doubt that the "cost" of hosting these old BIOSs is insignificant. The "cost" is probably more in the management of the website. If you're maintaining a site as large as Intel's, you want to keep it as trim possible so you stand a chance of it all working.

We're all geeks here so I'm sure we've heard about "code bloat". Well, the same thing happens with websites too.

Use the courts, Jeff: Amazon to contest Microsoft scooping $10bn JEDI contract

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Predictions

I predict the only people who are going to "win" here are the lawyers.

UK Info Commish quietly urged court to swat away 100k Morrisons data breach sueball

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KPMG

I would have thought that KPMG should have been in the dock for this, not Morrisons.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

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Re: Seems fine to me

A single 13A socket at 240V provides 3kW of power. At 12V, to get the same power, you'll be pulling 250A. That's a very large current and you'll be running into all sorts of heating & resistance issues. (There's a reason the National Grid runs at voltages in excess of 200kV)

You may not be pulling a total of 3kW through your 12V system, but the current is not going to be negligible - and will also be very dangerous.

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There are a lot of ceiling lights and from what I can see, it looks like some of those wall sockets could be network points. So I'm guessing that room was once used as an office.

UK ads watchdog slaps Amazon for UX dark arts after folk bought Prime subs they didn't want

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Facepalm

Free Delivery

..pay £8/month for free parcel delivery

A text-book definition of an oxymoron: Paying to get something "free"

Europe's digital identity system needs patching after can_we_trust_this function call ignored

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Joke

Stack Overflow Code?

Have the developers been using too much Stack Overflow sample code again?

Like the Death Star on Endor, JEDI created a ton of fallout and stormy weather in cloud market

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Facepalm

Re: Here We Go Again.

Some people just don't get El Reg's humour.

Where's the Modaratrix when you need her?

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Re: Legal action ?

..Mattis, reportedly, did not follow the order and instead directed staff to decide the contract on its merits.

Going by this, Amazon would have to prove that Trump by-passed Mattis.

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Facepalm

Re: "... execution is important and I sure wouldn’t want to be that staff."

"The beatings will continue until morale improves"

Move over Ceres! There's a new, smaller dwarf planet in town called Hygiea

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Re: "its surface only had two meager craters"

The argument is that there should have been a lot of debris in the area so Hygiea should have had more impact craters.

The unwritten alternative is that there are/were processes on Hygiea that have remodeled its surface.

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

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Facepalm

At one junction on my commute, a Red traffic light appears to mean "Beware of other people may think they have right of way"

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Re: Show this to the Mexican police

The alternative is to just obey the rules

But the whole point is that the rules are broken.

We're going deeper Underground: Vulture clicks claws over London's hidden tracks

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Re: Worth a visit

..cramped for a lanky bloke like me!

Anyone who is taller than about 5' 6" or wider than a 30" waist will find the carriages snug.

To be fair, though, this railway was never designed to transport humans but letters and parcels, so it's fantastic that they've managed to shoehorn in trains to carry humans.

Conspiracy loons claim victory in Brighton and Hove as council rejects plans to build 5G masts

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Re: Local Authorities

There was one near me where the council said that the supermarket could only be built if the company also paid for a community center.

One top-of-the-range community center duly appeared!

Welcome to the World Of Tomorrow, where fridges suffer certificate errors. Just like everything else

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The connected refrigerator has long been the fever dream of many an IoT enthusiast too-much-money-for-their-own-good idiot.

FTFY

Lies, damn lies, and KPIs: Let's not fix the formula until we have someone else to blame

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Re: Measurable KPIs

Our contracts people love putting KPIs in contracts. The problem is that mot of them are unmeasurable or the sample size is too small to be meaningful.

iTerm2 issues emergency update after MOSS finds a fatal flaw in its terminal code

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Vague Idea

My vague thoughts on the exploit from the linked Github diff in the article:

Terminal applications often update the window title bar with the name of the command being executed. iTerm appears to have been keeping track of its terminal sessions by their name. I'm guessing there was some exploit by abusing this feature.

What's one of the rules of programming? Never trust user supplied input.

Forget Brexit, ignore Trump, write off today: BT's gonna make us all 'realise the potential of tomorrow'

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The 900-strong team of “tech experts “ will be dispatched to people’s homes to help them install or fix their digital stuff

Let's hope they're more helpful then many of BT's current engineers who are only interested in closing* your support call with as little work as possible.

* Note: I didn't say anything about them fixing your problem.

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Re: If Only...

BT re-invented great customer service a long time ago and turned it into something the rest of us thought was a stinking pile of ****

HP to hike upfront price of printer hardware as ink biz growth runs dry

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Re: Deskjet - sold for $1,000, and not subsidised.

If memory serves, inkjet printers were in their infancy back in the 80s. At that time, the main printer technology was dot-matrix, with 24 pin dot-matrix being the expensive pinnacle of the technology.

Oracle demands $12K from network biz that doesn't use its software

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Re: VB, phone home

Some companies have a requirement in their licenses agreement that you have to allow their product to phone home and report usage. Failing to allow the phone home can result in a letter from the vendor demanding more money.