* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25246 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Boss broke servers with a careless bit of keyboarding, leaving techies to sort it out late on a Sunday

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Big red "cause a massive problem" button

Because they are often security doors that need need a badge or code to open or be buzzed through by a receptionist on the way in. It's an exit button, not an entry button :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Big red "cause a massive problem" button

"egress buttons are usually similar to the Big Red Button but are Big Green Buttons instead."

Most of the time :-(

When they have a "push to exit" button and it's not the almost standard big green hemisphere, it can take a while to figure what to push to get out. I've turned off lights before because it's the only obvious nearby switch. In at least one case, the doors actually open so slowly that the "fix" was the place the button on the wall about 10 metres down the corridor. (An old Victorian building with heavy solid wood doors) The "fix" to the button being so far away was to place two signs. One near the button on a "music stand" affair that's actually quite hard to miss telling you this is "The Button" and another at the door telling you to go back 10m to find the button. :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Big red "cause a massive problem" button

Another downside of gas fire suppression is the sheer force of it going off. ISTR a story on this illustrious site of Glasgow City Councils data centre being severely damaged because the shock of the sudden pressure wave of the gas release kill all or most of their hard disks. I can't remember if this was a deliberate or accidental discharge.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Belt up

IIRC, the accelerometer measures the lack of G force in this instance. ie if it registers free fall, the system has been told there is a large G shock rapidly approaching and it doesn't want to be its friend.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Belt up

I remember a 5.25" 40MB MFM Seagate running off an RLL controller to give me 65MB. It was standing vertically on it's side outside the case for some reason I don't remember when I knock the desk with my knee. It fell flat and never worked again <sob>[*]

* Both tears and me shouting out Son Of a BITCH!!

Orion snaps 'selfie' with the Moon as it prepares for distant retrograde orbit

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: that selfie...

The props are long gone as they though they would never need them again. The original studio was sold off and is now under part of a housing estate although some residents have reported feeling a little light in certain parts of the estate.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: Contrast Orion's journey with Apollo

"The cameras on the tips of the solar panels are GoPro 4s onna stick bracket"

Was that a Pro-tip?

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: XKCD Rankings?

I suspect he's more of a Cheeky Girls man :-)

Yes, those who clicked the link, that IS the lyrics and no the record wasn't actually stuck :-)

ESA names first Parastronaut: paralympian and aspiring surgeon John McFall

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Bipeds

Yeah, I was thinking that too. In orbit, being shy one leg likely isn't much of a handicap, if any.

He said "what it is about having a physical disability that makes it trickier and overcome those hurdles."

To be fair, I suspect he and they won't actually learn all that much that isn't obvious simply because this is one physical disability and possibly the one that will have the least effect. I'd imagine it will be great for him being microgravity and not having to deal with the earthbound problems a prosthetic leg can have, but I suspect people with other physical disabilities will not benefit much from this experiment, eg those missing a hand or arm, blind or deaf.

On the other hand, it's one small step (no pun intended).

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: “ Machiavelli thought the voice of the people tends towards insanity.”

"If Musk lived in the world that Machiavelli did, he'd be at the bottom of a canal by now."

.. or be The Pope :-)

UK bans Chinese CCTV cameras on 'sensitive' government sites

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Meanwhile…

"…everyone will be carrying an android or apple device into those same "sensitive" areas."

If it's truly sensitive, no, they won't. Everything with a camera or storage is placed in a lockbox at the entry point. Anything inside the sensitive area with storage is not taken out again in form where the data could be read.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Good idea anyways

Not so much sending all the feeds direct to Communist Part headquarters, more creating an entry into whatever networks they are connected to. Whether it could or will happen is a different question, but there have been reported instances of CCTV cameras and other IoT devices being co-opted into DDoS attacks, so if it's accessible, then anything is possible.

CT scanning tech could put an end to 100ml liquid limit on flights by 2024

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: FWIW

a small atomic bom...“a present for my mother-in-law” that didn’t seem to help my case at all."

I'm surprised they didn't suddenly turn all sympathetic and understanding and let you go instantly :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: FWIW

"I think lead foil is expensive and hard to come by."

You could ask the Mythbusters where they got theirs from. They used quite a significant amount proving that a lead balloon CAN fly :-)

European Parliament Putin things back together after cyber attack

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Poke the Bear and get a reaction

I bet that's the shoe banging video. And no, I'm still not going to check in case I lose the bet :-)

San Francisco politicians to vote on policy endorsing lethal force for robots

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "try not to die by automated car"

Christine? Killdozer?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Weird...

"Armed robots will only make it worse."

Yes, we all know the...difficulties...AI facial recognition has with people of a darker shade of pale.

Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sigh ..

"The most dangerous manoeuvre on a motorway is changing lanes."

Only if it's relatively busy and you are not paying attention.

That aphorism is about as useful as "Speed Kills". It sounds scary and, IMHO, is part of what has led to the endemic lane hogging we see so much more of these days.

Of course changing lanes is more dangerous than not changing lanes. But not enough to matter for a competent and aware driver.

Disclaimer: I've been driving 40-60,000 miles per year for the last 40 years and have never had a prang yet. I'm constantly expecting that to change, which may well be why it hasn't happened yet :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes, this is exactly what I have found in traffic queue too. In general, the middle lane is quicker for exactly the reasons you state and my own experience.

On the other hand, on a less congested 3-lane motorway, but not "clear" by any means, I'm finding more and more that lane one is nearly empty, just lorries, often well spread out, Lane 2 a bit more congested, primarily cars and vans, most of whom will rarely move back to lane 1 even when there's lot of room and time before needing to pull out and pass the next lorry. Then there's lane 3, where everyone who wants to drive to the speed limit or faster are nose to tail, often never quite reaching the speed limit because the traffic in 1 and 2 keep coming into lane 3 because lane 1 is doing 56mph "lorry speed" and the cars not in a hurry are staying in lane 2 doing 60mph with the occasional trip to lane 3 when a lorry is passing another lorry.

I would imagine the view from above is almost the exact opposite of what you'd expect in terms of numbers of vehicles in the lanes, ie 3 is busy, 2 is medium and 1 is nearly empty.

JWST snaps first chemical profile of an exoplanet atmosphere

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

I've read a lot of SF...

...and I can't immediately think of a single story that envisaged telescope able to discern this level of information from such a distance :-)

Many of have postulated all sorts of "scanning" devices to identify the planets and habitability of a star system when the starship gets there or working from data sent by a probe that travelled there but I don't think any SF author actually wrote about this level of telescopy. I'm probably wrong, and I'm excluding anything written in the last 10-20 years where this level of telescopy isn't actually fiction, but fact.

This all excellent science, and it's especially nice when it out sciences the science fiction :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Pie-eating

Can't we just place it on the target spot of the LHC?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Pie-eating

"That article’s URL was rather misleading; I wouldn’t call a geometry problem from 1925 “ancient”."

Well, it's nearly 100 years ago so old enough to be antique :-)

'Pig butchering' romance scam domains seized and slaughtered by the Feds

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Not just love

How? It's a got a new cool and scary sounding name. Possibly a special website and a logo too! The next step is an NGO to track it and beg for funding.

Orion reaches the Moon, buzzes surface, gets ready to orbit

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Deep space?

Agreed. I'd say "deep space" had to be, at the least, outside the orbit of the furthest known planet (That's Pluto[*], in my book!!)

[*] At least when it's outside the orbit of Uranus, since it also spends some time closer than that

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Happy

Re: Deep space?

"Is there a handy guide - ideally in El Reg Linguini or similar - as to the distance required for shallow, middling, and deep space?"

Shades of Purple?

DraftKings gamblers lose $300,000 to credential stuffing attack

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "only about 15 percent of people use strong and unique passwords"

"It will also be an incentive to take more care of your biometrics."

It#s not an incentive to those most likely to lose your biometrics through :-)

Twitter set for more layoffs as Musk mulls next move

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Devil

Re: He ran a poll 51.8% in favor of overturning Donald Trump's ban...

What's eGOP? Is that "electronic", as in email etc? The GOP is run by AI? That would explain a lot, considering the current state of AI :-)))

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Twitter survival strategy

"Eat your own leg so you have enough energy to run away."

'''cos you already lost the arse kicking contest :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Requirements

"And nor should you. The absence limit for the UK is 15 years. If you haven't lived in the UK for more than 15 years then you shouldn't have a vote. You left."

On the other hand, that was part of the point of being in the EU. Being able to live and work in other parts of the EU without having all the palaver of emigrating and possibly changing citizenship. Brits living in the EU were and are still British Citizens.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Requirements

I think it really depends on what the vote is about and how many of the electorate vote and whether those voting are actually thinking about or just voting with their party/friends/peers.

An actual free and fair vote is incredibly rare for those reasons alone, never mind all the other reasons why people are swayed one way or the other without actually thinking through themselves. Democracy is the simply the least worst option. I think it was Heilein on one of his political rants that made a good point. If you have the right to vote, always go and vote, even if you support none of the candidates or their positions. At the very least, there's someone you want to vote against. A good argument for compulsory voting IMHO

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Requirements

and to be fair,thinking of pointers on a clock face, "left leaning" in the US is more sort / while right leaning is more sort of _

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Requirements

"it's more a case that he's not allowed to speak in many of the modern day public squares of the internet,"

But Twitter isn't a public square. It's the "public square" inside a privately owned shopping centre/center/mall which is operated under the rules of the owners and management. No skateboarding, no photos, no handing out leaflets etc., etc., etc., without approval by the management.

BOFH: We're an industry leader … in employing idiot managers

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Try chlorine tri-fluoride."

I think they used all their stocks of that up replacing the halon in the data centre. They're saving that for a rainy day :-)

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hmmm

ISTR someone here, many years ago, relating a story whereby someone had dropped a big screwdriver or spanner and it landed across the contacts of a car battery. The initial sparks welded it to the contacts whereupon it glowed brighter and brighter until it melted and finally broke the circuit :-)

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: $44bn to teach the world...

Even when people come up with clever integrated clients, the big boys keep changing things to break them. Remember when there were Instant Messenger clients that tried to work with multiple systems? Constant upgrades to keep up with changes which, prior to the consolidated clients didn't seem to happen often at all.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Effective immediately, we are temporarily closing our office buildings

Soylent Blue?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: popcorn

In the UK, although you can buy a beer at the footy, it's not allowed to be consumed where you can see the match. ie you can go sit (more likely stand) in a bar, which is a bit pointless really since you just paid a lot of cash to get into the ground to watch the match in the first place. Scotland are even more strict. Corporate Hospitality is the only place you can get alcohol. It's been like that for quite a few years now.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Parody

"we can't run the company without you"

Sounds like the beginning of a very fruitful negotiation on the part of the employee. Starting with a 40 hour week and double the pay. Any further hours required must be requested with a no blame option to say no and at proper overtime rates :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I'm going to need more popcorn

"I could probably put together a team capable of creating Twitter (the platform) without much effort."

The clever bit about Twitter was the initial idea. A way of aggregating SMS messages into a social network so anyone with a mobile phone could join in. Everything else is just added icing on the idea.

Often, seemingly obvious ideas just needs someone to actually pick it up and develop it. Once it's been picked, lots of people than say, oh I could have done that.

I remember thinking about Doom many years ago and wondering if I could do something similar with photos and a map of the local town shopping centre where people could virtually walk around, click on a shop and enter their website (few actually had websites then so I'd also be offering them site building too.)

I didn't really have the time, skills or money to do anything with it and few years later things like Multimap, Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Streetview came along :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I'm going to need more popcorn

It's in production right now.

Not the Red Queen you meant, but an appropriate look to the near future:

Set in an alternate near-future America, where democracy is replaced by a monarchy and the population is separated into a common-blooded society (known as "Reds") and the powerful elites (or "Silver-blooded")

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I'm going to need more popcorn

"I'll add for reference that I regularly burn a 13 gallon kitchen garbage bag full of paper containing personal information,"

Wow, that's a lot. Although it does depend on what you mean by "regularly". Most people use it as a synonym for frequently, which I assume you are also doing here. Regularly could mean June 1st every two years, rather than frequently like say, every month or so.

Do you get a lot of snail-mail spam from banks, insurance and the like with your PII plastered all over it?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I'm going to need more popcorn

I suspect the bottom will drop out of the popcorn market by Tuesday. I'll be selling all my holdings on Monday, probably before the peak, but holding on too long might be a bit risky :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Waah

The Twitter meltdown achieved the same thing in weeks."

Just imagine, in a year or so, a newly minted PFY being issued a second hand corporate phone and wondering what that undeleteable Twitter icon is for :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Waah

He's still publish the equivalent of SFTW, but not always every week at https://autosaveisforwimps.substack.com/

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Catch-22

"I think there's a better than even chance Twitter will be permanently done before the end of the year."

This! Although I do think you are being remarkably optimistic :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Catch-22

"That would include the fatasses, I supposes. Can you even run Twatter on that?"

If you render down the fatasses [sic] and use the resultant fats as fuel in the generators, then yes, for a while.

Musk (in the bowels of Twitter HQ): "Keep shovelling the lard boys, we need to keep the servers powered!. More fat! Get me more fat!!"

India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Great

The plan is to stop bundling chargers/PSUs with devices. The upside is you have fewer chargers sitting around and more or less any you do have will work with any device. The downside is that many people buying a new charger/PSU will buy based on price and some will be buying "fake" chargers from Ali Baba et al for £2 including shipping from China.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The bar will be VERY high for that

The EU legislation has been specifically written to allow for future changes in technology. The Indian legislation is very likely to be a cut'n'paste with localisations. Future US legislation is highly likely to be butchered by special interest groups and end up optional but set in stone so people can point to it as unworkable and probably not even be ratified until it's out of date anyway.

Z-Library operators arrested, charged with criminal copyright infringement

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Textbooks...

A friend of mine once related a story about a course he was on. The lecturer basically "read" a chapter from the book per lecture and, being a "busy" researcher, disappeared at the end, no time for questions or discussion. The class attendance got smaller and smaller over the course of the term as students realised they got just as much information simply be reading the book and not bothering to turn up to have someone read it to them!

Many, many years ago when I went to university, one of the first things we were told was to head off to the Student Union bookshop where we'd almost certainly find second hand copies of all or most of the books on the reading list. From what I understand of "modern" education, that's less of an option these days as the "current reprint" version of text books is the only acceptable version due to changes and updates in some cases, especially when the lecturer is the author.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Wrong Target

Did he? I never noticed a sudden and sustained 20% price drop. I wonder where the extra money went? Not even a small price drop related to economies of scale as the market suddenly increased.

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