* Posts by Gene Cash

5697 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007

Senators urge US trade watchdog to look into whether Tesla may just be over-egging its Autopilot, FSD pudding

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Common sense and responsibility

Or "Common sense: so rare, it's a superpower"

Git 2.33 released with new optional merge process likely to become the default: It's 'over 9,000' times faster

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Git is not a file revision system

> why Git is so painful

I don't see why people think it's painful. Git is how I figured an SCCS would work before I ran into any SCCS.

My pain with git is remembering what command with which option does what I need to do.

If you haven't updated your ThroughTek DVR since 2018 do so now, warns Mandiant as critical vuln surfaces

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: "...open a remote management mobile app while on a poorly secured coffee shop Wi-Fi network"

Perhaps they got a call someone's breaking into their shop/house/storage, and want to check on it before calling the cops?

A Whopper of a bork for seekers of pre-flight nosh

Gene Cash Silver badge

This is usually the situation

This is usually how it goes with Wendy's and Burger King. Only McDonald's has its shit together to have the self-order kiosks functioning.

What's worse with Wendy's are the self-order kiosks are basically registers turned around, and they're at the order stalls, so you stand there in the way of people trying to queue up to order from the staff.

And people wonder why Amazon and McDonald's are doing so well. They seem to be the only companies able to handle modern technology. I tried to order a rainsuit and some mirrors for my motorcycle from a company that was not Amazon, and it was building-the-pyramids time.

The even sadder part is the food quality is in inverse proportion to the service. Wendy's burgers are actually recognizable as meat and mostly edible.

Blue Origin sues NASA for awarding SpaceX $3bn contract to land next American boots on the Moon

Gene Cash Silver badge

Sealed?

WTF? It's about taxpayer dollars, how can it not be public interest?

US watchdog opens probe into Tesla's Autopilot driver assist system after spate of crashes

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: A solution looking for a problem

> Interesting to see if those stats include all the bogus whiplash claims?

Well, even if the whiplash claim was bogus, and you weren't actually injured, you were still in a crash. So yes, that's a crash.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: A solution looking for a problem

Have you ever driven in America??

Windows NT could probably drive better than 60% of the people here.

A REAL self-driving car solves all the idiot "drivers" killing people because they don't give enough of a shit to pay attention to what's going on around them.

Unfortunately, we don't have any real self-driving cars, and I don't think we will for at least a decade. It needs more than hooking a bunch of sensors and a GPS to a computer and attaching a steering wheel motor.

Edit: God, I can't type.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: About time too

So can we rename Autopilot as "cruise control" and rename cruise control as "speed assist"?

I assume everyone remembers all the tired old jokes about people engaging cruise control in their motor home and then crashing because they went back to fix a sandwich or something.

Scalpel! Superglue! This mouse won't fix its own ball

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Ball crud

> It was the heyday of mouse mats as well - they improved ball movement.

The main purpose of my mousepad is to keep a clear space for the mouse. Anyone that places something there gets their hand smacked.

India makes a play to source rare earths – systematic scrapping of its old cars

Gene Cash Silver badge

They need to learn from "cash for clunkers" in the US

So we had "cash for clunkers" where we got old, polluting cars off the road. Problem is, poor people suddenly ended up having no cars to buy because A) these cars were trashed and B) prices went up because supply went down.

Also, it turned out to be worse for the environment because these cars were simply shredded or smashed without draining the fluids, so all the oil, coolant, brake fluid, etc is now seeping down through all the landfills.

Thunderbird 91 lands: Now native on Apple Silicon, swaps 'master' for 'primary' password, and more

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: So far so good

I exited the app (v78 as well) moved /usr/local/thunderbird to thunderbird-old, untarred the BZ2 file, and started it. I still had my 5 or 6 Google calendars working. I'm on Devuan. It's probably systemd that broke your calendars.

It "just works" and hasn't been screwed with, or revamped, or updated, so I went back and donated $60.

> Will I even recognise the new beasty?

YES. The UI has not been Mozilla-ed at all.

NASA blames the wrong kind of Martian rock for Perseverance sample failure

Gene Cash Silver badge
Coat

So... um... the core got dumped?

Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all week! Don't forget to tip your waitress!

India's return to space fails after first locally built cryogenic engine experiences 'anomaly'

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: No problem

They didn't do the needful.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: apparently needed more on the ground testing before putting an expensive payload on it

For example, IIRC there was a pipe on the RL-10 that worked fine on the ground. In space, the encasing ice wasn't there and it vibrated to pieces, and the engine failed.

It's time to decentralize the internet, again: What was distributed is now centralized by Google, Facebook, etc

Gene Cash Silver badge

Bullshit article premise

These are just large sites. They're not the internet, and the internet is not "centralized" around them.

Google's a big search engine because it's superseded all the crap ones before it, and because Bing, etc just aren't very good.

If Google went bankrupt tomorrow (which isn't going to happen) then people would drop back to Bing and whatever else, until someone else replicated Google's success.

It's the same with Amazon and Facebook. They're big and popular because they happen to be the "best" at what they do at the moment, where "best' is defined as "not as shitty as the rest" -- if people get pissed off with Amazon's customer service, treatment of their employees, or bogus reviews, or what-have-you, then they'll leave and go somewhere better, if that exists.

For example, I use Amazon a lot as a "shopping search engine" then I find the actual manufacturer/vendor and buy from them.

A lot of the time I can't do that because the manufacturer has decided they don't want to actually sell their stuff "to the little people" and tries to pawn me off on some crappy distributor, and other times they just don't have a working site, in which case I fall back to Amazon.

This is why Amazon makes lots of money, because other people are incompetent at selling their stuff. They put all sorts of obstacles in the way of you giving them money.

They're big and they supply an important service, but that doesn't make them "the internet"

Firefox 91 introduces cookie clearing, clutter-free printing, Microsoft single sign-on... so where are all the users?

Gene Cash Silver badge

So what features did they drop?

So every time they do a Firefox release, they drop more features than they add.

What did they drop this time?

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: old sites

Remember when everything was named "[Whatever] Planet" for about a year? I still browse superbikeplanet.com about once a week.

Come fly with me. But first we need to find a boot device

Gene Cash Silver badge

This is the same situation as "Orlando/Melbourne International Airport" and "Orlando/Sanford International Airport" which are 1hr 10min and 45min away respectively.

Orlando finally got the high powered lawyers involved, and now it's Melbourne Orlando International Airport, which is slightly better.

I've had a dozen people ask for rides, and then get a rude shock at the price of an Uber or taxi.

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Tesla scams.

I ran my electric bike out of battery, and needed to call for a tow to the closest charger.

The tow truck driver asked why didn't I put an alternator on the wheel so I could charge it while I rode.

Yeah. There's the American school system for you.

SpaceX Starship struts its stack to show it has the right stuff

Gene Cash Silver badge

Someone posted a pic of of New Shepard, Starship, Falcon 9, and Saturn V

I always thought Falcon 9 was the size of a Titan II. It's actually bigger than a Saturn 1B! It's HUGE.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Have you not heard Musk wants people on Mars so humanity isn't a one-planet species, and has a better chance of survival? He talks about it incessantly.

SpaceX and Starship is his road to that.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: "Mine is bigger than yours"

The Russians can arrange that! And the actual docking is far slower than the Orion III took.

THX Onyx: A do-it-all DAC for the travelling audiophile

Gene Cash Silver badge

Speaking as another 60+ year old codger, there is actually some good stuff today... but it's hard as hell to find. The last good stuff I found was background music to a Kerbal Space Program video, for god's sake.

Breaking Bad or just a bad breakpoint? That feeling when your predecessor is BASIC

Gene Cash Silver badge
Pint

> According to Carlsberg on twatter it’s beer day, so what more do you need?

Well it's ALWAYS beer day, or more exactly, whiskey day. Or perhaps whiskey hour, around here.

8 years ago another billionaire ploughed millions into space to harvest solar power and beam it back down to Earth

Gene Cash Silver badge

Tall poppy syndrome

Ah, I love all the instant replies of why it won't work and should never be considered.

Warms my heart, it does.

Redpilled Microsoft does away with flashing icons on taskbar as Windows 11 hits Beta

Gene Cash Silver badge

This is complete crap

So when I'm concentrating on things, Skype can flash the taskbar icon and I'll still miss it for a bit.

This sort of useless trivial crap is going to not be seen at all. There's going to be a lot of people who'll be hearing "nope, didn't see your IM"

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Car makers are almost as bad.

> The rubber radio volume knob on my 2017 Ford Focus has started breaking down

Wot? You need to get with the times, and buy a vehicle that has only a touchscreen, where you have to look over and search for the control instead of watching your driving! Plus when the touchscreen dies, it's an even bigger bill!

PwnedPiper vulns have potential to turn Swisslog's PTS hospital products into Swiss cheese, says Armis

Gene Cash Silver badge

"if a bad actor was first able to successfully break into a hospital’s secure network, know and understand the pathway from there to the panel, and then leverage the vulnerabilities."

So they're saying "nobody's smart enough to do it" anyway. Nice.

Assholes. But then in that case, they fit right in with the American medical system.

Tech spec experts seek allies to tear down ISO standards paywall

Gene Cash Silver badge

On this side of the pond, that's apparently the case: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Electrical_Code

"In the United States, statutory law cannot be copyrighted and is freely accessible and copyable by anyone.[8] When a standards organization develops a new coding model and it is not yet accepted by any jurisdiction as law, it is still the private property of the standards organization and the reader may be restricted from downloading or printing the text for offline viewing. For that privilege, the coding model must still be purchased as either printed media or electronic format (e.g. PDF.) Once the coding model has been accepted as law, it loses copyright protection and may be freely obtained at no cost."

Russia says software malfunction caused Nauka module to unexpectedly fire thrusters, tilt space station

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Those comments from Roscosmos are the biggest load of weasel-word flim-flam

Yes, and even NASA was bullshitting that the station never went past 45 degrees out of orientation. 45 degrees was about the point at which they started to regain control and the rates stopped increasing.

Russia's New Space Station Module Causes Alarm On ISS by good 'ol Scott Manley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTR5evpFLb4

You MUST present your official ID (but only the one that's really easy to fake)

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: On forgery

It's not forgery, is it, if it's someone else's QR? And apparently with their permission, so it's not theft.

It's a real QR, it's just not mine. You didn't specify it had to be mine!

What to do with our leftover Saturn V Lego? Why, build another rocket, of course

Gene Cash Silver badge

Wernher von Braun pic

There's a picture of Wernher von Braun in his NASA office in his later years. (edit: it's not the one on Wikipedia, it's from a different angle and not so hard cropped, and he's on the phone.)

There's a row of rocket models behind him. I presume they're rockets he's supervised/built/launched and they're all the same scale. They look like the same scale from my piddly little research.

There's a hole in the ceiling to accommodate the Saturn V model.

I always think he was subtly amused by this every time he walked in.

Privacy proves elusive in Google's Privacy Sandbox

Gene Cash Silver badge

"First Locally-Executed Decision over Groups Experiment"

Is this an attempt to "baffle 'em with bullshit" from Google??

(Being serious, actually... not joking)

GitHub stuffs $1m in Stanford Law School's pocket to provide free legal advice to DMCA-hit developers

Gene Cash Silver badge

How difficult to get?

I'm betting it'll be a complete pain in the ass to get any sort of assistance or advice.

Rackspace literally decimates workforce: One in ten staffers let go this week

Gene Cash Silver badge

Leveraged buyouts should be illegal

"Last year Apollo took Rackspace public again, in part to pay off the debt it accumulated buying the cloud management company in the first place."

This is the same shit that killed Sears, which was a premier American merchandiser with over a hundred years of success behind it.

There used to be a Sears in every US city, and Craftsman tools, Kenmore appliances, etc were all top quality and highly respected. When you walked in, you got professional courtesy and treatment, instead of Walmart's snotty disgusted acknowledgement that you exist.

And now it's all dead.

Leveraged buyouts should be illegal.

eBay cyberstalking victims sue internet tat bazaar over former staff members' campaign of harassment

Gene Cash Silver badge

This is on par with the toejams that decided that they didn't like the name of the new Audacity fork, so they came around to harass the developer.

People are assholes.

Never mind the trolls, Discord hosts 'significant volumes of malware' in its CDN

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Credibility score: zero

> Well, up your game then. Sounds like you have some scope.

Probably just a red dot, though...

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: 16GB should be enough for anybody...

I only have 32GB because the Altavista server had 32GB back in the day, and I said "some day..."

Seriously though, I run 2 VMs so I can run Windows and connect to work, and they love the extra memory. Otherwise, it's mostly wasted.

Same with the 8-thread CPU. The only time it uses more than maybe 2 cores is when it's compiling the newest nVidia kernel module.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Right to repair?

Or browser territory? Fuckin' Mozilla "developers"

"That feature was too hard to understand, so we removed it"

In the Navy, we want to share data with some ease. In the Navy, can someone help us with this please?

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Peter Thiel..........Please (please) have nothing to do with him!!!

I only like Peter Thiel for the fact he bankrolled Hulk Hogan's suit against Gawker.

I still like Elon Musk for SpaceX, despite the fact he started Paypal.

Hole blasted in Guntrader: UK firearms sales website's CRM database breached, 111,000 users' info spilled online

Gene Cash Silver badge
Coat

"completely untargeted"

"Isn't that ironic.. don't you think?"

--Alanis Morrisette

Exsparko-destructus! What happens when wand waving meets extremely poor wiring

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Gearbox

> The better electric drills have an indication showing you're closing in on live wiring.

Seriously? I've never seen or even heard of that. Cite? I'd love to see one.

Even Facebook struggles: Zuck's titanic database upgrade hits numerous legacy software bergs

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Didn't know they were still using MySQL

> they might even just buy Oracle

Now that sounds like a perfect recipe to sink Facebook's ship. That would be the worst decision ever, like Boeing buying McDonnell-Douglas.

Russia's ISS Multipurpose Laboratory Module launches after years sitting on a shelf, immediately runs into issues

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: As it's not raining (yet)

Or spotthestation.nasa.gov which will email you about sighting opportunities.

Akamai Edge DNS goes down, takes a chunk of the internet with it

Gene Cash Silver badge

Downdetector?

How come Downdetector is never down? Who the hell is their provider? Why don't we just all use them?

US senators warn China's Digital Yuan could compromise Olympic athletes

Gene Cash Silver badge

The Olympics are still a thing?

Hands up if you haven't paid attention to them in at least 16 years.

In the '80s, satellite comms showed promise – soon it'll be a viable means to punt internet services at anyone anywhere

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Can't wait...

> just an RJ45 coming in to the house

Errr, that's what we get on this side of the pond. Actually, it's usually a coax (or fiber) that goes into a DOCSIS (or fiber) modem, that has an RJ-45 on it. You can rent a modem and firewall/VoIP/router/WiFi-AP/pigeonroost from the ISP or buy your own.

South Korea tables law to remove app stores' in-app purchase monopolies

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Five per cent

"Madam, we’ve already established you're a whore. Now we are haggling about the price"

Google Cloud's Intrusion Detection Service attempts to make security 'invisible' but cost will be the big giveaway

Gene Cash Silver badge

Trust your security to Google...

Then how long before Google gets bored and abandons it, leaving you with your knickers around your ankles?

Gloom-dwelling subterranean robots battle for million-dollar DARPA prize

Gene Cash Silver badge
WTF?

WTF is a "homogeneous drone"?

Is this just a hidden buzzword bingo?