* Posts by Gene Cash

5697 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007

Farewell to notches and hole-punches? ZTE expected to announce mobe with under-display camera next month

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: I would be happy with a no camera phone

So you're using your phone to make a call that doesn't use the phone as a phone...

(sorry, had to bring up the momentary dissonance I get when I do that)

I can see my house from here! Microsoft Flight Simulator has laid strong foundations for the nerdy scene's next generation

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I feel really old

considering I flew the original Sublogic sim on the TRS-80

Xiaomi turns 10 and celebrates by sitting down to relax in front of its new transparent television

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Re: Transparent TV

I'm wondering how it tells a pixel is transparent... are these "normally black" pixels?

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

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What people remember you for...

Woz: all the good he's done and things he's invented.

Jobs: "Oh yeah he was the asshole one at Apple, right?"

Firefox maker Mozilla axes a quarter of its workforce, blames coronavirus, vows to 'develop new revenue streams'

Gene Cash Silver badge
Thumb Up

This is actually a good thing

If they have fewer "developers" then they can't remove as many features as usual.

As far as I'm concerned, they're negative "value-add" these days.

Android user chucks potential $10bn+ sueball at Google over 'spying', 'harvesting data'... this time to build supposed rival to TikTok called 'Shorts'

Gene Cash Silver badge

App that "competed" with Faecesbook was probably Google+

Google reports 80% spike of Flutter-built apps in Play Store as 1.20 is released

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How long before they abandon it, like most everything else?

> Google seems committed to the project

Google has seemed committed to a lot of projects that are now just historical footnotes. Also see Revolv.

China slams President Trump's TikTok banned-or-be-bought plan in the US

Gene Cash Silver badge

What ticks me off, as an American, is that I can buy a lot of useful and different tools at Harbor Freight, which are not available at Sears/Home Depot/Ace/Lowe's/etc at any price.

Leaky AWS S3 buckets are so common, they're being found by the thousands now – with lots of buried secrets

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Re: Outsourcing

Not Amazon's fault this time. Amazon themselves warn against this, and try to make it difficult. People still do it.

So many stars, so little time: Machine learning helps astroboffins spot the most oxygen-starved galaxy yet

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"All I see are the lights of a billion places I'll never go"

https://i.imgur.com/9O9aco8.jpg

Thank you, Howard Tayler

An irritating itch down the back of your neck? Searing midsummer heat? Of course, it can only be SysAdmin Day

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Colonies of sysadmins have a single queen

Hey, I'm still sore over my loss of Schlock Mercenary.

Fresh astro-underwear, anyone? Orbital shenanigans as Progress freighter has last-minute ISS docking wobble

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Only 3 hours?

> Are you sure that dropping an exploding rocket on Orlando wouldn’t be an improvement?

It would definitely be an improvement. Source: I live there, give me 10 minutes notice.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Only 3 hours?

Yes, the "normal" Russian trajectory is just under 3 days, but that's a long time cooped up in a very tiny Soyuz.

They've spent a lot of time and effort getting an accurate launch, accurate tracking, and accurate correction burns. After launch they have a very short time to determine the trajectory and the appropriate correction, then do the correction. This took several years and 3 or 4 Progress missions before it was approved for manned Soyuz.

Things are launched east to take advantage of the Earth's rotational speed. it's WHY Kennedy is on the east coast.

Butterfingers who don't bother with phone cases, rejoice: New Gorilla Glass 'Victus' tipped to survive 6ft drops

Gene Cash Silver badge

Here's a better option

Don't buy a phone with a glass back. I reached that decision with my Nexus 6P. Fuck that noise.

I drop stuff so often my grandfather had a special racist swear he would yell at me.

Did you know if you have an empty (no oil, no spring) motorcycle fork leg and you drop it, it destroys the bumpstop and all the hydraulic valves? That cost me nearly $450.

Did you know if you drop one of those WD MyPassport drives, even when it's off, it's destroyed and will never read data again?

You can also destroy Cisco routers and PIX firewalls by dropping them.

Twitter hack latest: Up to 36 compromised accounts had their private messages read – including a Dutch politician's

Gene Cash Silver badge
Happy

Twitter reported a loss this quarter of $1.2bn

Well, that's the best news I've heard in a couple months!

Frozen: Bank accounts of suspected Chinese Cisco counterfeiters who exploited pandemic shortages

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Re: Ouch

China shouldn't have needed to be notified. It should have been doing the notifying, considering it started there and its doctors were trying to tell people. Instead it tried to stifle the news until it got out.

My life as a criminal cookie clearer: Register vulture writes Chrome extension, realizes it probably breaks US law

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: "Removed in v44"

> No, it's still there.

Yes, that is still there, but Preferences -> Privacy -> History -> Keep Until "ask me every time" is gone.

And the point is that you don't know what sites or subdomains are setting cookies, and that "Manage permissions" requires the full subdomain.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: "Removed in v44"

All of those options are a major PITA compared to a dialog that pops up for a new site and you just say Y/N

> hit the F12 button to bring up the Developer Tools when the open tab is the site you want to clear cookies from. Click the Storage tab and expand the Cookies option in the left hand menu. Click the relevant site name and all cookies for that site will be listed in the main pane. Select any you want to remove and hit the Delete key.

Seriously? Fuck that.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Don't need it

I still use Firefox v43, which allows you to pick and choose which cookies get stored from where, and stores that choice. Removed in v44.

IBM profits cratered 46% last quarter. But its share price is up ~5% because Wall Street expected that to be worse

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: New buzzwords

Er, I worked for a company in 1986 where they used opex/capex as shorthand terms.

Mainframe madness as the snowflakes take control – and the on-duty operator hasn't a clue how to stop the blizzard

Gene Cash Silver badge

Data General

My community college (2-year degree) got a Data General to replace the SDS punchcard system. I remember finding and dumping my "user data profile" and being shocked to see my unencrypted password as the first thing to display. Even as a complete newbie, I knew that was not right.

Twitter hackers busted 2FA to access accounts and then reset user passwords

Gene Cash Silver badge

At least they seem to understand they fucked up. They're at least not going "we take our customer's privacy so very seriously"

OTOH I abandoned Twitter at the beginning of the month when they randomized their CSS to kill adblockers. I just don't have the patience to deal with the torrent of ads.

Black hole destroys corona

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Re: In Real Time?

Einstein just called: he says you're a twit.

AMD fans forced to sit out latest Windows 10 Insiders build due to 'bug impacting overall usability of these PCs'

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Linux

Linus won't be able to use Windows on his new AMD box?

Oh wait...

Bad news: Your Cisco switch is a fake and an update borked it. Good news: It wasn't designed to spy on you

Gene Cash Silver badge

Too expensive

You know your shit is too expensive when people go to this much trouble to make bootlegs, and still make a profit.

Linus Torvalds banishes masters, slaves and blacklists from the Linux kernel, starting now

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Re: Wishy washy

I see it as my goal in life now to slip "dictator and minion" and/or "boss and peon" into some official technical documentation at work now.

An email banning our staff from using TikTok? Haha, funny story about that, we didn't mean it – Amazon

Gene Cash Silver badge

It's not irrational. TikTok does grab a ton of data.

"We're proud that tens of millions of Americans turn to TikTok for entertainment"

Why? That's like saying "We're proud that tens of millions of Americans babble about inconsequential trivia on Twitter" or "We're proud that tens of millions of Americans jerk it to PornHub" - who cares? It's not something to be proud of.

Shopped recently in a small online store? Check this list to see if it was one of 570 websites infected with card-skimming Magecart

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: I won't shop at a small site

I've had too many friends with funds either frozen for months or outright taken by Paypal to ever trust them.

You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Another anti-immigrant rant goes viral in America – and this time it's by a British, er, immigrant tech CEO

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: We hear these stories all the time

> I'm pretty sure most of the people I know are racist, but they're pretty sure that they're not

I was raised by horribly racist relatives in a podunk shithole in the Deep South. They thought "Roots" was a comedy, and Kunta Kinte was too uppity and needed to be beaten again. That was the point I realized something was wrong and started trying to get out of there. I think I was 14. My grandfather used the "n-word" at least 3 times a day. My grandmother swore "well, I'll be John Brown!" and JB was a famous abolitionist.

I'm probably pretty racist but I try not to be.

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: I'm sure we've all done this too

> My ex-wife had the exact opposite effect

She wasn't named Margaret Dresden, was she?

Gene Cash Silver badge

Christmas tinsel and cats

I don't know about the UK, but xmas tinsel is long thin metal strips here.

Anyway, I was once treated to the sight of a cat coming up to sniff the tinsel, and it swung over to her nose, emitted a sharp snap, and swung back. Cat evaporated.

Gene Cash Silver badge

Mondrian

It took me over 30 years to figure out what that art style was called... and it was because of a girl's dress in a web comic. One of the forum users called it the "Mondrian dress" and I had to Google that.

Apple: We're defending your privacy by nixing 16 browser APIs. Rivals: You mean defending your bottom line

Gene Cash Silver badge

Gotta agree with Apple for a change

By the size of Google's temper tantrum, you can absolutely bet they're using this for fingerprinting.

None of those APIs are necessary in a browser.

Come glide with me: Virgin Galactic gives Unity some fresh air, looks forward to rocket-powered flight

Gene Cash Silver badge

Behnken is not a NASA astronaut

He's employed by SpaceX, not NASA.

Talk about the fox guarding the hen house. Comcast to handle DNS-over-HTTPS for Firefox-using subscribers

Gene Cash Silver badge

So how does Comcast handle NXDOMAINs?

Will they inject a fake response and ads like Spectrum/Brighthouse & Cox does?

Russia returns to space tourism and offers a first citizen spacewalk

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"becoming the first private citizen in history to experience open space"

Um, Bob Behnken of SpaceX is supposed to do that very soon, as he's slated to do an EVA to replace batteries.

He's a private citizen.

CompSci student bitten by fox after feeding it McNuggets

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Eating CS students

They should move to the US... one CS student here would last an entire fox family all winter.

After 84 years, Japan's Olympus shutters its camera biz, flogs it to private equity – smartphones are just too good

Gene Cash Silver badge

C-3000Zoom owner here

And it still works. It's got excellent low-light performance, better than anything I have now, and a very intuitive user interface.

I haven't been able to find anything Olympus in the shops for at least 5-6 years.

Fasten your seat belts: Brave Reg hack spends a week eating airline food grounded by coronavirus crash

Gene Cash Silver badge

Fix for 50-mile jollies - raise airline prices

Stop charging $5 for the flight and $25 for each checked bag. Charge what it used to cost back in the early '80s, $800+ a flight minimum for that 50 mile jolly. Four digits for anything further.

Insist that people adhere to business attire... no more flipflops, shortshorts, and minimal bra top.

Flights will quickly drop to only what's really necessary.

Airlines will be able to serve decent food and provide comfortable accommodations and good service again.

Windows 10 Insider wondering where Notepad has gone? Fear not, Microsoft found it down the back of Dev Channel

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Better alternative, skip MS

I thought the command to exit vi without rebooting was "killall -9 vi" ?

Salesforce plans to write Slack integration out of the equation by rolling its own messaging and collaboration app

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Yay, another messaging app to be ignored.

Skype for Windows 10 and Skype for Desktop duke it out: Only Electron left standing

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Re: FeatureDrop

Nah, that'd be a better name for the Mozilla Foundation.

Can't get your Pi fix online? The Cambridge shop's back open for business, Brits

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YASPDFV

Yet Another Shitty PDF Viewer (http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/59275/U.S.-Gold-Another-Successful-Year-1986/)

Can we stop trying to reinvent the PDF viewer? Everyone has their own installed already, and it's a pain in the ass to spend 5 minutes trying to find the tiny download icon, if it's even there.

I'm sure the museum's time is much better served elsewhere.

By emptying offices, coronavirus has hastened the paperless office

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: Security

That sounds like a problem that needs to be kicked upstairs before it's used as an excuse to ruin someone's career.

Management needs to make the choice one way or the other.

At Mozilla VPN stands for Vague Product News: Foundation reveals security product will launch eventually, with temporary pricing, in unspecified places

Gene Cash Silver badge

So does this mean there are Firefox Un-Protected Areas? (FUPAs)

A memo from the distant future... June 2022: The boss decides working from home isn't the new normal after all

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Re: New Normal?

Geographically dispersed teams suck balls. (edit: probably after it reaches about 2 dozen people - for really small groups it's fine)

You have to keep in mind which timezone someone is in, people miss important emails/slacks/IRCs/WTFs, and people end up forming cliques in each area, where the Switzerland group knows what's going on but doesn't realize the England/India/US groups haven't been fully informed.

Hayfever in Haymarket, or has Windows sneezed out a BSOD?

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: I just don't understand why this is supposed to be hilarious

Possibly because Microsoft holds themselves to be the be-all and end-all of personal computing, and that they're reliable 24x7x365 with 99.999% uptime.

So basically this is "you're not" and "you're too full of yourself"

Adobe about to pull the plug on Creative Cloud freebie 'at-home' access for students

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On the good side

This teaches kids why cloud "licenses" are a bad thing.

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

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Re: I have to admit...

Or it wasn't actually a drone. I know there's been plastic grocery bags IDed as drones.

https://i.imgur.com/7lx3aJD.jpg

Bloke rolls up to KFC drive-thru riding horse-drawn cart only to be told: Neigh

Gene Cash Silver badge

Re: So what's with the ban on horse-drawn conveyance in the drive-through?

No idea. There was a McDonald's and a Del Taco in Orlando (Florida) that didn't serve motorcycles in the drive-thru. That's ok, we just got 50-odd bikers together and filled the parking lot for a couple hours, and miraculously they changed their policy. We sent one guy in at a time to get a sandwich so we weren't loitering, we were just waiting to get food.

I've also seen places refuse to serve people on bicycles.

However, in Pennsylvania the Amish will not drive cars, so their horse-drawn buggies are seen (and accepted) everywhere. It's part of their religion, so if you refused horses, you'd have a civil-rights discrimination lawyer on your doorstep in a heartbeat. They live for that stuff.