* Posts by Uncle Slacky

2131 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2008

Beer rating app reveals homes and identities of spies and military bods, warns Bellingcat

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: For any one in a sensitive job.

Or equally, having a very common name helps you to be lost in the virtual crowd.

SAP proves, yet again, that Excel is utterly unkillable

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Re: The Wheel of History

> writing letters using one big row per line

Sounds like the "word processor" in Lotus Symphony (DOS version).

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

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Re: Pure 'Carry on ' gold.

Yes, sadly the Beebotron is no longer with us - it had a useful function called the Beebodge that would (usually) extract the requested radio programme (based on timings and station choices):

https://web.archive.org/web/20161230215329/https://beebotron.org/beebobodgewma.php

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Re: Kids Toys

Achtung, Schweinhund!

If you're appy and you know it: The Huawei P40 Pro conclusively proves that top-notch specs aren't everything

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Linux

Re: reviewer uses Google extensively

> For those of us who never install apps and use YouTube by going to the YouTube website

And if you *do* want an app for that, install NewPipe from the F-Droid repository instead!

Uncle Slacky Silver badge
Stop

Google apps etc. via browser?

What's to stop you logging in to Google's apps via whatever browser they've included?

Now there's nothing stopping the PATRIOT Act allowing the FBI to slurp web-browsing histories without a warrant

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Big Brother

Re: Illegal.is relative.

It's also worth noting that Joe Biden was the author of what eventually became the PATRIOT Act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act_of_1995

https://newspunch.com/joe-biden-admits-he-wrote-the-patriot-act-in-1995/

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Headmaster

Re: 1st Amendement

The 1st amendment didn't last long at all - in fact, only until 1798. From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

"...criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government (Sedition Act of 1798)"

More automation to suddenly look like a jolly good idea as businesses struggle through coronavirus crisis, say analysts

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That's why it's called "fully automated luxury communism" - it's a post-capitalist society:

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment

Total Eclipse to depart: Open-source software foundation is hopping the pond to Europe

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Facepalm

Re: A long time coming

> whether 4/6/2018 is in July or April

Or even June...

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

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Stop

ROTM?

Shouldn't this be listed under Rise of the Machines (if El Reg still has that category)?

Baby Diesel? Little d'Artagnan? There is another child of Musk in the world

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Re: X Æ A-12

"Chumley"

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Stop

X Æ A-12

That's the official name - not sure how to pronounce it though.

You can get a mechanical keyboard for £45. But should you? We pulled an Aukey KM-G6 out of the bargain bin

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Re: Sun4

There's a pinout diagram here: http://www.kbdbabel.org/conn/kbd_connector_sun456.png

IBM PS/2 pinout for comparison: http://www.kbdbabel.org/conn/kbd_connector_ps2.png

It was linked from a Sun 5 adaptor Github page, if it helps: https://github.com/benr/SunType5_ArduinoAdapter

There's also this: https://github.com/xelalexv/suniversal

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Coffee/keyboard

Macintosh Extended Keyboard II or GTFO

Nothing to beat it IMO. Still usable with a suitable adaptor like: https://www.bigmessowires.com/usb-wombat/

Sometimes one can go a little too far in search of isolation

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Stop

Re: Admiral Grace Hopper to post in 3, 2, 1...

She still haunts these forums, however.

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

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Re: POTUS Supporters

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1217/

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Darwin Award can also apply to people who are alive but have lost their ability to reproduce (due to their award-winning actions).

Fright at the museum: Bored curators play spooky Top Trumps on Twitter over who has the creepiest object

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Thumb Up

Re: A few years ago in Cornwall

Could have been at the old Potter Museum at Jamaica Inn, unfortunately long gone (I was there on the last day of opening). Lots of bad Victorian taxidermy - there's a nice collection of photos here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gallery/2013/sep/13/curious-world-walter-potter-pictures-taxidermist-victorian

Strangely, the Witchcraft Museum at Boscastle hasn't participated in this competition (yet) to my knowledge.

Vivaldi browser to perform a symphony of ad and tracker blocking with version 3.0

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Re: Vivaldi is great

Same here, it has the best vertical tab implementation of any browser.

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Re: I'll have to give it a go on Android.

You can set your country in DDG if you want, that should give you more relevant results.

So how do the coronavirus smartphone tracking apps actually work and should you download one to help?

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Stop

Re: Good for data-less phone plans

My Asus eeePC 701 is surprisingly portable...

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Thumb Up

Re: Good for data-less phone plans

Same for me. I have a netbook running Linux if I need to access the internet when I'm out & about, and a feature phone (with a physical keyboard) for phone calls and texting. Smartphones are too closed for my liking.

NASA makes May 27 its US independence day from Russian rockets: America's back in the astronaut business after nearly nine years

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: Thanks To A South American Immigrant

Adjusted per capita, too.

Honor MagicBook 14: Nice keyboard and ports aplenty – but with a webcam forever fixed on all of your chins

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Linux

Re: OS?

There's this one:

https://linux-laptop.net/

but I don't think it's been updated in a while.

OK brainiacs, we've got an IT cold case for you: Fatal disk errors on an Amiga 4000 with 600MB external SCSI unless the clock app is... just so

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Re: Witchcraft

Should have waved a dead chicken over it:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/W/wave-a-dead-chicken.html

Edit: On reflection, maybe a rain dance instead:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/R/rain-dance.html

Mozilla plugs two Firefox browser holes exploited in the wild by hackers to hijack victims' computers

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Re: One returning to the fold

Firefox on Windows is great, but for some reason it won't render things like checkboxes properly on Linux, so there's no way of knowing if they've been selected or not. Apparently it might have something to do with the desktop theme, but I don't have the time to devote to experimentation. Vivaldi seems better in terms of user experience, it also has an option for vertical tabs built in.

Absolutely everyone loves video conferencing these days. Some perhaps a bit too much

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Re: heefee, heefy, weefy, wiffy....

The one I had the greatest problem with was when a Frenchman asked me if I'd ever seen (what sounded like) "Eva Noë", which I took to be the name of an actress I didn't know. It took some time to figure out that he meant "Ivanhoe".

Stob's vital message to Britain's IT nation: And no, it's not about that

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"F" as in "ghoti".

Not exactly the kind of housekeeping you want when it means the hotel's server uptime is scrubbed clean

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Re: Reading Comprehension

That's a well-known phenomenon - like when someone tells you "don't think about a white elephant" and then that's all you can think about...

Broken lab equipment led boffins to solve a 58-year-old physics problem by mistake

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Re: I just loved "the nuclear charge is slightly potato-shaped"

I'm reminded of the plum pudding model of the atom:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_pudding_model

Hungry now for some reason...

Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

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Sometimes I use "a whelk's chance in a supernova" or "not worth a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys". Quite often I encounter things which are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike "x".

And of course last week there was an article on "the biggest bang since the Big One":

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51669384

Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: Dwarfs or dwarves?

Tolkien was fond of pointing out that he "wrote" the OED (OK, contributed, obvs) so his spelling choices should not be questioned.

Amazon staffer based just a stone's throw away from Seattle HQ tests positive for COVID-19 coronavirus

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Re: Doesn't check out

The best advice I've seen for poor people in the US is to cough on a rich person and let them get tested...

Surprise! Plans for a Brexit version of the EU's Galileo have been delayed

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Facepalm

Re: Good

> I hear he is sick of the US picking up the bill for European defence. Which is a reasonable statement.

No it's not - there is no "NATO budget", Trump just wants to sell more expensive unnecessary US-made weaponry to the rest of NATO for the benefit of the US economy/war profiteers. Who does Europe need to defend itself against, anyway?

> Why would we give ourselves to the US? Just because we whored ourselves out to the EU doesnt mean we have to do the same for someone else.

You think you're going to have any choice in the matter?

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband

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Re: THIS ISN'T THE BREXIT I VOTED FOR!

What did the Romans ever do for us?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to save data from a computer that should have died aeons ago

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Re: Didn't have to fix it

I used them too, when I had a summer job at TI's old offices in Bedford in 1991. They were being used mainly as dumb terminals, though.

Why so shy, Samsung? Weird Find my Phone push notification did not only affect Galaxy mobes

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Re: I almost feel left out

Nothing here either on my Samsung Ch@t 335...

Forcing us to get consent before selling browser histories violates our free speech, US ISPs claim

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Re: Have they never heard?

Corporations are people, my friend.

C'mon SPARCky, it's just an admin utility update. What could possibly go wrong?

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Also known as the "ohnosecond": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ohnosecond

Google Chrome to block file downloads – from .exe to .txt – over HTTP by default this year. And we're OK with this

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: Doesn't make any sense

uuencode/decode is about to make a comeback!

Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers

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Re: Might have mentioned this before...

So you're saying the disc drive was...jammed?

Hear, hear: The first to invent idiot-cancelling headphones gets my cash

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Devil

Re: Not a lot of people know this ..

So much for "Don't Be Evil" then.

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: short but somewhat formal dress and heels

> they pulled the logs

I see what you did there...

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

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Found the Boeing engineer...

That's what makes you hackable: Please, baby. Stop using 'onedirection' as a password

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Thumb Up

Re: Weird Al's "Happy Birthday"

I prefer "MashedPotatoesCanBeYourFriends":

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/weirdalyankovic/daretobestupid.html

RIP FTP? File Transfer Protocol switched off by default in Chrome 80

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: Whippersnappers!

UUCP! Pah! We used to dream of UUCP! Try remote system admin and sending uuencoded binaries via CU...

What a terrible result from this year's Super Bowl. Can you believe it? Awful. Yes, we're talking about the tech ads

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: I've got a super bowl

I've got a really superb owl...

So you locked your backups away for years, huh? Allow me to introduce my colleagues, Brute, Force and Ignorance

Uncle Slacky Silver badge

Re: Seen in the wild

IIRC this was the recommended way to reseat the chips in Apple IIIs and Acorn Atoms.

Will Asimov fix my doorbell? There should be a law about this

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Big Brother

Passport/ID with you at all times

Pretty sure that in France you're supposed to have your passport or ID card on you at all times (if possible).