Released on Monday eh?
So this was released on Monday 1st April? Hmmm, nothing suspicious there...
Posts by HkraM
41 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2013
Simulation reveals all Japanese will have the same surname by 2531
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is returning with its first-ever asteroid sample
Jury orders Google to pay $340M patent-infringement damages over Chromecast
Tuesday 25th July 2023 13:51 GMT
> You cannot, on any remote control I know of, browse a media catalogue onscreen, then tell your TV to play your selection.
As far back as 2010, I could browse Sky's catalogue on my phone via their app, then use the app to get my Sky+ box to download that program. I could browse recorded programs and tell my Sky+ box to play them on the TV.
It's not the same as this patent, but it's not a huge leap to get from what this could do in 2010 to doing it from the internet.
Tesla wins key court battle over Autopilot crash blame
Oh, 07734! Internet Archive debuts vintage calculator emulator
Tuesday 31st January 2023 08:23 GMT
Casio fx100
I'm sure I have a memory of some old Casio scientific calculators that would produce an odd (not even) result when asked to calculate 2^32 or 2^33, which were the largest numbers in the sequence before it would go into scientific notation. Sadly my Casio fx100 was lost years ago so I can't try this again. Does anyone else remember this?
Ukraine slides closer to NATO with buckets of experience fending off Moscow's cyberattacks
It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system
Monday 23rd January 2023 12:03 GMT
Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence
"And I'm selling winter-tyres 185/65R15, where 185 is the width in mm, R15 is the rim size in inches, and 65 is the height above the rims in ... what exactly ?"
The 65 is the profile and is the percentage of the width, so for those tyres it's 65% of 185 mm = 120 mm.
Musk says spat with Apple over App Store ejection threat for Twitter was 'misunderstanding'
Firefox 106 will let you type directly into browser PDFs
Wednesday 19th October 2022 09:17 GMT 
Stop ignore the address I type
I'm starting to get increasingly annoyed with Firefox and finding I have to use Chrome.
A couple of versions back Firefox stopped me accessing HTTP sites on my local network, including my router, by ignoring the address I'd typed in and using the HTTPS version of the address instead - but that doesn't exist on some devices on the network. After changing several settings in about:config I can now get to some of them, but one or two are still being blocked by Firefox.
I just want a browser to go to the address I entered!
Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable
Friday 30th September 2022 08:51 GMT
Re: Upside down 3.5" floppies
At college, when given a blank 3.5" floppy and a sticky label, one student on finding that the label was larger than the target area, placed the sticker so it partially covered the metal shutter. When inserted into a floppy drive, which offered some resistance, it then broke the drive!
Cue an interruption to the lesson for a brief demonstration on where to place the label.
NASA's Space Launch System rocket is on track for August 29 liftoff
Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing
Russia blows up old satellite, NASA boss 'outraged' as ISS crew shelters from debris
Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone
Firewalls? Pfft – it's no match for my mighty spares-bin PC
Monday 4th October 2021 14:36 GMT
Got the T-shirt
At a previous company we once had a 7-disk RAID5 chassis fail on the main server. Ended up removing all of the HDDs from their caddies, and connecting them up with a SCSI ribbon cable on the desk and positioning a desk fan to blow some air across them. It was just a temporary fix until the chassis was replaced. I think the server stayed like that until it was retired a few years later.
150,000 lost UK police records looking more like 400,000 as Home Office continues to blame 'human error'
We’ve had enough of your beach-blocking shenanigans, California tells stubborn Sun co-founder: Kiss our lawsuit
ASA tells Poundland and its teabagging elf: Enough with the smutty social ninja sh*t
User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work
Don't panic, but.. ALIEN galaxies are slamming Earth with ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!
Fighter pilot shot down laptops with a flick of his copper-plated wrist
Friday 16th June 2017 08:15 GMT
About 20 years ago I noticed a user from a different part of the company booting up his PC in the morning - he had to enter the date and time in when prompted. When I asked why, he said he'd been doing that for over a year, because his PC always forgot the date and time when powered off and IT couldn't find the fault - so IT had added date/time prompts into autoexec.bat.
As someone who was never afraid to do IT's job for them, especially if it had the potential to demonstrate how totally useless they were, I opened the case of this PC thinking that maybe the battery needed replacing, looked inside for less than 10 seconds, then removed the CMOS reset jumper that was still fitted. Problem fixed.
If only our British 4G were as good as, um, Albania's... UK.gov's telco tech report
Wednesday 14th December 2016 14:47 GMT 
OpenSignal
The report makes it clear that the data used to rank countries is based on data from OpenSignal. Their data should be taken with a truckload of salt.
I've used OpenSignal's app on four phones and two networks and it just never uploads any test results; their data still shows no coverage near where I live on my network. I don't know how they can get away with publishing data collected from such an unreliable app.
UK.gov was warned of smart meter debacle by Cabinet Office in 2012
Wednesday 30th November 2016 12:02 GMT 
No thanks
My current electricity supplier don't bother to ever read my meter, so I have to do it for them. This is despite the meter being on the same external wall and 6 feet from the gas meter, which they do read.
And even then I do not want a smart meter, even if it did mean they can read the damn thing remotely.
Fleeing Aussie burglar shot in arse with bow and arrow
Swansong for Rosetta as it lands on the duck-shaped comet
Tuesday 4th October 2016 09:53 GMT 
This mission has been a great success and I've followed its progress for years. Lets hope we can have more discoveries like these.
Often forgotten is the fact that Rosetta wasn't originally going to visit 67P but comet 46P/Wirtanen instead. But after an Ariane 5 ECA self-destructed in December 2002, Rosetta's planned launch the following month was postponed and a new target had to be found; Rosetta launched over a year later than originally planned.
Narcissist Heidi Powell wants her dot-com and she wants it now, now, NOW!
BOFH: The case of the suspicious red icon
Friday 16th September 2016 17:23 GMT
Re: 1bs
How about the users who know they don't know something and are prepared to ask... but they think they have a photographic memory so don't take notes, and end up asking the same question again a week or two later, and yet again another two weeks later. There's no point adding pages to the support FAQ list because these users always forget that exists! One user still didn't take the hint when I just kept forwarding an email to him containing all previous answers to his question.
Android's latest patches once again remind us: It's Nexus or bust if you want decent security
Tuesday 2nd August 2016 08:24 GMT
If you're using the nightly builds, Cyanogenmod gets the updates very fast. My CM13 phone got the July updates within a day or two of Google releasing them; I'm expecting the August updates to be similar. I am using the nightly builds though - the last "stable" build for my phone is 9 months old.
I'll never buy a new phone that doesn't have Cyanogenmod builds available. I had enough of manufacturers refusing to release updates after less than a year. (Motorola, Samsung, Sony have all done this.)
Lester Haines: RIP
Ultra-cool dwarf throws planetary party
F-35s failed 'scramble test' because of buggy software
Four hundred MILLION vulnerable Androids are out there
Wednesday 20th April 2016 08:50 GMT
Unsupported devices still under warranty
I think I've had devices by Sony, Samsung, Motorola and Asus that all got one OTA update then became unsupported before the 1 year warranty even ran out. Two of them ended up running Cyanogenmod builds.
It seems to me that the manufacturers can't even be bothered to support their devices for 1 year.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
