* Posts by ArrZarr

1182 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2015

Sneaky fingerprinting script in Microsoft ad slips onto StackOverflow, against site policy

ArrZarr Silver badge
Pirate

Re: Disrupting the business model of sites that you value

I just delete the elements straight up, no need to tinker with the obfuscation when you can just rip it out at the roots.

Bonkers British MPs rant: 5G signals cause cancer

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Unhappy

I...What?

Buckminsterfullerene sounds like the next UK Prime Minister but trust us, it's in fact the largest molecule yet found in interstellar space

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No, it's a Captain America reference.

That's a sticky Siemens situation: Former coder blows his logic bomb guilty plea deal in court

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Unhappy

Re: So.......

Except from your previous post, you give off the impression that any data within your system shall bloody well stay there, even if Excel is a better way to manipulate the data.

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: So.......

If you have Excel, everything looks like a spreadsheet.

I've already replied to one of your comments on this topic with a snarky post but from a user perspective, a lot of the value of getting a clue in Excel is how amazingly versatile it is, so that you don't need to learn how to use a dashboard set up by Vogon A and another tool from Vogon B, you just put the data in Excel and use one tool.

Not saying that everything should be in Excel. It most definitely shouldn't, and as a reporting tool (guessing at that from how you've described it), your system is probably better. For going in and digging around the data, Excel is quite possibly superior.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Coat

Re: $42,000 to read a code listing?

I think you mean XFD1048576.

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: Spreadsheet misuse.

You can get a 5000 character formula into a cell. Excel only starts throwing a wobbly when you go above 8192 characters.

You can often run into that problem while debugging array formulae as each section of an array formula can easily handle tens of thousands of rows so while stepping through with F9, you go over the limit even though you have no intention of actually writing a formula more than 100 characters or so.

Vulture gets claws on Lego's latest Apollo nostalgia-fest

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: Why is Christmas so far away?

I didn't notice the part count while building it but distinctly remember wondering why certain parts of the model had what looked to be entirely extraneous bricks hidden away on the inside.

Still a great kit to build, although one of the fins got lost during a house move :(

We've Falcon caught it! SpaceX finally nets a fairing half after a successful Heavy launch

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Happy

Re: Say what you like

Not on the moon, but there's always Olympus Mons on Mars - The largest mountain in the solar system. If Musk gets humans to the red planet, he mas my vote for that patch of land.

Sputnik? No, comrade, this is Spunknik: Frozen sperm manages to survive zero-grav in this totally realistic test

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Angel

Project Hephaestus.

You're welcome.

Comms room, comms room, comms room is on fire – we don't need no water, let the engineer burn

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Angel

Re: Leap Out And Let It Burn

On the plus side, if you die, it Isn't Your Problem anymore.

Shut the barn door: UK data watchdog tells MPs mass slurping by firms is a huge risk to privacy

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Big Brother

Re: Tell people *why* the slurp is bad for them

At this stage, I expect the world to continue marching towards dataslavery(TM) no matter what is done. There are too many ways around even the most expertly crafted legislation, which we all know isn't going to be that well written to begin with and we must rely on the conscience and commitment of the management of every company that can scrape this data.

All I want to know is whether they will be happy once they've taken over the world.

We knew it was coming: Bureaucratic cockup triggers '6-month' delay of age verification block on porno in the UK

ArrZarr Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: There's something I don't get

If the Tories collapse, that will leave only Labour, an even worse choice.

I was going to try and say something pithy about the second worst party letting the worst party in, but then i remembered that UKIP and NEWKIP exist and are even worse and just felt depressed.

*Spits out coffee* £4m for a database of drone fliers, UK.gov? Defra did game shooters for £300k

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Happy

Re: yeah right

See? It's foolproof!

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

ArrZarr Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: 1:4:9 dark featureless slab with no openings

You jest, but 1:4:9 with rounded corners isn't too far off the last couple years' flagships.

To members of Pizza Hut's loyalty scheme: You really knead to stop reusing your passwords

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: Breach Notification

The accounts have been compromised by, if Pizza Hut is to be believed, putting the correct username and password in for a user.

In this case, is Pizza Hut even at fault given that their security worked as any reasonable person would expect it to.

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

ArrZarr Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: figuring out

A guy at a desk, as described by the poster above can be tricked.

A machine can also be tricked, just by very different methods.

The possibility for an untrickable guy exists but isn't scalable, no matter how much he eats

The possibility for an untrickable machine exists but we haven't figured it out yet.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Unhappy

The problem is, and always will be people. Imperfect lords of systems that require perfection to function.

And, for all we like to think it is always the user doing something wrong, anybody in the chain of managing accesses/credentials is liable to make a mistake, which then gets amplified by human nature so the rumblings of discontent among the users who just want to get on with their job.

Whoever figures this out will die so obscenely rich that they'll be able to return Magrathea to glory, and biometrics don't count.

Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy

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Mushroom

Re: Ghastly

I know that the intent behind these tips is often envisioned by a genuine desire to help (as long as they aren't trying to sell you something), but I've never had a suggestion like this where I didn't want to add an option 4:

Shut up and go away you piece of shit. I have a computer so that it does what I tell it to do, when I tell it to do it. If I wanted your opinion on the matter, I'd program it into you with a god damn sledgehammer. Never offer my any advice ever again because I already have a mother who tries teaching me to suck eggs whenever I meet her.

*ahem*

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

ArrZarr Silver badge
WTF?

I'm informed that it's not a Vesa mount.

It's a Vesa adaptor.

Your $5k or $6k monitor needs $200 spending before you can attach it to a Vesa mount.

Which is sold seperately, and not by Apple on their page.

So you are right that third party Vesa mounts won't be available straight off, and would you really want to trust your new, expensive and very heavy monitor to a third party adapter?

Sunday seems really quiet. Hmm, thinks Google, let's have a four-hour Gmail, YouTube, G Suite, Cloud outage

ArrZarr Silver badge
Thumb Down

A domain that you redirect your mail to?

That's a novel thought. I expect that you're hosting this domain locally with an offsite backup server or have it set up with multiple hosting providers to avoid single points of failure.

But that does seem like a lot of time investment, so I rather think that time is better spent elsewhere than making an inconsequential personal email address that I get for free* bulletproof

*Well, as "free" as anything Google

Buy, buy this American PCIe, drove my PC on the Wi-Fi so the Wi-Fi would fly

ArrZarr Silver badge
Joke

Semantics are important

Or, as my colleagues phrase it "Nobody cares, oh my god, just go away with your linguistics facts"

It's 2019 and a WhatsApp call can hack a phone: Zero-day exploit infects mobes with spyware

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Re: The question is

...Britain

Japan on track to start testing Alfa-X, fastest train in the world with top speed of 400kph

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Re: Well....

It being okay for trains at the time is the point I was trying to get across.

I did also consider the prevailing lack of flatness in the UK, but considering that Japan is even worse for mountains, didn't think that point had much value.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Well....

Not really, we built the first trains; pioneered the science; made all the mistakes.

Poorly designed tracks, without the experience of 100 years of engineering means that the trains have to travel slowly because corners.

Trains that must travel slowly due to the track will naturally focus on outlasting God rather than being fast.

Japan's rail infrastructure was built after the War, with trains already able to travel >100mph and electric/diesel being what they were built for.

There are also passenger/freight aspects - Britain's rail network powered the industrial backbone of the country so the infrastructure needed to be way more complex than it did in Japan.

What we have left in Britian is the remnants of a structure that is no longer required to keep every aspect of the country's production lines in order.

Essex named sexiest British accent followed closely by, um, Glaswegian

ArrZarr Silver badge
Mushroom

I would argue that Hull's ear-tearing drawl is far too high on the list.

Years of listening to people who wouldn't know a hard "O" if it beat them to death ("Ur Nur, rurdwurks") may make me biased though.

In the claws of a vulture: Nebra AnyBeam Laser Projector

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Thumb Up

"...a pure electrostatic biaxial raster scanning mirror."

Amazing how all of those words actually mean something. Makes me less inclined to snigger at Star Trek's "modulated positronic anti-photon beams" when actual tools exist with similarly word-salady components.

Nifty widget though.

If the thing you were doing earlier is 'drop table' commands, ctrl-c, ctrl-v is not your friend

ArrZarr Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Shortcut curious...

> Never

> > When is it acceptable to top post?

I see what you did there.

Cool story, brew: Utah karaoke crooners receive cold, refreshing shock as alcohol authority refuses beer licence

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Coat

Re: Wow!

The article was definitely verging on the punbearable.

Gather round, friends. Listen close. It's time to list the five biggest lies about 5G

ArrZarr Silver badge
Joke

Re: New and shiny but practically pointless

Curses, we must ensure that history is ISO Compliant.

Quick, Ichabod, to the scrapheap!

ArrZarr Silver badge
Coat

Re: New and shiny but practically pointless

Off Topic, but does it bug anybody else that it's millipede and not megapede? Unless arthropleura has that name trademarked, it really should be the other way around.

BOFH: It's not just an awesome app, it'll look great on my Insta. . a. a. AAAARRRRRGGH

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Joke

Re: At the risk of creating a very powerful enemy...

Capita and Accenture are professionals.

Handing it to a random Computer Science student does have a chance of producing something that works to spec.

Can't have that.

Jocasta? Jocasta! Don't ram that trolley into the man: New tech promises an end to this scenario

ArrZarr Silver badge
Holmes

What's with the Oedipus reference?

It might just be a name chosen at random, but I trust El Reg to have higher standards than that.

Now, how to boost fibre throughput to a stonking 240Gbps? With frikkin' spin-lasers, of course

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Paris Hilton

Today, the spin laser. Tomorrow the Dillon-Wagoner Graviton Polarity Generator.

We'll get there folks. Just a matter of time.

No, I don't care that they're entirely unrelated.

It's alive! Hands on with Microsoft's Chromium Edge browser

ArrZarr Silver badge

+1 for Vivaldi.

Where has the "Close tabs to the left" option been all my life?

There are pictures all over the internet of a big dark spot on Uranu... Oh no, wait, it's Neptune

ArrZarr Silver badge

I was tempted to put LEO in the comment for Hubble, but refrained as I wasn't sure if that were the case. Inside Earth's gravity well, certainly.

I was also aware that the left image was the Hubble image and was still impressed by the clarity.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Happy

Re: In knots

I'm sure all of the pilots and sailors on Neptune appreciate your diligence.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Pint

It always amazes me that something as "small" as a planet can be seen so clearly from Earth. I appreciate how close it is, astronomically speaking, but the distances involved are just so massive.

--> One for the team

Brekkie TV host Lorraine Kelly wins IR35 ruling against HMRC, adds fuel to freelance techies' ire over tax reforms

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Coat

Re: At Spartacus, re: Scrabble.

Oh, you're Canadian. There's lovely.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Joke

Re: If so...

You see, the thing about Council Tax is that it's a Tax.

You can see it in the name there.

That word after Council, you see?

From hard drive to over-heard drive: Boffins convert spinning rust into eavesdropping mic

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: I'll file this in the ...

Bit old now, but FLSA was intended to be Four Letter Space Agency, as an attempt at a riff on the TLA acronym.

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: I'll file this in the ...

Calling it now that at some point, NASA or some other FLSA will be able to use this for research purposes.

Who pressured WHO to put gaming on a par with drug addiction to help silence political dissent? Oh hi there, China

ArrZarr Silver badge
Childcatcher

Please forgive me if I'm misunderstanding, but both of you are directly referring to the gambling part of these modern games - gambling in the form of loot boxes especially. In those situations, does it not follow that gambling is still addictive while the game part of the game is merely compelling?

I definitely agree that a balance must be struck and the onus lies on parents but I'm less sure of where my opinion on when a govt should get involved stands.

Croydon school rolling in toilet roll after Brexit gift deemed unfit for the Queen's Anus Horribilis

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Thumb Up

Re: Must be a German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) thing. Jawohl? Nein?

It's felt like you've been somewhat losing your touch recently, constructing sentences that could almost be considered coherent.

Good to have you back.

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: Must be a German thing.

Can never have too many post it pads, unless your world is turning into a scene from Bruce Almighty...

Want to cruise your auto auto around but don't fancy killing people? Nvidia has an answer

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Paris Hilton

Re: All this hoopla for nothing

I was going to give a real answer, but then the idea of an "Autonomous cockwomble coefficient" to trigger those situations made me giggle more than is proper.

Anyway, I'm sure our fellow humans will bow in the face of numbers and logic.

ArrZarr Silver badge
Meh

Re: All this hoopla for nothing

Considering that it is a virtual world, what makes you think that the above are unmanageable?

Sun glare is a visibility inhibitor in a specific direction - reducing view distance towards the virtual sun will handle it,

Intense rain is another visibility inhibitor, as is (falling) snow - reduce the view distance of the simulated car again.

Snow/ice on the road is a modifier to the coefficient of friction - have a variable changing unexpectedly

Awkward potholes can be inserted for maximum awkwardidity or virtual road surfaces could just have a "council budget" slider - all modifiable parameters.

On top of that, autonomous vehicles do not need to be perfect before they are better than humans, they just need to be better than humans to be better than humans.

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

ArrZarr Silver badge
Devil

Re: We have surely reached peak beard.

Getting very fed up of people thinking that how other people choose to present themselves is any of their business, so if you are: try being an individual and let them be as it has nothing to do with you*. You definitely sound like a pillock. And it sounds like all you ever taste is a dog's arse.

Oh, and for the love of God, ditch the bloody "Wiser than thou" attitude, and think about how somebody could take the piss out of your post - there are other assholes on the internet too, you muppet. And keep sitting there staring out the window like a drooling imbecile.

Jesus, you make me puke.

*outside of a professional environment

Why are there never free power sockets when my Y-fronts need charging?

ArrZarr Silver badge
Thumb Up

Bravo, Sir!

OK, team, we've got the big demo tomorrow and we're feeling confident. Let's reboot the servers

ArrZarr Silver badge

Re: Big demo. Should we test?

In my defense, the pasting into excel bit was because this was a backup process for when the automatic importing failed.