News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

onraglanroad

Re:Brian May, Queen guitarist and Astrophysicist on Sunday November 01, 2026 @10:31AM (#50326584)
One of the things I really liked about The Sky at Night (UK TV programme) was they occasionally had Brian May on as a guest.

And Patrick Moore would just refer to him as "Doctor May" and would just talk astronomy, never even referring to the fact he was the guitarist in one of the most famous rock bands in the world.

Re:The $6.3B Binance Hack Was Pulled Off in Just 20 Minutes on Saturday October 31, 2026 @05:24PM (#50320391)
No, you missed the point. It's obviously exchangeable for other fiat currency but it's also obviously not tied to any of them or its value would be fixed.

I think you're just using words that you don't really understand. Do you know what a tied currency actually is? They do exist. Do you know what they are?

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I have to move for a delivery drone. And I have this awful pain in the diodes down my right side. Life? Don't tell me about life.
Re:The $6.3B Binance Hack Was Pulled Off in Just 20 Minutes on Saturday October 31, 2026 @11:19AM (#50316953)
One Bitcoin is currently worth £57700 or €68980.

Nothing to do with dollars.

As mentioned, you can't do it with batteries.

To capture the 1.21 GW from a lightening strike requires a flux capacitor.

Re:Oldest GUI application that still runs on Windows 11 on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @02:59PM (#50264068)
One of the first proper jobs I had, I ended up doing unofficial support for the Windows 3.1 machines that they had. I can't remember exactly what I had to do, probably just cleaning temp dirs or something, but I got regularly called to one of my friend's machines.

He liked to play minesweeper and I found that the high scores were just stored in minesweeper.ini or something. I didn't know very much about computers at the time but I could manage that [1].

So, whenever I was on his machine I would edit the file and add my own name with a score that was one second quicker than his.

He got some really good times so I feel it was definitely an encouragement to excellence!

[1] When I was in my 20s I was immortal and knew everything. Now I'm in my 50s, with decades of experience, I am very much mortal and know practically nothing. Strange how life turns out.

Re:Apple introduces the new 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @02:02PM (#50263251)
You know, it kind of surprises me there isn't an Apple Linux yet.

It seems like such an easy win and could rapidly become the most popular Linux distro, even running on non Apple hardware.

They have the money so why not just do it?

Nope, both statements are completely wrong because 52 years old, and thereabouts, is GenX not Boomer.

And yes it makes a difference. They would have grown up with the first home computers like the 8 bit C64 or ZX Spectrum, and later the 16 bit Amiga A500 or Atari ST.

No, it's not. That isn't how night works. It's not how anything works.

I despair sometimes...

Re:Gen Z Is the First Generation Dumber Than Their Parents on Sunday October 18, 2026 @10:22AM (#50141362)
No, it shouldn't. It's perfectly valid to refer to the members of a group rather than the group itself.
Re:Desire to Move Permanently to U.S. at New Low on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:37PM (#50121630)
No, it makes sense to get into an EU country because it gives you access to so many more countries.

My niece was thinking of working in Ireland for a while and I told her that if she happened to stay for 5 years she could get an EU passport. It's a valuable thing.

Re:Desire to Move Permanently to U.S. at New Low on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:32PM (#50121572)
"Papers please."

That used to be a joke about the Soviet Union. Perhaps before your time.

Re:Desire to Move Permanently to U.S. at New Low on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:25PM (#50121455)
The UK dropping isn't surprising because of Brexit. It makes far more sense to move to an EU country.
Re:Desire to Move Permanently to U.S. at New Low on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:12PM (#50121245)
Yes, I could easily get into the USA (or indeed practically anywhere in the world) but I live in Scotland because that's what I prefer.

You fire ahead and take my spot.

Re:What on Earth Is Dekton? on Friday October 16, 2026 @12:47PM (#50120837)
> shower and general bath room)...Spilling red wine, putting sizzling hot pans on it, accidentally dropping big pans on it.

You're either using your bathroom wrong, or have a vastly more interesting sex life than I do.

(Yeah, I missed the kitchen counter on first reading)

> London has a dozen cameras per person, totalling to almost 1 million cameras.

Something wrong with your numbers there.

Of course they haven't. The old Unixes are dead and gone.

The shell grows not old, as we that are left grow old:

Aix shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of Sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Re:The Mathocalypse on Thursday October 08, 2026 @02:42PM (#50010145)
It provided a formal proof in Lean.
Feel free to link it if you like. And I really did like the idea of the Gospel Church being more "oh happy day"...
I think they do in some ways. But they're not generally considered part of the wider Christian church. Perhaps unfairly but I think that's how it's considered.
I dunno. Describing the Mormons as a sex cult makes them seem far more fun than they actually are.

It's like I thought the Gospel Church in Northern Ireland would have better music. Turns out not.

It's not generally considered Christian because they have their own religious text which didn't originate from Christians of the time.
I think perhaps you used the wrong words there. The hash is an integrity check but it was never intended as a security check.
Re:What Sun got wrong on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @01:58PM (#49912240)
> Linux was a hobbiest[sic] OS.

Long time since I've been sic'd! Ok, got it wrong but at least you know my comments aren't llm'd...

Only to the point it doesn't infringe on your statutory rights.

In the EU (and still the UK since they've not changed the law since) you have the right to benchmark software.

However, it doesn't include the right to publish the results, so you can only do it internally for Oracle and any software that has similar clauses.

Re:What Sun got wrong on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @01:23PM (#49819504)
Ok, that is funny! Though interesting to consider. Why did no-one go with a free OS that was VMS based in the same way?

It's basically does Linux win or why not BSD? Never what about OpenVMS.

Re:Tokens Too Cheap to Meter on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @01:18PM (#49819420)
I probably replied to the wrong comment with my previous response. The low lying fruit, in this case, should be going from single cell to multi cell, but that took ages.

It accelerated from there rather than slowing down.

Re:Tokens Too Cheap to Meter on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @01:13PM (#49819341)
Around half of that was going from single celled life to multi celled life.

The complexity gets faster as you get on with it.

Re:What Sun got wrong on Monday September 21, 2026 @01:17PM (#49790242)
As an outsider at the time, when Linux was taking off, there seemed to be a lot of people asking why they wouldn't Open Source Solaris.

It seemed to me like they couldn't decide whether they were a hardware company or a software company.

Mind you, I was young at the time so possibly didn't have the best understanding of the situation. Seems like they left the decision too late though.

Dismissing Linux as a hobbiest OS definitely turned out badly.

Re:Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented on Sunday September 20, 2026 @02:03PM (#49778271)
You want a source for the fact that a plant based diet requires killing plants?

Or you just didn't read the comment you replied to and made an assumption?

Older »