Would you rather have a smoke alarm that goes off 33% of the time you make toast, or one which never goes off when there's a fire ?

Re: 1/3 wrong of 60 is progress (?)
The problem is not with the "smoke alarm" it's with the fire engine.

1 day
MOH

Re: 1/3 wrong of 60 is progress (?)
When I'm making toast, I'm making toast.

I'm aware of what I'm doing and ensuring that the toast making doesn't escalate to a house fire.

If it does, that is fully on me.

I don't need a wonky security camera setting off a fire alarm for times a day because my dark brown slippers have vaguely the same shade as burnt toast and it blindly assumes a fire is in progress.

1 day
Yet Another Anonymous coward

Re: 1/3 wrong of 60 is progress (?)
But it could be useful if you're very confused and might be about to put marmalade on your slippers

Exclusive: The 'mythical superhero' picks his favorites from Parade magazine's recent list of 101

Hurling cars through the air with replicas of medieval siege engines has actually become a bit of a popular hobby, with early throws dating back to at least the early 1990s.

Ajax81611 Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
5y
166
Subscriptor
NASA missed a huge soft drink sponsorship opportunity here by not naming it the Perfect Elliptical Polar Stable Insertion with Coplanar Line of Apsides.

Bebu sa Ware
"the last full Moon on Feb. 29 was in 1972, and the next will be in 2048"
Just in case you were wondering. ;)

If you trust some gratuitous browser AI that kicks off with:

People also ask "Has there ever been a full moon on February 29th?"
What people ? Not normal people surely ? El Rego commentards excepted of course perhaps.

Jonathan Richards 1
Re: "the last full Moon on Feb. 29 was in 1972, and the next will be in 2048"
See, this is the quality investigative citizen journalism that I come here for.

--> Friday pint behind the bar

Philo T Farnsworth
Re: "the last full Moon on Feb. 29 was in 1972, and the next will be in 2048"
I'm hoping to make it to 2048 since I'll be a power of 10 in a power of 2.

Yes, I'm an old geezer.

ʎɹǝʌoɔǝᴚ sʍopuᴉM ʇɐ sǝʇɐuᴉɯɹǝʇ snq sᴉɥ┴

One destination passengers were definitely not hoping to reach

Bork!Bork!Bork! As if to demonstrate that whatever one operating system can do, Windows can do it better, bluer, and upside down, we present a bus stopping only at bork.

Today's example of signage woes - thanks to reader Spike - comes from a Nottingham bus, headed for Recovery (though hopefully the right way up).

According to an eagle-eyed Register reader, the screen normally shows the next few stops, but now it is only displaying a baleful blue screen and a warning that Windows is very unhappy about something.

"Your PC/Device needs to be repaired" is not the message a bus's passengers expect to see.

Words that rhyme with orange:
by: Lloyd Worthnone, hobby farmer

Don't mess with the IT department guys. Although their office might look as messy as mine, they are a force not to be screwed with.

It all started one day with this guy, the origional Etherkiller, developed with a few misc parts to warn new users that the IT department is not to be messed with. You too can make one at home, connect the transmit pins of the RJ-45 to HOT on 110VAC and the recieve pins to Common. Modify to suit tase by varying pinout.
This led to some general discussion that this particular device really is in a class of devices, now called the "killers", which need to be made.

https://x.com/RealDonKeith/status/2012537106443145506

That cat gifting a mouse to the other cat

Re: for all those who say "it shouldn't be this difficult". apparently it is.
A previous vehicle I owned would tell me to take the turn for "Go Dall Ming". (Godalming ["goddlming"])

Of course, English pronunciation of names is often obtuse (apocryphally, to confuse foreign spies into giving themselves away), for example:

• Mainwaring ("mannering")

• Cholmondeley ("chumley")

• Featheringstonehaugh ("fanshaw")

• Mousehole ("mowzle" [ow as in cow, not as in tow])

• Worcester ("wooster")

• Towcester ("toaster")

• Leicester ("lester" [not lie-cester])

• Loughborough ("luffburraw" [roughly])

among many others.

Re: for all those who say "it shouldn't be this difficult". apparently it is.
Having grown up in East Anglia with regular family holidays on the coast, the journey often passed by such fantastic places as:

Happisburgh ("Hayesborough")

Postwick ("Pozzick")

and Wymondham ("Windam").

My better half has english as a second language, but is very much fluent. As far as they're concerned, brits seem to just make up the words and how they're said as we go along. Probably not untrue.

Also further away is Bicester ("Bisster").

Of course, there's the somewhat old joke about the american tourist calling Loughborough "Loogabarooga"

Try Deepl:
Reindeer length is an old unit of measurement of length used when moving reindeer. Reindeer length is the distance a reindeer can travel between (reindeer) urination breaks. Reindeer cannot urinate while running, and running too long can cause them to become paralysed. The maximum distance a reindeer can run is up to 7.5 kilometres.

Re: Try Deepl:
Nobody said they couldn't urinate while flying. That's why I stay inside on Christmas Eve.

Now let's meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Rob" who at the time of Y2K worked for Sun Microsystems in the UK.

As a global company, Sun had an early warning system for any Y2K problems: Its Australian office was 11 hours ahead of the UK office, so if any problems struck there, the company would get advance notice.

Which is why, as midnight neared Down Under, Rob's boss called Sun's Sydney office … then heard the phone line go terrifyingly silent as the clock ticked pas midnight. Rob said that "scared the hell out of my manager" – at least for a few moments, because the phone soon rang.

"It was the Australian office, laughing their heads off," Rob told On Call. ®

The Federalist is here with a step-by-step guide on how to properly load a dishwasher and end your kitchen nightmares once and for all. //

Plates and bowls scattered across the wheeled racks at random. Silverware senselessly jammed into one or two of the many available basket pockets. The entire ensemble is so wretched that it resembles some trashy piece of modern abstract art.

But what’s a man to do? How is he supposed to get the woman in his life to stop loading the dishwasher like a cracked-out squirrel storing away nuts for the winter?

A simple proposal on a 1982 electronic bulletin board helped sarcasm flourish online. //

The emoticons spread quickly across ARPAnet, the precursor to the modern Internet, reaching other universities and research labs. By November 10, 1982—less than two months later—Carnegie Mellon researcher James Morris began introducing the smiley emoticon concept to colleagues at Xerox PARC, complete with a growing list of variations. What started as an internal Carnegie Mellon convention over time became a standard feature of online communication, often simplified without the hyphen nose to :) or :(, among many other variations. //

Between 2001 and 2002, Mike Jones, a former Carnegie Mellon researcher then working at Microsoft, sponsored what Fahlman calls a “digital archaeology” project. Jeff Baird and the Carnegie Mellon facilities staff undertook a painstaking effort: locating backup tapes from 1982, finding working tape drives that could read the obsolete media, decoding old file formats, and searching for the actual posts. The team recovered the thread, revealing not just Fahlman’s famous post but the entire three-day community discussion that led to it.

The recovered messages, which you can read here, show how collaboratively the emoticon was developed—not a lone genius moment but an ongoing conversation proposing, refining, and building on the group’s ideas. Fahlman had no idea his synthesis would become a fundamental part of how humans express themselves in digital text, but neither did Swartz, who first suggested marking jokes, or the Gandalf VAX users who were already using their own smile symbols. //

Others, including teletype operators and private correspondents, may have used similar symbols before 1982, perhaps even as far back as 1648. Author Vladimir Nabokov suggested before 1982 that “there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile.” And the original IBM PC included a dedicated smiley character as early as 1981 (perhaps that should be considered the first emoji).

What made Fahlman’s contribution significant wasn’t absolute originality but rather proposing the right solution at the right time in the right context. From there, the smiley could spread across the emerging global computer network, and no one would ever misunderstand a joke online again. :-)

But vanity plates can get you in trouble. One security researcher found this out when he ordered a plate that read, "NULL" — also the word the computer system entered for a ticket whenever a cop left the license plate field blank. Similar results have happened to drivers who opted for "NO PLATE," "NOTAG," or "VOID." They ended up receiving thousands of dollars in tickets for things they didn't do.

This was a [Solar] company that was not only economically unviable but was also conducting outright shady business practices. ///

That's breaking the laws of physics for a solar company to conduct shady business practices!

Nephophobia, or cloud phobia, is an excessive or irrational fear of clouds that can evoke intense emotional responses and substantially impact an individual's overall well-being.

The first multi-spacecraft science mission to launch to Mars is now on its way, and catching a ride on the twin probes are the first kiwis to fly to the red planet. //

“Rocket Lab has a tradition of hiding kiwis in many areas of its design,” said Lindsay McLaurin, senior communications manager for space systems at Rocket Lab, in response to an inquiry from collectSPACE.com. “The birds have snuck onto our rockets and satellites since the beginning of the company, reflecting the New Zealand roots of the company and as a challenge among our designers and spacecraft builders.”

The birds, which are native to the island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, appear as graphics on twin plaques attached to Blue and Gold. The metal plates, which adorn one of the two solar panels on each probe, also feature the Rocket Lab logo, the company’s motto (“Non Sufficit Hic Orbis” or “This World Is Not Enough”), and a similar icon of a bald eagle.

“To represent our company’s global presence,” said McLaurin, referring to the American icon. //

GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,658
Subscriptor
*pushes pedant glasses up nose"
As a Kiwi myself, I need to point out that the Maori language doesn't use the "s" to denote plurals, or even have a letter "s", so it's two kiwi, not two kiwis.

Also, go Rocket Lab!

winwaed Ars Scholae Palatinae
9y
711

GFKBill said:
Maori language doesn't use the "s" to denote plurals, or even have a letter "s", so it's two kiwi, not two kiwis.

So the plural of "sheep" is "heep"?

GFKBill Ars Tribunus Militum
21y
2,658
Subscriptor

winwaed said:
So the plural of "sheep" is "heep"?

Well, we do have heeps of them.

SiberX Ars Scholae Palatinae
15y
1,249
Subscriptor++

GFKBill said:
Well, we do have heeps of them.

We just went over this; heep of them.

The Tax Poem

Tax his land, Tax his bed, Tax the table at which he's fed.

Tax his tractor, Tax his mule, Teach him taxes are the rule.

Tax his work, Tax his pay, He works for peanuts anyway!

Tax his cow, Tax his goat, Tax his pants, Tax his coat. Tax his ties, Tax his shirt, Tax his work, Tax his dirt.

Tax his tobacco, Tax his drink, Tax him if he tries to think.

Tax his cigars, Tax his beers, If he cries tax his tears.

Tax his car, Tax his gas, Find other ways to tax his ass.

Tax all he has, Then let him know, That you won't be done till he has no dough.

When he screams and hollers, Then tax him some more, Tax him till he's good and sore.

Then tax his coffin, Tax his grave, Tax the sod in which he's laid.

Put these words Upon his tomb, 'Taxes drove me to my doom...'

When he's gone, Do not relax, Its time to apply the inheritance tax.

Not getting off “Scott” free.

An Alabama police force playfully exacted revenge against a group of high schoolers who had covered their department headquarters — along with the rest of the town — with toilet paper as part of an elaborate senior prank.

Heflin Police Chief Ross McGlaughn vowed to get back on the Class of 2026 when the students launched their overnight TP attack across the small Alabama city.