• Prime Mover (unregistered)

    +1 for Yes reference

  • (nodebb)

    Easy peasy : the cat is "Ehda" (if you apply one pronunciation of "Ada"), and the colour is "Redd".

    Remembering that you wrote them that way may be a little harder.

    Or you channel the Gands in Eric Frank Russell's "The Great Explosion", and answer all obnoxious questions of this type with a single word, "myob".

  • (nodebb)

    "Zero minutes seems plenty generous if you're trying to connect to a train that left seven minutes before you arrived!" German rail schedules are easy: no train is never expected not to be no way on time. If you have luck, the trains happen to arrive perfectly well delight ... delayed to meet your needs. Otherwise, uhm, business as usual.

  • Barry Margolin (github) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    You can't answer "myob" to all the questions, it doesn't allow duplicate answers.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Barry Margolin

    True. Decorate them with the necessary number of "f"s:

    • myob
    • myofb
    • fmyob
    • fmyofb
    • etc

    For reference, in the book, "myob" was supposed to be "initial slang", an abbreviation of "mind your own business". "f" would stand for one of those words that live in the space called "imprecations" or "profanity", of course. In extremis, you could even end up with "fmyfofbyfsff" = "F-ing mind your f-ing own f-ing business you f-ing stupid f-ing f-kers".

  • A. Glez. B. (unregistered) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    Or you can go full Guardians of the Galaxy: Groot, Grooot, Groooot

  • davethepirate (unregistered)

    For the train one, I'm going to guess that the first train departs Hamburg when you wanted to depart, but then an express train (less stops) comes along after. You get off at one of the stops to catch the express train to ultimately get to the destination faster.

  • Bill T (unregistered)

    I have the same problem with "Your father's middle name" as a security question. Like Harry S Truman, his middle name is a single character.

    On the one hand, if it's that short it's easier to guess. On the other hand, who'd guess a single letter? On the other other hand, people are lazy so short answers could be valid to guess.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    I use a password manager to answer security questions, so my favorite color is n6NvbAU32eQdN

  • Edd (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Oh god, yes.

    Why were security questions even a thing for non-email accounts? What's wrong with just sending a "forgot password" message?

  • (nodebb)

    I suppose the German train schedule takes the average delay across the entire network into account and honestly tells you that you’re not going to make your connection.

  • mpripper (unregistered)

    For the negative time one: The green hint says "Your current alternative" because the original connection wasn't possible anymore and the DB app has a function to reroute your trip so you still get to your destination. The second train had enough delay for the change to work. The DB app only shows estimated delays for the future, no delays how they really were in the past (would be too embarrassing to show how much all trains are delayed ;). At the time the screenshot was taken (19:41), the delays are already hidden for this station (18:5x). If scrolled down further, we'd probably see some times that make more sense

  • Jere (unregistered) in reply to Prime Mover

    Captured for the Queen to use..

  • MacFrog (unregistered) in reply to mpripper

    One might argue that nothing ever made sense with Deutsche Bahn...

  • Yikes (unregistered)

    Well, let's see. Superhero, 8 characters. I'd say "SUPERMAN" ?? I'd probably also guess that whether or not I saw the character length (ok, maybe BATMAN).

  • RB (unregistered) in reply to Steve_The_Cynic

    Your favorite color can be red if you use 32-bit RGB notation: 0xFF0000 For your pet, NATO alphabet might help: AlphaDeltaAlpha As others mentioned, remembering this later is the ultimate challenge.

  • Guesty McGuestface (unregistered)

    I used to work for National Rail Enquiries in the UK, and we used a package called Tribute2000 to do train times and fares. it was originally intended for use in retail, and it showed. It didn't show dates, sonif you werent careful, it would give hilarious journey plans, such as departing EDB (Edinburgh Waverley) at 1000, getting to INV (Inverness) at 1400, to make a connection at 1200 to travel onwards to Wick. The issue being it would give you the next train, in this case running 3 days later because Christmas.

  • WTFGuy (unregistered)

    My solution to the "security" questions problem is both easy to remember and scalable.

    Q: What's my favorite $whatever? A: Bullshi** $whatever Q: What was my first $whatever? A: Bullshi** $whatever etc. Just echo the variable punchline of the question back to them preceded by Bullsh** spelled out fully.

    If you are given a list of questions to pick from, you can always find one that's especialy easy and unambiguous to apply this formula to. Once in awhile some fool wants only one word answers. We're devs, we're used to reading CamelCase phrases. Just leave out the space between Bullsh** and $Whatever.

  • Neveranull (unregistered)

    Seriously, can someone explain to me why we’re suppose to choose long passwords so a computer can’t try every possible password until it hits the right one, but our account is locked after three failed attempts when we’re trying to remember it?

  • GrumpyOldGuy (unregistered)

    I'd be making those "LadyAda" and "RedTeamLeader" respectively I reckon. Moar memorable.

  • Heinebold (unregistered)

    The paypal bot is quite good, normally. It once had the prefectly right suggestions for me typing "Arrrrgh!" as a question

  • (nodebb) in reply to GrumpyOldGuy

    But memorable enough that the OP will be able to recall them when they've forgotten their very password?

  • (nodebb)

    I know CPUs are getting more power hungry but that does seem a bit excessive.

    Now I'm trying to imagine the size of the motherboard connector needed to deliver all that voltage to the CPU. There must be some pretty crazy shielding on those wires! And you'd want to be REALLY sure the power was off (and all capacitors drained) before you unplugged that cable.

    Addendum 2022-05-06 00:50: OK, GPU, whatever. Still wouldn't catch me going anywhere near it.

  • Maalik (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.

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