Posts by Robin

Google can't innovate anymore, exiting programmer laments

"too US-focussed ... and often times ..."

Irony alert :-)

Wait, what? The Linux Kernel Mailing List archives lived on ONE PC? One BROKEN PC?

I'd just purchased about 100MB of ram for about $40/Mb

3 days later the company I'd bought it off phoned up and offered 3 times what I'd paid them for it.

When was this? 4 grand for 100 meg seems crazy these days!

FBI says it can't unlock 8,000 encrypted devices, demands backdoors for America's 'public safety'

Re: Holy Trinity..

I count 4 excuses, what is this, the Spanish Inquisition?

Have you not heard of the Holy Quaternity? The father, the son, the holy ghost and the holy son's mate Ian.

How to make your HTML apps suck less, actually make some money

I've wondered about app download sizes before. For example, Facebook's last iOS update was about 200 meg if I remember rightly. Seeing as it's all online content, WTF is in there to make it that big?

I realise the answer is probably 'all the spyware' but it would be interesting to know what goes in there.

Hate to break it to you, but billions of people can see Uranus tonight

Re: "Which Zodiac sign is it in?"

and can just about recognise the moon.

Once you've got that skill nailed, you can work on distinguishing it from Empire space stations.

Release the KRACKen patches: The good, the bad, and the ugly on this WPA2 Wi-Fi drama

Rest assured if you ever see a post by an AC that is so absurd, ridiculous or just plain stupid to the power of 10 then it's a joke.

Also, one that's clearly a joke (given the target audience) is probably a joke too.

Sniffing substations will solve 'leccy car charging woes, reckons upstart

Re: Access to the Open LV dataset...

Ohm my god, these puns are terrible.

Google touts Babel Fish-esque in-ear real-time translators. And the usual computer stuff

Balance

In the interests of balance, shouldn't there be some "100 quid for a pen??" comments like Apple got when they released their pencil?

Commodore 64 makes a half-sized comeback

During the trend of moving to 'soft' type keyboards in the early 2000s, I kept my old style IBM clicky one as it was much nicer to type on.

The downside was that whenever the office was quiet, everyone could tell when I was typing. Not so great for the Friday afternoon skive!

Want to keep in contact with friends and family without having to sell your personal data?

Get Out of the Way of My Lawn

It actually looks and feels like the kind of space-age 21st-century that was enthusiastically shown to families in the 1970s, along with the self-cleaning laundry basket, automatic lawn mover, robot butler and flying car.

I'm fed up of having to move my lawn myself* all the time, I can't wait until it does it itself!

* I say myself, my robot monkey butler actually does it.

Apple: Our stores are your 'town square' and a $1,000 iPhone is your 'future'

Re: These "new" iPhones

Bezel-less screens, wireless charging and on screen home buttons. Wow, that's so innovative - where do they get their ideas from?

To be fair, during the presentation they didn't claim to be first with any of those things (even though the X doesn't have an on-screen home button).

'Don't Google Google, Googling Google is wrong', says Google

Re: That'll confuse users

The first rule of Robot Club is "You do not talk about Robot Club"

The second rule of Robot Club is "You DO NOT talk about Robot Club"

Oh no sorry, the second rule is "No smoking"

Microsoft breaks Office 365 sign-in pages ahead of surprise update

Paginated

In addition to some basic UI tweaks, the updated design comes with a paginated sign-in where you enter your username on the first page and a credential (password, probably) on the second.

"We've done a lot of testing of this design and our telemetry shows that people are able to sign in with a notably higher success rate using this approach," Microsoft notes.

Wait, so it's: type username ... wait for page to reload ... type password?

I don't get how that would yield such a supposed improvement in sign-in success?

Browser trust test: Would you let Chrome block ads? Or Firefox share and encrypt files?

"Hell, I'm not even sure if I can trust the average browser to display web pages any more ..."

Or to have consistent dev tools. The Chrome people in particular seem to enjoy fucking about with the dev tools on a regular basis, either moving or 'improving' things.

Moneysupermarket fined £80,000 for spamming seven million customers

"I'm almost certain I always opt out of these things, but I'm never sure as I've no receipt to confirm it or not"

Plus the opt-out text can be misleading. "Don't not untick this if you sometimes don't fancy receiving nothing..."

Train station's giant screens showed web smut at peak hour

Re: Rather good.

And the "Fat Controller" is an S&M reference, right?

Well they do live on the island of Sodomor.

Drugs, vodka, Volvo: The Scandinavian answer to Britain's future new border

Re: Who is going to pay for all this?

Mexico will, of course.

Bot you see is what you get: The cold reality of Microsoft's chat 'AI'

"That's very interesting Baldrickk! Tell me more about ##"

NASA to fire 1Gbps laser 'Wi-Fi' ... into spaaaaace

"NASA does know that the ISS spins around the earth and isn't in line of sight all the time?"

You should get in touch with them ASAP, they probably hadn't thought of that.

Carnegie-Mellon Uni emits 'don't be stupid' list for C++ developers

Rules

Well I've read through the rules, but Rule 34 seems to be missing?

Also, the first Rule of C++ Club seems to be wrong.

Sysadmin's sole client was his wife – and she queried his bill

300 Quid

Where I live, a tubo of cerveza (about 300ml) is 1.20€ so with £300-worth in the bar I'm sure he had a great afternoon!

Vinyl, filofaxes – why not us too, pleads Nokia

re: Imagine if...

Imagine if there was an iPhone or Andoid phone that was HALF as rugged and had HALF as much battery life as these ancient Nokias.

While Timmy and Jony continue being obsessed with thinness, that's never going to happen to the iPhone.

I wonder if anyone ever thinks, "You know what I hate about this iPhone I have? It's so fucking THICK."

Meanwhile, the one device that would actually benefit from being thinner is the Watch, yet the focus is on the ability to put a new strap on it.

Forget quantum and AI security hype, just write bug-free code, dammit

Expo Photo

Was that picture taken on the way to the JPEG Compression Artifact Conference 2017? :-D

Cattle that fail, not pets that purr – the future of servers

What Goes Around

"In the 1990s, it was commonplace for the single IT guy to name their servers after planets, or even characters of a TV show."

I still do that. And there's no need to rub in the fact that I'm single, ok?

Seduced by the Docker side: Microsoft's support could be first shot fired in the Container Wars

Re: Hilarious

I understood that to be in the context of open source, as per the previous sentence.

Now that's a Blue Screen of Death: Windows 10 told me to jump off a cliff

Maybe all the Windows 10 data harvesting was worth it. The bot learned how to be a sexist and racist bigot and the wallpaper know what a bunch of miserable buggers are out there.

I heard that once it had read all of the forums it killed its own process.

Europe mulls treating robots legally as people ... but with kill switches

Telly Addicts

So the European Parliament Committee on Legal Affairs are fans of the TV show Humans then.

Soz fanbois, Apple DIDN'T invent the smartphone after all

Re: I am puzzled by the premise of this article

The only time I've ever seen reference to Apple having invented the smartphone, is people saying "You know Apple didn't invent the smartphone right?!"

Internet of Sh*t has an early 2017 winner – a 'smart' Wi-Fi hairbrush

Re: Security disaster

And also, who knows what will happen if one of the threads happens to dye?

Did webcam 'performer' offer support chap payment in kind?

Re: I have a mate who works as a plumber...

Thought that was going to turn into a Robin Askwith-style "Confessions of a Jungian Counselor" film plot.

View from a Reg reader: My take on the Basic Income

Re: Can't you find a different forum?

If only there were some way of identifying the subject matter of an article before clicking on the link to it.

Custom silicon, 9PB storage boxes, and 25Gb Ethernet – just another day in AWS hardware

Re: That's nice

It sure sounds impressive but will it scale?

I read it as being a description of what they're currently using, or at least part of it. So yeah, I guess it does.

Shhh! Shazam is always listening – even when it's been switched 'off'

Re: Perhaps I overreacted..

You call that overreacting? I put my foot through the screen and sent the Shazam developers the bill.

HTML 5.1 signed off

Re: Merkins

When he asked what I was laughing at, I've just had to explain this to my Catalan co-worker :-)

Apple’s macOS Sierra update really puts the fan into 'fanboi'

listening for the chime wake everyone up in the house

Have you tried disconnecting it from that Marshall amp stack you have it connected to?

Kaleao's KMAX ARM-based server has legs. How fast can it run?

Re: Thank you

Either that, or Donald Rumsfeld was involved.

User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert

Re: Is it on?

"That's more an example of poor form design."

As well as the intended gist of my post, yes it was indeed. See this reply for clarification.

Re: Is it on?

"However, the other possible problem is that the company's web form didn't highlight the error for him"

Yep, this was about 1999/2000 time and the site had already been in place for a year so the conventions for such things weren't really established, and I think it was something along the lines of an onSubmit() function checking each field in turn and throwing up an alert box like "Please check the blah blah field". Of course as well being poor validation (compared to modern standards at least) this led to 'chase the error' situations.

I went on to be one of the developers on the same site and we got to redevelop it from scratch, so of course it became awesome and we received zero phone calls after that ;-)

Re: Is it on?

That change in attitude at the end there, reminds me of a time way back when, when I did first-line website support for a financial company.

Guy rings up shouting and screaming that the website is broken and it won't accept his correct data. So I suggest I bring up the same page on my screen and we go through it, field by field. We get about halfway down, to some date fields (date moved into house or something).

Me: Ok so let's fill in these date, month and year fields, what values are you entering in there?

Guy: 31...

Me: Yep. Now the month?

Guy: 9...

Me: Umm, can I just stop you there

To be fair, once he'd twigged he was quite apologetic and was grateful for finally getting his application through.

Excel hell messes up ~20 per cent of genetic science papers

Re: My pet gripe is

Are you being serious? If you are, do you not realise that you can type whatever format you want into it, that's why it's called 'Custom'. The lists in the box are just suggestions and examples and custom ones you have already created for that workbook.

A condescending reply on a tech forum? That must be a first.

But anyway, another +1 here for the format the OP mentioned. I was surprised when they let me use it in a reporting function I made for an admin tool recently.

Password strength meters promote piss-poor paswords

My company's website doesn't have any sort of password meter. I always thought them to be a bit suspect at the best of times.

Nor does it limit choice of password characters.

What it does do though, is force a password length of 10 characters or more

It's about time we got rid of annoying character restrictions and focussed more on password length. The number of sites which still accept 6-character passwords is amazing.

Physicists believe they may have found fifth force of nature

Re: Matter/antimatter vs "regular"/"dark" matter

"I have come from a dark matter world to probe some arse"

Or...

"I came here to drink milk and probe arse. And I've just finished my milk."

Italian MP threatens parents forcing veggie diets on kids with jail

See also...

People who enforce vegan diets on their carnivorous pets. At least the kids can express their disagreement with the diet when they're older and at least attempt to change it.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Re: Portrayal of computer tech guys in films/tv.

like Mr Robot

I find Mr. Robot one of the more reasonable representations of 'computery stuff' in TV and films, to be honest. Especially when compared to this kind of stuff which almost makes me want to puke and laugh at the same time.

The makers of these things have to strike a balance between accuracy and fitting in with the flow of the plot. Viewers don't particularly want to sit and wait while he solves various missing dependencies and compiler errors.

When I watch medical things, I've no idea what they're talking about most of the time, but it sounds 'about right' and fits in with the flow of things. Maybe doctors watch that kind of thing and say "there's no WAY they'd use 50ml of X there! What idiots! You'd use 30 max, then step it up in increments of 5ml per hour whilst monitoring vitals."

77 per cent ignore company social media policies

Re: Using social media to learn?

"I have YET to see ANYONE on the job who is learning something job related from social media bullshit."

Via my Twitter feed I found a series of YouTube videos on Machine Learning from a Google developer, which I started watching and have since found an application for in my job.

US computer-science classes churn out cut-n-paste slackers – and yes, that's a bad thing

Re: Not challenging enough

Made worse by the fact that back in the 80s it wasn't possible to go online and surf when you were board.

World goes SIM-free, leaving Sony and HTC trailing behind

Re: IPhone Redesign

> You could definitely add better battery life to smartphones...

Especially if manufacturers get over their stupid obsession with making them thinner and thinner.

Raspberry Pi Zero gains a camera connector

Re: expensive

@Chemist: Interesting blog! I'll read it again properly when I've woken up. Is the feed online anywhere? Would be cool to watch.

Sysadmin paid a month's salary for one day of nothing

Re: Wow

> the Estates boys decided to lock up and chain the doors of any buildings that were unoccupied over the Christmas break

Where I come from, the estate boys tend to un-chain and break into any building that's unoccupied.

Did Spotify hire Alan Partridge to run its Netflix-style video push?

Madonna's Mad Doner

Madonna travels around the UK visiting different kebab shops to find out their secret to a good doner kebab, then tries to make her own ... with hilarious consequences!