Posts by moonhaus

Ambulance patient records system hauled offline for cyber-attack probe

"Before the system can be brought into operation it has to be approved and verified by an independent actor".

Is Hugh Laurie available?

Re: Several UK NHS ambulance organizations

"Several" means more than two.

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

Re: Let's hope it stops the hate comments

"Let's hope it stops the hate comments"

I hear you're a racist now, Father? Should we all be racist now? What's the Church's position? I'm so busy down on the farm I won't have much time for the ol' racism.

Too many bytes and not enough bricks for datacenters

"Just how much rubbish do we really need to catalogue"

All of it. Then we need to think of new rubbish we've not yet made and catalogue that as well, plus the names of the people that inspired the idea, along with multiple pictures of their cats if they have any, with suggestions of what cats they might like if they don't. Then we need to add a comments section.

World's most internetty firm tries life off the net, and it's sillier than it seems

Re: Everything is impossible until someone does it

"Wow, now I'm wondering what the deleted said"

Something about Schrodinger I suspect.

'There has never been a realistic plan' for UK's £11B Emergency Services Network

Re: "Oh, there's been something to show for it all right"

"Yeah, that's what you have to understand about how public projects work under a neoliberal government."

That word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Threads versus Twitter: Shouldn't we be happy the wheels are falling off antisocial social media?

Re: Social media is like an STD

The effect of STDs depends on who you call. This could be the internet's PhONEday.

Brit broadband subscribers caught between crappy connections and price hikes

"Perhaps people should learn to read contracts before just signing up to the (apparently) cheapest supplier?"

The alternative being having no broadband. The article makes clear even in your quote that there are very few alternatives. You not only need to know these exist, but also they have to be available to you.

Re: Speed issues

"It would be interesting to see more details of what causes the speed issues that people report"

The vast majority of internet users are on VDSL or cable connections, all running over cables that are decades old and seen as "end of life" by their owners. So they invest the minimum in repairs as they intend to roll out fibre at some point, though nobody knows when.

Re: fibre

Also:

Quote: ...17 percent complained of "very slow speeds."

That full stop should be at the end of the sentence. It's very minor, but the sort of sloppyness that makes you question the rest of the writing.

Indian telecoms leaps from 2G, to 4G, to 6G – on a single day

Re: That will mean another TVI filter upgrade.

"3G was actually enough"

3G is generally regarded as a failed standard. Circuit switched voice calls with the assumption these would include low bitrate video, instead of being packet based wastes huge amounts of capacity and results in voice call quality issues due to CODEC limitations. Then you have the issues around "cell breathing" and the need for "transcoder free operation" to impliment HDvoice.

2G is outliving 3G in many places, as 3G just never really worked properly. Even 3.5G (HSPA etc) can't solved those fundimental issues.

Re: Roaming?

"It would be wonderful if you could just use your phone when you landed in another country"

Absolutely agree but that still wouldn't solve the need for a local phone number when travelling. You'd be supprised how many people in Australia, the US or Africa are reluctant to pay for a call to the UK just to tell me my taxi has arrived (many can't even call internationally outside their own country).

A local physical SIM is pretty much an essential and always the cheapest option when travelling, something that ESIMs can't solve as (apart from being as rare as hens teeth) the standard requires you already have a working data connection (ie have already paid someone else for a physical SIM or roaming data) before you can activate one (scanning the QR code just downloads something from the internet - the QR code is not the entire SIM).

Russian military satellite comms provider offline after hack

Re: Article links to Twitter

"Amtel Svyaz, Dozor's parent company and itself a satellite service provider, also experienced outages not long before Dozor was hit."

The word "also" is a Twitter link. :-)

Article links to Twitter

Really El-Reg, a link in an article to a Twitter account? Don't you guys keep up with the tech news about how links to Twitter are not currently working?

It’s official: Vodafone and Three to tie the knot in the UK

Re: Competitiveness reduction?

"For what it is worth, O2 do allow tethering if you have one of their xxGB/month contracts, but not the old "unlimited[*"

Networks preventing tethering is a breach of Ofcom "net neutrality" rules. There are some weird technical reasons why the "hotspot" option might not show, such as for smaller providers who've not created a carrier profile or older pre-2015 SIMs that have missed an update somewhere, but if you've asked and been refused log a complaint with Ofcom*.

*Yes I know that's about as much use as complaining to the ICO or the ASA but it might prompt a response.

Re: Coverage - Mast sharing

"surely one national fault tolerant Mobile provider is the way to go"

A single network can never provide customers with redundancy, it's not like power or water where you can have a local backup. Let alone all the issues that would cause with monopoly pricing. See for example Australia's NBN.

Re: The resulting company has yet to have an official name

"Well, if you're going to be honest to your customers, call it Vodafee".

I've heard they're going to combine the names. From Vodafone they'll take "Vodafon" and from Three "e".

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

Re: Communication

""I'll ping you later" is a rather irksome example"

My reply to that is usually "only if I respond".

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Re: They still exist?

"cheque checked Czech cheque checker

...lay a little egg for me."

A nest egg? :-)

YouTube's 'Ad blockers not allowed' pop-up scares the bejesus out of netizens

Re: Subscription

"I'd rather YouTube went down the Spotify route, charged a subscription for access with some videos being free to access and got rid of the ads."

The problem with that is Spotify "buys in" music from commercial third parties. Youtube relies mainly on it's own users for content (paid and unpaid). If you put a paywall in front of those users, you've also cut off your suppliers.

India calls for all mobile phones to include FM radios

"It surprises me that there are people who can afford a smart phone, but not an FM radio."

Do you also assume that people who watch movies on their phones can't afford a TV?

Streaming apps – and maybe even Cloud PCs – coming to electric cars

"Really smart people dont waste their life sitting in a car for anything."

Yes, good to know I'm not the only one that finds sitting at home all day in my underpants a much more rewarding lifestyle. :-)

Brits start 'em young with 20% of tots 'owning' a smartphone

Re: Nope

"as if Elsagate had never happened (and still isn't happening)"

I can't understand why Elsagate style accounts aren't Frozen.

I'll get my coat.

"these phones are most likely hand-me-downs from parents or siblings who have upgraded, and lack a SIM to be used simply as a smaller tablet"

I think it's safe to say that if the device has a SIM slot, it'll almost certanly have an active SIM in it, given the cost is effectivly zero and the networks send you multiple free ones if you even glance at their websites.

Even if just so it can be rung to find it, when lost behind the sofa.

UK consortium bid for NHS data platform falls at first hurdle

Re: "Unless the conservatives finish hollowing out and selling off the NHS by January 2025"

"Streeting has stated that privatisation of the NHS is the way to go"

He's said no such thing. You sound like a tory troll. :-)

Child hit by car among videos 'captured by Tesla vehicles, shared among staff'

Re: "Tesla driving through a residential area at high speed and hitting a child on a bike"

Was the evidence of a crime a video recorded illegally (the car could have been in the EU and recording the public illegal depending on member state), that the child was hit, or both?

If theres any question that Tesla may have even been slightly close to breaking a law, "doing the right thing" is not what we've come to expect from them.

Australian bank stops handling cash at the counter in some branches

Re: Uhhh...

In the UK they just closed most of the bank branches so they now don't do anything. An ATM for deposits? Pah, we dream of an ATM for deposits.

Today's old folks set to smash through longevity records

Re: Optional

"focus should be on why some people choose not too"

Maybe focus first on why some people assume it's a choice, rather than a logistics problem or hidden disability etc.

You sound rather like the cycling loonies (and i write this as someone who used to cycle a LOT) who when faced with the reality of people needing cars in online forums, blame the person for not cycling, rather than looking to solve the actual issues.

Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

Re: Android can be had minus Google

"Indeed. I have a Huawei."

Just a warning, Huawei no longer unlock their bootloaders so installing an alternative OS is no longer practical!

That's written off their phone business more than any "ban" could ever hope to do.

Re: It's a phone

"It is perhaps interesting to note one of the big complaints about the first iPhone was that it was very poor at phone functionality."

This. It took apple till the iphone 5 to get HD voice calling working (i had expected it in the iphone 4 which came out after HD voice launched on 3G) and until the 6 before calling worked properly. Even today the iphone struggles with basic ergonomics like displaying the callers number when ringing if it's a contact (so badly i store the number in the second name field of contacts).

Thats not to say it's not better than most android phones (many can't even handle 6 way calling) but it took apple seven years from the original iphone to get that core feature working. Many Android phones still haven't.

TikTok: Is this really a national security scare or is something else going on?

"What if both the Chinese and the Americans are the baddies?"

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?

Adidas grapples with $1.3B in unsold Yeezy sneakers after breaking up with Kanye West

Re: Maybe, just maybe

"There are many documented cases of donated goods to poor countries barely getting off the ship before they enter the cash economy"

There are plenty of cases of similar things happening in rich/western countries as well. It's not an excuse to not try and help people, especially when it's an almost zero cost excercise.

Unknown actors deploy malware to steal data in occupied regions of Ukraine

"however i'm not seeing any particularly obvious reason as to why they would care much about agricultural organisations."

Russia has been stealing Ukraine's grain and moving it to and from those areas.

Russian developers blocked from contributing to FOSS tools

Re: Ridiculous

"Does everything has to be politicized these days"

A war is inherently political. Better to try and stop it with sanctions than even more bombs.

T-Mobile US buys Ryan Reynolds-backed Mint Mobile for $1.35B

In a time long gone, far far away

T-mobile. Now that's a name I've not heard in a very long time.

Amazon: Behold our antennas, which you cannot use just yet

Not a pyramid

Squares, rectangles... no, the professional model is the trapazoid.

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

"not deliver on it - and there's sod all you can do about it - you're welcome"

Yes you can. If a party were to lie about their major policies, they could and should be voted out of office at the next election and never trusted with power again.

Musk said Twitter would open source its algorithm – then fired the people who could

Re: As a member of the Reformed House of Python

"We believe we should not be limited to the Parrot Sketch. Cheese Shop, Fish Slapping Dance, Tobacconists, Argument etc are all acceptable forms of devotion."

Pah. In my day we had to sit in a hole and imagine those sketches. Tell that to kids today and they won't believe you.

Apple's outsourced Lightning cable plant in India goes up in flames

Re: "as Foxlink is insured [..] the blaze won't impact its bottom line"

Surely replacement value is the current value? I've never heard of a buildings and contents policy that didn't expect to pay out at current prices and I doubt many mortgage companies would accept anything less. Many even offer "new for old" replacement of contents as well.

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

Re: Funding

"The same thing is happening to one of my old employers, Morrisons."

Wait you mean Morrisons is real? I mean i've seen the adverts on TV and heard about them in the news but never actually seen one. There was a rumor one opened in Oxford a few years ago, but when I got there people told me it had closed.

Some said if I went further up the M40 I might catch a glimpse of one, but others said there are dragons past junction 14.

Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved

Re: Will this cover

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality.”

Kremlin claims Ukraine hackers behind fake missile strike alerts

Re: Probably one good reason for the UK not to have such a system.

"Every country has an emergency broadcast system set in place, not only for misil warning but natural emergencies too. "

The UK has no such system. Some of our broadcasters didn't even realise the Queen had died until the BBC announced it.

Vodafone tests waters with 5G Raspberry Pi base station

But Wi?

So to run this base you'll presumably need an existing internet connection. The same connection that will already have Wifi at the same or faster than 5G speeds. Vodafone already have a Wifi calling service so this can only be for data.

Slowing a device down and wasting electricity in this instance by adding an expensive and complex extra 5G layer makes no sense, but then this is the same Vodafone that has no call divert or conference calling on their prepay mobile service. The only logical thing it can achieve is to allow them to bill you for using your existing internet connection, though accurate billing is something Vodafone already struggle with.

If I was Vodafone looking for ways to expand the business, I'd do something radical like fix my billing platform and start running an actual phone service, rather than promote nonsense.

Accidental WhatsApp account takeovers? It's a thing

Re: This shouldn't happen

"For example, the UK mobile number 07123456789 could also be represented as [phone] or 00441234567890 or 0712 345 6789 and probably several others."

E164 specifies the international standard for writing, storing and dialing phone numbers. In your examples only [phone] would be correct. It's why mobile phones have a + key. Formatting for storage should only ever be in this format.

Facebook and others just need to force you to enter your number in this format, or read it from the SIM.

The IMEI is even worse than a phone number, as people SIM swap and replace phones a lot more often than numbers. IMSI & phone number should be what you use to check a number is still on the original SIM. It looks like Facebook didn't even do that basic check though.

But as has been said, using a phone number as an account identity is moronic.

Re: this bizarre tale of inadvertent WhatsApp account hijacking

How do you delete a whatsapp account when your phone number's been disconnected and you need the phone number to delete it?

Losing a phone number usually wont be by choice. Many people lose their phones and a good percentage will not have registered their prepay contact details so can't get the number back. Some people have to travel abroad at short notice so cant topup, others have a "life event" that prevents topping up or paying the bill. Some are being abused by partners or fleeing violence or natural disasters so are forced to change phones and numbers.

Claiming the account should have been deleted to avoid being compromised is like saying you should have sold your car to prevent it being stolen.

Facebook seem to have lost control

"Facebook doesn't have control over telecom providers who reissue phone numbers"

That may be true, but if so then why have Facebook effectivly handed over the security of their entire platform to "telecom providers" outside their control?

This may be by design rather than a bug, but it's bloody stupid thing to do.

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

Re: Only the first one counts?

"If you murder the same person lots of times, only the first one counts."

This is more like stabbing the same person multiple times on different days.

Re: Only the first one counts?

In each case they USED the biometric for some purpose. It's not just the collection but use of that data that's a breach of the law. Therefore each use equals another crime.