Posts by Aleph0

Firefox 149 adds a free VPN and finally plays nice with Linux dialogs

Re: Menus

If anything it should be called "dango menu" (DDG image search for dango), at least IMO.

Smart mirror shows dumb Windows in elevator

Props to the photographer

It's not easy to take a photo of a mirror at that angle without also capturing your reflection. Good thing there was some cardboard around, it appears... ;)

Son of government contractor arrested after alleged $46M crypto heist from US Marshals

Re: If you're gonna flex stolen funds...

IMO flexing one's worth is generally inadvisable because it paints a target on your back, and that goes double for cryptocurrencies where by design there aren't many of the safety mechanisms that in the traditional financial sector have been put in place in order to protect both the customers and the banks.

The waiting period for transferring very large sums out of my bank is also because during that time I can hopefully realize I'm being scammed, or in case I'm being kept at gunpoint it increases the likelihood of me being able to send a distress signal. That my bank is also profiting by sitting on the funds in the meantime is just a happy (for them) coincidence...

Techie was given strict instructions not to disrupt client. Then he touched one box and the lights went out

According to paper-size.com A0 is exactly one square metre (849 x 1189 mm) so 0.0481 nanoWales.

BTW A0+ is 914 x 1292 mm, converting to 1.181 m² and 0.568 nW.

Re: Downvote - really?

"And why on Earth did someone downvote this post? There is no way it can be construed as controversial, it's just explaining how the system works and how you can ‘fix’ a mistake."

Maybe because they see it as factually wrong? (Disclaimer, I didn't vote one way or the other) I don't know how it goes for other browsers, but on Firefox if I have upvoted a post and want to rescind that vote there's no way to do return the post status to unvoted:

* if I press again on the same up/down arrow it remains highlighted and the vote counter doesn't change;

* if I press on the opposite arrow the highlighting moves to that one, and both up/downvote counters change by one (one increases and the other decreases).

Icon is for El Reg programmers, if someone could get round to address this minor annoyance it would be quite helpful...

UK still doodling digital pound while Brussels frets over payment sovereignty

Re: Digital currency

For what it's worth, one of the use cases for a digital currency is to allow the unbanked to use electronic payments.

From what I understand in my country they're envisioning something like the smartphone apps which store a credit that you use to pay in shops, only instead of being run by some fintech company those apps will be run by the central bank. That digital wallet will have a cap of some hundreds of euro in order to avoid objections from traditional banks.

Taiwan tells Uncle Sam its chip ecosystem ain't going anywhere

Apart from the other reasons stated in TFA

There is little reason to honour verbal promises made at gunpoint, especially when the other party in the "deal" then goes on to acquire 10% of your competition.

Windows fails to tip the scales in grocery store deployment

Re: image missing

Bork image from the page HTML source (headlines thumbnail). Currently also sending a heads-up to corrections...

Welcome to Wendy's! Before your order can be taken, you must first reset this kiosk

Re: slightly disappointing article

Looking in the headers it appears that there is one, it just didn't end up in the actual text...

https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/12/12/wendys_bork.jpg

Already sent a correction BTW

GitHub walks back plan to charge for self-hosted runners

Re: Steal and make you pay for the privilidge.

It's theft when the peons do it, it's copyright infringement** when Big Tech does it. Simples.

** except when it's "using your IP in accordance to the license we strong-armed you into giving us as a condition of signing up for our service", I suppose.

Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029

Re: For all those of you who haven't paid attention

At least in my country something like that has existed for decades. Lunch vouchers are a tax-reduced component of paychecks, depending on your employment contract; they have an expiration date of some months and can only be spent on meals at restaurants or foodstuffs at supermarkets. Recently they've gone digital, which means either using a smartcard or yet another damn app on my smartphone.

The important part, those vouchers are an additional part of my pay and they're entirely optional: I can opt out of them and be no worse off than before (the money can only go to my pension fund in order to keep the reduced corporate tax rate, there's no option for regular cash).

I can see similar restrictions applied to potential future stimulus checks: you spend the amount in the way you're directed or you lose it, but either way you're no worse off as it's free money. The fear of employers doing the same to regular paychecks IMO is unfounded, that would be tantamount to being paid in company scrip, something that's been illegal since forever.

Perhaps I'm naively optimistic but I don't see all those downsides, then again as a law-abiding individual "having to live on the run from the government" isn't really in my threat model.

Microsoft Task Manager now tasking PCs with running multiple copies of itself

Can still be terminated by command line

Windows + R to bring up the Run Program dialog, then:

cmd /c taskkill /f /im taskmgr.exe

Since it terminates all the named processes at once, it also comes handy to get rid of those pesky programs that execute two instances of themselves, each one acting as a watchdog and relaunching the other if it crashes or is terminated by the user.

Bezos plan for solar powered datacenters is out of this world… literally

Re: 85 degrees N

If you're referring to the concept of Moon datacenters instead of orbital ones... The temperature at the lunar surface matters up to a point because regolith is a poor thermal conductor (0.1-0.2 W/m/K), so using it as a heat sink is challenging to say the least. Besides trying to design a thermal loop where your sink temperature swings by 150 K on a 14-day interval, once you've solved that problem you've barely scratched the surface (citing from a NASA paper "the lunar regolith is composed of a statically-charged powder with high emissivity and absorptivity, which could greatly degrade the performance of any thermal system unless properly accounted for").

Moreover you're not going to like the 2500ms round trip latency to your users.

Replit makes vibe-y promise to stop its AI agents making vibe coding disasters

Replit CEO : “Unacceptable and should never be possible.”

Emphasis on "should". That's what you get when you involve so-called "AI", the output is stochastic to some degree because many interfaces to LLMs use a random seed to bootstrap the session.

As for myself I tend to prefer my computing deterministic; troubleshooting problems is hard enough as it is, I have no need for devices that randomly spit out a different result when fed with the same inputs...

JWST peers through dusty curtain to catch young star making baby planets

JWST peers through dusty curtain to catch young star making baby planets

I don't know who came up with the article headline, but it's *chef's kiss*. Well-deserved icon!

Suspected Chinese cybersnoop grounded in Italy after US tipoff

In other news...

Italian national arrested in China on bogus charges in 3, 2, 1...

Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

Re: Wish I knew what kind....

The keychron.com site has nearly any variation of keyboard features, and IMO their keyboards are pretty affordable. Seems something like the K10 Max has the features you're requesting...

Personally I'd go with hot-swappable switches because those allow for neat personalization tricks like making just some keys clicky, so one hears when they're inadvertently pressed (caps lock anyone?)

Credible nerd says stop using atop, doesn't say why, everyone panics

Ah, that explain Mr. Proven's advice to uninstall the package instead of simply... avoiding running it.

Was finding it a bit of a head-scratcher, I'll freely admit.

Hisense QLED TVs are just LED TVs, lawsuit claims

Fun fact about the human body is that what you described naturally occurs as a consequence of the decay of Potassium-40. For an average 70-kg adult it takes about half a millisecond as a matter of fact...

Yup, AMD's Elba and Giglio definitely sound like they work corporate security

Nothing substantial to say about the technical aspects of the article, but as an Italian it feels quite strange to read all those codenames in my own language...

Encryption backdoor debate 'done and dusted,' former White House tech advisor says

Re: Who's who?

The Patrician to Captain Vimes, in Guards! Guards!: "I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides."

Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks

The same argument about scanning for CSAM appiles

How long before some government tells Apple "since you have demonstrated you have the capability to scan for stuff on your users' phones, you will also search for objectionable content"?

"Objectionable" as defined by the ruling party, obviously...

Naïve Reg hack thinks he can beat Christmas food comas once and for all

Re: Suffolk Tip - New Wildlife Reserve

15-digit precision? As usual there's a relevant XKCD...

China starts building world's largest fully steerable radio telescope

Xizang Autonomous Region

Otherwise known as Tibet.

Seems like the CCP is looking to erase the name of the place in addition to its ancestral culture? I traveled there just before Covid, and it was heartbreaking to see the number of heavily armed police troopers surveilling religious festivals, or how newly built infrastructure defaced pristine landscapes (to which the new radiotelescope will do no favours also, I suspect)...

T-Mobile US takes a victory lap after stopping cyberattacks: 'Other providers may be seeing different outcomes'

Tempting fate

Eh I don't know, but bragging like this could be seen by some as a challenge...

Reminds me of the Discworld method of committing suicide by walking into the Mended Drum tavern and announcing your name as 'Vincent the Invulnerable' or any such nonsense.

Icon: GNU PTerry

EU irate about geo-locked Apple IDs

Odd, I distinctly remember changing my e-mail address some years ago from one at Yahoo! to one at Protonmail, and keeping the same Google account.

Perhaps it's due to some subsequent change? Or -my guess- maybe a benefit of NOT using Gmail when registering (yes, it's actually possible to create a Google account without using a @gmail address, it's just that 99% of users never bother to)... Or I may well be misunderstanding your problem with Google, in which case my apologies.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Re: "so that people can take their own privacy and data into their hands"

"I am prepared to lose any partner/friend/relative who does that"

Perhaps a naive question, but if they don't tell me and I don't use socials myself how would I even discover I've been tagged?

I mean, without compromising my privacy myself by giving away my PII or photos to dubious "people search" sites in order to ascertain whether that info appears anywhere on the Internet...

Icon: I'm sorry officer, I promise the only reason I'm wearing this mask in public is to protect my privacy ;)

AI PCs will dominate shipments by 2026, but not because of demand

History repeats itself

Just as Microsoft mandated that in order to qualify for the Vista Ready sticker PCs had to have a GPU, only to then abandon the 3D effects that required it in the first place. Now on my company laptop the task manager is reporting that same GPU has been sitting at 0% utilization all morning...

Green recycling goals? Pending EU directive could hammer used mobile market

The operators in other regions less so, since they will no longer have a convenient outlet to dump the previous iPhones of their users that are rolling over their contract and exchanging their handsets for new ones...

"The European telecom industry recognizes that it needs to address low trade-in throughout the region, but it's still far off the pace of the US and Japan, which generate much higher volumes."

They would say it, wouldn't they? In Europe we're much more used to buying our phones outright instead of financing them as part of our phone bills, and as a consequence we're much less inclined to replace our equipment when rolling over the phone contracts. I'd bet that it's much less lucrative for the operators than the American/Japanese business model...

Ellison declares Oracle all-in on AI mass surveillance, says it'll keep everyone in line

Torment Nexus by Oracle

Billionaires aren't even trying to hide their aims any longer, are they...

To patch this server, we need to get someone drunk

Re: Prison

> it is possible to do some computer fettling on a couple of pints, it doesn't suddenly remove all your facilities.

As always there's a relevant XKCD: Ballmer Peak .

There is no honor among RAM thieves – but sometimes there is karma

Especially if you know what ZIF stood for. I too would proceed only after having thoroughly verified that nothing is blocking anything, if something is named Zero Insertion Force and nonetheless requires more than minimal effort.

For the record: You just ordered me to cause a very expensive outage

"Norman" who is an electrical engineer by trade and during one phase of his career

I see what you did there, --> for the one who came up with it

BOFH: Why's the network so slow?

Re: The first part of the conversation rings a bell...

I think it was when Simon introduced the stack model of bosses' brain, namely that they could only keep max two technical terms in mind at the same time. After the third one their brain stack overflowed, and the bosses entered "dummy mode".

Enterprise browser maker Island says it's now worth $3B

Re: Browser...

To me the crazy thing is that they've managed to spend nearly half a bllion dollars, and unless I'm mistaken what they've accomplished is adding logging to Chromium and clearing the clipboard on focus lost.

I suppose that they must be renting some seriously fancy company headquarters because that kind of money sure as hell didn't go into development...

Alibaba signs to explore one-hour rocket deliveries

Re: NORAD is going to love this - not

Also because they have a valid prior art claim...

Reddit link (sorry)

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 with Eye-of-Sauron camera

Re: Hmm

Well this new SOC also features "party mode" audio, so there's plenty of appeal for inconsiderate people that like to inflict their taste in music on all the other poor sods in the same public space... Bet Qualcomm will sell wagonloads as usual.

You got legal trouble? Better call SauLM-7B

What lawyers enjoy

"tools to help lawyers focus on what they enjoy most and do best, which is to exercise legal judgment and help their clients with advice."

That's odd, I've always had the distinct impression that the thing lawyers liked the most about their job was billing their clients...

The S in IoT stands for security. You'll never secure all the Things

As for me I've solved by never giving my smart TV the Wi-Fi password. Since it was demanding to be connected to the Internet for initial configuration, plugging in an Ethernet cable for the ten minutes it took made short order of that, and it has been a satisfyingly dumb TV set ever since.

The Who’s Who of AI just chipped in to fund humanoid robot startup Figure

Robots are coming for the dirty jobs

Yeah, dirty environments are notoriously the ideal place to put expensive delicate automatons in. /s

Call me when they can go into city sewers to dislodge fatbergs...

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Re: Let's Check the Server Room Access Log

Or the access logs were themselves saved on the downed storage device ;)

This story reminds me of the old saying "SCSI isn't magic. There are fundamental technical reasons why it's necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your array every new moon"

Lenovo debuts AI PCs that have specs a lot like vanilla PCs with this year's accelerated CPUs

Transparent display on laptops

So not just the ones sitting beside me on the train can snoop on what's on my screen, but now also those in front? Yeah no, count me out on this...

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

Re: Daily!?! RFC begs to differ

Well to be fair @wolfetone didn't specify whose death...

Europe's deepest mine to become Europe's deepest battery

Pedant alert: if your uranium is sufficiently enriched as to sustain a chain reaction, it doesn't stay in a big pile for much more than microseconds. If it isn't enriched yet, then it isn't much use as a store of energy.

What you want is a number of smaller piles, depending on the level of enrichment. Citing Wikipedia: "The critical mass for lower-grade uranium depends strongly on the grade: with 20% U-235 it is over 400 kg; with 15% U-235, it is well over 600 kg."

Windows 11 24H2 is coming so we can all shut up about Windows 12 for another year

Re: Lifetime

The Windows app works under Wine in that it can find the files, but thereafter it breaks because it expects to talk to Explorer. Same problem as the Linux equivalent really, there are any number of different file managers so it can only cater to the lowest common denominator.

Kinda amusing how this thread has evolved like the old ones on Slashdot, complete with the reply "if you're having this problem you're free to write your own program to solve it"... Snark aside good suggestion @yetanotheracc, I'll look into it if I ever decide to try a third time with Linux.

Re: Lifetime

"You right click on it, same as in Windows".

That only works if you're using a file manager and you're already in the folder containing the file you're searching for. There's no graphical application like Search Everything in Windows that looks up in multiple folders and then allows the same context options like in a regular file manager. The nearest thing to it is AngrySearch, but once it's found the files you're looking for the only supported actions are simple verbs, like "rename", "delete" and "open" but crucially not "open with" that presents you with a choice of suitable applications.

That's why I wrote "file searching tools" and not simply "file search". Also at the risk of attracting further downvotes, I don't think it's fair being downvoted for stating that an OS doesn't fit my use case...

Re: Lifetime

For sure, for my next desktop PC rebuild I'm currently planning to obtain (most likely on the high seas -hence icon- since MICROS~1 doesn't sell it to end users) a copy of Windows 10 IOT LTSC 2021 that is supported until 2027 (mainstream, 2032 extended), since I cannot stand the modifications they've done to the taskbar in Windows 11.

Sadly I doubt I will be switching to Linux soon, I have tried twice already but each time I've come back to Windows because file searching tools in the land of the penguin have no concept of opening a file with anything but its associated application. Whereas there are times I need to edit a picture, but most times I just want it to open in a much-quicker-to-start image viewer for example...

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

Re: Ramble, blither

> Tibetans traditionally prefer China style tea but with all the twiggy bits left in, to which they add a dob of butter.

When I went there five years ago, the "yak butter tea" we were served was invariably just hot water with a crushed very hard white substance (totally different from the yellow stuff we saw burning candle-like in the temples), with no trace of anything vegetal in it. It tasted quite salty, and just a sip was enough for me; it took all I had to not spit it out...

I thought the locals were playing a prank on us tourists, but some in our group that had previously traveled in the Little Tibet region on the Indian side of the Himalayas were very much appreciating that drink and kept on assuring us it was the real deal.

Methinks I've had enough salty tea for a lifetime, thank you very much. Icon is my reaction at the first sip.

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

Re: I guess this is data storage!

Odd, if the floor was giving in I would have expected the gap among the cabinets to be near the bottom instead of the top...