Posts by TeeCee

Alibaba wants to get you off the PC upgrade treadmill and into its cloud

Well, obviously anyone who thinks their latency is over 70ms is a dangerous recidivist and the government will be sorting out some political re-education to fix the problem.

Oh, you mean outside China? Who knows...

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

AFAICS, the only rule potentially at stake here is the one that says; "All your profit are belong to us."

Typical '80s IT: Good idea leads to additional duties, without extra training or pay, and a nuked payroll system

Re: Wotsits' law

All well and good. If you're (un)lucky, all that backup care and preparation gets you this.

OPPO's ColorOS 11 hits beta, but swerves EU audience over GDPR compliance concerns

...concerns over GDPR compliance.

The problem's simple. Justifiable paranoia. GDPR is woolly and ill-defined. It also comes with draconian penalties attached for violating something which even specialist lawyers have difficulty interpreting, let alone agreeing on whether or not your plans are compliant.

The result is that many implementations effectively classify everything "eyes only and shoot the reader afterwards".

So, like Global Thermonuclear War, the only winning move is not to play.

Fasthosts finally promises to stop pushing unwanted .uk domains onto irritated customers

...no choice but to let the potentially valuable domains go.

If the only person or organisation that might want each of them doesn't, despite repeated attempts to flog the sodding things to them, I reckon that "worthless" is more accurate than "potentially valuable".

Astronomers get more than they bargained for, as Mars probe InSight's instruments detects solar eclipses

Re: Provided this is repeatable...

...limit for calibrators in ultra quiet environments...

Probably not a lot of traffic noise, autotuned muzak and other undesirable racket in the background on Mars.

Are you locally attached? Lenovo makes EPYC effort to wave HCI flag amid reports of sagging server revenues

"the new, smarter normal"

I'll believe it when I see those miles of new cycle lane still being used in the pissing rain in the depths of winter.

(My money's on gridlock as everyone and their dog goes back to their warm, comfy cars and teleworking dropping back to near real normal levels.)

Salon told to change ad looking for 'happy' stylist because it 'discriminated against unhappy people'

They have a point.

After all, if you are going to get sued for discrimination, it's always going to be by some miserable bastard. Cheerful, pleasant people just aren't that vindictive.

Probably best not to be seen to discriminate against them.

Forget Fortnite and FIFA: India wants to develop games based on local legends

Stereotypical...

...that he's making such a song and dance over it.

You Musk be joking: A mind-reading Neuralink chip in a pig's brain? Downloadable memories? Telepathy? Watch and judge for yourself

...implanted a mind-reading gadget in a live pig's brain.

"Hmm, what does that waveform mean?"

"Probably 'Oink'."

"How about that one?"

"I'm guessing at 'Oink'."

"That looks interesting. I wonder what that means?"

"I'll take a wild stab in the dark and go for 'Oink'."

Fairphone thinks its fair to offer a not-very-major and slightly-more-recycled new model

Re: Buying

To quote the OP; ...you can only buy the phones from them direct...

What reseller?

Presumably they themselves have done an exclusive deal with an operator in each market to get the generous bribecommission.

Define "ethical"...

Multiple customers knocked offline as firefighters tackle flames at Telstra's London Hosting Centre bit barn

Re: suspected UPS fire

The all time best I ever heard was recounted in the Netwire conference on Cix back in the day.

This was shortly after "big bang" in the City and took place at one of the dealing houses now part of ${bank}. Their IT director put together a presentation showing that, while the mainframes were protected by UPS, the loss of the phones, screens, lighting (etc ad nauseum) meant that, in the event of a power outage, they'd be effectively unable to trade. He included figures showing that this would cost them £1m a day. Back in the eighties...

The board approved the stripping out of a basement level and the installation of an online UPS to run the entire building.

When the UPS went titsup.com, everything their IT director predicted happened. The only thing he got wrong was that his figures were conservative. It cost them over £2.5m a day. They were down for a week. He was so fired it was unbelievable.

Telstra has not itself acknowledged the fire on Twitter and repeated calls by El Reg to its London office failed.

So that's both their internet connection and their phones down then?

Huawei mobile mast installed next to secret MI5 data centre in London has 7 years to do whatever it is Huawei does

Total Huawei ban in 2027.

Or "never" as I like to call it.

By then, the whole thing will either be moot, or whoever's in power will have a pressing need to lick the Chinese government's arse and kill it off.

So... just 'Good' then? KFC pulls Finger Lickin' slogan while pandemic rumbles on

How about;

"It's finger lickin'* good.

_{*and if you have a problem with that you're very sad and you can fuck off.}"

Google says Australian pay-for-news code means it can’t quit the country

Re: Murdoch

To make sure his empire actually reports the news, not just the opinions he favours..

Sorry to break the bad news (hah!), but every news organisation has an editorial policy of some sort. This is why the Grauniad these days reads like a sort of Stalinist version of the Faily Wail. Same blinkers on, just looking in a different direction.

They all pander to some demographic or other and nobody actually wants the whole truth, just the bits they like.

So long, Top Gun... AI software waxes US F-16 pilot's tail 5-0 during virtual dogfight drills

You are assuming that an AI controlled aircraft needs to fly in a straight line and can, therefore, only fire straight ahead.

I'd have thought that slewing the airframe to aim would be simpler, using stick and opposite rudder, although the reaction times required to hit anything by doing that are rather beyond human capabilities.

Apple hits back at Epic, says Fortnite crew wants a 'free ride' on fees: Let the app store death match commence

I have to agree. It's astonishingly difficult to describe a 30% rakeoff on each and every transaction as a "commission". Even football agents aren't that greedy and they're generally seen as thieving parasites.

"Usurious extortion" is the description that springs to mind for me.

Space station update: Mystery tiny but growing air leak sparks search for hole

The leak was repaired using a strip of good ol’ Kapton tape. ®

<Sharp intake of breath>

Well, yeees, if you've got the right sort of leak. This one's a different story guv'nor and I'm gonna have to replace the section. I ain't got the right parts in the Dragon, so I'll 'ave to come back....'ow are you fixed for next week?

We've heard some made-up stories but this is ridiculous: Microsoft Flight Simulator, Bing erect huge skyscraper out of bad data

Re: ...REAL plane

I've mentioned it before but.

A WWII Fairey Swordfish pilot was sent to a yank carrier. The idea was that the yank pilots and gunners could get a good look at the thing (presumably while trying not to laugh), so the trigger happy loons wouldn't shoot any passing Fleet Air Arm aircraft down.

On approach, the carrier turned into the wind a steamed at full speed, as per the correct drill for receiving aircraft. There was a stiff breeze blowing and that, combined with the carrier's speed was some way above the stalling speed of a Swordfish, even with the flaps retracted.

He could hover over the deck and fly backwards over the deck, but he couldn't land on the deck and was obliged to call down to ask the carrier to slow down.

Whoa-o BlackBerry, bam-ba-lam: QWERTY phone had a child. 5G thing's newly styled

Not a chance.

...see whether OnwardMobility retains the most popular features...

You mean producing a BES and locking the things to that?

That's the only reason the sodding things sold like hot cakes to the corp market[1] back in the day. Without that functionality, they're just another handset and rather overpriced for the spec for added "last nail in the coffin" value.

[1] Consumer sales were all down to "Iz emale nd msg thing iz must hav yes?", so they're royally buggered for a USP there these days.

Single-line software bug causes fledgling YAM cryptocurrency to implode just two days after launch

...the project attracted interest because its creators leveraged relationships with influencers...

So, playing wankword bingo for real money now are we?

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Re: Human Nature

Some people seem to just be looking for ways to be offended.,

Bingo. It's called Tw@ter.

Best recent example I can think of was Alistair Stewart. He replied to an ignorant troll with the beautifully worded Shakespearian quote that means "You are an ignorant troll".

Ignorant troll then parses said quote word by word, finds the one it's looking for and promptly waves it on Tw@ter as obvious evidence of a deliberate racist insult, gaining kudos and troll points for doing so.

Mr Stewart resigns from public life rather than attempting to explain Shakespeare to the baying hordes of the terminally stupid.

That's how we roll: OWC savagely undercuts Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels with bargain $199 alternative

Re: "Roughneck Dolly" from Wickes. Which is not a sex toy,

Have we met?

Re: "Roughneck Dolly" from Wickes. Which is not a sex toy,

Really? You've not noticed those paint mixing things that go in a drill yet then?

Re: Brace yourselves for some wheely bad puns in the comments

These puns are tyreing and nut very funny.

Pen Test Partners: Boeing 747s receive critical software updates over 3.5" floppy disks

... revealed a server-room-esque array of line replaceable units and cabling,

So, Hollywood. What was that film with Kurt Russell where they killed off Steven Seagal's character in minutes? Just like in that then.

Bet it doesn't have an access hatch in the floor though. You know the one to attach a Stealth Fighter that magically lacks engine, fuel, etc and thus has room for an assault team and an access tube, restoring normal Hollywood credibility levels.

You had one job... Just two lines of code, and now the customer's Inventory Master File has bitten the biscuit

Re: Adding a comment sometimes caused compile failure

I remember one of colleagues submitting a compile to batch and sitting back to read the paper while it happened.

The he went "Oh Shit!" and dived for his keyboard. He'd forgotten to make one important tweak and figured he could get the source updated before the compile happened to save himself half an hour (yes, it took that long).

What I reckon happened next is that with impeccable timing he got the source updated smack between the initial compile to deck and the optimisation phase so, when it referred back to the source, things didn't match.

Only time I ever saw an entire IBM System/38 crash like that, those things were bulletproof. He insisted that it was a coincidence and I know correlation is not causation, but...

Just like when you 'game over' two seconds into a new level... Facebook launches Gaming app without games on iOS

Bit of shame that every independent game developer I've seen comment on the subject has ranted about Apple's capricious attitude to what they can and can't do (subject to overnight change on whim) and also pointed out that a very large percentage of any crust they earn goes to, er, Apple.

Intel NDA blueprints – 20GB of source code, schematics, specs, docs – spill onto web from partners-only vault

I think AMD must have downloaded this.

You can hear the laughter from their HQ building ten blocks away.

Wrap it before you tap it? No, say Linux developers: 'GPL condom' for Nvidia driver is laughed out of the kernel

Re: free sandwich

I remember being on a Virgin Citiflyer Express from BRU to LHR. The boss had a beer and I went for the bubbly. A couple later and he joined in the champers-fest.

One more and the bloke in the row behind also partook, this required the opening of another bottle.

When we got kicked into a hold over south London (unlike taxis, planes do go south of the river at that time of day) and we went for a refill, the dolly just left the bottle. This was on the grounds that any remaining was going down the plughole on arrival and with three of us at it, we'd probably polish it off and save the wastage.

Probably the most champagne I've ever got through on a flight that short.

Microsoft forked out $13.7m in bug bounties. The reward program's architect thinks the money could be better spent

Another missive from the Department Of Stating The Obvious.

When it was drilled into me, it was called the "Rule of tens.": If it costs x to fix a problem in design, it costs 10x to fix it in development, 100x to fix it in testing and 1000x to fix it once live.

I guess nothing's changed.

Virgin Galactic pals up with Rolls-Royce to work on Mach 3 Concorde-style private jet that can carry up to 19 people

...delta-wing aircraft...

The pic would seem to confirm that, so not the same wing layout at all. Concorde famously sported an ogee wing which gave supersonic performance without compromising low speed lift. The only drawback was the monumental angle of attack required at low speeds for takeoff and landing, necessitating the "droop snoot".

I was sat in an MGB roadster in traffic on the A4 at the 312 roundabout when Concorde went over on final into LHR. When it got about 1/2 mile ahead of me I got pressed down into the seat by the wash off that wing. At high attack angles it creates a sheet of air behind it, confined by the vortices from the leading edges. This acts as an extension to the wing, generating additional lift. You can really feel it when underneath the thing.

Aviation regulator outlines fixes that will get the 737 MAX flying again

Meanwhile...

...every airline that was going to take these is now saying; "Thank fuck that Boeing gave us a cast iron excuse to cancel that order.". Let's face it, nobody's going to be buying commercial aircraft for quite some time.

Dynabook Portégé X30L-G: So light, you might even forget about its terrible keyboard

Re: You're in luck

It's also mentioned in the article.

Fun fact: If you noticed a while ago Zoom's web client going AWOL for a week, it's because someone found a passcode-cracking hole

Re: Short visits, last week

I think that's an old one and a user problem.

1) User generates six digit passcode for meeting as described.

2) User posts on farcebum or tw@ter "Iz joins heer for meet kids on Thu zoom 123456".

3) Bored git sees post and has their willy make an appearance in said meeting.

The fundamental security hole in Zoom is that it allows unvalidated attendees. If it were a "these email addresses and this passcode to join" thing, there'd be no problem. Unfortunately, lusers really like that "all u needs is my codes and is go heer" functionality and Zoom would be shooting their service in the head if they tightened things up.

WTF is cloud-tethered compute? We're not sure either, but it just made a hype cycle for the first time

First person to spot an ad wanting 5+ years of experience in it wins teh internets.

We're not all about rockets, says NASA: Balloon tech is good enough for economical star scanning

Re: Stability?

It's a balloon.

It's not exactly rocket science you know.

It's a Meow-nixed system, I know this: Purr-fect storm of 3,000+ insecure databases – and a data-wiping bot

I was going to say something like that. Less malicious, more of a public service.

SpaceX pulls off an incredible catch, netting both halves of its Falcon fairing as they fell Earthwards after latest launch

Re: Whats Next?

<Minder>

'Ere Arfur, that's a bit cheeky. 'Ope they don't land it in our manor.

</Minder>

Russia tested satellite-to-satellite shooter, say UK and USA

...a mere maintenance drone...

Out of the "Hit it with a big hammer" school of maintenance?

Amazon's auditing of Alexa Skills is so good, these boffins got all 200+ rule-breaking apps past the reviewers

Alexa content prohibitions.

Can we mix 'n match here?

Collecting health information from Nazis.

Sexually explicit symbols.

Hate children.

etc.

Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball

Aha. The "The dog ate my homework" strategy.

I'm surprised they didn't get laughed out of court for trying that one.

Seven 'no log' VPN providers accused of leaking – yup, you guessed it – 1.2TB of user logs onto the internet

...It appears seven Hong-Kong-based VPN providers,,,all share a common entity, which provides a white-labelled VPN service.

Let me guess: The People's Liberation ArmyHappy Dragon VPN Services.

51 years after humans first set foot on the Moon, a deepfaked Nixon mourns how Armstrong and Aldrin never made it home

Re: of all of the possible choices...they made this one

Oh, I dunno. Trolling the trolls has a certain poetic justice about it.

Here's why your Samsung Blu-ray player bricked itself: It downloaded an XML config file that broke the firmware

Hang on. Wasn't it Samsung who shipped laptops in which if any CMOS write went splat, it irrevocably bricked the motherboard?

You'd have thought they might have learned something from the kicking they got over that. Apparently not.

Maybe someone should go to their firmware developers' office and paint "Recovery Process" on the wall in six foot letters.

See you after the commercial breakdown: Cert expiry error message more entertaining than the usual advert tripe

Re: Red triangle programs

Pink triangle? At the risk of seeming old, isn't that a turntable?

AMD fans forced to sit out latest Windows 10 Insiders build due to 'bug impacting overall usability of these PCs'

...improvements in sound settings to permit the selection of default devices...

I suspect that's a biggie and has been on the "too hard" pile for a long time.

Only reason I can think of for having to go to the old skool Control Panel dialogue for anything more complicated than adjusting the volume, rather than having the functionality native in TIFKAM.

Power and Networks are still on the "to do" list I guess.

Oh sure, we'll just make a tiny little change in every source file without letting anyone know. What could go wrong?

Because "Baaaaaa". Obviously.

Well, that's what ever instance of "Why did you send this to me?" I ever saw read as to me.

Babe, I've changed! Twitter wants to try a relationship again with devs after first major API tweaks in years

...hopes external coders can make it a better place...

In much the same way as a farmer spraying a can of air freshener over his muck heap improves that.

At the end of the day, when your business is built on and is dependent on a ready supply of fermented shit there isn't much you can do to improve the place you keep it.