Posts by JPCavendish

The Y2K bug is back! Dutch dev digs up untimely flaw in old BSD build

"Not only was the bug specific to the PDP-11/70, a system that entered service in 1975, but it also requires a Precision Standard Time, Inc.(PSTI) receiver manufactured by defunct hardware maker Traconex used to pick up time signals broadcast by short wave radio stations managed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. Even at that point, the bug won't instantly break network time, as a would-be attacker must take several steps to configure the ancient mahicnes in a way that causes the error."

Oh wow. That's a niche within a niche within a niche.

It's do or die for Apple AI

Because their business model—selling premium hardware and subscriptions in a secure, private environment—does not rely on selling targeted ads or harvesting your data. In fact the more they did move into data harvesting, the more business they would lose due to removing the single biggest reason for many companies (and individuals) to choose them.

It’s a financial calculation; nothing altruistic about it.

Ah really! That’s interesting. With all Apple’s resources they still can’t go it alone.

Re: Die

Who are you aiming this at? You replied to my comment but I didn’t mention AI; and I fully agree companies are more than their AI components.

Buy one now, quickly, while you still can. The AI in current Apple products is (a) completely switch-off-able, and (b) shite enough that you'll never miss it.

Cynicism aside, you can turn Apple AI off at source - in fact you have to actively enable it during setup if you want it.

"Apple's security model isn't as much about data harvesting as Apple"

Oops. AI could have caught that.

Re: yet again

I'm with you on getting back to "it just works", and I'll give you the 'bugs' bit on iOS (MacOS is different, it's solid as a rock), but I have to take issue with 'security holes'. MacOS and iOS are by far the most secure of the "out of the box" OSen. You can get more secure if you build your own Linux (and really really know what you're doing) or buy a security-specific device like a Librium 5 but for general purpose you're safer on Mac and iPhone than anywhere else.

Re: Die

The most interesting part of your post is where you went into detail about how Apple has sufficiently ruined your life that you wish death upon them.

I think - although I could be wrong - that this 'new' Siri AI is homebaked. Apple used ChatGPT integration with the last version as a bandage to cover up the fact that Siri was irredeemably inept, but what I understood from the keynote is that they now believe they can go it alone.

Re: Time to vote

Show me on the doll where the nasty Apple touched you

Apple's Orwellian device controls for tots also mean more work for parents

Re: UK users

"If you don’t have a payment method attached to your Apple account, that cuts you off from a significant proportion of the App Store."

I'm not sure why this plays a role here. You have always been able to use gift cards which are freely purchasable.

Re: As long as it is optional

No. You're talking about different things. Parental controls are not and will never be imposed on everyone - for reasons that I hope are obvious.

"I've never used them but judging by the frequent posts on the Apple boards from parents whose kids bypass the current features with ease they are either too simple to get round or too complicated for some parents to set up."

Quite the contrary. As long as you don't give your kids your AppleID password and/or blindly approve everything that's sent to you, parental controls on iPhone are pretty much rock solid.

You use 'will' a lot in this article, where you should be using 'can'.

It's entirely optional, it's a tool that parents can CHOOSE to use if they so wish.

I could write a lot more about the fear mongering guff here, but given the - yes, Orwellian - propagandist nature of el Reg's Apple output these days I suspect nothing will change.

1 in 8 employees totally cool with selling work credentials

I flat out do not believe this. I've been in and around the security industry for 30+ years and yes credentials do get stolen/sold, but if 1 in 8 people were doing it, I would have earned a LOT more money through the years.

And those who "know somebody who is doing it" are just pathetic losers trying to be a bit edgy while maintaining plausible deniability and without actually committing to knowledge of something that could put their job at risk.

Remember kids: 67% of statistics are made up on the spot.

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

Not only pickable, but pickable with a bit of rolled up cardboard as well.

As you say - worse than useless.

Apple has an opportunity to rediscover humanity in its push toward AI

Re: Turn off all Apple AI crap

Which AI crap have you turned off exactly, and what kind of difference has it made to your experience?

Asking because on all of my Apple devices, the ‘AI’ generally does nothing at all unless I specifically open an AI app. It’s irrelevant and invisible to me in my day to day use case.

This isn’t because Apple don’t want to embed it - I’m certain they would if they could. It’s just that right now Apple Intelligence is SO far behind Gemini and Copilot in terms of ‘embeddedness’ that it might as well not exist.

Re: addictive products

Sure, let's go back to sticks and stones.

Oh wait - I'm sure even John S Caveman poked himself in the eye at one point while returning to his cave after a hard day hunting bison. Forget the sticks then.

Re: Tim Cook was NEVER the man for the job

Here are four trillion reasons why you're wrong.

"charging developers up to 30 percent of app sales for a 12-minute security review"

And hosting it.

And managing deployment.

And marketing it to an audience of hundreds of millions.

And ensuring a trusted and secure ecosystem.

Fucks sake Reg. There are enough legitimate reasons to knock Apple without having to fabricate them.

Yet another ex-ransomware negotiator admits turning rogue after payoff from crimelords

I fully agree on not feeding the Machine. But - and it is a big but - when the immediate real-life consequences of not paying could include actual deaths, as is often the case when a hospital or healthcare provider is extorted, the "not paying on principle" thing tends to become less black and white.

Re: Man in the Middle

"*Women are also available and just as competent in my experience."

Or indeed just as incompetent; given the nature of your examples here.

Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo

Re: Short cuts make long delays, but at least nothing shorted out

"...but that doesn't necessarily mean they were redundant..."

Mmmmm memories. A lot of IBM boxen had multiple power supplies intentionally designated "dual" rather than "redundant" - and many a tech (including me) has fallen foul of cavalierly ripping one out assuming the other would keep things running, only to hear the depressing (and career-damaging) sound of components spinning down.

Samsung still glued to its bad habits with Galaxy S26 Ultra

So the fully modular MacBook Neo with every major component easily replaceable with nothing more than 10 minutes and a screwdriver, Day 1 parts and documentation availability and not a drop of glue in sight, gets 6/10 from iFixit.

Meanwhile a device with a "tightly integrated screen" "heavily glued into the chassis", with "delicate, complicated and failure-prone" routine' repairs, poor parts availability, documentation and repair logistics, gets a 5/10; just one point less.

What a crock of shit.

US struck Iran with copies of its own drones

Re: Proof this was long planned

"because of the extreme leftist reactionaries that made up the commentariat back then"

Most of them are still here...

Fraudster hacked hotel system, paid 1 cent for luxury rooms, Spanish cops say

"According to the cops, he stayed at this hotel several times, costing the business more than €20,000 ($23,608) in losses."

Not getting revenue != losses. Using the published room rate as a multiplier to calculate loss is a logical fallacy.

Copilot spills the beans, summarizing emails it's not supposed to read

Re: my email

Makes sense to me.

Re: ...and no one was surprised.

I live in a country where English isn’t the first language, and Siri while driving is insanely bad. Plus Apple have now removed the keyboard search option for “safety reasons” when the car is moving, so your only option is to use Siri to set a destination en route, which never ever works.

“Siri, find me an IKEA nearby.”

“Here are some options for Watch Repairers in Borneo.”

“Siri, search for IKEA.”

“Now making a FaceTime Audio call to Aunt Irma.”

So you’re left with having to stop the car to set a destination, or fish your phone out of your pocket and (illegally and dangerously) use the phone keyboard instead.

Well fucking done Apple. You’ve made things an order of magnitude more inconvenient and/or dangerous. Sanctimonious pricks.

Re: ...and no one was surprised.

Don’t ’No’ me. Slurping data improves AI and (in many, but not all scenarios) generates a saleable asset.

You can disagree with this, but you would be wrong.

Re: ...and no one was surprised.

Slurping improves the quality of AI assistants, at the expense of user/data privacy.

Being able to sell the data on is an additional benefit.

Re: ...and no one was surprised.

Not all. If Apple was slurping everything it could, Siri would be a hell of a lot better.

You can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone, says Dutch defense chief

Re: You'd like to think

I think it's fair to say that (a) if a kill switch existed it would have been identified by now, and (b) if it did exist, it could be circumvented.

The reason I'm confident in saying it doesn't exist is because it is totally unnecessary. The 'real' kill switch isn't hardware or software, it's supply chain. F-35 airframes may be rated for 8,000 hours, but the componentry isn't - the MTBF (minor) is around the 4 hour flight time mark, and the MTBF Major around 30 hours; which means that when the US turns off the parts tap, any country who isn't the US has an F-35 fleet with a combined lifetime of around 30 hours before they start dropping from the sky.

You can't fight a war on 30 hours.

Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake

"The police should not be required to pay to investigate someone. The criminal justice system should also complete investigations promptly and return property ASAP as soon as practicable."

I should be a millionaire by now because I work hard and stick to the rules. That bloke over there shouldn't be a gazillionaire because he's clearly a liar, thief, fraudster and criminal. Politicians should deliver on their promises, princes shouldn't diddle teenagers, and an awful lot of bankers should have gone to prison.

There are a lot of things that don't work like they should these days, including when you get your stuff back from Plod after they've ballsed up yet another investigation. So I fully understand when someone doesn't trust them.

Re: Dumb and Dumber

Dutch != DEut(s)ch

I agree he was bang out of order in this case - they asked him to stop and delete, and instead he chose to effectively blackmail them.

There was a different case a while back (Kneejerk downvoters note: I'm talking about a DIFFERENT case) related to downloading films via Bittorrent, which at the time was fully legal in the Netherlands. Distribution, however, was not. The police demanded a suspect hand over his computers and hard disks, he refused unless they paid him the current market value, knowing full well that once these things disappear into the police evidence locker they're unlikely to resurface for years, if ever.

The police subsequently arrested him twice, once for the offence and once for interfering with an investigation.

In this DIFFERENT(!) case, I believe there was a justification in him asking for something in return; they were effectively depriving him of his property for a significant period of time, potentially causing him actual financial harm (because the market value of computers drops like a stone over time), without him having been convicted of a crime at that point.

Apple's Creator Studio creates a subscription where free apps used to live

Re: Um….

Same experience here. One single popup post-installation, nothing since.

Another example of the usual anti-Apple slop from the Register unfortunately. They really need to work on that or risk losing their credibility.

I saw one pop-up pushing an upgrade when I installed Pages and Keynote. Haven’t seen it since.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

British Army splashes $86M on AI gear to speed up the battlefield kill chain

Re: Army Intelligence ?

*Squaddie.

Which I would have thought any ex-Army would have known.

NASA delays Artemis II to March after hydrogen leaks bedevil countdown test

Re: WDR, WTS

Depends whether those wearing the T-shirts have a tendency to piss cryogenic hydrogen all over the place when fully filled up.

Baby's got clack: HP pushes PC-in-a-keyboard for businesses with hot desks

Eliteboard G1a: "If your monitor, like the majority on the market, doesn't have a USB-C input, you can use an included USB-to-HDMI adapter to connect. You can use a 65 W USB-C power adapter to juice the G1a if it's not getting electricity directly from the monitor."

So you buy this, then you buy 2 monitors, and 2 mice, and a couple of power supplies, all to avoid carrying the same thing but with a screen. What on earth is the point?

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

Re: In the raw

Not negating your (good) point but just to add that pre-fetch works when the data stream is linear and/or predictable. In unpredictable, nonlinear or high load scenarios (eg when the language/CPU stack combo leads to pointer chasing) it isn't practical.

Re: In the raw

That's really sad :(

California DMV tells Tesla to ease off on those Autopilot claims

Re: Clickbait

@Anonymous Coward

Hush now.

Infinite Machine e-scooter is like the offspring of a Vespa and a Cybertruck

Re: Form over function?

Because it's been done.

It's a Sinclair C5 that's missing a wheel. Except the C5 was a looker compared to this monstrosity.

User found two reasons – both of them wrong – to dispute tech support's diagnosis

"Funnily enough, a lot of them were in upper management . . ."

TRUE upper management types are generally far too busy bending the company over a barrel to interact personally with IT; they have minions for that. In fact even their minions have minions. If you're on the Helldesk and somebody calls claiming to be UM, chances are they are a LOT lower on the slippery totem pole than they think they are and are hoping to "motivate" you with their job title. Which generally works as well as you would expect.

'The higher up you are in the company has no bearing on how fast your problem gets fixed; it just determines which floor we're on when I throw you out of the window'

Apple blocks dev from all accounts after he tries to redeem bad gift card

Re: Apple sideloading

Ahh see now you’re making me regret thinking we could have a decent conversation; I should have listened to my instinct. Curse my trusting nature.

Goodbye.

Re: Apple sideloading

In the US you can still use sideloading tools like AltStore/SideStore if you wish, using your computer to self-sign apps with your own, or a different account. BuildStore and AppDB offer paid and/or enterprise apps. You don't need, and never have needed, an AppleID to use your iPhone; you can go down the free/3rd party route if you wish.

The App Store Freedom Act is on its way through Congress, and when it passes there will be other official app stores available as well in the US; which gives an added "official" dimension next to the current Wild West approach.

None of this changes the fundamental truth that if you have content locked to an account or a digital ID, in either the Apple OR the Google walled gardens, you are SOL if they decide they don't like you. You can't get it back or transfer it to another account; and if you have a backup copy, you're still fucked because when you try to install it it will ask you to sign in with the ID you used to purchase it. You have opportunities in both walled gardens to sideload or use alternative app sources if you want to go down that route, but that's not what this article or comment thread is about. It's about being at the mercy of the provider when you use cloudy services.

Which is the original point.