Posts by Chronos

UK PM Theresa May's response to terror attacks 'shortsighted'

I would love to be able to support the Green Party, but I can't get past the constant quoting of fuzzy facts and the inability to understand the difference in generating capacity between rooftop solar panels and what this country actually needs. You can't make adults numerate, especially when they don't want to be.

This is my exact problem. I have a few panels and I know what they generate as I built the MPPT tracker that keeps an eye on them. Factoring in the cost and the resources used to make the things in the first place, they don't really make financial or ecological sense. It's the same story with electric cars. Mining the raw materials, shipping them to Japan, making Li_Ion cells and then shipping them to Tesla is not ecologically sound, even if the electricity that recharges them (500 times or so before they're stuffed and the whole wasteful cycle starts again) was renewable, which there's a fairly good chance it wasn't.

Just like Ms May's "reaction" to these latest exceptions that prove evolution, it's all "to be seen to be doing something." Nobody cares if it's actually effective, it's just a sop to the PR people.

Well, hopefully it's just a sop or we've got a real problem with both the major parties deliberately steering us into 1984 with knobs on.

You forgot the Green Party, if you can get past the short-sightedness of their energy and transport policies. What better way to address that than from within? Those have arisen due to too many idealists and not enough engineers.

I'm half tempted myself...

UK PM May's response to London terror attack: Time to 'regulate' internet companies

Typical

The icon says it all. Do they not realise they're being trolled into curtailing our freedoms and civil liberties? Either this is just another excuse to tighten the elite's stranglehold on power or they're all (as Labour did exactly the same thing - remember Whacky Jacqui and Andy Burnham?) thick as two short planks. Hanlon's razor suggests I should take the latter view.

It can be summarised thus: "A group of radicals want to oppress the people with their anti-freedom views so we'll get in and do it first."

ESA astronaut decelerates from 28,800kph to zero in first bumpy landing

Ob nitpick

Zero? Only if the planet, the solar system and the galaxy stop moving from the origin point of the Universe. It's all relative. Or relatives on a Sunday, unfortunately.

Utah fights man's attempt to marry laptop

Let him.

Then infect his laptop with a trojan that makes it file for a divorce. It owns half of his worldly possession at that point. Stupid needs to have real world consequences, I think.

'Major incident' at Capita data centre: Multiple services still knackered

As Battery Sergeant Major Williams said...

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

UK ministers to push anti-encryption laws after election

@Graham Cobb

This. Well said, sir.

Go ahead, stage a hackathon. But pray it doesn't work too well

So, in conclusion...

We should stifle innovation and stall the betterment of humanity for the "corporate good" and, if we can't, we should use the law to nuke ideas from orbit. I see. Now I begin to understand why large organisations tend to become such a morass of bureaucracy, paranoia and incompetence, why their output often ends up sucking massive donkey balls and what is horribly wrong with the patent system and employment contract practices (all your brain are belong to us).

There are literally no words that do the depth to which this philosophy sinks justice.

Bye bye MP3: You sucked the life out of music. But vinyl is just as warped

Re: Rather than like buying a BMW

I know it's anode joke but there's a filament of truth in it...

Re: Rather than like buying a BMW

16 valves: All of them in the radio, eh?

DeX Station: Samsung's Windows-killer is ready for prime time

ORLY?

Well, no one saw this one coming.

April 5th 2016:

"Even us lUNatIX appreciate a full-sized desktop. However, the headshot to MS' dominance may come in the form of Android N[ougat|utbrittle]'s windowing multi-tasking. Imagine you can take your 'phone, with it's eight ARM64 cores, oodles of RAM and 3D graphics, and plug it into (or sit it on top of, with an inductive charger and some optical trickery as a data link) a hub with mouse, keyboard, NIC and an HDMI link to a proper monitor."

Nice to know I'm no one. Perhaps I can get a job in Braavos...

Linux homes for Ubuntu Unity orphans: Minty Cinnamon, GNOME or Ubuntu, mate?

Re: windows manager choice

I wish I could upvote this more. The WM's job is to manage windows and then stay the hell out of the way. For me, Openbox, Tint2, Cairo Dock and Feh scripted to rotate a directory of images as wallpaper has been my desktop for ages. I set it up as I wanted it and just left it alone. It hasn't changed unless I wanted it to, for example, span two monitors.

These bloated meta-packages are not window managers. They're desktop environments, with all the Other People's Assumptions™ that entails.

The big advantage of rolling your own is that, coupled with remote mounted /home, your desktop can follow you across distros. Actually, across operating systems as this setup started off on FreeBSD and is currently running on Debian Jessie.

Another AI assistant... It's getting crowded in here, isn't it, Siri?

AI

But it's not really, is it? It's speech recognition (FSVO) and a big bunch of keyword matching if..then...elses lumped together with the buzzword "abilities" that is so cumbersome it won't run on commodity hardware, rather it needs clustered processing and storage facilities. The automotive variant is infinitely worse, of course. Artificial stupidity would come closer.

IMHO, the difference is clear: This has to be continually taught both stimuli and response. A true AI would start learning itself at some point.

Welsh Linux Mint terror nerd jailed for 8 years

In the context of this discussion, Land Rovers from Series 1 to Defender == extremely provocative tractors.

BOFH: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back

Re: New terms

As stated in TFA (many a true word, etc), just wait until they're selling you a "synergy leveraging existing competencies to bring unparalleled flexibility" to cloud storage, which basically means a pass-through NAS box near the edge router with a couple of hard drives in it intercepting calls to your cloud provider if pings fail and rsync running as a daemon. The rest is all semantics. Or Symantec, probably.

To El Reg: Why is there no grumpy, cynical old misanthrope icon? Most of us are, regardless of gender or age. The windows user comes close but he looks too harmless.

"This the real world – a world where IT Managers are often dumber than the cleaners, the cleaners far smarter than the users and processor speed being almost entirely irrelevant....

"It's a world where you get paid to make up new words for the same old crap simply by changing the access method of one of the layers, where literally anyone can be a visionary and the beauty and elegance of bespoke craftsperson code is undermined by a user who demands a flashing font so that other users will know that the box marked 'warning' is important."

Spot bloody on. May these words be laser etched on the inside of your eyelid. Of the remaining eye.

UK.gov throws hissy fit after Twitter chokes off snoop firm's access

Pointless question. It's the Sir Humphreys who push this agenda, which is why it keeps coming back regardless of who wins in the general erection.

Script kiddies pwn 1000s of Windows boxes using leaked NSA hack tools

Potentially useful precedent

If their "secret" hacks can leak, what is to stop any backdoor crypto key, something they seem to want to force upon us, doing the same? QED.

Will the MOAB (Mother Of all AdBlockers) finally kill advertising?

Re: Trust

MJI wrote: Now to real world, lets say magazines. I really find the amount of silly overpriced watch adverts in car magazines very annoying, I want to read about cars, not about overpriced portable clocks.

Amen to that. May I suggest Drivetribe?

Bit hypocritical of me, that. You didn't ask for an opinion and I offered one, just like the ad men do. Sorry about that.

Re: Some people do hate all adverts, they're messing with our heads

What a facile argument. The difference between web commerce and advertising is we actually want what we've been looking for, rather than having it rammed down our throats because whatever it is is either utterly useless, overpriced, shoddy or just plain awful and needs aggressive sales tactics to shift.

Re: Quite ironic

This is what I said at the time. Phorm was a diversion. Nobody could have been that stupid, yet it took the eyes and minds of people off what was actually happening. Give them a huge target so they leave your real objective alone.

it's about blocking superfluous shit.

Like the EU mandated cookie warning, you mean? You do that too? That bloody thing is a right pain in the arse. I've already chosen what I do with web biscuits: Third party never get a sniff, first party get eaten by /dev/null when I shut the browser down.

Whoever developed "Welcome to our site! We appreciate your visit! Blah, blah, blah" overlays wants shooting with their own effluent, too. I suspect many of these new-age web developers are refugees from Geocities.

Trust

People don't hate adverts

Speak for yourself. First there was the banner. Then came the blink tag. Then pop-ups. Then the animated Flash ad. At that point I was pretty much sold on the idea of avoiding products based on how much advertising they did on the basis that if they have to advertise so aggressively, their product must be shit.

Pop over/unders, trackers, contextuals, you can keep the lot, especially now they are malware vectors. It's a matter of trust. The ad bureaux have lost that trust and you never get it back. All any advert is saying to me at this point is "waste your money on this crap you don't need."

This story is no more

Nothing to see here...

Your exoplanet resident overlords appreciate your co-operation.

Chap 'fixes' Microsoft's Windows 7 and 8 update block on new CPUs

Re: And here is why windows is trash

2/ you can modify a DLL using a hex editor and the underlying OS doesn't mind executing that code... No wonder windows is such a huge steaming pile of malware serving zombie botnets.

Careful with that. I had to do just this with some binary blobs on a smart 'phone to get the "new" shiny Android GPS subsystem in Nougat to work (function name changes where the old function names got re-used, the bastards). That didn't notice a few bits flipped either.

The point is not that Windows doesn't suck; it clearly does. The point is that all software sucks.

Linux remote root bug menace: Make sure your servers, PCs, gizmos, Android kit are patched

Re: Not Worried Now

LEDE just updated the 4.4 kernel to 4.4.61 so any builds after today are definitely immune.

WileyFox disentangles itself from Cyanogen

Re: What about us Storm owners?

Lineage 14.1 (Nougat 7.1.1) exists for the Storm (kipper) so it's not a chipset vendor issue. It's more like Wileyfox want to forget they ever made the Storm as it wasn't even half-arsed. Can something be a third-arsed?

@I Like Heckling: Don't hold your breath. They've been promising an "update" to fix the compass and LED flickering issues (as if the former isn't bad placement of a power rail near the magnetometer and the latter not enough copper to sink the heat from the LEDs) since the Storm released, until they stuck their fat fingers in their ears and shouted "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" every time a question was asked about the Storm. They seem to be more interested in posting twee comments on Twitter.

This is the same Wileyfox who allegedly did this?

An story, along with the problems with the back and recents backlight LEDs dying, the compass being bloody useless and updates non-existent.

Truecaller is a wonderful idea. Give a central repository all of your contacts' details without their permission. Nice.

Storm owner, building my own Lineage variant now which is the only way I could coax the thing into behaving (and get Nougat).

UK digital minister Matt Hancock praises 'crucial role' of encryption

Left hand, right hand

Arse, elbow. Situation normal in Whitehall.

UK to block Kodi pirates in real-time: Saturday kick-off

Re: Lazy-arsed, slovenly journalism.

Yes, it may well be tilting at windmills, yet just letting it lie will give us exactly what we now have with Bit Torrent, where legitimate uses of, let's face it, a MUCH more efficient content delivery system for things like disto ISOs is stigmatised by buffoons using the term incorrectly.

Kodi is a media centre. The problem is a combination of tvaddons.ag and morons on eBay selling perfectly good media streaming devices loaded up with plug-ins from that repository, half of which don't work and the other half connecting to transient, illegal, compressed to hell rubbish.

The very first thing I do to any Amlogic box I get near is root it, remove the shit and associated update processes (read "infection vectors") and install a clean copy of Kodi from the official builds. Then you can safely install the apps for content you are actually entitled to use, such as Amazon, Netflix et al without the risk of joining the merry Mirai tribe.

For more advanced people, an SD card with LibreELEC on it works far better for legal uses such as streaming from local NAS or a PVR than trusting the shonky Chinese Android build.

And yes, this is late. I've been busy. Just call me Mr Necromancer.

Lazy-arsed, slovenly journalism.

PLEASE stop referring to streaming plugins that source copyrighted material as "Kodi." Kodi is an open source media centre and organiser. Using the logic of the article, most web piracy should be referred to as "Chrome pirates." See how my finger is on the pulse there with browser rankings?

As for the bootnote, well, they would, wouldn't they? It's pretty obvious to me that this crap is overpriced nonsense to help some Lexusists with their share dividends. I'm quite happy to pay for Amazon Prime. I'm not prepared to pay increased line rental to subsidise bloody football broadcast rights grabs or increased licence fees for the utter tosh the BBC broadcast now. Not that I'm affected by this at all. Football is about as interesting as watching paint dry and the F1 coverage is still on RTL on 19.2E free to air this year.

TWO BILLION PCs to sell in next five years

This again?

We're all watching with interest. Especially given the "reluctant" price hikes due to "Brexit," my heart bleeds for the poor, poor vendors.

You're Donald Trump's sysadmin. You've got data leaks coming out the *ss. What to do

Simple

Replace Trump with a very small shell script. As long as it still posts to Twitter, nobody would notice.

Finally proof that Apple copies Samsung: iPhone 7 Plus halts, catches fire like a Galaxy Note 7

Re: Time enough to find another phone to video the first ?

I personally have access to my 'phone, two laptops with webcams, no less than four digital cameras, an Amazon Fire 6 (poor choice of name, given what we're discussing), my wife's 'phone, my son's phone and so on. I could grab any of them within the smouldering time of a mobile. I assume Ms whats-her-face has similar devices or theories of relatives from whom to purloin such a recording device.

And I'm an old git, relatively speaking.

Swedish politician wants weekly hour of paid sex. For exercise

Where have I seen this before?

Oh yes, Enlightenment. Didn't work out too well for Rimmer or Enlightenment's scout.

"Lister to Red Dwarf: Subject exhibits signs of being a git. With careful pummelling, could be taking his next meal through a straw."

BOFH: Elf of Safety? Orc of Admin. Pleased to meet you

Damn.

I had a fiver on "excessive potential difference between rack door handle and floor plates." It looks like my BSc (Bastard Systems certification) needs updating.

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

Whut?

Two models for you: Handspring Treo 270 (May 2002) and O2 XDA (June 2002). The Treo was the first colour integrated PDA/phone, preceded by the Treo 180 (Feb 2002) which was monochrome. The O2 XDA pioneered the form factor we now consider standard, albeit with resistive touch and a stylus. Apple wasn't even dabbling back then; the first iPhone appeared in 2007. It seems someone is doing more than rewriting history.

There is a very good reason why the premier smartphone firmware development site is called xda-developers.

Unlucky WD Ultrastar drives are knackered, need replacing ASAP

This. Only a fool thinks failures don't happen. The mark of the company is how it deals with them.

Don't worry, America: Elon Musk says he'll have a word with Trump

Please

Be sure to use short words, Elon, and be sure to say 'murica at least twice in every sentence if you want to hold his attention. For example, diplomacy is too big a word. Tact would seem to be short enough but I don't think he grasps that one, either.

At least the name fits: A trump is when you hear from an arsehole.

Sony takes $1bn writedown: Streaming has killed the DVD star

Sony CEO with a bottle o' gutrot ->

IIRC, Sony were one of the organisations insistent that content is licensed, not sold. In that case, streaming subs such as Amazon Prime are nearer the mark for a temporary licence. You can't have your cake and eat it, So[n]ny.

One BEEELLION dollars: Apple sues Qualcomm, one of its chip designers

I, for one,

...hope all of these nutters trying to destroy Qualcomm are left with Mediatek as their sole supplier. Good luck with that.

My hole is a private thing – see for yourself

This is called...

Bike shed. The theory is in the development of a state-of-the-art nuclear fusion plant, nobody will care whether it's a Tokamak or a bottled star but every nugget and his dog will have an opinion on the colour the bike shed should be painted, which will continue to rage on even when containment is lost and the place has been sucked into an area the size of four pi the width of Planck's pubes squared due to the accidental formation of a micro-singularity.

Which is a very fancy way of saying the basics were, are and always will be the same, regardless of the time of year or the buzzword du jour.

Congrats, PC slingers. That's now FIVE straight years of shrinking sales

Re: Mature market shake out

a_yank_lurker wrote: So the current gear soldiers on because it still works.

'zackly. There is simply no compelling reason to waste money, time and materials on "upgrading" to something with similar performance and worse compatibility with your preferred operating system.

This expectation of linear growth in perpetuity is utter tosh.

3... 2...1... and 123-Reg hit by DDoSers. Again

Re: I'm with 123reg

Mythic Beasts gets my vote for domain registration. Highly clueful folks.

Don't pay up to decrypt – cure found for CryptXXX ransomware, again

Port 445

Are people still not doing egress filtering on netbios and SMB? Christ on a unicycle...

Higher tech prices ARE here to stay. It's Mr Farage's new Britain

Re: Rip off Britain

Yes, the Irish government get the revenue. The Irish people get shat upon, just as we do, with higher prices, probably simply for driving on the correct side of the road.

^-- bait. (I know it costs more to produce RHD vehicles for predominantly LHD manufacturers)

Rip off Britain

It's exactly the same scenario we've put up with for years. These firms think we can't work out the sodding prices others are paying using the exchange rates. Utter bastards, the lot of 'em. The only people worse off are the Irish, who get the same shafting while these multinationals bum off their lower corporation tax as a gateway into Europe.

Brexit be damned, it's just a poor bloody excuse to make an already obscene price differential worse.

/rant off

Sh... IoT just got real: Mirai botnet attacks targeting multiple ISPs

Re: Sh... IoT

I was itching to say exactly that while R'ing TFA. It's plain old networking kit, not Internet of Acronyms. I know this industry is buzzword-led but this is El Reg; I expect a bit of respite while reading here.

We wanna give IoT folk kilobit data rates, beam NB-IoT telcos

Bandwidth isn't the problem

My connected solar controller does quite nicely on a 9600baud software serial link, admittedly to a local subnet. You can transfer oodles of data to a monitoring daemon on a narrow band stream. The problems are undoubtedly going to be:

a) Carrier grade NAT these monkeys use;

b) Lack of IPv6 support in IoT kit so that's not a solution to a) either;

c) Security.

Not necessarily in that order.