Posts by brym

Veeam bets on more VMware alternatives, including Red Hat and China’s Sangfor

Forgetfulness?

I know it was mentioned here once, but I've read so many articles where people complain about VMWare and the rising costs, blah blah blah - we all know the story - and can't help but to also notice a trending forgetfulness around suggestions being made of other potential solutions, but almost everyone seemingly sleeping on KVM.

KVM and VMM (Virtual Machine Manager) make a potent and capable combination, and are entirely free. Kind of blows my mind that more people either don't appear to know about it or don't appear use it.

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

Re: My way or the highway

My goodness, I thought I dragged my Flash/AS2 work out by making it last upto ~2013. I didn't think anybody would still be maintaining Director projects for this long. Hats off to you, fellow Macromedia project maintainer!

Though perhaps it's time to pull the plug and redevelop them with more modern, more flexible approaches. Such as web applications using Node.js/Bun, or Rust and Rocket. And then host them on Linux and point the kiosks to the respective web pages.

UK civil servants – hopefully including those spending billions on tech – to skill up in STEM

Re: How about the ministers go next?

If they truly care about the science of it and moving things forward, the opinions of others wouldn't matter one bit.

Save $7 million on cloud by spending $600k on servers, says 37Signals' David Heinemeier Hansson

Re: Data Repatriation

Please don't tell me that it's an actual thing for businesses to not keep local backups of the data (often times their own valuable ip) they fling onto other people's servers?

The completely rational take you need on Europe approving Article 13: An ill-defined copyright regime to tame US tech

13 MEP's made the wrong decision?

I'd wager alot more than 13 MEP's, and politicians in general have no fucking clue about decision making when it comes to tech. They vote to retain their power base, job perks, and yearly bank. But that's unlikely to change any time soon.

Pre-checked cookie boxes don't count as valid consent, says adviser to top EU court

Re: Tracking already done by the time the popup is displayed

It's bs tactics for ad / PII revenue. Nothing else. I make all my sites not load ads, cookies, etc, unless visitors consent -- by default. It's not difficult. And guess what? Content is still perfectly readable! That's right, cookies are absolutely not needed to display the text or images of the page you want to visit. Fancy that! As for 3rd party JS / CSS, I don't use them. I write my own.

It's not even slightly difficult to do the right and decent thing for visitors. There should be no excusing it. At all.

Is this the way the cookie wall crumbles? Dutch data watchdog says nee to take-it-or-leave-it consent

Re: Dump cookies after browser closes.

The only problem with this approach is the next time you visit the site, it'll detect there's no cookies and nag you again - if it doesn't already nag you every single time you visit regardless, like alot of the local rag (i.e. Newsquest) websites do.

Correction: Last month, we called Zuckerberg a moron. We apologize. In fact, he and Facebook are a fscking disgrace

Re: Wow

I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out Google lied about those G+ API misuses. Having seen the writing on the wall for some time - you know, on account of them knowing they were doing wrong but wondering how much longer they could get away with it.

When news broke about Facebook back in March last year, Google probably went into damage control overdrive, eventually resulting in the G+ platform being shuttered.

Just a shame they couldn't be as reactive about their ads platform, which remarkably sees Google's own API's still using document.write, then having Chrome be audacious enough to complain about how it's probably not the most secure thing to be doing. Like it's somehow your fault.

US legal eagle: Well done, you bought privacy compliance tools. Doesn't mean you comply with anything

Re: Only Suckers Believe Privacy Statements

Yeah I'll call bullshit on that statement. I've never sold on any of my client data, and never will. If that means I make less money, sobeit. But at least I have the peace of mind of knowing I haven't been a dick about it.

Behold… a WinRAR security bug that's older than your child's favorite YouTuber. And yes, you should patch this hole

Re: 2 people who paid?

Freeserve... Jesus, now there's an unexpected (but good) flashback!

Big names hurl millions of pounds at scheme to hoist UK's AI knowhow

Re: AI?

For Google at least, surely AI should stand for Advertises Irrespectively.

What did turbonerds do before the internet? 41 years ago, a load of BBS

Simpler Times Indeed

I got online in 98, so a little late to the party lines. But I was a good student of newsgroups (alt's: hacking a phreaking mostly) where alot of the then old hats lingered to offer history and support to newbies like me. Found my way onto hyperterm, and eventually into a few stateside boards. Things like that and messing with war dialling saw my first phone bill come in north of £200. Teen me's thirst for knowledge that month almost gave my mum a heart attack when she saw the bill.

Want to spin up Ubuntu VMs from Windows 10's command line, eh? We'll need to see a Multipass

I don't follow, are you for or against better collaboration?

I prefer the opposite: running win10 vm's on Linux. But it's good that MS is putting the effort in.

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Re: Google are cunts

This saddens me. We don't all write bs JavaScript.

Facebook Like, social sharing buttons on your website may land you in GDPR hot water if data goes a-wanderin'

Backdoors

Facebook don't only use their own code snippets for like/share/etc buttons. They backdoor their trackers into popular 3rd party web apps like Disqus.

Web Foundation launches internet hippie manifesto: 'We've lost control of our data, it is being used against us'

Yeah, but Tripod before Lycos was better.

GDPR stands for Google Doing Positively, Regardless. Webpage trackers down in Europe – except Big G's

Re: Google "is the industry standard"

I haven't gone so far as offering alternatives yet. I'm working on it though. Mine's a simple Accept / Decline offer. With all the standard bloat delivered if they consent, and the choice to go off-site to the 3rd party media providers if they decline (embedded YouTube, tweets, etc). For now. And by default, none of the cookies, analytics, ads, etc get loaded in. Because how can you possibly have consented to any of that on a website you may be visiting for the first time?

And don't even get me started on websites telling visitors that cookies are essential for websites to work effectively.

And I don't mind shouldering that responsibility as a maintainer of websites. By doing it myself, at least I know visitors will be given the option to decline ads, tracking and cookies without the threat of dark patterns.

I'd want it that way, so that's what I code for. If it means a drop in ad revenue, or stats from Google Analytics, oh well. There's more than one way to skin a cat. And not at the expense of privacy.

Also, nearly all of the tabloid websites use dark patterns to force at least one persistent method of harvesting. I read somewhere that consent shaming is illegal. Where are their fines?

Too many leftover screws? Ikea website backend goes TITSUP

DevOps been horsing around with supposedly stable upgrades, thought they were off to the races, only to fall at the first hurdle.

Top Euro court: No, you can't steal images from other websites (too bad a school had to be sued to confirm this little fact)

Daft question maybe, but...

Does this mean press kits would now require explicit permission?

UK cyber security boffins dispense Ubuntu 18.04 wisdom

Re: Finally took the plunge with 18.04 last night..

I spun up a few lamp installs on a 16.04 host last week with kvm/qemu. No issues so far.

Google Chrome: HTTPS or bust. Insecure HTTP D-Day is tomorrow, folks

Re: They can only do that if...

This is starting to sound alot like the witch-hunt that went on to kill Flash. Except, for JS, it's all just another case of history repeating.

We shall call him Mini-U – Ubuntu reveals tiny cloudy server

Maybe not Virtual box...

...but certainly mention of KVM. Who needs a GUI when you can ssh in.

Or qemu if you absolutely must.

Budget hotel chain, UK political party, Monzo Bank, Patreon caught in Typeform database hack

Re: We take the security of our data seriously...

All day long, this! Even if it means reinventing the wheel, I try wherever possible with my sites to develop it myself and avoid using libraries. I'm not prepared to rush out features or capabilities simply because somebody else has already done it or it's trendy.

GDPR forgive us, it's been one month since you were enforced…

Re: I don't think many of the opt-in/out menus are legal

It frustrates me because it's ridiculously easy to implement from a coding perspective; Has consent been sought and given? Load the all singing, all dancing page. No consent, just load the content into the page - no ads, no social media sharing callbacks, no cookies... it's as easy as a basic if/else.

And by the way, don't make the default state of a page load as though consent has been given already. That's impossible for first time visitors.

If I can do it for the comparatively small number of clients I host and manage, and I'm a solo operator, I'm sure dedicated teams can do it in a sinch.

Virgin Media's Brit biz broadband goes TITSUP: Total Inability To Support Upset People

Re: Resilience

It might not be an uncontended line. But VMB are still marketing it as a business grade service. And while it's open for one and all to buy into, meaning not everyone using it may be a genuine business or startup (have a genuine need for greater upload speeds), those of us who sincerely rely upon it are rightly justified in complaining.

It's also worth noting that VMB have known about the underlying issues for the better part of 2 years (since inception), yet continued to sell the Voom Fibre services. What attracts people (certanly myself) to this line of services is the price point. Sure, you get what you pay for. But everyone has to start somewhere, and uncontended fibre simply isn't an immediate option for everyone (out of budget, not fully cabled in your post code yet, etc).

That said, I agree with you that it would be short-sighted to operate in such conditions without adequate fallbacks. I have two such connections to fall back on, so I haven't been as affected as customers who've claimed it's cost them thousands.

Google's robo-CTRL-ALT-DEL failed, hung networks and Compute Engine for 90 minutes

I'm sure cloud is useful for heavy, on-demand compute tasks. But beyond that, I'll continue to manage the things I host on hardware I own and have physical access to.

Ransomware scum build weapon from JavaScript

I wonder how long

Before crims start taking advantage of the likes of Electron.

How did jihadists hack into top UK ministerial emails if no security breach took place?

Thankfully...

El Reg is on the scene to poke holes in the inconsistencies. As soon as I read the footnote in the article, I thought 'but... didn't you /just say/ their accounts were hacked???'

To InfiniFlash and beyond: SanDisk wheels out Big Data box

YouTube Link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z-0dMWB9ZQ

Virgin Media customers suffer YET MORE YouTube buffering blues

Broadband completely down...

...in areas of Southampton. When I asked why the status page still shows everything is fine, she said it's because the account info can't be pulled from the routers, and the status page will only updates in the mornings. I guess their web devs haven't heard of AJAX. Apparently I was the 4th caller she'd had from the same area as of 0650.

DHS bigwig 'adamantly opposed' to degree fetishism

On the other hand...

...if you were a small business owner attempting to expand, would you want somebody who may have only adequately self-taught themselves running critical operations?

Asus Transformer Pad Infinity 64GB Android tablet review

Use VLC

Still in beta, VLC on Android: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-android.html

Google ditches the bits in the bottom of the box

meebo bar

nobody else disappointed about having to have a meebo bar instead of gtalk? if they're still going punch for punch in social networking with facebook, the floating footer bar concept is pretty old now. they're moving backwards. i thought gplus was better than that.

Microsoft hands out tools to sneak Skype onto new PCs

Something about the truth setting people free...

"We aim to make it as easy to access as possible"

Legal Intercept.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/29/microsoft_skype/

SpaceX Dragon chokes at the last second

Maybe...

I don't know if it's possible, but wouldn't it be easier if they could just lift the crew/payload system to the edge of space using a balloon, then rocket to the ISS? I'm sure it would save a shit load on fuel.

Android's Chrome finish comes too late for Flash coating

Adobe created what?

Appears that even in your original universe, you were wrong. Adobe didn't create it. They bought it from Macromedia. Read The Reg much?

Russia and NASA plan to COLONISE the Moon

...

telescope arrays on the dark side of the moon, and launching points for mars and mining the asteroids would be a good start.

Samsung SSD 830

dabs

dabs are already on the 128gb's for £165: http://goo.gl/l2eGa

KIBOSH 'non lethal' sticky-bomb hits a car, fills it with gas

KIBOSH

Knowing It'll Be Over Soon Helps

Irishman's coke-packed abdomen poses for police

Re: The Guard

http://www.traileraddict.com/clip/the-guard/street-value

Great film!

Murdoch accused of operating illegal US air force

holy...

i can actually understand one of your posts and completely agree with it. way to opine!

Android respawn horror: Hacker says hackers' phones hacked

Respawning apps

This happens already on my 1.6 Tattoo. Several apps restart on their own. Happens at least every night shortly after midnight, and usually about an hour or so after I've forced them closed with Astro. Mostly seems to affect apps wanting Internet access.

Virgin Media blames Activision for Call of Duty lag problems

What about the GSP?

I don't know who hosts the XBL version of Black Ops, but it's GameServers for the PC. I regularly experience harsh lag for the first 3-5 minutes on all maps. 50Mb Virgin customer here, too. Also playing Eve, which is a P2P game. The only problems I've had with Eve have been related to their recent patch and subsequent patch fixes.

Though Virgin aren't completely without fault. I'd suffered 9 disconnects in as many days in mid June, and Virgin's response was to send an engineer out to tell me that my area isn't cabled for a digital service. Nice one!

600 tonne asteroid in low pass above Falkland Islands - TONIGHT

@JaffaMan

They hardly discovered it a few days ago. JPL's Dawn spacecraft has been on an intercept course for 4 years. It's set to orbit Vesta for one year while it gathers scientific data about the early Solar System.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/news/dawn20110623.html

Reg hack applauds asinine augmentation

el nombre

Bambi "Brian" Bobcat.

FSF to Google: Free Gmail's JavaScript now!

Bless your hippy mentality FSF,

...but do you honestly expect a multibillion dollar company to release all it's coding secrets, allowing any regular Joe to steal away a slice of their very profitable pie? Or how about those coders with malicious intent? You think they won't have a field day with Google code?

Nice try and all that. But we're a long way from peace and love and good happiness stuff. As long as there's someone who is perceived as competition or a threat to Google, you'll never get all of Google's code. Even if you only refer to web apps.

Microsoft: 'No one cares about Google's dev cloud'

Old tactics

We've seen these advertising tactics already. Probably most recently with Apple and Adobe. Microsoft is to Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine with Azure what Apple was to Adobe Flash with Gianduia. If you're going to have a bash at the competition to release a directly competing product, you'll need to hit alot harder than this unconvincing and transparent attempt.

Also helps if you have something which genuinely competes.

Groupon to raise $950m in massive funding round

Also...

Doesn't Groupon predominantly use Google as an advertising platform? If so, bit of a win for both parties anyway.