Posts by Thought About IT

Happy with your existing Windows 10 setup? Good, because Windows 11 could turn its nose up at your CPU

Re: Windows 11 also requires the presence of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) – version 2.0

Well, Windows PC Health Check is very clear that Windows 11 will not run on my Microsoft Surface Book, so I wonder where you bought your nothing-burger?

Advert for coronavirus 'destroying' air 'purifier' exterminated by UK watchdog

Facebook

Should I be surprised that Facebook still have a page for this scam, with a link to the new website promoting it?

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Re: Stop fiddling with my browser!

After updating to 89.0, FireFox asked me if I wanted to switch to the new UI. I said no, and nothing has changed.

Recovery time objective missed by four weeks, but Parler is back online

Disqus's turn next

On social networks, the only way to judge someone is by their posting history, which is why it's time to start criticising Disqus for allowing its users to hide theirs, and for allowing the sort of language that got Parler into trouble. They also have a sleazy feature to let moderators block posters who they disagree with, such that their comments seems to have been posted, but only the poster can see them. Then of course, the Trump supporting web sites that take advantage of that feature make a big deal about cancel culture! Unsurprisingly, Disqus provides no way to contact them about this.

Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election

Re: “We are proud of our 2020 election coverage ..."

I'm alarmed that the government has greenlighted Murdoch to set up a Fox News here in the UK. Having seen how successful an election tactic it was to divide the nation over Brexit, more division seems to be what they intend to encourage.

Marmite of scripting languages PHP emits version 8.0, complete with named arguments and other goodies

I found the Laravel framework good for recoding my web site in PHP.

With less than two months left, let's check in on Brexit: All IT systems are up and running and ready to go, says no one

Re: No need to panic

The algorithm on page 14 of that document reminds me of that oh-so-successful one for allocating A-level results!

Thought the FBI were the only ones able to unlock encrypted phones? Pretty much every US cop can get the job done

Thoughts and prayers for the dead, but now is not the time to discuss gun control - or ever!

Brexit travel permits designed to avoid 7,000-lorry jams come January depend on software that won't be finished till April

60% of them voted to leave!

Here's some words we never expected to write: Oracle said to offer $10bn cash, $10bn shares for TikTok US – plus profit share promise

Value added

I hadn't heard of TikTok until I saw this sketch by Sarah Cooper mouthing Trump's inanities about Covid 19. It adds value, but $20 billion!

Microsoft confirms pursuit of TikTok after Satya Nadella chats to Donald Trump

Re: Looks like Donnie the Don

Nadella probably had to promise that he'd ban Sarah Cooper, before Trump would allow him to buy TikTok.

Networking boffins detect wide abuse of IPv4 addresses bought on secondary market

Doesn't v6 give an infinitely greater possibility for bots to avoid being blacklisted?

In Hancock's half-hour, Dido Harding offers hollow laughs: Cake distracts test-and-trace boss at UK COVID-19 briefing

Typhoid Dido

John Crace, the political sketch writer in the Guardian, put it nicely when he wrote "it’s going to take Typhoid Dido quite a while until the number of people she’s prevented from getting the coronavirus outweighs the number she’s helped to infect." ... by letting the Cheltenham festival go ahead.

'An issue of survival': Why Mozilla welcomes EU attempts to regulate the internet giants

I suppose the ideal way to distract attention from the message would be a picture of a squirrel wearing glasses.

Stiff upper lip time, Brits: After bullying France to drop its digital tax on Silicon Valley, Trump's coming for you next

Re: But, but, but ...

Being good neighbours and following the rules of the club, which we were intimately involved in writing, is hardly "abandoning our democracy"!

But, but, but ...

We were promised we'd get our sovereignty back after Brexit, so would stop being rule takers. Surely Johnson didn't lie to us?

WTF? Apple iPhones shrank by more than $22bn in fiscal '19

Re: The Thrill Is Gone

My Nokia Lumia 925 Windows phone is still giving sterling service for phone calls, texting and GPS, but I know I'll have to replace it eventually. The problem is, while Android phones are cheaper than iPhones, the hidden cost is the data they slurp, so I'll probably end up with the latter. I just hope Apple realise they are pricing themselves out of business before I need to do that.

Clutching at its Perl 6, developer community ponders language name with less baggage

Re: doesn't matter who hates it...

I've always thought of Perl as a write-only language. It's all very well encouraging people to be expressive, but only if they have to maintain their own code in perpetuity.

Humans may be able to live on Mars within halls of aerogel – a wonder material that can trap heat and block radiation

Solar wind

Mars does not have a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind, so it'll need something more than aerogel to protect people from bombardment by beta radiation.

Deepfake 3.0 (beta), the bad news: This AI can turn ONE photo of you into a talking head. Good news: There is none

Re: digital signatures

Would you believe anything that was digitally signed by Fox News? Likewise, would any of their viewers believe anything that was digitally signed by Channel 4 News?

Boeing admits 737 Max sims didn't accurately reproduce what flying without MCAS was like

Most people buy a ticket, having no idea which plane they'll be flying in. A bit like those who vote for a party with no manifesto, policies, or members, because they think it'll get them to their destination.

Boeing big cheese repeats pledge of 737 Max software updates following fatal crashes

Finger of blame

If, as seems to be the case, the algorithm relied only on the device measuring angle of attack, when there are completely independent devices measuring airspeed and rate of climb which could have been used to check for faults, it's a choice between gross negligence by the designers and cost cutting by the accountants. In either case, someone should go to prison.

Watchdog asks UK.gov to reissue freedom of information guidance after councils are told to STFU about Brexit plans

Why worry?

Don't know why they're worried about secrecy. Any scary warnings about what could happen after Brexit will be water off a duck's back to Brexiters. They've been primed to label that sort of thing as "project fear", so they can dismiss it without further thought..

How politics works, part 97: Telecoms industry throws a fundraiser for US senator night before he oversees, er, a telecoms privacy hearing

Re: The more things change, the less they really do.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez concisely explained political corruption to the House Oversight Committee, recorded for posterity in this 5-minute video. Rotten to the top!

Treaty of Roam: No-deal Brexit mobile bill shock

Re: As a yank

Same goes for funding of the NHS, Social Services, local government, the police, etc. We're fed up of the EU forcing the Tories to impose austerity on us!

Holy crappuccino. There's a latte trouble brewing... Bio-boffins reckon 60%+ of coffee species may be doomed

All right for some

I assume that Trump and his fellow AGW deniers won't be affected. Either that, or they're stocking up on a lifetime's supply of jars of Nescafe.

A few reasons why cops haven't immediately shot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

Downwash it

The downwash from a helicopter is enough to flip a light aircraft out of control, so a drone wouldn't stand a chance against it. The helicopter would simply have to choose a safe spot to fly over it, maybe 50-100 ft above, to take it out.

That amazing Microsoft software quality, part 97: Windows Phone update kills Outlook, Calendar

Fixed

Microsoft seem to have fixed the problem this morning.

Which? That smart home camera? The one with the vulns? Really?

Re: It's all relative

Are none of the smart home cameras on the market secure?

Sync your teeth into power browser Vivaldi's largest update so far

Re: Good news

Bye lads. I'd have paid like I did for Opera. But you are most interested with changing the logos/icons (three times in two years) than you are actually actually functionality that makes you different from "Chrome + some extensions".

What makes the difference for me is not having google spy on me.

'This is insane!' FCC commissioner tears into colleagues over failure to stop robocalls

France

When I'm in France, we get at least 2 robocalls a day on our house line - even though the number is registered at bloctel.fr.

UK.gov finally adds Galileo and Copernicus to the Brexit divorce bill

Re: TL;DR

The level of ignorance about the effects of leaving the EU at the time of the last referendum - not least among the most extreme Brexiteers in the government - casts a long shadow over the proceedings. Holding a referendum on the terms of the negotiated agreement versus the status quo, now that people are much better informed, would be good for democracy.

Re: TL;DR

The only possible way to get unfucked is to hold a second referendum with the option to stay in the EU. Maybe adding to the 800,000 who've already signed this petition to hold one will help.

Surprise! VAT, customs likely to get a bit trickier in a Brexit no-deal world

Re: UK VAT Return

Any form of Brexit will bring with it a mountain of extra red tape and costs for business. How can this be, you ask, when the Brexiteers promised to slash it? Simple: when they say "red tape", they mean worker and environmental protection and no exposure of their assets in tax havens. Snake oil salesmen, the lot of them!

US voting systems: Full of holes, loaded with pop music, and 'hacked' by an 11-year-old

Re: how about

They have their own problems, as Al Gore will attest after losing to George W Bush due to hanging chads.

Microsoft: The Kremlin's hackers are already sniffing, probing around America's 2018 elections

Re: Russia and Who else? Talk to the NSA, FBI, et al.

Palyp wrote: "Don't buy the disinformation from Fox News, Breitbart, and Trump. The data is in the intelligence documents, not in the mouths of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. And the truth has never been associated with anything coming from Trump's mouth. Get facts."

It's surprising how many downvotes this statement of fact incurred. I hope that the IT professionals doing that are not involved in designing software for self-driving cars or drones, where they have to take moral decisions about who to save in the event of accident or malfunction.

British Airways' latest Total Inability To Support Upwardness of Planes* caused by Amadeus system outage

It's all very well weighing passengers' luggage, but there's a huge variation in the weight of individuals, so mass and balance calculations must have a wide safety margin. As most seat allocation is self selecting, the check-in staff can't even distribute the obese passengers to even things out. In that case you'd think that strain gauges on the undercarriage would provide a good enough estimate.

Submarine cables at risk from sea water, boffins warn. Wait, what?

It never takes long for articles like this to reveal those still in denial about climate change due to our greenhouse gas emissions. What evidence would ever convince you?

It's 2018 so, of course, climate.news is sold to climate change deniers

Something in common

Climate change deniers, Trump supporters and Brexiteers all seem to have the same aversion to facts and in a Venn diagram they would likely be the intersection of all three sets.

Murdoch to Zuckerberg: Cough up cash, nerd

Re: Oh, where to start......

The best thing Zuckerberg could do to prevent further damage to democracy is to buy Fox News and then close it down. He could usefully follow that up by lobbying to repeal the legislation which allowed Murdoch to create Fox News in the first place.

UK.gov admits Investigatory Powers Act illegal under EU law

No longer laughing

I see you were only joking, but it's becoming ever harder to laugh at the clusterfuck called Brexit. There's credible evidence that "Gove and Johnson are pushing for hard deregulation under the cover of hard Brexit. With the European Research Group and the highly influential Legatum Institute on their side, the duo have demanded that the prime minister drop taxes and make a bonfire of the regulations that protect us."

WhatsApp? You still don't get EU privacy laws, that's WhatsApp

Paid for option

I'd pay for WhatsApp, if that was an option which turned off all data slurping. As it is, I won't install it, much to the annoyance of my family.

Didn't install a safety-critical driverless car patch? Bye, insurance!

Re: Safety-critical updates?

"Logical conclusion - as soon as manufacturer is aware of a flaw that will require a safety-critical patch, they must order all affected vehicles off the road until the patch is available."

Actually, there is precedent for that with aircraft. There are many recorded incidents where flaws have been discovered which result in all affected aircraft being grounded until the problem has been fixed. To rub salt into the wound, the owners have to foot the bill.

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

Re: Awwww shut up and quit your whining.

Surely it would have cost far less for Microsoft to pay the most popular app developers to port their apps than throw away their investment in Nokia?

Nasty firmware update butchers Samsung smart TVs so bad, they have to be repaired

Re: They were unusable to begin with

Must have been written by the guys responsible for that abomination, Kies!

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

Re: Windows 10 FAIL Creators Update

Ahem: learn to spell!

Re: The end

No need to panic just yet. My MS Surface 4 still hasn't been automatically updated with the last Creators Update, so I don't expect to get the Fall update any time soon.

Hackers able to turbo-charge DJI drones way beyond what's legal

Re: DJI can't police this.

"The drone operator is at no physical risk, unlike the occupants of any aircraft it may collide with."

Got to wonder why I got 4 thumbs down for such a inarguable fact. Perhaps the perpetrators would like to explain?

Re: DJI can't police this.

"Requiring manufacturers to make sure drone operators can't fly beyond visual range, or over certain altitudes is akin to saying car manufacturers have to make sure people can't drive cars with their eyes shut or break any speed limits."

Not quite. The drone operator is at no physical risk, unlike the occupants of any aircraft it may collide with.

Civil rights warriors get green light to challenge UK mass surveillance

Crowd Funding

It's disappointing to see that only 1861 people supported the crowd funding of this case so far. You can be sure the government will take an apparent lack of interest into account when they reject any changes to this draconian legislation. Too late to contribute now, but maybe later, if the costs aren't capped.