Posts by Harry the Bastard

Spookception: US spied on Israel spying on US-Iran nuke talks

one day

the the usa will wake up to the fact that it's really not in their best interests (nor the rest of the world's for that matter) for the usa to be at the beck and call of israel's rightwing nutters

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Chana masala

best served with a batura

...or two, or lots of puri

Boffins brew up FIRST CUPPA in SPAAACE using wireless energy (well, sort of)

^^^ this

the article completely ignores el reg's standard units, fortunately i was able to resolve the crisis by determining that the distance involved was in fact 392.8571 linguine

'Roly poly' soft, wobbly robot BANGS EXPLOSIVELY, leaps 0.5m in air

i, for one, welcome our new roly-poly overlords

i’d like to remind them that as a trusted el reg commentard, i can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground swiss lair

Cash'n'Carrion restocks atomic keyrings

one with a glowing ☢ would be good

WHY are GoDaddy and Verisign stockpiling patents? Do I smell war?

oh ffs

humanity, we're doomed

'Utterly unusable' MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross

Re: vi + ms + troff (+ tbl + eqn + pic + scripts + sccs + etc. as required)

i value substance over style

wysiwyg encourages the exact opposite

when i want complex layout i use indesign, not the foul abomination that is word

vi + ms + troff (+ tbl + eqn + pic + scripts + sccs + etc. as required)

job done

Chinese food safety officials drank so much during working lunch that one of them DIED

hahaha...cof, cof, COF, gak, gasp, phew

“China has banned officials from drinking at lunchtime, to purge the tradition of mixing booze and business,” a local report stated.

nearly choked on my bolly when i read that

/where's the champagne flute icon?

Plane crash blamed on in-flight SELFIES

plenty of people can't even handle walking while fiddling with their phone

the idea of a pilot using one in the cockpit beggars belief

I don't think you're ready for this Jelly: Google pulls support for Android WebView

non-event

most oems seem to provide updates for only a short period, then the phone is stuck with ageing software, no updates even for serious security issues

my samsung is stuck on 4.1.2, but i'm loathe to ditch a perfectly functional phone, especially as most of the new ones with features i like have become so fat

it's the only real gripe i have with android, if there's a new nexus with a smaller screen than the 6, i'll buy it simply to be free of the bloatware and rapid abandonment that come with other brands (yes i know i could put cyanogen/other on my existing one, but i just can't be arsed)

'IDC, why did you play down EMC?' IDC: WAAAAHHHH

analysts

shamalysts

/nmfp

Sony-blasting Lizard Squad suspects quizzed by UK and Finnish cops

assuming he's in it up to his scrawny neck, by now...

...he's ratted on his mates and is trying not to think about what's going to happen next, which i hope involves jail and the reenactment of scenes from deliverance and scum

Norks blame U.S. for TITSUP internet, unleash racist rant against Obama

jong un's a wrong 'un

if the rest of the world cut off all electron communication with his loathsome regime it'd be a good move, the majority of the population would see no impact whatsoever and it'd at least annoy the ones at the top of the pile

but china will always look after them, and it's a fair bet that his serene bloatedness and chums will have satellite phones etc. to keep in touch with their foie gras and truffle connections

Hilton, Marriott and co want permission to JAM guests' personal Wi-Fi

i travel a lot on business and don't pay for the wifi, it becomes another freebie, like bottles of water, lounge access, fluffy robe etc., this will be the case for any regular business traveler

for infrequent/leisure travellers it's more likely that they'd face a charge (and more likely they paid a knock-down room rate), but it is becoming much more common for wifi to be either free or tiered with basic free and a charge for high bandwidth

setting up personal hotspots may seem innocuous, but it's also a great way to lure the innocent onto a wlan where the intent is to capture traffic or carry out man in the middle attacks

there are both passive and active countermeasures that can be taken, but use of automatic deauthentication needs careful consideration, restrict it to devices that are spoofing mac or ssid, as these are clearly not the work of the casual surfer

in high density environments enough hotspots will degrade/disrupt the legitimate site wlan, in trade shows etc. the issue is more likely to be from proper access points rather than mobile devices, in which case triangulation or wandering around to find them and have a word is a better option

clearly some hotels do see wifi as an extra revenue opportunity, personally i'm ok with that as long as the price is reasonable (which not all are!), it's not a free world

imho using personal hotspot in room seems ok, but in areas used others but there are legitimate security and performance reasons to limit their use

Privacy-loving boxing kangaroo biffs drone out of the sky

leggything 1

drongodrone 0

Norks' internet goes TITSUP in possible DDoS attack

norks on

norks off

Careful - your helmet might get squashed by a Volvo

Re: What a stupid fucking idea....

yes, it would be great if SOME DRIVERS got some lights, didn't run red lights and stopped weaving from one lane to another

also SOME DRIVERS not speeding, not indicating right then turning left, not ignoring solid white lines, not driving on the wrong side of the road and not driving the wrong way down one-way streets would also be welcome, some of them are scary enough from inside a car, let alone when on a bike

perhaps these things could be made part of driving lessons and the test, and, here's a thought, enforced by the police

over the last few years people seem to be a bit more considerate on the road, true fuckwits are rare, but these include cyclists, pedestrians as well as drivers, and yes, audis and bmws seem to have a disproportionate share of imbeciles behind their wheels

Purple glistening plasma, you say? Orion plummets back to Earth

after a bit i figured out the view was through the rear window

but why did they feel it necessary to splice on the two blurred sidebars and add the silly sound track, instead of silence or whatever noise was to be had inside?

perhaps they assume the audience is incapable of handling video in a 1:1-ish aspect ratio with no sound, but this sort of needless embellishment subtracts from the original, get ready for future nasa videos featuring sound in a vacuum

London teen pleads guilty to Spamhaus DDoS

Re: going down

don't care, fuck him

he's a net negative contribution to humanity, removing him from the gene pool is a good thing

We are never getting back to... Samsung's baking Apple's 14nm 'A9' chips?

apple knows samsung is the best

Iranian CLEAVER hackers may DRAIN energy and defence firms, warn Feds

i see your stuxnet

and raise you my cleaver

Virgin Media customers suffer YET MORE YouTube buffering blues

Re: Sometime I wonder...

until you come to the turtles

The Information Age: A day out for grown-up children?

hmm, after visiting the science museum for the first time in ages i was depressed at how dumbed down, narrow and superficial it had become

an institution that once had a fair crack at presenting humanity's development over millennia has turned into an entertainment venue seemingly aimed at an audience raised on reality tv drivel and with the attention span of a guppy

i suppose it's the end result of having to drive visitor numbers to retain funding, but i just found it sad and depressing

Sick of the 'criminal' lies about pie? Lobby the government HERE

Re: Bah!

puts me in mind of some albondigas i had in a small village in lanzarote

hard to tell what part of the dog they'd been made with, i'm guessing lullock (a blend of lung and bollocks)

they had a disturbing texture and a taste that no amount of tabasco could overpower

he can lobby all he likes, but...

while you can get arbitrarily close to pie, you never actually reach it

Mmmmffll-CHOMP: I won? Reg reader to have CHOC-TASTIC YEAR

"A small fifth morsel of chocolate is supplied so that you can introduce a friend."

or eat it yourself, more chocolate == better

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Masala omelette

ruined at the last moment by adding coriander leaves

seems to be genetic, among all food i've ever tasted it's by far the most disgusting taste there is, even a smidge ruins a meal

but the rest of the eggy spiciness looks most scrumptious

Google dodges 'costly' legal precedent, settles Daniel Hegglin case

because of course there're no other search engines

all he's done is advertise the fact that there's some sadfuck posting poorly written crap about him

now in addition he's made himself look like a twat

online abuse is illegal, he can report it to the police, it's their job to trace the person doing it and then nail them, sounds like he's got enough money to make them pay attention to his complaint

Oracle to axe over 450 jobs in Euro support centres – sources

it's the only race hurd knows

Call the Commish! Ireland dragged into Microsoft dispute over alleged drug traffic data

most of world ≠ usa

the usa government and courts need to accept with grace that they have fuck all jurisdiction in most of the world, otherwise they're just bullying thieving scumbags

Routine WHAT NOW? Bank of England’s CHAPS payment system goes TITSUP

message just received in arecibo...

all your cash are belong to us

you are on the way to destruction

iPhone 6 shunned by fanbois in Apple's GREAT FAIL of CHINA

i believe it to be an event featuring a popular beat combo with non-zero height but lacking both breadth and depth

‘This is 2LO calling’: Marconi transmitter, IBM Simon and more at the Science Museum

i assume it's ye olde point to point wan

if you ignored geography you could achieve site connectivity diagrams that had as least as much relationship to physical reality as the constellations the ancestors came up with

Japan develops robot CHEERLEADERS which RIDE on BALLS

let me be the first to say that

i, for one, welcome our new ball riding overlords

Bruges Booze tubes to pump LOVELY BEER underneath city

beer under the streets, pipelaying vessel seen leaving hull

only possible conclusion: GCHQ is already working on lawful intercept

Apple: SO sorry for the iOS 8.0.1 UPDATE BUNGLE HORROR

i bought a nice rimowa suitcase instead

that way even when it gets bent or dented, it'll probably still work, and i won't have to worry about updates bricking it or apple spluffing the contents all over the interwebs

JINGS! Microsoft Bing called Scots indyref RIGHT!

Re: Looks like many are missing the point

the london vs. edinburgh thing is a red herring, it borders on racism

there's no 'london' or 'westminster' government, it's the government of the uk, voted for by the people of the uk

the fact that one or more areas dislikes it is neither here nor there, it's the system

the correct approach is change the system, not break the uk

otherwise where does it end? i live in a london borough where council and mp are not what i vote for, can i secede?

because that's the core of the snp argument, even if the vote is 'yes', it's likely near half the voters will have said 'no', can they secede?

no way! the snp will never offer that to the people of scotland, they are no different from the system they claim to be so wrong that they want to leave it

salmond and co. are after one thing, power for themselves, they aren't good enough to cut it at uk level, so they dress up their lust as 'independence', the hypocrisy is sickening

same shit, different day

yep, by parentage i'm half scottish, but get no vote as i live in the evil empire

either way, it will be interesting to see what happens

until recently i was a firm 'no', splitting one small country into two smaller ones will help neither and it makes the awful prospect of an eu exit more likely

but since the spineless raving conliblab party started promising to take an even more disproportionate amount money from the rest of the uk and give it to salmond's whiners (promises that were in no manifesto at the last election and were never approved by parliament) i'm thinking 'yes'

it'll be a rough ride but at least the shafting of the rest of the uk's taxpayers will one day come to an end, plus it'll probably help increase employment in northern uk

eBay DROPS DEAD AGAIN - tat bazaar says sorry, scrambles to resurrect site

the fact is these people chose to use the service and chose to accept ebay's terms and conditions which give no promise of availability or reliability

ebay isn't a human right, it's a choice they made, if it goes titsup they have to accept it, otherwise they can get a shop and manage the issues themselves

"I think sellers need compensation, or at the very least auctions extended - we're losing money by ebay being down"

oh ffs, get a shop

UK.gov sinks another £1.6m into Internet of Stuff spec HyperCat

"publish the HyperCat specification as an independent and publicly available standard through the British Standards Institute"

does this imply the usual bsi paywall? that should encourage widespread adoption

Dr Dre's crew gets Beats-down from Apple: 200 jobs to go – report

"HR, finance will bear the brunt of cuts, it is rumoured"

good, parasitic scum of the corporate world, nuke 'em 'til they glow then shoot 'em in the dark

Ever wanted to be a Playmonaut? El Reg's Vulture 2 spaceplane sim reveals what it's like

hurrah!

nice to see the cousins joining in

USA to insist on pre-flight mobe power probe

Re: Containing little but bolts and glue

bolts and glue could be a test run to check if it's detected by security

prior to sending the deluded nutter through with the one containing bolts and explosive

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE DNS outage

yep, vm status pages are useless, as is the telephone status

during a long (>48 hours outage) and after several calls over two days with the 'help' desk, who could only say there was no known issue or resolution time (and kept trying to get me to check my network settings, grrrr), i was finally passed to second level support, who instantly replied that "oh, it's a planned outage for network changes, service will resume at xx:yy" which it did

i) planned, so why didn't they email affected customers in advance?

ii) planned, so why didn't they put it on the status page, phone status etc.?

iii) planned, so why didn't they tell their own help desk people?

iv) planned, in what way?

NASA flying saucer vids show fire in the sky

no plucky playmonaut?

nasa has a lot to learn from el reg

Cabbies paralyze London in Uber rebellion

yep, not endearing them to me either

technological threats to livelihood are nasty for those on the receiving end

but i don't recall taxi drivers protesting as others were put out of business or lost their jobs due either to offshoring or simple elimination

in fact quite the opposite, they seem happy to rake it in when there's a tube strike due to the de-staffing of stations

paris because french taxis are mad

Tor Project claims 'fake' Tor Browser sat in iOS App Store for months

"Known...

...instances of malicious apps and unauthorized software being posted to the App Store are relatively rare"

ftfy

paris, just because