Posts by Steve McGuinness

Work chat app Slack suffers services outage

Update : Now completely borked on all levels.

Court orders moribund ZX Spectrum reboot firm's directors to stump up £38k legal costs bill

So what are the chances

Of finding one of the Vega's that actually did ship on Ebay?

Did the Directors not claim at one point they had these ready to ship in a warehouse but the legal action was preventing them from doing so, only for it to turn out they had no such stock?

I genuinely wanted one of these, but l had doubts about it from the Kickstarter page description, so wanted to wait till the product came out before buying it.

And now the bloody things are as rare as Hen's Teeth.

UK.gov plans £2,500 fines for kids flying toy drones within 3 MILES of airports

I would be fascinated to know

If someone could draw a quick map circling a 2.5 mile radius from the edge of each of the functioning airports within the UK and see how many houses it covers.

I suspect it will be north of 100,000.

Extra life! Unity tries to undo disunity caused by Improbable cloud gaming toolkit ban

A reasonable discussion ending in a mutually beneficial agreement

The Dev in the article is right. They DEFINETELY are not Oracle.

$24m in fun bux stolen from crypto-mogul. Now he fires off huge fraud charge. Like, RICO, say?

AT&T Legally wont have a leg to stand on

However theres no way they wont have 224 million legs to stand on. Best he can hope for there is a settlement that doesnt admit liability.

The other guy however, how do you sue a guy in prison who likely has no assets left after the government seized it all?

AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile US pledge, again, to not sell your location to shady geezers. Sorry, we don't believe them

money talks

and so apparently do PR people wishing to assure us that they're not just corporate shills paid to lie through their teeth on behalf of an organisation.

when Facebook do it, i recognise its because I am the product. When a Telco does it, even after I explicitly tell them not to, I recognise its a failing of law and I expect to see a massive Sueball launched about this shortly.

Medical advice app Your.MD could have been tampered with by anyone, alleges ex-veep

Re: Sounds to me...

Based on this article, we have a QC that has no understanding of how the internet works, defending a company that absolutely should know how the internet works, and has chosen to ignore security concerns from someone who knows how the internet works, and then gone out of their way to get rid of the person in their firm, which produces a product that works on the internet, who knows how the internet works.

I would particularly enjoy seeing this firm announcing in 12 months time that its database had been hacked and using the excuse "Well the hackers found a way in, but we dont know how because the database doesn't show up on google".

Huawei sales director nicked in Poland on suspicion of 'spying'

24 Hours to Go

Before China arrests a senior Polish diplomat, or a senior Polish company executive and accuses them of spying or some other offence.

Because its not like this shit is predictable ....

Senator Wyden goes ballistic after US telcos caught selling people's location data yet again

Re: Ticked Off?

"Better to be "pissed off" than "pissed on" of course."

Unless of course youre a serving US President and youre in a Moscow hotel room with a high class escort.

Given that we already know

Trump is stupid enough to use non encrypted, non government issue phones, I wonder if any of the Telco's have sold his location data, amongst other things.

Oh and why do Senators think they can stop this? Theres a shitload of business in selling on location and tracking data, its arguably one of the fastest growing fields in Telecoms. And with Ajit Pai telling them they can do whatever the hell they like (whilst doing dancing/singing numbers on Youtube), the FCC wont do anything.

The Senator in Question should be chided for believing that when someone said "Im going to stop doing a thing that is literally making me millions of dollars a year, because youre annoyed at it" they might actually be lying through their teeth.

He's a politican for gods sake. If anyone knows how to spot a liar (and be an exceptional one) its this guy.

More nodding dogs green-light terrible UK.gov pr0n age verification plans

Is this the stupidest idea ever?

Not yet.

Not until Piers Morgan decides to support it on Twitter. THEN its the Stupidest Idea Ever.

A year after Logitech screwed over Harmony users, it, um, screws over Harmony users: Device API killed off

Horrible company with horrible products which deserves to lose market share and disappear in favour of tech companies that understand customer service.

Careful with this latest Microsoft release – tug too hard on the threads and it tends to unravel

WANT!

Just tell me where to send my money.

Tumblr resorts to AI in attempt to scrub itself clean from filth

Re: But...

I've seen people saying "this is the death of Tumblr" in a lot of locations, but its not.

Myspace dragged its broken carcass around for another 4 or 5 years after people stopped using it, people were convinced it still had value. There's no question someone will be dumb enough to buy Tumblr after a few years and attempt a huge relaunch which will fail because there's nothing it offers that doesnt involve hosting porn.

It should finally get shut down in 2023

Re: I understand for the Coprophilia forums,....

That was the shittiest joke I've heard today

Blanket Ban on Searches

Judging by my testing of this last night, Tumblr simply picked up dozens of words which relate to sex or sexual content and just blocked all searches on them. The pages are still there, you just cant find them using the search function.

I wonder if after this "Scrub" they'll still be there, just unable to update, hanging about like a fart in an echo chamber

ZX Spectrum reboot firm's shareholders demand current directors go

If I was entirely cynical (and I am), I would say that they will string the process out, oppose any attempts to remove them, go through the court system if possible to prevent themselves being removed, sue the company if it does successfully remove them, and generally do whatever they can to avoid being disqualified as directors due to their conduct.

This company will be dead in a year, but the lawyers will be feasting on its corpse for the next 2-3 years.

Re: Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more Guv

I do believe filing incorrect accounts (knowingly) is a criminal offence. That should be interesting if the courts have one version and Companies House have another.

That said, it could be argued successfully that one is an interim set of accounts, and one is the verified set of accounts, etc etc. There is a ton of wiggle room here legally.

Re: A Wide Spectrum of opinions

As much as I would like to share your opinion, my background was in IT and is now in Finance.

And this kind of behaviour from small enterprises, formed with good intentions but moving swiftly into crisis control, is pretty much the norm. I would assume only the goodwill of Sir Clive has kept the business from being immediately moved into administration, although today's decision to hold and AGM and remove the directors indicates that is the path they are going down.

Its sad. I am a huge Spectrum Geek, it was my 2nd computer after a ZX81 and I learned to write in Basic & Machine Code (on a Butlins holiday) so it holds many fond memories. I would have loved to see this succeed, but evidently the directors are more interested in their salaries than in delivering people's orders.

A Wide Spectrum of opinions

My tuppence worth would be ...

"The company will be placed into Administration/Liquidated, the existing shareholders will retain any intellectual property & physical stock after buying it in a pre-pack, the backers will be left trying to claim refunds from a company in liquidation with no assets, and the whole thing will repeat itself in around 12-18 months as a new company"

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Brit bank TSB TITSUP* after long-planned transfer of customer records from Lloyds

Did nobody get basic PR training on this one?

Someone really should have pointed out that, given the rather negative publicity associated with Banks over the last 10 years, the very last image you should have on a "Service Unavailable" page is a Fat Cat .....

Total WIPOut: IT chief finds his own job advertised

He should team up with the European Patent Office

It appears they're both run by megalomaniacs who feel they are outside official jurisdictions and run their entities as individual Fiefdoms, terminating and harassing anyone who dares question them.

How do NGO's like this get such overwhelming power to the point where actual criminal acts are impossible to prosecute?

Happy as Larry: Why Oracle won the Google Java Android case

That $1.4bn is going to the lawyers. And then some.

What I find interesting on this is, until its actually paid, can either side claim this judgment as an Asset/Liability in terms of their Company Returns for the calendar year. This money does not technically exist until Google chooses to pay up, and any appeal open to them, however frivolous, could keep the costs off the books for years to come, keeping shareholders happy.

Java-aaaargh! Google faces $9bn copyright bill after Oracle scores 'fair use' court appeal win

Amusing point here.

Google and Oracle can continue to appeal this for the next 10-20 years, throwing it back and forth between courts until they reach the top. The cost of litigation is a fraction of the cost of licensing or paying the damages demanded, so there is no incentive on Google to settle here.

Oracle's best option is to negotiate a lower pricing for historic and ongoing licenses for a guaranteed period of time, allowing Google to develop Android in such a way as to no longer utilise the original Oracle owned code. Google feigning moral outrage as not being allow to use code under "Fair Use" would work if they were a small software development company with a turnover of under $100k a year. Its bollocks to even try and argue that with the size and scale of the product.

I hate seeing lawyers get rich because they advise clients to fight when any sane person would tell them to negotiate and settle.

"Google hasn't yet decided whether it will challenge the ruling."

Of course its going to challenge it, Its just working out how to argue that it was fair use again.

(which it isnt, but lawyers make millions by talking bollocks in front of a judge)

FBI raids home of spy sat techie over leak of secret comms source code on Facebook

Despite all the security screening

The department was once again unable to Weed out the bad guys

Dolby sues Adobe for dodging license fees

How will Adobe get out of this one?

With some very Creative legal Acrobatics they hope.

An entire Suite of them

Stephen Hawking dies, aged 76

One of the first Hawking stories I heard

Was that in order to be allowed to push his wheelchair around (prior to his onboard computer/microphone being built) you needed to have at least 2 degrees, one of which had to be a PHD, in order to be able to understand and record anything he said.

Science has lost one of its truly great minds. RIP

Hansa down, this is cool: How Dutch cops snatched the wheel of dark web charabanc

Caught Red Hansad.

This thread got way too serious, way too quickly. Please can we return to a series of bad puns and amusing wordplay.

And this is that all too salient reminder of the old internet Meme. "On the internet, nobody knows you're a Dog" ... or in this case, a member of a domestic police force just waiting for you to do something illegal whilst handing them all your identifying details.

MIT gives one-star review to Lyft, Uber over abysmal '$3.37/hr' pay

So MIT produces a detailed, in depth report that Uber doesnt like the look of, and its response is to slam MIT on Twitter......

Bro Culture at Uber continues to drives the companies reputation into the ground. Someone needs to hire a Social Media Manager at Uber to take charge of all the senior management & directors Twitter accounts.

Remember the Yorkie pizza horror? Here's who won our exclusive Reg merch...

I Clearly Won

But the thread was hijacked by Russian Hackers and replaced with #FakeNews showing their friends as winners*.

*may/may not be accurate, congratulations to the winners.

CLOUD Act hits Senate to lube up US access to data stored abroad

I am not liking this trend

Of well considered, clearly worded US Laws that allow for minimal debate on what is and isn't legal.

Do they WANT to put those poor Lawyers out of business by doing things properly? I can almost see the partners at Freemont, Lake and Goodwin telling their kids they cant have christmas presents because "The Law is pretty straight on this one".

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

It should be used for a culturally sensitive remake of "Last of the Summer Wine" where a group of Italian Pensioners move to Yorkshire and attempt to blend into a small farming community with predictably hilarious results when they wear "Pizza Puddings" instead of Flatcaps.

£185k in fines rain down on dodgy PIs and claims firm for illegal data slurp

Criminal Convictions

Interesting note on this.

2 of the Private Detectives served jail terms for conspiracy to defraud people of personal details in 2012.

Yet Woodgate & Clark still hired them. I guess being a convicted fraudster doesnt hurt in the PI Business.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17157490

Spy-on-your-home Y-Cam cameras removes free cloud storage bit

And in another classic Trustpilot behaviour

Within hours of all those negative reviews going up, a new account appears with 1 review giving them a 5 star rating.

Im pondering whether some tech companies genuinely think the world and their dog are that gullible?

https://www.trustpilot.com/users/5a27d9dd0000ff000aecdc86

Hyperloop founder goes on immediate leave following sexual assault 'smear campaign'

Sexism in the Tech Industry? Never!

I mean, its not like their board and senior technicians are not just a huge sausage party, right?

https://hyperloop-one.com/team

Uninstalled Google Photos? Thought your pics safe from slurping? WRONG, bozo

Any tips on how to uninstall Google Photo's on an S4?

Since cunningly, its not even listed as an installed app when you try and remove applications from your system. Thats genius!

Microsoft sez soz over Windows 10 'freebie' balls-up

China

Didn't MS also say that Pirated copies of Windows in China would qualify for free Windows 10 upgrades?

Now I bet they're really confused.

MOUNTAIN of unsold retail PCs piling up in Blighty: Situation 'serious'

Ill believe it when I see Desktop Units with reasonable level of hardware at a viable price.

When the stockists are still charging upwards of £800 for a new machine thats no better than 2-3 year old tech, they cant expect buyers to be knocking on their doors.

UK bank blames fraudsters for World of Warcraft ban

Halifax = Profit

Considering that there has never been a bank that Ive known where profit and cutting costs is treated as the be all and end all before anything remotely resembling customer service, this provides absoloutely no shocks whatsoever that rather than fix a problem, they just choose the cheapest solution.

Even with those Glasses, Howard would have seen this coming.