Posts by Chris Evans

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Car makers are almost as bad.

The rubber radio volume knob on my 2017 Ford Focus has started breaking down. Officially it is available as a spare but only with the facia for £152!

I've tried to pull it off unsuccessfully but before I use mechanical assistance to get off (which will mangle it to an unsightly mess) I emailed Ford to ask if it is pull off [1] they just referred me back to a dealer, who've said they don't know. Knobs that look like they fit are only £4 on ebay (No 'Vol' text on it but I could live without it)

Yes there is volume up/down paddles on the steering wheel but I know my wife will have the heebie jeebies as a passenger or occasional driver as she won't be using the paddles.

[1] Google/youtube searches are flooded with irrelevant answers. I've lost my google mojo.

Beige pencil stockists on high alert as 'Colouring Book of Retro Computers' hits the crowdfunding circuit

Pah! 24pins!

Us mere mortals only had 9 pin printers. I wrote and sold a ROM (MultiFontNLQ) for the BBC that intercepted the printer output and converted it to two passes of graphics on a 9pin dot matrix printer to give Near Letter Quality print out.

SK Hynix hits 3-year revenue high as extreme ultraviolet production kicks off in earnest

1anm?

"but the 1anm node is still being treated as a test-bed" Is '1anm' a propitiatory name for the process? Google finds no answers for me!

Ransomware-hit law firm gets court order asking crooks not to publish the data they stole

Not even lawyers have found a way to bill themselves with any financial benefit.

Ofcom 5G auction ends with UK carriers spending £23m for choice spectrum positionings

A typo! 2000 not 2020 Re: Remember the 3G spectrum auction of 2020?

https://esrc.ukri.org/news-events-and-publications/impact-case-studies/design-of-mobile-license-auction-raised-22-5-billion/

Article date: May 2000

.... raised £22.5 billion for the government from an auction of radio bandwidths for 3G mobile phone licenses.

£22.5 billion in 2000 = £39.40 billion in 2021!

So it appears some of you really don't want us to use the word 'hacker' when we really mean 'criminal'

In an ideal world...

In an ideal world people won't use the term pejoratively, but in my world that ship has sailed:-(

Blind man sues Dell over inaccessible website

Text as a graphic.

I regularly used to receive special offers from various IT companies and the offers were sent only as an image with little if any info in the alt text. I pointed out the problem to a number of the companies but they ignored me or 'passed it on' but nothing ever changed.

Ingram Micro was one of them, I opted out of marketing emails so don't know if they ever fixed the problem.

While Reg readers know the difference between a true hacker and cyber-crook, for everyone else, hacking means illegal activity

Badly worded motion

I'd expect almost all ElReg readers to agree with "Hacking is not a crime, and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative." The real question has the shipped sailed or it is recoverable? IAIN THOMSON seem to be more resigned to the situation than arguing against the motion .

UK government may force online retailers to pick up e-waste from consumers

Practical? Better for the environment?

I'm not sure they really have thought this through, especially for the smaller online seller. Who would be responsible for supplying the return packaging (Environmental impact of sourcing and supplying that) and what is the environmental impact of getting it transported?

At work we repair various old retro computers, customers often ask us to arrange collection which can be time consuming especially when the courier doesn't turn up when they should and can be awkward for the customer. They will have a lot less motivation to stay in to have it collected just for recycling.

My local council now offers a good service: "We now collect unwanted and broken small electrical items. Put your small electrical items in a standard sized carrier bag, tie up and place next to your rubbish on your normal waste collection day.

Local recycling is much better environmentally

Of course the best recycling is reuse, so if it is still useable sell it, give it away (charity, freecycle...)

Nominet sets the date for extraordinary meeting where members could fire CEO

It would be a great precedent if they succeed

I really hope they succeed, not only because it is appropriate for Nominet but it should also make a few other organisations realise they must act better.

Nominations?

Forgot Valentine's Day? Never mind, today marks 75 years of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

Humans?

The original meaning of the word computer was: A person performing mathematical calculations...the first known written reference dates from 1613), meant "one who computes"

Missing GOV.UK web link potentially cost taxpayers £50m as civil servants are forced to shuffle paper forms

"This assumes every single paper form could've been done digitally."

This assumes every single paper form could've AND WOULD'VE been done digitally.

No one will ever know how many would have been done. I'd be surprised if it wasn't most. So yes a significant waste.

I'm battling with Amazon at the moment, as a seller they every few years check your identity (I realise they do have to do it) but they are refusing to accept an HMRC document with my National Insurance number on it. Insisting it must be an HMRC National Insurance bill. This is after escalating it to the Seller Verification Team.

Tab minimalists look away: Vivaldi introduces two-level tab stacks

Re: Some people

Pah! "100 tabs" a mere trifle. I've over 600 spread across 5 windows!

I'm struggling to find the time to reduce them. I sell into the hobbiest market so have been busier than ever this last year.

Explained: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32

More size equals more wasted time!

I'm not worried about wasting space but wasting time. When you've lots of spare capacity you don't archive off and delete things. The file server for my small business has >100,000 files on it and whilst I can find things quickly that fit into a well defined categories, locating some files can be rather time consuming.

Currys PC World website crumples into unscheduled maintenance as shoppers chase latest gaming machines

Maintenance! Calling it maintenance makes them look inept.

Why do companies insist on saying their sites are down for maintenance, when clearly they've crashed!

'Emergency maintenance' would be better but why not call a spade a spade say 'Technical problems'

Customers prefer honesty.

Nvidia to acquire Arm for $40bn, promises to keep its licensing business alive

Are you talking of ARM I'm unclear

I've not heard of ARM employees being upset about their workplace. Though AIUI they weren't overjoyed with Softbank buying them. Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

You had one job... Just two lines of code, and now the customer's Inventory Master File has bitten the biscuit

Who in there right mind would...

Who in there right mind would mass edit a key database without making a backup. If it still has to accessible to be viewed lock it then copy it. Work on a third copy, test, swap back in. Doing it after hours would make it less disruptive.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

The new guidelines are where?

The new guidelines only seem to be available to Nature subscribers

I found out of date info at:

http://www.hugo-international.org/HGM-News last news item 2018

https://www.genenames.org/about/guidelines/ seems to be the 2002 version

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_nomenclature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HUGO_Gene_Nomenclature_Committee

Presumable there is also a list of those genes that have been renamed but I didn't find it.

To be useful they need to disseminate the info as widely as possible.

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

anomalies?

"...every early space company goes through these anomalies and you learn from it,"

The trouble is that in rocket science 'anomalies' often equals deaths!

From unmovable boot screens to dead certs, neither are what you want to see in a hospital

Re: Signed Certificates are only as good as...

The problem is money! Someone has to pay for the servers etc. that confirms the certificate.

Companies offering perpetual services for a one off fee have a limited life expectancy.

Xiaomi Mi 9 owners furious after dodgy Vodafone software patch bricked their mobes

Blood boil!

If I was effected then "we apologise for any inconvenience " would make my blood boil.

PR 101 says it should be: ""we apologise for THE inconvenience" and given the severity of the problem they need to grovel much harder.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Please show your workings.

Raspberry Pi goes 2GB for the price of 1GB in honour of mini-computer's eighth birthday

Re: Ten dollars for a couple of gig of ram eh?

I remember when 32MB FPM SIMMS first came out, they were £995 inc VAT.

We didn't sell many!

Internet's safe-keepers forced to postpone crucial DNSSEC root key signing ceremony – no, not a hacker attack, but because they can't open a safe

How long before things would stop working properly?

If this 'signing' has to be done regularly and it doesn't happen for what ever reason what happens?

What if both safes were inaccessible?

The 'override protections' seem to be ways to access the vaults.

I'm surprised there isn't at least a third safe!

With backups, father grandfather son is standard for normal data.

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

Circular Economy

The Circular Economy movement is all about building stuff that can be repaired

https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/concept

Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers

No one was born knowing...

How stupid the user was depends on how long ago this was. I remember someone who went on a 'computers for beginners' course at the local college a few years after mice became common.. They started off in a room with no computers and were told to go through to the next room, sit down at a computer and pick up the mouse and move it about and see what happened. So they did as told... yes they moved it about in mid air. She told me that she felt very stupid after being told she had to move it around on the desk. But my response was no, no one is born knowing that and the lecturer had assumed some knowledge.

Thunderbird is go: Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest

Re: "Around 0.5% of emails opened in the 'bird today, apparently"

The question is what is the default setting of say the top 10 ways people access email?

Also what are the top ten ways they found people are accessing emails?

How far down the list is thunderbird?

This page is currency unavailable... Travelex scrubs UK homepage, kills services, knackers other sites amid 'software virus' infection

Planned! Maintenance

Calling it "Planned Maintenance" makes them look very very stupid.

They should call it something like "Emergency Maintenance"

Many big companies seem to make the same stupid mistake!

In tribute to Galaxy Note 7, BBC iPlayer support goes up in flames for some Samsung TVs

Re: Sorry but...

Sometimes the facility is not easy to replace. If the wall mounted TV in our breakfast room stops working with the built in iPlayer, etc. we have limited options as we don't want any trailing wires. A FireTV stick doesn't quite offer what we want. Anyone know of a good site that compares the FireTV and its rivals? (For use in the UK)

Close the windows, it's coming through the walls: Copper Cthulu invades Dabbsy's living room

DIY gone mad!

This reminds me of my sons flat. Before he moved in about 15 years ago we removed about half the electric wall sockets! In the lounge each of the three corners had four or six double 13Amp sockets so over 30 in one room and looked ridiculous. I suspect the previous owner had an aversion to power strips.

He also had in the modest flat a full alarm system with remote monitoring and a printer that recorded every event!

Loose tongues and oily seamen: Lost in machine translation yet again

Banning cryptocurencies on environmental grounds?

I suspect countries will start to ban cryptocurencies on environmental grounds. I wonder which will be the next significant country to do so.

China already bans them!

Weather forecasters are STILL banging on about 5G clashing with their sensors. As if climate change is a big deal

And in the UK and Europe...

I presume there is the same problem?

As above, so below: El Reg haunts Scaleway's data centre catacombs 26 metres under Paris

Insurance for the inevitable?

Considering the risk of water damage I suspect they will have a problem getting Insurance and then there is the cooling problem. I fear a catastrophic failure is almost inevitable!

Ex-Arm execs' upstart Agile Analog palmed $5m to sink into AI-driven chip design

I half agree!

But they need to look to their target market. I suspect over 95% will expect the American spelling.

TalkTalk returns to the email hall of shame as Pipex accounts throw weekend-long wobbly

Re: So, to confirm:

Some years ago in a server upgrade they lost all old emails. I don't think users lost any recent ones but we used to send as off site backups some data to an email address that we never downloaded. There was several years worth that disappeared. n.b. The files were backed up to a number of other places so no problem.

TalkTalk Lie!

They had another outage four weekends ago for about 24hrs. But their status page said everything was working.

I can't recall the status page ever admitting a fault when I know there is one.

I'm trying to persuade our customer to switch A.S.A.P.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

But who was the driver?

Still not clear who the 'driver' was and what the humans responsibilities were.

If the human was told the automatic system would be driving the car and he was only to monitor the system and should never take control, then Uber guilty human driver not.

Was the human told he should always monitor the road ahead and take control if necessary.

Or what?

Not enough information to decide culpability.

Mini computer flingers go after a slice of the high street retail Pi

Re: The Raspberry Pi Foundation is an official charity

I think the trading part of the Foundation is a limited company. They may though be able to get small business rate relief.

Holy planetesimal formation, Batman! Ultima Thule's no snowman – it's a friggin' pancake

CSI missing a trick?

I've often wondered why CSI (Fictionally and in real life) don't use NASAs type of image enhancement, like they are using here!

Rather than stupidly zooming in by ridicules amounts.

Not cool, man: Dixons spanked over discount on luxury 'smart' fridge with wildly fluctuating price

Digging a hole for them selves!

To try and pull a fast one like they did is bad enough but to try and defend it to the ASA is just stupid and makes them look much worse.

Techie finds himself telling caller there is no safe depth of water for operating computers

Re: Header pic

Thanks for the tip about searching for images displayed in Chrome.

I note ElReg's article is on the first google page! ElReg must be crawled at least hourly.

On more than one occasion I've googled a subject mention in an ElReg article, and the ElReg article itself was top of the results!

Raspberry Pi Foundation says its final farewells to 40nm with release of Compute Module 3+

Re: Good & Bad news

I'm trying to work out how I can get a side gate to unlock as I cycle up to it!

The gate latch will be on the outside wall of my garage which has power. Low power Bluetooth has been suggested.

I've got some spare Pi 1's.

How weird/stupid is that?

The aim is to be practical! Even SODIMM sockets in small quantities can be IIRC up to $20 each, depending on mounting. I hate to think what uncommon DIMM sockets would cost.

KISS!

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

Re: Two words for you ...

" (not even SSD due to $ to Gigs ration and mass storage needs) " I just a couple of 32GB mSATA SSD's £10 each! I think you could fit every speccy game ever made on 32GB multiple times!

A billion-dollar question: What was really behind Qualcomm's surprise ten-digit gift to Apple?

Re: Missing figure?

"That's about 800 million or so, so that's $24 billion for the chips" If my maths is right that is $30 per phone. Where did you get the figure from? I see no mention of it in the article.

Missing figure?

The vital missing figure is how much Apple ended up paying Quallcom after allowing for the $1B upfront payment and $7.50 "rebate" on each phone?

FCC tosses aside rules, treats Google to a happy ending following request for handy tech

Re: Confused!

Thanks for the info lads. All is now clear.

Confused!

This is an area I know nothing about but I can't see how you can have a negative output unless it is a comparison?

If it is a comparison, what to?

"...peak transmitter conducted output power of +10 dBm, rather than -10 dBm..."

I had a brief look at the (Section 15.255(c)(3)) link but it goes way over the top of my head.

Qualcomm lifts lid on 7nm Arm-based octo-core Snapdragon 855 chip for next year's expensive 5G Androids

A76 L1 cache size?

"Each A76 has 128KB of L1 cache (64KB four-way instruction cache with four-cycle load-use latency, 64KB for data), 256 or 512KB of 1280-entry five-way L2 cache, and shares up to 4MB of L3."

I've often wondered why the L1 cache size on modern CPU's are so small. ARM3 back in 1989 had a 4K cache I'd have expected more than a 32 fold increase in nearly thirty years. Later CPU's now have two extra levels of cache and I understand a little bit about cache coherency. I'm sure there must be a good reason. Anyone know what it is?

How much slower is L2 and L3 I wonder?

Do not adjust your set: Hats off to Apple, you struggle to shift iPhones 'cos you're oddly ethical

Ethical?

"You've behaved ethically, putting long-term consumer concerns first"

If they were ethical they'd make them easier to repair and whilst they may support their obsolete products better than most, they don't support them long enough to entice me, I would call it "Mid-term consumer concerns first" at best