Posts by simbr

YouTube's AI moderator pulls Windows 11 workaround videos, calls them dangerous

The irony…

I get to the bottom of this article about the evils of Google’s AIs and read “Sponsored: Generative AI on Google Cloud. Get started for free.”

Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

It would be a last resort, but I certainly have asked (back in my ADSL tech days) “do you happen to have an AM radio...”

It’s not even the first time someone else’s old TV has caused this problem: https://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,1550.msg53496.html#msg53496

Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

I remember something not dissimilar happening with some, I think it was Acer, laptops while the free upgrades to Windows 10 were first rolling out. They worked fine on battery but as soon as you plugged them in they turned "off". Turned out Windows 10 inverted the brightness controls for some reason and the default when plugged in was to go to full brightness...

'I urge everyone to fight back' – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

I'm at least partially with Microsoft here, since we've only seen one side of the story and there are problems like being unknowingly enrolled in a beta program; even if that were possibly, IIRC all the preview builds had to be installed manually - only the final release could be downloaded automatically through Windows update and as people are well aware, it wasn't exactly quiet about it (although I seem to recall there was a brief period where it installed for some users without intervention? Can't recall if that turned out to be user error)

The micro YOU used in school: The story of the Research Machines 380Z

I found an old review (can't remember where; we didn't have internet) of the RML 380 and 480 when I was in High School , which was by then fitted out with RM's x86 machines. I was told they had one somewhere and would have loved to mess with it, but I never even saw it.

Cisco email accidentally sent to 1000s of employees causes message list MAYHEM

When this happened to me it wasn't in the relatively safe confines on an office but out on the wild wild web. Must have been 10 years ago I came back from a holiday to find a newsletter I'd subscribed to had suddenly behind a two-way mailing list and exploded...

The Terminator, coming to a reality near you

So.. what I got from this is that you can genetic engineer a hamster to get an erection when you shine a light on it.

Ludicrously lucky teen survives spear through brain

He arrives in hospital alive.. so why are they surprised to find it missed anything that would have killed him instantly?

Virgin Media wipes out websites with routing blackhole

Re: Roadworks on the routes?

It is possible for ping to work while http does not purely due to the packet size. Saw an issue on ADSL years ago when BT starting rolling out Fujitsu MSANs - no new customers on VPs over a certain size could view webpages but could ping using the default packet size. Gradually increase the packet size and you would eventually find a value that would not work (but too small to make changing MTU viable).

Virgin has has DPIMs on the network for years, since it is how traffic shaping functions. They have also had the capability and indeed have already been blocking sites (e.g. those on the IWF blacklist). The only problem I am aware of this causing thus far was the Wikipedia "Virgin Killers" incident, which was caused by all traffic to Wikipedia going through one proxy IP (the only way they could block one page without blocking the whole site)

GCHQ loses Top Secret laptops

So..

what I got from this is that their new policy will tell them on a yearly basis how many have gone missing?

UK kiddies cop a righteous tasering

"shock figures"

I see what you did there..

Asus Eee keyboard opens CES

sidescreen

@lego

I saw a recent review (in PCPro IIRC) of a monitor with a small adjustable secondary "mini-me" panel peeking over it's shoulder for that purpose.

HD?

So it can connect to a HDTV (assuming you have a wireless one, and I've not seen any of those around yet anyway), but I thought Atoms weren't all that good at HD decoding? Are they thinking of squeezing some sort of graphics coprocessor in there also?

Orange to bundle free Eee with HSDPA modem, airtime

Thay're not the first..

Retailers have been offering free laptops (although the regular bulky sort) for a while - I was offered one in a T-Mobile store and CPW also have a range of laptops available (none that I took a fancy to last I looked). You can also get a free Eee (not sure of the specs) or Advent's atom-based Wind clone at PC World on a number of networks, or up to £400 off any laptop you choose depending on the length and monthly charge of the contract.

I'd' still prefer a built-in 3G adaptor, something Acer as supposed to be working on for the Aspire (and is already included with some Sony laptops that cost the earth).

Webcam hacker-ogler jailed for four years

Cover it

I was also thinking you should cover it. or turn it towards the wall when not using it but the bit about laptops having built-in cams hit me - they are often fixed at the top of the screen. They really ought to come with physical on/off switches or sliding lenscovers.