Posts by Fred Dibnah

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Re: Squeezebox / sonos

The Sonos story is slightly different to that. Sonos announced they were going to update the app with new features, but the update wouldn’t work with older units. But that was fine and dandy, because Sonos offered to take the old units back and give a 1/3 discount on new ones.

Understandably, owners (including me) of older units were not impressed with Sonos’ generous offer, and there was a huge outcry on their forums and elsewhere. In the end Sonos backed down, and they now provide two separate apps: S1 for old units & S2 for new ones.

That was in 2020. At some point I’ve no doubt Sonos will pull the S1 app citing ‘security issues’, but if/when that happens I definitely won’t be replacing my freshly bricked units with new Sonos ones.

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

IIRC the final UK 405-line transmitter was at Sutton Coldfield. When it was switched off, the BBC received zero complaints.

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

Re: "If Microcrap really decided that the "bad UI" should die"

Ah yes, Google Maps.

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

Re: Interesting.

The gov.uk pages have a lot of ‘should’ and ‘may’ rather than ‘must’, which muddies the waters somewhat. For example: ’If an employer does dismiss and re-employ someone, they may be able to take a case to a tribunal and claim:

breach of contract

unfair dismissal’

Fire and re-hire is still very much a thing in the UK, even in companies with unions, so I think employers must have enough wiggle room to get away with it. Labour have said they will stop the practice but I’m not holding my breath.

Elon Musk claims live Trump interview on X derailed by DDoS

As any fule kno, the ‘Cuban’ Missile Crisis started with the USA basing nukes in Turkey, and ended when they took them away again. It should really be called the Turkish Missile Crisis imho.

Tesla asks customers to stop being wet blankets about chargers

Your mention of fried chicken reminded me that here in GB there is currently a spate of cable thefts from rapid chargers, as I discovered at a KFC in Sheffield.

Craig Wright admits he isn't the inventor of Bitcoin after High Court judgment in UK

Ozzie

Ozzie is the ‘Ultimate Odor (sic) Remover’ according to their website. Australians are Aussies.

</pedantry>

64% of people not happy about idea of AI-generated customer service

Re: While I dread AI support

‘Happy’ in the context I used it doesn’t mean joyous, it means satisfied or content - but you already knew that and used it to deflect from my comment onto your weird dislike of the French.

Yes we are all hypocrites, but some of us try not to be. YMMV.

Re: While I dread AI support

So you’re happy to criticise someone who wrote monitoring software but you buy from Amazon, a company that is an expert at monitoring their employees to the Nth degree using similar software.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: it's hard to imagine many manufacturers making an exemption for Britain

The last three cars I've had automatically switched between mph and kph as I drove across the border in Ireland.

Switzerland to end 2024 with an analog FM broadcast-killing bang

Agreed, although DAB uses MPEG-1 Layer 2, not MPEG-2.

</pedantry>

Adobe users just now getting upset over content scanning allowance in Terms of Use

“Photoshop slinger has always been able to scan your stuff”

Not ‘always’. IIRC, in the pre-enshittification era before CS, you could run Photoshop perfectly well on a computer with no Internet connection.

UK law gives green light to self-driving cars from 2026

Re: Waiting lists

Why is overtaking on the other side of the road a problem for you? You do it when you overtake cars - I hope.

Re: If a driverless car needs a driver ... what is the point?

Whereas today’s reports just say "There's a long tailback on the Hanger Lane gyratory system”.

Plus ça change.

Re: Waiting lists

Well done for bringing cyclists into a discussion about motor vehicles. It always happens, like some kind of transport-based Godwin’s Law.

Anyway. I would much rather cycle in front of a neutral robo-car that is programmed not to hit things, than an aggressive impatient driver who is desperate to get past me no matter what.

Re: If a driverless car needs a driver ... what is the point?

I’m not great at handling an emergency immediately on waking. By the time my brain was in gear, it would be too late. YMMV.

Perhaps the robo-cars could be fitted with coffee machines to dispense espresso at the appropriate time.

PayPal is planning an ad network built off your purchase history

In my browsers I run NoScript, uBlock & Ghostery.

What are these ‘ads’ of which you speak?

How Apple Wi-Fi Positioning System can be abused to track people around the globe

Re: This :-

99.999% don’t buy a router separately, they use the router provided by their ISP.

And 99.999999% have no idea what OpenWRT is, nor do they they care when their router works just fine.

That’s not to say their routers don’t have security issues, of course, but the average Joe & Julia Bloggs can’t be expected to know how to deal with them other than on a superficial level. The clever people who built the hardware and software are the ones who *should* have the skills and knowledge to do it.

'Little weirdo' shoulder surfer teaches UK cabinet minister a lesson in cybersecurity

Re: Socks

You mentioned he was in First Class. Are you implying that going barefoot would have been absolutely fine if he had been in Standard?

Forget feet and inches, latest UK units of measurement are thinking bigger

Re: What the hell is a meter?

Just ‘Americans’ then.

Re: What the hell is a meter?

Americanization, Shirley?

Blue screen of death or Eurovision's Windows95man performance – what's less annoying?

Re: "Not available in your country..."

Strictly speaking the AC was correct, you can’t play PAL tapes on NTSC equipment. Your VCR is NTSC and PAL equipment combined.

</pedantry>

Re: Hmm.

All the pro-Israel votes went to Israel, but all the anti-Israel votes were spread around all the other countries. Lies, damned, lies, & statistics.

I don’t know why Israel is in the EBU anyway, or the Euro footie championships. Well I do know *why* they are, I just don’t think they should be given that Israel isn’t in Europe.

Re: Who's the target audience?

The Venn diagram of the target audiences for Eurovision and Eurotrash is two non-overlapping circles :-)

Re: Can anyone offer us a serious explanation

They are both spelt correctly, but retch is a verb and wretch is a noun. ‘Retching’ is fine, ‘wretching’ isn’t - until, that is, someone from the USA does their noun-into-verb thing once again.

Hubble Space Telescope hasn't had any visitors for 15 years

No visitors for 15 years

Voyagers 1 & 2 say hello, from 46 years and billions of miles away.

Not a Genius move: Resurrecting war hero Alan Turing as your 'chief AI officer'

Re: In my experience...

I’m not defending anyone, I’m just stating a fact.

Re: In my experience...

No-one is forcing you into Apple’s shops. Internet shopping is also available.

Microsoft dusts off ancient MS-DOS 4.0 code for release on GitHub

Re: Dos Versions that were significant or useful

That was The Answer.

https://rowrrbazzle.blogspot.com/2016/06/answer-by-fredric-brown-full-short.html

Leicester streetlights take ransomware attack personally, shine on 24/7

“Svalbard-esque perpetual brightness”

Good one :-D

Amazon search results now less self-centered, boffin says

Re: And deliberately so

I don’t use Amazon or their website so can’t comment on their internal search, but Google-sourced search sites are now poisoned with page after page of Amazon ‘results’ before getting to real, useful answers.

Space Force boss warns 'the US will lose' without help from Musk and Bezos

Re: Physics is no fun

I wish someone would tell that to TV and film directors (Kubrick excepted).

Chrome Enterprise Premium promises extra security – for a fee

Re: Safer browsing

Mine wouldn’t fit there :-D

Uber Eats to rid itself of pesky human drivers with food delivery by robo Waymo

Layer 8

Think OSI. ;-)

Apple fans deluged with phony password reset requests

Re: I solved that years ago

That’s a solution for you because you understand how this works, and that’s fine. Unfortunately 99% of people don’t have that level of knowledge, so unless you send them on a short infosec course when they buy a phone another solution is needed; that solution should be provided by Apple.

Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs

Re: Customers are happy with subscriptions?

Agreed and upvoted, although Mr Watson is not a great example given that one of his ideas was schmoozing with the Nazis to keep the money rolling in from Germany.

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

Work to resolve binary babble from Voyager 1 is ongoing

Only 45 hours? Bah, we had it tough etc. At school we would write out our BASIC on programming sheets, and a week later the sheet, printout, and cards would come back from the local Poly. Oh the joy of opening the bundle, only to read ‘Error in line 2’ :-(

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

Re: No need for an 'upgrade'

There is still the problem, for me, that the OS is tied to Google. YMMV.

Re: No need for an 'upgrade'

My 7 year old iPhone 6s had a security update just this morning. Lack of LTS was why I switched from Android to iOS.

Plus, I have no love for Apple but I really, really hate Google.

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

Re: I fail to understand

Indeed. I just did searches for 'Horizon', 'Post Office' and 'Fujitsu' on the homepages of the Grauniad, Mail, Torygraph, and BBC. Only the BBC gave a result:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-68061662

The media work on a 'news cycle' that pushes stories off the front pages after about 10 days, and this story is no different.

Private Eye and Computer Weekly have longer memories and won't let this go away, but the mainstream media have lost interest already and the general public will too.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

Re: How is Fujitsu not in the dock?

Wonderful as this esteemed publication is, it is only read by a few thousand people. It’s the same with Computer Weekly and Private Eye (although PE now has a higher circulation than the Torygraph). The politicians have felt able to ignore the reports in the ‘specialist’ press, but the TV documentary had millions of viewers so now they have to appear to be doing something to redress the injustice. Whether they will, of course, is another matter.

I suspect Sunak will simply cancel Vennel’s gong, and the Sun & Mail will declare everything sorted & go back to footballers & celebs.

World leaders ink AI safety pacts while Musk and Sunak engage in awkward bromance

Re: What?

Sunak wasn’t even elected, he won a beauty contest in front of a few thousand gammon-faced & blue-rinsed Tory members.

IBM to scrap 401(k) matching, offer something else instead

The basic rate of dividend tax for this tax year is 8.75%. That doesn’t sound punitive to me.

Where do people feel most at risk of being pwned? The pub

If they did allow you more time to search, every answer you got from Google would be ‘Amazon’ or ‘Alibaba‘.

Apple Private Wi-Fi hasn't worked for the past three years

Sky Q set-top boxes did a similar thing until they were patched a couple of years ago. They sent out multicast SSDP requests, slowly at first but then the rate ramped up until the WLAN was swamped. It was easy to see with Wireshark. Until they acknowledged the problem, Sky was telling subscribers to reboot the box every night, but in their forums people were spending money on switches with VLANs, new routers, homeplugs etc. I was lucky as I have a UnifiAP on which I can stop multicasts on the LAN becoming broadcasts on the WLAN.

UK civil servants – hopefully including those spending billions on tech – to skill up in STEM

Don’t you know what the S in STEM stands for?

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Keep drinking the covfefe.

UK flights disrupted by 'technical issue' with air traffic computer system

Re: The Russians?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cunAnBRCTN4

Re: Blame the Frogs

You wrote ‘rouge’ instead of rogue, so we can safely assume you are a French infiltrator to this glorious island of Great Brexit.

NASA still serious about astronauts living it up on Moon space station in 2028

For UK readers

Gateway, soon to be renamed to Somerfield.