Posts by Fred Dibnah

Poland bans camera-packing cars made in China from military bases

My cheap laptop is over 20 years old and still working just fine.

Keir Starmer declares 'months' timeline for social media age clampdown in UK

Re: Age check...

And for our younger viewers: Gail Porter.

Re: A tiny mind juggling too many thoughts?

Upvoted you for calling the PM ‘Mr Starmer’ instead of the ridiculous ‘Sir Kier’ moniker that the BBC and other media uses.

Microsoft engineer speedruns Raspberry Pi magic smoke in five minutes

Re: Keying...

The old Cisco 60-pin serial port connector was pretty awful. The pins were in a rectangle and the D-type shell was not a pronounced D shape and made of thin tin, so it was easy to plug it in upside down. The one time I saw it done (not by me, honest guv) on a powered 2600 router, it didn’t damage the port but it made the shell into an oval shape so it was now impossible to know which way up it should go.

Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch

Re: less programs

Fewer

/pedantry

EU won't scrap tech regs just because Washington dislikes them

“The EU has pledged to stand firm against US threats”

Translation: the EU will give in to the USA’s threats. Again.

Vibe coding: What is it good for? Absolutely nothing (Sorry, Linus)

Re: You weren't there, man

You don’t need to know how a car works in order to drive it, but it helps if you want to drive it well.

25 years of meatbags permanently in space on the ISS

Re: One step forward, two steps back!

Or is it?

Marks & Spencer swaps out TCS for fresh helpdesk deal

”UK retailer Marks & Spencer has replaced Tata Consultancy Services as its IT service desk provider following a procurement process that began in January”

When I parse that sentence, it says to me that M&S are now M&S’s IT services provider.

I also chuckled at the photo used on the article - it’s M&S’s Oxford Street store, the listed building they want to demolish and replace with a new one. There’s an ironic parallel with IT in there somewhere.

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

Re: Better option.

From The Right Stuff film:

Alan Shepard: “That is a spacecraft, sir. We do not refer to it as a ‘capsule’. Spacecraft.”

Apple faces £1.5B payout after losing UK App Store case

Re: Waste of time appealing

IANAL, but I would imagine that lodging an appeal means that Apple can ignore the ruling until the appeal is heard.

Given that the ruling came from a Competition Appeal Tribunal, I hope they also get to hear the appeal and throw Apple out of court.

Schleswig-Holstein waves auf Wiedersehen to Microsoft stack

Re: Yay for Schleswig-Holstein !

Yes, but no-one has ever suffered Death by Impress ;-)

Re: "slush fund"

For more of the story, I recommend this 45 minute documentary ‘The Microsoft-Dilemma - Europe as a Software Colony‘:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=duaYLW7LQvg&pp=ygUbTXVuaWNoIG9wZW4gc291cmNlIHNvZnR3YXJl

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

Re: You'd be amazed...

True, although other countries have implemented anti-circumvention rules along similar lines to DMCA 1201, under threat of sanctions by the USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention#

Cory Doctorow has written at length about this.

https://pluralistic.net/tag/dmca-1201/

If the Pye TV is currently in use it will almost certainly have an external UHF aerial which is already able to receive DVB broadcasts, so all they need is a STB with UHF output and an extra coax cable.

Anyone trying to reverse engineer the Bose system is likely to fall foul of DMCA section 1201, particularly if they share their code.

https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq

"It's really not unreasonable to expect people to know what they're buying."

At what level should they "know what they're buying"?

When they buy a fridge, should they know the about setting the correct temperature and putting food on the correct shelves, or should they know the thermodynamics of the refrigeration cycle?

When they buy a lawn mower, should they know how to add petrol and use it safely, or should they know how the Otto 4-Stroke Cycle works?

Joe and Jane Public already think their home wi-fi is their broadband and Google is the Internet, so IMHO it's reasonable that they expect audio products to just work, without needing to know in detail how the sound comes out.

Sonos

The correct parallel with Bose bricking their hardware isn't the Sonos app debacle, bad as it was. It's what Sonos did five years ago, where they said all their older products would stop working after May 2020, but which they tempered with a truly generous 'offer' of a discount on new hardware if you sent the bricked units to them. Understandably the customer backlash was swift and vigorous and they quickly backtracked, introducing the S1 and S2 apps for controlling older and newer hardware respectively. I still have the email from CEO at the time (see below). I notice that my copy of the email has British English spelling, which is nice :-)

If Bose customers are able to generate a similar amount of noise, perhaps the company will back down (although I doubt it).

"We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work just as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honour that investment for as long as possible. Whilst legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, whilst legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalising details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

Whilst we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the Trade Up programme we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn't exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Patrick

Patrick Spence

CEO, Sonos"

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

I don’t normally question why my comments get downvoted - differences of opinion and all that - but I am genuinely baffled why somebody-or-other didn’t like my little (true) anecdote about WFH in the days of dial-up.

Re: Chocolate and orange juice

And yet they are quite OK with mixing peanut and jam (“jelly”).

Same here, same era & circumstances. The only problems I had were running the modem cable across the floor to the master socket, and having to drop the connection every time my partner wanted to use the phone. ISDN solved the second problem.

I get distracted by the chatter of other operators in call centres, sometimes to the point where I can’t understand the operator who is talking to me.

Amazon grounds drone deliveries in Arizona after two crashed into a crane

‘Your Amazon package has been delivered to your neighbouring building site’

UK minister suggests government could ditch 'dangerous' Elon Musk's X

As awful as XTwitter is, it’s an efficient way of pushing messages out to a large number people in one go. Very few visit government websites unless they need a service such as pensions or benefits.

EU starting registration of fingerprints and faces for short-stay foreigners

Re: Security & Efficiency

TBF the database that IBM produced for the Nazis was pretty efficient.

Campaigners urge UK PM Starmer to dump digital ID wheeze before it's announced

Re: This idiot plan suggests that Labour really doesn't want to get re-elected.

”Lab will be out and Ref will be in, and Ref swear they'll ditch any id scheme”

Well, we all know what happens to pre-election promises once a party is in power, don’t we?

Brit scientists over the Moon after growing tea in lunar soil

Re: Tea..

What’s wrong with being drunk?

Charities warn Ofcom too soft on Online Safety Act violators

TV aerials have been used to receive digital terrestrial TV signals since, um, the 20th century.

US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty

I agree with Nick.

(I never thought I would write that)

OpenAI says models are programmed to make stuff up instead of admitting ignorance

Re: "Even a wrong answer is right some of the time"

That’s right enough ;-)

Linux Mint picks up the pace with LMDE 7 and Wayland-ready Cinnamon

Re: A bit slow?

Are we discussing Wayland here, or IPv6? ;-)

New cybersecurity rules land for Defense Department contractors

Re: Sidebar - "Department of War"

Trump is mad and bad, but Department of War is a more honest description of what the military does, imho.

Supermarket giant Tesco sues VMware, warns lack of support could disrupt food supply

Re: Popcorn time

Popcorn?

Junk is the new punk: Why we're falling back in love with retro tech

Re: It Never Went Away For Me

Technically yes, but as with physical books you are able to lend, copy and sell the content despite what the Ts&Cs say. I mean, they could send plod round to check you haven’t complied, but I doubt they have ever done that.

“Home taping is killing music” lol.

Re: It Never Went Away For Me

That applied to DVDs but fortunately not to CDs (apart from when Sony tried their rootkit nonsense).

I still have quite a few DVDs, but these days it’s often quicker to torrent the film than sitting through the nag screens and menus on disc.

Re: Cassettes???

Wikipedia has all the info:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette_tape_types_and_formulations

Re: Cassettes???

Metal tapes needs a higher bias level than chrome tapes, which in turn need more bias than regular tapes. Also the frequency response is different across the three types, so the frequency pre-correction needs to be different.

Re: Why?

Tapes recorded at 1x speed could sound really good, but I can still remember the terrible disappointment when I bought Honky Chateau on cassette instead of vinyl. It sounded atrocious because the tape replication was done at 5x, 10x or so.

Do today’s cassette albums sound OK, I wonder?

UK unions want 'worker first' plan for AI as people fear for their jobs

UK

So it’s labour, not labor.

End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

Re: 80085

A good proportion of piracy is downloading porn.

I once read that VHS won over Betamax because smut was available on VHS, and the Apple Mac was a success largely because it should show video (i.e. porn) when PCs couldn’t.

Should UK.gov save money by looking for open source alternatives to Microsoft? You decide

Re: Extra option?

This applies equally in the private sector. In my last job my boss came to me every end of financial year to ask what I could waste money on before the next budget period. .

The £9 billion question: To Microsoft or not to Microsoft?

AI-driven features

This line caught my eye:

“There is no doubt AI-driven features could boost efficiency…”

(My emphases)

Marc Andreessen wades into the UK's Online Safety Act furor

The article is about UK law, so imho “furore” in the title was spelt incorrectly.

You've got drought: UK gov suggests you save water by deleting old emails

Re: From the Department that brought you classics such as

For a heartbreaking reminder of the P&S nonsense, I recommend Raymond Briggs’ ‘When the Wind Blows’.

Hyundai: Want cyber-secure car locks? That'll be £49, please

Re: Do you want a car with that key?

No, they actually *did* charge a subscription for heated seats, but withdrew it after floods of complaints on social media.

UK unveils plans to 'transform' the consumer smart meter experience

I was given a usage monitor years ago by my supplier at the time (Eon, iirc). It used a clamp round the incomer and was useful for discovering our usage profile, but that was a one-off exercise and it went in the drawer once we had swapped all the bulbs in the house to LEDs.

Re: Just another vanity moneypit

By submitting their own meter readings?

AWS wiped my account of 10 years, says open source dev

Re: Jumping the gun maybe

“AWS wiped his entire testbed environment, including backups” (my italics)

The article doesn’t say whether he had another backup somewhere else.

Make Redmond angry by setting up Windows 11 with a local account

Thanks, I enjoyed reading that and the comments :-)

Microsoft promises to eventually make WinUI 'truly open source'

Re: Choices

You spelt ‘shitshow’ wrong ;-)

Long live the nub: ThinkPad designer David Hill spills secrets, designs that never made it

Re: Today I learned...

Happy T520 user here - I recently picked up a second one with i7 CPU, and fitted with maximum RAM and SSD drives it tricks along nicely. Fifty quid all in.

I digress. I didn’t know about that centre button paste thing, so thanks for that. Have one on me.