Posts by Captain Hogwash

In the market for a second-hand phone? Check it's still supported by the vendor – almost a third sold are not

Re: If the OS isn't supported, install one that is!

Great idea! I've used CyanogenMod/LineageOS and other custom ROMs since my first Android phone - the original Samsung Galaxy S. That was the phone that woke me up to so many problems such as long term support, e-waste, surveillance capitalism, etc. Since then I've ensured every new phone I bought could be immediately reflashed with CM/LOS as soon as it was out of the box. Unfortunately the vast majority of phones talked about in the article are not owned by Reg readers or those of a similar ilk. If I try and explain any of this to "normals" their eyes glaze over and they collapse as their bored brains take leave of their bodies. So sadly, most people won't even do what the article title says, let alone your suggestion, and the problems will continue.

Re: Can someone educate me as to why phones go out of support?

In order to force people to buy new ones. Manufacturers make money by selling phones, not allowing you to use them until they break.

Congratulations Peebles. Felicitations Queenzieburn. Openreach is bringing you FTTP (yes, they're real places)

Re: six rears

Hmmm.

Cornish drinkers catch a different kind of buzz as pub installs electric fence at bar

Re: Puntastic

The lack of co-ordination brought about by alcohol consumption in the environs of such terror would induce me to stick with an orange henry (though the internet tells me that name for orange & lemonade is unheard of outside my county.)

Cereal Killer Cafe enters hipster heaven, heads online: Coronavirus blamed for shutters being pulled down

I thought about going

but someone who'd been said they'd had a frosties reception.

You may be distracted by the pandemic but FYI: US Senate panel OK's backdoors-by-the-backdoor EARN IT Act

Re: once the encryption is broken...

Why would they bother trying to break it? That's just PR. They'll just make it illegal except for approved uses (e.g. banking) They'll just mandate that e.g. WhatsApp can no longer be used legally in e.g. Arizona unless the encryption is removed. Facebook will then either produce a crypto-free version for Arizona and other states which have gone the same route, or just drop it from the app altogether. They probably won't want to maintain two versions so most likely will do the latter. If the law only targets WhatsApp perhaps they'll do the former to remain competitive where encryption has not been banned. They could even keep the crypto and make it location aware. But once one of these apps has been targeted it's likely that others will follow leading to pressure to drop it from all of them. That's the problem (among many) with these centralised networks - one point at which to apply pressure breaks the whole thing.

Re: Don't use centralised, commercial services

I don't think they're really going after banking transactions. Interpersonal comms is what they're after. If it is about financial stuff then my original suggestions are irrelevant.

Re: Don't use centralised, commercial services

True. Becoming a bigger problem in recent times.

Don't use centralised, commercial services

Run encrypted comms on your own decentralised, federated servers, or peer to peer, using FLOSS software. That would go a long way towards mitigating any effects this legislation might have on the availability of backdoor-free encrypted comms. The biggest problem, as ever, is getting people to care.

The good news: Vodafone switches on first full-fat, real-life 5G network in the UK. The bad news: it only got sent to Coventry

Re: Blah, blah, blah...

Nah, SIP account keeps my four year old phone, with user replaceable battery, out of landfill.

Re: Blah, blah, blah...

Have wi-fi? Get yourself a SIP account. Make calls inside in the winter.

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

I'll just leave this here

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

― George Orwell, 1984

Re: No problem with most of it, but...

stakeholders. Hmmm. Sounds a bit aggressive, violent even.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: I was signed into gmail on both machines

Well, duh!

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

Re: ...delightful cakey accompaniment is pronounced "scone"...

I'm glad you've shone some light on that for us. The argument might have gone on for ages otherwise.

Huawei wins approval to plonk £1bn optical comms R&D facility in UK's leafy Cambridgeshire

Re: Scott Walker appears to have "the Trump touch" at dealmaking

I guess the sun ain't gonna shine anymore.

Facebook accused of trying to bypass GDPR, slurp domain owners' personal Whois info via an obscure process

Outragous

Sadly, if I were to try and explain this to the facebook users I know, they would collapse with boredom long before I finished explaining what a domain is.

Moore's Law is deader than corduroy bell bottoms. But with a bit of smart coding it's not the end of the road

Re: Things grow ... until they don't

Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976, if these trends continue...AY!

Surprise! That £339 world's first 'anti-5G' protection device is just a £5 USB drive with a nice sticker on it

Re: What 5G ?

https://glastonbury.gov.uk/5g-report/

Re: I'm no fool

Hmmm. Tell me more about your hosing project. Sounds a bit NSFW.

There's a world out there with a hexagon vortex over its pole packed with hydrocarbon ice crystals. That planet is Saturn

Saturn?

Arg, surely?

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

Big Grey

See title.

Microsoft decrees that all high-school IT teachers were wrong: Double spaces now flagged as typos in Word

Re: I don't know what you Brits got taught at school

Brit here. Never heard of this double space thing until I read this article so going to keep using one space.

Just because we're letting Zoom into Parliament doesn't mean you can have fun, House of Commons warns Brit MPs

Re: avoid holding sensitive conversations, even when on mute

Open the pod bay doors HAL.

Frippin' heck: Watch out, chin-stroking prog rock fans. King Crimson distributor Burning Shed says it's been hacked

Re: but no credit card deets

Phew! That could've been easy money for some miscreant.

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Re: doing the sane thing for years

Freudian slip?

So how do the coronavirus smartphone tracking apps actually work and should you download one to help?

Re: ...and should you download one to help?

This question, posed by the headline, was not answered by the article.

Microsoft attempts to up its Teams game with new features while locked-down folk flock to rival Zoom... warts and all

Re: helps to see how people are reacting ... not just ... the current speaker.

Same problem with Webex, which seems to be our company's conferencing software of choice (although we also have Teams & Skype for Business.)

Minister slams 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories as 'dangerous nonsense' after phone towers torched in UK

Re: high frequency vibrations cause pandemic[1] - headline

Fewer vibration frequencies!

Delivery drones: Where are they when we really need them?

Delivery drones of the future...

will be blimps.

UK enters almost-lockdown: Brits urged to keep calm and carry on – as long as it doesn't involve leaving the house

Re: shoot in the head

Way to spread the virus dude. Obviously they'll use tasers.

BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work

Re: "sheer bollockery"

Don't forget twatdangle.

Pervasive digital surveillance of citizens deployed in COVID-19 fight, with rules that send genie back to bottle

Re: Covid-29

Damn those viruses mutate quickly.

Tinfoil hat brigade switches brand allegiance to bog paper

To be truly effective...

The Shungite Plate would probably need to smell like Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina.

Re: you'd still struggle to get through a couple of rolls

You would. I would. But my SO? Mme Dabbs? In my experience it seems that women must eat the stuff. It's the only explanation I can think of for why it disappears so quickly when one is in residence.

House of Lords push internet legend on greater openness and transparency from Google. Nope, says Vint Cerf

Re: The real reason he's so "cagey"

I'm fairly sure he wasn't under oath. That tends to be reserved for court appearances rather than committee meetings.

Hello, support? What do I click if I want some cash?

Digital Eagles

Digital Dodos more like.

Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

Re: I remember...

You'll be needing a flying tea pot to go with that cup.

After 16 years of hype, graphene finally delivers on its promise – with a cosmetic face mask

Re: has not said quite how its cosmetic face masks will benefit from graphene

I'm not surprised. I suspect the chief benefit will be that the products can now be marketed as containing graphene. Given that the amount of pseudoscience in cosmetics advertising seems to encourage the unthinking to buy more this can only be a win for the producers.

Broadband providers can now flog Openreach's new IP voice network in bid to ditch UK's copper phone lines by 2025

Re: How will this work if they need to both be plugged into one VOIP socket on a router?

DECT base station, as many people already use.

Vodafone VDSL routers already have the socket by the look of the one they sent me. Never switched it on though so no idea if it does anything.

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

Re: credit rating

Much. Thank you.

Re: credit rating

Do you mean "credit rating"? I sincerely hope any loan applications I might make in the future are not turned down because I don't have a Facebook account.

Departing MI5 chief: Break chat app crypto for us, kthxbai

Re: Let's think about this...

I love unicorns. Rainbows too.

London's top cop dismisses 'highly inaccurate or ill informed' facial-recognition critics, possibly ironically

Re: In an age of Twitter and Instagram and Facebook...

They keep trotting out this same old guff without ever acknowledging that people choose whether or not to participate in the aforementioned.

The Wristwatch of the Long Now: When your MTBF is two centuries

Re: The tech bros and the late-stage capitalists are all about "creating value"

Yes, shareholder value.

Vodafone: Yes, we slurp data on customers' network setups, but we do it for their own good

Re: So...

Vodafone gave me the login details for VDSL when I signed up a few months ago. I've been using my own kit (and only my own kit) with every ISP for the last 10 years or so since I realised O2 were trashing my configuration settings in the router they supplied whenever they forced a firmware update.

So, to be clear, my LAN is safe from this slurpage or not?

Re: So...

I'm not sure I understand you. I have been using only my own kit with various ISPs for many years. Does this mean my LAN is unslurpable by the ISP or am I as vulnerable to it as though I was using the ISP supplied kit?

Private equity ponies up £2m to help launch satellites from sunny Shetland by next year

Re: There are deserts in Britain?

Dungeness.

Re: What was it Burns said?

"Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun"