Posts by Captain Hogwash

Facebook says dump of 533m accounts is old news. But my date of birth, name, etc haven't changed in years, Zuck

Re: Interesting

If that doesn't wake people up I don't know what will.

Interesting

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news/leaked-phone-number-of-mark-zuckerberg-reveals-he-is-on-signal/ar-BB1fjNfL

Mullet over: Aussie boys' school tells kids 'business in the front, party in the back' hairstyle is 'not acceptable'

Re: Very open-minded

When I was at school the girls tended to push the bounds of what could still be classified as uniform while showing as much as possible of what ought to be concealed by the uniform. Have times changed?

Re: shaving your head

Or the official school head!

AI recommendations fail fans who like hard rock and hip hop – official science

Re: So it's racist

That might have been true when hip hop first emerged, but today I think the dividing line between those who like it and those who don't is probably one of age rather than race.

Browser tracking protections won't stop tracking, warns DuckDuckGo

I expect...

...that you'll also be downvoted for using Google, Facebook and Twitter. Especially Facebook. Containers or not, you know you really shouldn't.

5-year-old Fairphone 2 is about to receive a major update to Android 9

"difficulties in porting Android 9 to the use of the obsolete Snapdragon 801 chipset"

LineageOS managed this ages ago. I've been running it and subsequently /e/ on a Galaxy S5 for a long time.

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

"Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand"

RIP Neal

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

Whatever El Reg decides...

...it'll eventually backtrack. Anyone else remember "mobe"?

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Re: English is definded by it's users

I am not surprising. I wear psuedo pshoes.

Copper broadband phaseout will leave UK customers with higher bills and less choice, says comparison site

Re: My mother pays £15-£18 *a quarter* for her landline

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/12/bt-to-continue-discount-for-landline-only-uk-phone-users.html

Smartphones are becoming like white goods, says analyst, with users only upgrading when their handsets break

Why upgrade?

That's just one of the things LineageOS, /e/, etc is for.

Back to the office with you: 'Perhaps 5 days is too much family time' – Workday CEO

Re: humans are social creatures

We're not all anywhere near as social as you think. There's a reason some of us chose to start programming computers.

Offices are cold, draughty, noisy, uncomfortable places with bad lighting.

In multiple occupancy tower blocks with shared toilet and kitchen facilities they are an absolute nightmare.

Coworkers believe that their problem is more important than anyone else's and that if they can see you then it's only right that they interrupt you.

I'll give you my WFH when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Signal boost: Secure chat app is wobbly at the moment. Not surprising after gaining 30m+ users in a week, though

Android: Conversations (or forks Conver6ations, Pix-Art)

Re: It's been obvious for days

Everyone has something to hide. Not everyone realises this or knows what it is until the failure to hide it bites them.

Under that pile of spare keys and obsolete cables is an IoT device: Samsung pushes useful retirement project for older phones

Re: Until some passing low-life sees it & thinks "hey, a free phone", that is.

Do you think the phone might take photos/video of them stealing it?

Already doing it

Automate running on Galaxy S3. Phone logged into a free SIP account. Cheap shower bluetooth speaker connected to it and fixed outside front door.

User, er I mean visitor presses button on speaker, phone calls the only account it knows, the phone I'm carrying rings, I tell the guy where to put the parcel.

Thou shalt not hack indiscriminately, High Court of England tells Britain's spy agencies

Erm

"Boris Johnson's Conservative government started a formal review last year aimed at reducing the power of judicial reviews to change the law. ®"

But they're not changing the law are they? They're upholding the law and rapping the government over the knuckles when they break it, or have I misunderstood something?

If you're a WhatsApp user, you'll have to share your personal data with Facebook's empire from next month – or stop using the chat app

Re: FOSS

I run both Matrix & XMPP servers. Matrix is a massive resource hog and most users are concentrated on the matrix.org server which makes comms run like a dog with three legs. I recommend XMPP.

Re: I now want to leave

If you use WhatsApp, but not Facebook, then Facebook probably knows almost as much about you as if you used both or only Facebook. This is through the combination of all of the unique IDs associated with the account (phone number, device IDs, SIM ID,) the accounts of people you interact with, cross references of those accounts with Facebook accounts accessed from the same devices, uploaded contacts lists to WhatsApp & Facebook accounts of people you interact with, and those crappy little Facebook & WhatApp 'contact us' things you see on websites you visit.

If you want to partially blind Facebook, don't use any of its services and block those website trackers. Even then, unless everyone you know is equally diligent, they will still know of your existence and part of your real world social graph.

Re: FOSS

A better option would be to run your own XMPP Server.

Xabber client connects to their servers on every start regardless of where your account is so Conversations client (or various forks) is a better option on Android. It also does voice & video calling. Finding suitable clients for other operating systems is left as an exercise for the reader.

Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal

I'll just leave this here

Well I'm sick and tired of hearing 'bout the world and it's hang ups

Gonna get myself together, take a ride downtown

Gotta see my Rock'n'Roll doctor

Gotta see my Rock'n'Roll doctor

Gotta see my Rock'n'Roll doctor

Gotta see him, see him today

He's gonna blow me away

Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching

Re: Only allow verified truth?

It was rhetorical.

Re: @Captain Hogwash - what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

I'm not suggesting for a minute that the situation in e.g. US or Europe is good. I am saying it's better than e.g. China or Iran. I'm also saying that there is a door slightly ajar from the former which leads to something better than either. However, it is rather heavy and does require some effort to push it right open.

Re: Only allow verified truth?

Quite. After all, are we adults or children?

Re: what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

Oh, that wasn't clear. But yes, I agree, a third stream is always welcome. Long live Jacques Loussier!

Re: what if the net stopped being one big, connected thing?

Big corporations can't throw you in jail or worse, so I know which side of your proposal I'd rather be.

Come, chant with us over a sacrificial goat and predict 2021's biggest tech stories to a high degree of accuracy

Goat

Seems a bit of a stretch to me.

As UK breaks away from Europe, Facebook tells Brits: You'll all be Californians soon

Re: The fundamental difference between the US and the EU

arises from the difference between having your cities destroyed by air bombing raids or not, I suspect.

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

"a wanky art project or marketing campaign"

There's a difference?

Brit Conservative Party used 10 million people's names to derive their country of origin, ethnicity and religion according to ICO report

Re: Synonymy

See icon!

Re: Call me Heinz 57

Ah yes. David & Goliath, that classic tale of Welsh heroism.

Android without Google – and yes it has apps: The Reg talks to founder about the /e/ smartphone

I've been using it daily for about two years

First on a Galaxy S3, then, when a build became available, on an S5. It's good if keeping out Google et al is what matters to you. But you do have to get your hands dirty occasionally if you don't want to wait too long for some things. E.g. the version on MicroG on my devices does not support Covid-19 bluetooth apps but you can work around this by flashing a later NanoDroid build. For people like me, recommended. For people like my SO, to be avoided.

Please, tell us more about how just 60 hydrogen-powered 5G drones could make 400,000 UK base stations redundant

Re: Led Zeppelin

No, but likely to result in a Communication Breakdown.

Remember when the keyboard was the computer? You can now relive those heady days with the Raspberry Pi 400

Re: Marketing has the final say

I think they do it like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ommMKTyUVU

Did Arthur C. Clarke call it right? Water spotted in Moon's sunlit Clavius crater by NASA telescope

Re: There is no Dark Side

Not a Pink Floyd fan then, eh?

Re: There is no Dark Side

As a matter of fact it's all dark.

Even 2020 cannot bring forth the Year of Linux on the Desktop

Re: Phones and tablets are the computers that people use the most

Yes, and an excellent choice for developing professional software.

Don't forget to brush your teeth, WFH staff told as Dropbox drops the office, declares itself 'virtual first'

Re: But...

You'll find that soon becomes one of the annoying interruptions from colleagues.

FFS FSF, you're 35 already? Hands up if you just sprouted a gray hair or felt a craving for a Werthers Original on reading that. Happy birthday, folks

Re: Don't forget Barley Sugar!

I remember those more as something parents gave to children who felt car sick on long treks to visit grandparents.

Re: Werthers?

Quite. Mint Imperials were always the confectionery of choice for the older Briton.

US govt wins right to snaffle Edward Snowden's $5m+ book royalties, speech fees – and all future related earnings

Re: American exceptionism means that they must police the world

Fuck yeah!

UK privacy watchdog confirms probe into NHS England COVID-19 app after complaints of spammy emails, texts

Re: I got one...

Not bothered, just curious...why the downvote? My post seems pretty innocuous and unlikely to inflame emotions.

Re: I got one...

That probably explains it. My partner, who lives at a different address, didn't get one in spite of frequent calls to and from the GP practice.

I got one...

and pretty sure I've never shared my mobile number with the GP.

Sonos turns patent war with Google up a notch with fresh lawsuit timed to coincide with Pixel, Nest jamboree

Re: it doesn't synchronise music playing across multiple units so that they are all in time

This is not true. I use the open sourced server and player software on Raspberry Pis and you can definitely group players for synchronisation.Sonos might have been the first it's been around for a long time in Squeezebox setups.

Burning down the house! Consumer champ Which? probes smart plugs to find a bunch of insecure fire-risk tat

Re: If you have an alexa

Superb!

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Not sure about this

MS Guy 1: Azure? Check. Office365? Check. What the suckers really need now is the EdgeBook.

MS Guy 2: The EdgeBook?

MS Guy 1: Yeah. We can drop all this expensive Windows development crap but keep them mainlining Microsoft while piggybacking on a cheap Linux kernel.

MS Guy 2: Ah, I see. We don't need to make the syringe to keep them wanting the drugs.

Or maybe not. But as I said, I'm not sure.

Let's go space truckin': 1970s probe Voyager 1 is now 14 billion miles from home

Re: the battery was dying anyway

What? Your phone isn't powered by plutonium?