Posts by Snowy

UN warns of global e-waste wave as amount of gadgets dumped jumps 21% in 5 years

How much of that waste

Was devices that worked but where no longer support by the manufacturer?

Last chance to grab a Pixel 3A off Google's UK store with 4A successor around the corner

[QUOTE]Google has discontinued its hugely popular Pixel 3A and 3A XL mid-range smartphones. While the device will continue to receive updates for the foreseeable, the Chocolate Factory has no plans to produce more units.[/QUOTE]

The date for "No guaranteed Android version updates after" you are looking for is May 2022, which is also the date that the devices get " No guaranteed security updates after"

Seeing that they release version updates at the end of the year, 2021 version is likely the last they will get.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en-GB

MIT apologizes, permanently pulls offline huge dataset that taught AI systems to use racist, misogynistic slurs

Re: c****e

I too I'm drawing a blank on what it could be!

Rental electric scooters to clutter UK street scenes after Department of Transport gives year-long trial the thumbs-up

Re: Rental vs privately owned

Yes you only have to look at how some electric bike have been modified to see why they only want rented ones on the road.

Boffins baffled as supergiant star just vanishes – either it partially blew itself apart or quietly turned into a black hole

Re: Have to love the ESO's naming conventions...

Maybe something a little sillier QED Quite Enormous Device :)

White elephants in the mist: Google's upcoming Pixel 4A may ship without Soli motion recognition, per FCC filing

Re: Why use the phrase "White elephants"

Have a look at the icon I used and have another think about it

Why use the phrase "White elephants"

Consider a general move away from colour based phrases.

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

What about clotted cream icecream?

Australia's Lion brewery hit by second cyber attack as nation staggers under suspected Chinese digital assault

If China has nothing to hide...

then it should have nothing to fear in an international investigation :)

Health Sec Hancock says UK will use Apple-Google API for virus contact-tracing app after all (even though Apple were right rotters)

Re: with respect to the UK app

POTUS45 or P45 for short :)

If you're despairing at staff sharing admin passwords, look on the bright side. That's CIA-grade security

Re: Numpties, the lot of 'em.

Stepping it up another notch CyberSecurityForce

Couple wrongly arrested over Gatwick Airport drone debacle score £200k payout from cops

Boris could alway level up the payments to the Windrush claimants!

Frenchman scores €50k compensation for suffering 'bore-out' at work after bosses gave him 'menial' tasks

Re: Oui, Premier ministre translated

Yes, Prime Minister

Garden leave or gardening leave describes the practice in which an employee who has left his job - who has resigned or has had his job terminated has been made aware - is required to stay away from work during the notice period while remaining on the payroll. This practice is often used to prevent employees from taking up-to-date information with them when they leave their current employer, especially when they leave to join a competitor. The term comes from the British civil service where employees have the right to request special leave for exceptional purposes. "Gardening Leave" has become an understatement for "suspended" as An employee who has been formally suspended pending an investigation into their conduct would often ask to leave the office on special leave instead. The term was widely used in the public in 1986, when it was used in the BBC sitcom Yes, Prime Minister, episode "One Of Us". Employees continue to receive their regular wages during garden leave and must comply with their conditions of employment, such as confidentiality, at least until the end of their notice period.

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Re: £6k or is it a £3k change?

The prices of cars will only go up another 3K then :o

Bezos to the Moon: Blue Origin joins SpaceX and Dynetics in a three-horse lunar lander race

Re: BO lander

Do not forget the mile of paper they stuff into the box too.

Browse mode: We're not goofing off on the Sidebar of Shame and online shopping sites, says UK's Ministry of Defence

Amazon.com not the same as Amazon.co.uk

Has The Register forgot that .com is not the same as .co.uk?

Geoboffins reckon extreme rainfall might help some volcanoes pop off

Steam

Could it be that with more flow, more water is getting deep down before turning into steam. Which would raise the pressure by a lot more than the pressure of the water alone?

Wanted: An exit strategy from the overt surveillance of smartphone contact tracing

Re: Yebbut...

For now yes but it will not be long until they can do facial recognition with goggles on too.

Ex-director accuses iRobot of firing him for pointing out the home-cleaner droids broke safety, govt regulations

Re: He obviously misunderstood his position

I thought it was !it was a rogue engineer" and "lesson will be learnt"?

If you're running Windows, I feel bad for you, son. Microsoft's got 99 problems, better fix each one

Re: I didn't know it was built in!

Thank you and have an upvote and a ----->

Apple finally clambers to top of phone market again as spider-eyed iPhone 11 lures fanatics out of the shadows

Re: One hit wonder?

Sure they just serve the ads themsevles https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/1/17418664/apple-ad-sales-app-target-smartphone. They may not directly share your information but you are still being sold.

Facebook coughs up $550m to make AI photo tagging lawsuit vanish. How ever will it survive on that $17.9bn left over?

Re: What community?

Yes people not on Facebook do not even get asked if they mind being tagged into photo's, so where is there share on the pot for them?

If only 3 in 100,000 cyber-crimes are prosecuted, why not train cops to bring these crooks to justice once and for all, suggests think-tank veep

Re: Where the buck should stop much of the time

I agree and the number of websites that will not display anything without a script is sadly increasing all the time.

Caltech takes billion-dollar bite out of Apple, Broadcom for using its patented Wi-Fi tech without paying a penny

Re: 5... 4... 3... 2.. 1...

Yes in the same way people who purchased one of Apples various iThings are not liable for infringements that may have occurred during their production.

Why so glum, VMware? It's Friday. Oh, is it this $235m patent infringement invoice from Densify? Too bad, so sad

Funny

I do find it rather funny that US8,209,687 B2 references Vmware 43 times in their document.

German taxpayers faced with €800k Windows 7 support bill due to Deutschland dithering

So much for German efficiency

Just remember that is approximately €800,000 this year, next year it will double and again the following year. To be supported until 2023 that is approximately €5.6million.

Europe mulls five year ban on facial recognition in public... with loopholes for security and research

Re: Optimization of Citizenry

Works until they get better at data mining, then they can sort the Junk out. Trouble could be unless the Junk is very random it is still going to tell things about you or worse if the Junk contains something the powers that be do not approve of.

Microsoft's on Edge and you could be, too: Chromium-based browser exits beta – with teething problems

Odd they support windows 7

[quote]Microsoft may love Linux these days, but it isn't yet shipping a Linux build. Edge is currently available for macOS, Windows (7, 8, 8.1, 10), iOS and Android.[/quote]

Odd they did a build for Windows 7 when it is EoL.

UK data watchdog kicks £280m British Airways and Marriott GDPR fines into legal long grass

The fees and fines are:

Taken from The Information Commissioner's Office web site (https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2018/11/ico-issues-the-first-fines-to-organisations-that-have-not-paid-the-data-protection-fee/)

The fees you pay each year and the amount they fine you for not paying.

Tier 1 – micro organisations. Maximum turnover of £632,000 or no more than ten members of staff. Fee: £40 Fine: £400

Tier 2 – SMEs. Maximum turnover of £36 million or no more than 250 members of staff. Fee: £60 Fine: £600

Tier 3 – large organisations. Those not meeting the criteria of Tiers 1 or 2. Fee: £2,900. Fine £4,000

There is a £5 discount for payments by direct debit.

Looks wrong to me for Tier one and two the fine is 10 times the fee but Tier 3 it is not even twice the fee. I think massive companies pay a relatively small fee which if they do not pay get a relatively small fine and now I know if they do something wrong they can get away without paying any fine. This does look rather anti-competitive!

If the ICO needs a slogan I think it should be

"Catch and fining the small while letting the big get away with it"

What was Boeing through their heads? Emails show staff wouldn't put their families on a 737 Max over safety fears

Lots of concern but no much care.

[quote]"These newly-released emails are incredibly damning. They paint a deeply disturbing picture of the lengths Boeing was apparently willing to go to in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, flight crews, and the flying public, even as its own employees were sounding alarms internally,"[/quote]

Yes they sounded the alarm internally but no one was brave enough (or concerned) enough to sound the alarm externally?

I guess sending a sharply worded email counts as "doing something" so when the brown stuff hits the air mover you can say "well I tried to do somethings about it" rather than doing something about it.

Guess this could be down to whist they have the Whistleblower Protection Act in the USA that only covers federal whistleblowers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act)

Hundreds of millions of Broadcom-based cable modems at risk of remote hijacking, eggheads fear

Re: "but could for example, also be done through ads on a trusted website"

It is "could not care less" using "could care less" means they have to care some amount to be able to care less.

Imagination and Apple, sitting in a tree, l-i-c-e-n-s-i-n-g GPU tech semi-secretly: Brit chip designer strikes iGiant deal

Re: Two and a half years ago I wrote

Patents are both a good and bad idea.

Good that they protect new ideas which should drive innovation. With the right licensing allowing others to build on your patent and have even better things possible :)

The bad some patents are way to broad and/or for something that is obvious. Then rather than being used to protect innovation they are used to stop others from competing.

Also enforcement of them is very much down to how deep your pockets are which is to my mind the very opposite of the reason for patents. Which should be to protect companies from having their ideas stolen by other companies with either. Also with how quickly things become obsolete is 20 years to long for some things?

What would be nice is a better way for patents to be licensed which would allow the patent to be protected but also not stop innovation.

Pint for the one who can fix Patents :)

Two and a half years ago I wrote

[quote]Call the IP lawyer.

If designing a GPU from scratch is so easy why it intel's so poor.

Even if you do design your own GPU you're going to still need to use a lot of other companies patents.

Looks more like they saw how badly the company depended on them. Then decided to drive the price down and pick it up for a song.[/quote]

Them getting rescued was not part of the plan but I do wonder if they are paying less to get hold of more...

Today's budget for application improvements is brought to you by the letters "Y", "K" and the number "2"

Re: Generally true

Look on the bright side the backup failed a compliance audit and not due to being needing to do a recovery for some reason :)

FYI: FBI raiding NSA's global wiretap database to probe US peeps is probably illegal, unconstitutional, court says

Re: and let's not forget the lies those officials have told.

Interesting phrase "We can't tell you how many US passport holders are on this database", does not mean they do not know how many are in it just they can not tell you how many are.

if the did not know surely they would have said "We do not know how many US passport holders are on this database"

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Aye should they have been looking at the stuff they were coping, was that the reason they where sacked?

Boffins believe it was volcanoes, not just life, that made Earth what it is today – oxygen rich

Re: Really?

Or someone is setting up the idea that the rise in CO2 is in part a natural thing?

Internet Society says opportunity to sell .org to private equity biz for $1.14bn came out of the blue. Wow, really?

True

They do love spending other people's money because I am 100% certain it will not be his own he spent last time so he will not be spending it time either.

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

When

Are they going to get a fine for pirating BBC content, given so many have seen it a very large one too :)

Uni of London loses attempt to block mobe mast surveyors from Paddington rooftop

Re: Vodafone's London HQ also a NIMBY?

No they do not overlap by that much, yes there is some overlap but nowhere near such that the next tower is providing covering under its neighbour.

Also from reading about the maximum cell range is about 500 metres and the building are about 62o metres apart.

Vodafone's London HQ also a NIMBY?

[quote]The University of London has lost a Court of Appeal attempt to block a new mobile phone mast that would have served Vodafone's London HQ.[/quote]

Why not just put it on the roof of their own building or do they not want to be that close to a mobile phone mast?

After 10 years, Google Cloud Print will finally be out of beta... straight into ad giant's graveyard

Re: Killing The Competition

May be a nice website but as it needs scripts to display anything I see nothing on it :/

HP to Xerox: Nope, your $33.5bn bid falls short of our valuation

Re: "No brainer" (Icahn)

Or it is only something you would do if you had no brain :)

Facebook iOS app silently turns on your phone camera. Ah, relax – it's just a bug, lol!?

Which is it

[/quote]Facebook’s Vice President of Integrity Guy Rosen responded to one of the tweets stating that it “sounds like a bug, we are looking into it.”[/quote]

What is the bug the camera turning on or the users noticing the camera turning on?

Next year's Windows 10 comes bounding into the Slow Ring, which means 19H2 waits in the wings

Re: 1909

Thanks but I like my Windows updates to be cold.

Don't miss this patch: Bad Intel drivers give hackers a backdoor to the Windows kernel

Re: Trust Me. I'm a Microsoftie

In the same way a country with democratic in its named is not democratic , anything with Trusted in its named is not to be Trusted?

Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink

Re: Going backwards?

Then back to the 737 Max sounds like the same kind of "progress"?

I'm still not that Gary, says US email mixup bloke who hasn't even seen Dartford Crossing

Re: I, Tonya

You could try sending Tonya an Email just change Tony into Tonya where it is in the email address and inform her of the error?

Senior GitLab exec resigns over plan to stop hiring engineers in China and Russia

Re: Shirley...

The gender of the UBER sysadmins, developers and security researchers or the passenger should have no bearing on it, none of them should have access to that data and the gender of the passenger is not a factor in this.

Come on, you can't be serious: Now Australia mulls face-recog tech for p0rno site age checks

Re: Database of photos to be hacked..Trust us...

No need to hack it just Email you blackmail victims saying you have.