* Posts by mark l 2

2409 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

Microsoft breaks out checkbook, turns Hungarian 'bribe' charge into a mere 'settlement'

mark l 2 Silver badge

If this had been an individual rather than a multi million dollar US company, would they would have probably been given a prison sentence of several years on top of any fine. Yet MS have got away with paying a fine which equates to around half a days profit, with a nice discount on top for being accommodating AFTER they were caught!

Hi. Sorry, we're still grinding Huawei at this: UK govt once again puts off decision to ban Chinese giant from 5G

mark l 2 Silver badge

Its probably OK now in Trumps view to supply to North Korea as he has decided Kim Jong-un is now one of the 'good guys'

I suspect our government is waiting to see what Trump decides about the US export ban on companies dealing with Huawei before they make their decision on allowing it in their network.

After all if the ban is ongoing for a while Huawei may start to struggle in supplying kit as its stock pile of components from US companies begin to dry up.

Although no doubt Huawei already have some shell companies in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere setup which will be buying components from the US and having them shipped via several countries to Huawei factories.

British ISPs throw in the towel, give up sending out toothless copyright infringement warnings

mark l 2 Silver badge

Unfortunately I can see video piracy actually getting worse with all the different providers dipping their toes into the pool and wanting to take a cut of the streaming service revenue meaning content is spread across more and more services. I can foresee a lot of people will pay for one streaming service and anything they want that isn't on that they will look to get illegally rather than pay another £8 pm just to access maybe one movie or TV show from a different provider.

Even if you wanted to legally purchase some shows on DVD box sets the likes of Amazon and Netflix original shows are not released on DVD so that isn't even an option.

Microsoft adds Internet Explorer mode to Chromium Edge, announces roadmap

mark l 2 Silver badge

Re: Why IE 11?

From what I read about 'IE Mode' in the new edge is that it isn't some compatibility layer or emulation of IE, but purely just an Edge tab showing an IE background process, rather than just launching the IE process separately.

Therefore it had to be IE11 as this is the only version MS still offer support for.

It will also mean than the MacOS version of Edge won't have the IE mode unless MS plan on porting IE over to MacOS just to be able to run IE mode.

Amazon's bugging of homes has German boffins worried that Alexa may be an outlaw

mark l 2 Silver badge

Why are recording being kept by Amazon in the first place? if it accidentally records something because it thinks it hears the keyword, surely it should either respond back to whatever query it thinks its heard, or audibly say 'I didn't understand your query, please try again' and then delete the recording.

If people want to actually use Alexa to record the conversations in the room using it like a Dictaphone then it could give a audible note of 'recording audio' before starting recording so people where aware it is actually recording.

Virgin Media blocks Imgur, literally tens of people rage at UK ISP

mark l 2 Silver badge

I wonder when someone tries to access an URL on the IWF watch list whether this triggers some other further consequence than mealy blocking access? Maybe sending all that IPs traffic logs to GCHQ for further monitoring? Which might bad for any unfortunate VM users who were trying to access a legitimate Imgur URL today.

Cloudflare comes clean on crashing a chunk of the web: How small errors and one tiny bit of code led to a huge mess

mark l 2 Silver badge

One major outage in 6 years is pretty good if we compare that against the number of Office365 problems Microsoft have had in the same period, and arguably Microsoft is a much bigger company, is better known and has deeper pockets so should be more reliable that Cloudflare on paper.

We have the best trade wars: US investigating French tech tax plan over fears it unfairly targets American biz

mark l 2 Silver badge

Isn't Jeremy Hunts solution to leaving the EU a proposition the the UK drops its corporation tax to the same level as Ireland to attract exactly the sort of multi-nationals like Facebook and Google to the UK?

You TalkTalk a big game, says ads watchdog, but your testing not good enough to say your Wi-Fi's best

mark l 2 Silver badge

A TalkTalk spokesman was undeterred, insisting: "We have one of the best routers on the market"

I received the Talktalk Sagemcom wifi hub when I signed up to their VDSL service but personally wasn't overly impressed with it. it might have reasonable wireless signal but it is let down in a lot of other areas. The admin interface is poor with it being hard to find some settings due to a bad UI and some advanced settings missing completely.

Its also lacking a USB port which means no plugging in a printer, or memory stick and being able to share it over your network. Something that the old Huawei routers they used to supply were able to do.

In the end I swapped it out for an ASUS VDSL router running ASUSWRT and flogged the Talktalk unit on ebay.

Internet imbeciles, aka British ISP lobbyists, backtrack on dubbing Mozilla a villain for DNS-over-HTTPS support

mark l 2 Silver badge

To be honest i fail to see why the ISPs should be that bothered about people using DoH? Sure they are required by the government to block certain content at the DNS level which is what they are doing. If people use technology such as VPN, proxys or DoH to get around those blocks why should they care?

The ISPs only implemented these blocks because the government required them to do, if the law were to be repealed most of them would probably drop the DNS blocking and history retention as it costs them money to maintain with no benefit to them. And there main goal is to squeeze as much money out of every subscriber as possible not police the internet.

DoH! Secure DNS doesn't make us a villain, Mozilla tells UK broadband providers

mark l 2 Silver badge
FAIL

How is DoH any different than someone using a VPN to bypass filtering by their ISP? I would say more people probably use those than DoH through FF since FF has quite a small market share.

There is nothing to stop the ISP's offering their own DoH DNS servers that their customers can connect to those and the ISP can then filter the results from the cleanfeed list.

More households invite creepy smart speakers indoors: Arch-slurper Google top dog for Q1

mark l 2 Silver badge

My neighbour has recently bought an Amazon 'smart speaker' and I can hear him due to the thin walls asking it what songs to play. So when I see he is outside in the garden I shout through the wall to get Alexa to change the song that is playing to one I want to hear rather than the dross he listens to.

But I really dont see the point of them tbh, My phone connected to a cheap £5 bluetooth transmitter on the HIFI can do exactly the same functionality with better sound quality and less privacy concerns.

There's Huawei too many vulns in Chinese giant's firmware: Bug hunters slam pisspoor code

mark l 2 Silver badge

The investigation by GCHQ already revealed that they thought the Huawei code was not very well written, so this report is hardly news, and I trust GCHQs opinion more than I do of this security consultants firm testing firmware images from over 10 years ago.

Brexit: Digital border possible for Irish backstop woes, UK MPs told

mark l 2 Silver badge

Even with a digital border, you need physical infrastructure to deal with people who for whatever reason try to cross without doing the digital bits first. The physical stuff does not exist now and certainly wont be there by the 31st October if the deal is not accepted and we leave on WTO terms.

Otherwise anyone can just drive through a border crossing with crates of bootleg goods or migrants in their boot with a strip of masking tape over their number plate and the system would not be able to do much about it.

The Eldritch Horror of Date Formatting is visited upon Tesco

mark l 2 Silver badge

Best before dates are only useful to the supermarkets as a way of ensuring they get rid of their old stock first so it makes sense for them to use a code that is not meant for the consumer. For a consumer a best before date is misleading and can cause people to throw away food that is perfectly edible because the best before date has been reached and really should be removed from packaging.

A use by date is different and should be adhered to more strictly, although with a bit of common sense food can still be eaten passed its use by date. Give it a visual and smell check first to see if there is any signs of it going bad. After all the human race has managed for millennia without pre-packed food with best before and use by dates on it, without everyone getting food poisoning.

Out of Steam? Wine draining away? Ubuntu's 64-bit-only x86 decision is causing migraines

mark l 2 Silver badge

I guess with Canonical making their money from the support from Ubuntu perhaps they have decided the amount it costs them to maintain and support a 32bit outweighs the benefits.

While Ubuntu is the most well know Linux distro I am sure that other distros will still be there to fill the void and offer 32bit support for those who want it.

Bill G on Microsoft's biggest blunder... Was it Bing, Internet Explorer, Vista, the antitrust row?

mark l 2 Silver badge

I get the feeling the phone manufacturers were not keen to get on board with Microsoft supplying the OS even if they had a product that could have competed against early Android. Sure they may now regret backing the Google horse but at least if they want to they can fork Android and role there own version without Gapps. Something they wouldn't have been able to do with a MS OS.

Awoogah! Awoogah! Firefox fans urged to update and patch zero-day hole exploited in the wild by miscreants

mark l 2 Silver badge

I am on Linux mint so get my updates from them not from Mozilla so there will have to wait for them to push out a patched version or not as there is no new Firefox build showing in update manager and I am still on 67.0.2?

We knew it was coming: Bureaucratic cockup triggers '6-month' delay of age verification block on porno in the UK

mark l 2 Silver badge

Re: There's something I don't get

Well considering the badly thought out wont someone think of the children p0rn law was supposed to go live in July, and we are currently in the EU until 31st Oct. Then we still have to abide by EU rules and regulations whether we are leaving or not.

If you hand in your notice at work you can't expect to be able to go around breaking company rules and say 'its ok I am leaving in 2 months so I don't need to follow the rules anymore'

UK.gov whacks export ban on 'grotesque' crab made by famous Brit potter bros

mark l 2 Silver badge

Would they still prefer it remained in the UK even if its going in a private collection for just a few rich people to see, as say a overseas museum buying it? As it only makes sense to remain in the UK if it is going to be accessible for the public to see it. (not that I would pay to do so as its hideous)

Finally, an AI that can reliably catch and undo Photoshop airbrushing. Who made it? Er, Photoshop maker Adobe

mark l 2 Silver badge

Since it appears that it is set up to only detect when the Adobe’s Face Aware Liquify tool has been used and therefore not other Photoshop tools or even other filters from different photo editing packages I am not sure that is really of much use. Also how well does it detect altering if other filters have been applied after the Adobe’s Face Aware Liquify tool has been used to further change the image?

Samsung reminds rabble to scan smart TVs for viruses – then tries to make them forget

mark l 2 Silver badge

Re: Sorry, couldn't resist

Kodi plugins can play BBC Iplayer content without requiring a login, ditto for getiplayer.

Microsoft's Edge gang pops a head above the parapet to give Linux fans a strong 'maybe'

mark l 2 Silver badge

If MS do release a version of Edge for Linux will support the IE mode or not? As since I believe the IE mode is just running a tab with an instance of IE in the background I don't see how they could achieve it without having a version of IE also ported to Linux.

And without the IE mode Edge is just essentially just Chrome but sending your private date to MS rather than Google so why would you want it on Linux? Especially as you can install Chromium and get a version that doesn't slurp your data off to either.

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

mark l 2 Silver badge

I quick test using an EE mobile plan where adult sites are normally blocked at the DNS by EE. I was easily able to bypass the filtering by enabling DNS over https in Firefox. So if the BBFC are using similar blocking techniques it wont even require a VPN to get around them.

Hongmeng, there's no need to feel down: It's patently obvious this is Huawei's homegrown OS

mark l 2 Silver badge

I agree I don't do anything on my phone that would likely to be of interest to the Chinese government But yet every internet search, video watched, music streamed, person contacted is currently sent off to Google for them to build a profile on me to try and push more ads.

This Free software ain't free to make, pal, it's expensive: Mozilla to bankroll Firefox with paid-for premium extras

mark l 2 Silver badge

I do use Firefox on my Linux machines and have been using it since the days before it had even reached version 1 on the old numbering scheme. But I have to say it seems slower than Chrome on the same machine loading the same sites.

Still we need alternative browsers like FF or else the browser world will just become Chromium with whoever's skin slapped on top and your choice of where to send your privacy data (Google or Microsoft?)

'Cynical and bullying' TalkTalk hackerhacker getsgets 4 yearsyears behindbehind barsbars

mark l 2 Silver badge

I watched a TV show on the BBC where some guy who was off his head on drink/drugs and used a 12inch knife to stab an officer in the arm who was trying to arrest him. That guy got a 12 month suspended sentence yes this kid gets 4 years in a YOI.

Yes he broke the law but that seems a harsh sentence for something that he did when he was still only a teenager.

When it comes to DNS over HTTPS, it's privacy in excess, frets UK child exploitation watchdog

mark l 2 Silver badge

I just got a new Nokia phone with Android Pie and it came with private DNS switched on by default, so secure DNS lookups is going to get more common.

The IWF argument about the reduction on how much content is hosted in the UK from 1998 to now is not really relevant to the use of encrypted DNS.

If the IWF identify that content is being hosted in the UK surely they should be reporting it to the police and hosting companies. And I expect 99.9% of it would be taken down by the hosting company within 24 hours once they have been notified anyway. So I very much doubt that there is still 0.04% illegal content still hosted in the UK for extended periods requiring it to be actively blocked. It would be interesting to know if IWF actually review their block list after a url has been added to it to see if it is still online or whether websites from 1998 that are long gone are still knocking around in it.

And of course if the people searching for this content were to be using TOR then the IWF block list doesn't come into it anyway.

Help the Macless: Apple’s iPadOS is a huge update that will enable more people to do without a Mac... or a PC

mark l 2 Silver badge

Re: iPadOS?

I think Google would like everyone to buy a Android phone and a Chromebook or Chrome tablet instead of an Android tablet. So they reluctantly allow Android on tablets but don't push out many updated features for it for fear of taking sales away from their ChromeOS devices.

Bad news from science land: Fast-charging li-ion batteries may be quick to top up, but they're also quick to die

mark l 2 Silver badge

Degrading in batteries from fast charging in phones or laptops is inconvenient but they are usually easy to replace (although manufacturers have made it so harder to shave a few mm of the thickness) Plus in the case of phones these devices are often replaced every few years anyway due to newer models being released.

Where I do see this as an issue is with batteries in electric vehicles, they are pushing the virtues of fast charging electric vehicles to try and make them more attractive. But if people find they had to shell out thousands of pounds after a few years to have all the batteries replaced in a car because of fast charging. They won't be particular pleased, as cars are cost a lot more to purchase than a phone or laptop.

LibreOffice 6.3 hits beta, with built-in redaction tool for sharing those █████ documents

mark l 2 Silver badge

It is good that they are continuing developing a decent alternative to MS Office but I would rather they spent time on improving the MS Office compatibility than adding in functions for 1% of users.

The redaction tool is something you could achieve the same result with the older versions of Libreoffice with just a couple more steps. Just tried it with Libreoffice 5.1. Export your document as a PDF, open the PDF in Draw, paste shapes over the words you want to redact, select all and convert to bitmap from the tools menu and save it.

Microsoft Bing is 10: That thing you accidentally use to search for Chrome? Still alive and kicking

mark l 2 Silver badge

When I first installed Mint 18 Firefox was set to search through Yahoo and so I got results from Bing. But I found a lot of the results were poor and had to keep manually opening Google and searching to find what I wanted. So in the end I changed the default search on FF to Google.

I also find the name 'Bing' to just sound stupid. Much like the word 'Brexit' and 'texted'

HP boss: Intel shortages are steering our suited customers to buy AMD

mark l 2 Silver badge

Re: AMD is cool again

The current AMD higher end line up is the best it has been for some time, but those specs will be overkill for a lot of what HP customers will be requiring, which will be basic boxes for running office, email and a browser.

For those types of tasks the CPU has not been the bottleneck for a long time now, I have a 8 year old Dell box which is still capable for daily office tasks without the CPU cores ever getting maxed out.

Pull up your SoCs: Samsung smartphones to get AMD Radeon graphics

mark l 2 Silver badge

"Both will also feature CPUs from AMD based on the Zen architecture, signifying that the console wars are well and truly over."

Just because the CPU/GPUs will be the same doesn't mean the console wars are going away anytime soon, its not like you can suddenly flick a switch and your XBOX with play Playstation games. I also remember reading that the next gen Playstation will have some AMD tech that is developed in conjunction with Sony and therefore will not be available to other OEM's (IE Microsoft) So the hardware will still have some differences which may create some advantages.

Apple kills iTunes, preps pricey Mac Pro, gives iPad its own OS – plus: That $999 monitor stand

mark l 2 Silver badge

"only managed 10 per cent adoption in Android 9, compared to 85 per cent for iOS 12."

The take up number for either is pretty irrelevant for end users as long as the version they are on will run the apps they want. With both Android and iOS being mature operating systems most of the new improvements are just small tweaks rather than vast improvements that are must have upgrades. You can probably get older versions of the OS to have the same new features by using a few 3rd party apps.

As long as your getting any security updates it doesn't matter which version you are using and even then it depends on its usage. I have a Android based STB which cost about £25 that I use for iPlayer, Youtube, Amazon prime streaming. Its never had any security updates but for what I used it for I am willing to take the risk as I don't use any other apps on it and it has a separate google login that is just used on that device nowhere else.

Apple iPrunes iTunes: Moldering platform's death expected to be announced at WWDC

mark l 2 Silver badge

Streaming is useful way of finding new music, but the issue with streaming is that the rug can be pulled out from under you at anytime leaving you with nothing to show for it. The steaming music service could close down, or they could have a fall out with certain record labels and they labels remove the songs from the service. At least with download you still have you own copy you can play no matter what.

DigitalOcean drowned my startup! 'We lost everything, our servers, and one year of database backups' says biz boss

mark l 2 Silver badge

'Backups' on the same cloud provider are not backups but just another copy of your data and they should have had backups stored elsewhere. I know this the hard way after I had 2 VPS with the same budget provider but in different datacentres both with the same data and when they went tits up I lost access to both instances. But luckily I had some backups downloaded locally but still lost some some data.

It did seem like a dick move from Digitalocean to not allow their client back into their account to at least retrieve their data though

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

mark l 2 Silver badge

MS are trying resurrect Windows RT but without learning why it failed the first time around, in that it couldn't run traditional Win32 programs and the choice of 'Metro' apps that were available were a fraction of what you could get on an iOS or Android devices. About the only thing the RT based devices had going were that they could run Office. But now that Office 365 is available for Android and Apple devices there is even less incentive to buy restricted Windows device. And even now several years later after RT was abandoned the choice of apps from the Windows app store is still pretty poor.

Guilty of hacking in the UK? Worry not: Stats show prison is unlikely

mark l 2 Silver badge

My personal opinion is that the low amounts of people sent to prison for hacking is about right. The UK prison system is already well overstretched with very little spare capacity in the prison population and the prison staff forced to supervise more and more prisoners. And a lot of these hackers who are probably anti social could be at risk from bullying in prison.

Unless their hacking had endangered lives then it is much better to deal with them with community based punishments and fines than spend £32K+ a year to keep them locked up in prison.

Leave the prisons for dangerous offenders who are a risk to the public.

No Huawei out: Prez Trump's game of chicken with China has serious consequences

mark l 2 Silver badge

For ARM, if this ban were to continue it might make more sense to shutter their Texas operations so they can then start to sell to Huawei again, than to keep a plant open in the US and loose out on the sales to one of the largest smart phone manufactures.

Where there's a will, there's Huawei: US govt already eases trade ban with 90-day reprieve

mark l 2 Silver badge

This sort of dickish move by Trump hurts the American business just as much as it does Huawei. Huawei will be now be looking to source components from elsewhere or making home grown ones. And by the time the ban is lifted they will not be dependant on US manufacturers anymore for services or parts.

I can already see that there will probably be a good aftersales market for custom ROMs with Gapps installed for Huawei phones which identify themselves as a Samsung or Motorola to get around the ban.

Swedish prosecutors request Assange detention: First step to European arrest warrant

mark l 2 Silver badge

We have to remember that he is presumed innocent until found otherwise of any of these crimes he has been accused of in both Sweden or the US. If he is found guilty of the sexual offence in Sweden I think he is likely to get a lesser sentence than he would do for the crimes he is accused of in the US. The most severe sentences in Sweden are usually a maximum of 10 years, unless it is for a crime such as murder. Sweden also has a much smaller prisoner population of just under 5000. Unlike in the US where people get sentences of 100 years plus and one prison can house thousands of prisoners.

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy: Run Huawei, Google Play, turns away, from Huawei... turns away

mark l 2 Silver badge

Although Huawei can roll out a Google free phone using the ASOP portion of Android and use their own app store, but wouldn't the US ban also stop other US based software developers and services releasing their apps on an Huawei app store? Think Facebook, Microsoft etc. Therefore meaning users would have to resort to manually downloading apps such as Whatsapp and skype onto their phone possibly from dodgy websites.

Its easy enough with rooted devices and a bit of knowledge to flash the Gapps onto a device that hasn't been certified by Google. I have a cheap Chinese tablet that I did this on a few years ago. But that isn't really something a lot of end users would want to do.

Time to reformat the old wallet and embiggen your smartmobe: The 1TB microSD is here

mark l 2 Silver badge

I will let the early adopters with deep pockets pay these launch prices. I will pick one up in another 12 - 18 months when they are down to around a quarter of the price. Especially when I can pick up 64GB cards for around a tenner at the moment and just swap them out for a fresh one as needed.

Buffer the Intel flayer: Chipzilla, Microsoft, Linux world, etc emit fixes for yet more data-leaking processor flaws

mark l 2 Silver badge

"Intel disagrees about the need to disable hyperthreading, and says it plans to add additional hardware defenses to address these vulnerabilities into future processors."

Well it took about a year for Intel to add hardware fixes for the first round of meltdown and spectre flaws, so expect that a similar amount of time before they get around to new hardware which is immune to this MDS vulnerability.

RIP Hyper-Threading? ChromeOS axes key Intel CPU feature over data-leak flaws – Microsoft, Apple suggest snub

mark l 2 Silver badge

Intel is fine with its technology, and leaves the decision to disable Hyper-Threading to its industry partners.

"Intel is not recommending disabling HT," a company spokesperson told The Register in an email.

Well what a surprise that Intel have not recommended disabling HT, doing so would be commercial suicide as they have been pushing how wonderful it is since the days of the Pentium 4. Those lovely Xeon CPUs used in data centres with loads of logical processors because of hyper threading suddenly loose half of the cores available to the OS and then don't look as attractive to buyers. And selling to server makers is where Intel makes most of its money these days with PC sales being down.

Microsoft emits free remote-desktop security patches for WinXP to Server 2008 to avoid another WannaCry

mark l 2 Silver badge

I noticed that the article doesn't mention Vista, is that because Vista is immune or just because even Microsoft don't want to admit they even made that OS any more?

Upgrade refuseniks, beware: Adobe snips away legacy versions of its Creative Cloud apps

mark l 2 Silver badge

It does annoy me when companies artificially stop you installing software on older OS for no good reason.

AFAIK there is no technical reason why Adobe should stop support for their software running on Windows 7, it just a money saving exercise so they don't have to have to have to test for bugs on anything other than 10 or train their staff on support for older OS versions. Heck it should still be possible to install it on XP or Vista if you wanted, but with warnings that your OS is out of support and that Adobe support won't help you if you have problems with the software on that OS.

Get in line, USA: Sweden reopens Assange rape allegations probe

mark l 2 Silver badge

If the UK decided to extradite to the US on some computer hacking charges as opposed to Sweden on what I think 99% of the population would see as a more serious offence. That would show there is something seriously wrong with the UK justice system.

Just in time for the Wiki-end: Chelsea Manning released from prison

mark l 2 Silver badge

If the grand jury is not classed as a court so you can't plead the 5th, How can you be in contempt of court, if it isn't a court?

The 'free world' gets a bit less free every time democratically elected governments are allowed to get away with this shit.