Posts by Dan 55

Microsoft drops a little surprise thank-you gift for sitting through Build: The source for GW-BASIC

Re: Please no

What do you mean you don't like the Headspace skin?

For the price tag, this iPad Pro keyboard better damn well be Magic: It isn't... but it's not completely useless either

Re: £350 for a keyboard

It's Magic.

Re: A pokey terraced house in Middlesborough for a month

I'm just wondering how long an iPad Pro with fancy keyboard will last in a student house in the Boro. Probably not even as long as the parmo.

Mind your language: Microsoft set to swing the axe on 27 languages in iOS Outlook

Consistency

They should be adding missing languages in the other iOS applications.

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

Tell that to yer kidney stones.

Microsoft announces official Windows package manager. 'Not a package manager' users snap back

Re: Why not use an existing Package Manager?

You mean The Microsoft Ways... Windows Update, Software Center, Microsoft Store, this new package manager...

Why? They've already got iWork.

Easyjet hacked: 9 million people's data accessed plus 2,200 folks' credit card details grabbed

Re: Highly sophisticated

I'm starting to believe the UK is a full-fledged kakistocracy and there's no way back from it.

New Zealand releases Bluetooth-free COVID-19 tracing app

Re: IQ downward spiral...

I think many people in many other countries would look at their nation's their own Covid-19 response and sign up for the kind of idiocracy NZ has in a heartbeat.

Project Reunion: Microsoft's attempt to tear down all those barriers it's built for Windows developers over the years

So let me get this straight

They've just done it yet again, thrown out Xamarin Forms (sucks if you ever used that), and come out with a new thing. And this is supposed to be a good?

We are getting to the point of a new framework every 2 years.

Just stick with Win32 and we'll see who blinks first, the huge mass of Win32 developers or MS trying to bork Win32 in Windows 10.

Apple's MagicPairing for Bluetooth fails to enchant after mischief-making bugs found hiding in the stack

Whenever I have some BT headphones within range of more than one paired device with their BT on, it's pot luck which one they connect to.

So forcing pairing with every Apple device you have doesn't sound like a feature I want, although I'm sure Apple have done something Magic so connecting is better too.

MagicPairing adds Apple's iCloud service into the equation. It generates fresh permanent keys based on user-specific iCloud keys every session, a security improvement over permanent keys that remain unchanged. It does so, the researches explain, using a symmetric ratcheting algorithm and authenticated encryption.

So is that more secure or just adding a lot of unnecessary complication to the process of pairing some headphones?

Fancy watching 'Bake Off' together with mates and alone at the same time? The BBC's built a tool to do that

Re: By requiring Authenticated login for online viewing ...

The BBC still hasn't rolled out sign-on for iPlayer on Kodi.

Doors closed by COVID-19, Brit retro tech museums need your help

Re: The Centre for Computing History

Two boys to one BBC? Luxury. When I were a lad there was only one BBC for the whole primary school.

Later on in high school there was a classroom which had about 10 of them, Prestel, and a Valiant Turtle. Mmm, marvelous.

Although I've never been to either of these two museums, I'll be adding them onto the list of things that I'll be throwing a few coins into the hat for, as if they go they probably won't be coming back.

Beer gut-ted: As many as '70 million pints' spoiled during coronavirus pandemic must be destroyed in Britain

Re: Milk consumption?

I don't get it. We are talking about recent changes in consumer habits yet we are appatently blaming "these kinds of people" who have been the scapegoat since forever.

Does not compute.

Re: Milk consumption?

So the recent furloughs and unemployment have nothing to do with the recent changes in consumers habits?

Re: Milk consumption?

I'd really like to know how exactly the UK consumers have changed their habits.

Food poverty is the answer.

Exclusive: almost a fifth of UK homes with children go hungry in lockdown

The dangers of no stock rotation

Of course what the BBPA should be doing is taking a leaf out of the government's book and continually changing the guidelines so the beer is still officially considered as meeting the quality threshold.

Tales from the crypt-oh: Nvidia accused of concealing $1bn in coin-mining GPU sales as gaming revenue

Re: I think most people here are missing the point

Do you think investors didn't know what was happening when the cryptomining bubble took off and any half-decent GPU went flying off the shelves?

The investors say Nvidia was supposed to draw an arbitrary line between sales to Group A and B buying the same GPU X, but how?

If the investors were sitting on a chair when the music stopped they wouldn't be suing anyone. But they weren't, so they lost that game.

Rust marks five years since its 1.0 release: The long and winding road actually works

Re: Meh

You'll have to look for a long time to find a modern compiler C which doesn't throw up a warning if you confuse the equality operator with the assignment operator.

Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two

Re: In keeping

I agree, but Clippy's getting a bit long in the tooth now. How about SlurpZilla?

The end really is nigh – for 32-bit Windows 10 on new PCs

They did, until Catalina came along.

Re: Linux desktop for decades

The subheading.

Stop tracking me, Google: Austrian citizen files GDPR legal complaint over Android Advertising ID

Google are so full of it

"in the case of non-account holders, Google does not have the means to verify the identity of data subjects from an Advertising ID" - so they do have the means for 99.9999999% of Android users.

"you may immediately cease the processing of personal data related to your Advertising ID by resetting your Advertising ID." - and then immediately start the processing of personal data with the new advertising ID generated immediately afterwards.

The Rise of The (Coffee) Machines: I need assistance. I think I'm running Windows. Send help

Re: First person

Heeeey there, we can't quite find your hard disk. Alrighty then!

[OK] [Ignore] [Cancel] [Abort] [Exit] [Close]

Re: Windows that won't resize :(

... and it won't let you select and copy the text either.

Not quite Windows

All Windows error messages have been reduced to "Oops we're sorry but something's gone wrong there. Please try again later or talk to your administrator who's somehow supposed to know what the fuck this vague message means."

Mad dash for webcams with surge in videoconferencing has turned out rather nicely for Logitech

Re: People don't know how to use webcams

Why should someone even have to put the laptop on top of a pile of books because the laptop manufacturer has stuck the webcam under the screen so it doesn't spoil their wonderful design language and super-thin bezels? Now try typing on the keyboard when it's on top of a pile of books.

I ain't using no nostrilcam.

I imagine much of Logitech's success lately is down to that, people buying a webcam to clip on top of the screen even though they've already got one, mounted in probably the most useless place possible.

DBA locked in police-guarded COVID-19-quarantine hotel for the last week shares his story with The Register

Re: And this is why the Aussies are on top of it

What's the PPE situation like in French care homes?

Was testing in care homes scarce-to-nonexistent in France?

Were people sent back from hospitals to care homes without being tested in France?

Did the official French healthcare guidance mean patients with symptoms could mix with patients without symptoms as they were classified as living in the same household?

Were deaths in care homes not quoted as part of the official stats for a long time, and later on when they were quoted were they revised upwards by the government's statistics body but still not quoted in the official stats in France?

By accident or design, the UK's way is a very good way of sweeping the problem under the carpet.

Re: And this is why the Aussies are on top of it

our Health Service was not overwhelmed like theirs was.

No, the UK pushed the problem into care homes.

Re: What a shit hole

The UK is now proposing the same thing, a couple of months after it would have been useful.

One gets the idea they're just going with whatever plays well in focus groups.

FYI: Your browser can pick up ultrasonic signals you can't hear, and that sounds like a privacy nightmare to some

Re: I am tempted ..

Even better: "Okay Google, blood! Hey Siri, death! Alexa, war! Cortana, rumpy pumpy"

It's been done.

Re: It's the microphone, not the browser

I've disabled everything for Play Services except storage and telephone, but when it receives a phone call it sometimes pops up a notification saying Play Services needs some permissions set and underneath there's the list of permissions which are currently denied.

That's just what I need when the phone is ringing.

The next phone will be Sailfish.

Chinny reckon

And last week, the discussion thread was closed by Raymond Toy, a Google software engineer and co-chair of the W3C's Audio Working Group.

Toy argued that if a developer is allowed to use a specific audio sampling rate, no additional permission should be required – few users enjoy dealing with permission prompts, after all.

Isn't it more like there's no way to phrase the permission prompt that doesn't sound creepy?

Never good to have someone working for Google on the chair of something. They'll push all manner of nonsense through in the name of their employer.

Forever mothballed: In memoriam Apple Butterfly Keyboard (2015-2020)

That would be a decision for the hardware manufacturers to build support for USB keyboards into their computers and for the customers to buy them (and they did, but it took a long time for PCs to drop the AT connector and you can still buy AT-USB adaptors). This is more like an OS upgrade for existing computers dropping support for the numberpad for no particular reason. It won't affect many people but it will affect others.

I really see no reason to drop support for 32-bit Intel software if the OS is properly architectured and ARM support is around the corner anyway. The ARM version of the kernel would be a different OS build anyway with its own set of bugs.

So, as long as a crappy feature is well advertised, that makes it okay?

If they are moving to ARM, why would it matter anyway? Apple should just allow 32 bit Intel software to continue running on the Intel version of mac OS. There's a lot of 32 bit software that won't be updated, if you buy ARM hardware you know it won't work but otherwise it's just yet more forced obsolescence.

NUC NUC. Who's there? It's Intel, with a pint-sized 8-core Xeon workstation

You can sometimes get away with using Yatse or Kore Android apps instead of DLNA get Kodi to play e.g. YouTube or videos from the NAS. There's also a cast to Kodi plugin for Firefox.

As for Miracast, my TV does it, so I turn it on when I need it and use that instead of Kodi. As Miracast uses WiFi Direct the TV doesn't need to be on the LAN (which it never has been and never will be).

Unfortunately Kodi supports DNLA but doesn't support Miracast.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: OMG, the privacy implications are apocalyptic...

The difference is the sender's phone sends the list of device IDs and dates it has met them to the central server and the central server sends this list to all phones because it doesn't itself have a list of device IDs. Finally the list is compared on each phone. Also, device IDs are regenerated each day.

So, unlike the NHS approach, the server doesn't know which phone has which device ID. This, coupled with daily device ID randomization limits the possibilities for tracking and deanonymisation.

Re: Stick to the tech, please

Your questions are answered in the article I linked to.

Re: Stick to the tech, please

Precisely.

No evidence No 10 advisers attended Sage during previous crises

It is a purely scientific committee which produces reports for the government... until now where 13 out of 23 members receive their salary from the government.

Re: Can tell when you're within 6' of an infected person? Skeptical.

I'm pretty sure it's not going to be able to find out that people living in flats or working in office blocks have walls and floors between them.

Re: Stick to the tech, please

There are very few countries who have followed a herd immunity policy and the death stats show it's not been a success.

Also, SAGE has 13 members out of 23 which are paid government advisors in one capacity or another.

If you would like a demonstration close to home, try comparing NI (followed UK Government advice) and Ireland (followed Irish government advice, which was basically following WHO advice).

Slightly further away we have Sweden alone among the Scandinavian countries following a UK-style policy and the stats show this.

Re: Stick to the tech, please

I believe herd immunity via contagion instead of vaccination was originally pushed by one Demonic Cummings, according to the Sunday Times exposé.

Also, NHSX and Faculty were originally designing the app based on a herd immunity policy.

So you'll forgive me if I'm somewhat cynical of the claim that Cummings was pushing for a harder lockdown on SAGE. As a government advisor he shouldn't even have been there.

Re: It asks for your location?

On Android, you must allow the app's location permission and turn on location services for an app to be able to do Bluetooth scanning.

Also, with those settings, any app can also find out the phone's location if it wanted to because it already has permission to query location services. The NHS contact tracing app may or may not be one of these.

So Google's original flimsy reasoning brought in with Android 6 to get people to turn on location services has now come back to bite us all in the arse.

Microsoft puts dual-screen devices and Windows 10X in the too-hard basket

Re: Dual Screen Woes

Windows already does dual monitors, a main monitor, hotpluging monitors, touch screens, and a virtual keyboard. It's all there, it's just not quite right and not linked together right.

It can't be beyond the wit of man to use all that to get the effect they want they achieve for these devices... unless perhaps the dependencies are horrific.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Re: No chance

Let's cut to the chase:

What is a government department doing sending a mailshot to just one party's members? What do you think that means for data protection? What does that mean for people who aren't paid up members of the ruling party?

Would you agree if, say, the US government only informed Republican party members they can get testing?

It stinks and you know it does.

Re: No chance

It seems to give first preference to Tory party members as the they're the ones receiving the emails. What happens if you're a member of another party or not a party member? You're not going to get a message from Matt Cockup.

Re: No chance

Oops, sorry, here's the proper link:

Conservative party members sent tests

Re: No chance

If I may be permitted to spam a post from another El Reg article earlier today which shows how any semblance of data protection in law has been thrown out the window:

----

Vote Leave AI firm wins seven government contracts in 18 months

Conservative party members sent tests

So in these two stories, we have:

- No data separation between the NHS and Tory party membership lists (sign up for the Tory party if you want a test, if you are in the Tory party you are apparently a key worker).

- No data separation between the government and Faculty, the Vote Leave data mining firm.

- No data separation between the previous things and Palantir.

But, please do install the NHS-government-Faculty-Palantir app.

Icon looks a bit like Cummings with a moustache.