Posts by Dan 55

Microsoft Windows 10 'Burger King' build 1903: Have it your way... and it may still leave a nasty taste in your mouth

Re: Windows 1903 background horror

Clockwork Orange. Hope the upvote was because someone knew what I meant...

Re: Tells us a lot....attitude

I'm not a betting man but I'd put quite a lot of money on that shop not going anywhere.

Re: Windows 1903 background horror

Forcing corp backgrounds always struck me as a bit too Agent Orange for my liking.

Re: Tells us a lot....attitude

Ununinstallable?

Re: The pricks!

Will it be like last autumn's update?

"Windows has found a problem and fixed it by wiping your documents folder. Have a nice day."

Uncle Sam to blow millions on mind-control weapon tech that can be fitted without surgery

Re: Mood control

Black Mirror - Men Against Fire.

Someone at The Pentagon probably saw it and said they wanted one of those.

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

Never really had a problem online, the only one I would have liked to get hold of but never managed to was the Nokia N9 but that was because Elop was selling them in "selected markets".

They've already made it so it's hard to get a device without being locked into a provider.

Go to shop, pay money, walk out with new never-locked device?

Re: Continuous Integration vs Donald Trump

It's a big world outside Murica's borders, there are other consumers apart from American ones...

A GSMA-run app store to cut Google out and get back to The Way Things Used To Be (given that Google and Apple cut manufacturers and telecos out with their app stores)?

But the GSMA have never knowingly got anything off the ground since SMS so I doubt this would be any different.

Re: OpenAppStore

That's more of a repository than a store. It can't charge credit cards or do operator billing and has no user accounts.

Re: Be careful what you wish for

Whatever happens, it won't be those US companies coming to an agreement with Huawei to pre-install those apps on their phones or to put them on a Huawai-run app store.

Re: Continuous Integration vs Donald Trump

It's not going to be pretty if retailers can't sell current stock. Trump will have turned retailers, operators, and manufacturers against Android overnight.

Continuous Integration vs Donald Trump

"We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications. For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices."

How are they going to do this?

Pull security updates for active phones from now on - madness.

Not accept new Google Account sign-ups or logins from Huawei mobiles - what happens if you reset your phone and it's worked up until now?

Implement by model ID - Huawei can sell current stock for several months.

Only implement the ban from Android Q onwards - someone in the US administration could notice get upset.

Back in 2016, Huawei was reported to be hiring ex-Nokia developers for "secret phone OS project", at the time seen as a way to fend off Google attempts to further tighten its grip on Android. Just two months ago, Huawei's mobile chief Richard Yu was clearly authorised to confirm this information, letting it slip out in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt.

Go Sailfish!

This is the best thing that's happened yet to give manufacturers an incentive to break the Google monopoly. EU fines are one thing but they don't hit the mobile manufacturer, knowing that Racist Grandpa could get upset with your company at any time and tell Google to pull the plug is something completely different.

Android relies on foreign mobile manufacturers, there isn't one home-grown manufacturer except the Pixel slurpmobile which is expensive, not widely available from third-party retailers, and has terrible after-sales service.

Now Chinese-made drones rubbing US govt up the Huawei: 'Strong concerns' DJI kit threat to national security

Irony meter asplodes

"The United States government has strong concerns about any technology product that takes American data into the territory of an authoritarian state that permits its intelligence services to have unfettered access to that data or otherwise abuses that access," the memo continued.

UK's planned Espionage Act will crack down on Snowden-style Brit whistleblowers, suspected backdoored gear (cough, Huawei)

Re: 1984 !

Nothing at all if you're a child who thinks in black and white.

You've still got FoM until the can hits the wall and then you'll be grandfathered into residency for that EU country.

Re: 1984 !

Brexit as mandated by the referendum was confused and unclear (52-48%), so be happy because that's what you've got.

One more step down the road we go

Step by stupid fucking step.

But it can't happen here...

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Lync conferencing and sharing the desktop...

... soon teaches you to set the wallpaper to a solid colour.

Standards group W3C wins support from all major players to get AI working in the browser

Good job they're fixing the Spectre exploits before rolling this out

I mean, we wouldn't want anyone to be able to access CPU or RAM who shouldn't, would we?

OK, Google, please do a half-hearted U-turn: Stay of execution for smart home APIs after Big G goes cuckoo in the Nest

Re: "just because Google wants more control."

You do know the reason Google has one account is so all the different services under the account can be data mined to target ads, right?

Re: "just because Google wants more control."

What does a Google Account login have that stops password reuse that can't be fitted onto a Nest Account login or indeed any other login anywhere?

Speaking of idiots, I'm not surprised you posted anonymously.

Re: Nest - the only smarts in my home

Your list doesn't address the manufacturer being bought up though. I doubt anything would except a law legally ring-fencing data in these kinds of purchases, in which case there's probably little reason for manufacturers to get bought in the first place.

Re: OK Google, what data have you got on me?

And now I'll post the right link.

OK Google, what data have you got on me?

150GB of stuff including data you thought never left your phone and data on you held by other corporations. The data you thought was deleted, shadow profiles, and other sundry information that we think you won't need to export isn't included.

I don't think any rational person could be in favour of adding Nest to a Google account.

(Link originally posted by fellow Commentard Hans 1.)

Oracle AI's Eurovision horror show: How bad can it be? Yep. Badder

El Reg is treading on thin ice

Oracle hauled Google to court over nine lines of text, this esteemed organ could be getting an e-mail off an Oracle Compliance Officer soon.

Let's check in with our friends in England and, oh good, bloke fined after hiding face from police mug-recog cam

Re: Is there a law for that?

I'm sure the other police officers standing next to the first one will all testify as to how offended and alarmed they were.

Re: Is there a law for that?

The problem was he swore and as soon as he did that he was fined.

This is what happened in another trial four months ago, also curiously in Romford.

So the lesson is don't let yourself get riled up.

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Re: Google to host videos ...

iAd was discontinued 3 years ago.

Re: Cloud Storage

It's pretty bad that Google has copies of local images which he thought he never uploaded, shared, or sync'd, records of Amazon and eBay purchases, OK Google recordings that start before he said OK Google, and all available via publicly available URLs (long ones that may or may not be predictable)... 150 gigs of Takeout data, and that won't be all of it, there's probably also shadow profiles connected to his account.

Office 365 user security practices are woeful, yet it's still 'Microsoft's fault' when an org is breached

"Even by flinging a document or two into OneDrive, Microsoft will reward you with 10 points"

So are these points a reflection of account security or just using more Office 365 products which most people never touch?

Supreme Court says secret UK spy court's judgments can be overruled after all

Re: Judges

Indeed, but that still doesn't affect the Tory party's stated policy for a decade of rescinding the 1998 Human Rights Act, meaning British courts won't have to take it into account into their rulings. People will have to exhaust all British court options before taking their case to the European Court of Humans Rights which takes years and is expensive.

Presumably Brexit makes it easier to do this because all new EU entrants have to have their courts take the European Convention of Human Rights into account in their rulings which is what the Tory party wants to wriggle out of.

Re: Judges

The divorce also includes Euratom and the ECHR whether by accident (it's got the word "Europe" in it, innit?) or design (overthrow by the born to rule crowd).

Titan-ic disaster: Bluetooth blunder sinks Google's 2FA keys, free replacements offered

Re: What do you expect with Bluetooth?

Bluetooth is not even the same as BLE, Bluetooth got became more-or-less secure after about decade then BLE was added with all the same mistakes that the original Bluetooth made.

UK Home Office: If we want Ofcom to break the law, that should be perfectly legal

This is so much arse-covering bollocks

0845/0870 indirect access numbers which let you call abroad are still (barely) a thing, and at least when I regularly used them admittedly years ago the person at the other end saw a random number which maybe was from the UK or maybe from the foreign country. Yet somehow it wasn't illegal/didn't have to be be stamped out because terrorism/etc...

GSM gateways are exactly the same thing only with a SIM.

The Home Office is dysfunctional, they'll spend years burning money fighting till the bitter end over every single decision they screw up.

Your FREE end-of-the-world guide: What happens when a sun like ours runs out of fuel

Re: So what that means...

The meaning of life is to propagate itself, so you get bonus points if you help unlock the space-faring civilization or keep Earth habitable achievements. Being excelent to each other might help others achieve that goal even if you directly don't.

Re: Perhaps

In an ever-expanding universe the rest of Westminster could have accelerated away from her, clinging onto the dispatch box, in a starless void. And she still wouldn't manage to get an agreement.

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

Re: All good here

Nobody really pro-MS would be extolling the virtues of having to reboot after an update in 2019, they'd just keep a dignified silence.

How much open source is too much when it's in Microsoft's clutches? Eclipse Foundation boss sounds note of alarm

Re: VSCodium?

Even if it is anonymous, you should have seen enough stories since the turn of the millennium to open your eyes to reality...

So no, I don't trust the telemetry in Windows 10, Office 365, VS Code, github, etc... one bit.

Re: How narrow are El Reg pages these days?

What ads?

Re: The youf what accept this hasn't learned from the grey beards.

Remember how systemd got crowbarred into practically every Linux distribution?

Well, imagine something like that, but with MS instead of Poettering.

Eclipse has got its own problems

Rampant feature creep leading to a maze of twisty little settings all alike, terrible documentation, stuff that doesn't work without loads of messing about, other stuff that just doesn't work, and some versions of it are on life support. I can see why VS Code's simplicity is attractive.

New builds, new Edge and some old friends: Everything that wasn't Azure from Microsoft's week that was

The new PowerToys, in this form, should not be necessary unless something is wrong with the UI

Due in the summer, the first two utilities bearing the PowerToys moniker will consist of one to remind users that Windows 10 can have multiple desktops when maximising a window, and another to show a list of shortcuts.

For the latter, we'd recommend a follow of Microsoft engineer Jen Gentleman, who has made it a personal mission to share as many Windows 10 hotkeys with the world as possible.

The original PowerToys made a UI for settings which didn't have one. This one is more about making a more obvious UI for settings which already have a UI. Where's the discoverability in Windows 10?

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

Re: Dear CS6 user, you ungrateful person....

Are they on archive.org?

Dear Valued Adobe Creative Cloud Customers,

We know who you are and where you live and we've got a lovely big licensing database.

You wouldn't want an audit, would you?

You're not getting off this treadmill, we've got you now. You should have stayed with the retail versions when you had the chance but you jumped at the shiny trinkets we offered you because you're just as greedy as we are.

Love,

Shantanu, your friendly Adobe Mafioso^WCEO.

P-p-p-pick up a Pengwin: Windows Subsystem for Linux boffins talk version 2

Re: Exactly true

Yes.

Re: Embrace....Extend...Extinguish....Except.....

If devs move desktops off Windows and enterprises find out the house doesn't burn down after all, it sets a dangerous precedent. A previous cost which was thought impossible to reduce, the MS danegeld, becomes reducible.

Re: Exactly true

E.g. stuff like this.

SQL injections are still a thing though.

That'll learn the Federation for using MS SQL Server.