Posts by Dan 55

Truck, sweet truck: Volvo's Chinese owner unveils methanol/electric truck with bathroom and kitchen

Re: Just don't use it in Europe!

In countries where the ban applies, the employer is obliged to provide drivers with a possibility to have their weekly rest in a convenient place of accommodation, in decent sanitary conditions.

Absolutely shocking.

Calendars have gone backwards since the Bronze Age. It's time to evolve

Re: The big monster here is Microsoft

Windows a can sync to generic provider but the UI doesn't let you.

However you can set up an iCloud account (doesn't have to really exist) then edit it.

So people are driven to the big providers that Windows 10 officially supports because of a brain-dead UI. I'll leave you to decide whether or not it's by accident or design.

Expired cert breaks Windows 11 snipping tool, emoji panel, S Mode features, other stuff

If I ever got a bug report with a screenshot like that then I would be completely unsurprised. My current record is a bmp in a ppt in a zip.

Greenshot. You can thank me later.

Reg reader returns Samsung TV after finding giant ads splattered everywhere

Re: How does it

How does it work if you're just feeding it an HDMI connection from a vermin media tivo box?

Thanks to the magic of Automatic Content Recognition where the TV uploads information about enough pixels from each frame so the programme you're watching can be identified by the mothership.

Reg debate asks readers about their post pandemic status. Half ask, 'What status?'

Re: "management never forgives and never forgets"

Yep, that's what I was trying to say.

Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson

Re: Is it really a fork?

They re-work security patches and some updates so they work on Gecko with XUL. Which begs the question why can't Mozilla maintain Gecko with XUL?

Re: Forks are a sign of success.

I think the reasons for dropping XUL were Mozilla let it rot. Mozilla didn't produce much XUL documentation and barely any for XULRunner. In turn people had difficulty using XUL and XULRunner, and those small developer numbers self-justified Mozilla's lack of interest in promoting its own project.

Waterfox Classic is based on FF56, just before Quantum. They're updating it but it's having trouble with more websites now, e.g. IBMs. But I'm in no doubt that Mozilla could have kept XUL and XULRunner going as well if a small team, a one-man band during some periods, have kept Waterfox Classic going.

Mozilla spend time cutting features and futzing about with the UI in their flagship project and don't support other projects properly - FirefoxOS for phones has turned into KaiOS and FirefoxOS for TVs is being maintained by Panasonic, so they were viable projects. The fact that there are still features to cut in Firefox shows how powerful it was.

What a Mesh: Microsoft puts Office in the Loop, adds mixed reality tech to Teams

Re: Who asked for 3D CRAP?

How about the one where you're in a non-group chat with one other person and you share a file, and somehow they don't permission to access it.

Why on earth would you need to bother with file permissions in a two-person chat?

So you have to share the file and then find where it is buried in sharepoint and manually change the permissions so the person you're chatting to has access. Gaaaah.

Re: Who asked for 3D CRAP?

Oh christ, the search. Three years I've been using this crap (i.e. forced to use this crap) and it's still as bad as the first day. You need to know there and then that you'll need to refer back to whatever it is and copy it out into something else because you're not going to find it later in Teams, they might as well be more honest and disable the search option to adjust user expectations from the outset.

Re: Teams is popular

Teams is as popular as syphilis.

Joint UK-Oz probe finds face-recognition upstart Clearview AI is rubbish at privacy

"Brit watchdog considering next steps, Australia's orders deletion of scraped image trove"

Just in case anyone was still not sure about how useless the ICO is.

The pandemic improved the status of IT workers … forever

Re: Hahaha . . . no.

Maybe they stand outside and clap for you once a week.

Re: break out the moon boots...

And claiming Covid was a con sometime last April.

Re: Never Forever

Around the early to mid 90's there was a management mind set change and almost immediately it was clear we were "downgraded" in their eyes. Made to re-apply for our jobs and the ensuing pay cuts that generated and then the gradual slide as we were seen to be fungible units.

But then Y2K came along and we were needed again. Almost at the same time there was the dot-com bubble which I guess wasn't needed but that was fun for a while. After that IT became disposable again.

Now we are needed again so make hay while you can because management never forgives and never forgets.

Protonmail celebrates Swiss court victory exempting it from telco data retention laws

Re: scan under-13s' faces in real time to determine their true age

I always suspected my cat had criminal tendencies but now I know for sure.

Government thinkers believe they can create a "safety tech" sector off the back of this potentially harmful idea and market it to foreign countries' governments as a British innovation.

The government that doesn't even know who its citizens are or its resident population wants to sell age verification to other countries. That's a very courageous policy.

Multimillionaire Activision Blizzard CEO cuts annual pay to $62,000 amid sexual harassment probes

Re: Jeez, not much.

He made about $150m last year for taking the big decisions like "let's make another micro-transaction filled Call of Duty" so I think he can take the hit.

Anyway, it'll all end up sweeped under the carpet like Ubisoft because it's the triple AAARGH games "industry".

Windows Subsystem for Android: What's the point?

Re: It would be quite funny

Especially because in both cases it's named back-to-front.

Zuckerberg wants to create a make-believe world in which you can hide from all the damage Facebook has done

This paragraph is pure poetry

The sheer tragedy of this: a man with more money than he knows what to do with and who could buy any experience he wants on Earth or beyond, holed up inside a sprawling mansion and wearing VR goggles after his website has had untold effects on democracies, scheming how to help us escape the society he dragged his car keys along for more than a decade.

Brilliant.

Although at this stage it's more like an angle grinder.

UK science suffers as lawmakers continue to dither over Brexit negotiations

Re: Negotiating... @Dan 55

I see delusions of Empire 2.0 are still going strong, where Ireland is unified but back under English rule, as it should be? It's a shame the current "direction of travel" for the UK is towards breaking up.

They were never going to admit that they were planning to throw Ireland under the bus until they actually did it.

Did I miss the news? As far as I know they haven't done it.

But if it was the single market or Ireland, than it was Ireland that would be sacrificed.

If the EU has not sacrificed Ireland for the single market up until now, they're not going to. The single market is something which all EU countries are members of.

Re: Negotiating... @Dan 55

And the day after:

EU shoots down suggestion Ireland could be shut out of single market

An Irish government source dismissed the report as “not true at all” while it was dismissed by an EU official as a “load of s***e”

Re: Negotiating...

Theresa May's "backstop" would have kept the whole UK in the customs union, leaving it unable to negotiate any trade deals by itself

This is not true, the "alternative arrangements", once agreed, could bring the UK or just GB out of the single market, the SPS area, and/or the customs union.

Divergence hasn't happened yet, that's the whole problem.

But it's not a bug, the frontstop is working as designed. Talk to the negotiator if you've got any complaints.

Re: "having lived outside the UK, in the EU, for half my life"

At no point was the EEC/EC/EU just a trading bloc, other than in the British press and in certain Tory MPs' imagination. It's a long thread but a good one.

Re: Negotiating... @Dan 55

And with the spine the EU has it would be a puddle on the floor in days.

Oh how weak the EU bully which prevents the oppressed UK from being truly mighty is.

Re: Negotiating... @Dan 55

Please post a recent news story about supermarket shortages or petrol shortages in NI.

As far as I can tell only M&S seems to have problems these days. As the boss is a Tory minister, one wonders if it's strictly performative.

Re: Negotiating... @Dan 55

You don't get how the EU works. The EU said they were necessary because the current version of the Northern Ireland protocol deems them necessary to protect the single market and customs union and it was negotiated between the UK and the EU. Such is a rules-based bureaucracy.

Then the UK asked the EU to come up with some proposals about how to improve things for NI businesses in July. It seems odd that these problems facing NI businesses were not negotiated into the original version of the NI protocol by the UK.

The EU went on a fact-finding mission to Northern Ireland and talked to businesses and has proposed a series of improvements for the NI protocol.

The UK responded by saying they don't want the ECJ to rule on matters of the single market and customs union. What's this got to do with NI businesses on the ground? Nothing, but anyway.

And now the EU and UK have opened negotiations on an update to the NI protocol, which unlike the TCA is a "living" agreement given that how things can change in NI. The EU has brought its improvements for businesses in NI to the negotiations, and the UK has brought its complaint about the ECJ because it seems the problems faced by NI businesses don't seem important any more (if they ever were).

Remember, at all times the management of the single market and customs union in NI is done by UK authorities, not Irish or EU authorities. If the UK really wanted to improve things for NI businesses, it had margin to do this before things got to this point.

Now the question is will the UK reject the EU's proposal? If it does, then we know it's just playing a political game.

Re: Negotiating...

Shirley GB->NI shipments?

GB is not obliged to follow EU rules, in fact, that was the whole point of the UK negotiating being able to diverge in the first place otherwise it would have stayed in the single market and SPS area. The whole point of the Irish Sea border checks is so GB can diverge whenever it wants.

By the way, Theresa May's backstop was a better solution to this problem - none of these problems would have started until GB diverged, by which time hopefully the UK would have been ready for it. This is what you wanted as well (assuming you're the same AC).

Johnson/Frost specifically negotiated a "frontstop" where the new customs checks with NI and the EU started first and then divergence happened later down the line... and is currently blaming the EU for it.

Re: Negotiating... @Dan 55

Instead, the EU, and their vocal supporters in the UK, have screamed that the agreement could not be changed, and that every check required by it was necessary.

Could you point us to where the Trade and Cooperation Agreement was changed?

Two weeks ago, the EU agreed to scrap 80% of food safety checks and 50% of paperwork, thus demonstrating that in fact the EU position was unreasonable, and that the majority of the checks were unnecessary.

You are aware that Frost specifically (disingenuously?) negotiated nothing more than a bog-standard FTA with the EU and NI was barely treated any differently with regards to customs and paperwork than the EU?

The EU offer to scrap 80% of food safety checks is actually 80% of checks on supermarket food, and the UK still hasn't implemented most checks yet anyway, so the UK will still have to implement more than it currently does.

The offer for paperwork is due to groupage paperwork for lorries going to NI being reduced, but again something which the UK never asked for in the first place.

The EU went to talk to NI businesses which appears to be more than the UK ever did but now the UK has pulled out the ECJ thing out of its sleeve which no NI businesses are interested in.

By the way, even in its current state:

Majority of people in Northern Ireland view Brexit protocol as a ‘positive’, poll finds

Re: Negotiating...

This isn't sufficient for the EU to consider them as equivalent. It is refusing to accept the UK standards as being the same as the EU (even though they are) unless the UK agrees never to diverge in the future.

First there is the rule that certain goods are not accepted into the single market from third countries. This has already been changed by the EU just for NI. Why did the UK not negotiate this in the first place if UK government documents show they were aware of the problem (e.g. raw meats)?

The UK-NZ agreement is an example of the UK choosing not to enforcing regulatory compliance on imports and these goods could be exported on to the EU without being properly labelled. The EU would be right to check rules of origin for these products. They also did not want to check regulatory compliance on Australian imports (before the agreement fell apart) and US imports (although those did not even get started).

Finally, the "sewage" problem is a current example of UK divergence from EU law, on paper the law is the same but the lack of UK enforcement means that products have to be checked, in particular fish and seafood.

It does not apply this restriction to other "3rd countries", where it has negotiated equivalence status based on the actual situation.

No, it negotiated equivalence status based on the manufacturer in the 3rd country manufacturing to single market standards or the farm in the 3rd country producing to SPS standards. There is a chain of paperwork and inspections to prove that and if the EU single market rules change in the future, 3rd countries must follow that change.

Re: Negotiating...

The NI part of the single market and customs union is managed by UK authorities with EU having observer status. It's the UK getting its knickers in a twist here.

If the UK chose diverge from all its neighbours with regards to goods and food standards then fine, but it should have at least had enough vets, customs staff and customs infrastructure to carry out inspections in NI.

The chances of getting everyone all hired and everything built in the last week of December last year were slim, but again that's was the UK's own choice. The UK did practically nothing in the five years between the referendum and the end of the transition period and decided not to ask for a transition period extension.

Re: Negotiating...

Portugal manages three different VAT regimes with the mainland, Madera, and Azores. Spain has GST instead of VAT in the Canary Islands, and Ceuta and Melilla again have a local tax instead of VAT and don't follow EU Customs and Excise rules.

The Channel Islands have no VAT, the Isle of Man does. Before Brexit both were in the EU's customs territory but outside of freedom of movement if they had no British grandparents, but they could gain it by living in the UK for five years.

None of these rules are beyond the wit of man to implement, but suddenly the UK claims it's too complicated to implement the rules it itself negotiated for Northern Ireland. It seems to me that if you don't build the customs infrastructure you agreed to you're never going to get anywhere implementing the rules and this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, the only question at this stage is if it's due to malice or incompetence (or both).

Re: EUCJ

It would be very strange indeed if a UK court or tribunal ruled on USMCA or MercoSur or TPP matters, yet somehow that's what the UK wants with the single market and customs union.

Re: Negotiating...

The EU don't want to make the ESA an EU-only agency. But they don't have to roll out the red carpet for a country they're in dispute with.

These couldn't wait for Patch Tuesday: Adobe issues bonus fixes for 92 security holes in 14 products

Re: RE: Give it time

Adobe have been playing whack-a-mole for years across their entire product range. This is not a language problem.

Twitter's machine learning algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians over those on the left

After the Facebook leaks...

"We don't even know how our ML works!" - Twitter.

So it's not their fault, of course. Always good to get your excuse in first.

And now, we return you to your scheduled programming of the decline of civilisation.

Aristocratic kakistocratic banana monarchy.

Fancy some shit in your water?

Windows XP@20: From the killer of ME to banging out patches for yet another vulnerability

Re: at least in XP you could easily revert to the win 2k interface

It's all the same theming code under the hood so I don't see why new Windows GUIs weren't just one more theme pack added with each new major release.

See also: Firefox.

Microsoft under fire again from open-source .NET devs: Hot Reload feature pulled for sake of Visual Studio sales

Re: Hello, dear MS haters

It's always a good sign when your roadmap depends on enough Twitter users getting their pitchforks out.

Solution

Try a proper programming language supported on all platforms rather than a noddy language which can be changed at the whim of MS' marketing department.

Analogue tones of a ZX Spectrum Load set to ride again via podcast project

Re: , programs were distributed on other media...

Software Hidden in Records | Nostalgia Nerd (31 mins)

The title is right, shame the video is littered with the word "vinyl" all the way through. Humbug.

Facebook sues scraper who sold 178 million phone numbers and user IDs

Re: So Facebook are actually in the right here, for once

Perhaps Facebook should have an API which IP and rate limits and requires a login to access contact data, instead of leaking everything like a sieve and relying on EULAs afterwards because the developer didn't pay enough or wasn't one of Zuckerborg's bestest friends, if he has such things.

Apple's Safari browser runs the risk of becoming the new Internet Explorer – holding the web back for everyone

Re: "Apple hasn't added support for sending notifications"

Well, guess what Chrome does, it pops up a request and the user presses yes to make it go away, then the website spams the user forever more.

I am not the unsuspecting user, I don't even have Chrome installed on my phone, but there are plenty of users who are, and a couple have asked me how to make it spamming them. It's not a useful feature and the web and phones aren't better for it.

"Apple hasn't added support for sending notifications"

Those notifications that Chrome spams unsuspecting users with every 5 minutes on Android phones? If not supporting notifications is holding back the web then I'm all for it.

Centre for Computing History apologises to customers for 'embarrassing' breach

Use the Dutch campsite solution

If CCH had used an Atari ST database like this Dutch campsite manager still does 35 years later then customer data would have been completely secure.

India's big four services giants wrestle with staff attrition amid COVID-19 pandemic

Re: So just contract it out

So these companies have, well suspiciously high jabbee numbers. Implies that there''s a fast track service either for rich cities or the professional class.

Correct (FT).

It's heeere: Node.js 17 is out – but not for production use, says dev team

Samual Johnson quote

"Sir, JavaScript on the server is like a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Omnipotent manboy leader who has tantrums

ZORG Industries?

Windows 11 Paint: Oh look – rounded corners. And it is prettier... but slightly worse

Re: Accessibility fail.

Partially blind - you may be able to focus on some areas (e.g. the centre of vision) but unable to see others.

Re: Modem noise

The Internet is expanding!