Posts by Dan 55

ood new, fanbys. Apple spds up n-str McBook latop kyboad rpairs, ccrding t hs leakd mmo

Re: Change for the Red Dot

If your machine can handle it, it's easier just to stick macOS in a VM.

Re: So many extended repair programmes....

However they spend years carrying design faults onto the next generation of computers and the repair you get under an extended guarantee is often sub-standard.

Re: Change for the Red Dot

Hibernate instead of shutdown. I think I only shut down once a month, when it's Patch Tuesday.

Re: Still not happy ..

Cheapy keyboards are a fool's errand. Investing in a decent keyboard is a no-brainer if you use your computer for any length of time, and quality costs money.

True, decent keyboards are expensive to come by now because most people stick with the cheap one that came with the computer so they're not made in large enough numbers, but I hope you're not confusing Apple's expensive keyboards with quality.

Re: Stopgap at best

Since 2015 I think, oh for a 2005 keyboard.

Apple's combined collective ego won't let them just go back to the pre-2015 keyboard, they'll fiddle with this for a year or two longer until the keyboard lasts the product lifetime (which is 5 years if you believe Apple).

Windows 10 May 2019 Update thwarted by obscure tech known as 'external storage'

Re: "If you are an advanced user".

If you find drive mounting in Linux some black magic art then what AmigaDOS did with drive any disk names would mean reality itself being ripped apart. Best stick with quick and dirty copy of CP/M.

Remember Windows Media Center? Well, the SDK is now on GitHub to be poked at your leisure

Nowadays, you could shove a Raspberry Pi under your TV and run a virtually silent HTPC.

But not running Windows as it would probably melt down.

High Court confirms the way UK banned GSM gateways was illegal

Re: Home Secretaries since early 2000s to present day

Home Secretaries knowing things? The closest anyone got to knowing something in the Home Office was John Reid but he lasted less than a year. Theresa May was more their kind of Home Secretary.

Re: re: Do terrorists still use GSM? Social media is their communications of choice.

This time next year, a new bill is proposed so all shop window adverts must be neatly typed out and grammatically perfect, so Google Translate can manage it.

Tesla touts totally safe, not at all worrying self-driving cars – this time using custom chips

Re: And a couple of thousand additional rules will probably prove to be good enough.

I guess those Teslas going up in flames couldn't take their programming any more...

FYI: Get ready for face scans on leaving the US because 1.2% of visitors overstayed their visas

Blame Canada

What happens if you enter by air but leave via road or boat, will the system think you've not left?

Hands off Brock! EFF pleads with Google not to kill its Privacy Badger with its Manifest destiny

Re: What a surprise

Sorry? What? If I install an adblocker, what data is leaked?

As far as I can work out, it's none whatsoever. If it is not none whatsoever, and certainty less than running tens of third party ad scripts when the page loads.

Social Media buttons

Social Media buttons

When a story about Facebook inevitably appears, one of the comments is usually "why does El Reg have social media buttons, if they read their own stories they must know that social media companies are evil incarnate" like this one here.

Perhaps El Reg could lead by example and put a 'privacy switch' next to the buttons? E.g. there's an open source project here which generates the code for you (although it states you should not host remotely but copy the scripts to your own site). If you want to see how it works you can check Bruce Schneier's blog.

Aussies, Yanks may think they're big drinkers – but Brits easily booze them under the table

Re: '...targeting the price would help cut down on the unsafe levels of consumption.'

I do worry that it's a sign of mental health issues.

I challenge anyone to look at the zombie hordes turning on each other on a Friday or Saturday night and claim they're not suffering from mental health issues. The problem isn't the alcohol, that's just a symptom. Fix the cause and you'll fix the binge drinking.

Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days

Re: Pretty well Inevitable for an Alpha Version

Knock yourself out...

OUR FAVORITE KOREAN CORPORATION and Windows Update

Samsung, bunch of *****

Tracking your insanity

And finally, last but most definitely not least...

Enlightened

Required reading for anyone thinking of buying a Samsung product.

Re: Pretty well Inevitable for an Alpha Version

Do we not know how Samsung works yet? It's not Samsung's commitment to QC, it's Samsung's commitment do doing whatever the idiot manager says, including sending out a pile of crap on Tuesday because it has to be sent out on Tuesday.

So, that's cheerio the nou to Dundee Satellite Receiving Station: Over 40 years of service axed for the sake of £338,000

Good job the Tories announced austerity was over... any time now, I'm sure...

Idiot admits destroying scores of college PCs using USB Killer gizmo, filming himself doing it

Re: What a fucking idiot

Had he learnt something useful during his studies he would have known other -better- means of revenge than this pathetic act of vandalism.

Get a job in the college with his MBA, put into practice MBA type stuff, destroy it without any damage to property, then move on to the next place?

Facebook: Yeah, we hoovered up 1.5 million email address books without permission. But it was an accident!

Re: Do sites like El Reg have an interest to declare?

At the very least the social media buttons should come with a privacy toggle which defaults to the "yes I want privacy" option, like Bruce Schneier's site.

Interview process

Do they go through a convoluted procedure to weed out all the non-psychopaths who apply (which are probably very few now)?

Microsoft debuts Bosque – a new programming language with no loops, inspired by TypeScript

Re: Bosky?

If a new language is released on github but nobody downloads it, does it exist?

Re: Ah, the loop

Every time I read about a language without loops I think to myself that it's probably as shit as SQL which also doesn't have loops.

So far I've never been wrong.

Re: Ah, the loop

LDIR? Luxury! When I were a lad I had to use the stack pointer to write to the screen and we couldn't afford a loop to do it as it took too much time.

Re: Why the urge to dumb everything down?

In answer to your question, I heartily recommend Compiler Explorer and a couple of cppcon talks: What has my compiler done for me lately? and A Simple Commodore 64 Game in C++17.

You may also like C++ Insights which is currently linked to from Compiler Explorer.

Things might be simpler than you think behind the scenes, especially if you pick the right keywords.

Google hits brand slam stamping AMP with more crypto glam

So, amp whether you like it or not

Everything on amp if they want visibility on News and Search. What could possibly go wrong?

In the meantime... Redirect AMP to HTML on Firefox or whatever the equivalent is on Chrome, if it's allowed on Chrome...

Did someone forget to tell NTT about Brexit? Japanese telco eyes London for global HQ

I am pretty much astounded that you were downvoted even once for this comment. Are really that many people in El Reg's commentariat who still believe that the UK doesn't have trade agreements with any country outside the EU or that basic WTO terms are anything other than a safety net while a country scrambles to get trade agreements set up?

Re: Honda's planned closure of its Swindon plant

So we shouldnt believe Honda. The ones who made the decision, thought it through, probably discussed and debated the reasoning, who have an intimate understanding of the decision making process to bring about the end decision.

There are plenty of reasons why a business, Japanese or otherwise, doesn't shout "y'all done fucked up" from the rooftops when winding down, alienating potential customers and walking into a political storm are just two of them. But Honda's opposition to Brexit in any form which causes more difficulty trading with rEU as well as other Japanese car companies and Japanese business in general has been well reported. The Japanese ambassador for one spelt it out outside Number 10.

Instead we should believe someone you found claiming its for other reasons?

This person does seem to be particularly knowledgeable about Japanese business culture, but she wasn't claiming it, she was pointing to an article on Nikkei which said it. I double dare you to say that Nikkei doesn't know what it's talking about when it comes to Japanese business culture.

Being in the EU would be more helpful to this? That makes no sense. If the way to counter the effects of brexit is to open up to the world then remaining would be the worst thing. It limits our borders and removes that global openness she was just spouting.

Here's the thing, being part of the EU doesn't mean the world ends at the EU's borders, that's why the UK has trade agreements with 71 other countries through the EU. Including Japan, until it leaves.

Be careful when selecting experts.

I couldn't care less about Cameron or Osborne, that combination of clowns has ended up causing huge damage to the UK. Carney however got to work the next day to avoid his predictions coming true, unfortunately it took a tonne of QE.

And various expert predictions that hit the deck so fast remainers have had to ditch so many of their reasons to remain or be shamed for lack of integrity.

If you don't believe experts, believe British businesses themselves.

Re: Honda's planned closure of its Swindon plant

It was actually about Brexit, or so says Nikkei.

She's an expert, if we still believe them.

She is unsurprised at London being chosen as a global hub, but it would be better still if the UK stays in the EU.

Re: Ha

According to the WTO rules, which apparently we're all suddenly such fans of, you can't descriminate between countries you don't have a bilateral agreement with them and you can't discriminate depending on the border without a bilateral agreement either.

So you can't do no/spot checks just for goods coming from the EU unless you have a bilateral agreement with the WU nor can you can't pretend the NI border isn't there without an agreement in place with that (that's where the backstop comes in).

So if we wave everything through, anyone who wants to offload chlorinated chicken in will sell it to the UK knowing that it won't be stopped...

Also, we trade on WTO terms with the rest of the world apart from 71 countries where we have bilateral agreements through the EU, including the Everything But Arms initiative. If you remove gold from the equation it's 50% EU-50% ROW. I think no deal Brexit prep has managed deals with 7 minicountries up till now so Fox has to pull his finger out.

Which begs the question, if we leave, there will be a tariff hit on the 50% from the EU... how will we replace that from the ROW quickly?

Oracle splats 300 vulns in MySQL, Database, Fusion, etc, pours fresh brew of Java SE terms

Looks like if you let Java SE 8 auto update you accept the new licence

It looks like they can go after everyone who's not already in the Java development game and already has a licence for their products, including those who installed Java SE at work just for the browser or just for Eclipse.

So there you go, lots of money for Larry's next yacht as they convert IP addresses that have downloaded Java against a list of bigcorps and start making enquiries as to their licencing status.

Facebook is not going to Like this: Brit watchdog proposes crackdown on hoovering up kids' info

Re: Facebook's response makes a good point

El Reg's report talks about nudge techniques being disabled for under 18s but The Guardian's report specifically quotes like buttons (and therefore up/downvote buttons too) being considered a nudge technique. So that really would nobble all like buttons, on-site and off-site, unless the user is logged into Facebook (or whichever social network the button belongs to) and has been age verified.

If El Reg falls under this code, commentards would need to age verify with El Reg to get up/downvote buttons and maybe even just to see the number of up/downvotes.

The code makes it plain that unless the companies enact age-verification systems, the UK government expects them to extend all the changes to all users, regardless of age.

How would Facebook do this, badger users for a scan of their birth certificate shortly after signing up and close the account down if they don't upload it? They obviously can't let adult users choose to avoid all of Facebook's creepy slurping.

And as if by magic, by making Facebook' model unsustainable unless they verify everybody's age, we've suddenly got pretty close to China's Internet access card.

Brit Watchkeeper drone fell in the sea because blocked sensor made algorithms flip out

Just a thought

Can we test our software properly before we let control things that fly over people, put people inside things it controls, put it inside always-connected devices in our houses, let it add up our money, etc... instead of chopping development time by half, using agile as if it were a development methodology instead of a way ticking off items on a list, cutting back QA, and doing everything else which means marketing/upper management get their bonuses quicker so they can snort it away sooner?

Every time this happens, the only answer is to develop better code and test it properly, which requires more time.

OpenAI retires its Dota-2 playing bots after crushing e-sport pros one last time

Presumably SkyNet will have a satellite map of the Earth or access to Google Maps so come the rise of the machines it won't matter.

Is Google's new cloud gaming service scalable? Yes but it may not be affordable, warns edge-computing CEO

Re: so, uh

I'm hard pushed to tell the difference between this and e.g. Counterstrike, apart from maybe a bit more work is done at the server end with this (e.g. the local client might not know what a player is, it just draws polygons and reads the controller).

New UK counter-terror laws come into force today – watch those clicks, people. You see, terrorist propag... NOOO! Alexa ignore us!

Oh Christchurch

Just as well it came into effect now and not a few weeks ago because if you went to the front page of the Mirror or the Daily Heil you had the video shoved in your face on the front page.

So there we have it, social media serving up auroplaying terrorist videos, MSM following it just for clicks, and a bunch of clueless idiots making laws which go after the wrong people.

As Alexa's secret human army is revealed, we ask: Who else has been listening in on you?

"Alexa, does my bum look big in this?"

If anyone's interested I'm taking bets on what the next shocking exposé will be about Echo Look/Show/Spots.

Rust never sleeps: C++-alike language tops Stack Overflow survey for fourth year in a row

I don't think your problems are insurmountable, your first two complaints are addressed in C++11. As for your third complaint I cheerfully admit have no idea about Rust lifetimes.

You seem to want to be protected from using C++ in the wrong way, as if somehow the compiler knew what the right way was, but C++ and C don't work that, if they did they'd be as bureaucratic as Java or would just remove options as Rust appears to.

All your problems stem from using something written in another non object-orientated language and having to wrap it into an class yourself, so you need to manage the memory and add operator support. libjpeg even calls exit() at times and you need to work around that so you're hardly starting with a good base to build on.

But that's not all - now someone wants to inherit my class and my destructor wasn't virtual. So now my code has the potential to leak because the destructor wasn't called.

Public base class means you need a virtual destructor. IDEs will even warn you about it.

And I might have lifetime issues if the libjpeg is shutdown while I still have instances of my class floating around.

Closing the library down should go through your class.

Obviously if the programmer decides to shoot themselves in the foot then who is C++ to stop them?

Pretty difficult to crash due to a memory leak if you stick to objects which clean up after themselves and local variables as much as possible though.

C++ was always a memory accident waiting to happen

RAII disagrees with you.

Need a Ferranti Pegasus board in your life? Brit computing history could be yours for four figures

Re: Ferranti kit

It wasn't called the CRM-114 was it?

Do you want salt with that? Salesforce phallus 'shopped out' of Oracle Park calendar cover

Re: Sex hang ups

How did nipplegate happen then? Apart from the wardrobe malfunction, obviously.

US boffins tangle with quantum entanglement in spooky rack-mounted networking hardware

Re: Science is amazing and all...

What you need is the late 2010s' version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to explain it for you:

Quantum Computers Explained – Limits of Human Technology

This YouTube channel is actually worth watching. Shame it's impossible to remember its name unless you're German.

Google Cloud flashes flower power in bid to realize 'write once, run anywhere' dream

At the opening of the keynote, Pichai addressed the elephant in the room, Google's inconsistent commitment to the products it launches. That legacy of distrust, born from the shutdown of more than 150 products and services in the twenty-one years since Google was founded, has become enough of a reputational albatross that Google engineers post in discussion forums to reassure those curious about new offerings that the end is not nigh.

When it gets to the point that the first thing they're asked in product launches is when they're going to shut it down, they're doing it wrong. The head of the game streaming platform also had to protest too much in the interviews he's done.

Shock revelation as massive American presidential election hack confirmed

Don't even need 2FA to make it more secure

While Google for Education does allow for two-factor authentication, the option must be enabled by an administrator, and while most kids these days have smartphones, getting multi-factor set up for an entire school district (Berkeley High School alone has 3,000 students) may not be practical.

The question is can you set up an option to force a password change on first login? If you can there's something wrong at Berkeley Unified School District (apart from the initial too easily-guessable password), and if you can't there's something wrong with Google for Education.

I know what EU did last summer: Official use of Microsoft wares to be probed over slurp fears

Re: So, when it is NOT a stupid, average consumer...

MS no longer requires that OEMs include an option to disable secure boot for Windows 10 PCs.

Apple Macs with a T2 chip only recognise MacOS and you have to disable secure boot so they boot Linux (hopefully the "boot anything" option doesn't disappear in the future).

Re: Not going to make a huge difference.

I assume they will find that MS should push out an update which changes the slurp level option in Windows 10 to have a GDPR-compliant setting and automatically change the option to that setting, at least for versions of Windows 10 in the EU.

Now, how Windows 10 determines it's really in the EU without slurping is an interesting question. MS want that data and changing the locale options is too easy for people outside the EU to do.

As the UK updates its .eu Brexit advice yet again, an alternative hovers into view

Good old .com

We don’t just help with the nasty things in life like Brexit. We’re there for the nice things too.

Edinburgh-based rocket botherer seeks UK or overseas launch location for fun times, maybe more

I have a cunning plan, my lord

Ask 'em if you can rock up and launch LOHAN too in exchange for coverage. You know you want to.