Posts by Stuart 22

Heart Internet in 22-hour TITSUP after data centre power stuffup

Re: DR plan?

"If you are moaning about losing business where is your redundancy? Where is your DR plan? If you are reliant on your website & email for your business you should have thought about happens when it goes TITSUP as it will."

Well some of us do have sophisticated DR plans. But, as I have posted above, they are always inadequately tested and there is always an unknown risk in activating them. I have been caught on that. Which is why, on failure, you want to know if the cause is known, being acted on and you know their best estimated time to fix with frequent updates.

Then you can take a calculated risk on whether to ride through the failure or bring up the back-ups. With normal DNS TTL's of 60 minutes this may not bring immediate relief, then you have to switch back and re-synch everything. That of course is if the DNS isn't in the same DC!

That's one reason I don't host with Heart. I don't have confidence that I am going to hear the whole truth straightaway. I host with suppliers who still manage to have resilient status servers and will reply to tickets when they have issues. The repliers are trustworthy engineers not computer illiterate customer services who can't tell the difference between a DDoS attack and a power failure!

Re: Air France Flight 447

"Is this in any way related to the article?! Almost thought this comment had been transferred from somewhere else!"

The parallel that a faulty sensor caused them to initiate a faulty procedure that likely caused an unnecessary catastrophic failure of a data centre when the power was OK anyway. But apart from that and not double-checking the cause - you are right, nothing whatsoever.

Sorry I come from an age when computers ran on valves and failure was omnipresent and you had a lot of practice coping and sorting. These days the very reliability means disaster recovery is rarely tested in reality. And simulated failures are never quite the same. That's why you don't implicitly trust procedure. Its a help, not a master.

Air France Flight 447

The pilots flew a fully functioning plane into the ocean because of a faulty sensor, believing it and and ignoring everything that indicated otherwise.

At least nobody got killed here but my experience of failures is you keep one spectacled eye on the manual and the other scepticalled eye on whether you really are where you are told you are. The report does suggest the procedure rather than the fault was the problem.

The first law of Disaster Recovery is to treat any Disaster Recovery Plan as having a flaw and you need to spot it before it pearly gates you.

Norks stabilise non-threatening space speck ... for about five minutes

Re: Missing the point?

"They so much as threaten such a thing the regime will be over within a week"

Absolutely. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doesn't apply here. They could seriously damage the US (or South Korea) with a kludge nuclear device. But only damage. They wouldn't be able to knock out anybody. And retribution would be complete and justifiable in the interests of self defence. Indeed if NORK attacked the US I bet the Chinese would be in Pyongyang before the POTHUS could press the button. They certainly could not entertain a neighbour prepared to use weapons. Only to play with them.

Willy waving in extremis.

Amazon's Lumberyard invaded by zombies

Re: Beers all round

Readers? - NNo way. Only a real genuine CDC certified Zombie would ever get down to point 57.10 of any service terms. And a Zombie lawyer at that. And they all tied up working for SCO ...

Land Rover Defender dies: Production finally halted by EU rules

Re: Rose Glasses

"If people really need one there's plenty of really good (and even classic) 2nd hand ones out there ready to rock-n-roll."

That's part of the problem. The longevity of the beast depletes the replacement market making the niche unprofitable for manufacturers. So its being dumped for not being green to make way for an extra production line of landfill motors.

Re: Just

"... and so the time had come to build from the ground up a new vehicle which could be exported globally and made with modern manufacturing techniques (not 3 guys with rivet guns fabricating the rear tub from a dozen separate panels when a modern design could be stamped in a second by a machine)."

Ah - so the replacement will be much cheaper then? Do you want to bet the list price difference on that?

Re: Just

Bit confused here. They are stopping Defender production in 2016 because it doesn't meet 2020 emission regulations. But VW can continue production of diesel vehicles that do not meet the 2015 emission standards. Doesn't compute. Well not without a nifty bit of naughty software ...

If you're one of millions using Magento – stop whatever you're doing and patch now

Re: ohshit.

Will Magento be the only CMS with this vulnerability? If not I give it 48 hours before someone knows and probes. I guess we won't till a patch is in place.

Fingers crossed.

'No safe level' booze guidelines? Nonsense, thunder stats profs

Re: Governemt "expert committees"

"Given the railways were haemorrhaging money in the face of the developing roads the application of an established scientist engineer and manager makes sense."

Bit of a myth. Giving money to nationalised industries is bad. Giving more money to private industry is good innit?

The losses then were only around half the subsidy given now (adjusting for inflation) which is seen to be essential for a viable transport system. Oh, and foreign shareholders/governments.

Re: What's the point of living?

I'm looking for our glorious government to rule on the 'safe level of VW diesels' on Britain's roads. I won't hold my breath. On the other hand not breathing may be a help. Or not. Its very confusing. Time for a beer.

Samsung sued over 'lackadaisical' Android security updates

" You will not get Android updates on an unlocked Nexus if you have an AT&T (for example) SIM in it. That's because the carrier doesn't like costs, like OTA updates."

My Nexus 4 & 6 gets its OTAs via WiFi. The only practical way unless you have an unlimited 4G SIM. So does the Nexus 7 - which doesn't have a SIM. How does AT&T disable this?

How to help a user who can't find the Start button or the keyboard?

Start Button

Yep, it could be me at the other end ...

When I get the inevitable "Microsoft have reported your PC has a virus" phone call on a dull day I rather enjoy playing up to it on the basis the longer I can keep them on the line the less chance they will be fleecing some poor vulnerable person.

A standard part of the script is press the START button. They never check you are running Windows first. So starts a rather difficult discussion on exactly where this button is and what it looks like and why the windows key doesn't work. As long as you sound really dim they sense easy prey and hence are blind to spotting you are having 'em on.

"Oh but I have a funny button there with a K on it ..." KDE users will appreciate where the conversation goes from here.

Boeing just about gives up on the 747

Re: So long old friend

Taking bets on which will be last really iconic plane to end commercial passenger service:

Boeing 747 (entered service 1970, production ended ?)

Douglas DC-3 (entered service 1936, production ended 1945)

Re: Airforce 1 - under heavy gunfire I'd rather be in a DC-3. They have a track record. I rather like the story of the Chinese DC-3 who had a wing blown off by a bomb. They stitched on an old DC-2 wing and returned it to service as a DC-2 and a half (with a bit of inbuilt yaw reportedly).

Thousands fled TalkTalk after gigantic hack, confirm researchers

Re: Expiring contracts

Let's see what happens over the next year if they lose 7% of their customer base every quarter. People couldn't leave without penalty before; I wonder how many have put marks on their calendar for an exit date....."

Sadly cynical companies rely on people who have short memories and no calendars. I doubt this report will get much exposure in the national media to remind them. The hacks have moved on. The decline will tail off until the next TalkTalk disaster - and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Out of the frying pan into the fire

"BT was the biggest beneficiary, picking up 40 per cent of this lost share, found the research."

Did anyone catch Dido on C4 last week attack other folks for their failures but refusing to even countenance being asked about her own? The rot starts at the top in TalkTalk.

But the again she did say all TalkTalk customers are enjoying their free upgrade in her 'let them eat cake' voice. Remind me what this generous upgrade was again?

New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich

Re: Adjust your /etc/hosts

Then don't block GA! Nobody is forcing you. This is surely no reason to not block ad slinging domains/subdomains?

Or get a better list. I have a beautiful ad-free life with much faster page loads and no 3 minute delays. Would you have preferred I'd kept quiet about it?

Adjust your /etc/hosts

The way to go? No external DNS lookup, no ad naughties downloaded. Just a much faster browser of your choice, clean websites and no third party to sell you out for money. Cut'n'Paste domain lists are only a Google search away ...

It's 2016 and idiots still use '123456' as their password

Re: Easily remembered...

Not to mention that any self respecting server operator will have anti-brute attack protection in place anyway. So you get 3 goes every 45 minutes. Doesn't matter how powerful the attacker is - as long as the password isn't in the top 100 its likely to take a day or so. Actually in most attacks they are guessing the username too so it would be much longer than that if it isn't 'admin'.

As they say - if the account isn't important use the same memorial password, just add something random into it. Worry about the ones you need to worry about. But then those should have two factor, if they don't then you really need a password generator and a secure Keepass-like system to remember them.

Apple backs down from barring widow her dead husband's passwords

"But does she have the rights to all his data? What about his medical history? What about before they were married? ..."

If the will bequeaths everything than yes. Old stuff will likely be on paper records or in photo albums, diaries etc. If those are locked in filing cabinets then the beneficiary has the right to what's inside and can ask a locksmith to open it if the keys cannot be found. That's exactly the equivalent of what this widow was asking of Apple.

If you don't want your family finding out about your exciting past - don't bequeath it to them!

It's Wikipedia mythbuster time: 8 of the best on your 15th birthday

Re: There was always a near monopoly on encyclopedic knowledge

"Wikipedia is far from perfect but is still a brilliant example of how the internet is better and providing timely, wide ranging and free information with no noticeable drop in quality. [citation needed]"

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/study-wikipedia-as-accurate-as-britannica/

There was always a near monopoly on encyclopedic knowledge

My school had a set of Britannica, my library had a set. It was the mark of becoming middle class to have a set (unread so it looked nicer) on display.

True there were cheaper versions but they didn't have the authority or the kudos. Britannica ruled the waves.

And it was bl**dy expensive, quickly out of date if you wanted any scientific information and, of course, a movie free zone. Wikipedia is far from perfect but is still a brilliant example of how the internet is better and providing timely, wide ranging and free information with no noticeable drop in quality.

2015 was the Year of the Linux Phone ... Nah, we're messing with you

Re: Re Linux Desktop

"The point is that today's generation being brought up on the Raspberry Pi, needs, 'Raspbian', (ridiculous name), to do anything.

Those who grew up with a ZX81, learned how to program the Z80 directly, not how to write shell scripts that need a half-free as in alcohol-free-beer, 'OS', stuffed with binary blob drivers, running on closed hardware."

Oh, yes the ZX80/81 - a step back in computing in everything but price from the initial PET/TRS-80/Apple-II generation. By the time you were trying to figure out BASIC they had moved on to having operating systems. And when TRS-DOS for the Trash-80 was a bit disappointing users rewrote or patched it as NEWDOS (swopping of 5" floppies was always a ceremony when at least two users got together - a sort of primitive networking).

So the ZX80/81 guys & guyesses grew up and appreciated a richer universe. Its nice that kids today for less than £30 can go straight into more or less 'proper' computing with virtually the same functionality (if scaled down somewhat) of a sophisticated real server or desktop.

And without having to blob about - just knowing which plug to put in which socket - can get a perfectly functioning PC to browse the internet. But messing about with blobs and scripts is there for the geeky crowd. The 2010_coder is being born without the limitations of a world being largely limited to POKEing & PEEKing.

TalkTalk outage: Dial M for Major cockup

Re: I can only assume...

I'm beginning to feel that we should be pressing Ofcomm to mandate monthly contracts for broadband/landline/mobile. Its the only way to keep some suppliers honest and competitive.

Bribing you for a lock-in should say it all. Sadly some people believe the advertising and I find it is unscrupulous suppliers who tend to trumpet 'caveat emptor'. Frankly none of us have the time and resources to check out the competence and arithmetic behind every contract we click on.

Meanwhile what happened to Dido's pearl handed revolver?

2015's horror PC market dropped nine per cent

Re: Possible explanation

Yep, Linux and a sub £30 SSD can take make a PC feel 5 years younger. Its really strange but profitable to still have the same number of active working PCs but buying less than half of what we used to per annum.

Bye HP, Dell, Lenovo - hello OS-free Zoostorm!

Philae's phinal phlop: Lonely lander didn't answer wakeup signal

RIP Tom, Dave & Phil

Ground Control to Major Tom

Your circuit's dead,

there's something wrong

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you....

Here am I floating

round my tin can

Far above the Moon

Planet Earth is blue

And there's nothing I can do

Gartner sees enterprise SSD-HDD revenue crossover in 2017

Never mind the money, feel the width

Some time yet when SSD capacity sales overtakes HDD capacity. I'm guessing around 3 years.

Brit cuffed for Kyrgyz 'horse penis' sausage quip

Re: No big deal

"If you can see ANYTHING racist in there then you are inventing it. OR you are some lily livered liberal whom takes offence at anything just because...."

Careful there. I doubt the Kyrgyz government could really be categorised in the lily livered liberal department when it comes to racism and stuff like that - read this from Wikipedia:

A law banning women under the age of twenty-three from traveling abroad without a parent or guardian, with the purpose of "...increased morality and preservation of the gene pool" passed in the Kyrgyz parliament in June 2013. American diplomats expressed concern in October 2014 when Kyrgyzstan lawmakers passed a law that imposes jail terms on gay-rights activists and others, including journalists, who create “a positive attitude toward non-traditional sexual relations.

A wee bit fascist instead?

Getting metal hunks into orbit used to cost a bomb. Then SpaceX's Falcon 9 landed

Re: Real numbers would be interesting

Yes - and I assume manned flight will be well down the list of potential customers.Well until they can prove a second hand rocket salesman can deliver the same quality and reliability as brand new. Yes there is the argument that a light bulb's highest chance of failure is in the first few hours - but sitting on the pad does the fact the rocket underneath has done 17 trips already make you feel more or less confident?

And the fuel efficiency and extra weight and complexity of a multi-use vehicle is going to require a lot of re-use. The jetliner analogy is a bit dodgy. Just think how the cost of a jetliner is amortised over 20/30 years use @ > 8 hours flying time a day. The single/multi-use ration would be several magnitudes different.

Oh and VTOL jet economics is so crazy even the military can seldom afford them.

IT bloke: Crooks stole my bikes after cycling app blabbed my address

Re: Common sense

"Why the hell are you sharing rides on your bike with the world in the first place?"

We use a similar app and publish our club rides every week so people on the ride can know where they have been and newcomers have an idea of the type of rides we do.

Thankfully if any naughty people try and use it to track the start/finish they will end up at a telephone box in South Croydon. No bikes inside and very rarely a handset. Guess that was all they could find.

25 years ago: Sir Tim Berners-Lee builds world's first website

"I remember when it was the "World Wide Wait" because transfer speed was so slow, watching a page load was pretty close to watching paint dry."

Re-live the experience by turning your ad-blocker off ...

The ball's in your court, Bezos: Falcon 9 lands after launching satellites

Re: Iron Man vs Bezos

"Aren't we comparing apples with oranges in this article? Bezos' vehicle is for taking people up to have a look and bring them back down again"

Nah - this is just cover for developing a vehicle to deliver heavier Amazon Prime payloads. Only to people who have decent sized lawns of course. Lawns you won't have to cut again at no extra charge.

NASA books second Boeing space taxi

50 Years On ...

They could swop that straight into the Smithsonian to replace Apollo and few would spot the difference.

Looks like we need a third contender with something a little different and a tad more exciting. George Lucas launching something from Pinewood Studios? I would have said Stanley Kubrik who really knew how today's space vehicles should look back in 1968. Imaginative use of plywood. We could even save a bit of a forest and use this 'Starliner' as a double for Dr. Dave Bowman's Pod.

My lips never moved.

Free Wi-Fi for the NHS, promises health secretary Jeremy Hunt

Re: Your just a complainer who jumps to their keyboard

"In any case porn - regardless of whether it's wanted or not - is for the most part COMPLETELY LEGAL."

Filtering for illegality is good. Indeed the hospital should feel it an obligation. The hospital should implicitly be acting in loco parentis for minors so there is a case of applying adult only filters for the young. But the key words are in loco parentis. For adults it shouldn't apply. It is up to us to choose how we use this facility as we would at home subject to some reasonable limit on quantity.

This is not the same as workplace or most other provisions. People are, mostly, involuntarily living in hospitals rather than at home. What they read, what they write and what they view on their tablets should be of no concern to the hospital. Only that it isn't an unreasonable burden on the public purse.

It isn't the Nanny Health Service.

Re: Your just a complainer who jumps to their keyboard

"Yes there are filters, Yes you cant take them off. Do you want the man.woman sitting next to you in a waiting room to be watching porn on the hospital wifi??!?!?? I don't!"

Why do you care? For some (too many?) its the only sexual fulfilment they may get. Personally I find the average episode of Top Gear does more damage to the mind and planet but I wouldn't ban it.

On the other hand it is quite reasonable to limit the quantities of both. If it is a public service paid by all of us then it is not unjust to stop the guys who claim a Terabyte or two per month is not enough to live on. So provide a reasonable service limited only in quantity and stop worrying about how people choose to use it. My hospital should not be my moral guardian.

Well until one starts googling one's symptoms of course ;-)

'Phantom' menace threatens to down Xbox Live, PSN at Xmas

Who's skiddin' who?

"highlight continuing lack of securirty .."

Yeah DDoS does just that dunnit? Hack the server, publish the CEO's paycheck and expenses and I'll be impressed. You might have done something useful. But DDoS is easy, stopping it is hard. You claim a win, I just go along with El Reg awarding you Grinch of the Year Award.

Will you be turning up in person to collect. Its over there with the gentleman in a blue suit and a funny hat ;-)

Patch now! Joomla attacked in remote code execution blitzkrieg

And the next CMS to expose my server is ...

Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress ... I've been around the lot and been broken on every one. I now exclusively use Wordpress because:

1) Best to concentrate precautions, patching and understanding of one product rather than dissipate between different CMSs (and only have to watch for alerts on one).

2) Wordpress core (not addons/themes) while a nasty mess is now not noticeably less secure and may be more secure than its main competitors.

3) Because of the dominance of Wordpress and its use by less experienced SysAdmins means my sites are not as vulnerable as most and the script kiddies are more likely to go after the easier pickings (and checking the logs does show they expect Wordpress SysAdmins to be asleep at the wheel).

4) I've studied (and experienced some) historical Wordpress hacks and so have systems that will stop them happening again. Won't stop something new but script kiddies don't have to be (and aren't) that innovative when they don't have to be (see above).

So security by obscurity is my strategy together with daily scans of site files to pick up suspect behaviour means if I can't keep the bu**ers out I'll know pdq I have a problem with a very good chance of squashing it before it gets handed on to an exploiter. Which is more than half the battle.

One thing worse than hackers is complacency.

Oh yes - I wish I didn't have to use any of them and could go back to doing my own html and perl server-side scripts with my own proprietorial database. Deeply satisfying and very secure but it wouldn't keep me in business when, to keep up, you need to pick up and assemble pre-packaged solutions. We are no longer soloists but conductors of large orchestras trying to root out some very dubious players!

Free HTTPS certs for all – Let's Encrypt opens doors to world+dog

Re: At Last!

Don't get too excited. Great in theory but most of us use control panels to administer our websites. They already have facilities to manage cerificates and those will mostly not match up with the client here which has the deluded belief that it, and it alone, should control your apache configuration files. It don't and the configuration file will likely be overwritten by your control panel when you do something else - breaking your https installation. That basically KOs your sites.

You can do it manually but then you have remember to renew the certificate every 60 days which makes this somewhat more of a bind(!) than the existing free providers albeit my favourites are Russian & Chinese.

When your chosen control panel integrates Let's Encrypt ito its system it will be great but until then it may be best to wait.

Mozilla: Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Thunderbirds are – gone

Re: Escape from Lemming Mode

"* Footnote: the fact that clunky old Thunderbird is the unquestioned benchmark email client"

Who would junk the benchmark 'best in class' product to help prop up a failing product that once was a benchmark but will never be again.

Oh, Mozilla? Explains a lot.

Ofcom spins out Wi-Fi checker app just in time for Christmas

Choices, choices

Its Christmas Day and i must choose between fairy lights and my broadband connection. Life or death but which is which?

European Patent Office fires up lawyers over claims of cosy love-in with Microsoft

"Meet Mr Blatterstelli"

Was I the only one to misread it?

RAF web survey asks for bank details via unencrypted email

Unencrypted data better than none?

Oh dear, another sad story from the distant past. But it does involve Harriers (both Fleet Air Arm and the RAF).

We were invited to tender for the computerisation of the engine records. These were held on cards and had to follow the aircraft to its operating base whether on land or sea. Each flight was recorded. They were sometimes typewritten, sometimes handwritten. They were absolutely vital to the operation of the planes because unlike conventional aircraft the time the engine could fly without being stripped was not just on hours flown but how many VTOLs had been made. A few minutes of VTOL equated to many hours in flight. The detail was vital. No time free, no flight.

There was only one copy of the card. So the easiest way to disable our entire fleet was not to try and shoot the Harriers down (v difficult) but go after the lumbering Hercules behind them carrying all the records. One shot, a squadron grounded.

Don't tell the Argies.

MPs and peers have just weeks to eyeball UK gov's super-snoop bid

Re: Thoroughly underwhelming joint Committee

Hey didn't you take into account the supposed commitment of one of the more extreme homophobic bishops to the cause of civil liberty and psychiatric treatment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Forster

Blog Off

Where might I find the blog of Dido, the 'Girl Who Got Away' with it, on the even more incisive questioning of the IPB we should expect from someone trousering rather more than Adrian's package?

Remind me what's the point of getting the big ISPs to do all this data retention when the bad boys will know to use the little boys. Its all complete fairyland stuff. Emperor's clothes call revisited.

Taxi for NASA! SpaceX to fly astronauts to space station

Re: My God, it's full of stars

Given the preferred previous employment was 'test pilot' and testing real edge of envelope and occasionally beyond aircraft I suspect a career move to astronaut may be a safer one.

This is a real problem that when a space vehicle goes bang then manned spaceflight is always brought into question. There have been losses, there will always be losses but aviation has shown how over time and learning from incidents can change something that is inherently dangerous into a mode of transport most of us will consider no more dangerous than taking the bus (and probably isn't).

All thanks to those early pilots who put their lives on the line in unproven craft. Always the right stuff and to be treasured for their heroism or just blindness to danger.

Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

NT ... and Windows 2000

The first successful re-incarnation of NT. The greatest desktop since WfW 3.11? (from which I made more easy dosh than anything since). I mean what has happened since? XP was just a finesse with added activation issues. Vista was a mistake in trying to go in a different direction restored by Windows 7. MS didn't learn and diverged again with 8/8.1. Oh, don't they find retreat painful?

Win2k was great - is great. I still run legacy apps in win2k VMs. Faster and sweeter than it ever was. It will only die when the last app expires. Can't see that happening before its successors are history we may choose to forget.

One-armed bandit steals four hours of engineer's busy day

South Africa Calling

"To Australia"

Ahem I got a call one morning from the MD of our South African company. "Our major customer (a bank) has an unresolved problem. Our engineers can't fix it. The customer is going to throw the machine out if it isn't resolved by the end of the week". It was already Wednesday.

I have certain skills - like finding the guy who wrote the suspect software. "Fancy a trip to South Africa to fix it" I asked nervously. This was in the days of white rule and the anti-apartheid calls to boycott. I was asking him to do something I'm not sure I would do myself though I was already an unwilling accessory. Fine he said (it was winter here and summer there as he advised me).

"Would tomorrow be OK?"

"I'll just check". 5 mins later, "Yep, I'm up for it".

What a relief. Called travel department and he was booked on the next day's noon flight out of Heathrow. Rang back the MD to assure him the only man who could sort the problem would be there the next day. He could tell the bank to relax. Sat back in relief that I had triumphed again and everybody knew it.

The guy rang back a couple of hours later. I forgot to say I haven't got a passport (nerds in the 70s didn't all have 'em). S**t - I could see my P45 being enveloped.

What to do? It was already late afternoon. Then I remembered that as the company did a lot of secret work with obscure government departments we had a secret office that dealt with sensitive matters in a very quiet way. I rang them, I explained the situation to a reassuring ex(?)-military voice.

"So it is a matter of national interest that we maintain this strategic economic link at all costs?"

"Yes", I spluttered

"Leave it with me I'll ring back in an hour"

He did. "Ring the chappy and tell him to drop into Petty France (then the passport office HQ) on the way to the airport. Its all sorted.

"Don't you need his details, photos ..?"

"No, we have that already".

And yes that guy made the flight, fixed the problem and that bank continued to bust sanctions with the aid of our equipment. My job was not only saved but enhanced.

I made an inadequate donation to the AAM in penance. It is something I am not proud of. But I do remember it as an example of what government can do when it wants too. And how scary those people in the shadows really are.

Prudish Indian censors cut James Bond Spectre snogging scenes

Its a hotty

A pint for introducing me to 'deosculation'. I shall remember that next time we say goodnight after a quick cocoa.

Storm in a teacup: Wileyfox does Android cheapie, British style

Keeping up with the Marshmellows

A major issue with Chinese (and too many non-Chinese) branded phones is the firmware/os is what you get and that's it. With a Nexus you are probably good for at least the next two iterations of Android and all the updates n'between.

Where are we with Cyanogen? It isn't CyanogenMod for geeks where ClockworkMod and the nightlies are all part of the fun. No we are talking about a consumer product that relies on an OTA requiring no more skill or judgement than accepting the update. So where does the OTA come from - Cyanogen themselves or Wileyfox? And good for how long?

That I need to know before it goes on a very short list of people who provide supported phones. Their website appears to be silent on this.

Telecity fix nixed: Borked UK internet hub 'had no UPS protection'

RackShack - the people's provider

Anybody remember them? The pioneers of the $99 dedicated server with no contract? Bringing DataCentres to a whole new value/budget market.

They had a power grid outage. The substation serving their datacentre actually blew up leaving them off the grid for about a week. And none of the operators of the 17,000 servers ever noticed. But they did get the full de-brief a little later. How the UPS silently took the load, how the two diesel generators powered up to provide the power. How one overheated (because they had only tested one at a time and the ventilation of one affected the other) - but they got carpenters to build a new whole ventilation system before it was lost. How they were having to get two tankers a day into refuel.

All for $99 about ten years ago. Somehow I had expected at least something as professional today in London as opposed to the Texan outback. Oh happy days!

* There was one other problem - their telephone system wasn't on the UPS so headsurfer and crew had to drive into the hills to a place their mobiles would work to call in help. But then few disaster recoveries are truly perfect ;-)