Posts by Glen 1

So you really didn't touch the settings at all, huh? Well, this print-out from my secret backup says otherwise

Re: It's always fun ...

"Nobody's perfect... except the captain"

Guess who came thiiis close to signing off a €102k annual budget? Austria. Someone omitted 'figures in millions'

Cubic Smoots

Raspberry Pi Foundation serves up an 8GB slice of mini-computing goodness

They don't call it the P4 for nothing

IGMC

Microsoft brings WinUI to desktop apps: It's a landmark for Windows development, but it has taken far too long

Re: Sandbox

"Since when was it the Corporate World's job to make that decision for me?"

Since society starting blaming Corporations for people's own crappy decisions.

See also: Blaming Microsoft for running as admin by default (I mean, its *your* machine right? Why *wouldn't* you be admin? Its *your* choice to run stuff. he says sarcastically). Blaming microsoft for *letting* MeDearOldMums run virus.exe. Blaming Microsoft for crappy third party drivers. Blaming Microsoft for Flash, Adobe Reader/acrobat and their associated attack surfaces. People complaining that FB knows too much as they upload another photo of their kids.

Dawin takes you, and the rest of internet along with it. This why we can't have nice things. Thus my original comment.

"since I moved her to Slackware"

So MeDearOldMum hasn't used windows since XP (Vista?) and IE7 (6? *spits*), OK.

Out of curiosity, why isn't the windows using sibling on Linux too? Choice?

Re: Sandbox

A) "Sandboxing MeDearOldMum in her desktop protects her from herself"

B) "I want to be able to access the entire planet, without restrictions"

The problem is where people in cat A think they are fine in cat B.

*Avoiding* giving the user the CHOICE to click on that dodgy link/email/attachment, while still giving them enough access to do their job, is something IT departments have struggled with for decades.

Add to that not all "MeDearOldMum"s have a tech on standby that can't bill by the hour when they do something particularly stupid, and you have a microcosm of why the internet is what it is.

"isn't the element of coercion"

Something Something systemd

If you are applying for a job somewhere, you either have to already know, or pick up pretty quickly whatever toolchain/framework is in use. If you're not the one making those decisions, that seems a lot like coercion.

If someone could stop hackers pwning medical systems right now, that would be cool, say Red Cross and friends

Re: Windows

Why?

What difference does it make if there isn't anyone shepherding the machines with updates etc?

Or are you naive enough to think there aren't machines out there that are still vulnerable to (or haven't already been compromised by) <flips chart> heartbleed? <flips chart> Meltdown?

Man responsible for least popular iteration of Windows UI uses iPad Pro as a desktop*

Re: Overpriced joke

"life is too short to chase Android updates"

Yep, thus the "Android One" system to combat provider abandonment.

On the topic of obsolescence:

I got burnt by Apple dropping support for my Offices' Mac Mini. Bought 2nd hand and was quite old, so cant be too annoyed. We had about a year before the app store required a later version of Xcode, which required a later version of OSX.

The only app we were making (at the time) was a charity thing, so the amount we could justify spending on new hardware with a single purpose was limited.

Tried some of the less 'official' upgrade paths. No Dice. Was investigating the legalities of a VM, but fortunately had a new hire of the graphic design persuasion, thus justifying the expense of new mac hardware.

Re: So it doesn't even do what its creator needs ??

"iPad as a second screen wirelessly and are able to text and call via your iPhone"

Pick your battles.

A) That's an expensive £40 monitor B)You can also add your tablet as an external display in W10 using 3rd party software C) You've been able to call and text through your phone on W10 directly for a year. D) I could do it on my Nokia N8 using the Nokia software in *2010* (I was still running *Vista* then)

Build quality is a question of manufacturer. You can take the Thinkpads from our cold, dead hands.

Resale value is for people on the upgrade treadmill.

When the main way you interact with the file system is so terrible, like akin-to-w8-start-screen terrible, picking things you can already do on windows as counterpoints is not a winning move.

Re: So it doesn't even do what its creator needs ??

Also: Finder is terrible.

It's the main way people interact with the file system, yet it gets in the way more than Windows Explorer. Hell, the *terminal* is more user friendly than finder. Let *that* sink in.

At least the Linuxes have sane defaults.

If/when I switch from Windows as a daily driver, it sure as hell won't be to a mac.

You E-diot! Formula E driver booted off Audi team after getting video game ace to take his place in online race

Re: Seems like an Abt punishment

I'm not into it esports in general, but there is obviously enough of a following for folks to be getting paid $$$ from advertisers.

I *have* watched "Let's Play"s of F1 games, and found it significantly more interesting than watching a bunch of millionaires kicking a bag a of wind about.

*shrug*

Each to their own, I suppose.

Dude, where's my laser?

"A whole roll? You must be very rich."

Is TPing someones house now a symbol of ostentatious wealth?

It *is* cold outside...

It's, it's, a red-and-blue striped golfing umbrella... Facebook teaches its online tat bazaar to auto-identify stuff for sale

Re: Rotating View

"If I want a 3D representaion..."

www.thingiverse.com

Document? Library? A new kind of component? Microsoft had a hard time explaining what its Fluid Framework is

Ugh. This again.

"If it can't be done with just CSS and HTML5, or on the server end, you probably shouldn't be doing it on the client side."

Ugh. This again.

The example I used last time was sorting a table by different columns. It is trivial. It shouldn't require a full HTTP round trip. Without Javascript, you are effectively doing the HTML-only calculator again. NO.

Don't get me wrong, many sites go over the top, how much script do you really need to show a page that is just text and images (with perhaps a few flourishes)? You *needed* JS for different screen sizes before CSS caught up.

However, this draconian "Web Pages shall only *ever* be text and images forevermore" bullshit belongs to the days of RealPlayer.

Could it be? Really? The Year of Linux on the Desktop is almost here, and it's... Windows-shaped?

Re: If only!

"reboot every time"

Only if you use it once a month or less, or don't let it do its thing to finish updating.

If it's not your daily driver, a patch tuesday may have elapsed since the last use. Some of those updates might take a conservative approach to the need for a restart (eg.net updates).

If its been *months*, a feature update may have been distributed.

TBF, it's much better in the last few years at the update-in-the-background thing than when w10 launched, but if it never gets a chance to update, what do you expect?

I'm not some MS fanboy, but a lot of the foamed-mouth negging seems to be by people who haven't touched a windows machine in the last 4 years. *shrug* Whining about stuff that has been mostly fixed just makes you look ignorant. Doubly so for the "Micro$haft" brigade.

Far-right leader walks free from court after conviction for refusing to hand his phone passcode over to police

Re: Why didn't they use s 49 RIPA?

I believe the way the laws are written require the information to be presented in an "intelligible" manner. Thus bypassing the "Its not encrypted, its just behind a password" loophole (eg on a webserver behind a htaccess login).

Also side steps the troll "here is the encryption key/password, but i'm not telling you how it is encrypted" response

Police already have powers to deal with physically locked doors.

Re: Was Miranda Read Her Rights?

The Manga Carter? Not read that one. Is there a fansub?

Re: He should be grateful he's British

I dunno, If he was gay, white and gay is still gay. (I have no knowledge of our subjects preferences)

Pride marches in Russia are like the Civil rights movement during Jim Crow.

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

Re: "Nasty little nationalist."

"Those people don't really exist..." "...you fit them all in a school gymnasium nowadays"

Riiiight. Because the EDL isn't a thing? When Nigel Farage distances himself from UKIP because of the extremism, you know things are messed up.

That's before we get on to the facebook/twitter posts doing the rounds. The standard Racist Uncle crap about "If my poppy/flag offends you". "Corbyn wants our kids dead in a terrorist attack", "Dyson has gone to Malaysia with an EU grant". "You'd all be speaking German if it wasn't for us, you ungrateful <expletive>" With the last one seemingly oblivious to the US, Canada, USSR et al.

The Vox pops about "We need to leave the EU to stop the Muslims".

Can I have a white Doctor for the operation

Hell, the comments *here* about how if were still in the EU, Angela Merkel would be in charge of the UK.

Does the above seem perfectly reasonable to you? "Nasty little nationalists" indeed.

"You knew exactly what I meant."

It was a cheap shot, I'll admit. However, it's no less prejudiced than UKIPers saying "Anyone but the mainland Europeans"

"but only ones that you have to cross the sea to get to"

Part of the attraction of the EU is that *inside* the EU, the UK is one of the bigger fish. Outside, there is US, China, EU, and the smaller fish.

The attraction to Scotland is a market of ~446 million and a seat at the table vs ~58 million (UK without Scot) and whatever Westminster deigns to listen to.

"Barnett formula " - from a different reply.

So you are familiar with the Barnet Squeeze then? or are *you* special needs?

From Wiki: "the expectation was that as inflation led to repeated application of the formula, average expenditure per head on devolved services in Scotland would over the years fall nearer and nearer to the English figure (the so-called 'Barnett squeeze')."

As I answered previously, the argument that Scotland would be damaged economically comes under the heading of "could be worth it". I'm not saying it wouldn't be without its hardships, but when you have the types described above all over the TV, social media, the tabloid press etc, it's *understandable* to want to get the hell away from them.

Especially when looking at the election results - the *perception* is that those sorts are in the majority in England. The rest of the UK (but let's face it, mostly England) seems to be dragging Scotland along a path it has voted *repeatedly* against.

Scotland now being able to set its own income tax levels might be a good start. Devolve enough powers, and Scotland is independent in all but name.

Re: "Nasty little nationalist."

HAHA I didn't check the user name of who I was replying to.

You really are "disgusted of tunbridge wells". That was an unintentional, but a funny coincidence.

Although I apologise to the residents of Tunbridge Wells. Turns out you were the only Council area in Kent to vote remain.

Re: "Nasty little nationalist."

"Bit of a contradiction there. Drag or inspire"

Inspire hope for the *future*. The 'can't even drag' is the *current Tory reality*.

One might look forward to an optimistic future of an adequately funded NHS, Schools, etc, but the English keep voting Tory. Not even Ken Clark centrist Tory, but borderline goose stepping "hostile environment" for poor people people with an accent immigrants.

Not to say that Labour govs produce a utopia, but good lord, it would be better than *this*. Even *Nick effing Clegg* understood the need for social housing.

"Who cares about the economic future"

Something something Brexit. If the economy is gonna be a shitshow for a decade, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Especially if the endgame is to wrestle control of the national budget from Eton and Harrow. At least with Oxbridge they pay lip service to the idea you have to be clever to get in, not just rich.

"Nasty little nationalist."

"Nasty little nationalist."

*Precisely* the sentiments a lot of us British folk have about the blind jingoistic flag waving "We won the war" "Furriners go home" little Englander types. When you have your delusions of grandeur, stop pretending you mean for all of us. Hell you can't even drag the North of *England* out of poverty, let alone guide us to "sunlit uplands".

We have the "nasty little nationalist"s standing in front of Union or St George's Flags - having successfully convinced half the country that our problems were caused by the big bad EU. As if we had no control over the decision making process.

When the whole fucking point of remembrance sunday was so we "never forget" the horrors of war, we have rabble rousing gobshites complaining that international treaties mean giving away control, ready to send in the gunboats of colonial times past. Add in a reference to Churchill (but not a quote - after all, he was all *for* a United States of Europe, even if the UK was not to be a part of it), and you've won Daily Mail Bingo. What's that? Don't look behind the curtain of the trade deal with the US?

"Anybody but the English. Racist."

That's what I mean about delusions of grandeur - thinking of the English as a race. Another chap had the same sort of idea. He was Austrian, if I recall...

It's not so much "anybody but the English" but "anybody that takes them seriously... so not the English, but perhaps the EU". The first indy ref showed how selling an optimistic vision of the future can help people aspire to be greater than on their own - ie with the English, Welsh and Northern Irish, and within the EU. It turns out England and Wales disagreed - ironic given that the UK had approximately the same voting power in the EU than Scotland has in the UK.

The country has only gotten even worse since the EU referendum. Between No-deal-by-design and the mishandling of the Covid crisis. Buried reports into election interference. No magic money tree - oh wait - here it is. I could go on...

Scotland has voted consistently left leaning for as long as I can remember. How many of those voters feel like their vote is wasted? Even if the MP you vote for gets in? Scotland basically gave up on Scottish Labour once it was perceived as an English branch office.

It is not an stupid opinion to want to be shot of England. We have shown ourselves to be untrustworthy bullies. Even if breaking from the UK causes economic hardship to Scotland, it's not stupid to think it would be worth it - even if its just to get out from under the thumb of the "Nasty little Nationalist"s - or their slightly less scummy cousins - "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".

Re: Note

Speaking as a English/Wesh person:

It's funny how much the little Englanders don't realise most of the fishing waters and more importantly the oil fields are *Scottish*.

That will be an interesting conversation come the indy negotiations.

I agree with the previous reply. I'm more aligned to Europe than I would ever be to the "English empire".

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

Re: So the technology is imperfect?

"Any sources for this?"

Sadly not. It was just something I inferred.

In cases that have made it into the news about cell tower location info, they only mention the nearest cell tower a device has pinged off of. No mention of triangulation. Thus my inference that more sites mean smaller cells.

While bandwidth might be an issue, additional sites are also there because the higher frequencies used by many 5G provides don't propagate/penetrate as well.

Re: So the technology is imperfect?

We already willingly carry around said chips with no problems. Even keep the battery charged, too.

With 5G cell cites being smaller, the granularity of said tracking data will improve (or get worse, depending on your point of view).

The thing that makes it easy though, is the people who *don't* willingly carry these devices. Or carry devices not registered to them, or that have only ever been used once. In terms of "person of interest", they light up on the gestapo's screens like a christmas tree.

Rogue ADT tech spied on hundreds of customers in their homes via CCTV – including me, says teen girl

Re: "ADT failed to monitor consumers’ accounts"

"That's exactly why we need laws : because of the 0.0001% of assholes who ruin everything for everyone."

Something something social distancing Covid-19

Attorney General: We didn't need Apple to crack terrorist's iPhones – tho we still want iGiant to do it in future

Re: Exactly.

Do it twice, just to be sure.

It could be that the methods used were expensive, unreliable or dependant on an exploit that is highly version dependant. Better to say "look we can crack this" than saying "We can't crack this" thus making iPhones the criminals phone of choice.

Hell, it would be an idea to say you could crack it, even if you couldn't, just to deter ne'er do wells (and regular folk) from using a system they can't access.

So they will keep banging on the "back door" drum in the hopes that the legislature will cave. If you can legally compel Apple to compromise their own security, the same law applies to other companies - which is ultimately the point.

The difference in the UK, is that the gov wouldn't want pesky judges offering fig leaf oversight.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

"orange man bad!"

But orange man *is* bad.

"Look at the how the population voted"

No amount of votes can change the laws of physics.

Yes, this is a tech site, but it reports on things based in reality. Those are not things that can escape from politics. You might have a different opinion to me as to big gov vs small gov, but you only have to have ears to hear that Trump doesn't know what he's talking about a lot of the time (and that's being charitable).

We all bemoan clients and managers not having a clue. "cup holder doesn't work", "the client accepted the mock up of the UI, so that means you're nearly finished, right?". Trump is that times a thousand. The fact that he has people cheering in him on, is like people defending "Mr Cup Holder". It's initially hilarious how clueless people seem to be. Followed by terrifying when you realise they are being serious...

Then you try to pushback with things like "facts" and "reality".

"That's not a cupholder", "The mock up is not the application", "Saying Mexico will pay for a wall shows a fundamental lack of understanding how economics/import tariffs work", "Injecting bleach is bad".

Imagine having explain to your boss these things, only to be told it is "fake news", that the bullshit they told the client was an "alternative fact", and is now *your* problem to make a reality.

If mocking clueless bosses/users is a sport. Mocking politicians is merely an extension. Finding people *even here* actually sticking up for the clueless (whichever side you're on).... is how flame wars start.

In Summary: We have mercifully few anti-vaxers, quite a few climate change denialist (distinct from sceptics). A few who still believe in trickle down economics on an intellectual level. Then there's Bombastic Bob and codejunky. If they are about, anyone you'd care to namecheck from the other side of the isle?

"I'm serious, no honestly, I really mean it"

That's for *extra* sarcasm

Beer rating app reveals homes and identities of spies and military bods, warns Bellingcat

Re: "this particular one used his surname as part of his username"

"YOU CAN'T ARREST ME!! I'M A SPY!!"

The Tale of Michael Bettaney

Latest NHS IT revolution is failing to learn lessons from the last £10bn car crash

The beatings will continue until morale improves

Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War

The crypto is usually solid. The implementations, less so.

Besides, the endpoints are the easiest to compromise. Why do hard maths when you can just MITM with a bog standard metasploit module.

Tradecraft: if you are a spy in another country, your phone/computer *should* be compromisable. That's how you prove to the other side you are a clueless tourist/researcher/whatever. Bonus points for kompromat consistent with your cover.

Re: Huawei

Something something GCHQ Belgacom

Link for your convenience

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

Re: Stupid humans

The thing about terraforming other worlds, is that its much easier to terraform this one.

Unless you want to live under a network of domes... which would still be easier to build on earth.

Re: "65 chunks, littering Earth’s orbit with debris"

You could bounce a graviton particle beam of the mean deflector dish.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7p9K9HuDAJyjOCCfGkasIG

Multi-part Android spyware lurked on Google Play Store for 4 years, posing as a bunch of legit-looking apps

Re: So...

Or perhaps a slightly more accurate analogy:

Everyone is running XP with minimal anti-virus.

Some folks are using external firewalls like face masks

Some folks are air gapping completely by staying at home.

and some folks are having fucking LAN parties complaining that the other two groups are pussies.

Re: So...

"Hey. LOCK DOWNS DO NOT WORK. There. I said it."

Ugh OK I'll take the bait. It depends on what you mean by "work". If you mean "reduce the loss of life" then yes, they do. As evidenced by anyone paying attention. You'd have to be PRETTY FUCKING STUPID (or a young child) not to grasp the reasons why that is. Pick a country. South Korea, New Zealand, China. Even in the UK the delayed lockdown has now passed the peak of the first wave. Unless you think the reduction in daily deaths is unrelated?

Hey, if you know better than the epidemiologists, then perhaps you went into the wrong career. Perhaps you could teach those climatologists a thing or two while you're at it. PMSL

People breaking lockdown make them... not work. Half assing the enforcement make them more likely to be broken. People have understood basic quarantine measures since the plague, but apparently Bob knows better.

That'd be fine, if you were only going to kill yourself, and others who think like you, but unfortunately, many of the people you are endangering don't have a choice. Some professions are *required* for society to continue to function. There is some wiggle room as to which ones those are. Hint: hairdressers are not on that list.

Then we have those lacking a basic grasp of the concept of how communicable diseases spread. I don't know about in the states, but in the UK the whole "coughs and sneezes spread diseases" thing was pretty well drummed into children with *competent* parents before they got to secondary school.

So why do we have people arguing technicalities when you know damn well what the social distancing rules are there for? If every break in the transmission chain is saving a life, every person *deliberately* breaking those rules by coughing and spitting on police/health workers should be locked up... and potentially tried for attempted murder.

Frontline police and health workers not having masks or other PPE is *different* competency issue.

Edit:

You coin a metaphor that Bob might listen to. Y'all are out there running Windows XP with minimal anti-virus, while the people running Linux listening to competent experts in their field are staying at home.

From pair to p-AI-r programming: Kite floats paid-for spin of its GitHub-trained code autocomplete assistant

Re: First....

"I see 100 copy/pasted...."

There is the well known rule of three.... Which this or similar software *would be able to pick up on*, and thus pass your code review on that measure.

"Don't EVER write the same code over and over."

Soo, by your logic we can only open 1 file, or only have 1 AJAX request, etc.

I get your point about novel stuff requiring more brain cells, but yet another chart for management with tweaked parameters is not it. Yet another first person shooter is not novel. Yet another RTS is not novel. Yet another text editor is not novel - trying to deny that these tasks are not "programming" comes across as outright snobbery.

How many careers have been spent entirely re-inventing the wheel re-implementing duplicate features in a competitors product?

Sidenote: Do you *really* remember and understand how to do stuff, if you're only allowed to do it once?

Re: First....

If that isn't programming, then taking it to its extreme, there will only be a handful of programmers left in the world. There will just be artists and mathematicians - and lets face it - most software is not exactly using 'new' mathematics.

The 'hard' stuff isn't being done in bog standard line-of-business software shops. or web dev shops. or phone apps.

Re: Or...

Or....

In ascending order of ridiculousness:

Don't use intellisense, just take a typing class.

Don't use Tab autocompletion, just take a typing class.

Don't use regular expressions, just take a typing class.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Motes ...

Speculation: It wasn't, but you wrote a word that started with a capital letter (manually?), so was assumed to be a proper noun by the autocorrect, which was than saved as a previously used word.

Uncle Sam courting Intel, TSMC to build advanced chip fabs on home soil – report

Re: There are costs, and there are related costs

INdeed. If I recall correctly, Edison was known for patenting not just the invention, but the processes/machines with which the inventions were manufactured

Re: Missed Opportunity

China is big enough and has the population and natural resources to be a superpower in its own right once it has teched up - without any economic flexing. The west didn't 'give' them money, we bought stuff. Companies set up there because it is/was cheaper, worshiping at the altar of profit.

The Chinese understand that economically intertwining economies makes it... disadvantageous for the US to rattle sabres *too* hard. At least until China thinks it could confront the US outright. They have their own space program, does anyone doubt they could put a nuke anywhere on the planet should they feel so inclined?

Look at the trade delegation the UK was going to send to China. Cancelled when it was announced we were going to send our carrier to join the US's 'freedom of navigation' sabre rattling exercise.

Briny liquid may be more common on Mars than once thought, unlikely to support life as we know it

Re: No life but plenty of puppets!

SIG Colonel

Wanna be a developer? Your coworkers want to learn Go and like to watch, er, Friends and Big Bang Theory

sooo.... Password reset questions?

Re: DumbF**kery

Here at el Reg, we expect most folks to understand the difference between i.e and e.g.

Sidenote: you must be "that guy" at code reviews.

"None, it appears, asked for a pony."

"None, it appears, asked for a pony."

Maybe you just couldn't hear them because they were a little horse?

Xiaomi what you're working with: Chinese mobe-flinger proffers two Redmi Note phablets for UK market

Re: My espionage device came with a free phone

Hey wiretap, got any recipes?

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Re: This change is part of the "Video Effects Artist Full Employment Act"

They didn't colourise Tom and Jerry.

They just put up a notice saying "Yeah, we know its bad, don't @ us" and left it at that.