Posts by Craig 2

The James Webb Space Telescope has only gone and deployed its primary mirror

Fantastic stuff, and quite telling that the actual Rocket Science bit (ie. The upcoming burn) is just a footnote in the complexity worries about JWST.

Rocket Science isn't what it used to be... How far we've come :-)

Google joins others in Big Tech: Get vaccinated – or you're fired

Re: regular lateral flow testing

"Likewise, just because you received a couple of COVID jabs at some point in the past, it doesn't mean you're not positive and capable of transmitting the infection."

Correct, but it does mean you will probably pass a LOWER viral load for a SHORTER period of time.

Re: 'we shouldn't stigmatize the unvaccinate'

Coronaviruses are a different type of virus and mutate much more frequently, compared to something like Measles.

Compare it to something more similar such as the flu - Vaccinations every year.

Now give it up ffs.

Re: This thread should be gold

Given the demographic of this website, I'm hoping for a lot more rational opinions than you might come across on a BBC HYS or FB...

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Re: Computers are cheap so why worry?

Yes. If you're a gardener you don't worry about the amount of different digging implements you have! Right tool for the job...

Irish Health Service ransomware attack happened after one staffer opened malware-ridden email

So the ones who clicked the link and did the course are the ones that need a talking to?

Sounds like the email (inadvertently) did exactly what was needed!

NASA installs a new and improved algorithm to better track near-Earth asteroids

Sentry-II: more powerful than its predecessor, Sentry.

Say what you want about NASA wasting money but at least they didn't* hire a huge panel of consultants to determine a new, trendy public-friendly name** for the software. Sentry II: Job done.

*Please God, tell me they didn't hire consultants and this was what they came up with...

**Suggestions on a postcard to the usual address...

A smarter alternative to password recognition could be right in front of us: Unique, invisible, maybe even deadly

Re: Never watch daytime TV

Nothing worse than realizing you're now firmly in the demographic daytime TV adverts are aimed at....

Server errors plague app used by Tesla drivers to unlock their MuskMobiles

Re: For the record...

Ahh, so the same class of idiots who can't turn on their house lights or open their front door when the internet goes out?

Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson

With fewer and fewer reasons...

There's still one OVERWHELMING reason: It's not a Chromium based browser...

Monocultures are bad and while there's definitely been changes to Firefox that I've disliked but had to adapt to, it's still my daily browser. I'm a tab whore and I still think TreeStyleTabs is one of the best implementations of side-bar tabs. It's a no-brainer for today's widescreen displays.

Tesla slams into reverse, pulls latest beta of Full Self-Driving software from participating car owners

Re: FSD - Not with this generation of technology

The first time my car did an unexpected emergency stop on autopilot would be the last time I used autopilot! Do you keep a spare supply of underwear in your Tesla?

Google deliberately throttled ad load times to promote AMP, claims new court document

Re: Thank you Google

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely...

No doubt Google have close to the definition of absolute control of the web most people see. (In the western world anyway) I also don't doubt there are thousands of tweaks in every piece of code that promotes to their own benefit and demotes the competition. We just get to hear about the most egregious ones...

Arms not long enough to reach the plug socket? Room-wide wireless charging is on the way

Re: Why?

Just wind back 50 (ish) years and substitute "wireless charging" for "wireless phone". Now everyone has one. Just saying...

LibreOffice 7.2 brings improved but still imperfect Microsoft Office compatibility

Re: Standards?

"If you have 90%+ of the market share, you have the standard. No point arguing beyond that."

That's fine as long as you don't intentionally obfuscate it, specifically to stop rivals implementing it. Which Microsoft (allegedly) did, and continue to do with the never-ending "transitional" version.

Twitter's AI image-crop algo is biased towards people who look younger, skinnier, and whiter, bounty challenge at DEF CON reveals

"The target model is biased towards...depictions of people that appear slim, young, of light or warm skin color and smooth skin texture, and with stereotypically feminine facial traits"

So, like most of the Western world then. No surprise another AI has the same biases as it's creators. (no matter how much they claim otherwise on social media)

Apple responds to critics of CSAM scan plan with FAQs, says it'd block governments subverting its system

Re: "a one in one trillion chance per year of incorrectly flagging a given account."

Also, how do the odds drop when you take the number of devices, multiplied by the number of photos taken, multiplied by time.. sooner or later those odds are going to start getting to numbers you wouldn't want to bet your life on....

Microsoft suspends free trials for Windows 365 after a day due to 'significant demand'

Re: free QA testing

That's the general release edition usually...

Amazon: Our carbon footprint went up 19% last year but we grew even more than that, so 'carbon intensity' is down

Re: devil's advocate question

Ahh, but the population's "carbon intensity" is also reducing if you use Amazon's skewed reasoning... We are buying more stuff but getting it delivered more efficiently. Instead of millions of individual journeys to consume, we now have a single entity making the majority of those journeys for us. /s

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Re: (cringe)

Absolutely. The best UI is one where you don't even really notice it. Designers want to make shiny, fancy, shouty UI's and IMHO it's completely the wrong direction. And don't get me started on hiding 99% of controls in favour of "simplicity". /rant

AWS adds 'basic first version' of automated troubleshooter to Systems Manager, but it's not a stand-in for engineers

Please tell me that the first suggestion is "have you tried turning it off and on again"

Microsoft issues emergency fix for Wi-Fi foul-up delivered hot and fresh on Patch Tuesday

"There still is such a thing as a network cable. If your computer doesn't have an RJ45 receptacle, it becomes more fun, but with a USB to RJ45 converter, that can be solved as well."

Great, I'll just order one from Amazon... oh wait Ok I'll go and buy one from a local shop... oh wait.

I'm sure the audience of The Register will have no problem going to one of their myriad of machines to get the patch installed. The problem is the old guy at home who turned on his laptop this morning and it blue-screens. He's not going to have any of that laying around and he's not going to be thinking "lets check out the Microsoft patch releases".

It's inexcusable to break stuff in this way, if it happened to any other piece of home tech people just wouldn't put up with it.

Google’s Pixel phones to measure heart rate and breathing, other ‘droids coming soon

It's well known

that as soon as you concentrate on "breathing normally", you can do anything but...

I was targeted by North Korean 0-day hackers using a Visual Studio project, vuln hunter tells El Reg

Re: WTF

This was my first thought too. Also: Security researcher gets pwned clicking link from untrusted source. Satisfying to know even the best can fall for the same ruse as Doris from HR.

Under that pile of spare keys and obsolete cables is an IoT device: Samsung pushes useful retirement project for older phones

Re: My old Motos...

An old iPhone 4 made a great dedicated kodi remote, but now the family just has the app on their current phones. Since it seems phones are permanently glued to their hands it removes the need to even get up and look for the remote!

Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more

We're our own worst enemy...

As somebody (occasionally) in tech support you get to see both sides of this coin. If I need to speak to somebody, I REALLY need to speak to them to sort the problem out. I've already exhausted all the `autofix` options. Conversely, almost everyone who calls me could have solved the problem with a bit of googling or looking at the help pages or even, God forbid, a bit of elementary knowledge. It's these people that make companies hide their telephone support at the end of a very long and convoluted maze. Otherwise people wouldn't even look at all the self-help ideas, they would just pick up the phone...

Uncle Sam sues Facebook for allegedly discriminating against US workers in favor of foreigners on H-1B visas

Bzzzzt.. Still wrong, made me smile though so thanks!

Banking software firm tiptoes off to the cloud with MariaDB after $2m Oracle licence shocker

Re: Nice ending

"Hahahaha"

That's Oracle's reaction when they successfully pull off these kind of licensing-lock-in deals. All the way to the bank...

Google reCAPTCHA service under the microscope: Questions raised over privacy promises, cookie use

At first I thought you'd misspelt `like` but then I realized your original sentence also made perfect sense :(

Re: In a way this is all encouraging for me

Definitely this, if you have your browser relatively locked down, recaptcha will ask every single time for image verification on sites you visit repeatedly. This should indicate that they can't fingerprint you so have to repeatedly verify you're not just a random bot.

Of course, the conspiracy version is that they can still track people running noscript / ublock etc just fine. They're only pretending they can't to make you feel safe....

We know there are a lot of, er, distractions right now but NASA's got some sweet video of its asteroid rubble raiser

"The passenger-bus-sized spacecraft will spin with its robotic arm extended, and NASA will measure the moment of inertia to measure the mass inside the sample head on Saturday."

Brilliant: We could put some kind of instrument to measure what we captured, but instead we'll just use the entire spacecraft and physics as an instrument!

Here's US Homeland Security collaring a suspected arsonist after asking Google for the IP addresses of folks who made a specific search

If there was one thing this guy really should have thought of first it was a burner phone...

Hasta la vista, Ola: TfL bans ridesharing startup, claiming unlicensed drivers picked up passengers

Because number plates are 100% reliable and cloned plates aren't a huge problem with criminals....

I'm assuming the start code would work as a one time token the driver tells you before you get in? It could be anything, but something like a famous spy movie quote could add an air of mystery to every journey :)

Ring glitch results in global ding dong ditch: Doorbell bling flings out random pings but they're not the real thing

Re: ding dong ditch

Knock-a-door-run!

Not content with distorting actual reality, Facebook now wants to build a digital layer for the world

"when I'm walking down the high street, that is also a private situation as far as I'm concerned"

If you really believe that then you should never leave your house again, or permit any family members to leave, or do anything online, or buy anything with a credit/debit card etc etc...

Family wrongly accused of uploading pedo material to Facebook – after US-EU date confusion in IP address log

Re: Pounds alone for bodyweight

"What if the pilot had an especially big breakfast?"

Tower: Sorry, you're not cleared for takeoff until you & the copilot go for a shit.

Cops called to Singapore golf club after 'wrongdoers' use scripts to book popular timeslots

Re: Is it hacking?

Not hacking! A script or macro is just a bespoke digital assistant. It won't be soon before you say can say "Hey Alexa, book me a slot at the golf course as soon as it's available".

You had one job... Just two lines of code, and now the customer's Inventory Master File has bitten the biscuit

I think this is where my spelling pedantry comes from: Looking at code with the knowledge that just a single misplaced character can wreak havoc. Even when it's not critical to conveying the message, spelling errors trigger me!

Days after President Trump suggests pausing election over security, US House passes $500m for states to shore up election security

A successful technique considering you both posted comments.... Oh, wait.... shit

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

Re: Editing

Tickbox in the comment entry area for "This is a correction"

Still published as a comment (For the glory)

Icon fixed to pendant (For the lulz)

Staff get a feed of all correction posts.

Separate metric for "You have made x corrections" as long as a staff member upvotes it.

Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball

Re: Supposed to give a warning

Cars accidents are generally in a public place so fair game. Secretly recording conversations where you would have a reasonable expectation of privacy could be a different matter.

Hot, synchronous DRAM: Next-gen memory tech spec DDR5 lands

Re: I’m disappointed!

"Sorry, but I have nothing actually useful to contribute to the discussion."

Welcome to The Internet....

Microsoft takes tweaking tongs to Windows 10's Start Menu once again

AKA the "more lipstick" update...

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

A whole new level of exotic...

I thought my shopping list was exotic when I added avocado for the first time...

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: He used the wrong excuse

True, the crime of being a stupid fuckwit carries a life sentence...

Microsoft blocks Trend Micro code at center of driver 'cheatware' storm from Windows 10, rootkit detector product pulled from site

"The code is definitely there and someone had to write it"

Absolutely. It looks like the code literally reads as "Is certification testing active?" If so, pretend everything is ok, otherwise carry on....

It's a bit like customer phone support when the boss is/isn't standing next to you.... :)

AT&T slapped down for its '5GE' ads: You don’t have a proper 5G network, so stop saying so, says watchdog

The whole basis of the nomenclature of 4GLTE is that you have 4G as the base technology and `LTE` are the enhancements made over time to give improved performance. The AT&T usage is pretty much the exact opposite!

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

In honour of their penchant for reinventing themselves every 5 minutes, you should change their moniker likewise and just use everyone's suggestions.

Facebook defers $3bn of infrastructure spend because it's hard to build bit barns when you're working from home

Re: Colour me surprised...

Don't forget Instagram, gotta post those "day# of lockdown" selfies!

'Non-commercial use only'? Oopsie. You can't get much more commercial than a huge digital billboard over Piccadilly

Aliens Ate My Buick - Loved that album! Total madness.

"I used to enjoy taking photos of other companies' failures," Ben told us, "and sending [them] to my colleagues in the office to make ourselves feel better about our own."

Now there's someone who's honest with themselves! I'm sure we've all felt that little glow as we hear of competitor's tales of woe :)