Posts by Greg D

Voda-Three name post-merger top team, keep schtum on layoffs

In the UK it is honestly 6 to 1, half dozen to the other.

I've been on Three, Voda, EE, O2. All of them are crap in London. All of them are crap where I live. None of them were good from a billing perspective (actually with the exception here being Three!). Voda even double billed me for 3 months before I noticed it and had to request a refund.

Conversely, I went to New York for a business trip and 5G was actually good there. London is utterly awful for any of the frequencies - 3G was decent before it was over-saturated, same with 4G. 5G started off rubbish and has gotten worse due to the ridiculously short range and number of masts required (which you just cant get approval for in London, hence why its so bad).

Try getting a mobile signal anywhere around London Bridge. Exact same issue - over saturation, 5-bar signal, no throughput whatsoever. Thats on 3G, 4G and 5G.

Three were genuinely (from my anecdotal experience at least) the least worst of all of the mobile operators.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Re: Seems to match

No.

Disney are putting out shit exactly because they have hired the wrong people for the job due to forced DEI hiring practices - basically discriminating against the massive pool of white male applicants in favour of anything that isnt white male - its complete virtue signalling and its costing them millions. They are literally putting people in charge of million dollar franchises that have had no previous experience and they are so far out of their depth - and it shows.

They also ruin stories and immersion by forcing diversity in casting choices as well as ridiculous gender and race swapping without adapting the characters to match. People aren't stupid - they can see its forced and it doesnt work.

Good stories dont need DEI to be good. They don't need you to shoehorn in different coloured people, or change main characters from male to female (because it NEVER happens the other way around). They have good female characters and good non-white characters because they are written for the role. Stories make no sense when you force things like this into it.

Re: Seems to match

The bias you speak of is a complete myth. It doesnt take into consideration the demographic applying for particular jobs, and it only ever seems to focus on jobs that require highly skilled workers.

IT is a prime example. We dont care what your skin colour or gender is, long as you are skilled and qualified for the job, there is no bias, but there is a lack of candidates applying from the female pool. Thats not something DEI can fix.

Forgetting the history of Unix is coding us into a corner

Re: One thing that has/should change is...

Don't get me started on the UI. Dumbing it down has been universally bad for every echelon of technology. How are files and directories THAT difficult to wrap your head around?

At this point, I'm not even sure the UI engineers know what they are doing at any of the major software houses.

Samsung's Galaxy S23 Ultra is a worthy heir to the Note

Heir to the Note my ass

I got a little excited upon seeing the headline, but after checking out the specs..... No microSD? No headphone jack? No deal for me.

Don't give a fuck how you THINK I should use my phone, I know how I WILL use it, so if it doesnt have basic features, ports or expandability, I aint buying.

How is this better or different or helpful? It's just another version of the same shit literally everyone else sells, just bigger.

I havent upgraded since my Note 9, as this had literally everything I want and still does. Any new phone, apart from maybe the flagship (and overpriced) Sony X1, is a big downgrade for me.

Chinese boffins suggest launching nuclear Neptune orbiter in 2030

I played that game in 1998 - but it was the CCCP and they were on Triton already.

(Battlezone)

4G to dominate cellular IoT until 2028, when 5G takes over

I still think 5G is unnecessary. Power hungry and the short range makes it impractical.

For almost all mobile users, that don't use it as their main internet connection at home or something daft, its pointless when 4G has a comparable downlink speed in most scenarios, and much better range/reception/power usage.

Intel's plan to license x86 cores for chips with Arm, RISC-V and more inside

Re: Intel

I doubt very much that Intel are going anywhere. Nice try though.

The x86 doomsayers have been on about the death of this instruction set for years, but it wont happen. Not as long as there are demands for the workloads - and there will ALWAYS be demands for the workloads while classical computing is still king - RISC is a nice alternative for lower power consumption, but thats about it. This move only shows the strength x86 still has, and its still dominant in the home computing and cloud computing spaces. How will Intel possibly cope with all that demand for their licensed IP?

I dont think they will go anywhere bud.

Remember Norton 360's bundled cryptominer? Irritated folk realise Ethereum crafter is tricky to delete

Does anyone still use Norton?

If so, wtf are you doing? Get it out immediately!

That time Windows got blindsided by a ball of plasma, 150 million kilometres away

Re: Sometimes I miss...

I will NEVER miss cleaning those things out. Ball mice were terrible. Even with rose tinted glasses on they were terrible.

Three UK slammed for 'ripping off' loyal mobile customers by £32.4m per year

Yup

Had this exact argument with them when I had to leave - moved to a new house that had no 3 signal whatsoever, so had to move networks. I had been outside my original contract for over 12 months, but overpaying by about £30 a month since then! You can argue that was somewhat my fault, but I dont keep track of dates too well, and didnt even think about it until I left.

TLDR, they tried to hit me with a termination fee, only about £40, but I told them they could poke it. Ended up paying a reduced rate of £20, but still was galling, as I'd overpaid by about £200 compared to being on a SIM only deal for the last 12 months, so they still made too much money from me.

Not sure I'd go back, but then not sure where else I'd go. Vodafone (my current network) are a much bigger bag of shite, who overcharged me £120 in my first few months! So meh.

UK privacy watchdog threatens British Airways with 747-sized fine for massive personal data blurt

Unpopular Opinion

This may not be popular here, but haven't we got cyber security backwards?

Why are we fining the organisation holding data for the fact someone stole that data? The following analogy may be over-simlipfied, however, if you report your car stolen, the police tend to try and find out who stole it, and go after them for punishment. They dont turn around and fine the victim of the theft, saying that they should have better protected the vehicle.

I know this gets a bit murky with it being other people's personal data, however hear me out... if the data was stolen from adequately protected systems, why is it the data holder (victim in this case) fault that data was stolen? They didnt steal it. They certainly didnt want it stolen.

They obviously have some level of basic security deterrents in place, all companies do. But in IT security, they are exactly that - deterrents. They will not stop anyone who REALLY wants to get in from getting in. That's a data security pipe dream.

Why are we not puttiing effort into identifying and punishing the perpetrators of the hack instead of the victims?

Not to be sticking up for BA specifically here, but this has been on my mind since they came up with this whole fine companies for data breaches thing. I assumed it was meant to catch stupid fuck ups, like leaving sensitive USB sticks lying around, or laptops unlocked etc. Just seems a little backwards and gives hackers more freedoms than anything.

So you've 'seen' the black hole. Now for the interesting bit – how all that raw data was stored

Re: BBC: what?

It was a feminism angle. A female wrote the code that got Apollo to the moon, and a female wrote the algorithm that got us the black hole pic.

Huawei elbows aside Apple to claim number-two phone maker spot

Lacking any kind of incentive to upgrade constantly

The yearly cycle died for me when they started asking for £500 for a phone. Switched to 24 month contracts (cheaper monthly cost). Now I've got a 3 year old HTC and SIM only deal at the cheapest I've ever paid (£20/mo).

Even with an old handset (HTC One M9), I still dont have a SINGLE compelling reason to upgrade. And for £1000 for top of the line devices? Out-bloody-rageous. Not a chance in a million years. And thats not even built for longevity, what with the battery being inaccessible. That limits it's lifetime to a max of 3-4 years (same as my HTC, but I'll see how far the battery goes).

I can get cheaper laptops than that, which are arguably much more productive devices for any meaningful work or play.

Only chance I would upgrade now is if Sammy decide to release the W2018 in the UK (flip-phone, only available in Korea). Dont even like the slab form-factor any more, and especially hate the side-mounted power/volume buttons. Ridiculous design.

Boss regrets pointing finger at chilled out techie who finished upgrade early

Re: I wish our cloud systems could respond that quickly

Problems? I didnt say problems. It's just terrible performance.

Think about it - we have a 10Gb backbone in our DC's. Everyone was using that to access our exchange cluster, which was awesome and fast. Cue the move to 365, where that MASSIVE database of emails and calendars gets shipped out to some unknown server in some country no where near where our people are located.

Top that off with every single user using a single internet gateway with a 350Mb internet circuit on it (which at the time was more than enough for general internet traffic) and you get shit performance. Specifically Outlook and Skype - and in Outlook the problem is made worse for PA's - where they have multiple very busy calendars open. Never a problem on-prem - on 365 however, its the #1 complaint! Multiple calendars take far too long to open.

And thats not even the fault of the 350Mb bandwidth available! Checking our throughput graphs, we're not even pushing it! It just sucks.

I wish our cloud systems could respond that quickly

It's 2018 and we're still worse off with Office365 than we were with on-prem exchange. Performance for cloud is appalling.

Unpicking the Pixel puzzle: Why Google is struggling to impress

the main problem with the Pixel 2/3 etc.

is that it's literally an iPhone. If you're motto is "be together, not the same" then don't fucking rip off the direct competition, with zero shame.

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

Re: Predictable my arse

I hate it. I'm still running a custom Jelly Bean ROM (ViperOne) on my 3.5 year old HTC One M9. Even this old version bundled in a load of this predictive shit I'll literally never use.

I've had to install Greenify (rooted) to manage apps running in the background (i.e. disabling everything that sucks battery when the screen is off!) as well as disabling auto-updates on everything possible (big battery drain). I get about a day and a half out of it with moderate use, which isnt bad for a 3.5yr old handset with a sealed in battery!

Windows 10 Spring Creators Update team explains the hold-up: You little BSOD!

Re: Bring my optical disk drive back!!

It won't show an empty drive any more (new unannounced features, I love em).

Stick a disk in and it'll show up (or assign a drive letter in diskmgmt.msc as you've already poked around in there!).

It's nearly as annoying as the "lets start all your applications you had open when you shut down" shutdown button behaviour they put in, with all the fanfare of a master ninja. Why would I want my computer to do that when I shut it down? I'd use hibernate or sleep for that ffs.

O2 wolfs down entire 4G spectrum as pals fiddle with their shiny 5G band

Re: As always...

Yup. Moved into a new build recently in a town with about 6,000 other homes and no fibre at ALL. Not even ADSL2+!! How can 5G work here?

Boring. The phone business has lost the plot and Google is making it worse

Form factor

Issue for me is form factor. All phones are basically the same in every way, aside from some software quirks. Hardware has homologised into a uniform slab of glass with identical human interface design issues. They all look the same and feel the same.

Buttons on the side? Shit. Touchscreen keyboards? Shit. Screen bezels that go to edge and cause all sorts of issues with fat hands holding the thing? Shit. Screens so big and unprotected, easy to break despite good quality build? Shit.

Give me more flip phones, more bananas phones. Experiment with new form factors FFS.

Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?

So....

Extrapolating this logic into real life, when watching GoT with my surround sound on, I can expect a visit from all the local emergency services then??

Mozilla offers sysadmins a Policy Engine for roll-your-own Firefox installs

ADMX files or go home.

As title suggests. If this isnt working with AD Group Policy, whats the point?

Google's phone woes: The Pixel and the damage done

Re: 3.5mm jack

Dajames, absolutely right, choice is at the core of my argument.

What choice do users have when all the major hardware producers are making the same fucking device? They all opted to design the same thing, no industry standard headphone Jack. No expandable storage. Generic rectangular design and capacitive touch. Power and volume buttons all irritatingly placed where normal human hands would grip the phone, resulting in infuriating unintentional button presses. They are all the fucking same. Where is the choice?

Idiots.

Re: Pixel was impressive - Pixel 2 is an abortion

Of course they can get lost. The phone itself can get lost. Tip is, don't lose it.

Not sure where you are getting this info from about the bus speed. They are on the same bus, the difference comes in quality of SD card used. There's no reason not to have the slot at all.

It's not just about bumping up the storage. It's the removable nature of it, and ability to do things you can't do with on board only storage. Just cos Joe Blogs doesn't need am extra 128gb of storage doesn't mean the handset should be sold without the capability of expanding it.

Pixel was impressive - Pixel 2 is an abortion

disclaimer: I've owned neither devices. I was very close to getting a Pixel 1 though.

I was checking the tech specs of this the other day.

Why have they basically produced an iPhone with a Google badge on it? Where are all the things that made Android a good alternative to the walled-garden overpriced company?

I cant work out why they:

- Dropped SD card support

- Dropped headphone support unless you own a pair of crappy bluetooth 'phones (removed 3.5in jack)

- Made the screen bezel look like its from the 90's

It makes no sense. How many people were more worried about a phone being waterproof than they were about being able to use it to listen to music? Fucking no one.

What is it about phone design that forces you to remove the expandable SD card slot? Fucking nothing. Other than an Apple-style price gouge for more capacious models.

These were all decisions I absolutely ridiculed Apple for (and still do). I am horrified to see Google doing the exact same fucking thing. I held 'droid as a cut above the hellhole fashion bazar that is Apple product ownership. I thought Nexus was the way forward with the platform, then they go and drop this steaming pile of equine manure.

Then they made the second iteration WORSE than the first. Not only that, the pandered to the fucking Apple crowd - the exact people they were competing AGAINST.

FML, I hate smartphones these days. I'll probably get a Note 8 though, as I miss the S-Pen from my Note 2.

Some positive news: LG, Hitachi, NEC charged $65m in li-ion battery price fixing shocker

In an industry where value is based on research put in...

...there has to be some level of price fixing, to set a bar for friendly competition - it may seem bad, but I cant think of a single industry that wouldnt do this, where there products are based on very costly R&D.

Not to say that some big companies don't go to far, as seems to be the case here - but to say that this isnt the norm might seem a little naive to me.

There are other factors at play also, such as the market value for lithium, cost of getting it out of the ground, availability etc. You dont want to set prices too low that every man and his dog buys it, then suddenly realise global lithium stockpiles are dry. Maybe I missed the point here, IDK.

Ofcom: Blighty has devolved into a nation of unwashed binge-streaming mole people

this is no different to any other hobby

For instance I prefer to play video games - often physically in solitude, but engaging in idle conversation with fellow hermits via communications equipment.

IRL is overrated. The graphics are good, but the gameplay sucks.

Alexa, why aren't you working? No – I didn't say twerking. I, oh God...

why would you want this battery drain on a phone?

see above.

Firefox doesn't need to be No 1 – and that's OK, 'cos it's falling off a cliff

Re: Bah!

I cannot upvote you enough!

I now have to use 3 browsers on my work machine, and at least 2 at home. I hate it. I just want ONE FUCKING BROWSER TO CONTROL EVERYTHING. IS THAT SO DAMN HARD. Sorry for caps (not really).

FF is faster than Chrome now?

I better give it another try. The ONLY reason I switched is because FF was the slowest browser in all respects out of all of them, and with the largest memory footprint. Even Edge has the edge over FF in speed (or had).

For me it always is and will be a technical issue. Whichever is the fastest on modern hardware is the one I'll use.

The great phone squeeze wheeze: Getting squidgy with HTC's U11

Buttons on the side still....

One thing I HATE about my One M9 is the power and volume buttons all on one side.

I dont know about the rest of you mere mortals, but when I pick up my phone, I usually grip the phone by the sides. This results in accidental and infuriating button presses where I just want to hold the damn thing. Some people have even managed to turn it off while on a call when I've passed the phone to them! Or reduce the volume to mute. It's just a bad design from an ergonomic perspective.

I would like to see some better ideas in that area. I dont know why they moved the power button to the side, as it was in a good place on top - not easily pressed/mashed by accident and an easy enough place for a finger to go to when unlocking the thing.

Volume rockers have always frustrated me being on the side - only LG had any good ideas there with the rocker at the back of the phone! Wish more manufacturers could do that. Shame the phone wasnt that great.

Ubuntu Linux now on Windows Store (for Insiders)

what?

Is... is this still Earth? And we're in 2017? The sky is still blue etc?

An echo chamber full of fake news? Blame Google and Facebook, says Murdoch chief

I'm not sure where I sit on this one....

On the one hand, we have a dude that works for a fake news company espousing hypocritical views about the situation, but on the other hand, he actually has a fucking point. IMO, Google et al (inc Bing, Twatbook etc), should ALL be taking more responsibility for the information they make available. I know they are only indexing sites, and that worked long ago in the early days of the WWW. Now, they are profiting from the proliferation of fake information and news (as well as the legit stuff) - so they need to be held to some kind of account for it.

If only the guy saying it wasnt this guy. It might hold more credence.

Shhh! Shazam is always listening – even when it's been switched 'off'

Can see why, but they should be up front about it

To be fair, the reasons they gave are acceptable from a technical standpoint - it really would make song recognition less good at its job when people want to identify a song - I know what the scramble is like when the song's about to finish :)

However, they should be clear about the behaviour as some people won't want that - the power draw on mobile devices is the first issue that comes to mind, followed closely by privacy concerns by would-be attackers using it as a potential attack vector.

Italian MP threatens parents forcing veggie diets on kids with jail

Re: @ Greg D

Veggie vs. Vegan is not moot, as there are large numbers of missing food groups from the latter, which provide many nutrients.

The change in scientific stance on nutrition is just evidence of the field of science always accepting new ideas and evidence - it self-adjusts. You dismissing that means you dismiss the principles that govern science. It's particularly tricky around food and nutrition as there are so many dicks out there doing all they can to spread misinformation, and you have to take in intolerances and allergies, which are becoming more noticable due to the better diagnosis rates and methods (thanks science).

At no point did the article say that the proposals would jail anyone feeding their kids on a veggie/vegan diet (actually it didnt say anything about that in detail, but I would assume only enacted when a child is hospitalised and the cause found to be related to poor diet).

I didnt read anywhere that they would be doing state menu inspections either. Not entirely sure where you picked that up from, unless it was tin-foil hat mode drawing tin-foil hat conclusions.

Re: @ Greg D

Well its not wrong to state that children raised on a VEGAN diet will suffer injury, as there are documented cases about it, which is why this was mooted in the first place! And if it's that hard to get a vegan diet right, that DOES contain everything they need to grow properly, then whats the fuking point?

Note: some major differences between vegan and veggie. The latter being slightly more nutrient rich.

If they fed their children far better than average, we wouldnt have this problem, nor would we have this discussion. Add to this the fact that people's ideologies are stretching into the "batshit insane" category now, and thanks to the internet, we have the dawn of the age of naturopath fuckwits, this is NOT a far stretch, or a bad move on the governments part. It makes absolute sense - if these twatbadgers cant seperate the facts from the bullshit (thanks to the internet/misinformation age), and they refuse to understand in the scientific facts (which is NOT a belief system), then they are unfit to parent and do not deserve that responsibility. Same as some people can be told they are not allowed to own pets.

Disclaimer - I am not saying children are remotely like pets - it was for analogous purposes only.

Good.

Veganism (aka crazy food haters), should be a choice, like religion, for when the child is an adult. A childs formative years are the most important and if they don't get the right nutrients growing up, it can lead to all sorts of problems.

This is not enforcing my view upon others, it is a simple fact of the universe. Undeniable, and unconcerned with anyone's thoughts, feelings or opinion on what's best for "their kids" (seriously cant understand why they say that - like a kid is somoene's fucking propery or something?).

@ AJ MacLeod

Because my internet-based commenter-friend, some people do not have the mental capacity to raise said child without said child suffering severe injury, or dying - either due to a crazy ideology that is actually proven bollocks, or just plain dumbness. The article did point this out, when referencing previous cases in Italy, and the reasons for those cases.

That becomes the responsibility of the people/state - otherwise we'd be in the dark ages, blindly looking the other way when this shit happens, because of people that say things like, and I quote, "How about if people just got on with their own life and let other people get on with theirs - including bringing up their own children the way they see best".

:)

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

So we're good if we use a wired network?

I'll be fine then. Wi-Fi is shit anyway, too slow and unreliable.

Not that I really ever watch iPlayer. Or any TV in general. When I do, these days its from Amazon or Netflix, which I'm payed up for.

Women account for just one fifth of the EU’s 8m IT jobs

Equality culture droning on its useless horn again

Not every fucking industry is going to have a 50/50 split of men and women. It's a well known fact men and women like different things - whether a result of culture or upbringing is irrelevant.

It would be lovely to get more girls in the IT dept, but lets not get ahead of ourselves and make a big thing about it. It has nought to do with sexism in the industry or anything like that. Women in general tend to be less interested in tech. It's THAT simple.

Symantec swoops on Blue Coat in $4.65bn deal

Re: Does anyone know....

Proxy or WAN accelerator?

For the latter, Riverbed I hear do good things.

We replaced our Bluecoat proxy with Cisco CWS. Don't bother, its fucking awful. Stick with Bluecoat until the last possible moment.

Hands up, who prayed for AMD? Well, it worked

Re: if it is x86

Dude, your data is a decade or so out of date. AMD won the x64 war (not to mention first dual cores), so they license their tech to Intel. :)

Helium... No. Do you think this is some kind of game? Toshiba intros 8TB desktop drive

Re: Longevity

one would imagine the seals are air tight.... a technology we've got a pretty good handle on. If we don't then I fear for anyone up in the ISS right now... or in a Submarine.

Got a Fitbit? Thought you were achieving your goals? Better read this

Re: Not surprised

Aye, it was a flex. Didnt think there was an even cheaper version available - then again, I really dont care. They are pointless.

Not surprised

I got given a free fitbit through work (they gave one to all employees - the shittest model, naturally).

What a heinous fucking waste of time that was. Used it for about a week before I decided it was pointless tat. I'm not surprised to learn it was inaccurate - I mean the pedometer alone could be easily fooled by a quick fap in the work toilets during lunch breaks.

India launches hypersonic space shuttle precursor

Good to see the British tax payers money at work...

Wait, what?

In all seriousness, this is some good shit. I just don't know why we're still sending them money.

EU vetoes O2 and Three merger: Hutchison mulls legal challenge

Signs of corruption in the telecoms industry/EU

So, they allow Orange and T-Mobile to merge to make EE, and allow BT to buy EE. In order to compete, Three and O2 begin process for merging, get vetoed by EU/Ofcom. Is it a coincidence that the person heading up Ofcom used to work for BT?

I think not.

Regardless of whom you contract with (personally, I'm with Three and love their network), this can only be a good thing (the merger) and will allow them to compete with BT/EE/Orange/T-Mobile.

This STINKS of bias/corruption.

First successful Hyperloop test module hits 100mph in four seconds

Re: Nonsense

Well I'm glad you cleared all that up. Elon can pack away his toys now and go back to, you know, being better at everything than you.

Re: Los Angeles to San Francisco route comes in at $6bn

Short sighted views-R-us.

What the hell do you think the purpose of this test is? To go straight to commercial service? Hah. Private money is funding a physical proof of concept. No one's tax money is going near it at this stage. The idea of the concept testing phase is to do exactly what you're saying - iron out the issues, and work out emergency procedures such as the one you mention.

Please dont tell me you work on any project management business. That would just be a disaster.