Posts by fattybacon

Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits

Think Microsoft might be selling their 40% stake soon

Dreaming of a new company alright. They've both signed up with Microsoft.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23968829/microsoft-hires-sam-altman-greg-brockman-employees-openai

Unit4 ditching on-prem in favor of SaaS come 2025

Re: It's not true SaaS

Not entirely true, what they haven't migrated to the web, which is most of it, will still be delivered by Citrix and the old Desktop app, but they will severely limit the number of those licences. Everyone else will use a browser.

Near Field Communication to get longer, stronger – better at contactless

Re: Multiple cards.

I'm surprised so much of the comments here are about physical cards. Surely that ship has sailed? If you are happy with NFC payments then your phone is holding all your cards already? I've long stopped taking out my wallet. I have a default card for bonking, and I can choose any of the others at POS.

Brit newspaper giant fills space with AI-assisted articles

Re: Artificial Intelligent...

Yeah! I thought it was pretty good tbh. You can tell it was done by AI, there were no spelling mistakes or factual blunders.

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

Re: It's just more of the same but faster,

It's like Google Stadia. It's a staggering achievement, you are playing top end video games without any lag, without a console, using any old controller and browser screen (laptop, tablet, phone, fridge, microwave, pc) but people just shrug their shoulders and say it won't work. It does work. It's incredible.

Microsoft emits last preview of .NET 6 and C# 10, but is C# becoming as complex as C++?

Static abstract interface members

I enjoyed the sample code a little too much for I am nought but a child.

IP-arse-able

Train operator phlunks phishing test by teasing employees with non-existent COVID bonus

Re: spelling mistakes, a really obviously bad url

No, successful phishing emails deliberately contain spelling mistakes, terrible urls and general weirdness which puts 99% of people off. They only want the 1% who fall for it

Brit accused of spying on 772 people via webcam CCTV software tells court he'd end his life if extradited to US

Re: Legal Spinners

Agreed. I particulally was intrigued that they'd return home in a coffin and the US guy was FBI agent Roderick Coffin.

Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC: Howdy buck do you get a solid 60FPS in Rockstar's masterpiece?

Re: And this, dear friends...

And this is why I have a Stadia... the patching is done and I can play on any device I own (TV, Chromebook, laptop, pixel phones)...

Everytime I turn my PS4Pro on there is some 40Gb patch for something waiting to happen. I know you can have the updates on PS4 to be done in standby but when I was gifted RDR2 by a friend, the patching process robbed me of my precious intended gaming session.

British ISPs throw in the towel, give up sending out toothless copyright infringement warnings

Amen brother. I was dismayed with the Netflix share price drop the other day which was due to imminent fracturing of the market due the arrival of streaming services from Disney, Warner Media and NBC Universal. Gawd help us, well the US.

So. To the question we really wanted answering: How real is 5G?

Re: But why?

Yarp. I enabled 4G Data Roaming on my son's phone when he went to Spain. One video call, all allowance used up for the week. The app that used to have nice controls which you could limit bandwidth manually were removed for 'improved user experience', so when offered a juicy 4g data resource it usedto the max.

Looked very good, mind.

Scam or stunt? It's looking like the latter... Xiaomi so sorry for £1 smartphone 'promo'

Marketing foobar

The thing is, this was for early adopters, don't do a stupid stunt like this while you are trying to get established in a new market. I'm sure lots of people who like good quality, cheap phones have been put off with the brand for a good long while. They should have just stuck with the £20 off a £99+ spend dealio they had at the same time.

Sorry friends, I'm afraid I just can't quite afford the Bitcoin to stop that vid from leaking everywhere

Re: I've seen a definite uptick in these

It's a shame a lot of regular sites view any email address containing the '+' as invalid. Despite it being whatever RFC for the last 400 years. Trying to get my free BT Sport was a joy, they accepted it but the BTID system didn't, so I was registered with one arm of the behemoth but unable to verify my id so couldn't ever use it.

If you're serious about securing IoT gadgets, may as well start here

Re: why indeed

> I have just 6 Internet Things: a router, 2 phones and 3 laptops

> And those alone cause enough problems.

Only 6? You don't have a smart TV, a PVR, a Set top box, a games console or two?

> The idea that a vital, fundamental home device such as a lock

> requires a live connection back to the

> manufacturer just to work, is insane.

Yeah.... I think it hit home to me when all those pets died... (The Petnet SmartFeeder which had a 3rd party server go down rending the feeder useless.)

People hate hot-desking. Google thinks they’ll love hot-Chromebooking

Re: 100,000 machines swaps in one year?

Where did anyone mention them breaking down? Have you ever been in a local council library? They used to have lots of books, often in multiple copies and in multiple locations, and they also had lots of members who could also go to any location and loan one. That's what Google have done. Lots of sites with the potential for an unknown number of staff visiting. You don't want to run out, the hardware is cheap, so you stock lots of them.

In my University, we have secure laptop loan dispenser cabinets at multiple sites, students and staff bonk their cards and get a laptop. Sadly, they are all Toshiba PoSs, and by the time your Windows roaming profile has loaded you'd wish you' hadn't bothered. It's a shame we are moving from the G-Suite because Chromebooks would have been so much better.

Google to kill its Drive file locker in two confusing ways

Re: Time to Migrate?

It needs something to be more attractive. At the moment it looks like Bella Emberg hit with a frying pan. My PC is in a constant tussle to trying to kill the Windows 10-built-in OneDrive to allow the company's One Drive for Business also overcome the different One Drive that comes with Office 2016. Good times.

UK not as keen on mobile wallets as mainland Europe and US

Re: Contactless Payments in Norway

That wasn't your four digit PIN you were typing, that was the price of the single beer you'd ordered. They make you type it to make sure you know what you are getting yourself into :D

Re: Define "regularly"

RFID shielding wallets, give me a break.

Thanks John. Why did it take so long for someone to post something sensible, rather than the swivel-eyed rantings of the foil-hatted loons?

I'd say Android Pay is more secure than your bank's contactless card as they generate you a fake card, tied to your bank account, so your real card details aren't part of the transaction. So, you could hobble the contactless part of your participating bank's card, and still be part of the contactless love.

I live in the ruddy sticks (A seaside town they forgot to bomb) where we do have a) 4G mobile b) shops that accept contactless, and I use it all the time with just MY PHONE. I'm so confident I even leave my wallet and jacket in the boot of my car, I'M A TOTAL REBEL.

Also, was funny the other day seeing four newly arrived American student girls in a bar all trying to pay for their individual diet 'sodas' with cards without the powah of contactless or chip'n'pin. The hipster bar dude hadn't a clue how to process them. He would have been better off just giving them on the house.

UK Home Sec: Give us a snoop-around for WhatApp encryption. Don't worry, we won't go into the cloud

Journalism

I've read all the posts so far.. lots of criticism of the minister and the Whitehall wonks and their agendas. No mention of the piss-poor journalism at play. The obvious question even if you could make you a backdoor and give Western governments the key then do you give all governments the key also?

And considering how often ours lose data then what hope? Additionally, all our IT systems are run by Capita et al. Do they have keys too?

Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?

Re: Said it before, will say it again

I tried to sign up for this HBO Now and Hulu, they look great! Oh, and Crackle, that looks handy too.... oh wait... what does this $ symbol mean... oh... still Crackle is free.... oh.... not available in your country.

How Apple exploded Europe's crony capitalism

It's all about the data stupid

For years the mobile contracts would only advertise the number of call minutes and texts you got, you could barely find the amount of data you got, if any, and certainly not quality/speed (GPRS, EDGE etc.). When they did cotton on the still would never give you a decent amount of data without a ridiculous amount of call minutes and texts. I just wanted the data... but of course data was expensive and broke their money cow of SMS, up to 10p for 160 characters of text, per text!

The article was interesting but it forgot the absurdity of Apple's nano-SIM... phones got bigger, SIMs got smaller, everyone standardised on the micro-SIM.. except Apple. No good reason.

Hangouts hangs up on third party apps

Re: Is this Reddit or what?

Don't Allo and Duo rely on using your mobile number for identification, like WhatsApp? I'd have been shafted recently during a protracted number porting fiasco, whereas my Google account-based identity let's me get up and running with a device really quickly.

FM now stands for 'fleeting mortality' in Norway

Licence to ... annoy

I ain't got no FM radio in my house, other than the receiver in my phone (LG G4), so it's always great to attempt to listen to the local radio footie commentary at home.

PC web browser... yes, for the pre-/post-match gibbon-chat, nope for the game, this program isn't licensed on this platform.

Squeezebox/Logitech server to numerous Squeeze clients dotted around the house... as above.

Chromecast TV and Chromecast Audio using TuneIn app on phone (nope). As above.

Chromecast TV and Chromecast Audio using BBC iPlayer Radio on phone (nope, no channel).

Freesat telly - nope, not re-broadcast there, not Lardaarn enough.

Freeview... just checked, maybe! Hope at last!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/news/item104

Balance phone precariously on top of a 2m tall cabinet, connected to amp using headphone jack... and phone's built-in FM app and yes, finally. I can listen to some very crackly FM.

Or sit outside in the street listening to the car's FM.

However... when it comes to test match special, the reverse applies to all of the above (car only has FM and MW).

Tesco Bank limits online transactions after fraud hits thousands

They're on top of it

Saw this on their forums

"Please send us a private message to the CET user account with your name, DOB, postcode and contact number. When you send the details, please leave extra spaces between DOB, postcode and phone number, like 0 8 1 1 2 0 1 6."

https://yourcommunity.tescobank.com/t5/News/Message-for-Current-Account-customers/m-p/6770/highlight/true#M370

Seagate has a flash early Xmas present for Xbox gamers

Re: Hmm

The word on the street is 32Gb on-board, the games are all cart based, and there will be a micro-SD slot supporting up to 128Gb and NO USB drives allowed.

Google's home tat falls flat as a soufflé – but look out Android makers

LG love

What sold me on the LG G4 I bought last year was that ticks all my boxes, SD card, removable battery and LTE-Advance (y'know the double speed EE sells), barring waterproof-ness. AND it was 2/3rds the price of the similar but worse-specced Nexus 5X.

Nice to see the crazy LG G5 carrying on the tradition of replaceable batteries and sd-cards, and lifeproof make a proper waterproof case. https://www.lifeproof.com/en-us/lg-g5/fre-for-lg-g5/lpfr-lg-g5.html

Good God, we've found a Google thing we like – the Pixel iPhone killer

No Google Stores

Google have seen chumps buying iPhones and thought premium price land here we come.. but they haven't got a Google shop in every premium shopping centre, staffed by people insane enough to patiently listen and help chumps who can't configure their home WiFi and send them away to be fixed when they breakdown. That's what people are paying the i-premium for and that's fair enough, I can see the appeal... but Google has none of this infrastructure and never will.

Android users want premium phones at half the price, and companies like Xiaomi and OnePlus produce phones. The Pixel specs, despite what the author thinks, are pretty mid-range, and indeed the materials, you get premium metal cases for a lot lot less.

The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

Insurance win

You need to spell out to your insurance company what was inside.

I had an £150 Dell netbook stolen, that by outlet flook had a 3G data card inside and an SSD. They replaced it with a £500 Dell ultrabook because they couldn't find anything else with a 3G in on their list.

HTC 10: Is this the Droid you're looking for?

Re: Almost all phones are "good enough" these days

Why suffer the trials and tribulations of varying Bluetooth versions and protocol extensions that your devices might or might not support? Get a Chromecast Audio, switch HD on, and hook up to some nice amp/speakers or 'active' speakers, with lovely optical cable. (Remember that you can upload 40,000 of your own tracks to GMusic.)

Chromecast gains wired Ethernet dongle

Dolt ahoy

I'm going to sound stupid (as well as looking stupid).. but.. so the micro-USB cable is providing powah and ethernets to the Chromecast? So, even the first Chromecasts had this ability built in? Why isn't every usb device offering this? A usb hub with a single ethernet port acting as a router to a raft of RaspberyPis etc.

Paris? Well, she's had some non-standard plugs put in her various ports.

Chinese takeaway, hold the Google: Xiaomi Mi4 LTE Android

Re: Another caution

If it breaks, you go on YouTube and work out how to replaces the screen yourself. :) You only paid £160.

Alternatively, Tesco were selling that basic but great Nokia 105 for a quid the other day. Buy your clumsy offspring a few of them instead.

'Why don't you buy from foreign sites?' asks Commish, snapping on the gloves

Amazon

I was just totting up my Amazon buying experiences (UK, US, CA, FR, DE & JP) so far, the other day and marvelling at how easy it was, my browser translates every page pretty well, and they keep a consistent experience so even without auto-translation I've managed a successful purchase.

The problem is not usually Amazon, it's the suppliers who geo-restrict things, and often Amazon say this item can be shipped to you, you can even filter on ship internationally, but when you finally get your basket to the check you will be stopped.

I just bought a handheld games console from France, arrived in 4 working days, was £30 cheaper than amazon uk including delivery.

Turbocharged quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed, global geekgasm likely

Re: Windows 10

Well seems the Win10 compatible RPi device will come along in the future, this RPi2 isn't it. It says something that it will be a free upgrade to 'makers', don't know what that means.

Reg man confesses: I took my wife out to choose a laptop for Xmas. NOOOO

Typical El Reg comments

I'm amazed at how little of the 3 pages of discussion has been about the needs of the 'customer'. It's all been about bashing Macs, replacing every OS with Linux and perceived quality of bits of technology. Typical El Reg stuff.

The thing is the Chromebook does the job for most people but most of all, it's easy to support for us the nominated techies. When anything goes wrong you can wipe and restore it in minutes, returning all the data, shortcuts, bookmarks, extensions, passwords everything. Yes, you are giving Google a gift but at least we don't have to be involved.

I'd also question the need for Word and iTunes in the OP article. Really? Still got an iPod have they? All the people I know with iPhones have never synced their device with iTunes and in fact, didn't realise you could or why you'd want to. As for Word, Chromebook handles Word docs seamlessly for viewing, and Google Docs edits and saves them.

Chromecast video on UK, Euro TVs hertz so badly it makes us judder – but Google 'won't fix'

Amazon Fire TV

My first Amazon Fire TV went crazy bonkers, wrestling to handshake with my telly to find a happy resolution and refresh rate. I had to send it back.

Amazon sent me a new one that was better but it still falls off the wagon sometimes. Out of the box it's 1080p/60Hz and my TV sometimes is happy to play ball, sometimes it's not.

In the settings you can choose all combinations of resolution and frame rate. Can't understand why the Chromecast won't. Since I bought a AFTV the Chromecast hasn't had a look in, in our house. Simple reason - remote control.

Internet finally ready to replace answering machine cassette tape

Re: 718- 387-xxxx

That's some fine pedantry there. Doffs cap.

Toshiba's CB30-102 13.3in Chromebook – imagine a tablet with a keyboard

Love love my chromebook BUT...

and it's a big BUT... Connecting to any sort of VPN has been broken for ages and despite fortnightly updates of the OS, it doesn't seem to be getting fixed. So despite having a nice RDP client available, you aren't going to be remoting to anywhere work related.

CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! Dell's Android PC on a stick to ship with Santa

Re: Power over HDMI

Yeah, power over ethernet is pretty rare on domestic tellies, but it has been part of the HDMI spec for years. I imagine it can be fed by a powered hub.

Infinite loop: the Sinclair ZX Microdrive story

Teesside Poly pimped the QL

In 1985 every student on the HND Information Systems at Teesside Poly were loaned a QL and matching 14" crt monitor for the two year course. I still have the welts on my hands from carrying them the to the train station.

Assignments were to be brought in on the damn microdrive tapes. If I'd have been a bit more savvy I would have realised that I didn't have to do the assignments, just blame the tapes. I ended up doing the assignments and invariably losing them.

Our machine code lecturer was a big cheese in the 68008 world, he worked part time for Motorola (more likely a research contract). Seems odd to have someone genuinely good at such a 'ahem' 2nd tier 'university'. Maybe he was a degenerate.

'Op! Op! Op!' Gangnam Style earns Google $8m

Re: i wonder

's funny, I seemed to watch the Korean Dance Team video version more :)

Humax HDR-1000S Freesat+ recorder with FreeTime

Back to the Future

I managed to pick one up for £195 in the Comet firesale. Really nice performer, HD and SD picture quality is excellent in my opinion. The unit itself is pretty light and plasticy, and a fingerprint/dust magnet, a real disappointment to be honest.

A few niggles, though I might be misremembering as I've loaned it to my dad to give him a taste of the future. When you Search it only displays things in the future from the seven day EPG, it would be nice if it searched the available On Demand content from the past too. (Does it even search through your own recordings?

The other big one is the remote, common with other Humax boxes it doesn't support HDMI-CEC so you can't control the volume of your TV, switch sources etc. In other Humax boxes they've made the remotes universal, and can programme in your TVs codes for power and volume etc. Not this one :( though an old Foxsat HDR remote is a good alternative.

BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

Re: Red Button

It really is cack isn't it? Often on even my brand spanking new Panasonic telly the red button takes a while to appear, and sometimes doesn't appear at all (BBC HD)

My dad and my in-laws were big consumers of Teletext as they have no interest at waiting for a pc to boot and pay poundzz for the internets. They are constantly frustrated by the red button services, half of the pages are missing for a start. The only benefit is they kept the page numbers.

Apple iPod Touch 5G review

It spells disappointment for anyone hoping for a reasonably priced iPad Mini

Having the entry level set so high now, it makes the iPad Mini a shoo in for £299 or £349, nestling between the iPad and the Touch (rename it iPad Nano?). Shame, the Touch was as they say in the Hudsucker Proxy "You know, for kids."

Carphone Warehouse lauds Nexus 7 while eagerly eying iPad Mini

Re: Buddy, can you spare me a price point?

An iPhone and an iPad are two different beasts. One's a phone for starters :)

A 4" iPod Touch is exactly the same as a 7" iPad Mini but with a different sized screen. Having them at the same price point confuses punters.

Buddy, can you spare me a price point?

The problem Apple have is that the 4" iPod Touch starts at £249 too, so the brand new Touch needs to go down to £199 - rename it to the iPad Nano? That would make room for the iPad Mini to be at £249. Or, since it's a <cough> premium brand, £299.

Crooks sell skint fanbois potatoes instead of iPhones

The source from the force

It's got even more funnees, bottles of water and bottles of coke, to go with the spuds. The truly gullible could get a full meal going on.

http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/04a6eb4b452f506480257a00004aefaa.htm

All the talk of bank accounts not giving out much at ATMs are forgetting that the there is a vast underclass that deal solely with cash because they don't trust banks (wise) or the banks won't touch them. Hence the popularity of the payday loans and real loan sharks.

When I pop into Argos in my northern seaside town (that they forgot to bomb), I'm usally the only one using the yellow card pay kiosks, everyone else queues with their bundles of cash.

Review: Raspberry Pi

Re: TV USB powah

I think it's adequate. I was running almost all 1080p videos I had. It did choke and stutter (unwatchably) on a 12Gb DTS audio, 1080p video with a 20Mb/s bitrate. So if I had more powah it would work better? Woop!

TV USB powah

Oh... I better stop doing that then. Thanks for the heads up.

I have it powered happily with my Panasonic TVs usb port.

I am using the Open Elec XBMC build headless with the android XBMC, streaming my content from my NAS and I was really blown away by it. Surprisingly responsive and usable. I'm not sure I'd let any other member of the family to use it but if I'm steering I'd be happy to use it.

As for a tool to learn programming, I've never understood the use. Join www.codeacademy.com and learn via a browser. There is no reason to buy a Pi for it.

National Rail Enquiries

Orange San Francisco

I've steered clear of CyanogenMod, too much volitilty and dozens of different but similar roms. I've standardised all my SFs on Swedish Snow RL7. Very stable with lots of nice cyanogen features built in.

Also install Ad Free from the Marketplace (Play) and you won't see any of the adverts this app purports to have saving you a fiver.

EA unplugs Rock Band for iOS

Suspend

I like the phrase "suspend support" so much nicer than "end" or "stop" or "fuck off"