* Posts by Sampler

1077 publicly visible posts • joined 16 May 2007

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the BBC stage a very British coup to rescue our data from Facebook and friends

Sampler

Re: BBC

/ the cause of...

Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads

Sampler

I'd been looking at buying on of their tablets too, I don't need anything too fancy and the price seemed good, ah well, definitely off the list.

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

Sampler

Speaking of basting, what about birds flying through the energy stream being beamed down from space?

I mean the hippies complain about wind farms chewing up migratory birds, what they going to be saying about kfc opening up suspiciously close to the ground station....

Redpilled Microsoft does away with flashing icons on taskbar as Windows 11 hits Beta

Sampler

Re: " ... make finding what you need easier."

I installed it tonight on a seven year old mobile workstation, which surprised me it would accept the older gear after hearing the stories, even if it was top of the line for the time.

I'd only gone to the left corner three times to hit start before I decided to hunt through the menu's and found there's an option to center (default) or left align the taskbar, so now it's back in the right (left) place.

Hopefully that option stays in to the final version.

Some weird bugs, most notably when the pop-up for admin actions comes through the options are to "remember me" (left side, greyed) or "C" (right side, default selected, highlighted blue).

"C" cancel's the action, "remember me" allows the application that was requesting admin privileges to continue (such as installing an app).

But I mean, final versions are bug ridden, I'm surprised the beta's actually run at all to be honest.

-posted from the aforementioned Windows 11 machine.

2021: A Bork Odyssey. Is it remake of Disney's The Black Hole or explorer.exe being shown the door?

Sampler

The Scariest Movie

I was once (circa 2016) sat in a cinema and the windows XP load screen came up..

image

(as you can see, it was a sell out show...)

It was weird they were still advertising it two years later:

image

Microsoft bins Azure Blockchain without explanation, gives users four months to move

Sampler
Coat

How very cryptic...

I'll see myself out..

A trip to the dole queue: CEO of $2bn Bay Area tech biz says he was fired for taking LSD before company meeting

Sampler

Re: Stoned web design

I remember back when I was cool *cough* young I would spin up the decks at a mates house and make record ideas of mixes I'd like to try at the next set we had live. Often a few tinnies would go down and one night I made this awesome tape and we were like "we should take this to a record label, it's awesome", listened back to it the next day and, yeah, it got taped over..

Watchdog 'enables Tesla Autopilot' with string, some weight, a seat belt ... and no actual human at the wheel

Sampler

“Standard Autopilot would require lane lines to turn on, which this street did not have,”

The street it drove off of an crashed on? I mean, I'm not saying that was the cause, but, it's not like it successfully drove down the street?

I like the idea of eye tracking to ensure the driver is paying attention, presuming they can successfully monitor the eye tracking (unlike my old tablet that keeps warning I've looked away when I get towards the bottom of the page), would resolve a lot of these autopilot crash reports you read on the reg where the drivers having a nap.

Beloved pixel pusher Paint prepares to join Notepad for updates from Microsoft Store

Sampler

Re: confused?

I used to be the same, but shift+windows flag key+s to grab a screenshot of your desired cropping is now easier (as it's auto loaded in to your clipboard ready for pasting).

Though, I still tend to use alt+printscreen to just get the application window a lot more..

What I'm really confused about is, what updates?

British gambling giant Betfred told to pay stiffed winner £1.7m jackpot after claiming 'software problem'

Sampler

I feel an upcoming episode of "Who? Me?"

...I was working for this software firm that made blackjack apps for betfred...

AI recommendations fail fans who like hard rock and hip hop – official science

Sampler

Going backwards

I got in to Pandora decades ago and was really surprised how well the algorithm worked, recently I used Google Play Music which again was really good at picking similar artists and on a few occasions I was genuinely surprised at who it put together but it did work, I'd even found new artists I now love from this.

Since being forced to switch to YouTube music though feels a massive step backwards as it clearly uses a new algorithm that is just appalling shite in comparison and feels like it's directed more by sales targets than actual preference matching. I appreciate a band like Skunk Anansie are hard to classify over the course of their repertoire, but to put the likes of Ed fucking Sheeran, Bruno Mars and a One Directioner gone solo is unquestionably wrong and also doesn't factor the other listening tastes I may have expressed on previous selections and playlists.

It's so bad that after years of being a happy Google Play Music customer I've switched to Spotify (that YouTube Music's UI appears to be "inspired" by). Whilst not great (it takes too much of an inspiration from my previous playlists so might through a heavy metal song in to a electontica playlist) it's certain not tried to play Ed fucking Sheeran at me..

Guilty: Sister and brother who over-ordered hundreds of MacBooks for university and sold the kit for millions

Sampler

Re: Why is the second part of:

I imagine it'd be harder to leave with the knowledge of whoever takes over your role will somewhat immediately notice that dave in accounting got a new macbook a month ago according to the system but is complaining he's using a five year old model...

Backblaze on the back foot after 'inadvertently' beaming customer data to Facebook

Sampler

One of the selling points..

..of backblaze is the encryption, you need to input your encryption key to view your files, so not even backblaze knows what you've uploaded (according to their marketing).

This, then, would fly in the face of that assertion and promise to the customer of holding their data securely. So, class action?

Australian police suggests app to record consent to sexual activity

Sampler

You know what would stop rapes?

Consequences. If these assholes don't keep getting away with it, it wouldn't embolden them to carry on doing it and others that see it happening carry on, if only there were some body that was supposed to enforce these consequences but all to often don't follow through on that obligation...

Samsung thinks about giving the Galaxy Note refresh a miss this year as semiconductor supplies run dry

Sampler

That's not going to really happen though is it? The argument of integrating the battery is for the water resistance and given the downpour I was cycling through yesterday I'd much prefer the phone to be water proof and have to go to a service centre to replace the battery than to have to go to a service centre every time it got a soaking.

I thought I'd be annoyed at the lack of a headphone jack, but honestly, not bothered me. Barely used the one in the 8 (especially after a misfortune with some hot sauce at a restaurant ruined a bag the phone was in and gunked up both it and the USB c port, leading to spotty performance) and haven't had any problems with the 20 not having one (especially as the free galaxy buds they bundled with it being pretty good, but there's always the usb-c to 3.5mm jack that came with it too somewhere..).

As much as the eight could've had a longer life, like the 4 behind it, by being able to buy a new battery, it's not like I was never going to upgrade again and open access to a battery just isn't that much of a demand for most customers, especially now power banks are a thing, further diminishing the requirement of being able to swap one out.

Sampler

But also, what would they do?

The S21 seems to just add Note 20 features tot he S lineup, what would they really add to the Note 20? The camera's already ridiculously over-spec'd and the chips's fast enough to do anything you want, we're already at the too much ram and storage options.

I got my Note 20 last year to update on my Note 8 and that was mostly due to the battery starting to give on the old one. I think we're long past needed a device refresh on an annual basis due to technology improvements. When I first got a phone I was upgrading every six months as there was a definite improvement and real innovations all round, that slowly dropped to a year, two, and now it's not really improvements we're looking for; I honestly can't tell the difference when my phone is on 5g or 4g for the types of data use you have on a phone, side by side photo's look the same, they're just more annoying on the Note 20 as when you try to use them programs and platforms either don't understand the codec (even though the heif is turned off for compatibility) or the filesize is above their cut-off (which is most annoying on my car-share app, Car Next Door, that you have to upload condition photos pre and post hire and they will not accept the pictures).

It almost feels like these increase in specs for the sake of looking new is a step backwards. So maybe a year or two out of the release cycle would be a good thing as device refreshes can be focused on actual improvements with usage to the user. Don't most contracts come as two years these days anyway?

As a long time Note user (first being the 4) I would be sad to see it go as I don't think there's much else on the market that's close and would be much happier with a more sporadic release than being discontinued entirely, even if that affects the cost (given it's one of the more pricey phones to start with).

A word to the Wyse: Smoking cigars in the office is very bad for you... and your monitor

Sampler

Similar, but not as refined...

I once had a similar experience, a friend of a friend asked me to look at his computer as it wasn't giving any output to screen. A few cursor checks were text back and forth before a home visit was arranged (him to mine, my generosity only goes so far).

Popped the computer on my work bench, popped the side off so I could see what was going on during boot, plugged the cables in and powered it up.

Pop, poof..something on the motherboard blew and a little plume of smoke rose from the opened side.

"There's your problem" I said, pointing at the smoke. The case panel I'd removed was covered in a sickly yellow sticky substance, I presumed similarly all components were but I wasn't going to get close enough to find out, presumably this substance was conductive and he'd shorted it.

Built them a replacement unit on the cheap out of ebay seconds and delivered it, this is where I found the source of the problem, our friends friend like to smoke weed, and copious amounts if the literal mountain of baggies on his desk were to go by (no exaggeration, a foot tall and the base about as wide, no wonder he had no cash to buy a new rig).

Never been a smoker myself but seeing what passive can do to a machine over a couple of years I'm quite glad I never took it up myself... drugs are bad..m'kay..

Samsung shows off next-generation big-pixel camera sensor tech, coming to an Android phone near you

Sampler

Re: "You don't want quantity – you want size"

As they explained in the article, you have a certain space to work with, more pixels (ie, higher megapixel count) in that area means each pixel has less light to work with (as there's spacing between pixels so you have more grid, which light is falling on instead of the pixel).

Pixels packed together are also more likely to interfere with each other so you get greater noise artefacts in the resulting image.

So you're looking for enough balance between number of pixels to get detail but not too many pixels that you're losing light and generating more noise.

This is why Sony sell the A7S range, a full frame camera with only 12mp (vs say 24mp on the cheaper A7 range or even the 40mp to 60mp of the similarly priced A7R range) as it makes it an absolute beast in low light where you can crank the ISO up (think of it as sensitivity of the sensor) without getting the noise artefacts you'd get in the other lines, this makes it a favourite for videographers on a budget who can get great 4k video quality in a small package and shoot in darker conditions with better quality than others.

I have a Note 20 Ultra with an 108mp sensor on it, which is thoroughly pointless, the picture quality isn't better than the 12mp Note 8 it replaced (in fact, they're worse, but that's more the default oversaturation of reds that they decided to do in processing, rather than IQ of the sensor) but the pictures themselves are huge in comparison (data file wise) and therefore don't work with a lot of systems as the filesize is above the cut-off limit (or they don't understand the HEIC codec). So again, more is not better.

Counter-intuitively though the Note 20 is actually better in low light than the Note 8, not straight out of sensor mind you, but it has a computational night mode that takes a second or two to take your photo, so if a subject is static and you're a steady hand it can take the time to read in data over time and help eliminate noise. Of course, if your subject isn't static and you've got the grip of Michael J Fox you'd be better off with the Note 8.

Facebook bans sharing of news in Australia – starting now – rather than submit to pay-for-news-plan

Sampler

Re: Couldn't even share this article

You can't share this news article, however, if you tweet it and then share the tweet, that works...

LastPass to limit fans of free password manager to one device type only – computer or mobile – from next month

Sampler

Re: Classic ploy

Probably not all, but a percentage and that's all they care about, it doesn't affect the current paying base, so no revenue lost, so the percentage growth from the free base plus cost saved on the free base that pivot.

I mean, it's a shot in the foot for future customer acquisition in trade off for the gamble of turning some free customers now as people will no longer be recommending the product or trying it before they buy unlike the competitors.

But I suppose the market is small to start with, given it does what Google already does, so you have to be IT literate enough to not trust Google to store your passwords in chrome and CC details in pay, but not literate enough to know password managers are a bad idea (this last bit will probably not win me any friends).

Microsoft's underwhelming, underpowered dual-screen Surface Duo phone arrives in the UK this month for £1,349

Sampler

I believe the logic is double the screens, double the power draw, double the recharge. Discharge/recharge cycles increase and battery dies sooner (not run flat, but depreciate in capacity as to be useless, which usually takes a couple of years on most phones, but sooner on this due to the higher demand).

Not that I agree, but, I believe that's their angle.

Amazon coughs up $62m to shoo away claims it stole driver tips, cut pay rates without telling them

Sampler

Re: 100% of tips _did_ go to the drivers

I guess they never did advertise 100% of wages...

AI-generated pixelated photo of AOC in a bikini pulled from paper highlighting danger of AI-generated pics

Sampler

Politicians must love this

And other public figures. Anything they've done in the past comes back to haunt them and it's "oh, no, that's a deepfake" and they carry on, reputation untarnished.

President Biden selects Jessica Rosenworcel to head up FCC as acting chairwoman

Sampler

Good

From the matters I've followed on the Reg over the last few years she's always seemed like a voice of sense and decency, how she's still sane is anyone's guess.

Brave bets on the decentralized web with IPFS browser support for a more peer-to-peer approach

Sampler

Parler v2.0

Coming to an IPFS near you soon..

Samsung rolls out new Galaxy S21 range, including extra-lux Ultra

Sampler

Re: Yet again ....

Then get a Note 20 Ultra, pretty much the same specs (or, as close to it as you wouldn't really notice in real life use) and have a micro sd card slot.

Not every device has to be built for you needs, that's why they have a portfolio and competition..

It's been a day or so and nope, we still can't wrap our head around why GitHub would fire someone for saying Nazis were storming the US Capitol

Sampler

Opportunistic?

Other problems with the fellow that would be difficult to fire for (low quality, but no that low, ruffles feathers, poor time keeping) but soon as he put his neck out on something they could point to a rule about, they got the excuse to shove? Maybe, there's usually more to it then what you can get in a news article, otherwise, if it's just for saying nazi, they're going to have to let the CEO go too...

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

Sampler

Re: Never happened to me

Never happened to me and I do use gmail.

I even have a fairly common *cough* popular name. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Take Note: Samsung said to be thinking about killing off Galaxy phablet series

Sampler

Well, when I said the 20 would be my last note, I didn't mean this...

My first was a Note4, got given it at work otherwise probably wouldn't have picked it but it's been my favourite phone to date.

It's also been the longest phone I've kept (partially due to the simple way to replace the battery when it started getting old) as I didn't "upgrade" till the 8 came out and that annoyed the heck of me, that fucking bixby button, I had it turned off but every time you caught it it'd pop with "hey, you want to enable bixby" and even software over rides to turn it into a camera button failed regularly enough to render them moot. The screen felt smaller, maybe it was the change in aspect ratio, maybe it was the pointless curvature to the side.. it was definitely dimmer too when you sat them side by side.

Yes I appreciated the faster radios, processors and storage that came with the upgrade but the phone design itself was a step backwards.

Not as much a step backwards as the 20, which seems to be the stepping stone to get users used to the S series as they moved the buttons to match, so my last seven years of intuition has to be relearned. The drop of the inscreen home button is still an annoyance as I still find myself going for it to wake the device or navigate home and the stupid bulging cameras is rubbish (and the photo's aren't even as good as the last one, oversaturated and contrasty - with the exception of the frankly magic night shot, I'd right the whole thing off).

Have said this many times, they just need to release a Note4 body with up to date internals and I'd pay the ridiculous Note20 price tag for one, you don't even have to throw the earbuds in to entice me. Especially give us the user replaceable battery, the only reason the 8 got replaced is the batteries gone spotchy.

I do have half a mind just to pull the 4 from a drawer and go back to it, I mean, gmaps, email, IG & web browser is all I use my phone for, occasionally ignore a call aside..

Marmite of scripting languages PHP emits version 8.0, complete with named arguments and other goodies

Sampler

Old documentation

I think one of the biggest problems for PHP is outdated documentation. As someone who's not a coder but needed to get something to work I found an example in php that did the trick, this happened several times and so when coming to build something bigger it started becoming my go to, especially as these are internal things never to see the light of a public network it was fine.

Down the line I need something public facing and oh god how many security holes are in these examples I'm reading through, like, fixed decades ago but still showing the old way in recently posted tutorials.

My film club needed a way to handle rsvp's since covid struck and we had to limit to 14 people, nothing I could find (in our budget of three beans) could handle rsvps with a cap and a waitlist so I was like, hey, that sounds like something I could probably bash out in an evening with a bit of copying from stackoverflow for the hard bits. Go out and look for "php user login system" and see how many examples have any SQL injection protection. Like, pdo with binded variables will leave a SQL injection dead in the water (as far as I've read) but barely any example uses them and only a few having a passing mention that the end user might want to look up about security - the end user who needs to google how to do a login page, they're not going to grasp the wider issue at hand here.

I'm sure I've made several other beginner errors (hence not linking it here as an example), especially with post or global variables (I've worked around get variables at least) and although I think I sanitise everything, I don't really know, and I guess I'm not the only person in this boat, just might be old enough to at least wonder about security rather than just be happy I got shit up and running.

But, as I have a day job (that seems to like to be an evening job fat too often), really digging in to the security isn't something I have time to do and, a little, the inclination, given the wording of a lot of the documentation I do find isn't very accessible to someone starting out, which is kinda counterproductive, given we're the ones who're going to make the biggest mistakes? Trying to teach someone security once they've got their bad habits well and truly ingrained seems a poor choice.

Tax working from home, says Deutsche Bank, because the economy needs that lunch money you’re not spending

Sampler

Change of location doesn't mean change of behaviour

I may be working from home but that doesn't mean I'm not nipping to my local shops to buy lunch, if anything I've switched from a national supermarket chain to local businesses as near work Woolies was the only option but where I live there's a cornucopia of cafes, restaurants (that do lunch) and bars (that serve food) that I can nip to (more food retailers per square kilometre that anywhere else in the city).

Would this make me exempt from the tax as I'm still being a good little consumer? Or do I just pay twice?

(that was rhetorical, I know the answer)

I guess the irony being here is if they do reduce my disposable income, being lazy and grabbing a quick bite at a café will be the first of my frivolities cut. I know this is anecdotal, but, wonder how many are in the same boat as me?

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

Sampler

Re: How

But that would also disable voice calls & sms, he just doesn't want mobile data (presumably happy with wifi, though that is available during airplane mode)

Intel's SGX cloud-server security defeated by $30 chip, electrical shenanigans

Sampler

UHD Playback

If SGX is proven to be smashed, does this mean we can drop the requirement for UHD playback limiting PC users being able to watch 4k discs they legally own on a pc other than one with an Intel CPU made in the last five years (especially given AMD's are rather fashionable at the moment).

Speaking as someone who's desktop is AMD, spare desktop is AMD, HTPC is intel (but a NUC that's older than Skylake) and neither laptop in the house supports it too. Only my NAS with it's little i3 that I built last year can actually playback the UHD's I have (thank god the drive's USB so I could actually test it in all these machines).

It absolutely stinks from a customer perspective. I can't watch the discs I legally own unless I'm huddled under the stairs with my NAS box but I could easily go online and download a myriad of rips of these discs.

That said, out of the two I own I only bought one. Alien I won in a competition and Die Hard is so full of noise from the transfer on the anniversary steel tin I bought that my old DVD looks better anyway. But, as a massively film nerd with a 4k projector, I would buy more of these things if I could bloody well play them.

Days before the US election, phishers net $2.3m from Wisconsin Republicans

Sampler

Victimless Crime?

[body]

Zoom finally adds end-to-end encryption for all, for free – though there are caveats

Sampler

And if you're using their record in the cloud option, is this encrypted at rest and only decrypted when you pull it down to play it?
You're not using any encryption, as the article states, cloud record is not available during E2EE.

SpaceX’s Starlink finally reveals its satellite broadband pricing for rural America: At $99 a month, it’s a good deal

Sampler

Outside America

Given these satellites are in low earth orbit I guess they'll be whizzing past most of the planet as the come back around to make their next pass, will this be available outside the states or is it just for the 'mericans?

I can think of a few places here in 'straya that would appreciate this.

Touchscreen holdout? This F(x)tec Pro1 X phone with sliding QWERTY keyboard might push your buttons

Sampler

I miss my HTC's

The Kaiser (TyTN II), Touch pro 2 and Desire Z (the latter actually being what got me on to Android) were great phones.

I remember when I had the Kaiser a friend of mine asked why I didn't have an iPhone, which at the time couldn't do video calling (this could), had a 2mp camera vs the 3.1mp on the Kaiser and topped out at Edge dataspeeds, no HSPDA and no GPS whereas I was running a TomTom app for sat nav driving with mine.

It was a wonder, an actual leap ahead of my old Nokia's and Windows Mobile 6 (iirc) wasn't as bad as people slate it for (most of which probably never had a windows mobile). Certainly better than what an iPhone would offer.

I'd be happy for someone to take the Touch Pro 2's form factor and chuck some modern chipsets in, don't have to be top of the range, last years mid-range phones ran perfectly fast enough to do everything, camera's don't have to be pointlessly over the top (like the 108mp camera on my Note 20 which takes worse pictures than whatever the Note 8 had, at least they weren't all oversaturated and full of bright screaming reds - and the camera module didn't have to stick out so much from the back of the phone) just something functional that'll take a snap to share on social media, as that's what phones do, those who bang on about doing proper photography with a mobile aren't doing proper photography (or at least a very narrow definition of certain aspects).

Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network

Sampler

Was considering one of these

The quest 2 looked pretty good, but, not with that limitation. So, that's off the cards now..

When you're On Call, only you can hear the silence of the clicks

Sampler

Classic Errror

Never, ever drink on call, you can guarantee that will result in a call, a pretty nasty one too.

I used to like our on call procedure, we had pagers, but, when out of network, they didn't receive any notification, even when they re-joined the network, so you could show the pager and be like "didn't get it boss".

Was a good couple of years I got on call bonus whilst living in a network deadspot..

It's that time of the year when Apple convinces you last year's iPhones weren't quite magical enough, so buy this new 5G iPhone 12 instead

Sampler

Covid Mobiles

Does anyone really need a new mobile now we're all sat at home with access to our larger electronic devices (tablets, laptops, computers, smart tv's/projectors etc..).

I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G Wonderpants and I really don't know why, my Note 8's battery was worn a bit I guess but I sit at home all day next to a charger, why, why do I need a new phone? It has 5G, but, I can already stream video at a high enough quality on 4G? And that's the biggest bandwidth usage.

By the sounds of things, by the time they let us back out in to the daylight we might as well get the 13..

Important reminder on IoT security..

Sampler

Important reminder on IoT security..

Saw this on the BBC:

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54436575

Had a good laugh, thought I'd share..

(Technically, would this be a denial of service attack?)

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

Sampler

Re: CSV?

Another favourite is an external provider which sends us a "CSV" file in which fields are separated with | which is not a comma and also not a problem. Up to now.

That's not a CSV, that's a PSV..

(pipe separated values)

Exercise-tracking app Strava to give away data sweated out after four billion runs, rides and rambles

Sampler

Re: Slight problem with that..

Melbourne is generally regarded as having better cycling infrastructure than Sydney, in so much as we used to have a professional cyclist who'd fly to Melbourne for training as they didn't want to risk their life on Sydney roads...

Having spent a year in Melbourne though I completely agree on your assessment, whilst holding the above true (sadly)..

Sampler

Slight problem with that..

Routes are either workouts or existing commutes, ie, where riders have to go to get to work already, rather than a preferred shorter route.

Workouts are what's comfortable for a user in a loop so kinda irrelevant, commutes don't take into account what would be more direct routes but have to be avoided due to either being a car park (and therefore not fun to cycle down) or existing infrastructure blocking the way.

For example I live in Sydney's inner west and my office is on the North Shore which entails a commute through the City Centre. There's a nice long street I used to take before it was closed to road traffic in favour of a tram, so now I have to loop out of my way to cycle safely and legally (and that's in both directions). That's one example of many diversions I have to take over a more direct route for safety or legal reasons that if you were looking to fit a cycle lane would be obvious from staring at the map, however, Strava data is going to tell another story with many other cyclists taking similar diversions to myself.

Consultation with local commuters would be a better first step and they could be reached by local cycling advocacy groups (such as here with have BicycleNSW who will have lots of contact details through being an advocacy group and also offering insurance).

Also, what about those who have "kom's" that break the world bicycle land speed record, by several factors, not that I'm inferring they've cheated and it's complete bumk data, but..

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Sampler

Re: Windows' Future

Interesting employees turn up with macbooks, I used to work at an agency who run MS's Australian social for xbox and dabble in other marketing areas and so they worked a day a week onsite to integrate with the client team more, our agency was macbooks (I being one of the few allowed to dualboot with a windows os) but as these guys worked a day a week out the MS office they all got MS gear (mostly surfacebooks) as they weren't allowed Macs, and, to re-iterate, we were a third party, not direct MS employees.

Ports in a storm: The Matebook 14 won't set your world on fire, but it's still a half-decent laptop

Sampler

Re: More places for our USB's???

I don't get why more keyboards don't have USB hub's in them, especially the wired keyboards.

Want to pop a USB stick in, great, there's a few holes above the num pad for you..

Woman dies after hospital is unable to treat her during crippling ransomware infection, cops launch probe

Sampler

Pretty sure hospitals were treating patients before they had computers, if the diversion is an hour away emergency patients should be seen and paperwork can be sorted out down the line.

As much as the ransomware folk are culpable, so is the hospitals IS team, companies like mine can be a little lax, we do market research, it's not life or death, these should be isolated in groups, physically as much as possible, yes route out to the internet if you have to (such as support mentioned elsewhere can be something enabled/disabled as required) but even internet access doesn't mean they should be able to access the next machine to prevent a cascading failure.

Yes it's complicated, but, that's why hospitals pay so much in IT. You can't take the pay-cheque that comes with responsibility and then shirk it when you fuck up.

Apple takes another swing at Epic, says Unreal Engine could be a 'trojan horse' threatening security

Sampler

"to slide a change into the app that blatantly evaded App Review."

So, um, just like any developer could do to sneak malware past app review, so much for Apple vaunted appstore protection...

Paragon 'optimistic' that its NTFS driver will be accepted into the Linux Kernel

Sampler

Re: Are they really this unclear on the concept?

Paragon told us. “Microsoft made the decision to allow the use of exFAT in the Linux kernel, and we felt encouraged to give Linux what it has been waiting for over 20 years – quality NTFS supports at the kernel level.”

Pretty sure that line sums it up, exFAT is stealing our customers and we need better integration to compete.

You're stuck inside, gaming's getting you through, and you've $1,500 to burn. Check out Nvidia's latest GPUs

Sampler

As an SFX user

I hope the third part cards have more standardised cooling, otherwise that's a fair bit of hot hair getting blasted at the PSU / divider in most SFX sandwich layouts...