Posts by williamt

Apple's latest macOS Catalina update mysteriously borks SSH for some unlucky fans. What could be the cause?

Re: Have you checked 14 boxes under system preferences...

Well fortunately I'm still running High Sierra… hoping that a small bonus of Covid-19 might be the release date of 10.16 gets pushed back to allow a few more months of security updates for my version before I have to decide what to do.

The problem is if you also have to time buying a new Mac right if you want the OS to be as stable as possible - i.e. ideally just before a new version comes out and the old one is still installed on the system.

Can anyone explain the chunnel fiasco?

Eurotunnel on Monday?

Apparently they were only running one shuttle from Folkestone to Cheriton every 2 hours, normally there would be 3 per hour (which suggested to the BBC reporter there that they only had a single train operational.)

So what went wrong with *their* trains?

I've also heard the following comments about conditions on one of the stuck Eurostar trains inside the tunnel, that:

- the Eurostar staff didn't have torches (how many should there be per train?)

- there was no emergency lighting (are trains legally required to have emergency lighting?)

- the exit/emergency signs (i.e. stickers) on the train weren't luminous

I also wonder if the power failure meant the braking failed?

What I find odd is that *zero* camera-phone footage or audio from passengers on board (who by the sounds of it had all gone to Euro Disney and therefore you'd imagine would have been taking photos of Mickey Mouse) has emerged yet. Maybe there was some but it was so grainy to be of little use..

O2 leaves travellers in the lurch

Mobile network status updates

Is there in fact, *any* UK or European phone network that provides an up to date, informative network status page or a press office that releases statements quicker than 24 hours after the event which actually good beyond "we have a problem affecting a small number of people [it's always a small number of people] which has now been resolved"? I'm guessing not.

Visa turns to txt

The problem with email...

... is that banks never use it anymore, do they?

Firstly, they'll claim its insecure to include transaction details in email, because anyone could be intercepting it (although, frankly, I don't trust SMS much more). Secondly there's the usual phishing attack excuse (even though the banks themselves can't get their SSL certificates right.)

So, if it ever happens, what we'll end up with is a rather useless "there have been some transactions on your card" email, and you'll have to logon, typing in the URL manually, and go through a complicated 3 stage authentication process on an overloaded web server to be told about a transaction 99 times out of a 100 you already knew about anyway....