Posts by DJV

Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy

"without needing to remember their username and password"

No, no and more NO!

Sunday seems really quiet. Hmm, thinks Google, let's have a four-hour Gmail, YouTube, G Suite, Cloud outage

No, unfortunately that's just normal for archive.org.

Microsoft: A new Windows 10 build arrives while another remains in hiding

Dang! That was my first reaction as well!

Pass the bucket...

Gaze in awe at the first ever movie of a solar eclipse from recording long thought lost forever

Re: Fascinating

"I wonder how many other gems like this are hidden away moldering in some dusty archive"

I expect you'll find them several layers below the Doctor Who Marco Polo episodes.

Chinese bogeyman gets Huawei with featuring in EE's 5G network launch thanks to bumbling BBC

Re: Reserved

Oops, sorry - my knee accidentally jerked there...

NAND down we goooo: Flash supplier revenues plunged in first quarter

Yay!

Cheap SSDs!

(for a while)

We ain't afraid of no 'ghost user': Infosec world tells GCHQ to GTFO over privacy-busting proposals

But, Shirley, your second statement contains redundancies, given that the government ARE the bad guys?

It's the curious case of the vanishing iPhone sales as Huawei grabs second place off Apple in smartmobe stakes

ARK

Hmm, maybe that stands for something like Android Replacement Kernel...

...ok, so I'm struggling with the 'K' as it's likely they'd stick with a Linux kernel underneath.

Or maybe it's called Ark because they intend signing up other mobile makers two-by-two!

SpaceX takes a leaf from the Microsoft playbook and stands down Starlink for an update

"A number of websites for non-central government websites are now inaccessible to IE and Edge users on Windows 10"

So, it's not really affecting that many people then...

If poking about Doctor Who's TARDIS in VR sounds like fun to you, better luck next time

Ah, nice - a proper TARDIS - not the half-hidden, shadowy, cheapo thing Whittaker has been saddled with (but then again, I suppose it matches the quality of Chibnall's scripts - sigh).

Your FREE end-of-the-world guide: What happens when a sun like ours runs out of fuel

Re: The World Will End

I see lots of words that are, individually, mostly correct and understandable but your post, taken as a whole, has completely done my head in. Have you been taking lessons from amanfrommars?

Japan's mission to mine Mars' moon is cleared – now they've filled out the right paperwork on alien world contamination

Re: Correct approvals?

Well, they asked him - but decoding his reply back into English will take another couple of centuries...

Re: Barsoom!

Bonsai!

P-p-p-pick up a Pengwin: Windows Subsystem for Linux boffins talk version 2

I thought...

...Pengwin was named after Benedict Cumberbatch's inability to pronounce penguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GHPNKUMf70

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

AI newsreporting

I think that having my local newspaper company* employ AI technology couldn't make their reporting any worse than it already is - which is to say that it often reads like it's been composed by a nine-year-old and is guaranteed to contain typos that any wordprocessor will highlight without any difficulty.

*Archant, if you must know.

Re: JavaScript

Maybe the TV program/film makers didn't understand how to obfuscate properly!

Re: Dabbs has been told right

And genius probably(?) knows the difference between "it's" and "its".

Zavvi tells customers: You've won VIP tickets to Champions League final! And you've won tickets, and you've won tickets, and you, and...

It reminds me...

...of a time when I was a kiddie in the 1960s and on holiday with parents at some UK coastal holiday resort (time has erased the memory of exactly which one).

Parents decided to take us all to see the Des O'Connor show on the local pier. On entry everyone was given a copy of the programme (this was back in the days when they didn't cost extra!) and hidden inside the programme was a bingo card. At a point during the show Des said that they were going to try something different for this show and that everyone should pull out their bingo card. As we did so a smiling scantily-clad young lady wheeled on a flash new bicycle, which we assumed would be the prize. Then Des started calling out the numbers and we started crossing off our numbers. We were doing extremely well and had all all the numbers crossed off apart from one. Then Des called out the next number - and it was our missing one!

So, my entire family jumped up and shouted "House!"

However, so did everyone else in the audience. Yep, all the bingo cards were (deliberately) the same! Des creased up with laughter for several minutes and then said it was one of the funniest moments he'd ever experienced, especially the initially surprised and perplexed looks on the audience's faces until we'd figured out the joke.

Lightning speed – how fast is that again? Virgin plugs in another 102k to superfast broadband

"While there is a lot of talk on network build, Virgin Media is delivering"

Not on IPv6, they're not! It's still only rolling out to a few customers.

Great disturbance in the Force as Star Wars' 'big walking carpet' is laid to rest

Sad news

RIP Peter.

However, I do notice that so many people are noted as having died "with their family by their side". So, I think I'm going to avoid having my family by my side as much as possible in the future as it seems to be a major cause of death!

Personality quiz for all you IT bods: Are you a chameleon or an outlaw? A diplomat or a high flier? Vote right here

"But I still have all my hair"

You lucky bastard! Mine is retreating over the horizon at an alarming rate!

Self-taught Belgian bloke cracks crypto conundrum that was supposed to be uncrackable until 2034

Re: It wasn't running Windows then

Windows 95/98 could run for at least 49.7 days without crashing if you didn't give it anything to do. Of course, attempting to get the PC to do anything useful was often a recipe for a blue screen of death long before the 49.7 days were up!

Eggheads confirm it's not a bug – the universe really is expanding 9% faster than expected

"before we do something irreversibly stupid"

You mean we haven't aready? Coulda fooled me!

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Is that the one where she manages to cram an entire 5.25" full height hard disk into the 3.5" floppy drive completely crushing the floppy (stiffy) disk that's already in there?

Node.js version 12 is now out: Let's pop the hood and see what's inside this JS runtime

JS would seem to have come a long way since then

Yep, those snowflakes can now pwn your entire network!

All we wanna do is talk torque: Taiwanese boffins spin a better way to switch MRAM states

Well that'll put the RAM manufacturers into a bit of spin...

...whether or not they're Dead or Alive.

Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days

@Andrew Heenan

No, that was Microsoft Bob.

Let 15 July forever be known as P-Day: When UK's smut fans started being asked for their age

"Its"

But if you want "It's": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6UaU_Dzysc

A quick cup of coffee leaves production manager in fits and a cleaner in tears

Not useful if the cleaner can't speak or read the Queens English.

Or is colour (or plug) blind!

Why is it...

...that the comments for a "Who me" are always better than the original article?

"we were still working out just how things like Windows did work"

Microsoft are still trying to figure that one out...

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

Sigh...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pore

Be wary, traveller: There is no going back if you step over the Windows 10 20H1 threshold

My insider test build (in a VM for safety!) tried to update to 18875 yesterday and then promptly failed with error 0xca00a000 and reverted back to 18362. So, probably SNAFU then - seems par for the course.

Apple disables iPad for 48 years after toddler runs amok

Re: Three year olds can't read

Amateurs! I came out of the womb reading War and Peace!

The Reg takes a trip over the New Edge. Mmmm... New Coke with extra fizz

Menus

Obviously, they have been covered...

well, covered up completely so you can't find them!

MS Account

Avoid like the plague!

I only use my MS Account in a VM* - other than that my PCs (7 and 10) always quite deliberately use a non-MS account as I always attempt to do my best to reduce the slurpage.

* for testing the latest bug-ridden Insider joke!

Microsoft realises more testing wouldn't hurt and plonks Windows 10 May update into Preview ring

Dark Mode, Light Mode, Meh...

If only there was a Windows 7 mode... sigh...

Rust never sleeps: C++-alike language tops Stack Overflow survey for fourth year in a row

I laughed when I saw...

...that WordPress was the most dreaded platform! Having seen for myself what a mess it makes under the hood, it doesn't surprise me...

See: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-platforms

Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly

Re: Why not construct SportsBall pitches with proper drainage

How dare you come around here with your sensible suggestions!

Centrica: Server fault on Wednesday caused Hive to crash on the Tuesday. Yes, yes, that's what we said

"the press office had not responded to our call for comment at the time of writing"

Don't worry, they'll get back to you last month.

You were warned and you didn't do enough: UK preps Big Internet content laws

Meh...

Sajid Javid decided to make it a personal issue: "I'm giving tech companies a message that they cannot ignore," he said.

I bet they're quaking in their boots... </sarcasm>

Want to learn about lithium-ion batteries? An AI has written a tedious book on the subject

Tedious and boring...

...but still more believable and plotted more realistically than anything Dan Brown will ever come up with!

It's alive! Hands on with Microsoft's Chromium Edge browser

"Didn’t Firefox do the same and quit on Gecko?"

No, Gecko is still around but Mozilla have been enhancing Gecko with Quantum (or something like that)! These two links sort of explain* things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_(Mozilla)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)

* or confuse the reader further - I just read parts and am still not exactly clear on things!

Oops! Almost a year in and ICO staff haven't been handed a GDPR privacy notice yet

Re: It should fine itself the maximum amount possible...

Absolutely! Though, to make sure the big boys take it seriously, it should probably fire a few of its own minions (i.e. those that do the actual work) and pay the CEO a fat bonus for implementing and collecting the fine.

Microsoft buffs its rings, emits Code and goes global with Kaizala

Skip ahead?

More like skip to the looney farm, methinks! Just what are Microsoft smoking these days?

HMRC accused of not understanding its own IR35 tax reforms ahead of private sector rollout

"HMRC will stand by its results, if the data had been entered correctly"

Well, if it was actually possible to enter all the relevant data on CEST then maybe that would be fine. I tried it out a few months ago and found I couldn't specify exactly how I work - I'm self-employed with several unrelated clients for whom I build and administer websites. Under no circumstances would anyone consider me to be employed by any one of my clients, but CEST's rabid conclusion to the restricted amount of data it allowed me to enter was that I should be registered as employed.

The whole CEST system is a stinking pile of crap and HMRC living in cloud cuckoo land with regard to its fitness for purpose is a major source of the problem. Idiots!

One step forward and one step back for Apple's privacy campaign with latest Safari build

"The Register asked Apple for comment. We don't expect anyone to answer"

One day they will and scare the living daylights out of El Reg!

Hello, tech support? Yes, I've run out of desk... Yes, DESK... space

"A mechanical engineer SHOULD be able to turn the thing over and work out the relation between mouse movement and mouse ball movement, even without having to remove the mouse ball and mess around with the rollers."

Yeah, but where's the fun in that!

Microsoft's corporate veep for enterprise puts the boot into boot times

Re: I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

HP load up whole piles of crap onto their PCs. Maybe a clean install will help (though make sure you download any appropriate drivers first in case networking is borked when doing the clean install). Here's a few links that might help:

https://www.howtogeek.com/224342/how-to-clean-install-windows-10/

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-do-clean-installation-windows-10

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/clean-install-Windows-10/

Searching for "clean install windows 10" will give loads more.

Good luck!

It's coooming: Windows 10 October 2018 Update adoption slows ahead of the next release

Check for updates still won't install 1809

I suspect one of the reasons the roll out is so low is that, even if you click "Check for updates" on an 1803 system, it will only ever install updates for 1803 and then tell you that "everything is up to date" without ever offering 1809.

I wanted to test 1809 on a low-priority system to make sure it didn't bork anything important* and the only way to do it was to download the update assistant and force an update. Most people probably won't even know that the option even exists. I'm sure there are probably thousands of 1803 based systems out there that are exactly the same.

(* So far, much to my surprise, it has behaved, but give it time...)