Posts by AndrueC

Starlink's plan to avoid orbital near-misses: Ephemeris sharing

Re: Restriction

That's fine as long as they have the sense to cover their noses as well as their mouths.

Permanent daylight saving time could be a public health time bomb

That's not the point of my post. I'm just addressing why a might not prefer sunshine in early morning. Although granted it might not apply to US given how much of it lies at lower latitudes to the UK.

Re: But that doesn't make sense.

Presumably because large parts of the US are further south than anywhere in the UK. Also people in those areas would probably rather play in the morning when it's cooler.

For most people in the UK sunshine before 7am is wasted but for anyone who likes outdoor pursuits daylight after 7pm is great.

But that doesn't make sense. Very few golfers can get up in the morning to play golf before work. It requires getting to the course before 6am just to get 9 holes in. It's pretty much impossible for any working golfer to get 18 holes in before 9am except perhaps a week or two around solstice.

However going from work to the golf course in the evening is eminently practical and what the vast majority of golfers will do. Currently in the UK you can play 18 holes after work between mid May and late August. You can manage 9 holes for an additional month down in the south evening golf probably only ended a week ago.

So that's currently six months of evening golf for working stiffs. If we had all year GMT that would drop to four months.

Golfers who don't have to work for a living don't care - they can play golf as/when the fancy takes them. But for the vast majority of golfers who have job to hold down, evening light is what we want.

Microsoft sends PDFs to strange new worlds instead of SharePoint

Re: What is my cache, what is my temp

It's just as bad when choosing where to install software. Writing installers is a pain in the arse even if you're just trying to leveraging an existing framework like Wix. The last team I worked with was tasked with writing an installer that worked for users with admin permissions, users that didn't have them and for corporate IT that wanted an MSI.

What a crock that turned into.

Ofcom pulls the plug on Openreach's aggressive fiber discount

a) There was no financial element to PHORM so it's a completely different thing.

b) OFCOM is in effect preventing Openreach from reducing the cost of residential broadband(*).

c) That was a different subsidiary so nothing to do with Openreach.

d) PHORM was a long time ago - at least in web/internet terms. Different times, different ideas.

(*)Assuming that ISPs would pass the discount onto customers and in the short term at least. I still think that duplicating the physical network across the UK has been wasteful and misused such funds and resources as were available but I also think that competition is a good thing so long term OFCOM's decision is probably the right one.

NightmareEclipse's latest zero-day leaves Microsoft Defender stuck in the past

Re: Eh?

No, the creation is instantaneous and is not filled with anything. Windows immediately shows 75GB decrease in available space.

Interesting. So that's what the documentation was trying to say. It looks like the disk space is allocated to the file but something called the VLD is set to the start meaning 'the rest hasn't been written to yet, return zeros if asked to read it'. That's quite clever. if you need a large file you can grab the space then fill it at your leisure.

What I couldn't quite work out from the fsutil documentation was what setting the sparse flag to be true did. NTFS supports sparse files (always has done) but does setting the flag trigger some kind of housekeeping to optimise allocation (as happens when you mark a file compressed) or does it literally just set the flag which is fairly pointless?

Re: This does highlight a fundamental windows design issue

Agreed. The OS should act more like a librarian. You can't just wander around opening books at random. You have to say what you're looking for and the librarian will find it for you. And I think extending the VMS idea so that you don't even get to play with bytes. Everything is an object and the OS takes care of storing and retrieving objects. There will have to be some way for the object hierarchy to be extended by applications but that's fine.

So if you're a spreadsheet program you can request that a document be opened and you help the OS generate a list of objects for that document. You modify the objects as you need by calling various methods attached to them then the OS takes came of streaming them back to storage. If another application wants to read a spreadsheet (perhaps to embed it in a text document) they have to ask the OS. The OS then asks you to help the user choose the spreadsheet. If the selection is successful you help the OS generate a list of objects with whatever methods you feel are safe and reasonable for the other application.

Re: Eh?

Or in Linux: dd of=sparsefile bs=75GB seek=1 count=0

That doesn't look like the equivalent of the fsutil command. The above command looks like it creates a sparse file (called appropriately 'sparsefile') and thus consumes no disk space so is not a valid example in this case.

The fsutil command is actually going to write 75GB of zeros to the disk so will consume 75GB of storage.

How Windows turned months of inactivity into a 7-hour update hostage situation

I'm not sure that's a common enough scenario to warrant much concern or angst unless you're a penguinista looking to score points. I don't think many people leave their Windows computers unused for months on end. For Windows users most updates are seamless with only the occasional one requiring a reboot and perhaps ten minutes of downtime.

Windows 10 and 11 can both bring themselves out of sleep/standby and perform the update without user interaction, My laptops both update either in the background or overnight without needing my help. The first I know about it is that when I open my main laptop in the morning it immediately shows the login screen implying that it wasn't asleep. The secondary laptop is more irritating because it refuses to respond to the external keyboard so I have to lean around the external monitor, open it and press the power key.

But the only times I can remember having to sit through the restart and apply updates process is when I've chosen to initiate them when offered rather than defer them to overnight.

So, no. I fully agree that the amount, nature and quality of Windows updates is poor but I don't think they are as bigger nuisance to most of us as the author is trying to point out.

Microsoft makes limited attempt to fix broken Excel paste

A bug that caused Windows Security to incorrectly report that Microsoft Defender Antivirus was disabled was resolved in a Defender update released on September 17.

I wonder if that was the cause of the weird behaviour I experienced yesterday.

A notification appeared telling me that Defender was out of date and I needed to click it to update. So I clicked it and the settings app opened. Then I got a dialog box telling me my administrator (which is me, 'cos it's a home machine) had disabled access to that screen. When clicked that dialog away I was looking at the main security page and it was saying everything was tickety-boo.

The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker

Fairlight.

LG accused of 'egregious invasion of privacy' over TV data collection

I'm going to have words with my washing machine about this.

Smartphone makers don't bother to comply with EU repairability requirements

"You're dangling it wrong".

Re: Make it simple

I liked being able to nearly double the battery capacity of one of my early phones. The battery came with a replacement rear cover. It had the added bonus of allowing the phone to sit on its side which was handy for watching videos. Felt a bit nicer in my hand as well.

Which came first, Windows 95's taskbar or NeXT's Dock? Neither

Re: YES!

Having used OS/2 Warp for a couple of years I'd argue that full object oriented desktop is something most OSes are missing.

WPS had a few stability issues (the initial single message queue being the root cause of a lot of ills) but REXX+desktop objects was a very powerful concept.

Microsoft devs rejoice: Union types coming to C# in November

I think I'd phrase that differently. Exceptions should be used to immediately abandon a sequence of actions.. My design preference is RAII and raising an exception is a reasonable choice if you want to abandon something you're doing. It doesn't matter to me whether the cause of your abandonment is a serious inconsistency or just a value that is out of range or even just 'oh well, we don't need to do that'.

Exceptions+RAII+appropriate handlers..

The above three working together allow you to just 'get the hell out of Dodge' and know that whatever mess you've just created is going to be cleaned up.

Ah, I get it. You're saying that you'd be forced to write code to handle an unstable weight reading so that it is correctly handled if/when it happens at runtime.

Yes that's fair enough. I'd probably have had a WeightResult class which throws if code tries to access the weight value before it has checked a bool. Something like:

int WeightResult.WeightValue()=unstableFlagHasBeenRead?WeightValue:throw ExUnstableFlagHasNotBeenCheckedYet;

and

bool WeightResult.WeightIsStable()

{

unstableFlagHasBeenRead=true;

return weightIsStable;

}

Although that's a runtime check it's something that wouldn't get past first base so is almost as good. Almost :)

Re: Reading the proposal…

Presumably an instance of Pet is just a reference (~ pointer) to an object of Cat, Dog, Bird or (I wasn't clear about this) nil/null. I would imagine there is some run time identifer stored in Cat etc objects that might be inspected and allows the type of Pet to be explicitly determined.

You can do that already in C# and have been able to since the inception of the language, decades ago.

It's just run of the mill OOP stuff and using 'as' or 'is' or speculatively trying to cast an object to a subclass (the latter generally being a crappy way to do it). I have to say I'm struggling to understand what union brings to the already crowded C# table. I thought C# was getting overly complicated when I retired three years ago.

Although being able to close a class seems to be touted as a new thing but I thought C# already had that ability. Ah yes, I was thinking of sealed which is not quite the same thing.

If you return a union of Weight(int) and Unstable, attempts to use an unstable weight would fail at compile-time, which is nice. Wouldn't that be a runtime scenario though? Or are you talking about certain types of weights that are always unstable?

Firefox helps iPhone users bypass ads on web sites while making money showing its own ads

Re: Meh. Orion.

Me too. And apparently Amazon are now trying to piss me off because every time I visit the site I get an almost full-screen advert for Amazon Prime that I have to click away. I mean FFS! What brain dead moron (manager or designer) thought that was a good idea. I go to Amazon to find stuff and I shouldn't have to click past an advert to get to the search box.

Idiots.

Green Party wants to slam the brakes on UK datacenter construction until water and energy use are sorted

Re: Water usage

Employ people to blow on the chips and/or wave a fan. That'll be good for employment.

Casio decides it's about time the simple digital watch got a little smarter

Ah now, phones are another matter. Mine's okay with appropriate zoom settings but that can lead to rendering compromises that are annoying. It's why I only very occasionally use it to access the web. I have the same problem though not as bad with computers. I have to set browsers to 125% zoom. Mostly that's fine but sometimes you encounter a website designed by some likely young designer who presumably assumes that everyone has access to a 15,000x12,000 display and eyes like a hawk.

That results in websites that either lack scrollbars completely or have a mess of scrollbars because everything is having to be clipped to fit.

It's why I dislike sites that have lots of white space. They might be great for fat fingers using tablets but they are a horrible waste of precious screen 'real-estate' for oldies like me.

Edit: And this is an area where varifocals struggle unless you pay for very expensive ones or screen specific. In most VF lenses you have close-up at the bottom and long-distance at the top. The middle is for middle-distance but unfortunately the viewing area is compromised by physics. Depending on the lens the viewing area might only be half the glasses width which can make reading a screen difficult. My current gasses have expensive 'digital' lenses and they are fine for laptop use (at least for an hour or so at a time) but I barely tolerate more than fifteen minutes with a monitor. I have a pair of 1.5x glasses just for monitor use.

Re: Get your eyes checked

Ah, that explains it. At least as far as I'm concerned. I wear varifocals so that's why I have no problems. Have you tried bi/tri focals? Some people who can't get on with varifocals are fine with those.

In any case it seems a bit harsh to criticise Casio just because they are mostly producing watches to be read by people with good or corrected eyesight. I'd suggest that at least 90% of watches fall into that category. It's pretty inevitable really give how small watches have to be.

And Casio have - maybe - produced some with larger displays. That 15 year old watch of mine is fully digital and readable without my glasses - the time easily, the date is a little blurry but still legible even under indoor light.

I'm nearly 60 and the only one of my three G-Shocks that I struggle with is the one with the red case. That's nothing to do with the size of the digits (it's analogue with digits for the day/date) and all to do with the stupid design decision to invert the LCD. White on black is only visible in the right kind of light.

Re: "low-end Casios can only display dates in US MM/DD format"

If you ever have the misfortune to own a G-Shock you will have the "joy" of having to set it up — a PhD in quantum mechanics might be useful.

Eh? I have three G-Shocks and all I've ever had to do is select the time zone. The watch does the rest and I never have to adjust the time ever again.

I thought all G-Shocks were radio controlled.

Replacing a watch battery - what is that all about? I have three G-Shock Solars and the oldest - a GW-500E-1VER - was purchased in October 2011 and is still on its original battery. It doesn't get used as much these days as the other two are more fancy but I give it an airing every now and again to show there's no hard feelings :)

Musk fumbles the timetable for first Starship catch

No doubt SpaceX could make a good attempt at catching Ship, and it might even work - I suspect it probably would.

Surprise me, Holy Void!

..I wonder who will get that reference :)

Expired credit cards revived by researchers to make unauthorized payments

Re: Thing Like This

I keep my car in my garage so that's not a problem I have to deal with.

Re: Thing Like This

It's a risk but one that can be managed through self-control and financial awareness.

I got my first credit card when I enrolled at Polytechnic in the mid 1980s. It's true that most of my later adult life I've been in a well paying job but for the first decade I was not yet I never got into any debt. On occasion I used the credit card to bridge a temporary gap in my finances but I always ensured that I could always cover the cost of the bill by the time it was due.

For the last thirty years my CCs have all been paid off in full by direct debit every month.

Re: Thing Like This

Debit card transactions aren't free either. I think they are usually cheaper to the merchant but not free. Now some people might point to that, shout Ah ha! and claim that cash should be used because it's free. Nope. There are costs associated with cash as well. It costs more in employee hours to deal with it and banks often charge businesses for depositing cash.

It's all just a business expense and of three methods cash is the one that's going out of favour. It's a faff for everyone involved.

Re: Thing Like This

I'd never use a debit card anyway - that's my money being taken. Even if I get a refund it could still be a nuisance. A credit card has always been my preference since it's the bank's money being taken. I can get the errant transaction(s) cancelled and a new bill issued so that I'm never out of pocket.

Re: "Let the dumpster dive for discarded cards begin"

At least cut them up and make sure one of the cuts is across the chip, then put the pieces into a bin over time so that they are spread over multiple collections.

Microsoft finally fixing File Explorer and the Context Menu

Re: "A single freeze while renaming a file"

Agreed. To be honest it's not a favourite solution. You could probably have it initially insert a placeholder for each application which becomes a submenu but I'm not keen on it. I think if I were the project manager I'd want to have a full and frank discussion about how much value there really is in going beyond a simple extension match.

Do we really need anything more than 'If it's a ZIP add this submenu'? If the handling application needs to dig deeper it can do it when the user actually asks the handling application to act.

It'd be nice if they could fix the Start menu search functionality. On this laptop if I type 'doc' I get offered the following:

Best match: "Windows fax and scan", "Docusign"

Apps: "documentation", "HP Documentation"

Documents: A random collection of documents that doesn't even match a 'most recently' or 'most often' used criteria.

If I suffix a 'u' most of these go away and I just get a load of random searches. Eventually after I've typed 'documents' I finally get what I'm after - 'Documents Folder'.

What's exasperating is that if I close the Start menu and try again on the second attempt with just 'doc' it adds a category 'Folders:' and offers 'Documents folder' and other folders with 'documents' in their name immediately under Best match: pushing Apps: almost out of sight. So it seems that second time is the charm..

Re: "A single freeze while renaming a file"

The context menu in Explorer has always had performance issues. There's a mechanism to allow applications to modify the context menu before it appears. Microsoft warn developers that "File Explorer loads shell extension code as part of the shell experience. Keep GetTitle, GetIcon, GetState, and other menu-construction methods fast. Do not perform expensive work on the File Explorer UI path. Run longer operations after Invoke is called." but frankly this is for cases where simply using the file extension is not enough in which case there's bound to be a delay because the code probably has to open the file(s) and dig in a little deeper.

Some solutions to this:

• Give up on the idea. Add context items based on pre-registered extensions only.
• Implement a timing constraint. Either the application adds the item within a millisecond or the call is abandoned
• Show the menu immediately and have additional items appear as/when the application is able.

First option seems the simplest but it depends how much of a case there is for intelligently adding context menu items.

Anthropic says text watermarking scheme relies on inconsequential words

Re: Watermarking.

Doesn't the UK or England have arbitration and adjutication processes for resolving these kinds of neighbourhood disputes ?

The names 'England' and 'UK' are not synonyms.

And to answer your question there are a number of ways to resolve such disputes which as noted vary a little bit from country to country.

The different countries that comprise the UK are a lot like the different states that comprise the USA. The big difference is that they all have many hundreds of years of history behind them a large part of which involved fighting the other countries. These days we mostly get along well and are happy to accept citizenship of the UK but foreigners should be wary of referring to any native of the British Isles as 'English'. That can cause offense if said to the wrong people ;)

Everything is better with pickles... except Windows

Re: ElReg's Own Bork!

They also don't know or care that it doesn't page up/down correctly at anything other than 100% zoom. Also it'd be nice if it didn't focus the newsletter input box so that I could adjust the position with the arrow keys without it jumping down there.

Microsoft-vendetta hacker has a new zero day that gives system privileges on fully patched Windows

Re: Microsoft needs to learn from it.

Yeah. The desktop world is still waiting for an adequate alternative.

Gym rat asks AI agent to book him a class, it hacks a waitlist API to bump him up the list

Re: How?

I don't know, it doesn't quite pass the sniff test from here.

Most websites that provide access to a back-end database will have a RESTful API and it's not hard to find out what the URL is. I just Googled for 'can you determine a RESTful endpoint from webpage source' and found multiple articles most of which are likely known to various LLMs.

I then asked ChatGPT and it gave me a couple of screens of how-to then asked if I had a particular website in mind and it would help me with it.

From some of my other conversations with ChatGPT I can well believe that the user was led down the path. My only reservation (hah!) is that I'd expect most humans to realise they were discussing doing something dodgy at some point. That probably depends though on how much detail the AI gave.

Yeah - where/what is the crime here? It sounds like it was a public API so anyone/thing is allowed to call it. On the other hand an analogy could talk about uninvited people entering your house through an unlocked front door.

There is some scope for suggesting that you don't call an API without some form of prior invitation (explicit or implied).

Personally I think the real crime is whoever implemented that API.

Brit boffins boast of beating barriers to building fusion power

Re: Looking like...

I suspect it's some kind of risk aversion by the UK business community either that or a lack of interest in the long game. Basically a 'get rich quick' mentality.

Re: Looking like...

..and the plans will be sold to a foreign company who go on to make vast sums of money from the technology.

Unexpected item in the bagging area as Windows Activation error pops up at check-in

Careful, now.

Curiosity rover spots field of giant honeycomb on Mars – but no giant space bees

We have assessed your desert as a level 3 issue. We aim to resolve all such issues within 28 million years.

Americans give all-day school phone bans a ringing endorsement

Re: Anyone else experiencing EL Reg comments dropping out?

Maybe to give us all time to ponder on the article and carefully prepare a reasoned riposte, ripe with rationale, redolent with, um, 'riting, instead of leaping in with both feet on the keyboard?

Wow. Web 3.0 is here.

Re: Anyone else experiencing EL Reg comments dropping out?

A few stories don't have a comments section. I've always assumed that the editors didn't want us commenting on those for some reason.