Posts by tim 13

80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds

Re: The real reason for fairly small line lengths

You say this, but the Register is formatting your comment at 132 characters wide and I can read it fine...

'iOS security is f**ked' says exploit broker Zerodium: Prices crash for taking a bite out of Apple's core tech

Re: "Zerodium said for the first time that it would pay more for flaws in Android"

Exactly https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/14/bitdefender_mandrake_malware/

Yelp finally gets its chance to tell US Congress how Google screws its listings service every minute of every day

Yell just need to put some effort in

All Yell have to do is to create their own dominant search engine. It’s what Google to do.

Not a Genius move after all: Apple must cough up $$$ in back pay for store staff forced to wait for bag searches

Years ago I worked in Dixons' software/music warehouse. They did an occasional search, but it took about 5 minutes to do all 20 or so people so it wasn't really an issue.

BOFH: When was the last time someone said these exact words to you: You are the sunshine of my life?

My favourite response received to an IT support survey was "The IT department should all be lined up against a wall and shot"

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Its just a google cache of an image. It can be seen as the cover photo on this page https://www.facebook.com/sytravelmaster/

There's far worse things than black wallpaper, in fact thats what I set for my personal machines. I recently had to push this out https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQIz52EKon9CsaCexSMQFLeue3iMzHb6_feBxwnGeXH2Xclfuq2cQ&s

Totally Subcontracted Business: TSB to outsource entire IT estate to IBM for a cool $1bn after 2019 meltdown

Re: New TSB slogan

I reckon they did mean "not employ anyone in India"

Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

Re: What has changed?

Tis true.The Chinese governent (or whoever) could have still got the same info if the DB was fully secured on a US server, they's just have had to pay Checkpeople for it. There's no loss of security of data, just a loss of revenue for CheckPeople

Having trouble finding a job in your 40s? Study shows some bosses like job applicants... up until they see dates of birth

In the UK there were two baby booms, immediately post war and and another peaking in 1964. Thus a UK boomer could be early-mid 70s or mid 50s.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Verry good advice when you don't know the wiring. I started by turning off the circuit I was working on, but after I touched the two supposedly now dead wires and they tripped the main breaker I now turn off everything before I start.

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

Re: It's all in the 'title'

Thats works for doctors and teachers, but farmers?

Re: AKA Libertarians

My previous job title was Systems Engineer. Basically IT support, software and fixing things with hammers

Trump Administration fast-tracks compulsory border facial recognition scans for all US citizens

Re: New categories for HB-1 applicants

Only if they are good at it

That code that could never run? Well, guess what. Now Windows thinks it's Batman

Re: Even Today

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

Re: Seen or smelled?

We've had a toast error that tripped a comms room

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

Re: Tiny Violin

You do realise that often contractors are hired by the personnel dept. And their payments go through the finance dept? You still need people to do that whenther you have all perm or all contractors.

Re: Just the start

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6a/bb/a0/6abba053aaf4833fc87bbff6bc46003a.jpg

Morrisons tells top court it's not liable for staffer who nicked payroll data of 100,000 employees

Re: Depends if decent efforts at data security made by Morrisons

Also plugging in mice and keyboards...

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

While I saw the same flaws in the object detection process as the other commenters, and not wishing to victim blame, it must be said that car’s avoidance logic was no worse than Ms Herzberg’s and the car had less to lose.

Socket to the energy bill: 5-bed home with stupid number of power outlets leaves us asking... why?

I heard of one company that used the bathroom of their small terraced house headquarters as their server room. Planks across the bath with servers sitting on them. Toilet still in use...

Bet you can't guess what I'm wearing, or where I'm wearing it

Re: “No one wants to hire a tit.”

Three's a crowd

Not a good look, Google: Pixel 4 mobes can be face-unlocked even if you're asleep... or dead?

Re: Erm

I prick my son's finger to do blood tests while he is asleep, he doesn't wake up. I also occasionally have to insert canulas, which hurts a lot. He only stirs even then.

Welcome to the World Of Tomorrow, where fridges suffer certificate errors. Just like everything else

Re: Not sure the comparison is valid

You've met my relatives...

If you have a security alert, I feel bad for you, son – you got 99 problems but a hack ain't one

Re: Ok...

But if you are overwhelmed with false positives, you are likely to miss the real positives amidst them.

The immovable object versus the unstoppable force: How the tech boys club remains exclusive

Re: Misguided

60's? What country are you in?

The mod firing squad: Stack Exchange embroiled in 'he said, she said, they said' row

Re: I am not plural.

I assume you are American? They doesn't doesn't carry the same plural connotations in the UK

Re: Is this just an English thing ?

""They come over hear......"

"or they come over HERE"

You missed the irony

Chef melts under heat, will 86 future deals with family-separating US immigration agencies

Re: "South America where the US govt has brought Freedom and Democracy(tm)"

“and a large influx of immigrants who cannot be easily integrated - and often don't want at all”

Pretty much the history of the USA

Remember that security probe that ended with a sheriff cuffing the pen testers? The contract is now public so you can decide who screwed up

Re: #semantics

Which mountain?

He's coming home, he's coming... Hutchins' coming home: British Wannacry killer held in US on malware dev rap set free by judge

Re: Hear, hear! @monkeysee

(3) He hasn't been incarcerated for 2 years. He has been free to roam around the US but had his passport held and so couldn't leave until the outcome of the trial.

Dunno, not being allowed to leave somewhere to go home seems like a form of incarceration, even if the area you are allowed to roam in is large.

Loose tongues and oily seamen: Lost in machine translation yet again

if a business expression cannot be converted into immediately clear English, then it is not worth the bother.

Facebook outage a peep at platform's ML tagging conventions, Baidu links up with Intel and Huawei on AI chips, and more

Yeah, I'd noticed some amusing AI guesses a while ago. However your average user isn't going to be reading Alt tags normally. Mind you I didn't see any Alt tags in the app

YouTube mystery ban on hacking videos has content creators puzzled

Re: Not Just Security

[how to fix] your toilet, is a threat to some corporations bottom line.

I see what you did there!

Facebook celebrates Independence Day by lighting up American outage maps

First noticed it early afternoon in U.K. with some photos not loading but thought it was a minor glitch. It’s obviously got worse. Much as social media is derided, I can’t imagine the complexity of trying to support something on that scale, I feel for their technical staff

Not just FB, WhatsApp is having issues with image sending and apparently Insta is down too

Comms room, comms room, comms room is on fire – we don't need no water, let the engineer burn

Re: And then some fool fills up a car with Li-ion...

Hey, I was just watching my video of that yesterday. It is cool (or hot!)

US border cops confirm: Maker of America's license-plate, driver recognition tech hacked, camera images swiped

Re: Bah!

The automatic recognition software doesn't work too well in low light levels

Egg on North Face: Wikipedia furious after glamp-wear giant swaps article pics for sneaky ad shots – and even brags about it in a video

That was Burger King

If servers go down but no one hears them, did they really fail? Think about it over lunch

Re: The title is not required

Failed its interoperability test then?

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy: Run Huawei, Google Play, turns away, from Huawei... turns away

Re: Be careful what you wish for

The other big one is more awkward, YouTube.

Plus, your first three are FB, which presumably has to follow the same US laws as Google, Netflix is also US. How do you provide apps for those?

It's 2019 and a WhatsApp call can hack a phone: Zero-day exploit infects mobes with spyware

Re: Latest version on iOS AppStore still isn't fixed

Same here. It said it had updated yesterday and was on 2.19.50, but I've just done an update but still has the same number.

Re: Changelog for the update

I was on 2.19.50 which was installled yesterday with that description. I've just done an update yet it still says 2.19.50

Edit, actually on the Apps store update page it says 2.19.50, but if I go into the specific details for WhatsApp it says 2.19.51...

If the thing you were doing earlier is 'drop table' commands, ctrl-c, ctrl-v is not your friend

Re: Bobby Tables

Apart from the drop tables command.

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

Related, but not IT. My kid's school gives them lined exercise books for their work, which comes as printed sheets which have to be cut to size and stuck in...

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

Re: Fiscal responsibility.

That's what you spread the jam with

Dead LAN's hand: IT staff 'locked out' of data center's core switch after the only bloke who could log into it dies

Re: Been there...

Our secure offsite fireproof safe is at a bus station....

How many Reg columnists does it take to turn off a lightbulb?

Re: Aliens

We had two new guys in our team recently. Their combined age is less than mine.

In hilariously petulant move, Apple shuts Texas stores and reopens them few miles down the road – for patent reasons

Re: Perhaps an empty gesture

To use that a analogy, they took the training course rather than get the points

Q. What's a good thing to put outside a building of spies? A: A banner saying 'here we are!'

Well played

The American Secretary of State (foreign minister), Mike Pompeo