* Posts by heyrick

6566 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Dec 2009

Twitter rate-limits itself into a weekend of chaos

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I used to lurk reading the tweets of a couple of people I know. Now I can't. Nor can anybody else that isn't actively on Twitter.

I wonder how long until people come up on tweeting stuff on that site. There are other, less actively hostile, alternatives.

The number’s up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111

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Re: Size.

Honestly, I suspect the American problem might be the telcos, and their inability to play nicely with each other.

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Police cars around. Bobbies on the beat. That's what's different compared to these days.

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WTF?

Okay, I understand each word individually. Strung together like that? Word salad...

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Re: Multiple redundancy

My landline has been VoIP only (over twisted pair) since around 2010.

Sometime around the end of the year, the twisted pair will cease working and it'll be done by shoving light down the line. And, note, providing power will become my problem. So, home on fire, big lightning strike... Got a phone line, got nothing to plug into it.

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Re: Multiple redundancy

I think what happens with the mobile network depends on what the emergency is.

For example, 9/11 showed that putting all the comms antennas on the biggest building wasn't a great idea if that building (or the unexpected lack of it) was the problem.

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Happy

Re: How about 112 and Advanced Mobile Location?

What three words might depend upon the scale of the problem... Oh bloody hell, Oh fuck me, Run arrrgh arrrgh, etc.

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Re: How about 112 and Advanced Mobile Location?

I had to make an emergency call a few years back (saw a field fire and no obvious people around). The dialler, as soon as it saw I was calling 112 turned on location services and got a fix on where I was.

So Google saying that "locate your phone" won't work if you turn off GPS is them being data fetishising dicks. The user setting can be overridden when it needs to be.

Google accused of ripping off advertisers with video ads no one saw. Now, the expert view

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Re: @David Hicklin - It Pays to Advertise?

Brand awareness is quite simple. Build a reliable product so when I have an idea of something I'd be interested in and search online, I don't get a dozen links about notoriously common faults in that product.

Otherwise, avoid the cheap brands like the plague. They're cheap for a reason. Avoid the expensive brands. Pick one in the middle that is considered reliable. As for the brand? Sorry, but word of mouth counts for more than the cleverly constructed lies that pass as advertising.

Actually I tend to view online advertising (especially forced over the top like you get these days) as an admission that the brand in question is mediocre and the product unable to stand for itself, so everybody has to be force fed this drivel to compensate for those inadequacies.

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Re: But I do read

I'm getting a bit sick of adverts (in apps) for Temu, Tony, Tama... I think it's some sort of online shop. Whoopee. Haven't they noticed the economy is a mess? Zero interest.

Also, fuck Tefal. My weather app used to play a colourful advert for their cake maker, which it would insist on playing in some quad ultra HD resolution that took longer to download than it took to play, all completely unskippable. And while the failings of the advertising infrastructure aren't Tefal's responsibility, somebody had to sign off on this, as well as the "show this thing to the user over and over and over". So, one annoying advert for a cake maker, okay. A dozen that actively interfere with getting anything done? Fuck you Tefal.

Five billion phones are dead in drawers – carriers want to mine them

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Happy

Re: Data

Well, if they're interested in recycling the raw materials they won't be interested in whether or not it works.

I [heart symbol] my pickaxe.

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Re: So, how much...

Found an old Econet card in a box. Looked on eBay as a joke. Nearly died. How much?!?

Not selling, can't be doing with the hassle. Left in a box I can easily forget about it for another twenty years.

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Mine's running Android 8... Still works, writing this on it. It is dumb to have to throw a phone because it's been forgotten about.

Metaverses are flopping – hard – says Gartner

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Re: Noooo! Reeeally? Who would've seen that coming.

"And at the 60 minutes mark"

Sixty minutes?! I'd be happy for it to happen randomly between 10 and 15 minutes.

There's nothing said in an hour long dose of tedium that can't be adequately summarised in a five line email, and that's the hill I'm going to die on.

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Re: Noooo! Reeeally? Who would've seen that coming.

"being able to open any number of windows and just placing them in mid-air"

Didn't downvote you, but this is a solved problem. Varying implementations of a "virtual desktop" with a button or icon to switch between them. Comes without the neck strain or wild gestures.

"it's a closed platform with highly limited support. VR"

This. If there was an open specification, maybe people would start using it and maybe it would snowball if there was actually a use case it was suitable for. But as a closed ecology with a company hoping to coin it on custom avatars and embedded adverts, no thanks.

"There are two options"

3, F**k VR.

"If every app you showcase doesn't have at least one "wow" moment"

I'd run a mile from apps that offer wow moments. I don't want a moment of dazzlement, or even an "experience", I just want an app that bloody works and isn't a bastard to use.

Open source licenses need to leave the 1980s and evolve to deal with AI

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Thumb Up

Re: Unsettle law

Why is the GPL a plague upon humankind?

+ bignum

Exactly this.

Existential dread time: One day Earth's oceans will boil. This exoplanet might reveal when

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Unhappy

Oceans will boil soon?

The way we're going, they'll be able to be set on fire long before then.

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Happy

Don't you have Netflix? We don't need loads of space mirrors. Just install a bunch of stupidly big rocket engines into the ground, fire them up, and move the planet.

Oh, and handwave what effect that would actually have on the atmosphere.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

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Re: UK specific model?

Are you sure it wasn't just a smaller SIM tray supplied with it? Seems weird to build an entirely different model for such a trivial change for one country.

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Re: UK specific model?

"I think I'll go for the waterproof one"

It's almost as if screws and a little rubber seal weren't a thing...

Data cleanser did its job, but – oopsie! – also doubled customers' bills

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Facepalm

I think this mentality exists in numerous places. We have documented procedures that must be followed.

Curiously we do not have a procedure for dealing with cases when the actual procedures have been found to be bullshit or, in one case, dangerous.

It seems as if procedures cannot be rescinded (is this some sort of ISO accreditation nonsense?) but a procedure can be replaced by an improved one. It just takes endless meetings and studies and piles of paperwork in order to make that happen. Timespan? Evolution happens faster than the yoghurt weavers make decisions because that means somebody has to sign off and that means responsibility... though curiously (there's that word again) nobody is ever held to account for signing off on the crap we wish we could get rid of.

Icon because...my face hurts from all the palm impacts.

Whose line is it anyway, GitHub? Innovation, not litigation, should answer

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Unhappy

"Playing by the rules while making things better? That's a good line to take."

Reality: Screw the rules while making profit. That's a better line to take.

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Re: Playing by the rules while making things better?

"and deserve a lot of criticism for that"

No, they deserve to be fined up the arse so damn hard they absolutely understand not to do that in the future.

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

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business bullshit makes them feel "less involved."

That's a polite way of saying business bullshit is business bullshit.

Maybe our age means we're less amenable to this nonsense, having heard it far far too often. It's just a way of having some mostly pointless management suck-up speak without actually saying anything... only later to claim that his underlings were indeed informed about "x" or "y" because, well, like Humpty Dumpty, those words mean exactly what he wants them to mean and nothing more.

Brit data watchdog fines sleazy sales ops £250K for 'bombarding' folk with calls

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Pathetic

Half a million unsolicited calls, quarter of a million fine.

How about at least £10 per call made?

Boss put project on progress bar timeline: three months … four … actually NOW!

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Re: Sounds like

Post Covid, one of our suppliers sent out a message saying "in order to do our job, we need you to do yours" and promising that all orders made will be delivered exactly as previewed at the time of ordering. No advances, no delays.

Kind of makes a person wonder what the hell other companies had been playing at.

New York City latest to sue Hyundai and Kia claiming their cars are too easy to steal

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because regulations there expressly require them. It is only in the United States that

There's your problem right there. Lax laws coupled with lax attitudes to security (on both sides) and some social media twattery...

Browser extension developers targeted with schemes and scams

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Not a new concept...

This is one of the main reasons I don't allow apps to auto-update.

Somebody, somewhere, creates a good and useful app. Then, one of three things will happen:

1, The developer will be deluded by potential advertising revenue to the point where the app will insert numerous full screen unskippable video adverts (the default to the sound on maximum).

2, The developer will start removing previous functionality to make a "Pro" version.

3, The developer will flog the app to some random third party who will then add #1 and maybe #2 above, and count yourself lucky if that's all they do as this tends to be the way of malware. After all, what better target than a popular app with a bunch of 5* reviews?

That the slimeballs are targeting browser extensions isn't a surprise. It's just "another potential app to infect", isn't it?

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

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Happy

Re: Run it through Microsoft Speech transcription

Sounds like a problem that can be solved with... <drum roll>... A.I.

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Pint

Recently it seems that posts are "submitted and awaiting moderation". I wonder if the person doing it here is like "oh my god, another one" as it seems most of the comments are about a UK site writing an article about Australia and then misspelling the item in question. Something that wasn't missed by anybody.

Icon, for the moderator...

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Re: Don't know what you've lost till it's gone.....

Here, it's the merchant that pays the card fees (typically 0.30% for credit and 0.20% for debit, plus a network use fee). They are not allowed to offer different prices on how you pay, but they are allowed to set a minimum (like €10) and they can choose to refuse cards entirely, but generally they'd lose more than they'd stand to gain as a shop these days that doesn't accept credit cards is considered a bit dodgy. Hell, the tea shop I go to is quite happy to let me pay €2 with plastic.

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Re: They still exist?

The thing about cheques is that they don't require the emitter to know anything about your bank details. Direct transfers and the like require the emitter to know your IBAN and whatever else to know where to send the money.

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Re: They still exist?

I didn't downvote, but I can assure you that the oldies here are quite attached to their chéquiers...

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Re: Cheques

Maybe the Americans this site is trying to cosy up to can't handle reading English spelled the way it's supposed to be...?

Windows XP's adventures in the afterlife shows copyright's copywrongs

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Re: What's the monetary damage?

"All it takes is a copyright notice in the published work."

Sure about that? Yes, the © is enough to assert copyright, but without the onerous requirement of registration, you can kiss goodbye to any sort of award for damages/losses, which pretty much annulls the entire point of what copyright is supposed to be about (plus pretty much carte blanche for American outfits to pilfer foreign content).

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ce6ab0fa-d628-43da-af70-07e266197a30

https://donahue.com/resources/publications/copyrights-registered-u-s/

Etc etc etc.

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Re: XP should die

I use XP. And no, the machine isn't online (duh). I have a few apps that I use from time to time that run on XP.

So, no, I don't need to buy an entirely new PC in order to use the latest Windows that might not actually run those apps.

And, no, I don't need to install and use an entirely different operating system that might not actually run those apps.

I think in this day and age, anybody still using XP is either a cheapskate that downloaded a copy (that may well already have "issues" never mind what happens online) or needs to use it for some specific reason.

Oh, I should add, one of those photo printer kiosks also uses XP, saw it a couple of weeks ago in a reboot loop. Again, so long as it isn't exposed to the internet, if it runs a given app and talks to a certain printer, then why not? As long as it isn't used in a way that is potentially insecure (online!), there's not necessarily any valid case to upgrade or change the OS (which may require new hardware) when what is already there works.

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Twenty years!?

How about five years after it ceases to be commercially available, or supported (if not commercial).

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Re: What's the monetary damage?

If I recall correctly, in the US you can only claim damages if the thing that is copyrighted has been "registered", in direct contravention to the Berne Convention as it applies to the rest of the planet, but then America is "special".

Netherlands digital minister smacks down Big Tech over AI regs

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" Many people die in car crashes but we don’t outlaw cars "

Idiot.

No, you don't outlaw cars.

But you do outlaw driving without seatbelts, driving cars that aren't subject to periodical checks, using worn tyres, disregarding the speed limits, ignoring stop signs/lights, drunk/high/medicated, and plenty more...

...and more recently driving with one hand holding a fondleslab against your ear and your mind elsewhere.

Meta tells staff to return to office three days a week

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Well, he's not a defender of the Metaverse. More like an unwanted parasite that will pollute and destroy it before it's even managed to mature into a "thing".

US Air Force AI drone 'killed operator, attacked comms towers in simulation'

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Re: What's new here

Define union.

Oh, you're married. Blam!

Oh, you're family members. Chakka-chakka-chakka!

Oh, you're in accounting. Kaboom!

Amazon Ring, Alexa accused of every nightmare IoT security fail you can imagine

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Re: People put cloud cameras in their and their kid's bedrooms?

Having recently had a disturbing encounter with a person who would be best defined as "of ill repute", I will soon be getting a remote surveillance system fitted at my home (isolated, rural...). It's no good simply having cameras, it needs something more active and I'm not available to respond to incidents (phones are banned at work). Thus, a third party will look when a camera is triggered to see what's going on and whether or not to hand over to the rozzers.

Obviously that's fine when I'm not around. But I want no access to the cameras when the system is inactive. It's good that this story has happened, as I rather suspect I'll be asking the engineer some difficult questions.

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

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Coat

Re: A particle smaller than a Boson?

But is the cat alive, dead, or both?

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Thumb Up

Re: You just broke ....

That's as amusing as that time Dr. Becky did a review of a Dr Who episode about black holes and went off on quite a few tangents about the stuff that was painfully wrong (like apparently mixing up black holes and wormholes).

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I thought the entire point of the quantum realm was to lull you into a false sense of security and then screw with your mind so hard you'll be questioning reality.

Absolute mad lad renders Doom in teletext

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The FBI as advanced persistent threat – and what to do about it

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Re: messed up

Hmmm. To me, capitalising one but not the other, coupled with the phrase "African American", comes across as making a specific distinction. It's a kind of "casual racism". God forbid anybody simply call a black person in America "an American".

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Black Helicopters

Spies are gonna spy.

True, but usually spies are supposed to spy on the country's enemies. When such enemies are the country's own citizens, using tenuous logic that's barely more than "because this person disagrees with us", well, that's a slippery slope that's only going one way.

Intel mulls cutting ties to 16 and 32-bit support

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Re: It's about time.

It's a little younger than the Z80, but the 8051 is still around in plenty of little embedded devices (bread makers, microwave ovens, etc).

Nowadays you can get them with DSPs and such bolted on. Which isn't quite as weird as it sounds given the ST1 range of audio players was a Z80 core with a 24 bit DSP for handling MP3s.

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

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Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

There's nothing wrong with "Thick As A Brick".

Or sheep.

And good luck with anybody around here knowing what a Twinkie is (and I only know about them thanks to Tallahassee).

Rift in space and time? No worries, we have a Doctor that is experienced with such matters.