Posts by cd

Audacity fork maintainer quits after alleged harassment by 4chan losers who took issue with 'Tenacity' name

They could name it Tubacity, that's how I pronounce Tuba City, AZ when I drive through. No one else using it and it sounds close.

Prez Biden narrowly escapes cicada assassination attempt, hunkers down in Cornwall

Their leader is named John. John Cicada sometimes changes the spelling of his name to remain incognito.

Seven-year-old make-me-root bug in Linux service polkit patched

If it stinks like a polecat...

Six years in the making, Vivaldi Mail arrives alongside version 4.0 of the company's browser

Re: Vivaldi/Thunderbird

Or Seamonkey, apparently, which had those features long ago. Which also works with the Firefox plugins like NoScript, uBlock Origin, etc. and there's even a Firefox plugin converter in case something doesn't.

Fastly 'fesses up to breaking the internet with an 'an undiscovered software bug' triggered by a customer

Fastly Over-rated?

See title

Tesla to build cars made of batteries and hit $25k price tag about three years down the road

The California plant had quality and labor issues when it was run by GM and staffed by UAW members. Then the partnership with Toyota resulted in higher quality and comparatively happy labor.

Source: Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Now Tesla is reportedly barely as good as GM was in in the 70's at either metric.

Musk is not even the Roger Smith of electric auto CEO's.

When Toyota and Honda make this kind of vehicle I'll be interested.

State of Iowa approves $17m in budget for Workday project after bid to use coronavirus relief funds was denied

Idiots

Out

Walking

Around

Diary of a report writer and his big break into bad business

Re: A Simple Observation...

Not to mention quantity over quality.

Perhaps a script/automation could be written to idio-cise (make PHB compliant) a Word doc, drawing on a dictionary of buzzwords and phrases and being able to set an output score on a scale of zero to subzero intelligence. There are times in my life I would've bought that.

SAP community suggestions for on-prem database canned as app giant looks cloudwards

A second padlock on the stable door?

So, where does Silicon Valley stand on S.230? Zuck wants 'industry best practices', Pichai demurs, Dorsey urges more Bluesky thinking

They need to implement a "TIme-Out" for these companies, give them six months or so inaccessible to all to give them time to think clearly and implement more effectively. If after that Time-Out they have not yet learned, another six months.

It would be effective if enforced, and could give competition time to take root.

Also need a ban on any Tech M&A for ten years.

US military employs neural networks to figure out interference in photons for quantum communications

This is a "someone else's goose" story if I ever read one.

Founders of medical science upstart uBiome once likened to Theranos now indicted for, you guessed it, fraud

Re: Anyone know?

The case is delayed because she is pregnant.

Backblaze on the back foot after 'inadvertently' beaming customer data to Facebook

Re: Blocked

And her they all are, ready to cut and paste.

Re: No customer dashboard should ever fire off a connection to Facebook, Google, or any 3rd party

I convinced my major credit union to drop recaptcha by declaring that I do not have any business relationship with Google and do not want to confide my personal practices with them.

I used an article here about an alternative captcha and they ended up adopting it for a while.

I am sympathetic to the need of blocking bad actors, but too often Google or Fb provide something "easy" as a solution that has ramifications for their customer. I view that choice as an indicator of whether sales or engineering is dominant and act accordingly.

OVH flames scorched cloud customers with pledge to build data centre fire simulation lab

Re: OVH may want to retire the name SBG1

They should mutate their own name to OVAH.

Crafty: Cricut caught out by user revolt, but will cloud stop play?

Jawbone

I remember buying one of their BT extra headsets and finding out that I could only change settings by logging into the company website. There were two things I wanted to change occasionally, and every time I wanted to change them I had to log in and make a new password and so forth just to toggle those.

Then they stopped supporting any browser I had, riding on the Google planned-obsolescence and keeping ahead of regs horse.

I didn't buy another Jawbone anything, despite it working well otherwise, and they're no longer here so perhaps other felt the same.

Privacy purists prickle at T-Mobile US plan to proffer people's personal web, app pursuits to ad promoters

Don't forget the MVNO's, they may also be involved in this scheme. Was just easing away from Mint Mobile anyway, noticed they now offer unlimited for the same price as my 10 GB. Now, thanks Reg, I know where the "unlimited" is coming from. Not that they offered it to me when I was an already hooked customer.

First Verizon, now T-Mobile: US carrier suggests folks use 2G to save battery

I am close to the end of a trial of a T-Mo MVNO. It is clear that, at least in my area of the US, T-Mo is having issues with capacity and/or config. What happens to me is that hotspot mode on my 4G phone slowly dies, then the phone's access to data dies, then no telephony at all is possible.

The solution from the MVNO is to switch to another APN and sometimes restart the phone, so in order to use that SIM i need at least two and preferably three nearly identical APN's to switch among as time passes, the expiration being variable. The story being told to me is that T-Mo is reconfiguring towers for 5G. It seems to me that 5G might demand more out of the existing hardware and some gros scrimmage just realised that when he put off some engineers pointing this out he screwed up. Not himself of course, but the customers and shareholders.

I stuck with 3G during the onset of 4G and can't see any reason why not to do the same with this transition, so it's amusing that the carriers themselves are now suggesting this course.

Perl.com theft blamed on social engineering attack: Registrar 'convinced' to alter DNS records by miscreants

NetSol is still living in 1999.

So, bye-bye mighty nerd haven Fry’s, took Silicon to the Valley... and now you must die

Last year I spoke with a clerk at another retail outlet who once worked for Fry's. His claim was that one of the brothers had money-handling issues and possible substance issues as well, so the stores got ignored. He said that his store's manager pleaded for more stock and support but that the top people were often MIA for long periods.

I really liked Fry's for being different and comprehensive. When the shelves started being empty and the employees started looking unwell it made me sad. So much potential and convenience, and they are the last place, not that Radio Shack was great but now we're down to the delivery truck to get some simple small things.

I wonder if the new Gamestop regime might consider a synergy buyout/resuscitation.

Microsoft president asks Congress to force private-sector orgs to admit when they've been hacked

Re: A team of 1000.

This is just asking for a new Reg measurement of incompetence.

"How incompetent were these people?"

"x000 Microsoft Engineers"

"Ahh"

Whistleblowers: Inflexible prison software says inmates due for release should be kept locked up behind bars

Re: inflexible prison software

They aren't locked-in enough for my liking.

Malware monsters target Apple’s M1 silicon with ‘Silver Sparrow’

So the way to defend against this is to add an empty file to a directory?

Amazon deploys AI cameras inside delivery vans, misspells 'surveillance' as 'safety' in reason why

Re: In defence of Amazon

As I wrote in a comment above, it can also be used against Amazon. When they face one of those cases, and their drivers --being underpaid and high-turnover-- are pretty terrible, the cameras may go away.

Re: Excellent!

You've hit on something that Amazon, being a newby transportation company , hasn't considered. Which is that the recordings can be evidence.

Some trucking companies in the US have learned that the recordings can be subpoenaed. This has resulted in the removal of cameras by some companies. Of course there are many stupid companies out there still using them.

Amazon is the personification of the wealthy idiot alpha-hotel, if they were a person.

Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election

Re: Ballot Marking Devices

I don't know why everyone says their name wrong, it's Mudrock.

Amazon coughs up $62m to shoo away claims it stole driver tips, cut pay rates without telling them

Trader Joes is owed by Aldi I think.

Were you thinking of Whole Foods?

File format conversion crisis delayed attempt to challenge US presidential election result

Re: Trying to subvert the results of a Presidential election?

If they do turn blue when their breath is withheld, it suggests a possible solution to the US political situation.

What can the 1944 OSS manual teach us before we all return to sabotage the office?

Obviously lazy satire...

The original manual is obviously either the product of...

a) a lazy jobsworth who merely took examples from the hierarchy they worked in and typed them up, sanguinely aware that they would not be comprehended as criticism by those in charge.

b) a master satirist, perhaps descended from the Swift bloodline, who also realised that the targeted would not grok the aim and that it would serve as a subtext for all practical people.

c) all of the above, but I wasn't alive then.

On another note: One fortunate thing about 2021 is that it cannot possibly be worse than the preceding years, we are now on track to have a splendid year of great relief. The polar caps will not continue to melt, causing a rotational imbalance and a 90 degree tilt of the planet. No explosives will go off without deliberation. No further plagues or virii will visit. Those earthquakes/unexplained loud booms in the southwest United States that aren't showing up on the USGS reporting are a mere figment, not a sign of the impending separation of California from the rest of the continent along the Walker Lane and the resulting incursion of seawater on all lower elevation cities in the region.

Everything will be perfect this year.

/s (which stands for sincerity)

'Best tech employer of the year' threatened trainee with £15k penalty fee for quitting to look after his sick mum

It's become a model

Here in the US, apart from using H1B's to get underpaid labor, there's an emerging model of "free" technical training followed by collecting a percentage of the student's paychecks after they get hired.

And now there's even an aggregator of those, careerkarma.com/, to help one choose which indenture program to enter.

Google Mail outage: Did you see that error message last night? Why the 'account does not exist' response is a worry

Re: You Get What You Pay For

I keep telling people to register a domain at Dynadot or Porkbun and either buy email hosting as well or I'll set them up via my reseller account.

In every case there is apathy until the kind of thing described in the article happens or their Yahoo account has 30k spams and they can't find what the want any longer.

Eventually they'll catch up when the losses are the worst possible, meanwhile you can look up how to get your IP off whatever RBL Google uses. Perhaps your hosting provider can accomplishi it if they do it frequently. And if they do it with relative frequency, then find another provider and IP to send from. I've had those on shared hosting, nothing but one misery after another with soiled IP's.

Raven geniuses: Four-month-old corvids have similar cognitive abilities to great apes at same age, study finds

Re: Please don't let QAnon see this.

Thank you, from all the satirists.

Social networks warn Pakistan its new content-blocking laws will hurt economic growth

I urge other countries to follow their example.

Laggardly HPE kisses Joe Biden's ring, whispers Uncle Sam's IT in dire need of modernisation

Needs a favor?

Is this the iteration of HP that wants a certain British ex-CEO extradited?

Four or so things we found interesting about Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888, its latest 5G chip for high-end Androids

Re: 5nm engraving, wow

Murphy's Law tried to die, but Murphy's Law intervened and the attempt failed.

Whoa BlackBerry: Firm hooks up with AWS on cloud telematics platform for vehicle data

Used cars for me

Preferably older than all this crap.

Spending Review: We spy a stray £60m – is that all you can spare to help 5G market recover from UK kicking out Huawei?

Re: Money tree

Make starving kids profitable first, then try again.

If Lester were still around perhaps he could rocket us back to 2016 and help put us on another track forward. Otherwise, the fault lies with the mess not the messenger.

Mysterious metal monolith found in 'very remote' part of Utah

It's not that far from Moab, which is scenic and popular, but also has a uranium industry background with discarded leftovers strewn about.

There were dumps of uranium ore along some riverbeds near there even recently, and there's a processing facility south of there near Blanding, to which radioactive tailings are being brought from out-of-state as well. A search will bring up various gov't maps of reclamation efforts and plans for that area.

I see the warning as straddling a way to keep people from exploring overland in potentially unsafe directions while not killing the golden tourism goose that is Moab.

That said, I'm tempted to go look. Could be there today if I stopped posting on the Reg, certainly lots of places to car-camp and hike. Might be a good time to set up a food truck nearby.

Ad banned for suggesting London black cabs have properties that prevent the spread of coronavirus

Re: Seems a bit harsh

Similar to when I park in a spot in a back corner of a shopping center lot, just want to sit alone for a bit. Someone will then park right beside me. I'm assuming this is some sort of neurotypical compassion/empathy thing where people shouldn't be left alone or something.

They nearly always look like limited types with no inner life. If anything, they make me even more considering of doing away with myself, if only to get away from them.

Crooks social-engineer GoDaddy staff into handing over control of crypto-biz domain names

Goes to show how clueless the cryptocurrency folks are, using GoDaddy for anything. Would you buy a virtual coin from this man?

Election security fears doused with reality: Top officials say Nov 3 'was the most secure in American history.' The end

Re: Ribbon

"With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off by the collar, threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parliamentary business of it, and then grinning in the officer's face, with great glee and self-approval. "

Brit Conservative Party used 10 million people's names to derive their country of origin, ethnicity and religion according to ICO report

Re: So what did they think of Boris ?

I've wondered why they don't call his followers Farangists.

Google to end free unlimited online photo, vid storage, will eventually delete files if accounts go over their cap

Re: Another one bites the dust

If you run Owncloud/Nextcloud on your hosting or home server, there's an Android app that auto-uploads photos to your personal cloud as they are taken, no big corp needs to scan them and sell/give them to Getty Images on the sly, or use them to boost visits to their site while you provide them with free content.

Those clouds do videos as well, and plays them if right there if you send a link to someone else.

You can also use Owncloud/Nextcloud to safely store other things you may need from time-to-time, like scans of driver's license and so forth, so instead of emailing them you can send the recipient link to download what is needed.

Thus, cloud services without Google's less-than-divine intervention. It's almost like you don't need Google's "free" stuff at all.

Missing Alan Turing memorabilia to be returned to Blighty from the US, 36 years after it went walkabout

Thank you, it all reads like she saw Turing's legacy not being respected or well-remembered in the UK and was determined to salvage what remnants there were and defend his representation in films.

Quite an effort, if one figures in the name-change, and the recent times come around to meet it. She could have kept all the stuff at home and no one would have known; it's obvious that she cares about his legacy.

The story and comments here were not answering the motivation question, because those items were likely not valued at the time.

Not excusing any actions, but it makes sense now.

Shopping online for Xmas? AI chatbots know whether you want to be naughty or nice

Re: Great article, once again !

If blockchain is a record of each transaction, how do people get away with stealing cryptocurrencies? It seems like the tranactions and the participants would be trackable.

I've not "invested" in them, so it might be a naive question, but it if currencies can be stolen, why can't electricity be stolen? What makes the currencies different?

Amid pandemic and economic uncertainty, enterprises find they've lost the will to migrate to SAP's S4/HANA

Does no one offer an escape kit for SAP or Oracle users? Seems like it would be especially viable right now.

Some kind of quantum entanglement database...

Please, tell us more about how just 60 hydrogen-powered 5G drones could make 400,000 UK base stations redundant

Re: Could is another way of saying...

And cloud storage...

The car you buy in 2025 will include a terabyte of storage. Robo-taxis might need 11TB

That kind of thing would make me say, "ta-ta".

Re: Good luck with that.

A certain US railroad has been running self-driving freight trains on a certain line for decades. Driver (engineer over here) still sitting there in the right-hand side, but not operating the train. Their road locomotives now have a console with controls to set a destination like an autopilot, it doesn't run as well or as quickly as a human but it does get there. So much money spent to eliminate jobs.

In general, this autopilot stuff tends to be popular with people who don't engage with driving.

Chevrolet has introduced an electric crate motor swap for older vehicles that ran gasoline engines, the first one will bolt into a 70's Blazer and even use the fuel gauge as a battery gauge. At some point, when these kits are more prevalent, I'll be be buying backward rather than forward.