Posts by Headley_Grange

How to teach an old Intel Mac new tricks with OpenCore Legacy Patcher

Yep - "no Tahoe" isn't a caveat, it's a selling point.

Europe's new import rules are coming for your bargains

Re: Uk is Temu EU

"On 23 June 2026, the UK Treasury announced an early start to the ending of the current Customs Duties exemption threshold for small import parcels. Instead of the withdrawal on 1 March 2029, it will now take place from 1 October 2028."

https://www.vatcalc.com/united-kingdom/uk-2029-ending-customs-free-135-threshold

AI bills are baffling the C-suite after shift to usage-based pricing

Why don't they try threatening it, cancelling its holiday and making it work weekends for nothing?

Hackers shoveled snow for company, were rewarded with network admin access

Years ago our company was going for List X status. IT went balls out before the initial audit - password policies, night-time checks of desk areas for post-its, senior management briefed that they were not "special", etc. Number one on the audit observations? Too many external doors into the building. If you think that C-suites get annoyed when you make them change their password every month you should see them when the door next to their parking space is permanently locked and they have to walk an extra 100 yards.

UK firm bombarded debt-ridden people with 5.5M texts

They should make him post hand-written apologies to everyone he texted.

Telling internet platforms where to stick public service media will serve nobody. Turn it on its head

"Forcing a quota of state-mandated media into the stream, even with the best of intentions, is a hostage to fortune. It's probably unenforceable, will be deeply unpopular with users and companies alike, and will poison PSM across the board."

Let's test that......

.......Charlie says

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

Re: SNAFU

I have fond memories of them from my Interrailing in the 80s. It might be the fog of time or the low baseline for comparison but after British Rail almost everything about German train travel seemed to be so much better.

Database (DB) problem.

Anthropic reimagines Claude in Slack as nosy, always-on agentic AI coworker

This made me think of that person we all probably met at some point. They were in the sort of non-specialist job that meant they were on a variety of projects and in loads of meetings. They would interject, frequently, with questions, ideas, solutions, etc., based on their imperfect understanding of things they'd heard about on other, non-relevant, projects. When they opened their gobs the engineers in the room sagged a little but management listened to them and sent you off on a wild goose chase. He was probably called "Peter" (never "Pete").

Security shops among the 'hundreds' of Klue hack victims

"..specific to CRM data.."

Could still be embarrassing or lucrative. I worked on an ERP transition many years ago. The old system didn't have a CRM module so the sales staff had been using other unused fields to keep information about customers. One of our jobs was to extract this info and copy it into the relevant fields in the new systems' CRM. The company would have paid a hefty ransom to avoid some of the comments being made public.

Small island nation tries bold tech education strategy

Re: Action at a distance

"I think that you do not understand the article, too."

In that case I think you can add me to the list of people who don't understand the article.

UK.gov links up with LinkedIn for jobs market intel from 40M accounts

Re: Explorers

"..observing a market and getting out of the way.."

Is that the market that's offshored millions of jobs? Or the same market that's, at best, going to turn engineers into AI babysitters and at worst put them out of work?

Tesco is sprinting to quit VMware and Broadcom despite rapid migration risks

"..VCF is so powerful it quickly pays for itself .."

Then all Broadcom has to do is to contract with Tesco based on this. Define a contract based on the savings they will see and once Tesco has seen those savings then they switch to the new pricing structure. I mean -- Broadcom wouldn't tell fibs about something like that, would they?

If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs

Re: Wait… what?

Don't US highway deaths correlate well with US lemon imports?

LibreOffice brands Euro-Office a 'de facto ally' of Microsoft's lock-in strategy

Re: deal breaker

My uncle told me the spike was for getting boy scouts out of girl guides. I was much too young to get the joke but when I told my teacher the same thing the look of shock on her face made me realize that there was something else going on that was beyond my understanding.

"Thats fine, but libre office doesn't have an equivalent to outlook.."

You make that sound like a bad thing.

NSO Group back in Meta's crosshairs after alleged WhatsApp targeting

Re: WhatSpy

In Whatsapp's early days I got a contract and the company wanted me to use Whatsapp for all the comms. I told them that under the new GDPR rules* I couldn't use it because it would mean getting the permission of everyone in my contacts list to upload their details to Whatsapp. They stopped using Whatsapp immediately.

* I don't know whether this was or still is true because I've never used Whatsapp and don't know how it works.

Re: Just asking

It doesn't matter where the owners live. All that counts is where the company is registered and/or where the deed was done. That is why banks and tech companies register themselves in jurisdictions that either benefit their tax arrangements or protect them from actions such as this. Or both.

Apple's Orwellian device controls for tots also mean more work for parents

Re: UK users

The requirement to provide ID to access restricted content is UK law, so you're right, Apple are just doing what they have to. Problem is that Apple's implementation of it is restrictive*. Initially they only allowed credit card, driving licence and having an Apple account for more tnan 18 years. Other options are available - face ID, mobile contract, passport, etc. During beta testing it proved a problem but Apple ignored it and went live with the same problems. Eventually they added Passports and other UK proof-of-age cards, but it's still a pain for some people.

There's a whole other argument about implementing ID requirements at device level, rather than directly at the point of access of restricted material. Apple's approach is a bit like having to show ID to get into the shopping mall because one of the cinema screens is showing a x-rated movie.

*I suspect Apple are being churlish.

"Some of these features such as App approval have been around for years."

I've never used them but judging by the frequent posts on the Apple boards from parents whose kids bypass the current features with ease they are either too simple to get round or too complicated for some parents to set up.

UK's top crime agency hamstrung by legacy IT, watchdog warns

Boy Racers

The UK buys IT infrastructure the way that boy racers buy cars. Get a cheap Focus then chip it, upgrade the exhaust, bore out the block, stage 3 the head, add racing pistons, upgrade the suspension, add a spoiler, upgrade the a sound system and cap it off with a respray plus matching interior lights to get a car that's still not as fast as an M3 but cost a lot more.

Bend the beam like Beckham to defeat anti-jamming tech

Thanks - downloaded for reading.

I used to work on null-steering arrays for GPS receivers. They worked passively using a Butler matrix. Based on your post I guess that they too might be fooled by these curved beams because of the complex phase.

This doesn't make sense to me from an anti-jam point of view. It doesn't matter a jot where David Beckham is. All that matters is the direction the ball comes from at the moment of impact. Why does a null-steer antenna need to know the actual direction of the source? It needs to put a null in the direction the signal comes from, not the direction of the transmitter. Even if the curve can be changed so the arrival direction changes there's no point pointing a null at the transmitter. A missile maybe.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Re: The first one is free...

The first one isn't free - it's an advance.

NASA to pull an IKEA by dropping tons of plastic, metal, and glass on the Moon

Re: But why?

Bagsies on the south pole.

California may let Linux bypass age check

Re: One response: Strike.

The UK Tory government brought in voter ID because poor and immigrant voters who were likely to vote for other parties are less likely to have the requisite ID docs.

Meta fights Ofcom over how many billions count as billions

It's not about jurisdiction and where the money is made, it's about setting a fine at a level that makes it a deterrent. If they set it at, say, $100M then it would bankrupt some companies but for others it would be pocket money and therefore no deterrent. So they have to make it relevant to the size of the company. If they only based it on UK revenue then it might not be a big enough. Global sales is the best measure of the size of the company.

Re: If Meta wants to be fined on their UK revenues

Yeah - if they win then watch the UK revenue drop as Meta Virgin Islands charges Meta UK £billions via Meta Cayman Islands for use of trademarks, logos, software, good will, etc., to the extent that Meta UK makes a loss.

TomTom’s route planner takes an unplanned detour into oblivion

Re: The perils of integrated innovation :o

TomTom stopped innovating many, many years ago. I used to report problems with their iOS app and its poor integration with Carplay and, like another poster here, got encouraging "We're looking at it" responses but the problems persist.

I'm curious about the potential 7-days' data loss. Does that mean they only back up every 7 days or they only backup the backups every 7 days?

UK drivers' agency shrugs off claims of week-long booking site smashes, blames browser configs

"we can think of no current error with our booking system that would allow certain browsers"

Here's one - you didn't test it properly.

SpaceX rocket set for unintentional Moon landing – well, a piece of it anyway

"traveling at several times the speed of sound."

Hmmm.

Phone users know when to hold ’em, delay upgrades amid inflation

I think that budgetary constraints are compounding a situation that was already in play. In the early, heady days of mobiles new phones had snazzy new features that people really wanted and were willing to splash out on well before they needed to. Today new phones have incremental improvements which, no matter how much they are bigged up at the annual press shindigs, don't nudge the dial far enough to make the difference they used to. I think Apple in particular are suffering from (their) AI proving not to be the shelf emptier that they hoped it would.

I'm on old git who sits in the unfashionable end of the distribution of phone buyers so I'll be hanging on to my iPhone 13 Mini as long as it gets security updates because it does everything I need pretty well and can't run AI but mainly because it's small enough to fit in my jacket pocket.

US clarifies mobile hotspots part of foreign router ban despite rarity of American made consumer kit

What about cars that have hotspots?

Dev targeted by sophisticated job scam: 'I let my guard down, and ran the freaking code'

Re: Is somebody really still using "LinkedIn"?

You forgot the other peoples who use Linkedln - the lazy bastards in almost every tech HR department who use it as their only source for recruitment.

AI quota inflation is no token effort. It's baked in

Software engineers are going to become project managers of AI; forecasting token spend, monitoring token spend and producing powerpoints to explain why their token spend is greater than their forecast together with RAG metrics, token recovery plans, etc. Of course, they'll be pushed to use AI to draft the powerpoint, thereby increasing the token spend for no resulting value, but that's project management for you.

Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug

Re: Silly question as a non iPhone user

No - the phone will recover but Activation Lock means it can only be activated by the owner logging in with their Apple ID.

Re: Silly question as a non iPhone user

In theory you can by connecting it to a Mac or PC and running recovery/DFU mode. I say "in theory" because Apple these days seems to have moved off the 'reliably boring" step onto the "break things" step. If the user hasn't got a Mac or PC then they ought to be able to get it sorted out in an Apple shop.

It's hard to understand how this change survived any sort of requirements review or design review but the good old reliable Upsilon testing picked it up.

US states can't account for datacenter tax breaks. Literally

It's more akin to religion than accounting. All you need is faith.

You can finally control serial devices from Firefox

Based on experience I'll get the straight and crossovers mixed up and they won't go anywhere.

Does this mean that box of random D-types I've got in the loft will be worth selling on eBay?

Britain gives Rolls-Royce the nod to sketch out its mini reactor future

Re: No info on the technology?

Two minutes on t'internet reveals, "Most PWR designs make use of two to six steam generators, each associated with a coolant loop." and "In a close-coupled reactor design, the primary coolant circulation system is made as compact as possible to reduce the size of the reactor's containment."

Re: No info on the technology?

From Wikipedia.

RR is preparing a small modular reactor (SMR) design called the UK SMR, a close-coupled three-loop pressurised water reactor (PWR) design.[31] Power output was initially designed to be 440 MWe, and subsequently increased to 470 MWe which is above the usual range considered to be a SMR.[3][32][31] It should be able to power a city the size of Sheffield.[10] The planning documents for the projects (by Rolls-Royce SMR co-owner ČEZ) for Temelín[33] and Tušimice[34] assume an output of 498 MWe.

The intended fuel is uranium dioxide (UO2).[35] A modular forced draft cooling tower will be used.[31] The design targets a 500-day construction time, on a 10 acres (4 ha) site.[35][36] Overall build time is expected to be four years, two years for site preparation and two years for construction and commissioning.[37]

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

When I'm stood in the checkout queue in the supermarket and a staff member comes over and says, 'Come and use the self-checkout - I can help you if you like", I reply along the lines of, "In a couple of years, after you've finished helping them to iron out the bugs and you're on the dole you'll wish there had been more people like me who refuse to use them."

Growing void between enterprise and frontier AI puts open weights models in the spotlight

"Most customers don't need the biggest baddest models, just ones that work, are cheap, and won't pirate their proprietary data"

And I wanted a Chopper for Christmas, but never got one.

Fewer than 3 in 10 register for HMRC's Making Tax Digital shake-up

In my experience it's good to have April as the end of the tax year, although UK companies can choose any dates for their accounting years. When I worked for a US company in the UK our tax year ended on 31 Dec which meant a crap time for a whole bunch of people. Account managers, project managers, anyone in finance and even engineers if they were needed to finish something to claim a delivery. It often felt malicious with the yanks seeming to take the view that if they had to ruin their Christmas then so must we. A couple of colleagues had holidays cancelled at the last minute in order to come to the office between Christmsa and NY to chase cash payments from their customers even though everyone knew that the customers closed down over Christmas.

DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

There's an annoying mix of units in the article. Li batteries described in terms of watt-hours per kg (energy density) but radioactive batteries described in watts per kg (power density?).

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

"and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store" until you don't.