Posts by David 132

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Related, and admittedly I've told this anecdote before, but... many decades ago, I obtained (by purchasing floppy disks of Public Domain software, as was the habit at the time when we weren't wearing onions on our belts) a sound/icon scheme for Amiga Workbench - what would now be called a "theme" I suppose. This gave Workbench the icons of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the "system alert" sound replaced by a suitable clip from the film.

Well, not having seen the film myself, I was impressed/terrified/puzzled when my Amiga suddenly said "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that".

How the *&@#! does it know my name? How did the developer code all this in just 1MB of memory?

Nowadays, of course, I am far more worldly and experienced, and would merely assume that Microsoft/Google had datamined my personal data and generated an AI-derived sound file to market stuff to me :)

Say that again, and the lovely Beti will do an exotic dance for you.

Unless you pay her not to.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

Re: Happy Days

That'll probably happen around the same time that everyone (apart from you :) ) heeds RMS and starts referring to it as GNU/Linux.

Not to tempt you (note icon) but... Surface Pro 3 Hackintosh Instructions :)

Multi-boot is very early 2000s, though.

I think all the cool kids these days are using Proxmox and GPU forwarding to run multiple OSes.

Re: Have an upvote

It does have The Power though.

And for that early 90s earworm, you're welcome.

Google India probed after driver fatally followed Maps route over unfinished bridge

Re: Let me get this straight ...

>A couple of sawhorses and a sign saying Bridge Closed would likely work. BUT IT'S NOT DIGITAL. Are you a Luddite advocating a return to the stone age?

I have a brilliant idea for denoting a bridge as closed that involves AI, Blockchain, Web 3, and quantum computing!! Where's my A-round funding from Y Combinator?

Re: Let me get this straight ...

Not to mention, needful!

Re: Let me get this straight ...

I think "don't blindly obey them" is advice for all satnavs, not just Google's.

Back in the UK, my car's built-in nav system used to regularly advise me to "take exit 11 from the M4... go straight over the roundabout... join the M4 motorway" because it thought using the slip-road would be somehow shorter or faster (not to mention endearing me to other motorway users). And it became a running joke that although otherwise pretty well-behaved when I was the driver, it would regularly try to kill my wife. Telling her to drive 10 miles south from Lincoln, turn round at an exit, and then drive 11 miles north on the same road - rather than, ooh, just going North in the first place - was a memorable low-spot.

Arch Linux installer now slightly less masochistic

Re: Why call it “dumbing it down”?

> what is the benefit of making the installation process hard?

A misplaced and out-of-date attitude of “this’ll separate the men from the boys”?

Or perhaps, more likely, a deep-seated ancestral memory of The Eternal September, when a previous step-change in how hard it was to do things that were previously the domain of hardcore geeks, resulted in a so-far-uncontrolled flood of n00bs?

Both KDE and GNOME to offer official distros

Re: daily-drivable general purpose OS.

> but you'd then have blank space beside the screen.

Shudder. Flashbacks to those Compaq/IBM/Olivetti/etc laptops in the early-mid 90s that had tiny little LCD screens with massive bezels all around, simply because larger screens were either unaffordable or simply not invented!

The photo on the Wikipedia page for the Compaq LTE is a good (by which I mean, horrific and triggering) example.

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

...with Blackjack! And hookers!

I’m sure I won’t have to endure it…

The article mentions that a Copilot+ AI PC is a requirement for this. And I’m sure, Microsoft being who they are, a Microsoft account, rather than a local one, will also be needed.

Both criteria, I’m totally heartbroken to say, I don’t meet. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

T-Mobile US takes a victory lap after stopping cyberattacks: 'Other providers may be seeing different outcomes'

Re: Tempting fate

Welcome to The T-Mobile Intranet(TM)

(C) 1977-2024 Infocom, Inc.

You are in your compromised account's home directory.

You see: A Collection of TXT files; A JPG; A File Named "Passwords.DOC".

Exits: North, West.

> GO NORTH

A firewall blocks your path!

> EXAMINE FIREWALL

It says "Palo Alto Networks"

...

First-ever UEFI bootkit for Linux in the works, experts say

Re: What took them so long?

> ROM boot image

Indeed. Getting infected by rootkits on my Sinclair Spectrum was laborious.

LOAD “rootkit”

(20 minutes of tape squawking)

RUN

D BREAK: CONT REPEATS

(machine crashes)

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

> This feels like the plot of a paperback thriller novel

Pretty sure it was used in at least one of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels!

QNAP NAS users locked out after firmware update snafu

Understatement of the year from El Reg…

FTFA: “It wouldn't be the first time an IT vendor has pushed out a software release that hasn't been adequately tested.”

Noooo. I find that hard to comprehend.

[Citation Needed], surely?

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

Is there anything more guaranteed to induce aneurysm-level rage than a full-screen Microsoft ad?

I, for one, come very close to punching my screen whenever I boot my PC and Microsoft see fit to interrupt my workflow with a full-screen entreaty to use Edge, or OneDrive, or switch to a Microsoft Account, or upgrade to Windows 11.

A small tool-tip in the corner of the taskbar, I could maybe tolerate. But hijacking my entire screen, usually with an override to prevent Alt+F4 or Ctrl-Alt-Del? There's an entire circle of Hell for whichever fuckwit marketing executive thought that was appropriate.

(At last. A chance to use this icon in an appropriate context --->)

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 struggles to take off

Re: Obviously...

Ah, you mean "Warning 47: Timeout - Unable to load DoorPlug.texture, non-fatal, continuing to load"?

Microsoft breaks timezones in Settings and calls on an unlikely ally for help

Re: Escalating escalations escalated

...and every few minutes, at random, their PCs will spontaneously reboot with an infuriating "We're installing updates! Don't power off your PC!" message, and a percentage-complete counter that will go upwards, downwards, past 100%, below 0%...

Framework laptops get modular makeover with RISC-V main board

Re: What comes after RISC-V?

Pfft. I'll wait for the RISC-V implementation within the next version of Systemd.

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

Could be even worse… skim-reading rapidly down the Reg front page, I parsed “passkeys” as “monkeys”. Will monkeys ever replace passwords? Now there’s a thought.

Microsoft Exchange update fixes security flaws, breaks other stuff

Re: Utterly ridiculous

Honestly I’m not sure they could write a NOP instruction on an isolated machine in an empty room without it crashing, segfaulting, bringing down Azure/OneDrive, and causing PCs from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe to BSOD.

Re: Channels

I used to like watching the little white dot after the BBC shut down for the night.

(Yes, that’s my denim jacket with “VERY METAL” written on the back, and my yellow Ford Anglia parked outside thanks.)

Ambitious overclocker cools Raspberry Pi 5 with liquid nitrogen

Re: I remember the Celeron 300A I had

Ah, the old trick of putting a sliver of tape on - or cutting the trace of, if you were brave - pin B12 of the Slot 1 edge connector?

Yes, it worries me that 25 years later I can still remember that.

Apple drops soldered storage for 2024 Mac Mini

Re: Power on the bottom

Can Macs then not be configured to go to Hibernate when the lid’s closed? Because S4 is “off” in every physical sense.

To kill memory safety bugs in C code, try the TrapC fork

Re: Variable Names : Case Sensitivity

26? You only need 1.

Obligatory XKCD :)

Schneider Electric ransomware crew demands $125k paid in baguettes

Re: Why did the ransomware scum demand payment in French Bread?

Well, we don't want any toast. We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns... and definitely, no smegging flapjacks.

Re: Why did the ransomware scum demand payment in French Bread?

Sigh. Puns about French bread are pain-ful.

Now, get out of here with your jokes about their pastry. Choux, I say, choux!

Arecibo telescope might have failed because of weak sockets

Zinc spelting?

...or metal fatigue from having Sean Bean and Pierce Brosnan hanging off the central antenna?

(The icon represents an EMP-blast-immune helicopter, obviously.)

Sysadmin shock as Windows Server 2025 installs itself after update labeling error

I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Windows version updates are always quick, fuss-free, and quietly and without drama work exactly as the previous version did, only with drastically fewer errata and many new user-pleasing - nay, delighting - features. Plus, they never break older applications.

(Note icon. It was a toss-up between that one, the trollface, and the coffee-sprayed-on-keyboard one.)

Ongoing typosquatting campaign impersonates hundreds of popular npm packages

We should be coding in Whitespace. That would make typosquatting fun!

Microsoft has reached $1M giveaway levels of desperation to attract users to Bing

Re: Marketing? Really?

While I agree with your general sentiment, I must admit to being slightly unnerved by the phrase “specialty pornography”. The mind boggles!

(Not my downvote btw… takes all sorts, live and let live, etc…)

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: We had

Hey! I’m from Norfolk and you’ve just offended my mother, wife, and sister.

…here she is now in fact…

Hack Nintendo's alarm clock to show cat pics? Let's-a-go!

Re: Next logical step

It's an alarm clock, so should be capable of TikTok.

Tower PC case allegedly used as 'creative cavity' by drug importer

Brings a whole new meaning to the term “the Intel Bong”.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Re: Wow

Amusingly, reading El Reg on my phone, the amount wraps across the page and underneath the headline of the story adjacent to it.

Fiendishly cunning attempt by Putler to crash Western media?

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source

Re: Open source confusion yet again

Yes, you're absolutely right. There is only one "Open Source license" in existence, no more than that, and it is so carelessly written that it has been ripped to shreds time and again even by concussed paralegals.

Oh, wait, no.

There are dozens of open source / FOSS / software libre licences, of which the GPL is merely the best known.

And in its 35 years of existence, it has survived all legal challenges and the slings and arrows of the finest FUD that closed-source interests can throw at it.

Look, if you're going to troll - and everyone needs a hobby - at least try to be a little more creative and subtle.

While I am sympathetic to their cause...

...am I the only one who thinks that the billboard design looks like something a 12-year-old might come up with?

Is it an appeal to the better nature of CTOs, or a political cartoon in a lowbrow tabloid, or a Heavy Metal album cover?

I "get" the need to have something short and snappy that will grab people's attention at 55mph (yes, knowing San Fran traffic, that is optimistic), but I think they could have done better.

Off the top of my head:

a) a simplified version of the XKCD "developers" cartoon mentioned in TFA, with a big arrow pointing to the guy at the bottom of the stack and the caption "He needs to eat too :)"

b) Text along the lines of "Build your Billion-Dollar business with Open Source bricks. Spare some change for the people who make those bricks."

As you can tell, I am not in Marketing, but I'm sure some of you could do better!

Feature phones all the rage as parents try to shield kids from harm

Re: Great news!

Bit like the corner that the USB Implementers' Forum boxed themselves into with their naming, then?

Full Speed

High Speed

Super Speed

(Mega Speed, Plaid Speed, Awesome Speed, HyperWhizzoUltra Speed...)

Re: Not Trusting Apps

Ah, a bit like the row of buttons Ming the Merciless had on his console as he watched the planet "Earth"?

"TYPHOON" "METEOR STORM" "TORNADO" "EARTH QUAKE" "VOLCANIC ERUPTION"?

I am, as they say, intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

If you haven't already, watch Sisu.

Yes, I know it's fiction.

But it's a pretty good depiction of the general Finnish attitude in war.

> if a future US administration gets mad at Germany, over chickens or something, we will presumably ban systemd and pulseaudio

Oooh. You really think so?

I have a sudden urge to poison US/German relations. Hey, Idaho! You won't believe what people in Dortmund call you when they think you're looking in the opposite direction!

41-million-digit prime crunched by datacenter GPUs

Re: GPU rental ... 2 million dollar

Most hobbies are.

A yacht is defined as “a hole in the water you throw money into”; Boat is a term that means “Break Out Another Thousand”.

Still fun, though.

A relevant SMBC!

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

The problem I find is that the 5 second ads, because they’re only 5 second ads, feel the need to be as loud and obnoxious as possible from the very first frame onwards, to grab the viewers’ attention. So VERY LOUD AND EXCITED VOICEOVER that has me lunging for the volume or mute control.

Re: Apple to the rescue

Obligatory XKCDSMBC.

Eh, those objections seem to boil down to “Brandon Eich has political opinions we don’t like” and “Brave once floated the idea of rewriting web-pages to remove publishers’ adverts and insert its own standard-sized static ads, but backed down when it was explained to them what a stupid idea that was”.

I can’t get particularly worked up about either of those.

Won’t switch from Firefox, though.

Re: Chromium DoH settings not enforced on ads

Internet’s biggest advert-pusher caught ignoring user settings to facilitate getting its adverts out there? I am shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

“Your winnings, Captain Renault.”

Re: "Unfortunately it is only a DNS blocker."

Honestly, and I know this could be misconstrued as me saying nice things about ad-slingers… given that a major problem people had with adverts was that they were served from possibly-sketchy 3rd party domains, this does seem like progress of a sort.