Posts by David 132

UEFI flaws allow bootkits to pwn potentially hundreds of devices using images

Re: Is this only UEFI?

Yes, my understanding is that machines starting in legacy BIOS mode - bootsector, etc - aren't affected by this vulnerability.

LogoFAIL, if my reading of this article's correct, relies on a malformed image placed in the root EFI partition on the boot drive. This images is loaded & parsed by the EFI firmware during boot, before the firmware hands over control of the boot process to the OS on its partition.

So if you're not using UEFI boot, and don't have an EFI partition (NB - these are normally hidden), you should be OK.

HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems

Re: Why are you complaining?

The sarcasm, it is strong in this one.

John Geek I don't believe I've ever had any HP hardware here, my laser printer is a Brother, my inkjet is a Canon.

What a coincidence! I come from an idle family of typesetters, and attend the First Reform Church Of The Holy Squid... so my brother's a lazy printer and my canon's an ink jet!

Does it include Bonzi Buddy? Are we nostalgic for that purple gorilla yet?

Seriously though… why? Why would anyone in their right mind install this Sprinkler of which you speak, if that’s what it does? It’s a gag. Tell me it’s an Obvious Plant-type gag, yes?

Re: Maybe there's an HP device visible from wifi or bluetooth?

Yay! Obligatory XKCD!

Always accompanied by that chirpy “Shovelware Shite just got installed! Check it out!” popup notification that makes me want to punch someone. Anyone, frankly.

“We just used your bandwidth to stick some rubbish onto your drive without your prior knowledge or consent! No need to thank us!!”

Re: HP Smart is innocuous enough

242MB? Time was when we complained about printer drivers growing to that size. But this isn’t even a driver, it’s an ancillary helper app, right?

Re: Just be thankful ...

I have a NUC with a failing fan, so I wouldn’t hear it over the rattle and hum!

For some reason a mental image of Mrs Doyle arises.

“Will you not have a cup of tea install Copilot? Go on, go on, go on go on go on GO ON…”

“Best to just say ‘yes’, your Grace. It saves time.”

SAP faces more accusations of breaching on-prem customers' trust

Re: "Our partnership with each of our customers is built on trust"

Wait, are we talking about SAP? Or Oracle? Or IBM? Or Microsoft?

Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system

Re: NerdRageQuit

Apart from just a few minor details - such as timing, motive, alibi, and execution - it was pretty much the perfect crime, right?

Weak session keys let snoops take a byte out of your Bluetooth traffic

Re: Imagine: "I need to buy a new car. Why? My key got hacked."

If it’s a Kia they’ll be using USB instead of Bluetooth for the key anyway :)

Microsoft .NET MAUI devs vent over bugs backlog, response times

Re: Microsoft shot itslef in the foot with the droppong of ASP.NET WebForms

Hear, hear. Well put.

Re: The only true cross plattform UI is TEXT

I thought clicking that meant “yes Microsoft, please upgrade me to the latest version of Windows”?

So many UX conventions to keep up with!

Re: .NET WinUi3

Thanks for the tip Steve, I’ll check that out. As I intended to clarify above, but didn’t remember until I’d missed the edit window, the devexpress toolkit gives Fluent controls to Winforms, but honestly $1000 per year is a bit rich for my blood!

Re: The only true cross plattform UI is TEXT

What key do you normally assign to the option "avoid being eaten by a grue"?

Re: .NET WinUi3

I'm confused, AC. Are you me? Did I accidentally write your post and then suffer amnesia?

'Cos your complaints are all exactly what I've been banging my head against my desk over, for the last week.

Having developed quite happily in WinForms for years, and WPF a little, I thought I'd keep my skills up-to-date and try WinUI3. Acrylic/Mica textures, new controls, auto scaling layouts... yum.

But as you (I?) so succinctly described, it's an absolute, unfinished train-wreck. Your post should also have mentioned the total absence of a visual UI editor within Visual Studio. Microsoft's best response at the moment is "create the UI by hand-editing the XAML, then use Hot Reload on your project to tweak the XAML and quickly see the result in the running code." <bangs head on desk again>

The cert thing is a nightmare. Microsoft's attitude is "You can build as an MSIX and battle with certs, or you can build as unpackaged, which means even the smallest Hello World takes 200MB+, and as an additional bonus 'fuck you' to our loyal devs, unpackaged projects can't use some of the system UI framework, like notifications"

I liked - hell, I like - WinForms. Easy to build a functional UI - drag and drop controls in the visual editor. Build your own user controls if needed. Quick & simple build process that creates, in most cases, a single, compact .EXE that you can copy to as many other PCs as you want & immediately run. Sure, it doesn't handle transparency well, and manual DPI scaling can be tricky if you want pixel-sharp interfaces, but it's like a familiar and comfortable pair of slippers.

To echo Knightlie's sentiment above, the fact that WinForms is still, in many ways, the best option for a project in 2023 is a damning indictment of Microsoft's utter inability to think of their developer community.

I do wish I could justify spending the $1000 for the DevExpress Winforms toolkit!

Scribbling limits in free version of Evernote set to test users' patience

$130 per year?

To use digital post-it notes?

And that’s not even a one-off, it’s a subscription, because of course everyone is now greedy for sweet, sweet recurring revenue.

They’re having a larf.

Have never seen the point of evernote, and am now even less inclined to check it out.

AWS plays with Fire TV Cube, turns it into a thin client for cloudy desktops

Re: shuttle to mission control SAY AGAIN

"but not to worry, because luckily your devices were in one of our vans that had an unfortunate mishap on the A47 in Cambridgeshire yesterday..."

Re: shuttle to mission control SAY AGAIN

Thank you, I hope you're right. As written, it is ambiguous, and I interpreted it in the same way as yetanotheraoc.

"Dear Amazon, I hope you are well. Please sell us 5000 of your thin client devices. The usernames and passwords to be pre-loaded onto them are below:

1) jdoe / sw0rdf1sh

2) fbloggs / 0p3nsesamE

....etc..."

Re: Er, is this article 15 years old ?

The article may or may not be 15 years old, but I'm not sure the hardware specs are any newer. 10/100 Ethernet? Really? On a box that's got no local smarts or storage and needs everything piped to it from the network?

What is this, 1996? I can't remember the last time I saw a client device whose ethernet wasn't at least Gigabit.

Plex gives fans a privacy complex after sharing viewing habits with friends by default

Replying to myself, to relate a tale of hilarity/incompetence/woe...

So, following the above advice, I've just sorted my /Anime folder into two subfolders - /Anime/TV and /Anime/Movies.

I then created a new library of type "Mixed films and programs", and added those two subfolders to it.

Utter, utter shambles ensued.

Jellyfin is now grimly determined that all of the TV shows in there - Black Clover, Cowboy Bebop etc, all named according to Emby conventions - are actually seasons of "Scream - The TV Show", a show that I didn't know even existed, and would have less than zero interest in anyway. Oh, the movies - Suzume, Weather With You - are apparently all episodes of a TV show called "Unknown".

Entering the appropriate thetvdb/imdb IDs into the metadata editor didn't make any difference. "Oh, it's Cowboy Bebop - but it's still part of Scream The TV Show".

(bangs head on keyboard)

So I reverted the change and went back to the old, ugly method.

Like I said, JF has a few rough edges :-D

Cool! Thanks for the pointers.

I'll happily admit that my understanding of what solutions exist for the two problems is a few months out of date; neither irritate me enough for me to have seriously dug into ways to fix them. But I do have time on my hands, after an unfortunate parting of the ways with my most recent employer, so I'll check out that Jellyfin Vue project.

And I don't recall seeing the "mixed films and programmes" library type, but I created my libraries 12+ months ago and haven't had cause to create any since, so that could explain it.

Thanks again!

Eh, possibly. TBH the anime is all my wife's, and holds no interest for me, so I have little enthusiasm for trying to fix it. Mess with my Goes Wrong Show metadata, on the other hand Jellyfin, and We Will Have A Falling Out :)

For me the hardest part of installing JF - and Plex, too in its time, to be fair - was getting the file/directory permissions correct for the drive that contains all my content. The usual messing around with chown/chmod fixed it, although it's a bit of a PITA.

I ran Plex on my Linux Mint NAS box quite happily for a few years, until one day it just died and refused to serve pages. Wiping, nuking, reinstalling... nothing fixed it, so I bit the bullet and went over to Jellyfin. Plex had been starting to annoy me anyway with its incessant nudging towards subscriptions and online accounts.

JF has a few rough edges compared to Plex - minor things, like the list of your content is paginated in the browser because they can't or won't do an endless-scrolling type arrangement. And some people say that JF is a bit fussier than Plex when it comes to naming content, although I've not run into that. Honestly other than that my only gripe is that it doesn't seem to be able to handle libraries - e.g. for Anime - that contain both TV shows and films; it's one or the other, it seems, although if anyone can set me straight please do!

I'd highly recommend Jellyfin.

Re: Why do companies think we care what anyone else is doing?

It's the pathological narcissm of the younger generation, who think everyone is interested in their opinion.

(Says, without apparent irony, the middle-aged man declaring his thoughts on a Register comments page... :) )

Activist Investor Elliott calls for a management reboot at Crown Castle

Re: Activist investor

One of those “we can sell the tower assets to a shell company and lease them back, giving us as shareholders an immediate windfall but costing the company $$$$$$ in the longer term, but who cares because by that time we’ll have moved on to asset-stripping the next company” type plans, presumably.

For some reason, the name “Reacher Gilt” comes to mind.

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

I'm intrigued by the concept of an "anarchist coffee shop".

"Hey, I ordered a triple-caramel oatmilk mocha but what you've just served me is a single banana in a bucket!"

"Yeah! Fight the power, man!"

What's to stop one Cloud provider using another for some of their storage needs?

Nothing whatsoever, until someone trips over the stretched power cable.

Re: Very dubious platform

Words like dependable, quality, permanent, trustworthy only appear in the same sentence as Google when accompanied by a negative.

"Don't be evil _____"

Tiny11 shrinks Windows 11 23H2 down to pocket size

Ouch. Your comment hit home. After years of developing in WinForms and WPF, I've recently joined the 21st century and dipped my toe into WinUI3, which for those who aren't familiar with it is Microsoft's "latest and greatest" framework for developing Windows 11 applications. Sorry, "apps".

Well, apart from the whole thing being unfinished and very much a work-in-progress (no visual UI editor at all? really? just hand-editing of raw XML files?) what's beyond my comprehension is that a simple "hello world" level program compiles to.... about 130MB. Yes, Megabytes.

There's things you can do to trim it down, but even with trying all the tricks, I haven't been able to get my simple prototype app - opens a window with some buttons, no code-behind functionality yet - below 90MB.

When I think of the miracles I've seen performed in mere kilobytes of space, 90+MB for a simple Hello World is utterly obscene and Microsoft should be red-faced.

Surface Duo crashes the party as Doctor Who celebrates 60th birthday

Re: Tom Baker

Hmm. Not claiming to be a serious Whovian, and I'm sure those here that are will have their own opinions, but...

First thing to remember is that compared to 2005+ Who, the classic episodes are a) slow-paced, and b) often have really, really dodgy production values. The former is just a question of readjusting your mental pace; they take 6 episodes to tell a story that New Who would wrap up in a single episode.

The latter issue just requires you to remember that they're of their time, when "decent special effects" were a dastardly American thing that Auntie BBC disdained. What they do have - at least sometimes - is crackingly good stories. Honestly with some of the best, I get so wrapped up in them that I utterly forget the rubber-masked cardboard shonkiness of it.

My personal recommendations would be the Season 14 Tom Baker story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", and the Season 17/19/19 Peter Davison stories "City of Death", "Black Orchid" and "Time-Flight".

With the first one you do have to ignore the slightly-dodgy-by-modern-mores Chinese characterizations of the first one and enjoy the really good writing and dialog :)

City of Death was written by Douglas Adams, and is rather inventive.

Time-Flight has a missing Concorde landing millions of years in the past; what more could you want?

OpenCart owner turns air blue after researcher discloses serious vuln

Re: So... if I read this right...

Juan, then. Juan Kerr.

US nuke reactor lab hit by 'gay furry hackers' demanding cat-human mutants

"The Fast and the Furry-ous"?

Robocar tech biz sues Nvidia, claims stolen code shared in Teams meeting blunder

Every year at my former employer we all had to complete mandatory training - antitrust, ethics, and so on.

A game I played - hey, I had to find my amusement where I could - was, when asked by my manager whether I'd done them, to rack as many "violations" as possible into my response.

It ended up as something like "sure, boss, I bribed an underage child of a North Korean government official to do the training for me by offering to get him a job in return for that and finalizing my Confidential company project..."

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

Re: At least the world would be safe

That at least would be of some value.

“Used to nag you to switch to Edge”, though?

Microsoft dials back Bing after users manage to recreate Disney logo in fake AI-generated images

Re: My new AI killer app, exclusively revealed on El Reg.

If anyone out there has $200m to invest, I'm open to offers, bribes and honey traps.

I can offer one of my sister-in-law's chocolate cupcakes and a can of artisan cider. Final offer.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ejection sparks theories as odd as some ChatGPT output

…he might prefer to do all that in a new startup, while he watches his defenestrators sink.

The Bender Rodriguez approach?

“Screw you guys! I’m going to build my OWN AI company! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the company!”

Copilot coming to Windows 10 to help navigate the OS's twilight years

Re: Plan to slow Windows 10 - try the other side, its less hassle (mainly)

I thought this line in the article was particularly damning:

“…Microsoft intends to further squeeze further value from its Windows 10 user base…”

Time was when a company would sink or swim on how much value it gave to its customer base, at risk of being outmaneuvered by competitors.

How quaint, I know.

Look out, Scattered Spider. FBI pumps 'significant' resources into snaring data-theft crew

Paying ransoms should be made illegal.

And/or should invalidate ransomware insurance and trigger shareholder lawsuits.

The West learned a lesson after the spate of terrorist plane hijackings in the 70s - don't negotiate, don't pay ransoms, don't give in to demands.

And surprise surprise, the hijackings stopped.

HP sued over use of forfeited 401(k) retirement contributions

HP are being mean

Only a matching contribution to 401(k)?

IBM, for example, now pay for romper suits, finger paints, and Peppa Pig videos for all their new employees. Until they “retire” them on age grounds once they start school.

Microsoft takes aim at on-desk, non-cloudy developers with Windows AI Studio

Re: Pollution

Oh come now, who wouldn’t want a Bayesian text prediction engine with all the coherence of Amanfrommars co-writing their business documents and presentations? Luddite!

You get a Copilot, and you get a Copilot – Microsoft now the Copilot company

Sounds ghastly, doesn’t it?

Computers now with Genuine People Personalities.

Icon, because I need to drink several of these, the world’s clearly ending.

As the Top500 celebrates its 30th year, with a $5 VM you too can get into the top 10 ... of 1993

Re: we opted to run Linpack in Vultr

That’s why we all read Th Regstr.

Canonical shows how to use Snaps without the Snap Store

Re: Nailed it

@Ian J

Hmm. That’s puzzling. In my experience Firefox, when I give in and close it to finish its update, automatically saves the state of however many tabs I have open, and invariably restores them when the new version launches.

So I only lose a few seconds of time (which is why I said “irrational” in my original comment :) …) but fortunately no work.

I wonder if I’m just missing something? Or if you had some extension(s) installed that were interfering with the auto-tab-save mechanism?

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Re: You think it was just another isolated incident....?

For bigger printers I recommend a 5 pound lump hammer and a bit of menacing. Sorts them right out.

"'PC Load Letter'? What the **** does that mean??"

Re: arnie

"You forgot to say 'please'..."

Re: It Happened Decades Ago ...

"I was in Virginia at the time..."