Posts by David 132

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

Re: Truly, certainly not

Well yes, but they even managed to break the search. On a Windows 10 system here yesterday I wanted to change the behavior of the power button. You can get to that option manually via Settings->System->Power->Additional Power Settings (or from Control Panel if you're old school). But as you correctly said, it's vastly quicker to hit Start and type b-u-t-t-o.. until the correct option appears.

Except that on this occasion, it didn't. I got results for "Settings -> Change mouse buttons", and the usual dismal bing web searches for "buttons", "what is a button", "how to buy buttons", "10 things about buttons that will SHOCK YOU", etc etc, but not the ONE option I wanted, which had mysteriously vanished from Search's ken.

Grrr.

Further down these comments, posted by Jamesit:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/04/rufus_explorerpatcher_windows_11/

> Why Microsoft considers Candy Crush worth the effort to keep getting adding back on each update I have no clue.

Oh come on now. Of course you do. I’ll give you a clue. It begins with “M” and rhymes with “honey”.

The end of Microsoft-brand peripherals is only Surface deep

Seconded. I really like the Microsoft mice and keyboards. Got an Internet Pro keyboard as my daily driver; the fact that it has a built-in unpowered USB1.0 hub is a clue to its age!

Right now I’m giving my MS mouse a long-overdue break, as I’ve just received my replica Amiga Tank Mouse (www.tank-mouse.com) that I backed on Kickstarter!

iPhones hook up with Windows as Microsoft’s Phone Link dials up Apple's iOS

Re: Full hell bingo

It’s only a shame that the sentence didn’t also include “blockchain” and “microtransactions”.

Microsoft probes complaints of Edge leaking URLs to Bing

Although monkeys might spell “bug” correctly :-P

Apache Superset: A story of insecure default keys, thousands of vulnerable systems, few paying attention

Got there in the end.

Honestly, I am reminded of the quote attributed to Churchill, speaking in his case of the Americans: "They will do the right thing in the end, but only after trying all the alternatives" (or words to that effect).

I'm glad that the Apache security team finally forced users to change the default key. But how frustrating that they shilly-shallyed for so long over it. Yes, yes, "don't want to break existing installs" and all that, but I think this is one of those cases where such breakage is definitely the lesser of two evils.

Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts

Re: Better ...

The labrador started dreaming?

Re: Big Brother has another way to cock things up.

Interesting. Reassuring, because I've had to resort to similar repeat tactics in network code I've written in the past, when throughput is spotty and ACK messages unreliable.

And I'm <sarcasm>sure</sarcasm> that the writers of iOS and Android would have been careful to implement basic checks along the lines of "if this phone gets an emergency alert that's a duplicate of one received less than 20 minutes ago - ignore it, it's a re-broadcast of the first one and we don't want to drive the phone user insane with multiple interface-blocking alerts".

Right?

Re: In reality, what's one meant to do if there's a real alert?

You mentioned Buncefield.

I’m sure I’ve told this anecdote before, so apologies if I’m more boring than usual…

An old schoolfriend of mine worked for 3Com, with offices on an industrial park adjacent to Buncefield. Well, he was laid off from 3Com along with many others as that company deflated.

The very next weekend, the oil depot exploded and pretty much annihilated the corner of the 3Com building where his office had been located.

We still tease him about it to this day. “Most people, when they’re laid off, chalk it up to experience and move on. But noooooooo. You had to take it personally, didn’t you?? How’s your alibi?”

Re: Big Brother has another way to cock things up.

Apparently, if reports in the press are to be believed, no-one on the Three network got the alert. Probably, he said with heavy sarcasm, a dastardly Chinese plot (aren’t Three owned by Hutchinson Telecom, or am I hopelessly out of date?).

>I hope you either have lots of land or an uncommonly large bathtub. Cute as they sound, what on earth are you (or SWMBO) going to do with them all???

That... is an excellent question. One of these days I'll get a satisfactory explanation from my wife, but in the meantime I'm just going along with it (and enjoying lots of "free" eggs - duck eggs, for those not familiar with them, are delicious!).

Also, runner ducks are a sure-fire cure for the blues. After watching them waddling around, occasionally getting the zoomies and hurtling hither and yon at light speed, or marching up to me to menacingly demand snacks, it's impossible to be depressed. Although when I hold them I do feel down... (feel "down" - ducks - get it? Oh, please yourselves.)

Plus, unlike the world of IT, they don't require patching, or license activation, or mandatory rebooting for updates, or involve interminable arguments about on-prem vs. cloud. So a nice way to disconnect from the real world for a bit.

Followed later of course by

Be astute!

Your country has enough lerts.

If otoh you heard a huge roaring sound from the West earlier today, it wasn’t a tsunami - just appreciative Wrexham fans celebrating.

You can have some of mine. 6 runner ducks, another 5 ducklings just hatched as of yesterday morning, and another 42 or so of various “rare” colours being professionally incubated as we speak. (All because as any husband knows, the only correct response to a wifely request is: “yes dear”)

I am prepared to rent them out for emergency preparedness purposes.

(Of course, in the case of Cthulu or the Kraken awakening and rising from the abyssal depths, you should instead go to Seaworld, for emergency preparedness porpoises)

International cops urge Meta not to implement secure encryption for all

Re: Man on the end, not in the middle

I read it as "Pollyneuronal", i.e. parrot-brained.

"Think of the children! Think of the children! Who's a pretty boy? Squawk!"

Musicians threaten to make Oasis 'Live Forever' with AI

Re: Gallagher Siblings Conversation [not AI]

You take back what you said about our cousin Neville!!!

Yes, but Modern Life Is Rubbish.

Re: For the record

Cue the old jokes we laughed about 30 years ago!

“Waiter, waiter, why is this bowl of soup described on your menu as ‘Oasis Soup’?”

“Because you got a roll with it…”

Re: Blur anyone?

Pailp, perhaps.

With an AI-generated sequel to “Common People” and “Sorted for E’s And Whizz”.

Couldn’t be worse than “This Is Hardcore” :P

Re: Please don't weaponize music ..

> served up by a demon named Ftumch ...

Wow, a man after my own heart with that cultural reference… I think his full name was Numcl-ptl Ftumch but anyway, “congratulations sonny, you’ve won a new Ford Tippex!”

Re: Musicians we'd like to continue hearing after their death?

Tom Petty

Roy Orbison

George Harrison

Willy DeVille

Jim Reeves

Marty Robbins

…although on balance let’s not. Our favourite artists left us their own work; using AI to “create” new pieces seems icky, like making a waxwork mannequin and putting the deceased’s clothes on it. A shoddy pastiche at best.

Aurora exascale system gets 'mini-me' testbed for researchers

Re: Not mentioned

Only because it doesn’t have a TPM 2.0 and so can’t run Windows 11 :)

Just kidding. I have had some contact with the Aurora team at Intel and they are very, very smart people, working on optimizing it for climate modeling, protein folding, molecular simulation and all sorts.

Boffins think they've decoded mysterious 819-day Mayan calendar

Re: Has anyone…

Fair enough.

Has anyone…

…other than these boffins cared about, or even thought about, the Mayan calendar since 2012?

Re: "and have yet to return to a sense of normalcy"

An amusing quote from the HHGTTG film (which was otherwise so-so compared to the books):

Arthur: Well, we can talk about “normal” till the cows come home.

Ford: What is ‘normal’?

Zaphod: What are ‘cows’?

Trillian: What’s ‘home’?

Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster scuttles into public view

Re: Desktop versus server

Shudder... if ever a comment needed a trigger warning...

Re: "Pause" updates?

Bricks? In the literal, "the hardware is unrecoverable" meaning of the term?

Wow. That's a new low for systemd if so.

"Pause" updates?

FTFA: "But if you're worried about a silent update bricking your apps, there is a toggle to pause these updates if desired.

Pause? But not "disable"?

Is this Ubuntu's version of Microsoft's "You can turn off the firewall / Defender / Updates for a short time, but don't worry, we'll automatically turn it back on for you" - to which the response from me is usually along the lines of "Not while I bloody well draw breath, you won't, you arrogant tw_ts, if I turn it off I am perfectly capable of turning it back on when I, and only I, want to do so" ?

Apart from that, LL looks interesting. I may well check it out. Thanks for the heads-up.

What does an ex-Pharma Bro do next? If it's Shkreli, it's an AI Dr bot

Re: Theranos II

And one suspects it will invariably prescribe a specific medication that just so happens to be under patent and $150,000 per dose, three doses a day, with a six-year minimum course.

Capita has 'evidence' customer data was stolen in digital burglary

Re: "... potentially affecting around 4 percent of Capita’s server estate ..."

Also, government, please stop unthinkingly handing contract after contract to these numpties. "Big & experienced" does not equal "competent".

Not to set up a false dichotomy, but having gov't contracts spread out across a multitude of smaller entities does start to look attractive. No eggs-in-a-single-basket scenario, and - bonus - no "joined-up government". Which is always sold as being convenient for the citizen, but in reality just means that the council's data on how full your bins are, or the ANPR camera data on where you've driven, can be used by completely unrelated departments to fine/coerce/"nudge" you.

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again

Re: We are all paying taxes for these things to be fixed

Indeed! Such a shame we can't all have bespoke HMRC tax plans written for us & us alone, like that heartless Tory, Sir Keir Starmer.

Course, if it was Knotty Ash it would be a jam butty mine.

Morris Minor is his son.

More ads in Windows 11 Start Menu could be last straw for some

Re: Obligatory sales pitch

I feel I have to give a shout-out here to GoG.com too. Surprisingly many of their games are cross-platform; pay once, and you can download full offline binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac, with no DRM. I'm a huge fan; I've spent more on games there than I ever have in my life before. I think that previously, I'd bought Elite for the Speccy, Civ2 & Monkey Island for the Amiga, and GTA3 for the PC and that was about it!

> Libra Office

Ah, a balanced review.

:P

Firmware is on shaky ground – let's see what it's made of

Re: Et Tu Brother

Accidental borkage? Worse than that.

There have been instances - I’d cite links but CBA right now - where printer manufacturers have snuck in restrictions on 3rd-party ink cartridges. Deviously, they’ve time-bombed them to activate at a later date. So one day your printer suddenly stops working with non-OEM cartridges, and of course you have no idea it’s because of that update you installed 3 months ago, so you blame the cartridge supplier not the printer manufacturer.

Stuff like that poisons the well of trust and is a very powerful argument for open-source firmware.

Sick of GNOME, Snap and Flatpak? You might like Linux Lite, but beware rough edges

Hey now. I’ve known some pretty smart cucumbers in my time!

Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 surprisingly still a thing, will get Windows 11 treatment

Windows 11 in goggles, eh?

Talk about in-your-face adverts!

UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence

Re: The existing ones don't even meet the spec

>It seems to be an inbuilt psyche of almost everyone that you are supposed to drive in the middle lane utterly unaware of anything going on around or behind you

"CLOGgers" as the Police apparently refer to them... "Centre Lane Owners' Group".

Sony Semiconductor sinks Simoleans into Raspberry Pi to advance edge AI

Re: Fan of Pi not AI

Or alternatively a high-bandwidth USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port, so that the Pi can be interfaced to (and maybe even stashed inside) a commodity N-bay JBOD box to achieve a similar result.

Tiny Brit tech firms win spots on £1.84B public sector contract. Kidding, it's the usual suspects

Re: at least our solutions are functional

You forgot:

- a proven track record of working with Government

(Note, having failed and f*cked up and gone vastly over-budget time and time again is still a "proven track record" by Civil Service metrics, so still counts.)

Cruise emits software fix after self-driving car slams into bus

Re: Unique error

My experience in Malta is that the Maltese drive on whichever side of the road has the fewest potholes. Two Malts approaching each other on the road from opposite directions will only appear to be playing Chicken; their natural pleasant nature* means that everything just works harmoniously.

*Footnote here. This "natural pleasant nature" does not apply to migratory birds, or (innocent) German tourists. In the former case, hunting guns blaze; in the latter, memories of 1940-42 remain raw...

Re: Look like the back of a bus

Well, there are other distracting things that can be on the back of a bus, as reported a few years ago by this very, ahem, organ.

Baidu sues Apple and anyone else in sight over ERNIE chatbot fakes

Not to mention drawing the Premium Bond numbers. Versatile chap indeed.

Cops cuff teenage 'Robin Hood hacker' suspected of peddling stolen info

Re: Lesson 1

Don’t worry, they also charged him with “stepping on the cracks in the pavement”, “looking at me in a funny way”, and “being in possession of an offensive wife”.

IBM shrinks z16 and LinuxONE systems into standard rack configs

Re: LinuxONE Emperor 4

This is the Gen One product; I’m waiting for the Gentoo version.

Re: Would like to see their comparisons...

Don’t know but check whether the marketing material refers to them as “dinobabies”…

April brings tulips, taxes ... and phisherfolk scammers

Not really. For most employees, tax is withheld each month by the employer, and then come Tax Day the next April, the employee has to use either tax software (free, online, or not) or a paid tax accountant to reconcile that amount of tax with what they actually owe. The amount withheld can be adjusted; if the employer withholds too much you get a nice refund cheque from state or Federal, and if not enough has been withheld you're the one writing the cheque for the difference. You have to factor in interest paid on bank accounts, mortgage payments (we still have tax relief on mortgage interest; in the UK it was known as MIRAS but phased out when Major & Blair decided it was too much of a perk for the middle classes), dividends, business expenses and so on. Add to that the fact that there are federal taxes, state taxes, and if you're particularly unlucky city/county taxes too, and it's a hot mess.

Personally I dump all my paperwork each year onto a really nice tax accountant who in return for a very reasonable fee of a couple of hundred dollars, takes care of it all for me. Life's too short to do it myself.

Decade-old patent battle goes Apple's way

Re: Earlier this week

Seems like it would be way more sensible to place a bet after the race has been run.