Posts by JimmyPage

From tomorrow, Google Chrome will block crud ads. Here's how it'll work

re:The only way that we will see an ad-free internet

I wasn't talking about an "ad-free" internet for everyone.

Just for me.

Dynamic stalemates seem to be a thing now ...

this weird dynamic stalemate that ad-slingers and ad-blockers has morphed into some weird alternate universe where the elephant in the room: that nobody wants adverts is ignored.

I'd pay £<x> a month to not get ads. Anywhere.

Amazon and Netflix have twigged, whilst Sky et al seem to be stuck in the 1980s where people pay a premium and get ads.

Especially in a professional context, I could see an ad-free (no sponsored results, no SEO engineered cruft) Google subscription going down well commercially. After all, most searches are horribly inefficient and getting worse.

If you haven't already killed Lotus Notes, IBM just gave you the perfect reason to do it now, fast

Thunderbird != Outlook

not even close.

The one thing about Outlook - for better, for worse, is it integrates calendar and email as seamlessly as a clueless user needs.

One thing about being out of the corporate fold, and using Linux for *everything* is you realise how good MS were where it counts.

That said, I never understood why even Outlook couldn't match calendar entries and OOO so that if you accepted a meeting as OOO, your Outlook wouldn't automatically switch OOO on ???????

You dopes! US state's pot dealer database pwned after security goes up in smoke

A lot of ignorance about US law here ...

which isn't surprising, seeing as most UK citizens know as much about their own laws ...

What did we say about Tesla's self-driving tech? SpaceX Roadster skips Mars, steers to asteroids

Re: Speeding ticket...

Reminiscent of when Grumman sending Lockheed a bill for towing after Apollo 13 ...

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/space-centers/kennedy-space-center/the-apollo-13-invoice/

"rapid, unscheduled disassembly,"

C'mon guys ! I can't believe no one didn't pick up this gem.

Apple's top-secret iBoot firmware source code spills onto GitHub for some insane reason

"These iBoots Are Made for Walking" by Dolly Parton

Nancy Sinatra, surely ?

Wileyfox goes TITSUP*: Smartmobe maker calls in the administrators

Colour me surprised... NOT !

I totally love my old-stylee WileyFox Swift. It's pretty much note-perfect in terms of features, and price point.

Their customer service on the other hand ... it would give too positive an impression to use the words woefully inadequate.

If history has taught us anything, it's that attention to detail trumps technical prowess. Ask Sony how Betamax worked out for them .....

I really, really wanted them to do well.

On a more pragmatic note, where can I find a dual-SIM quad-core phone with a 5.5" display that can take an SD card, and has a removable battery and (the only 2 features missing on my Swift) a fingerprint sensor and NFC capability for less than £150 ? (Seeing as my WF Swift was £129 in 2015)

LISA Pathfinder sniffed out gravitational signals down to micro-Hertz

Michelson-Morley

Ever since this project was announced, I can't help but think it's a sequel to the M+M experiment to find the ether.

I think there's a good justification for looking back at some of the ideas previously dismissed as "wrong" to see if they might in fact have had some germ of sense in them ?

A bit like the current vogue for looking back at old medicines for new applications .....

UK Home Office grilled over biometrics, being clingy with folks' mugshots

Once again, the UK has it's cake *and* eats it.

If the police can't delete the relevant images, then their use as evidence should be struck out.

What's that you say ? UK courts are happy to allow illegally obtained evidence ?

Say it ain't so !?

Oh, it is.

You're fscked.

"The fruit of the poison tree" is an Americanis I would welcome.

Uber: Ah yeah, we pay women drivers less than men. We can explain!

their premiums are lower.

Not in the EU ...

Assange fails to make skipped bail arrest warrant vanish

@ThomH

Thanks for a quick explanation.

He needs to show that he had reasonable cause to jump bail

Does he ?

Lauri Love judgment: Extradition would be 'oppressive' and breach forum bar

Hopefully, a UK court will kick it out too ....

if they try to bring charges here now.

Might teach them to *start* in the UK in future, rather than rolling over to the US.

Accused Brit hacker Lauri Love will NOT be extradited to America

UK prosecution - never gonna happen.

Any half competent defence barrister will just insist that any US evidence is presented in person, and can be cross examined. Which simply cannot - and will not - ever happen. Because the witness would be forced to refuse to answer questions on the basis of (US) national security.

Remember when Thatcher was silly enough to try and prosecute Peter Wright in Australia ? The Australians ran rings around the UK witness, and forced him to admit under oath that he had lied in his evidence.

Web searching died the day they invented SEO

I've been saying for years "Google is broken" ...

it's nothing new.

I've also been saying - even since I saw it demonstrate some *real* intelligence, that IBMs Watson should have a crack.

I was at IBMs labs, and Watson managed to return information that could only have been found by reading the context of the question (as opposed to just returning documents that contained the words in the question).

The GoogleFlop has a related AmazonFail, whereby when searching for - say a USB HDD - you have no way to specify USB2.0 or USB3.0, but you can specify "blue", "white", or "grey"

On a related note, has anyone had those really weird YouGov surveys where they seem to think that peoples first thought when booking a holiday is not "where shall we go ?" but "which airport shall we us ?".

Capita contract probed after thousands of clinical letters stuffed in a drawer somewhere

Dead tree letters. In 2018

was my first thought

How come the entire Arab Spring was managed by Twitter in 2012 with a mobile and mainly anonymous population, and these clowns can't get letters letters FFS to a static address in the same unwar-torn country ????????

There will be small "3rd world" countries looking at the UK wondering "and this is what we are supposed to aspire to ?"

What on earth was I doing over 30 fucking years ago, diligently working on RFCs for email and email addressing ?????? I should have been taking Pitman instead.

The blockchain era is here but big biz, like most folk, hasn't a clue what to do with it

Re: the confirmation process does not have to be resource-intensive

There is a difference between Proof Of Stake, and Proof Of Work (which is what BTC is).

But nice summary.

'Bitcoin heist' shock: Cops seek 4 for aggravated burglary in Midsomer Murders town

Re: If your BTC can be stolen by a single attack

Can't speak for the PP, but I'd certainly make sure that my cryptogoodies were protected by a smart contract which prevented them being moved in a single block, over a single day, and which required other external factors to be recorded on the blockchain before paying out. Maybe a token transfer a day or two before, from another actor ?

But as I am learning, a lot of people simply do not understand blockchain - and more importantly what it's capable of.

Just can't catch a break, can ya, Capita? Shares tumble 40% amid yet another profit warning

What about the DWP PIP reassessments

that have been announced ?

Surely all that lovely new lolly must count for something ?

Should ISPs pay to block pirate websites? Supreme Court to decide

Tax implications ...

Surely the cost of doing something mandated by law can be offset against tax ?

In America, tech support conmen get a mild slap. In Blighty, scammers get the book thrown at them

Downvoted

because it's wrong (despite the Joke Alert) and it panders to the morons who confuse the ECHR with the EU (helped by the morons at the BBC who never correct them in "debates").

RE: Hanging has a very low rate of reoffending.

Well, if you hang the right person, that's true.

But as the Christie case shows, hang the wrong person, and you increase crime, as the real offender is still free and the police aren't looking for them ... because they hanged them.

I tend to find proponents of capital punishment rarely think things through.

Kremlin social media trolls aren't actually that influential, study finds

Vaguely reminded of the days when cigarettes were advertised ....

The cigarette companies went to great lengths to produce report after report that concluded that advertising had no effect on consumer uptake of smoking (and that adverts were merely intended to persuade smokers to switch brand).

Which would have been believable, had the cigarette companies not continued to spunk *billions* on advertising over the ensuing decades.

You don't spend that much money on something which doesn't work.

(unless it's called "Brexit" that is)u

What do you press when flaws in Bluetooth panic buttons are exposed?

Re: More Bluetooth weirdness

Ah, toothbrush with a computer ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ4W7yB9Mow

What moron would trust Bluetooth for anything critical ??????

Especially if Android is involved ??????????????????????????

It's enough problem playing the odd tune through my cars BT connection.

Dodgy parking firms to be denied access to Brit driver database

Re: Good, private firms should not be doing government's work

WTF should the *government* be policing *private* car parks ????????

Let me guess. You didn't RTFA ?

Julian Assange to UK court: Put an end to my unwarranted Ecuadorean couch-surf

Oh FFS

The UK for not requiring assurances from Sweden that he wouldn't be extradited to the USA.

The UK didn't need any assurances. The UK HAS A VETO.

I really hope there aren't any morons here who are going to start blabbering that "The UK should have done this" or "Sweden should have done that". Fuck that.

The UK and Sweden treated Assange like anyone else suspected of a criminal act. He doesn't get to call the shots.

Arghhhhhh - facts !

Stop it. Any discussion about Assange - like Brexit - only gets vexed if you introduce reality.

Re: Expensive

All very valid points. But not really the issue.

The bottom line is Assange jumped bail, and risks making UK law look even more asinine that it is.

That simply cannot happen. Otherwise every foreign criminal will simply jump bail in the UK.

Furthermore, Assange is manifestly the author of his own downfall.

If I were in the UK foreign office, I'd have a quiet word with whoever has sight of UK->Ecuador trade, and see if I could recover the millions from them. Because the bottom line is Assange is a squalid alleged rapist, not some freedom fighting hero. Shame on Ecuador for falling for the Assange hype-machine, along with any similarly hoodwinked El Reggers who (still) prattle on about some fanciful US snatch squad just waiting to whisk the Blond one off to Waterboardsville.

Oh do fuck off.

You broke the law. In the UK. Now pay for it.

Here we go again... UK Prime Minister urges nerds to come up with magic crypto backdoors

With the TL;DR caveat on comments

surely there is an absolute fortune to be made here. It matters not a jot that unicorns don't really exists. If Theresa May is continuing to insist they do, then surely she'd be willing to spunk a few million on them.

Don't worry about being exposed by an "expert" we all know they're biased anyway. And if one should get close, just suggest it's just jealous because they didn't think of it first.

We could trumpet it to the world as a sterling example of post-Brexit British excellence.

France gives les citoyens the right to cock up official paperwork

Re: "Forgot your tax return, mon ami? Pas de problem!"

Peut-être que tous les commentaires sur cet article doivent être en français?

Facebook open-sources object detection work: Watch out, Google CAPTCHA

Google / Amazon search results

are the proving ground for "AI". Until they can return what I asked for (which is not "mix up the words I used to ask the question, and return whatever shit stands out") then they are useless and (more worryingly) incredibly prone to pwning.

I thought there'd be more Instagram: ICT apprenticeships down 20% in five years

Millenial job interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0KjdDJr1c

A high-energy neutrino, a powerful cosmic ray, and a gamma ray walk into a bar... Where you from, asks the bartender

these neutrinos and rays carry huge amounts of energy,

Probably me being a bit dim, but if the amounts of energy are "huge", why on earth (literally) are neutrinos so hard to find ?

Not going A/C, as I'm not ashamed to ask the question.

Serverless: Should we be scared? Maybe. Is it a silly name? Possibly

Is this have-a-go time ?

"Serverless" : Where the functions traditionally performed by a physical machine are now undertaken within a network of machines with no single identity.

Where's my $100K ?

'WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?' Linus Torvalds explodes at Intel spinning Spectre fix as a security feature

re .Intel's marketeers probably read industry forums

Last year, on one episode of the News Quiz, Simon Evans noted that when people are in hospital, they are leaving a perfectly good bed at home, which he proposed the NHS use to accommodate patients. This was followed by a joke about Uber ambulances to do the transport.

At the end, Jeremy Hardy quietly said that he hoped politicians weren't using topical news quizes for policies.

A month later, we had the announcement from Essex Health Trust about people "AirBnB ing" beds for patients.

HMRC dev support team cc blurtfest: Over 1,400 email addresses blabbed

Can't speak for individual developers ...

but I'm guessing there must be some mighty pissed off companies here.

I wonder if the ICO views a commercial confidence breach more seriously that personal details ?

(Starting with the observation that the ICO couldn't really care less about personal data breaches.)

Job ad for designer proves its point with MS Paint shocker

That's a hell of a salary range !!!!!!

For the same job ???????

PC sales get that post-Brexit vote sinking feeling

re: Does it matter ?

Since when has the ability to raise prices needed a genuine excuse ?

Unlocked: The hidden love note on the grave of America's first crypto power-couple

RIPA ?

If this were in the UK, could plod seize the gravestone and require it be decrypted ?

Or is that only for electronic communications ?

Digital mortgage service sounds handy, right? Oh, it's through UK.gov's Verify

Re: They seem to like it in Estonia.

My recollection is the Estonian Prime Minsters grasp of the subject was pretty impressive, and he was completely aware of what digital ID was - and was not. (I'm sure peeps can find the El Reg article themselves).

We really have to find a way to lose this ludicrous arrogance that because we are "British" we are somehow naturally good at shit. Because generally, I'd say we were naturally shit at being good.

F-35 'incomparable' to Harrier jump jet, top test pilot tells El Reg

SRVL ...

ISTR stories from the 80s that the Yanks kept smashing the front wheel ... I suspect they either weren't told about SRVL, or couldn't learnt it ?

All aboard the Vomit Comet: Not the last train to Essex, but a modded 727 for weightless flight

Apollo 13 ...

The space sequences in the (excellent) film "Apollo 13" were all filmed aboard one of these ...

France to lend Brexit Britain sore souvenir of Norman yoke – the Bayeux Tapestry

Re: In return

Why not the Pembroke tapestry ..

http://www.visitpembrokeshire.com/attractions-events/last-invasion-tapestry/

Destroying the city to save the robocar

RE: [citation needed]

let's start with ...Uruk, c.3000 BCE, pop. c.80,000

why are people seeking to preserve the concept of the city at all?

A better question might be: why has every civilisation (and we'll ignore the fact that the root of that word means "city dwelling") from prehistory onwards only thrived in cities ???????

Upset Equation Editor was killed off? Now you can tell Microsoft to go forth and multiply: App back from the dead

"Lost source"

Didn't they use sourcesafe ?

Anyway, I will bet that the source isn't "lost". It's all there. In fact, probably a bit too much.

The real problem is they have no idea what combination of patches and modules actually compiles to the binaries they've been shipping. So they can't "tweak" the program without a thorough testing cycle of the base source beforehand.

UK's Just Eat faces probe after woman tweets chat-up texts from 'delivery guy'

@jaduncan

would that cost more than £0.00 ?

Now you know why it wasn't done.