Posts by Andy Mac

FBI and friends get two more years of warrantless FISA Section 702 snooping

It’s heartwarming to see that bipartisanship in congress isn’t completely dead.

Happy 20th birthday Gmail, you're mostly grown up – now fix the spam

I save my gmail for people I wouldn’t even give my hotmail to.

Woz calls out US lawmakers for TikTok ban: 'I don’t like the hypocrisy'

“…Apple doesn't really do that so much."

So they do it a bit? Just a little bit of data slurping at the weekends? And I assume they can stop any time they want?

EU antitrust cops probe Microsoft ties between Entra ID and 365 services

I, for one, am looking forward to getting my gmail without a Google account…

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Ye mae take our freedom, but yae’ll never take our cheap meats wrapped in pastry!!!

Snowflake share price falls after revenue forecasts dip below expectations

Re: FCTLOT

I live for the day when the headline reads “Analysts fired for making wrong revenue predictions”

On-disk format change beckons for brave early adopters of Bcachefs

What is a BCA Chef anyway?

Windows 11: The number you have dialed has been disconnected

Re: Built to last

IIRC, 95 = 4, XP = 5 and Vista = 6.

Australian Federal Police arrest man suspected of exploiting Optus cyberattack

The moron didn’t even use a Bitcoin wallet. If only all criminals had equal intelligence…

Apple debuts iPhone 14, Watch 8, other sparkly things

Re: Dynamic Island*

Isn’t it just “we have an area of no screen, and we make the screen around and it black sometimes to make it look bigger”?

NASA scrubs Artemis SLS Moon rocket launch

Re: 200% trust in NASA

Seconded. This is, literally, rocket science. Hang on in there NASA.

Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there

Re: Zuck has been listening to too much Eagles

Maybe it’s the codename for his virtual world. Either that or Royston Vasey.

SAP hits 50: Entrenched, spread out and fully middle-aged

"From their perspective, among things it got right were creating a business model in which CIOs and consulting firms could benefit personally by persuading their employer and clients to buy SAP, irrespective of whether that was the right thing for the company to do.

That’s a rather long-winded way of saying “bribery”

CIA illegally harvested US citizens' data, senators assert

Land of the Free spies on its own?

<Bear enters woods>

<Flushing sound heard>

A proposal to beat below-the-belt selfies: Crowdsourced machine learning using victims' image stashes

Can I propose the substitute picture be of a squirrel?

An example of squirrel-replacement can be found at https://what-if.xkcd.com/98/.

Microsoft gives Notepad a minimalist makeover to match Windows 11 style

Re: Pointless

The long-since-departed El Reg mobile app had dark mode. Oh, how I miss it.

TikTok no worse than Facebook for privacy, says Citizen Lab (although Chinese TikTok is a horror)

No worse than Facebook

That’s like saying I’m no worse a cook than Jeffrey Dahmer.

FFS FSF, you're 35 already? Hands up if you just sprouted a gray hair or felt a craving for a Werthers Original on reading that. Happy birthday, folks

There ain’t no party

There ain’t no party like a Scat Club party. It doesn’t mean I want to go to one.

(Happy birthday FSF)

IR35 tax reforms for UK freelancers glide through committee stage: D-Day set for 6 April 2021

On the subject of Finance Bills...

...MPs, at least government ones, don’t read them. Passing a finance bill is central to the continuing existence of the current government so they’ll vote for it anyway.

This opinion stems from an anecdote I heard about an previous bit of egregious legislation in a Finance Bill. When it brought to the attention of a govt MP as part of a campaign, they were surprised by it. Something they surely would have voted for, if they had bothered to turn up that day of course.

Microsoft emits a colourful Windows Terminal preview

Re: it ain't json

Personally, I find the whole property-names-in-quotes thing to cause an involuntary twitch in my eye.

The virus curing the mobile industry's chronic addiction... and sparking an impressive algorithmic price experiment

Re: COVID-19

Did they really have to pick a name that sounds like it comes from a cheap disaster novel?

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

Re: Ah, Git ...

Fools! Promite is the only way.

Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it?

Given that my Unifi access points wouldn’t work without an internet connection, I always assumed they were sending something back.

It’s a sad indictment of the modern world of technology that I made that assumption.

Father of Unix Ken Thompson checkmated: Old eight-char password is finally cracked

Re: DES

I’m nit sure if anyone looks at the those passwords, they just script something to push all the hacked accounts at different sites to see what sticks.

As a side note, an 8 char password of lowercase letters and numbers of mine was lost as part of the Adobe hack. According to Have I Been Pwnd, it’s never been cracked.

How bad is Catalina? It's almost Apple Maps bad: MacOS 10.15 pushes Cupertino's low bar for code quality lower still

Re: No problems here!

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest iTunes worked in the first place.

The story so far: How's that Autonomy High Court battle with HPE looking at half-time?

In this part of the world we’re basking in the winter sun. Just sayin’...

This is not the cloud you're looking for.... Oracle's JEDI mind tricks work as Trump forces $10bn IT project to drop out of warp

I hate it when you want everyone to lose.

Reach out for the healing hands... of guru Dabbs

Time Travel is Real!

Is it just me, or is Jobssy wearing an Apple Watch in that photo?

NAND down we goooo: Flash supplier revenues plunged in first quarter

Can the extra chips be converted into Intel CPUs? I hear there’s a shortage.

#waitingsixweeksformylaptopandnotatallpissedoffaboutitohno

Gee, SEC, how did that get out?! 'Leaked' Tesla email claims big boost in Model 3 production

So Lazza lost $420M? The materials haven't yet been invented to make a violin small enough.

Taylor drift: Finally, a use for AI emerges? Cyber-smut star films fsck-flick in Tesla with Autopilot, warns: 'I wouldn't recommend it'

Re: No link for you!

Even an article about porn can be turned into a discussion on text editors.

Commentards, I salute you!

Azure thing at last: Windows Virtual Desktop takes to the cloudy stage

Anything that helps get rid of the foetid stench of Citrix from my life is most welcome.

NASA: We need commercial rockets! SLS: Oh no you don't!

"...it is also important to remember that NASA has history when it comes to racing to meet arbitrary deadlines."

To be fair they were good at it once "...before this decade is out...land a man on the moon".

But also, Apollo 1. So...yeah.

What do WLinux and Benedict Cumberbatch have in common? They're both fond of Pengwin

Re: Anglophones....

More importantly, how did Morgan Freeman say it?

USB4: Based on Thunderbolt 3. Two times the data rate, at 40Gbps. One fewer space. Zero confusing versions

So if USB 3.0 is now 3.2 Gen 1, what is now considered 3.0?

And will USB4.\|~> be called SuperDuperSpeed?

You know the drill: SAP has asked Joe Public to name Munich arena so go forth and be very silly

SAP in the Face

This is the final straw, evil Microsoft. Making private GitHub repos free? You've gone too far

Re: As ever

If you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

If you are paying for the product, then you’re an additional revenue stream.

Serverless is awesome (if you overlook inflated costs, dislike distributed computing, love vendor lock-in), say boffins

So according to this paper, serverless is good for "this" but not for "that". Isn't that true of everything and the rest is just hype?

And if you're believing the hype... well, there probably wasn't much hope for you in the first place.

Peak tech! Bacon vending machine signals apex of human invention

It wasn't until I came to Australia that I found supermarkets selling middle bacon, with both the meaty bit and the streaky bit all in one convenient package.

The only downside is that you're required to inform your health insurer when you buy it.

Edit: Oh my, I've just discovered the bacon wiki: http://bacon.wikia.com

Amazon robot fingered for bear spray leak that hospitalised 24 staffers

Bear repellant

Does it work on sharks too?

Funnily enough, China fuming, senator cheering after Huawei CFO cuffed by Canadian cops at Uncle Sam's request

The talk surrounding Huawei has been going for years, even during the last presidency. To the best of my knowledge, I don't think anyone has actually produced any evidence at all Huawei has actually done anything wrong. However, sanction-breaking is a different beast to infrastructure-level espionage, so maybe they actually have some evidence this time.

It's official. Microsoft pushes Google over the Edge, shifts browser to Chromium engine

This is good news. Microsoft's slow release cadence and insistence that each new browser version will not run on older versions of Windows has causes nothing but pain for us devs. I find it faintly ludicrous that MS was somehow unable to keep pace with Google and Mozilla.

Also, I'm not overly concerned about the reduction in competing browser engines as the companies with a vested interest in the Chromium project should keep it from stagnating into another IE6. I could be wrong though, and they might all become puppet states in the greater Googleocracy.

Keen for much-hyped quantum computing to finally land? Don't expect it for a decade

Does anyone else think that the quantum chip in the article looks like it's made of Lego?

Talk about a GAN-do attitude... AI software bots can see through your text CAPTCHAs

I hut a picture-based CAPTCHA today. It asked me to identify cross-walks. Now, not being of the North American persuasion, I couldn’t define what a crosswalk was *exactly*. Was it a zebra crossing, or anything woth traffic lights in it? Whatever I did, it was wrong.

Falcon 9 gets its feet wet as SpaceX notch up two more launch successes

I don’t carry a strong opinion about His Muskiness or SpaceX, but it sounds like the safety precautions put in place worked perfectly and ensured the malfunctioning stage landed at sea rather than crashing on the ground. Overall, not great, but chalk one up for safety backups.

Awkward... Revealed Facebook emails show plans for data slurping, selling access to addicts' info, crafty PR spinning

Re: I give you...

Can I modify that to “non-orange sleazebag of the year?”

Azure MFA falls over, Windows 10 struggles with Intel drivers, and Microsoft gives us... more Sticky Notes?

Re: Massive kudos...

Are you kidding? I watch Hey Duggee without my kids!

NASA's Mars probe InSight really has Mars in sight: It beams back first pic after touchdown

Re: MARS?

Potatoes? Did it squash Mark Watney on landing?

Microsoft squeezes a 2019 server out of the Azure DevOps pipeline

Azure(tm) is the new Windows(tm)

Just slap the name on everything and see what sticks. It worked for Windows RT, right?

iPhone XS: Just another £300 for a better cam- Wait, come back!

I feel like the Iron Islanders need to change one of their sayings:

“Did you pay the Iron Price, the Gold Price or the Apple Price?”