Posts by goldcd

Oops: Carphone burps up new Google phone details

I was waiting for this...

Now.. well short of some incredible "as yet hidden feature"..Well I'm not getting one now, and that's ignoring whatever the price is.

I'm a fan of Nexus/Pixel, HTC - and 6P last year looked like the perfect phone, but I was still mid-contract.

HTC are making the Nexus again - hurrah! I'll wait for this, it's going to be awesome!

Then I saw the HTC One.. erm where've the boomsound speakers gone? They seem to have blanded it down to their Apple-aping mid-priced models... and now I see they're continuing on with this..

I am sad.

HP Ink COO: Sorry not sorry we bricked your otherwise totally fine printer cartridges

Oh I've definitely got a soft spot for HP printers

My Dad in the late 90s spent some horrific amount of money on an IIP (plus RAM cart - please note back then 'print what's on my screen' wasn't included in the box).

My homework never looked better, and the thing was as you say, built like a tank.

But that was back in the day when you sold the printer to make money, and gave the nervous consumer the option of buying branded toner as a sideline.

All went tits-up as the price of printers raced to the bottom in the hope the difference would be made up in consumables.

I did (maybe uniquely) own a Kodak printer, when they tried to resist the prevailing market with "expensive to buy, cheap to run" - but they promptly got smashed under the feet of idiots wanting a £25 printer.

I don't bear a grudge. Just satisfied to see the market and their remaining "enabling" users, rotting in printer-hell.

As a counterpoint - I nearly went for this.

My post above relates me "finally removing my printer from my life" - but £3 a month to be able to print what I need actually sounds pretty good to me, it would just join Netflix and Spotify on my DD list I don't bat an eye at.

What pissed me off with printers previously was the anger I felt towards the thing.

The £75 of spare carts I had to maintain, the over-eager squirting of ink to 'clean heads' when I turned it on every couple of weeks to print a couple of sides of A4. I looked at my printer, and it made me angry.

I've personally got no issue with chucking a few quid a month to have a 'printer available' and replacement carts proactively coming through my door to maintain this service.

Personally, I've got printers at work if I need a hardcopy of something and no shortage of excellent online services that will not only print out my photos, but send it directly to the ageing relative who demanded them without me having to bother with packaging/posting.

It was a tempting death-rattle, and nearly got me, but I do feel good that I resisted.

I took my home printer to the tip a few weeks ago.

As I hurled it into the mixed waste skip, a feeling of liberation overcame me.

I have a sneaky suspicion that nobody actually *likes* the printer they have. It was something they've just learnt to tolerate, like the monthly connection charge for your landline.

My landline is still there due to the 'deals' in place to assist me in retaining it (don't pay it and you'll lose your landline and we'll take the discount off your internet bill and you'll end up with a 25p saving).

I can't help but feel when a load of HP users suddenly find their printer no longer works, they'll just follow my example, rather than rushing out to the shop with £50 they suddenly feel the need to give to HP.

Is "Resented Technology" a thing yet?

Unlucky Luckey: Oculus developers invoke anti-douchebag clause, halt games for VR goggles

I actually feel for the guy

I've had a drink, I'm here on the internet, I've said stuff I regret and stuff people don't agree with (including myself in the cold light of day).

And what of it? I appreciate the internet for allowing me to barf my lizard brain onto it and I'll take my knocks for doing so.

I appreciate what he did to reboot VR, I was leaning towards a Vive, but..well I dislike the idea that others might be swayed by his personal views.

I dunno. Look at the world around you. Look at where your monthly direct debits and taxes go.

Luckey's own personal views are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and if you think they are. then we're doomed.

You're honestly looking to buy a "Democratic VR headset?"

Video service Binge On 'broke the internet' but 99pc of users love it

You can change the DPI of your screen?

Rilly?

Brave telco giants kill threat of decent internet service in rural North Carolina

Socialism!!

Both Pepsi and Coke, proud american institutions supply water.

There's already choice and the intervention of a local government is destroying the free market, with their "all you can drink" offering.

T-Mobile USA: DON'T install Apple's iOS 10, for the love of God

Re: What about iPhone 6s?

Eds!

Please take the story down, it's all fine.

Fanbois iVaporate: Smallest Apple iPhone queues ever

What else can you queue up for any more?

Your music is digital, your premiere tickets are booked online weeks in advance, your game pre-loads for the midnight unlock.

I mean it's obviously fucked that you're sleeping in a fucking mall to get the chance to spend the best part of a grand on a phone, that's barely better than the last one, and millions will have within a few weeks based on a rolling contract plan second only in cost to your mortgage on an actual fucking house you live in..

..but you takes what you can, in this modern age.

Come in HTTP, your time is up: Google Chrome to shame leaky non-HTTPS sites from January

erm no...

you need an IP to host domains, yes.

But you can put as many domains as you like on the IP (or subdomains) - and then you can generate certs and get them signed for the domains as wildcards, or subdomains as you see fit.

I really should have just replied 'bollocks'

It's pretty minimal cost

I just renewed my SSL cert and I think it cost me £20 to get it signed and maybe 30 mins of trying to remind myself how to drive openssl.

In the grand scheme of keeping my little hobby site up and running, nothing.

Inside our three-month effort to attend Apple's iPhone 7 launch party

Might I just suggest

That each Apple product launch is greeted with The Register's review of the latest piece of iKnockoffTat available from the local market?

I would be much more interested in the "iDolphin" or whatever triple-sim monstrosity is available.

Cooky crumbles: Apple mulls yanking profits out of Europe and into US

I'm pretty sure

I read an article on this very tome, that quite convincingly argued that corporation tax is a stupid idea - and that this type of mess is what happens in the transition (and EU was setup to assist in pushing it down to zero).

When you buy your device you pay tax where you bought it (e.g. VAT), then the people who made this possible pay tax (income tax on the Irish/UK/wherever employees) and finally the company should pay tax through their shareholders (you get a dividend, or sell your shares, you pay your local tax on your profits in the same way you would on any other income).

Taxing a company for having more money in the bank just seems bizarre. A company isn't a person, despite some countries best-effort in making a corporation such an entity (yes, I read that book).

Two-speed Android update risk: Mobes face months-long wait

I don't really have a massive issue with a few months

Somebody has to ensure the bloat still functions.

What I'd like to see is a graph that say considers all phones that manufacturer made in the last 4 years.

Getting the update out onto their latest handset - they're still trying to sell this flagship and having the latest OS on it is in their interest.

What used to grate with me was the delay in getting it out to the model that was a year older - and actually impacts more of their users.

Scared of mobile banking

But when you walk into that branch

occupying some prime real-estate, filled with well meaning reps clutching ipads and generally portraying some idiot VPs version of Minority Report.

Don't you have that niggling feeling of "Who's paying for all this?"

Two G4S call centre staff sacked over 999 answering scam

Give people goals, and they'll try to game it.

Interesting point is that surely those making the "test calls" demonstrably couldn't be the people benefiting for answering them.

So why did they make those "test calls"?

Ad-blocking ‘plateaus’, claims hopeful ad industry

Where there's money to be made here

is between the "what we expect to receive by serving you an ad" and "what we expect to make by charging you a monthly sub for access to our site".

1) Providers would be more than happy to serve an ad where one in a thousand viewers click an ad and sign up for something that makes them $10.

2) Providers would shit themselves with happiness if you paid them $10 a month for their content.

Harsh reality is that option 2 is rubbish, unless you're fantastic. Really REALLY good, Something nobody can get elsewhere. Spotify and Netflix get that sort of money from me each month, nobody gets that for a piece of text though.

So let's look at option 1. I'll pay a cent/penny to read a page and give you more than you'll get in advertisement revenue - but there's currently no decent mechanism to let me do this.

I block your ads, you block me until I look at your ads - you never ask if I can simply compensate you in excess so you don't need me to look at them.

This research is 'bollocks' - but

We've had the ramp-up of the great-unwashed arriving on my pristine internet.

They've been bitten, and their children have installed the ad-blockers for them, whilst uninstalling the toolbars that previously presented the internet through a letterbox.

*Nobody* is uninstalling their ad-blocker though.

I personally have started to make 'exceptions'

Wired, for example, very nicely masks the page and asks you to make an exception for them.

I like Wired, wish to read what they've paid somebody to write, so comply.

I've also in the last few years contributed to kickstarters and signed up to Patreon to chuck the odd dollar to people whose videos/podcasts I actually enjoy.

Bluntly I've come out of the other side of the much derided "I pirate as I can't afford to pay" trench of non-contribution.

What currently annoys the f out of me is the "pay to view per site" model, which I've yet to see any example of... well it "actually working".

e.g. I see a link to The Times.. well I just don't even bother clicking any more.

I might "pay a cent" to read a page, but no way am I ever going to setup a direct debit to read a page of anything.

My cunning, if not innovative, solution is to pay the ad-blockers to handle this for me.

I pay £10 a month to "Ad-Block-Future".

I get my ads blocked.

Sites I go to can decide whether I can view content for my £10 a month subscription, or whether I need to pay £20 a month for access (will they accept 1c assuming I view 1,000 pages a month, or are they holding out on me doubling my payment to get their extra cent).

Whatever I spend each month is divvied up (less overhead) and distributed to pages I could see based on the number I've accessed.

Finally, I want a "won't pay" button/plugin, where I can opt out of sharing to that site/page - solely to ensure that click-bait/spam/shite isn't rewarded. You hit that button, they get nothing, but you lose access for the next billing cycle.

Tim Cook's answer to crashing iPhone sales: More iPhones

I disagree

The old iPhone connector was a pain in the arse (I got firewire on the other end with my old ipod, then had to buy a silly price cable for USB to sync, firewire to charge Y-cable.) - *BUT* I did see the point.

There was an ecosystem of docks, you could just drop your i-device into, and power would flow in, and music would flow out.

Nobody likes connectors, but was definitely better.

Then came the mk2 of the apple connector. I was still happy with USB - *BUT* there were still clear advantages to it (the physical flipping for a start).

Bluntly - yes Apple are a pain in the arse with their proprietary-shit, but it was 'shit' that had an advantage and you could talk yourself into.

My concern is that they seem to have forgotten why they got away with this stuff. Carrot and Stick.

If they lose the phono jack.. well bluntly, where's the carrot?

Yup

Plus we have google who having let 'Android free to spread its wings" are now rapidly back-tracking to close the current issue I have as an Android Fanboi, which is whilst the hardware and OS is great, I have left myself at the mercy of my manufacturer to support the damn thing (and resist the obvious urge to push me towards their latest halo-handset, they might bother to support).

Stepping back, what Apple got right was making a premium ecosystem with novel features landing on a yearly basis to keep people in.

"A button that reads your fingerprint to unlock" - magic of the highest order.

After that though... erm 'meh'

"It's bigger" - yup, it most certainly is.

"Force Touch".. oh for the love of god, that's even nasty UI design... it's not even UI..

Oh - and most importantly, could I mock his waxy botoxed appearance?..

..I swear I had the best intentions when I started writing this..

Bees bring down US stealth fighter

Sod Manuka Honey - way too common

I now want honey solely made from high-grade classified composites.

Google's brand new OS could replace Android

Because most of the planet

is covered with water.

Russia is planning to use airships as part of a $240bn transport project

Plus - you actually need an income from your airship

All well and good creating one and hoping "somebody needs transport of something heavy to remote places maybe without airstrips maybe a few times a month if you're lucky.

If you're responding to a need to shift 16 tonnes a time between 2 places as a shuttle, well your future looks a lot brighter.

Thieves can wirelessly unlock up to 100 million Volkswagens, each at the press of a button

VW haven't responded?

DESPITE being aware of this for at least the 2 years they gagged him?

I'd have hoped they'd have used this time to maybe oh I dunno, recall and fix a chunk of 100 million cars, but failing that at least put a note in PR's calendar to ask them to prepare a statement on "We take security very seriously blah blah".

Three posts lacklustre results, angrily mutters over O2 merger rejection

Oh my issue isn't that I felt they were a charity

Just they're a remarkably stupid business.

I was VF, then EE, then last time went to them.

Good value plan, innovative free-roaming - so could put up with the call-centres (only operator who I genuinely have trouble understanding, and cold-call me to try to flog me shit I don't want) and the f'in awful voicemail.

For the same cost I signed up for 2 years ago, I'm being offered 1Gig rather than unlimited.

Now I rarely went over a gig - but occasionally hammered it when office/home wifi was down.

I'd have been happy with data-rollover - but knowing I'm going to be paying more for less..bah, they're no cheaper than the others now, so not quite sure what the point of them is.

You've not been looking at their "new tariffs" have you?

Rolling Sim-only unlimited data and calls, is now a pretty hefty £36.

Oh yes that as well

Mid my asking "what's the best thing they could do over my official shafting", I seem to have inadvertently said "Yes, I would like to take you up on that offer, without noticing".

I must have though, as she rattled into the T&C spiel, and then told me she'd arranged delivery of the phone...

...then got all hurt when I said I didn't want it.

"You want me to cancel your order?"

'WHAT ORDER??"

Oh - and they're roaming is a bit 'shit'. Yes, it might work, but seems to vary wildly.

Trip to US was faultless. Trip to Aus and I seemed to be being VPNd back to the UK and was running on dial-up modem speeds. Ended up buying a local SIM.

Oh OH.

AND THEY STILL don't seem to have managed to implement a decent voicemail system.

No nice little icon (like everybody else), just a random text hours/days later if at all. Doesn't matter too much, as most of them are empty as they seem to treat immediate hangups as a 'message'

Yep

Called them for my "My 2 years are up call" and I'd like a phone upgrade (switching from previous HTC One to new HTC One - which HTC are trying to clear, based on the £100 off voucher they mailed me).

Anyhoo.

For the same price I currently get unlimited data for.. I could now have the basic 1 Gig.

Oh, and the useless insurance has gone up, taking even that over the £50 my employer will kindly let me expense. I say useless as when my phone did go kapput and die, I rapidly realized they have a £100 excess on it..I could have got the USB repaired myself for less.

Seagate flashes 60TB (yes, sixty) SSD monster

Seagate do have a marketing issue

I read "Seagate stores 60TB" and my first thought was "that's a lot of data to suddenly miss".

Good news: Teen hacker gets 1-million-air-miles bug bounty reward. Bad news: It's United Airlines

I can beat that.

I'd been quietly saving my British Airways Avios for years for a free flight. Paid for an Amex, solely as if put enough over the card I got a partner voucher for my free flight.

Putting aside the "no flights I wanted available when released" and "even then having to call for stuff that wasn't available online"(and incurring a charge) and "not getting to fly to the airports I wanted, when "... well that was a "free" booking with £1300 mystery-tax chucked on it.

As far as I could work out. I could have booked any 2 seats on economy flights I wanted cheaper.

100k points and a voucher gets you a bump to business of a flight you don't want.

Entirely off topic, but still pissy over this..Grrrr.

Samsung Note 7: Probably the best phone in the world. Yeah – you heard right

Yep - even HTC have canned them on the latest revision.

Something that's pissed me off.

I think the problem is that they're fantastic if you've got a need and experienced them.

My user-case is flat on my back in bed, with the phone sitting on my chest - work wonderfully.

Problem is that it's pretty hard to be sold on this, when standing in the middle of CPW.

plus you forgot the curved screen

means you can't nicely fit a decent glass screen protector.

I've no f'in idea where these downvotes are coming from

I agree with you entirely - I most benefit when slumped on a hotel bed just wanting to relax, or in my own bed finishing off something on Netflix etc.

Stepping back from the stereo aspect, having loud speakers is handy for making an impromptu speakerphone you can chuck on a desk.

erm... you've not had them have you?

I got them (without noticing or caring when purchasing) with my original HTC One - and assuming you watch video in landscape without headphones - were a revelation. Loud sound in stereo.

Now I'm quite prepared to admit that it doesn't seem to be a big deal for most people (HTC have dumped it in their latest version) - BUT definitely now is a purchasing decision for me

(e.g. my shield tablet has stereo speakers).

As I said, maybe not a deal breaker - but definitely a nice to have (along with OIS, SD Card, Fingerprint reader and all the rest).

Did Donald Trump really just ask Russia to hack the US govt? Yes, he did

It's really quite impressive.

I mean he's a loathsome little knuckle-head, but...

...you've got to admire the... "chutzpah" he has...

Maybe he could be kept around for amusement after the election - make him foreign secretary or something.

Citrix's GoTo goes to LogMeIn in $2bn merger

Fuck

I'd ignorantly assumed Lastpass was some hip-idealistic startup.

*prepares to bend over and spread*

BlackBerry snips Alcatel label off a midrange biz 'Droid, sells it for $299

As a business model, it sounds pretty good to me.

There're no shortage of good Android hardware platforms out there that cover all my needs - my growing concern is timely updates and then anything at all after a couple of years.

Nexus used to give you that - but have recently been upping their prices and back-pedalling on their length of committed support.

Now this re-badged 'Alcatel' phone isn't what I'm personally looking for..

..but if Blackberry could get their hands on something similar to a high-end Huawei or OnePlus mid-priced phone, and chucked in say "a 5yr corporate style support contract" on it.. Well I'd be biting their hand off to hand over an extra hundred quid or so.

Verizon blames striking workers for dent in sales

So

Got money by selling off hardware and FiOS.

Spent money by buying AOL and Yahoo.

There's somebody out there who still holds the geocities domain, currently deciding how many super-yachts he'll buy himself.

US standards lab says SMS is no good for authentication

Pretty easily

with an offline keygen like the RSA one in various guises or even Google Authenticator..

..my question would be that if you don't have a connection, wtf would you be attempting to authenticate in the first place?

Silicon Valley's contribution to the US Republican Convention: Gayness

I quite like Thiel

Doesn't mean I agree with him at all, mind.

Like many I only really was aware of him when he went gunning for Gawker and I looked up why.

Now there are many perspectives on how Gawker treated Thiel - not illegal, but at least to me it was despicable.

It wasn't a major act of civil disobedience - but I removed engadget and kotaku from my RSS feeds.

Then Gawker published Hulk's sex tape - a quite stupendously stupid/illegal thing - and Thiel saw this and provided a well-funded match to take to burn them to the ground.

Good.

And burn he did.

I can guess that Terry would have settled for some cash, rather than risking personal bankruptcy and I can further guess that that's the worst case Gawker thought they'd have to deal with.

Oops.

Fear not, humanity – Saint Elon has finished part two of his world-saving 'master plan'

I disagree

(Not that I can afford one either).

The world's full of perfectly functional cars that are cheap. Not cars you'd aspire to - but something that moves your meat-sack around.

Now there are all manner of aspirational cars as well - all the way up to the super-cars and the sky's the limit for how much they'll cost.

Tesla S isn't cheap.. but it's way way below what you could spend if money was no object - but if you want a fast accelerating tech-toy-box-on-electrical-wheels, it's the car to buy. There's nothing better.

If that's what you're wanting, suddenly the "ultimate car" in that category is.. well comparatively affordable.

In this case though, I don't think it's really the cost that's the big deal

It's the car generating it's own electricity.

Would be nice to park your car at the start of the day, and find the battery a bit more charged when you wanted to go home.

Or could maybe set it so once the battery was charged, it uses the panels to run the A/C at a low level - just making it a bit more pleasant whenever you decide to get back in.

One in five consumers upgraded to Win10 for free instead of buying a PC

And some of us are both types.

I've got my big-box gaming PC, filled with drives and server-apps and I've got my work laptop.

I *used* to have a secondary laptop for 'around the house' (at one point some stupidly expensive Alienware 13") - but that role has been completely replaced with my little nVidia shield tablet which is much more convenient and I think cost £150ish.

That wasn't even a budget purchase, seemingly that's all I had to spend to fulfill my "slumped on sofa needs"

I disagree that "The PC is obsolete"

but agree with pretty much everything else.

I think there's a variety of factors at work though.

1) I lot of people that bought PCs didn't really need them.

Of course granny wants to be able to receive emails, have a gallery of photos & listen to something on iPlayer - but an iPad does all of this and is a lot simpler to use.

2) Requirements on hardware have stagnated.

I'm still running a 2600k i7 that's *checks email* over 5 years old. CPU bottleneck is rarely a problem and the only real drawback I can think of is power consumption. Not really any driver for me to upgrade (especially as I'd also have to factor in new memory and mobo).

3) Hardware annoyances are vanishing.

Used to be something new with a definite advantage would come along every year or so. "If I bought x then annoyance y would go".

This drove higher res screens, SSDs, USB3 etc - but once you've got these.. well... I mean I'd like a 4k panel, M2 storage, USB-C etc... but bluntly what I've had for years is still 'perfectly fine".

Last PC I bought was a zenbook for my wife, to replace her very aged laptop - wafer thin, high-res screen - all solid state and generally solid. New model of it's just come out and "meh"..

It's not our fault we don't hire black people, says Facebook

Why not start here?

I'm sure The Register is aware of the demographics of their readership (and their writers for that matter).

Do they feel it's their duty to balance correct this skew towards educated, white, middle-aged males?

IBM scraps loyal staffer gifts in favour of... a congratulatory social page

I get $100 before tax

each time I hit a 5 year anniversary.

I can only assume at some point it was something decent.. but now.. well it just riles me, but fortunately provides me just enough to get shit-faced and moan.

AWS works on 'urgent' deals for UK customers as £ dips against $

Aside from the currency tanking..

I was just about to by myself a new shiny GPU - then the prices all went up by ~£50 across the board.

Teen faces trial for telling suicidal boyfriend to kill himself via text

No she didn't kill him in any way

and the moment the law says she did, we're all screwed.

Abusive email sent to you, abusive message you read online, somebody bumping into you on the stree, somebody staring at you.. blah blah.

She's clearly not a nice person, but the world's full of them.

Got the Brexit fear? Keep calm and keep using AWS – Amazon UK boss

My personal hope is that if she's PM

She'll get distracted from the data-raping.

FFS - not as if this idea spontaneously entered her mind after careful consideration of civil-liberties and IT awareness. Bored Home secretaries get taken to too many lunches and wake up with hangovers and and bad ideas (see also Jack Straw).

Sociology student gets a First for dissertation on Kardashians

They're the reason that you doubt yourself.

You did what you were told, you learnt a skill that benefited others - then you see them making more in a month that you will in the next decade without any discernible skill that you'd recognise.

I'd advise tolerance however - it's not their fault, just their greater understanding of the retarded mass we all dwell within.