Posts by Davegoody

Apple's latest macOS release is breaking security software, network connections

I smell some FUD here.

This is NOTHING new. When I used to run Cisco VPN on my Mac as well as other security software, it frequently had issues post-upgrade to the latest and (sometimes) greatest new MacOS versions.

What's annoying here, is the narrative that this is wholly Apple's fault. The latest MacOS (Sequia) has been in Beta since early June. Plenty of time for the vendors to get their acts together.

That's one of the reasons that Beta software exists. Poor experience for end-users when the security company all-of-a-sudden get confronted with a brand-new MacOS edition and claim that this is somehow surprising to them.

Rant over....

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

ISDN bills could be problematical.......

I used to work for a large car auction company, with a head office up-north, and the flagship office (where the CEO lived) down in the south-west.

As lead-techie, I had provisioned a state-of-the-art Video Conferencing system that used 3 ISDN lines (6 channels) bonded for comms (ground-breaking - if not pocket-stretching at the time. IP-based VC wasn't offered at the time.

Worked amazingly and paid for itself in short-shrift.

However......

One day if developed a silent fault which seemingly went on for quite a while.

We only knew when a lorry (I kid you not) delivered our phone bill on pallets.

It was a not-inconsequential amount.

Red faces all around, but pretty sure it cost nearly as much to print and transport the bill, than it did to cover the cost of the ISDN.......

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

Yeh I read that the same way too. Great minds think alike (or fools never differ - you choose)......

You can never have too many backups. Also, you can never have too many backups

Been there, bought (and still wear) the T-Shirt

Many moons ago, I worked for a large car auction company. We were, back then, using some large boxes (mainly fresh air and a RAID 10 array) running SCO Unix (remember that?).......

One of our auction sites, in the midlands, religiously backed-up to tape every night (DDS2 back then) and rotated the tapes as they should, so a good, if not great backup regime (one would think). However, rather than do what was instructed by us IT bods, and take the tapes out of the server room to be locked in the safe in the site's security office, they wisely (perhaps not) decided to just store the tapes on an available free surface in the server room, which happened to be on top of a very large, very old UPS. When the inevitable fan-clogs-up and server overheating issue finally occurred, taking multiple drives out on the RAID array, restore was the only option, with nicely degaussed tapes having been left on top of the UPS. Back then, all transactions through the auction were still captured on paper (remember that too?) and though it was a real nightmare, and took a team of people re-keying data for days, at least not all was lost.

The old adage of "a backup is only as good as the last restore" or perhaps more pertinently "don't store your F*****G tapes on top of a big electromagnet" was never so true.

You can liquid cool this Linux laptop to let the GPU soar

Stupid and inefficient

Look at the trailblazing performance of the 16” MacBook Pro which is an order of magnitude quicker than nearly every Intel-based / Ryzen machine, and even when running in our stupid temperatures currently in my office with two external screens (one 4K and one 5K) doesn’t break a sweat. Fans hardly ever need to spin up !

Mars Express orbiter to get code update after 19 years

I will do the software update on-site….

Gladly claim back the mileage at HMRC rates ……

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

Re: Not be happy ... to reinstall my OS from scratch every year or two

You could be in the next “shades of Grey” movie as a different type of Sado-Masochist if you insist on reinstalling MacOS, Windows etc on your home PCs on a monthly basis. Surely by the time you have done all that, installed all patches and apps, copied your data back etc, it’s time to do the whole things again? Bit like painting the Forth Bridge. I occasionally, such as when I buy a new machine, install the OS myself, but that’s just for price of mind and to overwrite the crapware that’s often installed, but doing this monthly has to be the biggest waste of time imaginable.

'Bigger is better' is back for hardware – without any obvious benefits

Apple don’t, at least not on iThings

iPhones and iPads, for the last couple of generations no longer require an internet connection to parse most Siri requests. Means that it’s a hell of a lot more responsive.

Client demo in 30 minutes. Just what could go wrong?

Time for a quick HOSTS file uodate.

Had similar issues years ago, used to run the IT for DVLA number plate auctions for my company. Temporary dial-up lines (long time ago) and the connections were often flaky. DNS caused much grief at the time and a few entries in the HOSTS file solved many potential problems

Server errors plague app used by Tesla drivers to unlock their MuskMobiles

Re: KISS

I have to agree, but I am far from normal - WIBBLE.....

Re: Unusually uninformed and biased article by the Register here.....

The bit that says "Teslas don't use conventional keys. Instead they require the presence of a fob, key card, or authenticated mobile phone app that links to the electric vehicles over Bluetooth. This is apparently easier and/or more convenient than a key, or something. Heck, everything's better with Bluetooth, right?"

If your phone was connected via BT then it would have still worked..... it's just those that were not in range of BT, and were stupid enough to not have a real keycard with them. VERY few Tesla drivers were affected, this was really a non-story. Non-technical press you can understand going with the sensationalist headlines, but The Register is better than this. Absolutely right to report on it, as it's right in the ballpark for the readership, but the context was all wrong. This was such a non-event, it's "news" like this that the anti-EV brigade just love pouncing on.

Unusually uninformed and biased article by the Register here.....

I love the Register, and always have done, but this report is just wrong. Yes, some (and I mean a few) Tesla drivers were inconvenienced, however, ALL Teslas are supplied with a Key (or a keycard for M3 / MY). I CAN unlock the car using my iPhone if I want to, I choose to be sensible and carry my key with me. The users that were really inconvenienced here were Model 3 / Model Y owners, who didn't take their key with them, and it's a credit card sized bit of plastic, so hardly difficult to have it in the wallet / purse......

Using a phone as a key is a convenience at best. What happens if it crashes, the battery expires, you drop it etc, quite apart from a Tesla-related issue ?

Common-sense should prevail. I have to declare I am a Tesla Driver (Model X), but was wholly unaffected apart from noticing that the app wouldn't connect to my car, which meant a 30 second walk outside to check how much charge it had. That was the limit of my inconvenience.

A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

Re: What was I thinking?

I once sent a final email to a German customer that I had fixed a load of issues for, and instead of typing something along the lines of "if I can help you further, please don't hesitate.........." what was actually sent was "If I can help your Furhrer..........." That was a difficult one to deal with.

Apple arms high-end MacBook Pro notebooks with M1 Pro, M1 Max processors

Re: Great but ...

Perhaps buy a machine that actually runs those packages instead of bitching about a MacBook Pro, that's CLEARLY not aimed at your specific use. Willing to bet that many of these applications require a legacy port such as RS232 or similar to drive, which are notably missing from modern Winter PCs / laptops these days too. Nobody is forcing you to buy a Mac in the first place, if not suitable for your niche uses, perhaps look elsewhere.

UK umbrella payroll firm Giant Pay confirms it was hit by 'sophisticated' cyber-attack

NOT Surprised

I had the "pleasure" when a contractor a good few years ago of using these cowboys as my Umbrella company. If their IT team were 1000% more competent than the rest of the company, it would still explain how this occurred. It's a rare situation where a company are really this incompetent. What made it funnier was when they asked me for feedback once I had left. Think they regretted asking. They say the truth hurts.....

A developer built an AI chatbot using GPT-3 that helped a man speak again to his late fiancée. OpenAI shut it down

It's all great until somebody types "unleash all the nukes"

AI is just that, artificial. Having such a draconian view on what can, or can't be allowed seems counter-intuitive. Unlike the example in my title, I can't see much danger with it.

Fired credit union employee admits: I wiped 21GB of files from company's shared drive in retaliation

Re: the data IS effectively the credit union

Agree, when management stop treating IT as a cost centre and start realising it's a profit enabler, we can all sleep a bit better.....VERY sloppy management at play here that allowed this to happen. She needs to pay the consequences of her (stupid) actions, but this was 100% avoidable

Why yes, I'll take that commendation for fixing the thing I broke

Anyone who refuses to put their hands up to something similar has never worked in IT...... Of course that's in the old "wild-west" days, these days change controls etc make this sort of thing very rare.....

Looking for the perfect Valentine's gift? How about a week of retro gaming BBC Microlympics?

Re: Best Beeb music award goes to...

If you really wanted to hear the Captain Pugwash theme, you could exit the game and type “proc pugwash” and it would play.....

Oh, no one knows what goes on behind locked doors... so don't leave your UPS in there

Re: Staff reduction...

Can go one better than that, know of an occasion where a server, that was not connected to the outside world due to its sensitivity, would, every 30days or so, just hang-up. Only a press of the power button would fix the issue. Not being internet connected meant a 150 mile round trip to power cycle the box. Found an old PC, glued a ballpoint pen to the CD-ROM tray and mounted it directly in front of the server. The PC was accessible remotely (unlike the server) so remoted-on when required, ejected the CD tray, pushing the ballpoint pen against the power button on the server. Waited 10 seconds and repeated ...... saved hours of driving and though Heath-Robinson, worked every time. Eventually twigged that a reboot script may be a better option !

123 Bork? Six-day DNS record-edit outage at domain name flinger 123 Reg enrages users

YEARS of bottom-tier performance and people still use these clowns ?

I have posted on here MANY times in the past about my lack of confidence in 123-reg. After them losing my website, email and everything to do with my hosting a couple of years ago, I left. They restored from a backup but it was too-little, too late. They wanted to retain my business and offered me a year free hosting (realistically a year more incompetence) so said no-thanks. Not had a problem of note since, and have had better customer service with the hosting companies I have used since. I am with ZEN now, and they have been brilliant. I really can't believe that 123 are still in business. Anything so important as a website or email shouldn't be trusted to these guys.

We've made it: Microsoft deems El Reg relevant enough to have a play with the nerfed version of its upcoming Xbox

Re: Confusing

There never was an edition of Windows called Windows 95 ME - there was windows 95, Windows 98, then Windows ME - but never denoted as Windows 95 ME. It's was crap either way.

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

Re: Something isn't making sense

The USB cable IS included, it’s just the USB charging plug that won’t be bundled....

Angry 123-Reg customers in the UK wake up to another day where hosted mail doesn't get through to users on Microsoft email accounts

These guys are true cowboys. I have posted on numerous occasions about how INCREDIBLY poor they are not at just providing a "service" - though I REALLY shouldn't call it that, but their customer support is beyond awful. When I complained (I left them after the last complete and utter f**k up), they offered me a free year's hosting. Second prize was perhaps two years hosting. I used 123-reg for a few years (they in turn acquired my original supplier and it went downhill fast). As a small photography business (mainly weddings) couldn't justify the cost of O365, so moved to ZEN internet hosted email and Web, FANTASTIC service, been rock solid, and great value (I have no affiliation to them I hasten to add).

Toshiba formally and finally exits laptop business

Sad, end of an era.

I was a Toshiba qualified Service Engineer back in the day. They were amazing at the time (we are talking Orange Plasma Screens, so the word "Laptop" was rarely uttered unless you had a lap the size of an elephant, and mains-borne too if I remember. GREAT kit though, genuinely bullet-proof.

I did a three-day residential course down at their training / HQ down south. Then the TECRA range came out a good few years later, and they were world-beating. Things started to slip with the Satellite / Satellite pro. I like some of the other commentators here had a couple of Libretto machines, which were amazing for their time. Sad end to a world-beater. Same as Nokia though, you can't rest on what you did before, it's all based on what's current and next.

Mad dash for webcams with surge in videoconferencing has turned out rather nicely for Logitech

Their cheaper options perhaps, but their high-end stuff is amazing, typing this on a Logi Craft keyboard and it's just the best membrane-based keyboard I have ever owned (perhaps the best keyboard overall I have ever used)..... sometimes it's a chase to the bottom...... Have to agree with other people though that the keyboard software is pretty rubbish though.

IT consultant who deleted every account on UK company Jet2's domain cops 5 months in jail

A very stupid thing to do.......

When I left an ex-employer a good few years ago, it was 18 months later that I realised I still had cached credentials to the email and hosting setup that I implemented during my time as their IT manager. They were a HORRIBLE employer, and anyone who knows me knows who they are, so I won't mention them here. I could have wreaked similar levels of havoc on their systems very easily, but didn't for a number of reasons:

1) They would know that it was me

2) I would end-up in prison

3) I am a reasonable human-being who bears no ill-will to the other employees at the business

4) Life is too short to bear these sorts of grudges.

5) I quite like the fact that I have moved-on to MUCH better and bigger things since leaving their employment, which would have been impossible to do with a criminal record.

As much as it's tempting (too tempting in the case of this guy) it's just not worth it. As anyone who works in IT knows, we hold the keys to the business, and if we screw-up, accidentally, or like with the above story, on purpose) there is often a lot at stake.

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

Re: That's horrible.

What a moronic response ! Don’t use an Apple device as a Lenovo is less likely to get stolen ?????? Don’t drive a Mercedes or BMW because a Lada is cheaper to replace than those, or don’t eat that steak tonight, have a cheese sandwich on supermarket bread as you may die overnight and it would be a waste of money.....

Remember Windows Media Center? Well, the SDK is now on GitHub to be poked at your leisure

Pretty sure PLEX supports Hauppage TV tuners ?

And in current affairs... Apple recalls three-prong AC adapters after some shocking behavior

Happened to me, and Apple fobbed-me-off

Happened to me years ago, with my old MacBook Pro, contacted Apple support and they basically blamed me for mistreating it, saying that nobody else had complained about a similar issue...…. Glad it was not only me, but feel bad at how I was treated by Apple.

Not so smart after all: A techie's tale of toilet noise horror

If there was a smartwatch that could be charged by “kinetic energy” there are people in my office that could power a small city .....

You got a smart speaker but you're worried about privacy. First off, why'd you buy one? Secondly, check out Project Alias

It may LOOK like a £20K microphone, but it's a bit cheaper....

Staff sacked after security sees 'suspect surfer' script of shame

Re: Access Denied

sCUNThorpe.gov.uk was another one

Mourning Apple's war against sockets? The 2018 Mac mini should be your first port of call

So use the Eizo as a second screen, assuming you (he) has the space.

Nah - your claim that MacOS / OSX is "Snake Oil" to run on poor hardware is nonsense. Whilst I totally agree that a typical Mac, on the face of it, costs a bit more than typical PC hardware, in my experience the build quality (thus also the resale value) is sky-high. Take your 8-year old PC laptop, sell it online and get £50 -£100 for it, a similar mac, 3-4 times that value. And the claim that a seven-year-old PC laptop with no SSD runs MacOS faster than a current "Real" Mac is nonsense. It's just not actually possible. My Mac VMs do run fast, granted, but nothing as fast as a real machine to run them on. It's like claiming that you 10-year-old Ford Mondeo drives faster because you nailed a Lamborghini badge on the bonnet !

Prank 'Give me a raise!' email nearly lands sysadmin with dismissal

Re: Mailing list fail

hahahahahahaha....... "Dear Rich Bastard" - that's evil genius at play.

I did similar.....

A good few years ago, I was working at integrating an SMS gateway into our intranet (forget why this was a good idea)...... To test it, you just had to enter a string of the text you wanted to send "MATT - PLEASE COME TO MY OFFICE IMMEDIATELY - YOU HAVE SOME QUESTIONS TO ANSWER" - the RECIEVING number - whatever that had to be - and most importantly, you could specify the SENDING number - which (inevitably) was my bosses number. The S**T really hit the fan when "MATT" ran into our bosses office with his tail between his legs, wondering what the hell he had done wrong. I admitted to it immediately, rather than anybody else get blamed, and the mitigating circumstances was that I was showing a mutual colleague how insecure the system was. I got a (verbal) slap from my boss, and a pint (thus the icon) from "MATT" for owning-up. Be careful out there folks, larking around has consequences. I did feel a bit silly, but the whole project was scrapped as a result, due to the inherent insecurity and risk that I uncovered. To be fair, the "FROM" field would not have likely been exposed by the webform, but not worth the risk.

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

Unsurprising mauling (and mostly deserved)

So Gareth, giving this 4 out of 10 was not the only surprise, being told by you that it's FUSE based was the biggest surprise, not that we didn't know, but for somebody who has so doggedly followed the trials and tribulations of this project I am somewhat perplexed to find you didn't know this nugget. My 12-year old knows this.

It's a shambles no doubt, but the horrible buttons can be fixed easily (as my pal who has one can testify) - with a couple of quids worth of bits - of course it should never have been released like this in the first place !

Crooks swipe plutonium, cesium from US govt nuke wranglers' car. And yes, it's still missing

Re: Bin (Dumpster) Diving

That's a terrible pun...... but I like it.

As one of the previous commentards have said, you would probably get more radiation exposure from an old watch than these samples. Everything always get's blown up (sorry about that) by media hype with these things.

Regardless of all this, leaving anything of value (especially radioactive sources perhaps) in a car in a hotel car-park is perhaps a bit foolhardy.

Science fiction legend Harlan Ellison ends his short time on Earth

Mostly agree....

I have to agree....... did not particularly enjoy his writing style, it's 100% about the ideas and plots.

In a similar vein, the writing style of Philip K Dick is (in my opinion) hard to follow, not particular well written, but the ideas and plots are peerless - Man in the High Castle is a perfect example of this, as is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

I think my point here is that there is more to writing than the actual writing........

SD cards add PCIe and NVMe, hit 985 MB/sec and 128TB

Re: No Wear Levelling hmmmmmm

That's a fair comment - perhaps a larger capacity card would help here..... But it's a NextBase DashCam, rather than a cheap eBay buy. It does get rather hot / cold in-car though which may well contribute to card failure too.

Re: No Wear Levelling hmmmmmm

You are presuming a lot there Lee D - My DashCam is on 24/7 (monitoring Parking etc). I have had to replace SD cards on numerous occasions over the last year or two - as for junk - a great-big nope there They have been typically SanDisk ULTRA, Class 10 Cards. SanDisk have been great and replaced the cards with no fuss, which for a DashCam is no great loss. For "Traditional" data, such as document, music, photos etc, it's cold-comfort getting a new card when you have lost the data. As a Mac user everything I do is backed-up using Time Machine, but not everybody is quite so proactive..... On the flip-side of this, as a photographer (sometimes) I also only ever buy top-of-the range media, and have still been let-down a few times by faulty cards - and these are not cheap copies of SanDisk / Lexar media purchased from eBay (or other Tat-Bazaar), but through proper channels. I maintain that SD or other Flash media are not up to enterprise level storage (yet).......

No Wear Levelling hmmmmmm

Bearing in mind that I typically replace my MicroSD cards in my DashCam around every 6-8 months, as they literally wear out, I don't see that these deserve in any way an enterprise moniker...... GREAT in principle as a write occasionally / read often media, but without wear levelling, they will wear out very quickly....... and 128TB on a single SD card is a lot of eggs in one (not very reliable) basket....

Happy birthday, you lumbering MS-DOS-based mess: Windows 98 turns 20 today

Re: The ONLY things going for it were

Yes, but don't forget the abomination that was WindowsME. It was basically Windows 98, but with GUI access prioritised in the boot-up sequence. It gave the impression of having a UI far quicker than it actually was, as thought the UI was present, it was completely unusable until the rest of the subsystems had loaded. Even when the UI was present it was so flaky that it often took multiple reboots before it was actually possible to do any work (or play games).....

Re: Memories

Ohhhhhh..... trying to get an Adaptec SCSI controller working with a Soundblaster, and two Parallel ports on the same machine was a source of much hair-pulling, and juggling of IRQs. I still have nightmares of losing the little black jumpers to change IRQ just as I needed them. How things have changed - Mostly for the better, and though I am mainly a Mac user these days, I still sort of miss those days, and if you could troubleshoot (successfully) back then, then not much phases your since.....

Buttonless and port-free: Expect the next iPhone to be as smooth as a baby's bum

Re: Better come with IPS display, you can keep your OLED shit!!

It's somewhat "ironic" the comparisons to bottoms here as you, plainly, are talking out of yours good sir.

Brit ISPs get their marker pens out: Speed advertising's about to change

I have Virgin Media 350mb and get .....

Typically 380mb...... VM are streets ahead of everybody else !

RIP: Sinclair ZX Spectrum designer Rick Dickinson reaches STOP

Sad, a real genius and an inspirational designer

As somebody that built their first ZX80 in kit form, then the same with the ZX81, when the Spectrum came out with the dead-flesh keyboard, it was remarkable that a "Real" keyboard could be included in a machine of the era for anything like the price..... When the Scrabble-key keyboard came out on the QL, which Rick also performed the industrial design for, it was amazing (and a huge upgrade from flat or rubber keys), and was eventually destined for the upgraded Speccy too......

His legacy lives-on, not just on the Spectrum NEXT which he has been heavily involved-in, but the keyboard I am typing-on now, on my MacBook Pro, is truly an evolution of Rick's designs.... Everything goes full-circle with design, and I do hope that Rick's Legacy is remembered not just for cheap-and-cheerful, but true innovation, he was yet another British Genius that perhaps has not received the recognition that he deserved. RIP Rick, you may have passed-on to a better-place, but I can't wait to receive my cased NEXT, and I will have a beer when setting it up in your honour.

Noise from blast of gas destroys Digiplex data depot disk drives

After a particularly long liquid and curry lunch.....

I too have destroyed HDDs with a rapid expulsion of Noxious gasses...... I'll get my coat....