Posts by werdsmith

Facebook: Up to 90 million addicts' accounts slurped by hackers, no thanks to crappy code

Re: oh what a tangled 'web' we weave

This is what puzzles me, why would hackers go to the trouble of cracking faecebook accounts when all they are likely to find is petabytes of puerile drivel from mouth-breathers.

Holy smokes! US watchdog sues Elon Musk after he makes hash of $420 Tesla tweet

Re: Maximum Hubris

There are electric cars which are more than good enough for my requirements. I just can't afford one.

I have a hybrid though, and it's amazing. Driving a normal engine car now feels very primitive.

Re: Seriously?

I think the best virtue of Musk is his energy, audaciousness and vision to get these projects off the ground and running. But once they mature on beyond that first growth stage he should hand them over and move on to the next thing. Lest he is stretched too far trying to look after space rockets, electric cars, trains in pipes and whatever else.

A story of M, a failed retailer: We'll give you a clue – it rhymes with Charlie Chaplin

Re: but there's still Digikey & Mouser

As far as I can see, RS are owned by London based Electrocomponents.

Premier Farnell (CPC are the friendly face) are owned by US based AVNET.

Re: well-staffed

No. I met plenty of people working in Maplins who knew their stuff. Not all of course, but there were some sharp keen hobbyist people working there.

Re: My perspective

People who still buy a 13 amp plug won't go to Screwfix and queue and wait for someone to fetch it for you and then voice all their personal contact details in front of a queue of strangers. They are pickup items in Wilko or similar.

But needing a plug nowadays is becoming less necessary.

Re: Profitability

It wasn't about the components and cables, they had become a sideline.

By the 2000s the components and cables Maplin were selling were a fraction of the store. By then their shops was packed with more consumer items and toys, from battery powered toddler vehicles, off the shelf RC toys, mirror balls and disco lights, USB vinyl conversion turntables and in car entertainment. Then on the checkout counter there would be a box of multi-tip screwdrivers or some other flashlight/torch or multi-tool. A spindle of 100 cheap CD-RW, and a 12 pack of cheapo AA cells. The components were never ever going to grow and sustain the business, all that profit was made on these other toys.

Braking bad: Mitsubishi recalls 68k SUVs over buggy software

Re: What did we do before they invented ABS?

Braking until one or more of the wheels locks up and skids has broken traction and backing off a bit probably won't help. The technique taught before ABS was called cadence braking and allowed maximum braking whilst still allowing a driver to steer. If stopping in a straight line then threshold braking, which is maximum brake force without fully locking wheels is better.

WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until long after the war

Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

Operation mincemeat corpse was discovered by the Spanish and the information reported to the Nazi command.

Re: Standard German and Dialects?

but I don't think the Poles who got things rolling are given their due.

They most certainly are appreciated and given their due respects within those folk that follow the Bletchley Park story, and by Bletchley Park itself.

It's Hollywood history that neglects them, and quite a lot of other stuff too.

That scary old system with 'do not touch' on it? Your boss very much wants you to touch it. Now what do you do?

I worked at a place where there was a super high-availability, shared-nothing, geo-dispersed cluster that was put up before these things were easy. It was made up with 3rd party utilities and DIY hacks. The people that set it up had long since left and nobody could support it, the complicated allsorts lashup caused more downtime than it solved and every one was scared of it.

But it cost unmentionable thousands so management wouldn't let us replace it with a modern cluster.

Until it broke in a way that a reboot wouldn't fix.

iFixit engineers have an L of a time pulling apart Apple's iPhone XS

Re: Real dunking ratings

Water proofing just makes DIY repairs harder because of all the sealing.

HP Ink should cough up $1.5m for bricking printers using unofficial cartridges – lawsuit

Re: HP Instant Ink?

It's amazing how those instant ink deal cartridges seem to last forever, yet shop purchased ones lasted a week or two.

HP Instant Ink £2 per month gives 50 pages per month. I've had the deal for 14 months and received one black cartridge which I haven't had to install yet. So £28 for a black cartridge. Genius business.

Enigma message crack honours pioneering Polish codebreakers

Re: Saving Private Lion

Unverified quote, that “the war in Europe was won by British tenacity, American money and Russian blood”.

And the almighty output of the Pittsburgh steel industry of course, because the ongoing work of the code breakers right through the war allowed the Pittsburgh steel to reach Europe, whilst the Wehrmacht was worn down by the Russian campaign.

Re: Polish contributions

The Polish contribution has always been well acknowledged and appreciated in the UK by the people involved in Bletchley Park and the various books written. It’s far from forgotten.

It’s mainly Hollywood that skews history, as usual but amongst all the other stuff that get wrong....

Garbage collection – in SPAAACE: Net snaffles junk in first step to clean up Earth's orbiting litter

Re: Orbital velocities

Clean up of space debris is one of the most common research projects chosen in academia. Loads of ideas have been proposed and plenty of brain power applied already.

Requiring space operators to build end of life deorbit procedures into all objects being launched, include booster stages is going to be helpful.

Developer goes rogue, shoots four colleagues at ERP code maker

Re: M biggest worry on a long visit to head office in Texss...

When I did casual work in a Napa Valley winery, there was an office handgun in a filing cabinet. I was told it was defence against rabid raccoons. I don't know if I was being bullshitted, I never saw it get used but there were bullet holes in the bottom of one of the dumpsters.

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Guns are definitely a convenient purpose made killing device, there can be no argument it does augment murder far more than any item which that can kill but has a primary function other than harming humans.

However, guns in the US is a stable door wide open with rusty seized hinges and covered in spider webs.

Legislating against gun ownership in a place that is saturated with guns of all kinds would be almost as futile as a brexit deal proposal.

What is needed is a culture change, not directly to do with gun ownership, but to do with the approach to life which leads to there being so many occurrences of folk who end up feeling the need to do as much harm as they can. It is something hard to describe but I felt when I was there and the reason that after 3 years I chose not to stay there despite all the wonderful people and obvious benefits of the place. In those three years, I never heard a single gunshot when I was not in the vicinity of a shooting range.

There was another incident yesterday too, Maryland claimed four more lives.

National Museum of Computing to hold live Enigma code-breaking demo with a Bombe

Re: Message Reads -

No, we don't need the message. We need today's reel choice, settings, plugboard etc !

Well I established it's not a linear ROT.

That's as far as I'm going. With 3 or reels, a reflector choice and a steckerboard I'm not going to get there.

Deliveroo to bike food to hungry fanbois queuing to buy iPhones

Re: Well....

I'm trying to work out why they are having food delivered to them in a queue when they could have the phone delivered to their home or office.

First Boeing 777 (aged 24) makes its last flight – to a museum

Re: Feeling old yet?

Air Atlantique still operate DC3s out of Coventry.

Re: Feeling old yet?

I was a young single man in Elk Grove Village in the 90s, I remember waiting to catch sight of a 777 when they were new at O'Hare.

Then last year I flew into O'Hare with my family of wife and 2 teens on a 787 and out again on a 777.

That's old, an entire generation.

Re: Feeling old yet?

@LeeE

One memory, that is still vivid, is of lying in bed at night and listening to them slowly drone past, and seeming to take an age

This one is vivid for me too, lying listening to the twin engine aircraft cruising over with their synced props beating together a slowly modulated hum. I would imagine what it was like sitting in the cockpit, where it had come from and where it was going. To this day anything in our busy skies still gets my attention.

Inspired me to go into flying as soon as I was old enough and had the cash.

Scrapping UK visa cap on nurses, doctors opened Britain's doors to IT workers

Re: our NHS will be short staffed

Here's your conversion course...

"we have to get over our prejudices..."

Re: What's that sound ? Brexiteers expoding.

As it turns out, a lot of employers do quite like an experienced, reliable local person. Especially if that person comes pre-cleared with SC security.

UK.gov isn't ready for no-deal Brexit – and 'secrecy' means businesses won't be either

Re: time for a chorus of

I'm getting more confident that people are slowly coming to their senses.

You can see in the words of brexiters that a lot are realising what a mess they've made and are trying to bluster over their embarrassment.

Boffins ask for £338m to fund quantum research. UK.gov: Here's £80m

Re: So the US gives us some hope

Forgetting the flask of hydrocyanic acid and the geiger counter to trigger the hammer actuator is a schoolboy error.

But your ability to pay for it does, tax revenue isn't a bottomless pit.

Hardly relevant is it? Either you get involved or not. Half-arsed efforts are likely to fail. Commitment done the right way will more likely pay off.

It so happens that the bills won't be lower in the UK than the US, I don't think that the cost of research cares about the size of the economy.

UK networks have 'no plans' to bring roaming fees back after Brexit

The Americans did pretty well out of independence - and that involved a damaging war and trade embargos.

The Americans did pretty well out of 2 centuries of mass immigration, I don't think that was what the EU leavers had in mind.

Re: GiffGaff

20GB, after 20GB it goes to 384kb between 8AM and midnight.

Usable in that you'll still get your emails, tweets and stuff, but you won't be able to stream video.

Necessary because some will use it as a DSL replacement and stream netflix 24x7 and giffgaff is a budget service without the the full capacity of the O2 network. They make this plain in the plan description so it's hardly a scam.

Re: Who's opinion would you trust most out of this lot?

(a) Theresa May - Jury out, hard to tell if she is any less of a bastard than the average politician because the other bastards won't stop rocking the boat.

(b) Boris Johnson - bumbling fool act is quite comical but blunt-tipped scissors and crayons only for him please. Everything he does seems self-serving and he is prepared to do it even if it damages the country.

(c) Moggy - in my opinion definitely out to manipulate the large uneducated underclass to serve his personal ambitions.

(d) Mark Carney - not an actual politician but no doubt involved in politics. Safe pair of hands.

(e) Anonymous Coward of The Register. Read some of their crass foam-mouthed comments above. Can't take them seriously at all.

(f) Jeremy Corbyn - dangerous. Labour would be in number 10 right now, would have won the last election had they had a credible candidate for PM.

I’m sorry , but this is simply not something that anyone sensible would say and it utterly reinforces my idea that Leave is a semi-religious frenzy rather than a rational decision.

This is a comment that should not have begun with an apology.

Why do people use this pre-apology structure for their comments? I never fucking apologise for anything I write. Don't like it? Downvote me, I don't give a shit.

The grand-plus iPhone is the new normal – this is no place for paupers

Re: Exchange rate

Boris and Co's efforts will not do anything to drop VAT (might even increase it). The consumer protection laws are not something I would want to lose and the state of the weak pound is down to the,.

Re: Time to switch platforms

Interesting how it works. I really don't like iPhones and iOS but use one because it's the only choice. I've given Android plenty of chances, every time they bring out another silly name release like Oreo or whatever, I get one and try and live with it but it ultimately ends up in the bin.

Really hoping for Sailfish to take off.

Re: Apple ecosystem

Correction - A fool and his/her money are soon parted.

It's a status symbol.

Of course it's not a status symbol. Every chav has one, they are everywhere and there is nothing special about them.

The reason that Apple phones sell so well is the alternative. If Android was half decent Apple would be nowhere.

Apple in XS new sensation: Latest iPhone carries XS-sive price tag

Re: What now?

Seems to me that iPonies (and most Apple products) hold their value much better than this in the secondhand market.

Post not clear enough and open to misinterpretation. £200 is how much it will cost the original buyer. For example, pay £1000 for it, sell it for £800. Assuming they buy the phone, as for many the cost price is irrevelant, they will buy it on a contract and have to wait to the end of their deal to recover the value in the phone.

The main point being that because of its secondhand value a latest model iPhone will cost its buyer-from-new only a couple of hundred quid in depreciation. All these people choking on their kebabs at the price didn't think too deeply about it.

I had the iPhone X for about three days before it was returned because it basically became useless while driving and I was having to pull the thing out of my pocket and hold it up to my face for three seconds to check a text..

Hold phone button on steering wheel down for 2 seconds, wait for beep and then say "read last message" to hear the message read out to you by a nice voice over your loudspeakers.

Saves you getting spotted checking your text and points on your licence.

Re: What now?

Average 5 pints of beer per week in a pub for a year £1000

Two reasonable bottles of red wine per week for a year: £1000

Cost of a 20 a day fag habit for a year £2000

Cost of gym membership for a year £600

Cost of a latest model iPhone if sold on after 1 or 2 years about £200

Milton Keynes: Come for roundabouts, stay for near-gigabit broadband

Re: An impressive challenge undertaken

We notice you didn't even bother with Milton Keynes…

Because it is not the 1980s anymore and firmly established Milton Keynes is now declining and will one day be as bad as any other place.

2-bit punks' weak 40-bit crypto didn't help Tesla keyless fobs one bit

It's not possible to start the car with the key out of the car, or in a bag in the boot. Anywhere else inside the passenger compartment works fine.

This is my experience with Nissan and the other cars too. And if you try and lock the car using the touch sensor with the key inside it will squeal like a pig. Yet if the fob is 1CM from the outside of the door it all works fine.

It's here! Qualcomm's new watch chip is finally here! Oh, uh, never mind

The Pebble was E-ink some 5 years or so ago.

And there are a few other options now, like the aforementioned Bip.

I wonder if it knows about British Summer Time?

Not sure it needs to when it syncs time from the phone. It does have metric and imperial settings though.

I received the Amazfit Bip 12 days ago, I charged it to only 95% because I was impatient and it's now at 48%.

I'm technical, and I had a smartwatch - a Pebble, until it broke and the company shut down so I couldn't replace it.

You can replace it, from Ebay. I sold 2 of mine on there last month. rebble.io has kept the Pebbles alive. Unfortunately iOS 11 is unreliable with them but they will work with shitdroid.

The real replacement is Amazfit Bip lite. It's just like a Pebble clone but better, includes a GPS and heart monitor and costs one third of the price. I bought one direct from China for £37 and it works with the Mi Fit app. It feels like what Pebble would have become if they continued - in everything except price.

Volkswagen faces fresh Dieselgate lawsuit in Germany – report

So as far as I can see, VW has fixed the problem and paid me a lot of cash, too.

But it's still a Volkswagen.

No amount of cash would be enough for me.

Re: Tze Germans...

@phuzz, both links you give are also maybes. Neither are anything near as blatant as VW's breach.

So, yeah, it is true.

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

Re: I could not agree more

I have a problem with model / view and.... argh "controlller" ? !!!

Please, take me to my safe space. Now. Please. I think I'm going to have a meltdown. And have the police meet me there, I wish to make a complaint.

Raspberry Pi supremo Eben Upton talks to The Reg about Pi PoE woes

Re: Another option (USB over PoE)

There are PoE solutions for the Pi that have been available many years. I had one from Adafruit which powered a Pi wanted on a mast with a short and very particular length of antenna cable run. That worked for a long time until this recent hot summer did for it.

PSUs with a high current capability but a ripply output are still not very good on the Pi. But that's not just a Pi problem.

Fake SD cards are also crap whatever you put them in.

USB bus is a bottleneck, but I don't know what the timing issues referred to are, never heard about these despite being a Pi user since the first 10,000 batch.

Mines the cupboard with the Beagleboard somewhere at the back of one of the drawers because let's face it, the OS implementation is a bit shite.