Posts by Trainee grumpy old ****

Google advises Android users to be careful of Microsoft Teams if they want to call 911

Does this issue impact all emergency phone numbers?

Is it only calls to 911 or are calls to other emergency numbers like 999 or 112 similarly impacted?

Insane homeowners association tries to fine resident for dick-shaped outline car left in snow

Re: Power unchecked

Not a left-pondian nor a great Trump fan, BUT am never ceased to be amazed by people complaining about him not winning the popular vote.

That was not the first ever election with the electoral college.

His opponent was supposedly someone who knew her way around the American political system, had $DEITY knows how many political advisers plus a husband who had won the presidency twice etc etc etc and yet not a single one of them was able to do the simple electoral maths as to how many states they needed to win?

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

Re: Again I have to ask...

"plotting our overthrowing of western capitalism" and not seeing any issue with owning devices from Amazon, Google, Apple

There something you are definitely doing wrong....

Are you sure your disc drive has stopped rotating, or are you just ignoring the messages?

Re: You've already had a second vote

So, when you vote for a party you fully support their entire manifesto without question?

I may not support the entire manifesto of the party that I vote for but if there is a manifesto pledge on a policy which I have very strong disagreement with then I do not vote for that party. I try and find another party which does agree with my views on that policy and vote for them.

If remaining in the EU was really that important for so many people then I would have expected the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP and PC to have done much better in 2017 election as ISTR they were all quite vocal in their pro-Remain stance. As it happens they all saw a very small fall in their vote share at the national level from the 2015 election (even if some of them picked up a few additional seats).

If a candidate stands for election on a manifesto with their fingers figuratively crossed behind their back then they probably should consider whether they are in the right party.

And BTW, in the 2016 referendum I voted to stay in the EU. By the time of the 2017 GE I had got so fed up with the constant carping by the remain lobby that I became a leaver. For some strange and unfathomable reason, being constantly disparaged as a thick, knuckle dragging Neanderthal has not yet convinced me to change my mind back.

Re: You've already had a second vote

87% voted for parties of whom some supported Brexit and some opposed it.

FTFY

87% voted for candidates who stood for parties whose manifestos committed them to implementing Brexit.

FYFFY

Oracle boss's Brexit Britain trip shutdown due to US government shutdown

Based on my experience (of US tv and films, natch), every US citizen has their own personal attorney, physician and therapist on speed dial.

and dentist!

Tech giant to spend $500m dealing with housing crisis caused by tech giants

Re: Clever idea to retain employees

The way I read the article, the funding is meant for housing people who are NOT in receipt of the sorts of salaries that Microsoft employees get.

The axeman strikes again: Microsoft has real commitment issues

I wonder

Is SatNad attempting to be Microsoft's Elop?

Gov contractor nicked on suspicion of Official Secrets Act breach

Evidently not from The Laundry

Charged under Section 1 of the OSA and not section 3....

No Cthulhu icon so this one will have to do ===>

Cassini probe's death dive to send data at just 27 kilobits per second

"It'll have to go"

As Cassini dives through the clouds I wonder if the local inhabitants will look up to see this intruder and once they find out where it came from will they turn to singing "a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life, and the obliteration of all other life forms."

New measurement alerts! Badgers, great white sharks and the Lindisfarne Gospel

Re: Those sharks

With or without frickin lasers?

They are great whites - are they even allowed to exist without the frickin lasers?

Trigger warnings?

All very well and all hail the new Reg units, but what do you take us commentards for? We don't need no frikkin trigger warnings!

Ruh-roh! Rick Ruhl rolled out of Ham Radio Deluxe in software kill-switch aftermath

modernize and renew

In addition to shifting Ruhl out of the company, HRD said it will be updating its end-user license agreement to "modernize and renew" its customer support policies.

Presumably to ensure that the EULA sanctifies a repeat of such action in the future?

If you bought a dildo in Denver, the government must legally be told

Re: What do dildos and Windows 10 have in common?

Both can potentially be a pain in the arse.

In the case of Windows 10, if it is not, then you are possibly using it wrong.

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Re: Is there a petition to insist that we DON'T change the new £5 note?

>> I did start one yesterday because this whole thing is a farce.....

And at least one person appears to have signed the petition while holding a contrary opinion.

Google may just have silently snuffed the tablet computer

I suddenly felt very old recently when, in conversation with a junior colleague, I recalled the first time I used a PC with a whole *1 Mb* of RAM and being amazed at the extra memory (all 300-odd Kb of it) would make.

Said colleague admitted to his first PC having had a mere 512 Mb of RAM.....

Australian geoboffin discovers 3.7 billion year old fossils after ice melts

Re: 6000 years

> I don't recall stromatolites being mentioned... did I miss those verses?

They mustn't have got a place on the ark - just like the dinosaurs.

WhatsApp is to hand your phone number to Facebook

The only surprise

was that they haven't already being doing this (or so they say)

Some months ago the name of someone I worked with for a few years turned up in the Facebook suggested friends list.

We lived in different cities, worked for different employers but worked together on a couple of projects for a common customer of both our employers. This was all pre-2008 so generally before Facebook became widespread outside of university campuses and definitely before Whatsapp.

I wondered how Facebook made the connection as there were no common "friends" either. Then I realised I still had his number in my phone contacts. I've never had the Facebook app on my phone, but I do have Whatsapp installed and had assumed that Facebook had got hold of my contact list via Whatsapp (this person is not a Whatsapp contact either).

So if they are only now talking about sharing contacts, then how did Facebook make the connection? Spooky!

Excel hell messes up ~20 per cent of genetic science papers

@Paul Woodhouse

urgh... accountants are the worst for inappropriate Excel usage, the horrors I've seen *shudder*

When the only tool you have / know off is a hammer everything is a nail.

Mozilla's trying on seven hot new spring/summer logo looks

The last one....

Am I the only one who thinks the last one looks a bit like an outline map of Great Britain?

London's Met Police has missed the Windows XP escape deadline

Re: Government investment in the Police

>> Haven't we got an extra £350million a week sloshing around somewhere now...? Ahem.

> No yet, we have to leave first, see icon.

And hasn't it already been promised to the NHS?

Reusable autonomous swimming microbots soak up 95% of spilt lead

Re: Uranium?

I don't know of too many Uranium-contaminated water sources, but I would think that Mercury would be an outstanding target.

Or crude oil. Think clean up after an oil spill or tanker / drilling-rig disaster.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina buys a Huawei superdupercomputer

How about

The Nine Billion Names of God

China's Great Firewall inventor forced to use VPN live on stage to dodge his own creation

Re: A taste of his own poison

And it was ever thus: do what I say, not what I do.

That one phone the FBI wanted unlocked? Here are 63 more, says ACLU

More fool you

If you expected them to be telling the truth when they said "there's just one"

Cunning scam: Mobe app stalks victims then emails booby-trapped bogus speeding tickets

Re: Ingenius scam.

I can understand the GPS thing and getting the email address, but how do they get the license plate picture?

By the time the mark realises that the attachment does not contain an image of the license plate it is too late.

Bug bounty hunters score big dollars and the boom's only just begun

Is it just me?

As I read through the article I had a growing feeling that it would end with a plug for a "learn to be a bug hunter" course of some sort. It sounded more and more like one of those "work from home for just a few hours and make xK £/$/€ per month/week/day" posts you come across in some forums.

Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe

Re: What a moron

He's a VC - he was never going to want anything else.

Given his ringing endorsement, presumably what he looks for in an applicant is the ability to discuss a random edition of The Economist cover to cover rather than the quality or viability of the project requesting funding.

Challenge! German drives from South Africa to Norway in nine days

And how did they get to Amman?

To reach Europe - and avoid Syria - the team flew from Amman, Jordan.

But they don't appear to have driven in Jordan. The list of 19 countries, presumably in chronological order, goes straight from Egypt to Turkey.

Met Police wants to keep billions of number plate scans after cutoff date

Re: returning to the DNA issue*

>> SOP runs it through the database, and - horror of horrors - 5 matches are returned.

The cynic in me says they'll pick one of the 5 and keep schtum about the others.

Re: Why are we surprised?

>> If they caught then the "oops we forgot" or "there are no clear guidelines" ploy is used.

you forgot "no one is above the law(*)" and "lessons will be learned".

(*) exceptionsapplyseefineprintburiedinafootnoteonpage94

Cardinal sin: Ex St Louis baseball exec cops to 'hacking' rival team's db

Email account of an ex-employee still receiving emails?

" Even when unauthorized access to the database was detected by the Astros and user passwords were changed, Correa simply logged into the staffer's email account and lifted the new credentials."

Seems to imply that when the employee left the Cardinals they did not suspend / delete his email account (assuming it was a corporate account) or remove it from all distribution lists (if it was a personal account)

British bureaucrats are world's most social-media-tastic

Never a more apt acronym?

"gag"

(see OECD shortened url)

France says 'non' to Wi-Fi and Tor restrictions after terror attack

@Matt Bryant Re: Trainee Who wouldda thunk it?!

Hey! I'm supposed to be the grumpy one here!

Sure nothing's perfect and yes Five Eyes won't be losing any sleep over this. However having seen successive governments falling over themselves to demand more powers for the securicracy, when we occasionally see one apparently declining to do this, it does seem like something worth mildly exclaiming over.

On the other hand, if you were just practising your Bah Humbug, you better get a move on - only 12 days left!

Who wouldda thunk it?!

A government that's willing to tell the "security" types where to go?

US State Department sicko pleads guilty to sextortion from UK embassy

Phished? Yes; Blackmailed? Yes; Hacked? No

"IT staff traced it to Ford's computer and, on searching the hard drive, found a spreadsheet detailing more than 450 email accounts **hacked** from over 200 victims."

Since when did phishing and blackmail get counted as hacking?

Hacker predicts AMEX card numbers, bypasses chip and PIN

Re: Don't think for a minute it's only AmEx...

And it's not just replacement cards. At least one UK card provider issues add-on cards with the same number and CVV as the main account holder's card.

MoD-founded firm Niteworks loses login creds of UK defence folk

Re: Name Change

"Niteworks"? With a name like that do they belong to the Seamstresses Guild?

Reg mashup rates CompSci unis for books, booze and boogie

I, for one, welcome our Precog masters etc.

"...having shot up from eighth spot to fifth since the 2016 survey."

In the real world it is still 2015 yet not only is the 2016 survey out but there has been another one out after that from which this progress is being reported?

<fx> whistles softly and backs away very slowly, </fx>

Bacon as deadly as cigarettes and asbestos

I'll stop eating <insert food of choice>, drinking <whatever> and doing <whatever else>

When the Daily Wail repeorts that reading the Daily Mail gives you cancer and buggers house prices. Until then, they will have to pry my bacon butty from my cold dead hands.

Alibaba experiences ‘I love China’ company rep breakdown … 22 times

Possible explanations

Either the gentleman was tired & emotional or he was warning the speaker to be careful or he would be denounced as an enemy of the people.

Earth wobbles on axis as Google rebrands

> One suspects that the sale and supply of josticks and whalesong CD's around Google secret hideout HQ spiked during this, erm, exercise.

Looking at the results, I suspect this is one case where the joss stick & whalesong budget was under-spent.

Indian DEITY lifts national pr0n ban

Cunning Bureaucrats

Gets the government of the hook - "we aren't blocking any sites"

Puts the onus on the ISPs. You can bet your last Rupee they aren't going to spend any effort verifying whether the sites hosts kiddie pr0n or not.

Result: the ban goes in name only.

Treble lassis all around!

US spied on Japanese PM Abe, Mitsubishi, and so much more

Someone's got to say it:

They were just checking what was under the kimono.

Moto fires BROADSIDE into the flagship phone's waterline with X Play and Style

Moto G 1st Gen

Have had it for about 18 months now. After a string of flagship phones with one exception (Orange San Fransisco), don't see why I should go back to paying a bomb for a phone. Quite tempted by the new versions, but my current phone is still going strong so it's nice to know I have good options when it starts to flag.

Police investigate strange case of doughnut-licking pop singer Ariana Grande

RE: That should be "Donut try to divide us...:", Shirley?

What about "Donut fore sake me...."?

Assange™'s emotional plea for asylum in France rejected

Re: Ironic..

That's ironic as ** the lack of ** a French Letter was what got him into this mess - allegedly...

FTFY

Facebook fiddles with News Feed algo. Brace yourself for CONTENTGEDDON

she / he did/said <insert random> and then his/her response will <insert more crap>

If there is one software patent I would welcome it will be a way of getting rid of all clickbait (not just from the free content ad network)