Posts by druck

YouTube turns off cash tap for automatic video nasties

Bots

I'm sure there are bot nets to hire which will subscribe to your channel and 'watch' as many hours of video as you like.

Childcare is a pain in the bum and so is HMRC's buggy subsidies site

I didn't get around to registering until the 9th of January, but had no issue with the servers being overloaded them. Yes there are a few issues getting the HMRC ID (which is different to one you may already have self assessment tax) and starting the process, but after that it's hell of a lot better than many government sites, and I had both children registered within half an hour (would have been longer if my wife hadn't been there with her national insurance number memorised).

Hawaiian fake nukes alert caused by fat-fingered fumble of garbage GUI

Re: Why the FCC is involved?

Pai would only blame crooked Hillary's email server for sending the alert, and say this would never happen if all emergency communication systems were handed over to big cable.

Intel puts security on the todo list, Tavis topples torrent tool, and more

Re: Did Intel say something?

I notice some of their testing shows patched machines actually got faster. Please pass the salt.

Next; tech; meltdown..? Mandatory; semicolons; in; JavaScript; mulled;

Re: Memory time...

No!

{

block;

}

It gets worse: Microsoft’s Spectre-fixer wrecks some AMD PCs

Redmond office hours only

"The Register cannot find a Microsoft response in the thread, a reasonable lack-of-reaction given many of the complaints accrued over the weekend."

If Microsoft schedules patches to be installed over the weekend, they should damn well support users then too.

Linux Mint 18.3: A breath of fresh air? Well, it's a step into the unGNOME

Damn, beat me to it, I was a late starter at Mint 12, and I'm running 18.3 on everything from an ancient Atom netbook to a noisy i7.

Nest's slick IoT burglar alarm catches crooks... while it eyes your wallet

Re: Rasberry Pi to the rescue?

The most important security measure isn't an alarm, it's good physical security - and actually using it. Doors with good locks and windows with security glass are only any good if they are closed and locked.

I'm making a Raspberry Pi system them will remind me as I'm leaving the house if I've left any doors unlocked or large windows open. It doesn't have to be hack proof, or need backup power, and if everything is locked up and the worst still happens, the house insurance will cover it.

Hot chips crashed servers, but were still delicious

Re: My keyboard stupidity.

The BBC Micro had a CAPs lock and a Shift lock. Didn't seem odd a the time as it was my first micro, but very confusing if I try to use one now.

5 reasons why America's Ctrl-Z on net neutrality rules is a GOOD thing

Ctrl-Z

Ctrl-Z is better than Ctrl-C, at least we can hope someone does a fg in the future.

Former Intel EMEAR sales director takes Chipzilla to tribunal

Re: Self-representation?

There's an old saying that a person who represents himself in court* has a fool for a client.

*Even though this isn't a court.

Please, please, c'mon, just... please, pretty please, just, like, please use our AI – Microsoft

Learn Something

I give Microsoft AI's 8 hours (because it's not as good as DeepMind) before it learns not to use Bing.

Microsoft asks devs for quantum leap of faith

Why not cut the bullshit about a computer that computes a billion parallel universes at the same time and admit that not one real problem has been solved with a quantum computer, and probably never will be, even without Microsoft jumping on the bandwagon with another supposed language.

Mozilla and Yahoo! trade sueballs over Firefox-Google search deal

Re: Yahoo

Who didn't install Firefox and immediately change the default search away from Yahoo! ?

Drone collisions with airliners may not be fatal, US study suggests

Re: 250kts assumes

Glancing at a flight radar sight, there are half a dozen aircraft over the south east of England right now doing more than 250kts below 10,000ft. Most are around 280kts, so 300kts would be a better test.

Once more unto the breach: El Reg has a go at crisis management

How not to do things

Did they have cards for "Buy off the attacker", "Cover up the breach" and "Lie to regulators" in the CEO pack?

AT&T insists it's not sweating US govt block of Time-Warner gobble

Re: CNN hurt Trump's feelings

Maybe AT&T will jettison CNN in return for approval.

User experience test tools: A privacy accident waiting to happen

Re: Javascript Exception-List - Why none in Firefox?

NoScript allows you to whitelist and blacklist domains.

If you haven't already, add all of these session reply sites to your blacklist.

American Express inks blockchain deal: Will use tech to pay UK folk who bank with Santander

Bubble

Another one falls for the blockchain bubble.

Red Hat opens its ARMs to Enterprise Linux... er, wait, perhaps it's the other way round

Re: History

The StrongARM was made by DEC and included DEC caching technology from the Alpha.

Openreach fibre plan for 10m premises coming 'before Christmas'

“We need a regulatory environment that moves away from lower pricing to encourage investment in the network,”

Given the continual above inflation increase in the line rental changes from all Openreach sellers, that excuse isn't washing with me.

Los Alamos National Lab fires up 750-node RPi cluster

Pi flavour?

[Edit: as Mikel asks;] What flavour of Pi's are they using? Full Raspberry Pi 3B's, Zero or more likely compute modules?

Automatic for the people: Telcos forced to pay for giving you crap services

Too late

It's come too late for my disastrous house move; PlusNet were booked to come and install 2 days after moving in, I noticed they had the address wrong, so instead of correcting it they cancelled the appointment and rebooked it for 2 weeks later. The engineer missed that appointment and rebooked another for a month later. I had to drag out of them that the engineer claimed the house builders had not signed off the wiring - but I knew they had from the site manager. After the engineer came it still took 8 days before ADSL was enabled, and then it didn't work due to the new installed master socket being faulty, which took another week to sort out. At least the upgrade to fibre went through on the claimed date 3 weeks later, but was capped to the wrong profile, so it was another week before it was up to the full 76/19.

In all it probably cost me over £250 in 4G data for the dongle and tethering on the phone, and all I got was a refund of £56 for the line rental and broadband fees during the time I had no service. Nothing for the stress and frustration of dealing with incompetence on an industrial scale.

History shows why geeks will never, ever, ever... get along

Usenet

If you want to see real techno-tribalism, just look up some of the pre-web usenet flame wars (BEWARE: not for snowflakes).

Chrome update kills unwanted ad redir... WIN A FREE iPad!!

Re: Kicker at the end

The only thing that is disabled is automatically triggering an unexpected action. A button will be available to trigger the action, if and only if, that is what the user wants to do. No censorship involved.

Qualcomm is shipping next chip it'll perhaps get sued for: ARM server processor Centriq 2400

RISC OS not RiscOS

Unfortunately the chip has no 32 bit mode, so won't run RISC OS, which still contains a vast amount of 32 bit ARM assembler. There are also a lot more important issues which need development time than porting to ARMv8, so I don't see it happen anytime soon.

It could run on the Centriq 2400 via emulation though, leaving 47 cores available to the host OS.

SSL spy boxes on your network getting you down? But wait, here's an IETF draft to fix that

Poxy Proxy

A number of proxies will make all TLS connections appear secure, and hide issues with actual site itself, such as having invalid certificate. This can make browsing less safe.

We're not saying Uncle Sam has lost control on Twitter, but US Embassy in Riyadh just did a shout out for oatmeal

Re: It beggars belief...

It would also insure that it was 100% free of millennials, who never venture outside of Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat.

Way-NO, Waymo! Judge snubs demand for Uber's robo-taxi code

Or why not get an independent 3rd party to analyse both sets of source code? There are plenty of tools to automate the process these days.

Raspberry Pi burning up? Microsoft's recipe can save it and AI

Re: Why?

@Voland's right hand well if your coding is anything like your comments, no wonder its ending up in ->

'Open sesame'... Subaru key fobs vulnerable, says engineer

Re: WTF?

Rolling codes are normally encrypted or hashed in some way these days, so an observer doesn't just see 1,2,3 being sent over the air.

Twitter: Why we silenced Rose McGowan after she slammed alleged sex pest Harvey Weinstein

Phone numbers

If they can detect a private phone number in a tweet, why not do so before it is posted and warn the sender it's against the Ts&Cs there and then, rather than banning after the event with a less than useful explanation?

Q: How do you test future driverless car tech? A: Slurp a ton of real-world driving data

Unfortunately this system is going to capture some of the less desirable behaviours displayed on the road by people driving:-

* Unnecessarily large SUV type vehicles

* Rushing between delivery jobs and parking inappropriately

* Driving vehicles they don't own or have to pay insurance on

I'd rather see the trail carried out on vehicles the driver owns, pays for and cares about, doesn't involve blocking other people's driveways while making a delivery, and doesn't think traffic rules only apply when dealing with a vehicle bigger than theirs.

European Patent Office staff rep blames prez for 'slipping quality'

Re: Home leave ?

You might one day be happy to move out from mommy's house, but some staff have families and children in education, who can't immediately relocate to a country over 900Km away.

NASA readies its asteroid warning system for harmless flyby

Being hit by an asteroid would be vastly preferable than listening to Chris Evans in the morning (or any time).

Stealthy storage startup wants to fly read-write heads closer to disks

Re: I have some doubts here

The last drive I saw with a linear actuator and belts moving the head was a 40/80 track floppy.

Mattel's Internet-of-kiddies'-Things Aristotle canned before release

Re: an “AI to help raise your child”.

Raising children in the modern world, is one big guilt trip. You try to spend as much time with them as possible to give them love, support and help with their learning. But with both parents having a full time job, you never feel it's enough, and then feel guilty about using other things to keep them occupied such as the TV or computers.

Russian spies used Kaspersky AV to hack NSA staffer, swipe exploit code – new claim

Hiding in Plain Sight

What better way to perform the protracted and resource hogging task of scanning every file on the computer for something of interest, than to hide in plain sight under the guise of an anti-virus application.

Whether or not Kaspersky were responsible in this case, you can guarantee one such application is doing it somewhere.

Smart burglar alarms: Look who just tossed their hat into the ring ... It's, er, Ring

Re: Subscriptions

There is very little difference in the IR signature of 3 cats and 1 man, or even two very hot cats after they have been chasing each other.

Subscriptions

Non IoT alarm systems also charge an even larger subscriptions - I was quoted £49.60 a month for someone to check the picture that gets taken every time one of the cats jump on the table and sets off the movement alarm. They say should it ever be a burgler, the police will be rushing around immediately to catch them in progress. I suggested the police were more likely to phone back in two weeks with the crime number for your insurance claim, and they should carry on fitting the alarm to next door instead.

Foiled again! Brit military minds splash cash on killing satellites with... food wrapping?

Space Sponge

My idea is for a giant space sponge. It would need perhaps a km sphere of aerogel to capture both large pieces of junk in similar orbits, and small pieces at large crossing velocities. It would then use a small thruster to gently de-orbit, and create a nice firework display.

Re: Currently...

I think El Reg is referring to the Chinese test of an anti-satellite missile against one of their defunct satellites, which almost doubled the amount of space junk up there. The US was also planning on downing one of their malfunctioning spy-sats, but I can't remember if they went through with that.

Google touts Babel Fish-esque in-ear real-time translators. And the usual computer stuff

Re: No audio jack

paulf wrote: I accept omitting the 3.5mm jack means they have more flexibility on device thickness and have a little more space inside the unit,

There is always the option of using a 2.5mm jack, which became common when pre-touchscreen phones got really small. All existing headphones will work with an inexpensive adapter that can remain attached to the headphones.

Ignite: Microsoft drops veil on Honolulu, releases SQL Server on Linux into the wild

Re: Difference between Bing and Windows Phone

The difference between Bing and Windows Phone is; you can force anyone using a Microsoft product to use Bing by default, but you can't force a Phone user to buy Microsoft by default.

Computers4Christians miraculously appears on Ubuntu wiki

Re: Time to switch to BSD

Bah, there is only one true Daemonette!

http://www.bishopston.com/jamie/misc/bsd-daemonette/

We went to Nadella's launch of Hit Refresh so you didn't have to

Re: Will it be viewed cynically as corporate propaganda?

wayne 8 wrote:

Do not pick up anyone who has fallen. They may need to be stabilized. Picking a victim up can cause further injury.

Do not try to move a victim unless there is an immediate threat of more harm if left in place.

Nadella was correct in his immediate response.

Jeezus! Does anyone on El Reg forums have children?

It was a supposed to be a baby (toddler) that had fallen over, they are learning to walk and fall over all the time without hurting themselves. They'll cry, but all you need to do is pick them up, give them a hug to reassure them, and put them back on their feet. Their parent will normally do this, but may be struggling with other children/shopping/buggies etc, and need a hand.

HPE confirms Belfast-based 3PAR engineering office to close

Disasters

I wonder if HPe going cold on 3PAR has anything to do with the recent highly publicised disasters.

Mainframe TITSUP totals Oz tax tech, again

Let's all go down the Strand (our data centre). King's College London goes TITSUP*

Playboy founder and dressing-gown wearer Hugh Hefner dead at 91

1000 Women

That's only about 1 a month on average, which is I suspect less than most people imagined.

Boffins sling around entangled photons at telco wavelengths

Me too, and all I can contribute is "whoosh".

Hotter than the Sun: JET – Earth’s biggest fusion reactor, in Culham

Re: Do not press

I don't see why it's also considered necessary to come out of Euratom. After all, it was formed in 1957 and Switzerland are involved as an associate state member.

That's the point, on leaving the EU we have to cease to be a full member, but can be an associate member.