Posts by Paratrooping Parrot

Post-Brexit 'science superpower' UK still hasn't appointed a science minister

That. Is. A. Disgrace.

Ubuntu 22.04.1: Slightly late, but worth the upgrade

Update from Fossa went bad

I had a difficult time updating from Fossa, it eventually managed most of it after deleting some packages. It eventually gave up on installing gdm3 because of issues with cpp, x11-xserver-utils. I had to download the iso file and install it over my Ubuntu setup. Eventually got my Firefox back up and running as before.

So, do make a backup of your system beforehand. I had no problems with upgrading from 16.04 to 18.04 to 20.04. It just died at 22.04. Oh well...

UK blocks China from licensing Manchester Uni's robot vision tech

Re: How come it wasn't open source?

I remember that some research in universities can be financed by external forces. In these cases, they can have patents and so results from the research from those can be delayed. Those done by the students or initiated by lecturers are often put into open source or published.

Seriously, you do not want to make that cable your earth

If they did the same to a twisted-pair, they would become Twisted Fire Starters!!!

Python is getting faster: Major performance tweaks on horizon

Re: Microsoft Python 3.11

It will be for Workgroups.

An international incident or just some finger trouble at the console?

Switches

Despite being a CCNA back in the day, I have accidentally connected two switches via two separate cables. Cue the network gradually slowing down in the whole building and everyone asking what's happened to the Internet. Lesson learnt, maybe.

SPEC mulls benchmarks for ML processing performance

Erm...

“IDC expects enterprises to spend nearly $342 billion on AI in 2021, and it's essential that these companies understand what that money will buy,” Kang said in a statement.

I think they need to work it out a tad faster as it's 2022 already. :)

Linux Snap package tool fixes make-me-root bugs

Re: Snap is a bad idea

The other thing I despise about snap is that when I do a df -h command, it is filled with /dev/loop. I am thinking of moving away from Ubuntu because of the snap situation. How many gnomes do I need? I have about 6 gnome snaps taking up valuable screen space.

I don't want to do a df -h | grep -v snap as it's still annoying.

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

Last decent version of Windows was

Windows 7, followed by Windows XP Service Pack 2 and then Windows 2000.

I switched to Linux when Windows 7 was no longer supported.

UK data spillers fined, but enforcement slows: £5m in ICO penalties not yet paid

I am sure that if I as an ordinary member of the public didn't pay a parking fine issued by the council, then I have a feeling there would be some major repercussions for me. Yet these directors always seem to get away with it!

How hot is it right now? 'Water park catching fire and burning down' hot

It's the funnest, wettest, most splish splashy place in the world!!!

Congestion or a Christmas cock-up? A Register reader throws himself under the bus

At least the bus didn't Comet them.

The Audacity: Audio tool finds new and exciting ways to annoy contributors with a Contributor License Agreement

Getting rather annoyed

I used to follow Tantacrul's videos on YouTube, but this kind of behaviour of ruining Audacity is getting rather annoying. Is this some kind of plan to drive people away? I am disappointed with him.

Microsoft: Purveyors of the finest BORK since the 1990s

Back Orifice

I still remember chuckling at the name of the cracking tool against Microsoft BackOffice being called Back Orifice.

Google to ban emoji, deceptive marketing, and ALL CAPS from Play Store metadata later this year

30 character limit is limited

30 character limit?

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch will not be happy.

This is just a slightly longer version of MSDOS's 8+3 ASCII alphanumeric character limit.

UK watchdog fines two firms £270k for cold-calling 531,000 people who had opted out

Lots getting away with it

The main issue is that it's possible to make up phone numbers for caller ID systems. I have often received phone calls from those that look like UK numbers, but seem to be missing a digit. If there is a way of blocking those made up numbers, it would help a great deal. I will have a legit phone number that I can send to the ICO to complain about.

UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm's 5G gear illegal from year's end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all next-gen kit by 2027

Who should have our data?

Maybe the UK wants to give all our data to the US and will therefore fill up the whole network with Cisco switches to hand over all data to the US.

Internet blackout of Myanmar States that are home to ethnic minorities enters second year

Re: Puzzled

The only reason they refuse to act is that the State Counsellor is none other than Western darling, "human rights activist" Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Bigger than big: Linux kernel colonel Torvalds claims 5.8 is 'one of our biggest releases of all time'

Hence why he got

the Ryzen Threadripper CPU.

This'll make you feel old: Uni compsci favourite Pascal hits the big five-oh this year

I remember it in the early 90s

I was at college then and used Turbo Pascal at college. I also remember JRT Pascal for CP/M. I loved Pascal, it was so much easier than C, and I finally learnt to get out of the goto issues in Basic. Happy days!

Surprise surprise! Hostile states are hacking coronavirus vaccine research, warn UK and USA intelligence

Re: Bullshit article based on bullshit press releases.

Citing the Daily Mail and the US government as your source is a bit rubbish. Remember this is the same US government that loves spreading false rumours.

Exchange some currency you want to? Guess the BIOS setup keyboard combination first you must, young Padawan

Via a really looooooong lead!

Aww, a cute mini-moon is orbiting Earth right now. But like all good things, it too will abandon us at some point

Another question for QI

You know all those questions on QI about how many moons does the earth have!

UK Home Office opens AWS cash firehose even wider with £100m public cloud services deal

Amazon tax

Is that why Amazon don't need to pay tax?

Here's a bit of Intel for you: Neri a day goes by that HPE doesn't feel CPU shortage pinch

Easy solution

Move onto AMD Epyc or Threadripper CPUs.

Criminalise British drone fliers, snarl MPs amid crackdown demands

Make it like owning a vehicle

Have drone licenses, which one has to pass a test for. Also, drones should have some form of registration plates. I know that I am going to be down-voted for not being a droneiphile, but they are basically remote controlled flying vehicles that can cause considerable damage if used incorrectly.

Don't be so Maduro: Adobe backs down (a little) on Venezuela sanctions blockade

I am glad I dumped them

I was very annoyed at Adobe for getting their monthly revenue scheme up. You don't get to own the software, just permanently rent it. I am glad that darktable came up and that has been able to replace Lightroom. Adobe are just nasty ***** who are either happy to cream the money from users and treating them like garbage, otherwise foist malware in the form of Flash. I hope Adobe collapse completely. Horrible company, just like Microsoft who abuse their position.

Hot patches for ColdFusion: Adobe drops trio of fixes for three serious flaws

Blast from the past

Wow!!! I didn't know that people were still using Coldfusion!

Five NHS trusts do DeepMind data deal with Google. One says no

No investment in the UK

The problem is that the government refuses to invest in the NHS, instead is slowly handing it over to corporations such as Richard Branston. If there was investment within the UK, then there could be research into using machine learning within the NHS. However, it is all being handed over to the lowest bidder who are desperate to make money and to improve their own infrastructure.

Seriously, this sh!t again? 24m medical records, 700m+ scan pics casually left online

Managers

Usually it is the managers' fault for not recruiting trained staff who understand computer security to deal with data storage. They must also pay the computer staff properly as well. I think if managers' pay is directly affected, then these incidents would reduce.

MIT boffins turn black up to 11 with carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.995% of light

Must make sure that nobody associated with Anish Kapoor is allowed to use it.

Mozilla says Firefox won't defang ad blockers – unlike a certain ad-giant browser

Re: ABP Evil?

Use uBlock Origin instead.

JACK OF ALL TIRADES: Twitter boss loses account to cunning foul-mouthed pranksters

Twitter Hack

At least the hacker didn't try it on Trump's twitter account. He would be hunted down like dogs and then sent off to Guantanamo Bay!

World recoils in horror as smartphone maker accused of helping government snoops read encrypted texts, track device whereabouts

Thank you for biting the hand that feeds IT. It is this kind of insightful article that makes me love reading The Register.

Apple loses FaceTime patent appeal again. And again. And again. And again. And again... yes, it's the fifth time

Hypocritical?

How many times has Apple been suing others for rounded corners and other dubious patents?

Alibaba sketches world's 'fastest' 'open-source' RISC-V processor yet: 16 cores, 64-bit, 2.5GHz, 12nm, out-of-order exec

Cheaper chips?

Do the open source processors mean that they will be cheaper to buy? I am hoping for small board machines like the Raspberry Pi from these chips. That will be a boon.

Time to Ryzen shine, Intel: AMD has started shipping 7nm desktop CPUs like it's no big deal

Pre-built AMD more mainstream?

I sure hope that this means more mainstream laptops and desktops become available with AMD options. It's ever so difficult to buy a pre-built AMD machine.

July is here – and so are the latest Android security fixes. Plenty of critical updates for all

If only

Security updates seem t only appear if you bought your device within the last year. You may be lucky that your phone is supported by LineageOS. This is one of the major flaws with Android ecosystem. Many cheap devices come out, but they never get updates. I have been lucky that my Samsung Galaxy s7 had updates a few months ago, not sure how long that will last though.

Epyc crypto flaw? AMD emits firmware fix for server processors after Googler smashes RAM encryption algorithms

This is how you do it Intel

Accept the flaw and fix it. Don't go round trying to diss those who found the flaw.

10 PRINT Memorial in New Hampshire marks the birthplace of BASIC

It's Locomotive Basic on the CPC.

Now Chinese-made drones rubbing US govt up the Huawei: 'Strong concerns' DJI kit threat to national security

Re: Start offering evidence

You know that whatever the Americans say, Britain will agree. When I say Britain, I mean whoever is in power, whether it's May or whoever Murdoch supports.

Jeff Bezos finally gets .Amazon after DNS overlord ICANN runs out of excuses to delay decision any further

So if you have loads a money

You can always get what you want!

Upgrade refuseniks, beware: Adobe snips away legacy versions of its Creative Cloud apps

Re: What are you waiting for?

An excellent alternative to Lightroom is darktable. I don't do much in the way of illustrations, but Krita is pretty good. I am also using Gimp for image editing.

Now here's a Galaxy far, far away: Samsung stalls Fold rollout after fold-able screens break in hands of reviewers

Need better testing

I am guessing that the robots doing the screen folding test was in a pristine environment. They should have handed it to some testers to carry out better testing out in the world. I guess they are worried about photos appearing in the press before their official announcement.

At least they are halting the rollout and are not calling users stupid for holding it wrongly.

Google rolls out Android Easter Egg for Europe – a Microsoft antitrust-style browser, search engine choice box

What if Brexit already happened?

Would we have the web browser choice screen? Is this dependent upon the manufacturer updating Android? Or is this the Play Store update?

BBM is dead, long live BBMe: Encrypted chat plat opened up to all as consumer version burns

I prefer

Signal.

Crystal ball gazers declare that Windows 10 has finally overtaken Windows 7

This time next year

I will be removing Windows 7 from my laptop and will move onto a Linux infrastructure. I have seen all these people struggling with Windows 10, and I don't want to be a part of that. I may keep a bare bones Windows 7 set up as a virtual machine on the laptop, just in case.

I don't need Adobe Lightroom because I can now use darktable instead. Web browser and word processors already exist under Linux. I don't play games though.

Guess who's back, back again? China's back, hacking your friends: Beijing targets American biz amid tech tariff tiff

Hypocritic US

Whenever the US hacks someone, it's all fine. Whenever a non Five-eyes country does the same, all hell breaks loose. Smells of hypocrisy. As long as the US are hacking and spying on others, then I think everyone else should have the same access. If the US forces companies to install backdoors, then don't come running if others find the backdoors and make use of it.

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Rosalind Franklin

I believe she should be on the £50 note, so then more people will know about her work in discovering the DNA. Everyone talks about Watson and Crick, but very few know about Franklin.