* Posts by Vector

649 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Feb 2011

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Move fast and break stuff, Windows Terminal style: Final update before release will nix your carefully crafted settings

Vector
Facepalm

Really!?

It's seems we're seeing more and more of this kind of lazy update from developers throughout the industry.

In this case, if the fix for the settings is "copy the settings file outside of the install folder then copy it back," it seems to me that you could take care of that in your damn install script instead of posting the idiotic workaround on twitter. If there are potential issues, inform the user and let them choose particularly with something like terminal which is generally only used by tech sophisticates.

Forcing us to get consent before selling browser histories violates our free speech, US ISPs claim

Vector

Re: Judgement

The difference between ISP's and other companies in this context is choice!

In many areas, a consumer has only one option for Internet service and these monopolies should come with restrictions just like this one.

Chrome 81 beta hooks browser up to Web NFC, augmented-reality features

Vector
Facepalm

WebNFC

...because no one could ever, possibly replace one of those NFC tags with one tainted with a malware laden Simusite™.

Nope, just can't imagine it...

Astroboffins agog after spotting the first repeating fast radio burst that pings every 16 days from another galaxy

Vector

Re: Aliens? Or something more prosaic? We're hoping for aliens

Besides, everyone knows gnomes steal underpants!

Free Software Foundation suggests Microsoft 'upcycles' Windows 7... as open source

Vector

Yeah, snowball's chance in Hell comes to mind, but I think that might be optimistic.

National Lottery Sentry MBA hacker given nine months in jail after swiping just £5

Vector

Re: This seems out of proportion to the offense

Yes, but as far as I can see from the article, he didn't create the security holes, he exploited existing vulnerabilities. So pinning those costs on him seems rather specious.

Kinda like saying the rain caused your roof to leak.

No horrific butterfly keys on this keyboard, just you and your big, dumb fingers

Vector

Yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and call fail on this one.

This is one of those "works great in the lab" things that will likely trip over all the variances of the real world.

Want to live long and prosper? Avoid pirated, malware-laden Star Wars free vid streams – and pay to watch instead

Vector
Happy

Whell...

They are owned by Disney now.

No, Illyrian, Naqaỹa, Mastika, Automex aren't Hollywood's hottest baby names – they're new monikers for exoplanets

Vector
Angel

No, Illyrian, Naqaỹa, Mastika, Automex aren't Hollywood's hottest baby names...

That'll be next year.

Interpol: Strong encryption helps online predators. Build backdoors

Vector

Re: Here we go again...

I believe you are cherry picking your statistics.

Browsing briefly on the interwebs, the consensus appears to be that correlating gun laws and gun deaths is a tricky calculus at best. This article from Fact Check asserts that the states with the toughest gun laws seem to have the lowest rate of gun deaths, but even they say the correlation is thin and proving causality would be difficult at best.

Complete with keyboard and actual, literal, 'physical' escape key: Apple emits new 16" $2.4k+ MacBook Pro

Vector
Angel

Re: Selective deafness

"For a portable device, less is more."

Unless you're talking about price...

Huawei with you! FCC's American Pai proposes rip-and-replace of scary Chinese comms kit

Vector
Facepalm

Re: FTFY

"Chinese law requires all companies subject to its jurisdiction to secretly comply with demands from Chinese intelligence services"

Does it not occur to Mr Pai (or anyone else in the US Gummint for that matter) that this would include the chip fabs (like TSMC) where virtually every bit of silicon tech in the world is manufactured?

Not to give anyone any ideas, but if I were the Chinese, the last companies I'd target would be Huawei or ZTE.

The sound of silence is actually the sound of a malicious smart speaker app listening in on you

Vector
Facepalm

A smart speaker that might listen in when I don't want it to?

Quelle Surprise...

Seriously, isn't this exactly what everyone around here was concerned about when Alexa made her debut?

Sure is quiet from Adobe. No security fixes this month? Great job. Oh no, wait, what's that stampede sound...

Vector
Facepalm

Flash?

No Flash or Shockwave patches?

Did we finally kill that thing off?

<Whew>

What!?

Damn...

Hands off our phones, says Google: Radar-gesture-sensing Pixel 4 just $999 with a 3-year lifespan – great value!

Vector
Headmaster

Re: Radar nada

Not at all. Step 1: don't buy one.

Particularly, since it still doesn't (i know: and will probably never) have a microsd slot.

Fairytale for 2019: GNOME to battle a patent troll in court

Vector
Facepalm

Method?

I went and looked through the patent linked in the article and, basically, there is no method!

The flowchart of the "preferred embodiment" pretty much comes down to: Establish a wireless connection between 2 devices, capture an image with one, send it to the other. The authors went through several pages of descriptions of this, that and the other, but never really get beyond the simple steps above.

Ummm, duh? This is not only obvious to anyone skilled in the art, it's obvious to pretty much anyone with a brain.

How long is a lifetime? If you’re Comcast, it’s until a rival quits a city: ISP 'broke' price promise

Vector

This could be an example of something that REALLY annoys me. Was the "lifetime updates" on the outside of the box while the definition was inside?

Reminds me of the old shrinkwrap software dodge: "Opening this box indicates that you accept the license agreement." The agreement that you couldn't review until you'd opened the box...

The gig (economy) is up: New California law upgrades Lyft, Uber, other app serfs to staff

Vector

Re: Knee Jerk

"Of course they'd like you to work for them like an employee, but be on the books as a contractor, they'd no longer have to pay SST, Medicare, FUTA and CA ETT."

In my case, all that money my employer wouldn't pay anymore would have gone into my pocket so I could cover those expenses along with additional money to cover my health insurance and other lost benefits. What they were trying to avoid was increased workman's comp premiums just because I was doing the job from home instead of a "controlled work environment."

As I said in my original post, AB5 is a one size fits all fix to a problem that needs to be addressed. But when one size fits all, it generally fits poorly. For me, since I would have been able to move to a place where my living expenses would be cut in half, this bill isn't protecting me from anything but a better quality of life!

Vector

Re: Knee Jerk

"Don't kid yourself about your employers ACTUAL intentions"

Perhaps you missed it but this is not my employer bending me over. I initiated this request. I would be perfectly happy with the arrangement. My employer is actually being more than fair in their offer.

It's not about them trying to take advantage of me. It's about not having increased insurance liability just so I can work from home.

Vector

Knee Jerk

While I agree that there is a problem which needs to be addressed, this one size fits all approach is about to hand me the short end of the stick.

I work for a small music tech company in California. I've been talking with them for the last year and a half about working remotely so I can move out of state. Because of Workman's Comp issues associated with home offices (there is actually a case where a woman got compensation because she tripped over her dog while working from home), most companies up until now have made remote workers independent contractors just to limit their liability. My company was more than willing to make up for the benefit losses I would see in changing my status and I was quite happy with the proposed arrangement.

Now that's all been thrown up in the air because (with a few limited exceptions) everyone must be an employee regardless of the situation.

Thanks, California!

Much love,

V

Apple will wring out $18bn by upselling NAND to fanbois – analyst

Vector

Re: AFAIK

"Very good actually. The places where 5G will actually make a difference are places with high numbers of people where they can put quite a few antennae..."

You can have all the antennae you want and it won't make much difference. The issue is not number of antennae, it's number of frequency spreads available. You could have 15 antennae in an area, but if they're all using the same spectrum, you're just wasting hardware.

Huawei new smartphone won't be Mate-y with Google apps as trade sanctions kick in

Vector

Re: One question.

Last time I had to deal with this issue, it was a pretty easy fix and, according to news reports I've seen elsewhere the same solution is available.

All the "licensed" software has long been packaged into a package called gapps.apk. Install that and you'll have ALL the Google apps you'd get on any other Android phone. Of course, finding a reliable place to sideload from might well be the biggest problem and that may just lead to a big black eye for the Orange One as people who want the Mate 30 get pwned by malware just because "The Chosen One" wants to beef with China.

Biz forked out $115k to tout 'Time AI' crypto at Black Hat. Now it sues organizers because hackers heckled it

Vector

Re: Openly and fairly...

You just reminded me of a youtube video I saw last night of Tim Michin...

Tim Michin Rant about Storm at the Reason Rally

Vector

Proof is in the pudding (why is that?)

I'd say if they are so sure they can break RSA-2048 then go break RSA-2048! Don't bang on about how you could do it.

Microsoft hikes cost of licensing its software on rival public clouds, introduces Azure 'Dedicated' Hosts

Vector

Deep thought will be able to sort it all out for you! We'll just need to build a planet, provision the mice...

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

Vector

Re: 25 seconds of fuel

My ex-wife's grandfather was one of the LEM engine designers. She said he sat glued to the TV during the landing with his own stopwatch. According to him, it was more like 13 seconds. Of course, sitting watching the event on television millions of miles away, his timing with the stopwatch might not have been the most accurate.

Imagine an Upside Down world where a vastly inferior OS went on to dominate... Stranger Things have happened

Vector
Thumb Up

Re: Once, in a fever dream it was working

well said

Vector
Angel

Re: Once, in a fever dream it was working

If you really want to pull your hair out, try getting them all to work with IPX/SPX (it was 1985 after all).

You're Huawei off base on this, Rubio: Lawyers slam US senator's bid to ban Chinese giant from filing patent lawsuits

Vector

a slap in the face of the basic principle of patent law

More like a slap to the basic concept of rule of law.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

Vector

Re: Holy Light Bulb of Antioch

One...

Three...

Two Sir!!

Meet the new Dropbox: It's like the old Dropbox, but more expensive, and not everyone's thrilled

Vector

Re: Bye bye Dropbox

Yet another reason not to use cloud storage. I have enough trouble keeping up with the ever increasing rent on my apartment.

This seems like yet another fine example of "task well done, now let's see how we can extend it and screw it all up."

Auditors slam FBI for shoddy testing of facial-recog tech. But no big deal. It only has 641m images on its systems

Vector

Re: Of course you've heard no complaints...

OR maybe it was ...

"...on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard."

Egg on North Face: Wikipedia furious after glamp-wear giant swaps article pics for sneaky ad shots – and even brags about it in a video

Vector
Thumb Up

----------->

That is all...

Germany mulls giving end-to-end chat app encryption das boot: Law requiring decrypted plain-text is in the works

Vector
WTF?

Re: More madness

They also seem ignorant or criminals' ability to do this in plaintext:

asdgljhn125098efg;kljn2445698regthsd8756q24t8dsf6h9sdgjdfsgj78sg4s

(not actual encryption. just a facsimile thereof)

Legal bombs fall on TurboTax maker Intuit for 'hiding' free service from search engines

Vector

Re: being introduced in the UK

Point taken and conceded.

Sorry, I live over here in the Republic of Murka. Our educashun sistem ain't so grate.

Vector
Headmaster

Re: being introduced in the UK

...you vote for an MP who you hope will go to parliament and vote in the way that you want,same as most other democracies.

That's actually not a democracy, that's a Republic. Which is what most "democracies" actually are.

Wikipedia entry on Republics

Vector

Re: Shocked ... Shocked ...

Well, consistent anyway...

Cocaine, psychedelics, DMT? They sure knew how to party 1,000 years ago: Archaeologists make startling discovery

Vector

Re: Number?

Humans have been tripping off hallucinogens for at least a millennia

Since when is 1000 years ancient? Does that make William the Conqueror an ancient Monarch?

What a meth: Elderly Melbourne couple sign for 20kg shipment of drugs, say cops

Vector
Alert

Re: " if they were smarter they might not have to turn to crime"

"Surely the "smart" ones enter banking or politics? Or both"

Smart? Politics!?

Surely, you jest.

California's politicians rush to gut internet privacy law with pro-tech giant amendments

Vector

I guess that means...

...we'll have to put this to a referendum after all.

Facebook: Yeah, we hoovered up 1.5 million email address books without permission. But it was an accident!

Vector
Facepalm

Re: "Please, pardon us as it looks we don't know we're doing what we actually do"

"...and they were asking for a password they didn't need just because..."

I'm still trying to figure out how an email password would validate anything (aside, of course, from the right to access the email account).

Then there's the whole "NEVER give out your password!(!)" thing...

IBM bid to unmask age discrimination whistleblower goes down in flames

Vector
Thumb Up

Re: There's a very simple reason IBM can't find it.

Wish I could upvote more

Wondering why 'Devin Nunes herp-face' was trending online? Here's the 411: House rep sues Twitter for all the rude stuff tweeted about him

Vector

Re: Agreed

Mom!!!!

They're picking on me!!

Hurrah for Apollo 9: It has been 50 years since 'nauts first took a Lunar Module out for a spin

Vector

Re: no nearby IMAX theatres showing it

Try the AMC Theater in Altamonte Springs

Only plebs use Office 2019 over Office 365, says Microsoft's weird new ad campaign

Vector
Vector

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours because 'The Cloud' is unavailable.

Choice is great! Insisting that you make the "right" choice, not so much...

Vector

Re: Nothing like having your work day extended a few more hours because 'The Cloud' is unavailable.

Yeah, when I saw that "continuous update" thing in the article, my first thought was "Great! So I get to relearn how the apps work every few months."

None for me, thanks!

Vector

Office 97 does pretty much everything I need from an office suite. Haven't really seen anything since that I would find compelling enough to upgrade. As a matter of fact, I've seen several things since (*cough, cough* ribbon bar!) that compel me NOT to upgrade.

You were told to clean up our systems, not delete 8,000 crucial files

Vector

Re: Recycle Bin

"These changes came after months of info emails and warnings about said changes."

Ah! That was your mistake.

You expected users to read!

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