Posts by russsh

Another rewrite for 737 Max software as cosmic bit-flipping tests glitch out systems – report

Re: So...

The 737 “classic” was designed to fly using a few cables and a human feedback loop. The computers only became critical to digitally cover for the instability caused by larger engines.

Just a little heads up: Google is still trying to convince everyone that web apps don't suck

Bridging the gap

At the same time, Microsoft is bridging from the other side by making Office so network-heavy that using it (365 at least) is just as painful on a slow connection. Integration to OneDrive is particularly painful.

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

Crowdsource

Wonder why they don’t just buy all the data from Strava about where people have actually been able to walk or run?

iPhone 8 now outsells X, and every other phone

Re: The 8 does prove a point

An all-screen SE (notched if necessary) would be an ideal format for me.

GNOMEs beat Microsoft: Git Virtual File System to get a new name

It takes a generation to forget...

ClearCase did this two decades ago. And no, it wasn’t free, but your precious code also wasn’t being fed into the big data meat grinder.

Microsoft partners to fling out collabo-visual Ginormonitors this year

The hydra

Refer to Dabbsy’s recent piece. Is this not just the latest incarnation of the unfathomable teleconferencing equipment with its six power sockets and Gordian knot of cables?

What I really want is a single monolithic piece of equipment that I can invite to my Skype4B meeting to project whatever is being shared and act as a speakerphone.

Blame everything on 'computer error' – no one will contradict you

When it’s their money...

IIRC when there was a minor run on an ATM that had fifties in the twenties drawer, the bank was quite well able to run a report and debit the customers’ accounts for the difference. One would hope that the same happens in the reverse scenario...

Android P will hear no evil, see no evil, support evil notches

Paddle Pop

Introducing a new form factor with built-in mini selfie stick

Net neutrality nonsense: Can we, please, just not all lose our minds?

The solution is simple and most countries already do this, with therefore little need for net neutrality legislation.

Make sure the last mile (and maybe the "outer backhaul") is available in the wholesale market - either from a government-controlled entity or by imposing rules on private incumbents. And, ensure this wholesale traffic is not prioritised except as nominated by the retailer using it (eg. classes of service).

Then, let the retail service providers compete with different offerings of free, subsidised or fully paid traffic. If a customer just wants unlimited cat videos - there's a plan for that. If they want a completely neutral service - somebody will offer that. If they want low latency and jitter for video along with bursty web browsing traffic - that can be done too. If they want a free walled garden with advertising - so be it. The pricing will reflect the costs.

Apple embraces El Reg! iOS 11 is now biting the hand that types IT

Why not just get a neural network to do the autocorrection - namely the brain of the recipient?

It's normally easy enough to work out the meaning of mistyped words, but difficult to unravel once autocorrect has taken it even further from the intended original.

What's HPE Next? Now it's unemployment for 'thousands' of staff

Re: HPE = Hydra?

Ah yes, but their digital engagement score (dwell time on site) is through the roof.

'Don't Google Google, Googling Google is wrong', says Google

Re: That'll confuse users

No, that's only if Google googles Google.

So, Nokia. What makes you think the world wants your phones?

Re: Realism without differentiation...Better audio is probably irrelevant to most buyers.

I think that's just as much to do with the environment in China - incessant traffic, it's not considered rude to watch a movie on speakerphone in a restaurant or train, speakers blaring from shops, pre-recorded tapes touting discount goods, etc. So maybe they haven't worked out how to make a waterproof phone loud enough.

His Muskiness wheels out the Tesla Model 3

Re: It will retail for just $35,000

I've never found being over six inches to be a problem in the back seat of any car.

'Help! I'm stuck in this ATM,' writes poor bloke on a scribbled note

I guess he failed three times to enter the lock combination. "You have been retained by this machine, please contact your branch during business hours."

Utility company picks NB-IoT, actively spurns rival techs' USPs

Re: Security?

NIDD - look it up. Low volume NB-IoT traffic doesn't go through the public internet until it reaches an upstream node big enough to look after itself security-wise.

Yee-hacked! Fired Texan sysadmin goes rogue, trashes boot business

The real question is

Did he release a boot sector virus?

Trump's America looks like a lousy launchpad, so can you dig Darwin?

Leccy in South Australia is a bit unreliable. Also to do with selling off natural resources overseas that we really shoudn't.

Dishwasher has directory traversal bug

Alphabet buys your dishwasher manufacturer

...then a year later bricks it because (1) it cbf supporting that buggy software, (2) not enough of your spending habits are revealed by your dirty dishes and (3) it can.

Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?

Favourite things

My vote for most annoying is the progress bar that stops at 20% with no sign from Task Manager or elsewhere what is holding it up. Only in the advanced stages of shutting down do the windows part to show the confirmation box that shyly popped underneath the application's other windows.

Airplane bomb fears spark America's laptop, tablet carry-on ban

Carnivore

Maybe it's an intelligence gathering measure. Duplicating your HDD/SSD at the passenger security checkpoint would slow down the lines too much.

Microsoft: Can't wait for ARM to power MOST of our cloud data centers! Take that, Intel! Ha! Ha!

WinComm? WinAvium?

How about "MicroSoftBank"?

Put down the org chart, snowflake: Why largile's for management crybabies

Cargo Cult

The highly skilled teams have chosen to use Agile.

Those highly skilled teams have three times the productivity of our other teams.

Therefore we will convert everyone to Agile and our productivity will triple.

It's basically the cargo cult fallacy. Have fun building your straw aeroplanes.

Anti-fragile

Anti-fragile is a useful principle when defining development practices. For example, make sure each bug fix includes a unit test to prove it stays fixed.

NetComm kicked to the curb by nbn™ for fibre-not-quite-to-the-home

Not quite sure what you're trying to say. Optus rolled out HFC primarily for analogue pay TV (for which the technology was quite well proven), and secondly for voice (which was somewhat novel and took a long time to get working, even after John Howard demonstrated it on stage).

Aussie trams equivalent to 30 skateboarding rhinos

Z, A and B class

Many of those trams were built when "supporting the steel industry" was a design goal. I was once in a taxi hit by one, the taxi was undriveable, tram only stopped out of courtesy then continued on its way.

IBM throws ISP under a bus for Australia's #Censusfail

Island Australia

Sounds like a job for TA and the Border Force - "Stop the bytes"

Death of 747 now 'reasonably possible' says Boeing

Re: Well, it will be a shame to see the 747 go out of service.

C130 Hercules comes to mind.

Re: The Clapham Omnibus went the same way.

Actually, either Malaysia Airlines or (formerly) Malaysian Airline System.

NASA tried turning lost spacecraft STEREO-B off and on again... but it didn't work. True story

Nitpick

So the IMU failed and the telemetry system reported evidence of this failure - not that the telemetry system itself failed.

Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update tweaked to stop you disabling app promos

Re: Dell?

The same Dell that has been installing buckets of crapware on its consumer PCs for decades?

LTE-U vs. WiFi fight gets closer to a settlement

Re: Share and share alike

Agree, @MT Field, I was referring to the unlicensed spectrum - the subject of this article.

Share and share alike

The spectrum is there for all to share. If I want to use a bit to communicate with my mobile provider, how is that any different from you using it to communicate with a WiFi hotspot?

FCC under fire over TV, mobile broadband signal interference fears

To be totally fair

Broadcast TV should bid for spectrum in competition with other uses, rather than being gifted an increasingly scarce and valuable resource.

Re: place too many broadcast television stations in the wireless portion of the band.

+1 for telling half the story and -1 for missing the other half.

Low frequencies are great for areas of low population density. Telstra's decision to pioneer 3G in the 850 MHz band made it a clear winner in coverage, a reputation it still enjoys today. (Just don't mention reliability right now.)

Tech firms reel from Leave's Brexit win

Re: That giant sucking sound...

Only the world's fifth largest (national) economy, not at all worth getting out of bed for.

Re: That giant sucking sound...

No, the world's fifth largest (national) economy, not at all worth getting out of bed for.

Re: That giant sucking sound...

No, the world's fifth largest (national) economy, not at all worth targeting!

How IT are you? Find out now in our HILARIOUS quiz!

How offshore support are you

Prank call at 2am then close the ticket as unable to contact the client.

Seagate intros Innov8: A USB-powered 8TB external hard drive

Ignition Boost

So it's a lithium battery then?

Australian government urges holidaymakers to kill two-factor auth

It's HOLIDAY season

To you - put those tax files down NOW!

To the govt - stop sending useless messages to taxpayers on days of rest.

Got a time machine? Good, you can brute-force 2FA

No news

So if the server/victim allows a million attempts in 39 minutes, then even without "stopping time" there is a reasonably high probability that a random brute force attack could find a valid code in the same time, and it almost certainly would do so in an hour or two.

The basic conclusion is that there needs to be a maximum number of attempts before the account is locked.

Linus Torvalds fires off angry 'compiler-masturbation' rant

Re: Maybe not goto's fault, but...

If the second malloc fails, it will return 0 even though *s == NULL.

I don't see how this example could be scaled to multiple substructures in a consistent idiom, either.

The Q7: Audi’s big SUV goes from tosspot to tip-top

A trick up its sleeve?

Mazda's 4WS did that same trick more than 20 years ago.

In that case it was to make a sporty-ish car (MX-6) sportier, rather than as a necessary aid for keeping the barge on the road around corners.

Practice makes perfect: NBN fibre deployments accelerate

Details

More detail publicly available here on a weekly basis:

http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/about-nbn-co/corporate-plan/weekly-progress-report.html

If it's any consolation, your "mainstream" media colleagues also seem to be unaware of this data source...

Kiss your Glass goodbye: Google mothballs techno-specs (for now)

Come back in twenty years

Google's "Apple Newton" moment?

Broadcom pitches chips at G.fast OEMs

Re: What's the point?

A 16% gross return p.a. doesn't sound too shabby to me. Especially if you're a government monopoly...

Turnbull to Big Content: Let your movies RUN FREE ... for a fair price

Free trade?

From the discussion paper: "Australia is obliged under its free trade agreements with the United States, Singapore and Korea (not yet ratified) to provide a legal incentive to ISPs to cooperate with rights holders to prevent infringement on their systems and networks."

In tandem with cross-border enforcement rights for providers, it seems fair to also ensure consumers have the right to purchase content/services at internationally equivalent prices (taking into account any taxes or distribution costs).