Posts by sorry, what?

OpenAI's DALL·E 3 teams up with ChatGPT to turn brainfarts into art

"You don't want a rote, robotic companion in your home"

He's not wrong, but then I can improve that quote to "You don't want a digital companion in your home".

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

Modem Mode Manifestly More Manageable

I've been with Virgin Media since they were NTL and have pretty much always run their router in modem mode. This was originally essential to allow multiple wifi access points (you couldn't use the router as one and a separate access point together without getting drop outs and other issues for some weird reason, and it was through the "virgin community" I discovered I needed to lobotomise their router to get this working).

This has worked so well for me, I continue to have separate devices and keep the Virgin router in modem mode even now.

Google rebrands 'android' as 'Android' to remove any doubt about its affiliations

Re: Pinhead

Me too - see earlier comment!

Glitterball Bugdroid?

When first seeing the image inline in the El Reg page, I thought this was a Hellraiser Pindroid... am I right, or do I need to visit the optician?!

Digital transformation expert on mass layoffs: I would have expected more from tech

Anyone think it may be the Activist Investors...?

Maybe the wrong article for this one, but I get the feeling this downsizing is a reaction, at least for some businesses (Salesforce, I'm looking at you), to the tactics employed by these "activists".

Just because you don't like how a business is run and have a wodge of cash to invest somewhere doesn't mean you should behave this way. It impacts real people who are actually trying to do a good job for the business, themselves and their families. Speaking from a position of ignorance, I doubt that's the motivation for "Activist Investors". While regular working folk can benefit (from improved shareholder value) via pension funds, it seems to me there are too few beneficiaries for this sort of behaviour. They come over as bullies and should be treated that way, IMHO.

Just my tuppence.

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

Re: And Again

Very annoying. First unable to access the cloud development environments I use, now twitter has fallen off its perch again. It's very weird that some sites are unaffected but others are totally unavailable. I'm assuming some DNS corruption somewhere...

No problem, switch to mobile data... right?

I use Virgin Media. I also use Virgin Mobile. Previously I've simply switched to tethering from my mobile when an outage has happened. Today I could not. I had no mobile data coverage and very "selective" internet access through broadband. It was difficult to find out what had happened because status.virginmedia.com was inaccessible, it hadn't hit the BBC website and twitter would not load due to the broadband issue. I have no idea if the two services were impacted by the same cause...

Fortunately both perked up by 9am, but the wide-spread loss of access was concerning. I was thinking I'd have to get virgin to fund a day off work...

Elon Musk orders Tesla execs back to the office

"They should pretend to work somewhere else"

If Musk really said that then he either hires really badly or he hasn't a clue.

I have worked remotely for years and have always additionally worked what used to be my commute time at the start and end of the working day.

While I do step away from my keyboard to receive parcels, get a drink and occasionally do a 5 minute non-work chore, the number of producrive hours my employer gets is way higher than contracted, and certainly higher than were I forced into an office, each and every day.

From what I see, I am not alone in this.

Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment

Re: I really wanted to like it ...

I don't understand why they made the context menu on files such that you have to access the "more" list to virus scan a download... not all virus scanners run automatically on file download and hiding this option is, IMHO, dangerous.

OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

VMS...

Verbosely Meaningful Syntax.

I used VMS (on VAXes) for about 4 years as a user. The one real benefit I remember from that use in the late 80s was how meaningful the commands were. The disadvantage - lots of typing due to the verbosity of the CLI.

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

PC? Nah

As even the body of the article mentions, it was a Home Computer. PC was a term reserved for the IBM monster at the time, so I can only agree with the OP here.

Cyclops Blink malware sets up shop in ASUS routers

Eejit guide to detection...?

I wonder if there is a simple way to discover whether one of these routers is infected? I expect a lot of these appliances sit in low-IT-capability homes and doing a factory reset "just in case" will put off most home users.

Govt suggests Brits should hand passports to social media companies

Is there an online petition against this stupidity?

Point me at it and I'll sign. Assuming I don't have to upload proof of identity first, of course.

Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400

Depends what you mean by computer and input device...

But have you heard of the Nokia E70 with a gullwing fold out keyboard in a mobile device, or the Blackberry, or perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Fold?

Oh, sorry, these all have displays (to be useable portably), so obviously not worth doing.

Re: ZX81

You forget the door wedge called the ZX80.

Acorn electron, Sinclair QL, various pre-built Raspberry Pies...

WTF? Has Apple never heard of doing an internet search?

Obviously, we know the US Patent Office hasn't, so they will give it the thumbs up.

This reminds me of a current event where a protagonist is rewriting history...

Windows boss Panos Panay talks up 'new era of the PC' – translation: An era of new PCs

If you want the local weather...

Look away from Windows and towards your Window. What is it with showing me what it's like outside when I can already see? And opening the window to find out if it's chilly ain't hard.

Tesla disables in-car gaming feature that allowed play while MuskMobiles were in motion

Re: Removing distraction = good

When you read statistics from US states that have introduced modern roundabouts, like fatalities reduced by 87%, I think (personally) that is a massive improvement. Sure, RTAs still happen but since speeds are generally so much lower they are more about property damage than death.

Removing distraction = good

Makes sense to me.

Still, US road safety would be massively improved by simply adopting modern roundabouts rather than having simple, signal-controlled intersections. Why hasn't this happened, despite the evidence around reductions in fatalities and other serious accidents? Because they are "too confusing" for American drivers, apparently.

We've only gone and got our hands on an early preview of Fleet, the forthcoming JetBrains IDE

Re: @sorry, what? -- Command Palette? Argh!

@Someone Else, grizzled is an appropriate term, sadly.

Command Palette? Argh!

The feature of VSCode I hate the most is the command palette.

Commands are less discoverable and figuring out which commands are related can be a nightmare like trying to find the right words to use in an Internet search.

I love IDEA's menus, toolbars and most specifically key binding features for their discoverability and the opportunity to lift out what you do most often for convenient use.

Apple scrambles to quash iOS app sideloading demands with 'think of the children' defense

that forever cut...

OK, so it costs some money to provide the security scanning and app hosting, search and download.

Solution: an annual payment for this service that is only enough to cover costs, and where a small dev can choose to spread the payment into a fee per download/in-app purchase until paid off. To ensure this, payments for such an app would be via the app store, including in-app payments. For the other model, you can use alternative, vetted payment services.

And this should probably be run by a not-for-profit that Apple is forced to support for free with the latest software for app security scanning, since that way they get to keep the OS and their users safe, like they want.

Salesforce fell over so hard today, it took out its own server status page

Re: Business-speak I’ve missed?

@Tabor, for me it's the Indian-centric abuse of the word "Revert". They use it to mean "respond", but that's not what it means... #sigh#

GitLab latest to ditch 'master' as default initial branch name: It's now simply called 'main'

In me yoof...

It was the case that any young male was called Master, like young females were called Mistress or Miss.

I really do agree that this feels like a complete over-reaction and "taking insult on other people's behalf", especially since master really does have so many different meanings. IMHO it's only when directly paired with "slave" that the meaning could be construed, by some sensitive souls, as offensive.

#sigh#

Would you let users vouch for unknown software's safety with an upvote? Google does

So you have to vote for being able to run the software...

before you've had the chance to run the software to find out if it's a "Bad Idea". Hmmm.

How about making it so the new software can only be run in an virtual machine with very restricted connectivity and only if the experience goes well, and the malware and anti-virus are happy, allowing the user to "upvote"?

Big Tech workers prefer 3 days at home, 2 in the office. We ask Reg readers: What's your home-office balance?

Training remotely @Cynic_999

It depends on the role. We have had a new graduate start in our dev team recently. We have put in place online learning but most importantly a mentor - a more experienced dev with whom the newbie is in touch at least daily to discuss progress and problems. We also have chat groups and ad hoc video calls initiated whenever anyone, including the newbie, needs help or to simply talk though options.

Yes, it requires the devs to have an appropriate attitude - they have to be willing to raise issues proactively, though we also have full team stand-up sessions every day.

I believe our grad is still managing to develop skills and contribute without physical office sharing.

This remote working also means we can have a team made of people from all over the place, removing geography as a barrier.

The context for effective working...

Entirely depends on your role, the stakeholders you interact with, the company's attitude and just how good everyone's connectivity is.

I have been WFH for a couple of years, since way before Covid. This helped me avoid 3 wasted hours of travel a day where it wasn't possible to be productive. Fortunately, the company I work for is quite able to handle this sort of behaviour and has cloud-based infrastructure anyway. It should also be said that this attitude and approach has allowed the business to hire folks across several timezones without fuss or bother.

The downside? I work longer hours, so my rate of pay is effectively diminished. And even then there aren't enough hours in the day.

World+dog share in collective panic attack as Google slides off the face of the internet

The entire g string fell off...

Exposing friends and foe alike to naked robots with their innards on show. Not just gmail and YouTube etc. (my son found he could still access YouTube through a desktop browser, just not on his device, so could continue to chortle at those kittens and their antics); gsuite was borked too. Looked like a serious authentication infrastructure boo-boo. I was told that my gsuite email address wasn't recognized at all when attempting to login. Ooof.

MongoDB loses its mind with marketing budget movie mania: Yep, it's choose-your-own-adventure Hackers with drop-down menus

Wish I could upvote the comment at the end of the article...

What were they thinking?!

Python swallows Java to become second-most popular programming language... according to this index

Re: Sin tax

BTW, whilst JavaScript appears to have concurrency, it doesn't. There's no actual multi-threading the the browser. Instead it is simply single threaded and able to wait on multiple responses from outstanding requests, appearing to multi-task.

Re: Sin tax

And what if I need to post a snippet of code on a forum (such as this) that doesn't preserve whitespace?

Re: Sin tax

I have to disagree. If I have something like:

if (condition) {

something;

something;

}

something;

It is very clear where the block is even though I messed up my indentation. If I have:

if (condition):

something;

something;

something;

and happen to use an editor that doesn't preserve whitespace properly (yes there are plenty out there) then I'm screwed. I have no idea where the condition block finished.

Oh! Look at that! The Register's post editor didn't keep the whitespace! Shame.

Re: "My first programming language, at age 9, was a Lisp dialect."

"Ey-up. When I were a lad, mi dad used tuh beat us wi' a pro-log tuh get us owt er bed in 't morning. Ee'd then make us wash wi' raw eggs whilst we 'ad a python round our necks. We'd be lucky tuh be allowed owt o' the 'ouse wi-out first licking the toilet clean."

Re: Sin tax

Starting with C and migrating to C++ is quite different to starting with Python and migrating to JavaScript. C's syntax is a sub-set of that needed for C++ and you can compile C with a C++ compiler. This doesn't hold true for Python and JavaScript. The Python syntax is, um, unique to that language and while there are some similarities with JavaScript (enough to let me help my kids with little extra effort on my behalf) the use of shitespace indentation and colons instead of delimited blocks is very different (and totally insane IMHO).

As to being asked to use FORTRAN at uni, you are either around my age or you had a cruel and unusual lecturer. Or both.

Re: Sin tax

I'd also like to understand why the thumbs down...

Re: Sin tax

What would have been wrong with teaching kids using JavaScript? I don't mean using every last aspect of the language, since there are some serious complexities in places, but using an appropriate sub-set needed for educational projects. Browsers come with tooling better than IDLE.

Sin tax

As a professional developer I cringe when helping my kids do their programming using this language. To me it's a poor man's lobotomized JavaScript taking a leaf out of the FORTRAN book of stupidity. I really don't understand why educational institutions have adopted it. Can someone explain the appeal?

Apple to Epic: Sue me? No, sue you, pal!

Monopolistic behaviour

Apple created the App Store and iOS for its own devices. They provide a service where they verify that your app is "safe" and they provide "advertising" of your app on the App Store. This makes for a "safe place to find and install apps". So far, so good.

Apple already charges the developer around $100 per year for the ability to submit apps to the App Store. Seems to be a fair price for the security review that Apple performs, so OK.

Now you make your app available and either charge a fixed price and/or have in-app purchases. Apple now starts taking a percentage of the money that people pay in either case. Well, if you're using their payment system that seems fair, but it should be similar to the fee levels that credit cards charge - down in the low percents rather than around 1/3 of the value.

However, Apple have stitched everyone up - you have to use the App Store and cannot use a different payment system and they have pegged their fees at a disproportionate level. (Google have done likewise, but side-loading is possible at the user's risk.)

I don't really understand why governments haven't taken action over this anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviour. It's not like app developers have a real choice here.

Clue's in the name: Samsung's next Galaxy Note line captures scrawls with responsive stylus then punts them over to a PC

Re: Longevity

... a little unfair. You get three years if you buy the device at launch date, but how many people do that?

Re: Biometrics crap like the S20?

I suffered crap GPS on my S5 Mini, but had perfect GPS on my S7 and great GPS on my S10e. Other S5 Mini users didn't have GPS woes.

My S7 and S10e device biometrics both work(ed) well.

Sounds like you have a duff device and you should get it exchanged.

IDE like an update, please: JetBrains freshens IntelliJ, adds improved GitHub integration, Java support

Microsoft or JetBrains... hmmm... let me think...

Nope. I don't need to. I haven't tried to use VSCode in anger, and only in the context of the Salesforce SFDX plugin, but it stinks. The UX is terrible. I did use Visual Studio for several years and found it rather limited in capabilities. The only IDE that really hits the nail on the head is IDEA. It just works so well, with superb refactoring support and brilliant git integration.

As to the "frustration" of re-indexing mentioned in the article - what? Sure re-indexing can sometimes take a while, but how often are you really switching context on big projects? Switching VCS (read: git) branches, sure, but that takes almost no time at all. I tend to have IDEA open 24/7, occasionally opening additional projects in new windows, but there's always a way to use that "re-indexing" time. Even if it's a quick trip to the "restroom" or to grab a coffee from the kitchen.

What the duck? Bloke keeps getting sent bathtime toys in the post – and Amazon won't say who's responsible

Wasn't decided feather to post a comment...

before it took off in a flurry, or to avoid such fowl use of the forum. As you can seabird, I avian uff pecking puns to post. Nest time I'll flight the temptation. Prey for me.

Only EU can help us, pleads Slack as it slings competition complaint against Microsoft Teams

Slack...

jawed that anyone would use Slack. My experience of it was at least 3 years back, so it may have improved, but at the time it was rubbish. Especially around attachments like images, for example.

That said, I also don't use MS Teams.

Privacy Shield binned after EU court rules transatlantic data protection arrangements 'inadequate'

Re: Standard contractual clauses

Those of us in the UK no longer have such protections anyway, what with Brexit and all. When Google shifted all my data to the US back in April I complained to my MP and got a dismissive bunch of drivel back in return saying that my data was just as secure in the US as it would be in the EU.

Soft press keys for locked-down devs: Three new models of old school 60-key Happy Hacking 'board out next month

Re: Alternatives?

I went for the TeckNet gaming "mechanical feeling" USB wired UK layout keyboard - the key backlights are ridiculous but the typing experience (I'm a dev) is good. At £22 you can buy plenty of these before you've spent the sort of money these keyboards cost... so even if the keys wear out, it'll be years before you regret it from a cost perspective.

Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost

Not puppets...

Muppets. You'd have to be one to use this..

Baby Diesel? Little d'Artagnan? There is another child of Musk in the world

Well, it's obvious to any bloke who ever had to buy smellies for their better half...

White.

'nuf said.

Don't Zoom off elsewhere: Google plugs video-chat service Meet into Gmail as user eyes start wandering

Looking back...

I wish Hangouts could do virtual green screen like Zoom and Teams.

Paranoid Android reboots itself with new Android 10 builds

Wot, no Sammies?

Does Samsung make it too hard to put a custom ROM on their devices? (Just asking - I have no idea!)

Commit to Android codebase suggests Google may strong-arm phone makers into using 'seamless' partitioned updates

I think we need some vendor-agnostic hardware abstraction...

Then the OS can be upgraded without even consulting the hardware vendors - just like Microsoft does with Windows on PCs.

Yeah, I know, not quite entirely aligned with this article, but...

All the vendors would have to do is provide the "drivers" (for want of a better word) and perhaps a partition where they can add their bloatware (to be disabled instantly) and their home screen app.

I'm probably being naive here, but M$ managed it...