Posts by G2

UK asks cyberspies to probe whether Chinese buses can be switched off remotely

Re: Oh really?

actually... the number of SIMs that can be concealed is unlimited if you also count eSIMs - these are just digital certificates and they are only limited by the storage space available on the device (more specifically on the secure element chip)

so even if one removes the obvious physical SIM card, with modern devices that does not mean that the connection to the mothership is now broken, there might be one ore more eSIMs configured as backup in the case that the primary SIM is not working.

Scholars sneaking phrases into papers to fool AI reviewers

Re: Code/data confusion

since you asked for a cake recipe but did not specify which particular cake type, here are the general steps on how to make a recipe:

- get wood from a lumber yard

- remove bark and break lumber into wood chips, add any recycled sawdust as filler too

- at a paper mill, cook wood chips in a digester until they are broken down into pulp

- pulp is washed, bleached, and softened

- pulp is again mixed with water and pumped onto a moving fine mesh screen,

- at the end of the screen travel path the pulp is an almost-dry sheet that is peeled off

- paper machines rapidly press, dry, and smooth the pulp

- the dried smooth paper is either rolled into very large paper rolls or further shaped into various sizes of cut sheets

- take one of the sheets and write the specific cake recipe on it.

You now have a cake recipe! =D

/s

Salesforce adds AI to everything, jacks up prices by 6%

Google Workspace did the same thing - and they even went above 10% increase in many cases

Google Workspace did the same thing and i did not see any news articles about it.

Google forcefully included Gemini AI in ALL Workspace service plans and raised the prices across all subscriptions - today it is impossible to have a Google Workspace plan without GeminiAI.

Starter went from $6/user/month to $7/user/month

Standard from $12/user/month to $14/user/month

Plus from $18/user/month to $22/user/month

see https://web.archive.org/web/20250101113458/https://workspace.google.com/pricing

and compare it with the live webpage.

Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter

Re: And the lesson we learn today is:

and as a follow-up:

Percussive maintenance should never be performed with as hammer drill... unless it is done during the removal of equipment for decommissioning, where that equipment was processing sensitive data, you MUST always use a hammer drill.

Microsoft tries to knife passwords once and for all – at least for consumers

Re: "It is faster using pass keys"

simple: passkeys are not "pass phrases", and "takes 2 seconds or less" is alo valid for using passkeys.

.

passkeys are actually public / private certificate pairs (ECDSA usually) that are unique for each particular service because when they are created they are also seeded with service ID data that is unique for each of them (usually based on domain name - but not always).

This way a passkey that was made for one service (e.g. Microsoft account) will never even be recognized (or prompted) by another service (e.g. Google account) because the service seed ID data is different.

The private certificate key of the passkey is never leaving the secure location (either a FIDO2 device. Windows Hello, Bitwarden store or other equivalent) and when authenticating that service is actually sending a request for a digital signature that the secure location is using when signing a response challenge with the same digital certificate key that was used when creating the passkey. The service then uses the public certificate that was enrolled when the passkey was created to verify that the challenge was signed by the correct certificate key.

This is also why you can never "save" or copy a secure USB FIDO2 hardware token / security key and why it is needed to have at least two such USB token devices - in case one of them breaks or is lost you have a backup already defined. Software-based passkeys though (e.g. Bitwarden)...that's another kettle of fish.

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

mileage depends on (calibrated) wheel size but ...

the odometer of a vehicle is designed to be accurate for the exact tyre size and tyre pressure as specified in the datasheet and that is delivered with the (new) vehicle. (and also, that size+pressure is usually shown on the plate near the driver door)

if the driver uses smaller size tyre rims and low profile tyres (usually done when lowering the car height) that will result in MORE miles registered on the odometer simply because the wheel needs to do more rotations to cover the same distance. Smaller wheel radius = it spins faster to cover the same real-world distance but the on-board ECU was calibrated for a different wheel size.

Equally, tyres that are under-inflated (usually done for more road grip) can sometimes have similar effects on the odometer - not as much as a smaller rim though.

But... in the case of a Tesla though... i think it might probably also use GPS data to compute odometer trips...and if it was shipped multiple times it probably registered those trips on the internal GPS as if it was driven and not shipped on a platform. Or maybe it was "shipped" in the sense that they hired multiple drivers to move it from one place to the other?

Firefox 136 finally brings the features that fans wanted

Re: Not to threadjack . . .

i took a look at their browser, the Windows version comes as a .msixbundle of ... 1.3 Gigabytes (?!!) ..i unpacked it with 7Zip, found 3 installers inside: x86, x64 and arm64 - each about 460mbyes in size.

I unpacked the x64 one and took a look... it's based on MS Edge WebView2 which is in turn based on Chromium.

The Android one also probably has a similar Chromium base.

https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2

Techie pulled an all-nighter that one mistake turned into an all-weekender

Re: sad... they fixed that

i think that is a troll comment...

Ubuntu has no such thng as a safety net if you're used to run as admin with 'sudo bash' and then typing commands as normal.

In this case 'rm -rf *' WILL get executed even on latest LTS or non-LTS release of Ubuntu.

reason: on Ubuntu the root account is disabled by default (you must enable it manually), and the safety net alias for rm is not enabled when you become root with 'sudo bash'.

(That safety net is only enabled if you enable the account and then login normally as root)

As Trump slugs Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs, industry groups hope trade war weapon isn’t pointed at their feet

Re: 'de minimis' exemptions are gone too

correct.. and they are just as likely to impose the maximum tariff / fees without checking, just to cover their behinds ...

Another key piece of information here is the volume of 'de minimins' shipments - almost 94% of shipments imported in the USA in 2023 were such packages (there are no proper statistics, yet, for 2024)

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/06/lawmakers-stakeholders-coalition-against-de-minimis-import-loophole.html

quote from the CBP, about 2023: "No less than 94% of all import transactions now enter the U.S. through de minimis rules [...]"

...and since Customs usually complain of being short-staffed, that means they barely only have workers to assess *at best* 10% of the packages coming in... (again, using year 2023 volume numbers)

This probably means we should expect to see a 900% ( not a typo! ) = nine times increase in the number of customs employees that are needed if the mandatory target is to process, inspect and assess tariffs on ALL packages - but it is not realistically possible to increase the number of employees practically overnight, just to handle this.

(comment icon: d'oh.. i so wish we would have an icon for Austin Powers' Dr. Evil pinky here... )

'de minimis' exemptions are gone too

Since 'de minimis' exemptions are gone too, we should expect to start seeing stories about even longer queues at US border passes with Canada/ Mexico and Customs officials nickel and diming people that return from drives into Canada (or Mexico) just for daily/weekly shopping trips.

25% customs tariffs on a shopping bag full of frozen canadian steaks are enough to spoil an appetite.

Also the removal of the 'de minimis' exemption means that all shopping delivered into the United States from international sellers on eBay / Amazon / Aliexpress / Temu / Shein / etc. is now subject to those tariffs too, even packages worth less than 10 dollars.

Azure networking snafu enters day 2, some services still limping

azureedge CDN sudden withdrawal symptoms?

given the retirement deadline of the azureedge CDN, I think the probable cause of this snafu is the rapid internal changes (a.k.a. not much tested) that MS is required to make in order to extirpate any connections to Edgio.

quote from the recent Edgio's bankrupcy article here on TheRegister:

in December, Microsoft was informed that the Edgio platform would end service on January 15, 2025. Worse, the company could not guarantee that Edgio wouldn't suddenly shut down before then.

/quote

Intel's microcode fix to save Raptor Lake chips may only work with default power settings

Re: Eee, when I were a lad...

5V? Apple MacBook CPUs still sometimes use 50V for the CPU data lines to these days...

... not that they can survive more than a few milliseconds on 50V, but Apple designs their motherboards so that a tiny ant or a speck of (conductive) dust can easily connect 50 volts on the CPU data lines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfwKXjl5vJU

Users rage as Microsoft announces retirement of Office 365 connectors within Teams

oh, the irony... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think this is a case of left arm (companies and users) blaming someone else because their right arm - (elected and appointed representatives) is / are doing EXACTLY what they have been elected, appointed and asked to do.

Almost everyone seems to blame Microsoft for the short deadline but i think MS pretty much has no way out of this - there is an antitrust case in the European Union which was actually brought by the EU companies & users own elected representatives - oh..the shock and awe that elected officials are actually doing their job...

And if the EU antitrust regulators are on the case that means that Uncle Sam's antitrust regulators are probably also smelling blood in the water and are doing circles around the MS boat...

.. and now users are complaining that MS is doing exactly what was requested of them under penalty of massive fines if they do not comply? oh... the irony ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oracle Java license teams set to begin targeting Oracle users who don't think they use Oracle

not just normal downloads but probably automatic update checking too.

i think they are not just tracking normal downloads, but also that automatic update check that is started daily / weekly in the background by pretty much ALL computers that have an Oracle JRE and/or JDK installed.

Even if the actual installer is not downloaded from their servers, the simple fact that the automated version checker sent a version query/ajax ping to their server is probably enough to tell them that you're using Oracle Java and which particular version you are using.

Short of being inside a walled garden / heavy firewalled network, that kind of update check is not usually blocked or considered malware by firewalls... after all, it's a "simple" version update notification check with just a few bytes transmitted from each side, right? (well, it used to be...)

ASUS creates a substance: Ceraluminum, which fuses aluminum and a ceramic

Re: Recycling?

it will not prevent recycling, because when scrapped and melted in a furnace the coating will become just part of the normal slag removed from the surface of the molten aluminium

marketing droids are trying to spin this as their hot new invention?

"new"? ceramic + metal variations have existed for years, some of the ceramic aluminium variants are even transparent >80% in the visible spectrum and some are even better than glass for infrared or UV wavelengths.

From the summary description, what ASUS seems to be doing is to use deposition of a very thin ceramic compound to a sheet of aluminium, bake it in an oven then probably rinse and repeat, to add another layer of ceramic.

Other industries have been using relatively similar processes for years with ceramic-based compounds...

e.g. https://patents.google.com/patent/US3928668A/en

Electrostatic deposition of dry ceramic powders

patent filed: 1974,

patent expired: 1992

Microsoft embraces its inner penguin as sudo sneaks into Windows 11

Sysinternals PsExec ?

Windows has had a 'sudo' command for years now, it's part of the Sysinternals Suite and is called psexec (or psexec64 - for x64 systems).

This new sudo probably means Microsoft is starting now to integrate (or...*cough* embrace, extend, extinguish?) the Sysinternals functions / tools into the baseline windows installation?

i've been using psexec quite nicely to run cmd.exe as SYSTEM account for years: "psexec64 -sdi cmd.exe" and up pops a terminal window that can run anything with superuser rights (SYSTEM).

It can also run things as other user accounts when appropriate parameters are provided.

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

re: cd /tmp & rm -rf *

that double & is going to bite you and some day you will make a typo... happened to me a couple of times but fortunately i was not doing rm -rf but 'yum clean all & yum upgrade'

... and had a few moments of confusion wondering why was yum seemingly waiting on... itself until i realized i had typed a single & instead of &&

Core blimey, Intel's answer to AMD and Ampere's cloudy chips has 288 of them

Re: Yes, improved threading is needed...

Microsoft and Oracle are probably already rubbing their hands with glee at the news of the cow patty's core count since their softwares are licensed by the core...

if one would try to run MS Windows on it, a single 288-core CPU will need a whopping total of 18 full 16-core licenses for Windows Server.

18 Windows licenses for a single CPU. ?!!!! That will be a pretty hefty cash cow.

UK government to set deadline for removal of Chinese surveillance cams

the actual quote from that proposed amendment does not quite say that:

quote:

(9) Subject to subsection (10), not later than 30 days after the date of handover of each subcontracted works at least 50% of the withheld retention monies must be released, and not later than the date which is 12 months from the date of handover of each subcontracted works the balance of the retention monies must be released.

/quote

this just shifts the delay point in the event chain - thus, if they delay signing the paperwork for the "handover" then they can delay payments.

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

Re: Hmmm

+1

my Mio MiVue J85 car dashboard camera is the same when it comes to the 5V power from the in-car lighter socket adapter.

If the voltage drops below ~4.8 volts the camera will either turn off suddenly or behave as if it crashes and reboots in an infinite loop - and it will do this even if it actually has an integrated lithium-ion battery, that one is so tiny that it does not really work when the voltage dips for more than a 1-2 seconds.

Such voltage dips are normal when the engine starts and many in-car power adapters are not designed for it (including the one shipped by default by Mio !!), and modern start&stop systems for cars mean the engine starts and stops every time a traffic light lasts more than a few seconds ...

...thus with a bad adapter (and the default included one too) the camera crashed and reboots every time the traffic light turns green (and engine starts).

(i fixed this by getting a different adapter that can also do USB-C power delivery at 3Amp 5/ 12 / 24volts - 24v is used on many trucks)

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Re: Why did it take three loops to find the launch abort button?

if you watch the fuel gauges on the telemetrey band at the bottom of the SpaceX video you'll see that they waited with the button until at least one of the fuel tanks was empty... in this case the LOX tank was pretty much empty when they pressed the button.

(look at 48m 50s on the SpaceX stream, and watch the bottom left of the screen where they show fuel levels for the booster)

Slacker vendors' one-fix-a-year effort leaves 88% of Androids vulnerable

Re: Motorola

8-years later update: Moto / Lenovo is still doing the same things: bait-and-switch promises of updates and then dumping users and devices under the proverbial bus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbFJytgC5e8

Lenovo lied to users of Motorola One about getting Android 12 for a year

(courtesy of Louis Rossmann)

John Deere signs right to repair agreement with US ag lobbyists

New York-style repair?

i think they will probably do the whole New York-style right-to-repair all over again... as in they will only provide assemblies of parts and not component-level parts for repair.

cue John Deere repair dealer technician, in a booming voice:

your tractor is broken?

you sir are lucky, we can sell you one off-the-shelf assembly of parts especially for that tractor.

yes, you heard that right, one assembly - it just needs the wheels - you just repair the old tractor by transferring the wheels from the old one to the new assembly.

/sarcasm

Patch Tuesday update is causing some Windows 10 systems to blue screen

Re: It's nearly 2023 and still ...

you cannot test ALL 3rd party softtware and drivers ever made.

none of my windows systems have a "hidparse.sys" file directly under System32, they are under 'System32\drivers\'

If some systems have it there it probably was placed there by a third party software... (or that O.S. is so old that is missing a ton of updates?)

but how do they even have a hidparse.sys file directly under System32?

i checked a few computers around me...

... ZERO of them have a file located at C:\Windows\System32\hidparse.sys

and all of them have the normal C:\Windows\System32\drivers\hidparse.sys

from what i can tell if you have a hidparse.sys directly under System32 that means it's an older version, likely planted there on purpose by a piece of malware so that they can exploit vulnerabilities present in those versions of the file / operating systems.

The steps indicated by Microsoft to xcopy the newest version from the drivers folder back to overwrite the old one in System32 mean the system remains functional but the attack/HID problem is most likely prevented from then on. (If you just delete the old one you risk getting blue screens)

This story about hidparse.sys starts to smell like NSA's EternalBlue + DoublePulsar all over again, especially since it involves HID parsing.

Maybe they were trying to hide USB keyboard/mouse/etc. interceptors/injectors disguised as extension cables or hubs?

/(black helicopter icon, because NSA, of course)

Uber fined $14m for lying to get customers to ditch cabs

Re: I really dislike UberEats

(previous poster here)... and i have to say that fortunately for me i'm not working in the delivery or transport business.

However, what i said above about the tickets is (unfortunately) true for many delivery services in Eastern Europe... they rely on the fact that we do not have (yet) fixed-location speeding cameras and what little traffic police presence there is, is relatively predictable and (usually) announced on Waze.

The Govt. already announced for next year the initial installation of some permanently fixed traffic cameras - but i do not expect it to make much of a difference at start.

Re: I really dislike UberEats

most of the current price increases are not (only) UberEats' fault but more because of the pandemic ... people started to order in much more while at the same time not visiting food places in-person.

Even if the pandemic restrictions have mostly relaxed now, many people have adapted to just ordering in instead of visiting in-person.

While before it was possible to (somewhat) subsidise a part of the costs of delivery from the proffits of the in-person side of business, once that side shrivelled up the companies started to realise the true cost of delivery: time spent, wages, fuel, vehicle costs and spare parts/maintenance.

Also, some will also cover speeding tickets just to meet that 30 (or 60) minutes pizza delivery time that many customers expect... those tickets will also increase the overall delivery costs.

A lot more deliveries to make compared to in-person food serving = a major increase in operational costs that has to be financed from somewhere.

Delivery costs to the end user are that "somewhere".

Crowds not allowed to leave Shanghai Disneyland without a negative COVID test

if they did that they would not have their money from the admission fees and neither from whatever purchases those trapped inside have to make just to keep living. Have you seen their price for a bottle of water?

Modified version of Tor Browser spies on Chinese users

Digital signature?

the original Tor browser has no digital signatures in the file properties either (when it is installed) and its files even have a fake timestamp of 01-01-2000.

Since they have practically "trained" their users not to bother with checking file properties for a signature on the main browser executable, it is no wonder they do as they were told and will not even bother checking installers either.

Letter to FCC: Why are US carriers locking handsets to networks?

Re: Got screwed by Xfinity Mobile

quote: we were trying to put in another carrier's sim w/o changing the phone number.

/quote

oh.. you were trying to port an US number... to another country. Another continent even. (Europe)

is porting a number to an overseas network, in another country (thus different telecoms regulation authority) even possible?

edit: call forwarding is one thing... but it appears you tried to port the number instead of forwarding it.

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

Re: making notes

of course... but this is basically the same support model that Samsung / Huawei / HTC / Sony / Lenovo / ASUS / etc... pretty much all connected electronics vendors are using, so it's nothing new.

Phones, laptops, motherboards, smart TVs, connected vehicles .... you name it, once their initial warranties are expired they become obsolete as far as the manufacturer is concerned and it's no longer their problem.

Once warranties end for a model / year... they no longer publish any updates at all and after another year or two, when you unbox a "new, old stock" phone (or other smart connected device), you can't even get to install the updates they have already published in the past - this is because they have now nuked the server instance that was tasked with serving updates for that year of launched models.

In 2015, my less-than-7-months old Moto phone was declared by them to be "no longer supported" despite the fact it was launched in the same year at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (early march 2015).

Planned obsolescence at its finest.

I had to root it and managed to install LineageOS on it... it still runs today but is stuck with LineageOS 17.1 (Android 10) latest version is from february 2022, quite a good stretch, for a device launched in 2015 and abandined by its manufacturer during the same year.

Re: Dave at the garage can sort you out

the police won't have to plug anything... it's all done remotely via radio.

These days they can already check tachograph systems remotely, including driver cards and work schedules... but the communications protocol is actually designed for all vehicles (V2X) not just tachograph devices.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016R0799

Re: Support nightmare?

nope..support is really easy: each year model probably gets a year-specific server / virtual machine instance to keep connected services management at a predictible, uniform stable version and that also allows for easy termination of services when all that year's model vehicles are definitely out of warranty: just shut down the virtual machine.

They will likely only support it for the warranty period and will shut down the server instance that supports that year's model after all the vehicles of that year are out of warranty (3 or 5 years usually).

If they really have (literal) hot-seat subscribers for that year's model they will probably keep the virtual machines for that series running a bit longer, to milk the subscription fees, but as soon as the subscriber count drops below a "profitable" number they will announce it's no longer economically viable to provide those services and will terminate all remaining subscribers for that year / version.

San Francisco cops want real-time access to private security cameras for surveillance

what exactly is the definition of "Historical video footage"?

they make a mess of purposes and apply different criteria to "live" vs "historical" video footage, without defining these terms.

what exactly is considered "historical video footage" under the new law?

are video images from one millisecond ago considered "historical" since they are already from the past?

How about from 1 second ago? 5 seconds ago? 1 minute ago? 5 minutes ago?

where is the cut-off mark? since they decided to apply different purposes/justifications for different categories of footage they should also define this threshold point.

Isaac Asimov published in 1956 a short story called "The Dead Past" about chronoscopy and it applies quite well to the live vs historical video footage issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past

"Happy goldfish bowl to you, to me, to everyone [...]"

Soviet-era tech could change the geothermal industry

what if ...

wait wait... so there's a beam that can drill 20 km down into the earth's crust+mantle?

how fast can it drill? what if instead of drilling into 20 km of the earth's crust+mantle we use it to drill into something much more thin...

... let's say 30 centimeters of steel.

how fast can it drill through 30cm of steel? and how small can the device get? how far from the object being drilled into can the beam emitter stay? can it be used from.. let's say, 100 meters away?

if it's reasonably small and can be mounted on a drilling rig for 20 km then i imagine it can probably be made a bit smaller when it's needed to operate on a material thickness much smaller than 20 km and from just 100 meters of distance...

.

.

if it's fast on 30 cm and reasonably portable then i can see an immediate, more practical use: steel plate drilling... specifically, tank armour drilling...

this could become the ultimate anti-tank weapon... especially if it ends up deployed against soviet-type tanks.. imagine the irony.

..

.

edit: oh.. or the opposite of shrinking the device: increase its mass and operating range and mount it on a satellite. It can become the ultimate space-based weapon - a tank-melting beam dropped down from space.

Indian government issues confidential infosec guidance to staff – who leak it

Re: bans the use of 3rd party ntp servers

not to mention DNS servers... not even root-servers.org /.net are allowed to be used as the root servers are considered a "3-rd party"... and also that national DNS server is mandatory because it allows easier man-in-the-middle redirection and/or interception.

Tencent completes 50 million core migration of its own apps to its own clouds

what could possibly go wrong?

I can't shake a feeling of déjà vu... all those eggs, in one giant basket.

That's one giant omelette just waiting to happen.

Next major update of Windows 11 prepares for launch

Re: Win11 22H2 hardware requirements will be relaxed

update: Microsoft took back its toys...

https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/09/windows_11_requirements/

apparently Microsoft accidentally turned off hardware requirements for Windows 11... ROFL.

Windows Update now says again that my computer is not compatible with Win11.

Re: Win11 22H2 hardware requirements will be relaxed

FYI from what i noticed over the years, intel uses the first digit of the series as a yearly counter and when they had 4 digits for model numbers it corresponds roughly to the year of the general commercial availability. (not actual launch)

Just add "2010" as a starting point to that number and you get a general manufacturing year.

i5-8250 ... the 8 + 2010 = 2018 (it actually launched in 2017, but sold a lot of units in 2018)

i5-3570 ... the 3 + 2010 = 2013 (launched by Intel in 2012... i bought it in 2013..)

the same general rule is still valid now when Intel uses 5 digits for CPU series/model numbers... but is slightly affected by the pandemic crazy sales / lack of stock.

i5-10600 ... the 10 +2010 = 2020 (launched 2020)

i5-12600 ... the 12 +2010 = 2022 (launched 2022... this year)

q.e.d.

Win11 22H2 hardware requirements will be relaxed

i think that those hardware requirements are relaxed by a lot for Win11 22H2...

why? my CPU here is an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570 CPU @ 3.40GHz with 16GB of RAM and Windows 10 x64 booting in legacy boot mode - my PC motherboard does not quite work right in UEFI Boot mode...

... and Windows Update has started this week to tell me that Microsoft has determined that my computer is compatible to migrate to Win11 22H2 ... WTF?

Last week it was still telling me that my computer is not compatible with Win11... and now it is?

note: i'm logged in with a Microsoft Account set for Windows insider - Release preview updates access.

New York to get first right-to-repair law for electronics

Re: A start

it's simple: This is not a right-to-repair bill, it was hijacked to become a deny-any-repair bill.

Please read the actual version of the law that was passed (A7006B) and not the one linked by TheRegister ( S4104 )

...S4104 is the initially proposed version, before it was nuked by ammendment "B" - yes.. the "B" version is important here.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/A7006/amendment/b

This new version "B" law is what was actually voted by the Assembly and it excludes practically all electronic devices - they use the language "INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO" when listing appliances (copy pasted text there, my caps lock is not stuck)

And under federal US law an "appliance" can be practically ANY device used in a home.

Laptops? LED TVs? they can be perfectly described as "appliances" because they fit the federal definition of what an "appliance" is:

24 CFR § 3280.802 - Definitions

(i) Appliance means utilization equipment, generally other than industrial, normally built in standardized sizes or types, which is installed or connected as a unit to perform one or more functions [...]

Google keeps legacy G Suite alive and free for personal use

Re: Not if you registered to upgrade...

i had also "upgraded" to Starter (in the early days of this month) and even foolishly decided to use the "pay early" option, to cover at least a year of service for my account, just to make sure that my domain keeps working

(all my home utility bills are tied to dedicated email addresses in this domain, they are collected via a catch-all mail routing rule in a single account mailbox)

i had to contact Google Support for going back to GSuite legacy and for getting a refund for that "pay early" rushed payment... but they didn't actually do anything yet for me :(

They just told me i was added to a queue for GSuite legacy rollback and that i had to wait for them to get back to me and with that refund.

I guess that means they are now flooded with requests for rollback from users... we'll have to wait and see...

BOFH: The Geek's Countergambit – outwitted at an electronics store

sooo, is this story about Newegg's warranty service?

interesting... this almost looks like Newegg's scammy warranty service policy is now featured in a BOFH episode...

i'm impressed... Simon managed to have this story published at around the same time that Gamers Nexus posted their episode 2 video about Newegg's malicious RMA process and fraud - they intentionally sold a rejected RMA product as a functional product - even if it has a damn sticker on it from the manufacturer that says it has bent CPU pins...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL-eB_Bv5Ik

Canon: Chip supplies are so bad that our ink cartridges will look as though they're fakes

Canon Europe official Europe-wide page to complement the German one.

fyi:

Canon has an official Englsh-language page to complement the German one... there's no need to mess with the German tentacle (unless you're into tentacle anime... in which case.... we need pics :p )

https://www.canon-europe.com/support/business-product-support/interim-toner/

Windows takes a breather in London's Spitalfields

that command prompt is stuck in text selection mode.

that's a touch screen large display (see where it says "touch to explore"?) - looking at the photo it's obvious that somebody was using it when the CMD window popped up and the "click" action of the touch was intercepted by the command prompt.

... and since clicking in a cmd prompt usually PAUSES everything indefinitely because it switches to TEXT SELECT mode... thus it got stuck in text selection mode - notice the "Select" keyword in the title bar and the white rectangular selection cursor in the command prompt window - that's where the window intercepted the touch click action of the user.

(To get out of text selection mode you usually have to press either ESC or enter. Clicking on X in the corner to close the window and terminate the script would also work)

James Webb Telescope launch delayed again, this time by weather

unusually bright star?

"appearance of an unusually bright star"... hmm, would that be the [second stage of the] rocket blowing up?

As famous expressions go, a rapid unscheduled disassembly tends to be unusually bright.

Intel audio drivers give Windows 11 the blues and Microsoft Installer borked following security update

This article is a bit incomplete (and i could say somewhat misleading) because Intel is in the process of transitioning driver numbers from 4 digits to 7 digits...

Intel Graphics drivers versions (which also include intel audio for HDMI audio) have already rolled over to the new numbering scheme, and in their case the full last seven digits must be taken into account, not just the last 4 digits. (those are just the build number)

Last week i manually installed Graphics driver 30.0.101.1069 and Windows Update immediately "updated" it to 27.20.100.9664 happily ignoring that Intel's driver numbering scheme rolled over 9999 ... so i had to rollback from 9664 to 1069.

For reference here is Intel's official guide to driver version numbering, with a quote from Intel:

The driver version numbering has rolled over from 100.9999 to 101.1069. This requires the use of all 7-digits instead of 4-digits for identifying the driver build number.

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/support/articles/000005654/graphics.html

Google Groups kills RSS support without notice

article quotes taxes = so long RSS ...

since Google killed earlier this year the possibility to embed a group in an IFRAME on other sites, for me RSS becoming unavailable is not a big surprise either.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/9687393#deprecated

Also, since some countries start to get crazy about applying taxes for every article quote or piece of news ... killing RSS feeds it's probably another logical measure taken to make publisher's lives more difficult?

Feeds from other sites into Google News / search snippets will most likely become the next victim scheduled to be eliminated.

let me rephrase that... it's probably another measure taken to satisfy beancounters. (yeah, definitely :p). Articles and/or content reuse can now be easier accounted manually, since it's no longer automated via RSS. :) (*grin*)

https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/14/google_fine_france/

GitHub's npm gave away a package name while it was in use, causing rethink

Re: domain name system

yes, but even with hierarchies the basic original questions still remain: is the email point of contact for the hierarchy management still valid? When was the last validation done?

Thus the need for periodic email revalidations still remains, even if names are not deactivated/reused, it's useful to know that someone is actively managing things and that that hierarchy is not just running on inertia without any management.