Posts by Pomgolian

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

Angle Grinder

I once had an HP laptop with a dodgy power connector. I managed to procure a

replacement from Alibaba for about 0.001c, but the original proved rather tricky to remove. My poxy 25 watt soldering iron couldn't generate enough heat before the metal can surrounding the connector radiated it away.

Judicious application of a 10,000 RPM 7" diamond cutting blade made short work of the metal can and I was able to remove remnants by "metal fatigue". The remaining pins were no bother for the mighty 25W iron.

Youngest daughter was much impressed and Dad's hero status reinforced.

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

Snotty!

"warning signs a mole rat could see from Mars"

Gotta chortle at that one.

GitHub publishes RSA SSH host keys by mistake, issues update

Blinked, nearly missed it

This happened to me, did a quick Google to see what the story was. No joy there so I tried again a minute later and it all worked.

All this in the same week I finally gave them my card details. Not massively inspiring. But then, Micros~1.

Windows 10 paid downloads end but buyers need not fear ISO-lation

Show us the stats

Windows owns 75 percent of the desktop,

Last time I could be arsed to look it was hovering around the 90s. I can't believe 1 in 4 people are using Macs so this must mean it truly is the year of the Linux desktop. Or is there one Chromebook to rule them all?

Larry Ellison mea culpa as traffic cop stops Big Red boss on own island

He only bought 98%

but 100% was available for purchase, so he was charged for the full 100%

Confirmed: Asteroid shoved by Earth crash probe DART

Re: DARTs and Pool?

It's as good a plan as any - have a nice cold pint, and wait for this all to blow over.

Re: Has anybody thought..

"I think. I am neither a mathematician, nor an astrophysicist."

But every second counts! 18 seconds at the speed of light is 3.348 million miles which is a lot more margin for error than I'm comfortable with. Then again at that speed it's all relative. I'm no physicist either, and certainly no Einstein.

Has anybody thought..

What the effect was going to be on the larger Didymos asteroid? Surely there is some effect now that Dimophos has less mass? Gravity or something? Is it now on a collision course? All this just as Bruce Willis hangs up his hat. We're doomed, I tell ye, doomed!

New Outlook feature: It freezes up when dealing with tables in emails

Proper Rendering Engine

If memory serves, Outlook 2007 dropped the Trident rendering Engine in favour of the one built in to Word. There were howls of pain among the marketing crowds back then due to the mess that made. Perhaps now is the time to switch html rendering to Chrome. If it's good enough for Edge..

There is a path to replace TCP in the datacenter

Re: Translation.

"easier than having to worry about whether your printer is local rather than in head office 2000 miles away"

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/26/windows_10_printer_bork/

With the latest Windoze updates, a 4,000 mile round trip is the least of your problems.

How to get Linux onto a non-approved laptop

Nuke from orbit

It's the only way to be sure.

When I bought my HP Pro book, the first thing I did was remove the NVME drive and shoved the SSD from the recently deceased laptop that necessitated it's purchase. Apart from having to disable secure boot, it booked up straight away with no issues, no drivers to install and all the hardware functional. Who needs to bother installing?

Password recovery from beyond the grave

Not happened to me, but

On the advice of my lawyer, I have an envelope somewhere in the pile of papers on my desk, addressed to her indoors. It contains all the important passwords and whatnot for just about every significant account I have. Apparently lots of folks have wills, but lots don't leave their passwords available, and it's a 'mare shutting down accounts and gaining access.

Thunderbird is coming to Android – in K-9 Mail form

Me too. If nothing else, maybe K9 will gain the ability to authenticate with oAuth2, which is required by Gmail these days. I had to remove my Gmail account because the failure warnings got too annoying and frequent.

Beware the fury of a database developer torn from tables and SQL

Re: Seems to have ended well in this case

Usually without a shroud of evidence.

How these crooks backdoor online shops and siphon victims' credit card info

Re: Ah, but how?

Bang on. Unless you have a heads up on how the site was compromised in the first place, removing the affected code is useless because it'll be back again by morning.

Does this affect all shopping cart systems or is it specific to a particular code base? Magento anyone? Asking for a friend.

Ad-tech firms grab email addresses from forms before they're even submitted

Unique emails

This sort of grotty tactic is one of the reasons I use a different email on every site. It's easy to both know which idiots misuse it and also to block them when they do.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

Re: Full names please.......

Indeed. I was always amused by the chiropractor I used to go to, Dr. Bach-Price. About £30, IRRC

Re: Full names please.......

I used to have a client who always introduced himself with his full name every time he called. Nice guy, Phil McCraken. I never saw fit to oblige.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS media released with APT fix as end of support nears

Re: Problem with ESM

Absolutely. The $750 per server is doable, but the minimum charge or $2,500 isn't. They're shooting themselves in the foot with that.

Still using Skype? Good news! After HOURS of meetings, Microsoft reckons it knows when you're Not Active

I'd Settle For It Doing What I Tell It

By which I mean when I set my status to Invisible, ferking remember that and don't set it to anything else until *I* decide, manually, to do so. Since the Upgrade to 8, this has been a major pain in the arse.

So Brave: Browser biz sics Brit watchdogs on Google's info slurpage

Re: _c_a_t__/_e_t_c_/_h_o_s_t_s_

Yeah, I got some really messed up page, like a huge mobile site rendering on a desktop and a Google I'm not a robot CAPTCHA pop up when I posted it. I kind of saw the irony with that given the contents of the file.

cat /etc/hosts

cat /etc/hosts

0.0.0.0 www.googletagmanager.com

0.0.0.0 www.googleadservices.com

0.0.0.0 googleads.g.doubleclick.net

0.0.0.0 ad-emea.doubleclick.net

0.0.0.0 ad.doubleclick.net

0.0.0.0 doubleclick.net

0.0.0.0 www.doubleclick.net

0.0.0.0 www.google-analytics.com

0.0.0.0 google-analytics.com

So phar, so FUD: PHP flaw puts WordPress sites at risk of hacks

Re: Good alternatives to WordPress?

concrete5.org

First A380 flown in anger to be broken up for parts

Emirates

Having just made two trips from NZ to the UK in the last month, flying Emirates via Dubai on an A380-800 I found it a really comfortable trip. I'm 6'6" with long legs, and there was plenty of leg room in cattle class. In flight entertainment is great, too. I'd be sad to see the A380 go. I've flown other airlines including Air NZ and nothing came close to the A380. Virgin Atlantic had perhaps the most pathetic amount of leg room ever -I guess Virgin is simply a tighter fit...

Linus Torvalds decides world isn’t ready for Linux 5.0

Windows 3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> 2000 -> XP -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 -> 10->Mint

FTFY

Internet engineers tear into United Nations' plan to move us all to IPv6

Whatever happened to...

IPv5? Just asking...

NAB mainframe turns its TOESUP* after power outage, offline 7 hours

Also Broke BNZ in New Zealand

New Zealand's BNZ are owned by NAB, and there was much wailing and nashing of teeth over the ditch for a few hours when nobody could pay for a latte or petrol etc. Cashpoints and cards were out.

New Monty Python movie to turn old jokes into new royalties

Sounds like....

...daylight shrubbery to me

Apple somehow plucks iPad sales out from 13-quarter death spiral

Re: Or maybe...

Exactly. Bought her indoors a new one last Christmas, because the one I'd bought in 2012 was S...O.......S..L..O..W and didn't hold its charge very long. New one's noticeably more plasticy/tacky feeling though.

WordPress is now 30 per cent of the web, daylight second

Wordpress is NOT a CMS

Please stop referring to it as a CMS it isn't. It's a blogging tool. Just because all sorts of crazy shit is built on top of it does not make it a CMS, or even a good idea. It's a piss poor insecure mess that I've had to clean up more times than I care to remember.

Apple tells GitHub to fork off: iGiant steps outside DMCA law in quest to halt iBoot leaks

@Boohoo4u

but not if someone forks Github first.

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

That probably explains..

..why my five year old iPad is like a snail on the tortoise's back.

And another thing: If the battery degradation is so great as to warrant this, why not fit a bigger fecking battery to start with, rather than trying to make every new model even slimmer than the one before. I for one wouldn't mind an extra 5mm thickness in exchange for a battery that pumps out the power for 5 years. It's a premium product and should be bloody well engineered like one.

WordPress 4.9: This one's for you, developers!

Re: But...

Oh, you'd think so, wouldn't you?

But read this:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/31/wordpress_security_fix_4_8_3/

and

https://blog.ircmaxell.com/2017/10/disclosure-wordpress-wpdb-sql-injection-technical.html

and then go and find a CMS that actually does walk the walk.

But...

... still the same vulnerable-by-design database layer shite that does not support parametrised or prepared queries which have been around for decades. Maybe by the time Wordpress 6 comes around they might actually fix that, but I do not have the lung capacity to endure the wait.

Patch your WordPress plugins: Scum are right now hijacking blogs

Re: Oh Joy?

>not having an admin account with the username "admin"

With the delightful new and shiny REST API, a complete list of user names can be exposed simply by poking the URL:

example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users

unless you've been wise enough to install a plugin that blocks access for unauthenticated users

WordPress has adverse reaction to Facebook's React.js licence

Re: "...the popular content management system"

...and another thing: Wordpress is *not* a content management system. It's a blogging tool. The fact that lots of people build all kinds of crazy shit on top of it does not make it a content management system. I can pound in a screw with a pipe wrench, but that does not make the pipe wrench into a screwdriver.

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

Because It's Not Google

I can't help thinking they're kind of missing the point: To be so synonymous with something that your name becomes a verb is surely evidence of significant if not total market penetration.

I always chortle every time I catch one of those tortuous scenes in the remake of Hawai'i 5 0 - the ones where they're trying to convince you to "bing" things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3ug8jrja7M

Guess Micro$oft will be ready to hoover up the honours.

Linus Torvalds may have damned systemd with faint praise

Re: Women Linux Lord ?

It's rightly said that you should love a woman for her personality. They have at least 10, so you can choose.

Set your alarms for 2.40am UTC – so you can watch Unix time hit 1,500,000,000

"So, shortly before beer o'clock Friday afternoon for us lucky few."

< ? php echo date('r', 1500000000);

Fri, 14 Jul 2017 14:40:00 +1200

Only downside to early Friday beers is that it's flippin' freezing in NZ right now.

'My dream job at Oracle left me homeless!' – A techie's relocation horror tale

Re: Surely Oracle could have found him somewhere to live

Sweet as, bro.

Re: Surely Oracle could have found him somewhere to live

You're right. This boat sleeps 8 people. We know there's only you sleeping on it, but you could have slept in any of the 8 berths, so we're charging you for all eight.

Surely Oracle could have found him somewhere to live

I understand houseboats are quite popular in Amsterdam. Apparently Oracle have at least one slow, old boat that they're not doing anything with right now...

FREE wildcard HTTPS certs from Let's Encrypt for every Reg reader*

Fantastic news

Let me be the first to buy those guys a beer.

https://letsencrypt.org/donate/

Create a user called '0day', get bonus root privs – thanks, Systemd!

FFS.

What sort of crippled mind thinks it's OK to carry on and run if the user you're supposed to be running as is invalid? Granted, an admin would have to screw up in the first place, but the brattitude being shown by poettering here is staggering.

Ad 'urgently' seeks company to build national e-ID system

Enough of the jokes

It's clearly time to Finnish...

Apple ups the stakes in patent royalties battle with Qualcomm

Well knock me down with a feather

I never ever thought I'd be on Apple's side, but if Qualcomm really are trying to have their cake and eat it, i.e. "here, buy our chips, oh, and about that licence fee", then hell has truly frozen over and I have to hope Apple wins that round. Just that one though.

Software dev bombshell: Programmers who use spaces earn MORE than those who use tabs

Re: correlation is not causation.

..and the correlation between pay and no underwear most probably correlates even more closely.

Proposed PATCH Act forces US snoops to quit hoarding code exploits

La La La..

>It's designed to force the US intelligence agencies to pass on vulnerabilities to developers and hardware >makers if there is evidence other people are exploiting them.

Anybody exploiting these flaw?

NSA: <fingers_in_ears>La la la</fingers_in_ears> Not that we can see...

OK. keep them to yourself then...

Verizon utters solemn Oath: Yahoo! will remain Yahoo!

What...

...bumbling incompetent oath came up with that? I'll swear nothing good will come of it.

Ubuntu splats TITSUP bug spread in update

Re: Chekov here: my nyetwork

Mine' snot.

Intermittent issues with PHP-FPM throwing a paddy for the last couple of days. Fixed now so all good.