Posts by aidanstevens

Notepad++ update service hijacked in targeted state-linked attack

It did feel like something was up! The past few months it has taken longer than expected to check for a new version via the auto updater.

CISA mutes own website, shifts routine cyber alerts to Musk’s X, RSS, email

Big up RSS

In an age of toxic social media algorithms and billionaire gatekeepers, RSS seems more relevant than ever.

London is bottom in Europe for 5G, while Europe lags the rest of the world

What did the X axis on the graph do to offend the author?

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

Re: Denialists - move 'm to the beach

If you think rising sea levels are the only climate change impact that will affect us then I'm afraid you're in for a shock.

Photoshop FOSS alternative GNU Image Manipulation Program 3.0 nearly here

But

Is it imperative that The Register use JPG for screenshots?

Admins can give thanks this November for dollops of Microsoft patches

Slowed my mouse down

Updated on Windows 10 22H2 and it changed my mouse speed to the lowest setting - anyone else?

Three and Vodafone: We need to merge because our networks are rubbish

Re: Voda and cornwall dont mix

It's Vodafone, what do you expect?

Apple Maps escapes orchard into web browser wilds

Come on

Give us the link, then.

(It's https://beta.maps.apple.com/)

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

Re: Fix was to bend the contacts a little.

Then just bypass the switch if it breaks?

Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users

Re: nonsense

Not buying one of the infernal, dystopian machines in the first place is an even better idea.

Server installer fails to spot STOP button – because he wasn't an archaeologist

Re: Paint all over everything, including power sockets and emergency buttons?

Anyone charging £216 for that should be put against the wall and shot.

Your next PC should be a desktop – maybe even this Chinese mini machine

Glaring omission

It's fanless!

Cisco's latest switch packs 32 800G ports into a pizza box

Re: IEEE 1588v2 and SyncE support with nanosecond-level accuracy

Alright, mate, we don't need to know what kind of porn you watch.

Consolidation looms for UK broadband providers

PDF link

The link in the article is wrong, should be:

https://www.ispa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/What_Lies_Ahead_ISPA_Gigabit_Investment_Report.pdf

Climate change prevention plans 'way off track', says UN

Re: It seems evident that

Is it, now? In which case, where are the climate scientists and research institutes saying that?

I don't recall any universities or atmospheric research centre sating that the world will get slightly warmer and it will be a net benefit. Funny, that.

Europe advances crypto-coin regulation – without potential ban on Bitcoin

Re: A missed opportunity

This is complete and utter nonsense, you've turned the truth on its head in your desperate attempt to justify this awful trend.

Santa's sack is bulging with browsers: Vivaldi 5.0 arrives full of festive cheer

Re: As a Presto lover

I've never used Presto but it's hard to concieve that anything could be better for power users than Vivaldi.

Re: Is this a (somewhat) lightweight browser?

The 80MB update I think is the full installer, you must have missed a version because the incremental updates are a quarter of that.

Since it's the only way to differentiate in a Chromium-dominated market, Vivaldi 4.1 introduces 'Accordion' tabs

Vivaldi is great because it gives you the feeling that you're in charge of your browser and it's working for you, and not a source of constant frustration and UI niggles.

Download it and spend 15 minutes going through every option and learning what it does and tweaking it to your liking, it's not perfect but for power users like Reg readers it's so far ahead of the rest it's hard to see a day when I'll ever use anything else.

BT to phase out 3G in UK by 2023 for EE, Plusnet, BT Mobile subscribers

Getting shot of 3G I can just about understand, but getting shot of 2G with its comprehensive network, superior coverage and compatibility with every handset seems to be a bad idea, and seems to me to be the industry putting all their eggs in one basket.

I think (but I'm happy to be corrected) that smart meters run on the Vodafone network.

Last chance to grab an iPhone Mini as savvy analyst reckons Apple will scrap it next year

I maintain that there is a market for small smartphones, most notably in the <£100 category (i.e. not iPhone price).

It's really advantageous to be able to use a phone with one hand, and, everything else being equal, smaller phones are less fragile, take up less pocket space and are lighter. You could have a well-specced phone - nice camera, fast processor, high DPI display, large memory - without a massive screen.

Could you imagine going back twenty years and telling people that in the future you'd need two hands to operate a mobile phone? They'd think you were mad!

Not everyone wants watch Netflix on their phone, personally I couldn't think of anything worse. The only video I watch on my phone is the odd Twitter clip and even then I take little pleasure in it.

What the FLoC? Browser makers queue up to decry Google's latest ad-targeting initiative as invasive tracking

Re: It's time to flush the toilet

Say hello to Vivaldi, it's a breath of fresh air.

I haven't bought new pants for years, why do I have to keep buying new PCs?

Re: "But I hardly use it."

It turns my stomach to think how much electricity has been wasted by people over the years which could have been saved with the use of Sleep or Hibernate modes.

Could have saved plenty of time watching OSs boot also.

Copper broadband phaseout will leave UK customers with higher bills and less choice, says comparison site

This makes the huge assumption that pricing will stay as it is, over the coming years, in a rapidly changing market.

My FTTP ISP has an entry level 50Mbps/50Mbps product for £20/month which is only a little more than the cheapest ADSL offering. I don't see why Openreach won't follow suit especially as they are supposedly overbuilding existing FTTP networks and need to stay competitive, given that Virgin covers 50%+ of the population and have their own gigabit offering.

Intel sues former staffer for allegedly stealing Xeon cloud secrets in USB drives and exploiting info at Microsoft

MS have confirmed that he used one of their drives on one of their systems. If the reason for the alleged data theft is to benefit the new employer (MS) then why are they co-operating with the Intel investigation, or am I missing something obvious?

Tab minimalists look away: Vivaldi introduces two-level tab stacks

Re: Looks good

The inbuilt Task Manager (Shift + Esc) on Chromium based browsers lets you sort tabs by CPU usage.

Re: Looks good

@John Robson you can do the latter with Vivaldi, it's brilliant.

Signal boost: Secure chat app is wobbly at the moment. Not surprising after gaining 30m+ users in a week, though

I can't stand Signal. It's riddled with problems:

- clunky app

- can't set different alert tone for personal messages and group messages

- rubbish desktop client, can only leave groups or mute people via mobile app

- messages sometime fail for no reason, especially in large groups

- more that I can't think of off-hand

Obviously the Signal protocol is solid because WhatsApp are able to implement it really nicely.

Telegram has the best feature set in my mind and the UX is SILKY smooth, plus doesn't have irritating group size limits like WhatsApp.

The Signal changelogs are witty, though!

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

K6-2s were utter junk so I'm amazed you were able to play it at all.

UK competition watchdog fast-tracks investigation into mega-merger of O2 and Virgin Media

Re: Viring media Positioning for 5G

Because you want a reliable, unlimited connection?'

Wireless screen in estate agent window just begging for someone to fill it with mischief

Re: A Life Of Grime

I'll never forget the joy he derived from his musical lighter.

Ad banned for suggesting London black cabs have properties that prevent the spread of coronavirus

Aerosols

Surely the problem is aerosols from one passenger still being present in the air in the back of the cab - it's a sealed box, after all - ready to be inhaled by the next occupant?

Who among you can resist an eight-core, 2.9GHz mini-PC or thin client that drives four displays?

NUC killer?

Anyone that can make a good quality, off-the-shelf, passively cooled (silent) mini PC out of one of these is going to absolutely rake it in. A far better solution for your average home user than a fragile and expensive laptop with no upgrade capability.

Like a good defragging? The latest Dev Channel Windows 10 might be for you

"a sudden splash of brightness turning them to dust"

Journalism for our times!

UK state of the Internet report: Virgin Media 'fast', BT's PlusNet last

And people will be using wi-fi connections that are acting as the bottleneck.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

Re: upvoted

Upvote for you purely for "dynamic duo" to describe a Swiss army knife and a pair of mole grips.

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Something like a Panasonic KX-P6100?

I had a similar model but it died having had very little use, unfortunately.

I now have a Dell 1100 (rebadged Samsung ML-1610) which I somehow manage to keep going. The output path (? as the paper leaves the printer, after going through the fuser) used to chew up everything that I printed so I took some bolt croppers to the rollers and leave the fuser cover open with a screw wedged between the cover and the switch to fool it into thinking the cover is closed. Works fine!

Another week, another dual-screen phone, this time a T-shaped LG thingamy

Two screens?

One screen is bad enough!

Samsung slows smartphone upgrade treadmill with promise to support three Android generations on Galaxies

I'm still waiting for a reasonably specced phone that you can use comfortably with one hand.

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

Space Cadet pinball

Debuted in Windows 95, I believe.

Google Chrome to block file downloads – from .exe to .txt – over HTTP by default this year. And we're OK with this

Could have renamed to something common like .jpg or .pdf and asked the recipient to rename it back to .exe?

Will this nitpicking bleed into other Chromium browsers like (my favourite) Opera?

This is one of the most stupid ideas Google have ever come up with, and that's saying something.

It's 2018 so, of course, climate.news is sold to climate change deniers

ISTR it wasn't all that long ago that El Reg was posting climate change denial nonsense. Happy to see it's turned a corner.

UK mobile operator Three launches Superdrug Mobile MVNO

And you get WHAT, exactly, for your £10/month?

A smartphone recession is coming and animated poo emojis can't stop it

They're just too big and too fragile!

UK watchdog Ofcom tells broadband firms: '30 days to sort your speeds'

What is with this fetish for faster broadband speeds? May I kindly suggest that if 34.6Mbit/s is not fast enough for you then you need to get a life? Yes, a small number of people have lousy speeds and high latency, but most people are just fine.

Virgin Media skulks in disused public toilets

"reverse-Bazalgettian mission"

Very good - you deserve a drink for that!

What makes you think they care about physical security? VM street cabinet doors are often found wide open or hanging off. The amount of damage that could be done in a short period of time with basic tools is breathtaking.

We need to talk about mathematical backdoors in encryption algorithms

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