* Posts by The Alphabet

61 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2012

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Better buckle up: Volkswagen puts Microsoft in driver's seat to deliver 'automated' platform

The Alphabet

Bork right into a hedge.

Tim Cook 'killed' TV project about the one website Apple hates more than The Register

The Alphabet

Gawker was blacklisted until 2014. How long is El Reg going now?

Uri Geller calls off 20-year ban on Pokémon trading card that 'stole' his 'signature image'

The Alphabet

For me its had the opposite effect and highlights it was him why many people could have an incomplete collection from back then. He should have just done this silently... but now everybody knows.

Well done.

Transport for London asks Capita to fling Congestion Charge system into the cloud

The Alphabet

The charge is 17 years old but they have still not developed a system to confirm if you need to pay or not.

Swivel on this: Spinning Surface Hub 2X module may not be happening after all

The Alphabet
Trollface

I misread "boardroom behemoth" as "bedroom behemoth" and i cannot unsee the imagery.

PSA: Disable FaceTime. Miscreants can snoop on your iPhone, Mac mic before you pick up call

The Alphabet
Trollface

Disable facetime, wifi, bluetooth and mobile data.

Be extra safe and leave your phone at home, face down, too. Take no chances.

Full frontal vulnerability: Photos can still trick, unlock Android mobes via facial recognition

The Alphabet

I know this article relates to smartphones, but lets include "Windows Hello" in the "unlock with a photo" category. I tested it with Surface Pro on 1803 and a relative was able to unlock the Surface with a photo on her phone.

Day two – and Windows 10 October 2018 Update trips over Intel audio

The Alphabet

Re: Cancel? Yeah, sure thing, buddy.

Even the restart option has that "feature" now - if it hangs waiting for something to close and you click cancel it jumps to RESTARTING and reboots anyway.

UKIP doubled price of condoms for sale at party conference

The Alphabet

"Here's your 350millimetres a week"

You'll never guess what you can do once you steal a laptop, reflash the BIOS, and reboot it

The Alphabet

If you want absolute security then the laptop should have a kill switch that automatically erases all the things including any USB devices, repeatedly, until the battery dies, if you are not physically touching the unit after 60 seconds.

It might make having a shower and sleeping difficult, but security is more important than such trivial things.

Go Pester someone else: TSB ditches CEO over bank's IT meltdown

The Alphabet

"Good news! We're letting you go and paying you £1.2m. Bad news, we're putting it in a TSB account, locking you out of your accounts and blocking your cards"

It liiives! Sorta. Gentle azure glow of Windows XP clocked in Tesco's self-checkouts, no less

The Alphabet

"Unexpected operating system in baggage area, please remove and try again"

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

The Alphabet

The biggest complaint i hear is how every time this rolls around, they cant work for nearly 2 hours while it does whatever it is doing.

Android figured out how to do seamless updates (it does an update, boots into android then completes in the notification bar). Why Microsoft hasn't tried to do the same since XP on is crazy.

Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

The Alphabet

If they screw this up they will lose trust.

After Skype, Nokia, Windows Phone, Danger, Windows Mobile, the many recent apps they have purchased and all the previous acquisitions in yesteryear only to sunset i'm surprised that they think this will be an issue only now.

It's not like they've done it enough times for people to be wary almost instantly, is it?

BT bets farm on consumers: Announces one network to rule 'em all

The Alphabet

BT is making all these changes. But they fail to mention why through any of it.

Could it be that they've been coasting along for far too long and that apathy has come back to bite?

Apple's new 'spaceship' HQ brings the pane for unobservant workers

The Alphabet

Could Siri be to blame for this? She does have a mean streak....

EE: Data goes TITSUP* for Brit mobile customers

The Alphabet

If nothing ever works with EE all the time, then it must be working exactly as intended.

Surely?

Back when i was with T-Mobile i had network issues where inbound calls would constantly divert to voicemail at home despite having signal and trying multiple phones, you'd have to call about 7-10 times before my phone would actually ring. The problems stopped when i migrated to Orange, then when the network merger started i wound up back on T-Mobile's network again and continued until i left EE entirely.

They told me there was no technical or capacity issues in my area.

If at first you don't succeed, you're likely Intel: Second Spectre microcode fix emitted

The Alphabet

I've already seen a windows update reboot itself into forcing a BIOS update this week. That's going to go well when half the office uses Windows 10 laptops.

From tomorrow, Google Chrome will block crud ads. Here's how it'll work

The Alphabet

I'm surprised that "ads that cause device resources to be rapidly consumed" isn't on this list, because there's several who nag me to turn off the adblocker then as soon as i do Firefox baloons to 7-10gb RAM use.

It seems that ad-content seems to miss that serving me ads is a two-way relationship; serve me ads in a manner that does not upset or interrupt the content of the site i'm on, or the device i'm using to view it on. If you can't do that then that relationship fails and you dont deserve to serve me ads.

When you play this song backwards, you can hear Satan. Play it forwards, and it hijacks Siri, Alexa

The Alphabet

I can't wait for someone to sneak this into a Justin Bieber song and watch the fallout.

Google can't innovate anymore, exiting programmer laments

The Alphabet

I'd argue the real issue is Google is too US-focussed (how many times have we heard "US only"?) and often times international expansion (or international-focussed products) is just an afterthought, if that.

It's 2018 and your Macs, iPhones can be pwned by playing evil music

The Alphabet

That site you refer to states which devices gets the update, not that devices which are labelled obsolete cannot get any security updates on them even if the patches are released right after EOL.

Having to work out which are EOL ourselves is not the same as just plain saying "these devices will not get security patches no matter the severity of the issue".

Google themeslves could have easily said "the Nexus 6 will not be patched for this bug" (which was the last EOL Nexus before blueborne) but opted to stay silent.

The Alphabet

*picks up my iPhone 5C, checks for updates*

"Your software is up to date"

I guess the security on my iPhone doesn't matter too much.

This isn't a jab at Apple either, as my Nexus 6 never received November 2017 patches (meaning it wasn't patched for blueborne). But note that both Apple and Google (and every other phone manufacturer) make careful attempts to avoid saying clearly what devices will not see an update.

Facebook invents new unit of time to measure modern attention spans: 1/705,600,000 of a sec

The Alphabet

People: "we want chronological order"

Facebook: "you need a new measure of time!"

It gets worse: Microsoft’s Spectre-fixer wrecks some AMD PCs

The Alphabet

My AMD laptop installed the patch automatically over the weekend, then immediately disabled the keyboard during the boot sequence, so i couldn't type the PIN to boot into windows.

I had to take my laptop back home (i was out travelling) and stick a USB keyboard into it just to type the PIN.

Well done.

HSBC swinging axe on UK IT department, 840 heads to roll

The Alphabet

If we replace "HSBC" with "RBS" this sounds eerily familiar...

Logging on to United's frequent flyer site might take longer than a flight

The Alphabet

"Millions of miles have been handed out to researchers in exchange for bugs."

So they are not actually paying in exchange for bugs, just handing out funbucks because to use those miles requires earning more miles (with them or others) to redeem those miles on United.

Are bearded blokes more sexist?

The Alphabet

I wonder how this survey would appear as if it was exclusively LGBT or other more specific factors (country, race etc).

Uninstall QuickTime for Windows: Apple will not patch its security bugs

The Alphabet

"Apple does not respond to The Register's requests for comment."

TalkTalk outage: Dial M for Major cockup

The Alphabet

People on TalkTalk who cant use their phones to talk are called what?

(there's a perfectly ironic name somewhere, i just can't think of what it is!)

Eric Schmidt, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords

The Alphabet

Samaritan is about to go live.

Bash, smash, trash Flash – earn $100k cash

The Alphabet

That's far too sensible :(

The Alphabet

Uninstalling flash (or not installing to start) is 100% secure and cannot be defeated by Adobe. Can i have the $100k now?

Three VoLTEs to victory as it jumps into UK 4G voice offering

The Alphabet

What Three haven't said is that its only available to devices supplied from Three (excluding iPhones). So my Nexus 6 (which is VoLTE capable) can't use it.

Windows 10 is FORCING ITSELF onto domain happy Windows 7 PCs

The Alphabet

So the only way to absolutely guarantee to not get forced to Windows 10 (or even have the option to be prompted to it, blocked or not) is to downgrade to Vista?

Microsoft sets end date on Windows 10 support. Hey, wait, WHAT?

The Alphabet

I do wish Apple would provide clear end of life dates like this, rather than just silently not updating OSX and leaving it to die.

Drunk on Friday night? Then YOU probably DIDN'T spot Facebook's privacy tweak

The Alphabet

Re: Please, do explain

What do you have to block specifically to get all of them?

Brit smut slingers shafted by UK censors' stiff new stance

The Alphabet

I read this article and immediately thought of this Family Guy cutaway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcVkYD3o910

Want to buy T-Mobile US? Yours for $35 per share – report

The Alphabet

What's the possibility of France Telecom buying up a portion and we wind up with EE USA?

Ah ha, mon amour violet ... French Iliad attempts to nibble on T-Mobile US

The Alphabet

I wouldn't be surprised if France Telecom mount a bid for 50% of T-Mobile and rebrand it into EE USA.

(if that happens, oh dear)

Cheer up, Nokia fans. It can start making mobes again in 18 months

The Alphabet

To be honest Nokia lost me as a customer after the 6280 back in 2008. Their first 3G and their first sliding phone - with an astronomically bad radio that would crash the phone and ridiculously bad build quality that rattled consistently and never felt like a "solid" phone.

Jellybean dominates Play, still seated atop rising KitKat

The Alphabet

I don't think Google bought Motorola Mobility for $125bn........

Cost-cutting Barclays bank swings axe on 5,600 IT and ops bods

The Alphabet

This will surely go well.

Chucking cash at sport and broadband starts to pay off for BT

The Alphabet

"Chucking cash at sport and broadband starts to pay off for BT"

..while quietly and consistently increasing the cost of the - supposedly unrelated, yet compulsary - line rental to compensate for it.

T-Mobile US cuts overage charges, dares rivals to follow suit

The Alphabet

I like that T-Mobile USA is making efforts like this. Pity T-Mobile UK has simply become an unwanted stepchild of EE.

T-Mobile US: AT&T's mobe buyout deal is so 'desperate', we'll do it too

The Alphabet

I wish T-Mobile UK would do (or did do when they were a Deutsche Telecom solely-owned or earlier) something like this rather than being absorbed into "the EE family" and being spat out as one of the two identical yet unwanted children.

iPHONE 5c FACTORY SHUTDOWN: Foxconn 'halts' mobe rebrand op

The Alphabet

Each person that wanted the 5C changed their mind immediately after i pointed out the contract price is largely the same (on Three, the cost per month is exactly the same), and the sim-free price is only £70 ish cheaper than the 5S.

It's in this strange no-mans-land where its too expensive to be low cost for people to want (like the Moto G/Nexus 4 etc), but labelled as the "cheaper, low cost" device simply by virtue of not being the 5S.

Google to punish sloppy mobile webmasters

The Alphabet

If only they would remove the "feature" that disables videos to be viewed on mobile devices on youtube first.

O2 scoffs at call-centre outsource fears, forgets to rule it out completely

The Alphabet

Didn't they dismiss the sale of Be and O2 Home Broadband to Sky as speculation at first too?

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