Posts by RM Myers

iPhone 12 deemed too hot to handle for France's radiation standards

Re: I need to look at how the test is done

Yes, that does seem rather quick by French bureaucracy standards.

University cuts itself off from internet after mystery security snafu

Re: Wrong School!

The nickname given to the University of Michigan sports teams is "Wolverines". "Go Blue" is their typical rally cry for their sports teams (their school colors are maize and blue).

Don't ask me how I know.

Charging your iPhone literally costs Apple millions as Batterygate saga slams shut

Re: Wow, 65 whole Dollars!

I've had 2 class action payments that were less than $1 USD, and 1 class action which gave me a discount off of "full fare" on airline tickets. I never used the later, since you could get tickets cheaper without the discount as long as you didn't wait until the last minute. Almost no one actually used the airline "discounts", but the attorneys pocketed well over $100 million USD

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Software locks are the devil's spawn.

Identity thieves can hunt us for 'rest of our lives,' claims suit after university data leak

Re: OK, I'll bite

Mercer filed the breach letter with a number of different states (probably every state that has a legal requirement), since they would have alumni living in every state. Maine nicely posted the information on their website, and since they only require the data breach notice IF there is unencrypted data, the author was able to infer that some data was unencrypted.

Logitech, iFixit to offer parts to stop folks binning their computer mouse

The YouTube Conundrum

When the repair video creator knows what they are talking about, these videos can be a life saver. But how can you tell which creators are experts versus which are just BS'ers.

Perseverance rover shows up Curiosity with discovery of Martian water park

Re: Doctor?

They are a very common thing in academia in the US. I'm on the mailing list for the math department newsletter from the university where I went to graduate school, and they always profile the students getting their Phd's, including their post graduation employment, if known. Post doctoral researcher/fellowship is probably the single most common job description.

Irony alert: Major airport to be interrupted for two hours to replace UPS

Re: Do they have a "fall back" strategy in place?

They don't have time. This is a crash project.

Ex-CIO must pay £81k over Total Shambles Bank migration

"The bank ultimately had to bring IBM on board to fix the problems."

This may be the scariest statement I have seen in El Reg. How bad does an implementation have to be if "bringing IBM in to fix the problem" is considered as an improvement?

Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid

15 bit computers?

Or maybe it was a signed variable - one bit for the sign and 15 bits for the number? And 1 + 15 = 16 bit computer?

Baidu sues Apple and anyone else in sight over ERNIE chatbot fakes

"I can't keep all of these straight anymore."

Sounds like you need to ChatGPT who is infringing who.

Cry Havoc and let slip dogs of war ... there's an upgraded malware server in town

Come on, this is El Reg. An article doesn't need to be about Musk to bring the haters in.

White Castle collecting burger slingers' fingerprints looks like a $17B mistake

Re: Only the first one counts?

How dare you try to inject commonsense into an internet comment thread! We have a right, no, a duty, to feed the rage machine!

Shame! Shame!

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

This would be a GREAT idea. FTFY.

Nvidia unveils RTX 4090 – but it's the 4080 to watch out for

Re: Caps lock stuck?

Thank you! With all the depressing news about the pandemic over the last 2 years, it is good to see a return to the pedantic.

The secret to Sparrow, DeepMind's latest Q&A chatbot: Human feedback

"...relevant link from Google search ... about 78 per cent of the time."

So about 7 times the percentage of relevant links that I usually get from Google search (I'm being optimistic here). Then again, they may have a looser definition of relevant.

Anti-Metaverse package 'explosion' at college VR lab probed by investigators

Or the plot of an El Reg article about Yahoo!

Bogus cryptocurrency apps steal millions in mere months

Re: "legitimate cryptocurrency investments"

Is it possible for any Ponzi scheme to be legitimate?

You can liquid cool this Linux laptop to let the GPU soar

Many laptops already use liquid cooling

I large number of laptops already use heat pipes, which contain small amounts of liquid which transfers heat from the CPU/GPU to other cooler areas by first turning the liquid into steam, and then the steam back into a liquid at the cooler areas (near the fans/vents). The quantity of liquid may be small, but it is still critical to cooling the laptop.

Canadian ISP Rogers falls over for hours, takes out broadband, cable, cellphones

Re: BGP

Eh.

Indian tax authorities raid offices of Chinese smartphone maker Vivo

Why does a smartphone maker have 2kg of gold bars in the office?

Because they couldn't afford 3kg?

Billion-record stolen Chinese database for sale on breach forum

Weird Coincidence

I'm listening to some old musical and reading El Reg, and what is playing now? Of course, "I Heard It on the Grapevine" - the old fashion way to leak private information.

But the grapevine never leaked private information on a billion people at one shot. Finally, real progress courtesy of "The Cloud".

Large Hadron Collider experiment reveals three exotic particles

Re: Ever get the sense...

Current models describe some of what we see (measure) very accurately; others not so accurately (dark matter and dark energies are basically placeholders for the unknown). Besides, infinity is a neat if somewhat mind blowing concept in math, but I doubt many physicists believe it really exists, despite showing up in relativity theory.

China-linked Twisted Panda caught spying on Russian defense R&D

Re: the actual running process is valid and signed by Microsoft

You might want to look up an explanation of "DLL sideloading" to get a better understanding of how the malware is executing.

LIDAR in iPhones is not about better photos – it's about the future of low-cost augmented reality

Sorry to disagree, but giving Apple credit for bringing another product to the consumer market seems only appropriate. After all, this was the company that invented the personal computer, the graphical user interface, the portable music player, the tablet computer, and the smart phone among many others products for individual comsumers.

Besides, their founder was rightly famous for augmenting reality from Apple's earliest days, so adding Augmented Reality to the list is only to be expected.

Critical bug allows attacker to remotely control medical robot

Re: Worrying

Good news - the server was running Ubuntu and Apache. From a cursory review of the actual security report(sorry, sometimes I can't help myself), this seems to primarily be configuration errors and design issues, rather than coding issues. For example, they left open ports on the webserver and ran javascript on the client rather than the server, as the reg article mentioned.

IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims

Re: Tell me

Ah yes, the old "you get what you measure, so you damn well better make sure that is what you really want". It doesn't just apply to senior executives either. Measure your programmers on lines of code produced, and you will get lots of code, whether needed or not. Measure your project managers on meeting schedules and budgets only, and your projects will meet schedules and be on time, customer requirements be damned.

Cyclops Blink malware sets up shop in ASUS routers

Re: Eejit guide to detection...?

"...just like everything else that allows remote admin by defaul..."

At least for these routers, remote administration is turned off by default. The only legitimate reason I could see for turning it on would be the situation where someone tech savvy is maintaining the router for a less savvy owner who lives far away. It that case, hopefully they would know enough to reset the username and password to something very strong.

Apple, Google urge monopoly watchdog to leave them alone

...and to keep gouging consumers because they have no alternatives.

I'm fairly sure both Apple and Google are willing to gouge consumers even when there are alternatives. The $999 Apple monitor stands come immediately to mind.

Ransomware puts New Mexico prison in lockdown: Cameras, doors go offline

Yes.

Feds charge two men with claiming ownership of others' songs to steal YouTube royalty payments

Re: 20m, 5 years stir, 250k fine

This is from the United States Department of Justice website (https://www.justice.gov/criminal-vns/restitution-process)

"In federal court, a convicted offender may be ordered to reimburse victims for financial losses incurred due to the offender's crime. This reimbursement is called "restitution," and it may be ordered for lost income, property damage, counseling, medical expenses, funeral costs or other financial costs directly related to the crime."

This restitution to the legitimate copyright owners would be in addition to the $250K fines per offense.

Running on empty, out of battery, power draining... three things the UK government definitely isn't. Oh no

"plentiful supply of sawdust and hot air available in Westminster."

And any place else with a high density of politicians.

BrakTooth vulnerabilities put Bluetooth users at risk – and some devices are going unpatched

Great News - Not!

The AX200 is not just on laptops, it is also available on network adapters used in desktops, and is even built into some desktop motherboards.

Perl Foundation faces more departures after pausing Community Affairs Team

Re: Social distancing…

The "idiots" in the far corner of the room probably are thinking the same thing about the "idiots"in the near corner. And thus the circle is completed...

The web was done right the first time. An ancient 3D banana shows Microsoft does a lot right, too

Re: Web is already 30

And that is why I majored in math, not English.

Re: Web is already 30

That was the best combination of accuracy, succinctness , and incitefulness I have seen in many a moon. Have one on me ===>

Remember Google Plus? Remember its privacy blunder? Remember applying for a slice of a settlement?

$1.875m for the plaintiff lawyers; $2.15 for the regular plaintiffs

That seems like a fair settlement. Evidently the judge was looking out for the class member interests. Otherwise the plaintiff lawyers might have sold their own clients down the river so they could get big fees without having to go to trial.

Remember folks, it is he best justice system money can buy. And guess who has the money.

'Prophetic' Steve Jobs autograph telling kid to 'go change the world!' among Apple memorabilia at auction

Re: Go change the world

Steve Jobs had Islet Cell pancreatic cancer, which is a rare and "milder" form that can be cured if caught early, which his was when he had a CAT scan for a kidney stone.However, he ignored his doctor's advise to have surgery immediately, and instead tried alternative treatments. By the time he agreed to have surgery, the cancer had progressed. Had he had surgery when initially advised, his survival chances would have been much better.

Customers warn Gartner of AWS's high-pressure sales tactics in latest verdict on public cloud providers

Re: Public?

Gartner had credibility in the past?

'Login infrastructure issue' blamed as sustained Xero outage threatens payrolls

"The cloud" is just someone else's computer.

Someone else's computer, and someone else's priority to fix any issues, but it's still the customer's problem when it all goes south.

Uncle Sam sanctions Chinese AI outfits for links to Xinjiang Uyghur human-rights abuses

Governing versus Angry Birds

Different games for different gamers? At least with angry birds, real people don't get hurt.

IBM President and former Red Hat boss Jim Whitehurst quits

Our hybrid cloud and AI strategy is strongly resonating with clients

Will the results of this resonation be similar to what happened to the Tacoma Narrows bridge in 1940?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw

NASA talks up Perseverance Mars rover's self-driving rock-avoiding abilities

...global speed limit of "oh God I'd be better off walking"

Ah, just like driving in New York City during rush hour then. or the 405 in Southern California anytime.

Hubble Space Telescope may now depend on a computer that hasn't booted since 2009

"Old does not equate to infirmed nor non-functional."

Thanks for that comment. The way things have gone this week, I was beginning to think maybe the opposite was true.

Really, who thought it was a good idea to use micro-mini screws to secure M.2 drives in a computer. Darn whippersnappers should be taken out back to the woodshed and have their behind tanned!

Pre-orders open for the Mini PET 40/80, the closest thing to Commodore's classic around

Re: KIM-1

The KIM-1 takes me back also. I hand built an interface to a cassette drive (with a lot of help from a hobby magazine for KIM-1 owners) so I could store the finished programs. It worked after a fashion - about 1 out of every 3 times it would read correctly. This is also where I first learned the advantages of socketed IC's after my incompetence at soldering an IC directly to the board killed the IC.

Good memories.

It doesn't really matter how many of us gripe about Google, nothing can stop it printing billions of dollars

Re: Narrative

Very impressively done. I'm not sure how anyone could keep a straight face while reading the "googly" quotes. Do these people really believe what they say?

"As we look ahead to the rest of 2021,

four big themes continue to guide us," said Pichai. "First, building and providing the most helpful products and services that allow us to scrape every morsel of private information we can get from users . Second, continuing to earn the trust of our users by investing in high quality information and keeping users' data safe and private so only we can sell it to the advertisers. Third, strong execution as a company, particularly as we start to reopen our offices and fire any employees who question are ethics. And forth, building sustainable value in our own business and for our partners , or at least the partners that our bots don't kick out of the play store or off Youtube without any explanation ."

There, I fixed that for Mr. Pichai.

Apple supplier Quanta Computer confirms it's fallen victim to ransomware attack

Quanta Quality

I bought 2 old HP laptops (DV9000 series) which had Quanta branded motherboards, so I assume they built the computers. I wonder if any emails will be dumped online. It would be interesting to know who was at fault for the GPU and monitor cable issues which plagued this model - HP, Quanta, or Nvidia. And yes, I'm still bitter that I was never notified about a class action lawsuit settlement for the affected GPU's and an extension of the warranty period by HP until after both had expired. Ugh!

Fridges... in... Spaaaaaaace: Engineers book ride on the Vomit Comet to test astro-refrigerator

Re: No student's at Perdue ?

I believe they would call them interns at Perdue* - I doubt they are called students. However, at Purdue** they definitely have students.- over 45 thousand from all over the world.

* A major food and agribusiness company

** A public university particularly known for their engineering department.

Jensen Huang's kitchen gets another viewing as Nvidia teases Arm-powered supercomputing chip Grace

Also from GTC...

Eight more Ampere RTX GPUs for laptops, desktops and servers "that you won't actually be able to buy at MSRP". The sidebar left off the last, and most important, part.