Posts by keith_w

Beneath Microsoft's Surface event, AI spreads everywhere

Re: allow Copilot to interrogate shoppers

influence, irritate. Same thing.

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

Re: I guess someone had to...

no, not even after a shower.

Lightning struck: Apple switches to USB-C for iPhone 15 lineup

Re: Where do we go from here...?

"We will also have to standardise electric car charging cables, and I don't want the precedent that Ford can make a Ford-only cable that you have to have Ford adaptors or go to a Ford charger to use... which is exactly what happen if we don't dictate base-level standards occasionally."

Ford is switching to the TESLA connector, so that's that worry put to bed.

Dropbox limits ‘all the storage you need’ unlimited plan, blames abusive users

I don't think I have ever seen an SD card listed in a PC's list of bootable devices, although I know that Pi devices boot from them.

it went onto a 128GB thumbdrive.

Re: 110GB Image

it is probably that.

Last night i had the pleasure of downloading a 110GB image ISO from a one drive Sharepoint. It took 2 tries, failing at 12 GB the first try. Over all about 4 hours to do the download and the another bunch of hours to put it on a boot stick using Rufus. I wonder about who imagines a 110 GB image is a good idea.

Tesla knew Autopilot weakness killed a driver – and didn't fix it, engineers claim

Mansfield bars are located at the back of the trailer to stop cars from rolling under the back of the trailer at highway speeds and are mandated on all trailers on the road in the United States, which also puts them on all Canadian trailers and probably on all Mexican ones as well.

AMD mulls new chip manufacturing partners amid supply chain jitters

Re: Opening moves.

if China could replicate TSMCs' foundry, they would. Then they wouldn't need to invade Taiwan.

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

It has been many years since I worked with Notes, was it easy to set up folders? I also have had users who used their deleted bin as a storage location for emails they wanted to review.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Re: Keyboard Confusion

On my Win 10 as well. However, for easy access to Emojis, I added the on-screen keyboard to which you can add what ever format of keyboards you like.

Many years ago, we were investigating changing our insurance management software to a package our home office was developing for IBM S/38s, later AS400s and were talking to IBM about localisation since we are in Canada and the Quebec language laws mandated French for use in the office. Our older software didn't support that, but it was kind of grandfathered. IBM suggested that the best way to localise would be to use message codes to look up the appropriate message in a language database before displaying it. We spent six months reviewing the package being developed and came up with 6 2" binders of required changes.

We put that in our requirements and got "For a million dollars, we'll change the spelling of check to cheque".

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

Re: They're not supposed to

They never ring my doorbell before running away. Obviously never played Nicky-Nicky-Nine Doors.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

One company I worked in the for 80's had added a computer room late in the planning stages so the only place available for it was between 2 sets of elevators on the 53rd floor. They had a Halon system which had a don't flood button, which need to be held until the cancel button was activated, on a wall about 20 feet from the phone. Unfortunately the cancel button was in a sister company's computer room 2 floors above. Fortunately we never had a fire in there.

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

That sounds like Canada and the AVRO Arrow. Many of the engineers and other staff, including my ex-Mother-in-Laws Uncle who moved to Florida and was a draughtsman working on various NASA programmes.

US changes rules on tax credits for electric cars to cover American-made only

Re: I’d want a discount too

And made in Canada as well. However, vehicles made with 75% parts made in the Canada-US-Mexico free trade area count as US made in the US.

More ads in Windows 11 Start Menu could be last straw for some

What the heck does that last sentence mean?

Microsoft mucks with PrtScr key for first time in decades

Windows 11? Who cares about 11? Windows 10 PrtScn launches Snip and Sketch on my machine

some text. Please see title.

Microsoft deigns to fix five-year-old Defender bug that slowed Firefox

Even the article says that it was only 1/2 MS's fault, the other 1/2 being how Firefox works.

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Re: Why

Many people appear to believe that if the console lights are on, which they are pretty much all the time in a modern vehicle, and the DLRs are on, then their headlights are on. Especially when driving on roads that are lit by overhead lights.

Microsoft uses carrot and stick with Exchange Online admins

Re: Article missing curcial details...

I would assume they mean any version of Exchange that is not up to date with the latest CU no matter how old. There are lots of companies that won't pay for an upgrade unless they absolutely have to.

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

Re: A strange feature of fault-tolerant systems...

that would be 5, 5 and a half, 6, 6 and a half, seven?

Dual Tesla lawsuits pull Elon Musk into right-to-repair war

Re: About time

Not true! We just had to replace the bearings on the front driver side wheel on my wife's 2006, 265,000Km/164,041mi Toyota Corolla! Of course we went to the non-Toyota mechanic we have been using for over 20 years.

Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you

fuel cap

My past 2 cars have been capless. I didn't even realize it until i went to fill them up. This was not a selling point to me. My thought, now that you have mentioned it, is that it is less expensive for the manufacturers.

As for GMs, I have one and I despise the "infotainment" system. Although the vehicle is only 3 years old, this "infotainment" system frequently functions incorrectly. I was adjusting the climate controls yesterday (using knobs, not the touch screen) and noticed as I changed the fan speed, the change of speed was not being noted on the popup display. Similarly there are 4 lights on that display for various functions including A/C, Recirculate, and 2 others i mis-remember. Only one of them changed when I pushed the appropriate button. It also frequently shows "Climate off" when making changes. Other issues with the "Infotainment" system have included it not turning on, the tuner for the radio not being available and not connecting to my phone. I am planning on not buying GM when I decide to change vehicles, reinforced now that they are planning on including ChatAI.

NASA fixes solar observation spacecraft by turning it off and turning it on again

that was not developed by Microsoft, it was developed by David J. Bradley, IBM engineer. He worked on creating the IBM PC, wrote the BIOS code, and the code for CTL-ALT-DEL.

UK tax authority nudges net 'influencers': You may owe us for those OnlyFans feet pics

""UK influencers and content creators earned on average $146.86 and $113.19 per hour respectively – the highest in the world."

This is about the UK. First part of the article is in US$ only and then halfway down it is £ to $

Can El Reg stop this please? Go back to UK units and then convert for the US audience?"

The US is not the only place that calls their currency dollars. Dollars are also used in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It would be nice if the country being converted to was indicated, for example US$, C$, A$, or NZ$.

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

Re: Too broad: You can't work in IT for 2 years.

Mostly less from what i have seen.

Cisco warns it won't fix critical flaw in small business routers despite known exploit

As was said in the article, most small businesses don't have the expertise to block 443 or 60443, or even to find out that they need blocking, so why would anyone think that they would know to find the patch and then install it?

Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name

Re: Bit ridiculous

Not Sir Alec - Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin.

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Re: Easy fix: e-fuels

Not to mention the environmental cost of raising corn (maize) and converting it into ethanol.

Upvote for the "King of the Road" quote in the comments for this article.

Re: "a strong desire to reduce refueling costs"

In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and other places in Canada where the winters can get VERY cold, many people do not have driveways or garages to store their cars overnight, so they are parked on the road. The IC engines have block heaters to keep them warm. The people run an extension cord out from the house to plug the car in. There is no reason that cannot be done to charge a battery overnight.

Raspberry Pi hires former spy gadget-maker who baked devices into surveillance ops

Did you stop using cars because the police use cars? Nothing in the article says that the PI foundation was involved in police surveillance, it says that they hired a FORMER police officer who put Pis to use in innovative ways to surveil criminals, surely in order to use his expertise with the devices.

Europe's USB-C deadline: Lightning must be struck from iPhone by December, 2024

Re: Site radios?

Most commercial portable radio equipment uses charging stands, not directly connected USB/Lightning connectors. That said, even those that use charging stands connect to computers to be configured and so far most of them use Mini or Micro-USB connectors for that purpose.

TSMC founder says 'globalization is almost dead' as Asian foundry giant expands in US

Re: Sensible

We had one in Ontario this summer as well. Midwest has nothing to do with it.

AWS joins the water positive gang, claims it will be there by 2030

I am totally amazed that no one else pointed out the irony of "it is working to optimize water consumption by using the cloud to analyze water use in real time.". Of course water usage is cloud based.

Massive energy storage system goes online in UK

Re: Per home usage

Ontario Canada, so much of our electric power is provided by hydro and nuclear. We got our electric bill yesterday, for the 32 day billing period, we used 808 KWh, for an average for 25.25 KWh/day. Our heating, cooking, and hot water are all electric.

Re: Frequency trimming?

Leap seconds no longer exist.

Croatian EV maker Rimac claims 412km/h speed record

Re: Not enough range.

with 80 gallons of fuel, I would expect you can do over 1,000 miles between fill ups, especially diesel so no big surprise there. Sonoma to West Endover Nevada (you didnt say where in Nevada) is only 594 miles. the average for your vehicle appears to be 13.8mpg.

https://www.fuelly.com/car/ford/f-350_super_duty

Re: Not enough range.

my ICE SUV (2019 GMC Terrain, 2l turbo) usually gets about 8.5L/100Km, when towing a small, covered, U-Haul trailer, lightly loaded, went to over 13l/100Km so no matter what you drive, towing makes a huge difference

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

Just this week I received a survey email from a printer sales company regarding the printers that had been recently delivered. One of the questions was 'would I recommend them' to which I chose (1-10) a 5 as the phone lady is very nice and helpful. I quickly got an email asking why to which I replied ' 2 of the mid-sized printers have had input paper tray-lifting problems, the large one's output hopper tray fell off because somebody didn't put the screws in to hold it on and it has had 2 wake from sleep issues requiring it to be turned off and on again requiring a firmware upgrade. All of these issues should have been resolved while you were assembling the printers before shipping them to us.' Also the one large printer, only one which handles 11x17 paper, has a jam at the stapler, according to the info screen and the recommendation from the info screen has not worked. I haven't heard back.

Not truly relevant to the ooops you screwed up, but i really wanted to get that off my chest.

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Re: Not just in IT

You needed to check the oil anyway didn't you?

Re: But I DO want to know!

one of my favourites is when someone tries to print one of the documents they received from Europe and since none of our printers have A4, they stop and request that some be put in. Since we are in North America we don't have any so the users complain to IT that the printer is broken so we have to tell the printers to print on 8 1/2 x 11, which isn't really very good. My users are resistant to learning to change the format of the document to an existing size of paper before printing.

California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles

Re: Never understood places with no front plate requirement, …

I was going to say that anything that is legal in the licensing location (state, province) is ok in locations that are not the licensing locations. Then I remembered that California doesn't allow anything except transponders to be attached to windshields.

Intel fires up internal foundry model to make its own chips

No space at the inn

This could lead to the foundry side telling the design side that they were all booked up and there was no space available to produce their chips.

Papa John's sued for 'wiretap' spying on website mouse clicks, keystrokes

Re: Information Privacy Boundaries in the Modern World

I like ham and pineapple on my pizza and I don't care who knows it, or what their opinion of me might be because of it.

Girls Who Code books 'banned' in some US classrooms

I believe that book banning began with that hotbed of left wing thinking - the Catholic Church and expanded with the selling point "Banned in Boston" a hotbed of puritanism.

Appeals court already under fire for upholding Texas no-content-moderation law

Re: Here we go...

Unlike the judges under discussion, Ted Kennedy was elected, not appointed.

Using the datacenter as a dining room destroyed the platters that matter

Winchester drives have the platters and heads in 1 removable unit.

"The IBM 3340 Direct Access Storage Facility, code-named Winchester, was introduced in March 1973 for use with IBM System/370.[40] Three models were announced, the 3340-A2 with two drives and a controller, the models B2 (two drives) and B1 (one drive). B-units can connect to the model A2 to a maximum of eight drives.

It uses removable data modules that included the head and arm assembly; an access door of the data module opens or closes during a mechanical load/unload process to connect the data module to the drive; unlike previous disk packs and cartridges there is no cover to remove during the insertion process. "

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

Microsoft: The deadline to get off Basic Auth is approaching

Scan to Email

We just got finished setting up a printer to do scan to email using SMTP. Am I going to have to get it a smart phone to MFA to?

Oh no, that James Webb Space Telescope snap might actually contain malware

I think you are misunderstanding what was being said. Data was being sent to a server disguised as a DNS query. These were not actual DNS queries.