Posts by DreamEater

Winnie the Pooh slasher flick mysteriously cancelled in Hong Kong

Re: Wierd

"It's not as bad as the hu-cow cheese fetish movie... Or LOTR secret diaries..."

I herd it was udderly brilliant...

...coat...

Putin to staffers: Throw out your iPhones, or 'give it to the kids'

Re: Unintended consequences...

"I do have nostalgia lately for phone booths, Selectric typewriters, and one way transistor radios. They seem like ancient symbols of innovation, privacy and freedom anymore. Those were the days."

Even the older stuff isn't as secure as you might think...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/10/how-soviets-used-ibm-selectric-keyloggers-to-spy-on-us-diplomats/

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

"Using personal names as a generic anything is bad policy. Take the example of "Karen" which has been used as a shorthand for the "overly entitled" and caused much unnecessary grief for people with that very popular name. Use some common sense."

Who pissed in your cornflakes?

Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla

"So, you unlock your car / house with your phone. What happens when you run out of charge and the charger is inside?"

You just slip the back off your phone and use the key hidden inside...oh wait...

FTC floats rule to ban imposed non-compete agreements in US

Re: Don't ban Non-Compete clauses

I could imagine them hiring people to Company 2, because Company 2 only employs people up to £20k.

Company 3 has people earning 20k to 25k etc...

Sounds a little far-fetched doesn't it...

Amazon halts work on ‘Scout’ delivery-bot that delivered parcels no faster than humans

Re: The Real Reason that the Scout Walked Slowly

Stag Do’s by Amazon (TM)

Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked

Re: Comments to On-Call articles

If you can fight the urge, wait until the Monday evening after On-Call is released, usually everyone who comments has (I realise this is midnight on Friday and I’m breaking my rule, but I’m on holiday and I’ve run out of books) so you get a really nice long read of 100+ comments

Legacy IT to blame for UK's inflexible benefits system

"As an aside, I've noticed The Register now seems entirely written from a US perspective and isn't really the El Reg of old; most of the sly humour seems to have gone, too."

I think you're right, although I don't have any links to back it up, it's just a feeling.

Was I the only one who felt sad when .co.uk went away?

China's top e-tailer sends sacked staff a 'graduation certificate'

"The problem with the Chinese is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur?"

I thought that was the French?

Help, my IT team has no admin access to their own systems

Re: Been there, loved wearing the t-shirt

Having recently gone self employed, I now have a new smile when I read these stories.

We have the original smile from dealing with desperate people because of their desperate actions, then the 2nd smile at being able to fix it and now the new smile "paid it promptly"

Never knew cashflow would give such anxiety.

Airtag clones can sidestep Apple anti-stalker tech

Re: give the dog a iPhone!

"Yeah, but have you actually tried to teach it how to work the fingerprint log on?"

I imagine its im-paw-sible...

Rover bring me my coat please...

How can we recruit for the future if it takes an hour to send an email, asks Air Force AI bigwig in plea for better IT

Re: Marked up

Radar? is that you?

UK watchdog's punishment for Blackbaud, Easyjet, other big privacy lawbreakers was slap on the wrist in private

Re: Not that GCPR seems to matter to Easyjet

I wonder if there is a way to force them...

A bit like when companies/people ignore courts instructions to pay fines etc and only seem to react when some rather large people turn up look for expensive equipment to take...

TskTsk: UK ISP TalkTalk told off by regulator over 'misleading' adverts promising fixed price service

Cheep barstewards

Unfortunately it's all down to price, the majority of people who ask me for recommendations never go with who I suggest, I tell them of the great service they will receive and the faster and more stable connection, but no, they sign up to TalkTalk because it was "free" or "really cheap".

ID10T5.

Apple begins rejecting apps that use advertising SDKs for fingerprinting users

Hopefully they won’t “touch base” *shudders*

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

Virgin

I’m a VM user and have been for over 10 years, where I live there is a old and “new” town VM.

The old town regularly suffers with outages and people not reaching their max speeds.

But the “new” town is almost flawless, in the last 7+ years I’ve been with VM at this location, I can count less than 10 occasions where the outage has been significant (I don’t count things being down for less than a few minutes)

My source is Facebook/word of mouth, looking at the local groups for the different parts of town, the old town probably complains once a month, where as the “new” part you only see a couple of times a year.

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

K-Series

How that Rover made that many miles without a new head gasket, I’ll never know!

What the duck? Bloke keeps getting sent bathtime toys in the post – and Amazon won't say who's responsible

Streisand effect

Here’s hoping the prankster doesn’t read El Reg

Could end up with even more ducks through the letterbox

You call Verizon. A Google bot answers. You demand a human. The human is told what to say by the bot

Not sure about a website, but generally have success at mashing the # or 0 key, usually around 5 times is enough for the system to crap out and go to an operator.

The other cheat is to go to accounts or termination, they don’t like to risk those depts with bots usually

The Edinburgh Fringe festival isn't happening this year, but that won't stop a digital sign doing its own comedy routine

Re: The festival should be banned

Unless it’s at someone’s expanse?

Linksys forces password reset for Smart Wi-Fi accounts after router DNS hack pointed users at COVID-19 malware

Why do companies use multiple domains? Why can’t they stick to one

Cisco rations VPNs for staff as strain of 100,000+ home workers hits its network

Re: Split Tunnelling

You'd like to think that, but somehow I've (with no qualifications etc, but just happened to grow up at the right time and annoy my parents enough by breaking and fixing our home computers, learnt enough to know what I'm doing) become our companies IT guy in the office when our outsourced guy can't get in (or can't be bothered to deal with half of it)

So I suggested at the very start of this all to use split tunnelling for everyone, this was immediately rebuffed and told it would be fine... we managed to the 2nd day before management got fed up of the stupid video meetings being laggy as hell, now we have split tunnelling.

I still can't fathom why they said no, I can only imagine it's because they would need to see every laptop, which is only around 40, and just didn't fancy doing it.

'Azure appears to be full': UK punters complain of capacity issues on Microsoft's cloud

Re: Homework

My child is 7, I feel that a term, or maybe two will be fine for him to "miss", he will still do work at home, but no where near the level the school is pumping it out at.

I know we're asked to stay in, but we're also encouraged to be out exercising, so in our once a day opportunity to leave the house, we'll most likely do some "exploring" of the local woods and countryside, he will learn a lot of things that can't be taught in the classroom, which I feel can only be a good thing.

Unfortunately I don't know what the end result will be, I can only do what I think is best for our mental and physical health at this time, being stressed out about work, school and caring all at the same time can't be good.

[/2cents]

Hey GitLab, the 1970s called and want their sexism back: Saleswomen told to wear short skirts, heels and 'step it up'

Sounds like you work for the Plymouth Brethren...

Reasons to be fearful 2020: Smishing, public Wi-Fi, deepfakes... and all the usual suspects

Re: Public Wi-fi factor must be in decline, surely

unfortunately you’ve not taken in to account how cheap people are.

I work with people who can quite easily afford a data plan to never need WiFi (excluding things like Netflix) but they have said they don’t see the point in buying it when there is so many free WiFi spots around, despite showing them articles and being that boring guy who always bangs on about privacy and security. I imagine they also use TalkTalk.

No wonder cops are so keen on Ring – they can slurp your doorbell footage with few limits, US senators complain

Re: Better not put a Ring on it then

Very true, I happened to see a post by beds police (I think earlier this year) offering the door bell with a significant discount.

They played the security/think of the children line quite well. Even if it was amazons hand up their arse.

Morrisons is to blame for 100k payroll theft and leak, say 9,000 workers

Re: Headline?

I agree, and because I read it all I felt invested so had to read the comments.

Very click baity.

Amazon is saying nothing about the DDoS attack that took down AWS, but others are

Re: The trouble with clouds

Well that’s going to rain on their parade...

Former TalkTalk cybersecurity overseer rattles the tin to cover costs of equal pay dispute against UK ISP

Whilst I agree people should be paid the same...

I’m not sure I can get on board with her claim, considering what her and the company she worked for did and does.

GPS cyberstalking of girlfriend brings surveillance and indictment for alleged American mobster

Re: American Justice?

Are you kidding?

Usually if you run a red light you face 20 years inside, because the red light was in one county, and as you went through you ended up in another, thus making it federal.

They also seem to think that’s reasonable!

Whereas, the UK, caught 5 times with an illegal knife, stabs someone on the 6th. Gets a suspended 2yr sentence and a £15 victim surcharge. All other costs are picked up by us as they’ve never worked a day in their life.

Fairphone 3 stripped to the modular essentials: Glue? What glue?

@DasWezel

What do you use to manage them?

I’ve got around 50 to manage and when updates etc need to be done, it takes utter days for them all to be completed as I have to do one (or a few) at a time by hand.

YouTube's pedo problem is so bad, it just switched off comments on millions of vids of small kids to stem the tide of vileness

Re: Is this accurately reported El Reg?

Have they done the same to Winstons channel too?

Plug in your iPhone, iPad, iPod, fire up the App Store: You have new Apple patches to install

Re: Speaking of patches...

Get yourself an old version of foxit pdf (before it became bloatware) super snappy bit of software!

Excuse me, sir. You can't store your things there. Those 7 gigabytes are reserved for Windows 10

The consumer rights act is your friend here.

I think it’s reasonable a computer should last between 3-5 years

TSB takes on 250 complaint-wranglers to absorb £200m outage fallout

Why let facts get in the way of a good PR announcement

Apple hauled into US Supreme Court over, no, not ebooks, patents, staff wages, keyboards... but its App Store

Not always good...

I wonder if this will allow people to have sub par apps that slurp details without being vetted by Apple.

A bit like google does, not saying Apple are amazing, but in my opinion there does seem to be a big difference in the amount of apps that scam. Google is certainly winning that race.

Tech giants' payouts go to everyone but affected citizens. US Supremes now urged to sort it out

Seems to me there is two options here:

1: they are forced to pay everyone 4cents regardless of how much it costs to do (shouldn’t of done it) and the remainder goes to a charity of the people’s choice.

2: the whole lot is donated to places the people who brought the case recommend.

World religions stake out positions on Pokemon Go

https://youtu.be/rZVjKlBCvhg

London's contactless ticket payment system for sale in £15m deal

Re: Testing similar with Safety Cameras?

I recognise that two finger salute...

Comcast slapped with eight-figure tax bill after package fails to impress

Bn

Everyone knows Bn is a delicious biscuit

NERDGASM as Apple announces 'special event'

Re: Special event? I'll set my watch!

Skagen!

Mens sana in fibro sano: Virgin Media network-level smut filters are ON

In the past with VM, I've been able to max out my connection too, but then 10 minutes later it's throttled for 4 hours.

"when quizzed by El Reg, confirmed that it was ditching its downstream traffic management policy"

When might this happen? As I can get ADSL2 but it's not very fast, but VM can guarantee me much faster speeds, but they limit, throttle and fondle it to hell.

The asymmetry implicit in Internet data retention

Will someone please think of the children?!