Posts by PTW

Coronavirus masks are thwarting facial recognition systems. So, of course, people are building training sets from your lockdown-wear selfies

Re: not have a social media account

or rather not to have your picture taken, your pic may be posted by someone else on anti-social media

TFTFY

For the price tag, this iPad Pro keyboard better damn well be Magic: It isn't... but it's not completely useless either

Re: Because ... it’ll just work : Nope

2011 Dell XPS X502L thanks, chunky, but it just works, every day. With 12Gb RAM and Devuan it does everything I need, docker, WINE for when I need to fire up EA, etc., etc.. And I can replace anything hardware wise. And does this keyboard have the rest of the keys that are missing from Macs?

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

Jolly japes

Many moons ago in tech support I incurred the wrath of my colleagues for some unremembered reason, probably leaving my pager on my desk and going out on site. I returned to my desk to find my mouse nonfunctional, ball still there, check, plugged in to the PS/2 socket, check, scratch my head, well it's Win 95, reboot it. Still nothing, trot off to the store room to get a new mouse to test, bingo, it works perfectly!

Whilst pulling the cable for the old mouse out of the cable management on the back of my desk, the PS/2 plug is not moving, then, pop, the plug appears, but there's still a PS/2 mouse plug waving about near my PC? Bastards had hidden my mouse in the cable management, and simply dropped the cable of another mouse into the management tray. Cheers fellas.

Re: All been there

What's really infuriating is handles on the push side of a door, that's what push plates were invented for, and surely they must be cheaper!?

Multi-part Android spyware lurked on Google Play Store for 4 years, posing as a bunch of legit-looking apps

re: factory reset

There's more than one article on el reg that describes android malware that survives a factory reset, so it'd be a case of flashing a factory image

Stop tracking me, Google: Austrian citizen files GDPR legal complaint over Android Advertising ID

re: adb

Doesn't really work for the rest of the population though, does it? My mother, aunt, grandfather, etc. should never need to either have a sys admin nor become one. We are the 1% in this case, and tbh I'm fucking tired of it, I should be able to buy a phone that doesn't track me, not go through all the shit of finding a phone that's supported by some alternate rom, and adding & updating the hosts file, etc, etc, etc. there's drinking to be done, I haven't time for this crap!

Hence the down vote.

@AC & Mr Jones

As I've said before, it's the Phantom Down-voter of Olde London Town.

It looks like a bot, but it's not, you can follow so many threads on el reg and there'll be posts with 101 up votes and just a single down vote. On some threads it's a single down vote on every post. It's quite sad if you think about it, that someone's only joy in life is down voting people for no reason whatsoever.

Sending hugs and kisses to you PDoOLT, and a pint, cheer up lad/lass!

PS

If you're not the PDoOLT don't you dare down vote this post!

DBA locked in police-guarded COVID-19-quarantine hotel for the last week shares his story with The Register

Re: What a shit hole

@Kangaroo maybe Oz is counting "deaths by" rather than the UK's "death with" in their numbers?

The iMac at 22: How the computer 'too odd to succeed' changed everything ... for Apple, at least

We woz robbed

in 1999, second floor office, and they used a ladder to come through the window, guess what they left behind? Yep, the only iMac we had!

boring Suns

Our fluid dynamics guys used Suns, I still hanker after one of the original Mouse Systems patterned "desk mats" even though I use a trackball!

MediaTek formally pulls open G85 SoC drawer, reveals chipset for next-gen budget blowers

Everything of MediaTek's making needs this ----->

See title.

All absolute shite with zero support after 3 weeks. My latest stupidity was trying to flash a decent ROM on a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9, I fell for the "we're gonna support this one" marketing tripe

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

Re: Citing the Grauniad

From off-guardian.org:

OffGuardian was launched in February 2015 and takes its name from the fact its founders had all been censored on and/or banned from the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ sections.

You're welcome

It'd be terrible

If someone unleashed a bot that filed, I dunno, maybe a 100,000 or more reports a day on plod's form

Stop us if you've heard this before: Boeing's working on 737 Max software fixes for autopilot, stabilization bugs

wasn't there a line about

"Helicopters don't fly, they're so ugly the ground repels them"

Not my opinion BTW I love the things

If there's something strange in Symantec's neighborhood, who you gonna call? Not Broadcom, it seems: Systems go down, cut off customers

Re: Broadcom worse than Symantec?

Jeez, that must be bad, I'll never forgive Symantec for what they did to Norton! See icon for what they deserve

Microsoft's Bill Gates defrag is finally virtually complete: Billionaire quits board to double down on philanthropy

Re: I miss WordPerfect

See title. Yes, I know it's still available, but I'm not paying $330 for something I use twice a year when Libre Office is available. TBH if it was $100 I'd probably pay it, it was so, so, much better than Word. Surely the patent must have expired on showing the single piece of formatting code that's actually screwing up your whole document?

Windows 7 will not go gentle into that good night: Ageing OS refuses to shut down

Re: I've had this happen for years with Windows

Windows has systemd too?

Boeing aircraft sales slump to historic lows after 737 Max annus horribilis

Re: Military have higher standards....

Exhibit A: SA-80

Exhibit B: M16

etc., etc.

Android PDF app with just 100m downloads caught sneaking malware into mobes

Re: How 'bout Lineage?

The only issue I've had with Lineage is there seemed to be only one dev supporting my ageing Xaiomi and he lost interest last year, so I've not even had a security update since January.

But, other than that I highly recommend Lineage

Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours

Re: "CPIOM is effectively a mini computer"

I read it as a 70s style, albeit a fraction smaller. Does this mean I'm officially old?

Google relents slightly in ad-blocker crackdown – for paid-up enterprise Chrome users, everyone else not so much

Is it time....

That PiHole became an application?

There's no way I can convince friends and family to shell out for a RPi and then have time to provide, the albeit minor, maintenance.

If servers go down but no one hears them, did they really fail? Think about it over lunch

Re: British 3-pin plug

What a marvellous and inherently safe design, electrically speaking.

Also, teaches one not to simply drop things on the floor after unplugging, that lesson is learnt when returning in the dark!

Owner of Smuggler's Inn B&B ordered to put up a sign warning guests not to cross into Canada

Re: AC I believe the correct term is Quebecers

Fucking humourless bastards aren't they!

Have a beer on me

Re: I believe the correct term is Quebecians

see title

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

Au revoir Mr Marmite!

You certainly kept the commentards busy, and I for one will miss your contributions.

Have a beer on me, with best wishes for the future!

Zuck it up: Facebook hit with triple whammy of legal probes, action in Canada, US, Ireland

I can't understand the fuss over CA

The issue is FB [and subsidiaries], LinkedIn, etc. Hoover up peoples contact lists at will, with some absurd EULA/TaC line like "you agree that you have obtained consent of those in your contacts list to share their data" in 2pt text.

To my mind THAT is a far more serious issue, and needs to be reversed ASAP.

ood new, fanbys. Apple spds up n-str McBook latop kyboad rpairs, ccrding t hs leakd mmo

Re: Lenovo Fn/CTRL

Wasn't in time to edit, but having just looked at a colleague's MacBook, I guess I'd forgotten, are Lenovo are trying to ape [or lure away users from] apple with the Fn/CTRL placement?

Apple keyboards did it for me, had a macbook for 3 months before throwing back at IT: no del key, Fn/CTRL switch, stupid half height up/down cursor keys, no pg up/down, end or home and the cmd key, oh, the horror!

Don't find the no tabbed terminal an issue either in windows or linux, I find it much easier and safer with alt-tab and separate windows

Re: Lenovo Fn/CTRL

It can be switched in the BIOS, yes, yes, I know you shouldn't have to and the fact they introduced the BIOS feature and didn't just swap the keys back has me lost for words.

Loose Women woman's IR35 win deals another high-profile blow to UK taxman's grip on rules

HMRC don't write the rules...

KPMG and PWC do

As Alexa's secret human army is revealed, we ask: Who else has been listening in on you?

Re: Just wanted to say "homophones"

Seven wankers with a humor bybass and counting....

Hams try to re-carve the amateur radio spectrum in fight over open or encoded transmissions

Err, why does it all need to be encrypted when dealing with disasters?

"'cos terrists"?

Jeez the Old Bill used to use the spectrum around 104-108MHz FM that you could pick up with any old radio by tuning to the end of the dial.

I think in a real emergency, "some comms" would be good enough!

Go Radio Hams keep this crap out of your spectrum.

EDIT

In fact make it all Morse only :D

International Bullying Machine? Big Blue seeks exposure of corporate canary

Re: Let's hope IBM keep pottering on.

There aren't enough up votes in the world for this^^^

Have one of these ---->

UK tech's gender pay gap: HP Inc closest to parity with 1.8% sliver – Civica, Huawei, Siemens straddle 40% chasm

So back of a fag packet calculation then...

"The median pay gap is calculated by arranging the hourly pay rates of all male full-pay staffers from highest to lowest, and taking the hourly pay of the middle-ranked man. The same is done for the women, and the two figures are compared."

What do the figure look like if you exclude all those doing less than 35 hours per week?

You need to compare people doing the same job and that have the same number of years in full time employment. Absolutely meaningless figures, what's the median of apples and oranges?

What bugs me the most? World+dog just accepts crap software resilience

From the NASA paper on the expense...

For the shysters out there now, there is little, or no increase in cost because they simply don't bother fixing their crap code.

See "anything with firmware" meant for a domestic setting, abandon it and sell some more tat

Tech security at Equifax was so diabolical, senators want to pass US laws making its incompetence illegal

Re: We don't need more regulation - GDPR not applicable

for the Brits as it happened before GDPR was in place.

Blue Monday: Efforts to inspire teamwork with swears back-fires for n00b team manager

Whilst testing an e-commerce solution....

One of my subordinates thought it hilarious to place an order with the customer's email address as: [email protected]

Privacy, security fears about ID cards? UK.gov's digital bod has one simple solution: 'Get over it'

"...universally acclaimed digital ID system which nowhere in the world has yet,"

Apart from Estonia with it's universally acclaimed digital ID system!? Fuckwit

Virgin Media? More like Virgin Meltdown: Brit broadband ISP falls over amid power drama

Re: Backup @illiad

About 4 to 6 weeks Sky subscription then for the average prole...

Hey you know what the smart-home world really needs right now? Yup, Google screaming in

Re: Not a chance & buttons

Google don't think so, they've enforced an A to Z on screen keyboard on the latest Android TV update, I'm sure in an effort to get people to use the voice search.

Sideloaded the ASOP keyboard and it wouldn't even display. Google can kiss my hairy arse!

Now a happy Pi 3b+ LibreElec/Kodi user, complete with Netflix.

Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

I can understand no Whatsapp

To be free of the Facebook slurp, but no Signal? I would have thought that a no brainer.

Although, with no store I guess a secure update process would be more difficult - the Signal website even carries a warning about downloading the apk directly.

Redis does a Python, crushes 'offensive' master, slave code terms

Re: They should ask Torvalds to rename git. - GentlyPluck

Won't somebody think of the turkeys, as it's nearly Christmas

VPNFilter router malware is a lot worse than everyone thought

TP-Link MR200

Seems TP-Link were aware of this model being affected before the 23 May, as that's when the latest firmware dates from. No firmware updates for the v1 since 2015, now they seemed to think it needs an update to:

1. Optimise the compatibility with DT(Germany).

2. Optimise the compatibility with Edge.

"Honest, they're the only changes"

Facebook puts 1.5bn users on a boat from Ireland to California

One step before the fine...

IANAL But my understanding is that under GDPR a fine is issued at Level 4, but the step before, Level 3 your right to act as a Data Processor is removed within the EU meaning Facebork can't hold any EU citizen's data.

Only way to deal with FB ------>

It's official: .corp, .home, .mail will never be top-level domains on the 'net

Only one up vote allowed

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

I'll raise you...

A tub full of m/m, f/f 9 pin serial connectors, 9 pin to 25 pin serial converters in various m/f guises, and a hand full of serial loop back plugs.

Oh! And Neo Geo Art of Fighting cartridge and a Neo Geo to Jamma board

Now I feel old

Munich council finds €49.3m for Windows 10 embrace

No-one see the contradiction?

On one hand they're spending >€49.3M "because all the software is Windows based" & they're migrating to cloud based applications.

Which are usually browser based, no? Ergo, no need to switch to Windows, just to a non bespoke version of Linux

Japanese sat tech sinks Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists' hopes

Re: De gustibus non est disputandum

OK my error, I was talking about Roundup rather than simply glyphosate.

Real point is Monsanto are CNUTS of the highest order, and the red mist descended that anyone would try to defend them. You know, that company that sues small farmers into oblivion because Monsanto GMOs drift uninvited onto their land. :rage:

Re: Glyphosate and Monsanto

Nothing to do with the lies that it's only active for 2-3 days after spraying, rather than the fact it can remain active for up to 30 years in real life?

Microsoft boasted it had rebuilt Skype 'from the ground up'. Instead, it should have buried it

Skype (and MSFT), utter, utter, shite!

Within months of MSFT taking control I lost my very early, firstname.lastname, Skype account, locked for no valid reason - to unblock tell us the month and year you created your account, and the exact balance, and which was the larger? Jesus left or right testicle, ad infinitum.

Just had the 4th blocked after 3 weeks, and a single use, due to possible spamming, trying to unblock entails constant email/SMS code loops. It's required for my latest assignment otherwise I'd fuck it off, and I'm trying desperately to get them to move to something else.

To top it off now there are no usernames only tel. or email.

MSN messenger was pretty awesome tbh, and early skype was even better... Ah, halcyon days..

Hand in your notice – by 2022 there'll be 350,000 cybersecurity vacancies

Old is new again.

It was NCE, MCSE, CCIE, now there's some new "must have" cert for the 20 (or 30) somethings to shell out for. All by paying your money to some "training" company that trains you in cramming answers; critical thinking NOT required.

Cue loads of bods getting certified and depressing wages again.

*Full disclosure, I completed my MCSE in two weeks; but you know what, it didn't teach me how to figure out NT4 won't install from CD if you call your CD drive, "CDROM" under DOS. *$^"* ^$&"£%%*"$!!!1! I don't know if the bug still happens in a VM, in theory it should as it's a DOS/NT issue. Go on, try it, you know you want to....

No longer a Windows User, just a bum ----->