Posts by bdg2

As so many people work away from the office, Wi-Fi 6E is perfectly timed for connected homes, other wireless apps

Re: congestion in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands

Do you mean using channels 1, 5, 9 and 13 rather than just 1, 6 and 11 in the 2.4GHz band?

Yes, I've heard that usually works well if everything in range can agree on it.

In the UK most 5GHz Wi-Fi when set to automatically choose a channel will try the lowest channels first (the 80MHz block formed from channels 36, 40, 44 and 48) because those are the only channels where DFS rules do not apply. These rules mean that with all the rest of the 5GHz channels you have to listen and check for absence of radar signals before and while using them. Even if you configure a UK Wi-Fi access point to use higher channels interference that makes the device "think" it hears radar signals can send it back down to channel 36.

Buggy chkdsk in Windows update that caused boot failures and damaged file systems has been fixed

And where is the fix?

Great news, they've fixed it now.

But unless someone tells us what the fix is and how to get it this information is totally useless.

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

WTF are people who pay such ludicrously high amounts for data even considering buying smart phones?

Re: Something they may get thrown out for...

Good point. The Samsung stuff often includes useless buggy rubbish far more likely to be accidentally using data than the Google stuff.

Seven 'no log' VPN providers accused of leaking – yup, you guessed it – 1.2TB of user logs onto the internet

Re: Building your own VPN

I use a VPN when I'm away from home on unsecured Wi-Fi or on a network of unknown security.

For my purposes my own VPN server back in my home is just as good as using any service would be. Plus I can get access to my NAS and other things that are on my network at home without having to forward ports in to them which would put them at risk of being hacked.

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Re: yes, yes...

I'm pretty sure I've updated successfully from a MBR Windows 7 install. I used a USB thumb drive created with the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.

123-Reg customers outraged at automatic .UK domain registration

My 2 unwanted .uk domains were set not to auto renew and they didn't. But instead when the original domains auto renewed they took my money for 2 more years of the original .co.uk and .me.uk domains (actually took my money twice for the .co.uk one!) and then proceeded to let them expire so my website doesn't work and none of my emails get through! Plus their advertised 24/7 support is actually office hours only and only if you are very very very persistent in trying to get through. 123-Reg are truly THE WORST EVER.

In solidarity with its broken email hosting, 123-Reg's '24/7' support lines also fall over

Most useless company ever!

There is no 24/7 support. IT'S A LIE. So far this year I have been charged twice for web hosting I asked to be stopped and I have just discovered they have allowed one of my domains to expire even though I have paid for two more years, and I have their invoice with "paid" on it to prove it. Where should I move to? (All I need is two domains (a .co.uk and a .me.uk), web forwarding on the .co.uk choose my own DNS on the .me.uk, and email forwarding on both of them. Oh and I need whois privacy too.

Chap asks Facebook for data on his web activity, Facebook says no, now watchdog's on the case

Great. Now they're going to outlaw collection of anonymized data and make them individually identify us instead. :-(

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

Re: QLC? It's not the one for me

4 to a 3 or 3 to a 2 etc ?

Bad example. Each cell holds four bits that's 16 levels. Better example:

15 to a 14 or 9 to a 8 etc.

Worst. Birthday. Ever. IPv6's party falls flat

Re: Follow the $

A /64 is not just "bigger" than the entire IPv4 internet, youtake the number of IPs in the entire IPv4 internet and square it -- that's the size of a /64. It's really really BIG.

Re: IPv6 weekly spikes

Higher percentage of traffic from mobiles at the weekend maybe??

Re: IPv6 weekly spikes

If the box that does your IPv4 NAT doesn't automatically by default firewall your IPv6 then REJECT IT, it's not fit for use. The IPv6 firewall should provide the exact equivalent protection on IPv6 that IPv4 NAT does on IPv4, if it doesn't it's not fit for use.

Re: Who in their right mind wants cloud based...

I don't understand what you mean. Please explain.

Re: very little out there runs IPv6 ?

Just as nobody with any sense would connect a Windows PC directly to an IPv4 modem that connects directly to the IPv4 internet you're not supposed to just put a Windows PC directly on the IPv6 internet, you're supposed to have a firewall which provides exactly the same security on IPv6 as an IPv4 NAT does on the IPv4 internet.

Lenovo's craptastic fingerprint scanner has a hardcoded password

I'm sure I heard a long time ago that the software that goes with these fingerprint scanners was appallingly insecure.

'WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?' Linus Torvalds explodes at Intel spinning Spectre fix as a security feature

Re: The bug is better than the buggy fix !!!

My understanding is that Microsoft never got as far as including the buggy 8th January Intel microcode in a Windows update.

With WPA3, Wi-Fi will be secure this time, really, wireless bods promise

Why would we believe this will be better than their previous bodged efforts when they're again designing it behind closed doors and not letting any real security experts look at it until after it's released as a standard.

It's happening! Official retro Thinkpad lappy spotted in the wild

My T430 isn't that different from a T420 and it's still my main laptop.

Plus I actually like and occasionally make use of the back lit keyboard to type in low light conditions.

Samsung drops 128TB SSD and kinetic-type flash drive bombshells

Re: The millibit/second strikes again!

Many people use k for 1000 and K for 1024.

Though I guess ki is more correct than K.

Travel IT biz reportedly testing 100TB SSDs

QLC is the daftest idea yet. Only 33% extra storage in return for doubling problems with charge leakage. TLC is pretty stupid too. At least MLC doubled storage capacity compared with SLC.

Why solid-state disks are winning the argument

Re the Kingston HyperX 3K -- were you monitoring it with Kingston Toolbox?

Re: @Nigel 11

I believe there is a third type of failure for SSDs, it seems to be rare now but I'm pretty sure that in the early years of SSDs it used to happen and was responsible for the stories of SSDs suddenly totally and completely catastrophically failing with virtually no possibility of any data recovery. Let me explain. While in use an SSD keeps the mapping of of logical to physical addresses and some usage counts in RAM -- in order to allow wear levelling. When the power goes off the controller in the SSD has to rapidly save that RAM into flash. However if something goes wrong and the RAM gets corrupt it effectively scrambles large sections of the drive.

Re: Will SSDs warn in advance of failure?

They do NOT put anywhere near 4 times the rated capacity of Flash memory in an SSD.

A 240GB drive probably has 256GB of flash in it, a 256GB drive maybe 272 or 288GB.

Certain hotspots in the drive get written to very often (directories, allocation tables etc.) and most other parts are rarely written to. The drive will move the hotspots around to even out the wear but it will move them before any damage is done.

New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD

What about Thorium?

Uranium is old hat.

What about Thorium?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

PLT chair: UK Radio Society is 'living in a dream world'

Re: With a lawless government, GOD gives Ya got a few choices here.

> (no knee-capping)

Don't see why not.

I'm utterly disgusted with the government.

As somebody who has been involved with the development of control systems that had to go through expensive testing to make sure they met the RF emissions standards as well as being a short wave listener it makes me really angry that the government has now decided that they support the manufacturers of these PLT devices that have illegally CE marked devices that emit, in some cases hundreds of times more interference than the legal requirement.