Posts by MR J

Chips for Huawei are fried: TSMC stops shipping parts to Middle Kingdom mega-maker this September

Re: Which could be where it gets "interesting"

Payment processing often happens in USD and as such passes through the US financial system. So regardless of them being in Taiwan or nearly anywhere else in the world. The risk of having your money seized while in transit is a big risk. This is one reason why OPEC has so much power in the US, if they change it so they process in currencies other than the US then the US takes a huge finical hit, plus they no longer have leverage against the purchasers of said product. This is the greatest fear of the US becoming number #3, once currency processing moves then so does much of their global overreach.

Re: The sooner Trump is out of office the better

List some of those overbearing regulations that tell you to do and not do the same thing. I hear a few people moan about overregulation but none can ever give a good example of where it does bad (Other than paperwork management cost).

One of the largest is the ACA, because healthcare for poor workers is something that they would have had anyhow - just look at how much insurance poor workers had historically, they had great insurance and supportive companies.

Sick Leave and PTO is starting to be allowed in now, your correct that this is stepping way over the mark. When most people get a job, they really enjoy the idea of working there 365 days a year without ever being able to have a week at home with the family. PTO regulations should be removed straight away right?. And Sick Leave, what the heck is that all about huh? If you love your job you will avoid getting sick. I have never understood how people can be sick for more than 2 days a year, repeal that huh?

I look forward to you giving some good examples. I come from a state with no public policy exception when it comes to employment. I have seen sewerage dumped in a river, police force people to sign over assets, people get fired after their first single sick day after working for months, and much worse. My original employer (by a company owned and ran by a preacher) ran three companies out of the same building, our working hours were split between the three so they could avoid having anything other than temporary staff, as such I never gained any form of benefits nor ever god paid any overtime even on one day that was about 22 hours long (but they did buy us happy-meals). So, hook us up with examples of bad regulation.

BoJo buckles: UK govt to cut Huawei 5G kit use 'to zero by 2023' after pressure from Tory MPs, Uncle Sam

Re: So...

That could be true.

It would explain why the towers burn so well.....

Linus Torvalds drops Intel and adopts 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper on personal PC

Re: New PC

+1 for Fractal, on their Mid-Tower cases at least.

There's a few things I don't like, the water line grommets that come with like to fall out, the "filter" for the PSU on the cases is generally crap, the pads for the feet are also usually poorly attached. I still have two cases here (Older r4 I think) but they have held up well with multiple builds and have done well for me.

Hey, China. Maybe you should have held your hackers off for a bit while COVID-19 ravaged the planet. Just a suggestion

Re: Close off china

Seeing how the US does this sort of thing against China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and even goes after private companies such as Yandex (Russian Google), Not to mention PHYSICAL damage to infrastructure.

Well...

The US and their partners need to keep the links open.

Forget toilet roll, bandwidth is the new ration: Amazon, YouTube also degrade video in Europe to keep 'net running amid coronavirus crunch

Re: Bandwidth like Bank Reserves?

A HD stream doesn't use anywhere near 150 Meg (I know you didn't say it does). 150 Meg would allow 6, at minimum, 4kHDR streams.

Really that 4kHDR stream is going to be closer to 15 Meg, and if your player supports HEVC then 1080 will probably only use about 3 Meg.

Low bandwidth is why there was a big move to HEVC (And why my old Roku box can only play birds).

ISP's should be forced to publish their contention/utilization ratios. So we would know how much of a "buffer" there is.

I think it's more that they don't trust the ISP to be able to handle the traffic, and would end up with complaints. Many of the huge US carriers would love Netflix to pay extra traffic charges (has nothing to do with Netflix and competition).

So they are saving the network so the providers don't complain. Plus users would probably rather have VoIP, VPN, and VideoSharing type of services to stay at the lowest possible latency.

Re: Excuse me...

What service did you use to buy all of your legally stored full quality movies?

Thought you'd go online to buy better laptop for home working? Too bad, UK. So did everyone. Laptops, monitors and WLANs fly off shelves

Re: and desks and chairs at IKEA

Ikea actually closed the stores in the UK, so I doubt anyone is there buying anything.

Microsoft engineer caught up in sudden spate of entirely coincidental grilling of Iranian-Americans at US borders

Hopefully targeting people who are mad means that the TSA might catch their first "Terrorist".

IRAN says killing the American leader wouldn't be punishment, but leaving him in power is. So they are leaving him there, and thus winning the "war".

UK's Virgin Media celebrates the end of 2019 with a good, old fashioned TITSUP*

Re: I dont understand why cutting a single cable takes out an area

The internet might be able to re-route things when something happens.

Firstly this was not just a "cut".

It is not until you get deep inside a ISP's network that the multi honed benefits can take over.

From you to the Street Cab is one connection. From there it's a single connection back to some form of headend and it's possible that more than one headend is connected in a ring allowing some redundancy. Once you reach the core network from the headend then there should be multiple points of redundancy.

The core network will have multiple peering providers in multiple peering locations. Really small ISP's might only have one provider.

The fact that the post above yours shows that multiple ISP's were down including mobile networks (They probably use Fibre backhaul instead of Microwave) shows just how much was "cut".

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/12/22/01/22534808-7817277-A_worker_on_the_New_Malden_site_The_company_said_During_construc-a-31_1576976438834.jpg was the photo I seen getting passed around.

Not sure if it was legit. But as you can see some of what's sticking out has been cut before then it's possible that was wrapped a lot higher than what you see.

Without seeing the full scope of the work it's hard to see how much of the complaints can be justified.

I mean, the photo of the auger/piling drill with all of that cabling wrapped around it to me looked quite bad.

Big difference between a "Cut" and a rotating bit of metal pulling thousands of feet of cabling out of the ground. Assuming said photo I have seen was of the actual problem.

You can forget about that Black Friday deal: Brit banks crap out just in time for pay day

We didn't have any issues early in the day, later in the day it was difficult to log in but once you got there it worked.

While it's annoying that a system is down, I have to say that there weren't any, from what I can see at least, data leaks or total meltdown issues. So the service was overloaded and everyone is mad, not saying they should be happy but other providers have had melt downs in the past and start sharing account information with the wrong people and all sorts of erroneous things. Even today I am still having issues logging in, but once in everything seems to work okay, and everything looks correct so it's a bit meh. We are in the lower 12% of earners and were fine so I find it odd so many people struggle to cope for a few hours.

Help! I bought a domain and ended up with a stranger's PayPal! And I can't give it back

Must admit, I Hate paypal.

I once priced up a new computer, and there was this advert for Aria or Scan or someone like that with a big bonus if you buy via PayPal.... Anyhow, I thought why not - I was going to buy said parts at the site anyhow so why not try to get the bonus.

Purchased said parts and then went to claim reward, was told they only paid it once the warranty expired on all goods I purchased. They said that as such they had to wait at least err, 2 years I think it was, before they could process the claim. Eventually they said it should have been one year (once I could no longer return to retailer). Having lots of spare time on my hands I contacted them regularly and each time was told I had to wait. Then about a year or so after, they said that they had no record of the purchase to said company (I sent them a screenshot of their own transaction page) and they said that the claim wasn't processed in time, I quoted all of the old emails to them and we went to-and-fro quite a bit..

Regardless... That was a bit of meh, but I have seen them make other mistakes and never refund for it.

Living in the UK I once sold something to a US pal. They managed to convert the money 3 times in total (taking a charge EACH TIME!) and refused to refund it. Overall the fee was quite large. Not a happy bunny (that's when I quit using them).

I also have tried to "close" accounts for family who have had the owner die. You get the impression that the account is closed, BUT if you monitor the email addresses on those accounts you will see that after a few months PayPal will start sending out emails again, then follow up with offers and pre-approved goodies. Log in for your reward, statement, whatever. If someone ask me now, I delete all information/cards/everything in the accounts, give it a super-secure password, and change it to a random super-long-name email for gmail and then ask for the account to be shuttered. There should be no reason why an account can't be closed.

Re: Or

Because no one has ever sold a phone with an existing SIM card in it.

Nor has anyone ever had a number removed for non-payment either (then re-issued by the telco years down the road).

So have you planned what to do when someone gets ahold of your sim card and ports the number over straight away, I am sure a different carrier isn't going to help you retrieve that lost number.

Not so G.fast: Hybrid fibre 'under review' as Openreach remembers it's all about FTTP now

I don't think you have that idea in your head correctly.

It is, and forever, will be a shared service.

So the motorway traffic is moving at 30, they change the speed limit sign to read 50.

Does everything magically get faster?

There is a pot of stew, shared between 100 people. Everyone takes an equal amount.

If everyone uses larger bowls then is there more stew?

I am with Virgin and it's fine. Some areas are horrible. I have no choice here... 4 meg dsl, or cable.

Mozilla Firefox to begin slow rollout of DNS-over-HTTPS by default at the end of the month

I load dns block list from winhelp2002.mvps.org, pgl.yoyo.org adservers, hosts-file.net adservers, adaway.org, someonewhocares.org, and hostsfile.org on my router.

What this change means to me is that I will start seeing adverts!...

For the average person it will be a win. For the tech-aware types out there then it will be a pain in the bottom.

I am sure that they will allow you to change in the future to some of the main providers, but Honestly I don't like it at all. While it will be nice to remove that attack vector, it will also be horrible as now it's moving in a direction that we will find it impossible to detect something going on wrong just by DNS request.

UK's Openreach admits 50k premises on 'gigabit-capable' FTTP network can't get gigabit speeds

Re: 330mbits??

Most "engineer" types who come to your door have little to no real understanding of how the system works. They have a role and generally speaking they fill their jobs without too much hassle.

The Hub4 doesn't seem to be out for testing as they have not put a call out for people to test new hardware. If it is in testing then it's only in the early lab stages at this point, and you can be sure that means it's going to be probably next year before we see such a thing roll out to customers.

IEEE says it may have gone about things the wrong Huawei, lifts ban after US govt clearance

Re: Security concerns?

I have been waiting a few years for these camouflage spy chips to be found.

There are unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know about.

Sounds legit to me, avoid their kit!

Something that sounds that dumb should probably be ignored, but in the good ole USA that could probably lead to war.

Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a

Re: All very nice ...

I purchased two Swift 2 X's for the kids.

One has serious battery drain issues (OS says the camera is causing the drain). The other one was dropped and the button popped out, my daughter (Youth, I forgive her) tried to fix it by sliding something under the cover to try and wiggle the button back in. She's managed to snip the flexible pcb going to the buttons and Wileyfox (Now defunct, but still going by another company) refuses to sell me the part. However, IF I pay around £60 + Delivery + Cost of Repair then they'll fix it for me.....

Soooo... My view on WileyFox and Santok(STK)…. They can take a flying flock.

Reason for them not being able to sell me the pcb flex - Because it encourages illegal reselling of parts and voids my warranty. Phone was under warranty (3 months old) but that would have been rejected.

US foreign minister Mike Pompeo to give UK a bollocking over Huawei 5G plans

Re: 51st state

In 1790 there was an actual Act that stated anyone born to US Citizens were "Natural Born" citizens.

This Act was superseded in 1795 and the "Natural" part was not included in the wording.

Now, the English Crown has defined it as your actual place of birth, but in most American historical reference it's your entitlement at birth.

A couple of cases of things like this have come up in the past, with resolutions happening outside of the courtroom. The problem is that most Americans would view it as entitlement at birth, but once they hear the King could be President then most would instantly switch sides. A bit like those that want US gun crime to go down - by buying out all bumpstocks in case they need them to stop gun crime.

This new kid is quite far from the Throne, but I think it would be possible.

My guess is that the child will give up US citizenship during those 1-2 years you can do it without penalty as a teenager.

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

My wife reported mis-selling of things like PPI to her Manager, the Manger went back to the top selling staff and said "Your bonus, and the bonus of all around you, will be lost if your not selling enough PPI, is there mis-selling of PPI going on?" and the people said No. Wife took it to that Managers Manager who then asked someone below "Your bonus, and the bonus of all around you, will be lost if your not selling enough PPI, is there mis-selling of PPI going on?", the answer was No. My wife was later let go for not selling enough PPI, she took them to tribunal and the Mangers in question said that indeed they checked and no PPI mis-selling was ever going on. Tribunal found in Banks Favor because high level managers dont tell lies. The funny thing was that as the complaints had gone quite high up, the top guy who said PPI was not going on, was also one who signed documents saying that they would pay out refunds because it was systemic within the buisness.

Her Manager was moved up after the PPI fiasco.

The Managers Manager was given a golden parachute for his dedicated service.

The Wife took about a 25% cut to her pension, and lost her job.

Soooooo.. Do I think that the "managers" at the top knew there was a problem, hell yea... But they will never "lie", It's just that no one knows the highly specific questions to ask. If their emails didn't say AOA sensor then they'll claim AOA was never mentioned, even if they knew exactly what the problem was. A the end of the day it was a paid option to have a AOA mismatch warning - Your bonus and the bonus of all below you can be harmed if the AOA mismatch warning is free, should it be free...…..

Tractors, not phones, will (maybe) get America a right-to-repair law at this rate: Bernie slams 'truly insane' situation

I recently had the same problem getting something installed.

It cost me $2,500 for a new aircon, and $2,500 for install... Because regardless of who would install it, the total needed to come to $5,000. The "Retail" price of the unit is ~$2500(usd) when you get it from Canada (who imported it from the USA) so I know the installers were paying a lot less.

8 hours of work (4 hours * 2 people) for $2,500 is nice money.

Even in the UK you still have this trouble. Daughter damaged a flexible pcb with microswitch on her phone. The part itself cant be repaired (too fine for me) and probably cost the company somewhere around 70pence to source. They refuse to sell me said part as I may damage the phone, but for roughly $60 they will attempt to repair the phone for me!...

Heck, even my Honda (Shame on you Honda!) faulty airbag can't be replaced because there is no stock (I call BS on that). But here's the thing, if I opt for a paid service then the faulty airbag can magically be replaced as there is stock for people who are adding it to other products!

Sinister secret backdoor found in networking gear perfect for government espionage: The Chinese are – oh no, wait, it's Cisco again

Netgear still haven't fixed a old bug that they had that I reported years ago.

Basically with the web interface turned off you can still ask the router to reset the admin password via the netgear website. It will forward the existing details of the router in the request and all you need is the MAC address (that the router itself has sent in plaintext!)

Been years now, but Netgear told me it wasn't an issue as people would eventually migrate away from those devices.

Bitcoin drops 7 per cent on New York Attorney General's allegations of $850m fraud by Bitfinex

Re: So does the US apply the same rules to other currencies?

Most currency transactions are not guaranteed at a specific rate (other than where you might buy it at a kiosk or something). Large bank transactions are purchased and sold instantly so there's no "stocking" of one currency or another "generally". In terms of "deposits", if you live in the UK and have a USD bank account (HSBC are a top pick for multiple currency accounts) then they are required to hold reserves in the UK based on the UK£ amount. So my "Guess" would be that they hold enough to cover any swings in currency value.

Money Transfer is so easy using virtual currency. If you live in some backwater part of the world (Like the USA), it can take weeks or months if your unlucky for money to be transferred from A to B. I sent ~5k to the USA last year and it took a few hours to reach the USA, then about two weeks to reach the final bank, plus I had to pay transaction fee's on every bank it passed through with an additional wait on the funds being held so they could make sure it wasn't claimed back.

TransferWise can do it in about three days, a physical check will be anywhere from a week to a month plus fees.

I once had a bank freeze my account when I deposited a check drawn from the Federal Reserve. They waited about 4 weeks to make sure it was clear and valid, I also had to pay "special" fee's as they don't deal with the fed lol...

There's also a LOT of fee's attached across the world to people who have little in their accounts. So while large laundering probably is taking place with virtual currency, there's also the great view that people who cant afford much can get around these fees. Laundering and Avoidance takes place now so this mechanism really shouldn't be looked at as something that's by and for that only. I don't think that this type of currency will ever take off (I view most as a large Ponzi scheme).

And in current affairs... Apple recalls three-prong AC adapters after some shocking behavior

I had a (recent-ish) BlackBerry one that kept popping open. The way it was designed means that when the cover comes off the thing is exposed in a bad way. I filled it with epoxy and sealed it shut, but really bad design. I have a few more "budget" usb plugs here that have a great mains design, molded in such a way that if the housing comes apart that there is no real shock hazard. Why someone would design the upper part of housing so it can come off leaving all the gubbings exposed is a odd one to me.

BT 'UK's most powerful Wi-Fi'? Why, fie, for shame! – ads watchdog

Power Limits aside, there are some design considerations that allow for "better" transmission. How these things are tested and rated when it comes to giving that bit of consumer information is probably based on who is testing it and what they want the results to show.

I am hoping someone will bring VM up on their current "advertising" that states that their packages are based on the number of devices you connect. I asked the sales team to not repeat it to me again that the package I was on was not good because of the number of devices I had (tho, he couldnt tell how many I had as I refused to give him the info). But to say that you count your devices to pick your package... That's just wrong.

Re: WIFI

Not sure what your on about, "away from the router".

Their router works just like all other "Routers". No LAN DHCP assignments are cloud-based. If you mean the WAN IP assignment, it might be "Farther" away, but that doesn't really matter nor can you used "fixed" ip settings for that.

Are you sure your disc drive has stopped rotating, or are you just ignoring the messages?

Re: I can believe it!

I changed out a power supply once in my work computer, when the IT guy found out he said it needed to be returned to how it was (broken) and then for me to file a repair request. I did as he suggested. A few days later the computer was collected, and a week or so after that they were unable to find the fault or funding to fix the unit, so I had to wait for them to order a new unit for the sales team, and for the sales computer to be formatted and have the os loaded again. All in all it took them about two weeks and then about 6 months more to request the specific software I had to use. Sadly the old software could not be recovered due to the machine non working.

Yes, sometimes users cause problems. Sometimes power-hungry idiotic IT departments are worse.

None of our computers had CD drives either, so once when the IT department put the service CD in the network drive for us, we copied the whole thing over to our computers. Life was so great. We all received a formal warning for that, as the IT department had not deemed it allowable. They deleted all stored PDF files we had and locked the service CD in the safe. To get a document off of it we had to file a request AND wait for the network CD drive to not be in use. I think at the time the CD cost £12 to buy (Early 2000's). When the IT manager went on vacation we had no access to PDF documents, but there was a warehouse down the road that would photocopy paper documents for us to use :/….

Data-nicking UK car repairman jailed six months instead of copping a fine

Re: "Shall I ship it to you home address sir?"

If delivery groups could offer a good service there wouldn't ever be a need to tell a lie about where you need/want something delivered.

A few weeks ago the royal mail guy (or gal) gave up on my street, stuck EVERYTHING through my door. I had like the remaining 9 homes on my street and the first 4 on the next street....

DX (Delivered Exactly LOL) sent me a text to say my delivery should be with me tomorrow, please be at the property between 6am and 8pm with valid identification. To be fair, it was exactly delivered in the time they gave me, I am just glad they didn't say between November 1st and November 30th.

And then I know a guy who moved like 9 years ago, and the council, BT, his pension provider, and lots of other people still send stuff to the wrong address. I can only guess it's because his post code hasn't changed so phone/office staff just look at the postcode and throw the sheet away thinking it's been done.

Then there was the time someone else used OUR phone number to sign up to Sky... Because we didn't know the persons name, address, sky account number, security details, or anything, they refused to remove our phone number from the account. Funny thing was, they were willing to upgrade packages for me - without needing to pass a security check.

So lets not just blame customers for the failings of big business and how it makes them do things.

UK computer dealer Aria PC loses £750k VAT fraud appeal attempt in THAT case

That's because the prices now include non-refunded VAT. ;)

Shortages, price rises, recession: Tech industry preps for hard Brexit

Re: And all we can do...

Me and 4 pals had an argument on if curry was the best take-out food to get. We decided to find out what the best take-out food was by voting.

Me - Curry

Bob - Pizza

Jim - Enchilada with Beans

Sam - Curry

Ray - Fried Chicken

Tim - Fish and Chips

Our testing led us to the startling conclusion that Curry is obviously not the best take-out food one could get. Only 40% of people were happy with Curry.

Since then we have never had another meal together, because they think I am a Curriestie.

Brexit is the same, numbers are bounced around the pro-Brexit papers but roughly...

48% remain, 26% No-Deal, 13% Canadian-Style deal, 13% Norway-Style deal.

Soooo, Yea, your correct, the UK has opted not to remain. Clearly a win.

$200bn? Make that $467bn: Trump threatens to balloon proposed bonus China tech tariffs

Re: And the pollies let it happen.

Some Americans view bankruptcy as a form of economic gain.

I have known people who go bankrupt every 8 or so years. The key thing is to work your finances and finical security in such a way that you don't need to live off of credit. The American system fails because it allows people who are older with good pay to build up credit really fast even if it is clear that they were previously bankrupt.

Trump is one of these such people. His team has gone one step above however. They would push out payments to those (small non-Chinese) suppliers/builders who they owe money to in such a slow drip feed and tie up what was owed with legal paperwork. Those suppliers would go bankrupt, and then that debt would never be chased again.

What is also highly laughable is that the losses that allow trump to not pay tax was likely all based off of foreign loans to build US buildings. So he pays no tax in the US due to defaulting on Foreign loans.

Protectionism is bad, he is not the first person to try this hard for it. Some people benefit, those being protected, but everyone else has to pay the cost. Yes you can save jobs mining coal - at the expense of the solar industry. Yes you can bring back car manufacturing jobs - at the expense of car company profit, final product cost, and a larger risk to the finance sector. Protectionism is bad, but if it helps you then you like it.

'Fibre broadband' should mean glass wires poking into your router, reckons Brit survey

Last year I was visiting my mother and needed a part for her gas furnace. I finally found a supplier.

Solar Supply, they only deal with plumbing / hvac ..

I was gutted really, was looking forward to talking to someone about solar pv/hw.

And I agree with the study, most people really dont know the difference, the terminology to me is wrong anyhow as even 2g phones could really be "fibre".

Sadly even BT struggles with this... I tried in vain one day for HOURS to get the staff on the phone to understand that I would like a quote for Fibre to be installed. FTTPoD to me shouldnt be confused with VDSL by the providers, but the fact that it is means that there is no way the average punter will know the difference.

Previously the ASA agreed that basic consumers were far too dumb to understand Hybrid-Fibre as a option, as such "Fibre" was okay to use as a marketing term. It's time (past time really) that this idea gets quashed so we can actually see who sells "Fibre" and who sells "HF Cable/DSL".

UK.gov IT projects that are failing: Verify. Border control. 4G for blue-light services. We can go on

So taxpayer money getting dished out to people who are overpaid and underdeliver.

What is this story about?... It should be changed to "Just another Day in the good ole UK"

I have seen this same type of problem with Recycling, the Tax Man, NHS, Universal Credit (LOL), the "Charity" groups that councils set up so they can subcontract things out without scrutiny, and so many other things that it's just laughable.

This is not a "IT" or "Tech" related issue, it's more along the lines of corruption or incompetence across all sectors of government.

At least they are not asking us to install some sort of smart meters at our house for electricity that has cost us £28 million each to install so far... Oh wait.

UK.gov: We're not regulating driverless vehicles until others do

Freedom.

Guess they are going to wait until the EU rules come out as those will be required for us too.

Oh Wait.....

Independent - But only when you want to be.

More power to UK, say 'leccy vehicle makers. Seriously, they need it

Re: Its not just manufacturing that needs a solution

How often do you go see your son in Norfolk?

There are a few rapid chargers on the way there, a few there, and since you cant park at his house then you might as well pick a lot that has charging facilities.

I hear this argument all the time.. "But It will not get me where I want to go", and then you ask the question about where they want to go and how often with the reply from them "Far away, once or twice a year, but haven't been in three years".

I think it's been thought out quite well. If you (like most car drivers) reside near where you work then it's worth it, If you are too far out then it is not worth it. Why should the 90% of potential electric car owners need to pay triple the price just so you can go see your son a couple of times a year?

I have known plenty of people who had cars with dual fuel tanks in them, 500+ miles of range (larger vehicles) and they could still manage to run out of fuel. If it's not good for you don't buy it. The biggest problem I found with our electric car was that some plonker in a large luxury sedan would use the charging bays to park in thus making it difficult to charge. Perhaps we should start giving fixed penalties for those drivers and use the funds to fix this poorly thought out thing you imagine?

EE unveils shoebox-sized router to boost Brit bumpkin broadband

Need "Unlimited" - with limits.

Really what they need here is a plan that is "unlimited" and offers a fixed connection, but you can buy packages to get "limited" data at higher speeds.

Our home uses 1-1.5tb every month, and virtually all of that is streaming services. TMobile used to offer unlimited data at 6 months for £20... Once you passed a threshold it slowed down, but it was great for still checking emails and having basic connectivity when you need it.

Far too many users need to buy packages that they rarely use, and far too many others need to pay HUGE penalties for using data that is not included in their plan.

Wish you could log into someone's Netgear box without a password? Summon a &genie=1

Simple answer, They dont care.

I found a serious exploit that allowed someone on the WAN side to fetch the router password and enable remote login. You used a simple URL fetch from pointed at the router, the router forwarded you to the Netgear website and would add a query line that included the information you needed to get the password. As it was a "Major" feature of all Routers they said they couldn't fix it.

I tested on all Netgear products I had at the time (WNDR 3700, 4000, 4500) and a couple of other units. I also reached out about a year after I reported it and others replied that it was still there on other units. To date no firmware fix has been rolled out.

June 6 2014 - Issue reported

July 12 2014 - Netgear confirm the issue exist.

July 15 2014 - Case attempted to close - I asked why

July 17 2014 - Netgear tell me that these cases will close and reopen if a fix is found.

February 10 2018 - Still not heard back, It's still there too......

I did however speak to someone who deals with non-released hardware, and can confirm that no new hardware has this existing flaw. It's easy to fix - but super easy to exploit (all you need is a web browser!) so perhaps when all of their "Older" gear is gone then this exploit will be gone.

Boffins craft perfect 'head generator' to beat facial recognition

Kids Today eh...

They need an app to keep their social media images from being able to be tagged as them, that way others might not see that image.

If only there was some other way to keep images from getting into the online world, life would be better.

Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020

Re: "When it's political, technology cannot do anything."

Manipulation of Idiots and Reasoning of Politicians are not really the same thing... Close, but not the same thing.

Re: Not sure about Office?

Worse for my kids school.

They use a music application that cost about $600 and is several versions behind, the new versions refuse to export to the old version so the school will only let you work with that old version or none at all (so I picked none at all). I am not paying that amount of money for my kid to use a non-supported program at home.

Then, like you say, office. Well currently the kids can get it free (but that's because the school is paying out the nose for services), but the IT department in my kids school, nearly 1k children, didn't know that the children could get it free. I only discovered it when I argued to get access to the children's school mail so they could do some work at home, the "option" is not in a great place but it is there. Funny part is that the school is using older versions of office, and they want all parents to buy the older versions so the kids can work from home!... Laughable that they are paying the cost of office for all the kids and themselves, but not using it at all.

I tried for years to get their earlier school to move to PDF files instead of Publisher 2003, they found it confusing that so many parents couldn't open an email with a publisher 2003 file - it was sad they didn't understand.

Too many people use ONLY windows, and ONLY Internet Explorer. You deviate away from that and they say they are unhappy or feel that things are not good. Schools get kids to do everything in windows-only environments and that feeds through until they are young adults. There comes a point when the children are unhappy to do anything that doesn't work on a windows machine, because that's all that they know.

WPA2 KRACK attack smacks Wi-Fi security: Fundamental crypto crapto

4 Years ago in a land far far away.

Some Netgear rep got an email from me detailing an exploit that new firmware was making on old units.

They tested inhouse and found that the routers were indeed left open (on WAN SIDE) to anyone visiting a crafted URL and fetching the router Login details Name, Password. It was possible to fully hijack the router via the WAN side without issue.

Netgear said that it's nothing to worry about as people buying NEW hardware would not suffer the same problem, thus as people upgrade the exploit will disappear.

This "Problem" will be exactly the same, If the hardware is more than 2-3 years old then a fix will never come via the manufactures.

The exploit for these old routers still exist to this day - even after multiple firmware updates on some units.

Dyson to build electric car that doesn't suck

Re: Well, electric cars are much simpler...

It doesn't matter, he will be the first producer to use a Digital Car motor.

EasyJet: We'll have electric airliners within the next decade

Takeoff/Landing vs Cruising

With super capacitors and batteries being installed in planes, wouldn't this allow a lot of the engine weight to be transferred out.

Imagine the fuel and engine weight you save on takeoff, it will be huge, but will cruising weight be a lot higher?

I would say the upshot to this being made now is that as battery density (and/or wireless energy transfer gets more efficient) then range will increase without the need to hugely change the designs.

Others say what about battery going flat, well, I have to wonder if the thing would still be okay landing without too much issues. I would imagine that you could recharge the caps (or battery) while slowing down, giving you the power needed to actually control the landing.

I cant see jet fuel going away any time soon, but I can imagine tons of hybrid builds coming along, and since this is not a car we are talking about then it should be a lot easier to get working than it has been for the auto industry.

Smart meters: 'Dog's breakfast' that'll only save you 'a tenner' – report

Does the price show the total install cost, or the difference between regular meters and smart ones?

I have a recalled (Due to risk of explosion and fire!) gas regulator fitted to my meter outside my house and they refuse to replace it stating that it will get replaced once I get my smart meter. So logically that means to me that some of the smart meter cost are also the regular meter cost with some sweetener on top.

I view it much in the same way that Solar Panels, and the way the Home Car Charge Point Subsidy was made. Every time the Subsidies were driven down, the install cost followed to match. They use regulation to install over the counter proven solutions - with HUGE markups. I think my charge point cost £150, but now that the subsidy has gone UP (Why???) the charge points are now £375 again (exact price of the subsidy!)

Smart Meters are good I think, because there are too many non-smart consumers out there. I am the only person on my street who reads and reports their own meter data, most people I know let the people who come around do it - for the rest of the time the bill is estimated. I am not sure how much a meter reader cost (14k/year, so 40-50p per house just for wages) but you could now take a reading every month so that saves over £6 per home per year, it also means switching providers "SHOULD" be a breeze.

Personally I like them, but I think that from top to bottom too many large companies are looking to fleece the gov (ultimately the people) and it just needs to stop until a reliable product at a normal price is out there.

Another thing that irks me a lot is that I cant actually download the usage from my units, only my provider can do that. So if I want to get a hourly usage chart, I would need to build my own smart meter and that would cost me nearly £35...

What is this – some kind of flashy, 3-bit consumer SSD? Eh, Seagate?

Re: Getting closer.

Seeing how I am more of a heavy user than most people I know, and my disk usage is around 120 GB for Games and 120 GB for everything else... then 1 TB is probably not something most people need.

I do have about 1.5 TB of ripped DVD's and CD's, but those are on a network drive that virtually never gets used... Cloud storage (CD's are in FLAC, but saved online as high-enough quality MP3) means that my old ripped files are of little use. Online streaming means I can watch "HD" quality films/shows of much of what I own in DVD Quality, so those ripped DVD's are of little use these days either.

Also.... If your using a program that needs 1 TB of storage, then you probably have high end storage solutions and deep pockets to boot.

The only people I have ever met that would need tons and tons of storage are people that download illegal software/media.

Report estimates cost of disruption to GPS in UK would be £1bn per day

No GPS is better than BAD GPS.

Lets take a bloody stand here.

If GPS is bad and making us be hundreds of meters off target, then we should just dump GPS fully.

Seems to work for everything else.