* Posts by Steve 39

28 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2013

Microsoft says Azure fended off what might just be the world's biggest-ever DDoS attack

Steve 39

Yet they can't keep their VMs up and running

On the day that their Azure VMs fail to start... https://downdetector.co.uk/status/windows-azure/

UK on track to miss even its slashed full-fibre gigabit coverage goals, warn MPs

Steve 39

FTTP are like buses

Rural Essex and having struggled with 3.2Mb/s for years (yes, that's BT's "fibre" service - to the cabinet a couple of KMs away), two providers have now installed full fibre.

Gigaclear by installing in the verges, County Broadband but stringing the fibre on the telephone poles. I went with Gigaclear 300Mb.

I do wonder what's going to happen when other providers such as BT/Openreach decide to provide the service here. Is it going to be a spaghetti of new fibre cables and another 3 months of roadworks?

It's a nice problem to have but can't help but feel it's not well-planned.

Did this airliner land in the North Sea? No. So what happened? El Reg probes flight tracker site oddity

Steve 39

FilghtAware has a little more track

FlightAware have a little bit more of the track than FlightRadar, including it turning round very sharply at the point FlightRadar ends

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/ENZ212P/history/20200915/1446Z/EGMC/L%2056.50929%20-2.33118

They also list an "arrival" time, roughly at the end of the track, but I'm not sure how they work out something arrived

"Tue 06:09:13 PM Arrival () @ Tuesday 06:09:13 PM CEST"

The Honor MagicBook Pro looks nice, runs like a dream, and isn't too expensive either. What more could you want?

Steve 39

"512GB SSD ROM"

Again, I've been looking at the specs on their website and it lists:

"16GB DDR4 dual-channel RAM + 512GB SSD ROM"

Such a shame, seems like a good laptop and 512GB storage is pretty good at this price. Shame it's read-only...

Steve 39

On their UK website, in the specs section under "Excellent Performance Across Different Apps", we have "Adobe After Effects - Video Rendering speed increases by 20%". Fair enough, that may be true. Awkwardly worded but ok.

But under "Microsoft Visual Studio", we have "Programming speed increases by 90%". I'm trying to work that one out. They are a huge company, they should really make a bit more sense with some of their marketing or translation.

Still, it seems excellent value.

RasPad 3.0 converts Raspberry Pi 4 to a tablet – be prepared for some quirks

Steve 39

Re: Absolutely amazing...

The OP is probably trolling but during lockdown, buying a couple of Pis (Pi 4b and Pi Zero W) has kept me amused/entertained/interested for hours on the following projects:

1) ADSB receiver with flightaware for tracking flights where I've been stuck

2) Pihole for trying to keep crappy tracking and ads off the network here

3) Getting Visual Studio C# projects running, built on a Mac, deployed to the Pi

4) Kodi media server

5) NAS box with serving the Samsung T5 1TB drive full of (legit) films that luckily I brought with me

6) Using the Pi Zero to connect to TVs and watch the films on what were dumb TVs

7) Backup Citrix client to I can continue to log into work if my 9 year old Macbook Air gives up the ghost.

8) Buying an e-ink display and displaying quotes from The Office and the weather every 10 minutes because why not learn a bit of Python too?

None of it essential (although the Citrix client install could well be classed as that if it's brought into use).

I realise a lot do end up in drawers but these two have been well worth the cost.

We read the Brexit copyright notices so you don't have to… No more IP freely, ta very much

Steve 39

Re: TL; DR

I agree, it certainly should have been taken into account but I think UK politicians share the "blame" for it not being resolved properly. If that meant changing how the NHS worked, for example, then so be it.

Steve 39

Re: TL; DR

Not quite true as you can live in other EU countries for as long as you like as an EU citizen without having a job, as long as you:

"have sufficient resources for you and your family during the time you want to stay in your new country"

and

"have comprehensive health insurance"

I agree with the point though, had the UK implemented such policies, we might not be in the situation we are now. Looking at places to live for up to a year next year, Spain and Denmark have this policy and I'm sure many others do too. Add the UK having "free at the point of delivery" residency-based healthcare, it should have done more to implement such rules.

YouTube thinkfluencer Siraj Raval admits he plagiarized boffins' neural qubit papers – as ESA axes his workshop

Steve 39

Suggest a new topic for him

What about a new topic for his videos, "Fun with Flags"?

Vodafone cops ads rap over Martin Freeman's vanishing spaceship

Steve 39

ISPs being creative with Watson their advertising - no sh*t Sherlock!

Canny Brits are nuking the phone bundle

Steve 39

Re: 3 and WiFi calling

Good for you. As I said, it affects Android phones on Three not bought from them

Steve 39

Punished if you buy phone from elsewhere

I always buy my phone outright, usually not from the network operator. Unlocked and free to do what I want with it.

But Three (and others) are now taking a long time to provide features such as Wifi calling and 800MHz "supervoice" to handsets not bought from them. They've finally done it, 18 months after launching the service to those who bought phones from them.

iPhones were ok, of course, just Android.

The solution they offered me over the phone was to spend £630 pounds on the exact same phone, bought from them. No thanks.

UK mobile operator Three launches Superdrug Mobile MVNO

Steve 39

Re: Rubbish Coverage

Only if the (non-iPhone) handset bought from them. Like their wifi calling (without the appalling Three in Touch app).

They've been saying they will provide non-Three bought handsets access to 800MHz and VolTE "Supervoice") and wifi calling for years.

Yes others networks do similar but that's not the point.

Not enough personality: Google Now becomes Google Not Anymore

Steve 39

I tried to use the voice function of Google on my Samsung this evening to set a reminder. "Remind me to post letters tomorrow at 10am". Innocent enough previously on my iPhone.

Turns out I needed to enable Google Now or somesuch. Turns out it needs to access my:

"Contacts, calendars, apps, music, battery life, sensor readings".

And then "Places you go".

Couldn't believe it, but I suppose I should have believed it.

WhatsApp is to hand your phone number to Facebook

Steve 39

Seems like they've changed their minds since they wrote this....

From their blog post in December 2012, still online, entitled "Why we don't sell ads"

"

Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it's all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out... And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.

Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.

"

Tim Peake to return to Earth after six months floating around in space

Steve 39
Trollface

Good career move?

Don't get me wrong, it looks like a fantastic trip and I've love to do it, but was it a good move for his career? I mean, taking 6 months off like that, what will he say to prospective future employers? "Did some travelling?"

I'm sure my friend Ken M would agree.

Dropbox gets all up in your kernel with Project Infinite. Cue uproar

Steve 39

Re: My Dropbox is integrated right now

Mine seems integrated now too on OSX. It appears in Finder, I can open and save files from/to it from Open/Save dialog boxes. All from the Dropbox app I downloaded from them ages ago. I never use the web browser.

How is this different?

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

Steve 39

Presumably the UK government (the taxpayer) will be receiving due recompense for the delays to this project?

Come on kids, let's go play in the abandoned nuclear power station

Steve 39
Mushroom

If you'd like this, I'd recommend Chernobyl

Slightly off-topic, but I'd throughly recommend a trip to Chernobyl.

I went there just over a year ago, stayed the night in Chernobyl but most of the trip was around Pripyat, the forests near there and close to the reactor itself. Pripyat, the abandoned town, is fascinating and our group of 12 or so were the only people where 40,000 used to live.

Felt safe, although there are some areas you still can't visit and it's interesting to hear the geiger counter go crazy near certain areas - chiefly where grains of radioactive material are still present in the woods or near the blades of the abandoned diggers that were used to move soil after the accident. Beer cheap in Chernobyl but the food is colourless, flavourless but totally in-keeping with the experience. Chernobyl is only really used by workers are are building the dome over reactor 4, the one which went pop.

The Register's entirely serious New Year's resolutions for 2016

Steve 39
Joke

"...and a recognition that attempted self-aware hopefully ironic sexism is almost always indistinguishable from actual sexism."

It's PC gone mad!

BlackBerry rejected Justin Bieber as brand ambassador

Steve 39

BB BB BB

Ed Miliband brands Google's UK tax avoidance 'WRONG'

Steve 39

Re: Pot and kettle

The tax avoidance will be employed. His mother's estate will be/was no longer liable for the full amount of inheritance tax. It was passed to Ed/David as a mechanism to avoid tax. If David bought it, it was at a lower price because he already "owned" some of it after the deed of variation in his father's will.

Steve 39

Re: Pot and kettle

Errr, I didn't call this tax evasion. It is tax avoidance. Which is what Google are doing. Which is what Miliband is complaining about.

Which is why I call him a hypocrite.

Steve 39

Re: Pot and kettle

Yes, you are correct, she is still alive. The point remains though that it has been used as a tool to avoid their eventual inheritance tax liability.

Search for "ed miliband inheritance tax" to read about it in the Guardian, Telegraph et al.

Review: NetAtmo Urban Weather Station

Steve 39

I had a cheap unit such as you are suggesting. You get obsessed with the accuracy - a five degree or more increase when the sun comes out and shines on it gets extremely annoying, particularly when publishing to a website. The cheap ones aren't at all accurate, I've been there.

If you build one yourself, you've got to use good components and build a decent Stevenson screen around it and do lots more than buy a couple of cheap sensors.

Steve 39

Not really much of a "weather" station

As mentioned by someone else, without wind speed and direction, not really a "weather station", urban or otherwise. Outdoor temperature likely to be inaccurate - no Stevenson screen, has to be undercover.

I've been running a Davis VP2 for 4 years, probably the best "amateur" weather station. Uses RF to communicate with the base station, much further than wi-fi, gets uploaded to my website every 3 seconds. But it is £600. The Oregon Scientific ~£130 before that annoyingly inaccurate particularly temperature. I got what I paid for.