Posts by Calum Morrison 196 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2007
So they can sell it of course! My DuckDuckGo app tracking protection reminds me weekly that, for some reason, my Hoover washing machine is trying to give my birthday and many other items of information to Verizon media. I'm sure it's all perfectly innocent.
That's a compliment from one geek to another. How many of us do things a certain way because we're perfectly happy doing so and it pleases us, even though we know there's easier methods? I took some time last night to use MP3Tag to tidy up the cover art and track listings of a couple of albums when it would be far easier just to stream from my Napster subscription than curate my own collection. Napster you ask? Why yes, I use a slightly crappy, more limited music service because it apparently pays a teensy bit more than Spotify per stream to the artists I cherish. Ans sometimes I listen to the same music on vinyl.
It is indeed their browser and yes, they can do what they like with it, but - call it a gentleman's agreement - it's not something browsers have done in the past so it's unexpected at best, unwelcome at worst. If I host a website, I like to think that I have a degree of control over what "it" displays to the user. OK, I give up some of that if I sell ads on it, but there's a quid pro quo there. In this case Google are actually harmed by it (no, I'm not crying for them either) and the worry is where this will stop - I already have to disable the News and Interests pop-up from displaying clickbait links from downmarket tabloids if I happen to brush my mouse over it so it's not like MS don't have form.
How is it different? Really? Google is THEIR search results page that THEY code and host. They can do what the hell they like with it, just like Microsoft can do what the hell they like with Bing for what it's worth. This is Microsoft ostensibly placing code on Google's page and that is wrong. That's what's different.
Yep, but that's on Bing, their own site. This is ostensibly on someone else's web site - it's annoying, it's creepy, and - per the article - it's potentially the start of a slippery slope in terms of what users come to expect of a browser so could be a behavioural security issue.
Being quite honest, Microsoft's tricks to prevent me using the browser and PDF app of my choice only make me more determined. Just how often do they expect me to believe that some weird thing has happened that's meant both have had to be reset to Edge?
That sounds a better bet, though persuading the Mrs that she'd then want to transfer to a second taxi after a GLA-LHR shuttle, transfer, 7ish hours to JFK, 2 hours immigration then an hour in traffic may be my undoing!
Best result ever was BA mislaying our luggage meaning we were deposited at Newark with our $250 compo vouchers (c/o business class on Avios) and nowt but hand baggage - quick train into Penn and up the stairs to our digs in the New Yorker. The luggage arrived by next flight and courier the next morning - result!
I don't know if this is sadder, but those systems are purely for the occupants of the car and don't really carry outside. With most cars being turbocharged these days, the engines are a lot quieter hence the "need" for this. Some Renaults allow you to choose from a range of different classic cars from their range. More interesting is the technique Ford - and I think Porsche themselves - use where real engine sound is fed into the cabin via series of pipes and diaphragms from the engine bay. At least that's sort of real.
It's maybe a bit of an esoteric issue, but Outlook annoys the hell out of me - in many more ways to be fair - in the way it absolutely will not remember window size or position, particularly wrt open emails as opposed to the main application itself. I think it was a review on here that found me the solution - FancyZones via MS PowerToys on Win 10. You basically draw out a selection of zones on your desktop then, using shift, move windows into those zones and they snap in and stay there. Outlook opens on he left two thirds of my main monitor, emails in the half, overlapping the main window but always the same damn size. Revelation!
You may be able to use it to solve some of your issues with multiple monitors - it's free so you may as well try...
My first thought was Citroen / Peugeot, but as you say they're Stellantis so many many more brands would be implicated - the technology shared between a Vauxhall corsa and Pug 208 is almost total.
I think Renault and Nissan are a bit less integrated though arguably Renault / Alpine would count as two French brands so that may be who it is. an Alpine A110 is effectively a Renault mechanically so I assume its security system will be too.
Of course, this doesn't count Dacia (and indeed Lada until earlier this year) but then they famously avoid technology that adds little to a car that their customers really want.
The current company car is a Volvo and the fuel filler release button is pretty much as daft; it only unlocks it so you still need to get out and actually press the flap to pop it open. That can take quite a bit of futile button pressing to discover... Presumably a safety or security feature and probably documented in the handbook, but that's a PDF on the infotainment system so that's not getting read.
I had a panicked call from my wife a few years ago as she was trying to unpark her Audi A6. She'd parked facing down a slope with nothing in front but now there was a car there and it was quite close. When she engaged reverse to give herself room to turn, the electronic parking brake released and her car moved forward before she could catch the bite point and move backwards. She caught it on the foot brake but was now too close to the car in front to pop the clutch and reverse hill start - she is a good driver and this shouldn't be an issue but it was like the parking brake was broken. She was stuck and in a hurry but couldn't leave the space without hitting the car in front. We couldn't figure it out and there was nothing in the handbook so she ended up having to wait for that car to leave - luckily not long.
It was some time later I was in a similar position in the car and the same thing happened. Not sure how, but by chance, I discovered that it was an undocumented feature to do with the seatbelt. I forget the details now, but I think it was belt on, handbrake disengaged automatically, belt off, it didn't. Fine in most circumstances but not in this case! A colleague had a similar generation car and she had exactly the same issue. The model my wife replaced it with (slight facelift car, 2014 rather than 2012 model) no longer did this...
In the old days, users needed speakers to annoy everyone in their office with bings, dings, dongs and whooshes so it was a relatively rare phenomenon. Since pretty much every PC has a built in speaker now and laptops all do, any open plan office is a hellscape of windows and Outlook notifications unless they're disabled - particularly as volume sliders are usually set to max for Teams calls, youtube vids etc.
Most people don't notice or know how to silence these constant bloody nuisances and it's not a system-wide option - it's per profile, with Windows seemingly even copying the WAV files into each user's profile so even deleting at source doesn't help. As far as I can find, there's no GP method to do it (why!!!???) so every single user I set up has to have it done manually - in the old XP-style dialogue box natch as Windows 10's sound panel doesn't seem to do it. It's either that or know that Betty in accounts has hit the wrong bastarding key yet a-f**ing-gain.
I hate you Microsoft.
Doesn't every microwave do that? Mine also beeps loudly every couple of minutes after finishing if you don't open the door. Arguably a safety reminder, but annoying AF.
My in-laws gave us a toastie maker as a wedding gift that doesn't beep at all - for some reason Breville decided it should play "comedy" celebrity impersonations, loosely themed on toasties. Even when we received it back in 2004 it was dated stuff - Ooh Mavis, Ken and Deirdre Barlow type guff that would even embarrass Les Dennis back in the 80s. It was truly dire and yet also utterly awesome in that very terribleness. Of course we've still got it...
IIRC, Stellantis (the company formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot Citroen etc.) are using NFTs to store and track car service and condition details. With the way clocking, cloning etc. is used to defraud customers, this could actually be an unsexy but useful implementation of the technology.
My then office was on the flight-path (What's it called? Cumbernauld!) and one day in the summer there was the highly unusual - and probably unique - sight of a Virgin 747 tailing the Emirates A380 over the Campsies.
That was in 2019 and I think it's safe to say we'll never see the likes of that approaching Glasgow again ;-(
Arrivals must have been mobbed shortly afterwards.
Definitely the latter, at least for them corrupting the hard disk. Potentially corrupting files en-route to the disk - maybe even a keyboard cable - but if it were the disk itself it'd be more than just a few Word docs. Looking at the age of the story, Word in those days was more than capable of corrupting its own output...
Correlation is not causation.
Time to award yourself a shiny new factchecker Mr Dabbs as I fear the old one is rusty. I'm pretty sure Josh Homme wasn't touring with EoDM when they were caught up in the Bataclan tragedy; they're one of those bands (many actually featuring Josh Homme) that has something of a revolving lineup. QoTSA are indeed another (I've been lucky enough to see them with Lanegan singing live - awesome) but I seem to recall reading an interview with Homme where he was discussing the trauma-induced breakdowns his friend and bandmate Jesse Hughes had suffered since that night. Truly horrible for everyone concerned.
You might have discovered CTRL ALT DEL in 3.0 but it wasn't to bring up the task manager - it's been a while since I endured an MS OS that old, but didn't CTRL ALT DEL just instantly reboot in those days?
IIRC it wasn't until NT4 that it brought up the login and task manager options; Win 9x didn't employ it for much more than restarting the whole PC too if memory serves.
Up here in Scotland, one of our public health officials is always immaculately turned out when she's interviewed - almost daily - from her home; makeup, hair, clothes and always with a very tasteful, very fresh flower arrangement in her nicely decorated room. But over her shoulder is a surface-mounted light switch fed by a cable conduit and I CAN'T FOCUS ON ANYTHING ELSE!
This is exactly why the (UK at least) supermarkets were late to online shopping; it wasn't that they couldn't, they were afraid of how much impulse revenue they'd lose. I'm sure I read at the time that there was something akin to an unwritten agreement amongst the big guys about this and then someone blinked first.
You wanted to switch the TV on with the power button on the remote control? Are you quite mad!? Every TV manufacturer knows that you switch the TV on by pressing channel button up or down. Or volume up or down. The on/off button is purely for switching it off. Well, into standby.
I've never worked out the logic in that arrangement, but it seems very common
A lot of these restarts seem to be unnecessary and - from what I can tell - are probably just a hangover from old versions of Windows or caution on the behalf of the person writing the installer. Many/most apps calling for a restart will work fine without, albeit they may use that restart to tidy up some of their logs etc. Per the article, there seems to be little standardisation in Windows to ensure things are all done in a similar manner.
Businesses holding out with cheques do so for one of two reasons; either wee Mary in accounts doesn't know how to modernise and has heard scare stories or more likely because they know it'll take you longer to cash it - if at all - meaning the money stays in their account longer or indeed indefinitely.
See Spotify et al.
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