Posts by Martin-73

Analogue radio given 10-year stay of execution as the UK U-turns on DAB digital future

Re: Radio 4 LW?

Indeed that should be an option. But the rollout of 'smart' meters in the UK is purely a box ticking exercise.

Indeed, they're proper geeks and LIKE to investigate faults or other issues. Wouldn't be surprised if one of their staff didn't read this

For what it's worth as a data point, I too am with A&A, and iplayer doesn't stutter here. Youtube sometimes does however?

Re: Radio 4 LW?

That's becoming a problem in gosport too. 2G reception is pretty much nada... most 'smart' meters are constantly searching for a signal

Re: The future is behind you ....

Also on jobsites for various trades (PRS notwithstanding). We frequently have to switch back to FM because DAB is hit or miss, despite being less than 10 miles from the Rowridge transmitter on the isle of wight, (I work in gosport/lee on solent)... and often have a line of sight to the transmitter mast (literally, you can see it out of many upper storey windows around town!)... but DAB radio no can see cap'n.

Pirates because all this talk of radio has me thinking back to Radio Caroline and Laser 558

Fasten your seat belts: Brave Reg hack spends a week eating airline food grounded by coronavirus crash

Re: Fix for ...

Sounds good to me if it stops me having to avoid chavs with mobile phones that cost more than their month's benefits walking out in front of me on the daily commute.

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

Re: LAEDA Omissions!

1 post, registered yesterday... I believe you could be right. Have a leftist beer

Ex-eBay security execs among six charged with harassing, threatening bloggers who dared criticize web tat souk

Bunch of tossers

Ebay that is, not the bloggers. Yeah they want to distance themselves from the accused NOW.. but knowing from first hand experience how they deal with criticism, I have NO problem believing that these people were working within company 'guidelines'.

Pirates, because that what ebay are

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: That may be true

Yes, I've heard of occasions where that becomes an issue when the WAN side is also in the 10.x.x.x block...

Re: That may be true

I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but the cabinets are not the source of anything... unless you're on one of those fibre concentrators from the early 80s. They merely take the local cables and bundle them into huge (up to 2400 pair) cables back to the exchange. Each line HAS a linecard ... everyone could pick up the phone and get dialtone. Now actually MAKING a call (especially from a rural exchange) may have caused issues a few years back, as there would have been only so many junctions/trunks back to the main serving exchange. But that's not the case anymore.

Interestingly the scenario you describe WOULD have happened with the strowger system, in the event of everyone on a particular uniselector rack picked up the phone, only a certain number (usually 10 per pair of shelves if i recall) would get dialtone. But that has absolutely zero to do with the cabinet, which is merely a junction box

Re: That may be true

To respond to your comments in order

They are required to have backup, yes. But who maintains those SLA* batteries? Virgin's in their cabinets tend to die within 10 mins of a local power failure, because they've not been replaced since install. Wouldn't be surprised if cellular was the same

FTTC still uses the central exchange battery for power to the voice part of the circuit. As the cabinets age, agreed, the same arguments may apply re: local batteries, but the central exchange batteries will be better maintained, fo sho. (internet wasn't my point here, it was the ability to send and receive phonecalls, especially 999/112 type calls)

Fair point re: taking out the feed to the cabinet/DP. Indeed, that is an issue. (unlikely to happen at the same time as a power outage unless there's a MASSIVE storm, so you'll have a backup in the form of that mobile :) )

Finally... if the landline's working, you don't have to seek signal. But yes, if the local tower is out, you can drive a few miles to get a signal to dial 999

Re: That may be true

My question with regard to that, given how my routing looks when using O2's LTE/4G offerings... what's the status of cellular broadband with regards to carrier grade (sic) NAT, and stupid IP address assignments (in the 10.x.x.x block?)

Re: That may be true

I'd lump them in with the mast burners. Landlines are cheap, and actually work when the power goes out (from experience, cellular coverage drops to zero if the power cut is more than a blown fuse at the local substation)

And if connection to the Internet is THAT vital, you'd want a backup provider, via a diverse route, right?

Earnings up, broadband users (and voice calls) down: TalkTalk posts prelim results for FY 2020

Re: Comments?

Business or personal? Business is spendy with A&A but... for home use,. 45 a month including a dedicated landline didn't seem too awful to me, having dealt with the likes of vermin mediocre

Contact-tracer spoofing is already happening – and it's dangerously simple to do

Re: why?

I suppose the moon landings were faked too

Re: re: 1) my phone blocks numbers not in my contact list

Not if the PABX is Centrex* style, then each extension has its own landline number.

Most universities and hospitals do this... extension 1234 will have the number 0xxxx xx1234 as its caller ID and DDI number

*centrex is a US term, I forget what Brutish Tellycon call theirs

Repair store faces hefty legal bill after losing David and Goliath fight with Apple over replacement iPhone screens

Re: It all depends on how the repairs were sold!

Sadly. I expect it to die a death soon though

Re: The law would appear to be an ass ...

My Nokia N95 was more capable than iphones for pity's sake. (try bluetoothing a ringtone... nope iphone couldn't do that, N95 could). The argument that apple just works is not borne out by anyone's experience.

My work colleague has an iphone, it just plain doesn't DO some things my old android does well...

80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds

42 character lines are the answer. the ULTIMATE answer

Mine's the one with the towel in the pocket.

Nokia's reboot of the 5310 is a blissfully dumb phone that will lug some mp3s about just fine

Re: Wireless FM radio

Indeed, the entire subject of fractal antennas is a fascinating rabbithole

Re: Wireless FM radio

Stringing aerials to the washing line post is a bad idea. I found that out years ago... when various trousers and sweaters ended up wrapped round the wire due to strong wind

Beer because I needed one after having to climb the pole and cut down my own aerial to retrieve my clothes

eBay users spot the online auction house port-scanning their PCs. Um... is that OK?

Re: Browsers don't.

UGH, shades of IE6 all over again

Pint because I'm sorry you had to deal with BG

Re: eBay got back to us to say that

You're not simple enough to be taken in by reply No.36366 and are therefore not their target audience, please move on citizen

(ALSO very generous of you to assume there's that many replies... unless it's in binary with 3 and 6 representing 1 and 0)

I'd mess with em

I would be tempted to set up a separate vlan with many many dummy hosts with all kinds of interesting ports open.

Possibly with the sequence of IP vs Open Ports spelling something obscene in ASCII

Re: Browsers don't.

All the reasonable ones. Often with much reduced functionality, but any reasonable site should work for sufficiently small values of 'work'.

Re: Fraud is a big issue for etailer

Wild is also much MUCH chewier... to the point of being rubbery

Dude, where's my laser?

Re: Not unbelievable

I think the thing with such people as Brian is that their brain is so... relentless.. that it will go into single threaded mode to solve a problem. The thread that says 'that soldering iron is hot' isn't running... or is at least backgrounded.

Witness the (probably apocryphal) story of Newton boiling his watch while holding an egg for 5 minutes. The stereotype of the 'absent minded professor' is there for a reason.

Home working is here to stay, says Lenovo boss, and will grow the total addressable PC market by up to 30%

Re: I have to say I'm with Lenovo on this

Indeed, many non-chain pubs hereabouts have been doing 'roast dinner', delivered, for a reasonable price (generally the same as pre-covid prices, no extra for delivery). Our 'local' also does the beer thing (but bring your own milk jug for it). They're not I believe allowed to deliver the beer.

I know stateside many local ordinances will prevent that kind of 'dispense into customer's own container' beer thing. But laws can change

Re: I have to say I'm with Lenovo on this

Food trucks may be hit, but not as hard as you may think... most of them have a lot of 'can't work from home' type businesses on their routes. Possibly not with the density of office workers however, but large construction sites usually have a couple of vans that serve them. And they could simply tour residential areas instead. Working from home doesn't alleviate the need for 'a quick bite around teabreak time'

Re: I have to say I'm with Lenovo on this

I believe the companies already should be paying, especially for people on 'you get x number of GB per month' tariffs. I would imagine Zoom and the like to be huge bandwidth abusers?

Record-breaking Aussie boffins send 44.2 terabits a second screaming down 75km of fiber from single chip

No fibre to the [premises/home/business/manshed] in .au?

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

I have two of the classless things. one supplier I used to buy electronic components from apparently had a massive surplus of the things and seeing as they were prepackaged and surrounded with bubble wrap he simply dumped the components in them and posted the cup in its box.

I don't feel guilty using them because obviously the presents of the mugs as a surplus represented a loss for the evil company

Re: Tea addicts, but I've seen fiends go through three cups an hour

Yes I started out working at a university maintenance department. the cafeteria tea was never any good until it had at least two teaspoons dissolved in it. Not teaspoons of sugar you understand but the actual spoon

Tech's Volkswagen moment? Trend Micro accused of cheating Microsoft driver QA by detecting test suite

Re: Petty or Pedant?

Interesting. I wonder if that had to do with one brand trademarking 'Duck tape" ?

Oddly at least here in the UK, there's an alternative 'duct tape' used for exhaust ducting from extractor fans. It's basically thick wide electrical tape.

Far-right leader walks free from court after conviction for refusing to hand his phone passcode over to police

Re: Would never have happened in my day

FSM may be fine, but not all pastas are... for example marine le penne !

Mine's the one with the meatballs in the pockets

Re: Would never have happened in my day

There is no immigration unless you believe the rumours about roswell.

UK MPs to off-payroll workers: Delay IR35 reforms until 2023? You wish

Thank you for that explanation. I am self employed in another field, so it made me wonder what was up. Knowing how IT is, it makes sense that people would set up companies and make themselves their own employee. It seems the IT sector is even more vicious than the electrical contracting sector!

Serial killer spotted on the night train from Newcastle

Indeed!

Ublock origin freaked out and closed the tab!

Square peg of modem won't fit into round hole of PC? I saw to it, bloke tells horrified mate

Re: I just didn't bother with a case :).

Wait you can do that?!

Re: Hmmm

Then lead free cra...err solder came along, and made the temperature required to do that likely to set fire to the board and toast any semiconductors or electrolytics.

Small b bastards. Have a pint for the memories of that smell of burning FR4

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Hardly clearer

Allow list is... not as immediately obvious as 'whitelist'

Doom Eternal: Reboot sequel is cluttered but we're only here for the rippin' and the tearin'

Re: Too much platforming

Platforming... ewww. One of the few things about the original doom and doom 2 that I really couldn't stand. Mainly because I suck at it

Hi, Google Duplex here, trying to book a haircut for a socially inept human. Sorry, 'COVID-19'?... DOES NOT COMPUTE

Someone probably asked it about an appropriate treatment to stop dry rot on their deck

Pervasive digital surveillance of citizens deployed in COVID-19 fight, with rules that send genie back to bottle

Re: Phone tracking

Frankly I think they should. The number of people at the local pub (yes I know*) claiming it was all bollocks and it's no more serious than a common cold (tell that to the victims) beggars belief. If they closed the pubs these cockwits would realize that something more serious than the common cold was afoot.

*neither myself nor my colleague are showing symptoms and we avoid interaction by choosing an isolated table... talking to others is still possible at distances over 6 feet...

Re: Nothing to Hide nothing to Fear

Usually I'm on boris's case too. But right now we need leadership and not a chaotic shambles of competing challengers for the job. So yes resign. But not right now when he's FINALLY doing the right thing and keeping us up to date.

US Homeland Security mistakenly seizes British ad agency's website in prostitution probe gone wrong

One does not drive on the wrong side of the road when visiting a foreign country by accident... I know, i've driven in foreign countries. it's one of the first things on your mind. Fleeing the country just proves that she knew she was guilty

It was seized by a bunch of incompetents, not an actual law enforcement agency (DHS doesn't count as one)

I think the charge is murder.... she deliberately drove at someone on the wrong side of the road and then fled the country.

Re: > signing a waiver reneging any claim against the US government for damages

They choose to continue the fiction that they're bound by contract law in order to prevent the uprising that would happen if the people found out the truth?

Your phone wakes up. Its assistant starts reading out your text messages. To everyone around. You panic. How? Ultrasonic waves

Re: LASERs

I believe so