Posts by Missing Semicolon

Intel NDA blueprints – 20GB of source code, schematics, specs, docs – spill onto web from partners-only vault

IME

I wonder if there are any more levers in these documents to crack open the Intel Management Engine even further!

Once considered lost, ESA and NASA's SOHO came back from the brink of death to work even better than it did before

Re: A fitting tribute to intelligence and sheer dogged determination

Don't the Politburo in China all have STEM degrees?

Soft press keys for locked-down devs: Three new models of old school 60-key Happy Hacking 'board out next month

At that price....

You could buy a real IBM Model M in UK layout! UK ones make Hen's teeth look common, however, so be prepared to wait.

Failing that, get a Unicomp. Around £100, and nearly as good.

<smug>I have 2 UK Ms</smug>

Re: Model M

Soarer's converter. You can get a version that works with the RJ45 plug on a terminal keyboard.

Someone got so fed up with GE fridge DRM – yes, fridge DRM – they made a whole website on how to bypass it

Re: Entirely legal

Practically, however, you are wrong. Repair by anybody else but the manufacturer or their designated service centre is prevented by the necessity to break other laws to do it. So, when components are cryptographically linked, the only way to replace a part (even when the part is genuine) is to crack the protection system, or use the manufacturers' service utilities. This falls foul of DMCA, patents/copyrights, or software piracy.

From off-prem to just off: IBM Cloud goes down planet-wide so hard even the status page didn't work

Core business

Since IBM are trying really hard to have nothing to do with hardware, and be a Cloud&Services business, having one of your core products disappear must be embarrassing at least.

And quite possibly fatal - or at least steepen the dive.....

Arm fires the head of its Chinese unit – but Arm China says Allen Wu still works there

"Joint Venture"

That's the point of these arrangements. They are the only way of doing business in China, and the local branch has to be autonomous from the foreign "partner" company.

See https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/01/doj_micron_dram/

An Internet of Trouble lies ahead as root certificates begin to expire en masse, warns security researcher

Re: Planned or accident

Tom-Tom, another evil company.

The older satnavs did indeed get a fix for the GPS week-rollover bug. However, that was delivered as part of the "sayonara, no more updates for you" message in the PC application.

If you have an old copy of TomTom Home, it forcibly updates itself to the latest version, that removes all of the features except the firmware updater.

No more map updates for your "lifetime" subscription.

All this, allegedly, is because the SD card the device comes with (2Gb) is not big enough for the latest maps. Bigger ones are, of course, cheap as chips nowadays, but no. They have used it as an excuse to dump their old products.

So, no more TomTom products for me!

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Service based jobs?

The Mitsubishi dealer only charges me £250-£300 for the service. They tell me they don't see them much otherwise.

Developers renew push to get rid of objectionable code terms to make 'the world a tiny bit more welcoming'

MISO/MOSI

Master In Slave Out / Master Out Slave In.

These exactly describe the functions of SPI bus pins on interface chips. Master interfaces drive the clock, Slave interfaces must use the clock from the connected Master.

I really think that this is just cosy people feeling offended on other people's behalf.

Re: The circle is now complete

Perforce has (had?) "main".

Some Brits reckon broadband got worse after lockdown – but that's just what happens when you're online 12 hours straight

Re: SamKnows has been borked.

Well I get 63Mbps down/ 11Mbps up on that test.

Which means that my link is over-contended (down is full of content, for most people up is just the ACKs). It gets worse at peak Netflix times, of course.

The poor test results are reflected in real buffering and poor video call performance.

My complaint about the popular speed test sites and SamKnows, is that those results get used in league tables, get quoted in news articles and such. Fixing the results is cheaper than fixing the problems. Plus, if I try to navigate the maze of twisty passages that is the customer care system, they can say "no fault found".

And yes, It was only a few weeks after I got a SamKnows box that the performance (which had becore poor) suddenly stepped up to the advertised rate.

SamKnows has been borked.

I have a VerminMedia link. It should be 100Mbit/s.

I also have a SamKnows box. When I first acquired it, my internet connection improved immensely.

Now however, the reports are showing virtually 100% 100Mbit/s all the time. At various points during the day, I run a speed test (using testmy.net, Speedtest.net is also gimped). And guess what? I get rates as little a 1-2MBit/s.

So, quite plainly, VM are prioritising the routes that SamKnows is using to fake the reports.

Who do I report this fraud to?

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

Re: STIR/SHAKEN

"Falling out of use"? You're 'avin' a larf, right? In fact, it's now the most popular form of 2FA! So no need for security at all!!

Zealous Zoom's zesty zymotic zone zinger: Zestful zealots zip zillions

Re: Video Won't Be My New Voice

keep in touch with my family via Skype. AND I HATE IT...!!! That's cos U iz old.....

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

Re: not the terminal, the punch card

And the IBM/Hollerith punched card (expanded to 80 columns in the 1920's - go check Wakipedia) is 7 3/8" by 3 1/4". A size derived from the "Large Legal Tender Note" used in the USA in the 1850's.

80 columns is like 4 ft 8 /14 in standard rail gauge - that size is set by the width of 2 horses, side-by-side.

5G mast set aflame in leafy Liverpool district, half an hour's walk from Penny Lane

Re: CCTV: gotta love 'em!

"you will experience a tingling sensation and then death"

Not going Huawei just yet: UK ministers reportedly rethinking pledge to kick Chinese firm out of telco networks by 2023

There is the issue of effective subsidy

Do you really think that Huawei is the cheapest because they are the most efficient? Does the blatantly un-free trade aspect worry anybody?

UK.gov splashes out on 40,000 new devices amid COVID-19-fuelled homeworking boom

13,000 laptops

I bet they aren't £400 cheapy basic ones for all the drones. I wonder how many top-range Surfaces got sneaked in!

Buying more MS licenses?

Isn't there some kind of multi-spangly-million framework agreement thingy with Microsoft for Government departments? Much touted as being super-good value?

If American tech is used to design or make that chip, you better not ship it to Huawei, warns Uncle Sam

Goose and gander

It's odd, in all the "China isn't all that bad, look at the USA!" shouting, that the information about this kind of blatantly one-sided trade arrangements in China isn't more widely known.

Whilst we happily buy stuff that arrives in vast container-loads straight from Shenzen, the fact that trade the other way is severely hampered and restricted seems not to be thought of.

If we bought from China with the same arrangements that we sold to China, things would be a lot fairer.

Serial killer spotted on the night train from Newcastle

Re: Hayes commands

You always need to do some research. In this case, a 7mm Allen is often available as a "brake caliper wrench" (been there, done that, got one). Some cars require the caliper to be removed even if just changing the pads. It's also worth changing the disc if it's significantly scored, as otherwise the new pad will take some time to bed in.

Microsoft puts dual-screen devices and Windows 10X in the too-hard basket

Re: It felt gimmicky

"Pivoted"? You mean - oh crap too hard, look puppies!

Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style

Re: This is why we make prototypes

While "Boomf" might be appropriate, I tend to find that mains-electrical stuff goes "Spop!"

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

Re: Fun with power tools...

Re: Via Eden EPIA boards. I only recently decommissioned one of these as my house server. I had to do ugly things with an IDE-CF card to make it boot from the drive connected to the plugged-in Sata card.

Only finally replaced as the only distro that will boot on it now is Slackware.

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Re: Switch provider, and refuse payment

"Bureaucrats: How to annoy them" by R. T. Fishall.

Who was in fact the late lamented Patrick Moore.

A Gem.

Real-time tragedy: Dumb deletion leaves librarian red-faced and fails to nix teenage kicks on the school network

MUD

I was at Bangor with the guy who successfully extracted it from Essex and loaded it on our DEC-20! Endless ours wasted. It was so witty....

Microsoft frees Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 from the shackles of, er, Windows?

Re: @Martin Gregorie - Or bigger still..

So that explains systemd....

Microsoft nukes 9 million-strong Necurs botnet after unpicking domain name-generating algorithm

Re: MS at least try to be the good guys every now and then

UAC is not security,as has been pointed out before. It's merely the transfer of liability to the user.

Alleged Vault 7 leaker trial finale: Want to know the CIA's password for its top-secret hacking tools? 123ABCdef

Would you dare?

The CIA want this guy inside. I'm sure the jury know what the wise choice is.....

Come kneel with us at UK's Cathedral, er, Oil Rig of the Canal: Engineering masterpiece Anderton Boat Lift

Re: Hmm... I think the original design more elegant

Absolutely. The new design really relies on bonkers materials and powerful electric pumps. It's a massive shame they didn't ho for thinner oil and a diddy pump to drive it, in honour of the original elegant design.

I kind of think it's spoilt now.

Microservices guru warns devs that trendy architecture shouldn't be the default for every app, but 'a last resort'

people like us

In other words, if all the devs are dev-gods like all my mates, microservices are great!

Raspberry Pi goes 2GB for the price of 1GB in honour of mini-computer's eighth birthday

Re: Ten dollars for a couple of gig of ram eh?

Ah. Back when the Edgeware Road was the Edgeware Road.....

Nokia said to be considering sale or merger as profits tank

Efficiency

So Huawei are massively more efficient than Nokia and Ericsson? Or just better funded?

Cache me if you can: HDD PC sales collapse in Europe as shoppers say yes siree to SSD

Dropping the things

Laptops particularly benefit from SSDs because of the droppage factor. I have rebuilt several teenager's lappies after it fell off the bed.

I wonder if there are fewer warranty returns as well?

Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers

Re: Library Catalogue very terminal

Not air. Butane! Perhaps why they went.....

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

EU sim?

No chance. Pre free EU roaming, I once spent some time wandering into mobile network shops in France, trying to buy a local Sim. As a non-local it was either "impossible" or more expensive than roaming on my Orange sub.

There are already Chinese components in your pocket – so why fret about 5G gear?

Networks are not really standard

Most networks have grown from small beginnings, so each installation is a different mix of hacks, shortcuts, and cost savings. Many networks have ripped out multi-vendor infrastructure and gone single-source to cut interoperability problems. Huawei send a huge number of staff to make sure any integration issues are ironed out. This isn't cheap, and most other providers can't do it . How do Huawei afford it (and their labour-intensive development process)? They also apparently offer good credit deals for cash-strapped operators. Huawei have access to large amounts of soft finance, and a hugely low-cost labour force. Essentially this is unfair competition - no Western company can compete. Huawei should be excluded on trade grounds anyway, never mind security.

ERP disaster zone: The mostly costly failures of the past decade

what about HP?

Who lost huge amounts of sales when implementing their own product?

Escobar Fold 1 snort all it's cracked up to be: Readers finger similarity to slated Chinese mobe

@Chairman of the Bored

The 70's called .... and even they were shocked!

Battery-guzzling 4K hardware clad in an alloy battle jacket: Lenovo's 4th-gen ThinkPad Yoga X1 is its most metal yet

Re: F'ing Fn key

Because Thinkpad.

That's just the way they are.

Newly born Firefox 71 emerges from its den – with its own VPN and some privacy tricks

Re: Javascript

Google is doing this to Youtube. It's already killed Edge's rendering engine ( as described here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/18/google_monopoly_abuse_claims/)

If it's not cloud, GTFO: Sage flogs payments business to US firm Elavon for £230m

Typical useless management

Gross margin for business=23%. Margin for SagePay=36%.

So, sell it because it's not 'core'?

Typical dim corporatist management, reducing workload instead of doing work. Sell.

And of course the actual service will go down the pan as well.

Microsoft embraces California data privacy law – don't expect Google to follow suit

Re: Different Strategies

The correct approach is to actually test stuff before shipping it, like wot used to happen. This "the User is the tester" crap is only being allowed by Stockholm Syndrome.

150 infosec bods now know who they're up against thanks to BT Security cc/bcc snafu

Exchange users

Do have this rather quaint belief in the ability to "recall" mails.

The rest of us just chortle. Or not, if the "recall" mail is also not Bcc'd.... (like our local Conservative Party..)

OPPO's Reno 2, aka 'Baby Shark', joins the deepening pool of high-spec midranger mobes

Cheap offshore software

Anyone checked it for phome-home spyware?

Delayed, over-budget smart meters will be helpful – when Blighty enters 'Star Trek phase'

Finally it is admitted

..what they are for. "picking the best tarriff" == SURGE PRICING!

The only way that renewables could possibly work is through "demand management". In other words, the poorest will have to eat cold food as they won't be able to ru the cooker at peak times due to the cost being too high.

AMD sees Ryzen PCs sold with its CPUs in Europe as Intel shortages persist

Re: Intel contraints

... with a built-in UPS!

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Why is the expiry date not printed on the box?

'Cos munneeee!

Blood money is fine with us, says GitLab: Vetting non-evil customers is 'time consuming, potentially distracting'

Re: I have said this before....

GitLab can have a CoC for the staff, entirely separate to its sales policy. The staff are free to work elsewhere if they don't like it.

The point at which GiLab may change is if they can't hire enough staff.