Posts by Oh Matron!

VodafoneThree's a crowd – now comes the hard bit

Re: Quality of service

Live in zone 2 in london. I see EDGE more than any other symbol :-(

70-knot winds so far blamed for yacht disaster that killed Brit tech tycoon Mike Lynch

Wrong Target....

Perhaps HP should target KPMG, Black Duck and Freshfields, who conducted due diligence on Autonomy

If my chartered surveyor tells me the house is okay to buy and it crumbles beneath my feet, I don't target the seller

Mars may have vast underground oceans and enough H₂O to make it a water world

Re: Just cheese

This is just down the road from me: https://www.blakesheaven.com/ Giggled when I saw the name!

So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?

Re: Hilarious!

Can I just point out that we went from a Cray to a Pi :-)

After that 2024 Windows fiasco, CrowdStrike has a plan – job cuts, leaning on AI

Re: What I want to know how

But AI!

China now America's number one cyber threat – US must get up to speed

I notice....

A lot of downvotes for perfectly rational comments. Would love to be a BOFH at The Reg and seeing where these IP addresses are coming from :-)

Competition boffin launches class action against Google UK over search dominance

YouTube. Owned by......

You still get an upvote, though

I truly don't understand why anyone pays to place an ad anywhere on the web

But that doesn't mean to say that Google's sh1tnannigans aren't predatory, anti competitive, etc, etc

Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft. Readers say it's all been downhill since Clippy

Sad but true

I feel that bit barns need both a consumption and heat tax. Yes, I completely understand the impact of that on prices, but if you wish for enterprise to do the right thing, it will be a wasted wish

UK government told to get a grip on £23B tech spend

Microsoft....

What percentage of the above is MS?

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/news/article/hmrc-approved-for-112m-microsoft-spending

https://ukstories.microsoft.com/features/nhs-england-microsoft-deal-maximises-time-for-care/

The fact that I cannot find this information is troubling

But, even more troubling is sh1tnannigans like this:

"HMRC’s current chief digital and information officer Jacky Wright is on a two-year secondment from Microsoft, scheduled to end this October. "

Oops, they did it again: Microsoft breaks Outlook with another dubious update

Is Copilot writing the code....?

That is all.

Techie pulled an all-nighter that one mistake turned into an all-weekender

Pulling an all nighter

Having done a 24 hour walk in the Lakes a couple of years ago, and completely bombing during the circadian low, there are no apologies necessary for a FUBAR....

However, first job out of school was floor manager at Maccy D's. We had our bi-annual replacement of fluorescent tubes once.... The all nighter consisted of about 3 hours of work, followed by hours of playing star wars with the tubes in the attic.... This is the kind of all nighter we can all get behind :-)

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

And LA cops

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/03/la_sheriffs_computer_crash/

Trump campaign arms up with 'unhackable' phones after Iranian intrusion

Apps that won't be available on this OS....

Let me start with Twitter.

Small wins, people. Small wins

Personalized pop-up was funny for about a second, until it felt like stalking

Labor? Center?

<Sad face>

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be gone in ten years – for chump change

We quite often see various exhibitions on the south bank here in Nodnol that highlight the plight of various cultures / animals / buildings etc. Furthermore, when the Tate first opened, it had an exhibition of everything they'd pulled out of the Thames when building the Clipper pier (which I did, and still do find more interesting than anything else that's been in there)

We have to highlight this And we have to educate. And educate. And educate. And Punish

(I don't know if anyone else noticed the high amount of fishing nets that were encasing the turtles)

Microsoft's Azure networking takes a worldwide tumble

ThousandEyes knew before customers, as always:

https://ajeatkatskhywlizmlgcrgoyplqlxalf.share.thousandeyes.com/view/cloud-and-enterprise-agents/?testId=5672131&startTime=1722342600&detailId=pathvis&metrics=netLoss,httpAvailability&timelineWindow=1722299400,1722362400

Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

No, it's a pedestrian crossing for horses :-)

Vodafone, VMO2 shuffle spectrum to woo watchdog amid merger moves

Things which need nationalising...

Cellular Radio. Imagine if the RAN was available wholesale, and providers could just bolt on their network Infra....

Satellite phone service could soon become the norm

Re: World coverage?

When roaming, it is NOT the foreign provider which sets the tariff, but your OWN provider. Interconnects are astoundingly cheap, and roaming is "perceived" to be expensive when in reality, the markup is what makes it expensive

Seething CEO shoulder surfed techie after mistaken takedown of production server

Managing apple....

I work in MDM..... And one of the biggest issues I face with customers is that apple, when bring a device under management, call the device, well, you've guessed it, iPad or iPhone

Why they can't use some non persistent random string, I don't know. I do get customers calling to ask if a device can be brought back under management because the wrong "iPhone" was wiped...

Bootnote: Yes, I know, devices can be renamed, but, if you've every worked with managing devices in education, you'd be fully aware of the toomfoolery that the yoof of today get up to.

Tetris Company celebrates classic game's 40th birthday

The film....

On AppleTV+ is pretty good and amusing. I'm sure there's artistic license involved, but it is very much watchable.

Hubble plays spin the bottle with last few gyros

Re: "One-gyro mode uses magnetometers, sun sensors, and star trackers for the failed gyros"

My rowlett (RIP) toaster is exactly the same.It's had ONE set of elements in 20 years and the mechanism inside is astoundingly simple. It will still be going in 20 years

I occassionally look at the newer stuff in john lewis and it just looks garbage :-(

We polled thousands of IT pros – and sustainability just ain't a priority right now

Re: With an election coming up in the UK ...

I did one of those "who do I vote for given my beliefs" thing at the last election, thinking I'd come out "lib dem". Was surprised that I actual came out Labour, who do appear to have a uch better grip on the climate than the Tories, who seem to use the RAF as their own personal Uber

'Little weirdo' shoulder surfer teaches UK cabinet minister a lesson in cybersecurity

Badenoch is even denser that Cruella Braverman. Hope that helps with the context

TR-069, a protocol that made broadband manageable, turns 20. What's coming next?

In the VERY first paragraph

"TR-069, which defines how people's broadband routers and other customer-premises equipment can be remotely provisioned and managed by ISPs automatically"

UK law gives green light to self-driving cars from 2026

Felt that this was timely

A tesla driving into a train on a level crossing: https://futurism.com/the-byte/footage-self-driving-tesla-train

Starlink offers 'unusually hostile environment' to TCP

Re: So move on, QUICly

for those old enough, when GPRS first came out, it wouldn't work when you were travelling faster than 70Kmph

Hm! Boeing union just ran whistleblower rights training

Re: The only training whistleblowers need remember

Never tell ANYONE... apart from the press, of course

Tesla self-driving claims parked in court

Re: Wonder what took so long

I'd have thought house then healthcare were the two largest purchases Americans make...

Brit publishers beg Apple not to hurt online ad revenue

Re: Will AI be able to stop noxious ads ?

run your own DNS. Problem solved :-)

Tesla layoff circus runs into fourth week with another round of cuts

Clown.....

Recently back from Scotland where I hired a very excellent Polestar 2 (a car I've hired multiple times before)

Also recently discovered that I could use the Tesla Superchargers.

1. They are quick! Up to 80KW for my car

2. They are cheaper than pretty much everywhere else

3. Sign up with the app was a doddle

What makes this stand out even further was the pish experience I had with every other charging provider:

Shell: Bin bags over the chargers

BP: Painted lines for the chargers but no chargers

Some other provider: CCS error

So I ended up charging at the airport for more than double what Tesla were charging

And yet, the petulant clown throws his toys and best engineers out of the (electric) pram

European Commission starts formal probe of Meta over election misinformation

whack-a-mole

I'm playing whack-a-mole at the moment with nationalistic, AI created images of some turk atop a steed fighting some reptile, or genetically deformed bulldogs. Every time I block a page, another pops up in its place

Facebook truly is garbage

Ib only go on because I like watching cats do crazy things....

Voyager 1 regains sanity after engineers patch around problematic memory

Difficult to comprehend that...

the entire code base is probably less than an empty Word Document file.

Europe gives TikTok 24 hours to explain 'addictive and toxic' new app

Is social media 'lite' as addictive and toxic as cigarettes 'light'?

Yep. Probably more so.

I'm in Singapore right now, and had to walk through Shoppes (Yes, really) at Marina Bay Sands. As it was minutes after opening, all the purveyors of luxury tat had their employees stood like zombies staring into their iDevices. Literally, every single one. At least 30 of them.

If it's already got those of voting age hooked, how damaging is it to those who can't make informed judgements?

YouTube now sabotages ad-blocking apps that stream its vids

There's a middle ground

I use Vinegar on iOS and macOS which has made, crap content notwithstanding, watch youtube a pleasant experience

However, I also understand the need to support the very content I'm watching

And, Google, if you're watching: It doesn't need to be content-ad-content-ad-content

It can be banners whilst watching the content. Or a side bar, or a whole host of other things. I see this quite often in the US when watching motorracing: we'd all hate to miss a moment of interest because of ads, so there's picture in picture and a whole host of other techniques used.

So, this doesn't need to be binary. I'm sure that you can com up with a better way of serving ads that are so intrusive

Boffins build world's largest astronomical digital camera to map the heavens

Liquid cooled or AI

I'd imagine noise to be a problem, unless the CCD are liquid / gas cooled or they use AI. Thoughts?

You break it, you ... run away and hope somebody else fixes it

I'd argue that Teams doesn't really "Run". More like "Meander, with the odd fall into the gutter like a drunk on a friday night on Piccadilly approach"

European Space Agency to measure Earth at millimeter scale

Re: What are they using as their zero point?

Cornwall rises twice a day because of the weight of the oceon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCA0II1sVZA

Re: Greenland.Has stayed pretty much where it's currently at for a LONG time

everything. Poles (grid), latitude, longitude

Re: What are they using as their zero point?

Greenland.Has stayed pretty much where it's currently at for a LONG time. Before the splitting of the atlantic, Scotland (north of Inverness) was connected to greenland until the splitting of the atlantic. However, south of carlisle was once 60 degrees south of the equator! Cornwall: well, that's another story. But, the north american plate is relatively stable

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

If ever there was a use case for LLM

Create a VM using existing documentation

Train a LLM on the syntax

etc, etc....

Judge slaps down law firm using ChatGPT to justify six-figure trial fee

Re: Donvoted for missing icon.

Who is this Don Voted you speak of :-)

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

Good news....

I've been lucky enough to have been up to the top several times. Still think it's the best view in London (no tourists, unlike the Shart)

Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

Enterprise is ****ed

Many enterprises use webclips for a whole host of reasons, significantly so. So, whilst it may affect only a small humber of users, this will disproportionately affect enterprise

NHS in Wales bets big on Microsoft with deal worth nearly half a billion

How does anyone not see this as being an obscene amount of money?

That is all.

In its tantrum with Europe, Apple broke web apps in iOS 17 beta, still hasn't fixed them

I love Apple...

I really do. I have to use Apple, Microsoft and Google as part of my work, and Apple really do make things simple.

But, Tim, for the love of everything that is holy, stop being a prick. You can't evangeliise about all sorts of stuff when governments have to force you to do the right thing

USB-C, 3rd party app stores, right to repair, iMessage, etc. Don't even get me started about the inability to move my itunes purchases from one account another (if you mention family sharing, I'll start throwing things)

Tim, you come across as being a nice bloke. But, secretly, I believe that you use a combination of O'Leary and Musk as role models

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

I've also got Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on 8 3.5" Floppies. I keep them to remind me of good times...

IT consultant fined for daring to expose shoddy security

Re: The problem is law is old and tech is new

I thought this was the Tory back bench for a moment!

Great clip!

Apple sets new 16,000-foot iPhone drop test after 737 fuselage fail

Re: > Fake news

Is this the same Apple that has allowed the Vinegar extension on safari that removes ads for both Youtube and Facebook?

Road to Removal: A blueprint for yanking billions of tons of CO2 out of our atmosphere

Re: wish you were right ...

Somebody has been watching the very brilliant Steve Mould :-)