Posts by macjules

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

"more than a dozen initiatives focused on enhancing workplace safety and product quality"

Have Boeing received FAA clearance in order to resume production? Have they fixed the 400 planes they have waiting on delivery? Have they fixed all the other grounded 737MAX aircraft and upgraded them?

Gone in 9 seconds: Virgin Orbit's maiden rocket flight went perfectly until it didn't

TITSUP?

Total Inability To Send UPwards?

While waiting for the Linux train, Bork pays a visit to Geordieland with Windows 10

Oh dear

"Microsoft Corporation: Putting the POS into Point of Sale software."

Nope, still can't find them. Skullcandy slips Tile's gadget-tracking hardware into individual earbuds

Apple, which is rumoured to be working on its own gadget-tracking hardware

I would think that Apple's "gadget-tracking hardware" would be self-defeating. Wouldn't Apple want you to be losing those ear buds, or whatever they are called in their current incarnation?

Now, if Apple announced that they were going into the gadget insurance business ...

Uber plans to ride out of stable Singapore, move APAC HQ to high-tension Hong Kong

"It's time for the government to de-regulate autonomous vehicles so we can bring death and destruction to Hong Kong's streets."

There, FTFY

Help your fellow IT pals spruce up their virtual meetings: Design a winning background, win Register-branded gear

Re: Give yourself a promotion

You need a backdrop of something that will make everyone else uncomfortable and want to leave asap, so you can get back to whatever work you were doing before yet another pointless project management meeting was called.

IBM's sacking spree reaches Australia – and as staff wait to exit, they're offered AU$4k to find new workers

Re: Pleased I no longer have to fear this b/s

Me too. Best bit about not working there? No longer waiting for 5 minutes for Notes to load on a Mac laptop.

Unmanned drones to slash NHS delivery times to one-fifth of road 'n' rail transport

.. deliver coronavirus testing kits to a remote Scottish hospital

Looks like another bloody excuse for Dominic Cummings to go on holiday to me.

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

Fraud is a big issue for etailer

Probably because they got so good at making sure users can be defrauded. I stopped using eBay many years ago when the steps you needed to take to prevent AFF criminals outweighed the value of the goods you were selling.

Once memorably got a $500 transaction on eBay cancelled and refunded when the seller assured my wife that the bag she had bought was "genuene aligator [sic]" I informed eBay that if they did not cancel and refund that I would have them charged under CITES.

Dude, where's my laser?

A whole roll? You must be very rich.

Beardy Branson’s 747-assisted sat-launcher can’t get it up

Do Delta know about this?

I would be a little bit surprised if on my trip across the pond the captain announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, please make sure your seatbelts are fastened. We are just going to launch a satellite. It is one of Mr Branson's little side-ventures."

It wasn't just a few credit cards: Entire travel itineraries were stolen by hackers, Easyjet now tells victims

Re: We are very sorry this has happened.

If RyanAir had done this they would have charged their customers to inform them of the breach.

For the price tag, this iPad Pro keyboard better damn well be Magic: It isn't... but it's not completely useless either

It's a game

Cook: "No, we can't, can we? Do you really think that people will buy it at that price?"

Marketing: "Surveys show that our fanbase do not care about the price, I mean, look at the price we got away with for the set of wheels for the Mac Pro."

Cook: "Oh go on then - send it to market."

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

Re: And the moral of this story is ...

You are making a presumption that BNP/BF/Whatever members can drag their knuckles off the ground long enough to do that simple operation.

HPE's Black Thursday: Staff face pay cuts or the ax, office closures to save $1bn+ after coronavirus slams IT titan

HPE has vowed to slash its spending by at least $1bn

Talking of which, isn't the Autonomy hearing due to publish any time now?

Apple, Google begin to spread pro-privacy, batt-friendly coronavirus contact-tracing API for phone apps

Will my data be monetized by Google or Apple?

No, there will be no monetization from this project by Apple or Google. Consistent with well- established privacy principles, both companies are minimizing data used by the system and relying on users’ devices to process information.

I see that winged pigs can now make use of Heathrow and Gatwick for practice.

We really doing this again? Rumour has it that Apple is nearly finished developing augmented-reality glasses

Facebook are probably working on it.

It is going to be the ultimate Fanboi dilemma. While on your iPad the phone rings: do you answer it via the iPad, your phone, your watch or via your glasses?

It's commonly found on driverless cars, where it helps identify potential obstacles and dangers.

Except with Tesla, where it helps identify potential obstacles and dangers and then accelerates into them.

Look forward to the "Should have gone to iSpecsavers" comments.

Remember when Securus was sued for recording 14,000 calls between prison inmates and lawyers? It just settled

"Securus claimed the recordings were the result of a software glitch"

What is the legal definition of a 'glitch'? Is it "Oops, sorry but we recorded all your calls when we shouldn't. Our bad" Or perhaps, "Someone deliberately planted code that would record privileged conversations between attorney and client. The federal authorities are investigating", as you would get in the UK?

NASA renames dark-energy telescope after its first Chief of Astronomy and Mother of Hubble: Nancy Grace Roman

"The Coronagraphic Instrument is an exoplanet hunter"

Shh, people won't buy it if you use Corona in the name.

Easyjet hacked: 9 million people's data accessed plus 2,200 folks' credit card details grabbed

Re: Highly sophisticated

Well, at least they informed that well known web security organisation - the London Stock Exchange.

OK, hands up ..

Who here allows credit card details to be stored server-side, "for future purchases"?

Car crash: Uber axes another 3,000 jobs, closes 45 offices as punters snub app during coronavirus lockdown

Re: AI for hailing a cab?

Intended for the Hunter-Killer Über Class vehicles they are building.

With millions upon millions out of work in the US, here come the scammers claiming victims' unemployment money using stolen info

Here come the carpetbaggers ..

Led by the Carpetbagger-in-chief flogging hydroxychloroquine :(

If you don't LARP, you'll cry: Armed fun police swoop to disarm knight-errant spotted patrolling Welsh parkland

Plague Doctors?

I would worry more about the 14th C plague "doctor". Someone with a hardcart yelling, "Bring out your dead".

Latest NHS IT revolution is failing to learn lessons from the last £10bn car crash

a target to go "paperless" by 2018 has not been achieved.

It is all about those pesky patients .. sorry, "customers". If they didn't demand appointment times or dates we would not have to worry about sending them letters to ask them to come in for an operation on a certain date.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

Re: Spitting Image

The Newsquiz started suffering when Alan Coren and Richard Ingrams left it.

NASA launches guide to Lunar etiquette now that private operators will share the Moon with governments

The Artemis program aims to put the first woman and second man

The Artemis program aims to put the first woman and thirteenth man on the Moon by 2024

FTFY

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

Re: Why bother?

Well Cressida Dick has good experience of getting a Brazilian done. She was the commander in charge of the Menezes shooting.

Openreach tells El Reg it'll kill off copper sales in 118 UK locations next year

Re: 118

It used to be 192, but BT decided that 2mbps was enough speed for anyone.

The end really is nigh – for 32-bit Windows 10 on new PCs

Windows 10, version 2004

Nah, I'll just stick with Windows XP SP3 if we are throwing back to 2004 thanks.

Danger zone! Brit research supercomputer ARCHER's login nodes exploited in cyber-attack, admins reset passwords and SSH keys

Naughty GSK and their outsourced hacking research teams ...

Lawyers hail 'superb result' in Facebook biometric privacy battle: They'll get 25% of $550m, Illinois gets the rest

Trust the lawyers

Undoubtedly there is a $75 handling fee to be able to send you the $70 check.

The Rise of The (Coffee) Machines: I need assistance. I think I'm running Windows. Send help

AI at it's finest

The machine is simply begging to be put out of its misery. "Here I am with a brain the size of a planet and they ask me to dispense coffee. Call that job satisfaction? I don't." (Sorry Marvin)

Re: Not quite Windows

It's not the message but the way that it is delivered that counts. MSFT now has a design team working on making errors beautiful and harmonious, such as Light Azure Screen of Bereavement which gently reminds you not to strain your hands when reaching for the Ctrl Alt Delete keys.

Gaming kit vendor Razer gives away face masks in Singapore – after signup to its payment system

It's Singapore innit?

Surprised they do not charge you S$100 in advance for disposal of the used face mask, or send a robotic dog round to check that your personal details are correct.

Wanna be a developer? Your coworkers want to learn Go and like to watch, er, Friends and Big Bang Theory

Re: Might use that as an interview topic

Interviewed someone in Switzerland a few years back and, trying to break the ice, I asked him what computer he would use if he wanted to work here, to which he replied, "I am here for an interview and not for personal preferences chatter".

Re: Hmm

You don't learn Flash. You get infected by it.

Might use that as an interview topic

Me: "what's your favourite TV show?"

Interviewee: "Friends"

Me: "Sorry, our open position just closed. Thanks for coming anyway. I guess no one told you life was gonna be this way"

Papa don't breach: Contracts, personal info on Madonna, Lady Gaga, Elton John, others swiped in celeb law firm 'hack'

Oops

That's their professional liability insurance gone then. I wouldn't worry too much about Madonna's tour schedule being leaked: it has somewhat changed for 2020.

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

"Aaron! Had you done anything to that server?"

The immediate response of any PFY/Boss/DevOps is usually "who me? no, mate"

Let me guess the bank. In that time the only 2 banks who used 'football pitch' to boast of their dealing room sizes were Deutsche Bank and NatWest, both then located at Broadgate.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Calling Isaac Newton...

If Malta had one there would be a lot more instantly-roasted bloggers.

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

Re: It'll just shoot

Which was based upon Brooker seeing BD's "Big Dog"

Apple owes us big time for bungled display-killing cable design in MacBook Pro kit, lawsuit claims

Re: Even those guys knew

Yeah, and it is supposed to be the "Genius Bar". Every time I have been in there I have never seen even the hint of a free glass of wine.

O2 be a fly on the wall during BT and Vodafone's video calls: Telefónica's UK biz, Virgin Media officially merge

Think about the poor sponsors

What will the O2 now be known as?

Perhaps the group could merge with British Airways and then it might be called the "O2 BA Virgin"

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Chocolate Factory alternative?

I would favour The Onion Factory. Microsoft never seem to know one division is doing from the other, like layers upon layers of incompetence.

The iMac at 22: How the computer 'too odd to succeed' changed everything ... for Apple, at least

Great article, thanks!

One thing to mention about the iMac was that it was in stock, worldwide, from the moment that Jobs released it. I phoned up my reseller the next day and asked if they had any on order and was pleased to hear that they could ship immediately.

So you've set up MFA and solved the Elvish riddle, but some still think passwords alone are secure enough

... tens of thousands across the world were using such Fort Knox-style gems

Remind me not to use NordVPN: if they can access their users' passwords.

Virgin Galactic takes another step towards blasting Richard Branson into space

Virgin Galactic takes another step towards blasting Richard Branson into space

I look forward to the headline in a year's time "Virgin Galactic takes another step towards bringing Richard Branson back from space".