Posts by Dabooka

BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year

Re: Three

Three are notoriously patchy with their coverage although they do make a reasonable punt (compared to others) at kind of acknowledging it and Durham has always been a bit weird when it comes to coverage

Re: What does this mean in practice?

Similar to me, although it's just a small patch on my commute so not too bad.

I assume that 4G or 5G (stop laughing at the back) will pick it up

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

My own experince tells me

Somewhere they'll be managers in marketing or other departments who called this bullshit out for what it was; they'll have had had their cards marked for being against it and yet now, after being proven correct, they'll remain a pariah. For making the bleeding obvious call all along.

PHBs never go back and promote the guy who correctly went against their idea.

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

Re: Should this be so easy?

That be yer 'hot' lead for kettles, steam generators and the suchlike.

And I think the problem is that with so many PSUs being switchable, the lead would be mooted irrelevant anyway.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Re: And Arnie? He will not be back.

Probably correctly from my reading of it?

Maybe a bit harsh.

Nobody does DR tests to survive lightning striking twice

Re: At least you fixed the problem.

To be honest that description of the DC extends to most of Milton Keynes in general

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

Re: Quite ironic

Came across that lot.

Used to spend forever having to tell folk that now you know you can't, you can't! Give it to someone else

Re: Quite ironic

5 downvotes? I wonder why?

Work based first aid provision has been diluted down something rotten over the last 25 years and hardly resembles what used to be taught. Bearing in mind we now have to support and maintain a patient for much much longer than we used to, learning more than the basics condensed into a few hours is actually something that most folk would benefit from.

You can easily be on for four hours plus. Nothing is taught to prepare people for that length of care anymore.

Quite ironic

As most (UK) workplace first aid quals are also utterly meaningless and as much use as a corduroy ashtray

Experts scoff at UK Lords' suggestion that AI could one day make battlefield decisions

Re: Is it technically possible ?

Or hide under a box

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

What checks are these?

Border control? Car safety? Banning of chessboards?

Oh, you mean cheques!

Logitech, iFixit to offer parts to stop folks binning their computer mouse

5 years?! Pah!

I'm sat here using my 20 yr old Microsoft Intellimouse Optical.

Given to me by a tech friend at work who could get used to it, it's survived a redundancy, two jobs, a return back to my original employer and about 12 office moves since. It's a lovely faded 'smkoers yellow' and the surface as become shiny through repeated use but otherwise it's good as.

I also quickly Googled it and there's some very optimistic pricing out there for these things used!

Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison – with a $500m bill

Just what I was going to post

fuck the small guys, but there's your wedge chaps.

And yes I'm aware they'll not see a fraction of it but that's hardly the point. 'Insufficient evidence' gimme a break

Student requested access to research data. And waited. And waited. And then hacked to get root

Re: Not caught either... Or they never caught up with me

I've had that too, except mine was about hydrogen fuel cells or something.

Resulted in pages and pages of DVs. Oh to have the time...!

The most bizarre online replacement items in your delivered shopping?

Terry Woagn (RIP)

One morning read out a message when asking this very question on his breakfast show.

A listener had order a 'Value' Kettle to take with them to their caravan but found it substituted with a Value iron instead

Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …

Re: Why would one ...

I agree, this makes little sense

If Tesla Investor Day was about exciting investors then boy did it fail

Re: RE: re-engineering the underlying parts for lower cost

This.

I don't know enough about Tesla components but the comparisons need to remain on point to hold validity. Most moderns are written off for all sorts of things, I guess it's just breakers are able to salvage and reuse parts (depending ion the category of write off of course, at least in the UK) which for whatever reason Tesla can't / won't allow.

The fact is cars are less likely to be killed by rust nowadays than a component failure. It's an issue for all manufacturers going back a number of years although it certainly appears Tesla is worse.

I'm struggling to get one of mine back on the road because of a bloody fuel pump off all things.

It's official: BlackLotus malware can bypass Secure Boot on Windows machines

Someone explain to a novice

I don't know much about the Secure Boot module aside from the lack of it prevents me upgrading an old Thinkpad to Win 11, so can someone explain to me what the word 'Secure' means in this context?

Obviously it means something different entirely

Starlink performance sees a bump, and so do prices

Re: So you pay more to have less?

Indeed.

I was going to say the increased charge isn;t going to change the demand on capacity is it, seems oxymoronic.

Titanic mass grave site to be pillaged for NFTs

Totally agree

The whole thing is abhorrent. I was appalled to see they were given permission to cut into the thing

FTX is back in Japan, where users can withdraw fiat and crypto

Well personally...

I'd rather have kept the '99 Panda, especially if it were the amazing 4x4 Sisley

New IT boss decided to 'audit everything you guys are doing wrong'. Which went wrong

Zero chance of that happening to me

By which I refer to the lack of remuneration or additional holiday for time taken out. That would have been resolved on my return, dangerous precedent set otherwise.

Regarding the Ops Dir, I reckon we've all seen the revolving door effect a few times when a WonderSuit with glowing credentials and a CV to match don't make it through probation

Bringing cakes into the office is killing your colleagues, says UK food watchdog boss

What a load of bollocks

Where I work I must hear as many people declining due to diets or whatever as I see indulging. Or maybe having a half of slice etc.

Never a problem we all know. If you don't want to eat it don't eat.

Likened to passive smoking? FFS

Arca Noae is modernizing OS/2 Warp for 21st century PCs

Cool

I hope it's available on 3.5" floppies.

I'm assuming a tad more than the 17 (?) it used to ship

Crypto exchanges freeze accounts tied to North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group

Well it hopefully shows there's a risk dodgy funds will get intercepted. Makes them think twice?

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Re: IoS

Brilliantly put.

Mind I see this all the time with iWatches and things, seems people are happy to switch them out a couple of years.

Yet they laugh at me for a proper analogue automatic

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

Little black book

Said it before and I'll say it again, my LBB still seems to be more reliable than all of these things.

2FA where offered and unique email addresses seems to remain the only way forward

Software engineer accused of stealing $300k from employer was 'inspired by Office Space'

Re: Two thoughts...

Again, we are not dealing with a criminal mastermind here are we?!

Twitter starts auction to flip the bird, furniture, pizza ovens, gadgets galore

Loving that print!

And as you say, Mad Men to the core

Ex-Twitter Brits launch legal challenge against dismissal

Re: A bit odd to focus on amount of redundancy pay

I thought that, even though I have sympathy for anyone losing their job it's well above minimum. Not sure how far this will actually get, citing other tech sector layoffs isn't really much to go in with

Re: Wouldn't hold out too much hope...

And to make matters worse I believe they even gave Gavin (or whoever he was) prior notification of what they intended to check it was okay.

An got a green light.

Virgin Orbit doesn't

Re: Slight amendment needed

Two thumbs down?!

Crickey tough crowd, we're getting harder to please in here

Slight amendment needed

'As The Register reported yesterday, Virgin Orbit’s plan was to take off from Cornwall and fly west over the Atlantic Ocean to an altitude of 35,000 feet before losing a rocket designed to hoist nine satellites into orbit.'

FTFY

UK gov makes fresh grab at Arm to list IPO in London

Re: Oh dear,

@AC

"so hows that not being in the EU working out for you, City of London ?"

Really well /sarcasm

FTFY

Oh well done

'the latest Prime Minister Rishi Sunak'

Made me chuckle

Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too

Re: Blockchain next..

I hear you.

In footy circles there's 'Sorare' (think a posh digital Panini sticker album) and those punting it keep explaining it's secure unlike other football themed investments schemes (Football Index for one) because it sues blockchain.

Trying to ask how blockchain can ensure the market won't collapse typically gets answered with a sneer along the lines of 'If you don't understand what blockchain is, this probably isn't for you'.

Yeah, I'm the one who doesn't understand how blockchain works...

When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration

Re: Unanswered question

Not just me then, I think we should be told

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

Did the very same thing

As part of my GCSE.

I never mastered it (I am not a musical type at all) but it was a bit of fun in the class and everyone seemed to have a go

San Francisco investigates Hotel Twitter, Musk might pack up and leave

Re: No, way, they beat us?

Is nothing sacred?!

North Korea using freelance techies to fund missiles and nukes

Swing and a miss....

NK have a long history of thinking outside the box to be ahead of the curve.

Wait, does that make sense?!

Weep for the cybercriminals who fell for online scams and lost $2.5m last year

Re: "banned from the sites for being dishonest."

Just logged in to say the same thing!

UK arrests five for selling 'dodgy' point of sale software

More about their typical spend

The example could've been a 'beer and a burger' for £20 becoming chips and a coke for £9

A brand new Linux DRM display driver – for a 1992 computer

Re: MIDI Maze!

The return of chip skimming eh?

Re: MIDI Maze!

90s car nerd here so I have to ask...

...what make and model? Just curious

Meta threatens to stop sharing news in USA to protest publisher payment plan

Re: Having your Cake and Eating IT ..... Biting the hand that feeds IT

Three times I tried.

I gave up each time.

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

Re: With a little help from the server

You're lacking the joke icon, flaming incoming

Re: What!?

I agree, regular and / or frequent changes for the sake of it are old hat. Our workplace insisted on this until WFH triggered by Covid, despite me discussing this with our Head of IT. His response was he's been instructed to do so by one of the the senior managers 'who knows things about IT' and he was equally as frustrated. In fact I believe GCHQ even updated their recommendations to reflect this (for the reasons above, repetition and writing down creates weak links).

Also, 12 characters or more? Hard to do that when portals still insist on '6-8 letters' to create a strong password (yes City and Guilds I am looking at you). This continues to push the myth that 6 is enough

IT manager's 'think outside the box' edict was, for once, not (only) a revolting cliché

Re: Hide and seek at El Reg

Awful isn't it?

Why do they always insist on messing around with a winning formula?

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

It's the old adage

Never reuse a populated template (or cut and paste between the two).

I mean for run of the mill instructions sure, but anything serious like his? You just have to invest the time to do it right

BOFH: We're an industry leader … in employing idiot managers

Re: Industry Leaders

That's more idiot being given money by other idiots to manage a company