Posts by Giles C

As we stand on the precipice of science fiction into science fact, people say: Hell yeah, I want to augment my eyesight!

Synthetic parts are commonplace already.

Cataracts

Heart valves

Pacemakers

Teeth (fillings and false)

Hip replacements

Just a few, but none of those improve on the original design they just replace the bits that have failed.

Now actual improvements are harder to quantify do you look at the blades amputee runners use and say are they better than the original limbs. What about if someone comes up with a Star Wars type artificial hand should it perform as the original or should it be stronger?

That is the sort of thing when the technology is working that people will have to decide for themselves.

I am very colour blind do I want the ability to see a normal colour range - well having lived in the world I perceive for 47 years I don’t honestly know, unless I was going blind then probably not, but different people will have their own views.

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

The number plate fonts worldwide are mostly badly designed. The best one I have seen is the Dutch system where it is hard to get wrong.

The uk font, well from a distance O and 0, and I and 1 are the same due to the 1 not having serifs far too many people stick a pair of 1s close together and add a suitable fixing hole with a black cap, the same as a 8 with a white cap in the centre.

But then it comes down to the issuers being sensible and blocks say I and O from the letters to make it easier to read.

Samsung shaves 0.1μm off pixels to make new ISOCELL sensor lineup 15% slimmer

The megapixel wars seem to be going in the phone world.

As a comparison I shoot using a Canon EOS R which has a pixel pitch of 5.3 micrometers and can take photos in virtual darkness. The flagship 1DX II has a pitch of 7.

The smaller the photosite the less light it can receive and the worse the picture quality, and as the other comment above says they are soon getting down to the physical wavelength being the same size as the photo site which means that have literally run out of light to work with.

Take your pick: 'Hack-proof' blockchain-powered padlock defeated by Bluetooth replay attack or 1kg lump hammer

Re: Sounds familiar

Yes, the smart lock that can be opened with a screwdriver

https://www.theregister.com/2018/06/15/taplock_broken_screwdriver/

Re: Chainsaw, anyone?

Yep seen that an massive steel door set into a stud wall , why bother with the door when a good kick would give you access.

Mind you the door was magnetic locked and it was on the back of the stud wall, so a smaller hole would let you pull the power to the magnets. Fortunately they didn’t put the electronics box on the outside of the room, but they almost put the computer controlling access in a room secured by itself so if the company went down you couldn’t get to it - I remember that lock would have only had one card that accessed it.

Fortunately it was secured by a key lock and accessible from reception.....

Entertainment-productivity mashups, lockdown tablets and 5G on the desktop: Tech show shakes stylus at post-COVID world

€900 for a hob

I bought a 4 ring induction hob for £225 what on Earth does this thing to to make it worth almost 4 times as much?

And what is the point of a smart hob, if you are heating anything up you need to be near in case it boils over, burns catches light etc. Not sitting playing on a phone.

The Wrath of Amazon: JEDI wars rage on after US Department of Defense affirms Microsoft contract

Re: Next DoD contract to be awarded by a fair dice roll

Not without a 100 page specification document for the dice and another 300 page methodology document

Weighted dice.....

Angry 123-Reg customers in the UK wake up to another day where hosted mail doesn't get through to users on Microsoft email accounts

Sounds like one of their customers has been spamming people.

Had this with 1and1 too much spam from their mail servers and ms will block the ip addresses.

Until they decide to release them all you can do is plead for the block to be remove.

Also had it when a marketing department sent a 4mb email to every customer (this was about 12 years ago so far bigger impact than now)

Apple commits to support human rights - 'We believe in the critical importance of an open society'*

Re: Place your bets...

My kit car was built by a small company (tiger racing less than 10 employees) but...

The engine is a ford zetec

The gearbox is a ford type 9

The axles came from a ford Sierra

The ecu came from webcon

The tyres are from Yokohama (company not the town)

A lot of the ancillaries were small companies but most electrical parts are from companies such as Delphi or Lucas.

Sorry but you can’t avoid the large companies when you have a car unless you are prepared to make every component from scratch yourself, and nobody does that.

Re: Place your bets...

Hmm

In the uk we have regional water companies and you are not allowed to change supplier. So I get water from Anglian water and if I don’t like it - tough....

Why cloud costs get out of control: Too much lift and shift, and pricing that is 'screwy and broken'

Re: Cloud is expensive

Totally agree, if you have a very spiky load, think ticket sellers (in normal times), or video streaming platforms it makes perfect sense.

Just scale up when you need it and then scale down. It might be you need x resource on a normal day but 100x on a peak load. Then the cloud makes sense. If you just need x all the time then I can’t see why you wouldn’t just do a local resource, as it is fixed, controllable and easy to manage.

If you haven’t got your own data centre just rent a cabinet off a hosting or co-lo site

With a million unwanted .uk domains expiring this week, Nominet again sends punters pushy emails to pay up

Had one for every domain I hold in the last couple of weeks.

All ignored, admittedly it is only 5 I am glad I am not on the list where I used to work, they had 20000+ and that was 3 years ago....

Pakistan demands TikTok and YouTube block 'vulgar' content

Ah but if you don’t watch it how can you be offended?

I.e. I was very offended with xxxx but I watched it to the end and then the next bit to see if that was the same....

It is the same argument about tv featuring too much swearing, if you don’t want to see / hear it then turn off. Most stuff will have some sort of warning on it these days.

Pass that Brit guy with the right-hand drive: UK looking into legalising automated lane-keeping systems by 2021

Re: re: Is this the final triumph of the middle lane hogger ?

Bit late but Ssangyong Rodius outdoes a Multipla

Re: re: Is this the final triumph of the middle lane hogger ?

First generation fiat multipla

That was an ugly car

Techie studied ancient ways of iSeries machine, saved day when user unleashed eldritch powers, got £50 gift voucher

Re: Maybe get a process to delay that 11am thing too

Most likely with the 11am would be the deadline by a bank or other organisation to get the data over so it would be processed.

I have seen this with credit card transactions, the days file has to be there by a certain time or nothing goes through and there is a giant hole in the accounts.

Unprotected quantum 'puters may hit 4ms brick wall, thanks to background radiation slashing qubit lifespans

Just reading this and under the comment box is an advert for sound proof office phone booths (no I don’t know why that advert is showing for me).

So it looks like quantum computer 10 cm cube, enclosure 10m cube guarantee 10 seconds of operation.

Mind you I thought they were meant to be so fast it could problems in a fraction of the time a normal machine needs so is the run time an issue....

Teen charged after allegedly taking food delivery biz for a ride: $10k of 'fraudulent refunds for stuff not delivered'

Re: WTF?

Makes you wonder how many people after reading this article might try something similar but on a smaller scale.....?

Seriously though how much is it paying in refunds every week not to notice this.

US Air Force shows off latest all-electric flying car, says it 'might seem straight out of a Hollywood movie'

Re: I person miltary helicopter you say?

Dh5 flying school, if at first you don’t succeed you will be minced!

Trucking hell: Kid leaves dad in monster debt after buying oversized vehicle on eBay

PayPal now can use 2fa which I just turned on, so that sorted part of the problem out.

There should have a confirmation email sent to the account when the order went through though...

You *bang* will never *smash* humiliate me *whack* in front of *clang* the teen computer whizz *crunch* EVER AGAIN

Re: took his hammer and smashed it to very tiny pieces

Oops, I meant to mean the devices that won’t fit between the uprights. There used to be a trait where I once worked someone used to fit switches and not use the countersunk screws but used the pan head ones. Try and get them out of the rack, where it requires a screwdriver and a hammer.

Re: took his hammer and smashed it to very tiny pieces

Ah yes in the world of kitcar builders you need some tools.

Tool 1: A Hammer

Tool 1a: A large hammer

These are essential for light persuasion when a bolt doesn’t go through a hole due to a burr, up to full force when loosening rusted bolts.

But they are also useful when fitting things to racks (the strange ones which aren’t quite 19” wide. And for creating a larger hole to get a cable through a wall, although building maintenance doesn’t like that.

Bunch of mugs keep risking life and limb to 'crockery bomb' sad little roundabout

Re: Where is the danger ?

There are a couple of roundabouts near me which are in small junctions and only marked by a painted circle, and maybe a layer of bricks set into the tarmac. As one of these is the entrance to a Tesco store the trucks do go straight over the centre as there isn’t enough room to go round, try it on a bike and the kerb is just high enough to tip you off though.

Yes I do know from experience....

Securus sued for 'recording attorney-client jail calls, handing them to cops' – months after settling similar lawsuit

I read that as it charges 100x the going rate for making calls.

so it a call costs $1 outside prison then the same call from inside the prison costs $100.

As the strange us phone system charges you to receive calls rather than dial them this could be rather pricey.

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced techie is indistinguishable from magic

The worst key I ever had the misfortune to drive belonged to the people l worked for.

It was a new (at the time) Renault Megane - the model that looked to be designed by people who didn’t know what the others were doing.

Amongst the bad faults was the fact that if you were driving with the radio on and a traffic alert came through the dashboard shut down until the alert finished, it also had some very odd brakes, and a lot more.

The worst bit was I dropped the car off with a list of issues. The next week I saw the person who I had handed the keys to, the next driver apparently looked at the list and said fine and took it out!

Huawei Matebook X Pro 2020: Nothing too crazy but at least it's more fixable and cheaper than comparable Apple wares

Re: £1,699.99

Can someone explain to me that Huawei is banned from dealing with US companies but this is running an Intel chipset so how are Intel legally selling chips to them?

You weren't hacked because you lacked space-age network defenses. Nor because cyber-gurus picked on you. It's far simpler than that

Re: Too hard, too frequent, too unreliable

The 5 nines uptime figure is all about availability not downtime.

So if you have have 2 sets of machines where either can handle the full load, you take set 1 down and patch/test.

Then bring that into production and repeat for set 2.

I have seen services run at 99.999% when components have been down for a couple of hours that week for patching, because this was planned maintenance work.

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

Re: They call them Home Speakers

Because they will believe the salesmen that their lives are not complete without one of these devices.

Voice activation does have use cases, for those who are disabled it can be invaluable, however for most people it is a gimmick that doesn’t achieve much gain for a lot of privacy issues.

For a start how many people have reported the problem that a Tv program or advert contains the start words for these devices, surely the first stage of security is to change the activation word to something unique so that the device only triggers when YOU want it to.

But I still wouldn’t use it myself as I can’t see the advantages.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Re: Not just genes

That one often causes me an issue, which is why I always put a space in the number. But of course the USA doesn’t have leading zeros in their domestic numbers.....

How Bude: Google's sole-financed private undersea pipe to make a landing in Cornwall

Re: Hmmm

Not sure what you are suggesting here.

There are thousands or dark fibre comms links between private companies data centres.

I have put in private links for companies before.

If you want the best service for your company a private link is the way to go. It is just that most companies don’t run dedicated cables across an ocean due to cost.

Reply-All storm flares as email announcing privacy policy puts 500 addresses in the 'To' field, not 'BCC'

This sort of mistake sounds like they were doing the emails manually.

I run a small club and to avoid this we signed up with MailChimp to ensure that this didn’t happen when the gdpr regulations came in.

Even if you didn’t want to rely on a hosted service you can buy the mailing list software to run on a local machine.

51 years after humans first set foot on the Moon, a deepfaked Nixon mourns how Armstrong and Aldrin never made it home

Re: Has anyone.....

Other way round,

Dowland was Dick’s pen name

If you can read this, your Windows 10 2004 PC really is connected to the internet no matter what the OS claims

Re: Windows has always had issues with networking

I don’t know about Samsung devices, but Panasonic smart TVs rely on getting a reply from a particular server to enable the online services. If that server goes down then the screen becomes a dumb display.

It is more likely for telemetry than any technical reasoning.

Cisco restores evidence of its funniest FAIL – ethernet cable presses switch's reset button

Re: Who buys those cables?

In a comms rack that shouldn’t be an issue.

I prefer non booted cables as trying to pull 48 booted ones when swapping a switch out is a nasty job, some of those boots appear to be made out of vulcanised rubber.

Out on the floor maybe, but once a cable is in then the only thing that causes the tag to break it when you replace the cable (at which point it is probably already broken).

Black hole destroys corona

Re: Boggle of the Day

I assumed the brightness was the accretion disc, otherwise if nothing was being dragged into range you wouldn’t be able to observer it.

NASA delays James Webb Space Telescope launch date by at least seven months

Having seen how clean rooms have to be for satellite builds (especially telescope mirrors) I am surprised that the virus has slowed things down. Surely once the machine is in the clean testing lab all the functional tests can be run from anywhere as it is just sending commands to the machine, or in the vibration tests shaking it a bit...

Sounds like a good excuse to me.

IBM job ad calls for 12 years’ experience with Kubernetes – which is six years old

A lot of adverts are more like fiction

Having been out of work due to a contract ending there have been some really awful adverts I replied to.

One was a Cisco network engineer, when I got to an interview I was asked about juniper experience (not really my area), I didn’t get the job because of lack of juniper knowledge. I asked why the advert stated Cisco answer, because it is easier to find Cisco qualified people. That was 2 months ago and it is still being advertised.

Also contract jobs where the scope jumps around (6 month contract becomes 2), locations that are really strange, one was advertised as north west, Scotland. (Turned out to be Manchester) not one of the islands.

Also job specs which reads like someone has picked up the list of topics from an exam outline, or wants huge amounts of experience and to pay £30k a year.

And that is the ones I can recall without going through my records...

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

There is a problem with this idea.

Most satnavs have a history where they store previous routes. Both tomtom and garmin do this.

So unless you start the satnav a mile from home (possible with stand alone units not sure about built in) the journey history will show your start and end point, therefore giving the person with your car your home address.

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

Well in non covid times I organise events and routes for a car club.

We end up usually with a 150 mile route taking in the scenic (I.e. back roads) with anything between 10 - 30 cars the route having up to 50 waypoints on it. Bear in mind that 1 or 2 of us will have driven the route before a satnav is invaluable to ensure everyone gets to the same stop.

As for them getting home that is their problem, but if you drive the same route every day then you don’t need a satnav, unless it is for the live traffic information.

P.s. I do a route once a year which the instructions are in tulip map format - no satnav clues unless they get really lost in which case I will give them the postcode of the end stop by phone

A volt from the blue: Samsung reportedly ditches wall-wart from future phones

Just did a quick count up most of fhe power sockets in my house also have usb power links (make that about 20 charging ports) the computers between them have about 18 USB ports and I have about 5 chargers.

Now as to usb cables, well there are some that charge devices, some the work for data, and a few (usually misplaced) which can reliably do both, and that is before you get to the disaster zone called usb c.....

Anyway do I need more chargers probably not.

No more Genius Bar bottlenecks for you, Mr Customer? Apple exports independent repair provider program to Europe and Canada

Re: "Any salvaged parts must be returned to Apple, where they’ll either be refurbished..."

Strange that, my last 2 macs have both come from the Apple refurbished section of their own web store. Usually you save about 15% on the retail price. Most of them are probably ex-demo or returned items.

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

Re: Cats.

I have a black cat, so black they only bits that aren’t are his eyes and bum. Everything else is black, although his coat is fading a bit in the sun and going sort of rust coloured.

Only problem is at night trying to find him, and not tread on him when getting out of bed...

No matter what words you use will be offensive to someone somewhere.

Therefore we should get the sha256 value of different sizes of the register logo file, and use blocks of 8 characters to form the function names.

Stuff readability or even getting programs to work....

Mind you someone would find an objection to 4cf67y62

How long before someone objects to Cisco config which uses NO in front of virtually every command to negate the effect.

I,e. Shut, no shut

Things can't go on like this. You need to get fit for the sake of your health. I'm going to write you a prescription for... an e-bike

As far as the health benefits of e-bikes go, maybe Sheffield City Council would accrue better value for money by prescribing the afflicted with circular cycle routes in which they travel only downhill.

Hmm has Sheffield got MC Escher involved in street planning

Three UK: We're sending you this SMS to warn you not to pay attention to unsolicited texts

They would have done better to put that link as a warning page, to teach people not to click on a link by sticking up a warning banner.

Mind you send some people a link saying click here so you identity can be stolen and I’m sure a good percentage would do so.

F5 emits fixes for critical flaws in BIG-IP gear: Hopefully yours aren't internet-facing while you ready a patch

Re: Last count...

I actually found that with a company router.

Router had been setup for telnet access only, I idly searched on shodan and got a login prompt.

Quick explanation to my boss and an ACL was added to remove all access from any address not in Rfc1918 got me enough breathing space to plan an upgrade to a newer image.

Brit MPs vote down bid to delay IR35 reforms, press ahead with new tax rules for private-sector contractors

As someone who has worked as a contractor I think the following would be acceptable to most.

75% of your daily rate is taxed as an employee (as long you as you are above the threshold) the remaining 25% can then be put aside to cover sick, holiday, company fees etc. The corporation tax is only charged on that 25% as that is your profit margin.

I.e. contractor earns £1000 week

Pays tax on £750

£250 goes into the company and gives you the buffer for equipment, training, holiday, sickness etc

Seems sensible as an employee you have 10% of your working year as holiday, training included, sick pay included etc.

It's National Cream Tea Day and this time we end the age-old debate once and for all: How do you eat yours?

Need clotted cream

Thanks to you lot I am going to have to go and buy some clotted cream now.

You have made me realise I need some proper stuff with a nice crust on the top, and I have some raspberrys I picked this afternoon..... along with a few strawberries.

Right off to the shops

Email innovator Hey extends an olive branch in standoff with Apple, tweaks code to make the iGiant appier

Re: A subscription fee for email‽

I do the same but never have had this problem. It might be that i setup a catchall@(domain) email where anything unspecified goes into - I usually empty it once a week, sometimes 5 emails sometimes 500!

Anyone sending to anything at (domain) well it will get delivered but not read....

Windows fails to reach the Finnish line as Helsinki signage pleads for help

Buy a tv with a slideshow function built in, stick images on a usb stick and leave it to get on with it.

Most TVs can play images from a usb these days and it is a lot simpler and less prone to borkage.

When I was at Thomas Cook we just had a media player console running all the screens in the shop. Completely black box solution which if it failed was swapped out.