Posts by Skribblez

City folk vote to each get $100 every time cops, govt officials illegally spy on them with facial-rec AI, minimum $1,000

Re: The Benevolent Machine

Already taken. Company out of Texas: https://malkorganics.com/

Wonder if The Simpsons get royalties...

The longest card game in the world: Microsoft Solitaire is 30

Re: "an ill-advised redesign"

A pi-hole kills those ads in the MS games, including in the iOS version when using wireless. Overall, pi-hole is a necessary part of one’s home setup, given the nature of advertising on the Interwebs.

When advertisers fix the issue of malicious ads, I’ll revisit running a blocker. In the meantime, you can always whitelist the sites you think are safe.

Micros~1? ClippyZilla? BSOD Bob? There can be only one winner. Or maybe two

Re: Wats-in a name?

BSODzilla! Pronounced SODzilla with a silent B, so it rolls off the tongue and shows the speaker’s true feelings for Microsoft?

I like BSODzilla.

Yeah, no. Really needs something like Blue Screen Purveyor or Blue Screen Monopolist.

Micros~1 is just Microsoft’s own name for Windows in 8.3 characters, and the rest of the choices don’t show The Register’s usual wit.

Did you ask whoever writes your subheadings?

Motion detectors: say hello, wave goodbye and… flushhhhhh

Re: mandatory marigolds!

“On a lighter note, how many ways are there to interpret ‘going to the toilet in a hazmat suit’?“

That method seems a bit inside out, no? Or is that outside in...?

Russian sailors maroon themselves in Bristol Channel after drunken dinghy ride goes awry

Why were the lifeboat crews assessing the helicopter?

Oh dear! Amazon's facial recognition is racist and sexist – and there's a JLaw deep fake that will make you want to tear out your eyes

So techbros produced a system that can only recognize techbros? Is anyone really surprised?

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

Re: (KB4480970) Also hoses Windows 7 32 bit on Tosh Lappy

Not at first. Going from 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10 was a series of speed increases in the UI that made my Acer D255 netbook more and more usable. But Microsoft managed to slow it down to unworkably slower than any previous OS with the first two semiannual updates...

Raspberry Pi Desktop has fixed it though.

Linux.org domain hacked, plastered with trolling, filth and anti-transgender vandalism

Using Yahoo! mail for something important?

Weren’t ALL the Yahoo! accounts compromised for ages? Even with changing your password, can you trust Yahoo! not to be compromised again/still?

Seems to me that is a really weak link to have sitting out by itself without MFA, no?

Incoming! Microsoft unleashes more fixes for Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Hustle as a Shitshow.

What a meth: Woman held for 3 months after cops mistake candy floss for hard drugs

“The moral of the story is don't ever help the police. The cops gave up any reasonable suspicion once they admitted the windows were fine so when they ask to search your car, because they're bored and want to go fishing, the correct response is "no". It's also best to follow it up with "am I free to go?"”

Amen. Even as a mature, white male the cops are not your friend, so the common sense rules apply to everyone. Do not talk to them. Do not volunteer information. Do not give them permission for anything, and ask to leave as soon as you can.

NWA had it right...

Microsoft slips ads into Windows 10 Mail client – then U-turns so hard, it warps fabric of reality

I have had these adverts in the Outlook webmail client for a year or so, but pi-hole blocks them and all I see is a complaint from MS to either enable ads or upgrade to Office 365.

This is on my email address that is tied to my MS account that does have an Office 365 subscription...

Is there anything they don’t fuck up?

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

Re: If their systems are capable of doing that...

Wasn’t that the last October update?

Re: Oh No!

Like the good old sys1475 error message, the numbers help for ease of internationalization. Though it would help if we had access to the list of error codes too... :-)

Apple macOS Mojave: There's goth mode but developers will have to wait for the juicy stuff

Re: Wow!

“‘If you are on High Sierra I would definitely upgrade as you will have a much more bug free experience after doing so.’

This is really bad advice. First of all, High Sierra isn't very buggy. But, more importantly, every MacOS upgrade over the last 10+ years has come with exciting new bugs and breakages and Mojave won't be any different. Particularly dropping 32-bit support is likely to cause some annoyance, even if it does make a lot of sense.”

I usually take the approach of upgrading to the previous OS version when the newest one goes GA. So that means our machines are all moving from Sierra to High Sierra at the moment.

Thanks for doing the beta testing for me :-)

Remember when Apple's FaceTime stopped working years ago? Yeah, that was deliberate

Re: Really?

“Another proof that all the academic titles in the world aren't enough to protect a frail ego, which will still be hurt even by things such as a tongue in cheek jab primarily aimed at the frail ego's preferred gadget maker.“

Bingo! I met a lot of these doing my doctorate. They were all “very important people doing very important things” too.

Getting the PhD just means you and I were stupid enough to keep showing up and doing the work while our supervisors piled the shit higher and deeper on us. :-)

As someone supporting an almost exclusively Apple household of iPhones, MacBook Airs and Pros, iMacs and even a Mac Pro, I like the use of Cupertino Idiot-tax Operation to describe Apple. But Foxconn Reseller is cute too. :-)

It’s the Reg! It’s supposed to both bite the hand that feeds Information Technology and the hand that feeds itself: its own readers.

Developer goes rogue, shoots four colleagues at ERP code maker

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

“Look, I'm all for making a good argument by heaping on the examples, but I challenge you to produce a single instance of a mass murder in which a prairie or grassland or steppe or anything of that genre was ever used as the murder weapon.“

Saskatoon RCMP Starlight Tours?

Microsoft still longs to be a 'lifestyle' brand, but the cupboard looks bare

Re: Adobe can join Microsoft in hell.

The university edition can be renewed as long as you are still in academia. MS just makes it hard to find on their site when your four-year licence is coming due.

Then again, if you are in academia, you likely have access to site-licensed or reduced-cost options.

Hearts and minds and all that...

AI bots suck at marking written essays, not too shabby at old Atari games, and more...

I think that bot was in my class...

I sometimes get meaningless drivel like that from undergrads, and they are always shocked when they fail the assignment. They then insist that they always got “good marks” or “As” from their other profs, which makes me respond, “ I don’t think they actually read what you wrote...”

Computers help for plagiarism checking but, as mentioned above, you have to double-check their work too because they flag false positives almost as much as they catch plagiarism.

Best just to trust your own instincts and keep an eye out for variations in the prose.

Dyn Dyn Dyn – we have a buyer: Oracle gobbles Internet of Things DDoS victim

*Sigh* Another grandfathered user here too, with further domains added after that because their service has been awesome. Time to start looking for a new home...

1 in 20 Wendy's burger joints hacked? No, make that 1 in 3 – 1,025 in total

Re: Tried it?

Having tried out all the options in the drop-down boxes, what is strange is that now all of the states return only "---Select City---" even though Wendy's says that means no locations in unlisted cities were affected...

Interesting... It seems to work now (3 mins later), so I wonder if there was an issue on the AWS side of things?

Lester Haines: RIP

I'll miss him

Sorry for the late comment but, as a long-time reader of this site (1999), this article came as a shock.

My condolences to Katarina and the rest of the family. Lester's irreverent articles and SPB hi-jinks have been the highlight of The Register. My partner even started following the site for the post-pub nosh neck-filler articles and has gone so far as to not only try making some of them but to pick up the associated lingo.

If I may borrow Ashley_Pomeroy's image for a min, I thought - as a non-bofffin - that this helped to express how I felt.

Playmobil figures on a shelf,

we all sit

in wonder at the loss

of a friend we have never met

but on these pages

as our garden-shed boffin

shares a pint with his intrepid Playmonaut

Eds off their meds: Does this headline REALLY need to be so astronomically long it can be measured in parsecs?

Microsoft's adverts in their Windows 10 games do this when they lose focus. Funny. Guess they think it means the ads will be watched because one wants to play solitaire and not that one stops playing solitaire and even less ads get loaded...

Google spews critical Android patch as millions of gadgets hit by Linux kernel bug

Woot! First generation Moto G just got security updates!

First generation Moto G just got security updates! Seems it still gets support after all, just a couple months late. Latest patch brings the security patch level up to 2016-03-01!

Go Google! Go Motorola!

Oh, wait...

They sure do make Apple look good...

Safest to buy a Google phone I guess?

Yay! Glad I bought one of those Google owned Motorola Moto Gs, so that it was kept up to date on OS updates until Google sold Motorola...

I'm starting to think the Apple luxury tax is worth it for the updates to the OS. At least the walled garden doesn't feel like a vacant lot. :-(

You can't dust-proof a PC with kitchen-grade plastic food wrap

@ x7 and AC

Lead II Oxide (PbO)

Hence all the safety equipment (HEPA etc.) and the frequent blood tests, though most of us who grew up when leaded fuels were used were exposed to far more lead from car exhausts.

The more immediate health issues were from dealing with the heat involved with blast furnaces, the molten rock they produce and other elements that were in the rock and might be cooking off like nickel and chromium and stuff.

That poor 286 was built like a tank, though I can't remember if it was a Compaq or something crazy like a Packard Bell...

Back in the late 80s we had a 286 in one of those big XT/AT cases in our assay lab. It never seemed to have any issues despite all the rock and lead dust (lead ii yellow being the main reagent used). We eventually opened it up one night to find everything inside coated with an inch of lead/rock dust but the machine didn't seem to mind, so we left it alone rather than disturb it all by attempting to clean it.

Which keys should I press to enable the CockUp feature?

Re: Which keys should I press?

The phone trick I remember was to coat the inside of the ear piece on the black plastic receiver with black shoe polish. Once you notice it all over your ear, the stuff takes forever to wash/wear off...

What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?

Not so awkward a conversation for Selkirk?

Been awhile since I did any research into the background of Defoe's _Crusoe_ but didn't Selkirk ask to be marooned after arguing over the seaworthiness of the ship he was on, which sank shortly thereafter?

Dampier commanded the other ship and the overall expedition, so the conversation would have been more, "I told them so!" than awkward.

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Re: Hp Stream ?

Was looking at one of those to replace my Aspire One D255e that I had upgraded to Win10 from Win7 Starter. The D255e worked fine with Win10 with 2GB ram and a 64 GB SSD, but the low-res screen was getting to me.

The Stream 11 seemed like a good replacement but I ended up with an Acer Switch 10 2-in-1 laptop instead because it was on sale cheap enough to qualify as an impulse purchase. The 1280*800 screen on the Switch 10 is nice enough and it came with 2 GB ram and a 64 GB SSD, so it runs Win10 fine. I find it nice to have a lightweight, usable laptop that can double as a tablet for movies or an ereader etc. But then I tend to do most of my actual work on my old MacBook or a Mac Pro.

Microsoft to OneDrive users: We're sorry, click the magic link to keep your free storage

Thanks for the notice and link for keeping our current storage limits Tim!

Not that I use my OneDrive space, but it's good to be able to let Microsoft know they didn't get away with reducing it... :-)

Get whimsical and win a Western Digital Black 6TB hard drive

If I take this selfie, will I get jumped too?