Posts by Nik 2

Windows 95 let installers trash its files then fixed the mess behind their backs

That's very clever. Explains why Win95 was so famously stable...

User found two reasons – both of them wrong – to dispute tech support's diagnosis

Three? reasons

I only count two? is the sub-editor seeing double after a christmas party?

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Go, Look, See

At some point it becomes quicker to send somebody round to do at-shoulder support.

Indian government reveals GPS spoofing at eight major airports

Re: No Silver Bullet

Solid state inertial systems are cheap enough to be used in cars, so multiple redundant systems won't affect the cost of an aeroplane. I know they are accurate enough to hold a Segway so still you can't see it move and robust enough to be attached to artillery shells, but I don't know how much error would creep in over the course of a long flight.

The mk 1 eyeball and existing radar approach control systems may be better.

Shield AI shows off not-at-all-terrifying autonomous VTOL combat drone

Re: AI-written PR slop?

VTOL featuring F35-style lift fans or Harrier/V-22 thrust vectoring is mechanically very sub-optimal, but tail-down is simpler.

That said, I'm not volunteering to be anywhere nearby when one comes back for a landing

Daddy of a mistake by GoDaddy took Zoom offline for about 90 minutes

Needs to have subdomains that mirror the structure of the 'up' internet so any valid 'up' domain can be tested by appending .down to it.

Forums.theregister.com.down => No

Re: Power

always a +1 for an xkcd reference, but I wonder how many people were reading it back then who didn't already know about sudo

Isar’s first orbital rocket crashes into sea – CEO calls it a 'great success'

Objectives?

Mission success can only be measured against mission objectives. if these were published in advance and achieved, it's a success.

Icon: RUD

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Adjust the orbit

If the atmosphere contracts as this suggests, does this not then open up a slightly lower orbit with a molecular density similar to the current environment we use for these satellite constellations?

Somewhere between the Caribbean Sea and the Sea of Tranquillity there must be a region with any given density.

Linux rolls out the welcome mat for Microsoft's Copilot key

It should order coffee from any IoT coffee maker on the local area network, or from a preconfigured online provider

SpaceX rocketeers get fresh FAA license for next Starship launch

Re: How much can one person legally pollute the air?

Probably not if you net off all the Tesla savings.

Satoshi Nakamoto is probably the biggest single culprit

SpaceX claims another Starship success, but fumbles the catch

Re: Shouldn't the first stage recovery be the *easy* bit?

*Easier*, perhaps...

They do say that Space is Hard, even if the person who originated the quote wasn't considering catching falling rockets

BOFH: Don't threaten us with a good time – ensure it

Re: Brilliant

"But how do you type while reading the underside of the keyboard?"

Clever people, touch-typists...

SpaceX plans next Starship flight just days from now

Re: FAA to be rejigged?

<quote> each Starship is significantly different from the last making each of them effectively a new rocket. </quote>

It is possible to imagine a regime that just considered the impact of each change. if the previous launch was considered safe and nothing happened to question that decision then a change to improve the thermal protection of flaps and additional structural rigidity oughtn't to be too hard to consider.

Alleged Bitcoin crook faces 5 years after SEC's X account pwned

Re: Rubbish!

But if you know which way the next $1000 move is going to be, you have a distinct advantage over everyone else.

Openreach reveals latest locations facing the copper chop

Fibre / Fiber

FFS, el reg. Be as international as you like, but perhaps we could use UK spellings for stories that affect only the UK?

Uncle Sam may force Google to sell Chrome browser, or Android OS

I think that Apple has a get-out in that it doesn't have the market share that Android does. Also the position of Search as a window into consumer preferences and the means of control of results and hence user behaviour isn't there.

But yes, I do think that the abuse of power is there.

Raspberry Pi AI Camera takes inferencing load off the CPU

Re: Yes

Average speed cameras work by reading registration numbers, so it's always surprised me that they can't look these up on a DVLA database and see to which class of vehicle they belong.

China’s quantum* crypto tech may be unhackable, but it's hardly a secret

10/10

<<The best use for QKD is to knock up an impressive PowerPoint deck and show it to a funding agency.>>

Top class 'El Reg', cynicism at its finest. Well done!

AT&T sues Broadcom for 'breaking' VMware support extension contract

Re: I've seen this sales play somewhere before, but where..?

This is the key difference between a 'cell phone' and a 'mobile', because in the UK a mobile contract can be ported in 24 hours with no cost and no inconvenience whatsoever :-)

Re: IANAL

This is the popcorn icon. If you have enough popcorn...

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

<<If HP "substantially succeeded" in 2022 then why did they feel the need to continue with the criminal trial in the US last year, at which Mike Lynch was acquitted? Pure spite, I assume.>>

The continuation of criminal cases is largely determined by the judicial authorities rather than those claiming to have been wronged by the defendant.

Tiny solid-state battery promises to pack a punch in pocket gadgets

Re: Capacity

30-50% is a lot less than the 100x claimed in the headline, IMHO.

Capacity

A Panasonic CR2032 cell has about 225 mAh at 3 volts, or 775 mWh

Volume is about 1cm^3, implying 775 Wh/litre

Energiser's spec sheet gives 683 mWh/cc, so TDK's tech nis either much better than claimed or their current cells are rubbish...

Hubble plays spin the bottle with last few gyros

Re: Another refurb mission?

SpaceX's normal rapid engineering approach isn't useful here. We don't have a collection of Hubbles for them to blow up, even if they do end up fixing the fifth one at a quarter of the cost of any other outfit.

Icon: Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly

A tale of two missions: Starliner and Starship both achieve milestones

Re: "before toppling over into the ocean"

No, that was the plan. Hovered for several seconds above the surface of the water, then was ditched.

US Army doubles down on laser tag with $95M for prototyping

Re: Price?

The effective range of a shotgun is fairly low, even against a DJI drone.

Cost is a factor, but the laser is probably capable of firing more than one shot.

Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight

Murphy's law applies

Nothing is foolproof because fools are so damn ingenious.

A previous employer sent a series of vaguely obvious fake phishing messages to all staff. Clicking the first link took you to a 'oops, silly' web page, the second to a mandatory repeat if the infosec training and the third took you to HR for formal disciplinary action.

A colleague managed to click a link while everyone around was discussing the merits of the campaign in general and the specifics of the latest message. Literally interrupted the conversation to ask why an email about approving invoices had taken her to the corporate training page...

Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, literally, something else

And create a RAM drive on the fly. Magic technology in the world before HDD

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Re: It's garbage

Try it. Open Outlook, pick up an email with the mouse and drag it to the desktop. You'll see the behaviour the OP is referring to.

I doubt I've don that more than once since I moved from Lotus Notes in 2003, but that's the point of this thread. Users use features in lots of different ways and those features are important to those users.

I discovered yesterday that new Teams can't alert you when a user comes back online, which was occasionally very useful to me. Why it's not there is anybody's guess, but I suppose MS knows how much it was used. I don't care if I'm in a minority of one, it was a handy feature for me.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

For most of the chargers I use, the situation is better than this suggests. I carry my charge lead with me and the Type 2 connector is the equivalent of the USB-A socket that is on the other end.

Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap

"...entry on the application menu was spelled "brawsers". While the updare fixed that... "

Oh, the irony...

Tiny11 shrinks Windows 11 23H2 down to pocket size

Ancient and Low Powered?

I would love to be able to install Win11 on ancient and low-powered machines - my 700+ desktop fleet includes some very old machines, but my school doesn't have the budget to upgrade them all before 2025. Security updates are important to us, as is a setup that is as consistent as possible for teachers, students and sysadmins.

That would be my second choice, behind having a Win10 with updates.

3rd party software like this? Interesting and clever as it may be, it's not for us.

Microsoft's bug bounty turns 10. Are these kinds of rewards making code more secure?

"Attacks are on the rise. That's not going to change. How are you using your bug bounty program to shape your live incident response and make it more efficient?"

Announce that you will give any unspent funds in the bug bounty pot to the dev team, a set period after product launch.

Pentagon seeks government gossips to dish dirt on UFOs

RAF since April Fool's day in 1918

Royal Flying Corps and Royal Navy Air Service prior to that.

Do SSD failures follow the bathtub curve? Ask Backblaze

An Uncomfortable Bath

That looks like a long way from the classic bathtub curve found in mechanical devices - there's no flat bit on the bottom, and the down and up curves are at similar gradients.

A proper bathtub shows a very steep drop followed by a prolonged period of low failure rates and a gradual increase after that, but this looks like one of those fancy tubs that are only found in showrooms and expensive boutique hotels.

Scientists spot startlingly close black holes in Hyades star cluster

Re: The Asylum has shown the way

Take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...

Microsoft's Surface Pro 9 requires a tedious balancing act

Rubbish review

I like my Surface Pro, but I understand why others wouldn't. A decision to buy the latest one would be based on the spec uplift from the previous version and the price point(s)

It would be useful to have a review from someone who had used one before - it's hardly a new form-factor

NASA's electric plane tech is coming in for a late, bumpy landing

Re: Any scientists left at NASA?

<quote>We might get slightly better batteries in the future, but battery technology is not subject to Moore's law - we can't expect revolutionary new chemistry to turn up out of nowhere.</quote>

I broadly agree with you, but one should never underestimate the ingenuity of very smart people with a sufficient financial motivation. There are often ways round unsolvable problems, and lots of modern tech was seen as improbable or impossible [or pointless - ed] until it became commonplace.

Energy density has risen from 55Wh/litre to 1600 in 12 years, and 80Wh/kg to 700 since 1990*. Still a lot of dead weight to carry around, but never say never.

*https://physicsworld.com/a/lithium-ion-batteries-break-energy-density-record/

NASA tests bot built to slither across, and beneath, alien worlds' ice

Re: Slither of the machines?

Robot underlords?

LattePanda's Sigma crams a 12-core Intel Raptor Lake CPU into an itty-bitty SBC

LOL to the cry-switch concept, but I think that you can do facial recognition on a Pi4.

Spain gets EU cash to test next gen network, and US 'scrum for 6G' already under way

Use case <-> specification link?

Can anyone explain how the futuristic use case scenarios affect the design of the specification?

I can see that video and voice calling means that the various data packets need to arrive consistently in a way that isn't needed for, say, email or web browsing, but once we have a spec that delivers that is there anything to improve beyond reliability bandwidth and latency?

TIA

Warning: Microsoft Teams Free (classic) will be gone in 2 months

Re: With apologies to the late Douglas Adams

Two months later, it's happening again

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/28/new_teams_client_preview/?td=rt-3a

With apologies to the late Douglas Adams

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly how the Teams UI works and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

BOFH: I care a lot ... about onion bhajis

Re: Small Rural AM station?

Thank you, Big_Boomer. I'll consider myself better informed. HAGW

Small Rural AM station?

Has the BOFH gone stateside too now? He and the PFY will have to find a bar to frequent before, during and after their lunch breaks if they're moved away from their beloved pubs.

Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot

Re: World's first AI government adviser in Romania

Does seem one of the more egregious uses of 'AI' as a label for something.

And, if they're looking to use a system to analyse users concerns to suggest polcy decisions then it's going to have to be really good at avoiding sampling bias.

WINE Windows translation layer has matured like a fine... you get the picture

Re: Ribbon interface holdouts

Me? Voice away, but I am genuinely surprised that this depth of feeling remains.