Posts by tiggity

Chocgate: The fallout. Partially taxpayer-funded £6k+ staff luxury treats land ICO in lukewarm water

Re: Public sector purchasing 101.

Thorntons have really gone down hill, high sugar taste, low chocolate flavour these days.

Shame, as it employs UK workers.

Though, there's a sad trend for much mainstream chocolate on sale in the UK to be high sugar & low cocoa.

Get my choccy treats mainly at a local indy choc specialist shop (not hotel chocolat), or for bog standard high cocoa content bars I go to Lidl (they do a 95% cocoa bar & lower % bars too if 95 is too high)

I have been given hotel chocolat stuff as a gift by people in the past & it was considerably better than Thorntons (low bar though)

Blockhead admits to helping North Korea mine crypto-bucks, faces 20 years jail

DPRK as whipping boy

Shame the US act like a bully with a big stick

I have no issues with DPRK sanctions, would just like to see a few more countries alos looked at

However, if we are thinking about human rights abuses..

Saudi Arabia have form (and majority of 911 attackers were Saudi if the US want a "danger" angle as well as human rights) - but too may financial entanglements between US and Saudi for that to happen.

China have form - ask Tibetans, Uyghurs etc. But again lots of financial involvement, and even worse China are also a bully with a big stick.

I could go on and on listing dodgy countries, but its only the weedy one with no money loss attached that gets hammered, show some consistency (and balls) & apply morality based sanctions more widely.

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

Re: Espressway to hell

I really don't care which one people use.

French use expresso

Italians use espresso.

If you look at signs in a café / restaurant signage spelling may depend on that influence.

If buying pre packaged beans / pre ground coffee, I have seen some with the French spelling.

So, in UK not a surprise that people may use one or the other (plus expresso, makes a bit more sense than espresso to an English speaker who does not speak other languages as English has the word "express" in common use but not "espress").

.. and finally* its a class thing, if, like me, you are working class scum from a shit area, very unlikely to have been told "expresso" is wrong as chances are your friends & family didn't know or care as there were more important things to worry about like getting through the week with enough cash to put food on the table & pay the bills and the only coffee you were exposed to was "instant" anyway)

* Yes, also potentially a dyslexia (& similar) thing too..

We're all at sea: Navigation Royal Navy style – with plenty of IT but no GPS

I like electronic navigation systems

Used to do leisure boating (RIBs, when had family members lived a stones throw from the beach, as used to visit often, sadly they have now moved).

Liked the electronic systems, but I did choose to take an extra course and get to grips with paper charts - just in case.

I felt a paper backup was vital as the seas in S. Pembs are "fun" be it weird tidal races or the huge vessels around Milford Haven.

Though, after a while of regular exposure, you get familiar with the area & don't need GPS, charts etc (with RIBs riding high you have to be massively incompetent to hit a sandbank as the sort of thing that could ground you would be visible anyway as would be so close to the surface - a lot easier than something with a big keel).

Local familiarity is why best option is always a local pilot (fine for commercial vehicles, not for Royal Navy for obv reasons)

I miss fun at sea..

UK's Surveillance Commissioner warns of 'ethically fraught' facial recognition tech concerns

Re: Far simpler to ban them all

No AI involved, massive human error in threat id (bit of wood <> gun) and response, just an example of fatal over-reaction that can occur & why AI false positives are a bad thing as could result in "accidental" death.

Referenced him (and de Menezes) as horrendous end results of flawed threat assessment / id (which biometric recog AI could give). Apologies if confusion caused / lack of clarity in my wording if there was implication they were AI related.

Far simpler to ban them all

Given that any (very dubious) benefits are far outweighed by problems of false positives* and massive privacy infringement.

*Ignoring false negatives, but obviously this is an issue of why biometric systems are poor as not great if your alleged terrorist is not IDed.

Given what happened to a Brazilian electrician, I'm not keen on false positives given the over the top responses we often see in the UK

I'm the one not carrying a table leg, just to be on the safe side.

So I’ve scripted a life-saving routine. Pah. What really matters is the icon I give it

Re: I wait for the statue erected for Ron Jeremy.That one should be exciting ^^

Doubt it - trend for toilet roll inners to have small diameter these days (so overall pacaging of rolls is smaller) so toilet roll would not fit

Re: Try living in a building...

Same here, name not a number, another house with same name a short walk away, postcode shared with a (different street) a couple of hundred m away.

Add in extra confusion points for a house with same name as our street - that house is approx quarter of a mile away

Stressed-out IT workers, software devs – we're not being funny but have you tried rebooting your breathing?

Physical activity

"found physical activity was the most popular way for software developers to address stress"

I'm sure lots of devs* would like this to be a minute of no consequnces, no holds barred combat versus manglement

* Those with the appropriate fighting skills / physique to make full use of the opportunity.

Re: My work e-mail inbox looks like this

Exactly like my inbox

Something phishy: Tech recruiters jabbed by fake COVID-19 Passport scam

Re: "quickly spotted [..] several hours later"

"The scam was quickly spotted by the recruitment biz"

My guess of most likely explanation is a phishing spam recipient spotted the problem and told them,

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

Got a lot of people into computing as the price was right

Ironically as a teen I purchased the atom basic solder it yourself kit as opposed to the ZX80 as shop was selling atoms off cheap (atoms came with more expensive prebuilt offer & they were selling well but nobody was buying the more DIY atom version from the shop so they just cut their losses, otherwise I would have ended up with a ZX80 as being a teen funding purchase on revenue from paper round & odd jobs I was very price limited.

.. Having said that, most of my friends and family who went the computer route got Sinclair products so I had a lot of experience helping people out with them and so lots of time using them- their cheap price & (relative, for the time, ease of use) played a huge part in stimulating interest as (apart from a few rich kids / kids with parents who splashed out on expensive presents for them) the rest of us teenagers were heavily constrained on price & without Sinclair cheap & cheerful products a lot of kids would have missed out on getting into personal computers at an early age (wonder how many kids manually typed in listings from C&VG etc. back then)

Ex-DJI veep: There was no drone at Gatwick during 2018's hysterical shutdown

TBF peregrines can do multiples of that (though primarily in a downward stoop) and well over that in level flight (as can some of their common prey such as pigeons as an "arms race" in speed & manoeuvrability means slow pigeons typically have short lives)

Given they are quite chunky (compared to blackbirds, tits etc.), ducks, pigeons etc. have triggered some speed cameras (though at more casual flight speeds, not at 65 MPH AFAIK)

You want us to make a change? We can do it, but it'll cost you...

Re: Screw-up?

I'm old enough to recall that it was fairly obvious at the time that Maxwell was dodgy, but he got off on burden of proof as unsurprisingly crooks often conceal their dodgy deeds - as was found after his death.

I wonder whatever happened to the woman his boat was named after ......

looks like dodgy behaviour runs in the family.

Must say most of the Maxwell references I recall were "bouncing Czech" type, cannot recall any Jewish references, though never keep my old eyes so cannot confirm (really should have done as there's good money in old issues but live in a small place with little storage)

RAF chief: Our Reaper drones (sorry, SkyGuardians) stand ready to help British councils

Re: Sill they be armed with…

I'm in N. Derbyshire so typically join M1 just South of Sheffield at either 28 or 29 depending on what route \I take, join the "variable speed limit zone" at either junction - however, no matter how quiet the roads are, the limit is always set (at less than 70, obv)

Caveat, not tried it at 2 AM or similar as work does not involve silly hours of day travel (usually!) but daytime weekdays and weekends its always been set below 70 (sometimes fair enough when road busy, but often its WTF experience as roads quiet )

Australia rules Facebook page operators are legally liable for user comments under posts

Re: Its only a little country

@SundogUK

.. Expect that position to drop

Wait until next year when Brexit effects have even more impact as various transitionary agreements expire.

Still, COVID gave government a potential get out of jail free card as will blame everything on that & gamble that enough people will believe them

You walk in with a plan. You leave with GPS-tracking Nordic hiking poles. The same old story, eh?

In the UK Lidl (& Aldi) better pay than the other "high street" supermarkets based on friends of mine who work in local supermarkets.

All the supermarkets have a bad rep as employers, so if a wage slave in a shit job, may as well, go for the better paid one - discounters the best of a bad bunch in that aspect.

Re: Blind Faith anyone?

Remember that album being on display in my local public library... in public area that all users would walk past on ground floor (adult section on ground floor, kids section was upstairs)

Back in the days when ..

Most towns still had a library

Vinyl LPs were available as items to borrow

It was one I borrowed (for the music, no the cover)

On the potentially offensive covers area (but not kids), also remember library had Technical Ecstasy (by Sabbath) & Electric Ladyland (Hendrix)

A developer built an AI chatbot using GPT-3 that helped a man speak again to his late fiancée. OpenAI shut it down

Re: Samantha skips the small talk, goes straight to breaking OpenAI's rules by talking about sex ...

@Intractable Potsherd

I dislike the D in ASD & prefer just AS

Disorder depends on your perspective - AS is not neurotypical, but its different not a disorder (IMHO).

As you said, a lot of neurotypical people lie almost continually (& in many well beyond social lubricant "small" lies which many AS people get used to dealing with in others (to some degree) after a while)

I would sooner have a group of AS people with a "disorder" running the UK than the corrupt, lying scum (that far more deserve being diagnosed with a disorder my opinion, YMMV) that make up a depressingly large proportion of the UK government.

Glasgow firm fined £150k after half a million nuisance calls, spoofing phone number, using false trading names

Re: How do you find them?

yes, no resources, those are better spent investigating Matt Hancock photo leaks apparently as per the article

Guntrader breach perp: I don't think it's a crime to dump 111k people's details online in Google Earth format

Re: Stupid is as stupid does.

@rg287

You missed out the huge numbers of pheasant / grouse shooters.

They do not come into "pest"* control wildfowling or deer stalking that you mentioned.

* foxes are not pests, I live in a rural area, farms all around me, lots of foxes, lots of people with "fowl" such as chickens, ducks, geese for eggs. Foxes do not take any of these birds because they are safely locked up at night, can get to safe areas in daytime if foxes out in the day. Foxes only a pest if you do not look after your egg laying birds (in general foxes useful as reduce rat, rabbit etc. numbers that can affect farmers crops)

Why we abandoned open source: LiveCode CEO on retreat despite successful kickstarter

I was taught occam - and used it on transputer systems - at the time potentially a big new thing but those systems never took off - but if transputers had become popular would have been lauded as a great decision.

Also taught dBase, at the time it was a big player in desktop database systems, but faded away. At the time that was a "safe" choice as widely used.

Its always a gamble what is taught but at least (when I learned them) their were (FSVO) aruably valid reasons for those 2.

.. Also taught lots of other stuff that is still in use today to varying degrees (C, Algol, ADA, Fortran, various assemblers etc)

US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses

DevSecOps

DevSecOps: Only works if the devs are given sufficient training to be aware of all the appropriate security aspects to deal with in development, and as there are always new security issues to be aware of, new training regularly needed.

So DevSecOps is a nice idea, but doomed to fail as always running just to stay in the same spot, best a dev can do is follow a mandated set of good practices (good practices regularly updated and reasons why part of traing), but have to be aware its not a "cure all".

Norwegian student tracks Bluetooth headset wearers by wardriving around Oslo on a bicycle

headphone jack

Headphone jack on music playing devices means I don't need to use BT headphones.

Never saw the point of BT headphones (in addition to security issues it drains battery more, can suffer interference etc.) - is a cord really that much of a hassle?

Leaked Guntrader firearms data file shared. Worst case scenario? Criminals plot UK gun owners' home addresses in Google Earth

Re: "British Association for Shooting and Conservation"

Most shooting woods here not very natural as massive numbers of (typically mass bred elsewhere and transported in) game birds (pheasant in this area, not even a native UK bird). The unnaturally huge amount of these disrupts the eco system in that area and nearby as some spread out (and attracts predators in as its like an all you can eat buffet, so causing keepers to "need" to shoot predators, which in the case of some illegally acting gamekeepers includes protected birds of prey).

e.g. biomass estimates

https://raptorpersecutionscotland.wordpress.com/2021/01/25/non-native-gamebirds-pheasants-red-legged-partridges-comprise-approx-half-of-all-wild-bird-biomass-in-britain/

Think you can solve the UK's electric vehicle charging point puzzle? The Ordnance Survey wants to hear about it

Couple of my near neighbours in UK have EV cars and their solar panels give enough power for that (& far more home power use besides, even in Winter). Though they do have advantage of plenty of South facing roof to mount panels on.

No EV or solar for me as I'm not rich like my near neighbours so cannot afford either... (a long wait before EV cars in the cheap old banger price range..)

UK promises big data law shake-up... while also keeping the EU happy, of course. What could go wrong?

They have that to deliberately get people to give up their privacy... make it awkward & lots of people give up.

Oh the humanity: McDonald's out of milkshakes across Great Britain

@Russell Chapman Esq.

What's the point of putting in a paywalled url? Odd assumption that 100% of reg readers will be FT subscribers

A new island has popped up off the coast of Japan thanks to an underwater volcano

Indeed, lots of interesting islands like that - Galapagos has same "production line" of islands & much fun to be had comparing islands of different age

Before I agree to let your app track me everywhere, I want something 'special' in return (winks)…

Re: Red Guitars

Was she doing the Len Ganley stance too?

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

a bit late to the show in featuring this site

This was publicised on he b3ta newsletter quite a while ago - shame on el reg if you don't sub to that

Firefox 91 introduces cookie clearing, clutter-free printing, Microsoft single sign-on... so where are all the users?

"Mozilla may be concerned that despite a redesign its market share continues to falter. "

It's because of the redesigns its share has dropped, keep modelling your browser on Chrome so it looks like a chrome clone ... no surprise users jump ship to chrome..

FF has lots of useful security features, but more & more they get hidden away so about:config gets hammered a lot to do stuff

PR director at Chinese Twitter analogue Weibo detained on bribery and fraud charges

Re: "China's government [..] is always enormously intolerant of corruption"

No, its not changed (unless its a very, very recent change) - backhanders all the way down when I was last chatting with friends who work heavily in China / with Chinese companies - they were still paying plenty of bribes in July (last time we chatted).

It's govt firmly letting big tech companies know that govt in charge.

As long as your corruption fits within state sanctioned corruption model (& the right people get their kickbacks) then business as usual .... except for occasional purges of someone high up & then their corruption / kickback chain either gets handed over to someone else or a persecution of the chain members occurs (when it can get nasty).

Chocolate beer barred from sale after child mistakes it for chocolate milk

If they taste like a "normal" brownie, either too little cannabis in the recipe, or its a really nasty over sweet recipe used, as cannabis adds a hint of bitterness to a brownie flavour.

Though my taste preference is not for over sweet brownies, & appears to be a minority view as over sweetened biscuits, cakes etc. seems the norm

Activist raided by police after downloading London property firm's 'confidential' meeting minutes from Google Search

Re: Loss of income? Inconvenience?

Has the look of a setup to me, or at least malicious accusation.

Rule of thumb, 99% of property developers are scum

The sideloader weeps tonight: Unsealed court docs claim Google said 'install friction' would ‘drastically limit' Epic's reach

Yeah, I sideload a lot. An easy process, totally confused by the exec claiming it's awful, when all someone has to do is just do the security toggle on non store apps & they are good to go

Woman sues McDonald's for $14 after cheeseburger ad did exactly what it's designed to

If you find a McD cheeseburger irresistible

Maybe get a CT scan in case you have a brain tumour ... need something awry in your brain to convert heavily processed McD "junk food" (being polite) into something I would find irresistible (or in my case, even edible - did have a McD once, a friend worked there & gave me a freebie from their allowance, it was one of the vilest things I have ever eaten)

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Re: Don't use your iPhone in church

And given the massive closure of public toilets in the UK over the last decades, urinating in public often a necessity (with age you find micturition more frequent and unless you massively dehydrate yourself in advance (not a good idea) a long walk as a senior citizen often needs a "loo break" - & often alfresco if no facilities round e.g. countryside)

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

Re: its not just the public charging

I would like solar (have some South facing roof area & a housebound relative lives with us so daytime solar power would be useful) but the upfront costs make it a no go when you are not wealthy.

The older system that made it less of a financial burden was scrapped at bad time for us (had to move house to somewhere larger than our old small box house to accommodate relative we needed to have stay with us to be cared for but move too late for the old system to be on offer)

Re: Some things that would help the situation

@J.G.Harston

Morrisons are just going all in on pissing off loyalty card users in as many ways as possible.

Re: Overcharging for Leccy

@Steve Foster

" their slow chargers are usually free (I don't see that being sustainable!)."

UK supermarkets often very competitive on petrol prices, a good way to get people to the store so likely to buy stuff (so more profit).

I assume similar logic on slow charge, a car "captive" at a car park charge point - owner quite likely to spend some of the charge time shopping.

.. Also, currently in UK, EV driver usually means quite well off given price premium on EV, so added bonus of getting potentially higher spending customers...

.. essentially a loss leader

Re: Hmm....

Not just solar though, home heating options include heat pumps (of various sorts), community wind, community river or tidal depending on geography.

Google hits undo on Chrome browser alert change that broke websites, web apps

Shame

Google do a lot of bad things with chrome, but this was a good thing for security (& web apps that fail due to this deserve it, too much cross origin js fuckery around (too much js full stop, but that's a separate rant)).

At least they will reinstate it in a while

Sueball over breach of more than 5 million payment cards at Dixons Carphone hit for six

Re: Although I understand the judge's judgement . .

Exactly, companies know they can get away with not spending on security as any fines are too often the merest slap on the wrist so no incentive to care about customer data.

I was irked by:

"If a burglar enters my home through an open window (carelessly left open by me) and steals my son's bank statements, it makes little sense to describe this as a 'misuse of private information' by me."

As most insurance companies will say its your fault for any theft in that situation (& not pay your losses) as you made insufficient attempt to make your property secure.

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

I would say the Henry (& similar family members) are also something that "lasts" but cheaper than a Miele (as well as Henrys being repairable) - Ours gets plenty of use (& lots of clogging nasties like pet hair to challenge it) but it keeps going year on year.

Tech spec experts seek allies to tear down ISO standards paywall

Needed doing for years, wont happen

Had experience of that when trying to do some code work based on ISO standards (some image processing as inbuilt image processing in C# (requirement for the project) was dismal & range of supported file types was a joke). The fees asked or all required specs were ludicrous, so we integrated some third party image processing software rather than looking at creating our own

D'oh! Misplaced chair shuts down nuclear plant in Taiwan

Re: Confirmed

its on britbox, do a free trial & watch them that way on the cheap

eBay ex-security boss sent down for 18 months for cyber-stalking, witness tampering

"As a retired police captain with 27 years’ service, Cooke should have appreciated the impact a fraction of this conduct would have on the victims,"

I think he appreciated it all too well, which is why he did it. The excuses given don't hold water IMHO (or alcoholic laden fluid) - especially given the prolonged time period. If you make a drunken mistake (& this is beyond that by orders of magnitude) you rectify ASAP

Steam-powered computers: Retro cool or old and busted?

Re: "who wouldn't enjoy a go on a steam train simulator?"

Visit the UK, lots of steam locos still in use.

I recommend Bridgnorth.

e.g. travel to Bridgnorth by train & last leg from Kidderminster to Bridgnorth will be on a steam train (they are in "proper" mainline use rather than trundling around on disconnected track sections of some of the more "hobbyist" lines, though must say those can be great fun too, live a few miles from a couple of different ones and enjoy occasional trips on them)

Plus it has a funicular railway in the town as an added bonus..

Google updates timeline for unpopular Privacy Sandbox, which will kill third-party cookies in Chrome by 2023

Re: Am I missing something?

@Jim Whitaker

But this is comments page on an IT related web site

People doing none (or only some) of your A, B, C are likely to be very, very small % of visitors here, but make up a hefty chunk of www users overall