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.
Posts by tiggity
3165 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Oct 2015
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Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right
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
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
Be careful what you inline: Defunct video-hosting domain used to inject smut flicks into news articles, more
@Zarno
Most "local" (small cartel of media groups run them) news websites in UK are awful for huge number of ads (& irritating ones) - only option is to go in fully defended. They lose any ad income from me as sites just impossible to use otherwise; intrusive ads, delayed render that "jiggles" page around so intended click target moves & you click something else just lose revenue in the end as people ad block or just stop visiting the sites.
Hole blasted in Guntrader: UK firearms sales website's CRM database breached, 111,000 users' info spilled online
Re: They set out to piss off the gun owners? Really?
Anti Terror officers have an axe to grind against lots of people.
FFS they would make the middle class climate protestors of ER a terror group if they had their way.
There's a lot more violent cops than violent animal rights activists.
.. I know plenty of wildlife monitors and hunt sabbers, they are all extremely NON violent (it's why I don't hunt sab, local sab group have policy of not retaliating to violence inflicted on them by the hunt / hunt followers - I'm too working class for that, if someone hits me, they get hit back
The old New: Windows veteran explains that menu item
Lawn care SWAT team subdues trigger-happy Texan... and other stories
Re: Bloody hell, nobody told me the police would cut my lawn!
grass is not a breeding ground for mosquitoes - eggs dropped in still water, which is where larvae feed and pupate.
Long grass can be good for wildlife - birds love the grass seeds, lots of bees & other insects visit the "wild" grassland area we maintain.
But I'm not in the "land of the free" - I'm in the UK, and ironically free to make my garden wildlife friendly
In a complete non-surprise, Mozilla hammers final nail in FTP's coffin by removing it from Firefox
I used FTP in Firefox, until they broke add ons by going the chrome model, I occasionally used FireFTP addon as very nice browser addon tool for FTP upload when required.
A lot of places still use FTP internally & you would be surprised how many companies still expect you to get / send data via FTP rather than via API calls in their "integration" of data between systems.
... I can even remember way back when some third party card payment / authorization systems used FTP as the interface ... there's a bit of scary for you!
Peers question experts over UK police use of AI, facial recognition tech
Never mind "AI"
The quote:
"There is no technology that will come along and solve domestic violence or enable us to predict burglaries successfully 100 per cent of the time"
But improvements to the approach of police could...
How often do we read of a woman complaining to police she is being harassed by her partner or recent ex, police do little, and weeks or months later, the woman is found dead?
(.. Yes, I know domestic violence can work in all sorts of ways, but this type (female victim) tends to get reported the most.)
Early intervention could make a difference in many domestic violence cases.
.. as for burglaries, if police actually made a serious effort / allocated enough staff to investigate them things might improve a lot.
Our Friends Electric: A pair of alternative options for getting around town
Re: The door
Indeed - as a kid I was a frequent reliant robin passenger as my dad only had a motorbike licence & could drive a 3 wheeler* using that (& they were cheap). He did eventually take a "proper" car test.
* Could act like a 2 wheeler on cornering as "outer (in relation to the cornering)" rear wheel could leave the road even at relatively low cornering speeds.
India IT minister denies illegal use of NSO Pegasus spyware
I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google
??? Corbyn is one of the least racist MPs in the current parliament. Try looking at his voting record, political action, his history of protests.
Try a bit of research & less taking media / comments of those with an axe to grind at face value.
I'm not a Corbyn fan (for many, many reasons) but he is rare in being an honest MP, & someone who, although he compromised a lot as leader / repeatedly reached out to the "right" of Labour, he could not be "bought" be it financially or by promotions, gongs etc. (hence a lot of people demonizing him as a lot of people like their politicians to be of the bought & paid for variety)
The framework that will not die: Microsoft gives Web Forms designer fresh lick of paint in Visual Studio 2022
JS, just say no
"Another issue is that when browser technology charged ahead, trying to avoid JavaScript was the wrong thing to do"
**** off, sites that just give a blank screen with JS turned off are an abomination: A web site should not be broken if JS is disabled, but so often is.
Given that JS is a massive malware vector, the less JS the better.
Especially when so many sites use various CDNs, or "libraries all the way down" with huge scope for a nasty lurking somewhere outside their control (very few sites self host all their own JS, based on my inspection when I decide whether to allow any JS for a visited site)
You might think me paranoid, but there is no denying JS and good computer security are fundamentally incompatible.
Happy 'Freedom Day': Stats suggest many in England don't want it or think it's a terrible idea
Spoke with worried NHS staff
I was visiting relative in hospital at the weekend (non COVID related illness) - staff were worried about freedom day as the hospital was already seeing an uptick in COVID admissions & were concerned about potential bed shortages if the trend continued (like previous COVID surges, people still get other illness, but unlike the early days, people less "scared" of hospitals and more likely to present at hospital now as they were seeing non COVID admission numbers far more "normal" than in early stages of the pandemic )
Purely anecdotal, a single hospital and a couple of staff I chatted with on one ward, but as that's one of the 2 main hospitals near where I live, then I was concerned by their concerns.
Ordnance Survey to take a poke at Pokémon-style gaming with outdoorsy AR adventure
Want to get people outdoors exploring more...
Free the data.
OS maps app is expensive* (& was buggy & limited in its use & tied you to a phone platform when I tried it, long since deleted, it may have improved since but once bitten twice shy ).
A paper OS map is expensive* if its somewhere you are just visiting for a few days.
Given that OS data has essentially been taxpayer funded for decades, give the data to us for free.
UK has a bizarre approach to excessive efforts to monetize data its citizens might find useful (stares hard at postcode databases) & if free could potentially lead to all sorts of useful bits of software as someone can take a punt on creating a product without being hammered by huge data licencing costs.
* for those on low income, YMMV
NASA fixes Hubble Space Telescope using backup power supply unit, payload computer
Excellent
At some point Hubble (& various other NAS bits of kit) do reach the stage where, despite all the skills of the teams, they can no longer be "revived" due to kit being damaged & alternative fixes exhausted.
But really enjoy seeing the "saves" & kit getting an extended lifespan despite the odds (especially Hubble which has done some great science over the years & maybe even more importantly created some stunning images that have engaged some people previously not that interested in astronomy as public engagement is good as science should be for everyone to access in some form)
Cyberlaw experts: Take back control. No, we're not talking about Brexit. It's Automated Lane Keeping Systems
Buyer of $28m Blue Origin space ticket has a scheduling conflict – so this teen will go instead
Re: Source of wealth
Given the name of the financial services company, is it by any chance related to a financial company that Jacob Rees Mogg* is involved with as the names are suspiciously similar & cannot think of a great reason for "Somerset" being main part of a Dutch company name?
* I was really well behaved & did not add a #ToryScum hashtag
All hands on Steam Deck: Fancy a handheld Linux PC that runs Windows apps, sports a custom AMD Zen APU and a touch screen?
Re: No mention of those this is copying like the Aya Neo
Hope https://www.ayaneo.com/ hardware is better than their software skills - I will never know as web page shows zilch for me when visiting (as its an unknown site so enter with most JS disabled by default).
Always code your site based on non JS browsers (lots of screen readers struggle with JS heavy sites too, its not just us malware averse cautious people). It's not difficult - by all means use JS to "improve" (opinions vary on whether its a real improvement) your site, but render content & allow navigation if JS is disabled
Trouts on a plane: Utah drops fish into lakes from aircraft and circa 95% survive
Re: Inaccessible lakes in its mountainous regions
And irony overflow in the comments about goldfish & why they are a bad thing " they can grow to considerable size, compete with native species for resources"
The air dropped trout thing seems a bad idea as they will definitely disrupt the ecosystem to some extent.
Restoring your privacy costs money, which makes it a marker of class
How many Brits have deleted life-saving track and trace app from their phones? No idea, junior minister tells MPs
Re: "it has proved effective"?
@AC Personally I would be happy if people had to mask up in flu season
As someone who suffers respiratory problems (& react really badly when I get a respiratory system targeting infection such as a cold, never mind flu) my health has really benefited from mask wearing reducing prevalence of various infections as a by product of anti COVID measures.
Would be happy if we went more along the regular mask use culture route that some other societies have had for a while.
This is the data watchdog! Surrender your Matt Hancock smoochy-kiss pics right now!
UK's biggest trade union takes aim at Amazon over 'price gouging' allegations
Not sure about Amazon prices as did my COVID shops in the high street, but "bricks & mortar" shops I visited were charging a lot for sanitizer, disposable gloves etc. during the early days of COVID especially. Whether gouging was by the shops or the suppliers (doing classic ramp up prices when demand outstrips supply) I have no idea.
A housebound (due to health reasons) relative of mine did tell me that stuff she used to buy on Amazon (disposable gloves) was for a while unavailable as all the stocks of brands she normally purchased were reserved for NHS purchase only. She did say there were some gloves available (I'm guessing they were 3rd part sellers, affiliates, whatever the Amazon terminology is) and they were lots more expensive than her normal ones... She basically went through her order history, found that all gloves she had in her history were NHS only and so then searched Amazon for alternatives.
What follows Patch Tuesday? Exploit Wednesday. Grab this bumper batch of security updates from Microsoft
Re: What precedes Patch Tuesday?
Nothing stopping people having all sorts of drinks.
Always a few single malt Scotch whisky knocking around the house (amongst other spirits), but also often a bottle of Southern Comfort (or similar bourbon style spirit) around.
Different drinks but also drunk in different ways / for different reasons - I'll irk the purists by saying I will occasionally have a small single malt (or a bourbon, or a rum, etc.) to accompany a dessert - depends on dessert flavour & sweetness but its a matter of picking something to complement it e.g. simplistically if you are going the contrasting flavours approach a "tangy" dessert gets a sweet drink such as rum or bourbon, a "sweet" desert gets a single malt etc. The appropriate drink for a meal course is a thing of argument though (some go for "matching" approach e.g. a sweet drink with a sweet dessert).
Verbosity aside, context is key, no such thing as a "bad" drink in the right circumstances.
Google fined €500m for not paying French publishers after using their words on web
Re: If you can't tax 'em fine 'em
Beat me to it on the robots.txt
At least Google obey it (glares at Baidu & many others)
When I use a news aggregator I often click through to the actual site to get details so "publisher" gets their hits (unless its a site I have blacklisted for over intrusive ads as they can swivel)
Don't if its a clickbait or mickey take headline e.g. a lot of "local" UK newspaper sites (in reality owned by a handful of big companies) have a penchant for headlines construct such as "[potentially interesting] event in [countyname]", which the aggregators dutifully just give the headline
e.g. "300 new homes to be built in Kent town" "Major accident in Yorkshire village"
.. in these cases I don't bother as chances are its going to be irrelevant (most counties big & area of the county you are interested in relatively small) - if its near enough to be "local" to me I will eventually hear about it via friends or other news sources.
Report: 83% of UK software engineers suffer burnout, COVID-19 made it worse
Not convinced
That 17% claimed no burnout....
Agile or non agile methodologies, problem always is manglement wanting the outcome in a timescale that is not feasible without corner cutting (e.g. poor code quality / bugs, lack of tests, some functionality problematic (e.g. edge cases) or even missing etc. ) and the general continual treadmill of no chance to take a breather, improve your skills (lots of employers make nice noises about training, work life balance etc., but reality so often tends to be that any (significant, as opposed to a few token hours here and there) upskilling you want to do is in your own time as workload allowances not adjusted accordingly).
Maybe I'm unlucky, but I have worked for companies ranging from small to huge, and as perm & contractor over the years, but always the case of someone high up agreeing to an unrealistic deadline & those at the coalface suffering the fallout.
As others have said, at UK pay rates, its a lot of stress for a poor salary (& plenty of studies to show that a better salary makes people better able to deal with high stress because at least that removes the general "struggling to get by financially" elements of general life stress & so only leaves you with job related stress & non economic based general life stresses).
UK govt draws a blank over vaccine certification app – no really, the report is half-empty
Re: App based stuff, and if someone steals my phone ?
Don't do payments on my phone, banking etc.
It has very little useful info on it as its mainly used for calls and texts (and the occasional game / bit of web browsing). Zero chance of it getting the NHS app - it does not have the COVID app on it (as, shock horror in these times, most of the time I do not have my mobile phone with me, only when I'm out and about without my partner do I take my mobile for emergency contact use (very rarely take it if I am expecting an important call) & usually if I am out I am out with my partner).
Paper Tiger Lake? El Reg gets its talons on the first Intel Core i7 Honor MagicBook 14
Re: svelte aircraft-inspired design
I'm happy to have something thicker, if it means more ports, occasionally useful stuff like an optical drive, better battery (preferably easy to remove and replace), better ventilation / cooling. Don't get this mania for the ultra slim... Obviously you don't want something massively heavy but the thinness mania irritates me (same on phones - give me a thicker phone with an easy* to replace battery please FFS)
* and by easy I mean a few seconds (unclip the old one, clip in the new one) - not "easy" in terms of a "solution" that involves faffing around with screwdrivers to remove screws (that always seem to be the one head type you don't have a tool for) and / or heat guns to melt glue etc.
Researchers warn of unpatched remote code execution flaws in Schneider Electric industrial gear
The world is chaos but my Zoom background is control-freak perfection
Re: 50 Shades of Grey
Had similar with old, but good condition, furniture when clearing mums house (due to her going into care home)
Charities turned their nose up at lots of furniture (even though it was well built & would massively outlast flatpack hardboard / thin pine / plywood flatpack junk) as it was too "old fashioned" (bear in mind this was a furniture charity that was giving furniture to people in need for free so you would think that they would be less picky. If I was skint and had no table and given choice between a "dated" design of table or continuing with no table, I would pick having a table.
So lots of perfectly good stuff ended up at the tip (fortunately some stuff went to family & friends, biggest of which was a 3 piece suite that charity turned down!)
Richard Branson uses two planes to make 170km round trip
Re: Awaiting FlatTards....
I'm sure there's plenty of people involved in flat earth stuff as important "influencers" (or whatever) just as an easy way to make a living, in the same way that many church leaders seem to be in it for the foldable green stuff rather than New Testament (rather socialist so a lot of them don't like that) ideals.
Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast
No recent interloper stuff such as hash browns or beans (though bubble & squeak may be added if suitable leftovers around)
Bring on the black pudding, as with the bacon & sausages sourced from your nearest award winning local pork butcher.
These days, for health reasons, I grill the sausage and bacon (but do fry the black pudding as it's not great grilled) and the fried bread is similarly replaced by toast.
Replace the traditional portabella style mushrooms with small ones as far quicker & easier to cook (& again health reasons they soak up less fat) .
Salesforce's Patterson blazes a trail for humble-braggers everywhere
Re: Question
It's a bit complex in NI as individuals can choose to be in Team Ireland or Team GB (in some sports).
In other sports its Team Ireland as your only option (e.g. boxing, unless you move out of Ireland to a GB club).
Isle of Man etc is fun, Team GB for Olympics but their own entity in Commonwealth Games (just like Scotland, Wales etc. (so someone IOM born, like Cav*, could (and did) represent their birth island in the Commonwealth games)
* Chose Mark Cavendish as IOM example as he may well be in the news soon for record equalling performance in Le Tour
Galaxy quest: Yet another sub-£500 phone comes to trouble mobile big dogs in the form of Realme GT 5G
Re: sub-£500
Yes, nearly all my phones have been "cheap" too (not cheap in my view, but cheap in the world of phones, i.e. sub 150)
(only exception was years back when I used to do some Android dev work & had a google Nexus phone for some dev use - but still had a basic model phone to make sure apps ran on that too)
Three-dozen US states plus DC sue Google over Play Store's revenue cut, payment system, and more
I can understand the Apple case
But not this one, as article says lots of other app stores.
Sideload of an apk directly is easy.
I can see why big companies like Epic want a free ride to maximise profits, but as a lone dev its fine.
Disclosure, many years ago when I did some android work I had apps on play store & the convenience of Google handling payment etc. was great for me as a lone dev as took a lot of hassle away (would not have done a premium monetizable version if had to do payments myself as the (cheap) premium version was just the free version with extra functionality that some people had requested via feedback (feedback via google app store ecosystem) & a nominal price version was more user friendly than adverts)
Google has second thoughts about cutting cookies, so serves up CHIPs
Re: Optional
your analytics would not see me as their cookies are blocked (analytics only work if users are not blocking various cookies)
However, your web server logs would get my IP address so in my "visit" case would be more useful than analytics.
.. Yes, I know IP does not mean a unique user, could be a whole company behind it, might be from a VPN, tor exit node, whatever but limited data beats zero data
Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone
8-month suspended sentence for script kiddie who DDoS'd Labour candidate in runup to 2019 UK general election
Data collected to promote public health must never be surrendered to police
details on paper
Not being young anymore & with underlying health conditions not been going out much with COVID.
However, with both of us being double jabbed for a fair while now (partner doubled up later than me as a lower priority), partner & I have now been out a few times, bu as neither of us have the covid app installed (& typically don't even have phones with us - a walk to local pub for a drink & meal does not need a mobile in either of our pockets).
So any covid "who we are" data has been written on paper at places we have visited (though, pointless anyway as pub landlord & landlady know who we are (& where we live etc.) anyway via general chat over the years, only info they did not have was phone number (& they could get that via directory enquiries anyway if they wanted it)
Revealed: Why Windows Task Manager took a cuddlier approach to (process) death and destruction
Re: meh
@Timto
I have used the (various versions of) Process Hacker over the years (whenever possible, some corporate IT places ban it as their AV* stuff does not like some of its low level behaviour, even though you can get the source code, check its benign and build it from source rather than downloading it! ... could be because it lets you kill just about anything so various processes e.g. AV (that are essentially unkillable with windows task manager) could be killed by it if you so chose).
I find it far better at killing processes than the default windows task manager
*AV = anti virus
Cross-discipline boffin dream team issues social media warning: FIX IT NOW!
Influence
Influence is always there, social media might be a thing now, but there's media in general (paper or online), real life family & friends, religious group someone may be part of (e.g. some US churches actively promoting / denigrating various politicians).
Unfortunately people in general don't do long term planning well, so don't expect the majority of people in power to take a serious approach to e.g. climate change until its really bad (yes, I'm aware it can be argued things are really bad already, but that's not the criteria many politicians use as short term staying / getting power often trumps long term plans especially those that might make voters unhappy as lots of climate change mediating action could)