Posts by tiggity

Don't stop me! Why Microsoft's inevitable browser irrelevance isn't

control

Speed is not everything to me.

I like some degree of control with my browser, be it fine grained cookie control, stopping videos autoplaying, script disable / whitelist , tracking disable, inspecting traffic / scripts (when debugging web apps) etc.

Which, typically means a browser with a good ecosystem of add ons.

So, depending what platform I am using / where I am , I use a variety of browsers, depending what's appropriate (e.g. if using dubious hotel WiFi I may well use Opera to make use of inbuilt VPN)

If some sites misbehave with a particular browser I will drop that site a line (if they actually provide contact details).

Don't like the idea of being resolutely wedded to a particular browser (though usage based probably use a couple of Mozilla forks most frequently just because of add ons). Use chrome sparingly as I find it quite a resource hog & annoyingly busy at writing to disk when it should be doing nothing

TVs are now tablet computers without a touchscreen

qulaity

"Viewers always want the best picture and sound quality"

Some do, in lots of cases it's not that crucial.

I have a TV with a small (20") screen with no external speakers / amplifier setup.

On that size screen with the inbuilt speakers then best possible sound & picture not really an issue as hardware very much a limiting factor.

It's a totally non smart TV, but that's irrelevant as mainly watch stuff recorded on the PVR (no need to see ads if not watching real time!)

Probably watch more TV content on PC monitor than on TV - as that also links to PVR (via ethernet) and lets me watch content and is bigger than the TV screen.

For me a TV is just a dumb display - I'll have the smarts in other boxen thanks

A bot lingua franca does not exist: Your machine-learning options for walking the talk

S

S should have been mentioned, like MATLAB it is paid for (S-PLUS) but R is basically the free version spun off of it.

Perl is quick for crunching large amounts of data ... destroys .NET and Java on real world cases I have tried.

Give 'bots a chance: Driverless cars to be trialled between London and Oxford

Most weeks I encounter horses on the roads, sometimes as a special overtaking bonus challenge in the form of horse and trap, they would definitely be the worst case scenario for driverless car as, in addition to needing to go past them far slower and wider than a cycle as horses can easily spook, ideally want to have "dialogue" (gestures / expressions) with rider & with vehicles coming opposite way as lots of "negotiation" to sort out who goes when as usually involves you passing with a large proportion of your car in the oncoming traffic lane.

eBay denies claims it's failing to thwart 'systematic fraud'

Gave up on ebay years ago

It was OK for a while back in the day (or maybe I was just lucky) but then seemed to get really full of fraud & scams on electrical / tech gear.

I have now not used it in years.

I might be theoretically losing out by spending more cash to buy stuff in bricks & mortar stores, but the upside is that there is a far higher chance of what I buy actually being legit & if any problems arise no problem to go back to teh store.

(Same applies to Amazon, its scam central these days, plus a very suspicious amount of items have delivery issues taht appear to be distribution side thefts (had hassles with niche, low value non UK books that would not be worth a scammers time from legit booksellers))

Webroot antivirus goes bananas, starts trashing Windows system files

Re: a crowning moment of AWESOME!

.. and in many company environments (company specified /controlled / deployed) anti virus is mandatory.

Shooting org demands answers from Met Police over gun owner blab

Surprised

Surprised they did not accidentally mailshot chair leg owners

(For those without a clue about this reference, use search engine of choice to investigate Harry Stanley death)

Peer pressure, not money, lures youngsters into cybercrime – report

What?

"Last year's TalkTalk hack is a prime example of how a young person working alone in their bedroom can significantly impact an entire business"

.. Not really, Talk Talk got off essentially free, microscopic fine (when you think how many peoples personal data), no criminal charges.

So, minimal impact on the business, not so good for customers who had personal data lifted

Farewell Unity, you challenged desktop Linux. Oh well, here's Ubuntu 17.04

Only unity fans really affected

Surely if someone really prefers a particular desktop, they will grab that tailored distro ( I like KDE so kubuntu) or if no tailored distro tehn manually install & set up.

Anyone

Only the unity fans lose out as they will have to manually set up unity (so long as fan base keep it alive) instead of a ready made distro

(You can't) buy one now! The flying car makes its perennial return

Calories (or whatever measure of energy expenditure you prefer)

Given the various fit bands will have accuracy levels of who know what...

Why not just use the (probably also wildly inaccurate) calorie estimate the spin bike gives you - all the gym bikes I have ever used give you distance / calories etc data if you check (& these were fairly low tech bikes in cheapo gyms)

Q. Why is Baidu sharing its secret self-driving sauce? A. To help China corner the market

Re: "exploiting cloud services as much as possible"

Cloud: Central point of failure

It has its uses in development as data from test vehicles can be sent to the cloud for analysis, but the idea of real time cloud use to know location / speed of other vehicles dependent on cloud connectivity is not conducive to safety.

A good self driving car needs to be autonomous, not cloud dependent.

Ignoring network failures, anything needing internet will be totally screwed in huge swathes of Scotland as an example as zilch network coverage and satellite is slow data rate and v. expensive.

What a To-Do! Microsoft snuffs out Wunderlist

Pen & paper

Pen & paper works for me

Plenty of people use post it notes

For anything complex that requires proper accountability / audit trails I use software suites devoted to that type of task (pun intended) e.g. agile dev work, tend to use dedicated software that integrates with source code repository, change request system (e.g. JIRA), etc.

Tesla hit by class action sueball over autopilot software updates

Swivel to MS

If there is a legit way to sue for dubious updates, someone please sue MS for updates that make things worse e.g. telemetry (spying), knobbling new processors for Win 7 . given that Win7 paid for, some people have now paid for W10 now it's not a freebie and recent updates seem to be all about making things worse

Mastercard launches card that replaces PIN with fingerprint sensor

Cheque Mate

Time for the resurgence of the cheque (PITA that most UK places hate them now)

A scribble that has varying degrees of difficulty to forge, and also needs a card to be presented with it, but as you inevitably get your fingerprints on cheque when handling it, if you have used it will have your prints in a few places so can prove if fraudulent use as they can lift prints from the cheque.

In worst case scenario, if your cheque book is nicked, only really a chance of stray prints of yours on the "top" cheque (you may have got prints on when removing last cheque) and as likely to do fraud with > 1 of your cheues then pattern of dodgy use (without your prints) will be convincing evidence that "top" cheque was also a fraud transaction

HTC seeks salvation with squeezy design

Pontless tinkering

All these extras such as squeeziness, UI tweaks are only much good if someone stays with a given phone manufacturer and learns the quirks of their particular tweaks. If they move to a different brand, learning process begins again.

.. Phones are bad enough already where accidentally touching it the wrong way can accidentally fire off a gesture, squeeze triggered gestures sound a recipe for more grief, In bleak Winter with heavily gloved hands and so not the light sensitivity of normal holding phone in (bare) hand , I could see lots of scope for accidental squeeze gestures

Maybe there is massive brand loyalty to HTC that makes such things worthwhile, but I doubt it (my main memory of HTC, like most brands, was the unwanted uninstallable (if not root) crud they put on for "added value")

Flagship seems to be more about adding pointless extras than anything else these days.

And given I can buy a more than good enough for typical domestic use laptop for less than the price of a flagship phone I'll stick to the non flagship phones and save a lot of cash

Zuckerberg's absolutely mental: Brain sensors that read YOUR MIND at 100 words a minute

100 WPM

100 WPM would give very incomplete data, way too low unless people were made to think slowly, which rather defeats the point.

Anyway, total fantasy on that timescale

30,000 London gun owners hit by Met Police 'data breach'

Probably lots of people who live in London briefly go up North to moors etc and shoot mass produced (grouse, pheasant, partridge all intensively reared in huge numbers to be shot ) birds at high prices.

So need their guns registered.

I doubt the likes of Big Vern will have theirs registered

It is trivially easy to get a shotgun licence, the "sport" of annihilating farmed birds is a big earner & so if you claim are a "sporting" gun user (no matter how occasionally) then pretty much job done on the licence.

Why Firefox? Because not everybody is a web designer, silly

Website dev

Though of course it is possible to design a website that is simple and relatively unaffected by various random browser changes.

.. Though then PHB demands to know why the website is not (needlessly) full of JavaScript blingy fripperies like every other site, so simple site gets "upgraded"

So, even if the web devs like simplicity, someone above them will not be happy until there's a few tens of thousand lines of script pulled in, references to at least 15 other domains and the site shows zilch if scripting disabled

Switch on your smartphone camera and look how fertile I am

Sperm fertility tester

The tried and trusted test is to donate to as many ladies as possible as often as possible and see if any brats result, though long lag time on getting your results

Re: Would you like to buy

Ideal device for garden lovers is a mole deterrent that actually works.

Your average "well 'ard" mole (in area with high mole density so needs to maintain a territory as "no room" to wander off elsewhere as that will be another moles area ) is barely inconvenienced by the ultrasonics, smelly chemicals etc. that people claim do the biz.

Alert: Using a web ad blocker may identify you – to advertisers

Re: Test

@Phil - Forbes do news (FSVO news), you may have picked up a cookie from there by following a news story from somewhere

I never bother with Forbes as they have served malware via ads on their site in the past yet have the temerity to tell you to disable ad blockers!

Like most people main role of ad blocker is as part of a series of measures (e.g. scripts run from sites on whitelists only) to reduce malware risk, loss of in your face / page rearranging ads is just a bonus side effect

Boss swore by 'For Dummies' book about an OS his org didn't run

Re: But the real issue is

.. but you don't buy Easter eggs at all, instead you buy blocks of decent quality chocolate that in addition to tasting good still works out loads cheaper per gram than the sugary pseudo chocolate monstrosity of 99% of UK Easter eggs that contain less % of cocoa solids than a proper chocolate eaters turd.

Brexit factor lacking in Industrial Strategy, say MPs

Surely all part & parcel of general

Brexit lacking in Strategy

Apple wets its pants over Swatch ad tagline

Re: Daft thing is ...

@ chivo243

My watch is cheap and old, the battery I put in every 2 years or so probably worth more than the watch, which is an old Casio (waterproof & also serves as an alarm to wake me in the morning)

Some people wear watches as a cash statement, but plenty of us do it because we like knowing the time easily (e.g. whilst underwater (waterproof), without having to get a phone out of pocket / shock horror might not even habitually carry a phone)

Official science we knew all along: Facebook makes you sad :-(

Re: No mention of...

We keep getting people wanting to organize wedding related & similar "big" social events via FB, our response is text us, phone us, email us but one or other of us using FB regularly is not going to happen

Disclosure - I actually do have FB account, but only for "emergency" use, as (not naming & shaming) some bus companies do not put up to date travel issues on their website (grr!! - a whole issue about companies putting important stuff on social media instead of on their own site), only way to find out is via FB or Twitter, so FB account for accurate checking of Winter travel woe issues / asking bus co questions.

Law Commission pulls back on official secrets laws plans after Reg exposes flawed report

@ Primus Secundus Tertius Surely they were all number two candidates

Windows 10 Creators Update general rollout begins with a privacy dialogue

defaults

@ TeacherMARK Of course you had to change teh defaults back, you don't think you would be allowed to have non MS defaults for things! You should know better by now.

Firest rule of any windows update is check yoyr settings to see how many things have been reverted from your changes to the settings MS wants

Re: "Should you upgrade?"

MS did have an android emulator essentially up and running, but canned it (search for Project Astoria)

or visit El Reg

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/16/sanity_prevails_microsoft_sidelines_suicidal_androidonwindows_plan/

WileyFox disentangles itself from Cyanogen

Re: Stock android

@Richaed 81 In an ideal world I too would like a lightweight android where you can uninstall unwanted junk (ideally without jumping through rooting hoops), but that's not going to happen (ASOP is fairly hobbled as a starting point, if you do run ASOP, swathes of apps do not run without various Google services as devs expect them and code for the Google services with no fallback), hence my preference for stock as least bad option

Stock android

Just give me "Stock/vanilla/whatever name you want to give it" android, I don't want anyone's "product differentiators" (which are normally unwanted, waste storage space & uninstallable without rooting).

Plus with stock", that way the vendor should actually be able to provide patches in a timely manner as no custom junk to get in the way, so less excuse.

Shadow Brokers crack open NSA hacking tool cache for world+dog

Re: "wake of a chemical weapons attack on civilians"

Ironically, way back in the day, when picking university course, I decided against a career in medicine because I did not feel I was empathic enough (bad decision..).

Now I am much older and so have had to have far more contact with various doctors than I would like, it's apparent I made a bad choice, as (from my experience only), for many doctors empathy is not a requirement (often "care" seemed purely to meet minimal duty of care requirements) so doctor would not necessarily mean a caring person

Sex robots and Radicals set to gatecrash Reg lectures

Squirm?

quote: "and you might, occasionally, squirm in your chair"

Is taht when my IoT love eggs get hijacked for lulz by someone at the conference?

Mark Shuttleworth says some free software folk are 'deeply anti-social' and 'love to hate'

Arguments

quote: "It became a political topic as irrational as climate change or gun control, where being on one side or the other was a sign of tribal allegiance"

I think he's misinterpreting those 2 arguments.

1. Climate change

No tribal allegiance with climate change (people who think that there's a good chance the huge majority of climate research experts are correct on this vs. those that dislike / fail to understand science, ).

Unless you regard the 2 tribes as scientifically literate vs science haters.

2. Gun control.

Depends on your perspective, in a global context its pretty much most countries think gun control is a good thing, a few countries disagree (US being one)

Within the US, 100000 school massacres a year would not sway the hard core pro zero gun control zealots, whereas those who say maybe it's not a great idea that people with quite bad mental health issues have easy access to weapons with big magazine capacity and fast firing capability (i.e massacre friendly) are not so much a tribe as people saying WTF, just how ludicrous can the gun ownership "regulations" get.

On 1 and 2, most people have an opinion, as both have (potentially, to some degree) life threatening implications.

On Mir, a fairly miniscule number of the population have a strong opinion. most folks have zeroi clue about Mir or go meh

He would have been better choosing an emacs / vi argument (or similar.) instead.

Boaty McBoatface sinks in South Atlantic on her maiden deployment

second favourite

Quote: " Britain's second favourite yellow submarine "

I'm hoping the favourite is Thunderbird 4 and not anything Beatles related

Customer satisfaction is our highest priority… OK, maybe second-highest… or third...

Re: Public wifi?

Cash, never fails. Apps fail, cards fail, jingly coins or crispy notes always get the job done, & with more anonymity.

Huawei mystery memo (and phone strategy) confirmed

premium prices

I have been vetoing laptops as being a bit too expensive that were less than those prices for a phone.

Must be a lot of marketing budget to reclaim

Device spend will rise 2% to $600bn in 2017, say techno-seers

spec rise

On mobile devices, big drive to "increase" specs (e.g. personally I don't want features such as an easily duped fingerprint reader but they are (nearly) everywhere now, adding a scintilla of cost, nor do I want a stupidly high pixel count screen that on a phone is of little benefit and uses more battery power), low spec cheap & cheerful smartphone models harder to find & the overall spec increase is meaning price increase as cost of extra bits added typically negating any benefit in fall in prices of components.

Adblock Plus owners commandeer Pirate Bay man's tip jar Flattr

Re: micro payments

Installing an ad blocker does not equate to not wanting to support websites, it mainly means you wnat to avoid being exposed to exploits and irritating ads / bandwidth abuse.

As has been mentioned, Patreon is quite popular, e.g I'm guessing a few reg readers will be aware of Techdirt (which as a bonus lets you disable ads easily as they know some people dislike ads) that allows you to contribute via patreon (makes a change from buiyng T shirts!) and it seems to be working OK for them

Facebook's going to block revenge porn with AI. Or humans. Or both

trauma

You would hope that reporting allows different image classification, it's one level of potential psychological trauma for a person to vet "mainstream" images, another thing altogether for some other more dubious areas e.g. involving juveniles, non consensual activities etc.

From similar vetting processes in other organisations, there's a short burnout time on those exposed to the worst images

ICO fines 11 big charities over dirty data donor-squeezing deeds

Barely a slap on the wrist

The logic seems to be that charity = money for good causes so tiny fine for privacy abuses to not significantly affect cash for good causes.

However, that means no real incentive to prevent further abuse in future (most likely effect is the charities will just be more careful of avoiding being caught)

Ironically a lot of charity efforts for extra funding are counter productive, I'm member of RSPB (& donate more than individual membership amount) & pleas for extar cash for various campaigns are quite irritating - I have factored in what charity donations I can afford to make to various charities and that's not going to change (only likely change is reduced donations to more irritating charities)

On same topic, SO is NSPCC regular signed up contributor, their begging letters go in the bin as they have images of distressed children on - the sort of thing SO donates to prevent & does not particularly want to be seeing / thinking about over breakfast when mail arrives

Londoners will be trialling driverless cars in pedestrianised area

Re: Glad I'm not a pedestrian in London

And second criterion for good walking area is free of cyclists (there's always a minority of cyclists who cycle far too fast & aggressively for a shared use path).

N.B. This is from someone who occasionally, but does try not to be a lycra lout when doing so (I do quaint things like obeying red lights!)

Half a million 'de-identified' patients records to be shared in Bradford

@Vimes - it did mention Sue Ryder charity for palliative care - so that might explain why. Plenty of charities involved in health care (in an ideal world there would be no need for health related charities, but that's a different issue entirely)

OK... Red wire or black... *Clickety* You've emailed the schematic? Yes, got it! It's opening. And... WHAT? NO!

Re: Wi-Fi

Opposite issue here

A range of 20 m, becomes a range of very little at all if you have an old house that actually has some thick internal walls instead of a modern build house with more plasterboard than wall.

No (not tried silly money kit though) router I have tried can manage to get signal through the thick stone walls separating room with router in to the adjoining room.

The walls also cut out intruding wifi signals, which is the only plus point

So we had to use a "line of sight" (opposite door so some signal got through) set up to use a wireless repeater only a few m away from router & repeater could get signal through to the blackspot room (via door of that room).

US border cops must get warrants to search citizens' gadgets – draft bipartisan law emerges

banking passwords

For non USians, email, banking passwords, misc social media passwords - wow identity theft, real cash theft as an added bonus of a US visit

And doubtless detainment grief for those who do not have online banking / social media

and of the few accounts they do have (e.g. email) , they do not know the account details (e.g. credentials all written down in a book somewhere, not a thing you take on holiday when you will not be using those accounts)

'No deal better than bad deal' approach to Brexit 'unsubstantiated'

Rampant optimism

Wow, I wish I lived in such a massively optimistic bubble as that.

Look at the wider picture, various anti EU parties in Europe, that are a thorn in the side to the mainstream parties in those countries

EU will be acting collectively to make it really bad for the UK, the idea being this will reduce support for anti EU parties in mainland Europe as they will see the right royal shafting the UK gets & think, I really don't fancy that much.

I hope I am wrong (as I really do not want to see the UK economy go down the toilet), but I reckon the final deal (or no deal) consequences will be nearer the really bad for the UK end of the scale than the happy ever after end of the scale.

D'oh! Amber Rudd meant 'understand hashing', not 'hashtags'

Spoiling ballot paper is fine, but it does not really get reported.

A "none of the above" option that was reported would help - I could easily see taht getting vteh highest number of votes in some constituencies

With FPTP UK system some smaller parties only place candidates in a few seats where they see the chance of doing well / have decent support , so if you are in many constituencies you only get a few !mainstream" choices (and sadly none of those choices are better than massively mediocre) - not even the option of "minor" parties (not that a "minor" party necessarily means better, e.g. UKIP began as a minor party, but I'm sure even the most ardent Brexiteers will have to concede that internal shenanigans have made UKIP a farce recently ).

Europe supplants US as biggest source of child abuse hubs

Hosted or placed on someone elses system

If someone had dubious content, would they host it themselves or exploit vulns, bad config etc to put the content on someone elses system(s) & then give their fellow dubious content fans hints on where to find it?

That sound you hear is Splunk leaking data

Splunk

I looked at the website and it seemed designed to be played with (the data mining set) buzzword bingo cards

UK gov draws driverless car test zone around M40 corridor

Re: Technology to save lives

That's me told, I'm social class F then! You missed out the obligatory inbetweeners "bus w****r" though ;-)

I like buses e.g. otherwise I would have a very long and erratic walk back from the (4 miles away) pub - would not fancy driving in that beer enhanced (FSVO enhanced!) state

Re: Technology to save lives

@ Natalie Gritpants

How far away is bus stop for it to be regarded as out of walking distance?

Just out of interest as depending on what distance people regard as too far could make a difference to what % of people would be regarded as too far from public transport.

Ironically, on the walking topic, it makes more sense for me to walk home from my nearest train station than take a bus home.

Buses and trains both only run hourly, bus stop a couple of minutes walk from station, however bus leaves approx 5 minutes before train arrives in a monumentally stupid piece of timetabling.