* Posts by simonlb

470 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2015

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Raspberry Pi OS 5.2 is here, with pleasant tweaks to Wayland-based desktop

simonlb Silver badge

Re: 800MB

5MB? Luxury! All we had was an abacus with three beads on it. Bloody kids these days, don't know they're born.

Sunak's defunct SaaS scheme spent seven percent of budget designed to help 100,000 SMEs

simonlb Silver badge

Re: It was just accounting software, big deal?

The voucher was probably like a Groupon one where the actual terms for redeeming it are highly restrictive and therefore useless to 97% of the target audience.

'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

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It's probably feline a bit under the weather now.

simonlb Silver badge
Holmes

Is PPE Optional now?

People working with the material... typically wear safety equipment when exposed

I should bloody well hope so!

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

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Re: Versions of MS-DOS did support more than 32MB partitions

"This may be connected with the fact that IBM did PC DOS 4.0, and Microsoft was more or less forced to adopt the changes."

This might also explain why MS-DOS 4 had a reputation for being unstable/unreliable and people waited until MS-DOS 5 to move from MS-DOS 3.x: MS probably deliberately crippled some of the functionality in v4 so that when they released v5 they could say they fixed something inherited from IBM.

Pure speculation on my part, but I wouldn't put it past them.

simonlb Silver badge

Re: 30 years later...

I went to a computer fair in Birmingham (UK, not Alabama) many, many years ago with a friend. He was so impressed with the demo of OS/2 2.1 that IBM presented on their stand he bought a copy, but when he got home he was completely unable to get it to install on his PC, a 486DX2/66. Despite numerous attempts it always popped up an error message that he was never able to get past, but which didn't indicate what was causing the issue. He eventually gave up in disgust and reinstalled DOS 6 and Windows 3.1.

Later on, I also acquired a copy of OS2/Warp from the cover of a PC magazine and tried to install that on three completely different HP desktop machines I had access to at that time and it also never installed, giving a mix of error messages which again didn't indicate what the issue was.

I decided then that if IBM couldn't get their own OS to install on a non-IBM PC, it must be because they had a reason for it, so bollocks to them.

Justice Dept reportedly starts criminal probe into Boeing door bolt incident

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Re: "if the door plug removal was undocumented"

Considering an aircraft can be considered a form of pressure vessel, the removal of anything that forms part of the structure of that pressure vessel, and that is critical to it's integrity as a pressure vessel should have a process and required documentation. You ignore stuff like that at your peril.

Byford Dolphin anyone?

Linux for older phones postmarketOS changes its init system

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Re: proof

I prefer Stump's Tupperware Stripper myself.

simonlb Silver badge

Re: Embrace... Extend...

So perhaps it's time for people who are involved with developing and maintaining the various Linux distros and software to start pushing back and asking the question: "Does systemd need to be part of this?" whenever it's first mentioned.

The S in IoT stands for security. You'll never secure all the Things

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Re: As I've said before

And this is why we need that protocol. If it is done right, and made as secure as possible whilst being very feature rich, designed so that the implementation cannot be screwed up and adopted as an industry standard, people will naturally buy any kit using it. The differentiator here is that even though these devices will be vendor agnostic, the companies who provide well designed, reliable and competitively priced IoT stuff using the protocol will create their own market share as there will always be people who trust one vendor over another even when the functionality and security of another vendors kit is exactly the same. Or to put it another way: How many Reg commentards on here have a go-to company for specific items? This is no different.

simonlb Silver badge

Re: As I've said before

Until there is a robust, secure by default, vendor agnostic, fully certified IoT protocol adopted as an industry standard, IoT stuff will continue to have crap security and I will avoid it like the plague.

The industry seems very keen to band together to create 'standards' where they can make money off them, but when it comes to security the cost is too high. Is it though? If the industry creates the necessary protocol - and vendor agnostic is a critical feature here so there is no phoning home going on - and ignore the cost of creating it, people will be happy to consider buying devices which use that protocol, knowing that it is inherently secure, low risk and they can mix-n-match devices with no issues. Long term, that is better for the industry than the complete shit show we currently have.

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

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Re: Sorry - the documentation was either never existant...

I'd forbid Boeing to sell any more planes into the commercial market until they come up with the documentation.

Not sure the NTSB/FAA etc. could do that. However, forcing Boeing to halt deliveries of all MAX9 models and revoking the airworthiness certificates of all MAX9's in service so that they are all grounded until the documentation is located and the paper trail correctly sorted out would probably focus Boeing's attention a bit better.

Windows 10 failing to patch properly? You are most definitely not alone

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FAIL

Re: non-optional updates

It's just like Win7 and GWX all over again. I'm glad I ditched MS after Win7.

Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7

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Re: a plan

I suspect that the quality of coders currently employed at MS is so low that any new security/driver updates they could write for ANY earlier version of Windows would be equally as crap as the current Win11 stack.

What a surprise! Apple found a way to deliver browser engine and app store choice

simonlb Silver badge

Re: I see the blind fanboys are out already

All the law is saying is that they need to provide a choice to the end users. Whether the users take advantage of those newly available options is entirely up to them. What was blatantly complete bollocks was the way that Apple were adamant it was going to be really, really difficult so they weren't even going to try and do it, when in reality it wasn't and they've now rolled out these exact changes less than three weeks later.

From the Reg article https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/16/apple_web_apps/: "Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA."

It's the gratuitous use of weasel words like these which put Apple in a bad light and make them look stupid. Do Apple seriously think they can avoid making changes to their software to comply with an EU wide regulation by saying, "We had a look at it, but the computer said no!"

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

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WTF?

"updating its flagship operating system"

Flagship? I'm confused now as that usually implies there are alternatives from the same vendor. Where can I try out the mediocre OS or even the really, really shit one?

Musk joins OpenAI lawsuit queue, says there's nothing 'open' about it

simonlb Silver badge

Re: Ms and Elon

It would be quite funny if OpenAI and MS just told Musk to, "Go. Fuck. Yourself." I wonder how he'd take that?

Lenovo to offer certified refurbished PCs and servers

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Stop

Excuse me if I'm a bit suspicious

"Lenovo said it won't compromise on security safeguards or PC performance"

Anyone fancy a bit of Superfish?

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

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Joke

Ah, but it's there now. Cherish that image.

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

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Stop

Re: I don't get it

"I expect that they have several pie-in-the-sky projects that aren't expected to make any revenue"

Remember, this is Apple. They don't want the revenue, they'll just sit on the large number of patents they've been granted for spurious ideas and concepts from these projects until they can sue another company for patent infringement after bringing a new product to market. It's what apple seems to be best at these days. They aren't known as a 'vexatious litigant' for nothing.

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

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Re: Yawn

orders of magnitude faster

That is your main bottleneck right there. It's ok saying up to 200TB of storage, but how long is it going to take to write that volume of data to the disc, let alone read it all back? There needs to be a significant increase in the data i/o speeds on PC's to make something like this viable to develop further otherwise it will be a waste of time.

Crowning glory of GOV.UK websites updated, sparking frontend upgrades

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Re: If they *really* want to improve the experience....

I recently renewed my drivers license on the DVLA site but initially couldn't access that part of the site as my browser blocks third-party cookies so I had to enable them for that site for it to work. However, I've never had any issues renewing my Road Tax (or whatever it's called these days), or when renewing my passport last year.

It's inconsistencies like that which cause problems and annoy people.

Rivian decimates staff to put a brake on spending

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Re: The end of electric vehicles

I wouldn't say unfeasible, more like impractical at this time. Whichever way you look at it, trying to force EV uptake by banning sales of ICE vehicles when there is the HUGE question mark over how we deal with EV battery packs when they are end-of-life is just plain stupid and doesn't help anyone. I've never been in a position to buy a new car and would almost certainly never do so even if I was due to the depreciation associated with buying a new car, but I'd also be highly skeptical of buying a seven or eight year old EV if there was a potential multi-thousand £/$ bill attached within the next five years or so. Add to that the reliance of these EV's on phoning home to the manufacturers mothership for everything and the always present risk of that being arbitrarily removed and bricking my car, and there is just no incentive for me to even consider looking at an EV.

No, sort out an industry-wide method for addressing the reprocessing of dead EV batteries which does not lumber the end used with a massive additional cost and I might be interested, otherwise I'm sticking with my thirteen year old diesel Estate car which can easily take me and four other people with all our stuff 600 miles in one go without having to work out an itinerary including multiple overnight stays when going to and from our destination because of having to recharge. And no, I won't be turning the fucking heater and stereo off and hypermiling to be more 'efficient' and increase range either.

Duo face 20 years in prison over counterfeit iPhone scam

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Re: Wrong company

Weren't Foxconn also the company who had a 'fourth' shift which assembled iPhones from the parts reject bins purely for the Chinese market and sold at competitive prices?

Nvidia revenue grows 265 percent with more to come as new GPUs and Ethernet near

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Meh

Perhaps...

They could now adjust the pricing of their consumer level GPU's to something slightly less obscene, more in line with pre-pandemic prices which were a bit more affordable.

Not holding my breath though.

Chunks of deorbiting ESA satellite are expected to reach the ground

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Joke

Re: 1 in 13 per year

Most of us here on earth are far more likely to be injured by a two tonne machine on wheels

Yeah, just ask Brian Harvey from East 17.

Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

simonlb Silver badge
FAIL

Yes, you really are the product

"Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA"

All weasel words to avoid actually doing something. The only reason that integration architecture doesn't exist in iOS is because they don't want to support it so are deflecting and saying it's too hard. I suppose once you're already making a trillion dollars a year by selling apps in your walled garden, it's also just not worth the effort so fuck the consumer.

HP CEO pay for 2023 = 270,315 printer cartridges

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Seriously though, the only way to break this mindset HP has of locking users into a subscription, would be for stores and online retailers to just boycott HP printers and ink and publicly explain in the press and to potential customers why that entire policy is anti consumer and why they are no longer willing to stock them. I'm sure HP would change their mind pretty quickly if that were to happen.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

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WTF?

Re: until the Cybertruck is scheduled for a full wash

Incredible. It's like Tesla forgot that the majority of people buy a car and then leave it outside for the rest of it's existence.

HPE seeks $4B in damages from Autonomy boss Mike Lynch and his ex-CFO

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FAIL

Re: Tiny violins

Léo Apotheker, HP’s CEO during the period of the merger, is quoted in the document as saying that he would have sought an explanation from Autonomy’s leadership if he had discovered the discrepancies in its books.

That useless bastard hasn't got an ounce of sense in his entire body - everyone else in the entire industry was saying, "How much?" for the valuation of Autonomy, but he still carried on with the purchase anyway when it was obvious they were paying way, way, too much.

And don't get me started on the whole Palm purchase and subsequent Touchpad shitshow. If anyone should be in jail it should be everyone from Carly Fiorini onwards for what they did to HP.

Amazon overcharges shoppers with Buy Box algorithm, fresh lawsuit claims

simonlb Silver badge

Since I've cancelled my Prime subscription most items I look at now will cost £4.99 for shipping if the order value is less than £25, with very, very few items having any option of free 3 or 4 day shipping. In most cases though, eBay will have the same item listed at the same price with free shipping anyway so Amazon lose out on a sale.

It's taking a while, but I am weaning myself off Amazon and it's instant gratification business model.

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

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Megaphone

Spent Batteries

Ignoring the whole range thing and the initial high cost of an EV, one very important question is what happens when the batteries are end-of-life? Is everyone expected to just cough up £5000, £10000 or £20000 for a new set of batteries and also spend a couple of grand having them swapped out? What about the old ones? A discount on the new batteries of a couple of grand? Or will you have to take them somewhere for recycling and get a few hundred quid back? At least with an ICE car I can get a replacement engine for a reasonable cost, but if the cost of a new set of batteries is 3, 4, 5, 6, or 10 or more times the value of the car where is the incentive to change them? I've never seen anything even remotely addressing this from any of the EV manufacturers, although we do know Tesla will happily sell you set of new batteries at the competitive price of 20-odd grand and they're 'doing you a favour mate!'

Sarcasm aside though, I suspect this will be used as the perfect business model to ease consumers into accepting leasing a car over ever owning one.

Alaska Airlines' door-dropping flight was missing bolts

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FAIL

Re: Major major cock-up

It's unclear though where the work was done. A work order was raised, but by whom? Boeing or Spirit? Where was the work done? Whose employees removed the bolts prior to doing the work?

If all this was done at Spirit by their employees then everything should have been tracked and new bolts fitted as they also manufacture the entire fuselage sections so it should have been known about and inspected afterwards.

If there were things being done by both Boeing and Spirit employees in that same area then there was obviously a massive breakdown in communication between them but the final post-work inspection again should have ensured everything was in order. Either way, this indicates a huge QA issue here for both companies.

As for the rivet holes, these should have been picked up during manufacture and fixed at the time: There is absolutely no excuse for anything like this to ever make it into a production aircraft.

Deepfake CFO tricks Hong Kong biz out of $25 million

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Re: Root cause

Not sure this still happens now, but I always found it bizarre that a financial institution would call you trying to sell you something, then get upset that you wouldn't provide your personal details "for security purposes" when they were the ones making an unsolicited cold call to you. Why would you tell someone you don't know and who you didn't call you own personal details?

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

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Re: Shirley?

We actually introduced our 17 year old daughter to Airplane! last night. She wasn't sure what to expect but when she saw the magazine rack label said 'Whacking Material' she burst out laughing. She liked the film.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

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Facepalm

Re: A wasted trip

I'd have challenged the decision as to why a power cycle wasn't an option and said, "I'm stood here in front of the bloody thing, you lot aren't. Standard procedure for any hardware issue like this is to reboot. Even the vendor will tell you to do that."

If there are enough technical people on the call, they'll probably support you as you're being completely sensible. If the router comes back up and there are still concerns about it's functionality, they can schedule a replacement at a later date.

Microsoft Edge ignores user wishes, slurps tabs from Chrome without permission

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FAIL

It's a feature no-one asked for. What experience were they expecting to give end users? The 'Your creepy uncle' experience?

The literal Rolls-Royce of EVs is recalled over fire risk

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Trollface

"It should be pretty quick"

All that needs to happen is for the bolt to be removed, cleaned of excess adhesive and reattached, so it should be pretty quick.

This is probably ignoring the fact that there is almost certainly a ton of stuff in the way which requires half of the front end to be removed just to get to the bolt and takes a total of 18 hours to do. I've seen how modern cars are assembled.

750 million Indian mobile subscribers' info for sale on dark web

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FAIL

Cyrpto Crapto

Terraform Labs... which hit trouble when its stablecoin crashed and wiped $42 billion from investors' portfolios

When will people just accept crypto is a ponzi scheme and avoid it? Alternatively, if you really, really want to get rid of a few million quid which you never want to see again, give me a call, I'm sure I can find some use for it.

UK merger of Vodafone and Three in competition watchdog's crosshairs

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Re: Forbid

20 years? Have they worked out how to get a 4G signal into a building yet? When I was with Three I could have 5 bars of 4G signal on the street but more than 3 feet inside any building I'd only get 3G if lucky and below that most of the time. If they can't generate a decent 4G signal how bad are their 5G offerings going to be?

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

simonlb Silver badge

Re: What fresh hell is this?

Personally, I've been using Mint with either MATE or Cinnamon desktop. Whilst neither are are the 'prettiest' UI you'll see, Cinnamon is my preferred desktop and has been completely trouble free for me. ***Caveat*** I don't do gaming so cannot comment on Steam availability, compatibility or anything like that.

simonlb Silver badge

Re: Preparing for October 2025

And this is why I moved away from Windows at home over seven years ago: I just want an OS that does what I want, is easy to make changes to, has the right applications I need and then gets out of the way to let me get on with stuff. Sadly, with Windows, this hasn't been the case since Win8 came out and it's just got worse since. Ok, you can install add-ons to give you a Win7 style menu and you can hack it to get rid of as much telemetry as possible, but you shouldn't need to have to do that.

Win7 was the only version of Windows I was happy to purchase, because at that time it was exceptionally good at what it did, was quickly customisable to how you wanted it and was very stable. It wasn't necessarily perfect, but which OS is? But is was bloody good. And then MS went back and had a look at Vista and decided they hadn't tried hard enough to truly fuck up the UI and UX because 'reasons'. And it's only got worse since then. Much, much worse. I'd like to think that MS will at some point actually listen to their end users, stand back and take a really hard look at just how truly awful some of the basic design and usability decisions in Win 10 & 11 are (menus and desktop theme for starters) and actively fix them or remove them if they are not needed (telemetry? Why? There is no indication you actually use that information for development purposes so why is it there?) I'm not holding my breath on that, though.

Tesla Cybertruck gets cyberstuck during off-roading expedition

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Re: Sports Futility Vehicle

So it got Cybertrucked when he tried to take it off road?

Japan recovers moon lander data, puts craft to sleep due to solar panels' bad attitude

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Re: Seems like it’s

Slim Shady?

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

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Re: Strange words

HP did actually bring out a pretty good all-in-one unit about 10 or 11 years ago; worked very well, easy to sidestep the 1+Gb of crapware the install disc tried to ram onto your system, individual ink cartridges (6 in total I think), but each was priced at about £5 each which was excellent value at the time.

After less than 2 years the ink cartridge price tripled. You can guess what happened next...

simonlb Silver badge

Re: You can embed viruses into cartridges

For HP, the IP is all in the print head which is on the cartridge, and nobody else does that so the ink cartridge is exactly that, an ink cartridge. It's then arguable that it's justifiable for HP to charge a bit more for an ink cartridge due to where that IP is, but they've had that same design now for forty years so have massively recouped their initial development costs multiple times over, but during that time their competitors have caught HP up with their own designs and can now beat HP on both print quality and price.

This isn't about 3rd party ink cartridges and security at all, it's about locking you into the HP ecosystem and to be fair, at least he's being blatantly honest about it so you're not being misled. The issue for HP now is that anyone who is a little tech-savvy will be telling everyone they know to avoid HP's printers like the plague because of the lock-in and implied subscription model. Obviously, that model will work for some and they'll be happy to use that for the convenience. For the rest of us, I can see sales of ecotank style printers taking off massively.

IT consultant fined for daring to expose shoddy security

simonlb Silver badge

Re: The problem is law is old and tech is new

but a quick glance at the code in question says you shouldn't try to use passwords you know you don't have permission to use, regardless of how you came across them, and how tempting it is

So the law is saying, 'Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.'

But which is going to be worse in the long term?

1. Someone finding and using that plain text password to access the systems and potentially steal information which would critically affect that companies reputation and possibly cost them a lot of money?

2. Someone finding and using that plain text password to access the systems, recognising what has happened and going no further, and then telling that company they are doing their security wrong?

There's a serious lack of common sense here.

Microsoft touts migration to Windows 11 as painless, though wallets may disagree

simonlb Silver badge

Re: Pointless

Except, of course, more Telemetry and Adverts

Just what are MS doing with all that telemetry? It pretty obvious they aren't passing any of it back to any of the developers to work with otherwise we'd be seeing actual improvements with the OS instead of the usual 'Break something, fix it, repeat next month' cycle we're in now.

If, after over two years availability, your new OS is at less than 20% market penetration, you have to accept that it must be a fundamentally broken, complete and utter steaming pile of shit that no-one wants to use. So go away, fix the total abortion of a UI, rip out all the telemetry and adverts, stop insisting on onerous hardware requirements that don't add value, make any AI 'assistants' entirely optional, enable local accounts and give everyone the option to have the desktop they want with a Start menu they prefer, such as 2000, XP, 7, 8, 10, etc. Perhaps then, you'll have a little more success and a lot less hate.

John Deere tractors get connectivity boost with Starlink deal

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Joke

Re: Starlink subsidy

I'm thinking that they might need a few better placed ground stations for some very remote areas, but I don't know enough about their network to say for sure. Maybe they can get money for those.

Well Musk states as a fact that he knows more about manufacturing than anyone else alive on the planet, so it will all have been worked out and he's probably very confident it will be available in two years. Or is it four? Probably.

Atari 400 makes a comeback in miniature form

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Re: Retro

I must admit I did initially covet my mates Atari 2600 but found the joysticks awful to use, which limited the length of time I could play on the thing. It's good to see these being resurrected though, and I hope they have more success than the previous Spectrum reboots that had lunatics running the companies.

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