Posts by anthonyhegedus 1183 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2016
This conversation/set of comments has given me more insight into the situation than all the news sites I've read so far. The Reg forums are populated by a greater number of intelligent people than most other forums I've seen. Not just conjecture, but conjecture that's been thought through.
I realise that some of the comments are daft, but you can tell they're daft by the number of downvotes.
Something to do with IT backgrounds I suppose.
ISPs will try and fob you off with any old excuse. Usually, if they physical link is OK, then it's the ISP. You should be able to tell if your VDSL link goes down, or your fibre, by looking at the DSL light or the fibre ONT respectively and seeing the one of the lights goes out.
Your ISP should absolutely be able to tell if it's a physical link problem.
Openreach can be unreliable, especially when not using fibre, but ISPs can be pretty awful too.
Microsoft persuaded hardware manufacturers (and customers) that Windows Vista would work just fine on machines with 512MB RAM. They lied.
This is the same sort of thing. Microsoft telling us that Windows on AI-ready platforms is the fastest ever is an outright lie. Yeah, it'll be fast for Microsoft products, and AI stuff, and their marketing machine will probably try and persuade us that the reason apps don't work well (it won't be just games) is that they're not using Microsoft software. I'm just wondering how well printer drivers will work actually. How slow will they be?
I'm not denigrating AI, that's not the point of what I'm writing. I'm simply saying that once again, they haven't thought it through from the point of view of the end user. I'm sure the AI stuff will be useful, but - as is common with Microsoft - not in the way we actually want. It'll be in the way that they expect everyone to work.
In a way it's sort of necessary. We need to shake off this reliance on the backward-looking processor architecture that is X86. Apple managed to do it. It's just going to be much harder with the sheer amount of software available for Windows.
who is the judge trying to penalise here? Blocking twitter, I get. It penalises twitter.
But fining Brazilians who use a VPN to access it? That's rather unfair! source: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/elon-musks-starlink-will-comply-with-the-brazil-x-ban-after-all-181144471.html
This is a long time coming. Take a thought experiment: If someone set up a physical wall where people could put up phone numbers of drug traffickers, places to obtain pornography including minors etc, and even pictures themselves. and they refused to tidy up the stuff that went on the wall, they'd be arrested.
This is the same thing. These people are making millions from adverts on these sites, and basically profiting off illegal things. It's about time they were stopped, regulated and put in their place.
As for Telegram itself, I've had it for a few years. All I've ever seen on it is adverts for sex services and the like. I've just got to work out how to eliminate my account on it and remove the app. I'll do the same for Signal probably.
This is just typical of Microsoft's behaviour. They’d *much rather* we used the new settings. Therein lies the problem. It’s always Microsoft “preferring” in some way that we did X. And this leads to higher cognitive load on the user, friction and annoyance. They do it with everything, from Microsoft Accounts, to the control panel, to ribbon menus. It’s just relentless. Why don’t they concentrate on making Windows and Office feature complete even if it’s for a couple of years and concentrate on making it work? It seems that we have for too long had to put up with partially complete features and we can feel the pressure to gradually start using them. Such as Outlook > New Outlook, Teams > New Teams etc. etc.
All the Indian scammers need to do is start using VoIP trunks in a "friendly" country. I know that in the UK, we block non-UK VoIP systems from using UK numbers, but the scammers may find ways around this. VPNs, unsuspecting (deliberately or otherwise) UK SIP trunk providers, and VPNs used to hide the scammers' locations are just a few of the things they can do.
Until we have a proper method of reporting these crimes to the Indian police and - this is key - a commitment from them to actually stop this shit, nothing is going to change. What we need is pressure at the highest level: how about the UK saying we'll whack large tariffs onto goods imported from India unless they actually do something about it?
What happens with all this money that ends up in India? I suspect the government has little will to do anything.
And this doesn't even address the other "don't care" states such as Syria and Myanmar where this happens. There, they're run by criminal gangs pressganging otherwise innocent people into scamming for them.
That was my initial reaction too. However, the OS should be able to recover from this. If a kernel-level app BSOD's the device, the OS should know to maybe stop it running and flag an exception. Or at the very least have given sysadmins an option.
Also, why allow kernel-level 0 stuff to run at all from third parties. I don't buy the "The EU made us do it" excuse. MacOS seems to be fairly secure and they don't allow Kernel-level stuff, after all.
I mean obviously crowdstrike were the root cause of this, but I still think MS has to take some of the blame for having a gung-ho attitude to security.
Microsoft like to have their ducks all lined up in a row, or as I like to call it, "they have the blame path set".
Why take the blame when It's an update in a piece of software that isn't written by them?
Why take the blame when it's not their fault if the EU mandated allowing third parties access to the kernel?
Why take the blame when it's the antivirus companies who begged them to allow kernel access?
Why take the blame when it's THEIR OS that once again, has failed to be an OS and actually manage stuff?
MS are more interested in rearranging features, introducing "new" features that we've actually had since Windows 7, adding advertising and upsell opportunities, charging for features you'd expect to be part of the OS and generally shafting the end user. I've said it before in these pages, and I'll say it again: Microsoft have a track record of making largely shit software. Disagree? Tell me about their really good software that everybody liked.
This isn't the first time this has happened. It's OK for our customers, who all have Microsoft 365 accounts and we can easily retrieve the keys. But what a fucking waste of time and resources.
IHow in the name of fuck does Apple manage to encrypt their computers with no sudden "enter your key" messages after an update, whereas this is a regular occurrence with Microsoft? It's same old, same old with MS - lack of quality control, strongarming their customers into a corner and moving the goalposts.
Everything in Microsoft is like a building site. Every other screen in 365 admin says "click here to use the new <whatever> experience" or "This feature has been replaced by <something> so don't use it unless you're doing so-and-so" or even "click here for a trial of the thing you expected to be able to do for free". How many different Teams apps, Onedrivel apps, Outlook apps are there these days? They never actually finalise and finish anything!
And when they do introduce a new feature without fully explaining it, like encrypting your drive, it goes wrong every 12-18 months.
IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH MICROSOFT, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND START BECOMING A SERIOUS OS!
The elephant in the room is an OS that can't recover from a bad kernel-level driver.
If Windows can get as for as a blue screen, it can work out what was the faulting application, remove that .sys file from the startup, reboot and therefore continue running.
Yes I know the same thing can happen in Linux, but it doesn't need to either. This functionality should be standard in serious OSes. Maybe it is already in which case it should work better!
In 2024, an OS should be able to recover from a blue-screen all on its own (as long as it's not hardware, obviously).
A car engine is not an OS. It's so uncommon for petrol to be 'faulty' in that way that there were no safeguards built in. But if it was a common occurrence to get bad fuel, that could cause catastrophic engine damage, then the manufacturers could, if they could be bothered, put some failsafe in.
I'm challenging the notion that OSes have to be able to be broken by anti-malware. Why? Why can't they be designed *better* so that the chances of them being broken by a faulty drive, or faulty antimalware, are **LOWER**?
It happens far too often that Windows gets into boot loops after an update. The underlying OS is so full of holes, so flaky and so capricious in its nature that this can happen at all. These problems don't happen *despite* safeguards, they happen *because* of lack of safeguards and well-designed code.
The elephant in the room is Microsoft's poor quality control (ok - and Crowdstrike's). We shouldn't stand for this intrinsic crappiness.
Yep. The root cause is really Windows. It should be resilient enough to cope with one badly written update, even if it is security.
In 2024 we should not be putting up with an OS that can fail so easily. It's part of the enshittification of everything in IT. And Microsoft's always been at the heart of it.
Yes the root cause is Crowdstrike. But let's be clear on this, the OS is Microsoft's. Why do we put up with an OS that can be felled by one program with a problem? Why can't the OS have a fallback to automatically roll back during a boot loop?
We've probably all seen Windows 10 or 11 fail to boot and then say "repairing" and more often than not just fail. This isn't really acceptable any longer. Microsoft needs to up their game and start making their OS reliable and resilient. It should not be possible for security software to break the system like it seems to have done for countless desktops and servers around the world.
I'm no expert in OS design, or security, but OSes should be concentrating on resilience. And I don't mean resilience to threats, I mean ability to not behave like a house of cards, and fall down at the first hint of a problem. Surely it can be part of the intrinsic design of an OS to detect when a file is causing a bootloop and automatically removing it? With all the advances in... everything?
I'm not saying that Linux-based OSes are perfect or anything, but let's face it, Microsoft have normalised the enshittification of OSes. We expected windows 1,2 and 3 to be unreliable because we understood how DOS worked.
Then came Windows 95, which was essentially DOS-based. It was like a house built on foundations of sticks. It would come crashing down at the slightest provocation. This unreliability continued, even into NT-based OSes like XP. And though it's got better, the underlying capriciousness of the OS is still there. We have learnt to put up with this. And all the while all Microsoft can be bothered with is putting ads into the start menu, moving the taskbar icons around, forcing its customers to use bing, set up Microsoft accounts and switch to Edge. They're like spurned lovers acting up and being petty.
Let me be clear about this: Crowdstrike is the root cause of this problem. But the blame should be squarely placed at microsoft's door. It's their OS that cannot look after itself, and cannot repair a bit of damage from a single program running on it. We deserve better than this.
The issue is that every decision Microsoft make that forces the user into a corner is done not because it's "good practice" or "secure", it's because they can make more money. The 'backup' service will only back up 5GB, and by default it saves your files "cloud only". So there's more impetus to buy more storage. And there's more room on the hard disk for 'recall' snapshot data, which can be siphoned off later.
There is so much that they do that is either just crass to deliberately anti-user, that I can't be bothered to list it here. Sufflice it to say that they really need to be brought into line. Microsoft is a monopoly and the company is abusing that position by steering the market in nastier and nastier directions.
I agree with you up to a point. The desire to incorporate new technology into everything is mostly too great and overshadows the real issues - bugs and meaningful enhancements. The problem starts when you need to look at security. Threats are evolving, and hardware and software need to evolve to counter these threats. So there are always updates, and changes. Microsoft Windows XP had a crap security model to start with, in 2001, but it didn't matter too much because the threat actors weren't sophisticated enough yet. But it had to evolve. First the introduced the firewall with SP2, then they replaced it with Vista, then 7 etc.
Unfortunately, because hardware improves, and manufacturers want a differentiator, it means that software has to change too. There's no point in having a new phone with a processor that's twice as fast if it's basically the same as last year's phone. So it includes some AI stuff. But then the PC users will say "why can't we have AI stuff?" and so on.
But I guess you're right. Perhaps if Microsoft only changed security, but kept the basic functionality the same, people would be happier. New features are great, but why do they keep changing existing features, and how can they continue to release unfinished software. Look at "New Outlook" for example. It doesn't do everything outlook does, and yet they make it too easy to switch. Users get upset.
Here we go again... more meaningless drivel from Microsoft. This is 2024, and Micro$hit is one of the oldest software companies going, and they still haven't defined what testing is, and they still produce unfinished, largely crap, software. This is straight from their playbook: produce untested, unfinished crap that for some reason we've already had anyway, and release it.
A couple of observations:
1. We've had the 'show desktop' button before in windows 10. They removed it, and it's now a 'quality of life' feature to put it back?!
2. The compress file dialogue, crap though it is, has existed for well over a decade, largely unchanged. It's taken them this long to put a few more features in. Over 10 years. And these are features that winzip, 7zip, etc have had for decades.
We shouldn't have to put up with this: dubious changes that just serve to make more money for Microsoft, and unfinished software - all with the addition of moving goalposts (local accounts, anyone) make Microsoft the most disingenuous large company out there.
I don't mind change, IT **IS** change, but with Microsoft it's always change for some nefarious background reason and it's never for security, or to help the users. In this case, they took out features from WIndows when 11 was launched, only to put them back in and call it a feature.
Disingenuous doesn't really cover this!
The really nasty thing about this is that by default, Onedrive saves files to the cloud and leaves just a placeholder on the computer. To the user, it just looks the same, with the file downloading on demand - so a bit slower for most files.
There's nothing wrong with linking the documents, desktop and pictures to onedrive per se, if you want to, but this default behaviour basically means that the files you save on YOUR computer are not necessarily actually on YOUR computer at all!
This is typical of this monopolistic, bullying company. They have an agenda, and it isn't helping people with features they want. It's helping themselves to more cash. Sell more onedrive subs.
It's not just that, it's everything they do: they remove flexibility and choice, hemming the users into their way of working. It's evident in other things, like the way 365 email works, the way Microsoft Office installs, the way Teams works (or doesn't). I would understand if some of it was because of IT best practises, but it isn't. Take their dogged determination to implement 2fa for all 365 users. Good idea on the face of it. But you can just close the 2fa window and get a 'something went wrong' message and skip the whole thing!
And the atrocious way they insist on everyone having a Microsoft account is beyond reprehensible. In fact, the whole thing with business accounts and personal accounts being somehow both called Microsoft accounts is crass.
In a nutshell I'm of the opinion that Microsoft make largely shit software, which is never finished/finalised and they're disingenuous at best, crooked at worst.
Why would a fairly large software company - or one of the biggest three companies in the world even - be responsible enough to even have an OS recovery facility available? Apple has a bootstrap online installer built into the ROM, and Microsoft has images available for download for Intel processor machines. So it's not like it's a NEW thing.
This is typical of the sort of thing Microsoft do: they make something without finishing it. I can't think of a single Microsoft application that's *finished*. It's all 'beta' or fluid in some way. Using their software is like a moving target. Same goes for their hardware.
It seems like a lot of what Microsoft do is just not engineered properly, with arbitrary decisions made that go completely against what end users actually want or need.
The trouble is that it's all so normalised now. It's not just Microsoft, but since Microsoft's software is the most used in desktop OSes on the planet, it really does fall on them to set a standard. Unfortunately, it seems all they're interested in doing is maximising profit at the expense of quality.
Security is rather hard to do when the whole basis for the OS is a mess. Bits have been piled on, changed and left there since Windows 95 or before. Much of the OS seems to be there to stop you doing things unless you bought the right licence, rather than stop you doing things because you don't have permissions. And now they're concentrating on adverts and conversions.
Perhaps if they took teams off the crapware and onto security, and had somebody in charge who had the ethos of "get people to use windows BECAUSE of its features" and not "IN SPITE OF its features" we'd have a secure and well-like system.
China has a plentiful supply of willing* slaves to employ in manufacturing and testing** cheap crap. That's why they want more Temus. They can afford to do it. And all the while, they're pumping up their already massive economy. The trouble is that as inflation takes hold in China and the price of everything rises, the only thing they'll have left to do is use more and more forced labour.
*Uyghurs aren't exactly willing, but the Chinese government use them for forced labour anyway.
**"Testing" is a technical term for faking a test certificate used within the Temu universe.
Given Microsoft's track record of reliability and confusing software, it will be hard to configure and have exceptions and problems all over the place. In using this recall feature for the smallest SMEs (1-20 employees), we are going to end up with huge privacy issues within the company.
People use each other's computers; they browse for shoes while working; staff leave computers logged in overnight. They watch naughty videos at lunchtime. SMEs are, compared to big corporates, much less disciplined in their approach to security. All this will be recorded in such as way as to make it easy to identify processes with AI. I can't see this being anything but a distraction.
While I understand the sentiment behind your statement, I believe it’s important to distinguish between generative AI and the other technologies you’ve mentioned. Generative AI, unlike the metaverse, 3D TVs, NFTs, and cryptocurrencies, has already demonstrated substantial and practical applications across various fields.
Firstly, generative AI has proven its worth in industries such as healthcare, where it aids in diagnosing diseases and personalising treatment plans. It’s being used in environmental science to predict climate changes and in the creative arts to assist artists and writers. The transformative impact of AI on productivity and innovation is evident and growing.
Secondly, generative AI is continuously evolving. Advances in machine learning and data processing mean that AI models are becoming more accurate, efficient, and capable of handling complex tasks that were previously thought to be impossible. This constant improvement is a testament to the technology’s robustness and potential for long-term relevance.
Unlike 3D TVs, which had limited content and user appeal, or NFTs and cryptocurrencies, which are often plagued by market volatility and regulatory uncertainties, generative AI offers tangible benefits and solutions to real-world problems. Its integration into everyday tools and services demonstrates its practicality and value.
Lastly, the societal and economic investment in AI technology far exceeds that of the other technologies you’ve listed. Major industries and governments are heavily investing in AI research and development, recognising its potential to drive future growth and innovation.
While it’s healthy to remain critical and cautious of technological hype, dismissing generative AI as a fad overlooks its proven capabilities and ongoing advancements. It’s here to stay, and its potential is just beginning to be realised.
One of the things I noticed last night, is that the "memory" feature (that is supposedly very useful but not available in the UK because GDPR is worse than not having GDPR in some cases) started working in the UK last night. Then it stopped. Then the option came back again. Then the option disappeared.
I know this is a moan, but why can't they release this feature in the UK? I can't remember anything and it would be damn handy to not have to try, in addition to not having to think for myself any more.
And as it stands, I just wanted to add a little to the end of this post, so asked ChatGPT to finish it for me, as is my wont, and it comes up with an internal server error. Infernal more like. What am I supposed to do now?
When I used to do home visits back in the 2000s, I'd often tell the customers that we have a special tool or system for removing the dust from the innards of their poorly looked-after tower computers. I called it a "dust server". People would look at it and say "isn't that just an ordinary paintbrush?". Oh, no I'd say, "it's specially designed for removing dust out of fan blades and corners of the inside of a PC - totally different and nothing like a paintbrush whatsoever!".
Another unusual "tool" was when a giant hornet appeared in an office where I was installing a tower-style server. We had the side off the server at the time, so someone used the server case panel to swat the offending insect out of the office.
And on the subject of screwdrivers, I always use a flathead for removing those motherboard batteries (the flat, CR2032 kind). If a flathead screwdriver isn't hand, I'll use my keys.
It does appear that LEAP was a UI for its time. The mouse was still a new concept, and people didn't all take to it. Keeping your keys on the keyboard because you spend all your time typing was still a thing. The keyboard was familiar to computer 'operators' and a specially designed one with the two LEAP keys seemed to make sense at the time. In truth, it was just a more complex way of doing simple operations - albeit faster once you knew how it worked.
The thing though is that it couldn't do _everything_ that a mouse could do, and it was just a clever sort of shift key. Keeping everything in one 'app' had advantages but ultimately it was a jack of many trades and a master of none. Other systems tried to do the same thing (Lotus Symphony anyone?) and ultimately failed. There might be quicker ways of doing things, but we need ways that introduce the least cognitive load, and that's what all these things don't do very well.
The current paradigm of apps and files and a desktop controlling it is more like how we work (we use graph paper to draw a graph, lined paper to do an essay, blank paper to draw a picture) innately. Current OSes try to relieve any pain points and there are ways of automating repetitive work. But not everything is perfect. A current pain point with apps is when things are greyed out and you don't understand WHY. Another is having to dig through menus to look for an option (anyone tried to do anything in Word or Excel that isn't a common function, and tried unsuccessfully to navigate those ribbon menus?).
So we're not there yet, AI control looks like the way forward: rather that work out how to do something, just tell the computer what you're trying to do and it'll work it out for you. That's not without its issues or dangers, but one thing modern UI designers have got right is keeping mouse control, keyboard control and voice control all at the same time. Everyone is different and works a different way.
LEAP is just a different way of doing things, and maybe modern UI (UX) designers can learn a thing or two.
It's just a matter of time... for Apple to maintain two different types of functionality within their ios system (one for EU, one for everywhere else) is soon going to be more effort than just supporting one, and putting more protections into the OS. The pressure on Apple to stop being a petulant little child is just going to be too great.
They'll find some other way. Cryptocurrency only has worth because the criminals involved will accept it, and the exchanges selling it think it's worth something. Anybody can make up a new currency and call it something else. If we redefined cryptocurrency as "investing in a money laundering operation" - which it is - then it would soon all end. But it won't happen.
It's rare to bump into people who've used FORTH, let alone know what RPN even is. All my calculators are RPN (of course) and although I don't program any more (I stopped being a programmer over 30 years ago), I have fond memories of FORTH on various devices in the 1980s. Hobbyist stuff then but still amazing for the time: A fast interpreted (semi-interpreted, anyway) language that was better in many ways than most BASIC implementations on home micros at the time.
It's quite easy to unfollow a group. You just click a button. It's also easy to unfriend people. I'm not sure what the problem is. There's even a hide button to stop showing those people in future. What does this software do? Automate that for you, or just block the showing of anything related to a person without actually unfollowing them?
These might sound like daft questions, but it's really not clear what this unfollow software is actually meant to do, that you can't do already
"a whopping 48 MB of LPDDR2 RAM"
Time was when this wouldn't have been said with sarcasm but with - not unwarranted - hyperbole. Coming from the days of computers with 16K rampacks and calculators with 448-byte memory modules (yes, BYTE!), what on EARTH do you need 48MB for in a simple phone?!
I have several old HP calculators. They, and the support behind them, were superb - 30-40 years ago. They effectively closed down their calculator division completely around 2001. But the ethos and quality lives on... companies like SwissMicros make 'clones'. HP used to be a company that stood for something. And unfortunately it's just changed into a 'find the most profitable and least ethical way possible to make money from consumers' organisation. Yes, we still buy some HP stuff, like servers and desktops, but I warn people off their printers. Not that the other manufacturers are much better.
As far as printers are concerned, manufacturers just view them as cash cows.
Therein lies the problem. They really are slaves because there's no way out. They may as well be forced to go pickpocketing, forced into prostitution or any other similar criminal activity. The difference here is that as a customer, you a) don't get to choose your supplier of scams and b) you don't even physically meet them. Welcome to age-old criminal activity upgraded for the connected 21st century.
The 'people' who perpetrate this crime are just the tip of the iceberg. They're all linked with prostitution, drugs, arms deals and all the usual things Big Crime is into. What's really sad is that every time we wind up or bait a scammer, we could unknowingly be exacerbating the torture they receive. It may not always be the case, but ultimately, we are in a lose-lose situation, as are the scammer-slaves themselves.
We really are in a dystopian world, where this sort of thing can happen.
This is confusing for the user as they don’t know where the message came from. Is it Google Chrome? Is it the computer itself? Is it Windows? Is it the web page they’re on? Most people don’t know or care - it’s just another message asking a question they don’t want to answer when they’re trying to do something else. It’s the same as:
- cookie warning messages. We didn’t ask for them, we haven’t got time to deal with them and they’re making the whole experience worse
- messages that appear in web sites to give you a coupon code and sign you up, when you’re in the middle of looking for something
- having to listen to a message on a phone call asking if you want to leave feedback after the call. No, I want the whole process to hurry up
- buttons on card machines in petrol stations not letting you pay unless you answer yes or no to the ‘donate to charity’ button. No, I’m in a hurry, I don’t want to have to parse whole messages to work out if I have to press one button or another
These are all obstacles and speed bumps in our lives that aren’t designed to help us at all, they’re designed to block us, frustrate us, annoy us and generally use us.
To me at least, all the above are the same. It’s just big corporations pissing about not thinking of the customer / user experience.
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