Posts by CustardGannet

Bulb smart meters in England wake up from comas miraculously speaking fluent Welsh

Or - as I heard George Dubya Bush say twice in one speech - "nukula weapons".

Very worrying when the man (assuming he is a man, and not a lizard) in charge of the world's largest arsenal of said weapons can't pronounce them properly.

Praise the lard! Police hook up with Microsoft to school us on National Phish and Chip Day

Re: Sorry to keep carping on...

But for us lovers of bad puns, it's a bream come true.

Facebook didn't care if your kids ran up gigantic credit card bills – lawsuit

Re: Is there a scammier corporation

Yes there is - Vale (the largest producer of iron ore and nickel in the world) - voted the corporation with the most "contempt for the environment and human rights" in the world in 2012:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/27/public-eye-awards-vale-barclays

Since then they have been responsible for two mining-dam disasters - Bento Rodrigues in 2015, and Brumadinho, just two days ago (they're still hunting for bodies, but it looks like >400 people have died).

HTH !

Who's watching you from an unmarked van while you shop in London? Cops with facial recog tech

Re: 650 willing crowd subjects

As an alternative, they could test it on people attending the Oscars ceremony, and see how many matches they get to wanted sex offenders.

Expired cert... Really? #O2down meltdown shows we should fear bungles and bugs more than hackers

"Most really bad IT disasters I've seen have been human error"

That would definitely include Windows Vista, then.

And Windows 8.

And Windows 10.

And probably whatever piece of crap they force on us next time.

Q: If Pesky Pepper had a peek at patient papers, at how many patient papers did Pesky Pepper peek? A: 231

Re: Norfolk

Why does Norfolk have so many bakeries ?

'Cos everyone there is really into bread.

Congrats to Debbie Crosbie: New CEO at IT meltdown bank TSB has unenviable task ahead

Re: In it for the money

"...a huge issue which needs addressing but there is no simple solution to it."

Tumbrils.

That's my simple solution.

Japanese cyber security minister 'doesn't know what a USB stick is'

Simile

It's like putting someone who doesn't have a heart in charge of the health service.

Oh, wait...

Californian chap sets his folks' home on fire by successfully taking out spiders with blowtorch

Merkins, eh ?

Reminds me of the Transpondian whose solution to a stuck car wheel-nut was a 12-gauge shotgun

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7091904.stm

Scumbag who tweeted vulnerable adults' details is hauled into court

@ Snufflepuff

If your account is true then it puts quite a different perspective on the story.

I'd suggest you contact El Reg news desk directly rather than just posting on here (as they can presumably verify your identity and update the story accordingly).

Wannabe W1 DOW-er faked car crash to track down reg plate's owner

Re: Switzerland....

"Switzerland doesn't have a population that contains complete idiots that will go round someones house for cutting them up on a roundabout"

Maybe that's because Switzerland requires all adult men to have a gun at home...

Brit MP Dorries: I gave my staff the, um, green light to use my login

@ macjules

"Wait until Damian Green realises that he can just... ask an intern for Nadine's username and password"

I can probably tell you her password right now, it'll be 'N4d1n3'

156K spam text-sending firm to ICO: It wasn't us, Commissioner

Most people don't know how to check...

...if they've breached Regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communication Rules.

Click here NOW to find out how !

Don't shame idiots about their idiotically weak passwords

"focus on positives, confront stereotypes and prime people to make better security choices"

Sounds wonderful, but unfortunately without concrete examples of how to do this, it sounds just like every other buzzword-bingo management presentation I've ever attended, where they exhort us drones to "maximise this, synergise that, and leverage the other", then leave us to work out the actual mechanics of implementing their fluffy ideals.

(To be fair to Doctor B, I didn't attend the presentation at the IRISSCERT conference in Dublin, Ireland last week, so it may be the article that lacks the information, rather than her presentation. But lacking the information still is </yodamode> )

Prosecute driverless car devs for software snafus, say Brit cyclists

@ Stuart22

('Cycling UK' ... set themselves up as) the spokes-people of all cyclists.

Ha, ha ! Nice one, Centurion !

User asked help desk to debug a Post-it Note that survived a reboot

Re: PBKAC

True confession time :

A few years ago I was issued with a works laptop, to be able to do on-call at home. After a while this became my primary home computer .

As time went on, I found that the volume on any videos or music was getting lower and lower, to the point of inaudibility. Checked the Windows control-panel: volume set to max. Checked the volume on Youtube, or the media-player (as appropriate) : also set to max. Searched online for other possibilities. No obvious other problem. Eventually concluded that the in-built speakers must be on their way out.

Mentioned the problem to one of my friends (occupation : phone monkey for a large bank). He took 10 seconds to locate and turn up the physical volume dial, on the right-hand side of the laptop, next to where my mouse hand normally did its mouse-wiggling-stuff.

I’d been gradually knocking the volume down over several months – but as I had always had a desktop til then, I never realised some laptops had an actual volume dial.

El Reg assesses crypto of UK banks: Who gets to wear the dunce cap?

"What happened to Nationwide?"

I believe Frank Bough blew the budget on Colombian marching powder.

Oh that Nationwide...

Re: Dunce Cap tip

I recently applied for a credit card (obviously I don't need any loan, given the whopping pay packet my employers give me (Joke Alert), but how else do you build a good credit rating for a mortgage?) from Barclaycard, who have now sent me the 'credit agreement' doc (the legal bit you sign and post back to them by snail-mail).

Upon inspection I find this has, printed on the back, all my 'personal details' from the online aplication form : name, address, phone no (ok so far)... d.o.b. (er...), employer and gross salary (cough !), account number and sort code for my current account (choke !), and - I shit you not - the supposedly-only-known-to-me 'Security Word' that I specified.

What a bunch of retards.

USB stick found in West London contained Heathrow security data

Re: leaves

A fairly high percentage of the UK is covered in leaf litter at the moment, so it's not really that surprising that the stick was found in a pile of them.

(Source : personal experience, from having spent much of yesterday tidying the garden.)

Paris, because she knows about having a tidy garden.

FYI: iOS apps can turn on your camera any time without warning

Re: Apple

Man, it looks like the NSA trolls (or Apple fanbois) have been out in force on this comments section. Downvotes all round for anyone criticising our new electronic overlords !

Hate to break it to you, but billions of people can see Uranus tonight

@ Iain Thomson

Uranus is instantly recognizable thanks to its blue-green color, which is the result of the methane in Uranus tinting the atmosphere

Well played, sir !

Top of the radio charts: Jodrell Bank goes for UNESCO World Heritage status

Re: 960,000,000GB of data per day

"You're gonna need a bigger hard drive."

BBC Telly Tax petition given new Parliament debate date

Re: high % women?

Loathe as I am to ever say anything in defence of Crapita, one can hardly use the statistic as evidence of sexist bias on their part.

The vast majority of people prosecuted for football hooliganism are men, does this indicate some anti-male bias on the part of the police ?

Re: Please someone tell me why I should pay the license fee?

Anyone with half a brain can work it out

Unfortunately, the Daily Heil types who think that the BBC is a hotbed of Marxism are lucky if they have 5% of a brain, never mind 50%.

BYOD might be a hipster honeypot but it's rarely worth the extra hassle

Re: No hassle here.

No security issues, no app issues, no support issues... Users are happy, management are happy, IT are happy

...pigs are fuelled and ready for take-off.

Twitter reckons Trump's Nork-baiting tweet was 'newsworthy'

Re: The Best Part?

Unless I'm very much mistaken : with Trump as POTUS, rednecks already rule the world.

SpaceX releases Pythonesque video of rocket failures

Re: I'm going to use some of these:

I think they might be taking a lead from C. Montgomery Burns :

" 'Meltdown' ? That’s one of those annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus."

If they do, they'll have to whittle it down from its original 28-hour running time.

User demanded PC be moved to move to a sunny desk – because it needed Windows

Re: As any good medical professional will tell you

@ jake

I have a steam hammer... for forging steel and iron implements. A friend has one that is used to crush gold bearing ore.

1849 called, they want you back !

Fruit flies' brains at work: Decision-making? They use their eyes

Re: How?

My thoughts too - how *exactly* do you manage to do that ? I have a hard enough time sellotaping Christmas presents closed.

These guys must have done a lot of Blue Peter projects when they were young.

UK not as keen on mobile wallets as mainland Europe and US

Re: Define "regularly"

Another trap for the stupid.

So now, if you lose your wallet, not only do you have no access to funds, you can't ring anyone to ask for help.

Even if you're on a night out with friends, you can't buy any more beers, and won't be able to borrow your taxi fare* home from them, because they won't have any way to access solid cash either.

(*You won't be able to catch the last bus because your bus ticket is now on your phone, too.)

Maybe soon they'll fit your front door with an electronic lock that you need to swipe with your phone, so you can be locked out all night to boot ?

Obviously most of the sheep enthusiastically embracing this Brave New World have never heard the phrase 'Single Point Of Failure'.

Personally I'll stick with the convenient payment system that is bits-of-paper-with-a-picture-of-the-Queen-on, thanks.

Strip club selfie bloke's accidental discharge gets him 6 years in clink

"I didn’t know it was going to go off"

Every woman's heard that excuse.

Strong and stable, my arse. UK wobbles when coping with ransomware

Re: That makes for dire reading...

"...raging wildfires aside, the food and weather and health service are generally much better"

I think you forgot the wine, public transport, education system, housing, and general quality of life.

The French cops are still a bunch of racist twunts who don't give a damn about liberte, egalite, or fraternite, though.

Greek police arrest chap accused of laundering $4bn of Bitcoin

$4 BEEEELLION ?

For that much money, surely you can buy the whole of Greece, declare yourself president and grant yourself a pardon.

Kid found a way to travel for free in Budapest. He filed a bug report. And was promptly arrested

In Stalybridge (near Manchester) there's a pub which sports a sign by the door :

"NO UNDER 28's.

If you look under 35 you will be asked for ID."

My kinda place.

Brit neural net pioneer just revolutionised speech recognition all over again

Re: Sounds similar to the way we work.

"Beelzebub has a devil for a sideboard..."

UK parliamentary email compromised after 'sustained and determined cyber attack'

Re: Machiavellianism

You can't seriously believe that *any* of the Honourable Members were users of the Ashley Madison website ?

Joke icon, for obvious reasons.

Facebook has a solution to all the toxic dross on its site – wait, it's not AI?

"Over 150 people are employed by the California giant to focus on countering terrorism"

Let's assume each dross-monkey is paid $30K/pa.

Farcebook is currently raking in ~$8 BEEEELLLION profit per year.

So they're spending just over 1/20th of 1% (0.0005625) of their profit to fight terror.

Wow, thanks guys, we knew we could rely on you

...to be a bunch of twunts.

Connectivity's value is almost erased by the costs it can impose

Re: "goodbye windows"

So the future is not totally bleak, then ? - > - > - >

Capita call centre chap wins landmark sex discrimination lawsuit

Re: Management speak ...

@ Commswonk : well spotted sir (or madam). Crapita saying "we take equal opportunities very seriously" is as valid as the KKK saying "we take mixed-race marriages VERY seriously".

'Spawn of Satan' icon, natch.

Meteor swarm spawns new and dangerous branch

"we will wake up to this threat only when half a continent has been erased from existence"

As long as it's half the North American continent*, that's fine by me.

(We all know which half I'm talking about - and it's not the ice-hockey-playing half.)

The nuclear launch button won't be pressed by a finger but by a bot

A message from Skynet :

You, humans, are the weakest link.

Goodbye.

'Major incident' at Capita data centre: Multiple services still knackered

"Stop relying on one datacenter to be up."

They would probably listen to your sound advice, if you put it on a sheet of 'Accenture' headed paper and charged them a 7-figure consultancy fee.

Russian raids sweep up 20 malware scum

"US$883,000 – a relatively paltry amount"

Did you used to work for Accenture ?

Mouse sperm kept frozen in SPAAAAACE yields healthy pups

Well played, sir/madman.

Presumably the downvote is from a Murine Semen Technician who's sick of people laughing at his job.

Faking incontinence and other ways to scare off tech support scammers

Re: Put them on hold

Me: "I've got a pan of food on the stove - can you just hang on ?"

Walk into kitchen, rattle a couple of pans, start doing washing up...

Someone is sending propaganda texts to Ukrainian soldiers

Re: "Sinister text messages reveal high-tech front in Ukraine war"

I suspect the downvotes are people who can't work out whether DAM is agreeing with the general or not, just because he doesn't describe the general as an "anti-semitic scumbag" or similar. So they assume that DAM must also be anti-semitic, because outrage is a commentard's default setting.

(Reminds me of when I saw the Bloodhound Gang in Leeds, shortly after two Leeds United players (Woodgate & Bowyer) were charged with beating the crap out of an Asian lad, & the singer's opening line was :

"Hello Leeds !

Good to see so many of you here - I thought you'd all be out beating up Asians !

I can see you're not sure whether to applaud that joke or not..." )

Fake ruse: USA Today calls the FBI after half of its 15m Facebook Likes turn out to be bogus

"The goal is to fool legitimate Facebook users..."

Fancy that, 'Facebook users' and 'fool' in the same sentence...