Posts by mintus55

NHS contact tracing app isn't really anonymous, is riddled with bugs, and is open to abuse. Good thing we're not in the middle of a pandemic, eh?

Will this run off my SD card?

I have literally zero space on my phone, so I can only have android apps which run off the SD card.

I can't delete Whatsapp or Gmail or banking apps because that's what I have the phone for.

Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers

Re: A fad?

Oculus products are in Argos, not exactly sold out anywhere.

Absolutely smashing: Musk shows off Tesla's 'bulletproof' low-poly pickup, hilarity ensues

NCAP

It's never going to pass a pedestrian crash test.

He needs to borrow the rounded corner patent from Apple.

Mark Hurd is dead

Work Life Balance

He died 5 weeks after retiring - is that really living?

Russian bots are just for rigging US elections? They hit home, too: Kid stripped of crown in TV contest vote-fix scandal

doing something for the lulz is ok because the participants are not receiving a benefit

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Re: Is this the best that the USA can come up with ?

I think the deal must be - give us Assange and we won't follow up on how the British security services wrote the Steele dossier

Microsoft 'welcomes dialog' over HoloLens use by the military, but doesn't have to listen

I'm not buying it

I've spent a lot of cash on VR / AR for my personal entertainment, i.e. >£10k, but I certainly won't be subsidising a weapons system if I can avoid it.

300,000 BT pensioners await Court of Appeal pension scheme ruling

breach of contract

on one level this is just a straight breach of contract.

employees make pension contributions over the years with a promise of RPI linked retirement benefits. the size of the contributions made are pre-calculated to be the correct level for delivering RPI linked benefits ( I worked as a trainee actuary for a while).

if CPI benefits had been promised, the pension contributions would have been smaller.

and when the employees comes to retire, the pension fund is now trying to break the original promise of the RPI link. this is what BT is trying to accomplish, although the pension trustees are fighting this. they have to fight this because pension trustees are personally liable

and RPI is definitely still a thing - examples are landfill tax and renewable energy certificates which both index at RPI for the next 20 years.

Sneaky phone apps just about obey the law, still have no trouble guzzling your data, says Which?

Ban All Apps on Corporate Devices

At some point this has to happen, you can't have apps just having free access to company emails etc

MI5: Gosh, awkward. We looked down the sofa and, yeah, we *do* have intel on privacy bods

lying in court

so MI5 can just lie in court and have no sanction applied to them??

wow!!

Microsoft accidentally let encrypted Windows 10 out into the world

windows mixed reality

To make VR work properly with WMR HMDs, the latest features are only available via windows insider.

So I am forced into having this on one of my machines.

Tax the tech giants and ISPs until the bits squeak – Corbyn

local radio

if they are serious about raising money why not privatise local radio?

these stations are really just a way to support your local football team, nothing else.

radio derby, radio nottingham, and radio leicester play exactly the same music, the only difference is the local sports.

local radio does nothing that cannot be done by the private sector.

Click this link and you can get The Register banned in China

Re: Hush, hush, whisper who dares..

hush hush whisper who dares,

little boy kneels at the foot of the stairs,

blood on the carpet

fur on the mat

christopher robin has castrated the cat

Re: Tibet

china ended feudalism in tibet which is huge but here we just hear people crying about the dalai lama, not celebrating the end of slavery.

i'm not sure how legit tibetan buddhism is as a religion because steven seagal was once recognised as the official reincarnation of an historic lama

Uber's London licence appeal off to flying start: No, you cannot do driver eye tests via video link

Re: Why is this so difficult?

The Knowledge is still very important - satnav only works if you know the address or post code of your destination.

i can tell a black cab driver to go to the vietnamese on kingsland road and he will know what i'm talking about and get me there no questions asked.

if i ask the same thing question to a mini cab driver i would not get to my destination. heck most mini cab drivers can't even find the brick lane beigel shop.

Uber 'does not exist any more' says Turkish president

Re: Alternative

the british government did refund water taxis when westminster bridge was erected

UK.gov: Here's £8.8m to plough into hydrogen-powered car tech

£8k subsidy per vehicle

The Mirai comes with an £8k subsidy per vehicle.

Seriously, if someone is going to spend £60k on a car, they don't need an £8k handout from the government.

Surprise UK raid of Cambridge Analytica delayed: Nobody expects the British information commissioner!

royal connections?

i thought the delay was there to scrub any royal connections from the servers.

Iver Mountbatten is on the board of SCL, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, along with a bunch of other people who need protecting.

Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor

38 inches is enough

i'm running the dell U3818 DW - it's 38 inches, which is more than enough, but more importantly it is 3840 x 1600, so vertical resolution is fantastic.

i tried out one of the UW gaming monitors, (alienware u3418), but it was just too skinny

Proposed Brit law to ban b**tards brandishing bots to bulk-buy tickets

primary auctions are the solution

big artists would make so much more if they set the prices at a market rate, instead of the fixed price.

The way to maximise revenue is to hold a series of ticket auctions, including a final auction 24hrs before the event to squeeze extra ££s out of the punters.

I don't have any sympathy for punters or bands in this debate - no one is forcing punters to pay high prices, and the bands and their management are just plain stupid when they sell things too cheaply.

ICO slammed for 'unfair' approach to FoI appeal by UK judges

how lazy can you be?

it's a sad state of affairs when a quasi judicial figure can't be arsed to read the case files.

no wonder she got the job!

European court: Let's not kid ourselves, Uber. You're a transport firm, not a 'digital service'

Newcastle

There's a lot more Newcastles than Barcelonas

GCHQ dismisses Trump wiretap rumours as tosh

Re: partial denial

read the denial again guys - it's pretty clear that it only refers to the period when Trump was president elect:

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president elect are nonsense"

an actual denial would read something like this:

"Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against Donald Trump are nonsense"

GCHQ have introduced the possibility that they may have wiretapped Trump before the election result. Why would they do that? who knows, who cares....?

partial denial

the denial only covers trump as president elect - it doesn't deny any wire tapping prior to trump's election win

Huawei's just changed the way you'll use Android

my LG has a hardware button on the rear for hanging up calls. It's extremely useful as using the touch screen to hang up is a PITA.

Facebook Fake News won it for Trump? That's a Zombie theory

Facelibrary

This story points to the heart of Facebook's problem. Originally conceived as a way to stay in touch with people, a lot of facebook is now people sharing news articles.

The problem with this is that browsing through links to pages that people have already visited is a fundamentally boring proposition - a bit like going to the library.

I think Snapchat does have an edge here, as a lot of the content is user generated, and so isn't a repetitive blend of bien pensant links. I'm not saying watching jerky videos is fun, but it's better than going to the FaceLibrary.

Trump's torture support could mean the end of GCHQ-NSA relationship

totally legal

The author doesn't say that relying on torture is illegal in the UK - in the absence of any laws prohibiting complicity in torture, presumably things will just continue as before, i.e. UK security services can kidnap people at will and send them to foreign torture farms, without any hint of illegality.

Court finds GCHQ and MI5 engaged in illegal bulk data collection

18 years

18 years of illegal behaviour but no sanction is available!!

UK's climate change dept abolished, but 'smart meters and all our policies strong as ever'

Demand Response

The proposed "smart meters" are not really smart, just accurate.

A true smart meter would allow demand response / feedback from behind the meter to in front of the meter, and in theory this would allow users to be paid not to use electricity at peak times when the wholesale price is higher than the rate the consumer is paid.

Maplin Electronics demands cash with menaces

Biggest Seller

The biggest seller in my local maplins (according to the guy on the till), is isopropyl alcohol. The biggest use for isopropyl alcohol has nothing to do with electronics, and everyone pays cash hahahaha.