Posts by katrinab

Dinobabies latest: IBM settles with widow of exec who killed himself after layoff

Going to court wouldn't bring you back though.

Excel @ mentions approach general availability on the desktop

Re: Gerrof my lawn!

"Are people using excel as a $thing?"

Yes. They are. Anything you can think of, no matter how inappropriate, people are using Excel for it.

Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for slow Celeron laptops

Re: "fraud is not required for such a stupid waste of money"

That would be like Dido Harding's husband being in charge of investigating NHS fraud. Which was actually the case at the time.

That sounds pretty tame compared to how much Boris Johnson’s government overpaid for things. And I presume the Filipino politicians got much more generously stuffed brown envelopes in exchange for the contract.

Warning: Apple 'could very easily' cripple Jamf

Re: Why is El Reg quoting right wing sources?

Hitler's policy was to blame the Jews for everything and use that as a means to gain power. His actual economic policies, other than the stuff about targeting Jews which he is rightly remembered and vilified for, were pretty unremarkable.

Mussolini was more about government support for big corporations at the expense of individuals as a way to achieve economic growth.

The end-game for both was of course the same, but if you were looking at them in the early stages, they looked very different. They took a very different route to the same destination.

Looking at Trump, I would say it looks more like an incompetent Hitler than a Mussolini.

Re: Why is El Reg quoting right wing sources?

Trump didn't invade any foreign countries, Bush did, so in that respect Bush is more like Hitler.

But, in terms of domestic policy, Trump is certainly closer to Hitler, though Bush definitely doesn't a free pass here.

Re: An ostensibly nonpartisan left-wing advocacy organization

What Americans describe as "communist", I would describe as centre-right, especially when it comes to healthcare policy.

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

I'd argue that it isn't renewable, because it uses up land. Once your reactor reaches the end of its live, you have a piece of land that can't ever be used again for anything, for the next 10,000 years or so. Or, if you have a level 7 disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima, you have a much larger piece of land that is unusable.

How many people have starved because crops can no longer be grown around Chernobyl and Fukushima? You can't point to specific death certificates or gravestones, but that doesn't mean those people don't exist.

Security needs to learn from the aviation biz to avoid crashing

Re: Preaching to the chior

Former CEO of TalkTalk who was was sacked for being useless and got appointed to run the NHS Test & Trace service, where she was also useless.

Her husband is a Tory MP, who was, at the time, in charge of the UK anti-corruption taskforce.

Microsoft open-sources its emojis as part of new design philosophy

Re: The same applies to country flags

I think the Beijing government recognises a different flag for the Province of Taiwan to the one used by the Taipei government.

You can download the "Paddington" typeface, which looks exactly the same.

Are they not "typefaces", and therefore not subject to copyright?

The "font software" that deals with hinting and so on, is obviously copyrightable, but the actual designs of the glyphs, I'm not so sure about.

Emergency services call-handling provider: Ransomware forced it to pull servers offline

They were originally blaming the heatwave for this, which I thought was a bit strange.

I get that heatwaves can cause servers to overheat and shutdown, but I couldn't understand how they weren't able to just switch it back on once it cooled down.

Now I understand.

Re: Recovery redundant?

I think the answer is, don't rebuild the software from backups, build that from the original source. Only restore the data from backups.

Of course the software, even if it isn't infected, will still have the same vulnerability that allowed the original attack to happen, so you need to identify and fix it.

There can be only one... Microsoft Excel Champion

Access is looking almost like abandonware now:

New features added to Access 2021:

- Slightly improved add tables task pane

- Slightly improved tabs for table view

- Slightly improved linked table manager

- New DateTime2 format with greater range and precision

- Support for Dark Themes

- Slightly improved query designer

- Slightly improved relationships window

- Slightly improved colour picker dialogue

Google gets the green light to flood US Gmail inboxes with political spam

My Gmail gets flooded with Republican spam, and I've never even visited the USA.

As for my political views, I consider the Democrats to be mostly far-right extremists with some centre-right politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Republicans to be even worse than that.

Facebook hands over chats to cops in abortion case

Because it is a Supreme Court Judgement, and that means that the current law now applies retrospectively since the beginning of time, and the Roe vs Wade judgement was never valid.

Re: Anything you do say may be given in evidence.

But, and this is very important:

The users are the customers of the advertisers.

No users, or no users who buy the advertised products means no business.

Or, put it another way, this is like saying that we are not Intel's customers because Intel don't sell direct to consumer, they sell via distributors and PC Manufacturers.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Re: Living in a bubble?

In Excel, tables is a big one for me. I'm not sure exactly when they were introduced. I don't think they were in 2003, and I skipped 2007.

More recently, =SWITCH() is pretty useful. You can do the same with nested =IF(), but switch makes it a lot cleaner. =SUMIFS() [like =SUMIF() but with multiple criteria] is useful, as is =COUNTIFS().

Spillable functions like =UNIQUE() are also pretty useful.

Re: Living in a bubble?

These days, Access is about 10 years behind the times. When did it last get a meaningful update?

I'm pretty sure Microsoft now wants you to use PowerBI instead of Access. Other, usually server-based alternatives may be more appropriate for your needs.

Excel, I think is where the biggest problem is. Libre Calc will do the basics, but it does not have feature parity with Excel.

GitHub courts controversy by suspending Tornado Cash developers and reneging on cookie commitments

Re: sanctioned the service for apparently helping to launder virtual currency since 2019

Yes, but people trusted Tornado to give them their money back because they have a track record of doing that.

Will they be able to trust any of the alternative services not to run away with their money?

Look for example at the alternative Silk Roads that popped up after the original was shut down.

Re: re: call into question its commitment to free speech

And requiring them to host it is a violation of Microsoft's free speech rights.

Countries that don't respect free speech often require people to publish government propaganda. That is the reason why this is in place.

Parallels increases prices with Desktop version 18

Re: Microsoft Access?

Access, and VBA, are looking like abaondonware at this point.

MS Office does work on Windows for ARM, so I don't think there will be any problems. There might even be a native build available.

Virtualbox doesn't work on M1, and, as far as I can gather, Oracle don't have any plans to support it ever.

You can definitely download a Windows ISO from Microsoft if you use Safari on MacOS.

Interestingly I tried it on Chrome / Windows 10 right now, and it actually worked there as well. Perhaps my adblocker extension helped here, so your mileage may vary. But, if you want to install a VM on your Mac, you will definitely not have a problem getting the ISO.

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

HGVs do 60mph because that’s their speed limit. If the were able to drive an extra 10 miles per hour, that’s maybe 50 miles in a shift, so an individual driver + lorry could do more jobs per day.

Buses are allowed to do 70mph on the motorway, and they mostly do drive at that speed when they can.

Re: Comparison

I've never seen a car with cruise control or lane assist claim it will stop you mowing down children, so if it does, that's on you.

Tesla, on the other hand, does make those claims, or at least people think they do, which is what matters.

Re: Comparison

Those cars don't claim to be self-driving.

Hi, I'll be your ransomware negotiator today – but don't tell the crooks that

Re: It's time to end this.

Colonial Pipeline Company for example?

Re: It's time to end this.

Banning cryptocurrency would stop legitimate companies from buying it.

Try this thought experiment. If the ransomware people asked the company to pay the ransom in kgs of cocaine, how many people do you think would pay it?

US-funded breakthrough battery tech just simply handed over to China

Re: M. Skyllas-Kazacos, M. Rychcik and R. Robins, in AU Patent 575247 (1986), to Unisearch Ltd.

That's OK, I'll just visit my local transport museum, find a vehicle that was made before you were born that also infringes your patent, and use it as proof of prior art.

Re: Big deal!

Is it paranoia to suggest that people go to university to learn things?

Bloke robbed of $800,000 in cryptocurrency by fake wallet app wants payback from Google

He did his research, and decided that Phantom was a trustworthy supplier.

Google claimed that this wallet came from Phantom when it did not, and the fact that it didn't come from Phantom was the reason why he had a problem with it.

I agree that crypto is a scam, but my opinion is not relevant here. This is a scam based on top of another scam. A scam² if you like.

Strike days should serve as 'wake-up call' to BT's top brass, says union

Re: Greed

No, if anything it will get more expensive when property prices go down.

That means you make a loss, but the market doesn't care about that.

Re: Greed

To an extent, yes. If interest rates go up, rental yield needs to go up as well.

However, there are two ways to do that:

Rents can go up

or, property values can go down.

In reality it is going to be a bit of both.

Re: Maths

Putin has cut gas flows to 20% of normal levels.

Re: Maths

That was the last step, not the next step. My bill from Plusnet, which is owned by BT, increased from £23.95 per month to £26.17, a 9.3% increase. If the money is not going on higher wages, then where is it going?

GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts

Re: For personal projects

And then someone else creates a new project with the same name and uploads a malware-infected version of the software to it.

One way Bitcoin miners can make money: Selling electricity back to Texas

Re: Nice power grid you got 'ere, Guv

With oil, it would work something like this:

You sign a contract to buy a quantity of oil on a particular date.

Normally you would send an oil tanker to the collection point on that date and they will fill it up with the oil you paid for.

You can alternatively sell that contract to someone else who wants some oil, and they then send their tanker to the collection point.

Oil price speculators will buy and sell these contracts to hopefully make money out of them.

Electricity futures work in much the same way, except it is electricity not a physical liquid so the actual delivery arrangements are a bit different.

Post-quantum crypto cracked in an hour with one core of an ancient Xeon

Re: Ancient?

I was running a pair of i7-3770s each with 32GB RAM, and recently replaced them with a Threadripper Pro 3945WX with 256GB RAM.

Part of the reason for using desktop/workstation stuff rather than server stuff is that I am in the same room as it and want something quiet.

Re: Ancient?

I have a pair of i7-3770s sitting in my pile of recently retired computers. I don't know how the Ivy Bridge i7 compares with the Xeon version for single core performance, but either way, I could definitely use one of them to crack this in a few minutes.

Now imagine how quick this would be on an Alder Lake, or even an A14.

New Outlook feature: It freezes up when dealing with tables in emails

Re: Tables?

Maybe because you are in the 1990s and css hasn't been invented yet?

Charges filed over $300m 'textbook pyramid and Ponzi scheme' crypto startup

Re: In before...

It is not a Ponzi scheme unless it comes from the Ponzi region of Brazil

Homes in London under threat as datacenters pull in all the power

Re: I still don't understand

If you have a budget to supply x m² of solar panels, I would suggest you put them somewhere that gets more sunshine than England, like maybe Southern Europe.

Re: And we also want EV's?

In what way is that a different opinion? 32A x 240V is 7680W. It is not something you are going to connect to a lighting circuit.

In case it isn't clear, the icon in the previous post is what might happen if you draw too many amps through an electic cable.

Re: And we also want EV's?

But that's no problem, we can just wire the cars up to lamp posts.

Something that is designed to power a 50W light bulb will have absolutely no problem powering a 7kW car charger.

Re: We all know why

If you look at the numbers, Bracknell is actually the place in the UK that has the most foreign HQs relative to population size, with companies like HP, Dell, and 3M.

China's 7nm chip surprise reveals more than Beijing might like

Re: Ours

There is one in Newport that can do 180nm, one in Greenock that can do 700nm, and three in Glenrothes that can do 1200nm / 800nm.

Google: We had to shut down a datacenter to save it during London’s heatwave

Re: Heat island

And, depending on how you measure it, slightly closer to Birmingham than to London, and not particularly close to Oxford either.

Sage accused of misselling perpetual licenses it knew would soon be obsolete

Except that the only thing that is cloudy about this piece of s**tware is the pricing model.