Posts by katrinab

'No BS' web host Gandi lives up to half of its motto... Some customer data wiped out in storage server meltdown

What's your recovery strategy in the event of a fire/flood at your location?

Cloud can be a useful component of your backup strategy because it is in a different location to you.

Re: Talking about bullshit

Dear Gandi spokesperson,

Maybe if you spent more money in a technology called a "backup"[1], and less on astroturfing PR bots, you wouldn't have this problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

So that's who's been stealing all the headphone jacks.

5G signals won't make men infertile, sighs UK ad watchdog as it bans bonkers scary poster

Re: Infertility - maybe not such a real problem in this day and age

Population in those places generally isn’t rising due to babies any more. It is rising due to people living longer, whereas in the West, life expectancy isn’t really increasing any more.

AMD rips covers off 64-core Threadripper desktop monster, plus laptop chips, leaving Intel gesturing vaguely at 2021

Re: Cache sizes

Or my old 486 from back in the day, you could fit the entire contents of the hard drive in there as well.

We won't CU later: New Ofcom broadband proposals mull killing off old copper network

Re: one major problem that Ofcom is deliberately ignoring

You could maybe put a pair of metal wires in the fibre bundle that carry power?

I'm the queen of Gibraltar and will never get a traffic ticket... just two of the things anyone could have written into country's laws thanks to unsanitised SQL input vuln

Re: Exploits of a…

Or a "Government of Gibraltar Act 2020"

Saying something along the lines of:

Effective 1st February 2020, Gibraltar will be part of the Cádiz province in Spain. The laws of the autonomous community of Andalusia will apply to the city.

This page is currency unavailable... Travelex scrubs UK homepage, kills services, knackers other sites amid 'software virus' infection

Re: Compliance....

The exchange rate is always the Visa or Mastercard exchange rate. Both rates are pretty good, Mastercard's is slightly better. The third chage you can be hit with though is interest from date of transaction, as interest free period usually only applies to purchases.

Re: Compliance....

Why would you want cash?

Because in lots of not particularly backward countries such as Germany and Japan, card acceptance is pretty limited.

In China, Visa/Mastercard acceptance is pretty limited.

Re: Compliance....

For retail purchases, yes, but not for cash withdrawals, because they are charges as cash advances.

Re: Compliance....

If you have a bank card, use that for payments / cash withdrawals when you get there. Do use it to buy cash from Travelex.

Autonomy did count some hardware sales as marketing costs, ex-finance bod tells High Court

What's the problem?

They threw in some cheap hardware in order to encourage people to sign up for their software

They didn't book that hardware to sales, they booked it to marketing. It is after all promotional activity undertaken with the intention of increasing sales.

So, how can it be evidence of them overstating sales?

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

The daemontools port in BSD does the status management. If you want to use it, then simply call /usr/sbin/daemon in your rc.d script.

It is the Unix way of one tool for one job.

Still not seeing anything desirable that I'm missing ...

Re: Workload

So in other words, a constant stream of brown smelly stuff

"I tried to find out how to make a systemd service the other day, I literally gave up [...]"

Try FreeBSD. You can create a new service with about 5 lines of csh.

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

I use FreeBSD, which doesn't have SystemD. What am I missing?

I can probably list a few things, but they are all things I want to miss.

Xerox grabs $24bn from banking titans to fund hostile takeover of HP Ink

Buy shares in Seiko Epson Corporation because they stand to gain the most out of HPXerox's demise.

I picked them rather than Canon because Canon sells a load of components to HP Ink.

HP Ink's business model:

sell cheap printers and make money on the ink.

Current / future threats to that business model:

People are printing a lot less than they used to because of internet, smartphones, tablets and stuff like that. They will probably continue to buy the loss-leader printer out of habit, and for the few times when they do need it; or for the scanner function, then not actually buy any/much ink for it.

For example, my 3 y/o Canon laser still has 70% remaining the the toner cartridges that came with it when new.

There, you read it here first, just like with Autonomy.

Rowhammer rides again as FPGA attack, RSA again reportedly up for sale, anti-theft kit to nuke laptops, etc

Re: Ransomware

Obviously a public good.

Re: Ransomware

It [was] a telemarketing company. They most likely wanted them dead.

Re: The removal does trigger the command

I always take my bag + other stuff with me when I leave the table

Bruce Perens quits Open Source Initiative amid row over new data-sharing crypto license: 'We've gone the wrong way with licensing'

Re: What does vaccination have to do with software licencing?

Vaccination is good, but it doesn’t belong in a software licence, and probably isn’t legally enforceable anyway. Are you required to hand over your medical records to your employer’s software distributor for a compliance check?

IT exec sets up fake biz, uses it to bill his bosses $6m for phantom gear, gets caught by Microsoft Word metadata

Re: idiot

Your observations are probably only based on the ones that get caught.

You could conclude that all criminals are dumb. Or you could conclude that you need to be really really dumb to get caught, and everyone else gets away with it.

Re: idiot

Much better surely to set up a virtual machine in your fake company's details, and just leave the metadata?

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

Re: No Service

Oxford city centre is also good if you want a no-coverage zone.

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

Last time I bought a pack of stanley knife blades from Robert Dyas, I needed another blade to open it.

Two missing digits? How about two missing employees in today's story of Y2K

Re: real issues

Store the value in cents? Or in Lire with a conversion routine?

One of the UK banks (I believe it is Royal Bank of Scotland) still stores values in pre-decimal pennies.

LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary

Re: It does have way better luck with home users.

You can buy a standalone version of Office 2019. If you update every three years when a new version comes out, then it will work out more expensive, but if you skip versions as I generally do, then it is cheaper. The only reason I upgraded from 2013 to 2019 was to get better high DPI monitor support. There are some new functions in Excel that are nice to have, and if you want to access Gmail accounts from next year, you will need Outlook 2019, other than that, there isn't really much more that Microsoft can do with Office.

Re: LIbreOffice Turns 10

NextCloud + Collabora Office is what you need.

Londoner who tried to blackmail Apple with 300m+ iCloud account resets was reusing stale old creds

Re: Stale old creds...

iCloud has had two factor authentication for a while now. It may be possible to disable it, I haven't explored this, but also I haven't noticed any obvious way to do it, so I doubt that many people have done it.

There is a Santa! BT prises remnants of InLink from jaws of administration

Re: Has it come to this

I think it is the customers who make the calls.

Re: Has it come to this

A normal payphone costs in the order of 60p per minute. Calls on these things are free.

Say GDP-aaaR: UK's Information Commissioner pours £275k fine into London pharmacy's teaspoon

Re: I wish it could be Christmas every day

A licence to print IOUs drawn on bankrupt companies.

The UK requires tax records to be held for 6 years after the tax return deadline, or if you submit the return late, 6 years from when you file it. That means in practice for about 7-8 years from when the transaction took place.

If you are required to hold records for tax purposes, whether it is HMRC, IRS or anyone else, that's fine. The GDPR doesn't interfere with that. It only gets involved if you start using your tax records for another purpose.

Re: exposed to rain, doesn't mean they aren't readable

These days it is usually laser printer toner, which is pretty waterproof.

FCC proudly wastes $90m getting data-capped, pricey satellite internet to tiny percentage of US population

Re: $80 per month?

Of you are uploading photos to facebook, or documents to dropbox, you need quite a bit of upload bandwidth. If you are doing facetime calls, your upload and download are the same.

UK cops lost nearly twice as much of their own tech kit this year, says thinktank

Re: What is even more concerning

They need to stop using mechanical hard disks. I don't think Western Digital would fare any better being carried around by a police officer on the beat.

Capita unfurls new consulting arm. Hmm, what shall we call it?

Sounds like typical Crapita tax advice.

If you book it as an investment, it doesn't reduce profits. You would only get tax relief against any eventual sale proceeds from selling the company.

London's Westminster Council wins appeal against phonebooth-cum-massive-digital-advert

Yes

Both

Sir John Redwood backs IR35 campaign, notes review would have to start 'immediately' before new off-payroll working rules kick in

Dear Vulcan

We have carried out our review as promised, and have decided that no changes are required to the proposed IR35 rules.

The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards

Re: If I were to guess....

Apple are a dominant force amoung those who spend money on this sort of stuff.

Post Office faces potential criminal probe over Fujitsu IT system's accounting failures

Re: Ooooh first post....

I think there will be some perjury charges against some of the people who gave evidence against sub postmasters in fraud cases.

Google security engineer says she was fired for daring to remind Googlers they do indeed have labor rights

Re: Can someone please explain...

Corbyn was the union leaders' choice of candidate to become Prime Minister.

I think you will find it is white male cishet issues that are the exception to the threat to culture.

London's Met Police splash the cash on e-learning 'cyber' training for 4k staffers

Re: I wish them well

Or more like, join the police and deal with loads of politics and government bureucracy.

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

Re: Downward spiral

Or maybe even in light blue?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/511182/P45_Laser-Sheet__12_15.pdf

Re: Maybe not such a bad thing

They publish their apps on Google Play, and the Apple app store. For the most part, they don't publish anywhere else.

InLink Limited limited: Firm that puts up UK's ad-supported phone booths enters administration

Calls from traditional payphones cost about 60p per minute. Calls from these things are free.

But these things are advertising billboards with a phone stuck on the side. No space for sex workers to place their cards. Only suitable for dogs to pee on, and they already have a wide selection of lamp posts for their convenience.

Cool 'joke', bro, you could have killed someone: Epilepsy Foundation sics cops on sick flashing-light Twitter trolls

They believe that sending a strobing tweet is equivalent to sending a diseased or dangerous animal in the post. They want to know what sort of punishment that would attract, and use that as guidance for how to punish strobing tweets.

Seems pretty reasonable to me.