* Posts by seanb-uk

6 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Nov 2016

If your websites use WordPress, put down that coffee and upgrade to 4.8.3. Thank us later

seanb-uk

Justify using Wordpress? I guess people use it because it's easy, it's included with cheap hosting packages (or you can have Wordpress host it for you), and the huge variety of plugins make it flexible.

It's possible for almost anyone to set up a quick blog with more features than, say, Blogger. I don't know how it compares with the point and click setups (maybe Wix, judging purely by their ads - no personal experience to judge), but that's the justification. People don't care about the details - they want a pretty website easily and quickly.

I'm sympathetic to that, but less sympathetic towards businesses that rely on Wordpress, shoehorning shopping carts and other add-ons onto a platform that really isn't designed for that kind of content.

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

seanb-uk

Re: Python whitespace

It's not having to type whitespace, it's the lack of a visible difference between tabs and spaces. It's not possible to tell whether the code is correctly lined up - are there four spaces or one tab? Critical to the Python interpreter, invisible to humans.

You really do have wrangle your text editor to stick to one format, and be very, very careful when pasting in code from another source. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to run an editor's "convert tabs to spaces" function to reveal why my code isn't working.

In the end I've just set my editor to show whitespace, which I think is ugly but sadly necessary.

Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics

seanb-uk

Re: You cant have it both ways

They've also got a bigger store near the Waitrose in Thorpe Bay.

I like to be able to browse for things and see them in the flesh, and that one is generally a little better for stock - not great though. I'll pay extra for that versus buying online, in order to support bricks and mortar shops. I'll also pay for the instant gratification of walking out of the shop with what I want.

The trouble that Maplins and other retailers, such as as Currys, have is that they don't often stuff in stock. If you're lucky there's a display unit and they offer to order it in. At that point I might as well order online - the whole point of an actual shop is being able to buy things...

Taken a while but finally here's the first proper smart-home gizmo

seanb-uk

Taken a while?

This is supposed to be a breakthrough because it allows us to mix and match products?

I'd say you should take another look at Samsung SmartThings. The hub has radios for both Z-Wave and Zigbee and can work with Hue (and I daresay Ikea, if not now then soon). It's not the only general purpose hub that can tie together different products and protocols, and it's been around at least a couple of years now.

UCam247 tells El Reg most of its cams aren't vulnerable to GET vuln

seanb-uk

Finding the firmware

This is a great response. I'd be happier with their products after seeing a response like that.

I hope it's easy to track down the firmware though. I know for some camera models it's a nightmare of broken links, poor documentation, confusion over whether you can go straight to the latest release or have to apply each iteration in sequence and the risk of bricking your device.

If UCam247 do a better job than the others in that respect as well, I'll be even more impressed.

GET pwned: Web CCTV cams can be hijacked by single HTTP request

seanb-uk

Re: Junk IoT

Did you find a good option?

I'm trying Hikvision, but I'm blocking them from the internet. I'm using ZoneMinder on a Linux box as the front end, so the only thing I've got accessible over the internet is the server.