Posts by DuncanLarge

UK is 'not a surveillance state' insists minister defending police face recog tech

Hmm

Lets all buy shirts like these and see how facial recognition handles it:

https://images.app.goo.gl/tKNpWYhb8d4RC8gq8

NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...

So they cost NASA 700m

They get away paying back a small percentage of it.

I'd sue for the full amount. I dont care if they have to flip burgers and drive a car worth £100 as scrap, I'd want it all.

We regret to inform you the massive asteroid NASA's all excited about probably won't hit Earth

Re: What's in a name?

"started his talk with "Jaffa Kree" followed by "OK not many understood that one""

What?

Oh god now I feel old.

Re: Hoarding?

Assuming we are allowed to leave on hug a Zombie day.

Re: Save the date!

Its a trap!

Buying a second-hand hard drive on eBay? You've got a 'one in two' chance of finding personal info still on it

Re: I read that the UK MoD has the following policy...

I'm sure the stairs had.

It's an Easter Jesus miracle: MS Paint back from the dead (ish) and in Windows 10 'for now'

Re: Basic, simple tools

I use notepad every day. I browse to a website that is full of adverts,

CTRL+A

CTRL+C

Open notepad

CTRL+V

Read with no flashing distractions. Ok the text sometimes is a bit messy but I dont care, I can read around that.

Re: "34-year-old program"

"We haven't tinkered with this for a while...let's "improve" it"

God that mentality is everywhere! The code works, everything works, it looks good and consistent between the past major versions. But we need to sell it more, to make more money. We cant easily add planned obsolescence to it all the time so lets just revamp the UI! Remove the long used functions, especially the really useful ones that only a small % of users actually use. Add support for Javascript in the file format, we'll worry about a sandbox later, much later.

Lets do it because we can. We can test it when we roll it out to the real users, bye bye in house testers (this happened to me). Its never finished, just like when Lucas had Star Wars. IT CAN NEVER FINISH, IT CAN NEVER BE STABLE AND MAINTAINED.

I remember a scifi story (I think it was a series of books) that were set on some huge starship. The crew were a generational one and maintained/improved the ship over many generations as needed. They had code going back hundreds of years, maintained and running. Unfortunately I cant remember whet the series or author was.

Re: Function over form

"No-one actually uses Paint to paint anything, it's a simple program that loads very quickly (Paint 3D does NOT)"

Totally agree.

It suggests that MS really have no clue as to how users use windows. Hey MS, we are NOT launching paint to make jerky mouse drawn doodles. We did that as kids, and kids may do that with Paint 3D to entertain themselves. As adults we use paint for different use cases and we chose it because it is small and light and loads the moment you need it.

Why I love paint

I press Alt+PrintScr

I click cortana and type paint.

I press ctrl+v when paint is open.

File->Save

Screenshot taken.

I prefer that to launching that slightly annoying snipping tool.

Re: It's good enough

"Leave it alone."

They didnt leave notepad alone. They actually improved it by adding support for UNIX line endings!

No more will you need to launch wordpad and try and convince it to not save in the borked by MS RTF format.

Re: Nostalgia?

Paint 3D

When I fist saw it I was thinking "what the hell is this cr*p". I dont have a 3D monitor, or glasses, so why would Paint need to do anything in 3D?

I started thinking that this was some early 2000's idea that finally made its way out of limbo. Some "advanced" painting app that cant shake a stick at The Gimp but bigs itself up like all that software from Ulead that we used to morph photos with but ended up being ultimately useless.

Windows 10 May 2019 Update thwarted by obscure tech known as 'external storage'

Re: How To Recover Volume Names

"A,"B, and C being dedicated to special uses"

Yes. Thats assuming your A and C drive remain your A and C drive after you install this update.

Assuming your C drive remains your C drive you should be able to boot windows and follow the steps you listed to correct the remapping of your A drive to your internal D drive and your Z F and H drives that have all been remapped and broken several bits of software including the backup software that decided you no longer had any backed up files as your Z drive suddenly had none, so it gets re-inventoried clearing the database thus making you go through your steps and then re-inventory drive Z that takes quite a while.

During your re-inventory your H drive suddenly dies. Simple bad luck. But you need to wait for the inventory to finish before recovering your project files, for a project that needs submitting for approval in 4 hours. After restoring the files, with 1 hour left to go, you discover to your dismay that the 1903 update was forced upon you before your backup software snapshotted your last couple of hours work.

Had the H drive not died it would be fine. Now however, thanks to MS using you as a test case, you must miss your deadline.

Thankyou microsoft.

Re: Oh FGS!!!*!*##

"You might be set for a long wait if you refuse to use any release that has major faults."

Oh dont worry about little old me. I can take it.

I started with Debian 3.0 Woody. Took 3 years to get the 3.1 Sarge update for that. Then 2 years after that till Debian 4 came out.

I'm also getting older. Easter? I still think christmas was a few weeks ago. Trust me, I can wait till 1803 no longer gets patches. :)

Re: An awful lot of software still depends on drive letters?

Try typing "findmnt"

Re: Working fine for me

D: makes no sense, emoticons are read left->right not right->left with some mental twisting to turn the mouth the right way round lol.

Some more examples:

:) is better than ):

:p is better than p:

lol p: looks like someone trying to lick their nose.

D: = Is it crying??

:D

aaaand right at the last min I realise everyone thought it was a miss-spelled drive letter :D

Nope, its an emoticon :D :D :) ;)

Well this would presume you only have 1 internal drive?

I'm not too bothered by the renaming of external drives as I dont necessarily trust them to be static anyway but mixing up internal drive letters just seems a bit much for a mass deployed update to the general population of users.

Corporate users can sit back and watch it all get fixed before they commit. But why, when I actually spent £70 on a copy of win 10 for a brand new build should I have to put up with not being allowed to do the same? MS are going to let normal users chose to defer the updates for a short time but will it be long enough?

You can also set a filesystem label. That can be entered into the fstab and will work fine.

Re: Working fine for me

Lol I noticed that typo after the edit window expired.

I suppose a RV can bake :D

Re: Do you work for "You are holding it wrong" Apple?

"Windows Update has been borked for years."

Oh lol I totally forgot about how you cant install win 7 and update it fully without manually finding a MS KB article with a manually installed update that fixes windows update to download the next several hundred updates.

Re: Amiga days.....

Same here although I did start with DOS and moved to GNU/Linux.

Once I got used to the single directory structure of UNIX like OS' I looked at windows and wondered how I survived.

Sure, you have to do a little more work to identify what physical drives/partitions are mounted where when you need to know but it just seems so much neater.

Re: Can we have a....

419.42

Calculated using GNU date. Assuming 1803 came out on 20180301, which it probably didnt but I cba to google it :D

Re: Working fine for me

"but bad workmen always blame their tools, right?"

Right, how is a normal user (not a windows OS developer) able to improve the OS' ability to maintain drive C: as drive C: when a USB HDD is plugged in when they want to edit the video their mate has just recorded for their youtube channel?

How are their skills able to avoid the mess and resulting blue screen?

So yes, they CAN blame their tools when the tools are faulty and not fit for purpose.

So you would be happy to not blame a hammer that was made out of metal grey painted rock hard stale bread? If it fails as a hammer, its your fault is it?

Do you apply the same logic to the ability of your new car to bake?

Do you work for "You are holding it wrong" Apple?

Oh FGS!!!*!*##

Run, run away!

Stop being their beta testers. They suck up your data, then find out they broke a standard function of every MS OS since the days of DOS by TESTING IT ON YOU.

Ever heard of a regression test? We are their regression test.

They didt even pay you for it. You had to give up your time and enjoy some inconvenience just so they could go "Oh yes! I remember now! Drives have drive letters and every OS we ever released relies on certain drives being assigned reserved letters".

Jesus, this is like having a router supplied by your ISP kill your internet because it didnt reserve its own IP address and decided to assign a DHCP lease for it to your mates mobile phone when he popped round, thus making your mates mobile the strangely silent gateway for your LAN.

Run away.

Go to Linux.

Go to Mac.

Heck try a Chromebook.

I'm using Win 10 1803 now, at work. It works well enough. We have limited ability to control the updates in our corporate environment. I was skipping 1809 as it destroyed data and kept getting recalled. Some of our users were updated to it, but I have steadfastly refused. I'm the IT Systems Technician here and the only way I'm letting 1809 in my laptop is if I'm forced to by external forces such as PCI compliance.

I was going to go straight to 1903. Then I saw this article. I will install 1903 when 1909 or 2003 comes out.

At home I use Debian. So I'm happy to trade bleeding edge features for stability.

Now here's a Galaxy far, far away: Samsung stalls Fold rollout after fold-able screens break in hands of reviewers

Re: A total failure

Just pointing out that the devices in The Expanse were not like our smartphones. They had limited processing power and storage and were made to be cheap, almost disposable, interfaces to a local network providing all the services etc.

They were basically the handheld/holographic version of a chromebook.

Your data would follow you between networks/ships with some local storage and processing possible on the "hand terminal" when you had no connection etc.

Re: A total failure

"but in the end we might get a foldable phone that works."

Why would I want a fold-able phone? I'd prefer a fold-able car, able to have bits folded away at the push of a button to fit (or drive out of) a tight parking space made tight by the guy who cant park.

However. I WOULD love a fold-able phone that is as thin as a few sheets of A4 paper when unfolded, folds down to a pocket-able size from a fully unfolded A4 size.

Even better would be a fold-able e-ink display in the same format allowing me to have an A4 sized kindle with smartphone functions that folds into a device I can put in my pocket that only is as thick as a standard smartphone when folded.

Re: What happened to testing?

"I thought this was more generally part of the Agile process..."

I really hope that thats not the case and car manufacturers dont start applying (fr)agile development models to new car designs.

I'd rather not be the unwitting alpha tester of the ABS braking system.

Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days

Well

I was going to have a go at them for thinking they could moan about it after peeling off the protective film that the instructions tell you to leave on.

Ok, ok I know people will assume its removable as they can be confused with the factory fitted protected film. But you are a REVIEWER of a device that incorporates new technology. You really dont think you should have read the instructions first? Thats part of the review process isnt it?

If I was suddenly given a flying car I wouldnt assume I could jump into it and drive about, then discover I was supposed to fold the wings in first.

Samsung now know their testing dept need to be told how to think like a person who does not know what dead trees are used for, then they could put a DONT REMOVE ME sticker on it :)

Anyway, the fact that this film does not prevent the failure when left on the device suggests that samsung could do with employing testers that actually know how to use a phone day to day and have them use it as their main personal phone for a whole month with the reward of being allowed to keep it ;)

Let 15 July forever be known as P-Day: When UK's smut fans started being asked for their age

Slippery slope

"We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online"

Who decides whats safe today?

Who decides whats safe tomorrow?

When pr0n is declared non-safe, what will take its place as the latest unsafe "protect the children" emergency?

Knives and their use, dangerous sports like football, cheap Chinese li-ion batteries, civil disobedience, bacon?

Thinking about how dangerous these things are to kids:

1. Pr0n, makes kids learn how humans interact. Makes kids ask questions to parents who cant get over the embarrassment to teach them why its there, why it costs money, how its mostly exaggerated to increase exceitemnt of the viewer (just like in those toy and sweet ads kids).

2. Knives, yes, dont carry one unless you are preparing meat for the dish and when doing so NEVER RUN WITH IT.

3. Sports. Wear the safety equipment when told to. When not told to just dont be stupid. Accidents happen.

4. Cheap li-ion batteries. Dont put them in your pockets.

5. Civil disobedience. Its a bad idea to glue yourself to a DLR train.

6. Bacon. Will ever so slightly increase your chances of getting cancer if you eat it all the time.

Why cant my ISP just block access till I call them and enable it? My ISP knows a lot more about me than I generally would like but at least its limited to them and not some ageid bods employed in china who can see me access blahblah.com for my personal time then call me on my landline when they start work in the other call centre telling me they know that site has infected my PC and they were told by microsoft to log on and fix it.

Did someone forget to tell NTT about Brexit? Japanese telco eyes London for global HQ

Re: Ha

"When Hard Brexit comes, how much will trade slow down now that every lorry will need to be inspected for proper paperwork?"

Why would we want to do that?

Do you think some jobsworth in the gov is going to get away with doing that just because the clocks changed at midnight? They would be strung up.

Honestly think man. They are OUR ports, controlled by OUR say so. Nothing will change the very next second after midnight on the 31st of Oct. Why?

What rules changed between us and the EU at 1am on the 1st of Nov? None. Not a single one. We have already implemented everything they have and have done so for 40 years. Every standard they have is ours. Every truck coming out of the EU and entering our ports is of EU origin so why the hell would any stops need to be done?

Any changes to the process would be implemented over a longer period of time as time moves on our rules may diverge. But not the next day! Not the next 2 months!

Oh and btw, bit of news for you about a new technology you havnt heard of. Its called a computer connected to the internet. A wonderful device. Basically, and try to keep calm when I tell you this, these magical things have eliminated paperwork! Most trucks these days dont carry bits of dead tree to be checked, unless as a backup for when the computer is broken.

Another bit of homework for you. How fast does trade get off the ships when it lands at Southampton? Trade from outside the EU? Hint, those internet connected computers are bloody fast little things.

Only someone who has a death wish would instruct our own ports to check EU trucks the day after brexit. Any delay would have their name plastered in all the papers. Think man.

Easter is approaching – and British pr0n watchers still don't know how long before age-gates come into force

Re: how about a simpler system

But not a landline. The OP is talking about landlines.

Mobile providers disable access to adult sites unless you prove your age by having a credit card. Hence I have no access to such sites on my phone as I cant be assed to give them my details (considering last time I did it they charged £2 to my card and failed to remove the blocks).

New UK counter-terror laws come into force today – watch those clicks, people. You see, terrorist propag... NOOO! Alexa ignore us!

Re: Best excuse ever to not do your homework...

"I sincerely apologize, Mr. Teacher, but I couldn't do my homework because virtually all the information you wanted me to look up is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Teacher: But all I asked you was to take a photo of the local fire station and the local library for your presentation on local services and amenities.

Pupil: Yes but the terrorist would need to know the details of the fire station as it would be a target for maximising damage done by fire and the library has books in it that can describe any number of subjects that can assist. It even has maps that coupled with a basic GPS or even a magnetic compass allow distances and ranges to be calculated!

Teacher: ...

Tor

Ok now I have a reason to put up with the latency of using Tor. Use it to protect me from an accidental click or a intentionally mis-titled video. Or even a news website in another country that has published a map of a location considered a bit more sensitive in the UK so is seen as useful for use by a terrorist in the UK only...

Perhaps we should switch back to Gopher.

As Alexa's secret human army is revealed, we ask: Who else has been listening in on you?

https://www.xkcd.com/525/

I gave up thinking of a title.

- No smart TV that has anything other than a wifi adapter to load BBC iplayer (its from 2012)

- No smart doorbell. My doorbell is a wireless one but I'd prefer to reactivate the wired doorbell I have on the wall (sounds better).

- No smart meter. Good luck installing one, that huge Yucca plant is very protective of its space ;)

- All webcams physically disabled or covered over. Built in microphones on devices that I done need to talk to are removed or covered over.

The most smart thing I have in my house is my Samsung phone and a couple of tablets. I intend on dealing with those on a case by case basis.

What are we calling these things smart? It doesnt seem very smart to have them does it?

Even better, avoid the streaming apps with all their default permissions by buying physical media.

Last time I shouted at a blu-ray for being in the wrong case it just bounced the sound right back at me, according to the laws of physics.

If I had turned the disc around I would have been looking at the person I should have been shouting at for putting the disc in the wrong case.

Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly

Grass?

Are they really still subjecting poor innocent grass to the punishment of human feet needlessly stomping on it?

Surely I thought we had all switched to AstroTurf TM

:P

However maybe that would dry better?

BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame

Oh if only...

If only the message was:

"Floppy disk error (40)"

:)

Google Pay tells Euro users it has ditched UK for Ireland ahead of Brexit

Re: TL;DR

We were F*CKED when Google decided to ignore its "dont be evil" mantra.

I vote Googexit!

Bit nippy, is it? Hive smart home users find themselves tweaking thermostat BY HAND

Re: What your smart meter can do

"A mouse click removes power until demands are met"

Unless the household has a basic line-powered land line phone I wonder how they will contact the supplier to argue.

Their mobile devices will die after a day or so of having no charge. Their wifi is dead. DECT cordless phones are dead.

Hmm the payphone at the end of the road is dead/turned into something else. Working payphones are all the way in the town centre.

Neighbors still haven't started talking to you after your cat shat in their garden and you both ended up having heated words, no chance of using their phones then.

My god, cutting off power these days would really be an effective way to force people to do what they are told, even if you are a supplier miss-selling things, overcharging etc.

I have a nice big tall prickly Yucca plant standing like a sentinel right in front of my outdoor meter. They will have to contend with that should they try and install a smart meter. I work in IT and there is no way in hell I'm having a smart anything controlling something that critical.

"Gas pressure is maintained by gasometers, which work by gravity, so pressure will stay up until the gasometer is empty"

There is no gasholder infrastructure in the UK at all. All the gas in the pipes is all the gas we have.

They are all mothballed. None of them are in use any more and are usually listed, demolished (the 3 that sat next to my workplace went last year :( or they get turned into flats.

Of course I think that getting rid of them is a pathetically stupid idea. You cant underrate emergency capacity, but apparently someone thought that the pipes are enough. I remember hearing during the beast from the east that the pipe capacity was being pushed to its limits, I turned to look at the gasholders being demolished outside my window and thought I was in a sitcom.

Brexit jitters fingered as UK consumer PC sales collapse

Whats a computer?

:P

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

Re: Random thoughts on this sad situation

"I, and many, many ex-pats were not even entitled to vote due to being abroad too long, yet are still impacted by all this total crap. I wonder how many folks for example working happily in European institutions for many years, will lose their job, simply because they don't belong to an EU country anymore? How many with holiday homes abroad or retired somewhere warm, will be impacted, possibly due to laws concerning non-EU ownership, or even simply the GBP-EUR exchange rate?"

Oh dear god.

NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE NONE

Try turning on the TV once in a while and watching the news. Its not 2017 any more.

Re: EU ≠ EEC

"Edward Heath's leaflet"

Do you mean this tiny little section of the Illustrated LONDON news from 1972. I'm sure that everyone read that.

https://goo.gl/images/KYKHrz

"when claims that leaving the EU didn't mean having to leave the single market or customs union turned out to be another lie"

What claims?

I never wanted to remain in any part of the EU. Leave meant leaving. I was actually surprised when I found out about some things that were NOT part of the EU such as the ECJ.

I was not an expert on the EU by any means and yet I knew I was leaving anything they had implemented. How on earth would someone not know that the customs union for example was an EU mechanism?

Unless you are a child perhaps. When I was a child, for many years I was convinced that teachers did not get paid. They were simply teachers and teaching was not a job, just what they did. When they went on strike in the 90's and I asked how that was possible I was shocked to discover that teaching was a profession, that I could even go into myself.

Maybe others did not learn that lesson and continue to think that things like the CU and the common market have simply always existed, always will and just are? Of course thats a sarcastic remark as I'm hoping it isnt true.

Go here instead

This one is more worth voting on:

https://www.change.org/p/keith-fraser-commemorate-only-fools-and-horses-nelson-mandela-house-before-its-demolition?recruiter=941579558&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

Re: Can you blame us?

The EU are just as much to blame.

Constantly asking what we want. When we tell them we want, to renegotiate the backstop, they say "the deal is sealed and is non-negotiable". They then watch us squirm trying to fix it and ask us again what we want while emoting for the cameras to make it seem like they are the ones to pity. We tell them we need to look at the backstop, they say its non-negotiable.

Who can sort out a problem with a deal when one of the parties is acting in a very immature and stubborn way? Its like trying to ask a taxi driver to drop you the road next to the one you originally asked for only for them to tell you to shut up and put up.

If the EU were decent enough to sit down and actually talk with May about what would need to be done to the deal to make parliament and the 27 member states happy it would have been a lot smoother I bet.

Re: The only conspiracy @JoshOvki

"does it still exist?"

Yes its now an automated task performed by windows every so often unless you have an SSD in which case its replaced by a trim.

We don't want to be Latch key-less kids: NYC tenants sue landlords for bunging IoT 'smart' lock on their front door

Oops

I cant open the front door because:

- Dang, my data just ran out.

- The Apple/Android boot logo wont go away.

- My phone case did nothing to protect the screen when I sneezed and dropped it. I cant tap any digits above 5 on the keypad.

- Battery died when it said 40% remaining.

- Battery died. Nobody else at school has an android, anyone with USB cables only had USB C cables and the wireless charging pad at Mc Donalds was switched off.

- My phone exploded at school due to that cheap chinese charger I got from the thrift store.

- My phone was confiscated by my teacher when I kept checking insta. DIdnt get it back after school as her water broke and went into labor. Dad is away on business and mum works till very late.

- When I start the app, it crashes.

- My mate tried to upgrade my Android to a custom rom to speed it up. Now its in a thing called a boot loop.

- The app needs an update, is 20MB in size and I have only 10MB of data left. Oh and my phone doesnt connect to wifi after I dropped it in the loo.

Funny how a bit of jagged metal that twists in a receptacle, or an NFC fob / card dont seem to have these complications.