Posts by dnicholas

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

Re: Today's Taskmanager

I'm actually amazed at the boot times of Server 16 onward. Sometimes I have to double check servers actually rebooted

Fella accused of ripping off Cisco, Amazon, iRobot, others to the tune of $2m by fraudulently demanding replacements for tech gear

The good news is that scientists have cracked aging so everyone can live forever. Bad news is you're going down for 825 years

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

I'm giving up skydiving again. 30 years straight

Sophos was gearing up for a private life – then someone remembered the bike scheme

To the lawyers

On ye bike

Google burns down more than 500 private-data-stealing, ad-defrauding Chrome extensions installed by 1.7m netizens

Hypocrisy

Only Google are allowed at the trough

Come to Five Guys, where the software is as fresh as the burgers... or maybe not

Re: Slightly off-topic

Surely that just means leaving the cleanroom every 5 minutes to check the time left on your shift? Maybe this is why Intel 10nm was (is) so borked!

Uncle Sam tells F-35B allies they'll have to fly the things a lot more if they want to help out around South China Sea

Most adversaries would be in ruin before any air combat ensues

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

>>And if it turns out to be someone OVER IT's head, like an executive?

An executive, running Linux? There must be an endangered list for such a unicorn like beast

Reinventing the wheel

Or rather, reinventing roaming profiles. Only problem is, roaming profiles suck

Google scolded for depriving the poor of privacy as Chinese malware bundled on phones for hard-up Americans

Re: Google's at risk

VPN tunnel to an at home PiHole sorts most of that...

The post Google future of having to buy a phone OS like Windows in order for the software maker to stay in business might just come true but it's probably worth it to take back a little privicy.

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

Backups in 2020 are still important

The Cloud: Just Someone Else's Shitty Computer

Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

Re: Agggghhhh!

If you're not American, America probably is a foreign adversary. Maybe not today but all it takes is a Twitter spat with the Toddler in Chief

EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield V, Penguinistas respond by demanding crippling boycott

Re: "ban people based on their legit OS and legit game"

> I wonder if the game is legit - or they are using an illegal copy

With Battlefield 3 onward you are really paying for a user account to get into the server browser. Doesn't really matter to EA where you got the executable and content files as long as they match and you have a paid up account

The horror

Being free of Windows and EA games? Oh, the humanity!

Pair charged with murder, manslaughter after IBM Aspera boffin killed in New Year's Eve laptop theft struggle

Re: A sad story

In the heat of the moment, it's hard to predict how you'd react :(

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

Re: It still doesn't sound like a smoking gun...

I'm going with "didn't bother to check". Not sure how promotional tin amounted to so much as to cause the huge drop in valuation though. It's mind boggling*

*Haven't been following closely and $8.8bn buys a lot of tin

Intel teases NUC-leheads with new desktop-class graphics systems and a fast i9 CPU

I would be interested if it didn't have an Intel CPU

Speccing up a Velcase Velka 3 build for my mancave at the moment, that too can take a full size GPU at <4l displacment. The need for FlexATX or slightly more exotic DC-DC power supply is a bit of a pain though...

R.E. commentators above, SFF cases are usually described by displacement in small form factor aficionado circles

Late $440m Christmas present for HP: Judge triples damages windfall from Quanta in CD-ROM drive price-fix showdown

Bravo!

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

Re: Shirly?

You wouldn't need such an accounting system if your transactional mechanism had validation built in, even over dialup this can be done periodically and at very least flag anomalies if it gets stuck

Shirly?

At the every least you have a database at each end then you reconcile database rows by transaction ID IF your coding is that schoolboy level

IT consultant who deleted every account on UK company Jet2's domain cops 5 months in jail

Re: Negligence

That was this wanker's job

Are you writing code for ambient computing? No? Don't even know? Ch-uh. Google's 'write once, run anywhere' Flutter is all over it

Re: Great solution!

Not enough useless IoT widgets in landfill, apparently

Oracle leaves its heart in San Francisco – or it would do if, you know, Oracle had a heart

Vegas

The only place in the world you can score blow, a hooker, an STD and gamble your life away on S/4HANA in 20 minutes flat.

Worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable and royalty-free: Amazon's Alexa NHS contract released

Everything's fine

We really need the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkey icons

Xerox woos HP stock owners with talk of layoffs, selloffs and cash payouts post merger

Savings

Start with the management please.

Apple tipped to go full wireless by 2021, and you're all still grumbling about a headphone jack

Free!!?

>>For example, will punters have to buy their own wireless chargers, or will Apple supply them for free with new devices?

With the £1200 fondleslab? Probably

Ad network ransomware crook to flog £5k Rolex after court confiscates £270k in ill-gotten gains

Re: Almost there

£5k deposit on a flat? Have you escaped from the 1980s?

Two can play that game: China orders ban on US computers and software

Re: Typical Chinese

Thank the lord the US has a level headed POTUS who can Make America Great Again without the Chinese...

I suspect Trump's Twitter tantrums have only accelerated China's plans. China don't need more American IP, they won't need Korean DRAM or NAND at all soon either. POTUS knows what he's doing though. His bigly intellect has allowed him to see through the charade

Escobar Fold 1 snort all it's cracked up to be: Readers finger similarity to slated Chinese mobe

>> We've reached out to Escobar Inc for clarification. If we hear back, and nobody kills us for asking too many questions, we'll update this article. ®

Dead men tell no tales

Pablo Escobar's brother is Medellín in the foldable phone biz, sniffing out new markets

Certainly not to be sniffed *on*

That fold will snarf all the dust it can get

Stand back, we're going in: The Register rips a 7th-gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon apart. Literally

Re: Who actually needs the talking to?

I had an ideapad once that I swapped they key and soft modded the layout (Sharkey's, iirc) as I couldn't get on with it...

Googlers fired after tracking colleagues working on US border cop projects. Now, if they had monetized that stalking...

Hypocrisy

It's ok if the snarf gun is pointed at Joe Public though

No wonder Bezos wants to move industry into orbit: In space, no one can hear you* scream

In space, nobody can hear

you pee your space pants

Bose customers beg for firmware ceasefire after headphones fall victim to another crap update

That'd be Microsoft (and Apple) fudged then

Dead or alive, you're camming with me, says RoboPup: Bomb squad hires Boston Dynamics Spot to snoop on suspects, packages

Sheesh

Just put an autocannon on it already

Found on Mars: Alien insects... or whatever the hell this smudge is supposed to be, anyway

Re: No oxygen

You CAN see mars with the naked eye, but on a clear night, and depending upon where it's at in its orbit

Ants

Ants, ANTS all over my body!

Can't you hear me knocking? But I installed a smart knocker

"Smart" homes and appliances just allow for dumber people.

Magic Leap rattles money tin, assigns patents to a megabank, sues another ex-staffer... But fear not, all's fine

I got some magic beans for sale

Weird flex but OK... Motorola's comeback is a $1,500 Razr flip-phone with folding 6.2" screen

All style, no substance

Had an original back in the day, briefly. Realised how pants it was as a device and swapped it for a Nokia something or other, which actually was pleasant to use

Fancy renting your developer environment? Visual Studio goes online

Re: Not for me

Hear, hear

Not there, where!?

Facebook iOS app silently turns on your phone camera. Ah, relax – it's just a bug, lol!?

"Bug"

The bug was that it was supposed to be the front camera

One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark

We've all been there...

...(over)confidently bashing a command in the ...(wrong)terminal window

Leeds IT bloke pleads guilty to hacking Jet2 CEO's email account

Re: "statistically speaking, he is unlikely to end up behind bars"

Nah he can do the infosec speaking circuit for a while. Might even be able to get some cash out of BoJo is he survives

AT&T: We did nothing wrong in promising unlimited data that wasn't. We're just giving the FTC $60m for fun

Re: Money can't buy you love

Exactly. How much of their profit is from misleading customers in the first place? Fines just become an operating expense to monopolistic corporations. Then they shaft captive customers harder.

Three UK does it again: Random folk on network website are still seeing others' account data

Typo

"fewer than 10(million) customers"

US Air Force inks deal with Raytheon on Windows 10 (and other) support for ARSE

You really don't want your missile rebooting for an update midway to its target

Top American watchdog refuses to release infamous 2012 dossier into Google’s anti-competitive behavior

Re: Splendid response

They'll also get in bed with China if the price is right