Posts by silks

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

Re: That probably explains..

Samsung's phones also have batteries that aren't user replaceable, it's not just Apple.

Seems like a fair technique to manage the declining performance of tired Lithium Ion cells, but Apple could have been upfront about the issue or even provided a toggle setting to switch this feature on/off.

'Please store the internet on this floppy disk'

Printer Power

The non-connected printer story reminds me of when I worked for a company that let's say distributes power nationaly maybe using a grid system.

Engineer visiting a substation called in to complain that his printer wasn't working. After going through some troubleshooting it became clear that the printer wasn't powered on. Irony here being that the guy was surrounded by 400kV but none of it getting anywhere near the printer.

ATM fees shake-up may push Britain towards cashless society

Here's an update from the LINK ATM network, 14th December: https://www.link.co.uk/about/news/link-announces-strengthening-the-financial-inclusion-programme/

Re: Link ATM?

The ATM operator receives a fee for every balance enquiry which is paid for by your card issuer so they're incentivised to push that service.

'I knew the company was doomed after managers brawled in a biker bar'

Story from a private school in the 1950's - someone in the science lab connected a rubber tube between the gas tap and the water tap. The higher pressure of water compared to the gas meant that the gas main became flooded.

EE Business Broadband digital transformation: Portal offline until July

The effects of BT ownership starting to show here?

WPA2 security in trouble as KRACK Belgian boffins tease key reinstallation bug

Re: Firmware update or OS?

Reckon the vuln is in the WPA2 protocol itself rather than in the implementation so it's unlikely there will be any update available?

Lenovo spits out retro ThinkPads for iconic laptop's 25th birthday

Re: Desktop Keyboards @AC

The legendary IBM Model M keyboard - in good condition they're worth a few hundred pounds on a popular auction site.

123-Reg customers outraged at automatic .UK domain registration

Leaving

We have some legacy domains with 123-Reg at work, I'll be migrating these to another registrar shortly :)

Cynical revenue raising attempt, luckily I saw the email and disabled the .UK registrations in Control Panel. These kind of tricks hardly make punters think better of 123-reg.

Itching to stuff iOS 11 on your iPhone? You may want to hold off for a bit

iOS 11 Features

There's maybe more benefit here for the iPad (dock), but Files app handy for both iPad and iPhone :)

iPad & iPhone Upgraded OK

Upgraded two iPads to iOS 11 on release day, no problems. One account (iPad Pro, mine) used 2FA, the other (iPad Air toddler's) no 2FA, both upgraded no problems.

Day 2, upgraded iPhone 7 (2FA enabled account), no problems seen so far :)

Chinese smartphone cable-maker chucks sueball at Apple

Those are Apple's rules, and no third party has to play the game if they don't want to.

Build good products, get certified or don't bother! Just don't complain.

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

I do sympathise with this view, but often a client visit means travelling/working/travelling unsociable hours for no additional pay. Maybe that's part of the job description but a coffee and a bun at a motorway service area isn't a big price for a corporate to pay.

Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

RFI-directional-radar-tastic-EMC!

US vending machine firm plans employee chip implant scheme

I'm ready to make a large deposit...

Apple hurls out patches for dozens of security holes in iOS, macOS

Good News!

Seems like good news, Apple sorting some vulns.

Not understanding some nagatives on the Reg forum - timely updates from Apple for users who bought devices many years ago seems like good news?

Brits must now register virtually all new drones and undergo safety tests

Drone Crims Beware!

Oh yeah, that'll definitely constrain the drone crims then :(

IETF moves meeting from USA to Canada to dodge Trump travel ban

Tricky

Not sure this will help #MAGA :(

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

Microsoft Paint Privacy

Surely MS can find some way to monetise Paint with some privacy-invading tech in Win10?

Sweden leaked every car owners' details last year, then tried to hush it up

Reassuring

Reassuring to know this isn't just the UK Government outsource experience :)

User filed fake trouble tickets to take helpful sysadmin to lunches

Re: Has a customer ever apologised to you?

Had an engineer call me from a substation who couldn't get their laptop to print. No remote diagnostics "back in the day" but I (fairly) quickly established that the engineer hadn't plugged the printer's power lead in. The irony of having no power where many KV was readily available...

UK government's war on e-cigs is over

Medical Community - "Not Invented Here"

Wonder if it's all about the medical community having the "Not Invented Here" mentality?

Some medical industry movers would rather not have these "upstarts" disrupting their business model I'm sure...

Repairable-by-design Fairphone runs out of spare parts

Re: Why on earth didn't they just use standard components?

Yep, hard to see that there's a yawning gap in the market here.

UK ministers' Broadband '2.0' report confuses superfast with 10Mbps

How about ISPs charge for the speed/latency as actually delivered/measured, that would give them and OpenBreach an incentive to perform better :)

FUKE NEWS: Robot snaps inside drowned Fukushima nuke plant

Re: Grainy images?

Probably grainy as the photo-enabled robots keep breaking down due to radioactivity levels - apparently breaking down much quicker than expected. Tough environment to take a photo there!

Virgin Media broadband latency headaches still not fixed six months on

Re: Subjective

A very useful service, I use it across multiple broadband accounts which offers a really handy way of comparing performance too. Helps to answer the "is it just me" question!

I had a SuperHub 3 for a few days in order to get VM's 300Mbit/s service, but with the latency issue it performed slower and with less stability than with 200Mbit/s on a SuperHub 2. Even modem mode with a decent Asus router to do the heavy lifting didn't help. Went back to SH2 200Mbit/s in the end.

Nationwide’s online banking goes down again

Indeed, for most customer's it's a "free" service and the downtime is normally minimal and outside of core hours. In very complex banking IT environments sometimes things do go wrong and at least Nationwide used social media to provide updates.

Stop all news – it's time for us plebs to be told about BBC paycheques!

How many episodes of Casualty compared to Dr Who worked in the year though? The data doesn't show the hours worked, on or off screen so really hard to compare the value of the on screen talent compared to their renumeration.

Re: Scrutiny...

Looks like she gets £500K for co-presenting the One Show. Not sure that's great value for the BBC tax payer.

Who thinks Alan Yentob is genuinely worth £12.5K per episode of "Imagine"?

Fair enough we need to look at gender pay gaps, but the data presented doesn't make allowance for the number of appearances, number of shows, time spent preparing, audience figures the "stars" draw in - how are we supposed to compare the on screen talent's value to the viewer regardless of gender when the data is presented in this way?

Vodafone reports sliding revenues but customers don't hate them as much

Vodafone perform consistently poorly in the UK in Rootrmetrics.com independent testing for their network performance relative to their main rivals. Reflects my real world experience too - moved to EE when 4G first came out and didn't look back.

Vodafone used to play on their wide usage by the emergency services but I suspect this is for their relatively good 2G network and not for today's ever increasing needs/expectations of a 3G/4G network.

Openreach kicks off 'rebrand' by painting over BT logo on vans

Re: Costs?

Lots, I suspect. Coming to a BT Broadband invoice near you soon :(

Hey Reg - no picture of the new logo in your article just to show how awesome/awful it might be?

Virgin Media biz service goes TITSUP* across London

Indeed, and well spotted :)

Surely councils would have a backup link(s) with another provider that would seamlessly fail over...

Microsoft hits Alt-F4 on 3,000 global sales staff

Maybe MS products are so compelling that they sell themselves...

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