* Posts by terrythetech

122 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Aug 2017

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British motorists will be allowed to watch TV in self-driving vehicles

terrythetech

Re: Step #1, define your terms

It's technical not legal. The car can control the video feed and warn the driver, it can't control a mobile phone.

terrythetech

Re: Too early.

That is all very impressive but if the vehicle following doesn't have the auto braking tech? How long does it take to stop a truck full of rock/ballast?

However, auto distancing should be fitted to every vehicle now - I live near the A27 and regularly see extreme tailgating at speed limit (70mph, or even greater?). Will have to visit with my radar gun sometime and see.

I cross that road as a pedestrian - no rerouting of footpaths round here. They build a dual carriageway and keep the footpath position! The road is quit bendy so usually I have to run across the 2 lanes to be safe.

Have you tried restarting? Reinstalling? Upgrading? Moving house and changing your identity?

terrythetech
Unhappy

Re: Ah the joy of customer service scripts

Yeah, now Plusnet, frequently screws up. I now discover from the forum (no I didn't find an answer to my problem there) that they are intending to drop email in March. FSCKers!

Microsoft brings Jenny, Aria, and more interface tweaks to new Windows 11 Insider build

terrythetech

Banksy

https://flickr.com/photos/oemebamo/3695925672

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

terrythetech

Re: Life goes on...

And email being unencrypted can be read and filed for future use by Google - and will be. Google do like profiling people. Personally I don't even use Google for search, their recommendations, sorry search results, are dependent on my previous searches.

One-size-fits-all chargers? What a great idea! Of course Apple would hate it

terrythetech
FAIL

So

When will Apple be insisting that we have a non standard Apple designed mains socket to plug their chargers into.

Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

terrythetech
Linux

Start

Well yes, I get your point but most users want usability and don't really care what's under the hood. I don't use Windows any more - thankfully (it is living hidden on a partition somewhere if I really need it).

I was concerned about moving Start into the middle but, as per article, it seems you can move it back where it belongs. Corners are hotspots, they are the easiest place to move the mouse, so Start should definitely be in a corner, and bottom left is where people expect it to be. It is, after all, where most users start from.

We spoke to a Stanford prof on the tech and social impact of AI's powerful, emerging 'foundation models'

terrythetech
Big Brother

Who decides?

"We can have constraints on what this technology can be used for."

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

terrythetech

Re: Built to repair?

The CRT was a well charged capacitor. The inner was conductive at EHT potential, the outside was painted with silver paint at earth potential. The glass of the tube acted as the dielectric. It was part of the smoothing circuit for the EHT which was low current /high voltage - yes the capacitor effect of the tube is what makes it bite.

To really get bit, try cutting thought the mains derived EHT of a powered up oscilloscope - boy did those cutters fly. Fortunately I lived to tell the tale and the cutters didn't hit anybody, it was my job back in the day. However, the worst getting 'bit' was mains fuse right hand, chassis left hand, that time it was the 'scope that went flying and I had to have a break for a while. That sort of shock is potentially lethal, don't try this!

Ex-health secretary said 'vast majority' were 'onside' with GP data grab. Consumer champion Which? reckons 20 million don't even know what it is

terrythetech
Big Brother

I find it deeply worrying

I find it deeply worrying that all that I know about this data grab is from reading TheRegister. So, all of us who peruse these pages know about it - how does the rest of the population find out?

Mark it in your diaries: 14 October 2025 is the end of Windows 10

terrythetech

Re: 2025? That long?

I have had online ordering that requires a mobile number only. Sometimes you can enter a landline number and it will work but some sites block the landline number completely.

terrythetech

Re: 2025? That long?

It may have changed but one of my friends used to accidentally text to my landline quite often and it works. The phone rings and a robot reads the text.

The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good

terrythetech
Facepalm

Re: Criminality

I once made something to be idiot proof. Unfortunately I gave it to somebody smart to test. They broke it.

Pics or it didn't happen: First images from China's Mars rover suggest nothing has gone Zhurong just yet

terrythetech

Re: Nothing there...

FFS - space exploration is incremental. This is just the prototype, and it is a success.

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

terrythetech
Unhappy

hmm

Hard to find this reported anywhere else. If people don't know about it how are they expected to know they can opt out of it.

Wi-Fi devices set to become object sensors by 2024 under planned 802.11bf standard

terrythetech
Big Brother

Tin foil hat?

Sod that, time to stick my router in a biscuit tin (grounded) and dig out the cat6 stuff I used to use. Oh bugger, I can be seen by my neighbours wifi.

Yes, there's nothing quite like braving the M4 into London on the eve of a bank holiday just to eject a non-bootable floppy

terrythetech
Linux

Re: Uptime Measured In Weeks

If you dual boot your PC and have shared partition it stays mounted too so the other OS can't access it. Turned off fast boot and I can now go and make a cuppa while Windows is booting, but at least I know it is a clean boot. Fortunately, I rarely have to do it :)

Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft

terrythetech

Re: Its very easy to detect ground based broadcasts

Nowadays they just hassle you if you don't have a TV license - in fact I believe that was the main way of "detecting" forever. Back in the 70s in a bedsit and not enough money to even afford a TV I got a knock. They obviously weren't detecting a TV as I didn't have one.

More recently a friend who decided that TV was too crap to fork out for a license got threatening letters despite not having a TV and being way too paranoid to even watch videos ripped from BBC on YouTube.

Smart doorbells on business premises make your property more attractive to burglars, warns researcher

terrythetech

Re: It's not cool or trendy, but it'll make a real difference

I locked my shed and lost the key. I discovered that it is trivially easy to remove shed windows. I don't think average garden sheds are ever very secure.

Millimetre-sized masses: Physics boffins measure smallest known gravitational field (so far)

terrythetech

They are both forces so can be compared.

Amazon deploys AI cameras inside delivery vans, misspells 'surveillance' as 'safety' in reason why

terrythetech
Facepalm

failing to break?

"Some of these include failing to break at a stop sign" - is a bit harsh. Failing to stop maybe, but what exactly is it they are supposed to break?

Quixotic Californian crusade to officially recognize the hellabyte and hellagram is going hella nowhere

terrythetech

Re: B, H

In my experience resistor values are often written as e.g 4k7 1M5 etc. R is often then used for values less than 1k0 e.g 470R, 1R5. i.e. it is a resistor, we know it is ohms so we leave that bit out unless it is less than 1k0 when we use R. Though for the life of me I can't imagine ever needing a 1H5 resistor.

NHS awards £23m two-year deal to controversial Peter Thiel AI firm Palantir

terrythetech
Headmaster

Re: Names, addresses and DNA samples of most people in the UK.

They may well say they have deleted it but how will they prove it. It will almost certainly still exist somewhere. That's the problem with digital data - it is so easy to copy.

I am concerned about Palantir's involvement - see here from June 4th

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/we-must-be-told-what-cummings-and-palantir-are-doing-nhs-data/

Court orders encrypted email biz Tutanota to build a backdoor in user's mailbox, founder says 'this is absurd'

terrythetech

And yet the petition to UK gov about this very thing has less than 1000 signatures

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/554027

UK infoseccer launches petition asking government not to backdoor encryption

terrythetech
Big Brother

Re: Once more with feeling....

And how many people will even know how. let alone why they should care :(

I've emailed all my contacts (I don't do social media) urging them to sign and pass it on with a link to this article and a brief description of why we should care, as most of them don't even know about this let alone the implications.

New lawsuit: Why do Android phones mysteriously exchange 260MB a month with Google via cellular data when they're not even in use?

terrythetech

Is the actual cost really the point here. It is the fact that allowance is used without the user knowing. I see lots of stuff about turn this or that off on this site but your average smartphone user i.e. 99.99%* of users know absolutely nothing about this theft let alone how to prevent it.

*OK that is a guess it could be 99.999% of users

IKEA Croydon (FYI: that's a place in outer London, not a type of DIY cabinet) likes things in pairs, from chimneys to bork

terrythetech
Happy

"the sound of relationships ending"

I misread the first screen as "Let's finish setting up you divorce"

Five Eyes nations plus Japan, India call for Big Tech to bake backdoors into everything

terrythetech
Coat

Re: Can never work

ASCII porn - ah, those were the days.

Remember the days when signs were signs and operating systems didn't need constant patching?

terrythetech
Facepalm

I wonder why so many of these screens exist. An old fashioned cardboard printed sign would do in this, and I guess, many cases. Illuminated with a few LEDS if you want to make it look important. FFS if you want it computerised an Arduino with the relevant shield ought to be enough.

Peer-to-peer takes on a whole new meaning when used to spy on 3.7 million or more cameras, other IoT gear

terrythetech

Re: some folks don't even know how to log into their routers

Replace "some" with "virtually all" and you are nearly there.

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

terrythetech

Re: Teach your children

"Plus, once everyone else is dead, we get the privilege of taking over the remains"

Do you think that "we" are not the ones going to be dead :)

I've heard people making similar claims about we need a war or erm, a pandemic, to help reduce overpopulation not realising they are just as vulnerable as everybody else.

Trump gloats, telcos weep, and China is furious: How things stand following UK's decision to rip out Huawei

terrythetech

No, Blair was New Labour - a whole different kettle of poo, er, fish

You may be distracted by the pandemic but FYI: US Senate panel OK's backdoors-by-the-backdoor EARN IT Act

terrythetech
Unhappy

Re: Don't use centralised, commercial services

They may not be going for banking transactions but once the encryption is broken...

... or maybe there is an exception for banking and financial trading. Is there?

terrythetech
Facepalm

Re: Not Good.

and making pi 3 would make life so much easier

terrythetech

Re: Pssst... wanna buy some strong crypto?

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/02/encrochat_op_venetic_encrypted_phone_arrests/

just goes to show you can't trust who you buy your encryption from

Brit police's use of facial-recognition tech is lawful, no need to question us, cops' lawyer tells Court of Appeal

terrythetech
Unhappy

Wedge

thin end of.

Worried about where the thick end is

Huawei wins approval to plonk £1bn optical comms R&D facility in UK's leafy Cambridgeshire

terrythetech
Coat

Boy, that is a weird kebab!

Only true boffins will be able to grasp Blighty's new legal definitions of the humble metre and kilogram

terrythetech
Boffin

Re: Probably not entirely a bad thing but ...

We do know the exact speed of light in a vacuum as it is defined not measured. I was working in a uni physics department when the change happened and the 'measure the speed of light' experiment had to be abandoned.

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

terrythetech

Re: Yes, Daily, or even hourly!

Back in the day you had to used to have to use a sneevling rod

terrythetech
Facepalm

Re: Yes, Daily, or even hourly!

Or the user (by which I mean friend) who doesn't understand screenshot etc. so you ask them to read the error message and they refuse because it is gobbledegook.

Hey Siri, are you still recording people's conversations despite promising not to do so nine months ago?

terrythetech
Facepalm

Siriously - giving Apple the benefit of the doubt!

(not a typo!)

You can't have it both ways: Anti-coronavirus masks may thwart our creepy face-recog cameras, London cops admit

terrythetech

Re: Coronavirus kills cities

Having moved out of London I now find that I couldn't afford to move back there even if I wanted to.

The Adobe Flash Farewell Tour 2020: LibreOffice to axe export support for .SWF in version 7

terrythetech

It does work. Surprised the hell out of me as when I complained to Channel 4 a while back about it not working they said Linux was too niche to support. ITV has been broken and mended a few times in the last 6 months but is working now. Using Firefox 75 and Mint Cinnamon 19.3.

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

terrythetech
Mushroom

Re: 56!

56 factorial is 7.109985878×10⁷⁴ according to my calculator app. That is one almighty big tower of pizza, it probably distorts the space time continuum which would almost certainly make it unstable.

Here's what Europeans are buying amid the COVID-19 lockdown – aside from heaps of pasta and toilet paper

terrythetech

Re: Thermometers too

or Arduino + LM35

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/arduino/arduino_temperature_sensor.htm

Dear makers of smart home things. Yeah, you with that bright idea of an IoT Candle. Here's an SDK from Amazon

terrythetech

Re: Harmonisation of Circles of Hell

"But anything which needs the cloud or wants to tunnel out through my router can fuck right off."

I think you will find they all want to do that :(

Come on baby light me on fire: McDonald's to sell 'Quarter Pounder' scented candles

terrythetech
Flame

Re: "Please let it be a joke"

FFS a self lighting candle‽ The internet of tat just got even tattier.

Handy for remote controlled arson though I suppose.

BOFH: Darn Windows 7. It's totally why we need a £1k graphics card for a business computer

terrythetech

Re: Hint

I always thought Windows ought to have a curtain option.

US govt 'told Germany that Chinese spies bug' Huawei 5G kit. It also told the world Iraq had WMDs ready to deploy...

terrythetech

So, you haven't considered that the risk (if there is a risk) might be in the hardware, or software that is not reprogrammable by the end user e.g, firmware, CPU monitoring cores etc.

Remember the Clipper chip? NSA's botched backdoor-for-Feds from 1993 still influences today's encryption debates

terrythetech

Re: The FBI is the only organization on Earth

" i'm not actually doing anything that I need to protect from the government in any way."

Until something you are doing is no longer liked by the government. You seem to be veering towards the nothing to hide argument. We all have something we would rather not be public I suspect. I don't think I have anything that the government might be interested in, but I still don't like that they want to break encryption that I need for e.g. accessing my bank account.

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