Posts by MrReynolds2U

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

"The Bbc already closed the ability to download content on iPlayer."

I just downloaded something from iPlayer on my mobile. So... ?

How one developer used Claude to build a memory-safe extension of C

"You just won't be competitive if you're not vibe programming."

Don't make me laugh.

Marching orders delayed: Veterans' Digital ID off to a slow start

Re: Single point of failure anyone?

Not just a smart phone, but one tied to the Google or Apple services and stores. This in itself is ignored as a reduction in freedom of choice.

While I believe the idea of a single digital id can be useful, we know in the current political environment, those in power will misuse it to control.

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

to paraphrase...

"democracy is the worst form of Government... except for all the others"

NS&I tech overhaul blows past Treasury spending limits

The UK fintech sector is quite healthy. Licensing their designs or partnering with them might have been a better alternative to yet another failing outsourced project.

Waterfox browser goes AI-free, targets the Firefox faithful

which raises the question...

Is this likely to affect Thunderbird?

Brit broadband grilling descends into farce over targets and definitions

Re: All I know

I can do you one better...

One of the companies I work with recently looked into moving into an office block in central Preston. When I checked for them, the only service on offer (outside of a leased line/ethernet) was 1Mbps ADSL.

1Mbps, in central Preston. At an office block housing a DVSA office. In 2025.

From pr0n to playlists and paperclips, trio of breaches spills data of millions

no payment information...

This always seems to be their cut-off for what is acceptable loss.

However, if your card details are compromised from a site that claims to be PCI-DSS compliant, your card provider will should treat your liability as zero.

What I found concerning (when it happened to me) was that criminals just need your name, DOB and address to apply for credit in your name (in the UK). I can't change my DOB, don't want to change my name and changing my address is not viable. So, once you are compromised, it's a constant battle with the credit reference agencies to get them to stop or remove fraudulent applications. You can put a "note of correction" asking for a pass phrase to obtain credit but in my experience, it's often ignored.

A small group of companies have a collection on us they call a credit file. We cannot opt out and some (TransUnion I'm looking at you) make it very difficult to fix issues despite GDPR. The measures that are in place to protect you are like paper over a crack and in the case of Cifas or vendor programs, they all cost money.

Researchers claim 'largest leak ever' after uncovering WhatsApp enumeration flaw

Alarming although not surprising

Since Meta didn't notice this scrape happening, it's likely not the first such occurrence. We should expect this dataset to exist in the wild.

What I find worrying is that you could take a public image of someone (potentially from their FB page), use a little face matching tech and extract their phone number from your scraped data.

This would allow a variety of bad things ranging from abusive calls, fake number presentation (calling as that person), through to targeted delivery of malware to a handset.

This feels more serious the general perception. I would not be surprised if this is also potentially a massive breach of GDPR.

Techie ran up $40,000 bill trying to download a driver

Re: Implausible to say the least.

Even better was free local (evening?) calls via NTL combined with a local dial-in number for our ISP.

NTL may have been Telewest or C&W at the time. It was a long time ago.

AWS, Nvidia, CrowdStrike seek security startups to enter the arena

Re: Here's an idea.

I see your concrete and I raise you "blockchain walls" - virtual physical barriers that you can track from your mobile phone and publish on Etherium.

Cybercrooks team up with organized crime to steal pricey cargo

If I buy anything expensive, I keep the packaging in the attic until the warranty expires (usually a year), then take the box to the local tip myself. Just in case it needs to be sent back or for repair.

Sometimes I'll break the box up and put in my recycling the night before pickup. I never leave it in view though.

But then I also have blinds that are always drawn stopping people getting a look at my living room as they walk by.

Actor couldn’t understand why computer didn’t work when the curtain came down

Re: "The Register wishes you a wonderfully scary day"

It is indeed. Thank you for the correction.

Re: "The Register wishes you a wonderfully scary day"

While I feel your pain, you forgot one of the tenants of our industry:

"Though shalt not make changes on a Friday." aka Read-Only Fridays.

Nothing good can come from updates, releases or changes on a Friday.

Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029

Or...

Why don't they do something useful like creating a EU version of Visa/Mastercard so literally every card transaction isn't sending money to the USA.

Ubuntu Unity hanging by a thread as wunderkind maintainer gets busy with life

Re: Unity drove me to Mint/MATE

It seems that for most of us this tiling interface phase is not our cup of tea.

However, the fact that a rather talented youngster picked up on it might point to changing desires and requirements of an interface among the younger generations. If that's the case, maybe our desire to retain familiar UI schemes could actually be slowing the move to Linux among the next generation.

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

Re: It must have been transported...

I wouldn't rule out duck tape as an option (or duct tape if you prefer that name).

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

I heard the early stuff was in Slime but I think that was pre-XP.

Amazon turns James Bond into the Man Without the Golden Gun

Liam Neeson would like you to hold his beer.

Word to the wise: Don't tell your IT manager they're not in Excel

Re: "Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

While I find it incredibly frustrating at times. If they don't understand, I'm not doing a good enough job of explaining it. If, however, they glaze over, that's on them.

Rust-style safety model for C++ 'rejected' as profiles take priority

Re: Rust is the future

Sure, if they want to pay for it. Most of the libraries we're talking about here are authored by a geographically diverse group of volunteers.

Absolutely fabless: Trump derails TSMC's China chip-building effort

there is another option

"If those two firms are unable to obtain export licenses from the US Commerce Department, they may be forced to write off their investments in the region."

Or... tell the US government to fuck off and let the US become a third-world state when they can't access these technologies produced by Samsung et al.

US government snaps up 10% of Intel for $8.9B

Extortion?

The CHIPS money was available to companies like Intel. In fact, it was already allocated (as stated in the article).

But... give us 10% of your company or you don't get the money and you competitors do. I'll also keep trashing you and affect your market price.

'MadeYouReset' HTTP/2 flaw lets attackers DoS servers

Newer is always better

My arse

Musk is messing with the Cosmic Dawn. Will alien hunters save the day for all mankind?

Re: Cosmic Dawn

The Asian Dawn splinter group (from Die Hard)

Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo

Power shower scares

Depletion, followed by the sound of an aircraft taking off when you take too long showers. Always used to scare the shit out of me.

Scientists spot massive black hole collision that defies current theories

Re: 400,000 times faster than Earth

Unless I'm mistaken, that rotational speed would be over half the speed of light (186,000,000 m/s vs 2.9x10⁸).

Not sluggish.

Don't shoot me, I'm only the system administrator!

Re: Never drawn a gun

Not if the marketing department gets there first

Re: Other side of the coin.

Only if they can't find a good comms room.

Breaking the nerd internet: Three overlapping generations of tech history – in one selfie

Re: Bill Gates' OS?

"apparently he was known for writing exceptionally compact code"

That sounds like something MS et al could do with learning these days.

Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown

Re: Honestly

Even less if they pour a European head

£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan

Also, it appears that the alternate plan will still cost the earth but only provide a lab until 2040.

The scrapped plan was to provide facilities until 2070, so was it actually better value?

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire

Re: Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road

Here you go: Diesel Particulate Filter - DPFs explained by the RAC

Fedora 42 now an official Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 distro

Re: way out of line here, but...

For me, the strength comes from being able to develop in Visual Studio and run either under Windows or WSL from the same IDE. YMMV.

When running the WSL console it's also 99% like using SSH to a Linux box (or VM) without necessarily needing to have one available that you can break as you like.

Docker? No thanks.

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Re: If it lands on Trump...

Definitely wins comment of the week

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Re: We're all mad here

"... reduce the budget deficit (by reducing taxes) ..."

Did any of them understand that reducing taxes would increase the deficit unless they also slashed spending?

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

Re: Reasoning

We do pay. We buy US hardware, software and services. These US companies pay taxes and pay their employees. Hence our money moves into the US economy and the US budget. This money is then used for programs like this.

Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft. Readers say it's all been downhill since Clippy

Re: From a home-user perspective, Windows 7 remains the best overall OS

I only ever had slow booting 2k if the DNS was misconfigured. That was in the order of half an hour before the domain server brought up the desktop. Corrected the DNS and rebooted, back up in under 2 minutes. My HP DL-380 (and relations) spend longer in the pre-boot stage.

GCHQ intern took top secret spy tool home, now faces prison

Re: Official Secrets Act?

You mean like RSA?

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

Fees

Don't forget that no crypto currency transaction takes place without fees. So you can't just swap back and forth since you will lose a percentage every time.

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

Kyocera (7/10)

I bought a colour one for the office and it's great... except when it decides the new non-OEM cartridge is empty. I suspect it's the chips on the cartridges sometimes, not necessarily the printer. But it has made me question buying Kyocera in the future. It has also got to the stage where it eats paper occasionally. I miss my (very) old HP lasers.

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

Re: SOP

Here's the thing though: Outlook was the killer part of Office for many people. Word etc has plenty of workable clones but Outlook was without peer once upon a time.

They don't seem to realise that this push away from Classic Outlook will actually harm their subscriptions.

Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend

Introduction to PHP

I was once asked to help out an affiliate at an old employer.

The affiliate's code was in PHP which I'd never used before but I was able to understand enough to find numerous errors in a few hours and fixed it for them. Typical offshore code written with assumptions and no thought of "what would happen if?"

Like most languages I know now, I picked up enough in a few hours to understand the code but like a golfer, I'll spend the rest of my life actually trying to be good at it.

Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals

Re: Copied the CD to HDD

Yep. Format and copy i386? Then run setup.exe

Installed in less than 20 minutes.

Microsoft hijacks keyboard shortcut to bring Copilot to your attention

Not that I have any plans to use it

But why not use WIN+C ??

My only experience of Copilot so far has been to Uninstall it on any PC I touch.

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: Keyboard layout

ISTR that in telecoms we used to refer to the hash as "gate". So you had star and gate keys on your telephone keypad. Not sure if that was a common name or more of a colloquial thing.

Veteran Microsoft engineer shares some enterprise support tips

Been the problem myself before

I once phoned up Virgin after a new install because the router wasn't seeing the internet.

I was adamant that everything was plugged in.

It was, but I had plugged the WAN line into a LAN socket and vice versa.

The tech on the other end was very understanding.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: When managers get involved in technical stuff - beware!

Tell me it wasn't called Proclaim. I get shudders when that gets mentioned.

Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

Re: AI research or Thunderbird?

Indeed. The marketing term AI is, like all marketing-led initiatives in software, vapourware.