Posts by MrReynolds2U

Self-hosted email is in steep decline, Microsoft and Google are taking over

Re: Use a relay service

Most VPS services (on big and small providers) I've come across have outbound mail ports blocked. So you have to use a third-party service like SendGrid to send outbound email. Some have restrictions on bare metal too.

Five years after quitting a job, developer's former boss asked for rapid tech support

Re: Well done

Yep, I get asked why XY company software does things a certain way, and can I fix it to work differently. Nope.

"But you're IT"... I can wire a plug, but that doesn't make me an electrician. So why assume I know how e.g. Salesforce works, or that if I don't, I'm bad at my job.

Dev who gave HashiCorp its name returns with a faster terminal multiplexer

The new new new

It feels like this is something with VC ambitions, rather than genuinely commercial.

I also feel like many companies continually have to buy or invest in the new tech, or else someone will stop and ask whether the current tech was a good investment. So there's plenty of companies in the industry that rebadge or create the new shiny to enable this behaviour. Meanwhile, laughing all the way to the bank.

Telegram shortlinks knocked offline over sanctioned VPN connection

Muppets

One size does not fit all.

They took an entire domain offline because of a specific URL referenced/used in a Telegram channel.

Likely massive disruption for regular users because they over-reacted.

Allstate Insurance quits Broadcom, alleges vengeful license audit on the way out

Blood sucking

That's a lot of chargeable hours for the lawyers before May 17, 2027

Hackers shoveled snow for company, were rewarded with network admin access

Re: Interesting

If you're going to have a port without NAC it needs to be on a guest network that has no way of connecting to the protected/internal network.

There's little point in having a self-service portal (with authentication) that allows you to add a device exception, as this will be abused for the sake of convenience.

Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size

Re: Original Notepad and Wordpad still work OK.

CTRL+SHIFT+V also works to paste without formatting in some Windows applications.

For me that includes pasting into Word and Excel but not Outlook, but as always, YMMV.

London cops bring live facial recognition to West End

Is that figure accurate?

"spending of around £6,000 per person"

The article implies that the MPS has £6k to spend per person in their area. Is it just me, or does that sound like a lot?

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

Re: SNAFU

I wonder how cancelled trains factor into that data? If at all?

Personally, unless I need to make a tight connection, a delay is acceptable. However, in my experience, operators up North (England) cancel services all over the place. This is far more inconvenient and leads to overcrowding and effectively a massive delay even though the next train is on time.

Marketing demanded IT add website feature that was already working

Unusual...

What doesn't make sense is anyone from the coloured-pencil department using an Android phone.

In my experience, they are all iPhone users.

Utah tells porn sites to take the P out of VPNs, and it's their fault that they can't

Re: The state of Utah may be surprised to discover

I think we should send them a little black box with a blinking red LED aka "The Internet".

Maybe add a second LED with a label "VPN filtering enabled"

Support tech caught by 'Technician Aura': the bug that only hides when you're watching

Many years ago...

At a three-letter UK ISP support call-centre. You would often get self-important types turn up and walk around the place on their mobiles.

More than a few times I had to take off my headset with a yell when they walked past as their mobile rang.

Waymo's self-driving cars face their toughest test yet: London

Oh yes!

Where you use your horn as a kind of primitive radar.

See also Mumbai, which I thought was worse.

Engineer sabotaged hardware then complained when it didn't work

Re: Repair shop bodge

No, you cut a hole in your lap.

Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they prove they really, really want to

Re: Do it once…

Imagine you bought a new phone and wanted to install something not on Play store.

That'd be a little annoying, right?

Your next car might need 300 GB of RAM, and so will autonomous robots

Re: I don't think so

Nah, it'll just show a poo emoji on the dash.

Fraudster hacked hotel system, paid 1 cent for luxury rooms, Spanish cops say

Cyber attack?

Or faulty website?

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?