* Posts by Ali Dodd

61 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Apr 2018

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EU mandated messaging platform love-in is easier said than done: Cambridge boffins

Ali Dodd

Just use Matrix and be done with it

Matrix is decentralised and lead by an open source foundation so logically it's the sensible choice as oppsed to signal or whatsapp which this article then seems to think are the only real choices (one mention only of it!). Obs EU gets behind matrix and it'll be mistrusted by Russia and others obvs.

Labyrinth of 371 legacy systems hindered hospital's IT meltdown recovery

Ali Dodd

Re: IT is a cost to be minimised

And the idea that making cuts in IT will actually result in any sort of cost savings in the organisation. 9 times out of 10 you cut IT you will increase overall costs to the business (more likley 99% of the time really). Increasing funding to IT usually has the result of reducing costs elsewhere, not to say there are not efficiancies to be had and changes can be benficial but you save a few quid in IT to your peril as it is the blood and lungs of your organisation and aids every other department to do their job. Very rarely will it be treated anything like that however.

Tales from four decades in the Sinclair aftermarket: Parts, upgrades and party tricks

Ali Dodd
Pint

Serious Hat Tip for this chap

That wizardry with printers and a PI is a very very clever idea. It's going to save companies millions if they know about it. Excellent work!

Sure there's alot more that tech like that could do for old systems that work and cost a lot to replace, thinking CAM machiens etc. Wonder if it's a relatively simple translation it could be done on a PiZero?

That NHS England patient data platform procurement, FDP, is live. And worth up to £480m

Ali Dodd

Re: It's just another asset to be sold

Not only that it'll be sold in a way that any new governement in a year or twos time can't do anything about it as the contract will definately be biased to the company not the NHS or the people of this country.

Wonder which Tories/NHS England directors end up on Palantir's board in a minor but well paid role when they get kicked out of power (or even befor)?

Apple aims to replace Broadcom, Qualcomm wireless chips with its own

Ali Dodd
Devil

Walled Garden or Prison

Bluetooth and Wifi and Cellular built by Apple? First sign of issues and they'll be 'You are configuring your wifi/headphones/phone network wrong". We know they don't play well with others so this sounds very dangerous, Another reason for me to avoid fruity phones (your milage/koolaid consuption might vary)

As liquid cooling takes off in the datacenter, fortune favors the brave

Ali Dodd

Have rear door water cooled DC here

Have rear door water cooled DC here and i work in a middling UK University - it's great the DC is much quieter. Every rack has a hulking rad on it to pull the heat out of the kit. Was put in over 10 years ago so nothing new, thought it was the new big thing in DC cooling yonks ago.

Look like Bane, spend like Batman with Dyson's $949 headphones

Ali Dodd
FAIL

Snot Cannon

This is actually danagerous to health of those around the user and should be banned. Blowing air onto & into the user's mouth and nose will spread any pathogens to the surrounding area as it is not then filtered. It's moronically stupid and dangerous and will cause more infections and potentially kill people, not the wearer, no that selfish prick will be fine...

A fan powered costume caused a super spreader event in a US hospital as the fan spread around everybody near it the wearer's unknown illness. This a snot cannon and really REALLY dumb (and studpidly expensive to boot).

Eat up, Windows 11 users – this is your last non-security preview update for the year

Ali Dodd
Thumb Down

Re: WINDOWS 11 is NOT ready for main streams use....

8? Have people forgotten the mess that was Windows ME? Still my most hated version. 8 was prolematical but shockingly it did have good aspects. ME was hideous beginning to end.

Rackspace confirms ransomware attack behind days-long email meltdown

Ali Dodd

Farcical support more like

China declares victory over teenage video game addiction

Ali Dodd

Blizzard is pulling out of China

All Blizzard online games e.g. WoW, Diablo, OverWatch etc will be pulled from China on the 23rd of Jan, Surprised to see China is not claiming this victory then... or maybe it will as another 'sucess'

If Apple's environmental rhetoric is meaningful, Macs and iPads should converge

Ali Dodd

Re: Because the iPad store lets Apple make more money than macOS

MS tried an OS that worked well on a tablet unfortunately they also forced desktop users to have it, then instead of making it have two modes one for tablet and one for desktop style use they threw the tablet stuff away... real shame as win 8 was great on a tablet, dogshit on desktop. 10 really should've had both modes depending on use for those that could understand it.

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison

Ali Dodd

Re: Some...

no mention that her fraudulent product actualy caused people to die as the tests it used were considered accurate at the time but of course were now. 11 years is too short.

Tired: Data scientists. Wired: Data artists

Ali Dodd

Seems actually sensible

Instead of grab everything perhaps look at what you can grab and start off with targeting more, ends up with more relevant and less data which is easiest to analyse. The land grab of record 'EVERYTHING' has been massively wasteful in storage and processing as most organisations don't tend to use 90%+ of the data in the end, more often than not you use the same data you did before.

List every item you can record, plan out what you might need and target on that, can always expand that if you know what is avaliable.

Perhaps a short term big pile is useful to do this but doing that evermore is just a waste of time and resources

NHS data platform procurement delayed for a second time

Ali Dodd
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stinks

whole process is corrupt and disgusting. The proposal is weighted towards Palantir they may as well have written the spec(and probably did). Should be prison time for those involved but most likely we'll just roll over an let it happen (with some nice fat kickbacks) and the people of UK get screwed again.

Bye bye BoJo: Liz Truss named new UK prime minister

Ali Dodd

Re: Please don't take this the wrong way, but

Don't worry they'll kill a whole load of pensioners down south too, don't forget half the care home staff have left and the rest can't afford to get to work so will be a heck of a lot of conservative voters dying everywhere as they'll have inadequate care.

Here's how 5 mobile banking apps put 300,000 users' digital fingerprints at risk

Ali Dodd

Re: Assuming they were properly hashed

Still not good enough and terrible security practice. Worrying that 98% were iOS apps as users on that have a impression of greater security from the platform which is heavily eroded if a lot of developers tend undo a load of good work by being lazy.

Crooks target top execs on Office 365 with MFA-bypass scheme

Ali Dodd

Re: Unbelievable

Not defending MS and their system does have some serious issues to look into but:

Both the primary method of managing your account on 365 and Azure AD do list the device name (internal model on android and name you gave it on IOS) against the authenticator.

If you want to get into the security methods to change your authenticator you do need to authenticate again...

This is on a standard tenancy with no special configuration - just checked.

it would be useful for MS to give more info about the authenticator like location last used but that would get into issues with privacy. They should ask you for a unique name when you set it up.

WhatsApp boss says no to AI filters policing encrypted chat

Ali Dodd
Mushroom

This is meta so a translation

""What's being proposed is that we – either directly or indirectly through software – read everyone's messages. I don't think people want that.""

or more accurately:

"We've tried it because we can make so much money out of your info if it worked, however our AI is shit and we don't have enough headcount to cope with the volume to do it without people noticing and complaining"

Meta never cares about privacy, never has never really will - YOU are the product they are selling.

Smart thermostat swarms are straining the US grid

Ali Dodd

Nope I'm not stupid enough to buy a Centric/British Gas product, they will screw you every time.

A 7 day timer is good. A timer that adjusts for temperature in every room and regulates the main heating is much better, plus it also stops heating automatically when I'm out of the house/on demand & starts when asked remotely. It's not 'smart' per se but it is a damn sight smarter than a fixed standard 7 day timer and a lot more useful.

Had a Nest (quite dumb and limited) and now have a Tado. Which is as far as I'm aware their core business and not particularly likely to go into the sunset for a while. Not everything is tainted by money grabbing fools and arseholes like Hive (peleton, etc) blatantly is.

Ali Dodd

I do like em but everything has issues and "with most homeowners only seeing energy savings of 5-8 percent, as opposed to the 25-30 percent they're capable of."

capable of? I'd read advertised as capable of, I doubt any smart thermostat would ever save you that much unless you previously never set a schedule..

Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025

Ali Dodd
Mushroom

This is British Gas (centrica) of COURSE they will screw you, should've been a given.

Logitech Zone Vibe 125: Weightless comfort on the ears that won't break the bank

Ali Dodd

Bluetooth in windows is terrible

Bluetooth in windows doesn't support proper stereo, it's a god awful implementation. I tried Bluetooth headphones for connectivity in video conferencing and they are the pits. Have to use a decent wireless set with it's own dongle or you get hideous sound, no matter what you spend on the headphones.

Giant outsourcer keeps work from home, loses tax breaks. Government says 'good riddance'

Ali Dodd
Thumb Up

Shocked

What the government is doing removing the subsidy is right.

What the company is doing is more shocking and seems eminently sensible - should happen over here. Put hubs in residential areas to support home working, I think there should be a lot more desk sharing facilities out of the centre of towns, lets stop traveling so far and support communities and be distributed much more. Big old landowners will hate it but the nature of work evolves - a decentralised workforce reduces a whole host of pressures and costs AND is better for the environment.

LIDAR in iPhones is not about better photos – it's about the future of low-cost augmented reality

Ali Dodd

Why bang on about Apple and LIDAR

when at the end he just mentions intel and camera inside out tracking?

It's also on the market now and a lot cheaper than an iphone plus (the one with the sensor) - the Meta Quest 2 does it quite well for £300!

If you dislike Facebook there's a really nice open source product on it way shortly the Lynx platform https://www.lynx-r.com/

I'd love Lidar to become really popular as it's very accurate but also expensive, I think more will just use normal cameras as its a fraction of the cost. But yeah Tracking happens!

UK regulator puts NortonLifeLock merger with Avast on ice

Ali Dodd

good the last thing we need is an okay AV being swallowed up by the pile of tires on fire that is Norton.

Why Nvidia sees a future in software and services: Recurring revenue

Ali Dodd

Re: They already do it on their GPUs for virtualisation

We'd already spent the cash before I got involved. We are unlikely to use them again however.

Ali Dodd
Devil

They already do it on their GPUs for virtualisation

There's a yearly licence fee to use a Nvidia GPU with citrix virtualisation for example, and it may not be expensive but if you've spent up to 10 grand on a card for a server having to pay a yearly fee is galling. They claim it's to allow their continued support and development for drivers etc, but I see it purely as money grabbing and wish we could dump them.

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is still pushing metaverse. Next step, language translation

Ali Dodd

Re: Next step : virtual strip clubs

As is normal with the Zuck being's products, it doesn't care about you or your kids he just wants the data. Meta's VR technologies are WOEFULLY behind on parental controls, and any form of moderation control or even abuse reporting. Again it's an afterthought, not even that a minor footnote.

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

Ali Dodd
Thumb Down

Still humans in the mix here not just machines

"it should be possible to identify html or xml just by looking at the first few characters" so you have to open the file??? Trusting the OS to identify it is recipe for disaster and doesn't work in a text interface.

How about you have a simple convention, say a 3 letter label on each file so it's easily human readable in every context to at least get an idea of what it contains BEFORE you look inside it.

They never should've been hidden imho, that way lies pain and confusion.

Update 'designed to improve user experience' takes down the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal

Ali Dodd

Main Admin portal is affected but most of the individual portals are not. Here's a handy list of the others if you are tearing your hair out:

https://msportals.io/?search=

Hope it comes back soon but have found out can do most tasks in the others..

A smarter alternative to password recognition could be right in front of us: Unique, invisible, maybe even deadly

Ali Dodd
Joke

Been done

Was used by the space station/research facility in Alien resurrection (4). and showed how to bypass it also. Obs this is the worst Alien movie but it still looks good as the design was great (apart from the alien baby screwup) . The script however, yeah needed MORE work than the legions who tried to polish that mess.

Honor 50 Lite: Google Play Services are back on Huawei's former stablemate but that's nothing to get excited about

Ali Dodd
WTF?

finger problems

"The fingerprint reader is built into a side button which also handles on and off, and both worked for us, though this seems a device for the right-handed."

don't you just register a different finger? I've had side unlock phones before and I register the easiest finger on both hands to use it with, so I can use it with both hands..

UK Treasury and Bank of England starting to sound serious about 'Britcoin'

Ali Dodd
Joke

Not sure if this is a cryptocurrency

rather just a digital currency, doesn't need to include blockchain or potentially onerous transactions causing huge costs both financial or ecologically.

However with a name like Britcoin I'm sure lit is likely to be a Shitcoin (sorry)

The return of the turbo button: New Intel hotness causes an old friend to reappear

Ali Dodd

8088

I had an XT clone which I think had an 8088 chip back in the day that ran at 4.77mhz (as expected) and then if you held down the period key on boot it would power up in the nippier 6.22mhz... very weird, it certainly seemed to run faster when enabled

Honeymoons last a couple of weeks – the same goes for any love for the IT department

Ali Dodd
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Forgotten and the vote is still confusing.

Forgotten already.

The format of this debate vote is still very unclear and confusing. So the motion is: "The pandemic improved the status of IT workers … forever."

My interpretation is that if you vote FOR this then that means it has improved the status of IT workers?

Therefore as I think it's a flash in the pain I voted AGAINST and was surprised to see that FOR is winning with nearly 60% of the vote, which can't be right with my cynical down beaten IT monkey colleagues can it?

Can you please put on these votes, NEXT to where to vote a simple statement confirming what you are voting FOR or AGAINST. Please El Reg? Make it very clear... I n this case it would be "You are voting for or against the motion that 'The pandemic improved the status of IT workers … forever'"

The future: Windows streaming through notched Apple screens

Ali Dodd

Hmm

"The pain of managing a mixed hardware fleet aside, there is always that one weird corporate app for which Windows is required."

Just one? We have several, but that's not all of it. Mac users in general don't seem to understand: basic security, any form of tidying or filing systems to organise their data; file extensions; etc. Plus the cost and single supplier issues. They are not enterprise focused - as they say themselves.

Windows may have it's issues but at least it's cheap and massively supported not a weird offshoot with their "do it this way nothing else will be tolerated" attitude. Rather go Linux, would be less painful.

Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit

Ali Dodd

Re: Stinking Yanks!

with blackjack and hookers!

Ali Dodd

toys out the pram

from those who don't see that this is a business making a sensible business decision based on many factors e.g.:

1. Customs tariffs to largest number of customers

2. Red tape for dealing with largest number customers

3. Skilled staff

4. Stability of location (e.g. no logistical issues)

5. Grants to support the investment to make it worthwhile

6. etc

Right now for their business the UK is pretty lousy for 1, 2 and definitely 4 (may be transitory but brexit is happening and is has destabilised the UK). At this point no 5. doesn't even need to be looked at..

UK Ministry of Defence tries again to procure £1.7bn tri-service recruitment system

Ali Dodd
Facepalm

Whats the betting it gets awarded to

Crapita AGAIN?

about 5 to 1 I'd say, with Serco being front runners as the gov outsource f*@kup of choice these days

A Whopper of a bork for seekers of pre-flight nosh

Ali Dodd

Re: That type of BSOD has been around since win 8

Oh god, I'm appalled with myself.

For that the downvote is well deserved.

Ali Dodd
Devil

That type of BSOD has been around since win 8

So is el Reg so truly Linux-land so much that no ones seen it before or perhaps ait due to Win 8 and newer MS oses are actually much more reliable?

I'm expecting alot of downvotes..

Tesla battery fire finally flamed out after four-day conflagration

Ali Dodd
Holmes

My maths is bad but

210 megapacks each which store 3MWh to have a total storage of 300MWh

Where did the other 330MWh of storage go?

Buyer of $28m Blue Origin space ticket has a scheduling conflict – so this teen will go instead

Ali Dodd
Devil

only SOME of the 28 mill is going to charity?

"At least some of the money from the auction will go to Blue Origin’s non-profit firm Club for the Future, which will donate $1m to 19 charities."

So Bezos the richest scumbag man in the work will pocket most of the 27 mill left? Oh god we are so screwed by the rich.

All hands on Steam Deck: Fancy a handheld Linux PC that runs Windows apps, sports a custom AMD Zen APU and a touch screen?

Ali Dodd

No mention of those this is copying like the Aya Neo

Steam are the biggest to enter this market and do this type of form factor but hardly the first, there have been several of these over the years from different companies, this is just the latest

https://www.ayaneo.com/

A full PC running windows... that is a portable as a switch. More expensive now not a kickstarter but a friend of mine bought one and loves it.

Capita: We were juuust about to generate revenue growth and sustainable cash flow – then pandemic stuffed it up

Ali Dodd

Astonishing that such a government leach

Manages to lose so much money despite bleeding this country dry through government projects it never seems to finish or get right despite charging the earth. Would seem to imply the whole thing is rotten to the core. Time to ban it from Gov IT then? PLEASE.

NHS tests COVID-19 contact-tracing app that may actually work properly – EU neighbors lent a helping hand

Ali Dodd
Holmes

Like to have an expert check the privacy statement & app

as I do want to know

A) What data and how long is stored

B) How identifiable is it

C) Are they storing what data they claim to be

Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

Ali Dodd
Thumb Up

Re: Moderately aggravating

I did this as soon as I heard they were culling PlayMusic.

I can recommend buying the lifetime subscription as £80 is a bargain for all you get. The playback is the best I've had on a mobile app, love the level balancing across your whole collection and the nice fades between tracks. I recommend the PlexApp android app for playback too, very slick only missing homescreen widgets which actually are not too much of a loss now they've improved the notification media controls.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

Ali Dodd
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Re: Good, good.

"Once a deal with the EU is negotiated and signed it will likely include freedom of movement as part of the deal" not a chance, it is only for members of the EU and that is is the charter. The EU and quite a lot of experts have been saying this from day one. Without being a paying in member we will not get the same FOM rights as we have now. Period.

I know several EU citizens who have already been forced to leave and others who have had to go through a heck of alot to get confirmation they can stay. Some haven't. Sorry you are wrong, the facts don't hold up.

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

Ali Dodd

Mac/Linux user

I think you'll find that Jack calls the 'Recycle bin' IS the Recycle Bin and has been always on windows - Trash is a Mac artifact.

Yeah met more than one company director who used their email DELETED ITEMS as their filing system... Morons.

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