* Posts by DoctorPaul

248 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jul 2018

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Smart TVs are spying on everyone

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Re: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM .... USE THEM :)

If you want to watch FTA broadcasts without a TV there is a little box called HDHomerun. Just 3 inputs - 5v DC, ethernet and aerial - then view via the supplied apps on the OS of your choice. No connection, just a satisfied user.

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Or plug in a USB drive and you can pause \ rewind \ replay live TV, at least on my LG. Start watching a programme then at the first ad break hit the Pause button and wander off and do something useful for a while before coming back to finish watching while skipping the ads. That said, they don't make it easy. On the LG the best I can do is 16x FF through the ads, while my old Humax satellite box also has skip forward and back buttons. Skip forward jumps about 3 minutes a press (easy multiples of UK ad breaks) while going back is about 30 seconds, thus making it a breeze to jump past ad breaks and then hop back to the start of the next section of the programme. So useful is this functionality that I believe that certain vested interests made sure that it was removed from all later equipment across the industry, after all skipping ads is theft right? I also refer you to the fact that all satellite boxes after the Humax FoxSat now have their firmware encrypted, cutting us off from the enhanced functionality offered by modders such as Raydon.

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: PiHole!

Been running a pair of pi-holes for years now, they "just work". A couple of years after being bereaved it suddenly occurred to me that I had completely forgotten about them being on my network, so finally logged in and ran some updates. Rather like systems that just sit there doing what they do. The only thing that I found in the early days was that I needed a pair of them, firstly to offer the router primary and secondary DNS servers, secondly because I found that a single pi-hole would lock up about once a week. That took out my entire home internet so had to be fixed, hence running a pair. Looking at the logs shows that one pi-hole will do all the heavy lifting for a while, then things flip-flop to the other one one. No idea why.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

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Re: Safe Mode

Dumber than Windows?

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

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Re: UFO

If you're looking for a TV series written on drugs, can I refer you to The Prisoner :-)

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Re: That film...

Seem to recall that I eventually ended up assembling an Airfix plane around a firework banger, it only had the one flight into the garden of course. That was after we got bored with setting fire to paper darts and throwing them into the fireplace, but before a schoolfriend and I built a mill out of a motor, Andrews tin, marbles and Meccano. What were we milling? Gunpowder of course! Kids today don't know what they're missing.

Embattled users worn down by privacy options? Let them eat code

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Re: would this work?

Loving the idea of poisoned cookies! And if some random corruption (honest guv) just happens to produce some SQL injection that would be a real bonus.

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And that in itself is enough of a reason for me to use Firefox for many years.

Busybox 1.37 is tiny but capable, the way we like Linux tools to be

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So many uses!

Pretty sure that busybox is a key component in the wonderful Raydon firmware upgrade for the Humax FoxSat satellite receiver that I will big up here at every opportunity. Full on web server for admin and channel listings, FTP server, utilities all crammed into that little ROM. Mind you, the end result is a film collection currently around the 6,500 mark spanning 32Tb of storage - you have been warned.

Office 2024 unveiled for Microsoft 365 refuseniks

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That's what I thought, but then when I needed to do a reinstall I found that Microsoft had switched off the activation server. You might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Meta gives Llama 3 vision, now if only it had a brain

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So let me get this right

The article once again emphasizes that every output from such a system must be checked for veracity, so someone please explain WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?

Revenge for being fired is best served profitably

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Re: only 3 in 25 years

Second hand business box from eBay is my go-to solution, OK so it's probably going to be a Dell or HP but at least they don't profit from me directly and the chassis quality far exceeds the cheapest Chinese boxes and their tendency to draw blood.

Main workhorse is a HP Z230 running the "full Terry Pratchett" with 6 24" monitors, media server is a Dell mini-tower whose stock PSU manages to cope with spinning up 32Tb 6HDDs and an SSD, and finally the driving sim just has the 3 monitors to go with the seat, steering wheel and pedals. Each box wasn't much over a hundred quid and came with a Windows license.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

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Re: We'll all look like sirens...

I recall an episode of QI where Stephen Fry showed a pair of glasses with multicoloured frames which it was claimed would make facial recognition systems identify the wearer as a particular female action movie star. Patterns in the frames exactly matched that face at a tiny scale and as soon as the system went "ping, that's a match" it moved on to other faces in the field of view. Anyone know if that still works?

Valve powers up Arch Linux – because who needs Windows when you have a Steam Deck?

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Re: Woa - desktops = production??

Trigger's desktop?

It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

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Re: Means nothing

Happy to oblige

Bank of America app glitch zeroes out people's balances

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Re: Cash is king

And then add to that reports of blaggers putting stickers with dodgy QR codes on payment machines in car parks. Me? No way will I ever scan a QR code while out and about.

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

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Re: Human-fired power station

Harry Harrison helped form a lot of my thinking back when I was a teenager, we all need to be Stainless Steel Rats!

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

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Re: In the days before t’interweb…

I think that the apogee of my attempts to speak French in an Alpine ski resort was when a local asked if I was Belgian, I was really chuffed!

Admins using Windows Server Update Services up in arms as Microsoft deprecates feature

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Re: MS seems to have lost it... big time

Finally had to be dragged kicking and screaming off Win 7 Pro earlier this year, at least Start11, WindowsBlinds and InControl make Win 10 tolerable for not much money. Shout out to Stardock for not taking the piss with their pricing and Gibson Research for just being bloody brilliant!

Would love to move my main workhorse to something like Mint but I'm running the "full Terry Pratchett" with 6 monitors and two graphics cards. Windows is fine but with Mint the proprietary nVidia driver only displays on 3 monitors and the open source driver sees all 6 but runs so slowly it is completely unusable. The graphics cards won't be getting any driver updates from nVidia either so I'm basically stuffed. That said, the nVidia driver sees both graphics cards when I delve into the settings - time to learn a bit about X windows internals?

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

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Shout out to the wonderful Humax FoxSat satellite box firmware update by Raydon, which gives my box a web based interface, an FTP server and the ability to record HD unscrambled.

My media server is a second hand HP Compaq tower running Mint and Plex which to my amazement is able to boot up with 6 HDDs and an SSD fitted, we're talking about 30Tb of storage in total - well over 6,000 movies, a few hundred TV series plus all my music (ripped from CD as flac). One day I may get round to watching them all.

White House seizes 32 domains, issues criminal charges in massive election-meddling crackdown

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Re: "The Biden administration"?

Quite simple really, they want to sow societal discord in any country that has nicer things than them. That would be quite a few.

Trump just happens to be a godsend to their campaign in the USA.

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

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Is opt-out even legal?

So the best I can hope for is to be given an option (well hidden?) to opt out. How about assuming opt out and having to specifically opt in?

It's a bad enough idea, but Palantir?! FFS

The amber glow of bork illuminates Brighton Station

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Re: "A toasted bacon sandwich"

British Rail toast was an epicurean delight, sadly lost to history.

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

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Re: Puzzled Experts

It will need a full marine investigation to establish what happened but I believe that it's already known that the wreck shows that the keel had not been lowered, so anything above a "normal" strong wind would have caused a capsize. Then there are the issues of how an "unsinkable" boat went down and what was done, or not, to rescue the passengers known to be below.

Have to say that it's beginning to not look too good for the captain and crew. Wonder if there's such a thing as "Titanic Syndrome" when a ship is believed to be unsinkable.

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

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Re: Huge gaps in this history

Ah the things that you could do with a BBC Micro! Actually called the British Broadcasting Corporation Micro after Brown Boveri Corporation got upset.

In the early 1980s, before the existence of the IBM PC, I worked for a company producing full-screen interactive video training software using a BBC Micro with a video card connected to an analogue Philips laserdisc player (12" discs like a vinyl LP in size). Analogue was fun, not as easy as asking for a digital file - you had to tell the disc where to seek to and then add in a fudge factor for the resulting overshoot and rebound of the playback head.

And don't mention MSX. I was a founding partner in Salamander Software back in the day and with every major Japanese electronics manufacturer signed up it looked like a no-brainer to develop for. It didn't end well.

Dr Helen Fisher, MRI maven who showed just how love works, dies at 79

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Re: Fajitas, yum.

I lost my partner of 35 years to Covid in 2020. Pretty sure that we said "I love you" to each other at least once every single day we were together, which was a lot as 90% of my career was WFH.

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Re: Real science

Back in the day (OK it was the 70s) I was at uni studying physics and engineering, and I recall that we called sociology and psychology pseudoscience back then.

What we found most amusing was that the "scientific method" that they embraced was essentially Newtonian, while the "real" science had moved on to relativity and the quantum realm. I think that my brain exploded around the time I tried to get my head around quantum theory, that's when I changed from physics to engineering:-)

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

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Re: Hard Hats and Hi-Viz...

Naughty. Learned this the hard way back in the day, damn that plastic can be sharp! My fault for having a penchant for tidy wiring.

Who needs GitHub Copilot when you can roll your own AI code assistant at home

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but each snippet is still very much 'trust but verify line by line'

So what's the point exactly?

Client tells techie: You're not leaving the country until this printer is working

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Heck of a definition of "free", I'll pass thanks!

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

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Re: Yankee employment conditions go home!

That would be the National Guard who shot fleeing students in the back at Kent State yeah? Some of us have long memories. "4 dead in Ohio"

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

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Managers were told to send reminders to staff "who are consistently absent from the office."

And that tells you all you need to know about what passes for "management" in the depressing majority of cases.

It's a software company FFS! If you're running a steel mill then WFH isn't an option but otherwise what happened to "set a task and monitor its progress". Oh of course, that requires competent management, 'nuff said.

Shout out to the handful of good managers who are a joy to work with (rather than for) and are remembered fondly many years later.

Elon Musk claims live Trump interview on X derailed by DDoS

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Re: Elon is an arse

That's a given, the thing is, he's a STUPID arse.

I refer you to the fake Telegraph "detention camps in the Falklands" post that he fell for hook, line and sinker. What a complete fuck-wit.

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Re: Interview?

"GBeebies" - love it and will use the term from now on.

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I thought it was audio only? Takes some doing to screw that up!

Speaking as someone who was involved in what I believe was the first ever live stream of radio by an ISP in the UK. That was at Nethead in Clapham (south London) in the mid 90s and the technology used was an aerial hanging out of the back window of the second floor office above a shop with cheap radio tuned to Capital Radio and its line out connected to the single rack of gear which was all you needed to run an ISP back then. Happy days!

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And as soon as the war was over he was voted out so fast his feet didn't touch the ground, resulting in a Labour government and the formation of the NHS

Google-commissioned report claims early adopters already enjoying fruits of gen-AI labor

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Re: This is all in how they ask the question

As was pointed out elsewhere, the main people to benefit from a gold rush were the ones selling the shovels.

Cigarette break burned out a huge chunk of Africa's internet

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Really Mean doesn't come close!

I worked in educational software around that time. All I can say is that the market was as bent as a nine bob note - and if that comment doesn't age me nothing will.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

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followed by counter-protests, some peaceful and some not.

Sorry Reg but that's up there with "there are good people on both sides" and really pisses me off.

Are you deliberately implying that as many counter-protests were violent as were not? I have seen NO reports at all of violence from counter-protesters, much more things like drinkers coming out of a boozer to hug passing Muslim protesters. Eight fascists in Brighton were met by over a thousand counter-protesters, no violence ensued and they fucked off back to wherever they came from.

The Reg's journalistic standards seem to have fallen off a cliff since you went left-pondian. That said, this is the first time that you have really disappointed me.

EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures

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Re: New

Really? In the last year or two I've made a few trips to rock gigs in the Netherlands and it's been an absolute breeze. Buying train tickets on the NL website is straightforward and on buses you just click in and out with any UK debit or credit card.

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Re: Naysayer

Didn't I read somewhere that many fleet hybrids are only ever run on fuel, companies buy them because the subsidies reduce the capital outlay?

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Re: Second Hand?

Upvote for the Herald owner.

Back in the day, our family car was a Triumph Vitesse and boy was that fun! That was when a major manufacturer like Triumph went "We've got a lovely little family car with the 1250cc Herald, why don't we drop in a sodding great 2 litre straight six and see how it goes?"

DoctorPaul Bronze badge

Re: Second Hand?

Applies to all modern cars...

FTFY a classic car fan.

Twitter tells advertisers to go fsck themselves, now sues them for fscking the fsck off

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Re: Not really understanding the plan

Err, did it not occur to this mega-mind that suing people that you want to spend money with you probably isn't the smartest of ideas?

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Re: curious

Think that's a reference to Adolf rather than John F!

What AI bubble? Groq rakes in $640M to grow inference cloud

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Best sub-heading of the week

Just saying

Microsoft whiz dishes the dirt on the Blue Screen Of Death's colorful past

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Re: BSOD has been rare since Windows 7

Wish I could upvote this more than once!

I was finally dragged kicking and screaming onto Windows 10 earlier this year, only made tolerable by the use of Start11 and WindowBlinds plus Incontrol from GRC.

What really pisses me off is that not only did Microshaft not offer a "classic skin", they continually sabotaged attempts by third parties to provide one.

Too late now for canary test updates, says pension fund suing CrowdStrike

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And a dead parrot

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Re: Unfortunatly your canary is really a (dead) parrot

Beat you to it with my "dead falcon" comment last week:-)

CrowdStrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide

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Re: Falcon + BSOD = Blue Falcon

'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This falcon is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-FALCON!!

Readers of a certain age will not need an explanation.

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