Posts by Slarti Bartfast

Jokes of no more than 2 lines

Clowns divorce

Custardy battle

Brave accuses Google of trampling Europe's GDPR with stealthy netizen-stalking adverts

Re: Funny

Tom I agree with you fully and have an upvote. However, I remember three years ago I was in a rush and needed to quickly find an out-of-hours pharmacy on Street View. When I visited the website I was blocked by a notification that I couldn't continue without agreeing to a new policy. I quickly clicked the agree button and thankfully I no longer have that burning sensation. It turns out though that I did agree to tracking and to start every conversation with the phrase "Pixel: the best Android phone you can buy". It transpires the Irish DPA (Unit 4, Google Way, Dublin) consider that 'informed consent' under GDPR.

Feature request

Makes sense. Thanks for the reply.

Feature request

Hi Vultures,

When I'm reading the comments on an article I sometimes see: "This post has been deleted by its author". We all see the world through our own eyes, so to me that reads as: I said something stupid or bigoted, probably had a backlash of downvotes, consulted with my PR people and my rabbi, sat sipping Bovril looking out of the rainy window for a while, then clicked "withdraw". I discovered the other day that when I wrote a comment and submitted it without checking it properly then immediately withdrew it to do some more research, it appeared as "This post has been deleted by its author", despite it never having been visible to others.

I know this isn't a big thing but it changes my reading of the comments, it adds a darker tone - maybe just to me.

My feature request is to not display the deletion message if the comment never made it through the ten minute window. If the comment was never displayed to other people, why should they see that one has been deleted?

Contractor association blasts UK.gov guidance on hated IR35 tax law's arrival in private sector

Impossibly complicated

Andy Chamberlain, deputy director of policy at the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE), whined: "The government's insistence that our members pay their fair share of tax is really confusing. The lack of guidance about whether the moral imperative to pay for schools and hospitals applies to IT consultants makes an accurate determination difficult. Public sector consultants got so confused that they were forced to take private sector positions with lower taxes. I mean less confusion. We urge the government to delay these reforms until all this pesky confusion has gone away."

The Register taps a foot with boffins under the Lovell Telescope at Bluedot Festival

a quick moan (not that quick)

Went to the last three Blue Dots and thoroughly enjoyed it all three times. Some of the science lectures are still a bit tailored to the general public, considering it's a science festival but there are 'deep-dives' as well. They can't afford the best bands to play but the stages are well curated anyway, I always find a few excellent bands that are new to me. Just being close to that telescope is an experience in itself.

I won't be going back though, which I'm sad about. They have decided to do what they describe as 'going cashless', which involves adding an RFID chip onto everyone's wristband. If you want to buy a beer or a burger or a programme or a toilet roll, you have to load money from your cards or cash onto your wristband and then spend it from there. You can also scan your chip at various locations on site to get extra goodies in your account. No consent asked, No opt out possible - other than by not buying anything on site for the whole weekend. It is possible to not create an account with your personal details, although you are in trouble then if you lose your chip, so I suspect most did. I had a suspicion that my ticket details were tied to my chip anyway, although I could be wrong about that. It's a data grab of the worst kind with no way of withholding consent. I also wonder what happens to all the 50ps left in people's accounts - a refund is possible but who would bother for the last few pence. Massive signs everywhere advising you how to load money onto your wristband but no sign anywhere of a privacy policy and I looked. In the end I went the whole weekend not buying anything because I would rather cut off my nose to spite the surveillance capitalists. Fortunately I took supplies with me to the camp site. </rant>

From MySpace to MyFreeDiskSpace: 12 years of music – 50m songs – blackholed amid mystery server move

I've just checked and my Geocities website is down as well. This is a nightmare.

'Numpty new boy' lets the boss take fall for mailbox obliteration

100% honesty 90% of the time

I know this is an amusing look at mistakes people have made, not an advice column. That said I want to mention that in my time in IT I have seen four people sacked because they made mistakes and lied about it, or tried to cover their tracks. I've never seen anyone sacked who made a mistake and immediately came clean. Maybe I've been lucky not to work anywhere with a culture of blame but I don't think so. So my advice is immediately come clean, unless you are the only person capable of understanding your mistake. In that case go nuts, blame fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field.

Any chance of a redirect?

Re: Any chance of a redirect?

Much appreciated. I seem to end up using multiple browsers on multiple devices (VMs, work phone, personal phone, work desktop, home desktop, laptop, tablet) these days, so bookmarking can be a pain. I'm far too tin-foil hat to use an online bookmarking service. Thanks a lot for the redirect.

Any chance of a redirect?

Not really a bug report just a request for the people with bad memories like myself. Can you redirect

https://www.theregister.co.uk/week

to

https://www.theregister.co.uk/Week

As someone who hosts websites mainly on Windows, I can't get my head around case-sensitive URLs.

IBM: Co-Op Insurance talking direct to coding subcontractor helped collapse of £55m IT revamp project

"showed a pass rate for 72 per cent for the tests that had been run".

Personally if I issued a release for UAT and it had a 28% failure rate I would expect two things: 1, Massive personal embarrassment 2, The users ending the UAT early due to it "not working". To me that smacks of the devs not doing their own testing and just chucking it over the fence, either due to too much pressure from IBM or laziness.

What a meth: Woman held for 3 months after cops mistake candy floss for hard drugs

Roadside drug tests

Surely the roadside drug test manufacturer should be in the firing line here as well.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/09/texas_man_loses_job_and_jailed_after_cops_confuse_cat_litter_for_meth/

Laptop search unravels scheme to fake death for insurance cash

pleaded guilty to concealing and failing to report his family's fraud scheme

Is that one crime "concealing and failing to report"? If so the second part seems redundant. Or is it two separate crimes? If "failing to report" someone else's crime is a crime then I need to urgently speak to the police about several thousand things. Including that car I saw speeding this morning.

Spammer scum hack 100,000 home routers via UPnP vulns to craft email-flinging botnet

Re: ISP-branded router - patch? What patch?

Same here. Four year old Technicolor router. They released one firmware update six months after the router was shipped, since then nothing. When I log in to the admin interface on the router there is a helpful "Update Firmware" button. I click it and it asks me to browse to the firmware update file on my PC. Is it beyond the wit of domestic router manufacturers to provide a firmware update facility over https? I suppose if they aren't planning on producing any updates what would be the point.

Cosmoboffins think grav waves hold the key to sorting out the disputed Hubble Constant

Timbo - There is a theory that dark energy will eventually overcome gravity completely. So after the stars start receding from each other, the atoms of Voyager 1 and 2 will also do the same. Personally I find that sad, so I'm rooting for a gravity come-back, then a big crunch as everything collapses back ready for the next big bang. I am a romantic though.