Posts by quartzz

Guess who came thiiis close to signing off a €102k annual budget? Austria. Someone omitted 'figures in millions'

saw a program, about building planes...one of the new Airbus? (have not currently googled the details)...France's software ran in one unit (inches or cm), Germany's software ran in the other. it went right thro to the end, meant miles of cabling around the aircraft was the wrong size/didn't fit. cost so much to rectify & rebuild, the commercial version of the aircraft had to be ditched (pun not intended).

Laughing UK health secretary launches COVID-19 Test and Trace programme with glitchy website and no phone app

Re: Oh No Surely Not...

all joking aside, I'll assume there is a government approved sticker on the DVD, saying 'please rewind after use'. I might remove this comment..

NHS contact tracing app isn't really anonymous, is riddled with bugs, and is open to abuse. Good thing we're not in the middle of a pandemic, eh?

aren't we at a point yet where the government can h̶a̶c̶k̶ call someone, and ask for the oxford eng dictionary definition of "anonymity", to be changed? if not, why not?

Mad dash for webcams with surge in videoconferencing has turned out rather nicely for Logitech

Re: now if someone could produce a wireless mechanical keyboard...

oo. not bad...

wireless and lit up - could be good. do the lights majorly affect battery life? guessing they can be turned off. altho backlit like that can be very nice.

rechargeable using optional USB cable, or just battery? *hints for focus group*.

flat keys...any makers want to make regular switch/keytop type keyboards? I'm not into the 'chiclet' thing yet. there are at least 2 types of cherry keys I might be interested in, the regular light-resistance action (red, I think), and non-clicky tactile 9can;t remember which, possibly light grey).

I used to like Logitech (mice, at least), haven't since some of their recent (well, 5 years ago) products. their setpoint software is *horrible*. (want to reassign mouse buttons? they become "mouse button 1", "mouse button 2", "mouse button 3" 4 and 5. (as opposed to left click, right click, wheel). but, re this article, ok, good.

now if someone could produce a wireless mechanical keyboard (they don't seem to exist?) https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3FJPGpwyzOA/maxresdefault.jpg they might have a customer/market.

Surge in Zoom support requests was 'unexpected', says tool team as it turns taps down

half related, but there's a popular online review site (either 'trust'pilot or sitejabber, can't remember which, both sites definitely have their integrated dodgyness - and I'm not talking about fake reviews). when you contact them, "if" you get a reply, the email subject says:

"your ticket has been solved/closed"

at the end of the message, it says "please reply if you have questions".

*why* do some people find the internet confusing? no idea...

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

as Bruce Willis said, "the President just asked us to save the world....by ignoring what he says".

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

it's only semi-related, but the amount of censorship on the BBC news Have Your Say comment section is starting to annoy me (the election brought it all out).

I have a feeling that the BBC doesn't want a comments section. that's why it makes the comment software as annoying to use as possible, and gives so many options for reporting comments.

I'm into reporting as many comments on there as possible. I often get quite a few hits. some of them on comments which seem perfectly fine to me. its a side-hobby. hopefully people will get put-off using the site because they get censored.

Zoom's end-to-end encryption isn't actually end-to-end at all. Good thing the PM isn't using it for Cabinet calls. Oh, for f...

Number 10 uses government approved protocols.

unless it doesn't. know they exist.

and they aren't

ok then

Hey, China. Maybe you should have held your hackers off for a bit while COVID-19 ravaged the planet. Just a suggestion

am I allowed to say

I ordered a takeaway yesterday.

A chinese guy knocked at the door with the order, and said "isolate!".

I said "no you aren't late, I only ordered it 15 minutes ago".

Sadly, the web has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'

Re: oh how things have evolved

well to start with, 1994-ish, most people had to pay per minute to access the 'net (or they were at work/university) . so you still had idiots, but they were a better quality of idiot. maybe .

GCHQ's infosec arm has 3 simple tips to secure those insecure smart home gadgets

Re: Updates

first thing I did with my laptop, duck't tape over the built in cam..

Bloodhound gang handles the pan again to get back to Hakskeenpan

glad the Reg has an article on this

'An issue of survival': Why Mozilla welcomes EU attempts to regulate the internet giants

Re: RE: big_D

I've asked this previously (and I have search-ed). but is there any decent cookie management for chrome? (like there is for Firefox). eg, sort by date last used/number of cookies/size)

Google burns down more than 500 private-data-stealing, ad-defrauding Chrome extensions installed by 1.7m netizens

can someone tell me, IF, there is a cookie manager for chrome? I've looked. can't find. Firefox you can sort by "last date accessed" which makes deleting anything that hasn't been used recently fairly easy

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

nice to know. I'm on a VX912, at least 10 yrs old. (I've replaced the cap on the power board). it's been giving occasional jip (fleeting horizontal pink lines across mostly the lower right hand part of the monitor when I have a USB hub connected). I'm thinking of a Dell U2419 when this eventually goes

Cali Right-to-Repair law dropped, cracks screen, has to be taken to authorized repair shop

lots of interesting informations there. thanks.

reminded me of a couple of eg's I had

used to be a technician for a company that supplied CD copiers. one of our customers was a barracks (fair play, not a lot wrong with them). the guy that met us in the copy room, said "don't tell these guys how to work these copiers (I mainly just replaced the bits that went wrong). they are corporals, you know. they're in charge of ships, they win wars, they don't need to be told anything".

also, different place. we had a new computer in the test room. case off. it had a bracket in it. the sales guy was showing a customer around. he gave the bracket a tap and said "look at that build quality, solid". I happened to know, that if he'd done anything more than give it a tap (ie, tried to move it), it would have come out of the machine.

This episode of Black Mirror sucks: London cops boast that facial-recog creepycams will be on the streets this year

yeah the specific thing I might be thinking about is "do you have to give the police your details in the street" or something. I've seen footage of people refusing to give information that I'm assuming the policemanwoman they were dealing with, were "hoping" the member of the public wouldn't be aware that they didn't have to provide. eg, "what's your name" "I don't have to give you my name", or something like that

can someone clarify the law. is it a crime to take a (camera phone, for eg) pic of a policeman in a public place? it will probably be along the lines of "if you're not under arrest, you can take a photo"?

Behold the Internet of Turf: IoT sucks waste energy from living plants to speak to satellites

I thought the "Internet of things" meant that companies website doesn't work, and they never reply to emails

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

Re: Microsoft Win10 Specs

the BBC doesn't need a sense of humour

Step away from that Windows 7 machine, order UK cyber-cops: It's not safe for managing your cash digitally

education if poss. but will using a paid for VPN service, avoid any of the possibilities of getting hacked due to lack of updates?

What if everyone just said 'Nah' to tracking?

Re: Poison the well

https://adnauseam.io/free-adnauseam.html stuff...?

Another free web course to gain machine-learning skills (thanks, Finland), NIST probes 'racist' face-recog – and more

but FB still kept the $9.5m advertising fee... all in it's T's&C's of course? "we reserve the right to remove accounts...and keep the payments".

Want to live long and prosper? Avoid pirated, malware-laden Star Wars free vid streams – and pay to watch instead

swim searched for Formula 1 streams... swim came across some sites that said "enter card details for registration, these won't be touched". swim closed the window.....

London's Met Police splash the cash on e-learning 'cyber' training for 4k staffers

does this mean that next time I submit something to Action Fraud, I'll get a reply or even an acknowledgement that my submitted data exists? w w w . a c t i o n f r a u d . p o l i c e . u k . don't answer. hangon. you didn't. (by the way, it would be really, really amazing, if action fraud also bought up .com and .co.uk domains. so that...you know....people over 60 (or something) don't get really strange websites when they type in a website url they don't know exists. just. you know. webbernet stuff)

You leak our secrets? We'll leak your book sales, speech fees – into our coffers: Uncle Sam wins royalties fight against Edward Snowden

I hate to bring this up, but the pro-Shamima Begum argument is that she can't be made citizen-less for ISIS, but Snowden could be made that (passport revoked) because of his whistle (or not) blowing

Valuable personal info leaks from Facebook – not Zuck selling it, unencrypted hard drives of staff data stolen

"so far there is no indication of the purloined details being used for fraud", it's really weird, how when you tell an insurance company that or a bank, they immediately cancel whatever it is you had, and issue you with a new one. ie, "they have no idea". when do we get Libra? or when does Facebook go back to being number 3 ranked on alexa? like it hasn't been for a couple of months.

Samsung Galaxy S11 tipped to escalate the phone cam arms race with 108MP sensor

cool. but I take it if I want those features, I'll have to settle for less than 100MP

do phones do optical zoom or image stabilisation yet?

PSA: You are now in the timeline where Facebook and pals are torn a new one by, er, Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen

Facebook [et all] thinks it's indestructable

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

I told Jeremy Corbyn I want hoverboards. he said he could do that. he asked me what they were, I said there was a network of peters, which he could access through a competer. if he used something called goggle, he could find out what hoverboards were on a competer. he said he'd do that, and I'd have my hoverboard by 14th December.

Pentagon beams down $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft: Windows giant beats off Bezos

Re: Article about JEDI shows picture of Spock

the needs of the Jedi, outweigh the needs of the few

Google warns devs as it tightens Chrome cookie security: Stuff will break if you're not clued up

someone correct if wrong, but is Chrome ever going to have a decent cookie editor? Firefox you can list by last date used, size of cookies, name. Chrome, you can't sort by anything. if I want to delete cookies that haven't been used since 2 years ago, there is no way to list those in Chrome

From Libra to leave-ya: eBay, Visa, Stripe, PayPal, others flee Facebook's crypto-coin

Paypal correctly refunded me £500 this year after fraud. I wouldn't trust FB to do that.

This won't end well. Microsoft's AI boffins unleash a bot that can generate fake comments for news articles

I support the [insert comment here*]

*note to Dave, edit this to say 'great leader'.

Good old Auntie Beeb's mobile app berates kids for being rubbish online

Re: Goatse

I've just lost the game. I'm one of 4 internet users who so far has not seen 'tse, or 1 cup. can't guarantee by end of today tho. hmm.

Police costs for Gatwick drone fiasco double to nearly £900k – and still no one's been charged

Re: Millions

You do wonder what the McCanns know about the head of the Police force, and why the Police seem to carry out their investigations in Portugal, during summer.

Capital One gets Capital Done: Hacker swipes personal info on 106 million US, Canadian credit card applicants

"Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised." -- they almost sound like they are sure about that.

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

the sneak peak of the new twitter seems to have all the text next to the icons gone. and no 'hover over' feature.

also google maps seems to collapse every menu option unless you click it's 'reveal' arrow. no idea why some (older? or other) people find the net confusing..

but I guess actually having information on-screen would make viewing on a smartphone difficult...

one of my old bosses shut his laptop down _every night_ by holding the power button in for 5 seconds, because "powering off took too long". his XP install did still work..somehow

Oh good. This'll go well. Amazon's Alexa will offer NHS advice

it's good. because (correct if wrong, I don't actually own one) Alexa's monthly cost is free, and they'll only plan to charge you an extra £40 (or £50? or ...) per year for medical advice? or is that to leave reviews on amazon.com ..

What would Jesus tweet? Church of England hands down commandments for Anglicans on social media

follow ze roolz. zees ees pah-ticularly importunt.

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

Re: "chiefly women, it doesn't work properly on men"

is that what is meant by 'non-binary'? running it on a quantum computer?

The seven deadly sins of the 2010s: No, not pride, sloth, etc. The seven UI 'dark patterns' that trick you into buying stuff

although....careful with possible complacency. I've been using ther 'net since ~1995. A couple of months ago, I had fraud for the first time. downloaded an infected file, virus scanner went nuts for a couple of minutes. and my hotmail junk folder got a strange receipt for a £200 delivery sent to Scotland (not where I live).

what I didn't do, was run malwarebytes. 3 days later, my paypal was (correctly) frozen as £700 had been ('suspiciously') spent on it, by someone else. paypal accepted liability, refunded me. (malwarebytes picked up about 200 items). happy ending to that one. fair do's to paypal.

Disk drives suck less than they did a couple of years ago. Which is nice

since 1996 or so, the only drive I've had going wrong (apart from a seperate IDE controller which went in 96 ish) was a maxtor 40GB, and that was pretty much my own fault because I ran it in a 'quiet' enclosure without the metal heat sink brackets, it overheated and started developing errors. mostly running 500GB sata western digital blues now (apart from my hitachi 2TB external). the annoying thing with two IDE western dig's I have is they can't be used on docking stations because of the jumper configuration.

You were told to clean up our systems, not delete 8,000 crucial files

I mean more about compatibility, an email with an image sent will generally show up with the image visible, a hard drive from this system will generally work with that system (provided they are both sata and so on)

I swear computers now are where they _should_ have been 20 years ago.