Posts by jvf

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

mesh good, access points-not so much anymore

By happenstance I just had to install two different mesh systems for a client in two different buildings, one (Deco) specified by me and the other (Eero) purchased by one of his employees because he uses it at his house. They both require an account and “apps” which totally sucks and probably makes it impossible to do any deep troubleshooting compared to traditional access points. I chose mesh because unlike consumer Access points, it implements the fast roaming handoff scheme whose 802.11 standard designation I don’t remember. I chose Deco because it offered Poe which seems to still be somewhat rare as of this writing and because Eero was borged by Amazon. Both backbones are hard wired. The Deco (5 units) was very easy to set up and works great. The Eero was much more difficult to set up and somewhat finicky requiring several reboots of one unit before it behaved. It seems to work ok but, as might be expected, the app is cluttered with Amazon ads.

Amazon's latest directive: Report to the office 'cos we're watching you

???

"freed them up to focus on more sophisticated tasks beyond the scope of automation" what the hell does that even mean?

Linux has nearly half of the desktop OS Linux market

Re: The trouble with linux...

Let’em downvote. The truth hurts. I don’t like Mac and I’m fed up with Windoze but every time I read another article about the tower of Babel that is Linux I decide to pass.

Google asks websites to kindly not break its shiny new targeted-advertising API

Re: "show an ad believed to be relevant to the visitor's known interests"

“Tailored to my interests” I must repeat to these ad slingers again: If you’re going to show me ads, don’t keep showing me the same old s**t. How many cordless drills do you think I’ll buy? Show me different s**t, you idiots.

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

Re: Thanks El Reg...

Back in the day, while I was washing up in the restroom, our company’s VP of marketing came in with one of his out of town sales guys. “How did you like the meeting”, Bud said. “It was great” says the sales guy, “I’ve reviewed my action items and see a clear path forward!” As I left I said “Bud, if anything like that ever comes out of my mouth, just shoot me”

NASA experts looked through 800 UFO sightings and found essentially nothing

guilty

that would be me,

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

Wake up

Forget the manual. Sounds like you were not paying attention. The sad fact is that due to lack of “real” driver’s ed. at least 80% of drivers should actually be passengers. But, that ship has sailed. Driver’s ed is being replaced by this (soon to be AI generated?) crap. One more reason (besides price) to never buy a new car. If I want to hit the brakes, I’ll do it myself.

Meta threatens to pull all news from California rather than pay El Reg a penny

Tabloid quality

I clicked on the Edge icon the other day out of curiosity. Its default is MSN.com (naturally). What a hoot! It’s like the National Enquirer of the digital age (my favorite headline from them years past was "woman cuts off nose to spite face"). Other than an occasional article from a reputable sports feed it’s splashed with fluffy, empty, non news items from dozens of ??? “news” sources. Quite entertaining for a few minutes, actually.

Meta tells staff to return to office three days a week

Finally

Is common sense starting to prevail? Maybe not all the suits are as dumb as we think. As I’ve been saying all along: “stop whining and get back to work”.

Fahrenheit to take over Celsius

I don't get it

What does any of this even mean?

Microsoft to let Internet Explorer 11 haunt Windows some more

programming madness

I have never understood why anyone would write code for an application that depended on a browser (or worse, a certain version of a browser whereupon the program would crash or refuse to install if a newer version was on the machine).

I never did, and lived to tell about it.

Chromebook expiration date, repair issues 'bad for people and planet'

computers, what computers?

When I went to school, all we had were books. We could buy them new or used at the bookstore. Is that cheaper overall than computers? Who knows, it worked for me and I received an excellent education. To paraphrase the real estate mantra perhaps it was actually the “teachers,teachers,teachers”.

P.S. If you acted like an a**hole in class, you’d get a bonk on the head. None of this “can’t touch a student or it’s child abuse” nonsense. Class was always more productive when everyone behaved.

LockBit brags: We'll leak thousands of SpaceX blueprints stolen from supplier

Re: RIP LockBit

kill the basTURDS

Cancer patient sues hospital after ransomware gang leaks her nude medical photos

nothing personal

Nothing personal-but a death sentence is looking more and more appropriate for these scumbags. As for the idiots that let this happen-20yrs minimum.

Dish: Someone snatched our data, if you're wondering why our IT systems went down

llong live Dish

I’ve been a Dish subscriber for 30 years. Their hardware is reliable, the remote is easy to use, the on screen menu is well thought out and picture quality is excellent. They’ve always been the “little guy” in the satellite dish wars so I hope they rebound and continue to prosper. Just hope my email address hasn’t been slurped up (again, I’m sure). But, it all goes to spam and I forward it to Micros~1.

Bitcoin mining rig found stashed in school crawlspace

where are they?

overmuscled?- Where did you see these guys? All the ones I've ever seen are old and fat. Makes me nervous that they couldn't handle a situation where they were really needed.

Google's Go may add telemetry that's on by default

what about?

What happened to the idea that a user could just send an email to the developer(s) with requests or comments?

Pepsi Bottling Ventures says info-stealing malware swiped sensitive data

why now?

“It also has "taken a number of steps" to boost its network security in light of the breach” Why do all these companies wait until the horse is out of the barn to try and close the door? You’d think EVERY company would have installed extra locks and a few good watchmen by now. O yeah, that costs $$$$

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

At least the system of measurement for surveying in the US is decimal feet. As I slowly converted an architectural drawing from feet/inches to decimal feet to do a building layout, my crusty old boss groused that “the only people who deal in inches are whores and carpenters”.

Native Americans urge Apache Software Foundation to ditch name

Re: Bit ridiculous

What's next? French toast?

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

Re: GMail ensures users are logged into their Google account when they access the web

Me too,

Ditto your comments about you tube. I’m not about to let google shove its head up my a** just to be able to comment on what I’ve seen.

OneCoin co-founder pleads guilty to $4 billion fraud

Re: What kind of people were targeted by this scam?

In my metaverse, the cops are allowed to ticket people for being stupid. Looks like we’ve got 3 million new scofflaws waiting to be served

DraftKings gamblers lose $300,000 to credential stuffing attack

Re:spare digits

sorry www-no fingerprints for you. However, I'm starting to wonder if there is a business opportunity awaiting for purloined digits from ???

Security firms hijack New York trees to monitor private workforce

Assholes all, especially jeff bozo

Apple exec confirms iPhones will switch to USB-C because 'we have no choice'

Re: Apple is not making bank on $19 Lightning cables

I’ve had to buy several lightning cables because of the lightning connector blunder. Exposed contacts sitting at the end of a connector subjected to real world use. What could possibly go wrong? Let me count the ways. Good riddance, I say.

California legalizes digital license plates for all vehicles

More tracking-yay!

I'm out.

Block this: Using satellites to plaster ads over our skies could work, say boffins

what's old is new again

Adverts in space were foreshadowed long ago. As a child in the 50s, I was a voracious Science Fiction reader. I’ve forgotten ALL the details of a long ago story but I believe the gist of the ending was that they (early NASA?), trying to drum up public support for space projects, were going to send a rocket to the moon and it was going to shoot off a dazzling display that could be seen through a telescope on earth. Well, someone infiltrated the project on behalf of a well known corporation and the resulting display was the two word name of its flagship product. The author was very discrete as he remarked that the Cs in the script were a little wobbly and the L near the end was somewhat deformed but all in all it was quite legible.

With a splash of dark Koloa rum, it makes for a tasty drink.

San Francisco cops can use private cameras to live-monitor 'significant events'

Re: Huh?

"So isn't the underlying issue how many privately owned cameras are pointed at publicly accessible areas?"

Nailed it.

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

Excellent summation. Get back to work, you whiners.

Merge shifts Ethereum to full proof-of-stake, price slumps

nonsense

Just read the article and came to conclusion 1)

Ex-Broadcom engineer asks for house arrest over IP theft

Re: What he said isn't relevant, what he did is.

jail time please.

Lenovo launches face-mounted monitor

Re: The best headmounted display

Can’t wait to try it and see if it works ‘good enough’ for me. I design, build and troubleshoot (not my designs, of course) control systems for machinery. So, I frequently wind up in the field whether literally outside or in a cramped room somewhere. It’s a total PITA to try and tape up a drawing in the wind or try to prop up a laptop somewhere with a PDF blown up to 200% scrolling around trying to locate wires and components. I’ve often longed for some kind of heads up display where I could see the drawings in front of me. Even if I would have to lift the glasses up or hang them from my neck to see the actual work and go back and forth I’d bet it would be better than what I’m doing now.

Musk tries to stall Twitter takeover trial following whistleblower claims

yawn

zzzzzzzz

California to phase out internal combustion vehicles by 2035

make 'em yourself if you're smart enough

No problem. Just hire some Cubans. Their ingenuity at machining parts out of nothing to keep old classics running is nothing short of astounding.

California accuses Tesla of false advertising over Autopilot

Finally

Glad to see the CA DMV pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. Hopefully more states wake up and join the bandwagon. Autopilot-what BS.

It's on: Twitter vs Elon Musk trial to start October 17

Re: I don’t have a dog in this fight

I was thinking the same thing as I read the article. This is one time I wouldn't mind the lawyers getting all the money.

Carnival Cruises torpedoed by US states, agrees to pay $6m after wave of cyberattacks

SSDD

Been on several Carnival cruses and had a blast every time. Fortunately, we had to postpone our last attempt several years ago or we might have been aboard the ship that lost a generator and had to be towed ignominiously back to port after a few days of hell for everyone (whew!). So, if they got my info it’s seriously out of date.

But, it points to a very depressing situation: It seems like every major company, no matter what the industry, is run by imbeciles. As I’ve lamented before, it’s a Beavis and Butthead world now and they run the show. It’s also another reason I don’t bother chasing cell phone or ISP providers or OS systems in an attempt to go with a more honest or environmentally oriented corporate structure. They all suck. Pick one, hold your nose and get on with life.

Wi-Fi hotspots and Windows on Arm broken by Microsoft's latest patches

Where have all the coders gone?

Once again, I have to ask: Is this sh*t way too complicated now or have all the pro code writers been retired (shoved out the door) and replaced by incompetent idiots?

Never fear, the White House is here to tackle web trolls

Re: Finger-Wagging

First of all, it sounds like he’s joking. Second, even if true, nowhere does he imply he’d shoot someone he was arguing with. Third, and most importantly, he’s in an apartment-if he’s not using the correct ammunition he’s going to shoot his neighbors-they’re the ones who should be nervous. Hope he has his s**t together on this.

Intel delivers first discrete Arc desktop GPUs ... in China

16 YEARS?

I'd think that Intel would be happy to get a 16 year run of its A380.

Toshiba says it's talking to 10 suitors about possible sale

Re: "discussions are under way with §0 parties"

That's what they did to my company.

Pentester pops open Tesla Model 3 using low-cost Bluetooth module

living in a fantasy

In my world I don’t need keys because nobody steals anything. I can write Office macros to be productive because no one hacks anything. But, since I’m living in an unreal world I have to be careful. It starts with using a phone to make phone calls and little else.

Apple's return-to-office plan savaged by staff

What is "work'?

I guess we must define “work”. If “work” means typing on a keyboard all day long with occasional conversations or emails, then one can work anywhere. Back when I was coding, I dreamed about sitting on a beach with my laptop while writing brilliant programs as a freelancer. If “work” means doing stuff with your hands and tools (as well as computers) then you have to be there. I ran a product development lab where we prototyped and tested product ideas (lots of in house automated testing with code developed by myself-great fun). Access to the equipment and collaboration with colleagues was essential.

Then, there was the submission phase to UL, CSA, VDE, etc. for testing and approval of our proposed product. One can only imagine the head butting that would occur when they’d say “you can’t do that” as we tested the limits of their standards (safely, in our opinion). It became obvious to me early on that it was far better to meet with them in person than phone/ video/email communications methods in terms of hammering out a resolution. This was borne out one day during a meting we had at the UL office. “We sure get a lot more done in person” one of their engineers said.

Of course, this was back in the day before all the greedy bastards shipped manufacturing off to China. So, perhaps its best to forget what I just wrote. The world has changed and I’m an anachronism whose time has passed. Thank God I’m not looking for a job.

Insteon's vanishing act explained: Smart home biz insolvent, sells off assets

Re: Insteon wasn't always cloudy

"Why would common Wifi/Zigbee/RF devices require gobs of wiring everywhere?" You're confusing wireless devices with a control system using existing electrical wiring. Gobs of wiring means running switch legs to the new locations and/or running new wires between switches if controlling lights (or plugs) from more than one location). Of course, if adding a new light you have to at least get power to it by wire but even then, switching that light can get complicated. Been there, done that 1000 times over.

Insteon wasn't always cloudy

As an IT website, the focus here is the reporting of computer based shenanigans including the pathetic abomination referred to as IoT. Not sure how Insteon became entangled into the (not so)SmartHomes cloudy endeavor but it was a very good stand alone product for many years. Similar to power line networking (but preceding it, I think) It used the power lines to communicate between modules. This enabled switching and controlling lights/receptacles, etc. without running gobs of wiring everywhere (and tearing up walls when adding things after the fact). Other than local control, if desired here could be a master controller plugged in somewhere. Insteon was a great improvement over the similar, but somewhat buggy, X-10 system. Insteon hardware solved thorny problems for many of my clients and I, for one, am saddened to see it going down in flames.

Europe twists YouTube's arm to get better cookie consent popups

Re: Cookie banners-why cookies at all?

"...GitHub, which in late 2020 stopped presenting any cookie notification banner because it abandoned non-essential cookies..." Why are cookies necessary at all for a website to function? If you want your information saved (searches, etc) why can't you just make a profile which the website could access when you visited the site. In other words-bake your own cookie when you want to.

Fintech platform flaw could have allowed bank transfers, exposed data

re Defensive programming

This is how I used to write code. Guess it went out of fashion. My code to validate user input was always longer than the function code. This would be followed by several days of users testing the forms by entering nonsense and alphabet soup into all the input boxes to make sure everything behaved.

VMware reveals a swarm of serious bugs – some critical

here we go again

Once again I have to ask: How does this keep happening (serious flaws in almost every application)? Are coders really this bad or are these applications so complicated that these scenarios are impossible to avoid? If they’re so complicated how come other people keep finding these vulnerabilities? If someone else found them why didn’t the company in question have its own bug finder on staff? I just don’t get it.

Feds slay dark-web souk Hydra: Servers and $25m in crypto-coins seized

Re: Here's an idea

They break into your house because, being illegal, the s**t is so expensive. Removing the huge profit margins will make your house far less likely to be burglarized (by a drug addict, at least). Trouble is, the ‘war on drugs’ means lots of money for cops also so it’s unlikely this mess will go away anytime soon.

It's time to delete that hunter2 password from your Microsoft account, says IT giant

Re: "in a safe place"

Had a spare car key tucked under the fender in a magnetic key holder box for “that occasion”. Locked my key in the car one shopping trip, reached under the fender and felt around where the box used to be. It was shocking how quick and easy it was for a helpful onlooker to unlock the door with a coat hangar.