Posts by Blackjack

Future airliners will run on hydrogen, vows Airbus as it teases world-plus-dog with concept designs

Isn't that a tad... explosive?

While hydrogen on itself is not explosive, hydrogen is very flammable... add the components of a plane to that and... BOOM!

Woman dies after hospital is unable to treat her during crippling ransomware infection, cops launch probe

Re: Why?

I am amazed the hard disk still works. That probably means it must have been replaced once or twice.

Re: Why?

Windows 7 Pro and the even more expensive one get Virtual XP for free.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002

I use it, is not perfect but anything that cannot run on Windows 7 64 bits because it needs an older 32 bit Windows works on it so far, even Windows 3.1 stuff.

Granted there is the small detail of having to buy extended support for Windows 7....

Feeling bad about your last security audit? Check out what just happened to the US Department of Interior

The best Wi-Fi defence...

Is not to use Wi-Fi.

Just.. use cables for everything.

Even the latest Wi-Fi protocol has holes and it has not been fully implemented in most places yet.

As we stand on the precipice of science fiction into science fact, people say: Hell yeah, I want to augment my eyesight!

It might be that if you are an impressionable youngling then the idea of being a cyborg sounds cool

Behold the Bloo Screen of Death: Bathroom borkage stops spray play

This used to be a joke...

When the Simpsons had that "Everything has computer chips nowadays" moment it was supposed to be a joke. It even showed how bad it would be. Two decades and change later...

Google bans stalkerware apps from Android store. Which is cool but... why were they allowed in the first place?

Where is my phone?

My Nokia 1 has an inbuilt app to locate the phone that keeps enabling itself no matter how many times I disable it. Wanna guess how similar apps can be used to locate another adult phone quite easily?

Safety driver at the wheel of self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian is charged with negligent homicide

Well...

Watching TV while testing an experimental self driving car that has you as the pilot in case of an emergency was not a smart choice.

£2.5bn sueball claims Google slurps kids' YouTube browsing habits then sells them on

This Youtube Kids problem keeps happening because Google is too lazy and greedy to make a separate website only for kids videos.

Worried about bootkits, rootkits, UEFI nasties? Have you tried turning on Secure Boot, asks the No Sh*! Agency

Re: Security tips

Here is another "Don't use e-mail!"

Singapore to pay its citizens to wear Apple Watches

Re: Think you forgot something

So... Let's say someone never updates the thing, just wears it, how long until it gets borked?

Oracle's Java 15 rides into town, waving the 'we're number one' flag, demands 25th birthday party

Re: with 14 new features

Java really needs to dedicate the next three releases to just fixing bugs and don't removing anything then people might move on from Java 8 and or 10.

That being said... Solaris? Wow, anyone still using that? They really should move to OpenIndiana or something...

Re: Who do we hate more today? Apple or Oracle? Take your pick.

Don't forget Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon...

Is Little Timmy still enthralled by his Leapfrog tablet? Maybe check he hasn't sideloaded an unrestricted OS onto it

Re: kid's toy turned into a proper tablet computer

They literally forced you to use very crappy keyboards for years.

And let's not get me started on Ipod cables and headphones that at first were of good quality. Then Apple decided to make the ones that came with the Ipod crap to force you to buy better ones.

Is not like other companies don't pull abuse like this but sometimes I think most Apple fanboys must like the pain.

Microsoft pulls this shit? No one forgives them. For Apple? It takes stuff like overcharging a monitor stand for even the fanboys to call them out.

Re: kid's toy turned into a proper tablet computer

I wanna know the main reason non fanboys use Apple products, I am honesty curious since if you just want a work computer a PC with Windows tends to be cheaper and if you want something that needs powerful hardware... Apple doesn't do power computers... do they?

1080p on an Android 4 tablet?

No wonder they are having problems. Was that even possible on Android 4?

And of course they have battery problems, Android 4 is way less hardware intensive.

Russian hacker selling how-to vid on exploiting unsupported Magento installations to skim credit card details for $5,000

The problem is selling that idea to people used to use something.

Is why a lot of people keep using Microsoft Office when LibreOffice is free and in like half the cases they just need a word processor and a simple spreadsheet program.

Back in the 90s I remember at least a few spreadsheet programs that were both easier to use and cheaper that Microsoft Excel but nooo... they wanted it on Excel. Then they added macros and you basically had to be a programmer to understand the advanced options and that plus the package deal, massive piracy and discounts is how the other programs disappeared.

They could still have offered a way to migrate, like a program that exports the database of 1 on a format that 2 can read. They definitely had more than enough time to do so. And even if the program to do so wasn't perfect, it would have helped a lot.

Adobe you say? At least Microsoft cares for backwards compatibility and migration.

Typical '80s IT: Good idea leads to additional duties, without extra training or pay, and a nuked payroll system

Remember floppy disks?

The flat ones were surprisingly durable if you took care of them, the 3.5 aberrations? They were so faulty that in the last few years I was forced to use them I had to backup the same files in three different floppy disks and do them as Rar compressed files with a recovery file included.

Another month, another cryptocurrency exchange hacked and 'millions of dollars' stolen by miscreants

Re: Definition of cryptocurrency

Funny it almost looks like you are describing a Tech Unicorn and or Tesla.

Mark Shuttleworth to revive Ubuntu Community Council after body shrinks to single member – Mark Shuttleworth

Yeah, Debian needs more love and care. I am gonna install Linux Mint Debian edition on a "Former Windows XP" laptop and see how it goes.

Microsoft's Surface Duo cops 1 repairability point for each of its screens: That's 2/10

In other words...

Better get a 1000$ laptop and a 400$ phone instead. Dunno about the laptop but I am looking at some Android Nokia phones.

Don't pay the ransom, mate. Don't even fix a price, say Australia's cyber security bods

Re: Security Practices

Why aren't e-mail clients sandboxed by default? Is not that hard and it would prevent a lot of malware. Plus blocking any links you get by e-mail and any scripts would work too.

Pension scheme cold caller fined £130,000 by UK data watchdog

Re: so sad :(...

Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

Bork, Beer and Breweries: Three of our favourite things

I read it as Tron...

And had the hilarious image in my head of what Tron would had been like if all the actors had been drunk.

Adobe Illustrator's open source rival Inkscape delivers v1.0.1 - with experimental Scribus PDF export

Re: I need some pointers

I remember Paint Shop Pro, I think I have a CD with an old version of 3 or 4 somewhere. Since I paid for it, I may try to make it work on Wine and have some fun.

Re: I need some pointers

Blender GUI is the next example on how NOT TO make a GUI user friendly. Inkscape is not THAT bad, I definitely find it less confusing than Blender and the artist formerly called Gimp.

Nintendo revives Game & Watch portable proto-console, adds color to 2.36-inch screen

If you are on a computer try this:

https://archive.org/details/handheldhistory

So... can it be hacked?

I had a Game & Watch in the eighties but even if 3 games for that price is not a bad deal I don't feel like buying this unless I can add more games to it.

Paragon 'optimistic' that its NTFS driver will be accepted into the Linux Kernel

Re: Whatever for?

[. It would be nice if we could put a Fedora ISO on an NTFS formatted USB thumb drive and boot-up and install from that, directly.]

NTFS IS FREAKING TERRIBLE FOR PORTABLE STORAGE DEVICES, yes even in Linux.

All my external hard drives are in Fat32 or on Ext2 for a reason and that reason is that it works better that way.

If even Windows 10 Enterprise, on a stable update, borks quite badly using NTFS on an external storage device, even if you threat it like crystal, imagine the borkage on Linux.

I say that as personal experience, just DO NOT use NTFS for an external storage device, okay?

Re: Whatever for?

Is not, is worse than the one that comes with Windows and has more bugs and errors than the FUSE one.

I don't want this junk on the kernel, is gonna be a buggy mess.

Vivaldi offers users a 'break' from browsing. No, don't switch to Chrome... don't sw..

Is a browser based on Chromium that has it's own brand of spyware and is also based on Opera.

There is literally no reason to use this browser I can think off besides trying something different.

The Honor MagicBook Pro looks nice, runs like a dream, and isn't too expensive either. What more could you want?

Re: How much does it weigh?

Dude we are in the pandemic era. People no longer want light laptops with long battery time, they want power laptops that can run every heavy program they need to work at home... and to play games at home.

And working from home won't disappeared even after we get a vaccine, at least a third of the office workforce will continue to work from home as it saves companies money.

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

Re: Perhaps

You are my hero!

More seriously people always bitch and moan that I am unavailable at night during my sleep time when they do the exact same thing! Heck people who gets angry because my smartphone is not turned on 24 hours a day don't have their smartphone turned on 24 hours a day.

There's a battery-free Game Boy that runs solely on the power of sunlight and the speed of your button-mashing

Neat, do Game & Watch next!

A traditional Game & Watch, instead of one of the remakes, wastes way less energy than a Gameboy and has more space for solar panels.

'A guy in a jetpack' seen flying at 3,000ft within few hundred yards of passenger jet landing at LA airport

Re: Mirage?

Anything can be reflected on a Mirage if it meets the right conditions. But having the jetpack be just there at the right moment and time to be reflected and for the mirage to be seen by the pilot... those are some crazy odds.

Mirage?

Seeing mirages is not unknown, but it would be heck of a coincidence.

India's telecoms given ten years to pay $22bn in back taxes they've already disputed for a decade

Re: Given my experience with Vodaphone....

Even most of Africa has digital payment methods.

Way to go India!

Happy birthday to the Nokia 3310: 20 years ago, it seemed like almost everyone owned this legendary mobile

In many countries (And most of Africa) SMS aren't going away due to being used for emergencies. Because of that GSM may last a few decades more if not everywhere.

Re: I'll See Your 33xx and Lower You

I had a 1100, once I left it turned on for ten days then found it still on despite the battery icon saying it was at zero charge. I ended giving it away as a gift when I got a Nokia N8.

Re: I'll See Your 33xx and Lower You

I had a Nokia 5110, had snake and not much else, too bad it got stolen.

Party like it's 2004: Almost a quarter of Windows 10 PCs living with the latest update

Hey guys!

Remember when Windows updates usually didn't fuck everything up?

What rhymes with 'boom' and is veritably raking it in thanks to the coronavirus pandemic?

Eh... you know all those places that opened up like a month ago?

Now they are closing up again due to a spike on cases. Summer plus Pandemic is not nice it seems.

What's 2 + 2? Personal info, sniffs Twitter: Anti-doxxing AI goes off the rails, bans tweets with numbers in them

Would anything of value be lost if Twitter was gone?

I am honesty curious.

When Irish screens are borking: Ticketing trip-up for Dublin-based Windows 10 IoT terminal, but at least it's not XP

Re: Dear God

Actually, both Linux Mint and Ubuntu and others distros do tend to nag about updates but do not automatically update at the very least.

My Nokia 1 updated itself to Android 10 just a few days ago and I haven't found any option on Android 10 to disable updates.

Facebook rejects Australia's pay-for-news plan, proposes its own idea: How about no more articles at all, sunshine?

Mom, do independent arbitrators exist?

Yes honey, they live in the cupboard under the stairs together with the tooth fairy and that hobo that insists that he is a wizard.

Funny, that: Handy script for wiping directories is capable of wreaking havoc beyond a miscreant's wildest dreams

Re: capable hands of Windows Server 2003

Authoring tools to create master CDs that later were used to make the mass production copies, ran on Windows and DOS so that's how a CD could get infected by a Windows or DOS virus despite the other systems being different.

The hilarious thing is that F-Prot for DOS was free and worked until Windows 98 SE to detect and erase viruses for Windows and DOS. And there was also Norton Antivirus Scanner that at least let you detect the things and was free to use and that one ran in Windows.

Re: capable hands of Windows Server 2003

That was most likely to avoid another scandal like the Microsoft Plus CDs that had viruses on them.

While I can't find the old news online, apparently a factory in Mexico didn't have an antivirus installed because "Windows 95 doesn't get viruses".

China trolls Trump with tech export rules changes that could imperil TikTok sale

Re: Just a reminder

Being a compulsive liar is always how the guy has always has been. The character he played in The Apprentice wasn't a character, it was how he usually acts.