Posts by Rahbut

Stuff a Pi-hole in your router because your browser is about to betray you

Re: Evil Browsers?

Hadn't thought of blocking DoH, so thanks the nudge and the block list :)

Type-safe C-killer Delphi hits 30, but a replacement has risen

Re: A colleague of mine uses Delphi/Lazarus

It's fairly noddy tbh - it was easy to pick up, and produce things quickly, hence it's popularity back then. If people can read Javascript and/or Python, there's not much to worry about in Delphi or equivalents - it's just a bit more "wordy".

GNOME 48 beta is another nail in X11's coffin

Re: I can feel the downvotes coming! Be gentle.

Have an upvote :)

I've tried a bunch of things and Gnome is fine - it gets out of the way and lets me do stuff. It's the default on some distros and I don't have a problem with that. It's opinionated, which can work both ways. I don't have nvidia, so my desktop experience isn't dictated by whether a driver is working properly or not.

That said, you don't have to look too hard to see some obvious bugs/features like how it steals focus when there's a pop-up/toast visible - which is crap when you're on a big screen.

KDE is also OK.

Cosmic looks interesting...

I quite like ChromeOS, so I know that makes me a bit odd - it sits in a middle ground between Windows and Linux from a UX perspective.

I think most people here can agree that Windows is getting worse, not better.

I should probably also mention that I really am not a fan of MacOS, despite loving the hardware and some of the other software - it would be far better WITH gnome! :D

It's nice to have choice on Linux, because ultimately we're all different and like different things.

Google: How to make any AMD Zen CPU always generate 4 as a random number

Re: In the Olden Days, Microcode

DNS I get, but that's another reason for using HTTPS because you're less likely to have the matching cert.

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Re: Confusing activity with productivity again

I tend to mark myself as offline (grey - as if the computer is off) and then make a point of messaging and responding to people and joining meetings... since setting your status to "Do not disturb" appears to mean "Please disturb me", and status will turn orange in a heartbeat even if you're on the computer, I think the Teams status indicator is invalid and treat it as such.

I also used to enjoy clicking "Meet now" and doing a quick screen share, with just myself in the call...

Fedora Asahi Remix 41 for Apple Macs is out

Re: Mmmmmm

I'm also interested in an M4 version - I suspect the limitation is down to GPU drivers, but there's bound to be other things as well.

I seem to recall watching a video about "device trees" that explained a lot of the difficulties - still, I suspect there will be support at some point in the future.

China's homebrew Bluetooth alternative is on the march as Beijing pushes universal remotes

This sounds interesting.

Ignoring any of the conversation around who's spying on what, this sounds quite interesting.

If you could create something "new" to do what Bluetooth does now, and could jettison a bunch of legacy backwards compatibility, you might have a fighting chance of creating something a bit more reliable.

Presumably this sits on 2.4GHz?

Can we assume it's less onerous from a patents/licensing perspective?

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: Keyboard layout

I always thought "bang" an exclamation mark ("!")?

Northern Ireland schools ditch £485M Fujitsu deal after less than a year

There's obviously a lot more to this than a School MIS

My understanding is that Bromcom's MIS is being deployed across NI schools - but that would be a fraction of the 485 million over how many years.

I'm fairly familiar with the software they'll use at the EANI side to aggregate school data.

Where is the rest of the money going? Consultancy? Equipment?

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

Re: Authentication is hard

I notice that PayPal will let my PC login using a Passkey on my phone... and I have to type in a TOTP as well (with the authenticator also on my phone).

Whilst still having MFA, this feels more convoluted than just using a password manager to me - which I guess is the main thrust of this article.

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

It is possible to switch to a Variable Direct Debit with most providers - thereby paying for what you use, rather than some daft estimation. There are no penalties for doing so. Martin Lewis/MoneySavingExpert mentions it at least once a year when discussing energy bills.

Octopus would like to charge me £207 per month, but I pay £0 since switching to VDD because I've generated sufficient solar credit over the course of the "summer" to carry me through. Come February the credit will run out, and I'll simply pay whatever I've used In essence I'm receiving credit, rather than offering it against my will to a cash strapped energy provider...

Re: "without the good residents of Norfolk coming out with the torches & pitchforks."

To be fair, it's pretty dead here most Friday nights... :p

...but there are a fair number of people unhappy with the infrastructure projects that are largely to connect London with North Sea wind farms. Especially in an area with frequent power cuts.

A group of those people have valid grounds for concern, and should be listened to, but another group of those people howl at the moon. I don't think that phenomenon is unique to Norfolk...

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Given that midday is supposed to be when the sun is at its highest (not 1pm), I agree that the working day is wrong not the time

Obviously there's a bunch of factors like staring at a screen for a living (which probably does all manner of untold harm), flexible hours and remote working that kind of make the time of day largely irrelevant for a proportion of the population.

Perhaps the Chinese are onto something...

Someone's finally taking on £10M Hull City Council ERP deal to replace Oracle

Re: Utterly crazy!

I work with Local Authorities, and it seems to me that the left and right hand can't agree on the most simple things which is why projects overrun and there's scope creep. I'm not convinced councils are going to agree on how everyone does the same job slightly differently without intervention.

Part of the problem is the history of incumbent IT systems and vendors who don't like to interoperate - and it's not like Councils like change (well, not on the scale required).

There still appears to be a tremendous amount of wastage/duplication in local government, and not be even the slightest intention of doing anything about it. Empires need to be built; it's all about headcount/budget size/"power".

Three, Voda promise £10-a-month or below mobile tariffs in bid to sway CMA on merger

I get the impression the current "cheap" rates are because they have to compensate for coverage/speed - together they'd offer something interesting with their mix of spectrum and 5G SA.

As for the 2 year "promise", I suspect they'll do whatever they have to in order to remain competitive and maintain or improve revenue.

I'm not completely against the merge - I can see some benefits.

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: Elephant

Isn't 240 a /4 though? So about 15 years if we do /8 a year?

Your point stands - you'd need multiple 10.0.0.0/8's or whatever to do CGNAT in India or China, which is a bit of a mess - but not impossible. How many people (residential customers) really need more than CGNAT?

Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be sold as hearing aids, says FDA

Battery Life?

I'm asking, because I don't know, but... how does a "proper" hearing aid compare battery wise with airpods/pixel buds/galaxy buds etc?

Obviously with earbuds you pop them in the case, they charge, then you get a few hours of use - presumably you get days of use out of a regular hearing aid?

If you're constantly popping them in the case, their utility/convenience diminishes somewhat - but then thinking about it, I'm not sure if targeting those at the less severe end of the hearing loss spectrum means that constant use is required?

Google says replacing C/C++ in firmware with Rust is easy

Re: Toxic BS

Agree.

It feels like people are arguing over a "separation of concerns", which requires defining some common ground - presumably, that has not been a requirement until Rust appeared.

And the reluctance to help ("a skilled C developer can just look through the code and work it out") is not the same as defining a contract, or understanding the intention of the code, and points to a problem with people rather than a technical problem.

If it was C talking to C, but maintaining separation, there'd still be issues - it feels like the argument is a C dev can play on either side of the fence to make something work, but doesn't want to sort out the fence. That feels like an anti-pattern.

With an org like Google, people issues can be managed better and projects can succeed - with the Linux kernel, less so.

People aren't keen on change..

Have we stopped to think about what LLMs actually model?

Gartner has declared that GenAI is entering its famous "trough of disillusionment,"

Gartner will declare whatever you pay it to...

[interesting comment section; most appear in agreement that there's no intelligence in AI]

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: 3 years of updates ?

"and just uses the appropriate driver"

That's kind of the problem - the driver is likely to be a blob provided by the chip vendor, and when they stop providing updates that's your lot. That was certainly one reason that was used in the past (specifically Qualcomm not playing along).

I believe that's one reason Google can go for 7 years - they provide the driver for their hardware.

I may be wildly off the mark.

[Alex Ziskand made a video about a similar problem for the new ARM based Windows co-pilot PCs: https://youtu.be/uhfO1IDFMrQ]

Raspberry Pi 5 slims down for cut-price 2 GB RAM version

Re: Complaints

I think (possibly incorrectly) that whilst the hardware is an important aspect of the Pi offering, the ecosystem/community that swarm around a selection of common devices is possibly more valuable.

There are hundreds of Rockchip and N100 devices that exist, and are arguably better value in some circumstances... but the number of Pi devices in circulation, and the size of the community means there's really good support if you need it. You're less likely to get a BIOS/firmware update and ongoing support for the generic RK3588/N100 boards on Ali Express.

That said, I think the more interesting stuff is happening on the Pico/Zero devices - they're the essence of the original Pi.

Google reportedly in talks to buy infosec outfit Wiz for $23B

Re: Like I always say

I'm kind of conflicted on this - they _have_ to be secure, because their entire business seems to revolve around holding lots of data against an individual. The second they mess up, will be the second the lose it all. So, paradoxically, I trust them with my data - I just wish they didn't have so much of it.

Nokia demos upper 6 GHz band for mobile, but UK wants it shared with Wi-Fi

Re: 6GHz Mobile?

Completely agree - but OFCOM will want some money, and they're not going to get that from using the spectrum for wifi :(

Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4

Re: As expected

I get the problem with Chrome, but what's wrong with Chromium? or Thorium?

Microsoft catches the Wi-Fi 7 wave with Windows 11

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

I get what you're saying, and perhaps that's what the marketing machine is trying to imply? "it makes your internet faster === better for gaming" or something along those lines.

Normal wifi is somewhere in the region of 1-3ms latency and wired is <1ms on a simple LAN (we're not talking multiple hops, VLANs or anything fancy). Presumably getting the latency down nearer to ethernet is a good thing; a worthwhile technical improvement - although of little practical/tangible benefit right now.

Apple redecorates its iPhone prison to appease Europe

Since I didn't directly answer the question (assuming it was a question), the DMA is dependent upon activity within the EEA - so the EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein & Norway. One assumes that this also determines where the law should apply.

Apple only mentions the EU in their PR blurb - not the EEA, EFTA states, continent of Europe, sovereign nations in close proximity to Europe, participating countries in the Eurovision Song Contest, or indeed the moon Europa.

The changes don't apply to the UK, just the EU.

There's a similar piece of legistration ("Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill") happening here that could help achieve the same outcome as the DMA.

SpaceX sends first direct-to-cell Starlinks to orbit

Genuine (Dopey) question... how do they use T-Mobiles North American spectrum? Presumably that same spectrum is used by other providers in other places? I can get that they might just "turn off the satellite" when it flies over somewhere other than America, but presumably the satellite can see a number of different countries from that far up... So, could it work in Europe, or would there have to be some kind of spectrum harmonisation?

England's village green hydrogen dream in tatters

Re: Which Led Zep Album?

But the hydrogen would be created by using electricity... so electricity > hydrogen > heat, instead of electricity > heat.

How to deorbit the Chromebook... and repurpose it for innovators

Re: I'm fine with Crostini

Android Studio, VS Code... even Audacity for a quick bit of sound editing, or Wireguard and qBittorent for some impromptu piracy... they're remarkably "not bad".

Add in Android support, and you've got something considerably more versatile than a content consumption device with a keyboard - which is how most people view them. For a vocal minority of people I suspect ChromeOS is dead in the water because of Google's involvement - which I see as no better or worse than Apple or Microsoft.

I'm particularly fond of my Pixelbook Go.

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

Re: Including devices

Similar to how EE can never provide an automated PAC because of an unspecified billing issue (even if you're out of contract and fully paid up) - you always have to speak to someone in retentions, which was what the automated system was designed to prevent.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Re: Imagine the meetings

They have replaced my (smart) gas meter twice over the years when the battery has run low. I can't see them swapping a comms module in situ; they'll swap meters for ones that have been modded and do them in batches.

Why Chromebooks are the new immortals of tech

Re: Data

I'm curious, why not? What could Google do with that information that is so heinous?

I'm more concerned about popular apps like WhatsApp amd TikTok scraping data they don't need, and yet people appear to have no qualms with using WhatsApp.

If I "live" in the Google or Apple ecosystem and my browsing data doesn't leave it, and my experience is enhanced by having access to it, I don't really mind. A lot of people don't mind.

Chromebooks are great for a variety of tasks, and I am more comfortable entering my tax return on one than I would using Windows 11 with Edge. An Apple computer running Safari might arguably be better, but likely significantly more expensive than a Chromebook/box. Of course, if I really wanted privacy (assuming it was even possible) there are alternatives that require compromises - and it's great because those options are there for the people that really want/need them.

However, for a lot of people, a Chromebook is an acceptable compromise of cost, ease of use, utility and privacy. And extending support as reported enhances that proposition further.

South Korean telco SK Broadband and Netflix call a truce in network payment fight

Re: SK Broadband is still being unreasonable

The telco provides access to content and bills accordingly.

The fact that a lot of that content ends up being with a single provider is coincidental - the telco either needs to provide access to it, or offer a product without access to it (which customers will avoid if they're after, in this case, Netflix).

If something is being sold metered (e.g. 100GB for £10) or unlimited for £20, it better be able to deliver it...

This feels like a symptom of a monopoly/lack of competition.

(all very reminiscent of the same problem in the US, and people banging on about net neutrality... telcos looking for other people to pay for their infrastructure)

BT dips toe into liquid cooling in quest for a chill network

Re: Even better

They could supply homes with the heat using copper... oh wait.

Have always been interested in why heat in (for example) data centres couldn't be harvested for power generation or communal heating.

Google rebrands 'android' as 'Android' to remove any doubt about its affiliations

Re: Unfathomable

I thought it was ProperCase or PascalCase...camelCase is different, no?

Aspiration to deploy new UK nuclear reactor every year a 'wish', not a plan

Re: Strategy, we've heard of it

It's likely to be the only way anything will get done with the current state of politics.

Google HR hounds threaten 'next steps' for slackers not coming in 3 days a week

I don't have an issue with going into the office to interact/"socialise" with colleagues - it can be useful, and you interact with others more naturally than you would over Teams or whatever (e.g. overhearing someone talking about something you're working on, catching up with people when making a cup of tea/coffee etc). Moreover you have an opportunity to interact with people you might not ordinarily interact with when remote. The interaction is more natural/organic rather than contrived/forced.

And I guess different jobs require different levels of interaction - I don't work in Sales or Marketing, I work in Development... as such my productive time is *not* talking to people, it's doing things.

The thing I'm not convinced by is the "3 days a week" - I can get all of the benefits of popping into the office in a single afternoon once a week, with diminishing returns for any additional time after that.

Three days feels arbitrary, and it doesn't take the employees job into account. It feels like it's more about the regressive "bums on seats" mentatility of certain managers, rather than tangible productivity improvements.

BT keeps the faith in 'like fury' fiber broadband buildout as revenues dip

Re: " CPI-linked price increases to offset the cost of inflation"

Surely if they're making cost savings there is less to uplift? Also, unsure why they're not regulated sufficiently so that they can no longer increase prices mid-contract.

India uses emergency powers to order takedown of BBC documentary

Re: Unforgivable!

Yeah - same but different - I'm using a pi hole with cloudflared (also DoH). I seem to recall it wasn't enough to change DNS providers, you had to obfuscate the traffic (DoH/DoT) in order to prevent upstream meddling - BT seemed to like interferring with DNS iirc.

Re: Unforgivable!

It's not blocked per se, you just have to use something other than your ISPs DNS server it seems - I'm on Zen using 1.1.1.2 for DNS.

EU plan to make big tech pay 'fair share' of telco fees reportedly weeks away

If the big companies account for 50%+ of traffic, then it would seem the telcos are selling a service to access the big companies... meaning they should probably foot the bill for access, or not provide access (and lose customers to competitors who do). If they sell an "upto <blah>mbps" service, they should expect people to want to use it - irrespective of the origin of the data - even if the business model is to sell an over subscribed/contended service for as much as they can get away with... the inter-connects are the price of providing a service. There are no options to buy "cheap internet, but without tiktok, youtube, facebook and netflix" - even though there are some that might actually like the option.

It sounds like a rerun of the net neutrality stuff in the US that got talked about a few years back, where the ISPs didn't want to just provide dumb pipes, but were also trying to "add value" with their own TV services (or whatever).

Whatever happens, customers will pay more to cover these new costs because either their netflix sub will go up or their telco sub will... because neither of those two groups of companies ever try to price gouge at every available opportunity...

$20m SAP ECC replacement project delayed because UK university unsure what it wants

Re: Before You Computerize Business Processes

"business processes to clear out the pointless and the stupid, and to simplify them. Then think about (re-)computerization"

it's very similar to paying a management consultancy to simplify business processes, so that, at a later date, you can pay a management consultancy to add lots of process to "fix things"... at no point will you actually fix the root cause of any issues.

i'm sure this system will be quoted for with an unattainable ROI which is dependent upon people doing things differently, or not at all... as someone above has mentioned, people will carry on clinging to the "way we've always done it", even if that way is wrong...

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

Let's be honest, the email bit is incidental... They're using Gmail for identity more than anything else; combined with various forms of tracking they've got a lot more useful info than whatever is in someone's inbox.

I disagree with the article... Amazon might not get increased revenue from Alexa, but then they're not as pervasive as Google - Tracking a high percentage of all web traffic and some 2 billion phone users... The datasets gained feed back into ads etc whereas Alexa doesn't feed into sales activity for Amazon. I see the scale/cost of running YouTube being far more of an Achilles heel than Gmail.

Sage accused of strong-arming customers into subscriptions

Re: Strong arming doesn't work

I guess Sage is "sticky" so this is a calculated risk - but there are plenty of competitors... Guess it's all about that annually recurring revenue... But the fact they've not moved to TLS 1.2 a lot quicker is quite perplexing given POODLE attack was discovered back in 2014!

France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US

Re: Pi-hole

Ghostery is fine on a browser, but it's not network wide...

e.g. there's no reason Samsung tellies should be phoning home with viewing data.

And you'd be surprised how much stuff is going back to Facebook if you've got WhatsApp installed on a phone - pi hole blocks that as well.

Re: Pi-hole

GA is blocked - as are the ads in Google Search (and whilst shopping in Amazon). Obviously that's largely down to your block lists, but the basic lists Pi Hole ships with should do the trick.

Also good for blocking Samsung tellies sending back unnecessary viewing data.

Shut off 3G by 2033? How about 2023, asks Vodafone UK

Re: Pretty sure 3G and 4G can work at the same time...

Surely 5G, with reduced latency, lower power consumption, higher user density for the same spectrum would be a better use of 2100MHz? Would help a lot with 5G coverage, rather than putting 4G there.

(and no point interleaving 2G in that spectrum)

Qualcomm takes a swipe at Apple's build-not-buy culture (because it wants to sell stuff to Apple)

AIUI they simply rebadged older models and resold (basically) the same silicon.

Having lost Kirin, it's good to see Apple doing their thing, Google shipping Tensor and MediaTeks Dimensity - we need more competition/innovation, something Qualcomm has stifled in the past.

Do not try this at home: Man spends $5,000 on a 48TB Raspberry Pi storage server

It was done for a bit of fun - I don't see the problem here...