Posts by Beeblebrox

Microsoft's plain text editor gets fancy as Notepad gains formatting options

Re: Get out your copy of Petzold

"45 minutes later, starting from scratch I had a bare-bones text editor with load/save functionality"

You could just have used vi and learned how to do :wq

"Do one thing and do it well.«

Or, more likely, if it isn't broken, fix it.

Thunderbird is go: 139 follows closely on Firefox's heels

"reply in plain text with bottom-posting very quickly sorts marketroids from techies"

Hmm, I mostly use Thunderbird for email, and send in plain text. However, I don't like bottom-posting.

Luckily, I don't think I will ever be sending you a story pitch.

Build your own antisocial writing rig with DOS and a $2 USB key

Re: Detest vi?

s/detest/appreciate/g 999

Detest vi?

Not sure what's wrong with vi; I remember being delighted with ed on a teleprinter, after having been subjected to punched cards, which really peeved me no end.

I still mostly write in vim, occasionally prettifying elsewhere.

I still refuse to dabble with emacs.

:wq!

UN says Asian scam call center epidemic expanding globally amid political heat

Re: Time for real, verified Caller ID, and antispam enforcement.

Who answers calls from their "bank" or whatever based on called ID? Call your bank back instead.

More importantly, why are legitimate companies even calling their customers from a call centre these days? Use a more secure channel.

It takes one click to join Uber One, but quitting might need 32 actions

Re: Not just in the US

"I wanted to go into the Science Museum in London"

I've suffered similar problems elsewhere. I usually use info such as mnbgt6 at gmail dot com or similar keyboard wanderings as an email address and so on - sorry if someone got my spam.

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

Re: so many ads

"Disable restrictions for this tab" is your necessary accomplice in noscript for this purpose. Unfortunately, I frequently have to fall back to Chromium to buy something.

Official HP toner not official enough after dodgy update, say users

Gen Zedder here - what is printing?

See title.

41-million-digit prime crunched by datacenter GPUs

Re: Is this any more useful than "AI", or more amusing cat videos?

> Based on some of my experiences with the truthiness of "AI", I wouldn't be surprised if it spit out a number ending with "2".

There's only one 2 trlilion digit number ending with 2. All but the last digit are zero. Bravo AI.

SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS

Re: I dunno. . .

> I don't want to start an editor war but. . .

I can't hear "editor war" and "emacs" without saying "vi".

However, I'm so over old fashioned editors (ed, please move along).

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

How about lynx? I don't seem to need an ad blocker with lynx.

My boss peered over my shoulder when I was reading articles on this site with lynx whilst supposedly working. Apparently this terminal based app passed as 'working' successfully. Helps to have a few terminals open.

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

Too many web "developers" only testing on Chrome.

Perhaps Chrome is the new 'Internet Exploder'?

OpenSSH bug leaves RHEL 9 and the RHELatives vulnerable

EOL

Fedora 37 was EOLed > 6 months ago.

Singapore's banks to ditch texted one-time passwords

So what happens when Google or Apple get hacked ?

A mealy mouthed apology, without accepting any liability?

except phones these days usually have some kind of biometric authentication

Except someone shoulder surfing the device password can just add their own biometrics after they have stolen your device.

Re: Easy solution : a physical OTP token

> I still have one - Nationwide in UK offers me the choice of that or an OTP on each login

Not available for card purchases. Which is a shame.

Qantas app glitch sees boarding passes fly to other accounts

Presumably my data is compromised even if I have never used the app

I'm registered with QFF.

I would expect that never having used their app would not mean my data hasn't been compromised.

My points have not disappeared yet ...

Why you might want an email client in the era of webmail

Re: "who uses as a local email client in 2023. Doesn't everybody use webmail these days?"

It's even better on a mobile device: who uses webmail, there's an app for email. One app for each provider.

Or one could just use an email app.

"who uses as a local email client in 2023. Doesn't everybody use webmail these days?"

Whilst I am heartily tired of all the apps nowadays that one is encouraged to use instead of a perfectly functional web page, I feel that webmail is the opposite: why use webmail instead of a proper email client which can connect to various email accounts?

In the scenario where one has more than one email address, with multiple accounts from individual providers, I cannot see how using webmail could be anything other than a nightmare.

Fedora 37 beta: Hints of what's to come in Red Hat's free flagship

Re: Notes

How is nouveau in this release?

My pc (approx 2 years old, i3 cpu without onboard graphics plus low-end nvidia gpu) won't boot from Fedora 35 or 36 usb media. When I last needed to reinstall back in June after disk failure I had to boot / install Fedora 34 and upgrade.

After installation / updates nouveau "works", but is flaky enough so I end up using the proprietary drivers instead.

Google, Oracle cloud servers wilt in UK heatwave, take down websites

Grauniad reads el reg

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/23/if-our-datacentres-cannot-take-the-heat-the-uk-could-really-go-off-the-rails

Could become a feedback loop.

How to get Linux onto a non-approved laptop

"keep it just in case"

My version of "keep it just in case" is to take out the original drive with windows on it and stash it in a bag with a label.

GitHub drops Atom bomb: Open-source text editor mothballed by end of year

M$ to kill Atom

Fork off.

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

Re: Control Your Own Upgrades

My Fedora installations upgrade smoothly these days with 'dnf upgrade' without hassle.

Even taking the boot device from an old motherboard to a new one seems to work fine.

The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around

Lynx

Pro tip - read El Reg using Lynx at work, if your boss looks at your screen they just see you 'working' in a terminal.

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

Re: Concurrent usage

"I own a city apartment and a country cottage"

cf UK TV licence - you need one for your holiday cottage.

Indonesia's new mega-telco to build 18,000km submarine cable to the US

Batam

I always mix up Batam with Bintan, which makes me think of Bintang, possibly the best beer in Indonesia ... or not.

Grab some tissues: Meta's share price tanks after Facebook emits latest figures

Re: Deflection

"I closed my account a couple of weeks ago"

I think you count towards next quarter's results - sorry.

Google's Pixel 6 fingerprint reader is rubbish because of 'enhanced security algorithms'

Re: A guess

Shurely, them with insecure, easily faked fingerprints were excluded.

Would you like to try another finger?

New Zealand spooks say satellite snooping is obsolete – better intel is found elsewhere

Re: Now, If New Zealand Only Had Ocean Cables Passing Across It's Shores . . .

Interesting viewpont; not sure how ocean cables might affect this satellite monitoring station: presumably other activities vis a vis cables would continue unabated at this site.

140,000-plus drivers sent $60m in compensation checks after Amazon 'stole their tips'

Re: Once again

Bezos probably just thought that as restaurants keep tips intended for staff, why shouldn't he?

Thunderbird 91 lands: Now native on Apple Silicon, swaps 'master' for 'primary' password, and more

running Windows 7 and hit the update button for Firefox

... and, what about your Thunderbird experience from this effort?

Not a fan? ;-)

Didn't you read Devuan in the post?

... no longer be a "Master Craftsman"?

And just forget about that MSc, MBA, MA or whatever.

Elementary OS 6 Odin released on a 'pay what you want' basis

New users expect at a minimum to have a web browser, email, and an office suite when they first boot

Wimps.

When I was a young 'un, we had to install from floppies (5.25", not any of the new fangled 3.5") ....

no, wait, I mean mag tape, or was it punched cards?

Stone tablets, hewn from the mountain, that's it, I remember now.

Firefox 91 introduces cookie clearing, clutter-free printing, Microsoft single sign-on... so where are all the users?

> constant nagging to use "pocket" How did you manage to get that?

Right click on a link.

In the context menu, between 'save link as' and 'copy link' sits 'save link to pocket'.

I accidentally choose 'save link to pocket' around 5% of the time, and have to cancel.

UX designers

Perhaps if they didn't update the UX they'd be redundant.

Re: This is mine

Is that enough? Six domains?

I tend to go with the pi-hole type approach - i.e. a far larger number of blocked domains, updated automatically, for various devices.

Obviously still need an adblocker in firefox. Doesn't work against lots of mobile ads: avoid apps where possible, and use the browser instead; many apps aren't really necessary.

Seamonkey

I also use Seamonkey in an "open, visit site, close" manner for sites that are too bothersome to fix noscript permissions temporarily for (I try to avoid permanent) on firefox. I have noticed recently that less plugins work on seamonkey (ublock?) which is annoying.

"badgered by Google"

... and repeated "Critical security alert for ... Sign-in attempt was blocked" emails when I use an android phone running k9 mail or fair email to access a gmail account.

Since I popped a new sim into a phone I get this every time the phone leaves a known wifi network and is on the cellular network / other wifi.

Rocky Linux release attracts 80,000 downloads as ex-CentOS users mull choices

AnimalLinux

Unfortunately, throughout this article, I kept reading AlmaLinux as AnimalLinux, now there's no going back for me.

Richard Branson plans to trump Jeff Bezos by 9 days in billionaires' space race

Re: Sigh

Musk

Re: Am I evil ?

Are you short?

Fastly 'fesses up to breaking the internet with an 'an undiscovered software bug' triggered by a customer

make sure that *similar* bugs get caught

Please do note that non-similar bugs will continue to be undetected under these updated processes as previously.

Would be so cool if everyone normalized these pesky data leaks, says data-leaking Facebook in leaked memo

How to check?

How can I check whether I feature in the leaked data?

I don't have a facebook account, although I'm pretty sure some contacts of mine have, so my details could be there.

Robocall bagmen admit they collected millions of dollars from victims scammed by bogus IRS officials, lenders

Re: Taken for a ride, twice

Mars should be coming online soon as a destination.

What about the First Nation people?

You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?

Who gives a shit?

"little spoon the German doctors prescribed last month"

Sounds a bit like the kit they sent me here in Oz. I couldn't face using the one I got shortly after turning 50; next time I did bother, it ended up being too messy for my liking.

How do we combat mass global misinformation? How about making the internet a little harder to use

Re: The death of Google search

"My reason for googling myself is to make sure I don't appear."

Now you are recorded in their search logs.

Not that hard to search

I just searched for 'pcr' on startpage - first result was wiki, second was a .gov page with somewhat reasonable info.