Posts by Phones Sheridan

Under Trump 2.0, Europe's dependence on US clouds back under the spotlight

I have Office 365. When I open up Outlook, or any other product like Excel and Word, my firewall logs show half a dozen connections are made to servers in the US. There's nothing connecting to servers in the EU or UK. Would be interested to know if it's the same for users in the EU.

UK tax authority eyes £880M overhaul for Northern Ireland trade services

Re: Brexit

Your comment is back to front. Since Jan 21 (official brexit day from a customs point of view) I've been importing and exporting both from UK <----> EU, and from NI<--->England. The issue I have come up most against, is what I can only describe as UK self punishment. Take a look here, and see if you can work out what this means. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-can-declare-goods-you-bring-into-northern-ireland-not-at-risk-of-moving-to-the-eu In reality, the UK government is punishing English, Scottish and Welsh companies that send items to Northern Ireland. The UK is NOT honouring the GFA. From a customs declaration point of view, it's a right royal feck up. The paperwork requirements for sending goods from the UK to the EU are far less than required if sending goods from Eng/Sco/Wal into NI. We're told "know your customer..... unless it's an NI customer, in which case, turn the regulations upside down, and, good luck, we're all depending on you"

Re: I stopped exporting at Brexit.

I went the extra mile to work out the intricacies of UK to EU trade. If you can follow the paperwork... which as an autism sufferer, I can, it's easy enough to make work if you accept that the minimum time for anything will be 7-14 days. The issue at the moment is not shipping in either direction. It's sending machinery for service or repair from the UK to the EU or vice-versa, or having a knowledgeable person from the UK or EU, cross the border to assist in service or repair. The law in the UK does not take these 2 scenarios, despite being included in the trade agreement, into account. You want something serviced, it's going to be long winded, expensive and frustrating, and may not happen at all.

Bollocks! That is all!

" self-serve guidance and contact center support on completing digital declarations."

This is fiction. I was attending a Northern Ireland import/export presentation hosted by HMRC, to educate businesses how easy trade would continue to be now we had exited the EU, and I asked near the conclusion, if I could have a flow chart that clearly and unambiguously showed all the pathways of customs declarations for trade between what is to-be-blunt 2 UK members, and after a very long pause, was told "it's not that simple!".

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Yes but as I recall during my time in Spain, this problem was overcome by advertising the times of breaks and siesta. If you ring during break time, not our problem if there’s no-one around to answer it.

We had a LOT of breaks :p

US lawmakers press Trump admin to oppose UK's order for Apple iCloud backdoor

I think it's safe to say that someone in Apple might have spilled the beans here. The question is, did the UKs gag order provide enough poison* to identify from the reports in the press, the identity of the person who leaked? I wouldn't want to be that person if they are based in the UK right now.

*Poison, as in poisoned data with an identifier. E.g.

Hey Joe, Don't tell anyone, but we need 576 units of potentially illegal product.

Hey Fred, Don't tell anyone, but we need 478 units of potentially illegal product.

Hey Sam, Don't tell anyone, but we need 379 units of potentially illegal product.

Newspaper Report. Acme Inc importing 478 units of ILLEGAL PRODUCT!

<mafia knocking on Freds door>

Re: The negotiations will be very simple...

No no no no no no, more like

"I've touched my toes Mr President, do I keep going?"

Have I Been Pwned likely to ban resellers from buying subs, citing 'sh*tty behavior' and onerous support requests

The issue here is companies with buying departments. That department procures everything from toilet paper to antimatter containment fields. The buyers have no technical knowledge of the product they are trying to obtain, it's just a part number to them, so trying to use technical reasoning with them will not work. You have 2 choices, 1) jump through all their hoops, 2) "This is the product and this is the price, and the service is provided as-is. Take it or leave it". Unless the customer is about to spend tens of thousands, I always go for option 2.

Exactly what it says in the tin. They are selling his service, to other people and keeping a cut.

Judge says US Treasury ‘more vulnerable to hacking’ since Trump let the DOGE out

Re: What constitution

I read an article the other day, that stated there is nothing in the constitution to stop him becoming vice president after his second term, and then succeeding the presidency for a 3rd term, if for example the actual president stepped down.

Re: What constitution

Proposals already made.

'Maybe the problem is you' ... Linus Torvalds wades into Linux kernel Rust driver drama

Bring Back Eadon?

Trump tells Musk to 'go get' Starliner astronauts

Re: It seems to be an extra mission for SpaceX / Dragon and PR for Musk

I thought it was already too late for Congress and the senate to do anything, because the republicans won both houses with a large enough margin to do whatever his Trumpship edicts.

Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts walks free as Trump pardons dark web kingpin

I think we need a new topic called "Trump" on the site seeing as we're going to be reading so much about him in the next 4 years.

Microsoft to force Windows 11 24H2 on Home and Pro users

A driver hanging, not allowing a task to complete because it's waiting for the driver. When you reboot using safe mode, you no longer use that driver but usually another from MS to be used in safe mode only, and the task completes because there's nothing stopping it.

Upon next boot, the breaking task completed during the safe mode, so all is well.

Sage Copilot grounded briefly to fix AI misbehavior

"Sage Copilot is presently available by invitation as an early access product"

I call bull on that. I use Sage 50 Professional. Every time I run reports it's there as an "Enable Now" button. Everyone has been "invited".

I won't touch it with a 10 foot barge pole, because it's only 1 cleverly worded query away from providing my competitors with my data by design.

Anyone using these AI Copilots, you're just handing over the blueprints to your business, to someone else... in business.

SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero

Re: Schrodingers Starship

Then to solve that problem, we don't observe the cat either" :p

Schrodingers Starship

I wonder if the 30 cameras had anything to do with the RUD. Had the ship not been under such close observation, the state of the ship would have remained in quantum flux for the duration of the flight, and all would have gone well.

Just need that icon to be adjusted to cover both eyes!

GM parks claims that driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums

Re: My old chariot is as dumb as a log

Whilst I fully expect governments at some point to start banning dumb cars, if they have not already started the process or set a deadline, there is the issue of dumb mechanics. Old school mechanics are a dying breed, literally. The newer mechanics seem to be brand and type specific, and only on the latest models. They are coming out of the apprenticeships with a great working knowledge of state of the art hardware, but stick them in front of an 80s, 90s and early noughties engine, and they are lost. Like any industry, there are enthusiasts who keep old tech running, but at some point, your dumb car won't be able to be repaired by the 20-something mechanic down the garage brandishing his laptop and serial cable.

Mail-out madness as insurer offers refunds to customers in error

Not the first time.

I had a similar issue with Hastings about 10 years ago. They refunded the full amount I paid for my insurance out of the blue. Only thing is, they didn't tell me, so I never noticed the amount going back on my credit card. About 6 months later they started chasing me with letters and debt collectors for an outstanding amount. Each time I wrote to them, showing my (original) credit card statement showing the payment had been taken, and they went away for about 8 weeks, then started chasing me again. This went on for about a year, with me on the phone to them, and them on the phone to me every 8 weeks or so, them demanding money, and me showing them I paid.

Eventually one person on the phone went "...Er.... were you aware we sent you a refund on the dd/mm/yy? The notes don't show any reason why, can you check your credit card statement for that month?". And then slowly we pieced together that they had refunded me about 6 months after I took out the policy, and they never noticed until some spreadsheet somewhere was showing I had an outstanding balance and they passed it automatically to debt collectors.

UK government pledges law against sexually explicit deepfakes

Re: Wrong move

Your comment of deepfakes being used as evidence reminded me of Joe Lycett and how he handled an issue of what I can only describe as very convincing deepfakes being used as evidence for both parties involved in a parking fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gkiw7zpULo

SpaceX will try satellite deployment on next Starship test

Re: Important

Is there a treaty governing how much land can be claimed with each landing? Is it like national waters, 12 miles around the ships landing site etc?

If Musk was to make the endeavour privately, could he claim a portion of the moon upon landing? Or even Mars.

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Re: What's the weirdest outfit you've worn to a tech support job?

"Note that splitting is perfectly legal here in California."

In the UK, it is.... until it's not. A traffic cop friend explained it to me thus.

If you are filtering, and you are involved in a Road Traffic Incident during a filtering maneuver, you will be prosecuted for dangerous driving (riding). No ifs, no buts, no excuses, you will be charged and it will be dealt with by the courts. The courts usually take the view that you would not have been involved in the RTA if you were not filtering as surely as you would not have been involved in an RTA if you hadn't turned into the path of oncoming traffic.

Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks

Google's Cloud Vision is a real thing, although the earliest I can find reference to it is 2016, so 9* years, not 10 :p

https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/detecting-landmarks

https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-identify-landmarks-on-android

I think nowadays we are beyond speculating or requiring evidence if Google have slurped or not. Of course they have, and then some more too!

*I came across this stackoverflow from 10 years ago, discussing using Google Vision to track peoples faces. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38435653/detecting-face-landmarks-points-in-android , so it doesn't take a great leap of imagination that at some point, the pair were combined to track who you are, and where you were from the pic alone.

Next-gen Wi-Fi to trade ludicrous speed for the boring art of actually working

40 fold speed increase since WIFI4...

And everything is still connected together by CAT5!

After a long lunch, user thought a cursor meant their computer was cactus

Re: Au Contraire

I don’t think you can blame your bank for that. I haven’t seen a POS for over a decade that has a sign option on the credit card machine anymore.

It's only a matter of time before LLMs jump start supply-chain attacks

Hey, LLM. Analyse all commentard posts on El Reg and identify Anonymous Cowards!

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Re: A bit later than that...

Sort of. I was at Salford Tech college in 1991, went from an Amiga 500 to 486 SX25 that year. It cost me £1200 new from PAL computers in Stockport. I got it with DOS and Windows 3.x (and bought Coherent 3 from Grey Matter specifically because Salford was heavily into Solaris at the time and we needed Unix for the coursework). The cost was 5 times what I paid for the Amiga the year before. And it sucked at games. Yes you had Battle Chess, but it had Sinclair spectrum 48 levels of 1 bit sound, until I could afford a Sound Blaster 8 bit a year later. Around 93 when Doom and X-Wing came out was when the tables turned, and the Amiga started to get left behind at that point.

SpaceX rocketeers get fresh FAA license for next Starship launch

Re: Tiles b gone

Can anyone explain to me the point Mach is trying to make?

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Re: You can even sign in...

It's not very hard now, but it will get harder. Our latest quote for cyber insurance states a clause that we must use either Google or Microsoft accounts for user authentication. It looks like the pair has successfully lobbied the insurance industry, that true security comes from having M365 or Google Apps.

We're looking elsewhere for insurance, but you can bet that once one does, the others will start to follow.

Ingenuity helicopter's flying days cut short by featureless Martian terrain

So class, what did we learn today?

No doubt NASA have used this as a learning opportunity, and thrown the task at the engineers to make sure this can’t happen on future helicopters.

Icon cos it’s 45 minutes from Beer-o-clock here, and NASA deserves one for a job well done!

Judge hands WP Engine a win in legal fight with Automattic

Re: Shitstorm

"Sure. But the question is, why in law is he required *not* to discriminate against another company in this way?"

Because the judge, has, er, judged that he can't discriminate. It's that simple. Discrimination is not a right.

Re: Shitstorm

It's not forcing Mullenweg to open up his website per se, but rather stopping Mullenwegs closing of his website to traffic from WP Engine.

For example

10 if incoming traffic = WP Engine source

20 print "Feck off"

30 goto 10

The judge is ordering that the above is removed. The service is available, just Mullenweg is explicitly denying it to WP Engine by something like the above. If the code wasn't there, then the traffic like spice, would flow. That's the difference. The traffic isn't flowing, because he is going out of his way to stop it.

Good news! You'll soon be able to send faxes again with Windows 11 24H2

Forget bringing back cassettes, I still have an 8 Track in my attic! Bring back 8 Track!

Go icon, cos this thing ran in a loop forever. Changing side, that was the work of cassette devilry!

Windows 11 24H2 strikes again – Outlook might not start with Google Workspace Sync running

Just tried the new Outlook again. Functionality regarding shared mailboxes is still missing that is there in old Outlook. For over a year when switching back to old Outlook, the program asks you why you are reverting back. When giving the reason that the shared mailbox functionality is missing, you were prompted with "Missing shared folder functionality - This is a known issue and will be addressed in a future build", now they've stopped even bothering with that message. Looks like in the shiny new world of New Outlook, shared folders are not intended to be a part of it.

I'm assuming that the new (and chargeable) way of getting the same functionality, is to somehow use Flow, and rack up more bills.

M665 also has a security evaluation tool. Now if you use Outlook add-ons, it penalises you, giving you a lower security score. I'm assuming that again, they want you using chargeable Flow, rather than an addon to produce the same results.

It all comes down to they are trying to screw you for more money, to do what you could do last week as part of the software functionality.

Facing sale or ban, TikTok tossed under national security bus by appeals court

“ Then again, he could change his mind.”

Then again, he’s probably more likely to declare all independent media “Fake Press”, all social media to be “election-interfering” and ban the lot, to be replaced with official government approved news outlets and social media of truth unicorns and pixie dust.

It worked for Putin right?

Temporary printable tattoos could be the future of EEGs

Why don’t we just have a standard cap that can be fitted to everyone when they reach adulthood? A simple procedure to last a lifetime. They could even be applied by mobile fitting stations travelling through the country on 3 legs. Come to think of it, we could use the same cap to send impulses down into the brain to counter aggression, curiosity and creativity!

Huawei handed 2,596,148,429,267,413,
814,265,248,164,610,048 IPv6 addresses

Re: I have one major worry about IPv6

"I'm not sure how many times it needs to be said "...

The confusion comes from many teachers saying, but no-one actually showing. If it was demonstrated that all internal LAN machines behind NAT can be probed by a thousand bots on the internet, then people would believe it. But if those people see that their NAT router is being probed by a thousand bots on the internet, but the unsolicited traffic does not get through to the LAN (unless a port forwarding rule is set up), they will continue to believe that NAT is an ingress firewall, despite an endless tide of protestations that "NAT is not a firewall".

Re: I have one major worry about IPv6

"I have an ISP router which talks Wifi6, and I see many devices pick up an IPv6 address via DHCP.."

Yes, but all you need is the "Deny All" set as your default rule on your firewall, and then you can poke individual holes through to your hearts content. No less secure than a Deny All rule on IPV4.

Wubuntu: The lovechild of Windows and Linux nobody asked for

Full Metal Panic: Wubuntu

Lindows 2?

Musk and Trump to fall out in 2025, predicts analyst

Re: Thank fortune that Musk was born in South Africa

Don’t they have enough republican bums on seats now to change the constitution, and allow not-born-on-us-soil persons to become president again?

Abstract, theoretical computing qualifications are turning teens off

Re: WYF!

Google was Mavis Beacon a real person?

M4 MacBook Pro shows Apple is still glued to the idea of unfixable laptops

Re: It's in the Apple DNA!

"Apple hasn't always hated repair."

But they have always hated upgrades. They began to take notice around 2010 when you could buy the most expensive Mac Mini. Fill it as full as you liked with SSD and RAM, and it would be faster than the cheapest Mac Pro, and still less than half the price. Then they started to remove the ability to add your own components.

Helpline for Yakuza victims fears it leaked their personal info

Re: The Only Way to Keep Your Personal Data Safe

....because no low paid employee has ever been bribed to open a filing cabinet??

Isn't that what the leopard is for?

SpaceX claims another Starship success, but fumbles the catch

Re: Any metallurgists lurking?

It just means it got hot. Typical colours I work with when welding stainless, brown = it welded, but it could have been hotter, blue = it welded and reached a perfect temperature. Metalic blue, it was too hot and is likely to be brittle. Crystal silver colour, not hot enough and likely to be brittle. Black = who welded mild steel with zinc plating by mistake :p

As someone else said, people make art out of stainless by applying heat, so I wouldn't read too much into it, other than it got hot. It's when it becomes molten you should worry :p

Robot runs marathon in South Korea, apparently the first time this has happened

Re: Great idea

You might be confusing Robot Wars with Techno Games. It ran at the sameish time as season 3 of Robot Wars, and then for 3 more years, with the same teams competing and the same judges.

Enjoy!

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Re: Slap on the wrist?

“ User permission management wasn't some new concept introduced in the 90s.”

It pretty much was. My uni in 1990 was exactly the same. Network of Suns, and what we discovered as students was pretty much no security at all. It took Sun about a year to lock the network down enough to stop us students from wreaking havoc, but remain useable for us as software engineering grads, because they had no real world experience of an entire network connected to the internet (JANet) either with each machine having a dedicated public IP directly connected to a router. I don’t think I even heard the word firewall for at least 5 more years.