Posts by Barry Rueger

Britain plots digital bedtime after kicking under-16s off social media

Re: Reeally....

It will raise a generation of skilled cyber security professionals adept at getting around government control

Yes, but surely there must be a down-side to it all?

The big AI companies are going to see their margins disappear

Is AI better than humans?

Seriously, how often is using AI for any task less expensive, less prone to errors, or more trustworthy than a well-trained (and well paid) human being?

Until that day arrives AI remains a really expensive toy that lines the pockets of grifters.

Britain's latest civil servant is a chatbot trained on GOV.UK misery

Seriously?

I have NEVER had a chat thing, much less an AI assisted one, solve a problem.

Never.

Hire some friggin' humans to answer phones.

Australia threatens tech companies with 2.25 percent tax if they don’t pay publishers

Meanwhile in Canada

Several years ago Canada insisted that Meta/Facebook pay their fair share. Since then Facebook will not allow you to post a link to any story in any major news publication.

What makes this more frightening, is that over the last couple of decades most major Canadian news organizations have been bought out and consolidated by large American investors, with newsrooms being decimated, and news coverage becoming very pointedly right wing.

Small towns all over the country no longer have any local news outlets, and rely solely on Facebook for news.

It is a disaster.

Pass the key, passwords have passed their sell-by date

Re: Great!

Getting the six digit code via SMS seemed just plain daft to me.

Hah! Try moving between countries, and finding out that your Canadian bank refuses to send the SMS to your new British phone number, making their phone app entirely useless.

One of the BIG problems with all of this are the people who more or less never leave California, much less settle in another country, with differing banking and phone systems.

Months-old Adobe Reader zero-day uses PDFs to size up targets

Sigh. I've given up.

In all seriousness, I just assume that anything remotely connected to the Internet is already compromised, and act accordingly. When our new washing machine demanded a connection to WIFI I knew that the battle had been lost.

Firefox 149 adds a free VPN and finally plays nice with Linux dialogs

Is it time to ditch FireFox?

Serious question. On my Linux laptop I'm finding that Firefox just doesn't behave, and often grinds everything to a halt until being restarted. I have the horrible feeling that I may wind up back on Chrome just to have things work without headaches.

Beyond that, in all seriousness, has ANYTHING been added to a browser in the last decade that REALLY made it significantly better? Sometimes less is more.

(I'm open to alternative browsers, but only if they can import all of my settings - especially passwords and the like - with one click.)

Price of popularity: Linux Mint's success also means maintainer stress

Mint FanBoi Here

Ok, I'll say it. I've been using Mint Cinnamon for a decade or more, and love it. On those rare occasions when I'm forced to use Windows, or my partner's Apple, I find myself going "Dear God! Why?"

My choice is simple: things stay the same. They don't change. My desktop doesn't change. The commands that I use remain the same. With few exceptions, it installs every program that I need automatically, and they don't change either. (Hello LibreOffice!)

And I am happy that I can consistently choose to let it install updates and everything STILL works fine.

That, in a nutshell, is why I like Mint. It doesn't get in my way. It lets me work without nuisances and barriers. It feels safe, and stable, and comfortable. It feels like I'm respected by the maintainers.

And it has never demanded a subscription payment, and doesn't shove advertisements in my face. Or force unwanted AI crap down my throat.

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

Kia, seriously

Just rented a Kia minivan.

One knob, on the left, controls BOTH radio volume AND heater fan speed

An identical knob, 18" to the right, controls both choosing a radio station, AND heater temperature.

You switch between radio controls and heater controls, by pressing a tiny button one third of the way across the dash. With utterly cryptic icons. One of which was either an up arrow or a North map icon.

These were all at knee level, so you could take your eyes completely off the road any time you got cold.

Far above them was a giant touchscreen, which seemed to have no real function but to activate directions in the map to somewhere I've never visited.

No owners manual in the glovebox. "Download the Kia app "

And of course, my phone never did connect on Bluetooth

Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching

Thunderbird for the win

I switched to Thunderbird ages ago and have been very happy with it. One advantage, to my mind, is that all of my email archives live on my local PC, not on Gmail's servers. That's called "privacy."

I have a domain name, that I control, and an email address, that I control, and am very happy with that state of affairs.

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

Old, old news

For at least a decade I've assumed that every digital device is sending information about me elsewhere. I've long since given up trying to contain them.

But honestly, I am far, far less worried about China than I am about Google, Amazon, and the rapidly expanding Trump empire.

Those are the people that frighten me.

X shuts down European Commission ad account after €120M fine announcement

X? Why X???

Honestly, at this point, I just can't understand why anyone with a serious job in the world would be using X.

Do the EU drones not understand that posting to X actually makes them look so much less credible?

Brits to help foot power bill for datacenters under government AI plans

Re: Yikes! Can we afford to stay here?

I am also not being sarcastic, but I have heard that question many times and cannot, myself, define it. Though, I am currently reading Thomas Mann's "Doktor Faustus", and it helps.

Re: Yikes! Can we afford to stay here?

We just had our first big budget! To hell with greenhouse gases! Hurrah! to oil and gas! And it's time to cut back those greedy pensioners and veterans!

Re: Yikes! Can we afford to stay here?

We've actually adopted most of those habits, but there's one more: a table beside the wood fire at the Blue Ball pub, two doors down from us in Grantchester, is the best warm up possible.

Yikes! Can we afford to stay here?

We moved from Vancouver to Cambridge this year so that my wife could do an MPhil in Musicology. To say that the electric bills are staggering is an understatement.

EDF is charging us electric rates that are literally either double what we were paying in Canada (for overnight) or TRIPLE during the day. The rented house uses storage heaters. Beyond that we have begun leaving all of the lights off, all of the time, and stopped using the oven. We are literally being more frugal with power than at any time in our lives, but our first EDF bill was three times anything we ever paid in Vancouver.

In all honesty, UK electric customers are being robbed blind. These prices are crippling.

Then again, at least EDF will answer a phone call. No-one has worse customer service than Nova Scotia Power. Dealing with a massively error-filled bill has involved multiple overseas phone calls with 45 minute times on Hold. Then we've been told that it will take at least two weeks before anyone can investigate the problem.

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

Re: Fork it

And, here we go again. All that I asked, really ALL that I asked, was that LibreWolf import my settings, passwords etc from Firefox. I'm running an absolute bog-standard Mint install, and yet LibreWolf couldn't find the files to import.

This, in a nutshell, is why dog+world runs Chrome. Because changing to anything beyond Firefox invariably runs into some stupid problem, and some of us are just far too tired of fixing stuff to be bothered.

I'm a couple of decades past hacking around with software. I like Mint, and LibreOffice because they Just Work, and more importantly they Just Work the same way year after year with no stupid surprises. I can buy a new laptop or desktop and have it set up and running in fifteen minutes.

Firefox is not as good as it used to be, but it's better than Chrome. Mozilla is not the company they used to be, but at least they're not Google.

And I'll carry on, and once year will try a replacement only to discover it doesn't work.

Facebook, Threads, WhatsApp, Instagram stumble on and offline in global outage

Down in Vancouver

Can't get in here at the UBC campus.

Microsoft unveils Office LTSC 2024 for users that remain stubbornly offline

Ob: LibreOffice

I'll acknowledge that some jobs, in some places, require features specific to MS Office. Those people are in the minority.

After a decade or more I can't see giving Microsoft any more of my money. For the vast majority of home or business related tasks LibreOffice is more than capable.

And free.

And can even save your work in MS Office formats.

(This week I find myself using a shiny new Windows laptop, and cannot grasp why the Start menu is now located in the middle of the bottom task bar, and not on the left.)

Transport for London confirms 5,000 users' bank data exposed, pulls large chunks of IT infra offline

Surprised? No

I assume that any information about me, anywhere on-line, has been, or will be hacked or stolen.

At this point it's simply inevitable .

Can it be stopped? I'm inclined to think that most IT infrastructure has grown to the point where no-one entirely understands it. The size and complexity makes it a great target for hackers and governments.

Until something really, really, REALLY massive happens I can't see that changing.

Punkt MC02: As private, and pricey, as a Swiss bank account

Oh Canada!

$699 is expensive? In the great white north your choices are Apple or Samsung, and you find very few phones under $999.

And that's on top of $75-100 a month for service.

China ponders creating a national 'cyberspace ID'

Context folks

Forget the Chinese government, how many Reg users don't have an on-line Google ID? Or use Gmail, Drive, and Maps in a daily basis?

The on-line privacy battle was lost at least a decade ago, and it was a voluntary program - until services you need started demanding your on-line info just to enter.

Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows

My choice for a decade

I'm past wanting or needing novelty. I just want to get things done - mostly writing.

I've been running Mint for more than a decade. On a new system it's a 15 minute install, all defaults, just disable CapsLock and I'm happy.

Best of all is that year after year, version after version, it looks, feels and works the same. None of those "why in the hell did they do THAT?" moments.

I honestly believe that 90% of end users would be fine with an out-of-the-box Mint install instead of Windows or Mac OSs.

And as far as I can recall there gave been maybe two bugs ever that actually bothered me.

Apple Maps escapes orchard into web browser wilds

Re: Very risky move for Apple.

FWIW we've spent two years trying to convince Google Maps that we live on "Lighthouse Rd" (what the sign says) and not the imaginary "Breakwater Rd" (what Google calls it.)

They simply refuse to even respond.

We did though convince them that the 100 year old lighthouse at the end of our road had "moved to a new location."

So delivery drivers remain a struggle, and directions sent to anyone include a paragraph beginning "... if you're using Google maos .."

Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue'

BitTorrent?

Is still a thing? Who knew?

Surely they're also using WinAmp to play the mysic?

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Ah, but France

France seems to have solved this issue (except for BMW drivers of course.) People for the most part drive at or near the legal limit on highways. Big, monumental speed cameras remind you why this is a good idea.

In towns though they use a decidedly non-digital toolbox: 30 kmh limits, lots of roundabouts, and LOTS of speed bumps.

Somehow the French managed the seemingly impossible feat of deciding "in towns, cars need be slowed down down to protect the people walking or biking."

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

Missing the point folks.

I'm not really interested in nit-picking various people's suspicions, though I'm inclined to think, "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck."

What this long comment thread demonstrates is that none of us has a clear idea of how, and by whom, we're being watched, or where that data ends up.

I don't trust Google or Meta, or the rest of them, and assume that EVERYTHING that I do on-line can be tapped by someone.

Google thinks AI can Google better than you can

plus ça change, plus c'est la même

I remember when Yahoo was the most amazing place to find answers.

I remember when AltaVista was the most amazing place to find answers.

I remember when Google was the most amazing place to find answers.

For whatever the reason, Internet people have a remarkable talent for taking great products and destroying them.

Ransomware negotiator weighs in on the extortion payment debate with El Reg

Two issues

As of today the app with the most stringent, and pointless, control is for my supermarket points card.

Other entities vary all over the map, but ultimately I assume that their back-end is as sloppy as their front end.

I assume that any on-line actor has a good chance of being cracked open, whether by criminals or government, and the information that I provide reflects that.

In other words, I'll take a paper receipt before handing over an email address.

When I look at these major corporations I look at how likely it was that they had a secure, off-site, and tested backup. Often it sounds like they relied on "cross your fingers "

And do they have a realistic plan, and the people, to actually restore themselves? These days the answer is likely "no".

Beyond that is the question of ransom payment. If your systems are safely backed up your only concern is shielding your clients from damage. Except, of course, that you're negotiating with criminals, so your working assumption is that they're lying to you and will sell your data regardless.

Stack Overflow simply bans folks who don't want their advice used to train AI

Wake up kids

By now surely everyone remotely awake assumes that every word they tap into a web site is immediately and irrevocably out of their control.

Think before you type and, sadly, don't ever assume that web site owner will behave with honour.

Why, even at The Register there been cases wher.. x.&*/......

no carrier

Japan's space junk cleaner prototype closes in on its target

I miss my Huawei phone

As does my wife. She's cursing her brand new, near top of the line Samsung as I write this.

America's vendetta against Huawei is stupid and performative, whether having their CEO arrested by Canada customs, or forcing a really good product off the shelves.

Now, in Canada, you need to hunt far and wide to find a smartphone that isn't Samsung or Apple

MPs ask: Why is it so freakin' hard to get AI giants to pay copyright holders?

Greed

Seriously? AI guys? Elected guys?

Is there any question?

Got an unpatched LG 'smart' television? It could be watching you back

Samsung too?

This is why, despite their invitation, my washing machine has not been added to our WIFI.

Well, that and because I can't be bothered to clutter my phone with a washing machine app.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Musk? Who trusts this guy?

Staggering to think that the American space program relies heavily on this goof.

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

Re: I don’t buy this

Liverpool. Nova Scotia still gets Yellow Pages. Problem is that since we no longer have a local newspaper pretty much every local business relies exclusively on Facebook.

Google is largely useless here

Google to start third-party cookie cull for 30 million Chrome users

Pointless ads

This is all very charming, but am I alone in finding that Google, Facebook, and the rest consistently deliver ads for things that I don't want and have never considered?

Whether it's search results or advertising, my experience is that in recent years the web giants have really lost the plot.

Amazon already has a colossal ads business and will extend it to Prime Video in January

YouTube

A place that I now studiously avoid specifically because of the deluge of ads. I swear the entire corporate Internet is determined to destroy themselves.

Google Groups ditches links to Usenet, the OG social network

Another brick in the wall

I'm sitting here waiting for the day when Musk or Google or Facebook finally figure out how to kill off email and force us into some variant of Slack or YouTube.

And yes I'm serious.

One by one it feels like every on-line tool that I've ever relied on has been bought up and either ruined or shut down entirely.

It's a shame. I can recall when the Internet was a shiny new thing, full of hope and opportunity. Now it's an ad-infested mess and a constant battle to do simple tasks.

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

Re: Just the tip of the iceberg.

Nonsense. Health funding us not about levels if taxation, it's about how tax proceeds are apportioned.

The billions being handed to the likes of Palatir could instead be used to hire nurses or upgrade facilities.

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Re: Every single time

Unlike my wife Susan's Apple laptop which TWO count'em TWO USB C ports and nothing else.

IT sent the intern to sort out the nasty VP who was too important to bother with backups

Re: muscle memory

Dell laptop, Mint Linux. Tapping the middle of the trackpad = paste, especially when you've previously copied a three page document.

For me it's a nightmare, but I wouldn't even mind if there was an easy way to disable it.

I honestly can't comprehend the thought processes of many people in IT today

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

Take responsibility

This is hardly the first time one of the big on-line giants has done this, which is why my files live on my local hard-drive, and backup drive. I simply don't trust Google, Apple and company to protect me.

Beyond that though is the reality that if my rural Internet or mobile service go down - a fairly common thing around here - I can still keep working on projects until it returns.

Black Friday? More like Blackout Friday for HSBC's online and mobile banking

Ah, HSBC

We chose HSBC as the best choice when moving between Canada and France. Over the course of 18 months we spent literally hundreds of hours on the phone, being disconnected on the phone, and hanging up the phone because the low paid Asian call center drone was incomprehensible.

They are, without question, the most technologically inept company I've dealt with.

I now bank with the decidedly tiny Lahave River Credit Union, where I can even phone the branch directly and talk to a real person.

Word turns 40: From 'new kid on the block' to 'I can't believe it's not bloatware'

Hate all this new software!

Give me PaperClip on my Commodore 64.

Actually downloaded and installed WordPerfect 5.1 a couple of weeks ago. When it launched a warm, happy feeling swept over me.

I still miss "Reveal Codes."

Twitter further restricts free tier with option to limit replies to verified accounts

Disney??

Before abandoning Twitter a week ago for BlueSky (highly recommended) it baffled me that the single most consistent advertiser on Twitter recently has been Disney.

Every other large, name brand advertiser has long since disappeared.

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

Bluesky

Just dumped out of Twitter and moved to Bluesky.

It's a good fit, and growing past a million users.

One user explained it nicely:

Bluesky has no algorithm. Who you follow and what they post is your feed.

Don't argue with chuds or quote-reskeet dunk on them, just block (and maybe report)

Starve the assholes out and don't give them the attention they crave

You shouldn't be able to buy devices that tamper with diesel truck emissions on eBay, says DoJ

Re: This from a country

Something that has never made any sense to me is tackling pollution on cars/trucks before power plants

France has done it, relying heavily on nukes and wind. And underwriting a large part of the costs of moving home heating from oil to electric.

VR headsets to shift 30 million units a year by 2027, vastly behind wearables

For sure, this time! (I repeat)

I remember when everyone was going to wear glasses to watch 3D TV...

I remember when everyone was going to wear Google Glass...

I remember at least a few other companies flogging some kind of 3D VR goggles...

And most recently I remember when Facebook was going to change the world with Meta goggles...

Then Apple..

But surely THIS time!

Mastodon makes a major move amid Musk's multiple messes

Re: Shame about Mastodon

I'm liking Bluesky a lot, for the reasons, and people, that made Twitter so good. Thus far no nazis, and no trolls, but I'm still incredibly hard-nosed in curating my feed.

My big question is how the heck Disney corp seems to be Twitter's biggest advertiser.