Re: I wonder if...
You make a fair point.
My comment was really related to the slang definition of "Dutch oven", but I should have made it far more obvious I think.
63 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2020
Yes, the software support period seems really disappointing. I wonder who thought making a repairable phone with only 3 years of support was a good idea? It seems strange.
I agree with you regarding iOS. Something really needs to be done to improve the support situation across the Android ecosystem. As to how easy that is realistically, given all the different SoCs in the various phones, I do not know, but as things are it all seems like a bit of a mess.
The thing about BBC Three is that it was a good channel the first time around, in my opinion. It had good comedy on it, therefore, I was sad when it was demoted to online only. Because of that, I was happy to hear of its return, but since it has returned, it does not seem to be its former self. I do not find myself seeing anything much interesting in the EPG for BBC Three now. Perhaps the programming does appeal to a certain youth market, of which I am no longer the target audience.
I watch loads of documentaries on BBC Four, so I'm sad it is to be demoted to online only and now find myself wishing BBC Three had remained online only, if it meant BBC Four would be spared.
I down-voted your comment because it does not appear you're comparing apples to apples by simply talking about output.
I don't see any of the following on Netflix:
UK national and international news services.
UK national and international radio services.
UK regional radio or news TV services, along with the staff and infrastructure required to produce content for them.
Any web content that provides any of the above.
Any web content relating to educational material linked to UK key stages to support learning in UK schools.
You can't easily compare the commercial streaming services against the total output of the BBC. The BBC has a broader remit; it may not suit everybody, but that's how it is.
As more countries look to further adopt digital payment methods, I hope they are going to factor in ease of use for foreigners as well.
When I was in India, I had Paytm on my phone, but could only get money into it by asking somebody else (an Indian) to transfer money to me if I gave them cash. In *theory* it was possible to walk into one of the Indian banks (I can't remember which one it was now), pay cash and have that deposited into your Paytm account. I tried multiple branches in a number of cities and none of them were able to do it - and that was after having to prove to the staff that it should indeed be possible, by showing them the web page that detailed it, as they rarely seemed aware of it otherwise. Indians can pay money into their Paytm accounts by card, but foreigners can't because of anti money laundering and anti terrorism laws...
In Argentina, you need either a DNI (national ID) card or as a foreigner a passport in order to use a credit card in a shop (not that it's wise financially). Want to order online from somewhere like Mercado Libre? Forget it - no DNI card, no account.
In my experience, cash is still king for foreigners in a lot of countries, however you get hold of it.
My parents have an Amazon Alexa device. I noticed it again recently, sitting on a cabinet in their lounge, apparently no longer powered on.
I've always thought these things are mostly novelty devices for a lot of people. Besides the creepy surveillance capitalism aspect of these devices, the novelty aspect is another reason for me not to buy one. It seems like such a waste of our resources to manufacture these things and then end up with a lot of them sitting around doing very little for most of their lives after the novelty has worn off.
"Part of today will be turning off the “microservices” bloatware. Less than 20% are actually needed for Twitter to work!"
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592177471654604800
Followed by a load of replies claiming folks with 2FA enabled can no longer log into Twitter if they had previously logged out...
> How does a certificate on a personal device "protect" anyone from inbound phishing emails or other inbound malware?
It doesn't stop phishing emails or malware.
The problem with currently widely used MFA is that it is not resistant to man-in-the-middle attacks.
A properly implemented TLS client certificate system should not suffer from these MitM attacks (although I have not read enough to understand the technical details of it). In addition, however, YubiKeys implement origin bound keys and token binding to thwart MitM attacks.
You could implement such a client certificate system via a web browser, storing the private key on the client, but this opens an avenue to phishing, whereby the attacker would seek to gain access to the private key.
My understanding is that the above scenario is thwarted by using a YubiKey because the private key does not leave the device; you're essentially communicating with the YubiKey via a defined protocol to generate a signed response to the remote site's challenge.
It seems hard to determine how resistant these keys are to local malware, but if you have local malware it would be much easier for it to just extract browser session cookies I would have thought. The YubiKeys seem to offer protection from remote access by requiring that the user touch them to activate. I don't think you could use an intercepted signed response (along with, say, key-logged user name and password) because the challenge given to the user and the challenge given to the attacker would be different.
I have to say, the YubiKeys do look to have an excellent balance between ease of use and high security. I'm currently using a password manager with a strong master password and OTP code, which is pretty secure, but it's very tempting to invest in one of these keys as well.
I skimmed through the stuff below while writing this. If you really want to know how it works, take a look:
https://www.yubico.com/blog/creating-unphishable-security-key/
https://developers.yubico.com/WebAuthn/
https://docs.yubico.com/yesdk/users-manual/application-u2f/how-u2f-works.html
I've installed a Firefox add-on that can selectively disable JS. I have www.theregister.com disabled, but not other sub-domains, so JS is still enabled for forums.theregister.com, for example.
I can still see adverts if they're images and I'm cool with that, but annoying things that make the page jump up and down are no longer present while I'm reading articles.
I experienced the page jumping issue quite a while ago now and it's the reason I no longer have JS enabled for reading articles on The Reg. It works fine for me - embedded YouTube videos just show a link to YT proper. The occasional embedded polls require hitting the JS button, which reloads the page, where I can vote in the poll and see the results, then hit the same button and JS is disabled again.
An additional bonus is that without JS, page loading times are *much* quicker.
I recently emailed The Reg techies because during the site redesign, visited links were no longer distinguishable from unvisted links (both were black). To their credit, I got a reply the next day and they'd fixed it.
Not being certain of a response or action, I'd already taken care of things myself with a Firefox CSS add-on and a tiny bit of CSS to fix it for me, but as it was fixed on the site, I subsequently removed the add-on.
For anybody who wants their own style, e.g. colours, underlined or not underlined, etc, find such an add-on for your browser and do what you want. You don't really need to be a CSS expert - I hardly know much CSS myself - you can find answers online to do what you want with a quick search.
I did the conversion via Google when reading this because I don't do Fahrenheit; I'm not young - getting on for 50 - but I just can't grok Fahrenheit.
They said "approaching 80°F", whatever the figure might actually be, but 80°F is getting on for 27ºC rather than 21ºC, which is pretty much 70°F.
Even the non-electrical parts? It's surely the moving heavy-duty mechanical parts that are most likely to need replacement due to wear over time.
If an ECU or other electrical parts mean you can't use a whole engine, it's still likely to have plenty of mechanical components that will be useful.
This is an interesting solution and could be a reasonable stop-gap measure, but I think in general I prefer the idea the ICO have proposed in the past and covered by El Reg at: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/07/ico_cookies_g7/
If you can't be bothered to read that; TLDR: develop and implement standards to set your cookie preferences locally and signal them to the site when you visit it, eliminating the need to interact with manual cookie preference dialogues when you visit a site for the first time or have since deleted its cookies.
It's somewhat similar for me. I'm travelling and carry an Android phone (old first generation Moto G), a laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad X201) and a Kindle (an old e-ink version with no back light or touch screen).
All those devices have different uses for me. Because I have the laptop, I don't use the phone as much as other people might; it's mostly just useful as a camera and for navigation, with occasional use of banking apps and Facebook/Twitter or for information while on the move. The laptop is a much better experience for web browsing than the phone and much better for me for typing with. I also find the laptop preferable for watching video content with its larger screen.
I have about 50 to 60 books on my Kindle at the moment, some of them paid for, but many from Project Gutenberg. For me it's worthwhile to have the Kindle, not only for its ability to store a lot of books, but for its battery life. The lack of a back light and running it in aircraft mode pretty much all the time means it will last much much longer than a phone. Sometimes I have regretted the lack of a back light - in India I don't think I ever travelled on a night/sleeper bus that had working reading lamps! Other than that, it's a great device for me. I also like its portability - I can squeeze it into a cargo pocket of a pair of shorts if necessary, but it will easily fit into many waist or shoulder mounted little bags that are also useful for chucking other crap into as well.
Unlike other people who have commented here, I do not get any greater satisfaction from reading a traditional book; as far I'm concerned, reading a good book is reading a good book.
Many moons ago, I could not get a parallel port based device working, but I knew the device itself worked and the parallel port had also worked.
I spent some time trying to debug this, even resorting to inserting extra printk()s into the Linux parallel port driver.
The problem? The BIOS was set for a mode (EPP/ECP, I can't remember which exactly) that wasn't supported by the device.
That's a good point, although I came here to say that the now ex-Ubiquiti dev can't have been that good at his job if he failed so badly to cover his IP tracks.
If you're going to attempt to extort your employer for ~USD$2m, it pays to be a lot more careful than this person apparently was.
I got my refurbished X201 from a company on eBay in the UK, back in late 2015 for £110 including delivery. I wanted that company to provide me with one that had the full 8GB of memory that can be installed into one, but unfortunately they supplied one with only 4GB, which is a bit low these days and I did not have time to send the laptop back and get one with 8GB installed, so I was stuck with it.
Other than the memory being low, the X201 has been a great workhorse for me. It has travelled round the world with me on planes, trains and some very bumpy local transport in various countries. I have had no major issues with it other than overheating, which I have solved via installation of the thinkfan utility for the time being. One day I will get around to taking the thing apart and checking the cooling system/applying new thermal paste. I did have to replace the PSU somewhat recently due to the case coming apart and then in an unfortunate circumstance, shorting on a metal bed frame! The battery, of course, does not hold the charge it used to, but that's standard.
Just about everything else on the X201 is good for me, in terms of its size, keyboard and screen. A bit of weight shaved off would be good, although not essential, but my laptop has the extended battery pack which adds more weight (although it's great as something to hold if you're carrying the laptop while open) and currently a spinning rust drive. Replacing the drive with an SSD would be great in terms of the weight and performance, and presumably could also extend battery life a bit.
The idea of having a new motherboard inside the X201 case with at least 16GB of memory and an SSD is really appealing to me. I think I will keep an eye on these replacement motherboard companies and consider what to do when I can get around to giving it some TLC.
> information about "your TV viewing history" including "information about the networks, channels, websites visited, and programs viewed on your Samsung Smart TV and the amount of time spent viewing them".
Can you opt out of that stuff? I would have thought you should be able to. If not, are there not implications regarding GDPR?
As for the ads, being able to block them is one thing, but it doesn't mean you'll get the screen real estate back for your own use. :-(
This has taken me back to the mid-to-late '90s, when a lot of people were using fax modems from the likes of USR.
I set-up HylaFAX on my home Linux server with the aforementioned hardware back then. I never really sent or received faxes, but that's not the point...
I have not thought about HylaFAX for many years, so I just looked it up and surprisingly, it still seems to be a thing, although the last release appears to be Sept 18 2018 and the one before that Jun 05 2012.