Posts by EricB123

Think your phone is snooping on you? Hold my beer, says basic physics

Re: This is mildly terrifying

Sort of like having to pay the phone company an extra $1 a month for a phone that was any color other than black.

Re: This is mildly terrifying

"Note to USAfolk, 'Callan' was a UK TV series featuring an MI5 hit man,"

Thanks so much for thinking of us non-Brit readers. A rare courtesy from the Continent. Can I call Britian "the Continent" these days?

Oops, they did it again – rogue Soyuz spurt gave ISS an attitude problem

Re: Previous Incident

The f-ups alone could make an engrossing movie.

White House ransomware summit calls for virtual asset crackdown, without mentioning cryptocurrency

Is Anyone Listening Anymore?

It's all "blah, blah. blah".

So much news being generated when nothing is accomplished these days.

Amazon textbook rental service scammed for $1.5m

Re: If the alleged perp’ is convicted

The lack up upvotes is scary.

Shatner breaks the age barrier, goes where no nonagenarian has gone before with Blue Origin rocket trip

Re: NCC-1701

Only "quite possible"?

Samsung starts cranking out 14nm DDR5 DRAM

Re: A bit like cleaning product marketing

The soap companies don't mention it takes over 20 minutes to kill most bacteria. I have better things to do with my time.

User locked out of Microsoft account by MFA bug, complains of customer-hostile support

How Did He Get a Human on the Phone?

I got locked out of my Outlook account a few years ago. I couldn't get a human despite hours of trying to. To this day the account not accessible by me. I had to start from scratch, and his time using gmail.

Well, that should bullet proof me, shouldn't it?

Android OS vendor variants transmit data with no opt-out

Re: there's no way to opt-out of this data collection.

USA doesn't even have GDPR, for what little that's worth. How much money you have in the bank, every fetish, everything is monitozed.

I so wish government, by the corporation, for the corporation, would perish from the earth.

Schools email marketing company told us to go away when we told them of exposed database creds, say infoseccers

Worldwide Problem

I have lived in several countries, and the same non-attention to software security is everywhere I go. Although I have never been to thr UK, one of the countries I have lived in is the USA. I wish I had an answer to this serious problem,

Boeing's Calamity Capsule might take to space once again ... in the first half of 2022

Re: "oxidizer and moisture interactions"…

Engineers saw all of this. Management overrode them.

Learning app Duolingo sets its sights on the language of numbers

Mais oui!

Quantum computing startups pull in millions as VCs rush to get ahead of the game

Re: Flogging a dead cat @Anonymous Coward

I just hope El Reg doesn't go the Facebook route, where the most abrasive comments get bubbled to the top of the pile.

Facebook, Instagram finally end days of uptime by returning to some downtime

Re: The US giant claims it is used by 1.9 billion people every day.

I thought everyone liked quadrophrenia.

Reason 3,995 to hold off on that Windows 11 upgrade: Iffy performance on AMD silicon

Who is This Guy?

Which lone individual keeps downvoting everyone who criticizes Microsoft?

(insert MS stockholder here).

Waymo, Cruise get green light from California's DMV for self-driving taxi services

Re: --As-a-service is nothing new

Why so many downvotes?

Labour Party proposes raising UK Digital Services Tax (so Amazon can pass the hike on that, too?)

Re: There is an easy way round this

I've come to the conclusion that if you are worried about getting downvotes then you are probably a part of the problem.

Sort of like some governments of several large countries that I won't or need to mention.

Same Old Shi*

"There is no 'tax avoidance', just a very low margin business"

Thanks for your analysis of the situation Mr Jeff B

Texas cops sue Tesla claiming 'systematic fraud' in Autopilot after Model X ploughed into two parked police cars

Re: Yes it is Tesla's fault

"I'm baffled that you're getting downvotes"

Probably Texans

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Re: Pity that Apple don’t have Elon’s attitude to fixing things

I hope that was sarcasm, but fear it isn't.

Japan, Singapore, perhaps the whole world.... Get ready for robot waiters from Softbank and Keenon

Re: The return of the automat

Maybe the lack of upvotes (or downvotes) on this post is that nobody knows what an automat is anymore?

TV Dinner Time!

Getting served by a freakin' robot at a restaurant sounds almost as pleasurable as staying home with a Swanson (please not Morton) TV dinner, eating it off of a portable TV dinner tray while watching TV. I mean, for greasy fast food a robot is ok, but for anything better I'll pass.

Apple's M1 MacBook screens are stunning – stunningly fragile and defective, that is, lawsuits allege

Re: My gaster ...

Where in the world did the word "flabbergasted" come from? IT workers?

Why tell the doctor where it hurts, when you could use emoji instead?

Re: History repeats itself

Have you ever tried to assemble IKEA furniture?

Can WhatsApp moderators really read your encrypted texts? Yes ... if you forward them to the abuse dept

Welsh?

Is Welsh THAT hard to learn?

Busy day in China: Xi Jinping announces tech-sharing, services export push and a bourse for startups

Re: "young men who dress fashionably and don't conform to male stereotypes"

"I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok..."

US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses

Re: Do I hear a deafening chorus?

I was approached by the newly hired head of software documentation who asked me "what is meant by the word syntax"?

Online disinformation is an industry that needs regulation, says boffin

Re: Interesting concept

I bought a mechanical pencil in California that had the Prop 65 label on it. Maybe if I grind the thing up and snort it I would sneeze.

Japan's bullet trains replace smoking rooms with Zooming rooms

Re: Lagging

Don't even think about Amtrak!

Israeli firm Bright Data named as enabler of Philippines government DDOS attacks on opposition groups

Third World?

I thought the Philippines was a developing country. Not that labels matter much.

Big tech proud as punch about cameos in Joe Biden's security theatre

So THAT'S how you spell "Shysters"!

Apple wants to scan iCloud to protect kids, can't even keep them safe in its own App Store – report

Re: What happened when Eve ate the Apple?

The "Every Sperm is Sacred" song says it all.

TSMC to hike some chip prices 'by as much as 20%'

Re: Arizona?

No.

Trust Facebook to find a way to make video conferencing more miserable and tedious

Overly Polished Video

I am so sick of seeing hyper slick videos promoting worthless products! It (almost) seems to me the more money they spend on the promotion video the less useful the thing it promotes is.

US watchdog opens probe into Tesla's Autopilot driver assist system after spate of crashes

Re: About time too

"I assume everyone remembers all the tired old jokes about people engaging cruise control in their motor home and then crashing because they went back to fix a sandwich or something."

I heard if was coffee. But the man who did that sued, and now I see all new car manuals say something to the effect that the cruise control is only for speed control, NOT anything more.

Now about that lady who sued McDonald's for millions when she burned her thigh spilling their coffee in her car...

Google staff who work from home might see pay cut under corporate policy – reports

Nothing New

Hewlett Packard tried to do this many years ago with employees who worked in lower cost of living locations would get less pay than those in Mountain View, for example. While this is commonly done to set pay rates, doing this to employees after they are hired seems to me to be a breech of contract.

Microsoft wonders if disabling just-in-time compilation of JavaScript improves browser security

Super Duper Smart Bomb

As per a Trump statement of some sort of "top secret" weapon the USA was working on.

My God, it's getting contagious!

Giant Tesla battery providing explosion in renewable energy – not as intended

Re: It's not online yet

" I hope everyone understands that the above is a humorous reply, and not to be taken seriously. Follow the link instead."

Too late!

Re: It's not online yet

But it's only a flesh wound!

We can't believe people use browsers to manage their passwords, says maker of password management tools

Re: password managers

As readers of The Register already know, the cloud is the safest place to store data!!!!!

POLL: Is this sarcasm?

Re: Mixed model

You made me DuckDuckGo "KeepAss" just to verify you made that name up.

You didn't.

Hungarian tech store closed by World War II bomb

Re: I have a question...

Without a doubt, this!

"https://www.toytent.com/Games/7386.html"

Never mind the trolls, Discord hosts 'significant volumes of malware' in its CDN

Sounds Familiar

This sounds like the new drug war. Probably will end about as successfully too.

In the '80s, satellite comms showed promise – soon it'll be a viable means to punt internet services at anyone anywhere

It's Comcastic!

"The vast majority of people with cabled broadband services have performance that's reasonably good."

You, sir, have never heard of a company named "Comcast".

NASA warns Mars: We're about to laser your rocks and start stealing them

Re: New Reg Standard Required

"It's a little less than the diameter of a thruppence, and the length of an airwarden's whistle."

Translate for us non Brits please.

Troll jailed for 5 years after swatting of Twitter handle owner ends in death

Re: the old classic ..

Sigh, I guess there are only 2 Register readers who have heard of Carnac the Magnificent .

Apple delays recalling staff to offices until October as Delta variant romps across US

Who Knew?

"Googlers in California were given the choice to return to the office earlier this month, we're told. They have been advised to wear a mask at all times, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated or not."

Wow, there is a shred of humanity in Goggle's management after all!

Not only is Hubble back online after outage, it's already taking photos of the cosmos

Well, Well

Maybe, just maybe Americans will finally remember what week Engineer's Day is (yes, it's a day in most countries but in the USA it lasts a whole week).?

Nah!!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Day

Re: Life without the shuttle

"So you are right, the reusable shuttles cost an eye-watering $1.6 billion per launch."

About the cost of a single F-35 fighter jet perhaps?

Our Friends Electric: A pair of alternative options for getting around town

It Could Be Worse

"And the controller's tiredness/inattention from looking at screens constantly."

Let's just hope he is looking at the driving screens and not his phone screen.