* Posts by ConsumedByFire

42 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2021

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

ConsumedByFire

Re: The amount of times...

"A useful "feature" of Fahrenheit for people in snowy climates is that zero Fahrenheit is the temperature where salt on icy roads ceases to help melt the ice on the road to make it less slippery. So if the temperature is less than zero Fahrenheit, you know to be very careful when driving.

In Celsius, you have to remember that the critical temperature for salted roads is about "-18C", which is not as intuitive."

And what - having to remember 32F for unsalted roads is more intuitive . .

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

ConsumedByFire

Re: Where is my beloved "SFTW" chronicle?

I notice also . . . hmmmm . . . . how to express this.

So the branding used to be "The Register - Biting the Hand that feeds IT". I can't see the Biting the hand bit anyomore. Whats going on PHBs in ElReg world. Have you sold out?

Have you sold out?

ConsumedByFire

Re: Where is my beloved "SFTW" chronicle?

Seems like ElReg may have too many PHBs.

Whats going on guys? We're a loyal readership but we seem to find out about personnel changes by the grapevine rather than by editorials. Sort your selves out or I need to update my favourites.

And how about an editorial? A broadsheet daily has one . .

ConsumedByFire
Pint

Re: Where is my beloved "SFTW" chronicle?

As for the this weeks BOFH ... Too many TLAs :-)

ConsumedByFire

Re: Where is my beloved "SFTW" chronicle?

One less reason to read ElReg if Dabbsy has gone.

How long is it til the mgmnt part ways with BOFH one wonders. Anything that gets too popular seems to get dropped it seems :-(

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

ConsumedByFire

Re: She was a good one

Its interesting to compare how the Norwegians dealt with their oil riches (sovereign wealth fund) and what the UK did (spent it on ideology).

Anyway its in the past. One for another day.

ConsumedByFire

Re: She was a good one

Where do you get "1000 year reich" from?

The current consitution of the monarchy starts with the Act of Settlement around 1701 (and no can't be bothered to go check my facts).

ConsumedByFire

Re: ta ta Liz

"Now there is a weekend of pointlessly cancelled events which is going to cost millions."

Yeah . . . Just had my first Airbnb cancellation as the event they were attending is cancelled. Thats £300 I'm down. I do the Airbnb just to milk my asset so not too worried and hopefully no more.

But your point is valid. All the stadium staff who would have been working football matches this weekend may have a bill paying problem to solve.

ConsumedByFire

Re: ta ta Liz

Here here - very nice sentiments. Half the UK agree.

The other half who are struggling working 2/3 jobs to feed their children have a ittle resntment about the entitlement and privilege of those that "won the birth lottery".

For me the only argument that really holds is that 'at least a hereditary head of state means one less politician'. Best alternative I can think of is a rolling 4 year lottery to see who will be King/Queen for the next 4 years :-)

Enough with the notifications! Focus Assist will shut them u… 'But I'm too important!'

ConsumedByFire

Re: It's not just the OS...

On Android just set your normal sleep times. This basically automatically turns on DnD at bedtime and switches it off in the morning.

If you want to allow certain priority messages from vulnerable relatives or whatever you can exclude those numbers from DnD.

US regulators set the stage for small, local nuclear power stations

ConsumedByFire

Ta for that:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power

I learnt something. And I agree its a mad mad mad world.

Ditching VMware over the Broadcom buy? Here are some of your options

ConsumedByFire

Re: Thinking about my own options

Not a done deal. EU regulators starting an investigation. Potential for the deal to fall apart.

Keep your chin up :-)

US judge dismisses Republican efforts to block release of Salesforce emails

ConsumedByFire

Re: Only in 'merica

Britain doesn't have a constitution. Probably needs changing but still.

AI helps scientists design novel plastic-eating enzyme

ConsumedByFire

Re: Doomwatch episode 1

There was also a Judge Dredd comic very many years ago where someone released a plastic eating enzyme into the city. Chaos ensued.

Clothes falling off sexy girls my 12 year old self clearly remembers for some reason, but basically everything with a bit of plastic in it falling aprt and ceasing to work in disastrous fashion.

Enterprise IT finds itself in a war zone – with no script

ConsumedByFire

I will agree Doctor.

In my opinion the tech companies should be implementing the sanctions. Working out which sanctioned people buy what from them and cutting off the supply. Just implement the sanctions.

I wouldn't consider it fair to cut off services to all of Russia right now (unless it were likely to result in a change of regime) as you'd be causing loads of hardship for people who disagree with what their dictator is doing.

Work out if you are selling to a company with any ownership/control by a sanctioned individual. Shut down the services you are supplying. Else you are in breach.

Ukraine invasion: We should consider internet sanctions, says ICANN ex-CEO

ConsumedByFire

Re: Now that I can get behind

Biut don't ICANN need to comply with sanctions and stop providing services to the Russian government and the other sanctioned individuals?

ConsumedByFire

Re: It's over

Apparently I was born "woke" 52 years ago.

They may have only invented the term recently but if you think being non-judgemental, nice, considerate, kind and compassionate to people of all cultures, genders, religions, etc (I.e. Woke) is a bad thing then I think you are a bad thing :-D

Cloudflare, Akamai: Why we're not pulling out of Russia

ConsumedByFire

Cloudflare will do your DNS for you so traffic goes through their security before it hits your servers. And they can use their DDoS service to prevent those kinda attacks. If you've signed up to that and they turn it off you need to redo your DNS and associated routing and lose the DDoS protection.

SAP continues to support Russian customers

ConsumedByFire

Re: As usual, capitalism does what it always does.

I've been wondering since the start of this if targetting the UK sanctions at all Russian nationals rather than certain individuals would create a Russian backlash against Putin (which is whats needed - get the people to get get rid of the madman).

Would freezing all Russian assets work?

Given prpopoganda in Russia has indoctrnated them that NATO caused this war then probably not. But its worth thinking about. Plenty of rich Russians will have investments in London they cant afford to lose just cos their overlord lost his stuffing marbles . . . .

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

ConsumedByFire
Pint

20 Seconds to Comply

Hey Dabbsy - loved the Robocop riff. Classic 80s.

Surprised you didn't work in a link to this very very memorable 20 seconds to comply scene of malfunctioning tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzlt7IbTp6M

And for music you could have gone with the rather poor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw9GNz-EYP8 which somehow I remember existed from the mists of time.

Anyway - hope you're having a nice Sunday.

Make assistive driving safe: Eliminate pedestrians

ConsumedByFire

Re: The Joy of Motoring

Middle Lane drivers - GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

ConsumedByFire

Re: "I could be driving out of Cairo towards the Great Pyramids of Giza"

One of the most 'interesting' roads I have ever been on is the Cairo ring road to get to the pyramids. 8 (iirc) lane highway with no lane disciplne, no concept of fast/slow lane, pedestrians (whole families, sometimes with animals crossing) and the occasional rich kid in a souped up hot hatches forcing themselves through the traffic at speed.

Car crash waiting to happen!!

Spent two weeks there in Cairo and Luxor and one day sat in passenger seat on a day trip I realised that almost every (about 99%) car had body work damage including bonnets and roofs.

ConsumedByFire

Re: pedestrianism

I've never been to America. I don't think I'd like it. I walk everywhere.

ConsumedByFire

Re: pedestrianism

But quite alot of Spain has a crossing at every junction where peds have priority. I like this.

ConsumedByFire

Re: On foot, on crutches, in wheelchairs

Avoiding the phone users is the bigger problem. Walking and texting/facebooking/news reading are incompatible. Whatever is so urgent you can't concentrate on not walking straight into me can wait. Can't it?

Seriously!!!

HMRC: Contractors, don't worry about IR35 reforms in private sector 'cos it all went so well in public sector

ConsumedByFire

Re: Strange statistics

I've gone permie but all my old recruiters still keep approaching me. Always inside IR35. Always a crap rate. Its just killed it.

TBH I was sick of getting my renewal and sweating on my next all the time but its quire annoying HMRC aren't allowing self employed people to be taxed as self employed (and take the risk themselves). I was always clearly self employed during my 15 years of contracting then suddenly rules changed and my employer decided all contractors are employees. Doh!!

ARSE!!!!

Waterfox: A Firefox fork that could teach Mozilla a lesson

ConsumedByFire

Re: I'd love to try Waterfox, but there's a problem...

This conversation is exactly why its never going to be "the year of Linux on the desktop".

What are you guys talking about . . . ?? Don't you just run the installer and thats all you need to know . . .

ConsumedByFire

Re: Personally I don't recognise all the Firefox criticism

Completely agree. I hadn't noticed there was an issue. Don't remember when I started using Firefox it was so long ago. Not planning on stopping anytime soon.

If all these Devs on here are missing features then can't you just roll yourselves a plug-in?

Judging by the way your face lit up, my inbox just got more attractive

ConsumedByFire

Unsubscribe

"No matter how often I hit that "Unsubscribe" button"

I now have an email rule to delete anything with Unsubscribe in the body of the email. On my work account anyway, as there appear to be companies in India trawling Linkedin, guessing email addresses and adding me to spam marketing for big tech companies. Their efforts are now wasted :-)

Google to auto-enroll 150m users, 2m YouTubers with two-factor authentication

ConsumedByFire

Re: And because we know the best way ...

"You know people won't be getting dedicated 2FA keys, they will use their phones, most likely with Google's authentication app."

A key is one of the options.

Microsoft's new 'power app converging model' hits public preview with Custom Pages

ConsumedByFire

Re: Lock in

These are web based apps . . .

They srill lock you in but to a cloud service not a desktop environment.

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

ConsumedByFire

Re: Not just old MacBook Pros...

Or just invest in aircon . . . .?

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

ConsumedByFire

Tell us more Aryeh.

Was he bonkers then? Could you foresee his path?

Google employee helped UK government switch from disastrous COVID-19 strategy, according to Dominic Cummings

ConsumedByFire

Re: Cummings' testimony

It was interesting at the end of the testemony where he was aked what we can learn from this and said that the Civil Service need to be incentivised to get things done as opposed to the current state where they are incentivised to keep their heads down so its not their fault when it all goes pear shaped.

Insightful!!

Business-intelligence-company-turned-Bitcoin-addict MicroStrategy grabs another $10m crypto-coin fix

ConsumedByFire

Re: It's not a bubble, it's a pyramid scheme

And taking this a level on.

If you make it a criminal offence for a company (including its officials) to conduct transactions in an anonymous currency . . . does that kill the ransomware business?

If a ransomware outfit needs a bank account its surely out of business or in prison?

ConsumedByFire

Re: It's not a bubble, it's a pyramid scheme

Nothing personal against non governmental currencies per se here. But at some point those currencies which burn energy through the 'proof of work' mechanic will get banned from major economies because of climate crisis.

This will result in:

- very sad people whose crypto coin investments are suddenly worth diddly squat

- affordable graphics cards

No inherent value. Big environmental cost. Ban them.

Glimpse of 3GHz 128-core Ampere Altra Max server processor emerges as Oracle teases more cloudy Arms

ConsumedByFire
Pint

Have a beer you Anonymous Coward you.

Clarifed some stuff that I probably knew but certainly couldn't have written down in a few hundred words. I learnt quite a bit from the post. Off to reread after I hit submit,

Cheers

Yahoo! Japan! offers! free! comment!-moderation!-as!-a!-service! API!

ConsumedByFire

Re: constructive comment ranking model vs amanfromMars

Hilarious. I used to spend time trying to elicit meaning from some of the more surreal posts but theres only one life.

I would be interested to see what the algorithm made of Bombastic Bob (who I sometimes agree with sometimes don't but always appreciate his forthright approach to commenting).

Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told

ConsumedByFire

Why is Epic not a platform in the same way as the examples you quote? Why should things I buy on Epic website not be available to me in their iOS app? Why should Apple take a cut of purchases made in Epics iOS app but not via their website?

If I buy a license to an Epic game from Epics website then why should I not be able to install and play on multiple platforms without Apple taking a cut?

ConsumedByFire

Re: Pot calling Kettle

So if I can:

- buy an album on Amazon Music and listen to it on the Amazon Music app on any platform I like, including Apple, without Apple taking a cut

Why can't I:

- buy a big gun on Epic store and use it to shoot people in an Epic game on whatever platform I like including Apple, without Apple taking a cut.

I sense Apple will lose this one.

ConsumedByFire

Re: I thought this case was against Apple?

I suspect the store lock-in is worse on Apple than Google.

Whilst I buy apps on Google app-store they aren't expensive and very few. eBooks I buy elsewhere, music I don't buy from Google, or video. AFAIK Google doesn't take a cut on movies, music, books I buy on other services but watch on my phone. Google also doesn't particularly encourage me to use their services to buy those things (I get directed to YouTube alot but then thats free to me other than the annying ads).

I believe Apple are much more aggressive in directing users to their own services for Music/Video/eBook purchases. Apple were also first with decent smartphones / tablets and got iTunes front and centre and many users were already locked in from the iPod.

Its the same as MS directing me to the x-box store for games on ,my Windows machine.

Only way to stop this is to ban vertical integration between the hardware/os platform vendor and the services vendors.

I swore never to give Apple a penny ever many years ago when they snuck iTunes onto my PC alongside a QuickTime download, and it immediately decided to reindex my carefully curated .mp3 collection. I then had to hack the registry to remove traces of it. Its that kind of thing thats unpleasant.

P.S. Don't get me started on Apples insistence on their own version of the USB-c socket. Idiots.

Brit authorities could legally do an FBI and scrub malware from compromised boxen without your knowledge

ConsumedByFire

Back in my 'very early' ISP days we were getting our outbound email traffic blocked by SMTP relay providers because we had been blacklisted because of SPAM eminating from our network. I can't remember the exact details but we were getting whole user subnets blocked I think til we killed the SPAMing customers (told them to cease and desist or find a new ISP).

Wouldn't something similar work here? Just block email traffic to/from the offender til they cleaned their house? Might not work, my email infrastructure knowledge is rather rusty.