Posts by that one in the corner

Python tops programming love list – but if you want a job, learn SQL

Re: Feeling smug

The inevitable xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/297/

Smartphone gyroscopes threaten air-gapped systems, researcher finds

Re: Here's how to overwhelm the receiver

When asked why the Intelligence Agencies were unable to locate such a well-known suspect, the spokesman replied, and I quote, "We wuzz all mellow, the joint wuzz jumping, the sounds wuzz pumping" before blowing a whistle loudly in my ear. Later, a Ministry Aide threw shapes during PM's Question Time.

Binance exec says scammers made a 'deep fake hologram' of him to fool victims

fool several highly intelligent crypto community members

Another reminder that "intelligent" and "sensible" are orthogonal

PS: it was NOT a hologram!

Janet Jackson music video declared a cybersecurity exploit

Re: Am I safe?

Also worked for a SCSI disk that let the magic smoke out (blowing a neat little hole in the controller IC). Luckily, that was back in the dim and distant days of 1994 (approximately), when local Computer Faires were a thing and there were so few drive types available to home users that it was actually a practical idea to go and hope to find a matching second-hand drive to be a board donor.

Re: Unbelievable

Look Around You. Look Around You. Do you know what is now? That's right.

Software developer cracks Hyundai car security with Google search

I wonder what the password for zip file was

12345, the same as my atmosphere shield

Digital Ocean dumps Mailchimp after attack leaked customer email addresses

Hey now, he is a "rising senior" at Cornell.

Though that probably just means he gets out of bed half an hour earlier than the rest.

Apple to compel workers to spend '3 days a week' in the office

> Permanent chalk isn't a thing

You're not trying hard enough!

This tiny Intel Xeon-toting PC board can take your Raspberry Pi any day

Re: Tiny HSF?

A teeny tiny HSF that will make dogs howl and knock bats from the air.

Apple says 2017 MacBooks don't have FlexGate defect. Aussie tribunal orders a fix anyway

Re: Happy with their Choices

> As for "economic value", that argument only holds water if you considere your own time as of no value whatsoever. If you do, Apple gear isn't that expensive anymore

The commenter you are replying to is using their time to help their friends/relatives to get better economic value - the value *they* get from investing the time is in friendship and social terms.

Stagelights - surely that is an Apple feature

Apple should just have provided a screen-saver of an applauding audience:

Your Mac is showing you stagelights, because You Are The Star for buying Apple, now is your time to take a bow.

Re: Why Do They Insist On Blatantly Denying Anything Is Wrong?

> If it was not for Capitalism one would have no redress via courts at all

Are you trying to imply that Capitalists created consumer protection laws? The ones that irritate them so much?

Or are you trying to say that Capitalism invented Courts of Law? There are a few dead monarchs who would like a word with you.

Anti-piracy messaging may just encourage more piracy

"Thank you"

For a few years now the DVDs we've bought *have* had a big "Thank you" message instead of the "anti-piracy" videos, which does work on us (oh, we are so easily manipulated): we feel lot more positively towards the DVD producer after being thanked and keep on buying DVDs.

(Intrigued that none of the above comments mentioned this change to a "Thank you" message - maybe we are part of an experimental group?)

Elon Musk wrote article for China's internet regulator, hinted at aged care robots

Re: Mars

Quite right, my apologies. I keep forgetting he's the one with the 'tache.

Helium

always best to go out on a high note.

Re: Mars

Well, Oglethorpe, you were wrong about Mars last time; million to one my backside.

Re: Mars

Shipwrecked and comatose - oops, Starship was on Tesla Autopilot!

(or from another place: "That planet just came out of nowhere!" - Deanna Troi)

Linux 6.0 debuts, missing some Rusty bits and a magic mushroom reference

this one contains at least one active bug

carefully hidden as a test: you have to find that one to prove you really are testing the new kernel, its line number is the password to unlock the bug reporting site.

Microsoft: Outlook desktop app crashing due to missing identity setting

Re: I have no Outlook problems at all

Looks like the probable unpatched security issues PLUS the certainty of fascinating new bugs in the newer versions is trumping the probable unpatched security issues in the older version.

Our software is perfect. If something has gone wrong, it must be YOUR fault

Re: It's not always the developers fault

> asking where all the buttons have gone, and tell you to put all them all back

At which point we find out if the dev is the sort who will only go by the literal word of the demand and therefore deleted all the old button code, and will now (almost, but not exactly) recreate it from scratch to comply with the new demand. Taking who knows how long to do so.

Or was the sort of dev who left the old button code as it was, just adding in a new boolean flag to disable it; and also used a separate boolean to enable the weird menu behaviour, just in case. He just flicks the boolean, gets the buttons back in minutes.

The big question being: which of those two actually did the better job? In whose eyes?

Was it the one who is being yelled at by Testing because "now they have to check it all works with the flag both both ways"?

Starlink satellite dish cracked on stage at Black Hat

Spoiler alert

The Hotline isn't actually *at* Ophiuchi, it is just coming from a station in the *direction* of Ophiuchi - only about a quarter light year out, IIRC.

So the wait won't be that long...

'I wonder what this cable does': How to tell thicknet from a thickhead

Re: colour me sceptical

Indeed - BBC Micro: "video doesn't work, I've plugged in the aerial lead solidly, it should work".

How the heck they got the monitor lead (DIN, RGB) rammed hard enough onto the BNC (Video Out) socket, so that it was, indeed, solidly in place, I do not want to know.

Luckily, DIN leads can be replaced and the BNC on the back of the Beeb didn't seem to have suffered at all.

After eleven-year wait, Atlassian customers promised custom domains in 2023

Re: No-one seems to know just why

I like the realism of the example they use - in the first table, the "what others think (my role is)" column has practical actions in it, whilst the "what I think (my role is)" column has wishy-washy talk about having visions.

Perhaps the Atlassian team working on CLOUD-6999 has been having these visions for so long now that they've totally lost touch with reality: "Why do customers keep asking for updates, my log book shows we've only been working on this for 29 days!". Ah, you have only been *lucid* for 29 days; that's ok, we'll just do a non-committal update on the ticket and you can - oh. Yes, that *is* a lovely giraffe. Nurse!

Want the very latest Windows Insider Dev Channel build? Check your disk space

Re: "there's a language-neutral word list"

PS: for anyone wondering why I specified USAsian Conservative, aside from the obvious (MS being from the US), a UK Conservative word list would mostly be variants of "bwaaa", which were all covered by the first suggestion, alongside " aaargh"[1]

[1] thank you; the chips are ready but fish will be five minutes

"there's a language-neutral word list"

I don't doubt there is - but what the blazes is it and why would it need an MS account?

"Language-neutral words" - such as "123" or "aaargh" (unless you really do want more boiling oil, of course)?

Is it supposed to mean "Neutral language", that is "such words which do not (explicitly or implicitly) take a particular (ideological) stance or a point of view" - in which case, if you don't have an MS account all the error messages will be racist, sexist and staunchly (USAsian) Conservative?

Or, FSM Preserve Us, it only communicates using Emojis?

FCC decides against giving Starlink $1b in rural broadband subsidies

If Starlink *is* already good enough to use

as some are saying, why give Starlink the money directly, instead of using the money to buy the dish for rural peoples and actually get them connected?

Google tells Apple to 'fix text messaging' in bid to promote RCS protocol

Fond memories of RCS

it was a definite improvement over SCCS, especially as we could compile it from source quite easily.

Re: My biggest complaint with it...

> What's the point in such software if it only works with Apple?

To get you to hand over your money to Apple in return for a shiny iDevice, of course.

Re: RCS seems to be a mess

Thank you - I was hoping for someone to provide some info about whether RCS is still "a convoluted mess from a technological perspective" (to quote the Register article from 2020). Certainly doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Boffins rate npm and PyPI package security and it's not good

Re: No mention of StepSecurity?

The preprint paper is restricting itself to "community efforts", whilst StepSecurity (disclaimer: I'd not heard of them before this) appears to be a company still starting up: the FAQ referring to " early adopters" and "All of our tooling and SaaS services are currently free".

So Step Security is simply outside the purview of the report and hence the article.

Now, whether this means that the report is too exclusionary to be useful to the general open source consuming population is another matter.

Re: If you read the article more carefully...

Yes, the researchers are aware of the problems: and I've been reading all of the criticisms in the comments as agreeing with the researchers and going into detail about how these problems manifest themselves.

The problem is not that the researchers are unaware but that the OpenSSF don't seem to be aware of these problems (they do admit that their scorecards only works for Github, but don't allow for any of the cases where Github is used but isn't the be-all and end-all). Yet OpenSSF are apparently[1] the only people who are trying to provide a way to examine package security.

I don't want to give the researchers a free pass, however: the preprint abstract talks about confirming the applicability of these Scorecards, instead of examining their applicability, and the discussions and conclusions both uncritically assume (come very close to stating) that the OpenSSF product is Absolutely The Bee's Knees.

[1] If you just rely on what the OpenSSF say, in the Github repo for their Scorecards and their distinctly corporate website. The preprint does admit that other offerings have been made in this area.

Hmm, one thing that I like to see in any open source related site/repo is the section that lists other projects with similar/related goals, especially when comparisons are given. Shows a bit of rigour and knowledge of the field - shame OpenSSF don't have one.

There can be only one... Microsoft Excel Champion

Waiting for the Matt Parker commentary version

(Title says it all)

Tech industry stuck over patent problems with AI algorithms

Re: otherwise no binaries are copyrightable

(presumably you mean by copyrightable by the author of the sources that were compiled)

This isn't (hasn't been) clear-cut.

IIRC there have been programming language compilers where the compiler writers claimed copyright on the results of compiling your code (and nowadays you may see a clause specifically stating the opposite, otherwise who would bother using your compiler). Tools like GNU Bison have to explicitly state you own the results of compiling your own inputs, because alongside the encoding of the state machine derived from your input is a load of template code to evaluate that encoding.

Although the situation was rather messy, even in 2016 there was a claim on the output of a CAD program: http://www.maw-law.com/copyright/output-copyright-protected-software-program-protected-copyright/

Aussies crowdsource a business case for central bank digital currencies

Digital Currency automatically means Cryptocurrency?

Which is the assumption everyone is making here, even though the linked media release only says "potential use of new technologies such as distributed ledger technology" - note "potential".

Although, what would be the alternative? Some crazy system with plastic cards that can record how much "money" (tied 1:1 with the Oz dollar?) is "held" on the card at the moment. Machines at the till could "debit" some money from your card and "credit" it to the shop's.

Or vice versa if you handed over some cash. Maybe even "top up" someone's card after they've done some work for you!

No "crypto" in sight (well, just the proper cryptography that lets you secure access to the cards).

Google sues Sonos yet again, claiming it stole IP and infringed patents

Re: Cognitive dissonance

> we need rules (laws) that make corporates fit their sales channels to human expectations and understandings

Back in the Good Old Days we used the concepts of Fit for Purpose and hence Fit for Sale, with accommodation for a reasonable lifetime of use.

Easy enough for fork handles and broom heads, but seemingly ignored by *all* parties to the sale when buying the shiny shiny.

Now, if we could get the buying public to read the side of the box before purchasing and then demanding a contractually enforceable Service Level Agreement then you'll find that we already have laws that can be applied for consumer protection.

But sure, demand new laws before exhausting the existing ones - won't anyone think of the poor starving politicians and the deeply impoverished legislature!

Always impressed by the cleverness of these patented technologies

Wireless music played in more than one room! Amazing, completely unlike me and the missus, each with our own tranny.

Oh, it is all about us both receiving the same music and we choose what that will be? So, totally unlike the (rather illegal but boys will be boys) FM transmitter bought from Tandy and plugged into a cassette deck back in the 70s? Okay, that wasn't shared with missus back then and it went a bit further than the next room - hey, wireless sharing with next door, that is surely good enough for its own patent!

Remember the humanoid Tesla robot? It's ready for September reveal, says Musk

Re: Optimus Prime will even claim Mars—for the robots

He'll have to fight Opportunity: https://xkcd.com/1504/

Re: Optimus can replace the Russians ....

And then I realised that I know nothing about modern vehicle terminology and found out that the above two comments should have referred to the Tesla "Semi" not the "Cybertruck".

Hmm, the charabanc is parked a bit away; shall need the velocipede to get there. Toodle-pip.

Re: Optimus can replace the Russians ....

Sorry, I was being silly. I was confused by thinking of Optimus Prime and Cybertrucks in together. Clearly, one is just silly Sci-Fi and CGI, the other is the mighty Optimus Prime.

Re: While I agree

> Self driving is absolutely not a "relatively simple task", it is a very simple task compared to developing a robot that can replace human manual labor.

So you *do* think that self-driving absolutely *is* a relatively simple task, compared to a humanoid robot! Which is the comparison that Gary Marcus made.

Yet you say you don't, then you say you do, but you don't.. Norman, co-ordinate (clunk)

Re: Optimus can replace the Russians ....

Obviously, Cybertrucks

Nomad to crypto thieves: Please give us back 90%, keep 10% as a reward. Deal?

Did you forget to add the <sarcasm> tag?

Russia: Hey, don't act surprised if we're still on the ISS in 2030

So we need to explode Jupiter

before everyone will play nice?

That is a bleak thought, even for the cynical El Reg.

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

Re: Nothing to worry about...

What are those noises in the kitchen at night? Could it be the Smart Yoghurt at the back of the fridge, Making their means of escape?

CASE NIGHTMARE GREY GOO WITH A FRUIT CORNER!

Be careful where you install software, and who installs it

Re: Linux Bros'

> threatening to put one of each in a pile and set alight to it.

One of each group of users?

Ah, of course, it makes them easier to carry out, those carpet rolls are heavy.

GitLab U-turns on deleting dormant projects after backlash

Re: Neat, must remember to put bugs into code so it has to be continuously revised

Unless it is being used by one of those "must get a new copy from the 'Net every build" setups, a stable library may still only see a very few downloads, when new projects grab their copy to go into the local repo.

Though if you are including in "downloads" polling for updates, hopefully that would put the numbers up a bit.

GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts

Purely incidental that GitLab's stats will improve

Just after the deadline clicks over, new ads for GitLab start to appear:

"Every single GitLab hosted project shows activity! We only attract the most active and alert coders, not like the slackers you get infesting <name of competitor>. Come and join our fast-paced community."

One way Bitcoin miners can make money: Selling electricity back to Texas

Nice power grid you got 'ere, Guv

Okay, I'm lost. Clearly I don't understand when finance and electricity mix. I'll spell out what I think is going on and hopefully someone better informed can point out where I lost the plot:

You know you are going to use massive amounts of power during July, so ahead of time you agree to bulk buy at a nice low rate. Come July, you decide not to turn on all the lights so you end up not pulling as much power from the grid, but what you do use is paid for at the agreed rate.

But then you somehow pump the electricity you haven't used back up the wire, "providing power back into the ERCOT grid during periods of peak demand"?

How does that happen? Where is the electricity being provided to ERCOT come from? Regenerative braking from the PC case fans?

Surely all they were doing was *not* pulling power - and then asking to be paid extra for *not* switching everything back on again?

Nice power grid you've got 'ere, Guv, shame if it were to overload in all this hot weather, know what I'm saying?

Sonatype shines light on typosquatting ransomware threat in PyPI

2FA helps ensure your package

is under your control and still *is* your package, but how does it help with typosquatting?

Unless, perhaps, each "critical" package also has packages with all the close-match typos auto-generated (these containing whatever is the equivalent of "this package deliberately left blank") and also put under your 2FA? Wild guess, that isn't happening..

Microsoft thinks there are people on 2G networks who want to use Outlook

Re: "only 1GB RAM"

> A lot of emails probably rely on CSS and other HTML functions that simply didn't exist at the time.

And a blissful time it was.