* Posts by Johnb89

162 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jan 2022

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Microsoft blames 'latent code issue' after Windows 11 upgrades sneak past admin blockades

Johnb89

Re: Whoops, missed that...

Focus things amaze me. They work sooooo badly that I cannot believe anyone did any amount of testing with anything like real world data/situations. The errors these things make are trivial to see.

Conclusion: MS and apple at least don't test in house. And that includes eating their own dog food. Reason: That's what users are for!

Microsoft OneDrive file sync apps for Windows, Mac broken for 10 months

Johnb89

Syncing has always been a problem

I've never had anything sync reliably. One app, when a sync decided that I wanted new content that I'd added on one device on neither device, told me "Tis but a bug, but its actually permanently gone. Sorry." This is dozens of things over 30 years. I won't have the little apps that onedrive, google drive, dropbox et al want to install, and don't use apple cloud sync, because none of them have proved reliable.

Hint: Don't using syncing except for unimportant things, IMHO.

Is syncing really this hard?

UK's attempt to keep details of Apple 'backdoor' case secret… denied

Johnb89

And the rest of the world

The comments so far are about UK resident's rights (mostly). For me, the true comedy of this order is that it gives the UK government access to ANY icloud account in the world. Which I'm sure all other governments would be fine with, but would the UK government be happy if say Brazil or Botswana granted themselves access to a UK citizen's account?

The software UK techies need to protect themselves now Apple's ADP won’t

Johnb89

Reminders and Photo backup

I used Due on my iphone for reminders, for the simple reason that it doesn't arbitrarily mark a thing as done all by itself like apple reminders does.

And I use pcloud to backup my photos because I don't want to be trapped in the apple Photos ecosystem, and I want my photos as files in folders with useful file names (date and time of photo).

London is bottom in Europe for 5G, while Europe lags the rest of the world

Johnb89

Wifi calling doesn't work, in my experience

My experience with wifi calling, on good broadband, is that it doesn't work at all well, particularly with regards to latency.

One person I regularly call uses wifi calling at their end. Hopeless. If we talk on whatsapp its fine. Yes, I appreciate that my end is different in those cases too... but I make mobile calls all day and its only the wifi calling ones that have problems.

Johnb89

It can be done

I'm currently in <back of beyond, beach island in Asia> and can consistently stream HD on youtube via my phone hotspot on 4 bars of 5G, pretty much anywhere in the country. When it does drop to 4G I can speedtest upwards of 40 Mbps. There is rampant competition and advertising here for the mobile networks, which can't hurt the quality of service.

Planning restrictions aren't a thing here though, let alone safe water or food hygiene, so good mobile service isn't a function of money.

As Amazon takes over the Bond franchise, we submit our scripts for the next flick

Johnb89

Surely the Billionaire in question will be the hero?

And as such we will have to finally decide : Is it

Beezos, Jeff Beezos, or

Behzos, Jeff Behzos

Cause I've never been sure, and it'll need to be sorted for the filming.

Why AI benchmarks suck

Johnb89

Re: Benchmarks and statistics lie

It's true! 76% of statistics are made up on the spot!

US lawmakers press Trump admin to oppose UK's order for Apple iCloud backdoor

Johnb89

Not just UK users' data

As I've seen it this order applies to all data held by apple, not just on 'UK users' whatever that might be defined as. Which does seem slightly over reaching.

Imagine if Brazil, or France, insisted apple give them access to all apple worldwide user data. The UK government would be opposed, so how does this square that circle?

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

Johnb89

Re: What is this article about again ?

Exactly. There I was minding my own business reading about a microcode attack, and suddenly US POLITICS. Ugh! Go away!

Amazon's Kuiper secures license to take on Starlink in the UK

Johnb89

What good is a license in the UK?

Indeed, if you are granted a license to do something in the UK, where that is an incorrect use of the word, is the contract valid?

Sigh.

US watchdog sticks probe into 2.6M Teslas over so-called Smart Summon crash reports

Johnb89

Re: So who pays?

And what if it runs over a child where criminal prosecution would be expected? Who is legally liable? Tesla's CEO? Tesla QA? The owner of the car? The person that had their hand on the 'stop' button on the app?

Has this been tested in court?

Johnb89

So who pays?

When a Tesla using ASS hits another car, I assume that Tesla blames the human and takes no responsibility for damages. And has the logs to prove Tesla isn't at fault, which it won't share with a court or the user or the police, but trust them, it is never the car.

Do the courts agree with that? Has it been tested? Some might suggest that a self driving car should be responsible for its actions.

Or does your insurance cover such things when you buy a Tesla and that's already in the policy?

Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in Full Self-Driving mode

Johnb89

I'm sure the motorcyclist had signed the liability waiver

I'm sure the motorcyclist had previously signed a water tight legal document absolving tesla of any all liability for injuries or death resulting from tesla testing their alpha quality death machines on real roads.

We've all signed that. Don't you recall doing it?

At least that's what tesla's lawyers will tell the court.

My condolences to the motorcyclist's family.

Johnb89

Re: GPS - Washington State

Because rules don't apply to tesla. Obvs.

Thunderbird is go: 128 now out with revamped 'Nebula' UI

Johnb89

Re: Losing It

I expect it is for those unfortunate souls who have gmail accounts that they get locked out of and without any support from google can't get back in to. Permanently.

In that case, having your email archive local and still accessible is helpful.

HP CEO: Printed pages are down 20% since pandemic

Johnb89

Perhaps if printers WOULD ACTUALLY PRINT

Perhaps I'd print more if my printer would actually print.

- You can't print black&white because you don't have Magenta ink that you have.

- Your debit card has expired so you can't print with the ink and paper that is already in your printer.

- The cartridge you are using that worked perfectly well yesterday is now illegal and the police have been called.

- The wifi connection that worked perfectly well for the last 13 years is the wrong polarity/style/font. Have you tried restarting your computer?

- Are you in a rush? Bad attitude detected, please wait.

Google’s in-house docs about search ranking leak online, sparking SEO frenzy

Johnb89

Does anyone still use Google search?

Ok, so I guess some people still need to use google for something, but seriously there are search engines that at least try to pretend the results are related to what you searched for. And that at least purport to respect your privacy.

The argument that doing those things gave you worse results because reasons is long over now that google has their AI results.

The good news is that the google AI results are hysterically funny, so there is that.

Silicon Valley roundabout has drivers in a spin

Johnb89

Re: Attraction

High Wycombe has (or at least had, don't know) a magic roundabout as well, but doesn't seem to be as famous. I've occasionally wondered why. It was fun, not least because of the stonking long hill down to it... one could (hypothetically, of course) get up quite a speed.

Stability AI decimates staff just weeks after CEO's exit

Johnb89

A sustainable business

Is not one that has direct COGS 9x revenue, that also relies on stealing critical inputs.

Then again... the CEO of GM was once quoted as saying they lose $1000 on every car but hope to make it up in volume, so what do I/we know?

Judge refuses to Ctrl-Z divorce order made by a misclick

Johnb89

Re: Presumably they were already 'getting' divorced

Just maybe she is the rich one, we shouldn't assume.

Tesla decimates staff amid ongoing performance woe

Johnb89

Running a car manufacturer as a tech startup

Tesla, near as I can tell, is run as a tech startup. LEAN. Move fast and break things. All that. It's an interesting experiment. Dramatically increasing and decreasing staff numbers based on quarterly results, pivoting, announcing vapourware... these are all tech startup things.

Cars, however, are not software. Cars are heavy and move fast, they have momentum when they hit things. They are physical objects that can't be updated virtually (see cybertruck pedal).

I'm very happy I live somewhere where Teslas don't drive themselves, because I cycle near cars a lot. The kerb strike comment struck a nerve, because I could be the kerb, but also because somehow Tesla tries to pretend it is the 'driver's' fault, even when the car is in FSD. Classic tech startup mentality.

Its an interesting experiment, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Hopefully the world will learn that killing people isn't just a bug to be fixed in a later release.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Johnb89

Epson is it?

So when I threw away (aggressively) my HP printer because the firmware update caused it to stop using the ink cartridge that had been in it for some time and worked perfectly well, I bought an Epson, because they'd always been good and fine with 3rd party cartridges.

Then lo, one day, it tricked me into doing a firmware update on the printer... security stuff, it said.

Shockingly, it then rejected the 3rd party ink cartridge that was in it that had worked perfectly well until that point. So Epson went on my shit list.

Never again anything HP, and also Epson. Sigh. Good that I don't really ever print anything.

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Johnb89

Coincidence? I think not

There's a rumour going round some of the good bits of Reddit that Princess Kate moonlights as a Python developer, and spent January building 'something'. The rumour continues that she is now frantically trying to fix that 'something', which coincidentally has been the cause of these outages.

It would explain several things in on fell swoop, and thus passes the Occam's razor test.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

Johnb89

Better parenting, not thicker steel

Here in the UK our reaction to vandalism is to secure and strengthen and toughen and harden... school playgrounds surrounded by 3m tall spike fences made of 5mm steel, telecoms street furniture made of thick steel, big heavy bike locks, etc

That is not the answer. The answer is to teach the (mostly young, male) people who destroy things for fun, or think its ok to steal things, that its not ok to do that. This is a generational project.

Many countries have things exposed and don't have these problems, because parents teach their children right and wrong, and how to behave. Too many parents in the UK don't do that.

Google hopes to end tsunami of data dragnet warrants with Location History shakeup

Johnb89

But then a pesky 'rogue engineer'...

It will be found, after a time that...

'A rogue engineer' actually included code that sent your location data to google after all that totally accidentally used it for ad placement anyway and completely unintentionally stored it in a place that the warrant team 'didn't know about'.

Tesla says California's Autopilot action violates its free speech rights

Johnb89

Money and Lawyers

Many of the comments ascribe these things to Musk, but I suggest that he merely gives high level instructions to his legal team to take these various things to court, or sue the bastards or whatever.

It turns out that there are lawyers out there that will park whatever ethics they might have... for money. Perhaps lots of money. But these lawsuits take time to put together and follow through and these are the people making up spurious arguments, trying to find loopholes, writing biased user agreements and so on because money.

One would think that a proper lawyer would have ethics of some sort, but reality suggests not always.

HP TV ads claim its printers are 'made to be less hated'

Johnb89

When good companies go bad

Remember HP, founded in a garage, made cool stuff. Reverse Polish notation. Other things back when. Ah the days.

The last 3 HP things I've interacted with have been steaming piles of sh*te. HP are on my 'never' list.

Alas.

California commission says Cruise withheld data about parking atop of a pedestrian

Johnb89

Re: In fairness

As I commented on a previous article on this incident the car wouldn't be listening for the person under it screaming "STOP!!!!!!!" and "OWWWW!!!!!", nor would it be able to hear bystanders screaming at it and hitting it and banging on the windscreen etc.

That is one of the many problems self driving cars have.

Microsoft confirms Smart App issue renaming everyone's printers to HP

Johnb89

In a way it simplifies things

Having had an hp printer that worked perfectly well with 3rd party cartridges and then didn't I swore I'd never buy another hp thing again. Which matches my policy of never giving microsoft money. In which case I can just sit here finding this funny. Sorry to the rest of you that aren't able to make that choice.

*companies what can't do simple things properly don't get upper case. Its the rules.

UK's cookie crumble: Data watchdog serves up tougher recipe for consent banners

Johnb89

Re: 30 days to get compliant with tracking rules or face enforcement action

Hey, that's a Strongly Worded Letter, if you don't mind. And if that doesn't work, the threat of a Very Strongly Worded Letter.

Watchdog bites back against blockage of $9M fine on US selfie-scraper Clearview AI

Johnb89

Re: Gah!

I came here to note the $ in the headline for a UK article, which the 'mericanisation of the reg is getting silly.

But I still find the reg is far less click baity than most things, even the tax funded BBC which has become unreadable for the click bait headlines... so much for 'public service, publicly funded journalism' there.

Cruise parks entire US fleet over safety fears

Johnb89

How to detect there's someone underneath? Listen for screaming!

So they might be checking that the applied torque matches movement including wheel slip, which would work sometimes perhaps.

But what would a human do? Listen for screaming from under the car or from bystanders. Are they doing that?

There are too many edge cases for AVs to be safe in the real world. As the other commenters note, they need to be separated.

Tesla swerves liability in Autopilot death lawsuit

Johnb89

Re: What about other road users?

Umm, but what about the other other road users that are much more vulnerable? Cyclists, pedestrians and such.

The newish rules of the UK road that prioritise them in a sensible order can't be managed by any self driving car conceived.

Meta's ad-free scheme dares you to buy your privacy back, one euro at a time

Johnb89

A good idea in principle*

I actually think this is a good idea. In that it is not unreasonable for a company providing a service to profit from it, either by ads or subscription fee. I suggested twitter go that way years ago, but that's another story.

But... I wouldn't trust facebook to actually do it. And I would fully expect that when they are caught 'a rogue engineer' or 'a coding error' happened, that meant the user's data would have been 'unintentionally' collected.

*if implemented ethically

UK to crack down on imported Chinese optical fiber cables

Johnb89

An interesting place just east of Harlow

Meanwhile, the place where they invented this stuff (Nobel prize winners etc) is now an office park on the east side of Harlow, Essex.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Telecommunication_Laboratories and Kaopark Harlow -https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Kao+Park/@51.770534,0.1258598,17z/

Red light for robotaxis as California suspends Cruise's license to self-drive

Johnb89

Its those meddling edge cases

Those meddling edge cases! Damn them! Damn them all to hell! (Picture Charlton Heston and Scooby .gif)

And yes, pedestrians under the wheels are 'edge cases'. Mere details to be sorted in a future release. Practically trivial.

iFixit pries open Google Pixel 8 Pro with clamps and picks

Johnb89

7 years of support is it?

Promises of long term support from Google are like pigs and wings, politician's commitments, or 'Google protects your privacy'. Google is famous for killing off products with no notice and no sensible plan, even for people that just bought.

Ha ha ha ha! ROFL! LMFAO! All those.

Are they escrowing things to show commitment? Putting money where their mouth is? (Maybe they are, but I haven't seen so)

Google promises Germany to creep on users less after market power probe

Johnb89

17th time's the charm, then?

Promises made, regulations implemented, excuses ready, loopholes found, meaningless fines levied, data flows as before ... the cycle continues.

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Johnb89

Re: Once again. . .

Yes, the car handed control to the human driver 2 milliseconds before the collision, thus the human was in control of the car.

And until Tesla starts releasing credible logs and data that demonstrate otherwise we will all believe that that is exactly what has often happened.

Johnb89

So how DO the police tell a driverless car to move 'just a bit'

The article mentions lifting the car, but there are circumstances where the police would tell or motion to a real driver to 'move over there' or 'pull forward a bit' or 'don't move'.

How do authorised people tell a driverless car these things? Can they?

One could imagine the default case where there's a big red 'STOP' button on the car that makes the car stop immediately and stay that way until central control says otherwise, but I don't think they have those.

Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive

Johnb89

Next step, Sharepoint

Once this is done they'll need a better name for it. I suggest 'SharePoint'.

Yes, the same Sharepoint whereby the only way to find a file is to already know where it is.

Beta driver turned heads in the hospital

Johnb89

Rebooting for 5 of every 25 minutes, mind you

The early powerPC apple laptops (which I can't tell if this was a desktop or laptop) that I had (of which several at work) had a mean time between crash of about 20 minutes, so indeed rebooting wasn't a daily thing, it was every half hour... so this rotated monitor trick would have been more annoying that is perhaps obvious.

Totally coincidentally this was (one of) Apple's near death periods.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Johnb89

The day when one can't drive one's BMW because the seats are permanently heated

Picture the day. An overnight software update, announced on the large screen, with 'bugs fixes and other improvements'. But what's this, my arse is getting warm. 10 minutes later I have to stop the car because I'm being cooked.

Seat heating is on, can't be turned off. 'Tis but a bug', BMW support (at least there might be that for my monthly fee) assure me a patch will be out next week, 'right after the engineering team fix the P1 'brakes not working when turning left' bug'.

Ah, software in charge of things.

Zoom CEO reportedly tells staff: Workers can't build trust or collaborate... on Zoom

Johnb89

Extremists eh

Just because Zoom et al can replace SOME meetings doesn't mean such tools are good for ALL interactions. That's it, that's the key, its easy to understand if one tries to do so just a little bit.

Being absolutist about anything is wrong. Being absolutist about remote working being perfectly fine in ALL circumstances is silly at best.

IBM shows off its sense of humor in not-so-funny letter leak

Johnb89

Re: You don't have to be from IBM or middle-aged

I saw that joke on the news last night and thought 'Every single 7 year old learning African animals in school made that joke within 5 minutes of reading the word 'cheetah'. Every one of them.'

Is this where we are now?

Lockheed's ARRW hypersonic missile: Sometimes it flies, sometimes it just tries

Johnb89

One is reminded of the 'missile gap*'

Just because They have a whatever technology thingy, does that mean We are at a desperate disadvantage because we don't have that exact kind of thingy?

Surely not.

*the real JFK-era one, not just the Dr. Strangelove version

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