* Posts by John H Woods

3577 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2007

Programmers' Question Time: Tiptoe through the tuples

John H Woods Silver badge

Sheer brilliance

See title

This is a sett-up! Mum catches badger feasting on contents of freezer

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: LOL

Have a word with your brother/sister. Calling their son Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg is almost as bad as calling one's daughter Daenerys

Revealed: Facebook, Google's soft-money 'blackmail' to stall Euro fake news crackdown

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Oh the irony,,,

No, the (tragically unsurprising) irony is that, despite it being central to your somewhat off-topic argument, you don't know that the Lisbon Treaty "came into full effect" nearly a decade ago, on 2009-12-01.

Jeff Bezos finally gets .Amazon after DNS overlord ICANN runs out of excuses to delay decision any further

John H Woods Silver badge

the tld to rule them all ...

.tld

Guess what shrinks when it gets cold and then you shake it around a little? The Moon. We're talking about the Moon

John H Woods Silver badge

Haloumi does change colour

Try deep frying or hot grilling.

Or my new recent favourite kitchen appliance, the Rothenberger Superfire 2.

Essex named sexiest British accent followed closely by, um, Glaswegian

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Relative accents?

One of the most interesting sounds I've ever heard was fluent Arabic (of which I understand maybe three words) spoken in a really, really strong Scouse accent. Marvelous.

Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register

John H Woods Silver badge

I agreed with you on almost nothing ....

... but your articles were well-written, well-considered and hugely entertaining. All the best ...

Autonomy's one-time US sales chief can't remember if he took part in grand jury hearing

John H Woods Silver badge

British Judges ...

... can be absolutely brilliant.

And in this week's weird news, Feds seize dark-web news site, accuse admins of getting rich off drug cyber-souk

John H Woods Silver badge

Noob question

How do hackers steal bitcoin from an exchange? Don't you need private key(s) to the wallet(s) you're raiding?

Airbnb host thrown in the clink after guest finds hidden camera inside Wi-Fi router

John H Woods Silver badge

Erin Andrews

IIRC that was a reverse optics device through the door security viewer, not hidden in the room.

I see you're writing an app... Microsoft nudges AI Clippy-for-Code out the door, turns machine learning onto Word

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Pluma

Give me EMACS or give me death

Apple stock hits bottom ... as AirPod exits man's backside and still works after colonic travels

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: How do you accidentally SWALLOW something?

Last time I went to bed hungry I dreamt I was eating a giant marshmellow and when I woke up I couldn't find my pillow. #dadjokes

NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: up the hill

I think I'd rather drink from the spring up the hill than the pond at the bottom... YMMV.

A day in the life of London seen through spam and weak Wi-Fi

John H Woods Silver badge

WiFi strength ...

in my experience coffee shop WiFi is weak because

1) it's near a DECT cordless phone base station

2) it's near a big metal coffee machine

3) it's an ancient router

4) 'smart channel selection' seems to work by seeing where everybody else is and deciding that must be the best channel.

May Day! PM sacks UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for Huawei 5G green-light 'leak'

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: FTFY

Ah yes, too much gin, apologies.

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: It is May...

A Sir Humphrey-ism comes to mind: "The ship of state is the only state that leaks from the top"

Come friendly bit barns and fall on Slough: Equinix opens £90m data centre in London rust belt

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Slough - Greater London?

To be pedantic, berks are named, cockney rhyming style, after the Berkeley Hunt. Which, I believe, is in Gloucestershire.

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Rust belt?

Well, maybe spinning rust belt

Take a hike: Grab a flask of tea – South Korea is opening hiking trails in the DMZ

John H Woods Silver badge

I quite like tourist trails...

... but I'm not sure where I stand on landmines

Sky customers moan: Our broadband hubs are bricking it

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: "for anything except a single wired connection to your own switch"

Well, I thought about using the term 'router' but I thought that, in the simplistic case, it's not actually doing any routing, is it? Just switching some packets to a gateway?

I am not a network (or any kind of) expert really.

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: It's been years since . . . .

One slightly easier option is to retain the ISP provided router but not to use it, except in emergencies, for anything except a single wired connection to your own switch.

Russian-trained spy whale spooks Norwegian fishermen

John H Woods Silver badge

I sea what you did there

And in current affairs... Apple recalls three-prong AC adapters after some shocking behavior

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Duckhead?

changing the first or second letter is frequent when referring to the person who left a BS1363 plug somewhere where you encountered it whilst unshod.

Baffling tale of Apple shops' 'non-facial' 'facial recognition', a stolen ID, and a $1bn lawsuit after a wrongful arrest

John H Woods Silver badge

If Anders Brevik gets released...

... I'm gonna need facial surgery

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: I hope Apples store software is better than what is on my iMac.

Well, Labradors understand at least some English; they aren't judgemental; they don't hold grudges; and mainly they just want to please... so it's probably an advantage

Cheapskate Brits appear to love their Poundland MVNOs as UK's big four snubbed in survey again

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Vodafone

Best thing about high Street shops is the staff have name tags... Will never forget being served by a Simone Leigh in an EE store....

The peelable, foldable phone has become the great white whale of tech

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Fixing a problem that doesn't exist

Indeed. I only use my tablet in private!

Microsoft debuts Bosque – a new programming language with no loops, inspired by TypeScript

John H Woods Silver badge

Love this ...

... so much simpler than when I was a Smalltalk programmer and had to write stuff like

squares := numbers collect: [:each | each ^ 2]

Are we actually going forwards at all?

* of course, if one were serious one would add the method to the class and just write

squares := numbers squares

iOS 13 leaks suggest Apple is finally about to unleash the iPad as a computer for grownups

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Editing two files at once

I didn't vote you down but I'm pretty sure you can ... You certainly can in 2016 and I'm sure I used to be able to do it in 2010. Resize an Excel window to approx half the screen then launch the app again from the task bar...

Brit Watchkeeper drone fell in the sea because blocked sensor made algorithms flip out

John H Woods Silver badge

Like AF447?

Another case where frozen Pitot tubes caused a problem, although in that case the faulty response was in wetware.

But from the little I know, wouldn't one expect these to be prone to freezing?

HP deployed 'Truth Squad' in post-Autonomy PR blitz to defend Meg Whitman

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: "Have I missed anything?"

5. Create a propaganda department to minimize the impact of 1, 2 and 3.

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

John H Woods Silver badge

Victorian Flatulence

Queen Victoria at a meeting of European leaders

Queen farts. Disraeli leaps to his feet and says "Excuse me ma'am, I humbly beg your pardon"

"Quite alright, Sir" comes the reply. Disraeli sits and smirks smugly at the other two.

Queen farts again. Determined not to be out-gentlemanned by Disraeli, Louis Napoleon III jumps up almost before the fart trails off, kicks Disraeli's chair from under him causing the latter to sprawls indignantly on the floor. The Frenchman makes a sweeping bow, an extravagant apology, and the Q not only says "Quite alright" but actually cracks a smile.

Well, this isn't going down at all well with Otto von Bismarck who feels thoroughly outdone and increasingly embarrassed. The moment the Queen farts again, he leaps to his feet, waving his sword and shouts "Diesen - und die nächsten drei - übernimmt die deutsche Reichsregierung!"

Cyber-insurance shock: Zurich refuses to foot NotPetya ransomware clean-up bill – and claims it's 'an act of war'

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Automation (digital/mechanical), 100% Predictable

No, it doesn't make enough sense

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: An opposing point of view

"software that you knew was faulty regardless of how much you patched it"

Surely that includes any reasonably complex software, especially operating systems?

How an augmented reality tourist guide tried to break my balls

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Knot

I recommend anyone who has to wear a lanyard familiarise themselves with the "alpine butterfly" a nice easy knot for putting a loop in a cord without needing access to the ends. (Use at your own risk in cables!)

It liiives! Sorta. Gentle azure glow of Windows XP clocked in Tesco's self-checkouts, no less

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Eh?

I go back to work next week.

Security MadLibs: Your IoT electrical outlet can now pwn your smart TV

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Low Impact - Really?

"The only way you could possibly overload the switch is if you had plugged in more things than it can handle,"

IANASparky but couldn't rapid switching of some devices also cause problems?

'Oh sh..' – the moment an infosec bod realized he was tracking a cop car's movements by its leaky cellular gateway

John H Woods Silver badge

Easy consumer law regulation

Just fine companies some % of turnover for using the same user/pass combination on more than one item.

Even just using digits from the serial number would be safeR than default credentials.

Google keeps tracking you even when you specifically tell it not to: Maps, Search won't take no for an answer

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Stuff Like This Should Be Illegal

"Just because someone might have questions about one event, it does not follow that they will swallow any and all conspiracy theory"

It doesn't follow, but it certainly has predictive value, both in how likely they are to believe other CTs and how pointless it is to talk to them.

US voting systems: Full of holes, loaded with pop music, and 'hacked' by an 11-year-old

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: I heard that ...

*uploaded

Kaspersky VPN blabbed domain names of visited websites – and gave me a $0 reward, says chap

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Is this a bug at all?

Whilst I agree that the *user* of a corporate VPN might not care about DNS leakage, the corporation should.

Unnecessary information leakage is always a problem, even if it just enables social engineering attacks (eg which vendor support pages you are visiting).

As the tunnel is already there, there's really no excuse for not sending DNS queries through it.

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: "Decide what outcomes you're interested in"

As a prime reason to have a personal VPN is to hide web destinations, a DNS leak pretty much renders it worthless.

I'm very glad security researchers hold these vendors to account.

Clap, damn you, clap! Samsung's Bixby 2.0 AI reveal is met with apathy

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Where's MY AI?

Google still frequently misreads my email and frightens me by popping up notifications for train journeys on the wrong dates.

Even when it has notified you of a train journey and must "know" you are on a train, and where you are getting off, it does stupid stuff like asking you if you want to check in at the Mailbox when you're sitting on the train at Birmingham New Street.

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: "Is that a chord keypad in your pocket"

May I commend to the commentard community, a word I only recently learned?

My brother had referred to a "sacofricotic colleague" and my subsequent enquiry taught me the definition of sacofricosis

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Pillage of the Open Source projects

Erm, I can't see any criticism of open source here?

UK.gov to tech industry: Hands up who can help cut teachers' admin

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Quick solution

I'm torn because I absolutely agree with you that politics should be removed from education but feel that your focus on "PC" is entirely wrong.

I would argue the problem is more to do with setting curricula centrally, micromanaging teachers and setting, and trying to achieve, fairly arbitrary targets.

Riddle me this: TypeScript's latest data type is literally unknown

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: Not gonna touch it.

@OnlyMee

Its not only you: I would agree that few run time bugs are type errors. It can increase tooling sophistication, as the IDEs then "understand" more of the code.

My most productive (and favourite) language remains the dynamically typed Smalltalk (even that will barf on 1+"a" unless you specifically create a method to perform it, but it will happen at runtime.

I've had those kind of type errors at runtime, sure, but you hit them and fix them in the very early stages of testing, so I'm not sure static typing is worth the effort. Other's mileage may vary, of course.

IBM Watson dishes out 'dodgy cancer advice', Google Translate isn't better than humans yet, and other AI tidbits

John H Woods Silver badge

Re: At least you know it's rubbish

" in Japanese the default pronoun (when omitted and not obvious from context) is the first person."

Surely this is also true in English, at least the wife says so.