* Posts by Mage

9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

You GNOME it: Windows and Apple devs get a compelling reason to turn to Linux

Mage Silver badge
Flame

a throwback to the 90s

No, WIn 3.x, NT3.5x, Win9x and NT4.0 were all FAR more usable than Win 10.

Win10 is like Win1.0 except able to use more RAM and storage. Certainly I've used Windows 2.x, the Windows 286 and Windows 386 and Win10 is less private, more aggravating and less customisable GUI and TOO BLOODY FLAT. What the hell am I supposed click on to change a setting? At least a DOS 2D 256 colour click and point adventure could be fun. And Coloured! I've not used monochrome since 1980s. A simple pair of highlight lines and drop shadow lines doesn't tax any HW made in last 20 years and even fits on a 320 x 200 screen. Is anything less less than 800 x 600, and I don't think Windows 10 works on less than 800 or 1024 lines high? Needs more screen than XP anyway. So what is the point of the Win10 styling?

Maybe Linux can't "win" the OS "wars", but MS are certainly able to commit suicide.

Mage Silver badge

turn to an OS which has a market share of around 1.5%

If Apple continues to iOS-afy OSX and MS continues to crapatise Win10, Linux only needs to stand still on development!

MS is still designing for an OS with now maybe 1/5th of Linux support. As well as forcing a ChromeOS style cloud dependency.

Mage Silver badge

Re: So, 2018 will be the year of the Linux desktop because of Gnome?

Android?

It looks nice and is OK for a phone. Poor on a large tablet. Erratic application support for printing and external storage. They are gradually getting actual GUI features (not appearance) to about the level of Win 3.1 / Win95.

A USB ethernet dongle works on DHCP, but no interface to settings on any Android version I have.

Android is a work in progress, permanently in Beta. The Android TV seems designed for people at a desk using a 24" HD screen and only apps and streaming. The program guide too small font, sorting stations (esp on built in sat tuners) a disaster and GUI generally puts broadcast use & input selection far less important than streaming/apps. It's no use on a 50" 4K TV at 2m viewing distance (average bed or lounge settee viewing).

Also the Google T&C you MUST agree to on Android TV before tuning are probably illegal in EU.

Android is increasingly Google Spyware (as is Chrome Browser, Google Analytics, Chrome OS). They don't need streetview WiFi slurp now.

Android is a GUI for Mobile gadgets & essentially Google controlled Apps (Their version of Java on their version of JVM, Davik). The underlying OS is based on Linux based on Linux Kernel.

Android and Chrome OS are inferior to Linux and ANY decent GUI/Desktop. Both assume the Cloud. I'd prefer Linux on any 7" HD or larger tablet, especially if using to create content, rather than purely consume.

Mage Silver badge
Linux

Re: Cinnamon or Mate, not just Gnome

Linux Mint (18.3) now has flatpacks on Mate. I think Cinnamon too.

It's #1 on Distrowatch and Ubuntu is #4.

Gnome is probably possible on Mint, but it's not a default option.

How to hack Wi-Fi for fun and imprisonment with crypto-mining inject

Mage Silver badge

Re: might cost of the order of 50kWhr

Coin meters on the power sockets. Or people run on batteries.

Actually surprised people not doing this.

"Free" USB charge outlets can use HID to install fun stuff. I only use my own charger. A custom USB charger cable with switch to set resistors on D+ and D- lines to set current and only + & - to host end plug seems a gap in the market. Also solve the issue of gadgets only charging at 0.1A on a 2A 3rd party charger that doesn't provide the expected resistors on data lines.

Mage Silver badge

Re: VPN use

The local uni blocked VPN, so we set up our router to map port 80 to our VPN server. Then VPN worked as the Uni was only blocking ports and not doing inspection.

Mage Silver badge

Re: public WiFi services

I don't use those now.

Even apart from javascript they are a problem unless you only use a VPN. The library wifi service here is unusable by eReaders at all and unusable for laptops / tablets / phones due to security / privacy issues. You have to log in with a library password AND your unique library ID. Sorry but I don't want anyone tracking my research or casual browsing.

I certainly have not used cafe / hotel wifi for about 14 years without using a VPN. Esp. for email.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Mmmm, JavaScript.

uMatrix seems nicer than Noscript?

Whizzes' lithium-iron-oxide battery 'octuples' capacity on the cheap

Mage Silver badge
Flame

x8, x 4, x2

It's hard to see where the x8 comes from. The x4 seems unlikely. The x2 is theoretical. Have they modelled impurities etc? Even NiMH vary hugely on quality of materials and the best can equal LiPoly for volume (not weight) after 100 deep cycles. What effect on weight?

So 5 to 10 years or never sounds likely as does 1.5 to x2 capacity (weight or volume?).

How stable and flammable are these with Lithium and Oxygen in them? Note even iron filings burn rather hot in oxygen.

Search: burning iron filings oxygen

Hence icon.

Lithium burns nicely. Even the non-chargeable CR2032 will burn/explode if heated via self discharge in a confined space due to short circuit of a stack.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Oh look, another one.

Maybe patents (and it depends), but not research.

Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

Mage Silver badge

Re: using 52.5.3 now, with NoScript working

Yes, it should be working, No idea why the update to it disabled everything. I uninstalled and re-installed which got back everything except NoScript. However uMatrix seems less bother.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Z80 dual registers

I used that for a round robin cooperative multi-tasking OS in early 1980s. The alternate registers used ONLY for the scheduler. It meant lower overhead and better reliability. Previously, like many others, I'd used it for the NMI to reduce latency.

Mage Silver badge

Re: " don't run untrusted code"

Install uMatrix plugin on Firefox. NoScript doesn't work on 52 ESR since 52.5.3

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Mitigation: #1 infection vector?

Maybe scripts on webpages.

Mozilla managed to make Firefox 57 incompatible with Noscript (they made it hard for devs to migrate by NOT documenting API and releasing versions to devs first). Now they updated Firefox 52ESR (52.5.3) to break every plug-in. Got all working again except noscript.

So I have installed uMatrix on Firefox as a script blocker. It also uses a database of evil tracking and malware domains. So good.

Iceweasel now simply installs Firefox 52.5.3, so no good. Palemoon seems too much like a beta.

I have Classic Theme restorer. Mozilla, if I wanted something like Google Chrome, I'd install Chromium.

So yet again, the scary zero days are NOT beaten by AV systems (that often slow or break Windows), but by no remote content in email (I use a client for POP3 & IMAP), not opening attachments you shouldn't and Script blocking (White listing, blacklisting and blocking entire 3rd party domains).

We translated Intel's crap attempt to spin its way out of CPU security bug PR nightmare

Mage Silver badge

Re: What's Not Mentioned .....

CPUs used to plug in.

Now they are BGA. So only patches, firewalls on servers, script blockers on Browsers are the overall solution.

Smart TVs: Don't connect to Internet, they mostly won't get updates.

IoT: You don't want them anyway.

The mind boggles as to how this will get sorted. Though Intel is a USA company, so maybe they'll mostly ignore it.

Years ago I thought "Out of Order Execution" was a performance boost at too high a cost. Debugging and timing issues. Messes up Real Time OS, where predicted speed /timing is more important than raw performance, "Out of Order Execution" causes jitter on physical I/O timing unless you have HW timer support and/or HW buffers with own IO CPU etc.

Linux Mint 18.3: A breath of fresh air? Well, it's a step into the unGNOME

Mage Silver badge

Fine with me

No problems at all with upgrade here from 18.2 and very customised theme on Mate (Sidhe-N).

When neural nets do carols: 'Santa baby bore sweet Jesus Christ. Fa la la la la la, la la la la'

Mage Silver badge

learning how to cap up letters,

No, not learning anything. It's really a specialist type of human fed/curated database with query system.

A lot of supposed Christmas songs and carols don't make much sense anyway. It's going to make less sense mixed through an algorithmic mincer that has no intelligence and few rules of context added.

This sort of thing is hardly new (about 30 years older than the Harry Potter experiment the other week).

It's curious when you analyse the Brilliant Douglas Adams' HHGTTG series that the 1st book (actually the radio play is the best) has most original content, which falls with each book in the series. I mused on this as I read the approximately 60th Chalet School story and considered other series, such as Pern and Dune. Obviously the readers expect the same "world" and kind of stuff to keep going back ...

Where did all that water go? Mars was holding it wrong, say boffins

Mage Silver badge

Re: Sci Fi authors are pretty good at predicting what's possible

You were doing great till then. I'm an SF Author. I've read thousands of SF books. It's not Futurology. Fiction's (or Futurologist) predictions of the future are mostly rubbish. You'll notice the odd one that gets it right. It's not prediction, it's story.

Most SF doesn't even much concern itself with actual science at all, but is simply fairy tales set in the future or off the Earth. Magic by another name.

Dune? Psychic powers.

Superheroes. Basically magic.

Pern. Teleporting telepathic Dragons.

Star Trek: Technobabble and the logically impossible.

Avatar. Magic and lots of visuals.

How's this for a stocking filler next year? El Reg catches up with Gemini

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Remember the Nokia Communicator N9200?

Nokia could have done this 10 years ago. But the people doing Communicator, S80 / Crystal etc lost politically to the dead end S60 and they made the E65 and then 5800. Blah.

There were other gadgets like this 10 years ago.

Is there a market AT THAT PRICE, or do we just need a decent clip on for a smart phone that can be USB hub and accept charging and be a decent QWERTY. Why is every small Bluetooth keyboard garbage? I've only ever found one decent small keyboard, which was USB for a shelf on 19" rack to have mouse space. A slightly smaller Folio USB keyboard is nothing like as good yet still far better than the BT keyboards which have rotten action, sleep too soon, take too long to pair or wake and usually have no way to type accented letters on UK or US layout.

Ubuntu 17.10 pulled: Linux OS knackers laptop BIOSes, Intel kernel driver fingered

Mage Silver badge

Re: mentioning Linux Mint

Because Mint, + Mate + TraditionalOK Theme works really well, on new or old hardware and can be used by windows users familiar with Win9x /NT4 to Windows 8 without any difficulty. Possibly even working with more legacy applications than 64 bit Win10. Though a pity MS killed Skype 4.3 lately, the replacement isn't on Software Manager and is poorer on Win Desktop & Linux than 4.3

Mage Silver badge

Re: At least Windows never killed my BIOS

You didn't have a Linc Tablet running Windows. Very many bricked by MS including an incompatible firmware update.

Also some of Google's Android tablets were bricked by by an official update!

Nest's slick IoT burglar alarm catches crooks... while it eyes your wallet

Mage Silver badge

No, it's stupid

It's still a bad design and a waste of money.

The security features are rubbish as is ANY wireless alarm or any alarm that can be controlled from the Internet. Look also how secure Apple and Amazon's door locks have been!

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

Mage Silver badge

Re: "f I plop down $89 (or whatever"

Really? About x5 the cost of a battery for my phone.

How much will Britain's next F-35s cost? Not telling, says MoD

Mage Silver badge

Re: how many troops the US put into Afghanistan

Afghanistan: Eating armies since the Victorian age.

Probably earlier. Did Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great bother?

Mage Silver badge

Re: "So, where is the money going?"

Also the UK really only rents the Nukes. They obviously don't charge the US enough for all the bases they have in UK (usually labelled RAF).

There is one billion on a bunch of drones guarding Wales?

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Gulf deployment is a vital bit of peacekeeping

We'll all have to rely on the Chinese, Russians and Indians. The US have had difficulty not going aground, ramming other ships and violating Iranian territorial waters, also you can't control warships via tweets.

Magic Leap blows our mind with its incredible technology... that still doesn't f**king exist

Mage Silver badge

Fawning Tech journalisim

All the mainstream media and most so called tech sites / blogs (excepting here) are fawning PR publishers. Look at all the articles on every new Apple iteration. Only the 7, 8 & X have had a hint of honesty and questioning.

They all want to believe SF writers are publishing blueprints for future tech. They are telling stories for fun & money, not futurologists. Most SF future tech is simply for texture or a maguffin. Often the 1% that's feasible actually already exists but just isn't economic. Amazingly some tech businesses seem to fall for this too, if they believe their own hype.

There are even entertainment sites and magazines pretending to be tech / science news.

I am sceptical of ANY tech, health or science amazing claim in the media (based on my own science, programming and engineering background). I can't remember one where I know the stuff well that was correct.

Even here a lot of nonsense is posted as news about LTE, 5G and mobile. A domain that I designed and evaluated stuff in for many years. It's lovely to see the growing realisation that AI, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Deep Learning etc are nothing clever at all, just human curated data fed to human written programs that are as fragile as ever. "The Diamond Age" is flawed, but a good story about the illusions of AI.

Virgin Hyperloop pulls up the biggest chair for Branson, bags $50m, new speed record

Mage Silver badge

Re: New markets?

Unless it's a Ponzi scheme, pyramid selling?

Hot chips crashed servers, but were still delicious

Mage Silver badge

Re: guess when a user has a dollar/pound symbol in their password

I thought it was only £ and # that swapped (# is called pound some places rather than hash) also @ and " but never $. There are some other changes with ~# key and |\ key.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Caps Lock

I set dual shift to be caps lock (either cancels) and Caps Lock to be the Compose key. Mårvəll°ŭß…

Keyboard US, paper size Letter, dates "wrong" etc. Default on Windows used to be USA regional Settings. Linux Mint asks at install time. Maybe Windows 10 does now? I forget.

The numlock on laptops is a menace. Who uses it?

Revealed: How Libratus bot felted poker pros – and now it has cyber-security in its sights

Mage Silver badge

Re: OK so 1.35 PFLOPS is a lot

And it's not really AI at all. It's easier for a computer than a person to remember all the cards played and calculate odds.

Seagate's lightbulb moment: Make read-write heads operate independently

Mage Silver badge

Half the drive's recording heads will operate together

I'd imagined two sets, but I suppose it would make the drive longer.

One more credit insurer abandons Maplin Electronics

Mage Silver badge

Re: Probably for nought but...

Online?

Their website used to be bad, now atrocious.

Mage Silver badge

Re: They are full of it.

"high cost base and low margin"

Wut?

There is a x2 to x10 markup of cables and components.

Mozilla's creepy Mr Robot stunt in Firefox flops in touching tribute to TV show's 2nd season

Mage Silver badge

Re: Death by a thousand cuts?

Google must set Mozilla policy?

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Re: Groupthink

Why would you expect them to see a problem considering all the other stupid things Mozilla have done to Firefox?

Fridge killed my baby? Mag-field radiation from household stuff 'boosts miscarriage risk'

Mage Silver badge

Sample size too small

Other issues too. My scepticism meter broke with the overload.

Container-flinger pushes Win 10 transformer for legacy apps

Mage Silver badge

Re: if Windows 10 could run

with a sensible GUI, logical access to settings, customisable GUI and legacy compatibility. There is no point at all to windows if it can't run legacy applications and be designed for desktop, not phone/tablet, might as well migrate to Linux, Apple MacOS or whatever.

Also if you want to be totally dependant on Cloud (which is bonkers) then the local OS hardly matters.

I can run multiple VMs for older Windows applications on nearly any OS. Some legacy applications will run on 32bit Win7 (and the 32 bit Win10 for crippled Atom tablets), but not on 64bit windows. Yet they work via WINE (which isn't an emulator, container or VM) on 64 bit Linux. Esp some VB6 applications (anything using the VB serial ocx, even mapping RS232 to USB on 32 bit Win 10 or 64bit Linux).

MS seem to have lost the plot. What, designing for 0.1% of the phone market when business desktop used to be a captive market. They went "off" when they added Ribbon and GUI over candy of Vista, at least you could turn that off. Now gone to other extreme of monochrome paper with almost no cues as to what is clickable and icons so simple you can't tell what they are for. We are not using Hercules or 1 bit CGA monochrome!

Another AI attack, this time against 'black box' machine learning

Mage Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: deep learning as it is implemented now is not [a very] good

Because really it's not "learning" in any sentient sense at all. It's a method of putting human curated data into a special type of database (made of interconnected nodes) that has a specialist interface.

All the terms of this area of computer application are deliberately misleading to make it sound cleverer than it is. Ignore the guys behind the curtain, which is why the models share the same biases as as the developers / programmers. People that are often lacking in wider knowledge, experience, wisdom and quite often don't realize how ethnically, age & gender bigoted/biased they are.

Almost none are anything like as good as the PR claims. The media is very uncritical of claims.

Microsoft's 'Surface Phone' is the ghost of Courier laughing mockingly at fanbois

Mage Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Oh why?

Why is the bar to get a patent so low?

It seems all you need is money.

What is original, innovative and not obvious to those skilled in the art?

There is prior art too. Nintendo, Lenovo and others.

Maybe you could patent a clever non-obvious design of hinge? That would apply to ANYTHING with a lid or hinged from cigarette case, laptop, gameboy, dual screen tablet or whatever.

Russia could chop vital undersea web cables, warns Brit military chief

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Not news.

Was massively done* at outbreak of WWI (1914, not 1917). UK was a major telegraph hub. Prior to that Churchill had set up spying on all international traffic. The precursor to Bletchley & GCHQ.

[*The UK cut any cables that would be of use to Germans and their allies.]

FBI tells Jo(e) Sixpack to become an expert in IoT security

Mage Silver badge

Re: Continuous product and service improvement

All excellent, except I think advertisers, not readers, pay the wages.

Checkmate: DeepMind's AlphaZero AI clobbered rival chess app on non-level playing, er, board

Mage Silver badge

Google /Alphabet PR

See Title.

Australian central bank says 'speculative mania' and crime fuel Bitcoin

Mage Silver badge

Mining new coins

It's not at all like QE or a State printing money. Or like mining. There are a fixed number of possible coins and anyone rich enough to buy the computers somewhere with cheap electric beats everyone else. The cost of coin production rises as there are less left.

It's more like a mechanism in a Ponzi scheme. Inherently it's harder to get extra coins as "people join", price will rise. It will burst because you can't actually have loads of people trading with them and who can afford to convert any sizeable quantity to US$, GBP or Euro if more people want to cash out than buy in?

Once the peak is reached or confidence is lost the crash will be very dramatic.

The problem conventional money is only irresponsible governments and lack of anonymity for non-cash. Bitcoin actually creates problems and it turns out complete anonymity is only needed in dictatorships (democratic countries need a warrant) or by criminals.

Mage Silver badge

Re: What goes up

Crazy USA mostly doesn't use IBAN.

I've written a check/Cheque in years. Yesterday was first time in over 10 years I even saw one.

Only advantage of Bitcoin is anonymity. It's too slow and ANY truly distributed to public cryptocurrency can't scale to a fraction of the transactions needed. The only workable level is bulk batch transactions between banks, but what does that do that IBAN doesn't do today?

Most German eBay sellers use IBAN in preference to PayPal.

It lets people put money in your account but not take it out. From 2008 it's the preferred method for 3rd parties to make lodgements to Ulster Bank customers.

Was Bitcoin actually designed as an elaborate ponzi scheme?

Microsoft asks devs for quantum leap of faith

Mage Silver badge

sharing information through quantum entanglement,

Um, an aid to encryption by allowing detection of tampering. The quantum entanglement itself by definition can't be used as a communications medium. Not a basis for an Ansible.

An analogy

Imagine two randomly ordered packs of cards that happen to be in the same order. But you don't know what it is. If you shuffle one the other is shuffled identically, instantly, but holder of other pack doesn't know it's been shuffled. They can both look and then at light speed share the results with each other. If they don't match, then the messages or the card packs have been tampered with.

Lifestyle pin-up site Pinterest: Hack attempts blamed on 'credential stuffing'

Mage Silver badge

Re: Parisite

-pinterest -youtube -stock

a) Shouldn't have to. I do that.

b) Curiously STILL returns many!

Google search is much poorer than it used to be and prioritises sites they know I've been to. I can work a browser. Put a check box (empty by default) for those wanting a bookmarker service!

Mage Silver badge

Re: So yeah, how's that cloud thing working for ya?

Pinterest is mostly other people's content. So a "hack" gives hackers email, name and password.

Problem is people using same password for everything. A little address book at the least.

Also anything important never stored with phone/tablet/PC.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Parisite

Copyright and other images "pinned"

You often can't find where from

You have to sign up and be privacy harvested to view.

Fed up with Google returning Pinterest (a parasite) and youtube at top of results.

Oregon will let engineer refer to himself as an 'engineer'

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: Oregon is a nanny state

All the stations here are self service and close about 10pm to 11pm. There might be a 24 hr somewhere in the city.

There is CCTV. Only some require payment before filling, or after dark or if they are suspicious.

I see no advantage in "being able to pump your own gas". Self service was only to benefit operators, not customers.