Phil Kingston • User • The Register Forums

Western Australia rushes out legislation after cops access contact-tracing data to investigate serious crimes

Tuesday 15th June 2021 13:11 GMT Phil Kingston

They were always going to stuff this up. App deleted. I'll put my phone number on the paper sheet at each venue if I remember.

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Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page

Tuesday 8th June 2021 06:57 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: How to tell if you're stupid.

Geez, in all my years of coming here I think that's the most downvoted post I've seen.

I keep naked pics of myself just to remind me how much of a fecking legend I am, it doesn't make me stupid. Vain? Perhaps. But hard not to be when rocking this bod.

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Google and Samsung merge their wearable OSes, tease Fitbit baked into the combo

Wednesday 19th May 2021 04:58 GMT Phil Kingston

>make Samsung’s own smartphone fitness apps obsolete

Six voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

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Apple announces lossless HD audio at no extra cost, then Amazon Music does too. The ball is now in Spotify's court

Tuesday 18th May 2021 12:41 GMT Phil Kingston

Wonder if Google will follow suit. Or just shut down YouTube Music early

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Tuesday 18th May 2021 12:40 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: The fruit giveth, the fruit taketh away

The 2000's called and want their earbuds back

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NASA pops old-school worm logo onto Orion spacecraft

Monday 17th May 2021 02:08 GMT Phil Kingston

Changing it to anything from the logo as seen on David's cap in Flight of the Navigator would be a crime.

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Mayday! Mayday! Microsoft has settled on a build and Windows 10 21H1 is inbound

Friday 30th April 2021 04:11 GMT Phil Kingston

If MS's idea of "News" didn't include who's banging who on whatever this month's shitfest reality show is, I might let it infect my Taskbar. Until then, no.

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Australia probes app stores, politely suggests Apple and Google could try being nicer and more careful

Wednesday 28th April 2021 22:19 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: The second recommendation is more important - and a potential sting in the tail

Even if we do legislate against that data sharing, they're still going to have that behavioral data from every other country.

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NASA's Mars helicopter spins up its blades ahead of hoped-for 12 April hover

Monday 12th April 2021 04:46 GMT Phil Kingston

Please tell me it's got a cool callsign.

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Ice Lake, Baby: Intel's 10nm 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable server processors to arrive at last

Tuesday 6th April 2021 22:22 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Redundant marketing BS

>Surwe, as if you would proudly announce a chip that would be less flexible and performant than what was made before.

The real skill here is spewing new marketing speak for chips year after year.

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5-year-old Fairphone 2 is about to receive a major update to Android 9

Monday 29th March 2021 01:10 GMT Phil Kingston

I'm still perplexed at people's expectations that their devices will receive updates.

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Clothes retailer Fatface: Someone's broken in and accessed your personal data, including partial card payment details... Don't tell anyone

Wednesday 24th March 2021 22:17 GMT Phil Kingston

At some point we're going to need to have a real good look at Experian's involvement in all these.

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John Cleese ‘has a bridge to sell you’, suggests $69,346,250.50 price to top Beeple's virtual art record

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 04:39 GMT Phil Kingston

I've been doing it wrong

I've been trying to flog my magic beans for years now. It hadn't occurred to me to flog a _picture_ of my magic beans. I shall fire up Paint now and get right on it.

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Russia botches Twitter throttling, cripples anything with t-dot-co in the name – including Reddit, Microsoft

Friday 12th March 2021 04:35 GMT Phil Kingston

Mastodon FTW!

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MPs slam UK's £22bn Test and Trace programme for failing to provide evidence that it slows COVID pandemic

Wednesday 10th March 2021 22:45 GMT Phil Kingston

As I get older I am more and more amazed at figures like 22 billion. I mean 22 _million_ is mind-boggling enough. I'm too lazy to go and read reports on what they actually spent the money on, but are we not in the realms of "could have had a few aircraft carriers for that" - something perhaps that would do a better service to the country.

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'Major update': Microsoft snips the life support lines for its Delve mobile apps

Friday 5th March 2021 07:28 GMT Phil Kingston

Bugger

I only recently discovered Delve and how useful it is.

The march of progress has left me behind it seems.

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SD card slot, HDMI port could return to the MacBook Pro this year, says Apple analyst

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 22:44 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Magsafe

You just know it'll be some kind of incompatible magsafe 2

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Huawei's new Mate X2 foldable phone costs almost $2,800

Monday 22nd February 2021 23:44 GMT Phil Kingston

10 year contracts here we come

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Microsoft says it found 1,000-plus developers' fingerprints on the SolarWinds attack

Tuesday 16th February 2021 00:27 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: The real takeaway

Feel the burn

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Microsoft's underwhelming, underpowered dual-screen Surface Duo phone arrives in the UK this month for £1,349

Thursday 11th February 2021 23:32 GMT Phil Kingston

But, Shiny shiny new new!

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ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

Sunday 7th February 2021 22:55 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Red pointy thing

Usually one of the first things I do on a new lappy is disable the nipple. Annoying little thing standing there all brazen.

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After 11 years, Australia declares its national broadband network is ‘built and fully operational’

Wednesday 23rd December 2020 23:15 GMT Phil Kingston

I'll not bore you with the saga of getting my FTTN to be actually usable (suffice to say months of complaints and TIO escalations eventually came good). But I am very happy to be on one of the exchanges that will be first to have its copper ripped up and fibre laid. Like it should have been in the first place.

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Not one, not two, but a trio of hinges to potentially break in OPPO's bendy concept phone

Tuesday 15th December 2020 00:15 GMT Phil Kingston

"Most of the vendors are still experimenting with the form factor and trying to figure out how they can actually maximise or create unique value for people, while still justifying the price points,"

And there's the problem. No one asked for folding phones.

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The three or so people who run Windows 10 on Arm might be glad to know that x64 emulation is in preview

Sunday 13th December 2020 23:52 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Original Surface

I've yet to find a spare afternoon to try it, but https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/windows-10-on-arm-for-surface-rt.3830124/post-82022643

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How much is automating customer comms in a time of COVID worth to Cisco? Almost three quarters of a billion dollars in a pure cash deal, apparently

Tuesday 8th December 2020 05:34 GMT Phil Kingston

"faster and smarter customer interactions" So a chatbot on their site that can't even get the basics of your query?

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Ticketmaster: We're not liable for credit card badness because the hack straddled GDPR day

Wednesday 25th November 2020 23:18 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Small Claims Court

That is the most joyous thing i have read for quite some time

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Wednesday 25th November 2020 23:15 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Ticket master

Do they still do shit like only charge you a fee for the privilege of buying a ticket near the end of the transaction? Then another fee for the satisfaction of printing the ticket yourself? And some other bollocks insurance thing?

I hate them.

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End-to-end encryption? In Android's default messaging app? Don't worry, nobody else noticed either

Sunday 22nd November 2020 22:24 GMT Phil Kingston

What about distancing yourself from your mobile number totally and using something like Session

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Australia to track coronavirus encounters with payment card records

Tuesday 17th November 2020 04:52 GMT Phil Kingston

Wash your hands before and after please.

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Tuesday 17th November 2020 04:50 GMT Phil Kingston

My issue with it is who has access to it and how they may be accountable. This kind of information grab is littered with situations like disgruntled spouses tracking their ex-partner's movements/income.

Putting my payment and location information in the hands of whichever temp contractors are hired by Crapita/Serco/CSC/DSC/whoever sits very uneasily with me.

I'd better be able to opt-out of this shit.

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Tuesday 17th November 2020 04:48 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Pay cash

Lots of places gone card only. Except the sushi bar in the nearby food court that has been cash only forever. Not suggesting anything of those guys, but cash is a lot easier to launder/evade tax on.

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Cool, cool, cool: Screwdriver-wielders delve into the guts of an Xbox Series X

Wednesday 11th November 2020 22:55 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Zen 2?

I'm thinking the "Series" in the name hints at several updated models to follow that may be able to utilise components not available for this model's launch.

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Sony launches ‘Airpeak’ drone division

Tuesday 10th November 2020 04:42 GMT Phil Kingston

Last thing we need is more drones. When I'm chilling out at a deserted beauty spot or beach and then there's the whirrrrr-whizzzz of some asshat's drone overhead I get irrationally angry. They're like power tools - the only person they don't piss off is the person using them.

Sony's reputation with me will drop if they enter this market.

I am aware this makes me a petty, grumpy old git.

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Honey, I shrunk the battery: Something's gotta give as iPhone 12's logic board swells to accommodate 5G chippery

Monday 26th October 2020 22:41 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: The Iphone 13 will come quicker than the 5G

I'll wager 5GS

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After Dutch bloke claims he hacked Trump's Twitter by guessing password, web biz says there's 'no evidence'

Monday 26th October 2020 05:04 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Interesting

|celebrities have a whole social media department running their presence

Might just be one person, but yes I reckon they do. Maybe just a single PR person or agent.

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Monday 26th October 2020 05:02 GMT Phil Kingston

Really?

People still use Twitter? I'm on TikTok these days, with all the cool kids.

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AMD scores 200,000 cores worth of secret silicon at new Australian supercomputer

Tuesday 20th October 2020 22:14 GMT Phil Kingston

That is the kind of answer I come here for. Have a beer.

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Monday 19th October 2020 23:30 GMT Phil Kingston

$6M per rack. I'm sure someone can do a comparison for me against, say, a similar volume of maybe gold? Just curious.

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Samsung aims boot at Apple's decision not to bundle a charger in with the iPhone 12, foot ends up in mouth

Monday 19th October 2020 00:04 GMT Phil Kingston

Isn't that what they're doing? Need a charger, add it at checkout.

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With so many cloud services dependent on it, Azure Active Directory has become a single point of failure for Microsoft

Tuesday 29th September 2020 22:44 GMT Phil Kingston

Sigh

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VMware drops hints that ESXi on Arm is about to become a proper product

Thursday 24th September 2020 23:26 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Ptarmigan

Not sure if still the case, but also the name of the cafe atop Aviemore's snow fields.

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Microsoft will release a web browser for Linux next month. Repeat, Microsoft will release a browser for Linux – and it uses Google's technology

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 22:28 GMT Phil Kingston

Simplicity in syncing bookmarks etc between Linux and Windows versions would be one thing.

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'Mindset reset' contributes to £1bn extra costs and another delay – 2 years this time – for Emergency Services Network

Tuesday 15th September 2020 22:15 GMT Phil Kingston

"A year's delay across the whole of the legacy estate is in the ballpark of £550m,"

Just me, or is that a mind-boggling amount of money to keep the lights on for another year? It's a mind-boggling amount of money to do anything.

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We have bad news for non-US Microsoft fans: The incoming Surface Duo is underspecced, overpriced, and over there

Thursday 13th August 2020 00:04 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Battery capacity for starters

I reckon a couple of extra mm thickness and ram a bigger battery in might have been a better option. Claimed 27 hour battery life, so probably 12 in real world. Yeah, nah, i'll pass.

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Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

Wednesday 5th August 2020 22:49 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: Disabled person

Upload the tracks in YouTube music, change the default music source to YouTube Music in the Google Home app and her Home Mini will default to that.

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Microsoft confirms pursuit of TikTok after Satya Nadella chats to Donald Trump

Monday 3rd August 2020 23:50 GMT Phil Kingston

Today Trump talks tremendous tik tok takeover

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Butterfingers who don't bother with phone cases, rejoice: New Gorilla Glass 'Victus' tipped to survive 6ft drops

Sunday 26th July 2020 23:07 GMT Phil Kingston

Re: £5 buys you ...

They're good, but can't get one (cheaply) that fits curved-edge screens. You know, the curved edges no one asked for but Sammy gave us because they could.

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