Posts by Mystic Megabyte

GPS and Assist

On my Moto G running 5.0.2 I am unable to switch on GPS without Google wanting to run Google Assist which I presume wants to log any SSIDs that it finds.

There is a Catch 22 selection window where if you choose "Don't show this again" the "Disagree" option becomes greyed out. Choosing "Disagree" results in a warning message that says that Assist has to be on.

"High accuracy" my arse! This is just Google being greedy for data.

I'll wait until the next generation of Ubuntu phones are out before dumping the Moto. I would definitely not recommend buying an OnHub.

"O" dear

Hacking Team staff appeared to accept the Ethipian government’s justification that the surveillance was “lawful.”

Can't trust those Ethipians!

Western stlye

In the West after a similar explosion $company would "find" their stock control on Pastebin. $company says "Look! This proves that we were hacked and it only shows 7 tons of cyanide". This is shortly followed by "After thorough investigation we found that an evil hacker set the coffee machine to overheat so we are not to blame and won't be compensating anyone".

Or something like that, YMMV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

Linux?

A review using some version of Linux would have been a welcome addition. AFAIR a full install of Xubuntu is 4GB and will run quite nicely on an Asus eeePC 900. It also only takes half an hour.

poor man's spotify

Man gets mumps but drops mother and U turns

??

How would I know that "California Surf Fever" was copyrighted until after having downloaded it? Upon discovering this I would of course immediately delete it.

ffmpeg rotates top job

ffmpeg -i old_project_leader.mov -vf "transpose=1" new_project_leader.mov

Foot in mouth

Blurting out some offensive crap is possibly excusable when you are drunk but not really a good idea when sober.

For those that forget to disable winIO data-mining

Scenario 1:

A businessman gets a cab for a short trip. A screen lights up and with a list of all the dodgy web-sites he has visited. The price of the trip has increased by 1000% with an "Accept this price? Yes/No" button.

Scenario 2:

A politician gets a cab for a short trip. A screen lights up and with a list of all the dodgy web-sites he has visited and a man in dark glasses asks him if he'd like to change his vote on some trade deal. When he agrees he still gets whacked by a massive price hike!

Disclaimer: This is all humour and is in no way related to any real companies.

Sent from my iPood in spaaaaaace! (I'm a floating voter)

nice!

Holy cow, the price tags on those Surface Pros make Apple Stores look like pound shops.

LOL

Don't touch that!

Best of all, Classic Shell is available as part of Ninite, so it just gets installed along with all the other default required third-party software whenever I build a system

This is what really pisses me off! Being charged loads of money for an OS that has no useful utilities. Coupled with the fact that Win10 would appear to be spyware I think that it should be avoided if at all possible.

What do they expect?

After years of fighting pop-ups and pop-unders I no longer want to see this crud. I mostly browse with Firefox and have the NoScript, AdBlockPlus, Ghostery and BetterPrivacy add-ons. It's quite worrying when I visit certain news sites and enable Javascript to see maybe 17 or so trackers being blocked by Ghostery.

I also think that it is time to root my Android phone, Google is becoming more annoying than useful.

Epic or epoch?

It's strange to think that in 2015 a Raspberry Pi running some version of GNU/Linux is a more stable platform than Windows on a more powerful device. I certainly will not be buying anything with Windows pre-loaded.

Space moths

It's not just wool, they can eat plastic and rubber too.!

Land of the free™

As you can see, I have trademarked that phrase. Please pay me $1 each time that you say it.

For the desperate

One quick search and here is how to get the MacBuntu look. I just use Unity 'cos I'm too lazy to change anything other than the wallpaper.

http://www.noobslab.com/2013/05/mac-os-x-theme-for-ubuntu-1304-raring.html

Go away!

I manage this by deleting every Linkedin invite that I've ever received.</grump>

Parrots?

The Vikings used ravens as a method of seeing over the horizon. Let the raven loose and if it cannot see land it has to come back, if it sees land then follow the bird. There is no reason that early humans did not discover this simple navigational technique. It might not work if you're on a raft but a canoe with outriggers could use paddles I suppose.

What's the chances of that?

It is the brainchild of leader researcher Chen Chen of Carnegie Mellon University, together with Daniele Enrico Asoni, David Barrera, and Adrian Perrig of the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and George Danezis of University College London.

All of whom have sadly died in freak accidents involving presentation fountain pens.

Trump

They have that his ego is so immense that it is forming an impenetrable shell around the Earth

BBC

I'm sure* that the BBC's total reliance on Flash has nothing to do with spying on their users. But I spent some minutes wondering why the hell a script from an USian company called mpulse was trying to load.

Now I cannot use the BBC for browsing the news, I might as well go elsewhere.

*Not entirely!

It happens on boats too!

I was on a runaway 2000HP boat in a harbour. The stupid throttle/gearbox controller had got confused and was programmed so that in an error situation it would put control to a certain station. The problem was that no-one was sitting at that particular station and the throttles had been knocked forward.

It would have been better to program the the thing to put the engines in neutral and throttles to tickover if an error is detected. Lots of damage was done and the manufacturers denied all responsibility for it but did have a new "improved" version waiting in the wings.

Tl;Dr

Elon stuffs his strut!

Congrats

Well done the New Horizon team! I was half expecting the probe to slam into some orbiting crud. Now we need to send another to get images of the "interesting" side of Pluto.

Dingley Dell

I knew a guy who had to sort records for British Gas. He managed to slip in a few phoney records.

There's probably a meter reader who has been searching continuously for the last 20 years on his mission to find Dingley Dell. If you see an old battered BG van with a grey bearded driver please tell him to go home.

Dish mish

Presuming that the world will keep spinning for the next 16 months, which other dishes will be pointing in the direction of Pluto?

Fragmented

Windows should be renamed Barriers. Too many versions that by default arrive empty of basic utilities. A "Media Player" that thinks that an iso is an unknown file format! I could go on..

On the island where I live a computer builder has for years been offering Linux on new builds. Now about 50% of desktop computers here run Ubuntu, the Windows users are those trapped into MS Office. The majority of other devices are a mix of Chrome Books, Android tablets and iPads. So it is only the business users who will need Windows 10, everybody else will get along fine without it. I run Linux and my VM of XP has not been fired up for over a year now.

<sorry if this is a bit rambling but the caffeine has not yet kicked in>

Navfree

I had Navfree which changed itself to Navmii when it updated. Now it seems to be pushing malicious adverts* so I've uninstalled it. Anybody know of good Sat Nav, I don't mind paying for one if it works well.

*I had a pop-up saying that my phone had been selected for a prize. Well duh, I don't think so.

MPV

On this Ubuntu box I uninstalled Flash and installed youtube-dl and mpv. In BBC iPlayer I can right click and select "Play with MPV", it works fine. However it will not play the Flash videos that are on the BBC news site.

Someone please tell the BBC to stop using Flash! If I wanted to "steal" their content I could just record it from the TV or radio. Broadcasting, the clue is in the name.

Total Control

For the benefit of overseas readers Total Control is an tariff from suppliers that uses off-peak power to heat your home and water.

"You'll get between five and twelve hours a day from your storage heating. We find out the best times to put it on for you by regularly checking the weather forecast. This means that you’ll have heat when you need it most, without having to worry."

https://www.hydro.co.uk/GasAndElectricity/YourMeter/DifferentMeterTypes/

The reality is that they can dump excess power into your house when you don't need it and make you pay for it!

With smart meters the suppliers will be able to cut you off as well. This won't affect me as my tinfoil hat has a woolly lining.

Great!

Maybe now those BT Belfast call-centre b*******s will stop calling me every fortnight. The usual conversation goes like this: (Due to my location I can only have line rental with BT)

BT. We notice that you don't make calls with BT, which service do you use?

Me: Feck off!

BT. We also notice that you don't use BT internet, which ISP do you use?

Me. Feck off!

Actually I'm slightly exaggerating, this went on for months and eventually they did feck off.

Like

I'm not particularly politically astute but I keep wondering why certain businessmen want the UK to leave the EU. Is it a divide and conquer plan from the USA? Discuss.

Headache?

That's explained why each time that I take off my tinfoil hat I get adverts for $pain_killer pills.

In reality this is not a joke but in fact quite scary.

What's the name of the sci-fi film where they have to take the medication that's behind the bathroom mirror?