* Posts by Phil Kingston

867 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jan 2008

AGM X3: Swoon at this rugged interloper mobe then throw it on the floor to impress your mates

Phil Kingston

I've been keeping an eye on rugged phones for a while now, precisely for the reason mentioned - by the time you slap a decent case on a normal phone you may as well go rugged. AGM excited me a while back but I recall they couldn't quite get their act together with actual release dates.

Another one to take a look at is Ulefone's Armor 6. Probably have to import it yourself though.

Ever used VFEmail? No? Well, chances are you never will now: Hackers wipe servers, backups in 'catastrophic' attack

Phil Kingston

I was thinking insurance fraud. But then I'm not in a very trusting mood today.

Q. What's a good thing to put outside a building of spies? A: A banner saying 'here we are!'

Phil Kingston

No news on if GCHQ's finest minds have actually managed to find something bad in the kit yet? Or we still just relying on whatever Trump says?

DDoS sueball, felonious fonts, leaky Android file manager, blundering building security, etc etc

Phil Kingston

Re: Don't touch ES File Explorer with a barge pole

I think the last version I used started to get all touchy-feely and ask if it could clean up some files it identified as no longer required. And had some funky UI bits and bobs that meant it was hard to get to actually use it as a File Explorer.

If I'd wanted a questionable-value "system optimizer" data slurper I'd have downloaded one. I want a file explorer to allow me to explore files.

Tens to be disappointed as Windows 10 Mobile death date set: Doomed phone OS won't see 2020

Phil Kingston

The Tiles were the thing that made the UI the best of the phone UIs. Icons and Widgets just don't have the same class. A shame MS couldn't get the app support to make it a success.

Dozens of .gov HTTPS certs expire, webpages offline, FBI on ice, IT security slows... Yup, it's day 20 of Trump's govt shutdown

Phil Kingston

Yet another day to be thankful I'm not an American.

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

Phil Kingston

Re: It's just criminal...

IANAL but malice sounds hard to prove.

You can blame laziness as much as greed for Apple's New Year shock

Phil Kingston

Re: "Given that a credit card in Germany is just a "delayed-action" debit card"

Does that make them a "charge card" like AMEX?

AT&T (sucks) upgrades folks to 5G (Evolution) that isn't actually 5G

Phil Kingston

Not sure about the US

but here in Oz AT&T would find themselves on the end of a smackdown from the Oz Competition and Consumer Commission, a body that regularly wields quite a large stick.

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Phil Kingston

If I were plod I'd be all over YouTube waiting for the invetible footage upload.

Phil Kingston

Utter fuckwits like this are why we can't have nice things.

Cue bans and tighter controls on operation.

The Palm Palm: The Derringer of smartphones

Phil Kingston

Nice to see...

a review written by someone who gets what this device is for. All the US reviews a couple of months back were by yanks who just didn't understand it.

Phil Kingston

Re: 2nd phone

IIRC these only have eSIMs - there's no physical card to swap and the network may choose to activate it on the same number (same stuff as with LTE-enabled Apple Watches).

Or at least that's how Verizon are doing it.

Phil Kingston

Re: Xperia X10 mini pro

Still miss my mini pro.

Oh Deer! Poacher sentenced to 12 months of regular Bambi screenings in the cooler

Phil Kingston

Re: 'Murica never ceases...

>/me notes that if EVERYONE has a firearm, criminals will be a LOT more afraid to use them to commit crimes...

Ah, one of those ones.

Phil Kingston

'Murica never ceases...

... to amaze me. The fact that they allow people to run around with hunting rifles so easily is only narrowly outdone by the ridiculousness of some of their sentencing.

Also, I've never seen Bambi, but have heard what goes on. I'll pass.

Ding dong merrily on high. In Berkeley, the bots are singeing: Self-driving college cooler droid goes up in flames

Phil Kingston

BigTrak for Millenials

Surely there's an obligatory video of a cat riding one of these things?

Dixons Carphone smarting from £440m loss as it writes down goodwill on mobile biz

Phil Kingston

Yep, I think that sums it up. I'm increasingly seeing Oz networks giving add-ons e.g. Beats headphones on a contract plan as part of the credit arrangement. Makes sense to me - tie customer in for 24 months, load up their credit contract with as much product as you can.

Super Micro says audit found no trace of Chinese spy chips on its boards

Phil Kingston

Re: Err

Good spot

Phil Kingston

It still surprises me that Bloomberg stick by their story. With zero evidence to back it up. It's almost as if they'd been pressured by the US to damage the perception of a Chinese brand.

Wow, what a lovely early Christmas present for Australians: A crypto-busting super-snoop law passes just in time

Phil Kingston

I hear the second bill of the next parliamentary year is one to stop the ocean tide.

Be interesting to see if any tech companies announce plans to just not have an Australian presence any more.

Tumblr resorts to AI in attempt to scrub itself clean from filth

Phil Kingston

My Tumblr feed is just filth. And I've some fairly niche tastes. So I'll have to find that somewhere else now. Boo.

Customers baffled as Citrix forces password changes for document-slinging Sharefile outfit

Phil Kingston

Re: Work requires regular password changes

I used to work somewhere as a non-sysadmin that required regular password resets, retained 12 previous passwords but had no minimum password age. I just used to sit there and reset my password 13 times to get back to the one (very complex) one I had committed to memory.

I say this to perhaps reinforce that having a policy is one thing, having an effective policy is harder. Sounds like Citrix is at least trying to do good things.

Mystery sign-poster pities the fool who would litter the UK's West Midlands

Phil Kingston

Re: Another design approach:

I made one of those in my first car (a Citroen GSA estate if you want to know). I screwed the lid of an ice cream tub to the side of the centre console in the passenger footwell, snapped the tub into place, made a rubbish sized hole in the top et voila, my own bin. Tended to be full of fag packets and crisp bags.

Phil Kingston

Isn't this the kind of use-case we're all told Blockchain will shine in?

Lenovo superdishes not-so-superdosh for Superfish superloss: $40 waiting for you if you bought adware laptop

Phil Kingston

As I recall, Superfish was more than just a bit of bloatware, it was effectively a MITM attack.

Canuck couple returns home after night on tiles to gaggle of randomers hanging out in their flat

Phil Kingston

>stains on the sofas, walls and carpets

Walls? Fark.

Flea market Xiaomi makes mad dash for growth

Phil Kingston

Re: Yeah but...

I'm a satisfied Amazfit Pace user. And have long admired their mobile phone offerings even if never actually purchased one.

Good luck to them I say.

LastPass? More like lost pass. Or where the fsck has it gone pass. Five-hour outage drives netizens bonkers

Phil Kingston

Re: Keepass

Got to agree, it's the whole security-vs-convenience thing. Sure manually copying a file between devices may be more secure, but at quite some inconvenience. Too far along that scale for me to implement.

US China-watcher warns against Middle Kingdom tech dominance

Phil Kingston

Filed under "Committee recommends giving itself more powers".

Six critical systems, four months to Brexit – and no completed testing

Phil Kingston

I'll print out whatever Vulture South posts and mail it to you.

Phil Kingston

Re: Honest answer here also from the colonies

Hey! Don't be dissing Strictly.

Phil Kingston

Re: Testing?

DevOps FTW?

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

Phil Kingston

Re: Shame to see it end like this.

Yep the UI is still the best mobile one. There's an Android launcher "Launcher 10" that does a pretty good job of bringing it to Android. But performance can be a bit hit and miss.

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

Phil Kingston

The real surprise here is that Windows Troubleshooter actually managed to fix something.

UK rail lines blocked by unexpected Windows dialog box

Phil Kingston

Re: Um

They may not have been trying a silent uninstall, maybe these machines are just in the wrong ou or something.

FYI NASA just lobbed its Parker probe around the Sun in closest flyby yet: A nerve-racking 15M miles from the surface

Phil Kingston
Flame

Scorchio

Well done team!

Premiere Pro bug ate my videos! Bloke sues Adobe after greedy 'clean cache' wipes files

Phil Kingston

Would be interested to know how he gets on. It can't be easy to prove something was deleted.

DXC: Everything is going to plan, too well in fact... we've chopped so many staff, our IT projects are now behind

Phil Kingston

"Talent cloud"?

Choose your own pun.

HSBC now stands for Hapless Security, Became Compromised: Thousands of customer files snatched by crims

Phil Kingston

I'm still suspicious of the credit monitoring folks actually being behind these kind of things.

Mourning Apple's war against sockets? The 2018 Mac mini should be your first port of call

Phil Kingston

Re: Tempting...

How did we get from a Mac Mini to a Windows patch rant?

Oz spy boss defends 'high risk vendor' ban

Phil Kingston

So, we're banning the best value vendor and pushing business towards a (probably) US outfit?

Q: What's better than thinking there might be unwanted eyes on your network traffic?

A: *Knowing* there's TLA eyes on your network traffic.

What can I say about this 5G elixir? Try it on steaks! Cleans nylons! It's made for the home! The office! On fruits!

Phil Kingston

Because shiny shiny!

Intel: You'll get 10nm next year – now witness the firepower of this fully armed cash machine

Phil Kingston

Re: LMGTFY

Thanking you.

Phil Kingston

>surged another three per cent after the stock market close

Go on then, someone help me with my economic ignorance... If the market's closed for the day how/who is trading?

Should a robo-car run over a kid or a grandad? Healthy or ill person? Let's get millions of folks to decide for AI...

Phil Kingston

I can't help thinking that the idea of a car that's programmed to possibly sacrifice its driver in certain circumstances could be abused. Say James Bond is driving along and a group of 10 henchman deliberately jump out in front of him so that James ends up wrapped around a lamp post.

I am glad brighter brains than mine are working on this.

Phil Kingston

Can I get....

a link to what the trolley problem is?

It only took Oz govt transformation bods 6 months and $700k to report that blockchain ain't worth the effort

Phil Kingston

Already happening. Wine being one use-case I've heard of.

Finally, someone takes a stand against Apple, Samsung for slowing people's phones. Just a few million dollars, tho

Phil Kingston

Re: Wrong Metric

But there are those who say they'd rather keep the performance.

F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs

Phil Kingston

Hey boss! Honestly, I did all those TPS reports, but they had cuss words in them so they've been deleted.