* Posts by Jason Bloomberg

2903 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Mar 2008

ZX Spectrum reboot firm's shareholders demand current directors go

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more Guv

The Companies House filing of "Micro company accounts" from just a couple of weeks ago report they have £433,008 as capital and reserves. No idea what their bank statements show.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08831435

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

The cavalry arrives

The best thing to come out of this may be that whoever takes charge will look at the books and quickly reveal how things actually are.

But we should not forget these shareholders appear to have done fuck all until now to end the fiasco.

Noise from blast of gas destroys Digiplex data depot disk drives

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Safe for personnel?

> do it without additional suffering

Why? They sure as hell didn't extend that courtesy to their victims.

Because we are better than they are. It's not meant to be a race to the bottom. It's not meant to be an opportunity for revenge or venting desires to inflict suffering on others.

BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Blockchain for sale

I have a completely unused blockchain if someone wants to make a bid.

Apple's QWERTY gets dirty, leaving fanbois shirty

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Joke

"Any key is susceptible but it's the space bar that most commonly fails"

So they actually have an "Any key" to press to continue in Mac land!

Windrush immigration papers scandal is a big fat GDPR fail for UK.gov

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Unhappy

They weren't immigrants as such either. As residents in the British Empire, they had a right to settle in any other part of the Empire.

Setting aside what any exact legal definition is: These people were British before they came here, were British when here, are British even as the Home Office detains them, deports them, denies them jobs, benefits, welfare and healthcare. That's what makes it so appalling.

It is easy to see how it came about; "Illegal immigrants" are "those who shouldn't be here", which became "those without evidence of a right to be here", which meant many of the arrivals, unable to provide that evidence, were de facto "illegal immigrants".

The "hostile environment" May created turned "innocent until proven guilty" into "guilty unless proven innocent" and changed "balance of probability" to needing to provide absolute proof of innocence.

May, Rudd and the Home Office then merely concerned themselves with removing "Illegal immigrants", chased the targets they had promised, and cared little beyond that. It didn't matter who people were, only that they could be classed as "illegal immigrants". The Windrush generation without paperwork were easy targets, low-hanging fruit, "illegal immigrants" hiding in plain sight.

Every little helps. They were just numbers to callous Home Secretaries and a ruthless Home Office.

Academics: Shutting down Facebook API damages research, oversight, competition

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Association of Internet Researchers

I can't help but feel it's more like a group of peeping toms begging for the curtains not to be drawn.

When tyrants pull on their jackboots to stamp out free speech online, they reach for... er, a Canadian software biz?

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Scumbags

In other news, a manufacturer of cluster bombs said it could not be blamed for their use on civilians.

It's the perennial question; are manufacturers, sellers, those who allow them to operate, equally, more, or less, to blame than the people who use such things?

Pragmatically, the chain has to broken as close to the top as it can be. At the manufacturing end there will always be someone else wiling to step into their shoes. That's a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.

Deibert isn't wrong, but he's chosen to pick on the wrong target.

Danish submariner sent down for life for murder of journalist Kim Wall

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Rest In Peace

Sadly it seems she suffered greatly. Reports I have read say he tortured and mutilated her quite savagely before her death.

Madsen's ridiculous and ludicrous claims, the laughable nonsense he came up with, has tended to distract from the brutality and horror of what he did.

Let's all hope Kim's boyfriend, family and friends can eventually find some peace.

Blighty stuffs itself in Galileo airlock and dares Europe to pull the lever

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Non-EU

I thought that there were already some non-EU countries involved in Galileo?

Yes. And we can have as much involvement as they have once we leave the EU.

Microsoft Lean's in: Slimmed-down Windows 10 OS option spotted

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Windows

So, in conclusion...

Microsoft should have stopped at Windows 7.

State spy agencies 'outsource surveillance' to foreign partners – campaign group

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Trollface

intelligence-sharing deals could become a way for states to "outsource surveillance".

"Could"? You mean they aren't already? I think someone has fallen down on the job.

Revenge pornography ban tramples free speech, law tossed out – where else but Texas!

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Facepalm

Hate speech IS FREE SPEECH!

And constitutionally protecting hate speech is why America is so utterly fucked-up, has so many problems, is a failed state.

Brexit has shafted the UK's space sector, lord warns science minister

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Not just the space sector....

I haven't come across anyone that's changed their mind since the vote.

Me neither. Some rather quickly admitted their vote to leave was just for a laugh or a protest vote and a few are still a bit confused about Farage saying "Wouldn't it be terrible if we were really like Norway and Switzerland?" when that apparently was never on the cards.

But what has really changed the polled opinion is (1) those who did not vote now realising they don't like how things are going, and (2) those who were not old enough to have a vote now entitled to one.

And, given the generalisation that older voters were for leaving and younger for staying; I would guess leaving has lost more votes than remaining in the last two years.

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
IT Angle

An insider speaks

An ESA insider told The Register "the fact the UK is leaving shows that something is not entirely right with the EU and that the EU needs some level of reform"

Random people are always right, absolutely right, no question about it.

I had to check I hadn't accidentally landed at the Mail Online.

Time to ditch the front door key? Nest's new wireless smart lock is surprisingly convenient

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Nice advertising

there is an external battery terminal that can be used to hook up a 7-volt battery to provide enough power to enable a single unlock cycle. I have a stand-alone (non-smart) electronic lock and it has standard 9-volt battery external terminal to power it in an emergency.

How do you think either will stand up to 230V or more being put through those from my portable inverter?

Maybe try it before someone else does ;)

There is no perceived IT generation gap: Young people really are thick

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Thumb Up

Do you remember your first dime?

Never had one, not sure what one is.

But Marathon Bars, Jiff, Wimpy Burgers, OMO, Chocolate Cigarettes, a sachet of salt in every bag of crisps, Sherbet Dips very possibly being a mix of Cocaine and Novichok, Walnut Whips with an edible filling, Wagon Wheels being bigger back then - Now you're talking.

BOFH: We know where the bodies are buried

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

"great heatproof kitchen furniture"

It's a bit of a shock to realise that, after all these years, I had never wondered what the company did.

EU under pressure to slap non-compliance notice on Google over pay-to-play 'remedy'

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Criminal Records etc

So far they haven't been proven to be non-compliant, deliberately non-compliant, or criminally so.

Rules are rules but if the rules have loopholes they need to be closed. It is unreasonable to expect companies and people not to exploit loopholes they find. If it's not against the rules then how is it cheating or wrong?

I do think Google have been sneaky bastards and that needs to be stopped. But I can't begrudge them being sneaky bastards.

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Compatibility

You can't stuff more addresses in 32 bits. So you need to make the addresses bigger. If you do that it is not IPv4 anymore.

No it's not, but if they had just made the first octet a pair, 0-65535, and added an extra octet at the end for local routing (with a default zero if not specified), they would have come up with a 6-byte IPv4+ address scheme which would have found far more acceptance than what IPv6 has received.

Most people could understand that, simply by reading it. IPv6; too complicated, not interested, bye.

Super Cali health inspectors: Tesla blood awoke us

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

An "extremist" is someone outside the bounds of your personal bubble ...

Possibly two along. Those next door are idiots, wankers, dickheads, clueless, etc. You have to go further out to find the swivel-eyed loons, extremists, terrorists, nut jobs.

I would think it comes down to who one believes might be brought into one's own bubble from outside.

How 'parasitic' Google's 'We're journalists!' court defence was stamped into oblivion

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: "get those taken down"

I fear we are heading towards a Ministry of Truth situation

We have had that for years and every country has. This imaginary right of unrestrained and unrestricted freedom of speech has never existed.

What you actually fear is the Ministry of Truth taking it too far, interfering in things you don't believe should be interfered with, and I expect we all harbour such fears which is why we should all be conscious of what they are doing and ensuring they are controlled with checks and balances.

But, at the end of the day, whether the Ministry of Truth has gone too far or not, comes down to whether you and your mates should get what you want or whether others and their mates should get what they want. And there's no single or simple answer for that, no absolutes, no universal truths.

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

"BT killed my family"

I don't know how they will respond when the change inevitably results in death which would likely have not occurred if they had stuck with what we have.

I imagine this might also be in the minds of those who have to approve the change.

With the issue being one of public safety I am inclined to think the risks outweigh the benefits. Failure modes are easy enough to see so the onus is on them to convince us they are not a problem or are an acceptable price to pay.

Size does matter, chaps: Oversized todgers an evolutionary handicap

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Joke

Re: Cock size

I always thought penis length was to help avoid us pissing on our toes - more of a problem in later life and when not filled with the local brewery's finest ale.

Hence the correlation between feet and penis size.

That could be intelligent design or evolution. After all, who wants to go out with a bloke whose toes smell of piss?

You're a govt official. You accidentally slap personal info on the web. Quick, blame a kid!

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Unisys screwed up

This would be analogous to a library getting a kid charged with theft for borrowing a book which should not have been there

I would refine that to having partaken in a "grab a box of books for free" offer and not even knowing what he has taken.

I really cannot see how they can make the charges stick. Plenty of charges though which should stick for the real criminals here.

Cambridge Analytica's ex-CEO decides not to front UK Parliamentary Committee again

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
WTF?

Re: "There is no legal reason for him to appear."

That should be summons enough to anyone with a smidgen of honor and sense of duty.

It's been a while since I have heard anyone on El Reg saying we should do as we are told.

I guess, like me, he's a traitor, saboteur, enemy of the people, and a lot worse - unpatriotic perhaps seeing how you spell "honor" - simply because he is exercising his free will and not bowing down to others telling him what he should do.

Sorry, but not really, if doing that offends you.

Car-crash television: 'Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?' 'Yes I do,' replies AMD's CEO

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

F1 isn't always exiting, and some races ARE snooze fests, but then sometimes something happens like last weeks crash between Gasly and Hartley causing a safety car and the whole race is back open.

It does seem F1 is getting less exciting as time goes by, that the only kick does come if there's an incident and a non-virtual safety car bunches them up and resets everything.

It's getting common that races are mostly settled after the first few laps and then it's just a tedious procession and maybe some battles for the minor placings. There's little on-track skill shown, get out in front then lead all the way to the finishing line.

When it goes pay-to-view I doubt I will miss its departure.

NHS Digital execs showed 'little regard' for patient ethics by signing data deal

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: It only makes sense.

Being in the country Illegally SHOULD be treated as a serious crime.

Bollocks should it. It's no worse than having strayed on to private land without permission.

To me, at best, it's simply jobsworthian to suggest merely being here when one shouldn't be is a serious crime. I am not saying that shouldn't be addressed when it occurs but real crime rests upon harm done and damage caused.

If someone wants to come here, to work, support themselves, pay their taxes and dues, contribute to the country as much as anyone else does I don't really see the harm being done. In fact they are probably contributing more than those engaging in tax evasion and avoidance.

If people are acting illegally beyond just being here without legally being allowed to be then yes; address that.

Australian Feds cuff woman who used BTC to buy drugs on dark web

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Either that or

Officer Wags sniffed it out at a parcel centre....but this makes a great bluff.

Having seen those 'border guards' shows I am surprised anything illegal makes it through, except by luck or when they want to allow it so they can catch supplier and buyer red-handed in the next deal.

I expect this is just 'good old fashioned policing' with some sprinkles on top intended to deter those who think there are ways they can keep themselves safe from prosecution.

HMRC delays digi tax plans amid Brexit customs woes

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: More brexit fun!

I particularly like the way Sir Nige promises he will leave the country if brexit turns to shit as if that's atonement rather than an escape plan.

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: I hope that HMRC...

Plan A should involve a feasibility study, a list of requirements and a project plan to have the whole thing in place with "Trigger Article 50" set well down the list so that everything else would be sufficiently advanced to be ready for the go-live date.

Needing to have a transition period to get our ducks in a row is a fudge for prematurely triggering Article 50 and not having sorted things out before hand. The problem now is the transition period is time limited whereas triggering Article 50 never was.

And all because May needed to get Article 50 triggered before the country came to its sense, realised what a nightmare brexit was going to be, before remoaners derailed it, before leavers woke up to realising what they were getting is not anything they voted for.

And it will all be for nothing when the next generation take us back into the EU.

What most people think it looks like when you change router's admin password, apparently

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Hmmm

Is that the same VM that can't / wont tell me all the IPs/Ports/services their TiVo connects to, in order to whitelist them in my non VM routers's firewall? I'm not talking the TiVo .com settings, I have these, I'm talking the IP's they use to get what channels I'm subscribed to.

Not really following you there. My TiVo runs a network link straight up the coax and out of the house which is used for TiVo-to-VM interactions. The network link to the router is entirely separate and optional. It appears the TiVo accesses account and subscription data via the cable modem not through the router.

Use Home, Settings, Network, and you should see the two connections; the TiVo internal cable modem on 10.*.*.*, the ethernet likely 192.168.0.*

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: At the risk of becoming tiresome...

Just checked -

Filler cap: Loose

Lights: Some working

Screen wash: Empty

Oil level: Low

Warning lights: Blown

Lint filter: Blocked

Drain filter: Missing

Drip tray: Mouldy

Router: root/admin

Boffins pull off quantum leap in true random number generation

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Randomness

What does amanfrommars use?

The true victims of Brexit are poor RuneScape players

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Basic groceries have gone up > 10%

The only groceries that have gone up are brand name products from companies that like to profiteer.

It may be profiteering by someone but I am consistently seeing prices creep up by 5p or more every time I go to the supermarket, across a whole range of items, from all manufacturers. My local supermarket does a good job of hiding that by having a 'reduced price' period before putting prices up to more than they were before.

Except basic rice which seems to have dropped in price lately. Getting us ready for a third-world post-brexit lifestyle perhaps.

Google's not-Linux OS documentation cracks box open at last

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Call me a cynic....

If you do try it, make sure you use exactly the versions recommended, newer or older versions mess up the whole process.

Which is what makes it rather tricky for most people.

I don't see Fuchsia as being any worse than Linux/Android/Java, other than being harder to spell correctly. I was never expecting Google to make things more open. It is a means to an end for Google, not for others.

Data exfiltrators send info over PCs' power supply cables

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
IT Angle

It's getting tedious now

Can't they just publish their list of 'ways to do it' in one big dump rather than one at a time every month or so?

Come on El Reg; bite that hand which feeds and stop giving them endless publicity.

British government to ink deal for yet another immigration database

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

"Just what are they going to do..."

Put Ministers and MPs on the TV and radio to tell us everything is just fine and dandy while answering questions other than were asked.

That seems to have served them well in the past; hence no 'joke alert' icon.

Want to terrify a city with an emergency broadcast? All you need is a laptop and $30

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Or alternatively

n Hawaii, it just happens when you click the wrong button in the UI.

The real problem in Hawaii was that the alert could not be easily cancelled, could not be quickly confirmed to be a false alarm.

Imagine you're having a CT scan and malware alters the radiation levels – it's doable

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Childcatcher

OMFG!

While systems should be more robust than it seems they are, should be hardened against script kiddies, vandals and collateral damage in digital attacks, I find it hard to accept that deliberate targeting like this is at all likely to be a thing and the risk of being run over in the hospital car park is likely higher.

There's too much "if it could happen, it will happen" scaremongering these days.

Watch out for the bogeyman. He could be under the stairs, hiding in the dark, hacked into your router, draining your bodily fluids as you sleep.

Fear the Reaper: Man hospitalised after eating red hot chilli pepper

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Joke

Re: The Carolina reaper...

I saw what it did to Sergei and Yulia Skripal so I'm steering well clear of it!

I do enjoy a very hot chilli or curry but it's always a fine line between hitting perfection or brewing up what can be best described as battery acid.

Having ridden the wave, soaked T-shirts in sweat, even done the 'should have washed my hands' thing, I have no inclination to enter any hottest chilli contest. At my age I have no desire to re-enact the 'Alien' or 'Scanners' scenes.

Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte creating app to register 3m EU nationals living in Brexit Britain

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Reduce the overcrowding

There are far fewer UK nationals living abroad in the EU than there are EU nationals living in the UK. If both sides did the same then there would still be a net reduction in the number of people in the UK.

I would rather have EU citizens who want to be here than returned ex-pats who don't.

Many will be furious about being taken from their sunny homes and returned, will spend every moment of their lives hating what has been done, making themselves bloody nuisances with it, clogging up hospitals and costing us on welfare, housing benefits and bus passes.

Of course there's an argument they will be hating brexiteers rather than remoaners, will want to rejoin the EU as soon as possible, so maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Big Brother

For the sake of just 3 million people it would seem easier, cheaper and less problematic to just say they can have de facto British citizenship status and we'll deal with any issues as they arise.

But it's not really about accommodating EU citizens; it is about pandering to nationalism, racism and xenophobia, removing people from Britain, and creating an adverse environment for immigrants who remain.

Sysadmin shut down the wrong server, and with it all European operations

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Happy

Re: A bad day at school ...

Taking down TOPS10 was so easy a luser could do it by assigning too many disk name aliases.

Mostly done for shits and giggles on last day of term with the added entertainment of super-lusers going to the computer centre to wrongly claim "I've just crashed the system".

These days that would probably be terrorism or some serious offence.

My Tibetan digital detox lasted one morning, how about yours?

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Mme D opens a novel and I illuminate my smartphone

Having decided to forego any interaction between yourselves I suspect illuminating the smartphone may be seen as just icing on the cake for those who think people should be indulging in congenial banter in a cafe.

Don't want to alarm you, but defence bods think North Korea could nuke UK 'within a few years'

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

Re: Lies, damn lies, and lawyers

I'm no expert on war crimes law, but he was definitely guilty of lying to Parliament by any meaningful definition of the term, and by doing so he obtained authorisation to order lethal military action against a foreign power.

A standard tactic. Having achieved that goal he could then hide behind the fact that everyone else was as convinced of the so-called evidence as he was.

It was the same when parliament were manipulated to treat the brexit referendum as if binding rather than advisory, the same trick May has used with "Russia did it" in getting many in the international community to agree with her assertion.

It is wilfully co-opting defendants into the matter to protect themselves; 'everyone believed it, not just me'.

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

They WANTED it to be clear they'd done it

There are far better ways of doing that, making it obvious they did it with greater plausible deniability than using Novichok.

Putin could be on TV saying "I guess that's the sort of thing which could happen if we wanted it to", giving a wink while knowing there would never be the evidence to prove they had, and there would be far less of a case the international community could get behind.

I don't buy it. It's no more convincing than claiming Ahmadinejad or the Kim Jongs are utterly insane and reckless, desire to kill us all even if it means their own country's annihilation.

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Mushroom

Can't say I blame them

When countries with nukes go threatening others to do as they say it is not surprising those others want their own nukes as well. They want them for the same reasons we say we need to have them.

I believe we should get rid of all nukes, but if some nations are allowed them I find it hard to say others shouldn't be allowed them as well if they choose that and we can't reassure them otherwise.

What I find most concerning is the shift in nuclear doctrine under Trump; to have lower yield nukes which can be more readily used with less risk of provoking the Mutually Assured Destruction which comes with bigger nukes. That may be a misguided notion but it suggests a worrying path being walked. Coupled with Trump repeatedly asking 'why can't I use our nukes?' that's shit-scary.

Law's changed, now cough up: Uncle Sam serves Microsoft fresh warrant for Irish emails

Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
Big Brother

BoJo sez:

https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/977269315362844674

"I thank our US friends for their hard work to pass the #CLOUDAct today: a future UK-US agreement will protect privacy and allow UK and US law enforcement to share data to keep our people safe"