* Posts by paulf

1250 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2009

Co-op Bank up for sale while customers still feel effects of its creaking IT

paulf
Alert

@ Stuart 22 "It all started to go pear shaped when Thatcher made Building Societies game for asset snatchers."

The implosion Thatcher caused culminated in the raft of demutualisations in the late 1990s (Halifax+Leeds Permanent, Woolwich, B+B, A+L et al). After Abbey National converted first in the late 1980s it all went relatively quiet until 1994-ish.

My take on Britannia is a little different as this didn't happen until 2009-ish. They were fucked by bad lending and knew it. They realised they had to sell out to some sucker so they could scarper before the shit hit the fan. Step forward Co-Op bank which had the same empire building zest as their owners at Co-Op Group (the ones who paid £1.6bn for Somerfield and have spent the last few years reversing it!). Britannia were savvy though and even lobbied for a self serving change in the law so that a mutual Building Society could merge with a Provident Society like the Co-Op Bank.

I was a Britannia member but don't flame as the black hole wasn't my fault - that was down to Platform their sub-prime mortgage specialist lending unit. The corpse was so rotten the members got ziltch from the shadow conversion of Britannia - all we got was a £1 membership of the Co-Op group, with the £1 paid out of Britannia reserves just before it all completed. That's how much the whole BBS business was worth - £1 per member. Co-Op members got shafted worst in the long run though. That shows they must have known there was something stinky about Britannia. I do wonder what would have happened to BBS had they not been acquired; probably some kind of bankruptcy and rescue as happened to Dunfermline with Nationwide.

So I think the question is not whether Due Diligence was done or not, but whether the warnings were heeded. The answer to that is clearly, La la la we're not listening "No". I don't think the Co-Op were conned as such - they wanted BBS to increase the size of their empire regardless of the eventual cost. It was that same empire building that eventually caught them out - their attempt to acquire the branches that became TSB from LBG. The external regulator due diligence to make sure they were strong enough for the deal to go through is when the problems were spotted.

As far as I'm aware the BBS team at the time have escaped any sanction for the part they played. I suspect the situation is the same on the Co-Op side of things apart from Flowers who went to jail for Meth and Crystal rent boys.

New PayPal T&Cs prevents sellers trash-talking PayPal

paulf
Boffin

Driving Licence and Passport [@ cornz 1 Re: Fuck Paypal]

"After speaking to their drones they said they wanted a credit card statement AND a copy of a bank statement AND a copy of my passport or driving license."

I think there is more to this:

1. Companies demand simply because they want it and people provide it thinking they're obliged to or have no choice.

2. Companies are trying something dodgy and need proof of revenue residence (perhaps tax shenanigans?)

I've mentioned this before but I'll do so again as this Paypal thing and your comment reminded me of it. I used to have an Amazon seller account for selling old games/CDs and the like second hand; preferable to flea-bay as it was less of a bear pit (not much but enough). All of a sudden a few years ago they demanded a utility bill and my passport or driving licence otherwise they'd close my account. I wasn't prepared to provide those most important of ID documents considering the relatively small use my account got so let them close it. Now, I can understand a business seller needing to provide some evidence of their existence but not a private individual selling a few second hand items a year (perhaps £50 a year in sales?) especially as they'll have confirmed my address from the credit card linked to my account.

The reason for this? I don't know. Perhaps they want to prove the source of revenue for dodgy tax reasons but it seems a heavy handed way to go about it. It's an issue that will be beyond the mainstream media and their "Just click 'I Agree'" readers but it's also something El Reg hasn't picked up on, sadly. I'm sure most people would have handed over that info without question without really asking why a sodding mail order book seller wants a scan of their passport - one of the most important types of ID there is.

paulf
Pirate

Re: Fuck Paypal

@johnfbw "Most of that is because they need to do it by law for anti-money laundering regulations. Three pieces is excessive, but nothing more than your average bank would request."

Sorry, I call bollocks on that. They're not a bank as they make clear time and again when they do what they want and users can't hold them to account like they can with a bank. You can only put money in via a Credit card or a bank account and those methods will have fully vetted your ID before opening your account. You can only get money out via a bank account.

Paypal are a payment processing service, acting as an intermediary and nothing more, and they're certainly not a bank account. It'd be like Apple or Google demanding your passport and birth certificate to use Apple Pay or Google/Android pay (which simply acts as an intermediary between card issuer and merchant account).

Welcome to my world of The Unexplained – yes, you're welcome to it

paulf
Go

Re: Battery box...

I had a 1999 version of that model 206 1.4LX petrol (second owner). When the battery failed I had no way to get a new battery back from the car parts shop (and wasn't sure it was the battery) so called out Acme Breakdowns to take a look. He fitted a new battery (handily leaving the old one with me). The new one was something like 240CCA replacing the old one with something like 325CCA. Funnily enough from that point it was very reluctant to start cleanly - and I only realised the cause afterwards. My garage had the solution a nearly new 450CCA battery - as with your experience it burst to life promptly when the ignition key was turned from then on.

As an aside Acme breakdowns refunded the cost of the underspec'd battery which I gave to a family member for use on their boat.

Joking aside mine was a nice little runner and very few problems in 10 years. I only got rid because the insurance wrote it off after a taxi driver ignored a Give Way sign and drove into it on an icy day.

Openreach reshuffles top brass, brings in BT bods to make biz more independent of BT

paulf
Boffin

Chairman reporting

FTA: "But Ofcom said the changes fell short. The main point of contention is that BT wants Mike McTighe ["independent" Openreach Chairman] to report to BT chairman Mike Rake, whereas Ofcom wants the reporting to be separate.®"

Exactly who should the Openreach chairman report to if not the Chairman of the parent group (i.e. BT Group)?

If BT Group wanted the Openreach Chairman to report to BT Group CEO (Gavin Patterson) then, yes, that isn't going to pass muster as "fully separate" but reporting to the group Chairman or the Group board (led by the Group chairman) does make at least some sense (even if you don't agree with it). Who would the Openreach Chairman report to otherwise? Above the Chairman/Board is direct to Shareholders but they're shareholders in BT Group plc not Openreach Ltd; and that's when the Structural separation looks more like a fudge than a workable solution to the problem (workable in that it achieves the most separation with the least grounds for legal challenge - note IANAL.).

Facebook investors yell at CEO: Get the Zuck out of our boardroom!

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: Good practice

@ Credas, Good practice: "the CEO is meant to be the hired help running the company on behalf of the shareholders, the chairman represents those shareholders."

To put it another way, while the CEO is busy running the company the Chairman has only one job: to fire the CEO if (s)he fucks it up.

Streetmap loses appeal against Google Maps dominance judgement

paulf
Unhappy

Re: The bitter taste-

@Daggerchild "I say this while typing in a Firefox I'll have to eventually restart due to ever increasing hitching caused by memory management issues they still haven't sorted out, which is currently eating 8Gb of VM."

I have used FF since the 0.9 beta (I think) and prefer it (FF works well with ABP while Chrome has the blanket Google tracking plus the new creepy Bluetooth APIs) but you're right on memory. My home FF installation regularly gets to 4GB now making it slow to a crawl until I restart it. It's improved in the last couple of versions but still not where it should be.

Virtual monopoly on UK cell towers and TV masts up for sale

paulf
Headmaster

Re: I seem to have missed something

@AC "RedBee was Macquarie"

Fair point - Arqiva and Red Bee both had the same parent in Macquarie but (and here's the pedant point) that's not the same as Red Bee being part of Arqiva and thus a justifiable part of the Arqiva valuation in the article. This isn't justified as it appears it wasn't the case - the two companies were never merged into a single organisation by Macquarie they just shared the same parent company.

paulf
WTF?

I seem to have missed something

As mentioned in other comments above, this passage, "The truth is that the strong British Pound...", seems to have missed the whole GBP dropped from $1.45 to $1.24 ish post 23 June 2016. It's also dropped against the Euro by a similar degree. Perhaps it would be useful if the article explained what currency it considers the GBP to be strong in comparison to?

"Arqiva, so much a dominant force in the UK, that it might be considered a monopoly,". I thought it was a monopoly in that it owns the former BBC and IBA transmitter networks meaning there is little significant other competition for renting space on masts (and mast building being capital intensive means a high barrier to entry for new competitors).

"Macquarie bought the broadcast business of what is today Virgin Media in 2004, paying £1.27bn; in 2005 it acquired BBC Broadcast for £166m and then in 2007 bought Crown Castle’s tower and broadcast properties as National Grid Wireless for £2.5bn"

The NTL Broadcast stuff (Virgin Media) was the former IBA transmitter network. Crown Castle (CTXI) owned the former BBC Transmission business which was privatised in 1997-ish. The reference to BBC Broadcast is odd though - this was sold by the BBC 2005-ish to become Red Bee Media (play out, channel management, subtitles and the like) and is now owned by Ericsson. It doesn't seem to have been owned by Arqiva.

Openreach appoints former TUC head to independent board

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: BT, the obstructive drunk blocking the doorway.

The thing that's been said so many times (by me and others) is that structural separation where Openreach is a separate legal entity isn't the same as compelling BT group to sell Openreach (which will not only be a much bigger legal fight but it will almost certainly get picked up by some foreign raider for buttons to be milked for profit until the pips squeak). It can still be a part of BT Group just as a wholly owned subsidiary rather than as a division. BT will still get the profits from Openreach and it'll still have the muscle from being part of the larger group but it will no longer be able to act as if BT Retail is the only customer that matters. If it does it should be more obvious from the accounts than at present.

That BT are fighting structural separation as if it's the same as forced divestiture tells us all we need to know about the underhand shenanigans going on between BT Retail and BT Openreach that they know will be stopped by Legal separation.

I think that means I agree with you, AC :) OFCOM need to be strong in pursuing their Legal separation remedy, even if it doesn't rectify all the errors of the past.

Baird is the word: Netflix's grandaddy gets bronze London landmark

paulf
Meh

Re: IEEE

I wonder where the British equivalent The IET (nee The IEE) was among all these celebrations of British invention?* They have some claim of interest in the early days of telly as their HQ (Savoy Place, London, on the Embankment) was the original BBC HQ before Auntie moved to Portland Place. I seem to recall on a visit many years ago they had a large picture of Lord Reith locking the doors of Savoy Place for the last time.

*Genuine question - I see no mention of them in the article.

Dido queen of carnage steps down from TalkTalk

paulf
Coat

Re: I can see the press release now...

Perhaps it just said "So long, and thanks for all the Phish" before PR got their hands on it.

NHS reply-all meltdown swamped system with half a billion emails

paulf
Coat

Perhaps it was intended? FTA: "The report revealed that half a billion emails crossed the NHS network between 0829 and 0945 that day, against the usual traffic volume of three to five million emails per day. It also claimed that the service "did not crash at any point", though it confessed to "significant service delays for the majority of the day"."

Underpaid tech: <Coughs> Sir, the stress test on the new email system is complete.

PHB: Did it pass?

UT: It took more than 100x normal traffic and did not crash at any point.

PHB: Great. Sign it off so we can send the invoice to HMG and get paid.

Avaya's bankruptcy protection is a 'good thing,' says Europe North veep

paulf
Pirate

Private Equity?

FTA: "The debt arose from an $8.2bn (£6.5bn) buyout in 2007 by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners."

So this is another of those "Economic miracles(TM)" performed by Private Equity in the noughties - buy company with cheap debt, load up company with masses of cheap debt to fund sizeable payout to the PE owners (and pay off original debt), flip the now financially wounded company within 12-24 months to a bunch of suckers before the wheels start falling off.

It's one thing to acquire a struggling business, invest in it, sort out the problems that left it struggling, return it to good health and sell it for a profit as that is beneficial; but these kind of PE shenanigans don't do anyone any good (other than the PE partners, natch).

BT's profits plunge 37% following Italian Job

paulf
Pirate

Re: Price increase link?

@AC "Perhaps a desperate attempt by BT execs to reinforce the shareholder dividend at the expense of their UK customers?"

I suspect the board's only interest in shareholders goes as far as their own shares and their own bonuses/share options that are linked to shareholder returns. One can only hope that after these revelations those options have been royally buggered to the point of worthless but, and you might be justified in calling me a cynic here, but I think they board will figure out a way to get their sacks of cash regardless and make sure customers/shareholders suck up the losses. Any attempt to reinforce the dividend will only be done to bribe shareholders with their own money to dissuade them from voting against the board at the next AGM.

Sky fattens up broadband subs as it hovers above Fox's open mouth

paulf

Not to mention they only have the rights to transmit stuff in the UK (certainly WRT Premiership rights, but likely most other content also) while offering streaming across Europe seems to be the intention.

Hey, AT&T. Help us out. Why is buying Time Warner a good idea?

paulf
Pirate

Re: Everyone at the bottom knows

@ matchbx

"Instead of two guys at the top of each company earning 50 gazillion dollars a year, you'll have one guy at the top of one company earning 100 200 gazillion dollars a year." (FIFY)

The board deferred this decision to the remuneration committee who agreed with the new guy at the top that this increase was necessary because the organisation is now larger, more complex, cross-market demographic integration, stretch KPIs, retaining key talent, ensuring they're incentivised and properly remunerated... (Management bollocks continues for 94 weeks until accelerated Executive stock plan and Golden Parachute have vested)

LTE-Broadcast has broad deployment models. What it doesn't have is the iPhone

paulf
Holmes

Re: Does the fault only lie with Apple?

@DougS "Where is the groundswell of people itching to watch live TV and sit through tons of commercials on a phone?"

Surely the answer to that is "It doesn't exist!" and the death of DVB-H many (many!) years ago is testament to it.

It's possible to stream live TV on a phone if you want (e.g. BBC iPlayer) so all LTE-B does is save the operators a load of bandwidth in sending the same stuff to multiple handsets. People mostly don't care how their bits are delivered so it would be down to the MNOs to push for LTE-B as they're the primary beneficiaries. Anyway an area with small LTE microcells suggests the chances of enough multiple handsets on one cell wanting the same "broadcast" is pretty small.

How Lexmark's patent fight to crush an ink reseller will affect us all

paulf
Unhappy

Re: Um...so Lexmark's long term plan...

@TonyJ "How does it go then, Lexmark? Piss off your customers, drive down sales, PROFIT!!!! ???"

Isn't Lexmark the former IBM Printer division? I guess they're running with the strategy of their former parent where that idea seems to be going swimmingly (at least for now).

Toshiba may sell silicon biz to contain fallout of nuke plant problems

paulf
WTF?

Westinghouse

I'll confess I'm not in the know here, and perhaps it would have been useful if the story had done some more digging on this.

I seem to recall the British Government (through BNFL) sold Westinghouse to Toshiba. About 12-18 months later they announced we needed to build (some badly needed) new Nuclear power plants with much gnashing of teeth from those who pointed out we'd recently sold the in house capability to do just that.

With Toshiba writing down the value of the purchase substantially "The 2006, $5.4 billion acquisition of Westinghouse [..] writ[ten] down [..] by $2.3 billion." does that mean HM Gubbermint dodged the bullet of hanging on to Westinghouse or are these problems caused by Toshiba's ownership? $2.3bn may be peanuts compared to the savings of having built new nuclear in house though, but I'm sure Sir Humphrey would have meddled in new build whether Westinghouse or EDF/Areva...

You know how online shops love to keep tabs on you? Now it's coming to the offline world

paulf
Terminator

Re: Already a rudimentary thing

I have a vague memory* of something over the Christmas period (possibly advert or advertorial masquerading as "news") that Amazon was setting up bricks+mortar stores. You sign into the shop on arrival, pick up what you want and just walk out with it. The items are all tagged so the exit knows what you've left with and bills you accordingly. I know this is a bit different to the Intel stuff (and yes I know that Amazon already track and data mine your purchases to death) but perhaps it's a sign of where we're headed in physical stores, especially if the Amazon system can monitor your movement around the store for marketing purposes as opposed to just detecting who is leaving with the detected list of items.

As for the Intel shelf robot - I seem to recall electronic shelf price tickets being the next big thing about 12 years ago. This would resolve the shelf price accuracy but I've never seen them rolled out in any major UK retailer. Pricer is one, but I'm sure there are others. Surely the stock check could be built into the price label rather than having a robot bumbling about in between people that have difficulty steering trolleys.

*<coughs> "Christmas Spirit" may have been involved

paulf
Big Brother

Already a rudimentary thing

I have an online account with Wickes (a supplier of low cost/average quality building and DIY supplies). Deep in the fine print T+C of my last order was something about a new way they track my purchases. They will now link purchases made in store with my online orders where the in store purchase is made with the same payment card as I use on their website. I don't know if other retailers do this covertly like this (i.e. where they don't offer a purchase logger loyalty scheme) or whether this is just the first time I've spotted a retailer admitting to it but it's a bit creepy especially if their website purchase recommendations start saying things like "We know you bought paint at our High Street store yesterday, Did you know we have an offer on paint brushes?"

<shivers>

I know anonymity on in store purchases isn't likely these days as even if you pay with cash the CCTV and car park ANPR cameras will track you, but this really is a step too far IMO. The whole avoiding tracking is becoming a war of attrition and the retailers have bigger guns and much more time on their hands.

Lloyds Bank customers still flogging the online dead horse

paulf
FAIL

Re: I love Lloyds Bank online - not

@N2 "Dont you just love those SQL server fuck ups disguised as "we're sorry for the inconveience, but we've had to log you off" No Sir! just click the back button & youre right where you left off."

So that's the cause of those? I use a Bookmark to go direct to the login page and was often perplexed to find it had told me it had logged me out before I'd even logged in FFS.

paulf
Meh

@Dan 55 "Nationwide seems to be relatively free of these intermittent issues affecting a very small number of customers so far." FIFY

Top result from a Google search for "Nationwide Outsourcing" was this from Oct 2015: Nationwide Building Society outsources IT infrastructure [to Capgemini in 5 year deal]

I suggest get the popcorn and give it time as I suspect it's been more luck than judgement...

Maps and alarm clocks best thing about mobes, say normies

paulf
Boffin

Re: Improvements

Perhaps the statement implies more general debugging + reliability improvements all round (both in the OS and the built in/installed Apps) rather than the constant dash for ever more new features when most of the current features aren't aren't that compelling for the majority of users? That could include tweaking useful features like improving the ability to control user privacy settings with respect to what Apps want access to?

IME I can think of a few problems: Plugging the iPhone into the Mac and seeing it reboot occasionally is pretty crappy for the premium styled shiny shiny. Also if a file is deleted from a playlist in iTunes, iTunes will then create a copy of the modified playlist when syncing to the phone. Right click on track in playlist and click Delete from Library - iTunes deletes from playlist. iTunes did have a habit of randomly deleting podcasts that are marked don't delete when listened but that seems to have been fixed. The other day the music app refused to play anything until I rebooted the phone.

I know I'm shooting fish in a barrel with iTunes but it's a necessary evil for the user to get things into and out of the walled garden. From my experience quality has gone to shit at Apple in the last few years, and I have no evidence or reason to suggest it's much better over in the Android world.

Netgear unveils world's easiest bug bounty

paulf
Unhappy

Re: Doesn't address the issue

I would have thought the main issue wasn't so much getting bug reports filed as actually fixing them and pushing out an updated firmware image with those verified fixes? Netgear might be upping their game (finally!) on bug bounties but they've proved poor in the whole area of fixing bugs with updated firmware, and even when they do products get EOLd soon after release because the fixes only get applied to the vn+1 HW they've just released. [This happened with my router - loads of ADSL bugs which were never fixed in an official firmware release because they put all the bug fixes in a v2 HW release instead. I only got some of the fixes because I switched to an Engineering beta firmware after pestering their Support].

On the issue of rebranding - if it says Netgear on the front they need to understand they're going to take the flack for it whether it's their Hardware/Firmware or not so yes rebranded items should be included.

Oh and FTA: "They will score half that in they can steal only one user's payment information or the majority of Netgear's customer database including logins and products owned."

So if someone hacks their main customer database but only makes off with the majority of it they only get five grand? I can't help thinking it would be worth more than that to a competitor?

My fortnight eating Blighty's own human fart-powder

paulf
Pirate

Re: If I could prepare proper meals every day I would

@Lotaresco "PS: The tone of this article is very much like "product placement""

The Huel PR department play serious hard ball if they got a full length advertorial in El Reg while also getting the article author to pay full price for the product being reviewed...

Netgear: Nothing to see here, please disperse. Just another really bad router security hole

paulf

Re: Too F***ing Late...!

@Adam JC "Maybe the downvote was due to your mentioning of RAID5...? *Shudder*"

@John H Woods "Dude, no. Just no. I'd recommend 6 disks and RAIDZ2 but other sensible options are available; RAID5 is not one of them."

Well, "RAID whatever" is likely more efficient than the current RAID 1 mirroring that's in use. I can't complain too much as it did save me from a drive failure with no data loss, but it's not particularly efficient. The two bay ReadyNAS Duo v1 supports RAID 0 or RAID 1 so not much in the way of choice.

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: Too F***ing Late...!

@BugabooSue "I have a couple of ReadyNAS Duo v1 Sparcs too, and they been bloody terrific!"

I have four and they're bomb proof - never missed a beat and still running 24/7 all these years later. They've also got features that [IIRC] weren't included in later versions like the iTunes library and Time Machine support. I probably should have bought a larger 6/8-bay device from the outset and used RAID 5 striping as that would have been more efficient but I'll replace them when they fail and that could be some time...

P

PS - From the smattering of single downvotes it looks like the Netgear PR dept shill is loitering on this thread. Instead of downvoting sort out your bugs and provide firmware updates for a decent period of time after release - 5 years strikes me as reasonable.

paulf
Mushroom

Re: Too F***ing Late...!

Similar experience here with Netgear. I had a wireless router from them over 10 years ago. It worked fine although the final firmware update managed to completely bork the LAN routing between Ethernet ports and I had to regress it to the previous version (thank $DEITY I kept the old image!).

I updated it with a new Netgear router in 2011 (a/b/n/ac wireless and GbE) - supposedly top of the range at £120. I bought about 6 months after release yet it was EOLd only 5 months later. The ADSL never worked properly with the production firmware build and I had to download an Engineering beta via Support to get it working "properly" (of the three versions I downloaded the second was the most reliable oddly enough) as it wasn't updated again with a production firmware to fix the myriad bugs in it - it certainly didn't get any security updates! I still don't get why the Engineering Betas were never finished off and released considering the work that must have gone into them but I guess they just lost interest when they released the v2 that did get all the bug fixes.

The ReadyNAS duo v1 boxes I have (Sparc Powered) are still getting occasional updates despite being 6 years old which is impressive but after the router experience I won't be touching Netgear again. To have a relatively new product EOLd just months after purchase is unacceptable. My next router will hopefully be a DrayTek as I hear good things about them.

Not OK Google: Tree-loving family turns down Page and pals' $7m

paulf
Terminator

What's happened to El Reg these days

There was a time when "..tens of thousands of wide-eyed Googlers.." would have made reference to Oompa Loompas at the Chocolate Factory.

Now, where did that El Reg tombstone icon go?

Dixons warns of looming Brexit storm cloud amid bumper results

paulf
Holmes

@ Doctor Syntax "Or simply ask them to hang on for a moment and then lay the phone aside until it makes that siren noise."

Yes on a landline (assuming you don't mind the line being blocked until you hang up after you hear the off hook siren), but the OP noted his Missus was called on her Mobile...

paulf
Holmes

Re: "identifying areas of potential market share growth"

@ John Lilburne "Oddly dixons/currys have been considered a bunch of "completely useless wankers" for almost 40 years. [...] however, they are still there where others have folded."

That'd be the "We're cheaper because we're useless wankers and we're depending on you relying on one of our more expensive competitors (with decent knowledgeable staff) to answer your questions then you coming here to buy for less" effect.

paulf
Unhappy

Re: All I want for christmas is for DSG to go BUST, DSG to go BUST, DSG to go BUST.

@ MR J "There is little to no brick and mortar competition to them any longer. The gov says there is."

The only real remaining High Street competition, if you can call it that due to their more limited reach, is the department stores (John Lewis, HoF, Debenhams, et al), to a limited extent the larger supermarkets and the "Poor Fucking" HP stores like Brighthouse. If you thought Slurrys were determined on their extended warranty sales you've clearly not seen how ruthless places like Brighthouse are with their claims you can only get the necessary "loan" if you buy the extended warranty. Talk about the next PPI in its genesis...

The only training Slurrys dish out is how to read information off the shelf ticket. If the answer to the question put to the sales droid isn't on that ticket you're SOL.

paulf
Alert

@AC

Presumably you are a regular here at El Reg? If that's the case you should have explained to your better half the art of telling unsolicited calls selling crap or asking for personal information (and the like) to (bugger off)^2*. Had you done so (this is your failing not hers!) she would have told the "Pushy, arrogant [...] liar" to summarily get lost saving you both a lot of hassle.

*You can work up to "string them along for entertainment" over time.

paulf
Pirate

Re: More opportunity than threat

I think this part of the quote was more interesting (My emphasis): "In particular, we have been focusing on reducing our fixed cost base, identifying areas of potential market share growth if the world becomes a tougher place for our competitors, and generally preparing for all eventualities - just in case."

IOW - If a competitor to one of our foreign operations does a Comet, leaving us as the only major gig in town, we'll respond as we did in the case of Comet by cutting service levels lower than your thought possible while extending our price gouging on the poor hopeless saps in that country as all vestiges of being able to go somewhere else equally crap but possibly a bit cheaper and less likely to insist they buy an overpriced 5 year warranty evaporates before their very eyes, while we rub our greedy hands with glee laughing maniacally.

Apple's Airpod wireless earbuds finally go on sale after six-week delay

paulf
Unhappy

Re: £159 .....

The concern is that other vendors will now go the courageous ludicrous path of removing the 3.5mm headphone jack. I saw recently that Samsung's next big handset is likely to ditch the 3.5mm jack too, as reported by Fanboi site Macrumors. HTC may be a smaller player these days but even they think they have enough influence to move to USB C headphones without serious numbers of people going elsewhere. Like or hate Apple it seems they have a significant influence on the direction of this stuff. If Samsung moved first on this they'd have been rightly ridiculed (as Apple have been including by Samsung who made jokes at Apple's expense about their handsets still having a 3.5mm headphone jack) but it seems Apple can get away with these stupid decisions and still sell loads of iPhones which then influences the rest of the market.

So things have gone full circle back to every phone having its own proprietary headset connector that's generally incompatible with anything else (including other handsets from the same manufacturer). I wonder how long it will be before Apple ditch the lightning to 3.5mm adaptor.

Uber-creepy: Dial-a-ride devs accused of stalking pop diva Beyonce

paulf
Joke

Re: Shameless

"I also reported that Uber's lack of security, and allowing all employees to access this information (as opposed to a small security team) was resulting in a violation of governmental regulations regarding data protection."

I think the real news here is that the USAian government has any kind of legislation/regulations on data protection.

Oi, you, no flirting, no touching in the back of our rides, sniffs Uber

paulf
Paris Hilton

Re: 'Barter'

@ CDD "Isn't that what Viz calls "paying with a hairy cheque"?"

See also "Gash Card"

UK National Lottery data breach: Fingers crossed – it might not be you

paulf

Re: No card data? think again

I call BS on Camelot on this one. They must store all the card data they're allowed to because it's possible to register a card for all future deposit/withdrawals of money to/from a NL account. They have all the details except the CVC (I think PCI DSS forbids them from storing this in any way) so they just ask the amount and the CVC then process the transaction.

paulf
Alert

@ cmannett85 "Use a bloody password manager!"

This is the core of the problem, only emphasised by this FTA, "Ollie Whitehouse, technical director at NCC Group, added: “This latest hack is yet another example of why people should use different and strong passwords for all online accounts due to the lack of transparency with regards to how they are held."

Every site expects people to register before they can use it (it's unusual to find a website that allows express checkout without registering as that would stop their data harvesting impair the user experience), you're expected to use a completely different password for each site, and every password must contain a capital, a lower case, the number you first thought of, a punctuation, an emoji, and what you did last summer. People are looking at 50-100 passwords just for the regularly used parts of their online time (possibly much more) all of which are near impossible to remember so is it any wonder they pick one "strong" password (as determined by the misguided password policy on the most cantankerous site they use) and reuse it elsewhere. It may help using a different email address for each site but that is a lot to manage for many people and strays into security/obscurity territory.

Password managers are helpful and I believe most of the major browsers offer some kind of "remember my password" functionality (Safari, Firefox, IE, not sure about others) but one breach on the password manager exposes the whole bloody lot. Perhaps the most secure password manager is a small notebook in a kitchen drawer?

My concern is that these kind of things push people towards third party authentication e.g. login with your Facebook account. The idea that Zuck becomes the password gatekeeper to the interwebz is just too horrific not just because it also concentrates the target into one place - crack a Facebook account and get access to everything. Facebook only keep things private if it suits them and telling them you log into Amazon, your mobile provider, your telly provider and your utility on a regular basis would be music to his wallet.

I'll leave it to someone else to dig out a link to the XKCD cartoon about passwords.

Behold, your next billion dollar market: The humble Ethernet cable

paulf
Coat

Re: Non-sense!

I don't know what's worse - charging $7000 for some snake oil a directional Ethernet cable, or whacking on an extra five bucks for delivery. I suppose extra for delivery makes sense since it's also directional...

Loyalty card? Really? Why data-slurping store cards need a reboot

paulf
Big Brother

Re: Just digging deeper here

I'd suggest it has already happened with things like Halifax Cashback Extras where your spending profile on the debit card at all merchants is used by the bank to target you with offers. For now it's opt in but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that opt-in box is automatically ticked to borg the bloody lot of you "improve the customer experience".

I still don't see why they bother though. Nectar might only have one supermarket in it (the former Sainsbury's Reward card) but they have various other retailers so can pick up lots of data. I use mine only in JS and spend about £50/week, very occasionally spending £80 to refill the freezer, yet every week I get a voucher promising bonus points for spending more than £90. They know I almost never get anywhere close to that amount and must assume I sneak off to the other supermarket nearby to do another full shop. If they gave me a bonus for spending £60 I'd be able to use it most of the time while also subtly increasing my spend with them - i.e. it would be successful. Getting vouchers I definitely cannot use means I won't even try so it doesn't increase my loyalty which was surely the whole point in the first place.

TL;DR: Simply put after 20 years of harvesting and deep analysis of all this big data they still don't understand the data they have, and they definitely cannot put it to effective use to increase how much people spend with them (at least in my case).

HTC and OnePlus spruce up flagships for Santa's sack

paulf
Unhappy

Re: start all new phone aritcles

@ Ralph B "Also: 3.5mm audio socket: yes/no HTC has none, so no sale there."

FTA: "HTC re-emphasises it again here, bundling USB Type C headphones. ...So it's another phone that drops the traditional headphone jack."

This is the start of the fall out from Apple dropping the 3.5mm jack. Apple may have a relatively small market share* compared to Android in general but they get a lot of coverage, not least from the launch day queues which show how iPhones are so deeply desirable* and aspirational*. So when Apple does something quite ludicrous as dropping a de-facto standard connector (it might be old but it's not *obsolete*) they normalise this change when made to other phones. I seem to recall a Reg article years ago which noted Apple pushing the keyboard back on laptops to make wrist rest spaces either side of the trackpad would likely propagate to other manufacturers and that came to pass in various cases. Unfortunately in this case Apple's courageous shitty decision threatens to infect non iOS ecosystems. Samsung may have taken a swipe at Apple, noting their latest handset still has a 3.5mm jack, but that could change next year when the marketing narrative has moved on.

* All of these terms are very much YMMV.

Sorry, iPhone fans – only Fandroids get Barclays' tap-to-withdraw

paulf
Meh

Re: How is this progress?

@ Scotthva5 "You still have to physically open your wallet and wait for the cash to dispense."

TBH the phone makes things more cumbersome unless you store your phone in your wallet.

Using a bank card means you open wallet, put card in ATM, get cash, put bank card plus cash into wallet.

Using a mobe means you have to juggle wallet and phone while also keeping one eye over your shoulder at that shifty looking guy over there. It might be easy for Da Kidz to sort, but I can see it being really easy to put down your phone or wallet or cash on the ATM while trying to put everything away and forget one or more of them.

It might be a nice idea if, for some odd reason (or you just want to show off), you have phone but not wallet/cards but it sounds like more faff than it's worth.

Reg man 0: Japanese electronic toilet 1

paulf
Joke

Re: Here I encountered the first of many problems. The labels were entirely in Japanese.

@TRT "Gotta have Bluetooth".

Bluetooth is an absolutely necessity* so it can connect to the corresponding App (now available in the App Store and Google Play) that allows you to track how many times you visit the khazi, what you do, how much you did, how long it took, the consistency and so on. Then you can upload all the stats to our cloud servers (see the "privacy policy") and use them to play "Top Trumps" with your friends!

* This isn't entirely fantasy - TOH has a Braun electric toothbrush with Bluetooth probably for downloading a whole pile of useless brushing stats that result in some oddly contrived targeted ads. Sometimes I'm staggered beyond words.

Emergency services 4G by 2020? And monkeys could fly out of my butt

paulf
Unhappy

Re: Any advantages?

The claimed point is that 4G will mean the control room can send a detailed map to an ambulance crew or perhaps a building plan to plod on the ground. That is a good idea.

The bad idea is migrating the primary functionality (i.e. voice) to the 4G side of things too so it's all 4G and no TETRA. TETRA can do all kinds of funky things - not only is the range much better due to the lower frequency (around 400MHz) which can punch through buildings that GSM signals at 900MHz/1800MHz+ struggle with but it can also run the handsets back to back in the absence of a mother network. Useful in serious emergencies as this is the time when the mother network tends to go TITSUP.

The downside is TETRA is really shitty on data rates which were specified for voice only and not actual data so TETRA alone would have struggled with anything other than voice.

The ideal solution would have been to make handsets that combined rich media via 4G with TETRA for voice only but that didn't happen.

FYI Apple fans – iCloud slurps your call histories

paulf
Unhappy

Re: Or

@ MrDamage "You could take full responsibility of your own data, doing a nightly manual backup to systems and storage you own and control, and be prepared to lose a days worth of "data" should the phone go titsup."

I already do regular backups of the jesus mobe to my computer. There's a bit more to it than that, though. You need to sign in to iCloud for stuff like find my iPhone and the remote wipe option - that's the only reason I've signed into it. I have all the remote backup options turned off (I only do and trust local backups) thinking that would stop* the remote slurps to Apple's bit barns. They might not have outright hidden this (as noted in the article) but absent an option to explicitly turn this on/off they haven't exactly drawn attention to it either. As with these privacy cases the convenience claim is always bollocks.

* As far as a mere mortal resident in the walled garden can ascertain

TfL to track Tube users in stations by their MAC addresses

paulf
Big Brother

Re: switch off your Wi-Fi...

"For the privacy-conscious Londoner, the easiest way to not be tracked is to switch off your Wi-Fi."

And switch off Bluetooth while you're at it as that can be tracked too, although the shorter range makes it a bit more difficult. Switch them on when you need them, and leave them off at other times to save battery as well as avoid tracking. It's not just Tube stations, shopping centres are another that like to track "Footfall" offer free Wifi and ping you with targeted advertising into the bargain.

I use Wifi at home then turn off Wifi and stick to cellular when out and about then it's only your mobile operator and the Gubbermint that's tracking you.

Red squirrels! Adorable, right? Wrong – they're riddled with leprosy

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: As I once heard....

@ kyndair "DEFRA thinking always seems to follow logical fallacies such as: All rats are rodents therefore all rodents are rats."

I'd offer the Yes, Minister example of Politician logic from Sir Humphrey:

"All cats have four legs. My dog has four legs; therefore my dog is a cat".

I don't know what's more worrying - how often these dolts put forward such questionable logic or how often us in the electorate fall for it?