* Posts by paulf

1250 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Aug 2009

Frowns all round as Smile and Co-op online banking goes down

paulf
Mushroom

Re: Customer focussed or Bonus focussed?

I wondered at the time Britannia BS was merged into CFS what skeletons were in the closet, and how long it would take to find them. In the end the implosion was so massive it took out not only CFS but most of its CWS parent as well (also helped by the Somerfield acquisition so they weren't entirely blameless and had form in overpaying for vanity acquisitions). Britannia members got nothing from the [effective] demutualisation, bucking the windfall culture over the previous 15 years, other than a £1 membership each of the Co-Op, paid for out of what was left of BBS's own reserves. IoW each BBS membership was worth £1 which is very telling for what they knew then about the state of BBS's finances. Compare that to the ~£1000 that demutualisations had attracted.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I'd suggest the due diligence didn't fail and they knew exactly what they were taking on from that evidence alone. I'd also suspect that BBS manglement knew the problems they were facing and found, in CFS, a bunch of idiots that would acquire it regardless, to save them having to face any serious music. For the benefit of any litigious lawyers reading this, that's just personal opinion (and I'm an idiot), not a statement of fact.

ATM fees shake-up may push Britain towards cashless society

paulf
Unhappy

Re: Be careful what you wish for

They've been busy making it progressively harder to do business at the counter with a person, as they add more ATMs into the branch. A few years ago my local branch of $MEGABANK boarded up 4 out of the 7 service windows it was fitted out with when refurbished about 5 years earlier. The new boarding was painted in corporate colours but it just makes it look like a failing shopping mall trying to cover up the fact it has lots of vacant units. The teller desks and computers etc are all still in place behind the hoarding but with no way to serve us meat bags.

The deposit machines work well (and a copy of the paid in cheque on the receipt is useful) but until the machines dispense fivers and coins I'll keep using the the counter for withdrawals - I tend to use cash for smaller purchases so a wallet full of twenties is sod all use!

Guy Glitchy: Villagers torch Openreach effigy

paulf
Holmes

Re: Lies, damn lies and BT excuses

@Real Ale is Best "What utter lies. The truth is: Templeton is out of the way which makes rolling out fibre broadband unprofitable, and we won't do it unless forced bribed to with some lovely Government millions." FTFY.

I bet BT would find it was immediately possible all of a sudden (regardless of whether it was profitable) if some upstart competitor offered to cable up the village for a reasonable price, and subject that captive market to some badly needed competitive forces.

Competition? Yeah we've heard of it, and we stamp it out when we do.

Phone mast maker Arqiva: Oh, the £6bn float? Yeah, about that...

paulf
Alert

Re: Please Clarify...

At best it's lazy reporting - ah for the El Reg tombstone icon - that makes for an interesting claim in the text, even if it does stretch the credulity of readers who know the actual situation.

Arqiva's primary history is that of the IBA tranmitter network as you rightly point out - hence Winchester.

The BBC aspect is because Arqiva (still the IBA bit) bought National Grid Wireless which is where the former BBC transmission ended up (via Crown Castle), until it was Borged by Arqiva.

So the "Started - BBC - 1922" connection is deeply tenuous but strictly true, even if it only applies to a sizeable chunk of the current Arqiva.

One-third of mobile users receive patchy to no indoor coverage

paulf
Thumb Up

@ John Lilburne "The power company came out about 2 years ago to install a smart meter but abandoned the installation because they couldn't get a mobile signal. "

So it's not all bad news, then?

First iPhone X fondlers struggle to admit that Face ID sort of sucks

paulf
Gimp

Re: I like Touch ID...

@teahound "I see no compelling reason to upgrade. I'm expecting to be in the minority here, though."

If you're in the minority I'll join you and make that minority a bit bigger. I have a 6s+ and I rather like it. Touch ID works well, the camera is good enough for my needs and I easily get a day of use from a charge based on my usage pattern. I looked at the 7 in the local Fanboi Boutique(TM) and I wasn't that impressed. I haven't bothered looking at the 8 as it strikes me more as a 7S presented to be not a "S" incremental release. Since I'm just not ready for the brave innovation of removing the headphone socket I guess I'll stick to my 6S+ for another year.

Google's phone woes: The Pixel and the damage done

paulf
Facepalm

HTC again

"Readers may point out that for years HTC was been selling phones in EMEA with only the bare minimum of support. Indeed, but that was on the back of years of success, based on great design. It took a while for this reputation to fade. Google doesn't have years of reputation as a hardware king. And HTC's numbers tell their own story. Google now owns the cream of HTC's phone division."

I've mentioned before my experience of HTC on these fine forums - I wouldn't even call their support in 2011 "bare minimum", nor their design/quality "great". Non-existent was more like it. My second HTC handset was a HTC Sensation with the random shutdown bug - it would just randomly turn itself off. At first HTC wanted me to buy my own replacement battery to see if that fixed it - it was only when escalated to a supervisor did they grudgingly agree to send a free one. There was a few mediocre attempts to get me to shove off, including telling me to do a factory reset but nothing fixed it. I swore off HTC with that handset and never looked back - considering how HTC have gone since I guess I wasn't the only one they royally pissed off with no regard for the consequences and it's caught up on them. Frankly Google must have known what they were buying from HTC and HTC's numbers would have made clear their ability to keep customers happy and turn them into repeat customers.

Google have two options - fess up with a mea culpa then dig deep to 1. sort out the problem for existing owners and 2. design something that works properly next time; or abandon the lot and sweep it under the carpet. Based on the long list of Google abandonware I wonder which they'll pick?

All your masts are belong to us outfit Arqiva confirms IPO plan

paulf

Re: Crawley

"But as you said, to claim that it can trace its origins back to 1922 is disingenuous, or perhaps more correctly completely wrong."

The 1922 connection is likely because Arquiva (the IBA/NTL) bit that ran transmitters for commercial broadcasters acquired Crown Castle UK (that acquired the BBC Transmission business at privatisation in 1997 as CTXI). So it can, kinda, coulda, sorta, claim to have origins back to 1922 but that would come from the BBC Transmission side of things not the IBA side.

paulf
Pirate

Re: Typical

Philip Carse, analyst at Megabuyte, said: "The primary objective of the IPO seems to be to tidy up a balance sheet weighed down by debt, shareholder loan notes and swap liabilities. punt the business on to some suckers now the PE boys+girls have had a bonanza pay day from loading it up with eye watering levels of debt that will only ever be cleared by a pre-pack Administration (blue prints available - please ask seller for details)."

Frankly this is not a screw up - this is entirely intentional. Borrow money to buy business, load up with debt secured on said business (that has no recourse to shareholders), use money from loans to pay out massive special dividend to PE owners to pay off initial loans and enrich owners, sell business + debt through IPO, leg it before the whole bloody lot implodes from said debt. This PE scam has been going on for at least 15-20 years now.

Why is there no Scrooge McDuck "$$$$$" Icon?

404 - Product Not Found. Micron's SolidScale storage disappears

paulf
Terminator

Spokes-droids again!

A Micron spokesperson said; "Micron is aligning the go-to-market and fulfillment process for its Micron SolidScale architecture to the company’s established Micron Accelerated Solution process and will no longer market directly under the Micron SolidScale brand. "We're renaming it"

FTFY

Icon -> Please keep spokes-droids away from foster parents.

Misco UK chops majority of workforce, pulls down shutters

paulf
Alert

@ steviebuk "You do realise lots of people used paper from sustainable forests."

I think you've missed the point I think the OP AC was making. Sending a few more brochures (perhaps 10 instead of 5) may be worth doing if it got the Misco message in front of the right pairs of eyes (i.e. those making the buying decisions).

Carpet bombing an organisation with brochures is 1. Going to piss people off because dealing with them then disposing of them would be an unsolicited cost on the recipient business and 2. Do you really think sending brochures to stacks of made up names and Maureen the cleaning lady is going to increase the number of Enterprise x86 servers and Cisco switching kit Misco could sell. That's before you consider the cost of producing and posting all those brochures has to be recouped from somewhere - i.e. muggins customers that did buy from them.

It appears some PHB thought more brochures sent = more $$$ which was BS

Avaya thinks it's found a new voice, by singing the same old song

paulf
WTF?

Wait, what?

"The second will see it soon productise a practice currently led by “client principles” who build bespoke applications around Avaya's contact centre and unified communications platforms."

Am I alone in wondering WTAF that meant?

And when was "To Product" a verb? Surely you mean "To provide" or "To produce"?

Edit: I've just noticed this further down in the article, "['Edictive' may not be an actual word. Chirico used it to mean a top-down decision-making style – Ed].". I understand you have to wind back the usual snarky to get these interviews but this guy is CEO (of a communications company!) and you've let him get away with apparently making up random meaningless words."

It's 4PM on Friday, almost time to log off and, oh look, Disqus says it's been hacked

paulf

Re: Why would..

@macjules "5) Realise that the 18m users were most likely Daily Telegraph commentards from that period and not worry too much."

I'm certain the Telegraph doesn't have 18m users/readers (At least I'm hopeful they don't!)

Google touts Babel Fish-esque in-ear real-time translators. And the usual computer stuff

paulf
Alert

Re: No audio jack

@ Cuddles "Getting rid of headphone sockets is done for precisely one reason - cost."

I don't believe for one second a headphone jack that costs, what, two bucks in parts and assembly costs (lets say 3 bucks if you add in design cost shared across millions of devices) is going to make any tangible difference on a handset costing £800-£1000. Even if they did put up the price by a tenner to compensate it wouldn't matter - people buying flagship phones aren't usually that price conscious, hence "Cupertino Idiot-tax operation".

paulf
Meh

Re: No audio jack

@ druck "There is always the option of using a 2.5mm jack,"

True, but it takes us straight back to the same problem - having to use an adaptor to get standard 3.5mm kit to work with it. Existing headphones should work with a USB-C/Lightning to 3.5mm jack adaptor too. The pain is having to use an adaptor at all.

paulf
Facepalm

Re: No audio jack

@AC "If you ever drop your non waterproof phone in a urinal"

Why are you using your phone while standing at a urinal? Perhaps if you were concentrating on the, ahem, task in hand you wouldn't have dropped the phone?

paulf
Mushroom

Re: No audio jack

@ jaywin "If they can waterproof the USB-C, I see no reason they can't do it to a headphone jack."

Exactly. Google and Apple (to name two) are massive companies worth billions and with billions in the bank. I can't believe for a second that they couldn't develop, or find someone who could develop, a 3.5mm jack with suitable water resistance if it can be done for the USB-C/Lightning ports. I accept omitting the 3.5mm jack means they have more flexibility on device thickness and have a little more space inside the unit, but, as said by another in this thread, people are more likely to use their 3.5mm ear buds than go swimming with their phone. Also there aren't many people complaining their phone ought to be another mm thinner. This is all about pulling people further into the walled gardens and ensuring they cannot use their existing accessories while in there.

Snap, crackle ... patch! Apple kicks out iOS 11.0.2 to tackle crappy calls, fix email glitches

paulf
Alert

Re: Control Panel

That's Apple Innovation, just like the brave innovation of removing the 3.5mm jack.

paulf
Thumb Up

@ Jay 2 "Still on 10, maybe I should wait until 11.0.3?"

I'm still on 10.3.3 and will be waiting until 11.1.2-ish. I don't have to be at the bleedin' edge (security fixes notwithstanding) so I'm happy to let others do the field beta testing. I've seen it said (probably in this fine organ) that Apple get x.0 right for the new HW then concentrate on the older hardware problems with x.1

The axeman strikes again: Microsoft has real commitment issues

paulf
Facepalm

IFPI "research"

IFPI = "International Federation of the Phonographic Industry"

They did some research and found that, "music remains staggeringly important to people". Well, who knew? In other research:

The Ursine Association finds wooded areas to be very popular.

Survey finds Catholics are very keen on the Pope.

UK lotto players quids in: Website knocked offline by DDoS attack

paulf
Coat

Re: Oh well

@ Martin an gof "Premium Bonds...At least the capital is safe"

Only if you exclude inflation. While you can get back the investment capital you lose the stake which is the investment income that capital generates.

Mines the one with Martin Lewis's PB analysis in it.

paulf
Pirate

Re: Oh well

@ breakfast.

The odds of winning the lottery (I assume you mean the jackpot, rather than winning any prize) may be pretty long; but those odds are much longer if you don't buy a ticket.

In a surprise to no one, BT and TalkTalk top Ofcom's whinge-list

paulf
WTF?

Re: Don't believe it until it's officially denied

Turns out this update was added to this story incorrectly - it makes more sense in this story.

paulf
Coat

Don't believe it until it's officially denied

FTA: " Updated to add. A TalkTalk spokesperson got in touch and said: "We do not recognise these comments. Our biggest security priority has always been protecting our customers.""

"We do not recognise those [figures|comments|etc]." is Govt speak for yes, you're right but you're one digit away so we'll push out a flimsy complete denial so we can put our fingers in our ears and sing LALALA as YOU'RE WRONG!!1111!

Twitter's 280-char blog mode can be enabled client-side. Just sayin'

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: This is great.....

@ djstardust "I can now tell Scotrail, Ryanair, M&S & WH Smith why I dislike them so much in finer detail."

On the last one it's much better to tell @whs_carpet then we can all have a laugh at the atrocious retail shiteholes that are branches of WH Smith. Expect photos of tatty carpets, rusting baskets, plus aisles strewn with obstacles and detritus.

The award for worst ISP goes to... it starts with Talk and ends with Talk

paulf
Thumb Up

@Ledswinger "Now, if you just throw away junk mail from companies you dislike, they continue to periodically send it, and in the longer term that costs them more. I like to think I'm playing a long game, you see."

I think this works. The biggest offender of "To the occupier" junk with a return address is Vermin Media. I've always done RTS on their stuff and we no longer get any, but I'm not sure if this is just us or because they don't advertise in our area now. It was a long game - about two years until they got the message but every item was RTS until they stopped. It involved effort but will have cost them more than it did me and much easier than trying to call their Customer Disservice in India.

@Roj Blake "If a junk mailer sends you a pre-paid envelope to send your order in (which they have to pay for if used), then you can use that to send them a flyer from the pizza place, thereby killing two birds with one stone."

Homeserve are a particular problem in this area - not only do they bundle their tripe with my water bill but they also send "Important Water supply info" shite to me as well. I pack their return envelope as full as possible as if its over 100g they pay more for the return! Not only that as an application it goes to the main office, not a returns processor.

London Mayor backs talks with Uber after head honcho's apology

paulf
Holmes

Re: All those signatures..

@AC "Who ever said that TFL was independent of the mayor's office?? I always believed that the two were closely linked."

Very closely linked as this page confirms from the TfL website detailing TfL Board members:

"Sadiq Khan, Chair. Sadiq Khan is the Mayor of London and has appointed himself as Chair of TfL."

I seem to recall the previous Mayor, Boris Johnson, was also Chair of TfL so the position seems to go with the office of "Mayor of London".

Welcome to the future: Bluetooth jackets you can only wash 10 times. Gee, thanks, Google

paulf
Coat

Re: Wearables...

"...connected textile platform."

What a time it is to be alive!

Yes, that's mine. No electronics in the fabric - only the pocket.

Noise-canceling headphones with a DO NOT DISTURB light can't silence your critics

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: Do not disturb notice.

@AC Re: Rolf Harris mug

I'm impatiently waiting for my Tobias Funke* mug (somewhat NSFW) for office use. I suspect (and hope!) it'll have the same result in deterring people from bugging me during the day.

*For those who haven't seen Arrested Development

DXC Technologies mails another corp message (gulp)

paulf
Holmes

Re: The cynic in me already know the outcome...

And that's exactly how it will be - they'll worm out of it any way they can as I know from recent experience.

About 14 months ago, to try and stem the increasing flow of departures, a bonus scheme was hurriedly implemented for all Business Units. If a BU met its budget a bonus would be paid to all within that BU.

Guess what? My BU drastically improved its financial performance thanks to a lot of hard work but didn't pay out because it didn't meet its budget. The response from Manglement said it all: your performance was "phenomenal" but, hey, you didn't make the target so fuck you. Two things are instructive here:

1. They didn't properly explain how the scheme worked until after the end of the performance period.

2. Despite everyone working like mad we only made 2/3 of the target because we are so under staffed we couldn't complete any more work, so didn't stand a hope in hell of meeting the target in the first place.

Needless to say that caused a lot of bad feeling so it was staggering when, a month later, we were reminded of the importance of our current project to the BU. The heat was turned up a week later when the recent closure of a team in another BU was used as motivational material i.e. get this project completed or you'll all get the sack.

I heard, "If you're not already looking for another job, you should be." I'd be surprised if that wasn't the result in 12 months at DXC - perhaps that is their ultimate intention...

Atlassian releases 'Stride', because HipChat isn't hip enough to whack Slack

paulf
Unhappy

Re: Oooo Disruptive! Innovative! Amazeballs!

There's also something called “Focus Mode” that mutes all incoming messages and informs colleagues you're trying to get some work done without interruption encourages colleagues to come over to your desk to interrupt you in person with their tenuous problems instead.

FTFY

IBM's global load balancer and reverse DNS degraded by domain transfer mess

paulf
Meh

Re: Total Inability to Support Usual Performance

After all their IBM coverage in recent years perhaps they did and this mornings El Reg downtime was the revenge?. All my attempts to read El Reg over my cornflakes crapped out to a Cloudflare holding page. I had to rely on the other half for my morning dose of snarky commentary.

TalkTalk plans to bail on mobile in major shake-up for beleaguered biz

paulf
Holmes

Re: Triple play/quad play bullshit aroma recognised at last?

This is the point. Quad play is pushed by the marketers, not by significant demand from the public, and they love it for this very reason - it gets people locked in with a trivial initial discount then makes it significantly harder to switch to other services when (if?) they start cranking up the price until the pips squeak. The ability to move each service separately to find the best deal is valuable but doesn't have that headline "Saving for taking multiple services" that quad play has.

Tesla hit with official complaint over factory conditions

paulf
WTF?

Re: A bent Union Boss.

The Ferraris and swimming pools I can understand but, "two gold $35,000 Montblanc pens". Seriously? Who TF spends THIRTY FIVE GRAND on a bloody pen, never mind the same again on a second one?

Uber sued by Uber for tarnishing the good name of Uber

paulf
Gimp

Re: Maybe just change your name?

Having to change the business name you've used for years just because you're getting grief from a massive tech monolith?

I seem to recall His Steveness (tm) once asked someone to do just that:

"Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal."

In related news, I can't help wondering how stories like that "Apple cult leader emails outside world, 11 words from the Messiah's Jesus phone" contributed to the Apple PR Dept's silence towards El Reg. Colour me baffled!

Reality strikes Dixons Carphone's profits after laughing off Brexit threat

paulf

Re: That's it, blame it on phone users

@ Karlis 1 "I tried to buy a phone from them one day. When I realised it is conditional to me giving up all my personal data ... I noped out of it."

Depends what they requested. If you were a new customer they would normally do a credit check and they would typically ask for proof of address (e.g. utility bill) and proof of identity (e.g. driving licence). That seems reasonable. Exactly how extensive was their request?

@pleb "Buy from CPW and you're tied into a 24 month contract - having to buy yourself out of airtime and handset if you want to leave early." Not my experience. I bought my phone sim free unlocked from CPW, it was a reasonable deal and I had the phone there and then.

This charging for the remainder of a fixed term contract was dealt with by OFCOM a year or two ago. Companies can charge for the remainder of a contract (I'm thinking of service provision rather than payment for equipment like a handset) but only the actual cost to them which is normally much less than the headline monthly price. Sorry - I don't have a link to hand with more details but if DixCar are charging the full monthly airtime rate for contracts cancelled mid-term they ought to be taken to task on it.

Mozilla ponders making telemetry opt-out, 'cos hardly anyone opted in

paulf
Big Brother

Re: I think that's a good idea

@DougS "I'll bet most Windows 10 users have "willingly" agreed to let Microsoft slurp their data..."

Let's see; Windows 10 has at least two settings for data collection "ON" and "ON" and they're turned "ON" by default. Even if you turn it "OFF" it automagically turns itself "ON" again when it quietly installs an automatic update. So when you say "willingly" I doubt that's via informed consent of deliberately turning it on from its default OFF state having decided to do so based on full information on what will be collected and how it will be stored/used.

The bottom line is that very little (if any) of this continued data collection is about better software. It's all about profiling you to the max to push Adverts at you, because $$$/£££/€€€. Even the bloody robot vacuum cleaners are doing it!

Mozilla seems to have decided continued existence is just too much hassle. There's been the continued frustrating UI buggering about in the years since Australis was introduced. Then the recent news that they're going ahead with the kill on extensions and plugins. Old school plugins like Flash I can understand but it seems they'll kill the more recent extensions stuff like Classic Theme Restorer (and I presume stuff like AdBlock +). The latest missive is full on death of privacy. As another poster said above: they may make lots of virtuous promises now when the collection is turned on but that could change once they have the data as the Ts&Cs slowly creep into more and detailed data collection. Based on how they're going at the moment would you trust them 5 years from now with the data they collect from you today?

I really like Firefox and have used it (Thunderbird, too) since something like the 0.8 beta but I just don't get what they're up to at the moment.

Lottery-hacking sysadmin's unlucky number comes up: 25 years in the slammer

paulf
Happy

Re: When Will People Learn? Halifax Banking...52% APR / 68.4% APY

Another thing worth remembering is that complaint dept operatives tend to be able to solve things up to £50 without significant authorisation as the authorisation process tends to cost more than would be saved from just paying out the amount claimed. So if you have a complaint, and you can reasonably justify it to the 1st/2nd line complaints droid, stiff them for the full £50 (apply an extended remix of time, trouble and inconvenience if this helps).

My experience of LBG is if the payout is relatively low they tend to nix complaints before they become complaints - I've had CS droids offering small payments of around £20 to avoid it entering their internal complaint system where the cost inevitably rises exponentially with a risk of further costs going to Ombudsman. Some may say this is bribing the customer to keep their complaint stats down but such is capitalism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Foxit PDF Reader is well and truly foxed up, but vendor won't patch

paulf
Thumb Up

Re: Suggestions for replacement?

"SumatraPDF" Thanks for all the suggestions on this. I've been looking for a decent replacement for the PoS that is Adobe reader. Since installing SumatraPDF yesterday it's been working well.

Apple bag-search class action sueball moves to Cali supreme court

paulf
Unhappy

Re: When will this bosses realise it works both ways?

@VinceH "Amongst other things I was told that I "shouldn't be counting hours""

It's interesting how we get berated because we shouldn't be counting hours while it's in their favour; until it's in our favour then those hours are suddenly counted to the minute.

I recall accidentally admitting I kept a note of my hours during my first appraisal at the current gig (some years ago now) - the boss had complained I didn't work enough unpaid overtime (in his workaholic opinion) and I wanted to make clear that wasn't the case. He went absolutely loopy at the idea I was noting my hours which I took as a sign I absolutely must keep doing so for the very reasons you and many others in this thread have also found.

Defra recruiting 1,400 policy wonks to pick up the pieces after Brexit

paulf
Mushroom

Re: Brexit

@AC "There's no sign of EU citizens leaving, "

I have two friends - both are from EU nations, both work well paid professional jobs (IT/technology) and pay lots of tax, both do charity/voluntary work in their local community, and both are leaving soon as a direct result of Brexit and the sudden rise of xenophobia they've experienced because they're Forrinurs.

It may be only two data points but by itself it blows the absolute claim you make out of the water - and they're not the only ones.

paulf
Coat

Re: I predict chaos

It'll be worse than chaos. That picture in the article shows a chicken with only one leg that seems to be responsible for a basket full of eggs. What kind of agricultural marvel is this fowl future? A sudden halving in the supply of chicken drumsticks will have the Colonel crying into his special mix of herbs and spices until they realise it's easier to catch them.

I, for one, welcome our new Mono-pod Avian overlords.

Ads regulator raps PC repair biz for massaging malware infection rates

paulf
Holmes

Re: Google is your friend here ...

I'm surprised* a significant number of people didn't see that claim for the BS it is.

If it completely excludes reinfections then every computer considered by the survey (all in normal use?) would be infected within 3 days. Even if we look at the other end of the scale (every infection is on an already infected computer) the computers in question would acquire 2-3 new malware infections per week and surely become unusable within a few weeks. I'm not saying malware isn't prevalent, but those kind of claims are nuts!

The ASA is a bunch of useless crap - but that shouldn't forgive people who seem to suffer from widespread gullibility. Unfortunately the very people we should accord the highest scepticism (adverts, politicians) are the very ones people seem to lap up with more credulity than they deserve.

*Not surprised

SoundCloud: You can't stop the music, nobody can stop the music

paulf
Go

Re: It's one of the examples of one of the dumbest competitors...

I've found this site to be helpful in downloading the occasional track from Soundcloud (that doesn't offer an official ability to download)

http://keepvid.com/

As always YMMV

Outage outed: Bing dinged, Microsoft portal mortal, DuckDuckGo becomes DuckDuckNo

paulf
Meh

Re: Duckduckgo for Google?

That's a frustrating aspect of DDG that pushes me back to Google UK all too often. Even with the UK localisation set on DDG it still throws up a load of US results when I search for things in the UK: I may find what I want in result 10+ with DDG whereas G! UK returns what I'm after as result 1 or 2. I guess they are dependent on the results from Y! and Bing and these are letting them down?

Revealed: The secret CEO texts that tell the tale of Uber-Waymo's self-driving tech spat

paulf
Pirate

Re: Ottomotto Zero to Self Driving in 6 Months

I know this whole affair stinks of something awful, and anything Uber gets involved with is more likely to be dodgy than not (El Reg passim), and I'm concerned I'm tacitly supporting the case for the other side (i.e. The very big data collection and advertising extravaganza Corp), but:

"Levandowski left Waymo in January 2016 and set up his own self-driving truck company, Ottomotto, that was bought by Uber for $680m in August 2016." How on earth could you set up a company (presumably from scratch) then get bought out for more than HALF A BILLION BUCKS about 6 months later and expect people to think that wasn't dodgy?

Hell desk to user: 'I know you're wrong. I wrote the software. And the protocol it runs on'

paulf
Holmes

Re: HR Fail

@TonyJ: "Whereas HR departments seem to solely exist to ensure that a company can get away with the absolute bare minimum and treat their staff like cattle."

Better summarised as: "The HR department exists only to protect the company from its employees."

Uber bros kill car leasing program after losing nine grand per vehicle

paulf
Alert

Re: Overestimating resale values

This has been in the media recently as these PCP and PCH deals have been flagged up by financial regulators as an area of growing concern: Car finance deals: Do they spell trouble?

From that article: "Here is a fascinating conundrum: The price of new cars has gone up significantly in the last five years, yet they have become cheaper to drive.

The answer lies in the creative genius not of the car designers, but the financial engineers who invented a new way to borrow money."

Sub-prime mortgages offered a new way to borrow money and look how that worked out when the house of cards came tumbling down so those opening sentences should strike fear into anyone who remembers the crash of 2007!

Big Switch, HPE, in 'You complete me. No, you complete me' tryst

paulf
Happy

Big Switch

Well, I've just learned something. I thought Big Switch was a typically snarky El Reg reference to someone like Cisco, a la Big Phone (AT&T) and Big Cable (Comcast). I guess I've been loitering around here too long.

Another day, another British Airways systems screwup causes chaos

paulf
Holmes

Re: Not just an IT problem

@commswonk "The Daily [NameThatMustNotBeMentioned] about other shortcomings of which BA is accused. It cannot make happy reading for anyone."

I'll take that as the Daily Heil so I've FIFY