* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25246 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Commercial repair shops caught snooping on customer data by canny Canadian research crew

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

This is what proper diagnostic tools are for...

At most, after a successful repair, we will check that the customers HDD boots up to whatever, log in screen, desktop etc. We don't want or ask for log in credentials. We simply ask that the BIOS is either set to boot from other devices or they give us (ore remove) any BIOS/BOOT passwords so we can boot an external USB device or temporarily replaced HDD of our own. If the HDD has failed, we replace it. We don't do data recovery but if asked, we'll return the faulty HDD to them.

Generally, we only ever need to boot the manufactures diagnostics tools to confirm the fault and then confirm it's fixed afterwards. Sometimes we do a quick and basic install of Windows depending on the quality of the manufacturers diags tools and likewise, use the manufactures tools to check and update any firmware such as Bios, Intel ME, Thunderbolt etc.

This is almost all warranty repairs mind and only rarely non-corporate customers, so mostly the HDDs are encrypted anyway.

On top of that, anyone caught browsing around a customers HDD contents would be walked out the door and they all know that.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

He may also have been alluding to the US and now El Reg policy of naming US universities by individual State without naming the country. Canada has similar Provinces etc and being a Very Large Country, might benefit readers by also naming where in Canada it is.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: And anyone is surprised?

"Bring back the days where HDD's were easily removed, RAM upgrades was via a 2 screw slot at the bottom and batteries were not embedded within the guts of the machine"

Except few will buy them because "everyone"[*] wants slimmer and lighter laptops. Extra panels for ease of access weakens the already thin casing.

[*] most consumers have been trained by marketeers, social meeja influencers and peer pressure.

NASA's cubesat makes it to the Moon to test orbit for human visitors

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Plan B

"could we build a space elevator on the moon?"

Simple answer? Probably, yes.

Actual answer? You'd need a permanently manned moon base and manufacturing facilities or some way of building the parts either on Earth or in orbit and getting the stuff there. At which point you need something a bit larger and robust than the ISS and enough people able to stay there on long enough rotations to build it up and down from a Lunar-stationary orbit. Ideally, that space station will form the mid point of the space elevator so probably needs a decent amount of mass to keep everything stable. Finally, of course, you need there to be something on the Moon you can export to make it all worthwhile or a really really good reason to have large amounts of people or equipment travelling too and from the Moon on a frequent basis.

PS. I am neither a rocket scientist nor a space engineer but have read lots of SF and many space based comments here on El Reg, so make of that what you will, YMMV, values of space stock may go down as well as up, do not invest in more Lunar land plots than you can afford to lose.

Russia-based Pushwoosh tricks US Army and others into running its code – for a while

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Waving red flags

"Sure, that could be a Delaware llc that's a subsidiary of some other entity that's wholey owned by shadyaf.ru but at least there is, or should be some regulatory paper trail to follow."

LOL, and sometime after you posted that, the story was updated to state almost exactly that :-)

FTX collapse prompts other cryptocurrency firms to suspend withdrawals

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Cryptocurrency industry?

They seem to claim that "producing tokens" is "work" of various types using power sucking computers ;-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Can't have it both ways...

"And, one day, people will realize that government intervention - i.e., LAWS - are created after an event in hopes of preventing a recurrence."

There's two basic types of legal systems. Those where everything is legal unless there's a law making it illegal and those where everything is illegal unless there are laws making it legal.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Consenting adults. (Consenting by default?).

"QE and austerity are drugs that are very hard to come off. The very low rates (ECB rates were negative?) for such a long time have been an issue. Even just raising them a bit would have been less painful but so many people over-stretched including big business and govts."

Decades of low interest rates have been a nightmare for savers. But the latest cost of living "crisis" demonstrates that most people are not savers, they are borrowers. Inflation is crippling for them because they have no savings and are mortgaged up to the hilt. Making borrowing so easy at such low rates has been a slow ticking time bomb for many years now. Many younger people are terrified of interest rates going into double figures because they've NEVER SEEN interest rates higher than about 4-5% and have no idea what do about it. Those of us a bit older, who took on mortgages back when interest rates were already around 15% were worried enough to not take out mortgages that would bankrupt us if they went higher. Luckily, we were quids in as rates then dropped to historic lows and stayed there, but we planned for worse, not better.

It's really all very sad, and I do feel for those led to believe that things would stay the same or even get better and so they kept on taking out the biggest mortgages they could afford and went on overseas holidays on the credit cards. The multiple whammies of COVID, QE, Climate change fuel costs, Chinas zero COVID policy and yes, the war in Ukraine would probably have broken most economies, in fact have broken most economies. But some seem to be weathering the storm better than others.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Over the past 12 months, cryptocurrency market capitalization has declined by about $2 trillion.

"crypto doge"

I read that as crypto dogs and thought it might have been a story in the comic 2000AD :-)

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Accent

"NOOCASTLE!"

Only southerners call it "NoooooCastle".

Real Geordies call it Nyuh-cassle (Sorry, trying to spell phonetically for non-Geordies isn't easy for a Geordie :-))

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I've had this oodles of times

"buying stuff for a local authority team,"

Isn't there a legal requirement to buy from the cheapest supplier? Without some creative purchasing skills, that could mean buying from someone trying to undercut the bigger fish and making pennies per unit on the sale, relying on volume and no further warranty costs.

Speaking to one local authority customer, he confided that they will sometimes purchase a "base" device without any optional extras, then separately purchase the "extras" which are actually required, so as buy from a supplier they know they can trust and not from one they know they will have a poor experience with and will actually cost more in the long term.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "Shouting" at the wrong person

Probably for one of two reasons. The CEO's PA does all the CEOs email and so the CEO never saw it anyway. And even if the CEO did see it, I very much doubt the CEO would be informed of new starters at the now merged business unless they were C-Suite level anyway.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Now ask me why ...

I used to go up to Glasgow quite often for various call-outs. I never, ever had an issue dealing with people in the various companies I dealt with, at all levels. One year, my wife and I went on a holiday up by Loch Lomand. Trying to have a chat with a broad Glaswegian in the bar (yes, he'd had a few) was entirely fruitless!! And I thought I was "tuned in" on the Glaswegian accent. Clearly I'd only ever met "posh" Glaswegians up to that point :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You get what you order

It seems to be the case that not charging enough gives the impression the product or service is not valuable and the chancers will try to knock down the prices even further or demand more for the same. Good for him for seeing the light when it is pointed out to him.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You get what you order

"It’s a trust that is only potential until a problem crops up, at which point the trust is affirmed or lost."

That's something I've always "known", felt in my bones, so to speak. When a customer has a problem, as I often say to them, the problem isn't the issue, it's how it's dealt with that matters. So I always try to deal with it in the best way possible. After all, if they choose to go with a different supplier, odds are they will have the same or similar problems somewhere down the line and may or may not get those problems resolved promptly and/or correctly.

Hey, GitHub, can you create an array compare function without breaking the GPL?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hey, Github!

<spits out> Yuck, tastes 'orrible"

How about sudo github?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hey, Github!

"a certain other product might be if there is a person called Alexa in the room."

I'm an old git and have a wife :-)

Luckily, she's can barely program the PVR so is unlikely to ever come across a word like github and use it on me :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Hey, Github!

Can you cope with me choosing my own wake word phrase for you? You seem to have an enormous amount of computing power and storage so this should be a really simple function to implement.

I'm not an American college kid and don't actually know ANYONE who starts a greeting with "Hey! $name". In my culture that's both rude and childish.

Just follow the instructions … no wait, not that instruction to lock everyone out of everything

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

How odd. All mine have an Alt left and an Alt GR right. :-)

Atl GR for Grrrrrrrr!!!!! :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

LetMeIn is one I remember from somewhere, somewhen. No idea what it was for, but it was the standard, default password for something and not often changed in deployment.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

And yet another explanation is that the younger ones are still employed at a level where they won't admit to making mistakes that could get them fired if identified. It's a lot safer to recount a tale of disaster that happened decades ago in a different life under a different, possibly now defunct employer :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I'd like him to describe what alt-right is. Logically, alt-right would be left, but I don't think that's what he means. Maybe he has two rights and is getting a wrong?

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

You may find that those companies specialising in repairing large clocks, Grandfather and bigger (eg towers clocks), are the best places to find a long weight :-)

Some sash windows suppliers, especially of traditional types may also hold stocks of long weights.

Since being sent for a long weight is something given by "an officer of the company", the trip can probably be expensed if there isn't one locally :-)

Looking for a holiday DIY project? Build your own pen-plotter, for under $15

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Reminds me of my first non-trivial hardware project

My first non-trivial hardware project that was more than just flashing an LED or reading a switch status, was the opposite of this plotter. I had a dual 8-bit A/D converter and a couple of potentiometers in the same arrangement as this plotter built as a rudimentary "point" digitiser. It ran on a Video Genie, programmed in BASIC initially and had to some trig to calculate where the pointer was. It had to be calibrated on every use and each reading took a perceptible time because BASIC andbecause the resistance of the Carbon track pots would vary based on room temperature. I'd not really thought about much and was a little puzzled by the changes in position so left it on over night reading and recording the "home" position every 5 minutes, had a look in the morning and realised the reading was changing slowly overnight as the house cooled down then warmed up again in the morning :-) Accuracy wasn't a huge issue considering the "graphics" resolution ion screen was 128x64 :-) I did re-write it in Z80 and called the ROM BASIC trig functions, which was a bit faster. On reflection, considering the accuracy, pre-calced look-up tables would have been better.

Later, I built a small (A5-ish) flatbed plotter from old stepper motors and some long threaded rods controlled by a BBC Micro. That was fun and actually very, very accurate. It never got upgraded to self-controlled pen selection though. Suitable pens basically meant buying proper plotter pens though. Most normal pens either didn't flow the ink well enough or the nibs (eg felt tip pens) were too large. Fun times.

University staff voice 'urgent, profound concern' as Oracle finance system delays payments

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why Does El Reg Have A Picture Of The Assembly Hall Of The Church Of Scotland......

I must admit, a similar thought crossed my mind too. You'd never see a US university simply described as a "US university". They ALWAYS specify the State, not the country, assuming the that rest of the worlds readership will understand. Likewise, will El Reg start referring to various European universities simply as "in the EU" now?

It's one thing to adopt a US style guide, quite another to dumb down to Fox News levels of knowledge ;-)

Google’s resistance to third party Play store payments eases further with US tests

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

This sounds odd.

I wonder why Google would expand this offering into regions where it's not being legally mandated? By allowing 3rd party payment processing, such as in-app etc, that means Google loses their PlayStore levy. I can only imagine that they have found a way to take a percentage from these other payment processors otherwise they'd be fighting tooth and nail to NOT allow them in wherever possible.

"Hidden" posts due to "ancestor" being deleted by a moderator

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Hidden" posts due to "ancestor" being deleted by a moderator

"This post is hidden from public view because one of its ancestors has been deleted by a moderator."

Anyone know when things changed? It used to be a moderated/deleted post only affected that post. Now it seems any replies to that deleted post are also hidden now.

I understand if the reply was quoting the offending part of the moderated post, but this seem like a new behaviour to effectively delete all replies to an offending post.

Twitter, Musk, and a week of bad decisions

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

caused Musk to ban "impersonators."

What is an "impersonator"? Surely you can't create a Twitter account using an already taken name. So how can someone "be" Elon Musk without having some other, different letters or numbers in the name? Will every John Brown on Twiiter who is not the original John Brown now get kicked off? John Brown1, John Brown2 etc?

Or does this ban on "impersonators" only apply to "famous" names? I bet there are corporate accounts that could be seen as "impersonators" because they have a similar or even the same company name in a different country or even just a different town to a similarly named company.

This is the sort of thing that quick and rash decisions causes. And Musk seem to be running Twitter based on quick and rash decisions now.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Close it Down and Get Out Quick

I've made that very same suggestion in comments on one of the many other El Reg Twitter articles. But on reflection, some of his investors such as the Saudi Wealth Fund and Qatar may be the types to take such losses personally, and both have form for "disappearing" people they don't like. Does he think he's "too big to disappear" or have that much trust in his personal security?

BOFH: Don't be nervous, Mr Consultant. Come right this way …

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: should we call time on the BoFH?

"Are you by perchance management?"

He's probably a Trumper[*] sowing discord.

[*] As opposed to a Republican. They aren't all Trumpers :-)

Intel’s axed Optane biz spurts out mixed bag of new SSDs

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I don't get it!

Thanks for the comprehensive explanation :-)

Clearly, Intels Optane marketing totally failed in my case :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I don't get it!

These appear to bog standard enterprise grade SSDs. The Optane branding seems mis-leading considering all the previous Optane marketing has been for a sort of permanent RAM" thingy. Has this Intel Optane business previously been selling stuff not directly associated with the Optane RAM product? Why is not just marketed as an Intel SSD? The article certainly doesn't appear to question this or explain it in any way. Have I missed something here?

World Cup apps pose a data security and privacy nightmare

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Nokia rules!

I suspect from the demand to install the COVID tracking app, that failure to do so will mean refusal of entry at the airport. Next plane out or buy a new smartphone in the airport and install both apps.

Musk tells of risk of Twitter bankruptcy as tweeters trash brands

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "We all need to be more hardcore"

I wonder how long it will take before the documentaries starting coming out on the downfall of Twitter?

Based on lead times for TV, I'd guess about 6 months will be the earliest.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

For clarity, who is "we" and will you be quitting any time soon?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: If Twitter dies..

"All the ones I see on TV / Internet are just news readers."

Most of them aren't even that. They "read" 60 seconds of news then spend the rest of the "show" being opinionated twats ranting about one aspect of it with their like0minded "guests". There are very few actual sources of news that don't bury it in strongly biased opinions.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: Fuck that asshole

He said he wants to benefit humanity. Killing Twitter may be part of that plan. Maybe we should be congratulating him :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Can a genius be unskilled and unaware

Edison? AC/DC wars?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Employee memo number 2

You do know that "going postal" was coined after a number of postal workers randomly shot a load of their co-workers, don't you? IRC, about 50 people died over some years due to these incidents of "angry" workers.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes and no. The thrust of what you say is correct. His mistake was in actually calling it crap. There were many and better ways he could have described it without calling it crap and he would almost certainly have got away with it.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 80 hour weeks

I wonder if he's bothered to read all their employment contracts? How many of those staff are hourly paid and entitled to overtime rates after 40 hours? Or, this being Silly-Con Valley, is that not a normal contract of employment? I'd be surprised if any of the EU or UK staff are on unlimited hours contracts without overtime rates, except maybe executive level people.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I thought he was suggesting that Twitter apply to be payment processor. That's not a bank. It's just cutting out the middle man in subscription payments AFAIK.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Even if salaried, in many jurisdictions, including the UK and EU, even with a Working Time Directive opt-out, you can't make those sort of demands with the only option to resign without falling foul of a whole raft of constructive dismissal cases.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I wonder why he thought he could just state that he wanted a blue tick subscription service and say "Make it so!" and it would be so without allocating time to design a system that worked, including verification?" That sort of system needs people to carry out, at the very least, random checking of automated verification. And you can't just knock up an automated verification system in a few days. It takes people and time and he gave little to no time and took away half of the people. Why does he think developing new ideas, products and systems at Twitter will be instant when it clearly isn't at SpaceX or Tesla?

KFC bot urges Germans to mark Kristallnacht with cheesy chicken

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

It's only a marginal variation on "computer made mistake" that has been around almost since the computer was invented :-)

So-called AI just means it's working on steroids now and far more difficult to blame on a specific programmer since much of the "training" results is "black box" that no one claims to understand.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Meanwhile....

"a new chapter in the digital development of the Russian restaurant industry"

"What could possibly go wrong?"

Hmmmm....I wonder what happened to KFCs business in Russia?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Shades of "The Producers"

You wish!!! In the Producers the plan was to lose money and it went wrong and made money. The exact opposite of what seems to be happening at Twitter :-)

Although it is a wonderful thought and image :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Childcatcher

Re: Brainless automation

Exactly. WTF are they doing automating "special offers"? Sending an automated reminder to marketing maybe, but letting the computer make marketing decisions for them? Won't someone think of the poor marketers jobs?

GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: FOSS conditions

"but the immediate thought is: how about one that looks for code that is suspiciously close to your copyright material appearing elsewhere, as though it had been spat out by Copilot?"

There;s already software out there designed to look for plagiarism in exams and academic papers that could probably be fairly easily repurposed for the task. Depending on how it works, eg simply looking for matching strings of a certain minimum length, it might well work as is.

That would certainly find out if Copilot is taking existing chunks of code and regurgitating them. On the other hand, it may well show large chunks of code being reused in other FOSS without acknowledgement and maybe against licensing terms.

You wait for an aurora on Mars and MAVEN spots two arriving at the same time

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A dust-up

From what I read in the article, the magnetic fields don;t have much, if anything, to do with producing an aurora. They just just affect where and what shape the aurora is.

Any care to tell me the article is wrong or if I'm misreading it?

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