* Posts by upsidedowncreature

62 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2012

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Crowning glory of GOV.UK websites updated, sparking frontend upgrades

upsidedowncreature

Re: FUCK the king twat

I didn't realise Harry was on here TBH.

upsidedowncreature

Re: changes to things like police and military uniforms, and signage on official buildings

I'm just relieved both the Head of Design and the Senior Interaction Designer were involved, it would be awful if an important change like this were to be under-resourced.

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

upsidedowncreature

Outside the environment?

Nearly 200 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes grounded after door plug flies off mid-flight

upsidedowncreature

It's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.

Windows keyboards to get a Copilot key – but how quickly will users jump?

upsidedowncreature

Decades ago?

"The addition of the Windows key some three decades ago was the last time the company fiddled with keyboard hardware. "

Really? Didn't they add the fantastically useful emoji key in 2019?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/emoji-key-featured-on-microsofts-latest-keyboards

Does Windows have a very weak password lurking in its crypto libraries?

upsidedowncreature

How did you get that to display as "*****"?

It is 2023 and Excel's reign of date terror might finally be at an end

upsidedowncreature

Re: Great. We're getting there

ISO 8601 FTW!

Airport chaos as eGates down for the count across UK

upsidedowncreature

"The gates use facial recog technology"

ws t wrth sving a fw kystrkes fr tht?

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

upsidedowncreature

Professor Unwin? Is that you?

LG's $1,000 TV-in-a-briefcase is unlikely to travel much further than the garden

upsidedowncreature

Re: Students?

We have the BBC which has no ads, it's instead funded by a licence (license? Never sure) that you have to buy if you have a TV. It's £159 a year so worth it I think, although there are those who think it should be abolished.

Lock-in to legacy code is a thing. Being locked in by legacy code is another thing entirely

upsidedowncreature

Re: The other mechanism, of course, is the induction loop.

Sometimes flicking the side stand down is enough to trigger the loop. Remember to pull clutch in or go into neutral or you'll likely cut the engine!

Someone just blew over $190k on a 4GB first-gen iPhone

upsidedowncreature

Re: What strikes us as odd...

It really hit home when Blue Monday turned 40 a few months ago.

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

upsidedowncreature

“ orthogonal layers of beech placed under extreme pressure to create an entirely new, solid and massive material”

Plywood, then.

Edit: I should have read the comments first, I see this observation has already been well made.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

upsidedowncreature

Re: Unique keys

I think I've mentioned it before, but in Mork and Mindy, Mindy's landlord was called Mr Wanker.

Pixies keep switching off my morning alarm, says Google Pixel owner

upsidedowncreature

Re: Well that's weird

It’s been used (well, quieter acoustic versions have) in a couple of TV adverts in the UK in recent years.

edit: a package holiday company a few years ago and the current Apple Airpods ad.

If you fire someone, don't let them hang around a month to finish code

upsidedowncreature

Re: Never risk it

I've been the person being called in to an unexpected meeting with HR - got the call on Sunday evening, the meeting was on Monday at 9:00. I dictated a list of systems and passwords that I insisted be changed, to protect myself. She said they had it all covered, but they had missed several.

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

upsidedowncreature

Re: I liked VB5/VB6

Correct, but there were no curly braces - it was all End If, End Loop etc. In mixed case. Dear God.

Also indentation was completely optional so many didn't bother with it, making untangling nested control structures an unalloyed joy.

UK firm NOW: Pensions tells some customers a 'service partner' leaked their data all over 'public software forum'

upsidedowncreature

What forum was the data uploaded to, and how did the upload come to light? The file must have been pretty big - about 1.6GB if it had 1024 bytes per record (please check maths!)- so it wasn't uploaded by accident. Was it malicious in intent? The company seem to be implying that it wasn't. If it wasn't, what goes through the mind of somebody uploading a file that size, containing lots of PII, to a forum? Fresh air, probably.

Unsecured Azure blob exposed 500,000+ highly confidential docs from UK firm's CRM customers

upsidedowncreature

Re: No more Mr Nice Guy

I upvoted you, but why is putting company directors inside not do-able? It seems like fines aren't having the required effect. The threat of doing some bird would focus the mind and shift priorities.

HP bows to pressure, reinstates free monthly ink plan... for existing customers

upsidedowncreature

Re: Not eager to get a HP printer

You'll never guess who bought Samsung's printer division a whle back...

edit: Wow, in 2017, I hadn't realised it was that long ago.

We're not saying this is how SolarWinds was backdoored, but its FTP password 'leaked on GitHub in plaintext'

upsidedowncreature

It's OK...

They've secured it now, they've changed it to "SolarWinds123!"

AFAICT this is the whole problem that code signing was designed to solve, I would love to know the precise details of how the attackers managed to sign the code.

India to spend up big on submarine cable to sparsely-populated but strategically-placed remote island group

upsidedowncreature

Spend up big

Spend up big? What fresh hell is this? It’s bigly uncromulent.

For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice

upsidedowncreature

Nanu Nanu

Mindy's landlord in Mork and Mindy was called Mr Wanker.

Crooks social-engineer GoDaddy staff into handing over control of crypto-biz domain names

upsidedowncreature

Re: Why can't they ever give clear information.

Because these communications are produced by communications professionals whose purpose is to convey as little information as possible while making sympathetic noises.

upsidedowncreature

Sophisticated...

They're always sophisticated, these attacks. They're never the result of clicking a dodgy link, or inadvertently letting slip that you use your dog's name as a password. Damn sophisticated, these hackers.

Not exactly the kind of housekeeping you want when it means the hotel's server uptime is scrubbed clean

upsidedowncreature

Re: Simply Ghastly...

No good if the UPS isn't in use - it wasn't in the article. An intriguing device though!

Amazon drops battery-powered Echo speaker so you can play Despacito on the go

upsidedowncreature

Boomer indeed, I'll have you know I'm Gen-X and proud of it. And consequently knackered.

upsidedowncreature

I thought the word "drops" in the headline meant they were stopping production, not introducing a new model.

That's what makes you hackable: Please, baby. Stop using 'onedirection' as a password

upsidedowncreature

Re: Uncomplicated

Eh? How is enpass.io not an online password application? Also, why are you undermining yourself by storing text copies of passwords?

upsidedowncreature

Re: 1-2-3-4-5?

That's odd, all I see is * * * * *.

Apple: EU can't make us use your stinking common charging standard

upsidedowncreature
Trollface

It's acceptable if you use an oxygen-free directional USB cable, as long as you spend a few days conditioning the cable first.

upsidedowncreature

"Apple argued any move compelling it to ditch the Lightning port, which has been a staple of the iPhone for almost a decade, would inconvenience its customers, simultaneously creating an "unprecedented volume" of electronic waste."

Funny how those considerations weren't important when they ditched the 30-pin connector for lightning.

Microsoft boffin inadvertently highlights .NET image woes by running C# on Windows 3.11

upsidedowncreature

Re: BTW if you need a cross-platform GUI development solution

Good point. Even applications from Microsoft don't all follow the same rules.

Not just adhesive, but alcohol-resistant adhesive: Well done, Apple. Airpods Pro repairability is a zero

upsidedowncreature

Re: Simply Ghastly...

You've given this *far* too much thought.

The D in Systemd is for Directories: Poettering says his creation will phone /home in future

upsidedowncreature

*raises hand*

$30/month email upstart Superhuman brought low with a blast of privacy Kryptonite

upsidedowncreature

cf Whatsapp

I can understand the privacy concern, but how is this different to Whatsapp, which indicates when a message has been read?

Meet the new Dropbox: It's like the old Dropbox, but more expensive, and not everyone's thrilled

upsidedowncreature

Re: Simply Ghastly...

I think that might have been aimed at me...Nescafe and a four year old Dell here :)

I just don't think the new features are compelling *for me* and given that I only use a fraction of the space I'm paying for I reckon I could quite easily get by without it.

upsidedowncreature

Bye bye Dropbox

Don't want the new features, was quite happy to pay the annual $99 for 2TB but no more than that. I'm going to see how I get on storing everything in Evernote.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

upsidedowncreature

Re: whether if they'd had their sidearms they could have shot the lock off instead

Mythbusters: testing a hypothesis by experimentation. Maybe you can pick holes in the method, but it's still science.

Microsoft slaps the Edge name on SQL, unveils the HoloLens 2 Development Edition

upsidedowncreature

Re: Unfortunately

"Or there is my design, see the US PTO?"

Link please.

NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...

upsidedowncreature

Re: Aluminum

IIRC the element was originally named Aluminum (the American way) and we Brits decided to call it Aluminium to better fit in with other element names ending in -ium.

Sky customers moan: Our broadband hubs are bricking it

upsidedowncreature

Re: It's been years since . . . .

No, as mentioned above you can put the Virgin hub into modem mode and connect your own router to the one port that remains active. I'm on Virgin and using my own Draytek router. As long as your router has an RJ45 WAN interface, and I think the Drayteks mostly do, you should be OK.

upsidedowncreature

Re: It's been years since . . . .

Does your Vigor router have an RJ45 WAN interface, i.e. a network socket for the WAN side? If so you should be OK.

Put the Virgin hub in modem mode, connect the WAN socket on your Draytek router to the specified port on the superhub - only one works when it's in modem mode, it's either 1 or 4, can't remember.

The peelable, foldable phone has become the great white whale of tech

upsidedowncreature

"Pholdable"

Ugh.

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

upsidedowncreature

Re: More urban myths busted

I was explaining a large and complex spreadsheet to a director on my new, superfast 486DX PC with 14" CRT Monitor. He wanted to draw attention to a particular row of figures, so he took out his red biro and underlined them neatly on the screen.

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

upsidedowncreature

Re: Floppies and Stiffies

I ordered some seals for a motorcycle brake caliper that arrived folded up. Didn't fancy fitting them.

Fortunately they sent replacements out fairly quickly.

upsidedowncreature

Re: Ex apple genius.....

This is also the technique for getting plectrums out of acoustic guitars. Technologically very different items, but both prone to user stupidity and clumsiness.

upsidedowncreature

If it fits...

About 15 years ago I finally got fed up with my DVD player misbehaving so decided to replace it. As I removed it from the shelf I noticed an uncharacteristic clunk. Upon opening the case I found a music CD rattling around inside.

The CD was Rooty by Basement Jaxx - the one with a picture of a cartoon gorilla. I reckon my toddler son had found it, thought he'd like to watch cartoon gorillas and not knowing how to open the disc drawer had just stuffed it through a gap in the case. In his defence he was only around 2 at the time.

Boeing big cheese repeats pledge of 737 Max software updates following fatal crashes

upsidedowncreature

Re: Simply Ghastly...

What is an E*** M***?

Edit: Duh, never mind, the coffee kicked in and I figured it out.

Tim Apple. Larry Oracle. Ginni Layoffs: It works so why the heck not?

upsidedowncreature

Don't bother Richard Herring today, it's International Women's Day, his busiest day of the year. 19th November, by the way.

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