Posts by Lee D

Re: Yay money laundering!

It's already difficult to move money from your bank into or out of any of the major Bitcoin etc. exchanges.

They're not stupid, they know what's coming.

When I withdrew the last dregs of my Bitcoin, I had to do so by sending it to a third-party website who sent me an Amazon voucher... well dodgy! But it worked out.

Trying to withdraw to my full-validated, only UK bank account as a UK citizen, the transactions were just automatically refused. And I remember years ago when I was trying to buy them and credit card / debit card were refused at the bank end, not the other end.

My original Bitcoins were obtained by a third-party escrow site where you give the site £50 and then someone later sends you some Bitcoin and you confirm the transaction, then they release the money. Because the people selling Bitcoins have to use dodgy third-party means and were jumping onto anything like PingIt or any new service as soon as they launched to get there before they caught onto how they were using it.

I'm not sure how people are trading in cryptocurrencies for cash, to be honest, at least in the UK. It's quite a tricky thing to do, and far from anonymous. It's entirely reliant on taking a risk on unknown, and pretty untraceable, third-parties, companies registered in the Cayman Islands, etc.

If you want to trade in crypto, do it via an investment vehicle of some kind. You still make the money, but they take all the risk. Well, most of the risk. There's still a risk that one day what they're doing will collapse because of some new money-laundering rule, but at least you stand a chance of getting some of your money back. I wouldn't invest in Bitcoin etc. directly in this day and age.

Yeah, ask the Americans about that.

As I said... 3am alerts for a missing vulnerable adult 600 miles away, in a category that you can't turn off.

If they can't keep their testing silent (there's no need for a test to actually alert a user, just have the handset acknowledge or display a message is fine), I don't hold out any hope that they'll categorise future alerts correctly (e.g. exactly like the Americans haven't done).

Re: Yet another push for us to all go work at Tesco

"that's more complicated for the client, who then becomes an employer for 3-6 months"

Gosh, if only they could afford to have an HR department when they're paying the guy £450 a day.

Seriously, it's a tax dodge. I don't care if it's temporary, part-time or whatever else. Pay the damn tax.

"I only work for clients for 3 months and then move on" does not somehow make you magically exempt to paying roughly the same amount of tax on that income as someone who's in the job for 4 months or gets sacked after a week.

Re: It's hard to say this...

Meanwhile, just outside a MAJOR town inside the M25, literally a stone's throw from the huge town centre, surrounded by big posh houses and a main road, I gave up trying to get a landline and just bought a 4G stick and an unlimited data contract instead.

Not only is it cheaper to run each month, there's no contract, no install costs, and I can chop and change SIMs as much as I like if I'm unhappy. Oh, and it doesn't charge £160 + VAT which BT want to charge me to activate a landline, and they will only guarantee 4Mbps down, 1Mbps up (WHAT?! This is the 2020's!). My 4G gets 50 down and about 30 up consistently throughout the entire day including peak periods and I know that's just the local 4G because 5 minutes down the road in work the same SIM in the same device gets way more.

I know that some of the rollout is focusing on getting people SOMETHING while other parts are focused on improving what's there, but it's ridiculous in 2021 to be giving those kinds of prices and speeds when a wireless 4G connection outclasses it in every respect.

Meanwhile my parents on the other side of London, again in the middle of a HUGE town, their "wifi" (as they call it) is so terrible that I literally cannot log into a gaming service (e.g. Steam or Epic) because it just times out and throws you out of the game. They do not have a filter of any kind, the connection is just atrocious and they're paying quite a lot for it. Stuck my phone on 4G, hotspotted to it over wifi, got a better and more reliable connection instantly, played online for hours.

There needs to be a moving minimum standard, whether that's 8, 24, 100Mbps or whatever. It needs to evolve every year (so now the minimum is 115 or whatever), and they need to be judged on their compliance with it regularly. They know if the line is syncing at 10 or 12 Mbps, they don't need us to report it or independent companies to have to run apps and test boxes. And they only get their "subsidy" for any customer who is getting the minimum. And then set a ratio on "real world" versus line rate so they can't fudge the numbers.

And it has to be stated that every year, say, a 1% greater percentage of their customers must attain that target, including at least X% of new customers that had no connection before. This year 90%. Next year 91%. Next year 92%.

And then they wouldn't be able to "drop" people who technically have FTTC or whatever down to nothing shortly after installed, they'd have to keep improving the speed even after install, while wiring up those with nothing, etc.

For reference:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitcoin-blockchain-illegal-content

Re: Beats me why.

Been working in schools and deploying Chromebooks for 7 years in their thousands. Chances of a device actually stopping working because Google switched it off: 0%. Chances of it being broke in between: 10%. Chances of the Chromebook being deemed obsolete on the asset registers before you get there: 100%

Pretty much any business or school has a 4-year replacement programme for devices like that, so who cares if it stops working in year 5/6/7. But, pretty much, they don't - Google only seem to stop the cheap Chinese junk, they still push updates for anything major-brand.

And given the price of them, I'd far rather buy you a new Chromebook every year than a new laptop every four years.

Re: Remember the 3G spectrum auction of 2020?

Or you could read the article and see they spent over a billion just on getting this far before this auction - and that's when they are still allowed to keep/reuse their 3G/4G spectrum for the most part.

This is a billion-dollar industry, and the frequency allocations are critical to customer satisfaction in terms of coverage and speed. The company behind Three alone is worth 10's of billions of dollars just by itself, not counting what money actually goes through it in the average year and is spent on actually providing its service.

It costs £5m per kilometre of undersea cable, for instance, so there is far, far, far more expenditure in dropping a few fibres between countries than the entire telecoms spectrum.

They wouldn't be paying this money if they didn't think they'd be getting it back, or if they could skimp on it and still beat their competitors.

Re: £999?

Wouldn't touch either.

Who the hell spends that much on a 13" model? I want a laptop, not a fecking smartphone.

Re: Whose bloody computer?

Hint:

Don't run computers that let unauthorised people run commands on them.

This stops not only these kinds of actions, but also the problem in the first place.

While I agree that the responsibility should be your own, I see no reason with, say, permanently cutting off the Internet of infected machines at the ISP level until they are showing no more malicious traffic.

PlusNet in the UK used to block your web etc. access if they detected an open Samba port on your Internet-side. I think this is perfectly reasonable. I think it should be extended to "you're running a business mail server that's known-compromised and hasn't been patched in years", they just block your IP access and replace all HTTP pages with "Your network has been compromised, and as your ISP we have blocked your access. Contact us for information on how to resolve this block".

Maybe then people would wake up and fix their stuff in a timely manner.

Re: But... but...

Macs literally have AFS, NFS and SMB/CIFS support, so in fact they have MORE methods of transmission across a local network. In fact, it's required to enable the latter if you join it to an AD, like almost all corporate Macs are.

This kind of ignorance is dangerous.

Or do Mac people never use networks, NAS devices, iSCSI drives etc.?

USB-C is a complex protocol.

It's basically 5V USB, but if you ask for more it can give you 9, 12, even 20 volts.

But that's not different to how USB always was - technically you only get 500mA on even the oldest USB but you're supposed to ask for it first. Most old USB chargers just push you 5V whether you ask for it or not (that way, they don't need a chip). If you want higher USB currently, you're *definitely* supposed to ask for it, but many USB chargers just shove 2A down the line and the electronics sorts itself out (you can't "give" something more current than it's asking for). This then leads to devices that want 2A but don't ask for it (because they're being cheap on the electronics) and then they fail when they only get a proper USB's 500mA only, etc.

Enter USB-C and you can't just shove 5V down it and hope for the best... you need to negotiate as many devices take advantage of the 20V (which results in nearly 100W of power) and only use the 5V initialisation to negotiate and nothing else. Hence USB-C chargers can't avoid having to do the negotiation.

But if you cheap out, or your cables aren't designed for it, then that negotiation doesn't take place and you're shoving 100W down a cable that's not certified for it, to a device that's only expecting 5V, and you have problems if they haven't taken account of it.

Most cheap $1 USB-C negotiation chips just handle the situation - they negotiate, provide only the power asked for, and operate over whatever power comes in even if it's not what was asked for (e.g. if something just shoves 20V down the line, which is a dangerous assumption as classic USB devices will be blown to smithereens). For charging ports, especially, they should be able to handle whatever comes in on whatever voltage so long as it's within USB-C power limits, but obviously some don't. Like Apple. And chargers *should* negotiate all power above 2.5W @ 5V. But they don't seem to, or they seem to do it poorly and in a way that makes assumptions they shouldn't.

It's a poor show on Apple to have a chip that can't safely handle 100W. It's a poor show on the charger's part to - say - only ever negotiate 100W @ 20V supply and ignore any possible refusal from the controller at the other end (USB-C is basically bidirectional, the same port can both receive and supply all voltages with the right negotiation).

Rule: Don't buy cheap junk... whether it's an overpriced Apple or not.

Re: Mobile to save the day?

£20 - unlimited data SIM with Smarty (based on Three network), with a stated 1000GB/month fair use after which they will slow you down a bit. Unlimited free calls, texts.

Been with them for three years on 2 different SIMs (one in my phone, one running my entire house as a broadband replacement - including access to my local network cameras, services, media, streaming my TV direct from my house, etc.)

When I moved into this place three years ago, and the broadband was still talking in single-digit Mbps, I didn't even bother to activate the phone line. For less than most people pay for their phone line and broadband, I have two unlimited data SIMs, free calls on two different phone numbers, decent speeds on both, complete mobility and a recurring month-to-month contract so I'm not tied in at all.

If BT kill copper, it'll be replaced by 4G/5G, not by fibre (though presumably most 4G/5G masts are running fibre leased line or radio-relaying to one that does?).

Re: Pointless

The XCover series all have replaceable batteries.

Re: Good

I assume you're trying to be facetious.

Wanna tell me how you're going to access a device without a hardware device driver for it?

Or are you expecting all drivers to be user-space (good luck with that!)?

Controller input support, especially where it differs from USB / Bluetooth HID standards, is most definitely operating system territory. Even if the actual userspace driver and/or userspace use of that device isn't.

The question is: Do you want to rely on a third-party driver from the hardware manufacturer to let you use it, or have a device driver in the OS that'll work forever more, supported by the operating system manufacturer.

Be careful of your answer, because there may well be examples of the latter that you'll regret losing.

P.S. "support" does not even mean "it'll work". It means it's technically possible to use the device, not that there's complete top-to-bottom OS integration for it.

Re: some in, some out

SMARTY - Three-backed company, expressly allow tethering in their T&Cs, 1000Gb/month before they do anything to you traffic-wise (stated in one of their brochures on the subject) and then it's just a speed limit, not a block.

Been with them two years, never had a problem, and have easily done 1000Gb in a month.

Re: Who's the audience?

Cancel culture is a company cutting you off when you explicitly break their T&Cs on which their service to you is conditional.

Don't like it, set up a company without those T&Cs. See how long it lasts, before you're having to moderate, cancel accounts in the same way, or sued to oblivion under laws that have existed for decades by facilitating hate speech, etc.

"Cancel culture" is the phrase used by people who expect service from companies who don't want to provide those kind of people with that kind of service, even for money. It's like the playground-phrase used when someone doesn't want to do something stupid in concert with the speaker, so they just call them out as "cancel culture" when in fact the other person just doesn't want to do what you want them to do.

"Cancel culture" used to be called "violation of the terms of service". And the terms of service haven't changed much in decades.

Re: Reporting calls

Agreed.

But they can just write you a letter.

By contrast, I work in a highly-unionised industry and I refuse to sign up to them, mainly because to do so would jeopardise my privately-negotiated salary.

And, working in IT, running the finance system, and therefore party to a lot of HR/Finance data - at random, and inadvertently, only as problems arise - means that I know I'm not being conned or just being led into thinking that.

At a previous workplace, the top man literally had to scream and shout at a local government office because they - and I quote - "didn't have a payscale that went that high" when it came to that place employing me directly after having had them as a customer for 7 years when self-employed. They literally had to create a borough-wide payscale, with a unique code, just for me that hadn't existed before. They informally asked us to keep that quiet "because the unions would go mad".

Sorry, but unions often just reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. I'll negotiate my own salary, terms and conditions based on basic employment law, desirability of my services over alternatives, and what I need to be properly rewarded for the job. I've never been replaced by someone "doing the same job for less", but I have replaced several people by "doing the same job better, for more money".

Some of the people I work with will happily boast about their current level on the payscale (despite silencing conditions in their contracts) and I have to bite my lip knowing that - compared to private industry, literal identical workplaces, or even just equivalent work elsewhere - they are being conned into thinking it's a good salary because it's high up the payscale and higher than their colleagues who are a level below them and have no responsibilities at all.

Unionisation is just equalisation, for the most part. Fact is, some people are better at their jobs than others, hence more desirable, hence more retainable, and you shouldn't need to "promote" people by giving them unrelated or unsuitable responsibilities, while tearing them from the job they are far better at, in order to retain them anywhere near market rates.

Re: Meh.

https://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/commercial/details/57416358 for reference.

Re: My evil hauwai phone...

I have a 17" laptop, it fits snuggly into a basic thin rucksack (I have an old one someone gave me years ago that's made specifically for laptops, but the kids all have them nowadays for their Chromebooks, etc.).

Previously have taken a 17" laptop with me every day to work for about 10 years, but I bought my own since and that stays away from work, but it comes with me on the airplane as a carry-on with a ton of food shoved in the main pocket whenever I go on holiday, it comes with me to relative's houses (when not in lockdown), I take it camping, I take it on games nights etc.

17" is *not* a huge laptop. It's not heavy.

And, like the OP, I tether mine to my phone, which cost a fraction of this junk, has dual-SIM and an unlimited-4g-data SIM in it (£18 a month). I could also use the little Huawei 4G Wifi box I have in the laptop bag with a similar SIM, but I'm using my 2nd SIM to run my entire house Internet for the last three years.

This stuff is just over-priced junk. In a small rucksack, literally the kind of thing you could give a kid to take to school and nowhere near heavy, or bulky, or awkward, and a mid-range Samsung phone I basically can do anything from game online to work remotely to watch hours of movies on a plane.

Hell, when going abroad, I often shove my phone in the rucksack so that I can pass security and it stays in there offering out a private Wifi while I use the laptop to pass the time in the airport.

It's 2021. Phones that "do everything" are commodity. 17" laptops are the default. Gaming laptops can kick most people's PC's backsides.

Hell, apart from a couple of Raspberry Pi's offering services like TV NVR, I don't use any other PCs in my own home. Same laptop, same phone. The only difference is that at home I have a 4G SIM running the house wifi, but the phone is capable of the same (the reason I have two is that the phone is then able to connect back to my home wherever I am, and pick up my home TV recordings, movies, CCTV, etc.)

As the OP says, mid-range phone and a laptop, and you basically have everything you need.

Re: Back in the day...

That's not how education post-school works.

In college/university, you're expected to learn of your own accord, and lectures are there for you to be lectured at... not in a negative way, it's literally just watch, follow on, absorb the complicated material in the overview that you're given in a lecture, then study after that to understand what the hell he was going on about and why he skipped over certain parts.

Only the UK and the US cling to the "teacher-led spoonfeeding" kind of education you describe past any significant age. Everyone else presents the material, explains it from a distance, and then it's up to you to study and understand it.

It's why many people never make it past that point, because they lack the ability or self-discipline to learn on their own.

I know a few Italian professors, some of whom now teach in prestigious London universities, who decry quite how spoonfed everything is in the UK compared to how they teach in Italy. They refer to it as "the American system", almost spitting the words, and see it as a dumbed-down education. They also still do things like put pupils back a year if they're not performing to standard. We stopped doing that decades ago.

Same way that every company now is "disruptive" to its industry. I'm amazed these industries are able to function at all, with all that disruption.

Re: Atchoo!

I was around then.

I started on Netscape, if you don't count DOS-based gopher-ing. Then Opera, probably, then Firefox, then Chrome and Chrome-based browsers.

I have never used IE in my life outside of literally stupendous banking websites that required it to plug in their own ActiveX for a card-reader in ridiculous ways "for security" as part of my work on finance systems. Otherwise, I've never loaded it in my life, except accidentally.

There wasn't a point at which IE was necessary for day-to-day browsing (My Amazon account is 20 years old this year, I think) except on tiny niche sites that deliberately made that decision, but my point was really that nobody ever made an "IE-clone" that used IE underneath it, like people use Chromium to make other browsers now.

Re: cashless society

Last time I used a bank branch was to literally cash in 3 years worth of spare/loose change that I had accumulated because I hate carrying cash and don't even have a wallet that holds coins (a few notes, yes, coins, no).

It added up to £60.

It's been a year since then... no change at all in my house.

Re: WTD

Literally illegal to even suggest that it's "career-limiting".