Posts by ComicalEngineer

Microsoft reportedly eyes E7 tier to make AI agents pay their way – like the humans they'll replace

Re: Agent 365

Who is number one?

Re: I'm very happy to pay

What is this 365 subscription of which you speak?

Facebook went down for about three hours, interrupting your poking and Meta's ads business

Suddenly nothing happened

Which is a positive for Farcebook.

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

Re: "Dunno from where the lass got the meat"

Long pig?

My coat? Why thank you.

Microsoft to auto-launch Copilot in Edge whenever you click a link from Outlook

Several of my larger customers PCs are locked down by their IT departments.

Only company mandated software is installed and users have no admin privileges. No non-approved software can be installed, and all software must be approved by the IT department.

In all of these companies it's Outlook / Office 365 / Teams like it or lump it. If you have a need for CAD it's AutoCAD or if you just need to look then you just get Autodesk viewer.

Several of my customers even have corporate login and lock screen images and company standard backgrounds and colour schemesThere are many among us who simply don't have the choice and are effectively the IT equivalent of Dilbert.

PCs and phones to get more boring and expensive in 2026 thanks to memory drought

Why do you need a new phone?

I have a 3 year old iphone, I think it's a 13. It does everything I need. It's paid for next month and I go onto a sim only contract. It still works fine and does everything I need so I won't be buying another one unless this one breaks.

Let's be honest, all phone manufacturers are looking for the killer app / feature that will get you to buy a new one.

Except that there aren't really any killer new apps, and if, like me you use your phone for making errr phone calls and texts plus emails then there's no reason to upgrade unless you're one of those people who absolutely has to have the latest features e.g. wanting a folding screen phone or some other such gimmick then where is the incentive to change?

Thus phone makers will become another victim of Artificial Idiocy and the scramble for more memory.

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Didn't like the result

Early 2000s my day job was doing some complex gas dispersion modelling for a thing called the (UK) Control of Major Accident Hazards regulations. We were called in by a property developer to look at some housing they wanted to build near a site containing large quantities of toxic gas. A development boundary had already been set by the HSE but the developer wanted to build a housing estate within the safety distance.

The developer wanted me to prove that the HSE's calculations were wrong! I accordingly ran the calculations using the same software that the HSE use and my conclusion was that the HSE calculations were correct to within a few meters (if you've ever done gas dispersion modelling the concentration / distance contours are affected by numerous factors).

At this point the client had a hissy fit with me and screamed that that was not the answer they were looking for and I must do it again.

He was then politely informed that my work had simply confirmed that the HSE calculations were correct and that they would not get permission to build in this location and that the HSE would not make any change to their decision.

Another screaming fit and I was told to leave the site. The client refused to pay as I hadn't got the right answer! (That's another story).

He then decided to go to a judicial review with a well known QC who earned in a day what I earned in a month.

They were kicked out of court by HSE,

We passed their name and reputation across to everyone we knew in the area and I personally put a block on our company working for them ever again.

Britain's creaking courts to use Copilot for transcriptions

Better still trained on "The Sweeney"

Get yer trousers on, you're nicked.

AIs are happy to launch nukes in simulated combat scenarios

War Games

Anyone remember the film "War Games" (1983) where a young Matthew Broderic hacks into NORAD computers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

The computer concliusion "the only winning move is not to play".

If only modern AI was a smart.

Pop music fans literally dying to stream hot new albums – in car crashes, that is

Re: Touchscreens...

My 2018 Volve will recognise many voice commands such as "set temperature to 20" (centigrade) and even "turn heated steering wheel off / on" but is totally pants at getting the radio station of my choice which it can (in theory) do. Play Radio 4 usually results in a list of tracks from my USB stick or anything but Radio 4 "pick from list or not in list".

I've owned the car for 7 years and I still hate the touchcreen for anything other than the SatNav.

Gatwick shuttle screen suffers pre-flight nerves

Re: 1980s infrastructure

I have a CAD program dated 1998. It still works perfectly under W10 but as it's only 32 bit I have a 32 bit W10 machine with 4GB of RAM.

Over the years I've done thousands of drawings in this package and as long as the old PC keeps working I'll continue to use it. If the old PC breaks, I'll get another second hand one running either XP or W10 32 bit and reload the software from the CD.

It ain't broke and I'm not going to fix it. Being written for W98 it uses hardly any RAM thus I can run the CAD program and MS Word / LibreOffice together (drawings copied and pasted from CAD top Word Processor).

Some of the old stuff is still the best.

SaaS my arse.

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

Company where i worked also had a clear desk policy, plus it was a serious offence to leave your PC unlocked when leaving the office as there would be contractors and visitors wandering round the building.

Our favourite trick was to go onto the computer and put passwords on all the top level directories in a user's personal filespace and / or generally move all the files around.

Another Post It would be hidden somewhere in the office telling how to undo what had been done.

A Post It message would then be left on the PC demanding payment of a ransom in cakes and biscuits to be left at reception in the building after which a phone call would be made to the receptionist (who was in on the game and liked cakes) telling the unfortunate where the unlock post it was hidden.

We got quite a lot of cakes before management forbid the practice after someone with a negligible sense of humour complained.

Hard drives already sold out for this year – AI to blame

Re: I still use HDDs.

4x 1TB 5" HDDs (old style) WD "Mybook" type. Two sit on a shelf in the office. Two are kept in another location for safety.

5x 1TB 3.5" portable HDDs. One for regular daily / weekly backups, one backup for the working backup. Again two in a different location.

2x 500GB SSDs with USB3 connections for quick backups and large file transfers to non-network machines.

I have over 25 years worth of work backups, copies of standards, e-books, music, photos (digital and scanned) and miscellaneous personal information. My late father was an avid photographer (semi-pro for a time) and I have hundreds of his photos scanned in including 120 roll film and 35mm colour slides. Those plus my own film photos dating from 1975 when I got my first camera until about 2002 when I started using digital.

A few weeks ago someone asked me for a copy of some modelling work I did in 2003 and then paid me for retrieving it.

Quebec vehicles agency spent C$245M over budget on SAP ERP it wasn't sure it needed

Re: Performance, Cost, Schedule

Beat me to it.

Have an uptick.

Amazon's vibe-coding tool Kiro reportedly vibed too hard and brought down AWS

To properly screw up you need AI

HMRC spares 661 from Making Tax Digital as rollout nears

Re: Let Me Guess

Exactly what happened with VAT returns a few years ago. From uploading figures directly to HMRC website we now have to use a piece of software to upload exactly the same data that we used to input manually which took 5 minutes. Needless to say that if you used one of the proprietary accounts packages (Xero, Quickbooks etc) the original purchased versions don't have the functionality to work with the new HMRC system and the accounts software companies now require that you purchase a monthly or annual subscription to their SaaS systems. Fortunately I have another small company which produces a cheap software package although it now takes me over half an hour to go through the verification process to upload the data instead of the 5 minutes it took previously.

How this benefits me I am unclear. Actually I am clear, I'm being screwed over again by HMRC.

This quarterly system is exactly the same, but in my case it will cost me more as my accountant does my tax returns.

BOHICA

Bend Over Here It Comes Again.

You can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone, says Dutch defense chief

Re: There's a great alternative to the F35

You forgot to add that you can buy 4 Gripens for the price of 1 F35.

Scientists show it's possible to solve problems in your dreams by playing the right sounds

Max Headroom

What we really need is Blipverts.

For those of us old enough to remember.

Capita taps Microsoft Copilot to dig it out from UK pensions backlog

Database issues

A work acquaintance of mine is due to retire from a UK government agency shortly. Despite over 4 months of trying he still has no idea if he will get his pension on time and what the amount will be. He has spent many hours on hold by Crapita and the website doesn't work properly. He says that despite numerous attempts to correct them via website and emails his employment record is still wrong.

One excuse he has been given is that there are "database errors" which will have to be corrected by an administrator and that he will have to provide verification of his employment history and salary.

This is potentially a major issue as he has an index linked final salary pension for a large part of his service but an average salary pension for the latter part of his service.

He currently has no timescale for a resolution.

Evidently [alleged by Crapita manglement] the blame is firmly on Crapita's predecessor (MYCSP / Equiniti) for giving them bad data.

Sellafield pensions are still administered by Equiniti and they are as bad as Crapita according to one of my fields who is due to retire from Sellafield this year.

Keir Starmer declares 'months' timeline for social media age clampdown in UK

That's the Liz Kendall with an honours degree in History from Cambridge and who then went straight into politics?

Ideally qualified to understand the computer and other digital challenges. [/sarcasm off]

Price of popularity: Linux Mint's success also means maintainer stress

Ancient hardware

Running Mint / Cinnamon on a Fujitsu Q520 i7 dating from 2015 with 8GB of RAM and a SSD.

Does everything that I need other than one Win only CAD program.

Cost £95 plus 4GB of s/h RAM and a cheap 128GB SSD that I had in the box of bits.

Takes up next to no space on the desk and just works. Connected to a 27" monitor and is my daily driver.

I love it because it's simple and just works without the OS getting in the way.

M$ would be well advised to take note!

Fukushima's radioactive hybrid terror pig boom was driven by amorous mothers

Hog roast

A local comany specialises in doing Hog Roasts for parties, weddings etc.

I wonder if I could sell them self-roasting hogs?

UK unveils telecoms charter to curb mid-contract bill shocks

Another toothless regulator

We jumped from O2 a few years ago because of the ridiculous annual mid contract price rises, which in 2022 was 11.7%.

Looking at all the big players, the rises were almost identical leading me to believe that there is a price fixing cartel within the industry.

Yes, they're going to tell you that you're going to be shafted next year. How helpful is that?

Microsoft warns that poisoned AI buttons and links may betray your trust

AI being used for nefarious purposes?

Colour me shocked.

Not.

It seems to me that AI just gives more and better opportunities for baddies to steal data / money / insert ransomware etc.

Azure power hiccup gives Windows admins a rare break from updates

Unexpected power outage

Why was it unexpected?

Surely it's normal to design for occasional power failures for your critical assets and install systems like ... ooo ... maybe UPS or maybe even standby generators?

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Evidently we have "full fibre" and (allegedly) a slight increase in speed over the previous copper based system, but the last 20m of cable to our router connection is still copper and hasn't been replaced!

We have been given a new router (from EE) into which we have had to plug our landline.

SWMBO works with older people many of whom prefer to use landlines for phone communication hence retaining our landline phone.

We still have no date for getting our proper "full fibre" connection.

UK council digs deeper into capital assets to keep Oracle project afloat

The problem is ...

That there is only so much family silver you can sell.

Once you've sold off the *surplus* land and school fields to property developers for housing, once the council owned offices and buildings have been sold off and leased back , and the parks have been concreted over for warehouses then where does the money come from for ERP?

Answer - raise council tax, again, and again, and again.

Summoning the spirit of the BBC Micro with a Pi 500+ and a can of spray paint

Memories

I had a BBC Master 128 with a Viglen kit. For those who don't know this was a separate case top with space for two 5.25" or 3.5" FDDs with the keyboard on short lead (about 2 feet IIRC. Mine had one of each size floppy plus a green screen hi-res (for 1988) monitur for work (programming) and my 16" colour TV for games.

Sorry that I ever sold it.

Now if I can have the Pi with a selection of BBC games to go with it....

UK watchdog to rule on £246M Post Office subsidy over Horizon scandal and IR35

Re: Truth

As an off-payroll worker:

* You don't get paid holidays or bank holidays;

* You don't get sick pay (or private health benefits);

* You can be terminated usually at 1 weeks notice without any reason being given;

* You won't get access to any employer fringe benefits e.g. shop discount schemes;

* You aren't eligible for company car schemes;

* You have to make your own pension arrangements and contributions all come out of your pay.

HMRC IR35 tests:

* Control: Evaluates the degree of control the client has over the contractor. Outside IR35, the contractor should decide how, when, and where to work, rather than being managed like an employee;.

* Substitution (Right of Personal Service): A key indicator is whether the contractor can send a substitute to perform the work. A genuine business has the right to send a substitute, whereas an employee is required to perform work personally, as explained by People Group Services.

* Mutuality of Obligation (MOO): This checks if the client is obligated to offer work and if the contractor is obliged to accept it. Outside IR35, there should be no obligation for further work once the contract ends.

In additon:

* Financial Risk: Does the contractor bear financial risk, such as paying for their own insurance, training, and fixing mistakes at their own expense?

* Part and Parcel: Is the contractor integrated into the client's organization (e.g., having a company email, appearing on the org chart, or receiving benefits)?

* Equipment: Does the contractor use their own equipment (laptops, software) rather than the client's?

One of the other dodgy areas is working via an "umbrella company" as below:

"An umbrella company acts as an employer for temporary or contract workers, serving as an intermediary between the worker, a recruitment agency, and an end client, handling payroll, taxes (PAYE), and National Insurance, providing legal employment status, benefits, and continuous work history, while the worker performs assignments for various clients. They invoice the agency, get paid, then pay the worker through PAYE, deducting contributions, simplifying administration for the contractor."

Thus working for an umbrella company you get none of the benefits but screwed over for PAYE and you still have to arrange your own sickness insurance, pension payments etc.

I frequently get offered roles under IR35 or via an umbrella company, all of which I refuse, but I know a goodly number of people who are working in IR35 roles who are not operating within the rules (and I don't blame them). One I know sets up a new company every 12 months or so so as to stay under the HMRC radar.

I'm thankful to be operating (legally) outside IR35.

One of the previous posts was correct, it's basically screwed over the majority of small companies in favour of large consultancies employing people under IR35.

Microsoft spends billions on AI, converts just 3.3% of Copilot Chat users

Would you like AI with that?

"The company is trialling an AI-powered chatbot, which can help match drinks with customer moods, and is introducing the ability to schedule orders in a bid to reduce customer waits."

I wonder if an AI serving bot would be able to guess that I am in the mood to destroy it with a fire axe?

My choice has been to bypass any service station on the motorway that is Starbucks unless absolutely desperate for coffee, as I find them miserable and uncomfortable compared to the Costa competition (that's just my preference). Now it seems that they want ot enshittify the coffeee experience even more by having an AI bot serving? Will it talk to me and ask if how I am and then tell me to have a good day when it serves my drink?

Got to be one of the decisions that will kill the business.

UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything

Ah, the fragrant Liz Kendall. Degree in History from Cambridge and generally working in the background of politics before becoming a full time politician in 2010. Allegedly she has had several "proper" jobs other than being being an MP, particularly within think-tanks, health charities, and government advisory positions.

Perfectly suited to a role as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.

I despair of our politicians with knowledge of next to nothing relevant but an opinion on everything.

British military to get legal OK to swat drones near bases

Re: Make it legal --

Irony loss.

Oh, dear, obviously a sense of humour failure from the downvoters.

Make it legal --

-- to shoot the drone pilots.

That'll learn 'em.

Want more ads on your web pages? Try the AdBoost extension

Re: "If we don't feed the advertisers, then we'll be forced to pay artists for their creative work."

My institution has an annual flagship conference, of which I was a member of the organising committee for over 10 years. Then the institution decided to replace the independent committee with one appointed by HQ at which point the quality of the papers went down and it became an advertising shitfest for consultants touting for business, with many papers being nothing more thinly disguised advertising presentations.

IIRC, there is a saying that only 10% of advertising is effective - if only we knew which 10%.

Actually I'd say it's more like 1%.

You can guess which institution from my user name and that I'm based in the UK.

Microsoft kills standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans, because they’re not suite enough

I have this special backup system. It consists of some spinning rust in small boxs (OK, a couple of them are SSDs).

These drives, including some older 5 inch drives, store my last 25 years worth of work and personal files.

I find that the smaller ones can easily be transported in my pocket and plugged in as and when I need them.

I have never had a requirement to store my stuff in the cloud and use e.g. dropbox if I need to transfer large files.

And yes, there are at least 2 backups for all the important stuff.

Dow Chemical says AI is the element behind 4,500 job cuts

Re: De-intellectualisation?

Maintenance is not always done on a fixed timescale basis, some is, and some isn't.

For example, one of my customers uses a large gas turbine compressor which gets regular inspections every 1,000 operating hours. Maintenance decisions are then based on the condition of the equipment at inspection. Other items such as pumps often have vibration monitors which will flag up warning of e.g. impending bearing failure. For larger items such as tanks and vessels inspections are done based on risk criteria e.g. how corrosive is the process fluid. Inspections are done at a given frequency which is extended or reduced based on condition monitoring and the life of the item is thereby projected.

IMHO it's extremely short sighted to get rid of experienced maintenance techs, who are far from being 10 a penny. In addition, the type of high hazard processes operated by Dow and the dangerous chemicals used mean that lack of maintenance, or inadequate maintenance, may well result in serious accidents with injury or loss of life.

AI can't replace a skilled and experienced maintenance tech.

Most major companies use maintenance planning software e.g. SAP PM, Maximo, Fiix etc. which allow for predictive intervention.

It's still no substitute for having boots on site doing the actual work.

Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

Re: Practice Giving Instructions From The Pavement......

Huge signs needed...."Proceed"...."Turn Left"....."Go to Hell"...........

Fixed for shits & giggles.

NS&I's IT car crash considers cutting legacy links to stop the bleeding

The usual suspects

Atos and Capgemini. Who would have thunk it?

All we need now is for Crapita and Fuckitupsu to get stuck in.

The are plenty of banks with good operating systems but NS&I are potentially looking to reinvent the wheel as a square.

Again.

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

You get the support you pay for.

Or not.

The very large company I worked for in the mid-90s had a large engineering department, of which I was a member. At the time we had our own internal IT support team until some arsehole bean counter decided to outsource our IT support to IBM.

Our own team sat in an office in the adjoining block and would often appear within minutes of putting the phone down to them. The IBM contract was negotiated on the basis of the response time being proportional to the number of machines affected. Thus, more than 25 machines (we had about 100 in the section) and the response time was less than an hour, 5-10 machines it was next working day, but for a single machine it was 5 working days.

My machine went down and on ringing the support line I was told that someone would be with me "early next week". Now at the time I was a company SME and my charge out rate to the business was £65 per hour. My PC was also one of only 4 in the company which had a specific software package installed and I was one of only 6 people authorised & trained to use said package. Therefore using a spare PC wasn't an option.

My line manager was a quite senior person in the company with the title Professor. I pottered off to his office and told him the good news at which point he went ballistic (not with me, I hasten to add). The issue was then upped to the head of engineering (who sat in an office just down the corrisor). The engineering department at the time was just over 500 people. This was then (I was informed) bounced up to director level and just over an hour later I had an IBM support bod at my desk. I should explain that I probably could have fixed the machine myself as it was a driver error, but our machines were locked down as part of the IBM contract.

IBM did not get to renew the contract and we went back to having our own in-house team.

If you're one of the 16,000 Amazon employees getting laid off, read this

Re: AI is just a fashionable excuse.

A friends' son is one of the 16,000. He was one of the many agency staff employed at the Haydock (Merseyside) warehouse which distributes to other warehouses. He was given one week notice of job termination with no explanation. A number of other agency staff were also terminated at the same time, but, of course, being agency, you're expendable.

"Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, told staff in a blog post: “As I shared in October, we’ve been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership and removing bureaucracy."

Rachel Fagan, organiser for the GMB union, said: “Amazon is showing itself for what it is – a company that cannot be trusted to do the right thing by working people in the UK. “Now is the time for decision makers to see Amazon for what it is, a company fixated on eye-watering profits at the expense of workers and local people.”

I wonder how a worker doing pick and pack at distribution centre is classified as a beaurocrat?

As for the wonderful title "senior vice president of people experience and technology" I would not work for any organisation that had that kind of job title for the manglement.

Sat Nad declares Windows 11 has a billion users – just don't bother asking for details

The real reasons?

W11 offers no real advantages over W10 for the average and many corporate users.

Canges to the desktop and added spyware and adverts have put off many people.

Trying to talk up an operating system that's not as good as its' predecessor.

Microsoft plans more server farms, despite water worries

Magic water

" ...the cloud computing behemoth [M$] launched its Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative earlier this month, in which it pledged to minimize its use of the wet stuff, and even replenish more water than it draws."

I'm looking forward to the hearing the way in which M$ will magically make more fresh water appear. To the best of my knowledge there is a limited number of sources:

Groundwater: Suckingf lots of ground water out will be unpopular with those people who rely on wells for their drinking water.

Rivers: As we know, largely at the mercy of rainfall and climate change (not necessarily global warming, just the changes in weather patterns although GW may play a part.)

Rain: Notoriously unpredictable (see rivers above).

Perhaps M$ are planning to tow icebergs from the [ant]arctic?

Cops get more facial recognition vans as UK bets big on AI policing

Re: Broken Brit-AI-n

Welcome to 1984.

Microsoft illegally installed cookies on schoolkid's tech, data protection ruling finds

Re: Default On.

Your data is worth money to advertisers. Anyone who thinks M$ are an altruistic company is very much mistaken, all M$ care about is $$$$$.

Successive versions of Windows have progressively added more and more reporting back to M$ by default, that plus the increase in unwanted and unwarranted advertising (especially in W11) has progressively moved me towards non-MS products wherever possible, in particular Linux in my case. I actually won't have W11 on any of my machines.

Children are an easy target as is anyone who is less than technically proficient. Has anyone counted how many separate apyware settings have to be turned off in W10 and W11 and which are on by default?

My trust in anything M$ has reached an all-time low.

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Tools for Tools

I am an engineer and the type that grew up around large lumps of moving metal made in Luton (Bedford trucks). Thus I have a comprehensive toolkit which used to live under my desk and was used for various tasks including building or repairing office furniture, occasional car repairs for other members of staff etc. I also had a smaller and more delicate toolkit in my desk drawer which I used for computer repairs.

One day I came back from lunch to find my big toolbox open and a large screwdriver missing.

A search around the building and I found a young female clerical assistant attempting to open a tower case (which usually sat under the desk) by prising it open with the screwdriver wedged into the rear of the (very solid) steel case! The case was the sort that could be opened simply by pressing the relevant spring loaded locking lugs upwards and opening the hinged side of the case. (Dell Dimension from the 1990s?)

It turned out that the young lady in question had taken off her engagement ring and managed to drop it into the open CD tray from whence it ended up inside the CD drive. She was in tears trying to get the computer open.

Fortunately I got to her before she damaged the case other than a few scratches.

Turned out that the ring was inside the CD drive which had to be removed, the tray opened and shaken gently until said ring fell out.

Some very strong words were said but it turned out that she had only been engaged a few days and had taken the ring off to moisturise her hands!

Fortunately the PC and the CD drive lived to fight another day. The young lady who was a temp, disappeared a few days later never to be seen again.

Three is the magic number for Alaska Airlines: triple redundancy

Cloud computing for an airline?

Let's hope that they have an instrument rating and aren't trying to fly VFR.

Microsoft 365 outage drags on for nearly 10 hours during bad night for North American infra

if only everything was as reliable ...

... as Microsoft 365 ... we'd all be in a complete mess.

With a nod to Paula Hamilton.

In all seriousness, M$ online services seem to be getting less reliable with time.

With the engineering systems that are part of my day job, reliability improves with time as we work the bugs out.

I just wonder at what point do M$ get the message? Possibly more to the point, when do users get the message and rebel?

Tech support detective solved PC crime by looking in the carpark

Sometimes it is the management...

I joined a small company in 2000 as a partner in the business. At the time I didn't have a laptop and so I was loaned one that had been purchased for use by "a mate of mine who did some marketing for me" this from the MD who was my business *partner*.

Finding it a bit slow and the HDD a bit short of space I set about doing a clean-up. Going through the Internet Explorer temporary files I found a large amount of porn. Nothing outrageous but enough in quantity to clog up the HDD. I did a thorough clean of the machine including removing the porn files and also clearing out the internet history.

A few days later I mentioned to my business partner that I had given the machine a thorough clean out and had found out a lot of porn files and links to porn sites which I had deleted.

"Oh, he said, that must have been my mate Andy using it to look at porn".

I later found out that my *business partner* had a serious porn addiction and was undergoing counselling for this.

I never told him that I knew about this but I left the company a few years later after finding out about his financial shenannigans.