A fourth book...
Is shown to the acckuntants, who otherwise might be tempted to turn you in to the taxman for the reward...
Posts by Daniel Pfeffer
35 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Apr 2023
Register reader hit with surprise bill after Microsoft portals disagreed
BOFH: Oh no! The CMS ate 500 pages of corporate documentation
How Voyager engineers found two more years in a 50-year-old power budget
GitHub AI agent leaks private repos when asked nicely
Security boss thought MFA would be too much security
UK firm bombarded debt-ridden people with 5.5M texts
Engineer accused of insider trading tied to Microsoft's reboot of Three Mile Island nuclear plant
Friday 26th June 2026 16:25 GMT
Re: am i missing something?
The last time I sat through insider information training, it was explained to me that any company information not released to the public (i.e. via a press release, published on our website, or reported in official , public filings) may be material insider information.
I cannot beleive that Casey Muggleston was not given similar training.
A modest proposal: Reformat everything to make documents more palatable to AI
AI is code – and can't be prompted into being smarter
Listen up, England. The Health Secretary is going to be data controller for everyone's Single Patient Record
Benevolent dictator Zuck will give Meta staff 30-minute breaks from keylogging privacy assault
Thursday 4th June 2026 20:34 GMT
There is no way I would work for a US company in the US!
In other parts of the world, there is a certain expectation of privacy even in the workpkace. For example, it is illegal in my country to place cameras in private offices. It is also illegal to routinely monitor what one is entering on the work-supplied equipment.
This does not mean that no monitoring can take place. For example, phone, email and nerwork logs are legal, and the employer can have IT examine any work-supplied equipment for contraband.
The idea is to provide a reasonable balance between the employer's needs and the worker's rights.
Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold
Microsoft slaps new coat of paint on Copilot, buries annoying button
Disgruntled 0-day hunter 'humiliated' by Microsoft pledges 'bone shattering drop' as Redmond calls cops
AI sackings reach New Zealand, which will use it to eject 14 percent of government staff
Monday 25th May 2026 07:28 GMT
AI-related sackings in public service
This is the first time I have heard of any government initiative actually reducing the size of the civil service. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to last. I expect that as the shortcomings of AI agents come to light, the number of supervisory staff will increase and swamp any putative savings
Calling out corporate BS? There's a steaming pile to aim for
Microsoft fixes VS Code after app gives Copilot credit for human's work
Royal Navy chief backs drones, autonomous weapons in ‘Hybrid Navy’
Sunday 3rd May 2026 20:01 GMT
The First Sea Lord is fighting the last war
"the First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins said that there was still very much a place for the navy in the modern world, but that adopting new technology is critical to its future capabilities."
Leaving aside the "gunboat diplomacy" of the past, navies are essential to police national and international waters against bad actors such as the Somali and Houthi pirates, and rogue states such as Iran. This need will exist until the Millennium comes, and all men are brothers.
Navies are now vulnerable to asymmetric warfare. It costs much less to overwhelm the defences of a ship with (say) 1000 drones than it does to build a new ship. The last time that the West faced such a problem was during WWII, with the Japanese kamikaze pilots.
IMAO, the way to solve the asymmetric warfare problem is not to build expensive unmanned ships, but to design cheap defences. A laser system, for example, could shoot down drones at a cost of a few £s per shot for the electeicity required.
(I am aware of the problems involving inclement weather etc., but if no one attempts to solve these problems, they definitely won't be solved.)
Visual Studio 18.5 lands with AI debugging at a price, devs still feeling blue
Thursday 16th April 2026 15:57 GMT
MS are not eating their own dogfood
When developing a large project or when trying to find a bug, it is important to have the same compilation environment throughout the lifetime of the project. Failure to do so may introduce new bugs or cause some bugs to disappear. Auto-updates make preserving the environment impossible.
Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers
They thought they were downloading Claude Code source. They got a nasty dose of malware instead
ServiceNow allegedly says salesman 'overachieved' and is not entitled to comp
Microsoft veteran says some 'broken by update' PCs were already doomed
Friday 3rd April 2026 09:49 GMT
Re: He has a point, but the issue is that the architecture allows it
Home users basically can't buy a computer without Microslop installed
Not quite true. Many manufacturers are selling laptops (and possibly desktops, haven't checked) with no O/S, with FreeDOS, or with Linux installed. I agree that the first two options are unlikely to be chosen by the typical home user, but they are available.
DEF CON bans three Epstein-linked men from future events
Thursday 19th February 2026 17:08 GMT
Re: Inappropriate knee jerk reaction.
How about banning those who delivered groceries to his New York apartment? Those who delivered groceries to his island? At what point does one draw a line in the sand and say "this business relationship is tainted by Epstein's crimes"?
I would say that the only ones who should be banned are those who either participated in his crimes or had knowledge of them and did nothing.
6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom
CIOs told: Prove your AI pays off – or pay the price
Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake
Monday 16th February 2026 18:00 GMT
Double-Dutch police screwup?
The downloader behaved extremely stupidly by demanding "something in return" for returning the downloaded files. He deserves the trouble that he's getting.
OTOH, how were the Dutch police going to verify that the files were actually deleted? Do they have a remote shredder? :)
Whitehall rejects £1.8B digital ID price tag – but won't say what it will cost
UK finally vows to look at 35-year-old Computer Misuse Act
Tuesday 9th December 2025 17:42 GMT
Using your analogy, who appointed the researchers Guardians of the Public Security?
In the days when we still had policemen on the beat, they (in some jurisdictions) might have been expected to check whether shops or warehouses were locked at night and to notify the proprietors if they were not. This was considered part of their job as Public Safety Officers. The researchers have no such public (or private) sanction.