Posts by PCScreenOnly

Microsoft resets 'days since last Windows 11 problem' counter to 0

Fucking Cnuts

I have my machines all set (or I thought so), so I have to initiate an update. I typically do a VM - post snapshot and non critical - and then over a week do the other devices. 2 laptops are done differently as can use one as the backup of the other (only difference is one is AMD vs intel - other than that, a clone)

I wondered last night why I had no updates when I checked tje VM and did think. Perhaps they miscounted and gone to week 3, but no, I just looked at my laptop here as it had rebooted and they auto updated overnight - all of them

What gives them to right to trample all over my preferences of not auto updating and doing what they like ?

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

Re: Ticket Ordering

Amount of tickets I've lost as the site has incorrectly said I am a bot

Re: We asked....if this would be an opt-in feature

How as every gpedit, powershell or other option Ive seen does not, may hide it, but does not uninstall

Oracle says its cloud was in fact compromised

to be honest, that is all bollox anyway

I started at a company and in a few of the various docs, he added his phone number and message to "call for dinner"

I knew it was there in various docs, including ones I updated, I left it there, I filed them every year until I left

No one ever came to any of us to ask us to explain it

EU may target US tech giants in tariff response

Re: Hmm

Penguins will agree

Home Office haunted by 25-year-old asylum system

Government and IT systems

Never fail to show failure

I wonder whose fault this is

Not good enough analysis

Poor requirement gathering

Scope creep

Incompetence

Wrong tool

Too many customisations for said tool

worked fine in version 1.0 or said too, but 2.0 made changes and broke all customisations

Add more to the list as there is bound to be many

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Ones Aurora

The best are when you arrived at said persons desk, they went to demonstrate the issue and it just worked.

Time take 0 seconds

That said, you then got the late Friday afternoon call that on paper and in your head say 5 mins tops. late Friday night and you are still battling away, cursing and thinking "When will I ever learn, the quick 5 mins jobbies at the end of the day are anything but..."

Pennsylvania’s once top coal power plant eyed for revival as 4.5GW gas-fired AI campus

Nvidia new rack

So now we know where the first Nvidia recently announced AI track will go

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

Same area of town

I know one company whose main DR site was literally the other side of the Thames. They didn't seem to really grasp that some disasters can take out large area's for various reasons

Re: Bombs too

And after that, we left a "server" in the Cobham office, During a meeting, I decided I would go and do a restore from a previous tape. Only one problem, the toe rags in Cobham were using *our* server.

I started to do random arrivals and test restores. One week I did three consecutive days. I was asked "what are you doing and why, you were only here yesterday or the day before". I simply replied "you never know when a disaster may happen"

Bombs too

Always surprised me how bt would take an absolute age to do anything. But with the houndsditch bomb (dump truck, not st Mary axe or Liverpool st that to out just glass) weren't, they could move all our lines from our office around the corner to Cobham in Surrey within 2hrs

British govt wants to mainline AI, but its arteries are clogged with legacy tech

they join Reform

Need to remove the incumbent consultancies

Clearly, they are just interested in a BAU scenario, costing a fortune, not having to employee engineers who are good, but just about able to keep the lights on.

Change of culture at the top and then ditching all the usual suspects and rebuilding internal knowledge is probably the best place to start

Hm, why are so many DrayTek routers stuck in a bootloop?

Re: Inscrutably bad router

I have a few r7800's. One is stock and surprisingly had an update a little while ago

The others are dd-wrt, did look at open wrt when kong moved over, but I don't do enough to warrant me getting that stuck into the cli

Much better for security. Though done feature do get lost or slower

Fond memories of done old draytek's from segcom on cix

London's poor 5G blamed on spectrum, investment, and timing of Huawei ban

More coverage, lower speeds

I'd prefer if they could reach their 99% coverage with decent 4G speeds instead of marketing schpiel about 5G and super speeds.

5G is so bad that I have disabled it on my phone as it is too unreliable

Apple hallucinated Siri's future AI features, lawsuit claims

Re: Given this....

To me, all I need from a phone is to know how improved the camera is, and is it worth upgrading from my current phone.

Next to no difference to me with my use. And when it comes down to me I want to know if it still has a microsd option

The misses on her last 2 upgrades had asked the same and she is in the iPhone camp.

Re: Are you sure?….

Do we have ABC in the fridge?

Frequent question when someone changes their mind over what we have for dinner ( from the previous shop and intended meals)

Washing machine, yeah I struggle with that

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

London Stansted, London Luton.

Just waiting for London Manchest / London Glasgow

Nearly as good as Lympne international airport - when I lived in that area, they started to redo the A2070 - bit odd and it was a really nice road. It was as if they started to build a great new road to the Lympne international airport and then realised a) how small it was b) no longer in use

BOFH: Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?

bloody spooky

Trying to update the firmware on an old Marvell 9123 sata controller.

Not quite stuck at 83%, but one version says it applies, but no card or devices - OS boots with none

Another says applied, shows the devices but kills the OS

I know it is an old card, but it is needed for an old external box. Newer esata cards using ASM just lockup no matter what.

The post-quantum cryptography apocalypse will be televised in 10 years, says UK's NCSC

SMS

Don't worry, you'll still be asked to validate from the SMS text they are about to send you.

Nice and safe

China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust

Re: not making this a Trump / Musk problem

Tesla roof tiles still interest me, especially as I need to redo the whole roof as the tiles I have now no-one will install panels onto because of the type of tiles, the way they lift and no underfelt.

Redo roof + get solar, or redo roof in solar.

Dell discloses monster 20-petaFLOPS desktop built on Nvidia's GB300 Superchip

24H2

Wonder how well it runs the above ? (Machine killer for some)

Don't want Copilot app on your Windows 11 machine? Install this official update

24H2 - killer

Unless a recent patch has changed it, every machine of mine (5 ThinkPads or a homebrew "server") are all sluggish with 24H2

None of the machines are bad spec (x240 is the worst for ram) and buzz along as happily as they can with the older (23H2)

Maybe they're is a benefit to updating.....

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

Patreon

For some sites that are good I'll pay. The amount of magazines I used to buy each week/month was worth it, even at the end with magazines like micromart where you got it, you already knew most of the "new" articles and news. The sales section was always a laugh, but editorial or writers articled were worth the money - good on a Friday evening with a quiet coffee or by the bank on a day's fishing

Re: At this point, adtech can be considered malware

The old virgin TiVo boxes on virgon were good at that. The new ones are absolute shit ( in every respect)

Re: AI generated content might ironically be the the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Try asking to remove copilot or Gemini and of it goes and gives the standard "application wizard" or " go into system / application and turnover from there

Anyone searching (or on here) knows that these are not how to do it

It's just give for standard app removal and replaced <app name> with copilot/Gemini

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

Re: Bloody Samsung...

disable Wifi, add whatever smart stick you trust

One of our TV's the makers (Sony) used such a shit processor that many apps removed themselves, so disable wifi and I have a Roku in there - though only for Plex as we get the apps we use via an STB

The other is a newish Fire TV - I would disable all that shit, but the kids use that room more and want its features so they are logged in with our son's account, otherwise I would disable it as well and be the same as the Sony - STB or a Roku for plex

Re: In-car use?

If use Android Auto, it is because I want Waze over the car's sat nav and I am pressing the cars interface and not talking to the damn thing.... partly as it cannot hear me over the music blasting out - and I want music more than some bloody AI shit

Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied

Re: File too big

No always MS in my case,

Bit I do stress I have lowered the res, the colours and tried to do it as fast as I can, yet the video is still over their "size".

File too big

Occasonally tried to send a report with a video and get told the Video is too big - no matter what I have tried to do to the video / colour settings etc.

Then get asked to "attach the video" and point I cannot as I am told it is too big, and oh, i cannot send via email as it is..... too big

Official HP toner not official enough after dodgy update, say users

Re: I remember when HP was a good company

Ta

Re: if a customer HP has invested in

I'm lucky, mine is in the middle of the water feed so any inline filter will do

Re: I remember when HP was a good company

Good old canon

LaserJet 2686a, then the LaserJet II

Re: if a customer HP has invested in

No problem with our Samsung washer, fridge, oven, microwave here

Now tomorrow all of them will die

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Security & updates

For many devices, the vendors should be forced, by law to make security updates for a long period of time.

For a phone at least 5 years, preferably 10 or more. Many older phones (especially it if was high end at the time of purchase) are still good and functional today, and sometimes better spec'd that todays cheapo's, but no support.

Apps may work, but if you try to 3rd party OS them, some apps recognise and instantly fail. Why, the OS is now more secure and I only did this as <vendor> does not update the OS for this model any more.

With things like W11. I can understand to a degree, so no 32bit chips - fair enough, or going from PPC to Intel, then Intel to arm - fair enough, but on the whim of a company to block perfectly good devices - should not be allowed or they are forced to provide a good compensation scheme - and not just £50 for a 6th gen intel based device)

Can you imagine the hoohar with TV's ? OK, we lost analog, but a lot of more modern TV's were digital for years - so stop scanning Analog. TV's for years have had HDMI, so an external box to give freeview or a smart stick to get others. can even get HDMI to Scart to get the older generation TV's going. If your TV does not have SCART you really are on a hiding to nothing, but lets be honest, that TV would have had a damn good innings so I think at this stage if is fair to say you may need a new TV

'Uber for nurses' exposes 86K+ medical records, PII in open S3 bucket for months

Move the E

Make the prefix E into a suffix world be more appropriate

Google begs owners of crippled Chromecasts not to hit factory reset

Don't do themselves any favours

Some products should just run and run.

These clearly have a finate life based on Google's whim, I forget what home thermostat stopped, Sonos with their screwed updates

At least with smart TV's you can buy a cheap product to give smart features

Still have my slim devices - all these years since Logitech bought them and then seemingly instantly dropped them. Thankful for open source and dedicated devs

$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well

Uk gvt, oracle + outsourcing

At least an excel spreadsheet is considerably cheaper for the same experience

Microsoft goes native with Copilot. Again

Re: Control more of their PC using a conversational interface

Of if from the MS Community, some plank who has no idea who will start of with something like

"HI I am clippy,

I have 12 years working with Microsoft Windows and I am here to help you

Please reboot / try a full install / sorry, Windows cannot do that"

The last response maybe after a few weeks of telling Clippy they are a twat, we have tried everything else and it still does not work

Can disable installation

So now, if we know the folders and file names, try the old trick of addng your own files that do squat diddly and then changing the ACL to stop anything from being able to do anything and see if that works

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: How would an E2EE system be backdoored without a backdoor in the encryption?

Ms recall

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

Re: "Firstly, normal people don't care what car they or anyone else is driving"

I do know quite a lot of people who when asked what car they have will give answers like

"Red one" and no idea of make or model, just red.

"A Ford", to which the follow up question of "what model" may have been me asking for the square root of 498 judging by the look on their face.

The SO is pretty good when we are looking at cars for one of us. Right now I can be told about most small SUV's from any angle, any make model - as this is what is being purchased soon. Crap on any other type of car though

Re: they're not like us

Scorpio - old frog eyes itself

The Multipa were really decent cars, well use abroad as Taxi's

Re: they're not like us

Fortuneatly, illegal over here - though seeing the rain + rust comment that would be fun.

Wonder if it is worse than 50/60's british cars or 70's italian ones ?

Re: Unless a finger smear or a slice of cheese is enough to damage the Cybertruck

and no wonder it can rot through anything

Re: Courts to the rescue

Wouldn't buy one of those then would they

Microsoft: So what if it costs 4X as much to run Windows Server in AWS, Alibaba, and Google?

Buy / License the OS

It should be one cost (OK, there is the core vs CPU), but once I have that, it should not matter where it is run and that should not impact the cost.

What next.

W11 running on

CoPilot PC = 50% discount

Dell = 1.5x

Lenovo / HP = 2x

Other = 4 x

How Google tracks Android device users before they've even opened an app

Re: Google free

Love to, but all my banking apps stop working no matter what I try to hide it.

Barclays are the worst. May get it going for a short while and then bosh, thye get it blocked again

No point telling them that a later Linage OS is more secure an an old OS

Non-biz Skype kicks the bucket on May 5

Thought they said skype

And not the whole of Microsoft

Payday from hell as several British banks report major outages

Tied at the end

I have accounts with both and being a sad IT git, have my own domain. Email address was [e-mail]. I got a Lloyds one, set that with [e-mail] and then halifax emails went to the same address.

Tried to complain and was told "we are the same group", but pointed out that according to FCS you are independant (hence £75k protection) and so everything should be retreated so, including email addresses. They didn't get it and nothing done

Now they are doing a new project where you can go into any Halifax / Lloyds / BOS and do ALL banking for any of those 3 banks regardless of the branch. This is a new feature - only becuse they are trying to close more branchines IMHO.