Posts by Tim Kemp

Cloudflare suffers second outage in as many months during routine maintenance

So Cloudflare is a bit like having foster parents? They care, sometimes for free, sometimes not, but ultimately your life depends on them not being killed by a bot?

(yes I made that up just to use this icon)

Dorset Council ditching customized SAP for £14M Oracle overhaul

Re: Are not council business requirements largely the same across the UK?

No, They're not. There's a massive difference between a council the size and scope of Birmingham to that for example of Hull. Some councils have housing, some don't. Some have pensions to administer, others outsource that. Adult Social care and other central grant funded obligations have very odd accounting processess, and the number of transactions is large and complex.

The real insight behind measuring Copilot usage is Microsoft's desperation

Re: Microsoft surveillence software

Copilot wouldn't tell me, but perplexity was happy to offer;

Is there any way to detect whether my employer is using Viva Insights?

If so, is there any way to then poison the data that it collects?

It is possible to detect if your employer is using Microsoft Viva Insights by checking if you have access to the Viva Insights features through your Microsoft 365 account. Employees typically receive Viva Insights via the Microsoft Teams app, Outlook add-in, or the standalone Viva Insights web app. If you can access personalized insights about your work patterns, meeting time, and wellbeing recommendations in those apps, it is a strong indicator that your employer has enabled Viva Insights for your organization [1][2][8].

Regarding poisoning the data collected by Viva Insights, it is important to note that Viva Insights aggregates data from multiple Microsoft 365 services (emails, calendar, Teams chats) and applies privacy protections like aggregation and differential privacy. The analytics are designed to be robust against anomalies and individual tampering. While theoretically one could skew own personal data by deliberately manipulating patterns like calendar events or emails, this would not meaningfully affect aggregated team or organizational reports used by managers and leaders. Additionally, intentional data poisoning could violate workplace policies and ethical guidelines and might have consequences.

In summary:

- You can detect Viva Insights usage if you have access to the Viva Insights apps or personalized insight dashboards in Microsoft Teams or Outlook.

- Attempting to poison data is practically limited to your own personal data and unlikely to affect larger aggregated insights.

- Such actions are not recommended or ethical because Viva Insights is intended to improve workplace productivity and wellbeing with privacy protections in place.

If you want to check if Viva Insights is enabled for you, look for the Viva Insights app in Teams, the Outlook add-in, or visit insights.viva.office.com [1][2][8].

Citations:

[1] We answered all your questions about Viva Insights https://www.intelogy.co.uk/blog/we-answered-all-your-questions-about-viva-insights/

[2] Wellbeing and Productivity Tools | Microsoft Viva Insights https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-viva/insights

[3] Analyze your Microsoft 365 workplace data using ... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/analyze-microsoft-365-workplace-data-use-microsoft-viva-insights/

[4] Introduction to Viva Insights https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/insights/introduction

[5] Microsoft Viva Insights: Boosting Productivity and ... https://www.easylife365.cloud/stories/microsoft-viva-insights/

[6] Microsoft Viva Insights Implementation and Support Services https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/348462269308208

[7] Microsoft Viva Insights – What it is and how to use it - Valto https://valto.co.uk/microsoft-viva/insights/

[8] Viva Insights – IT Service https://it.wp.worc.ac.uk/staff/work-from-anywhere/microsoft-365/viva-insights/

[9] Use Microsoft Viva Insights in Outlook https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/use-microsoft-viva-insights-in-outlook-83d09caa-bfe8-4cb9-8f64-30afd79cc75d

[10] Measure Engagement and Productivity with Microsoft Viva https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az1bvjgabvM

A single DNS race condition brought Amazon's cloud empire to its knees

Re: bed is stuck

Certainly here in the UK one does not need to have an internet connection to have an adjustable or assistive bed...

It's crazy how much shit depends on cloud connectivity.

Apple's ultra-thin iPhone flops as foldable iPad hits a crease

Cowards

Bravery would have been to release an iPhone without a camera, offering a privacy bump, less distraction, more space for battery etc.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

Re: Private or Work?

Or christian immoral code?

SonicWall breach hits every cloud backup customer after 5% claim goes up in smoke

Re: not just in businesss.. but share price is Higher

[checks availability for chronicwall.com]

Hundreds of millions of business PCs are still on Windows 10 as D-Day nears

Re: Deliberately ignoring it?

If any of them have cyber insurance, they may want to check their terms. If they don't, they may want to get some and upgrade their PCs.

Employees regularly paste company secrets into ChatGPT

Re: Personal access at work

Unless you also ban personal devices from work as well, you can have your favourite LLM dream up a wrong answer to an issue by pointing the phone camera at the monitor and asking from there.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Coercive control

In a romantic relationship insisting someone stays at home is coercive control, yet in a working relationship no justification needs to be given for an RTO order.

Employers forget that they employ humans and to make them want to return to office the office environment needs to be appealing and necessary, COVID years showed many how unnecessary it is.

The business I worked for lost no revenue or profit during that time, and retained flexible working afterwards, making targets all goal and performance based and allowing people who's jobs were not time or location based to work when and where they want.

Staff became more appreciative and happy, worked better and smarter and produced better results. Office space was available for thos who wanted it, growth became less expensive as we didn't need to upgrade infrastructure and property to expand the business.

Too many bosses looking at the past and thinking control rather than leadership is the key to success.

Hack to school: Parents told to keep their little script kiddies in line

It's a good point towards the end of your post, I grew up with BBC / Sinclair at school, and went into IT because it was interesting. I recently had some students working with me who hated their IT course because it was dull.

Hiring people for a career in IT is hard.

I came here to comment "Was it little Bobby Tables again"

Breathe easy: Apple Watch can read your oxygen levels again

Blood Pressure

HiLo, formerly Aktia, have been doing blood pressure monitoring on a wristband for a while, needs monthly calibration but the whole process is slick and integrated into one app. Not a cheap toy but I've had one for a few years.

Citrix signals return to the mainstream hypervisor market with a product it says isn’t quite ready for the job

We used to refer to our wanscalers as WankSailors. Great when working, somewhat frustrating when not. That said I used to like working with Citrix but I struggle to see their relevancy these days.

How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'

Post-Its FTW

Whenever we do refreshes, or post M&A work, or other large scale IT interventions, we try to grab a room / office, and put a post it pad and instructions outside the room.

Instructions along the lines of "Write down your name, phone number, problem and where we can find you". What we then do is every time one of our IT guys goes in or out they (a) pick one to fix and (b) reshuffle the others by priority.

It gives the users a clear view of why we're busy, what we're aware of, what we're working on. They can also re-prioritise. It builds engagement and trust and has worked well for us. I learned this from an Aussie IT manager...

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Re: How?

All ofthem I expect. There's no reason for an airport to need power backup for all its systems, and they rely on a lot of third party and off site services to work as well. For example air traffic control and coordination, parking, road networks, communications etc.

As a regional outage will affect all of that there's no cost-benefit to keeping anything other than emergency lighting and evacuation, and critical systems, operational as people won't be able to get to the airport, get away from the airport, or fly anywhere anyway.

How the OS/2 flop went on to shape modern software

Re: Thanks for a trip down memory lane

Planars, DASDs and AMDs. I miss the days of IBM calling stuff by names no one else used.

Fujitsu does not trust Post Office in use of Horizon data in future third-party prosecutions

They were paid for a system to handle data, and produce information. They were not paid for data.

Microsoft's results are in, but the E7 subscription remains mythical. For now

The dilemma is often that the Microsoft platform now encompasses so much of what 75 percent of business users use, want and need, that IT providers are focussing directly on it and deskilling in everything else.

Management will buy Microsoft because it's quite cheap and all works together. Single vendor removes interoperability issues, near universal acceptance of Microsoft as the desktop platform of choice means development and compatibility are good. Conversely it's also the largest attack surface and massively disruptive when it goes down.

We have backed ourselves into this corner, and need to ensure we protect ourselves and our data. The clever ones can still operate their businesses when Microsoft, Google or AWS are down.

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Disk encryption on servers?

Sometimes policy requires disk encryption when using equipment you don't own such as public cloud.

Yet another reason for keeping a copy of data on site.

Workload written by student made millions, ran on unsupported hardware, with zero maintenance

Re: A quick question

I believe a major reputable organisation was still running some code myself and a colleague wrote in a hurry one night on a server room floor right up to 2019, we wrote the code in 1995. It was interfacing a data stream from RS485 and sending it to an AS400. I think we revised it once in that time when the data stream was moved from the RS485 network to ethernet.

During its lifecycle it was P-V and continued to run, in windows 2000 in its last incarnation, 24/7/52.

It was I think mostly VB6...

I'll see your data loss and raise you a security policy violation

Re: Outlook...

You mean Reverse Chronological Desktop Heap Sorting?

Huawei wins big intellectual property case in Europe – against fashion house Chanel

"But fashion house Chanel found it offensive because it resembles its own logo, depicted below on a tub of moisturiser that inexplicably costs around $100."

At 25 quid for an 8ml ink cartridge from many printer manufacturers, I wonder where they learned that from?

Splunk junks 'hanging' processes, suggests you don't 'hit' a key: More peaceful words now preferred in docs

Re: Primary...

"'Dominant' and 'Subservient' - now where's the 'GIMP' when it's needed?"

Replacing Photoshop for those who don't like paying for subscriptions.

Dev creeped out after he fired up Ubuntu VM on Azure, was immediately approached by Canonical sales rep

Am I the only person that thinks that whether or not you consider this acceptable is irrelevant, you should either (a) read all the damned terms and conditions before clicking Accept (along with all the related terms and conditions) or (b) assume that the contract is biased solely in the vendor's favour and they will do what they like with the data and then find something in the 4,000,000 page agreement that covers their behaviour?

If you don't want to be stalked don't have an online presense. If you care about privacy so much then stop using t'internet.

Samsung slings the skinny on its 12GB GötterDRAMmerung for next-gen smartmobes

Didn't Sir Clive

intimate that you could run a power station on a 1k ZX80?

Total Inability To Support User Phones: O2 fries, burning data for 32 million Brits

Using a multi-net SIM here. Feeling smug today.

I wonder how many people finding voice calls affected are trying to use VoLTE?

UK 'meltdown' bank TSB's owner: Our IT migration was a 'success'

Saw Pester on the news last nigjht, when asked when the systems would be up he replied "I've been told 4 PM but we can't always believe what IT people say".

That's disgraceful. He is CEO, buck stops there. If he can't trust his IT department and leadership then why did he allow the transfer to proceed?

How life started on Earth: Sulfur dioxide builds up, volcanoes blow, job done – boffins

Punctuation...

... congratulations on hiding "blow job" in the headline!

Sysadmin told to spend 20+ hours changing user names, for no reason

Not difficult.

1. Document and inform of the risk

2. Create a transformation project, engage a consultant

3. Create a process, and a test, then re-assess risk

4. Request budget for change.

5. Create methods and scripts for PFYs to follow an implement

6. Await sign off from 2IC to approve the potential downfall of anything AD linked for the whim of a change, then either sit back knowing you've been vindicated because he backs out, or plough on and kick off the change project, knowing that the overtime is coming, and the "I told you so" moment will be glorious.

Freeparking hit by DDoS, vexed customers scream into abyss

The joys of hosting.

I've worked for a small hosting company, DDOS on the servers is a nightmare, hard to mitigate, slow to fix and when you're in it it's like being drowned with screaming customers who do not understand that no matter what they do there's nothing that can be done that isn't being done.

I've used FP for years, and they're no worse than the other small providers I use, I'm in no hurry to move my domains away from them based on a DDOS and a few migration issues, those customers of mine who have complained I've explained the situation to and offered to move them to other provision but with the explanation that such action is not a mitigation against re-occurrence.

Hopefully FP will put better plans for communication in place and better mitigation against future attack and maybe spread the DNS around a little more, and publish a statement showing their diligence and what they have improved, and it won't hurt them too much, as it stands today I'm not moving my domains away, about 60% of mine are with them.

Photo finesse: Eyefi Mobi Pro Wi-Fi SD card

Indeed the older cards do support pro. I've had mine ages and for me the best thing is that you can have a mifi running, and with a couple of photographers covering one event the images are backed up as they are shot. I seldom sent RAW that way but to know that if your camera was stolen that the images were safe was a big bonus.

Sony Bravia KDL-37S5500

couldn't get a power saving indication?

Why not invest on http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270326836162 - made me realise that all these claims for low power by LCD TV manufacturers are pretty much rubbish, and that my Plasma isn't that bad after all.

El Reg obtains snap of OGC logo reveal

the funny thing about monday

was them publicising the web address "www.introducingmonday.com" and neglecting to get the .co.uk

http://www.b3ta.com/newsletter/issue44/

3Com - a company built on ether

USR modems

I bought a new courier a few months ago for use on a fax server, still brillian and was used for a couple of weeks while BT got the DSL sorted at that site.

Still expensive, still big, still black with a slide volume control, still connect first time and as fast as the line will go.