Posts by nichomach

Booby-trapped Alpine Quest Android app geolocates Russian soldiers

Oh no! Anyway...

Judge says US Treasury ‘more vulnerable to hacking’ since Trump let the DOGE out

But we know, of course...

...that however hard that judge slams the stable door, the horse has not only bolted but flipped the bird to the law on its way out. That data is now irrevocably in the hands of Musk and his sturmtruppen.

UK aims to fix government IT with help from AI Humphrey

Personally I welcome anything which allows the government to ignore the public more swiftly and efficiently.

Consult AI:

"In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we *can* do.

Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now."

3Blue1Brown copyright takedown blunder by AI biz blamed on human error

Re: A Perfect System

I've seen this movie - "we take the humans out of the loop!"

*nuclear holocaust ensues*

Amazon accused of cheating low-income Prime users out of two-day deliveries

Re: “protecting the safety of drivers”

Including USPS, who will be legally obliged to serve the neighbourhoods that Amazon don't want to. So Amazon pocket the excess profits of charging for a service that they can't deliver, while relying upon a government regulated service to fill in the gaps? Their tax bill should DEFINITELY go up.

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

Anyone else impressed by the biblical level of chutzpah in the statement "On this particular topic, I absolutely don't trust the Post Office,"?

NASA pushes decision on bringing crew back in Starliner to the end of August

Re: Suit SL != Capsule Dragon

As in:

"We have two competing connector standards"

"Let us design a new universal connector standard to solve the problem!"

.

.

.

.

.

"We have three competing connector standards..."

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

I think there are about to be...

SO...they're claiming the right...

...to fire with insufficient notice, while sueing for being fired with insufficient notice...

Too late now for canary test updates, says pension fund suing CrowdStrike

CS: "We believe this case lacks merit"

Investors and clients: *point to millions of screen caps of goosed computers*

CS: "We believe this case lacks sufficient merit..."

Qilin: We knew our Synnovis attack would cause a healthcare crisis at London hospitals

Oh, it's a politically motivated TERRORIST attack

Fine. Treat them as hostile threat actors, find them, kill them. They're happy to kill innocent civilians, they should be fair game in return.

BOFH: So you want more boardroom tech that no one knows how to use

Re: Laminate everything

No, silly - you laminate the USER. Solves everything.

Justice Dept reportedly starts criminal probe into Boeing door bolt incident

Sentences you have to read twice...

...and even then they're difficult to believe: "if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share"

How, excuse me, the flying FUCK can a procedure like that be "undocumented"???

"We're going to take a big chunk out of the side of this plane, then plug it back in again."

"OK, where's the manual for the procedure?"

"You're new here, aren't you?"

Boeing-backed air taxi upstart Wisk plans to fly you across town at UberX prices by 2030

At least you can rely on them to open the door for you. QUestion is at what altitude?

Palantir bags £330M NHS data bonanza despite privacy fears

Re: Follow the money

They're probably queued up for the remedial works when it all goes titsup.

Legacy comms outfit Avaya returns to Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Same

We use on-prem IP Office with SCN between a couple of sites, and it's easy to administer, easy to set up voicemail menus etc. We use the J179 handsets and they're great, as is Communicator, the softphone. Sad that a company that makes great stuff is being driven into the ground again.

On the 12th day of the Rackspace email disaster, it did not give to me …

Re: who's bollocks: Rackspace, or hosted exchange?

Hosted Exchange *should* mean an Exchange tenant in the provider's Exchange infrastructure, not a singe VM, contrary to a couple of the answers here. This means that you're getting advantages of scale (clustering, database availability groups, hopefully better backups and restores) than you might be able to afford running on-premise.

Boss installed software from behind the Iron Curtain, techies ended up Putin things back together

"I picked up this copy of Microsoft Project in Hong Kong on a market - can you install it for me?"

"Ahahha...you're a funny guy - NO!"

Cloudflare finds a way through China's network defences

"This, Chen, is the Internet!" *

* or at least an approved part of it...

HP Inc to lay off up to 6,000 staff, cut costs by $1.4 billion

Here we go again

Sounds like Apotheke mark 2 - "PCs only make 6.6% profit! We must slash them immediately!" Pardon me, sunbeam, but 6.6% profit on $44bn sales is, let me see, STILL A CHUFFING BUTTLOAD OF MONEY!

Security firms hijack New York trees to monitor private workforce

Hang on a mo'

I'm not sure of the situation in New York, but drilling into public property like that without prior authorisation in the UK would be criminal damage.

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

Re: Lack of energy policy for 30 years, nuclear costs

I didn't say it was the Liberals' fault, merely stated that it was the coalition government that shelved the plan. That said, lay down with dogs, you get fleas.

Re: Lack of energy policy for 30 years, nuclear costs

In all fairness, new reactors were greenlit in 2009, but were shelved by the coalition.

Too bad, contractors: UK government reverses decision to axe IR35 tax reform

Re: Screw them

I'd agree with a lot of that *except* that Labour are offering an economic plan in so far as they can without seeing the books.

Former Uber CSO convicted for covering up massive 2016 data theft

"Kalanick has not been charged."

Well spank me silly and call me Susan, I'm SHOCKED. Well, not THAT shocked.

Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox

At this point

I'm seriously considering ditching Firefox completely. I spent about an hour this morning trying to get my history, settings, saved passwords and everything else back after Firefox sh@t the bed during a failed update and wouldn't load my profile, forcing me to create a new one. It's ditched my add-ons as well, which is a REAL pain in the posterior.

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

Re: Architect Smartitect

I feel your pain. Some years ago we built an extension onto our building. Nice false floors with cable trays beneath them - really quite tidy, until the architect decided that floorboxes were aesthetically unpleasing and banned them. Cables were terminated in plastic surface mount boxes *under* the floor with grommets fitted to allow cables through the floor tiles. IT were told, basically, "You can have whatever you want as long as it's what we say". So every time we need to trace a cable, we get cut to shreds fishing around under the floor. Oh, and needless to say, it looks crap as well. Architects? Shoot on sight.

You've heard of the cost-of-living crisis, now get ready for the cost-of-working crisis

Re: Email remains the most used communication method for work

Had that sort of thing a few years back, only with people claiming to be from Microsoft. Got to recognize the type and forced them to admit they were a reseller. My standard response was "You started your very first conversation with me with a lie. Why would we trust you on anything else? Goodbye, and don't call again." Seemed to work, eventually.

Nadine Dorries promotes 'Brexit rewards' of proposed UK data protection law

Re: A cunning plan

Baldrick was mostly trying to be helpful. This bunch are only trying to help themselves.

Good god...

...she's an idiot. Truly it is said that Dorries is what happens when the ventriloquist dies and the dummy keeps talking.

$50m+ contract for crime-fighting IT system won by Fujitsu after no one else bid

"Won" is doing some heavy lifting here, isn't it? As others have noted the lack of any other bidders should be a HUGE red flag.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-23 is coming: Do you have one of the older model phones that can test it?

I've got a OnePlus 3 kicking around somewhere - might well give it a try; a few bits don't work, sure, but early days....

Phishing operation hits NHS email accounts to harvest Microsoft credentials

Re: To be fare (pun intended)...

The 350m was supposed to be financed by Brexit savings, so it emphatically was not given *from the source described*. Having our taxes increased to fund increases instead was not on the side of the bus. Also, "if we include Covid funding"? Pull the other one. Covid was a national emergency; in the same way that actually fighting a war isn't in the defence budget (it's funded by contingency funding from the Treasury) neither is a pandemic in the budget for the day to day running of the NHS. That's leaving aside that billions of that funding was trousered by Tory donors through unlawful contracts - and that was so blatant that the government doesn't dare appeal the verdict.

Re: Too little, too late.

You don't get joined up thinking after a decade of balkanisation aimed at privatisation. That said, the NHS is starved of resources.

Apple patched critical flaws in macOS Monterey but not in Big Sur nor Catalina

Re: There is an official update available from Apple

"Are Microsoft still patching Windows 8.1?"

Pro? Yes. Drops out of support next year.

Have you tried restarting? Reinstalling? Upgrading? Moving house and changing your identity?

Not identical, but...

We have a firewall manufacturer, let's call them...TonicFall. They also provide a host-based content filter, which is actually pretty good in itself, but the management portal for it has become increasingly unreliable. Reports don't work at all ("this content requires Adobe Flash..."), and increasingly has just refused to load in multiple browsers on multiple machines. If you want to open a support ticket, you are prompted to use their portal - which automatically registers the fault as a P3 ("We really don't give a toss, now go away"). To raise a P2 or P1 you are advised to call them on one of the local support numbers on <link>. Link goes to a page of phone numbers where the support number...is a link back to the portal you just came from. And this is one of the reasons we're changing manufacurers.

Thank you, FAQ chatbot, but if I want your help I'll ask for it

Re: I am here to help. What can I do for you today?

When I'm on a support call with someone and having to wait for something to complete I've taken to whistling "The Girl From Ipanema" on the basis that they'll be expecting hold music.

Government-favoured child safety app warned it could violate the UK's Investigatory Powers Act with message-scanning tech

For goodness' sake...

...don't encourage them to overhaul surveillance laws with the Home Sec currently in full Bond Villain mode!

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/priti-patel-anti-protest-powers-stuffed-policing-bill-1316830

Honor 50 Lite: Google Play Services are back on Huawei's former stablemate but that's nothing to get excited about

Re: finger problems

Same - I have the thumb and index finger on my right and the index finger on my left.

Trial of Theranos boss Elizabeth Holmes begins: She plans to say her boyfriend and COO Balwani abused her

Re: I don't buy it

Technically, I believe the boxes contained a magic stick...

BT to phase out 3G in UK by 2023 for EE, Plusnet, BT Mobile subscribers

Re: Provided...

Mum just got a Doro phone and it's more hassle and less user-friendly than just about any smartphone I've encountered (got involved when she couldn't send texts). I would inflict one on my worst enemy, but I might feel a twinge of guilt about it afterwards.

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Where is my fried slice?

IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster, sources say

Re: Dark, chaotic pit of not being able to access email or calendars

I know what you're getting at, and have experienced being in those interminable "I'd better cc EVERYONE" email chains, but there is little more annoying than being in the middle of a complex task that requires concentration and having someone rock up or phone with something completely unrelated that they expect you to deal with there and then. Make an appointment and I'll clear the decks for you and you'll have my complete attention. Rock up out of the blue, and I'll be less forthcoming.

The server is down, money is not being made, and you want me to fix what?

Re: What kind of idiot do you think I am?

An event which must make you wonder whether autism actually IS a superpower...

We'd love to report on the outcome of the CREST exam cheatsheet probe, but UK infosec body won't publish it

Re: "It's not something I can speak out about"

A cynic might surmise, therefore, that promising that confidentiality at the start gives a tailor-made excuse for never having to publish the findings.

Fancy trying to explain Microsoft Teams to your parents? They may ask about the new Personal version

Re: Skype???

SfB is dead in July. I would suspect that Skype is likely to follow, especially as Teams works pretty well with Office, so it's a good way to leverage a free service to get people to take up O365.

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Upvoted, but...

...damn, that's nasty....

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

"...unless one opted to use one of the flakier NetWare Loadable Modules"

Thought that was all of them...

Oh, no one knows what goes on behind locked doors... so don't leave your UPS in there

Well, at least once...

Lost server

CentOS project changes focus, no more rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux – you'll have to flow with the Stream

"...we encourage you to contact Red Hat about options, (and bring your wallet)" said CentOS Community Manager Rich Bowen.

TIFTFY