Posts by Scott 26

User locked out of Microsoft account by MFA bug, complains of customer-hostile support

the stories you hear on r/realms or r/minecraft are horrific - minecraft players are being migrated to MS accounts, and in the case of issues, trying to get hold of a real person is a nightmare. In the case of realms which is subscription based, it is poor form - they are paying customers.

What if Chrome broke features of the web and Google forgot to tell anyone? Oh wait, that's exactly what happened

> The idea that there might be someone sitting right now writing their first tentative lines of HTML so that they can launch a webpage dedicated to ostriches is not even considered.

It'd have to be a sick ostrich. Allegedly.

Fake 'BT' caller fleeces elderly victim of £30k in APP app scam

Re: Incest??

I had a similar one: kept him going with BS for ages, and asked if his mother liked having a goat-fucker for a son?

That set him right off, even threatened to phone the police for my abuse... "be my guest, goat-licker"

Break out your emergency change process and patch this ransomware-friendly bug ASAP, says VMware

Re: Just using UNIX text editors can be a challenge

> So while you may wish VMware admins are more generalist I find many know nothing other than Windows. While they may have used 'vi' once or twice, if editing a text incorrectly is going to bring down an entire ESX farm you don't want them touching it...

At my org, I find the windows guys have a wider breadth of knowledge than the eunuchs guys....

We have windows guys who can 'get by' in a shell, but their equivalent eunuchs are completely lost on a windows server....

Microsoft Exchange Autodiscover protocol found leaking hundreds of thousands of credentials

It's the WPAD flaw all over again.....

The Register speaks to one of the designers behind the latest Lego Ideas marvel: A clockwork solar system

Re: BrisBricks

One holiday in your fine city, we (BIL, SIL, myself) took my nephew to a BrisBricks Expo.... of course taking the nephew was just the excuse 3 grown men needed to wander around in amazement.... ;)

Everyone's going to Mars: Rocket Lab joins the Red Planet Fan Club

Because - generally speaking - Kiwis are a unassuming lot.... just get on with it, and when the rest of the world says "huh, howthefuckdidyoudothat?" we shrug and say "no worries, mate"

Apple's bright idea for CSAM scanning could start 'persecution on a global basis' – 90+ civil rights groups

Re: Apple has learned a lot from China

> I can't wait for the federal lawsuits that will be triggered by this moronic idea if Apple doesn't backtrack and forgets about it.

Hopefully before innocent lives are ruined

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Re: re: this seems like a sensible middle ground.

>A thoughtful response. But I think Apple are big enough to just say not.

Except the Chinese ICT market is big. (I mean rally big). And Apple, ultimately wants a slice of that pie. And if the CCP says "you want to operate in our country, then here's some images we want you to scan for"... I bet Apple bends over.

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac

> Brilliant article, thanks. I learned a lot.

agreed... must find a Youtube video that shows this in graphic form as well..... very interesting.

(How can logic gates make these characters appear on the screen?!?!?!?!)

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: Only half the story

but your mate was a repairer - it was in his best interest for everyone to get the unreliable model - kept him in a job.....

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Re: Dangerous sites?

in the late 90s, introducing my parents to the internet, and I explained they needed to be careful what they typed - after all there is a world of difference between allblacks.com and allblack.com (not any more though, the 'wrong' domain is now parked)

Windows 11: Meet the new OS, same as the old OS (or close enough)

Re: Here here

if CCTV has such high bandwidth (etc) demands, why in the Almighty fuck, is footage shown (say in the news) always look crap.....

Now that China has all but banned cryptocurrencies, GPU prices are falling like Bitcoin

Re: Phew that was close!

upvote, not for the Europe nukes part, but for the total Inability To Support Usual Payments part :D

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

Re: Sometimes though....

re that Lake....

SWEET BABY JEBUS!!!!!

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Re: "Things were purposefully not documented"

1990 - I would have been a 1st year at Massey (BTech(ChemTech) represent,yo!) and therefore I don't remember this because most of 1990 was an alcoholic haze :)

Staff and students at Victoria University of Wellington learn the most important lesson of all: Keep your files backed up

Re: New variation on “my dog ate my homework”

> It'll be the next episode of BOFH.

Simon is ex-Waikato Uni, not Vic ;)

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

Re: Smoking

Lots of smokers vs non-smokers stories, but one from the UK:

Having a pub lunch in Bristol (?) ... dense fog inside, so decided to take my meal and pint outside... found a (BBQ table style of thing) table to myself... not many smokers outside (weather wasn't 100% suitable).

Halfway through my lunch a guy sits down at my table and lights up. I politely say "excuse me mate, do you mind?". He says "if I don't like it I can choose to go somewhere else"... I reply "yup, just like you can choose to be a cunt". He was speechless at that.

Just when you thought it was safe to enjoy a beer: Beware the downloaded patch applied in haste

"simon".... "antipodean educational institution"..... are you sure this isn't BOFH IRL?

Facebook and Australia do a deal: The Social Network™ will restore news down under and even start paying for it

Re: Raising the dead

ahhh - all those downvoters have never heard of Billy Birmingham :(

Wazhe Acrim

Whayamean Wazhe

The sad news that Rabish Binny was left out over night, but wasn't collected in the morning.

SpaceX small print on Starlink insists no Earth government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities

Re: James S A Corey novels?

It made me think of Space Pirates from a certain Andy Weir novel....

Facebook bans sharing of news in Australia – starting now – rather than submit to pay-for-news-plan

Just today an Aussie friend posted a screenshot of FB - no news feed, but quite happy to display an ad for news.com.au its about money, plain and simple

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

I have 4 Ubuntu VMs in Azure for work (1 prd, 2 nprd, and 1 monitor running percona)....

I haven't been contacted at all... or maybe I have... I haven't logged into LInkedIn in about 3 years. OK... just logged in - nothing apart from cold calling slave traders "You'd be a perfect match for my client with your Azure skills"... yeah, right.

Why was this guy targetted?

Microsoft runs 179 admin portals, says sysadmin supergroup

Bloody brilliant!

Have shared it with my team (we are predominately Azure admins)

Europe considers making it law that your boss can’t bug you outside of office hours

Re: Been there, done that.

Years back (at a .govt.nz) on-call was a 'gentleman's agreement' with the business... then one particular business group wanted a formal contract (something to do with an FTP process they wanted nursing - it was very specific). I agreed to be part of a roster of 3 (I think)... it was money for nothing - the FTP process normally ran at about 3pm, so it wasn't going to be an A/H problem. Also, the extra kiwi pesos in my payslip weren't insignificant.

The process was to cut the helldesk phone over to a mobile... no IVR, so users didn't know they were going thru to a cellphone. You'd get the odd user ringing thru saying something like "oh I didn't expect someone to answer - I've forgotten my password"... and my response was "Sorry, I will log a ticket for you and someone will look at for you in the morning" (this is exactly what the on-call variation/contract said).

I would get the occasional one saying "oh, the other guy last week helped me" (and I would die a little inside, but re-state my position, expanding on what the on-call arrangements were, ie, they weren't paying for after hours/on-call support, so they would have to wait until the next business day - mostly the users were understanding, eg I've just got back in the country and I didn't even know what the time was, oh well, suppose I should sleep - yes, yes you should :rolleyes:)

But then one day we had a very specialised (and temporary) (read self-important) business group needing to get a report out ... they rang through after hours to me with some kind of problem - can't remember what it was - printer wasn't working, maybe... how the holy fuck I was supposed to fix that remotely, I don't know. Gave them my usual spiel and they said "oh [Desktop Manager] said there was someone on call to help us"..... hmmmm... news to me, so I told them so, and they said they were going to ring [DM]... ok, fine, she's not technically in my chain of command, so she can't tell me what to do. 1/2 an hour later [DM] is ringing me, and I bluntly said "At what point did you think it might be a polite thing to do and give the oncall person, me, a heads up that this business group needed help?"

She was a shite manager and spouted some bollocks about this group's report was needing to go to the PM's office. I said something about 'lack of planning on their part doesn't make an emergency on mine". The stupid thing was if she had just given me the heads up I probably would have helped if I could (grudgingly). But because of her lack of common courtesy, I dug my toes in and quoted the on-call contract I had signed. She threatened to go to her boss (who was my boss' boss)... I told her go for it and when my on-call rotating was finished that week I was resigning from it... leaving them only two people on the roster.

I can't remember what the outcome was that night, but I kept my word and resigned from on-call, and while I missed the money, it was so good not to have to worry about that damn phone. Even though it was 1 week in 3, it was still a PITA - couldn't go away, couldn't go to the pub, couldn't go to the pictures.....

Fast forward a few years and they tried to bring 'proper' on-call.... for the whole department, not just that one business group. The remuneration was calculated a slightly different way, but when you applied the numbers, it worked out to be about 60% of the original agreement (so you want to pay me less for supporting more?)

I refused to sign the contract variation.... I had several 'conversations' with senior management & HR, but by this stage I was unioned up, and I would copy my delegate into every conversation. and I would relay the above and the union rep would say "he kinda has a point"

These days I'm at an IT outsourcer in a specialised role operating "in the cloud" (whoooo).... so no on-call (business support hours only, and even then 99.99% outages are ground-to-cloud connectivity related, so don't talk to me, talk to network support)

Ahhhh... these forums are a bit like therapy! Icon cos I feel like I need some stress relief now.

Loser Trump's last financial disclosure docs reveal Tim Cook gave him $5,999 Mac Pro, the 'first' made in Texas

Re: A HUNDRED AND FORTY QUID!?

Working for a .govt.nz I was at an HP breakfast, and I won (random prize draw) a fairly decent (back then) HP Projector (est 2-3k Kiwi Pesos).... as I was at the breakfast with my manager and his manager, and as we were walking back to work, I said "Just got to take a quick detour" and popped into my wife's work, and dropped off the projector into her office.... got to my work and boss/boss's boss said "where's the projector - you going to declare that?"..... My response: "What projector?"

I kept it as my main TV was a tiny tube-based thing. Friends would say "want to come over to watch the rugby on my 48-inch TV?" Nah I'll watch it on my 3m screen, thanks.

Then HD became main stream and the projector is now in a box somewhere.

United States Congress stormed by violent followers of defeated president, Biden win confirmation halted

Re: Careful. Slow down and THINK.

> an attempt at insurrection. Which is about as anti-American as it gets

Isn't your country built on exact that? (Asking for a friend)

Take Note: Samsung said to be thinking about killing off Galaxy phablet series

The Note stylus

I have a Note 9, and I mostly use the stylus when playing SCUMMVM games (ported old click'n'point adventure games)....

I thought when I first go it, it'd be great for quick note taking..... nope.

Occasionally use it for sketching a diagram that I can't visualise in my head (eg, trig calculations in my DIY projects around home)

Hmmmm, you know what Azure PowerShell is lacking? Some Predictive Intellisense

I'm more concerned that it requires PS7.

MS don't have an IDE for v7, so I use VSC - VSC + Azure modules + PS7 has quite a few well documented bugs....

How's this for the ultimate gaming achievement? Half-Life 2's Gnome Chompski is going to space – in real life

The cynic in me thinks this is just GabeN trying to show what a great citizen he would be ;)

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

I use the term 'slinkies' for the helldesk...

Once , in front of their manager - who laughed and laughed until she clicked to it being HER staff she was laughing at.

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Re: HP

> The LaserJet printers were the reason HP had a reputation for making solid reliable printers

HW-wise, I agree with you, but there was a point (~PCL5) that the SW side of the equation became a complete nightmare... kernel-mode drivers for a printer?!?!?!?!??! grrrr. No! Bad driver! No biscuit for you.

Have no idea WTF is going on with the Oracle-Walmart TikTok deal? Don’t sweat it, here’s our latest rundown

he really hates that

Court hearing on election security is zoombombed on 9/11 anniversary with porn, swastikas, pics of WTC attacks

Re: What?

@I aint Spartacus: wish I could upvote these counter points more than once..... nice.

Take your pick: 'Hack-proof' blockchain-powered padlock defeated by Bluetooth replay attack or 1kg lump hammer

"Nothing on 1, click on 2.... SMASH!"

QR-code based contact-tracing app brings 'defining moment' for UK’s 'world beating' test and trace system

Kiwiland

We've had something similar for a while (covid app with QR codes at businesses. Scan code, adds an entry to your diary stored locally).

During Lockdown Season 2, it became compulsory for businesses to display a code (our health ministry website has a tool for generating the code, which you can then print off). Some businesses took it a step further - display a code and a manual sign in sheet: Please do one or other or GTFO.

As for supermarkets and other areas with lots of patrons: displaying multiple codes helps. Also, as a nation, generally we have gotten pretty good at scanning: as you approach, you get your phone out, launch the app, start pointing it at the sign. I'm had it register from about 2-3m away.

Q: How does hydrogen turn into a metal? A: Hang on a second, I need to train my AI supercomputer first

Re: Since we can't build a planet

Took this long to have a HHGTTG reference..... for shame el Reg commentards, for shame

Rocket Lab boss Peter Beck talks to The Reg about crap weather, reusing boosters, and taking a trip to Venus

Venus life

So long it's not a blue crystalline structure

As Amazon pulls union-buster job ads, workers describe a 'Mad Max' atmosphere – unsafe, bullying, abusive

Re: Well the

Upvote for the Cave Johnson reference, now I can't not hear it!

'First ever' snap emerges of something vaguely resembling our solar system 300 ly away. We'll take 10 tickets

easy to defeat: the old 'eat the telly' trick!

(icon kinda looks like Vyvan Basterd)

Faxing hell: The cops say they would very much like us to stop calling them all the time

Re: Also works the other way round

I hate wrong numbers who ask "well, what's your number?"

Who gives a fuck what's MY number - clearly not the number you want.... grrrr

Or multiple wrong numbers in a row "I keep pressing redial and I keep getting you".... no shit sherlock.

Now you've done it: Cyber attack targeted Australian brewery 'n' dairy biz Lion

Lion....lol

Lion Red 'popularised' by Once Were Warriors... 'nuff said.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: why vital?

pretty easy when you grew up in a small town in the 70s: 2-double-1

Friends were 6-3, but they were on a party line so you could potentially get the whole damn road on a single call... instant and specific tele-conferencing.

Raspberry Pi Foundation serves up an 8GB slice of mini-computing goodness

Wooohooo - this is great news... another RPi to sit in my desk drawer

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

At least MSFT knew a good thing when they saw it - acquired wininternals, and picked up Mark Russinovich in the process.....

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

Re: The East India Company?

>No, everyone knows that tea was introduced to Britain in Roman times by Asterix.

I was getting worried no-one had made that comment yet.....

Lars Ulrich makes veiled threats of another Metallica album during web chat with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

Can't recommend Metal Evolution enough (doco film + doco series) for a great view on how Metal has...err... evolved over the decades.... very cool.

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Re: Switch provider, and refuse payment

have an upvote.... I have to rememebr that one....

Let's get digital... digital: Microsoft Ignite switches to online-only as 2020's tech calendar clears

But how will vendors get my email address by enticing me with a shiny new pen?

Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

We are using it at a client's (a govt.nz) site (paid, I think), because it is easier to get going with multiple vendors and the client themselves than say teams (we use teams as well).

I just looked at my last Zoom invite and it had this stamped on the bottom: "Use Zoom for meetings which are classified up to a level of 'In Confidence' ONLY"

I assume the client put that in there, it's in a different font to the rest of the invite info.

Icon, just because.