Posts by adam 40

Post Office CTO had 'nagging doubts' about Horizon system despite reliability assurances

Most of this could have been cleared up much earlier if...

... the Post Office didn't have the means to start criminal prosecutions without going through the CPS (or equivalent).

This power must be revoked immediately.

Re: ...and it was open to abuse.

An audit should have shown up phantom "profits"

Re: If there's no audit log how can there be prosecutions?

There was no audit logging.

No any form of double-entry by the looks of it.

I've only worked in accounting software once, and when I said "we have two ways of tracking transactions" shall I get rid of one, the accountant in the team said "no! great, keep them both, we can use them to counter-check against each other". A principle that seems lost in Horizon (probably, to this day. Which lays it open to fraud.).

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Commsco

As a contractor I worked for this outfit, one of my earlier contracts. On more than one occasion I worked late when there was a board meeting going on, where I knew that I could get a cheque written out and signed by the finance and one other director, to pay me my three month overdue invoices.

And if you worked there, you'll know why this ------>>>

Google's memory safety plan includes rehab for unsafe languages

Architecture

The "problem" isn't C, it's the machine architecture.

Fix that first.

Tech support chap solved knotty disk failure problem by staring at the floor

Further than that - the Cabinet!

You're wrong, I'm right, and you're hiding the data that proves it

Of course, the incessant "upgrades" on my Micro$haft Windoze laptop use no bandwidth at all!

Re: Linux binaries?

Actually, it's worth doing, so you can share them for uploads and get your credits on non-copyright stuff.

Re: Brian may not have been the messiah ...

Nailed it!

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

Put them off..

Always worth installing the Russian language pack on your devices. ;^)

Re: No need to pay the ransom

You are assuming that you can trust the miscreants to destroy the data and not release it anyway at a later date, for even more money.

Re: Oh, it's a politically motivated TERRORIST attack

How many people have died as a direct result yet?

Not dissing, just asking. So an appropriate response can be meted out.

Wells Fargo fires employees accused of faking keyboard activity to pretend to work

There is no Me in Teams

So, gleaned from the comments above:

"Chatting on Teams" is actually "working" now?

We are all doomed.

Ukrainian cops collar Kyiv programmer believed to be Conti, LockBit linchpin

Kyiv ain't Moscock

Wrong country, mate.

I didn't touch a thing – just some cables and a monitor – and my computer broke

Re: Crows: It starts at the top

I went to T-Mobile labs in Bellevue.

THe building was grey, and completely anonymous, no company logos, because it contained bleeding edge not yet released mobile handsets, and squillions of dollars of test kit.

HOWEVER, they overlooked one thing, near the main entrance was a reserved parking space. And on that space, they had painted "T-Mobile Employee of the Month"

UK public voice fear over security in NHS data systems

Opt out cancelled

I have opted out of this data sharing, only to find that the opt out was cancelled when I looked later.

There is definitely something fishy going on.

I told Halle Berry where to go during a programming gig in LA

Re: Alternative uses for hotels

What was the name of the hotel? So I can avoid it.

Hypothetical TSMC invasion 'absolutely devastating' says Raimondo

TSMC is vital to China too

A handful of dirt in every clean area would put it out of action for years.

Would China want to risk that - invade and have it sabotaged from underneath them?

Also Taiwan own a lot of fabs on the mainland, and the same could happen.

Help! My mouse climbed a wall and now it doesn't work right

Re: Wow

Kinky - bondage AND bestiality.

Your trainee just took down our business and has no idea how or why

When I was at school doing Physics pre-O-level, I was playing with the on-bench mains sockets, as one does, put a big nail into the earth and a compass into the live, and joined them together.

My teacher was watching me do it, apparently...

Then I threw the switch on the socket and BLAM! big flash and the power went out.

The scary head of department then appeared about 10 seconds later and demanded to know why the power was out.

I don't know why to this day, but luckily the teacher gave some excuse, and the head went away.

I got a minor bollocking, which was all good in retrospect. I went on to get A's in Physics (and more besides) then A's in Physics A level, being taught by said head of department, plus S level too, an AS Electronics. And then a degree in Electronics/Computing and the rest is history.

I stilll have the compass somewhere with the weld mark in it.

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

POTS is not fickle because a statutory obligation, meaning they have to have loads of 48V lead-acid batteries in the exchange.

Their power supply comes from the same source - national grid.

Re: Never worked - No Coverage

But - you never needed it for Feed in Tariff - you gave them the reading from the solar inverter meter,.

Re: So, smart meter joy is continuing

Because the end user could unplug the box, and the leccy company couldn't then do a remote disconnect.

Do your French ones have remote disconnect too?

Re: So, smart meter joy is continuing

I've been fobbing mine off for over 4 years, they have now given up. My last excuse was "we are locked down, you can't come round and give us the lurgy".

Re: newer != better

Interesting idea, but you have to stay in range until the meter camps on your basestation. Once it's been sitting with no signal for months, this could take tens of minutes per meter.

A human home visit usually takes 2-3 minutes.

Novelty flip phone strips out almost every feature possible to be as boring as possible

Re: Surely ideal for children

Including, it seems, your own one, sir!

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

Virgin on the Ridiculous

Been on Virgin Upper a few times, on expenses natch, and spent many an hour at the bar upstairs.

Also, the massueuse... what a nice lady.

Hyperfluorescent OLEDs promise more efficient displays that won't make you so blue

My burn-in is Red, then Green

Blue is actually almost unaffected.

(Bought a secondhand 4k OLED LG TV very cheap, best bit was the preinstalled film accounts!)

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Use Thunderbird Instead

It's faster than Ourlook too!

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

The worst job (interview) I ever 'ad...

Well I've had a few, but one stands out. After reading the above, it's a bit lame but here goes....

I went to an interview with a S/W and H/W company somewhere in the Midlands. The main interview goes reasonably well, and at the end they hand me a sheet of A4 paper.

On the paper is a list of TLA's, and the final task was to say what each one stands for.

After about 15 of them, they started correcting me here and there, "yes but in our company it means 'Total Concept Paragigm'" or whatever.

After almost an hour and and into the third column my mind started exploding, and when I got to the end I was spent.

I can recommend this as a form of torture! Probably it should be banned by the ICC.

I didn't get the job. Phew!

Re: I may have told this one before...

One place I was at (SG), HR brought in psychometric testing, then stopped hiring people with extreme graphs.

Not too long after, the business went downhill, because they were hiring the boring people and rejecting creative types.

Meta seeks ASIC designers for ML accelerators and datacenter SoCs

Re: 200k a year, in the bay area, for bleeding edge hardware design

Agreed, $200k/pa is only worth ~£80k here, after you factor in health insurance, long hours, etc etc.

And they want ASIC designers? They need to be paying double that.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

EVERYONE - CLICK ON "Expand Comment"!

Best On Call story for some time.

Re: Got to love an optimist ...

I had a client who stiffed me for about £1200 while I was working away overseas, doing more than 37.5 hours a week because it was in Taiwan, and on a critical project.

Unknown to me there had been a max hours edict from upper manglement for cost cutting.

My middle manager didn't back me up up on my invoices, and they didn't even pay the 37.5 hours while they disputed.

After several months of reminders I asked them to at least pay the 37.5, and the rest remained in dispute.

5 years later it was apparent I wasn't getting another contract with them, so I took them to small claims for statutory interest. I got awarded £1500. By that time, Motorola had bought them, so had to pay, which was an added bonus! :-)

It's friday - time for beer.

It's friday - time to take my team for beer.

FTFY!

Europe's deepest mine to become Europe's deepest battery

Re: Think big!

If you extract too much tidal power they WILL start rubbing together.

Re: Performance isn't exactly great

What sort of moths would attack a mineshaft?

Venus has a quasi-moon and it's just been named 'Zoozve' for a sweet reason

What about

The rings around Mianus?

LockBit shows no remorse for ransomware attack on children's hospital

Re: It's time

At least our agencies have letters _and_ numbers. But, so far, no special characters (apart from Bond, James Bond, of course).

Fujitsu finance chief says sorry for IT giant's role in Post Office Horizon scandal

Re: Horizon is an EPOS....

Or "Evidently"

(if you don't cover it up)

... and then the election happens, and whoever gets in, fuck all progress for the Postmasters and Postmistresses.

Re: Meanwhile, back at the Post Office...

If they are going to "rake over the coals" as intimated by this latest article, and revisit previous compensation settled "in full and final settlement" because some of the evidential inputs to the decision making/tribunals/ombudsman were false, perhaps they should also consider funding the revised settlements, at least in part, from recovered bonuses paid out to the board over the same timeframe?

Because it seems to me that these bonuses were awarded based on PO profitability, which would have been less if the proper settlements had been made at the correct time, based on the actual facts, not something made up.

It's all going a bit nuclear!

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

At least there wasn't a crash...

Adios, dead zones: Starlink relays SMS in space for unmodified phones on Earth

No no no!

" being able to make an emergency call from the middle of the wilderness" is not what was demonstrated!

They demonstrated send (or receive) SMS which needs maybe 200 bytes of data in a packet (inc overheads).

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Re: employee of the year

Probably because he was from a "grande ecole"?

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

There were 3500 cases, though, probably with lesser amounts.

Labour will take the fall

I predicted this, as Horizon was rolled out mostly under Labour, they will take the flack.

In an election year, no less.

That was a bit of an own goal.

And I bet there are quite a few Civil (!) Servants with gongs who advised on this matter, who will not be handing them back.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

Re: Plumbosolvency!

Actually now you get platinum from the car exhausts.

Which explains the massive rise in asthma attacks.