Posts by dave 76

Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it

writing documentation

I'm crap at documentation but I give it a try (I'm in the support team).

On our main document site, the top doc is the New starter guide which lists all the apps that support uses, with a 1-2 line explanation of what it does and how to install. Everyone in the team is encouraged to add new apps and strikethrough old apps when they are no longer used.

For each business group we have a page called Business Flow which starts with a "executive summary" of what that business does and how important it is (so if more than one business is screaming at the same time you know who to focus on). It then has a flow chart of the various components and how they are linked. This is invaluable when troubleshooting.

The next section is common issues - things that come up often or infrequently, or might might not be obvious. Again, everyone is encouraged to either add to this section or to tell me so that I can investigate.

And then the rest of the document is all the meaty stuff, how to install, what Devs to talk to, L2 troubleshooting, sql to run etc.

It's not perfect by any stretch but it does cover most cases. I still don't have enough time to document everything though.

Trump kills clearances for infosec's SentinelOne, ex-CISA boss Chris Krebs

Re: I like Americans…

not sure what your point is here.

- I'd be pretty confident that all politicians wear makeup when out in public. Like it or not, public image is a big part of politics these days.

- Of course a Harris aide had a strategy in place if anything happened to Biden, they would be remiss if they didn't. There will be one in place for Trump and for any significant public figure. We maintain a set of procedures for the royal family too.

- Many people on both the left and the right had issues with the age and acuity of Biden, just like they also do of Trump. The US needs to get some younger candidates. It's not always been the case, Bill Clinton and George W Bush are both younger than Trump and hopefully after Trump we will start to see younger candidates coming through on both sides.

Google confirms Gulf of Mexico renamed to appease Trump – but only in the US

Google confirms Gulf of Mexico renamed to appease Trump – but only in the US

"Messing around with the language options, it appears to show the name in your chosen language followed by a translation of the name in America in brackets. No other sea seems to have this treatment."

Take a look at the Sea of Japan, it has East Sea in brackets after it. Japan and Korea call it by different names.

Australia passes law to keep under-16s off social media – good luck with that, mate

which Oz supermarket?

Not doubting you but just wondering which supermarket you were able to do this in.

I need another SIM.

Network engineer chose humiliation over a night on the datacenter floor

late night operator

I was working as a night shift operator and running backups on a Sunday night. I went into the Data Centre to change a tape and realised that I had left my card on the desk outside.

This particular DC required the swipe card to exit, there was an emergency button but using that would have been difficult to explain.

Fortunately the "designer" of the DC room hadn't done a complete job, and I was able to climb over the wall as it it only went up to the false ceiling!

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

2FA can be a Catch-22 when moving countries

I've just moved countries and can not access my original phone anymore.

So trying to update my mobile number on many sites, they insist on sending an SMS to my original phone for confirmation. Which I cannot access from overseas.

Why didn't I do this before I left the original country? Because I didn't have my new number yet.

Not sure how to get out of this validation loop other than abandoning my original account and creating a new one. In many cases that's possible but not when it is a banking site.

Eventually I will work out how to get out of this Catch-22, will probably involve a plane flight back to my original country for a day.

Bank of America app glitch zeroes out people's balances

Re: "Checking" account?

"More importantly, millions of financial computer systems have a "C" or an "S" code for the bank account type. "

My bank dealt with that by simply renaming the "Cheque" account to the "Current" account.

Japanese orgs now paying salaries direct into e-wallets

PayPay is everywhere in Japan

You can use PayPay almost anywhere in Tokyo so having your money paid into that account instead of a traditional bank account would be easier for lots of people.

Thank you, Reg Readers: On Call has turned 500!

Re: Dear me, 10 years already ?

I just checked my profile too and I have been signed up since Dec 2007 - didn't realise it had been that long.

Amusing note, the country that I am currently living in at the moment is the same one that I was in when I signed up, but inbetween I have moved countries 5 times!

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: Not screwdrivers but...

I once had to collect an Electrohome monitor from a bank because they were no longer subscribing to our service. If you have never seen an Electrohome, this was 9 inch monitor in a square casing so that you could stack them.

I got to the trading floor and could find the PC under the desk without too much trouble but the monitor had ended up on the neighbouring desk under a stack of paper and behind another monitor. That took a bit of work to extract.

Re: Safety-Guard-Free

You should see the cutting blades that they use from Helicopters - they normally have 4-5 circular blades on them for maximum trimming.

Simulation reveals all Japanese will have the same surname by 2531

Re: Released on Monday eh?

"So this was released on Monday 1st April? Hmmm, nothing suspicious there..."

Of course, you are assuming April Fools Day is a thing in Japan, it's not.

Hundreds of workers to space out from NASA's JPL amid budget black hole

Moon lander contracts

"Common Sense Sceptic has done a series on the moon lander contract that was awarded to SpaceX. There were supposed to be two finalists, but through some suspect dealings, SpaceX was the sole awardee and NASA didn't have the funds to properly fund that due to an insufficient appropriation from Congress. It's worth a view as it makes it plain how NASA gets whipsawed with changes in the political wind."

The amount of money initially allocated was too low for two fully formed bids but there was a widely held expectation that an old space firm would win it and continue to drain future budgets under the normal cost+ contract.

What wasn't anticipated was that SpaceX would come in with a significantly cheaper bid based on Starship so they got the contract.

Then the shenanigans started by Congress to get more money so that a second contract was awarded.

NTT Data to monitor ten million hotel guests and sell data about their sleep

I suspect the only "new" bit in this announcement is that it is a new hotel, Ninehours has been doing this for a few years https://ninehours.co.jp/akasaka_sleeplab

Buggy app for insulin-delivery device puts diabetes patients at risk of hypoglycemia

Re: Safety and sanity-checking

I don't use the omnipod but I have a max dosage set on my pump as a fat finger warning. I would expect that Omnipod does the same thing.

Pumps are only just starting to release software to allow management from a phone app rather than just reporting - I hope this doesn't give the manufacturers cold feet.

Japan cruises ahead with drive-thru EV charging trial

Re: The problem you don't see

A significant proportion of Japanese homes in Tokyo do not even have parking at home, you park your car in a parking lot. I'm starting to see charging stations appear there, but is still few and far between.

Seems there is a lot of difficulty to get a working Wireless charging solution, will be interesting to see if this implementation is able to address any of the issues.

Musk's mighty missile is ready for launch once FAA says OK

you keep asking that but they are stupid questions. I'll take one for the team and reply.

- The booster part which caused the damage to the launch pad is not going to the moon.

- The starship that will be landing on the moon will be a variant on the existing (test) starship so no one (outside of SpaceX) knows even the proposed design at the moment.

- It will be several years of testing before we get to that point and the designs will be iteratively tested and improved.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

rebooting is not a 'fix'

I always tell people that rebooting doesn't fix a problem, it just makes it go away for an unspecified period of time.

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Re: Cheques are so dead that there are a lot of uncashed cheques in Oz

Trying to even find a bank in Australia that will let you deposit a cheque is getting harder and harder. Just HSBC and some credit unions now it seems.

The only check I get these days is from US Tax Refund (so "check" is correct in this context) but in some years, the fees to deposit a US dollar check into a Australian bank account would be greater than the refund that I am getting.

Techie sacked after jetting to tropical island on sick leave

Techie sacked after jetting to tropical island on sick leave

"I'm not sure we know the whole story here. Is it possible that the boss was "playing favourites" and giving other colleagues preference in getting leave? That might explain why there "weren't enough staff" on two occasions (and possibly why the initial tribunal sided with Xu)."

or simply multiple people asked for the same period off before him and were granted and by the time Xu asked there was insufficient people to cover.

I've had that happen in my team a few times, it is not nice to tell people that they can't take holiday when they want to but we always remind them to ask before booking anything just in case.

Botched migration resulted in a great deal: One for the price of two

beware energy company mergers

I sold my flat in the UK, closed off all the utilities and was happy that all was good before moving to another country on the other side of the world.

About 9 months later I started getting emails from an energy supplier that I have never used that I owed them thousands and they would be starting legal proceedings.

I called them and after going through multiple people found out that my original supplier had been sold to this new company and all the accounts transferred over, including it seems accounts that had already been closed. So they had done a meter reading and billed me for usage on an meter that they were not supplying. They were also sending the paper bills to that flat so of course I was not getting them.

I got assurances that it was now sorted and there was nothing I needed to do.

Another 6 months and the emails started again, seems they still had not sorted it out. After more conversations they wanted me to log into my online account to sort this out. I told them there was no way I was going to create an online account for a supplier I didn't use, on a flat I didn't own. That seemed to me to be a way of them trying to sneakily accept that I was receiving the bills and be liable for them.

Eventually after many more weeks and calls I managed to get them to acknowledge (using the final bill from the previous supplier and the email from my lawyer saying that the sale had been completed) that I had never been their customer and that was the end of it but it was a stressful time.

Heata offers free hot water by mounting servers on people's water tanks

nice to see the company represented here in the comments

It's nice to see the company represented here in the comments - At least, from what he is saying, I assume it is the same Chris Jordan.

Chris, how many units do you have installed so far and how is it tracking compared to projections?

Cleaner ignored 'do not use tap' sign, destroyed phone systems ... and the entire building

Re: Water and IT

We had a Data Centre on the 3rd floor and the sprinklers went off on the 14th floor over the weekend. By the time the water got to the DC, it had accumulated a lot of carpet fibers and plaster from the ceiling tiles and found its way through a crack in the concrete floor and straight over the top of the main computer.

Needless to say, that machine did not survive and within a few weeks there was waterproofing urgently applied to the ceiling of the DC.

When we asked how you crashed the system we wanted an explanation not a demonstration

After he proved he could screw up with hardware, they gave him the opportunity to screw up with software too. That's all round training!

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

skip the front page

"Ïnterestingly, I often miss seeing the BOFH, On Call and Who, Me? in the main articles. They only ever seem to appear at the very top row in "!popular" or whatever it's named now. Rather than having stories posted in order of publication, they seem to be interspersed with stories being "pushed" at the audience. I find that distracting and it makes me even less likely to read them,"

Go straight to https://www.theregister.com/Week instead, you will be thankful.

Remote work wipes $453b off office real estate

Pension Funds are investors too

As the article points out, a lot of the investors in Commercial Real Estate are pension funds because normally it is a good long term investment.

So this will affect us, just not immediately.

NASA, SpaceX weigh invoking Dragon to take Hubble higher

Re: The big

Jared Isaacman and the Polaris Program have already planned to do an EVA from a Dragon next year.

In their previous mission they tested the Dragon going high enough to be able to reach Hubble.

So yes, there is lots of complexity to be worked through but planning is already underway.

US court backs FCC decision to let SpaceX fly Starlink sats at lower altitudes

if you are going to complain to the courts....

There are a multitude of things that you can rightly accuse Musk of doing but this one seems like a perfectly reasonable decision. Viasat should have turned up with a stronger argument.

Lapping the computer room in record time until the inevitable happens

I was an operator on a site with Wang minicomputers in the 90's. The Wang computers had exchangeable disk packs which needed to be swapped occasionally and we got in the habit of sliding across the floor in our socks and hitting the unload button on the way past.

This wasn't a problem until the time I accidently hit the poweroff button (no Molly guards in those days) instead of the unload button.

Good thing there was two set of doors between us and the users so they had no idea what had happened just that we were working to fix it.

Blood pressure monitor won't arrive for Apple Watch before 2024 – report

Re: ...measure blood glucose levels using non-invasive methods...

If I am just doing finger prick tests, I am testing 8-10 times per day.

If I have a CGM on, that is sampling every 5 minutes so 288 times per day.

You can do more trending and tighter control with more data.

CGM/Libre is expensive though and if any smartwatch came out out with a reasonably accurate measurement system, I would be in the queue on Day 1.

'Virtually no difference' between AI and humans in diagnosing prediabetes

changing habits

"What percentage of people who are told they have pre-diabetes make diet and lifestyle changes to improve their insulin response and avoid getting full-blown diabetes? Because from what I can tell, it's hardly any."

I know of two people who did, they both dramatically changed their diet and added exercise and are no longer considered at risk. Those are exceptions though.

I often tell people that in some senses it is easier managing being Type 1 than Type 2 (I am Type 1). If a Type 1 doesn't manage their levels, they get immediate feedback - Hypos or excessive blood sugars. If we don't do anything about it, we are hospitalised within a week.

A type 2 however doesn't get to see the consequences of their lifestyle for years and by then it is too late. And we all know how difficult it is to change lifestyle habits without feedback or reinforcement.

I would not wish anyone to get Type 1 - but if you have it, it is never far from your mind so you have to deal with it.

Singapore monetary authority threatens action on bank over widespread phishing scam

Re: Follow the money.

"Yes the person could do a zillion digital transfers to try & mask the money, but every single digital-transfer will leave a digital trail to follow. Manual withdrawls should result in the video evidence local law enforcement can use to find the local perp."

That's assuming that it hasn't bounced through a bank account in a country that won't give up details, or a digital only bank account where KYC wasn't done properly, or the money used to buy bitcoin....

Money Laundering is an issue that has been been going on for years for huge sums of money and is not yet a solved problem. If it appears simple to you, that's because you don't understand financial fraud in the real world.

NASA delays crewed Moon landing until 2025, citing technical infeasibility

Re: So NASA will *never* make it to the Moon

"We've landed a Starship once from 10km, it needs to land 100s if not 1000s of times from orbital velocities before you put people anywhere near riding on top of it"

How many times did Apollo, Soyuz, Shuttle, or Dragon land before putting people on them?

yes, a number of trips will be required but 100s of times is over egging it a bit.

Client-side content scanning is an unworkable, insecure disaster for democracy

I'm normally fairly happy to upgrade to Apple's new releases when they come out but I've decided to not upgrade to iOS15 - which also means that I won't be replacing my iDevices like I had planned.

Yes I know that this scanning has been put on hold, but I bet that it is still in the software and just requires a simple switch to turn on. I'm not happy to give them the opportunity.

I am just one person with a couple of devices, but if sufficient people jump off the upgrade train at this point, it may force Apple to consider how it assures people that this functionality will not be slipped in the back door.

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

Re: Without Facebook...

"While this is undoubtedly true for some, for many of us social media allows us to stay in touch with family and friends no matter where they live. I have family that lives all over the U.S. and even one family member in South America. It would be extremely difficult to stay in touch with all of them on a regular basis without social media."

My immediate family live in enough countries that the sun virtually never sets on us. We seem to do fine with SMS, email, video conference calling.

It all depends on how much you want to change - I agree the least resistance option for many is facebook, but it really doesn't take much to not use it.

I would drive 100 miles and I would drive 100 more just to be the man that drove 200 miles to... hit the enter key

London to Milan via Frankfurt

I was scheduled to fly from London to Milan to help setup a new office when we had some issues with a Sun Server in our Frankfurt office not responding.

After spending several hours on the phone to the desktop support person in the office including getting them to power cycle the server and not getting anywhere, we decided that I would fly to Frankfurt, deal with that issue and then head onto Milan.

Got to Frankfurt and into the office to find that the keyboard for the Sun was unplugged - if anyone remembers those early Sun boxes, they did not like to come up without a keyboard.

Plugged the keyboard in, rebooted the server and back to the airport - total time in the office about 15 mins.

Fired credit union employee admits: I wiped 21GB of files from company's shared drive in retaliation

Re: Rather moronic

"but I know that in the UK and EU it can be literally months, especially if the employer initiates the separation. Is the expectation that the employee doesn't actually show up for work during the notice period and the pay for that length of time is severance? Because certainly I have never had a job I could do, at all, without access to my employer's computer systems."

Yes it happens in the UK, people can be put on gardening leave and basically get paid to sit at home until the end of their notice period. They are not able to start another job in the meantime because they are still employed.

Often the company and employee will negotiate to reduce this amount of time for a cash payout.

SCO v. IBM settlement deal is done, but zombie case shuffles on elsewhere

Re: Red dress?

it's a pity there isn't a way to reward PJ for all her hard work on Groklaw, it was really informative and easy to follow.

If you are out there PJ, many, many people appreciate what you did with this case.

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

Re: I'm sure this builds on Apple's robust and secure Face ID tech ...

You can check a bit.ly url by appending a + to it. This causes bit.ly to show you the original URL and the date it was created.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not worth the effort, I just ignore all bit.ly links and never follow them. If it is important, send me the full link so that I can at least visually verify that it is going to the right site.

Report: Aussie biz Azimuth cracked San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, ending Apple-FBI privacy standoff

Re: iOS updates

"I always ask when I can: is there a basis for the general public to know that an iOS version is eligible for updates, besides (1) it is the latest version and there isn't a new iPhone due in the near future, or (2) it got an update not very long ago?

I haven't seen it published,"

I can only assume you haven't looked very hard because even the briefest of searches ("supported iOS versions") gives you pages from wikipedia and from Apple themselves as to which versions are currently supported on which phones.

iOS 12, 13, 14 are currently supported.

Australian ponders requiring multiple IDs to sign up for social media, plus more crypto-busting backdoors

Laming quite helpfully demonstrated that even having your account in your real name doesn't stop you harassing people - but does shows that eventually there can be consequences.

Clothes retailer Fatface: Someone's broken in and accessed your personal data, including partial card payment details... Don't tell anyone

Re: Please do keep this email and the information included within it strictly private...

"Now when a message leaks, you can instantly identify the leaker."

And then what? You sent me an unsolicited email asking me to keep it confidential which I shared. What are you going to do now?

I never agreed to you catagorising the issue as confidential. The worst you can do is refuse to accept my future business, which I am unlikely to give to you anyway after this fiasco.

Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft

Re: Its very easy to detect ground based broadcasts

"The current scare tactic is for crapita to send scary looking letters out to everyone who hasn't bought a tv licence, threatening to open an investigation, or maybe send someone round. The letters can be safely ignored (I haven't received any since i burned the last batch). Someone once did come round whilst I was in. I let them in to show them the back of my telly, where I had removed the tuner head so it was unable to receive broadcasts"

Your first instinct is correct, why let them in? you are not required to prove you don't have a TV, just send them on their way.

If they want to waste money continually sending you threatening letters then that's their own problem.

Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more

Re: Doesn't just happen with email

I left the UK and closed my account with my energy provider. That provider subsequently got sold to another energy provider who setup an account for me and 12 months later started sending me emails saying that my account was overdue to the tune of £280

I'm still working through trying to convince them that I do not live in the UK and just because they automatically created an account for me, I am not going to logon to it.

I don't know how the account has been accumulating so much, maybe the person who now lives in my old place hasn't setup new utility accounts - or the energy provider is just incompetent.

Azure in Spaaaaaaaaace: Microsoft signs up with SpaceX's satellite net constellation Starlink

Re: Wait... what?

you may have missed the point.

This is about being able to drop a Modular Data Center (a DC in a container) anywhere which provides local computing power. It then utilises Starlink to be able to communicate to the rest of the world.

Starlink provides much easier connectivity than running a landline though what might be difficult territory and more bandwidth than a satellite phone connection.

yes, it's a press release but it does promise improvements for some customers (maybe military, remote mining etc)

Academics: We hate to ask, but could governments kindly refrain from building giant data-slurping, contact-tracing coronavirus monsters?

Re: haven't heard a good reason why this isn't simply GPS based

GPS can be wildly innacurate - up to 100 meters error

And yet a GPS track of my morning run is almost 100% accurate, so its evidently possible to work out from the data where someone has walked or ran in most instances.

Doesn't work well in dense urban environments with lots of tall buildings

And yet it works perfectly in London which is the densest built city with the highest buildings in the country.

GPS doesn't tell you *where* in the building you are though. I don't need an alert that I have been in close contact with someone on level 20 when I live on level 5.

Bluetooth LE gives you close accuracy, it's not perfect but it is a lot better than GPS.

No backdoors needed: Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt iCloud backups after heavy pressure from FBI – claim

seems like a reasonable compromise

if you want secure backups that cannot be accessed, backup to iTunes locally.

If you want the convenience of cloud backups, you take the risk that it can be accessed by law enforcement.

At least the options are clear and it is easy to make a choice as to which one you want to use.

Squirrel away a little IT budget for likely Brexit uncertainty, CIOs warned

Re: I blame Borris

"If you are referring to Jacob Rees Mogg, he is the Right Honourable Member for the eighteenth century - so he'll have nothing to do with this modernist 19th century rubbish."

I was very depressed the day that I found out the Jacob Rees Mogg was actually *younger* than me :-(

Wham, bam, thank you scram button: Now we have to go all MacGyver on the server room

Re: Not his fault really

"I am amazed when I hear all these stories about unprotected master shut down buttons. I think I've only ever seen one such button without a cover, in dozen of datacenters I've been in."

In one building where I worked (back in the 80's), the computer room isolate was just *outside* the Ops room and was triggered at least twice by people thinking it was the button to get our attention. It certainly did that!

The silence of the racks is deafening, production gear has gone dark – so which wire do we cut?

Re: Spanner in the works

>

and when he went to throw the main breaker somehow he managed to short the main power leads with the spanner. There was a huge bang and the flash lit up the room brighter than the brightest welding arc I have seen; then the room fell into a deathly silence. The sparky was thrown across the room

The hospital reported that he had received flash burns to his retinas. He did recover his sight eventually. The spanner was found later that day and was missing a full half inch of metal from one of the lugs.

>

I had an almost identical situation working for a Visa Data Processing Centre in NZ - those antipodean sparkies! We had a couple of massive generators outside for weeks while the power distribution room was being completely gutted and rebuilt but at least no one died