Posts by K555

IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day

Kinda dull

I'm not sure a 'who, me?' would be quite so entertaining if it read....

"We had a 'bring your kids to work' day and our systems were perfectly designed so nothing bad happened."

Microsoft cancels Patch Tuesday for some Dell users over surprise shutdowns, overheating devices

Re: Validation and quality

If I'm running Windows on a laptop I might get shutdowns, overheating and performance problems but I'm way beyond being surprised by them.

Godot says bye bye AI, bans vibe-coded contributions

Re: Why would people even do this?

"Some people do not understand what programming, or probably most things, involves and that will just cause chaos if they get involved."

Some people? Yup, they're normally the ones that end up in charge of IT decision making.

NASA tests AI medic for astronauts too far from Earth to call a doctor

Re: WTF?

I suspect it'll use zilch in terms of power if it's not running because nobody needs it.

If we're talking about something that can make triage suggestions to a sensible human whilst waiting a number of minutes to get each message too and from Mars (provided the Sun isn't in the way) then it's at least an idea to look at how beneficial it'd be. As much as I dislike a lot of AI applications, where I find it 'OK' is as a natural language way to quickly search for the info you need.

That said, if I were on a crew headed for Mars, I think I'd want one of them to be a doctor.

XP-era Windows spotted haunting London's driverless railway

Re: Windows 2000

XP could look just like that if you set it to 'best performance'

AI is code – and can't be prompted into being smarter

Re: Hilarious article leads to question

I've absolutely never hard coded in data that should be in an .ini file. Never. Ever. Much...

Microsoft's worst 'Nightmare' unleashes BitLocker bypass 0-day

Why is it I'm less worried about dynamic drives than I am ReFS?

Angry bug hunter with Microsoft beef drops new Windows 0-day

I wonder if, being an ex-employee, they're prohibited from taking their knowledge of Microsoft code along to another vendor, even if they're not in direct competition.

Serious ISS air leak forces NASA astronauts to temporarily take shelter in Dragon capsule

Re: Crack cure

All he needs to do is catapult it at the ISS door on a fly by and then mark it as having been left in a safe *space*.

Another bug hunter leaks Microsoft exploits in defiance of company’s handling of vulnerability disclosures

Re: Even Microsoft knows it stuffed up

I'm not saying I totally agree with the software argument, but it has some substance and is at least arguable.

The cheap hardware thing....

Re: Even Microsoft knows it stuffed up

You have to suck it up and and endure it whilst you keep an open mind to heading elsewhere. Unless there are other up-sides beyond 'it pays the bills' that make it worth putting up with bad software.

I know that's not always practical, but it'd be a driving factor for me now. Some time ago, I decided if something was shit, it'd at least try other things.

Re: Even Microsoft knows it stuffed up

"At some point this becomes 'demanding money with menaces'/blackmail"

Which is what criminals will end doing exploited end users if Microsoft don't remunerate bug hunters (or get a QA department).

Re: Even Microsoft knows it stuffed up

I get the 'wide range of software' argument. But Windows being the only choice for cheap hardware? How do you come to that conclusion?

AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims

Re: And they're Surprised?

Easy and, most importantly, cheap.

Tony Blair and the Reform party both want AI in government, though they can't agree on what for

He sees good use for AI...

Perhaps his comms team could use it to plagiarise a multitude of sources in the preparation of dossiers.

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

Not so accidental

I carried out some install work at a major UK airport - right next to the airfield apron. We'd cleared it with the operator, given them all of the frequencies, locations and power levels we'd be using. DFS all enabled with RADAR detection etc and been given the all clear.

It was nearly impossible to get stable links. They'd come up with perfect quality then totally drop out. Initially, I figured it was just going to be proximity to airport rain RADAR or similar that was jamming up the whole band, but something about the pattern didn't quite fit. So I dropped the power right down and ran it outside of the DFS areas. Same issue.

I then took at look with an analyser and found that whatever channel the equipment was set to, got a whole load of garbage back at high power. Initially I figured this might be some kind of reflection off a nearby structure. Then I noticed that it took a few seconds before it happened after a channel change. I then set it to a non-standard channel width and it all but cleared up.

It was never confirmed, but it looks like we were having a fight with some kind of drone countermeasures. Which is interesting, because I feel like I remember when the whole Gatwick thing was going on that one of the issues is that jammers weren't allowed, even for use by the authorities. Might be misremembering that though (or it may have changed).

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

2.4 gets congested long before 5. Not to mention the fact 2.4 is a giant dumping ground for RF in the first place!

In my experience, It's pretty much only useful for low speed IOT stuff or filling in where 5GHz doesn't propagate in congested areas.

Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug

Silly question as a non iPhone user

Can you update an iPhone without unlocking it?

Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros

Re: Well of course...

I once heard someone who thinks Musk is a genius say "It's just amazing what he's managed to achieve!"

Well yes, I too am fairly amazed by it....

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

I feel like those switches don't turn the card off, they just tell the driver you'd like the radio off like a wireless toggle on a function key.

So you're still at the mercy of software.

I was once on a client site on a call out when another issue got phoned into our office. A user (a particularly whingey one) was reporting one of their screens had failed. It made sense that I just pop to the machine in question rather than the support desk talking it through on the phone.

I sat at the desk and tried to ignore the whingey noises emanating from behind me. Looked at the monitor and saw there was no power light.

My first thought was actually "shall I pretend this takes me a minute to find or shall I just push the power button first?"

I split the difference and switched the monitor on after a little look around the desk.

From behind me, the immediate reaction was "well why was it turned off!?"

Facebook went down for about three hours, interrupting your poking and Meta's ads business

probably down to the areas you frequent

That doesn't quite ring true for me. Facebook had an incredible habit of drudging stuff up I didn't care about and shoving it my face. MAYBE if I didn't actually add any 'friends' and stuck exclusively to small groups it wouldn't been better, but I struggle to imagine that being the case.

In my case, I know exactly what I browsing looking at when the 'final straw' popped up. It was the 'FreeNAS' (as it was then IIRC) user group. A bot had gotten in there and put up a video I really didn't want to see. I mindlessly let it run before I realised and it made the rest of my week really really shitty. I reported it for spam and content and Facebook came back once on an auto review saying there was no issue with and then twice with a human review to say it didn't violate any of their content restrictions.

And it probably didn't violate any laws, it really wasn't the worst thing I'll ever see. But I didn't want to see it. And I certainly didn't need to see it whilst I was using my free time to indulge in an interest. And yes, it was bot spam, but I stepped back and realised that, at least once a week, Facebook would piss me off.

So I deleted my account. I can't say it was 'wonderful' to be free, I was pretty indifferent overall.

Re: Despite the rabid hatred of SM on here...

Minus the holiday photos, I've managed to hang on to all that I need post using social-media with a mobile phone and some contact numbers.

Granted, I have to pay a mobile carrier for this but I think most people do that on top of their free Facebook accounts anyway.

Re: Oh no !

Pictures of a minion with some text over about how special grandchildren are. Right next to a post about how the youth of today are awful.

Users fume at Outlook.com email 'carnage'

Re: OVH

I'm behind CG-NAT at home (cheap service). I have a little OVH VPS I use in order to get a private fixed IP for services like e-mail. DNS, PTR, SPF, DKIM, DMARC etc all set correctly.

It's been on a few arbitrary blacklists based on subnet, I get that... it's a cheap VPS. I've been able to delist the specific IP with most if I run into a block. Can't do it with Microsoft services, so I just live with not being able to e-mail them.

I totally get that OVH are 'known for it' and I could run up a 2nd IP elsewhere if I was that bothered. But, by the same logic, every time an M365 account gets hacked and sends out a phishing link to everyone in it's address book with a link some hookey file hosted on sharepoint, everything will have come from a Microsoft IP.... I might blacklist those ;)

OVH

Pretty sure they had all of OVH Europe on a block list.

Gamers furious as indie studio Cloud Imperium quietly admits to data breach

Re: “We are closely monitoring the situation"

What were they doing before?

They were busy not finishing Star Citizen ;)

Agile Manifesto turns 25 – just in time for vibe coding to test it

Re: Not doing Agile right.

Don't assume or try to diminish consensus. I thought Agile was a shit idea well before I'd heard any opinions on it at all.

I first found out about Agile when consultancy/development firm turned up that proclaimed 'we use Agile' and I had no idea what it was. So I went straight to (pleasingly basic*) Agile website. Having read it I concluded it's pretty much a very wordy extension of wanting to jump to bottom-up programming and a bunch of egocentric behaviour around avoiding the boring bits. Basically, it's a manifesto on how to be me doing my A-Levels.

Re: Not doing Agile right.

"Working software over comprehensive documentation"

Sorry, it's not that I 'can't grasp' this. I totally get it and it's plainly ridiculous - you'll just end up with neither.

Not doing Agile right.

"Kern is quick to acknowledge how the manifesto's ideals were subverted"

Whenever you critisise Agile, the 'not doing it right' gets wheeled out.

Every. Single. Time.

When you write a law or set out a process, people will make use if it. And if it lets them roll out half baked crap, that's what they'll go for.

Google presses play on 30-second Gemini musical slop generator

Is it still somewhere around Kid Rock levels of generic?

Price of popularity: Linux Mint's success also means maintainer stress

Re: Inevitable?

Go into more detail or find a better analogy? If you don't know what more you can do than use a term and list things you don't like, I think you'll find Twitter very accommodating.

The criticism of systemd is usually it's pervasiveness isn't it? Not it's following of expensive and short lived trends?

And how does that equate to Windows users loving 'fashion victim' software? Are we saying they're into faddy init systems?

Re: Inevitable?

Saying 'I'm not sure if it's true or not' isn't an attempt making an argument.

I'm telling you that I don't understand your use of the term 'fashion-victim' in relation to software. It's not commonly used and it's not immediately obvious what it's supposed to imply.

Re: GNOME on a cheap laptop

I do love a downvote for saying that I find something fine to use. Guess what... I quite often say "Linux" instead of "GNU slash Linux" too ;)

Re: Inevitable?

I'm not sure if it's true or not because I don't really have a clue what "fashion-victim" software is describing.

GNOME on a cheap laptop

I've got a laptop that was very much in that age / price range (Ryzen 3250u based) and I find it perfectly satisfactory running GNOME.

Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation

We've replaced Seth McFarlane

So it's not being written by manatees after all?

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

Diesel gate era VW

They'd far rather you leased it rather than own it. Covers up massive software flaw. Constant check engine lights. Gearbox might just refuse to select gears on occasion.

Yet the masses still think VW is a safe bet and think if you happen to run a 15 year old Toyota you're driving something due for the scrap heap.

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

A friend of mine who works in motorsport used to have a position that involved being sat on a stool in the pit watching the telemetry coming in from the car. As exciting as F1 is supposed to be, that required wrapping his leg around the stool in a certain way to prevent him falling off if he nodded off mid race.

And when you unscrew the VGA lead, you've got a 50/50 chance it'll take the screw from the graphics card with it.

Did you ever try to lift one of those NEC ones with the BNC inputs? They're were like twice the weight of a normal CRT for the same size. IIRC, in the earlier series of Stargate SG1 they were the monitors in use around the SGC - including some hung from the ceiling. I think Walter should've been more worried about one of those coming down on his head than what might come through the IRIS.

I've often wondered if some Yoga positions could be named after moves specific to IT personnel.

"Leaning over desk"

"Reaching back of cab"

"Fitting AP to ceiling"

I'm reality, I think we're more likely to get types of lower back pain named after us.

VS Code for Linux may be secretly hoarding trashed files

Re: Snap

Maybe it does for many other reasons, but in this case isn't the bug that the package "sets the XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable equal to $SNAP_USER_DATA/.local/share."?

I'd not lay that one on Snap itself, but the package. Unless I've misunderstood.

'Ralph Wiggum' loop prompts Claude to vibe-clone commercial software for $10 an hour

"Agile and standups doesn't make sense any more,"

Any more?

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

Re: Great

Nooooooo.... not at allllll...

Meta retreats from metaverse after virtual reality check

Re: Bollocks. Utter bollocks

When Cloudflare went down, taking a great number of sites and services with it, the end user tickets we logged were all for ChatGPT being unavailable.

One office manager logged a tongue in cheek ticket saying "staff don't know how they'll survive".

Affordable housing site goes live with meme-laden test data

Re: Internet memes ?

Worse than teenagers. Looks like web designers.

2026 brings a bumper crop of Microsoft tech funerals

Re: What about Windows Server 2022?

It also comes with the bonus that they stop fiddling with it.

Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote

They're good for teaching kids an early lesson in decision making.

Abort, Retry or Fail?

Re: Ahhh... reminds me of Star Trek

The only reason that the Scutters don't do that is that they have a better union.

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

Re: So you signed up

Judging by the style of writing, it was trained on posts from people that haven't even reached junior high.