Posts by JimboSmith

AN0M, the backdoored ‘secure’ messaging app for criminals, is still producing arrests after four years

Actually it probably relates to the Comancheros an outlawed biker gang in Australia. Drug smuggling Australian kingpin Hakan Ayik who was involved with the gang was also heavily involved with distributing An0m.

Re: Quantum ?

Have an upvote for the Sir Pterry reference. Just to clarify something here from the article, it wasn’t a three or four letter agency that came up with or created An0m. Though they did end up with all the data and were the ones who ultimately pulled the strings they actually didn’t set it up. It was a bloke known by a pseudonym “Afgoo” who was a distributor for Phantom Secure. He was facing charges related to that phone system and decided to see if he could cut a deal with the FBI. He was thinking of setting up his own “secure app” and approached the feds to try and reduce his potential sentence by offering them full backdoor access. I read a very good book about An0m called Dark Wire by Joseph Cox which I highly recommend if you’re interested in this.

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Re: Really?

I have Hue lights in my house and they are connected to a closed circuit wifi network. I’ve never seen the need or had the desire to connect them to the internet/cloud, could not see the point of doing so. I don’t want Philips or any other data firm to know that I have a lighting setting in the bedroom that is called “Let’s get it on” and how often i use that. Someone recently tried to sell me a smart tv which I declined as I would rather use an aerial and dish. Same with a “smart” kettle although upon closer inspection it wasn’t what most on here would describe as smart. It was instead one where you could choose the temperature the water warms to, no internet or cloud needed.

China blames US for cyber break-in, claims America is world's biggest bit burglar

Who watches the Watchmen - Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

RIP Sir Pterry..

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

We had one arrive one day that read this is a Lazy Fax Virus, Please fax me on to other people in your address book.

Microsoft moves to the uncanny valley with creepy Copilot avatars that stare at you and say your name

Re: Share and Enjoy…

“Your Plastic Pal who’s Fun to be with”

After Marvin from the HHGTTG my next thought for that line was “Inflatable Ingrid” from Red Dwarf.

I’d never use this avatar thing because I don’t consciously use AI, oh and I think it’s more than just a little creepy.

£5.5B Bitcoin fraudster pleads guilty after years on the run

Re: unreal returns

Very clever! Have an upvote.

Digital ID, same place, different time: In this timeline, the result might surprise us

Re: "If thay had any sense they'd add it to your digital wallet"

Serious question: what's a digital wallet? I'm hardly a Luddite and I've never had nor wanted such a thing. Christ only knows how Mavis aged 84 is going to handle it.

I have never used the digital wallet on any of my phones I’ve ever had, I’ve never done internet banking nor used Apple or Google Pay. If this becomes a reality then I’ll get rid of my smartphone I think. I suspect for work purposes I may have to have access to Whatsapp which I thought would be a problem. However I found out recently that there are feature phones that have WhatsApp on. Either that or they can supply me with a work phone, which I have thus far refused.

UK to roll out mandatory digital ID for right to work by 2029

Re: IDs..

They did get off the drawing board, you could pay £30 and get one. And some people did.

David Blunkett was being interviewed on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning about ID cards. He said he had one of the previous ones and had I think last used it to travel somewhere.

Re: Gov: So - well drop the cards...

I had some blowhard in the pub earlier suggesting to everyone, because he was so loud, that ID cards were a brilliant idea. Someone challenged him on what they would achieve and he said they’d stop illegal immigrants from working in the UK. He also seemed to think that fellow pub enthusiast and Rothmans smoker Nigel Farage was in favour of ID cards too. It was then pointed out, by means of a Xweet from the man himself, that he actually wasn’t in favour https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1971258492687352012

Nigel Farage MP @Nigel_Farage

I am firmly opposed to @Keir_Starmer’s digital ID cards.

It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalise the rest of us.

The state should never have this much power.

The blowhard looked visibly shocked and says loudly “Bloody Hell Nige, has gine soft!”. He then downed the remainder of his pint and walked out. Someone on my table said “It’s a fecking weird world where I agree with something Nigel Farage has sais.”

Charities warn Ofcom too soft on Online Safety Act violators

Re: Hah....Another Talking Shop About "Enforcement"

Yup.....no one is enforcing the 30mph speed limit in streets in London.

That’s possibly because the speed limit in London is now 20mph. I know this because my cab driver told me a couple of weeks ago. I was in a hurry to get home to let a locked out elderly neighbour in to their house with the spare set of keys I have of theirs. He said he’d like to go faster to help me out, but that’s the new Londonwide limit. He then pointed out that we were on the Cromwell Road (a dual carriageway) at 12:30am and there wasn’t anyone around but the new limit was 20mph even on dual carriageways in the middle of the night

Russian fake-news network, led by an ex-Florida sheriff's deputy, storms back into action with 200+ new sites

Re: Asylum in Russia?

Here’s a link to the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dougan_(conspiracy_theorist) and yep as the AC says the perfect Russian stooge.

Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group

I feel sorry for all those affected by this from staff to customers. Having used Comcast in the USA their service is variable and I wouldn’t normally use them out of choice.Bloke in a shopping centre stopped me and tried to convince me about Sky Glass not too long ago. To be clear he did work for them and wasn’t just some random bloke in an anorak. After explaining the concept and showing me the product he asked what I thought of it. He seemed a bit shocked when I said “underwhelmed” and essentially asked why was I daring to diss such a great product. I said because it comes from the internet rather than the airwaves. Why would I want to use the internet when I have a dish and TV aerial at home? I explained I had no interest in catch up/on demand and was perfectly happy with the non sky satellite system I have already. There won’t be any weather related reception issues is the first response, to which I said in the over 12 years since I have had the set up only twice has there been an issue with the weather. That was two incidents one summer where there was almost biblical torrential rain for 5mins (both occasions) and the satellite signal went. The terrestrial signal was fine though.

Not to be deterred from his sales pitch I’m informed that it has voice control. That’s great for those who want it or are incapable of pushing a button but I don’t want or need it. I don’t like random microphones on things if it’s all the same to him. I asked if my viewing habits would be sent to Sky and he said probably (it obviously does), so I asked if they sold the details on to third parties, like advertisers etc. he didn’t know about that. He asked if I had any streaming services and I said I had Amazon Prime for the same or next day delivery, the streaming was a bonus. Well I can have that on my Sky Glass as well can’t I then, it integrates seamlessly. I then explained that I used the Amazon Prime streaming at work during lunch because I didn’t have access to a TV there and if I did I would watch that.

A thought the occurred to me, if my broadband goes down what happens to my viewing then? Ah well yes then he had to concede that I would then need an aerial connection for terrestrial viewing. “How often does that happen though” he enquired to be met with a far more often than my satellite signal dies reply. So does the box have a hard drive and if not where are the programmes I have decided to record stored. Ah he says on the Sky servers, you won’t run out of space anymore with a Glass TV. Erm but if the broadband goes down then I can’t even watch my saved TV shows? No he conceded you wouldn’t be able to do that. He mentioned screen quality and audio performance from the built in sound bar. My current TV which is HD is perfectly fine for me as is the audio setup. The last gasp thing from him was that this is the future, to which I said not my future thanks. I thought therefore I would not bother with Sky Glass thanks all the same and told him so.

It’s the same with this Freely service for which you apparently need a low end TV to watch and the internet. I looked into that and it would be perfect as an app for my tablet so I could watch tv at work in my lunch hour. Cannot see the point when at home and have access to an aerial/satellite dish. I appreciate I might be in a minority on this but that’s my position and I am unanimous on this.

Careless engineer stored recovery codes in plaintext, got whole org pwned

Re: A large IT company in Birmingham used to do text files in the shared drive

A friend of mine uses a jpeg file or some other image file as a password backup. The method is fairly simple open an image in a text editor and then use some of the plaintext characters that make up the image as your password. They also have the picture stored on their phone along with loads of others as a seconday repository. Which picture is it they use out of the two thousand on thier devices and which characters from it they use is anyone’s guess. Then on top of that there’s encryption on the devices and MFA for his accounts.

Microsoft blocks bait for ‘fastest-growing’ 365 phish kit, seizes 338 domains

Re: "Microsoft filed a lawsuit against Joshua Ogundipe"

Nigerian Prince smince I’ve got a Nigerian Princess who thinks I am marriage material and is coming to see me. There has been a small hitch in that she has had her access to her bank accounts restricted. Not to worry though, I am going to send her some money by Western Union so she can come and visit me. I just have to deal urgently first with one of our suppliers who needs me to send their regular payment to a different bank account.

Supermarket giant Tesco sues VMware, warns lack of support could disrupt food supply

Re: Popcorn time

Went to my closest Tesco this evening with three specific Tesco own brand products that I wanted. They didn’t have any of them but one of the staff suggested the smaller Tesco up the road . Went up there and they normally have two out of the three but not in this case. A staff member there suggested trying the much larger store a small tube ride away. Went there and they had none of them either. That is seriously quite annoying, and that’s with functioning IT - I dread to think what it would be like without.

The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety

Re: "adult content providers"

What’s to stop each porn site logging your viewing list of your verified profile, which they may already do under quite legally as defined in their T&C’s. Then that database is hacked/mistakenly left unsecured on a cloud server (cos we’ve never seen that happen) and then people find out what you’re into, especially if it isn’t of a vanilla flavour. That’s before you get into the problem of creep, where things get added to the list of content that websites are required to have age verification for before you can view them. One day you wake up and discover your favourite technology website is on a list of sites that someone in power believes should require verification. Why? Because they discuss things that may help circumvent such requirements. Then OFCOM say that the visual verification checks aren’t effectIve enough and children are able to bypass them. So ID upload is required……..

My university when the internet was first introduced there had a draconian list of words and subjects that you weren’t allowed to search for. No one had thought that this might have unintended consequences. So for example the popular music students who were given an assignment on punk music found that they couldn’t access anything about the Sex Pistols because the word Sex was on the banned list. Anthropology students and criminology students faced similar problems. This was swiftly reversed and “Sex” along with some other terms/words were searchable for the first time. Although the draconian restrictions still applied because you didn’t have to log in to the university system to surf the net but did have to use specific computers. There were unfiltered computers available for faculty use, which meant that most of them had no idea there were blocks.

When I was looking for a new TV for the spare bedroom recently I found myself going past a Currys store. I went in to see what they had on special offer, and whether they had anything really cheap, such as one that was a cancelled order etc. The sales droid tried to interest me in TV’s with “Freely” on them and said that it was better than freeview. I therefore googled it and looked at the Freely site and they list the following ‘great’ features:

One press of the Freely button on your remote... and you’re in! - One press on my power button suffices at the moment!

Glammed-up TV Guide to find what’s on now, next, and later - Why do I want a ‘glammed up’ TV guide? What’s wrong with an EPG like I have now?

Brand new MiniGuide to help you find more of what you love! - Why do I need a ‘MiniGuide’?

Pause and restart live TV – snacks, anyone?! - I can already do that on my existing TV.

Find and watch new shows and old faves on your Browse page - See above comments about guides

Accessible TV Guide so everyone can enjoy great TV - There’s already one of those on channel 555 on my current TV.

I told him that I didn’t see any of that being different to what I can do at the moment with my current TV. I can already find what I want to watch on TV without this new streaming thing, mini guide etc. I can pause live tv thanks to the hard drive attached to it. Wouldn’t this just be sending my viewing habits to people/companies that I don’t know? He unsurprisingly said he didn’t know about that. I said I don’t need streaming so please disregard that when showing me televisions. He mentioned that streaming wouldn’t be affected by the weather to which I said that my current set up isn’t either. It has to be torrential monsoon downpours before my satellite reception is affected and the terrestrial signal hasn’t ever been yet. I then explained what I wanted in a tv and apparently just buying a normal plug it in and watch the broadcast signal TV is very hard nowadays. I asked him when were the cameras going to be mandatory on TV’s so that surveillance of you as well as what you watch was complete? He hadn’t read 1984 nor seen the film from what I gathered from his response.

End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

I was talking to someone with children of their own who has had a talk with their children about what they see on the internet. I cannot imangine the utter horror of having a talk about Internet Pr0n with one (or both of your parents) whilst watching examples. She has explained that what they see in porn isn’t reality, that no one should be forced to do anything they don’t want to, and about safe sex.

She said if the kids weren’t aware of VPNs before as a way of getting round age verification, thanks to this idiot and her report they certainly will be now. She also said to her children, if you want to watch that stuff you can pay for a mobile contract and view it on your own phone don’t do it on the home internet connection please. If you need money to pay for a contract/phone, go and get a Saturday job etc.

Only ISPs get to determine what constitutes 'affordable' broadband, says team Trump

Re: Only one ISP in some locations

There were serious suggestions in government during the cold war that AT&T should be broken up. The Department of Defense had to urgently stop this by pointing out how incredibly important it was to national security.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

Re: Private or Work?

People under authoritarian regimes always found workarounds. That never meant the system was acceptable - just that people were forced to survive it.

You can also say that about schoolchildren in my experience. All this will do is make the IT savvy kids the most popular ones in school. The ones who have their parents Age Verification password, know how to use a VPN etc. They then just share it around possibly for a small fee. A few years ago I was on the way to the post office just after kicking out time at the local Schools. On the bus ride there I was joined at the back of the upper deck by several spotty teenage youth in uniform. One of them had an impressively high resolution image of one lady and four men engaged in what I now understand is a position referred to as 'airtight'. His phone was filled with such images and films and as this was the latest addition he was bluetoothing or wifi sharing it to his mates sitting around him.

This obviously won’t kill off the access to porn by young people, as we have seen VPN’s are one way round it. AOL when it first launched in this country used a US IP address/addresses for users. What this will do is attempt to satisfy the Daily Mail readers/Mary Whitehouse disciples who get very upset at the amount of filth available. Just realised I would have been the most popular (and richest) kid in my school…….and not Antony who looked like he might be 18 and so his local newsagents sold him some of Richard Desmond’s finest publications (and I’m not talking about the Daily Express).

Microsoft bolts Copilot Mode onto Edge to chase AI-browser crowd

Re: No.

I was going with:

Aw hell no, no no a thousand times no!

Why do I have visions of Clippy on steroids?

An example shown in one of the published videos for a pending capability called Actions – which requires granting Copilot permission to access browser history and credentials – involves handling prompts like this: "Can you find a place to paddleboard, close to work, that has afternoon rental?"

The model responds, "I see you’re interested in paddling, I recommend Mistress Niamh who is very strict with Naugty Boys is not far from your work and can be booked for the afternoon. Should I book it for you?" without citing any basis for that incorrect recommendation.

The user answers, "No I’m interested in paddlboarding, you know watersports."

The model then presumably checks the new information in the appropriate area and replies, "It looks like Mistress Niamh doesn’t do watersports, so instead I've booked Mistress Samantha who does, next Wednesday at 6pm. I’ve added it to your work calendar so that people know where you are."

Problem PC had graybeards stumped until trainee rummaged through trash

Re: Was his name ...

Talking of Sherlock……….I once witnessed an what looked like an inquisition of sorts going on as a visitor to a company. All the staff of one department, my mate’s department were being called into a meeting room one by one. They would walk out after a few minutes normally looking relieved and the next person would be asked to come in. The mate I was visiting eventually finished in there and we went out for lunch. I innocently enquired what had been going on because it looked like a redundancy set up.

That wasn't it at all he said. They'd noticed that they were having problems with a particular system. They ran a complex report every night using a very high spec office computer at 18:30 and this was automatic. Only problem was several reports spanning a period of weeks were missing and had to be re-run when the first person had gotten in in the morning. This delayed the start of day for several people. After just a few instances of this happening they'd installed a logging program to see who was doing what on that computer. The logs had told them who had logged in and stopped the program running,

They'd found out that it was Employee ‘X’ but had decided to call everybody in, not just him. They revealed to each person in turn that there was a now a monitoring prog on that computer. They asked each employee if if they'd got anything they'd like to mention at this point. None of the rest of the had anything significant just things like burning an copy of a CD etc. all within office hours. Employee ‘X’ on the other hand was sweating profusely and had sung like a canary. He used the machine to play something like Quake or Half Life etc. on as it had the best graphics card the most memory etc. He'd had to hide the game on the hard drive and was playing it after work. However the reports prog was quite memory and processor intensive when running. So he'd shut it down before playing and if his gameplay went beyond 18:30, as it frequently did, no report was run.

Discussions were ongoing as to what punishemnt he'd get.

‘I nearly died after flying thousands of miles to install a power cord for the NSA’

Re: Two possibilities

Even that leaks some information as there is a finite set of places with that cost of train ticket.

Well, to be precise, there are a finite number of all train stations, but a smaller set with a given cost of ticket.

I don’t know if the original poster is still reading this to further explain when this was or maybe further clarify. I would have thought there was a lot of variables in train ticket pricing if you vary the departure station and the destination station the pricing would be variable for tickets especially if you added in railcard discounts etc. Also we don’t know if it was an exact price match or whether there was wiggle room. I’m really curious now as that would be an interesting way of dealing with a travel expenses and a need for secrecy. If it was during the time of BR and as this was presumably government work, maybe wherever this bloke went had their own ticket machine for this.

GPS on the fritz? Britain and France plot a backup plan

Re: Bring back Long Wave!

It is my understanding that listening to the BBC radio stations will still be possible on ‘Sounds’ when access to catchup and podcasts etc. is restricted.

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

Re: That reminds me

Pressing the shift key to prevent autorun and therefore bypass the Mediamax anti-piracy technology was also a distinct no-no. The student who did a report on the software was threstened by Sunncomm with the full might of the DMCA as reported by El-Reg:

SunnComm to sue ‘Shift key’ student for $10m

Where I worked at the time we had a professional CD duplicator and that DRM wouldn’t have bothered us had we been into copying music CD’s.

Deutsche Bahn train hits 405 km/h without falling to bits

We might have the most uncomfortable trains given my last trip on the new GWR trains. The person sitting opposite was a regular passenger and had brought a cushion to sit on and told me I’d made a rookie mistake.

Trump guts digital ID rules, claims they help 'illegal aliens' commit fraud

Re: Addendum

How old are you?

Nobody remembers that song...

Oi, I resemble that remark!

Ukraine strikes Russian bomber-maker with hack attack

Re: CAD design files ?

Yes the DGSI or the DGSE cannot remember which, found out about the mole/source leaking to the Russians and I believe deliberately doctored the plans that the mole had access to.

Re: Thank goodness

1. The SMO was screwed up by our deception.

2. Ordinary Ukrainians do not want this.

3. I think their soldiers would prefer their lives with their families than a salute and the hardened gung-ho element really did include a lot of Nazis.

Oh and you know some Ukrainians do you?

I do and when I showed them what you’ve posted they said it was total crap. I also know an expat Russian who said the same thing as the Ukrainians.

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

My Samsung with a headphone jack (A12) doesn’t have an FM radio which is annoying because normally I don’t buy a phone without one. I only bought that one because I was going abroad and the backlight on the then current phone had died. The £30 Nokia I have does have a FM radio on it and in an area with a strong station I don’t even need the headphone cable. It’s much better with the cable though or one of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364200907544 and plays through the phone speaker.

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: Mine was shelf stacking in a supermarket

I started off making the tea in one department and ended up before being made redundant as deputy head of another department. I was once on a conference call with people from across the company and our new head of IT. Most amusingly he hadn’t got around to meeting many people in the firm and therefore no idea who most people were on the call. Someone described me as the “company expert” on one particular system which was nice of them. However that meant I had a separate calls afterwards from the new IT head asking me questions and trying my best to answer them.

I caught up with the person who had given me that title in the canteen and asked them “Why me”?

She said “You’re the only person I know who has read the manual, I don’t know anyone else who has.”

I got some unwanted extra attention and work from that which I didn’t need.

Krebs throws himself on the grenade, resigns from SentinelOne after Trump revokes clearances

Re: It is so refreshing and hopeful to see some people with integrity and a backbone.

Mr Krebs posted this in response to Mark Hamill’s translation of a tweet by Trump about his firing.

In defending democracy, do or do not, there is no try. This is the way. #Protect2020 @HamillHimself @PedroPascal1

https://x.com/C_C_Krebs/status/1328953421882413056

A friend who is a Yank and a Yankees fan and a republican said at the time

It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You didn’t get as many votes, nor electoral college votes, so you get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

Re: Fake interest in product

Whilst working for a company in a large building I picked up the phone to someone who was trying to sell me double glazing. Their offer was pay for the downstairs windows and the upstairs ones were free. He told me all about the quality and made out that the materials were first rate. I said yes I’d be very interested how quickly could someone get here to give me a quote? He took the address but sounded a bit suspicious when asking for the postcode.

He then asked if he had called a business to which I said yes, apparently commercial property was excluded. He asked out of curiosity how many windows we had and i said that not counting the ground floor well over 100 “That’s why we don’t do commercial property” came the reply. I asked what had given me away and he said I was far too keen to get a quote. He took that number off their dialing list.

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

Re: Oh look !

Yet another reason to tell MS to fark off...

Could not agree more and it is to my great shame that I can only upvote you once.

How is this going to work with GDPR?

Windows 11 adds auto-recovery, kills offline setup loophole

Not necessarily 1998, he just knew that Mac OS won't easily run on the non-Apple hardware.

Retail staff must really love the customers who are deliberately obtuse to make their job harder.

But, if it helps with self-esteem for the smart-arse then at least does some good.

I work in retail and I have dealt with staff* in the businesses I’ve worked at, and also elsewhere. This bloke for my laptop wasn’t a very communicative person and not the best at technology. He was a little bit clueless as to whether the laptop I was enquiring about had USB-C as it wasn’t mentioned on the ticket (no display model) and he didn’t have the initiative to check on the internet or their internal systems. He also had a total disregard for the customer, as he went to talk to a colleague after initially talking to me and then spent 10 minutes talking to the colleague rather than coming back to me with the information.

It was only when I walked over to the pair of them that he suddenly remembered I existed. He then had to go and find the information he’d gone to get because the bloke he was talking to didn’t work in that area and didn’t know. He did know that Nick was having a party on Saturday night, that it was bring a bottle and that it was worth going just to see Nick’s new girlfriend who apparently was (and probably still is) extremely good looking and a bit too good for Nick. I know this because I was able to hear them talking from where I was standing.

*who have in one case been hired for no reason other than they turned up for the interview and no one else did, on a transport strike day.

Anonymous Coward

I had to reinstall a windows10 laptop for somebody without internet access recently. The whole "you must have a microsoft account" thing is a massive pain the ass. All of the loopholes I've used to get around it in the past *no longer work*. It took me over an hour of fannying about to make it install (I'm not a newbie, I have been a developer and sysadmin for over 30 years).

And then it was locked in fucking S mode. And they tell you that the only way to remove S mode is to install an app from the Microsoft Store, for which you need network access and a Microsoft Account. I eventually found a way around that too but seriously what a huge waste of time to do something that should be simple and easy.

It just shows what utter contempt Microsoft has for the their customers that they deliberately go to such lengths to make life difficult for them.

Do you know that was the exact reason that I decided to dump MS on a new laptop and go with Mint instead.

I was told by the sales bloke that it came with a free trial of MS Office which I said I didn’t want. I asked if they had any machines that didn’t have Windows installed and he said no you have to have it don’t you or the computer won’t work. When I mentioned Linux he just looked a bit blank, so I said what about Apple? Again he just looked blank. Frustrated by the Windows Account and that blasted S Mode, I got a USB stick out and wiped out Windows with Linux.

GCHQ intern took top secret spy tool home, now faces prison

Re: How?

Many years ago I was taking a small group round a business I used to work at. They were guests of the Chairman & Chief Exec so had friends in very high places. I was told to show them everything including the Server rooms etc. Well as we were approaching the secure door to the server room I asked everyone to show me that their phone was off not just on airplane mode before entry. Most people were happy to comply except one pompous git who said he couldn’t do that as he was so important he couldn’t risk missing call etc.

I said okay fine you can wait out here whilst the rest of the group go in. Boy was I unpopular with him, he tells me he’s mates with the CEO or the Chairman (can’t remember which) and I should be more respectful etc. I pointed to a sign that said something like no mobiles no exceptions and reiterated he wasn’t going in with his switched on. Well he’s unhappy with this but eventually after repeating my ultimatum he agreed to turn the phone off.

Tour (including the roor terrace with very good views) over we head to the boardroom where the CEO and Chairman are waiting. Mr Important relays his disgust at having to turn his phone off and says it was all my fault. One of the two most senior bosses looks at him and says “Oh come on man up and grow a pair, if he says turn it off then do so, I have to too.”

I made my excuses and left at this point. This wasn’t a top secrets containing secure installation in any way like GCHQ. I would have hoped that they had more stringent and stricter rules and regulations.

Apple hallucinated Siri's future AI features, lawsuit claims

Re: Given this....

I discovered that despite turning off Apple Intelligence on my iPad, after the last update it was magically reenabled. I found out when opening the email app and being presented with a screen about Apple Intelligence atop of my emails. Instantly disabled this again and cursed Apple, if told you I didn’t want it before then the least you could do is ask before reenabling it. I didn’t ask for AI and don’t want it.

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

Re: Nooooo.

I have another one but I’m not airing that one just in case someone from Microsoft is reading.

Re: Nooooo.

But please leave your "testing putting the Gemini multimodal API inside applications" in the testing phase only, to spare the rest of us that don't want AI shoved into everything for a multitude of reasons. Thanks.

I have a form of neurodversity where I have trouble with things popping up when I’m typing. I therefore have a very great problem with Outlook etc. suggesting words after the one I’m typing at that point. I only use outlook at work and the AI on windows attempts to guess what I’m going to type next and puts it up on the screen. That gives me issues and if I shut the AI down in Task Manager when I start typing it comes back. I have to use a workaround to avoid this, one of which is to use Notepad to compose emails and then copy and paste it into the reply. I can’t delete or rename the exe because I don’t have admin privileges.to let me do that.

Don't want Copilot app on your Windows 11 machine? Install this official update

"The app is unintentionally uninstalled and unpinned from the taskbar."

Sounds perfect to me, shame it isn’t an option for everyone. I’d be willing to offer any of our tech support real money/booze etc. to have it removed permanently.

Celonis slaps SAP with lawsuit claiming it's gatekeeping customer data

Re: What a world

Spot on with that description, is it any wonder SAP are all hot on retiring ECC and pushing everyone and their data to the cloud on S/4HANA.

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Re: If you want a general purpose computer ...

My long suffering mum has an iPhone and a Mac because Which (the consumer organisation) told her that they were the best. Except recently Apple made changes to IOS and moved stuff on her iPhone. Some apps were put into groups/folders without her permission/knowlege and as it doesn’t take much to light the blue touchpaper with her……..She’s gone off Apple. She asked what I used and when I said Android and Linux she looked at me blankly. I then explained that there are more OS’s than windows and Mac and IOS etc. however given she’s got the latest IOS phone that cost a packet she’s probably not going to change that. Doesn’t stop her from slagging off Apple at every opportunity she gets though.

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

I had a chat with my mum abot this a few years ago when a politician brought up E2EE and the “dangers” of it. She’d just started using online banking despite her advancing years and found it very useful. I said to her without E2EE her new found way of banking wouldn’t be possible. A slightly dumbed down explanation followed where she then understood a lot of things rely on E2EE. I said the second you put in a back door then you cn assume multiple criminals will be looking for this easy way in. Imagine shopping online and paying only to have your purchase redirected or your card details stolen and used elsewhere. She said why don’t politicians understand this? I said she’d answered her own question there, they’re politicians and whilst not all of them are clueless idiots, there are more than a few around who were.

Techie pulled an all-nighter that one mistake turned into an all-weekender

Re: Ouch!!!

I once cut instead of copied a folder in a directory and posted it into my new folder in another drive. After I’d done this I was about to go back into the original folder and leave a read me text file. However the folder wasn’t there, and a realisation that I might have clicked cut rather than copy dawned. I replaced the folder back where it should have been just as my desk phone started to ring. That was an confused rather than angry user who wanted to know why their software wasn’t working properly. I suggested that they just restarted the thing and maybe the issue would go away.

Non-biz Skype kicks the bucket on May 5

Skype was actually very helpful for me because of the ability to make calls to USA toll free numbers. When calling a company in the US, if they had such a number, then the call was free which was great. I cannot see Teams doing that in my lifetime. What was really brilliant was the system Three had on their mobiles, from Skype. There were even Skype phones on Three as seen here. It allowed you to use Skype without using any data on your phone. As I understand it, it used the PSTN and connected to Skype that way. As a result it meant that anywhere you had even a ropey signal even if data was a problem you could still make calls. I once sat in the middle of nowhere in the British countryside and made a call to the toll free number of the phone company we use in the USA. Microsoft killed that off as well.

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

Re: Seen that

One place I worked at there was an employee who was running a business selling stuff via ebay. It wasn’t nicked items, that was legit, but he was using the company packing materials and postroom. They were caught when one evening all the post had gone but the next morning first thing, there were several packages in the postroom waiting to go out. The security manager opened one of them and noted the contents. Then did a search of sold items on ebay and found that exact item had sold the previous evening at 5pm when the auction had ended. Having noted the seller details the manager found the closest end time for one of the seller's auctions and placed a large bid so they were guaranteed to win.

Then they just waited for the auction to end and sat in the postroom afterwards. Idiot turns up with a package and is told to open it which they are reluctant to do. It is opened in his presence and the security manager says that this doesn’t need sending as he won the auction. They looked at this bloke’s stationery orders and it was mostly bubble wrap, boxes etc. Bloke was made to repay his spent stationery budget for the year and what they could prove he’d sent from the office.

Oh and then he was fired for gross misconduct.

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

Re: Changing hardware

Yeah I’m fairly certain that there was something in their software that would have objected to that setup. It really was done cack handedly by them to get their cash cow of a product onto Windows. One suspects that they wouldn’t have even made a Windows version if competitors with Windows ready programs hadn’t popped up.

Changing hardware

We had a new shiny Windows version of the DOS program that the software company we used had been very slowly updating for years. There were other companies who had released Windows versions ages ago but we were locked into the ecosystem of this firm. This was either during the Win 95 or the Win 98 era my memory doesn’t remember that detail from that long ago. We’d actually spent some proper money too for once, getting updated higher specced machines, which were going to be new for the roll out of the Windows version. So I have one of the tech team from the software company with me and he’s getting ready to install the software on one of these machines. First thing he asked me was where the floppy drive was, and I said that we didn’t have them on the new machines. His face became a contorted picture I will never forget until I die. He asked how were we going to do the mandatory daily backups then, without there being a floppy drive? At this point I thought he was joking and to continue the joke said that I knew we were installing the new DOS version not Windows.

He is not joking and says that we’re installing the Windows version and where is the floppy drive on this machine, “it also needs to be the A: drive”. I explained that we had servers now that could back up many times more than a floppy disc and we could just back it up there. These backups to the server can be mirrored and stored offsite too. “No” he says, like the DOS version, the Windows one backs up to a floppy drive, and we must have one. I dug out a computer with such a drive and he installs the software showing me what to do. So I then realise that the Windows version is a straight port of the DOS version including the dumb backups to floppy. This version costs extra per month but is hardly any better.

I reported this to my boss who is not thrilled about this unwelcome development given the capex on new machines. He has however been told we’re using it by the senior management so there’s no choice atnthat time. However he also tells me to quietly investigate a rival company that produces a product that was built from the beginning for Windows. Eventually we dumped the original firm and went with their competitor. They didn’t require a floppy drive for backups, could back up to a server and it was a better product all round. It also meant we could use the shiny new machines. We could also finally roll out and use the new machines we’d bought.