Posts by JimboSmith

London cabbies want Sadiq Khan to slam the brakes on robotaxis

Re: Missing the point

How do you tell a driverless cab that you have a preferred route?

Microsoft 365 subscribers set to lose up to 4 TB of OneDrive storage

I’m assuming that Keep source formatting will work when “pasting from other apps” but to be 100% honest I haven’t tried this yet.

My assumption was wrong and this setting only carries across things like tabs bolding and italics. It doesn’t do anything at all about spaces between paragraphs etc. you manually have to correct those. Typical Microsoft.

I made the point when they called me, that New Outlook was hardly fit as a replacement and Microsoft only seemed interested in cramming in more AI. Asked if I used the AI I said no I disabled it all, unlike Microsoft I actually read everything the customer writes and then I personally write back and actually do something about what they’ve written.

Full disclosure I did try co-pilot via edge for a solution to the pasting issue and all it told me in a very cheerful way was:

That yes New Outlook no longer used Word for

I could still use Word for composing emails

I could then paste back into my email.

It never mentioned that blasted hidden setting once.

I said have you ever tried that and he admitted he hadn’t, I said the formatting disappears try it yourself. He did and realised I was right, I said I’ll just copy it paragraph by paragraph and then add in the underlining, bolding etc. but that this was not making me more productive, quite the opposite.

Actually I might have a solution to this for you but it’s well hidden in the settings which I find bizzare in the extreme. What you need to do is go to

Settings,

then Email,

then Compose

and look for the Cut Copy and Paste section on that page.

In there you will find “Choose how content from different apps is pasted” under that you have

“Pasting from Emails” and calendar”

and

“Pasting from other apps”

The options are:

Keep source formatting,

Merge formatting

or

Keep text only.

I’m assuming that Keep source formatting will work when “pasting from other apps” but to be 100% honest I haven’t tried this yet. I only got given the solution late on Friday in the pub. I had put an IT ticket in about this because it was driving me mad, as I guess it was you. Someone called me to say that this wasn’t really something that they’d be able to help with. Basically this is a trivial software issue pasting between two apps and not something that requires a ticket thank you very much.

I said you forced us to use this POS that is New Outlook, so therefore you can find a solution please. I will keep reopening the ticket if you just close it, so at least try and make an effort to find a solution please. One of the IT support team approached me in the pub and told me he had found it. i will try it on Monday and see if it works.

Ukrainian drone attack takes out Russian datacenter

Re: Underground

If you want secure in the UK then the old RAF Ash, the command and control centre at Greenham Common, and the bunker at RAF Bawdsey are all now owned by thebunker.net and should be fairly secure.

BT buys TalkTalk out of administration to keep 2.5M customers connected

Re: As a former TT customer ---

Dido Harding? You mean "test and trace" Harding?

Yes the aura of ‘success’ follows her everywhere.

Re: As a former TT customer ---

Their customer service is indeed awful, which is one reason I decided never to be their customer again. The problem is, the same goes for pretty much all the telco operators. They're either BT resellers, or they're Vermin Media whose quality-of-service is equally appalling.

Proper regulation to ensure minimum quality would go a long way, although I suspect they'd just pass the fines onto their customers, rather than allowing them to hit the pockets of the shareholders or board.

-

Their customer service was pants. Indian call centres with operators reading off a script that didn't relate to the problem you were having. 3-4 week wait for a technician to fix a broken connection etc etc. The final straw was when we moved house and told TT we were moving in order to transfer the line and we received a letter (by snail mail) "Sorry you're leaving ..." So we did.

Yes the customer service was utter crap as I was dealing with them for my parents internet. Originally they were using Homechoice which was very good but was then bought by Tiscali and then again until it eventually ended up being part of TalkTalk. When Mum’s email mysteriously died the call centre had never heard of Homechoice nor their legacy email addresses. They persisted that TalkTalk was nothing to do with it and they wouldn’t be able to help with other businesses. After showing via a whois search that yes TalkTalk did own Homechoice.co.uk the bloke was completely flummoxed. He said that they had no information on any of that and he would therefore be of absolutely no use taking this any further. Found out from an internet forum that they had killed off the homechoice email totally and not bothered to tell anyone, migrate it to a TalkTalk one etc. Then TalkTalk were victims of a “sophisticated cyberattack” according to CEO Dido Harding which turned out to be an SQL injection and hardly sophisticated etc.

Get rid of Apple's AI bloatware and reclaim 12 GB of storage with this open source tool

Re: Inverse enshittification

An IOS version would be most welcome here.

Techie was stung by a wasp, held overnight by Chinese police, then trapped in a 13-hour meeting

Re: Yep

Having a visa issue in reverse, I was flying with some colleagues for a short work trip to the continent which was only going to be 3 days. One of those colleagues is not British but Indian and had to get a visa owing to his nationality. He was initially told by the consulate that he was ineligible for the short stay Schengen visa. Totally bemused as to why he informed the boss that he couldn’t go on the trip. Then he was told a day later that he was fine and to go back to the consulate. No explanation was ever offered for the reason he was initially declined nor why he was then cleared. We had visited two clients who were close to each other and had hospitality from both. The second one had taken us to very good restaurant in the city and I said I’d happily eat there again. We got to the airport at 6pm for an 8:30pm flight and then at 7pm a slow moving thunderstorm hit the airport. Our aircraft circled around for about an hour before diverting to another city a long way away. We had visited various of the airport food outlets and not found anything very appealing nor appetising.

Whilst this was happening another thunderstorm had rolled in on the heels of the last one and the airport closed again. Contacted the boss who said come in at 10:30 tomorrow and get some sleep when you get back. Eventually we each bought something that would keep us going and waited for the flight to land. I checked and our plane had not moved which was a worry, given it was now 10pm. I said to my two other colleagues that if I’d known this would happen I’d have gone back into the city and to that restaurant. At least I’d have had a decent meal out of the night when one of the others said that would be well over the expenses limit. I said I’d happily pay myself rather than eat a dried out pizza. Eventually the plane did start to move but it was much later and eventually landed with us at 12:45am. We didn’t take off until 1:30am and arrived back at Gatwick around 2:30am. Even though I knew that the company would cover the cost of a cab, I did not fancy a long cab ride home. So instead I walked to one of the airport hotels got a room at my own expense and collapsed into bed. The others did take a cab each and owing to overnight roadworks and the closing of a section of the the M25 etc. didn’t get home until around 5am. I managed around 7hrs sleep before getting the train back to London, the others not so much given it took them both around an hour to get to work.

BT Tower's rooftop pool plan brings swimmers back down to earth

Re: Buena vista

When I went a few years ago as a guest of BT I asked my new friend from BT if I could view the war room. He seemed surprised that I knew it existed and then said no sorry Health and Safety. The view is amazing.

Clop gets a taste of its own medicine after ShinyHunters hijack leak site

Re: Revenge?

Quite, the Polonium 210 Sushi/Sandwich is a once in a lifetime meal. Although I doubt they’d bother to try and make it look unexplained or natural causes.

Techie fixed Wi-Fi dead zone with a drill

Re: We might have solved out connectivity problem by opening the door

There was a call I got from the company that bills me for my energy trying to get me to have a smart meter. They mentioned that on the weekend they offered various freebie’s when power generation was at a peak via wind, solar etc. I said that’s of no interest to me and he said it was perfect as you can run those power intensive things then and save money. I said so I’m supposed to do this whilst at work and he questioned whether I worked at weekends and I said yes. I pointed out that I had an Economy 7 tariff and and did all my washing etc. when the cheap rate kicked in at night.

He then tried tell me of the in home display and how I could see which appliance was costing me the most to use. i told him I knew which appliances I had that used the most power the washing machine, the dishwasher, the dryer, the cooker basically the High Wattage ones, and I used them (as I had said before) when the electricity was cheapest, i.e. overnight. He was at a bit of a loss at that point and I told him I was hanging up. They haven’t called back.

Re: WiFi dead zones

A building I once visited had a toilet off of reception for visitors. I asked if I could use it and discovered a really disturbing thing about it. There was a motion sensor that turned the lights on and off, fair enough you might think. The disturbing thing about it was the placement of the one sensor which was close to the door. It couldn’t see the cubicles just the hand basins, so you had 60 seconds in a cubicle before the lights went off.

If you didn’t know this it was fairly freaky because there’s no way you would be finished in 60 seconds. There was a very faint green glow from the emergency light but that was over the hand basin and quite dim. The cubicles were also almost floor to ceiling and blocked out this small amount of light. So that wasn’t much help and I got caught with the lights going off very unexpectedly. That was a shock and when I eventually managed to finish up and get the lights back on. I went back out to reception and asked the receptionist what the hell that was about. Apparently the contractor they’d hired had missed a sensor from the plans and as a result it was total chaos. They were waiting for these bozos to come back and fix the problem.

Revolut falls for fake government requests, hands over customer data

It was reported that Snowden had stored the stolen documents on the cloud by a few sources. Here is one

https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/11/26/Snowden-May-Have-Stored-Doomsday-Info-Data-Cloud

Boss wrongly claimed IT deleted his files, refused to learn the one-click fix

Please tell us that you went BOFH on the Boss?!?

I knew his boss rather well having installed his new computer and monitor for him and had a chat over lunch one day in the canteen. I may have ‘accidentally’ let slip what had happened, in a sort of I had to deal with an issue with one of your team way. I wasn’t waiting long for a reaction, he asked if there were any volations of IT policy with his ‘team’ and I said I could check, secondly was there any IT training that this guy had missed?

So on the pretext of checking his computer for something early one morning, I had a look at his desk, low and behold first place I checked, under the mousemat was his password. That’s one policy violation, and then saw floppy disks that weren’t locked away, that’s two. So he had to do a security refresher which for some inexplicable reason was longer than the original. I also signed him up to an Office basics course which he hadn’t done when joining. Of course he said he knew how to use Office when he joined and this was unnecessary. The response was that it was obviously an oversight that he hadn’t done it when he started and it was compulsory. So he sat there with a load of new starters learning that the button that looks like a disk is the save button etc.

I wasn’t at that firm very long but that was probably the most satisfying thing I did there.

Re: "Deleted Items" is not a good place to store your data

I have a folder in Outlook which is titled “Important Emails” and filled with those emails with important Information. Someone changed our archive policy a while back and suddenly unbeknownst to me emails from there were silently being archived. So I called a colleague up and said what’s happened my emails are missing. He said “Oh yeah we changed that, you get X number of days before they’re archived.” I said that’s probably to do with GDPR, I can restore them but wouldn’t they just get almost instantly archived again? “Yep” was the sooo helpful reply and I persisted with so how do I stop that?

He took me through the whole process and it worked. I asked him if they had communicated this change to the company and he said yes. It was on an obscure page on the company intranet which you would have found probably only through an email sent to you with a link to it. The email made no mention of archiving as such it referred to retention dates for email, the page was more informative. I had a few arse covering emails including a get out of the hot seat card in there, emails that gave us contradictory instructions to company policy, as well as info on protocols etc. He then said you’re still using Classic Outlook and we’re pushing people to use New Outlook. I told him to defer delivery on that one because you still can’t do that in New Outlook.

One thing Novell Netware had in it’s favour was the "salvage" command. When you deleted stuff it just marked those files for deletion, didn’t do it immediately it moved them to a hidden file salvage area. When the system started to run out of disk space, then it would start actually removing the “deleted files”. There was a Utility called Salvage which could be used to view and restore the “deleted” files. Salvage was a very handy thing to have at your disposal. I can't count the number of times I was seen as a "genius" for recovering somebody's accidentally deleted files.

In one case a company report had been deleted and the person who had called me about it was almost in and then floods of tears. She believed that this was the only copy and it was being presented the nexr day, (it was 6:15pm) so if it wasn’t there sh!t will hit fan. I said I could see it and restore it for her and then proceeded to ask how she had come to delete it? She stopped sniffling and that’s when it turned out her boss had done it………and then she was told to fix it, he was going home. Charming way to talk to your PA.

UK's Online Safety Act has made 'absolutely no difference,' kids say

Ah but I didn’t buy it, it was a gift from a generous relative. it was the first Apple product that I’d owned and I couldn’t understand how controlling they were of something that was expensive and was my property not theirs.

They’re effectively saying, if you don’t tell us what we want to know, we’ll cut off some usability/functionality on your own device, so jump to it

My iPad wanted me to prove I was over 18, I took it to an Apple shop and said why is it doing that? It’s part of the OSA legislation was the eventual reply when they found someone senior enough to know anything. Where about in the OSA does it specify machine based checks? Erm now he’s not sure about that, so we looked online and can’t find anything. I made reference to my satellite box, my laptop running Mint, my non Apple phone, my Android tablet etc. all of which allow me to access the net without having to verify my age. If you just enter a credit card number then you can verify yourself that way he says. I fail to see why I should give Apple my credit card and told him so. I don’t get anything in return but Apple get my credit card number which I don’t want. He then noticed my Apple account is under Zaphod Beeblebrox and asks if that’s actually my name. I said no, why would I give Apple my real name, which he said millions of people do quite happily. Well that’s their problem not mine, I don’t want your company knowing who I am, what my credit card number is, my passport details, my inside leg measurements etc.

Why is your screen camera covered over? Because I’m over 50 and I don’t like cameras pointing at me from every device thank you. Now, obviously as he said, it’s a head office decision not something decided in store and I said it was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Why can’t I come in and the Apple employee can see I’m a cantankerous old git and they verify my account to say I’m over 18. Head office have not allowed them to do that comes the reply.

User who handled life-or-death situations struggled with the SHIFT key

Re: Locale dependent description too

One of my siblings offspring told me one day when they were very young that I must be very wise because I was quite old. I let that pass but more recently another of them said I was getting on a bit and my reply was

“Did you want to remain a recipient in my Will or just have the executor pass on my best wishes to you?”

I was then told that like a fine wine I was maturing beautifully, the sad truth is I’m over 50 and feel like it.

UK digital ID may be dead, but its legacy IT problem lives on

Re: I really can't see why people are so busy objecting to a proper national ID system

What amuses me is the idea that this ID card data wouldn’t be abused in anyway at all. I’m currently in the USA and Flock cameras are the very hot to potentially radioactive topic at the moment. For those who don’t know, these are the Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras that have sprouted up everywhere with contracts that range from city councils to police departments. To say they are unpopular is like saying there was a small outpouring of grief when Princess Diana died. They’re hated and not just by those who break the law, I haven’t spoken to anyone who thinks they’re a good idea.

The data they collect is available nationwide to those who have a contract. They don’t work with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but some police will run searches for ICE instead. Even better some just give full access to the Customs and Border

https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-the-door-wide-open/

Records obtained by UWCHR researchers via public records requests reveal that at least eight Washington state law enforcement agencies enabled direct, 1:1 sharing of their networks with U.S. Border Patrol at some point during 2025; effectively opening the “front door” for searches potentially related to civil immigration enforcement activities.

Flock audits reveal apparent “back door” access by U.S. Border Patrol to the networks of at least ten Washington police departments which did not explicitly authorize Border Patrol searches of their network data.

That’s before we come onto people who legitimately have access abusing it. Such as a Sheriff’s Deputy who stalked his girlfriend searching her licence plate 2055 times.

ttps://fox59.com/news/jackson-county-deputy-allegedly-used-flock-cameras-to-search-same-license-plate-2055-times/

There is a list of over 100 other abuses listed here https://ij.org/the-ij-database-of-alpr-abuse/

There are as reported on this esteemed site people who have been arrested for deciding to de-flock their neighbourhood. In Florida a man was arrested after a police officer made at home a 3d printed replica of a flock camera and put it up. They then sat there and waited for someone to damage it and it apparently didn’t take long.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-camera-decoy-vandalism-arrest-florida.html

A lot of access creep there, abuse and misidentification which is obviously perfectly fine

Now in the UK what would I have done with a Digital ID when I don’t have a phone that has a wallet on it? My financial advisor has known me for at least 20 years (possibly as much as 30) and he’s a very nice bloke. He asks me for normally a utility bill and a passport that he can copy every so often for Know Your Client regulations. Someone who was in favour of the Digitsl ID said it can be used to help stop money laundering which made me laugh. I asked how that would work and he then seemed lost for a bit before mentioning opening a bank account would need a Digital ID.

So what happens with overseas students who need a UK bank account? When they go home some of them sell their accounts to Launderers aka Money mules. What about the Informal Value Transfer System or the Trade Based Money Laundering What about Cryptocurrencies and their ease at transferring funds around the world quickly without any scrutiny? That floored him and he didn’t know any of those (with the exception of cryptocurrency) happened. I asked how much he really knew about money laundering and he admitted to actually not knowing a fat lot. He tried again with the NHS and you could prove who you are when seeing a doctor. I came back with oh goody so with a centralised database it wouldn’t take someone and possibly AI to get a digital picture of your life. Would you be comfortable knowing that your hypothetical visit to the clap clinic was recorded, followed quickly by you using your ID to prove who you are, to pick up a prescription from the local pharmacy? He persisted he was in favour but a bit more half heartedly now.

Microsoft will stop finishing your sentences in Word and Outlook

I don’t mind Teams putting a squiggly line underneath a misspelled/autocorrected word (red/green respectively). The new horror that they have unleashed is the entire word being highlighted when you move onto it. That for me at any rate makes it harder to see what the text is and I’ve disconnected the autocorrect as a result.

Microsoft will stop finishing your sentences in Word and Outlook for the weekend is sunny with the potential for drizzle or heavy rain and sleet from Friday afternoon until Monday morning.

Have an upvote because that really made me laugh out loud.

"text predictions helps you write documents and emails more efficiently by suggesting words and phrases as you type.

Not to me they didn’t they were a giant effing distraction which drove me up the wall when they were introduced. Someone gave me a workaround to stop it from happening but actually finally turning that off in the settings was a blessed relief. I left feedback for Microsoft when asked and said turning it on by default was not the smartest thing they’ve ever done and then said there was some pretty stiff competition from other dumb Microsoft ideas for the “Not the Smartest Thing” they’d ever done award

Techie with three months' experience was sent in as the Cisco expert and proceeded to blow everything up

Re: This is Muddy

We had a situation back when you received a software patch via Royal Mail not the Internet, where a program suddenly refused to print. This was kind of really needed so not a good thing at all. Fortunately there was a bloke from the vendor on site doing training who was summoned. He said yes he had applied a patch to fix something else as we hadn’t done it ourselves, and that may have done it. My boss who didn’t mince his words said and I’m slightly paraphrasing here, without raising his already low gravelly voice, like an East End gangster from a film:

“Nobody gave you permission to install anything, and you’re on very thin ice. If you don’t roll that patch back now, I will have security here in minutes to escort you from the premises, permanently. You will not be allowed to collect your stuff, it will be handed to you outside the building or sent on to your company for which you will be billed.”

Low and behold it was rolled back very quickly, he apologised profusely and everyone made it to pub after work with no one having to stay behind to work.

Ukraine unveils native jet-powered drone interceptor

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

So now you’re talking about Kyiv (and the unfortunate Heavenly Hundred) and not Crimea where the Russian Little Green Men took charge and organised the illegal referendum.

In Crimea Reshat Ametov a Crimean Tartar was participating in a silent ptotest when he was abducted by the Little Green Men and tortured before being killed. Valentina Korneva was trampled in a crowd, Igor Postny died of a heart attack whilst protesting at the parliament building.

Quite happy for Britain to give the Ukrainians anything they need (short of giving them WMD*) to expel the Russian invaders from their lands including Crimea. *despite Russia using them in Great Britain already.

Fine if you don’t like Meduza then how about vatupdate.com

Russia’s Finance Ministry proposed tax relief for Wildberries and affected sellers after warehouse attacks.

Sellers with losses above 5% of annual revenue would get a 12-month deferral on VAT, corporate tax, and other liabilities.

Deferred taxes would then be repaid in equal monthly installments over the following 12 months.

RVB Group would also receive a similar VAT and tax deferral through July 28, 2027, with a one-year installment plan, excluding import VAT.

Tax audits would be suspended through the end of the year.

Also you’ve mentioed my favourite pro Kremlin phrase “Rules based order”. So I’m done with this.

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

For someone who told me to “cite your sources!” It is more than a tiny bit hypocritical to make a statement about a coup being bloody, without being able to back it up, prove it for peer review etc. For completeness my source for the Wildberries tax arrangements was https://meduza.io/en/news/2026/08/26/russia-approves-support-measures-for-businesses-affected-by-wildberries-warehouse-strikes-including-tax-deferrals

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

So how many people died in Chechnya, as a result of the coup before the election for the president and parliament of Chechnya held on 27 October 1991?

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

So there definitely wasn’t an election for the president and parliament of Chechnya held on 27 October 1991?

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

I think you’re confusing me with someone else. I also remembered Chechnya this morning and the Russian violent response to their votes for independence.

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

I’ve jsst come back from the pub although in my defence I didn’t drink very much and I’ve read the link that you posted and it is indeed about “the early termination of the powers of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” dated March 15th 2014. That I won’t dispute, as it’s the title of the thing and is there in black and white. It also says that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine resolves to terminate the powers of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea early. And also to submit proposals to the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on State Building and Local Self-Government regarding the appointment of early elections to the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. That as you say is all correct

However it also says that as I’m reading it and as I say I have a drink, that in making this decision it is taking into account the conclusion of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Decision No. 2-rp/2014 of March 14, 2014. This is a case on the holding a local referendum in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea regarding the violation by the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, of ​​the Constitution of Ukraine.

So as I read the actual decision (linked above) but mostly having read the end of the document where the Constitutional Court decided:

1. To declare the Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea “On the Conduct of a All-Crimean Referendum” dated March 6, 2014 No. 1702-6/14 as inconsistent with the Constitution of Ukraine (unconstitutional).

2. Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea “On holding a Crimean referendum” dated March 6, 2014 No. 1702-6/14, recognized as unconstitutional, shall cease to be valid from the date of adoption of this Decision by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

3. To terminate the activities of the Commission of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea for the conduct of the all-Crimean referendum, territorial and precinct commissions created to conduct this referendum.

4. The Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea should stop funding referendum activities and ensure the destruction of ballots and campaign materials.

5. The decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is binding on the territory of Ukraine, final and cannot be appealed.

The decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine shall be published in the "Bulletin of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine" and in other official publications of Ukraine.

CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF UKRAINE

So it appears to me that the Ukrainian government were completely correctly following the decision of the constitutional court when they killed off the powers of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea because of the decision to hold an illegal referendum.

So the TLDR version is that if they hadn’t been planning an referendum in Crimea (under Russian rule) then the constitutional court wouldn’t have ruled that the referendum was illegal and the government wouldn’t have had to terminate the powers of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea based on the constitutional court decision.

Now my head is starting to hurt from a combination of booze and thinking hard at this time of night.

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

Wasn’t aware of Wildberries until the Ukrainians started to burn them down but having looked at it the Russian government are giving:

a 12-month deferral on value-added tax (except VAT paid on imports into Russia), profit tax, and taxes under the simplified tax systems (USN and AUSN)

a deferral on advance payments for these taxes and on insurance contributions due between August 2026 and July 2027, which can then be paid in equal installments over the following year.

a suspension of tax audits for affected businesses through the end of 2026, with related procedural deadlines frozen for the same period.

So the AC-OP was right in that there will be tax effects from the warehouse fires. Also I would assume any business that is now out of business because their entire business went up in flames in a wildberries warehouse will just go bust. Heating oil doesn’t need to be flammable and no one mentioned it being flammable as far as I can see. It just needs to be stored somwhere drones can hit the storage vessels and cause large enough holes.

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

And you'd accept a document released by Putin as authentic?

Perhaps you can understand why he hasn't bothered.

Personally I’d assume anything he produces could be laced with WMD like Novichok and Polonium 210 so no I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. However the Russian President has repeated his claim about this peace deal being initialed in June of this year.

https://qna.org.qa/en/news/news-details?id=putin-says-russia-ready-for-peace-talks-with-ukraine-based-on-istanbul-agreements&date=23/06/2026

Russia, as has been said many times, is ready for peace negotiations with Ukraine, ready on the basis of the agreements that were reached in Istanbul [in the spring of 2022] and, I would remind you, were initialed at the time by the Ukrainian delegation, which means everything suited them," Putin said.

I mean if you can’t show the alleged important document you are repeatedly claiming exists, (even if it was just to show the initialed page, if the alleged document is top secret) then you’re no better than a crazy world leader with a large nuclear arsenal inventing mysterious paperwork…..oh wait a minute he is a batshit crazy world leader with a Nuclear Arsenal…..

.

Re: A handful of vicious assholes

The only handful of vicious assholes in this conflict are Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz and Joe Biden who bullied the Ukrainians into rejecting the already-initialed peace deal with the Russians in March 2022.

Funny how this supposedly initialed peace deal has never been seen in public anywhere isn’t it. I mean you would have thought if it existed Putin would have publicly published it for all to see but strangely enough he never has nor anyone in his government. Gosh something that would show up all the people you listed and make them look fools (alright with Boris you don’t have to make him look like a fool) and yet it has never seen the light of day. I seen me a mermaid once. I've even seen me a shark eat a octopus, but I ain't never seen no phantom document the Russians claim was initialed.

Davyd Arakhamiia Doesn’t seem to think it exists and he’d be one of the best people to know about this, as he was there.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/24/7430282/

Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction who led the Ukrainian delegation at "peace" talks with the Russians in Belarus and Türkiye in 2022, said that the Russian delegation promised Kyiv peace in exchange for refusing to join NATO, but the Ukrainians did not believe them.

Details: Journalist Moseichuk noted that at a meeting with an African delegation, Vladimir Putin showed a supposedly ready-made draft peace agreement with Ukraine agreed during the negotiations in Belarus, which was allegedly initiated in Istanbul (Türkiye).

According to Putin, there were 18 articles in the so-called agreement On the Permanent Neutrality of Ukraine and Security Guarantees, where "everything is spelled out, from military equipment to personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," and allegedly the document was signed by the head of the Ukrainian delegation. Arakhamiia stressed: "For some reason, Putin did not publish this document. Why do you think? If he had such a document, he would have made it public."

Yeah the CIA director was in Moscow

US asked Ukraine to refrain from striking Moscow during CIA chief's visit, source says

The U.S. asked Ukraine not to strike Moscow and St. Petersburg while CIA Director John Ratcliffe is visiting Russia, a person familiar with the situation told the Kyiv Independent on Aug. 25.

"They don't believe in the strength of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's air defenses," they said, adding that Kyiv agreed to pause strikes against the cities between Aug. 24 and 26.

Sounds very plausible to me. And Russia releases a decree that allows the state to effectively confiscate any “critical infrastructure” that the owners haven’t ensured the security of. So basically if they haven’t gone out and bought their own air defences it would seem Putin can seize it ‘temporarily’.

en.kremlin.ru/acts/news/80578

The Executive Order stipulates that, should an economic entity fail to take timely measures to ensure the security of critical infrastructure facilities in the Russian Federation, or fail to restore such facilities within the required timeframe, as per Government resolution issued at the President’s instruction, temporary administration may be introduced over all or part of the movable or immovable property of such an economic entity.

Critical infrastructure is suggested as being industrial, hazardous, communication, fuel and energy facilities, transport and logistics complexes etc. And before anyone says that you can’t get equipment like air defences very easily, it’s obvious they should have been shopping at the same military surplus shops that the Little Green Men were shopping at before going into Crimea.

Putin Comes Clean On Crimea's Little Green Men

At the time Mr Putin flatly denied they were his troops, that he was in the process of annexing part of another European country.

He said all their equipment could easily be bought in a military surplus shop.

Simple really.

Energy biz SSE smacked around in court by a guy and AI

I went into the bank decades ago whilst still living at home, to sign up for a credit card. I just popped in before they closed to get a form but I couldn’t see any. So I enquired at one of the cashiers desks and after checking my account, she made a call. So far so ominous, when the bank manager appeared and took me into the meeting room which made me even more nervous. I really wasn’t expecting anything like this and he asked if I wanted a tea/coffee/water. I was in my first job after leaving school and being paid what at the time was a good salary. He sat down and said that after reviewing my account it was obvious that I had a good history with the bank. I’d never been overdrawn but also I’d never had any credit either which was concerning him. So he said opening a credit card was the sensible thing to do, “you need a good credit history, or we might not lend you any money”! At the same time he’d switch me to a gold packaged account with a gold coloured debit card. I didn’t know that I wanted that as it had a monthly fee attached and said so. He told me that with the amount my account normally had in it I would never pay the monthly fee - and I haven’t. He also had me fill out the form for the credit card (also a gold one in both name and colour) whilst sitting there. He set it up so that the full balance was paid off every month automatically via direct debit. When I’d signed the form I noticed it was now almost 6pm and the bank had been closed for at least half an hour. He said I shouldn’t worry about that, he was the boss and how long he stayed with a client was up to him. I’ve claimed on the packaged travel insurance too which was paid without fuss. He could not have been nicer and I have stuck with the same bank ever since.

Turns out Brits would quite like their private messages to stay private

Re: Colour me impressed

My mum who has been an OAP for sometime asked a lond while ago what backdoored encryption was. It had come up in a news story* and she was genuinely curious about it. So I started off with basics about where she used encryption every day, things like WhatsApp, online banking etc. We went into the different levels of security through encryption, and the reasons for needing them. I explained using Crypto AG as a real world example of when backdooring had been used and said as soon as someone else finds access to the backdoor, the encryption is fairly useless. She got this concept quite easily and realises that it’s not as simple as some people (mostly politicians etc.) make it out to be. Her final comment was that if she could understand this why couldn’t the politicians?

* https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/25/mi5-chief-asks-tech-firms-for-exceptional-access-to-encrypted-messages We chatted during lockdown which meant I had plenty of time to give detailed answers.

Australia’s record industry won’t chart tunes recorded in the key of AI

The late Frank Farian has a lot to answer for.

RIP Rob Pilatus.

UK supermarket scales go 404 on shoppers

Re: *Smart* scales

A good long while ago I had a local Tesco that was very convenient and I knew quite a few of the staff there due to the frequency of my shopping. It was back then when the National Cash Register (NCR) tills used at Tesco used to have a fault in the software. If you were in the middle of scanning your shopping at the till (as I was for a small amount of items) and pressed "Request Subtotal" the machine would crash and restart itself.

I worked out that the use of the subtotal was obviously causing it and told one of the staff I knew that I had identified an issue. The duty manager was brought over and asked me to prove this to her satisfaction which I did to her amazement. She then gave it a go herself and the same thing happened causing much writing of notes. She then scanned all my shopping on the now rebooted till and overrode the price down for everything to a penny. She paid that herself and thanked me for my bringing it to their attention. I joked that I should have put some bottles of booze in the trolley before alerting her.

On another occasion the scan as you shop system refused to transfer over to the till when the “end shopping” barcode was scanned at the till. The handset said it had transferred over to the till but no shopping appeared on the screen. I had a sales associate try and it didn’t work for her either, ended up with shopping scanned manually at a manned till and an apology. No problems on two more scan as you shop purchases over the next week, then I did a very similar shop to the one that hadn’t scanned before and the problem happened again.

When I alerted the sales associate that it had happened she noted that it had failed again………with me and probably thought it was suspicious. Low and behold the duty manager came round and it was the same one who’d looked at the reboot issue. She asked me to explain if I had any idea what the reason might be given my previous help. I fished out the three receipts from my last shops there and said that when it wouln’t transfer across I had scanned a particular item first. On the other two shops it had worked fine and I hadn’t bought that item nor had it been my first thing scanned. Notes duly taken again, test done and the same result achieved. This time I only got the six pack of Coke reduced though, still better than nothing.

Russian missile uses Nvidia AI chip to help target Ukraine

we need their gas.

You’ll have something to back that up with I suppose? Would you mind sharing it here so it can be peer reviewed? Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

Re: Russia Doing What It Does Best.

Remember when America spent billions on a space pen.

No I don’t remember that, I don’t recall seeing any evidence of the US Government doing so either. Was that a question and you forgot the question mark? If not do you want to provide evidence of the billions spent?

There were private individuals Friedrich Schächter, Erwin Rath & Paul Fisher who spent around a million dollars (not billions) of private money and created the Fisher Space Pen in the 1960’s. Those I only ever remember being sold in the Innovations Catalogue as I never saw them on sale anywhere else in Great Britain.

Re: And Ukraine?

Funny how there is never any mention of what western technology is helping Zelensky murder Russian civilians with his drones

Strange how people who make comments like that fail to mention which country invaded and started a war in Ukraine. I’ll give you a hint it wasn’t Ukrainians invading thenselves. It started with the little green men back in 2014 and the downing of a Malaysian airliner……. Vladimir Putin's acknowledgement that Russian troops were in Crimea after all raises doubts about his claims over eastern Ukraine.

Flock cameras go up in flames as cops hunt suspected firebugs

Re: Puzzled…

What the fuck sort of bird did he hit? An ostrich on stilts?

A common crane can reach 6kg according to google and having seen one of these up close, I would not want one to hit my windscreen. Something flying into the windscreen head on would have quite an impact even if the truck wasn’t going very fast. Plus if this was at night it would probably cause quite a fright.

Hands off our VPNs, privacy groups tell UK ministers

Re: Capita?

There’s a reason Private Eye call them Crapita.

Outlook for Mac bug makes font choice a purely decorative feature

Re: An MS app that won't work right on Non-Windows OS?

One of my colleagues said they expected a banner to appear aking if the unlucky Mac user had tried New Outlook.

Clingy Virgin Media fined £28M for refusing to take the hint

A mate of mine was looking for a new broadband supplier and there was a Virgin Media rep in his local shopping centre when he went in. So he registered his interest but didn’t have the time to sign up there and then. Then six weeks later he had to move to a new area because of a new job, Virgin called him up one afternoon and tried to get him to sign up as a customer. He explained patiently a couple of times that he had moved and that Virgin do not serve this area let alone his street. Salesperson continued with the benefits of taking VM until my mate said he was bored beyond belief.

So he said yes let’s do it, he wanted the fastest Broadband, he wanted every television channel they can get to his house and he might switch his mobile too. Sales person eagerly confirms all the multi tv packages and the broadband which wasn’t cheap every month. There were channels he hadn’t even heard of but he happily signed up for the lot. The bloke on the other end then read out the address he had given in the shopping centre and my mate said “No, as I’ve told you before, I’ve moved!” He gave the actual address of where he’d moved to and the sales guy said he would just check that address. He informed my unsurprised mate, that sadly Virgin do not appear to have reached that town yet. Mate just replied along the lines of oh what a shame, oh well deals off then, ended the call and blocked that number from ringing his phone.

EU urged to act after Pegasus infects phone of spyware inquiry MEP

Re: The Word "Persistent" in the Phrase, "Persistent Malware" ...

Yeah well if we’re just including iPhones then Predator may not be persistent, but Cisco Talos say

Talos’ analysis revealed that rebooting an iOS or Android device may not always remove the Predator spyware produced by Intellexa. Persistence is an add-on feature provided by Intellexa for their implants and primarily depends on the licensing options chosen by a customer.

I woild hope they know more than me about this.

Microsoft says the world is changing faster than it can keep up as it guts commercial, Xbox teams

Anonymous Coward

This follows a broad Microsoft strategy of buy things and then either write them off or sell them for much less than they paid. Nokia phones being one of them, the acquisition of Danger Inc and the launch of the Kin another, Skype anyone?

I’m not a gamer but I’m assuming some of those games brands might not survive. Yeah thanks for killing Skype and not selling it on, I recently had to call my cable company in the states from the UK on their tollfree number. Now I’m dying to know Microsoft, how I do that with a personal copy of fecking Teams. Answers on a postcard to the usual address please. No wait nevermind your AI just told me you can’t.

How about MSFT killing off the perfectly good and more usable (Classic) Outlook and replacing it with the much less capable and dreadful GUI web version? For those who don’t know or use Outlook, Microsoft are “unifying the codebase for Outlook” across all platforms. What this means in practice is killing off the desktop version and making the less capable web version all you’ll be able to get (from I think 2029) in an app wrapper on the desktop.

Oh I agree with that entirely, a member of my team who found it on her desktp (along with Classic) thought it was a fake program made to look like Outlook and steal her. So she pulled out the network cable and reported it to IT as such. "Brian from IT" turned up and told her it was perfectly fine IT had installed it for her. He tells her to “Try it you might like it”. Well she didn’t and said “why does this look like my 6yr old drew the icons and why has one of my rules not worked on the test email I’ve sent? It was then we found out Client Side Rules don’t work, there is no blanket delayed send for all emails and then nobody was happy. She deleted the icon off the desktop after he’d buggered off. It’s like they had a meeting and thought what’s the lowest amount of features from the original we can launch this POS with. Who uses COM addins in 2026, ah you do, well never mind, you won’t soon. Oh and depressingly it’s 2027 not 2029 I believe when Classic Outlook goes belly up.

End of era as the BBC switches off Radio 4 Long Wave service

Re: Run silent

When I worked in the media someone told me some interesting Cold War facts. The reason that the IBA ran the commercial transmitter network was because the government wanted control of it. In the event, when the chips are down the balloon goes up and the lights go out they wanted to be able to switch the feed to transmitter to what they wanted broadcast. In actual fact this would have been a BBC feed informing you what your wartime local frequency would be and then it would have shut down. This way no one could still be playing the chart show when the listeners would be a few minutes away from reaching 10,000 degrees.

I used to be able to receive Eagle Radio from Guildford in Central London via DAB and that was the only reason I had my DAB radio out of the cupboard.Then when I got back from holiday and Eagle said not available, but I’d moved the radio which might have been the cause. Back in position I scanned the multiplex again to see if it was down to the radio’s location. BBC Surrey worked fine but the Eagle preset just said not available. i checked online and it had closed so the DAB radio went back in the cupboard. Otherwise it was just national stations like Heart and Greatest Hits broadcasting on the local multplieX.

252khz from Ireland only stopped in eatrly 2023 when RTE stopped broadcasting on it.

O2 joins UK 2G switch-off with summer 2029 start date

It would be easier just hitching it up to your WiFi like most things. PC/laptop/tablet/phone Devices, smart fridges, door bells, inside and out CCTV, smart lightbulbs, sound system etc …

Except that not everyone has wifi and not everyone has wifi that reaches their meter. My folks have their meter in an outbuilding and the wifi doesn’t reach there or anywhere outside the house. I know of one person who has no broadband, so no wifi and just tethers off his mobile phone or his work phone.