Posts by the.spike

Techie expensed a bag of oranges and then juiced up a stupid security incident

Why pay half when you can pay double?

Years back I was looking for a Perl course. With QA I could go to London or Dublin (based in the Midlands at the time). Tried to persuade the company to let me go to Dublin. I'd pay for the flights, they pay for the course and hotel. I'd fly the Mrs over and we'd move to a different hotel and have a few days away.

Would have been much cheaper than a train to London and a London hotel. They refused as it was "against the rules". They ended up paying double what they could have done.

Space telescopes are being photobombed by satellites, and the problem is slated to get much worse

Re: They do not care

Spot on. Unless we can put them under manners this will continue.

We're basically fsked aren't we..

Norway's £10B UK frigate deal could delay Royal Navy ships

It's this sort of forward thinking and planning that governments of any colour seem to lack these days. We don't need a five year plan to get you to the next parliament, we need a 20 year plan.. this is why nothing ever gets done.

Biden tries to cut through fog of confusion caused by deliberately deceptive customer service tricks

If you operate online I should be able to cancel online

The lawmakers should be all over this. If I can open and operate my account online, it should be a legal requirement that I can cancel it online. No having to phone up or anything. Big red button to press. Thank you very much.

Now all Windows 11 users are getting adverts to 'make the Start menu great again'

Linux here I come

I've messed with Linux in the past and it's worked but I've always just fallen back onto Windows as it just works.

This is probably going to be the push I need to move for good to Linux desktop. My only issue is iTunes and there appears to be solutions for that these days.

$17k solid gold Apple Watch goes from Beyoncé's wrist to the obsolete list

As is mine (25 years+) and no part has have ever been replaced. However I have in the last 5 years tried to get it serviced and guess what? None of the parts are available anymore. Yes I could pay the watchmaker to make them, but then it's probably easier and cheaper to buy something new if and when it stops working.

Tesla's purported hands-free 'Elon mode' raises regulator's blood pressure

I for one can't wait till this works

It really is a mess at the moment, and it's really really hard to get this stuff to work. But I can't wait till it does.

Less traffic jams. Safer roads. No need for car parks (I'll just send it home). The future will finally be here!

I just hope it's in my lifetime (next 30 years), but I doubt it.. :(

Have you ever suspected your colleague doesn't really hope this email finds you well?*

Re: Slack choices

May I direct you at https://nohello.net/en/ ?

It's my standard Bio info these days.

City council cans ERP project, keeps details of replacement supplier secret

Nottingham City Council might be the local authority for Nottingham the city, but I'm pretty sure that Nottingham is still in Nottinghamshire.

UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail

Bring it on, means I'll stop using the sticking pile of shit. Win win as far as I'm concerned.

BOFH: Who us? Sysadmins? Spend time with other departments?

I tied an onion to my belt, as was the style at the time..

Bonus point for the Grandpa Simpson reference!

That emoji may not mean what you think it means

Re: Eggplant

If I recall correctly it was meant to be a chocolate ice cream, hence the shape. But someone said it look like poo.. and well sh1t sticks!

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

I think the idea of trying to cut pay for people that want to WFH that were in the office is abhorrent. You're not paying me for my commuting time. You're paying to provide a service to you commensurate with my skill set. Did the skills you are paying me for suddenly become worth less? If there's some task or service I'm now not carrying out, then by all means call it out and we can discuss it. But by cutting my pay you're saying I'm worth less than when I was in the office.

I hope people vote with their feet. Which is ironic because if they do, they won't have to walk anywhere...

Symbiote Linux malware spotted – and infections are 'very hard to detect'

It never ceases to amaze me how clever some of these virus writing chaps are..

Your AI can't tell you it's lying if it thinks it's telling the truth. That's a problem

Re: Cue Dr Susan Calvin

Upvote to both of you for the obscure short story reference!

With 90% COVID-19 vax rate, Intel to step up return-to-office

Re: WFH is here to stay

That is a shame. Can I assume that you're part of a small company or a one man band?

Several of my friends are voting with their feet as they've been pushed back into the office. But they work for larger organisations. I can see that would be much harder with customers..

It would be interesting to see what your customers attitude is for their own employees and if they are treating you and them differently. It would be a shame if they are.

Hackers remotely start, unlock Honda Civics with $300 tech

Steering Wheel Lock Anyone?

Back when I was a lad it was all the rage to have a big fat bar across your steering wheel to make sure that if someone got into your car, they couldn't actually drive it away.

I've a feeling these will be making a comeback!

I'd certainly be investing in one if I had a big fat expensive car. Or even one of those little Hondas..

Google to wind down pandemic work-from-home

WFH the new Normal?

I'd like to think that WFH would become the new normal. The organisation I work for (a small company) has changed all the office based contracts to be remote. The team I'm in meet once a month in the office. And that seems to be working for us (obviously lots of video chats etc etc).

Many people I talk to say that if a role is not at least mostly remote then they aren't going to be interested. And if they are forced back into the office they'll leave.

It will be interesting to see who will actually votes with their feet.

I think it would be a crying shame to go back to 100% office based working. The benefits of not are far greater for the worker and the environment. It's just managers who can't manage who they can't see we need to work on..

When the air gap is the space between the ears: A natural gas plant let ransomware spread from office IT to ops

Re: Consequences

I suspect you are right. Education to start with, but if people keep getting it wrong, there has to be consequences surely?

Consequences

Until people start to suffer the consequences of their inability to not open dodgy attachments (such as disciplinary action up to and including being fired), this sort of thing will continue.

On Christmas night, a computer logs a call to say his user has stopped working…

The Christmas Day oncall that wasn't meant to happen

Many years back when I worked for a large UK retailer and still did oncall, the oncall team had agreed that Christmas Day we wouldn't have calls. The person on Christmas Eve nights would sort everything out overnight and we could all have a quiet Christmas Day. The few things that might go wrong on Christmas day we'd leave for Boxing Day.

Only no-one told the operators.

They made not a single call on Christmas Eve thinking they were doing that person a favour.

Christmas Eve oncall thought it had been a bit quiet but didn't question it. I mean out of 800 stores there was always something that went wrong but well, maybe not tonight..

I then got a mountain of calls to sort out at 8am on Christmas day. I spent the entire day logged on via a modem from the in-laws fixing shizzle.

Oh happy days.. Made a fortune in cash though. Every little helps as we used to say...

Microsoft's Teams Essential tier seems designed to coax people on to Business Basic

Re: I have kicked my chatting addiction in '97

"Chat" is a good addition to the communications tool bag but I think the biggest problem is people use it wrong.

If you've got a quick question you need to know the answer to now, then by all means ping me with it. If the answer is quick and simple I'll tell you. If it's not, then I'm going to call you and give you the answer. If you've got queries to my quick answer then you should phone me, not post reams of text into the chat, which then leads to the aforementioned 10 hour chat.

If it's more involved than a quick question then call me. If you don't need to know then send me an email and I'll get round to it.

I think with IP telephony (which is good) and many people now having no desk phone (or desk for that mater!), people forget they can just use their computer to call, and fall back on chat.

And then people perpetually complain that they get too many emails and so ignore everything. Hence pushing people to chat to get a response.

It's chat all the down..

Microsoft shows off Office 2021 for consumers ahead of the coming of Windows 11

Re: Softmaker Office

I have to agree that Softmaker Office is pretty good. For my personal needs it is absolutely rock solid.

Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

Re: My main regret ...

"Maybe we could arrange for Greta Thunberg to meet Trump when he is here in July."

She's already said she won't as there's no point. she said, "He's not interested in science."

Don't mean to alarm you, but Boeing has built an unmanned fighter jet called 'Loyal Wingman'

If MS wrote the OS for it..

"Hello, it looks like you're trying to bomb that town. Would you like me help?"

Blue Monday: Efforts to inspire teamwork with swears back-fires for n00b team manager

Testing in the not quite non live test system

Then there was also the time when a colleague was testing our in house incident system. They were on the test system and raised a P1 stating that "<other colleague> is a C**t" unaware that P1s automatically emailed to a list of people. That list contained the live emails of a number of the very senior managers.

Yup, bad system design and all that, but quite amusing when it happened.

You got a smart speaker but you're worried about privacy. First off, why'd you buy one? Secondly, check out Project Alias

Re: Why not just

They do. At least the Amazon Dot does.

Furious Apple revokes Facebook's enty app cert after Zuck's crew abused it to slurp private data

But they were getting paid?

To play devils advocate, haven't people been moaning that our personal data is free and people just give it up? At least this time they were getting paid for it..

It’s baaack – Microsoft starts pushing out the Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Fuckers got me last night. Big box, "Install now" or something. Clicked remind me later and then when I shutdown it updated.

Fuckers. I hate them.

BOFH: We want you to know you have our full support

Speaking and saying nothing

"." the PFY says wordlessly

Brilliant!

One-third of mobile users receive patchy to no indoor coverage

It's not the maps that are the problem

The maps lie. They tell me I should get a good 3G signal indoors in the centre of the city that I live. Half the time I have no signal. And it's not a thick walled place..

New measurement alert. The Pogba: 1,200Pg = NHS annual budget

Re: Less than £2k per person

I was shocked the other day to learn just how American health insurance works. I assumed you paid each month, and then when ill, they paid out.

Turns out that's not so.

If you've got something they cover, you pay out your deductions first ($2k-5k apparently), and then they pay out ~80% of the cost of the treatment. You still end up having to shell out a fair amount.

I always wondered what people were complaining about and where all the bankruptcies were coming from. I assumed it was people without insurances. Turns out it's not.

It's a terrible system and I can not say a word against the NHS, even on the rare occasions when things haven't gone swimmingly. The amount of work they do, for those that need it, at the price you pay at the point of delivery is phenomenal.

Undercover BBC man exposes Amazon worker drone's daily 11-mile trek

Easy Target

This is no different from the warehouse picking and packing I used to do for Tesco. You got a sheet with a load of stickers on it and off you trundled round the warehouse to collect everything in a certain amount of time.

OK, we had trucks to carry the three cages you had to fill but you still had to lift all the crap onto it. Let me tell you once you've hefted 80 6 bottle cases of 2L coke you were glad for the 2 minute rest you got while you drove the truck to the loading bay. And then you picked up the next job and did it all again.

Welcome to the world. It's called work. Suck it up.

Ofcom probe into telcos jacking-up charges halfway through contracts

But prices aren't part of the contract

I'm sure it was on the BBC a while back but prices aren't mentioned in the contract at all and therefore don't form part of the contract. When they put the prices up they aren't changing the contract.

And that I believe is the real rub.