Posts by hoola

Survey of astronomers and geophysicists shines a light on 'bleak' systemic bullying

Re: Did they do another test?

Whilst I believe that this is highly likely to be happening it does not address the wider issue.

Bullying is now seen to be an acceptable form of management. One ethnic origin or gender is irrelevant however notice is only ever taken if this used as a reason or contributing factor for the bullying, discrimination or abuse.

Just because someone is in smart suit, respected or well paid job does not absolve them from being a bully, in fact they can be some of the worst there are.

Cut us some Slack: $27bn+ later, collab tool officially belongs to Salesforce

Re: Teams is "free"

Your are forgetting the main drivers;

Email (Exchange Online)

Outlook

SharePoint

There simply are no credible alternatives that companies are prepared to consider.

Financial Ombudsman Service to ditch tech heads as it open arms to Workday and outside service provider

Re: What is it for?

To ensure that efficiency is increased to the point that it is impossible to actually do any meaningful work.

Most IT schemes follow this path with the only winners being the manglement that commissioned it and companies involved in delivering the resulting debacle.

Not only is Hubble back online after outage, it's already taking photos of the cosmos

Re: Life without the shuttle

True but it is the payload and then in-space handling that made the difference.

However it is done, being able to deploy manned service missions really needs to be revisited.

Good news: Jeff Bezos went to space. Bad news: He's back

All well and good but this must be one of the most irresponsible use of resources there is.

These people already have massive carbon footprints and this is a willy-waving exercise in one-upmanship.

Sorry but I really don't see the value other than a handful of super-rich people continuing to emit more pollution and CO2 than entire countries.

Happy 'Freedom Day': Stats suggest many in England don't want it or think it's a terrible idea

Re: Odd...

At the time or your test you were not infected.

It is a snapshot in time of Covid status.

Re: SNAFU

In a basic face covering that the majority are using where exactly do you expect the air to come out?

It is all about limiting the amount of aerosols that are expelled and reducing the velocity so that it does not travel a longer distance. If 90% stay on the wearer then that is vastly better than not using the mask.

Re: SNAFU

And are ever knowledgeable tabloid media that have been on a frenzy pushing the 19th July.

Malaysian Police crush crypto-mining kit to punish electricity thieves

Re: It’s one way I guess

Compression but not deduplication......

Annoyed US regulator warns it might knock SpaceX's shiny new Texas tower down

Re: Am I the Only One Who Wants to See Elon Frog-Marched Out of His Offices in Handcuffs?

I don't know why there are down-votes.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-gigafactory-germany-idUSKBN20A0KK

This is exactly what they have done.

They started work at their own risk before planning permission was granted.

Re: Am I the Only One Who Wants to See Elon Frog-Marched Out of His Offices in Handcuffs?

How about the Tesla site in Germany where they have cut down hectares of forest without permission. Basically they started building a Tesla factory on the assumption that permission would be granted.

Just how the hell they continue to get away with this behaviour is beyond me.

Total recall: Amazon faces legal action from US consumer protection group over hazardous goods

Re: Amazon said "customer safety is a top priority"

Let's just rephrase that...

Amazon said "our profit it the top priority"

They could not care less about the customer as individually we are utterly powerless. For those that do need refunds it will all be charged back to the source anyway. Amazon simply cannot lose.

BT to phase out 3G in UK by 2023 for EE, Plusnet, BT Mobile subscribers

Old Phones

My mother still uses an ancient Motorola v3.

It is indestructible, has a battery that has been replaced, makes phone calls and has nice large buttons.

It does everything she needs it to do, make and receive the occasional phone call, anything else, PAH!

It is the same as trying to kill FM radio so they can sell the bandwidth,

It works pretty much everywhere.

Does not drop out and constantly and be unusable in cars when driving

Sounds better.

In battery operated devices, lasts for weeks or months.

United, Mesa airlines order 200 electric 19-seater planes for short-hop flights

Hydrogen?

Surely this where hydrogen would be better as the fuel source or is the fuel-cell not viable in the air? At least then you can stick with well-proven electric motor /propeller technology.

There was a test not that long ago of an electric jet engine but I think the scale was significantly larger than a 19 seat exec jet.

Thinking about 19 seats, what is the maximum number of passengers before cabin crew are needed? This looks to be a perfect replacement for G-ERTI......

Arthur, have you remembered to charge G-ERTI?

Re: I wonder

It would probably have quite an impact but the issue is the resultant physical stresses on the passengers. It is one thing to be strapped into a form-fitting seat that supports you and kicked at 4G than a standard passenger seat.

What is acceptable to the military is probably not viable to the general public.

The coming of Wi-Fi 6 does not mean it's time to ditch your cabled LAN. Here's why

Because speed is a number and higher numbers mean people will buy more stuff.

Saying that the connection is more reliable is difficult. I supposed BTs WiFi guarantee is the nearest but I don't use their hub or know anyone who does so have no idea how it stacks up.

Re: This months of work from home showed too....

And whilst using a wired connect solved one problem it then brings us back to the practical issues of working from home.

The router/WiFi gizzmo is rarely where it is actually needed to be able to work on a wired connection. WiFi is used by 99% of people at home because it is wireless. Some will have bits cabled and depending on what people are doing may have more funky solutions but those are edge cases.

The biggest issue in dense areas is overlapping WiFi coverage all fighting for bands. Bring back the adapters to put network over your ring main, all is forgiven........

Google killed desktop Drive and replaced it with two apps. Now it’s killing those, and Drive for desktop is returning

Re: Dancing to someone else's tune

It is not pitiful until automated processes fill it with crap that you don't want saved there. Plugging in a device with 128GB of storage to then have the automated tool try and "back it up" to the 15GB space is not intelligent.

I have no issue with paying for storage and deciding what I want to put into it.

Re: Shit at search, too. (Was: Google - great at search...)

The automated inclusion of results on loosely similar search terms just completely stuffs everything up. Then add the fact that so many are "sponsored" results you end up with increasingly useless results.

That so many results are for doohickys that you don't want to buy, unrelated to your actual search and are in fact tat for sale on Amazon (but are always out of stock because it is an old advert to suck you in).

Then the sites that auto-generate links based on the search to take you to a whole world of junk. These should not be allowed....

Add to that there there is so much rubbish now that posted by people with no thought.

Someone posts a question about some technical issue:

A load of responses:

"I had that problem too"

"I had that problem and fixed it.... (nothing more)"

"Reinstall Windows"

"Try this "<insert unrelated Powershell command>"

And such rubbish.

Re: Dancing to someone else's tune

There was some update a while back, maybe it was a beta of the new thing but I was setting up a new device and took the latest installer for syncing a Google Drive with a folder on Windows.

What then followed was a ridiculous fight to stop it hijacking anything that was plugged in and "backing it up" to Google Drive. This then filled up the pitiful 15GB that is already 80% full of Google/Android shite at which point they then hassled you to buy more space.

I think I installed an old version and it has sat quite happily since. Who knows where this will go but I surmise it will probably be a pain in the arse.

So much now just assumes that everything you do should be saved in "the cloud" because it is secure and available anywhere. The fact that it can still be deleted, has no backup is missed by 99% of the users.

Trouts on a plane: Utah drops fish into lakes from aircraft and circa 95% survive

There probably is but the anglers don't want to catch it because it is:

Too easy

Too difficult

Cannot be eaten

Not "sporting" enough.

NEC to move its IT into Azure and give staff – all 110,000 of ’em – a cloudy Windows desktop

Even less that that, a few MS365/Azure login issues and everything is utterly stuffed however all the SLAs will still be met because the login portal still comes up.

Imagine a scenario where 3 or 4 large corporates effectively controlled the IT infrastructure from 90% of companies, all accessing it over a piece of wire..........

Just as utilities are being targeted by cyber criminals these providers will be as well and it only take one tiny chink for the impact to be global. Nothing is 100% secure, ever, it is just about time and resources.

At some point it will go down and the ensuing catastrophe will blame everyone except those who made the decisions to put everything into "The Cloud". There is still this hype that "The Cloud" is some sort of IT nirvana that never goes wrong, never requires any maintenance, is always available, is cheaper and is better than anything that can be done in your own data centres.

It has it's place, probably just not the way everything is being shovelled into it as IT is at the moment.

It had to happen: Microsoft's cloudy Windows 365 desktops are due to land next month

Re: Umm...

This is already available for business with Windows Azure Desktop. If this is corporately managed then that is what they will use as part of the Azure/M365 subscription. If this is aimed at the consumer then it is no different to a full PC at home.

In terms of using it, Windows on a tablet? There is no advantage.

For work use any laptop (or tablet) is going to fail or the DSE requirements anyway, particularly if you are essentially moving from work office with monitors etc to home with just a laptop.

This is all about getting Windows as a subscription out. People are conditioned to paying for everything now on a small monthly payment regardless of whether it ultimately costs them more and crucially, whether they actually own it, now or at the end. Look at the success of this system in the car sector.

Companies want stable revenue stream and subscriptions do that,. It also allows them to make more money overall because people are happy to spend quite large amounts per month for a service. This is just the first toe in the water to Windows becoming a subscription service with consumers. Stop paying and it stops working (worst case) or best case goes into some barely functional mode that is not usable.

People will buy (lease?) new hardware for a monthly payment just like a phone and the OS subscription will be included.

Enterprises are not far off that already with their M365 & Azure subscriptions anyway.

Nvidia launches Cambridge-1, UK's most powerful supercomputer, in Arm's neighbourhood

Re: Stitch up

It will be connected to something with Internet access somewhere, no USB key required,

Ah, I see you found my PowerShell script called 'SiteReview' – that does not mean what you think it means

Re: A story from The Mill...

I would have thought that using one's privileged access to look at documents that were outside of his area working would also have been a disciplinary issue as well.

He may have been well prepared but could very easily have ended up in a far worse position.

Having been involved with internal investigations where data/emails/logs have to be collated as the technical resource to obtain the information for Audit/HR one has to ensure that you don't "see" anything.

The shear stupidity of some people is mind boggling as is the fallout when things go pear-shaped. I hate doing these things and ensure that there is a cast iron paper trail in place and if a second pair of eyes is needed for protection, then someone from the requesting team has to sit there as well whilst everything is collected.

CentOS Stream: 'I was slow on the uptake, but I get what they are doing now,' says Rocky Linux founder

Re: pulling source from the CentOS repo

To push people into buying a full RHEL license.

I believe this has been all about money, the fact that many will simply just go to another distribution if they can does not appear to have occurred to them.

As another comment eludes to the real danger is going to be if the OS ends up needing to be certified to run on the hardware. No key in the TPM, no run.....

It will all be pushed as security as this then makes it appear legitimate but it will actually be a few big corporations forcing lock-in.

Not a baaa-d idea: Embracing the eunuch lifestyle slows ageing – for sheep anyway

Re: Humm...

One would assume the same would apply for those that have gone done the mail->female trans-gender process.

As far as I know all the essential bits that make up a male are lopped off.

Maybe they are just not old enough yet. That is the problem with these sorts of studies, humans just live too long for a quick result.

11-year-old graduate announces plans to achieve immortality by 'replacing body parts with mechanical parts'

Re: What about the brain?

Issues around degeneration of the brain are going to continue to get worse as other physical aliments are either cured (drugs) or mitigated (pacemakers, replacement valves etc).

There is this endless quest to cure or control physical conditions that often end up with a longer life expectancy but a very poor quality of life. In the case of Alzheimer's and dementia this is also the rest of the family as they have to care for them unless the "shove them into a care home" option is taken. My Father-in-Law has been ga-ga with dementia now over 2 years, has all sorts of medication to keep him physically alive for heart and various other conditions that would normally have killed him years ago. None of this can be withdrawn so we just soldier on until he expires.

My Father developed MND and he was very clear there was to be no intervention at any point. The family all supported his decision and he died about 9 months after diagnosis with no medical heroics, and on no medication. His life could have been extended with feeding tubes etc. but by 3 months after diagnosis he already had lost all most of his leg movement and by 6 months speech and most movement. Exactly why the medical profession believe that a feeding tube was a viable option is beyond me.

Huge gains have been made in medicine and the associated technologies particularly around prosthetics that are highly beneficial, particularly to younger people. The ideal of preserving life at all costs regardless of outcome may be great for science and reputation but less so for the people actually concerned.

Life is finite and there really does come a point where medical intervention is not the best course of action.

Belgian boffins dump Starlink dish terminal's firmware, gain root access and a few ideas

One cannot help but think this was more a fortuitous outcome as a result of preventing the technology from being stolen rather than a "security first" approach to ensure that is is actually appropriate.

Maybe I am just being cynical.....

Jackie 'You have no authority here' Weaver: We need more 50-somethings in UK tech

It is not skills..

Employers in looking for IT skills persistently see older people as inflexible, unable to adapt, not in tune with modern technologies etc.

It does not matter how good you may be, this prejudice is their and it can be very difficult to get through the door. This reasoning is often confirmed because there will be a handful of dinosaurs in the business waiting for retirement who are exactly fulfil the employer's expectations of older people.

Also older people are often more experienced and because of where they are in their careers, more expensive.

The issue is with the employer and is very difficult to deal with. You can legislate as much as you like but you cannot force recruitment of a particular age. All the diversity stuff is supposed to deal with this but how do you actually put this into practice?

Five consultancies with severe branding difficulties win spots on UK government's £580m 'transformation' services framework

Re: identification of the correct commercial and operational models to deliver the......

Covering one's arse.

This is all about being able to transfer responsibility when things (inevitably) fail to deliver what was actually required.

If manglement can use a framework they will because it provides validation for their decisions. It is irrelevant if it delivers any value for those needing to use the resulting solution.

NHS England staff voice concerns about access controls on US spy-tech firm Palantir's COVID-19 data store

Re: This was all foreseen...

The only thing they can do is stop sending any new data. The chances of getting back what is there and preventing any on-going use is non-existent.

The data should never, ever have left the NHS in the first place but inept management and corrupt politicians believed they new better.

IT management biz Kaseya's VSA abused to infect businesses with ransomware

Re: It appears that attackers got onto Kaseya's servers

It is not just outsourcing, it is the every-growing use of cloud services to provide some form of funky solution that protects both your on-prem and cloud services.

Where you services are located is pretty much irrelevant when buying these sort of solutions. This is going to keep happening, again and again until such time as something so big kicks off Governments actually do something.

Look at how much is delivered as a "modern cloud" service with claims that anything that is only managed on-prem (or even in your own cloud subscription) is legacy. Management continue to buy the services because snake-oil salespeople use the fear of being left with "legacy" systems as the stick. The fact that the "legacy" systems are just as good as the "modern, cloud delivered" solution are ignored.

Many of these solutions have agents that are deep in the OS, any OS as they are providing security or monitoring. It is a perfect attack vector, compromise the Command and Control and that is it. simply millions of assets ripe for picking.

I don't care what these organisations claim, nothing is 100% secure, the more that is hanging off a webservice in the Internet, the higher the risk.

The PrintNightmare continues: Microsoft confirms presence of vulnerable code in all versions of Windows

Re: The solution to rule them all ... in that situation

And where do you stand on support?

If you have a high skills base then it may be feasible but there are reasons why people continue to use Windows, SMB or Enterprise.

You either go complete Open Source and take your chance or you start paying for support, either though a third party or something like RedHat or SUSE. At that point are you actually any better off?

For the SMB that only has one server they invariably have to have Windows because there will be other bits and pieces that are only supported on that OS.

It is very easy for skilled professionals to state "switch to Linux/Samba-AD/CUPs" because it is "better/more secure/simpler". The point is it may be for them, not the person who is stuck with managing the server in the SMB because "they know about computers", or have enough understanding to keep it going.

Battery recycling boosted by dentist-style ultrasonics, if manufacturers can cooperate

Re: This is news

I had seen that where there is a proposal to put all the batteries in a sort of layer under in a sandwich under the floor.

Just imagine that going into one of those car crushers or shredders........

As ever the "what to do at the end of the items life" is ignored or offshored. EV batteries urgently need standards on accessibility and recycling (not disposal) so that they can easily be extracted and then broken down into their component parts. Ideally there should be minimal residual waste. Now the intelligent thing to do will be to recycle at the place you construct the new batteries. That is unlikely to happen as it is cheaper and easier to ship the stuff for "recycling" to countries with cheap labour and poor environmental controls. The source of the recycling can then smugly tick a box stating that they are doing everything they can to recycle the waste without any concerns as to what is actually happening.

Backbench Tory campaigner promises judicial review of data grab of English GP patients unless UK government changes tack

Research into who it can be effectively monetarized for maximum financial gain for:

The Government.

Selected private sector business.

Pals in both camps.

Very little or nothing in terms of health or medical research.

Or am I just being cynical?

Green MSP calls on Scottish government to stop spending £4.7m a year with AWS after Amazon 'dumping' allegations

Re: Time to stop awarding contracts to foriegn companies anyway

Because:

We have very little left that can compete

Everyone, Government and business do not look long term

Public Sector procurement is an utter shambles that more or less ensure that the least suitable tender that costs the most is successful.

Bonkers procurement rules that prevent UK companies from bidding.

All of these can be laid squarely at the foot of successive Governments, regardless of party as seemingly well intentioned schemes and endless frameworks are created to "streamline and increase value" for procurement.

Re: "we do not send items to landfill in the UK"

It is probably not their loss or markdown. the costs will just be charged back to the supplier. This is just how businesses like this work. It is very rare that discounts and BOGOF deals actually cost the big retailers anything. The supplier just has no option but to suck it up or be told you are no longer a supplier.

All these items that are dumped will be listed as being sent back to the supplier or a third party for recycling so Amazon's books will looks squeaky clean. The worst of the worst.

‘What are the odds someone will find and exploit this?’ Nice one — you just released an insecure app

Simplistic View

The trend for a number of years has been Agile. All that matters is delivering stuff fast and if you are lucky fixing the worst of the bugs as they go. Nobody is interested in proper testing or security because it slows down the release cycle of shite that is spewed out. Automated testing is seen as progress but it never appears to occur to people that if you test to get results and the people who wrote the tests also developed the software, it is a recipe for failure. This is overlooked because all the test usually pass.

Management are happy because they see lots of stuff happening and can honk on about how productive their developers are. Security and infrastructure teams get increasingly marginalised because they are seen as blockers to the business of release stuff quickly.

Even where there is really high regulatory compliance there are still errors.

Often the only time that back-end teams get involved is when it is too late and there has been a breach. Then it is all about closing the stable door however this is only in the short term because very quickly we are back to square one and so the cycle continues.

Mostly companies get away with it because the resulting holes in security are not sufficiently bad to lose customers money directly. Very occasionally something like the BA fiasco hits the news.

What you need to know about Microsoft Windows 11: It will run Android apps

Re: Windows

Another global shortage approaches plus a huge number of perfectly viable devices then being binned.

Is it really that critical for the average consumer? I can see why some commercial outfits may need TPM but to enforce it on everything.....

Yes, I know they can install Linux etc. but many simply don't have the knowledge or cannot be bothered. I have not dabbled with Chrome for a long time, can this just be installed on something that ran Windows as the only OS?

Hubble Space Telescope sails serenely on in safe mode after efforts to switch to backup memory modules fail

Re: And shut the door on your way out ...

I am not so sure about ground-based.

Atmospheric pollution and then all the new cubesat swarms are making that unlikely.

Also a lot of the newer ground based telescopes a not in visible for the very reason that the atmosphere messes up so much of the wavelengths.

Re: Wishful thinking...

Given the billions that have been committed to James Webb Telescope I rather fear that anything that is going to replace Hubble is unlikely. Maybe there is space for a private replacement but then there will be all the issues of access, is it paid for etc, etc.

Maybe a philanthropic mission to repair it would be possible but it needs the agreement of NASA and if NASA decide to write Hubble off because of its age there is little to be done.

Hubble is an amazing resource that has produced not only some incredible science but also images from space that have captivated the general public.

I hope they are able to fix it but I think as time passes the outlook is not optimistic.

UK spends £36m on 18 little 'bullet-proof' boats to protect Royal Navy assets

Re: No sign of armament

Maybe they will have a grunt with a useless SA80, or if they are lucky the SA90 that almost works.

Another fine example of how to spend a huge amount of money and produce something nobody wants to use.

Re: Feh.

I have no idea if it is still in print but I have a book that covers MTB action around the UK.

MTB Flotilla at War - Night Action by Captain Peter Dickens

It is so old it does not have an ISBN.

Amazing accounts of what they did.

Vodafone names vendors tapped for Britain's first wide-scale OpenRAN build: NEC, Dell, and Samsung

Re: ...developed in conjunction with Facebook

Exactly my thought, but they are a US company so all is well with the world.

Facebook are probably even worse than Huawei, all they are interested in is collecting and aggregating data. Now just imagine Facebook with a hand in telecoms pie.

Of all the analytics firms in the world, why is Palantir getting its claws into UK health data?

I think that to be fair it is an issue with politicians overall, it is just this lot have been in for a while so what they are currently doing is seen as a Tory issue.

The issue of the Tory's being the best of a bad job is difficult to quantify as each group is going to have a different set of issues, each with their own side effect and result.

I am not supporting Hancock, almost every word that comes out of his mouth is meaningless or worse. That also goes for most of the Cabinet. up to the PM.

Brit watchdog shows some teeth over McAfee antivirus auto-renewals

Re: It's not just McAfee...

Add Webroot to that, though to be fair they refunded instantly with no questions. That was to an expired card and the card provider appears unable to tell me how the payment was taken so my assumption is that it was a CPA.

Re: Continuous Payment Authority

I should imagine that many are not even aware that they have setup a CPA instead of a Direct Debit or card payment.

It is certainly very unclear when you take these things out as the assumption is that it is a Direct Debit that can be cancelled at any time.

I am guessing that these shysters are using this sort of thing for precisely this reason, they can keep taking the money in perpetuity even when the customer has stopped using the service. It is one of the many problems that are starting to become apparent with all these subscription based services. I expect that will keep taking it even if the service is no longer available!

Does anyone know if you can tell from your back account payees if it is CPA or just Direct Debit. This has made me look closely and I cannot see anything. The trouble is the CPA includes a Direct Debit form.

Man found dead inside model dinosaur after climbing in to retrieve phone

Re: To die for a phone

All I can think of is that he fell into the model and then either injured himself such that he was unable to call for help by shouting or passed out from the alcohol and as sadly happens, then vomited and because of where he was, died.

Surely there would have been staff who noticed a hole in their dinosaur or CCTV that spotted someone climbing on the model.

The story is amusing in the same way that these plonkers who fall off buildings, waterfalls & mountains trying to take the ultimate selfie are.

It is the "how can anyone be that stupid".