Posts by hoola

Porsche panic in Russia as pricey status symbols forget how to car

Re: "A while"

The article states the service is managed locally.

This looks more like a failure in the satellite or bills not being paid.

Re: More cloudybollocks

Same for an Austin Allegro.

Once in a carpark my Dad got in and drove out of the carpark. It was only when he reached for something in the door pocket the deception was revealed.

Two of these abominations parked close to each other.

Re: More cloudybollocks

And loss of parts revenue.

These types of vehicles are rarely stolen to drive but to break for parts. That said the route is normally theft here, break and sell the parts where authenticity is not a key criteria.

Re: More cloudybollocks

These will all be keyless entry that can be spoofed along with picking it up and putting it on a transporter.

Physically defeating the locks went yeas ago.

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

I suspect the wider issue is that by making these contributions all sorts of contractual obligations start to creep in.

Finance and procurement want contracts to manage and use to make payments.

The resulting software or service now has to be legally supported with all sorts of protection for the maintainers and any other staff.

Then add in the usual problem that if one organisation puts in a large enough amount they believe they have more rights and ownership.

FOSS has now left that project.

Swiss government says give M365, and all SaaS, a miss as it lacks end-to-end encryption

Re: End to end encryption is not enough

The crucial part here is "End to end".

If you have the appropriate access at one or other end you will always be able to read the content. If you could not then the entire thing is pointless.

The wider issues surround the (mostly US) security services requesting access.

All providers have slight variations on the same wording.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/reports/government-requests/customer-data

Microsoft reviews every legal demand to ensure it is valid and complies with applicable laws. A subpoena or its local equivalent is required to request non-content data, and a warrant or its local equivalent is required for content data.

Microsoft discloses customer data only when legally compelled to do so.

Microsoft does not provide any government with direct or unfettered access to customer data.

Microsoft does not provide any government with our encryption keys or the ability to break our encryption.

https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-privacy-faq/

We will not disclose customer content (see How does AWS classify customer information? below) unless we're required to do so to comply with the law or a valid and binding order of a government body. If a governmental body sends AWS a demand for your customer content, we will attempt to redirect the governmental body to request that data directly from you. If compelled to disclose your customer content to a government body, we will give you reasonable notice of the demand to allow you to seek a protective order or other appropriate remedy unless AWS is legally prohibited from doing so.

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/sovereign-cloud/data-sovereignty/

Read this if you have time and want to increase you blood pressure.

I lost the will to live trying to find one for Google......

UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B

It is also paper, more easily damaged and would soon become unusable for it's primary function.

Even driving licences wear.

OBR drags in cyber bigwig after Budget leak blunder

Re: I'll wait and see

Immediately being sacked would be better, cost less and have more impact.

Re: I'll wait and see

First thing is he needs to be sacked.

All too often now completely preventable cock ups like this occur and the response is an apology with no sanctions on any one at the top. We don't know about further down the chain it is also unlikely.

If the results of this stupidity were those responsible being sa ked it proveds a substantial incentive to take more care.

Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges

Re: Hardly makes us meatbags feel better ...

Follow the money,

Although in the case of AI it is a fear of being left behind. I would be very surprised if the energy costs the datacentre operators pay covers the full cost yet they will want first access to x number of MW.

Just like Amazon buying the entire output of a wind farm so they could claim they are using renewables.

Firstly it is not 100% reliable and all that happens is the rest of us continue to use electricity generated from gas.

I am always puzzled by these energy companies that claim all their electricity is renewable. The simple answer it is not and I also suspect that the people being sold it and the resulting usage exceeds what is generated.

People keep demanding that electricity pricing be decoupled from gas costs. I am fine with that as long as those demanding it are happy to have reduced load or power cuts when demand outstrips renewable generation and short term backfill from batteries. The trouble is that they are not. They want a 99.9999 reliable source at bargain basement costs. Not that renewables are that cheap in the UK due to all sorts of other insanity like paying wind farms to no generate.

Manchester hits snooze again on joining Palantir-run NHS data platform

Re: Straight out of the Sir Humphrey playbook

No back-handers and NHS England will have written the contract that effectively made Palantir the only company that could bid.

Pen-pushers at the top bought into the snake oil that is Palantir, probably with some nice trips to "evaluate" the product.

Commodity memory prices set to double as fabs pivot to AI market

Follow the money

Manufacturers will switch to the units that make the most money. That has always been newer technologies it is just the insane demand for AI is skewing this to epic proportions.

The outcome of course is that we all end up paying one way or another.

Vodafone, EE, O2, Three hit with £3B overcharging lawsuit

Re: Motor Insurance

That is because the named driver is not the registered keeper (and likely not the legal owner) of the vehicle.

Adding a named driver allows someone who is not the main driver to be able to use the vehicle however they cannot do most of the mileage.

In the case of you insuring your daughter's car for her that is "Fronting" and is illegal. In the event of a collision there is a very high chance that she will not be insured and the consequences for both of you significant.,

This is a very good summary.

https://www.aviva.co.uk/insurance/motor/car-insurance/knowledge-centre/fronting-car-insurance/

Re: We do not accept the substantive allegations of the claim

What has always puzzled me is how the consumer failed to notice they were still being charged for something that has been paid of.

My experience is with O2 is that the handset is a completely separate contract that is fixed term. I cannot recall with Vodafone as it is too long ago.

And back in the days when Orange existed you bought the handset from a shop then phoned up to register it.

Zoomers are officially worse at passwords than 80-year-olds

Maybe I fall into the latter category being an old fart but can someone please explain to me the following:

I have a username and password with MFA. The password is a string of characters.

That is migrated to a username and passkey with MFA. The passkey is a string of characters

I have a hardware Yubikey that can do various level of authentication. One makes it usernameless and passwordless. I select the option to use it on login and guess what?

I have to enter the "Passkey" that looks incredibly like a password to me.

On the surface this looks to be very much rebranding a password to make it sound more secure. A string of characters is just that, you can call it what you want. I would rather the lunacy of logging in to a service that has MFA cheerfully sends the MFA to the very device I am logging in from.

Re: "They can probably set up a printer faster"..?

I dunno, if the tablet you read the PDF on is thin enough you could push a needle through it a few times before everything went down the pan......

'Largest-ever' cloud DDoS attack pummels Azure with 3.64B packets per second

Re: Rather self inflicted

Have you understood that the OS was of no interest here? It was a DDOS attack against a SaaS platform. That could have been any SaaS platform or a company that hosted everything in their own datacentre using Linux.

With you on the first line however the rest is a summary of pretty much any software that is provided now, not just Microsoft.

Canonical pushes Ubuntu LTS support even further - if you pay

One of the challenges with this is that the entire stack gets further and further behind to the point that when you actually have to move because there is no more support the jump is now so many versions that failure is pretty much assured.

It is one of the reasons why HMRC and many councils struggle. There comes a point where endlessly extending support is self-defeating.

The OS is only part of this legacy or extended support. A question could by "Why are the applications not being updated?".

If there is no support on that either then as a business it becomes more risky. What happens if there is a major failure or security flaw? You are potentially in an even worse bind as you find everything is back in the dark ages.

Change for the sake of change is the way IT makes money. It is a loop that businesses and consumers are locked into as it is seen as continuous improvement (in the loosest sense.....)

It should not be like this but businesses and users demand constant updates because it that does not happen it is considered "outdated". That the actual functionality people use is a tiny amount of all the new bug-ridden crap that is added appears to be irrelevant.

Palantir plots NHS skills drive for its controversial data platform

Re: Meanwhile...

Those pushing this agenda all stand to benefit from privatisation:

Lucrative contracts

Higher salaries (consultants etc)

Patient data to sell (although Palantir are winning that one)

There is nothing to suggest that the average person will actually be better of, either medically or financially.

Britain's first small modular reactors to be built in Wales

Re: Sounds dystopian.

Yes but it is far easier to deal with as each unit is smaller.

Re: Sounds dystopian.

In the same way that the anti-green lobby deny that the stuff spewing out of power plants, industry & transport does not exist.

The biggest different between nuclear and fossil fuels is that the residue is visible. With the latter if CO2 had been a messy liquid then it is unlikely it would have seen the adoption without any mitigation.

Both nuclear waste and fossil fuel waste is long term problem and the reality is that globally we are running out of time on the latter. I am old enough to be around when Global Warming first starting being discussed and predictions made 40 years ago have happened. Many of those far sooner than predicted. Sadly humans are the smartest, most selfish, destructive and stupid being on the planet.

The biggest problem is actually not the current waste, it is all the stuff from teh 1950s & 1960s that was just dumped in ponds with little thought as to what would happen.

That is were the challenges and risks are.

Those pumped hydro facilities are very to provide bursts of power in peak demand, Like batteries they have a finite runtime.

Gas does not (well not within the parameters and timescales we are talking about).

Apple knits up $230 sock for your iPhone in time for Christmas

Re: early april fool?

I think what is sad is that people will buy these.

It really is just crazy what some people do when they are wedded to a brand. It is similar with clothing and so on.

Microsoft's lack of quality control is out of control

Just for reality that is a card launched in 2015.....

It appears to have been targeted at mobile and desktop OSs so is possibly not in Microsoft's scope for testing and validation of the drivers.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/82186/intel-ethernet-connection-i219v/specifications.html

Azure's bad night fuels fresh calls for cloud diversification in Europe

Re: an inadvertent tenant configuration change within Azure Front Door (AFD)

There will have been change management however too many believe just having a change management process means disaster is avoided.

This is rubbish as all change management does is assign responsibility when everything goes titsup. It does little to improve quality.

You can engineer as many tests as you want to prove that you have done due diligence. The aim being to pass tests that get you through a CAB.

Zen Internet loses unfair dismissal appeal case with former CEO

Re: Pointless growth attempt

I am also a Zen customer and had a similar excellent experience when the connection became intermittent.

The next day OpenReach arrived, checked the termination, disappeared to the exchange and fixed it. The old phone line had been left connected somewhere and it had developed a fault. This was impacting the FTTC line.

Been rock solid again since.

I also like the decent AVM Fritz.Box they supply.

I have used one for years.

Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it

Re: Recommened section

Again that is all fine if you have the access to install them.

Same with StarDock Start 11. That is also excellent although paid.

The trouble with that is the unless you prevent it searching the web you are stuck with all sorts of crap still.

On a personal device you can fix this but if it is a corporate managed device you are pissing in the wind to get IT to understand how bad this,

I drives me nuts that we get all this training and endless email about security etc but the very tool we are lumbered with just searches the web. That it can be blocked but these morons appear incapable of implementing it beggar's belief. Sadly this is symptomatic of much end user computing at a corporate level.

Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan

"Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan"

Well, who is implementing the AI?

If does not implement by itself so manglement are making the decision to sack people and replace them with artificial intelligence. Strangle the people in the decision making process rarely sack themselves unless they are engineering a nice fat pay off as they jump to a new job or retire.

Blaming AI is complete bollocks

Apple's ultra-thin iPhone flops as foldable iPad hits a crease

Any phone where the camera has to stick out is simply being made pointlessly thin.

It is vulnerable & gets snagged or you have to put it in a case that now has bulk to protect it,

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

They killed Lonux as well at some point

Not if you take comparable quality hardware.

Cheaps PCs, yes, decent PCs last just the same.

Re: Another point of anecdata

That is an issue with the Adim Team, not the OS.

Re: My nerdy formner CEO offered me a choice ...

Part of the issues around the alleged hardware longevity are because a cheap PC is compared to an expensive Apple device.

In my experience if one takes decent hardware ((HP Elite or Pro Books are what I experience) the life is the same.

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

Whilst I agree with that viw a big part of the problem is that people buy into all this IoT/Smart tech because it is trendy and cool.

They are all just fashion accessories and do nothing that a phone with a Bluetooth speaker, or heaven forbid, a traditional amp and speakers can do.

Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal

Re: And?

I am not sure that you grasp the problem, leaving coal underground is not wasting it. The outcome us less CO2 (and other pollution) in the atmosphere benefitting everyone.

As it stands mlions of tonnes if CO2 is being spewed out for farnklrly no useful purpose. Now add in all the emissions to make the hardware and end of life disposal.

It is utter lunacy.

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: No to Win 11 then

Have those downvoting actually read this?

I stated that I did not agree with it but that most people (and that will include most El Reg readers) will have one or more accounts/logins (whatever you want to call them) to use phones, Android or iOS.

Why is it that Microsoft doing this is deemed to be unacceptable but iOS and Android is not?

Heck even some Linux distributions are starting to edge in this direction.

I don't use iOS, is it even possible to use an Apple laptop without an Apple login? As earlier from someone indicate it was but that created limitations in how the device was used.

If you can what is the outcome in terms of the services that it can connect to?

99.9999% of the population that use tech simply don't care.

Re: No to Win 11 then

Given that almost everyone will have an account to use their phone I struggle the the cries about how bad this is

I don't agree with it and the forced creation of accounts to do mundane things that have no need for a login but everywhere you go now, it is "normal" . That 99.999% just sign up without thinks shows just how few care.

Like the websites that increasingly froce a login or subscription if you block ads or reject cookies.

UK Home Office opens wallet for £60M automated number plate project

I would say there is a new "usual suspect" on something like this.....

Palantir.

What could possibly go wrong?

Criminals take Renault UK customer data for a joyride

Re: Anothger 3rd party hack

It is a convenient way to shift responsibility.

Renault are the data owner and is they contract a third party it should make no difference. Renault must still be responsible however the third party is also culpable. Just like any big business hiding behind contracts, outsourcing and third parties is standard practice so that those who ultimately should be responsible are not.

Just like all the double glazing companies with a 10 year guarantee but the business is wound up every other year.

EU funds are flowing into spyware companies, and politicians are demanding answers

EU Bureaucracy At It's Best

Like any huge organisation money is made available for one thing and is distributed accordingly. Those lower down the food chain dispense different parcels of funding with scant interest in where it goes or accountability.

It is not their money and they probably have to only show that it has been allocated. I am old enough to remember the EU Wine Lakes, Butter Mountains and so on. All funding given to farmers to produce stuff that nobody wanted to buy but the goal was to give the money to farmers.

The Butter Mountain was particularly good as there was a scam where a barge could be loaded up then shuffled up and down the Rhine or Elbe claiming VAT rebates on a cargo that was never actually delivered. When it all went rancid you just disposed of it (probably in the river) and filled the barge up again.

More recently in the UK we have the incentives to help bus operators buy electric busses. The intention being that the incentive would mean they bought British vehicles. Due to the way the procurement works all that has happened is over £400m of Tax Payer's money has gone straight to the Chinese as those vehicles were cheaper. When the tender came in Yutong was cheaper so that was the successful bidder. The incentive that should have been used for the British vehicle was applied after tender evaluation, not before. Net result that Chinese is even cheaper.

Apple's AirPods Pro 3 are still chuck-and-buy-again specials

Re: Unlike . . . ?

I use hearing aids and for what I need they are insanely expensive. There is no way the are actually "worth" that much in the technology but to get a half decent outcome as a musician there is no option.

Now I bought the first pair in 2018.: Rchargeable, Bluetooth and some handy funkwizardry that the £3k was just about bearable.

They had 4 years warranty. In 2023 I paid £198 for them to be refurbished. High you may think but not in relation to the initial purchase price.

I have just replaced them and the new one were a bit more expensive but based on the previous experience at a hardware and tech level it is great.

Upto 24 hours on the old ones, 36 house on the new, reducing if you stream etc.

I believe they can be dismantled for repairs but again you need the correct equipment and knowledge. From what I could tell the refurbished ones came back in the original outsides.

Imgur yanks Brit access to memes as parent company faces fine

Re: Yet more Starmer authoritarian stateism - Oh no it isn't

Maybe I am mistaken, I thought GDPR is a European Union piece of legislation

After the UK formally left the EU GDPR was adopted. There was a top up that added some more details that had cross party support in the Commons and Lords.

Nothing to do with Brexit of a particular political party.

'Money-saving' UK procurement platform racks up monster tab

Re: Set up by a brexiter

Sorry, just how is this anything to do with Brexit?

Public Sector procurement has been hamstrung by regulation for decades all to "save money". I did tenders under EU rules and after Brexit, the procedures and restrictions are pretty much the same with everything revolving round a handful of well known outfits providing solutions or services.

Now add in the various frameworks that allow procurement to bypass some of the process because the framework allegedly has pre-approved suppliers. Again the outcome is more expensive.

Public Sector procurement rules exist to:

Protect the organisation issuing the ITT from being sued by unsuccessful respondents

Allow the Private Sector to milk every last ££££ they can from the public purse.

That you cannot use real experience of a supplier to mark them down has been one of the biggest issues for a very long time. Again this is nothing to do with Brexit, it existing as part of EU procurement rules.

If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff

Re: Just a way to fire the older workers

I was assisting a much younger and less experienced team member recently whilst they were trying to implement something. There was a question over a particular feature in an area that has has dodgy documentation and many changes. They were convinced that because our AI tool said this was possible it must be right. The source for this information is the dodgy documentation.

The assumption being made was that because they had asked the AI tool the answer had to be correct. There was no further check, verification or assessment that what AI came up with was plausible.

For many AI is seen as always giving the correct answer. Thise with more experience (and generally older) are taking the time review the results because they are wrong on so nany occasions. On the Accenture World this nears you ate incompetent or unwilling to adapt..

Quite scary....

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Re: Message to CEOs : it's hopeless

Yes the do, more than two hours from the office then overnight either the day before or on the day.

Travel is expensed and in theory one can travel in working time. There is give and take on this because it actually suits everyone.

There is insufficient space for all staff to be in the office at the same time so I believe we probably have an excellent WFH policy and outcome.

Re: Message to CEOs : it's hopeless

Whilst you are correct what is constantly overlooked in the entire "Working From Home" debate is the environment.

All the same regulations apply to WFH as an office in terms of disks, chairs, monitors etc. This is constantly overlooked and is going to end up in yet another litigation frenzy as people end up with issues because they are hunched over a laptop 8 hours a day.

Everything to do with WFH tends to favour those who are better paid or further on in their career:

Dedicated office space

No family (children) in the house during main working hours

What is also missing is the social interaction, this is not just having a group call on Teams but all the things that used to happen when a team was in the same place.

I have been working from home since the start of Covid with a job change in the middle of that. My currently employer fully supports WFH but at the same time ensures that at least once a quarter the team are in the office for a day at the same time. There maybe less work done on that day however the resulting gains for the team are significant. Very occasionally we get a mandatory office day, usually for some major training session where it is actually beneficial to be there in person. This happens maybe once or twice a year.

There is no expectation that people must be in the office for a certain numbner of days in a week.

Salesforce facing multiple lawsuits after Salesloft breach

Ahh, The cry of "Not Our Fault"

SalesForce is the parent company and provides the product.

This looks like then trying to offload culpability so they don't have to pay anything. Once could say "Typical large tech company behaviour".

Hopefully they will end up in the wrong end of these complaints and do have to pay up.

Sadly the only real winners will be lawyers, the cases will take years after all the appeals by which time the actual event is long forgotten.