Posts by Screwed

Marks & Spencer swaps out TCS for fresh helpdesk deal

Yet again...???

Five minutes ago:

M&S

Thanks for visiting!

We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties.

I knew they had been too reliable for the last week or two.

Fresh UK postcode tool points out best mobile network in your area

Not very helpful maps!

The coverage is so variable where I am that I got a multi-network SIM. Still often have no coverage but at least I know it isn’t simply because I chose the wrong network.

But those Ofcom maps are way, way out in many places. Huge areas where there is coverage but they don’t tell us, and huge areas there is no or poor coverage that is not shown.

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

And what about Russia?

I would have though the Russian Federation would have moved to some Linux variant long ago. But Windows appears still to be very significant. (Not surprisingly, percentages vary depending where you look. But 25 to somewhat over 50% seems commonly reported.)

Yet they possibly have some of the most obvious reasons to switch away from Windows.

I see a certain irony in the possibility the EU might overtake the RF in abandoning Windows.

Mozilla rolls out Firefox 140 with ESR status and fresh features

Version 140.0.1 now available.

How time flies.

SpaceX's Starship explodes again ... while still on the ground

Headline writers, please take care.

SpaceX's Starship explodes again

It was ANOTHER SpaceX Starship. Not the same one again.

And it being called a Starship is pure chutzpah!

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

Re: "For most, not so bad"... bloody excellent actually.

The two keyboards within sight - MacBook Pro and Logitech iPad keyboard - neither brand new, but not old, have raised dashes on the F and J keys.

I never notice them when typing - indeed I have no idea how I position my fingers when typing. It just happens!

M&S warns of £300M dent in profits from cyberattack

Re: Savings

I'd be looking at the fine print of the Tata contract.

Surely, if you outsource, the company that takes the job on must also take on much of the responsibility when it goes wrong?

Marks & Spencer admits cybercrooks made off with customer info

Re: I don't really give a fuck that they got hacked...

Because they kept asking me to supply my DoB, In March I actually asked them why.

Good day Screwed,

Thank you for getting in touch regarding your M&S online profile. I am so sorry that the website or app keeps asking you to verify your date of birth. I understand your frustration, as I too would’ve been if I were in your situation.

Screwed, the reason we keep asking is because M&S is now giving free birthday treats, and because you have not added yours, we will not know when you should be getting a birthday treat from us.

Not to worry, we understand if you do not want to add this. We unfortunately cannot remove this question at all, so I would like to kindly ask you to ignore this the next time you log in.

Thank you for your loyalty, we at M&S really appreciate it.

Kind regards

One of the problems is that while I can obviously reply with any date, I might cause some odd problem down the line. For example, some cross-checking of my account against other data (credit reference agencies?). And I would feel silly if I caused my own problems.

We should be able to safely supply any date for M&S to use as our "official" birthday. If it is solely to offer a tin of biscuits, then it would have no consequences if I choose the date that works best for me.

British govt agents step in as Harrods becomes third mega retailer under cyberattack

Re: M&S Store shopping - no stock at the best of times

As a 30" leg person I am in more pain! Always the slightly too short 29" or the slightly too long 31". And I am crap at adjusting them.

If only they'd produce half their trousers in even leg lengths, and the other half in odds.

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Maybe we've found a good use for the AI tools everywhere?

"How much of the cost of this item is due to tariffs?"

Even if Amazon doesn't blazon the tariff element, this petulancy might result in people actually asking that.

OpenAI pulls plug on ChatGPT smarmbot that praised user for ditching psychiatric meds

You are so right to hate sycophants. I'm very impressed with your reasoning and expression.

Was there something specific that made you feel this way today?

This is not just any 'cyber incident' … this is an M&S 'cyber incident'

Was in M&S yesterday late afternoon - and almost no yellow-labelled reductions. Whilst often of little or no relevance, it is unusual not to see quite a number of items with yellow label reductions at that time.

I suspect that the computer systems identify which items need attention, based on stock levels and dates, then someone goes round printing the yellows, and sticking them on. But if systems not working properly, that process likely failed to work properly.

But the one contactless payment I made (debit card via Apple wallet) worked and has appeared on my account this morning.

HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional

If you absolutely need a printer, but only actually print the odd sheet, the original cartridges/ink might last effectively forever.

That is, HP's need to recoup their investment will fail on the basis of your minuscule printing volume.

Could they actually require you to print more in order to force you to buy their supplies? (Some test and cleaner processes appear designed to do this!) Would they stop working if you do not print at least 100 pages a month, or some such?

(I've no idea is current day HP practices check expiry dates on supplies. Which would be another approach.)

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament

Re: before they die more slowly.

Any drugs streaming in are paid for by those in the USA. Otherwise no-one would be supplying the drugs.

That so many end up wanting and/or needing such drugs is very much the underlying problem. And addressing that is probably the most important part of any attempt to reduce drug traffic.

Parallels brings back the magic that was waiting seven minutes for Windows to boot

Re: Cheap Mini PC

I have one remaining x86 app - last compiled in 2011 - that I want to use. Luckily, that runs in a VMWare Fusion/W11 VM on my Apple Silicon boxes. Though I haven't given much thought to exactly how it achieves that.

And your point re travelling is 100%. It's not a major issue for me. But it does mean that even when out and about, if I wish, I can use that one app easily and quickly.

I do realise the Parallels offering is not just ability to run some apps. The carry with you issue applies regardless.

Apple quietly admits 8GB isn't enough in 2024, M4 iMac to ship with 16GB as standard

All too often we had to get rid of the original memory in order to upgrade capacity. I have loads of ancient DIMMs upstairs...

If you have a spare slot (or slots) and can put your choice of module capacity in, yes, it's good. If you have to spend ages working out what options are available and try to understand whether certain combinations will (or won't) work, or might negatively affect performance, it was all rather less than wonderful.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Even so, it will be a while before Google owes a googol of roubles or dollars.

Long before then, Google could simply offer a cheque...

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

If the servers that the phone communicates with are hackable, even a totally unhackable phone doesn't protect your traffic from being hacked.

And no functional phone can ever be untrackable - in case location is what is being kept secret.

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Re: What next?

288pin DDR5 module compliant

Well, I wouldn't say no to the government ensuring that no-one introduces a 287 or 289 pin DDR module solely to implement a barrier to use of 288 pin modules.

And what has been quite amusing is when one company has adopted their own standard for something - then a merger or acquisition has meant they actually now want to be fully compatible but have screwed up that possibility.

Re: "wall wart of fortune"

But the range of voltages they use, that at least one I've got somewhere is AC, that the outer barrel is not insulated, the ease with which some diameters can be confused - at least visually. A long list of negatives.

Also, even if the physical barrel fits, even if the right polarity, plugging a heavy load into a low capacity charger can blow it almost immediately. The negotiation part of USB does a lot to prevent that even being possible, let alone likely.

Re: What next?

The house I lived in was rewired to the new standards in, I think, 1963. And our house ended up as being just about the only place I saw 13A sockets for years.

Meant we couldn't readily lend or borrow electrical devices. But also meant we used same plugs for everything, no worry about 2, 5 and 15 amp plugs and a complex array of adaptors. Nor concern that so many devices were not earthed.

Our next-door neighbour used a pendant light-socket to 2-pin plug adaptor to do her ironing. While we had more sockets than we could use.

Even the significant issue of being able to touch the pins of 13A plugs was eventually addressed. And the range of fuses that we should use reduced.

Starlink-branded hardware reportedly found amid wreckage of downed Russian drone

Re: What usage ?

"Drones aren't just bombs"

And bombs aren't just bombs. Many having fancy glide capability and control mechanisms.

Though we are not yet teaching them phenomenology.

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

Currently, I cannot see my own records (beyond a few fragments - for example, no test results, no notes, no letters). While I can request them, sometimes it is hard to even identify who holds them in order to do so.

It feels totally incredible that a considerable portion could be accessible to Palantir but not to me.

Currently, even public information can take a long time to work its way through the systems. The NHS' dm+d database might hold information about medicines, but a new medicines can take at least weeks, quite possibly months, to appear on GP systems so that it can be prescribed. And, in reverse, medicines which have been discontinued and cannot in reality be prescribed/dispensed still appear for a months and years.

This is the sort of information which should be kept in the UK. What if we fall out with the USA? What if the USA law gets rid of any protection we might think we have for our data?

Windows 11 continues slog up the Windows 10 mountain

I have an ageing W10 machine that cannot run W11. But I now use an Apple Silicon Mac and only use the old box for a couple of things now - an app for which I've found no alternative and to get over some issues with Microsoft Word under macos.

Ironically, this has forced me to W11 - as a VM under Fusion. Amazingly, the now very old app installed and works fine - despite it having been created and compiled for Intel, probably W7.

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

Re: Settings vs Contol Panel

Somewhat oddly, you get different options depending on whether you search for "color" or "colour".

Color finds:

Choose your desktop background

Text cursor indicator colour

Choose your accent colour

View advanced display info

Colour filters

Colour finds:

Choose your desktop background

Mouse pointer style

Apply colour to Start, taskbar and Action Centre

Choose your accent colour

Colour settings

And there are even more differences if you choose Show all results.

(Windows 11 for ARM installed with English (United Kingdom.)

What is missing from the web? We're asking for Google

Re: My starter for 10

But Google Groups as a way of accessing it is dead. Now read-only of the archive - as far as it goes.

I'm well aware that a proper news server is a far better approach anyway, but this hammers another nail. It has been convenient in certain circumstances.

And what had a devastating effect on Usenet was the vast quantity of spam, malware, total junk, that was posted, and cross-posted all over. Along with the impact of binaries on servers which really only had limited capacity. As a Berlin user, I saw only text - thankfully. But I let that lapse when some of the most important topics (to me, of course!) were more readily and better served by other approaches. It was always difficult to get those with web-only experience even to use mail (other than via web portals), let alone connect to Usenet servers.

Yes - there is still https://www.eternal-september.org/ - must sign up!

Twitter tells advertisers to go fsck themselves, now sues them for fscking the fsck off

Re: curious

Maybe Mercedes would sell the Maybach brand to him?

Just after WW2 my mother was working in Germany and spent much time being driven around in a former-nazi Maybach convertible.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: Good

Maybe, just possibly, you might eventually realise that most roads (other than truly residential roads) in Wales do not have a 20mph limit. Despite what the clown Andrew RT Davies says, it is NOT a blanket 20mph limit across the nation.

Most days, I have one section between my front door and the nearest main road, all estate roads, which is 20. Often the entire rest of my journey is on roads with higher limits. I can drive right through town and out the other side only having been in 30 and 40 limits.

And there are still lots of roads which have a 60 limit which really could do with being dropped to 50, or even 40 in some places.

Re: The devil is in the detail

I like the adaptive cruise control on my car.

Yes - I can maintain a steady speed over long distances and have many, many miles under my belt. But, for example, on a long stretch of 50mph motorway, I can set it and be sure I won't be speeding. At the same time, a lot of my attention is on what is happening outside the car rather than on the speedo. All too many switch lanes frequently, without indicating, and having speeded up a tiny but, then have to slow down. And switch back. Awareness of them is critical.

The adaptive bit works well at slowing if the vehicle ahead is going slower. It also works extremely well on hills. And, contrary to what some have said, it will even free-wheel in the right conditions to minimise fuel consumption.

PayPal is planning an ad network built off your purchase history

What an odd person...?

My PayPal history is confined to a subset of my purchases where I cannot use one of my other preferred ways of paying. These days, that is quite rare.

If PayPal analyse me for advertising, they will see a very odd and biased view. And if they sell that onwards it will mislead potential advertisers.

I am still hoping that my bank will offer an anonymised payment mechanism where the payee doesn't get to know anything about me and my account like card numbers, expiry, even bank name! Something like Apple Pay but better.

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Ask AI

Have you asked the AI systems what they would do in your circumstances?

(Honestly not expecting a helpful response from them. But responses might be anywhere from a waste of time through mildly interesting, even amusing.)

Vodafone and Three's UK merger hits regulatory roadblock

5G, 3G, 2G

I live in an area with somewhat, or very, patchy coverage on all networks, on 3G, 4G and 5G. I am currently on Three while partner is on EE. (She had to move from Vodafone because their network is so awful here.)

This means that most of the time, at least one of us has a signal. Which is helpful.

At the end of this year, Three will have terminated all 3G coverage but still has virtually no 5G in the whole county and beyond. O2 and Vodafone have no 5G at all. While EE has at least got some coverage in the more populated areas - though still with many gaps.

Yet the websites of all these networks are pushing 5G phones. We are being told the network

Apparently we will enjoy a better network experience with greater coverage and reliability at no extra cost. I can't see why we will see any improvement at all.

Their claim:

"MergeCo will achieve this whilst also reducing energy consumption by accelerating the installation of energy efficient 5G equipment and replacing less power-efficient 2G and 3G systems."

is also junk as 3G will be turned off by the time the merger happens (by end of 2024) and Vodafone 2G will only exist for utility meters. (And Three does not have any 2G.)

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Re: I propose a new solution

Imagine that Regland Kingdom has a revolution and becomes the Republic of Regland, they will want nothing to do with the old assigned IPv4 address and will demand a new one. (Even if they keep using the old address.)

Then, when the Republic of Regland splits into South Regland and Reglandia, the same will happen again. With the added issue of neither of the new nations accepting the other controlling the old IPv4 address(es).

In time South Regland and Reglandia settle their differences and become United Regland. And again, to mark the occasion and avoid ending up using two addresses, or one address taking precedence over the other, they need another new address.

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

Virtual TPM

Where does this leave virtual TPM systems - such as are widely used on Macs running virtual Windows 11?

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

Even if I do as you suggest, and move my fingers left and right as far as I can without being painful, my ring fingers are longer than my index fingers. (I do mean the ring finger on each hand, not both the ring fingers on my third hand.)

Any relationship with athletic performance, however, has passed me by entirely.

As for being psychotic, I'm really not the one to judge.

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

Re: April 1st and Windows 3.1 joke

We used to move some or all the desktop icons off into a separate folder.

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

Can you invoke AML on a non-emergency call?

Like reporting something to police 101?

Mind, if you allow your camera to access your location, you can just take and send a photo.

Re: My iPhone compass app includes the w3w location as well

The standard IOS 16 Compass app doesn't display W3W location! Well, not the one on my iPhone.

Apple Maps also shows Lat/Long for current location, but does so in decimal. Whereas Compass displays it in degrees/minutes/etc. format.

UK air traffic woes caused by 'invalid flight plan data'

My first ever program caused the IBM mainframe to snarl up. Early 1970s, at school, punched with a manual card punch and a simple Fortran program.

Seems I made a mistake with a punched card but not sure if it was mis-punched or left out. Should have been something like:

#IOCS NONCONTROL

Got a curt note back with my stack of cards.

While I never made that mistake again, one of the joys of computers is the seemingly infinite number of opportunities to screw things up.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

There were some very information and helpful health-related usenet forums. And one I used a lot is still in existence with one chap valiantly still posting regularly.

Two things made it progressively less and less pleasant to use: spam and belligerent posting. But all the binary posting - requiring much greater server capacity and bandwidth - didn't help. And we saw several ISPs drop out.

I used to pay for access through "the Berlin server" - which was pretty damned good.

Occasionally I use Google groups to see what is happening (not much!).

Anyone know of a reasonable client for use on an M1 macOS machine? The one I liked best was xnews.

Resilience is overrated when it's not advertised

Re: Failover backup redlining

Or they used some memory from the backup server when they found they needed more in the prime server.

British Airways, Boots, BBC payroll data stolen in MOVEit supply-chain attack

And spam?

In the last five or six days, I've received spam purporting to be from Boots (but clearly not if you look at the headers) - to an email address I used for communicating with Boots customer services.

Keep wondering if this hack is why it has started.

Chrome's HTTPS padlock heads to Google Graveyard

"Unlike the padlock, it has no obvious link to any real world object that hints at its function."

My eyes say it is two keys. But my house has an unusual key design throughout. (Not the usual Yale-type.) I'd not expect that interpretation to be at the top of the list for most people.

And it is horrible.

Australia gives made-in-China CCTV cams the boot

And in the UK?

Has anyone done and published a similar audit in the UK?

I suspect some properties in Marsham Street might have Hikvision security cameras.

The Twitpocalypse may have begun, as datacenter migration reportedly founders

Re: Here is data everyone, including Musk, has been looking for

Though it rather depends on how tweets are counted. For example, a reply, a retweet and a quote tweet of the same thing can be done very quickly.

And the continuing lack of an edit function sees numerous replies to tweets just to minor correct typos. Often within seconds. Which can ramp up tweet numbers for those of us with fat fingers.

It has also been suggested that non-payers will be limited in likes they can apply.

Longstanding bug in Linux kernel floppy handling fixed

ZIP

Thank goodness ZIP drives didn't become standard. At least, not while they were still affected by click of death. Did that ever get fixed?

And remembering processor usage they could achieve. (SCSI ones were much better.)

Amazon halts work on ‘Scout’ delivery-bot that delivered parcels no faster than humans

Scalability

Round my area, Royal Mail have largely switched to electric vehicles. And what a difference to noise and, most especially, diesel exhaust - which can be very bad when they restart the engine multiple times even in our short road.

From that point of view, I'd very much appreciate one of these delivering rather than the diesel vehicles Amazon (and most others) use. But how would Amazon handle the sixty miles from their nearest depot to where I live? A local depot which employs people to transfer packages from vans or lorries to Scouts seems the only possibility. Which would require considerable numbers of transfer depots to cover even the urban areas of a country. With staff. And lots of Scouts so they can still deliver in a sensible time even at busy periods. And particularly so when they have to wait, possibly for many hours, for the customer to unload them.

So this seems feasible to use only in specific areas which match how they operate. No wonder Amazon are not expanding the project.

And I very much agree with those who prefer a brief chat with a human.

Micro molten salt reactor can fit on a truck, power 1k homes. When it's built

Concentration on the size of the reactor tends to read as if an artic turns up, the reactor gets put on a prepared slab, and someone turns up to connect some cables.

We need the full scale of the plant to be clarified.

If each one can power a thousand homes, we'd need 3634 (2020 figures) for London alone - and that's just for houses. Add in the extras you identify, and fitting them in will be extremely challenging!

Waxworm's spit shows promise in puncturing plastic pollution

Calling Milton Jones

Are very big ones called bee he moths?

USB-C iPhone, anyone? EU finalizes charging standard rule

Re: Lint Magnet

With both micro-USB and Lightning, I have had small pieces of paper find their way into phones' sockets. But no such problem with the one USB-C phone I temporarily had (a few months).

Is it possible for the USB-C socket to incorporate some sort of silicone cover, or dummy plug, without breaking USB-C standards?

And while the EU are at it, please force all carriers to support eSIMs at no extra charge. Not to force a change to eSIMs, just ensure that they cannot effectively be blocked by technology or cost/charge decisions made by the carriers.