Posts by 080

Suits ignored IT's warnings, so the tech team went for the neck

It depends on how vulnerable the CEO felt, with all the evidence in IT's hands it was probably quite vulnerable.

Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it

High Risk Sites

On high risk sites not only is a weekly fire alarm test mandatory but each alarm on the site has to be witnessed as working on a monthly routine. Our test was at exactly 10.30 on Thursday with staff positioned to witness alarms on a schedule this was followed by a test of the evacuation alarm. Long due to the staff having to walk around several alarms and very loud with sirens.Any interference with fire alarm systems was a disciplinary offence.

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Dirty environments for Computers

You don't get much dirtier places than coal fired power stations, even the offices were dusty and PC fans complained when it built up too much.

The fix a sharp slap on the case and watch the dust being expelled by the fan. A quick squirt with an air duster and it's good to go.

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

Re: 10 hours you say

Hopefully not with Tiger

'There has never been a realistic plan' for UK's £11B Emergency Services Network

Re: "Oh, there's been something to show for it all right"

I don't think you should give the government of the day the credit for all these shenanigans, the SNP are doing a good job with the ferry contract and the sale of the Aluminium smelter.

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Re: Someone shopping at Bunnings for Crescent slabs?

Bunnings, my favourite shop in Australa, beats anything we have in the UK

Pager hack faxed things up properly, again, and again, and again

The new pager

When pagers were introduced at our power station for shift engineers they were not much loved or cared for.

At the end of a 2/10 shift the group of engineers retired to the local pub for a wet or two as usual then off home a lot more relaxed.

A little later the night shift received a call from the pub, "One of your old guys has left his hearing aid here' which turned out to be his pager.

Thieves smash hole in wall to nab $500K in Apple iKit

Re: Where were the plastic police?

Thermal blocks are just as easy to cut with a saw. For plasterboard use a Stab Saw

Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

Re: One C, one R

Or a battery tester

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

Never mind 5G, could we possibly have 4G or even 3G within 10 miles of Cardiff, not exactly the sticks.

Dear Stupid, I write with news I did not check the content of the [Name] field before sending this letter

Re: To access or not to access

"Of course, most regulators seem content to make themselves look toothless and fine organisations much less"

Don't want to kill the Golden Goose do we.

Re: These guys' newsletter?

Would that be the group that branched from the Haemorrhoid Appreciation Society?

Rentokil uses AI rat recognition to plot extermination in real time

AI

Why would you want to Artificially Inseminate a rat?

CES Worst in Show slams gummi gouging, money-wasting mugs, and other dubious kit

Re: A gummy printer?

Or the old joke of the B&B lady asking the newlyweds:

"Please stop throwing your used rubbers out the window my ducks keep choking on them"

Techies try to bypass damaged UPS, send 380V into air traffic system

Re: Critical

Fuses won't stop frying, especially of the over-voltage variety

Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened

i can't understand why someone installing an always required on system uses a standard 13A plug and socket, there are plenty of alternatives but you may have to fork out for an electrician to install them. As my old boss said "You can't make things idiot proof, idiots are far too resourceful".

Telecoms networks could provide next-gen GPS services without the need for satellites

Re: increased positioning accuracy is deemed to be worth the cost

My hearing aids app also ask for position access but still seem to work when I deny it, it's just irritating

Boss broke servers with a careless bit of keyboarding, leaving techies to sort it out late on a Sunday

Re: "an on-prem email server"

For Free is mine.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

Impossible repair

f you want to see some almost impossible electronic repairs see NorthridgeFix on YouTube

Re: Live Printer

Live line working is really only for well trained experts.

Apple debuts iPhone 14, Watch 8, other sparkly things

Clever little Elve's

Apple make some very clever equipment these days, in China

Goodbye, humans: Call centers 'could save $80b' switching to AI

Chatbots are designed to wear you down until you give up, certainly NatWest's does by spewing out random words that don't make any sense in the order they are spit out. They may be Artificial but they will never be Intelligent.

Plusnet use real people who know what their company does, the Yorkshire accent is thrown in free.

A tip to get to a real person quickly is to select the Welsh language option, if provided, they all speak English perfectly.

In a time before calculators, going the extra mile at work sometimes didn't add up

Re: Honesty kills

It all depends on which version of the truth you accept

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller

So it is 100 tonnes, doesn't seem as much does it. Why do people insist in using small weights (pounds, kg ) to make things seem bigger.

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

Why?

Why would you pay $25 a month to make your backside sweaty?

Foxconn factory fiasco could leave Wisconsinites on the hook for $300m

Re: A lesson learned...

Sounds a bit like the SNP and Gupta.

The time you solved that months-long problem in 3 seconds

Re: Fuck that

Nach, a 5kV Megger has very low current so not much use against an earthed root, whereas a couple of applications of Glyphosate fixes the problem.

A tale of two dishwashers: Buy one, buy it again, and again

I get so many adverts my PiHole is throbbing, but very effective.

Bouncing cheques or a bouncy landing? All in a day's work for the expert pilot

Re: In the pilot's defense...

And on a Billard T75 you have a forward reverse lever which points in the opposite direction to travel, that is before it shakes your back teeth out.

Re: Expert?

He was probably a baggage trolley pilot

Less than PEACH-y: UK's plant export IT system only works with Internet Explorer

Re: A Firefox user writes...

Slimjet

Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads

My Lenovo laptop doesn't seem to suffer from any of this, mind a HD reformat and Linux Mint backed by a PiHole does help.

Having trouble getting your mitts on that Raspberry Pi? You aren't alone

it's easy to make bolts shorter, a hacksaw and/or a file, making them longer is a bit more challenging

OVH founder says UPS fixed up day before blaze is early suspect as source of data centre destruction

Re: 300 Cameras

Or at least getting rid of all combustible material from the UPS room and sealing all the wiring ducts, sounds like a cheap and cheerful thrown together bodge.

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

Re: Who knew data centres were tinder boxes?

I would like to see the risk assessment of anywhere that allowed personnel to enter a confined space with an active fire suppression system. All HV switchrooms that I have entered, and there have been more than a few daily over many years, had an interlock system to ensure you could not enter unless the fire suppression was locked off. A bit of a pain but a lot better than trying to breath CO2.

This would explain why the system might have been switched off during maintenance.

Mobile World Congress to run this year's Barcelona event in June with 50,000 attendees. We're speechless

Re: Already bought a ticket

I think Dido Harding is better qualified to run the EU

European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab

Re: And the EU still can't understand why the UK left.

"If there's one thing we've learned, you are on a hiding to nothing trying to educate these lot."

Surely you mean " this lot"

Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'? Newbie gripe sparks some soul-searching among Debian community

"Otherwise it's like the whiners who never stop whining that GIMP isn't Photoshop! Gee, who knew? That really is the point, isn't it: GIMP is NOT Photoshop. If you want P'shop use P'shop, don't fill up lines of message boards whining on and on about how GIMP isn't P'shop, ... ad nauseum"

And I thought Gimp was just a free version of Photoshop.

UK network Three hikes pay-as-you-go rates by 400% to push punters to buy 'bundles'

Re: Maybe not

"In this case EE. Which to be fair does seem to have a better coverage than the others, but if we are dissatisfied with them what alternative is there?"

Plusnet, owned by BT but cheaper.

About $15m in advertising booked to appear on millions of smart TVs was never seen by anyone, says Oracle

Re: Naughty step

Where can I sign up for this service?

Apple aptly calls its wireless over-the-ear headphones the AirPods Max – as in, maximum damage to your wallet

Hermes

Did't realise that Hermes made watches, I thought they just delivered parcels

Travel agent leaked customer data by – this is embarrassing – giving it away in a hackathon

Re: Postcodes [in the UK] can be personal too

In Australia it's as you say, one post code per town, the same as in France where it may also be one code per 6 or more villages.

For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice

Re: Lest we forget

Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert Dibble and Grub

Super-antique-fragile-and-it's-XP-alidocious, even though the sight of it is something quite atrocious

Corona days

Now, that takes me back, I worked for Corona during the school holidays in the mid 60's

Let's... drawer a veil over why this laser printer would decide to stop working randomly

You need balls

Can't understand why you guy's don't just chew their ears off after the first stupid call out. Worked for me for 20 years, but then it was in an industrial setting and I was the team leader.

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Re: Poor On-Call this week

In Wales it's cleaner

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

Re: CSV?

Or according to Google a vspdv (variable séparée par des virgules)

Re: Hmm. 65 000 000 people. 1 000 000 col limit*

"and get any result you want!"

So it is good for statistics then?

'Mindset reset' contributes to £1bn extra costs and another delay – 2 years this time – for Emergency Services Network

Re: Who was the priority?

Not only marine radios, get them off the shelf from your local Motorola and others dealers. But this is a government project so they must invent a different shaped wheel.

Take your pick: 'Hack-proof' blockchain-powered padlock defeated by Bluetooth replay attack or 1kg lump hammer

Re: Sounds familiar

How much a metre is this blockchain stuff, I'll get some for securing my ladder.