Posts by Lazlo Woodbine

Datacenter MacGyver saved the biggest football match of the year

Re: If a UPS could do it...

My only guess is that a portable generator may not give stable enough power...

Re: an old firm game then

I was thinking one of the Manchester clubs...

Back in the late 2000's, one of my customers won the job to supply and install the CCTV and access control for a newly built football stadium.

The club weren't in the Premier League, so the standards weren't quite as severe, but the police still had to be able to take immediate control of the CCTV in case of an incident.

As the distributor of the cameras, myself and a colleague traveled down and monitored the install, and were present when the system was tested and commisioned in the presence of the police.

Come the first home game a couple of weeks later, a 3pm Saturday kick-off as League One games rarely trouble Sky TV, I get an urgent call at 9am, the CCTV was completely down.

I talked the club security guy through a few things whilst I got dressed, then I called my colleague and we set off for the 3 hour drive to the stadium.

We got there at a little after 1pm and the security cabin was in complete darkness, as was that whole corner of the stadium.

"How long have the lights been out?" I asked

"I don't know, it was light enough in here so I didn't turn them on."

"It's not the CCTV that's broken, it's the power supply," I pointed out, "you could have saved 3 hours and a huge bill to my employer by trying the lights."

Luckily the police knew a sparky who came out immediately and we soon had power.

We billed the club the full £750 each consultancy fee, plus mileage, and we stayed to watch the team get hammered in their first home game in the new stadium...

Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess

Re: AMD clips

I forget which P4 generation it was, but one model had a heatsink that was so big, it would often rip itself off the motherboard if the box was shipped upside down...

They were the first gen, I was part of a team evaluating them for a new PC line...

Was testing a bunch of newly released P4 processors and soon got bored fighting with the heatsink clips, so for the next one I simply held the heatsink in place, with predictable results; a very expensive CPU self-immolated in a matter of seconds.

I used the heatsink clips for the rest of the batch...

Only half of US datacenter capacity planned for 2026 is actually under construction

So, if we have shortages of RAM / flash memory and GPUs due to AI datacentres, but only half of expected datacentres are actually under construction, how are they going to fit out the other 50% given the apparent shortage or hardware?

Commodore gets into the phone biz with Sailfish-powered retro 'Callback'

Re: $500??????

The current incumbent of the Oval office suggests there are plenty of people who are exactly that gullible...

Firefox 152 understands 'Sssh!'

Re: They are going about silencing tabs the wrong way

Listening to Test Match Special whilst working, you need that tab to play the audio whilst it's in the background, as I will be doing today.

Capita is about to sail past deadline to fix civil service pensions scheme

Of course it it

As Douglas Adams said, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."

Capita won't care, they'll still get government contracts, which they'll continue to handle appallingly...

This is your BIOS speaking. Please fix me. Your PC is broken

At my last school we had boarding students from all over the world, and they'd all bring their laptops to the IT office when they'd done something daft like download music and games from a dodgy site and kill their device.

We got quite adept on working through menus in multiple languages with different keyboard layouts so we try to fix them.

The first time I encountered this problem it was a French kid with about 10 minutes of battery left on his Macbook, no charger and he'd mananged to change his screen resolution so high the text was barely visible. Trying to remember my french lessons from 20 years ago with a rapidly dying battery was a task with Mission Impossible vibes, especially as this was my first encounter with MacOS in about a decade.

Anyway, got it fixed and he was so pleased, he sent all his mates in my direction, so I produced a personal manual with all the keyboard layouts and menus in every language I could think of. I left it in the office for my successor when I left...

Home Office ditches legacy asylum database, keeps the spreadsheets

Re: Who cares? The government certainly doesn't!

Please tell me which jobs the asylum seekers are taking from British "patriots" and therefore depressing their wages.

Yeah, you're all scrambling to work in barbers, vape shops and cleaning hotel rooms...

England's exam watchdog frets over smart specs turning GCSEs into Google searches

Dead zone

This is one of the few advantages of being in the sticks with no mobile coverage, students' "smart" devices simply dn't work, especially once we've turned the wifi off in the sports hall.

Maybe schools should hold exams in big Faraday cages...

All the passwords were stored in Active Directory description fields

Comment I replied to suggested they were a small company with a small number of users, 2000+ is not a small company with a small number of users...

I regularly get emails with very, very confidential information about pupils from one local authority.

The attachments are zipped and passworded, with the password in a second email sent at the same time.

I've now trained that office to use a consistent password, so it doesn't need to be sent each time.

The new password is the school name plus 1! which is no better...

Back in the 80's, a friend of mine worked in the local university managing their Cray II.

His boss had a bee in his bonnet about passwords, specifically rude passwords, which he decided were unprofessional, which is odd, because the passwords are secret, right.

Ahh, no, because he had this bee in his bonnet about rude words on his network, the passwords were plain text, and it was my friend's job to keep an eye out for rude passwords.

Makes comeplete sense...

2000+ workers mentioned in the article, doesn't sound terribly small to me...

Tech support chap hauled out to help SWAT team saw his life flash before his eyes

About the most danger I ever encountered was if we ever needed to access the switch in one of the boys' boarding houses at my last school.

It was in the attic, and the light switch was just past the first, very low, roof beam, so a minor head injury could be counted on whenever we needed to access that switch...

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

Re: Not me, but ...

One place I worked, they had accounting codes for "ladies of negotiable affections", apparently the MD used them frequently...

The best part of working for this company was travel, because they simply wouldn't let anyone use their own car for any work related journeys.

This meant you either got a pool car (ex-sales car, so worn seat but well maintained, usually BMW 3-series with the odd 5-series or Skoda Superb) or a hire car, usually Mondeo or equivalent Vauxhall. The cars came with a fuel card, but usually only enough fuel to get you to the nearest Tesco, and never instructions how to open the fuel filler, which for some cars wasn't obvious. The Skoda Octavia I got once had a button the dash to open the filler, no way I would have found that without asking the guy in the petrol station for help...

Another tale of woe due to being bought by a US globo-corp.

One Christmas, a party at our owner's New York office ended in a fight and many arrests.

The next day, the company board reacted in the typical US manner, by banning the purchase of alcohol with company funds, and the consumption of alcohol on company premises. This was a global edict.

Naturally, we in the UK didn't take this lying down, and soon managed to work a way were we could still expense booze at the two hotel chains we used while travellng, both chains agreed to invoice all alcohol as food for an additional guest in our party...

Re: Unlimited expenses

A friend of mine was in Petrus, one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants, in the mid-00's. He was eating with a client, so his high 3-figure bill was expensed.

Also in the restaurant was a group of four city types who managed to run up a 6-figure bill which included several bottles of insanely expensive wine and cuban cigars (pre-indoor smoking ban).

The next day, my friend noticed that all four guys had been arrested for insider trading, they were probably spending the last of the proceeds on the wine...

I used to work for a small security product distributor.

A colleague was field support, and had unwritten permission to expense two coffees a day.

We were taken over by a huge US globo-corp, who brought in a new expanses claim system. No longer could we simply take a reciept to finance and emerge with cash, now we had to fill in an online claim, then fax the printed form along with reciepts to the globo-corp's Indian outpost.

My colleague couldn't be bothered doing this daily, so he accumulated enough reciepts to make the effort worthwhile.

Naturally the Indian office wanted to know why someone was claiming for 90 coffees, sent an authorisation request to the globo-corp's US HQ and the US beancounters decided they were not honouring the claim, nor could we expense coffee anymore, and this extended to the free-vend Maxpax machine in the office, and the daily supplied tunnocks caramel wafers,

One person's disdain for filing daily claims led to the whole UK wing of the company suffering.

That chap was never invited to Friday afternoon drinks ever again, especially now we coudn't expense the first round anymore...

Techie claims Trump Mobile website was leaking thousands of people's data

A fool and their money are soon parted

see title...

Vivaldi 8 polishes the chrome without coating it in AI

It was, and it is, to a certain extent...

Wanted: Digital chief for England's schools. Must enjoy data, AI, and concrete problems

Re: and lead work on a unique identifier for children and other learners in England

Why not use one of the existing unique identifiers?

The UPN for instance is made of a check letter, the LEA Establishment number the year of entry and a number between 000 and 999

The check letter doesn't include I, O or S, so there's 23 check letters, giving thousands of possible UPNs per school per year.

There's no need for a different unique identifier.

Independent schools currently do not issue UPNs.

The ULN links to the Learning Records Service and is used to compile a students' Personal Learning Record (PLR).

Currently ULNs are mandatory for state schools and advisory for the independent sector, most do use them to allow the compilation of a PLR.

UCI is the only number that is mandatory across all sectors of Secondary and Tertiary education, as it's used to link external exam results to students.

The problem is, unlike UPNs and ULNs, there is no way for a school to search for a UCI, so if a student changes school after being issued a UCI, they're highly likely to be issued with a second or third UCI, causing confusion for students and universities.

The solution seems obvious, we don't need another unique identifier, simply make the ULN mandatory, and generate it at the first entry school, rather than at 14...

and lead work on a unique identifier for children and other learners in England

Currently students in England have three Unique Identifiers

UPN - Unique Pupil Number - issued by the first school they attend

ULN - Unique Learner Number - issued at age 14

UCI - Unique Candidate Identifier - issued when entered for their first external exam

Why on earth do they need another?

Civil servants to protest outside Capita AGM over pension shambles

Re: Crapita

Catita's complaints department now covers all the major land masses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system...

Royal Household seeks £3M finance system fit for a King

Re: £86.3 million

Look at the US Secret Service budget, 50% of that goes on Presidential protection...

Google launches line of Android laptops festooned with Gemini AI

Re: Decision made

And those AI features are easy to turn off...

Decision made

When my current Chromebook bites the dust, I'm moving to a Macbook Neo...

HP stuffed a PC into a keyboard. We took it for a spin

Re: Spills

Where I work we've been using Fujitsu mini desktops mounted to the back of our screens since about 2010. They either fasten directly to the VESA mount of fit in a little cage.

We've only recently moved to pizza box case PCs from Stone and Lenovo as they're generally cheaper

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

I spotted this a few months ago, when I deleted it the file returned but has not reached the same size.

CCleaner and similar tools class it as junk and will happily remove it.

Luckily, I don't think it's being deployed to Chromebooks, as they will struggle to accomodate such a chunky file

Young evil genius forces hamster to run on wheel to power his gadgets

Re: From our clickbait correspondent - Brandon Vigliarolo

I'm not aware of any law that requires you to click on the video link...

Mars rover hits rocky snag with power tool

Re: For a less crap video

If it wasn't for the ridiculous clickbaity title, I would probably watch that...

OpenAI exec says company hopes to burn $50B of somebody else's money on compute this year

I did pay attention, but your reading comprehension is clearly not up to scratch, i very deliberately included the words IN PART, as the trade shrinkage due to high tariffs was one of a lot of causes...

Re: Tariffs

You clearly missed the words IN PART, I didn't say, or even hint that tariffs were the main cause, just one of a whole heap of causes...

The great depression was cause, in part, by a reduction of internation trade brought about by high tariffs, something the orange one is about to precipitate...

I'm struggling to understand how anyone is dumb enough to invest billions in AI.

Has nobody heard of Tulip Mania, or more recently, the dot com crash?

Bad news for OpenClaw stans: Apple’s Mac Mini now starts at $799

Re: When it was cheap. Now? No.

I don't think Apple ever made a Mac Mini with the M3 chips.

I've got a base M1 model and it's getting a little bogged down with some of my tougher workflows, so I'm thinking of buying an M4, the £200 price jump for the new base model albeit with double the SSD, is a little off putting, but I'll have a redundancy cheque soon, so I may just take the leap...

Two men charged over series of arson attacks on 5G masts

Re: Technical insight

4G masts tend to be taller than 5G masts, as they cover a larger area...

Friendster rises from the grave to make social media great again

If you have to tap phones to sign up friends, that means the only people on your friends list will be people you actually meet.

So why not meet these people and interact in the real world?

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

A former Headmaster where I work introduced a policy for forced password changes every half term.

IT pushed back saying frequent password changes reduced security because staff would just write them down.

One day when I was in the Head's office to drop off some paperwork I noticed a post-it on the bottom of his screen with his username and password. I swiped it and passed it to the IT manager, who immediately cancelled the forced password change policy and the Head never even noticed...

If a former colleague ever saw an unlocked computer, he would do a google image search for something very innappropriate but just safe enough to get through the filters, then hit Windows+L to lock the PC.

As we work in a school, and some of those computers were in classrooms, staff soon learnt to lock their computers, even if they were just stepping away for a few moments...

Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami

Re: Heard and McDonald Islands

Unfortunately for the tango tyrant, NATO has no mechanism for removing members...

Microsoft gives your Word documents an AI co-author you didn’t ask for

But in Textmaker, the AI is not forced on users, and it's actually useful, offering pretty decent translation tools.

You know what, I'm leaving my current employment at the end of August, so I'll lose my MS Office licence.

Time to build familiarity with Textmaker I think...

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

Re: Why only temporary move for the Windows laptops?

Apple gear defaults to 5ghz; I'm assuming this was a US school, where I'd imagine most laptops would be Apple.

Shift the Windows laptops back to 2.4ghz and you've nicely split your spectrum usage...

Zorin OS 18.1 released - and the Lite edition reappears

ARM CPU support

I notice Zorin doesn't support ARM CPUs yet, so Pi / Apple Mx / most Chromebook users are left out.

Any advice for a similar distribution for someone who doesn't like Raspberry OS?