Posts by Dabooka

Marching orders delayed: Veterans' Digital ID off to a slow start

What can possibly go wrong?

Success virtually guaranteed, I cannot foresee any problems at all with a digital drivers licence. Which probably won't be accepted anywhere mind

AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics

Re: Blame it on video games

Now I am way removed from the IT sector, I am definitely at the 'end user' part of the scale (sorry!) but I do recall my former Comp Science lecturer form some 30+ years ago talking about the greatest progress being in creativity at both organisation and individual levels. Again something that isn't recorded in productivity metrics, but look at what rank and file folk are doing now for themselves (me very much included) in relation to data and other essential job roles.

Also my missus in software dev and her experiences of trying to overturn a poorly implemented AI model has been horrendous. Cost a fortune and deadlines missed aplenty

Windows 2000 still earning its keep running a rail ticket machine in Portugal

Re: Wedged by old proprietary hardware + drivers.

I assumed they were referring to that TBF

UK's long-delayed Emergency Services Network eyes satellites for help

Government at odds with itself

Today on the front page of El Reg, we have this article and another reporting on the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill and "Now more than ever, the UK needs to build and protect sovereignty over its digital infrastructure, and not leave itself vulnerable to the policies and actions of foreign powers such as the US and China"

And yet we want Starlink of all systems to replace TETRA....

Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029

Re: "the bloc needs a digital version of the Euro"

Wow, there's a lot to unpick in such a short post....

Fake home invasion vid lands woman in real trouble

Re: So tell me sir...

No malicious intent on his part, he thought he was doing the correct thing. He would be fine

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

For what purpose?

I mean if they just want something to brag about make them the recipients of the next thing to be parked up, but spending millions of Disney bucks on moving anything for a mere vanity statement is insane

Oracle saddles up with $18B debt amid AI infrastructure gamble

Not the same thing

Brown raided surplus form public sector pensions form those 'over performing'; sucked still of course.

Reeves is talking about raiding the tax free obligation to bring it down and keep more in the annuities, or pay a tax on what you decide to take out. Sucks even more but a clever way to force a draw down that probably means tax is liable on the income.

It's time mobile devs started to think seriously about foldable smartphones

How much?!

Dropping £2k on a phone is a level of insanity I will never come to terms with. Ever.

Nice cat by the way :)

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

All too common

My former employer had a staff survey system developed by a mate of the Dir of HR from their time together in the NHS.

And just as in the story, once logged in to the system you could simply amend the staff id in the address bar to access anyone else's responses and a quick look on something as simple as Outlook Contacts could bring up anyone's staff ID number.

Farcical. And did anything happen to change it? Nope.

'Trained monkey' from tech support saved know-it-all manager's mistake with a single keypress

I think COmpaq too

Was about to post that too although it was early and might have had Harvard Graphics or Freelance back then

Remembering when NASA stuck a Space Shuttle on top of a Boeing 747

Nope, that's awful

Forgive the negativity but at some point something needs to be said; that 747 is laughable.

It needs a custom nose minimum, it's too far off to be even funny or quirky. £200+...?

One of the last of Bletchley Park's quiet heroes, Betty Webb, dies at 101

How jolly sad

The work they did was immeasurable, and the conditions rather grim in certain circumstances too.

Coincidentally I have just finished The Emperor's Codes, a great book for anyone interested. Despite reading plenty in the past about Bletchley, this book still offered significant amount of new information especially about how the US pollical scene was in the run up to them joining. I will admit now much on how the ciphers worked went right above my head!

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

I've met 'tyrant'

Or another incarnate at least.

I think in educational circles they must simply buzz around from institution to institution until they run out of places to go

NASA's inbox goes orbital after email mishap spams entire space industry

If only..

Someone had through to reply to the entire list asking them to stop replying to the entire list.

That always works

UK's biggest mobile operator starts 3G switchoff, hopes it won't catch out April fools

What differnece does it make?

Mine has never worked properly anyway

Vodafone: Be in the office 8 days a month or lose bonuses

It will ultimately limit their recruitment

In my line of work folk actively ask in recruitment phases what the hybrid / WFH policy is, as would I. Some days I'm back to back on Teams, well I'm at home for that thank you very much otherwise I'm off elsewhere

Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he was let go

Always the same

For all there ability and creativeness, they lack simple cognition for covering their tracks. I'm utterly bemused by the failings of these rogue admins, they must want to be caught for notoriety

The Register gets its claws on Huawei’s bonkers tri-fold phone

Further proof if were needed

That just because we can, does not mean we should

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

They picked the wrong countries

If they thought this would remain confidential and in house they picked the wrong places to pilot it in.

Ridiculous decision and everyone knows it's about cost saving. But will the PHB get the blame for this? Of course not

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

Please, please, please....

STOP giving the spoilers away in the headline!

Tool touted as 'first AI software engineer' is bad at its job, testers claim

15% you say?

I thought that was about industry standards nowadays anyway

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Here's an idea

Bright pink or fluorescent green might help in the future.

I await my cheque in the post

Hold my Pimms! Wimbledon turns to tech for line-ball calls

What a shame

Although I suspect its implementation will be better than the farce which is VAR, it is a shame to see it going tech.

As Half Man Half Biscuit would say, 'Surely a bit of controversy is part of the game's appeal'

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Re: Early days

Linking back around to SMS, Nokia *always* seemed to insist 'pint' was 'riot'

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Amstrad?

They seems somewhat absent from these writeups

Hong Kong authorities halt alleged smuggler shifting 596 'high-end' CPUs to China

Re: Thanks for the memories

Okay...?

Techie invented bits of the box he was fixing, still botched the job

Re: "I am not a number," ... MagicSix

Well worth the jaunt, it's really rather lovely.

I had the pleasure of going last summer although my son and his two friends were not overly bothered about Rover, Lotus Sevens or much else (although the fatality chess game seemed to garner their interest).

Cops finally unmask 'LockBit kingpin' after two-month tease

They messed up here

They should've just gone and 'false flagged' some attacks against the Kremlin and FSB, let the Ruskies tidy up their own mess

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

Re: This is where technology lets you down

Yep, been there and done that.

Those lovely brown internal mail envelopes and countless pigeon holes made it oh so easy to have japes. Nothing malicious or particular time wasting mind

BOFH: I get locked out, but I get in again

Re: Nothing on one...

Great reference!

Belgian ale legend Duvel's brewery borked as ransomware halts production

Another swing and a miss

Why not bloody Brewdog instead and us all a favour in the process?

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

They do have mini kegs but I personally find them gimmicky and difficult to get a decent pint out of without some being wasted or the latter pints being a bit too flat. Watney Party Sevens were notoriously worse

For cask ales and ciders from the breweries they can be great. I often get them for gatherings at my house when we'll be on an ale and it doesn't matter anywhere near as much

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Re: Let's Check the Server Room Access Log

Lol, check the 'access log'

Good one that :D

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

No, not in the slightest

Especially when we're still paying the price for selling it off and witnessing first hand what a disaster it is putting essential national infrastructure into private hands

Survey: Over half of undergrads in UK are using AI in university assignments

Re: An easy solution

It's about how it is implemented, copy and paste is already covered in the usual plagiarism academic regs of the institution.

We need to be better at how it is implemented and utilised, focus on the research elements it can support but not to rely on output. We've had these discussions before, thirty years ago with the rise of the WWW and even bloody word processing before that,

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Re: Another one bites the dust

Fuzzy Logic was also used a title for The Super Furry Animal's first album, and a banger it was too

Can't think of any other practical examples?

Doom turns 30, so its creators celebrate seminal first-person shooter’s contribution to IT careers

They're not wrong

Our early LAN parties saw token ring cards pilfered and network play in my mum's dining room. The movement required for four players was so great it invariably planned the whole weekend as towers, CRTs, keyboards etc were lugged about and setup, resulting in a whole weekend of varied gameplay.

Doom, Quake, Rise of the Triads, Heretic and even strategies such as C&C, Red Alert all found their way on to our (by know) TCP network. Pizzas and beer also featured

Happy days...

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Take sme back to college days

Doing A Levels 1991-93. Apparently TP was used as its structuring was a good basis for the real world apparently.

Knowing what I know now I work in the sector myself, it was probably as much to do with the fact it was cheap! I am pretty sure there were grumblings back then it was already obsolete although I can appreciate why for someone's the first dip into programming how it would have been a reasonable choice back then. Maybe. I don't know, I never took it up in any sense afterwards.

(And for those outside the US, college here in Blighty is post compulsory school, so was then usually attended between 16-18 years of age)

NASA just patched Voyager 2's software but spared Voyager 1 the risky rewrite

Absolutely unreal achievement Those distances are just mind boggling

Always very impressive

However surely it's time they bought them back for a service? Maybe a wash down, upgrade to a Pi 5 or something

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

Re: Is there anyone

Just about to post this very thing.

Oh so very cock sure, so very confident, so very fucking naïve!

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Re: Fun with magnets.

I do love it when heroes come along and hide by the AC mask

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Re: Trading Places

I agree wholeheartedly, would be an upgrade on what we have.

Actually I'll take her here at work too

BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year

Re: Three

Three are notoriously patchy with their coverage although they do make a reasonable punt (compared to others) at kind of acknowledging it and Durham has always been a bit weird when it comes to coverage

Re: What does this mean in practice?

Similar to me, although it's just a small patch on my commute so not too bad.

I assume that 4G or 5G (stop laughing at the back) will pick it up

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

My own experince tells me

Somewhere they'll be managers in marketing or other departments who called this bullshit out for what it was; they'll have had had their cards marked for being against it and yet now, after being proven correct, they'll remain a pariah. For making the bleeding obvious call all along.

PHBs never go back and promote the guy who correctly went against their idea.

Chap blew up critical equipment on his first day – but it wasn't his volt

Re: Should this be so easy?

That be yer 'hot' lead for kettles, steam generators and the suchlike.

And I think the problem is that with so many PSUs being switchable, the lead would be mooted irrelevant anyway.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Re: And Arnie? He will not be back.

Probably correctly from my reading of it?

Maybe a bit harsh.

Nobody does DR tests to survive lightning striking twice

Re: At least you fixed the problem.

To be honest that description of the DC extends to most of Milton Keynes in general