Posts by Giles C

Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD

Re: "even non-STEM fields"

Is that why we refer to them as bad actors - sorry.

Re: Competive pay for experience

That is only if you are contracting.

The previous poster was talking about a trade as I read it plumber, electrician, gas engineer etc. most of the those I know are self employed doing domestic work, no IR35 there, mind you if you don’t have the customers you won’t earn much. But there are other ways of working besides contracting for big companies.

Re: When I started work, back in the dawn of prehistory

The idea that because we (the employer) paid for a one day course in prehistory demands the right to force you into servitude for a millennium needs to be killed off completely.

Where I work we get training (sometimes too much) on new products, and it you want to get trained on an item it will be granted as long as it is relevant - they won’t pay network engineers to do underwater basket weaving for example.

They understand that we need to use new products and more importantly know how to use it properly. We are installing a new monitoring solution and everyone using the product did a two day course to make setting it up easier and we knew how to get it running.

BOFH: Rerouting responsibility via firewall configs

Re: The BOFH is back to his true form

We have one meeting room which has two aircon controllers in it, neither of which seems to make much of a difference to the perpetually cold room…

Nobody is sure which units they are driving (if any)

China orders trial of aged care robots that can cook, clean, and provide emotional support

Re: China orders trial of aged care robots

Maybe they are made of old oak barrels….

Techie traced cables from basement to maternity ward and onto a roof, before a car crash revealed the problem

Re: PCM link

Some people I have worked with would rather you turn an alarm off than spend the time to find and fix the underlying fault. Me I want to find and fix that problem.

Re: At my last place....

We had the opposite problem, laser link between two buildings which failed due to freezing fog (the beam was refracting off the ice crystals in the air.

We also had an architect designed special with bare concrete walls in a meeting room, the poor installation guy was driven mad trying to get the av mics to work without reverb, eventually I think they did go out and buy some heaven curtains to hang on the walls as sound deadening.

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Re: It happens to the best of us.

The number of people who have a bulb blow and then put the old one back in the box, rather than the bin….

Techies thought outside the box. Then the boss decided to take the box away

Re: When I was in college

I just read that as a glass floor….,

Re: I know it's an old joke but on the topic of office signs...

I wonder that in the office as well. Must be my slightly twisted sense of humour, that same as I read to let signs and mentally fill in the gap with an L….

Microsoft dumps AI into Notepad as 'Copilot all the things' mania takes hold in Redmond

Maybe I’m old fashioned

But I use a text editor for config files and making quick notes. Ok on a Mac I use BBEdit rather than notepad but the same applies. I generally want a text editor to write a script In (Usually Cisco ios) or compare two files to spot the differences - which definitely does not need AI assistance…

Want a quick note on how to do something, need to edit a csv file, all of those need something simple, quick and accurate.

On windows notepad++ fills the hole, on the Mac BBEdit on Linux take your choice (not getting involved in which editor is better here)

User unboxed a PC so badly it 'broke' and only a nail file could fix it

Re: In denial

I had to get glasses recently not for close to that is fine but for distance as I was realising that road signs were getting harder to read.

The shock is when you first put them on and suddenly realise how bad your eyes had got. The only problem is as they are distance glasses I can no longer read the computer screen with them on, so in the office I do without unless we are using a big meeting room screen.

BOFH: The Boss meets the unbearable weight of innovation

Re: Best line?

That feeling is well known to most it people especially when some manager comes up with a new idea.

Fortunately my managers are mostly sensible (in case they are reading the register).

Mind you the latest idea is a partner landing zone to handle big file transfers which keep hiring the limit in the firewall for vpn throughput. So that was a useful meeting apart from the fact I know have more work to do to ratify the design and then work out how to implement it… probably needed a month ago as well..

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Just one thing

You should have posted the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9lmCpIzhFo

Dilettante dev wrote rubbish, left no logs, and had no idea why his app wasn't working

Re: Divers log

Most military performance figures are sanitised I remember reading that the SR71 worlds fastest plane did not run at full power for the record attempt.

Also several military jets can run their engines at 110% power.

And on a side note remember that guitar amps can go to 11….

BOFH: HR tries to think appy thoughts

Obligatory xkcd

https://xkcd.com/773/

15 years old and still correct

The 12 KB that Windows just can't seem to quit

Redo from atart

I dimly remember that as a error message on a commodore vic20 when if you typed a letter and it was expecting a number it gave you this very uphelpful message (or it could have been the other way around), it was 40+ years ago though.,,,

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

Re: I read "WorldCoin"

The foxes do know a lot, but getting on the wrong side of Molly could be worse….

Yes a Ben Aaronovitch reader here…

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Great I am 40 miles north of Royston so nothing to worry about, unless it gets close to the office in Cambridge..

Microsoft to preload Word minutes after boot

Updates are a pain. I know my work machines is pending at least a few (it was before I had last week off) so I will probably fire it up Monday evening and get them out the way before starting my week and going into the office on Tuesday.

Sounds like it, my work mac well I can go days without starting word, most of my work is done in web browsers or terminal sessions, the biggest drain on it is running teams, slack, Webex, zoom and outlook for email - it depends on who I am talking to which messaging app you need (and most of the are internal staff)

Google details plans for 1 MW IT racks exploiting electric vehicle supply chain

Re: Fun stuff

It was a long time ago (almost 30 years now) but I worked for a company making control systems for factories, one of the jobs we had to meet a short circuit test. This basically dropped a solid lump of copper across 3 phas busbar and the test was it the machine had to stay intact for a set number of seconds and automatically shut down,

I didn’t witness the test but those who did said it was terrifying watching something that you throught was strong just buckle and destroy itself in a few seconds.

If they are talking about this much power in a rack then they must have to pass a similar the same test, or I doubt the dc operator will let them install the rack.

Homeland Security boss says CISA has gone off the rails, vows to set it right

I think you have missed the reference

“Ministry of truth” refers to George Orwell’s 1984 when the objective was to rewrite information to fit the party line.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministries_in_Nineteen_Eighty-Four

Yes CISA needs to be an independent source of truth but it must be free from political interference.

Windows profanity filter finally gets a ******* off switch

Re: Microsoft...

I thought you were doing a major clanger but that would have been

“*** it, the ******* thing has stuck again.”

Now if it can filter swearing through a penny whistle that would be impressive….

Google goes cold on Europe: Stops making smart thermostats for continental conditions

Re: Again

That is exactly what I do with my tv, I use an Apple TV box for streaming (you can choose Roku, fire etc) but the tv doesn’t connect to the internet and is used as a panel with the built in tuner, but no smart apps or other services.

If the Apple TV goes end of life which it may be in a few years, I will replace it with another box whereas the tv is a lot more expensive

What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack

On internal documents I tend drop easter eggs into long documents - a recently design document for the wireless network ran to 80+ pages. Halfway through the document is a reference to new SSID names (which were very silly), and the description of why roaming needed to use a common platform with a multi building campus. The reason given was "better snacks" as for why someone would move between buildings.

However I keep them clean, rather than anything too rude. Although in a previous job I did write in a document that my named boss won't have read this far.... He did and when mentioned I just said it good at least you read until the end...

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

Hmmm

Quote

The 20-foot high general-purpose construction robot is, we're told, designed to have cognitive capabilities - which will be novel for that industry

End quote

Is that novel for the robot industry or is someone being sarcastic about members of the building trades….

BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

Re: I Really hate printers

I had one similar but it was ibm type 1 cabling, we had a port that didn’t work well, so decided to replace the patch cabinet, now from the cabinet to the central reception was about 150 feet (45m) we started pulling the patch cable out no big deal it should have been less than 2 metres but this was long and curled up in the bottom of the cabinet, well we managed to get to the reception door without either end being unplugged so that was about a 100m patch lead which then went off to a desk near the reception door, this was replaced.

The thing is for those youngsters who have never encountered it, is that type 1 cable is big and heavy modern cable is a lot lighter but this wire must have weighed in at about 15kg. Considering it is 4cores of 0.6mm cable it will draw about 7amps per core you can almost run a 240v kettle on a single cable…

I don’t miss working on it.

Elon Musk makes another cut – to his time at DOGE

Re: Oligarchs

Upvote for the Monty python quote….

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: We hired the guy that HR rejected

I think that must be why my employers like contractors.

HR don't get involved in the interviewing of contractors.

Contractor comes in and if they are suitable will get a contract extension or made an offer to go perm (this happened with myself and another contractor who I recommended when they were looking for more people)

Re: Qualifications

Yep I didn’t go to university but if I had it would have been over 30 years ago now, what stands out is attitude, and flexibility not a bit of paper you got over half your life ago.

Re: If you screw up, say so and say how

The second puts mine to shame, my worst was deleting the entire vlan database off a site with 80 switches - I had to go and console to each one separately as the management vlan had gone down, what should have been a 2 hour evening piece of work was a 12hour overnight. But the site was running at 8am when everyone else came in.

Re: Years and years

I deal with the networking side, and have a simple process for dealing with people

If you don’t know how to do it ask

I will spend time going through stuff with you.

But if you don’t know what you are doing and don’t ask. Then you are on your own.

And if you screw up admit it….. people are a lot more lenient when you are honest (mostly)

We all make mistakes I’ve done plenty of them but stopping and thinking is the best approach.

Case in point I was working remotely and just starting the drive back to office and got a call.

Me: what’s up

Caller ; we have a problem

Me: what has gone wrong?

Caller: I turned spanning tree off on a core switch uplink port and now the network is running odd. I can’t connect to the switch

Me: well I am two hours away, so go and tell management and then power down that core wait 5 minutes hopefully the network will stabilise and then power it back up again.

Caller: do I have to tell management ?

Me: well if you don’t they will find out and trying to cover it up is not a good look.

They did keep their job but why they wanted to do the port change in the first place is still a mystery…..

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

Re: "because the warranty had expired and the recall didn't apply to him."

Round here that is common, the grass in the middle of the roads gets high enough to give the bottom of the car a free clean as you drive along.

Heat can make Li-Ion batteries explode. Or restore their capacity, say Chinese boffins

Re: Blue Peter fans ...

Responsible or irresponsible to adult?

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

Obligatory xkcd

https://xkcd.com/3073

When even Microsoft can’t understand its own Outlook, big tech is stuck in a swamp of its own making

Re: Ohhhh Rupert!! Ya wanna hear some technological wankery?

Up vote for auto shenanigans one of the best channels around.

Regarding electric charging, I have said for a long time said that you don’t need any apps for electric charging, all it needs to do it take a payment card (contactless or pin) and give you electricity.

I don’t have an electric car I just pull up at a pump dump diesel or petrol (depending on which vehicle I am in) and then pay at pump or at the counter and drive off. I can even pay using cash if I want.

I certainly don’t have an app for paying and if the local garage started that then I would go somewhere else.

Aardvark beats groundhogs and supercomputers in weather forecasting

Re: Simple model

Or get the famous weather forecasting rock…

And Train the AI on these rules

If the rock is wet, it's raining.

If the rock is swinging, the wind is blowing.

If the rock casts a shadow, the sun is shining.

If the rock does not cast a shadow and is not wet, the sky is cloudy.

If the rock is difficult to see, it is foggy.

If the rock is white, it is snowing.

If the rock is coated with ice, there is a frost.

If the ice is thick, it's a heavy frost.

If the rock is bouncing, there is an earthquake.

If the rock is under water, there is a flood.

If the rock is warm, it is sunny.

If the rock is missing, there is a tornado.

If the rock is wet and swinging violently, there is a hurricane.

If the rock can be felt but not seen, it is night time.

If the rock has white splats on it, watch out for birds.

If the rock is levitating, you're stoned.

If there are two rocks, you're drunk.

Microsoft patches patch that broke USB printing in Windows 11

Swamp castle! Anyone?

BOFH: Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?

Fireware problems

This reminds me of a job I did a few years ago, firmware upgrade 2 switches. Did the checks loaded the new firmware and told the device to reboot.

The switch (2960x) was still unresponsive 20 minutes later so wandered down to the comms room and plugged into the console port

rrrrrrrwrrrrrrrwrrrrrrrwrrrrrrrw

It had a microcode update over an hour after the reboot it finally came back to life.

For some reason I didn’t do the second switch that night.

Still not as bad as rebooting a switch after deleting the old image and BEFORE copying the new image over, that one I had to upload the boot image via the serial port.

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

Re: More mouse confusion tales

I didn’t know that one, that may come in useful - thanks

Re: More mouse confusion tales

Last week I witnessed someone almost use a marker on an LCD interactive screen fortunately they realised in time.

But permanent markers on whiteboards are a common problem in office. Fortunately some isopropyl and elbow grease will eventually take care of it.

Re: Glasses case != Mouse

Sellotape or remove the ball? Inquiring minds need to know…

Re: they were "hovering" it a few mm above the surface.

As soon as I read the hovering comment I thought about the ball mice. Other things I have seen is the user running out of desk space to reach the edge of the screen, not realising that they could pick the mouse up move their hand and put it down again - or even better make the cursor move further for a given input which solves the problem permanently.

No if that happened on a graphics tablet that outdated be interesting…

Intel's new CEO: Chip world veteran Lip-Bu Tan

A few to add to your list not exhaustive

Arm has Rene Haas who was born in Rochester New York.

Cisco has Chuck Robbins born in Grayson, Georgia

OpenAI SAM Altman

Etc

Or are these not tech companies in your view?

BOFH: HR's AI hiring tool is perfectly unbiased – as long as you're us

Re: Bachelor of Advanced Pencil Sharpening

Tasty

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

Re: Be in the office 8 days a month

Yep, I don’t know when these companies will realise that working multiple 12 hour days in succession will lead to lower performance as you need breaks from work to recover.

Occasionally I have done such and at the end of the week tasks that should take 10 minutes end up taking a lot longer as you are so tired.

You can do this for a week or two but after you need downtime to recover.

Junior techie rushed off for fun weekend after making a terminal mistake that crashed a client

I know someone who did that

As400 admin demonstrated the command format to a junior but with a 30 minute delay then hit enter instead of cancel.

However the machine would not let then cancel the shutdown request and so frantic calls went out informing of an impending loss of service.

The worst was the restart time was up to an hour in those days….

Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

Re: On the bright side...

Depends on the order as you don’t want to pollute the oceans any more….