Posts by Wayland

AWS admits more bits of its cloud broke as it recovered from DynamoDB debacle

Re: What a great idea

Two advantages, when it goes wrong it's not your fault and 2nd loads of other people are in the same boat.

AI crawlers and fetchers are blowing up websites, with Meta and OpenAI the worst offenders

Re: The standards already exist

Probably use a service that keeps your robots file up to date.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

Re: It's all about government surveillance

If you think government surveillance is about finding the one terrorist who will hurt members of the public then you miss the point. It's the government and those who control the government looking out for itself. As the new Police Squad was set up to monitor "anti-migrant sentiment" is not looking for the odd person but to clamp down on the vast numbers of people.

Re: Nothing more

The government may not be very bright but they are working to an agenda. Those trying to get the agenda through are having to work through the government who have to pretend that this is about protecting children and adults from online harms. It's actually about protecting the establishment against damaging information becoming widely known.

Re: It's all about government surveillance

I think it is banned but they've not acted on that.

Re: It's all about government surveillance

It is knee jerk and not very well thought out however the agenda is censorship.

No, they're not trying to appease parents. If the parents were worried they'd set up their own filters and screen time rules as they should. The "think of the children" pretext is just a cover story for censorship. The government realise that there is "anti-establishment sentiment" and are attempting to deal with it via censorship.

Re: Private or Work?

People voted Labour because the Conservatives did such a bad job. Labour are doing it even worse so it's fair to blame them.

Re: Private or Work?

I'm pleased to welcome our new Starmer Cyber Police Squad, keeping me safe by detecting any anti-establishment sentiment I may have before it's gone too far.

Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress

Re: "You can, with some work, rewire things behind the scenes to get rid of a lot of these"

I wrote to MS and asked if we could have pop up windows with the latest news on the Kardashions.

Re: The real question

In other words MS needs competition.

Re: It's all very well saying "Just don't use Windows"

The drastic thing would be people using Linux at home. Windows is still the default choice for gamers but many are exploring Linux. Many people are happy with a Chromebook which has limitations similar to Linux when needing Windows programs.

If businesses can look at what software they run they may discover they could immediately switch to Linux. Some business cannot, or at least not all the staff can.

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

CTT Windows 10 Debloat kept Windows usable for me but I'd switched to Linux after 7 was ended.

Let's Encrypt rolls out free security certs for IP addresses

Re: why are we using dns?!!

Where I live the houses are mostly owned by a housing association. They've all been fitted with sophisticated wireless smoke detectors, three in each house and a button. When someone burns the toast half the smoke alarms in the street go off. I suspect they've all been set to the same house number.

Three ways to run Windows apps on a Linux box

Re: This is more like it (20 years too late)

Windows is OK as an OS but the full Windows Experience is horrible. Versions of Windows with all the cruft removed show that it's actually OK. You can get that desktop experience by running Linux which is why people switch to Linux. Often Windows programs install on Linux using WINE. Everyone would be happier with Linux if all the Windows programs worked.

LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything

Computers are considered deterministic. Sometimes they're not but in those cases they're considered broken.

Re: Hallucination

The job of the AI is to be convincing. Some of them are very convincing. AI is often the best bullshitter.

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Re: Thanks for 24h time format

Five 9s reliability 90.9999% uptime

M360 because for 5 days a year it's broken.

Re: The Cloud FTW!!

Oh no, not New Outlook. My client was using Office Outlook with 3 mailboxes but then New Outlook imposed itself on her computer. Also she could say was that her email was acting weirdly and she'd lost two of her email accounts.

To get it back to Office Outlook was simply a case of switching the switch in New Outlook to OFF. It took me a while to figure out that was all I needed to do.

People who use computers for business are not interested in new feature and ignore them. This is why Microsoft have to force new features onto people and force them to use them. People only notice the new features if something is broken by them or they can't work the software in the way they have got used to.

Does anyone know what CoPilot does apart from slowing down weak computers? I've not met any clients who use it. Some have asked me what it is. I tell them it's a virus and I'll remove it.

Under Trump 2.0, Europe's dependence on US clouds back under the spotlight

Re: Wake up call!

Interesting that some parts of Europe are attacking some parts of the USA, Ukrainian attack on X.

Microsoft tells abandoned Publisher fans to just use Word and hope for the best

Re: Ho-hum

Internet is powered by Linux but Affinity Publisher does not run on Linux. I expect the Windows version could run on Linux using WINE but that's not supported by the developer for some reason.

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

Re: It's not the language, it's just the way it's "talking"

RUST is WOKE.

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

Re: A great idea

Strong in this one, the sarcasm.

Re: "run both Firefox and Chrome and wanted to keep both on the same ad blocker."

Brave is so good I never realised YouTube played ads until I used FireFox.

Obviously you need more than one browser because Brave does not work for everything.

UK electronics firms want government to stop taxing trash and let them fix it instead

Re: VAT was removed from eBooks

I agree, making repairs more profitable with a small saving to the consumer will grow this business sector and reduce e-waste. A larger repair sector will increase competition improving both the repairs and the savings to the consumer.

So you paid a ransom demand … and now the decryptor doesn't work

Re: Paying the criminals is idiotic and high risk

Paid a million dollars for a bunch of messed up routers? Just wipe the system and set it up again! HAM people would enjoy having to do that.

50 years ago, CP/M started the microcomputer revolution

Re: CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

I remember in the '90's I was writing library code in C and they wanted us to write documentation for each function as we went.

The project leader had set up a word perfect template in the text version of the WP. Simply by using the correct paragraph tags perfectly structured manual pages could be printed on the laser printer. I've never worked on such a well set up WP system before or since.

Azure VMs ruined by CrowdStrike patchpocalypse? Microsoft has recovery tips

Submerge it in seawater.

CrowdStrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide

Re: BSOD

Radio 4 are one of the causes of dementia. Try to ween yourself off their brain rot.

Re: CrowdStrike

Switch on the reel to reel tape loop machine that tells you to switch it off and on again.

Re: I don't mind people blaming Windows..

No, Windows cannot be expected to cope with a badly written security patch. For CrowdStrike to do it's job it has to be deep into the sensitive part of Windows.

The problem is still Windows however because such services as CrowdStrike should not be required if Windows was safe and reliable.

Re: The fault's with Microsoft

To be fair, Microsoft achieved this with Windows 7.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: Good

I've always had ESP in cars. If you don't then you could slam your mini into a tractor hauling grain on a C road during harvest season.

Re: Get a horse

Now that ABS and ESP are mature technologies they work unobtrusively. However in my Supra MKIII the ABS was worse than useless so I did pull out the fuse. The car's limited slip diff made ESP unnecessary.

Cars already have a system to prevent accidental speeding, cruise control. Drive up to the speed limit then switch it on and the car stays at that speed until you touch the brakes or accelerator.

If cruise control were to have a button that sets speed to the speed limit then that maybe a welcome enhancement.

A nagging bleeping system that wrestles with your right foot for control is not how I want my machine to function. If I wanted to have a battle of wills with my ride I'd get a horse.

Apple says if you want to ship your own iOS browser engine in EU, you need to be there

They had to abandon the Apple car because they could not afford to build the Apple roads to run it on.

Apple make personal appliances. If you want a general purpose computer there are plenty to chose from. No one wants to have a general purpose operating system on their fridge or washing machine. iPhones are sophisticated Etch-a-Sketch devices designed to do a set of simple tasks.

Re: Cunning move?

Green bubbles, yeah Apple's attempt to 'other' people who are not one of the Apple Family in the messaging.

Re: How does Apple determine location ?

It used to be called Wombling after the Orinoco WiFi card. You gather WiFi MAC addresses whilst running GPS. It was once used as a poor man's GPS. Obviously Access Points go missing or get moved but you triangulate between the ones you can see. You young'uns don't remember the dayz....

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Re: Microsoft

Microsoft backups have always been terrible. I'd never use a backup by Microsoft.

What Microsoft's latest email breach says about this IT security heavyweight

The Government liked Fujitsu but now prefers Microsoft

You need your IT run by a large company who you can blame when it goes wrong. You need to be fairly sure it will go wrong or else you won't have anyone to blame.

Re: Lessons Learnt

We never used to use MS for email but they have proved themselves to be the very best.

Re: Uhhh, wha'?

Microsoft has a pretty good Out Of Office feature in their email plus people know that Microsoft invented the Internet and are the only company who can provide email.

Re: do they?

I thought MS DOS 3.20 was pretty good.

Re: "Microsoft makes a good operating system"

Why delay rollout of features for security when you can fix it later with an update. 98% of people love updates so the bigger and more frequent the updates the happier people are.

No one ever got fired...

...because they put the company's email on Microsoft and it was hacked.

It's all part and parcel of living in the Internet. At least you're not alone when the hackers are reading your emails, other people made the same mistake.

Nearly a million non-profit donors' details left exposed in unsecured database

Re: US based,,, Or only operating in the US?

The Big Issue sellers take card payments.

FBI Director: FISA Section 702 warrant requirement a 'de facto ban'

Re: Warrant?

In the UK they will take your computers and not give them back for months. If you won't unlock them they will simply assume you're a terrorist and prosecute you on that basis.

Is it left or right wing?

If they are spying on Far Right Extremists and White Supremacists then that's fine. If they are spying on LGBT Woke Progressives then it's a bad thing and should be stopped.

Microsoft, Meta detail plans to fight election disinformation in 2024

Re: Recommendation algorithms and fake accounts

It's like when no one would turn up to Biden Rallies but Trump Rallies were jam packed. You'd not have known Trump was winning from electronic information.