* Posts by steviebuk

2002 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Feb 2017

Seriously, boss? You want that stupid password? OK, you get that stupid password

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: perhaps the MD knows enough about Unix to know that the password couldn't be all numbers

An engineer in America was set to prison. Can't remember the details, its online somewhere. Reading it, he sounded like a tit.

Found it

https://www.networkworld.com/article/2208076/admin-who-kept-sf-network-passwords-found-guilty.html

Lenovo profits sink 75% as PC demand continues nosedive

steviebuk Silver badge

Its not just that....

...its also because Lenovo have gotten shit and their customer service is awful. At work, still waiting for them to send back the laptop that was sent off for a screen repair. Been a couple of weeks now.

UK watchdog won't block Openreach’s discount fiber pricing

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: FFS...

They want to eat it.

Apple, Google propose anti-stalking spec for Bluetooth tracker tags

steviebuk Silver badge

Found one

That I assume was used to track or stalk someone. Was on the floor in a Sainsburys car park. Took it home and eventually (took ages as the Android app just refused to read it) got it to scan and it showed part of the number but that's it. No "I'm lost message". I left it for a few days, still no "I'm lost message". Left it for another 2 weeks, still no "I'm lost message". I took the battery out and its still sat in a draw. I was thinking of picking a random car and sticking it to it.

steviebuk Silver badge

I don't like them but they have their uses. Once guy stuck one in his bag for a flight and saw his luggage stay at the airport. When he mentioned it was missing they said they couldn't find it, he had to keep telling them he could see it back at the airport. Eventually they "magically" found it.

Microsoft decides it will be the one to choose which secure login method you use

steviebuk Silver badge

At it again

Would be fine if their cocking MFA was stable which it isn't.

Google Go language goes with opt-in telemetry

steviebuk Silver badge

Never knew this

"The Chocolate Factory has consistently opposed opt-in data collection – you still have to rename your Wi-Fi SSID to opt-out of Google mapping your Wi-Fi access point, for example. And it continues to promote a definition of privacy that skews toward data usage rather than data denial."

People should change it to fuck Google at the end. So they have a list of devices all with fuck Google :)

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: With two-faced "friends" like Dyson, Britain doesn't need enemies

And I could be wrong but I think he's also against right to repair.

Quite frankly, he's a dick.

EU's Cyber Resilience Act contains a poison pill for open source developers

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: A car analogy

Or you buy a exercise band thing from Amazon or a Ring Doorbell with certain features. That then get taken away shortly after purchase with no refund.

Or build the doorbell yourself and put in the features you want with support as long as you want.

Britain's largest private pension scheme reveals scale of Capita break-in

steviebuk Silver badge

Here...

...you are Crapita. We've seen your recent break in but here's another multi million pound government contract. Cause we're too fucking lazy to do a new tender process cause we know we'll just pick you anyway. Yours Clueless UK Gov.

Meta wheels out Deloitte to plug the metaverse. Is anyone actually convinced?

steviebuk Silver badge

No clue

He has no clue what companies are like. Companies don't even want people working from home anymore let alone having to buy VR headsets for all their staff so they can have "VR" meetings. Say that to our grounds team or the painters and decorators, that they have to stick on some VR headsets to join the VR meeting, that will go down well.

Musk decides to bury dead Twitter accounts, warns users follower counts could sink

steviebuk Silver badge

"that only the worst of humanity wishes to still part take in"

Granted, its kinda shit but if you follow only normal accounts its fine. What are normal accounts? These are

@whs_carpet All about bad carpets in WHSmith stores, their funny sale pricings, old lost historic stores. Someone on YouTube was trying to work out the location of a site from old footage and I asked on there and someone regonised the location, which was lucky as the buildings had been knocked down.

Then me have

@rmcretro about Gaming and computer history.

Show us the sauce code... Wendy's and Google to test drive-thru order-taking bot

steviebuk Silver badge

Great

Destory the min wage jobs so everyone can continue to struggle even more. As has been said, if you're going to destroy min wage jobs you need to give every person a set benefit each month to compensate for no longer being able to do a job.

We also need to remember these are starting off point jobs. So people who run McDonald's stores are often franchise stores. They work from the bottom up. If you can no longer work from the bottom up you'll struggle to get in the middle because they're be less and less jobs available due to everyone being desperate for those positions.

China lands mysterious reusable spacecraft after 276-day trek

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: UK vs Germany

If you enjoy a company that is partly owned by the CCP. A government who is currently committing genocide with the Chinese Uyghurs, a government that welded people into apartments during Covid so people burnt to death when a fire broke out, a government that bans all Western apps on its firewalled Internet but objects when other countries try to ban its apps, a government that doesn't view Taiwan as an independent country despite the CCP NEVER in its history ever having controlled Taiwan, a country that pumps out more C02 than any other country and lies about its green tech, a country that has now made it illegal to talk about poor people and so on and so on, then go ahead.

But there are others of us in the UK that don't want the Chinese owning our chip factories.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: UK vs Germany

Wingtech owns NXP and Wingtech is partly CCP owned.

steviebuk Silver badge

India

Just given the CCP access to fully to snoop on all your phone calls over their network. Well done India.

"Zoom awarded full Indian telco license

Zoom's Indian outpost was last week granted a full license to operate as a telco provider in the subcontinent.

In India, as elsewhere, the company's voice and video chat services were a lifeline during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Zoom's cloudy PABX service was not licensed in India, meaning it could not operate that function or extend its services to calls that touch the public switched telephone network.

ZVC India, Zoom's local subsidiary, last week announced it had won the license required to offer those services, and intends to do so as soon as practicable."

Microsoft may charge different prices for Office with or without Teams

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Deja vu all over again

Wouldn't put it past them its how they got DOS to be bigger than CP/M convincing IBM to sell DOS for a whole lot less with each IBM than what they charged for CP/M.

Rise of the machines is slower than expected says World Economic Forum

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: AI: ignore the downers in this world

Or you could have an AI that decides to use specification gaming. Works fine in a lab, goes wild when released to the outside world. The specification gaming in question would be "My goal is to build affordable systems to assist blind people. I know, I'll just kill all the blind people then I don't have to finish the goal but will have essentially finished my goal".

China's Mars rover finds signs of 'modern' water

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: I bet

True, Chinese science is good, the trouble is Xi is ruining it for the scientists.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: I bet

The wumaos are around with their down voting.

steviebuk Silver badge

I bet

They also found an ancient map that shows China, the CCP, owns large areas of the moon and mars.

Nothing that comes from Xinny The Pooh's China can be trusted. Especially when he still feels he owns Taiwan when the CCP have never own Taiwan, just look at the history. Taiwan is an independent country, all the spinless countries should acknowledge that coughFrancecough.

Xi is the new Mao and shouldn't be listened to or trusted. He's ruining China, he's ruining China's great ancient history and he's turning China into a rich North Korea. He's also totally ignored what his dad said about no one should become a dictator.

UK emergency services take DIY approach amid 12-year wait for comms upgrade

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Too Big?

Bit like the NHS and Fujitsu contract many moons ago. Ignoring Fujitsu are now officially cunts what with the Post Office scandal. But they had a big project near us with the NHS. In ended up tanking with Fujitsu pulling out if I remember right. One of the main reasons was the NHS management were awful. Apparently after everything was "scoped" each week they request more and more and more and more but didn't want to pay. Eventually Fujitsu had had enough and decided to pull out. That's what I was told by someone who was in the meetings anyway, how accurate it was I don't know.

Musk tried to wriggle out of Autopilot grilling by claiming past boasts may be deepfakes

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: All you need to know about Musk

I used a VPN to pretend I'm in America which worked. Grab yt-dlp and then you can download it.

The end of Microsoft-brand peripherals is only Surface deep

steviebuk Silver badge

Odd move. Lucky I have 3 ergonomic keyboards brandnew that were heading for a skip. Just need to fix the spacebar rubbing/sticking known issue.

China again signals desire to shape global IPv6 standards

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: I'd just like to say don't trust CHINA

Its all the Wumaos that do the down voting.

"I remember yoooooouuu"

UK PM Sunak plans to allocate just £1bn to semiconductor industry

steviebuk Silver badge

That's accountants for you

They see IT departments as a cost instead of an asset so always underfund or try to cut IT or outsource to a god awful MSP then wonder why support ends up being shit.

Seems he's doing the same here.

Stop OpenAI training its models on your chats by turning off history

steviebuk Silver badge

What a loud of shit

Its private chat it chatgpt should be fucking off by default. You shouldn't have to turn history to stop it grabbing the chats. There maybe a legal reason you have to leave history on so then surely MS have no fucking legal right to suck up chat history.

We said chat history should be on by default for gsuite but was told no. I said it should be on to stop managers using it to bully their staff. Anyway, some months later HR ask for the chat history of two members of staff who were having an affair (what the fuck that has to do with the business was anyone's guess). We had the great pleasure of saying "No. We said chat history should be on by default but were overuled, so its off so there is no history of those two chatting".

And the new company, they'd just suck up "Jesus fucking Christ. I told them to log a fucking ticket. Will they ever learn. Clearly fucking not. Oh and that other one, he's as thick as shit. Claimed I hadn't fixed the issue when I had and the new issue was completely fucking different. The fuck whit.". We love our rant chats.

SentinelOne sticks generative AI into its stuff because 2023 gotta 2023

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: 2023 tech for 2005 performance

We have it as I thought it was good but the amount of false fucking positives is fucking annoying. It will only get worse if they stick AI in it.

AI - "How to I make sure I complete the task of protecting this system from Virus threats. Shall I scan for virus' as I should? No, I'll just lock the system down completely then it can never get infected". Ah, specification gaming, its quite funny when you read about it.

And Robert Miles' video on it, is always good

https://youtu.be/nKJlF-olKmg

That's cute. UK.gov gathers up £100M for AI super-models

steviebuk Silver badge

That

"right now it feels as though everyone is too dazzled by the magical shiny-shiny nature of the tech and has lost all sense of proportion."

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Eminently qualified

Which was full of holes :)

Microsoft may stop bundling Teams with Office amid antitrust probe threat

steviebuk Silver badge

Edge

I want them to stop their anti-trust bollocks with Edge. Making it, on Windows 11, a lot more difficult to change the default browser so non techs won't bother. When you do it asks if you're REALLY sure and that Edge is great. And when you use Edge to look for another browser it shows you at the top that "Use Edge instead".

Fucks.

Central UK govt awards £12M+ contract to leave Google Workspace for Microsoft 365

steviebuk Silver badge

How accurate is this?

We were sold the "Chocolate Factory" as being cheaper by a shady consultant company. It was an intentional lie or a massive fuck up because being local gov MS 365 would of been cheaper because.

1. Local gov gets MS 365 cheaper than normal

2. MS said they'd migrate our exchange for free.

The Chocolate Factory has been massively more expensive.

They charged about 30k to migrate exchange.

Documents looks shit in Google Docs and don't convert properly.

Having to share Google Docs with others who don't have Google is a pain in the arse.

Google Workspace is fine for local business', local garages etc. But shit for medium to large companies.

Where are we now – Microsoft 363? Cloud suite suffers another outage

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Single points

Its why I'd like to get out of IT now. I'm getting to the point I've had enough but can't do anything else so have to stick it out until I die or win the lottery. Some cloud stuff is useful the rest is marketing bollocks. When you constantly are ignored that its marketing bollocks it just makes you fed up of it all.

Soon we'll be fully cloud and I've warned it will be more expensive but what do I know. Mark my words, the cost will increase and it won't be any cheaper than onsite kit with engineers to support that onsite kit.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

steviebuk Silver badge

Embarrassed & Netbookgate

“Finally, a week or two later, he was hauled in front of some bigwig and told that he would only receive an official reprimand, and that this was his one and only pass.”

You've embarrassed us so we're gonna bollock you due to our screw up.

I had experience of this way back in 2009 in the NHS, the fuckers. I was at a Trust's site with an ex-engineer in another department. He knew all the passwords as nothing had been changed, they were even still using the remote connection software he created for connecting to PCs. Anyway, that Trust didn't like the IT department that had been created to support all local Trusts and were trying to break away and do their own thing. The ex engineer was helping them due to now being employed by the Trust. He asked for help putting some new netbooks on the network that they were trialing as they didn't want to use the HPs that had been forced on them (due to the HP being a bit of a shady deal between HP and the director of IT they didn't like, neither did I, he was a pure cunt). I helped him to make sure all was done securely, as I told him "Well you know the passwords so I'll help to make sure they are done properly". Once done, I informed the stakeholder for the site about the netbooks and being a temp, I was ignored. Not even a "Thanks for letting me know".

Roll on 3 months later we all get an e-mail "Does anyone know why these netbooks are on the network?". Yes, I told you about them 3 months ago. Why they were on the network and why I helped.

All hell broke loose. I was reported to the CEO of the IT Department who said "Get rid of him" (she was also an arse and had been milking her high wage for years). But our head of IT and Networking heard and tried to calm the situation down. She said I'd done what I'd done with all the best intensions AND I'd informed them at the time but had been ignored. It changed from "Get rid of him" to "Can you come and have a chat with me about what happened" from the Head of Service (who was also a nasty fuck). When I told my manager he was pissed and called the Head of Service, informing him "You know you can't just have a random 'meeting' with him, you have to allow someone in the 'meeting' with him, he's allowed representation". So we go into the meeting and I explain again what happened, all that was already in my original e-mail. I said "I told you all ages ago that when an engineer leaves all admin passwords should be changed but they never are. So there was a risk he'd just put them on the network himself". The head of service admitted he was partly at fault as it was supposed to be his project that passwords were changed. They then took away the network share we used for all software and utils. I refused to apologies as I did nothing wrong, my manager said it for me and after the meeting said "I knew you weren't going to speak because you were so annoyed so I did it for you otherwise they'd have just let you go" I didn't last much longer, my contract expired again and they didn't renew it. The arse ex engineer from the Trust never bothered to try and help with the situation either.

It was a clear example of them fucking up (the stakeholder ignoring my e-mail 3 months earlier) and choosing to throw me under the bus instead of admitting their mistakes.

I've long moved on but sadly, the bitterness has bugged me for years. The IT department eventually got disbanded as the new government came in and they all moved on. I, sadly, hold grudges and when heard 5 years ago that the ex Director of IT had cancer but had survived it, I couldn't hold it my distain for him and spurted out "Shame he never died of it". I hate him with a passion. Something is very wrong in a company if staff end up hating a manager that much. You're clearly a poor manager if your staff hate you that much.

Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts

steviebuk Silver badge

Turn it off

Can someone explain where the option is to turn it off on Android. Still on my old Samsung S8 but still can't find the option to disable it.

Meta's Zuckerberg paid $27M in 'other' compensation for 2022

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Private

Didn't think of the small plane benefit. Good point. Also, yeah not going through TSA is a massive benefit.

steviebuk Silver badge

Private

Jets. I still don't know why people use them. They seem to crash more than commercial airlines. At least he could afford 1st class every time, I'm wondering if it would also be cheaper.

But the other point is. This is the tit that wants us to all live in the META verse and all have virtual meetings. So why doesn't he do that instead of pissing plane fuel all over the sky with flying.

Musicians threaten to make Oasis 'Live Forever' with AI

steviebuk Silver badge

I knew that was coming...

...someone saying its a copyright issue. Its always the studios and the artists that are in it for the money and not the craft.

Oasis liking it is a surprise.

Download it while you can cause unless Oasis own their own music and not a studio, the studios will have it pulled.

Guy rejects top photo prize after revealing snap was actually made using AI

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: C2PA

If Adobe are involved I assume it will end up requiring a licence that will be thrown at the camera buyer and if you then don't buy the monthly sub you won't be able to take photos with your camera anymore. Not to mention it will prove fuck all if you use old cameras that don't have the tech. Or all comps will require said cameras as part of their rules, we'll then find they are all sponsored by Adobe.

Child-devouring pothole will never hurt a BMW driver again

steviebuk Silver badge

Someone wrote "Glory hole" round the one that gave me a flat. They removed the graffiti but sti didn't fill in the fucking pot hole.

steviebuk Silver badge

And..

...the fucking council will no doubt refuse to pay for any damage. I got a flat when I hit a pot hole that they'd piss poorly attempted to fix that the rain hollowed out again. It was dark, a puddle was covering the hole and when I hit it colourful words were said. Then discovered had a fucking flat. They got their legal involved who claimed it wasn't the cause. Arseholes. And now attempting to tie them up with FOI requests.

Capita IT breach gets worse as Black Basta claims it's now selling off stolen data

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Crap IT? Ah!

And still they appear to either being unwilling to pay out or the payout is peanuts.

UK consortium bid for NHS data platform falls at first hurdle

steviebuk Silver badge

"So Dave. In the scoring you gave them 1. Is there a reason? Would YOU change your 1 to a 5? Like everyone else? Would you?"

China the largest buyer of chipmaking machines as sales hit an all-time high

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: “Advanced technologies” aren’t always needed

The wumao's downvoting in force.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: “Advanced technologies” aren’t always needed

The 50cents are here again.

You forgot to mention China's MASSIVE coal plants and coal mines causing MASSIVE amounts of pollution yet some people have been fooled into believing China is at the forefront of green energy. Far from it.

We won't fall for or listen to your wumao bullshit.

Automation is great. Until it breaks and nobody gets paid

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: This is why we need code review

But code review isn't*agile. Innit.

*Reason agile is bollocks.

San Francisco fog defeats pack of Waymo robo-taxis

steviebuk Silver badge

Expensive

With all these censors on these cars aren't they going to end up being expensive? And I assume there will be no right to repair so your local mechanic won't be allowed to fix it for you.

What if someone mixed The Sims with ChatGPT bots? It would look like this

steviebuk Silver badge

Just try it

Got to ChatGPT and ask it:

What song contains the lyrics "And the day gets crazy, and I feel like I can't win."

Tell us what it said.

I've been arguing with it all weekend as I'm trying to work out what a song near the end of Columbo Cries Wolf is. Not the end credits tune, that is noted in the credits. But another song playing in the background. Shazam, despite it being clear, couldn't find it. So I asked ChatGPT.

It not only was confidently wrong, it then admitted it was wrong then was confidently wrong again. The best respond to further questions relating to this subject were, where I just added "from 1990" on the end. It said the song was "Pray" by MC Hammer. It then proceeded to them tell my the lyrics appear in the second verse of the song. It then wrote out that second verse, which not only didn't contain anything from my question but also isn't even a verse from the MC Hammer song.

Alibaba and Huawei set to debut generative AI chatbots

steviebuk Silver badge

It will be a massive failure as it will be trained on CCP data only considering they censor the Internet there, unless they steal the training data then it will only ever spit out what the CCP want it to. They can then claim, "The AI said it, not us the CCP, so its unbiased and must be true"

steviebuk Silver badge

Missed your post, glad someone explained it better than I did.

Makes me irritate.