Posts by steviebuk

Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

Re: Wouldn't suprise me

Granted it might be true but with the "don't rock the boat" attitude is why they continue to get away with it and why the Horizon scandal happened.

Wouldn't suprise me

Companies will try anything they can to convince people to just quit instead so then they don't have to pay them any redundancy pay.

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

Re: That was my thought, too.

I really, can't understand the thinking of people like you that believe the crap Trump comes out with. Growing up in the UK watching American movies in the 80s they were always against "The reds" just look at the shit that was Red Dawn (I finally watched it. Probably fun at the time). I enjoyed the likes of Hunt for Red October etc but they are just movies. It was always the joke the American's were in the audience go "Yeah 'merica".

Then Trump comes along and seems to love Russia (because he has money over there) and now all those red necks that hated the "Reds" appear to ignore all this and now fine with Trump paling up with "The Reds".

And then we have the issue with Ukraine, where you seem to be totally clueless in understanding that Putin wants the land so he can create the USSR again. Once that's done he'll start moving into Europe and be another Hitler. If America sits back because "We have a big ocean in the way, we'll be fine" won't be as the worlds economy will screwed and USA will be next to fall.

How to weaponize LLMs to auto-hijack websites

Re: Maybe it's useful?

Can run basic tests using Kali Linux. Plenty of guides on YouTube for this. I did for our company website when the Wordpress got compromised because the on/off dev hadn't bothered to keep the plugins up-to-date.

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

Burner phone

Simple. It shouldn't be up to the government to be the nanny. Parents, if they want their kid to at least have the means to call in an emergency (now pretty much all pay phones have gone), then you buy then the old skool 90s burner phone. They are cheap, for a reason, and can only dial out, text or recieve calls. Put a limit on the txt messaging if needed.

It might be difficult, but still up to the parents to monitor their kids.

Adam Savage had a funny story of one of his sons he grounded and confiscated his phone. Handed it to him every evening I think it was. Anyway, at one point for whatever reason Adam checked the phone and realised he'd handed him a dummy phone and not the one he actually uses :o)

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

Much like Dell

"This story had a strange sequel: three months later, Edmund was asked to locate the defective kit, because he had sent the unused replacement back and the serial numbers didn't match."

Sent me a monitor replacement and the asset number didn't match. Told them it was the wrong one anyway. They sent replacement, another wrong one but appears to work but again asset tags don't match. Kept it anyway. Wonder if that will come back to byte. Might email them to point it out so there is a record.

How did China get so good at chips and AI? Congressional investigation blames American venture capitalists

They didn't.

They stole everything and if you think their Sara AI is good then you're delusional.

Watch the wumao's come in.

Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work

Re: Saying you'll quit isn't the same as quitting

Elons were businesses before he came along. He just bought them and then made everyone's working life a living hell to make his billions.

Billions lost to fraud and error during UK's pandemic spending spree

Re: Oops, we stole it

Much like the tit that appears in the YouTube adverts about money in property. Can't remember his name but he just straight out came out with it. That people could claim Covid money, legally then use it to invest in property.

He really is a cunt. Yet YouTube continue to display his ads.

Re: Oops, we stole it

I wonder if its cause "mates" were involved.

DEF CON is canceled! No, really this time – but the show will go on

Re: Voting Machines don't get Hacked

"It would also help if the CCTV didn't show a few people pulling boxes out from under tables and doing some after-hours work at the counting sites."

Don't believe the idiot Rudy. You do realise he has lost his case and has to pay $148 million for saying the same bollocks.

The problem with conspiracy theories is when you get idiots that have never been involved with the process think they know what is going on in the "CCTV footage". Much like the UK elections. All the nut jobs came out and "examined CCTV" because they thought they'd lose, they all went quiet after they didn't. I think it was the referendum. They were all saying "Take your own pen, they can't rub out pens" and the CCTV footage showing them "rubbing out votes".

Pencils are used because they don't run out of ink!

The CCTV footage of the "rubbing out votes" was idiots not understanding the count process. You have a group of people at a table counting. The count supervisor for that group then takes the total count to the election workers who have the tally in their system. If the tally in the system doesn't match how many people turned up, it means the count at the table is wrong. So the count supervisor goes back to the table, the counters recount and the supervisor rubs out the incorrect number and waits for the new result. THAT is what they were rubbing out in the CCTV footage.

EU repair rights bill tells manufacturers to fix up or ship out

Re: I haven't read

And this is one of the big issues which I'm assuming this bill won't or doesn't cover is parts. The likes of Apple are so massive, for years they've told the company that makes its screens that it is not allowed to sell them as parts to anyone else. Its shit like that, that needs to stop.

Especially when we have stupid expensive phones now with "gorilla glass" that is marketing wank bollocks. I have a Samsung S23 Ultra as my excuse for buying was I get a high quality portable camera as well. Its in an Otterbox case so raised from services. I should of put a screen protector on but haven't. It sits in my jean pocket that never has anything else in it yet its already got micro scratches on the gorilla glass. Its bollocks. And as I type that, I wonder if I could claim a replacement because of how its advertised.

I haven't read

the bill but its probably not going to be good enough.

I remember in the late 80s the TV in the back room packing up. My mums friend from work popped round with her husband who was an electrician or engineer. I remember it like it was yesterday. He layed the TV on the floor, opened the back and there were the schematics for the TV in the back of the case, not hidden somewhere secret away from repair engineers. He traced the fault, did his solder repairs, put the back back on, TV repaired. That TV lasted several years after that so avoided landfill.

Now, however, we're fucked. The big corps have realised people will still buy stuff even if its made to fail early. All the shitty little paid for feature creep, people moan about but still pay. Much like my partner with Amazon Prime. We've had it a few years and the point being you pay for it to have NO ADVERTS in the movies or shows.

Now, however, greed has set in and Amazon will include adverts but if you don't want those adverts with Prime, you have to pay a few extra pounds each month! WTF! So I've let the sub expire. She's asked me how long the protest will go before she can have Prime back. And this is the issue, I know she'll probably end up getting her own sub, but this is why they continue this model as they know people will just pay.

If we all stopped buying (easier said than done) they'd be forced to make kit repairable again to get customers back.

When it comes to working from home, Register readers are bucking national trends

Re: Managers don't know how to manage remotely.

All the downvotes are from the HR departments that believe in the bollocks.

Re: Managers don't know how to manage remotely.

I should of stated its a psychometric tool or bollocks as I call it.

Re: Managers don't know how to manage remotely.

personality types or MIRO is also part bullshit. We were forced to do some MIRO training and it surprised the trainer as it shouldn't be forced (although hardly anyone would of then turned up). This was done during Covid and remotely and I was asked "You seemed to be distant. Is there an issue?". I replied "Not really an issue I just don't believe in any of this, most of what you're saying etc. Not that I'm saying this about you but its much like mediumship which is known to be bullshit. You can cold read people and twist your questions to be a hit, rather than a miss, on how the person reacts to that question". Others on the meeting smiled and the trainer moved on and didn't ask me anything again :)

After the training had finished and we had showed what our "Colours" were, our manager, who also thought it was bullshit, proved the point. He had fudged his answers as he worked out what they required to get the results for each colour, so that he was equal bits of each colour :)

Sadly, despite all this I still hear people talking about it in the office "What's your MIRO colour?" so there are still people who believe in that bollocks.

Re: cross-linking

Not all companies and offices are like that. I understand what you mean but they aren't all like it.

Re: It's the commute

Partly true. My Internet and electric isn't paid for by the company and they were thinking of scrapping head office as more work from home (that didn't happen). I know the last place I was, if working from home (this was long before covid) they paid for your broadband. Obviously it was just basic broadband but they still paid for it.

AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

Gandhi

has always been quite nuke happy in Civ 6. Any game of Civ 6, especially on Deity will have already shown you the AI loves nukes (however oddly nukes the same spot over and over instead of hitting multiple cities)

Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users toward Edge

I've been saying

This for years that Microsoft are long due another anti-trust case likes its 1999. They make it complicated for normal users to change the default browser. You now have to do each ext relating the browser. When you do try to make the change it asks if you're sure but worded to make a regular user just keep Edge as default. And as mentioned, do a search for another browser and it now tells you how great Edge is.

They did the same with the Windows 10 push.

I like Windows (not Windows 11) but its getting ridiculous.

Microsoft's vision for the future of work is you trusting Redmond to get AI right

Re: There are alternatives to Co-Pilot

I still don't understand why they haven't been hit with anti-trust again with Edge as they are doing similar to what got them in hot water with IE back in the day.

Forcing it on everyone. Misleading text when you try to change default brower. Misleading when you trying to search for another browser. If you use Outlook the forcing of Edge being the browser that will open when clicking a link in an email and finally, making it a pain in the arse changing the default apps. Having to choose each one and another bullshit misleading warning when you do that.

GPS interference now a major flight safety concern for airline industry

All the more reason

to not have pilotless planes.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

We

"let the junior tech do something alone that we knew might be dangerous without watching over him, even though we knew he'd never done it before. Then when it all went wrong we gave him a bollocking (because we knew it was our fault for not supervising). And to add to that, we made him do a walk of shame as he'd been suspended for making a mistake.

We left out the part where the junior tech then said. "Fuck this job, if you're going to suspend me over a mistake, a mistake you probably should of been helping me with then I don't want to work for you as you all sound like entitled cunts."

Thats what I'm getting from this story. First one where I'd blame the senior techs.

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

Sometimes

it can't be helped

"It is inexcusable that Microsoft still hasn't required multi-factor authentication, which is cybersecurity 101 and would have prevented this latest attack," Wyden told The Register.

You might have accounts 3rd party apps require that don't support MFA. Nothing can be done. You can't just stop using the 3rd party app, the execs paid for it to be put in. You might also have stuff that struggle to understand new tech with no training budget to change this.

Its not always easy. Its always easy for someone in Congress to comment though.

Not even poor Notepad is safe from Microsoft's AI obsession

I love it and how many of us have several notepads open that we've never backed up :)

DPD chatbot blasts courier company, swears, and dabbles in awful poetry

Re: "Maybe these chatbots are smarter than we thought?"

Ted in Finance gets told "Its got AI in it". Ted in finance is fucking cluess and believes the bollocks the sales bod told them because "Its got AI in it and we want to be visionary". The engineer explains its no proper AI etc. Ted ignores this "But its got AI in the title so must be AI".

The Post Office systems scandal demands a critical response

Re: On the other hand

They did here. The woman in charge at the time got an award in 2019 despite this issue being known then.

Incompetence at every level

Listening to the enquiry and the tit that was a manger of a team of "technical people" and in security it seemed, knew fuck all about anything technical so most of his answers were along the lines of:

"I wasn't involved with that. I just went off the data Dave gave me"

Yes but you are the manager of that team.

"Yes but I still just go off the data Dave and Sue give me. They are the technical people"

This guy Peter Sewell

https://youtu.be/wKN0JHkrW8g?si=lesmBXC_C-pHXPZ5

Re: It's still happening

Sadly the link is dead.

Travel app Kayak offers Boeing 737 Max 9 filter after that door plug drama

When a company

Puts profits over safety cause "we just have to rush these inspections through for money".

Engineer Dave "But I can't get it done quicker. We need to do the checks properly"

Manager "If you can't, I'll replace you with someone who can"

This appears to the mentality of businesses these days. More senior management need to go to jail.

Having said that on an air crash investigate episode the cockpit window blew out and sucked the pilot half out and knocked him out. He lived. When they did all their checks they discovered the bolts for the window were wrong. The engineer, instead of referring to the spec manual they are supposed to (could this be due to being rushed?) he replaced with the bolts that were currently on the window that were already wrong from another engineer.

Sysadmin's favorite collection of infallible utilities failed … foully

It does mattee

Having dealt with PCs since the 90s and in my early days actually being careful with static I started to think it didn't really matter. I'd built a few PCs in my day on my bedroom carpet and all OK.

So in office back in about 2012 and get under desk of the IT Helpdesk lady and tell her I'll just shift the PC a bit. The cable will be loose on the graphics card. "Want me to turn it off first?". No I said, it will be fine. I wiggle it a bit while on carpet, having already rubbed myself on the carpet and fizz and pop and she says "Oh the PCs just turned off". Won't come back on.

Ah shit. I either shorted the card or static fucked it. I made up an excuse and replaced it with a temp :)

Microsoft 365's add-on avalanche is putting the squeeze on customers

Re: Min seats

It does. People used to write letters and say

"I hope this letter finds you well"

The writer is essentially saying they hope you are well when you read it.

Min seats

May have changed now but when a sales bod was trying to flog us Copilot it was £30 per user min of 300 seats. So we'd have had to buy 250 more seats than the users we have.

I've predicted it will be given to management to make their life easier for the same pay and fuck everyone else below them still having to do all the manual working outs in Excel and still having to actually read reports.

Too many people are relying on it summerising reports meaning I predict here, on the register, that this will create more instances of Horizon. There will be some key data in those reports that the AI will ignore and so will the manager who just asked Copilot to summarise it for them because they are too fucking lazy to read it. More people will be falsely imprisoned because of a lazy manager. Much like we're seeing in the enquiry now, with managers in charge of a technical team and making no decisions themselves. Instead "I relied on the info John gave me. I'm not technical. I just manage the team".

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Martin Gilroy?

Write it in code. Like we do.

2868

Look at a phones alphabet keypad

IBM overhauls rewards program for staff inventions, wipes away cash points

IBM

IBM now stands for Inconsiderate Bastards Much. They really have tanked and turned into arseholes.

Re: Why why oh why

Wozniak wasn't stupid. When Jobs said they should sell the Apple 1 Wozniak said he had to ask HP first as he'd been working on bits of it on their time. They said they weren't interested and he can keep the idea.

The rest is history.

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

Re: A forerunner in it's time

Play Dwarf Fortress. That gets your imagination flowing again.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

Office Space

Listening to Peter Sewell he IS Tom Smykowski from Office Space.

"People wrote those words, I just gave to blah blah" and so on.

No technical knowledge

Appears we have, listening live to the enquiry, another classic case of a manager in charge of technical people that has no technical background. Granted you don't need to be fully technical but you should at least try and understand what your staff are explaining to you. It appears Peter Sewell was one of those managers that was giving a "jobs for the boys" manager role of a technical team yet never bothered learning any of it during his time.

"I don't recall". "I can't say its a technical issue".

Microsoft braces for automatic AI takeover with Copilot at Windows startup

autoruns...

....set Autopilot to disabled.

Word of mouth, why can't these big corps understand word of mouth. Forcing shit on people makes people hate shit more than they already hate shit.

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

Re: The glory days of UK IT

And no import tax or whatever it was called. I now can't find the vid but its of Alan Sugar saying in an interview in the 80s, that he gets all his stuff made in Asia because he gets hit with no tax when then importing the boards.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Thats how bad he was. So bad he was a collection of bad people

"hand over the backup servers" erm no. They are mine on my hardware that you wouldn't pay for. I'll wipe them but you're not getting the kit.

No doubt he'll have made copies.

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Re: Don't forget NPfIT

And when they remove jobs worth managers and heads of service from roles, especially in NHS IT or hire ones that listen to their staff.

We were looking to move to new laptops, away from Dell so HP was suggested. One Trust disagreed but was ignored and rightfully pissed off. When the execs came back from silicon valley in the old US of A paid for by, you guessed it, HP and then said "Look at these nice HP laptop tablets they've given us" it was obvious what was going on. Especially when we pointed out "You can't accept those laptops they are classed as a bribe" to which they replied they weren't and kept them. The HP contract was then signed.

We then had our director of IT, the biggest, corrupt cunt ever, get a contract with a provider for remote access for Windows XP (this was all many moons ago) and do a "testimony" review for them and their site. The office he was in, in the video wasn't his office. It was all staged at their gaff as their office was nicer. How much did he get for that deal or what discount did he get?

The amount of IT managers was/is in the NHS is such a waste. I even asked why don't we get our own HDD crusher instead of out sourcing. No was the answer. Then they got hit with a record fine when a few years later some drives sent for destruction where actually sold off. After that they got the crusher and were religious it be done properly. I was long gone then but funny how they now ran with my idea.

It was such a toxic environment to work in because of those IT managers and director (and it should never be this way at work) that I heard a few years back that that director had got cancer and had to take a year out. He was such an evil cunt that I blurted out "Shame he didn't die from it". No place of work should ever make you feel that way.

Re: Don't forget NPfIT

Part of that, so I was told by the people in it, was because once the contract was in place, within the NHS each manager wanted more added, this added, that added, this added Fujtsu said "OK, pay us" they said no, and eventually decided they wanted out of the contract, at which point Fujitsu sued.

But that could all be inaccurate as we see how Fujitsu have behaved. Maybe the film Gung Ho was accurate after all.

Motorola loses appeal to kill price cap on UK Airwave emergency services contract

The government

"Will announce today that the new contract has been awarded to...... Fujitsu"

Broadcom ditches VMware Cloud Service Providers

Re: The End

Problem with Proxmox is I need a machine to run it on. At least with VMWare Workstation it can sit on my Windows laptop and I can boot up a Windows or Linux VM on it when I need to mess around with stuff.