Posts by steviebuk

Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either

I miss these days, in the 90s, where MS used to do market reach getting people to run through the apps, talk about what they were doing and the issues they were having.

https://youtu.be/8Ybm4JxknTo

At

21:35

This will be a little pointless post as I have no link but I do know, from watching an old episode of Defrag tools, Andrew Richards would show how to modify the right click menu's. There is a place in the registry for it. I'm assuming it would still work on Windows 11.

EDIT: Found one of his posts

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/archive/blogs/andrew_richards/enhancing-the-open-command-prompt-here-shift-right-click-context-menu-experience

Re: Swap to left align

There isn't one!?!?!?!?! Saves me spending hours searching for one then. I was going to push it out as the amount of comments I've had "Why are my icons now in the centre". Wasn't my fault, I wasn't the one who decided to fucking push out Windows 11 untested in our environment.

Windows 11

I dislike Windows 11. What happened to the "We will no longer have major builds just updates".

Man wins competition with AI-generated artwork – and some people aren't happy

Read this elsewhere and said

Mark my words. Some poncey "artist" WILL generate several of these "art works" and then display them in a gallery in London or other big city and sell them for lots of money to poncey rich people.

Much like Richard Prince did with people's Instagram posts. Just copied them and sold them as his own work and got away with it.

This is why I dislike the art world. In school I was a copy artist. Would copy drawings freehand but never make out they were my own work. This was back in the 80s-90s. During one art lesson we were talking about this issue with the art world & in fact Mark Gattis said this on the Richard Herring podcast recently "Who decides that someone's childish scrawl is worth millions and another childish scrawl is just a childish scrawl?". During our lesson we told the teacher our work was the work of one of the art teachers she liked and his work was ours. She said his work wasn't very good (thinking it was ours) and that our work was really good (thinking it was his). It proved our point.

There are people on YouTube I see who can do almost photo quality pencil work but make no money. My girlfriend's cousin can do near photo quality pencil work but makes no money. Yet a poncy "artist" in London can draw colour boxes and make millions. Then we have Bankys. Blek le Rat was doing VERY similar work but never made it big, Bankys seemed to essentially copy most his work and makes millions from it.

Meta hedges bets on metaverse silicon with Qualcomm VR deal

I'm now wondering

If Meta is one big money laundering scam. We really aren't anywhere near the tech advance for you to want to stick it on your head for the whole day.

Goodbye, humans: Call centers 'could save $80b' switching to AI

No no no no no

just NO! If you are in the UK, most people moan when we get pushed to a foreign call centre. Rightly or wrongly this is just the mentality of us. We want an English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish call handler just because we then feel they can relate. Having said that when I had issues with PayPal many years ago I got better service from the Malaysian call handler than the rude Irish guy that answered earlier in the day.

But anyway the point is EVERYONE hates the automated call handlers. So much so I always swear at it telling it to put me through to a human. Knowing the more I rant with garbage, the more it won't understand the quicker it is to put me through to a call handler.

Germany orders Sept 1 shutdown of digital ad displays to save gas

Estate Agents in the UK

Need to be pulled up for this. The amount that have the massive TVs in the window and they leave them running 24/7 showing bollocks. They already have the big window with all the houses on display, why the big, pointless TV as well.

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

Yeah. I also forgot to mention I was in high school back when I'd play my "game" :)

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

I was amazed in the late 80s in the UK when we got LED displays at bus stops in London. No more having to look at the useless time table that was sometimes posted in the little window on the post. Now while waiting for the bus I could see from the display when the next one was. Eventually realising it was sometimes quicker for me to walk the mile home than wait for the bus. And a lot of the time I made it a game, see if I could beat the bus home :)

Amazon has repackaged surveillance capitalism as reality TV

Re: Apathy is the problem

The amount of up votes is really concerning. These are the people that will be running round with pitch forks with no evidence. The same people that would be shouting "She's a witch, she's a witch, drown her" then she survives so they shout louder "See, she MUST be a witch. Burn her".

Re: Sorry, but

Get them to watch Demolition Man

Re: Apathy is the problem

I've always wonder if shining a laser at the cameras would screw them. Can always claim "I accidently pointed it that way". I'm assuming they have protection so it doesn't ruin the sensor?

Re: Apathy is the problem

The current down voter is probably the same type of person that would of done what was done to Bijan Ebrahimi

"Bijan Ebrahimi, 44, had taken a series of photographs of local youths attacking his hanging baskets and intended to hand the images to police as evidence.

But someone saw him with the camera and told police that Ebrahimi, who was registered disabled and couldn't work, had taken pictures of children.

Officers took him away for questioning and as Ebrahimi left his council maisonette in Bristol residents began chanting: "Paedo, paedo"."

So if we take this example and look at the original OPs statement. He's pretty much done the same "Neighbour , who I already think is creepy has put up a ring door bell. So he must be doing it for creepy reasons because the house opposite happens to have 2 girls living in it. If the "creepy" neighbour was a woman, I wouldn't think the ring door bell position was creepy. I'll go tell everyone he's creepy with no evidence. Someone will hopefully report it to the police, he'll be taken in for questioning & found totally innocent but I'll still continue to shout he's creepy and got questioned by the police and potentially ruin his life if everyone listens to my bullshit".

Re: Apathy is the problem

And another reason you shouldn't be straight saying creep with no evidence, especially out loud to other neighbours

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/29/vigilante-murder-paedophile-bristol-bijan-ebrahimi

Re: Apathy is the problem

This case says different

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/plumber-fears-losing-home-100k-25216095.amp

Ignore the plumber knob. Read the court documents for it instead as not only did he lie in his statement which changed in court, most of what he said in the papers was also bollocks.

Re: Apathy is the problem

Have you seen the footage of the camera? Have you asked to see it? If not you can't really comment on the suitability. Its possible to block out areas of a camera so it doesn't record in those regions. I have a camera up that looks straight ahead. You'd think it wouldn't capture either side of it but it has a fish eye lens so it does.

Re: There is a solution to this problem -- greenbelt houses

More house on greenbelt land means more traffic, more pollution and less trees which are there to combat the pollution. I no longer live in London and never want to go back due to the lack of greenbelt land.

Re: Apathy is the problem

I have a big problem with this. You can't just accuse a guy who, most likely, innocently put a camera up on his door and not thought anything about the neighbour or filming her two daughters. I'm assuming if the guy was a woman, you wouldn't have the same thought. This is as bad as the idiots way back in 2000 that attacked a paediatricians house as they thought it was related to the word paedophile.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/aug/30/childprotection.society

However. In the UK if you have CCTV recording that go beyond your land to public land you are required to have a sign up warning of this and have contact details. So anyone can apply for Right to Be forgotten or do a SAR request. You are allowed to use CCTV to protect your property. Amazon door bells are a bad move as they record audio as well which you really have to be careful about. As the plumber found in this article. Don't listen to his bollocks though, read the court documents which I did. Turns out he lied on his statement which he changed in court. He was aggressive to the Dr when she questioned him about his cameras. And apparently said something along the lines of, to another neighbour, "She'll hate it more with the new cameras that will be able to see her eyeballs from my house". Oh and he lied about half the cameras being fake. They were active and recording.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/plumber-fears-losing-home-100k-25216095.amp

I do have issues though with the cameras. No one warns people when they are putting them up and some of us just can't be arsed with the aggro of complaining or taking it to court. We have a clear case with the dick next door. Not bothered to bring it up but if we went to court we'd have a good case. He put a ring door bell up. But he put it on a old bit of wood attached to his house which is at a slight angle. Because of this angle it records his front yard and all of ours. I make a point of not talking when I leave or enter the house as I know it will be picked up.

Zuckerberg: Yes, Facebook kept Hunter Biden's laptop under wraps

Re: The Republican Party & Hunter Biden

I think you're just more optimistic than the rest of us.

Re: The Republican Party & Hunter Biden

Everything that Trump did, ironic.

Japan reverses course on post-Fukushima nuclear ban

Re: Wind and solar

Cause I'm an idiot and just read the headline :)

Wind and solar

Why aren't they doing wind and solar also? A lot quicker to get up and running and also safer.

80,000 internet-connected cameras still vulnerable after critical patch offered

Re: Airstrip One

The wumao is back.

Back to the cameras. We should be avoiding them, but sadly, the image quality is good and they are cheap so we've had to use them at work.

Meta offers $37.5m to settle location tracking lawsuit

Re: How can this be stopped?

Another option, which will sadly never happen, is for everyone to stop using Facebook. Sadly, too many small businesses still do.

And again

Was never a fan of breaking these big companies up but now I am. Facebook will never stop. They only stop when they get caught, pay out then do it all again with the next project. Until people like Mark are told "Do this again and you'll serve prison time in general pop", they'll just continue.

$50m+ contract for crime-fighting IT system won by Fujitsu after no one else bid

As its Fujitsu

Let's try that again, I appear to be incapable of actually cocking typing on my phone properly.

When anyone ever says they have a problem or there is a bug Fujitsu will deny it, claim there are never any bugs ever in their software or systems and then work to get you sent to prison.

Police lab wants your happy childhood pictures to train AI to detect child abuse

No no no no no

Just no. You fight child sex images with proper policing not using shitty AI. The register from what I can see, has yet to report on the guy that has had his phone blocked and his Google account closed cause of what it and its shitty AI classed as CSAM. The local police were informed and an investigation was opened up. Which was then closed as it was clear the photos were close ups of his sons groin for MEDICAL REASONS. The doctor requested, checked the photos for the rash and prescribed antibiotics. The police saw all this was legit, all investigation dropped.

Yet the cunts at Google have said "We stand by our findings and won't reinstated his account" when did Google become the fucking world police.

Musk tries to sell Tesla's Optimus robot butler to China

Sell it to China

Good luck with that. He knows what he's doing, using China for its low cost slave labour but he must be aware if you sell anything to them Xi will demand it be stolen. So in the back room they'll be trying to reverse engineer it so they can make their own and sell it on Alibaba for £50

China cybersecurity regulator wants to support tech growth

Very funny

"the vice minister rattled off a long list of achievements that included creating positive energy in cyberspace, a better digital economy, strengthening network security and increasing international cooperation"

add lying to that. under the leadership of winnie the pooh.

Get ready for the wumaos.

GitHub Copilot may be perfect for cheating CompSci programming exercises

Re: There are anti-copilot techniques...

Problem is some of us learn by looking at others code. Currently trying to learn Python doing the free Harvard course. But struggle at times with the problem sets and makes me, at least, want to give up and move on. Looking at others code really helps when totally stuck. However I make sure I understand exactly what is happening for every line. And I've even changed the code in mine and done the solutions different ways.

My logic has never been great so when some take an input and convert to an int at the same time. I know I wouldn't of thought of that so do it the longer way of taking the input then on the next line converting it to an int. I never totally copy, I always make sure I understand what the code is doing.

Re: Not in academia

Or you'll have people with poor memories like me who's old but trying to learn the small assignments. Completes one but then for the next one still needs to refer to the last one due to already forgetting some of the formatting for some functions.

Another idea is telling the student "I want you to comment your code. Tell us what each bit is doing. Then when you've done one whole section. I'll ask you to come into my office and explain your code." Could even do it remotely if needed. Problem is, Uni classes are probably too large to do that.

UK blocks sale of chip design software company to China

Quite a few

Wumaos about on this one.

They finally made a good choice. Shame they didn't do the same with ARM.

Re: Wise decision, need more like it

Also doesn't help the Musk is in bed with China as most of his battery factories are over there.

Re: The footrest

OK wumao.

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

Happens with cheap Bluetooth mice and keyboards still

Back in 2018 when I'd started at a new place got a call from a user saying "words are being typed on my screen but mean nothing".

Went up and watch. Sure enough they were. Two of the keyboards in the office on same bank of desks had decided to interfere with each other.

Microsoft to drop price for Teams Rooms, add free Basic tier for SMBs

Not for long

"add free Basic tier for SMBs"

Then once they are ingrained in enough SMBs, they "review" their model and all SMBs will have to pay. That's how these big companies are working these days. So massive they can afford to take a lose of their software, until such time its to expensive for people to find another, then hit them with new charges.

That was fast: MetaGuard emerges as an 'incognito mode' for the metaverse

They're not heavy but yes, the motion sickness. Having not tried VR forever, I finally gave in last Christmas when my nephew bought his kit to my parents. The Star Wars none moving bit was good, even the lobby was quite relaxing. Then I made the stupid mistake, despite disliking them in real life, of trying the roller coaster.

Jesus, it was weird because your head says your sitting still but your eyes and brain sees you're moving so it proper screws with your head. So much so I stopped because I felt sick, went home and went to bed having had to take some motion sickness tablets :)

Janet Jackson music video declared a cybersecurity exploit

What?

"Few modern machines have hard disk drives,"

My PC is still full of them. Cheaper than SSD and well, just cheaper.

Dinobabies latest: IBM settles with widow of exec who killed himself after layoff

Not to mention if it is a large payout which they tend to be in the US and tiny here in the UK, she may even use that money to benefit others in his name. I'm not saying that's what she should do, her husband no doubt would want her to be comfortable for the rest of her life and not ever have an arsehole company put her in the position he was in, but its something she might do. Waste of time going to court and just letting the lawyers get rich off the back of it.

IBM are...

...a shadow of their former self.

Elon Musk wrote article for China's internet regulator, hinted at aged care robots

Re: Not surprising

Your argument never stands up wumao.

Quick search

"China is the largest coal producer in the world"

"China Confirms It Will Build Extra Coal Mine Capacity This Year"

Re: Not surprising

And its clear he gives no fucks about their human rights abuses, their censorship, their slave labour, the Uyghur genocide or the massive amount of coal they still continue to mine and burn.

And that its illegal to call Xi Winnie the Pooh.

When will the UK take another giant leap into space?

Re: What is the benefit?

To encourage young kids in the UK to follow science.

Apple says 2017 MacBooks don't have FlexGate defect. Aussie tribunal orders a fix anyway

Re: Why Do They Insist On Blatantly Denying Anything Is Wrong?

I argue with my partner and her family now and then about Apple as they all love them, I still hate them. I even tried to use her old MacBook to get used to the OS but it came with a tiny HDD. I looked at an upgrade and not only do you have to buy specific RAM that is inflated, same with the HDD and it's a really old model now.

I can't get them away from Apple as they always say "Its just so easy and connects so easily with my other devices".

I give up.

Facebook hands over chats to cops in abortion case

Re: Oh dear

Probably all from Texas.

Emergency services call-handling provider: Ransomware forced it to pull servers offline

Re: National Hacking Survival?

They were most likely penny pinching on IT and didn't think it was "important".

Microsoft asks staff to think twice before submitting expenses

Re: Quirky Fare Deals

You mean Noel "Tidy Beard" Edmonds.

Google gets the green light to flood US Gmail inboxes with political spam

Re: Forward it on the FCC

Can we not setup rules so any of those types of mail come in automatically get forwarded to the FCC.

Flag them all as spam. Enough people that do is supposed to affect gmail filters. Whether it actually does is anyone's guess. There was never an option to see the filters in gsuite when I used to manage it.