Posts by steviebuk

Nobody expects the borkish bank-wisition: When I said I wanted some notes from the ATM, I never thought I'd see...

Possibly using psexec because they're remote tool has failed and seeing if psexec will work by running something simple as notepad, would be my guess.

Arm freezes hiring until Nvidia takeover, cancels everyone's 'wellbeing' allowance

Re: What a shit show

I guess. Didn't think of it that way.

What a shit show

ARM were sold to Japan with a "This is a great sign of the UK economy" so the government proclaimed at the time.

A few years later Japan decides to flog it to America and the UK government moans "We're going to check on this, this could be an anti-competition issue". Yeah, which you fucking caused by agreeing the original fuck sell off. Cocks.

NASA to return to the Moon by 2024. One problem with that, says watchdog: All of it

Better to take your time than kill people

Rushing it is how the challenger disaster happened. The management ignored the warners the engineers and put PR over safety then 7 people died.

All that Lego has a purpose: Researchers find that spatial memory improves kids' mathematical powers

I love

Lego, still do, an Adult Fan Of Lego.....however, I'm still shit at maths.

Apple seeks to junk claim that iOS is an 'essential facility' in legal spat with Epic Games

Re: It is

"Ace2

Reply Icon

Re: It is

It isn’t. Buy a different device! There are dozens to choose from."

Microsoft could of said that in USA vs Microsoft in the anti-trust case but it would of been thrown out as it should be now too. Its not an a valid argument.

Re: It is

Not difficult at all. Find the apk, click it. Android gives you a warning, you agree you understand, installed. Simple.

It is

An "essential facility" as they make it as fucking difficult as possible to install something outside of the Apple Store. Last time I had to use an idevice (ipod touch) only option was to jailbreak the device to be able to put whatever you wanted on it. Which Steve knob head Jobs was trying to make illegal but lucky a judge saw sense and told him to jog on.

How much would you pay me to develop a COVID tracking app that actually works? Ah, thought so: nothing

Re: How much would you pay me to develop a COVID tracking app that actually works?

And after I tested positive but my partner didn't (I never had symptoms and never got ill) the app, correctly told me to isolate when I gave it my details. Where it failed massively is the app then never pinged my partners phone to tell her to isolate.

I got calls from the track and trace people and told them about this. They took notes and said they'd pass info on. Put the issue on the play store for the review. Kept getting the bullshit excuse that the phones need to be within range for it to register. We fucking live together, the phone is within range all fucking day.

We both isolated but anyone else may have said "Well my app hasn't told me to isolate so I'm off out".

The fact they tried to sneak a cheeky update recently that was blocked by Apple and Google on Android means its now uninstalled.

Parliament demands to know the score with Fujitsu as Post Office Horizon scandal gets inquiry with legal teeth

Annoys me

"Parliament demands to know the score"

You already know the fucking score. All you ever had to do was read Private Eye who regularly reported it. Yet, instead you allowed the execs etc to get promotions instead, even after all the shit had come out.

The Microsoft Authenticator extension in the Chrome store wasn't actually made by Microsoft. Oops, Google

Googles checks just don't exist

I bet. To save every fucking penny they get "AI" to do the checks. This is evident with their fucking constant disregard for all the clear fucking scam adverts on YouTube of late.

Over the past month, I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen the starscope monocular advert scam. And lets not forget the "I have this amazing fomula on how you can make £5k a day. Just sign up to this free course" which turns out to be one free course convincing you to pay lots of money for the other lessons. Which turn out to be nothing more than "Sell my courses and you'll get commission" none of them realise the guy/woman (don't see many women doing this scam but know they do, one from the apprentice did) who has this "Secret", the secret is flogging the bullshit courses.

Waymo self-driving robotaxi goes rogue with passenger inside, escapes support staff

Its shocking...

....that support appear to be unable at all to disable the car. Although she could see all the cameras, not being able to disable it from randomly starting up and driving off again is really bad.

AI car thinks

"I need to get passenger from A to B. I could just kill the passenger then there won't be a possibility of me failing if I have no passenger to transport"

China says its first Mars rover Zhurong has landed on the Red Planet

Re: Not surprisingly....

There's also research that suggests mars is made up of the same material a mars bar is and that, thats where the name came from.

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

Re: Why opt out ?

Yep. Even more annoying when I suggested long before that "Why don't we get our own drive crusher. Then all controlled internally and done properly". I was a low down temp so was ignored with mutterings by them of "waste of money".

Several years after the incident I find they have bought in their own drive crusher and are very strict with it. Funny that.

Reminds me of one manager saying "I don't want anyone doing "quick win tickets anymore" you need to work on all tickets but prioritise the "low hanging fruit" tickets". I couldn't keep quiet. "They mean the same thing." No that don't he kept saying. I gave up arguing as he was never going to admit they do. Fuck whit.

Reading This Is Going to Hurt, although from the viewpoint of a junior doctor and they get it worse. It so reminds me of the mentality of IT management at all NHS trusts.

"We are taking the overnight beds away for the junior doctors" ignoring the fact they tend to have to work way over their allotted hours.

"Staff car park isn't own by us. Speak to the parking company that gave you the fine while you were delivering babies"

"We need to save money so taking away your staff cantine and leaving you with just a vending machine instead"

Arseholes.

Re: Why opt out ?

I can understand that but when you've worked in a trust that decided to ignore the advice of the IT department when it wanted to get rid of some old hard drives, despite them giving them details of a company that would shred them securely and give a certificate. They choose to ignore this as "We want it done now, we don't want to wait".

They turned up later on ebay. Someone bought them, found unencrypted patient data on them which also IDed the trust and hospital. The hospital was then hit with the biggest fine in the UK.

So no thanks.

Google Docs users, you are on notice: Code rewrite may break browser extensions

When...

...are they going to allow a document to have both landscape and portrait pages in the same document instead of one or the other only.

Train operator phlunks phishing test by teasing employees with non-existent COVID bonus

Re: But isn't this what (real) criminals would do?

I would of thought they could of worded it different and not related it to covid-19 as if I've read it right, one of their staff died of it.

The most simple phishing email they could of sent out is one that spoofs a managers address and asks for urgent help with something. Sadly I've seen that work with people replying & actually paying money as they didn't bother telling anyone. It was spotted they'd replied and given out their mobile number, the rest was then done via txt that we can't and don't monitor. I really wanted to know what went on in their head and why they never double checked first!

I've also witness a director fool for it when the spoof was the chief exec. Nothing better to see a director who is fearful of the CEO, fool for a phishing email all because they want to "please(kiss arse)". Forgetting the phishing issue, they shouldn't have a fear of the CEO, CEOs need to learn not to be cunts like that one was.

US declares emergency after ransomware shuts oil pipeline that pumps 100 million gallons a day

I wonder

If one of the big wigs demanded "I need access to gmail. I need internet access now from this station"

But that is air gabbed sir/madem for safety.

"I don't care. You know who I am. Get it done. I need to book this dinner date for my partner I promised them about and forgot"

Opens to the Internet.

"Oooo I got sent an email for a discount for a dinner date. There is a link. Thats a funny address, thisismalware.com. Never mind, should save me some bucks. They need me to run this file for the discount? Sure."

Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

Did Angela Kolar

Vice President, Operations Services & Chief Risk Officer skip work recently or just not bother to notice the this risk?

I wonder if its like the oil in Texas where the companies were given, I believe, funds to weather proof their shit but didn't bother and used the money on other things, then we saw what happened in winter.

Nothing will be learned, as said, until the big bosses are fined if it can be showed they are incompetent and that it wasn't due to some lower down rogue employee.

Google will make you use two-step verification to login

Re: Don't force it

You should watch Mark Russinovich's Case Of the Unexplained talks. He's now head of Azure but even when he was just a Technical Fellow in Microsoft he'd always take a dig at the Office Team. He even used his tools to find a bug in the Office Suite told them about it but they still told him to report it properly as a bug. So despite how high up he was, even he couldn't get the Office Team to listen to him.

I do understand however, it was a bit of jossing but still feels like the Office Team possibly don't listen much.

Don't force it

We already struggled to get the multiskilled operators (painters, decorators, builders) and the grounds team to use the tablets and phones & we're fully aware passwords aren't secure but if 2fa gets in the way, they'll be even more annoyed.

We have 2fa setup on 365 for the office workers but its fucking flacky. It will randomly decide a laptop that has office 2016, the Outlook 2016 isn't a "modern app" (it is) so doesn't understand 2fa so needs the one time password instead. It will randomly decide the mobile you're using needs a 2fa check and refuses to pass it despite nothing being fucking wrong. Turn off 2fa, log them in, turn 2fa back on and all fine.

I understand the need for 2fa just make it simple and make it fucking work.

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

Loved it

I started my college IT courses learning Pascal and then Visual Basic. Loved both. Wanted to be a programmer, so I thought. But I was shit at it. Visual Basic made it easier.

Wrote a lottery number picker in Pascal then later converted it to Visual Basic but with less features than the Pascal version as didn't know how to code the extra features in Visual Basic.

Wrote a martial arts membership database for my year assignment with it as I was doing martial arts at the time.

Discovered how to do scrolling in it so did scrolling credits for the about box :)

I loved it. Shame it turned out I was shit at programming so became a desktop engineer instead (which I find easier). Shame though as more money in programming.

Recently booted up a Win 98se VM just so I could load my old projects into it as found the old CDs from 1998. Fixed a bug that was over 20 years old in my installer (don't know why I never worked it out at the time as was fairly easy to work out what the issue was). Stuck the video of the Lottery Number Picker onto my YouTube channel just so I have a record of it somewhere.

Then I took a look back at Hotdog that also used to love :)

Seems a bit suspect

"And a final surprise: All backers before the event will have 20% lifetime discount for all RAD Basic products and renewal license."

Will the event review nothing is available yet or that it might be a bit like Magic Leap?

The Wight stuff: Marconi and the island, when working remotely on wireless comms meant something very different

Funny....

....seeing this as I've always loved the Isle of Wight. We'd got there every year in the 80s and early 90s for 2 weeks for the family holiday. Staying at Sandown holiday park. Sadly, lots of what we loved have all gone and closed down but the island is still nice to visit. My sister has now moved there, which we all dreamed of doing as kids. I'm also considering it but IT work there isn't great, the pay isn't great and worst of all their internet. I might knock Virgin but their speeds are generally good but they are to cheap to pay to have their cable run over to the island so no Virgin media there at all.

George Clooney of IT: Dribbling disaster and damp disk warnings scare the life out of innocent user

I bet it never actually got wet

"Moisture sensors that display messages on screens are, after all, a relatively recent thing. This hack well remembers taking a borked iPhone to a UK Apple Store and being told the thing had clearly got wet and he should not use it in the rain. In the UK."

As Louis Rossmann says on his repair videos. The pads, at least in iMacs are so easily changed to red (meaning water damage) even just my humidity in a room that they aren't reliable yet the Apple stores use it as an excuse not to repair and claim water damage.

Re: Am I Old?

True. Probably don't tell the person you'd fire them if they do it again, comes across as a power play but agree with telling them, strongly not to be a fucking dick by playing the trick on a user.

Vivaldi update unleashes the 'Cookie Crumbler' to simply block any services asking for consent (sites may break)

Re: But aren't they required by EU law?

Ah right. I'll explain

Been doing computers for years. Work as an simple desktop engineer. Always thought "I want a place to store all my notes, not ones specific to work that I possible can't share but general ones about fixing issues I came across".

Everytime I sit to do a website, I spend ages looking for a design. Because I was crap at HTML and CSS I'd eventually get bored and nothing would get done.

Years later I finally found Wordpess. Realised you have the free version you just need hosting and a domain. So bought both, set it up in 2010 or 2011 and been putting my notes on it ever since "A place for my notes so I have access to them anywhere, others may find it useful"

Some people would comment and thank me for some of the notes. Some notes where fixes I'd not found elsewhere. Anyway. Its not a job, it costs me £79 a year for the hosting, I'm with a nice host and wanted the middle tier package.

Decided maybe I could try and fund the hosting with adverts and the Amazon really shit affiliate link system. Got nothing from it. Then GDPR came in and it mumbled something about even private blogs will need disclaimer that a site uses cookies. Well I knew my ads must have cookies so assumed I had to put an "This site may have tracking cookies press OK" to cover myself as I'm a small 1 man band who couldn't afford a fine if it came to it.

After making the last comment I realised in the past 2 years since having the ads they've made me fuck all. So now gotten rid, along with the shit Amazon links. So assume I can remove the cookie concent now. Only issue might be allowing comments via discuss which I guess I could just disable.

Re: Malicious Compliance

True but think it's the ICO isn't it? In the UK that deal with them? They'll do fuck all as already underfunded.

Re: But aren't they required by EU law?

Two downvotes? Decided as none of the adverts make even 1p I've removed it all and the cookie acceptance box. Annoyance of GDPR having to have it.

But aren't they required by EU law?

That is the main issue. I run my own website, it was only for and still is an online place I can put all my IT notes, so no matter what job I'm now at, I have easy access to all my notes. Because I've suck adverts on the site (I think I'll remove them now, they make me no money, not even a penny) I had to put a message up that you're aware. Also because the site can take comments (which I might as well turn off) thanks EU, some things you do are good, this was always a stupid one, forcing hobby sites to also comply.

Big Tech bankrolling AI ethics research and events seems very familiar. Ah, yes, Big Tobacco all over again

We'll end up with this one day

"Serve the public trust"

"Protect the innocent"

"Uphold the law"

"Any attempt to arrest a senior member of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Intel, IBM, Huawei, Samsung, Uber, Alibaba, Element AI, and OpenAI results in shutdown"

Known software issue grounds Ingenuity Mars copter as it attempted fourth flight

Am I the only one...

....that would also be interested in seeing them doing their testing on the copy on Earth? Surely they have a copy of the copter in another remote office that they also control remotely to simulate being on Mars. So I assume test out their update ideas on that first?

Did....

....it get a new, forced Windows update*

I'll get my coat.

*I know its not running Windows.

Mayday! Mayday! Microsoft has settled on a build and Windows 10 21H1 is inbound

Re: I love Windows - update are never an issue

They may not be. I still run Windows 7 on the main PC and laptop at home as I know they work. However I use Windows 10 at work. There are parts of Windows 10 I like and miss when in Windows 7. Tempted to move the main PC to Windows 10 but still holding off as all working fine in Windows 7. Also don't want to lose the beloved Truecrypt (not tried it on Windows 10 yet)

Salesman who helped land Veritas UK's 'largest ever' deal was lawfully docked £275k in commission, says judge

I assume he'll now loose all the rest paying all the legal fees.

39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question

Re: anglican priest yet put many people through a lot of suffering

Exactly. And why I dislike the church. I may be interested in the history but nothing else to my mums annoyance. I've seen so many people over the years in the church be not very christian, Paula Vennells is the worst.

Re: And still...

Was going to mention some went to be promoted. All mentioned in Private Eye. There is bentness but this is the worst form of bentness ever. Sending people to prison, wrongly and I believe some SPMs have taken their own lives over this.

Banks across America test facial recognition cameras 'to spy on staff, customers'

When I visited Italy....

.....way back in 1999. If you wanted to go into a bank you had to take out all your metal objects and put them in a safe in the lobby. Then step into the metal detector cage, then they'd let you in. Assume the mob was forever robbing them.

Home office setup with built-in boiling water tap for tea and coffee without getting up is a monument to deskcess

Re: All that

But the company that supplies it will be against Right To Repair and will attempt to make it illegal to repair yourself, won't supply spare parts, will charge over the top prices for their engineers to fix who'll say its not repairable and you have to buy the new tank at a cost of £10k

All that

and they don't show where all the plumping for that hot water tap will go? And speaking of that, you'd need to locate it near a water source and the extra cost of hiring a plumber (only to discover later they were a cowboy) to plump it in. Then the maintenance required on the boiler and pump.

Designers annoy me.

MI5 wants to shed its cocktail-guzzling posho image – so it's opened an Instagram account

Has it been long enough?

I applied for the "service" back in the 90s as I'd just finished IT in college and wanted to be a desktop engineer. They had a place but guess my families working class background, grades and lack of work experience (how do you get experience when no one will give you a fucking chace at a job) meant it was a no to even get an interview. I was sent a letter from "the service" and also told not to tell anyone I'd even applied. Guess thats why they have had issues with people applying over the years.

Assume the "Don't tell anyone you applied" is defunct now and cause I never even got offered a fucking interview.

Might help if you pay even just the desktop engineers a decent fucking wage.

Spy agency GCHQ told me Gmail's more secure than Microsoft 365, insists British MP as facepalming security bods tell him to zip it

Clearly not

A Parliamentary spokesperson said in a statement: "We have robust cybersecurity measures in place and work closely with partners in the National Cyber Security Centre. In line with guidance from the NCSC we would always encourage MPs to use parliamentary email, which offers significantly higher levels of security than external providers."

If someone was spoofing the MPs address, why don't they have anti-spoof on for all MPs so the spam filter should pick that up straight away.

Don't get me started on gmails issues. Unable to control its spam filter, it decides so someone within a company can abuse it by flagging all legit emails as spam until gmail AI agrees with no control over this in the gsuite console. Its shitty UI and search. It lack of auditing for the desktop sync meaning anyone in the company can sync emails to their person PC with desktop app and their be no audit.

What could be worse than killing a golden goose? Killing someone else's golden goose

Reminds...

...me of past times at the NHS IT

Apple iPad torched this guy's home, lawsuit claims

Whats the betting

They were using a knock off charger from Amazon or even ebay. More reason more needs to be done to regulate or crack down on Amazon due Chinese sellers being able to sell stuff that shouldn't be sold in the UK. Home furniture with no fire labels etc. The other day I ran into one device a Chinese seller was selling. Their company name "Nottingham Shopping Centre" clearly hoping people see that and assume they are a UK company.

Can you imagine Slack letting people DM strangers in another org? Think of the abuse. Oh wait, it did do that

Re: Never trusted slack, Never will.

Hipster directors with no clue would use it. Until they discover they have to pay for it for it to be useful and keep chat logs.

Remember that day in 2020 when you were asked to get the business working from home – by tomorrow?

Re: Zoom - March 2020

The IT department or at least some of them in the IT department would of mentioned about GDPR and been ignored. I've worked in NHS IT before and it's shit. Upper management just do what they are told by the trust directors instead of stearing them in the right direction. If you question it, expect a bollocking. Or maybe its just the shitty trusts I've had the misfortune to work for.

Google admits Kubernetes container tech is so complex, it's had to roll out an Autopilot feature to do it all for you

Nothing to do with that as it doesn't break the terms of service.

And buy into a service and notice a few months later they change it. I was about to do a video on how to get unlimited drive space for just over £100 compared to the cost of Amazon Drive, Google Drive etc. It involved a little bit of knowledge, paying for a domain name, paying for small bit of hosting then paying the business package of Gsuite. Set it up and you have unlimited drive space for one user for only £11 a month, and if you set it up you can use the email, google docs etc. Altogether works out cheaper per year than Amazon drive etc.

I was on the basic package originally as last company used it. So wanted to keep the knowledge up. Realised the above was cheaper than the drive only packages and I could use it as offline backups for all my home stuff. Noticed on my bill the name had changed, so looked it up. Found out they'd scrapped my package (although I've not been forced off it yet) and if you want unlimited storage you now have to pay for the enterprise package.

Bastards.

Apple, forced to rate product repair potential in France, gives itself modest marks

Serialising

Whats even worse is they are starting to serialise everything. Take a Apple battery out of an Apple phone and put it in another and the 2nd phone will tell you its an unauthorised battery. They claim stuff like this is for security and safety. Bullshit, its clear its parts of their business model. Make it difficult to repair your products so people just buy new or charge 10x the price of an independent shop so you can make money on repairs.

NurseryCam hacked, company shuts down IoT camera service

Sick of companies

That ignore warnings. Like the parking fine companies I pointed out had issues. Had no contact details, only snail mail address. Then to silence the report they falsely claimed copyright on my YouTube video about it. No matter, copy of it is on Odysee and LBRY, then a whole article was written about it for my blog.

Knobs.