Posts by steviebuk

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

Same issue in Outlook

I don't see it much anymore but had a few users using the "deleted" folder in outlook as a save location. Had created folders within it. Had to gently explain "Do you understand why its fucking called a deleted folder?"

Oh dear... AI models used to flag hate speech online are, er, racist against black people

Re: crafted in the style of African American English (AAE)

Bit like "Whasup niggers" in Shawn of The Dead. I'm assuming the AI would ignore the context and flag it as offensive. If so, surely its not proper AI. Surely AI should be able to work out the context.

If you thought Windows Insiders was lacking a little in the leadership department, it is now

Re: Dev in 5 minutes ?

Although her statement isn't accurate, I think she's trying to appeal to people who think they could never be a programmer. Some may not realise, try it and find out they are good at it. But some "Devs" like to build walls and not let anyone in.

Ones that got into such areas when they didn't have experience were David Malan from the Harvard CS50 course and he's a great teacher. And Jessa from iPad Rehab (although that was electronics same idea. She was a stay at home mum in a world were people would make out "You can't just pick it up the next day and start repairing stuff")

Yes, being a dev came become complicated and programming can be difficult but shouldn't stop people from trying. And I think that was the point of her 5 min comment. To encourage those that normally wouldn't, to just give it a try.

Re: Dona Sarkar's Twitter Tag Line

Press the Windows key, type the program you want that you know if fucking installed and the shitty search system never fines it. Manually find it, then try and again and now it fucking fines it. Reboot, same shit all over again.

I hate the Windows 10 search.

US games company Blizzard kowtows to Beijing by banning gamer who dared to bring up Hong Kong

Blizzard

Has turned to shit. Not that I ever played WoW but know people that did. When they said, despite all the knock off servers showing otherwise, that "You don't want WoW Classic" and then being totally wrong as now they've released it, everyone is on it again. Blizzard seemed to have lost the plot and don't give two shits to their customers and gamers anymore, who, after all, are what keep them alive.

Game over: Atari VCS architect quits project, claims he hasn’t been paid for six months

Died years ago

People who now own the name just exploiting it. Its not Atari of old.

Who you gonna call? Avaya grabs $500m investment from RingCentral to cut whopping debts

Avaya

The company that likes to keep your phone/user name logins database on the Avaya servers that any consultant setups up, in plain text (not the consultants fault, its Avaya's shitty software). So all you have to do is steal the database and you have access to everyone's Avaya user name and password logins. The user names and passwords that 99% of people end up using for their AD logins, so you now have compromised their AD account as well.

Oh and go with a full PC/Laptop client only and forbid desk phones and you have "Sorry I know you're dying but I need to login to Windows first before I can call 999. Oh...sorry...hold on...I now can't remember my password. Oh, sorry, you're fucked now as I've locked my account so now can't call 999 for you".

And "Why did I take ages to answer your call? Because I couldn't answer the fucking thing until I logged in. And by the time I put my long password/passphase in, you rang off".

Windows 10 update panic: Older VMware Workstation Pro app broken

And I was going to upgrade one of my home machines

To Windows 10 finally. But no longer interested again.

Astronaut Tim Peake reminds everyone about the time Excel mangled his contact list on stage at Microsoft AI event

Re: AI bollocks

Yeah they know it as ALPR

AI bollocks

" "to fully capitalise on its standing as a leader in AI"."

What so your company can spout out bullshit marketing AI and Machine Learning bollocks?

FFS. Getting really annoying now. We were on a webinar call today for a CCTV system based in the US of A. Looks nice but the amount of times AI and Machine Learning was mentioning was a little annoying. But they didn't mention it too much. Ironically at the end with the Q&A someone asked if the cameras could do ANPR reading. Skip the part where we had to explain to the American's what ANPR was (they have a different name for it) but the answer was funny. "Yeah we still are looking into this. As its not a huge market..." What? Its a massive market, we didn't say anything though. He continued "..this would mainly be a software thing and we're not quite there yet" what? But you've just spouted AI and machine learning. Surely if you've implemented such then ANPR recognition would be a piece of piss. Or our you just using those words as marketing bullshit. And why, when doing presentations do US salemen talks to fucking fast. Stop and take a fucking breath. Its not a fucking race. Is it to hide your bullshit in noise? In the hope we didn't hear because you said it so quickly?

If you really can't let go of Windows 7, Microsoft will keep things secure for another three years

Marks & Spencer

I wonder if they will be paying. Their customer service desks in the local store still uses Windows 7.

Zendesk clocks 10,000 accounts accessed by miscreants before November 2016

-Snigger-

A certain NHS trust was using this last time I knew. Despite us saying years ago it was a bit shit. Anything to stop us visiting actual users in person was the real reason they wanted it used.

YouTuber charged loads of fans $199 for shoddy machine-learning course that copy-pasted other people's GitHub code

Re: Sounds a lot like...

Yeah although i can understand why they want to be. They then feel like they are working for themselves and not some faceless corp. I find it hard to explain as you'll get some that want to do it for that reason and will shit on anyone that gets in the way or misunderstand the approach. Such as the guy that started up a video podcast for Star Wars Republic as it was being released. Was doing it from his house. Which was all fine. But then he thought to be bigger he needs to go and rent an office space with big TVs in the background. Long story short, didn't last long after the move and "hiring staff". That's where a lot of them go wrong.

We all want to work for ourselves and YouTube used to be a way to do it. But I think getting lucky with it so you get the numbers that you can now do it as your day job but ignore the bullshit "YouTube celebrity" side of it is just fine. Its why I like the likes of LGR. He's done it as a hobby for years and now finally made it a success & was able to quit his job a while ago. But he doesn't get involved in the "celebrity" side of it. He's even admitted in an old video he wouldn't do meet ups with viewers he doesn't know. As its really uncomfortable meeting strangers as it is. Strangers that think they know you just cause they watch you all the time must be even weirder.

Sounds a lot like...

..Eli The Computer Guy. Originally thought he seemed OK with his free courses on YouTube. Then noticed that most of his "Courses" consisted of one or two videos on the subject, then he'd move on to something else. Got the impression he was just taking the first two chapters of a book and blurting them out in the hope to get viewers and subs (unfortunately has worked). I gave up on him when I watched his backups video. The amount of disinformation in that was clear he has never implemented a proper backup solution before.

Holy smokes! Ex-IT admin gets two years prison for trashing Army chaplains' servers

Re: Where is god when you need him?

I wish I was a Q

How to lose a UK contractor in 10 days: Make them commit after upcoming IR35 tax upheaval, apparently

Re: Some are considering moving to another employer

But they never will. They will always go after the easy target.

Pupil mental health monitor promises app rewrite after hardcoded login creds discovered

And becomes the managers just "Want stuff done now" for "Market and/or release" "we have to hit this madeup target" despite being told time and time again it won't look good if there is then a security issue. "Fuck security. Just get it done. I want my bonus for hitting bullshit targets". And because those bonuses aren't then taken back when a massive security issue is revealed, it will continue.

HMRC chief digital wonk Jacky Wright takes flight back to Microsoft's light

I'm so proud

""I am so proud of all that we have achieved in my two years with HMRC. The digital transformation we have introduced and the new ways of working we have championed have built a solid foundation on which to continue, for both our colleagues and the customers we serve.""

I'm so proud I've managed to escape before the shit hits the fan.

Brit ISP TalkTalk blocks control tool TeamViewer

The dicks...

...are still doing this and it's 20fucking19. Trying to remote to a user and can't because of shitty TalkTalk blocking TeamViewer.

The knobs.

Dropbox Paper: Handy for collaborating... oh and harvesting email addresses, too

Bit like...

...when you share a fake PDF file via dropbox and convince loads of idiots to sign in to legit dropbox to click on the fake PDF. And then they all leave posts saying "Jane did you mean to send me this? Its not working" so I now get to see all the idiots that fell for the "Clearly a fucking phishing email because the owners mailbox was compromised" scam.

The D in Systemd is for Directories: Poettering says his creation will phone /home in future

Re: That was a serious breath of fresh nerdiness

Just go back to TrueCrypt. The independent said it was still safe despite it being closed down. And at least with it you can create a hidden encrypted partition. I'm sure at the US airports the people asking to look at your laptop aren't gonna have any idea you have a TrueCrypt hidden partition installed.

Calling all the Visual Basic snitches: Keep quiet about it and so will he...

Re: Caught by the auditors

Nice. If in the days of Process Monitor or File Mon and Reg Mon, I think it would of appeared in those traces as well.

Re: Bending the rules to breaking point

And what happened next? Did you e-mail them saying exactly the same? So then you'd have a record of refusing to commit their fraud as people like that normally try to fuck you over later.

Re: Do the right thing?

Tesco?

Tesco parking app hauled offline after exposing 10s of millions of Automatic Number Plate Recognition images

What an idiot

Last week I read that as

"10 seconds of a million automatic number plate recognition images"

:)

What annoys me is in the so call "cloud" age, everything is being run by hipster knobs who what stuff "rushed to market" and stuck "in the cloud". But it needs to be secure "Fuck security, just get it done and too market as soon as we can. I want to then sell it and become a millionaire so I can buy more hipster clothes and just sit in coffee shops all day disguising how we can use AI to put loads of people out of work and call anyone that doesn't agree with me 'Granddad/Grandma'"

Re: Incompetence

From what I can tell from their website, they look like they might also be using a virtual office address based in London. Someone on Amazon was doing the same. His mail would go to the London address and they then forward it on too his real address. He was illegally using the NHS logo so looked him up. He gave it away by leaving a review of their service on their Google Reviews page. Found his real address via Companies House.

Most of the car park management companies end up being as bent as fuck. Most of them have no idea about GDPR and most of them have little to no IT security in place.

Argued with the one in the local Waitrose. I wasn't getting a ticket but requested my number plate be removed from their system under a Right To Be Forgotten. They claimed "I have no need to worry, I'm not getting a ticket and that they keep the plates for 6 months for security and crime prevention". I pointed out that under GDPR they no longer need to keep the plate so it needs to be deleted and that ANPR cameras are not to be used for CCTV purposed as they claimed they were doing.

They removed it. Well so they claimed. I asked for it to be removed from their backups also, they ignored all further e-mails.

Numberplate check on the DVLA website will give you the make, model and colour of the car.

That time Windows got blindsided by a ball of plasma, 150 million kilometres away

Re: Sometimes I miss...

Get a Logitech MX Ergo. Still has a ball, the tiny rollers still, eventually, get dirty. I thought with that new model they'd have replaced the roller balls with lasers but appears not. I only use mine when I have no space for a proper mouse.

HP printer small print says kit phones home data on whatever you print – and then some

Re: polluting the well.

They still do that in Screwfix. Fucking annoys me but I know it's not their fault, its the shitty system they are lumped with. Was before GDPR but because of GDPR they now have a code to skip that section so I just say "I don't want to give my details thanks" and we continue as normal.

COBOL: Five little letters that if put on a CV would ensure stable income for many a greybeard coder

I remember one summer of the 90s

Where I was putting together the final year project for college. Despite it being the 90s we had still been taught Cobol, I guess they assumed we'd all be supporting legacy systems.

Despite it being so called "plain English" I still struggled with it a bit. Fudge the project to get it to work from what I remember. Also slightly annoyed but do now understand where they were coming from, that I only got a Merit for the project. It was because I didn't stick to the design specs. Roughly remember I think we were asked to take in user entered data and save it to TWO different files. I was struggling to get it all to work but ended up doing so but making it all save in ONE file. Got told by our nice programming lecturer Joan Foxley (I wonder where she is now) that it was a good program and efficient code and worked well, but they could only give me a Merit because I'd only saved to ONE file when the spec required it to be saved to TWO files. I was annoyed at the time as thought well if my code is more efficient and better than what they wanted why the mark down, but was simply because I didn't meant the spec the so called "client" requested.

Pascal was the language I enjoyed learning back then. Never did get that good at programming. Then grew bored of it for years and moved into hardware support. Now interested in it again but just as before, struggle to understand it :)

Service call centres to become wasteland and tumbleweed by 2024

Re: Tumbling Tumbleweed

Yep and I'd rather speak to a person than a bot. Amazon chat have now done away with a real person from the start, so I have to feed that lots of bollocks until it gets to the point of saying "Do you wish to chat to a real person" fucking yes!

Eco-activists arrested by Brit cops after threatening to close Heathrow with drones

Re: Good work MET Police

That's a flawed argument. You're suggesting all cyclists don't also own cars. Again, everyone pays tax even if you don't own a car and that tax is added to funding roads. Car owners pay more because the cars are massive pollutants (why cars before 1979 aren't included I don't understand) that's why you have no tax for electric vehicles.

My point stands. Cyclists are allowed as much use of the road as anyone else.

Re: Good work MET Police

Time and time again. There is NO ROAD TAX. They, we, all pay tax that is then added to funding the roads. So unfortunately for you, they have exactly the same rights to use the road as you.

Hasn't been road tax since world war 2

Handcranked HTML and JPEG japes. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Keyboard japes

Not to justify it but some kids were rights shits back then. In our school, roughly the same time just a year or two earlier, a mild mannered teacher was hounded in science every lesson. The shits in our class knew he couldn't control them so they'd act up. At one point he snapped and punched the blackboard while shouting. Then clutched his chest. The shits panicked as we all thought he was having a heart attack. They were so worried they even asked him if he was alright but he was so pissed off with them he told them to shut-up and get on with work. It felt if at that moment he'd rather die than have to carry on dealing with the shits.

The rest of the lesson everyone was silent.

I don't recall what happened the next week. I know he never died and assume he wasn't having a heart attack (at least I don't recall hearing anything about it later) but it didn't stop the arseholes continuing to be an arsehole too him in other science lessons.

Problem when you get a teacher like that in school, is you never learn anything. He was too busy trying to control, unsuccessfully, the shits, that we'd never get anything done. And I'm sure the shits had a death with as they'd randomly set fire to the gas taps without the bunsen burner attached in some lessons.

Re: Keyboard japes

You're fine, he's either an old git now or dead.

Hmmm..

You can't really say that when you were the soul person to create the image so you can't really blame anyone else "It was also your fault for not stopping me"

"Fiona also didn't hand in the names of the rest of the gang "as much as I wanted to turn in the numbskull webmaster who'd been asleep at the wheel with that assets list." Instead, she was rewarded with a lecture from a HR contractor on how she should have known she'd never get away with "something like that.""

That's like me blaming everyone else when I decided to paste a member of staffs image onto a front copy of Time Magazine. He saw the funny side for about a minute then got really pissed off. Especially when I said I'd e-mailed it to the 3rd line team :) I blamed no one but myself. Got away with it though as he was a cock and had been doing similar stuff to others so had no argument. If he'd got HR involved he'd have fucked himself over. It all went quiet and he oddly started to be nicer to me after that incident.

#MeToo chatbot, built by AI academics, could lend a non-judgmental ear to sex harassment and assault victims

Will it also...

...detect the liars? Obvious harassment is a awful issue to happen to a person but there are also cases of people "crying wolf" and later found to be lying, such as Carl Beech.

UK ISPs must block access to Nintendo Switch piracy sites, High Court rules

Pointless

"ISPs can be forced via a court order to block websites found to heavily facilitate internet copyright infringement."

When DNS over https become the main, the ISP can put the block in but will be ignored by the masses.

What a bunch of DoSers: Wikipedia says it was walloped by 'bad faith' actors over weekend

No.........

....just no, it's the only game you can get away with at work "Wikiraces" then claim you're "Doing research".

Mozilla Firefox to begin slow rollout of DNS-over-HTTPS by default at the end of the month

I've just had a look

It appears you don't have to use Cloudflare as "use provider" there is the option to choose CUSTOM.

Equifax is going to make you work for that 125 bucks it owes each of you: Biz sneaks out Friday night rule change

Re: So basically

The FTC is in a human centipede with Equifax. Equifax is at the front, the FTC is in the middle and all of the unfortunate users of Equifax at the end.

It's free...

...free monitoring from the very company that had a data breach. Fuck that.

AWS celebrates Labor Day weekend by roasting customer data in US-East-1 BBQ

Well then...

...that's cause you get managers who say "I want to be infrastructure free. It will save us loads of money" and despite being told it won't and there is no such thing as infrastructure free, they want stuff done on the cheap. So think moving to the Cloud means their service will do everything for you backup wise, not understanding you have to set that up yourself and pay for it.

You know what the NHS really needs? Influencers, right guys? #blessed

Shakes head...

"NHS 111 online"

Is it as bad as the phone line. Tell them you are short od breath and every time, even if you tell them you don't need one, they'll send an ambulance. The 111 service is fucking shit. Making an app for it ain't gonna help.

Oops, wait, yeah, we did hand over photos for King's Cross facial-recog CCTV, cops admit

I see the ICO only gets involved when it's news and a big breach, other than that they appear to not give a fuck. Reported a car ticketing company that weren't using HTTPS on their site yet requesting quite a lot of ID over their shitting web form (not my ticket).

And while we're at it. Like has been mentioned, does the private company have permission to hold said details? They can't spout the bullshit it's for security so we have a right under GDPR to hold images. People in the area all now need to just throw loads of SAR requests at them until they give in and delete the lot.

Have done that in a Waitrose car park. Parked, shopped, got no ticket but didn't want my plate on their database forever, the parking company. Requested under Right to be Forgotten for it to be removed. They claimed they can keep it for as long as 6 months as they use the ANPR system for CCTV security and nothing to worry about as not getting a ticket. I then pointed out GDPR states ANPR can't be used for CCTV purposes so delete the number plate now please. They did. I requested they also remove it from their backups. They've stopped replying to me now.

:)

I like being an annoying dick at times. Guess its why I have no friends.

Big...

...GDPR breach that one is then.

Massachusetts city tells ransomware scumbags to RYUK off, our IT staff will handle this easily

Finds local admin on one machines. Attempts to jump from that machine to another and discovers all local admin passwords are the same. Eventually finds a machine where a domain admin was once logged on. Uses mimicats to get the hash of the domain admin. Domain admin has an easy password. Cracks it. They now own the network with that domain admin account.

From there they can create dummy accounts and then delete logs. Then edit the odd service or two on some servers that give them readwrite persons on the service for write dac and write owner. This then gives them a hidden backdoor unless you're looking for that you wouldn't see it. They can then use that service, even as a non admin, to restart the service to run their own code. Then change the settings back leaving the write dac and write owner as their secret backdoor.

Thats massive overkill. Mark Russinovich bought this idea up on one of his talks. That the first port of call people do is wipe a system, but he said its not always required. Showed his tools in use hunting malware. He was the guy that found Sony's rootkit all those years ago.

Yes wiping is best practice. But destroying a mobo and drives after an attack is massive overkill and a waste.

Loss-making $15bn hipster chat biz Slack suddenly less appetising to investors as it predicts deeper losses

Re: I just don't get these massive losses

Lego is quite expensive. I could spend £200m

Re: My new business venture

Can I invest?