Posts by steviebuk

Apple redesigns wireless AirPower charger to be world's smallest, thinnest, lightest, cheapest, invisible... OK, it doesn't exist anymore

And still putting...

...5400 RPM HDDs in their expensive laptops.

Are you sure you've got a floppy disk stuck in the drive? Or is it 100 lodged in the chassis?

Re: One, OK, hundred, I have my doubts

True. The two I chatted to were old skool and had been there since the 70s. Now both retired. Both were professional typists but didn't know that much about computers. But knew their area well. Good at typing, good at Word and Excel, good at creating macros for themselves within said packages to make tasks easier and very good at shorthand. Although not a good idea writing your passwords in plain sight, one did it in shorthand, knowing pretty much all the other staff didn't understand what it said, I believe the shorthand was unique to her as she'd adapted it. One is long retired, other one only a year. But in that time no longer uses a PC or shorthand so has forgotten it all.

IT meltdown bank TSB: It's as good a week as any to announce we're taking back control

Re: Closing High Street branches

Branches are also useful because you know that, unless someone on the inside has set them up, their cash machines are 99% clean and not compromised. Not compromised by hidden pin hole cameras with card skimmers attached. And you know this because they are unavailable when the bank is closed and during the day, no sensible crook would try to rig them with all the staff watching.

Re: Migration

Because banks want to make as much money as they can get. From what I've read over the years, banks IT systems are always poor. So I bet they could of done what you suggest but "Want to save some money so we won't".

Not in the same vain but was in Nationwide recently, and they couldn't even be bothered to buy them new privacy filters. So the cashier was having to hold the privacy filter in place because it kept falling off. What was it held on by? Bluetac. The Bluetac was so old even that was failing.

jesus!

Easy-to-hack combat systems, years-old flaws and a massive bill – yup, that's America's F-35

Makes me think of...

...The Pentagon Wars. In fact it seems exactly the same.

Stop us if you've heard this one: IBM sued after axing older staff, this time over 'denying' them their legal rights

Here's that word again

IBM are cunts. The more you read about them the more they sound like the worse company to work for.

Humanitarian champ or sex-trafficking profiteer? Fresh sueball argues Salesforce is the latter

Re: Sales people

I think I've just had the misfortune of only ever running into sales people that spout marketing bullshit all the time and through out buzzwords. I'd rather they be honest.

Sales people

are mostly evil and all they care about is making a sale to get their bonus. You could try to argue this is like gun makers and gun shop owners being responsible for mass shootings, but this is different. They wouldn't sell to people they knew were going to commit mass shootings. However, from what they are saying in this case, it looks like they are accusing Salesforce of knowing what the site was being used for, yet kept selling them their software. I guess will see if the courts agree with that view or not.

It's coooming: Windows 10 October 2018 Update adoption slows ahead of the next release

Let's hope

The next release is also a major balls up. If it is, it might, just might force Sat Nav to concede and give as all fucking control back on when updates are done and not shove it down our throats.

VP Mike Pence: I want Americans back on the Moon by 2024 (or before the Chinese get there)

Re: Lead the way

"and won the Whitehouse as his first political endeavour" because the people that voted for him are even more idiotic than Trump.

As Red Hat prepares to become part of Big Blue, its financials look as solid as Linux kernel 2.4

Re: Wise move financially? Perhaps. Culturally? Nope ....

SHOUTS - hear, hear.

Exactly what I was going to say :)

Ethiopian Airlines boss confirms suspect flight software was in use as Boeing 737 Max crashed

No its not

"Safety is our highest priority"

If it was this would of never fucking happened.

Slack slings crypto-keys at big biz, union gets worked over, VPN owners probed, trolls trouble vets, and more

But paying with Bitcoin is also traceable so you'd want to "clean" your bitcoin first with like minded individuals. Then pay with said bitcoin making said bitcoin untraceable. But when "cleaning" you do run the risk of the other individual just stealing the coins.

I currently use AirVPN. Seem OK for me so far. Just want to avoid Virgin's shitty filtering so the VPN purchase is traceable on my card.

Campaigners cry foul over NHS Digital plans to grant policy wonks and researchers access to patient-level data

Doesn't sound good...

...considering at work a few months back we got sent a phishing email. Oh look, its spoofing an NHS.net email account. Check the headers. OK, that's interesting, its not spoofed. The return address is valid. So someone has broken into an NHS.net account and using it to send phishing info. Nice. Why don't they have 2fa on? Unless their device was compromised as well.

I reported to nhs.net. Never did get a reply. Rude.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

I like the word...

...but don't use it here much. But the A-Team sound like cunts.

I can't stand engineers like that. It's fine fobbing of a user now and then if you have other urgent work to do and if they are very difficult and won't take "We're not sure why its doing it but we're still investigating. It's ongoing" as a reason you need to move on. But flat out saying that's how its suppose to work just to shut them up, then not working out what the issue is. And then telling someone that might actually be able to work it out to "not bother as we've already looked. Just tell them that's how it work" And then dismissing that person after when they actually find the fix because it made you look stupid, is a dick move.

I suspect he was glad he actually now didn't work for that "A-Team". Was it Arsehole-Team, see what I did there.

Let's spin Facebook's Wheel of Misfortune! Clack-clack-clack... clack... You've won '100s of millions of passwords stored in plaintext'

I guess this is why I've never made anything successful

As even when everything is going to shit, you appear to have to keep at it. With all the money he's got, if I was Zuck, I'd quit now before it all goes tits up and you lose all that money. Although I'm sure he'll have invested money in other areas that can't be touched when Facebook starts going down like MySpace.

Brekkie TV host Lorraine Kelly wins IR35 ruling against HMRC, adds fuel to freelance techies' ire over tax reforms

Re: Yes, it gave me pause

Because she's Scottish and tiny so what's the problem? Her Scots accent is such a part of her, for those that don't know who she is, it's a good description.

Vengeful sacked IT bod destroyed ex-employer's AWS cloud accounts. Now he'll spent rest of 2019 in the clink

True or not...

...I read an interesting story in one of Kevin Mitnick's books. Of an sysadmin who was a bit of a dick but equally so was the director or whoever managed him. So summoned him up to a meeting in front of everyone and fired him. Then stupidly allowed him back to his desk for the rest of the day.

When evening came and all was quiet and he was long gone, all the servers rebooted and wiped themselves. Although pretty obvious, there wasn't enough evidence left to be able to pin it on the fired sysadmin.*

*It was read many years ago so may not be accurate retelling of said story.

Re: Idiot

And according to a resent issue of Big Issue, he'll make more money doing that than selling the Big Issue.

Sorry, Linux. We know you want to be popular, but cyber-crooks are all about Microsoft for now

Re: BBC

Because the BBC are the same people that think I'm going to put legit details for the sign in. And not using Mr Knobber at a post code miles away from where I am. The amount of fake details in their database now. Why'd they bother.

Ransomware drops the Lillehammer on Norsk Hydro: Aluminium giant forced into manual mode after systems scrambled

What's the betting

They cut costs in IT to save money? IT departments are always seen as unimportant for some reason. When nothing is happening they are accused of "Not being required. Everything runs fine and you never seem to be doing anything" or "we keep having outages since cutting your budget so we'll outsource you".

What made a super high-tech home in Victorian England? Hydroelectric witchery, for starters

Dwarf Fortress

Every time I see an Archimedes screw, my first thought is Dwarf Fortress.

UK libraries dumped 11% of computers since 2010-11... everybody has one anyway, right?

The film...

...I, Daniel Blake is coming true.

We don't want to be Latch key-less kids: NYC tenants sue landlords for bunging IoT 'smart' lock on their front door

Re: No worries!

Retro game collector would love those CRTs. Never throw them out. Sell them on.

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

Local papers

Someone with some web coding should look at the local papers. The amount of shit cookies and tracking they have is insane.

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

Re: Drive mirroring.

I did that but only to my home Netgear ReadyNAS. That claimed it was hotswappable. So when one drive failed I put a new drive in. It should of started to copy the data over but it didn't. For some reason it decided to copy the blank drive to the data drive.

When I realised what had gone wrong, I sat R-Studio sitting there all week checking the drive so I could restore it. Pretty much got everything back.

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

Well if Trump can do and say anything

Then you need not have worried

"who feared it would hurt the Democrat's political aspirations"

Trump can be recorded during his campaign about grabbing women by the ...... yet still get elected. How did that happen!

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

Re: "regulation on the Internet isn't going to stop nutters like this"

I meant to say "and now a wide spread ban on tobacco advertising is in place". Problem with typing on the phone.

Anyway. It may have fallen but is this due to the lack of advertising or better education, that would be the big question.

Re: "regulation on the Internet isn't going to stop nutters like this"

But it won't. If a nutter isn't able to watch said footage it doesn't stop them being a nutter.

Obviously nowhere near as bad, not even in the same league but they banned cigarette adverts on TV in the 60s (didn't stop cigar adverts) and now wide spread tabbaco advertising is in place but it hasn't stopped people smoking.

I'm not saying the live streaming of mass murder should exist, I'm saying banning it from a medium won't stop a nutter being a nutter.

I feel the fact is Facebook is big enough now and has enough cash it can easily tackle this problem. As IT people we understand more than MPs how the Internet works. We are realistic. We know if you ban it from Facebook it will just pop up in other areas. But the point is we also know of realistic ways Facebook could combat this. But MPs chiming in saying they should remove footage 10mins (I can't remember the exact figure) from being reported is stupidly unrealistic. Letting MPs decide on an area of tech they don't understand and won't listen to expects makes issues worse. We have the 18 age ID coming in for porn. A classic example of MPs getting involved and not understanding how the Internet works and how that will fail due to VPNs. And this is the same government that was suggesting encryption should be banned.

Re: Errr, censorship?

Its not an excuse for what the cock did but with the like of Facebook etc, its all about money. Having to actually pay decent wage to real people to watch said videos cuts into profit. Because share holders want more money they convince the powers that be to save money where you can. They see this monitoring area as a saving so do a half arsed job knowing they are so big now, they won't be shutdown and can get away with just saying sorry.

Never understood the point of live streaming anyway. And I'd rather they implement a 30 min or hour delay on the streams than allow government to start regulating the Internet.

"which has been re-shared by miscreants" which includes a few newspapers who aired a short clip of said footage. Knowing fall well people would click on their article with the video footage than an article without it. Then they gain from the ads on said page. The people clicking those article links are the same people that slow down when there is an accident. These newspapers are as bad as Facebook.

However regulation on the Internet isn't going to stop nutters like this. Its foolish to think it will.

Capita: B is for Brexit, C is for cutting costs. Stock exchange: Yay! You guys are awesome

And there it goes

Interserve gone into admin like Carillion but it won't stop the government giving contracts to Crapita.

Re: It needs to stop

You have a slightly correct point stuff being bought back in house maybe equally as shit however it can equally be good and cheaper. They quote low to get a contract then stiff you year on year with higher prices.

"The director just needs a laptop replaced at short notice" crapita IT "We can do that but as you want us to break SLA they'll be a charge for that". We as inside IT "That's fine. Although its against SLA we can get it done quick, obviously no extra charge" and so on.

I've seen an NHS trust moan about internal IT despite us being fucking good and they got value for money. They outsourced after I left to Crapita. That trust has regretted it ever since.

It needs to stop

All the outsourcing. With Interserve about to go into admin, thats another big government outsourcing company to go bust. When will the government learn. Crapita will be next.

All good, leave it with you...? Chap is roped into tech support role for clueless customer

Hmmm

I'd have turned round and said sorry no. I'm here to drop the drive off, you need to get your own IT to do the install. If they say they no longer have an IT as they were all let go then I'd leave even quicker.

We'll help you get your next fix... maybe, we'll think about it, says FTC: 'Right to repair' mulled

This needs to pass

Apple have been fucking people over for to long. Just look at the recent news footage in the US. Where they took a broken Mac to the Genius bar who claimed it would cost over $1000 to repair. Took it to Louis who has a store in New York and a YouTube channel, but isn't an authorised repair shop. He said the perm fix would be over $100. Clearly showing how much Apple are ripping off their customers.

Not only that. But these stores are order screens from the same factory as Apple. But Apple are telling customs to seize them on import. Arseholes.

This is much like how Steve Jobs tried to make Jailbreaking illegal. Luckily he lost in court. What a dick.

Windows XP point-of-sale machine gets nasty sniffle. Luckily there's a pharmacy nearby

Re: Yawn?

WILD! WILD!. Dawn keyboard!!!!

I also have one of the M&S self service machine being out of action. And one of a display board at Eurostar being logged in as a user. I assume the digital marque program had crashed.

Re: Yawn?

And it is interesting. Not being sarcastic. I find it oddly fascinating seeing these machines in the while crashing or at the login :)

Being an IT Engineer might have something to do with it. I have a pic somewhere of the local cash machine that had crashed :) some years ago.

'It's like painting with atoms'... Watch how boffins form armies of simple micron-sized bots from a silicon wafer

Because that's how the Borg became. And we don't want an invasion of the Borg :)

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

Re: Travelling to client sites

Yes but a simple search shows jet lag is just your body clock being out. Sleeping helps, no medication does, no fancy "cure" does.

Not poking fun at anyone. Just has always annoyed me people coming up with all different fancy "cures". But then I am a grumpy fuck so lots of things annoy me.

I never knew what it was when growing up. Thought it was this mystical thing only the rich got (as we couldn't afford to fly anywhere). I know it's only a movie but kinda makes my point is the Thomas Crown Affair, the 1999 one. When Rene Russo's character makes out she is super cool and has this magical cure for "jet lag" by drinking some weird shit.

Then I had very mild case of it, and realise it was just tiredness due to the body clock being out. Went to sleep for hours and was fine for rest of trip. But yeah, I guess it's worse flying to the other side of world unless you can get some sleep on the plane.

Melatonin is also a potential pseudoscience. There are no decent clinical trials that show it helps for Jet Lag or sleep disorders. Much like Remedy Rescue, was recommended to me years ago for my anxiety. I tried it, it was bollocks. It has no effect unless you "believe" it has an effect. As I don't believe in bullshit, it had no effect on me. It has a tiny amount of alcohol in it, that is the only possible reason it could help with anxiety.

Anyway. I'm ready for the down votes, but I like this forum as we seem free to speak our minds without to much of a kicking.

Re: Travelling to client sites

Cure for jet lag.....go to sleep. Simple. Never understood the fuss. Experienced it once when went to America. Had a long sleep and thats it. Was fine for rest of trip.

Dear Britain's mast-fearing Nimbys: Do you want your phone to work or not?

Go to Inverness and you'll find the Three signal pretty shit.

You'll also find it ironic to know EEs signal at Royal Sussex in Brighton is super shit to non existent. Other providers have slightly better signal but despite EE being give the contract, their network doesn't even work 99% of the time at the hospital.

While this CEO may be stiff, his customers are rather stuffed: Quadriga wallets finally cracked open – nothing inside

It's possible, if he's faked his death and from reading the report it sounds quite plausible he has, he'll have emptied them before his death so as not to flag that they were emptied after his death.

Could this almost be the perfect heist. Stealing cryptocurrency that will be harder to trace than real money and which he can then attempt to "clean" through trades with other people wanting to "clean" theirs?

This will be interesting to watch.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

Jesus!

""At 1.3 seconds before impact, the self-driving system determined that emergency braking was needed to mitigate a collision," the NTSB says in its report summary. "According to Uber, emergency braking maneuvers are not enabled while the vehicle is under computer control to reduce the potential for erratic vehicle behavior."

The safety driver is supposed to handle emergency braking, but the car's systems weren't set up to alert the driver of the need for intervention, according to the NTSB."

And they aren't being hit with a massive fine for that MASSIVE flaw!!!! How the fuck have they gotten away with that!?!?!

Did Uber say "Don't blame us, blame the safety human person. Even though if the system had alerted them to hit the breaks, 1.3 seconds before impact was never going to be enough for them to react, blame them anyway."

Were brown envelopes involved?

SPOILER alert, literally: Intel CPUs afflicted with simple data-spewing spec-exec vulnerability

It..

...amazes me how people find this vulnerabilities. This seems so convoluted.

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

So...

...if calling a Hipster and Hipster is slander then is calling me a cock also slander (I may or may not be a cock).

Hipsters are tits. Is that slander?

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

What was the point?

Military equipment and medical equipment is expensive due to the extensive tests they all have to go through. The whole story ended up being pointless as they never said what was in it. Even if it was a generic mobile, the cost is due to the extensive testing they've had to shell out for. So it covers the R&D and testing.

UK banking was struck by one IT fail every day for most of 2018

Re: it is time!

Just don't let anyone know or you'll end up in the dock like Ken Dodd :) although there is nothing illegal about hiding your money in the wardrobe or in your mattress.

After last year's sexism shambles, 2019's RSA infosec bash has upped its inclusivity game

Re: This is why

Or where you go to get arrested.