Posts by DCdave

Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase

Re: I weep for your gas mileage

I hope you reported the other driver for speeding

Unidentified object on Australian beach may be part of Indian rocket launcher

Re: Uncontrolled reentry?

It does look like metal in the photos, however reports state that it was seen floating in the shallows and was dragged out of the water by a 4x4. People on the scene described it being made of something like carbon fibre or a lightweight resin (which doesn't sound very substantial for part of a space vehicle).

Microsoft kicks Calibri to the curb for Aptos as default font

Misread is a matter of perspective

As anyone in Germany who lives at an address with especially a 7 in and receives letters from English-speaking countries will testify. German posties tend to interpret the un-crossed 7 as a 1.

On a related matter, it does make me wonder that Germans manage to cope with computer and print typefaces that do not have crossed 7s and heavily-seriphed 1s when they apparently cannot for handwriting.

Microsoft whips up unrest after revealing Azure AD name change

If you have to rename something...

Rename Active Directory as Active Directory Classic, or Classic Active Directory, and keep Azure Active Directory as it is. I've already forgotten what they want to rename AAD as. Something like Entrada*

Which, on double-checking, probably isn't what they want.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Re: Sausage Factory

It could have been wurst, he might have ended up as mincemeat.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

"Critics also claim that the water and dust resistance consumers have come to assume will be present in their mobiles will be hit hard – a sealed unit isn't just a deterrent for techies after all."

Dust resistance was a myth, at least on the Galaxy S21 5G. It couldn't be charged via cable and when taken to Samsung, the techie was less than suprised and cleaned out all the gunk that was statically attracted, saying it was hard to do at home without the proper kit, advising using a rubber plug in the charging port in future. Never needed that on predecessor models though.

Millions of mobile phones come pre-infected with malware, say researchers

Western Digital don't make phones though

Western Digital don't make phones though

Oh, really? Microsoft worries multicloud complicates security and identity

Zero trust is quite secure...

...but from experience it leads to hiding insecure things from people responsible for making sure they are secure. How to report on something that is hidden from you?

In the middle of an incident the last thing you need is to find that some little-used access rights that you have for good reason have in the meantime been silently removed and you don't even know who you need to speak to to get them back.

US cybersecurity chief: Software makers shouldn't lawyer their way out of security responsibilities

As bad as having a monthly fix for security and other issues is...

it's actually one of the better models out there, compared to the obfuscate and/or deny everything that many companies operate.

Microsoft promises smaller Windows 11 updates with UUP – but there's a catch

Small updates?

No, what I want is no reboots of my customers' servers when installing OS updates.

Four top euro carriers will use phone numbers to target ads and annoy Google & Facebook

Re: Thank god it's opt in

Yes, opt-in seems to have an increasing tendency to 'default' to opted-in (whether by tick box or by simply ignoring your choice), thus making it actually an illegal opt-out. Allegedly, of course, and I'm sure it's entirely accidental.

As an aside, having your own domain and registering with every company with a separate email address (actually a forwarding address) <company name>@<your domain> is remarkably effective in controlling miscreants who abuse email in some way or another, although it is more effort to set up each time. You get to know the culprit and to delete the forwarding address.

First Patch Tuesday of the year explodes with in-the-wild exploit fix

Re: A yes monthly patching time again....

Steps 1 & 2 are automated here, step 3 is autopilot.

Addendum based on November patches:

4. Wake up and find lots and lots of things broken and people screaming. Marvel that no-one invoked on-call.

5. Spend the next week with Microsoft trying to fix everything.

More than 4 in 10 PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11

Re: I'm amazed! I really am!

I'm not sure that's the case - expensive though ESU is, it must be a huge pain to support code that's a decade old. Which is not to say they won't happily take your money in the end.

Deluge of of entries to Spamhaus blocklists includes 'various household names'

Re: "my ISP was delivering the service I paid for"

Your premise is really quite ridiculous.

Re: Different strokes

That's not quite correct - my ISP was delivering the service I paid for - my email was being sent in all cases. It was the receiving domain that was not delivering it to the intended recipient if and only if it came from a particular server (not domain) owned by my ISP.

Different strokes

Lots of admins on here defending Spamhaus and saying it's easy to get off the lists, and as a sysadmin (but not responsible for email) I understand that, however as a user I have very much been collateral damage as a result of a single one of my email provider's servers being put on their list due to relatively spurious reasons.

I will not forget the arrogant and unhelpful attitude of Spamhaus at the time. They just did not care about collateral damage and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

Of course, the problem was made immeasurably worse by my Dad's email provider mostly not sending a bounce, or occasionally sending one after 48 hours.

Either way, absolutely nightmare of a problem to troubleshoot as an end user, the problem effectively manifested itself as "random" depending on where my provider's load balancer directed me - to the flagged server, my mail wouldn't get through, or to an unflagged server and my mail would get through.

I don't know how the problem was eventually resolved, but it was months later, well after I had started using another provider just to keep in touch with my Dad.

Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center

now we know how the spooks set up their dead-man's-handle kill switch

Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025

Re: Reciva Radios

I had a very similar experience with my Philips Streamium. I continued to use it for streaming on my home network for a while, before consigning it to history, and learning a lesson about devices that require a service to function, as well as the companies that provide that service.

Don't ditch PowerShell to improve security, say infosec agencies from UK, US, and NZ

Re: Powershell 7.2 improves on 5.1?

You know you can use Visual Studio Code for free, right? Personally I do prefer ISE, but you can run your scripts within Code too...although yes, ISE's tabbed approach is better than Code's window per script.

Powershell 7.2 improves on 5.1?

Hmm, not so sure about that, really. It's newer, but it has some compromises due to portability. If you're setting up a new environment from scratch, then maybe go for it. If you've got a mature environment with lots of scripts then you're likely going to need and want to keep using 5.1.

Also, just using 7.2 isn't enough anyway, you do actually need to disable 5.1 in some way, at least for remote access, otherwise all you're doing is stopping using 5.1 and leaving it open for anyone who wants to use it.

Microsoft slides ads into Windows Insiders' File Explorer

Of course it was a mistake...

....they meant to bypass the free Insider tests and push it straight to the free public test phase.

Germany advises citizens to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Re: Kaspersky has been in the crosshairs for years

Going by the same logic, what we really need is an AV vendor who exposes Russian government exploits, or indeed one that exposes all governments' exploits...

Microsoft patches the patch that broke VPNs, Hyper-V, and left servers in boot loops

Re: Seems like it is time to train a new generation

This one took a little too long though. Patches issued on Tuesday, tested, no problems seen in our environment, updates pushed to next test machines over the weekend. Discover on Monday there's an out-of-band patch that compromises your testing strategy, even if no adverse affects were actually seen.

Locked up: UK's Labour Party data 'rendered inaccessible' on third-party systems after cyber attack

I trust the affected were notified in the proper fashion

All user emails in the To: field, with an Excel of the compromised data attached.

Intel teases 'software-defined silicon' with Linux kernel contribution – and won't say why

Clearly this means...

The boffins at Intel have found a way to emulate a Xeon running on a 286 chip. We have a solution for the silicon chip crisis!

Now, where did I put that old IBM PC?

BOFH: You. Wouldn't. Put. A. Test. Machine. Into. Production. Without. Telling. Us.

and we all know that it finishes with the call being cut at exactly closing time for their hotline (or before if they really don't give a rat's behind).

Docker’s cash conundrum is becoming a bet on a very different future

Re: "Progressive pricing may seem dangerously like socialism"

What are you doing owning a house. Are you some kind of rabid, selfish capitalist?

Windows 11 will roll out from October 5 as Microsoft hypes new hardware

Re: That was fast

I guess we'll really know what's what when/if MS release Windows 10 21H2. Maintaining different (even if closely related) codebases goes against everything MS has done in recent years, so it would make sense for Windows 10 and Windows 11 to be really close. Alternatively, expect Windows 10 to get little more than lip-service support in future.

Microsoft does and doesn't want you to know it won't stop you manually installing Windows 11 on older PCs

Old laptop? What old laptop?

I'm fairly ambivalent about upgrading to Windows 11, though I have it running on a VM out of idle curiousity. But I was quite surprised to find from the compatibility list that my 3 year old laptop with a Ryzen 5 2500U, where said VM is running, wasn't even supported. New laptop? Don't think so, but I might eventually install Windows 11 on it, I suppose.

Re: 99.8%, statistically significant?

Well, even basic maths says that Windows 11 is 10% better than Windows 10.

Sysadmins: Why not simply verify there's no backdoor in every program you install, and thus avoid any cyber-drama?

I feel so foolish

It seems so obvious after reading the report, as a sysadmin I should just read the code of all the (in many cases closed-source) software running in the data centre. Why didn't I think of it before? Then we'd be safe.

Excuse me, what just happened? Resilience is tough when your failure is due to a 'sequence of events that was almost impossible to foresee'

Re: What? Only four questions?

Documentation? I think I recognise this word from the last century when as a tester my developer boss told me "the code is the documentation".

Fastly 'fesses up to breaking the internet with an 'an undiscovered software bug' triggered by a customer

I'd add another step - we will work on limiting the scope of any changes to cause such a widespread issue. A customer should maximum only be able to affect their own systems.

Beijing twirls ban-hammer at 84 more apps it says need to stop slurping excess data

Remind you of anyone?

Google and CCP seem to have the same attitude to data. Has anyone seen them both in the same place at the same time?

Samsung stops providing security updates to the Galaxy S8 at grand old age of four years

Re: "For an Android"

I suspect we have a different definition of "function", but fair enough.

So what if I pay peanuts for my home broadband? I demand you fix it NOW!

Re: Feature suggestion.

Why only when the connection drops? It'd be quite useful when the connection is active too.

GCHQ boss warns China can rewrite 'the global operating system' in its own authoritarian image

Global operating system

So does he consider the global operating system Windows or Linux? Discuss here without invective or religious fervour.

Would be so cool if everyone normalized these pesky data leaks, says data-leaking Facebook in leaked memo

Re: normalise what exactly?

The point is that the data likely did not come from scraping. Look at the amount of it.

As an aside, Facebook have my number even though I did not give it to them. I assume they have it from one or more of my friends and acquaintances sharing their contacts. The only reason I know that Facebook have the number is because a couple of years ago their website asked me to confirm that it was my number, which I did not.

Google patches WebView component to end unexpected Android crash fest

Re: This is pretty nasty

If you set Play Store not to auto-update, at least you can make it OTHER users job to test, not yours. But this is probably not advisable for non-technical users.

Re: Yep

Same for me, but luckily I was only notified after the fix was available. Although the phone was set to auto-update apps, the staggered nature of Play Store meant it hadn't been installed yet. So for a change I was the hero for fixing it.

Re: WebView, a system component linked to Chrome

Right, System WebView is a subset of Chrome, and is designed primarily for handsets that do not have Chrome installed.

OK, Google: Unshackled from Windows, Edge team is free to follow where Chromium leads

Re: Starting to see sites that only work right with Chrome

No, these days you can test their website for them and find out whether it only works with Chromium.

Don't be a fool, cover your tool: How IBM's mighty XT keyboard was felled by toxic atmosphere of the '80s

Re: Useful trick for ballpoint pen marks.

Reminds my of when my Dad walked into Tandy (Radio Shack):

"Got any isopropyl alcohol?"

"Na, sorry, don't do that"

"Got any tape head cleaning fluid?"

"Yeah, right over here...."

UK government's cloud ERP strategy seems to be in stasis following top civil servant's move to COVID-19 task force

Re: "it's no good saying, once you get on the cloud, it's all going to be OK"

He's not a politician, he's a civil servant, although they are not known for their grasp on reality either, particularly when it comes to IT projects.

Microsoft claims to have 200 million education users as it pushes new hardware and updated Classroom Pen

Using Android here

After very short notice from the school about using Teams for the new school term, I had my daughter up and running on an older 7" Android tablet in no time, with her declaring it "easy". She actually seems to enjoy doing tasks on it, though the missus can't wait until the schools open up again.

As such, I don't understand the assertion that Windows 10 is Microsoft's entry for Teams. I'm sure they don't mind selling it, but they've not exactly made it hard to avoid.

Dratted 'housekeeping', eh? 150k+ records deleted off UK’s Police National Computer database

Re: Backups - Not the answer

"The problem with having been a commercial pilot is that (for the most part) we don't tend to have those moments."

This line reassured me that I am in good hands when flying.

"Typical reaction is more like "OK, this will be interesting".

This line dashed my hopes and instructed me that pilots simply have a different vocabulary to IT.

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

Re: Fluorescents...

"Guess what always goes wrong first on any Austin Rover / Rover Group car..."

Absolutely everything and anything?

Another piece comes to .NET Core: Microsoft will keep the runtime patched automatically

Re: .NET 5 doesn't run on Windows 7 ... unless ...

Why would you expect a new framework to be supported on an already-deprecated OS?

WSL2 is so last year: Linux compatibility layer backported to older Windows 10 versions

1909 holdout?

Not holding out, 1909 is still the latest available version for my laptop.

AI assistants work perfectly in the UK – unless you're from Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, Birmingham, Belfast...

The BBC are releasing their own

On twatter I saw that the BBC are releasing their own AI assistant, with a regional accent. Further delving showed that it's Cortana-based, so no doubt there will be little change to the accent recognition issue.