Posts by Caver_Dave

BOFH: What physics defines as impossible, sales calls a challenge

Re: Sales

Yes, but that includes the walls either side of the too small gateways.

EV charger biz ELECQ zapped by ransomware crooks, customer contact data stolen

Re: #1 reason I haven't bought an EV

I know where you are coming from!

My wife uses our electric car all the time, and when she recently updated her mobile, she transferred across 8 different car charging apps - many of which have pre-loaded credit on them which you can't seem to be able to drain back into your own account.

Yes, we usually charge from solar at home, but some journeys are longer than a single charge.

She wonders why I won't use the car for anything other than short journeys!

I don't even have parking apps - I would rather walk from a carpark that takes cash that spaff my details to all and sundry (and of course parking companies are known to be iffy at the best of times).

Icon - no tin foil hat symbol!

Microsoft's Project Silica promises eternal storage. It can't get there from here

Re: Too much

IMHO the peak of the Internet was 2022 before AI started generating slop based on AI slop.

Server crashes traced to one very literal knee-jerk reaction

Re: "It was the time of Novell networks, RG58 cables, and bulky tower PCs,"

"stretching the female socket" was the punchline of so many networking jokes in the day that are rightly, totally unrepeatable these day.

I designed and built a DSP board and software back in the days when 50MHz was a decent clock speed and was desk testing it before it went into a shielded metal box (for integrating into an F1 Ferrari test rig). I could only get it to work perfectly on a Sunday. Come Monday morning when the company owner came in, it would throw random bus errors. We made a trip around the local industrial site together. It turned out that someone was building unregulated Taxi radios next door and they were the source of the interference. They immediately put up shielding and asked us not to mention the issue. (I think that the company owner also gained a brown envelope to cover my 2 wasted weeks of debugging.)

In my first job I was in charge of repair as well as Hw/Sw development. As an Epson dealer this meant printers as well as computers. There was a particular hinged printer part (I think it was a hinge, but I can't remember exactly) that made a perfect Molly Guard and the company owner and I discussed fitting it to all computers we supplied.

NASA repurposes Mars Helicopter’s ancient Snapdragon SoC to help Perseverance rover navigate

Re: Wonderful

Having work directly or indirectly with the 3 groups, I would say the main difference is not the engineers, but having a defined goal and letting the engineers get on with it without too much top-down interference. Plus timescales and working hours that do not induce 2 year burn out!

Desktop tech sent to prison for an education on strange places to put tattoos

Re: Basic Rule.

I often worked under supervision - to the level that they followed you into the toilets and stood outside the cubicle! (To listen for hidden communications devices being used.)

If anyone doesn't take their responsibility seriously, then they shouldn't be given the responsibility.

Re: Hazing = abuse

Yes, as a caver I am very well aware of the issue. It's why my group always take an extra rope, long enough for the longest pitch in the cave, and other rescue gear. Given them we can always rescue someone incapacitated on the rope - sometimes upwards, mostly downwards. And yes, we do practice this every couple of years, first with a heavy bag (to illustrate issues that might occur) and then a live casualty (you can't really simulate having to climb up the rope and over the casualty - rescues can only happen from above) .

Hazing = abuse

While solving an IT issue I once came across a guy in a -18C cold store in underpants and boots wrapped to a post with pallet wrapping 'cling film'.

I went straight to the Site Manager who said "It's his birthday, they'll cut him out in a few minutes!"

Had they placed something between the unfortunate guy's back and the post then it would not have been so bad, but without he could have suffered permanent harm.

Being an H&S team member at my IT based site in the same group, I went to my Site Manager to report what I had seen.

The Cold Store Site Manager left by 'mutual consent' in a few days.

Yes, I am expecting down ticks. But banter is one thing - physical harm is another!

Healthcare security: Write login details on whiteboard, hope for the best

Re: The Oddest Thing

78 pins on the notice board in my Doctor's waiting room!

Yes, I was there a long time as someone who should have gone to A&E, had gone to the Doctor's, who (a Doctor and a Nurse) then had to attend the patient while they waited for an Ambulance!

When I eventually saw a Nurse she admitted that it was a regular occurrence, as people think (incorrectly) that it avoids some of the wait in the A&E.

Not just medical centres, but I've seen it on a hospital ward as well. When I pointed out that I just walk behind the nurses station and log into their systems using the information on show, I was met with a shrug from the two Nurses. I spoke to one of the Board Members who I know and she said that it was one of the things that she was trying to eradicate, but that maglement were objecting, as it meant that staff would have to log in the ever rotating locums all the time.

At least my Pharmacist wife has to use a Smart Card to get into her medial laptop.

You can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone, says Dutch defense chief

Re: There's a great alternative to the F35

The best alternative IMHO was the Harrier, but the UK sold them off to the US Marines!

Lightening, Concord, Harrier, Vulcan ... the list continues of UK innovation (sometimes with partners) that were well ahead of the curve, but the UK decided to either drop or not continue to develop.

Final step to put new website into production deleted it instead

Re: Rename the directory, we are going to need it later. To delete it.

"Festina lente" make haste slowly

Reviving a CIDCO MailStation – the last Z80 computer

Ah, the memories

I was a developer in a very small team working on the WEB2U internet access device a very long time ago.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166541294575

386 processor (running at 4MHz IIRC), 60% of the time the 1MB RAM was locked for the screen rendering (onto a PAL output), minimal EEPROM.

Amongst all the assembler code, I had to write an ultra efficient (time and space) JavaScript interpreter, (as all the home shopping sites that the box was designed to allow the public to interact with), were just starting to use it.

However, the biggest task was the parent enabled "net nanny". Boxes that came back for repair often had a very 'interesting' list of websites in their history. This list was used to test the "net nanny" by a young lad straight out of university. No emotional support for him, just a comment that he needed to watch out for cramp in his right hand.

I left before the end of the company, but not before the young lad had emigrated to Australia to be with a woman he had met online whilst testing.

AI vastly reduced stress of IPv6 migrations in university experiment

Doing it manually and then with AI

Surely by doing it manually first, you take time to learn all the nuances of the commands and environment.

Then when it comes to the AI prompts, you know all the details already from the manual attempt. This may not account for all of the difference in time between the approaches, but it will account for some. Certainly the AI will be faster at typing the long IPv6 numbers error free.

British Army splashes $86M on AI gear to speed up the battlefield kill chain

Re: I'll be back

AI says all "meat bags" are the enemy. Squadies do as the are told.

Tech support chap invented fake fix for non-problem and watched it spread across the office

Placebo

My wife used to be a community Pharmacist. Her store used to sell placebo tablets (labelled as placebo, not just homeopathic). She used to explain that they had no active ingredients, but people still bought them - and would come back for more saying that they really helped.

Even when you know they are placebo, the power of the mind works in mysterious ways for the good.

(Icon as she used to wear a lab coat at work - another physiological trick that made the customers trust her more.)

Re: Gullible!

I've used the assistants name when saying "thank you" a few times - once last summer in a caving region about 100 miles from home. I forgot my wife was with me and she accused of having an affair as I 'knew' the pretty young assistant's name! (Doubly not amused when I said that I took the accusation that I could have an affair as a compliment!)

Not able to do it too often these days as many shop workers wear name tags. And my super hearing is becoming decidedly less so as I get older!

Smartphones cleared for launch as NASA loosens the rulebook

You don't want Trump phones. Remember - no out gassing!

[Trump = 1950's - 70's common term for breaking wind in the UK]

AI security startup CEO posts a job. Deepfake candidate applies, inner turmoil ensues

Re: Old school

Ooohh! I've received a thumbs down.

Possibly from someone who failed the test.

Possibly from the 50 year old -ish contractor with supposedly 20 years experience of Certification for multiple bodies. My boss went through the usual, general questions and the interviewee did well. When my boss had finished, I asked the guy to compare and contrast 26262 (cars) and DO-178C with respect to [a particular document type] (the names differ, but in general they contain similar enough contents to easily compare for someone who knows their stuff). I was ready to introduce a few pointers to get the guy going, but the BS artist was caught and just sat there like a rabbit in the headlights for 20 seconds or so, and then started loudly sobbing. My boss led him out and I went back to my desk, from where I saw him get in his car. I would have had a little more sympathy for him (his situation might have been dire) except that he was driving a £100K+ car (a lot more than my annual salary!)

Re: Old school

I don't think that some of them had actually written anything since they held a crayon!

I did ask one of them to read what they had written (as I couldn't) and they really struggled.

Yes, even today I do still need to take notes in meetings or when away from your desk.

I never received a poem, but a couple of times received "Car" or "Train and car", which does not provide an interviewer with much to start the conversation.

I did once get given the bus model and number plate along with the timetable from one guy who I did employ. He was on the bus (rather than by car/taxi) because he was "special" [his self description] (well down the spectrum) and arrived for the interview in camouflage trousers, but I spotted straight away that his attention to detail would be perfect in a particular role I had in mind. He was with me for 4 years before sadly life became too much for him :-( [The tears are welling up just thinking about him.]

Old school

As I've said before in this forum.

At a previous secure hardware supplier and a telecoms software supplier before that, I took the interviewees to an interview room and left them with a sharpened pencil and piece of paper and asked them to write about their journey to the interview, and told them that I would be back in 5 minutes.

If they cannot produce something coherent, with sufficient length and skill, then I am not interested. They cannot say that it is not a subject they know, and they cannot say that they did not know how much time they had.

The only problem was HR at the hardware supplier. They complained to my manager that I was demeaning the interviewees by asking them to do this. I showed my manager some of the pages and he backed me up that having qualification xyz on the CV did not mean that you could actually write in person. And this was all well before AI crap.

Techie's one ring brought darkness by shorting a server

Re: No KZZEERT, no activity either

I used to work at a board manufacturer and almost every time someone started up a new board, someone would time their walking behind and clapping their hands to induce the maximum panic reaction.

A remember Dr. B (if you are reading, Hi) turning on a 6U board and it showing no activity on the front of the board. I asked him what the orange LED at the back of the board signified - It was VME backplane power pins shorting and glowing!

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

Re: Analog mobile phones

Nobody gave a sh1t

Analog mobile phones

A long time ago I lived in an area of no analog mobile phone coverage (and still no digital, although I can physically see a mast without using binoculars), but for one week in the month I had to have the out-of-hours support phone and be on-call for the organisation that did much of its warehousing and distribution work over-night.

I informed the person who was imposing this rule that there was no mobile signal and that I would never receive the call, and they just shrugged. So, I accepted the phone (no extra payment unless called into the office) and never had a call in the 2.5 years before I left.

BOFH: Eight pints of a lager and a management breakthrough

Re: "Do Nothing"

Off by one error?

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

I had a note on my desk at a previous company to say that I was willing to lend out tools, but only if the signature in my loan book was made in the borrowers blood!

I also only left one pen on my desk surface, a genuine "Bic" that had been used until all the ink had run out i.e. both parts of the pen body were translucent.

Royal Navy's helicopter drone makes its first autonomous flight

Re: Blimey!

I test flew an auto-gyro a few times when I was a teen (towed on a 50m rope by a car along an abandoned runway near my home), and to be honest I found that easier than steering a barge on the Broads in later life! I suppose it just depends where your natural aptitude lies? My friend (whose father drove the car) just could not get the hang of it and two broken blades later, the job was given to me. My friend did not carry on into 6th form and I soon lost touch, so I do not know if the auto-gyro was ever flown free.

Obviously, the flights would not be allowed now, and we only ever tried when there was thick fog hiding the activity from the roads.

Birmingham pauses Oracle relaunch to get staff on board

Stocktake

Why do they need a stocktake if the requirements are clear and progress is reported accurately - surely they know exactly where they are on the plan and how much has been delivered?

Oh, of course, it is the usual suspects who couldn't plan their way to the corner of the barrel they specified. [pun intended]

Britain goes shopping for a rapid-fire missile to help Ukraine hit back

Reuse

The usual Defence companies could take some of the existing £10M rockets, paint them a different colour, give them a new NATO code, have them available in a few weeks, and if selling them at 'only' £1M, still make a profit!

Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows

Re: I keep wondering...

They ingest their own junk output.

Peak Internet was about 2022, before it was infected with AI generated slop.

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book

I read all the books in our house to my brother before he started school. (Mainly the Ladybird series of books.)

When my brother started infant school (aged 4, in the 1970's) it took nearly 6 months for the teachers to realise that he could not read, but was just regurgitating verbatim, and only then because the teacher turned over two pages of the book and my brother could not see the picture on the opposing page!

This is the same school that taped my left hand to the table if I did not use my right hand for writing! Discovered at the first "parents evening" when my parents said that all the work that was presented was not my work as the writing was different. (Teacher was not sacked!!! As very young children, we did not complain as it seemed to be the "standard punishment".) UK education in the 1960's!

Humongous 52-inch Dell monitor will make you feel like king of the internet with four screens in one

I have a 100cm 4K LG TV that was sold off by Argos as an end of line for £250 3 or 4 years ago (maybe more). Works perfectly well for me as a monitor with multiple HDMI video inputs for the multiple devices. It is at the ergonomically suggested arms length away from my head. Any larger and I would have to keep moving my head. And it just fits on my sit/stand desk lift. Certainly the sweet spot size for me.

HSBC app takes a dim view of sideloaded Bitwarden installations

Re: Don't Use Apps

I'm with you and walked away from a free London Museum that insisted I had to provide my personal details before walking in.

(I then used a little known entrance around the side, where there was no such palaver.)

My wife filled in all her details into the app to get into the main entrance and then had to show its QR code to get past a second layer of checking.

And she has been getting spam ever since requesting donations.

Students bag extended Christmas break after cyber hit on school IT

Progress

The school I attended last century was run by the Headmaster and two secretaries using ledgers. (I know as I regularly visited the Headmaster and got to know the secretaries. The Deputy Head used to walk around with a "Slipper in hand" to deal with any minor infractions of the school rules he witnessed - for instance not walking the corridors in an anti-clockwise direction, or not walking. And to head off some comments regarding Public Schools, this was a newly formed Comprehensive after the 11+ was dropped by the LEA.)

To give context, the BBC micro's in the computing labs were already old when I was at the school.

The school now has no more pupils that when I attended, but I met its "Data Manager" recently who is part of a 5 person IT team.

They have built an extra block of classrooms as 2 of the old classrooms are now used to house all the secretarial (he reckoned about 10) and IT staff.

The "Data Manager" blamed the increased number of SENS students, but it sounds like BS to me.

Maybe someone who works in an education environment can comment and educate me?

LockBit takedown architect gets New Year award from King Charles

Re: Ot's not what you know ...

I once (the one and only time) got invited to a do with the Lord-Lieutenant of my county. He asked who I volunteered for and I said "Representing <charity> but I also volunteer as a Parish Council Chairman, Cave Rescue volunteer, <charity>, ...... and <charity>" and he walked away before I had even finished the list and I couldn't grab him to finish the list as his minder stepped between us.

They are not interested in us plebs who actually do all the good deeds for society!

Re: Civil service gets the bulk

The company I was with at the time was an official sponsor of the London Olympics and got 2 places in the 2012 Olympic baton carrying relay. These were given to the husband, and to the best friend, of the Head of HR, one for organising a local children's football tournament, and the other for not missing much time off work when their heavy drinking and smoking husband had a mini-stroke, that took a week to ostensively recover from and he was back at work within 3 weeks! In the previous few months I had led a 3 day competitions and entertainment weekend for 300+ young people and dealt with my wife having a heart valve replacement in a hospital 70 miles away whilst looking after our 3 young children and still being in work every morning and taking the afternoon as vacation during the operation and immediate recovery, so losing no company time (I couldn't afford to take unpaid leave which was the only other option). I couldn't have achieved it without the support of the villagers taking the 2 children after junior school and one from the daytime child minder, until I got back from each brief visit to the hospital.

So I understand the OP's dismay. I friend (who was a committee member of a charity I was President of) did get to carry (and keep) a baton and so I have at least touched one.

This was the same HR person who would not let me be a company First Aider when I was, at that time, qualified First Aid at Work, qualified Wilderness First Aid, and trained Casualty Care with Cave Rescue.

Re: Civil service gets the bulk

Those 7 Baton carrying nominations for different charities/organisations would have all been looked at separately. There was no amalgamation or counting of nominations, unless they were all related to a single charity.

UK's long-delayed Emergency Services Network eyes satellites for help

Re: Whilst tetra

Yes, I have worked with those on Cave Rescue practices, where the cave entrance was difficult to reach reliably with TETRA. These 'not spots' are very small compared to the vast swathes of the country not covered by the current 4G mobile system.

The company behind the 2G vehicle trackers and alarms I currently have, recently contacted me to offer an 'upgrade' to their new 4G trackers for a 'remarkable price' according to them. I simply asked the tracker company what I should say to my vehicle insurers when they ask me about the 4G coverage and was met with a wall of silence from the tracker company. (4G is not available within 100m or more of my driveway, regardless of the mobile operators maps/lies!) If you want to steal a new vehicle, just take it to a 4G 'not spot' and the tracker is useless!

When 4G does not have good enough coverage to replace 2G, then why are the mobile companies allowed to go to 5G and plan to shut down 2G?

New boss was bad, his attitude was ugly, so the tech team pranked him good

Yes, I was witness to a similar 'jibe' back in the '90s.

I walked into a Cold Store (i.e. -18C) to find some unfortunate in his underpants, shrink-wrapped to a post.

I wasn't sure what to do, but he said the Store Manager would notice and cut him out within the hour.

The post was cold, but the shrink-wrap was apparently keeping him quite warm! I suppose you get used to the cold working in a place like that.

Icon: as he probably could have used that!

DVSA's clapped-out booking system gets bot slapped as new boss rides in

Re: It's a broken system and the fixes are just tinkering

My daughter's instructor was no more successful that we were in booking a test!

We did consider 2 holiday in Scotland to get a test.

Re: Checks

When we were trying to get a retest for my daughter we were locked out for a week for trying too many times one morning. (Funnily enough the same amount of time we tried every morning to get a test for 20 weeks!)

Re: It's been a disgrace for years

My daughter failed her first test after driving down a road with an intermittent (along its length), 24 hour bus lane that had just been opened after approx. 6 months closure. i.e. she had not even been driven down that road during her time learning. She failed for not going into the left hand lane when it was not a bus lane - she would have then had to filter into the solid line of traffic in the right hand lane when it became bus lane again. No regular or local goes in the left hand lane as it is notorious for people getting fines. (It was a pretty spurious reason to fail her - but she did later report the examiner for being a pervert throughout the whole test talking about himself and his pleasures, even when she was supposed to follow the Sat-Nav). It then took 21 weeks to get a booking for a retest that was then nearly 6 months in the future. (We tried from 05:50 to 06:30 every morning.) So nearly a years wait in total.

If you live in the countryside, where there is no public transport and where cycling is dangerous on the narrow, often twisty, (and in my area hilly) country roads with lots of lorry traffic, getting a driving license is essential to getting a job, or going to college, so you can see how desperate people pay desperate amounts.

DSVA have known about this for years. My MP wrote on my behalf to the Transport Minister 10 years ago, when it was not so much of an issue. The answer was just a fob off!

It is ridiculous that nothing has been done about it before.

India unveils a homegrown dual-core 1GHz RISC-V processor, the DHRUV64

Re: Aid

Money was saved, but not as much as expected, as the EU wanted to "bloody the UK's nose" to stop others flying the coup.

And what was saved was immediately incorporated into general funds and so not easily traceable for use in either side of the argument. (The UK Civil Service at its best.)

Personally I'm still torn over the closer ties with Europe. On the general face of things it was all positive, but the bureaucratic juggernaut was just getting out of hand, costing far too much and being far too silly. (Sorry, "silly" is a childish word, but I really can't think of anything better to describe some of their decisions.)

Microsoft research shows chatbots seeping into everyday life

My experience of chatbots ...

.. could be compared with ... arguing with a truculent 3 year old, holding a script of wind-up phrases

Irish Excel whiz sheets all over the competition in Vegas showdown

Re: Congratulations Diarmuid

And used for the wrong reason so many times - writing letters, as a simple database, etc.

Vendor's secret 'fix' made critical app unusable during business hours

Re: Medical systems are a nightmare

My company tried to get us to use a company wide password vault.

One on the early items in the training was how a wonderful feature in the vault allowed you to share passwords.

At which point anyone with sense dropped off the call.

Even the HR droid monitoring the call noticed this drop in attendees and everything has gone quiet on the compulsory use of the tool.

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

Re: Let me just file this...

Seems like a scare story to get more work for him and similar bottom feeding lawyers, conflated with a real issue.