Re: Another grin
The next generation of PFY is now in the pipeline!
By the time they hit the workforce I will have thankfully retired!
Posts by KittenHuffer
1870 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Dec 2018
Page:
BOFH: How our Covid ransomware protocol's Y2K blockchain lowered uptime
Trump wants to grant private cyber firms a license to hack back
DEF CON dingus suspected of trying to take over Delta in-flight Wi-Fi
Demoralized developer's desperate hack came back to haunt him on LinkedIn
Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees
IT department put sticky notes on the laptops to help employees log in
Next step for LINK spacecraft – a software update that won't make things worse. Are you listening, Microsoft?
Voyager 2 cheats the power budget for another year
Wednesday 5th August 2026 16:22 GMT 
Re: The future
It's just a pity that the nearest black hole to earth (currently known) is just over 1,500 light years away, and with Voyager 2 travelling at roughly 55,000km/h, it would take roughly 30 million years to reach it, even if it was heading in the right direction (it's close...ish, but space is really big).
And if there were to be a black hole close enough for it to fall into within 2-300 years then it would be within 10-15% of a light year, and I'd be far more worried about the black hole than Vger!
IT boss left root session open for bring-your-kid-to-work day
Monday 3rd August 2026 12:44 GMT
Re: Groups!
These days I would argue that, cos the company processes where I w**k proliferate far more and far faster than it would be possible for my cow-orkers to fsck up!
I'm sure that there is someone employed by the company to 'do' company processes, and they have to be seen to be doing something ..... so every three months we get given a bunch of additional processes we have to conform to!
NASA's Swift rescue slips to late August as LINK battles its spin
NASA Swift rescue mission spins into trouble during commissioning
British Army finds a new eye in the sky after Watchkeeper woes
Manager showed off his DOS prowess – with a command that wiped data
BOFH: This printer engineer knows every trick in the book
Monday 27th July 2026 09:31 GMT
How much help did the end (l)user actually get? They've still got the same printer that they had at the start. Still got the same squeak as they had at the start.
But the BOFH did get to mess with the printer technician! Sometimes you have to take pleasure where you can, rather than keep hammering away at the same targets all the time!
Variety is the spruce of life!
Support newbie figured out how to avoid all-nighters, and his colleagues hated him for it
Friday 24th July 2026 14:38 GMT
Re: Blind acceptance of "the normal"
I believe it might be 'rind on' bacon that needs to be snipped. The bacon will shrink whilst cooking but the rind tends not to. So the bacon will curl up due to this. Cutting the rind at intervals prevents this.
The bacon I buy is rindless, so doesn't really have this problem.
The gammon rashers that I buy do have the rind on, and do need to be snipped to avoid some serious curling.
LG monitors are using Windows 11 feature to serve adware
Airbus takes flight from AWS. What happens next is critical
Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'
Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem
NASA's Artemis III will need three rockets to do the job Apollo did with one
Law firm insisted on one password to rule them all
Thursday 16th July 2026 07:24 GMT
Re: "In the end, the boss will have the final word"
Just make sure that you've documented their choice, your objections to their choice, and their override of your objections. And then make sure you have a copy of this documentation on hard copy and/or on a your own system.
When they are stupid ... CYA!
LegacyHive: 'Bone-shattering' zero-day from Microsoft's serial tormentor not the haymaker that was promised
World Cup grudge attackers may have scored Argentine FA access via year-old infostealer infection
User crippled a network while trying to learn Nmap
New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation
Clingy Virgin Media fined £28M for refusing to take the hint
Apprentice developer defied orders – then got a job supporting her weird code
Insert token to continue, says AI. Yeah, about that...
Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess
UK school’s network left wide open for invasion, student found
UK government wants 'trusted' news sources promoted above the social media noise
Brazil probes emergency warning system after nationwide rogue alert
Monday 22nd June 2026 14:55 GMT
"Anatel clarifies that the alert messages received by mobile phone users during the early hours of this Saturday were not issued by the competent authorities responsible for the population alert system," it said in a statement.
Notice how they make no mention on whether the alert came from incompetent authorities!
How dare you stop data loss – that's not your job!
Monday 22nd June 2026 08:20 GMT
Many a year ago ....
.... whilst just a junior programmer on a quite substantial contract I noticed that the root directory of the C drive on all of the Windoze machines on people's desks were being shared, seemingly without any significant access rights. I played with a cow-orkers machine to prove to them how easy it was to 'inject' something into their startup folder. And our discussion continued in the smoke room (disgusting habit), not thinking about those sat around us. The PA of one of our bosses picked up on it, discussed it with their boss and our boss, and I was asked to put something together explaining what I saw as the issue. Which in my naivety I did.
This went up the chain of command, and across to IT, before coming back as a nastily worded statement that there was no issue and that I had been incorrect in what I had discovered. I noticed within a week that suddenly (and silently) the 'openness' of the C share disappeared, and that over the following months I got very short shrift from the IT department.
The lesson learnt being to not expect people to thank you for pointing out potential problems if they can in any way interpret that to mean they've made a mistake.