Posts by fluffymitten

Google Timeline location purge causes collateral damage

It used to be useful...

I liked Timeline a lot but have noticed features and usability eroding. Used to be able to click on a location and see all the visits you had there, which was very helpful when recommending bars/restaurants.

I made sure data was set to never delete and enabled the back up option when accepting my fate to have the info stored on my phone. I have noticed, since then, that the quality of information on New Timeline is awful. The logic it seems to use when you update missing / incomplete data is bonkers. I keep submitting feedback but I know it just gets binned. I suspect I'm going to just end up turning the feature off if improvements can't be made.

WhatsApp may expose the OS you use to run it – which could expose you to crooks

I bailed on WhatsApp as soon as Meta took over. Moved to Signal and chuck them a fiver a month for their troubles.I had already exited from Facebook some time prior.

My partner moved with me and dragged most of his family and friends too. A few of my friends came over too and those that didn't are contactable via other means.

Sadly, I have been unsuccessful in getting off Instagram, which is probably much, much worse than WhatsApp. It's a shame that no-one uses Vero. Or, should I say, no-one I know uses Vero.

Transport for London confirms 5,000 users' bank data exposed, pulls large chunks of IT infra offline

You'd rather they say data has been stolen but they don't know what or where from? They have to notify ICO within 72h and it makes sense at that point to also make a public holding statement while they work out what's happened. It's not impossible to believe that statement was true at the time it was made.

I think people can be too quick to claim malicious intent from a holding statement, especially when the complexity of systems mean that tracing the breach and its impacts means answers won't be forthcoming quickly.

I think they have done a fairly decent job of communicating so far when you compare other organisations' responses to similar events.

Microsoft exec warns of business functions being sacrificed on the altar of AI

There are some fantastic AI developments in the medical space but using it to replace clippy is always going to be fraught with danger.

Sounds like your typical gambling adage - don't gamble more than you're prepared to lose

Microsoft partners beware: Action Pack to be retired in 2025

>> Office licences via 365 Business Premium - means a cut in storage from 5TB to 1TB per account.

Eek, that's annoying. Will have to check the small print further. I too was thinking that 'Launch' would be good enough for what I use.

Down and out: Barclays Bank takes unplanned digital detox, customers not invited

Re: Customers of the bank, whose values include "Excellence" and "Service"...

Lloyds do it to.

Nationwide, on the other hand, can't even show what's coming out of my account the next day (which Lloyds, HSBC and Monzo do - probably others but I don't have experience of them). But they can tell me the total of the next day transactions by SMS if they're going to take me into my overdraft!

I like Monzo but still have that nagging kernel of doubt that stops me making the full switch. I mainly use it for holiday spending.

Good news for UK tech contractors as govt repeals IR35 tax rules

Re: Good news and a triumph for common sense

Some clients know they need a permanent staff member, or ought to take someone on a FTC for a long term project, but they don't want to report an increased headcount, as that makes the company look inefficient. Taking on a contractor solves the headcount issue along with the pesky trouble of pensions and employers NI (amongst other costs).

I completely agree that the budget cycle of many companies is just bonkers and they don't know from one month to the next what they have and what they need. One of my clients put me on a rolling 1 month contract because they didn't know when the money would run out so I'd have the same conversation every two weeks about whether they still needed me or not. Granted, that's a good outside indicator as they couldn't get away with that for a permanent staff member, but it was damn annoying at the time.

FYI: If the latest Windows 11 really wants to use Edge, it will use Edge no matter what

As an aside...

Why does Outlook insist on opening IE11 if you choose 'View in Browser' for an email?

I quite often use that feature to save a PDF of an emailed receipt without all the header carp and it just vexes me a little each time that the application can't either call the default browser or, at least, a more modern one.

Maybe I'm the last person to the use the feature and MS are waiting for me to die.

'Nobody in their right mind would build a naval base here today': Navigating in and out of Devonport

Very much enjoying the Boatnotes II series - thank you team!

Google staff who work from home might see pay cut under corporate policy – reports

Re: London weighting

Officially London weighting is only for public sector workers (doctors/nurses, police, teachers, civil servants, fire brigade, etc) to encourage them to live within the Greater London area, closer to where they work.

This is quite an interesting explanation, focussed on teaching:

https://teachlambeth.com/london-weighting-explained/

Some private companies have also implemented something similar in their pay scales and are likely to have their own rules and scales of wages uplift depending on what they're trying to achieve.

'Login infrastructure issue' blamed as sustained Xero outage threatens payrolls

Just one thing...

My only gripe was that there was no indication on the log in page that there was an issue. So you get the message that your login details are incorrect and you wonder how and whether your account has been hacked. It would have been useful to have something on the log in page saying there's an issue, please click this link to the status page for more info.

Brit MPs and campaigners come together to oppose COVID status certificates as 'divisive and discriminatory'

Call for evidence

It's a shame the call for evidence closed a month ago (it was only open for two weeks). I must have missed the comms from HMG inviting me to offer my tuppence worth.

Re: Brit MPs ?

"Next the bureaucrats will be demanding I carry some proof that I can drive or fly a plane"

Now that is a shocking limitation on my civil liberties! I've been drving since before there were cars, I'll have you know, and no fly-by-night whippersnapper is going to tell me I need a bit of paper to continue to do so.

Harrumph

:D

IT workers join elite sports stars, fat cat biz execs, celebs and posties for special treatment under England's COVID-19 travel isolation rules

That section quoted around IT workers isn't new. It was there from the start.

The new section is about directors bringing in new business and sports persons etc.

Fancy that: Hacking airliner systems doesn't make them magically fall out of the sky

The first paragraph mentions the pilots' actions could cost airlines lots of money but then doesn't fully reference how any of the action taken would result in that. I suspect the goarounds is what they're referring to, which implies the author of the article / study thinks it's safer to continue with an approach where an alarm is triggered rather than going around to take time to check systems, etc. It's that cost first attitude that results in things like the Max and I would not want to see any pilot penalised for taking a safety first approach.

Over a thousand electronic gizmos went missing from London councils last year

Back in 2005 I was contracting at a local council and helped out with a county-wide equipment audit. Very interesting to discover that many staffs believed the equipment the council supplied belonged to them so they took it home!

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

Retention policy?

In some industries, especially regulated ones, there is a retention policy so that even if something is deleted from the users' perspective, it's still retrievable by and admin. Shouldn't be used as a backup / restore but if the emails were that important, the company should have had such a policy in place.

Google forks out $2.1bn for Fitbit – and promises not to exploit all that delicious health data to sling ads (honest)

Re: company making WiFi connected pacemakers

Yes there are WiFi connected pace makers! My brother has one (it's a combined pace maker/defibrillator). It picks up WiFi to upload data. During my brother's convalescence, he used to take a walk each day to his local Costa Coffee and his consultant could see the connection details and location in the data uploaded. He did also get a couple of calls checking up on him after some worrying data got uploaded as he was being closely monitored for months after installation.

Downside is the WiFi use halves the lifetime of the battery so, now he's largely recovered, that feature has been switched off and the data are downloaded when he goes for a checkup.

Microsoft welcomes ancient Project app to the 365 family, meaning bleak future for on-prem

Re: Plan 9?

I do believe the learned poster is referring to this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_User_Space