Posts by parlei

Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

Example time. Almost all readers here are probably ignorant regarding the details of splicing wire rope: most are probably unaware of the fact that it can be done, and is routinely done for some use cases. Does that make them stupid? I'd say no.

I would start to question how someone managed to avoid knowing things they should have needed in order to go through daily life or do their job, like a parent who have no idea of how to change a diaper, Exactly how an lawyer, who should have written a large number of documents while at law school, managed to avoid understsanding italics is left as an open question.

Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager

Re: "46-year-old [Gen-X] IT manager"

Well, some of us have a few letters more left (Å, Ä & Ö in Swedish), but one could always expand into e.g. Greek, runes, or tengwar.

Headteacher had the most guessable username-password combo you could imagine

Re: No Imagination ?

I, being of devious mind and paranoid disposition, might have had such a password sticker on the underside of my keyboard. It would of course mainly be used to trace the times of any unathorized login attempts, not actually do anything.

Well, there is allways honeypots...

Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to see whose agents can go rogue harder

Re: Oh dear...

May the swinging dicks of of competing AI-clowns meet the sharp knives of sanity.

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

"Mylongpassword-1" is a strong password, but "randomdklsjfsgdsfhjtdsdjfdkeypressesmcvadsf" is not...

Attention, gamers: The FAA wants YOU to be an air traffic controller

Do you really want en employer who is so bad at handling money that they can not pay salaries for 1-4 months?

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

Re: Comparing fruits

I'm much more concerned about my children deciding to follow people in the Manosphere than them looking at boobs (or even vaginas/penii). One my get then an unrealistic idea of MOTAS anatomy, while the other may cause them to become antisocial menances to society.

Study confirms experience beats youthful enthusiasm

Re: Experience includes institutional knowledge

Well, soon LLM will write the documentation. What could go wrong?

British military to get legal OK to swat drones near bases

Re: be careful what you wish for

One of the problems is that what goes up must come down.

As we have seen in Ukraine it is possible to hit small, nearby and slow drones with normal military rifles, in particular of some sort of round with multiple projectiles is used (like a shotgun shell, but for rifles). But in a closely populated area and no shooting war going on this might be frowned upon.

Eurail passengers taken for a ride as data breach spills passports, bank details

Re: Why Did Eurail Even *Have* Peoples' Health Data?!

Almost certainly this is reasonable needs: wheel-chair or other mobility accomodation, possibly dietary needs for booked meals (e.g. gluten intolerance). Possibly vaccination status, if this is needed for travel anywhere inside the EU (the old Covid vaccination certificates?).

But I can be wrong.

Moon hotel startup hopes you get lunar lunacy, drop $1M deposit for 2032 stay

Better then the NoAirBnB we expect if they try...

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

Re: Vendors...

Currently I have one such vendor on my List. No, there is no reason your install suite needs to trigger our malware scans. Except incompetence on your part, but I hesitate to label that as a *valid* reason.

Re: Lost for words

There are almost certainly rules with the force of law that would make this a serious matter. Medical records are (a) sacrosanct and (b) not to be open to outsiders to read.

Pentagon and soldiers let too many secrets slip on social networks, watchdog says

Re: Let's face it..

We will perhaps never know (or care, mostly not care).

But I have noticed that all his operations code names sound like (oversized) dildo product names, or possibly male porn star screen names.

AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay

Re: Unions

A union is a bit like a bicycle helmet or the seat belt in a car. A totally unnecessary encumbrance that costs you money. Until it saves you from getting hurt. Think of it like insurance, where you hope you will never need it.

Yes, the union is other things as well, since it levels the playing field when it comes to negotiations.

In '90s Microsoft, you either shipped code or shipped out

In a similar vein I wish Excel would refuse to show percentages from numbers not totaling more than 100. I have seen percentages from sets of 3 ("over 30% of the group is whatever!")

Mad man builds chatbot in Minecraft with redstone, Python, and patience

And someone should get a price for best ad placement:

"So don't give up your favorite chatbot for CraftGPT. Or do – this one's probably just as practically useful and reliable as the rest. ®

Sponsored: Generative AI on Google Cloud. Get started for free."

Tile trackers are a stalker's dream, say Georgia Tech researchers

Re: News flash: Tracking device tracks things

"The purpose of these devices is to track things you stick them to. And then you're surprised they can be tracked?"

I have a key to my apartment, to make it possible to open the front door. Why am I surprised that anyone who cares to can unlock my front door with relative ease?

Google is very sorry for pulling down COVID misinfo and pledges never to use outside fact-checkers

Re: xTube?

Besides: "numerous studies on the relationship between the price of cheddar cheese and wind-patterns around Svalbard" does not actually tell you that any of them found any causative relationship, or even any correlation.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Re: Message to CEOs : it's hopeless

That sound like a truly perverted choice!

Re: Message to CEOs : it's hopeless

I work in an environment where most people have to be physically present[0]. Personally I could do 50-70% of my job remotely. Bosses are reluctant. Partially due to the usual control issues, but also the convenience of me being on hand for things that come up that needs hand on. On the other hand I can be at the POW[1] in 15-20 minutes should the need arise. On the third hand some of the people who do need to be there for their job might feel that it is unfair if I can work in my undies from home while they have to wear clothes and be at work. On the fourth hand setting the precedent that if your day does not require your physical presence then you can work form home would benefit some of them as well, just more infrequently.

[0] No matter how much we automate people still have to be on hand to wrangle the automation when it fails.

[1] Place Of Work

Google stuffs Chrome full of AI features whether you like it or not

Re: Goodbye chrome

Browser of last resort, when the site you need/want will not work with anything else

Microserfs ordered back to the office, given 10 days to appeal

Re: "How we work has forever changed"

Unfortunately the affected party, be it a woman or member of a minority, is far too often not really in a position to "cause bad feelings".

People like me, a middle aged white cis-man, are often in the position to ask someone to politely explain such a "joke". And it is actually our duty as a sensible human being to do so.

Sometimes we are even in the position to tell "Greg" that (a) that it was not funny and (b) that it was actually quite offensive. And it is with great satisfaction when I get a chance to do so.

Forget disappearing messages – now Signal will store 100MB of them for you for free

Well, to be fair dissapearing messages was always on the honor system: one could screengrab och even just take a photo of the screen.

And 45 days is reasonable for most people in the use case given (but I can see plenty of cases where it will not be sufficient), and it saves them from becoming a permanent repository of everyones secrets (and "secrets").

BOFH: Deepfake or just an idiot? We'll need an audit to confirm

Re: Very interesting.

One school I worked for did the 6 week password change routione[1]. Unless you changed your password just before going on vaccation it was expired and locked when you returned after summer...

[1] The whole dance: number, special upper and lower, not resuse the last 17 passwords..

German team warns ChatGPT is changing how you talk

Re: Or is it more people writing lecture notes with ChatGPT?

I suspect that they choose lectures because at least a human said that, as opposed to text that may never have been seen by a human before it is published. Recording and analysing different types of everyday conversations and analysing that would be (1) much much harder and (b) yield much more interesting results.

Ex-US soldier who Googled 'can hacking be treason' pleads guilty to extortion

The quality of Evil Hackers have gone down even further. In my days...

Proof that either hacking (at that level) is no longer very intelligent people doing very difficult things OR that specalized knowledge in one field does not transfer to other fields. Or that 21 year old males are not actually ready to do important things

Based on a youth reading decent-to-good spy thrillers In would never have occured to me to puiblicly search for such things if I was in that situation.

BOFH: Peeling back the layers of the magic banana industrial complex

For radiation dose?

Remembering when NASA stuck a Space Shuttle on top of a Boeing 747

Re: Dear Santa...

I actually kind of miss my old Mecanno set. That was fun to build things with.

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Re: Whacked Out

Back in the 90's there was a totally insane "plot summary" iof the LotR books, intended to be both (a) entertaining for those in the know and (b) perhaps luring lazy kids into copying it into their book report. Now we have invented an automated systerm that could end up doing that for all books, even all knowledge.

Microsoft rated this bug as low exploitability. Miscreants weaponized it in just 8 days

Yes. Is anyone here even the slightest surprised?

Back when "all" of them was reading random love letters or running the AnnaKournikova-worm[1] in hopes of god-knows-what anyone who thought there was any limit to the "will someone fall forn this?" should have handed in their BOFH-card.

[1] For a short while i had a screen grab of the vbs-code on the screensaver image rotation...

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

Re: Skills

Rounded iCorners[TM]

Re: I don't see the issue.

I'm waiting for the first Amazon Correctional Facility, convenienty located adjacent next to an Amazon warehouse. They would love being allowed to tase underperforming workers.

One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee

Re: Quite the opposite experience

I work in a hospital: I'm not allowed to use myself as a test query, another real person even less so. There are specially designated test patients, that are guaranteed not to have national ID number that will ever be used for a real person.

And yes, technically I could get fired for checkoing my own records. Even if I in the role of a patient have the right to see those same records.

Re: Deeply nested folders led to a surprise

No, the depicted assets are still the assets of the person depicted

The software UK techies need to protect themselves now Apple's ADP won’t

Re: Security Theatre at best

Apart from disagreeing with your notion I wonder how you/they will prove in court that the fact that the 17th letter in this post is or isn't a wovel is a signaificant message. And the fact that the next to last word in the first sentence was misspelled? Steganography done right is hard to prove, in particular for short messages.

Want to play billionaire for a day? This app lets you rent your own armed goon squad

Re: Why?

Who would win: a Kzin vs a Protector? The risk of the former is that everyone will helpfully try to guide it to the nearby furries convention...

Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it

Re: Scrum

That is easy: just leave a 10m loop of "spare" in on the cable ladder. Or "for building structural reasons the cable had to go up to floor 4 before going back down to floor 2". Stupid: yes. But all metrics will be gamed by someone. Who will then look sucessfull.

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

Re: nullllptr has been core dumped

The interesting thing is: with a tech infrastructure CEOs jumping on the DOGE train, how will that affecct who wants to purchase their products?

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

Re: The deferred resignation offer does not apply to postal service?

Sweden went that path. Split off services as wholly state owned companies -- which had to show a profit, and did not have the pesky rules governing public services -- and then a few years later sell them off their pal the asset stripper VC.

Google takes action after coder reports 'most sophisticated attack I've ever seen'

Re: Scammers with American accents

Duolingo had Navajo...

(No, I don't think it goes all the way to fluency)

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

Re: You know, bad weather can sink bad ships

The problem is that even a non-tanker ship carries quite a bit of fuel oil, all of which will then necessitate an cleanup to limit the environmenta effects. Is there had been a plan for this kind of events there would have been "cable corridors" where one could limit and monitor shipping, but that ship sailed a log time ago. And the Baltic is a busy shipping region[1]

[1] https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/cargo-ships/BALTIC%20SEA%20AIS/ship-traffic-tracker#gotomap

BOFH: How to innosplain your way through an audit

Re: I'm confused!

As part of an, perhaps misguided and overzealous, fire safety initative the elevators was fitted with a Halon release system. Being an uncommon system it has been a bit temperemental...

Musk torches $500B Stargate AI plan, Altman strikes back

No, that's him indicating how deep into nazi crap he is: way over his head

Even modest makeup can thwart facial recognition

Re: "However, gait recognition is becoming quite powerful..."

I wonder how changing between stiffer boots, trainers, "barefoot shoes" (fivefingers?) affects this?

Altman to Musk: Don't go full supervillain – that's so un-American

Re: "I don't think people would tolerate that. I don't think Elon would do it"

Nah, it is just the expected response. You know "Surely you, great, wise and powerfull Lord, would never stoop so low as to act like those vile scum that we both despise, and which act would, in the practially inconcievable event that You would chose such a path, seriously inceonvenience and undermine me, your loyal and ever faitheful servant and worskipper". The only difference is tbat he is not exepect to do a full prostration and kiss Musks feet, and that we try to avoid the more flowery language: the expectation is still there.

Letting chatbots run robots ends as badly as you'd expect

Re: Sex

Just don't say "harder!" repeatedly or you may end up the victim of a penectomy or penetration trauma (etc), depending on your equipment and what you are having it do.

BOFH: Don't threaten us with a good time – ensure it

Insurance is like an airbag or seat belt in a car: I can honestly say that I have never had any use of either. But if I get into a situation where they will be usefull (i.e. accident) I will be very happy have them.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: Leave the clocks alone

It is stockpiled by the EU, to use in an emergency. Or rather it was, until the NPM-fanatics sold the whole stockpile to their mates.

The most common use is to improve high speed trading, bu having an extra second or two to complete the trade.

Ford CEO admits he drives a Chinese electric vehicle and doesn't want to give it up

Re: :)

Plenty of EVs in Norway and northern Sweden. Not yet ideal for long range driving -- infrastructure -- but it is getting there. And for the large number of cars that pretty much never leaves a town: EV is the ideal choice.