Posts by Guy de Loimbard

At last, a good reason to buy an AI PC: Reining in runaway token bills

Gartner always keen to remain relevant!

How do you solve a problem like Capita?

Re: Oh Hokey Pokey!

With that level of lyrical wizardy one shouldn't need to be A/C, surely it's off to Eurovision for you!

Come on! Reveal one's good self!

That would be good

I hate IR35

Outsourcing

Has long since lost its appeal.

There is so much knowledge and capability being lost, over time, by giving out contracts to the like of Capita.

The alleged savings are nowhere to be seen, not when you factor in delays, or in this case, people not receiving their rightfully due pensions.

UK PLC used to be good at so much stuff, but, unfortunately, successive ministers are increasingly gullible to the sales pitch of "look how much you'll save" from the sales teams of all these outfits.

Technology has it's uses, but bums on seats, doing good things and seeking to improve, without having think about profit, shareholder revenue, or targets, is desperately needed, i.e.an actual job held inhouse, not outsourced, may well help here.

I'm sure there is anecdotal evidence to the contrary, but I can't remember the last time I heard a soundbite extolling the virtues of how awesome an outsourced contract has been and actual benefit the the public purse, or the poor bastards on the receiving end of the shite service being delivered.

Infosec professionals sour on automated pentesting tools

Why did you feel the need to put 'as necessary' where you did?

Because it was necessary.

Square Peg, Round hole

Yet more news that AI isn't the silver bullet for the werewolf.

We've a long way to go before any of this matures into a usable product, IMHO.

All I've been hearing for the last number of cycles around the sun is how AI/ML/Some Algorithm is going to save/destroy/( delete as necessary) humanity/jobs/humans/science/earth/the sun(delete as necessary)

FFS, can we just get on with something that actually makes a difference, instead of yet more news about AI is good/bad(delete as necessary)

Bah humbug - I hate wednesdays!

Malaysia ponders regulating management of IP addresses

Pint for you

Good Sir ==>

Yep, confused sums it up for me!

London cops bring live facial recognition to West End

Tech has its uses

But so does having 700 frontline posts.

Policing has a deterrent effect that is often overlooked.

The whole of the UK and beyond is measuring budgets on how much tech they can get, which may or may not be useful.

Policing can often be seen to be using/trialling leading bleeding edge technologies, but, as it would seem by the lack of "bobby on the beat" boots on the ground, across the UK I hasten to add, the investment in tech appears to be greater than the thought of having actual police officers to respond to events that the tech has detected.

Of course Metropolitan sized police forces may be the outlier, but, in the UK at least, I can't remember the last time I saw a local constable on foot patrolling my locality.

UK.gov warned that digital transformation hype is no substitute for delivery

These numbers always make me

Laugh.

A few things spring to mind:

1. Who dreamt up those numbers?

2. Who is the government trying to convince?

and

3. Anyone remember the numbers of Brexit Savings on the sides of the buses?

4. Also, does the government think Joe public believes any of this spin? (see 2)

Anyway, I'm sure £45 Billion will come in handy to spend on some other vanity project that will never deliver!

Back to you in the Studio!

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Nanny State rules are creeping in

This nonsense is as much about deflecting attention away from the leadership shenanigans in the UK Parliament as anything else.

Default for political parties to start "think of the children" BS when they want you to focus on something else.

I don't think for a minute this idea from UK Gov is based on any sensible research, just the latest soundbite to get spread over the UK press to divert attention from actual issues back in old blighty!!

You know, the ones that actually impact the population....... No? Okay, must be nudes on my device that are driving costs up then yes?

Department of Work and Pensions' answer to AI job fears is a bot to polish your CV

Re: AI Saves so much time!

Agreed Ken!

However, it would appear that the CV has now become the first part of the interview.

As an example I was in "review" for a role I applied for, that review lasted over 2 months and I never spoke to a single human being, then out the blue I got the classic, "Thanks but other candidates blah blah blah".

I've been in business a while and trying to pitch myself based on a CV that demonstrates employment and capability, only to be fobbed off by a machine is somewhat annoying.

I wonder is the CV still relevant in this day and age of algorithms and ML/AI scraping?

Re: Is there any end to this race

Fair enough AC, appreciate your insight here.

How much is UC?

Does DWP seriously think someone can spend 35 hours a week apply for jobs?

Not sure the scatter gun/barn door shovel etc is the best course of action.

I totally agree that people claiming UC should demonstrate efforts to get to work, but there's got to be a better approach surely?

Is there any end to this race

To the bottom?

Seriously, everyone has an app, or an "AI" for this or that.

We are making every stage of job advertising to fulfilment as painful and as soulless as possible, but to what end?

We keep hearing these horror stories of NEETs applying for "thousands" of jobs and getting nowhere.

Half the issue has to be people applying for almost anything because "Apply Now" buttons are easier than actually thinking.

To be fair, it doesn't make a difference what level of role your applying for, because this "AI" shite is ubiquitous and infiltrates all organisations, small and large.

Speaking from my own personal experience too, this isn't just a gripe from my end, it's there and an be evidenced quite easily. Just go apply for a job to experience the joy.

Of course I wait to be corrected by there being some outstanding outlier organisations, but generally it's few and far between.

UK lawmakers call on government to ditch Palantir NHS contract

Palantir....

That's got to be a recipe for disaster.

UK Health Records should be treated as Critical National Infrastructure and as such, have no access to non UK entities.

Netflix wiz creates app to slash AI bills, then open sources it

Re: Project Headroom

"First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin.

Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less.

Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three.

Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.

Five is right out.

Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naught in My sight, shall snuff it.'

Satellite phone dreams orbit reality as direct-to-cell usage set to underwhelm

Solution looking for a problem

I've worked in this space for a number of years, well over a decade to be fair.

Most people who want mobile phone type connectivity in a rural or remote area probably already have a satellite handset, if comms is a serious issue.

Terrestrial operators are looking for another niche and boost, to get sales into areas that are sparsely populated already.

Most indoor users, if that remote, have WiFi calling, assuming the local telco can provide enough bandwidth of course, so satcom not working indoors, whilst obvious, I don't believe is an issue.

If you consider the typical mobile/cell phone user is massively data centric now, what with all the apps on the typical smart phone, then this isn't something that typical SatCom providers will be able to provide at scale, via Satellite.

Unless you can offer 4 or 5G connectivity via Satellite to terrestrial users, then I think you're going to struggle with that slice of the market, if you use the same data that a typical urban user wants.

Is the idea to offer out of urban roaming via Satellite? If so, you'll need to provide more bandwidth so people can use Music Streaming, GNSS Maps etc. All of which start to fall over when presented with fragmented or limited bandwidth.

Election interlopers register 5K+ domains, hope to catch some voting phish

Interesting pivot

But if influencing an election is this easy, you have to wonder about the voter pool surely?

Given US politics is pretty much a two horse race, what side of the coin toss is going to be impacted?

Rogue states are putting AI agents to work on sanctions evasion

Where's the AI evidence?

Bit of a non article in my opinion.

Lot's of "AI could" and "AI may".

I'm a bit agnostic when it comes to AI and cyber crims.

Yet to see the deluge and tidal wave surge of issues caused by AI and ne'r do wells.

The actual published article talks more about good KYC governance than actual AI threats, with a lot of "options" that threat actors could take, but doesn't seem to outline for sure, actual uptake of AI and how it's being deployed, merely hypothetical methods or use cases.

Civil servants to protest outside Capita AGM over pension shambles

FFS......

Is there a weighting applied to government contract awards?

The more shite you are the more likely to win another contract.

Reminds me of the Blackadder goes forth episode where General Melchett is explaining the cunning plan to do exactly the same as the last time! -->

Melchett:

Field Marshal Haig has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.

Blackadder:

Ah. Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy?

Captain Darling:

How could you possibly know that, Blackadder? It's classified information!

Blackadder:

It's the same plan that we used last time and the seventeen times before that.

Melchett:

Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard! Doing precisely what we've done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is, however, one small problem.

Blackadder:

That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds.

Enter into the arena, Capita et al!!

Do we really think throwing them another bone to see if "this time, they may just get it right".

I wonder how many ministers, past and present, have some sort of vested interest in Capita?

Japan’s PM orders cybersecurity review to stop Mythos going full CyberZilla

Finding vulnerabilities is one thing

Understanding the exploitability factor is another.

I get this tool is an eye opener, but some things I've seen,that were declared as emergency patches, often addressed a vulnerability that could only be exploited by physically having access the hardware.

We're in danger of sinking below the waterline with all of this scaremongering!

Anyone else have a view on how to address this?

Britain pays Starlink millions despite Musk's calls to overthrow UK government

Love him or hate him

IMHO, just ignore the ramblings of the pancake smoker and decide whether the service being provided is:

1. Fit for purpose

2. Value for money

Once you've answered those you can decided if the Musk man's random statements really have any bearing on what you've got.

Of course, if you really feel strongly enough, you can vote for the Monster Raving Looney Party and show them, as they have as much chance of seditiously taking over the UK as the Muskman does.

Brit mathematician lets AI agent loose with credit card – cue password leaks, CAPTCHA chaos and more

of course not!

There's only one bastardisation of the English language allowed to be used at any one time!

Queue the request for an accurate well Anglicised LLM version.

UK pensions dept goes shopping for spy-van tech with £2M surveillance tender

Re: Riiiight

Going after small fry.

Well isn't that par for the course? Spend millions, to claw back a few thousand, whilst sweetheart tax deals are being thrown around for all an sundry, if you have the right level of billionaire status of course.

I'm all for reducing fraud on our already horrifically high welfare bill in the UK, but adding another £2 Million to the cost isn't going to help.

Also, too light on the details, I can't imagine you'll be getting a national service for that cost either.

Amazon unveils a Copilot for all your apps

Not a fan then? :)

TBF, I'm not sure what I actually read, just some AI shite needing to mine everything I do!

To your point.... No!

Watch out UK taxpayers: 28,000 HMRC staffers just got an AI copilot

Cue the next headlines

HMRC "AI" Agent persued Winston Churchill's Estate for unpaid taxes, dating back to 1915, relentlessly....

Or, of course, insert your wildest, most absurd reality, and that, is likely what we'll see off the back of this at some point.

"Must be true Compooter sez so!

Now, peasant, sell a kidney for this insane bill we've just dreamt up!

Yours Sincerely,

Mr Colin O'Pilot

(C.O'Pilot- Head of HMRC Collections)"

Stale gov.uk pages are feeding AI overviews old data and Brits are believing it

Shit in.....

Shit out.

AI like this is just fancy searching isn't it.... but being too lazy to go direct and actually look at GOV webpages, so where does the issue lay?

England's school phone ban gets teeth, just in time to bite no one

Noble idea

Love to see how that's going to be policed in England.

Hopefully it will be something really good, like giving parents a day in court and remove some money, as we all know that's the best way to deal with the scourge of phones in School /Sarcasm.

Joking aside, something with the best of intentions, but not sure how this is going to pan out, from policy, implementation and consequence management.

UK told its Big Tech habit is now a national security risk

Re: Slight correction of tense

Love the analogy Watch out for those Greeks.

There's an opportunity, IMHO, that the UK and other could workout what the new world order technology requirements are and start investing, researching and developing, as required.

Re: Slight correction of tense

Indeed!

I echo your thoughts Doctor Syntax.

We have been riding the coat tails of everyone else for far too long in the UK.

The UK, and others, should start to look at the next decade's worth of investment and think where it truly needs to be.

No "Sovereign" Cloud will cut it I'm afraid.

We need to support the minnows and help them, where applicable, get a fair market share.

Also, we need to wean ourselves off all this US centric software that we don't truly need.

Just my opinion of course, or do we need to get a manumission to be free?

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

100 %

You know that's coming next.

Are you really telling me that the hardware and software can't work together?

Remember BezosCorp doesn't have enough money and you must purchase new devices........

NHS Scotland-linked domains caught serving pr0n and dodgy sports streams

FFS.... basics

I've seen WordPress compromised repeatedly.

The moment you hand a CMS to a non technical team, there will be issues.

The maintenance and upkeep is ignored as let's be honest, how much change will a surgery operating under an NHS domain really need?

Do they really need something like Wordpress to tell the octogenarians that don't use the website how to get their prescriptions this week?

Business needs and an impact analysis would help.

I'm all for citizen developers, but once they've mastered security (never going to happen) then give them the keys to the kingdom, or give them a much more secure and watered down access to WP. i.e here's how you update the one page you'll need to tweak.

Microsoft hints at bit bunkers for war zones

Re: LOAC1

Totally.

The rules already exist, but, as you've already pointed out, the application of said rules varies by conflict, country and perceived necessity of outcome

Also, rules are no good without enforcement and potentially repercussions that persuade one to follow them for fear of the consequences.

YMMV on most of this, but no one is following the Law of Armed Conflict explicitly anymore as far as I can see.

UK's grand plan to fuel AI with public data faces uphill battle

Shock horror the AI won't fix

AI really isn't as smart as the smack talk and hype would lead you to believe.

It's got some uses I'll concede, but not the silver bullet that would justify the power and resources it's consuming.

AWS CEO: It's funny when people ask me if AI is overhyped

Re: Talks Pure Shite

Fine words!

I can hear the Scots tone as I read it and laughed as I think it aptly describes this whole movement.

More of the usual "you're not using the AI right", "it's you skeptics that are making it not work" and " Give us more money".

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

Ihren Ausweis, bitte

That is all.

I also note this statement from the article: ""Should the recently announced introduction of ID cards achieve universal coverage....." So it's a done deal is it?

So what is the point in this "consultation" apart from playing some weird theatrical act and of course, relieving the treasury of more taxpayer money.

US foreign router ban criticized for being ‘industrial policy disguised as cybersecurity’

Security Theatre and posturing

Yet more BS from that side of the pond's administration.

Reminds me of some of the bone sound bites you hear from political parties this side of the pond to point score on the run up to what ever local or national elections are coming.

I would like to think, that when this "idea" was started, it was with the best of intentions, but poorly executed, or I'm just really optimistic/naive :)

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

Re: systemd-free distros

It's worth a glance at this draft legislation to begin to understand what the driving forces are for this - below is an excerpt:

SEC. 3. App store obligations.

(a) In general.—Each covered app store provider shall—

(1) at the time an individual creates an account with the covered app store provider—

(A) request age information from the individual; and

(B) verify the individual’s age category using a commercially available method or process that is reasonably designed to ensure accuracy

Microsoft 365 pauses Copilot creep after admins cry foul

Re: I rolled back to Office 2024 in my SOHO environment

I'm using typical office suite, just don't need the subscription, or the one drive, or the drama of AI! :)

I rolled back to Office 2024 in my SOHO environment

Minus 365 and all the "features".

Of note, it's taking me a while to turn off all the 365 features on my Win11 PC, biggest wrestle was to regain control of "My Documents" from One Drive.

On analysis, couldn't believe how much crap I had in one drive.

Reverted to my multi terabyte, on Motherboard SSDs, will now consider some sort of NAS on my home infrastructure as, if I'm honest, I'd become so lazy and was letting a 365 subscription slowly lock me into their infrastructure and billing, but the key trigger was yet another price hike and a realisation that we don't need all these features and an ongoing ever increasing bill and the inevitable AI creep too.

At some point I will get fully onboard with FOSS office software, but baby steps.

Water company wasted $200k on bad answers from an AI model – so built its own slop filtering system

LLM hype-train

Bang on the money!

Nothing quite like the motivator of FOMO on the LLM hype-train!

Alibaba Cloud hikes prices by up to 34%, blames hardware costs and AI demand

Re: Hot to love corporate speak

I'm sure a lot of enterprises will benefit from cloud services, however, I've seen, at least historically, many an IT Department hoodwinked into thinking cloud is the silver bullet for everything and failing at the point of the first new billing cycle, when all the sales discounts are removed.

This is another example of lack of ownership puts you in danger of being price gouged at the whim of the provider.

It has never got anything to do with providing you with better services, just a profit margin increase from the provider.

Europe's cloud minnows tell Brussels to stop big tech 'sovereignty-washing'

Well, if there's one thing I've learned over the last 10 or so years

Is that the EU is getting better at defining regulatory frameworks that appear, at least on the surface, to be well thought out.

Delivery of said regulations and actual policing/compliance checks are another matter all together.

The hyperscalers will see this as a threat and will likely do what they are good at, bluff, bluster, market, obfuscate etc., to maintain dominance.

Also, be wary of any European sovereign provider being bought out by VC/PE.

This will be an ongoing battle, perhaps a worthwhile one, it wouldn't hurt the rest of the planet to be less reliant on North American tech.

Bank built its own threat hunting agent because vendors can’t keep pace with new threats

Surely some attack surface management

Would be well deployed here, if you have that much being flung at your organisation, you'd better be looking at why so much of your shite is online when it doesn't need to be.

Still, it wouldn't be a week on this planet without some article or another broadcasting AI nonsense "AI this and that.....AI was good... AI is coming for you" etcetera.

Read the article, didn't really see the point and also, give some details as to how, not more AI tech bro speak, such as Agentic AI tools.....

Also, this one guy is suggesting he's got more capability, funding and horsepower for a small army of "AI" gurus, than all the security vendors out there? Colour me pink if it's not so!?

EU legal eagle says banks should refund cybercrime victims first, argue later

Good intention perhaps

But the devil will be in the detail for any legal implementation.

It's a very strange area, we are dealing with multiple challenges and issues, not least the one being we've got scammers aplenty who are giving this the broadside approach and then clinging to any mark that seems to be drawn into the scam.

It's an ever moving set of rules and goalposts.

Whilst banks are very much loaded with cash, is it always the banks fault that a scammer has worked on their system to steal funds from a poor unsuspecting victim?

As soon as you put a control in place to deal with something, then the miscreant n'er do well, will work out a method to get around it.

Much like electricity and water, the thief will take the path of least resistance.

Hotpatching goes default in Windows Autopatch whether you like it or not

From the department of "what could possibly go wrong?"

You're not wrong there!!

Understandably most OS owners and operators will be jumping for joy at the prospect of completely stable and no risk patches being auto applied......

As you say What Could Possibly Go Wrong!!!

Dutch cops warn 100 alleged scammers: Turn yourselves in or we tell Grandma

There's a lot to be said

For invoking societal convention.

A lot of these operators carry out these shitty scams, as they believe they will not be caught, but a huge angle on this as the Politie have pointed out, is the fact that they don't expect to be identified.

Shame is a good motivator, assuming one has been brought up in a society with a reasonable moral compass, covering what it believes to be right, or wrong.

I'm sure a wager would come up trumps betting that those societal norms don't cover ripping off your elderly neighbours, or cover off robbing your own grandmother.

Be interesting to see what comes of this deadline from the Nederlandse Politie.

Royal Navy races to arm ships against drone threat

Careful Noodle

You may upset old Johnny Rubber Desk at Whitehall with your wit! :)

Yes, you'd think a war that's now into its fifth year, would have triggered a reaction sooner, however, I suspect the RN have just realised how few ships they have and how long it takes to replace one, particularly if it's been malleted by much cheaper drones....

CIOs say AI adoption is moving faster than they can manage

It doesn't matter

Just make sure there's lots of AI related surveys that tell us something about AI, and specifically, how it is humanities fault for not getting on the bandwagon to pay the techbros.

OpenAI’s Altman says Pentagon set ‘scary precedent’ binning Anthropic

Re: require approval by a human decisionmaker

Spot on Neil Barnes, my thoughts exactly:

"The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control"

Having worked in Policy, this is the biggest get out clause, where "law, regulation, or.... policy requires human control"... how long before the Tangerine Buffoon, or one of his hapless and feckless sidekicks, decides to change, law, regulation or policy.

Jack Dorsey’s fintech outfit Block announces 40% layoffs, blames AI, gets 23% stock bump

Yet another billionaire tech bro

who thinks past performance/luck means they're ace at business and fuck the little people.

Off you go to the welfare office, while I smoke some $100 bills, as I'm that fucking rich.

Now, where's my solid gold thingumy that shows how ACE I am?

C U Next Tuesday!