Posts by yetanotheraoc

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Where would you like to go today?

Windows Maps definitely needs Copilot. What could go wrong?

NetAdmin learns that wooden chocks, unlike swipe cards, open doors when networks can't

Re: Leg day at the office

"Not wanting to be overheard, I wandered into the service stairs for some privacy. ... I had my phone with me but, unluckily, no service in there."

Extra privacy when you can be neither overheard nor heard.

Re: Testing is essential....

"blame was aimed at us"

At least they are good at something.

Both KDE and GNOME to offer official distros

Re: KDE FTW

I get the impression he has one shirt with 14 sleeves, but the other 12 sleeves don't get in his way.

El Reg existentialism

"Both these projects have laudable goals, and there is nothing to criticize here."

But we won't let that stop us.

Arch Linux installer now slightly less masochistic

Dumbing down or smartening up?

"I'm just vaguely wondering why a TUI or GUI at all?"

It's the installer equivalent of a shell script. The first time you perform a complex set of steps, you research the commands, finding the options that fit your use case, and documenting them. The second time, you work from your document, fine tuning the commands as you go. The third time, you edit your document, adding # and ${} and $() where needed, with #! /bin/sh at the top. Now you at least won't miss a step.

The TUI or GUI donates the benefits of scripting to people who know _next to nothing_ about installing your distro, or indeed any distro. Of course _you_ don't need the hand-holding, but you are not the audience.

"The only tricky bit is if you want to edit the disklabel ..."

Another tricky bit is lack of a Back or Previous function.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: I read through

"PS as a side note, someone earlier suggested sacrificing a bean counter to keep the machine god placated and happy. this does not work."

Did you try again?

We can clone you wholesale: Boffins build ML agents that respond like specific people

"All of these things are coming (especially the sex robots)"

I see what you did there.

AI PCs: 'Something will have to give in 2025, and I think it's pricing'

Re: leaving Windows for a *nix

"I want Sky Sports / Virgin Media."

Sky Now TV box is what you are looking for, I believe. Then it won't matter what OS is on your home computer.

Techie left 'For support, contact me' sign on a server. Twenty years later, someone did

Pluses and minuses

They didn't need to find your documentation, they just needed to try the default passwords. And of course without the documentation, they could blame you for the passwords not having been changed.

Re: Passwords

"35+ years on the clock"

That's some serious uptime!

iOS 18 added secret and smart security feature that reboots iThings after three days

Mouse-move

You need the equivalent of a cron job on the device that undertakes some activity once every 24 hours and resets the timer. Is there an App for that?

Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework

Re: What Kind of Illogical Idiot ...

Probably the panic referred to was due to being unable to complete their homework on time.

AI: I don't understand the questions.

Grad student: Please just tell me the answers. I really need them.

AI: Feck off.

Grad student: No, no, nooooooo! (sobs)

Re: Are we being fair to the AI ?

"Who gets to decide"

The AI has already decided.

Microsoft Exchange update fixes security flaws, breaks other stuff

Re: Duh

"enlighten me on what I missing"

If you don't want another stroke, best avoid Microsoft entirely.

Re: Is this stuff even newsworthy any more?

In some places, the weather is the news.

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Re: A Piece of String

It's from the Psychologic Manual of Design -- If the original machine had arrived new with a piece of string hanging from out of the front, the operator would have refused to use it. But because her own engineers had devised it, she thought it was brilliant.

Microsoft Power Pages misconfigurations exposing sensitive data

Security is hard, almost as hard as Microsoft docs

The Reg article's link to security roles "Security roles and privileges", https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/admin/security-roles-privileges , doesn't have any information on the Power Pages roles discussed, "anonymous users" and "authenticated users". That link is for Power Platform, and Power Platform is apparently not the same as Power Pages.

From The Reg article: `The problem is that many companies treat the "authenticated user" role as belonging to someone inside the organization and grant permissions accordingly – even for outsiders who register for their websites.`

I wonder where they got that idea? I found a link for Dynamics 365 "Secure your Power Pages", which does discuss those two roles, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/guidance/implementation-guide/security-strategy-product-portals , wherein we can read the next gem of a first paragraph. It doesn't explicitly state that authenticated users are internal, but mightily implies it.

From Microsoft: `Power Pages let internal and external users access Dataverse data through external-facing websites. You can expose your data to anyone—that is, to anonymous users—or only to authenticated users. For example, you can create a landing page or a home page that anyone can see, or a page that's only for users in your organization. To secure your Power Pages sites, you need to use authentication and authorization.`

Maybe that's not the link most low code users would find? I found a link for Power Pages "Power Pages security",

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-pages/security/power-pages-security ,

From Microsoft: `Authenticated users **can be** (emphasis added) assigned web roles that provide specific access to information on the site. ... Web roles allow users to perform special actions or access protected content and data on the site. Web roles link to users, table permissions, and page permissions. Because users can be assigned multiple web roles, they can get cumulative access to site resources.`

In the unix www, "anonymous users" and "authenticated users" means roughly the same as how Microsoft intends it. "Authenticated users" doesn't mean all records, it means access is controlled by work **already done**, by a different admin, when the account was previously created. That's a missing step in Microsoft's implementation, and expecting low code users and managers to understand the implications of umask 000 is a bit much (pun intended), when their primary goal is simply to "make it work".

Anyhow, I didn't see any mention of Web roles in The Reg article? A quick scan of "Power Pages security" with the "what will my users think of this" cap on and I conclude: They will run away screaming! From bitter experience with SharePoint, business users and access controls don't mix. This is where I set up a meeting with my boss and they "decide" to let me set perms on the default Web role, assign the employees to a new team Web role, and create a process for my boss to switch people between the roles. Or would do, but wiser heads have prevailed and there are specially trained (thus oxymoronic) low code teams who implement all the details on behalf of the business teams.

The sad tale of the Alpha massacre

The moral of the story

Never miss an opportunity to call QA TOOLS.

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

tldr;

Go, too, considered harmful.

Python dethrones JavaScript as the most-used language on GitHub

Re: Embrace, extend, empower!

Some years back I was making a choice of new scripting language. The candidates were python, php, and ruby. I chose the one that no longer appears in the top 10. :(

Neologism

All the fuss about Rust := fust. :)

Sorry, couldn't resist the joke. But seriously, what makes Rust good is what makes it hard. and this will always limit its growth on popularity surveys. The corollary is Rust developers as a rule are pretty sharp. Not a fan of the language though. (a) I'm no longer sharp enough to put in the effort. (b) Anyway the problems Rust solves are not my problems.

Polish radio station ditches DJs, journalists for AI-generated college kids

plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

"it's only the gobshitery between tracks that changes"

The gobshitery is freely recycled. I heard the exact same story twice on the car radio, separated by four years listening time and 900 miles of driving distance, supposedly about a spider "yesterday" in some "local" DJ's garden. An LLM trained on all DJ patter could not do worse than that.

Feature phones all the rage as parents try to shield kids from harm

Re: BBC News today: Smartphones: "I feel guilty for not buying my daughter one for school"

Somebody threw away the globe that used to be in the corner. The stand was obviously broken because the globe would spin around if you touched it.

Re: Not Trusting Apps

"F*** off" territory

Personally I can't wait for Web 4.0 interactivity, where we users get a row of buttons at the bottom, like: [Bugger Site Admin] , [Pwn Zuckerberg's PI] , and the final option [Nuke It From Orbit].

// Turn off daydream mode.

Fake reviewers face the wrath of Khan

Beware the Khan!

"and also some planes that actually do work"

You're not allowed to knock the aircraft unless you've actually purchased one.

Developer pockets $2M in savings from going cloud-free

Re: It's not just about scale, it's also...

"somebody else handling the operational complexity"

That's the dream, isn't it? No complexity anywhere, or as Hans says in _Die Hard_: "We'll be sitting on the beach, earning 20%." And as everybody knows, there are no mosquitos in paradise. Whereas in the real world, managing suppliers is just as much work as managing employees. The complexity moves around, but it doesn't go away. This must be true, because if it were possible to outsource all the complexity, then anybody could be in the same business as you. Er, wait, that's what MBAs think already. Never mind, puts hand down.

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

And here it is being modelled.

Equally suitable for catwalk and spacewalk. Could use some feathers, IMHO.

Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

AI is the answer to all questions

"how will they get a job ?"

Remote interview for a work-from-home role, obviously.

Re: School rules

"... two students trying to kill each other? Recommend they all sit down in a circle ..."

More AI nonsense, two students make a line not a circle.

Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July

The other side of the coin

"I'd be very loath to use a law firm that didn't actually realise that a contract is between two parities and isn't valid if both sides haven't agreed to it."

You would be loath, some would be happy.

BBC weather glitch shows 13k mph winds in London, 404℃ in Nottingham

Neptune is jealous

Meanwhile, enquiring minds want to know why the BBC reports wind speeds in mph rather than kph.

Version 7.6 – the 'OpenBSD of Theseus' – released

Re: Firefox isn't allowed to browse the local filesystem

"none of the links worked"

Try creating a Download folder on your microSD card and putting your reference documents there.

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/220400/local-files-revisited-opening-local-html-files-file-path-to-file-in-chrome

Post Office CEO tells inquiry: Leadership was in 'dream world' over Horizon scandal

Re: Nick Read - Mediocre man

"He gives no impression of being the Leader a broken and illegal organisation needs to force change upon it."

Perhaps that's why they wanted him.

Re: Pathetic from Read

The way I read the article, Read _did_ know ahead of time. His complaint was that it wasn't mentioned in the job requirements nor in the hiring interview.

Re: Unrequested comma surplus

"One person makes a YouTube about something and now it's the rule of the world; ..."

The obvious solution here is a YouTube about placing punctuation outside the quotation marks.

Switching customers from Linux to BSD because boring is good

Re: Lost on who?

Lost on _whom_?

Chosen by _whom_ BTW?

Goofy. :)

I find the colors slightly distracting at worst. You can turn them off if you wish. And thanks for the tip about .d suffix, I might find a use for that in future.

Red team hacker on how she 'breaks into buildings and pretends to be the bad guy'

Re: David Avocado Wolfe

New game: "AI or Jellyfish?". As in, who wrote the following nonsense ....

NHS drops another billion on tech in the hope of finally going digital

Re: In house...

"And digital is not a magic solution, as they will eventually find out."

Watch us make the money disappear!

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Implementation detail

"access codes were changed to SIX digits"

Me wonders if they simply prepended "random digit" to the existing five digit codes. Armed with a previously working code, very easy to check.

The empire of C++ strikes back with Safe C++ blueprint

I'm doomed

"any program which uses pointers or (sic) indexes into arrays may well fail to compile"

"or" ? I'm hoping you meant "for" !

Not counting machine language code for lab controllers, just about every program I've ever written uses indexes into arrays.

Telcos scolded for unwanted erection of utility poles in race to wire up Britain

Re: I remember when it was all fields around here...

This cretinous merkin is hoping someone can explain what is an unwanted erection.

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

Hypothetically

"I supposed we'd be just as bad as Musk ..."

You certainly would be just as funny as Musk.

Apple AirPods Pro 2 can be sold as hearing aids, says FDA

Re: What's that?

"there's nothing worth hearing anyway"

He might be interested in some of the things his wife says about him -- out loud, to nobody in particular, because she knows he can't hear it.

"I can't get used to your hearing aids."

Re: Battery Life?

From a pair of CR312 batteries I get about seven days, sometimes eight, assuming "normal use" which is about 12 hours per day *not* using bluetooth. Using bluetooth 4 hours out of the 12 I can get about four days, sometimes only three.

I needed hearing aids for work and paid out-of-pocket for the expensive ones, but they are still going strong seven years later. The over-the-ear type work great, whereas I don't get along so well with earbuds. After surgery on one ear nothing stays in that side.

Double joke alert!! With these Airpods can the bluetooth be disabled? How many recharge cycles before the rechargeable batteries should be replaced?

Muppet broke the datacenter every day, in its own weighty way

Re: No ginger hair involved

Tea Henge.

Rust for Linux maintainer steps down in frustration with 'nontechnical nonsense'

To paraphrase the old joke

Solving the technical part of the problem requires 90% of the effort. Solving the non-technical part requires the other 90%.

Unicoin hints at potential data meddling after G-Suite compromise

Re: Next Gen? Yeah Right

"Are there really that many ... ?"

134 MM world births in 2023, if only 0.4% are muppets, there is indeed one born every minute.