Posts by 43300

Machine learning saves £4.4M in UK.gov work and pensions fraud detection

"Nah, who am I'm kidding?! Of course they will accuse legitimate users of fraud."

And meanwhile, how many actual fraudsters will they miss?

Windows 11 tiptoes further into dark mode with new dialogs

Re: Launch admin MMC's, you get blinded by the white

They no longer have any interest in on-prem server admin tools!

Boris Johnson confesses: He's fallen for ChatGPT

Re: Question

I assumed that most were offloaded to discount bookshops who sell them at 99p (or rather, try to sell them at 99p)?

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

Re: My nerdy formner CEO offered me a choice ...

If your company's PCs aren't lasting at least five years then they must be buying crap! Business-grade laptops (Dell Latitude, Lenovo Thinpad, etc) easily last longer than that unless severely misused. They are also generally much easier to repair than Macs.

Healthcare lags in Windows 11 upgrades – and lives may depend on it

But are these devices standalone or connected to a network / the internet?

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide

Re: England & Wales is not Britain

Well, London and the home counties anyway! Wales and The North are only of any interest to them at election time. The South-West is where they have a holiday home, but other than that it's of no interest (again, except for at election time).

Microsoft agrees to 11th hour Win 10 end of life concessions

Re: Pissed

8th and 10th gen are compatible with W11. It's 7th and earlier which isn't (although there are workarounds).

Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates

Indeed. Support normally lasts for a couple of years after a version is replaced, i.e. they support the three most recent versions of MacOS.

Some of them are. Some are more minor (probably equivalent to a service pack). It appears that W11 25H2 will be the latter.

Boffins fool a self-driving car by putting mirrors on traffic cones

Re: Message from Elon Musk, CEO Tesla

Possibly a bit like commercially-viable nuclear fusion? always 10 years away!

Microsoft Surface 7 laptop: Nice hardware, shame about the OS

Dell does ARM and X64 versions of their XPS 13, and I notice that the price difference between the two has been getting larger for a while (the ARM one is cheaper). This rather demonstrates the relative popularity!

Data destruction done wrong could cost your company millions

Re: What if the SSD or Motherboard has failed?

Only 2.5" ones generally have glass platters, in my experience. 3.5" ones usually have what appears to be some sort of alloy (which can be cut into pieces with a decent pair of bolt cutters!

Microsoft readies Windows 11 25H2 while Windows 10 circles the drain

Most of the crap can generally be removed with Powershell commands.

Microsoft gives in to Chromebook bullies and drops Windows 11 SE

"Microsoft does not support OS upgrades or switches on the Surface SE."

But can it be done anyway? i.e. clean install of W11 Pro? I've never had cause to play with one of these devices so not clear on how hard they have locked them down.

Tested: Microsoft Recall can still capture credit cards and passwords, a treasure trove for crooks

... Yet ...

I've not found Server 2025 to be notably more buggy than 2022.

Re: GPO

As regards the home version, the template will set a registry key so if someone knows what that is (anyone?) it should be possible to do it manually on the home version.

Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

In the case of cars, they are buying a product. If it was the same with computers you would be buying a computer with your OS of choice installed - and most laptop manufacturers offer few or no Linux options, and those which exist are not directed and the non-specialist channel.

An equivalent with cars would be if you were asked what engine management system you wanted on the car, and you would need to install it yourself in many cases.

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

So where are they storing all the files used with Libre Office? Local fileservers? Denmark-based (and owned) cloudy services? Or a cloudy offering from Microsoft or one of the other big US cloudy providers?

Apple goes glass whole as it pours new UI everywhere

Re: So a bit like Vista then?

Only some Intel Macs though - doesn't included the 2020 Macbook Air (which would normally have got at least one more OS upgrade on Apple's usual 6-year cycle).

£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan

A lot of the nastiest material from Dounreay gets shipped down the coast to Barrow, then taken by train under armed guard up to Sellafield. The same is true of waste from many other nuclear sites (although most of them don't have the sort of material which Dounreay does). Sellafield has the whole of the UK nuclear industry's crap to deal with, not just its own.

Microsoft is opening Windows Update to third-party apps

Re: an interesting shift!

I'm not sure that the current situation is much better, where you might have to use the supersede function in Intune to remove and old version and install a newer one. That has at least as much potential to go badly wrong. Doing it through the Windows Store would be a better idea, although it would probably be sensible to have a pilot ring who get it first before it's rolled out to all users on the tenant.

ASUS to chase business PC market with free AI, or no AI - because nobody knows what to do with it

Re: Repairable would help

Dell were the same - the E series docks were very robust. The current USB-C ones have a weakness in the USB-C plug housing - we've had loads which crack down the sides and then the housing falls off.

Dell's new business laptops are also claimed as having stronger USB-C ports, and these are replaceable as they plug in to the motherboard rather than being soldered - still appear to be a pain in the arse to change though as the motherboard will have to come out.

Apple are actually (unusually) among the best on this - recent Macbooks have each USB-C port with a separate connector which plugs into the motherboard. Plus the magnetic power connector makes damage to the USB-C ports much less likely (in my experience, people tripping over charging cables when using the laptop at home is the most common cause of broken ports).

30 percent of some Microsoft code now written by AI - especially the new stuff

Re: Only 30%?

Sounds like they want to re-invent Microsoft Works!

Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates

Re: Cuckoo land

"ut the public transport system is excellent compared to almost any other city in the UK"

Yep, quite! Try the West Yorkshire conurbation (Leeds / Bradford). No light rail / urban rail, and only limited heavy rail so it very much depends where you are wanting to get from and to - large parts of the urban area are further from a station than most would want to walk every day.

M365 apps on Windows 10 to get security fixes into 2028

Re: Suuport?

Quite. The M365 suppport is probably the worst of those which I have to deal with.

Well, apart from possibly VMware since they've been taken over by Broadcom and farmed a lot of the support out to third parties.

This is not just any 'cyber incident' … this is an M&S 'cyber incident'

But is it a 'generously filled' cyber incident? Or does that only apply to their sandwiches?

OK great, UK is building loads of AI datacenters. How are we going to power that?

Re: Hmm

"At least Starmer does mean well"

I don't know where on earth you get that idea from!

Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

Re: Don't worry

Perhaps M$ wants people to complain to their IT department about Windows Hello being disabled? Can't see that happening, fortunately - the average user doesn't give a toss provided their computer can do what they need to do.

Microsoft to mark five decades of Ctrl-Alt-Deleting the competition

The server versions have generally been better than the equivalent client ones, and that continues with Server 2025 which is better than W11.

Microsoft ducks politico questions on Copilot bundling and lack of consent

Re: To get rid of the Try New Outlook in Outlook

And if New Outlook is already installed and you want to get rid of it for all users on that device, this should do the trick:

Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Where-Object {$_.Name -Like '*OutlookForWindows*'} | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers -ErrorAction Continue

UK's biggest mobile operator starts 3G switchoff, hopes it won't catch out April fools

Re: So what about the cars?

Impressive, or dystopian? Is seems that every new car is now fitted with in-vehicle data collection which gets sent to the manufacturer.

Amazon to kill off local Alexa processing, all voice requests shipped to the cloud

Re: Not uploading

No doubt any time that the teachers save by using shiny things is swiftly used up in additional bureocracy added by the government...

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: Put up or shut up

But you can guarantee that when some MPs' data gets exposed due to a back door which the government insisted on, there will be howls of outrage from them!

This is the problem with having MPs who are mostly technically illiterate - they are determined not to understand that there is no such thing as a secure back door. If it exists it will, sooner or later, be compromised by criminals / foreign governments / spooks.

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

It turns Bitlocker on if you sign into the machine with a personal Microsoft account. Unsure about business ones as we enforce it on them by policy anyway.

I think it is Bitlocker, but your other points are true!

You know something's wrong when Clippy fills you with nostalgia for simpler times

Copilot is MUCH worse than Clippy - he only appeared in specific contexts rather than everywhere, and so far as I recall you could turn him off, which is pretty much impossible with Copilot.

Want Intel in your Surface? That’ll be $400 extra, says Microsoft

Re: Why would anyone want any Microsoft Surface?

"You might be interested in Surface laptops if you need the touch screen, pen input and other accessories. For an average business use they might be too expensive, but that's true for Apple as well."

Touch screens are an option with a lot of Dell models now too.

Re: Why would anyone want any Microsoft Surface?

I can sort of see it with the tablets - I wouldn't buy them, but I can see that they are one of the main offerings in that niche, if you need that sort of thing.

But I really can't see why anyone would buy the laptops. They are overpriced, under-specced (unless you pay a fortune), and don't seem to have a great reputation for reliability. I can get something better from Dell, of an equivalent size and probably at a lower price (and quite probably similarly from Lenovo / HP as well - I've not checked recently what they offer in this sort of area).

UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation

"Perhaps recognizing there might be a latent problem, the government says it will set up a dedicated "AI Energy Council" chaired by the Science and Energy Secretaries. This will work with energy companies "to understand the energy demands and challenges" of its AI plans."

Ah yes, set up another talking shop! That'll resolve the issues in no time...

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

Re: Why?

I'm sure your right, but being Microsoft they can't even stick with that consistent approach - there are a number of differences between OWA and 'New Outlook'.

China's homebrew Bluetooth alternative is on the march as Beijing pushes universal remotes

Sure, the US and UK are as bad in some ways, but at least there is sometimes a way for the people to push back a bit - in a one-party state like China there isn't even that option without considerable risk to anyone trying it.

The risks of this new technology being used for spying on ordinary citizens is greatest for those in China. Like all authoritarian regimes ever, the CCP will be very keen to know what its country's citizens are doing and thinking, so that it can clamp down on any dissent quickly and early.

Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues

Some of the recent Dell Latitudes have a hold on them at the moment (not clear why - we've tested clean installing them and not encountered any issues)

Outlook is poor for those still on Windows Mail, Calendar, People apps by end of year

Re: Why are MS even bundling a mail client with Windows?

New Outlook is unfortunately going to replace proper Outlook entirely over the next few years.

And as regards integration with the OS, proper Outlook does that already in the way that matter.

I don't really see the retirement of the Windows Mail app as a significant issue. It's a home-user program and has always been crap. New Outlook certainly isn't sparkling it's a bit better than Windows Mail.

What is more of a problem is the intention to phase out proper Outlook over the next few years. New Outlook is generally tolerable for basic home use, but it's hopeless in a business setting because lots of functionality which businesses do need is simply missing.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

Re: By the way

I appear to have a downvote stalker - everything I post gets one, no matter how non-controversial. I assume it's someone I disagreed with in a thread on here at some point. It's really quite sad that some people have nothing better to do than engage in this sort of infantile behaviour.

Re: By the way

With the Pro version you can do it easily, although they don't make it obvious - click the domain join option, which actually goes through the local account creation process and doesn't join it to the domain!

Home version is a bit more complicated, but still doable - don't connect it to the internet, then on the region selection screen, Shift-F10 to get a command prompt and type oobe\bypassnro - the computer will reboot itself. Make sure it still doesn't get connected to the internet, and tell it you don't have internet when it asks. It will then prompt to create a local account. Tried it with 24H2 and it still works.