Posts by mobailey

AI spam filters are getting suckered by old-school text salting

So the AI spam filter didn't know how to detect salting? It had Na Clue.

Russian oligarch's financial network crashed thanks to a crank and a cleaner

I blame Grandad. But Del Boy and Rodney weren't completely blameless.

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Re: Analogue clocks

re: It apparently only lasted about a year,

So about 3.6 decyears.

Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo

Documentation

re: "The device was also so new that the team was still writing documentation on the day of the demo,"

There is no correlation at all between the newness of a product and actually having finished documentation.

Microsoft Windows Media Player stops serving up CD album info

Re: E14n

eMShittification

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app rebrand was bad, but there are far worse offenders

Dear Microsoft

Just call everything "Bing".

IT team forced to camp in the office for days after Y2K bug found in boss's side project

Re: "in December 199 he worked in the IT department"

It was the Y2C bug back then.

Locked out of your Gmail account? Google says phone a friend

Also Google:

"The recovery contact will be presented with three codes, and they have to select the one that the user provided them."

Oh yes - that's an absolutely foolproof system. Not going to have more than a 33% chance of guessing that.

The first rule of liquid cooling is 'Don't wet the chip.' Microsoft disagrees

Liquid Cooling is a Great Idea

Right up to the time when it's not.

Bored developers accidentally turned their watercooler into a bootleg brewery

Re: When Life Gives You Lemons...

I was being "somewhat appropriate".

When Life Gives You Lemons...

... make Hooch.

Playing ball games in the datacenter was obviously stupid, but we had to win the league

Cricket Explanation

"trying and failing to explain the rules of cricket to folks who didn't grow up with the game... 100 meters through the air at speeds exceeding 150 km/h."

So you're attempting to explain cricket to Americans - by using the metric system?

Choose your own Patch Tuesday adventure: Start with six zero-day fixes, or six critical flaws

"Among the 57 flaws Microsoft’s fixed this month..."

Missed an opportunity here to reference Heinz's 57 varieties of baked beans. Sometimes The Register needs to concentrate more on what's important.

You're going to do what to the feature? Microsoft defines what it means by 'deprecation'

"This all leads us to the thorny issue of Windows 10. Has it been deprecated? While the AI overview provided by Google says..."

Oh, if only Microsoft had their own AI tool that you could have asked...

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

"lacking some features of its predecessor....such as support for .pst files"

Have they tried just copy and pasting some code out of one of their other email clients?

BASIC co-creator Thomas Kurtz hits END at 96

GOTO END

Fired Disney staffer accused of hacking menu to add profanity, wingdings, removes allergen info

He should have just let it go.

Microsoft admits Outlook crashes, says impact 'mitigated'

Re: Intternationalisation!

I usually Reply All with a single word:

UNSUBSCRIBE

ESA's meteorite bricks hit Lego stores, but don't get your wallet out just yet

Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!

We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network

Re: "I literally crawled over broken glass for this company."

re: "switch used on the stand had been given a static IP that conflicted with ones used elsewhere".

So wouldn't it have been easier just to change the IP on the one used elsewhere?

IT worker sued over ‘vengeful’ cyber harassment of policeman who issued a jaywalking ticket

Re: Strange thing to do someone for

Highway Code rule number 42.

Bing and Copilot fall from the clouds around the world

So, Bing is down...

But if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Microsoft confesses April Windows update breaks some VPN connections

That made me think of a "Day Today" reference:

KB5036890 - no VPN died.

KB5036891 - no VPN died.

KB5036892 - one VPN died.

Tired techie 'fixed' a server, blamed Microsoft, and got away with it

Re: a utility we've chosen not to name that could clean up a Windows PC's registry

We're talking about CCleaner, aren't we? Where the first C stands for "Crap"?

London Clinic probes claim staffer tried to peek at Princess Kate's records

Re: "not being able buy a meat pie with a credit card"

I counted 3.14 pieces of meat in my Steak Bake.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Re: I need classic outlook

This is the way.

Windows 10 users report app gremlins after Microsoft update

> > cock-up rather than conspiracy seems more likely

> Which part of their track record makes you think this ?

To give Microsoft the credit it deserves: the number of their cock-ups does exceed their number of their conspiracies.

Microsoft sheds some light on Russian email heist – and how to learn from Redmond's mistakes

Re: weak password

Re: "So, what was the password?"

I suspect the answer is in your question.

UK water giant admits attackers broke into system as gang holds it to ransom

Not the first time my data has been breached by Southern Water

I’ve had to phone up Southern Water before, to discuss a broken drain leading out from my property. They couldn’t help.

Later that day, a local plumber pulled up and asked if I needed any work doing. I asked how he knew and he said “I’ve got a mate who works at Southern Water.”

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Elon Musk renames X to Zzzz but only when in Dark Mode.

After nine servers he worked on failed, techie imagined next career as beach vendor

Re: Sorry, is it just me ?

Agreed.

This just makes no sense:

"he attempted a repair of that machine.

It did not."

I suspect the article was written by AI.

Clippy-like AI at forefront of Windows update previews

Wait... autosaving NotePad?

re: "yet more tweaks to the veteran Notepad applications in terms of autosaving."

That sounds like a nightmare. I'll be switching off that option.

Imagine using Notepad to type a new line into a website's Web.Config file. You're halfway through typing it, and NotePad thinks "this is a good time to save the changes so far"....

Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye

Re: Missed opportunity

Or marked down the price, and paid us to use it?

Nobody would ever work on the live server, right? Not intentionally, anyway

Re: Don't let that guy work without supervision

re: "After taking photos, camera users took those films to a retailer"

So, Han shot first.

Network died, hard, during company Christmas party, leaving lone techie to fix it

Yippee ki-yay, motherboard.

Virgin Media email customers enter third day of inbox infuriation

Speaking of redundancies

"Speaking of redundancies"

VM/O2 have told their UK workers than many of their jobs are at risk. Soon after this, their email service stops working for three days....

Source: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/06/job-cuts-set-to-strike-more-of-virgin-media-o2s-uk-staff.html

Hmmmm.

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

In other words - just a network joining one branch to another?

Eric Idle tells infosec world to always look on the bright side of life

If...

If Elon Musk was posher, then he'd be the Upper Class Twit of the Year.

-mobailey

Google: If your Android app can create accounts, it better be easy to delete them, too

So....

"As the new policy states, when you fulfill a request to delete an account, you must also delete the data associated with that account,"

So, if I delete my Barclays banking app account, then all my bank accounts will be closed and the money disappear?

-mobailey

When it comes to database security it's down to people, not tech fixes, to save the day

Kaspersky's People Problem

For an example: Putin rounds up Russian family members of Kaspersky staff. Demands that staff member(s) insert a line of code which will wipe any western PC that it's installed on.

Hence me unsubscribing and uninstalling.

Microsoft squashes Windows bug exploited to inflict ransomware misery

MotW?

Acronym may as well stand for "Monster of the Week".

Dole production plants crippled by ransomware, stores run short

Don't Blame Ransomware

Don't try to blame empty supermarkets in the US on a hacked agricultural supplier.

Everyone knows this is down to Brexit.

-mobailey

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Really?

re: "All of the laptops were returned to IT and reimaged"

Is that really the easiest way to delete a single item from the browser history?

-mobailey

Super Bock says 'cyber' nasty 'disrupting computer services'

Oh Great

Just when I finished Dry January.

-mobailey

LUMI supercomputer puts GPU partition through its paces with hardcore science

But Why?

But why advertise this story with a picture of slice of chorizo?

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Case in Point

Hive Cameras. and other products, which are being turned into bricks from this summer. Hive is switching off our devices for us, for so-called "environmental reasons". Because ending a product's life artificially early, and forcing a replacement (Non-Hive) product to be manufactured, purchased and installed is great way to achieve Net Zero.

-mobailey

Third-party Twitter apps stopped dead with no explanation from El Musko

Re: Mars Ahoy

re: "Sorry, when exactly are you going to sod off to Mars, mate?"

But as soon as he got to Mars, he'd fire half the astronauts.

-mobailey

Fraudulent ‘popunder’ Google Ad campaign generated millions of dollars

Re: Never heard it called that before

Gives a new meaning to their song "I Am a Rock"

-mobailey

Financial authorities fine UK bank nearly $60m for platform migration disaster

> Too much septicisation going on.

We should be spelling it "septicization" now.

-mobailey

NIST says you better dump weak SHA-1 ... by 2030

In other news....

US National Institute of Standards and Technology advises against writing passwords on PostIt notes by 2040.

-mobailey