Posts by Ball boy 333 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2009
"If you want to turn this off, go to Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off the toggle for Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more."
Commit that to muscle memory: I'll bet subsequent updates will turn it back on for you and you'll need to repeat this process regularly. Welcome to the brave new world.
Additionally, Redmond suggests disabling print spooler on domain controllers, since this service isn't required for domain controller operations anyway.
This implies the spooler is enabled by default. If Redmond were really leaving such services running during the initial setup of a DC, may I assume they have since reviewed this rather short-sighted practice and current versions of their installer only enable services a DC needs to have running - or at least presents the instalee (is that a word?) with a list of services to start or block so they can make an informed choice about which holes they want poked through their attack surface.
Incorporated October 2019, nicked £100k of public funds (arguably the system was at fault for allowing a company to make duplicate claims for this bounce-back loan) and the business paid out £500k to third parties in about a year - less the loans, that's £400k paid out from a one-man software and consulting business in what was pretty much the first year of trading - and then wound up the company. What's the odds that these 'third parties' were somehow related to Jastrzebski and that there's a number of suppliers who are also out of pocket over this?
Upshot: he's walked off with a ton of funds and got away with it. Been banned from running a business in the UK for 13 years though so that'll teach him not to try that trick again, I have no doubt. </sarcasm>
THE platform of choice, natch. After giving his backing to Birmingham Council's migration I'm sure he'd be only too happy to suggest they'd be a perfect fit for this project too. £75m should just about cover project scoping and the basic-requirements doc.
Relax: I'm joking. I think ;)
My business subcontracts to an estate manager - the kind that look after residential apartments and the like. They hold not only physical keys to the premises they manage but have full access to the bank account operated by the company that gets created to deal with shared costs: maintenance and repairs, etc. I've seen staff log into some of these bank accounts and any credentials not cached locally in the browser were looked-up...in an email from the MD! So far as I can work out, no one has ever mentioned these as potential risks and there's never been any formal IT training. Ever.
Their tech. support is run by a IT shop three doors down. I really do mean 'shop': I'm not using the term as a slang reference to an IT services house; they sell hardware and custom-build PC's to the general public. Nice enough chap, though, has a background in IT services and tries his best. He says he has no control over what the MD in the estate management biz. decides to buy and link into the network (mobile phones, his home computer setup and so on) and I'm told the 'backup' is a RAID pairing of the SSD's in their office server: he wouldn't pay for anything beyond that. So basically, no backups: just some insurance against a single drive failing (don't even ask what happens if one SSD suffers bit rot: I have doubts the motherboard would believe the right drive and no confidence it'd get investigated unless warnings were writ large and often!).
I can't imagine this kind of setup is by any way unique. IT systems, the data contained within and the security surrounding all this is very much an afterthought for, I suggest, most businesses below about 20 people because the costs of doing it anything like 'right' would be horrific.
I'm not convinced. Given the number of drivers I see that sail through red lights, undertake on the inside (for leftpondian readers, both illegal in the UK) and park in insanely stupid places (probably ditto), I don't believe passing a driving test and being given a license makes someone safe to use a vehicle - applying the same process before being allowed to use a computer would, I fear, instil a false sense of security. Have an upvote for the idea, though!
On a technical note, would a user have to resit a test each time the OS undergoes a major version change? I can almost hear gubberment tills ringing... ;)
They have a point: if you ditch *nix and run Redmond code, the baddies might still come after you - but your hardware will be so tied up BSOD'ing, dropping its peripherals or simply rebooting after the weekly patch regime, they won't get enough CPU time to do any real damage.
/joke. Downvote if you've lost your sense of humour in all this
All UK cattle had (and probably still have, for all I know) a 'passport' or ID document. In the early days, this was a sheet of paper that followed the animal from farm to farm, right to the slaughterhouse. This document was then scanned and the image uploaded for the barcodes, dates and so on to be read and injected into a database. Except for when the paper was too messed-up to process. I'll leave it an exercise for the reader to deduce the state some documents got into and the subsequent effect this had on the delicate internals of the scanner hardware. It wasn't pretty.
I agree: 4 cores, 8 threads and little in the way of dedicated ports for storage doesn't add up for NAS usage. If you have to host so much traffic that you need 8 ports, the thread count will bottleneck throughput if you're handing RAID as well - that's assuming you can find somewhere to attach the storage. As the MB for a fairly high performance home router that maybe has a shared printer or the odd USB stick poking out of the side, this cuts the mustard but I'm not overly sure why I'd need AI in the mix if that's the use-case (other than the desire to ram AI into everything because it's the new shiny).
Can you run a Windows OS in 8Gb these days? It'll boot up, sure - but can you actually use the machine for, say, editing a document or opening up a couple of Edge browser windows once it's hobbled into life and CoPilot is sitting there, watching your every move?
Forgive my ignorance if it does work swimmingly well: perhaps they've optimized the code considerably since I last had the...err...pleasure.
As already pointed out, FB tends to be the domain of the 30+ user.
What would be interesting is to see the app/service usage split by age group. I think it'd show a rather different bandwidth demand: if you're an oldie (like wot I is) then you're probably less likely to live your life apparently totally reliant on high speed connections to feed a video chat/TikTok habit!
Some perspective: I rarely - if ever - come close to my 2Gb/month cap: my daughter regularly moans that her 20Gb limit is cramping her style! On reflection, maybe I just don't have as many friends as her ;)
If your job is to market a product, you have to meet one of two objectives:
Convince potential buyers that your product fits their needs better than the competitors offerings or;
Create a market by explaining your offering does something people didn't realize they really need to do.
This chap works in marketing and it looks like he's behaving like a well adjusted marketer. Good for him. ;)
A lifetime ago, my ten year old son was doing a school project where healthy eating was the focus (all very noble stuff) and wanted to embellish his work with a picture - so typed 'fit man' into Goo....I mean, into a major search engine. I'm sure the resulting images came as no surprise to the world-weary readers of El Reg. Laughable? Maybe, but it highlights a very serious issue: context is everything. Until AI understands the context of a query and takes that into account, it'll always be at risk of producing content that wasn't desired (be that semi-naked people or whatever). There's a problem with understanding context though: it means the AI needs to know one hell of a lot more about the user in order to figure out an appropriate interpretation. I, for one, don't feel comfortable allowing a third party to know quite that much, thank you very much.
Sure, we can enable 'safe search' and the like - but AI almost needs another AI to review its answers and apply an acid test: Is this an appropriate response for this user? And there we go: back to context again!
Popping up a window so you can interact with their AI is only half the story: before long, we'll find that the pop-up is also fed a bunch of data grabbed from the windows underneath so AI can 'predict' what you might be about to ask and get the answers for you more quickly. Have a wild guess who profits from the data that gets slurped...Hint: it won't be you.
You need to find a business that has a need for a constant supply of mildly warm air - a launderette sounds like the ideal candidate. Then *they* need a client that demands cool, moist air. At this rate, all DC's will have to built adjacent to a room full of tumble driers and a mushroom farm...
I'm pretty sure I'm taking the piss - but with Westminster being what it is, don't blame me if this gets written into an Act ;)
There's only so fast you can spin a plastic disk before there's physical issues with its stability. They tend to fly apart if you get carried away and they expand slightly even at lower speeds, suggesting some complex offsetting will be needed to cope with the track density these things would have if you want to pirouette reasonably quickly. Back when optical media was still the rage, their I/O rate was acceptable given the capacity of the media (where did they top-out? Around the 2.6Gb mark for double-sided platters IIRC) and the fact that the host bus couldn't deal with the Gb/s rates expected today. Things have moved on: if I want to move such vast quantities of data, I'll need sustained transfer speeds that mean I can do it quickly enough to make the device practical.
They should start by dragging their services into the modern age. I recently had to use DVLA (UK vehicle and driver database) to update my address and here's the message from their front page:
Use this service to change the address in your log book to a new UK address.
This service is available from 7am to 8pm.
What the heck? Does this mean any overly fast driving at night won't result in a ticket because their database is having a little nap? ;)
What we need to do is pass the output from these LLM's to a human operator - let's call them editors - who can check the text for errors, plagiarism, copyright issues and so on. If the subject matter is beyond their comprehension, they can call on someone else - a subject matter specialist, perhaps - who will be able to draw on their experience in the field.
Oh, hold on...
</irony>
As the communication posted by AC reads:
Southern Water takes its data protection and information security responsibilities to you seriously, and so we are bringing this to your attention as soon as we can
Beggers belief - but the 'we take your data security seriously' is the standard phrase dolled out each time this kind of thing happens. They must all go on the same PR course!
Firstly, roll-out: it'd be a brave site that implements this wallet scheme when its competitors still rely on ad revenue: until they get to critical mass, income from their website will drop like a brick.
Secondly - and more worryingly - what happens when (not if) a site gets hacked and the bad actors insert their own micro-payment code that scrapes a visitors wallet - or a coding error means I get double-charged by the host? For any repayment claim, the user would have to provide full details of when they visited the site in question. Chances are, for the fractional sums involved, no individual would bother going through the process. Net result: it becomes very profitable to slip rogue code into legit. sites.
At the moment, at least, the black hats seem to be focussing on corporate routers - but with the huge increase in home-based working, it won't be long before there's more value to be had in poking about in the home router market: a made-to-a-budget home router hooked up to an unmonitored network that has a couple of PC's used by the children (virus updates current? Umm...not entirely sure there'll even be an AV app, never mind updated definitions!) and now the veep's laptop is hanging off the same address pool? Good luck, folks!
One presumes the mugshots are deleted immediately after the analysis has been done - or are they kept for a period of time 'to be verified if required' or 'to improve the AI model'?
I think we should be told.
There's also a huge potential for scope-creep here: for now, it's used to check ages when you buy alcohol. However, it makes sense for the retailer to use it for all purchases so they can better understand the profile of its customer base. All that lovely extra data!
There's inherently several issues that won't help - and I'm in no way defending the process here:
1.) Projects will almost certainly change scope during their lifetime (political masters being what they are and all that). A bit like Triggers broom, it'll bear little resemblance to the original specification after a few years so it's hardly surprising the software - all of which have 'snag lists' that require re-working during roll-outs - struggles to evolve correctly;
2.) The project leaders change over time. This makes it far more difficult to hold people to account, especially if they've long retired;
3.) Government ministers are not project specialists: they outsource this job to those that are. I'd argue that, pretty much by definition, someone very specialist in designing the spec. for a system such as Horizon must come from a supplier that has skills in that area. As such, their project definition can only be skewed in favour that supplier's solutions even if it's not the ideal fit.
Add in the inevitable 'incentives' and blame dodging ('Yes Minister' and 'The Thick Of It' are not comedies, they're documentaries) and, well, it doesn't exactly aid transparency and critical thinking!
The tank talks to the printer which talks to the the print driver and onto the client-side app. That then checks with HQ to make sure you're being a good boy.
Yep, I can totally see why that could be described as a virus - and I can also totally see a certain manufacturer designing their products to take full advantage of it for financial gain. Way to go Enrique Lores; you win the Internet today for making it clear to us all!
Fair enough but there's a point of principle here. At idle/unused state, it may 'only' be a few handles, some loaded DLL's (or whatever Borkzilla use these days) some memory, a few system calls here and there - but all these little bits add up. Add in all the other cruft and it goes a long way to explain why the machine specs need to be so damn high. They also introduce a larger attack surface. I find all this harder and harder to justify when the purpose of the OS is, I thought, to allow me to interact with applications I choose to install.
Concorde had heat shields that popped up over the nose to streamline it at supersonic speeds. There were two little side windows so pilots could see where they'd been but not where they were going to be. Hardly a backward step if we were doing it in the 60's - plus they'll have TV's to help this time around. This isn't general aviation: these things will be flying in controlled airspace so it's ATC that make sure they have a bubble of space around them (we have been doing this right for many, many years, give or take the occasional runway incursion). Quite honestly, if you think your reactions are up to seeing, never mind avoiding, another aircraft coming at you at cruising speed then you're doing better than most and, anyway, action to avoid an extreme air proximity incident would almost certainly overstress the airframe so the end results would be similar but with only one hull destroyed.
I would imagine the hardest bit would be pilot acceptance, despite all the 'partial panel' training they already do.
I'd argue that the manufacturers are dying to move to a lease-only model. The sales pitch will be that this is to help with product recycling but, if they get away with this, your car goes end of life when the vendor decides it's no longer making enough profit for them: when you've stopped buying additional monthly subs and your data has been milked dry then it's of no further use to the manufacturer and gets recalled. Never mind the inconvenience of the heated seats or what-have-you no longer working: the entire car will cease to function and the lessor will have to cut a deal with a vendor for a whole new vehicle.
Welcome to the Brave New World. Now pass me my Government mandated Soma pill.
The current capacity of the cable to the box will need to be upgraded if it's to serve more than one charge point (there's one box serving the 20-something houses in my close, a fairly low contention rate), while the point of delivery would have to be relocated because - as so many have pointed out - the current location of boxes tends to be at street junctions where parking is generally forbidden by the Highway Code. In practice, it sounds like the presence of a box doesn't really lend a great deal of value to the proposed solution. However, it does mean BT can transfer the cost of maintenance - and eventual removal - of these boxes to a third party and that's smart thinking for their bottom line.
What next? Water companies proposing adding charging points adjacent to the downstairs loo 'because it'd be trivial to run cables to them through the existing sewer network'? I'm joking, by the way: please don't take that as a serious suggestion (unless you're a paid-up gubberment blue-thinker - in which case, remember me when the financial bungs start getting thrown around!)
"That positive outcome will only be achieved if we show ourselves capable of acting responsibly and respect such fundamental human values as 'inclusion, transparency, security, equity, privacy and reliability'."
And how's that worked out for various religions over the years then, your Holiness? There's a pot over here that wants a word with your kettle!
I know about votes. I know more about votes than anyone and I can be telling you now that I won this.
I got biggly more votes than this Pete2 person. What kind of name is that anyway? Sounds like a made-up name and that tells us all we need to know: this vote was RIGGED by the FAKE MEDIA and STOLEN from my wonderful supporters who know I am the true winner. We will fight this wrongly verdict.
.
.
...goes on for another few weeks until head explodes.
On a serious note: congrats., Sir! Well deserved :-)
"The rules apply to services with links to the UK – where the UK is a target market, or the service has a "significant number" of UK users"
Anyone know, offhand, what percentage of p0rn sites actually *target* the UK or otherwise meet this 'significant number of users' malarkey? Furthermore, anyone care to guess how many of those that are registered outside UK jurisdiction will be willing to expose (see what I did there?) this kind of data about their user base to a curious UK government official?
Surely the market for p0rn is pretty global so I'd be surprised if any of the top 10 sites actually meet the definition - and that's before anyone in gubberment figures out that content unsuitable for a minor can be hosted on sites that are waaaay outside the definition of 'p0rn': my child (16) told me they'd seen a video on Tiktok of someone getting run over by a bus (as in properly ending up under the wheels). Not p0rn - but hardly bed-time viewing for anyone.
I'm afraid I can't offer a workable solution to this problem but I can easily see some muppet in Whitehall deciding that the only practical solution is to force age verification for, well, any use of the Internet.
Just read today's 'Who, me?' and gave a wry smile at the mention that 'a Pentium 133 running Office 97 on Windows 95 was the height of business computing - after all, I can reasonably convince myself that was only a handful of years ago, right. scandisk? Yup, I remember using that, too, and it really wasn't that long ago surely.
Now you come along and mention an IDE I remember using (with some fondness, too) but mercilessly highlight the year of its release. 40 years ago. Damn you. I'm now officially an old git ;)
Q1: Not much happens. No, really: MS post a full set of entirely bug-free patches for all current releases.
Q2: Windows 14 announced. Leaked hardware specs cause orders for HPE Cray EX hardware to skyrocket.
Q3: Pottering announces that what Linux really needs is some kind of central registry for all things system and settings. Names it SystemX in honour of the recently ennobled Lord Musk.
Q4: Elon Musk makes a bid to take over Microsoft. Post reading "It's in the bag" cause the press, world wide, to take no bleedin' notice of him whatsoever. Ever again.
Seasons greetings one and all!
She can't really walk away yet, it's too soon and would look like she misunderstood her role (which wouldn't bode well when looking for another position). On top of that, having taken Musk's poison pill, she's damaged her chances of getting hired by any major company for fear of being somehow linked by association with The Great One himself.
Her best bet - by far - is to hold out for another six months or so then strike a deal with a publisher, hire in a ghost writer and try to make a killing with a 'life under Musk' exposé.
Back in the day, I remember hearing a story (true or not, I don't recall) about NASA spending a small fortune developing a ball-point that would work in zero-G, on damp paper and so on. The Russians solved the same problem by sending their lads up with pencils. KISS makes a lot of sense, especially so if you can't easily service or update your tech.
* Update: Just checked. Not entirely true about NASA - but the principle still holds! ;)
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