Posts by Daniel Bower

Not quite an email...

...but I used to design flyers as a side line. My mum was a GP and one of her colleagues wanted a flyer doing for a surgical course he was running.

I had the main speaker down as Mr Soandso - consultant plastic sturgeon...

iThing

It just breaks...

I am not a software engineer but...

This is the bit that struck me from TUI's response. Paraphrased - 'We fiddled with some potentially safety critical code which was meant to make things better and wasn't meant to break anything but we couldn't be sure and launched it over the weekend without having anyone on stand-by in case we had broken it'...

---

"On 20 July, 2020, the programmer was making enhancements to the program to improve its performance," the report says. "This should not have stopped the program from working, but as this was a 'fix,' it could not be known for sure. A combination of the [TUI] teams not working over the weekend [to make manual corrections] and the 'online' check-in being open early on Monday 20 July, 24 hours ahead of the flight, meant the incorrectly allocated passenger weights were not corrected."

---

Could some of you more knowledgeable folk confirm or deny that this is a pretty shocking response? Surely you'd do some proper testing on something like this. Christ our compliance team have us run 50 pointless iterations if we make so much as a minor change to a formula in Excel...

Rolling back the update or Force Stopping

Android WebView worked for me as a temporary fix. Caused a bunch of third party apps to crash out but a quick scout of the interwebs showed these as likely fixes and both did the trick until Google pulled their finger out of their arse...

Benchmarks

'Select industry benchmarks'

ie we ran all of them and on many of them the chip is only as fast or slower than Intel/AMD so we selected the ones that showed a nice speed bump :).

Can't say I blame them, everyone is at it, but i'd rather wait as see some proper independent benching before deciding whether to jump ship

I wrote this five years ago on these hallowed pages

OK it was about Amazon acting as a cloud storage provider however it applies equally here. When will people realise that cloud storage is not proper back up?! Obvs you need to replace Amazon with Adobe etc but the sentiment is the same now as it was then.

---

Unfortunately this is just the sort of thing my mum (for example) sign up to and not realise that you actually need to back your data up locally as well as 'in the cloud'.

I can see the email now:

Dear Amazon Cloud User

We are terribly sorry but due to a SNAFU at our data centre, all your photos and other precious memories have been deleted.

As per clause blah blah blah we are not responsible in any way for this loss and if you do not have your precious, irreplacable photos and memories backed up else where then tough titties.

However, as a gesture of good will we would like to offer you a free 30 day trial of Amazon Prime.

Love

Jeff

---

When/why is any rational justification need?

I can't afford one, have no need for one and have made enough unauthorised purchases over the years to potentially end my happily married life without buying another thing, but...

I still want one of these. No of course it's not got much poke compared to modern machinery and the games are pretty basic but christ, I spent more time playing Jetpack than I ever have any modern games and enjoyed myself more. Do you need to justify something like this? IMO no absolutely not. It's to be bought and enjoyed just because it's a thing. And that should be celebrated :)

Keeping it simple

Checking the simple stuff first is the best advice anyone can ever give. In days gone by I would find myself at a party or two only to be called over to try and get the sound system working. There would always be four or five people tugging at wires, flicking switches on the mixer, power cycling the amps etc. I would always suggest tearing the whole thing down and starting again only to be told that was a silly idea.

Trouble is, without ruling out the obvious you're shooting in the dark and after another 30 minutes of silence I would invariable get called over to strip things down and put it back together bit by bit. It was always something simple in the end - duff interconnect, dodgy deck or whatever - the problem bit just needed to be isolated...

Never mind the actual pizza

When is 'Charles' going to lob an IP infringement bomb at Just Eat et al?..

Pebble

Well they did buy Pebble’s IP so maybe they’ve implemented their screen tech...

My mate John

Who we, for good reason, referred to as Honest John would have made a killing at our school. Knocking out vpn access for a fiver a month.

I imagine it’ll be his kids first business venture instead.

How do you...

Set up a VPN? Asking for a friend.

Fenix 5 owner having tried a Gear S3 and its miles better. Sure the S3 looked all pretty and could 'dp stuff' but the Fenix 5 does everything I want (eg I can check whether the text message I just received is worth reading etc) has all the fitness metrics you could possibly want AND has a battery life of 2-3 weeks.

And that is with the watch face constantly on! Closest thing to a Pebble Steel out there...

Broadband providers I’ll never use...

1/ TalkTalk

And this is why...

I have moved to Apple. I never in a million years thought I would buy an iPhone - I hate most things about Apple but the divergence in Android (both in the OS and also the shear number of differences between devices app developers now have to consider) coupled with the fact the M & N were actually worthwhile updates but with O & P it looks like they are just changing stuff so they can say they have added 'features' mean I no longer have faith in it.

iOS is by no means stellar but I just about prefer the UX at this time.

What if you just don’t tell them?

I mean they’re asking you so they probably don’t know. Just your hotmail account set up for the purpose and nothing else...

GDPR

It'll be interesting to see what if any teeth the forthcoming GDPR has on all of this. Particularly around specific consent.

Talktalk will be first up against the wall

When GDPR kicks in. And I for one cannot wait..

This sounds no different to every company I've worked for. If I'm buying my own lunch it's never allowed on expenses.

If I take a 'client' out to lunch for a coffee and a sarnie the whole lot can go on expenses. You know I never eat lunch on my own...

Surface 2 RT

I still use my Surface 2 RT - its perfectly serviceable for browsing and light office work. The battery life is still good and the device has held up well despite mild abuse.

I also have a Dell XPS 13 which is very very lovely but am still tempted by a SP 2017 model for 'convertable' use.

You could...

Paint a figure on the side of a helicopter and promise that to the NHS...

Just went to log a ticket with WD support

As I have a new DL4100 which uses an affected chip. Their website is down! Cooincidence?! (Well yes it probably is but I found it far more amusing than I ought...)

Commcat

Is the best piece of ham radio software going. Tried HRD and thought it terrible!

Howard (Nurse) author of Commcat provides first class support also. Usually responds to me within a couple of hours regardless of time differences.

Not affiliated with him at all-just putting it out there as an alternative!

73 de Danny M0SDB

I work with some some crime underwriters and some of the scans are very sophisticated.

Fire example having into a solicitors email system and watching house conveyances go through the process and at an opportune time get the buyer to transfer the deposit to a scam account.

All very convincing as they've been watching the whole transaction and a) pick the right moment and b) use the right language-none of this uncle in Nigeria nonsense.

Personally I don't think the banks should be liable but the institutions who have so poor security their emails can be compromised in this way.