* Posts by Jason 24

208 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

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Elon Musk hits the brakes on taking Bitcoin for Tesla purchases

Jason 24

Re: What is the point

What you're looking for is probably Monero - the algo used is ASIC and GPU resistant, so it can only be mined with CPUs so scaling it up massively is going to be very tricky. It follows a one CPU = one vote model and so anyone can join in, even now, which makes the whole system fairer.

Due to needing ASICs (and apparently your own Power Station) effectively every normal person is locked out of mining Bitcoin.

Oh, and it actually has an actual use case right now, albeit on the dark web for nefarious purposes. Bitcoin just seems to be investors trying to buy low and sell high constantly.

Cybersecurity giant FireEye says it was hacked by govt-backed spies who stole its crown-jewels hacking tools

Jason 24

Re: Woops

I've often said that the value of a partner is not in how well they can manage day to day installs/maintenance, but in how well they respond when the shit hits the fan.

It seems they've responded honestly and are working at breakneck speed to a) create new tools, b) analyse the attack to learn from it and complete A.

A lesser company would go very quiet and attempt a cover up.

Ho hum: If you're so artificially intelligent, name this song while my videos go viral

Jason 24

Re: Sell the packaging!

Oddly I had someone offer up an "Empty iPhone 6 Box" for £5 on FB market place. Struck me as odd, but did remind me of the above Playstation story!

50%+ of our office seats are going remote, say majority of surveyed Register readers. Hi security, bye on-prem

Jason 24

Re: Not here

Thankfully the MSP I work for fully ingests its own shit before foisting it on our customer base.

Maybe we're an outlier?

It is nice when pitching a product at a customer that I can just say "here is how we do it...", I'm not in sales but that does make the sell very very easy.

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

Jason 24

Re: They didn't vote for him

"Wrong. More people die who would otherwise have had an opportunity to be shielded by a vaccine."

Assuming we get an effective vaccine. If we do, then great, you were right and Updraft102 is wrong.

If however no vaccine can be found then to a degree Updraft102 is kind of right, a lockdown has only delayed the inevitable.

That's not to say we shouldn't have had any lockdown at all. Having the lockdown has surely ensured that;

a) If you need a ventilator, there is one available, and you don't die in a corridor

b) Doctors have had more time to get their heads round this and improve their treatment methods, meaning those up pick it up later in the curve have a better chance of survival.

A good article on the BBC showed the varying array of symptons this thing is presenting, can't find it though.

I've said it before here and other places, calling approaches right or wrong when we are still miles and miles and miles from the finish just seems daft. Is New Zealand going to keep its borders shut forever? Is Sweden going to achieve herd immunity through natural infection rates long before a vaccine?

To many ifs.

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Jason 24

Re: UK+ USA's spiking again

We've also ramped up testing considerably, so we will find a lot more new cases, hopefully these will be the less serious cases, so our cases:deaths ratio will improve. Compare our testing with Thailand is completely out there 19k/1M pop, to 3K/1M pop.

The population density is half ours too.

We are also doing lockdown "lite", compared to Italy, so yes, our curve is going to take longer flatten.

I've come to the conclusion that there's no point drawing any conclusions about any of this yet because;

a) There are so many variables, I've highlighted a few above.

b) This isn't over, so to say that X is wrong and Y is right before the whole thing is sorted seems very odd.

It could be that complete lockdown was correct, and NZ never sees another case again.

Or it could be herd immunity was right, and NZ has just pushed the cases down the line 6 months.

If a vaccine emerges by January then excellent. But if it takes until January 2025?

I do feel the Donald needs a special shout out though for his incoherent blabbering, that is a prime example of how now to behave on the world stage....

Check Point chap: Small firms don't invest in infosec then hope they won't get hacked. Spoiler alert: They get hacked

Jason 24

Re: Insurance Risk Management?

Having recently implemented synchronously replicated storage across a manufacturing plant who were looking to be insured as a 24x7 business, the insurance company absolutely insisted on having completed tests (pulling power from the entire rack) and documentation for this. That's a level of risk management being completed by the insurance company.

Also, which insurance company is not demanding a cyber security essentials certificate before issuing any sort of cyber security insurance? Maybe that's just UK specific, does the US have a similar program?

It's official: In May, Microsoft will close the door, lock the vault, brick over the entrance of dreaded Windows 10 1809

Jason 24

Re: I'm still stuck

Have you any USB devices such as printers connected? I've had quite a few fail unless the only USB devices connected are a keyboard and mouse.

This AI is full of holes: Brit council fixes thousands of road cracks spotted by algorithm using sat snaps

Jason 24

Re: AI 101

Clearly you're just not fluent in amanfrommars yet, all regular readers are!

Having trouble finding a job in your 40s? Study shows some bosses like job applicants... up until they see dates of birth

Jason 24

Re: What jobs did they try to get?

I'd like to think that when I reach 50+ I may well apply for a hell desk role. Mortgage will be paid so I can pick hours that suit me meaning I can be at home/with the grand kids more often.

I don't think I'll want to be traipsing up and down the country doing installs still.

What is this, 1989? Laplink is still a thing and wants to help with Windows 7 migrations

Jason 24

Re: Still around, actually works, mostly.

Are you referring to the easy transfer wizard from Windows 7? If so you can copy the files off the Windows 7 machines onto Windows 10 and run it, it all works perfectly.

Imagine being charged to take a lunch break... even if you didn't. Welcome to the world of these electronics assembly line workers

Jason 24

Re: "the cost of which would be automatically taken from their wages"

I should clarify I suppose.

I don't get paid from the moment I leave the door Monday - Friday, traffic and where I choose to live is beyond the control of my employer.

I cannot claim mileage to my normal place of work, even on a weekend, that's HMRC rules.

But if you have requested me to work a weekend above and beyond my 37.5 hours then yes, my over time sheet will be completed from the moment I leave work until the moment I get home, all of that is eating into my personal time.

Jason 24

Re: "the cost of which would be automatically taken from their wages"

At one company I worked for we were moving all the IT equipment to a new office over a very long weekend.

Come pay day I found that my overtime was docked by 0.5 hours each day.

I questioned it and was told "well you must have stopped for lunch".

Firstly, no we didn't really, shoved a quick sandwich down and that was it. I am here until it's done, I've no incentive to down tools for any period of time.

Secondly, we're busting our balls for you over a weekend and you want to whinge over half an hour?

They did eventually correct it and pay us for the entire time (which on a weekend is from the moment I leave my house until the moment I get home, you are paying me for travel).

'Cynical and bullying' TalkTalk hackerhacker getsgets 4 yearsyears behindbehind barsbars

Jason 24

I call crap on him only being allowed on a level 2 course.

My GCSEs should have only got me on a level 2 course, but they realised I would be very bored so they put me on a level 3 course.

We were still bored and the tutor gave us CCNA to do in the other 15 hours of the 16 hours a week we had to attend college (and I did attend all the hours for the £30 a week bung offered at the time, EMA I think? Great beer money).

That was 15 years ago mind.

Boss regrets pointing finger at chilled out techie who finished upgrade early

Jason 24

Re: Usually gets worse, the bigger the company ...

" the user is the new CEX, who started today and wants "new" shiny tomorrow"

If he has CEx is his title he will have surely have a personal card with a much much bigger limit than my own, he can damn well buy it himself.

HPE supercomputer is still crunching numbers in space after 340 days

Jason 24
Pint

Re: Using COTS instead of rad-hard devices.

Is it masochistic that I enjoy being made to feel very very stupid reading comments like this?

Beer for the fascinating read! >>

Have to use SMB 1.0? Windows 10 April 2018 Update says NO

Jason 24

"Oh, there isn't any and they're not planning the upgrade? For this device still in shops? Fk off."

Add Netgear to the list. We bought had some of their switches foisted on us recently by sales. Turns out you can't remove the vlan 1 untag on all the ports or something daft along those lines.

Last firrmware update was 2013 and they are still being sold.

Never again.

Off with e's head: E-cig explosion causes first vaping death

Jason 24

Re: Vaping is NOT smoking...

"No-one gives a toss about caffiene use, and with the correct delivery method - a non-combustible one - no-one should give a toss about nicotine use either."

You know, I can't say I've ever actually considered whether nicotine is beneficial on it's own, to often nicotine = tobacco = bad things.

A quick google search does show some benefits, do they out weigh the crankiness some people experience during withdrawal?

I've not said that vaping is bad, it's definitely healthier than cigarettes, no question. But if the nicotine is only being used to cure the craving for the nicotine then surely it's a pointless exercise? The "cure" (for cravings) is only leading back to the "problem" once the cure has left the body.

Jason 24

Re: Vaping is NOT smoking...

"Would anyone talking about vaping 'carrying on the addiction' care to actually define addiction, and apply that to e-cigs?"

Absolutely, it's the physical addiction to nicotine. The cravings do subside after using an ecig so you are absorbing some nicotine. 40 roll ups a day is mighty impressive though.

"As for drug addiction, @lost all faith, the first time a vaper is caught mugging an old lady for the £10"

There are differing levels of addiction. For cigarette smokers they aren't likely to mug an old lady for a tenner, but they can be very very unreasonable when they haven't smoked, and they can't quite put a finger on why.

Then they smoke and they are suddenly reasonable again. The harm here is to relationships in the immediate term, but nicotine long term can also be damaging, even without smoke;

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/

(Incidentally the same source as above!)

I guess this is similar to the original problem with smoking, "well it won't kill me immediately so why bother about the harm, I'll just enjoy it and quit later".

It can be said that people get unreasonable when they are hungry too, but that isn't the same because everyone needs food to survive. No one needs nicotine to survive. Non smokers don't feel better for having smoked, they never get that weird feeling that something is missing and they can't be satisified until that missing thing is fulfilled.

Would anyone (Aaron Eckhart excepted) ever encourage their children to start vaping and/or smoking?

Jason 24

Re: Vaping is NOT smoking...

I'm not sure I've assumed anything, the only information I had was that you didn't want to smell like a toilet. As with everything in life there are exceptions to the rules.

Fair play to yourself for managing to remove the nicotine aspect from the habit. Clearly my anecdotal evidence isn't aimed at you now I'm aware you're not on the nicotine.

But I am fairly confident that most vapers are using nicotine and hopefully my musings can assist them.

Jason 24

Re: Vaping is NOT smoking...

"it's aimed at people that don't want to smell like a toilet."

That was me. I stopped at work in an attempt to cut down and started noticing a lot more how much people who smoke stink.

I found not smoking at work was actually very easy, I was busy and didn't think about it.

I also realised that ecigs are simply kicking the can down the road. You're still an addict, and I didn't like that, the thought that at any point I might cave for a smoke. Heard many stories as well of people who tried a cig after months of ecigs and one cigarette didn't cut they, they had simply increased their addiction level because it was so much easier to vape a shit ton.

I can only assume that upping the power on your vaper is also upping your nicotine intake and thus your addiction level. When so many people are punting this as an aid to quit free themselves from smoking that seems completely contradictory.

You may have already heard of and tried the Allen Carr method. If you haven't and really wish to kick the habit please give it a go. It's a tenner for the book and both myself and the partner have completely stopped after that.

Jason 24

Re: Vaping is NOT smoking...

Having recently quit (15 years of rollies) after reading the Allen Carr's easyway book I have to agree, e-cigs are just another way to ensure people are still hooked/get hooked on Nicotine and believe they cannot possibly live without it.

Those sweet yummy flavours are most certainly aimed at kids.

1 month in at the moment, was round at a friends house for an hour last night where they were all smoking and can't say I felt even the tiniest urge to ask for one.

In fact even now I can smell smoke coming in through the AC at the office, I don't dislike the smell, I did enjoy smoking, but I'm not inclined to nip to the garage for a pack of GV.

Cannot recommend that book enough.

It's true – it really is grim up north, thanks to Virgin Media. ISP fined for Carlisle cable chaos

Jason 24

"You wouldn't blame Ford or BMW if a mechanic did a piss poor job of replacing your breaks would you?"

I would if I took it to Ford/BMW and they then contracted it out to the cheapest indy garage they could find.

BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?

Jason 24

Re: Missed a trick here

"Plus an IoT car park shutter that guillotines the Boss' new pride and joy."

I'm fairly sure some of the historical ones feature this exact scenario, proving once again that the BOFH is ahead of the curve.

I vaguely recall one where the car becomes remote piloted and slams into the walls as well... I definitely recall a boss getting a remote piloted wheel chair at least!

Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes

Jason 24

I am too, but then they aren't my primary bank, just use them to hold a couple of grand for the 3% interest.

Very happy to see it going back to 5% after this!

Two's company, Three's unbowed: You Brits will pay more for MMS snaps

Jason 24

I did, by mistake, a little while ago, orange/ee/bt/whoeverthefuck charged me 50-sodding-P.

Next time it went via whatsapp and they got feck all for it.

As for the massive jump in calls outside the EU, well someone has to subsidise the loss of charges from the EU setting the roam at home stuff up. Great for those in the EU, not so great for those outside clearly.

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

Jason 24

Re: I've been trying to get this happening

Apparently I work for the UKs "leading provider of unified comms" (doesn't every company claim to be the leading?)

Yet we don't lead with IPv6..... All IPv4

Sysadmin shut down the wrong server, and with it all European operations

Jason 24

"I have created tiled bitmaps with the server's name on it"

We tried that at a customer on their RDP servers, so users can quickly look at the desktop to tell techs which server they are on.

Turns out roaming profiles will cache the background image, even if it's set by GPO at the computer level.

Another day, another meeting, another £191bn down the pan

Jason 24

Re: Meeting governance technology

An old boss of mine thought a million dollar idea was a clock that counted up the minutes of a meeting and everyones salary and told you how much the meeting had cost.

And would bang on about it for 10 minutes at the start of every meeting he arranged.

Never progressed it, should have arranged a meeting I guess..

Hypersonic nukes! Nuclear-powered drone subs! Putin unwraps his new (propaganda) toys

Jason 24

Re: Possible scenario

"He talked about how important it was to make sure your troops were properly supplied for whatever campaign they were to be sent on."

<caveat>According to wikipedia</caveat> we built 20,351 supermarine spitfires and 14,851 hawker hurricanes during the second world war.

How are you going to supply that many F35s during war time if we can't manage a dozen now? Or the Typhoon with the wonderful idea of building different parts all over the world. Can we even repair the typhoons here since the deal was Turkey would do it?

He's cheesed it! French flick pirate on the lam to swerve €80m fine, two-year stretch in the clink

Jason 24

Re: Historical?

"This will only get worse since Disney is planning on pulling all its content (including Marvel/Lucasfilm) from Netflix in the future to host exclusively on its own forthcoming streaming service.

The future of legitimately streaming movies and TV shows is going to be *very* expensive."

Well then they will be shooting themselves in the foot again.

We've finally reached a point where it's almost possible to gain access to everything we want legitimately and at a reasonable price. If they start forcing us to pay for 15 different services they'll probably find pirating starts shooting back up again.

Even BT and Sky have started to realise that we don't like paying multiple times for the same thing and agreed to share.

I'd make a point about them sharing the content and then competing on service but it will just be wasted letters....

Uber: Ah yeah, we pay women drivers less than men. We can explain!

Jason 24

@AC

If I declare 20K Personal + 5K business and no access to company cars it's £500 (e.g)

If I declare 20K Personal + 5K business and access to company cars as well it's £400.

My declaration on both is 25K miles, on the latter I could rack up an extra 20K in company cars, giving me 45K in total. The amount of time and miles on my personal are no different, yet one is a fifth cheaper.

Jason 24

@ArrZarr,

Except the car I've insured is down for commuting and business miles, 20K declared personal, 5K declared business.

It's clear to them any miles in the company cars are above and beyond what I declare as my yearly milage on my personal car.

Jason 24

"Which is primarily why women often pay less. They drive fewer miles on average which outweighs the higher risk of them having an accident per mile driven than a man."

So why did my insurance drop significantly when I put down that I had access to company vehicles?

More vehicles = more miles = more experience.

Plus

More vehicles = More experience

Lenovo literally has a screw loose – so it's recalled flagship Carbon X1 ThinkPads

Jason 24

Re: Fault analysis undertaken and fix identified

@andys

Always wondered what that blue gunk was. Thanks!

Love these forums.

Capita contract probed after thousands of clinical letters stuffed in a drawer somewhere

Jason 24

Re: Meanwhile in NHS Tayside...

£100,000 per year, and they are well under the 10% waste limit at 7.6%.

Given they are £5,600,000 in the hole I don't think this bit of waste (within limits) is much of an issue.

Neither of the articles I can find have said how much is spent in total, nor provide any comparison against other trusts.

UK's Just Eat faces probe after woman tweets chat-up texts from 'delivery guy'

Jason 24

Re: @jaduncan, @rmason

We've started using Just Eat as a reverse amazon, use just eat for the menu, then call up direct and order on the phone. The price on just eat is generally inflated a bit so you play less going direct.

Magic Leap blows our mind with its incredible technology... that still doesn't f**king exist

Jason 24

Re: TL:DR. BS technology company continues to peddle BS technology which is

Can I fight the Advanced Persistent Threats with this head set?

That would make firewall configuration much more interesting.

'I knew the company was doomed after managers brawled in a biker bar'

Jason 24

I dunno, Bezos has that new 'ard man look about him...

FCC douses America's net neutrality in gas, tosses over a lit match

Jason 24

Re: Black arm bands for everyone

"So Trump is doing what we want him to do: de-regulate"

"All gummint needs to do is keep the playing field level by preventing the situation that created the 'Robber Barons'"

Can you really not see the contradiction from one paragraph to the next? Do you want no regulation, or do you want the government to stop monopolies? AKA Regulation?

YouTuber cements head inside microwave oven

Jason 24

Re: Twat

Last nights Dave Gorman had a simiar vein, "would you a buy product which does not work if it was endorsed by a celebrity"

A shocking number of people will buy a product, which advertises that it does not work, if it's endorsed by a celebrity.

Weird.

Jason 24

Re: Send them the bill

A friend had an amount added to his council tax billl after mostly destroying his flat by putting tea lights on top of the TV (before flat screens!). The tin part melted through the plastic and dropped red hot wax all over those lovely electricals.

Lauri Love's US extradition appeal judges reserve decision

Jason 24

"why within the court no evidence has been presented..."

Isn't one of the USAs arguments that they can't provide the necessary evidence to the UK courts to prosecute here?

I'm aware this isn't really a valid argument, just interesting to note. Swings and roundabouts!

BOFH: Do I smell burning toes, I mean burning toast?

Jason 24

Re: the basement deluge control…

And frikkin' lasers!!

Dell makes $1bn bet that IoT at the edge can kill cloud computing takeover

Jason 24

Work for works sake is not how to advance society and improve living standards. Else we'd all still be living in mud huts working the land to feed ourselves.

Why Uber isn't the poster child for capitalism you wanted

Jason 24

Re: Erm

"If Uber offers such awful terms in comparison to the others then nobody will work for them "

I think you underestimate how desperate some people are for any sort of work.

ICO whacks Welsh biz with £350k fine for 150 million nuisance calls

Jason 24

Give them an inch...

Forget all that, this is much simpler to resolve, from the article;

"Companies can only make automated marketing calls to people that have previously consented to such communications from them."

I can give you the complete list of people who want to receive such automated calls.

...

Now if no one wants these, then surely they are illegal? The above line merely gives them an inch and they taking a fecking light years worth of the piss.

Scottish pensioners rage at Virgin cabinet blocking their view

Jason 24

Re: BT + Virgin = Twats

@ Look at this gem of an installation..

Bet they still can't get FTTP

Jason 24

Or a cement mixer, why do things by half?

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

Jason 24

"When I'm in the office I'll pop out at lunch time and buy myself a sandwich. When I'm on site at a clients for a few hours I pop out at lunch and buy a sandwich, but this now becomes the companies responsibility?"

I kind of feel the same way to a degree, I always bring a sandwich to work, so why should me going onsite for an install be any different?

1) If we're doing an install with an onsite IT team then going out together and eating together can improve the team/become friendlier and usually we end up stopping at a point things needs discussing, helps if we're all eating together. Better than slinking off to sit in the car by myself.

2) If I'm getting back home after 7pm then I don't see an issue stopping for something on the motorway home, you're already eating into my evening family time for the companies benefit, let me have a quick bite without half an hour of cooking.

As for breakfast, my place will cover it if you set off before 6am from home which I think is pretty reasonable. If it's a hotel stop over then we generally get the premier inn breakfast included as part of the booking.

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