* Posts by tfewster

1193 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2007

Big Tech workers prefer 3 days at home, 2 in the office. We ask Reg readers: What's your home-office balance?

tfewster
Facepalm

Yep, which office? I'm UK based, but working TZ-shifted hours on projects in the US and Japan as needed.

Occasionally I flew over to the US for a week of touchy-feely time at HQ with my "peers". Meh.

One day a week in the office might be useful if there's a schedule of essential face-time for that day. Otherwise it's a waste of time/fuel/makeup

Just 2.6% of 2019's 18,000 tracked vulnerabilities were actively exploited in the wild

tfewster
Joke

Re: Counterpoint

Patch your systems?! Heavens no, Kenna and other Vulnerability Management vampires want you to "manage" vulns, with pretty graphs and steering committees, not actually fix them!

UK dev loses ownership claim on forensic software he said he wrote in spare time and licensed to employer

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: No evidence of a license

"...was paying Penhallurick a salary and cut of sales in payment"

"Penhallurick resigned in 2016... in January 2018 ... MD5 stopped paying him for the code."

That looks like evidence of some sort of agreement at one time. Though maybe not what you would call a "licence" agrement

Wells Fargo patent troll case has finance world all aquiver so Barclays, TD Bank sign up to Open Invention Network

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: The greed of banks

Yes, pardon my cynicism, but I find it hard to imagine Barclays as a victim or a contributor to free software. The headline could so easily have read "plucky inventors band together to get some of what they are owed from bank cartels".

The patent system corpse allows leeches to feed on all sides.

Dev creeped out after he fired up Ubuntu VM on Azure, was immediately approached by Canonical sales rep

tfewster
Joke

Nominative determinism at its finest - a Weiner working for Microsoft.

The Linux box that runs the exec carpark gate is down! A chance for PostgreSQL Man to show his quality

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Outsourcing

It's funny how HR and Finance are never considered for outsourcing. All those roles need is a knowledge of the relevant law and common practices for $COUNTRY. In fact, you could probably replace them with a very small script.

tfewster
Joke

I'm awaiting the "Who,me?" angle from the ex-admin. Told he was being laid off, so set up a time bomb that would impact manglement.

Japan’s COVID-19 contact-tracing app hasn't warned users of encounters with carriers since September

tfewster
Joke

Overcrowded, proud, insular island nation admits error

Whut? No, it was Japan. We Brits wouldn't lose face by admitting to errors!

But seriously, Japanese people in cities are used to wearing face masks against pollution and I think are more likely to follow Government guidelines. Let's hope their good run continues.

Smells like Teams spirit: New platform Viva builds in all the tools Microsoft thinks staff need to succeed

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: What!?

ODFO, Microsoft. Some of us are here to do a job, not "engage", "network" or "career build".

Intranets are already a thing. Usually crap, but putting MS polish on that turd won't help.

As for a knowledge base - It's a shame our legal department recently instituted a policy to delete all emails older than 2 years, unless you had overcome the obstacles to archive the useful stuff. Lots of reference stuff gone there. But maybe they could index the contents of SharePoint ("Where information goes to die")?

UK Test and Trace chief Dido Harding tries to convince MPs that £14m for canned mobile app was money well spent

tfewster
Joke

Re: Plenty of money, but

Dido says £14m wasn't wasted - If we believe her, presumably (£15,000m-14m) was?

No cards, thanks, we're contactless-less: UK supermarket giants hit by card payment TITSUP*

tfewster
Facepalm

> the anti-bacterial fluid...on your way OUT of the store...

I do, but by then any germs are on your hands, your card, the bag handles and inside your wallet...possibly not a high risk, but unnecessary. @Danny 2 makes a good point about sanitising the most likely collection places.

Don't do this --------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Google, Apple sued for failing to give Telegram chat app the Parler put-down treatment

tfewster
Facepalm

> has legitimate fears about being targeted due to his ethnic and religious identity...

No, Mr Ginsberg, it's because you've taken a visible position against hate groups. Which is very important and commendable, but means you don't get to play the race card when they target you for your position.

Ali G's "Is it cos I is black?" catchphrase illustrates the point*. No, Ali G, as you know it's because you're acting like an ass to provoke people to the point where you can use the catchphrase.

* I may be wrong about that point - I don't find Sacha Baron Cohen funny, so I don't watch his material.

By all means, drain the cesspools of extremists of all types. But do it right.

[Full disclosure: White, Anglo-Saxon middle aged atheist male here. I'm all for equality, but "positive discrimination" worries me]

12 tech merchants win slices of £504m NHS framework without competition because everything is terrible

tfewster
Boffin

Re: They spend £200m on IT consulting

I'd like to think the IT procurement experts were helping evaluate suppliers of masks, ventilators etc.

But yes, it's strange.

PPE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->

Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'? Newbie gripe sparks some soul-searching among Debian community

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Debian isn't remotely difficult to install

> The people who publish Mint care about ease of use, which is what makes it a good distro to use if you don't want to spend hours hunting down obscure fixes every time you want to do anything.

YMMV. In my experience, Mint was as full of useless cruft as an HP PC and an end user couldn't have got it working. Though once I'd put a few days into cleaning & stabilising it and making it usable, my mother is happy with it.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=269907#

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Many many years ago

Could it be that the lid had a safety cutout contact on it, so the fast-moving printer internals wouldn't run when dangerously exposed?

Possibly not in your case, if the engineer didn't spot that, but it was a fairly common design (and easily disabled ;-)

United States Congress stormed by violent followers of defeated president, Biden win confirmation halted

tfewster
Thumb Up

Re: 'Nuf Said

Maxim 27. Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.

tfewster
Flame

I'd love to have seen him being tear-gassed and then arrested for treason.

Julian Assange will NOT be extradited to the US over WikiLeaks hacking and spy charges, rules British judge

tfewster

Re: Is this designed to confuse and terrorise?

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse"

tfewster
Joke

Re: Suicide

Without prejudice to the man or the accusations: As it's Assanges mental state that seems to be the only remaining barrier to deportation - How about a virtual extradition and trial under COVID lockdown conditions?

- Deport him to the US Embassy in London, on the condition they don't try to take him out of the country.

- Allow him to face his accusers via video link, as many trials are performed nowadays.

- For a fee, Britain can provide trained staff to monitor his health during the trial.

- IF found guilty then, for a fee, Britain can provide suitable accommodation at HMP Belmarsh.

As Uncle Sam continues to clamp down on Big Tech, Apple pelted with more and more complaints from third-party App Store devs

tfewster
FAIL

Re: You don't enter into a relationship with Apple...

Not a good metaphor - there are no swipe-pass bottlenecks on leaving the car park.

Unsecured Azure blob exposed 500,000+ highly confidential docs from UK firm's CRM customers

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Listen to what Teacher says..

The Cloud enables the worst extremes of shadow IT. No longer do business buyers have to smuggle a bootleg beige box into the office (where at least it has some physical and network security). With just a company credit card the clueless can cut through any corporate governance.

Though I'm amazed they managed to completely disable the out of the box security to make this a perfect clusterfuck.

You wouldn't sell a knife to a kid - Maybe Azure et al should enforce a competency test, e.g.

"The Cloud is a) A magical paradigm that anyone can use b) A way to free the business from the tyranny of experts c) Bureau computing with a new name d) Someone else's computer."

Even if the buyer guesses a "right" answer, they've been warned ;-)

Alibaba admits it built facial-recognition-as-a-service to detect oppressed Uyghur minority in China

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Good luck on your next IPO...

Does the Chinese government count as a "customer"? Would Alibaba really develop this capability "under duress" and then refuse to implement it?

Chinese government policy on Uyghurs stinks, but collaborators are no better.

US nuke agency hacked by suspected Russian SolarWinds spies, Microsoft also installed backdoor

tfewster

Is Marcus Hutchins getting credit for his technique of taking over a C&C server?

Google rejects Australia’s revised pay-for-news plan, proposes its own plan instead

tfewster

> Silva also argues that no search engine anywhere pays to generate links and that Australia’s plan could therefore “unravel the key principles of the open internet people use every day”.

Most websites pay for their content, whether or not they charge consumers.

On the other hand, search engines bring in a wider audience, so I'm not sure what is "fair".

About $15m in advertising booked to appear on millions of smart TVs was never seen by anyone, says Oracle

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: So, from where does that money ultimately come?

That's OK - At least my valuable time isn't being wasted. And it's not like a vendor will reduce their prices or marketing budget if they make a saving on _some_ advertising.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna needs new business cards already after appointment as board chair

tfewster
Joke

Re: Good work, if you can get it

> support staff

Just a dog.

Her job is to feed the dog.

The dogs job is to bite her if she does anything to interfere with IBM.

Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Netflix

I'm amazed no one has posted this xkcd yet

Who knew that hosing a table with copious amounts of cubic metres would trip adult filters?

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Inside joke?

One company I worked for had a strategic growth programme called "Winning The Future".

I got a lot of childish amusement from the regular email updates with the subject "WTF"

It's always DNS, especially when a sysadmin makes a hash of their semicolons

tfewster
Angel

Re: Guide to religion

Splitter! Vim is a derivative of vi, which in turn is based on ed.

Pretty fly for a SharkEye: Salesforce sponsors AI drones to spot sharks before they attack California swimmers

tfewster

Re: Text messages are then sent to people, warning them whenever a shark is nearby

> nearby

So, constant geolocation? Or a "shark alert" signup?

I get the "study behaviour" purpose. But "alert swimmers" seems like a political stretch/bodge.

'Unmute' named one of Oxford Dictionary's words of the year

tfewster

Blursday blues

I'd not heard "Blursday" before, but it gets my vote.

Dated 267th March 2020

When even a power-cycle fandango cannot save your Windows desktop

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: How do you shut down Windows?

Same logic as a car - Use the ignition key to stop the engine as well as to start it.

Cyberup campaign: 80% of infosec pros fear they might fall foul of UK's outdated Computer Misuse Act

tfewster
Facepalm

It may be news to F-Secure, but there are many disciplines within Infosec, and I doubt that Pen-testers (or Incident Response - hacking back?) make up 80% of those roles.

So, another BS headline from a self-serving SIG. Which leads me to take all of their claims with a pinch of salt.

Billionaire's Pagani Pa-gone-i after teen son takes hypercar out for a drive, trashes it

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Ask any actuary

I disagree. Stupidity should have consequences. I just hope they didn't harm any innocent bystanders.

Max Schrems is back... and he's challenging Apple's 'secret iPhone advertising tracking cookies' in Europe

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: They just don't get it.

"why this is beneficial" - it reduces $COMPANY marketing costs, enabling us to fire our marketing staff and reduce the cost of the product to the consumer.

I'd agree to personalised ads if they said that. Of course, I'd still block 'em.

International infosec rules delivered to make nations and non-state actors behave themselves online

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Possible but unlikely to be effective

A lovely dream, but I can't see the NSA or GCHQ signing up to this, and I can't see this "commission"calling them out for it either.

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

tfewster
Facepalm

@Mike 137 Re: Time bombs?

crippled kit:

- several different versions of each product with differing specifications - And duplicated R&D, manufacturing, and support costs. Which got passed on to the customer.

- so you can "upgrade" by buying a "license key" - Surely better than having to throw the old one away and buy the higher spec version?

Paying only for what you use is a pretty good model.

Apple now Arm'd to the teeth: MacBook Air and Pro, Mac mini to be powered by custom M1 chips rather than Intel

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Good time to buy Apple shares

Until Spectre/Meltdown type flaws are found in the M1. Developing your own chips and doing security is *hard*

Google's plan to make User-Agent string even less useful breaks our device detection tech, says NetMarketShare

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: We expect this change to improve compatibility...

One website I know of stopped working because the UA was (honestly) reporting "Firefox-Linux", and the Webdevs claimed they didn't support Linux. A quick hack of the UA later, normal service was restored.

Why, yes, you can register an XSS attack as a UK company name. How do we know that? Someone actually did it

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: What is wrong with this?

You don't leave knives or matches lying around in a playground. Although it's not explicitly prohibited by law, you would be liable for the consequences.

Similarly, Companies House should be free to reject anything potentially problematic. FCUK* the companies trying to be "clever".

* French Connection-UK, who pushed the limits in their advertising.

Dulux feel lucky, punk? Samsung wades into paint world with interior emulsions designed to 'complement' your, er, TV

tfewster

Re: What ?

Snot green, vomit brown and piss yellow - The classics.

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

tfewster
Facepalm

I confess, I wrote one myself for the systems teams to use for stock control.

We weren't allowed to use the corporate system, as we were just a side branch. But we had PCs, wireless hand scanners and label printers in the stock we had to count every month, so why not build our own? How difficult could it be?

As it turned out - not very difficult. Scan deliveries in, print labels for the boxes, easily track stock, print shipping lists. Stocktake into a new "table" to compare with the DB.

And finally, print the reconciled stocktake report to send to HQ to be re-input into their system. Could I have sent an electronic copy ready for import? Yeah, but stuff 'em.

Amazon tells ISPs: I can be your Eero, baby. I can ease your Wi-Fi pain. I will block bad sites forever...

tfewster
Facepalm

Fascinating

> Eero Insight, which is designed to identify network connectivity and reliability problems, and then automatically resolve them

So it can contact my ISP, even when the connection is down, to tell them they've fucked up again? That would solve 99% of my internet connectivity problems.

(the other 1% being a power outage, which I fixed by buying a UPS for the router. I've never had a problem with MY equipment.)

Wisepay 'outage' is actually the school meal payments biz trying to stop an intruder from stealing customer card details

tfewster
Childcatcher

Wisepay should top up any empty accounts and recover the money later. It's their fuckup, parents* are the victims, and "find alternative methods" is just adding insult to injury.

* Oh yeah, and their kids.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Relax...

Thanks Paddy - It's embarrassing how much time I've spent writing my own bash utilities to import/manipulate/write CSV files instead of just looking for something ready-made!

tfewster

Re: Alternative?

Really? Please tell me how to get awk to recognise a comma is "quoted" and is not a field delimiter.

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Relax...

@AC, your script fails if there's a comma in a data field, even if it's within quotes (the CSV standard).

Better to use something that understands the CSV standard, like, um...Excel? In my experience, it tells you if the CSV data hasn't completely loaded ( > 1M rows, so that might only be in later versions).

I believe PowerShell has an Import-CSV function. I expect there are Linux utilities that can do that too. I'd probably find them useful, as one of my duties involves producing a huge, meaningless report listing which I then parse in a bash shell to pull out useful data.

Excel is remarkably good at making up for systems that can't produce decent reports, though it has pitfalls. The real WTF is why a 65,000 row "report" is needed - a human won't read it. If it's using CSV to transfer data from a collection system to a proper analysis tool, that's fine. If Excel is your (temporary) analysis tool, just be aware of the limitations.

Downvote away if you have a ready-to-roll analysis tool for, say, < £500/seat ;-)

IBM manager had to make one person redundant from choice of two, still bungled it and got firm done for unfair dismissal

tfewster

I was under the impression that the US "right to work" was a union-busting tactic and "at will" was a separate thing.

Did this airliner land in the North Sea? No. So what happened? El Reg probes flight tracker site oddity

tfewster

Re: I blame the following, in this order...

<obligatory>It's always DNS.</obligatory>