* Posts by psychonaut

991 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2012

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

psychonaut

Re: fine, change it

Customer conversation used to be

So do you mean by outlook ....the email address, the website email or the outlook program. Now gotta add the other program called outlook which looks very similar bit is crap, and has a tiny word "new" written on the same icon as proper outlook

Aaargh! Just call it something else ffs!

Also, please stop asking me if I want to go back to the old teams app that was incapable of multiple accounts. I like what you have done, you did something good, stop trying to make me undo it!

psychonaut

Re: Microsoft

Microsoft specifically tell you to back up your own data if you use business 365. They specifically say that they do not back up your data. Use datto or sky kick or whatever from about 2 quid per month.

Exchange Online blocked from sending email to AOL and Yahoo

psychonaut

There will be a lot of ip addresses, each ndr will only list one, the one it was sent through.

psychonaut

Re: Enforcing DMARC

Exactly this. If they haven't enabled their actual domains dkim on their 365 account and set up the cnames in their dns, along with a proper spf record, with a -all not a ~all and a dmarc record, yahoo and many others will bounce their spam looking emails . I hate yahoo, but this isn't an ms issue or a yahoo issue, this is a "I don't know shit about how to set up 365 properly" issue

recommendations for accountant for IT LTD company

psychonaut

recommendations for accountant for IT LTD company

Hi hope you are all well.

I'm having to fire my current accountant as he is a useless bastard.

I am near Reading, Berks.

Does anyone have a recommendation for an accountant that specialises in IT companies please?

Dropbox drops 16% of staff, points finger at hard-up customers and AI

psychonaut

One drive..

Their 30 quid per month mimimum business service has been made unnecessary by one drive for business, which is free with any 365 business subscription, 99 pc of my clients are on 365. So no need for Dropbox. Although, to be fair, one drive isn't as reliable as Dropbox. However, what with entire 365 ecosystem being cheaper per user (basic is 80vquid a year) than a single Dropbox user (£100 per year) I can't see where they fit in anymore.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

psychonaut

Security

I have now got 1100 end points that I look after, 99% windows. Not one single viral issue or one bit of lost data in over 10 years , thats across xp to 11, from old grannies to small businesses, and not 1 domain. Windows can be secure as long as you do it properly. Every Windows system i ever see for the first time...user is an admin, no ad blocker, no script blocker, no crypto prevent (use it, it is marvellous), and Norton, avg or mcafee. That's why Windows gets owned so much.

EU makes USB-C common charging port for most electronic devices

psychonaut

Re: Repair

Not so, there are no end of people who rip the dc jacks of any flavour out of the board, I get 4 or 5 a month. Usb c is incredibly difficult to resolder. Its a terrible choice for power. And always attached to the motherboard. If it was on a harness or daughterboard, then no problem but it drops the repairabilty of the device down the list.

psychonaut

One problem

Usb c sockets are very very difficult to resolder, and they are usually directly connected to the motherboard, not a daughterboard. Makes repairing them very difficult indeed.

avoid teamviewer. price hikes, reusal to end auto renewal, refusal to remove payment details

psychonaut

legal advice is to let them invoice, then let them sue me if they believe they have a case.

if they manage to successfully bill me, i am to sue them.

lawyers noted that the "auto renewal policy having to be cancelled within 28 days of the renewal period" was unlikely to be lawful .

they also did the following:

1)say they are going to enforce a quota within 28 days of expiry of subscription (of 200, which i had never known before and ive been with them for 8 years, there are 1700 computers on my account, vast majority of which are dead)

2)say i have to pay 5x my current subscription

3)refuse to help me remove dead machines

4) refuse to cancel auto renewal due in 25 days time

5) refuse to remove payment details

6) attempt to charge me for a service which has not yet happened, and for which they will suffer precisely zero financial loss if it is cancelled, as the date for renewal is in the future.

psychonaut

avoid teamviewer. price hikes, reusal to end auto renewal, refusal to remove payment details

a cautionary tale, teamviewer are getting nasty -

Firstly teamviewer have implemented the quota on my account, which i've never been aware of, but fair enough. but, because i have never realised i have a quota, i have never bothered to delete any old pc's...my account is 8 years old now. so i have circa 1700 computers on it. most of which are dead.

so, i was happy to pay a fair license fee, but only for the machines that are not long dead. firstly they said i had to do it manually, now they have given me scripting tools to see how many there are, but they dont provide the correct information. they have now said that that is all they can do.

so, i am not happy to pay for 1700 computers when maybe i only have 500 hundred, and also, they want to jack the price up by a factor of 5 anyway (i was grandfathered in at a really good price to be fair).

I'm now seeking legal advice via my business insurance as to if they can enforce an auto renew that is not due to occur until 3 weeks time.

this post is really just a warning, i am quite disgusted at the behaviour of the company, and i wonder if anyone else has had this issue and got round it?

i will also post the results of the legal advice i will be getting.

so, now i have started looking at alternative suppliers, and im done with teamviewer. im moving to splashtop.

so i ask them to prevent the contract from renewing in about 3 weeks time. the middle of december, they say the following, which i find incredible. they have also refused to remove the payment method i have on file.

Thank you for reaching out to TeamViewer.

Unfortunately, we are unable to process your request for cancellation. You can view our End-User License Agreement (“EULA”) by clicking on the link: TeamViewer End-User License Agreement (See the section B.5.1 of the agreement).

"Unless otherwise specified in the Order, the Contract has an initial term of twelve (12) months (“Initial Term”) and shall subsequently be renewed automatically for additional periods of twelve (12) months (each a “Renewal Term”), unless either party notifies the other party no less than twenty-eight (28) days prior to the end of the Initial Term or any Renewal Term that it has elected not to renew the Contract."

As your request was sent outside of the contractual renewal period, cancellation is not permitted for the upcoming invoice.

Once you have received the invoice and it has been settled I would be happy to terminate your license for the next renewal period.

Have a nice day.

repair shop ..to open or not?

psychonaut

repair shop ..to open or not?

Anybody else got an IT repair shop, and if so , are you open? if so , what precautions do you take?

Microsoft 365 Business to gain more Azure Active Directory toys... oh, and it's called Microsoft 365 Business Premium (from 21 April)

psychonaut

So when people call and say "my Microsoft doesn't work" they might actually be correct from now on.

BT's Wi-Fi Disc ads banned because there's no evidence the things work

psychonaut

Re: What is best for a house on three levels?

YMMV. but, here are my rules. ive done many a wireless install over the years for customers.

currently using Ubiquiti Unify UAP-AC-LR access points (for low density client requirements, such as a residential house) . these are bonkers powerful. ive had whole house coverage off of just one, however, when you have more than 1 AP you have 1 seamless network providing you do some research. you need to use different channels for each ap, turn off mesh (if you have cat 5 backhaul), turn off wireless uplink, set min rss values, turn the power to what is appropriate for the cell size. also disable the wifi on whatever shit router your isp has supplied you with

ok, i know there was some hoohar about the ap's phoning back telemetary stuff - im ignoring that for the mo. you could use ruckus/cisco instead. if you believe that they dont phone home and also are worth the premium

the best way to do backhaul to connect these to your router is by cat5e or 6 of course.

if you cant, you might get away with powerline. in this case i use solwise 1200mbs with mains filters. they dont always work due to peoples wiring.

the AP's are PoE, so you dont need to have power source handy.

the thing is, you can put these in your loft.

if you can get just one cable from your router to your loft, up an external wall for instance,then through the soffit under the eaves, you are laughing. you probably have a power socket in the loft anyway, or maybe a lighting circuit, then you can put a small poe switch in there to run however many AP's you need, or you can do PoE from next to your router if needs be. heck, run 2 or 3 cat 5 cables, its all the same labour really to run 1 2 or 3. you'd need a very wide house to need more than 2 or 3 in the loft.

mine are in the rafters in the loft. the ac-lr's are so powerful that they penetrate through the ceiling of my 1st floor, into the first floor, through the floor, and into the ground floor. i get about 80 Mb/s on the ground floor, some places its worse, some better. my source is 300mbs. on the 1st floor i get 300mb's on wifi. 80mb's downstairs is enough to do anything streaming wise. i could have put these in the ceiling of the first floor but after testing with them in the loft i couldnt be arsed to move them. i could also get better coverage by tweaking but again i cant be bothered.

it really works. well worth a look. ive installed these in many houses now, with much success. one seamless network, no messing about with duplicate (well, fake really) ssid's from different access points , or different networks for different bits of the house. the AP's talk to each other and kick your device form one to the other automatically when you reach the limit fo their range(needs tweaking though with min rssi) ...it really is great.

as has been mentioned, repeaters are shit , mesh can be usefull but its not desirable,

psychonaut

Re: "sheer bollockery"

Shitcunt ftw though

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

psychonaut

Oh God yes this. "Leave"the EU but follow all the rules. Fucking idiots. Either leave or dont. Dont give up what we already have and follow the fucking rules which we now cant change. Leave or dont. Remainers and leavers surely dont want a scenario where we are still in a customs union but unable to alter anything ever?

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

psychonaut

Re: What an unpleasant display of smugness here

"Nobody has time to go surfing in hard drives to find whatever files have been squirrelled away wherever."

"We are supposed to stay late, miss deadlines and endure screaming fits for these people?"

to be fair, i do, but as i work for myself i charge a decent amount of money for it, so its not too bad for me. if i was on salary it might be different though.

i still dont put up with arseholes though, a policy i put in place many years ago. i have a few i still need to get rid of, but the time will come....oh yes, i am looking forward to that day.

psychonaut

Re: What an unpleasant display of smugness here

Sadly these kind of people are most often the kind who dont listen, treat it people like minions/ shit, think they know better and have no respect. Schadenfreude when it all goes tits for them? Too bloody right! It's to do with attitude. I will go out of my way to help people that are respectfull , in fact anyone now that treats me like crap can be someone else's problem

psychonaut

Re: Back up of encrypted folder

I use true crypt container for customer stuff. Had an issue where carbonite made 1 copy of the file and then never backed it up again. Because the file was a fixed size and same name and time stamp the same it never changed as far as the carbonite backup was concerned. There is an option in true crypt which I cant remember exactly what but it's to do with the timestamp on the file..set it to change rather than not change or similar. Once changed carbonite see's the file as changed and starts doing versions backups again. Fortunately i caught this before anything bad happened. One to watch out for...might not just be carbonite that does this.

Pro tip: Plug in your Tesla S when clocking off, lest you run out of juice mid hot pursuit

psychonaut

Re: Damn

Not much seeing as he is deader than a Tesla pursuit battery

Bonkers British MPs rant: 5G signals cause cancer

psychonaut

Re: Is it safe?

Is it safe?

"Oh yes. It's perfectly safe, and its merely us that are in trouble"

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

psychonaut

Re: Well, if MS want to sell MS Azure Cloud services...

they deliberately throttled it the bastards. after a few days of tearing my hair out, (i run a PC repair shop amongst other things) thats when i found this

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

still the quickest way to do updates for any win os. you can set it to auto reboot among other things.

encrypted email

psychonaut

encrypted email

Hi Everyone, hope you are well.

I'm trying to find a solution for encrypted email.

i have a number of customers that are financial advisers or accountants, each of which have many customers, each of which use any number of email systems - could be anything from 365 to ntlworld webmail

it has to be

1) simple for the end user to use / implement

2) be 2 way encryption

i have today talked to 2 providers, which i wont name at the moment, which proport to be able to deal with any email client. the way they do this is to send the recipient an email saying "you have an encrypted email, click the link below and log in" which take them to a website which lets them log in, where they can view the email and respond to it. if they respond, the originator gets an email saying...you have received an encrypted email etc etc.

they do this so that they dont have to bother doing dkim or spf and send from the originators address.

sounds good right?

easy for the client, easy for the originator.

hilariously, i have been able to spoof both of their email delivery addresses. ive sent them emails from themselves to themselves using fakesend. casued a bit of a stir hopefully, but i am flabberghasted that this is possible.

their spf records are on a ~all and the dmarc records are non existent or say p=none. (i.e. even if it fails, deliver it). both dont have dkim signing.

so some one could send out a massive spam campaign, spoofing the address, using an email that looks like the ones that they send, and have a link to a fake site which then harvests their "secure email" credentials. then they use those to log into the real site, and bingo, they have access to the encrypted emails. encrypted emails usually have stuff worth looking at, so its quite a big honey pot.

has anyone got any suggestions for a proper service?

Making money mining Coinhive? Yeah, you and nine other people

psychonaut

Re: Not Ponzi - it's MLM

you are AMWAY right mate....one of my friends was big into that years ago. he was always trying to sell stuff to his mates poor bastard. it never made him a bean

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

psychonaut

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

actually, that isnt true.

credit card numbers dont die. even if you get a new card, there is still an authorisation to use the old number and it cannot be blocked (at least not by amex and lloyds, cant vouch for anyone else) . i was gobsmacked when i found out.

you have to put a block on a particular supplier on that account.

this is from experience for a client, who was having hundreds of pounds a week spent by one of his kids' friends on xbox crap on his amex and lloyds cards

The last phablet? 6.4in Samsung Galaxy Note 9 leaves you $1k lighter, needs 'water cooling'

psychonaut

fucking battery

aaaarghh! non removable....

i wonder how difficult it will be to actually change it.

Top tip? Sprinkle bugs into your code to throw off robo-vuln scanners

psychonaut

i was thinking the same.

also - "Because the stack layout of a function is determined at compile time, we can control what data will be overwritten when the overflow occurs, which gives us an opportunity to ensure the overflow will not be exploitable."

surely you should be doing this in your own, non buggy, code anyway?

Another German state plans switch back from Linux to Windows

psychonaut

Re: Short sighted idiots

i seriously doubt govt type organisations are interested in having "the community" do anything at all with their systems.

Boss helped sysadmin take down horrible client with swift kick to the nether regions

psychonaut

johnson

wang labs....snnnerk!!

OnePlus 6: Perfect porridge? One has to make a smartphone that's juuuust right

psychonaut

power brick is no use to me - i dont want to have to carry it around all day, with a lead coming out of my phone into it, i just want a big battery.....full day with everything on and constant phone calls is ok. the note does this with a battery that is <9 months old

psychonaut

Re: Moto G3

3 things you need...

search ebay / amazon / some other tat bazzaar for the following:

Micro USB Magnetic Adapter Charging Cable

turns your crappy micro usb port into a mac style magentic charger port. the one i have supports fast charge. i have these in all my micro usb devices. they are only a few quid. the do iphone versions as well, and probably usb c

i also bought a monster battery for my note a few months ago. it makes the phone fairly thick, but it lasts 2 days, with everything on all the time. i hammer my phone (bluetooth, wifi, data, remote phone call centre app, calls all day long whicvh is why i need a new battery every 9 months or so). battery is called a powerbear. im not sure i like it actually, its almost too thick and its quite heavy. i might ditch it, but if you need 2 days this will do it.

oh, and the last thing is the Scosche magnetic mount / holder. i have these in both cars and on my desk . i can just plonk my phone on them (and its a note 4, very heavy especially with the big battery) and it holds it no problems at all. my missus' iphone has a magnet on it too, so we can just swap cars and only have 1 mount in each car.

if i could get a decent camera on the note 4, i would never change it!

psychonaut

Hmm. How should we differentiate our phones??

Its soooo obvious.

Sd slot

Removable battery

Waterproof

Still rocking my note 4 as there is NOTHING to replace it with

Great Scott! Bitcoin to consume half a per cent of the world's electricity by end of year

psychonaut

ok, whatever the calculation is, is has a result. when you arrive at the result, you get a bitcoin. or something similar right?

the end result is useless, unless your only goal is to make money. in which case, it is usefull.

but, if you could make money and also perform a useful calculation....

so give it a different problem. one where the answer is usefull but as yet unknown.

there must be millions of unknown chemical compounds / seti data / methods of mixing chemicals / protein structures / christ knows....lots of things that could be worked out but havent been yet.

psychonaut

ok, i may be being thick here. why cant we reward someone for doing x amount of computations instead of rewarding someone for doing x amount of useless computations?

like generate 1 NHScoin every time you work out how many useless managers there are in a given department?

1 NHScoin can be redeemed to put your appointment ahead by, say, 1 hour, for a , say, category c injury (mild headache, or something that you think needs antibiotics).

or similar. the possibilities are endless.

psychonaut

Why dont they make the computations usefull rather than pointless? Im thinking of the old SETI screen saver (20yrs ago...)and there was a medical number cruncher as well...solving arbitrary problems is a waste of energy and time.

Router admin? Bored? Let's play Battleships using BGP!

psychonaut

surely that would be doom over BFG?

Intel’s first 10nm CPU is a twin-core i3 destined for a mid-range Lenovo

psychonaut

Re: Yawn indeed.

nice! the first guy to post has deleted his post! cant stand the heat? get out of the meltdown man...

psychonaut

Re: Yawn indeed.

Thats pretty harsh. Considering almost noone needs even a 10 year old i3 .(ssd, intel gxxxx gen 2 or 3, 4gb ram will do any office task imagineable very quickly for 99% of imagineable in a normal office environment) easily..this chip isnt aimed at you. No one is going to pair this chip with 64gb of ram, itd be stupid. You would spend the budget differently

UK 'meltdown' bank TSB's owner: Our IT migration was a 'success'

psychonaut

Re: Sounds vaguely familiar...

i was thinking more like ferrero rocher

Musk: I want to retrieve rockets with big Falcon party balloons

psychonaut

this is genius.

the best bit about it, is if you got the tension correct, the rocket could come to a complete stop (for some value of a small amount of time) next to a platform which could allow people to alight / derocket, and then go up to orbit themselves using nothing other than the tension in the ACME. rinse and repeat, with a few chemical kickers along the way to defeat that pesky friction stuff. you wouldn't want to hang about though i suspect when de-rocketing alighting.

You're a govt official. You accidentally slap personal info on the web. Quick, blame a kid!

psychonaut

Re: Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Portal

hmm except no.

alonis, ironic . ed byrne.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfpB0kDLEts

Pentagon sticks to its guns: Yep, we're going with a single cloud services provider

psychonaut

Re: Seriously??

"Coup Plotters" - i used to have one of those. big A1 thing. lovely

Boring as she goes at Sage? Oh no, no, no! Shares slide as sales slip below forecasts

psychonaut

Re: Sage is a horrendous

yeah, pretty much that. although it works very quick on a TS over a vpn on rdp.not sure why yours doesnt work on a vpn.

and yes, they dont "support" terminal server, but it does work. so dont tell them that....the only pisser is finding the updates so that you can run them in instal mode although to be fair their support portal now does allow this. a few years ago and it was a pain in the arse.

psychonaut

Re: Maybe accountants are finally looking elsewhere.

i fucking hate sage with a passion. ended up building a terminal server 6 years ago just to get it to run multi users. otherwise its a total dog on a network. and the number of programs they have, p11d, accounts, payroll, corp tax, personal tax, accounts production, accounts production advanced, err, i think thats it.

its really nice to have it on a TS, only needs one update per few months per program but in the bad old days it was a total nightmare for more than 1 user

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

psychonaut

this, several times a month, in 2018

At which point Calving explained the screen was a screen and the computer was another box entirely.

“What?” was the next retort, followed by some insistent commentary to the effect that Calvin’s sister was not stupid and knew just what was what and which thing was where.

Calvin resolved to be a supportive sibling, so asked his sister if she’d ever noticed “that big, beige box under the desk?”

“That is the computer,” he explained. “The screen is just a screen.”

My PC makes ‘negative energy waves’, said user, then demanded fix

psychonaut

Re: qotw

yup, its been this way for years....

remember the isoplat?

i have to confess i did by cyrus oxgen free single strand copper for my mission's though. it was only a few meters. it made all the difference ;)

Are meta, self-referential or recursive science-fiction films doomed?

psychonaut

With you on winstanley. Waiting for the new one.

'Every little helps'... unless you want email: Tesco to kill free service

psychonaut

Re: Buy your own domain

so

1) email all contacts saying you have changed address.

2) forward your gmail to your new domain email address

3) set an auto responder on your gmail saying "we got your email, but please form now on use mynewemail@mynewdomain.tld"

within a few months anyone who is important will definitely have taken note.

its not a big deal...

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

psychonaut
Coat

Re: How Dare You!

you cant GIVE offence, it can only be taken by someone.

(jimmy carr will explain this for you...)

what the recipient deems offensive could be anything. so the only sure course of action is to say nothing.

SSSSSHHHHHH.....i'll get my coat

psychonaut

a new feature

so, they are scanning your mail and phone conversations.

if they make it so that outlook automatically adds appointments to your diary based on your emails, then tuesdays are going to get booked up to fuck.

see you next tuesday

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