* Posts by Lotaresco

1501 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2007

'Tesco Bank's major vulnerability is its ownership by Tesco,' claims ex-employee

Lotaresco

Re: Speculation and Rumour

"The Tesco Bank systems were started from scratch, there's no RBS legacy systems there."

There's no RBS tin there, for sure.

You get where this is going?

Lotaresco

Re: Speculation and Rumour

Most of it is there in the article.

Tesco Bank was originally run by RBS for Tesco. Therefore if the vulnerability was in the banking system it's likely that RBS would also be affected because the most likely transfer of operations from RBS to Tesco would be reproduction of the RBS systems at Tesco. The fact that some ex-RBS people are involved suggests that this is probably true.

The NCSC says it doesn't affect wider UK banking i.e. there's a low chance that the problem is common to Tesco and RBS. Therefore it is something that Tesco has done that has introduced the problem. Connecting a banking system to any other system is risky, the staffer says it was connected to Clubcard. That would be a stupid thing to do. We don't know which other Tesco systems are connected but it's reasonable to suggest that retail systems will not be secured to the same standard as banking systems.

The staffer also says there's no protective monitoring for the Tesco systems. That's downright irresponsible but typical of low-margin retail which would not like to pay the high day rates for SOC analysts who know their stuff.

This is back to "I told you so" territory because any halfway decent Security Architect could have told them that connections to non-banking systems are a bad idea and that skimping on monitoring is a *really* bad idea.

Six car-makers team to build European 'leccy car charge bar network

Lotaresco

Re: I can't see the point.

"If I wanted to go on holiday to another continent I might fly."

Don't your arms get tired?

Lotaresco

Re: Where's the power coming from?

"Given the lead times for building power generation plants somebody had better start planning now. Perhaps the car manufacturers - so keen to bang the drum for electric cars - could pay for them :-)."

Then we have to consider that EV drivers are getting a free ride at the moment, even if they pay for their "fuel". Electricity for vehicle use is taxed at 5% the same as for domestic use. Other car drivers have to pay taxes of about 157%.

So the hypothetical and completely untrue 100kWH capacity of a Tesla costs £14 to "fill" at present prices. Pay the fuel duty on that and it would cost £36 to fill. If the driver had to pay the fuel duty on the fuel used to create the electricity it would cost the driver £110 to "fill" their tank. Ouch.

It's about time that we started to tax EVs properly - they can keep their free Vehicle tax concession as an incentive to go green.

Lotaresco
Boffin

Re: Electric cars are a deadend

"I have suggested here before (and got downvoted for my pains) that ALL new buildings are constructed with a PV array on the roof."

What a brilliant idea... then, like you, we could all charge our cars overnight using the PV panels on the roof.

Or is it possible you haven't thought this through?

Lotaresco

Re: UK Charging points

"You mean kinda like now, where we have pumps with nozzles for two types of petrol, two types of diesel, and autogas all serving the same bay."

Not really. Because if I fill both tanks on my car (LPG and Petrol) then I'm not going to need to stop for 1000 miles.

The Tesla isn't even a dot in the rear view mirror. It's something I forgot about 170 miles into the drive.

Lotaresco

Re: UK Charging points

"Given that Tesla have now set up charging points across just about all of Western Europe (excluding Western Span and Portugal for some reason), allowing you to drive from Malaga to Narvik ..."

... taking at least three times longer than you would need to do the same drive in a proper car.

Lotaresco

"Right now, one of Tesla's major advantages is its network of "superchargers", which in about 40 minutes can recharge a car's batteries with enough energy for up to 200 miles of range"

Tesla claim "up to" 170 miles.

By the law of advertising that means "nowhere near" 170 miles.

Lotaresco

Re: I can't see the point.

"Now do you see the point?"

No.

Because I'm about to set off on my drive home for Christmas. That will be 1500 miles in three days (I'm a slow driver). That's 500 miles per day 7 hours driving per day at an average of 70mph. The speed limit is 81 mph so I'm taking things easy. An electric car can't do that. Not even the mighty Tesla. It would need to stop three times for 30 minutes to make the distance turning an easy drive into an ordeal. Yes you can charge it overnight but you still can't drive even half the distance before needing to stop drive like a pussy and you may get away with a two stop strategy but "range anxiety" will figure heavily in your journey.

I can arrange to do the drive in a single day if my SO and I swap driving every four hours. You don't even have that option in a Tesla. You're going to have to stop or resign yourself to 170 mile (maximum) hops. Nine refuelling stops instead of three, 4.5 hours just to refill to add to 19 hours of driving[1]. As close as makes no difference to 24 hours.

No, I really can't see the point.

And that's before we get to the stupid price of a Tesla. I could happily run my car for 500,000 miles for the purchase price of a Tesla.

[1] I'll let you drive faster than I do.

Lotaresco
Boffin

Re: Fast, how fast?

"The biggest (at present) Teslas have 100kWh batteries"

That is, the battery has the same energy capacity of just 10 litres of petrol[1].

10 litres of petrol weighs 7.5kG

The tesla battery pack weighs 544kg

[1] It doesn't because independent tests have shown that Tesla lie about the battery capacity. The batteries are sold as 100kWH but are actually 81-85kWH.

Lotaresco
Boffin

Re: Electric cars are a deadend

"About 3kwh of electricity and another 3 kwh equivalent of heat energy goes into making every gallon of petrol "

A gallon of petrol is 45.5kWH equivalent.

The efficiency of electricity production is 33% so 3kWH of heat goes into making each kWH of electricity.

For 45.5kWH of electricity you need a heat input of 136.5kWH.

So for every gallon equivalent of electricity you need 136.5kWH of heat. That's 23 times more energy input than it takes to make petrol.

Oops.

Your argument isn't looking too good now, is it?

Lotaresco

I can't see the point.

I recharged my car for another 450 miles this morning. It took about five minutes including payment.

Passengers ride free on SF Muni subway after ransomware infects network, demands $73k

Lotaresco
FAIL

Re: What a nightmare...

"Somebody will *always* click on a link!"

I don't believe that's true. If it were people would be able to misdirect individuals over and over again. There's no evidence to support your claim - see this paper which gives a detailed statistical analysis of the root causes of security breaches. It does not mention clicking on a link as a significant issue.

Lotaresco

"I am surprised at the moderate level of ire at the perpetrators in the comments."

I'm not.

About a decade ago the domain name registration service used by a company I worked for fouled up and failed to renew one of the domains - they invoiced and were paid for the renewal, they just didn't do it. It was instantly snapped up by Russian cyber squatters who demanded $CASHLOTS to hand it back. I got voted in as the person to talk to them about it. I made it clear that the domain name wasn't one that was important to us. It was handy to have but not essential and it wasn't associated with business comms (the only email accounts for that domain were postmaster and hostmaster) so we didn't care about losing it. I asked them nicely if they would hand it back since we weren't going to put ourselves out to recover the domain name and certainly weren't going to be paying even $1 ransom money. I also pointed out that they would have to pay the registration fees so it was costing them money for nothing.

I got the same outraged response. How dare I not want to pay ransom money? They had gone to some effort to grab the registration and I should be grateful to them that they only wanted hundreds of thousands of dollars to hand it back.

I check from time to time, they still have the domain, no one wants it.

Lotaresco

Re: Design failure

'if I am shown to be right and problems later develop, I will shout “I told you so!”'

A design team that I was a member of had an informal rule that all position papers used to establish the design objectives would be printed on odd numbered pages only. Even numbered pages would be printed with "I TOLD YOU SO" in 72 point characters. In the event of the inevitable management-created cock-up the paper would be turned over.

Lotaresco

Re: Sign of the times

"Just saw your post about "manual reversion". I think I can see why it may have copped a downvote, it's a bit of a non sequitur as I read it."

Perhaps the point was difficult to follow? It doesn't seem to be difficult but it may be. Manual reversion is only possible in aircraft which are inherently stable in flight. If as AC1 states it is a myth that FBW aircraft can be uncontrollable without the assistance of active FBW systems then all aircraft should be capable of manual reversion. Design teams will always provide manual reversion if possible as the ultimate failsafe. If they have not done so there's a reason and the reason is that the aircraft cannot be flown under manually control because it is dynamically unstable, i.e. "uncontrollable". Hence absence of manual reversion is a clear indication that a particular aircraft type is "uncontrollable".

As to "angry", no I'm not, but thanks for offering your point of view.

Lotaresco

Re: Sign of the times

"Military aircraft without passengers..."

Yes, but military aircraft are aircraft. The Anon. Coward stated " the myth about fbw aircraft being "uncontrollable"". It's not a myth, some FBW aircraft are uncontrollable. If the AC wanted to refer solely to Civil Aviation he should have made that clear or referred to "airliner" rather than "aircraft".

Typical bus driver, he thinks his vehicle is the only one in existence.

Lotaresco

Re: Sign of the times

"There's a good reason for that"

Yes, I know. My work address used to have Royal Aircraft Establishment in it. Thanks for clarifying the point.

I was responding to the boastful pilot[1] who said: "And the myth about fbw aircraft being "uncontrollable" is sensationalist rubbish"

Note that he stated "aircraft" not "airliner" and he's downright wrong. There are FBW aircraft that are dynamically unstable and they cannot be flown by pulling on strings. As you say these tend to be military types and have, on the ones I'm aware of, quad-redundant control systems. Although there's a long and intense argument to be had about whether these systems are suitably redundant. For example they all tend to use the same firmware and processors so there's no independence of design.

it's amusing that rather than engaging in a discussion he's just downvoting, presumably with his bottom lip out in a childish pout, because he knows he was wrong but is too much of a child to admit it.

[1] Is there any other sort of pilot?

Lotaresco

Re: Sign of the times

Oh FFS, another downvoting cockwomble. The BAe Typhoon, B-2 Spirit and Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk have no manual reversion and cannot be flown by a pilot using direct input manual controls even if these were available. If you want to know how an aircraft type works, the last person you should ask is the pilot, he's just the bloody taxi driver. You see all you did with that downvote is make yourself look like a horse's ass, boy.

Lotaresco

Re: Sign of the times

"And the myth about fbw aircraft being "uncontrollable" is sensationalist rubbish btw, don't pay attention to that."

There are aircraft that do not have manual reversion and that could not be flown by direct input to the controls.

Lotaresco

Re: Sign of the times

" I am fairly sure the inflight entertainment system is air gapped from the flight control system on today's modern airliners."

I'm fairly sure, no certain, that you are wrong.

Vegans furious as Bank of England admits ‘trace’ of animal fat in £5 notes

Lotaresco

Re: Fighting your way to the top of the food chain?

"Let's get real. Nobody posting here "fought their way to the top of the food chain". Let's put anyone who says that in a cage with a hungry lion, see who ends up getting out alive, and let's test that theory."

It may have escaped your notice but the British diet does not contain lion meat. I'm more than happy to be put into a cage with the farm animals that I eat. Given that I am a part-time farmer I already spend time in cages with farm animals. So far it's them (0) me (lots) on the scale of who wins. So I would argue, successfully, that I have indeed fought my way to the top of the food chain.

If you could point to any other macro-predator with a population of approx. 7 billion I would be interested to know what species it is.

BTW all the guff about "torturing" animals on farms is just that, guff. Animals get well treated because abusing animals gives poor results when it comes to the quality of meat, milk and hides. Although I suspect your use of the term "feedlots" means that you are talking about production outside Europe. I can't speak for the farming practices of the Shermans.

Lotaresco

"Way to big up your statistical insignificance guys."

Being generous with my rounding up, that's 0.01% of the population. I think their views can safely be ignored.

Lotaresco
Boffin

Re: Faecal matter

"PCR (selectively amplify) the 16S gene (conserved through all bacteria)"

I can't see that this is achieving anything better than just testing for ATP.

Lotaresco

Re: Well, I would settle

Sheer genius. I think you have conceived of a plan that could simultaneously achieve both deflation and inflation. Have an upvote.

Lotaresco

Re: why...

"1) Why tallow"

Why not? Most people (i.e. the democratic majority, held to be sacrosanct, except of course when it gets to be a tad inconvenient) don't care whether tallow is used as a lubricant or not. Why should the majority have to change what they do to accommodate a minority?

Lotaresco

Re: what Vegans think will happen to all those animals we breed for food and dairy

"They think that being born to live your life in a cage and then be killed isn't worth it."

You think that cows are born to live their lives in a cage? What are those big things that are dotting the hillsides around my home? Inflatable models of cows?

Lotaresco

Re: Perhaps the Superior ones

"should go around inside hazmat suits just in case they touch something or breath in molecules of air that has been contaminated with animal (and/or human) fats if they are that sensitive to it."

They will also have to give up the majority of manufactured goods. Tallow has many uses in manufacturing and engineering. They will find that drinking water supplies in commercial premises are likely to contain minute traces of tallow. It is used as a thread lubricant and cutting agent when assembling pipework.

Lotaresco

Rational?

"As I understand it, the rational veggie/vegan choice is "I do not want any part in killing or hurting an animal" (with definition of hurt being very much up for debate)."

I know that veg*ns try to rationalise their diet in these terms but that doesn't hold water for long. For example it's not possible to "hurt" some animal life and the "killing" involved is of the same order of that involved in "killing" vegetables.

For example shellfish don't have a central nervous system and are pretty much the animal equivalent of vegetables. Sea cucumbers, sea urchins, jellyfish are also edible and have no CNS. I don't see veg*ns consuming them, hence there's more to their aversion to eating animal protein than cruelty. There's also not much consideration of the cruelty involved in farming vegetables. Harvesters mangle animals leading to a slow, lingering and painful death. Farmers trap, poison and shoot animals that eat and damage their crops. I don't see much hand-wringing over this from the veg*ns.

Lotaresco

No big deal

"I wonder how many would be complaining if it were discovered the new notes contained trace amounts of recycled shit"

Given that people eat bread coated with re-cycled piss (Urea), spread it on their lips and faces and rub it into their skin (Allantoin) it's likely that any *recycled* shit would be just as acceptable. All veg*ns seem to be happy to eat recycled shit. We put the shit on the fields, we grow the veg, we eat the veg.

Lotaresco

Re: Blasphemy?

"pork tallow is only ever used in government money"

When the money is packed into the pork barrels.

It would probably be a good idea to use a mix of suet, lard and mutton fat to create the tallow just to ensure that the greatest number of individuals are offended. Indian, Muslim and Vegan mutiny guaranteed.

'Pavement power' - The bad idea that never seems to die

Lotaresco

Pavement power

It all seemed to work so well for Michael Jackson.

Lotaresco

"We have a PV system running, at work. No subsidies whatsoever."

I find that very difficult to believe. Are you claiming that the company has forgone the FIT and is selling the electricity generated at the current unsubsidised wholesale price of 3.8p/kWH? I can't see your bean counters being very happy with that.

The Internet Society is unhappy about security – pretty much all of it

Lotaresco

Re: Security is rubbish

"Serious efforts by major organisations have clearly shown that with current technology it will remain so."

I couldn't agree less on this point. Any analysis of security breaches shows that the exploits used tend to be old, easily avoided and mostly not technical. Nothing much has changed from the days of Mitnick. It's easier to trick someone into giving you access than it is to hack into a system. That's nothing to do with "current technology" and everything to do with "average stupidity".

If tricking someone doesn't work then rubber hose cryptography does.

The countermeasures for these attacks are simple, easy to implement and effective but people, company bosses in particular, tend to assume that "it can't happen here" so they do nothing to avoid the inevitable. And why should they? They can save the money, kid their customers into thinking their data is safe - usually by saying "Your data is safe with us." accompanied by a reassuring smile and if absolutely necessary a firm handshake.

If it all goes hideously Pete Tong then there's an easy way out as pioneered by Diana Mary "Dido" Harding, Baroness Harding of Winscombe. Just look serious and hassled and state loudly that the first rate security systems installed by the company were defeated by highly-skilled evil hackers. That's so much better than admitting that your systems were either secured by the equivalent of leaving a key in a plant pot by the side of the door or that you had no security at all.

Lotaresco

It's not "security" that is rubbish

It's the way that businesses choose to run their IT systems.

I get contacted by large organisations who get my name from people I have done a good job for, or via the professional body that certifies me as an information assurance specialist. (I refuse to call myself "cyber professional"). Enough of them take me on to keep my life ticking along nicely but the majority and that's about 75% of those asking for help then refuse to accept what they will have to do.

Large companies tend to have IT networks that are poorly conceived and badly executed. Software is unpatched, Windows XP and Server 2003 lingering on in dark corners, flat networks on which the only security appliance is an aging firewall that has had rule after rule pushed onto it to the point that it's so open that there's no point having it.

The reason for this is budget and nothing else. Businesses don't like spending on IT unless the result of the spend can be seen and understood by the CEO. So shiny new desktops for offices in management land, good. Faster connection to the porn vital business communciations good. Spending several thousand on sorting out the fact that some idiot wired all the ILO cards to the user LAN[1] bad.

[1] Like the Highlander, there will be only one. Networks flatter than E A Abbott's fantasy world are the norm. Once you're in, you're in with access to everything.

Sysadmin denies boss's request to whitelist smut talk site of which he was a very happy member

Lotaresco

Not so clever...

A couple of decades ago I had a request to supply someone in the company with a new laptop for "urgent field work". We configured a Thinkpad which had a "massive" 120MB hard drive. After a month the person re-appeared asking for a bigger hard drive because his was "full of work". We were suspicious because no one else had managed to run into problems that quickly. He was asked to hand in his laptop the next morning with a promise that it would be back to him with a bigger HD at the end of the day.

One of the junior engineers was given the job of swapping the drives. He appeared after a few minutes saying there was a problem - the drive currently in the laptop was 40MB but the inventory showed 120MB, he suspected that the user had stolen the HD and replaced it with a smaller one. It seemed unlikely, so we had a look. Yes the drive was showing as 40MB capacity but a quick prod around revealed that was because it had been re-partitioned to have one 40MB boot partition and a hidden 80MB partition. We mounted that and had a look at the content. It was full of porn GIFs, close to 80MB of porn. As the junior said, some of the ladies in the photos looked startled but not as startled as the animals. Referred to HR for action.

After that the three of us who ran IT support were asked if we wanted to re-train as security people and we did.

Mobile service in Ireland and France

Lotaresco

"Three is not very reliable network as they have not full coverage."

Which is irrelevant if the phone is being used for roaming within Europe, including Ireland. When roaming your phone will prefer the local 3 service, if it exists, otherwise it will use any available network. When used in the UK there are 3 network black spots but there are black spots with all networks and sod's law says that no matter which provider you choose you won't find coverage when you are desperate.

In the (long, broad) valley where I live in the UK 3 is the only consistently available network. If I travel out of the area there are black spots in other valleys but usually limited to a radius of a mile or so.

It's not true to say that they are "not very reliable". The network is reliable, it just has patchy coverage in some areas within the UK.

In Italy I get the best network coverage with 3 and since all data is included in my plan it's remarkably cheap. Much cheaper than getting a TravelTalk SIM or a local SIM.

TalkTalk teen hacker pleads guilty as firm reveals £22m profit jump

Lotaresco

As predicted

The few customers with a clue left Talk Talk. The ones who don't care about security or even understand why they should care suffered an overdose of inertia. It's like a sort of reverse Darwinism where Talk Talk ends up with a customer base of the clueless.

Clue seems to be a substance that is in short supply and that has little reference to the vast majority of the public. ISPs for people who know what they are doing (A&A, Gradwell come to mind) are relatively tiny compared to the ones that sell to people who want someone to give them a pipe that leads to porn.

SCIENCE LAB TERROR: MYSTERY of the MISSING BRAINS

Lotaresco
Boffin

Re: hmm

"A researcher I knew from the US National Institutes of Health was said to have lost a dozen or so male organs being shipped to her from Asia. I think that they were frozen, but it has been quite a while since I heard the story."

It seems unlikely. When I worked in medical research we used to receive body parts and blood samples from around the world, frozen and packed in dry ice. The containers tend to have a large ratio of dry ice to sample hence they are the size of picnic cool box (they often are picnic coolboxes), so losing one is a bit difficult to start with. Going back to the 1980s airlines have been notoriously reluctant to ship dry ice anywhere and often insist that the containers are accompanied by a human being which again reduces the chance of them going astray.

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Lotaresco

Re: Madness!

"Scorpion bombs were used in naval warfare. Throw a couple of thin eathware pots with a scorpion inside at a hostile trireme and wait for the effect."

A cunning plan, Baldrick, with only one flaw. The Euscorpiidae and Buthidae that are the scorpions commonly found around the Mediterranean are small and don't present much of a hazard. Being stung by one is about as painful as a bee sting.

Lotaresco
WTF?

Re: Growing your own food can

" the story is wildly exaggerated"

Go on, I'll bite, how can a story that is supported by references be "wildly exaggerated"?

Lotaresco
FAIL

Re: Growing your own food can

"No, really, it is."

Well that really convinced me. Emboldening the word "is" is just so convincing, so much better than all that tedious evidence.

"You are spouting bullshit."

Well researched, accurate, referenced "bullshit" with plenty of examples of people who have been subject to action to prevent them living off grid in the USA. Of course this meticulously documented evidence is of no value whatever when someone can perform the perfect put-down by emboldening the word "is" and shouting "bullshit" without providing a single reference of their own.

<rolls:eyes>

Lotaresco

Re: The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments

One of my favourite books. Another good one is Ignition! a history of rocket propellants. A very good and amusing read.

Lotaresco

'I had to give my name and address to buy Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as a pure white powder rather than fizzy orange tablets. The pharmacist didn't know why but it was "on the list".'

Shame on the pharmacist, although it is possible that he knew why and didn't want to tell you. Ascorbic acid is used by (some) heroin addicts to prepare heroin base for injection by making it water soluble.

UK NHS 850k Reply-all email fail: State health service blames Accenture

Lotaresco

Re: WHY does an "ALL NHS STAFF" list even exist?

"There's not much everyone in my lab needed to know that all HR also needed to know"

"Someone let picrate dry out in the tissue processor, again. Their remains are now available for collection. May contain traces of glass."

Lotaresco

Re: Not just the only stupid email thing

"...like my former boss, the CEO and a peer of the realm. He *always* spelled his email address saying: "lower case" for his name and "upper case" when he got to the name of the Company...."

I take it he was a PHB?

Lotaresco

"your medical records are perfectly safe with this shower."

Really? Because my experience with NHS Direct is that their IT people have trouble in the shower finding their derriere with both hands. Oh hang on... this is that irony thing I don't understand, isn't it?

<FX: wavy lines>

This takes me back to a conference a few years ago when an NHS Direct bod gave a speech about their "great success" in ensuring that that hundreds of thousands of iToys owned by medical staff were all permitted to access the network within a few hours of the latest Apple product launch. Most of the non-NHS IT bods sat staring and asking if they had thought through he implications of a massive BYOD with access to sensitive personal data. The answers seemed more than a little complacent.

Angry user demands three site visits to fix email address typos

Lotaresco

Re: My favourite story of a demanding user

"a support call was escalated to her and marked as urgent because it was a surgeon needing something before going into surgery"

Surgeons, Flash Harrys, are like that. I taled to an NHS support person a few years ago who said to me that it's very difficult to resist a surgeon's demands because they always scream that "SOMEONE WILL DIE" if they don't have their own way. He gave the example of a surgeon demanding to load patient data onto his own iPad and when refused screaming that "SOMEONE WILL DIE" so IT support had caved in and connected his private device to the hospital network.

I had experience of working in the NHS when I was (much) younger. I suggested that they should have asked if people were dying at the moment because he wasn't using an iPad and then to suggest that if that was the case he should be reported to the BMA standards committee for looking after victims patients inappropriately.

Lotaresco

Make it longer

"As a result any password that might have to be inputed in both systems does not have non alphanumerical characters, lowering the security of them. Frankly it puts me off doing stuff on my phone."

You do realise that the use of "special characters" does not confer some magical security characteristic on a password, don't you? It's just enlarging the character set that would have to be tried for brute forcing a password (the days when American hackers would not think to use the £ character are long gone). Hence you can restore the security of your password by making it longer. One alphanumeric character longer is sufficient to overcome the lack of a special character in a password.

See: XKCD: Password Strength for a decent explanation.

Lotaresco

Re: I generally now won't help any family members or friends with any IT problems

"In fairness, it's your fault for being honest about what you do."

Given what I do for a living (it's not computer repair) I'm always vague about my job. Unfortunately at most social gatherings there will always be someone who knows that I "do something with computers" and someone who knows that my friend does "something with the law" and those people will be daft enough to tell others their version of what they think we do.

The fact that he's a senior Professor who serves most of his time on international committees and government bodies that create and review the law means nothing to them. They want someone to sort out their divorce/dispute with an ebay seller/car accident compo claim for free. Similarly with me, yes I can configure a desktop PC but many of my clients tend to have "plc" in their name and I've never worked on one-to-one tech support for private individuals.