* Posts by Winkypop

5635 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2008

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

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Big Brother

They call them Home Speakers

But their real purpose is listening.

Why do people allow this?

British Army does not Excel at spreadsheets: Soldiers' newly announced promotions are revoked after sorting snafu

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Black Helicopters

Forget the “Right Stuff“

The British Army has the “Correct Sort” (sometimes)

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

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Facepalm

User Error

Don’t blame the tool

Amazon's coronavirus symptoms: Swelling of the profit, large sales deposits, insatiable demand

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Thumb Down

Mega profits, good

Paying staff a decent wage, bad

Merica!

Two large flightless birds walk into a bar... The pub's owner was not emused *ba-dum tsh*

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Being in Queensland

They should have substituted the word “shit” with “XXXX”.

Amazon and Google: Trust us, our smart-speaker apps are carefully policed. Boffins: Yes, well, about that...

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Big Brother

Home “speakers” and privacy

People gave that up when they turned their DIY wall-screens on.

If you can read this, your Windows 10 2004 PC really is connected to the internet no matter what the OS claims

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Trollface

2020. These are testing times....

...just not at Microsoft it seems

See you after the commercial breakdown: Cert expiry error message more entertaining than the usual advert tripe

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Re: Sigh

Ahhhhh, now there’s ya problem....Murdoch shite.

Twitter mass hacking: Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Biden, Obama, more hijacked to peddle Bitcoin scam

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Trollface

Twitter

Actually employs twits

Nice

Detroit Police make second wrongful facial-recog arrest when another man is misidentified by software

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Big Brother

Arrest everyone

Only let them go if nothing will stick

Japanese probe to land asteroid rock sample in Australia on December 6th

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Joke

Bound for South Australia...

Because Western Australia banned incoming space machines after Skylab.

An email banning our staff from using TikTok? Haha, funny story about that, we didn't mean it – Amazon

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Coat

I ate a whole bag of Chinese TikToks

But I was hungry an hour later

Road trip on Mars: Thrill as Curiosity rover races up to 0.06 miles per hour. Marvel as it takes a mile-long detour

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Should have sent up a shopping trolley/cart

Those things can get absolutely everywhere!

But seriously, well done boffins and boffinesses.

Mars InSight to stretch its arm and look around as mole-mashing ops are paused

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Go

If only

If only a couple of hapless astronauts were trapped down the hole.

We could send Virgil and Gordon with The Mole.

Trump's bright idea of kicking out foreign students unless unis resume in-person classes stuns tech, science world

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Megaphone

The demise of Trump's political career will be televised

Good whiskey: check

Popcorn: check

Streamers and balloons: check

Drugs: not required, natural high will be enough

Detroit cops employed facial recognition algos that only misidentifies suspects 96 per cent of the time

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Big Brother

But the good news is...

The system was able to detect that 96% of people tested actually had a face.

Barclays Bank appeared to be using the Wayback Machine as a 'CDN' for some Javascript

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Facepalm

I've used the wayback machine a few times

Client: "Oi, who removed XYZ.pdf from the website?"

Me: Checks past job tickets, "you did, said it was to be deleted, no longer required"

Client: "Well put it back, immediately!"

Me: "Raise a new ticket and send me a copy of XYZ.pdf please"

Client: "Haven't got a copy" (supposed to have backup in RM system)

Me: "OK, leave it with me..."

Hosted locally of course.

DDoS and dingoes: Australia to bolster cyber-defences with 500 hackers amid China spat

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The colt from old Regret had got away

Better secure those systems that are already thoroughly compromised, hey Scotty!

Boffins baffled as supergiant star just vanishes – either it partially blew itself apart or quietly turned into a black hole

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Alien

Pandora's Star!

A Peter F Hamilton sci fi masterpiece

CompSci student bitten by fox after feeding it McNuggets

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Joke

Foxes, rabbits, toads, et al

No place in Aus.

Not native.

Not dangerous enough.

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

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FAIL

"A trio of Republican senators"

Collective noun: A triangle of stupid

Segway to Heaven: Mega-hyped wonder-scooter that was going to remake city transport to cease production

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Meh

Image and price problems

Looked naff, adults riding on a toy, but cost the earth.

Facebook accused of trying to bypass GDPR, slurp domain owners' personal Whois info via an obscure process

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Terminator

Zuckerborg

Is there anything NOT evil about this company?

Belief in 5G conspiracy theories goes hand-in-hand with small explosions of rage, paranoia and violence, researchers claim

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Irony

5G will just speed up the transmission of conspiracy theories on social media platforms.

Ouroboros.

The incumbent President of the United States of America ran now-banned Facebook ads loaded with Nazi references

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Trump. A master baiter

He lets out the rope, others get caught in his noose.

Attack his lack of ability and his poor policies, disregard his circus acts.

Australian PM says nation under serious state-run 'cyber attack' – Microsoft, Citrix, Telerik UI bugs 'exploited'

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Facepalm

Don't mention China

I did once, but I think I got away with it.

OR

Morrison just wants to change the news cycle to some vague threat instead of the constant stuff ups of his government.

Your choice.

The girl with the dragnet tattoo: How a TV news clip, Insta snaps, a glimpse of a tat and a T-shirt sold on Etsy led FBI to alleged cop car arsonist

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Trollface

Throw the book at her

Preferably one with a nice artsy cover on it supplied by Etsy....

Facebook caves to Australia's call for explanations of News Feed algo changes

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News Corp

Right-wing nut jobs losing money hand over fist.

Lovely to watch.

Not that I'm any fan of FB.

Whatsapp blamed own users for failure to keep phone number repo off Google searches

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FAIL

The true cost of using these "free apps"

Your identity, freedom, integrity, security and more...

Hey Mister Prime Minister ... Scott! Can you get off my lawn please, mate?

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Morrison

As popular as a wet fart in a lift.

Lawsuit klaxon: HP, HPE accused of coordinated plan to oust older staff in favor of cheaper, compliant youngsters

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Thumb Up

Cheaper, compliant, go-get-em, youngsters

Bah!

That's exactly why I retired last year.

And it's glorious!

Doors closed by COVID-19, Brit retro tech museums need your help

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Well worth supporting

Get at em guys

Australian contact-tracing app sent no data to contact-tracers for at least ten days after hurried launch

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Facepalm

You know they are bullshitting you when they say:

"Legal advice has been sought regarding the impact of the USA’s CLOUD Act on data collected by COVIDSafe, as it is stored in AWS. Officials would not release that advice and said they believe it is “not conceivable” the data could be accessed by US authorities, emphasised that security had been considered from every angle and opined that US courts would not likely look favourably upon a request to access data gathered by the app."

You have one job, Australian PM tells contact-tracing app, and that’s talking to medicos

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Morrison primer

For our overseas brethren, Scott Morrison is a combination of the following:

- Evagelical fruitcake

- Trump supporting right winger

- Ex marketing wonk

- All round pretend "regular guy"

As fake as a three dollar watch.

Apollo astronaut Al Worden – once named most isolated human being of all time – dies aged 88

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Unhappy

Another boyhood hero, gone

Truly inspiring men and women.

Facebook does the right thing for once: Joins Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube to clean out dodgy COVID-19 info

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Devil

Facebook does the right thing...

The world REALLY is ending!

Good luck pitching a tent on exoplanet WASP-76b, the bloody raindrops here are made out of molten iron

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Flame

Raining molten iron?

Mankind: Hold my beer...

House of Lords push internet legend on greater openness and transparency from Google. Nope, says Vint Cerf

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Boffin

Trust us

We're from Alphabet!

If only you were smart enough to understand us.

Sadly, the web has brought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'nothing is true; everything is permitted'

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How's Mum?

I always ask after their Mum, as if I now her well.

How's your Mum's leg?

Has she seen the Dr?

Does she know that you work for a scammer?

She'd be very disappointed, etc......

Morrisons puts non-essential tech changes on ice as panic-stricken shoppers strip stores

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WTF?

Poo tickets in short supply here in Oz

People have gone completely bonkers here.

Toilet paper, pasta, rice and hand sanitiser have all disappeared!

B o n k e r s !!!

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Alert

Re: Couting my blessings

Everclear.

Been there done that.

Two shot glasses of that stuff is like having your brain slowly removed.

As Australia is gripped by bog roll shortage, tabloid says: Here, fill your dunny with us

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NT NEWS

What a croc* of shit.

* Their usual front page obsession.

Windows 7 goes dual screen to shriek at passersby: Please, just upgrade me or let me die

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Alert

It's still operating fine

It's an advert for Windows Update!

Take it Huawei, Pai: Senate passes bill to rip 'dodgy' kit from rural telcos

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Coat

NEXT: The war on Christmas

No more Huawei in a manger....

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

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Oh $deity, retirement means...

I never have to apply for another job.

The old codgers club accept absolutely everyone.

No social media? No problem.

Never thought we'd write this headline: Under Siege Steven Seagal is not Above The Law, must fork out $314,000 after boosting crypto-coin biz

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Devil

Crapto currency

(Sic)

Trashing privacy? That's our job! Facebook accuses analytics biz of harvesting people's info from software dev kit sold to app makers

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Poacher hunter gamekeeper

Who can tell anymore?

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now: Brexit tea towel says it'll just be the gigabit broadband

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Devil

Brexit Tea Towel

Put it next to the Charles and Di wedding plate.

While hype merchants push chatbots, CIOs are saving up pennies while expecting a recession, reckons study

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Re: So, around half or even three quarters of dis-satisfaction

We had a name for this.

The "Interstate/Overseas Executive Trip"

Exec would come back with a head full of marketing-crap and vapour ware brochures.

Just the place you'd want to spot a BSOD: While waiting in line for a roller coaster that lifts you up 124ft

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Coat

Windows

Always full of ups and downs, often downs....