* Posts by big_D

6775 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Nov 2009

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

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Re: What jobs did they try to get?

My last 2 job changes were at 50+ and I have had 5 job changes since 40, along with 7 offers.

But I don't work in a major IT hub, like Silicon Valley. It seems that over here experience still counts.

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Lucky?

I've swichted jobs 5 times since I was 40 and have had 7 job offers... One was for a young, open source startup, where I was the oldest employee. But not based in Silicon Valley...

Beset by lawsuits over poor security protections, Ring rolls out 'privacy dashboard' for its creepy surveillance cams, immediately takes heat

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Up to a point, I agree...

But the manufacturer offers 2FA, but the users don't use it, it is too inconvenient for them, so they stick with a weak password they can remember - because they use it everywhere.

You can only protect users from themselves to a certain point - minimum password strength rules etc. Checking Haveibeenpawned? That could open up another can of worms, is it sufficient to check once, when the password is set? Or is it corporate negligence when they don't regularly check the password? But the password should be hashed, so they don't actually have the password to re-check.

At the end of the day, each user has to decide for themselves what is adequate, but it is such a complicated topic, that uninformed users make uninformed decisions, which can come back to bite them.

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I think that was his point, the parents are using unsecured tech with microphone, camera and speaker to monitor their children.

A major part of the problem seems to be the users. They are re-using passwords and not using 2FA.

One can argue about whether the system should allow weak passwords and whether 2FA should be enforced - but a lot of people just wouldn't use the system, if they had to use 2FA.

We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...

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Cheesy...

Tom Cheesewright's High Frequency Change. The book tries to explain why idiots (ie, anyone who isn't a futurist) perceive modern tech business as being founded on the cult of fleeting unsustainability, and how to go about convincing oneself that it isn't.

Ahh, a book on self-delusion, got it.

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

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Re: On Call / not On Call

We had a guy who didn't have a telephone - at home. When he was on call, he'd toddle off to the telephone box 2 streets away and phone in at around 9 in the evening, before toddling back home and going to bed, if there hadn't been any problems. That was in the days before mobile telephones.

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Re: No Service

I can just leave my phone at work - no reception there.

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IT's always DNS

I had a problem a few weeks back, I went on holiday and powered everything down. When I came back home, I powered everything back up, only the Pi-Hole's DNS resolver wouldn't kick into life. The Pi-Hole software and the local network were available, but anything external failed.

Restarting the service didn't work, restarting the Pi didn't work. In the end, I changed the DNS provider and it suddenly started working again, changed it back to the original provider and it continued working... The wonders of DNS at work.

2 more degrees and it's lights out: Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix's toasty mobile bit barn

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Yes and no. If you can design the system to work with ambient temperatures with direct cooling from, at most, dry ice through blowers, then you don't have to "waste" space on additional AC units, which is extra weight and extra cost - although AC units seem to be fine for the drivers, sitting in the pits or the paddock...

It also means it is one less thing that can fail during the race. You don't want half your pit crew disappearing, because they double up as IT support, because the AC in the data container is on the fritz and you aren't getting telemetry and can't communicate with the driver.

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Re: I'll never really understand...

So true. I haven't worked in F1, but I did work as a consultant for many years and I would often spend 6 nights a week in hotels for 18 months at a stretch. The lack of "simple" food, never being in your "own" bed, not near your friends (what friends? You spend you whole life living out of a suitcase in strange towns, you are only ever at "home" to do the laundry, mow the lawn, pay the bills and then bugger back off to the next hotel room), it gets you down after a while.

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HP kit is also fairly tough.

We had a "computer room" (old office on the top floor, south facing, floor to ceiling windows and no AC). The first thing I did when I got there was recommend AC, the price was too high and the CEO told me that they had never had any problems. I also suggested putting the servers in the cellar, but that was nixed as the mirrored SQL server was down there...

I put a thermometer in the middle of the rack. In the summer, we were getting temperatures in excess of 60°C and most of the kit kept running. I think the highest temperature I saw was around 68°C, the room temperature was over 40°C most days. The first person into the office opened the windows to allow some fresh air in.

One of the servers crapped out, a 7 year old HP ProLiant server, it was so full of black dust that the fans had to work overtime in the winter... I did manage to get budget after that to get a man with a compressor in and we blew out the dust from all of the servers in the rack. They ran reliably after that, despite 60+°C temperatures. I left shortly thereafter, my successor did manage to get the replacement CEO to re-locate the servers to the cellar.

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Re: I'll never really understand...

It depends on his personal circumstances and also which countries he was offered... For the actual back-office staff on site, it isn't so glamorous as being in the pits or sitting and watching the race. All the time the cars are being prepped or are on the track, you are probably stuck in a hot and sticky trailer, making sure everything is working. No going to the hospitality and saying "page me if something goes wrong".

I was offered the choice of 2 travel opportunities in the early 90s, IT support for the team running the elections in war-torn Angola or war-torn Bosnia... I somehow managed to lose my passport.

The guys that did go to Angola were accused by the rebels of collusion with the regime and there was a running gun-battle to the airport to evacuate them... I'm so glad I lost my passport.

Beware the Y2K task done too well, it might leave you lost in Milan

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Re: knocked back the expresso

Yes, I know, I now live in Germany. It is the same in pretty much every country where a different language is spoken. I knew about it before I left the UK and had written down the local names on my PostIts (I was riding a motorbike, so I put a series of PostIts in the tank bag window with the list of roads and major cities I'd pass by).

When I came back to the UK with my German car, I was only driving from München to Calais and from Dover to Littlehampton via the A22 and cross-country over the A272 and then on to Southampton, Alton and Manchester over Nottingham and back to Dover, so I didn't need a navigation system. But it was showing German names for some places, when the built in entertainment system was showing the map.

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Re: knocked back the expresso

I'm all for calling them by their real names. It makes things a lot easier... I made a plan for driving down through Europe to Italy and had planned on passing Cologne, Munich and Vienna... Only they don't exist, instead, I ended up driving past Köln, München and Wien... Damned stupid English maps!

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I have Peter's Problem

/Qualityland

Smart speaker maker Sonos takes heat for deliberately bricking older kit with 'Trade Up' plan

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Re: Right to repair?

The user has decided to brick it themselves, in order to get a 30% discount on new equipment - as opposed to continue using it or to reset it and sell it on. I'd guess that the case would be thrown out as the user made a positive decision to "throw" the product out.

If they then still sell it on, that is fraud, as they know the product is disabled.

I don't like the way they do this, but I don't think you could have a go at them on the basis of right to repair, as you have specifically given up your right to repair in exchange for a 30% discount of the replacement.

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I bought a soundbar over Christmas. I chose one that explicitly wasn't intelligent, because I don't plan to replace it in a couple of years.

It has good sound, works with HDMI and Optical connections and it does have Bluetooth in a nod to the modern world. What it doesn't have is security weaknesses and a lack of security updates after 2 - 5 years that will render it useless. The "intelligent" bits will be stuck into the soundbar, the soundbar itself doesn't need to be intelligent.

The time PC Tools spared an aerospace techie the blushes

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Re: Peter Norton's commercial UNERASE from '82 was probably ...

I certainly had a copy of Norton and Xtree on my emergency floppy back then.

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Facepalm

Blinded by the verbosity

I saved the original code I had been working on as .cobol and carried on making changes to the original .cob files, the direction of the code having been changed by management.

After 2 - 3 days of diligent work and testing, the new code was finished. I then went to delete the backup of the original code, with del *.cob;*

Hit return and then screamed!

The admins didn't have a backup, so I had to re-do all the work again. Luckily, most if it was still in my head, so I could re-type most of it straight away. The final result was actually little more elegant than the original and it was done in a couple of hours, instead of a couple of days.

I booked that code back into the core system, before I deleted the backups this time around!

Who's that padding down the chimney? It's Puma, with its weird £80 socks for gamers

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Re: PUMA Socks

My Arai Quantum E with Harada colours.

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Re: Socks?

Yes, but socks are Socken in German, shoes are Schuhe.

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Re: £80 for a pair of socks?

They are shoes, not socks. Look at the sole. Indoor shoes (or slippers for the old geezers).

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Re: PUMA Socks

I never play Forza without donning my Nomex racing shoes.

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Socks?

The German site says they are shoes...

Das Reboot: Uni forces 38,000 students, staff to queue, show their papers for password reset following 'cyber attack'

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True. When a customer got hit with crypto malware, we quarantined all the drives and put new drives in, in case the crypto was ever cracked... But that was only a small number of drives.

If you don't need to keep them around for forensic reasons or "just in case" the crypto is cracked, then you can re-use them.

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Tuition fees in Germany are already next-to-nothing - around 150€ - 250€ per semester.

As to a better way? Either going to each machine with a USB stick and cleaning or going to each machine and replacing the hard drive (more secure, but more expensive and time consuming).

As the malware spreads over the network, you have to disconnect the machine from the network, until it is clean, therefore any remote management tools are useless.

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It is either the USB sticks or you re-image each machine.

When we have had individual cases of malware, we just remove the old HDD/SSD and put in a newly imaged, clean SSD. As nobody is allowed to store data locally on the machine, that means that there are no problems with lost data.

But given the size of the faculty, it is probably easier and quicker to do it this way, if they can be 100% sure that the malware is removed... But I'd want to be damned sure. Personally, I'd take the new drive approach, but the cost might be prohibitive, especially for an education establishment.

Nice to see that faculty and students are on separate networks and that only the faculty network seems to have been affected.

Sir John Redwood backs IR35 campaign, notes review would have to start 'immediately' before new off-payroll working rules kick in

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Having worked both sides of the fence, a contractor is not "earning twice as much", he is billing twice what your paid, but they have to pay taxes, health insurance, liability insurance, pension, accountant and tax advisor etc. and they don't get paid for the days they aren't working.

So you go on holiday for 2 weeks, your employer keeps paying you. A consultant goes on holiday for 2 weeks, he doesn't earn a penny.

Likewise, at my first job, I was there for so long, I qualified for 6 months of sick pay - one year I needed 3 months of it. A contractor ill for 3 months doesn't get a penny, it comes out of what he already earned.

If things are slow, the contractor is out on his ear and has to find a new gig. In the meantime, he isn't earning a penny.

They can earn good money, but the headline figure he is invoicing the company for is a loooong way from what they actually earn. And what you actually earn is just a fraction of what it costs the company to employ you.

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Duvet time? That is a new one on me. Been away from the UK for too long.

IT consultant who deleted every account on UK company Jet2's domain cops 5 months in jail

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Nearly every hotel I've stayed at has had single and double room rates, but 90% of the rooms were doubles, so you still got a double, even though you were paying for single occupancy.

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Re: He was stupid

At a lot of hotels, at least in Europe, you pay for either a single room or a double room, but you usually get the same room, whether you are alone or with somebody else, you just pay less because it is single occupancy.

Some hotels turn a blind-eye, if you discreet, or bigger hotels just don't notice, because there are so many guests and so much traffic going through the foyer.

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Facepalm

Re: He was stupid

Yes, good advice, but even better still, don't do it in the first place!

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Thumb Up

Re: A very stupid thing to do.......

I had a similar situation. An ex-employer used constructive dismissal to get rid of me.

I kept a copy of my emails, but everything else was erased (I went through my password manager the next day and removed all business related accounts from it, for example). I also noted all of those external accounts that I had had access to and put them in a letter to the company informing them to change those passwords (a copy to my solicitor). Likewise, I made a list of company equipment I had and when I returned it, got one of the directors to sign for it (a copy to my solicitor).

I had a good case and I didn't want to ruin my chances of making them pay for wrongful dismissal by doing something stupid. I even refrained from bad-mouthing them on social media.

I got a nice payout in the end, and a much better job at another company.

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

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Re: N-word

Grrr! Shrubbery!

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Coat

Re: N-word

The one with the shrub in the pocket?

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The problem is, if they are being bullied, they can actually talk rings around the bully and make them feel socially inadequate...

Unfortunately the bully's response is then of the highly intelligent "SMASH!" variety.

As a big nerd (literally, 6' at school and overweight), I was something of an anti-bully, I'd stop the bullies bullying the weaker pupils. I never hit anyone, I just stood between them and their prey and told them to leave them alone... It always worked, even today, I have still never hit anyone in my life and I've never been hit. (hastily find a bit of wood to touch)

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Mensa...

In the UK if you pay £24.95 for the IQ test and score over 132, you can then pay £59.95 a year to receive a newsletter and attend events with other people who have also paid up to be in a room with people who scored highly on the same intelligence test.

There are two types of high-IQ people, those who are intelligent enough to join MENSA and those that are too intelligent to join MENSA. ;-)

I have a lot of friends who are MENSA members in Germany and I know many of the high-ups. I was travelling with one of them, when he told me, I should consider doing the test, as I was definitely intelligent enough.

I replied, that I had never felt the need to prove how intelligent I am... He had a fit and nearly crashed the car - he drove up the kerb onto the pavement, but missed the lamppost - before informing me that MENSA wasn't about that at all!

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Re: these terms are "divisive and humiliating,"

As a fellow super-smart person, geek, boffin, smarty-pant, know-it-all, Besserwisser and Klugscheisser, I don't find the terms divisive or humiliating and they most definitely don't fall under hate speech.

This is an affront to minorities that are truly the target of real hate speech.

The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards

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Re: If I were to guess....

Dominant force? They are the number 3 smartphone manufacturer and have a market share under 20%, Samsung are number 1 with 23%, Huawei 2nd with 18%. I think Apple have around 16%.

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

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Re: Maybe worth considering

I use Android, but the first thing I do with any new phone is de-Google it as much as possible.

A phone with no Google to start with is good news.

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Huawei?

In another body blow for Huawei's global smartphone ambitions

Isn't it a blow to Google's global smartphone ambitions? Given that the first thing I do on my Android phones is disable or uninstall all Google tools, with the exception of the Play Store, this is actually interesting to me.

If they provide a good alternative to the Play Store, I'd be more than happy. The Gallery is a little bereft of content at the moment.

Poor, poor mobile networks. UK's comms watchdog plans to stop 'em selling locked-down handsets

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Re: See the light

I haven't had a network locked phone since about 2001.

I always buy my phones from local retailers or from Amazon. Waiting a couple of months usually saves you a lot of money as well. When a new handset, especially premium handsets, are launched, they are expensive. Wait 3 months and you can save up to 30%, wait 6 months and that can be around 50%.

My current phone launched at 999€, I paid 599€ 3 months later.

What do Nginx, Twitch... and the English Premier League have in common? Russians. It's always the Russians

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Re: I get a bit bored

Exactly. Too many of the IT startups think that the laws don't apply to them. They just plough on, knowing that they are acting illegally, but they don't worry about it until they get pulled up in court for it, then it is usually too late to implement a cost effective solution, because, instead of implementing what they knew they had to do from the start and scaling it up and knowing how much it costs and whether the system is ever going to be a money maker, they just cross their fingers and hope and nobody notices and that, once they are big enough, they are too big to fail.

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Re: Wait a minute

Nginx is open source software available and in use world-wide, I believe it is no the second most common webserver after Apache. It isn't only in Russian and it isn't only for Russian web hosters.

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

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Re: Confilicted...

The delay could be the problem, but if that is the case, .ca should have stated that in the press release...

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Re: Confilicted...

Sorry, almost gave you a thumbs up for the Gripping Hand reference...

But, this was a work computer, so there is absolutely no excuse for having private images on it, let alone erotic/porn images, even if they were his own. Most companies have very strict policies about that these days.

Firing the techies was definitely a dick move.

The IT staff going to HR because of a violation of company policy, as long as they had gone through their manager, was absolutely the right thing to do. That is what HR is supposed to be there for. At least in the parts of Europe where I have worked.

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Re: Do you think

I agree with your last statement, if in doubt ask your lawyer first. That assumes that you have legal insurance, although around here you can sometimes get an initial discussion (10 - 30 minutes, depending on the law firm) for free.

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Re: Do you think

HR have always been the people to talk to, in my experience. But, then, I've mainly worked at good companies and they have had good, and supportive, HR departments.

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Re: Do you think

A real PFY would have loaded the photos onto the homepage of the .ca authority, replacing the official photos of those involved... You should re-read you BOFH archives. ;-)