* Posts by steviebuk

2198 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Feb 2017

BT opens 'voluntary job leavers' scheme for merging Enterprise and Global units

steviebuk Silver badge

Work experience

1990 I believe it was, I went to a BT warehouse for my work experience at school as my dad worked at BT office in Greenford.

While I was there they said I was a jinx as they got a visit telling them the place would be closed and they'd either be made redundant or voluntary redundancy was available.

Then I believe it was a couple of years after my dads site closed and he got made redundant. Sadly, just being over 50 and despite having been a manager there. No one elsewhere was willing to hire him or the same wage so he never worked full time again. Has had to survive on his pension and the shares they gave him since.

They're business practices in the warehouse saw so much waste. I did different departments and one was people ordering new phones. Then there was a skip full of them. Brand new phones, some used but most new. I said "Can't these be resold, surely?" They said no, once opened we aren't allowed to resell them if returned so we have to skip them. Ridiculous, they could of sold them as opened with a discount.

Seeing as GPT-3 is great at faking info, you should lean into that, says Microsoft

steviebuk Silver badge

God no

"and the IT titan hopes to inject this kind of machine learning into everything from Teams and Skype to Excel."

We already have auto.suggest replies in Teams. Its fucking rude, anyone that uses those is fucking rude. Just type thank you instead of auto completing it because you can't be arsed to type it. If you can't be arsed to type it, don't fucking reply.

Telus source code, staff info for sale on dark web forum

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Doesn't matter...

...Elon sold his sole to the devil, the CCP. So they'll have already stolen some of his tech for allowing to have his factories over there.

'Ethical hacker' among ransomware suspects cuffed by Dutch cops

steviebuk Silver badge

I guess there are some but...

...we don't see the news because they are very good. Ones that are "ethical" but good enough they hide amongst us. Like Gus in Breaking Bad.

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

steviebuk Silver badge

I'm confused

They've been doing this for ages. Worst they do it when you try to change your default browser. This smacks of anti-trust, the exact same lawsuit they got hit with at the end of the 90s. Why haven't they been hit again?

No more free API access, says Twitter: You pay for that data

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: They just did this in the wrong order

No excuse but I believe one of the other reasons it was done was to stop the spam bots. However, he doesn't live in the real world to know that the scammers will use stolen money to pay for the API. Not that he gives a fuck where the money comes from just as long as he gets it.

Bang go all those Python tutorials that get you to create a Twitter bot.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Rules of Acquisition!

#212 - Once fired, immediately charge them a fine for loitering and a general charge for being in the building and breathing the air within.

Microsoft promises smaller Windows 11 updates with UUP – but there's a catch

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: What I want

If you use a 3rd party like n-able you have to do the filtering in there. Even the registry setting in Windows 10 gets ignored by n-able. There is a way to filter in n-able (I've asked them directly) our MSP is just refusing to put any filters in.

steviebuk Silver badge

What I want

Is the option to fucking avoid Windows 11, easily. We are with an MSP who helps out when we hit an area we don't understand. Unfortunately they convinced us to take over the Windows update duties. They use n-able. They "accidentally" pushed out Windows 11 to a few machines and when I questioned it they asked if I wanted it stopped. It was too late, to many machines had been hit so let them carry on. "its been fine in our office" it doesn't matter, we're not your office and have old shit software that doesn't like it.

When all calmed down I asked for isolation for my IT machine. Did not want it. Was told because of the way Microsoft have been pushing out Windows 11 its not possible to isolate it. As people were blocking the term Windows 11 so MS changed the update name so it would get pushed out anyway. A few poor excuses of why they won't put a filter in and what was essentially a threat to remove our access to n-able (wouldn't be a bad thing) I've taken my own steps. Having to turn off encryption so I can turn off the TPM 2 chip so I don't get the weekly Windows shitty 11 update.

Microsoft's AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Hype, Hype and yet more Hype

ChatGPT is good for quick code though. Yes, you need to check it before using it but at least it doesn't give sarcastic replies like Stack Overflow. However it does lie. It told me to use a powershell script but I told it the commandlet doesn't exist anymore it said "Yes you're right it doesn't try this instead" that 2nd one also didn't. It then gave up giving powershell commands and gave me older inbuilt commands that did work but I asked specifically for powershell.

But its still useful. Got it to give me one quick line of Powershell I needed, that was a beginner question that would of have a ton of sarcastic replies from Stack Overflow.

Musk: Tesla's doing great. I mean, have you seen my Twitter follower count?

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: 'Skull-', 'cluster-', 'total-', 'dumb-', and now 'cyber-'

Glad someone else sees it. Saw a British couple a while ago doing their vlog (hate that term) who were going to go camping "We have this amazing solar panel that can be used for camping. Its great and does blah blah blah. Oh and thats to CampingCompanyNameHere for the panel. We haven't actually tried it yet". So how can you say its fucking great? Is it because you got it free and want more free stuff from people so will just so something is great before you've even fucking tried it?

They annoy the shit out of me. Granted, I'd love the money and free items but just can't bring myself to sell out. Really liked Britec's videos but then he started to "review" more and more IT stuff clearly sent to him for free buy Chinese sellers. Never declared this and the "reviews" were never reviewed just unboxings.

Conversational AI tells us what we want to hear – a fib that the Web is reliable and friendly

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: run for cover and grab the popcorn

Or a nice long run in Project Zomboid.

China's Yangtze Memory reportedly lays off staff, evicts them from company housing

steviebuk Silver badge

You're fucked. They have no health care program and no benefits system.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: " in marked contrast to US tech employers"

Its the CCP. They'll have put a massive mark up on the flat that is no doubt, poorly built and the staff were probably poorly paid so they can't afford the flat even if offered.

China’s Baidu reveals generative AI chatbot based on language model bigger than GPT-3

steviebuk Silver badge

Just like...

...Huawei's Sara AI.

Tech CEO nixes AI lawyer stunt after being threatened with jail time

steviebuk Silver badge

Google

"Google builds music-making AI, but won't release it due to copyright

Researchers at Google have trained a new AI model, MusicLM, that can create audio samples based on text descriptions, according to a research paper on arXiv.

The first sample, for example, is generated with the prompt: "The main soundtrack of an arcade game. It is fast-paced and upbeat, with a catchy electric guitar riff. The music is repetitive and easy to remember, but with unexpected sounds, like cymbal crashes or drum rolls." You can listen to it here."

And because if they released it, YouTube would then probably flag everyone's song ever made as Googles AI copyright. That's how broken the detection system is on YouTube. For years my Disneyland Paris parade footage was being flagged by some Chinese account claiming copyright on the Disney sound tracks. Only recently have all those claims been removed.

It is possible to extract copies of images used to train generative AI models

steviebuk Silver badge

This is why

The Aussie satire magazine (can't remember its name) has stuck itself behind a paywall now as it no longer wants these AI models like ChatGPT from sucking up and exploiting their free info.

Unfortunately the likes on Microsoft and Google will buy into this so the little people that have their images robbed will be able to do nothing about it, but the big corps will continue to profit off everyone elses work.

Wow, turns out cloud sales can slow down – eh, Amazon, Google?

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Growth Sustainability

Exactly, but unfortunately so many hedge funds are tied to the companies, like the knob that owns lots of Google shares so told them they needed to fire more people. Doesn't matter that he's already making a shit ton off them, he just wants to make more. And that is the issue, the investors.

China unveils massive blockchain cluster running homebrew tech

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Now we're talking

"Finally a service based on Blockchain tech that is a) serious and b) not a scam."

Are you having a laugh? It will be used by the CCP to monitor and suppress the people of China, nothing more. So yes, it will be a scam.

Former Facebooker alleges Meta drained users' batteries to test apps

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: contract requires him to take the case to arbitration

It appears going to work for Meta is like signing up to the Country Club in Invitation To Hell.

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Possibly a sensible solution

"5G has the potential to make fixed lines redundant for many Internet users."

It was marketed as that but never happened because its hyped bollocks.

Google institutional investor calls for wider cuts: 30k jobs

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Arsehole

But they aren't loosing money. Take YouTube for example, they make a massive killing over the adverts, it doesn't matter that quite a large amount of adverts are scam adverts now, it appears Google gives no shits as long as those adverts are being paid for and making them money.

steviebuk Silver badge

Arsehole

"The billionaire hedge fund manager who runs a major Google investor isn't satisfied with the record 12,000 redundancies the US tech giant is making, and wants to see thousands more forced out of the organization."

"I'm a billionaire and want more money. Fuck the little people, they can get jobs elsewhere even though there is a recession".

Knob.

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Who?

Self service, although I now use them and find them useful when in a rush, are also annoying because they are designed to make the company more money but the customer gets no discount for essentially doing the companies job for them. Not to mention the "You are a thief unless you can prove you're not" cameras that record you as you use the machine. We all should be sending in Right to be Forgotten requests for those machines and those recordings. They can try and claim they are entitled to keep them due to "security" but if no theft has happened, they have no right and I've never seen any GDPR warning for them in any store.

ChatGPT, although good does give out wrong answers and knows it. I asked it a powershell question the other day and it gave me the code. Which I tried, the commandlet didn't work. I told ChatGPT it didn't work as the commandlet didn't exist. It then confirmed "You're right, the commandlet was discontinued on blah blah blah", I gave up asking it after that as it gave another command that it knew was no longer valid. (I've already forgotten what the commands were, stupid brain).

What is Google doing with its open source teams?

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: On the upside

Or Google will be arseholes like a lot of the big companies and claim "That idea you're trying to run with after we fired you. That's our property. You had that "thought" when you were on Google campus, we know this because you told Dave during your lunch break in the Google cafe. So, technically, its now our IP. Give it us or will sue you until you cave."

Lockheed Martin demos 50kW anti-aircraft frickin' laser beam

steviebuk Silver badge

Don't

shine it at the cats.

I'll get my coat.

What's called Grogu but isn't that cute? Google's leaked answer to Apple AirTags

steviebuk Silver badge

Exactly. Although problem is I see the use case now. One guy tracked his luggage when he took a flight and watched the airline loose the luggage and make up shit about where it was.

But then you have the other side. Found an Apple Airtag recently on floor in Sainsbury's car park. I've checked it and not been reported lost. Waited a bit with the battery out and still no report. So as far as I'm concerned, that was clearly stuck to someones car to track them so they're not going to want to flag it as lost.

Microsoft axes 10,000, already breaking bad news to staff

steviebuk Silver badge

Sat Nav

"In an interview earlier this month, CEO Satya Nadella said the next two years are going to be tough for the tech industry, and that companies would need to look inside themselves and ask if they are as efficient as they need to be competitive."

Maybe, maybe stop being fucking greedy. Tell your investors "I'm keeping the price of license as they are, they don't need to be increased, we can take the small hit, more people will then buy as we'll be cheaper. Also, we need to do more testing instead of just pushing stuff out and we also need to STOP forcing Windows 11 (that is shit) on people".

But he won't.

China may have to reassess chip strategy in face of US sanctions

steviebuk Silver badge

And in Xi's China, there was no 5000 years, unless he finds a map that says "China owned this once". He was picked because "He seems alright". Now they've all realised he's another Mao but can't get rid of him.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Capitalisim ≠ competition

Two wumaos in a row.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Typical western arrogance

Hello wumao.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Hermit Kingdom

You're right it will become a hermit, like North Korea but with a bit more money. But they really need the West for their economy. Currently their economy relies massively on their housing market. But their housing market is a massive scam. You have all the ghost cities and buildings that don't last a year. One person will be convinced to buy a flat in a new build. The new build will be half built then the contractor will knock it down and tell you "We're starting again, the new, new build will be even better, but you have to give us a bit more money". Rinse and repeat.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: US semiconductor industry???

China for sure has enough know-how to design chips (see Huawei before it was killed by Trump)

No they don't. There are smart people in China, its just a shame Winnie the fucking Pooh is in charge so you're not allowed any of your own thoughts, you must follow and read "Xi Jingping Thought". Trump didn't kill Huawei, as much as I really dislike Trump it was actually the only sensible move that happened. Huawei has been stealing tech for years. Just do a quick search online and you'll find all sorts. And look at how the CCP runs, look at what they did to Jack Ma because he criticised the little man child Xi. Then look at how they reacted when the Meng Wanzhou came home, she got a heros welcome, all because Huawei is clearly state controlled.

UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail

steviebuk Silver badge

Still making me mad

The fact David Carrick got away with what he did for years and still got promoted. And now the police watchdog "Won't be doing any internal investigation" in case it reveals the MASSIVE failings of the police. Means this bill is even more of a joke.

Look up the Shana Grice case. She was being stalked by her ex for months and reported to the police several times. They eventually fined her for "Wasting police time" at which point the ex finally murdered her. Goes to show, Sussex police have always been useless cunts, just look up the case of Dominic O'Brien now in prison

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18208133.sussex-police-inspector-spared-jail-attempting-publish-obscene-material/

This online bill is a complete joke.

steviebuk Silver badge

What a loud of shit

Do the UK think they are the world police like the US?

Try this on Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Facebook they'll all tell you to "Go fuck a duck, we're based in the US, you're laws don't apply to us. If you want them to, we'll move all our data centres out of the UK and Ireland. You'll now have to move all your tenants to the US servers if you wish to continue to use them. Then we can suck up all your data with our Patriot Act."

Its as stupid and Starmer wanted to make shotgun ownership more difficult now. Doesn't matter that the guns crooks use are fucking illegally acquired, just make it more difficult for law abiding citizens. Much like my knife I use for work I'd like to always carry. Its useful, is 3" all legal but because it has the safety locking feature, I can't fucking carry it. Doesn't matter that knifes used in crime are fucking kitchen knifes as they are cheap and disposable.

The law has been created by fucking idiots that don't understand how the Internet works. They are the ones screaming on the IT Crowd when Jen showed them the black box Internet. VPNs will avoid most of this shit. It will affect local bloggers and independent journalists. Hosting companies may decide they can't risk hosting UK sites anymore and so on and so on. Tories are fucking tits.

Oh, is that classed as hate speech? The Register best get ready then.

Oh and will Nadine Dorries be pulled up? Most of her Tweets wouldn't pass this shitty bill.

Its all done to silence those against the Tories. Much like the new shitty ID required to vote. I tried signing up to test it. The government do no checks the photo is the person who is signing up. It goes to the location elections department. They can't possibly check the photo is the person they say they are. We also have the fact photos have to specifically be a certain fucking size. Our old friend doesn't even have a smart phone, how's he gonna sign up for that? This also stops homeless people voting, how are they going to get access to a PC to do the upload and take a passport style photo? We also have Muslim voters, who are in their right to wear their religious dress when voting. However, the polling stations (and understand local election departments already have a hard time at election time as it is), they now have to setup a private area so they can ask the Muslim lady to show her face for ID purposes. This could cause a lot more Muslims not to vote. It was ALWAYS, clearly, a Trump style ploy to stop people voting because the Tories know they'll lose the next election.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Boo hoo

But I'm not.

I'll get my coat.

Basecamp details 'obscene' $3.2 million bill that caused it to quit the cloud

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: nice to see

We had someone like that in management who wanted to make it his pet project to go full cloud. Only one consultant has been honest that its more expensive. Now the place is making people redundant to save costs. When they could just save it on his cloud idea bollocks.

steviebuk Silver badge

Told you....

...that the "infrastructure free" idea was bollocks & would be more expensive.

Always fun when you're right, not fun when not listened to.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

steviebuk Silver badge

..

"I can't let you land Dave".

Should open source sniff the geopolitical wind and ban itself in China and Russia?

steviebuk Silver badge

They aren't an optimist, they are a wumao.

Apple accused of censoring apps in Hong Kong and Russia to maintain market access

steviebuk Silver badge

Apple and Tim Apple

Should be ashamed. The recent protests in China was helped as they were able to use Apple Airdrop between devices which the shitty CCP couldn't monitor. Tim Apple realising he'd loose his China market gets an update sent out, only for China that would cripple the feature on the demand of the CCP.

All the people that were protesting that are now being arrested. All the people that will be disappeared like the Tank Man was, all those deaths are now on Tim Apples hands.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Screw 'em.

"The latest Top Gun movie changed the Taiwan flag on Cruises flight jacket to something less politically sensitive"

But it was switched back. They realised what they were doing, realised the US market were getting pissed off with these direct censors as in they are censored for the US market as well to save the Chinese doing it. Realised viewers were objecting so told China to sod off and changed it back. Hollywood have finally realised their mistake when China asked them to remove the Statue of Liberty from the Spiderman movie. When they managed to make loads of money with without the Chinese market, they started to stop self censoring.

Look up Laowhy86 on YouTube and his "Why Hollywood Now REFUSES to Bow Down to China" video. Its quite good. And on one of their ADVChina videos they talk about their time living in China for 15 years for Winston and 10 years for c-milk regarding the Hollywood movies and how China have been ripping them off for years. China's local films are released and don't do very well, so when you go to the cinema to watch a Hollywood movie, Winston said the ticket that was printed out was for the Chinese movie which the teller crossed out and wrote the Hollywood movie. However, it means the money from the ticket sale went to the local Chinese movie instead so inflate its viewing numbers & profits.

Its not the fault of the Chinese, its the fault of the CCP and the stupid Winnie the Pooh lookalike cock that runs it.

It's time to retire 'edge' from our IT vocabulary

steviebuk Silver badge

Can't

Due to a shitty browser being called it.

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: The obvious choice

Opened the Christmas Crackers early?

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: He was reportedly already looking for a CEO for the past month

True. Its clear the investors have told him to find someone else to run it or they'll pull their money. And the poll was to make him look good.

It will be a shit job. It will be for show only, Elon will still be running it all from the side, they'll just be a puppet CEO. It will be someone who's willing to take a hit for cash, knowing full well he'll throw them under the bus at some point. He'll hit them with an NDA so they can never mention this after he fires them.

He truely is a cunt.

Broadcom braced for full EU investigation into $61B VMware buyout

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Care

They would if the whole of the EU decided that no one is allowed to use VMWare anymore. Whether the EU would be able to legally do that I'm not sure.

Microsoft to buy 4% of London Stock Exchange in 10-year platform deal

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: You can't get fired for buying...

Because, unfortunately, Excel is quite powerful. Take Google Shits, I mean Sheets for example, its really shit compared to Excel.

Women sue Apple claiming AirTags helped their stalkers

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: Just curious

Possibly because Tile are smaller. Its only with these comments that I've heard of Tile. Never heard of them before.

Not a Apple fan but even I know what an AirTag is and what it looks like.

steviebuk Silver badge

Re: THIS is why we need diversity

Do you have any evidence there were no women at the development stage? Apple is only concerned about the share holder nothing more. This has been clear for years with their continued use of China despite the CCPs human rights issues. They are only now beginning to slowly move some manufacturering outside of China but only because they had suppy issues with China's stupid zero COVID and the riot at the foxconn factory.

steviebuk Silver badge

Found

Found one in the local Sainsbury's carpark. Android struggled to read it but rhen so did my partners iPhone.

Eventually it read and only showed the last digits of owners number. Waited over a week, still not reported as missing. Now been a month and the same message. Its clear it wws stuck on a car to track