PhobosAnomaly

I encountered Quishing the other day - the inadvertent scanning of QR codes that take a browser to a malformed URL or site with malware embedded.

Back in my day, it was just called “being a bit dense”, especially as most cameras/QR readers will offer you a prompt to go to a website first.

How is someone getting control of their data by paying a ransom?

The opposing actor still has your data, so it doesn’t really matter how much you pay, you’ll never be able to mitigate that security issue, surely?

His voice isn’t much different!

I watch his videos because it’s nice to have an insider view of what was the formative years of Microsoft’s assimilation creation of a common office workspace. The anecdotes are deliciously 90’s, the openness is refreshing, and the implementation detail is quite interesting.

My other half likes the videos because he has that quite monotone voice, with quite an even canter and the odd lingering pause that can send her to sleep.

Win win.

That’s really cool, thank you for the explanation and example!

Awesome, thank you for the insight!

Alright, I’m going to be a real pain in the arse here and throw some edge cases at that idea - not because I’m trying to be a cockwaffle (I can manage that all by myself), but trying to straighten out my understanding of these things…

In short, what criteria does the data have to meet to make it immutable, and can that be changed in future?

Birth certificates are brilliant for establishing time dates and places, but what if someone changes their name or gender partway through life? Is there a function to amend the original blockchain entry, or is a new one created that supersedes an old entry in the ledger?

Lifeforce Tenka (or Codename Tenka) in NA territories was underrated.

A PS1 FPS that experimented with having just one gun, but could be modded to provide different weapon functionalities (or weapons in real terms), and the soundtrack was absolutely banging.

Classic Psygnosis really.

Speaking of whom, there’s also Sentient - perhaps not necessarily good, but tried so many new and inventive things that are common in modern games, that it deserves it’s own post really.

edit: in fact, how can we mention Psygnosis and not me tion G-Police? That was a fantastic game, with great graphics (let down by a short draw distance), awesome gameplay, and a absolutely amazing storyline. Well worth a play, especially for the particularly mental trailer.

I was brought up on C, did a module of Java at uni, and am doing an algorithms course which is python heavy.

My other half - who’s quite handy with Python - looks in sheer horror at my code which is littered with semicolons.

I was stumped for half an hour figuring out why the Python interpreter was bouncing an error before it had even reached the main program logic… turns out a { before the block of code royally ruins the interpreter’s day.

Still, I live and learn.

…/Four Seasons Landscaping/Press Venue Hire

Yes, but also no.

The Civil Service runs on menial tasks, the public sector could trim down by - and I’m pulling a figure out of thin air here - at least 20% if a lot of the superfluous admin grade jobs were automated or trained on.

That said, nobody can hallucinate and produce wildly neutral and self-defeating policies quite like the civil service. That’s something we’ll intuitively beat AI at for centuries yet.

I mean, it sucks yes, but there has to be an acceptance that if you continue to use Meta products in the knowledge that Meta will rip you off for every shred of data that they can, then there’s not really a defence of ignorance any more.

Meta are absolutely a cunty company, but it’s not as if that’s not common knowledge any more.

It will only stay as the default messaging platform for as long as people bury their heads in the sand as tradeoff for convenience.

Brilliant! Even funnier that it was the QM that done goofed!

I always knew procurement across the UK public sector was wasteful, but I never knew quite how wasteful until I started working alongside various bodies.

This was just one of the more egregious - and more entertaining - examples.

Another story from the workplace probably worthy of a “who, me?” segment on el reg:

An old admin grade at one of my last workplaces was… unique, in her approach to her workload. In the times that we haven’t had an admin assistant in post, the workload gets shared out amongst the team so the job still gets done, but it’s primarily menial and trivial stuff. It’s not difficult, but the way the civil service works, sometimes a ten second job takes ten minutes. It wasn’t that she was particularly awful - just a bit useless and had all the critical thinking skills of a common housebrick. Anything that needed a decision made became someone else’s job.

Someone went in to to see her wanting another AA battery, to replace one in the clock to stop people from losing their minds having done a few hours in the office, but still only seeing half past nine on the clock. There’s none left in the store cupboard, so she logs on to the ordering system, and realises that they come in nondescript “units”, rather than the SKU style setup you see on most retailer sites. So, she goes for 10 - thinking ten packs would be enough for a while.

A week later, a lorry pulls up at the office, with a pallet for delivery. Nobody’s expecting this, and we can’t lift it off the lorry for it being too heavy, and we had to get a neighbouring unit’s forklift driver to pop it off the lorry for us and leave it at our side door, probably for a pack of fags and a coffee. We opens it up, and hurrah, our batteries are here!

All ten thousand of them.

Turns out, a “unit” in this branch of the civil service is “per thousand”, so we literally had nearly a tonne of batteries on a pallet outside. We tried phoning the distribution centre, and they’re clearly not giving a fuck about something as low value as this, and certainly aren’t sending a truck to get them - this was now an “us” problem.

One of the lads pulls out a stick of batteries, goes back into the office, comes back ashen faced…

“Boys, the clock needs AAA batteries”

We had a slowly dwindling mountain of AA batteries for about three months, literally people taking strips of batteries home at Christmas to put in toys, people bringing in old Game Boys or Game Gears just to try them out with a supply of new batteries, and a Sky Digital remote control with a now perpetually infinite lifespan.

God bless the civil service.

As always - decent idea, poor execution.

Enforcement is rarely as effective as education - and it is an issue that probably should be addressed at school or at a young age at home, that notification dopamine hits are easily abused by apps and advertisers, the dangers of walking on pavements while your head’s down, and the pervasiveness of social media or always-connected information and it’s impact on mental health.

After all, behaviours are better changed when you learn why it’s a bad idea, rather than someone telling you it’s a bad idea.

Euronews has done what The Independent did in the UK - went from being a brilliant source of news, to being a bit of a shambles. I used to watch the Euronews channel pretty much daily until they pivoted to a magazine show style of output. The website is just as bad.

A shame really.

I mean, it could have been shortened to “lol yeah sorry about the deaths, but that’s just warfare bro” but that would be a little too facetious.

Yes, collateral damage and loss of life is always a risk that can’t be mitigated in this scenario, but it’s hard to accept that over the course of nearly four fucking months.

I do need to get hold of that journo though. If he gives out handjobs like he’s jacking the IDF off with that story, I’ll be turned off women for life.

COBOL has entered the chat

e: good for legacy employment though. A relative of mine is a Z80 programmer by trade, and he can effectively walk into a job because the talent pool is so small now. Granted - the wages are never great but never poor, and the role is maintenance and troubleshooting rather than being on the leading edge of development - but it’s a job for life.

It was quite lenient with my error-prone French.

That said, Duo is well known for A/B testing so no doubt we were just using different feature sets.