pete

Have Google ever offered filter vendors access to an ad-free feed in return for payment? Load token into filter, good for X interval on a per-customer basis. "Provide ad-free YouTube in schools for free" doesn't really pay for the engineering resources for a relatively niche customer base (who'll be accessing it anyway outside of school, so it's not like they're losing traffic).

Judging from the intro there have been some changes on the IT side. Old CIO (Simon W) has been replaced in the last few months.

Unless I'm guaranteed Alan Sugar gets savaged by a succession of increasingly angry badgers, I'm not the apprentice's target audience. But I appreciate the candidates making the whole of the UK aware they shouldn't be considered for any role: Application rejection reason: "You convinced the whole of the UK you were a sphincter on national TV".

It would be interesting to see if the rampant stupidity* on LinkedIn has gone up at the same time. *posting like an idiot, but on a platform directly linked to your employer. "We couldn't find any public social media for you / you haven't listed any accounts" "Well yeah, when I was at school they taught us using your real name on the Internet was a stupid idea that would come back to bite you later." "Yup, ex-partner got a bit weird. Had to shut that all down." closes that avenue of enquiry. Pick one.

I have the 16GB Nvidia 5060 TI (upgraded from a 2060) that I bought before the price hikes. It's decent. Most of the reviews said to stay away from the 8GB version.

Our plan is "follow the critical incident plan": Contact mobile numbers of middle and senior leadership at school and trust level are available to all other school and trust senior and middle leaders via the critical incident plan. Something happens, whoever has 30 seconds texts or calls the appropriate person to get outside help or at least loop them in so they don't get an inaccurate account from someone being "helpful".

Provided the existing battery sled is in good condition (case, wiring, etc) and the front of the sled can be removed to swap out the batteries (slide out the whole string), you should be fine. If the front is rivetted on, it's more of a faff. Take photos of the wiring before you dismantle the sled to swap in the new batteries. Bear in mind the new batteries may not come with protective caps on the postive terminal, so swap out the (removable) caps from the old batteries. We've swapped out 5 or 6 APC sleds using that supplier. On the latest 2U models we found APC had used (excessive amounts of) foam tape to keep the batteries in the sled. Still doable (a flexible steel rule can fit through slots in the bottom of the sled to "saw" through the foam) but annoying.

We don't do any of the above (expenses and approval workflows are handled in specific platforma). With regard to 7 accounts@schoolname inboxes - are your individual schools handling their own accounts? Or has the finance team not got around to requesting all of those addresses pointing to an accounts@trustname mailbox?

You have suspended a fairly heavy sheet of glass or steel above the teacher though. An exotic guillotine that won't trigger in most circumstances.

They can submit one, but it'll be rejected if the student is over 13yrs old and there's no evidence of consent from the student. (We do ask the student). In cases where the parent <> child relationship is zero contact, they don't have that consent and they're unlikely to be able to gain it. Subject access requests are intended to allow the data subject (the child) access to their personal data. A trusted adult (parent, relative, solicitor) can act upon their behalf but the legislation's purpose is "here's the data we hold about you", not "dear parents, here's all the data about your child". We'll happily process a SAR if the student (or their representative) submits one, but an adult claiming consent that they don't have isn't representing the student.

Oh, we're definitely getting the AI-written and SEND-related SARs too.

We're seeing quite a few "this is a SAR, give me info X on child Y" requests. Increasingly, the person making the request is estranged from the child and isn't best placed to / can't demonstrate they are acting on behalf of the child. Anyone else?

What specifically does the lease cover? The on-prem handsets or more than that? Is there some dedicated hardware racked in a datacentre somewhere or is it just a VM?

Just finished Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi. A legendary pirate queen is blackmailed out of retirement for one last job. Very good.

There's one 2m from my desk (we store random sacrificial USB drives in there).

You might need a load of test accounts for reasons.

My use case is allegedly semi-functional adults who don't open tickets (or pick up the phone) for things directly affecting them and expect (or hope) that the school office might open a ticket on their behalf by psychically picking up their problem from three buildings over. It needs to be simple enough that a more responsible 6yr old could get fed up with their teacher whining, pick up the phone and call us because they'd like to get back to their lesson about elephants.

So for "now you have no excuse" reasons I need to source stickers to slap on staff-issued equipment with: Some accompanying text. An email address. Two 4-digit extension phone extensions Maybe a logo (not that fussed) Hard to peel off. And I probably need 300-400 of them. Who have you used? I'm considering the same people we use for asset tags, but the email address is a bit long to fit on an asset tag and still be readable at arms length for a range of eyesights.

For configuration state, I'd look at Ansible (or Landscape, as mentioned above). Edit: and the free tier of Ansible Tower (the GUI bit) seems to no longer be a thing. Check out Semaphore instead if you want a UI: https://semaphoreui.com/

We (mostly in secondary) really like the uLog USB line (https://www.logitworld.com/logit-ulog) because they appear to the OS as a keyboard and send the temperature (or whatever) as text and the software is cross-platform (on desktop/laptop). Potentially a bit too pricey though. (They'll technically work on an iPad/Android/iPhone with a USB-A > Lightning or USB-A > USB-C adaptor and a text editor but visually the information isn't as usable if you're demonstrating something to the kids.)

Smoothwall for filtering and SW monitor for monitoring in a VM hosted by Coconnect (we're filtering multiple schools). Coconnect can do Smoothwall as well, you just have to ask for it (we made it a condition of getting and retaining our business). Ask to have a chat with Matt.

Our mobile contracts are up for renewal* and one of the contenders mentioned Crosscall phones, the Core M6 specifically, as "hard to break, 5 years of security updates, but not a brick". Is anyone using them/have any feedback on how they perform? cheers Pete *Hello suppliers: I am not soliciting quotes at this time.

I like Coconnect enough to renew the contract. Worth giving them a shout and (as of March 2026) you get someone actually technical on the phone when you call.

^ If I use the Jelly Baby (as we're apparently calling it now - I shall update our documentation) to access MCAS as the parent would see it. The first time it sends me to the login page and doesn't work. The second time, it loads the info but the student photo in top-left is missing (placeholder instead). Looking at the same child in the MCAS app (staff member's kid), the picture displays correctly.

(or women, or thems, or haven't-decided's. Incompetence isn't gender-specific)