Ditto

Thought I'd pop this in here - I guess I am 80-90% aligned with the messaging.

Welcome and the 'stupid cars', well lets say your find some soul mates here too. We also have some very passionate EV supporters - I'm sure you'll come across both types in your time here - we're a diverse bunch 😄

Not sure I've known of an IT Governor before! So, given you have one, the role should be purely strategic, so if the strategy is to stay on old kit and increase risk of IT infrastructure collapse, then all's well.

My wife told me I need to embrace my mistakes. I gave her a hug. Actually, the original version of this was the other way around, but I'm all for equality.

On re-reading, yes I can see that now. Classic click bait headline - tut tut BBC! Will those in the senior salary roles remain as they are I wonder?

£0.5m on the topc 6 salaries with, approx a £10m income and expenditure and 168 staff is spicy. But what is the estate worth - looks outside my budget! I have to wonder how they provide education for public benefit after closure.

Very sad for many locally, but it was inevitable some schools would not survive the VAT hike. Looking at the BBC picture, the school looks to have a stunning building and a stunning location - I wonder what will happen to it - would be a great shame to see it fall in to disrepair. If sold, where's the money go?

Fundamentally, Copilot is ChatGPT under the hood. I'm interested what it is about ChatGPT that failed your DPIA process.

I think this one is almost too good for a 'Dad' joke. My usual 'victim', younger son, actually found this funny rather than groany! If you're American when you go into a bathroom and American when you come out, what are you while you're in the the bathroom? European.

Just for intrigue, has anyone ever spent the time to put together all the inputs and requirements into an AI tool and see what it can come up with. I'd be shocked if it made a decent fist of it, but perhaps it would be an interesting experiment. I expect it would take a significant effort on the input side, but AI tools work best when in discussion goes in to a lot of detail on what problem is being resolved.

Noted!

I don't think the coffee has kicked in yet this morning. 😁

I was at least aware, and it is a surprise to see spinny disks in this era of machine, especially from Dell refurb. I though maybe the original spec would have been SSD, and perhaps the corporate owner swapped them out or destroyed for data secuirty. However, Dell support site shows they shipped that way - madness! I did check your site, but had a preference for Dells. I may have a couple of spare SSD's, so perhaps no problem their, but I defintely don't have any DDR4 lieing around. I agree the DDR4 prices are mad, blame AI, but for now this will be a big step up for both brother an mum!

I've purchased Dell Grade A refurbished SFFs as mentioned in the title. The older device has 4 x 4GB RAM, the newer device 1 x 8GB RAM. Priced at £249 incl. deliver and 180 day warranty it seemed reasonable. One is for my mum and one for a brother. Both are light users, nothing more than browsing, a small bit of printing/scanning so no need for high end graphics. Not sure even if I need to add Office, but they won't be into 365 subscriptions and I recently upgraded to 2021 Pro plus for under £50 on my laptop recently - always a risk but no problems a few months down the line. It at least moves them on to W11 so better supported security and there devices were getting very old. The one downside with each device is a 7200rpm 500GB HDD. My thinking is make that a storage device and put in either a NvME or SSD for fast boot. For these devices, what would you recommend of those 2 - I'm thinking 256GB will be ample. Any recommendations? I might also upgrade the 8GB device to 16GB, but with DDR4 RAM prices, I might wait until they head south again, even if that is a year+ away!

I had to check for an audit only last week. No one has admin update access internally. 2 or 3 people have read only access. Including my LM's LM, formerly my LM. He wouldn't know what to do with it but I guess it adds to a feeling of importance. I've had a couple of reasons to run a read only PS script or MS Graph script because first line support don't have the skills to to run one. Only in the last couple of days a query came up about getting everyone's MS Outlook calendar updated with bank holidays. I suggested asking support to do that. They basically said they can't easily. 5 minutes on ChatGPT gives 3 solutions including providing PS scripts or MS Graph solutions. The irony is the MSP is running an AI training session in 2 days time

I think in my charity setting, there is a strong will to protect data - staff have access to some of the most sensitive data and loss of that data undermines the very work they are doing - I understand in other environments this might not be the case. However, the company policy does nothing to protect data. There is no protection in place. The positive bit is that there is a realisation that this is very much v1 of the policy, and for example there have been primilary discussion about Data Loss Protection applications. I suppose you start somewhere, but a better job could have been done before rushing the policy out.

Restricted to M365 Copilot ('cause we are an MS shop and so it must be safe!). Already the content creators includind the fundraising team (charity, not a school) are unhappy. Stifles creativity and focuses on technolgical platform rather than AI ethical usage. Sigh - as much for the predicability of the route taken.

I've only driven the OH's Cupra and the 'assistive' technology is a best interferingly annoying and at times downright dangerous. Happy to live with collision avoidance stuff but lane assist needs to be optional.

Finding data on the web that backs your view and I suspect your wish for "I'll bet on 5 years, specifically by 1st Jan 2031 self driving taxis will be everywhere, ..." is not really that convincing . The figure of 3000 people dieing on the roads everyday is a headline grabber. But add the context that 100,000 to 105,000 people die a day due to natural cause (Source World in Data), then perhaps less so. I'm sure self-driving will come, but not in the timeframe you wish. Societal change is difficult and you can pump all the facts and data for the logic at change, humans are not like Spock. I would not be surprised if passenger airliners could be safer if fully automated, but why then do they have 2 or 3 pilots on every flight. Perhaps against the facts, humans as a whole feel safer in the hands of a well trained man in a suit than they do than our inflatable friend Otto.

Have watched the first series of Younger on Netflix. Some laugh out loud moments in the first few episodes, less so as it went forward but still amusing as the story develops. A few sub plots seem to disappear, but for easy light hearted, yet edgy comedy, it fits the bill for a Sunday evening. Apparently another 6 series to go. so the story must develop quite a bit.

There several instances of 'Call for price' which suggests prices can vary behind the headlines. As a charity that works with schools closely, but is not a school, but equally not really an organisation that I would label 'Enterprise', I was really after some inside track insight. However, the LM, to the LM, has explained he reaches out to someone in a separate team for negotiations, someone I have no knowledge having procurment and/or buying skills. Besides, despite sitting on the taks himself for months, my latest LM came up with this option which I have giving my backing, only to conclude that let's look at alternatives - which will have been done, but meams yet another project slips on to the back burner to go nowhere for the coming months or more!

Staying alive - mundane! Hmm, quite important for us humans. I guess the elixir of life for AI is electricity, one flick of te switch and it's as if it never existed.

The last few years' worth of data for UK businesses entering administration. Year Number of Administrations Trend 2021 796 18-year annual low 2022 1,231 Up 56% from 2021 2023 1,567 Up 22% from 2022 2024 1,597 Up 2% from 2023 (similar to pre-pandemic levels) I wonder what 2025 will look like, but I doubt it will be worth celebrating. As a contrast, and harder to find, here are some figures for the other end of the pipeline. FY 2022/23: There were 801,006 new company incorporations. FY 2023/24: New registrations reached a high of 890,684, an 11.2% increase from the prior year. FY 2024/25: Incorporations fell to 801,864, a 10% decrease compared to the previous financial year.

I suspect you underestimate the resistance to change from the general public. Taxi's could provide the service you describe and would be more cost effect than the 20000 miles travel and car ownership. Actually, given taxi prices around here, maybe much less! The vigour with which large numbers of car owners value the ability to get up and go at any point in time, regardless of cost, is something not to be underestimated. Perhaps you could diary a revist in 5 years time, and see which of have the stronger Nostradamus attributes!

Further to this, has anyone any feedback on the room booking add-on going by the name of Spaces?