Ditto

For the last year or 2 we have been purchasing Dell laptops. Mine for example is an Latitude 3550, 16MB RAM 512SSD i7-1355U. It has a traditional A/C connector and I have had no issues. Several colleagues have slightly lower specs and I believe may only have USB-C charging options. Following more than one failure of these flimsy connectors, those up the feeding chain are now considering alternative devices. Due to 'internal connections' he is persuaded to look at HP Ryzen laptops - e.g. HP Probook 455 G10, same screen size, RAM and SSD but Ryzen 5 7530U. I don't have a problem of Dell over HP, but I can already beat the 'contact' price which allegedly contains a charity discount - ebuyer do it for £40 less. The question is, do you avoid USB-C only devices like the plague. These machines are intended for use by adult colleagues, but they don't seem to be too far behind the ability of Y9 boys to inflict damage!

Harsh, even brutal, but I'm afraid I have to 100% agree.

It all sounds very good. Although, it hasn't led to good use of English 😂

If you have a DPO, send it that way. If not, get one! In the meantime, pass it to the head.

Pehaps controversially, deception apart, does it matter?! If a RI (real intelligence) setup performs at least as well as a AI setup, Is there a danger we devalue RI over AI?

Over 125,000 signatures and Gofundme has exceeded its target of $16,000 in 26 hours since launch. @ICTDirect_Dave, that's seriously impressive! If you ever fancy a new career, I'm sure most political parties would sign you up in a flash as their campaign manager - although perhaps your passion wouldn't be the same! I bought the first 3 books of the story for my 16 year old, but he is working through other stories. I've been holding off on watching the series until he has read the books, but that could be a few months away, so I might start without him!

Further research indicates that some individuals are reprogramming the EEPROM chip to reset counters. I presume they do this for the technical challenge more than the savings! Then I learned that you can access the printer settings by going to the printer IP address (activates SyncThru Webservices). Logging in as admin (details are out there!) and you can change the 'Imaging Unit Stop' from ON to OFF. It doesn't stop the warning or the flashing red light on the printer, but I presume it will let you continue after the 'software-driven' end-of-life state. It is, of course, not recommended and you'll get a warning that changing this setting may damage your device. Alternatively, you can buy a replacement chip, anywhere from £20 or via something like Ali-Express for a fiver. I wouldn't mind buying a genuine replacement unit, but at £50-60, it's clear profiteering. I'll probably buy a replacement OEM unit in due course, mid-price point with good reviews, but I just wish life didn't feel like the big corporations are constantly trying to milk you of your hard earned money. The truth is the printer is printing as well as it did the day I bought and is at about 8000 pages - with all bar the first few thousand on OEM toner cartridges. For clarity, this is a home device, and in the workplace, I'd be less reluctant to take this route.

I was hoping with Samsung to avoid the forced consumable updates that Epson thrust upon me with their ink management. Hey-ho. This duplex laser has worked well and continues to do so, being well used currently as the kids work through GCSE and A-levels. A warning has come up to say there is a need to replace imaging unit. It looks immaculate, but I believe is also acts as a container for excess toner. Other models of Samsung appear to have ways of draining excess toner and resetting counters by installing a capacity, which once blown, resets the counter. This model doesn't seem to offer that option. There are apparently software reset options, but they don't come free. So, I think I am stuck with replacing the unit and adding to the ever increasing e-waste mountain. Anyone else experienced this? Compatible imaging units can be got for around £8-£16 on ebay (new allegedly), genuine new for around £50+ (although not from HP site directly) or original via ebay but trusted commercial seller for £40. So, go cheap and risk it, or go original and risk it!

Some bee fun today. 2 doors away in our cul-de-sac, we had a swarm of bees arrive. Bee-keeper called and swiftly collect 10,000+ bees! Unfortunately no photos.

Also it is working to talk to your new MIS people. Depending on who they are, they may well have good advice. None of them like this shoddy practice and it taints the whole industry sector. Overall though, I agree with the view it is best to advise the school to take legal advice.

I'm sure they do, but I have strong evidence to show it's my account! Yep, MFA might have helped, but ultimately this scenario was a social engineering one, so maybe not? IAs it's an account I virtually never use, but historically my son does for Minecraft, he's to date been very savvy! He realised his error immediately. What I find surprising is I get an email notifying my landline number is removed from the account to allow me to investigate and also when a additional email account was added. But the primary email, the name of the account, gets changed/removed and no notification whatsoever?! I do, via my son, have a case number, so maybe there is hope. Oddly, now that it appears I have the account name recreated, I wonder if the MS recovery forms now work, as they didn't previously as it said the account name didn't exist! Somehow I presume it must have, albeit with another primary email account name I guess. It's extremely unlikely that I stored any payment details. My email archives shows I have purchased XBox game pass years ago, but all my cards were renewed in the last few weeks due to lost wallet - maybe got lucky with that one! Wallet was recovered! I can also see from my account records I passed Office2019: Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Associate 4 years ago - I guess that is linked. I must have been really bored to do that! Must have been a BETT freebie!

I'm further confused... and still no update from MS Account Safety Team! I thought I'd create a new account with a similar and sensible name. I can't quite remember the exact steps, but it seemed to ask me to enter a verification code for my old (stolen) account - it seemed fine and normal at this point. Then I ended up going through a process of setting up as if it is a new account with the original email address as the account name. History and other details do strongly indicate this is a new account. I can only presume the old account was abandoned and deleted after the theft. I have read that each MS account does have a truly unique id, several in fact. Why is it not possible using this to restore the account to the rightful owner?

Absolutely no response from Google or Microsoft - I'm appalled. Currently no signs of attacks on any finances. Lost my wallet very recently (it was relocated) but all cards cancelled and renewed - that might have helped. I'm not even sure if any details exist on the MS account. Additional info provide to MS includes that when he start up Minecraft Launcher, a new email name is listed, this time an 'outlook.com' one. Also we notice where it asks you to enter password (the new outlook.com names appears at the top, but under forgot password, it's a partial email along the lines if 'Email code to zz*****@rambler.ru'). Background reading on Rambler.ru is concerning. My son passed what Minecraft resources he could to a friend. Some articles I've read suggest Xbox account might be recoverable but as for the MS account, that's looking unlikely. I'm quite surprised even with a OTP, that the original email name on the account can be changed/removed without an email being set to that account before hand - to provide the opportunity to spot the malicious attack.

Firstly some background and more detail. Whilst I have an account with MS, I rarely use it and I think there is very little associated with it - no sign of financial issues to date. The hack came about as historically my youngest son had a Minecraft account but registered with my MS account. I think this came about when MS bought Mojang. I haven't quite got full clarity of events, but it involves the Minecraft account, Discord servers and chats as a result of using Hypixel. Essentially he got tricked in to revealing the Ms account name and then handed over a One Time Password. Clearly there is no MFA on the account - my error, but it's not something I use hence oversight. My son realised almost immediately he had made an error. Within no time at all I received to emails from Microsoft. The first was to say additional security info had been added to the account. The details were another email account. I can only assume an account being used by the hacker. The email said if this wasn't you, then it must have been malicious and to review account activity. At the same time another email arrived, this time saying security info had been deleted. This was my landline phone number. So I went to review the activity, but it asked me to log in to my account but then when trying to do so, MS report that the account name was not recognised! No matter my efforts to recover the account, there was no way to do so. MS website even said create new account to be able to communicate with them. The form then asks you to type in the compromised account and the new account. It then says the old account doesn't exist! Despite strong efforts to speak to a human, online chat or by phone, I never found a way. My son was trying the same and by some unknown means, using his own MS account (school maybe) he got an online chat going. That has ultimately lead to a case being recorded with the 'Microsoft Account Safety Team' and dealing with an 'Account Escalation Request' which has a case number. Normal response times are quoted as 5 business days. That does leave a hacker a long time to continue with malicious activity! During the chat phase, we were asked whether we have an Xbox One or 360. We have a now rarely used 360 and it probably is linked to the MS account. We were asked to provide my GamerTag and the 360 device id. Hopefully that will be sufficient to meet ownership proof. So at the moment, it's looking like a serious nuisance. The biggest loss could be of resources my son has on his Minecraft/Hypixel account - lesson to be reinforced. What I found really galling was the complete inability of me being able to contact and speak to someone on an account hack, or even report it online. Every step seemed to require login in to the MS account, and that wasn't possible. Because the added email address was a gmail account, I wanted to report the incident to Google. That was equally impossible. No online chats offered, no telephone numbers that I could track. For the size of these 2 corporations, that is really disappointing, no appaling! As a last resort, I emailed '[email protected]' - the response? Nothing. I will try again today, maybe with more success as it's a week day. So for now wait and see, and of recovered, MFA immediately to added! My living day email and account is Google/GMAIL - that is already secured with MFA!

Details later, but my MS account has been hacked and apparently deleted. Does anyone know how to speak to an agent to resolve - all attempts online have failed so far.

I received an email from a colleague (and therefore the same domain) with the key content in a picture. The image was blocked and although I could download, I would have thought being from an internal source, it would be fine. So I raised the topic with our out-sourced support and proposed we had a company wide solution, not one for me to close the ticket! Various nonsensical moves ultimately resulted in the issue going to 3rd line support. I have just received the following comment: "...whether there is a problem with all images showing if we set things up that way?". Also, "There is little impact, security or otherwise, of having images download for all....whether internal or external". I've replied with a link to a MS statement as to why the default is not to download images. For awareness, this is in desktop Outlook as part of M365. Your comments and insights are welcomed.

I find using RI (real intelligence) is superior to AI (Artificial Intelligence) in many instances.🤔

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I noticed a post with a link to another post isn't working quite as expected. The link took you to the other thread, but not the exact post linked.

What's the plan on bronze/silver/gold badges etc. I was hoping to reach gold one day!

Yep, big user of iSpy too.

Oh....

Yeah, similar, years of management experience and preceded by years of hands-on experience including technical project management (yeah, that old!). I Prince 2 certificated just to avoid failing foul of the auto-recruitment filters at step 1. I can honestly say I never used a hard core Prince 2 in jobs I worked in. I did use Rational Unified Process (RUP) and kept up to speed with Scrum but never certificated. But with that combined experience set, I got very good in interviews with answering theoretical project management/delivery questions by talking about the variety of project management techniques and suggesting the advanced skill was picking the one that suited the nature of the project. It usually went done very well rather than trotting out about dry Prince 2 formalities. It is interesting, perhaps one of the hardest parts of the jobs I've hard is line management. None of us has talked about a de-facto certification for that. With line management, I think answering interview questions based on personal experience is hard to beat. Well, whichever path you choose, I hope it goes well and for sure you will learn some new things.

I see it differently. Sell the car now for your suggested £1500 and buy a replacement say for £3000. Assuming 10% depreciation on the newer car. Over 2 years your net position is £1800 spent/depreciated Keep the car for one year and buy the depreciated newer car in a year, get £50 scrap for the failed MOT car. Over 2 years your net position is £2650 spent/depreciated. At the end of both scenarios, you are in the same place car wise, but not expenditure wise. If the older car keeps passing MOTs, then it's a different picture, but that's the judgement to be made. Given the desire to move to a smaller car, I'm suspecting there could be further savings on fuel costs, insurance and all being well, maintenance costs.

Following on from my Cool things post, this is Spring just a few minutes walk from my door.

Would it make sense to sell it now as a 1 year runabout for someone, than having to dispose of it as scrap in a years time? Or can you break it for parts?