Always consider incompetence before malice.

All I get now are websites saying they don't recognise my details, yet come back five minutes later or with a different browser... How are we going backwards when so much trade of whatever description is now online? [LIFTED], there's no excuse for it.

There was an absolute corker of an unhelpful bit of gantry signage on the way to work this morning.
Travelling South towards Huntingdon the gantry signs were warning that the A14 exit from the A1 was closed. Unfortunately there was no indication as to which one it was - there are two exits from the A1 onto the A14. They meant the second one - Brampton Hut roundabout (there had been an accident on the slip road off the A1 to the roundabout).

Naturally the warning had people trying to avoid the impending carnage that usually happens when something goes wrong with the A14 involved with a lot of traffic diverting through country routes which naturally snarled up a treat. Fortunately I help my nerve and managed to go off via the previous A1 exit onto the A14 which was absolutely fine (no doubt helped by others not being on the A1 by that stage).

A bit more specificity about which exit from the A1 to the A14 was having the problem would have been very helpful, but no, that seems to be beyond whoever sets the signs.

SO, having held out for literally years I have finally caved and signed up with Bookface.
For the security I turned on 2-factor authentication. Seem fine when I tuned it on, code came through quickly and everything.
Now I'm trying to log in on another device and the code is either not coming through or taking ages - what's the point of having 2FA available if it takes too blood long to work properly?
Not impressed.

You should never use SMS as 2FA, it is insecure.

Use time based 2FA, with an app like Google / Microsoft Authenticator. You scan the provided QR-Code into the Authenticator and it sets itself up automatically.

The only negative of these 2FA systems is that they are totally useless, if you send an SMS to the smartphone where you are signing on, or the authenticator app is on the device you are signing on with. It is still a 2nd factor, but if somebody has stolen your device, they have access to the 2nd factor.

SMS is worse, because a hacker can get a 2nd SIM card for your account sent to them and then intercept all of your 2FA SMS messages...

SMS can also be slow (or in my case, I usually need 2FA when sitting at my PC, which is in the cellar and there is no signal at all), so that it has timed out by the time you get the SMS.

For the important accounts, I use a Yubikey Neo, which is a USB stick that generates a unique code when plugged into the PC, which is synced with the service I'm logging into. For my smartphone, the Yubikey Neo has an NFC chip and transmits the code to the smartphone that way, which is then validated by the app through the service I am connecting to.

Apacer reveals assault rifle inspired PCIe NVMe SSD
First off, why? Second, if you're going to try and make a PC peripheral look like a gun try and not make it look like a heavy duty stapler instead.

And a 'school stapler' at that.

The National Lottery’s recent campaign is going well.


Yup, another high profile ad campaign where the public can add their own captions to a picture goes staggeringly badly. There are more like this, but far worse.

It’s not like this is the first time this has been done, or indeed this kind of sabotage has happened. Once again, poor planning and no safeguards in place.

Yes, just look at that horrible dumb quote used instead of an apostrophe!

Something similar happened back when I was at Toshiba. I think the problem boiled down to the TVs picking up an over-air update not intended for them (too many shared components with another manufacturer), and it removing a significant chunk of functionality. I recall creating and mailing many, many USB sticks to allow people to correct the update.

My little brothers flat was burgled recently. They swiped his old MacBook... and his external hard drive with his backup on it.
Fortunately he had photos on a separate drive which they missed and the laptop was on its way out (I think he said you could only actually see about a quarter of the screen).
Suffice to say we had a little chat about the 3-2-1 rule for backups, ironically while I was in the process of running a backup of my PC (the backup is now in my desk drawer at work).

Speaking of backups, I had two external drives, a relatively new WD one and an older Iomega. The WD drive behaves itself fine. The Iomega I used to use as a backup when I was using my Mac. Could I get Windows Disk Management to format the Iomega drive? Could I heck. Tried GPT and MBR, hangs on formatting every time. After several hours trying to get it to work I have come to the conclusion that, even if I could somehow get it to format and be recognised properly, I wouldn't entirely trust it to put a backup on so it's gone. I just need to work out how to dispose of it.

Also, trying to format the drive did answer a slight mystery. I was wondering when Windows was going to get round to offering the Win 10 Creators update. As recommended I normally use my PC from a Standard, non-admin account. Disk Management only works from and admin account so I logged into that and lo and behold one of the first things to come up was the Security prefs screen for the Creators update which then proceeded to download without incident the next time Windows Update ran. So, I'm guessing you needed to be logged in as an Admin for the CU thing to kick off or maybe it was just a massive coincidence. If you did need to be logged in as an admin for it to work they really should have said so. It's very rare that I log into my admin account.

I take a drill to mine and put a good number of holes in it and then take it to the local dump and put it into the metal recycling Skip

MY local car dealership. Took my car in for some work, when they handed it back to me it had a 2 foot long crack in the windscreen. Not so much that the damage was done, I mean accidents happen, more than nobody at all in the place noticed it before they gave me the keys back, despite it being right in the driver's eyeline.

That is indeed pretty poor. I assume they're putting it right though.