Stringent

IT Professional and Geek.

[Stringent @stringents]

@techspence I just wonder what the latest updates will break. Something basic which is fundamental.

[Stringent @stringents]

I have used 3 AI tools over the past year. Grok, Claude and CoPilot. I used to think CoPilot was the worst, however they all have good subsets on what you want to use them for. CoPilot great for Microsoft integration and even troubleshooting Microsoft Products (usual caveats).

Claude is good for logical thinking and analysis of things. Reading legal and suggesting formats and creating documents. Some success with troubleshooting.

Grok is good for gathering information and presenting it for your own benefit. Searching the latest headlines and X. I haven't had much success with troubleshooting my high end issues.

All are good at reading screenshots, reading and summary of documents and cross referencing. Prompts are the key thing to get into your head.

[Stringent @stringents]

Experience has taught me, watch everything a consultant or engineer does on your system. If there is an issue as a result of an upgrade or works. Document it, what was done to fix it. When they leave and 4 months later you face a weird issue, it will be a life saver. No amount of AI can replace actual experience, and send you on different rabbit holes.

[BleepingComputer @BleepinComputer]

LastPass, Bitwarden users targeted with fake security alerts
https://t.co/ayVruFWpIf

https://t.co/ayVruFWpIf

[IT Unprofessional @it_unprofession]

A vendor from a tier 1 cybersecurity firm has been trying to sell me a managed firewall for a year.

I've ignored 45 of his emails.

Yesterday, he offered to set up a proof-of-concept trial at zero cost to us.

I told him I'd only agree to the trial if they provided the necessary hardware for a visual telemetry dashboard.

He asked what a visual telemetry dashboard entails.

I told him we require a 77-inch OLED 4K display to properly monitor the asynchronous traffic spikes in real time.

I explained that standard monitors can't render the granular pixel density required to spot a decentralized brute-force attack.

I said it's a fundamental requirement of our threat detection posture.

He desperately needed to meet his quarterly quota.

He approved the hardware expense and overnighted a $4,000 television to our loading dock.

I immediately mounted it to the wall in my office.

I didn't plug it into our network.

I plugged my PlayStation 5 into it.

I told my team the flashing lights and explosive sounds are just data packets colliding in the firewall.

Whenever I'm playing Call of Duty, they think I'm actively defending the company from Russian hackers.

The vendor called me this morning to ask how the firewall trial was performing.

I told him the perimeter is holding, but the latency is unacceptable.

I told him we need to extend the trial for another 6 months before making a purchasing decision.

He thanked me for my rigorous evaluation process.

My KD ratio is finally positive.

Corporate procurement is just a game of seeing how much consumer electronics you can expense as enterprise architecture.

Next week I'm going to ask a cloud storage vendor for a surround sound system to monitor our audio data compliance.

[Ramin Nasibov @RaminNasibov]

CS 😢

[marqix ☆ @fwmarqix]

My wife has a strict rule: I am not allowed to be left unsupervised in public for more than twenty minutes. This weekend reminded me why.

I’m standing in a long line at a garden center with a massive 50lb bag of specialized bird seed.

This woman behind me taps me on the shoulder and asks, "Oh, do you have a lot of birds?"

Standard small talk, But I’d been in line for fifteen minutes and I was bored.

I looked at her, completely deadpan, and said: “Actually, no, This is for me, It’s a new holistic cleanse I’m trying, High protein, great for the hair.”

The guy behind her immediately stopped scrolling on his phone.

The woman’s eyes went wide. “You… you eat that? Is that even safe?”

I leaned in like I was sharing a government secret. “The results are incredible. I lost 30 pounds last summer. The only problem is the side effects. Last time I did it, I ended up in the emergency room for two weeks. Tubes, monitors, the whole deal.”

She gasped. “From the seeds? Did you get a parasite?”

“No,” I said. “I was perched on a telephone pole trying to sleep and a hawk knocked me off. Fell forty feet.”

The guy behind her made a sound like a tire blowing out. The woman just stood there, paralyzed, trying to process the mental image.

Right then, my wife comes back from the bathroom, sees the look on the woman's face, grabs my arm, and starts dragging me toward the exit.

“He’s kidding,” she tells the woman. Then she turns to me: “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

I don't care. The look on that lady's face was worth more than the bird seed. 😂

[Stringent @stringents]

@MKBHD When prices go up, they seldom come down.

[Signal @signalapp]

Our statement on the UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the country be scanned, on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning. This proposal will not safeguard children. It endangers us all.

https://t.co/VdWe9uhi8p

[Mûriëlo @LordMurielo]

No es que lo quiera, LO NECESITO

[Hugh Laurie @hughlaurie]

Well heck. The Arsenal. What an amazing achievement. BPM 150, dropping slowly.

[Community Notes & Violations @CNviolations]

There are over 12 hours of film footage explaining why you should put it back

[Classic Ads @ClassicAdvertz]

Toys R Us “#Sega Mega Drive” 1992

[癒しの動物 @animalkyat]

我が家のマクドナルド

[Stringent @stringents]

@SydneyJones_ @FladenAuf @Apple Not to stock Android. The way thats moving it will be there as well soon.

[Fesshole🧻 @fesshole]

A few years ago when my son was young I convinced him that it wasn't worth buying Easter eggs when they first appear in shops "because they are not ripe yet".

[nixCraft 🐧 @nixcraft]

Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device.

> No consent dialog. No opt-out UI. Re-installs itself if the user removes it manually.

That is the true definition of malware.

[Electroverse @Electroversenet]

The UK Met Office has again been caught publishing temperatures from weather stations that don't exist.

An FOI revealed Lowestoft closed in 2010, yet the Met Office kept issuing official temperatures for it.

The office said they were using well-correlated neighboring stations, but the FOI revealed that this was a lie. The numbers were actually coming from a model that was inventing data from 'phantom' neighboring stations.

When exposed, the office quietly deleted years of readings for Lowestoft, as well as a number of other stations, and added a disclaimer saying their data is "for general interest only."

FOIs also show over one third of Met Office stations never existed, and that real high-quality sites like Colwood are ignored.

Also, more than 80% of the network is low-grade class 4 or 5, by WMO standards, giving 2-5C uncertainty.

This is the foundation of the UK's climate record – closed stations, imaginary stations and synthetic temperatures.

The Met Office isn't credible.

[AI Highlight @AIHighlight]

🚨 Clearing your cookies does nothing.

That is not how they track you anymore.

Texas A&M and Johns Hopkins just published the first peer-reviewed proof.

It is called browser fingerprinting.
Here is what they found and what actually stops it: