Our PMs use either MS Project or Excel for the detailed project stuff, the programme level tracking is mostly Excel as is resource tracking. It only works though as we have dedicated PMs, if it were part of my role that sort of thing would never get updated.

Is the new role hybrid managerial/technical or pure managerial? I was a technical team lead a while back and enjoyed it (no hiring/firing responsibilities, more resourcing projects and being the person problems get escalated to etc.) but the company grew significantly through a merger and I had the choice of a going purely managerial or purely technical. I chose the technical option as I’m pretty sure I’d hate a purely managerial role. That was 12 years ago and I’m still in a technical role (tech architect) and can’t progress any further without switching to either an enterprise architect role (not hands-on technical at all) or a pure management role – neither of which interest me so planning to stay as is until retirement (or possibly look at contracting). If you think you might like a managerial role then go for it but it’s not something I’d do.

I fitted the front version on my Polestar a couple of weeks back (I think it’s powered by the auto-dimming rear view mirror feed in my case). I’m absolutely useless when it comes to DIY type stuff (and was pretty sure I’d end up breaking the plastic housing or something) but it was very easy and took about 10 minutes (although I did watch a couple of YouTube videos first to see if there were any gotchas etc., there weren’t). I did have to push at some of the clips a few times to properly seat them, can’t remember any other issues though.

The only other problem I had was when I went to eject the included microSD card from the unit (just to check what size it was) and apart from noticing something shooting across my peripheral vision I’ve not found it since (but had ordered a 256GB endurance one anyway, which seems to work fine even though they say up to 128GB is supported).

I have Aphantasia to, I can’t really visualise things apart from (sometimes) fleeting parts of an image (and if I try and focus on that and make it into a complete image it just goes away)

I thought as a result of a legal case they had to allow alternate means (e.g. via a web-site) for people to do this sort of payment (previously it was against their T&Cs so could block the app from the store if developers did this). As long as there’s an alternative without the Apple tax (and to be fair it’s not just Apple that takes this sort of a cut on their store), that the application developer can advertise within the app, then I don’t really mind.

Are the smart meters and supporting tech different between different suppliers?

The backend infrastructure is the same (run by the DCC), rather than each supply company having there own. In theory it should even allow you to switch supply companies multiple times in a day to take advantage of different tariffs but I don’t think that’s been implemented (and given the hassles of just changing suppliers once that some people experience I’m sure it would be carnage if they allowed it).

I have a cheap battery/wireless PIR in my garage but it’s been years since I bothered setting it, kept forgetting to initially then the battery died and didn’t bother replacing it. I’d say it’s worth spending the extra for a wired system you can access remotely (and set/unset from a phone app), just must less hassle once fitted. I’ve not bothered myself but do have bars across the garage rear window and a decent main door (Hormann) + CCTV covering it.

I cannot believe that the board at Tesla isn’t looking at ways to remove him. He’s so damaging to the brand at this point that there’s absolutely no benefit to keeping him there

It’s mostly because the board are all his approved appointees/lackeys + they probably realise although he’s damaging to the company/brand for some people he’s also a big part of the reason the Tesla stock price is so inflated. If/when the stock price corrects I don’t think Musk will survive (he’ll have extracted his $50B bonus by then though)

His new lawsuit against companies that withdrew advertising on X seems to be yet another “man-child throwing his toys out of his pram moment”. I hope that it not only gets laughed out of court but that other companies currently advertising there re-assess what they’re doing.

His main gift is that he’s managed to create a cult of personality around himself, no other CEO would have survived the amount of over-promising and under-delivering that he’s done with Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company etc. Sure he was smart with Tesla early on and going all-in on EVs (and seeing the Supercharger network as key to that success, although that might have been someone he employed’s idea). But since then he seems to have failed far more often than he’s succeeded, he’s just been able to get away with it for now.

the pessimist in me wonders if say more benign incidents that get captured by cameras might get handed to insurers who will then take a more unreasonable stance and try to elevate the scene into something more than the simple human error bump or parking mishap

Insurers just care about liability, they don’t make judgements over whether people were driving with “due care and attention” etc., that’s the police’s job (but they’d only get involved in more serious accidents/incidents and I’d definitely want dashcam footage if someone tried to run me off the road etc.)

AVA have confirmed they’re sending me a replacement hose and just said I should have had an email confirmation when I registered for the warranty so I might want to try the process again (but didn’t use that as an excuse to delay sending out the replacement), happy days :)

I don’t have dash-cams, burglar alarms, CCTV, Ring doorbells, a camera to watch the dog while we’re out, etc., etc. – I just don’t want to live my life that way.

Not sure I understand what you mean by this. They’re just things you purchase, install and forget about until you need them (or if you’re lucky you never do), it doesn’t change the way you live your life. Sure, it’s a bit annoying to have to spend money on stuff like that but you could say the same for any form of insurance to, hopefully you’ll never need it but if you do you’ll be glad it’s there.

We need a social media regulatory body with teeth to start imposing substantial fines on social media companies that don’t moderate extremist content. Sure it would open up the free speech slippery slope debate and claims of the government trying to silence criticism etc. but it’s pretty obvious to many of us that letting social media companies moderate themselves isn’t working.

Whether it’s a case of they just don’t take it seriously enough (and invest sufficient resources) e.g. Facebook or if they’re run by an absolute bell-end that’s not fit to run a lemonade stand let alone global companies like X. £1m per day fines would be a good starting point and use some of the proceeds to help deal with some of the issues they cause.

I finally fitted a dashcam at the weekend, been cut up a few times recently on roundabouts by people that don’t seem to understand what lane markings are and I’m pretty sure they’d claim I just drove into the side of them (rather than them cut across into my lane). Only took 10 minutes (Fitcamx so no visible wires if you just have the front camera). I’m glad I’d ordered a decent SD card for it though as the one it came with flew across the room when I went to eject it and I still haven’t found it (I was planning to use it for a while and swap it out if it started playing up).

If you couldn’t see a way of unscrewing it to get the old one off, how were you planning on getting a new one on?

I think my logic was the hose was making it awkward to try and manipulate the connector in anyway to figure out how it worked so I fixed that problem only to realise I still couldn’t figure out how it worked and that I’d just made things worse (this is how most of my DIY jobs go…), it didn’t help my car was half covered in snow foam at the time so I wanted to fix it asap.

AVA have replied saying it sounds like a replacement hose is due under warranty but have asked for the order details etc. first (I thought I remembered registering the warranty for it but now can’t find any sort of email confirmation, hopefully they have a record of it their end).

Yeah, waiting on a response from AVA, hoping they’ll sort it but wondering if they’ll push back as now all I can show them is the connector separate from the mangled end of the hose, wish I’d taken a picture before I started messing with it!

Microsoft Office Standard 2021 Home & Student is £120, if you’re buying it significantly cheaper than that then it won’t be a fully legit copy (it will be a resold OEM or Enterprise Agreement key, which isn’t permitted under MS’s EULA). There is a slim chance that key gets deactivated by MS rendering your install useless (they tend to do this in big batches as they become aware of mass misuse of certain keys) but in reality it’s very unlikely you’d end up affected.

So it’s more down to your appetite for purchasing dodgy goods and use of ‘justification’ arguments about tech billionaires and trillion-dollar evil companies etc.

MS do offer various deals (e.g. schemes for home use licences if your company is an Enterprise Agreement) that might be worth looking into

I say ban all organised religion first and then we can deal with face coverings later

I’d ask Co-pilot or ChatGPT if they could do it for me

I like YouTube mixes but it annoys me there’s seemingly no way to shuffle songs within them if you’re watching via a smart TV app

I’m hoping it will be Badenoch as she seems divisive and abrasive enough she might just cause the Tory party to split and that will be entertaining to watch.

Home charging is great, until like this morning when a fox had pissed on/scent marked my cable and I didn’t notice until I got in the car and wondered where the smell was coming from (it was my hands which I’d already held the steering wheel with). They like to crap there to, not on the cable itself but where I walk between car and garage door when using the charger, not great in winter when it’s still pitch black and I can’t see where I’m treading

I can’t see how any sort of protection would help for the way most collarbones are broken when cycling, it’s not through direct impact it’s via force transmitted through it from a different body part that is impacting. If it’s just something covering it whilst its still healing (just in case there is a direct impact, or someone wants to poke it…) then most shoulder protection body armour would do that

I wish I knew when I’d die so I could plan around that :( I’m 51 and starting to think more about retirement but although, thanks to a recent inheritance, I’m doing OK financially I still don’t know whether I should be planning based on living to 60, 70 or 80+ As my mortgage is paid off I just switched to paying the same into my pension but I’m going to be mad if I die at 55 with decent savings but never having taken the time to enjoy retirement life (I have no dependents to worry about either)… Currently aiming to retire late 50’s but to do that I’d have to do a couple of years of IT contracting first but haven’t yet convinced myself that’s a good idea.

I’ve also heard that a lot of companies configure staged deployments of Crowdstrike updates to their end points (not involved with managing it myself though) but the way they pushed this update (I guess the Rapid Response option) ignores all that and pushes out to all the end points at once – which is probably why it took down services in companies like Microsoft where you’d expect them to have staged roll-outs configured. If I were MS I’d certainly be suing Crowdstrike

The only way to be sure of what’s happened is an X-Ray, it won’t make any difference though as the treatment is still the same as ribs will heal themselves in 3-6 weeks

Yeah I never bother, unless you’re pretty sure you’ve broken ribs and it could risk damaging a lung then going for an x-ray is just a waste of resources really.

Terrible why? Somewhere on here there’s a professional butcher who uses, and recommends, drag through ones.

Most pull-through sharpeners remove way more metal from the blade than you would with a whetstone, they often also leave a slightly saw-tooth profile on the edge. This means they feel very sharp on the first couple of uses as the micro teeth help with cutting but they quickly wear off leaving a duller blade.

So for a butcher that sees knives as disposable tools and doesn’t mind sharpening regularly (probably multiple times a day) a pull-through makes sense but for home use on quality (and therefore usually expensive) knives you want to last a long time then it’s generally not a good idea.

I think it’s a bit late in the day for Biden to step down and Harris go into the election as the serving president, unless some sort of major global event happens where she can show strong leadership but I don’t think any of us really want such an event…

AOC isn’t really the correct choice this time around, they already have the left leaning Democrats in the bag but the only chance they have of beating Trump is the middle and she’s likely too divisive to win enough of them around. Of course it defies any logic that someone advocating for social programs and providing support to people that need it (rather than tax breaks for millionaires and corporations) is considered a radical lefty who will somehow hurt the average American but that’s where US politics is these days.

Assuming free and fair elections survive another Trump presidency I hope she runs next time and that the Democrats at least control one of the Congressional bodies during Trump’s term.

I’m sure they can and will add some better error checking into the driver code. It’s not that driver that’s being updated frequently, it’s the channel files the driver calls which contain the updated content for the detection code that runs in the kernel layer. It appears there isn’t much validation done of those channel files by the driver as it just assumes they are correctly formatted etc. as they come from Crowdstrike. That will need to change (although it’s unlikely to be able to detect every anomaly) and a rollback process might be an option (as in if an anomaly in the latest channel file is detected it reverts to using the previous update, rather than disable itself).

I still don’t understand how it was missed by Crowdstrike in their testing, it made more sense when it was speculated the updated channel file 291 had null bytes in it (which might have been caused by corruption whilst copying it to their public staging locations post validation – although even that process should have file hash checks) but Crowdstrike has said that wasn’t the case and imply it was just the new detection logic in the channel file that triggered a logic issue in the driver when it processed it (and if a kernel mode driver crashes it will intentionally crash the OS).

IMO it is likely that all endpoint protection providers have similar processes

I wonder if Microsoft will make anything of it (as in “I told you so” as they’re forced to open up this sort of low level access to vendors for competition’s sake), maybe in Windows 12 MS Defender will be the only endpoint protection client that can work at this level…

Fix for a BitLocker enabled system if you don’t have the recovery key BUT you do need to have local admin rights (might be a bit confusing without the accompanying screenshots), I haven’t validated this myself but it’s been sent out as a fix by our internal IT:

Start Computer

Press ESC (this is on the BitLocker passcode entry screen and takes you into BitLocker Recovery mode)

Press ESC again

Skip drive

Choose Troubleshoot

Choose Advanced options

Choose Command Prompt

Write command “bcdedit /set {default} safeboot minimal” and press enter. Afterwards write command “exit” and restart pc.

During boot enter Bitlocker and windows will run in to safe mode – there you will need enter Local Admin login.

Open browser and location C:\Windows\System32\drivers\CrowdStrike\

Delete all files with starting “C-00000291*

Once its deleted, open C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe

Write command “bcdedit /deletevalue {default} safeboot

Restart computer and normally login – computer should work

In case it doesn’t work make sure in step 10 you removed proper file “291” have to be in first part not second or third.

There will definitely be a reckoning for how a trusted company like Crowdstrike has pushed out a dodgy patch like this, it just shouldn’t be possible with correct procedures in place unless they’ve been compromised and what’s gone out was never an authorised patch.

The resulting event is by far the biggest IT meltdown I can recall and as someone else has said the fix isn’t easy if you have BitLocker running (which most IT literate companies will have on their EUDs) and don’t have access to the recovery key (even worse if the issue has taken out your AD so you can’t extract them centrally)

I’m just glad I work on an air-gapped secure network :p I think some colleagues are going to have busy weekends though :(

I have one of these (corded electric) https://www.direct-powertools.co.uk/ryobi-rbc1226-intelli-tool-electric-26cm-brush-cutter-c2x20843911 and it works really well dealing with brambles etc. My garden is pretty small so I wanted corded but obviously for some use cases that’s a limitation.

I also bought steel toed safety wellies, face shield and harness for it (possibly all from Oregon but not sure), I’d highly recommend them (especially the face shield as more protective than just goggles/glasses).

If you’re anywhere near Bristol happy to loan it to you

I’d consider a wet UFH in a modern well-insulated house, my own experience of electric UFH in my bathroom (that isn’t very well insulated and it’s above a garage) is that after running for 4+ hours it takes the chill off the floor tiles but very gets them warm let along the room itself warm, even running it 24×7 during winter didn’t help (I expect I was heating the garage more…). Haven’t used it in a few years as it was £80+ a month not even running it 24×7. I did also have it installed in a wall (separate circuit) instead of a towel radiator and it works great there…

why would I go to a shop when the dealer will come to my door, will have drugs of known quality that will always be cheaper?

Eh? That’s pretty much the opposite of reality. Do you think dealers are looking out for you and want to ensure you get the highest quality drugs? lol, they’re cut to a crazy extent (you’re lucky if the coke you might buy is 10% actual coke these days). Sure if you live in that world and know the dealers well you might get better stuff but that’s not most people.

Who really wants a drug dealer driving to their house selling them something illegal vs being able to go to a shop and buy the legal quality-controlled version (maybe it ends up being available on Deliveroo anyway…).

And why cheaper? A lot of the cost of illegal drugs comes from a mix of the high overheads that come with smuggling and the nature of the market where supply is artificially controlled and protected. Remove that and the only real cost to worry about is how much tax the government would be applying to the product.

As for the wider argument…

I’ve never really been into cannabis myself but agree with controlled legalisation, that said I think it’s best limited to edibles as it removes the smoking aspect which is not only damaging to your health but also horrible for your neighbours to deal with.

Heroin is the problematic one, whilst I agree criminalising it’s use mostly just harms society’s most vulnerable people you have to have something in place to stop people trying it and getting addicted in the first place (afaik it’s the only recreational drug that’s pretty much instantly addictive, not something you can just try once or twice to see what it’s like)

Coke, yeah it’s hard to argue for legalising it in any way but I’m sure, with research they could come up with less harmful synthetic versions that might have a place…

Crack is basically a poor man’s coke but even more harmful (shorter but more intense high meaning it often ends up being much more abused than coke). It’s not helped by often being bought alongside heroin, by the same vulnerable people but unlike heroin can’t really be prescribed as a way to reducing it’s harmful impact.

MDMA, if it were available legally you’d take away one of the main problems with it (in that it’s often cut, sometimes with harmful stuff but also people just don’t know how much to take as they don’t know it’s purity).

Micro-dosing on psychedelics I think needs a lot more research and has the potential to help a lot of people (if the limited positive research that’s been done turns out to be true and there not being long-term harmful side effects etc.)

Unless you know the person very well it’s not worth the risk IMO, they could end up making a claim against you (e.g. that you reversed into him) and then when your insurance company get involved you’ll have to explain why you didn’t inform them about it in the first place. Plus you’ll end up having to lie on future renewal forms in the bit about being involved in any accidents in the last X number of years, only a very small chance they’d ever find out but why take the risk of them denying a future claim or cancelling your insurance as a result if they did?

Hanging bogs are fine as long as you build them in properly, and pick a cistern with a proper metal frame to support them and bolt the pan into

Mine has all that (Grohe one) the problem I think was the metal frame is designed to be fixed at the top not just bolted in at the bottom (to stop it rotating forward when someone sits on the toilet) but without a stud wall to use for that they built a wood frame around it to bolt the top fixings to but I suspect that wooden frame still isn’t 100% flex-free (I didn’t actually see it before it was tiled over) so the metal frame can still flex a couple of mm

I went with the using a local plumber (that I’d previously used for a boiler but he advertised kitchen & bathroom replacements etc. to). I didn’t use a designer or anything, just picked the tiles I wanted via visiting a couple of showrooms and also went with the plumber to the local plumbing supplies merchant (who he had a good relationship with) and I picked out the other stuff from there (bar the mirrored bathroom cabinet which I bought on Amazon).

Was helpful having the plumber there was picking out stuff as could lean on his experience on what was reliable and to make sure all the right fitments were included etc. and also ended up getting a few ex-display bits which saved about £500. The plumber later had to postpone the work a couple of weeks and his relationship with the plumbing supplies place meant they were happy to hold onto it for a bit rather than insist it was delivered.

It ended up with a decent result (although pricey at nearly £12k) and a few things I wasn’t overly happy with and should have gotten them back to fix but never bothered.

Things I’d avoid if doing it again:

Underfloor electric heating (needs to be on several hours just to take the cold out of the tiles, it doesn’t heat the room at all)

Hanging toilet + concealed cistern. Mostly as my cheap construction house just had bonded sheets of plasterboard where the toilet was to be mounted, rather than a stud wall, so they had to construct a frame for it but it flexes a bit and has cracked one of tiles (plus I wonder each time I sit on it if it’s going to come crashing down…). As all the frame and cistern is now behind tiling it would be a pain to do anything about (also sometimes I can hear water dripping into the cistern that never stops but sounds really loud at night so I have to keep the bathroom door shut but then it doesn’t get passively heated in winter. Only happens intermittently though so not sure what the root cause is and can’t even see the drips via a torch trying to look in via the flush panel).

I’ve done the same trying to de-ice a fridge ice box, didn’t feel dizzy afterwards though but you definitely need to replace it.

All that day learned a valuable lesson in atmospheric pressure. Basically couldn’t get the lid back open and there was about 7 of us gripping the edge.

I don’t follow this, how is someone being in it any different to it just having food inside? Only difference presumably is they’re breathing but can’t see how that creates a vacuum.