Be Excellent To Each Other

MacBook Air showing battery degraded and service required. Also some intermittently flaky keys and not wanting to power on sometimes.

Found a chap who specialises in Macs and MacBooks only 5 mins drive from me.

Called him Thursday, took it in that afternoon. Battery replaced, KB cleaned, all seems to be OK now. £99.

Seems ok that, shame it needed to be done though. How old is your MacBook Air?

It's a 2017 model, but I got it in early 2018.

Decent then! Hope it keeps running well now.

My car, which I chose because it's a bit more powerful then others in the range, uses a lot of petrol when I drive it faster than necessary. Which seems to be often. And it likes the expensive stuff.

This seems in every way a consequence of my choices and also a first-world problem.

If only someone had pointed out the economy lies to you beforehand!

Oddly mine seems to be getting more economical with mods. By which I mean I've seen 33mpg on my commute a couple of times.

Yeah, although I probably still would have done it anyway, and then still groaned about it later.

"16 billion passwords exposed in record-breaking data breach, opening access to Facebook, Google, Apple, and any other service imaginable". The source being quoted for this is Cybernews.com, a site I'd never heard of until today.

Mrs. W said this popped up on her notifications this morning and when I ran a search I found that it's being reported on news websites all over the place, as well as lots of YouTube channels, with the notable exceptions, as yet, of the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and The Register, among others. So either the they don't know about it, haven't got around to reporting it, or is there a possibility that it's misinformation and lots of outlets have jumped on the bandwagon without checking its veracity.

Scary to start with, but a few paras down we get, 'With a dataset containing 16 billion passwords, that’s equivalent to two leaked accounts for every person on the planet.

We don’t really know how many duplicate records there are, as the leak comes from multiple datasets. However, some reporting by other media outlets can be quite misleading. Some claim that Facebook, Google, and Apple credentials were leaked. While we can’t completely dismiss such claims, we feel this is somewhat inaccurate.

So maybe it's not as scary as some of the headlines would like us to think.

We all know it's good practice to change our passwords regularly, and to use 2FA and/or passkeys but it's going to be pain in the arse to update all my accounts, 'just to be on the safe side.'

It's pretty much bollocks. It's not a new breach, someone has just collated and released a bunch of smaller, old releases. Usual common sense applies: use long random passwords and store them in a password manager, change your password(s) if you suspect an account has been compromised, and please for the love of all that is good in the world turn on 2FA.

You didn't mention "write passwords on a post it and stick it to your monitor"

Still more secure than using the same password for everything. 99.999999% of all security breaches happen remotely.

Unless the password you've written down is "password" in which case yeet yourself into the sea.

I'm in a privileged position at work where I can get someone's password just by asking for it. It scares me how easily some people give up there details.

If I ever do need someone's password (say to log into a laptop that's been left with me for repair or upgrade) I will always offer to change their password to something temporary so they don't have to give up their "main" password. But no-one, and I mean no-one, has ever taken my up on that.

Also, I would say 95% of people use their kids names plus a number. Maybe throw in an @ or a ! for flavour

I only recently changed my password on here from the one Craster set for me some 14 years ago

When I'm driving in my car and I ask Siri to play one of my favourite tracks (The Secret He Had Missed by the Manics, with Julia Cumming); Siri cheerfully respond with "Sure, here's blahblahblah featuring Julia *BEEEEEEEP*"

It doesn't matter all that much, and the name is displayed on the screen just fine, but it still irritates me.

Also, my delightful children found an album full of fart noises on iTunes and have listened to it so much, and also starred some of them, that when I'm happily driving away and grooving along or bopping along to my favourite tunes somewhere I am occasionally surprised by the interruption of a very loud and very rude blow-off sound.

It was quite funny the first time, and many subsequent times (and I'm laughing typing this) but now it's at the point where it's irritating me enough to want to do something about it but not enough to actually go and deal with it.

When I went on my induction course with the fabulous Fujitsu in 2013 one of my fellow inductees had downloaded a farty app and couldn't resist letting fly at random times. Indeed, it was quite funny until after about the 5th eruption.

I’ve been given hundreds of dance 12”s but they all need a proper good clean and new inners. Mountain of work and bit of expense getting them playable / sellable…

Christ, that's a haul

Yep. I thought of you and Craster as I flicked through…

Look at the state of the one on the left

The huge oregano plants that live in the gaps between the pavers on our patio are really starting to get in the way.

Currently eBaying a few things. What a CHORE.

Sold a guitar that I did manage to actually post yesterday. Hoping it arrives in one piece but eBay made it such a faff. It let the buyer pick the delivery company which was fine except that Yodel wouldn't take the package as it was too big. Ended with me posting it at the Post Office. Try balancing a guitar in a box, inside another box on those little scales they have.

Also, sold a watch. Was a 10 day auction as I wanted it to end on a Sunday evening. Anyway, the guy didn't pay right away and then cancelled the next day. Total waste of 10 days and his reason was 'found it cheaper' - you were the one who pushed the bids that high. Twat!

Also, sold a handheld gaming thing. Got my brother in law to bid it up a little bit. And he ended up being the winner. Didn't go high at all. Practically giving it away. Guess there's not much of a market for these things. Cancelled and relisted as I'd messed up and it ended at 2pm on a Saturday which is a terrible time for it.

Can't you offer the watch to the next highest bidder?

I probably should have done but I just ended up relisting it but this time for five days.

O2/Virgin Media are causing Mrs. W and I a couple of probs at the moment.

Firstly, Mrs W has an O2 phone number on a Pay Monthly account, but has never set up her account on the MyO2 app on her phone. This hasn't been a problem until recently, when she ran out of data and couldn't remember what her data allowance is anyway. I tried to create a login for her on the app on her phone, but because Virgin Media and O2 are in the long process of merging, after logging in, the app insisted that her O2 and Virgin Media accounts should be linked. This is a bit tricky as she doesn't have a Virgin Media account, only O2. But it let me proceed to the page to link them anyway and asked for the phone number related to her O2 account. I entered the number, then it sent a prompt to her phone to authenticate that it WAS her O2 number, but it then said that it had a different email address registered in relation to her phone number. I can't proceed any further without changing to the correct email address and there's no way to do this without SPEAKING to customer services, i.e. trying to explain all this to a chatbot got it totally confused and advised us to call Customer Services.

As an aside, she thinks O2 set up a temporary email address for her when she bought the phone a few years ago, to enable her to get a 20% discount on the price, but she'd never used it, didn't know the password, so it's probably dead by now anyway, but it may be THAT address that O2 thinks is associated with her phone number.

So I called customer services FROM HER PHONE, and they asked if they could speak to Mrs W. As things stood, Mrs.W would have had a hard time trying to explain the problem, as it's me who's been trying to get it fixed, so I said that I was Mrs. <Firstname> 'Warhead' and was able to answer the security question, so even though I could tell that the agent had her doubts about the masculine voice on the phone, she went ahead and dealt with the problem. So it'll take 3 to 5 working days for the correct email address to be associated with the real Mrs. W's Virgin Media/O2 account ..... or so we hope.

So, having theoretically sorted this out, I logged into MY O2 account on my laptop, and was immediately hijacked with the same requirement, i.e. to link my O2 account to my Virgin Media account. And the problem with THIS is that my O2 account is registered with my gmail address and Virgin Media with my Yahoo Mail address. ‘No problem,’ says their website, ‘we can change the email address associated with O2 to your Yahoo address,’ which it promptly failed to do after three attempts. It just continually says it couldn’t complete the task and to try again. After three goes at it, I gave up. I CAN log into the MyO2 app on my phone and I guess I’ll have to ring customer services again to sort out the Web based access to the linked accounts.

Mrs W refers to these kinds of things as 'a ball ache,' although how she knows what that's like, I have no idea.

She's telling you if you don't get it sorted soon you'll have one.

I have to admit that it's all my fault for not insisting she set up her on line account when she first got the phone.

This whole 'St George flag on a roundabout' thing can for sure get in the bin.

Oh gosh, it’s so embarrassing too. Every time I see photos in the news of scraggly red crosses painted on zebra crossings, another little bit of me dies inside.

It’s absolutely pathetic, I’ve lost what little national pride I ever had.

All these councils saying that the flags can stay on lampposts… is that just the England flags that can have a permanent setting, or does it apply to all flags? I’m just thinking it would be a lot more colourful if we could also hang Pride flags everywhere. Maybe some Ukrainian flags. EU flags. Palestinian flags.

The flag thing will blow over eventually, when the 'silent majority' find something else to be outraged about.

Personally, I couldn't give a shit about it. It doesn't really say any one thing. Some groups are just saying it's nice to be proud of the flag, others are accusing them of having racist overtones, both of which will be true to some people. Some councils are taking them down, some aren't. If all that's happening is that flags are being put up, I'm not worried. If some group(s) starts some kind of civil disobedience trying to further some cause like Stop The Boats, Close the Hotels, Send Them Back, Demand a General Election Now, etc. I'll be more concerned. But mostly I think they're just shouting at the clouds.

I'm sort of seeing bth sides of that, I think you've put it well.

Roundabouts are in general quite ugly (there are some exceptions, like ones with nice flowers or decorative elements like fountains). I wouldn't be against jazzing them up a bit but I do feel like some of the flag stuff is a bit dog-whistley.

Some of the painting is just shittily done, a bit embarrassing really.

The main problem with painting the flag on roundabouts is that they're the wrong way up 99.7% of the time.

The England flag can be the wrong way up?

I think the visuals of the whole thing are quite threatening. Men running around with painted flags on balaclavas doesn’t give me feelings of safety, and I’m sure that would be even more true for immigrant families at a time when the far right is loud and proud and those same symbols are a cornerstone of nationalist movements.

Oh for sure they're hoping - in the so-far budget reproduction of Trump-shit style - to stoke a bit of distrust. What they really want is for people to start taking down flags so they can argue about it.

When they said, "Two men wearing St George's masks," what they should have said was, "Two men in white balaclavas with red crosses badly sprayed on them, one of whom can be easily identified by the big tattoos on his arms and legs, were seen running past someone resembling Charles Dance."

I see what you tried to do there.

In the case of the Union Flag, it depends on which direction you're approaching the roundabout.

And as they're mini-roundabouts, the paint will probably start to wear off pretty quickly as a lot of drivers drive at least partly over them rather than around them.

I'm sure you're right and it also depends, to some degree, on whether it's just two blokes trotting around doing it, or if they're being egged on by a gang of like-minded wazzocks.

It’s having a real world impact on plenty of non-white folk already. This is a comment from a FB group that supports asylum seekers.



And there’s a huge overlap between the folk posting about “flagging” and those ranting about foreigners and organising demonstrations outside asylum seeker hotels.

Someone else in my town had their house and cars vandalised because they took a flag off a lamppost.

Exactly this. Protect us from those people. It's like when those girls were stabbed in Southport and a load of EDL (or whatever they are called now) showed up and smashed up the town. Protect us from them.

Do you remember when that soldier was murdered? Lee Rigby. During the trial my old neighbour was outside the court with his EDL mates and they built a gallows. That guy was a criminal from when he was a teenager. A worthless piece of shit.

Reform

AKA our next government.

I honestly can't see any other result currently. I've lived on Merseyside for more than 20 years and it's always been solid Labour territory, but recently it seems the combination of Right Wing bullshit propaganda and the blandness* of Starmer (which I personally was thankful for, who the hell wants an exciting PM??) is having a noticeable effect. I hear grumblings about "immigrants" all the time. Use of phrases like "those people" and "my country" turn my stomach.

*and his fucking massive own goal about winter fuel payments. Idiot

Same here, it's grim as fuck isn't it.

I'm not sure people realise how much they're influenced by the narrow stream of media they allow themselves to see. I've watched my MiL turn nasty over the last few years because she get's her news from the Telegraph exclusively.