TheDroolingFool

I don’t disagree this has been a big help for us but be careful it’s not a magic bullet - we have a number of devices left over we need to take care of manually due to firmware updates being on hold or paused.

I was with Sky years ago, then BT for ages, and now back with Sky after their Black Friday bundle for TV, broadband and phone which was far cheaper than BT. The Stream box takes a bit of getting used to but it’s been fine. Had a look at Glass but didn’t think it was worth it since we’ve already got a decent TV, so just went with the little box. Not needing a dish anymore is probably the best bit. WiFi’s a bit hit and miss in some rooms. Apparently the idea of “I want to buy a thing, I pay for it, you send it to me” hasn’t landed at Sky. Instead if you want a booster it’s some weird subscription add on and a load of hoops, so for now certain rooms just have rubbish signal which is shit but there you go.

>exploding head syndrome. >It's not a big deal medically Those two things don’t sound compatible until you look it up properly!

Hardly surprising I have a licence to evaluate it and I just keep going back to Claude and ChatGPT (sanctioned) because copilot feels like it’s been lobotomised. Hell I remember one of the suggestions is something like mock my week and 9 times out of 10 I would start generating then stop half way through and say ask me something else, that was just trying to do an example prompt from Microsoft!

Private relay (the iOS one) isn’t bad… I ended up switching it off as the number of ‘are you human’ style prompts especially Google drove me absolutely insane but I suppose it might be the same for all VPN providers.

I mean I’ve known about it for years as a risk. I’m not sure this is something IT/security can police. You need a policy on AI agreed at business level, and training. Don’t firefight every single tool.

I agree with you, but you’re arguing with two people who clearly have no idea what the hell they’re talking about, and one of them has now fully disappeared up his own ass inventing strawman arguments. This isn’t 'AI slop'. That term exists for generic, empty content farm garbage with no substance. This was a detailed account of a real compromise, handled by the person who experienced it, who came here asking for help to make sure he didn’t miss anything. Who cares if he used AI to help write the post? He’d just dealt with a security incident and was likely running on adrenaline. Was he supposed to sit down for three hours polishing prose so he could meet some arbitrary purity test before asking internet strangers for free advice? What a shitty response from those two posters.

I would leave a blunt Google review spelling it out. Say she was filmed by the pub during karaoke with no warning or consent and that bullying comments were allowed while supportive ones were removed. People should know before they step up to that mic. If you have the energy, consider putting in a report to the Information Commissioner’s Office as well. Being in a pub does not mean you have agreed to be broadcast online. If they are streaming identifiable customers, they should be able to explain their lawful basis for doing it and have clear signage telling people it is happening. If there was no proper notice and she would have said no if asked, that is worth flagging, they are unlikely to be find but the ICO might write to them and ask some uncomfortable questions.

I'd wager 60% of those in the right hand lane are 'right hand lane wankers' anyway and will happily be in that lane for several miles overtaking fuck all after the closure.

We have been dead in the water here in the UK for about 3 hours now, finally starting to see signs of life and some of our services come back up.

This should be right at the top because right lane everywhere dickheads are unbearable and breeding. Not just on the motorway, on every dual carriageway as well. I wish there was a way to automatically fine these bastards.

What is wrong with Copilot in everything? Copilot helps me use Copilot to configure Copilot so Copilot can explain why Copilot needs Copilot before Copilot can unlock Copilot, unless Copilot detects I don’t have the Copilot Copilot license, in which case Copilot forwards me to Copilot, who suggests upgrading to Copilot Pro with Copilot, managed by Copilot. Honestly, Copilot.

I’m not being difficult, but the document doesn’t say it’ll be pinned by default it says it launches automatically, then makes a point of saying users or admins ‘can’ pin it. Maybe Microsoft should just sort their shit out and be clear about what actually happens. Either way, I’m glad I disabled this mess.

Here’s a more biting version focused on “can”: I’m not being difficult, but the document doesn’t say it’ll be pinned by default it says it launches automatically, then makes a point of saying users or admins ‘can’ pin it. Maybe Microsoft should just sort their shit out and be clear about what actually happens. Either way, I’m glad I disabled this mess.

That’s not how it reads in the article “For the best experience, users can choose to pin the apps to the taskbar; admins can configure to pin the apps to the taskbar via the Configure the applications pinned to the taskbar.”

I’m struggling with this. Microsoft’s favourite trick is flipping switches to ON without asking, and now I get to waste time figuring out if I even want this, how to opt out, and what kind of mess killing it might cause. **File search** \- Start menu already does M365 docs? **People** \- Teams and Outlook already do this, plus the Start menu? **Calendar** \- fine, a simple taskbar calendar has some appeal… but Teams and Outlook already cover it. So we’re loading three pointless apps at startup to duplicate features that already exist? features most users won’t even know about and would have to go digging for, because they’re not pinned by default… but still run at startup by default? Hard pass.

I feel your pain. They call me like it’s a matter of national security on every ticket I raise asking for email contact. Because having already spent time dealing with a user raising whatever the issue is with whatever Microsoft broke this week, replicating the issue myself, raising a ticket with detailed repo steps, logs etc I would naturally just love to spend even more of my time on pointless phone calls… what a fantastic customer experience.

The real kicker is that every single one of our support tickets exists because Microsoft broke something. Not user error. Not bad configuration. Just Microsoft shipping something that suddenly fails or silently stops working with no warning or documentation. All we’re doing is trying to get their attention “hey, you broke this, maybe fix it?” and somehow that’s an uphill battle, but its certainly not something I am going to pay for the privilege of doing. To elaborate from my previous post on how unbelievably shit this experience is it tends to go like this... A user comes to us and says "X has stopped working." My team then spends time investigating, confirming everything is configured correctly, checking documentation, ensuring we haven’t missed something. We exhaust every possibility before raising a ticket. That ticket usually includes exact reproduction steps, logs, screenshots, sometimes even videos. The kind of detail that should let someone go straight to triage. Every single time, we ask for email. Every single time, it's ignored. We ask for email because it's faster, clearer, and doesn't waste everyone's time. It gives us a written record. We can pass it around, reply when we’re not buried in other work, and actually think before responding. You know, efficiency. Every time we are immediately hit with “When’s a good time for a call?” Or worse, some engineer just rings out of nowhere. No warning. No context. No explanation for why a call is even necessary. No agenda. Not even the slightest acknowledgment that they’ve ignored the simple instruction for contact preference. Miss the call? They’ll gleefully fire off an email pointing out you “weren’t available” but don’t worry, they’re more than happy to try again at your convenience. You know what would’ve been convenient? Not calling me in the first place. Decline the call? Suddenly it’s like you've insulted their entire lineage and the ticket goes cold, you’re effectively put in timeout. Once you get past the performative phone call you didn’t want, you enter the next phase. An agent who’s clearly out of their depth, fumbling through unrelated suggestions and generic links while valuable time slips away. This will usually chew up another week or two, during which you’ll be lucky to get anything more useful than “have you tried turning it off and on again” If you finally convince them to escalate to the product group, things might begin to move. But by then, the user is still stuck. The business function is down. And our team has wasted potentially weeks chasing responses from someone who has no authority to progress anything. Then comes the truly maddening part. The product group responds, but won’t speak to us directly. Instead, everything is filtered through the same engineer who doesn’t understand the issue and is asking for yet another pointless call. Push back, and they’ll grudgingly share the reply, usually stripped of any context or anything remotely useful but they’ll always close with “I hope this was helpful. May I archive the ticket now?” Helpful? No. But sure, go ahead and archive the disaster. That’s what this whole thing is about now appearances over competence.

Support has been nothing short of abysmal ever since Microsoft decided to offshore operations a few years back and allowed the likes of Mindtree to take charge. I’ve been treated to what are clearly responses cobbled together from ChatGPT. Gems such as: “If that does not fix your issue, you should contact the support team.” That's precisely what I did and what you are here for? What’s exasperating is that there’s absolutely no reason for the support experience to be this inept. This isn’t even a question of cost, it’s sheer laziness. Microsoft ought to take a far more rigorous stance with vendors like Mindtree and demand something resembling basic competence. At the very least, respect the customer’s stated contact preference. If I raise a ticket and explicitly request email communication, why on earth is the very first response a phone call request or worse, an unannounced phone call out of the blue? Read. The. Ticket. Do you genuinely believe I spent 20 minutes painstakingly documenting reproduction steps, including screenshots, stack traces, and logs, for the sheer joy of it? So that someone can then ignore it entirely and ask me, via a surprise phone call, no less, to explain the issue all over again? Let’s also dispense with this default posture of blaming the customer. Microsoft product teams fuck shit up all the time. Change management is clearly a formality, and quality control an aspiration. Yet when I raise an issue, I'm subjected to six weeks of stonewalling while some agent, following a painfully rigid script, tries to pin the fault on me instead of escalating appropriately. To be clear, the individual agents aren't at fault, they are operating within the laughably broken system they’ve been given. This is squarely on Microsoft and its chosen outsourcers. Whoever at Microsoft is responsible for vendor oversight of support operations is either asleep at the wheel or irredeemably incompetent.

Have you tried setting your contact preference to email? I do it on every single ticket like it's a legal requirement. Naturally, this means I get surprise calls at random hours and then emails politely asking when they can ignore my preference more conveniently.

Did you ever manage to resolve this? I’m seeing the same error. I work across two tenants, my primary tenant is where the issue appears. When I click the “Fix” button, the authentication window tries to sign me into the secondary tenant using my primary credentials, which naturally fails with an “account does not exist in xyz” type error. Interestingly, if I go to the account page and click “Update licence”, it prompts me to log in. I enter my primary account credentials, and it accepts them. That clears the error temporarily, but as soon as I close and reopen the app, the error returns and hitting “Fix” again triggers the same cross-tenant authentication error.

Depending on where you are, you’re misunderstanding the difference between owning the system and processing personal data under say GDPR. GDPR protects the personal data inside the mailbox. Ownership doesn’t cancel employee privacy rights. A manager doesn’t automatically have the right to read a direct report’s emails whenever they want. Access must be necessary, proportionate, justified, and transparent. GDPR Article 5(1)(a) requires fair and transparent processing. GDPR Article 6(1)(f) says legitimate business interests must be balanced against the employee’s fundamental rights, even on work systems. Silent access without informing the employee or proving necessity and proportionality is unlawful processing. It’s not about “can you technically open the mailbox” it’s about whether you lawfully respected the employee’s rights while doing it. Plenty of companies have been fined for getting this wrong. Throwing a monitoring disclaimer in a login banner doesn’t automatically legalise silent access either. A forced click at login that you can’t refuse without losing your job is not valid consent under GDPR. And even if you rely on legitimate interests instead of consent, you still need to show that each access was necessary for doing your job, proportionate, and documented, not just vaguely covered by a general policy. Saying “the company owns the emails” doesn’t give blanket permission to access however, whenever, and for whatever reason. GDPR doesn’t stop access. It stops unlawful, unjustified, undisclosed access.

Who’s actually asking for this, and what ass covering do you have lined up? legal, HR, compliance? Anything at all? Because without it, you’re hanging yourself out to dry. Depending on where you are, sneaking inbox access could smash GDPR, HIPAA, company policies, and every basic compliance rule in the book. Every log, every audit, every compliance review will point straight at you. And when it explodes, and it will, you’ll be left explaining yourself alone while everyone else claims ignorance. If this is legit, get it done properly. eDiscovery request. HR and legal sign off. Full paper trail. No shortcuts, no shady offline copies, no “oops, didn’t know” excuses.

I used to love salt and vinegar Pringles. They actually had flavour once. Now they taste like someone whispered “vinegar” near the factory in 2008 and then set the recipe on fire. I guess they’ve saved 1p a tube in the grand tradition of enshittification.

78 is the number which I don't think is that high!

It’s not an alien theory. Forbes specifically argues it was a covert US operation using classified tech, not extraterrestrial. Still a wild claim, sure, and fair enough if it’s not your thing, just pointing out it’s an unusual but interesting rabbit hole for those who enjoy that kind of deep dive. I did preface it as a wild theory!

Officially, there hasn’t been much progress. A few confirmed debris pieces were found, and the conclusion remains that it likely crashed in the southern Indian Ocean. But no wreckage site, no black boxes, no definitive answers. One of the more controversial theories is from Ashton Forbes. It’s definitely outside the mainstream, but what makes it stand out is that it attempts to account for all the available data, not just the parts that support the standard narrative. He points to satellite footage that appears to show an aircraft, possibly MH370, mid-air with three unknown objects maneuvering around it, before a sudden bright flash and complete disappearance. The theory suggests the aircraft was taken under intelligent control and removed from conventional airspace in a way that current aviation frameworks don’t explain. It’s definitely one of the more out there theories. Even if you don’t buy into it, it’s a fascinating rabbit hole to dive into just out of curiosity.

Yup this is my experience. Open a ticket with comprehensive details, repo steps, logs and screenshots. Ask for email contact preference. Literally first update every time is "when is it convenient for a call?" Never, read the damn ticket

Some of the laptops we've had returned look less like work devices and more like they've done a tour of duty. One came back so scratched it looked like it had been used to sand a floor. So now, treating your equipment like an actual professional isn’t just a nice idea, it’s policy. We.looped in HR, updated the rules, and yes apparently we now need to explain that dragging your laptop behind a car isn't standard usage. Astonishing.

We never found a way around this, we simply did some comms to say ignore it and don't worry (we are a relatively small org). New users don't bat an eyelid.

We use "Configure extension management settings" alongside "runtime_blocked_hosts" to define the whitelist of domains. To clarify, this is not a native feature of uBlock but a browser level setting that prevents the extension from running on specified domains. It works well for our needs but do note I believe there's n upper limit of 100 domains. https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/9031935?hl=en#zippy=%2Cstep-prevent-or-allow-all-apps-from-altering-pages

We deployed ad blocking last year, and ran with uBlock Origin Lite in preparation for the Manifest V3 changes. It is enforced on Edge and Chrome through an Intune settings policy and has been set and forget. We centrally manage an allow list, and added most obvious things we could think of to preemptively get ahead of any issues but there have literally been none and users can of course switch it off temporarily or create their own allow list.

They don't have support, they have Mindtree. You are better off screaming into the void and hoping someone hears you.

Yes, you've essentially worked a shift for free, which is unlawful. If you were doing actual work rather than just observing, they owe you at least the National Minimum Wage for those 8 hours. The fact that they paid you for the other two days confirms they see you as a worker, not just someone on a trial. Tell them in writing that you expect payment for the full shift and give them a deadline. If they refuse, report them to HMRC for wage theft and start an ACAS Early Conciliation claim. If needed, take it to an Employment Tribunal. Do not let them get away with this.

How is an Apple Watch even sending emails on its own? Are these coming from Outlook, Apple Mail, or something else entirely? Have you checked Azure AD sign-in logs or Exchange message traces to confirm the sending device and method? ls Siri somehow involved, maybe misinterpreting a notification or trying to be "helpful" with a suggestion? If Microsoft had no clue, did they at least confirm whether Exchange Online processed these sends, or is something external at play?

That ad is a fever dream of bad decisions. That poor bloke is out there getting a face full of ‘boldness’ while some ad exec, high on their own genius, cackles over the sheer audacity of it. We’re one step away from ‘liberation’ being a bloke involuntarily waterboarding in the name of marketing.

Mind if I hijack this to throw in the 'gushing' advert? Because that thing reeks of a marketing team deliberately weaponising discomfort for engagement. You can practically hear them brainstorming: ‘How do we make people squirm just enough to go viral while pretending it's empowerment?’

At this point, you’ll probably need a Copilot Licensing Copilot to copilot your copilotting of copiloty copilot licences. But don’t worry, Microsoft will soon release Copilot for Copilot to help you manage your Copilot in Microsoft 365 while Microsoft 365 Copilot copilots your Copilot for Enterprise.

Only when absolutely necessary, when there is a critical bug, something is broken, or Microsoft’s documentation turns out to be fiction. Otherwise, I would rather gouge my eyes out than deal with Mindtree, oops, I mean Microsoft support. Nothing beats the joy of crafting a detailed ticket with reproduction steps and error logs, politely requesting email contact, only to be bombarded with random unsolicited phone calls from someone who barely skims the ticket and immediately demands a screen sharing session because reading is apparently too much effort. Then they will happily waste weeks playing hot potato with the issue, refusing to escalate it to an actual Microsoft engineer. When they finally cave, the engineer will confirm it is a known global problem. After months of mind numbing back and forth, an engineering fix eventually rolls out long after you have found a painful workaround or given up entirely.

My dentist let's you do this but it's not great. On the two times I've used it they've rang me almost straight away to "confirm details" which makes me wonder what the point is.

Outlook isn’t just sitting there twiddling its thumbs before deciding to nuke your emails for fun. If months of messages are vanishing, something is actively causing it. Also, “Azure and all that” doesn’t narrow things down. Are you on a personal Microsoft account, an Exchange Online setup, or some weird hybrid mess? Because that makes a difference in figuring out what’s actually happening.

Three months later Microsoft proudly rebrands it to TikTok 365 Enterprise Copilot Pro (Preview) for Teams. To avoid any confusion the old version sticks around as TikTok Copilot (Legacy for Business, formerly Classic, soon to be deprecated, but maybe not). Expect exciting future updates like TikTok Viva Loop Engage (for SharePoint), TikTok Defender for Creators (Consumer Edition, but installed on enterprise SKUs by default), and TikTok Dynamics 365 for Dance Trends (Powered by Azure AI, requires E5).

This is exactly the problem, and I’ve seen it play out countless times. You can see it coming a mile off, employee gets called out on performance or misconduct, suddenly they’re at the GP, say a few magic words, and boom, sick note. Then they just keep rolling back in every month for another one, no plan, no intervention, no actual support. At what point do these GPs assess whether this person is being helped by endless time off? It’s not healthcare, it’s just passive enabling. They’re not treating the problem, they’re just keeping someone stuck in a spiral until they’re so detached from work that the only possible outcome is getting sacked. How is that supporting anyone’s mental health? And as always, the people who suffer the most are the ones left behind, the colleagues who have to pick up the slack, who get burned out, and who then hesitate to take legitimate time off because the whole system is being rinsed.

Do you mind sharing what logs or kinds of events you are looking for in your sentinel rules? Just curious what these might look like

The new Outlook feels frustratingly sluggish to me. I made the switch just before Christmas, and that "laggy" vibe is still there – hard to explain, but it’s like everything takes an extra second or so to respond, especially worse with long email chains. On top of that, I’ve had a few weird moments when sending emails. I’d be working on a draft, hit send, and somehow, an older version of the email gets sent instead of the one I was actually editing. No idea how that happens. With classic Outlook, everything feels quicker and more responsive. To be clear, I’ve had the same issue across three different laptops, all fairly high spec. My current device is a 13th Gen i7 with 32GB of RAM, so it’s definitely not a hardware problem.

I usually appear away for huge parts of the day while still working because I can't be arsed with people bothering me. You mouse jiggler always online no matter what people are an entirely different breed or just have shite bosses.

As an occasional seller, I’ve always been pretty cautious because it seems so heavily biased towards buyers. Nothing in these changes makes me think sellers are getting any extra protections to fix that imbalance. It’s annoying that you can only leave positive feedback for buyers. There’s no proper system to warn others about bad experiences or flag dodgy behaviour, which just doesn’t feel fair. The delivery tracking system is another issue. Just because tracking says ‘delivered’ doesn’t stop people claiming they received something ridiculous like a brick instead of what they ordered. Sellers are stuck, as eBay almost always sides with the buyer, leaving you out of pocket. That said, I don’t get how any seller, business or private, can use eBay and *not* send items tracked. It’s such a gamble, and unless you’re happy to write off the value of what you’re selling, it’s not worth the risk. At least this might push people to stop using Royal Mail 2nd class for everything.

I completely agree. When I was called up, about half the people in the room were either self-employed or said their employers weren’t paying them, leaving them significantly out of pocket. I was fortunate that my employer paid me as usual, but the number of frustrated jurors who didn’t want to be there was staggering. They’re not the kind of people I’d want deciding my case if I were on trial as all they wanted was to get home.

>Honestly believe that the "customer support" / "bug report" people are just there as a great filter It’s absolutely ridiculous how bad this is, especially when it doesn’t need to be. The people, systems, and contracts are already in place, yet some senior exec at Microsoft is letting this mess drag on. It’s lazy, it’s careless, and it shows a complete lack of leadership. Bring in proper quality checks, respect what customers actually want, and start spot-checking tickets to figure out if people are happy - and if not, why?. Right now, it’s a total shambles, and the thought of well-paid people sitting in the middle of this doing nothing is beyond infuriating. Sort it out.

Funny, we have the same running joke here. Apparently, they’re required to attempt at least one call per ticket, no matter how clear you make your contact preference. I try to cut them some slack, it screams "management nonsense", but if they push too hard or start making demands, I’ve got no problem being a bit of a dick about it. One time, a guy threatened to close a ticket unless I joined a call immediately. Since the issue was urgent(ish), I figured I’d play along. Big mistake. It was clear within seconds that he had no clue why we were even on the call. “Show me the issue,” he said, blissfully ignoring the well documented ticket right in front of him. After a painfully awkward pause, it became obvious he was Googling. You could almost hear the frantic scrolling. That’s when I decided to have a little fun. Just as he started reading a solution off, I cut in with, “Ah, yes, I know the one you’re on, page 3 of the community form. Tried that already didn’t work.” The fact that I’d caught him broke his brain. Listening to the meltdown and stuttering almost made the call worth it. Almost. Well, you insisted on the call buddy not me.