The Technology Thread

Philip · Sat 20 Jul, 2024 15.56

I had been working from home since Tuesday thanks to Covid. Yes, was unable to do any work (and neither was anyone in the office anyway). At least it meant me and my girlfriend were able to go out properly for the first time since Monday, if only for a bit of shopping and Costa.

EDIT: I should add, I’m not at all looking forward to Monday…

cwathen · Sat 20 Jul, 2024 16.44

Blewatter wrote: Sat 20 Jul, 2024 12.35 Out of curisosity, Metropollers, did anyone get affected by the IT Outage yesterday? Personally, it was quite minimal in terms of impacting my day. The worst was the dot matrix screen at my station was not working, and my online Maccies order went a bit funny. Besides that, felt like it was a bit overblown. Correct me if I'm wrong.

A supplier's ordering platform was down for half the day which meant orders got placed an hour later than they would have been. That's it.

No problems with the actual trains running or the departure boards either, but the ticket barriers were locked open at both ends. Don't know if that was related or not.

That said, I'm sure it wasn't overblown if it affected you, and there were visible major issues - Sky News being taken off air for one.

What probably is overblown is the idea that somehow it will become inevitable that this sort of thing starts happening on the regular. It has to be a major failure of sign-off processes that an update this flawed was ever able to be pushed out and I doubt is likely to be repeated. Also will probably spearhead a review into all the single points of failure which were shown up yesterday leading to increased resilience.

bilky asko · Sat 20 Jul, 2024 18.17

My employer was heavily affected for a day and this morning until the fix could be applied. I was, thankfully, not at work yesterday.

A lot of the news coverage was regarding travel, and food retail chains were relatively unaffected, so I get why a lot of people might not have noticed the impact.

Additionally, I'm aware of some businesses affected that didn't get any press coverage at all, perhaps because their problems weren't as wide ranging.

Ex-Pat Tyke · Sat 20 Jul, 2024 23.00

Blewatter wrote: Sat 20 Jul, 2024 12.35 Out of curisosity, Metropollers, did anyone get affected by the IT Outage yesterday? Personally, it was quite minimal in terms of impacting my day. The worst was the dot matrix screen at my station was not working, and my online Maccies order went a bit funny. Besides that, felt like it was a bit overblown. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Not personally but I did see Sky News' restricted service.

Nick Harvey · Sat 20 Jul, 2024 23.58

As well as Sky News (TV), Sky News Radio, which is the IRN feed to stations, was down for a while, but, thankfully, not on the hour.

Ex-Pat Tyke · Sun 21 Jul, 2024 21.38

Nick Harvey wrote: Sat 20 Jul, 2024 23.58 As well as Sky News (TV), Sky News Radio, which is the IRN feed to stations, was down for a while, but, thankfully, not on the hour.

So was CBBC!

thegeek · Mon 22 Jul, 2024 07.29

We had a bunch of systems at work affected, but the early shift had them all sorted before most people arrived in the building.

cwathen · Fri 29 Aug, 2025 16.15

I wrote:Unless anyone actually buys Apple's original 'courage' claim when they started this trend that the small amount of internal space released by deleting the connector from the iPhone 7 somehow translates into significant other features that otherwise couldn't exist

18 months on, the A25 5G is still going. Recently had to repair it as the USB port was becoming distinctly iffy, and thought I may as well replace the battery whilst its apart.

So...do the higher end A series handsets do anything with this space gained by having no headphone jack? Umm...no. The replacement battery for my phone turned out to be exactly the same as the part as used in the A54 which didn't have one so definitely no bigger battery. When it comes to the repair, the USB port & headphone jack are mounted on a little sub-board which just needed swapping over. Watching tear downs for some of the jackless A series handsets, they have a sub board of pretty much exactly the same size which fits into pretty much the exact same place in the case but with only a USB port. So no actual space being saved within the case either to make way for something else. It just seems to have been a marketing decision to take it out.

On this year's A series handsets, they've now taken them out of both the A26 and A16 too, leaving only the base model A06 still sporting one, and I'd imagine next year it'll be gone from the lot.

Fortunately, with its new port and new battery the A25 should plough on for a fair old while yet.

Martin Phillp · Sat 30 Aug, 2025 03.31

The A25 has Android upgrades until 2028 and security updates until 2029, so a good four years yet.

cdd · Sat 30 Aug, 2025 10.37

Not directly related but I always have a dissonance when I see smartphones referred to as handsets.

The last time the word "handset" felt natural to me, the devices took full-size SIM cards ;-)

cwathen · Sat 30 Aug, 2025 10.54

cdd wrote: Sat 30 Aug, 2025 10.37 The last time the word "handset" felt natural to me, the devices took full-size SIM cards ;-)

...which ironically pretty much all phones are wide enough to accept once again!

I'm still trying to work out quite when referring to your phone as a 'mobile' disappeared from the current vernacular.