EOW–miscellaneous

For some stupid reason, I’ve not been writing much, apart from work-related stuff. So, as promised many a time before, I should set aside some time regularly to write about … whatever. A friend of mine tries to publish something every day, but I don’t think I’ll manage that. Hence an EOW (end of week) series from yours truly to be published on Friday or the weekend.

This initial one is a bunch of miscellaneous topics.

As explained before, I’ve been trying to improve my French, especially the spoken variety. I’ve now attended two local French meetups and the next one is on Thursday next week. C’est bien fait, quand même, parce que il y a des gens qui vont qui sont français. Also I’m wading my way through another French TV series – Alex Hugo – which is proving hard to do as the accents are a little weird to my Seine-Maritime trained ears. The wonderful thing about this series is no doubt the fact that it’s filmed in the French Alps, down south-east near Marseille.

Another TV series that I’ve just watched is Mr Bates vs. The Post Office, a dramatization of the Post Office scandal in England where hundreds of sub-postmasters were prosecuted for theft and fraud from the Post Office in their daily jobs. Oh. My. God. This one resonates in two ways for me. The first is personal in a sense: my dad was the sub-postmaster in the village shop in Cople, Bedfordshire, for five years from 1978 to 1983, well before this scandal erupted, but still. The second is that the cause of the scandal was a buggy new accounting software system from Fujitsu. So, yes, some crappy software developers and managers caused this issue, but hid the problems when the sub-postmasters were being prosecuted. A couple of weeks ago, the ongoing inquiry had one such engineer testifying as a witness:

From Wikipedia:
Gareth Jenkins, the former senior Fujitsu engineer who played a leading role in specifying and designing the Horizon system, testified that he “thought the system was working well” and that he was “confident, possibly wrongly so, [bugs] were quickly fixed and weren't left to fester in the system and have a large impact”. He admitted that, during prosecutions of subpostmasters, he changed crucial expert testimony at the request of the Post Office, in particular to state that “it looked as though [Seema] Misra had stolen money rather than that it was incompetence”.

Let me put it like this, what a complete shit. Pardon my French.

More fab emails! The first is waaaaaay wacky. I have no idea why this was sent to me:

We're dedicated to helping businesses in Miami Beach maximize their selling potential, and we couldn't resist reaching out to you at 4FX. Looking to Sell 4FX?

This one is one of those that believe I’m a software company, not an individual:

Considering your role at Julian M Bucknall, I believe our exclusive investment opportunities in the booming real estate sector could greatly benefit you.

And one of those “I have something precious, can’t show you what it is until you pay me” emails:

I Found a Security Vulnerability / Bug in your precious and exotic website. An attacker could steal sensitive information. Please let me know the Monetary Reward for bug reporting, responsibly.

Even better, one of those “I’ve taken over your PC and have recorded you watching porn, send me X bitcoin and I’ll delete the recordings” emails:

Several months ago, I was able to hack your operating system and gain full access to all your devices and accounts including messengers, social media profiles, etc. If you still do not believe me, here is a password to your account on the day when I logged in into it: wazemepo07.

Nope, squire, that is not one of my passwords. I use a password manager that generates randomized passwords. Something like that one is almost like a “common” password that has been used many times by many people and this git is hoping he’ll score by sending out emails to a bunch of addresses he’s gleaned from somewhere.

Playing: Everything but the Girl: Missing. The video reminds me of a girlfriend I used to have, who lived in walking distance from East Dulwich train station. I can almost visualize myself “…walking down your street again and past your door but you don't live there anymore.” Sadly I learned from a friend of a friend that she died nearly four years ago from cancer.

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