'Please, choose to be a good citizen and DON’T ask Siri about 9/11'

QuoTW This week saw Microsoft sharpen the knives while GM showed off an incredibly ugly car and Samsung borked a few notebooks.

Here are the best quips we picked up along the way.

Outsourcing house of horrors Capita recently made 700 UK workers redundant. Turns out, they might be the lucky ones, if our story is any indication. The company, it seems, is so cheap that it even tries to wring extra cash out of Capita's cafeteria. One employee explained:

If you bring food into the canteen then they SELL you plastic cutlery, napkins and cups. You cannot pick up your own cutlery.

Well, there's no such thing as a free, er, lunch fork. Hmm.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Brit eavesdropping nerve centre GCHQ investigated itself over possible privacy violations and – surprise, surprise – found that the whole thing was just a misunderstanding. Intelligence Services Commissioner Sir Mark Waller had this to say about the apparent balls-up:

The team explained that because of a lack of understanding of the system's full capability, more data than had been authorised had been collected. It was clear to me that this was a technical error and not deliberate.

What's that, readers? You actually expected GCHQ to take accountability for something? Don't be silly.

Canadian cops, meanwhile, have their knickers well and truly twisted, after jokers tried to game Apple's Siri service.

It was reported that 114 budding truthers had been redirected to the police over a two hour period last Sunday morning, after a viral message circulated on social media encouraging folk to ask Siri about the 9/11 attacks.

The numbers nine one one are phonetically identical to the emergency telephone number in North America. And it turns out Siri immediately reports iThing owners to the plod when they ask about 9/11.

The Regina Police Service urged people to be aware of the consequences of their actions. The Canadian cops said:

We are fortunate, so far, that there haven’t been real 9-1-1 emergencies where help has been delayed.

Please, choose to be a good citizen and DON’T ask Siri about 9/11.

Over in Argentina, the battle for the Falklands heated up again. Except this time it was in cyberspace. Argentina wanted ICANN to reconsider whether the islands deserve their .fk TLD. This prompted Blighty representative Mark Cavell to lay down the following:

The United Kingdom has no doubt about its sovereignty over the Falkland Islands and their surrounding maritime areas nor as to the islands' right to decide their own future, the right to self-determination as enshrined in the UN charter and the international covenant of civil and political rights.

Cavell then presumably dropped the mic, grabbed his crotch and exited stage left with his homeboys in tow.

The Bank of England's CIO John Finch, meanwhile, reckoned this week that his company was doing all those pathetic tech nerds a big favour by dishing out jobs to them. The finance honcho had this to say about his hiring policy:

Particularly in technology we want to recruit people who we wouldn't normally recruit – specky, geeky kids hacking in their bedroom.

Gee, thanks Finch, you charmer, you.

Speaking of charming individuals, rock musician and gossip mag regular Courtney Love found herself caught up in the Paris Uber protest and was none too pleased. She moaned on Twitter:

they've ambushed our car and are holding our driver hostage. they're beating the cars with metal bats. this is France?? I'm safer in Baghdad

— Courtney Love Cobain (@Courtney) June 25, 2015

And, to top it all off, when she got to the airport her private jet only had Fiji water when she had CLEARLY asked for Evian. The world's gone mad, Love, we know.

We wrap things up with James Newman, the madcap hobbyist who is trying to build an entire processor transistor by transistor. Here, he talks about the moment he decided to build a computer so large he couldn't fit it in his house.

There was a conversation at work about that time when we were talking about debugging something and someone remarked it would be easier if we had an LED on a signal. Things got out of hand at that point.

We do hope your weekend isn't getting too out of hand. Monday is just around the corner. Sorry 'bout that. ®