* Posts by TeeCee

9506 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

Tiny Linux kernel tweak could cut datacenter power use by 30%, boffins say

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Facepalm

Well, well.

So getting your code optimised by people who have a deep understanding of the language, know how the hardware works and know what they're doing makes it more efficient?

I'm afraid this missive from The Department of Stating the Bleedin' Obvious is going to go down like a cup of warm sick in India.

Boeing, Boeing, burned: Over half a billion dollars by Starliner in 2024

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Alert

It should be worse for them.

...were instead left on the International Space Station (ISS)

As this is entirely their fault, NASA really should bill Boeing for the overtime and cost of the return taxi.

Poisoned Go programming language package lay undetected for 3 years

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Facepalm

...a single cryptocurrency project with just seven followers.

Looks like someone's get rich quick scheme failed to take off.

Guess who left a database wide open, exposing chat logs, API keys, and more? Yup, DeepSeek

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Facepalm

Journalism.

I see you asked Deepseek the company for comment and they haven't said anything.

Why didn't you ask Deepseek itself? That would have been interesting. I'll bet there's no point now because it never happened, just like much of China's recent history according to Deepseek.

Ransomware scum make it personal for Reg readers by impersonating tech support

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If I were to impersonate you and rip a load of people off, who do you think they would blame?

Likewise, if some bunch of rancid shitstains impersonates your IT support team and.....(etc)?

First Foxconn, now Microsoft: Wisconsin town dissed by big tech

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See elsewhere for details.

That pause for planning changes due to new technology?

Tenner says a Small Modular Reactor for a decent low-carbon greenwash.

Telco security is a dumpster fire and everyone's getting burned

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I wish them luck.

Now, I have to suspect that anything important is being covered by end-to-end encryption, so they're getting the trivia.

I'm sure they're loving Mrs Miggins' 2 hour call to her friend on the subject of her lad's piles.

Ransom gang claims attack on NHS Alder Hey Children's Hospital

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Facepalm

Re: No mercy for vermin who attack healthcare

Meanwhile, Syria is up to 500,000 odd so far.

But then Iran don't have a dog in that fight and aren't getting their stooges to stir up the "useful idiots" and make a fuss about it.

NASA's X-59 plane is aiming for a sonic thump, not a boom

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Re: Thump, not Boom, was what Concorde sounded like

I found myself underneath one when it was at high angle of attack on final to land, while I was sat in an MGB with the top down.

Once it got to about a mile ahead of me, I got pressed into the seat by the confined sheet of air producing the additional lift effect off that ogee wing. Very impressive bit of work that, making it produce waaaayyyyy more lift when it's most needed without resorting to variable geometry, like everyone else did.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

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Staffing problem.

...the company employed a driver who took its directors' cars to the petrol station...

I'd have thought they'd be able to run to a secretary to click the boss' Internet Explorer icon for him then.

Supply chain management vendor Blue Yonder succumbs to ransomware

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Coat

Blue Yonder's customers, however, are reportedly suffering.

Suffering as a Service?

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

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Re: The view

Or the roof:

"Oh that? It's a trebuchet. My assistant does stuff at the weekend with some very odd people and this is the best place to keep it.. of course you can have a closer look.".

Helpline for Yakuza victims fears it leaked their personal info

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Meh

He cut off the internet...

And now he gets to cut off his own little finger.

Rust haters, unite! Fil-C aims to Make C Great Again

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Facepalm

Memory safe language number scramson.

Do you know why C and C++ remain so popular?

Because there's only one of each of them, so you don't have to start from scratch whenever the flavour of the month changes.

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

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Re: "as it would pass through the rotating blades during flight"

Probably more a capon or a small duck.

UK government plays power broker with small modular reactor suitors

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Facepalm

Dunno why they bother.

They apparently have to have competitive tendering. This means dragging other companies into the design / build process and pissing a load of time and money on the wall.

Then they go with the lowest bidder, which makes no difference as the project will come in waaayyyyy over budget anyway like all public-sector crap.

It'd probably work out cheaper and quicker to just pick some mob who chuck a decent bribe or whose CEO's kids go to school with the minister's and give them the job.

Watchdog reluctantly blesses Vodafone-Three merger – with strings attached

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Oh bugger.

As usual, the authorities have completely missed the elephant in the room, in this case the MVNOs on 3.

So why do Vodafone want this to go through? Well, if you look at their model, you'll find that if you get a phone and plan on a long contract, it's a massive saving over buying the phone outright and taking one of their SIM only offerings. A great deal, right?

Wrong. The problem here is that their SIM only plans are outrageously overpriced when you look at the likes of ID mobile or SMARTY on 3. Now, it's quite difficult to draw price comparisons as they are really bloody good at obfuscating the deals by breaking out voice, data, roaming etc. However, I reckon if you were daft enough to take, say, an iPhone 16 on, say, a 48 month contract, you'd pay somewhere around double what you would by just buying the sodding thing outright at the lowest price and then chucking a tenner a month at one of the MVNOs. I guess the CEO's new Merc doesn't pay for itself every year.

Best bit of vodashit is their offering of unlimited data which I strongly suspect involves a very interesting interpretation of the word "unlimited". I'm forced to wonder if I'd actually be allowed to get more than my current 100Gb limit. I reckon this feature only exists to make price comparisons more difficult, although I also reckon that you catch a lot of sheep using "iPhone" and "unlimited" as bait.

The hunt is on for the scum who stole Britain's largest inflatable planetarium

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Meh

Re: Was it locked?

Was that a perfectly ordinary cordless angle grinder the culprits used to remove it?

See also, bike lock, wheel lock, catalytic converter, etc ad infinitum.

Fired Disney staffer accused of hacking menu to add profanity, wingdings, removes allergen info

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Sounds like they really need to fire more people!

1) ...his work credentials, which still functioned after his termination. That means whoever's in charge of your HR exit process should be looking for a new job about now.

2) ..a couple of weeks, requiring backup restoration to fix. If it takes two bloody weeks to restore your menu system, then whoever's running your data centre and whoever signed off on the backup / recovery process being fit for purpose should also be gone by now.

3) ...redirect menu QR codes... No need to do anything about this, QR codes are an exploit looking for a gullible idiot to happen to anyway. Still, knowing that, someone decided to use them and that person should be getting nervous.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

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Facepalm

Re: One good sanction deserves another

Here's an idea. Try taking your tongue out of Mad Vlad's bumhole before posting.

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

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Depends what's in the fire extinguisher, whether that matches what it says is in it on the outside, who last maintained it and whether there are any non-standard features about it.

Boeing's new captain promises U-turn after Q3 nosedive

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Re: "...after Q3 nosedive..."

The father of a friend of mine used to work for British Aerospace. His particular area of expertise was wings. Amongst the things he worked on were Concorde and he also designed that bit of aircraft origami that Airbus use as a flap system, where the wing effectively splits into two.

His opinions on the aerodynamic qualities of the 737 wing were unprintable.

He's now long dead and Boeing are still making that wing.

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Facepalm

"...after Q3 nosedive..."

Well, Boeing had better hope that Ortberg can guess what the real problem is amidst the chaos and figure out which levers to pull and switches to flip to avoid a Q4 smash into the ground then.

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

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Many years ago...

...I recall reading an article about mens high fashion in which it was stated that Prada was problematic because: "No man can wear Prada without looking gay".

Looks like they've finally solved that one.

Richard Branson to take balloon ride to edge of space

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Re: How much helium will we need

OK, plan B.

Fancy a game of darts?

Western Digital releases firmware fix for SSDs blighted by Windows 11 24H2 BSODs

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WTF?

With the same level of relevance, I note that there are still elephants in the zoo and Tesco have sausages in stock.

Alleged Bitcoin crook faces 5 years after SEC's X account pwned

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Coat

Re: searched 'signs the FBI is after you'

Maybe he's Russian?

After all everyone knows that, in Russia, FBI is searched for by you!

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

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Re: Important word

Ah! That's why it took so much time and effort just to keep XIII alive for a few days.

BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

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Meh

Re: Hilarious

Yeah, but Lucifer is fussy and will damn you to hell if you accidently get in a few rats, weasels, pigeons etc, etc ad nauseum.

Thus a less trivial task with more accurate chicken numbers.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

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Mushroom

Upgrading Adobe Acrobat?

Have you thought about taking the dropship and nuking the site from orbit?

It's the only way to be sure.

Average North American CISO pay now $565K, mainly thanks to one weird trick

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Facepalm

Re: CISO?

I do hope that you get burgled, all your crap gets stolen and you also get thrown in jail for not having the very best bolts and locks on all your doors and windows.

Mega supermarket spots stock discrepancy of tens of millions amid ERP system migration

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Meh

Re: "a minor discrepancy"

At neither of my 2 nearest co-ops is there a security guard.

That's probably why the scumbags go there to nick the baskets then.

AI agent promotes itself to sysadmin, trashes boot sequence

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Facepalm

Well that's just great.

AI agents are actually just like your common or garden user.

Like we need more of them.

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

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Re: every day Simon, every day...

Beats reaching for your zombie knife and finding that, yet again, you've left it stuck in a zombie.

I just wish we'd hire more smart people, zombie knives are expensive.

SAP support auto-renewal gotcha: Do nothing now, pay for another year

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Facepalm

Missed a trick.

They forget to say that copping out will only be allowed if a written request is received before the deadline:

"We told you this a month ago!"

"The contract clearly states a written request, you emailed us."

"We'll send a letter then."

"Well. Next year maybe, you've missed this one now."

This technique (c) every single one of the crooked analogue mobile providers back in the day.

Win 11 refreshes delayed, say PC makers – and here's why

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Meh

Re: 5 years is no longer "old"

...when their performance degrades to the point where it impacts productivity.

In my experience, that's usually about three months after the admin nazis remove the ability to defrag and clean up from their users and install some corp clogware running in the background to ensure they can't.

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

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Facepalm

"Reserved for future use"

Well here we are, in the future and somebody, somewhere has made a right pig's ear. As usual.

Rule 1 of IT: Never, ever try to build in something for the future. The future that actually turns up will always be radically different to your guess as to what it might look like.

Homing pigeon missiles, dead trout swimming, butt breathing honored with Ig Nobel Prize

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Pidgeon guided missiles?

Pah! I've already figured out the perfect counter.

Cat guided anti-missile systems.

Post-CrowdStrike catastrophe, Microsoft figures moving antivirus out of Windows kernel mode is a good idea

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I've not bothered crossing my fingers.

As I mentioned before, they wanted to do this a few years back (first mooted for 7 IIRC) but the A/V and Corp clogware vendors threatened to sue.

This time around I see it reported elsewhere that Cloudflare are already sharpening the knives at the prospect of third parties not being allowed direct kernel-level access.

Boeing union workers in US reject contract: 96% vote to strike

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Facepalm

Re: Things can only get better [playing happy tune]

I see what you're saying, but if there's anyone who can screw up making aeroplanes while they're not actually making any, it's Boeing.

So you paid a ransom demand … and now the decryptor doesn't work

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How this works:

"This mob have coughed up, send them the decrypter."

"There isn't a decrypter!"

"WHAT? Why the fuck not?".

"Well, I never thought that you'd find anyone so massively bloody stupid that they'd pay, so I never bothered writing it 'cos I couldn't be arsed.".

"Oh well, knock something together and chuck it at them..."

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

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WTF?

AI PC?

I'm waiting to see who blinks first on this.

MS have said that AI PCs must have an NPU rated at 40+ TOPS. While Intel have fallen into line, AMD have shipped their latest and greatest having an NPU only on the laptop processors. They have stated that desktop machines will have a discrete GPU, which will shit all over any NPU when it comes to running AI tasks, so there's no point decorating their dies with a shitload of redundant transistors.

AMD are, of course, correct. The snag is that, as things stand, MS will only allow AI tasks to run on an NPU because ${bullshit_and_waffle}.

Popcorn please.

Deadbeat dad faked his own death by hacking government databases

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Alert

...and now they have to fix all the data errors caused by him actually still being alive.

Surely it would have been simpler to just fix the discrepancy?

Juice probe scores epic fuel save after snapping selfies with Earth and Moon

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Meh

Re: Gravity?

Gravity is still the force that causes the spacecraft to accelerate...(!)

NASA pushes decision on bringing crew back in Starliner to the end of August

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Facepalm

When is a mishap not really a mishap?

When it becomes obvious to anyone watching that it's actually a monumental cockup.

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

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Facepalm

Should have gone with Plan B.

Bribe some upmarket fashion house to claim it was their idea and watch as every woman starts going around dressed as a lamp.

CrowdStrike meets Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will

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Facepalm

I remember it well.

When Win 7 was in gestation, one of the "big ticket" items was that it would deny kernel mode access to third party software. The big A/V and corp bourgeware providers threatened to sue and MS backed down. I remember thinking at the time that they should have fought it, but they would probably have lost...

I'm afraid that MS are right about the EU. That bunch of tits are currently trying to force Apple to open their kernel, courtesy of their "digital gateway" arsehattery, when we now have proof that they should be enforcing the exact opposite.

You want stable operating systems? Keep politicians and lawyers well away from them.

BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe

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Re: "You are confusing Belgian chocolate with American "chocolate""

That makes me very worried as to what the other 35% might be.

Cybercriminals quickly exploit CrowdStrike chaos

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Look on the bright side.

If you're a lawyer, this is going to keep you fully occupied and highly paid for years, suing the living fuck out of CrowdStrike.

BOFH: It's not generative AI at all, it's degenerate AI

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Coat

HR AI looks like it could be around for a while.

Then again, it could be HAIR today gone tomorrow.