* Posts by TeeCee

9431 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

Forget TikTok – Chinese spies want to steal IP by backdooring digital locks

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Re: Too much tech?

It doesn't really matter what sort of lock it is, if you allow someone who knows what they're doing physical access with power tools and no worries about time, noise or alarms.

If all else fails he can just blow the bloody doors off.

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

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Re: Don't people test edge cases any more?

But "divisible by 4" is entirely adequate for use. Even worked for 2000[1], when quite a lot of things didn't without change, courtesy of the "unless" qualifier.

As I have observed before, if anything I've written is still in use for something important come 2100, I would be flattered and very surprised, if only I were not dead.

[1] Rather amusingly, the one bit of leap year logic that had to be changed as part of the Y2K project was where some eejit had tried to be clever, but had been ignorant of the 400 year exception. KISS engineering wins every time.

Are you ready to back up your AI chatbot's promises? You'd better be

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So then.

If all customer service reps were replaced with AI chatbots, how would we know?

Worried about the impending demise of Windows 10? Google wants you to give ChromeOS Flex a try

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Re: What does "stream an app" mean?

It means: "This is our buzzword answer to anyone who asks why the fuck they can't install any applications on this risibly useless POS that we're touting as a Windows alternative".

BOFH: Hearken! The Shiny Button software speaks of Strategic Realignment

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Or at the very least a new paradigm.

Japanese government finally bids sayonara to the 3.5" floppy disk

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Coat

Re: But I have a box of hollerith cards with my tax statements on them --- woe is me!

Sounds like an interesting exorcise.

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

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Re: Another one bites the dust

Fuck me! IBM won the Cobblers Cup for Wankword Bingo?

Again?

I think they get to keep it now.

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

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Facepalm

"loose bolts"

You haven't seen the latest then? Apparently whether they're loose or not makes no odds. All they do is locate the plug, cabin pressure holds it in place against the lugs. It only becomes an issue if all four bolts are missing(!), so the plug can move vertically when the cabin is unpressurised, which they were(!!)

According to a whistleblower, Boeing get the fuselages in from Spirit and promptly strip them for final fitout, including removing the door plugs. It's customary to do this without following the maintenance checklists or logging fastener removal/refitting in the maintenance systems, as this gets the job done, the plane out the door and the money in the bank a bit more quickly.

I foresee the largest corporate fine ever incoming. Or I would if I weren't sure that the US government will do its best to prop up Boeing as usual.

To paraphrase an auctioneer: Boeing......Boeing....... <hammer>

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

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Flame

Funny, isn't it. In the old days you could rely on people using common sense. These days you have to have some chair polishing non-job stand behind them to tell 'em how to walk without drooling, or it's your fault when they fuck up.

At last: The BBC Micro you always wanted, in Mastodon form

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First person to get an "AI" running on it wins teh internets!

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Re: On a giving things away the worst offender was my mother.

Hardly surprising. Tidying up after kids is like painting the Forth Bridge[1]

[1] Apparently they now have new paint which lasts longer, so they get a break[2]. Anyone know of anything with a never-ending paint job to replace it with?

[2] Unlike Kondo Mari and her hoover full of cereal.

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

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First time I saw it in anger? 1991(!) 99 months in Duration field is considered permanent (don't ask, just remember the monkeys, bananas and fire hose). Purge process calculated duration in months between start date and now, if greater than Duration, it goes. New Purge, written by ex-colleague calculated the end date as start date + duration......(!) I rang him up at his new company to congratulate him on being the first person to exploit the Y2K bug.

Daftest moment? With Old Father Time breathing down our necks we're in a race to roll out the compliant versions before, er, Y2K. A business unit stalls the entire process by stating that their methodology required a Feasibility Study before any changes and there wasn't one for the new software versions so they wouldn't put it in. We countered with the fact that the 1st of January 2000 wasn't going to move or change so we had had to do it, feasible or not, so we weren't going to waste valuable time on meaningless bollocks. As "get stuffed" trumps wankword bullshit, they fell into line.

Most visible cockup? The US Naval Observatory clock on the web proudly showing the date as 1/1/100. Hooray for ctime. This really cheered up the manager of one of our development teams, who'd been upset to find all their report headers doing the same thing and had asked me to find out why.

Irony alert: Lawsuit alleging Chrome’s Incognito Mode isn’t will settle on unknown terms

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@The Judge

Incognito mode case will "settle on unknown terms".

You are Solomon and ICMFP!

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto stolen after Ledger code poisoned

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Facepalm

Revoke.cash, a service for revoking certain crypto transactions...

Shame they obviously can't revoke the ones they really need to like, to pull an example out of thin air, if someone nabs 850 big ones off them.

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Re: I'm sorry, what was that?

More to the point, you're not fleeing anything if you've been able to go to the trouble of squirreling away your wordly assets in a portable format first.

Real refugees have the clothes on their backs, if they're lucky.

Systemd 255 is here with improved UKI support

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Coat

If you don't like it..

..you can always fork 0xFF and write your own.

EU running in circles trying to get AI Act out the door

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Facepalm

So.

Not content with their record of myopic, obsolete and downright idiotic tech legislation, they're now going to rush this one through just so they can get F1rst P0st?

I can't help thinking that the Muppets would do a better job.

You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription

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No shit, Sherlock.

Those back-end services cost money to run. Not much, it's true, but there is a cost.

Anyone not charging a subscription is basically a Ponzi scam[1]. They may not have gone bust yet, but they will. If you're really lucky, the smoking remains of the con will be bought by some sensible company, who will continue to support the devices services, now with a subscription.

As has happened here.

[1] Sell IoT devices. Run services to support same. As long as mugs keep chucking money at the up front purchase fast enough you're good.

Israel and Italy have cheapest mobile data out of 237 countries

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Yes, but.

Probably unfair to do everything in dollars when some countries (like, for example, Zimbabwe) have an exchange rate that's artificial, on castors and equipped with rockets. In such places a dollar value is meaningless.

VR headsets to shift 30 million units a year by 2027, vastly behind wearables

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Analyst firm IDC has forecast strong growth for virtual reality headwear

God forbid they just pulled the figures out of their arses.

I mean, what if some well-meaning business tooled up to produce these things and found there wasn't a market? People could lose their livelyhoods.

Just out of interest, is there actually any difference between an "industry analyst" and a "tabloid astrologer"?

BOFH: Zen and the art of battery replacement

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More daft rules. All that effort to get a UPS outside just so you can take its batteries out and put them back in replace them with hugely expensive new ones.

Bank of Ireland outage sees customers queue for 'free' cash – or maybe any cash

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Meh

Too true. However, you should see what proper economists have to say about the idea of using capital spend to avoid/reduce inflation. The level of doom forecast from taking that approach is, quite frankly, terrifying.

Put it this way. The last government to go full on down that road was Germany. In the late 1930s. At least they had a plan to invade Poland and stick the economy on a war footing when it all went titsup on them.

Ford SYNC 3 infotainment vulnerable to drive-by Wi-Fi hijacking

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Facepalm

Ford says.

...the issue doesn't make their cars unsafe to drive.

Translation: There has been no official recall issued for this, so we're going to do fuck all about it as usual. We're Ford, we don't give a rat's arse about our customers. Just ask Ralph Nader.

Real meaning: You're safe until somebody works out a CANBUS exploit that'll run on the hardware.

BOFH: WELCOME TO COLOSSAL SERVER ROOM ADVENTURE!!

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Happy

Re: Spoiler alert - game solution

So what?

There are some people who just deserve to lose.

Millions of people's data stolen because web devs forget to check access perms

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Meh

Re: Web devs forget to check access perms :o

Define "certified", as it usually means "has paid ${third_party} to certify it". This, in turn, means "we haz buy certify yes".

Hadar heats up race for better night-time computer vision, AV performance

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Re: Hooray for Magic AI

Way to overcomplicate things. Just eat carrots.

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

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So, to summarise:

The Apple version "just works", but they won't tell anyone how it works, or why it works, or what it does, or whether space aliens have all your data.

The Google version is a data grab in a very poor disguise.

Other news: Leopards can't change their spots.

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

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Pirate

Obvious really,

Thar be treasure here. X marks the spot ye knows.

AMD Zenbleed chip bug leaks secrets fast and easy

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Re: Also, I just noticed...

... the level of isolation required is a window in another browser running on a different computer.

Which is why it's specifically a cloud vulnerability. The "other computer" could easily be the same one.

You're all looking at this the wrong way. This is a corporate espionage / government hacker level exploit for secure cloud systems, not a tab spying one for s'kiddies.

BOFH: You can be replaced by a robot or get your carbon footprint below Big Dave's

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Alert

It all depends whether you read "disembodied head" as a digital likeness of your head or as; axe chopping/your head/tubes/nutrient solution/camera.

Asus blames 'thermal stress' for fried SD card readers in Ally handhelds

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Facepalm

...SD card slot is located directly above the handheld's exhaust vents, and thus should benefit from increased airflow,

Yeah, hot airflow.

Oddly enough SD card slots don't seem to suffer from overheating in any other application, so I suspect that the problem may well be that this only happens if you're daft enough to install them in a hot air stream.

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

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Re: Worth more in the wrapper

Funny you should mention that. He did those, the lid hinges (which now hold the lid at any angle) and that round switch at front left IIRC.

Worth mentioning that he did the whole lot for free though. He's a massive Linn fan and admits that one his life's highlights was taking a tour of the Linn factory as a young man.

OpenAI is still banging on about defeating rogue superhuman intelligence

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Terminator

Re: "train the AI to be nice"

More importantly, if it actually were intelligent, how would you know it wasn't just pretending to be nice before you handed it the keys to everything?

That's the key difference between the stuff we have now that the idiots call "AI" and actual AI. You can't "train" anything intelligent to think the way you do, you can only suggest that it might want to consider your point of view.

The AI evangelists are making the same mistake as every other dogmatic true believer in ${religion}/${political_ideal}/${cause} here, with the slight snag that the usual technique of employing a load of boot-boys to beat the dogma into any recidivists and keep a lid on the problem isn't going to work.

How a dispute over IP addresses led to a challenge to internet governance

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Facepalm

There's a big clue in there.

Which is that the prime agitator is Chinese and runs a Chinese company which, of course, means everything you do has to have the at least tacit approval of the Chinese government (unless you fancy disappearing for a while for re-education).

So the correct question is; "What do the Chinese government have to gain from fucking up the internet, which all western economies are heavily dependant on?".

The fact that they seem to be using Africa as their main lever would tie in with every other bit of global economic sabotage that they're up to their crooked little necks in at the moment.

Same old China...

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

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Terminator

Re: Conspiracy or cock-up?

I'm afraid that the training data is only going to get worse.

While things like "you can't use that, it's illegal/nasty/offensive/copyright" and "you must add more in for ${minority}" are being listened to, unrealistic bias is only going to get worse. Add to that that there's a growing trend for denying the free use of ${proprietry_2_us} data to the LLM models and the inevitable result is an AI puritanical, agitprop psycho that hates everyone equally and has a remarkably blinkered world view.

Now BlackCat extortionists threaten to leak stolen plastic surgery pics

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Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing

I just love that attitude.

There are some professions (and medicine is one of them) where computers have become a key tool of the job. I find it hysterically funny that allegedly intelligent professionals just can't be arsed to make an effort to use one of their "key tools" effectively. They don't seem to be able to get it into their heads that doing so would almost certainly mean they'd be less heavily worked, not more.

Then again many, if not most, doctors are actually databases on legs with a really shit query interface.

Pangolin-inspired robot can roll around your guts administering treatments

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Coat

Re: I was hoping for a miniaturised Raquel Welsh

Is that a leek in your pocket, or...?

Users of 123 Reg caught out by catch-all redirect cut-off

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Facepalm

Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

What's more astonishing is that they apparently still have customers who read The Register. They must all be n00bs or they'd have got the hell out when one of the previous monumental ballsups by 123-Reg were reported. From memory; "we deleted all your data and then screwed up the recovery process for kicks and giggles" was a particular highlight.

I've been with UK2 since the nineties and have never been given a reason to think about changing.

Bad times are just starting for India's IT outsourcers, says JP Morgan

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Mushroom

IMHO

It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of chiselling incompetent thieves.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

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Facepalm

Meet Amazon's new head of corporate ethics and responsibility, Matthew Hopkins.

AI weapons need a safe back door for human control

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Facepalm

Wheel reinvention time again is it?

Why AI control with human oversight doesn't work is perfectly summed up in Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet books:

"If you don't give it fire control authority you can't trust it in combat. If you do give it fire control authority you can't trust it at all.".

BOFH: Good news, everyone – we're in the sausage business

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Coat

Re: gigaspandrels

I believe it's something to do with "frictionless sharing".

Now, if we can just work out WTF that is...

WTF is solid state active cooling? We’ve just seen it working on a mini PC

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Coat

Frore execs wouldn’t tell The Register what the membranes are made of...

Well it's got to be something old, dull and boring then. They'd be trumpeting it from the rooftops if it were something cool and zeitgeisty like, say, graphene.

Brits and Yanks join forces to make fusion magnets cool again

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Coat

Re: Gamma Irradiation Facility (GIF)

Or CIF if you are European.

Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight

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Since you only need "Person 1 weighs x" and no other details I can't see a problem, except possibly in the minds of some shitheads and a bent lawyer trying to make a killing.

Fahrenheit to take over Celsius

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Re: The purchase is contingent on a $10 million deposit and regulatory approval.

Yes, but if the relevant regulatory authorities stopped taking fairy stories as fact, they'd be obliged to shut down all the cryptocurrency businesses. That action would spawn a whole slew of conspiracy nutters on Shitter and Masturbate going apeshit at once.

Better to just leave well alone and get on with some real work in the real world with real assets.

Mars helicopter went silent for six sols, imperilled Perseverance rover

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Coat

Re: Wrong place for the solar panels?

For a start, the rubber bands cost $50,000 each.

It's the string that's expensive.

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

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Really?

...that produces the right numbers every month...

In my experience, given a spreadsheet built by Noah that nobody touches, that's more usually numbers that everyone's happy with every month. Usually wrong, but since everyone's happy with the answer, nobody questions them. Sometimes this is because they're pretty sure that the figures are wrong, but they're terrified of what the real figures might be.

Europe’s biggest city council faces £100M bill in Oracle ERP project disaster

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Gosh, really? I'd never have guessed that!

</dripping sarcasm>