Posts by Chronos

Ukraine seeks volunteers to defend networks as Russian troops menace Kyiv

Re: Not optional

5M Rubles? After this disgrace, that's about 50p, isn't it?

BOFH: The Geek's Countergambit – outwitted at an electronics store

Re: Electronics shop

There's RS if you are extremely wealthy and CPC if you live in Preston. Cricklewood still have a counter accessible by the general public, assuming you can afford Sadiq's eye-watering charges for the privilege, but the options for a place to go on a Saturday to have an argument over 85 degree and 105 degree electrolytics are severely limited these days.

Admittedly, that has been the case even before Craplin closed all their shops; finding someone working at a Craplin who knew what an electrolytic is was a challenge. I never thought I'd miss Tandy but one never knows where life will take one...

Online, Bitsbox are rather good if you want a proper, old school, family run electronics shop.

How to get banned from social media without posting a thing

Influence this

we should always do what influencers tell us to otherwise they won't be influencers any more. And, well, that would be a disaster, wouldn't it?

Oh yes, a disaster akin to Vlad becoming a friendly old chap respecting borders, Sleepy Joe cancelling student debt and Boris keeping it in his pants for once.

BOFH: On Wednesdays, we wear gloves

Future classic

This. This is the Simon we've all come to know and admire from a healthy distance behind a blast-proof screen in a secure bunker with a disabled and dishcharged halon extinguisher system armed with RPG launchers and killbot-defeating EMP devices.

Windows Terminal to be the default for command line applications in Windows 11

Quake mode

+WSL running Debian/ZSH. It's not perfect but it's a damned sight better than hitting your usual hot key and not getting a command prompt when forced to use Windows.

Oh no, here we go again, groans the internet as AWS runs into IT problems. Briefly this time

Re: Something, something, eggs, some, baskets

There's probably something to be said for not putting all your bits in one bucket. It tends to make one's April go tanner-half crown when it all goes mams vertical and you can't get onto the status page.

Of course, given the cyclic nature of this here industry wot we are in, someone is bound to come up with a new, snazzy name for hybrid on/off-prem infra, something like synergistic cache, for which you'll not only pay for the hardware, leccy and bandwidth but also a fee for the privilege of using what amounts to a blinged-up squid proxy, albeit one that reports back to base with not only stuff that was missed while the tubes were clogged/down/DNSless/serving the CEO downloading the entire box set of Outlander but also "telemetry."

Ain't life wonderful? May you live in interesting times.

Re: I assume

Who, Jeff? Yes, I suppose that is where all the money goes.

The rocky road to better Linux software installation: Containers, containers, containers

"Just Works™"

Apple has a huge advantage here: With both their hardware and software, they choose for the user. That's not how most of us "roll" and anyone using GNU/Linux seriously will eventually have software installed from various sources, all quite manageable after the initial pain of getting repos added, versions matched, deps installed, cmake behaving etc.

This is not to denigrate Apple's ecosystem; for some people I have no doubt it works very well. Equally, GNU/Linux will be unsuitable for many of those same people and more. The point is there's no "one size fits all," even within those ecosystems. Proudly proclaiming the "One True" anything is a hiding to nowhere. Every time I see a "this is the future" op-ed I know anyone without tunnel vision will be shaking their head by the second paragraph.

Reg scribe spends 80 hours in actual metaverse … and plans to keep visiting

Re: Metaverse?

Never mind Snowcrash, it's the third book of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy I'm thinking about. Even if your mind doesn't get wiped with a fancy pattern, it'll still be addictive escapism once to technology advances enough. Many people won't want to jack out, which is exactly what Zuck seems to want.

There won't be an evolved AI at the Centauris system to visit, either.

Toyota needs more than its Cheer Squad to deal with chip shortages, as five more home factories forced into idleness

Interesting

They could always make the vehicles less complicated. Most of the need for custom chippery is locking the end user into dealership services. If we had a standardised ECU architecture, none of this would be an issue for base models. That does presuppose manufacturers are willing to drop the cash-cow of aftersales, though.

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

Re: Loyd Grossman accent <on> ... Who would run a company like this ?

Have you seen the man speak? He has an emotion deficit that Spock would have envied. The problem with Facebook and, indeed, most social notworks is a lack of empathy, both on the part of the companies running them and the users using them. It's like giving a man a chainsaw: Give any old munchkin a mechnism to destroy people with a pithy put-down and they're going to do it.

Why do we feel comfortable gesturing at other drivers when driving? Because the mobile box insulates us and virtualises interaction. It's the same with sitting behind a keyboard. I'm probably doing it right now, although I am always aware on ElReg that other commentards are at least as smart as I.

What is really dangerous, though, is the blurring of the lines between fact and opinion. Facts are becoming "number of likes/upvotes/thumbs up" with the proliferation of mob validation. This, in my opinion is driven by the social networks and real experts are being lost due to the low SNR. Covid has been an excellent heads-up. Whether we hear that warning us up to us.

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Hat Mancock is an easy target, regardless of your political views.

Re: Excuses, excuses

Even little people have to draw the line somewhere...

UK.gov is launching an anti-Facebook encryption push. Don't think of the children: Think of the nuances and edge cases instead

Re: There are still terrorists and mobsters?

It's hookey fags and baccy now. Apparently, if you don't pay the sin tax on your demon weed, a Don gets rich on the 30p or so that the actual product costs. Whoda thunk?

EU to formally probe Nvidia's $54bn takeover over British chip designer Arm – report

Just wrong on so many levels

The ambivalence is killing me.

Firstly, this is a private company. The free market model means they should be free to trade. If that's the entire company, so be it. Beak out.

Secondly, the EU messing around with an Anglo-British deal despite not having jurisdiction over either party. Again, snout away.

Then we come to my overriding pain: As someone who grew up at a time when computer == Acorn, exporting the success that is ARM (it is - or was - an acronym, people, [Acorn|Advanced] RISC Machines) and the resulting diminution of tech boom in Cambridge is something of a disaster. Why do we keep selling off our success? I am within touching distance of one x86_64, a Cortex M0, two arm64 devices, two arm7s and a MIPS. That's a 5:2 ratio of ARM to other architectures, completely ignoring SMP capabilities of each and that's just my workspace.

My answer? Sod it. Que sera, sera. It's out of my control so I'll not worry about it.

Elastic amends Elasticsearch Python client so it won't work with forks then blocks comments

TL;DR: All that is old shall become new. From a technical perspective, katrinab's comment is spot on, i.e. you do not fully control the hardware or software, you just transceive data. The rest is either sophistry or economics, things of which we tend not to take much notice on here unless it's the canteen onion bhaji budget.

TL as in you lost my interest at the word "amortize."

Brain-computer interface researchers warn of a 'bleak' cyberpunk future – unless we tread carefully

I can imagine that future

You appear to be thinking about using an etherkiller on the director of HR's machine. Would you like some help with that?

Clippy. In your head. Icon, from orbit. It's the only way...

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features

!Audacity

Following the current trend of sticking punctuation in names (Cee'd, Up! for cars) with the added bonus of only true escapists will be able to install it.

Or we could just call it what most people have been calling it for years: Thatsoundeditorthingywithroundbuttons-youknowtheone-yeahthat'sit.deb

Mark it in your diaries: 14 October 2025 is the end of Windows 10

"The last version of Windows"

It can only be the last version of Windows when the next one releases. Don't you know nuffink? :-)

Windows 11: Meet the new OS, same as the old OS (or close enough)

Re: What is an OS for?

Unit files are quite good; your comment about rcorder problems is bang-on.

The problem is I would like to be able to read up to date log files when journalctl -xe blah... falls over into a cesspit of its own making and fails to pass what made it crap itself on to syslog. If Lennart could split systemd out into - oh, the irony! - Unix-like modules that do one thing well in their own PID, I wouldn't have a problem with it. The fact that he never will is what makes so very many of us into bitter refuseniks.

Also, while we're criticising Poetteringware, Pulseaudio. FreeBSD has had kernel mediated snd(4) multiplexing since, IIRC, FreeBSD-5 and it does not need a sodding userland daemon or complex policies and group management to work.

Re: What is an OS for?

Office indeed. And Teams, Sharepoint, Azure, O365...

The OS is pretty much an afterthought. MS under Nadella have achieved what His Billness wanted back in the day: They own the mechanisms used in business to get work done and they did it so quietly that nobody noticed.

BOFH: When the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East, only then will the UPS cease to supply uninterrupted voltage

Re: new battery dry as a nun's

Are you sure? Was it an APC? Because you only have to unwrap a sealed lead-acid within sight of an APC logo for it to boil off all the electrolyte.

_{For the curious: APC float voltage calibration}

Playmobil crosses the final frontier with enormous, metre-long Enterprise playset

Cue...

...stop motion fan flicks. Quite how Kirk is going to shag anything that moves with "Made in China" on his crotch is left as an exercise for the reader.

Of course, it couldn't be any worse than the Kelvin reboots and at least you'll be able to see what's going on rather than looking like it was filmed in the 1970s during the rolling blackouts, which seems to be de-rigeur right now.

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

On days like this we need Old Linus back - after he's explained messenger RNA in a calm, scientific manner and questioned exactly what "the illuminati" want us producing a spike protein for, of course. Perhaps he could delegate taking down clowns to mjg59? He's another one with a pretty good record of not suffering fools at all.

Had my first AZ jab last month. If I grew another head or changed any of my opinions (sorry to disappoint) it was for a very short time. AdBlock is still there in the top right, I still won't let anything I haven't compiled myself on a router and I still enjoy cancelled 1970s BBC sitcoms.

Maybe it was a bad batch...

ASUS baffles customer by telling them thermal pad thickness is proprietary

It's not the implement, it's knowing where to hit it - usually just above the second cervical vertebra is a good choice.

Oh, you meant tech. Try gently reseating the VRMs (greybeard Proliant people are now back on the Valium - sorry for the trigger)

So what if I pay peanuts for my home broadband? I demand you fix it NOW!

TITSUP

Temporary Inability To Stream Unlimited Pr0n. Nobody gets hysterical due to the lack of Meetings That Should Have Been E-Mails. You're fooling nobody, Dabbsy :-)

BOFH: Postman BOFH's Special Delivery Service

Re: Dump-and-run

sed -e 's/Herm/Herp/'

FTFY

All you really need is the acronym "NSR:" No signature required. It may even end up in the general vicinity, certainly the right county, of the boss' address. "Leave in shed which will be open" is ambiguous enough to get it delivered somewhere.

You know, this may well be the solution to e-waste. Every courier company in the country with a section of Dexion racking for holding boxes filled with Lexmark printers that never made it past the supplied cartridges, APC UPSen that have cooked their batteries (again) and old DLT drives.

We finally get to spot a burnt-out comet and what is it covered in? Talcum powder

Utterly wrong

It's an alien gummy milk bottle covered in that powdery flour they use to stop 'em sticking together. Even aliens drop them behind the couch of their flying saucer control centre once in a while.

The real threat to the Sol system is the Andromedan Hard Gum. The black ones are made of dark matter...

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

Re: What?

Context, sir. Quantum mechanics, by its very nature or lack thereof, suspends the usual norms including those of when to apply the clue-bat.

Re: My favorite screw-up

The best entertainment someone else's money could buy at the time. That was a howler, especially given that 4.4BSD-Lite had already been through its own SCO moment, albeit rather more seriously given the Deathstar's power, and was specifically tailored to nullify this sort of challenge. Thanks for reminding me. I needed a chuckle today.

Re: What?

I doubt it. Just load up the old site in the Wayback machine and sync it to the start of the case. As idiocy is defined as trying to do the same thing the same way and expecting a different outcome, I fully expect the transcripts to be very, very close.

Yet it could provide some entertainment for those who missed the last round of fuckwittery. errno.h, anyone? Because of course you'd reinvent the wheel and completely fsck up error parsing on a POSIX-compliant operating system running cross-platform code, wouldn't you?

What happens when back-flipping futuristic robot technology meets capitalism? Yeah, it’s warehouse work

Re: There's a few things....

Consider the boxes the likes of a certain well-known hardware vendor uses; you know the ones, mahoosive 3 acre box with three dozen #6 screws in it. Those boxes are put together by a machine with a sliver of hot glue and a prayer. Lift those by the lid and the whole shebang falls to bits. Actually, if the little packet of #6 screws ever nudges the lid, all bets are off.

Whoda thunk? Automation screws up automation. I suppose "not my department" transfers as seamlessly across botspace as it does fleshtube...

Move aside, Technoking: All hail the Sweat Master and his many inspirational job titles

Re: Uptitling

You forgot:

Whipping boy --> Customer Service Specialist

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Re: Barn doors

That's an argument for the proposal. In this context, the "hack" is a useful shortcut or novel way of doing something to achieve a desired end. That, to my mind, is evolution of the original definition.

helloSystem: Pre-alpha FreeBSD project chases simplicity and elegance by taking cues from macOS

Re: Further simplicity and ease of use...

Ooh, rose gold Samsung? Suits you, sir!

Um...

NEXTStep, Mach microkernel and BSD userland. CUPS was never strictly Linux, nor was Webkit. Darwin, the underlying glue behind MacOS, is closer to FreeBSD than Linux, licensing being the motivation; it all depends on your definition of "free" as, for some of us - Cupertino included it would seem, having to release your mods as source isn't freedom at all.

Meh, whatevs, ancient history.

_{* Long-time *BSD user, jumped ship to De[bi|vu]an when the project became infested with divas.}

Looking for the perfect Valentine's gift? How about a week of retro gaming BBC Microlympics?

Durdleurdleurdleurdleurrr

Bloody geese.

Nothing new since the microwave: Let's get those home tech inventors cooking

Oh dear!

Why do we say this every time after a good belly laugh?

Thank you, Mr Dabbs. The sweary bit made my day. I suppose I'm easily amused but, having heard the story of a 70cms repeater that was shut down because the numpties at Winter Hill couldn't unlock their cars with the keyfob (what the fuck is wrong with using the key, anyway?) I have to admit a physical switch, button, key, handle or plain old analogue hammer of last resort beats tech every sodding time.

Linus Torvalds rates his own words 'incoherent ramblings of a crazy old man'

Exactly what is needed.

Linus is doing an exceptional job, let's not fool ourselves. The "problem" he has is honesty. That will ruffle feathers when he's outwardly honest but it also means he's capable of not taking himself too seriously and can backtrack and correct without worrying about "PR".

Let's not be too quick to ridicule this as it's something from which a few people in real positions of power could take notes.

Brexit freezes 81,000 UK-registered .eu domains – and you've all got three months to get them back

While it does seem to fly in the face of established practice...

...I can't remember the last time, outside of trawling (sorry) through Europa.eu for some obscure tract of text, that I actually visited a dotEU URL. The "issue" seems to be a twmpath twrch daear masquerading as a mynydd.

BOFH: Time for the MMOCC. You know, the Massively Moronic Online Christmas Call

Re: "We've signed up to a multi-presence company”

That's impossible. What you really want is, for example, the latest remotely installed unicorn fart (Teams, I'm looking at you here) not autostarting on everyone's desktop on Monday morning, resulting in not only a glacial roaming profile share but more support calls than directory enquiries in the 80s.

Also, which bellend thought piping Chrome's ghastly notifications to the notification area in Windows 10 was a good idea? Once that thing activates, it takes focus from anything and everything else. Bastards. The OS's job is to launch useful things and then stay the hell out of the way.

Yes, as you can probably tell, I spent a good two hours running around the depot disabling Teams that day. At least its icon is purple, a tip of the hat to Bonzi Buddy, no doubt.

Running joke: That fitness gadget? It's, er, run out

As a complete aside...

...that facial fungus you're sporting, Dabbsy, is now known as the Cypher, from the Matrix character of that name. And you're a dead-ringer.

Now, try GadgetBridge and never buy any form of fitness tracker¹ that isn't compatible with it, should a piece of idle silicon with a few electrons flowing through its doped bits telling you you're a lazy, balding, obese git like me be your particular vessel buoyancy. Me? The mirror tells me ever day. I need no electronic reminder :-P

_{¹ The origninal AmazFit Bip was ideal for this before they ruined it by insisting you use their app to pair the bloody things, even if there is a way to extract the pairing key for GB}

Worn-out NAND flash blamed for Tesla vehicle gremlins, such as rearview cam failures and silenced audio alerts

Re: So a car with the price of a Tesla

It's an 8Gb(it) NAND flash, so the same memory used in, e.g. 2000's mass-produced landfill Android tablets. At least when those crash, nobody dies.

EMMC wearing out?

What the giddy frig are they storing? GPS tracks? Or is it that there's a software upgrade every time some intern at Tesla moves their mouse?

America's largest radio telescope close to collapse as engineers race to fix fraying cables

Arsenoise is lacking in so many ways, yet I doubt he even knows Arecibo exists. For one thing, he'd have to understand that the word "telescope" doesn't necessarily mean a long tube with lenses in it, parrot, cutlass and eyepatch optional...

Neglect, pure and simple. Any competent metallurgist will take one glance at that picture and declare expansion and friction assisted metal fatigue in a nanosecond¹. This is a compound failure, recognised with the benefit of hindsight, to allocate resources over more than half a century. Hanlon's Razor applies.

¹ The various wires in those cables expand and contract at different rates as they heat and cool by layers. It's not much movement but, given 57 years, it all adds up. At this point, replacement is needed as the visible effects mean the invisible damage is already past the point of no return.

Voyager 2 is back online after eight months of radio silence

Re: DSN Now

It jumped the shark and ended up docked on the Worf...

Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network

Re: "Citizens should have struck first against the Corporates"

A cow-orker of mine has just bought a Quest II. I laughed a little when he said "I had to sign up to Facebook" and then it struck me just how many people are being suckered into the clutches of the data fetishists with promises of "shiny." That, and just how green around the gills he looked after playing with it for hours the night before with the disagreement between visual cortex and inner ear still raging...

By the time an open source solution arrives it'll be too late. The masses will already be hooked on - and quite possibly hypnotised by - the commercial loss-leader offerings.

MediaTek's Snapdragon-7-bothering 5G eight-core Arm chip for modest mobes jets into Europe this month

Mediatek

I'm sorry but there's a very good reason Qualcomm are the market leaders: Mediatek is just so half-arsed. If the GPS will lock without phoning home to some god-awful Chinese SUPL server, something else will be broken to the point of uselessness. Couple that with the usual bean-counter engineering, half-arsed bootloaders that brick if you look at them a bit funny and cobbled-together kernels in devices that use this dross and you have landfill mobiles aplenty.

Avoid like the plague.

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Re: Opposite will happen

...in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with "Beware of the leopard" on the door?