Posts by John Riddoch

NTP server that traveled back in time caused massive Aussie mobile outage

I'm guessing this is related to the GPS counter overflow which would result in a 19.6 year jump (so back to 2026). Surprising that it happened as the last overflow was 2019, so you'd have expected it to have been an issue for 7 years by now, although sounds like they fiddled with something at some point which broke it.

EU lets wearables wriggle out of user-replaceable battery rules

Re: To be fair...

I managed to replace the battery in my dive computer about 15 years ago. For context, this is essentially a wearable (watch format) which is subject to about 4 bar of pressure at 30m, far less forgiving than a phone designed to cope with being splashed a bit at the beach/pool. It's not impossible, just needs designed appropriately.

Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

Two factors - inelastic supply and high barriers to entry. In short, the factory capacity for making Ram chips has a fixed cap until you build more factories which are VERY expensive and take a number of years to complete. Before that can happen, demand has risen massively (AI etc) much faster than supply can increase. As demand has increased and supply hasn't, prices rise.

Add into this that building a new factory may take longer than the AI bubble will last. It's possible that a new factory won't complete before demand plummet, so that's a further lag to increasing supply.

Microsoft once used its own brand of 'Lego' to optimize Windows

Re: The simple answer was responsibility.

In the "good old days", hardware was expensive, programmers were relatively cheap. Now hardware is cheap (although AI is doing its best to fix that) and programmers are expensive. If it's a choice between 4 weeks of project time (10s or 100s of £k) to make the code more efficient, or adding an extra CPU and few gig of RAM for a few £k, it's an easy choice.

FCC warns US broadcasters their licenses are a privilege, not a right

Ah, that's where you've missed the part where they intend to be in charge forever. There is not planned "no longer in charge". Voter intimidation, gerrymandering, using the law to go after your opponents and media control are all part of the authoritarian playbook.

AWS racks M3 Ultra Macs that boast specs you can’t currently buy

Re: In the post-consumer world we will own nothing...

It does amuse me how a lot of computing has come full circle.

Initially, we'd rent time on massive mainframes to do our work. Then we had home PCs. Now we rent time on massive hyperscalers' data centres.

Ethernet originated as radio waves round the Hawaii islands. Then it went onto copper wires and fibre. Now it's most pervasive as Wifi over the air.

First reports come in of victims of critical cPanel vuln as 'millions' of sites potentially exposed

Same with mine - I was expecting to have to chase them up on their lax security, but they'd beat me to it!

Server-room lock was nothing but a crock

"Don't pound on mouse like a wild monkey"

I'm reminded of the old bug report you used to be able to find in Sunsolve (fantastic resource, which of course Oracle killed). "Workaround: don't pound on mouse like a wild monkey".

For context, mashing the mouse buttons in CDE could cause the calendar manager (dtcm) to crash. They did fix the bug, but the workaround was also listed in the bug report.

Datacenters are hoarding grid power just in case, says Uptime Institute

Re: How the UK system works

£120k is peanuts when they're filling racks with GPUs and DDR5 RAM...

But yeah, that system encourages over-requesting just in case.

Vendor's secret 'fix' made critical app unusable during business hours

Re: Lost for words

I've seen numerous apps over the years where the "fix" for a permission denied error was "chmod -R 777 /app/directory". It doesn't overly surprise me, but it's awful, awful practice.

Developer battled to write his own documentation, but lost the boss fight

Re: I used to own a sports bar/restaurant

I'll be honest, a bunch of typoes in your menu would have given me a bad impression of the place and would likely have turned me off coming back. If you can't even spell things properly, what else is wrong there?

Trump’s tariff‑shaped stick can’t beat reality on US chip fabbing

Re: Really makes me sad

It's unlikely any successor to Trump will be able to hold the party in their thrall the way Trump has managed to. Jay Kuo covered off some hypotheticals as to what could happen if Vance had to take over from Trump (either through death or being forced to stand down) at https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/after-trump-gone-vance-maga.

UK to roll out mandatory digital ID for right to work by 2029

It's doomed. It's a government IT project, so it's doomed from the start. Expect it to go over budget and over time.

Huawei counts cost of Western bans as UK business withers

Re: Tinfoil Hat time

The US doesn't need a stake in the vendor to tamper with their tech, they were caught putting back doors into Cisco kit years ago (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/glenn-greenwald-nsa-tampers-us-internet-routers-snowden). The US is worried that other countries will do what they've been up to for years, but they're the "good guys" so should completely be trusted with it and there's no risk of them becoming an authoritarian police state with the army on the streets, right?

M&S warns of £300M dent in profits from cyberattack

Normal press release. They'll never admit "some script kiddie in his mom's basement with an off-the-shelf piece of ransomware broke our systems because Bob in Accounting clicked on the link in the blatant phishing email", even though that's probably the overall method of most ransomware attacks.

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

There was the AD&D magic item compendium where someone was obviously offended by the term "mage" as the updated class name was now "wizard" so they did a search and replace. Badly. So we now had magic items doing "6d6 points of dawizard" to the target.

Old Fortinet flaws under attack with new method its patch didn't prevent

Re: "an unidentified threat actor created a symlink that linked users to the root filesystem"

There was a vulnerability in the OS which was being exploited. Fortinet released a patch which fixed the vulnerability, but didn't clear up the back doors left by the threat actors and left the systems vulnerable. This new patch removes the symlink and prevents symlinks being used as a back door. In essence, the new patch removes the persistence of a previous hack on the system.

Re: Remote Re-Writing of EEPROM/Flash is a Security Hole

Sun servers used to have physical jumpers on the motherboard to prevent the PROM being updated. We inevitably set the jumper to "allow updates" and never put it back after an update.

The Reg translates the letter in which Oracle kinda-sorta tells customers it was pwned

Re: With the plummeting stock markets...

Is there anything left of the SEC after the Trump/DOGE cuts?

Oracle says its cloud was in fact compromised

The rules are published on ICO's website. Key paragraph is probably this one:

"When a personal data breach has occurred, you need to establish the likelihood of the risk to people’s rights and freedoms. If a risk is likely, you must notify the ICO; if a risk is unlikely, you don’t have to report it. However, if you decide you don’t need to report the breach, you need to be able to justify this decision, so you should document it."

I await Oracle's justification for choosing to not report this breach within 72 hours.

Sarbanes-Oxley came out of the fallout from Enron collapse etc which cost rich people a lot of money. SOx is about ensuring rich investors don't lose their money more than it is about protecting the little people.

There's also the higher standards for food production etc. Chlorinated Chicken gets the headlines, but US beef is reared on steroids/hormones to bulk them up quickly. Food standards in US are defined by whoever bribes the most politicians, standards in EU are mostly defined by scientific/health guidance and generally err on the side of safety.

Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud

Re: But but but...

Once you put Windows on a client box, it needs maintained, patched, supported and that's difficult/expensive when users are prone to buggering about with them. Virtual desktops can save a lot of that pain so it's not a fair comparison.

That said, 349 (pounds or dollars) seems excessive for a desktop terminal, especially one limited to Azure desktops.

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: childish analysis

Less about what they "appear to have done" and more "what they've told us they've done" - see https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations for their actual calculations based almost wholly on the trade deficit to that country; the tariffs charged by those countries isn't part of that equation. The assumption is that the other country must have cheated to be able to get a trade surplus with the US and they must be punished for it, as opposed to them being better/more efficient/smarter at it.

Partly, this seems to be part of a negotiating tactic of Trump to try and get what he wants in concessions from other countries; the promises by Mexico and Canada delayed their tariffs for a month, he's probably hoping other countries will be rushing to his door to make promises and concessions for a better deal, but in reality, there's not much wiggle room in many negotiations. The average tariff rate the EU levied against US imports was 1% (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_25_541) and for all Trump's bluster about car trade, the fact is that most countries don't want US style cars. Petrol is cheap in the US, so they typically make huge gas guzzlers which aren't viable in countries with expensive fuel.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Yeah, overflowing shared drives - had that at previous job where a lot of JPGs of women not wearing very much was taking a significant portion of the space. Deleted the files, left a README saying something like "Who's been a naughty boy?". Few days later, the README and the folder was gone too. Not a further word was ever said of it.

Weird thing was, the miscreant had a workstation on his desk with a fair chunk of free space and if he'd kept the files there, I'd likely never have found them or cared about it.

BOFH: HR's AI hiring tool is perfectly unbiased – as long as you're us

I think the boss might need to get a Painkiller and Ram it Down his throat to deal with the headache he's gonna get when the HR team start Screaming for Vengeance about the mess they've gotten in with the AI tools. Just have to hope they don't bring to much Firepower with them.

Payday from hell as several British banks report major outages

TSB migrated out of Lloyds in 2018, although that didn't go well...

You're right about the other three being the same banking group, they probably run different OS instances for the brands, but there will be crunch points somewhere in the chain where they use the same bit of infrastructure. Doesn't explain how Barclays got caught up in it, so could well be some third party service which threw a wobbly and some banks didn't cope as well as others. Or it just some random coincidence, we may find out from the banks' post mortem comms.

FDA clears Google watch feature to call 911 if you flatline

Or the Microsoft watch with Clippy - "It looks like you're having a heart attack. Would you like some help with that?"

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

Re: He could do well

That's an outrageous accusation. I mean, you'd be suggesting that he'd forcing the head of the FAA who'd suggested fining SpaceX to resign next...

The curious story of Uncle Sam's HR dept, a hastily set up email server, and fears of another cyber disaster

Re: Cat's out of the bag.

John Bolton's comment in an interview probably said it best. "Trump doesn't want Loyalty, he wants Fealty" and that's from someone who worked closely with him.

Re: Cat's out of the bag.

And as normal, the best employees will resign (because they'll be able to find another job easily enough), leaving the worst workers (who can't find another job) in place.

Some other highlights:

"potentially resulting in physical office relocations for a number of federal workers" - if you stay on, expect that you might have to uproot your entire family.

"flexible workforce" - Flexible for the employer, not the employee.

"employees who are reliable, loyal" - that's loyal to MAGA/Trump, not the USA.

"employees who engage in .. other misconduct" - like following the rule of law rather than autocratic dictats from on high.

This is part of the drive from Trump to demolish the civil service and remake it in his image.

China ever-so slightly softens stance on possible US TikTok sale

I think the first post was spot on - "How much?". It gives him time to do some backdoor chat and sell some of his memecoins to line his pockets before accepting the advice of his advisors ("that's about all you can extort from them, sir") and letting TikTok run.

Tesla, Musk double down on $56B payday appeal

What doesn't make sense here is that $56B is more than 3 years of gross profits at Tesla. Paying him that basically says he's generated the entire profits for those 3 years. Market cap is $1.27T, that payout is about 4.5% of the total value of the company.

Ridiculous.

Elon Musk's galactic ego sows chaos in European politics

"Farage doesn't have what it takes"

"Specifically, a willingness to do whatever I tell him in order to beg like a puppy for the $100m I'm dangling in front of him."

I'm still wondering how long Trump will put up with Musk before being kicked to the kerb. Wouldn't surprise me if he got the boot before the 21st when Trump takes over.

Microsoft Edge takes a victory lap with some high-looking usage stats for 2024

I wonder how much of the increased market share is from forcing users into Edge? As an example, Facebook messenger app on Windows is no longer an actual app. It's a lightly skinned Edge window which means that when you click on a link in a message, it bypasses your browser choices and opens the page in Edge. Click on the wrong bit on the login screen? Here, have a page loaded in Bing/Edge telling you about something you don't care about, just because it was on the login screen. There seem to be more and more ways in which Windows opens Edge against your will. Then it points out that you're obviously doing something wrong because Edge is not your default browser. The Edge is your friend. Trust The Edge.

What do ransomware and Jesus have in common? A birth month and an unwillingness to die

Part of the problem with Ransomware is how to stop it. At its heart, it's editing files a user can access and most users can access a lot of files as part of their work (or home systems). All you have to do is get the victim to run something which proves annoyingly easy, despite the cyber security training most of us are subjected to. You can't remove a user's access to files without stopping them doing their job, so what do you do? If that problem can be solved, ransomware becomes less of a threat.

'That's not a bug, it's a feature' takes on a darker tone when malware's involved

Re: Sometimes there is third party...

Have a beer for the XKCD reference :)

systemd begrudgingly drops a safety net while a challenger appears, GNU Shepherd 1.0

Re: 42% less unix philosophy

The core part of systemd (faster boot times by doing startups in parallel) is a great idea and if it had stuck to that, everyone would love it. Its tendency to spread tendrils into places no-one expects it is the issue and one which Solaris did with SMF. Using a component called "tmpfiles" to create persistent files and folder is always going to ask for trouble. Added to that, the tendency for its author to dismiss any concerns doesn't help its image.

Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, with grainy pics the only tech involved

It's possible, but unlikely. The core is that he (allegedly) crossed state lines and committed premeditated murder with an illegal firearm and granting him any kind of leniency on the basis that the victim wasn't a nice person opens the floodgates for people to claim justifiable murder. Whose opinions do we follow when deciding if someone deserves to be gunned down in the street?

Barring something extraordinary, he'll be found guilty in court or he'll make some kind of plea bargain.

Amazon leaves Snowcone data migration boxes and older Snowball edge kit out to melt

Re: Nice gadget?

These devices were never intended to stay in use in the long term. They're shipped out to a customer to load on data to transfer into AWS where that transfer is faster than going over the internet (see also: station wagon full of DLT tapes). They shouldn't stay on prem for longer than it takes to load it up with the data going into AWS.

As for re-use, they're essentially relatively fancy encrypted hard drives with a NAS front end. There's probably limited value in re-use, although the ruggedisation might make them interesting in niche cases.

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

Was the flicking of the switch a mistake or a "mistake"?

Mostly, I'm surprised that running a ring mains for 25 PCs didn't blow the fuses for the lighting circuit. Certainly doesn't sound like it would pass any electrical inspection.

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Workaround

I remember an old Sun bug report for Solaris where some stress testing caused a crash in CDE. It helpfully listed a workaround: "don't pound on the mouse like a wild monkey"

This was when Sunsolve listed a lot of useful information about bug reports and before Oracle hid it all away...

Intern allegedly messed with ByteDance's LLM training cluster

Losses

"tens of millions of dollars in losses" - seriously? The AI hype train is running that big?

In any case, you have to wonder how an intern was allowed access to modify so much in the AI model? Of course, it could just be that they're struggling to make it work and they're now blaming a scapegoat to explain away their failures. Neither of those is a good look, to be honest.

AT&T claims VMware by Broadcom offered it a 1,050 percent price rise

Probably less "competitors" and more "resellers who sell VMWare and $OTHER_SOLUTION". In that instance, Broadcom could put pressure on their resellers/partners to not sell competitors' products.

Microsoft on a roll for terrible rebranding with Windows App

I can see the conversations:

"Have you got the Windows App?"

"Er, which one?"

"The Windows App, of course"

"....The Windows App for what?"

etc, etc...

Iran's cyber-goons emailed stolen Trump info to Team Biden – which ignored them

Re: It's a little funny, as an outsider...

As far as China goes, Trump has already threatened to (re)introduce tariffs against Chinese imports, so I'd assume they'd prefer Harris.

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

Re: Obviously this was planned as a two stage attack

BBC was reporting that Israel* had to "pull the trigger" early as they were worried that Hezbollah was onto them. Certainly, timing it just before (or during) an actual assault into Lebanon would have seriously hampered any defensive effort, they will presumably have a short time to regroup while Israel is now moving troops to the North. Whether Israel is reorganising for assault or defence time will tell, but the rhetoric suggests attack. That's an escalation in a volatile region and it's getting messier.

I don't know what pressing Delete will do, but it seems safe enough!

Re: Ouch!!!

I think it's a little harsh to complain to MS about a lack of warnings, given how easily Linux/Unix would have let you delete those accounts. Probably wouldn't even have given you a warning...

That said, it really should have made it clear it was deleting the account rather than just the mailbox.

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

My living room TV is 11 years old and still works fine as a TV. All the smart features are useless, because Netflix, Youtube etc changed their APIs/codecs/whatever and LG stopped updating the firmware to keep track.

MongoDB takes a swing at PostgreSQL after claiming wins against rival

Re: Not the flex they think it is

Developer time is expensive and directly attributable to the project manager's budget, timeline and by inference bonus.

Operations time is a cost to be attributed to someone else and at a later time, i.e. not the PM's problem. It's also likely to be lumped into a big pot of looking after other systems, so the pain of one system gets hidden in among the noise. As such, it's fairly easy to see why developers may get the benefit.

There's also a trend over the last 10-20 years where it's cheaper to throw CPU, Memory and faster disk at a problem than it is to develop and code something which runs more efficiently. Why spend £200k on developer time to reduce CPU cycles by 25% when you can just double server capacity for £10k?