Posts by K

ICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level

Better late than never..

But probably 15-20 years too late - Split horizon resolution is all the range these days.

Google pulls RISC-V support from generic Android kernel

They tried this back in the late 90's with PGP, it didn't get very far... hell they even tried forcing all PCs to have a backdoor.

Besides, America doesn't do this alone.. Nvidia, Intel, AMD etc rely upon global sales to cover the cost of R&D... take that away, and some-one else will step into the spot, yes probably ARM or a Chinese company.. the only bug loser is the US economy and they'll no longer dominate the Tech game.

Broadcom boss Hock Tan acknowledges 'some unease' among VMware community

Re: Way to go : Tan

Software is only worth as much as customers are willing to pay.. as an IT Manager, if VMWare was more expensive, then we'd have rolled with other solutions - i.e. Hyper-V and Xen would have gotten a bigger slice of the pie.

These days, there are more viable alternatives, which might not have the polish and shine of vSphere.. but companies will flock to these, which will in turn feed more investment and better products.

The only 1 outcome from this, is broadcom will milk the largest clients, and that boon will only last as long as it takes those clients to migrate away, and many will... and at the same time, they're giving up their dominance of the on-premise market.

Can't afford to play? Sure, but why buy Rolls Royce, when a Kia will do..

That home router botnet the Feds took down? Moscow's probably going to try again

Re: Wtf?

Cause some people like role-playing as SysAdmin.. There's several rather large subs on Reddit dedicated to it.

Re: Ubiquiti used to be my go-to source...

TP Link have an eco-system similar to UBNT, often cheaper.. whether it's better, I can't say.. if your paranoid of anything with the "Made In China" tag, then probably not.

That's not the web you're browsing, Microsoft. That's our data

But that's not sustainable, even in the short term... you'll eventually run a foul of some exploit, bug, or need some feature...

AWS exec: 'Our understanding of open source has started to change'

Your understanding is changing, you sure?

If so, it's not for the better.

I get the spirit of OSS, but it is the likes of AWS, that have gourged themselves on a free buffet, and when you take somebody else's product, and start to compete against them, and give absolutely nothing back, i.e. giving nothing towards development and new features.. then it's understandable, it is gonna piss off the developers and they are gonna become defensive... and when AWS response each time is 2 midd

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

Re: With two-faced "friends" like Dyson, Britain doesn't need enemies

"go out and enjoy the new found SOVEREIGNTY and CONTROL"

I think that is the issue.. there is nothing to enjoy, shit started running down the stairs the day after the referendum... and since we shut the proverbial door, the shit is now so deep, we're swimming it it.

What makes it worse, its impossible to escape - we've got 2 political parties that can't move on from it, with media outlets seemingly finding a way to tie everything back to Brexit, cause its an easy way to generate clickes... and a depressed population that should be en-mass prescribed xanax.

Zoom's new London hub – where 'remote work' meets 'we need you back in the office'

You'd think... but no cigar, at least for a lot of IT folk.

Many companies have tried,.and all they got was deaf-ears..

Let's face it, Your IT managers and directors have all brought houses in the country or by the beach. If they're not going in, there is no chance your average Sysadmin will..

Still, trying to enforce it would be short sighted - the IT market is bouyant, so all they'd achieve is an exodus of their key staff.. cause plenty of other companies are offering flexibility.

Commute should be considered contracted hours...

Easy way to fix this, commute time should be considered part of our contracted hours, and travel costs treated as expenses.

We'll then see how keen the CxO's are on a return to office!

Writings on the wall for these companies

I keep my finger on the pulse of this.

Last year there were quite a few dodgy articles, insinuating everybody had already gone back.. and whilst I don't normally wear a tin foil hat, these articles, are blatant attempts by geriatric politicians and business groups to manipulate both employees, and employers...

You just need to look at Bloomberg's speech a couple of weeks ago, im paraphrasing but 'NYC spending billions on unused offfices" - here is a thought, get rid of those premises, and save the tax-payer.

On the flip-side, in past couple of weeks, there has been a flurry of research released on this have been several very interesting studies released on. The summary is:

Whilst the CxO keep pushing for return to office. The most senior and experienced staff are not adhering, and the majority of these (70%) would walk away if they were forced.

Another paper showed that companies that allow staff to choose, have over twice as much success with recruitment and retention. In addition to be more profitable..

Graphene foam is the future of IoT power, maybe

"measuring their unique temporal pressure profile"

What a polite way of saying "We'll be using your weight to identify you".

I can then see this being used by the Smart Meeting Room, to determine how many Chocolate Digestives they'll allow to be consumed in this meeting!

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

Re: Keys not yours

BMW are already doing it with their heated seats..

Thousands of subreddits go dark in mega-protest over Reddit's app-killing API prices

Re: Gold mine

The Reddit Nuke extension for Chrome worked well for this, for some reason Google removed it.. but it's still been available on Edge...

When the API changes were announced, I thought it best just to have 1 last clean up, then discovered Reddit has now blocked it from working with the site.

But there are a couple of python scripts on Github that will do this... it took a few runs, but eventually all my tarnished posts have been nuked...until I post more, assuming my favourite subs come back, and the Slide for Reddit app keeps working.

Meta virtual reality interrupted by financial reality as thousands lose their jobs

Sorry to see jobs go..

But thank f*ck reality is biting.

I've had to listen to numerous CxO's of multi-billion company's drivel on about "The face of the Internet is changing, the metaverse is coming."

It's another case of businesses, listening to evangelists... where what they should be looking at, is the porn industry. If its not being used to peddle smut... then it's dead end for everything else.

Are you ready to go all-in, head-first, on a laptop? ASUS's Zenbook Pro 16X asks for that commitment

"The machine can charge on USB-C"

Over the past 6 months, I've had the pleasure of several different consumer models, all still DC-inputs, but also had separate Thunderbolt4 and USB C ports, they charged great via the USB-C.. but Thunderbolt? huh nope, forget that.

Does make me wonder who approves or tests the final spec of these devices - Its a huge oversight, as one of the biggest uses for Thunderbolt is Docks to consolidate all the cabling.

60% of Germany's 5G network is Huawei, says Chinese embassy

I'm giving up..

Commenting on these posts.

This had zero to do with spying or national security as we'd see it, it's purely economical warfare.

Once Trump had harassed and bullied the "friends and allies", then finally got his way - he offered a deal to China, to soften up the restrictions on Huawei... I can't recall exactly what he wanted in return.. But the point is, the smug orange asshole used as pawns..

Where are the women in cyber security? On the dark side, study suggests

Re: So these figures mean...

ELI5 - Who on earth is that? I did try to find references.

GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

Its not quite as bad as claimed...

I've been using it for around a year, and even have a subscription, 99% of the time, the code it proposes is literally just statement-completion.. i.e. if x or z then y ... and yes, its very handy, it provides more of a shorthand than anything.

There have been 2 occasions where it has effectively proposed that is more than 1 line.. and I won't deny, this blew my mind, as one of them fair a fairly complex recursion function.. which did save me a lot of time, but likewise, I knew how to write it myself and it was word for word a standard recursion function.

But I'm not sure I will renew after this period expire, I'm extremely lazy, so the idea of CoPilot, and AWS's CodeWhisperer is amazing, but both absolutely take the piss when it comes to respecting those who built the products which form their core of their services.

Apple exec confirms iPhones will switch to USB-C because 'we have no choice'

Re: But what about Brexit ?

"which the UK believes should not be able to overule the UK supreme court."

Yep, as we're all seeing the shit-show that is the US Supreme Court, now full right-wing religious zealots, who are putting the country back 100 years - acting as puppets for a right-wing sociopath, who admires the leaders Russia, North Korea and China, as they are "strong".

Cause that is such a great place to be.. I used to have a lot of respect for UK courts, but part of that, what their was always recourse... now, they're open to political manipulation.

Former Cisco boss launches upstart to rattle old employer's cage

Re: The real reason for the USA's stance on Huawei

Love the way this is downvoted... Yet nobody offers their differing view.

But I'd reckon its pretty much spot-on, the UK's GCHQ and other major European countries, had dedicated teams whose sole job was to tear apart Huawei kit, to look for exploits and backdoor, and not once in its 15+ years of operation did they find anything.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/huawei-gchq-security-evaluation-uk

The sole reason they got ejected from West was, they were offering comparable products, cheaper, and the likes of Cisco, Nokia, Siemens wouldn't compete.. So they complained to the politicians.

Then Trump chucks his toys out the pram, tries to piss off the Chinese, who just ignore it, so he tries a different tactic, of threatening allies... Citing risk. To national security and infrastructure, and even to this day, not one iota of credible evidence had emerged, no smoking gun.

Then more recent cently, it came out, this was all about the money.. Its in an article somewhere, if I can find the link, I'll post it.

GitLab U-turns on deleting dormant projects after backlash

Re: Neat, must remember to put bugs into code so it has to be continuously revised

Unfortunately code that doesn't get updated gets seen as abandon ware, even if it's feature complete and has no known bugs.. Its part of the throw away culture.

Calls for bans on Chinese CCTV makers Hikvision, Dahua expand

Re: I've got zero faith in anything gov.uk says anymore...

Thats exactly what is it...

Shits not going so well at home, so they shout "squirrel". Sometimes, I'm ashamed to be British, cause so many of us fall for it, even the people who be considered the brightest!

I've got zero faith in anything gov.uk says anymore...

Several days ago a report was published called for the banning of facial recognition and biometric profiling...

Yet, all these self-sanctimonious assholes sat in Westminster, who are meant to be dealing with our own problems, they spew this bullshit, and completely ignore the fact that the same shit is now happening in this country.

MP's I suspect this site above your IQ level (quite an achievement), but if you read this... stop looking abroad for amusement, I assure, we have enough issues in the UK to do that... Now ask the Civil Service to give you dumbed down version of events, and do what your paid for!

We've only gone and got our hands on an early preview of Fleet, the forthcoming JetBrains IDE

Re: Command Palette? Argh!

Got to agree here.. I use VSCode as a general text editor, Python IDE, Docker IDE and K8S IDE... and I rarely ever use the command palette, it's like look for a needle in a haystack... I'd rather have a yucky tabbed ribbon bar, than I can at least put short cuts in...

And whilst hot keys are great... They also suck when you have large volumes of them!

VMware waiting for Tanzu take-off, tops guidance as customers kick tyres

The problem is...

They're getting little interest directly from DevOps teams, they will also lean to GCP and AWS as they have control over the core environment, no pesky IT, Network or Server teams to answer, and outside of that, general IT teams are yet to discover Kubernetes (it's CNCF own fault, they market it as "For Devs").

VMWare may find a small market amongst small shops and hobbyists with their community edition, but they are competing with Rancher, who pretty much own that.

VMWare could do something drastic, like give some of that NSX and security to Open Source, along with with good management tools.

That'll increase their street cred and live-in, as L3 network security is notoriously time consuming, difficult and hard to implement in K8S.. tools for these seem to keep getting hoovered up by PA and Cisco et al - I'm just waiting for them to buy Calico and Cilium, that will effectively drain the OSS offerings.

Microsoft previews Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, but why bother when VS Code runs just fine on Apple hardware?

Missed opportunity

One of the reasons I dumped Visual Studio was lack on Python support on MacOS, looks like they missed that boat again, oh well... Maybe VS 2030 will have it

VMware to kill SD cards and USB drives as vSphere boot options

Does my head in... I've used USB to boot dozens of ESXi for 10+ years... I've never had a single problem. I even have 5 at home running ESXi 7 with zero issues!

Rather dictating they should simply ask, and suggest it has limited support. This all stems from "Two customers had problems, so we're going to screw you all over."

I may look to see if PXE is feasible... I ain't wasting any more money on storage.

Metro Bank techies placed at risk of redundancy, severance terms criticised

Re: Industry standard redundancy terms?

I know several places this has happened... One place let go most of their network team, cause they were acquired and thought the parent company would let their network team take over - they were forced them back in ad contractors.. within a couple of months those folk went from driving banged-uo VW Golfs tand Focus's to top of the range shiny Aldo's and BMW.

What goes around comes around.

First RISC-V computer chip lands at the European Processor Initiative

Re: Typical EU

Yay, tin foil hat time.

Brexiteers are like that crazy ex-girlfriend, who dumped you and then stalks you, cause if she can't move on, then you can't either.

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

The more they assault it...

The more people will want it!

Government is missing 1 key thing here, people are sick of all the privacy scandals, being tracked and where X has been hacked and data leaked .. it's not only private or commercial website, it government as well...

So let them keep making it high profile, cause in the end, all they're is raising awareness - and as the famous saying goes, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Great reset? More like Fake Reset: Leaders need a reality check if they think their best staff will give up hybrid work

Re: Going on-site has certainly been made redundant in IT

I work for a large international company, and this question often comes up...

Not only would they lose all the expertise that has taken then years to build-up (at great expense), this would also massively impact their reputation.

Troll jailed for 5 years after swatting of Twitter handle owner ends in death

Honestly - His parents or carers should be held partially accountable for this. Instead, they buy a PC or laptop for the little shit(s), and as long as they're not seen or making a nuisance, everything is good - I see this all the time!

Teaching kids right from wrong, it's part of the price for dipping the wick!

Digital delinquent deletes developer's database during disastrous Docker deployment, defaults damned

It's an interesting point..

As a deciple of the BoFH philosophy, I can't believe I'm about to admit to knowing this, it makes me physically queesy:

This only happens if you actually forward the database port... If both DB and Frontend are containerised, then there is zero need to do that..

So it's not a fault of docker, more a poorly configured container...

The M in M1 is for moans: How do you turn a new MacBook Pro into a desktop workhorse?

Thanks... but no thanks..

I'd rather stick with a CalDigit, its the same price but far more capable.... When that goes bang, I saw another dock with a built-in 10GbE, that will do nicely :P

Help wanted, work from anywhere ... except if you're located in Colorado

Be aware of those who don't share!

Years ago when I got made rendundant and ended up moving to London, I quickly learnt

1) When recruiters says salary is not set yet, it means the company has not set aside budget - there is no position, they are using you to reaserch the market, so walk away.

2) When you are told, salary is "flexible", it means they are offering below market rate, so walk away.

3) When companies do play games like this, it often originates from their "culture", i.e. if they are shitty to potential recruits, they will be shitty to those working there..

I only have 1 rule when talking with a company - An interview is a 2 way street, I'm also evaluating them.. so they best be prepared to disclose projects, salaries and benefits on the first call.

Users wail over neverending queue: Nope, not the supermarket. GitHub Actions is having a workflow wobble

Odd...

I only just started playing with these on the 1st ... what a strange coincidence.

Flagship Chinese chipmaker collapses before it makes a single chip or opens a factory

Re: Wow, flame bait.

>> I'm struggling thinking real people would actually believe the CCP is amazing. These threads must be started by torolls. The US, Japan, Korea, are democracies, for a little bit longer hopefully anyway.

Not the case - I'm 40 and from the UK, I've been posting on El Reg for almost 20 years (You can check my history), thats a hell of a long time to be a troll.

The CCCP is not "amazing", neither is China. But then again, it's also not "dastardly evil", it's just different... a different political system, different ethics, different motivators.

In the past 5 years, I've seen the West turn China into the Bogeyman of the 21st century.. It drives me nuts that it doesn't concern others like yourself, I see politicians sleep-walking us back to the 1960-80's and living in a shitty world with another cold war... thanks, but no thanks..

I'd rather voice my opinion and call bullshit where I see it.

Re: More to this than meets the eye

> No idea why people repeat CCP propaganda about China being brilliant and will overcome sanctions.

First off, there are no "sanctions" on China, you may be confusing them with Iran or Russia, or the fact there are export restrictions to some Chinese "entities". Given 50%+ of the tech in your home is either built in China, or has significant components that are built-in China.. No western government would dare for fear of pissing off their voters, since they can't get the latest and great iPhone.

Second, I take it you've never been to China? Over the past 30 years, they've gone from a third-world back-water, to challenging the US for "biggest economy".. They've effectively done what the USSR could not.. So even if the CCCP are pumping smug "we're frikkin awesome", they may have a point.

Third, you are assuming Chinese citizens want a "western way of life", sure some Chinese want "freedom of expression", but most don't give a shit, what they want is a comfortable life - Which the CCCP has delivered in droves (as mentioned in point #2)... As far as they are concerned, this is a golden-age. So why would they want to over throw?

I agree with the part about steeling and copycatting, but to be honest, thats a problem of western making - China had no concept of "owning an idea". Every company that outsourced to China is part of that problem, they saw an opportunity to improve their margins and offload costs associated with manufacturing. it was extremely shortsighted (hindsight is a wonderful thing) and now our own capacity is minuscule and the West is reliant upon them... But likewise, they are reliant upon us to buy their products....

Welcome to Globalisation!

Re: More to this than meets the eye

@CheesyTheClown You've nailed the hell out of that ... 100% spot-on.

Trump was a shorted-sighted moron, by stripping away Chinese access to US licensed tech, they'll simply roll their own - The only loser here is the US, including current and future income from licensing, the political capital and bargaining power it offered.

Protectionism will work in the short-term, but once China has established manufacturing, selling kit for 30-40% the cost that Western companies offer it for, over time more and more $$$ will be heading east, rather than west..

Don't get me wrong, competition between companies is a good thing ... But competition between countries is dangerous, collaboration is far more productive and beneficial. Also much of this is China's very own doing, and they do have a "victim complex"..

Pressure builds on Nominet as members demand to know leadership's contingency plans for when they’re fired

Does anybody know if there is a government regular who has oversight of Nominet?

At an outsider, it seems they're operating against the principles of a non-profit NGO.. I'm the last person to call for government intervention... but f*ck me, somebody please call OFCOM.

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

Re: Further simplicity and ease of use...

There is some merit, but I'd 100% be against this, purely for philosophical reasons.

The "woke" brigade on Reddit and elsewhere deem the usage of "GIMP", "gimp" and "gimped" to be extremely offensive, and should never be used under any circumstances. I refuse to give any ammo that those sanctimonious-vegan-hippies can proclaim as "success" to prove their righteousness.

I will obviously now crawl back into my cesspit, until the next opportunity arises!

Former NCSC chief says US sanctions made Britain strip Huawei from mobe networks

> As opposed to the traditional: turn up, rename the place, take all the stuff, kill the locals model ?

No - As opposed to "Here is a few hundred million", spend it wisely... Then only £500k makes it way to the intended use, as there are 20 middle-men skimming a few million each to cover "handling and administration costs.

Foreign Aid into places like Africa is a huge profitable business... Why do you think after the hundreds of billions the West has ploughed into Africa (via Foreign Aid and Charity) had done so little - Yet the few countries that have managed to stamp out most of the corruption, now have semi-decent economies.

Agreed.

I travelled around parts of the middle-east and south-east Asia over the past few years, and the Chinese were operating huge infrastructure everywhere I went, 2 particularly stood of note, a huge land-reclamation project in Sri Lanka, and also a massive extension of the airport in the Maldives (I can't wait to head back there).

The Chinese are extremely shrewd when it comes to these types of projects, rather than giving money, they provide the plans, materials and man-power - Which feeds backs into the Chinese economy, whilst leaving those countries in-debt to the CCCP... Honestly, the UK and the West in general, should learn from this model. It might not generate as many local-jobs, but at least we can control exactly how money is spent and reduce fraud.

It will be interesting to see how the Chinese try to apply influence in these type of locations in the coming years.

Give 'em SSPL, says Elastic. No thanks, say critics: 'Doubling down on open' not open at all

RE: Sorry but, bollocks.

Frikkin Amen... lets give a "hallelujah" for brother A/C....

I mainly consider AWS the culprit, they profit the most and do the least - what an age we live in, Microsoft does more for Open Source!

Either way, all the cloud-providers are making-bank off the time, sweat and overtime of others. The companies such as Elastic who develop open-source products need support, whether this is the contribution of developers, financial donations, or purchase of commercial-support... or perhaps something else.

Between 2017-19, I worked for a huge AWS client and had access to their devs. They do occasionally feed fixes back into projects, but it's done extremely low-key, there is pressure with-in to keep distance between AWS's brand and their "SaaS" offering, and the open-source products that power them. They also have a reputation for using JIT-forking, i.e. they'd rather see the main product developer go to the wall, they then fork, and offer a modicum of support.

How good are you at scoring security vulnerabilities, really? Boffins seek infosec pros to take rating skill survey

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) is a useful tool

Its useful ... But it is extremely subjective.

For example, consider a dangerous exploit in RDP that impacts Windows 10:

1) A corporate IT team would would rate it high.

2) A SaaS service IT team, would shrug and rate it low-medium

3) A Russian IT team, would rate it as vokda or even champagne .

Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 Gen 8: No boundaries were pushed in the making of this laptop – and that's OK

Awesome machines

That is... Until the end-user team, deploy an image with so many endpoint agents that they run like an Atom!

Larry Ellison says he's not following Oracle to Texas, prefers his private Hawaii pad

Re: Austin, of course

Reads like part of the new-reporting in CyberPunk 2077, Texas is a republic at war with the rest of the US..

Overpriced, underpowered, and over here: Microsoft to bring the Surface Duo to British shores in early 2021

Re: Uncle Microsoft,

Nothing wrong with double denim... Kevin Bacon pulls it off spectacularly!

Cops raid home of ousted data scientist who created her own Florida COVID-19 dashboard

Re: This isn't about Trump

Its generally this way the world over at the moment, I sum it up in 3 words:

Preach - About about how everybody is hard-done by, and its not their personal responsibility

Point - The finger at somebody convenient, who can be target easily

Promise - To make naughty and nasty targets pay