* Posts by Paul Hovnanian

2205 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Mar 2008

How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

"you write the problem on a Post-It note, you stick it on the board, and say, 'Here's my problem, give me a shout.'

People would get their coffee; they would walk along and read the board. You'd go along and you go, 'Oh, wait a minute, I know how I can do that.' "

This isn't the same as emailing somebody. Which presumes you know the somebody who has the solution. This is posting stuff on a board for everyone to see. And having the janitor stop by and say, "Hey! I know how to solve that."

US Transpo Sec wants air traffic control rebuild in 3 years, asks Congress for blank check

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: highly regarded AI

"they have to keep in their memory all the planes they are responsible for at the moment"

Which works until that controller falls over dead from a heart attack. Or has to use the toilet. Hence the use of flight progress strips or an electronic equivalent*.

*Maintaining the capability of reverting to the paper system in the event the automation goes T.U. Not that we'd ever expect that to happen.

Computacenter IT guy let girlfriend into Deutsche Bank server rooms, says fired whistleblower

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Computacenter - Not The First Time

Nothing important ever goes on in boardrooms.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: I was called in ...

"Be very, very careful when tying equipment grounds together,"

There have been a few instances of musicians being shocked or even killed by grabbing a "hot" microphone whilst holding their guitar. In the case of IT equipment, the comm cable takes the place of the lead singer. And many I/O ports are no more robust than they are.

The only band members that seem to fare worse are Spinal Tap drummers.

Google details plans for 1 MW IT racks exploiting electric vehicle supply chain

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Fun stuff

I imagine that the Underwriters Laboratory will have to approve the design and do some of their own testing. Or data center operators won't allow it in due to insurance issues.

Some of the design will undoubtedly involve "dead front" removable rack units (pull them out and they unplug themselves from a relatively inaccessible cabinet power bus). Or the technicians will have to start wearing some serious PPE to guard against arc flash injury.

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Big Brother

Pretty much the same ...

... for all authoritarian governments. In Washington state, we can neither see a breakout of our Climate Commitment Act fees charged for each product. Nor can we audit the program to see exactly where the funds are going. Or if they got there.

I just finished re-watching Chernobyl. This line came to mind:

"But it is my experience that when the people ask questions that are not in their own best interest, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor and leave matters of the State to the State." - Zharkov

They all do it.

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Interesting

Many years ago, I did some work with a few engineers who were looking into building power line trucks based on a "waldo" type manipulator. Lineman would sit in a cab with the hand controls and raise an insulated boom into the high voltage zone. Equipped with quick change tools on the boom end, work was done by the "meat sacks" remotely and out of harm's way.

I don't know if anything came of this. I suspect not much, because you still needed (to pay) a qualified lineman. And the safety angle was easily handled by the bean counters, by just calling the union hall for another worker when one got fried.

Canada OKs construction of first licensed teeny atomic reactor

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Small nuclear reactor? That's all very well, but...

"The anti-nuke clubs aren't protesting the size of reactors, but their very existence so each new SMR is going to have a similar number of lawsuits brought against it being built/turned on."

This is generally true of nukes being sited and operated in certain locations. But a factory that builds them and ships them out for installation ... somewhere may not be susceptible to such litigation. And some of the governments with jurisdictions over those operating sites don't take too kindly with interference in their affairs. They have been known to order nuisance journalists to be chopped into little pieces. And if that extends to trouble-making lawyers, that will make me happy.

As far as nukes on the open seas, that appears to be settled law at this point. We have nuclear aircraft carriers and the Russians have at least one ice breaker. Some countries may object to such equipment making port. But that's more often an objection to the weapons as much as the propulsion. And if the industry realizes significant cost savings (once effective carbon taxes are in place), your fussy-pants anti nukes can just pay for the expensive transportation. Or just not eat.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Small nuclear reactor? That's all very well, but...

I don't think I'd like to see a passenger car nuclear reactor in the hands of a few shade-tree mechanics I know. But there are arguments for smaller modular reactors, particularly for shipping.

On the other hand, ship breaking is usually done in real third world conditions. So, maybe not.

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

I suppose China could take over the CISA functions and maintain the CVE database. Provide that as an altruistic contribution to the world's software community and earn some of those "soft power" good boy points.

Oh, and expose all the NSA backdoors it finds in various networking gear while they're at it.

Don't delete that mystery empty folder. Windows put it there as a security fix

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: "No one uses IIS these days"

IIRC, that's how the Code Red virus blew through our organization a few decades ago.

IT Security: "You've got to apply these IIS patches to secure your NT systems."

Admins: "But we're not running IIS. So we don't need the patches."

Remember when you turned on that cool looking web-based server admin tool? Well, that started IIS quietly, in the background. You've been running it ever since.

MX Linux 23.6 brings Debian freshness, without the systemd funk

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Fiddly?

"As in an ex-machine."

It's just pining for the fjords.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Fiddly?

"That's why Ubuntu came along 20 years ago"

Ubuntu: Bantu for 'I don't know how to configure Debian'.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Fiddly?

"I think this is the situation on all platforms - it's installed but not used"

Dependencies? There is getting to be a lot of stuff that expects systemd components to be present, if not running.

LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Hallucination

It's self preservation (in a way). You are the manager. The LLM is your employee. You have just given your employee a task with no solution (don't tell me you've never had a boss ask you to accomplish the impossible). So your loyal peon just makes some BS up. Either hoping you won't check. Or assuming that anything, no matter how poor a fit for the original problem, is better than nothing.

In some cases, cost/benefit (solution ranking algorithm) is being calculated incorrectly. Sometimes, no solution is cheaper than the wrong one.

California sues President Tariff

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Trollface

Tax cuts

"a tax that generally gets passed on to buyers."

Aren't they all, though? Anyway, it's nice to see California liberals finally coming out against taxes.

AWS claims 50% of Azure workloads would jump ship if licensing costs allowed

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: That's not the complaint

"Try and move your system from AWS services somewhere else."

If your application runs on a LAMP stack, no problem. Any proprietary components you need on top of that would depend on their licensing terms.

It's not AWS or Google. It's the particular server stack that you have selected. If you are stuck with Windows, it's time to sit back and think about the life choices you have made.

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Windows

Microsoft can fund it

Just let CISA sell blocks of CVE IDs in advance for a discount. I'm sure the people in Redmond will consume them almost as fast as Cheetos.

Windows Recovery Environment update fails successfully, says Microsoft

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Linux

"what's this 'device is unbootable' mentioned?"

I bet I can get it to boot something. Maybe just not Windows.

Challenge accepted.

BOFH: There's a fatal error in the blinkenlights

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Wow!

This hearkens back to the days of fake Marshall stacks.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: "English language keyboard license"

Perhaps we will finally find out what covfefe means.

Laser-cooled chips: Maybe coming soon-ish to a datacenter near you

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Scaling laser refrigeration

So in the future, closing the refrigerator door will turn the light on. Simple.

AI entrepreneur sent avatar to argue in court – and the judge shut it down fast

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

"Can I present my case with a flock of avatars each looking like the judges' nieces and grandkids ?"

Atticus Finch for me, please.

Or Perry Mason, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, Vinny Gambini, Ben Matlock. Or whoever tests well with the judge on the case.

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Read my screen?

Why don't you computers just do my work for me in the background. And leave my screen alone so I can watch cat videos in the meantime?

Boeing 787 radio software safety fix didn't work, says Qatar

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Same people that were changing out the sticky AOA sensors on the 737 MAX.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Who makes the radio

Boeing requested and received "special considerations" for the topology of Aircraft Control Domain, Airline Information Domain, and Passenger Information and Entertainment Domain networks on the 787-8 . Essentially allowing them to be interconnected (where in previous models they were isolated).

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/12/28/E7-25075/special-conditions-boeing-model-787-8-airplane-systems-and-data-networks-security-protection-of

So there's no telling what sort of "weirdness" there may be jumping back and forth between systems. I'm not certain if the tuning control panel (TCP, poor choice of acronyms IMO) and the radios (boxes in racks in the electronics racks down in the hold) use their own dedicated links, or the multipurpose networking buses Boeing proposed above. But good luck debugging the latter.

UK officials insist 'murder prediction tool' algorithms purely abstract

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: You are already guilty...

Whatever else you do, DO NOT think of elephants.

No joke: Microsoft foolishly published inaccurate price list on April 1st

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Oh please!

Just stop. My sides are still splitting over that one about Microsoft pushing everyone onto Windows 11.

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Handwaving

"in place as an emergency system"

For load balancing. Two (or more) servers, geographically separated. But each with full copies of all the data.

We did this for years. The company was divided into two divisions. The North division had their server, the South had theirs. Each in a convenient broom closet local to their principle users. But in the event of a failure, just connect to the opposite division's system and fetch your stuff out of the subdirectory allocated to you. Good luck postutating an event like a meteor that would hit both sites, about 30 miles apart.

It worked well until the IT godfathers mandated that ALL corporate data and servers were to be housed in their shiny new data center. We relocated both systems there. To a site that was haplessly located a few hundred yards from the Seattle earthquake fault.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: "built to survive minor accidents"

"Maybe I invented them :-)"

I think the Russians invented them.

Developer wrote a critical app and forgot where it ran – until it stopped running

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Similar thing, but zombie user not laptop

Didn't something like this happen to one of Microsoft's domain name registrations? Service stopped working. Tech support traced it back to the domain having been dropped from DNS. Tech support person called registrar and had them put the $35 annual fee on his personal card.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Ah... deployment...

Something similar. I had written a web page that "collected" results from various different document management systems and presented them on one page. Just as a proof of concept/demo of what this new technology could do (back in the days when Bill Gates still didn't "get" the Internet). It was hosted on my office Linux system (that's a whole other story). The factory, the end users for this collection of documents were quite discontented with the current state of affairs. But getting any fixes through IT management would take many months. If approved at all.

My boss took the demo to his weekly factory staff meeting. Upon seeing the simplicity of the web system, a very highly placed manager on the production floor said, "We want this in production in two weeks."

With that managers pull, we got some space on a Sun server where we could build an NCSA httpd service (this before Apache) copy my Perl code over, have the IT department bless it and flip the "On" switch. Because the alternative was having the factory people pull documents through my desktop machine (which I suspected they had started to do on the day after the demo).

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

That's pretty much my story in software

I taught myself as I was working the projects.

First one was an ARINC 429 reader we needed to certify some avionics. The new, all digital cockpit was to have no "steam gauges", so we needed to emulate a flight management display which had not yet been built. I told the boss, "Give me a PC, some technicians lab time and development software and I'll build one."

The tech shop wire-wrapped up an ISA card with ARINC UARTs, I wrote the software (assembly driver, Turbo Pascal UI) and it worked.

We had a bunch of new hires, fresh out of college. Probably with better software skills than me. But I was the first to raise my hand. One guy asked my boss why I got all the "cool projects" while they were busy tracing schematics and counting wires.

My boss said (I heard this later), "Paul has been working in the industry for a few years. So I figured he could handle the job."

This guy then came over to me and asked me where I used to work. "The power company," I replied.

"So, what did you do?"

"Just drove around in the county in a pickup truck, pounding in stakes where the crews were supposed to set poles."

He walked away with a rather confused look.

Microsoft tastes the unexpected consequences of tariffs on time

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Shiny laptop screens

Caution: Video may contain reflect-o-porn

SpaceX Dragon pod arrives at ISS to finally pick up stranded Boeing astronaut pair

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Missed a good practical joke

The recovery team didn't open the capsule hatch wearing ape suits.

Boeing's Starliner future uncertain as NASA weighs next steps

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: I'd hesitate too

"The overrun will get run through the system and get tacked on to another project."

Not if government accountants are keeping watch. That'll get someone sent to the slammer in short order.

Someone _IS_ still there to watch? Right?

CISA fires, now rehires and immediately benches security crew on full pay

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Coat

Rehired. On full pay.

Clearly not a cost savings/efficiency measure then.

But benched so they don't interfere with Russian/Chinese espionage efforts?

My jacket. The one with the cash envelope stuffed in the pocket.

Microsoft isn't fixing 8-year-old shortcut exploit abused for spying

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Not just Windows

I've seen some pretty good demos of "nasty stuff" distributed in places like StackOverflow. "Just paste this simple command" into your shell to list files. Targeted at Linux/*NIX, which just happen to contain a bunch of tiny font commands that you really shouldn't be running.

Or e-mails that are a few hundred kb long, appearing to have one line of text. My terminal e-mail reader doesn't do fonts. And it certainly doesn't auto-execute stuff either.

We have to wean users off the expectation that this "magic" technology will automatically entertain them with dancing cat videos at the click of one button.

Extortion crew threatened to inform Edward Snowden (?!) if victim didn't pay up

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Edward Snowden?

"When he first turned up in Russia he was allowed to stay provided he kept his head down, mouth shut and generally dropped out of sight"

At the very minimum, I'd expect Snowden to steer clear of anything not attached to a highly morale principle. Or should he surface somewhere that the USA can get their mitts on him, association with purely for profit capers can be used as justification for a maximum sentence.

AI crawlers haven't learned to play nice with websites

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Wee need ...

... a good filter to detect the probable presence of an AI scraper reading a system. And then switch them to the phlogiston files, flat earth models and Lamarckian inheritance.

Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Flame

"People have obviously forgotten how to read."

Fahrenheit 451

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Trollface

Showing my solidarity ...

... with the anti-Elon/Trump crowd. Smile and wave as I drive by, rolling coal, in my bro-truck.

This is the FBI, open up. China's Volt Typhoon is on your network

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

The FBI ...

... probably could have thought through their approach a bit more. Like request that the person contacted should forward the information to their IT team or consult with a security expert.

But then that's not just the FBI. I had my credit card company ask me to call them back at a number I didn't recognize. About some questionable charges. No way I'm calling that. But I did contact them on the customer service number on the back of the card. After getting the charge problem handled, I made a suggestion that they never request customers contact them through unknown numbers. It instills bad habits. And I don't really mind being forwarded by the primary service contact to the proper department.

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Nice article!

Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Middle age bloat

Thicker as in more dense? Or more voluminous?

"you can't say on this page the atmosphere is getting warmer but then say here it is getting colder"

Yes I can. The atmosphere isn't a column of gas with a uniform temperature/pressure profile. The tropopause is one interesting point where there is an inflection or change in temperature gradient. it moves up and down with seasons as well as distance from the poles.

The IT world moves fast, so why are admins slow to upgrade?

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: Danger Will Robinson.

"I have "business consultant" morons to content with here who are pushing "move to the cloud" yet are unable to provide any tangible benefits"

Benefits to whom? If they are not collecting kickbacks .... er, finders fees from cloud providers for the delivery of another customer, then they are indeed morons.

If they have their own yachts and private jets, then they are in fact quite smart. They are just not using that grey matter for your benefit.

Athena Moon lander officially FOADs – falls over and dies – in crater

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Never throw out stuff that you might be able to use. Where would Mark Watney be if someone had "cleaned up" the Mars Pathfinder before his mission?

So … Russia no longer a cyber threat to America?

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Doveryai, no proveryai

Trust but verify.

Trump may want to drop our cyber attacks as a carrot to promote negotiations. But it doesn't mean we should stop checking the incoming phishing e-mails from Russian based hacker groups.

Please fasten your seatbelts. A third of US air traffic control systems are 'unsustainable'

Paul Hovnanian Silver badge

Re: not new situation

"Why don't they just buy one?"

Federal acquisition rules. Things have to be put out for bid. If some vendor doesn't receive a bid invitation, throw out everything and start again. If some vendor doesn't like the specifications because (they claim) it somehow favors a competitor, throw out everything and start again. If some vendor loses and takes the whole thing to court, throw out everything and start again. Etc.