Posts by Duncan Macdonald

Firefox and Thunderbird hit the fortnightly release treadmill

What is the point of updating Thunderbird ?

An email program's job does not change rapidly (receive emails - show emails - compose emails -send emails) so there is no justification for rapid changes.

Apart from (unwanted) cosmetic changes and unwanted (and unused) new features, very little has improved since version 63 (back in 2018) which I only upgraded from when I went to Windows 11.

As for Firefox - the inclusion of AI (which I have turned off) just added to the software bloat for very little purpose.

Rather than continually fiddling with the appearance and other useless changes, the development teams should spend at least the next six months doing a full code review and eliminating bugs.

A once per year feature upgrade rate is fast enough to keep up with website changes while being slow enough to not irritate users finding overly frequent user interface changes.

EU and UK officially blame Russian spies for cyberattack on Poland's power grid

Gentleman !!!

Remember Putin was a senior officer in the KGB before he left to enter politics.

No gentleman would ever reach such a position in the KGB.

Putin was firmly on the dark side long before the breakup of the USSR.

Icon for what Putin has done to Ukraine and caused to be done to Russia =========>

Perseverance rover finds even more signs of extinct life on Mars

It is almost certain that life once existed on Mars

There was a period of hundreds of millions of years during which Mars had surface water and there was life on Earth.

During that period Earth and Mars would both have been struck many times by meteorites large enough to eject fragments into space.

Many lifeforms are tough enough to survive being in space for several years (as seen on the outside of the ISS).

Meteorites from one planet could easily carry life to the other planet.

The big question - did life in this solar system originate on Earth and then infect Mars or did it originate on Mars and then infect Earth?

This icon seems appropriate ============>

Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone

Is it possible to block the Google updates ?

My phone (Pocophone F1) has an old version of Android (10). Is it possible to just block ALL updates so the the existing software just stays at the current versions.

(I do NOT use any financial application on my phone so I do not care if this makes it impossible to install a banking app.).

Iran claims US used backdoors to knock out networking equipment during war

Old equipment - no budget for replacement

Iran probably had a lot of Cisco equipment and no one provided the budget to replace it with NSA-backdoor free Huawei equipment.

Given what happened, I expect there to be a LOT of Cisco equipment on the secondhand markets in the next couple of years.

(Also expect a lot of anti-Huawei rules to be removed in countries outside the US.)

Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience

Re: Surely Edge can be nuked from space ?

I use the Norton firewall to deny all Edge programs access to the internet - so far it seems to be doing the trick.

50 GW of datacenter demand queues up for UK grid access

Re: Perhaps sense can prevail - Not likely

The UK has had ONE useful politician in the last 100 years. Winston Churchill was a useful figurehead in WW2.

As for the rest - if someone did the Guy Fawkes job properly, the main public regret would be for the Big Ben clock.

Icon for my opinion of politicians ============>

Then add another huge chunk for all vehicles being electric

The datacenter demand is the easiest to deal with - just deny planning permission for all datacenters that need more than 10MW. Datacenters do not add a significent number of jobs once the construction phase is over so there is very little reason for the UK want them.

Dealing with the "Green" demand that all internal combustion vehicles are removed from the roads is going to require far more added electricity generation and distribution infrastructure.

Well over 20GW of additional generation would be needed to provide the energy for the vehicles. (If the load was absolutely uniform throughout the year then 12GW would just suffice. However as the demand varies over the course of every day (home charging can only take place when the vehicle is at home) the demand will be very non-uniform.)

Add to that the requirement for most urban roads in the UK needing to be dug up to install higher capacity electric cables along with replacing most urban distribution transformers with higher capacity ones to actually feed the power to homes to allow them to charge the vehicles. (For those people who say that fast chargers (eg at supermarkets) should be used, they cost far more (50-90 p/kWh) than domestic electricity (under 25p/kWh)).

Icon for the "Green" all electric vehicle idea ==============>

Stash or splash? Lawmakers ask NASA to find alternatives for International Space Station

Re: Bad idea

The volatiles are not a problem - venting the ISS would easily dispose of them.

Next-gen nuclear reactors safe enough to skip full environmental reviews, says Trump admin

Re: Highly enriched fuel - NOT Nonsense

The first Magnox was a prototype - the full size Magnox reactors (eg the ones that were at Oldbury) managed over 200MW electrical output.

CO2 or heavy water cooled reactors can manage with less enrichment than light water cooled ones due to not having so much neutron absorption.

Small research reactors (usually under 1MW - often pond cooled) need high enrichment because of the neutron losses at the edge and in the coolant

A reactor core needs to have enough reactive material (U235 or Pu239) to sustain a chain reaction - the smaller the core, the more concentrated the reactive material needs to be.

Highly enriched fuel

The smaller a nuclear reactor is, the higher the enrichment of the fuel needs to be (due to neutron loss at the edge of the core).

A large gas cooled reactor (such as the old british Magnox design) can run on non-enriched fuel (0.7% U235).

Small water cooled reactors (such as the ones in nuclear submarines) need highly enriched urainium (from 20% U235 up to 95% U235)

Highly enriched urainium is a terrorists dream target.

This icon seems apt ============>

UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered: First ever version of UNIX written in C is running again

Wrong disk size

Removable RK05 disk drives had 2.4MB of storage not 1.5MB. (The fixed RK05F had twice the capacity - 4.8MB as it halved the track to track distance. This could be done as a disk cartridge would only be used in one drive so there was no need to allow for drive to drive variations.)

I remember using RK05 drives back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The race to shore up Europe’s power grids against cyberattacks and sabotage

Re: There is a simple fix - which will not be implemented

Unfortunately it IS being done over the public internet as it is cheaper and does not require the power companies to hire skilled network technicians.

Given the choice between insecure and cheap or secure and expensive mismanagement will always choose the cheap option.

There is a simple fix - which will not be implemented

If the electricity grid controls have NO connection to the internet (airgap Airgap AIRGAP AIRGAP) then the attackers have no point of entry.

Unfortunately mismanaement insists on connecting everything to the internet.

Industrial control systems should NOT be connected to the internet.

The perfect AWS storm has blown over, but the climate is only getting worse

Re: Too big to fail

Unfortunately politicians are corrupt. If a proposed measure would harm the profits of big companies then a few well placed backhanders will ensure that it does not pass (or at least is delayed for decades).

For a couple of examples look at the tobacco industry delaying laws that would require health warnings and the auto industry fighting the ban on lead in petrol.

Canon claims its nanoimprint litho machines capable of 5nm chip production

Mask lifespan ?

The mask will gradually suffer from deformation and erosion due to the imprint cycle. How many impressions can be done until the mask is too degraded for further use will be one of the main determining factors in how economic the process is.

Climate goals go up in smoke as US datacenters turn to coal

Coal can be cheaper

If you do not care about pollution and do not have taxes on coal or CO2 emission then coal fired generation is much cheaper than gas fired generation. Coal can be mined in large opencast mines with outputs of millions of tons per year. Allowing for the current cost of coal and natural gas and the higher energy content per ton of natural gas gives an energy cost advantage to coal of almost 2 to 1 (2MWh from coal for the same price as 1MWh from natural gas). Coal also has the advantage of being easy to store in large quantity at power stations removing the risks of being dependent on pipelines.

Pollution restrictions and taxes on CO2 emissions can easily overcome the basic price advantage of coal (as has happened in the EU where coal fired generation is being phased out).

The first rule of liquid cooling is 'Don't wet the chip.' Microsoft disagrees

Re: Similar in size to a human hair you say?

Not even practical with water - silicon + water + heat + metals + voltage = a certain recipe for corrosion. (And given the atomic scales of modern chip structures only a very tiny amount of corrosion would be enough to disable a chip.)

A liquid other than water would be needed - something that can not react with silicon (or any other constituent of a chip) is needed.

VMware to lose 35 percent of workloads in three years – some to its friends at ‘proper clouds’

Consider the costs of staying with Broadcom

With the large cost increase arising from the Broadcom takeover of VMWare, it is time to consider the alternative of actually having trained staff that can manage OpenStack.

Training costs money BUT it can save far more money even over a short term let alone the long term (consider future price increases from Broadcom).

Staying with Broadcom (or another firm that Broadcom could purchase in future) will cost far more than having a trained staff that are competent with OpenStack.

SpaceX prepares itself for a tenth Starship flight test

Re: Yay fireworks!

Preferably when fully loaded with fuel. Bigger bangs are always better!!!!

Make Redmond angry by setting up Windows 11 with a local account

Re: Easy way around - WARNING

Following the above procedure still leave M$ with access information to your PC. They can still use the Microsoft Account to connect to your PC as an administrator. The missing step that needs to be added - log in using your new local account and delete the Microsoft Account.

You DO see Windows 11 as an AI PC opportunity, say Dell and Intel

Re: Lack of a killer app

AI does have a few good artistic uses (for examples see the videos produced by Music-and-Songs on YouTube) but so far I have yet to see any serious use for AI as the results are far too likely to be incorrect. Until AI can produce results that are more accurate than the average YouTube video there is very little justification for the huge hype and expenditure.

Firefox 141 relieves chronic Linux pain in the neck

Agreed

I have automatic updates for Firefox disabled - I will update when I need to - not because some idiot wants to muck around with the layout again.

Stopping the rot when good software goes bad means new rules from the start

Re: Product liability - nice idea but...

Politicians take bribes - Google and Apple can easily buy enough politicians to ensure that this sensible idea never becomes law.

The only practical solution is for each new version to go through verification before it is allowed onto the Google or Apple stores. An automated process could check for significant changes and flag new versions with significant changes for manual checking. This would not be perfect - but it is better than the current situation.

The SmartNIC revolution fell flat, but AI might change that

Is a "Smart" NIC worthwhile ?

Unless a computer has a heavy traffic load a smart NIC is not going to make much difference to CPU loading.

Some servers (especially shared ones in datacentres) have enough network traffic for the reduction in CPU loading from the use of a smart NIC to be worthwhile - however for most servers (and almost all end point devices (desktops,laptops,embedded computers etc)) the CPU loading caused by the network traffic is too low to make a smart NIC economic.

Gridlocked: AI's power needs could short-circuit US infrastructure

There is a simple fix - which ensures that it will not be done

The simple fix - prohibit datacentres from being powered from the grid - require them to use on site generation.

But as this would add to the capital cost of each datacentre you can be certain that the US lawmakers would never make such a rule (instead they will pocket backhanders to not make such a rule).

Sudo-rs make me a sandwich, hold the buffer overflows

Re: Another day, another attempt to force this on us

Any competent programmer of the day knew that assembler was going to be mainly replaced by high level languages long before C appeared.

FORTRAN made it apparent that the days of large assembler programs were dying.

Good programmers could write approximately the same number of lines of correct code per day in Assembler or FORTRAN - but each line of FORTRAN could do the same amount of work as a dozen or more lines of Assembler. Also FORTRAN (and other later high level languages such as COBOL, ALGOL, PL/1, C etc) no longer required the programmer to know the inner details of a computer and a properly written FORTRAN program could be moved from one type of computer to another with little effort.

One of the biggest security hazards in programming at the moment is the runtime inclusion of mountains of untested code in languages such as JavaScript. Because the linkage to the libraries is done at runtime from "somewhere on the internet" which may itself include more code from "somewhere on the internet" it is perfectly possible for a program to work properly when released but fail later because something changed in a library 4 or more levels deep in a "somewhere on the internet" tree which the original programmer never knew was being used.

If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?

Re: Think

The ad business IS Google - that is where over 75% of its income comes from. I do not see any way that Google could be forced to sell the core of its business.

Microsoft tries to knife passwords once and for all – at least for consumers

Re: Why trust Microsoft ?

Even on Windows 11 it is fairly easy to create a local account by using the NET USER command - once you have created a local admin account you can then use that account to delete the one that Microsoft knows (Use a throwaway new hotmail account when setting up Windows 11 - it will never be used again.)

Run cmd as an administrator

to create a new user

NET USER username password /ADD /EXPIRES:NEVER

to make the user an administrator

NET LOCALGROUP Administrators username /ADD

to disable a user

NET USER user_to_disable /ACTIVE:NO

to delete a user

NET USER user_to_delete /DELETE

Of course the better answer is to use Linux instead of Windows if practical

Why trust Microsoft ?

How long will it take for the biometric data to be copied from your PC and sold to the highest bidder ?

At least with local passwords, if you suspect that a password has been compromised it is easy to change. Good luck on trying to change your biometric data.

Your graphics card's so fat, it's got its own gravity alert

Re: Card orientation

Look for a 4U rackmount PC case. This size will provide enough room for even the largest graphics card. The horizontal motherboard and vertical GPU card removes the bending strain on the GPU PCIE slot. A quick search showed several available at SCAN

One that caught my eye - Inter-Tech IPC Server IPC 4U-40255 Server Case - £109.99

See https://www.scan.co.uk/products/inter-tech-case-ipc-server-4u-40255-55cm

The disadvantages of this type of case is that it is WIDE - designed to fit a 19 inch rack and usually with no sound dampening of any sort and not compatible with liquid cooling.

Alternatively get a full tower case and replace (or cover) the side window with a metal sheet and put multiple stick on feet on the motherboard side of the case then put the case on its side.

California sues President Tariff

Re: No Power

Ending the USA as a democracy seems to be the aim of the MAGA Republican politicians - they seem to envy the personal power that Putin has.

As I said in another forum, if the Trump administration openly defies an order from SCOTUS without getting punished, then the US constitution and its laws will join the Charter of the League of Nations as dead historical documents.

No Power

All the federal policing systems (FBI, US Marshal Service etc) are part of the Administration. If SCOTUS ordered the arrest of Trump and the Department of Justice said NO then there would be nothing that SCOTUS could do other than ask Congress to impeach Trump - given the current Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate any impeachment attempt would be certain to fail.

Microsoft quietly erases Windows 11 TPM 2.0 bypass workaround from help page

MS doing their best to slow down the adoption of Windows 11

Enforcing the TPM 2 requirements will slow down the adoption of Windows 11 so why are MS doing it ?

Possibilities that come to mind

1) MS is getting a kickback from the makers of new PCs

2) MS plans to use the TPM to block other software (eg Linux, LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird etc) that competes with MS software

3) MS plans to use the TPM to embed an undetectable backdoor

I can not think of any reasons for requiring a TPM 2.0 module that would actually benefit the users of Win 11 - can you ?

NASA spacewalkers to swab the ISS for microbial life

Metorites

The Earth has been hit many times by large meteorites (eg the dinosaur killer). Many of these impacts have been large enough to eject debris from the Earth that could hit other solar system objects.

Given the toughness of many microbes, other planets must have been contaminated by microbes carried on such Earth originated meteorites.

It is currently thought that Mars still had liquid water up to around 3 billion years ago. Earth has had life for over 3.7 billion years. This implies a period of several hundred million years when both Earth and Mars could host life. During that period both Earth and Mars would have been hit by many object large enough to eject rocks (with bacterial passengers) to the other planet.

This leads to an interesting question - did life originate on Earth and contaminate Mars or did it originate on Mars and then contaminate Earth

The icon seems fitting ==========>

Microsoft eggheads say AI can never be made secure – after testing Redmond's own products

Re: There are security risks and security risks.

Unfortunately there are a number of enterprises that are not sane and even more that do not care in the slightest about adverse effects to innocent people. (Examples - Big Tobacco, the leaded petrol lobby, Putin's war with Ukraine, CEOs trying to destroy unions and environmental legislation.)

Intel turmoil prompts S&P Global to downgrade chipmaker's credit rating

Still too high

With the dismissal of Pat Gelsinger, Intel does not have a viable strategy to escape from its current woes. I would rate Intel as B- at best and more likely a CC or C rating.

Intel's net loss for the last quarter was over 16 billion dollars and its balance sheet shows an excessive amount of "Goodwill" of over $24 billion.

Years ago Intel got rid of a lot of its R&D staff to boost its profits when AMD was struggling - and in the process destroyed the future of the company.

With the beancounters having got rid of Pat Gelsinger's because his plans to rescue Intel had a high short term cost, I would not be surprised to see Intel failing.

Big lesson - DO NOT have beancounters running a high tech company,

This icon seems to fit Intel =============>

US, China agree machines must not be allowed to control nuclear weapons

However look at Russia's Dead Hand system

The Russian Dead Hand system is capable of launching Russia's ICBMs without needing command approval from Russia's leaders.

It was intended to ensure that a surprise attack that killed the Russian leaders would not stop Russia from launching its missiles in response.

The icon seems appropriate ==========>

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

The real reason the UK government wants smart meters

All UK smart meters have a remote disconnect facility that allows the consumer electricity supply to be turned off. This facility is mandated by the government. The smart meters would be cheaper to produce is there was just a wire link instead of the relay.

UK governments realize that there will be times when there will insufficient electricity supply (eg a cold calm winters night) as the UK has become too dependent on non-constant generation (principally wind) and the electricity demand is expected to rise due to heat pumps and EV charging. The smart meters remote disconnect will allow the government to ensure that only the "non-important" people shiver in the cold while they and their friends are comfortable.

Unless I am forced, I will not have my meter replaced by one of these smart meters.

Icon for what should happen to lying politicians (about 99.99% of them) ======>

Windows 11 24H2 hoards 8.63 GB of junk you can't delete

Use a Linux rescue disk/USB stick

If you boot Linux from a USB stick or disk then you should be able to delete the unwanted blob with rm as Linux ignores any protections that Windows places on files.

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Re: Why now?

It is also quite possible that Israel learned of a planned Hezbollah attack and triggered the explosions to disrupt or prevent the planned attack.

Between the Hezbollah casualties and the disruption to their communications, any attacks that were planned to be launched by Hezbollah over the next few months are unlikely to now take place.

At a cost of a few innocent casualties, Israel has taken a large number of Hezbollah out of the combat - some permanently and has massively damaged their communications.

This attack on Hezbollah caused far fewer innocent casualties than would be possible by any other attack causing the same number of Hezbollah casualties.

Re: A domino effect.

The pagers were not made in Israel - just modified by them to become a very effective anti-Hezbollah weapon system.

Congratulations to Israel for one of the most effective strikes to date against the Hezbollah terrorist organization.

Icon for what should happen to all terrorist groups =====>

Intel frees its Foundry biz – and that's just one of many major shake-ups today

Will Intel recover ?

I doubt it - Intel seems to be doing the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Intel brought its problems on itself by cutting R&D to increase short term profits.

Icon for Intel shareholders ===============>

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

What a stupid article

This article is possibly the worst that I have seen on The Reg in the last 20 years.

Time to replace Rupert Goodwins with someone who has some common sense and computer knowledge.

Hello? Are you talking on a Cisco SPA300 or SPA500 IP phone? Now's the time to junk 'em

Re: Cisco, again

Having got Huawei banned, Cisco sees no need to provide support as its customers can not vote with their feet and move to much better and cheaper Huawei equipment.

America - the country with the best government that money can buy :-(((

Intel: Our balance sheet is a smoking ruin, but we think our new chips work

Booting an OS - but which one ?

If the chip manages to boot Windows 11 then much of it would need to be functional, if however it was just booting MSDOS then huge chunks could still be inoperative.

The fact that this bit of PR guff did not mention booting Windows 11 makes me think that it just booted MSDOS (something an 8086 could manage).

CrowdStrike Windows patchpocalypse could take weeks to fix, IT admins fear

M$ can not afford Windows to skip bad updates

If it did then Vista, 8 and 11 would never have been installed !!!!

Will Cloudstrike be held responsible for the damage (financial and otherwise)

If the legal system was just (haha) Cloudstrike would be liable for damages from every organisation and individual adversely affected by their incompetence.

However the chance of it happening is on a par with the chance of the US having an honest competent government.

Some lawyers will get richer but I bet that Cloudstrike will end up with nothing more than a slap on the wrist and perhaps a nominal fine equal to less than one weeks profits,

Battery electric vehicles lose their spark in Europe as hybrids steal the show

Only while the battery is new

BEV range decreases as the battery ages - a 500km range when new might well be only 400km after 5 years (even less if fast charging is used often).

Icon for a BEV user that runs out of power 20 miles from the destination ======>

Nearly 20% of running Microsoft SQL Servers have passed end of support

Don't bin the old hardware !!!

Make it known that you have it available for sale and watch the bids come in. There are a LOT of firms that are hoping that their own antique hardware will last a few more years and will be happy to accept second hand parts to keep their vital systems working. Several maintenance firms know this and are happy to buy old hardware.

(Also - a cynical note - make sure that the data on the tape library is copied off somewhere - otherwise there will be a critical need for some of the data 3 months after the tape library has been removed!!!)