Posts by Lusty

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

I’m reading this as the start of vastly increased salary/consultancy rates for skilled C and C++ devs. This happens any time you “kill off” a computer thing. COBOL, anything IBM original, Netware, all have niche and in demand skills and C will be no different. I’ve even seen some pretty desperate asks for Delphi.

Airbus to migrate critical apps to a sovereign Euro cloud

Encryption doesn’t help since the host has the key to decrypt even if you use on prem key stores. If your key isn’t held in their cloud then you can’t use your dafa in their cloud. If it is, they can access your data.

Unfortunately hosting providers write the software so if you think they don’t have access you are mistaken.

Whitehall rejects £1.8B digital ID price tag – but won't say what it will cost

Re: We're in the land of confusion

“when the system doesn't work properly”

To determine this they would first need to define the purpose of the system. So far we just have “we want ID” and that’s not really much of a dream techies can aim at with success criteria.

Obviously we all know the success criteria involves giving billions to their mates and has nothing to do with ID.

Kyocera claims 5.2 Gbps underwater laser data blast in lab tests

You could easily increase that to 10Gbps if you reduce the distance to 1cm. Utterly pointless, I can’t imagine a scenario of up to 1.5m where a wire wouldn’t work, especially if this needs line of sight to remain stable, which it will because LASERS.

Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

Sounds like the iPhone bug that’s been there forever. Set a timer for two minutes and do nothing. The timer never goes off because the phone is busy locking itself after two minutes so it just cancels the timer.

If Apple can ignore it with their user base then I don’t see why Microsoft should be more proactive

Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit

Re: MS to Google

Excel stops that these days, thank gods.

Software engineer reveals the dirty little secret about AI coding assistants: They don't save much time

Very underrated these days and young people will never have the experience of really knowing their colleagues. Makes me sad.

UK agri dept spent hundreds of millions upgrading to Windows 10 – just in time for end of support

Not correct. Windows has longer support and better enterprise management tooling. Mac might be cheaper due to a lack of flexibility and lack of enterprise tooling so certain things can’t be done (therefore lower adkin costs), but that’s enforceable on Windows too if you hate your user base.

Researchers intercept unencrypted satellite traffic from space blabbermouths

A VPN only does that if your traffic is going to your network, as I said. Kinda limiting and not the solution to fix this problem. End to end encryption is the solution here.

Wow who’s downvoting that? In the old days Reg readers were less susceptible to marketing and understood this stuff.

If you’re downvoting because you disagree, explain your technical stance on how a VPN would help.

Re: security???

The problem with Huawei was the US didn’t have a backdoor, as far as I can tell. No evidence for anything else. Same with DJI.

A VPN changes literally nothing except the breakout point to the Internet. Even if it did, you’re now fully trusting a dodgy VPN provider rather than a dodgy ISP.

Encrypt your traffic end to end. Unless the VPN breakout is on your network it’s not adding anything. Even if your VPN does break out on your network, end to end encryption is neither hard nor expensive so you still ought to do it otherwise you’re one network issue away from data leaks.

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

Re: Sonos

If only that was their first snafu. Zero trust for sonos, they keep trying and failing. Hoping they will slowly go out of business.

https://www.theregister.com/2017/10/11/sonos_privacy_speakers/

Deloitte refunds Aussie gov after AI fabrications slip into $440K welfare report

If customers are going to start reading reports then the big consultancy firms are stuffed whether AI is used or not.

Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates

Trust in hardware, yes. Because the affected Intel chips aren’t supported.

It may not help with whatever issue you clearly have, but that specific issue, which was extremely important to their business customers (who, by the way, pay the bills for all this).

You losing trust because you don’t get updates on affected hardware and didn’t bother to investigate the reason? That’s on you.

You’re assuming those fines would be considered worse than not dealing with the hardware security bugs that led to the decision in the first place.

Microsoft had to do something to get trust back after that debacle, Windows 11 is that something.

Microsoft Surface 7 laptop: Nice hardware, shame about the OS

Re: After formatting....

Err actually you lose zero. GiB and GB are different that’s all. The number is the same as specified and always has been.

512GB is 476GiB which is pretty much what was reported by the author, who clearly doesn’t understand the topic either.

Microserfs ordered back to the office, given 10 days to appeal

You’re saying that Satya Nadella, an Indian fella who had a quadriplegic son with cerebral palsy is making changes for the white agenda to disadvantage those with caring requirements?

That’s some next level conspiracy stuff.

Linus has had enough of links that point to 'stupid useless garbage'

The problem isn’t getting competent people. The problem is getting a competent person who can stop the incompetent people screwing their product up.

Linus is the only example I’m aware of.

What terrifies me is that eventually that Finn will need replacing with another or Linux will go the way everything else has gone in recent times with a committee approach and enshitification inevitable.

Gigs in space: Amazon breaks bandwidth barrier with Kuiper's satellite broadband

If you get 1gig for a minute every 10 minutes as the lonely kuiper satelite flies by your average speed will still be 100Mb. If they ever got a second user you may well be stuffed too.

Even Starlink speeds are dropping with their enormous fleet as user numbers climb. You can’t beat physics when using wireless transmission.

Wikimedia Foundation loses first court battle to swerve Online Safety Act regulation

Re: Wikipedia is used by every UK kid and teenager doing their homework.

Nice rant and all, but can you please talk us through Labour’s involvement in the Online Safety Act 2023?

The plan to make all networks optical is about to take two big steps forward

Re: serial ram

40s, actually. EDSAC had mercury tube memory and the term “optimised code” meant an instruction entered the CPU as the data it needed exited the memory rather than waiting for the next pass.

Today’s coders probably couldn’t manage such a feat.

Microsoft walks us through Copilot Search with a domain it doesn't even own

Re: They have a domain set up already which they should be using for this

Actually they have a whole list of domains for this, contoso is just the well known one. There’s an internal website with a full list and how to use them. The domains are spread across industries, and for those in the know, contoso is very often used inappropriately.

T-Mobile's satellite service lifts off, and it's open season on rivals

Hmmm this launches and now Starlink is globally down like a sack of shit. Coincidence?

GPS on the fritz? Britain and France plot a backup plan

Re: Galileo?

They don’t all operate the same way in terms of this specific question. Some have signing solutions which entirely defeat spoofing. There are multiple problems to solve here yet we seem to be using terms interchangeably. Jamming is common to all due to the low power signals, spoofing is very much a solved problem (not for civilians, but it is solved).

Re: Sextant Alert

Indeed, and some of them support signing which entirely defeats the spoofing issue mentioned in the article already. I don't think GPS does, but they may have added it to more recent satellites.

So you CAN turn an entire car into a video game controller

Re: The other way around

Depends on the vehicle, most are power assisted so you’d just get feedback in the wheel. The Tesla cybertruck on the other hand is fly by wire for the steering…

Re: it's not all fun and games

It’s not a security issue, CAN is an open standard and well documented and has been for many decades. It’s by design, and unless some numpty adds a WAN there’s no sensible way to remotely do anything.

It’s a serial bus so local access is trivial, again by design. I’ve no idea why this person didn’t use the built in port that every car comes with, other than trying to sound clever and hackerish. You can literally buy the connectors online.

Re: The other way around

None at all. CAN literally consists of devices that send an ID and state. This means buttins can be assigned to anything, and you can add buttons anywhere. All you’d need to do is create a translation layer if using a standard controller.

CAN is also just serial comms, so to connect you can use a type of serial port. It’s not quite correct but RS232 ports work just fine.

The article made it sound harder than it is.

Don't pay for AI support failures, says Gradient Labs CEO

You still pay the frontline support staff if they can’t resolve an issue. This is cheaper frontline staff. You still obviously need 2nd and 3rd line support.

Microsoft dangles extended Windows 10 support in exchange for Reward Points

Re: Cheap trick

I don’t like it either, but it’s far from arbitrary. Those chips had well documented hardware bugs that couldn’t be fixed.

Forgotten Turing treasure trove rescued from attic goes under the hammer

Suicide

Can we please stop saying suicide? There’s no evidence he committed suicide, and that conclusion was thrown out at a later inquest. It’s just as likely it was an accident but more likely he was murdered by the government due to being gay and a “threat to national security”.

It’s an insult to his memory to continue the suicide story at every opportunity.

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

Re: app Mnaagers / installation of apps

It’s funny, because what you said is and always has been the problem, not the solution.

Microsoft walking away from datacenter leases (probably) isn't a sign the AI bubble is bursting

Re: Are you sure obtaining power is cheap?

“ (*) London's exploding footpaths are mostly overloaded distribution cables finally letting go”

Mostly that’s been a drug gang illegally splicing into the grid to run drug farms in abandoned department stores. It’s been widely reported now that the gang was caught.

Google’s broadband balloon laser comms tech floated out as independent company

They seem to have removed the balloon element which leaves this as just another point to point wireless network option. They say light is better due to congestion but point to point radio isn’t congested at all as it’s directional. Nice that there’s another option but if a bird can block the laser I’m not sure it’s a step forward.

US Dept of Housing screens sabotaged to show deepfake of Trump sucking Elon's toes

Re: During this time

With respect, you’re no longer welcome here. The Reg has always been a home of smart people.

SpaceX receives FAA blessing for another Starship test

Now now, the sooner this testing is done the sooner we can pack him and his orange pet off to Mars.

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

Re: Surface

Obviously other laptops with older chips exist. Did you buy yours with Windows 11 pre installed though?

Surface

Microsoft included some older chips originally because Surface devices used them, so the OEM at fault was them. I imagine those devices are now discontinued so they’re correcting the error and it probably affects nobody else. It will mean though that a Surface Studio won’t continue to get updates despite being a recent purchase.

The software UK techies need to protect themselves now Apple's ADP won’t

Re: You don't need alternatives

The requirement of a warrant is universal so I don’t see the relevance here. The only difference is who hands them the keys.

Re: You don't need alternatives

There are laws to compel suspects to provide encryption keys in the UK so iTunes wouldn’t change a thing. You’d sit in prison gloating how they don’t have access to your data. Under that provision they never have to release you.

I don’t think now is a good time for anyone in the US to be lecturing about data privacy, do you?

Re: Commenting here on my main phone

How do you ensure the two are never on in the same location? It’s trivial to track devices which are related using various techniques including public IPs, WiFi, phone network data. It’s this sort of confidence that makes tracking criminals easy as the authorities can build up a nice bunch of evidence.

Elon Musk calls for International Space Station to be deorbited by 2027

Re: "There is very little incremental utility"

By assistant, do you mean the teenage boy he’s been using? For government business.

A win at last: Big blow to AI world in training data copyright scrap

They worked in an almost identical way, assigning statistical significance weightings to things and using vector maths to find stuff.

Fun fact, Google were also sued for copyright and lost, it's why they no longer put all the content on their page, robbing others of ad revenue. They now use sources like wikipedia directly, and pay for the privelege.

Re: "The copying of our content was not 'fair use.'"

Lawyers pay for licences for the copyright content they use in their work, actually. The books are exceptionally expensive too, I used to be the person buying the licences! The reason they are expensive is that it's a commercial licence ;)

That said, they’re only licensing from folk with deep enough pockets to sue. :( America is fully broken.

It’s interesting that OpenAI has started buying licences. That sets the expectation that they know they need a licence. Any and all content for which they don’t have a licence must therefore be excluded from the training set as per their own understanding of the law.

This puts everyone with a website or YouTube channel in a very good position when the class action starts.

Re: "The copying of our content was not 'fair use.'"

Simple distinction, training your brain is personal use. Training an AI model and serving it to everyone on the planet for money is very much commercial use.

Amazon's Kuiper secures license to take on Starlink in the UK

USD

Why quote US prices for Starlink when the article is about the UK? UK pricing is published on their website so better to use that.