Posts by Dan 55

Keen to go _ExtInt? LLVM Clang compiler adds support for custom width integers

Re: Intel? Excuse me?? INTEL????

The late 60s-early 70s CPUs had all kinds of weird and wonderful bit widths, what goes around comes around.

Re: What am I missing?

Ok, I'll buy the first one off you (although you can work round it), but I'm not sure about the second one.

Most CPUs generally don't have don't have 128-bit and 256-bit arithmetic operators and passing big integers isn't fully supported by Windows and UNIX function calling conventions, so everything's got to be done by software anyway. That and the article was about saving space on FGPAs, not having big integers. But yes, I guess they would be nice to have.

Re: Ugh!

Extra code for bitshifting is a given, but do you really want to be the one to write it? Personally I think it's the kind of stuff best left to the compiler.

If it's in a structure with alignment turned off via a compiler option, pragma, or what have you, and you string a bunch together, it will save memory. Then again, behaviour is compiler dependent (VC tends to create bigger structures with unused bits between structure elements).

Re: What am I missing?

typedef struct {

unsigned char flag:1;

unsigned int pad1:0;

unsigned char nibble:4;

unsigned int pad2:0;

unsigned char munch:2;

unsigned int pad3:0;

unsigned int mouthful:18;

unsigned int pad4:0;

} someStructure;

Some people want it all on a plate.

Re: Sounds like a good idea

That can be avoided by only ever setting the bit(s) using carefully written macros that mask out the untouchable bits.

Or bit fields, which are easier, nicer, and let the compiler do the hard work.

What am I missing?

typedef struct {

unsigned char flag:1;

unsigned char nibble:4;

unsigned char munch:2;

unsigned int mouthful:18;

} someStructure;

What's wrong with that?

Edit: By the way, the code tag is a bit broken on El Reg.

"Something went wrong with the submission. Please try again." ... forever.

"Something went wrong with the submission. Please try again." ... forever.

This is the new cookie banner. I submit, it says error, I click try again, and GO TO 10. It won't go away even with uBlock Origin and Disconnect disabled. Dev console tells me this:

Powered by AMP ⚡ HTML – Version 2003262059300 "https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/create"

Powered by AMP ⚡ HTML – Version 2003262059300 "https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/create"

Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at https://www.theregister.co.uk/CBW/all. (Reason: CORS header 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' missing).

(AMP in the forums?! It gets everywhere...)

Why should the UK pensions watchdog be able to spy on your internet activities? Same reason as the Environment Agency and many more

In case anyone was confused as to what this is about, Classic Dom and a mate are on Sage, the science committee that gives advice to the British government, so the government is advising itself (or rather, Classic Dom is pulling strings all over government now), always, as they constantly remind us, "guided by the science".

The mate was a data scientist who worked with him at Vote Leave, and is the brother of a data mining company boss with links to Palantir.

But please do allow your data to get slurped by your ISP and also install that NHS app, it's apparently what people need to do to beat the virus.

Revealed: Cummings is on secret scientific advisory group for Covid-19

Re: Big Brother Watch

As mentioned in the interview, they were going to move out and they have done, but the point is it's still a Matthew Elliot-funded policy pushing organisation, the same Matthew Elliot who runs a whole load of other policy pushing organisations like TaxPayers Alliance, Business for Britain, Conservative Friends of Russia, IEA, Brexit Central, etc...

Not so fluffy now, are they? (Or maybe you think that's fine in which case go ahead.)

Re: Big Brother Watch

Are you sure that's a good idea?

55 Tufton Street

Perhaps Liberty might be a better choice.

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

A recording is available for anyone who wants to know, and yes he is an actual fucking idiot. The only thing he didn't suggest was drinking Brawndo.

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

Re: WTF

It's Chrome, they do it because they can.

Microsoft admits pandemic caused Azure ‘constraints’ and backlog of customer quota requests

Teams is apparently great now, or so the PR spin says

Meetings are apparently supposed to sound like a herd of goats bleating plaintively for help from down the bottom of a well, and that's with the video disabled. (Of course, the video disabled option doesn't work on shared desktops because that would be too useful.)

My ISP doesn't have problems with anything else, just fucking Teams. But, as we all know, marketing have said any problems are now fixed so it's not a problem.

There are, of course, no useful bandwidth or network settings in the client because that might indicate there could be problems.

Google Cloud CEO says Istio will be handed to a foundation. The Reg: But what about..? Google: That will be all.

Is it open source or open sourcey?

Open sourcey is read-only for everyone outside Google, Google greatfully receives all code donations and bug fixes but is not obliged to do anything with them, then adds its own binary blobs and spits out a product when it wants to. If you try to build from source yourself you will probably lose compatibility because you don't have the all-important binary blobs.

See also: Android, Chrome, Fuchsia.

Google says no more shady anonymous web ads – if you want your billboard up, you've got to show us some valid ID

I find it hard to believe Google can run ads on their ad network without knowing who the advertiser is. If this is true, how come Google are allowed to take billions from unknown third parties from probably every country in the world without their door getting kicked down at 3am?

Web pages a little too style over substance? Behold the Windows 98 CSS file

Re: This is exactly what the internet was designed for

I was thinking more of having to explain to your better half or bored kids why you're watching that, rather than any shock value itself.

Re: This is exactly what the internet was designed for

I thought everyone knew by now how to furtle the the URL to get round sign-in:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/c4glrmcMhKU

But probably not at work, even if you are working from home...

ICE cold: Microsoft's GitHub wrings hands over US prez's Trump immigration ban plan

Re: Aren't his wife and/or ex-wife born and raised abroad?

Seems like racist grandpa is racist on all three counts to me.

Because a) tourists don't carry the virus but prospective immigrants do and b) there's no such thing as community spread.

The pipeline is already there because the US hasn't grounded all flights. Banning immigration while letting in tourists and business visitors and travellers in transit does the square root of one half of fuck all. Immigrants who sort out their immigration outside the US, immigrate, isolate for 14 days then start work after no symptoms are less likely to spread the virus than travellers passing through who do not isolate.

It's the typical populist bullshit targetted at the hard of thinking. Look, there's a squirrel.

Vivaldi browser to perform a symphony of ad and tracker blocking with version 3.0

Re: Websites and ads

El Reg does do this if you've got an adblocker. They listened!

Re: I'll have to give it a go on Android.

Startpage might not be a good choice.

Python 2 bows out after epic transition. And there was much applause because you've all moved to version 3, right? Uh, right?

Re: Repeat Offenders?

Almost but not quite.

Coronavirus lockdown forces UK retailers to shut 382 million square feet of floor space

No, now they buy shit online.

Hana-hana-hana: No it's not your dad trying to start a motorboat... It's Northern Gas, renewing its SAP software

"NGN will lose access to key critical business applications like SuccessFactors"

Still not seeing what the problem is.

Mayday! Mayday! The next Windows 10 update is finally on approach to a PC near you

Re: Just wait

It doesn't matter, they almost all generally have one sound output (speakers or line out) and two sound inputs (mic, line in). A lot of effort was put into Windows to abstract it from the hardware. There is a lot of scope for automated testing, the test is does it record something and then play it back.

The update they just did hosed sound for a good number of people who depend on their computers for studying, working, and keeping in contact in a pandemic.

And that was just that problem, there's also this:

KB4549951 issues include broken Bluetooth, WiFi, connectivity problems, BSOD, poor system performance, and even complete system crashes for some users and not everyone.

Microsoft are idiots, enforcing constant updates but none of them are reliable.

Re: Just wait

Just had to use TeamViewer to sort out a neighbour's Windows 10 laptop because the latest KB last week mutes microphone input for Realtek sound but you don't get to see it unless you go right down into a Windows 7-style device properties dialog box, in all of Windows 10's TIFKAM windows it looks like its working, even the microphone test.

And that really helps when people are trying to do classes online.

And that's not even Windows 2004.

Microsoft haven't got a effin clue about testing.

Re: Just wait

So, who's first to risk the chance of hosing their computer with this update in the middle of a pandemic?

Europe publishes draft rules for coronavirus contact-tracing app development, on a relaxed schedule

Meanwhile in the UK...

NHS in standoff with Apple and Google over coronavirus tracing

The NHS is in a standoff with Apple and Google after the two tech firms refused to support the UK’s plans to build an app that alerts users when they have been in contact with someone with coronavirus.

Apple and Google are encouraging health services worldwide to build contact-tracing apps that operate in a decentralised way, allowing individuals to know when they’ve been in contact with an infected person but preventing governments from using that data to build a picture of population movements in aggregate.

But the policies, unveiled last week, apply only to apps that don’t result in the creation of a centralised database of contacts. That means that if the NHS goes ahead with its original plans, its app would face severe limitations on its operation.

[...]

But the new tools, which come in the form of an API that lets developers code apps with special access to Bluetooth, strictly limit the information that public health authorities can gather. Most importantly, a public health authority cannot ask a phone to gather a list of every other phone it has been in contact with.

[...]

The limits will prevent the NHS from obtaining useful information about population flows in the aggregate, tracking “near misses” or receiving information about contacts from people who have opted into the system but not recently checked their phones.

This seems to me to be a tenuous excuse at best. If the government wants population flows, it can already get them from the telecos (cell location data). If the government wants to get people to check their phones, it can push a notification to the NHS app or set a notification to appear at some time in the future.

Facebook's Libra Association tries again at this digi-cash game, with more modest ambitions after global flop

Not everything is changing however: Libra will continue to rely on blockchain technology. The Register asked the Libra Association why a blockchain, as opposed to a traditional database, is necessary.

A spokesperson for the organization offered a not-particularly enlightening reply

Bet it's so they've got the option of flipping the switch later on and turning it into what it the original plan was.

Trello! It is me... you locked the door? User warns of single sign-on risk after barring self from own account

Re: Old e-mail

And the canned reply at the end does not address this or the fact that his personal account was there first before the SSO switch was flipped and it got hijacked.

I.e. Atlassian has no intention of fixing obviously wrong behaviour, which will come as no surprise at all to anyone who has to put up with Jira or Confluence.

Tick tick Zoom, is this thing on? US comms giant Verizon pulls on BlueJeans for 'undisclosed amount'

Verizon

Where vast amounts of money are spent on taking over services and letting them sink into a pit of mediocrity.

Oh Hell. Remember the glory days of Demon Internet? Well, now would be a good time to pick a new email address

Re: The first "real", low-cost ISP for the UK

I stayed with Amiga KA9Q till the end using all manner of AREXX scripts to hold the thing together. Perhaps with hindsight I shouldn't have...

In case you need more proof the world's gone mad: Behold, Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels

Don't give them ideas

The Register decided to look for what other wheels we could get for $699. To do so we looked up data on the best-selling car in the USA and UK, which taught us that the Toyota Camry and Ford Fiesta topped the charts. We easily found Camry wheels for US$108 a pop and Fiesta wheels for £85 apiece.

If you draw their attention to it, Apple's going to sue them for rounded corners.

Oh ... Fudge This Pandemic! Google walks back on decision to switch off FTP in Chrome 81

Re: and here's the proof.

I'm happy to use a browser as an FTP client knowing that if I do there's no JavaScript-driven trackable shiny. Point your question to Google, why are they unhappy there's no JavaScript-driven trackable shiny?

Obsession with JavaScript-driven trackable shiny

There's no real reason to axe FTP support, and here's the proof.

Indian city floats camera-packing surveillance balloon to zoom in on quarantine-quitters

Buttle/Tuttle

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, has called on citizens to adopt the nation's "Arogya Setu" contact-tracing app.

How's that going to work with the number of dumb/featurephones about which don't use apps and with phones which are shared between several people?

Seems this is less about useful contact tracing and more about yet another tool which helps the inquisition should they already have someone in their sights.

April 2020 and – rest assured – your Windows PC can still be pwned by something so innocuous as an unruly font

Windows 10

So much for the sandbox...

For all systems except Windows 10, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could execute code remotely. For systems running Windows 10, an attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could execute code in an AppContainer sandbox context with limited privileges and capabilities. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.

... it seems you can create new users and install programs in it.

OK brainiacs, we've got an IT cold case for you: Fatal disk errors on an Amiga 4000 with 600MB external SCSI unless the clock app is... just so

Re: The SCSI implementation on the Amiga was badly broken.

SCSI was only ever as good as the worst device on the chain.

Re: The SCSI implementation on the Amiga was badly broken.

Slightly different price range, build quality, and target market though and probably didn't suffer from Commodore's legendary ability to not fix hardware bugs in a timely fashion but treat them as platform features (even though they owned their own fab).

Re: The real mystery is how Paula discovered the clock work around ...

Right at the end of that page you've got this:

A final Zorro-3 problem exists on some cards, including the A4091s from Commodore, though not necessarily DKB (eg, I don't know). Originally, there were a couple of ways for a Zorro-3 card to terminate a bus cycle. It could give the bus back during its last cycle or after its last cycle. This former mechanism can cause some problems, including bus lockups, when multiple masters are present. So I only recommend the latter mechanism -- the card runs its last cycle, then unregisters the bus. This takes longer, but it's safe. This is only an issue when multiple bus mastering Zorro cards are working together.

The A4091 is Commodore's official external SCSI expansion card and even with a Rev 11 Buster there are problems with it.

So if you wanted an external SCSI on your A4000 it seems your options are this:

- Rev 9 irreplaceable Buster: Expensive Fastlane card out of many people's price range.

- Rev 9 irreplaceable Buster: Zorro II card and a shareware software patch (problems?).

- Rev 9 irreplaceable Buster: GVP A4008 which is a reworked Zorro II card with a built-in software patch (we assume it is reliable).

- Rev 9 replacable Buster: Official A4091 card supplied with Buster chip update to Rev 11 (still scope for problems as mentioned above).

- Rev 11 Buster: Official A4091 card (still scope for problems as mentioned above).

- Rev 11 Buster: GVP A4008 as mentioned above (we assume it is reliable).

- Rev 11 Buster: Cheaper Zorro II card plus a software patch (solution may have problems?)

- Rev 11 Buster: Other Zorro III SCSI cards (reliability unknown but let's assume they are reliable unless it's a first revision).

So the chances are that the A4000 in this story had a solution which wasn't reliable and sticking the clock in the corner altered chipset DMA timing or the CPU usage of a software fix so it worked.

Re: The real mystery is how Paula discovered the clock work around ...

Based on what was described in the article, I'm going to suppose it was a very, very specific timing issue with the various I/O buses and the SCSI card.

I think you might be on to something, especially with a Rev 9 A4000 which had a broken Buster chip which stopped many Zorro III external SCSI boards working, an old A2000 Zorro II external SCSI board which at least did work, and a software patch to improve transfer rates with old Zorro II boards.

GVP A4008 SCSI Controller

What should have been a reasonably simple case of just going out and buying a SCSI controller for my A4000 turned out to be a rather more complicated process than I had originally forseen.

The only two SCSI cards I was aware of for the Amiga 4000 were Commodore's (now DKB's) A4091 and the Fastlane Z3. I'd read good reviews of the Fastlane board, and knew it was already in the shops, however prices were in the range of US$599 or STG#399 --- slightly more than I was prepared to spend just to get a CDROM attached! The A4091 board seemed to be in very short supply, but was significantly cheaper. Both of these cards were Zorro-III (A3000/A4000 only) SCSI-II controller cards.

Things started to get tricky when I discovered that early models of the A4000 were shipped with a broken Buster chip which prevented many Zorro-III boards from working correctly. The revision which had this problem was `Rev 9', and sure enough this was in my machine. To make matters worse, my Buster was surface mounted, so despite the fact that Commodore were aware of this problem, and were distributing new Busters with the A4091 card, my A4000 was too old and didn't have a socketed chip that could be easily replaced. The Fastlane card, on the other hand, was smart. It knew about the broken Busters and had a work-around to compensate. Performance wouldn't be quite as good as with a fully functional Buster, but the card would still work well.

All of this meant that the A4091 just wasn't an option for me. The Fastlane Z3 card would work perfectly, but it was too expensive. I'd have to look for a Zorro-II SCSI-I card for the A2000 which would hopefully still work in an A4000.

The problem with old Zorro-II cards for the A2000 is that the Amiga 4000's 32-bit RAM is outside of the 24-bit DMA-able address space which these controller cards can see, so data can't be transferred directly from the SCSI device into main memory. This means the CPU ends up dealing with requests and individually copying a few bytes at a time to and from 32-bit memory. The transfer rates are abysmal.

One fix for this is a Shareware program by Barry McConnell called DMAfix which patches some DOS library calls to do the CPU copies with larger buffers. This improves performance significantly. It works fine with cards like the A2091, but this whole scenario seemed quite unappealing to me.

I can imagine that such a software fix could be quite timing-sensitive and crashy.

Re: Memory-mapped video?

Yes, but the chipset could only access some of the memory, so that area was called chip RAM (as opposed to fast RAM). Only memory accessible by the chipset could be used for video memory and DMA, it was also slower due to memory contention.

I'm not sure why it happened

But was the boss called Denise and was Agnus particularly overweight?

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

Nah, they're not setting fire to 4G towers. Those are good, they let us check the Facebooks and the Twitters and the YouTubes so we can find out how 5G towers are killing us.

Taiwan may turn traffic advice app into massive tracking system

Re: de-anonymisation

Of course, it's the first thing that would occur to British ministers and civil servants. "Apple and Google have come up with this contact tracing framework that supposedly preserves privacy. How can we use it to de-anonymise people and the relationships between everyone for no specific reason other than the minister wakes up one day and deems it proportionate?"

And this, for puzzled overseas readers who occasionally ask here why people in the UK don't want ID cards, is why nobody trusts them.

Big data analysis

Or just mark the beach as off limits?

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

Re: Hack is the right word

And now to Manchester, man who's delivering food to a family member is handcuffed and threatened with pepper spray and an onlooker is told "you'll be next":

UK lockdown: police apologise after man threatened with pepper spray

Re: Hack is the right word

Because pretty much all forces are overreaching in one way or another. Here's that hardy perennial South Yorkshire:

Coronavirus: Police apologise for telling family they weren't allowed in their own front garden

Further south two forces are confused between what is an essential shop and what they consider to be an essential item. They seem to think it's legal for a shop to sell non-essential items but not legal for people to buy them, as if it were some kind of test of character and those who are found wanting can be warned or fined:

Coronavirus: Government confirms shops can sell whatever they have in stock, after police criticised for patrolling 'non-essential aisles' in supermarket

This of course might be down to the complete lack of clear guidance from the government, but if the police don't want to lose support from the public (and they need it because in the UK there are relatively few) then they should cut out nonsense like this.

Re: Hack is the right word

I believe the author is from the UK, if that's enough qualification for you.

Re: Lord Sumption

I think Dixon of Dock Green finished its run decades ago.