Posts by Dan 55

Rust rustles up fix for 10/10 critical command injection bug on Windows in std lib

Perl's documentation flagged it as a problem at least four years ago (earliest record in archive.org).

Nobody knows how to split arguments on Windows. Apart from C because it's been around the block and had the bugs knocked out of it but reimplementing all the bugs back in again in other languages appears to be the way to go.

Re: Ha! Rust Is The Answer To All Our C Programming Security Issues?

No memory was harmed while arguments were improperly split, so I'm sure we should all be thankful for that.

SharePoint logs are easily circumvented and Microsoft is dragging its heels

MediaWiki? XWiki?

Microsoft squashes SmartScreen security bypass bug exploited in the wild

I suspect they don't care, they've pulled it from WSUS and if a boot loop hits a home user many will end up buying a new Windows 11 computer which is what they wanted.

X fixes URL blunder that could enable convincing social media phishing campaigns

"Xeets"

Where the "ee" is pronounced as the short "i" vowel sound I assume.

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

Today was the day Alan Bates gave evidence, so it looks like they wanted to do that. The chair was having none of it though.

Video here (starting from Alan Bates' appearance after the part of the inquiry dealing with late documents).

Tele2 secure collaboration hub for public sector keeps Swedish data in Sweden

Meaning even the so-called soverign version of Azure isn't soverign...

Musk burns bridges in Brazil after calling for senior judge to be impeached

You make it sound like two AfD supporters asking each other "are we the baddies?" and perhaps they're just misunderstood.

Yes, they are actual far right Nazis. Which I suspect you know.

Cloud vendor lock-in is shocking, but there's a get out of jail card

Re: Why not have cloud.gov.uk ?

The difference is that when you use Amazon AWS/Microsoft Azure/Oracle you buy a service, have an account manager and when it goes wrong, just ring you account manager and put your feet up. Responsibility ends there.

If by account manager you mean a status page, a forum where threads which get too uncomfortable are locked, and they let you up/downvote proposed features but they end up doing what they want anyway, then yes.

UK meet Sweden

Well it seems Sweden's already done it, based on open source.

Tele2 secure collaboration hub for public sector keeps Swedish data in Sweden

They didn't get pushed from S4B to Teams, instead they used the time to build a platform for the public sector.

Windows 95 support chap skipped a step and sent user into Micro-hell

Re: Those were peak 'fix by reinstall' days

In that context, it makes the current iteration of Windows look palatable.

It still is peak "fix by reinstall" for those who have their computer stuck in a boot loop or worse by the January 2024 update. Still not withdrawn, still not reissued, official advice is the user should resize partitions, but the instructions are wrong if you're trying to fix it from the pre-boot command line.

So... amateur hour, yet again.

A cheeky intern nearly turned MS-DOS into NSFW-DOS

Three copy commands

If at first you don't succeed, leave it the bugs there and then do it all over again only this time with different problems.

Wipro appoints new CEO: 32-year veteran and current US boss Srini Pallia takes over

YouTube filtering election ads based on an "initial technical check"

So YouTube stop the spread of electoral misinformation by confirming that the video is uploaded in a format that they accept. We're saved.

AI will reduce workforce, say 41% of surveyed executives

'78% say GenAI will play a "critical role in providing upskilling and development opportunities."'

Yes, people should be made to learn from a black box that makes up random shit as it goes along. Rather like the execs themselves it seems.

Apple cuts hundreds of jobs after ditching the car project and more

Re: Just wondering...

Apple speak to The Register, but only when there's a PR Defcon 1 situation.

Local councils struggle with ill-fitting software despite spending billions with suppliers

"The council now plans to re-implement Oracle out of the box."

Reader, how I laughed.

German state ditches Windows, Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice

Re: Extend the open source initiative to include education?

I don't know what control German states have over publicly funded educational provision, but it might be sensible to wean schools, and tertiary education, off reliance upon proprietary software.

2019 - Office 365 verboten in Hessen schools: German state bans cloudy Microsoft suite on privacy grounds

2022 - Microsoft 365 faces more GDPR headwinds as Germany bans it in schools

Also:

2022 - France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school

UK govt office admits ability to negotiate billions in cloud spending curbed by vendor lock-in

Re: Cloud

Run their own global fibre networks?

Well... yes, since any infrastructure or utility connected to the open Internet has the lifespan of a mayfly before it's ransomwared or hacked or has all of its data copied. More often than not hosted by cloud providers.

Perhaps we should start getting serious about what is needed to run a modern-day country, because people that don't have our own interests at heart certainly have. If that means running our own infrastructure off the Internet then so be it.

Tech titans assemble to decide which jobs AI should cut first

Reasons to be happy

Having disrupted everyone else's jobs already, Big Tech now disrupts itself.

When that happens, large tech corporations everywhere will collapse in their own steaming pile of horseshit as the last people leave and the AI turns off the lights. Then IT people can get more socially useful jobs elsewhere.

Ivanti commits to secure-by-design overhaul after vulnerability nightmare

Q1 results are in... CEO sends out missive

Shouldn't it be the CTO reacting a little earlier than this?

Microsoft unbundling Teams is to appease regulators, not give customers a better deal

"Think before you pull the trigger, warn analysts"

They know which side their bread is buttered...

Infosys announces 'In-Person Collab' weeks

Putting aside those people who work in geographically split teams so it makes no difference to them where they work so they might as well work where they work best, it's also odd that all these back-to-office initiatives never include some element of co-ordinating with other members of the office. It's just "turn up x days a week or we fire you" and then... Brownian motion will improve productivity?

Outlook.com trips over Google's spam blocking rules

Re: Gmail

When you have a gmail address, gmail's spam filter is great. When you don't, that's apparently not Google's problem, even for spam sent from gmail.

AWS severs connection with several hundred staff

Probably the best thing to happen to them

Amazon noted for being a toxic hellhole and all that.

No joke: FTC boss goes on the Daily Show and is told Apple tried to block her

Re: USA Free Market

I bet she even brought her own socks with her so she didn't have to accept the EULA that USAian socks have.

X's Grok AI is great – if you want to know how to hot wire a car, make drugs, or worse

Re: Guardrails my ass

"X is wrong therefore Y must be right" never got me very far in programming or even real life. Perhaps that's your problem.

Microsoft slammed for lax security that led to China's cyber-raid on Exchange Online

Ten years ago...

... Microsoft fired their QA and decided to crowdsource testing. Nobody could have foreseen what happened next.

Starlink clashes with Telecom Italia over frequency data sharing

"it may shift investment from Italy to other European countries if the situation is not resolved"

The most investment Starlink make in a country is add the country drop-down box to their website, set up a tiny shoebox company used to collect payments from customers, and pay the bare minimum in taxes. There aren't even any customer service jobs because Starlink doesn't have any customer service.

Sega grabs tech layoff baton and dumps couple hundred Euro staff

Re: Couple complaints

You may be able to modify the universal metric translator *monkey script to make the change for you. That script makes The Register's nonsensical units of measurement almost bearable... I don't mean the true El Reg units but the imperial units house style nonsense.

Also the article headlines of today are nothing like those of yore, but again I guess true red top headlines scared off the USAians which are prone to panicking easily. As did the .co.uk.

End of rant.

Genius

Buys Rovio then fires own staff six months later...

Google will delete data collected from 'private' browsing

Just as well they're bringing in Privacy Sandbox in a few months to stop this kind of thing ever happening again...

Rust developers at Google are twice as productive as C++ teams

Re: Zig

Rust (Carbon, Go ... ) targets C++, not C. Zig targets C, and not C++.

I do know this, hence my answer.

The new hotness for replacing C is Zig. It's difficult to tell the difference between Zig and Rust, at least in terms of PR.

"More productive"

Anyone would be more productive, all the hard work has already been done. They're just translating one language to another and maybe finding a few logic problems on the way.

Hillary Clinton: 2024 will be 'ground zero' for AI election manipulation

Re: Photo ID in UK

So for the downvoter:

UK removed legal protection for Windrush immigrants in 2014

All you have to do is remember which party governed in 2014 and which party governed in 1999.

Re: Photo ID in UK

People that don't vote for a period of time should be removed from the roles since chances are that they are no longer alive or aren't living in the district.

Absolutely not, the fact that no party's manifesto offered something to make you vote last time should not be a reason to deny you a vote the next time. Otherwise there is a last-minute rush to enroll which leads to disenfranchisement.

Re: Photo ID in UK

Your source says:

Although the decision was made in 2009, it wasn’t until October 2010, when the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition government were in power, that the registry slips were actually disposed of. The Home Office described this to us as an “operational decision”.

Would Labour destroyed boarding cards in the same way, started deporting them after 2012, carried on until 2020, or washed their hands of the whole affair and pretend it never happened in 2023? Bit of a reach to suggest that.

Re: Photo ID in UK

I did find it a little surprising that the people involved in the Windrush saga has never applied for a passport.

Everyone has seemingly abdicated responsibility for their own well being to other people and this is the result.

Most are at the poor end of society. They were British citizens when they arrived. Why would they need to pay for a passport if they're not leaving the UK? They were all given ILR but the British government did not keep records or notify them of this - basically just some legal handwave in Parliament and life carries on.

Even if they did apply for a passport, they would have to apply to the country of their own citizenship after 1973, which knows nothing about their UK ILR status so nothing would be reflected in their new passport or on any UK system.

So should they have known the British government would suddenly start deporting them after 2012 or not allow them to enter the UK on the return flight because it can't run a residency database?

Fantastic way to blame the victim, AC.

Re: Photo ID in UK

Maybe if when they arrived the labour govt at the time could have ensured they were given them the right paperwork and those that had been given paperwork had then kept it then there would not have been an issue.

At the time of arrival they were British citizens and there was no need to keep records.

Later the 1971 Immigration Act (Heath Government - Conservative) gave Commonwealth citizens indefinite leave to remain but these people did not receive any official communication to this effect or keep records.

In 2010 (Cameron Government - Conservative) did this:

Home Office destroyed Windrush landing cards, says ex-staffer

And then came the 2012 Hostile Environment which did not take into account the immigration status of Commonwealth citizens.

As much as you would like to blame Labour, this is just yet another Tory fuckup.

No. Hate speech in the DSA is defined under national laws plus the EU Code of Conduct definition ("all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin").

censorship law called "digital services act"

What censorship does the DSA impose?

If you mean TSNFKA Twitter can't be an open sewer any more, I'm still not seeing the problem.

Re: Photo ID in UK

If the 'young and the minority people' can't be fucking arsed to pick up a widely advertised free ID

And yet older people don't have to because their bus pass is already accepted. Funny, that.

Re: Photo ID in UK

Younger people and minorities? What a ridiculous excuse

Just look at the list of accepted ID. How come a handful of different types of pensioner bus passes are accepted but a youth travel card or a student card isn't?

Re: Photo ID in UK

The UK is the only European country which does not require a photo ID to vote.

[citation needed]

Amazon fined in Europe for screwing shoppers with underhand dark patterns

Re: Appeal in front of a jury

It's a fine imposed by a regulator, not a court case.

JetBrains keeps mum on 26 'security problems' fixed after Rapid7 spat

Re: JetBrains seems to have a history of being dicks

If they're holding back info until most of the user base have updated, a lot of developers do that.

Apple fans deluged with phony password reset requests

"UX Engineers" need to be bludgened with Petzold and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for classic Macs until they either get it or die, I don't mind which.

Canva acquires Affinity, further wounding a regulator-bruised Adobe

I don't get the premise

Why does Canva buying Affinity wound Adobe?

It might wound users though if Canva decide to switch Affinity's software to a subscription model to match the rest of their offerings.

FreeBSD Foundation hands out Beacon gongs for safer software

Re: What's CHERI?

From the horse's mouth:

Capability Hardware Enhanced RISC Instructions (CHERI)

CHERI extends conventional hardware Instruction-Set Architectures (ISAs) with new architectural features to enable fine-grained memory protection and highly scalable software compartmentalization. The CHERI memory-protection features allow historically memory-unsafe programming languages such as C and C++ to be adapted to provide strong, compatible, and efficient protection against many currently widely exploited vulnerabilities.