Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre

Fast Pair, loose security: Bluetooth accessories open to silent hijack

Re: Couple Of Things To Think About.............

Roosters don't have teeth, blue or otherwise. Penguins, on the other hand... don't have any either. Now I'm confused. I may need some cheese for comfort. Grommit, go fetch me some, please.

Not too sure what the problem is about

Bluetooth protocol has always been about connecting anything to everything -it is in the spec, and the inspiration for the name. It has been made fun of even in mainstream shows like The Simpsons (the episode in which Bart cosplays as a secret agent and Lisa points out that his earbud uses the least secure tech of all times, that was like 20 years ago). The only real security built in bluetooth is that it doesn't work over a sufficient air gap. I do not own many bluetooth-enabled devices but (and perhaps because) I don't expect them to be any more secure than they were designed to be -which is not in the slightest.

Raspberry Pi 5 gets LLM smarts with AI HAT+ 2

If you don't need a GPU there are some RISC-V alternatives that may fill your particular gap. I jumped ships myself, so to speak (well I still do own and use Raspberry Pies -the older ones- , but mainly for legacy reasons)

Bleh

I can understand why it could appeal to some people, but it is exactly the kind of stuff that got me off the RasPi bandwagon and onto the RISC-V one. While I do own several of the Raspberry Foundation's finest, only a PiZero (1st gen) and a Pi2b see daily use, although I did use a Pi3 daily for work for a few years, a few years ago. Of my 2 Pi4 only the one built into my Pi400 has ever been powered on, and perhaps 10-15 times max. What made the Raspberry approach work for me (frugality and elegance, mainly) just isn't there anymore. I say good luck, farewell -just without me.

Micron breaks ground on humungous NY DRAM fab after beating bats and tree huggers

Re: Mass production in 2030

You can always trust the software industry to come up with new innovative ways to waste ressources.

Trump administration sets GPU export rules that put Chinese buyers at the back of the queue

Re: I'm confused on how...

To add insult to injury they could sink the ships as part of a war on narcotraffic ...

Windows 2000 rusts in peace by the sea

As a general rule I dont flick a button when not asked to, or at least with consent. One of the few tech rules that be appended with "in bed" as-is :D.

Sad day

The day I lost my trusted Windows 2000 install disk was a sad one indeed. Coincenditally, I have never owned a machine that was not fully Linux-compatible since then.

Except you can't

From the picture, and contrarily to the statements in the articles, it doesn't look like a touchscreen at all, the controls are the buttons around the sides of the screen, "graphically" linked to the on-screen text bubbles. Quite a common setup in Europe for older ticket booth and ATMs. Much more robust than touchscreens, and usable outdoors under the rain.

AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics

They’re firing people because of AI...

... and then three weeks later they hire a team in India because the labour is so much cheaper

Our management has been there done that, and is now walking the walk of shame back home. I am not very old in the company but my underlings are paid more than I am because the market price for good in-house devs has kinda soared in the last few years in our sector. And yet we do use GH Copilot.

Dell wants £10m+ from VMware if Tesco case goes against it

Re: OpenShift is no 5-minute migration.

It kind of is, actually. An org the size of Tesco should be able to complete the switch in a couple month if they mean it. Although not necessarily cheaper / safer than the alternative, depending on your use and scale.Which is why they do not really mean it, or so I suspect.

Banksy's Limitless limited by Windows Activation

Commercialization

I'm pretty sure Banksy is OK with selling art ; in fact the self-shredding one may or may not have been intentionnally incomplete, and did increase the resale value of the piece. One has to eat after all (and to pay for spray cans etc). What Baksy said about this exhibit is basically "not my circus, not my monkeys". So the Windows activation bork is most probably not an artistic twist, although it does fit pretty well. Poetic justice ?

Judge hints Vizio TV buyers may have rights to source code licensed under GPL

they can't ...

... unGPL the linux kernel though, can they ?

Canada ups its European Space Agency bet 10x with $376M

Re: Everything we do

"Would surely be interesting to see what might happen if the Yellowstone volcano REALLY came back to life again. At least to my knowledge, regarding the "usual / normal" 600000 years cycle, this beast seems to be more than overdue ..."

Done: it eructed as the Orangestone. Gaya has her ways

Blinded by the light: Tesla fixes glaringly bright Cybertruck headlights

Not a fan of the beast, but...

It's not as the Hummer was ever any better in any aspect -to the notable exception of gaz-guzzling, admittedly because the cybertruck guzzles another kind of energy.

No more 'Sanity Checks.' Inclusive language guide bans problematic tech terms

Re: Quite possibly

Wow. I won't use "greybox pentest" lightly ever again. Although at some point the lack of acceptable terms might lead us to using UUIDs for technichal terms, for fear of an outrage. That should give us ~10 years, before d7e909ab-62f2-4fa9-a23a-6fb79657d3c0 is deemed offensive in the context of 4b7a903e-962a-4f68-9dd4-230017a0c5a9

So much for watermarks: UnMarker tool nukes AI provenance tags

The Fourrier transform is not known to be particularly cheap in terms of computing power.

Musk and Trump take slap fight public as bromance ends

communication tactics

This is standard "Pro wrestling" tactic : both contestants needed to create the illusion of a close alliance to further their agendas. Now that is growing old and hampering their individual progress they must appear at odds, Musk to further his agenda in non-US-friendly countries (Starlink and Tesla come to mind) and Trump to reinforce his US-based support which is dwindling. Hence the very public bitch-slap match akin to a former "temmate" smashing a chair on his former ally in the middle of a wrestling ring. I believe it is called a "beef" in the Land of the Great Again, and it benefits both parties.

It also serves to mask the fact that they both worked together to pass measures that will durably harm their respective supporters : the Bidden did it all" excuse was wearing thin, they both needed a diversion.

Throwflame launches fire-spitting robo-dog from Hell

Re: Black Mirrorian horror...

Actually in a lot of places counterfires are the most efficient way to control wildfires. That includes savannah but also in some cases forests with well-maintained fire-cutting alleys.

Arianespace's Vega C delayed after gantry throws a tantrum

Although it should be noted that in the case of external combustion engines (steam, stirling etc), WD40, duct tape and bailing wire are all best left aside.

FabricScape: Microsoft warns of vuln in Service Fabric

Re: What?

"Such that you can delegate rights granularly and SUDO doesn't need root privileges."

Can you elaborate on that ? because that's someting *Nix has been doing for a few decades now, and that MS just figured they might try to emulate, like, last year or so. And they spectacularly failed.

Re: What?

"That's why users don't get execute privileges.

There's a reason 666 is the number of the beast"

666 is the number of the beast because it gives me the privilege to execute users who demand it. Or did I get that wrong all that time ?

Re: What?

My thought exactly. It's a Linux issue because Windows doesn't allow you to do much so you can't exploit this Microsoft bug from Windows...

- Embrace : Check, Linux on Azure

- Extend : not an issue in a Cloud, it's more like "Empower" there (still an "E" so in-spec)

- Extinguish : Let's artificially create security bugs on our platform that are only exploitable from the competition's guest, then claim it's the guest's fault.

BOFH: It's Friday, it's time to RTFM

Re: Intelligence?

In Unix systems of old there was an app for that : "wtf". On some *nix systems it is still installed by default although it tends to be more like a personnal dic than a shared one. Shared definitions these days seem to be "shared" on platforms such as Sharepoint because they have the uncontestable advantage of not being searchable in any meaningful way which allows every branch (and in many cases, every team) in the same organisation to have different definition for the same term / acronym. Sometimes several per team. We live in a wonderful world.

Salesperson's tech dream delivered by ill-equipped consultant who charged for the inevitable fix

Re: Not his fault surely

Well, the articles does state that the processing engine did not remove invalid mails aftr bouncing them, and thus re-processed old emails each time it ran, whic seems like a pretty major design flaw to me

Old-school editor Vim hits version 9 with faster scripting language

Re: Others preferred

"Personally, I prefer Geany or Scite, which resemble word processors rather than traditional programmers' editors."

I do use vim as my editor of choice on my desktop machines but I am open to discussion on that matter. The thing I like most about vim is being able to ssh to a remote server and get directory parsing, coloured syntax, advanced search, scripting, the whole lot. It helps tons when debugging undocumented legacy software. Try running Geany over ssh and tell me how it went ;)

Vigor

I'll be leavig now

The Raspberry Pi Pico goes wireless with the $6 W

Hear that distant rumbling getting closer and closer ?

That would be the Risc-V tidal wave. While this gadget sounds nice, in that segment for any new project Risc-V would be my primary target, because future.

Back-to-office mandates won't work, says Salesforce's Benioff

Re: Happy to return to work if....

My presence seems to have a soothing effect in that kind of situations. Perhaps due to my natural ability to interrupt the shouting match with a well-placed "OK, we've heard everyone's problems, what do we do to reach a solution ?". Silence usually ensues, which is my time to shine because at that point I usually have a few technical options I can tout :D .

Re: Happy to return to work if....

Unfortunately Teams has this useful "invite a participant" which means you start a friendly chat with one person and before you know it there are 25 angry manglement people involved. Who are rightfully angry to be forcibly pulled in a technical chat on a subject they don't know anything about, and who will then escalate to top management just to make the thing disappear. You can't pull that trick around the coffee machine.

Re: Happy to return to work if....

I'm happy you raised the "Escort" argument. I am an ESB developper / tech lead for a pretty large financial institution (Top management speil is that we are either first or second, worldwide, in our domain). I identify as a Dev, not a coder. I can code, but that's only part of my work (almost secondary, as it happens). My work consists largely in architecture definition etc. In generic Teams meetings With 18+ people (Top management, clients, Financial managers, the whole lot) I can't raise tech issues without looking like a Grouch because all these people only think in terms of share value and there is an overwhelming auto-reinforcement bias towards the "Google does it, we want the same. Now" train of thought.

When I meet the same people around the coffee machine, ideas seem to flow much more naturally.

Am I an Escort ?

Re: Happy to return to work if....

I am happy I can WFH 3 days a week. OTH I wouldn't take a full WFH position. I do think that in-person informal discussions are necessary for a smooth workflow, especially when managerial arbitrations are involved.

EU lawmakers vote to ban sales of combustion engine cars from 2035

Re: Useful for city dwellers, I guess...

When I was a student, a few decades ago, I was able to buy an old car to carry me occasionnaly from / to "home" (aka the old folks). It cost me the equivalent of 150 € (200 USD, 100 pounds). In today's money that would be about 5 times that, but still I had to team up with my sister to gather the funds. The vehicle was able to cover the 450+ kilometers (one way) on a single tank. Its dry weight was about 450 kg. It had very litterally zero electronics, I routinely fixed it with a basic set of tools (think of the set of tools available to a student 30 years ago). It was over 15 years old and over 250 000 km when I got it, we brought it well over 350 000 km and was over 25 years old when mutual relocation forced us to part with it and in the meantime it cost us exactly zilch to maintain. I was doing the maintenance. It was still running according to spec when we were forced to part with it.

Newsflash : a lot of students and low-pay workers are in the same situation as I was in 1998, if not worse.

Now name an EV that is even remotely close to that kind of affordability / durability. EVs are OK for rich people who don't really need a car, but that's pretty much it.

Of course now that I am considerably better off, I understand your argument, but the 1998 me seriously winces and thinks "this guy has clearly much more money than sense"

IBM's self-sailing Mayflower suffers another fault in Atlantic crossing bid

Re: Electrical problems

Perhaps IBM should just buy the tech from China and call it a day. Ah, no can do ?

On a more serious note this is exactly the kind of problems that were entirely predictable, and that arise from a "solution" looking for a problem.

Surface ships are notoriosly hard to keep running unnattended, and even though most shipping companies now run ships that are almost entirely autonomous, a minimal crew is always included.

But there is little (if any) need for a reseach vessel to be a surface ship : underwater siblings are faring pretty well, thank you, as are airborne ones.

In addition to that, the project suffers from what I will happily name "the Elon syndrome", after Tesla's famous attemps at autopilot : why would you try to emulate a human operator when more efficient technical solutions are widely available and well tested ? Surely cameras and image recognition should be at the very most a last-resort help rather than in the core design? A bit like how human crews have been in most commercial carriers for quite a while now ?

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

Well the BOFH himself is not impervious ...

... to the clever machinations of printer-attached leeches :

https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/17/bofh_2016_episode_8/

World’s smallest remote-controlled robots are smaller than a flea

Carcinisation

"Rogers called the crab-like feature of the design “a creative whim.”"

Either a lie or a lucky "whim". For these kinds of application, Evolution seems to agree with this design decision. And of course XKCD has a take on it

: https://xkcd.com/2314/

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

Of Yoof and (Wo)Men

Speaking as someone who's been in in this game for quite some time now, and who actually runs a MVS emulator on my own hardware (open to the world, too, for the education of the masses), I must say that IBM is trying very hard to become a subsidiary of Red Hat, instead of the contrary. The typical out-of-school software engineer knows Angular, Springboot, basic Java if you're lucky.Perhaps some Python for the most adventurous but only the flashy "AI" frameworks. Big Iron (or real programming for that matter -gerrof mah lawn yodan ngood kids-) is kinda out of fashion, and for a reason (note that I didnt write "for a GOOD reason").

As I see it, Windows13 will run on IBM mainframes in no time at all, and THAT will be either the end or the rebirth of International Business Machines. DOOM !

OpenSearch, the AWS-sponsored Elasticsearch fork, reaches 1.0 milestone

Re: But what does it actually do?

According to the coloured crayon blurb Elasticsearch and Kibana are "the Google of business monitoring". They work quite well, too. Except when they don't. Cheers !

Well, Elasticsearch and Kibana are not exactly stellar when it comes to stability

So an alternative would be at least a testable option in my opinion.

South Korean uni installs lavatory that pays out when you spend a penny

Septic tank

So it's basically a septic tank with a tracking API on top. Manure and methane are not exactly scarce resources, especially in densely-populated areas, but what happens with the water ?

Help! I'm trapped on Schrodinger's runaway train! Or am I..?

Inoui also means "unheard (of)" (with a strong hint of "unbelievable") and is running the "OUIGO" trains (which dosn't mean anything but you get the idea).

So that would be a silent "non" then.

Unlocking news: We decrypt those cryptic headlines about Scottish cops bypassing smartphone encryption

Re: Let me get this right

It all depends on how it's implemented. My assumption was that the use of dedicated "kiosks" is so that the kit can be properly locked down (and, hopefully, bolted down too). I don't think the plods want cases to be thrown out of court because of doubts about evidence massaging ...

The kiosks are probably read-only, with the devices sent to a proper lab with proper procedures if anything suspicious iis discovered. As for returning the "clean" devices to their owners, though, there is probably little hope.

Pomp and ceremony: When the US Secretary of State meets Oracle overlord Larry

Debatable

Oracle (proven to exist beyond a reasonnable doubt)

Trump (proven to exist beyond a reasonnable doubt)

Amazon Not Paying Taxes (proven to be somewhat untrue, although they DO cheat a whole lot)

Assassination (proven to have happened beyond a reasonnable doubt)

There, fixed that for you.

If they have time

You might have put the subjects to be discussed in reverse order there...

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

Re: On the plus side...

Recently I went to a print shop to get a photo printed as a gift for an old lady. The snap had been shot by my wife on her smartphone (Ugh) so it was in 3:2 format (re-ugh). I took care to re-frame it properly and change it to the proper 4:3 format for photographs, only to have the millenial shopkeeper tell me that she'd have to crop it as it was not in a standard format.

Now what if I had come with a round pic !

Linky revisited: How the evil French smart meter escaped Hell to taunt me

Re: Le Diable

They have a built-in circuit breaker set (remotely) to the value you pay for ; this breaker is quite a bit more sensitive to peak consumption than electromechanical ones, and they do trip, IRL, way before the main breaker downstream does.

As it's distantly adjustable, all it takes to restore power stability is a quick call to your provider -and of course a quick increase in your monthly bill.

Re: Le Diable

No, as far as they are concerned, the electricity companies are actively SELLING customer energy usage records to the DEVIL HIMSELF.

The meters do change the way power consumption is calculated, so if you were close to the upper limit of your power rating, chances are that the new meter will cut pretty often, forcing you to upgrade your contract. That is quite evil if you ask me !

Yahoo! customers! wake! up! to! borked! email! (Yes! people! still! actually! use! it!)

Re: Guilty Secret

I do have 3 accounts with them, although 2 are mostly spam traps.

Yahoo is much less of a pain in the arse about smtp / imap or geoloc than Google is.

Bus pass or bus ass? Hackers peeved about public transport claim to have reverse engineered ticket app for free rides

Pretty much like a real ticket; for single fare*, activation performed by external hardware containing the private key. Of course there's an associated cost, however small, so First had to try and dispense with the hardware.

*for anything else, there's no real issue - besides the pervasive tracking of users, which companies insist is for our own good - because daily / monthly etc can be controlled by other means, for example a calendar.