Posts by theblackhand

Cisco turns to titanium spoons and sand dunes to build a better … box?

Re: Next: Cisco -> Fiasco

How can you be so pessimistic?

Without these significant advances, an El Reg writer wouldn't have been able to make that joke...

BOFH: Nobody would be stupid enough to go live with the mirror system, surely

Rather than looking at the number of bosses, you should add up the month's between bosses.

That's where you will see the savings...

Trump to hyperscalers: your datacenters, your power bill

The link says "1.5 GW Caterpillar G3520K generation (firm order, delivery March 2026)"

The Cat G3520K is a 97.6 litre, 20 cylinder engine designed to run on low pressure natural gas and generate 2552–2567 ekW (at 50/60 Hz).

Running ~600 gen sets seems rather optimistic and about 25% less efficient than three large 500MW CCGT's although they probably require regulatory permission and I believe the smaller units may not be.

Sword of Damocles hangs over UK military’s Ajax as minister says back it or scrap it

Re: Send it to Ukraine

Or we could just acknowledge that the design is fundamentally flawed and avoid wasting the Ukrainian's time.

And if manufacturers/UK defence decision makers need more evidence, have Ukrainian's "donate" some to Russians desperate for vehicles and let them demonstrate the flaws rather than harming allies....

Feeling taxed by layoffs, IRS turns to AI helpers

Re: AI Herpes

While that maybe the case, it has to be compared to the existing service.

Being told to go f*#k ones self by AI in a timely manner is still better than the same from humans after multiple transfers between departments and a cumulative hold time measured in half days...

AWS's inevitable destiny: becoming the next Lumen

Cloud direction

Previous articles have identified regulatory issues (i.e. the EU) and that the big two cloud providers (AWS and then Azure) pulling away from their competitors driving consolidation within the industry.

With only Google looking like they could be a viable competitor outside of regional niches based on investment (unless you believe Oracle/OpenAI can deliver on their contract), the pressure to provide multi-cloud is more about covering off future consolidation than customer flexibility.

Multicloud is less of a threat to further growth of the duopoly now that it is entrenched and smaller players can be priced out of future data centre contracts (if not on current contracts, then during the next 5 year round of contracts and infrastructure refresh) - it almost becomes a requirement for futher consolidation.

AI faces closing time at the cash buffet

Re: Tech debt

I thought Nestle grew by buying up water rights in areas they operated and charged everyone excessive pricing because "the idea that water is a human right "extreme." (Quote from Nestle CEO Brabeck-Letmathe in 2019).

Having said that, it is a useful comparison because the big 7 seems to want a monopoly on AI and by extension, water, electricity, data centres and leading edge semiconductors and the rest of the world doesn't matter.

IT team forced to camp in the office for days after Y2K bug found in boss's side project

Re: Ah, the great Y2K scare

Out of interest, how did you check Notes was working?

Because in my experience of Notes over multiple companies including resellers using Notes/Domino to replicate IBM parts and price lists, bring broken was almost the default state.

NS&I tech overhaul blows past Treasury spending limits

Re: The same story

I think you're overly focused on the cost to taxpayers and are completely ignoring the benefits that outsourcing responsibility and accountability to a third party bring to senior management.

Anyway, enough if this unChristmasy behavior, I have to find an Atos salesperson to take me out for ""an in-depth review" at the local...

ATM jackpotting gang accused of unleashing Ploutus malware across US

There were almost 1600 incidents since 2021 of ATM jackpotting (https://www.justice.gov/d9/styles/banner/public/2025-12/picture2_0.jpg?itok=n4AAriXN) and while I don't believe they are attributable to one criminal organization the reported losses ($40m) now exceed the cost of the -5000 annual bank robberies in the US (~$35m).

The UK and Europe experienced issues with ATM jackpotting around 10-12 years and ATMs were either upgraded to address the issues or removed from some locations. Rather than declaring ~54 people "terrorists", I would have imagined banks upgrading their ATMs and police/FBI working together to apprehend criminals (which they appear to have done...) would have avoided the need to use the terrorist bogeyman...

Amazon is forging a walled garden for enterprise AI

Re: Own dog food?

While I have similar experiences aearching even when giving pretty good hints, maybe we aren't the target for Amazons sales AI?

Put another way, maybe Amazon have optimiser for sales revenue versus what we are interested in buying and improving search for...informed?...customers risks losing sales elsewhere.

MongoDB talks up its AI chops by talking down PostgreSQL

Re: Scaling problems?

"And scaling is fine, but don't you also want to keep the integrity of the data?"

Data corruption allows AI to be extra innovative....

Unofficial IETF draft calls for grant of five nonillion IPv6 addresses to ham radio operators

"Well I for one would urge someone to give Poettering a ginormous IPv6 allocation in the hope we never hear from him or systemd ever again."

Or....systemd is able to allocate a truly unique loopback to every local application to avoid the dreaded "address already in use"error without having to worry about exhausting 127/8

AWS builds a DNS backstop to allow changes when its notoriously flaky US East region wobbles

It's not the DNS lifetime that caused the issue - it's the inability to create new DNS entries that stalls/stops provisioning resulting in a feedback loop that further overloads provisioning as failures generate even more provisioning requests.

I believe it means that if AWS experiences a major Issue with it's provisioning service, within 60 minutes (an SLA rather than how quickly they can potentially enable this feature), they will allow an alternative method of provisioning resources.

My guess is that AWS have preallocated a limited emergency range of DNS/IP mappings that can be safely allocated in an emergency and don't require DB access. That relieves pressure on the DynamoDB solution to allow key organisations to recover faster and probably allow AWS to recover faster as well.

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

Re: "Tales from the pit"

"*I caught her once, standing in a corner, holding a torch and she said she was a lampstand."

Maybe it was a test to see if you were a moth?

Sole trader dispatched almost 1M spam texts to hard-up Brits, says watchdog

Re: What I would be more interested in .....

Limited liability doesn't protect a company director if said director is breaking the law...

He's accused of sending text messages - why would you give him an unbreakable texting machine?

Everybody's warning about critical Windows Server WSUS bug exploits ... but Microsoft's mum

Re: Soooo...

My guess is that they tried to allow RDP access to their server, but couldn't get it working with a single port so allowed full access to all port/protocols...

A single DNS race condition brought Amazon's cloud empire to its knees

Re: Recovery wasn't rate limited?

I would suggest you are looking at the problem from the wrong direction. The issue isn't existing DNS mappings. They work.

It's new mappings. You have to be able to create/delete records to flex services up

/down/between data centres (US-EAST-1 is a collection of around 100 large data centres) and each new instance that is required to cope with increased load or the migration of load between your capacity groupings (i.e. a data centre hall is likely the smallest grouping)

Once your DNS move/add/delete process is delayed, demand will create a situation where key services reach capacity and then you enter the downward spiral of no capacity to cope with current load and no ability to increase capacity.

This ignores any systems used to avoid this situation (DNS planner and DNS Enactor) - my assumption is that something triggered the DNS issue such as maintenance/power outages causing a loss of data centre capacity causing some of the initial demand issues, because historically, that has been the cause of a large number of previous US-EAST-1's outages.

It's worth noting that a number of AWS people have said that US-EAST-1 is too big to be stable BUT customers want it and it provides valuable data for how to run other AWS regions reliably as they have been built to avoid the extreme scale issues US-EAST-1 has. Ref: https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/10/aws_dave_brown_ec2_futures/ and

IBM is just not into the 'spend megabucks on cloudy GPUs' thing, rents them instead

Re: BS

You're ignoring spreadsheet errors...

"Went from a first mover advantage, to loser last in 2 decades."

IBM may have had a capacity advantage in the pre-cloud environment, but cloud required bigger, more efficient data centres and IBM wasn't willing to invest to compete with it's rivals.

It didn't take IBM two decades to lose their advantage - it took 3-5 years and arguably less as many of it's data centres lacked the geographic advantages of being close to power suppliers or locations where data centre density allowed IBM to exploit their existing locations.

Rather than an advantage, IBM had a significant disadvantage of significant opex, a lack of capex and management that was unwilling to change course.

British govt agents demand action after UK mega-cyberattacks surge 50%

And if there's a real risk to the board, they will outsource the risk to a third party.

Maybe Rishi could help companies avoid the dangers of TCS and encourage them to use Infosys instead?

Oh dear, my sarcasm jar seems to have emptied unexpectedly.

UK Home Office opens wallet for £60M automated number plate project

Re: £60 million?

"Which part of the world would you like to visit? We can setup "an existing trial" there tomorrow and arrange a visit during the tender process to show a 'working system'..."

As you can see from the attached photo, the alleged crack is less than two feet deep - please find the £200 fine for abuse of His Majesty's footpaths. If you do not challenge the fine and pay within 2 weeks, the fine will be reduced to £100.

UK police caught slacking off by jamming their keyboards while working from home

Re: Meanwhile

Using a wrist watch to distract your mouse still allows you to clock watch unless you choose to binge watch your favourite series...

College student went on a destructive rampage, then confessed to ChatGPT, cops say

How long?

How long must we endure these puff pieces for AI companies demonstrating AI is smarter than humans?

Windows 95 was too fat to install itself so needed help from the slimmer 3.1

Re: Good times!

So we look back with nostalgia at Clippy making an underpowered laptop take 5 minutes to start as we mumble "f*&£ off Clippy"?

Oracle will have to borrow at least $25B a year to fund AI fantasy, says analyst

It's an interesting comparison between Google and Oracle. Both were unable to keep pace with the huge infrastructure spend or AWS and Azure.

Google specialised to try and make their spend sustainable. While they have challenges, they also have some very sizeable revenue streams even as search falters.

Oracle fell behind for years, depending on renting space rather than building like the others.

Then OpenAI comes along and signs a deal that promises expansion at rates that AWS or Azure would be laughed at for suggesting. The lead times required for power and planning new builds make it time consuming and competition for existing space drives up pricing. Sure, you can get lucky a few times, but Oracle has to get lucky for years and years...

UK and US security agencies order urgent fixes as Cisco firewall bugs exploited in wild

Re: Unbelievable!

The advisory is for organisations to:

- patch equipment

- remove any end of life equipment ASAP as at best, it has another month of vendor support.

Insert whatever vendor you wish into those statements and it remains true.

While it would be nice if Cisco or any other vendor could write perfect code that anticipated any possibility, we have to accept reality isn't that perfect.

Apple 0-day likely used in spy attacks affected devices as old as iPhone 8

I'm wondering how you got from "a surveillanceware company" and "targeting individuals" to the UK government being involved? It looks like German and US companies were responsible for the software rather than known UK surveillanceware companies.

Amnesty International report "Shadows if Control" suggested this was being used in Pakistan and more widely against journalists.

HybridPetya: More proof that Secure Boot bypasses are not just an urban legend

Re: Not Clear About The Impact On Linux Systems....

The jump from "encrypts NTFS partitions" to "encrypts a range of OS partitions" does not seem to be large...

US puts $10M bounty on three Russians accused of attacking critical infrastructure

Re: Who is responsible here?

The article suggesting older kit could not be patched for these vulnerabilities while failing to mention they could be disabled, ACLs applied AND good practices applied around securing the management plane against 8+ year old vulnerabilities on kit that is likely 13+ years old equipment based on Cisco patching vulnerabilities for at least 5 years if we ignore the prosumer Linksys rebrands.

If your grandparents or elderly parents used an unpatched Windows 8 PC that was was compromised, you would question if they should be using such a difficult to maintain piece of kit.

We should treat companies similarly and get them to use people for important tasks if they can't manage to run networked equipment in a competent manner.

France fines Google, SHEIN for undercooked cookie policies that led to crummy privacy

"The EU could be hammering China with fines, and he'd still claim we're doing nothing, if the lie was useful to him."

That's just portraying Trump as untrustworthy - if you would also acknowledge that Trump would approve of the fines if there was a kickback to Trump's family because Trump had invented fining other countries, then you could also capture his corruption and narcissism.

Huawei counts cost of Western bans as UK business withers

Re: Tinfoil Hat time

If you want any insight into what Intel might be o dered to do, it would have been "survive".

Not much point having a conspiracy to introduce advanced spying capabilities into new chips if the company never makes them...

Europe Putin the blame on Russia after GPS jamming disrupts president’s plane

Re: Putin on the glitch

Biden didn't fix it but it was really Obamas fault.

Everyone said there would be no consequences for wearing a tan suit but wow, look at all the consequences.

Lords of May-hem: Seven signs it is Oracle's year end

Re: "there's nothing illegal in its approach"

Or...visit my website: https://ameatgrinderisfor lifenotjustsoftwarerenewal.com

We have a large range of models to cater for all of your Oracle (or Microsoft or AWS or Google etc) license renewal needs - from the portable models for one to one meetings to full room size models to efficiently handle larger discussions.

And as we do every Oracle licensing season, we are throwing in a free sausage maker so you can surprise the replacement salesperson with a tasty snack.

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

About time

I've been uncomfortable using "hung" for some time and have made a point of saying "well endowed" instead.

IBM Cloud hit by Severity One incident with the same symptoms as other recent SNAFUs

Re: Obligatory

IBM doesn't have a cloud solution just a lot of inefficient old data centres with customers entrapped in contracts they regret.

Making cloud jokes will only please IBM execs...

Mexit, not Brexit, is the new priority for the UK

Re: Simple options

While the article discussed the importance of moving away from MS, the comment around E5 licensing perfectly encapsulates the behaviour that has led to the the current situation.

The current Microsoft usage is driven by the combination of desktop dominance and providing security and compliance tools to meet (or at least be capable of meeting) regulatory and audit requirements. Every part of the government reseller/procurement/IT/compliance stack is comfortable with a Microsoft solution and know that substituting alternative products increases the risk of failure AND higher costs.

Instead of getting Mexit and a decrease in government spending, the M7 with co-pilot and increased spending seems the likely future.

CitrixBleed 2 exploits are on the loose as security researchers yell and wave their hands

Re: Security device is full of bugs :o

A security device that doesn't validate parameters. In 2025...

If only there had been 30+ years of examples of why this should be avoided.

Cisco president says dredging coding syntax from wetware memory wastes engineers' expensive synapses

Re: Eh?

I don't have much time to answer as I've just been recruited by Cisco as part of their AI initiative.

What if instead of using AI to do "requirements-> pseudo code-> actual code" you did 100 x (Requirements-> pseudo code-> actual code)?

I know, my genius amazes me! It's amazing what the right AI prompt can give you.

I'm also working on an aggressive approach to "the requirements are wrong" - AI will go along way if we can fix the "time traveller from the future trying to stop us" problem.

'Major compromise' at NHS temping arm exposed gaping security holes

Re: Compromise

I'm also struggling with the rags-to-exceeds national standards security story.

While not wishing to undervalue the investigation and recovery operation, telling the world everything is OK when you don't know how the attackers got in the first time or how long they were operating within your infrastructure feels a little risky.

It's like the cartoons where after a character almost gets hit by a truck, they walk off, seemingly OK, before they turn to reveal they lost all the clothing off their backside.

Europe's cloud datacenter ambition 'completely crazy' says SAP CEO

Re: Give them your keys?

20 years ago, $8bn may have been enough to start a cloud computing company. Now you have to compete with the 5 largest providers who are already well established and have cululativrly spent $1tn+ to reach the current positions (AWS/Azure/GCP have spent ~$20+bn/year each for 10+ years with smaller investments in the previous 10 years).

To enter the hyper scale realm now, you need to invest around $10bn/year and will likely need 2-3 years to start churning out newer, larger DCs to be competitive both in procurement and scalability to justify the spend.

We are already seeing consolidation (Oracle and IBM using AWS/Azure/GCP) from those who have spent tens of billions as they can't compete with the data centre build rate of the largest providers when power and space are at a premium in thr regions with the largest demand.

Can an existing mid-tier provider get a significant injection of capital ($40-50bn to cover a 5-10 year build out in Europe) to be genuinely competitive? Maybe but I doubt they will get the investment needed as they will likely struggle to be competitive even if there are stricter data protection requirements for EU data.

Ex-NSA bad-guy hunter listened to Scattered Spider's fake help-desk calls: 'Those guys are good'

"your call is important to us...."

And the betting on how long they will wait begins..

Just make sure you don't do it over a long weekend, we wouldn't want a repeat of the guy in finance who gnawed off his own foot due to hunger while he was waiting.

CISA mutes own website, shifts routine cyber alerts to Musk’s X, RSS, email

Re: As JFK said

Wouldn't the most relevant JFK related quote be Marilyn Monroe saying "President Kennedy is very democratic and very penetrating"?

Re: I wish this was a joke...

Are you sure El Reg can be trusted?

I'm not convinced they have truly adopted the banana as the universal measurement unit so who knows what other crazy ideas they may be concealing behind a thin veneer of red paint...

Unending ransomware attacks are a symptom, not the sickness

Re: Open Door

And in this case, "too many" was how many exactly?

We all know the perfect firewall has no connectivity to the outside world. By extension, the perfect building would have no doors...

Curl project founder snaps over deluge of time-sucking AI slop bug reports

Re: It's the bug bounty

If you "deepfake" the video, MS can get a team of relatively low skill security people or potentially even AI, to review your submission and if the steps provided do not match your results downgrade or reject the submission.

Potentially they could even create a submission "cost" that involves no cost for actual submissions but could be offset against any bounties you do legitimately claim in the future.

Redis 'returns' to open source with AGPL license

Luck is stumbing across something you never knew existed.

Poor judgement is finding a gun with an attached note that says "caution, point away from you before pulling the trigger", aiming it at your foot and pulling the trigger. Redis may argue that the didn't know that a gun called "changing licensing models" would hurt so much but its hard to make those arguments when your customers are walking away and Redis can only limp after them owing to the damage done to their feet...

Trump derails Chinese H20 GPU sales, forcing Nvidia to eat $5.5B this quarter

Re: Ouch

I don't believe this is a tariff issue - the parts are produced in Taiwan and likely assembled somewhere in Asia so likely miss the tariffs.

The issue is export restrictions - as nVidia is a US company and H20-based products are currently export restricted, they can't be sold to China.

At a minimum, export licenses are required - there was a rumour that nVidia would be exempted from this following the Mar A Lago dinner. Looks like $1m doesn't buy as much influence as you need to sell $5.5bn of AI chips...