Posts by Julz

Barclays Bank appeared to be using the Wayback Machine as a 'CDN' for some Javascript

Re: This puzzles

That's not the Devops way.

UK government shakes magic money tree, finds $500m to buy a stake in struggling satellite firm OneWeb

Re: It Could Be Made to Work ???

You could try reading the linked article.

http://web.stanford.edu/group/scpnt/gpslab/website_files/LEO_sat_nav/ION_GNSS_2016_LEO_Navigation_Reid.pdf

Re: Hmm.

Why do you think that your VPN provider isn't compromised?

E-scooter fanboy so hyped for Teesside to host UK's first trial

Re: Here's an idea...

Do it with Italian style:

https://piaggiogroup.com/en/archive/press/ape-calessino-2009-all-new-colours-and-revolutionary-electric-lithium-electric-version

Like a Bolt from the blue, Huawei's fledgling AppGallery signs a ride-sharing platform

My

Mum always told me not to bolt my food.

Euro police forces infiltrated encrypted phone biz – and now 'criminal' EncroChat users are being rounded up

Re: Honey pot

Or perhaps a web based numbers station.

https://www.numbers-stations.com/

Re: Honey pot

I does look a lot like a honeypot that has been busted and a mad dash to arrest and cease stuff to put a front out the world.

If your interested, the internet archive has copies of what their web site used to look like:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181112142511/http://encrochat.network/

Which went all quiet around Dec 2018

There seems to be a big Canadian connection, and here is the archived web site for one of their 'resellers':

https://web.archive.org/web/20191025220110/http://www.eccanada.ca/

Never knowingly under-digitally transformed: Retailer John Lewis outsources tech function to Wipro

Re: A Question for the Chief Idiot

As I've said before. Since it seems that any old MBA can run any type of company. Why don't you outsource the management functions to a board as a service company. Which will efficiently run yours, and several other companies business, bringing economies of scale, time efficiency and cross pollination to such functions as strategic planning, corporate marketing, fat bonus negotiations, golden parachute schemes, corporate merry go rounds, and many other vital functions.

The joke part is that it might actually work...

MIT apologizes, permanently pulls offline huge dataset that taught AI systems to use racist, misogynistic slurs

Re: This is a problem in general

For research purposes only, I did just that. My google search didn't show me any naked girls (at least in the first page of results). What aren't you telling us about your alien google profile :)

'It's really hard to find maintainers...' Linus Torvalds ponders the future of Linux

Re: Another problem of a monolithic monster kernel

Not necessarily dog slow. It depends up on how the message passing / switching between kernel actors/modules (or whatever you OS of choice calls them) is handled. Not too dissimilar to the normal issues around context switching from user space to kernel space for things such as system calls. They do have some inbuilt advantages as well. Device drivers tend to run completely in user space and so don't have the inconvenience (mostly) of having context switch in and out of the kernel for each buffer load of data. They also tend to fit better on top of distributed computers or multi-threaded CPUs.

Declaration of interest; I spent some time working with Chorus Systèmes getting their micro-kernel UNIX OS working in a performant manner on an ICL massively parallel (well for the time) computer which I doubt any of you would have heard of because only three were ever sold. Again, for the time, it wasn't too shabby on the speed front being much faster for large database operations than the other equivalent UNIX big iron boxes of the time.

Re: Another problem of a monolithic monster kernel

Micro-kernels are a thing and have been for a while and where well developed at the time LINUX was a gleam in Linus's eyes. I'm sure that many reasons for LINUX not being a micro-kernel can be trotted out but I can't help thinking that its monolithic nature is contributing in large part to the problems being described.

Germany is helping the UK develop its COVID-19 contact-tracing app, says ambassador

Translation?

Here's a headline we'll run this century, mark our words: Alien invaders' AI found on Mars searching for signs of life

So

Send an robot to Mars with loads of sensors to do science stuff. Collect bucket loads of data from those sensors. Then, whittle the data down to what you think you might be looking for via a black box algorithm. Dump the rest and send back the Readers Digest version of the data. Sounds just the job.

White elephants in the mist: Google's upcoming Pixel 4A may ship without Soli motion recognition, per FCC filing

So

How is it going to determine the difference between the one and two fingered salute?

When one open-source package riddled with vulns pulls in dozens of others, what's a dev to do?

Other Peoples Code

On other peoples computers; what could possibly go wrong.

Russia returns to space tourism and offers a first citizen spacewalk

Probably a good idea to know enough Russian to understand the glyphs that flash up as the soyuz flings you into an unexpected ballistic trajectory...

NASA mulls going all steam-punk with a fleet of jumping robots to explore Saturn and Jupiter's mysterious moons

Tarrahawks!

See title...

Sorry to drone on and on but have you heard of Ingenuity? NASA's camera-copter is ready to head off to Mars

Why

Didn't they put in on the top?

Grav wave boffins are unsure if they just spotted the smallest black hole or the biggest neutron star seen yet

Re: So too small for a black hole and too big for a neutron star

A quark star?

Not the cheese :)

Eclipse Foundation releases Jakarta EE 9 preview, adopts AdoptOpenJDK

Are you suggesting that JAVAs got a fat arse?

Big Tech on the hook for billions in back taxes after US Supreme Court rejects Altera stock options case hearing

Re: A small contribution to countries' Covid-19 costs...

I guess the question is, how much is enough?

It is the same as Monte Carlo opening a casino in the 1800's so suckers patrons could travel there and be parted from their money, enriching the country. Only works if your small and the country's around you cooperate by providing you with a unique market. In this case keeping gambling illegal.

Ex-CEO of fintech biz Wirecard arrested over missing money: Vanished €1.9bn may not have existed in the first place

Difficult to cash in a lack of money...

Segway to Heaven: Mega-hyped wonder-scooter that was going to remake city transport to cease production

In the UK

It was doomed from the start. It was illegal to use them on the roads and also illegal to use them on the pavements. The only place you could legally use them, was on privately owned land. I suspect that if the bicycle was invented now, it would suffer the same fate.

By the way, so are electric scooters, illegal that is, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them. For some reason, the law isn't being enforced. In fact I believe there is a review into making them legal on roads in some places/circumstances. It seems the transport revolution came too late for the Segway.

UK police's face recognition tech breaks human rights laws. Outlaw it, civil rights group urges Court of Appeal

Re: What's a "Human Right"?

The USA didn't have Irish bombers driving transit vans around the country blowing stuff up. ANPR was a reaction to try track their movements. Oh, and it came in on all of the major road junctions quiet a bit before most where aware that the technology even existed.

US starts sniffing around UK spaceports – though none capable of vertical launches actually exist right now

Re: launch from a British spaceport

Ascension would be a better choice, nearer the equator and absolutely British. It's south of the equator (~5 I think) which might be useful too. Already got an RAF base with a long runway, an ESA space tracking station, the BBC world service transmitters and some no name agency listening posts (proximity to undersea cables just a coincidence). Oh, and lots of albatrosses.

Paging technology providers: £3m is on the table to replace archaic NHS comms network

Re: The NHS - uniquely the same

Get your diodes fixed.

Google isn't even trying to not be creepy: 'Continuous Match Mode' in Assistant will listen to everything until it's disabled

Re: Oh mighty one...

godot...

58 Starlinks scattered across sky, Rocket Lab aims for back-to-back launches, and Skyrora hops 6km above Shetland

Re: Musks new alloy

You'd be able to see how full the tank was from the outside! Well, if a whale didn't get in the way.

Microwave-tech-touting British upstart scores £3.6m to build 'large-scale quantum 'puters'

Re: Are we there yet?

Well yes, and no...

Full stack, C++, and backend developers in demand in this week's job openings

Re: Backend in JS!?

It's a thing.

One language to rule them all, One language to find them, One language to bring them all, and in the madness blind them.

ZFS co-creator boots 'slave' out of OpenZFS codebase, says 'casual use' of term is 'unnecessary reference to a painful experience'

Re: My first thought:

To be directed, implies having a choice. Being a slave to a decision infers no choice.

Whatsapp blamed own users for failure to keep phone number repo off Google searches

Re: It's an unknown

So you desperately wanted a service but didn't want to pay for it. You then found a 'free' service on the internet that seemed to provide what you were unwilling to pay for. All is good, until the dawning realisation that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that you are in fact paying for the service by having your identity monetized. No shit. Who would have thought.

City of London Corporation explores options to escape Oracle's clutches

Re: Luck? You make your own luck.

I have found that if you have a good technical architect (or whatever you might call them), who's onboard from the inception to the final delivery, you might stand a chance of getting something that at least works. Otherwise...

Re: "The current Oracle solution is considered not fit for purpose"

One has to ask, whose purpose? I suspect it suite Oracle fine.

Remember that backdoor in Juniper gear? Congress sure does – even if networking biz wishes it would all go away

Sneeky

Bits of code in firewalls and routers, pah. I remember the days of whole rooms in data centers that only special 'GPO' staff were allowed to enter. That's a proper back door.

US Air Force wants to pit AI-powered drone against its dogfighting hotshots in battle of the skies next year

Re: Still fighting WW2

Not a B-52, try a B-1r sans drones anyway.

Huawei launches UK charm offensive: We've provided 2G, 3G and 4G for 20 years, and you're worried about 5G?

Re: Fun fact

And that in itself is a problem. Once a government looses it's credibility with the institutions of governance then a coup of some sort becomes more likely.

Trump's Make Space Great Again video pulled after former 'naut says: Nope

Re: Curious to know...

Or perhaps Arnold Rimmer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al5bErqFrDQ

Moore's Law is deader than corduroy bell bottoms. But with a bit of smart coding it's not the end of the road

Heretic

" spending a few minutes thinking about the problem before starting the design"

How can you move fast and break stuff efficiently if you stop and think first! As for a design, what the hell...

OK Windows 10, we get it: You really do not want us to install this unsigned application. But 7 steps borders on ridiculous

Re: "This app may harm your device"

Dam, beat me to it. Have an up vote.

SpaceX is about to launch its first Starlink internet satellite sporting a sun visor following complaints by astronomers

Re: Vantablack

Or perhaps just ask their buddies in the NRO what they do to reduce the observability of their spysats. Perhaps they have and sun-visors are the way to go but they didn't seem to feature in their old musings on the subject (link (pdf))

p.s. Yes I know is mostly to do with RADAR stealth, but visual stealth is also a thing.

Anatomy of a business email scam: FBI dossier details how fraudster pocketed $500k+ by redirecting payments

Re: Not very good

And lets not forget to add in those that have enough money that they act with immunity.

They've only gone and bloody done it! NASA, SpaceX send two fellas off to the International Space Station

Re: Almost accident free

Should have been wearing a storm troopers suit...

Bite me? It's 'byte', and that acronym is Binary Interface Transfer Code Handler

I think the not pronouncing letters in a word accolade should go to the French. Who knows how many letters at the end of nearly every French word are left silent.

Cisco hacked: Six backend servers used by customer VIRL-PE deployments compromised via SaltStack

Should

Have bought Huawei...

This'll make you feel old: Uni compsci favourite Pascal hits the big five-oh this year

OK

So I'm officially old. The university I attended in the late 70's had a Pascal Micro Engine (link ) which always intrigued me. Pascal has had an enduring influence on me, although it's I/O sub system sucked . Of that type of language I always liked Modua-2, a sort of grown up Pascal before N Wirth got obsessed with OO and Oberon.

I recall many a long hour in the 80's discussing the pros and cons of language X over language Y and why this or that memory allocation method was so much better, etc. There seemed like such a richness of choice. So tell me again, how have we ended up with Javascript and PHP ruling the roost?

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Re: Approvals

Surly given the current circumstances there will soon be a whole host of secondhand efficient airliners available without the Boeing stamp on them to choose from.

Contact-tracing app may become a permanent fixture in major Chinese city

So

How many here think that some form of this will be rolled out here (wherever here is for you)?

Lawsuit klaxon: HP, HPE accused of coordinated plan to oust older staff in favor of cheaper, compliant youngsters

This Is About As Shocking As The News That Bears Shit In The Woods.

The IT industry in general and the USA large IT corporates in particular, are ageist by design. That's not to say they don't discriminate in other ways, but the cult of youth is very strongly embedded and structures and practices are in place to support it. Having lived and worked through the change, it's not been good or pleasant. When I started it was common for technical colleagues to have been working for more than forty years at the firm (or it's predecessors). When I was last working for a USA corporate, the average tenure amongst the doers was five years. If you didn't shuffle up the greasy pole and slide over to the dark side in management, the large growing target on your back was plain for all to see. And don't get me started on the incredible shrinking number of women and the obsession with reinventing the wheel.

I'll get my coat, it will be the one with specifications, designs and testing plans in the pockets...