Posts by Jon 37

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

Many of the shareholders will support the deal. They get to sell their shares for more than the pre-announcement price.

The regulators are unlikely to care much. Musk isn't a competitor to Twitter and there's no monopoly.

SoftBank aims to keep control of Arm after IPO – report

If it increases in value as the current semiconductor mess eases, then they will get some money now and more later as they sell off the rest of ARM over time.

They want some money now, so they can spend that money on something else. They think the price will go up over time, so by keeping part of ARM for now and selling it later, they think they will get more money overall.

Re: So the competition watchdogs

They probably wouldn't worry so much if Intel had a small stake in ARM. Intel wants to start fabbing chips designed by others, and that includes ARM chips. So a small stake- with lots of other companies to prevent Intel from abusing it - seems reasonable.

Obviously Intel buying 100% of ARM would be blocked.

ASML CEO: Industrial conglomerate buying washing machines to rip out semiconductors

No-one uses 4-bit or mask ROMs nowadays.

At minimum, they'll have an 8-bit or 16-bit processor with on-chip flash memory for the code.

Some of them probably have 32-bit ARM cores. The ARM Cortex M series are cheap, and there are several reasonably cheap microcontrollers that use them.

At the high end... well, my tumble dryer has WiFi and an app to tell you when it's done. Lots of computing power. (That I don't use, because why would I want the security risks of connecting my tumble dryer to the Internet).

Oracle already wins 'crypto bug of the year' with Java digital signature bypass

Re: User presents a certificate

There are trusted CAs that have ECDSA root certificates trusted by all OSs and browsers.

With this vulnerability, anyone can create certificates allowing them to impersonate any TLS server they like. This allows an attacker who is able to intercept traffic, to view and change your communications with any TLS server.

Atlassian comes clean on what data-deleting script behind outage actually did

Re: GDPR

It's not just GDPR. There are a bunch of laws that might require data to be really deleted.

Without those laws, the sysadmins could always do "mark as deleted", which can be easily undone when someone makes a mistake. Because of those laws, they had to add a "really delete this now" mode to the script. And when someone made a mistake and had used that option, there was no way to get the data back except restoring from backup.

OpenSSH takes aim at 'capture now, decrypt later' quantum attacks

Re: What's the problem?

> It's trendy to believe that the NSA only releases/approves defective algorithms that provide them with secret backdoors, but there's no evidence to that effect

Nice use of the word "only". Because we know that at least one algorithm produced by the NSA for public adoption, had a very clever back door.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

The problem is that it is hard to find a back door. The easiest solution is, once an organisation has proven to be an attacker trying to introduce back doors, stop using new algorithms from them.

HP finance manager went on $5m personal spending spree with company card

There's no way she can actually make amends. But she can "try", totally unsuccessfully.

Trying to make amends is a mitigating factor in sentencing. So the lawyer is doing their best for their client, by publicly claiming this mitigating factor in the hope that their client gets a shorter sentence.

OVHcloud datacenter 'lacked' automatic fire extinguishers, electrical cutoff

But Cloud!!!

It magically makes computers easy, and I save money because I don't need to hire an IT department!

/s

AMD confirms Ryzen chips' stuttering performance on Windows 10, 11

One real use of a TPM is whole disk encryption on laptops.

Used to be, if you encrypted the whole disk, then you had to type a password on boot, and that password would decrypt the disk.

If you just put that password somewhere, then a hacker would read it from wherever you left it.

With TPM, you can store the password in the TPM chip, and do "Secure Boot". The TPM chip monitors every step of the boot process, to ensure you're booting your normal BIOS and normal OS. If so, it decrypts the disk for you. If not, then it refuses to give up the key.

This means that an attacker can't get the key to decrypt the disk easily. I mean, everything is possible if you have enough time and money, or if you have an exploit, or if the OS or software has been configured insecurely. Your security only has to be good enough to defeat a realistic attacker.

This is clearly not as good as typing in the long memorised password on every boot. But normal people didn't do that. And it's a lot better than an unencrypted disk or a post-it note with the password stuck to the laptop.

Russia mulls making software piracy legal and patent licensing compulsory

Re: Time to cut off all access

There is value in keeping the Internet communications open, so people in Russia can get news and information from non-Russian sources that don't have to toe the party line.

If you want the Russian people to vote Putin out and/or stage a coup, then they need to know what's happening. If all they hear is Russian propoganda, they would have no reason to do that.

400Gbps is the new normal for biz networks

Re: The eternal questions

It's not aimed at home users, it's for completely different worlds:

* As you get closer to the network backbone, network connections have to get faster. So an Internet provider who is aggregating multiple home network connections over a (redundant pair of) link(s), needs each one to be many times faster than the home network connections. This applies to connections within their network, and connections to their upstream Internet providers.

* In a datacenter that has a bunch of servers connected to top-of rack switches, which are connected to intermediate switches, which are connected to the core, then the top-of-rack to intermediate network connections need to be many times faster than the server to top-of-rack connections. And the intermediate-to-core connections may need to be faster still. The servers will be communicating within the data center, so their speed is not limited by Internet speeds. Modern servers will be connected to the top-of-rack switches at at least 10Gbps, and perhaps more, so if you have a rack of 40 servers that's theoretically 400Gbps, though you may be able to get away with slower connections since they might not all be sending data at the same time (depending on your use-case).

No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

Re: Failure of capitalism

Unregulated pure capitalism does not work. People will act in their own interests, which will be to pollute the environment, make their workers work in horrible conditions with no regards for safety, sell defective products if they can get away with it, etc. This is all well known.

Regarding the antivirus market, the incentive is to scare consumers into spending lots of money, to have lots of tickbox features so you can "win" product comparisons, and to provide software that defends against most viruses. Making that software fast and compatible is not so important. Making that software unobtrusive so it "just works" actually works against the goals.

There is weak regulation and no way for a consumer to sensibly compare products, so that is what you get.

Now, Microsoft has different incentives. They want Windows to be fast and safe and easy to use, so they can sell Windows and Office and all their other software. Hence they give away a free, fast, relatively unobtrusive antivirus, to everyone who has bought Windows.

So while capitalism caused a mess in the "separate antivirus" market, in the overall "Windows antivirus" market it has worked. We ended up with a single free solution being the clear winner, which is good for consumers.

Intel chases after Bitcoin miners with dedicated chip

Re: If it's that good

Finding all bitcoins is not an end to mining.

You can optionally agree to pay a fee for your Bitcoin transfer to be processed. The miner gets that fee. Naturally, when choosing what transactions to include, the miner will choose the ones with the biggest fees

So finding all the bitcoins may well be the end of free Bitcoin transactions, but not the end of mining. Sadly.

France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US

Re: Confusing GA with advertising

No one is stopping you from doing analytics. They are stopping you from using non-EU services for analytics.

Indian PM says digital rupee will facilitate creation of global digital payment scheme

Re: Digital Currency = collapsed economy?

The UK has "Faster Payments", a scheme for fast transfers between the banks that use it. Payments are pretty much instant. It's free, and is the normal way of making smaller transfers. (There is a limit of a few thousand pounds, so bigger payments have to go through the old overnight system).

Chip shortage: Buyers sign multiyear, no-take-back deals to secure supplies, says NXP

Re: "non-cancellable, non-returnable"

The issue is that customers did not place advanced orders for the chips they needed. Or, in the case of car manufacturers, they did but then they cancelled them at the start of COVID.

The chip manufacturers can supply whatever you want, given enough time to schedule manufacturing and if the deal is profitable enough.

However, given the shortages, the chip manufacturers don't want to waste manufacturing capacity on orders that will get cancelled or returned for a refund. Hence them wanting NCNR terms. And customers are desperate enough to agree to them.

Amazon stretches working life of its servers an extra year, for AWS and its own ops

Re: "servers have a useful life of five years"

The accounting rules say that you divide the capital cost of the server by its expected lifetime in years, and you put that cost in your accounts each year.

So you have to know how long the server will last.

Amazon announced a change to how long the server lasts *for accounting purposes*. While this has to be based on reality, it may be based on changes to replacement cycles that have happened gradually.

Another US president, time for another big Intel factory promise by another CEO

Re: Wishful thinking

Yes. Because Chinese wages are too high, and Chinese sweatshop safety standards are higher (and therefore more expensive) than in those other countries in SE Asia.

No, I'm not joking. Wish I was.

Buy 'em by the punnet: Raspberry Pi offers RP2040 chips in bulk

Re: I assumed they were doing this already...

Yes, they had reels available for their partners. Now you don't have to be a partner, anyone can buy a reel off the shelf.

Multi-day IT systems outage whacks umbrella biz Parasol Group amid fears of a cyber attack

I don't think the problem is the details they wanted.

The problem is using email. Email is unencrypted, and the data is likely stored unencrypted on the recipient's systems.

Support specialist Rimini Street found in contempt of court for continued Oracle copyright infringements

Well, of course it's copyright infringement. The customer has a licence to use the software on one pc. If they send it to you, they are distributing copyrighted code, which probably breaks the license terms. If you run it, that is almost certain to break the license terms. If they want a second person to be able to run it, then someone has to pay for another license.

If that bothers you, you are welcome to stick to free software. But if you choose to use proprietary software, you have to follow the license terms.

The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel

I like Pluma. Not sure what happened to gedit. One moment gedit was a decent text editor, the next Ubuntu release it was a straight Windows Notepad clone with no features whatsoever. Hence someone forking the decent version and calling it Pluma.

Dutch nuclear authority bans anti-5G pendants that could hurt their owners via – you guessed it – radiation

DO NOT DO THIS!

I have to laugh.

But, I have to add a warning too, there are a LOT of stupid people out there:

Do not do it. It will probably kill you.

It will generate a lot of gas in your tummy. At best, you will be continuously burping and/or vomiting for a bit. But probably the gas will be generated so fast, you will not be able to burp/vomit quickly enough, and your tummy will literally explode. That would probably kill you.

Insurance firm Admiral fails to grab phone location data of 'fraud' claimant's mother

But, the article says that Admiral were applying for a court order to get the details from Vodafone. So doesn't that mean that Vodafone REFUSED "to give up someone's call details to a random barrister without a court order"???

After deadly 737 Max crashes, damning whistleblower report reveals sidelined engineers, scarcity of expertise, more

Re: In Case of MCAS: Logical Reasoning, Calculus

They couldn't do that easily. The rules say the aircraft must have certain control characteristics. The rules do that to try to make it easier to fly. With the new engines on the same frame, the Max failed that rule. They added MCAS so they could persuade the FAA that they comply with that rule.

Without MCAS, the plane would need significant changes to the airframe to fix the aerodynamics to fix the control characteristics. It would be effectively a new plane. It would require retraining the flight crew, too. That's a lot more expensive to design and test than what they did. It would also have been better and safer, but "cheap" won.

Re: "scientific testing" of safety is done by the manufacturing companies

For Grenfell Tower, an architect signed off on the fire safety without even checking. They stuck in some words copied from a computer program, and signed it, since "that's what everyone did".

They were not prosecuted.

If we actually wanted safe buildings, the best and easiest way to do that would have been to throw him in prison for 20 years for fraud and manslaughter. And then go back through building applications and throw lots of other people in prison for a month each for fraudulent statements. That would have made architects actually check the buildings are safe before signing off.

ExoMars parachutes just about good enough to land rover safely on the Red Planet

Re: time schedule seems difficult

That might be assuming that they analyze the test results and decide it's fine. If they have to make changes then the launch date might slip.

Intel's mystery Linux muckabout is a dangerous ploy at a dangerous time

RPi explained the MPEG decoder unlock. It's to pay for a patent license for the MPEG patents. If you're not going to use it, you shouldn't have to pay, so they don't include those charges in their board prices. And if you are going to use it then it's the patent holder's fault you have to pay. RPi don't make any significant money on the unlock codes, they mostly just cover their costs.

The rocky road to better Linux software installation: Containers, containers, containers

Re: Cleanly uninstalling is impossible

If you have a whole-system installation, used by multiple users, you can't delete all the per user settings in your uninstall.

Though that applies to Linux as well as Windows.

A 'national security' issue: UK.gov blocks Nvidia's Arm deal for now, inserts deeper probe

In the medium term I agree with you.

In the longer term, I'm hoping it will encourage a switch to RISC-V, which is a truly open instruction set not owned by any one company. That promotes competition between RISC-V core designers, driving down prices and driving up performance and capabilities. A widespread adoption of RISC-V, replacing ARM, would be good for consumers and enterprises. (Though obviously there are short-term costs of the transition itself).

SAP patent not inventive enough to get legal protection, judge rules

Re: "There is no inventive concept that provides something more than the abstract idea itself"

A patent is basically a law. It says that only company X, or people they approve, can do this thing. Anyone else has to pay a fine to company X, and stop.

Going to court to contest a patent claim is just not possible for most people, only the largest companies can afford the cost.

So I strongly disagree with your claim that the patent office shouldn't ensure that the patent is completely valid before granting it! They are making a law that normal people will not be able to fight. So they should treat that with the seriousness and great care which it deserves. They should ensure the patent is clear, and is genuinely a novel invention worthy of patent protection.

(But they don't)

Microsoft accidentally bricks Insider HoloLens 2 devices

Expected for "Insiders"

To be fair, if you go out of your way to sign up as an "Insider" then you should know you're testing alpha quality software and this sort of thing can happen.

If you want to limit yourself to beta quality software, stay on the MS default release track...

Oregon city courting Google data centers fights to keep their water usage secret

They said it was an average across all their sites. Large rainy sites will be more, desert sites will be less.

Rain.

The return of the turbo button: New Intel hotness causes an old friend to reappear

Can you just turn it off?

Is there a way to just disable the slow "E" corrs permanently, and just use the fast P cores?

Windows Subsystem for Android: What's the point?

Minimum system requirements

> Microsoft must have its reasons, but it appears that many of these restrictions are artificial and can be bypassed

As a software developer: We choose a minimum spec, and test our software on that spec. It may run on lower-spec PCs, at least most of the time. But then, after months of use, the user might find some part of the software that their PC is not powerful enough to run. They will then complain that our software is faulty. Err, no, the problem is that your PC doesn't meet the specs. "But it works, everything else runs". Err, no, if it worked you wouldn't be calling me.

And we may be conservative in our choice of minimum spec. If lowering the RAM requirement from 8GB to 4GB is only going to allow a few more people to run the software, but will cost us time testing and time optimizing code in future, then someone will make a business decision whether it is worth the cost of doing that for the small amount of extra revenue.

Also note that, over time, as the proportion of 4GB PCs drops, the extra revenue will drop but the cost of squeezing our code into a 4GB system remains, as we can't drop support for the existing users with 4GB RAM. Much better to spec 8GB minimum right from the start, so our code has room to grow as we add more features.

Informatica UKI veep was rightfully sacked over Highways England $5k golf jolly, says tribunal

Maybe not. The article says it was deemed a bribe under US law, not UK law. The company paying the bribe was US owned, so US law applies to the company. The person receiving the bribe was a UK government official, so US law doesn't apply to him.

We're closing the gap with Arm and x86, claims SiFive: New RISC-V CPU core for PCs, servers, mobile incoming

Re: I want a piece of this.

RISC-V is an open standard for the instruction set. Anyone can design a chip that uses it. This is like how both Intel and AMD make chips that use the x86 instruction set. Most programs for x86 will run on any sufficiently-powerful Intel or AMD chip, and most RISC-V programs will run on any sufficiently-powerful RISC-V processor from any manufacturer.

You can't invest in "x86", but you could invest in Intel or AMD.

Similarly you can't invest in "RISC-V" itself, but you can invest in the companies who design the chips. One of whom is SiFive. No idea if they have publicly-traded stock, though.

(Standard disclaimer: This is not investment advice. If you invest your money, you may lose all that money).

Software Freedom Conservancy sues TV maker Vizio for 'GPL infringement'

Re: I smell a fight coming on

Legally, that's nonsense. The DMCA is irrelevant here.

Vizio distributed copyrighted code without a license. That is not allowed, so they have to pay damages for copyright infringement.

The only defence they might have would be to claim they had a license, the GPL. In which case, they will be asked why they didn't comply with it's terms.

Whether they modified the code or not is irrelevant. If you distribute GPL'd code, you must offer to distribute the corresponding source code.

Not just deprecated, but deleted: Google finally strips File Transfer Protocol code from Chrome browser

Re: "frankly, Google and pals would rather users opted for a dedicated transfer app"

They have HTTPS, a secure protocol that can be used for file download. They don't need FTP as well. And browsers supported FTP for file downloads, not uploads.

Reg scribe spends week being watched by government Bluetooth wristband, emerges to more surveillance

Re: What do you want from your surveillance state?

And do you know how many people died of plague during "the Black Death"? A third to half of all the people in Europe died.

So yes, we could accept lots of people dying. Or we could try to use modern technology to save lives.

Intel teases 'software-defined silicon' with Linux kernel contribution – and won't say why

They've done it before

Intel tried this before, in 2010, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service

This was ... controversial. I'm going to explain what Intel did, why they did it, and why people don't like it. Please note that the downvote arrow is for if I've done a bad job explaining it, please don't downvote just because you don't like what Intel are doing!

Retail shops that sell complete systems can't offer the range of CPUs that you can get online. So Intel cut a deal with certain PC manufacturers, they made a special CPU and artificially disabled some bits of it. When you buy the PC, the shop can try to upsell you a card with a code that you can use to enable them. This way, you can choose to buy the cheaper CPU with less cache, or the faster more expensive CPU with more cache and hyperthreading. And the store doesn't have to keep two different models of expensive PCs in stock. This is good for the store, they can potentially make more profit.

Note that Intel "bin" their CPUs. This means they make a lot of CPUs, test and sort them based on the working features and the speed they work at, then label each chip with the best part number that that particular chip is capable of. "Best" meaning most profit for Intel, obviously. If they are making too many expensive chips and not enough cheap chips, they would normally permanently disable some working parts of the chip, so they can label it with a "worse" part number. Presumably in the case of Intel Upgrade Service, they did that but disabled the working parts of the chip in a special way so it could be re-enabled with a code. They could then sell that for the price of the "worse" chip, but potentially make more money later when they sold the "upgrade".

However, many people didn't like this. They felt that if they'd bought a chip which had certain features inside it, they should be able to use those features without having to pay more to enable them. It brings up a whole host of policy issues. It's pretty much "DRM for hardware", with all the politics around that.

Intel's attempt in 2010 was limited to one processor, and was extended to another three in 2011, but it was discontinued later in 2011. I guess Intel want to try again.

Amazon textbook rental service scammed for $1.5m

Re: "lying to the FBI"

Lying to the electorate is not a crime. (Maybe it should be, but no politician is going to support that).

Lying to the FBI is a crime.

US nuke sub plans leaked on SD card hidden in peanut butter sandwich, claims FBI

Re: This is why TS clearances take years to process

But, the way it should be working is secret information is only given to people who need to know. If only 20 people know something, the fact that there are another 799,980 people with a TS clearance is irrelevant.

Just because you have a TS clearance, that doesn't mean you get to know all the US Top Secret information. It just means you CAN be told the bits of it if you need to know.

Re: Restricted?

Apparently nuclear information is controlled under a specific US law. That's what they are being prosecuted for, since it is nuclear reactor information. Not the usual "classified information" law. So this is not related the various classification levels.

From the court filing:

> “Restricted Data” consists of “all data concerning (1) design, manufacture, or utilization of atomic weapons; (2) the production of special nuclear material; or (3) the use of special nuclear material in the production of energy,” but does not include data that has been declassified or removed from the Restricted Data category. 42 U.S.C. §2014(y).

Re: But... but...

The letter was sent in April. It sounds like the foreign government looked at it, and decided they weren't interested, so they passed it to the FBI at the start of December. (Though that isn't explicitly stated anywhere I saw. But there doesn't seem to be another plausible explanation).

They were making really sure they caught him, and he can't weasel his way out of it.

He can't argue mistaken identity, they will have photos of him & his car at multiple dead drops. Where he had no other reason to go.

He can't argue it was a "one off lapse of judgement". He did it multiple times.

He can't argue it was "worthless information". The seller believed what he had already delivered was worth $100k to a foreign government and he was paid that. And he asked for $5 million total for all the information he had.

Boeing's Calamity Capsule might take to space once again ... in the first half of 2022

Re: Probable?

If you're doing proper engineering, you don't say you know something for certain unless you really do know it for certain.

If you're only 99.9% sure, it's a "probable" cause.