Posts by heyrick

The wild world of non-C operating systems

Re: Necrophilia for fun and profit

"all had features that today's mainstream OSes lack or do badly."

Once upon a time it was a fairly easy job to undelete a file, just as long as you had your "oh shit" moment right away.

All these fancy dodahs these days, nuke a file and it's gone for good. Delete a folder by mistake and everything vanishes in a microsecond with no way of undoing it (and since you don't have low level access to anything without jailbreaking, you can't even try to retrieve whatever might remain).

Yup, progress.

RISC OS

There's some bits written in C. Some.

But the system API and the huge majority of, well, everything is hand crafted ARM code.

Start here (main OS startup, after HAL init).

Will Chinese giants defy US sanctions on Russia? We asked a ZTE whistleblower

Re: The USA will use any excuse to preserve its hegemony

You know, what you say would carry more weight if your weren't "yet another AC". Posting anon suggests that you don't care to own your words.

Debugging source is even harder when you can't stop laughing at it

I'm rusty, but...

DEFFNfark


FOR f@ck = 1 TO 10

MyWindow.Print STR$(f@ck)+" ";

NEXT

ENDFN

Something like that (with interesting rendering by the site!). Yeah, it looks better in C...

Protip - be sure to add some binary shifting next time. VB5 (and possibly VB6?) didn't have a binary shift operator, leading to some horrid code with divides and multiplies a plenty.

"the stress relief becomes part of the code base"

I don't swear in source code. But that sure as hell won't prevent me from dropping in comments to explain that something that was being done in an illogical manner was because following the spec was mandatory even when the spec was not only wrong but created by an entity best described as "something that tumbled from the cloaca of a kittiwake".

Keep it classy and keep it interesting. No shit feck and arse.

EU law threatening 'commercially painful changes' for tech out tonight

Re: How will you do that?

You don't think throwing toys out of prams and abandoning a market as large as the United States might just put a dent in their prestige and, more specifically, their profits?

Re: Wrong question

I remember a time when you used to get a shiny new computer with Windows pre-installed. Due to various dubious deals, it was factored into the cost of the machine. It came with an OS, and that OS ran and did stuff. You were not a product, your data belonged to you, and while you didn't "pay" for Windows, it certainly wasn't free.

Same goes for Android. There's no reason why Android cannot be licensed to be supplied in EU hardware. The problem is not Android, the problem is the many tentacles that Google have pushed into the system. Their services are currently free (sort of, didn't they nobble Photos last year?) and that may be affected, but this shouldn't affect Android.

And, yes, I'm well aware that modern Windows is full of spyware telemetry. This shit needs to be slapped down hard. Just because they can pilfer everybody's data doesn't mean they should. It's a blatant abuse of the trust that should be implied with regards the services they are providing (free or not). I mean, would you use a free email provider that archived your emails and dumped them on Pastebin? Of course not. Every free email service could do this, but they don't, because there are certain expectations regarding privacy.

So I can use Firefox instead of Safari?

(and I mean real Firefox, not a rehashed version of the same WebKit that everybody is forced to use)

Re: What data do they take ...

This.

Any app (or service) that collects data and sends it off device must describe exactly what data, why it is being collected, and have an option to opt in (opted out by default) unless said data is necessary. This must also account for any and all third party uses in connection with the app.

Enough is enough.

None of this "for diagnostics" crap. Necessary is, if a messaging app, the message the user wants to send, and an ID for checking if there are messages to collect. Location, phone number, address book, screen size, processor type, underwear colour, and amount of protein in the last meal are not necessary items of data.

Does this mean it'll hit apps that pilfer user data by way of in-app advertising? Yup. And see, this is me giving a shit.

Enough is enough.

And +1 for the managers seeing jail time. Not necessarily the programmers (they're told what to do) but certainly the managers. And twice as long if the data collection was due to "a rogue programmer" as that implies there's absolutely no code auditing going on.

Enough is enough.

Icon, seems appropriate.

Re: I assume

The EU is democratic. Something Brits might have a better handle on, had they not voted the likes of Farage as their MEPs.

‘Precursor malware’ infection may be sign you're about to get ransomware, says startup

Re: Almost mind numbing...

"update as they are made available"

Oops, there goes network printing, again.

Re: Advanced Malware - No way to stop

You forgot the C-suite ponce who doesn't want to have to deal with all your "security nonsense" and since they outrank your boss, it's a simple matter for them to raise the issue in a way that gives you no choice but to punch a hole in the defences.

Boom times for North America's big datacenter real estate market

Hmm...

This article follows an advert from Pantheon that screamed in really big letters "Website hosting is dead".

EU, US agree on Privacy Shield enhancements

Re: EU, US agree on Privacy Shield enhancements

Oh for fucks sake.

The European Commission (basically civil servants) nominates those who could be president, and the Parliament, formed of people elected by the citizens (the MEPs), then elect the president for a five year term.

Compare with British civil servants, who may be appointed but certainly aren't elected, and the Prime Minister who, also, is not directly elected by the people but by his party (unlike, say, France where the government and the president are elected separately).

Re: safeguarding privacy and civil liberties

Not troops, gas... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/25/biden-and-eu-agree-landmark-gas-deal-to-break-kremlin-hold

Timing's just a little too suspicious, eh?

Upvote a gazillion times.

I don't give a shit about American laws [*]. I don't live there. I live here. The laws of this country apply to me. If I feel wronged (not that I have a clue how I'd actually ever know), then I expect it to be heard in a comptent court in my jurisdiction. Especially as endless stories on this very site portray the American legal system as confrontational and protectionist, with mega corps forever appealing until they get the result they want (either a win or the little guy bankrupted into silence). In other words, a wronged EU citizen likely doesn't have a mouse's hope in a nest of hungry eagles.

* - Which is in itself something of an oxymoron given the wide differences between each state, with the federal stuff on top of that.

safeguarding privacy and civil liberties

It's astonishing that she was able to say that with a straight face. Is America committing troops to eastern Europe or something?

RIP: Creators of the GIF and TRS-80

If your tea doesn't taste of anything, might I suggest you leave the tea in the tea for a tad longer?

"I don't see people spitting incandescent fury at each other here in the UK over the order of jam and cream on a scone."

That's because proper British people don't do incandescent fury. We also don't care what jam you prefer, or even, marmelade. We can also cope with multiple ways of saying the word "scone", just so long as you can cope with gentle mockery for the wrong ways.

But mark my words, you will be judged on your choice of tea. If you choose incorrectly, there will be quiet tutting and rolling of eyes. That's an unrecoverable situation, you should apologise and just leave...

Mozilla creates paid-for subscriptions for web doc library

Re: Fire Fox. . . savour of the universe!

Upvote for the title, because I'm listening to an 80s station and, guess what's actually playing right now? (Open fire! All weapons! - yes, it's a world of ham)

I think burning in hell is a little strong, but certainly they should invest the money in putting back the features that made Firefox different, and useful, instead of chasing the coat tails of Chrome.

If I wanted Chrome, I'd be using Chrome. I chose Firefox for it's capable and powerful extensions, especially with regards to blocking content and cookies and filtering the dross that comes down the line... yeah, about that...

Hackers remotely start, unlock Honda Civics with $300 tech

send the same, unencrypted RF signal for each

Wait, WHAT?

I get that my toy car (limited to 45kph) is like that, but a proper and upmarket car using the same lame-ass technology? The same, even, to remote start the engine? That's just an embarrassing fail.

By the way, what's with the expensive kit? These things run at 433MHz. I got a signal out of my scope by looking at mine using a 433MHz receiver salvaged from an old "weather display". I don't imagine it would take a lot to hook one up to something like an M0 or ESP32, run a timer, and just count ticks for when the output is on/off to later replay back to a 433MHz transmitter (though I've not bothered with this part). It might be more work (the fun part), but it's about a tenth of the cost.

Intel updates ATX PSU specs, eyes PCIe 5.0 horizon

600W for a GPU?

FFS.

Isn't that something like fifty amps?

Hackers weigh in on programming languages of choice

Re: 93 percent have five or more years of programming experience

Upvote because I'm 48 and started when I was 12, so "relatively young" but... Good grief, five years? That's "still in nappies" isn't it?

Shell first, then Python, then C, then HTML, then C++?

It's quite clear from that that hacking has some rather specific requirements that are, shall we say, less likely to be encountered in the workplace.

Plus, anybody who has ever met a hacker (as in the type that walks through security like it isn't there, rather than the tinkerer type) knows that they don't refer to themselves as hackers. They don't refer to themselves at all. Experienced hackers don't need to prove anything, and certainly not share it with others.

How did I meet such a person? Noticing the use of an acoustic modem with a laptop and a public phone (note - about twenty odd years ago). Talking to her (yes, a her), she was also well aware of all the security cameras in shops and knew this one place was a blind spot. Beyond that, she said nothing. Never saw her again either.

Sealed, confidential IBM files in age-discrimination case now public to all

Clearly they seem to feel (between this and the arbitration) that the legal process doesn't apply to big corporations such as themselves.

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

Re: Nothing new...

C's power is not that it is more capable, it's that it is fairly easily understood and that it is ubiquitous.

Granted, there are a few things that might trip you up if you're doing a lot of cross compiling - we live in an age of 8 bit and 16 bit (simple microcontrollers), 32 bit (older kit), and 64 bit (newer kit) and when 128 bit rolls around, will we have long long longs?

However more than anything else, the power of C can be demonstrated by Linux. Literally, if the processor is capable (and documented), then Linux exists for it.

If Linux was written in some trendy new language, would it exist damn near everywhere? And would the API be as restrictive as the C based one, only "good for that language if not everything else"?

The reason that you're stuck with a C interface is because that's what the OS is written in. Before that, the OS API was often something that worked best with assembler...

Android's Messages, Dialer apps quietly sent text, call info to Google

And in another story

A bunch of twats called FIDO seem to think that this is one of the companies suited for handling our identities in lieu of using passwords...

Epson payments snafu leaves subscribers unable to print

Re: Not just printer subscriptions

So much pain... Wow.

My two (French) banks went through this last year. From time to time I now have to go into the app and authenticate myself with a special code number (every 90 days?) and from time to time I have to validate online payments, but since most companies pass this to a third party payment service (for Verified by Visa and the like to work), it's just another code to enter.

Monthly payment orders (prélèvements, like direct debits) aren't included in this as those are considered pre-authorised.

All in all, it seems to have been pretty painless, though I don't really understand how replacing an eight digit PIN with a five digit one is supposed to be improving security...

Re: HP Are no better

This. The HP subs are less than Netflix. Works out to be about a euro a week.

Plus they count pages. A bit crap if you're trying to get something working and it spits a bunch of blank pages (yes, those are counted), but on the other hand it's useful that they don't distinguish between a colour print to regular paper, and an A4 size photo quality print.

It's nice to just print whatever I want, when I want, without stopping to think "how much is this going to cost". Replacement cartridges are not cheap, and a dozen full page colour prints can empty them. With Instant Ink, that's 12 pages, 88 left to go this month.

I know how much I used to spend on ink, I know how much I now spend. There may be other options (ink tanks and such) but for my needs, the subscription service is sufficient and affordable.

I also have a little laser for when I want to run off copies of datasheets and such.

Re: So the moral of the story is...

"Don't buy an Epson printer"

Funny this article turns up today. I got an Epson XP-345 back in 2017. Never used it as I subsequently got a cheap HP and their Instant Ink programme.

I dug the Epson out, unboxed it, set it up. Noticed the print quality was pretty poor (banding, obvious dithering) like something from the late 90s. But, okay, it was cheap.

Oh, but the scanner is faulty. Most of the page was okay, but there were a few lines of gibberish (noise?) across the page. Broken or faulty pixels? In a scanner that had never been used?

The printer worked as expected for the setup and installation. I turned it on a couple of days later, and it worked, for a while. Then it died. Died in a way that meant that it was shorting out the power supply. I unclipped it. 42v with nothing attached. Connect the printer, nice spark as it makes contact, then 0v across the terminals.

After about four hours of use.

Clearly, as it was bought in 2017 and unboxed in 2022 there's no chance of any guarantee.

So I took the thing apart to see what was inside (a paranoid number of ferrite rings!) and then.... let's just say a pickaxe [*] was involved. It was quite cathartic.

So I'll clip your quote and simply say "don't buy an Epson".

* - I did consider using the ride-on mower, but felt that I'd spend weeks picking up all the bits. Shame.

Re: Is that theft?

"It is the cartridge that is remotely bricked"

And there lies the problem. If they know there is an issue, they should be working with the customer to resolve it, not sticking their fingers in their ears and then bricking the cartridge.

It may not be Epson's fault, but it sure as hell isn't the customer's fault either.

FIDO Alliance says it has finally killed the password

Oh my God!

"A smartphone is something that end-users typically already have."

Yes. And they get stolen, hacked, borrowed, and the issues regarding OS updates (or lack of them) is infamous.

"Virtually all consumer-space two-factor authentication mechanisms today already make use of the user's smartphone"

Wrong! With the partial exception of my bank, every single two factor jobbie except Google's pain in the arse "enter this number" that doesn't appear to work unless you're using Chrome... with the exception of that, everything sends me an SMS. So my phone number is the important part, not the phone type. I could be using an old Nokia... I forget the number, the famous feature phone one. And it would work.

I say partial for the bank, can as it wants you to authorise using their app. But after about thirty seconds it will offer to send a code via SMS instead.

"and thus also on the security of the underlying OS"

Count me out. My attitude towards the internet is "they're all out to get you", and sites that I feel I can trust are whitelisted (but all their third party resources are not). I don't believe in scanning to see if something is malicious, I believe in assuming it is until shown otherwise.

My phone as my single and sole method of authentication everywhere? Guys, April 1st is in a week and a half.

"is how we can meaningfully reduce the internet's over-reliance on passwords at a massive scale"

Are you willing to be held legally liable for when it goes horribly wrong? (notice I said when, not if)

You don't fix crap passwords and sites doing passwords badly by getting rid of all of them and using a single point of failure instead.

Plus, I have multiple identities that I use online. Oh, they're all "me" but the email address differs (depending on my level of trust when signing up). Will the phone authentication cope with that, or do you expect everybody to just hand over all of their private information "because authentication"?

"proximity-based authentication"

Why do I get a bad feeling about this? Oh, yes, something by the door of a shop will happily require you to login in order to benefit from all their special offers of the day. It's cool, it just happens automatically as you go in. Just don't ask what information they're busy extracting from you.

"but said it would still be better than using plain passwords of phishable second factors"

The thing is, passwords can be changed. Identities, only if you're of importance to the government...

"to be the ultimate arbiters of their organization's credentials"

They can't be trusted with what they currently have access to. Screw the idea of handing over more information.

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Re: Address formats

Oh god, the number of times I've had parcel services fail to turn up because "address missing or incomplete".

It's my name, the house name, the postal code (that covers one town and four communities) followed by the name of the community to help narrow it down.

Rejected without trying by some city twat that thinks the address needs seven lines to locate a place.

Step outside your comfort zone, get some cow shit on your shoes, and just be glad that my address isn't the way it's really known - Chez Bordereau - after somebody who lived here hundreds of years ago, maybe the original occupant?

I am impolite (but not sweary) when on the phone with the parcel companies because I happen to know that my address, as written, can be correctly located with Google Maps. Therefore it is entirely their uselessness that is wasting my time, and that's more or less exactly how I put it.

Coding in a war zone: A Ruby developer's life in Kharkiv

Before anybody gets too sanctimonious about what Ukraine may or may not have done regarding languages, it's worth noting the status of languages such as Welsh and Breton, that are now starting to do better after many years of oppression (Welsh starting to be accepted somewhere in the early 20th century, Breton in the 1960s, and this recentness means that it's still an endangered language).

I note also that BSL is about to receive official language status. What took so long?

So that the government of a country tries to restrict and deny minority languages isn't good, but it's nothing we haven't tried in the fairly recent past with our own native minority languages, never mind those of immigrants.

ITC judge recommends banning toner imports that infringe Canon's IP

Re: Interesting Article - Not Fact Checked

"and that the patent system is truly broken."

What d'you mean "and"?

The patent system is buggered beyond redemption.

Re: Epic names

Some films on your favourite streaming service are partially subsidised by Chinese companies. You can tell not just because of the Chinese characters, but the tiny translation underneath that seems to say weird things like "Jeffery's pet motion picture product brought to this glorious world by flying llamas".

Really, if you see a credit that's Chinese with a little translation, hit pause and see if you can make out what it says. Some are amusing to the point of "is the translator taking the piss?".

JavaScript library updated to wipe files from Russian computers

I agree with the sentiment, but it's an utterly dick move.

There's no excuse for randomly trashing files, especially given as one cannot equate Russia with western democracies - just look at how war protesters are being treated. The cops are more than happy to throw young children into cells (but, then, in the country they are stomping over, the army seem more than willing to consider them acceptable targets). As such, you cannot know the thoughts and political opinions of the person who ends up running your code, other than to be pretty certain that if their files end up being replaced by heart symbols, they are quite likely to think westerners are a bunch of hypocritical wankers.

On a different note, this does highlight the obvious flaw in fetching and using stuff on the internet, as opposed to using known versions hosted locally. There is the argument that using the latest versions will be better against security flaws than older ones, but then again newer versions aren't necessarily better if the author is a complete fucking arsehole that thinks it's okay to wipe people's data. That's malware behaviour.

Icon because Putin is the main problem, not random citizens.

False advertising to call software open source when it's not, says court

I think it's a bit of a leap to directly equate the word Open with Open Source.

But in this case, extremely clearly Open Source wasn't.

Even complex AI models are failing 5th grade science

Re: Interpreter please

Here in France they count the years backwards, and have a terminal after the first!

Here's a comparison of American and French.

Re: Interpreter please

What happened to Junior? Or is that just considered a part of Secondary these days?

For me it was Kindergarten [1], Primary, Junior, and finally Senior [2].

1 - that part was in America, which is why it was called that.

2 - and since that was boarding school, it was split into Junior/Intermediate/Senior. The only time forms were mentioned was Sixth Form because they were Prefects and they were bastards.

Re: The next question...

Quick example. There's a car coming around a roundabout. It is indicating that it will turn onto the road you're on. Do you pull out?

What if it isn't indicating?

Re: The next question...

I drive a little car that has a restricted speed (Google "Aixam").

One of those on the road is like a red flag waved at a bull. You'll spend half your time looking at the road ahead, and the other half keeping an eye on the rear view mirror for the cars behind that will do something stupid. That's not a possible maybe, that's a "yes this twat is going to pass me at 90 (10 over the limit) on a blind bend going up a hill". Seen it enough times already. Because clearly risking a spectacular crash is a better option than thirty seconds behind something slow.

So all of you that think that loads may be well secured, people follow the highway code, and cars are all driven by sensible competent people... bollocks to that. In reality some cars are driven by people who are careful and considerate, whilst others are driven by suicidal nutjobs. It's hard enough for a human to predict exactly what stupid thing is likely to happen. A computer? No chance.

Re: Asimo

"see it recommending mastectomies just in case"

Google "Ian Paterson"...

Half of bosses out of touch with reality, study shows

Re: Bollocks statistics

"That stuff has to be defined, and then we can talk about fixing it."

I think it's reasonable to assume your work day is the hours you are being paid for, based upon how you worked prior to WFH (say, 9-5 or whatever) unless your employer has stated otherwise in writing.

In sensible countries (such as France), you're permitted to disconnect. Five minutes past five (if you stop work at five), no you do not need to answer the phone. Nor quarter past ten in the evening. If you're expected to handle work related things outside of work hours, that's called being on call, and you should be remunerated accordingly.

I think, from what I've seen, that the biggest problem post-pandemic is the sort of abusive bosses that don't realise that they aren't that bloody important. The crisis is in their minds and whatever problem has set their arse on fire will be exactly the same at 9am the next day.

Sure, certain parts of critical infrastructure are important, but if the accounting that's supposed to be complete by the end of the week is off kilter on Wednesday, no you do NOT try to hold a meeting with EVERYBODY in the late evening.

Re: Hybrid work ?

On break right now, just had our weekly meeting. A lot of time herding wailing cats, and more or less all of it nothing to do with me. So I mentally twiddled my thumbs and wondered how close people got to the point of "screw this, I'm out of here".

Well, it's entertainment, I guess. Productivity? Not so much.

Openness of Oracle licensing and audit tools questioned

This needs legislation

Namely, one cannot be legitimately fined or penalised for licence non compliance unless suitable tools for verifying said compliance are openly available; and/or a set of licence conditions written in the sort of language a reasonably well educated person would understand, and not relying on specific narrow legalese interpretations of particular words (especially if they have other looser meanings to normal people).

How CAPTCHAs can cloak phishing URLs in emails

An automated scanner gets stopped at the puzzle.

Surely the correct behaviour is that content cannot be shown to be safe (for varying degrees of "safe"), then it is not. Teach the thing how to recognise a Captcha, so it'll understand that the link isn't the target, but rather an obfuscated step to the target.

The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility

I believe Orange France "guarantees" 512kbit download, and there's no figure for upload rate.

My line is advertised as "up to 20mbit". I get around 3.4-4.5 depending on the weather, and around 750kbit up.

Should point out, it's after 4.7km of ancient overhead-strung copper. When I first got hooked up, I had a single megabit, but later technology has managed to push that to nearly four.

It's just me and I have a regular quality Netflix subscription, so it suffices.

"If I have a problem, there is no finger-pointing to be done, it's all Orange's responsibility from start to finish."

Exactly this. I pay through the nose for Orange, but living in rural Brittany there's no end of incidents...usually involving heavy agricultural machinery. As I live in a dip surrounded by many fields, 4G isn't an option.

A woman two towns over was with Free and Free (internet) and Orange (phone line) argued for three months over what turned out, in the end, to be a faulty line filter.

So I'll pay more knowing that any brokenness is usually seen to in 2-3 days.