Posts by Steve Graham

Meet the 'internet radical' who helped Microsoft get email and AT&T get online

I worked for BT in the 1990s and the UK arm of Microsoft approached us to build a self-contained online service along the lines of AOL or BIX. Internet connectivity was not mentioned, which we nerds thought was ridiculous. It came to nothing in the end, fortunately for Microsoft.

A requiem for Optane, Intel's KV cache killer that could have eased the RAM price crunch

I have a 16Gb module that came out of my sister's dead Dell. I have it in a USB adapter but haven't thought of a use for it. Rescue boot drive, maybe.

LisaFPGA brings Apple's magnificent misfire back in programmable logic

LisaGUI

You could usefully have included some of the concepts from your earlier article here: the idea is that there is no "application". There is simply the document, or spreadsheet, or image, or whatever. I found that fascinating.

Fascinating because I think they were barking up the wrong tree.

Today, if I right-click on, say a JPEG image icon, the window manager offers me a menu of applications which have registered as understanding JPEG. I can choose feh, because that can conveniently put the image into my desktop background, or viewnior, because that has a nicer GUI for getting image info. Or I can choose GIMP to edit it.

What I'm saying is that the application, with its strengths and weaknesses, is more important to the user than the data, and a choice of applications is a benefit.

Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module

What is a MWe? Not an SI unit anyway.

Self-destructing Mistic backdoor linked to access broker selling corporate footholds to ransomware gangs

There's a formatting error in that article -- a spurious "font-weight-light" directive. I thought my eyes were going funny.

Cloudflare teams up with big browsers to help websites tell welcome from unwelcome visitors

Re: Ah, Cloudflare

I can't even log in to my account here at The Register any more. I get stuck in a Clouflare loop. But when I click on their "Help" link and get to their test script, it tells me everything is kosher.

Deleted cookies, disabled all extensions, told Vivaldi not to block ads and to allow 3rd party cookies... nothing worked. What did work in the end (as you can see from me being here talking at you) is I logged in on another PC, flew through the Clouflare authentication, saved the resulting cookies and imported them into the first machine.

Strangely though, the Vivaldi user profile on the machine that works was cloned from the one that doesn't.

Flatpak-NG sounds like bad news for systemd refuseniks

"I have not read much about anyone else's init alternatives trying to replicate the functionality"

That's exactly the point. Some things need to be part of init. Some don't.

Re: Yes, please!

Oh great! Now give a list of the "bunch of things" that systemd does which aren't common in all Linux distributions.

Where "functionality" is a subjective term.

Linux kernel 7.1 sends Intel 486 support to silicon heaven

I follow kernel releases (this Thinkpad is running 7.0.1) but I usually wait for the first point update in case there's a "whoops!" in a new version.

Linux Lite 8.0 sheds Chrome, slims down, and finds its name fits better than ever

non-optional dark mode

"Some Lite apps are hardcoded with a dark theme" and scrolling down the announcement page, you can see that they really like darkness. I don't. I disable dark modes everywhere I see them.

Anyway, a "lite" distro that still runs systemd isn't for me.

OpenBSD 7.9 arrives, a diamond in the rough proud of every sharp edge

beside the point

I hadn't noticed until I read the linked PDF on indentation styles that I use "Whitesmith" for C, but "Perl Best Practice" for Perl.

Linux kernel flaw opens root-only files to unprivileged users

ArchWiki

The ArchWiki referred to clearly states that the restrictions apply only to "officially supported kernels". A kernel from a different distribution, or (in my case) one you've compiled yourself needn't have any problems.

Although I note that the systemd functionality mentioned is a process that examines the disk to find suitable partitions for root, /home/, /srv/, /var/, /var/tmp/ and so on. On every boot. Oh yes, I plug in a differently-partitioned drive every time I turn the computer on.

LocalSend puts your sneakernet out of business

If I understand correctly, you have to operate the sending and receiving instances of Localsend via each GUI? So that's not unlike a sneakernet, particularly in my case when my Android phone and Linux desktop are at opposite ends of the house. I suppose VNC is an option.

I actually run an FTP server on the desktop, and an Android file manager called "Material Files" (from f-droid) which has an integrated FTP client.

Early versions of Android supported NFS, which was a perfect solution for me, but they removed it.

Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone

Really de-Googled?

I'm on my second Pixel phone, an 8a running LineageOS/microG. I had to boot into the stock Android once to unlock the bootloader, but with no SIM or wifi. (Paranoid? Me?) I haven't come across any apps I need/want that don't run.

But I've still seen Google remnants. Checking for internet connectivity pings a Google server. The stock keyboard tries to connect to Google every few seconds, although it still works if you block that.

Linux cryptographic code flaw offers fast route to root

Re: None of my computers are vulnerable

And on a Raspberry Pi, it just corrupts the cached image of su.

Re: None of my computers are vulnerable

It runs on my main machine, but the invocation of su still asks for the password. Though it's running a very recent kernel (7.0.1).

UK gov pays public £550 to discuss Digital ID – then bans journalists from the room

The second amendment gives Americans the constitutional right to overthrow tyranny with armed force. Hello! Americans! We're waiting!

More ancient Linux device support faces the chop

If I remember correctly, an early work laptop I was given had a dual-port Xircom PCMCIA card, supporting (via dangly adaptors) ethernet on one side and 1200-baud modem on the other. And yes, they worked under Linux. After the laptop was declred obsolete, I took it home, rather than tossing it in the official skip.

You too can build a nuclear battery from junk you have lying around the house

I started work with BT just prior to privatization. It was company folklore that there were two shipping containers somewhere in Wales, filled with redundant, radioactive Trimphones. Trimphones used tritium to light up their dials.

QUIC will soon be as important as TCP – but it's vastly different

elephant in the room (or web page)

I enjoyed reading the article. It was all new to me, but understandable.

However, delivering HTTP faster and more efficiently is surely swamped by the HUGE amount of bloat in web pages these days?

Decades-old Linux UI bug fixed by dev younger than the window manager

when it's finished, stop messing around with it

No, no, no. xorg is finished and feature-complete, so we need to replace it with Wayland.

Raspberry Pi OS ends open-door policy for sudo

I have 3 headless Pi units doing things around the house. I disabled the policy of letting the non-root user execute all commands as root, and enabled a couple of convenience ones. Although if someone is on my home network and logging in to them, privilege escalation is probably the least of my worries.

Ubuntu 26.04 beta arrives packing GNOME 50, which no longer supports Google Drive

architecturally wrong

A "desktop environment" shouldn't integrate with a storage platform anyway. The whole point of the unix-like architecture is that there is one, unified file system and "everything is a file". If I used Google Drive, I'd accept a FUSE solution.

On the other hand, it's good to see someone looking at eviscerating GRUB. It's large and overly complex in my opinion. On most of my boxes I've replaced it with extlinux, which boots a Linux kernel from an ext4 filesystem, and that's all.

Systemd-free antiX Linux 26: Debian 13, in bonsai form

zzzFM

I don't use a specific "desktop environment", just openbox with xfce-panel (vertically, on the right). Then I have a pick-and-mix of applications, many from xfce and lxde, including pcmanfm from the latter as my preferred file manager. (Although I keep thunar as well, because its bulk rename is very useful.)

So I thought I'd give zzzFM a try after seeing it mentioned here. I made some tweaks in the preferences, mainly to suit a high-res monitor. When I tried to save the settings however, zzzFM said it was going to prompt me for the root password so that it could store them in /etc/zzzFM. As it happens, I don't have a graphical su installed, so that failed. I'm sticking with pcmanfm.

Microsoft points at Samsung after Galaxy app bug locks users out of C:\

"recovery options for devices already impacted remain limited."

Really? You'd think they could come up with a rescue image you could boot from USB. Fixes the permissions; exits. (Caveat: I haven't used Windows in 20 years.)

Sudo maintainer, handling utility for more than 30 years, is looking for support

Re: A reminder

The standard Ubuntu setup, inherited or copied by other distributions, is that logging in as root is disabled, but sudo grants the logged-in user root access to all commands (on submission of their own password). This is why many tutorials on system administration put "sudo" at the front of all commands.

It seems wrong, but I can't put my finger on exactly why.

ATM flashes a port or two for the enterprising hacker

On Wednesday afternoons, I play an acoustic gig in a local coffee shop. It's called "The Bank House", because, unsurprisingly, it used to be a bank. There's still an ATM in the wall outside, and I guess that the back of the machine was accessible from within the bank. But when the bank was decommissioned, they built a concrete block wall around that corner of the room, and cut a hole for an armoured door in the outside wall. That's security!

MX Linux 25.1 brings back switchable init systems

Why?

Can someone give an example of a use case for rebooting to use systemd occasionally, and sysv usually? Or vice-versa? I've been using Linux for over 20 years and have never needed systemd. (I've disliked sysv's init method of file symlinks ever since first encountering it {in Solaris?} but it's lightweight and it works.)

Microsoft Windows Media Player stops serving up CD album info

Nobody has pointed out yet that track metadata should have been included in the 1980 Red Book audio CD specification, but wasn't.

Vultures rake our claws over COSMIC as Pop OS 24.04 LTS with 'Epoch 1' emerges

Re: "Pop!_OS still does not play nicely with dual boot"

GRUB tries to cope with many, many scenarios, which makes it quite large and complex, whereas extlinux can only boot a Linux kernel running with an unencrypted ext4 root partition*. Since that is exactly what I need, I opt for that simplicity. It has meant that I needed to write a custom script to replace the usual one started by "make install" in a kernel build, but, excellently, the kernel developers have put in the hooks to enable you to do just that.

*(Actually, I think it might work with more partition formats, but I've never used anything else. Oh, it supports an initrd too, but I've eliminated that.)

Re: "Pop!_OS still does not play nicely with dual boot"

Ah, I created the EFI boot partition at what seemed to me to be a "tiny" 2Gb on a 2Tb drive. That's why I didn't come up against the shortcomings of gparted. I then installed extlinux as the boot manager, with the (custom) kernel in the EFI partition, which df shows as 10% full. Since I've not used anything other than Linux on the metal for 20 years now I've never had much to do with dual-booting, although I'm sure it would be straightforward. Obviously, I'm not the typical computer user. Not even the typical Linux user. Installers? Who needs 'em?!

Linux 6.18 crowned LTS kernel – and Alpine 3.23 wastes no time adopting it

I tried Alpine a short time ago, first on an old 32-bit netbook, and then on a Pi Zero 2. It worked perfectly well -- no hiccups -- but on the netbook, I found that after 20 years of apt-get and dpkg, I'm too set in my ways to get used to apk. On the Pi, I installed the camera, which required the rpi-cam apps and libraries, and I was too lazy to compile from scratch with musl. Currently, I have that as a Devuan install with the Raspian repositories added. I thought that might cause dependency problems, but it hasn't.

Oh, the old netbook now has Peppermint, the Devuan flavour. They haven't updated that in a while, but have continued to keep up with their Debian-based one.

Cheaper 1 GB Raspberry Pi 5 lands as memory costs go through the roof

When the AI bubble bursts, there will be loads of gear available at knock-down prices.

You are likely to be eaten by the MIT license: Microsoft frees Zork source

"Kick the grue." worked at all times. It didn't achieve anything though.

Retro Games opens pre-orders for THEA1200, a full-size working Amiga replica

Re: PiDP maybe?

Uni OS course assignment (1980s) where I used the console switches to load a bootstrap by hand

Me too. Edinburgh, 1977.

Ubuntu 25.10's Rusty sudo holes quickly welded shut

Re: ninjed me!!!

Giving the default user full root access to everything is a Ubuntu thing. (Inherited in derived distros.) Many other Linux distros stick to the traditional Unix-y permissions regime. So, if I need to do system admin, I log in as root. That's the way I've always done it, and that's the way I like it.

To 'Infinity' ... and beyond: MX Linux 25 has arrived

I also managed to mis-spell "excalibur" when I tried to upgrade. Maybe it's dementia creeping in.

mucked about with the kernel

I do build a custom kernel for my desktop and laptop machines. No initramfs, and necessary drivers compiled in. The only time I ever made one that didn't boot was when I forgot to include the newfangled SATA disk drivers. That would have been about 20 years ago.

It's Devuan 7 now.

The help for the package kde-full says:

"This metapackage includes all the official modules released with KDE Sotware

Compilation that are not specific to development and as well other KDE

applications that are useful for a desktop user. This includes multimedia,

networking, graphics, education, games, system administration tools, and other

artwork and utilities."

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

Re: Password rules make for weaker passwords

A short maximum password length is a red flag. It suggests that they are storing the password, not a hash.

Pop!_OS deejays prepare to release holiday remix along with Cosmic v 1.0

So you need special code in (effectively) your window manager to "night-light" Wayland? In Xorg, it's a single xrandr command.

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

is that how people normally do load balancing?

In my career (of distant memory) we'd have a layer of boxes behind a single IP address that distributed "work" one layer down to the servers.

Mobian makes Debian's latest 'Trixie' release pocket-sized

Re: If only...

My current phone and its predecssor are Pixel devices from the Evil Empire. Unlocking the bootloader is a standard option on them.

I couldn't get the AMD64 image to boot on a virtual machine either, but burned to a USB stick, it booted a physical machine (a Thinkpad T470). However, running from the USB device, it was too slow even to tinker with, so I gave up. (The PIN is 1234. I guessed it.)

Mozilla is recruiting beta testers for a free, baked-in Firefox VPN

Architecture? That's houses, isn't it?

Great. A VPN in the browser. And a mail client. And a Bitcoin wallet. And a Calendar. And an e-book reader. And a pop-up toaster. And a rechargeable vacuum cleaner. We won't rest until we've ticked off the entire list of things that users haven't asked for.

Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily

Re: Eh

Yes, I think this article jumps to the conclusion that the setting turns back on by itself, and that isn't what the Microsoft description says.

I imagine that users turning it on and off repeatedly would burn a lot of AI calories, which is why Microsoft restricts it.

Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project'

Re: Android is dead to me.

The vast majority of Android devices have "non-Google ROM images", from Samsung, Xiaomi, Fairphone and so on. And yet they all work with banking and goverment apps. Enough of the FUD, please. I've been using LineageOS/microG for several years and never had a problem.

Linux's love-to-hate projects drop fresh versions: systemd 258 and GNOME 49

Re: Systemd

"it doesn't conform to my idea of the way Linux should be" in that it aspires to become an operating system, and that's what we have Linux for.

I've been using unixy systems since the mid-1980s and never liked vi. I did learn the basics when it was the available lightweight editor for tweaking config files, but now I always remove it and install nano.