Posts by cyberdemon

Microsoft gets new Windows boss as Start Menu man Parakhin 'to explore new roles'

Re: Vertical taskbar in Win11

Sounds like KDE is for you! Put your taskbar anywhere you like... been like that for decades

Scaleway shows off its new RISC-V devices at Kubecon

Re: RISC-V hasn't hit its stride yet...

Nice to see RISC-V PCIe in action. Will be interesting to see if RISC-V could supplant Intel/AMD/Arm at hosting GPUs..

Twitter's lawsuit against anti-hate-speech crusaders gets SLAPPed out of court

> Twitter is the only place that you are allowed to say certain things that the US Government doesn't like. Things like saying Covid vaccines don't stop you catching it or stop you passing it on, would have got you banned from every platform

So either you just proved yourself wrong, or you should be banned from El Reg..

Over 170K users caught up in poisoned Python package ruse

Lazy library use

Python itself isn't the problem so much as the ease of use of nonstandard libraries by any idiot in charge of a keyboard. It's the same problem on Rust: cargo. Nodejs: npm. Go: go get.

C and C++ only get a free pass because it is LESS simple to install a random library off the internet and all of its dependencies, and less simple to publish one. Except in Arduino land, of course, where it is just as bad as Python

We are now in a world where people who call themselves programmers simply ask Google/Stackoverflow or worse ChatGPT which library to pull from pypi to do whatever they need, and they follow it blindly

Re: Cookies? Wouldn't it require SSH/GPG keys?

No? It is possible to make a commit using the Web interface, with no more authentication than a cookie.

No, it only requires that for initial log-in. After that, it trusts the cookies, apparently.

But probably you were faecetiously referring to the practice of applying MFA to everything as if it were a silver bullet to absolve oneself of all cybersecurity responsibilities.. It isn't, of course, there are side-channels abundant.

Re: Stolen Cookies

Will it? I thought most train networks were behind NAT? As are most mobile networks?

I realise NAT is not an ideal solution to anything by any means.. There was once a thing called Mobile IP that would let you keep the same address on the move..

But if someone jumps in with an IP address from a completely different provider/continent with your cookies, it should be suspicious enough to require re-authentication, no?

Stolen Cookies

Why are cookies trusted across IP address changes..?

All the better to track you with, little red riding hood..

US task force aims to plug security leaks in water sector

Re: Well, duh..

I remember a website called VNC Roulette..

Someone had done a portscan of all IPs running VNC on the standard port, made a list of all the ones with no authentication whatsoever, and the site would connect you to a random one.. The number of industrial control systems on there was horrifying..

Of course, the standard government response was to shut the site down.. I wonder if they actually bothered to contact all the idiots on the list.

Re: Well, duh..

https://www.beckhoff.com/en-en/products/ipc/software-and-tools/twincat-bsd/

Re: Yet another pretext for State Security to spy on its own people.

Do elaborate, please.

As AI booms, land near nuclear power plants becomes hot real estate

Anticipating grid failure is more like it..

With a functioning grid, there is not much reason for electricity to be any cheaper near to a NPP, surely.

But if the companies are betting on grids failing in future, then nearby to an NPP might be a good spot for their datacentres.

Chinese snoops use F5, ConnectWise bugs to sell access into top US, UK networks

Re: I'm beginning to smell a big fat commie rat

Now General Turgidson, What's going on here?

One rack. 120kW of compute. Taking a closer look at Nvidia's DGX GB200 NVL72 beast

Re: 120kW is low

Yes, the article said 120kW of compute

So it probably only includes power consumed by the GPU dies, and not the 57 Arm-core "management" chip on each node, nor the DC power conversion/supply efficiency.

But also, it's designed for 20C @ 2L/s, but it probably runs at 167kW in some sort of worst-case power-eating test for commissioning the cooling system.

Nevertheless, the 8-rack superpod is going to need its own susbstation at 1MW...

Any guesses for the voltage on that busbar?

Mine would be 48V direct to the PCBs.. The stonking thick red/black DC cables that connect each PCB to the busbars looks good enough for 100A@48V ie 4.8kW to supply each pair of Blackwell modules, each having 2 GPUs, so around 1.2kW per GPU.

That of course would mean that the busbar itself would be carrying 2.5kA @ 48V.

This is one hell of an expensive water heater..

Whistleblower raises alarm over UK Nursing and Midwifery Council's DB

> "Trouble makers out first"

This, exactly this. It's the same for so many other professions now. Teachers, police, social work, politics, even trades and engineering to some extent. Make the smallest mistake or cause political trouble for someone powerful and you can be banned, years of training down the drain. And then they wonder why they can't recruit anybody into these professions. All the honest people are leaving, and the only ones staying are the psychopaths who can put on all of the Machiavellian masks to cover up their own failings and gaslight others to keep themselves from being reported.

Frankly I'd rather be treated by a doctor or nurse who had been struck off, than not be treated at all.

Of course, there are some cases like Wayne Couzens et al where they should never have been allowed to do the job in the first place, but a system that simply waits for those people to do something awful is not sufficient, and it actually encourages that sort of psychopath because they enjoy the feeling of getting away with it.

Also, the idea that a nurse should need a degree is ridiculous..

Uncle Sam, 15 US states launch antitrust war on Apple

Re: Invalidate their patents

Lol.

I think it would be unfair to say that Apple have never innovated, the argument is over when was the last time they did.. Was it the 80s, 90s, or 00s?

But these days they just come up with some piece of "design" that all the zealous fanboys come out to worship for no good reason, like having rounded corners, the colour white, or a rubber-band bounce at the end of a menu, then simply wait for others to copy their approach and sue the pants off them. That's not innovation, it's just hiding under a bridge and waiting for some billy-goats.

Invalidate their patents

Might force them to actually start innovating again..

Truck-to-truck worm could infect – and disrupt – entire US commercial fleet

Re: See icon

Frankly, i'm glad that these researchers were allowed to expose a vulnerability and not be treated as criminals, as seems to be a trend..

Because when people are discouraged from looking for vulnerabilities in infrastructure, the holes are left behind for the real baddies to do their worst.

Meta, Microsoft, X, Match pledge selves to Epic battle against Apple App Store

Facebook, Microsoft.. Suing for anticompetitive walled-garden practices?

Pot, meet frying pan, skillet and kettle

Exposed: Chinese smartphone farms that run thousands of barebones mobes to do crime

Re: 1,000 smartphones all hard at work

Presumably many things in China are app-only and have no web alternative, and the app is a slurpy one that will ban you if it thinks it's in a VM

That or when you have such cheap hardware and cheap hardware engineers, nobody thinks of running android in a VM

Also worth noting that these things probably have network via USB-C as well as power, video and input. So they don't all have to be on WiFi/cellular unless they need to be, to pick up a verification SMS message

Virgin Media sets up 'smart poles' next to cabinets to boost mobile network capacity

Ohm's Law

Well, actually..

Ohm's law is not really very good. Most things are actually "non-ohmic devices" i.e. the current is NOT proportional to the voltage. Usually it is still a function of voltage, but even then, not always. Even an old-fashioned lightbulb is "non-ohmic" because its resistance changes drastically as the filament warms up. Halve the voltage and you do NOT halve the current. It's lower, but not as low as you expect, because the filament temperature has changed.

Consider, for example, the Zener Diode, which exhibits "infinite" resistance at voltages below its breakdown-voltage, and (ideally) "zero" resistance above it. Or the standard IT power supply, which is a circuit driving a constant (or at least unrelated) power to a downstream load - raise the voltage and the current drops. Lower the voltage and the current increases, keeping the power constant to whatever the downstream load requires.

A thin insulating membrane, such as dry skin, is like the dielectric of a parallel-plate capacitor. Much like the zener diode (but with less precision), a capacitor supplied with a slowly-increasing DC voltage will eventually fail and become a conductor when it reaches its dielectric breakdown voltage, which depends on the material and its thickness

Below 60V or so, dry skin has a very high resistance. Your multimeter will give you something of the order of megohms. Above 200V and the dielectric has failed, and the current is limited now by the ionic conductivity of your body, which is electrochemistry. The exact point where your skin turns from insulator to electrode depends on how thick it is at the thinnest part in contact with the live wire, and any water present will ensure that every part of it (including the very bottoms of any ridges on your fingers) are in contact with the voltage.

And then when you throw AC into the mix, you have an additional current passing across the capacitance itself, proportional to the rate-of-change-of-voltage. (I = C dV/dt)

Re: "digital electricity" technology

Hmm, I was taught the opposite, that DC is more dangerous because while AC causes paralysis, DC causes you to grab hard on whatever it is you were holding on to.

At higher frequencies, apparently, you can't even feel it, until it burns your insides.

Re: What's more important, your network or the rat that pissed on the cable?

I once worked in traffic controllers, and I heard stories of street cabinets being left loose or open, only for some drunk to have a slash inside..

A urine stream is full of electrolytes.. 240VAC up the wazzer - Drunk or not, that's not something he'll forget in a hurry!

Re: For contrast

Surely RCDs / (GFIs for the Yanks) (as mentioned by @PRR below) are mandatory in such a scenario?

I would hardly consider somebody's yacht supply to be "critical infrastructure" worthy of prioritising reliability over safety ..

Re: "digital electricity" technology

All that says to me is "spurious-trip hazard".

Safety vs reliability: In reliability engineering, there is no such thing as "fail safe" - only fail.

Monitoring for minute changes in power-line impedance only introduces a new EM-induced failure mode. Never mind a solar flare, you'll be down the next time the arc-welding shop next door starts their shift.

What's more important, your network or the rat that pissed on the cable?

Re: Danger of Death

And give the idiot behind the switch a bloody great fright / singed eyebrows to teach him never to do that again!

Re: "digital electricity" technology

I did, but only after inhaling my coffee

Danger of Death

I once heard a story from an old electrical contractor about when he was called to some mansion in the scottish highlands that had its own 11kV substation. He says he had isolated the supply and locked the switchroom to work on the busbars (i guess probably he was on the 400V side) but hadn't reckoned on the janitor having a key, ignoring the sign saying Do Not Operate, and throwing it back on to make his tea.

The contractor was up a ladder with his hands on two different busbars at the time, but survived to tell the tale because apparently he was thrown clear like timmy from Jurassic Park..

Moral of the story: Always lock out with your OWN padlock

Could have been a tall tale of course, but nonetheless instructive

On the other end of the scale, I also knew an electrical engineer who said she wouldn't touch a 12V car battery, "cos its the current that kills you". I didn't argue - never a good idea with that one.

Re: "digital electricity" technology

Pretty sure 48V DC can kill too, if you have thin skin and wet hands... Always keep one hand behind your back

I wouldn't want to touch 100V DC, however BS7671:2028 (IET wiring regs 18th ed) says in 414.1.1 (iii) limitation of voltage to 50V AC or 120V DC for SELV/PELV. I would guess this lower than expected limit for AC is because of the capacitance of the epidermis, which is not an issue for DC. I have had a few capacitively-coupled shocks and it stings a bit, but not as bad as being burned by a real shock.

Re: "digital electricity" technology

It says it's "touch safe" so I expect it would be 48VDC. 100V at a push.

A 5G radio for a "small cell" shouldn't need much power, right? 100W or so ought to be sufficient? 350V might be needed for a repeater in a 1000km submarine cable, but not for a few metres between a cabinet and a telegraph pole

Nearly choked on my coffee when I read "'digital electricity' allows power to be transmitted on a fibre optic cable" though! The marketing wonks at Vermin Media are either stoned or have been replaced by AI

Judge demands social media sites prove they didn't help radicalize mass shooter

Re: IANAL

> Otherwise, Ford would be found responsible for introducing a defective product because it functioned correctly when a malcontent driver decided to run over a crowd of pedestrians

Either you or I are misunderstanding something?

Facebook et al are working "as-designed" by promoting controversial/extreme/distressing content from unrelated sources (and NOT displaying what the user is actually looking for i.e. a chronological list of posts by their friends) in order to drive engagement. To use your analogy, it would be like a Ford truck with an automated sat-nav, which looks at the user's face wearing traditional islamic dress, an "AI" draws a correlation with images of terrorists, and the sat-nav suggests "Hi, you look like you want to mow down some pedestrians! Here's a route through a heavily pedestrianised area for you"

The defect is in the design, not the implementation, but the product is still harmful.

IANAL

Meta, Reddit, Twitch's company Amazon, YouTube owner Alphabet, plus Discord and 4Chan (where is TikTok?)

But it seems to me the only ones in this group with a defence are Discord and 4Chan i.e. the ones acting as "plain-old messageboards" without promoting content to er, "like-minded users"?

Reg needs a popcorn icon. Or maybe dry-roasted peanuts.

How to improve Chinese TV? Better censorship, says top tellie-maker

Re: Telescreens

The part where Orwell was wrong in his prescience is about the size of the telescreens - They would not be on the wall, but in your pocket.

Reddit gets a call from Nokia about patent infringement ahead of going public

Re: Greetings from "Nokialand"

@perkele That sucks. You'll need one or five of these.

Cheers for the N900 btw! Best phone ever (except for that one flaw that limited its lifespan and things like the USB connector and SIM holder started coming loose from the PCB - an issue with early lead-free wave-soldering I guess?). Cheers for Maemo the debian-based mobile OS that made it what it was. (Shame when Intel and deadrat joined the party and poisoned it with their bastard Meego)

I loved that phone, from 2009-2015. Last phone ever to have a native Linux OS, X11, apps in .deb format and a C++ compiler on-device. Made a great SSH terminal with its slide-out keyboard and high-res screen. There was even an open-source WhatsApp client for it at the time called Yappari.

Now all we have is a choice of crapple or slurpzilla.

Nokia could be pulling a Microsoft

Well, Microsoft already "embraced, extended and almost extinguished" Nokia by installing execs, crashing the company and buying half of it at a fire-sale price, so i'm not surprised

Re: 2 years may not be long enough

2 years may be a little too far the other way, but 25 years is far too long for a patent.

If all software patents were to be reduced to 10 years, it would solve a lot of problems. The tech development cycle has accelerated since the patent system was conceived (and frankly the whole system is broken) so I would welcome a gradual reduction in patent life until eventually lawyers and corporate-spies reach a new equilibrium.

AI researchers have started reviewing their peers using AI assistance

Embarassing? Elsevier are beyond shame

They have been publishing fake journals to try to inflate their worth since the year 2000. Scum-sucking parasites the lot of them

Beijing-backed cyberspies attacked 70+ orgs across 23 countries

Re: That's OK

Never mind budgets, security education seems to have been defenestrated in favour of "trust us, it's easy, install this, do this"

IT died when they let the riff-raff in, without a basic education in what a computer is or does or can do

Manglement thinks the solution is to buy a package from someone like DarkTrace .. which is like paying a cowboy builder to plaster over the cracks

How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes

Re: curl -fsSL someurl | sh

Last time I had one of these I did exactly that and got very annoyed, and built from source. But you're right, of course. Doing so defeats the object of an easy install, but an easy install is highly insecure.

Running in a VM is not a bad approach for most things, but for GPU stuff, there'll be a performance hit if it works at all.

Unless you have a separate GPU dedicated to one particular VM via an IOMMU?

Re: curl -fsSL someurl | sh

If it were a binary EXE installer (it isn't, it's a text script) then saving it before running it would at least give your AntiVirus a chance to spot something dodgy. But executing a shell directly from a HTTP response is just stupid, and users need to be made to understand just how stupid it is. Yet perversely, this method of installation seems to be gaining ground with a lot of commercial software for Linux.

Re: JARGON

Hear hear. I find that very annoying, too, when I don't know a piece of jargon.

But, what rock have you been hiding under? And can I join you? I wish to avoid all technological and political developments of the next decade.

Nvidia: Why write code when you can string together a couple chat bots?

Re: This will solve all our problems

The worst that can happen is that the AI vomits verbatim the contents of one of Oracle or SAP's codebases from a private GitHub repo!

(With a bit of luck, they are still on VCS or Visual SourceSafe, and/or they have lost the code entirely)

"It is very likely that you assemble a team of AI"

And what you'll end up with, is a fully end-to-end AI-built software product, with all the delightful quality of Wonka's Chocolate Experience!

Voltron Data revs up hyper-speed analytics, leaves Snowflake in the dust

Also, what kind of database query returns a 100TB result??

To me, that just says you are doing your query wrong

"only 6 TB of GPU memory."

What kind of GPU comes with 6TB memory?

Swift enters safe mode over gyro issue while NASA preps patch to shake it off

Hot or cold spares?

Are all three normally spinning, or is one of them left cold?

If all three are spinning then they probably wear out at a similar rate.. A bit like disks in a sodding RAID where Sod's Law dictates that N+1 will fail on the same day where N is the level of redundancy

Atos says Airbus flew off, no longer interested in infosec and big data biz

My heart bleeds

For those poor Atos shareholders

.. who might be thinking "Why couldn't they have bought us anyway at a heavily inflated price before we bail out, let them run the company down, and worst-case we send a stooge to jail.. But no, they had to do their bloody due diligence"

Yes, I did just crash that critical app. And you should thank me for having done so

Halve a watermelon

Perhaps he wanted to buy the 'experience' of halving a watermelon

Here is your 'Halve a watermelon' ticket, sir. That'll be five pounds.

India celebrates rapid adoption of its internet of livestock

Don't give the next Home Secretary any ideas

Or (s)he'll be buying this for all of us lot.

Moo