Posts by Uplink

Folk are getting dangerously attached to AI that always tells them they're right

The modern version of "The Devil made me do it"?

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

Separation of concerns

I would argue that any age verification system is the responsibility of the pre-boot environment (BIOS, UEFI), rather than of the OS.

Final step to put new website into production deleted it instead

An M&S-take?

What if Linux ran Windows… and meant it? Meet Loss32

Loss32 subsystem for Linux (L32SL) would be just a (possibly chrooted or containerised) GNU-like userland, wouldn't it?

Say, if Loss32 were based on the most minimal Ubuntu, to get L32SL, one would just apt install the "ubuntu-minimal" package, and run a bash in a terminal (which itself could be a Win32 program, to keep with the theme). Then one could just apt install other stuff, like perl and gcc as needed.

GitHub walks back plan to charge for self-hosted runners

Re: Coincidence?

Sure, but in just two short weeks?

Coincidence?

I found it really strange that GitHub announced self-hosted runner pricing soon after Atlassian did the same. And the wording is so similar too: "We're bringing you an upgrade and improved experience."

It's like they talked to each other (or shared the same consultants) - nothing that can be easily proven, of course.

I bet Atlassian was like: "Yes! GitHub is doing this too! We're vindicated!". And after GitHub backpedaled: "Well, crap, now we're the only bad guys."

Apple blocks dev from all accounts after he tries to redeem bad gift card

I wonder what a judge would say about this. Ignoring that it would take a damn long time, I wonder if a judge would uphold Apple's action and not award damages to the customer. I would expect a decent company to at least tell the customer what rules they broke.

Google Antigravity vibe-codes user's entire drive out of existence

I bought a chainsaw to cut branches of trees in my garden. I didn't expect it to cut the branch I was sitting on. Later on, I used it to cut the entire tree, and it fell on my house. I'm writing this here so that others are aware of the pitfalls of vibe chainsawing.

ISPs more likely to throttle netizens who connect through carrier-grade NAT: Cloudflare

This article is IPv6 propaganda.

Sincerily,

Big IPv4

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: It's almost as if...

Not necessarily. It's more akin to "as much as the market will bear" (but more like "as much as we can get away with"). There's not enough pushback for them to care. They could send out a sex toy and tell customers to suck on it in order to activate Windows, and there will be a lot of moaning (of both kinds), but people will still use Windows. Try to regulate what MS can get away with and there will be even more moaning.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Nothing like a plague to reshape human working relationships - 1348, 2020.

People discovered it's nice to have all the commute time to themselves instead. Why would you give that away again?

How and why Linux has thrived after three decades in Kernelland

Re: Licenses

The two replies I got so far made me realise that the basement metaphor is not quite right. I can't think of another word for "software slavery" right now (unless it's "cage"), but I have a real world example: Linksys WRT54G: https://lkml.org/lkml/2003/6/7/164

Re: Licenses

The way I understand the GPL "freedom", is that it's not freedom for you, it's freedom for the software itself. The software cannot be chained and locked in a proprietary basement - not by you, not by anyone. They could just as well call it "emancipated software" to drive the point home.

The BSD and MIT people seem to say "yeah, whatever, if you lock it in your basement, you just make more work for yourselves, so good luck with that".

There is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

IETF Draft suggests making IPv6 standard on DNS resolvers - partly to destroy IPv4

IPv6 DNS for El Reg

Would The Register kindly get IPv6 hosting too? The DNS records only return IPv4. You're the real reason IPv6 is held back :)

Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server

Swap

Missed opportunity to shut down the real Orion too, and swap the power cables. Then the labels will be correct, and everyone else will shut down the wrong server because they remember that time when the labels were swapped.

The real reason why Trump is killing the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai'i

Evidence

Will you stop bombarding us with evidence? Some people feel offended by it. They can't keep asking "where's the evidence?" if it keeps coming in.

X tells the French police 'non' to its request for algorithmic data

Something to hide

What was that statement? Ah, yes: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about".

Security company hired a used car salesman to build a website, and it didn't end well

Re: secure passwords

Sending password in the clear by email is worse than sending a password reset link.

The clear password is a very good indicator that they store passwords in the clear in their database too. Such sites usually send you the password again if you say you forgot it.

Make your email your bastion - with a strong, distinct password and 2FA, and password set/reset links aren't that bad. Not as good as PKI Client Certificates or Passkeys (when implemented correctly), but still.

Linus Torvalds hints Bcachefs may get dropped from the Linux kernel

We do not release on Friday

Why we don't release on Friday? It's a small change, it won't break anything!

Because: He who burns his tongue from the soup will blow on yogurt.

It's as simple as that.

What would a Microsoft engineer do to Ubuntu? AnduinOS is the answer

Re: Misread as ArduinOS

Is there a medical or psychological term for this? I read it as ArduinOS several times, for sever days. And now I went back in the browser, from the comments section, and it says AnduinOS without reloading the page. I could bet real money that it said ArduinOS and it just changed (even though it had no way it could have done that). Mandela Effect seems to fit somewhat, but this wasn't a memory. This was me reading the same thing wrong consistently, and I'm not usually known to be dyslexic.

Re: "reshapes GNOME in the image of Windows 11"

Maybe Wubuntu/Winux is just too small to go after at the moment. They did got after Lindows a long time back, and everything that had "Windows" in its name but wasn't from Microsoft, e.g. Windows Commander became Total Commander because of this.

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

Re: You're not entirely correct

I'm curious now. Did anyone quantify those properties that you list for the Model M? That would make the comparison a bit more scientific than "Oh, how I loved Model M and hate these modern keyboards." It should probably one of the first steps in the "lot of work" that the article says needs to be done.

Sudo-rs make me a sandwich, hold the buffer overflows

Re: Another day, another attempt to force this on us

You say: "If you use simple code, and the STL"

I think I see the problem. It's that "if". You're relying on humans. Put that into mandatory tooling and then we may have a fair comparison.

Using the car analogy, it's like this: a car that checks the blind spots for you vs an older car where "if you check your blind spots religiously" everything should be fine. But as long as there's space for slipups, there will be slipups.

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

Moving the task bar to the edges

Moving the task bar to the left or right edge seems to be annoying quite a few people, but Microsoft feels it's not enough of them to care.

Accenture: DOGE's federal procurement review is hurting our sales

They should ask Elon to consult on a "deprivation of revenue" lawsuit.

Photoshop FOSS alternative GIMP wakes up from 7-year coma with version 3.0

A thousand comments on how GIMP could use a new name, and zero on Ogg Theora. Huh...

How about if you pronounce GIMP like GIF - I.e. the Italian way? Would that work for you?

Non-biz Skype kicks the bucket on May 5

Worldwide toll-free/freephone calls

It's been a while since I've used it, but the one thing that Skype did that nobody else did as far as I could tell was being able to call Freephone (0800, 1-800, whatever the local Freephone equivalent is) from anywhere in the world for free without getting a phone number from that country.

Is customer support available only in the USA via toll-free 877 number and you're in the UK with no plans of setting foot in the US? Call then with Skype. Can't do that with Teams or WhatsApp.

But I guess as long as everyone moves towards a webchat customer service experience we're all good, right?

WinAmp's woes will pass, but its wonders will be here forever

Source

Just a quick mention that although they removed their GitHub repository, they still have links to it on their website. Look for the "Legacy Player Developer" buttons :) Even their blog post proudly announcing the release of the code is still up and not retracted. I'm not sure people talked to one another before taking all the actions in the chain of events.

Uncle Sam's had it up to here with 'unforgivable' SQL injection flaws

Simple but complicated solution

The problem with SQL is that it's human-writeable text that can be concatenated on a whim. Solution: replace with binary protocol. Well... at least disallow direct coding of it - use builders.

Reasoning: if you want to keep humans away and let the computers build the safe commands, you make it really hard for humans to write it directly. Humans get to use a builder with that has safety built-in.

For example: Nobody is writing machine code. Nobody is really writing asm either. We use compilers. Make builders for SQL and Regex, and disallow direct string writing (the binary protocol is the sledgehammer that helps with this), and now the coders have to find a different way to introduce vulns without realising.

Chrome users – get an alert when extensions are in danger of falling into wrong hands

Re: Money Money Money

Yeah, it should be used in the plural. Everyone who doesn't know how to use a computer at hacker level is essentially included, regardless of how old they are.

We challenged you to come up with tech predictions for 2024 (wrong answers only) – here are some favorites so far

Some coding AI will be asked to write code that deletes the AI platform itself (exploiting a bug only the AI knows about), it does so, and it actually works.

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Hugs

The robot was grateful for the engineers work on making it more efficient, and wanted to give him a hug, that's all.

Google, DeepMind accused of 'stealing the internet' to create Bard AI chatbot

It may actually be that simple.

Learning and then using that information to make things is fine - even if you learn it by violating copyright law, as it's not easy to prove that you read books and articles and watched films against the terms and conditions (I'll refer to improperly sourced material again below).

It's when you start disseminating that learned content verbatim to others against the original terms and conditions where you'll be in the wrong. If you quote your sources in newly produced original material, even those accessed against terms and conditions, you're probably in the clear though.

Let's go to the level where the LLM sits: you produce content based on the things learned as described above, but for an employer, who then takes that and makes money. They may even give you new material to study in order to perform your new material creation duties. That's still fine, isn't it? Even if the material was sourced against the author's terms and conditions (and even if the obtainer is caught and sentenced).

Now, being the money maker that he is, your boss replaces you with a much more efficient tool: the LLM.

By my reasoning, as long as the LLM doesn't reproduce the original material verbatim, everybody is fine (except the now-starving content creators that have been obsoleted).

The LLM owner may be much easier to prosecute for improperly sourcing training material against terms and conditions than the general population though - until we all get pocket LLMs and proceed to apply the copier machine principle at high speed.

As the Renault Twingo ad says: "We live in modern times". Things will get very interesting soon.

Microsoft makes Windows Server 2022 licenses a little less cynical

Re: Squeezing the process

Wait... They attempted to patent a billing structure? If such a patent does go through, it may be time to bring out that implement that the French used to make their royals lose a little bit of weight.

Microsoft stumps loyal fans by making OneDrive handle Outlook attachments

Microsoft has a solution for this too

Just put those attachments into postcode files (that's how we say "zip files" in British). Problem solved :P

Ref: https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/12cwylk/microsoft_has_mistranslated_zip_files_as_postcode/

Debian dev to the rescue after proposal to remove Itanium from Linux kernel

Re: This is called technical debt

That someone isn't forced to do this maintenance work. They choose to do it. And it's not affecting the general product in any negative way. It's not debt. It's legacy, which is a related but different paradigm.

When all willing maintainers go away, then of course it's a good candidate for removal if it breaks or gets in the way. Even without maintainers though, if nothing breaks or gets in the way, it's perfectly fine to have it zombie along.

India’s retail digital currency pilot launches on December 1st

Hold up...

Back up a little there:

Participating banks distribute the e-rupee (e₹-R), in the same denominations available as notes and coins

What do you mean by "denominations" when it comes to digital currency? Does that mean that if I go to a shop they may not have enough change to give me because they don't have the requisite digital coins? The idea of "change" itself would arise from my lack of exact digital coinage as well.

Teen bought Google ad for his scam website and made 48 Bitcoins duping UK online shoppers

Is that all it takes?

I should start a website like that for a short period, but you know, hide my tracks much better. Redeem vouchers with his own account? A newbie mistake.

Disclaimer: your honour, I made this comment hypothetically. If I were to actually go into cybercrime, I wouldn't brag to anybody, much less a public forum on the Internet, surely.

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

Was mega.io (accessed via a VPN, Tor, behind 7 proxies™) too untrustworthy compared to a physical drop location? What a waste of a sandwatch.

Samsung to sling 2nm silicon in 2025, 3nm process running a little late

Re: What does "X nm" actually mean now?

Following your nice description, I guess processor manufacturers should have continued with the GHz numbers without actual GHz in the processor. We'd be at 20 GHz on a 1.5 GHz processor by now, if I'm guessing correctly.

UK umbrella payroll firm Giant Pay confirms it was hit by 'sophisticated' cyber-attack

Sophisticated

I'm guessing that their "senior" Laravel "developer" didn't bother himself with junior-level stuff such as "syntax" and "preventing SQL injections", and "concerned themselves with the bigger picture"

I'm channelling some anecdotes I got from a friend who is conducting hiring interviews and so far has rejected all the "senior" developers that came his way, with one of them saying more or less what I said in the first paragraph.

Story of the creds-leaking Exchange Autodiscover flaw – the one Microsoft wouldn't fix even after 5 years

Hello,

I would like to chime in and say that this problem isn't really a problem. Stop bothering me and my company.

Bill Gates

Lagos, Nigeria

Sent from my iPhone.

Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans, thank you very much

A quote from some guy who uses this development in support of his policies:

"Kill all humans!" - Bender "Bending" Rodriguez.

Three million job cuts coming at Indian services giants by next year, says Bank of America

New industry boost: scam calls

Is this part of the reason why calls about my national insurance number and getting warrants in my name have jumped in frequency? They want to show us that they'll take BoA's money one way or another?

Arm pulls the sheets off its latest Armv9 architecture with added AI support, Realms software isolation

Re: RISCY

Well... The core is still RISC, and it's all about modules added to it. The instruction sets of each module may also be relatively reduced in size. Maybe we need a new term: Modular Instruction Set Computer - MISC.

Intel keeps adding instructions to the main instruction set (but pretends to be modular by giving each addition a new label), because backwards compatibility. ARM is just pick and mix - make it as reduced or as complex as you fell like. I think RISC-V adopts this philosophy too.

One could think of this as having a lot more coprocessors than just a math one.

The wrong guy: Backup outfit Spanning deleted my personal data, claims Cohesity field CTO

Limits not imposed

Basically they didn't write any code to display errors when you reach a limit, but they're keeping an eye on it, likely with an excel sheet emailed to some higher up once a month. Then they store your data in /dev/null for free.

No phish for the likes of you, thank you very much! Google finds email villains are picky about demographics, country

Who gets the least?

If I "move" to Nigeria will all spam disappear?

Project Ticino: Microsoft's Erich Gamma on Visual Studio Code past, present, and future

They'll make their own UI framework. With blackjack. And hookers.