Posts by Leedos

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: Keyboard layout

I blame AT&T. The British Pound was first. The symbol had been established long before telephony came along. There's probably an interesting history on who's to blame.

Nearly since birth, I've used a DTMF touch-tone phone. Every voice prompt in every PBX or switch I've interacted with has brainwashed me press the STAR key and the POUND key. Was this not the case with DTMF in other English-speaking countries? Did anyone hear "followed by the hash key" or "followed by asterisk?"

For me, the move to computers changed star to asterisk on occasion, but pound remained pound until the 2010's and now we have both. These days, I'm still going with pound unless referring to social media. It rolls off the tongue easier than "hash tag." When I hear "hash" out of context, I'm thinking of a breakfast that includes potatoes.

Buckle up, admins – Windows Server 2025 officially hits GA

My last windows server

Windows 2025 will be the last time I'm running Windows Server on bare metal. I'll be upgrading to Windows Server 2025 as my business is hybrid-cloud at the moment. I hope to have all the important parts moved to the cloud before the current server is no longer fit for duty, For the next hardware refresh I think I'll get a workstation instead of a new business desktop and a new server. I'm really only using AD, DNS, DHCP, Hyper-V and SMB. People love to bash Windows, but for me it's been quite reliable. I was that guy running Windows Server 2000 on my laptop. Windows Server will be around my shop until I retire, but not running on bare metal. I don't see that changing unless they really improve Storage Spaces, Hyper-V and ReFS. Those three things all looked very promising for the future of Windows Server. All of those features were released before they were ready, but did improve. It seems Azure took all the good developers. The remaining devs are mostly fixing bugs and making more things work with Azure. ReFS is still not supported as a boot volume unless I'm wrong. If ZFS can be bootable then ReFS should also be bootable. At this stage, I expected many more improvements to Storage Spaces and ReFS. I haven't given up hope yet, but I've been burned before with Microsoft retiring a product or feature. Storage Spaces, ReFS and NTFS work well enough, but I'm not seeing much progress. I really liked ZFS for storage and I will likely return to it unless a miracle happens for Windows Server team at Microsoft.

Sysadmins rage over Apple’s ‘nightmarish’ SSL/TLS cert lifespan cuts plot

What about CA certs?

What about the Trusted Root CA certificates that are valid for 25 to 30 years? Is this not a problem? There are more than a few that I don't recognize. Perhaps it's time we take a closer look at the Trusted Root CA's also. Since Apple / Google / MS can update CA's using security patches. Maybe change is needed at both sides of the trust chain and CA cert lifetime should be reduced as well. Is 10 years enough for a CA cert? If the trusted root CA's can be easily updated, they don't have much excuse for the 30-year lifetimes. Major pains for CA's every decade at most should be acceptable if I need to make sure my certs are still working every 45 days. I'm not sure if reducing the lifetime is going to help fix the problem if those certificates shouldn't have been issued to begin with.

Pretending to be a badger wins Oxford Don 10 TRILLION DOLLARS

The annual Ig Nobel Prizes

Recognition of the winners here is worthwhile. May this tradition continue for centuries. "When you're going through hell, keep going."

And that's 3 recalls for Tesla Cybertruck in as many months

JOB OPENING: USI - Validation and Testing - Overcurrent division

Job Description:

Step 1. Twist load and input voltage knobs until magic smoke is released from widget in test.

Step 2. Document input and load values.

Step 3. Replace damaged widget with new widget.

Step 3. Repeat step 1 at a lower loads and input voltages to see if magic smoke is released.

Step 4. No smoke? Pass!

Some days are more fun than others.

Mr Cooper cyberattack laid bare: 14.7M people's info stolen, costs hit $25M

Re: Lovely

Me too, Wells Fargo sold my mortgage to these guys. They keep sending me junk mail about borrowing more money. I had no choice in the matter, but that's how it goes with mortgages.

Playing instruments, musical talent? Psh, this is the 2020s – Meta has models for that now

Agreed, the samples suck

They should have the option to export as MIDI so it could be used with better sounding instruments and tweaked to sound less generic.

On second thought...

They should get some better sounding instruments and add some swing to the tempo. AI is supposed to make things better, not make me work harder.

LockBit brags: We'll leak thousands of SpaceX blueprints stolen from supplier

MaximumInd.com - no HTTPS

It seems this contractor hasn't even bothered to implement HTTPS on their website. In all fairness, there isn't any authentication on their site, but they do have an RFP form. They probably could care less about Google page rank lowering them down a few notches. However, one could infer that IT modernization is likely a low priority for this metal working company.

From what I can tell they most likely cut thick chunks of metal into flanges, bulkheads and the like. I'm doubtful that someone would be able to do much with these blueprints. If the CCP makes a Phalcon-IX, and it works, I would be astonished.

I have a steel company as a client, and they also don't seem to care much about keeping things updated. They had an XP box in daily use until last year. The most I could do was to convince them to do is to not connect it to the internet.

Tesla reports two more fatal Autopilot accidents to the NHTSA

ADAS failure - Johnny Cab from Total Recall

If Arnold Schwarzenegger can override ADAS then you can too, but the AI may want revenge....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAkeZqAN_qU

TSMC reportedly looks to raise a second Arizona chip fab

It takes a lot more than water to fab chips...

I don't believe that TSMC is controlled by a bunch of corrupt idiots. They probably went over all of these factors and a whole lot more before deciding to spend 12 billion dollars on the first one. Arizona has the largest nuclear power plant in the US and two very large hydro-electric plants. Cheap and stable electricity probably factors in quite a bit more than water. For the water there is the Central Arizona Project canal that brings Colorado river water to the middle of the state. Agriculture uses a large portion of it. Nevada is actually the driest state in the US, not Arizona. Cheaper labor, lower taxes, decent transportation corridors, large swaths of inexpensive and easy to develop land helping also. The construction of the first plant probably went better than expected so now they are building another one.

Quit worrying about 5G C-band and crashing aircraft, US govt eggheads sigh

This needs further consideration...

These are all valid points. However, asking owners of the ~30,000 airplanes that are affected by this to upgrade their avionics or install some kind of filter is a bigger ask than it seems. It will certainly be a more expensive fix than to avoid the interference in the first place. 5G is great and there are too many unfounded claims against it, but this isn't one of them. I have a few friends that are pilots that have experienced interference. These airplanes are of course older models and have old avionics to go with them. There was a whole lot less RF interference to deal with when they were designed. Swapping out equipment in airplanes is much easier said than done. You can't simply take out one part and swap in another that works better. It's not allowed by the FAA, for good reason. Kinda like how the 737 and 737 Max really aren't that different so let skip the recertification process. Even on a smaller aircraft like Cessnas, you can't just change out one part with a newer equivalent. Even though in most cases, a modern replacement would almost always be a better choice. Edge cases can and do happen. Removing and replacing equipment with something else can require special exemption certifications from the FAA. This is usually a costly endeavor. You would need to design, retrofit, test and upgrade all affected aircraft of every affected make and model that has been produced and are still cleared for flight. Then the FAA needs to sign off that these modifications should never be a contributing factor in any future accidents. I don't think the FAA would like to test these waters again. There are other bands that carriers can operate in that are not a problem. I think most of us can deal with not having a gigabit internet connection on our cell phones while at the airport if it means there won't be a chance of an accident. I can deal with not having 5G at the airport in the near term. If that's an issue for you, leave AT&T or Verizon and switch to T-Mobile.

Oh Deere: Farm hardware jailbroken to run Doom

I love the corn rows in the game. Great mod.

On the GPL Stuff, they're scared stiff. Like a "Deere" in headlights...

Ex-CISA chief Krebs calls for US to get serious on security

As my OpenBSD #7 shirt says...

Make crypto, not munitions...

What good is all that R&D investment building the latest weapons only to have the designs stolen. Public and private sectors really to need to beef up the cyber defenses.

Too little, too late: Intel's legacy is eroding

Re: Subsidies for multi-billion dollar companies ?

Agreed, but we are talking about for profit companies, There are many healthcare, educational and correctional institutions (prisons) in the US that are for profit companies. They really shouldn't be or at least be capped on how much they are allowed to take out of the system. I would rather see money go to assist those that make products vs. the last big bailout we had of companies like AIG. I would argue that the loss of Intel would be worse for the US than the loss of a company like AIG. What does "too big to fail" really mean for purely financial organizations when nearly identical products and services can be had from another that was "too smart to fail". From CBO.gov "The final net subsidy cost of TARP assistance to AIG was $15 billion." But hey, what's a few billion between friends?

Ship stranded in Suez Canal shifts, but not before spawning some choice tech memes

My favorite one...

https://media.giphy.com/media/IrrYlFmpivxthPksfh/source.gif

High-resolution display output or Wi-Fi: It seems you can only choose one on Raspberry Pi 4

RF can be strange

Not just the Pi. USB3 and Logitech Unified receivers. I've had other issues with a Gen3 AppleTVs and HDMI flicker / HDCP errors. I moved and all is fine, same TV and cables. I have faith in the the nex rev. 'RPiV'?

UK Home Office: We will register thousands of deactivated firearms with no database

Re: Why?

It's very interesting to read these comments as a US citizen. 9mm ammo is very common over here. Most Walmart stores have it on the shelf right now. My Ruger P94 9mm holds 10 rounds with the factory magazines. I bought two additional 15 round magazines and a box of Winchester Ranger "law enforcement only" rounds for it at a gun show. With the two factory magazines and the two 15 rounders, I can load a full box of ammo. The amount of damage that could be caused is somewhat shocking and I understand that not everyone should have one of these. That said, my 9mm is looked at as a weak firearm due to its lack of stopping power. Reading other comments about semi-auto shotguns (legal in the UK) being converted to full auto and you begin to realize that it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle. A full auto shotgun is something you want to pickup as a room clearer in a video game. The 9mm semi-auto pistol, not so much.

I guess more rounds and less skillful reloading means my gun is not a friendly gun like a revolver is. This makes zero sense to me. I did see the bad guys in the movies using the newer "military-style" guns and the street cops have to fend them off with there revolvers. I understand that semi-automatic pistols might be a bit scarier to look at for some, but in my eyes all guns are made to kill. Some kill animals, some people, a small number "kill" targets and decoys. Setting up a registration for deactivated firearms is not a good use of resources. Take the cash for the program and setup a no questions asked buyback to take the working, unregistered firearms out of the community. Isn't that what you really want to accomplish? Do you really need to worry about the older, deactivated guns? Sorry if I'm trying to be too pragmatic.

Sure, we made your Wi-Fi routers phone home with telemetry, says Ubiquiti. What of it?

Limits to your madness.

How do you connect to the internet? There's always that one pesky device that really does need to talk to the rest of the world.

Some assembly required as Dream Chaser mini-shuttle's empty husk arrives in Colorado

Re: I'd go with the

Thanks for that link to British Airways Flight 5390. I hadn't read about that incident. The captain got violently blown half way out the window. He was frost bitten and his head repeatedly bounced off the fuselage while they descended. The crew had to fight to hold him inside. Makes you think twice before you take off your seat belts.

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

Re: This is awesome

Agreed. Even better if he personally coded BO2K and all the plugins. I enjoyed experimenting with the software and remember being impressed with what could be delivered in a relatively small payload.

Microsoft unzips Zipline, lets world+dog have a go with cloudy storage compression tech

Storage Spaces and ReFS

Hopefully this will trickle down to Windows Server and bring a little bit more feature parity with ZFS. They've only had about 15 years to tackle a problem everyone else knew was coming. I wonder what systems the NSA is will be using in Utah to store our data without "bursting at the seams"?

Most munificent Apple killed itself with kindness. Oh. Really?

My "new" Apple batttery needed replacing

The replacement battery Apple provided me has already failed. I debated going back for a second battery replacement before the end of last year, but the first one took almost a month to get due to high demand. Going to the Apple store is rarely quick or easy. I ordered a 2225mAh replacement with tools from Amazon for $25 Works fine and the phone lasts all day again. The real bonus is that I didn't have to go to the Apple store.

Thunderstruck: Azure Back in Black(out) after High Voltage causes Flick of the Switch

50% restored (for me)

I have 4 VM's in that data center. 1 survived, 1 was restored, still waiting on the other 2.

Didn't Ben Franklin come up with something to prevent this kind of thing?

Corking story: Idiotic smart wine bottle idea falls over, passes out

19 Crimes wine - Clever AR application

I got to experience this in person. I was impressed from both a technical and a marketing point of view. No need screw up the wine bottle. Just build an app to recognize the label.

Forbes Article link

US Congress quietly slips cloud-spying powers into page 2,201 of spending mega-bill

Re: Paperweight

You might want to go stack 4 reams of paper and take a look. It looks like about 4 1/2 reams of paper to me. I suggest someone let Sen.Paul and his assistants how to use duplex mode.

Bell Canada Canucks it up again: Second hack in just eight months

Since "password" was a poor choice for a password, they changed it to p@$$w0rd. No one will ever guess that....

Parity calamity! Wallet code bug destroys $280m in Ethereum

Re: Oh dear

It would expect the opposite. Ethereum tanks, Bitcoin climbs. Let's check back on Friday to see who's right.

FYI Apple fans – iCloud slurps your call histories

Where's my access?

I'm OK with this as long as I have access to it. You would think that a new iPhone would have the ability to store more than 100 calls in it's call log, but no. This hasn't changed since the orignal iPhone. I can burn through 100 calls in less than a week when I'm busy. Apple referring me to my carrier to access that information is not very helpful as the data there is numeric only (no Caller ID). Apple - How about putting some work into improving the Phone app on the iPhone? I will concede that CallKit in iOS 10 is a step forward by allowing the integration of VoIP apps like Bria into the native phone app. Sure, your app library is impressive but there are some people (not millenials) that actually use this device as a phone!

35,000 ARRIS cable modems at risk from firmware dumper bot

This has the potential for stealing cable internet.

With root access to the cable modem, it may be possible to clone another modem on you cable network by changing the MAC address and config files. Also possible to change your speed to highest available or change from residential to business level service or set the modem to use a VoIP profile to prioritize your traffic. I have the sense that's what hackers are getting in and locker others out. It sounds like a digital land grab.

If at first you don't succeed, you're probably Google: Android Pay arrives

I smell another lawsuit

So Google copied the methods, look and feel and nearly the name of Apple Pay. I don't think this will go over too well with the folks in Cupertino...

Server tech is BORING these days. Where's all the shiny new goodies?

The band-aid problem exactly why I'm planning on going with Infiniband for my next storage project. For a bunch of Windows servers, SMB Direct over Infiniband makes a lot of sense when you start looking at all the other shared storage options out there. Near native access speeds to storage is very tempting. Lets hope Storage Spaces is mature enough at this point to provide the reliability that's required. On paper everything look good...

Acer silences Thunderbolt

I like thunderbolt on the Mac.

The major problem is with PC's and BIOS / Windows. You can't hot plug a Thunderbolt device into a PC. You have to reboot for it to work. Intel should have worked out a solution for this. I can hotplug my thunderbolt to gigabit Ethernet adapter into my MacBook Air running OSX and it works as you'd expect. Running Windows with BootCamp and you need to reboot to get it to work on the same hardware. Please fix.

Google hit by building automation security FAIL

Re: And who in their right mind puts a BMS on the Internet?

I had a certain HVAC contractor ask me to do just that for two federal buildings. One houses the Department of Homeland Security, the second houses the Drug Enforcement Administration. The system did not have any authentication to prevent unauthorized access.

I refused and recommended that if they wanted remote access to the HVAC system, they needed to implement a VPN and IP-based access controls. Of course the told me how they "do it all the time" and have never had a problem.

It's official! Register hack is an alcohol-flushed cave dweller

I picked the same DNA lab.

I received a couple of kits for my wife and I a few days ago. I originally was looking at Geno 2.0 from NatGeo, but ended up going with 23andMe because they seemed to provide more results than just ancestry and for half the cost. My wife was adopted, so she has always wondered about her lineage and possible family related illness like breast cancer. I bought her a test kit as a birthday gift so she could find out a bit more about herself since she can't ask her parents. I also ordered one for myself so we could find out what we may have passed on to our children. I'm eagerly awaiting the results, it seems they provide quite a bit of info.

Massive strike at Foxconn's iPhone 5 factory

Move production to the USA.

I don't understand why they don't just move production to the USA. They hate the leaks that happen about their products, so move production elsewhere. They have more than enough money to offset the higher cost of production by building them stateside. I would pay another $50-75 over the regular price to have something built stateside. If they can't figure out how to do it in the USA for reasonable cost, then I personally would prefer to have my iPhone 5 built in Mexico than in China. Cisco builds equipment in Mexico to avoid Chinese tampering. I'm already on my second iPhone 5. My first one had touchscreen issues right out of the box. Is it really cheaper to make things in China when you have to replace a brand new phone under warranty within two weeks? The aluminum backing on this phone must be made from recycled cans, the quality of the metal is absolute crap. Quality is slipping and they do need to address it quickly.

Microsoft, RIM ink new licensing agreement

That's too bad. I was hoping it was something like the whole ActiveSync IP portfolio. Fail for RIM.

There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button

Re: They just needed to put it a "Start Slice"....

"What dead space? There is the same size margin to the side of the left most icon as there is to the right of the clock. Hover over them and you will see how big the "dead space" actually is."

The difference is that the space on the right has a function, the one to the left doesn't. You click the space on the right and the desktop is shown. If you try the same thing with the space on the left and nothing happens. Get it now?

Re: They just needed to put it a "Start Slice"....

I use the Windows key all the time. Like I said, it's more of a problem when using RDP to connect. The windows button on my keyboard is not mapped to the remote machine, unless I'm running in full screen. Sure that can be changed in the remote desktop client, but you are missing the point. Why is there dead space on the left of the task bar that has no use?

They just needed to put it a "Start Slice"....

Like many others, I have no problem with the new Start screen. Searching for the app I need by pressing a few letters works well. I like using the keyboard.

My problem is with the way you are required to move the mouse to the corner, then click on start. The desktop slice on the right of the taskbar works as it did in Windows 7. Why didn't they just put in a "Start Slice?" There is now a chunk of the taskbar on the left side that is completely useless. They just left a gap there that doesn't do anything. All people want is the ability to click something where the start button was. If you have used Windows since 1995, you would think you should be able to click something in that gap, but clicking there does absolutely nothing at all. I don't see how moving the mouse to the bottom left corner, then clicking Start is more production than just being able to click on the slice to accomplish the same thing. This becomes more of an issue when RDP-ing into a Window 8 / Server 2012 box that is not running full screen.

With Server 2012 and Windows 8 already RTM'd our only hope to correct this flaw is that maybe they will come to their senses and issue a "Shell Update". Just like they did when IE 4 came out and added some great new features to the Windows shell. While they are at it, go ahead and add the Shutdown command to the new Start button's right-click menu. Done.

PoC code uses super-critical Windows bug to crash PCs

Can the Chinese do me a favor?

I'd like them to call it WinNuke 2012. Please make it just like the old WinNuke, but use the this exploit instead.

Peeking up the skirt of Microsoft's hardy ReFS

Client side too please.

Now just put this in Windows 8 Professional and make 85% of El Reg readers very happy. The other 15% can continue to whine here and not benefit from it.

Nexenta trashes Win8 Storage Spaces

Bravo MS

You know you’re doing something right when it starts to irritate companies like Nexenta. I applaud Microsoft for at least doing something in storage. Sure it's not ZFS, but it's a whole lot better than just NTFS. NTFS is just not goo enough anymore. That's why I'm using ZFS for server storage. I would like to see this new Resilient File System and Storage Spaces clustered on Windows 8 Server. All they need are iSCSI and FCoE targets and some network replication. If that happens more than a few storage vendors will have to think about something new to do. It may not be ZFS, but if it's close then we all will benefit. Windows is not going away.

'Angry Bird' netflinger projectile brings down drug ultralights

The cartels are using catapults, ramps and remote control aircraft to get drugs the short distance across the border. Full size UAVs are probably too expensive at this point. The drug cartels will try ANYTHING one can dream up, but they don't like losing car, planes or money. Of the shelf RC aircraft are doing the job and are cheap. I'm sure they are thinking of ways to increase the payload.

I like this K.I.S.S approach.

http://www.yumasun.com/articles/-69256--.html

Illicit Bitcoin miners steal resources from infected Macs

Quality of Pwns?

The first poster proves that using Graphic Converter is great way to bait Mac users. I'm sure there are more than a few users that don't like to wait.

I think the bad guys are getting picky about the quality of their botnets. I work on enough outdated Intel hardware to know the average Intel Mac has much faster hardware than the average PC. Using the GPU for minting Bitcoin is quite impressive. Malware is now running on GPU's! The programming behind this attack is the real news here.

Windows Server 8 plays catch-up with VMware and Unix

windows server

The new feature list is impressive. I hope they are focusing more on storage and networking in Windows Server 8. Being mostly a Windows Server admin, I've been envious of Solaris 11's storage and network features.

I use Solaris 11 on Intel Atom hardware. It started just to test, but performace is good enought for production use as an iSCSI SAN. I like the combination of ZFS, COMSTAR, and Crossbow. Performace is great given the cheap hardware. I considered running Windows Storage Server, but the features aren't on par with Solaris from a storage perspective.

With MS now giving away their iSCSI target they might as well integrate the whole iSCSI stack into the server. They need some improvement in disk management, replication, dedup, snapshots, and SSD acceleartion. Hopefully this all results in a Hyper-V cluster without a SAN. Do this and they will have a real winner. With all the benefits a SAN provides, nobody really want's to buy a SAN. All the SAN's that I've looked at are way overpriced for what you get.

I'm not sure what's stopping MS from being a bigger player in storage other than they don't want to step on some partner's toes or possible monopoly litigation. Maybe their recent stock downgrade will make the company a little more aggressive again. Everyone needs quailty storage, I prefer mine integrated with the OS.

Three in ten Americans urge feds to read their email

Founding Fathers

The old guys seemed to have a better understanding of life in general.

I like the quote so much I ordered up an OpenBSD t-shirt with it on the back.

http://www.openbsd.org/images/tshirt-7b.jpg

US iPhone ready to be tied down?

AT&T is worried about nothing.

I believe tech savvy iPhone users who really want this feature, and would regularly use it, have already jail broken their phones and enabled the feature. As for the masses of iPhone users, they probably have never even heard of tethering it the first place and wouldn't use it if it was available from AT&T. I know that was the case with my own brother. His internet connection went down at his home. I suggested he jailbreak his iPhone and enable tethering. I believe his reply was "You can do that?"

Oracle murders free OpenSolaris CD shipping

no more openstorage?

Oracle is stupid if they don't recognize the potential that OpenSolaris has as a storage platform. I was really starting to enjoy using OpenSolaris for it's iSCSI target (COMSTAR) and ZFS storage features. MS Hyper-V R2 clusters use the iSCSI target without complaining, not always so on a Linux-based SAN. I hope Oracle doesn't ruin OpenSolaris by pissing off the developers either, without them OpenSolaris is finished.

goodbye openstorage!

Oracle is stupid if they don't recognize the potential that OpenSolaris has as a storage platform. I was really starting to enjoy using OpenSolaris for it's iSCSI target (COMSTAR) and ZFS storage features. MS Hyper-V R2 clusters use the iSCSI target without complaining, not always so on a Linux-based SAN. I hope Oracle doesn't ruin OpenSolaris by pissing off the developers either, without them OpenSolaris is finished.