Posts by alain williams

Developer battled to write his own documentation, but lost the boss fight

Re: The person who writes documentation

You write documentation for someone who doesn't know the product.

No: you need different levels of documentation, even experienced users need documentation - but about things that would mystify a novice user.

Yes: you need good documentation for the new user that assumes that they know zilch; this will let them get it installed & running. I have wanted to try out several packages and given up because I could not get a basic installation to work. Optimisation & customisation happens next.

Also: many programs produce hopeless error & information messages, eg not saying the name of which file is missing, or just the name but not the directory that it is in.

Geopolitics push European CIOs to think local on cloud

How is the local cloud reached ?

They also need to consider the interconnects, ie the cabling, routing, etc. I WW-II Gordon Welchman pioneered Traffic analysis and deduced much from pattern analysis in communications.

We also need local equivalents to Let's Encrypt - this is based in San Francisco, we would be foolish if we thought that the USA spooks had not compromised it, if not it is subject to USA laws.

Fix these for starters.

Here's one way to cut support ticket volume… send them to another company entirely

Bonus points is when customer gets angry - they you can just close the case.

I have had this in shops as well - they try to put me off, when I persist they claim that I am shouting/abusive/... and then refuse to talk to me.

Musk gets approval for bumper Tesla payout but, unlike his robot, there are strings attached

Tax it at 95%

That will still leave him with $50 billion - more than enough for anyone.

Use the tax for: food aid, Medicaid, overseas aid.

That will never happen, but it is nice to dream.

Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!

Re: 21th century colonialism

prohibit export of data to providers operating under different jurisdictions outside of EU

The best way of achieving that is by:

• ensuring that the data-canter owner is not beholden to non EU laws, ie is an EU company

• does not run software that it does not know what it does - ie not use closed source code. Who knows what Microsoft telemetry does ? (Ditto for not MS s/ware). Open source is the only way to go

Even this is no guarantee but is a good start.

Bank of England says JLR's cyberattack contributed to UK's unexpectedly slower GDP growth

So now we know that cyberattacks cost ...

(as if we did not know that already) so when are government and corporations going to put real effort and funds into preventing it in the first place ?

100% prevention is a pipe dream but we can reduce the number of attacks and/or their impact.

The trouble is that it is cost today for probable benefits tomorrow - something that short term attitudes by politicians and corporate bean counters are averse to.

Ministry of Defence's F-35 blunder: £57B and counting

Re: Again why beancouters

buying all their key equipment from Yank suppliers was a stupid, stupid, stupid idea

Fortunately we have more Eurofighters than F-35, but less from the USA is good, even more so since the coming of the orange one.

Amazon Web Services’ US-EAST-1 region in trouble again, with EC2 and container services impacted

Re: Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan

The 14,000 staff were a cost to Amazon.

The AWS outage is a cost to Amazon's customers & their customers.

Which of the two costs has the larger effect on Amazon's profits ?

Re: Prompt

Your comment was prophetic: Heathrow, NatWest and Minecraft sites down in Microsoft global outage (4pm GMT 29 Oct).

UK government on the lookout for bargain-priced CTO

Pay peanuts - get a monkey

anyone coming from outside the civil service "will be expected to start at the salary minimum if successful."

But someone from outside the civil service is exactly who they want. Someone with real world experience.

Appoint a civil servant and you will get someone who will want to continue to do things the way that they are currently done - as that is all that they know.

Who is outlining the role ? I suspect one of the monkey that inhabits Whitehall :-(

Ex-CISA head thinks AI might fix code so fast we won't need security teams

How delightfully naive

to think that a little AI magic pixie dust will solve all security problems.

The truth is good, old fashioned software engineering practice that starts with a secure design and ends with quality assurance testing.

Yes: AI might help with this but AI must not be used as an excuse to cut s/ware development costs - which only results in enshittification.

Australia sues Microsoft for misleading M365 users about Copilot subscription options

Fourth option not mentioned

LibreOffice, even cheaper and keeps on working even when someone screws the Microsoft cloud.

MPs urge government to stop Britain's phone theft wave through tech

Every 'phone stolen results in a replacement bought

Where is the incentive for manufacturers to reduce sales just to save customers some money and inconvenience ?

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

1. Build a Time Machine

But that makes a different problem: one of getting Discovery to 88 miles per hour. You cannot use the better alternative as Discovery is too large to get in through the Tardis doors.

Playtime’s over: Crooks swipe Toys R Us Canada customer data and dump it online

Statutory redress

There ought to be statutory compensation given to all those affected by such a heist. Partly to redress any loss or hassle caused and partly to raise the cost to the compromised organisation which would increase insurance costs and so make the board more willing to enact proper security in the first place.

Salt Typhoon hit governments on three continents with SharePoint attacks

Re: Test

Same thing happened to me ~12 hours ago: a comment did not appear after I submitted it, so I tried again, again nothing. Several hours later I saw the comment twice.

AI bubble inflates Microsoft CEO pay to $96.5M

Maybe he could spend some of this ...

in quality assurance of Microsoft products.

Turns out the end of Windows 10 is good for something: The PC refresh cycle

Re: More bubbles are going to burst.....

One of these days, Redmond et al will have to recognize that the latest and greatest is just a pipe dream. 90% of users already have what they need.

Which is why AI (needing new hardware) is being pushed.

This being written on 13 year old hardware running Debian Linux.

How many people use this missing functionality ?

you will always find differences but how much of that is important ?

Trump's anti-sustainability agenda comes to Eurozone

Re: TDS

I can disagree with Herr Trump and articulate why ... please articulate the other side !!! ... That is called debate

Please include in that debate objective, testable evidence -- too many recent speeches are contain assertions that have little basis in reality or are emotive, dodgy stories that are not representative of the wider picture.

The rejection of the scientific method by those who do not like what it shows is one of the worst changes in recent times.

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

It might be someone else's photograph ...

but if it is my face how do I opt out ? I do not use any Microsoft software or service.

This should be opt in by the individuals in the pictures.

Fujitsu pumps £280M into UK arm to keep lights on after Horizon scandal

No justice yet

Most postmasters have not been compensated. No executives at Fujitsu or Post Office have gone to prison.

I am waiting. I fear that I will be waiting a long time.

50 years in deep space, and Voyager still can't escape budget gravity

So the USA is saving $1¼ million on Voyager

but then splurge $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel since the start of the war in Gaza and $35 to $40 million a year to protect Trump while just in Palm Beach.

I know where I would make budget cuts.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Cheaper to leave it where it is ???

I thought that Trump was so eager to cut needless government costs that he set up a new unit: DOGE to do just this.

Or does DOGE not cut vanity projects ?

I have not heard of DOGE for a while - is it still a thing ?

SaaS turbo-charged software spending tough for CIOs to control, says research

SaaS - I thought that that was the point

By making it a service the customers will always be on the hook and so pay more.

Was this not obvious ?

Square Kilometre Array is so sensitive, its datacenter needs two Faraday cages to stop RF leaks

Re: Are they are two separate cages?

Presumably local transport would either be horse & cart or steampunk.

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide

Re: Just to be sure

Strangely found in some hotel rooms pointing at the bed.

That will be really interesting for them to explain what was going on when a child takes his/her clothes of before going to bed.

Greg Kroah-Hartman explains the Cyber Resilience Act for open source developers

Re: Compliance is the same overhead for all producers :(

The proper approach is to use Product Liability.

Presumably liability is not just about suing people it is also about fixing things. If there is a bug in code the camera manufacturer can get his programmers to fix it or encourage (ie pay) the open source author to do so. What is the cheapest way ? If the code is non trivial prolly paying the author - which also complies with the GPL requirement to make available this code fix.

So this could result in those who use open source code paying the authors - I expect that they will do so begrudgingly and as little as possible.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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

Re: Android is dead to me.

Interaction or communication with your government or bank might become extremely difficult.

I do not care. I do not do banking with my 'phone, they are not secure and easily lost. On-line banking I do from my Debian (Linux) machine.

Re: Android is dead to me.

The problem is that there isn't really another option.

Try LineageOS

Digital ID, same place, different time: In this timeline, the result might surprise us

Re: Dishonest about it's purpose

It will strongly tie your ID to your 'phone.

• via the cell towers your 'phone company knows where the 'phone is, the will now know where you are

• many people browse the web using their 'phone, they will now know who is browsing what web sites

What permissions will the Digital ID require to install on a 'phone: address book, location, ... ?

Trump demands Microsoft fire its head of global affairs

Judge people by your own standards

Trump thinks that Lisa Monaco is partisan and that if she has access to sensitive information that she would abuse it. This does not describe most people. Most will do a job honestly and not use any special status for their personal benefit or that of their favourite causes. That Trump thinks that she would is a reflection of Trump's own corrupt morals.

Trump also fails to understand that just because Monaco is in a position of power that she would have access to sensitive information. Most businesses would not allow that. Trump & cronies doing that in the USA government is not how well run organisations work.

Trump’s tariff‑shaped stick can’t beat reality on US chip fabbing

What would the world look like ...

if all the world's governments behaved the way that Trump does ?

Renewables blow past nuclear when it comes to cheap datacenter juice

We can always hope ...

that the wind does not blow for a week when the sun is not shining much ... and as have a week free of facebook.

LockBit's new variant is 'most dangerous yet,' hitting Windows, Linux and VMware ESXi

What is more expensive ?

• Spending days negotiating with ransomware scum and maybe shelling out in bitcoin

• Implement (& test !) decent backups and be up & running again after a few days hard work restoring your systems

In either case your systems are down for a bit, it is a matter of how long it takes to get back.

Am I misunderstanding something ?

.

Threatening to put your data up on the dark web is a different threat.

UK to roll out mandatory digital ID for right to work by 2029

Re: I look forward to the leadership contest

Will a digital ID check be needed to put yourself up for election to Parliament ?

Probably not but I can see it mandated for a citizen to be allowed to vote.

Re: held on people's phones...yeah

My 'phone runs LineageOS as I do not want google to suck up everything. I do online banking but not on my 'phone - these devices are too easily stolen or compromised; I have much more confidence in my desktop that runs Debian Linux.

The other thing that this will do is to closely tie a 'phone to a person which will enable much easier tracking of people:

• the cell towers that know where the 'phone is now know where a person is

• browse the Internet from your 'phone - much easier to see which sites a person has visited

This would have been the Stazi's wet dream.

Oracle saddles up with $18B debt amid AI infrastructure gamble

$18B - what is that is mega yachts ?

Can we have a new el-reg unit - a measure of money in terms of Larry style mega yachts.

Google is very sorry for pulling down COVID misinfo and pledges never to use outside fact-checkers

Re: Politicise Everything

How is medical disinformation and lies political?

Come out with enough lies and people tire and start to not believe anything that is in the news/Internet, then they only look at sport and social gossip. That is great: when Trump then abuses another part of the constitution it is ignored by most and he gets away with it.

Google-sponsored DORA report reframes AI as central to software development

I am dreading the announcement by Birmingham council ...

that it has decided that it will follow advice that can save a lot of ££ in adopting its Oracle system by using AI.

Estimates please as to how many £million and months delay that will add to the project.

UK agency makes arrest in airport cyberattack investigation

What I would like to know ...

(if they have the right guy) is why he did it ? Simply a money making exercise or something else ?

Did he do it by himself, maybe with some cronies, or was some larger (state ?) actor behind it ?

Europe's largest city council delays fix to disastrous Oracle system once more

Would have been cheaper ...

to write a bespoke system from scratch in conjunction with other councils round the country.

The biggest problem with that is the human one: getting the councils to work with each other but that is what central government would do if there was any competency there at the top level (note: this is a long term issue, they current lot are on a par with the previous mob).

Second problem would be the absence of brown envelopes from such a shared source solution.

The first rule of liquid cooling is 'Don't wet the chip.' Microsoft disagrees

Re: Not water...

If it ever freezes in the microtubes (e.g during transport), it'll explode the chips

If the water pump stutters or fails the water might boil and explode the chips.

Slow Wi-Fi? Add houseplants to the list of suspects

My mother would have put the router behind the plant pot simply because a plant looks nicer than some ugly piece of plastic with flashing lights.

Some people see things very differently than us techies.

Slack threatened to delete nonprofit coding club’s data if it didn’t pay $50k in a week

This is what you get ...

for using someone else's software on someone else's computers.

AI can now design functional viruses – not the computer kind, either

Virus produced by nation state ...

The concern would be that it would make something that only targetted a specific race.

This would be a great way of clearing out that race that is inconveniently occupying territory that it wants.

I would hope that this remains in the realm of dystopian science fiction but observing what several countries are up to I am not sure.

I leave the possible names of target races as an exercise for El-Reg readers (which you prolly ought to keep private).

Jaguar Land Rover supply chain workers must get Covid-style support, says union

Re: Insurance

"it's fine, the taxpayers will cover it" will be heard in boardrooms up and down the land.

That is what the banks do and did in 2008. The banks can get away with it, if one bank goes down it will take others with it but if the likes of JLR go down the economic fallout is not so big, competitors will survive and step into the void left by JLR.

More diversity in software used is needed

When ever you get a biological monoculture (eg crops) you run the risk of a disease ripping through the fields, eg bananas. Having a diversity of crops helps - even variants of the same species, do not plant just Cavendish bananas.

The same applies to operating systems. Too many run Microsoft, so how about using other operating systems ?

Yes: my favourite is Linux, but there are others - although IBM mainframes are too expensive for many.

BTW: when did you last hear of malware successfully attacking an IBM mainframe ? Linux is not as immune as z/OS but is much better than Microsoft.

1,200 undergrads hung out to dry after jailbreak attack on laundry machines

The students must be getting shirty

and hot under the collar and want to sock the management company or hit them with a legal suit.

Did the miscreants trouser any money ?

I'll get my coat.