Posts by alain williams

The International Obfuscated C Code Contest is back for 2024

Re: Devious

What you have is an array of int containing the values of Unicode characters with values like U+0E0053 (first one), putchar() puts a byte eg 0x53 which is 'S' - the start of 'Season'. The top bits (0x0E00) are ignored as being more than can be stored in a byte.

It increments in the int array until it outputs U+0E002E (0x2E is '.') followed by U+200A (0x0A is newline) and then NUL which putchar() returns thus stopping the loop.

This is all output by after 'main {' having U+0E0041 which is the 'grill' macro (somewhat deviously). This is not visible in most text editors as it has a character value U+0E0041.

Why the squares from 1 .. 10 is not output is because after the U+0E0041 (after 'main {') is another U+0E0041 which expands to ';while(putchar(*salmon++))'. This outputs another NUL byte, which putchar() returns as condition to while(); this being false the body of the while loop never happens.

I suspect that this will not work on a big endian machine (Intel/AMD are little endian).

It might need a tweak if sizeof(int) is not 4.

Phew!

Only ISPs get to determine what constitutes 'affordable' broadband, says team Trump

Only one ISP in some locations

This means no competition which means that they get to charge what they want to captive customers.

Well: there is starlink but that seems to be $120/month (many plans make my head spin).

Tony Blair Institute: UK needs bit barns to lead in AI deployment, not training

Keep control of our data

If we do not do this at home then it is just more UK data that is taken by the USA - talked about this morning.

When hyperscalers can’t safeguard one nation’s data from another, dark clouds are ahead

On-prem services is a good start ...

but what software do you run on your in-house machines ? If that is written by an entity beholden to an inquisitive government how can you be sure that your data will not be exfiltrated ?

If you run Microsoft then its telemetry is designed to do just that - beam parts of your data back to the mother ship. If the USA government takes an interest in you how much telemetry will have nothing to do with debugging faulty Microsoft code ? A good firewall cannot be used to stop MS telemetry.

Open source software is much better but not a 100% silver bullet. I suspect that Debian is more resilient to 'interesting/unseen' code additions than Red Hat but it is likely that you will have some proprietary business specific code running on the machines.

Gadget geeks aghast at guru's geriatric GPU

Re: Oh, Linus is running a recent graphics card!

You VIEW MP3s?

Sigh: MP4 & whatever :-(

Oh, Linus is running a recent graphics card!

I run a Radeon HD 7850 (launched 2012) on my desktop Debian box. It does what I want: Mate desktop and can happily view MP3s, etc. I do not play games so I do not know if that would be a problem.

What is the point of running something that you do not need? It would take him time to update to something newer as well as create more digital waste.

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

Immutable name

When I create a new machine I give it a name that never changes, ever. The hardware name.

Said machine will then acquire jobs and with those jobs come names, eg: NameServer1, www, ... One name for each service. A machine can be known by many names.

When those jobs are moved to other machines those names (eg www) move with those jobs.

The machine's hardware name never changes, it is immutable.

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty

Re: Tell us something new

Just say no to US cloud services.

Just like I remember a Just say No campaign from long ago.

Where does this leave Microsoft telemetry ?

If they have to obey an order from the government of the USA to hand over data that they have access to on servers in other countries ... what about data that they have access to stored on Windows PCs in other countries ?

Debian isn't waiting for 2038 to blow up, switches to 64-bit time for everything

About time too

Pun intended.

DNS security is important but DNSSEC may be a failed experiment

Ask Google to make it a page rank criterium

If the Google ranking of your web site depended on DNSSEC (as is HTTPS) then it would reach 95% in a few years.

I know that Google is evil & all that but it might actually do this if someone asked the right person nicely.

If you're forced to use Windows 11, here's how to steal some of your time back

Re: Nonsense!

I've just spent a couple of days setting up my and a friend's new Win 11 PCs

Oh, and people complain that they need to spend a little time setting up a Linux machine.

You must have a complicated setup, the last machine I installed (Linux Mint) took a few minutes.

Grief - that looks horrible

Makes me glad that I run Debian and my machine just does what I want.

Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

The trouble with endof10.org is its step 1

Download the operating system you want to install. Search for Linux distributions for beginners to get some suggestions.

They are asking a user, who presumably knows zilch about Linux, to search and do not give any clues what to search for or what makes a good distribution.

They should have chosen one (I suggest Linux Mint, Mate desktop) but if they had they would have been flamed by all the other distros and desktop users.

Meta used AI to concoct low-carbon concrete it poured for a datacenter floor

Meta wants to reduce its carbon footprint

Just switch off all its servers, that will save far more carbon today and every day.

Large Hadron Collider data hints at explanation for why everything exists

Re: Might

This stuff makes my head spin.

Ukrainian hackers claim to have destroyed major Russian drone maker's entire network

10TB of backup files

Errrm, are the Яussians so stupid as to have no off-site backups ?

This is one instance where I hope so.

Cloudflare fesses up to config change that borked internet access for all

Screwed up but confessed

We all make mistakes. The impact of some people's mistakes are bigger than for others.

At least Cloudflare admitted it and explained how they got it wrong. That earns some forgiveness (from me at least), unlike those who try to blame someone else.

VMware reboots its partner program again – and it looks like smaller players are out

Computing infrastructure should be boring ...

Predictable, reliable, just there and works for as long as needed. Unpredictable infrastructure means that the IT department cannot provide what is needed for the business to thrive.

Broadcom is demonstrating how it cannot be part of any business stack.

What will be next ? An exit fee once a business stops using Broadcom software ?

Sovereign-ish: Google Cloud keeps AI data in UK, but not the support

It is all just smoke and mirrors

Designed to appear to make it look safe so that the "data is safe" box can be ticked while the auditors check with their eyes tightly shut.

Read the cloud act, Google will have to give the data up if the USA government asks for it. Do you really trust a government headed by Trump to not grab it on some whim of his ?

Eggheads hold science fair on Capitol Hill to decry funding cuts

If Trump thinks that science is a waste of money ...

and, presumably, has been for a long time then he ought to eschew all science based advances for the last say, 40, years. So for him and his rabble of cronies:

• No modern medicines

• No internet

• No transatlantic telephone calls

• No modern, small, hearing aids

• No smartphones

• No LEDs

...

Anubis guards gates against hordes of LLM bot crawlers

I want some crawlers but not all of them

I want the ones that benefit me: the search engines (google, bing, etc); they help people find my pages. These spiders tend to be well behaved and do not overload my machine.

I do not want the ones that just suck my data but bring me no benefit: LLM crawlers. These crawlers do not care what they do to my servers, they grab too many pages per second.

The problem is how to distinguish the two.

Georgia court throws out earlier ruling that relied on fake cases made up by AI

I have been in court (matrimonial, my own case) where the judge has asked a barrister to draft an order. The barrister will consult with the other side when s/he writes it. The judge then reads it, maybe tweaks it, and stamps it.

Lynch should pay for the cost of retrial

including opposition lawyers fees and costs for all witnesses - including the plaintiffs.

Unless it is really costly then more attorneys will do the same.

This happens in the UK as well.

Post Office and Fujitsu execs 'should have known' Horizon IT system was flawed

Re: Jail

The guards at the camps were given permission by the government to do those things, just like the top tier at the post office gave permission to prosecute those postmasters who they knew had done nothing wrong.

The Nuremberg trials rejected following orders as a defence. OK: this was a trial after a war, but the same principle should apply elsewhere, including the Horizon IT scandal.

Microsoft kicks off new fiscal year with more layoffs

How many of those 9,000 were in QA ?

How many does it have in QA compared to 10 years ago ?

Coming to PostgreSQL: On-disk database encryption

Re: why?

HDD & SDD already encrypt. Linux already has encrypted filesystems. How does this improve anything?

An encrypted file system helps if someone steals the disks it does not help if the operating system is compromised - ie someone breaks in - to a process running under the operating system the file systems will be seen unencrypted.

Your browser has ad tech's fingerprints all over it, but there's a clean-up squad in town

Kasm web site needs javascript

Javascript is one of the first things that I disabled as it is a great way of fingerprinting me. I would feel much happier with Kasm if I could look at their web site without having to enable javascript.

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

Re: "This, in turn, means their data and meta-information will be kept in a US-based datacenter."

OK, let us look at the implications of that:

• USA mandates some bug/spyware into the source code of the Linux Kernel, or Apache or some other important component of a Linux system

• This code is open source; it is likely that someone will notice the bug/spyware and shout LOUD on some forum

• USA mandates that Red Hat (a USA company) leave the bug/spyware in its distribution - it will have to do it

• USA mandates that Debian or Suse or Ubuntu or ... leave the bug/spyware in its distribution

•• These are global organisations, they will have seen the SHOUT

•• They will tell the USA to fuck off

• The USA might be able to mandate copies in repositories located in the USA to have the bug/spyware; non USA repos will remove the bug/spyware

• Users located in the USA might be mandated to use the USA located repos and so suffer the consequences

• Users located outside of the USA will use repos that contain good code and so not have a problem

So: who suffers, who is disadvantaged ?

Re: "This, in turn, means their data and meta-information will be kept in a US-based datacenter."

Technically you might be right. But they will be under control of a corporation subject to USA law, notably the USA Freedom Act (successor to the Patriot Act). This increases protection of USA civilians but enables foreign surveillance. See 6 things to know about the newly approved USA Freedom Act.

Re: Autodesk

Please tell them that. If enough do then they will follow the money and port Fusion to Linux.

We seem to be seeing more corporate adoptions of Linux on the desktop. I wonder if we are approaching a tipping point where enough adopters convince others that a Linux desktop will not leave them alone in the cold.

The next change will be when more ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) port their applications to Linux - further reducing reasons to stay on MS Windows.

This will create a lot of positive feedback.

EDIT: someone modded this down within 4 minutes of when I posted it. If you disagree with me please post a comment to say why (otherwise I will assume that you take Microsoft's shilling).

Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it

Re: I touch it and it breaks!

me: "Grey text on a grey background is not easy to read in a well lit area " ....

All testing should include it being used by someone ancient, like me, who no longer has 20 year old eyes.

Microsoft slows Windows 11 24H2 Patch Tuesday due to a 'compatibility issue'

I know that MS Windows runs on a wide variety of hardware ...

but surely these things should be testable ? I would have thought that their contacts with hardware vendors would enable them to have pre-patch-release test builds that could be sent out and installed. To do so is in everyone's interest.

Why is it that the Linux distributions, with their much smaller budgets and not so good relationships with the hardware people, have a much, much lower incidence of borkage ?

UK's Isambard-AI super powers up as government goes AI crazy

I would rather that it was named after an engineer than a politician.

AI can spew code, but kids should still suffer like we did, says Raspberry Pi

You & I understand that. What worries me is that managers will not and force the use of AI generated code "better productivity innit".

All nice & good until it is not.

AI kept 15-year-old zombie vuln alive, but its time is drawing near

If I were Putin (other nasty people are available)

I would have a unit dedicated to writing code with remotely exploitable bugs in it and uploading it to places like GitHub.

Odd homage to '2001: A Space Odyssey' sees 'Blue Danube' waltz beamed at Voyager 1

Re: "it is likely We Are Not Alone"

Only the fact that we're here proves it did happen once. That doesn't improve the chances of it having happened elsewhere at any time.

That life began when Earth was only a few hundred million years old suggests that it was not a complete fluke, a one off -- if the conditions are right. That does increase the likelihood of it having started elsewhere.

Earth's setup and solar system configuration (geology, in the habitable zone, large moon, a Jupiter, ...) might not be common but given the bazillion other solar systems means that there will be others like our planet.

Re: "it is likely We Are Not Alone"

The only real question is : how far away is it ?

The other is: is it able to appreciate music ?

Most life will be simple, aka bacterial. On what proportion of life hosting planets will life have evolved to be intelligent enough to receive the Waltz Into Space signal ?

Aussie businesses now have to fess up when they pay off ransomware crims

Why is there a limit on reporting ?

Anyone who pays ransomware scum should have to report it. How much detail about the attack could be size dependent.

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Re: Intelligently stupid people

Been there, done that a couple of times.

Unhappy with the cloud costs? You're not alone

The one advantage cloud had ...

is that the servers often had better Internet connectivity than could be obtained on-prem. This especially so years ago when cloud first became a thing.

Now, for many, fast & low latency Internet is not too hard/expensive.

I am not saying that there were not other reasons but this was a big one back in the day.

Ex-Meta exec: Copyright consent obligation = end of AI biz

It is so tiresome having to obey rules

My business would fare much better if I did not need to:

• send annual accounts to the Inland Revenue and pay tax

• insure my vehicles

• get planning permission before erecting that new office

• dispose of waste properly rather than just dumping it up some lane

• ...

These rules are all part of the contract of social cohesion, to ensure that we all play our part to mutual benefit.

Why should AI be exempt from this ?

A basic filter as an extension to robots.txt would be simple to implement and tell the AI spiders what they could/could-not take for free or what/how-to-pay fee needed; how they could use said content. Although I doubt that most would follow this even if it were written into law.

Russia expected to pass experimental law that tracks foreigners in Moscow via smartphones

Shhh! Do not tell Trump

If he hears about this he will prolly think it a great idea and thank his mate Putin.

Signal shuts the blinds on Microsoft Recall with the power of DRM

So they have shut the door on Recall ...

but what about telemetry ? That is even worse as it ships data up to MS servers, keystrokes can be requested.

VMware price hikes? Between 800 and 1,500%, claim Euro customers

Re: Cuck

No, they were caught by not being able to move to a different VM solution fast enough.

If they are sensible they will sign the 3 year deal, with the 30% or 50% discount (ie paying for 2 or 1½ years new prices but 7½ to 2½ times old prices) and use the 3 years to move away from VMware.

Greater Manchester says its NHS analytics stack is years ahead of Palantir wares

Re: All too familiar

I think that delays to slow a new computer are called 'Hopper loops' (named after Grace Hopper), these would be gradually removed as the system load increased so that users did not notice a degradation of performance and so complain.

But the stupid thing about this code is invoking a shell command to do what can be done by a system call:

sleep(5);

Follow the brown envelopes or funny handshakes

to see why the NHS went with Peter Thief (sorry: Thiel).

The UK should use Manchester's system and then sell it to other countries - that this would annoy Trump‡ is just an added bonus.

‡ Less money to one of his mates and less USA intelligence about the health of UK citizens.

European customers report Oracle Cloud identity outage, Big Red is silent

Is big red silent ...

because no one can login to diagnose or talk about the problem ?