Posts by Linker3000

Get paid like a prime minister to tame Home Office IT chaos

Stop it

All this sarcasm and derogatory wit is making me rethink my plan to apply.

You're putting me off!

Playing ball games in the datacenter was obviously stupid, but we had to win the league

Hot shots

Back in the 1990s I worked for a group of companies that included a systems & network outfit, a PC assembler and a computer hardware and software mail order company.

We boarded up the back of the last row of shelving in our storage and shipping warehouse with old crate panels and had an air pistol / rifle range.

Basic projector repair job turns into armed encounter at secret bunker

Bank bomb

I was allowed to drop my toolkit, a new CRT, laser printer and my briefcase in the loading bay of a major global bank in London and then I drove out to find parking.

When I got back to the loading bay, the bomb squad was apparently on its way and a building evac was just about to be called because there had been a shift change of security guard and the one going off duty did not mention me in the handover.

Apparently the new guard caught sight of the toolkit, my Samsonite, silver-coloured briefcase and reached for the phone.

US imposes sanctions on second Russian bulletproof hosting vehicle this year

Drop that phrasing

"...drops sanctions on..."

Aahhhh - You mean "...sanctions...", not "...discontinues sanctions on..."

Are we not doing phrasing any more?

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

Re: Phone down

I was sent to a UK military base to install their end of a packet network connection to a Whitehall building. When I asked for the ID information for the remote end, my escort phoned them up only to be told the info was classified and I couldn't have it.

I left the config page open, told the folks where to put the info, how to test the link and left them to it. I presume it worked as I never got a call about it.

On another site, I turned up to upgrade a NetWare server and I was taken to a filing cabinet with a big, solid metal strap padlocked through all the handles. This was duly removed and I was shown the Tosh T3200 laptop 'server' in the bottom drawer. "The most secure server in the building" I was told.

While I was doing the upgrade, a telephone started ringing and ringing quietly in the next drawer up. I mentioned this to the person nearest to me and was told "Oh, we don't answer that one."

There's a thief about

Back in the good old days a customer called me and said that whenever they switch on their PC the date has gone back to 1st Jan 1980 and they have to correct it.

"Ah", I said. "It sounds like the clock battery has gone".

There was a brief pause, followed by an indignant "Well, who do you think would take something like that?".

Microsoft dumps AI into Notepad as 'Copilot all the things' mania takes hold in Redmond

Buggles predicted this

Rewritten by machine and new technology.

Unending ransomware attacks are a symptom, not the sickness

lose-lose

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Legacy systems suffer from being built at a time when code dev and testing tools were not as sophisticated, and the perceived (if any) external threats were not given much thought, plus systems were not connected to external environments in such accessible ways. Simpler times.

Now, systems are abstracted into so many layers, both from technology stack and business responsibility levels; dev tools come from multiple sources, on local and cloud environments divided into layers of services, containers, orchestration and physical or software edge devices, spread across different commercial organisations that don't and can't have an intimate, holistic approach to development and testing, except to share, often iffy, API specs... and we're surprised when the whole lot leaks like a sieve.

Who'd be a CISO?

The fundamental role of the person in charge of business information security is there to develop a robust plan for business continuity and recovery that kicks in WHEN a system is breached. Anyone taking on the role on the basis that their skills and leadership will make their organisation's systems impervious to infiltration is very misguided.

We've worked so hard to be 'clever' with dev pipelines, frameworks and bolt-it-together architectures that we've lost the ability to understand, own and test the creations we make.

The solution? Get systems and services back to minimum viable stack so that the end-end design can be understood and owned by the development team. What shape this takes is a big discussion..maybe start by considering on-prem or co-located physical hardware and then work outwards, software and hardware-wise, as much as you believe is possible, necessary and safe, so that you can own and audit the beast you are creating. And then write your recovery plan from the start point of your secured data repository (backups) and the business needs, not the technology that's just let you down.

Of course, you could always commission a solution from an established market practitioner on the basis that you haven't, and don't, need a clue about what's going on under there hood provided you're as happy as can be with the functional spec you are served, safe in the knowledge that when things go tits up it's someone else's job to sort it out, and you escape the front of the incoming storm when your business grinds to a halt. With a bit ofuck, the company you engage to provide your solution developed it as described above so they have an easier time getting you going again.

Slate and chalks all around then!?

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

A Linux live installation on USB flash media and gparted may be able to help with weird partitions

Microsoft tells abandoned Publisher fans to just use Word and hope for the best

I can still hear in my head the Scottish lilt of the receptionist who'd greet telephone callers with "Hello. Aldus UK..".

yEd FTW.

It has a few quirks, but it doesn't hose your carefully laid out org chart if you cough in the wrong direction, unlike Visio.

Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

The day has a 'Y' in it.

I swear that pretty much every time I check in on a Microsoft 365 outage they end up rolling back a change.

Does that say something about their test / release competency?

After 3 years, Windows 11 has more than half Windows 10's market share

Well, meh

I'm indifferent to which MS business OS I use because I just want to fire up an app or be in a (Firefox) browser most of the time...or be on one of my home systems running Linux.

But I would like to take this opportunity to mention that having had a Win11 laptop foisted upon me, the amount of times it pops up a handy hint, change / improvement notice (aka we've moved this feature that's been 'there' for generations to somewhere different), call-out or multi-panel tutorial when I start an app, or Microsoft 365 is driving me nuts.

Win 10 is much better in this respect. Microsoft 365 seems to be getting worse over time.

Is there a global "f...off with this crap and let me get on with my work" option I can change somewhere? Bearing in mind I have to use this laptop and it's locked down, so no Linux for me here.

Agile Manifesto co-author blasts failure rates report, talks up 'reimagining' project

Re: The more process you have the less agile you are.

So much this.

In one place I worked, the top management were sold on the belief that you implemented all Agile framework [X]'s principles from A..Z and the world was suddenly a wonderful place.

When, for example, I queried the need for a team of 6 engineers *who sat right next to each other* to stand up for 15 minutes every morning to tell each other what they were working on (which often ended up as 45 minutes of two of them debating some technical issue while the others twiddled their thumbs), I was all-but denounced as a heretic.

The chip that changed my world – and yours

Gonna be taped out!?

There's an intention to reproduce a version for the die-hards (heh!)

https://studio8502.ca/@mos_8502/112349800192558629

Tesla Cybertruck turns into world's most expensive brick after car wash

Not a unique issue

My car (2010 vintage) also has a car wash mode - it's called "Tuck in the wing mirrors and flatten the roof-mounted antenna".

Sheesh, that Tesla boot time is slower than my homebrew 4MHz Z80 machine starting CP/M from an Hitachi 4GB Microdrive.

Too much tech will get you every time.

Google's AI-powered search results are loaded with spammy, scammy garbage

No shit sherlock

The results from all the major search engines have been getting progressively shittier for several years.

I am sure Google:

Values the quality of its search experience very highly.

Always endeavours to provide only the best, curated search results.

And lots of other marketing crap including words like: 'strives', 'synergy', 'quality' and 'listens'.

But we're living the reality of the situation - and it's dire.

Never mind, those profits still look oretty good for the shareholders.

Microsoft license shuffle means Power Apps users could break the bank

Re: Very generalised response ahoy

Yep - good poiint. Corporate politics and evangelism come into play too.

My background is very much biased towards Linux-based platforms and Open Source stacks.

Last place I worked spent a fortune on commercial middleware and development to integrate a couple of ITSM tools with SolarWinds, mostly for CMDB ingest and updating. I knocked up a proof-of-concept analogue in Fusion Inventory and Node-Red etc. in about 2 days as a side project to fulfill a similar, but different need, but the grown-ups couldn't get their heads around the 'L' word.

Very generalised response ahoy

I know it's down to needs and use case, data volume, responsiveness etc. etc. but I implemented a data collection and dashboarding tool with Node-RED, InfluxDB and Grafana. Picking up data from sensors (low bandwidth MQTT), Webhooks, JSON formatted data streams, API calls and some Direct (IP) device probing.

It's not a very sophisticated stack but it did the job and avoided PowerApps completely.

Twitter further restricts free tier with option to limit replies to verified accounts

My strategy

After 14 years of participation, I've now gone read-only on Xitter. I'm only hanging around for the local travel news reports until I sort out an alternative, ideally with an rss feed.

Happily still engaging with like-minded (STEM and retro-computing) folks who've moved to the Fediverse and Bluesky.

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

X

As I mentioned on the platform in question, the new logo looks like a Band-Aid being slapped on something falling over.

Brit broadband subscribers caught between crappy connections and price hikes

Happy me

I am very happy with a 1gig FTTH connection from a regional provider at £24/month.

The connection has been rock solid, except for a 1 day outage when Openreach damaged the fibre while doing some unrelated work.

Datacenter fire suppression system wasn't tested for years, then BOOM

The newly-installed fire suppression system in the computer room next to me was test-fired with a cylinder of CO2.

That's when the contractors found the uncoupled pipe in the false ceiling - mostly because the entire ceiling, dust, metalwork and all, was now resting across the floor and the IBM mainframe, while the air in the room was doing a good impression of the smoggiest day in history.

At least all personnel had left the room for the test. The cleanup bill was expensive because as well as replacing the entire ceiling, the mainframe had to be cleaned and all dust filters changed. Fortunately, no asbestos found.

Google's bug bounty boss: Finding and patching vulns? 'Totally useless'

Ha ha

$133,337.

I see what they did there!

Know the difference between a bin and /bin unless you want a new doorstop

Son of a 'b'

Back in the early 90s, the place where I worked ran Sage Accounting on a system running AT&T UNIX.

Our semi-technical Financial Director was doing some housekeeping and needed to restore a copy of the bought ledger files from tape. As was Sage's way of things, all the bought ledger files started with 'b'. Unfortunately, the FD restored all the files into the root folder, so he just moved 'b*' to the right place and carried on.

A month or so later, the system was restarted but failed to come up. A bit of head scratching and a pile of 5.25" 'recovery' floppies later, we discovered that a rather critical file called 'boot' had been swept into the bowels of Sage alongside the bought ledger files.

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

Joystick Adapters

Wow, that's a hefty looking adapter!

If you just want a simple Kempston-type one, just get wirewrapping!

https://github.com/linker3000/ZX-Spectrum-ROM-and-Joystick-Board

Mind you, there's always this:

https://twitter.com/linker3000/status/1516106194808623106

DIY Sinclair clones: Left it too late to back the Next? Build your own instead

CP/M Systems

Back in the 1980s, as a very young electronics engineering apprentice working in an R&D lab, I was tasked with operating and maintaining the lab's timesheet recording app, which was hosted on this big (small filing cabinet on its side) 'thing' with twin 8" floppies. It might have also had a hard disk, I don't remember. The program was written in BASIC and I didn't really think much of it at the time.

When I got back into the retro 8-bit scene a few years back, it dawned on me that the system was a Cromemco, probably sent over from our US parent company! I suspect the system was replaced with a PC eventually and the Cromemco hardware was probably scrapped for parts :-(

Start or Please Stop? Power users mourn features lost in Windows 11 'simplification'

Win 10 treacle mode

Likewise, just for one app that runs a chip programmer.

I always regret it though because the first thing Windows does is start doing updates, slowing the entire computer to a crawl (Core i7 @ 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM, Enterprise-class HDD; might change for an SSD).

Sometimes it's around 10-15 minutes before the machine is useable for browsing, email etc. I often spend perhaps 10 mins with the app and then reboot to Linux.

It's a traumatic experience every time.

Debian 11 formally debuts and hits the Bullseye

Re: Benefits vs. features

But, hey, very thick crust = extra airbag.But plan ahead!

Thunderbird 91 lands: Now native on Apple Silicon, swaps 'master' for 'primary' password, and more

So far so good

I downloaded and installed 91 on a laptop running Mint linux, having first uninstalled 78.

It picked up all my settings except for Google calendars, which I had to remove and re-setup/re-authenticate.

The only other task was to setup a launcher to get a program icon.

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Fry up

Forget the oven.

Forget the hash browns if having fried bread.

Heat the grill on max minus a little bit (95%)

Sausages take 7 + 7 + 7 minutes, turning 120 degrees twice.

Tomato goes on grill after 1st sausage turn

Bacon goes on grill with a total of 10 mins to go.

Eggs fry on lowish heat from last sausage turn.

Add black pudding to grill for last sausage turn. Turn over the black oudding after 3.5 mins.

With 2 mins to go...

Beans go in microwave for 1.5 mins on medium.

Plate the eggs once the microwave starts.

Put bread in frying pan.

Start to plate up the meats and tomatoes when the 21 mins total is reached.

Turn the bread in the frying pan.

Add beans to plate/s.

Add bread to plate/s

Make sure grill and hob are off.

Eat.

The PrintNightmare continues: Microsoft confirms presence of vulnerable code in all versions of Windows

They never pony up.

150,000 lost UK police records looking more like 400,000 as Home Office continues to blame 'human error'

The more the merrier

The BCS said in a statement: "It is likely that a developer, test analyst and release manager would all have been part of the process leading up to the failure...."

No room for a competent Change Manager in the mix?

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

Oh the memories...

When Netware 386 3.0 came out, I had a nightmare server on a customer's site in London (my office was in West Sussex).

To cut a long story short...

Regular trips to site to try and catch the issue. Very stress-inducing customer.

Replaced components until the server was effectively swapped out - apart from the case.

Novell took an interest on the basis that it might be a software glitch...they found an issue with the 'network cable disconnected' code...but the server still crashed maybe 2-3 times a week. Nothing else in the server room was playing up.

I tried a mains analyser - nothing stood out except perhaps the odd 'blip' at crash time - but it was barely more than a bit of noise.

Widening the search for a fix, I asked about the room, which belonged to another company, behind the server room...it was their kitchen, and hard up against the wall behind the server was their dishwasher. It turned out that the dishwasher was switched on when full..a couple of times a week!

Hey - EMP from the some motor or pump in the dishwasher knocking over the server!

Fix: Move the server to against another wall.

Western Digital shingled out in lawsuit for sneaking RAID-unfriendly tech into drives for RAID arrays

Correction: HGST/Hitachi

** "There’s also Hitachi (owned by Western Digital)" **

Um, no. Not quite.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was created by an IBM/Hitachi drive tech business merger in 2003.

WD acquired the business in 2012 and rebranded it as HGST and from that time, it had absolutely nothing to do with Hitachi.

WD does not own Hitachi.

If you're writing code in Python, JavaScript, Java and PHP, relax. The hot trendy languages are still miles behind, this survey says

Wire-wrap

Works for me!

https://github.com/linker3000/Z80-Board

The Iceman cometh, his smartwatch told the cops: Hitman jailed after gizmo links him to Brit gangland slayings

Hi-viz bike

"Kinsella was killed on May 5, 2018, by a masked gunman on a bicycle wearing a high-visibility vest."

I guess the bright orange/yellow bike drew some attention too.

Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub

Re: for the cost of a tape to copy them to and delivery.

Don't write off the retro computer scene just yet...

This lot have just started regular UK meets: https://rc2014.co.uk/

also: https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=start

...and shameless self-promotion:

https://github.com/linker3000/Z80-Board

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

Re: for the cost of a tape to copy them to and delivery.

Meh!

Wordstar on CP/M is where it's at...

https://github.com/linker3000/Z80-Board

2nd last pic. (me a week ago)

Heatwave shmeatwave: Brit IT departments cool their racks – explicit pics

Re: for the cost of a tape to copy them to and delivery.

At one place I worked, the in-house facilities guys turned one end of an office block into a fully airconned computer room with raised flooring:

1) They boxed-in a row of radiators behind drywall - but didn't shut them down, so from the getgo the room never reached the expected temperature. The aircon guys spent ages recalculating things, checking equipment etc., before someone commented 'does this wall seem warm to you..?' Out came the padsaw, holes were cut and valves were turned. The room temperature dropped, but the ugly holes were never fixed.

2) They put the room stat on a pillar next to a window so it was affected by outside temperature and sunshine. The room went into superchill mode when the sun was shining, and on very cold days the aircon would hardly kick in and the room stayed toasty. When someone put 2+2 together, the stat was relocated.

TalkTalk plans to sell family B2B jewel to Daisy Group for £175m

Clarification

*EBITDA (Talk Talk)

Earnings Before IT Disaster Again

Microsoft patches problematic OS to deal with SSD woes

Re: Yes, but...

My dual-boot Debian Stretch/Windows 10 box survived the process.

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

Same old...

Me (on phone in 1990s - probably wrangling SCO UNIX): Hi support guys, this server OS doesn't recognize the optical drive properly - any thoughts?

Support: Hmm, well there's a drivers CD in the box somewh...oh, right....OK...The driver will be downloadable from our BBS [look it up, youngsters]...that server has a built-in modem.

Me: I can't see a modem on the devices list...?

Support: Oh, the driver'll be on the CD..

Me: See my problem here?

Support: Um, yeah - but the driver will be downloadable from the BBS too...oh, yeah.

Me: I'll just pop back to the office and fetch stuff on a floppy or three..

Support: Hey, if the server's hooked up, why not download the drivers on another machine and copy them across the network?

Me: There's no other machine here with a modem. Anyway, Would the NIC drivers be on the CD?

Support: Yep!....Oh!

Sir Clive Sinclair dragged into ZX Spectrum reboot battle

Re: for the cost of a tape to copy them to and delivery.

..Connectors will be super-cheapo and unreliable bits of bent metal, while cables to plug into them will cost extra and the controls will be similarly cheap and nasty, feeling more like a dead frog on its back than anything else.

So pretty much true to the original design?!

We sent a vulture to find the relaunched Atari box – and all he got was this lousy baseball cap

Knock your socks off with TV Pong on an Atmel microcontroller:

https://github.com/linker3000/Microbit-TVPong

RIP... almost: Brit high street gadget shack Maplin Electronics

Alternatives

For anyone not sure where to go (or where they should probably have gone in the first place):

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/buying

Re: My life in 1976

Orange - very orange!

https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/comments/5ez7cl/rulers_living_in_the_plastic_age/

Facebook invents new unit of time to measure modern attention spans: 1/705,600,000 of a sec

Units of measurement...

http://units.wikia.com/wiki/Mickey

One more credit insurer abandons Maplin Electronics

Amazon, Shmamazon

There's an Amazon Monopoly on electronic components and related stuff? Check out our curated list of suppliers on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/wiki/buying

(Abbreviated list:)

EMEA Suppliers

Bitsbox UK

CPC Farnell UK

Electron Electronics UK

Element14 UK AKA Farnell.

HobbyTronics UK

Mallinson Electrical UK

Maplin UK

Mega Electronics UK

Rapid Electronics UK

RS Components UK

Spiratronics UK

Squirrel Labs UK

Arduino, components and robotics:

EMEA

Cool Components Some say "The UK's Sparkfun".

Kitronik BBC micro:bit partner. Kits, Arduino, Sparkfun parts and components.

Oomlout Arduino, Adafruit, Sparkfun and components.

Pimoroni Stocks Adafruit parts.

Proto-PIC Stocks Adafruit and Sparkfun parts.

SK Pang Stocks Sparkfun parts.

ExpTech Boards and modules, robotics etc.

Tinkersoup Arduino, modules etc.

Waterott Electronic Boards, kits, robotics, components.

There's also a supplier in Thailand called Tayda that has stupidly-cheap stuff and 2 week delivery - they are used by many UK and global hobbyists.

Yes, Maplin is on our list - with a comment that they aint what they used to be in terms of stock and pricing. I could go on, but suffice to say I have a 4 digit Maplin customer number as one of their early accounts and the current company is not a patch on the 'original'. For others that hark back to the 1970s-80 hobby electronics scene and the Maplin catalogue, coloured vouchers you could collect towards future orders and the decent projects, check out some nostalgia here:

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Maplin-Electronics.htm

Spy-on-your-home Y-Cam cameras removes free cloud storage bit

Re: for the cost of a tape to copy them to and delivery.

There's also Zoneminder (Linux, Open Source)