Posts by Chz

Linux kernel to drop 486 and early 586 support

Re: junk like the Celeron

Celerons have see-sawed back and forth between "junk" and "pretty good deal" a number of times over the years. Mendocino and Tualatin Celerons? Brilliant for the money. Anything Netburst-based? Horrible junk. When they first went dual core back in Sandy Bridge days, they were a good deal again. But became junk as they kept the 2 cores only for 10 years. The very last Alder Lake ones with 1xP and 4xE cores were decent again. I suppose there are also the Atom-based ones, which really depended on usage (for a NAS? Great. For a laptop? Junk).

Elon Musk makes another cut – to his time at DOGE

Re: Sticker seen on the back of a Tesla this morning

The signs were always there, people just weren't looking hard enough. And a lot of those cars with stickers are still from post-2019 "pedo" Musk when it became brutally obvious without having to look too hard.

Bug hunter tricked SSL.com into issuing cert for Alibaba Cloud domain in 5 steps

Never you worry!

45 day certificate life will stop this sort of thing in its tracks.

Or perhaps make it more likely. Either way.

New SSL/TLS certs to each live no longer than 47 days by 2029

Re: Are compromised certs really a thing?

The security risks in deploying automation and renewing so often are surely greater than the risk of a compromised certificate. As you say, you almost never hear about such things and it would be rather big news for a major site. Even the rare compromise I've heard of has been at the intermediate/CA level where they have to cancel and then re-issue certs anyhow.

Re: God help the academic sector

I work for a University. It's going to suck. Data Security have decided that an internal CA is not good enough for them, and we need commercial (because they also demand OV certs) certs for every bit of network kit. It's not so much the cost - Universities have a bulk buying power through JISC and GEANT - it's the headache of dozens of appliances that *cannot* have their certs renewed in an automated manner. Eventually everything will get updated to play nice, but I humbly predict that will happen after the certpocalypse these changes will bring. We're already paying extra for some commercial code to make certbot and the Citrix frontend play nice together and it's going to get worse. The contractors will be laughing.

VMware sues Siemens for allegedly using unlicensed software

Re: On the 72 core minimum..

To give an example, VXRail recommends a separate cluster for Vcenter. 3x16 core servers (one per site, plus witness) is more than enough just to run Vcenter, but now it's going to need a 72 core license.

Nvidia wants to put a GB300 Superchip on your desk with DGX Station, Spark PCs

Stylish

That tower looks like an Ultra 10's younger sibling in their goth phase. Someone's nostalgic for Sun Microsystems.

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

Agreed, but for the TCO of running an ink jet for photos (given that I rarely need to print them) I can print the things at Costco for less. A bit less convenient perhaps, but it's exceedingly rare that I need a photo quality print of an image *right now*.

Apple dares users to fix 'budget' iPhone 16e themselves

Re: I'm not sure....

"Do the SE / mini and they'll sell a mountain of them"

It's a common opinion, but the actual fact is that both the SE and the Mini are poor sellers - the discounted previous year's iPhone usually sells much better than them.

You could argue that this has a lot to do with Apple's pricing model rather than the devices, but that's just how Apple is and they're not going to change.

Microsoft: So what if it costs 4X as much to run Windows Server in AWS, Alibaba, and Google?

Re: Buy / License the OS

You're going to hear from Oracle's patent lawyers any moment now....

AMD looks to undercut Nvidia, win gamers' hearts with RX 9070 series

Re: OK, might as well ask.

You can still find 3060/4060 Ti cards for not horrifying prices on Ebay, if you're okay with used. Should be well over 100% faster than an RX580. I have a 3060Ti and it's fine for 1440 gaming if you're not too into the whole ray tracing thing. DLSS3/4 is a massive, massive advantage to Nvidia cards because you can run in Performance mode with DLSS4 and still get great visuals and it really ramps the performance up.

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

It's the same (DNS block only) on Community Fibre, which I imagine is hugely popular with any London-based readers here. Given that setting my DNS to something else is one of the first things I do on an ISP's new router I've never seen any of the pirate sites blocked. I actually set the router to 1.1.1.3 (for the kiddies) and 1.1.1.1/8.8.8.8 directly on any devices where I care about such things being blocked. I keep saying I should make a PiHole, but I never get a round tuit.

Just how deep is Nvidia's CUDA moat really?

Grudging admiration

As aggravating as Nvidia can be at times, I do have a grudging admiration for their ability to execute their plans over the past 10 years or so. Sort of like Intel was 15 year ago. AMD and Intel can't get into the market not because their products are particularly inferior (though you could argue lack of CUDA makes them so), but because Nvidia hasn't put a foot wrong in a very long time in IT years. Even with a *better* product, when the market leader has 90% of the market it's not enough. They have to make a mistake. And I think one thing that Nvidia has and the other two don't that helps them not bugger it up is that they actually know where they're going. CUDA's dominance is the result of a near-20 year campaign to put it where it is. I don't see anything out of AMD that indicates that kind of vision on the GPU front.

I did mention Intel before to point out that it's not inevitable that Nvidia continues to eat all the pies. Hubris is a thing in IT, and Intel was certainly guilty of it. They still dominate the market of course, but they've shown their weak side and AMD continues to nibble away at their marketshare. And this is exactly the sort of boost that the ARM-based companies need to get their foot into the lucrative consumer desktop/laptop world. Maybe finally become a general purpose option in the server room, too. One wrong step out of Nvidia when AMD or Intel are having a good year could cause a seismic shift in the GPU market. Let's see what 2025 brings us.

Linux 6.12 is the new long term supported kernel

Re: Anyhow, a good reason to use Ubuntu Server.

I manage rolling out Ubuntu with ansible, and one of the first steps in main.yml is uninstalling snap. I still prefer Debian, but there are a few things installed in the past that preferred Ubuntu for various reasons (eg: GitHub) I think most of those will now work on Debian as well, but you know how it is with these things hanging on.

Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues

Re: switch to something better

There are quite a large number of Macs the same age as PCs that *can* run Windows 11 that aren't getting updates any more.

AMD aims latest processors at AI whether you need it or not

Re: Flavor of the week

There's a decent enough reason for the death of the manual transmission at least. It doesn't work too well with proper (not this "mild" nonsense) hybrids, and electric vehicles don't have gears at all.

The connected nonsense is exactly that, though. I know someone with a new RAV4 who gets a big reminder that they should sign up to Toyota's connected services every time they turn the car on.

Arrow Lake splashdown: Intel pins hopes on replacement for Raptors

I appreciate that there's always a painful price increase for the best of the best, but $200 extra for 200MHz and 4 E-cores really can't appeal to that many people. Or is the intent to make the $70 jump from 245K to 265K (2 more P-cores, 6 more E-cores, *and* 200MHz) look even more appealing than it already is?

Windows 11 migration? Upgrade engine revs up, enterprises have no choice

Re: Big if

While the hardware requirements at launch were perhaps a bit demanding of newer equipment, by the time Windows 10 support ends the oldest supported CPU will be 8 years old. Most companies are keeping their PCs for longer, but few of them are stretching out past 8 years.

Samsung and pals Hyundai, Kia team for software-defined cars, IoT integration

Re: Two words for any of those things...

We already have some of the downsides. I know someone with a 2024 Toyota and the first thing it does when you turn the engine on is pester you to subscribe to Toyota's "Connected Services", whatever that is. Yes, *ads* in your car. Truly the end times.

Japan to put a small red Swedish house on the Moon

Re: Spelling nazi here...

English is a bit of a bully that way.

Same as we call it Sweden and not Sverige. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is the status quo. Whether railing against this is productive for the future or old man yelling at clouds, I don't rightly know.

Veeam debuts its Proxmox backup tool – and reveals outfit using it to quit VMware

We have zero doubts about the capabilities of ProxMox, it's the support we're not too sure on vs. Nutanix's offerings.

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: Flogging a dead horse

"purchase store-sold software"

My inner 13 year-old is aghast. The closest we ever came to paying full price for software was pooling our money together to buy one for the five of us and then tearing apart the codewheel and photocopying it five times. I'm not even sure I grokked what piracy *was*, but I certainly didn't pay for any of my software. I had well over 100 floppies to go with it when I finally sold my C=64 onwards.

(NB: I'm not proud of this, it's simply how it was for a kid with no job)

AMD spills the beans on Zen 5's 16% IPC gains

And a lot of generational gains in the old days were purely on the clockspeed advantage a new process would bring. A 286-16 and a 386-16 were not too far apart in performance, but that was the fastest 286 and the 386 eventually hit 40MHz. Clockspeed is pretty much at a standstill now. Zen 5 is not running any faster than Zen 4 and has to rely purely on architectural advances (which are a lot harder to employ than cranking the clocks up) to be faster.

Clockspeed could work both ways, of course. I had an outrageously overclocked 486 that ran at 160MHz, which kept it competitive with the Pentium 75. The Pentium was an absolutely massive upgrade over the 486 and I'm not sure Intel ever had a generational gain that large ever again.

Smartphones sales bounce, Xiaomi biting at Apple's heels

Re: Xiaomi FTW

You would think someone clued in enough to be posting on The Reg would be able to google the 5 minute procedure to turn off all ads in a Global ROM. In my experience, the EU ROMS (eg: you bought it from the Xiaomi Store UK and not AliExpress) come with the ads already disabled.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: Urm...

The camera trumps the GPS in all cases. If the camera can't get anything either, it just doesn't display a limit.

Japan's digital minister declares victory against floppy disks

Re: Icon

We have a Victorian bellows-style camera as an icon for speed cameras and you think a floppy disk is out of date?

Volvo recalls all of its 72K EX30 cars due to software bug that obscures speedometer

Re: Idiocy

Is why we bought a Mazda over a Volvo. One has a knob and button based interface for entertainment and maps for a screen that's at eye level on top of the dash and manual button control for HVAC. The other has a Tesla-esque "iPad in the middle of the dash console" interface for everything.

Windows 11 24H2 might call time on that old NAS under the stairs

Re: That's rich

I know they're a bit slow on the patching, but my old QNAP was still getting OS patches 10 years after I bought it.

Research finds electric cars are silent but violent for pedestrians

Re: I call BS²

According to this video, Cupras sound like marketing wank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9woCmUboQek

Cops developing Ghostbusters-esque weapon to take out e-bike thugs

Re: Insurance

No country on Earth implements mandatory bicycle insurance. But it has been trialed many times and always abandoned as a waste of time and money. Last time I checked, only Japan and North Korea persisted with mandatory registration and number plates. Though Denmark and the Netherlands have mandatory VIN registration as an anti-theft measure, it's not illegal to ride without one.

There's a very long and drawn out conversation to be had around bicycle registration and insurance, but the easiest counter to it is that it's been tried many times and almost always abandoned as a waste of money with no tangible benefits offered. Most countries want to encourage their lazy population to ride a bike, and mandatory insurance is sort of at cross purposes with that. (Never mind that a majority of cyclists do have third party cover via other insurance) The fact is that bicycle injuries are infinitesimal if you remove the ones that happen whilst breaking the law. And then the solution is to enforce existing law, not introduce new ones that will still be unenforced.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

I've a consumer-grade Seagate 250GB from 2006 sitting in my PC. As my personal desktop, it's had to endure tens of thousands of power cycles over its life which I'm sure makes for a harsher environment than running 24/7. It's still perfectly adequate as a MAME repository, so it will sit there until it dies. There's an old WD Green 750GB sitting next to it in the case, from 2009 or so. That just holds backups of useful data from the NAS. I'd say aside from some tranches of disks that clearly have some sort of manufacturing defect, the consumer kit is almost/just as reliable. (FWIW, the 2006 era 7200rpm Seagate is much, *much* faster than the Green. On the order of twice as fast. Those Greens are dog slow.)

Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi adds electric vehicle to its mobility offerings

Re: If Xiaomi want to be taken seriously

I'd have thought as a sedan and not a crossover SUV it was fairly unique for a new model these days.

American Express admits card data exposed and blames third party

Re: Or just ask for a new card

Despite the name, that's very much the case in the USA as well. Most Amex users will be used to this and have another card in their wallet. Albeit one that likely generates less cash-back, which is the primary reason I have one in the first place.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Re: Air Canada must really be terrible

Air Canada has been called Mapleflot by those in the know for decades. That should tell you all you need to know.

Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit

Re: Query: the timing of ads

> stoner-level dross.

*puff*

Yup, that's what makes it great. Beavis and Butthead was like that, too.

Re: They'll reap what they sow

My rationale kind of works like this:

I pay to subscribe to Netflix, Prime, and Cinema Paradiso's DVD rental service. If it's not available on one those... well, Hollywood, I tried. I honestly made an effort to give you money to watch what I want to watch. If that doesn't work, off to 1337x it is.

Zen Internet warns customers of an impending IP address change

Re: Hard Work

People can threaten to move from Zen, but in the Good Old Days Zen offered what was basically a business service to consumers at... well, slightly elevated prices for consumer service but quite a lot less than business services. If you move to anyone else and expect the same goodies, you're paying for a business account. I think Zen knows this and their reaction to a lot of the criticism has been along the lines of "suck it up, buttercup" because they know you'll just pay more for the same elsewhere and it will stop most people from leaving once they have a look around. Count yourselves lucky that Zen has enough of their own IPs that CGNAT isn't being forced down your throats.

Will be happy to be proven wrong on that, as it will give me something to look at for myself!

How governments become addicted to suppliers like Fujitsu

Horizon was very much developed in the ICL years. And to be honest, the reason why Fujitsu kept getting government contracts is because it was ICL with a new letterhead. Same customer reps, same salesdroids, the departments just kept going to who they were comfortable with, competence or no.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

Re: No Justice

She can keep her CBE, for all I care. It's not like there is some shortage of truly awful human beings who have one. But she should have to serve jail time for every single person the Post Office wrongly imprisoned.

Fairphone 5 scores a perfect 10 from iFixit for repairability

Re: Nice! Too bad about the price.

A Pixel 8 is regularly on sale for cheaper than this thing. Much, much more powerful. Much, much better camera. Waterproof. And support for 7 years, only one less.

Yes, you can't repair it as easily but I've never had a phone that I've needed to repair beyond replacing a battery. You give up a LOT to get that repairability. Whether or not that's worth it to someone is really up to the user to determine.

Alternatively, you can get a Redmi Note for 1/3 the price with the same performance and get a performance upgrade every three years by buying a new one. (should you want to) Wasteful, yes, but on pure value to the consumer seems a lot better bet, and you can always opt to keep it for a bit longer.

I like the concept of the Fairphone, but they need to find some ways to cut corners while keeping it repairable. For the most of us, it is simply too expensive for what you get.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

That's just life with ink jets. Once colour lasers got cheap enough, I waved goodbye to them forever. The only thing they were ever better at was printing photos, and you can do that on the web with next-day delivery now. I've never found myself needing a high-quality printed photo *right now*. The laser is Good Enough for most photo usage (read: the kids' school reports) anyhow.

And yes, Brother.

Amazon to staff: Come into the office – it'd be a shame if something happened to your promotion

Re: COVID changed the world

I think it's a common theme for senior techies. Most of us have been promoted as far as we can go in a technical role and have zero urge to join management. No promotion is a bonus, not a threat. I have an old colleague who was railroaded into taking on a management, and then senior management role and now longs to get back to working projects and tickets instead of endless meetings. The pay increase was meagre for the increase in workload and responsibility.

Boris Johnson's mad hydrogen for homes bubble bursts

Re: Capacity

High output gas boilers are almost (except in very large houses) always combis that need the heat output for instant hot water at the tap. 16kW is plenty to heat a 3-bedroom home.

How to get hot water out of the tap becomes an issue though. The obvious solution is tanks, but many/most flats have ripped them out for combis and used the space for other things in the meantime. Not everyone is going to have a spare closet to hide a hot water tank in.

Take Windows 11... please. Leaks confirm low numbers for Microsoft's latest OS

Re: There's nothing particularly wrong with it except for its hardware requirements.

Given the likely security flaws out of the box, I'd think it wanting an internet connection at setup was a good thing. One of the first things it does is patch itself.

Re: Maybe it's the installer

The only thing that truly got my goat was hiding half the right-click menu behind yet another click. But like most of 11's annoyances it's fixed easily enough and doesn't even require much Clue to do.

Car industry pleads for delay to post-Brexit tariffs on EVs

Re: I'll be sticking with petrol (or diesel) for my next car.

I'm not normally a Cite Everything sort of post here. It's not a Serious scientific forum. But I'd like to see where that particular datum comes from.

AIUI, a BEV has an 80% higher carbon cost in manufacture vs. an ICEV, but manufacture only counts for something like 15% of the lifetime emissions of an ICEV.

Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

Grass is greener

Speaking as someone who occasionally has to support SITS, an IT system based on your particular sector's needs can easily be just as horrible as some eldritch creation produced by SAP. I believe a few Universities have tried to move away from SITS, but they're all running it somewhere in some form.

BMW deems drivers worthy of warmth, ends heated car seat subscription

No touchscreens

FWIW, Mazda still make their cars without any touchscreens whatsoever.

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Taylor make loads of soft serve machines, some of which are even reliable. The McDonalds one has a pasteuriser in it to not waste the day's leftover mix that other, similar machines do not have. I'm not sure that anyone else thinks the maintenance vs. product loss costs are worth it to use such a machine. But McD's part-owns Taylor and are well known for squeezing franchisees as much as possible, so it's not surprising from their persepctive.

I'll also point out that franchisees *are* allowed to buy a machine from another manufacturer. Some Italian company I forget the name of. They're much, much more reliable, but of course the initial cost is much, much more.

Start rummaging: Atari's new 2600+ console supports vintage cartridges

Re: Maybe this will sound harsh...

I think the ColecoVision is probably the most primitive thing I can imagine enjoying. It very much bridged the gap from 2600 to NES. My parents managed to return the Vectrex when the company discontinued it shortly after Christmas and replaced it with a used Coleco instead. I think I was happier for it overall, even if the Vectrex would have had better nostalgia value.

(In the end I got a C64 and forgot about consoles entirely for a decade)