Posts by Roo

Claude is his copilot: Rust veteran designs new Rue programming language with help from AI bot

Re: We don't have a package manager

I don't really see how you fix systems like NPM & Maven...

1) They make it far easier to pull in unnecessary and dangerous dependencies

2) Consequently they make it a lot harder to for developers to actually understand and reduce the dependencies.

They are working as they are intended to work, I'm not sure how you can "fix" them beyond limiting yourself to a subset of "trusted" upstream repos and hope for the best. Sometimes a bit of impedance to development is a good thing, it's the universe's way of telling you that what you attempting is a bad idea (in this case accumulating a large & complex set of dependencies).

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

Re: Open Source

"In other words: common ownership of the means of production (whether physical or intellectual) actually works."

Steady on chap that's practically COMMUNISM ! Joking aside, while I do advocate in putting community before profit, I really do mean that this is about ensuring that a person or organization does not hold a *monopoly* on a form of communication (in the form of source code).

Re: Open Source

"Open standards (and open source) is the secret of longevity." - aka preventing the IP being monopolized and traded as a commodity by the "Rentier" class.

C (and C++) do have something Rust does not: Formal specifications of the language codified as ISO standards. By contrast Rust presents a (slow) moving informally defined target for it's community, rolling out a formal spec of the language & it's libs every few years would give the community a much stronger foundation to use and develop the ecosystem around Rust. This doesn't have to stop the language from developing - standards certainly have not put the brakes on C++. As it stands I don't think there's much to stop Rust from being captured by a litigious corporation (eg: Oracle & Java) and run into the ground with lawsuits and apathy - standards would help insulate Rust from the worst effects of that outcome.

Memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat

Re: I'm looking down the barrel of a running a "Learn a bit about MCUs" course

Rather than getting hung up on the language for course, I would be looking judging the toolchains on the following criteria for the build -> upload cycle:

1) Reliability & consistency - ie: if I hit the go button it should *always build and upload (barring errors in my code), I shouldn't be having to dig through the environment to work out why it didn't work this time.

2) Speed of iteration - if I'm learning I want to be able to try things out, being able to build, upload & run my change in a couple of seconds makes this easy. If it takes 30 seconds that becomes dead precious class-time - and frustrating.

I suspect more people will have experience with Python which may also be a deciding factor - but *simple* C with everything in one file should be just as digestible - the problem comes when their coding goes off the rails, C/C++ documentation tends to be less newbie friendly than Python. I was looking for a C++ for beginners tutorial for a colleague recently - I couldn't find anything that really fit the bill - I know this stuff *used* to be readily accessible - but I couldn't find it - the candidates tried to cover every single feature in excruciating detail which just isn't helpful for someone making their first steps beyond hello world. :)

Fads come and go, the speed of light is a constant.

There is a very good reason to reduce memory footprint:

- Power consumption (and dissipation).

The hardware pushes less bits - and because there is less *volume* required to store those bits they don't have to travel as far.

-> More speed, less power

Less data -> less time to process the data.

-> More speed, less power

In the old days to get those benefits you waited a couple of years for a new gen of semiconductor fab process - those gains are no longer to be had - and the speed of light is still the same as it ever was, so if you want to make things faster you need to be more efficient.

UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered: First ever version of UNIX written in C is running again

I really enjoyed firing up V4, and poking about - it's a marvel - and provides some valuable insights into how dennis & ken put it together. I went on to fire up V7 from the same archive - and oh boy things had changed a lot. Thanks for bringing these gems to our attention - much appreciated. :)

JLR: Payroll data stolen in cybercrime that shook UK economy

Re: outsourcing critical cybersecurity functions

Thanks for the correction - have a thumbs-up. :)

Re: outsourcing critical cybersecurity functions

Could still be the case, JLR is not the crown jewels, Tata consulting is. Either way Sunak and his wife win, and I'm sure they'll be only to help to shake down the government for some cash to help subsidize their wilful complacency.

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Re: One more thing

One of the hidden incentives of transliterating code from one language/toolchain to another an incentive to reduce the workload by leaving the cruft behind. Having an AI identify and strip out the cruft should be very doable given the intrusive instrumentation that Microsoft has woven into their platform for many years now.

LastPass hammered with £1.2M fine for 2022 breach fiasco

It's about the estimated size of the CEO's pay packet. I imagine they'll get a raise.

Vendor's secret 'fix' made critical app unusable during business hours

Re: Lost for words

It's SOP at some sites to scan places like /tmp for sensitive data. There is a cost for doing so and it's going to miss stuff (and report false positives). Hackers do it too. :)

GPU goliaths are devouring supercomputing – and legacy storage can't feed the beast

Re: Pay to play?

In practice I found that GPFS has been surprisingly good at dealing with zillions of tiny files - albeit you do need to configure your setup appropriately (eg: metadata heavy for lots of stupidly small files that reek of muppet level programming). The best solution is to not to code like a muppet and pick the right tool for the job in the first place.

UK agri dept spent hundreds of millions upgrading to Windows 10 – just in time for end of support

Re: Solution for low salaries in gov IT

W.r.t to the "shorter lifecycle" line: folks are still running RHEL7 and clones to the tune of thousands of instances quite happily. In otherwords: If you want to be you can be just as unsupported and out of date as Windows <11 customers for far less cost.

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

Re: Again why beancouters

"The Germans are apparently now publicly looking at alternatives to SCAF. But they've missed the boat. Italy, Japan and the UK have signed the Edgewing partnership - which as I understand it is the industrial partnership structure, with workshare all carved up. Obviously if someone brings more orders, they can get some work - but probably not as much as F-35, which is designed to bring new people in."

While the initial R&D might be already carved up - adding in additional manufacturers is still possible - and I would argue highly desirable for the following reasons:

1) Resilience through second sources - helpful if your plant gets burnt down by a guy who was promised $500 on Telegram in return for torching a critical bit of military manufacturing capability.

2) Proving out production transfer & scaling out - essential for ironing out problems that will inevitably crop up when you want to scale up from a dozen units a year to several hundred or even thousands a year.

3) Ramping up production (quickly).

Cyber exec with lavish lifestyle charged with selling secrets to Russia

Re: Oh please, what a load of bollocks

Predictably, as is their way, the Israelis bombed Iran anyway - repeatedly. So that didn't age well - only naive dupes and shills reckoned it was a great plan.

Lob a few $m at the Whitehouse and all will be forgiven with pardons all round.

Intel's open source future in question as exec says he's done carrying the competition

The manglement strategy here is to cut costs by firing everyone who might possibly be able to create a viable product, leaving himself and the rest of the C-suite to hoover up all the cash & bonuses and license patents. The concept of actually making money from products people want to buy doesn't appear to be a concept he is interested in, presumably because it entails the hard work of nurturing talent and managing people.

Re: Good news everybody

The 432 was an ambitious project, but it was way too complicated. Intel just couldn't help themselves from the early 80s to this very day... They just have to make everything as complicated as possible, making the resulting device impossible to validate, awkward to use, slower and more expensive than it needs to be. It doesn't look like they're learning a lesson any time soon too - this cash may as well be boat-anchors instead of life-preservers.

SIM city: Feds say 100,000-card farms could have killed cell towers in NYC

Re: Different points of view

Looks like the lone DailyHeilBot has struck with a crushing downvote. Classic DailyHeil misdirection from their barely resident in the UK owner.

US cuffs 475 at Hyundai–LG battery plant – feds tout largest single-site raid

Re: anti-EV

Have to commend Mr. Duffy and his associates with their pragmatic approach of beating America back to the Stone Age first. After all, they'll need to work up to the iron age (you know, actually make steel instead of importing it) before they can get to the steam age.

Re: So agree with George Takei ...

Indeed. They aren't cancelled, they refuse to accept responsibility, run away from accountability, and they sure as hell won't stand by their arguments without a generous wedge of cash from wealthy degenerates to back them up.

Re: So agree with George Takei ...

You'll have to ask Trump his administration and the Gross Old Perverts. They are the ones who run the rigged elections, disappear people, throw 3+ million voters off the rolls (some after the votes are cast), and redraw the boundaries mid-election cycle.

Re: So agree with George Takei ...

Also worth remembering that Trump has been happy with the results of the elections held under Democratic administrations (2016, 2024).

As for the 2020 election, Trump ran that one, so if it was rigged - it was his fault that it was rigged. No doubt the 2026 mid-terms and 2028 will be rigged as well under Trump's watch because it's clear that he doesn't value or tolerate democracy in any shape or form.

Lazy Posting

A police officer involved in the case turned out to be one the perps. Not so much lazy policing as a corrupt policeman getting in the way of the prosecution - aided and abetted by lazy right whingers jumping up and down on the sidelines making it a race issue. There are a hell of a lot of data-points that link right-whingers and child abuse. Folks could be forgiven for concluding that the right whingers and their supporters are trying to kick up a fuss to 'torpedo' the convictions of kiddie fiddlers.

Microsoft wares may be UK public sector's only viable option

The 1990s called, they want their FUD back.

Jeez, this article may as well have been written 30 years ago.

It is a damning indictment of the author that they are *still* pedaling this crock after THREE --ing decades and at least *FIVE* major "retraining required" releases of Windows. The costs of using something other than your favourite business lunch provider's products are still "hidden" because you haven't actually gone out and done your --ing job which is to *find* out what those hidden costs are... 30 wasted years - all on the tax payer's shilling.

Give your head a wobble.

Oracle offers workaround to Windows boot issue in the cloud instead of fix

Emotional Support Needed.

How strange, two products supported by multi-billion dollar companies not actually being supported by the vendors... You sure as hell can't afford to sue them into supporting their products... Could be time to look elsewhere, right ? :)

Aeroflot aeroflops over 'IT issues' after attackers claim year-long compromise

Re: .. and there is that other problem.

I'd say Russia and America are as "Communist" as each other right now under the current regimes.

... A small number of very rich & powerful people get all the pies and the plebs get to work for the rich & powerful people for a little money as they can survive on - ideally less than that, with the risk of being assaulted by state storm troopers and locked up for some random arbitrary reason without due process.

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

Re: 10TB of backup files

I decided they were a sheeple speaking for the sheeple and skipped to the end.

Huawei's latest notebook shows China is still generations behind in chipmaking

Re: Still generations behind

Broadly agree with your post, but ... "The 2 year old process almost certainly means worse power consumption for the same performance" - that has not always been the case. In fact there have been instances where older (tuned) processes are used precisely because they are more power efficient than the bleeding edge.

The elusive goal of Unix – or Linux – simplicity

Re: No money in simplicity

I do like that xkcd strip - and definitely can relate to it... But as I sit here - right now, as a developer, I realize that somehow I have entered a weird space where the stuff I automated is actually working - and I am casting around looking for more stuff to automate - or in the case of apps saturating virtual machines - migrating them back to bare metal to *reduce* the amount of required automation + cost + ice caps melted. ;)

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

Re: "would rather get a root canal than start over"

Weirdly, in the Linux/UNIX space it's the Greybeards that adapt fastest to this idea of bootstrapping stuff with images and tailoring them for the job at hand... Who diagnose the underlying faults in the VM infrastructure that is crippling the code etc... Meanwhile on the other side of the aisle we've got greenbeards(?) who don't understand why they can't run the Java code on Linux Virtual Machines using a Windows jvm.exe. I kid ye not.

Meanwhile the manglement are busying trying to extract their bollocks from the vice of their Cloud vendor having discovered that the Cloud is costing 3x that of on-prem bare metal (2x on-prem cloud), I can bet you can guess what their solution to the problem is: Run those highly-optimized compute intensive batch jobs on 1/3rd the capacity... Throughout all this the greybeard backed teams supporting all this guff have managed to migrate the apps from bare-metal to off-prem cloud, on-prem cloud, and back to bare-metal and mixtures there of.

The greenbeards supporting the cloud stuff are struggling - they keep running into odd-ball VM related bugs and screwing up the configuration while they're at it. It would be nice if they could understand why migrating a VM hosting a HPC app that is eating 100% of the host from one hypervisor to another is a really shit idea for example - their solution is to ask apps to leave 10% of the host unused - which is comical given that the bare metal runs happily at 100% utilization - and the whole argument for migrating stuff to VMs was to improve utilization of hardware...

Trump announces $175B for Golden Dome defense shield over America

Re: Golden ?

Europe did a lot for Russia, for starters we cleaned up all that Nerve agent Putin left lying around Salisbury and didn't prosecute the baldy dirtbag.

Re: This won't cost the USA a penny

So cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a Weasel. Oh no, hang on, that's Trump.

Don't you find it weird how all Trump's "cunning plans" involve someone else paying the bills for them ? I call that extortion, and it isn't cunning when playing in the "biglys".

Re: May not repeat but it rhymes

I think you'll find that in practice it will only work around Bedminster and Mar-a-Lardo.

Space Force tech mission threatened by staff and funding black hole

Re: A more lethal military

They won the body count for sure - mostly their own people.

LastOS slaps neon paint on Linux Mint and dares you to run Photoshop

Re: 1998

"and I've already won."

You've won at punching yourself in the nuts and making a fool of yourself in public. I applaud you. Congratulations.

Re: 1998

Steve Ballmer called, he wants his FUD back.

Just in case you weren't aware macOS has been at the Desktop game since 2001 - and it's market share is in the same ballpark as Linux - despite wrapping it's developers and users in straitjackets and having many $bns of development budget lavished on it.

Besides which mobile phones are where the action is these days, and Android (aka Linux) is in a lot more people's hands than iOS or whatever they want to call it.

I honestly don't see why you bother FUDding something that has such a small piece of the market you care about. Let the kids have their fun producing software they like using, they aren't in the way of you enjoying a random collection of 90s vintage UIs known as Windows or the different random collection of 90s vintage UIs running on macOS (not to be confused with the 80s vintage UI stuff that ran on Mac OS).

Post Office finally throttles delayed in-house EPOS project

Re: The first rule of cloud is...

Fujitsu owns it first though. :)

Re: Important addition

I suspect that investigator is taking that line to cover his own corrupt ass.

37signals is completing its on-prem move, deleting its AWS account to save millions

Re: Keep on their system status for the next year...

If you are running at any kind of scale you will need a bunch of well qualified SRE/Sys Admin/Operator types to keep your compute estate pointing in the right direction - wherever it runs. With respect to your last comment, I refer you to a paraphrase of quote attributed to John Rollwagen: "A computer is like an orgasm - it's better when you don't have to fake it.".

Re: In six months...

I miss the days of being able to tell what a system was doing by feeling the vibrations through the floor, having to look up to see the lights flashing is a bore. :)

Re: Press X to Doubt

Cloud SLAs are kinda meaningless when the infrastructure and Cloud services are being continually being overhauled, thus forcing continual development churn just to keep the AWS instances alive. Case in point some of our internal clients migrated to a major Cloud a three years ago - and basically they have an "incident" every other month, much of which is down to the churn and people making mistakes (the odd AWS outage or liquidity shortfall on our 'reserved' capacity happens too).

By contrast the on-prem clusters (even with rolling OS updates, service updates etc) have had *zero* downtime for two years solid (the last incident was literally caused by a back-hoe - but happily the workloads continued executing uninterrupted in the DC regardless). In addition to requiring less overheads within the internal client teams (no Cloud SAs/Operators/SREs needed) the on-prem clusters running costs are less than a third per CPU hour. It really depends on your workload at the end of the day, and ours are very definitely not the classic AWS use-case. Our workloads tend to run 18x6, saturating 100s-1000s servers at a time and the networks get eaten in bursts - we are very bad neighbours. The classic Cloud benefits of consolidating multiple workloads onto a physical host, and multi-region availability don't apply (our workloads are HA by default because you don't get a big enough maintenance window to bounce an entire cluster at once).

It is a case of the right tool for the job... For (our) workloads that span multiple hosts and saturate them for the majority of the day - Cloud has zero benefit - even the liquidity argument doesn't cut it as we found out when our internal clients tried to actually *use* their *paid for* reserved capacity (6 month lead time vs 3 months on prem - and of course that wasn't covered by the Cloud SLA). For the sake of fairness I have to point out that there are plenty of internal workloads that have happily moved to the cloud - just not the big ones we look after. :)

Krebs throws himself on the grenade, resigns from SentinelOne after Trump revokes clearances

Re: Damage done

9 down votes seems a bit harsh for a fair point. However your point is not limited to SentielOne, it applies to every single company within the grasp of Trump's malicious ketchup stained grasp.

Now Windows Longhorn is long gone, witness reflects on Microsoft's OS belly-flop

Re: WinFS = Document Management System not invented here…

The sad thing is that Gates had promised a database style filesystem with "Cairo" (which was axed in 1996). Longhorn seems to have retrod the path taken by Cairo a full decade before it. Just add it to the pile of ephemeral vaporware that MS used to kill off the competition.

Mixing Rust and C in Linux likened to cancer by kernel maintainer

Re: "it would suck"

Part of the challenge with OSes in particular is that they are built on hardware - which doesn't necessarily have a formal model, proofs and a means to verify implementations against that model. Thus the OS runs atop silicon quicksand - it can never be proven to be "correct" or "bug-free" because the hardware model it is written against is not adequate - let alone complete in 99.99% of cases. There have been efforts to plug this hole - eg: RSRE's VIPER microprocessor, but as far as I know these methods haven't been applied comprehensively to common or garden x86 type gear.

Re: "it would suck"

The Linux codebase doesn't exist in isolation, it's a function of the community around it. Porting the codebase to a language that is familiar to a tiny minority of that community is what would cause the damage, all those folks who aren't familiar with the new language are frozen out of the development effort - and all their domain knowledge is effectively lost with it. Thus the result would *likely* not be as good / useful to people as the original codebase (ie: it would be incomplete and it would suck balls). Ultimately it's a daft argument to have - Linus, bless him, appears to be more pragmatic.

Tesla's big reveal: Steering-wheel-free Robotaxi will charge wirelessly

Re: Snakeoil

Cows are a lot smarter than car AIs, and most car drivers in general.

Does DOGE have what it takes to actually tackle billions in US govt IT spending?

Re: "It's a temporary decision, "

Ultimately it comes down to whether you are content to be boiled alive in the Frog Jacuzzi or you want to establish some boundaries by getting some licks in before getting boiled/stomped on.

Agent P waxes lyrical about 14 years of systemd

Re: "(Almost) all in C"

I nominate PASCAL.