Posts by RichardBarrell

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

Re: Expat would like to pay but can't

I'm obviously not going to do this because it's too silly, but there *are* a bunch of addresses which get demands to buy a TV licence but never will, and you could reuse those. :D

I worked at Capita on phones for TVLA briefly once and one of the trainers related a story about how the automated nastygram system had been sending TV licence demand letters to... a field, with a horse in it, so the farmer who owned that field sent back a reply purporting to be from the horse explaining how horses don't watch television.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

Yeah that's a design that works and is used in the real world.

An old parking meter and a Pi make beautiful music together

I don't think the surveillance is worth more. My belief is that one of the reasons why the surveillance economy is so incredibly bad for privacy is that each act of surveillance yields only miniscule revenue, so the companies doing surveillance do it absolutely as much as possible.

The reason I think the surveillance earns very little money per privacy violation is that I believe that advertising targeting is very neatly their only revenue stream. Ads make on the order of micro pennies per display, so commercial surveillance has to be making a fraction of that.

Schleswig-Holstein waves auf Wiedersehen to Microsoft stack

> I'm not sure why nobody ever did a dead easy mass-market-friendly Linux thin client that just turned a low-end PC into an X terminal, but it I've never seen such a thing. I've read about several efforts but they were either unfinished experimental projects, or they were tied to some company's proprietary remote-app

I guess the problem is there isn't an obvious revenue stream resulting from making such a thing, other than by tying it to some proprietary remote-app garbage. Also the customers interested in such a thing are likely to be, let's say "good at cost optimization" to be polite about it. If it's all open source and freely available then nothing stops them cloning it and installing the clone on all their machines?

Alleged Scattered Spider teen cuffed after extortion Bitcoin used to buy games, meals

There is no statute of limitations in the UK for most criminal offences. The main exceptions are traffic tickets and summary offences. Some offences under the Computer Misuse Act can be summary offences, but I don't think anything involving stealing tens of millions of pounds worth of BTC would be.

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

Re: Desktop is not the only problem

This comes off a little weird because Microsoft have been pushing mainly C# and typescript, both of which are memory-safe languages with open source implementations.

Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown

Re: Honestly I'm bilingual

((Particle ÷ cm²) ÷ parsec)) is equivalent to (Particle ÷ (cm × cm × parsec)) so that's... weird but well-formed - it's particles per volume, which makes sense physically.

Re: Someone else's mistake?

Hm. I think it's plausible that the errant "rm" deleted the directory entry pointing to the kernel file but not the actual file itself, which would explain why it *didn't* crash next time part of the kernel needed to be paged in. It might not have been just luck. Obvs you'd need the actual directory entry back, pointing at a usable copy of the kernel, for the machine to ever boot again successfully.

It's been part of unix semantics forever that you can open() a file, unlink() it (and any hard links pointing to it) (so now it has no directory entry anywhere in the filesystem) and then carry on using the open file descriptor. read(), wrote(), seek() et al will continue to work and the disk space for the file will be reclaimed only when the file descriptor is closed for whatever reason. The underlying file has a reference count and both hard links and open file descriptors on it increment that refcount.

That all applies to files being accessed by ordinary userspace programs through the normal unix file API. I don't know for sure that it would apply to your kernel image though.

"logical Friday" is a very good one. I am stealing that. ❤️

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

Re: Automated or not...

You haven't actually ruled out for certain the possibility that IGotOut has a friend called Greg who sells inexpensive coffee that is better than Starbucks?

In wake of Horizon scandal, forensics prof says digital evidence is a minefield

Re: This one of the few use cases for blockchain

Not for this the specific use case.

I would use the term "Merkle tree" rather than "blockchain" here because what the parent poster is thinking of is tamper-evident logging.

When you use a Merkle tree to make a tamper-evident log, each entry in the log message contains a signed hash of the previous entry. This is fast. Also you don't use proof of work, which is where the never ending increasing power waste in bitcoin comes from. Instead you have multiple organisations (that you trust to not all collude with each other) sign log entries regularly. Certificate transparency logs work roughly this way.

Tamper evident logging is IMHO a perfectly good and reasonable idea for use in establishing evidence of chains of custody, though hardly a complete solution by itself.

Memories fade. Archives burn. All signal eventually becomes noise

Re: DRM is the biggest threat to conservation

A certain amount of reverse engineering is a moral imperative since there is no other way we'll be able to preserve copy protected software.

British Museum says ex-contractor 'shut down' IT systems, wreaked havoc

Re: lax procedures

Formula for combinations (pick k different items out of a bag of n items) is `n! / (k! × (n - k)!)`

So choosing 4 numbers out of 10, you get 10!/(6! × 4!) = 210 different combinations?

Brackets go there? Oops. That’s not where I used them and now things are broken

Re: Any system...

in an expression context you may be able to use an IIFE like `(function() { /* do stuff */ return "something"; })()`

unless there's some heinously evil filtering thing that parses the code you paste in and rejects it if it contains functions, I guess

Ambitious overclocker cools Raspberry Pi 5 with liquid nitrogen

Much more, even. The RPi5 has 4 cores at that clock speed and its cores each can execute multiple instructions per clock cycle whereas the 8086 takes I think a minimum of 3 cycles to execute even the fastest instruction. Data that would even fit in the amount of space an 8086 can address could fit entirely within an RPi's caches.

Hands up who hasn't made an offer to buy some part of Intel

Re: The "market cap"

Would you rather own a small business that makes money or a large one that loses it?

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Holidays

Same organisation doesn't mean the same people. Microsoft in particular have REALLY high variance in the quality of the software they ship.

Spam blocklist SORBS closed by its owner, Proofpoint

On that note, I have found the fact that Azure doesn't have a first party equivalent to AWS SES mildy annoying. But oh well, sendgrid works fine.

I've seen people mention that Azure, AWS, etc all have ended up with their entire customer IP address ranges on various spam blocklists anyway.

Intel's foundry business bled $7B in 2023 with more to come

That can't be right

This sounds like the accounting is just a bit incorrect. Intel made a profit last year on GAAP. If their fabs weren't there then Intel wouldn't have been able to make and sell the ~70% of products whose fabrication isn't outsourced. The rest of the business would not respond well if that went away.

Maybe they should be outsourcing more but the external fab capacity does not actually exist for them to buy. I bet they are not pricing in the fact that their internal foundry has some advantages like the fact that it can give Intel first priority at all times.

How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT

Okay that's really nice and wholesome. :)

Whistleblower raises alarm over UK Nursing and Midwifery Council's DB

Re: It's deja-vu all over again ...

> I'm not sure the GDPR has a problem with shit.

I think it can. The GDPR isn't only about security. The GDPR also requires you to try to ensure the information you have is accurate. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/data-protection-principles/a-guide-to-the-data-protection-principles/the-principles/accuracy/

I believe broken schemas can interfere with this. As a hypothetical example, imagine if the lack of proper primary keys causes records about two different people to accidentally be merged, and then for one of them to be denied a job offer based on a red flag that was raised on the *other* person's records. That would be unfairly prejudicial to them. The organisation would be failing its obligation to hold accurate data.

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

Note to self if I ever deploy thin clients, glue them to the backs of monitors or on top of shelves or something. Thay way they'll be just high enough to be out of spill range.

Brits blissfully unbothered by snail-paced mobile network speeds

I believe 3G had worse coverage per-base-station than 2G, 4G or 5G (i.e. both the stuff that came before it and the stuff that came after it). So you'd expect consistency to improve if somebody swapped out the 3G base stations for 4G base stations, one-for-one.

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

Re: After booting for the second time

> smelling bad isn't a reason for prohibition

Well, maybe? The optimal plan that will definitely leave absolutely everybody happy is to legalise only nice-smelling marijuana.

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

If you're currently reading this for the nuclear engineering rather than the geopolitical horror, I strongly recommend the website "Beyond NERVA". The web design is a little bit timecube so I have no idea if the author is a crackpot, but it's fun reading anyway. https://beyondnerva.com/fission-power-systems/fission-power-plant-reactor-cores/ describes a bunch of nuclear reactors that have been flown in space, mostly by the USSR to power radar systems.

Forcing AI on developers is a bad idea that is going to happen

In my experience JetBrains have some unusual perceptual gaps, generally. One that I've run into is that none of them apparently use multiple monitors because they are incapable of reproducing or fixing bugs that only manifest when you have two screens plugged in.

Cloudflare defends firing of staffer for reasons HR could not explain

Re: Cold, calculated and heartless

You need to hire slightly more than 11.111111% or you will find yourself at 99% headcount afterwards instead of 100% ;)

Shock horror – and there goes the network neighborhood

Re: The last time I heard a loud noise and things were restarting...

The next big use for nanotechnology will be to put thousands microscopic DRM chips into every millilitre of liquid ink.

Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it

Re: So, shoot the messenger is still well and alive

Don't serve long pork to customers!

US prosecutors slam Autonomy tycoon's attempt to get charges tossed

Well of course the prosecutor would say something strongly worded - they have more dog in this fight than Crufts. The interesting part is the extent to which the judge agreed.

Workload written by student made millions, ran on unsupported hardware, with zero maintenance

The latency on a thermal printer is really good. The only thing I think could possibly keep up is a line dot matrix printer? They go very fast and I believe have negligible start up time. https://youtu.be/KnPBWru2Ecg

I think thermal printers are almost definitely going to be the winner here because they are mass manufactured and hence cheap. If you had throughput problems keeping up with the amount of sheets you need to print, you could just get several thermal printers and send different sheets to each one in parallel.

Microsoft drops official support for Python 3.7 in Visual Studio Code

Re: That is SO StackOverflow

You might prefer Stack Overflow surveys because those ask people to report whether they like or dislike each language they use, too. https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/22/stackoverflow_survey/

Re: Python 3.11 is where you want to be

I think the biggest speed ups are in benchmarks in which list comprehensions got much faster. If you have code that spends much of its time doing list comprehensions then you may actually see those very big speedups.

Epic cut: Fortnite games maker culls 16% of staff

Re: A free third party one every week

In 2021, a snapshot became publicly available of what the giveaways cost up to September 2019. Epic published this document for some reason related to the court cases against Apple. https://kotaku.com/heres-what-epic-paid-to-give-away-all-those-free-games-1846815064

Search for phone signal caused oil spill, say Japanese investigators

Understandable on one level - geosynchronous satellite internet is slow as the hills.

If only they'd had Starlink instead, the dumbass would not have been so tempted to try to get a cellphone signal from shore.

Unity apologizes, tweaks runtime install fees after gaming world outrage

Re: The damage is done

Mobile games built on Unity will have to update to the newest version sooner or later because the Google Play Store and Apple App Store both introduce changes to requirements every couple of years. Complying with these usually requires you to update whatever framework you are building on and increase the target SDK version so that your app opts into newly changed defaults. This isn't unique to Unity: it also happens with React Native, Cordova, Flutter, Java/Kotlin and ObjC/Swift.

Desktop AI isn’t happening, says AMD, and might not for quite a while

Re: Why shove this into the CPU

> GPUs - where you get far more processing units and associated RAM than you'll get onto the CPU

Speed yes, capacity no. Video RAM (GDDR) has higher throughput than normal RAM (DDR) but it's sold at fairly eye-watering prices per byte of capacity and you don't get very much of it even on the biggest most expensive GPUs. nVidia's current datacenter GPUs top out at 180GB.

It is cheaper to buy a server with multiple TBs of RAM in it than to buy a GPU with 80GB of RAM on it. A H100 with 80GB of RAM costs north of £30k.

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

Re: One Good Earworm Deserves Another

That one doesn't really work any more because I've since heard pop music which was so much more annoying.

And I enjoyed it, too!

Microsoft calls time on ancient TLS in Windows, breaking own stuff in the process

Good plan

TLS 1.0 isn't as well designed as 1.2 is. I think we should be expecting that there will be protocol vulns found in TLS 1.0 in future, and when they are found we will all have to turn TLS 1.0 off everywhere in a massive hurry. Similarly to how SSL3.0 had protocol vulns that required everyone to turn it off a few years ago (the "POODLE" issue) in a massive hurry.

In light of this, it's a good idea to turn off TLS 1.0 now, while we can all do it at a leisurely pace, rather than suddenly having to turn it off in a massive hurry if (but probably when) the next big TLS 1.0 protocol vuln is found.

(As has been noted by other commenters, TLS 1.1 can be ignored because just about everyone who implemented TLS 1.1 also implemented TLS 1.2.)

With version 117, Firefox finally speaks Chrome's translation language

Re: FF convert

I have Firefox for Android on my phone because I can use the NoScript extension with it, which makes it vastly faster and easier on battery life than any other browser.

IBM says GenAI can convert that old COBOL code to Java for you

Re: Programming is independent from language

> I don't really have any time for employers who simply employ people based on their having exactly the right skills for their requirements at that particular moment

I'll argue that if your organisation still has COBOL in it in 2023 then you should expect to still have COBOL in it in the year 2223. No contractors are going to live that long. Plan accordingly and set up training that can create the skills you need instead of just praying that you'll be able to find them outside.

Social media is too much for most of us to handle

Re: American spelling

I'm frankly bewildered by the concept that you seem to have in your head, of an English person who isn't constantly preoccupied with thinking about the Norman conquest of 1066.

"What if Harold had just-" no, mate, no. Let it go.

Google accused of ripping off advertisers with video ads no one saw. Now, the expert view

Re: It Pays to Advertise?

Those VPN services are a really high-margin service (ARPU >> COGS), so they can afford to spend exorbitant amounts on avertising (CAC can go into the stratosphere without them really noticing).

Bosses face losing 'key' workers after forcing a return to office

Re: The same government employees who did nothing when they worked in the office?

Rump Sandpaper Injury

Re: The same government employees who did nothing when they worked in the office?

> "repetitive stress injuries" caused by prison grade single ply toilet paper

Roughness-induced Shitting Injury >:D

Metaverses are flopping – hard – says Gartner

Second Life isn't dead

For what it's worth, Linden Labs is apparently profitable and employs a couple hundred people. What appears to have happened to it after the initial round of hype was that it grew a user base who like it and spend money on it, for recreation? I assume this is because they have innovative features such as "legs", no "real names policy" and they don't kick people out for being weird. Also it works on cheap computers. You can't beat "it runs on cheap computers", it's practically a super-power.

I'm not at all disagreeing with you that it's way short of the "this is going to change everything!!!!!" hype that surrounded it in the early days, of course. I certainly haven't heard of anyone using it for business for real.

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

Re: Weather?

I wonder could you put the laser on some kind of very slow precise motorised mount so it could re-aim itself?

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

Re: What a waste

It was only an Ultra 5. Just about the lowest end thing that Sun ever produced that wasn't explicitly marketed as a thin client.

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

Re: Oh the pain!

Oh that's genius, I will have to remember that one.

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

Re: With two-faced "friends" like Dyson, Britain doesn't need enemies

Please, let's keep the historical timeline in-order here: the French copied us.

Charles I of England was abridged in 1649, more than a hundred years before the French revolution kicked off around 1789.