Posts by eldakka

$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well

Re: 20 district health boards

So you are saying they use TWO Excel spreadsheets to manage the NHS?

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

Re: Reality

> I tried that. The NPC's sucked.

The PCs are even worse.

Einstein Probe finds two stars that have spent 40 million years taking turns eating each other

Re: Disappointment

> I heard about some stars that emit a lethal jet of radiation through their poles when they go boom, and these were calculated to be lethal for over 1 million LY in the direction they happen to aim.

You are most likley referring to Gamma-Ray bursts (GRBs), but you are off by a couple orders of magnitude. A GRB would most likely have to be within 10,000 LY to be dangerous to the Earth, which basically limits it to having to be within our own galaxy. But since the the events casing GRBs are quite rare (estimated at between 1 in every 10k years and 1 in every 1million years in a galaxy our size) and the jets are tightly focused, you'd be pretty unlucky for a star within 10k LY to be pointing directly at our Solar system when it does go supernova.Which isn't to say it can't or won't, but it is extremely rare and is believed to have happened at least once in our past (4-5 billion years is a long time, long enough for incredibly rare events to have happened a time or 2 or three).

'Key kernel maintainers' still back Rust in the Linux kernel, despite the doubters

Re: If I understand the logic, I understand the reasoning...

> Learning a new language is not that much of a biggie, compared to the technical expertise required to work on a kernel in the first place.

It is entirely unreasonable to demand that people who have worked for decades on a project in C, entirely unpaid, to go and learn Rust because some idealogue said so.

I'm really not sure why you are finding it hard to understand:

Rust in the kernel is not the problem of anyone else than the R4L developers.

It is not the responsibility of any maintainers outside the R4L project to assist with that or enable it in any way.

It is the responsibility of the R4L developers to make Rust work. No-one else. No other maintainer has any obligation or responsibility to assist the R4L project at all.

If the R4L developers want Rust in the kernel, then they need to make it work, not the C maintainers.

As I've seen it mentioned elsewhere, the R4L developers should have just sat down and written a Rust-first clone of the Linux kernel rather then trying to insert Rust into the Linux kernel. Otherewise, the only way I see the Linux kernel being migrated to Rust is when long-time maintainers retire/resign/die/lose interest and get replaced over time with developers who already understand both C and Rust when they come into the projects.

Re: If I understand the logic, I understand the reasoning...

> The difference being? I mean, you can just recompile the Rust code to.

Why would a C developer have the Rust toolchain on their system to do such a recompile? They are C developers, not Rust developers.

Even if a C developer had such a toolchain installed, why would they know how to use it or diagnose (let alone fix) any errors it throw? They are C developers, not Rust developers so they don't have that knowledge.

They are C developers, what happens in Rust-land is none of their care. Apart from the fact that Rust developers are whining on social media about this and whinge that the C-devs that should care and they (the C-devs) need to be responsible to the Rust code, y'know, something the C-devs don't actually care about or have the skillset to do because they aren't - you guessed it - Rust developers.

It's just not their job to care about Rust (because for many of the devs, it's not a job).

'Maybe the problem is you' ... Linus Torvalds wades into Linux kernel Rust driver drama

Re: Fair comment by Linus

It is not the case. The Rust folk are not trying to change ANYTHING in that API.

They are bindings to allow Rust to work with the C API as it is, and to be maintained by Rust devs.

The problem is that these Rust wrappers are being put into the kernel. Therefore if the C API developers change their C API that breaks the Rust wrappers, the kernel will fail to compile because another component in the kernel - the Rust wrappers - are broken now and won't compile. Therefore either the C API developers will have to fix the Rust wrappers themselves to allow a full kernel compilation, or take steps to exclude a part of the kernel - the Rust wrappers - from the kernel to allow their code to compile into the kernel.

And who will the Rust wrapper maintainers blame? They'll blame the C API developers for breaking the Rust wrappers.

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

Re: Possible issue.

> Miffed CIA folks may not appreciate these 'cost savings'.

And when the CIA is unhappy, bad things happen to those who make them unhappy (see JFK assassination)

Re: nullllptr has been core dumped

> nullllptr has been core dumped

due to a seg-fault

A good kind of disorder: Boffins boost capacitor tech by disturbing dipoles

Re: Breakdown?

> Of course! How else can you ensure the product breaks exactly a week after the guarantee runs out?

Luckily, depending on your jurisdiction, this may be irrelevant and you may still be covered, for example in Australia, according to the ACCC Broken but out of warranty? Your consumer guarantee rights may still apply (excerpt):

Common statements that may be misleading

Here are some statements to watch out for, and an explanation of what consumers’ rights are.

• Your product is out of warranty, so we can only repair it for a fee.

This isn’t right. Consumer guarantees are automatic and are separate from any voluntary warranty, manufacturer’s warranty, or extended warranty. Consumer rights can last longer than warranty rights, and you can ask for a repair, refund or replacement after the warranty has expired.

• No refunds under any circumstances.

This isn’t right. If your product has a major problem, under the consumer guarantees you have a right to choose a refund.

• To be eligible for a refund, you must return the product within 10 days. Refunds are not available under any circumstances after this time.

This isn’t right. Businesses can’t apply a time limit on your rights to notify them or return a faulty product.

• You will need to contact the manufacturer to have this issue resolved.

This isn’t right. As a first step you should contact the business that sold you the product to explain the problem. The business can’t refuse to help you by telling you to contact the manufacturer.

• If you don’t buy the extended warranty, you’ll have no protection once the 12-month warranty expires.

This isn’t right. Consumer guarantees are separate from any warranties, and they may still apply after a warranty has expired.

• We understand your concern that if you were made aware about this fault beforehand, you would not have purchased the product. We can offer you 50 per cent of the original purchase price as a goodwill gesture.

This isn’t right. If your product has a major problem, a refund should be the full amount you paid.

• The damaged item must be returned in its original packaging to receive a refund.

This isn’t right. If your product is faulty, you don’t have to return the product in its original packaging to seek a refund.

• We identified the screen is cracked on your product. The warranty doesn’t cover damaged screens, so we can’t help you today.

This isn’t right. Even if your voluntary warranty, manufacturer’s warranty, or extended warranty doesn’t cover the specific problem, it may still be covered under the consumer guarantees.

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

Re: You know, bad weather can sink bad ships

> but a small shaped explosive charge on the hull, that is made to look like an internal bang is easy to do for some nations and fixes a lot of problems

I don't know what sort of magic shape-charged you are using to make the buckling of the hull due to the explosion occur in the opposite direction to the direction of blast, but I'd like some (i.e. making a blast on the outside if a hull buckle/bend the hull in an outward direction as if the explosion came from inside the hull).

OpenZFS 2.3 is here, with RAID expansion and faster dedup

Re: Give ZFS another try

> My original question was whether I could keep the mountpoint online and data in-use throughout,

Your original post included other statements besides the specific question you asked, which seems to imply doing additional things that may be unnecessary:

"Every process of migration seems to need a manual copy of data (or snapshot) and a pool destroy/re-create,"

So I tried to be helpful to point out that some of those steps you listed as doing may not be necessary.

You can also rename a pool too if you want. if you've created a new pool and still want to just use the default mount points for consistency with the pool/dataset name, you can rename the pool once you've exported (or destroyed) the old one to the same name as the old one had.

But with respect to doing the whole thing live without even a minor hiccup in re-mounting, I do not know, but am not aware of being able to do so, however I am far from an expert in ZFS.

A better place to ask such questions would be on something like the level1tech forums where many 'enterprisey'-type people (e.g. Wendel from Leve1tech's) contribute,

Re: Give ZFS another try

> and a pool destroy/re-create, which necessitates a short downtime to flip the replacement dataset to the desired mountpoint.

why do you need to do a destroy/re-create?

By default the mountpoint for a filesystem is inherited from the parent pool/filesystem (e.g. poolname tank, filesystems will by default inherit that and be mounted at /tank/<filesystem>/ ...), but you can always manually set (and change) a mountpoint for a filesystem.

So if you send from tank/mydata mounted at default /tank/mydata to new_tank (so be default mounted at /new_tank/mydata), you can change the mountpoinf of /new_tank/mydata to /tank/mydata:

zfs set mountpoint=/tank/mydata new_tank/mydata

The mountpoint doesn't need to be the same as the pool or filesystem name:

zfs set mountpoint=/data/fred/bob new_tank/mydata

Of course, you'll need to either take the old filesystem ofline first,

zfs unmount tank/data

Or unmount the new filesystem, specify the new mountpoint, then unmount the old and mount the new:

zfs unmount new_tank/mydata

zfs set mountpoint=/tank/mydata new_tank/mydata

zfs unmount tank/mydata

zfs mount new_tank/mydata #which will now be mounted at /tank/mydata

Note however, if you already have manually set the mountpoint on a filesystem, doing a zfs send/receive of all properties will also apply that mountpoint name to the new copy (the target of the receive), but in that case if it's on the same host you probably weant to use a 'zfs receive -u' to prevent the destination filesystem from being mounted pre-maturely if the source filesystem is still mounted.

How to leave the submarine cable cutters all at sea – go Swedish

Re: Practice what you preach?

> There isn't really any need for clarity. It has long been the case that vessels damaging cables or pipelines are responsible for the damage.

There is.

It doesn't matter whether something is against the law or the law assigns responsibility if there are no consequences or the law isn't enforced. Which is what's been happening in the Batlic - lack of enforcement and thus lack of consequences.

The current activities of the various navies in the Baltic is telegraphing - i.e. clarifying - that (maybe) they are starting to take it seriously and may begin enforcing the laws and meteing out the consequences of breaking the laws.

The first step in doing that is to make sure there is sufficient monitoring being undertaken to accurately determine who is breaking the law. With lax monitoring it is easy to get away with breaking the law since it can't be pinned on the perpertrator. So first step is to up the game in the monitoring and detection of the crime and the perpertrators of the crime.

Second step is having the ability to detain the alleged perpetrators by having the necessary assets to enforce a detainment in a legal fashion, i.e. while they are still in your territorial waters and prevent them from fleeing into international waters before they can be deatined. If you have no or few assests available to intercept the alleged perpetrators, then again, that's lax enforcement and thus consequence-free sabotage.

The first two steps are what's going on with these naval asset positionings.

The final step would be to prosecute and punish the perpetrators, which it seems that Finland is taking seriously at the moment.

Therefore the current activities are 'clarifying' the stance of the NATO partners to the Russians and anyone else that wants to sabotage the undersea infrastructure that they do now take such sabotage seriously and are intent on enforcing the laws and punishments around such activities in the Baltic.

SpaceX will try satellite deployment on next Starship test

Re: Important

It's also much closer to Earth in terms of flight-time (as opposed to delta-v, I believe the delta-v for Mars isn't a lot larger than for the moon). Therefore it'd be easier to set up research bases on the moon (in the vein of Antartic research stations) with personnel rotations to build up experience with operating for extended periods on foreign bodies. If there are problems, help is only a few days flight-time away (plus whatever the launch-prep time is) rather than the 9+ months away it'd be on Mars.

So I do think the moon is a reasonable goal from a 'training grounds' perspective.

How the OS/2 flop went on to shape modern software

Re: Developers! Developers! Developers!

I disagree.

People said the same about WINE 25 years ago. If Linux could run Windows apps there'd be no market for native ones.

Well, it's done all right, and now Microsoft offers Linux apps.

I think there's a significant difference here. O/S2 was a commercial app that the developers had to be able to justify to accounting to get funding for development. If the O/S or app didn't have the revenue to satisfy the bean-counters, things stagnated or were just dropped entirely.

WINE and Linux didn't have this problem. It could weather the lack of use/revenue/bugs/drawn-out dev time for decades until it was actually useable/mainstream since there was no revenue/profit driver.

Will passkeys ever replace passwords? Can they?

Re: Lose your device, lose your access

> one reason to have a personal domain

I've thought of doing this multiple times over the years. But I can't get past the fact that it's not 'your' domain. It's a rental. And you can lose access to it in multiple ways, forget to re-register, someone hacks your account at the domain registrar, an unscrupulous registrar just takes the domain and gives it to someone who bid more for it, the registrar jacks up renewals by 1000% to a price you can't (or won't) match, etc.

I really think you should be able to 'buy' a domain, and the only renewal fees are hosting fees if you don't have your own DNS servers.

Re: Lose your device, lose your access

> You have 2 Yubikeys, you create passkeys on both.

Okkaaayyy, I have hundreds of accounts spread across decades of use, so having to double up on creating passkeys (1 for each device, so 2x#accounts) is a lot of onerous work,

> You lose one, you log in with the other, revoke the passkey on the lost one, and enrol a new passkey on a new Yubikey.

Excellent, do you have the complete list of all websites/services/accounts I've ever created an account on? I sure as hell don't for me to be able to go to them all and de-register the device.

> Or use two phones, or 2 Yubikeys, or something. Either way, it is a damn sight more secure than using a password.

Well, yes, but so is requiring physical attendance where appropriately cleared and vetted technicians and supply chain takes a sample of my blood and does an DNA anaylsis of it to to verify that the person who's physically shown up is the one who's DNA is stored on file - oh and that that file has never been tampered with and is the DNA record that was originally submitted. More secure != better, people have to be able to use it and actually want to use it.

And what happens if theres a fire at home so both the primary and secondary yubi-keys get burnt up? I guess you could have a fireproof safe for the secondary, but then you'd have to go digging it out all the time whenever you make a new account so you can use it and the primary to store the passkey. If you frequently have to retrieve it to register new accounts, you aren't going to want a time-consuming tumbler-lock safe, too much hassle. Maybe a safe that uses a key instead? Where are you going to store that key so someone doesn't just break in, find the key, unlock the safe and grab the yubikey? Maybe secure the safe with a passcode-type mechanism? Say it could work with a yubikey. Does this now mean you need a 3rd yubikey as you'll always want to have access to 2 to be able to unlick the safe to grab the 3rd - do you now use all 3 to create login credentials on every site?

> Oh and if you're using a Yubikey or phone you typically have to enter the PIN or use biometrics to unlock the key before any passkeys are available. So if you've lost it it's no use to anyone else either...

A rubber hose or phone book or, if the assailant doesn't care about being sublte, a bullet to the knee, can sort that problem (although, to be fair, that'd sort the problem of just getting a specific password out of the individual anyway).

Now don't get my wrong, I think 'passkeys' (or as I see them: ssh key-pairs but unique to each end-point rather than pushing out he same public key to multiple end-points) are a good idea and devices like yubi-keys etc. But they introduce their own complexities that are perfectly fine for someone like me - a sysadmin who's been using ssh public/private keys for decades so is perfectly familiar with the concept - but it could be an extra level of complexity for the average person. Ad my ssh-key use is mostly for work purposes, so I'm perfectly happy with work having copies of my private and public keys that I use for work puproses in terms of having them backed up, or being replicated to any host I login to automatically, or even a 'break-the-glass'-style system where cyber securty can invoke an emergency function that gives them access to all stored passwords in an emergency (with things like auditing where notices go out that this has happened and so-on) or another admin being able to login to a host and as root copy my new public key to my account and so on, But I don't have that type of admin-support mechanism at home with my personal accounts, such as account-based private key replication so that it's "just there" therefore I can't rely on that support for.

But I don't think passkeys and yubikeys will ever be a general solution for the general populace for security. Sure, for specific high-security populations (government employess for work, politicians, CEOs, really rich people, etc.) or for specific small-set high-security systems, like say bank accounts, but I don't see it ever being used for, for example, my TheRegister forums account, or random news commenting sites, etc. Hell, for those, password re-use is strong, because I honestly don't care if someone gets my credentials for a dozen forum/commenting sites, I prefer the convienience of being able to log into those sites in situations where it'd be onconvienient to use passkeys, e.g. my work computer. I have no way of getting personal passkeys onto my work computer easily (or legitmately, I'm sure I could get them on their if I tried by breaking all sorts of policies that could get me fired) , so while I can visit TheRegister from my work computer, unless I can remember and type in the password, I won't be able to login.

We told Post Office about system problems at the highest level, Fujitsu tells Horizon Inquiry

Re: In defense of Gareth

> Gareth's evidence related to the specific scenarios mentioned in defense, he was not cross examined or asked about other defects : The UK courts rely on the adversarial principle if you don't cross examine, doubt is not considered. The judge could have asked questions, but it is likely they were peeved by the professional discourtesy of not engaging a barrister.

That only applies to a 'fact' witness, not an expert witness.

An expert witness - which is what Gareth Jenkins was presented as - produces a report and submits that report as part of their witness statement.

That report produced by an expert is required to be made on the basis of assisting the court, which means it is supposed to cover things like known issues, caveats, etc. It should have a discussoin about known issues and why they do or do not apply in this instance and so on. An expert witness is required to go far beyond just answering 'the question' like a fact witness would.

And that's the point with respect to Mr. Jenkins, that he was never properly advised of this 'extra' requirements an expert witness needs to perform.

Expert Evidence - The Crown Prosecution Service:

The Duty of an Expert Witness

The duty of an expert witness is to help the court to achieve the overriding objective by giving opinion which is objective and unbiased, in relation to matters within their expertise. This is a duty that is owed to the court and overrides any obligation to the party from whom the expert is receiving instructions - see Criminal Procedure Rules 2020 Part 19. (CrimPR 19.

CrimPR 19.2(3)(d) also obliges all experts to disclose to the party instructing them anything (of which the expert is aware) that might reasonably be thought capable of undermining the expert’s opinion or detracting from their credibility or impartiality.

...

3. The expert is impartial

The expert must be able to provide impartial, unbiased, objective evidence on the matters within their field of expertise. This is reinforced by Rule 19.2 of the Criminal Procedure Rules which provides that an expert has an overriding duty to give opinion evidence which is objective and unbiased.

...

4. The expert's evidence is reliable

There should be a sufficiently reliable scientific basis for the expert evidence, or it must be part of a body of knowledge or experience which is sufficiently organised or recognised to be accepted as a reliable body of knowledge or experience.

The reliability of the opinion evidence will also take into account the methods used in reaching that opinion, such as validated laboratory techniques and technologies, and whether those processes are recognised as providing a sufficient scientific basis upon which the expert's conclusions can be reached. The expert must provide the court with the necessary scientific criteria against which to judge their conclusions.

In satisfying itself that there is a sufficiently reliable basis for expert evidence to be admitted, the court will be expected to have regard to Criminal Practice Directions 2023 at 7.1.2which states:

"7.1.2Factors which the court may take into account in determining the reliability of expert opinion, and especially of expert scientific opinion, include:

the extent and quality of the data on which the expert’s opinion is based, and the validity of the methods by which they were obtained;

the validity of the methodology employed by the expert;

if the expert’s opinion relies on an inference from any findings, whether the opinion properly explains how safe or unsafe the inference is (whether by reference to statistical significance or in other appropriate terms);

if the expert’s opinion relies on the results of the use of any method (for instance, a test, measurement or survey), whether the opinion takes proper account of matters, such as the degree of precision or margin of uncertainty, affecting the accuracy or reliability of those results;

the extent to which any material upon which the expert's opinion is based has been reviewed by others with relevant expertise (for instance, in peer- reviewed publications), and the views of those others on that material;

the extent to which the expert's opinion is based on material falling outside the expert's own field of expertise;

the completeness of the information which was available to the expert, and whether the expert took account of all relevant information in arriving at the opinion (including information as to the context of any facts to which the opinion relates);

if there is a range of expert opinion on the matter in question, where in the range the expert's own opinion lies and whether the expert's preference has been properly explained; and

whether the expert's methods followed established practice in the field and, if they did not, whether the reason for the divergence has been properly explained.

"7.1.3: In addition, in considering reliability, and especially the reliability of expert scientific opinion, the court must be astute to identify potential flaws in such opinion which detract from its reliability, such as:

being based on a hypothesis which has not been subjected to sufficient scrutiny (including, where appropriate, experimental or other testing), or which has failed to stand up to scrutiny;

being based on an unjustifiable assumption;

being based on flawed data;

relying on an examination, technique, method or process which was not properly carried out or applied, or was not appropriate for use in the particular case; or

relying on an inference or conclusion which has not been properly reached."

Re: Time to produce the audit trail

> The legal status is that it is a Public Enquiry, not a Court of Law so no, it wouldn't be perjury.

It is a statutory enquiry that has the power to compel (summons) witnesses to give evidence under oath and if they refuse the summons they can be arrested (once a warrant is issued for contempt for not complying with the summons) and otherwise criminally prosecuted.

Witnesses to the enquiry take the same oath to tell the truth as witnesses in a trial do. The broadcast of the questioning includes the witness taking the oath to tell the truth, and in some cases - where the witness being called is already under suspicion of criminal activity or actively being investigated by the police (e.g. Gareth Jenkins (youtube video of his testimony) from Fujitsu is under investigation for perjury in the criminal trials that he gave evidence in) - after taking that oath the Char of the enquiry also reads the witness their rights regarding self-incrimination.

They absolutely can be prosecuted for perjury.

However, the specific statements being referred to here are closing statements by the Barristers (lawyers), who are not witnesses and thus are not under oath, as is true for legal counsel in a criminal or civil trial. This does not mean they are allowed to lie, they are under professional obligations that can result in them being dis-barred and/or otherwise sanctioned, but it is not perjury.

Microsoft won't let customers opt out of passkey push

Re: That's not a problem with passkeys

> The only exception is within a smaller security domain - like if you lose access to your university resources if they have a way you can go to a physical office and present your official ID they can get back your lost access without opening things up to remote attack.

I think that's sorta the point, they want to become that single security domain for you and tie you into their system. They want you to use their, and only their, services for that single security domain. Passkeys are an enabler of lock-in.

Mr Intel leaving Intel is not a great sign... for Intel

Re: Replicant Gelsinger

> nVidia's also in a weird personnel position in that so many of its staff were given company shares in years gone by that the place is full of millionaires now.

It might be 'weird', but it's not unique.

Several 70's/80's startups that made it big have been through the same thing. Microsoft is a prime example, there was a doco in the late 90's I think it was, and there was a woman in her 50's that was just boxing up Windows CDs/manuals in a production line who was a multi-millionaire because she'd been with Microsoft for nearly 20 years and her share options were worth millions, and this is a fairly menial job to have gained so many share options, imagine what high-level staff would have.

These are the 'exception' stories that make people work for fuck-all at startups hoping their startup is going to be one of these exceptions. Like where people say "Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college and became a billionaire, so I'm going to dropout too". Sure, but the Zuckerbergs are a 1 in 10million dropouts, most of the rest are still waiting tables (obviously of course some did well if not quite hugely rich, but again the ones who did really well are the 1 in 100k dropouts).

Mystery border control outage causes misery at Malaysia/Singapore frontier

If this were a US scandal, we'd cal it 'Gategate'

And if it was British we'd call it Gatey McGateFace!

(Or maybe just 'Tuesday').

Employee sues Apple over 'spying' claims tied to mandatory devices

I think

Quite why Bhakta chose to bring this lawsuit after four years with the iBiz – and after presumably reading and agreeing to his employment contract – isn't clear. He remains employed by Apple.

is answered 2 paragraphs down

A similar case [PDF] against Google, filed in the same court, led to a $27 million settlement last year, split between staff and the state. This latest case could potentially prove similarly lucrative if successful.

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

> post script: I'd recommend you switch to "GO"; it is simple to learn and easy to use - even the old guys in our shop like it!!!

I don't want to go to Go because my lecturers always banged on about how go to's are bad.

Re: It's not the language, it's just the way it's "talking"

> Basically I don't see the language as the problem,

Amen.

As a Java Application Server administrator of hundreds of appservers and thousands of JVMs, I can tell you our single biggest root-cause of incidents are memory leaks. Because the devs don't have to micromanage memory, they get lazy and expect the garbage collector to clean up memory, which it does if the developers remove all references to the memory in question. But often they don't. We have cases where we have to schedule pro-active restarts of JVMs (often after already increasing the heapsize significantly to extend the time it takes to fill the heap) to prevent the heap filling up on weekly, sometimes daily and in a few cases hourly restarts of the JVMs. The hourly and daily ones are usually temporary until they fix the code, but in some cases we've had some applications requiring weekly JVM restarts for years.

SpaceX plans next Starship flight just days from now

Re: FAA to be rejigged?

Most federal agencies like FAA, FTC, FCC, DEA, ATF, EPA and so on do draft (synonymns: formulate, plan, outline, propose, deliniate) federal laws.

Those drafts are then sent to a friendly congresscritter (assuming they were't actually asked to draft the laws in which case the congresscritter/committee who asked for a draft would sponsor it) who sponsors the draft legislation into the appropriate sub-committee who then asses the draft and either reject it, ask for changes, or endorse it to come out of committee to be put to the floor for a vote.

Anyone in the world, doesn't even have to be a US Citizen, could 'draft' federal laws. That doesn't mean they are federal laws. And most likley no congresscritter would give them the time of day let alone sponsor it.

Actual congresscritters rarely draft laws, they either come up with general ideas that they pass onto someone else to do the actual law drafting - federal agencies whose are of expertise it is, or staffers, or vested interests (e.g. thinktanks, societies, foundations, industry groups, actual industries) - or those other parties come to them with proposed - i.e. draft - laws, and they sponsor them (most likely not even understanding the draft, the level of understanding required is inversely proportional to the size of the donations or perks or promised future empolyment opportunities) into the appropriate sub-committee.

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Re: "amid growing adoption of competing architectures"

> They can always license the ARM architecture and get into the game at any time

AMD already has an ARM license. They were developing an ARM CPU, K12, , but due to their precarious financial position in 2014, when they basically went all-in on developing Zen, putting everything else on the backburner including the K12, it disappeared from their roadmaps.

Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws

Re: Just not with a Ubisoft game?

> If, for example, these people used to work in an office and were allowed to go remote during the pandemic, then their contracts may specify the office. As long as that office is still available, not only is that not an intolerable change, from a legal perspective it's not a change at all. I've known many people who want things they don't like to be illegal,

IANAL, but I believe that is not totally true.

The in-practice performance of a contract can be considered in enforcing it, the behaviour of the parties to the contract.

For example, if a contract has a penalty clause (every time you fail to deliver 10 widgets on time you pay a $100 penalty), if the party who can enforce that penalty clause don't enforce it for a long period of time, then it can be ruled as unenforceable going forward due to the fact that the parties involved got 'used' to that being how the contract terms were being (or not being) enforced. "Specific performance"? I think it's called? Something like that. Where the parties get used to specific performance applied to the contract, therefore that becomes the fact of the contract going forward rather than the clause that was never enforced.

It obviously requires some extended period of time for that to come into effect, whether 3? 4? years is long enough I don't know. But it is not always the case that "the contract says this, you have to do this" if it can be shown by the actions of the parties involved that no-one ever expected that to be enforced so that becomes the specific performance of the contract.

Edited to add: I just did a quick seach and the term I'm looking for is definitely not "Specific performance", that's the exact opposite, forcing the party to comply with the terms!

Nice.

Time to party (or game) all night and catch up on sleep at the office ...

Canon ships first nanoimprint chipmaking machine to R&D lab

> Ok, someone's got to ask... How are they making the "mould" with 14nm features?

Electron-beam lithography

The primary advantage of electron-beam lithography is that it can draw custom patterns (direct-write) with sub-10 nm resolution. This form of maskless lithography has high resolution but low throughput, limiting its usage to photomask fabrication, low-volume production of semiconductor devices, and research and development.

Some of your questions answered

Several posters have posed questions/made comments about this process, most of these are answered in the Asianometry Youtube channel's video on this, A Deep Dive Into Canon’s Nanoimprint Lithography.

Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

> "Requiring", "responsibility" -- this is the language of formal contracts. It's not the right thing within a single project which progress with social norms.

Well, the Rust evangelists seem to be requiring that sort of requirement on the C-developers to support their efforts. "We must have Rust, and you must maintain the comaptability layer with Rust".

The C-developers have no obligation to maintain compatible interfaces with someone's pet project (which is all the 'Rust in the kernel' is right now).

Re: vi vs emacs?

> it's insane that I have to install nano just to edit a damn configuration file.

That's the whole point.

The only editor that is pretty-much guaranteed to be on every unix-like install, whether a server 30 year-old SunOS, a 20-year old Solaris, 40-year old AIX, current gen Linux or AIX or whatever, a full-on user environment or a sparse terminal-only (ssh) command line, vi is likely to be there.

Vi/Vim etc. aren't better (or worse) than other editors, they are the ones that are there.

Therefore basic ability to use vi means if you need to update/edit/create a configuration file on some random box you've ssh'ed into, then you can just get on about and do it, rather than having to install nano (assuming you even have the permissions to do so, you very well might not because of either change control or you just don't have root and are doing non-root administration tasks) or whatever just to create a 30-line script or update a couple values in a conf file of some sort.

The best tool for a job is the one you have. And Vi is pretty much the lowest common denominator (well, ok, maybe that'd be ed) text editor.

Rust people have stated many times that if anyone needs to make changes to interfaces impacting Rust bits they're happy to be involved and help everywhere they can.

But that's the problem.

It should be that they are required to do the work in to maintain the interfaces. Not to 'help' wherever they 'can'. The wording you said is very wishy-washy and doesn't commit, doesn't put the responsibility on the Rust devs to do any work at all on the interfaces, It's aspirational wording, not binding commitment wording. it just devolves to pushing the responsibility back on the C-developers to maintain the interfaces with the Rust devs choosing whether or not they will assist.

Atlassian softens its cloud-first approach for remaining on-prem customers

I work for an Australian org with about 20k seats.

We have on-prem Confluence and Bitbucket.

Well, until we complete our migration to Azure that is, which was entirely in response to Atlassian's forced migration to their cloud. Our organisation took the attitude that, since we are being forced into cloud anyway for wiki/GIT, we may as well do that migration into a cloud provider we already have substantial business with anyway. I mean, the only Atlassian business we had was on-prem wiki/GIT, while we have other substantial Microsoft business with Windows, already moving some customer-service workloads to Azure hybrid/private cloud, outlook, teams, probably heading to O365 as well. And it's a lot easier to migrate wiki/GIT to a different provider (Azure) then it would be to migrate all the other Micrososft-provided services to Atlassian.

I don't like Microsoft (I originally came to the Register to follow the MS anti-trust trial of the late 90's), I'm an open source/Unix/Linux (I was a Solaris admin on Sun SPARC machines in the 90's/early 2k's), enthusiast. But even I, a die-hard anti-MS person, and my preferences to 'buy Austraian' where it makes sense, couldnt argue in the face of Atlassian's customer-hostile position against this migration with a straight face.

Atlasian, at least where my 20k seat organsiation is concerned, cut their own throat.

Fuck Atlassian for forcing me to use more MS products.

(although I have a feeling a lot of open source wiki's are goint to start popping up around our org as IT teams roll their own wiki's rather than go to Sharepoint or other MS products)

Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in Full Self-Driving mode

Re: Not entirely true

> > No, there's no "driver in charge" like the concept of "pilot in charge" in the sky.

Citation:

Some may be surprised to find themselves being charged with a DUI offense if they allow their child with a driver’s permit to safely drive home if they’ve consumed too many beers or had too many glasses of wine at a dinner party. ...

Before reaching their destination, the underaged driver crashed, crushing Abbagail. The father was subsequently charged with criminal negligence and spent six months in jail. ...

Found in N.C. Gen. Stat. § 20-12.1(a), it’s been determined that it’s unlawful for a licensed driver over the age of 18 to act as a supervising driver under G.S. 20-7(l) or G.S. 20-11 while having a blood alcohol concentration over 0.08 percent or under the influence of an impairing substance.

Note the use in the law of the phrase "supervising driver", which in casual-english-speak would be interchangeable with the phrase "driver in charge".

Re: Not entirely true

> What defines a "driver" can be pretty ambiguous, and whether someone is "driving" isn't generally as simply defined as "the person sitting behind the steering wheel".

No, it isn't ambiguous. There is plenty of case law around it.

For example, a Pilot on ship (as in a harbour pilot) is the one legally in charge of the navigation of that ship, and bears the responsibility for the 'steerage' of that vessel, despite an normal crew-member actually manning the 'wheel' and doing the actual course inputs into the controls under direction of the pilot.

The captain of an airplane is legally responsible for the 'piloting' of that aircraft whether the 2nd officer (co-pilot) is flying, or the autopilot is turned on, or the captain is actually the one at the controls.

Another example, if there is a learner-driver in the drivers seat, the licensed driver supervising them in the front passenger seat is legally the 'driver in charge' of the vehicle. They can be charged with any violations made by the learner-driver - speeding, reckless driving, etc. If the supervising driver has above whatever the local BAC limits specify as 'drunk driving, they can be charged a DUI despite the fact they aren't behind the wheel, the learner-driver is the one behind the wheel.

There is no ambiguity under the law as to who is in charge of a vehicle. The ambiguity only enters when non-lawyers use common-use language terms in casual english (or whatever your language is) such as 'the driver'.

No matter what driver-aids are in use, the legal driver (i.e. a human) who holds the license to operate such a vehicle and is thus the one 'in control' whether physically touching the wheel and pedals or sitting in the passenger seat supervising a non-fully-licensed (e.g. a learner-license) driver or sitting in their living room using a remote-control to control the vehicle, is responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle.

If the licensed person in charge of the operation of a vehicle doesn't want to take the responsibility of a supervisee's mistakes (e.g. a learner), then the they are free to choose to never supervise a learner-driver. In the same way, if the operator in charge of the vehicle doesn't want to take the responsibilty of the operation of the driver aids in the vehicle, they are free to not engage those driver aids - just leave them off - or to not operate a vehicle in them if they can't be turned off.

Re: Not entirely true

Entirely True!

SAE lvl 3 is not 'full self-driving". It still requires the driver to be attentive and ready to take over. It's not until SAE 4 that you get to the level where it doesn't require the driver to be ready to take over at a moments notice.

CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor also linked to Linux kernel panics and crashes

> But then I remember the fact people still use Windows and realize that answer would be "zero, or maybe one or two"

My own organisation doesn't use Crowdstrike, but from many other comments I've seen, many (especially local government, state government) orgs use it for compliance/insurance reasons. And it appears that Crowdstrike is the biggest player in this particular market. Therefore many orgs have little choice in whether they use Crowdstrike or not, it seems to be about the only player in town who can tick a compliance checkbox - which in itself to me seems to be a significant issue.

Of course, this may be a leg-up for other, smaller players ...

CrowdStrike Windows patchpocalypse could take weeks to fix, IT admins fear

Re: Will Cloudstrike be held responsible for the damage (financial and otherwise)

A clause in a license agreement that is contrary to law is null and void (and if they didn't make those clauses separable from the agreement that may make the entire agreement null and void).

In some palces in the world, there are legal requirements on implied warranties that can't be waived by contractual language.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

> In a fair world, this would be the end of crowdstrike.

A crowdstrike on Crowdstrike?

(see icon)

HP to discontinue online-only e-series LaserJet amid user gripes

Re: About time!

Unless you have a very specific need specifically for an inkjet-type printer, just don't buy one.

Never buy inkjets.

Lasers are the only way to go. Unused toner will last decades.

Even colour (A4) lasers aren't very expensive. The money saved on ink refills will have paid off a cheapish laser over a few years.

If you are after bigger, say A3, then go buy a 2nd hand ex-business equipment auction printer.

Study finds a quarter of bosses hoped RTO would make employees quit

Re: Who

> How big of an HR department do you want to finance?

Why would this effect HR? They set the general policies and allow the line managers to do their job - manage their staff. HR should only get involve if there's a dispute, e.g. the employee disagrees with the managers refusal of something-or-other and sends it to HR to sort out.

The fact that organisations push these types of decisions back up to some central area (e.g. HR) and strip these types of decisions away from lower-level managers is a problem for the organisation to deal with. If they work in that fashion, then they are the ones who have set up a structure that may require expanding their HR department, and that's a problem for them to deal with.

The "we can't afford this", or "we'll need to hire more HR", or "this will complicate our processes" is a problem for them to solve, not a problem for the employees to solve.

Again, this is narcisstic thinking, the "this is how we do it and this imposes a cost, and what you want will increase that cost" is a problem with how the organisation is set up (has extraneous processes that impose cost) or the organisation is likely not a viable financial vehicle - it's gotta cut corners, like the example given earlier "to afford this I have to reduce staff wages".

Organisations need to function in the legal and cultural and moral environment they trade/operate in, if the revenue they gain from those operations is not sufficient to cover the costs of those operations, that is the companies issue to deal with, even if that means they can't and have to fold (or cease operations in that particular region/state/country).

Re: Who

It would depend on the number of employees.

I don't see why it would depend on the number of employees.

It's not like the CEO would have to personally make the decision for every one of their 50k (for example) employees. That's what delegation is for. It'd be delegated to HR and to an employees line manager (or maybe their line manager) to make the decision (based on organisational and business-unit policies), therefore no manager-type would ever have to make the direct decision in more than a few score of cases.

I mean, they already do that anyway for things like Occupational Health and Safety around things like appropriate seating (someone might need a special chair to do their work due to health conditions), equipment - I worked with someone who was legally blind and had (years ago) Dragon Naturally Speaking and and other tools/aids to enable them to work. I doubt the CEO of the 30k employee organisation was even informed of let alone had to make the decision for the adjustments made to enable that employee to work.

After my organisations new Enterprise Agreement came into force about 6 months ago, the whole process of requesting Working from Home is done in the HR tool - SAP (cringe) - from start to finish. There's a form you fill out (what days do you want to WFH, what days (if any!) are in the office, etc), send it to your line manager who endorses or rejects it, then it goes to their line manager who, 90% of the time, follows their subordinates recommendation (if you don't trust your direct subordinate, then what's the point in having them ?). If your immediate line manager rejects it, you can appeal to their line manager, but unless your line manager is a complete dick (possible) or what you are asking for is way outside the policy (also possible), it's pretty much a tick-and-flick exercise.

When I had a manufacturing company, I had to handle many employee policies in a general way. There just wasn't enough time in the day to do it otherwise. That was with less than 100 on staff. I could have (ack) hired an HR person and then everybody would get compensated less to pay for that person(s).

That's a spurious argument, and I hate it when people/companies go down that narcisstic line of thinking. Your companies/business lack of revenue to follow the law (i.e. work conditions, pay, safety, etc.) and basic human decency (treat your employees as humans, assets, not cost centres) does not give you the right to ignore those things. If you don't have the revenue, then what you don't have is a viable business. Either you've got the revenue - a viable business - or you don't, in whch case you just aren't a viable business.

Re: Who

> Companies can't cater to employee needs on an individual basis.

As long as those needs are reasonable, why not?

Windows 11's Recall feature is on by default on Copilot+ PCs

Re: Do you trust Microsoft?

Doesn't even have to be a rogue employee. The current common ransomware technique is for the malware to silently turn on windows built-in disk encryption, except using a password the malware knows that is unknown to the user. Once encryption is complete, delete the password from the configuration, viola, your data is now accessable only to the controller of the malware.

So now, in addition to holding you ransom to your own disk encryption system, they can use the built in screen-logger. Silently turn it on, collect some data, then threaten to blackmail you over the contents of the data - or even just skim any credentials captured and use them themselves.

Was there no one at Microsoft who looked at Recall and said: This really, really sucks

Re: There's a gem of a good idea in there...

I can understand the privacy implications for businesses (as the coverage has pointed out, it's a GDPR non-starter), but for consumers, I could see this as a useful feature, as long as the data was locked-down as tight as possible. I don't see it as any more-dangerous than having a password manager that also holds your OTP keys... I'd understand users not wanting to deploy it (it should totally be an opt-in feature), but I think it does have some appeal.

The problem is Microsoft is famous for 'scope-creep' when it comes to its customers. They have form here.

First they'll start re-enableing it (if the user turns it off) with every update - without letting the user know. The only way the user knows is if they check their settings after an update.

Then Microsoft will start taking random samples for quality control - which can be turned off, but again gets re-enabled on every update.

Then they'll say their telemetry needs this random sample, so you can no longer turn of the screen-shotting or turn off sending random samples to MS.

Then Microsft will start taking a fixed subset (say 1 per minute out of the 3-second snapshops) for providing a better search experience for the users (i.e. feeding it into their central copilot AI model) - and they'll provide it to law-enforcement or security services on presentation of a subpoena or warrant.

Then Microsoft will embed it within the MS-Account (which you will have to use to use your local computer) and MS's online storage will automatically sync it - at which point they'll provide it on request (no supoena or warrant required!) to law enforcement or security or adjacent agencies.

I mean, it'll take 3 to 5 years, most likley not until late Windows 12, to get to the "can't be disabled, can't turn off MS taking samples, can't turn off it being synced to your compulsory MS cloud account, live feed into the FBI ...", but MS will take it there eventually.

It looks a lot like VMware just lost a 24,000-VM customer

And Computershare is big: the Australian company had revenue of $3.3 billion last year, its 14,000-plus staff work across more than 20 countries, serving 40,000 clients and 75 million end-customers. All of which requires 24,000 VMs – a fleet few orgs will match.

While I agree that a company that has a $16B market can't isn't eactly a tiddler, in this day and age of multi-trillion dollar ($US at that, not the Aussie Ruble) companies, maybe from Broadcom's point of view anything less than a $100B company isn't worth their time ...

Re: What an absolute s**tshow

> If I had any VMware stock,

Since VMWare is wholly owned by Broadcom, it would be physically impossible for you to own any VMWare stock since, by definition, all VMWare stock is owned by Broadcom. That's why Broadcom can unilaterally make changes to VMWare licensing, as literally no private citizen or company in the world has any say over it. The only one's who could have a say would be governments if they decide there are anti-trust or other regulatory breaches by such a decision.

Re: 24,000 VMs

> Or about 1400 for this organization, if everyone has a PC. I wonder what the other 22,600 virtual machines are for?

maybe for:

serving 40,000 clients and 75 million end-customers.

75 million end-customers are going to need some computing resources to do their interfacing with the company (logging into their accounts to see their share holdings and so on). And providing appropriate resiliency/High Availability to those same customers.

Also, often VMs are 'smaller' servers than a traditional server you are talking about. Microservices. So instead of 1 server providing a webserver, local disk, some sort of actual transactional processing (e.g. a Java application server doing work) and databases and whatnot, with VMs you are going to split all those services out into their own VMs - webserver, application server, file store, database, etc. And each of those will be smaller, so instead of having a single web server handling 10000 requests/second (say needing 10 cores and 64GB RAM), you'll split that into 10 VMs each processing 1000 requests/second and having 1 core and 6GB RAM. That makes each individual 'server' simpler and easier to configure and manage - less impact if it crashes, and easier to spin up new instances for more load and shut down unused instances when load decreases, and live migrate them between physical 'boxes' to better manage load across the VMFarm - e.g. maybe you've got 3 physical servers of 24 cores and 256GB RAM that you are paying hourly rent to a cloud provider for, load goes down, you can live migrate all the VMs to only use 2 of those boxes, and stop paying the cloud provider for that 3rd 24-core/256GB RAM box for 12 hours, then as load ramps up you spin up or move instances back to that third 'box' and start paying 'rent' again to the cloud provider for that box you are only using for 12 hours. It also allows beter tuning of each individual VM/server. A webserver needs different tuning parameters than a database that needs different to a file server that needs different to a application server that needs different to a data store. Having them all on the same box means compromise in the server config as the same server is doing them all. Splitting them up so each VM handles a specific type of service (web, database, applicaotin, etc.) means that each server (VM) can be tuned best for its workload without compromise.