Posts by Terje

For flux sake: CISA, annexable allies warn of hot DNS threat

Or we could just realize that the main issue here is the way that DNS works and the abhorrent way it's used, and start tightening that up instead, there are exceptionally few valid cases (imo) to change the ip of a record more than a few times an hour even fewer to change the authoritative dns server. just block dns entries that abuse the system with to many changes? Or maybe just maybe redesign the system from the bottom up with the modern internet and its miscreants in mind.

Crew-9 splashes down while NASA floats along with Trump and Musk nonsense

Re: a renaming frenzy that includes the Gulf of America

I notice here that you failed the citizen renewal test, the correct answer was of course that you would buy two (one for each hand) concealed carry fully automatic double barrel pump break action shotguns.

BOFH: The USB stick always comes back – until it doesn't

Re: GDPR

I don't have a problem with cloud backup, especially at home, but Google drive, One drive etc. is not backup.

I have important stuff in three locations, my workstation, my nas, and my workstation backed up to backblaze. the nas/workstation should handle mostly all hardware faults, and the online backup for more catastrophic scenarios. "Cheap" and safe enough for my needs.

Feds sue Southwest for chronic delays, unrealistic schedules

Re: That's way to lenient!

Yes, but if that (Weather and taxi issues) effects you badly enough and often enough that you miss your schedule more than 50% of the time I believe that warrants you changing the schedule to take that into consideration.

I do agree that departure time is another metric that should be considered, but probably as a separate category, since the only thing a customer really cares about is arrival time.

That's way to lenient!

I find the definition of chronically late to be exceptionally lenient. 50% more than 30 minutes late. While I do agree there should be some degree of wiggle room, I believe that it should be more like 50% 10-15 minutes if you don't manage that your schedule is clearly not tailored to reality!

HPE may have bagged $1B order from Elon Musk's X for AI servers

I have the theory that Elon is really only a dodgy custom LLM that spews out random stupidity from time to time, when he sometimes say something coherent and less than usually stupid, the actor playing him has lost the connection with the backend feeding him lines and have to improvise. This is probably just the hardware needed to train an updated version that will not spew out quite as much expensive nonsense.

Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic

Re: infinite monkey nonsense

Don't let the Librarian catch you calling him a monkey...

Intel sued over Raptor Lake voltage instability

Re: First world problems

I built a six disk nas system based on Truenas Scale, after a few issues making a bootable usb image of the installation was easy, and I have not looked back, easy to manage, good performance, definitely recommend it.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Re: Midnight!

I told them it was to late for that caviar blini and vodka post party snack, but did they listen...

Openreach reveals latest locations facing the copper chop

Re: Amazing

While I don't know the British grid code I doubt your supply is compliant and as such they would probably be forced to fix it if you file a complaint with them.

The end is in sight for Windows 10, but Microsoft keeps pushing out fixes

5+ year old self-built PC. Note the self built, I assume that when you built that pc 5 years ago you didn't go down the route of the most bare bones motherboard you could find to save a few <insert currency of choice> that many of the larger manufacturers tend to do, if they can avoid adding a component to the system they save maybe not that much on each system but if you deliver a million of them it quickly adds up. And only a very small percentage of all computers are custom built ones, most have stamps like hp, dell or lenovo on them and if they could save money on a budget model they definitely did, sure they probably had models with everything needed, but they also had those without, and guess which ones were cheaper?

Game dev accuses Intel of selling ‘defective’ Raptor Lake CPUs

Re: Intel vs AMD vs ... CPUs

68k assembly was just so lovely

Amazon puts down its Astro robotic business watchdog

A long long time ago the usually had a good product / service usually at the time they were run by engineers. As time went by the good product / service got marginalized MBAs got more and more power, products got worse as quality is expensive and "not profitable enough" and with the passing of time they end up as they are now.

ISS 'nauts told to duck and cover after dead Russian sat sprays space junk

Re: "a debris-generating event in Low Earth Orbit."

Sounds plausible, I didn't think of internal destructive events like that.

Re: "a debris-generating event in Low Earth Orbit."

From what I can come up with, either uncontrollable spin or some part of it orbit is starting to dip far enough into the atmosphere for that to break up solar panels. or a combination of the two.

Korean telco allegedly infected its P2P users with malware

Re: "an entire team at KT"

They have been bashing samsung though. so going after KT would not be implausible. granted Samsung was for corruption if I recall correctly.

DARPA searched for fields quantum computers really could revolutionize, with mixed results

Re: So, quantum computing will be here in 30 years, then

It will arrive at the same time as the energy generating fusion reactor...

Windows 11 tries to escape Windows 10's shadow with AI muscle

Re: For what stats are worth...

I agree, I have been running Windows 11 for 8 months or so now, and it's fine and I'm used to it now, but there is no reason at all to upgrade old running hardware. There's no new features that any thinking person want. It's nothing but win 10 with slightly changed and more annoying ui.

ASUS creates a substance: Ceraluminum, which fuses aluminum and a ceramic

I just hope some of the more militant consumer protection agencies take them up on that offer.

Re: "a machine that's just 1.1cm (0.43 inch) thick"

I assume the voltage level of the battery pack is at an appropriate level like 300V or so, then 1000mAh is plenty!

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Be careful though after the Foxtrot and Tango exhibit during the Typoon with Romeo and Juliett you can still hear the Echo of that Yankee Charlie twisting his ankle tripping on that twenty Kilo portable cooler, so Papa and Oscar have to take Mike to Lima for his flight with Delta home to Quebec.

BOFH: Come on down to the dunge– erm … basement

For that you need black cockrells. And make sure the candles are proper VAX candles as well and none of that modern stuff!

UK data watchdog wants six figures from N Ireland cops after 2023 data leak

Re: What is the point?

In cases like this I'm a firm believer in not punishing thee people that made the mistake for the same reasons that you usually don't blame and punish people in aviation investigations. If you do it will only make it that much harder to find and fix problems in the future since people will try to hide them instead of reporting them and cooperating in sorting them out.

Underwater datacenters could sink to sound wave sabotage

Re: So, sound waves can be a problem

If we don't want to deploy the sharks, how about an iceberg?

Mandatory xkcd reference

Tesla nearing shareholder vote to grant Musk $46B

...the reasoning is that Musk, the second richest man in the world, may consider leaving Tesla should he not be compensated for his work during his time as CEO...

And where exactly is the downside of this?

One bank's brilliant upgrade was another bank's crash

Re: Extended Data Format Crashes System

And it's so desperately far to pan galactic gargle blaster time....

BOFH: Smells like Teams spirit

Ahh, a dose of BOFH signals the imminent arrival of the long awaited weekend!

I'm a bit surprised the new boss have not had a accident with a window orchestrated by some poor office person...

Indian bank’s IT is so shabby it’s been banned from opening new accounts

Re: The next superpower ?

I would argue that it's likely in part to corporate/social culture that seems to my outside view to be highly hierarchical and you do anything to avoid losing face to people above or below you by admitting you don't know something. There also seems to be a degree of shoot the messenger involved although I have less evidence for that.

I think that this leads to an environment where equipment easily ends up misconfigured, unpatched and uncontrolled, add some old expensive but obsolete kit that no one wants to tell the bosses needs to be replaced yesterday, and you end up with a situation where security is almost bound to suffer.

This is definitely not something unique to India though but can be seen to differing degrees in many places.

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

Re: Never worked - No Coverage

This I guess is the main reason. I would never allow it on my wifi at all, sure I could give it a separate vlan etc, but nope it would not let it touch my network, it's cheap stuff from manufacturers I don't trust to not have security issues that will never be patched.

Meter communication over the power line is mostly a dead technology there are niche areas where it is still practical to use, but it's mostly dead. There are to many problems with it and it's to easy for some electronics with a faulty power supply to knock out communication to the entire neighbourhood.

Europe gives TikTok 24 hours to explain 'addictive and toxic' new app

Re: Is social media 'lite' as addictive and toxic as cigarettes 'light'?

That is because it's almost impossible to ban something that a large part of the population is addicted to or that is deeply socially integrated.

Ask yourself if either alcohol or tobacco didn't exist in the world but the risks were known, and you were starting to market and sell it today, how long do you think it would take to be banned for health reasons, or you being straight up locked up for trying to sell people addictive poison.

For a lot of social media today we can see there are harmful effects yet there have been virtually no regulation of them based on health.

I don't think we are at the point were some more stringent regulations are impossible to impose yet, but in another decade it may well be.

Future Roku TVs may inject tailored ads into anything and everything when you pause

Re: Do you mean the company who.....

As regards to Youtube, I have been giving them however many pieces of silver a month it is they want for premium for quite a few years now, and As far as I can remember have not seen any ads in my watching. So for that single thing I have to give them credit.

CISA in a flap as Chirp smart door locks can be trivially unlocked remotely

Re: I actually wouldn't worry all that much about this

As to the questions you put.

What are the odds a burglar would know the brand of a smart lock you have and have the know how to exploit it?.

Probably quite high if we look at the "professional burglar" it's a job skill and as such would probably quite fast make it's round to those in that area of "business" especially if the owner have to manually update the locks firmware as that is unlikely to happen to a large number of them and is thus a long term viable option. If you are talking about your regular break a window kind not very high, but then any kind of locked door will result in going through an easier route.

The lock business seems to have a longstanding tradition of security through obscurity, putting their heads in the sand and ignoring known problems, so I'm not surprised at there being no answers and no patches from the company.

BOFH: The new Boss, Aiman, is suspiciously good – for now

A nice new BOFH episode was just what I needed today! Surprising though that Simon will not use this to have the "boss" sign for some nice new hardware purchases, looks like a missed opportunity to me!

Netherlands arm of KPMG fined $25M for cheating in exams

KPMG Accountants NV, the >>>Netherlands-based arm<<< of the global professional services firm, has been fined $25 million (€23 million, £20 million) by the >>>US's Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)<<< for failing to prevent its financial auditors from cheating on exams.

The only way I can read this is that it's the us fining the nl company, not that they should not pay for it (they should pay a lot more in my not so humble opinion() but it still looks like the standard us overreach of authority...

How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes

I have been toying at home with llama2 and mixtral, why?

To poke around at it and get some general experience of it and it's a bit of fun and to somehow rationalize my 4090 card to myself... Beware that running the larger models will require a "fair" (read insane by home standard) amount of gpu memory to be bearable to run.

My toying around have cemented the idea I had before, <sarcasm> that the "AI" craze is a plot by Nvidia and big climate change to sell more gpus and waste more electricity on pointless energy hungry compute. </sarcasm> Sure there are probably some cases where it can be a really good technology, but for 99% of what it's used for today it's pointless.

Bank's struggle to replace Atos threw system back to dark ages

If you are a bank, an institution that should be very concerned about security, service stability etc. do you outsource what seems to be core business functions. That seems like a unique opportunity to lose control of your system/data and end up facing all manner of regulatory, customer and legal issues should things go wrong.

Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11

Re: Can someone please tell them to stop?

I have been using W11 for half a year now, and it's fine(tm)... You can configure it to remove most of the idiot things that should not be enabled from start. If we disregard any potential "improvements" "under the hood" and just consider the user experience, in my not so humble opinion it's a slight downgrade from 10, mostly from crap being added that I don't want front and centre (Onedrive I look at you). I have luckily avoided most of the horrible bugs people have experienced so I'm not tainted by them in either direction as of now. My verdict is Meh, don't upgrade unless you are forced to or if it's a new system and you don't want to mess with upgrading when they try to force you away from 10.

When anything AI related tries to make it's way onto my desktop It will be gone the moment I figure out how to disable it, that's crap I don't want.

There's not a single feature I have found that I feel like wow, that is nice!

In another year or two it may be (with configuration to disable crap) an on par experience with 10.

Feds dismantle Russian GRU botnet built on 1,000-plus home, small biz routers

Re: Not much of an incentive to splash out

Or rather confidence in the people that leave default passwords on kit, if you have a abcd1234 password to get into the device first time when you configure it that is kind of sensible, but that should probably ring a bell for anyone remotely sane to change it.

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Re: Future use??

This shows more about how the IETF needs to sort themselves out then the underlying issue. While I wholeheartedly agree that ipv4 is a problem, I don't believe that ipv6 is really the answer, since it's one misconfiguration of my router away from exposing everything inside to the world. If ipv4 were to disappear today which seem to be pretty much what IETF wants then there would be even more carnage with intrusions then there already is since firewall configuration is significantly harder to do properly when you don't have a nat under it providing another layer of isolation when you are either a home user with no clue, or as in my case someone with enough knowledge to be dangerous.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

Re: Size isn't everything

I suggest you look at electronics suppliers like mouser, they have quite a wide selection of microsd, and it's searchable by for example technology, so if you want slc you can filter for that and yes you can still get that if you want!

Alaska Airlines' door-dropping flight was missing bolts

Re: "poorly drilled rivet holes"

Actually Spirit have both Airbus and bombardier as customers as well, but I think that at least for Airbus it's smaller components being made and not entire fuselage sections.

From what I have read / seen on youtube (so truly authoritative sources scouts honour) some years ago Boing considered the option of buying back and in housing spirit again, but given the external contracts it would be almost impossible to do and on top of that todays boeing don't have the funds to do so without taking on debt in a way that will not pay for itself.

Re: "poorly drilled rivet holes"

I find it even more interesting why in this day and age of "infinite storage", 2 hours is considered sufficient recording time before being overwritten at all.

FBI confirms it issued remote kill command to blow out Volt Typhoon's botnet

Re: Explain again to me

I think for many industries it's not the cost of new hardware that cause them to keep running ancient systems, but the fact that it's far easier and safer to keep a few ancient machines running then to get some new servers to talk to the old equipment, and more importantly make sure it's rock solid. If the controller for your blast furnace dies and the melt solidifies, the potential cost of rebuilding the furnace and the months at best of lost production far outweighs anything you spend on keeping a few redundant ancient machines running

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Re: Excellent!

It must be, it was so long since we had an appearance!

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

The FAA note have the crew accounted separately so the 184 should be actual passengers.

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Re: The real lesson...

What you fail to remember is that during that time era, optimization by the compiler was better then nothing, varied a lot, but was nowhere close to compete with assembler even written by someone not very good at it. and it took a long time for the compilers to catch up to someone good at writing optimized assembler.

Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system

Re: I'd bet good money he was also a pain in the ass to work for.

Homicides? My good man that is slander! There have never been any evidence of wrongdoing from this upstanding member of society, pillar of the community and pride of administrators everywhere!

Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?

Re: As soon as...

Obligatory xkcd reference