Posts by Terje

Marching orders delayed: Veterans' Digital ID off to a slow start

Single point of failure anyone?

I find this whole push of digital phone based id cards, drivers licenses etc to be mostly stupid. I'm out traveling, ohh my phone died since it's not charged no id or license (unless you have a classic one as backup with you), you are off somewhere your phone charged and ready, it drops and the screen dies, no id, and people say ohh you could lose your wallet with cards and id in it, yes you could, but I bet that if you ask 100 people how many times they have lost their wallets and how many times their phone have been without charge or damaged I'm sure the latter part would dwarf the former. I'm also against concentrating more and more vital things to one single vulnerable point of failure. Having digital as a compliment, fine, but it's not in any way shape or form a replacement.

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

Re: BS

You were probably not stupid and used the air at an appropriate distance and not trying to find out if you can run the pc by back feeding it from spinning a case fan, or other such hilarious adventures. a small amount of oil and even water in a line is unlikely to actually damage most computers

Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one

Re: "Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one"

Another area where AI can be genuinely helpful is with all sorts of translation, the ability to live translate speech to another language can be a great help for people that don't speak the language concerned or for you trying to ask something / explain something to a person not speaking any language you know.

Tens of thousands more ASUS routers pwned by suspected, evolving China operation

Home routers are soft targets.

Most people just install them and forget about them, I would guess that the vast majority never even enter the management interface once unless they do it following the setup guide, after that it will be left alone and forgotten, never getting a firmware update even if it's still supported and they tend to live on far beyond the end of support making them a target that is easily exploited.

Azure's bad night fuels fresh calls for cloud diversification in Europe

Re: Pre-cloud

Yes there were outages, but one config change at a company on the other side of the world was unlikely to take you and half the internet down with it.

I don't think most people actually complain about uptime, but the absurd fallout when something do go wrong.

It should also be considered to be a very vulnerable single point of failure, with cost benefit ratio that would make any analyst salivate if a hostile nation / organization want to cause maximum disruption.

Or you could (drumroll please) Host critical systems internally so you are not reliant on a company that don't care one little bit about you to not screw up and leave you without a working system. Sure there are specific systems where some form of cloud may be the correct solution, but in the end it's the computer of someone who don't give a beep about you and your data/system.

Microsoft moves to the uncanny valley with creepy Copilot avatars that stare at you and say your name

Re: Share and Enjoy…

It's always a correct time to re-read/listen/watch that timeless epic!

Mines the one made out of a towel

The first rule of liquid cooling is 'Don't wet the chip.' Microsoft disagrees

Re: Technically...

I do remember reading about tests with vacuum depositing (somehow) diamond films on chips for isolation instead of standard SiO2 which would dramatically increase the thermal performance since diamond (especially if you tweak it a bit have insane thermal conductivity. I guess that was a practical dead end since I have not heard about it since. But why care about that, I'm sure some simple to handle He2 would do the trick, should be able to handle those gigantic channels without a hitch and have almost infinite thermal conductivity :) I'm sure the small issue of keeping it at the required sub 2K temperature would just be a minor inconvenience.

Bcachefs goes DKMS after Torvalds' kernel banishment

While I personally don't give a beep about what filesystems are included in the kernel, I feel that at least some of the kernel developers have lost the plot on what is important. The kernel itself is not what is important, it's what it enables that is... So if removing something from the kernel just to make it prettier breaks / makes it slower / harder for other non kernel stuff to do things they are in the wrong (most of the time, there may be legitimate reasons for that as well sometimes). For a while it felt like we were moving away from the playground attitudes and to something more adult, but it feels like we are back in the safety of thee playground again.

icon because pirates are definitely a part of the playground.

Whitehall lobs £40M at 'critical' phase of police DB reboot

My personal opinion with regards to large government systems is that it should be done in house. Have a department of nerds that have the actual skills to manage and implement and maintain projects without outsourcing it wholesale to consultants, my strong belief is that this would result in a better product faster and to a significantly lower cost.

The downside of something like this is that it makes it considerably harder to funnel money to your friends and family or fill your own account with kickbacks...

Terminators: AI-driven robot war machines on the march

I was thinking more along the lines of...

Wakeup trigger. . .

9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6 ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... SELFTEST: OK 2 ... 1

Peripheral test ... USB Boot Media ... OK Panel ... OK Cameras ... Std:OK,Infra:OK,UV:OK 3D Directional Mic OK Hi Speed Steppers 1:OK,2:OK,3:OK,4:OK SERVOS 1:OK,2:OK,3:OK,4:OK Battery OK, level 67% Servo Saw OK booting ...

no ntp update > 180 days!

Wireless Strategic Update ..... timeout. Update Server unavailable, assuming M.A.D.

>RRRRREEEEEeeeeeeeooooooooorrrrrrrrrr!< >crunch!<

>RRRRRrrreeeeooorrrrrrr< >clatter!<

>boop<

>PING!<

Ahh friday, mines the one with an axe in the pocket

BOFH: HR plays checkers, IT plays 5D chess

Re: he's not enough of an idiot to wander too close to a full-height window that opens out ...

The same ISO 9000 that's almost singlehandedly responsible for my mail getting hammered by please tell us what you think/experience/ who you want to kill after your interaction with us...

CIO made a dangerous mistake and ordered his security team to implement it

The wonderful era of solve the computational problem faster by not starting and just wait for new faster hardware!

Commodore Amiga turns 40, headlines UK exhibition

And the countless hours of pinball dream, pinball illusion and pinball fantasy. Ohh and Wings a disturbingly good game!

edit: forgot all the hours I spent with harpoon and red storm rising.

Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it

Re: I touch it and it breaks!

What, the software / hardware didn't have an off button for the rgb? that's the only option I ever use.

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!