Posts by cjcox

PCIe 7.0 pegged to arrive in 2025 with speeds of 512 GBps

And, as with anything, faster means hotter

I think we need something faster that doesn't produce so much heat. Anyone got a revolutionary idea handy?

HP turns back on $1b in annual sales by quitting Russia and Belarus

Gotta love headline wording, HP turned back on....

If I start a sentence with "HP turned back on...." doesn't that sound like they have started doing something again that they had stopped doing prior?

Only Microsoft can give open-source the gift of NTFS. Only Microsoft needs to

What??

Microsoft teases Linux. They definitely do not love Linux.

If they loved Linux they would support their products on it. They don't. You say, "but what about Teams? SQL Server? Powershell? WSL?"

Actually, it's part of my point. Because in all of those cases where Microsoft has a temporal port or build or integration to Linux, it is very poorly supported. And their track record for long term support on Linux is horrendous. It's a closed source company, and they believe in their model (only). That is, you drive your workers to make your software better by giving them rewards/punishment. You will not find a lot of coding pride there, because it's just the wrong culture. Software that costs them money to make/support and nets them nothing, gets cut.

So, with regards to NTFS. Don't use it.

It's a primitive file system in many ways, it's designed for Windows. I say, leave it there.

Let's just leave Windows on its rapidly becoming deserted island. They don't want to leave their island, and they certainly do not want to be helped. They're happy there.

Microsoft plans to drop SMB1 binaries from Windows 11

Re: Very old.

You're not thinking Microsoft. The protocol is old, but the devices still relying on it aren't that old, and that's the point. Experts (that is, people outside of Microsoft) hacked SMB1 eons ago, but it didn't stop appliances from continuing to rely on it.

So, you say, Microsoft is smart... ok then, then they knew 15+ years ago that it was hack city, just like the rest of us. So, it took them 15+ years to close this down? Whatever....

Very old.

Mind you, very old meaning 7+ years old. Just so you know what "very old" means.

Microsoft created the beast, gave us the neighborhood, praised its holy name as lord god of os features.

And now they admit they were absolute morons. Typical Microsoft.

'IBM is now a very different company' says CEO as Q1 2022 beats expectations

We need to wait

Some companies are masters of "creative accounting". Probably need to see several consecutive quarters before making any determination.

And IBM is "big", which means they can masquerade "stuff" at will via acquisitions and sell offs. So, even after a year, we might still not truly know what is going on.

Atlassian comes clean on what data-deleting script behind outage actually did

Atlassian is making the official report available

You can get the official report if you install the Jira Oopsie Plugin, which is free for up to 10 users, then a mere $10/mo. per user greater than 10. There's also a Premium level that removes some important redactions at $20/mo. per user. The ability to go beyond page 1 of any report is supplied through the Atlassian Markeplace with plugins such as Money Money Money, you will have to check the marketplace for current pricing.

US Army to build largest 3D-printed structures in the Americas

Blast from my past (old technology)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJyAilELhkE

Red Hat gets RHEL 8.2 certified for high level US government security

Red Hat catches up

11/11/2021 - SUSE was awarded with the Common Criteria Certification (NIAP OSPP) for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2. This certification is mandatory for work with the United States (US) Federal Government. It demonstrates compliance to NIAP Protection Profile for General Purpose Operating Systems, Version 4.2.1 (CCEVS-VR-PP-0047) with the Extended Package for Secure Shell (SSH), Version 1.0 (CCES-VR-PP-0039). This certification extends our Common Criteria Certification track by US Compliance Regulations enabling US federal entities to profit from SUSE’s Certified Secure Software Supply Chain while complying with all necessary national regulations.

Samba 4.16 release strips away more SMB 1

Samba and SMB1, saving landfill

I have a network scanner, Canon ScanFront, and while it's running the latest available firmware, it can only write to an SMB1 exposed fileshare.

Thank you Samba for keeping this out of landfill. It's a great device.

We scan and just pick up the scanned image off the drive.

I'd like to keep the device for as long as I can (hint).

New Linux kernel bolsters random number generation

Re: A puzzle about random numbers.........

https://www.kodyaz.com/images/pics/random-number-generator-dilbert-comic.jpg

AWS power failure in US-EAST-1 region killed some hardware and instances

New AWS service working as expected

Amazon recently brought up their Elastic Total Failure Service and has reported that so far, it has been quite reliable. Right now the service is free for all AWS customers. /s

"I just checked. We're down." - Joe Satisified, Important Company, Inc.

A third of you slackers out there still aren't using HTTPS by default

Don't like mandates

Encryption is always necessary. http is a valid protocol.

Arbitrarily banning it would be like banning all DC movies in preference to Marvel (and yes, there are those that would support this).

Seagate demos hard disk drive with an NVMe interface. Yup, one with spinning platters

Maybe

As newer CPUs support more direct lanes to them, the idea of many NVMe "sockets" might make some sense.

But maybe we're not quite there yet (?)

Haven seen many things cycle, would not be surprised to see us cycle back to a bus bridge chip again in the future... but we'll see.

Microsoft's problem child, Windows 11, is here. Will you run it? Can you run it? Do you even WANT to run it?

You would have moved away from Windows long ago.

Let's be honest, if it were "possible", people would have moved away from Windows long ago.

So for those that have not moved, will you choose to run Windows 11? Microsoft says, "you have NO choice."

This is your final warning to re-certify, Red Hat tells tardy sysadmins

I remember when...

I remember when I liked Red Hat as a company, and even wouldn't mind the cert.

The world is huge now and Red Hat is just another proprietary lock-in style old school Microsoft-like software company.

Sort of hoping that they get ZERO takers. But, somehow, pretty sure Red Hat would not understand the message.

Is it OK to use stolen data? What if it's scientific research in the public interest?

I only do car analogies...

Wanted to some research on cars, so stole my neighbor's Lamborghini. He got mad. Told him it was purely for research in the public interest.

Tachyum's Prodigy emulator achieves first boot, runs Linux and says 'hello, world'

Next thing you know...

Next thing you know, they'll be hiring Linus Torvalds (memories)

Facebook pulls plug on mind-reading neural interface that restored a user's speech

Facebook made a video to help

Video covers the basics of the interface, how censorship will operate and telemetry/analytics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D7cPH7DHgA

IBM President and former Red Hat boss Jim Whitehurst quits

Another possibility?

At IBM, how those outside of IBM perceive them is everything.

The CentOS takeover and destruction, while it might not seem like a "big deal", was sort of a black eye to IBM reputation wise.

"Thou shall not do that."

Have a feeling this wasn't a simple "step down" by Whitehurst.

Five words everyone wants to hear: Microsoft has 'visually refreshed' Office

We found John, finally!

After 20 years of searching, we were able to find John Babich, the creator of the original Windows 3.1 icons and panels to design the new Dictator, Editor and Designer ribbon sections. Not only that, but also the new Dictator, Editor and Designer ribbon sections.

Pics or it didn't happen: First images from China's Mars rover suggest nothing has gone Zhurong just yet

Picture confirmed

Huawei has also confirmed that they received the picture at the same time. All is working well.

Where meetings go to die: Microsoft Teams outage lets customers skip that collaboration call they've been dreading

We apologize for any minor inconvenience

We are sorry that new changes may have impacted somewhat your ability to use our services.

But, please notice that your framerates in gaming are closer to where they were.

And, you're welcome!

In a devastating blow to all eight of you, Microsoft pulls the plug on Cortana's Android, iOS apps

Bigger event coming

Just wait until Microsoft pulls the plug on all 9 Discord users.

Linus Torvalds labels Super Bowl 'violent version of egg-and-spoon race'

Answering the subject line....

But also recommended Hockey as the way of peace.

Microsoft delays disabling Basic Authentication for several Exchange Online protocols 'until further notice'

Easy to say....

The problem with moving to something new, is that there are many things in play that won't work with it.

Which is why the delay.

So, what is basic auth?

While BA could mean submitting your credential over an unencrypted connection, usually, this is not the case.

The problem is that long accepted industry standards allow for encrypted auth using a username and password. For example, just about any https web site where you enter data you'd rather people not see. It's deemed "ok", because the connection is encrypted.

So, what's the problem?

Obviously there are some sites that allow people to hammer attempts without restriction (even Microsoft). So, in theory, somebody could brute force a login after trying many times (since Internet services are involved, there's latency, so this could actually take many many years to brute force, even an 8 character password).

The other problem, and this is actually bigger, is how the end point is using/storing your data. A lot of data exposure happens as those service providers get compromised (happens all the time).

But, again, overall, the reason why encrypted tunneling of personal id info is allowed, is because the world still depends on it... a lot. And some protocols are even weaker B2B (even bank to bank, for example, or medical provider to medical provider). That is, there's a ton of even lower hanging exploitable stuff out there.

Extra.... Microsoft believes that it, and it alone, owns all email world wide. And they don't want to support non-Microsoft clients (if possible). They believe this, and want this to be so true. So with that said, an even bigger security problem is when you place all your trust, all your business, everything... in the hands of a singular player with a not so great track record when it comes to security. Just something to think about.

Red Hat defends its CentOS decision, claims Stream version can cover '95% of current user workloads'

Dead broke Red Hat? Really?

Red Hat can continue to provide CentOs (remember, was once an independent non-Red Hat entity, that Red Hat took over in order to "control") as well as having a "test bed" for down the road.

In the beginning, you have to remember that Red Hat believed that Fedora was their sufficient "test bed", but due to community "politics" they had to take their hand off of that one, and it quickly started going in directions away from Red Hat.

And this has been true for many years.

Not sure why Red Hat is making a change now. But they've decided to nuke CentOs (something that would not have been nuked if Red Hat hadn't insisted on "controlling" it). And since Fedora has "gone wild", they want a "test bed" (where you and I are the testers) for their enterprise ($$$$) distribution.

All this says is that Red Hat can't afford to do both a "test bed" and maintain control of something they never should have had control over to begin with.

It takes money and effort... Red Hat is trying to escape both. Real reason? Unknown.

Revenues are up, the boss is about to give his keynote, and results are due. Time to sell shares, says Salesforce CFO

Normally, you can't just "willy nilly" buy/sell as an insider

Usually big transactions by an insider require a lot of "up front" notification about what is being "planned", that is, difficult to be "in response" to an event, etc...

Not saying that you can't do (evil) planning months in advance, just pointing out it's different for them.

If this was done rather adhoc, you can bet that the SEC will want to take a look...

Intel chief pens congratulatory letter to President-elect Biden urging work on immigration and domestic manufacturing

TL;DR

Dear President Elect Biden,

We really need to exploit some cheap foreign slave labor. Won't you help us?

Not one to be outdone by Microsoft, Apple's cloud fell over too. Unlike Microsoft, it hasn't said what happened

Choose the safe blame

Blame it on Microsoft. Then it's "ok" for it to happen.

Can't believe Apple hasn't learned this.

"Hey Chris, why are the systems all down? If they aren't back up in 2 minutes, you're fired!"

It's a Microsoft problem.

"Oh, ok, how about a liquid lunch, your choice?"

Trump backs Oracle as potential TikTok buyer

Is it just me, or isn't that the same thing as hoping Oracle dies as a company?

Is it just me, or isn't that the same thing as hoping Oracle dies as a company?

Linux kernel maintainers tear Paragon a new one after firm submits read-write NTFS driver in 27,000 lines of code

I too have been using ntfs-3g for years. Hasn't give me any issues.

University of Cambridge to decommission its homegrown email service Hermes in favour of Microsoft Exchange Online

It will consume you

Probably the worst thing about any usage of any flavor of Microsoft Exchange is that once you're in.... you're in. And you can never ever leave. It will consume you and force you do to use more and more and more and more Microsoft systems and services over time.

With that said, if you've already drank the Microsoft Kool-aid, it's a slam dunk.

Who was behind that stunning Twitter hack? State spies? Probably this Florida kid, say US prosecutors

Disappointed.

Hacking in 2020 is posing as an IT admin to get administrators to give you their credentials.

Here's some "recent" news... if somebody asks you for your password, say "no".

(unless "no" IS your password, then say something else)

Bad news: Your Cisco switch is a fake and an update borked it. Good news: It wasn't designed to spy on you

Things I also learned.

I learned that people will purchase genuine product from you if you don't turn the customer upside down while extracting all money that falls to the ground while you perpetually whack them in the groin.

Microsoft doc formats are the bane of office suites on Linux, SoftMaker's Office 2021 beta may have a solution

Summary: Bridge players have a document that is formatted like how your grandmother does formatting, without thought or structure. And, it only displays correctly using the software it was created on (please don't touch it though), Microsoft Office. Conclusion: Anything that is not Microsoft Office is crap.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

And if you run your own CA? Tough rocks I suppose. Apple === clueless about computing.

Linux in 2020: 27.8 million lines of code in the kernel, 1.3 million in systemd

I remember...

When systemd was being discussed, the idea was to not force carry a large FOSS shell (emphasis on FOSS btw) for handling "init". The mantra was that we needed something simpler.

1.3 million lines of code in systemd.

365 thousand lines of code in bash.

Just something to thing about.

Dell slathers on factor XPS 13 to reveal new shiny with... ooh... a 0.1 inch bigger screen

Read other "real" overviews...

Was going to detail all that is "wrong" on Reg's "slather" article.... just read about the new XPS from other sources. Nuff said.

Crossing the platforms: The Register checks in with Canonical's WSL alternative – Multipass

WSL, Multipass, pretty different things

WSL is a Windows specific way to run Linux under Windows.

Multipass works across operating systems allowing different operating systems, using different native hypervisors to run Ubuntu easily.

How bad is Catalina? It's almost Apple Maps bad: MacOS 10.15 pushes Cupertino's low bar for code quality lower still

The "elements" of the dumpster fire

So... really, there are some things in Catalina to be aware of.

1. No more 32bit support. If you're holding on to old software, like a bought copy of Office 2011, you will be frustrated. Also, even venerable apps like Creative Cloud have had some problems with add-ons that are still 32bit. So, IMHO, this is probably the biggest thing to be aware of as "important" stuff might not work for you on Catalina. Is there a list of software somewhere? Not sure. There might be some kind of "checker" program out there.

2. Apple's version of UAC. More things are going to ask your permission. Interesting that during the MS Vista days, Apple ran ads mocking the UAC feature of Windows and now, they sort of have the same thing. Hopefully this is just more of a nuisance.

3. Protected OS area. With Catalina you can lock down the OS areas from external modification. This might cause problems for some software, but usually not.

(there are other "big things"...)

Anyway, like most Apple shops, we have been kicking the tires so to speak, and at least for our users, we don't view much of Catalina to be a big problem, sure... we have some rough things relating to TCC (#2) that we still need to work through, but in general, we're ok. Has Apple been making some fairly radical changes in Mojave and Catalina... definitely. And some of these changes can frustrate an Apple shop where processes and procedures for "imaging" or "network install" were used. Probably nothing big for the user community. With that said, not sure there's anything terribly great or awesome forcing you to upgrade. You might just wait until you need a new device (talking home users) and accept whatever OS version it comes with.

We asked for your Fitbit horror stories and, oh wow, did you deliver: Readers sync their teeth into 'junk' gizmos

Ditto, never again.

Not me, but the rest of my family went all fitbit... had them break, get more expensive (top of the line) fitbits and have them break. They're done with fitbit.

Breaking, literally: Microsoft's fix for CPU-hogging Windows bug wrecks desktop search

They did respond!

Microsoft has been trying to respond, but the latest update has prevented them from doing so. Please be patient.

For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020

How very PHP of them.

Anyway, same old problems when people "in the name of good", create a lot of pain. Well done. Well done.

You like magic tricks? See this claim that IBM bungled an Obamacare IT project? Whoosh, now it's a $15m check

We had nothing to do with it!

I'm thinking IBM would have taken full credit for a successful rollout of a insurance exchange. What do you think?

IBM is trying to throttle my age-discrimination lawsuit – axed ace cloud salesman

IBM doesn't do "win - win" and they never lose

That subject line is very true of IBM. They know every trick in the book and "paper wise" they own you, you just don't know it yet. Taking on IBM and winning... would love to see it. IMHO, if you think you have a shot, I'd buy some kevlar.

Microsoft, you shouldn't have: Festive Windows 10 Insiders build about as exciting as new socks

They are working on a major new feature

The next insider build will include something new for Windows 10, called "testing".

"We believe that 'testing' will be received as the most well received update to Windows 10 releases over the past year."

It's the wobbly Microsoft service sweepstake! If you have 'Teams', you've won a lifetime Slack sub

Of course, given recent statements from the rumor mill...

Recently the rumors are that Microsoft may be ditching Edge for a new browser based on Chromium (or maybe just WebKit?). Microsoft deploys a Linux enivronment, tries to support Powershell (by the way, poorly) on real Linux, attempts to move away from Wrm to ssh, yes you're Windows has an ssh daemon now.... etc...

Maybe Microsoft should just buy Slack and go with that...

You think you're hot bit: Seagate tests 16TB HAMR disk drive

Amazing advances

Used to be, I just lost 1TB. Now we'll be able to say, I just lost 16TB.

We (may) now know the real reason for that IBM takeover. A distraction for Red Hat to axe KDE

Broken by design

Gnome is broken by design. Why have a background if you can't use it? It's just weird.

With that said, RHEL's KDE implementation was also pretty broken. Maybe Red Hat's goal is to make every DE non-functional? They've done a pretty good job.

If you want a good KDE experience there's always SUSE. IBM's crush of Red Hat could mean opportunity for SUSE. Maybe they can hire back some of their talent?