Posts by tygrus.au

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

Electrical contractor says minor interruption

Electrical contractor says minor interruption & doesn't mention to fully disconnect equipment from mains supply - famous last words before the smell of burnt electronics.

Example from my experience but it didn't happen in a datacentre, but it could happen:

While upgrading power from grid to the meter board from 1 phase to 3phase, the licensed contractor approved by the power company (retail/network/supplier) got the wires mixed up so 415v went across circuits designed for 230v - 240v. Anything connected with a ON/standby was damaged. A very costly & time consuming mistake even if some items covered by our/their insurance.

SpaceX Starlink sat streaks now present in nearly a fifth of all astronomical images snapped by Caltech telescope

Stack multiple images and avoid areas with streaks

Long exposures with telescopes that move slowly to track a distant target get the streaks.

Stack multiple image frames and avoid areas with streaks. The area affected per frame would be smaller when you increase the number of frames per final image.

Flash? Nu-uh. Windows 11 users complain of slow NVMe SSD performance

I consider Windows 11 is still in beta testing.

Australian court rules an AI can be considered an inventor on patent filings

An artwork belongs to the artist not to the tools, brushes & paint they use. A typewriter was never the listed author of any book.

Likewise, the output of computer software belongs to the user and some credit (eg. software license fees) ultimately goes to the programmers.

Any patentable idea generated by AI should belong to the AI design team & any input by the user NOT the software/computer.

Battery recycling boosted by dentist-style ultrasonics, if manufacturers can cooperate

What would be the effect of using the same ultrasonic frequency sound from further away wirh greater power? Can this be weaponised?

Hubble Space Telescope to switch to backup memory module after instrument computer halts

Hobbled space telescope.

Rocky Linux is go: CentOS founder's new project aims to be 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux

If they wave the $$$ to buy it up ... run

Never trust a big corporate to keep open source the same purpose, type/level of development & stay open.

Marine archaeologists catch a break on the bottom of the Baltic Sea: A 75-year-old Enigma Machine

Re: Old typewriter

I could not keep up with Guy Martin, I miss every second word on average. English as 1st language for me in Australia but some UK+Ireland accents are hard to get used to.

Welp, it is the season for silicon mega-mergers... AMD rumored to be in advanced talks to buy FPGA slinger Xilinx for $30bn+

Big losses & asset write downs the last time

They paid too much or didn't get the value out of ATI the last time they bought up big. Huge risks. It still requires many millions/billions to merge & develop products to make use of Xilinx tech over the next 10 years.

Email innovator Hey extends an olive branch in standoff with Apple, tweaks code to make the iGiant appier

What are you actually paying for?

If Apple store want a cut of iOS app revenue then you make the iOS service an addon for a small price. Apple get their cut of the small amount. The multi-platform service is paid for outside Apple store because it's not an iOS exclusive.

From off-prem to just off: IBM Cloud goes down planet-wide so hard even the status page didn't work

What support?

If you have a problem, IBM can blame it on the last one leaving the office.

Watch an oblivious Tesla Model 3 smash into an overturned truck on a highway 'while under Autopilot'

This is a driver assist not an autopilot !

They need to combine techniques and multiple systems over larger areas for redundancy and increased AI. At least 4 sensors: Daylight vision, IR, LIDAR & GPS. If just 1 of these systems can see a possible danger then assume this as being correct. If a system has unreliable readings that don't match expectations then slow down, proceed with caution depending on the limits of the other sensors. If there are conditions or objects obscuring the view of the sensor then don't assume everything is perfect. Don't take the sky or lane lines for granted. Watch the driver at all times, if they stop paying attention then alert and slow down until the driver reacts correctly. This is a driver assist system not an autopilot.

Could it be? Really? The Year of Linux on the Desktop is almost here, and it's... Windows-shaped?

Windows graphics in Linux running on Windows

Microsoft continues to add layers to complicated OS/driver/subsystem/app stacks. Now we have WoLoW (Windows on Linux on Windows), more mess and slower steps in the thicker mud.

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

MegaSoft

.. Their software just keeps getting bigger.

Dumpster diving to revive a crashing NetWare server? It was acceptable in the '90s

Rubber bands & bobby pins

The 60's DPD operator used rubber bands & bobby pins to keep the machines running.

Microsoft decrees that all high-school IT teachers were wrong: Double spaces now flagged as typos in Word

I've dropped the "Office" from long shortcuts for 20 years

I would shorten the desktop and Start menu shortcuts to be like "MS Word 2000" for more than 20 years. Keeping the "MS" as the start keeps them sorted together as a group. Microsoft are including non-Office apps & services so dropped the "Office", nothing special.

VMware’s cloudy capacity constraint stretches into third week

Update "Resolved"

Resolved

VMware Cloud on AWS Service is fully operational. This incident has been resolved. This is the final update.

Start Time: March 23, 2020 15:05 UTC

End Time: April 10, 2020 18:00 UTC

https://status.vmware-services.io/incidents/h48v9q28715t

Linux fans thrown a bone in one Windows 10 build while Peppa Pig may fly if another is ready in time for this year

Re: I'm confused..

"USMT is intended for administrators who are performing large-scale automated deployments. If you are only migrating the user states of a few computers, you can use PCmover Express. PCmover Express is a tool created by Microsoft's partner, Laplink." from the Microsoft URL above.

USMT is not designed for home users and Laplink will try to upsell from the free to the Pro for $$.

Australian digital-radio-for-railways Huawei project derailed by US trade sanctions against Chinese tech giant

Government should demand access to code & hardware

If you fear security then the government should demand access to code & hardware for analysis. ASIO (or military + security company) to analyse the code & hardware for security risks or intentional backdoors. Verify the compiled files of the company with what was compiled by ASIO so no changes can be secret after initial approval. Can we charge the supplier for part of the costs involved (eg. 1% or $5 per device)? Would other suppliers be subject to the same rules?

Microsoft's PowerToys suite sprouts four new playthings with a final March emission

Add option to reinstall what is removed

Can they add "Control Panel" to the PowerToy when they remove them?

Microsoft starts a grand unification attempt with .NET 5

I like the versioning methods where they add new features and replace old methods while leaving the old code still workable but depreciated. You then have atleast a year (prefer 2 to 3 years) to recode what is deprecated before the next major release drops the old deprecated code and starts the cycle again. Removing the old at the same time as adding new features/methods is fraught with danger. Much better having an overlap where code can be run with 2 compilers that can check the output.

Cumulative Update 2 for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 breaks SQL Server Agent

SNAFU usual Microsoft ..

Break it .. release it .. test it .. verify it .. maybe fix it ..

IBM exec told that High Court evidence in Co-Op Insurance case wasn't 'truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth'

Agile can be used for two cases:

1) inhouse development;

2) some ongoing development & support of existing installation (customer asks for features and you have a short contract-develop-deliver-accept cycle).

Otherwise, they don't know what they need, they don't know what they're getting, nobody knows the costs and we all fight when we don't agree with the results.

Get in the C: Raspberry Pi 4 can handle a wider range of USB adapters thanks to revised design's silent arrival

RPi4 2GB now the same price as the 1GB

RPi4 1GB has now being replaced with the 2GB version at the same price.

RIP Katherine Johnson: The extraordinary NASA mathematician astronauts trusted over computers

data processing systems not mainframes

Firstly, I'd like to send my condolence to the Johnson family. Katherine's achievements should never be forgotten by us.

I think they were called "data processing systems" not mainframes when the 7090 was released and earlier. The systems were made of cabinets and frames holding modules. Telephone system also had equipment mounted in frames so the phrase "main frame" was in prior use, but not the modern definition applied to computers after the mid-1960's. My mother worked in a data processing department as a computer operator in the 1960's and early 70's of MLC insurance company in Australia.

Quoted from an answer by "mgkrebbs":

"The term became more widely adopted, in particular for the large central computer used by a company as distinguished from smaller computers which began to appear in the 1960s. It is not terribly surprising that the earliest source quoted by the Oxford English Dictionary for mainframe is a 1964 glossary from Honeywell, then a producer (among other things) of smaller computers and soon minicomputers."

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/28290/origin-of-the-word-mainframe

Huawei unfolds latest shot at the phone-tablet hybrid with reinforced hinge and reassuringly Xs-sive price

Users paying for future repair upfront

Users are paying for 2x hardware. The likelihood of failure is so high they add the potential repair/replacement costs in the upfront price so it's still profitable after 2 years of potential warranty claims. Most premium phones sell with a 50% premium which is slowly reduced over the first 12 months.

Dual screens, fast updates, no registry cruft and security in mind: Microsoft gives devs the lowdown on Windows 10X

10X != 10

This strange 10X version is not replacing the current Windows 10 for desktops and normal notebooks.

Windows 10X is probably for tablets and bargain basement rubbish that readers of this site won't be buying.

Stick with the non-X Windows 10 if you're running old Win32 / winforms and apps that do something worthwhile.

Thunderbird is go: Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest

Re: I've stopped using it

Mercury Mail server with Pegasus Mail client blocks the usual web code execution and many other good features but also has a few limitations. The good and the bad as you found with others. Microsoft make it hard for others to use their API's which also heavily change over time (calendar sync, contacts & lists). Free options are nice but they need $$/time from somewhere to add features and keep it up-to-date. As time goes by, the bar for entry is raised higher and higher. Big corp/gov need to invest in open source to meet their needs. Hopefully it will also meet our needs and they make it available to the rest of us. Shareware and asking for donations really struggle getting money from users. A lot of the $$ to Microsoft go to lawyers and marketing.

Alan Turing’s OBE medal, PhD cert, other missing items found in super-fan’s Colorado home by agents, says US govt

256 items would have to be now worth atleast 2'097'152 USD. 2^21 just for fun.

You're not Boeing to believe this: Yet another show-stopping software bug found in ill-fated 737 Max airplanes

Re: Isn't THIS why we've got to teach 2nd-graders how to "code", rather than how to think?

If there's 1 sensor or 1 computer or any other 'single' in the system then you have no redundancy and no guarantee of reliability.

If you duplicate sensor/computer/network then you add redundancy but how do you determine which is correct and reliable with only 2?

With triple redundancy you assume only 1 will fail at a time so the other two agree and you assume the third has failed and to be ignored. Hopefully only 1 fails at a time. The other problem with triple redundancy is if they continue flying with 1 broken because they think 2 is enough.

Can GPS and other sensors be used to model the suspect flight parameters and verify it's suspect value? Sensor says I'm pitching up with a stalling speed but GPS and airspeed (nose) says I'm level flight (also cup of water is level flat in plastic cup) with sufficient speed that stalling is very unlikely. Auto-pilot/MCAS panic button = alert authorities of rouge pilot in the hope that it's a computer fault not pilot trying to crash the plane. Is it better to rely on a person or a computer? If in doubt, let the pilot take control who has responsibility for the plane. Warn and help the pilot but don't let the sensor/computer faults crash planes.

Whoooooa, this node is on fire! Forget Ceph, try the forgotten OpenStack storage release 'Crispy'

Sometimes like a toddler

Some computer systems remind me of a toddler: immature, stubborn, repetitive, illogical, hard to calm down...

Me: What do you mean you want "the pink one", this IS pink!

Toddler: I want the other pink one!

Me: If you wore it yesterday, it's in the wash

Toddler: But I want the pink one!

Me: It's in the wash, how about this pink shirt

Toddler: I want the other pink one!

Me: I give up, I'll get the one from yesterday with the ice cream stain on it.

Linux kernel is getting more reliable, says Linus Torvalds. Plus: What do you need to do to be him?

A tough job but someone's got to do it

Outside the kernel, Linux has great advantages by enabling many to experiment and customise applications and implementations.

Inside the kernel and it's critical to limit the possible damage caused by too many cooks. To stop the loudest idiot in the room you need someone to be louder up the front with a megaphone. Other open software project leaders have crumbled under the weight of communication, expectations and too many loud idiots. I would like to know if there is anyone else ready for any succession plan? Can anyone replace Linus?

I congratulate Linus for surviving this long and keeping the project curtailed into the finely groomed animal it is today. Linux may have not replaced Windows as the default desktop/notebook OS but Linux is still on more devices. Smart phones are mostly android based and now outnumber desktops/notebooks. Now it's all about app portability (eg. web based) and cloud hosted services (mostly Linux).

Boris Brexit bluff binds .eu domains to time-bending itinerary

UK businesses in the EU become Zombies after Halloween

So EU treats UK businesses that try to have offices and trade in the EU as the walking dead after Halloween. No web domain, no trade across UK-EU borders, no UK government approved agreements, no end in sight. They can't seem to make Brexit alive (finish the job), nor can they kill it off (stay in the EU). Brexit is holding up the whole supply chain in both directions as business on both sides can't rely on supply or pricing from each other. Trade conditions, tariffs and taxes affect price of A which also affects B that then affects price of C. They can't sign contracts because they don't know the price and they don't know if they will have the inputs or be able to move the final product across borders. It's a nightmare that many want to wake up from.

HP polishes the redundancy cannon, prepares to fire 16% of workforce

HP employees pay for management mistakes

HP board supporting the purchasing of companies like Autonomy for multiples of their value and then later writing off the losses. Now the people (different or same) in the same positions as those who lost the money pay themselves bonuses and fire the workers that earn the company far more than they are paid. Stop burning money on bad decisions and you would be able to keep your workers. There was a court case regarding who knew what, a possible lack of due diligence or did Autonomy cook the books. Those CEO's etc. are paid the big bucks to know what they are doing and don't trust everything you are told.

Spacecraft that told us 'you're screwed' finally gives up the ghost after doubling its shelf life

5cm could be an over-estimate

MSL from reliable and geographically stable locations is closer to 1.5cm for 11years (+/-0.2) to start of 2019 (trend of 1.36mm/yr). Fort Denison (Sydney, Australia) is barely moving compared to places built on sinking mud/sand (like Jakarta which has huge buildings on soft ground which they pumped the water from under their feet so it sinks more). Did they tell you they calibrated the satellite results by adjusting sensor output by upto 75cm (early in orbit) and data is readjusted for drifting times&locations. How can they say these Jason satellites are more accurate than other sources to measure mm changes. Some physical data from Pacific Islands are garbage because sensors have lost backup battery capacity and only work during hours of sufficient sunlight. A NZ study found Pacific Islands were on average, not shrinking https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1.

Antarctic sea ice coverage returned to 1979 level in the last few weeks.

Enterprise Java spec packs bags, ready for new life under assumed name – Jakarta

Re: Typical of Oracle

Jakarta, the city, is sinking under it's own weight and lack of firm foundations. See level rise is minor, the MSL of 1900 would result in the same problem just a few years later.

Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams

Will this increase the sales of the Laser Turntable

ELP sell a record player that uses laser beams instead of a needle to convert the grooves to sound. No prices listed now but years ago they were about 12K to 19k USD depending on model/options chosen. Very small quantity ever made/sold to such a niche market. If they had an order for 100 or more, then the price should come down a lot.

Roses are red, so is ketchup, 'naked' Huawei tells its critics to belt up

Point of view

Put simply "Government intelligence/military/law-enforcement agencies don't like bugs and security holes unless their the ones using them or adding them".

Core blimey... When is an AMD CPU core not a CPU core? It's now up to a jury of 12 to decide

A core is what I say it is, nothing more, nothing less

Early CPU's never had a FP unit and would still be called a CPU core when counting. Would you call the FPU of an early Atom processor a full FPU? The Atom CPU core is far less powerful than their normal desktop but everyone accepts the differences. To misquote Humpty Dumpty from 'Alice in wonderland', “..it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less". 8 CPU cores with some shared FPU resources performing better than an Intel Atom but less than a modern Intel Core i7. Buyer beware.

Vitamin Water gets massive publicity for new flavor: Utter BS

Expensive Pee

Arbitrarily adding vitamins to drinks and foods is increasing our risk of overdose, adverse side-effects and toxic damage. Drug store (pharmacy etc.) advertising piles of vitamins can be very dangerous to your health. The great thing for them is: the more we take of excessive additives, the more feel bad, the more we think that more additives will help us, the more we buy. Whole foods with minimal processing is best. Avoid added sugar, avoid artificial sweeteners.

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

Re: WINDOWS FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION

Windows 10 has so many parts that no one in Microsoft can understand how it all works together. Components and teams change so often that you can't keep up with the changes. The bowl of spaghetti just becomes bigger every year.

Re: But will they listen?

The software for Linux tries to minimise changes to the software interfaces so that if software "A v2.0" is said to work with software "B v3.x" then both try to keep backward compatibility until they bring out "A v3.0" and "B v4.0".

1) You can change the internal functions but you can't change the existing interface (the command names or outputs seen by other programs/users).

2) You can add new features but don't break or remove old features (first do no harm).

3) If you want to make major changes then you fork the code tree into a new major version release.

Because the software interface doesn't change then other software that relies on it doesn't break unintentionally.

The problem with Microsoft is that they break all 3 rules listed above. Microsoft remove and half replace features with no care. Microsoft products often have more features broken than fixed each release. They rip out the old GUI dialog and then have this new "user-friendly" process that requires more clicks or has half the functions because it was left unfinished before release. There are too many dependencies where different MS products/components can break each other. Instead of making new 64bit versions of the OS components with new names, they: repurposed the old names; renamed 32bit components so 32bit compatibility was not certain; and made a headache for everyone (only new 64bit SW should have required recompile instead they made 32bit need new installers).

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

How much of MS Office is actually needed?

My first computer had Borland Sprint 1.0, Printmaster Plus and GWBASIC. School assignments were completed with that plus: a 3 volume encyclopedia, Osbourne science books, School Project packs (poster folded up to half A4 from the newsagent); stencils; dictionary; thesaurus; cardboard and coloured pencils.

I can use more features than most but overall productivity has decreased over time as they change and bloat the software.

MyHealth Record rollout saga shambles on: ALP wants it put on hold

Most think MyHR system is a waste of $$$

Less than 20% (AMA doctors or public vote ?) think the MyHR system will improve patient outcomes

About two-thirds think it's a definite waste of time.

https://www.doctorportal.com.au/mjainsight/2018/25/my-health-record-on-a-path-to-nowhere/

There are so many limitations, lack of functionality, risks and impact to performance that the system is doomed to fail no matter how many people you sign up. Six years and ten clinical safety reviews later and we still have a long list of recommendations yet to be actioned or completed. Six years and no peer-reviewed research papers have been published that use a control trial and the implementation to show patient care improvements compared to the costs & risks.

Git365. Git for Teams. Quatermass and the Git Pit. GitHub simply won't do now Microsoft has it

How about "Gitlost"

BTW, Look up git in Wiktionary, the free dictionary:

"Git is a term of insult with origins in British English denoting an unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. As a mild oath it is roughly on a par with prat and marginally less pejorative than berk. Typically a good-natured admonition with a strong implication of familiarity, git is more severe than twit or idiot but less severe than wanker, arsehole or twat when offence is intended.

Linus Torvalds actually named the VCS system "Git". Maybe it was what he thought of most of the contributors sending him bug riddled Linux code (the first use of Git).

The name still seems just as appropriate for Microsoft and it's programming users.

Audit of DeepMind deal with NHS trust: It checks out, nothing to see here

anonymised data is not anonymous

While a sample of 1 event from each patient maybe able to be anonymised, full history from all patients quickly becomes much easier to re-identify. You can scramble the DOB but if you have access to other patient records (a health provider or private health insurer in Australia) then they become easier to match. If you convert DOB to an age at time of attendance/treatment event then with the full history of health events you can narrow down the DOB. Google et. al. can guess a family who have been sick (the keywords you've been using for searches, map searches). Facebook et. al. data can be used if you've been posting about yourself or others you have been sick or injured. It may not be open slather but some companies can potentially utilise the data available.

The ethical way is to let clients & users know the external parties who have access and potential use of their data. Not just a generic warning but to be more specific and log the access. And allow uses to block access until specifically asked to grant access prior to data being shared.

nbn™ CEO didn't mean to offend gamers, just brand them unwelcome bandwidth-hogs

Stop blaming the users for behaving like the users in your adverts

They first promoted the NBN to be the enabler for uses which had higher data use: business eg. Work from home; education including live & pre-recorded videos; video calls; streaming services; everyone in the house with their multiple devices sharing the internet; games. They offered higher speeds and unlimited download plans. It's ridiculous that now they persecute people for using the NBN plans as advertised. A remote school is not going to pay for 50 microwave services so that each staff & student computer has a dedicated service: the school pays for 1 and expects it to cater for the whole school. From what I heard from ISP's (including old cable, ADSL) around the time of the introduction of Netflix to Australia, user GB/month quickly doubled and now has tripled with major impact to congestion during evening peaks. Microsoft and other updates grow 30% pa. Advert supported content, http and https based services (eg. Cloud & remote hosted) all increase GB/month. There is a lot less simple static pages being accessed and even emails use html and images to bloat our download usage.

SAP hopes to blow the doors off Salesforce with a block of C/4HANA

Re: Hmm...

C4 is a very effective explosive. Maybe C/4HANA is a bomb waiting to explode. I like to avoid any so called "solution" which requires years worth of work and Millions of dollars to customise & implement.

I don't mind having configuration options and using existing functionality the way you want it, should take <3months to decide and test. No programmer required for 90% of functionality.

What percentage of functionality would you leave to programmers? 5%, maximum 10%

If it requires more than this then the original product was not a "solution".

nbn™ scoreboard: miracle needed to hit FY 18 construction targets

Local HFC delayed 9months

Updated NBN rollout plan has added another 9 months to large areas of HFC in the local area (those connected to the St Marys Exchange, NSW).

Late 2017, I think the plan said Oct-Dec 2018, now it says July-September 2019.

User asked why CTRL-ALT-DEL restarted PC instead of opening apps

RE: keyboard errors & TSR's

POK or BOK (Paper or book on keyboard) happened several times to my users at work.

I consider some dictators as TSR's. Either they change title and keep a puppet as PM or they terminate others to remain in residence.