Posts by Jamie Jones

Digital sovereignty is real in Europe. The UK? Not so much

Re: Puzzled Old F**t Here......

"JFC why is an article from 3 weeks ago showing up on at the top of the list?"

Ahh, it got you too! Greetings fellow traveler from (their) future!

Cisco thinks Mythos means instant death for unsupported networking kit

Re: Cisco thinks Mythos means instant rewards for writing insecure code

The analogy would be, yes, you need to replace your car, because we no longer make tires that will fit on that old and deprecated version of said car.

Cisco thinks Mythos means instant rewards for writing insecure code

Fixed that headline for you.

So, a really careful and capable coding team code for their router, and a few years down the line, they are financially worse off because customers are instead replacing their swiss-cheese coded equipment.

This is wrong.

Linus Torvalds says AI has made 'huge' Linux kernel updates the new normal

Re: a kernel running on empty fumes and burnout

I'm all for a bit of anti-Linux trolling, but that was really pathetic!

Dev proves LLMs will run on anything – even a $10 microcontroller

Re: Share and Enjoy

Really? You cannot be Sirius!

Dev who gave HashiCorp its name returns with a faster terminal multiplexer

As well as agreeing with the above comments, I don't want a terminal emulator to render characters locally that haven't been processed by the server. I remember battling with old dumb terminals that did that, it was a nightmare.

Also, I recently hit the 100 concurrent session limit in "screen". It was still fast and responsive.

And latency to servers is better than ever these days!

Americans give all-day school phone bans a ringing endorsement

Remember the comment from the American, replying to a news story that Scotland was banning mobile phones in schools? >>> Here <<<

Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks

Re: Maybe not all the data came from America?

I dodn't "tl;dr;" and whilst I agree based on what I already knew, there were some parts I didn't know, so yeah, I learnt something.

cheers!

Overton

"“I do think there is good support for the hypothesis that left-wing content is overrepresented in the training corpora of these LLMs,” Victor told us."

Says who? The overton window is different to different people, and to different cultures.

For example, some in America consider the Democrats left wing!

Tech leaders issue letter to train Uncle Sam about value of open weight AI

Re: open weight models

"open weoghts" is to AI what a free to download closed source binary is to software. You get the code for free, but not the source code that created it.

Dev accidentally commits Copilot binary to FreeBSD ports repo

Re: Timestamps!

The FreeBSD developers and committers decided to move to git for reasons stated here: https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2020/09/freebsd-subversion-to-git-migration.html

So, they prefer it.

As an end user, and contributor (but not a committer), I agree with you.

Re: Whoops

As they prefer git diffs, and I don't use git, I wrote a program that emulated a git diff... if you want a copy!

Timestamps!

Im working on my own changes to the cgit web interface to make it more comfortable (in my opinion) for FreeBSD users, where there is a *one true source* repository. (I need timestamps dammnit!)

Not yet finished, but opinions welcome:

Compare https://git.freebsd.catflap.org to https://cgit.freebsd.org

A summary of changes is here (https://git.freebsd.catflap.org/?p=about)

Tesla burns through a billion as Musk bets the farm on chips and bots

"I think Optimus [Tesla's humanoid robot] will be the biggest product," Musk reiterated during the earnings call, before cautioning that "it is a very complex problem to solve."'

Boston Dynamics! Stop sniggering back there! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNorxwlZlFk

Britain isn't considering datacenters' thirst for water in its 'AI superpower' ambitions

Disappointing

Disappointing to hear the government has fallen for the AI hype.

Still, the bubble will have burst long before they actually do anything about it!

Some Mullvad VPN customers tunnel for exit after co-founder donates millions to populist party

Re: Sad but not surprising

Fair enough. Apologies, and I withdraw that comment.

Re: Sad but not surprising

*woosh*

You really aren't the sharpest tool, are you? Peak irony that you don't even recognise when you're being mocked, and then try to insult 'Yet Another Anonymous coward' as if they are the clueless one!

Re: Sad but not surprising

I was going to reply to Philip that someone will be along to say brexit failed either because the politicians didn't do it correctly, or the lefties sabotaged it, but you beat me to it, sarcastically replying in character as one of those morons.

You even managed to throw in a hint of climate change denial too. Bravo.

Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'

"Today I tried to create an account and password for an ISP that shall remain nameless."

Well, if it makes you feel any better, they won't be in business for very long if they don't have a name!

AWS customer learns the hard way how even the smallest oversight can be mission-critical

Re: spam spam spam spam

"literally impossible to function without routing the most obvious spam to /dev/null and automatically sorting the rest to a Spam folder."

No, it's literally not. And my email address is plastered all over mailing lists and commits etc.

Don't get me wrong, I block spammy domains, and use things like the spamhaus SBL lists, but everything i block is blocked at source - if someone sends me an email, and it's blocked, they'll know about it. Nothing goes to /dev/null or some spam folder that auto-deletes after 30 days, or whatever.

spam spam spam spam

Who was responsible for his spam filters? Him, or the email provider?

Was AWS doing anything silly with their email format?

Anyway, spam folders and even worse, blackhole filters, are evil. Call me when they can literally produce zero false positives.

It makes me weep.... The lengths made to ensure SMTP was reliable (fsync before ack) and an ack mechanism that meant in the most unlikely of race conditions, you'd get 2 copies of the same email as the only consequence...

Cowboy mail sever operators have ruined the very email they claim to be saving!

Top EU court clips YouTube's intermediary defense over reviewed content

Re: Now smack them hard for all the scam ads

I've probably reported 5 or 6, and my success rate is literally 0% !

It's nice to know they do sometimes take it seriously! But note that a takedown affects one video, not the whole advertiser!

Oh well, I can take comfort in the fact I have a torch so powerful, the army wanted to ban it. And I'm typing this using my much faster internet connection, due to the magic little box my ISP wants banned. I'm paying much less to do this too, as I'm using the little power-factor correction box my electricity provider wanted banned, and despite it being hot, I've got my tiny electric heater that can heat a full room for pennies running, just to annoy the energy company that wanted it banned. But don't worry, I'm cool because I have the NASA engineer designed cooling system that dropped the temperature of my room 10 degrees in minutes! Take that, HVAC companies, and your attempts to ban it!

Re: Now smack them hard for all the scam ads

Don't forget, the government/ISP/military/energy companies want to ban these things!

What really annoys me is that youtube is a "legitimate" company. There is no excuse. And frankly, even if the takedowns were successful, I'm tired of doing their work for them. So, reject my takedowns! I'm now keeping the receipts!

Less clued up people might think their adverts are legitimate, because it's a legitimate site.

I tell friends and family to ignore every youtube advert and assume that it's a scam. I'd kike the legitimate ad companies to take note. An "ad apocalypse" based on Youtubes actions rather than video uploaders may be what is needed.

Re: Now smack them hard for all the scam ads

Very much this. And worse, every time I've reported one, I get a reply "we reviewed this advert, and determined it's not breaching our terms of service", so they can't hide behind the "we didn't know" bullshit even if they wanted to ("we didn't know" is for user videos and comments, not stuff they are displaying FOR A FEE - Imagine the uproar if ITV showed ads like these! Yet google is teflon)

So, now each time this happens, I've started collecting the video itself, the whole json data of the ad campaign, and the response from youtube. It would be cool if others did the same so we could build a case!

Using AI makes people less likely to admit they don't know something

Re: "because adults have learned critical thinking."

And not just computer systems.

The Jeremy Kyle show:

Even if you take their highly suspect claim at face value "Lie detectors results are 90 - 96% accurate", that means out of all the lie detector tests he did on his "show", one in 20 of them was inaccurate, yet he and the guests acted every time as if they were 100% correct.

Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

Re: Too many to mention them all....

Ah.. That's a good point. Still, these were big boxes meant for the machine room, and of course, there was no coffee in there(!)

Re: Too many to mention them all....

ICL in the late 90's - their new "superservers" were stylishly coloured (in purple!) and the top of the case was all rounded and curved.

It meant there was nowhere to place the monitor in the machine room!

http://arhiva.bccservices.com/Novosti/Image11.gif

AI spam filters are getting suckered by old-school text salting

Re: False Positives too?

Same here. I do have some local filters, on obvious stuff, but they will reject the message at source, not quietly delete it or hide it in some other folder without anyone knowing. THAT's what makes email unreliable.

I think I mentioned it before, but many years ago, I was involved in an email exchange with a social worker, and later discovered that one important email was never received. I did some testing, and it turned out to be a "naughty word" that was being used professionally, in context, but caused the whole email to be dropped. It would have caused problems if I hadn't by chance a few days later realised she hadn't received it. I can't remember who the council were using at the time for their mail filtering, but it was one of the usual big names.

I emailed them, giving them details, receipts, msg-id's etc. and their reply was basically "You aren't our client. We won't talk to you". The social worker didn't want to get involved: "I know the details of the message now, I don't want to cause a fuss"

Charlatans

Dark patterns in Windows are steering users to Edge: Mozilla-commissioned report

"Thus, if Microsoft is adopting the dubious design practices its competitors are accusing it of, it doesn't appear to be working particularly well."

Who knows? If they hadn't been doing these things, their market-share may have dropped to 4% rather than the current 10%!

Software bloat? This elevator needs an 8 GB Core i5

Re: Principles (again)

Did posting that awful pun give you some kind of a lift?

Re: Principles (again)

I guess you are younger than 30 years old, and are part of the "all computers need to be rebooted every few days, and reinstalled from scratch every 6 months, or they'll slow down and crash" generation?

HTTP gets a QUERY method so complex searches can stop pretending to be POST

Re: Idempotent

As someone who never had any formal training, I often have to look up words and acronyms I'm not familiar with.

I'm always familiar with the concept, and am generally amused that such a basic concept gets a cool-sounding acronym.

I didn't know what idempotent meant. The concept is simple, I just didn't know the word. I am reading El Reg as a professional. I suggest if you think it's big just to know words, then you're the one who is pretending.

Meta admits its first ‘superintelligence’ was too stupid to survive for three days

Re: Jesus wept!

They could all go to Zucks other most-successful project - the metaverse!

New tool gives CLIs a warm and GUI feeling instead

Re: Might be useful to avoid nuclear bombs going off

And ravers can enjoy the filename "x.c"

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

Re: SCO v. IBM

Weirdly, it still works if you go here: https://www.groklaw.net/index_php.html

and here: https://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index_page-20031016162215566.html

NetNut cracked as Google and FBI target 2 million-device botnet

Hi. I didn't find any links on how to do this. I did search for the background about ALPN/GREASE , but don't have a specific link that I can remember. But I think searching for "blocking with ja4 alpn grease" should help.

So actually implementing this, I did myself. I've been meaning to write this all up on a web page, but well... the TODO list is always growing!

But basically, I got this upgrade to apache 2.6 : https://git.catflap.org/apache-httpd/latest/patch/?id=e9915b2bdb47a0dca4daa144a41a3c23edc3a59a

and backported it to work with apache 2.4 which I run.

That then exposes the relevant headers, which a cgi front end parses to drop connections that fail the test. It also queues other requests in an orderly way to stop them slamming the system.

If you want further information, and copies of my apache changes and configuration, and the cgi wrapper (written in C, on FreeBSD, but it should be portable) and my notes, feel free to contact me,. [e-mail]

The actual site I have it running on is https://git.freebsd.catflap.org/ - however it's currently down as I've replaced the disks in the server, and decided it was time to do a server rebuild/update so it will be down another few days, probably!

I'm curious to know which AI Slurper uses this or similar botnets.My web server is being hit from residential IP address from all over the world.

It's currently easy to block because they spoof browsers yet don't support the corresponding GREASE/ALPN but some are getting better so it's going to soon be time to use realtime connection packet profiling - something harder for them to spoof because they'd need to write the IP stack on these small devices (many don't have the permissions yet alone the resources)

Vim text editor game teaches you keyboard shortcuts with ice cream delivery

Whenever anyone uses AI for code...

... I ask them who wrote the original that the AI copied, and do they have permission to use it?

Boffins build a better pixel capable of emitting and receiving light

Re: Seems like this would have limited applications

1200 baud? Why? 300 baud should be enough for anyone!

Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

Re: Its like memory has its own...

As opposed to Trumps "strait of warm ooze" (not my joke!)

Bold move, Cotton: Trump administration tells US techies it expects American quantum computer by 2028

Re: Dick head

Does anyone else here get vibes of "And when you make me class president, I'll make sure there is no homework, and coca-cola machines will be free in every classroom"

Telegram founder accuses Meta of sabotaging access in India with BGP hijacks

Re: It's India. Who cares?

Farage? Is that you?

Bcachefs exits experimental status in new 'performance release'

Hey Liam, sorry to hijack your post like this, but El Reg is awful on tablet in portrait mode since the website change and no-one is listening. We are unable to reduce the size of the article. The comments section is still ok.

Compare and contrast! - https://www.jamie.wales/misc/the-register-20260620.png

Also, I'm sure the number of comments would go back up if the link to the comments was changed back to html. It's now 100% javascript generated html :-(

Cheers

Britain's privacy watchdog quits after 'poor judgment' admission

Re: it's most likely that he made a remark that was either racist, sexist or ableist.

Perhaps he joked that their jewellery was crap?

Feds freaked over Fable 5 after simple 'fix this code' prompt, not jailbreak, says researcher

Well, what did you expect of an administration with petty grudges?

No surprise here. Anthropic are on the naughty seat because they don't suck up to Trump enough.

That aside, this always makes me chuckle:

"Anthropic and Google have both accused China-based rivals including DeepSeek of using “distillation attacks” to train their models by siphoning knowledge from American companies’ AI."

And how did YOU get this knowledge in the first place?

Anthropic reserves right to check ID for Claude subs

I'm not sure if you mean the same thing, but since the changes I can't zoom out the font on android when in portrait mode, and its default is HUGE! It's like reading a WAP page!