Posts by STrRedWolf

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Fast Start keeps breaking on dual-boot w/Linux

Ugh. Fast Start. I have to disable that thing every time I get a new Windows install, because it will screw up when you boot into Linux and then back. So many problems traced back to Fast Start.

The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves

Still a crap layout.

Well, it's better to type on... but you still don't have a good space bar on it.

...unless you got extra fingers and a thumb on both sides of your hands.

Glad we switched to the C64 early.

ARPANET pioneer Jack Haverty says the internet was never finished

What's the list of things to do?

So what's the list of things to do? Lets get cracking!

After first trying to use federal COVID-19 relief aid, State of Iowa comes up with funds to pay for Workday project

The troubles with Workday...

...can end in lost pay. Just ask Baltimore City's employees! They transitioned right before the pandemic and it's been a big mess.

26 million logins believed to be stolen from LiveJournal in 2017 pop up on hacker forum

I'm good. I moved out from LiveJournal when they got picked up by a Russian company with government ties and nuked the account. They can't hack what's not there anymore.

GCC 10 gets security bug trap. And look what just fell into it: OpenSSL and a prod-of-death flaw in servers and apps

Optional

If you ever read the OpenSSL Valhalla Rampage site, you'll see that OpenSSL's devs need all the help they can get.

Detecting use-after-free at compile time is a welcome addition to GCC.

OK brainiacs, we've got an IT cold case for you: Fatal disk errors on an Amiga 4000 with 600MB external SCSI unless the clock app is... just so

DMA and Timing

From what I can tell, this *sounds* like the drive in question was built for a different Amiga with different DMA timing. It was built specifically for one Amiga, but put in another... and the clock app was built that it chewed up enough timer ticks at that right size to let the drive work properly.

Oracle told to warp 9 out of court: Judge photon-torpedoes Big Red's Pentagon JEDI dream

Badly mixing your franchises...

Someone had a hyperspace engine failure there. "Warp 9" and "photon torpedo" are Star *Trek* references, but the Pentagon's JEDI project is a Star *Wars* reference. Next thing we know people are going to argue that Starbucks shot the Darlek first.

Queue the red shirt vs storm trouper fight jokes in 3... 2... 1... (someone call the Doctor)

Microsoft has Windows 1.0 retrogasm: Remember when Windows ran in kilobytes, not gigabytes?

Gimmie Windows 2.x

Windows 2.x had the base. I bet adding the Start menu on that and you had 16-bit perfection.

Stunning infosec tips from Uncle Sam, furries exposed, Chase bank web leak, and more

The Reg hack forgot to research outside the fursuit.

Only 20%-25% of the furry community actually "fursuit" or cosplay. So that "people who dress up" line is an old, tired, inaccurate statement. (Yeah, I sent the correction in)

More info from Anthrocon: https://www.anthrocon.org/what-is-furry/

Remember CompuServe forums? They're still around! Also they're about to die

First Quantum Link... then Usenet... now...

It was inevitable. Quantum Link's forums shut down... then Usenet died off... and now Compuserve is being absorbed and rebranded into the AOL/Yahoo/Oath borg, and with it, the discussion boards of old are gone.

Wish they'd donate them to the Internet Archive.

SCARY SPICE: Pumpkin air freshener sparks school evacuation

And badly sourced.

The report pointed to a CBS network affiliate... which isn't in Baltimore. It pulled the copy from the Baltimore CBS station, WJZ.

Yes, I've sent a correction notice in. I bet the Reg hacks are sleeping off their hangovers...

Facebook fake news: Sort it out yourself, readers

Bad use of dead character for graphic

Great timing on using Pepe the Frog in the header image there, lads. He's dead.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/05/07/matt-furie-killed-off-pepe-frog-free-comic-book-day/

Cat discovers GNOME desktop bug

Didn't find the Linux Kernel Panicing Cat?

With actual photos, this time. Timo from the Kernel list was able to find a crash/panic bug using a "feline input weight." https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/11/3/110

What data recovery software would you suggest?

The question really is: Do you need something to recover a crashed laptop, a virus-loaded laptop, or do you want something to back up your laptop so you can recover easier (aka prevention)?

For a crashed (or crashing) laptop, there is only one solution: Spinrite at grc.com. This works wonders and is worth the $90. Don't be fooled by it's tiny (3.5" floppy) size -- it's written in assembler by GRC's sole owner, Steve Gibson. Spinrite also works on SSDs (using level 1, max level 2). Get it, slap it on a CD, boot into it, scan your drive. It'll take a while but it's worth the wait and price.

For a virus loaded laptop, pull a copy of the AVG Rescue CD, and boot into it. Scan your system. Then switch to MalwareBytes and let it clean up your system.

If you Windows install is completely hosed, grab a Knoppix CD and use it to dig through your laptop and copy your data to an external USB drive. This is Linux for the win.

For prevention, there's numerous ways including Carbonite or even setting up a Raspberry Pi with a large desktop HD (or even a USB based Drobo) and setting up a "Time Machine for Unix" scheme.

Your 'funny' cat pics are weighing down the web, so here's a better JPEG encoder from Mozilla

Why not just replace the last-end compression?

Mozilla forgot one other item as well. JPEGs are compressed in phases. The first few are to translate the RGB image to a different colorspace, something like YuYv. It then reduces the image down depending on configuration (remember, JPEGs loose information by design), and then finally hands it off to a general data compression codec.

That codec? Arithmetic.

No, it's not LZW (aka XZip), not BZIP, not even GZIP (PKWare's Deflate) or LZ77 (GIF), hell it's not even Huffman! It's plain arithmetic encoding, and anyone who knows their compression codecs knows plain old' arithmetic encoding SUCKS.

To demonstrate that it sucks, the folks behind StuffIt! (Mac compression tool) put in a custom JPEG compressor, which took the JPEG, undid the arithmetic encoding, and recompressed it with Deflate. When it was uncompressed, it just un-Deflated it, re-arithmetic encoded, and passed it off as the original JPEG. It got like 10-15% savings.

Penguins, only YOU can turn desktop disk IO into legacy tech

Haven't been monitoring things, have we?

Phoronix published results of the Flash Friendly File System (aka F2FS) that's bundled in the Linux 3.8 kernel. Compared on SSD, SD cards, and even USB flash drives against EXT3, EXT4, XFS, and even BTRFS... F2FS improved performance in most cases. In some cases it even beat exFAT and NTFS.

I'm waiting for it to stabilize on 3.9 though.

WTO ruling emboldens pirates of the Caribbean

If this goes through, this means:

Pirate Bay, bullet-proof hosting services, and even Mega will land mirrors on their networks.

Internet connectivity gets upgraded ASAP.

The media companies start bribing heavily enough to cause military action.

A&B get nuked.

World War 3.

I'd move to Germany but they're even worse than the US.

Welcome to 'Vulture South'

Okay, what's Vulture Far East? Tokyo?

And what about Vulture North, since the home office (nest?) is in the UK?

'I'm a PIRATE' confessions spew from OED iPhone dictionary

Great, another Trojan horse. And why haven't these been yanked off the store?

Ohio voting machines have 'backdoor', lawsuit claims

PA Touchscreen was not calibrated.

Hearing reports that the touchscreen on the machine wasn't calibrated in PA. The Ohio problem, though, if it's a paperwork/audit issue, needs an audit.

Apple banishes Java from Mac browsers

Actually, Apple did talk to Oracle earlier and decided to get out of the biz of doing their own Java builds. Oracle will take care of that now... and considering what Oracle's done to patch Java (finally)...

Amazon lets you barf VMs out of EC2

Don't forget the DIY stuff.

Did someone forget that VDMK also works in any VMWare product (including the free Server, which you can slap on any Linux box) and Oracle's VirtualBox?

Microsoft unveils paid SkyDrive options

Would be nice if it matched Dropbox's range of OSen.

Skydrive: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android (by third party)

Dropbox: Windows, Mac, *LINUX*, iOS, Android, and many third party access.

Yeah, wake me when Skydrive hits the penguins.

Twitter update: @regsecurity – The Reg bags imposter

Agree with Patrick on @elreg being human

(First time commentard, please be brutal. :D )

I was about to suggest that -- let @theregister and @regsecurity be RSS feed stuff, and @elreg be human (with some updates on various projects going on). Monitoring @theregister for feedback will be helpful in case of problems (like hacks to Vulture Central hardware or notices of specials at nearby pubs).