Posts by ssharwood

Boss wrongly claimed IT deleted his files, refused to learn the one-click fix

Re: New login procedures

Horse ... water ... leading

Sigh :-(

Google engineer unplugged every fiber they could see and – surprise! – took down a chunk of the G-Cloud

I was thinking that too - it would make a fine Who, Me?

If you're out there, Google chap - maybe suddenly former Google chap - you know where to find us!

Cloud-managed earbuds sound strange - as a concept, and on a plane

Re: long-haul?

I should clarify. I take 14-hour AUS-USA flights a couple of times a year and quite like a mid-flight break in which I stand, stretch, remove whatever audio earwear I'm using, then settle in again. Buds that last 6 hours and recharge in 15 minutes work just fine in that setting. This also works for 8-hour SYD-SIN or 10-hour SYD-HKG trips.

Quit VMware and you’ll emerge with more complex and less capable infrastructure

Re: Shouldn't this piece be clearly labeled with the FLUFF emblem?

FYI we continue to label sponsored content as such and the session I attended was not conducted under any auspices.

Custom PC worked in the lab, failed on site – and so did the angry client

Re: "and a ping to home worked... but nothing outside the box itself was reachable."

Yup, that's what I meant

AWS lets agents drive its virtual cloudy desktops – which could cost 500,000 tokens per click if used carelessly

Nah just a typo dammit.

but a good gag ;-)

Yahoo! Japan’s owner consolidating 164 OpenStack clusters into one

Re: Yahoo!

Sharwood here - think curry, not forests.

For a story directly about Yahoo I would Use! The! Old! Format! But this one touches on Yahoo! Japan only, and all those !'s add a lot of visual noise.

I also suspect that kids these days have no idea Yahoo! even exists ...

While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

FYI, nope.

When writing On Call, I look for a relationship between the contributor's name and whatever Regomized name I pick. In this case it is very obscure rhyming slang regarding their surname.

Simon

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

Re: "Well, as you're on site...."

Is there a more expensive phrase than "While you're here ..."?

Parachutists told to check software after jumper dangled from a plane

Re: Tully

Four meters is bugger all for Kiwis - Fjordland in the South Island gets about 8m. Which can make a mess of some of the otherwise excellent walks in that part of the world.

I've been lucky over there: just one day of rain in ten days of tramping.

Actor couldn’t understand why computer didn’t work when the curtain came down

Here in Oz, supermarkets inexpicably start selling them between Xmas and New Year.

Tech troubles create aviation chaos on both sides of the Atlantic

Reg hack Simon here - I co-wrote this piece, edited it, and decided on the timing of publication.

FWIW the timing of this story was entirely down to the fact we don't work weekends. I arrived at my desk on Monday down here in Australia and one of the things in my edit queue was a short version of the story that mentioned only the EU outages. I was already aware of the US situation, and decided that as the EU angle was already widely known, a piece on both incidents would be more valuable.

When we are around and in a position to deliver very timely coverage, we pounce on news. For example, I was on duty down here in Oz when the substation fire took out Heathrow back in March. Our story was up at 04:39 UTC https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/21/heathrow_closure_datacenter_resilience/ - we were among the first to cover it, and almost certainly the first to advise on the datacenter impact.

When CrowdStrike's massive fail hit last year, we had the story at 06:46 UTC.

We also break stories almost every day. Stick around. You'll see lots of stuff here before it appears elsewhere.

News from a possible future: ‘Rampant jellyfish cause AI outage by taking datacenter offline'

Re: Release sea turtles

Introducing species seldom ends well

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

See? Steel-toed boots can be needed in the datacenter. Call HR and expense 'em

AT&T claims VMware by Broadcom offered it a 1,050 percent price rise

Re: No sympathy

That's a very good point!

On Call’s Greatest Hits, as voted for by you, the readers

Re: Someone didn’t check their numbers!

Go ahead, add another comment,. I dare you. We'll send you another ad as a prize (assuming you don't block!)

ICANN reserves .internal for private use at the DNS level

Re: Is it really final?

Sorry bout that folks - board docs here with the decision and links to consultations. https://www.icann.org/en/board-activities-and-meetings/materials/approved-resolutions-special-meeting-of-the-icann-board-29-07-2024-en#section2.a

Tape is so dead, 152.9 EB of LTO media shipped last year

Re: Penalty

Is writing a prompt to have ChatGPT do this allowed? It's manual work! Asking because I'm still not sure of any other use for text-to-text services ....

IT infrastructure scared away potential buyers of struggling e-commerce site

Wasn't my intention to sneer - as I am a MAMIL myself.

Rather thought i just landed the story with a nicely circular little jape.

Shall punish myself with an extra coffee when next I ride.

Simon

Atlassian loses half its CEOs, but customers stay solid after Server products exit support

Re: So another CEO that doesn't talk to customers?

Solid point there on Atlassian security. It's a weak point for sure

Japanese government rejects Yahoo! infosec improvement plan

Re: Surely you meant…

Coupla things here.

The! Apostrophe! Gag! is pretty old now, and also makes for pretty lousy readability IMHO. I like to nod to it, but not overdo it.

Also, Yahoo Japan is not Yahoo! and has tenuous lineage to the purple palace. The back story is complicated, but applying the apostrophe gag is therefore not entirely accurate.

And FWIW I try to slip in some linguistic delights to most of what I write, and to the headlines and subheads I edit.

S.

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

Re: Network?

Oh well played.

Insurance job?

Re: So, he was just fired ?

I was tempted to coin the term "Nepo techie" for this piece but wasn't sure the reference would be appreciated

Re: Jazz Cabbage

Thesaura-wha?

Off the top of my head I could have used

Waccy Baccy

'erb

weed

smoke

leaf

Mary J

....

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Re: 10.*.*.*

Yes because internal use of the 240/4 block shows up in global traffic. It's still internal use ... but evidence leaks

VMware's end-user compute products are for sale. Who might buy 'em?

Late to report? No. We reported the divestment plan DURING Broadcom's earnings call. If we weren't first, we were among the first handful to report this.

We then CHOSE to offer commentary on that decision at a later date. And did so without reading the TechTarget piece.

Commentary doesn't always need to follow events closely.

Re: Where do VMware Fusion and the like fit in all of this?

Fusion and Workstation are being kept- they're considered core

Doom turns 30, so its creators celebrate seminal first-person shooter’s contribution to IT careers

Re: "Doom 1993 from the Microsoft Store"

I had the MSFT store icon right there, but Steam isn't installed on this PC.

Don't judge me, please.

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

Aaaah Clapham Junction ... I pased through in the first few days of my time living in London. Having previously only seen touristy and nice residential bits it was quite a revelation ... I later learned that the district was gentrifying. All the 20-somethings I worked with referred to it as 'Claaahm' to denote its upmarket shift.

You had to go there? I thought of a mention while writing this On Call and held back

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

Or you could sit in the prison to get to a more interesting place to ride bikes ..

Re: in a 3-3 economy class configuration.

I once set my alarm to get up at 0500 to get a flight from LHR-BKK. But I had forgotten to change my alarm clock from French time so it went off at 0400. Then I had a middle seat and didn't get a wink.

Next, the 12 hour layover in BKK, which I spent being driven around in a TukTuk to see the sights.

On the BKK-SYD leg I fell asleep the minute I sat down, and woke up when the wheels hit the ground.

Best flight ever.

Re: "leaving airlines to decide if they want to cram passengers in"

Not necessarily. QANTAS plans relatively spacious layouts, and premium prices, for the A350s it will fly nonstop from Oz to LHR and JFK.

People won't fly them otherwise.

The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right

Re: While the world slowly turns n burns.

FWIW I wasn't suggesting it's a vintage phone but that it comes from the 2019 vintage. Fine distinction

Florida Man and associates indicted for conspiracy to steal data, software

Re: The smell of desperation

So here's the thing. When a public figure says "Russia, if you're listening", later tries to induce a foreign power to interfere in domestic politics, tells a zillion lies about an election, and refuses to assist in retrieval of classified documents, I don't see investigations as attacks - I see them as necessary and appropriate. And just the sort of thing that a mature democracy with a strong rule of law encourages and can tolerate.

S.

Re: What does this have to do with tech?

Charges of computer trespass and theft of data seem to me, prima facie, to have quite a bit to do with tech.

Re: The smell of desperation

OK I'll bite. I'll regret it, but here goes.

I just don't get the logic behind the "lawfare" argument. The defendant literally asked Georgia's governor to find him some votes, and has failed to produce any evidence that the election was "rigged". The Georgia indictment points out that his associates tried to mess with voting machines. How is that stuff NOT worthy of investigation? Or condemnation?

I gather another strand of the "lawfare" argument is that the timing of the cases is suspicious given campaigning season has commenced. Yet I suspect that if the indictments had been made earlier, critics would have dismissed them as the result of rushed investigations ... seems there's no way to win against this argument.

I say from a distance and without a vote to cast - but as an increasingly stunned observer of US politics which from down here looks to be dominated by ideology rather than a genuine interest in governance.

Microsoft to hike prices in Australia and New Zealand

Re: On the grounds they oppose freedom of the press

I see what you did there. Nice.

Australia fines tech companies for exploiting foreign tech workers

Re: Sport

Bring on The Ashes. Which our men’s and women’s team both hold. And the women have thrashed all

Comers for years. But yeah the Wallabies are woeful.

WTF is solid state active cooling? We’ve just seen it working on a mini PC

Re: "Frore is confident it can defeat dust": More details please.

There’s a dust filter in place rated to last for years

Pixies keep switching off my morning alarm, says Google Pixel owner

Dad rockers? C'mon Doolittle is a timelessly classic album. Arguably a precursor to Nirvana and much of the 90s Indie scene.

If I didn't work here. I'd be telling The Reg to pull up its socks

IBM teases AI-infused hybrid cloudy upgrade to z/OS - Bingo!

Re: You're not kidding about the buzzwords!

Oh, well played! Wish I'd thought of that!

Oh, 07734! Internet Archive debuts vintage calculator emulator

Re: What no 5318008

The topic came up during editing and we decided not to go there.

Twitter starts auction to flip the bird, furniture, pizza ovens, gadgets galore

Nope: We were first to cover this - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/13/nasa_software_oracle_overpayment/ - and this - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/13/microsoft_gdap_double_byte_delays/ - and this - https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/11/teams_premium_more_expensive/ ... and those are just the stories I know we were first with last week.

I could go on. But this Twitter story was written over the MLK day long weekend, and long weekends are always terrible times for news.

And FWIW I think this is real news: Twitter made losses for years and the fact it bought $4000 USB-charging bicycles might tell us why ...

Basecamp details 'obscene' $3.2 million bill that caused it to quit the cloud

Re: "Most of that spend – $759,983 – went on compute"

Nah I just stuffed up. Storage is the largest single line item. Compute comes close. Edited. And strapped self to arse-kicking machine.

Microsoft to move some Teams features to more costly 'Premium' edition

Re: vanilla

Fair cop. Have slapped myself in the vocabulary and will wear the bruise with pride.

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

Re: Won't fly

I did worry our list is a bit stale, male, and pale. Thanks for the suggestion.

Re: Ughhh...

Which is why we asked for other suggestions. C'mon!

Japanese convenience store chain opens outlet staffed by avatars and robots

Re: Automation may keep corporate costs down, but does not keep retail prices down.

Upvote for the Stross reference.