Posts by K555

Google's email spoofed by cunning phisherfolk who re-used DKIM creds

The original DKIM sig

"The phishing mail linked to a URL at Google Sites" and "claimed the recipient must comply with a subpoena from an unspecified law enforcement agency"

but..

"....valid DKIM signature, meaning it was signed as Google as a legitimate message. The attackers saved the email without altering any of the signed content"

First day back at work and only one coffee in, so I may be being a lemon here and was just working out how you'd achieve this so went back to read the spec for DKIM.

So would i be right in thinking the ones google had sent out that they used had 'I' tag to limit the length of the body used for hashing? Allowing them to add their content after the message.

Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft. Readers say it's all been downhill since Clippy

Re: Ah, ya know what?

You run a Bethesda title without issues!? ;)

Re: Ah, ya know what?

Windows user for 30 years here. Even a fan of it from about 2000 to 2010. Although I was obviously using it wrong because I ended up having to count the problems I had with it within a week on the fingers of one hand, and then use the other hand if there was a feature update.

Linux user for 5 now. Decided to swap to it on desktop because I was so very very envious of Windows.

VMware revives its free ESXi hypervisor in an utterly obscure way

Bit late?

This news comes after we've just gone through evaluating, testing and implementing a shift away from VMWare. This was partly because there wasn't anything on the table to fit small customers and get them into the ecosystem, the type who may (or may not) be growing into the full licence paying type. Absolute killer for organic growth.

That was Broadcom's aim, wasn't it?

Trump kills clearances for infosec's SentinelOne, ex-CISA boss Chris Krebs

Re: How pathetic can you get ?

Reminds me of Father Ted's Golden Cleric acceptance speech.

Or the Alan Partridge "Needless to say, I had the last laugh."

Microsoft resets 'days since last Windows 11 problem' counter to 0

Re: M$

It's a fairly historic reference now, 2021. But an example I'll not forget.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/11/printer_problems_windows_10/

BSOD with 'certain printers' from 'certain apps' when trying to print. In our case, I think it was Cannon and HP from Outlook or Word. My point being, no matter where the fault lies (and my WORD do I despise print drivers by and large!), an HP printer on Windows 10 trying to print a word document isn't exactly an unusual setup.

Re: M$

"You've also suggested that Micros~1 doesn't test anything. I don't know what processes they have in place but I expect they have a substantial investment in testing."

From an outside point of view, it's hard to see the return on that investment when they manage to release an update that causes windows to blue screen if you're running type 3 print drivers and try to... print.

That's not a bug with a small footprint.

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

Re: Only $1M?

(In an attempt to stem the flow of downvotes)

I was attempting to poke fun at my own historic pedantry making me want to point out that digital is not synonymous with binary. Yes, we're very often talking about binary encoded data, but that's not universal.

And that my minor point is now eclipsed by what Michael Strorm's comment is referring to.

70 year old tech?

Cloud providers really need to get a move on. Hard discs are about 70 years old too! Better tell Google.

Re: Only $1M?

I used to get a little upset over the tendency for people to describe digital signals as '1s and 0s'.

Given the creeping misuse of the word now, I've had to give up on that one ;)

Microsoft lists seven habits of highly effective Windows 11 users

and even farther back for users who remember the Windows 98 Active Desktop

My overriding memory of active desktop was the big white 'Active Desktop Recovery' background with the 'Restore my active desktop' button on it. Windows 2000, I think.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Re: "My mouse is going the wrong way"

Just use the keyboard.

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

User foot shooting

We had a user that kept a lot of personal data on their Laptop. They kept it outside of a backed up area and were quite aware of this. But they were also confident it was fine because they'd purchased a USB HDD to make a copy to.

Fair enough, really.

Until their laptop died. Being enterprising enough to sort their own backup, they were also happy to have a go at fixing it. So they created a Windows recovery disc.... using their backup USB drive.

The first thing I panic about...

I check backups are working. I check them at random, I check them on schedule, I get reports, I have live monitoring for replication jobs.

If someone phones up and says 'I've lost a file' I STILL get a sinking feeling and think to myself "Shit! I hope the backup actually works!"

Windows 11 roadmap great for knowing what's coming next week. Not so good for next year

Re: Stay on win 10.

I've been using the 'Tiny 11' ISO in a VM a bit for the odd bit of software that can't run under WINE.

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

And they'll probably have it done faster than I can find an f'in setting in the Sharepoint admin centre.

Now Windows Longhorn is long gone, witness reflects on Microsoft's OS belly-flop

Have you ever noticed the people just 'learn' to work around the search box on the start menu without thinking?

Quickly type 'notepad' into it before it's had a chance to wake up and it'll display a bunch of help results or web search results for the word 'notepad'. It's then second nature to just delete the 'd' off the end and, hey presto, Windows has worked out you might want a program it has called 'notepad'.

I swear it's been doing that for over 5 years... yet they think it's time to pile resources into co-pilot.

China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust

Re: 1 MW charging

I don't recall anyone giving me any training before letting me pick up the end of a hose/pump arrangement that delivers flammable liquid with a potential 30MJ/S.

As Elon Musk makes thousands of federal workers jobless, tycoon pushes for $56B Tesla pay deal

Re: I don’t care

Elon says shorting Tesla means you hate the environment.

Google's Chrome divorce still on the cards as Trump's DoJ plays hardball

Re: ELI5

I want to give you an up vote for very possibly being right.

And a downvote for making me more miserable than I already was.

I also use Bing now pretty much exclusively for search

I can't say that I've ever seen or heard someone declare that they use Bing to search (deliberately).

No judgement, it's just a very rare thing!

No peace for Gandi this past weekend, after storage SNAFU breaks email and more

I'm starting to use him for fact checking in the same way I use the Daily Express.

Primary source you can use to quickly rule out what definitely didn't happen (and catch up on Princess Diana).

$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well

The poor poor helpdesk

How many calls do you think they take along the lines of "I've got real problems with my PC, Excel keeps crashing"

Of course, I mean relative to the usual amount.

GNOME 48 beta is another nail in X11's coffin

Re: No Thanks

This is a really insightful response. Although I think whilst you correctly identify this can be a generational thing, there's an element of how people naturally approach their PC as a tool that's as much nature as it is nurture.

Although I think it's also possible I just want a teleprinter and I was born 50 years too late ;)

>> "It's aimed at reducing visual clutter, hiding that away, bringing a restful minimalism to the desktop."

Nail on the head - I've written a post further down (no doubt far less salient than yours and busy accruing downvotes ;) ) where I think I'm reaching the conclusion that that's what I want and what I've always wanted from a GUI... the bare minimum to add something useful or be a bit faster than just using a CLI alone and for it to butt out of everything else. I still switch away from mouse to keyboard frequently (for instance, browsing a deep folder structure in a file manager, I'll use the top bar and type / tab complete my way through instead of clicking on folders).

>> "To my colleagues in their 30s, my desktop with an efficient vertical panel and a keyboard-dominated UI is a visually overwhelming nightmare."

Visually overwhelming can actually drive me to the point I very literally stop doing any meaningful work. I end up just 'checking the status' of everything in a loop.

>> "Phones don't do things like minimising apps so nor does GNOME."

I must turn that back on subconsciously! All of mine have the minimise option and I swear I don't remember changing it.

I can feel the downvotes coming! Be gentle.

I really like GNOME. To the point it's the UI I'd pick over anything I've ever used. For the way I think/work, I just find I can 'zip about' it better than any other OS/Desktop I've used (Ubuntu 22 or 24, very little customisation done). It's a bit sad, but it's almost made me enjoy using a PC again.

There, I said it!

Before you fly to that 'down arrow' and add one more use cycle to the microswitch on your mouse, that's not supposed to be a 'I love GNOME because it's great and you're all wrong!' - I'm just trying to understand how I've come to quite like something that generates so many derogatory comments (including a tech at a client looking over my shoulder and saying 'wow, you use GNOME?') when I get along fine. Genuine question that pops into my head every time I read a Linux Desktop article and it's comments.

I came GNOME as an utter newbie - the first time I'd tried to use Linux as a desktop for the day to day and I picked it out for my OpenSUSE install (can't remember why now, but it wouldn't have been an informed decision, I was too busy being angry at Windows 10). I have to confess the thought hadn't really crossed my mind that Linux had a single viable desktop environment, let alone several.

Prior to this, I'd have considered Windows 7 as my favourable pick. I now find it very frustrating going back to Windows 7.

Have also been using KDE and Mate Desktop (is that some descendant of an old GNOME?) a fair bit too. I'm not really keen on either, things just take me that little bit longer to find/do. MATE had a theme called 'Redmond' IIRC which I shoved on on a couple of systems just to make the layout familiar, if not intuitive.

Maybe I just happen to be the type of user they target so it's been easy to gel with it? I don't like having more than about 8 Windows open in the background, any more I lose track of what I'm doing. I tend work with 1 foreground window maximised per monitor and use the super key to flit between if needed. Dock menu is hidden as I barely use it, just 'super' and type what I want - whereas it drives me nuts hiding the Windows task bar (I've not done so since I was trying to work on a 640x480 Windows 95 system and needed the space back). I don't generally like to tile windows and I don't have any nvidia kit to fret over.

LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

Re: All you need

A few times a year, someone will bring a completely knackered spreadsheet to my attention (not always the same one). It will be 17MB and be un-renderable / unusable in any version of excel that I try, causing glitches, crashing etc.

Backups won't be an option because the inherent buggyness has been creeping in over time. There was no 'worked fine' point close enough to not have a massive overhead of trying to re-input the data. Granted, these are often those dreaded spreadsheets that really-should-be-a-bloody-database that departments love to create and then rely on.

It looks like a lot of work ahead....

And this is where it's worth having LibreOffice: Open the sheet. Save-as an ODS. Close. Open the ODS, save out as Excel format.

You now have a 120KB spreadsheet that Excel opens in an instant with all the data in tact. Parties are thrown, gifts are lavished upon you and a statue is erected in your honour.

I've gotten less and less diplomatic about Excel. It's always been the worst of the lot. Somehow users give MS Office a free pass in their head and assume the PC in general is at fault and I'm starting to just say 'nope, it's just excel being shit'.

Re: All you need

I took the comment to mean 'core' office suite.

If someone you worth with is using a siloed collaboration or file sharing tool then, yes, you'll often need the client for it (or just use the web version). Teams and Onedrive are both stand-alone and free to use if you're working with a 3rd party that's licenced for it.

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Re: The last OS you will ever need

Yup. Turned out to be the last OS you'd ever want. ;)

I also remember getting a bunch of box fresh laptops out that had voice prompts on the new setup / enable spyware thing (I had a desk with 12 Cortanas babbling on at me in unison - it was traumatic). When it reaches the licence it says something along the line of "You don't have to agree, but then... No windows!" in a jokey kind of tone. All I thought was 'don't tempt me!'

But given some people's 'every other Windows version is good' theory

I think you have to decide how you're going to count 'versions' to try and make that one fit. I'm going to have to make up a spreadsheet one day to see if there's a pattern.

Whilst 95 made many leaps, I don't remember it ever being 'solid' for me till 95c came along. I'd Venture 98 wasn't so bad by SE. XP needed that 3rd service pack before I was really happy with it. So do you count 'minor' releases, service packs? What about what NT version sits under it all?

8, 10 and 11 have been stinkers for me. The only reason 10 is looked on as 'OK' now is because people have the perspective of 8. A bit like the MK5 Golf GTi being hailed as a return to the glory days because it was a sort-of-average hot hatch but happened to follow the MK4 hitting rock bottom with a very heavy thud.

I think the most onerous part of Windows 7 (2008R2) admin was the constant battle with it's servicing stack being broken and refusing to apply patches (always fun after they abandoned service packs if you went back to an 'original' image for an install, 237 you say? Off you trot). I spend far less time troubleshooting why patches won't apply to 10/11 and far more time dealing with the fallout of when the DO apply!

Microsoft's final Exchange Server 2019 update still missing as support deadline ticks down

The successor

"The successor to Exchange Server 2019, Exchange Server SE"

"We have committed to Exchange Server CU15 being the 'code equivalent' to Exchange Subscription Edition (SE) RTM release"

Successor equates to..... change in licencing model.

Windows 11 stages a comeback – still miles behind older sibling

Becomes a security risk? ;)

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: Couple of things that need to be set straight

Mostly, I've seen this because they anti cheat of kernel level.

Even in windows, they moment that's the case I'll steer clear of the title anyway.

Windows does everything they want

It doesn't quite do everything my Wife wants. She'd like it to to work consistently on a day to day basis. Apparently it'd be useful if the start menu didn't go on holiday at random.

The serious point is, we're in one of those phases where the quality control from MS has dropped low enough it's pissing the 'I just want it to work' majority of users off. Probably nowhere near enough for it to be the year of Linux on the Desktop, but maybe enough for MS to push people to subscriptions where the PC software is nothing but a shell for a browser.

Re: Gaming on Linux

I've had to 'dick around' with a few titles to get them 100% on Linux. But not many. I think at most I've lost 90 minutes to googling, faffing, testing.

Which sounds a bit damning, but that's because I don't immediately ask myself "how much time have I spent getting Windows games to work well on WINDOWS!?" because of bugs / dependencies /drivers?

The show stoppers are usually kernel-level anti-cheat OR a crappy launcher to sign into some studios 'online account' before I can experience my offline title.

Something I did note that Apex Legends would 100% have worked for ages if they chose to use the Epic Anti Cheat already provided for Linux - they elected not to. Until the Steam Deck launched and, presto, it was perfectly workable on Linux a week later. I'm very grateful to that bit of hardware for giving companies a little shove to put that extra 1% effort in.

British Museum says ex-contractor 'shut down' IT systems, wreaked havoc

Re: lax procedures

If it's an electronic lock, give 1066 and 1966 a quick go.

WINE 10 is still not an emulator, but Windows apps won't know the difference

Re: OK, I'll bite

Battery?

I sit in total silence all day unless I boot my Windows VM up to run some specific application that I've not tried in WINE. At home, I have to put up with the fan noise. If I'm on site, I rush to get whatever I need done ASAP so I can turn the thing off again before I start thinking about working near a main socket.

It's also much much faster to use a program on my native desktop than hop in and out of a VM.

OpenZFS 2.3 is here, with RAID expansion and faster dedup

Re: I am pleased to see the progress...

I had to take a look at a Synology box recently and I think I clocked it using mdraid to handle the discs then btrfs on top of that.

I assume that's because it was configured as a RAID5 which is still a no-no on btrfs.

Re: Steam?

I keep Steam Libraries on mine for a couple of PCs.

Yes, you can fit SSDs in to cache the most frequently/recently used data, although if it's not heavy random access, HDDs can usually keep up.

I've then got a 250GB partition on an NVMe drive on the local machine used as fs-cache for the NFS mount, so the most recent stuff is held locally. Even with 1gbps networking, most titles load just like they're purely local in this configuration.

"HP Microservers running TrueNAS"

The old Gen 7? There was a point where they were going for £190 new (with a 250Gb drive and 2GB RAM) with a £100 cashback offer. Lost track of how many of those became very well prices NAS boxes for customers. You can still pretty much trade them on eBay for as much as they cost new.

I'm running a pair with an add in LSI SAS card and a 4x 2.5" HDD adapter in the 5.25" optical bay. Bumping into 8GB of RAM being a little limiting now and if I use ZSTD compression rather than LZ4 it can bottleneck on the CPU, but they still perform 'well enough'.

What I can tell you is that the PSUs really like to go pop and make burning smells! I'm down to my last couple of spares now and I think that'll be what finally kicks me off the platform. I'll take that as a sign I have to suck it up and try the Linux based Scale over the FreeBSD Core TrueNAS offerings. Then grumble about how they used to be fine with 2GB of RAM doing exactly the same job before shouting 'get off my lawn!' at some kids.

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Re: Surprise

Correct, but the point is that the way it 'checks' to see if the user is an admin is flawed. If you're using a domain account that's a member of a group that's added to the local administrators, it'll bounce you because it's looking for a direct membership.

It's an example of someone that's trying to add something 'smart' to software and shooting themselves in the foot.

It'll work on a home PC where someone is just logged in as a local admin.

Re: Surprise

Not sure if this has changed, but it was certainly the case for years.

The daft installer they foist on you refuses to run unless you're an admin. How does it check? By seeing if the account you're logged in as is specifically added to the local administrator group!

GAHHH!

Linus Torvalds offers to build guitar effects pedal for kernel developer

Re: Nowt wrong with the 555 and blinky LEDs…

It might've formed part of my online identity for 25 years now...

People guess it might be related to Motorsport, but no, it's far far more nerdy than even that particular bobble hat.

Haiku Beta 5 / In tests it's (Fire)foxier / It pleases us well

Doesn't notepad need hardware acceleration yet?

Contrary to some, traceroute is very real – I should know, I helped make it work

Re: Interesting stuff

Help textbox says: "This option can help in some circumstances but may have consequences"

Re: Tracer T

I feel like I've just watched some source material for LinusTechTips.

Re: Interesting stuff

These are the people that hit tick-boxes in GUI configurations because the short description sounds useful and they have no idea about what they just configured.

And, when things fall over and you have to explain why, they say 'that's stupid, why does it work like that?'

Granted, a lot of tick box descriptions are indeed counter intuitive, which is why it's worth the google time to find out how things actually work underneath. Also, experience tells you that if it's one of those options you get on propitiatory pro-sumer gear says "automatically do magic fixes to my network and make things brilliant, with some mesh and stuff", treat the damn thing the same way you would a land mine.

Brackets go there? Oops. That’s not where I used them and now things are broken

Re: Not quite a misplaced bracket but definitely misplaced testing...

The UI is/was a also bit like that in Exchange, so you could do similar even without an errant script!

Because you were in the Exchange Management Console it was very easy to assume the 'delete' button was just for exchange stuff. It deleted the user's AD account too. I'm sure everyone managed to do that once, but at least it's good practice on recovering objects once the user phones up to tell you they can't log in any more.

Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend

Re: Bluffing

Webhosting!

I wouldn't call it bluffing, I frequently tell clients 'I can't write this stuff at all, so I'm starting from scratch with google on hand, it's really really inefficient asking me to look at this'

Why do i end up there? Because they've gone out and spent a bazillion quid on a fancy new website that runs like arse and the people that build it say "we don't usually have these issues, there's something wrong with your server init!"

What is is always down to? It's yet another Turdpress site where someone who doesn't understand all this stuff any better than I do has added every plugin under the fucking sun and at least 3 of them are sat there waiting from data from some non-existant API or stalling on a DNS lookup that just isn't going to happen.

Lost track of how many times I've had to add an admin account to the database and go rummage around.

Microsoft dangles $10K for hackers to hijack LLM email service

Re: Why?

"Sounds like a mechanism for machines to babble endlessly with each other with no human oversight or input whatsoever."

Isn't that a facebook news feed now?

Bing Wallpaper app, now in Windows Store, accused of cookie shenanigans

Re: heartbreaking to see one of my favorite tech giants

Any ideas where the programmers work now? Are they still just confined to the sysinternals tools? ;)