Posts by LordHighFixer

The TSA likes facial recognition at airports. Passengers and politicians, not so much

No need to opt out.

Just make sure you have powerful IR leds in your glasses or somewhere, like a necklace, to washout the image. Then that whole 'you have already been photographed' argument flies out the window, and bonus, facial rec won't work.

Before the megabit: A trip through vintage datacenter networking

Ahh nostalgia

And a pint for all of us who waxed nostalgic at those descriptions. What I wouldn't give for just a few more years with that HP-2000G with a 32 port serial multiplexer and a 500MB washing machine.

CloudBees CEO says customers are slowing down on 'black box' code from AIs

Lets refactor that.

I use AI often when writing code, simple basic stuff. But I am often having to say things like "well, that would be great, if that command existed in this language", or "Lets simplify that 64 lines of case statements in to a while loop with an array", and the like. AI is very helpful in laying down you first few pages of code, but you will actually need to know what you are doing to make "good" code.

AI hype fuels pay rise – but only if you're in the right gig

AI Coding

AI Coding is entertaining. I have used a few different models and they have a tendency to make up magick solutions and you need to call them on it. To use it effectively you need to know how to code. So far it is an entertaining distraction that helped me crank out 4 pages of perl, well documented and functional. So my official opinion is ...meh..

Windows profanity filter finally gets a ******* off switch

****

*** those ******* **** ******* and their ******* **** ******* ****

Trump yanks CHIPS Act cash unless tech giants pony up more of their own dough

Please tell us to fuck off

As a lifelong US citizen,

I can only implore all other countries in the world to reject any deal proposed by the Mango Mussolini. He will fuck you like he is fucking us. You have been warned.

Thanks.

A time when cabling was not so much 'structured' than 'survival of the fittest'

Its not the voltage...

Once dropped a wrench (spanner in the uk) while working above a 48V battery bank, used as primary power for the local city telco. Did it bounce and hit the floor, oh no, did it take out the power, or trip a breaker, oh no. As is 'normal' in these cases it dropped perfectly on to the 2 1/4"x4" copper rails running the length of the building. taking quite a notch out of said rails, and turning the wrench in to a puddle of molten globules flying through the air. The batteries and associated equipment didn't even notice.

Also, back in the day, was disposing of a bunch of retired CRT's, procedure was take to dumpster, and break the nub off the back or the neck to safely pressurize them. Unfortunately I discovered that a CRT can hold quite a charge for a very long time, as I picked one up, and happened to grab on to where the cap would be fitted. Not wanting to drop a very large glass object in the shop, I just stood there as it drained through me. Only a second, kilo-volts at micro-amps, but it was an interesting experience.

The monitor boom may have ended, says IDC

Is it wrong

That I have 12 identical monitors, on arms, and another 4 "close to identical" also on arms?

Ya, I won't be upgrading until I buy new video cards. All 6 are in need of an upgrade, but I can wait a bit on those as well. (nvidia 980 class).

Luxembourg judge hits pause on Amazon's daily payments of disputed $844m GDPR fine

It would seem

That enforcement of the law is the same everywhere, you get what you can pay for. It is much cheaper to find a like minded judge and pay him to obstruct, than to cough up the fine. Not that I can say that it happened, but I can't say that it didn't either.

Amazon could easily afford to pay every claim that ever comes across their desk and write it off as a cost of doing business.

Facebook locks out 1,500 fake accounts used by cyber-spy firms to snoop on people, alerts 50k potential targets

A PR move

Designed to make it look like they actually will comply with the government and do something, which as we all know is just a little glad-handing. This is not a change for them at all.

Is it decadent that I use four different computers each day, at different times?

Posers.

My home office:

13 workstations, 4 versions of linux, 2 versions of windows, 22 monitors, and 6 servers and a mirrored dell iscsi raid array, gig fiber to the premise, and 4 hours of UPS time. Still looking at backup generators. And that doesn't count the other 'devices', phones, tablets, gaming rigs, roku, alexa, etc..

You either do IT, or you pretend you do IT.

CentOS Stream 9: Understanding the new Red Hat OS release for non-Red-Hat-type people

Returning to Slackware.

Slackware, arguably one of the oldest distributions available, is still going strong. All of the previous issues about package managers and updates have been addressed, and it is stable. http://www.slackware.com/

The only catch is you have to understand linux, be able to live without systemd, and configure your systems without a GUI.

But if you can not handle that, are you really a linux admin, or just a linux user?

BOFH: Time to put the Pretty Dumb F in PDF reader

Once upon a time

I was hired in as a contractor to work on systems owned by a branch of the government that had guns and tanks and such. The 'lifers', who were going to spent the rest of their lives in government service until they died or retired, kept getting caught out on that. Someone would make a 'drive by' request, or a phone call, and work would happen. Now this place had a pretty strict change control process, that was ignored for these requests. After a few of them got called to the carpet for making undocumented changes, that they could not prove were ever requested, my mantra, which I would constantly have to remind them of was "If it is not in writing it never happened." I was still reminding them of this until the day I left, 5 years later. I really thought that many years in government service they would at least know to CYA.

Wind turbine maker Vestas confirms recent security incident was ransomware

Solution

Every time you even hear of a new ransomware attack, take images of all your servers, and pray they are clean. Patch the hell out of everything.

And most of all DON'T PAY!.

The rocky road to better Linux software installation: Containers, containers, containers

And people wonder

Why I am migrating back to Slackware after years of using all of the others. Sure, I occasionally have to drag an app through the seven circles of dependency hell, but for the most part, it is just:

configure ; make ; make install

Everything else just works, (including VLC) and no systemd, as a bonus.

Apple's Pegasus lawsuit a 'declaration of war' against offensive software developers, says Kaspersky director

Re: I am not

"Yes, but in this case, the spyware was used against legitimate journalists, world leaders etc. doing their normal day-to-day business."

You seem to be making some kind of good vs evil argument. My argument is much simpler, if you don't want to be spied on, don't use things that can be spied on. As far as I am concerned every electronic device I own is spying on me and sending data somewhere I don't like. I expect it and accept it, and I act appropriately.

People may argue about the varying levels of expected vs actual privacy, but the bottom line is, once it is turned in to electrons, there is none, never has been, never will be.

I am not

Entirely sure I care. I mean there are low tech ways to organize against your government. I believe that if you are going to do that, no matter which government we are talking about, using your iphone, or any device with GPS features, is just looking for more trouble than you originally intended. That is what burner phones are for.

And good luck apple getting any money. By all mean take it to trial, I can hardly wait to see the 'discovery' phase..

China's hypersonic glider didn't just orbit Earth, it 'fired a missile' while at Mach 5

Guess they missed this...

Seems physics wins again...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-physics-and-hype-of-hypersonic-weapons/

Turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems admits to cyber incident, refuses to confirm if ransomware is at play

Hopefully it was

Ransomware, the company decided not to pay and just restore from 'gold masters.' I would really like to see a company actually handle this correctly instead of paying.

Ready, player anyone? China's gaming ban left cloud providers looking for someone to play with

Making every other coutry

Look at its laws and as itself "Hey, can we do that?"

Can you imagine how peaceful the net would suddenly become if we could limit the muppets to 3 hrs a week.

WTF is 'Computing First Networking'? Think load balancers for the age of edge

Soooo

It seems the best way to use 'cloud' resources is to move the critical work to the edge (aka, on-prem), and make it more cloud like, with distributed processing, fail-over, load balancing and the like.

I didn't expect to get to this point on the full circle so fast.

Oh, Comcast. An Xfinity customer and working from home? Maybe not this morning

Too funny.

I realize that a lot of people actually use these entertainment networks for work. I even had a couple of people ask me about it. I have synchronous fibre to the premise and a backup satellite connection. I only go offline after 4 hours of power outage. (still looking at generators...)

Reg scribe spends 80 hours in actual metaverse … and plans to keep visiting

Re: Second Life

Worst article ever. Comparing SecondLife to Roblox or Minecraft. Sorry, but after 18+ years secondlife is still going. And the rest of the world is starting to catch up with it.

Next time don't interview a 4 month old NOOB. Grab someone who has been inside the entire time, ask them how it is. ((anyone in SL for less than a year, more like 5, is still a noob))

And if you are too much of a nancy to put up with a few flying penis, you should probably just turn off the computer, you are only going to get hurt.

https://secondlife.com/ you can still play for free.

Fedora 35 is out: GNOME 41 desktop, polished UI, easier-to-install closed-source apps

A Return to SLACK

I mean seriously, ubuntu, fedora, rhel, centos, rocky, screw it. I am going back to slackware. It is easy, straightforward, has everything I need, including patch and package management. No support, but, hey, when was the last time they did any good anyhow?

Apple's Safari browser runs the risk of becoming the new Internet Explorer – holding the web back for everyone

Re: The choice

Lynx with COLORS, sideloading jpg2vga or something. Ahh, the good old days.

I am sure I have it on a floppy somewhere...I think it's that box in the back, on top of the line-printer.

Thanks, boss. The accidental creation of a lights-out data centre – what a fun surprise

Molly guard

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard

Noun

molly-guard (plural molly-guards)

A physical barrier to protect something from unwanted contact, especially a shield to prevent accidental tripping of an emergency shutdown or power switch.

South Korea’s top telco launches 'metaverse'

Yawns

So, it is a neutered version of Secondlife, run by a government entity, with a little VR sprinkled on top. I think I saw that movie.. Just ignore the hypnotic flashing lights and the subliminal frames..

Would-be AWS bomber pleads guilty, faces 5 to 20 years behind bars for plot to take out government servers

Some peoples kids.

This guy deserved to be arrested. First rule of doing something illegal is DON'T TELL ANYONE.

And the first rule of explosives, is if you don't already have some, and can't make any, then they are fakes from the Feds.

And everyone knows, blowing up a datacenter does nothing except test failover.

To cause real havoc you need to push a route update.

Space Force's data must flow: Microsoft Azure and Ball Aerospace demo satellite to battlefield linkup

It's tech..

Re-watch 'Real Genius', in case you forgot how it is done...

That Salesforce outage: Global DNS downfall started by one engineer trying a quick fix

We have all been there

You build a monster to be proud of, 5x redundant everything, a towering monument to intellectual prowess, a work of art. But still, on page one of the procedures is the requirement that the super golden master box, be online before anything else, in a cold start. Which never happens, so is never tested. You go on vacation, and someone decides to test the UPS/Generators. Oops.

And yes, it is always DNS. After 30+ years at this, when things go all wibbly wobbly for no reason, check DNS first. I did not used to believe it, but you would be amazed if you start watching, how often it actually is.

1Password unsheathes Rusty key, hopes to unlock Linux Desktop world

Not a fan

I have never been a fan of password managers. Just another point of failure. Never been much of a fan of passwords for authentication either...

21 nails in Exim mail server: Vulnerabilities enable 'full remote unauthenticated code execution', millions of boxes at risk

Re: shocking

Holds up his bat boot on high and chants insane incarnations. Oh thee blasphemers, thine mta shalt not peer into thine packages, but only shove them by brute force if necessary, untu their destinations in a timely manner. Embrace the R$ and the L$ hold them high and let not thine mail queue.

--I'll get my my robe of the ancient dark arts..

Average convicted British computer criminal is young, male, not highly skilled, researcher finds

Correction

Isn't is supposed to read:

it seems that most with the mindset to deal with computers started young, and male, with mental health and development disorders over-represented in their number, that lends itself to this type of work.

FCC urges Americans to run internet speed app to counter Big Cable's broadband data fudging

Rural and Lucky

I live in the middle of nowhere, population 200, nearest 'town' is a 15 minute drive, nearest 'city' 45 minutes. For me it was satellite or terrestrial microwave for a long time. Welcome to 10Mbps on a good day with between a 90-600ms ping. That is what passes for competition and 'broadband' for most of rural America. Forget reliable cell data service.

Luckily, I happen to live close enough to a highway, that when they laid a new fiber cable, they offered FTTP to everyone along the way. I now have the minimum service that anyone should have 1G SYNCHRONOUS FTTP. And it tests at the theoretical max. 9ms ping. Anything less is unacceptable.

FSF doubles down on Richard Stallman's return: Sure, he is 'troubling for some' but we need him, says org

Re: Offensive

Since I personally share a number of his traits, know it, try to control it, have had people try to help me with it. But when it comes down to it, most people are idiots and any argument based on morality or social norms often fails a logical attack.

But here is the test, upvote this post if you can see some of yourself in this guy, downvote it if you share no thoughts in common.

Fed-up graphic design outfit dangles cash to anyone who can free infosec of hoodie pics

Funny thing

A few days ago I took a picture of my home office to show my co-workers (or cow orkers if you prefer). The almost universal comment was "that looks like one of those hacker dungeons you see in the movies "

To be fair, it does look like a NOC done on the cheap.

Out of Steam? Wine draining away? Ubuntu's 64-bit-only x86 decision is causing migraines

Re: Interesting

"(face it, at this point Ubuntu is 'Linux' for most people)"

Really?? I had not heard. No one I know runs Ubuntu. Slackware, CentOS, RHEL, are most prominent in my circle of losers. Ubuntu is what the kids who don't do Linux use.

Bloody vultures! Cheeky Spanish paraglider firm pinched El Reg's mascot

Co-Branding?

Maybe they could be "The Official Spanish Paraglider outfit for The Register" ??

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Re: I prefer PEBMAC

I once told someone that I name all my servers after strippers. That didn't go over well in the board meeting. ((actually they were just alphabetical, Alyssa, Brandi, Candi, Debbie, Erin, but the stigma remained.))

Now Intel taken to US Supreme Court over retirement fund gripes: Ex-staffer demands right to sue over risks, losses

Don't Fsck with old people.

The saying 'age and treachery beats youth and exuberance every time' exists for a reason. Pay the retirees and move on, or they will knee cap you.

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

HP Business basic

10 BRK(0)

20 PRINT "^G"

30 GOTO 10

Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy

Could be handy

ME: Alexa, purchase a roll of heavy duty plastic, a shovel, and some quicklime.

ALEXA: I have ordered an Uber for arrival one hour after the items arrive. I have also located 3 popular dumping sites, would you like me to select one?

Refactoring whizz: Good software shouldn't cost the earth – it's actually cheaper to build

When I learned to code

I was taught that 100% of writing code was only 10% of the work, the other 90% was in code cleanup and bug fixing, BEFORE you released the code to test. I guess someone forgot that along the way.

Bring it on, Chipzilla! Nvidia swipes back at Intel in CPU-GPU AI performance brouhaha

Target audience?

Who buys this stuff? I am happy to be able to run AI stuff on a CPU, at my price point anything over about $600 USD for a video card (the only place you will find GPU's in my house) is not happening.

The fact that the lag make it looks like it is thinking is a bonus.

Salesfarce to Failsforce: Salesforce database blunder outage enters day three as fix falters

Re: I never get tired of saying it

Embrace the new, are you high, this is re-invent the old. A place, not in my company, where computers live, that I send my work to and get the results back. Welcome the Pre 1970's computing!!!

Wanted: Big iron geeks to help restore IBM 360 mainframe rescued from defunct German factory by other big iron geeks

A very nice heater

It will be cool if they get it running, but I would not want to pay the electric bill. And like another poster commented, if I were younger, I would pack up my gear and be on a plane to help them out. IBM should send them everything they have on it, gratis.

Backup your files with CrashPlan! Except this file type. No, not that one either. Try again...

So, a backup for idiots

CEO's, Bean Counters, HR, salesdroids. They can all back up their critical PowerPoint slides, glossies, word docs and excel spreadsheets. just nothing actually critical to the business, like apps or data. Interesting business plan.

Just in time for the Wiki-end: Chelsea Manning released from prison

US Grand Juries

Are a special kind of evil beast. I support her refusal to participate in any way. And even 5th amendment protections will not save you from contempt of court.

US minister invokes Maggie Thatcher, says she would have halted Huawei 5G rollout

Keep him. Lock him under the tower. We don't want him back.

Zavvi tells customers: You've won VIP tickets to Champions League final! And you've won tickets, and you've won tickets, and you, and...

I would think that they are going to have to either pay or go under to avoid it. Not sure of the legalities where they are located, but a number of nation/states would hold them to it.