Posts by Down not across

Datadog allegedly asked developer to kill open source data export tool

Re: Murky

Well, that's them on my "Do not use. Do not recommend. In fact recommend to avoid" list then.

Castrol immerses itself deeper into liquid cooling with researcher

Re: What is the advantage of lubricants over Hydrofluoroethers

For example, 1-methoxyheptafluoropropane is Non-flammable, non-ozone-depleting, Non-corrosive, High electrical resistivity of about 10^11 Ω·m (roughly the same as glass). Boiling Point (@ 1 atm) 34°C (93.2°F). Freeze Point. -122°C (-187.6°F). Typically sold as 3M Novec 7000 Engineered Fluid.

The Engineered Fluid are more like a solvent though I thought. I'd rather use 3M's Fluorinert (which incidentally is what Cray used to use too although current ones tend to be clear rather than coloured) if i was looking at immersion cooling.

Disaster recovery blunder broke New York Stock Exchange this week

The problem, according to Bloomberg, is that an NYSE employee failed to shut down a disaster recovery system at the exchange's secondary Chicago data center. Because the system was left running overnight, the market software at the NYSE acted as if trading had already begun and prevented opening auction prices from being set correctly.

Doesn't sound very well designed DR system. Surely it would (should) know which system is primary and which is not and act accordingly.

James Webb Space Telescope suffers another hitch: Instrument down

You might be suprised how many would volunteer for that trip.

NASA, DARPA to go nuclear in hopes of putting boots on Mars

Re: So what fuel will be used ?

Fuel or propellant?

Anyway, the article was short on details but the news bit at DARPA emits this:

Nuclear thermal rockets have been built before, so DRACO has a head start. About 50 years ago, the technology was tested on the ground. DRACO is now leveraging lessons learned from past NTR reactor technology, but instead of using highly-enriched uranium, DRACO is using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel to have fewer logistical hurdles on its ambitious timeline. As an added safety precaution, DARPA plans to engineer the system so that the DRACO engine’s fission reaction will turn on only once it reaches space.

Fission, the same process used for nuclear power, is the splitting of atoms. It creates high levels of heat that can turn rocket propellant such as hydrogen from a liquid to a gas phase. In the NTR, that gaseous propellant is accelerated out a converging/diverging nozzle in the exact same way as a conventional chemical rocket engine. The high performance of an NTR is enabled by the reactor passing its heat along to its rocket propellant. DRACO’s proposed solid core NTR temperatures could reach almost 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring use of advanced materials.

Cisco warns it won't fix critical flaw in small business routers despite known exploit

Re: Thanks

Certainly think carefully before touching any of their "Cisco Small Business"/RV line kit. Some of that kit was unbelievably buggy and cisco had no interest in fixing any if the issues even whilst it was still current/supported.

At least they support (somewhat at least) the normal enterprise kit.

Re: Did I read that right? - software support

At $JOB-1, the office network jack for your PC or laptop was literally the daisy-chain port on your office phone. Can't remember the vendor.

True for many (most?) vendors. Generally the phone and the PC ports will be on different VLANs (assuming things are even vaguely properly configured).

Haiku beta 4: BeOS rebuild / almost ready for release / A thing of beauty

Re: Psion, what a machine

The 3 was just right for pocketability. The keyboard on 5 was fantastic and screen was nicer too. Many colleagues went for Palm Pilots but I preferred the Psions. Should still have Psions in boxes somewhere. may have to hunt, although i seem to recall display cable issue on some.

OPL was great for passing time, especially on airports and planes and trains. Later i used pretty much just Nokia Communicator instead of 3/5.

Re: BeOS was totally amazing

Thank you for the link. I recall the demo very well. Had BeOS on one machine for a while and loved it. Sadly at the time software availability (whether free or paid for) was just too limiting. They definitely had multimedia handling done right and nothing like the battles with Windows and Hauppauge cards.

I will have to give it another whirl now.

Samsung expects profit dive as demand for memory and devices continues to slow

Re: “Only”

Hear hear. The Wall Street induced chase for eternal growth and ever increasing profits in insane.

I remember when companies used to look after their employees, there was loyalty both ways and it was sufficient to be enough in black that in addition to normal business operations there was bit in the kitty for investment/improvement and for rainy day.

Oh, no: The electric cars at CES are getting all emotional

Re: fratzonic chambered exhaust

If they could accurately reproduce the sound of the Vulcan, that would definitely piss off the neighbours. ..and anyone within quite a few blocks. It could put a smile on your face tho.

Re: "buttons replaced with touchscreens"

Simple fact is this, studies have repeatedly shown that for these reasons, plus others, countries that adopt right-hand-drive vehicles that drive on the left have a lower crash likelihood than LHD vehicles on the right.

Would you care to refer to a few?

Intel: Please buy these new 13th-Gen CPUs, now with 24 cores

Yeah the lineup is a bit convoluted. Still that could work in AMD's favour.... no having to choose between different ratios of P vs E cores. About the only benefit Intel has in the higher end is larger cache (at least based on recently available products (laptops in this case)). A buyer could quite easily, when presented various intel options, just go "feck it that's confusing I'll just take that AMD instead...".

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

Re: "Hybrid"

I, in my own view, disagree. I have no issue potentially going into office for a meeting if there truly is a need to do it in person. It is not rocket science to schedule it so that people are present. As for team meetings, that depends on your team, ours is geographically diverse so that would be the most ridiculous reason to traipse into the office.

BOFH: Come back to the office. Your hotdesk is nice and warm

Re: My eyes have been

Quite often the bonuses are tied to company / department performance as well as one's own performance. To top it off, they tend to insist on following the bell curve and even if everyone exhibits truly exemplary performance only one or two is allowed to be rated as such and receive maximum bonus. it is all smoke and mirrors. You'd be insane to budget including you bonus (even if you budgeted with less than 100% bonus).

It is just a way for companies to claim your total earnings/reward is higher than it generally is.

Programming error created billion-dollar mistake that made the coder ... a hero?

Re: Worst code I ever saw...

It is not always about what the code does, but why.

RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project management

Re: Man-month

I got my copy when I was at Data General...they used it in a management course.

Did they also use and hand out Soul of a New Machine?

Grand Theft Auto 6 maker confirms source code, vids stolen in cyber-heist

One word. Trevor.

Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down

Re: I have no problem with this.

Long cold and slippery winters tend to get that into you.

Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Worth keeping in mind the almost two day roundtrip for the communications. I suspect there were fair few command/reply sequnces involved.

Nichelle Nichols' ashes set for trek to the stars

Re: moderatrix

There can be only one. Seems unfathomable that the reference would be to any other than Ms Bee.

...over 10 years ago...as if I didn't feel old enough already.

California to phase out internal combustion vehicles by 2035

Re: Other countries are available.

...if there is public transport. Once you get outside the concrete jungles, availability and usability of public transport tends to drop massively further.

Re: America without V8's just isn't America

A V8 cast iron block clunker that does 15mpg? :-)

That's not even difficult. For example the cast iron 305 TBI on one of mine does easily 20mpg+ (imp. gallons). Ok perhaps not in city but certainly on motorway. Even in city it won't drop much under 20.

Windows 10 update breaks audio for some systems

Microsoft recommends...

Those who haven't yet installed the update can use the KIR or update the device drivers. Microsoft also recommends that anyone using advanced audio applications backs up all their settings before installing KB5015878.

How is that going to work then with the bloody automatic updates that happen when you turn your back?

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

Sun SPARC escapes to PROM monitor on receipt of BREAK.

Break on serial connection is holding TxD positive for a period of time. On a SPARC 9600bps console connection 4ms is enough for it to think a break was sent and drop to the PROM. This was almost guaranteed to happen if plugged into serial terminal that was then turned off or on (with most terminals if not necessarily all).

Re: Wireless Mice

I second the opinion on old Latitudes, I'm writing this on E7240 that is on its second screen. Replacement batteries are aplenty, just as well as they tend to have lot shorter lifespan than originals. Want to carry a spare anyway as run time is not always that brilliant. Nice 12.5" FHD screen (sadly the FHD version is glossy touch screen), fairly lite. Has built-in 3G etc so perfect for on the go.

Also at least so far Dell is nice enough to keep drivers and their own additional bits downloadable for probably all the way back (haven't looked past D620/625 as those are the oldest I have in use at the moment.

I've yet to see a wireless keyboard that takes batteries.

Really? I don't think I have had any wireless keyboards that did not take batteries. Most have been Logitech, some some random cheapies, none have been rechargeable (unless you buy rechargeable batteries yourself). Mice on the other hand I've had both ones that take batteries and ones that have built-in rechargeable.

Janet Jackson music video declared a cybersecurity exploit

Re: Am I safe?

A very good point. Also SSD tends to fail irrevocably, whereas if you have the dosh you can get spinning platters read in a cleanroom supposing the drive electronics have failed.

No need for clean room. I recall recovering customer's data from "dead" drives by swapping in PCB from a working drive.

Granted, these were old Seagate MFM/RLL drives and I also tried to use same/similar revision board if possible.

General Motors charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features

Re: How fast is the data connection?

Here in the UK a noticeable minority have ditched DSL / Cable etc for unlimited data plans with their mobile phone acting as a hotspot.

At least there still is DSL option. In some places (Finland for example) copper phone lines have been mostly ripped out so if you live bit more rural your only telephony/intenet option is mobile.

NetBSD 9.3: A 2022 OS that can run on late-1980s hardware

Re: Reminds one

My Kaypro 2X had character map in a ROM, I dumped the ROM, crafted the bitmaps for {}[]/|, then burned into a EPROM, soldered it piggy back over (a copy of (just in case)) the original character map ROM and fitted a toggle switch to CS line. Worked a treat (even without a fancy debounce on the switch).

Sounds like someone had the same approach for those ADM-3As.

Oh those yellow pages... I suspect it would take as much explaining about the ones i was thinking from the more carefree times.

NASA's six-mile-wide orbital telescope is 1/6th built

Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

Barclays inks multi-year deal with Microsoft, starts rolling out Teams

Re: Busy

The flakyness of Teams is not all bad. At least you can just kill it in order for your laptop to actually be usable and if anyone complains excuse with "oh teams may need a restart or something".

Re: I pity the users

Good for you, me.. I'd take WebEx (with its warts and all) over Teams anyday.

Linux may soon lose support for the DECnet protocol

Name one person...

If DECnet is still alive, name one person or company that currently supports, maintains or develops the protocol architecture.

I do. I still have some old VAX and Ultrix boxen and some other ancient DEC hardware for example DECservers that boot using MOP over DECnet.

CP/M's open-source status clarified after 21 years

Real men don't eat quiche

Systemd supremo Lennart Poettering leaves Red Hat for Microsoft

Re: SMF

I think that may have been the point the author was trying to make.

If systemd, rather than being the cancer it is, had truly been FOSS implementation of SMF, I don't think anyone would've objected. I run a lot of Solaris boxen and for any homecooked stuff, I pick either simple init script or SMF with its manifests if I really need the contracts and milestones.

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

Re: that jerk with the annoying voice and that other bastard who sniffs all day.

Back in the day (when all phones still had (easily) removable batteries) the standard was to remove battery and leave next to the phone on hte desk., Repeate offenders had some all all parts dropped in their bin.

Of couse now that (nearly) everything has a sealed battery, your suggestion...

Alternatively take the phone and smash it with a hammer.

is a good alternative. or if you want to give them some hope dump it in a pint/mug of water (especially if not a waterpoof model).

Windows 11: The little engine that could, eventually

Re: Re-added need for MS Account to download from Windows Store.

You forgot (unless it has changes again) that in non-enterprise versions you will have to have MS account to install/activate, no more local accounts.

Perhaps you can afterwards create and use local account but i'm not interested enough to even find out.

When time runs out on W10 then I suppose any game that doesn't run under Wine/Proton will lose out.

Graphical desktop system X Window just turned 38

Re: Baby and bathwater come to mind.

It's come a long way from it's origin, but browsers were meant to handle largely static, mainly one-way communication. Extending that into an application display framework always seemed like an ugly fudge to me, and I think the bloat and inefficiency in our modern web browsers, which are now probably the biggest resource hog in any workstation just shows how poor a decision that was.

I wholeheartedly agree. Dynamic content in the form of CGI was far enough. This current fad of "web apps" is infuriating. They're not exactly "just run in the browser" anyway, as many require downloading additional crud/plugins to work.

Warning: Colleagues are unusually likely to 'break' their monitors soon

Re: What is the market for these devices?

That is certainly a possible outcome. Would be a shame as the Series X is actually a pretty decent console. Not to mention Sony needs competition.

You say that like its a bad thing. And if you don't connect them to network updates are largely irrelevant.

CockroachDB adds command line tool as database hits version 22.1

*less

"I am fascinated by the serverless thing," said Walker, "I think it should be called Infrastructureless, eventually, I think that's really what this thing becomes… what we're doing it is we're preparing it so that it can actually work for huge massive applications."

This irks me. Without some server and infrastructure, there is nothing to run the stuff on. Yes it might be somewhat opaque to the end user, but there has to be server and networking somewhere.

Repairability champ Framework's modular laptop gets a speed boost

Re: I'll Be!

Not a fan of Realtek. Some RTL interfaces hang when you actually push any data through them, so I'd like to see intel network card option (even if only at !Gbit/s). I would also like to see 3G/4G WWAN option. Otherwise it is quite tempting proposition to consider replacing my 12.5" latitude E7240 (the 1rst gen "slower" would do fine). EIA-232C expansion would be really nice too to avoid yet another dongle off of USB port.

Turing Pi 2 crowdfunding goal smashed within a day

Re: A million dollar gimmick.

I have also backed this. I have Turing Pi version 1 (which for those who don't know, supports 7 nodes on the board) which is bloody brilliant. I think theyv'e done a cracking job in having just enough integration/management built in that (for me at least) it is worth paying a bit rather than doing from scratch. Sadly CM3+ modules are bit difficult to obtain at the moment.

I am stil wondering if I should've pledged for 2 to have a fail over cluster.

Enterprise-strength FreeBSD-based TrueNAS releases v13.0

Myself, I went with nas4free (think they rebranded as XigmaNAS some time ago) for reasons that I can't even recall (sometime afrer the fork from FreeNAS happened) and the upgrade worked flawlessly. Slightly different approache between iXsystems and Xigma as they each went in slightly different direction.

Touch wood, has worked flawlessly without any issues on HP MicroServer (old N36L IIRC) booting off of internal USB stick. I did add intel dual port gigabit card to the MicroServer which improved network throughput and reliability.

FTC says Frontier lied about its internet speeds amid $8.5m settlement

Re: I had Frontier service, and TBH was perfectly happy

Verizon did flog all/most of their copper wireline to Frontier. I wonder if there is any correlation.

Qualcomm sampling Wi-Fi 7 silicon for next-gen access points

Channel bandwidth and aggregation

Channel aggregation and increased bandwidth is all very fine, but not much help in urban areas. Finding, a reasonably, free channel let alone one supporting 160MHz bandwtdth is nearly impossible in most urban areas let alone 320MHz. Admittedly 5GHz/6GHz helps a little bit but still leaks enough that you're sharing with nearby neighbours.

Apple's return-to-office plan savaged by staff

Re: No real surprise

If you think working in clean rooms and/or under watchful eyes of CCTV (well IP nor CC...) is trusted, then yes.

A discounting disaster averted at the expense of one's own employment

Re: Access is not the problem

We had someone (or someones) pointing Access to Sybase backend and it caused no end of havoc as it locked whole tables. Not sure if that was fault of Access or ODBC drivers, but the end result wasn't pretty. it is possible that it does something stupid (while thinking it would improve things0 causing lock escalation from page level locks to table locks.

Cluebat was swiftly administered for the guilty for doing that without even asking if that was allowed/good idea.