Posts by rob_leady

Red Hat slams into reverse on CPU fix for Spectre design blunder

Why would techies be scratching their heads ?

It was well publicised by Intel that the microcode updates were causing reboot issues, and Red Hat have simply followed all of the other vendors and pulled those updates.

Do keep up... !

Meltdown, Spectre bug patch slowdown gets real – and what you can do about it

We need to ask on the kernel developer list...

The kernel mailing list archives seem to be notably offline for the last couple of days...

https://lkml.org/lkml is currently giving a Cloudflare error.

Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

Oracle caught napping ?

So all of the big vendors have already got patches out, or on the way, yet there's notably none from Oracle as yet...

Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

Re: Counting chickens?

Reading the comments on the kernel mailing list, it doesn't appear that it was just Linus who wanted to call it Fuckwit, if at all...

https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/4/709

2) Namespace

Several people including Linus requested to change the KAISER name.

We came up with a list of technically correct acronyms:

User Address Space Separation, prefix uass_

Forcefully Unmap Complete Kernel With Interrupt Trampolines, prefix fuckwit_

but we are politically correct people so we settled for

Kernel Page Table Isolation, prefix kpti_

Linus, your call :)

https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/12/4/758

On Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 6:07 AM, Thomas Gleixner <[e-mail]> wrote:

>

> Kernel Page Table Isolation, prefix kpti_

>

> Linus, your call :)

I think you probably chose the right name here. The alternatives sound

intriguing, but probably not the right thing to do.

Linus

BT, Sky bury hatchet with deal to sell each other's telly channels

Now if BT started offering BT Sport to those who weren't either Sky or BT subscribers, and at a sensible price, they *might* get a bit more business in.

Believe it or not BT, there are people who might want to watch say the cricket or rugby, who have don't have broadband through you, don't have a satellite dish, and would rather not spend money on streaming services of dubious legality, that may or not be around next week.

Fitbit health alert: You appear to be bleeding

Poor build quality to blame ?

I don't think I know anyone who has owned a Fit Bit who hasn't had a free of charge replacement, if not two, as their build quality is (or was) so poor...

Boss visited the night shift and found a car in the data centre

PAT was barred...

In the dim and distant past a member of the Helldesk let a PAT (Portable Appliance Tester) into the computer room, who we had been assured would only be conducting visual tests.

He was quickly removed when servers started going down...

Oracle promises ‘highly automated’ security in self-driving database

Critical Patch Updates

“The worst data thefts in history have occurred after a patch was available to prevent the theft. The patches just weren’t applied; how is that possible.”

You might want to take a look at how you release CRITICAL security patches Larry... you know, every QUARTER.

Software glitch led to London Ambulance Service outage – report

I wonder just how old the servers and software actually are ?

These two recommendations made me cringe a bit:

R19 Update the CAD servers to a modern, supported platform that replaces the existing Itanium servers.

R20 Update the Oracle version to current (or one below as a default).

So probably still on Oracle 10g (10.x) if not earlier, but HP-UX or OpenVMS ?

Police anti-ransomware warning is hotlinked to 'ransomware.pdf'

McAfee sent a very similar email out...

Dear McAfee Customer,

Be careful what you click on. This malware was distributed by phising

emails. You should only click on emails that you are sure came from a

trusted source. <ul>Click here</ul> to learn more about phising emails.

Internet of Sh*t has an early 2017 winner – a 'smart' Wi-Fi hairbrush

Airport Security ?

So what's this thing going to look like when it gets x-rayed at an airport ?

I'd imagine that a Li-ion battery concealed inside a hairbrush, along with a circuit board and a transmitter (or two) is likely to to raise a few alarm bells...

Hackers electrocute selves in quest to turn secure doors inside out

There's always an easy way in...

At a former workplace, we had fun one day, when the card reader controlling access to the computer room decided it wasn't going to work anymore.

Fortunately, whoever installed the door control system mounted the box that controlled everything outside the computer room. Once I'd figured out which of the connector blocks went to off to the door exit button, it took a couple of seconds with a paper clip to get the door open.

Command line coffee machine: Hacker shuns app so he can stay at the keyboard for longer

Why aren't they following the standards ?!

I do wonder why the IETF bother coming up with all these standards, when manufacturers just seem to ignore them...

Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol

Dutch bicycle company pretends to be television company

Don't use Fragile stickers !

Having spent a reasonable amount of time working at a courier firm, it's quite amazing what you see when spending a few hours watching how parcels are sorted.

Parcels emblazoned with FRAGILE stickers, are always targets. The let's see how high we can throw this one game is, I'm sure, still a favourite.

When this particular company had the contract for delivering Dell kit, I was quite amazed how well a 19" CRT monitor box would roll, corner on corner, down the chutes of the sorting machine, rather than slide !

Parcelfarce, Sh*tty Link, Oops, etc. They get their names for good reason.

Heathrow airport and stock exchange throw mystery BSODs

Re: En route from CAI to NCL

Not necessarily an Acorn Archimedes.

Could easily be RISC OS running on a Raspberry Pi.

Supermicro's macro Microblade: That chassis is... huge

What racks are you using ?!

"At 265mm x 449mm x 875mm (10.43" x 17.67" x 34.45"), it may be the single largest thing you can put onto a rack, and it probably isn't going to fit onto most racks."

That looks pretty small in comparison to other blade chassis...

NHS advertises for digital director at £131k

What IS digital ?

Can someone PLEASE define digital, in this context ?

I'm sure I could lock a few CIOs and CTOs in a room and repeatedly turn the lights off and on, but I'm not entirely sure that's what they're after...

Western Digital spins up a USB disk just for the Raspberry Pi

Grrr....

Gb != GB

UK to stop children looking at online porn. How?

...and age verification works so well on facebook doesn't it...?

I mean you'd never find any children under 13 on there would you...

Trouble brewing as iThing coffee machine seems to be hackable

But does it conform to standards ?

The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol has been around for years...

I wonder if it conforms ?

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2324.txt

Audi, Seat, Skoda admit they've been fiddling car pollution tests as well

Hardly news...

The original VW *GROUP* press release, stated that 11 million Volkswagen *GROUP* vehicles were affected.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that Audi, Škoda, Seat, etc are affected !

BT Home Hub SIP backdoor blunder blamed for VoIP fraud

I wonder what other ports are open on the Home Hub ?

In the past I've noted that the firewall on my PC which is sat behind a Home Hub 5, has blocked incoming connections, even though the HH is set to block everything and there's no NAT configured.

Must remember to check what ports were being let through when I get home tonight...

OpenSSL preps fix for mystery high severity hole

Ghostbusters II ?

I wonder if this is related to the following announcement made to the BugTraq mailing list last week ?

http://seclists.org/bugtraq/2015/Mar/48

During a source-code audit of the OpenSSL v1.0.2 implementation for Linux; conducted internally by the Advanced Information Security Group, instances of deprecated function use, were observed in relation to the GHOST vulnerability (CVE-2015-0235).

If it is, then there shouldn't be anything to worry about if you've patched glibc...

Violin Memory's strings snap as losses DOUBLE from last quarter

Violin Memory ?

Who are they ?

Exactly...

UK Scouts database 'flaws' raise concerns

Re: Dib dib dib

I think you meant to say DYB DYB DYB...

Put down that Oracle database patch: It could cost $23,000 per CPU

Not quite that expensive

"setting you back at least $23,000 per Oracle SPARC processor it's installed on, we've heard"

Based on the price list here:

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf

it's $23,000 per Processor. But most SPARC processors use a factor of 0.5, so it'll only be $11,500...

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/processor-core-factor-table-070634.pdf

WikiLeaks' Cablegate server touted on eBay for $3k-plus by Swedes

DoD wiping ?

There's no approved DoD mechanism to wipe drives that have held Top Secret information.

Physical destruction is the only way...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_erasure

Windows NT grandaddy OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard

Are you sure...?

If you read through the linked articles, there's no such mention of a 2015 "death" date.

OK, so they're not going to port to the latest Itanium processor, but it reads to me as though OpenVMS is going to be around and supported for many years yet...

'THINNEST EVER' spinning terabyte beauty slips out of WD fabs

1TiB = 1024 GiB

1TB = 1000 GB

What is the difference between Virt and Cloud?

Dictionary defintion

I think this dictionary definition sums cloud up quite nicely:

"anything that obscures or darkens something, or causes gloom, trouble, suspicion, disgrace, etc."

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cloud?s=t