Posts by Oh Homer

AMD red-faced over random-number bug that kills cryptographic security

Remember EntropyKey?

I still have one of those EntropyKey do-das from SimTec Electronics, a company that sadly seems to no longer exist, although the website is still there, just barely.

http://www.entropykey.co.uk

This was handy back when I still owed a prehistoric PC with no hardware entropy generator.

Also sadly, the driver and support utils no longer compile on modern systems. I suppose there's not much demand for something like that nowadays. It's a shame, because the entropy generation method is quite interesting.

I'm out, says OpenSUSE: We're dropping bcachefs support from next kernel version

Total non-issue, IMO

First off, this filesystem is extremely niche, so barely anyone cares. And secondly, for the three people who actually want it, just build the DKMS.

Removing Xorg and 32-bit libraries, OTOH ... definitely not niche. Has anyone at OpenSUSE ever heard of Steam?

Honestly, it's not like I'm married to any bit of software, but in the realm of Things I Need To Do®, there's stuff I need installed to make that happen, and OpenSUSE seem to have decided that gaming is not on that list.

This is why I'm averse to mainstream distros, or mainstream anything, really. Too many stupid decisions motivated by stupid reasons.

Thunderbird ESR is here: Mozilla's email client adds new functions

Re: But isn't Betterbird basically the same as Thunderbird

Betterbird IS Thunderbird, except it retains many of the important design choices previously obliterated by Mozilla.

Essentially it has the look, feel and operation of Thunderbird before Mozilla screwed it up.

I'll never know

I switched to Betterbird (at work) at the same time as I switched to LibreWolf, and for basically the same reason (Mozilla's determination to make their stuff as crap as possible).

Betterbird just looks the way a gooey email client should, imo, and I could never figure out how to get that look on Thunderbird (or rather, get it back, because that's the way it used to look).

At one point I was actually forced to go back to Claws Mail, because the real estate taken up by useless guff in Thunderbird was vast, and I could find no way of disabling it.

Finding any space for the actual message body of emails was a struggle. Meanwhile, the few bits I did manage to disable somehow obliterated the "Compose New Mail" button, which I never did figure out how to get back, and so I ended up having to use the (now hidden) menu to compose messages.

I think it had something to do with a Microsoft-esque "ribbon" thing that I would've chewed my own arm off just to get rid of. But honestly, who knows.

So now you have 16 convoluted and non-intuitive ways to do everything, except for the things you actually want to do, which have been removed entirely (or hidden away so deeply you'll never find them).

As one perfect example, I ended up having to search Reddit just to figure out why Thunderbird was double spacing every new line. Turns out there's a setting for that, the name of which escapes me (it's one of those obscure things you need to know the name of before you know what to search for), but the point is why the hell is that the default? In what alternate universe do people write like that?

Then there's this weird thing when you're setting up a Caldav account, and you go to look for the calender, and it's just not there, and the menu item for it is greyed out.

Several days of googling and redditing found nothing relevant.

Then by chance I hit alt-tab while trying again, and there it was ... some pointless confirmation window, that I was forced to "OK" before it would compete setup.

Why was this window not given focus?

The litany of Mozilla's crap design choices would fill a library.

Had I known about Betterbird, frankly I would've switched to it years ago.

Ousted US copyright chief argues Trump did not have power to remove her

The Real Test®

I'm just waiting to see if the US electorate will support Trump for an (unconstitutional) third term.

If so then this will be the final confirmation that the US is fucked for all time. Not only because the constitution, and Americans supposedly fanatical devotion to it, will be exposed as a sham, but also because the majority who voted for this fascist nutjob will have demonstrated quite unambiguously that they are the root of the problem.

You can unelect a leader, but you can't unelect the voters.

The remaining 96% of the world's population now needs to make a serious and rapid effort to break any dependency they have on America, and work towards ending all trade and relations with it.

Microsoft Copilot joins ChatGPT at the feet of the mighty Atari 2600 Video Chess

LLMs are good at...

1. Generating hype

2. Being unintentionally funny

3. Making lists

Note: I am probably not an LLM.

Boffins devise voice-altering tech to jam 'vishing' schemes

Re: "calls relating to hospital appointments"

The last time I got notification of any sort of medical appointment by phone was probably back in the 80s. Since then, every last one of them has been by ye olde snail mail. I wasn't even aware that the NHS ever used any other method, again at least not in the last 40 years.

I did think it was an oddly unreliable method of contacting patients about something so important, given the notoriously poor service offered by what passes for a postal service nowadays, and the fact that it's quite common for appointment letters not to arrive until *after* the day of appointment.

Why not just use emails? It's instantaneous, free, and leaves an easily auditable record. And I mean, who in 2025 still doesn't have an email address? Even street urchins in Bangladesh have entry-level smartphones and gmail accounts.

It's quite bizarre, but I've learned the futility of challenging the rationale of archaic government institutions.

Meanwhile, like a rapidly increasing majority of people, I no longer even have a landline connection, mainly because 5G internet is approximately 150 times faster than the prehistoric ADSL I had previously. And where I live, it's highly likely that I will quite literally die of old age before Openreach finally gets around to installing gigabit fibre in my muddy backwater, if ever.

My only comms is now exclusively by smartphone, and one of the first things you realise is that, once you have a smartphone, ironically you no longer need to make or receive actual phone calls, because you now have 100 more effective ways to communicate with people.

So the fact that the aforementioned archaic institutions make the bizarre, unnecessary and frankly sinister decision to hide their identity, at least when making calls, is not something that affects me in any way, and shouldn't need to affect anyone else in the 21st century either.

Trump administration set to waive TikTok sell-or-die deadline for a third time

China is doin wot?

China's Threat to National Security® is their collecting and analysing of...

1. E-girlies dancing and miming to dubstep.

2. Cute puppies and kitties being melodramatic.

3. Lifestyle gurus spouting aphorisms.

4. Lifestyle hacks with less credibility than Trump.

5. Fake "rescue" videos.

6. People Are Awesome and/or Stupid videos.

7. Diet/Fitness influencers blatantly lying about how they lost weight.

8. Memes constructed from popular TV shows, mostly Breaking Bad and The Sopranos.

9. Youtubers multi-platforming their shorts for cross-revenue optimisation.

10. Lots of Asian content that defies explanation, unless you're a weeb or actually Asian.

Yes, beware the Yellow Peril, for all your memes are belong to them.

Put Large Reasoning Models under pressure and they stop making sense, say boffins

Re: Breaking: Intelligence works like Intelligence.

But my dear Watson, it's precisely the imprudent *current* use of something clearly not ready for production, that is the primary concern.

Arguing that the fetal stage of a horse is perfectly normal, does not somehow make that fetus suitable to race in the 2:30 at Chepstow.

But a Tsunami of Tech Bros armed with glorified autocorrect scripts and the complete unabridged chat log of Twitter, have decided to launch that stillborn abomination onto the unsuspecting public, and just see what happens. Because, money.

We live in gloriously shit times.

Re: Breaking: Intelligence works like Intelligence.

Because we don't typically consider it prudent to employ Neanderthals to run multi-billion dollar enterprises that literally control every aspect of human life.

Except for Twitter, obviously.

Larry Ellison is still not the world's richest person

Dear Larry...

Everyone else did not fail.

Unacceptable, must try harder.

£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan

Clean Energy®

Allegedly.

US govt login portal could be one cyberattack away from collapse, say auditors

Say what?

Tax funded, unelected bureaucrats with disjointed, inadequate and archaic SOPs, that nobody even bothers to follow?

Shocking.

VodafoneThree's a crowd – now comes the hard bit

I got a signal once...

It was the summer of 93. I remember because it was raining. We were just about to put the kettle on and settle down to watch Heartbeat, when all of a sudden the screen went all snowy with static, and I swear I could hear the voice of my old aunt Edna. Mind you, it couldn't have been a phone call as she'd been dead for 20 years.

Strong signal though.

Anyway, round these parts you'd have better luck sending a carrier pigeon than making a mobile call. Legend has it that a van bearing the Vodafone insignia once drove through the village. Some of the regulars swear there used to be a photo of the phenomenon hanging in the gents toilets in the pub, but it was a bit fuzzy, so maybe it was just a tractor.

Meta – yep, Facebook Meta – is now a defense contractor

Still waiting...

...for even a single positive use case for VR, AR or AI.

How Java changed the development landscape entirely as code turns 30

Microsoft

I never had anything to do with Java, so the fact that Larry "Everyone Else Must Fail" Ellison tried to poison it, only bothered me in a sort of anti-proprietary licensing activism sense. And even then, not really that much.

I do remember wasting a surprisingly large amount of time installing and updating it, then testing browser plugins to check if that Java animation thing was working. It was a completionist thing, don't ask.

I also remember the ongoing saga of Microsoft trying very hard to basically co-opt Java into a Windows only thing, and they did kinda succeed in the sense that there really was Windows-only Java code. But then our pal Larry sued, so that was that. I still didn't really care either way.

Microsoft's response to losing was predictable. They made their own "Java" thing called C#/.NET, then tried to kill Java.

I don't really know how to feel about the fact that Microsoft failed. I hate both companies equally.

I do find it amusing that the Java updater always recommends that you uninstall it. Now there's a feature I really wish Microsoft would adopt for Windows.

Elon Musk’s xAI to pull about half of its smog-belching turbines powering Colossus

Now you know why he's called Musk

It's the stench of smog heavily laced with bullshit.

From Russia with doubt: Go library's Kremlin ties stoke fear

Hysteria

It's not that distrusting code based on geopolitical bias is overkill, it's simply that using such puerile criteria completely misses the most important point...

You should not be trusting *ANY* contributor.

It may come as a shock to Western authorities to discover that their respective countries are also riddled with black hat hackers and organised crime, at least some of which is on record as being perpetrated by state actors.

By all means distrust contributors. All of them. Just don't be hypocrites.

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

Let's be real

Not being fanatically pro-Linux or anti-Windows, but honestly, for me the OS is mostly irrelevant.

Just install whatever works, and a browser.

Done.

Optionally for gamers, install Steam (and Proton if needed).

This nonsense of Microsoft trying to force the entire planet to upgrade their hardware, just to support Microsoft's pointless whims, is just funny.

And in the middle of a global economic crisis, it's absolutely hysterical.

Goodbye Microsoft.

Fujitsu promised to sit out UK deals ... then Northern Ireland called with £125M

RIP NI Land Registry

Please observe -£59.9999991 of silence.

NTT creates a drone that triggers and catches lightning – then keeps flying

Disappointed

Where's the sharks and lasers?

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

Honestly, just don't go

If America wants to be isolationist, let them be isolated. They don't want us, we don't want them.

That includes IMF meetings or any other conferences. Let American delegates sit alone in otherwise empty conference halls. That will give them plenty of opportunity to discuss how badly they fucked up.

At this point, they are no better than the Norks. In fact they're worse, in terms of the threat level.

The most important experimental distro you've never heard of gets new project lead

Meh

Seems like a non-problem.

I mean the entire usr hierarchy is basically pointless to anyone not still living in the 1970s, but it's all symlinked now anyway, and I've never really had a problem with the rest of it. It has certainly never confused me in any way.

OTOH, if Apple-ising Linux is somebody's passion, more power to them. Keep it very far away from me, but good luck to you.

The end result may be of interest to some extremely niche demographic, but I can just imagine the utter nightmare it might present whenever attempting to actually compile anything, especially given the myriad of build and make systems and languages.

OK so I'm assuming they've worked most of that out already, especially given that they need to build the distro itself in the first place, but it'd make me quite nervous. Ironically their "simplification" might actually make things more complicated.

It's nice to scratch your own itch, but this really ain't my itch, nor I suspect many other people's.

Firefox 136 finally brings the features that fans wanted

Great timing, Mozilla

This is the sound of a champagne cork popping in an empty hall.

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

The End

My 20 year use of Firefox ended 3 days ago.

I've switched to LibreWolf for now (which is essentially just Firefox with all the sinister crap removed). Eventually I will switch to Ladybird. This seems to be the popular consensus among browser geeks.

I'm not in the least surprised by this. Mozilla have been getting exponentially more egregious for years.

For me, the 3 biggest issues are:

1. The idea that a piece of supposedly free software, that I use entirely independently of the developer, presumes to compel me to use it only in accordance with their "terms", is absolutely outrageous. It's none of their damned business how I choose to use their browser. We're not talking about copyrights here, this is literally just my use of the software as a web browser. How dare they presume to tell me what I can do with it. Cheeky bastards. This would be like Ford telling me I can drive anywhere but Manchester. What the actual fcuk?

2. They used to clearly state that they would never sell my data, but now they've removed that statement. Their excuse is that California has a weird definition of "sell". Excuse me, but what the fcuk does California have to do with me? If you actually cared about privacy rights, you'd tell California to go fcuk themselves, and just add a clause to the effect of "Due to California's moronic laws, sadly we can no longer license the use of Firefox in that State". Are you really going to screw the entire global population of Firefox users because of a single State in America? Sorry, I'm not buying it. I think you're just using that as an excuse for your foray into AI data harvesting.

3. The "other people do it" excuse doesn't wash. Mozilla was created in the first place specifically to be the one who "doesn't do it". So regardless of the details, the fact is you've betrayed your own founding principles, and consequently betrayed your userbase, none of whom now have any reason to continue using your products, as they are now functionally indistinguishable from those of any other for-profit corporation.

Yes I think the demise of Mozilla was inevitable, given how utterly tone deaf they've been over the years, and especially how they seemed to completely lack any moral compass (Mozilla really doesn't seem to understand the concept of "consent"). However, now we're actually at the end, it's still incredibly sad.

Goodbye Mozilla.

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Chatbot from Hell

I hate all of 'em, but I reserve my Special Hatred® for the ones that just give up and go back to the beginning of their script, if you keep selecting the "No that doesn't even remotely answer my question" option, around and around in a loop, forever.

One company that we deal with in particular, seemingly has no contact options of any kind, other than a moronic chatbot, which of course has so few response options that it's clearly just a token gesture, never intended to be actually used, just so they can tick the "Extensive customer support" checkbox in the marketing literature.

So I suppose it's only fitting, then, that everyone here uses a marketing contact at the aforementioned company, who exposed his email address to us unintentionally, as their first as only point of contact with them.

And every time we email him for any reason unrelated to marketing (which is basically every email), he politely agrees to help us, but reminds us that he is not the correct contact for e.g. tech support. And every time, we thank him, but politely point out that his company doesn't actually have any support contacts.

We do this partly in the vain hope that he might actually retort with an actual contract address. But of course, he never does.

Even Linus Torvalds can have trouble with autocycle … autocracy… AUTOCOMPLETE!

Autocompost

I fur of Elvin or new "Please try again" overlords.

Annie is the real results of this phones agriculture.

(However I just made up the title ... Bloody he'll it advise got that one right)

Microsoft quietly erases Windows 11 TPM 2.0 bypass workaround from help page

TPM and Linux

First of all, TPM is absolutely the most pointless tech ever devised, especially as there have already been multiple successful hacks.

As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of TPM is an attempt to lock people into Microsoft's ecosystem ("He who controls the bootloader...").

Having said that, allegedly there is a way to use Linux on hardware infected with TPM (enabled).

I read the docs for this, several times over, until my brain melted. Did I mention I'm a Gentoo user (and Void Linux) for past 20 years, so not exactly a noob, but this is honestly the most perversely convoluted, overengineered and complicated shit of all time.

Frankly it would just be a whole lot easier to disable TPM, and never install Windows. Ever.

Bonus points if I can rip that shit out of its socket and smash it with a sledgehammer.

US AI shares battered, bruised, and holding after yesterday's DeepSeek beating

Oh joy

An even cheaper way to make humanity redundant.

Microsoft's London 'Experience Center' packs up and goes home

Experience what?

What exactly is left to experience from Microsoft?

A new and innovative form of subscription based spyware, powered by AI?

I'm petty sure everyone knows exactly what Microsoft is, by this point. It's not like they've actually innovated anything useful recently, or, for example, ever.

Same goes for the entire tech industry, frankly.

The state of Right to Repair: Progress made, but key barriers remain

This is really the right to own property

If I can't repair it, I don't really own it.

AI pothole patrol to snap flaws in Britain's crumbling roads

How on Earth can the council not know?

One of our many local potholes is called Harry. He celebrated his 23rd birthday last Wednesday. There was cake and everything.

That makes him older than the average mental age of our councillors.

Why would the local council be somehow unaware of the existence of a two decade old pothole, that they would feel it necessary to waste taxpayers' money on some "AI" robot to hunt them down?

Just literally get in your car and drive, anywhere. They're impossible to avoid.

Instead of wasting money on stupid robots, how about using it to actually, you know, fix the damned roads?

Clock ticking for TikTok as US Supreme Court upholds ban

lol

"TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression"

IOW ... brainrot.

Google and Linux Foundation form Chromium love club

Re: Return features to the platform?

I can 1000% guarantee that Google will never reintroduce Manifest v2, or facilitate anything that undermines their core business.

Which for those who may have forgotten, is the global monopolisation of spam, and the pursuit of every technical and legal measure necessary to force everyone to see it.

There's undoubtedly a quid pro quo for the Linux Foundation. They get to sell themselves like a bunch of dirty pros, while Google stuffs their pockets with quids.

Perfect 10 directory traversal vuln hits SailPoint's IAM solution

Not excusing the vendor but...

Shouldn't their corporate customers be using secure platforms locked down with Mandatory Access Controls, instead of just haplessly relying on application security?

Telco security is a dumpster fire and everyone's getting burned

Security is an illusion

The trick is to know what to do when it's breached.

Google earns fresh competition scrutiny from two nations on a single day

Indian gamba app

Yeah, what could go wrong?

I'm not exactly thrilled at Google's arbitrary censorship of apps that conflict with their spammy agenda, but at the same time they may actually have a point wrt Indian gambling apps.

Arm reportedly warns Qualcomm it will cancel its licenses

Actually ...

ARM is technically correct, licenses are not transferable.

Although Qualcomm's argument seems to be that it was already licensed for exactly the same IP as Nuvia, which seems unlikely, but I guess we'll soon find out.

The only significant takeaway I get from this is that IP is, as ever, a cancer, and that we'd all be much better off if it had never been born.

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Committee meeting

Let's have a consultation to decide if we should do what the entire rest of the planet has already agreed on...

How very British.

Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

The "best"...

The best programming language is the one you're good at, the one you enjoy using, the one that makes you productive.

That's not a platitude, it's just reality.

As for vi vs Emacs: for years I really wanted to hate Emacs. Then I discovered Org mode.

Online media outstrips TV as source of news for the first time in the UK

TV ... what's that?

I supposedly fall into the geriatric demographic still loyal to TV, however the reality is that I gave up watching TV two and a half decades ago in the late nineties, around the time of the rise in popularity of "reality TV".

The sort of garbage on TV at the time included such masterpieces as "Ibiza Uncovered", "Cops", and my personal favourite, "Britain's Most Violent Pubs".

I remember thinking at the time that, if I really want to immerse myself in anti-social behaviour for entertainment purposes, all I need to do is step outside, and frankly I got more than enough of that in real life. I watched TV to escape that shit, not subject myself to a rerun of it.

There were also very early warning signs of the emergence of "Woke" culture in TV, or what used to be called "political correctness". Everything felt a little too preachy for my liking.

From what I've heard, mainstream media has now fully succumbed to Woke cancer, and things have only gotten significantly worse, so it seems I cut the cable at exactly the right moment.

These days I get orders of magnitude more entertainment value from certain youtubers and Twitch streamers than anything the mainstream media has to offer. And as far as the news is concerned, I was never that interested in the blatantly manufactured propaganda peddled by mainstream news outlets in the past, I'm even less interested in it today.

Thunderbird is go: 128 now out with revamped 'Nebula' UI

Simplification

Re: the subheading, I've always hated webmail, but I realise that nobody from Millennials onwards has even heard of the concept of an email client. This is the biggest hurdle that Thunderbird faces.

Over the years I've made my computing environment and workflow simpler and simpler, so for me even Thunderbird is too bloated, and I now use neomutt.

I realise I'm literally a dying breed, but that's fine by me. As long as I get to keep doing things the way I want to, for the few years I have left, what the technophobic consumer generation chooses to do thereafter is none of my concern.

Adobe users just now getting upset over content scanning allowance in Terms of Use

Self-inflicted wounds

Just stop using the "cloud". And "subscription" software.

No really, just stop.

The argument that this anti-consumer garbage is supposedly "needed" by professionals, that there is no suitable alternative, and that they couldn't possibly do their job without it, is complete and utter horseshit. Most of the best art ever made, for example, was created long before computers even existed. "Need" my ass.

I can only conclude that your average sheeple is an incurable masochist who just really enjoys rewarding bad behaviour.

I've seen street artists produce the most astonishing work, from nothing but a piece of chalk, or upturned plastic buckets and bits of leftover plumbing.

People who are genuinely creative don't need props, they don't need any tool in particular, they can use literally anything to express their art.

The sort of people who claim to be completely debilitated unless they have access to some fashionable toy gadget, are utterly delusional. They're not artists, they're just mindless consumers.

The only way to stop these Silicone Valley gangsters is to stop giving them your money. Stop rewarding bad behaviour.

Venerable ICQ messaging service to end operations in June

A bit like Napster...

When "Napster" officially ended it wasn't what a lot of (younger) people thought it was. The real Napster died years earlier.

Same goes for ICQ.

I remember the original fondly, but only because it was one of many iconic landmarks of my youth, not because I really used it much. Surprisingly, I do still remember my ICQ number, which is weird considering I barely ever used it.

The thing that's about to pass into the abyss is not the thing that was born three decades ago. It's just a name, like Napster.

Teardown confirms Huawei's Pura 70 contains SMIC 7nm process node

Hypocrites

If America hates China so much, stop buying billions of dollars of their crap every year.

Please.

Either the FBI is recruiting in Iran – or some govt Google ad buyers are getting a lousy deal

I can just imagine...

An Iranian steel worker and an Italian porn star sitting next to each other in the FBI's recruitment office.

Next!

Meta sued by privacy group over pay up or click OK model

Cambridge Analytica

Yes, remember them?

People seem to have very short memories.

I dumped Facebook the moment I realised it was being used by Farage and various other highly dubious interests, from places as far afield as the US and Saudi, as a tool to sabotage the EU and line their own pockets.

The fact that they subsequently won, and got away with it scot free, did not exactly improve my opinion of them.

There was a tsunami of outrage, then ... silence. Followed by amnesia, apparently.

Why the hell is anybody still using Facebook?

Seriously.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

Long form discourse

I realise that having an actual conversation using complete sentences is a bit passé, although some people on Reddit have been accused of trying.

Sadly, by the time I finally discovered Reddit, it had already degenerated into a shithole filled with incomprehensible degens and tin-pot dictator mods, the latter of whom take a perverse pleasure in enforcing entirely unwritten rules, or in other words just making up shit as they go. Which is, frankly, pretty much every social network platform these days.

Just look at YouTube, for example. The latest case I heard about is a thirty-something YouTuber who is being constantly demonetised because, according to the divine algorithm, she's a child, and children hosting YouTube channels is verboten ... or something.

A lot of Usenet is also moderated, of course, but from what I remember with significantly more sanity. However, personally I'd rather be the judge of what I do or don't get to read, and unlike every web-based social network out there, Usenet clients actually provide the tools necessary to do that ... properly.

The only thing launched for Amazon's Project Kuiper is a lawsuit

Meh

Bezos is probably worried that Mr. X's rocket will randomly brake half way up.