* Posts by Missing Semicolon

2039 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Nov 2013

Agent P waxes lyrical about 14 years of systemd

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Unhappy

Re: Not a Hater

2 things:

1) SystemD re-implements some features. But it does so in an unexpected and worse way. For example, fstab mounts used to fail-soft, leaving you with a system which while broken, could at least be logged in to to fix it. Now, mount fails are fatal. Ands since the mounting (for swap files) happens in initrd, just patching fstab frm a rescue disk doesn't fix it.

2) It does not work like it's documented. I was trying to implement a script that runs on shutdown before the users are logged out. It seems that the user sessions are ended, and their processes killed, before any unit shutdowns are processed.

2.1) Oh, yes, changed defaults to suit LP's desktop. It used to be that processes started by users lived after the user logged out. Because he got fed up with Gnome desktop processes being left over on session end, he unilaterally changed the default to kill all processes on logout. You can disable this, but it surprises you when you first upgrade from SysVinit.

Veterans Affairs reboots Oracle health records project for $330M

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Why does Oracle get this free pass?

The sell some stuff, and then nobody says "throw it away, it's broken! get something else!"

Dems want answers on national security risks posed by hiring freeze, DOGE probes

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Move fast, break things, drains up.

To be fair, the perception is that the whole system has become so ossified, so encrusted with stuff that happens because it's always happened, and little projects that are nothing to do with running a country, that doing the IT thing of just switching it off and seeing what stops working is the only solution.

USAID was a really bad case of that.

There are organisations who have become comfortable with the constant drip of State cash who need to have hard questions asked.

If they just reviewed everything, 40 years would not be enough to review each one.

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

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Re: "a total duration of 32 minutes"

That makes it hard to remove the shell. The high initial temperature pings the membrane off the shell.

Mixing Rust and C in Linux likened to cancer by kernel maintainer

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Re: This is the scariest part of all this, IMO

Reading the comments in the thread, there definitely seems to be a case of "I enable the Rust components, I change some Code, it stops building. If I disable the Rust build, it works again". That sounds like there needs to be more work on the shim layers to be less fragile.

I can see that one might get unhappy if you say "this breaks things" and you get the response "our code must go in, and you must help maintain it!"

Arm gives up on killing off Qualcomm's vital chip license

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Re: The best possible outcome for ARM

We had to obey the no-State-aid rules.

Why UK Online Safety Act may not be safe for bloggers

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Re: First amendment ?

I suspect this is a bit of malicious compliance.

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Unhappy

Re: Brown said he intends to put this question directly to Ofcom

Yep. In other words, it depends on whether *Ofcom* are offended by the content. We know where that is going....

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

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In the one hand, the ad-hom is "TDS".

On the other hand, it is "Nazi fascist dictator"!

Godwin applies here too.

US datacenters in for shock as Canada mulls cutting the juice over Trump tariffs

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Re: Short term pain for long term gain.

The current incumbent has hardly presided over unbridled success, has he?

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Re: UK has has an economic growth problem

It would help if we had a government who were determined to improve the situation. They seem to be hell-bent on doing the opposite.

It could be ideology, it might well be incompetence, but is there a chance they are deliberately doing it so that the only way out is to abase ourselves before the IMF and the European Commission?

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"Looking forward to an end to the current 100% tariff on Chinese EVs"

Why?

Do you want more people to lose there jobs?

Call of Duty studio co-founder pleads guilty to crashing drone into firefighting aircraft

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Re: Canada tariffs....

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/outside-investigations-to-examine-ladwps-empty-reservoir-during-palisades-fire/3617569/

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-22/why-has-a-reservoir-in-palisades-stood-empty-for-a-year

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/la-fires-santa-ynez-reservoir-pacific-palisades-california/

The hydrants ran dry, for various reasons. You build next to fire canyons, you need effective fire response resources.

Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price

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Unhappy

Poor work, El Reg.

We don't need politics in our tech news, thanks.

Only 1 in 10 Oracle Java users want to stay with Big Red

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FAIL

Java peaked at around 1.6. Since then, the feature-creatures have been at it and the syntax has become Baroque.

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Re: MS openjdk

Unless it's rotted some, the last time I ran a Minecraft server it was quite happy on a Debian box with OpenJDK.

A good kind of disorder: Boffins boost capacitor tech by disturbing dipoles

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Happy

Re: Breakdown?

Maybe they could put the capacitors on little wire legs to isolate them. Novel, eh?

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Re: Breakdown?

Wow. So the old thing where vintage gear will last for decades if the capacitors are good will come to an end, as the new capacitors will fail after a year or two?

Enshittification of hardware proceeds apace.

The curious story of Uncle Sam's HR dept, a hastily set up email server, and fears of another cyber disaster

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Re: welcome to hell

Calm down dear.

Fear of the unknown keeps Broadcom's VMware herd captive. Don't be cowed

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Re: "Open your wallet and repeat after me: help yourself?"

Aaagh! Sapristi Spon! You are correct!

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"Open your wallet and repeat after me: help yourself?"

(c) Colonel Bloodnok

Astronomers red-faced after mistaking Musk's Tesla Roadster for asteroid

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Thumb Up

Most importantly

... where can I get one of those towels?

Zyxel firewalls borked by buggy update, on-site access required for fix

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Their gigabit switches are quite good.

I have a couple at home - basic simple web UI. Obviously keep that off the internet!

Google takes action after coder reports 'most sophisticated attack I've ever seen'

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FAIL

Passkeys

When will these muppets get it? Once the key store on your phone becomes the prize, the crims will just apply their considerable resources to either cracking it, or social-engineering a way round it. Once there is a single key that opens all of your locks, that key is now worth spending considerable effort to steal.

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Credit card security

Nearly got had by a scammer pretending to be the credit card security team. They were able to provoke emails (by taking particular actions with the stolen details) so the scammer announced a mail was coming, then it arrived.

Very close call - only saved by my one-email-per-merchant trick, as the email they had was not the CC company. But still very good.

Someone is slipping a hidden backdoor into Juniper routers across the globe, activated by a magic packet

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Re: Single Packet Authentication FTW, eh?

Mighty 404's there for those links!

FortiGate config leaks: Victims' email addresses published online

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FAIL

Re: Another bullshit company statement

"We continue to strongly recommend that organizations take the recommended actions, if they have not already, to improve their security posture."

"We did - we bought one of your firewalls!"

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

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Windows

Re: Dear me

"we tole them, we tole them we did, millennium hand and shrimp!"

Apple sued for using dangerous 'forever chemicals' in Watch bands

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Happy

Carnivores for the win

..it will turn out that the best material for watch straps is real leather!

BT unplugs plans to turn old cabinets into EV chargepoints

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Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

Ok, downvoters, how about the official word on this: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/135/science-and-technology-committee/news/101056/clean-growth-report-published-17-19/

"3. Plan for reducing vehicle emissions: The Government must bring forward the date of its proposed ban on the sales of new ‘conventional' cars and vans to 2035 at the latest, and ensure that it covers hybrids too. In the near-term, the Government must reconsider the fiscal incentives for consumers to purchase both new and used vehicle models with lower emissions. The Government should also work with public services and owners of public land, such as schools and hospitals, to accelerate the deployment of electric vehicle chargepoints, and introduce measures to ensure that chargepoints are interoperable, compatible with a smart energy system, reliable, and provide real-time information on their current functionality. Although ultra-low emissions vehicles generate very little emissions during use, their manufacture generates substantial emissions. In the long-term, widespread personal vehicle ownership therefore does not appear to be compatible with significant decarbonisation. The Government should not aim to achieve emissions reductions simply by replacing existing vehicles with lower-emissions versions."

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Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

By 2035, there will be far, far fewer. Us proles won't be allowed cars.

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2016/12/goodbye-car-ownership-hello-clean-air-this-is-the-future-of-transport/

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FAIL

Re: the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EVs

I guess the owner needs to use their phone to authorise the charging process. No mobile network, or no local Wifi alternative, means that even if you could actually pull 7kW from the cabinet power, you could not pay for it!

Enterprises in for a shock when they realize power and cooling demands of AI

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Boffin

Re: Optimism at its finest

And getting water hot enough for a bath over any great distance is going to require a load of insulation. Never mind your desired bathwater temperature, the water needs to be kept above about 60 degC for safety reasons. This is why the water coming out of the taps in commercial properties is so darned hot. It's only not if there are mixer taps, or a thermostatic mixer valve just below the sink.

(need a hot-cup-of-tea icon)

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Re: Funny...

If that's in food, it's mostly solar-powered.

Tech support fill-in given no budget, no help, no training, and no empathy for his plight

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Re: Not "Fixing", Exactly

It's only the students' data. Nothing of value to be lost.

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

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Re: An evidence based approach

What it is for is to ensure that ordinary people cannot publicise opinions that are seen as "harmful" by the Government. The penalties are so draconian, and the penalty for merely being investigated is so huge (have you ever asked a Solicitor to write a letter?) that most small forums will simply close, to avoid the attention.

This is one of those things where the "process is the punishment".

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Re: I am all right jack

Oh, you poor sweet child.

Of course they will be punished. Otherwise the legislation will be ineffective, as Ofcom don't have time to have a little chat with every forum owner.

And when they do, you'd better make sure that every single post would never be taken down from the Guardian's comments section.

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Re: Can probably be ignored.

No, vague law is bad law. It is subject to judicial expansion and interpretation. This means that the definition, for example, of "hate offences such as stirring up of racial hatred offence and stirring up of hatred on the basis of religion or sexual orientation" can be blown up to ensure that criticism of certain orthodoxies will be effectively illegal.

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Re: Can probably be ignored.

Do you want to be the example they choose to make? Thought not.

UK government tech procurement lacks understanding, says watchdog

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Re: "an overemphasis on acquiring the minimum requirement or cheapest resource"

Apparently from John Glenn's biography:

“I guess the question I'm asked the most often is: "When you were sitting in that capsule listening to the count-down, how did you feel?" Well, the answer to that one is easy. I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract.”

Apple's interoperability efforts aren't meeting spirit or letter of EU law, advocacy groups argue

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Facepalm

Facebook iPhone services!

Can you imagine "Back up your contacts to your Facebook account!".

Many idiots would install it.

Snyk appears to deploy 'malicious' packages targeting Cursor for unknown reason

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Looks like npm has the same problem that Pypi does.

But this time, it is due to lousy code in npm install.

Pypy is broken by design.

Sonos CEO steps down after smart speaker app upgrade hit bum note

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FAIL

Normality

A new web app/phone app is released. The reason for the release could be some internal reason (backend cost reduction, or "engagement") or just new shiny. The actual features are of no importance. Unusually, the company actually suffered this time, normally it makes no difference (hello Atlassian!).

TSMC revenue booms and you don’t need AI to figure out why

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Re: “Digital Offerings”

If the business is profitable, it seems like the usual manglement making life simpler, or trying to fluff the stock price by being a pure software services company.

Edit after research. Paloma is another Japanese company. The other "non-core" bits are also being acquired by Japanese companies. So unlike us, Japan looks after its core industry.

Euro-cloud Anexia moves 12,000 VMs off VMware to homebrew KVM platform

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Nice business there

Of couse, the "year in advance" ensures that many customers will not have time to migrate away. Kerching!

Europe coughs up €400 to punter after breaking its own GDPR data protection rules

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Facepalm

Not identifying the service provider.

Odd that Stiizy hasn't been hacked, their payment provider has. Yet they decline to identify them. Almost as if it's part of the T's and C's of the contract "if we screw up, it's on you, don't mention our name". Nice.

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

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Re: Why?

It lowers the load on the back-end servers on O365. Classic outlook lets you do whole-folder operations, new outlook restricts you to a maximum of 75 messages.

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

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Re: We need more Bluesky thinking

BlueSky will be all ribbons and puppies until the need to make actual money rears it's ugly head. Then it will get enshittified like everything else.

DEF CON's hacker-in-chief faces fortune in medical bills after paralyzing neck injury

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Re: Ouch

Happens. Seen the rationing of care causing a close relative a miserable death.

After China's Salt Typhoon, the reconstruction starts now

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Expensive?

How much has this really cost the Telcos themselves? Obviously the mug punters suffer as their data is exfiltrated, but the telco?

When TalkTalk got hacked, there was exactly no consequence. The big US telcos will continue as before, with much "lesson-learning" and such, until the news cycle moves on.