Posts by Doctor Syntax

Bada Bing, bada bork: Windows 10 is not happy, and Microsoft's search engine has something to do with it

"Prize for the first person to come up with a DNS hijacking thing which pwns Windows 10 machines via the search box."

The winners are already quietly enjoying their prize.

Don't mistake quantity for quality. What I want is a search engine that finds the gems in the reams of ads and other dross in Google results.

That said, Google is usually better at finding stuff on Amazon than Amazon's own search. I suppose the only reason Amazon keeps the "don't know when it'll be available again" stuff on line is to poison Google results.

"being a US company, they need to open up their data vaults if the Big Orange One™ develops an haemorrhoid."

If, as they say they don't retain search info, then it doesn't matter. The vault will be empty.

This AI is full of holes: Brit council fixes thousands of road cracks spotted by algorithm using sat snaps

Or go back to the days before HM Treasury got its hands on what used to be called the Road Fund Licence.

Maintaining highways has been a problem for centuries. Collecting an annual fee from users and devoting to that end was probably the best solution.

Re: I have a simpler and lower cost solution

"The bin lorries"

One of the worst roads in our neck of the woods is the one that leads to the local dump recycling centre.

AI? I think our roads would crash the system.

They can't collect your bins or fix your roads. They let Google stalk visitors to their websites. Yes, it's UK local government

Re: An alternative example

Nice one.

"Critics responded that the IAB are not road builders, but the traffic authority."

More like a road builders' trade association.

Outlook more like 'look out!' as Microsoft email decides everything is spam today

Re: Yay for single points of failure !

You're telling me they're not?

Re: Outgoing or Incoming?

"marking EVERY SODDING EMAIL I RECEIVE as spam"

It usually is.

Oh ****... Sudo has a 'make anyone root' bug that needs to be patched – if you're unlucky enough to enable pwfeedback

Re: SUDepressing

" Anyone up for safesudo?"

Or sudont?

Re: It's okay - Lennart Poettering is on to it

Just don't make jokes like that.

Re: SUDO and +s is a design weakness

No, you let only those entitled to log in as root do so. Part of the problem is that although early Unix had multiple user IDs for different tasks these all got handed back to root eventually. Why, for instance, couldn't a specific non-root user have rights over installing S/W in /usr/local?

Trivial backdoor found in firmware for Chinese-built net-connected video recorders

Given that the communication is over Telnet it doesn't sound as if they were at pains to hide whatever might be communicated. More likely to be an ill-thought out diagnostic/IoT business as usual.

Microsoft Teams starts February with a good, old-fashioned TITSUP*

Re: Executive Hubris

"They gave up an on-premise solution with a 10GB network fiber backbone, 1GB to the desktop with full blown QoS and an exceptional up-time rating."

Perhaps this is the time to turn up with a purchase order to reinstate that. Even better if you can come up with an innocent sounding project title which is a backronym for something along the lines of I TOLD YOU SO or YOU WERE TOLD.

At last, the fix no one asked for: Portable home directories merged into systemd

Re: No point

"I suppose it comes from the earliest days of Unix?"

Not quite, at least not in its present form.

You need to remember that Linux, like Unix, is fundamentally a multi-user system. If an application can be used by all users then its binaries, logs and configs can't be in user home directories. If the data - say a database - is shared then the data can't be either but your office files should then be in your home directory. If you have personal configs that override the defaults then they do go in your home directory.

One area which has changed a good bit is the overall file system layout. Unix had /lib for libraries and /bin for binaries. There might well have been something like /sbin for binaries needed at start-up/single user mode because devices were small and these would be programs needed before the system was ready to mount the others.

Home directories went in /usr - the name was a bit of a clue. Then for some reason we had some stuff going into /usr/bin and /usr/lib so eventually home directories ended up being shunted out of /usr into /u or /u2 and eventually /home. There does seem to be some inconsistency between distros as to whether some or all stuff goes into /bin, /lib or the /usr equivalents and, indeed, as to whether the /bin and /lib exist at all or as symlinks.

Mostly there are reasons why things are as they are, some, admittedly, based on distro maintainer's choices and some into 3rd party packager's choices (does this go into /usr/local or /usr?).

Re: On a brighter note, there *are* alternatives

From that link: "using much less resources than the traditional syslogd."

Traditional?

Anyone who thinks systemd is traditional is to be avoided.

Re: Context of optional

That's a lot of trouble to have to go to instead of using a systemd-free distro.

Re: My pet theory for this shites existance is that...

"Probably not in the way he wanted, though."

Not in the way the rest of us want, not sure if he cares, though.

Re: Where are you?

The worrying thing about IBM is that with the effect on IBM's bottom line and the management changes it's starting to look like a reverse takeover.

Re: Where are you?

"trying to solve issues for people with laptops"

These days I use laptops almost entirely and I still don't have a problem it solves. With a hybrid drive boot time isn't a problem and time to get online is dominated by negotiating access with wireless. If I want to sync something between machines I have a specific directory for it on both machines which is separately synced with NextCloud (on a Pi running Devuan), not an entire $HOME and certainly not on flash drive.

Re: Why?

"you can use NextCloud"

And run that on Devuan of course.

"My only worry is that Linux doesn't take all the hardware driver support along with it"

My worry is that systemd doesn't take all the software support along with it.

Re: Jeez

The name seemed very vaguely familiar. It reminded me that it was well over 50 years since I studied any zoology.

Re: Jeez

"and proponent"

Given the remainder of the comment the obvious question is "why?".

Re: Finally!

They're all optional. The option is not to touch any of it.

Re: Systemd is devastating

"Got Devuan??"

Yes.

WannaCry ransomware attack on NHS could have triggered NATO reaction, says German cybergeneral

Re: Exactly, attribution is THE problem.

"I assume you are aware that Hacking attacks can - and in fact are - also be executed from the soil of the US, UK, Germany, France, etc."

I think you missed the phrase "more forgiving".

Re: Disproportionate response?

"Not least of these is the difficulty of finding out who triggered the attack, as opposed to who actually carried it out."

There's also the little matter of who failed to keep their stash of undisclosed vulnerabilities secret.

Things I learned from Y2K (pt 87): How to swap a mainframe for Microsoft Access

Re: In IT, encrpytion algorithms can't be secret....

Or in this case hardly anything, it seems.

Ah, night shift in the 1970s. Ciggies, hipflasks, ADVENT... and fault-prone disk drives the size of washing machines

Re: DEC field service engineers

100 upvotes for mention of Kermit.

it was an extremely useful essential cross-platform file transfer protocol

FTFY

Not just file transfer but terminal emulation as well. When all you had was a serial interface Kermit was the equivalent of FTP, Telnet, rcp, ssh or whatever your favourite weapon might be these days.

Gin and gone-ic: Rometty out as IBM CEO, cloud supremo Arvind Krishna takes over, Red Hat boss is president

Re: Did the desire to hire Arvind Krishna cause IBM to buy Red Hat?

I think Krishna is an IBM lifer. It was he who was largely responsible for them buying Red Hat.

Is everything OK over there, Britain? Have you tried turning the UK off and on again? ISPs, financial orgs fall over in Freaky Friday of outages

Re: Just call a sanitation engineer

Given the nature of much of that material.

"We understand this was likely due to the end of the month demands such as payroll runs and the deadline for submitting tax returns."

There'll be another month end next month. And one the month after. Etc.

SF tech biz forks out $146m in fines, settlements after painkiller makers bribed it to design medical software that pushed opioids to patients

Targeted advertising.

No need to worry about tracking. Cut out the middle man and advertise direct to the prescriber.

Not call, dude: UK govt says guaranteed surcharge-free EU roaming will end after Brexit transition period. Brits left at the mercy of networks

"but my granny can't work out how to use whatsapp"

This grandad hasn't worked out why he'd possibly want to use it. Or any of Facebook's other offerings.

Re: Transition Period?

"Including proposals on the Irish border that they've since agreed with Johnson, having said they were literally impossible to May."

The Irish border "solution" involves effectively moving the difficult bits of it to the middle of the Irish Sea. At the end of the transition period we'll have an interal customs border in the UK!

He can do that because, unlike May, he doesn't have to rely on the DUP for his majority. How well that works out remains to be seen. But it'll be OK because he's reassured us his a Unionist; we have his word on that.

Re: Transition Period?

"Getting a second term is probably in that strategy."

Maybe. He could simply say he's delivered what he promised and it's up to the rest to make the best of it.

Brexit keeps reminding me of the Bilko episode "The Empty Store". You got what you wanted, what are you going to do with it?

Re: Transition Period?

"I would never bet against Boris breaking a promise."

He promised to be dead in a ditch if he didn't make the October 19 deadline. That's one promise gone already.

Re: Transition Period?

we will get need more time for government and businesses to plan for implementing it.

However Boris is adamant that 11 months is all there is. However, come December he could decide to say "I've done what I came here to do. I'm off.".

"One network cuts their rates to attract more customers. Others are forced to follow. "

Alternative view: one network raises their rates. Others leap on the opportunity of increased profits and follow.

They could call it a Brexit SIM.

Re: Bankers

"Whereas designing solutions that fit into common use-cases - replacing tungsten bulbs with increasingly energy efficient bulbs - is working."

There's even a further lesson in that - replacing tungsten by compact fluorescents wasn't the greatest idea - they were crap: they didn't last long, the claimed equivalences to incandescent wattages were against the most inefficient incandescents they could find and unless properly disposed of were apt to leak mercury into the environment. Your replacement not only has to fit the use-case, it has to do it at least as well as the original for all the parameters, not just those you're trying to improve on.

Re: that reason's name is "Organised Crime"

"cell tower triangulation"

Ah, the luxury of being able to triangulate. Daughter was puzzled about grandson's lost phone being shown as at home and several hundred yards away. Had to explain you need coverage from more than two base stations to resolve the correct location.

Re: Bankers

"For business - it's just another business cost."

I hate to find myself on the beancounters' side, even occasionally, but for a business profit is money in minus money out. The greater the costs, the greater the money out and the smaller the profit.

"As soon as a company does that they will lose all their customers and go bankrupt. I can't see many others thinking that's a good idea."

Alternative: once one makes a break the rest will follow. Race to the bottom as usual.

It’s not true no one wants .uk domains – just look at all these Bulgarians who signed up to nab expired addresses

"That could be a real pain for those of us that have .UK domains hosted overseas for whatever reason."

The comment made no mention about location of hosting, just the location of the owner.

There are already Chinese components in your pocket – so why fret about 5G gear?

Opening an EU subsidiary in the UK would have beenfeasible. Nissan, etc. did that for cars. Unless the subsequent trade negotiations result in Brexit meaning nothing more than being out of the rule-making process and nothing else that sort of thing isn't going to happen for the foreseeable future.

Re: “A country torn apart by nationalism, corruption and warring factions”

"Boris could be on the Iron Throne for some considerable time"

You don't think he'll do a Blair and step down just before consequences happen? In Blair's case it was an economic policy that powered a housing bubble that in turn powered huge indebtedness. In Boris's case it's going to be the economic reality of the British business's home market being just the UK and maybe a whole new Irish problem when the Irish Sea border becomes a reality.

Re: “UK is now a sea of calm"

I was never a fan of British Snail, especially back in the days when I used to commute on the Chiltern Line but right back when privatisation happened it was obvious that separating the infra-structure from the service provider was a bad mistake. Not having control of the rails it runs on has certainly been one of Northern Rail's problems. None of its underlying problems are going to go away in March and the new operator is going to inherit them although eventually the new rolling stock is going to get delivered.

Re: "It is perfectly possible for the West [..] to decide on a coherent policy"

"he is a somewhat authoritarian president, but far from a rabid dictator."

Should we settle on "kleptocrat"?