Posts by Doctor Syntax

Cybercrime is 'orders of magnitude' larger than state-backed ops, says ex-White House advisor

"we've got to be able to do the equivalent of walk and chew gum at the same time"

No chance.

Datacenter biz wants to turn heat and carbon waste into biomass for sale

Re: Instead, it looked for new ways of reusing the heat...

If it's substituted for a fossil fuel it's a win by avoiding adding extra CO2. Alternatively if it were charred part would be returned to the atmosphere but the remainder would be stable and if stored (e.g. bumped in landfill) would be more or less permanently removed.

Re: Ick

I think the objective is to use it as some sort of chemical feedstock, maybe for biodiesel or the like.

"Currently, the module captures 900g of CO2 per day, but the objective for phase 2 (2027) is to capture 36kg per day,"

That's going to be dependent on day length unless they add artificial lighting and hope that that doesn't depend on fossil-fuel generation.

User unboxed a PC so badly it 'broke' and only a nail file could fix it

Re: Not Exactly Computer Tech...

Driving an Anglia to Dublin from Belfast, two of us to visit TCD and the a third going to a job interview I heard a distinct click and the engine died. I'm not sure why the first thing I checked was the distributor but I lifted the cap to see a contact. Just the one. The moveable contact had broken off and moved itself into the depths of the distributor where it stayed for good. The interviewee got a lift to Dublin and I trudged to a garage and back or possibly got a lifts (depths of time and all that) to get a replacement set. Eventful trip but useful, years later the specimen we collected from TCD was one of the cover illustrations on my friend's book.

Re: Slightly before my time.

A pity the lead wasn't carrying mains, then he could have found out about effing safety.

Re: Once had IT support ask me if I knew where a PC had been moved to

Ah, the innocence of youth.

Back then the only alternative was cable the thickness of a hose pipe with a bend resistance closer to mild steel with a minimum bend radius of, IIRC, 2 metres com=connected with vampire taps, a drop cable and a 15 pin connector. 10Base2 was a vast improvement. Networking with Cat 3 (yes 3) was still in the future.

You admitted it instead of telling them that that's what you'd have to do now?

But yes, facilities. Deciding that the assembly point for bomb threats was the opposite side from the door so we were expected to walk round the end of an all-glass building that had an alleged bomb in it.

Re: "The usual one was a USB A cable in the RJ45 socket"

A determined user can fit almost any plug into almost any wrong socket. It just depends on the size of hammer available.

Trouble-ticket system's AI summary.

I thought that was "Something went wrong."

Re: fixed a keyboard related 'fail to boot' remotely

This thread is getting very worrying.

Re: In denial

Same here, - distance & computer glasses but reading print with neither. I'm not sure the last is unusual, it's just a function of the underlying condition, long or short-sighted combined with reduced range of accommodation with age.

BOFH: The Boss meets the unbearable weight of innovation

Damn sans-serif fonts

Al Gore

AI Gore

Which has AI in it?

What would a Microsoft engineer do to Ubuntu? AnduinOS is the answer

Re: Wrong approach

"none of the managers could accept it."

Obvious reply: OK, you can keep it but you'll have to fund it out of your own budget.

Re: Doesn't need to be done

"So who is left that hasn't already made the switch."

All those who've heard about the end of W10 and have a box that won't downgrade to 11 and which they can't afford to replace. There must be a lot of them. Add to that those of us with non-tech relatives whom we wish to ease off to something better.

Re: Doesn't need to be done

"Or W2000 (in which case there's, e.g., Mint/Xfce)."

Any distro with KDE with Reactionary for window decorations and any of the various early Windows application style, colour and icon themes. It's very easy to do with KDE, especially as the panel and menu button are in the right place by default unless the distro developers have chosen to apply some NIH sauce.

Re: Oh no

Everything since W2K has been grot.

Re: pOS

This would be the tentacle themed option.

Re: Doesn't need to be done

"The various flavours/desktops of Linux are fine as they are trying to make them look like Windows is not doing anyone any favours."

OK, they're not necessarily doing you any favours. OTOH what would be a favour for somebody attempting to move away from Windows? The UI will necessarily look like something but what? Some SciFi fan's homage to their favourite films which seems to ba a favourite basis for theming DEs? Or something that looks reassuringly familiar?

You're not the target market for this sort of distro. Neither am I. But that doesn't mean that it isn't what the users it's aimed at won't want.

Having said that, maybe a W10 look would have been better.

Microsoft dumps AI into Notepad as 'Copilot all the things' mania takes hold in Redmond

Provided it doesn't get into vi (nvi) I'll be OK.

Lenovo thought it could surf geopolitics, until Trump's sudden tariff changes

That wouldn't have worked. Tariff is applied when it's imported, not when it's ordered. The best that can be done is say "Here's the sales price, you'll have to pay a tariff surcharge when you get it but we can't tell you what it will be because it could change between ordering and delivery; it's not under our control."

I can't see why Trump objects. He says tariffs are beautiful so why should they be hidden. He's not lying about them, is he?

Just bill for the price and the tariff separately, showing why the tariff was what it was on that particular day. Yes, it'll be chaotic but point out they're Trump tariffs, not Lenovo's and he says they're beautiful. All customer complaints to him.

Neptune OS is Debian made easy but, boy, does it need some housekeeping

Re: Psudo security

"I don't understand how allowing access to all admin tools via sudo and the users password is more secure than using a root account with a different password."

The theory is that if you have a big hairy server operated by several people with differing roles you can assign each one with the rights they require and you can also log who does what. To some extent the first was solved years ago by having some subsystems owned by a specific userid such lpadmin.

However, with a personal computer with a single user this is pointless. There is no subdivision of functions. With sudo we have a situation where one userid and password pair can do anything. The additional protection of a second password has been sacrificed for a non-existent gain.

It makes sense to use root and su rather than sudo..

At the very worst, if the user can't remember more than one password then set root and user to have the same password. What's the difference between a Ubuntu user being presented with a dialog box* to enter their own password and a Debian user being presented with a dialog box to enter the root password which happens to be the same as their own?

Answer - the last offers the option of improving security by changing the root password, the first doesn't.

Obviously my preference is separate root with its own password.

* This assumes that admin tasks are being performed by GUI apps run from the menu using pkexec or the like rather than CLI.

Re: Psudo security

You don't login as root, you su to it. For a non-technical user the reality is that they won't use su or sudo explicitly - they'll pick something off the menu to do some specific maintenance operation such as run updates which will ask for a password. That will be their own password for sudo based systems and the root password for su. When that operation completes if su was being used the root session also ends.

China finds a previously unknown microbe on its space station

"eats gelatin, not astronauts"

So what's it been feeding on up there? Gelatin is boiled-up collagen so I'd guess skin flakes and/or stray hairs. That's probably how it got there in the first place.

VMware price hikes? Between 800 and 1,500%, claim Euro customers

"end customers have no choice but to play ball"

Given the reports here of end customers jumping ship that might be overstating it but it's a good basis for urging a monopoly investigation accompanied by "we told you so" for those who approved the merger.

Trump announces $175B for Golden Dome defense shield over America

Re: So...

"There may be other, easier and cheaper ways to take down the US that El Reg readers can suggest."

AFAICS Trump's taking down the US single handed. (The single hand is Musk's.)

Re: May not repeat but it rhymes

I wouldn't worry. Does anyone but himself think it can be done in 4 years? I suppose some odds & ends of things will be done & he'll declare it complete. Maybe in his mind it may be. Who knows, maybe in his mind it already is.

"Dome would be operational by the time he leaves office."

This must be on the same alternative timescale as peace in Ukraine within 24 hours of his taking office.

Google carves out cloudy safe spaces for nations nervous about America's reach

Read the fine print

It would need:

Data centres to be owned and managed by a franchisee company in the country or bloc to which services are to be provided.

Owners and managers should be citizens of the same.

The contract between the franchisee and Google (or Microsoft etc) should be subject to the law of the same and signed there.

The contract should stipulate that the franchisor should have no access to data hosted by the franchisee or to the franchisee's customers

The contract should stipulate that the franchisee is under no obligation to provide hosted data or information about its customers or to the franchisor

The contract should stipulate that the franchisor does not have any authority to instruct the franchisee from providing services until the end of the franchise term.

The contract should stipulate that the franchisee is under no obligation to stop providing services until the end of the contract.

The contract should stipulate that the franchisor does not have any authority to instruct the franchisee to withhold services from any person or business who wishes to purchase services

The contract should stipulate that the franchisee is under no obligation to instruct the franchisee to withhold services from any person or business who wishes to purchase services

And probably more besides. It should be an operation completely hands off by anyone subject to US law. Arm's length would not be good enough.

LastOS slaps neon paint on Linux Mint and dares you to run Photoshop

Re: When will we stop trying to get Windows?

"Before you complain about any aspect of Linux, consider this: IS IT WORTH WHAT YOU PAID FOR IT?"

An interesting argument to apply to Windows.

Re: Bloatware Linux

First bit, obviously true. Second bit - I very much doubt it.

Re: 1998

That 4% know something you don't. It Just Works.

Your echo chamber may tell you otherwise based on somebody repeating something they read online posted by someone who'd never tried it based on something they read online posted by... eventually somebody who'd seen somebody managing a server farm from the command line or possibly running s minimal set of utilities on a pre-v1.0 kernel in the '90s. Probably a few repeats of some of your own rants are in that sequence.

But those of us using it as a daily driver know it Just Works. That's as oppose to Only Just Works - don't confuse the two.

It Just Wordk. Remember that. It's why we use it.

Re: 1998

"You want to tell the 20-year old desk worker at my gym who was asking for help from me"

Poor kid. He was asking the wrong person wasn't he?

Adobe turns subscription screw again, telling users to pay up or downgrade

Some years ago a local council grant enabled our local Civic Soc to produce a folded tourist information leaflet. UK readers will know the format - it's found in every hotel and tourist information office. The text is out of date but we have a PDF version of it. Okular tells me it was produced by InDesign. A PDF can be edited with LibreOffice Draw. The other 3 pages can be edited as a mixture of images and text boxes but the front page is just a single big image, including the text on it. At least that's how it appears in the PDF and in print. But open it with Draw and there's something else. A big black rectangle, the size of the finished folded leaflet blocking the copy. How it doesn't show in the PDF viewer or in print I don't know - PDF is a strange thing.

Easily removed but is leaving this debris behind this debris something commercial professional software line InDesign does? Or something commercial, professional InDesign users do?

Re: Adobend

"Maintaining this monolith is probably more of a burden than a business now."

I doubt it. Add bells and whistles occasionally. Tweak the subscription models often.

Greater Manchester says its NHS analytics stack is years ahead of Palantir wares

Here's a thought. The Health Sec is taking direct control over from NHS England. How about he undertakes a survey of his new empire to see what he's actually got that works, is created in house, is totally under UK control, not US and doesn't involve forking out huge sums of money for anything other than the H/W to run it on.

Re: Wait...

A more reasonable interpretation is that here is something which already exists, could and should be rolled out to other trusts and dump Palantire.

M&S warns of £300M dent in profits from cyberattack

Re: A £300million reduction in profits

The "accelerate a technical transformation" will mostly amount to doing just that. AKA shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

AI can't replace devs until it understands office politics

Re: This is what I keep saying

"you reach a point where you can't refine the requirements any further until there is something for the userbase to start poking at"

This is where fast prototyping comes in. Working with an RDBMS (Informix) it was easy enough to throw together a table or two based on what I thought were the data needs for what was required and have it automatically generate a default screen based on that. The users could then try it to see if it represented what they'd been thinking about. It wouldn't be pretty or have any business logic behind it but it could be done and amended very quickly. When they were happy with it it could be something more and less than a final spec - a working sketch, in effect.

That is maybe something that an LLM could produce.

Re: The Great Replacement

"Translating vague requirements into usable specs."

Whether the useable spec is actually the spec for what's wanted is another matter.

Re: It's going to happen

"I'm still trying to convince my kids to learn to code, because I think they'll have a decent and rewarding career for many years yet."

If they go into coding because their dad persuaded them rather than something different that they'd rather do then they may have a career in coding but it won't be decent and rewarding. We all think that what comes naturally to us is equally accessible to everyone. It isn't.

Microsoft revives DOS-era Edit in a modern shell

Re: "superseded Edlin"

Well played, sir.

Actors' union complains about Epic Games cloning Darth Vader

"The union are looking after the collective rights of their members (or ought to be)."

Tell that to Ryanair's flight attendants: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqeelw04e9o

All too often it's not clear what "the Union" is; IME it acted as if it had a feudal relationship with its members who were expected to pay their rent and do what they were told in order to be weaponised in pursuance of somebody else's pay claim.

On the whole I'm in sympathy with artists' rights but AFAICS this is just the Union miffed at being cut out of their self-appointed role as middle man by direct negotiations between company and rights-holder. My limited experience of unions was that they weren't on my side in negotiations when they were supposed to be.

Ransomware attack on food distributor spells more pain for UK supermarkets

Re: Picture

That's what manglement thinks.

Re: These are terrorist attacks and the response should be appropriate.

Have core services such as the RDBMS that drives the rest connected to the rest of the business only through their data ports and not at all to the outside world*. No SSH or whatever. No other functionality. Maintenance only through the system console or at most a very small, dedicated network. Inconvenient? Ask M&S, the Co-op and all the rest about inconvenience.

Have a business resilience plan. Run exercises to test it. And test your backup and restores.

By now the boards of every big retail and distribution company in the country should be making this their top priority but I wonder how many are.

* Yes, I know this is makes updates tricky. It was much easier in my system minding day when updates came on CDs at intervals of some months from the vendor. It would need a process to verify the updates and the media to convey them across the air gap.

SEC SIM-swapper who Googled 'signs that the FBI is after you' put behind bars

Re: proved once again that cybercriminals are very bad at internet search hygiene.

"once again" is hardly generalising from a single instance.

Re: Chicken or the egg?

"That is, it seems like the searches were evidence of his guilt, not the reason he got nabbed."

Exactly. It would have been difficult, to say the least, to work back from the searches to what he'd done.

Microsoft adds Grok – the most unhinged chatbot – to Azure AI buffet

It'd be a handy, if not very strong, defence to anti-trust charges.