Posts by Steve Channell

Court docs allege Meta trained its AI models on contentious trove of maybe-pirated content

Bhopal

At the inception of electronic legal due diligence, the first step was always to scan all documents for keywords like "Bhopal" (for exposure to the Chemical disaster) and words like "unlimited". It was quickly discovered that blanket scorecards have limited value, since the number of false positives highlighted.

The reason to mention it is that that lesson was not learned by Facebook, that censored references to the Austrian town of Fuck, Spanish chocolate Negro or English food Faggot. It seems that despite the huge investment in "AI", they never really got to grips with context, and Californian censors were (frankly) too stupid to comprehend that words had an established definition before they were adopted as profanities.

While most normal people find Elon Musk's posting of count transcripts (technically pornographic text) disturbing, it is still impossible to adequately censor content.

We should the honest: Facebook failed on many fronts

Boffins carve up C so code can be converted to Rust

Re: A.I.

Porting COBOL to C# is easy.. just compile with NetCOBOL then reflect using ILSpy. Simples because C# supports struct

This is nothing new

'C' is a difficult Language to parse because of exception cases and implicit conversions, "mini C" parsers have existed for a very long time (Haskell used a mini-C intermediate language for over a decade before LLVM rendered it redundant), there is even a ANTLR C parser for parsing C in Java. It would be new if it produced safe Rust code, but it doesn't.

The principle of parsing a language into Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), then rendering the AST into another language is not rocket science, Hiperspace.SQL is an example that translates SQL into C#

We told Post Office about system problems at the highest level, Fujitsu tells Horizon Inquiry

Re: In defense of Gareth

Watching evidence to the enquiry, there was a large number if discrepancies reported in the migration from Horizon (store & forward via dial-up ISDN) to Horizon-NG, highlighted by whistleblower.

The case that was brought to the old bailey was not in-scope of Horizon-NG, so no reasonable expert witness would reference bugs with that rollout.

The often ignored fact is that Horizon was primarily an EPOS and network system, with replication of all transactions to Post Office each night, but POCL did not implement management information to support counter management or investigation (the cash-account report was initially a transitional system). You shouldn't need an engineer expert system for a criminal case: the evidence should be clear.

In defense of Gareth

Post Office counters brought a case against a sub-postmaster to the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court) with the express intent of making an example, including a full team of barristers and solicitors for the prosecution, while the sub-postmaster chose to represent himself.

The sub-postmaster highlighted an example that he believed to be conclusive proof that the system was defective, but there were scenarios where it could be normal:

1) Messages were transmitted (via UDP) between counter 1 & 2 were first written to disk by counter 2 (idle device) while counter 1 (single CPU) was concerned with counter transactions

2) Session-move key was used to transfer the session to another counter (e.g. to use weighing scales), but cancelled.

Gareth's evidence related to the specific scenarios mentioned in defense, he was not cross examined or asked about other defects : The UK courts rely on the adversarial principle if you don't cross examine, doubt is not considered. The judge could have asked questions, but it is likely they were peeved by the professional discourtesy of not engaging a barrister.

Had the case been reported to police, a solicitor would have been appointed (who would seek legal funds from Federation of sub-postmasters, and/or professional indemnity insurance); and CPS would have considered evidence before seeking prosecution. This didn't happen because POCL used crown-agency status to investigate and prosecute, choosing to bypass crown court and seek trial at highest court (only appeal to supreme court can override the Old Bailey, and only if a legal precedent is needed). Application for leave to appeal was not sought.

It was a miscarriage of justice, but not because Gareth didn't volunteer an answer to a question that was not asked.

Oracle's Java price hikes push CIOs to brew new licensing strategies

"Support" contracts + discounts

Anybody who didn't switch from Oracle when they bought Sum Microsystems deserves it, but if you're tied into Oracle database, WebLogic or Oracle Financials, the cost of the Java subscription is discounted and a small part of the overall cost - Oracle has a mantra "prices never go down". If you switch to OpenJDK, your discount tier will go down to compensate, and any financial institution will forced to pay "support" subscriptions to another provider to offset operational risk "insurance" (that after all is how RedHat makes money).

sure, no one ever needs the "support", doesn't make it a complete waste of money

Billionaire food app CEO wants you to pay for the privilege of working with him

Re: double flames

You might want to reflect on your own racism - it was foolish of someone to start with "it might seem racist", but the caste system is one of the factors holding India back (relative to China), and that was the target of the criticism.

Elon Musk is not a paragon of inclusive management, but he does pay his staff (highly) and is in a hurry: Twitter eclipsed the facebook, but lost its way and needs to recover lost ground.

IBM's mainframe bubble bursts and growth stalls

Time for a price cut

The Telum processor is a CMOS processor like AMD64, the latest AMD and Intel chips are also multi-chip processors. The difference is volume, but that applies to the POWER processor too.

Given that you can run RedHat Linux on {Telum, POWER, AMD64, ARM} the price ratio should reflect value rather than legacy premium.

The mystery of the rogue HP calculator: 12C or not 12C? That is the question

PEMDAS not needed with RPN

RPN does not need brackets for precedence, but can be confusing.

1 ENTER 2 ENTER 3 * + Reverse Polish Notation uses less (7 keys) key presses than algebraic notation 1 + ( 2 * 3 ) = (8 key)

Majority of Redis users considering alternatives after less permissive licensing move

Apache KVRocks

It's worth noting that Redis has two flavors, the durable flavor (restart recoverable) it uses a RocksDB store in addition to the in-memory cache, which is slower than KVRocks (tuned for large cache) since there is a single store

We know 'Linux is a cancer' but could CentOS chaos spell opportunity for Microsoft?

Could be very good

If they certified it as 100 percent compatible with WSL2, could be very good. Azure Linux and WSL2 both use the Microsoft SMB client rather than Samba.

Would be nice if they included loadlibrary in the kernel for DLL loading

Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew

Re: "Boeing is committed to continue their work with us."

more specifically, they don't want to return the money they got from NASA for "R&D"

Starliner's not-so-grand finale is a thump in the desert next week

Re: Rapid push away

they didn't mention why they added "rapid push away", but given it pushes the ISS in the other direction, there would have to be a very good reason, and this was my "non rocket scientist" conclusion

Rapid push away

The undock procedure has been changed to push it away from the ISS faster so that [1] if the thrusters fail completely it will drift away from the ISS fast enough to burn up in the atmosphere [2] if it explodes, it will be far enough away not to avoid shrapnel. If there are any heat problems during first maneuver, NASA can target a sea landing to avoid cities.

To crew, or not to crew – that is the question facing Boeing's stricken Starliner

No good options

Worth noting that "NASA has approved the Starliner for a crew return as a contingency" can be translated to "in the event of gravity film like scenario (where the ISS must be abandoned), it can be used as a life-raft - better than certain death".

What nobody is mentioning is that the propellant leak on the way up might have continued adding to the risk - at some point a Boeing manager would have highlighted the growing risk to expedite a decision.

It's entirely possible that SpaceX has vetoed sending a empty suite since it might not fit, and insist they return on a Soyuz spacecraft instead.

Other technical questions include the software patch and reboot to allow unmanned disconnect.

Either way, Boeing is going to have issue a bond for uninsured liability: The Astronauts will not have signed a waiver for a SpaceX ride

Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS

I thought Racketeering was illegal in the US?

LLM-driven C-to-Rust. Not just a good idea, a genie eager to escape

Solution looking for a problem

Rust is a great language, and reminds me of the debate we had thirty years ago about whether to use the PL/1 (or PL/S the systems programming subset of PL/1 without a runtime) or use C/370.

The debate didn't change much for most of that time (other than the suggestion of Pascal/Delphi rather than PL/M), or using Lint (itself a 40 year old static analysis tool).

While it seems like a great suggestion, the main value of using an LLM is to add "AI" to the description - so much more sexy than using a static analysis tool to solve the problem.

The problem is Rust achieves type safety by applying ownership and immutability concepts, that are difficulty for LLM - what you'll get is:

1. syntax conversion

2. Compilation errors

3. Managers wondering how long it's going to complete

4. Managers complaining that "the AI has done the harp part", why are developers taking time.

How did a CrowdStrike file crash millions of Windows computers? We take a closer look at the code

Nope, did you not see the reference to eBPF?

eBPF includes a verifier where shoddy software does not.

As someone who has written kernel-level code, I can assure that it is possible to write formally provable code using Formal Methods - I don't anymore because the levels of code review, profiling, verification, {unit, system, integration, regression, performance} testing are prohibitive. duff data is only an issue if you don't verify it.

I know my surveillance code as 100% reliable, not because I'm some kind of genius, or used VDM mathematical proof; it was 100% reliable because it checked every pointer and fell back to a read-discard loop (after WTO instruction) that ensured it did no harm. CloudStrike's code is surveillance code - their first work-around "fix" was to delete csagent.sys

to translate your comment " It is certainly possible for shoddy invalid data to trigger a shoddy logic bug in the shoddy code that interprets it. Indeed, that happens all the time in application code"

This article says they couldn't ("https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/22/windows_crowdstrike_kernel_eu/")

There is simply NO EXCUSE for what CrownStrike has done: they've taken advantage of a signed kernel driver to side-load code into the kernel in contravention of the license agreement. We can expect a future Patch Tuesday to black-list the csagent as malware.

To describe these sys files as "broken configuration file" insults the intelligence of readers : either they include binary executable code, or are virtual environment like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBPFbut inferior.

CrowdStrike meets Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will

Re: Windows: a flawed security model

This really has nothing to do with the Windows security model - it's the history: When the internet became as retail experience in the early 1990's Windows had a TCP/IP stack based on DCE and wasn't secure enough to prevent attack - compounded by MS decision to add IIS remote debugging on the server and ActiveX on the client. Windows rightly got a bad reputation for poor protection, creating a market for 3rd party virus protection.

MacOS is better protected than windows because [1] it shares the micro-kernel design of the NT Executive (using messages rather than stack frames to call kernel functions) [2] almost nobody used it when virus attacks exploded, [3] Apple had early experience of virus attacks when it was especially vulnerable due to floppy disk viruses, and learned the lesson.

CrowdStrike problems are only just starting: It would be reasonable to blacklist their csagent.sys kernel driver as malware, destroying their business. That we're not (yet) talking about bankruptcy is a testament to two things: [1] their well-funded legal department, [2] their well-funded marketing department.

While MBA led tech companies are poor for engineering, the modules on legal and marketing are well used stopping the truth from getting out

Db2 is a story worth telling, even if IBM won't

Re: Earlier?

what you're remembering is dBase II from Ashton Tate.

There was no dBase I (it was an internal database tool at DARPA)

dBase IV could talk to what was eventually branded as DB2 (for OS/2, Windows NT, Unix, Linux).. it was never related to the IBM database product

AI query optimization in IBM's Db2 shows you can teach a tech dinosaur new tricks

Re: Elaborate

Cost Based Optimization takes a parse tree in a language we like to call "structured" query language - a LLM does the same (the prompt is parsed into a language tree

It generates permutations of query plans using a stop check that estimated cost is lower than the cheapest plan generated to so far

Cost is estimated using heuristics (generated from hard simulation of the of cost of access paths), and statistics of the cardinality of data and where the predicates fall within them

Oracle (prior to v6) used rule based optimization that favored unique indexes, then non-unique indexes, then order of tables in the query - not particularly intelligent.

Granted CBO is more like the Amygdala that higher cerebral functions, but so is current AI.

Alas we live in an age where "an algorithm" that looks at recent price history to make buy/sell decisions is now branded as "an AI" - If you can call a price algo AI, or shopping "people who bought toys also bought batteries" agent AI, then you certainly can call CBO AI.

IBM spent years training CBO to be reliable.. but (as with Oracle RBO) early punters were happy to go with "it's like magic"

DB2 has included "DB2" since 1983!

IBM released DB2 in 1983, four year after Oracle because it was working to an advance artificial intelligence called "cost based optimizer". CBO might not be as sexy as AI, but arguable that is what it was

Meta, Microsoft SQL Server make strange bedfellows on a couch of cyber-pain

or it is still working as expected!

the "out of support" includes every version of SQL/Server up to 2017, since then Microsoft has been pushing clients to cloud subscriptions.

Unless you're using graph tables (doesn't really work) or ledger tables (me-too demo searching for a use-case), the main difference is scalability, security patches (even EOL SQL/Server has less issues than Oracle) and in-place version upgrade (page table format)

Microsoft's Recall preview doesn't need a Copilot+ PC to run

back to the future?

Anybody who ever used Microsoft Outlook Journal will find this feature somewhat familiar if a little sad in its sheer stupidity of the technology.

Journal used to look at applications you were using and what files were open and record basic information - it wasn't very useful, but didn't use much power to process. Recall could reinvigorate Journal applying AI to what you're working on, but instead uses daft technology. The idea of taking a screen print of a document, and using AI to convert back to text is so stupid, you'd only do it for a demo.

Graph database shows Biden outspends Trump in social media ad war

slow news day?

A US company that happens to sell software, gives $250k to a university, research doesn't confirm whether the companies products were used in the study.

The fact that Neo4J has funded the study highlights that its products are not used by any web-giant, and wasn't used for the "graph problem of our time" (pandemic contact tracing).

Help! My mouse climbed a wall and now it doesn't work right

Cleaning instructions for mice.

When writing historical stories about the old roller mice, you really should reference the IBM field service engineering instructions for cleaning mice balls.

Back in the day, IBM had instructions for everything - but the mice-ball cleaning instructions when viral (in as much as anything could in the 1980's) because they were hilarious when taken out of context

GCC 15 dropping IA64 support is final nail in the coffin for Itanium architecture

segment registers were the difference

The intel 80386 introduced configurable size segments, which all the OS vendors used to wet segments to 32-bit and used a single address space, with segment selector registers set to this one large segment. Without much change it was possible to increase address space from 4Gb to 16Gb by using {code,stack,data,extra} registers. All the effort would fall to OS and compiler vendors,

AMD didn't just increase the addressing from 32 to 64 bits, they remapped segment registers as general purpose registers to ensure that AMD64 programs would always be faster than "whatever Intel called their version" (was it x86-64 or ia32-64, can't remember).. Fortunately Intel was persuaded to build AMD64 compatible chips

US 'considering' end to Assange prosecution bid

his "crime" was hacking (badly), not journalism

unrelated to Chelsea Manning's big dump, Julian got impatient with a DoD hacker's caution and accessed servers himself without using a VPN - that not journalism

The clarifications are a formality - constitutional rights in the US universal (that why people sign visa waivers on planes to the US)..

It's likely that he'll be convicted, and allowed to serve his time in "spider land" (which will release him on licence). Aus doesn't want any blow-back if he kills himself, but also doesn't want him using his celebrity to run for political office

Catch Java 22, available from Oracle for a limited time

Java is rubbish for AI workloads

Back when Generic Java (GJ) was mooted for as a successor for Java 2, ther4e was much debate about whether to bite-the-bullet and amend the Java bytecode to support runtime generics, but instead stuck with GJ type-erasure : at runtime ArrayList<T> is the same as Java 2 non-generic ArrayList. .NET 2 did bite-the-bullet and include runtime generics because it was thought that you could never replace C++ with arrays scattered across the heap.

Net result, betting that "everything will eventually be re-written in Java" was a mistake, because there is no equivalent of native arrays packed in continuous memory, and no support for primate data types that were not understood three decades ago

Re: What's the point?

The paid version includes GraalVM which "promises" higher performance as long as you don't use any of the stupid API that can't work

Java 22 still includes RMIClassLoader 22 years after it was near universally agreed as a bad idea. RMIClassLoader is responsible for most security violations (including log4j & struts)

Nvidia turns up the AI heat with 1,200W Blackwell GPUs

FP4 WTF

The distinction between G-Force and Quadro GPU used to be the latter sported full FP64 double precision floating point numbers while G-Force only supported FP32 single precision floating point numbers that were fine for games and mundane traditional calculations like Ballistic range calculation and Hydrogen Bombs

FP16 and later FP8 where billed as the advance that set Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) apart from GPU that were thought to be useful only for training.

With nVidia support for FP8 and FP4 in microcode, it's difficult not to see the end of any argument for dedicated TPU processors.

'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

Oracle Bills never go down

If You find your budget for Oracle licences is going down, expect an audit.

If your user count is going down, expect your discount to be reduced to keep the bill up.

If you fail the audit you lose your discount: there was an incentive to over provision licences.

when an audit is scheduled, Shut down any servers not currently used, and spinup postgress on at least one of them

Preview edition of Microsoft OS/2 2.0 surfaces on eBay

Re: Worth noting the discovery that made OS/2 1 redundant

I thought I was doing well remembering back 35 years, Citation is difficult because none of the publications at the time were on the Internet..

I developed on OS/2 (1.1-,1.3) - it was rubbish for services unless you disabled real-mode applications (processor reset was used to switch from protected mode to real-mode and lost interrupts).

i have no evidence that IBM wanted OS2 to remain single CPU, but 80486 was the first x86 processor to have CMPXCHG needed for multi-CPU Critical sections

Worth noting the discovery that made OS/2 1 redundant

The 8086 could address 1Mb of memory in real-mode (20-bit addressing), while 80286 could address 16Mb (24-bit addressing) in protected-mode, and 80386 4Gb (32-bit addressing).

That 20-bit addressing consisted of 16-bit for segment (for 8080 compatibility), and 4-bits for segment selector (16 segments)

Through experimentation MS engineers found that the 80286 in real-mode could address 20 segment giving a usable address space 4Mb - a surprise to MS/IBM and Intel! Because the PC-AT could take a maximum of 4Mb anyway, the whole 286 protected mode (the original reason for OS/2) became completely redundant.

Windows 3 didn't start as a breakup with IBM, but as a way to push win-Word and Excel (that has been ported from Apple Macintosh) and get a head-start over IBM DisplayWrite, WordPerfect and Lotus.

Windows/386 (the variant of Windows 2) was a faster GUI platform because it used top-left origin for CRT (the standard for TV) rather than bottom-left of IBM terminals. translation of screen addresses meant OS/2 was always going to be a little bit slower than Windows 3.

The break-up came because IBM didn't want OS/2 to be a multi-processor OS to protect its mainframe platform. Windows NT was originally going to be OS/2 3.

Apple Vision Pro is creating a new generation of glassholes

Zaphod Beeblebrox mode?

anyone who's watched (or listened to the original radio-4) Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, will know that Zaphod Beeblebrox had sun glasses that turned black when something frightening happened to him.

The apple glassholes are unique in that they are not "augmented reality" in the conventional sense, but instead VR where the camera image is overlayed behind the VR images.. and consequently go black during in an accident. The other feature is that you don't "see" someone eyes, but an OLED display that projects an image taken from the inside of the glassholes, for that authentic second-head appearance.

going to message the Douglas Adams estate, in case they fancy a few million quid for "prior art" patent infringement: Douglas would love that!

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

After-market paint job?

Sounds like there is going to be quite a market for after market paint jobs! - you know, that clear outer layer of paint you find on normal cars.

There might even be some "survivalists" that choose camouflage transfers to match assault rifles they use for "legitimate deer hunting" (clearly unaware that several hundred bullets ruins the texture of the meat)

Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

worth reading the job description

Worth noting that the job advert is for the web-substrate for office - running in a browser. Rust is better than C# for web-assembly because it doesn't use a garage collector (C# downloads mono runtime). Rust is better for edge-security than C++ because it blocks unallocated read (that could reveal keys).

Rust has a bright future, but it's biggest impact is likely to be the open release of C++ code analysis tools that MS uses internally, and an alias for std::unique_ptr<T> ( T^ anyone?).

C# is now the undisputed fasted managed language, and TIOBE language of the year for good reason, but there are still situations where managed languages are not be best fit.

The Land Before Linux: Let's talk about the Unix desktops

Re: Proprietary

If you were a device developer, that is exactly what you could do.. All operating systems have source licences for device developers - what you couldn't do is ship the product.

I loved "the land before Linux" story, but couldn't work out which episode of star-wars it was a parody for, but am looking forward to the the "return of the jedi" edition. The only thing missing is the plot hint about Xenix for the "I'm your father Luke" line.

Those familiar with UNIX SVR4, will remember the SunOS boot sequence where the Microsoft (C) is included alongside AT&T. The original "Unix on the desktop" outfit got the gig for PC-DOS because [1] IBM was already in the room shopping for a Basic interpreter [2] The CP/M author had snubbed IBM [3] MS had pitched Xenix to IBM for the desktop - IBM thought "if you can do Xenix, you can do DOS".

MS was a Unix shop before OS/2 (they developed and ran office apps on DEC Unix) - but changed as PC's became more powerful. ~Nobody should forgive them for the Balmer years, but shouldn't rewrite history either.

Apple has botched 3D for decades. So good luck with the Vision Pro, Tim

Unity means it is different to every other Apple attempt at 3D

Worth noting that Unity is also used by Magic Leap.. so they start with a mature 3D platform with a mature VR integration.

I'm sure Apple developers can upskill to C#

Postgres pioneer Michael Stonebraker promises to upend the database once more

Re: lets do the time-walk again

I've designed databases schema for DB2, Teradata, Oracle and SQL/Server. Raw volumes were introduced for Sybase, Oracle and others because (at the time) Unix only provided buffered synchronous IO. DB2 never needed raw volumes because VSAM datasets were always asynchronous and translation from VSAM page address to cylinder, track, sector imposes little overhead.

I was skeptical of SQL/Server dropping raw volumes in the migration to NTFS (from OS/2 to NT), but direct async IO and list IO reduced the performance advantage. The biggest distinction now is that databases don’t need journaled files-system – Oracle ASMLib and MS Storage Space Direct avoid this but are still logically file-systems.

You’re right that NAS storage and S3 will never be as fast as a raw volume.

lets do the time-walk again

The idea is far from new, and mirrors work done for IBM future system project (that eventually became the System/38 minicomputer then the AS/400), Pick, Mumps and yes WinFS.

It's also been a long time since File-systems were simply hierarchical directories for files stored on disk volumes, they've evolved into specialist databases in their own right.

If it's not new, the real questions are [1] what's different this time? [2] why do we need it? [3] will its performance justify the change? [4] is it better than other initiatives?

It's different because PostgresSQL and advanced file-systems are open-source, stable, modular and implement stable APIs - combining both functions is an engineering problem.

Why is more difficult because we no longer use raw-volumes to host high-performance transactional databases - Asynchronous IO and unbuffered file access largely eliminates FS overhead

Performance advantage of combined scheduling, memory management and indexing can only be achieved by moving the DBMS kernel into the OS kernel, but that means removing triggers/procedures or introducing a fresh attack surface for hackers

Developments around CXL Memory, pooled memory and memory semantic SSD are adding index technology to memory devices with GPGPU executing search functions - maybe the convergence of the future is database/memory not database/operating-system.

Not even LinkedIn is that keen on Microsoft's cloud: Shift to Azure abandoned

Explains poor reliability

Not wishing to bug-up Azure, but I assumed recent availability problems with LinkedIn was due to AI priority for their servers - reassuring to known that it's nothing to do with Azure.

They would do well to think about Azure Stack to improve reliability

Microsoft floats bringing a text editor back to the CLI

there 's a reason Vi and Violate start the same

It won't be emacs because every tool that ships with Windows has to be "supportable" by micrsofties.

It's likely to be something like PowerShell ISE

Snowflake puts LLMs in the hands of SQL and Python coders

put down the cool aid

"Snowflake was founded in 2012 and was one of the early proponents of separating storage from compute" - shared disk parallel processing was the foundation of "Oracle Parallel Server" (sic) a quarter of a century ago.. what is new is applying it as a cloud only option.

The genius was [1] Identifying that AWS S3 solves the same problem as HDFS [2] Marketing an old idea as the next iteration of big data

The battle between open source and 'sort of' open source is as old as software

Evolution

The open-source model used to be like "try before you buy", but the "buy" consisted of consulting, maintenance, training, support, documentation - you could just use it, but if your business depended on it, it was better to have a commercial contract. The market changed when hundreds of thousands of clients dwindled down to a few large service-providers who decided to in-source the services that companies like Hashicorp depended on to fund their development.

The new business license is primarily about stopping cloud vendors profiting from work without funding its development. If a cloud provider make 30% gross profit, we shouldn't care that part of that profit goes to the developers that made part of it possible. There is a risk that smaller business users (like IBM, Exxon etc) might be asked to switch to a commercial contract, but they're likely to do that anyway for insurance.

CEO Satya Nadella thinks Microsoft hung up on Windows Phone too soon

I'll be happy when they bring back the Windows phone..

.. and they will, but using Windows Subsystem for Android and Amazon app store.

CERN swaps out databases to feed its petabyte-a-day habit

Another migration

When CERN first started the LHC, it used an Oracle database with redo logs distributed (using as tape) to multiple facilities around the world.. don't remember seeing the replacement announcement.

Intel stock stumbles on report Nvidia is building an Arm CPU for PC market

news?

Tegra was one of the processors used for Windows 8 rt devices including Lenovo Yoga. Nvidia lost out to Snapdragon because they didn't include a cellular model, critical for always on operation. With 5G, it starts to makes sense to decouple the chips

In-memory database Redis wants to dabble in disk

Not quiet as daft as it sounds

Redis uses as time-to-live (TTL) mechanism to avoid cache-eviction problem of not knowing whether there is still a weak reference to the cached-object held by a remote server - in essence it pushes the problem to the application client. That's fine for session information, but in other cases it means either :

1) combine cache write with an async database write.

2) set a long TTL, hopefully with a cache-delete when no longer required.

The solution is the same as one used by Kafka: write older TTL objects to a SSD key-store (RocksDB/Speedb) rather than just loose them or crash - describing it persistence rather than as a fix.