Posts by Numen

Hardware quality problems and server supply chain kinks slow Amazon’s $100 billion AI build

Looks like they'll be spending money for a loooong time

Supply problems matter because Amazon spent $26.4 billion on capital expenditure in the final quarter of 2204

Intel sinks $19B into the red, kills Falcon Shores GPUs, delays Clearwater Forest Xeons

Wonder when they'll finish announcing the Xeon 6s?

After June and September announcements in 2024, there were more configurations to come, but no hint yet. And I've noticed the big server folks haven't really announced serious systems using any Xeon 6s either.

This cant be good - AMD's Turin is shipping; where's Intel?

The bell tolls for TikTok as lifelines to avoid January 19 US ban vanish

Little Red Book?

Mao would love that. No one's noticed the relationship?

Qualcomm triples Windows on Arm OEM design wins since May

I saw what you did there: vice-like grip

Intel losses hit $16.6B in Q3 and Wall Street is … loving it?

If you're going to have a loss, clean out the cupboards

A lot of companies are sitting on losses that they can defer almost indefinitely. But if you're going to have a loss anyway, you may as well get rid of that stuff all at once. That way you have one bad period, but all the skeletons in the closet are gone and won't haunt you in the future.

As I was told as a beginning musician, If you make a mistake, make it loud and people will think it belongs. Similar concept; and then I can say I'll do better next time.

Windows 10 given an extra year of supported life, for $30

Re: If

And it would really upset everyone who had already replaced otherwise perfectly functional hardware to be able to run Windows 11.

Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws

I remember this from the early 80's. I heard of one guy who was assigned to make sure that each box of paper clips had exactly 100 in it.

Intel prepares to cut 'thousands' of workers

We trally don't want more cores!

You add too many cores, memory can't support the accesses, even if PCIe reads go to cache (the writes don't!). We really don't want more cores, just faster cores and faster memory. More cache might help a bit. Take a look at what corporate data centers are doing!

Management company settles for $18.4M after nuclear weapons plant staff fudged their timesheets

K-25 enriched Uranium, not Y-12

There were three main atom bomb facilities in Oak Ridge, TN.

K-25 did the uranium enrichment, and is being cleaned up now

Y-12 was the assembly plant (my dad worked there for a while)

X-10 was engineering, which I believe grew into the Oak Ridge National Lab

Oracle quietly extends Solaris 11.4 support until 2037

2037 makes sense

Neatly avoids the 2038 time problem. Oracle won't be fixing that!

Microsoft rethinks death sentence for Windows Mail and Calendar apps

Sounds like they're reinventing Mozilla Thunderbird

I've been able to do this for years - multiple email accounts (with Owl to access MS mail), integrated calendar with sync. Local folders, spam learning, sorting, ... Very nice!

Microsoft breaks geolocation, locking users out of Azure and M365

Apparently lasted more than one day according to NHS

NHS shows this lasted around 3 days, from 21/3 to 24/3

https://support.nhs.net/2023/03/microsoft-365-alert-service-degradation-microsoft-365-suite-some-users-with-conditional-access-policies-may-be-unable-to-access-any-microsoft-365-service/

Intel’s axed Optane biz spurts out mixed bag of new SSDs

Not a huge surprise

This kind of thing usually happens either because there was a contract for it that was too expensive to break and pay off, or there was a stockpile of memory to use up. (Or both.)

Too little, too late: Intel's legacy is eroding

Re: Got fat and dumb

Just like Sun Microsystems.

Hire anyone and everyone, regardless of qualifications; tolerate continual delivery slips and product quality issues, and trade on your reputation. Remember "No one ever got fired for buying IBM"?

People forget that no tree grows to the sky.

Why the end of Optane is bad news for all IT

But it's not new

The concept of Optane as a second layer of memory had been tried before, and hasn't been successful each time it has been reinvented. It had only a niche appeal for a number of reasons.

And remember - it was cleared every time you rebooted. No storing stuff across boots. That could be a security issue, and you might not reboot the same OS and application right away, say if there was a failure in the node. You could end up with obsolete data you'd have to clear anyway.

It's both the idea and the implementation that have to work. Not the case here.

Why Intel killed its Optane memory business

Optane wasn't the first, or even the second, try at adding a memory hierarchy. The IBM 360/91 (I think it was) had the memory channel in the late 1960's, the IBM 3081 had expanded memory in the early 1980's. Not a lot of good use cases then either.

Interesting technology, but Optane always seemed like a technology solution in search of a problem.

CXL is a different solution, for a different set of problems. It should do better, but it's likely to be some time before it makes it to on-premise data centers.

California state's gun control websites expose personal data

Accidental?

I suspect this will turn out to be intentional by someone opposed to gun ownership.

Cloudflare's outage was human error. There's a way to make tech divinely forgive

Not only that

But when you've used a certain paradigm long enough, you'll find there are problems that are hard to solve. So there's a stampede to a "new" paradigm that doesn't have those problems. Then, when you discover that approach has problems, head over to the "newer" one.

Rinse and repeat.

Centralize, decentralize. Cloud, on-prem. Big systems, groups of smaller systems.

Seems to be about 3 paradigms that run in a circle. It's fun to watch something from the 60's or 70's be rediscovered. (Server class memory is one example.)

The new approach is the solution to all problems, until it isn't.

Splunk dabbles in edgy hardware, lowers data ingestion

Sounds like an offload owuld help

It certainly looks like this filtering would fit into a SmartNIC very nicely. Their "puck" project sounds like a good fit for this. Or add filtering in a SmartNIC on entry to the Splunk server. I'd be glad to help with that!

Offload?

Too bad they can't offload the filtering/puck into a SmartNIC, maybe on entry to the Splunk server. Their "puck" project might be ideal for this. I'd certainly be glad to help with that!

Broadcom buying VMware could create an edge infrastructure and IoT empire

SmartNICs too

With VMware's Project Monterey, there's a good case for Broadcom and SmartNICs as well. Not as big as cars, or perhaps not yet, but certainly another set of functionality from Broadcom.

Although Broadcom could be outbid. Say by Cisco or Intel? Gelsinger certainly knows VMware!

Intel plans immersion lab to chill its power-hungry chips

Not a new idea, correct

From an article on Seymour Cray:

For his next machine, the Cray-2, he intended to shift from the usual silicon chips to faster, but unproven, gallium arsenide technology. Manufacturing difficulties forced him back to silicon, and the Cray-2 arrived, delayed, in 1985. Nevertheless, it broke the giga-flop (one thousand Mflops) barrier. This was the machine that was cooled by being completely immersed in an inert fluorocarbon liquid, the same liquid used as artificial human blood. Ever stylish, Cray included a decorative fountain in the coolant circulation system.

Will we get a fountain in these new systems?

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

Actually, the HW requirements make some sense to me

When W10 was announced in 2015, as noted you could install it over Windows 7 and 8 systems, supporting hardware back at least from 2000. If W11 supported the same as W10, they'd have to support these old systems until maybe 2030 or later. Support 30 year old hardware? I'm not sure I know of any OS that does that, certainly not a commercial one.

So I understand why they have the hardware requirements, looking ahead to future support until W11 end of support, but I do suspect they could have been a bit more liberal with where they placed the line. I'm sure they'd lose too much face if they went back and changed it now.

Looking back from 2030, a line at 2018 hardware might make sense. But looking from 2022, it would certainly seem silly to put the line there. Be interesting to see MS try to explain this, though.

Notes on the untimely demise of 3D Pinball for Windows

Supported hardware

I always figured that the short list of recent hardware for Windows 11 was due to how long Windows 10 has been around since mid-2015, and will be supported until 2025. Windows 11, released in late 2021, would likely be supported until 2031. (Just in time to handily miss the 2038 date problem.)

I suspect they don't want to support 2010 hardware until 2031. Cant say I blame them; most OS vendors do similar things, just not as poorly.

Microsoft extends 'outage mode' for Azure Active Directory to bake more resilience into cloudy services

3 days?

"There is also a limitation in that authentications are only processed by the backup service if the user has already accessed an "app or resource" within the last three days"

So no more long weekends or longer holidays, like Thanksgiving?

Talent shortage? Maybe it's your automated hiring system, lack of investment in training

And that degree ...

I've got 47 years of good, widely varied experience, but I'm not qualified for anything because I don't have the proper degree. I've known a lot of good people with physics, math, and music degrees, so they get passed up too. (Mine's in philosophy.) And, of course, I'm too old to actually know anything. Very disappointing.

Astronomers detect burps of interstellar cannibal from 480 million light years away

And eventually ...

The two compact objects will spiral into each other, most likely creating a black hole, if there wasn't one there before, or making the existing one larger. This will generate gravity waves that LIGO and Virgo will detect if the two compacts are large enough.

There's more to come!

When everyone else is on vacation, it's time to whip out the tiny screwdrivers

Re: Tech tip

Great idea! I use paper muffin baking cups for this. Holds all different size parts, and very easy to label. You can even use their different colors to color-code if you're obsessive enough!

Where on Gartner's Hype Cycle is Gartner's Hype Cycle?

Re: "the square root of strategy"

It actually is. Do the math.

IT manager who swindled Essex hospital trust out of £800k gets 5 years in prison

More checking?

You'd think it wouldn't be that hard to automate a check to see if you're being billed from a non-working company. At least once a year, and for a new supplier?

Quantum computing: Confusion can mask a good story, but don't take anyone's word for it

Say you're trying to reduce data into a 1024 x 1280 picture. Using two variables, Monte Carlo will generate a pixel for each variable pair, chosen at random. Eventually you'd have enough of the image to tentatively identify the picture. QC would just produce the picture.

Now assume you've got 50,000 variables. That takes a lot of computing to get any kind of (multi-dimensional) picture. Certainly would make QC popular, if it could ever manage that many variables.

Maybe QC In Spaaaace to keep it cool!

Again:

Great article, Rupert Goodwins. Hit all the right spots, spot on. Bravo! Encore ! More, More, More! :-)

Microsoft issues emergency fix for Wi-Fi foul-up delivered hot and fresh on Patch Tuesday

Got me twice, I think

2 BSODs since Tuesday, both when rebooting to install a Windows patch, including the 5001028 patch this morning. On a 6 year old PC!

And still waiting (sort of) for 2004 to "become available" for my system. (If ever.)

Banking software firm tiptoes off to the cloud with MariaDB after $2m Oracle licence shocker

Re: Features yes but..

I remember working for Ingres in the mid-80's, when Ingres and Oracle were the same size. Oracle had a soundex (sp?) function that would search for words that sounded like others. There was almost never any use for it, but Ingres didn't have it. Thus Oracle told all the prospects that you had to have it, and so of course you couldn't possibly use Ingres.

Somethings don't change, I guess.

5 months later, 37.7% of Windows 10 PCs are running the May 2020 Update... Wait, people are still on 1809?

Re: Names and numbers

I'm still waiting for Windows to give me permission to install 2004. I'm sure I"m not the only one!

The vid-confs drinking game: Down a shot of brandy every time someone titters 'Sorry, I was on mute'

Welcome back!

Sanity has been sorely missed.

When you gaze long enough into the bork, the bork will gaze back into you

10:10 (or 1:50) is Happy Time!

This is known as the "happy time." See? The hands seem to smile. You'll see this on almost every clock/watch/analog time/... ad to subliminally put you in a good mood about it.

As opposed to the "sad time" of 4:40 (or 8:20). You'll likely never see that!

IT guy whose job was to stop ex-staff running amok on the network is jailed for running amok on the network

Re: 12 Months And A Day

As I recall, 12 months or less is a local jail; over 12 months is prison. The extra day thus ensures prison.

Peek-a-boo! Windows Insiders play hide and seek with a Friday night update

Print from the cloud

Am I paying exit network charges for the big Postscript/PCL etc files?

Brit MP demands answers from Fujitsu about Horizon IT system after Post Office staff jailed over accounting errors

Just don't allow bugs!

I worked for a company in the 70's and 80's where the QA group returned a product release literally 10 times due to all the bugs. The development managers were livid, of course, so they got the SW Dev VP to declare that the QA group could not run any tests that the developers themselves had not run. Problem solved!

Watch an oblivious Tesla Model 3 smash into an overturned truck on a highway 'while under Autopilot'

Didn't notice a person either

Did you notice the truck driver standing in the lane near the center divider, about where the car's brakes show the puff of smoke, trying to warn off the car? The car didn't notice him either, not just his truck.

Prank warning: You do know your smart speaker's paired with Spotify over the internet, don't you?

Re: Until some vendor takes security seriously...

Then they get hit with the epoch rollover and the dancing stops.

Patch blues-day: Microsoft yanks code after some PCs are rendered super secure (and unbootable) following update

W10 + AMP = '!'

On one of our Windows 10 systems, running Cisco AMP, after the Tuesday patches went on we get a yellow '!' on the Windows Defender shield icon. When you look, it says "Virus and threat protection status unavailable, open Cisco AMP for Endpoints for information." The link it provides is to the AMP Connector, which won't open. Opening AMP directly, it thinks things are fine. I'd turn on AMP Connector Debugging if I could find where the log file for this is!

Anyway, something seems off in the Connector interface.

Cover your NASes: QNAP acknowledges mystery malware but there's no patch yet

Consume vs Enterprise

From a client we work with:

I checked with QNAP and our enterprise devices are running on a FreeBSD base vs the consumer Linux based devices. QNAP has said there are no currently known vulnerabilities for our enterprise SANs.

Swiss sausage sizzler 4.0 hits 200 bangers per hour

procine produce?

Great! They've been telling me to eat more vegetables!

IBM turns panto villain as The Reg tells readers: 'It's behind you!'

It's discs. IBM had their own spelling.

Is hyperconvergence about to take over the enterprise data centre?

Forward into the past!

We're seeing the re-invention of the divide and conquer approach: X was too big and too slow to provision, so we're going with smaller systems that are much more agile and that "anyone" can manage. Of course there are more of them, so maintenance time and effort is multiplied (1400 security patch applications, anyone?) and we need more people to do it. After a while, this gets to be a problem. Wait - look! We can consolidate all this little servers into a few big ones. Problem solved!

There's a time-honored tradition of stampeding over to a "new" approach that solves your current issues, without any insight (or memory) that the new approach has its issues, too. Too hard to figure out how to solve your current issues, so just follow the PR/hype and go with something different.

Fun to watch this on its second or third go-around.

IBM swings axe through staff, humming contently about cloud and AI

Experience is cleaqrly overrated

So they lay off the older, most experienced people. Obviously experience isn't important. You'd think that would apply to upper management as well. Think of the salary you'd save there!

OMG: HPE gobbles SGI for HPC. WTF?

More history

Don't forget the merge/demerge with Cray that started their high-end computing.