Posts by bombastic bob

Intel CPU interconnects can be exploited by malware to leak encryption keys and other info, academic study finds

Re: "Intel classified our attack as a 'traditional side channel'

more right than any other perspective, for sure. "Bottom Line" drives _EVERYTHING_.

Perl.com theft blamed on social engineering attack: Registrar 'convinced' to alter DNS records by miscreants

Re: Focus

From the article: a social engineering attack that convinced registrar Network Solutions to alter the domain's records without valid authorization.

Network Solutions - they're pretty much the OLDEST one out there, as i recall. Used to be 'internic'. I set up a domain with them in 1995. Still registered there, too. I was under the impression they had safety procedures in place to PREVENT this kind of thing.

Apparently they need to review their internal procedures...

Homo sapiens: Hey you, Neanderthals! Neanderthals: We heard that

Re: POTS

not just telephones, but narrow band radio communications as well, limited to about 3khz. Narrow band FM is common for walkie-talkie systems, and short wave band (as I recall) is allocated in 5khz increments [unfortunately this means cross-talk at high frequencies but there ya go].

Re: POTS

you made me think of a joke involving a Neaderthal named "Ugg"

('who's on first' style)

Re: Species or specious?

dogs have "breeds", and yet they're all dogs.

I suspect Neanderthal vs Human is more like that, rather than a separate species. This is more or less proved by the apparent evidence that Neanderthals and humans had viable offspring who then passed along genes from both.

[usually separate species can't mate very well, though donkey+horse = mule, and mules are normally sterile]

In any case, the similar hearing fits the concept that Neanderthal is just a "breed" of human.

Ever felt that a few big tech companies are following you around the internet? That's because ... they are

Re: Dogfood

my anti-tracker method is a lot easier on my end.

* assume that browser history and stored cookies are a huge part of the problem

* For "those" sites, run a browser without 'noscript' in a different security context, such as a different login entirely (i use DISPLAY=localhost:0.0 or similar and authorize via "xhost +localhost" - make sure X server runs with -listen_tcp or similar for this to work).

* The separate login's browser settings either delete history on exit, or you have a script (needed for Chrome) that deletes everything that's persistent.

* close all browser instances for that login and erase history between web sites.

Normally when I find these sites I have nothing to do with them. But occasionally an online store or even gummint resource (Cali-forn-you is bad about this) will have a CAPTCHA or some other scripty thing you can't avoid using. So I run it from "that" browser. Firefox has a setting to erase all history on exit, and that is helpful.

This as an alternative to "temporarily allow all for the current tab"

(understandably clever trackers can track you without cookies, and then put 2 and 2 together to associate that web page with everything about you, from your real name and e-mail and cell phone number, to personal data you entered for a social media account like age, sex, likes/dislikes, education and work history, and so on, and then SELL IT or use it to target ads, etc.)

1Password has none, KeePass has none... So why are there seven embedded trackers in the LastPass Android app?

The company says users can opt out if they want.

The company says users can opt out if they want.

Read: "It's in there somewhere, just search if you really want it"

or "Most users won't care anyway so it doesn't matter it YOU shut it off"

or "Good luck figuring out which magic buttons to press, Muahahahaha!"

or something else that's equally arrogant and/or condescending.

Tracking should be OPT IN or NOTHING. no exceptions.

Linux Mint users in hot water for being slow with security updates, running old versions

Re: A bit rich

most debian-based releases have "apt-get dist-upgrade" available, but you're kinda on your own to make it work. You need to mess with the sources.list file among other things. Often worth doing, but you may have problems later...

Re: How about NOT doing what Microsoft Does?

If I want updates, I'll update when I'm good and ready.

That sounds like INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY to me.

Since when has a toy maker tried to stop children from playing with the toys that they make in ways that they don't like? Yeah, it's kinda like that, isn't it?

Re: So...perhaps Mint SHOULD have automatic updates turned on.

some people do not notice the icon that says that updates are needed

Other people (like me) just *DISABLE* that kind of [insert profane pejorative here] and PRACTICE SAFE SURFING instead...

NASA sends nuclear tank 293 million miles to Mars, misses landing spot by just five metres. Now watch its video

Re: Linux

VxWorks is an RTOS, and that's probably why it's used for things that work better with an RTOS.

I used to compile images for Vx and Linux back in the day, wifi access points specifically. Vx had a much smaller footprint but of course required license fees etc.. One day the manager said "Fit it in 2M flash and we'll use Linux." We made it work.

Australian government fights Facebook news ban by threatening 0.01% of Zuck's ad revenue

Re: Just goes to show how out of touch our politicians are

post links to USENET and who's gonna stop you? Who's gonna TAX you?

As expected, pretty much everyone will AVOID the tax, or ignore paying it even when required.

wait until news links aren't posted any more. You could post something like this:

A link to "The Register" online site for an article titled "whatever" - then a simple google search... no, wait. [could they tax Google as well???]

Dangerous flying car drone zoomed into UK's Gatwick Airport airspace after killswitch failed

Re: What the AAIB had to say

while the Alauda gang, who 'built' this chunk of junk just come across as a bunch of incompetent fuckwits.

When you invent something, and want to show it off to the public, don't make the kinds of mistakes that Tesla did, on occasion. Mad science is cool, but doesn't play well with the public when things go horribly wrong.

It's probably best to hire a safety consultant (one that's familiar with that particular field) to come in and make sure you're following regulations and taking necessary precautions, before doing anything in public.

but yeah that's the difference between "mad science" and "industry". If you can do BOTH, like Elon Musk, then you're gonna do well if you can build the thing you're dreaming up (and it actually works and doesn't kill people or break things unintentionally). But if all of the lights are going to go out for 3 counties in all directions, or airplanes might crash, nobody out there wants to be told "RUN!". Best to avoid that, yeah.

[I've got these ideas about nuclear fusion that I'd like to try. It wouldn't be all that hard, nor even expensive, to collect enough parts and build it. Problem is radiation, neighbors' safety, and stuff like that. So I haven't]

it should be fairy easy to implement a gentle setdown if the signal is lost for a few seconds or so

Agreed. the on-board IMU [necessary for something like a quad rotor] would tell you when the thing is hovering, and then you simply have it drop at a known safe velocity.

From what i oould tell, though, they were using an Arduino Nano (or a clone) and they only have about 32k of NVRAM. Maybe the nav stuff was on a separate Pi board but still, there's _not_ a lot of code space in an Arduino Nano and, well, results were what they were...

The photos of shoddy electronics workmanship didn't make it any better. It's not THAT hard to visually QA a circuit board, and things that fly should be getting extra scrutiny. When I was in the Navy I was an ET and even went to a special soldering school where we learned to solder to NASA spec. Burned insulation and improperly mounted components would have obviously failed the visual inspection. In fact the NASA spec took into consideration a number of things from thermal and mechanical stress on wiring and solder joints, to use of a 'conformal coating' to seal it all up. As I understand it, current NASA specs also mandate leaded solder, due to unleaded solder always looking like a 'cold joint', and to help mitigate the threat of 'whiskering'.

Hero to Jezero: Perseverance, NASA's most advanced geologist rover, lands on Mars, beams back first pics

Re: Life on Mars

Panspermia is interesting, but I think the more likely case is that [like planets around stars] it is more plentiful in the universe than not. Life exists on earth in even the most hostile places, "finds a way" to continue existing. Perhaps the rest of the universe is the same way...

Re: Life on Mars

atmospheric loss due to the solar wind would not have occurred until this field collapsed

Yes, this is the theory (along with a solid or nearly solid core which would lack the magma activity needed to generate a magnetic field from planetary rotation, etc.) along with other theories including the magnetic field generation theory.

Some direct proof of the above would be nice. Maybe on a later mission? The magnetic field could be measured with your standard 9 axis IMU. Just sayin'.

Until then, the Mars meteorites discovered over a decade ago [as I recall] had some evidence of structures that COULD have been caused by bacteria, and that the rocks themselves were supposed have originated on Mars. So, "some evidence" is already there. Proof time!

Maybe the helicopter can spot something better than on-ground cameras that would be worthy of the rover to analyze to a greater extent. Not sure exactly what they'd be looking for in that realm, but I kinda like the ancient lake bed approach so I think they've got a much better chance of finding that important conclusive evidence than on ANY other previous mission.

Bill Gates on climate change: Planting trees is not the answer, emissions need to be zeroed out to avoid disaster

Re: There's a lot we don't know

you really do mean to deny anthropogenic climate change

_I_ most certainly deny it. With pride! And, I have science to back up my "denial". I presented some of it in an earlier post...

I believe that it is extremely important to "deny" the things that are just NOT true, and then wear it as a badge of honor, even in DEFIANCE, if people want to use "denial" as some kind of pejorative.

Don't forget: science is not about CONSENSUS - it is about THEORY and EXPERIMENTS and PROOF.

I think it’s fair to say that nearly every reader of this august website has an absurdly high carbon footprint, and we all need to work hard to reduce it

From the article: There are 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses emitted annually

A few facts to ponder, which I'm sure many will "mind"

* earth is heated by the sun in the day, and cools by "black body radiation" at night

* the method of cooling involves the IR spectrum, in which most of the energy will be in a limited frequency range that is related to the temperature of the black body

* a greenhouse gas (like water) will "act like blanket" and prevent IR radiation from leaving the atmosphere by absorbing it. This heats the atmosphere, and indirectly, warms the planet

* CO2 is practically TRANSPARENT to IR energies corresponding to ACTUAL temperatures found on earth, ;i.e. those between -50F and about 140F. TRANSPARENT. Like glass. NEARLY ZERO EFFECT.

* CO2 is about 0.04% of the atmosphere, and is at equlibrium due to the the planetary hydro cycle (i.e. rain and evaporation - CO2 is very hydrophyllic, and will attach to water in the atmosphere).

* Water, on the other hand, can be well over 1% of the atmosphere on very humid days. Not only is there a lot MORE of it, it's FAR more effective at being a greenhouse gas.

In short, CO2 can NOT act like 'a greenhouse gas" on earth, (not of any significance) given the temperatures you normally find on the planet. On Venus, sure, but its mostly sulfur compounds doing it there. And on Mars,there's not enough of it.

WATER, however, is a HUGE greeenhouse gas on earth, maybe over 100 times as effective as CO2 could possibly be.

And yet, I see NOBODY trying to control WATER...

I wonder why THAT is?

Texas blacks out, freezes, and even stops sending juice to semiconductor plants. During a global silicon shortage

they are unequipped to handle coal frozen together.

Prison chain gangs with sledge hammers oughta do it...

At least coal and oil and gas plants will have higher efficiency (see Carnot efficiency and 2nd law of thermodynamics) once up and running.

What I'd like to know: where did all the NUKE plants go???

Another reprieve for exhausted IT admins: Looks like there are no whizzbangers in Windows 10 21H1

Re: Good

From the article: without the major new features

Read: without the FEATURE CREEP

Small, stable, incremental change is a *Good* thing for an OS

A qualified "agreed" except that you want to avoid the _kinds_ of feature creep that slowly shows up, such as some of the things in XP that broke stuff in SP2 (for example). I remember a few things, specifically, including the ability to (easily) create raw packets for IP.

But it's a welcome change, for sure for Micros~1 to (for a second time) release updates that don't "change the universe" according to someone's "feel".

Linux as root partition on Hyper-V: Microsoft submits patches for kernel 5.12

Re: Hopefully...

we can always hope!

I'd just like to have Linux or FreeBSD with a windows subsystem (like Wine), even if it has to be Win-10-nic .

Biden administration pauses pursuit of TikTok and WeChat

Re: Meanwhile, China blocks the BBC

right, but if a non-CCP-controlled nation blocks THEM, it's "endless lawsuits" dragging it on until a "friendly administration" just "pauses" (read: buries) the whole matter. Puppet strings notwithstanding.

The CCP has WAY too much influence/control over the things we're doing, from suddenly (and without warning) LIMITING PPE EXPORTS during a pandemic, to routing the usual privacy-violating things (that people are wiling to agree to, go fig) through servers in CHINA. And they're not friendly, no matter how wide the Stepford Smile. Look what they do to their OWN people...

I for one will NOT be subjugated to anything resembling a "Social Credit Score" derived from CCP spy data. Or Google spy data, for that matter. But Google is a U.S. company, and may have trouble getting past those "stupid laws" whereas the CCP would NOT.

President Biden to issue executive order on chip shortages as under-pressure silicon world begs for help

something worth considering, the RELAXATION of environmental and other (similar) restrictions, which is always a MAJOR impediment to new construction of things _LIKE_ FAB plants. It's cheaper to off-shore your pollution, yeah.

I do not know if 'Benedict' (Biden} would actually DO this, but I might have to give him a "slow clap" if he does something MAGA-worthy.

Habitable-zone exoplanet potentially spotted just around the corner in Alpha Centauri using latest telescope technique

Re: a mere 4.3 light years away

they're just not capable of particularly high thrust. Not yet

Ack. I'd say the most efficient 'impulse' type of engine would be

* fusion reactor

* super-heated liquid/gas expelled at high velocity

* maximum impulse per gram of propellant

If the propellant is hydrogenous, it can also be "fusion fuel" even if only a small percentage (i.e. deuterium and tritium) are being used for that part of the engine's output.

Then you just need a LOT of it. Since hydrogenous material (methane, water, ammonia) is available on just about every planet in our solar system, in high abundance, shouldn't be a problem if you can make a big enough tank to hold it all.

* NOTE: to prevent melting engines, you inject raw fuel along the inside surface of the engine. The laminar boundary layer will allow turbulent flow, while protecting the layer itself, which will then evaporate and effectively cool the engine housing. Then you can have exhaust temps way above the melting point of the materials it's made of. Multiple injection points for 'raw fuel' will make sure that the engines run continuously without melting.

Re: a mere 4.3 light years away

eh, fire up the "Jupiter 2" - let's colonize Alpha Centauri!

You don't have to go C to get there... just 1/2C will do. ~10-12 year trip, accelerate to 1/2C, coast, decelerate. It's been a Sci Fi staple since the 1950's I think...

Lots of water or methane or some other abundant mateial, a fusion reactor, and one big ass rocket engine that uses all that. Fusion energy would accelerate liquid to a point where you get peak impulse with minimal mass. CAN be done, but you need to accelerate to 1/2C over several months, then coast, then slow down again just before you arrive.

The hard part will be radio communications. Maybe this is where some kind of quantum resonance communication system would come in handy.

helloSystem: Pre-alpha FreeBSD project chases simplicity and elegance by taking cues from macOS

Re: Further simplicity and ease of use...

it's way, way, way too complex for that purpose

ack - gimp does things no other graphics application seems to be able to do easily. However, they are things that you kinda have to be familiar with gimp to use properly. Example, paste a 2D image into a 3 dimensional perspective slot, such as "faking" a monitor screen for a meme...

worth pointing out, the screen shots for the desktop look Mac-like and have at least a 3D appearance, and not the 2D FLATTY FLATSO McFLATFACE every OTHER "modern" desktop is trying to clone...

"Minimalistic" can still look nice.

Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer, says sheriff

Re: For the love of the wee man

Because ThoseInCharge want to show their friends pretty real-time graphs on their iFads.

'iFads' - heh.

Though a proper design would only allow remote control if you passed through multiple firewalls through multiple air-gapped [except for that one firewall] systems. I hope this is a wakeup call for SCADA in general.

Here's what might work, for emergencies:

a) ssh into a jail running on a FreeBSD box that's attached to teh intarwebs

b) ssh from that jail into the host box, which has access to the private network

c) ssh (via the private network) into another box that is multi-homed (but does not route) into the nearly air-gapped network

d) ssh into a box on the nearly-air-gapped network that has a command line interface (to perform somewhat cryptic commands using a custom interface) so you can "fix things" remotely.

A bit cumbersome, but for emergency use only. So, in this example, 4 ssh logins are required to get through, the first being a jailed system (FreeBSD jails have completely separate security contexts, and limit what root can do). Sane IT people would make the logins and pass phrases all different.

And so on.

(but anything significantly less secure than that, BAD idea)

The problem, at any rate, is NOT the pretty charts for "iFad"s. The problem is allowing COMMAND AND CONTROL via the same interface you use for the pretty charts.

Google OS, phone home: Leaked Android 12 screenshots suggest new design, privacy features

Re: Location

good point. You're supposed to be able to control access to location info for applications, last I checked, but how many people do NOT click "enable" for it when prompted?

Or... go through the list of pre-installs and DISABLE it

Is there a "master disable" settings feature yet? That should be in there, too - disable "whatever" for ALL applications no matter how loudly they whine [as an example] and, better still, feed them bogus data so they don't break. Well, I can wish, cant I?

Salesforce likes to play the diversity nice guy in public – Black ex-employee claims the reality is quite different

Re: Rant. No Content.

my initial reaction was that the "micro-agressions" might have been the fault of the recipient by "interpreting them that way". This whole idea of "micro-agressions" and "triggering" nauseates me to no end. Unfortunately there isn't a "Vomit" icon...

Also, deep pocket lawsuits are (unfortunately) a possible motive for possible false allegations by disgruntled employees.

Windows' cloudy future: That Chrome OS advantage is Google's to lose

Re: Contributing? Surely you jest ...

I thought we were calling them "Micros~1" these days...

What's nice about open source is that if you do not like what they did to it, you are welcome to fix it or contribute a patch to make "whatever that was before" an option so that you can have it back if you want it. A properly managed project would accept "an option to have it back" as a patch and integrate it so as to NOT anger a lot of existing users that agree that "change is NOT always for the better" and want their old "whatever" back. Or it will fork. Like Mate. Like Devuan.

(My mate desktops running on Devuan systems and FreeBSD look like an old Gnome 2 setup from a decade ago and it makes me very very happy that I _STILL_ have a 3D Skeuomorphic classic desktop)

github has been moderately stable except recently when they broke the appearance of tags [text now always black unless you have a bleeding edge browser version] and apparently aren't going to fix it so that it's compatible again...

Re: Apples and oranges

you made me consider what fruit equivalents we could use for Micros~1 and for Google since "Apple" is already taken...

I guess Micros~1 is a banana and Google is a pineapple. Or maybe the other way around. Ouch.

I have yet to purchase a chromebook but the potential of 'just putting linux on it' makes it a worth-while gamble, as long as the screen is big enough. Or maybe, like an inexpensive 'droid slab (i have one 'o those), it becomes "fit for purpose" when used as intended. After reading stuff here, that last part is probably most correct.

/me needs coffee now

How do we combat mass global misinformation? How about making the internet a little harder to use

Re: Trust nothing, check your data, use various sources.

Being "Intar-web Street-Wise" is *THE* solution.

"A sucker born every minute" - and twice as likely on-line.

Here's what _I_ think: Question _EVERYTHING_, especially when EVERYONE *APPEARS* TO BE SAYING THE SAME THING...

The only protection, for you, from "Teh Intarwebs", is YOUR BRAIN.

(but of course, THIS assumes that INDiVIDUALS are personally responsible for their OWN lives, and lacks an elitist point of view that "the elites" should be "making it safe" for "the prols" because they're not smart enough to do it for themselves)

Chrome zero-day bug that is actively being abused by bad folks affects Edge, Vivaldi, and other Chromium-tinged browsers

Re: Chrome is the new Flash

"JavaScript is the new Flash"

Re: "the flaw exists in [..] Chromium's Javascript engine"

blocking script is the only way to be "safe". Unfortunately a lot of sites break when you do this. Although I can avoid them 99% of the time, I still have a "special login" that runs without noscript, for those times when I have to cave to their nonsense.

Hint to El Reg: Script is why ads should be showing up on my browser, but they don't. You could fix that, and ALSO show the world that you do NOT need script in ads. Win-Win

Re: Cross reference (very)

I wonder if Google'w bureaucratically minded approach was already being used for the browser's updates...

If so, I'll LAUGH EVEN HARDER!

Though maybe the _REAL_ problem is the way web browsers have diverted from displaying hypertext mixed with graphics and interactive links into a "mini-OS" of sorts, written in of all things, JavaScript.

maybe they'll bother to fix another memory bug I've observed (and others online have been reporting for YEARS), where [under certain conditions] if you leave a page open that frequently "phones home" and does a periodic query across the network (let's say updating status text, like a weather monitor), that in a particular use case the memory footprint will slowly increase until something crashes. It's been like this, since, forever I think.

Alphabet Workers Union hits Google data center contractor with labor complaint: We were banned from discussing wages, say staff

Re: Sigh!

I would be more sympathetic to their union if not for the fact that this union was, in part, started over objections to the 'Maven Project'. And though I agree with the their dislike of a "real names" policy, it's usually the point of a union NOT to dictate corporate policies and contracts, but to protect rights of employees and in doing so provide needed services to the company they contract with.

So I have to agree with the idea - if you do not like working for Google, there are other employers. I know _I_ would not like working for Google. So I don't.

I'm not against unions, but I don't see an I.T. union being all that effective. if it were more of a guild, where it acts more like a standards setting organization and even provides employment "head hunter" services, it might make sense.

Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election

please let me know (with proof) what 'lies' you are referring to. Thank you.

Jeanine Pirro (one of the defendants in the lawsuit) used to be a judge. On her show she's known as "Judge Jeanine".

I would think that Jeanine Pirro would have a pretty good grasp of evidence, evidentiary rules, and so on with respect to what might be considered libel, slander, or "damaging". Many other hosts on Fox News are actual attorneys.

So far I haven't seen anything like "lies" that would result in any kind of "damage", and I watch Jeanine's show regularly.

And though I don't always watch the others named in the lawsuit, I haven't seen anything "damaging" from them, either.

Please keep in mind, THIS.

I expect to see more of the same in the near future. the thing about a court case is that actual EVIDENCE gets to be presented, and DISCOVERY gets to be demanded from the opposing party.

Japan’s COVID-19 contact-tracing app hasn't warned users of encounters with carriers since September

6000 / 126million = 47 per million

I have to wonder how much DAMAGE giving away freedom has done in its place...

It also suggests that there is ONLY *MINIMAL* (if any) benefit to "tracking apps".

How do you fix a problem like open-source security? Google has an idea, though constraints may not go down well

Re: Fixing the unfixable

reporting a bug is good, but supplying a PATCH along with the bug is even better.

Re: factors like verified identity, code review, and trusted builds

You don't need to verify the identity of the person who did the change when you can look at exactly what was changed.

Correct. And it's theoretically possible to grab a source tree based upon a specific commit, or a specific version, if you need to [for patches, at least].

What you do *NOT* need is "da bleeding edge newest feature-creep-laden" version, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! you update.

What I see as the problem: Someone "not you" is deciding what version of code is being used by your application or operating system.

What I see as the fix: enable software authors and package maintainers to depend on installing older (or newer) versions of critical libraries if they want to, with forked security patches, as needed.

What needs to happen to make this work: either static link the binaries and manage them individually, or else use something similar to a "container" or "run environment" to be installed with specific package versions assigned to critical (or otherwise incompatible) packages. Ubuntu may already have "a mechanism" for this....

Just because a shared lib exists on the OS does not necessarily mean you MUST depend on it. Your critical package dependency tree could easily depend on versions that have been PROPERLY VETTED, and maintain security patches on.

To some extent, an LTS release will do this. By fixing code versions in stone, and ONLY patching vulnerabilities, you generally are NOT introducing NEW ones. Prior to a Linux release that's LTS, responsible package maintainers would vet all of these things (and prevent breakage).

Long ago I realized that you can NOT rely on shared libraries being updated to NOT break YOUR application, especially if you ship binaries. To some extent Linux handles this by versioning the names of the shared libs, but this does NOT correctly patch security vulnerabilities if you update ONLY THE NEWER VERSION of that shared lib. This patchwork "must be a shared lib" approach is flawed in this way. As I see it, for any critical application, you either include your own libs in the build process and link them statically (or dynamically with unique-to-your-application names), or you use specific LTS versions of the libraries as dependencies for your shipped binaries, thus ensuring that security patches (and not "FEATURE CREEP") are the only things done to them.

Things broke HORRIBLY WRONG when everyone "suddenly decided" it was necessary to maintain bleeding edge "feature creep laden" versions of EVERYTHING, and to CONSTANTLY HAVE A MOVING TARGET, in lieu of "stable, well tested, rarely changes except to fix serious problems" .

Change and re-inventing the world, because, "new, shiny" - SO HIGHLY OVERRATED!!!

Microsoft's Azure Quantum hits preview: Not so much quantum computing as it is quantum-inspired computing

Re: It unveiled a new language, Q#

Q - like from STNG ?

The actual benefits of quantum computing...

Has anyone done ANY meaningful benchmarks?

I did some study on entanglement a while back and it seems that what you need is hardware that can produce pairs of electrons or photons, as a single Qbit, a particle pair that is entangled (the 'opposite ends of the superconductor' method might be the best one yet) , and then somehow you leverage this entanglement to do computing tasks for as long as the Qbit can remain stable (which, apparently, is NOT very long).

But if you use simulation software to create a simulated QBit, how is this ANY better than just doing normal maths??

Nothing I have read so far EVER goes into specifics on how to make this work. Maybe it's time to grab that QDK and see how it can actually be used. I'm sure SOMEONE must have SOME kind of sample code out there, even if it's only doing some mundane chaos calculation like "sun spots".

A practical example is needed...

In Rust we trust: Shoring up Apache, ISRG ditches C, turns to wunderkind lang for new TLS crypto module

Re: FTFY

nice use of the joke icon to make a point. I wholeheartedly agree!

/me points out that since that "few million lines of lines of code" is relatively STABLE and WELL TESTED by time, there's really no need to play the "Arthur C. Clarke's 'Superiority'" gambit only to end up the loser and ALSO not knowing how it happened...

Severe bug in Libgcrypt – used by GPG and others – is a whole heap of trouble, prompts patch scramble

Re: C++ has it's own set of problems

The one thing that I found that C++ helped a lot with (in windows coding) was the ability to manage GDI handles automatically, freeing them when no longer needed. This also assumes that you're not abusing exception handling and that object unwinding functions properly if you do.

Otherwise, my C++ code nearly always looks a LOT like C code. Personally, I think it becomes more maintainable that way. Properly designed templates and operator overloads can help, too.

(but if your C++ code throws exceptions and requires try/catch everywhere, you're doing it wrong)

One thing that I believe Micros~1 got mostly right is the COM object for OLE 2.0 . It kinda demands C++ and, by design, helps to prevent memory leakage and similar things. You could make _THAT_ a qualified "citation" for mitigating SOME of the things that shared objects and object lifetime issues might otherwise cause.

Re: Well......

according to the TIOBE index, C is WAY out ahead in popularity at ~17.4%, Java is just shy of 12%, followed by Python at ~11.2% and C++ at ~7.6%.

Rust is pathetically in 26th place at 0.61%. Even assembly language is doing much better than Rust, in 11th place at 1.64%.

(note these are still January numbers and so it might change around a bit when Feb numbers come out)

Anyone who bitches about writing code in C should provide a link to the operating system alternative, since I can't find it in my version of Google.

heh. so true.

there've been plenty of "code smell" and "code pattern" web pages (or even dead tree manuals) written regarding the *kinds* of things that get you into trouble with C coding, like best practices and things to avoid. I would think that reviewing and understanding the more sane and concise ones might be "step 1" in contributing to any public project _like_ gpg, OpenSSL, etc..

(And if that's not good enough, a clue-by-four and/or cat-5-o-nine-tails)

Re: Well......

poorly written/reviewed C code, you mean.

last I checked, compiler warnings in llvm should spot a lot of buffer-size-related issues. It's not perfect but apparently will spot many things. As a test, I called 'strncpy' with a buffer that is too small for the size I specified in the 3rd argument, and got this warning: "warning: 'strncpy' size argument is too large; destination buffer has size 16, but size argument is 32 [-Wfortify-source]". But using 'strcpy' with a string that was too long in the 2nd argument gave NO warning.

Suffice it to say that the big problem here is "NOT using" code that checks buffer size, and hopefully if you DO use code that checks buffer size, that code warnings are paid attention to if you accidentally get it wrong.

And, of course, best practices and peer review to go with it.

Biden administration pauses ban on Chinese tech companies suspected of military entanglements

the West does not have a monopoly on smart scientists and researchers

this may be true, but because of the CCP (and things like "social credit score"), it is my impression+opinion that engineers in China tend to defend higher ups or "status quo", even when blatantly wrong, in lieu of taking an initiative and getting things done. It is my opinion that they are fearing for their jobs. Were it not for an NDA I could describe a situation in more detail where an OEM product started to fail after they made an unannounced design change at the factory in China. I assisted in troubleshooting the root cause, and proposed a solution that was a compromise between the old and new designs (it worked perfectly when tested, and many units were retrofitted with the fix). The solution was basically rejected (keep in mind it took the form of a customer request), with no real reason provided, almost like a denial that the problem even existed. Much later the engineers in China made a "fix" that was, in short, like "using a bigger hammer".

Re: "any post that questions their world viewpoint gets banned,"

O...k...

Facebook finally finds something it thinks is truly objectionable and needs to be taken offline: Apple

see, THIS time, Apple is getting it right and providing an ADDED VALUE to their products with the new iOS.

Apparently trying to make it worth paying the "Cupertino Tax".

Remember life on Venus? One of the telescopes had 'an undesirable side effect' that could kill off the whole idea

in science, the mistakes and failures are often more interesting than the successes.

Right Dr. Fleming?