Posts by PenfoldUK

Deeply buried 16-year-old SQLite bug caused last year's Tailscale outages

So a company takes a product, uses it in a way it was never designed or tested to do, then wonders when it bugs out...

IT department put sticky notes on the laptops to help employees log in

My memory may be at fault here, but at one place I worked a while back, the new laptops did have sticky notes with employee name on them. But only enough info to turn them on first time. You then had to choose a Bitlocker PIN.

Even then, you couldn't log into the network without separately provided credentials.

Anthropic’s bug-hunting Mythos was greatest marketing stunt ever, says cURL creator

Is it marketing hype?

Or a reflection that cURL has been largely well written and bugs patched already.

Whereas bigger companies have a plethora of bad coding and design issues that Mythos can pick-up on.

Whilst I don't think Mythos will pick up on anything a good human coder could discover, it can do it a lot faster.

I just hope it fosters good coding practises, rather than encouraging more "vibe" coding, as companies rely on Mythos to do their QA.

NHS to close-source hundreds of GitHub repos over AI, security concerns

Sounds like an excuse to close source the NHS.

How are firms supposed to make billions off the back of the NHS if code is open source?

I doubt it will prevent threat actors exploiting weaknesses. But it will prevent AIs and prople detecting and patching them.

Microsoft publishes a workaround for Samsung's C:\ drive woes

How the hell does an app like this screw up C: drive access on Windows?

I could understand if it was something like a low-level drive formatting utility.

Although I understand why Microslop didn't pick up on it before allowing the app in it's store - they can't pick up their own update problems.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Last heard working for a large American aerospace company.

Got to be Boeing, hasn't it?

Sight of Clippy, Internet Explorer scares baby

This might be the first concrete evidence of generational trauma being passed to offspring by genetic or epigenetic means.

It's long been known that humans and animals have some things programmed at a genetic level. Like a fear of snakes.

And recent research shows that epigenetic changes can be passed on for several generations in response to environmental changes.

So it's logical they'd be a mechanism for passing on fear and hatred of Clippy to new generations...

Here’s your worst nightmare: E-tailer can only resume partial sales 45 days after ransomware attack

Whatever you think about old tech...

... at least it's fairly reliable in an emergency.

I know at one place I worked at, a big office environment, the one fax machine that was installed became a lifeline whilst the building LAN was down.

Of course, totally impractical for today's pace of business, especially with job cuts. But a good back up none the less.

Especially if Putin uses Goldeneye on us...

Broken wizard forces Microsoft to issue out-of-band Windows 10 patch

Closing the door after the horse has bolted...

I know it was probably done deliberately by Microsoft to push W11, but I didn't get the W10 ESU option until I followed some instructions on a YouTube video by a contributor who has subsequently had several such videos banned by YouTube under it's "illegal and dangerous items" terms.

Please note the video ONLY showed how to get ESU enrollment working as intended. NOT to enroll outside of Microsoft's stated terms.

Pop! System76's 24.04 beta is here – complete with a beta of polarizing COSMIC

One OS to rule them all

I know it's probably just me but sometimes, with all the forks and kernel spats, I wish the MCP had won in the original TRON...

Tired of begging, Microsoft now trying to trick users into thinking Bing is Google

A few years ago I did use Bing for certain searches, as it had some features that Google apparently didn't have. Or at least they weren't as obvious to access.

Then Microsoft removed those features and I haven't used Bing since.

Instead of trying to ape Google, why not innovate and offer stuff Google doesn't?

No. I'm here... :-)

The Register takes AMD's Ryzen 9800X3D for a spin

Re: Meanwhile, on the blue side of the fence..

You've picked a good analogy there.

Whilst the top speeds of Ford's may not have increased recently, the engine and fuel efficiency has .

The 13th and 14th Gen Intel parts were like old "muscle" cars that had their engines so overturned and ramped they were literally damaging themselves beyond natural wear and tear.

Intel realised they had hit the limits and had to reset.

Whilst the 200S series may seen lacklustre, they are still good chips for most compute tasks. And form a solid base for the future.

You also have to remember that Intel also have to build experience with their new chiplet/tile designs. Much as AMD have had to with theirs.

You're right not to rush into running AMD, Intel's new manycore monster CPUs

Re: Many cores on power-limited package = poor single-thread performance?

It depends on how you define "stupid".

Yes, from a pure steps executes point of view it is wasteful. And must increase power consumption to a degree.

But can be incredibly useful to save a CPU sitting largely idle and save overall runtime. Especially if you write the code so that any rollbacks happen in a minority of cases.

Of course, the downside is when the implementation of the rollback isn't 100.00%, which has allowed a number of exploits in recent years. So you have to decide whether to have speculative execution switched on or not, depending on your use case and security concerns.

Two years after entering the graphics card game, Intel has nothing to show for it

A tangential question

One thing that always puzzles me about graphics drivers is why they have to be updated so often, apparently even for individual games.

I can get with things like DLSS a game by game approach must taken. But driver updates seem to be required even when rendering natively.

Is this a case of newer games picking up bugs in existing drivers, so need updating?

Or are drivers bring altered to accommodate individual games, and if so why?

Pretty much all the headaches at MSPs stem from cybersecurity

TLAs

When I saw MSPs in the headline I thought you meant Members of the Scottish Parliament.

Who have unique cybersecurity issues.

Such as telling the difference between work and streaming football matches...

UK's National Cyber Security Centre entry code cracks up critics

I would have thought for the secure areas they'd also need keycard verification as well.

This story reminds me of when a friend temporarily worked at an IBM Research facility in the UK.

Needed a keycard to open every door. Including going in and out of the toilets...

Windows 11 unable to escape the shadow of Windows 10

My personal take on Windows 11 was that it was launched to early in its development cycle. Giving it a reputation as a buggy mess that has never really gone away.

And I think they released it too early as Intel bounced them into it to make their new p and e cores work.

Of course the ridiculous hardware requirements, in the middle of a global economic downturn haven't helped either. I doubt most enterprises have reached return on investment for the kit they needed for Windows 10 yet.

Internet's deep-level architects slam US, UK, Europe for pushing device-side scanning

There are a number of human rights concerns with client-side scanning.

Firstly once the software and hardware infrastucture is in place, there is little to stop it being used for other purposes.

Even with the stated aim of detecting child pornography, given how "advanced" auto scanning is I can see many people being incorrectly flagged. And with things like child pornography, even a totally false allegation can trash someone's reputation.

Finally, I have sincere doubts it's effective anyway. The paedophiles will just use obfuscation products to hide the photos and videos.

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

And I'm sure this is nothing to do with Google deleting data in "inactive" accounts.

I know from work the number of times "inactive" data is targeted and it picks up newly created stuff as well...

Microsoft delays debut of IoT security offer due to 'unexpected system challenges'

Sounds like they might be eyeing up the IoT part of Blackberry that Blackberry are planning to hive off.

I suspect MS have found it's more difficult than just tweaking the old Windows Mobile source code...

BlackBerry to split into two companies, foraging for tastier fare for shareholders

I'm surprised Blackberry is still big enough to be split up...

It's a salutory lesson in Tech.

Anyone remember Digital Research?

NASA may tap SpaceX to rescue ISS 'nauts in Soyuz leak

Re: But I thought...

Normally a lifeboat is used when the ship is sinking. If they use the spare Soyuz, it leaves the ISS without a lifeboat for the remaining crew on board. The docked Crew Dragon wouldn't get the whole rest crew down in an emergency.

Re: Lessons lernt from Apollo programme?

Standards is a two-way street.

Yes some standardisation is a good thing.

But if the standard is dodgy, like the PCI-SIG 12V power cable standard appeared to be, or you've got a faulty batch, you then don't have anything else to fall back on. And it might be months before a resupply mission can be launched.

As for rhe space suits. It's all relative risk. For a return journey they're there in case of cabin depressurisation or life support failure. Most other failures on reentry would be fatal space suits or not.

How TSMC killed 450mm wafers for fear of Intel, Samsung

One of the reasons given for the movement towards chiplets(AMD) and tiles(Intel) is a combination of lower yields with monolithic chips and that certain parts of CPUs don't need the full-throttle approach.

Hence plans for the chiplets so that things can be mixed and matched.

With rumours that nVidia are sticking with monolithic GPU chips for it's forthcoming RTX40 series, will be interesting to see how the manufacturing costs v performance stack up for both approaches.

Having said that any new approach is likely to have some teething problems. So AMD may have to take a short-term hit in manufacturing costs to pull it off.

How did you mourn Internet Explorer's passing?

IE is dead?

Didn't mourn it's passing.

Haven't used it personally for ages.

And for work only using it on legacy systems.

Intel plans immersion lab to chill its power-hungry chips

With Intel/nVidia power consumption, the KFC Console concept is becoming a reality.

Except in the data centres they'd be able to actually cook the chicken rather than just keep it hot.

Maybe it would be an idea to build fast food outlets into data centres, or vice versa.

Or build data centres next to housing developments so that the heat can be used to heat the homes cheaply.

Wouldn't it be better to design AI chips that don't need 600W of power to function?

The human brain runs at about 12W.

Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites

Re: Insured?

Whilst I can see that the "suck it and see" approach to engineering may produce benefits with the development of new rocket technologies such as Falcon 9/Heavy and Starship, given the decades of data available for satellites of all sizes this seems more of a waste of money than a legitimate experiment.

I appreciate the delays in launching were not down to SpaceX (particularly that idiotic Cruise Ship), but launching when you've got a major storm warning seems overly risky. If not a fit of pique.

Re: how most women feel when some <hiss>man</hiss> promises to call them the morning after.

Given that SpaceX, Starlink and even Tesla are heavily associated with billionaire Elon Musk, I don't think it's sexist to refer to a man in this instance.

He doesn't strike me as the kind of man who'd ring back unless he's interested in you birthing his Imperial Progeny*

*Intentional reference to Ming the Merciless in the 1980's Flash Gordon film.

Notes on the untimely demise of 3D Pinball for Windows

Space Cadet wasn't an "Easter Egg" as such. It was a standalone game, not buried in other software.

Played rather too much of it back in the day...

Windows 11 Upgrade?

I think this is the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to encourage uptake of Windows 11.

Make the 64-bit game available as a Windows 11 only feature.

Especially if they can adapt it so that it uses 12th Gen Intel P-Cores/E Cores to advantage. :-)

Twitter's machine learning algorithms amplify tweets from right-wing politicians over those on the left

Tweet Bias

Could it be that some more right-wing people are more likely to tweet simplistic solutions to complex problems, that are themselves more likely to get re-tweeted?

For example, with the Covid-19 anti-vaxx rhetoric, in English-speaking circles at least this seems to be driven more by right-wing ideology than left.

Whereas people debunking the claims often have to post several tweets to explain their views. Which then are less likely to be retweeted.

What is more disturbing about this story is that if Twitter don't know why their algorithms are generating these results, maybe they should switch to code that identifies why certain tweets are promoted over others. Black Box processes have a tendency to give unintended results precisely because no one know how they are making the decisions.

Why did automakers stall while the PC supply chain coped with a surge? Because Big Tech got priority access

Re: They only have themselves to blame

Agreed. The car manufacturers are used to bullying their suppliers. And expecting them to respond at the drop of a hat. Chip making doesn't work like that.

So when the car makers told the fabs to go screw themselves at the start of the pandemic, the fabs took on more reliable and currently more lucrative customers.

Now the car manufacturers are bleating like toddlers who've been told their favourite sweets aren't available.

As US$12bn is wiped off Apple's value in one day, iOS 9, OS X 10.11 and Watch OS 2 dates set

The Argos Connection

As a UK reader, this reminds me of my experiences with the Argos high street catalogue chain over the decades.

When it first came to my hometown, I was amazed at how high-tech and fast it was. The first time I bought something, it was ready waiting for me by the time I'd ordered and paid for it (separate transactions at two separate tills - those were the days).

Each time they brought a catalogue out, it was an exciting time. Seeing what new wonders they'd added. (No, I'm not being sarcastic, just nostalgic).

Then it got to the point where they reached saturation. Virtually everything they sell is just new iterations of the existing stuff. So the excitement of that new catalogue has gone...