Posts by SCP

HTTP gets a QUERY method so complex searches can stop pretending to be POST

Re: Idempotent

If you didn't know the term and did look it up, well done you are being professional - you have taken the time to learn something (even if all you have learnt is that there is another name for something you learnt about 40+ years ago).

What this poster does not seem to understand is that software is involved in many fields of engineering and those areas may have similar concepts but routinely use different terminology. Or, in some areas, the concept is not a high profile issue and the expertise required lies in a different area. Such experts might be unfamiliar with the term - but are happy to inform themselves when they encounter it.

I find the narrow minded attitude of the AC poster very annoying - have a[nother] down vote.

David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82

Re: Thanks, Dave

It was sweet. Still have my Psion 3 (broken case hinge), and 5mx (similar) and a donor 5mx - [fading] hopes of resurrecting.

It was great having both a word-processor for notetaking and a spreadsheet ready to hand able to run for pretty much a working day on a couple of AA batteries (and easy to have spares to hand).

Condolences to David's family - he was someone who made one of the iconic contributions to personal computing.

France and Germany agree to disagree, ditch joint next-gen Euro fighter

No, that was the Ju 287 - a bomber.

Re: As usual, the problem lies with French intransigence

Perhaps we need to adopt a Register unit for boondoggles - maybe the "Presidential Ballroom".

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Re: STASI

or Tempest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_%28codename%29 [link]

There should be no reason for parents to not have one of those for their kids, right?

Why do parent's need to have a reason "to not have one"? Maybe the parent decides that having no device is appropriate for their child.

The current "reason" for snooping is to prevent sharing nudes, but there is much more on social media that is very unsavoury. Many of the social media platforms are addictive by design and the behaviours they develop in users can be deleterious. Maybe parents simply do not want their children becoming involved in the whole social media scene.

If this was about safeguarding children then obliging social media platforms to avoid addictive practices would be a more useful way to go.

GitHub nukes 70+ Microsoft repos, breaks CI/CD pipelines, following suspected worm infections

Re: Captain, there's a Codeberg right ahead!

This seems like a plight to remember.

F-35 software delays leave UK buying time with US glide bombs

Upvote for the trolling and sarcasm; but Ed - please don't bring back the Junior-Lt (if nothing else you might deprive The Torygraph readers of the 'benefits' of his 'wisdom').

Yes, you can serve a website from a $1 microcontroller

Re: How low can you go

There was a saying "An engineer can build for $10 what anyone can build for $100" - which alludes to the engineering discipline of minimizing costs.

Obviously for a one-off project the easiest (and cheapest) route is to use something where most of the work is already done. If you are going to build 20 million units then reducing recurring costs from $5 to $1 is a big saving and $80 million can pay for quite a bit of engineering time to achieve that.

Some people enjoy the challenge and see it as part (typically an engineer will be balancing a number of factors - development cost, production cost, reliability, maintainability, risk, time to market, etc) of the engineering ethos.

Linus Torvalds says AI-powered bug hunters have made Linux security mailing list ‘almost entirely unmanageable’

Re: There's an easy solution

They'll have a few volunteers/moderators willing to do the legwork to figure out which are new issues, and forwarding them to the main list.

Sounds like a job for an AI - go through the list of AI submissions collating and summarising those that identify the same issue, prioritising those that proffer a fix, then cross check each issue against the register of known issues and eliminate those from the AI list. Forward remaining issues to the human triage team for further assessment.

Poland directs officials to ditch Signal in favor of 'secure' state-developed alternative

Re: It's worth remembering

The contribution of Polish cryptographers in the breaking of Enigma has always been part of the Bletchley Park history that I recall.

The work Poland did in getting their work out, as the country was about to fall, then eliminating all traces of the work so that the breaking of Enigma remained a secret is a fascinating story and an important aspect of the whole ULTRA programme. (As too is the betrayal of ULTRA by those spying for the Soviets <obligatory smiley :-)>)

Classic 7 is Windows 10 LTSC cosplaying as Windows 7

https://www.linkedin.com/...

The link quite possibly leads to some very handy information - unfortunately it requires registering and signing in to LinkedIn to see [no thanks!].

Is this the same Nicholas Gerasimatos as the github: https://github.com/nicholasg-dev?tab=repositories

(At first glance that site seems to have some interesting content but not an immediately obvious equivalent to what the LinkedIn might be - though there is more exploring to do when time permits)

South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access

Re: Digital ID Required?

Many people accept restrictions of liberty as a necessity of war but are glad to be free of them when war is over. They also look back on some actions taken "as a necessity of war" and consider them over-reactions and a shameful episode in their national history.

Digital services are indeed a very convenient means of conducting many of life's activities - but they come with risks. Even 'paper' systems are prone to screw ups, but it is the scale of the risks that is most concerning. The quip "To err is human, but it takes a computer to really foul up" is also a caution. The ease of access that many digital services provide is also a one of its biggest risks - if a security flaw is uncovered then the consequences can be very widespread and very rapid.

You describe a situation in which you screwed up and the system provided a means for you to recover from that without too much disruption - that was a good experience (and not always guaranteed - but that can also be the case with a 'paper' system). Users screwing up should be an entirely anticipated event, so having an efficient (and secure) recovery mechanism should be expected (sadly it is too often not the case - see the all too many cases of services being hijacked by exploiting failures in the 'access recovery' system - or people not being able to recover accesss). The real trouble happens when there is a systemic security breach. What happens when 3 million people simultaneously try to make an appointment with their bank, and there are similar call levels to the transport authority and orders for new cards. What do all these people do while they are waiting for the now overloaded and congested system to clear the backlog.

Some people prefer not to have single points of failure in the important parts of their life - some are unavoidable, but that does not make it desirable to take on others. Paying by card is very convenient, but having some ready cash to hand to pay for things is a useful backup (still does not prevent problems when the supermarket's electronic tills have gone down).

Re: Digital ID Required?

If it's optional, what's not to like?

OK, you have looked at the upside - and the convenience to a broad section of a community are undeniable. But have you considered the potential downsides and risks. You cannot be unaware of the prevalance of ongoing threats to digital infrastructure and repeated failures of digital security.

If you are comfortable with the risks, others are not - then the issue of things transitioning from 'optional' to 'expected' becomes a concern. For example some [UK] banks still do not provide alternatives to SMS texts as a means of 2FA because everyone is 'expected' to have a mobile phone!!! (Some of us live in mobile blackspots), Then there is all the cr@p of "use our mobile app" to access key services - I don't want to entrust important digital services to a device that I am more likely to lose as I carry it around with me,

You are free to embrace the options offered to you (and I understand the convenience they offer) - but please do not dismiss other viewpoints. There is plenty not to like.

Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns

Re: Zurich, Switzerland

That only works IF you know which contry speaks german ...

It works if you know which canton speaks German.

Re: America's reputational loss will be long lasting

Surely the Quark Bomb (formerly know as the Johnny Cyclops Bomb).

This current remake of the classic ITV TV comedy is even less funny than the film version.

Re: America's reputational loss will be long lasting

Perhaps because the vast majority of US citizens who, through poverty and other social deprivations, will struggle to get or engage with such ID are believed to vote Democrat and that there is no real evidence of substantive voter fraud (and certainly not to the extent that election results are demeaned by such as 'sanctioned' gerrymandering).

It is also the case that it is not only the disparity in the effect of the law but also that it is likely to be the selective enforcement of the law that will be discriminatory. There is also the chilling effect that other recent events will already have on voting by some demographic groups of US citizens. For example, if ICE happened to be (or were believed to be) conducting operations in certain areas at the time of elections.

UK watchdog eyes Meta's smart glasses after workers say they 'see everything'

Re: describing the allegations as "concerning."

1) Facebook will probably just drop the UK as it’s a fairly useless market now that they are no longer a gateway to Europe.

You say that [Facebook dropping UK] like it’s a bad thing.

StopICE hacked to send alarming text messages, admins accuse border patrol agent of sabotage

Re: Good

... but making their names and phone numbers public? I see no problem with that.

How is the information to be authenticated? Enough people have problems with just having the same names as somebody who has just become notrious and the knuckle draggers pile on to the first social media account they find with the name.

Open publication of personal information would allow anyone who has a petty grievance with someone to perform a form of SWATting by suggesting their victim is an ICE agent. As much as some people are overdue a healthy dose of justice, vigilantism is not a good way to go.

Notepad++ update service hijacked in targeted state-linked attack

Re: When will there be..

One of the things I miss about Newsgroups. And, being able to ignore complete threads. The two things I miss about Newsgroups ... Oh sod it, where is the comfy chair?

So Notepad++ had a security SNAFU which puts them in a very large group of FOSS and corporate software providers.

Taking 6 months to identify and resolve the attack is not nice, but by the looks of things this was quite a well resourced attack against a limited resources provider. It is also not unique for vulnerabilities and exploits to go undetected for quite a long time - the trade press is repeatedly covering them. And, this is not just a FOSS problem - it affects corporate software as well. In some ways the corporate software can be more problematic if the corporation spends more time and effort denying and obfuscating the problem because it will have an adverse impact on profits (reduced sales, having to pay the engineering staff to fix the problem and pay customer services to field more support calls)

This is a supply chain attack and the underlying problem is quite challenging. The solution is not going to be to axe small players for any lapse in a complex and adversarial field of IT (I am pretty sure you will not be axing Microsoft after the next security SNAFU - it will simply be another Patch Tuesday).

This Helldesk AC sounds like the sort of complete tosser (because of their unnecessary pile-in on Notepad++) that makes me glad I am out of the corporate hell where IT Support is all about sucking up to the Executives with personal service while the masses get a shoddy service; particularly if they happen to be in Engineering and are trying to use their computer as a tool to do engineering rather than simply generate Powerpoint presentations. No consideration of why Notepad++ was on the whitelist, or what the impact of removing it will be (beyond the it makes it somebody else's problem, not ours). Yes - there might have been a need to have an immediate response- but if you have already been hit, taking out Notepad++ now would still seem to leave you with an infection problem to sort out, and you still have a problem with everything else that is on your whitelist - so this is no solution. But something must be done, and this is something.

FFS - February has got off to a depressing start. The only good news (for me) is that I had auto-update deactivated so I am running old versions of Notepad++ and avoided the troublesome period. I guess I can look forward to seeing all the improvements to Notepad++ when I install the new 'secure' version. Keep up the good work guys and ignore the loud-mouthed tossers.

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

Re: Obvious Question

But it did give the professor's name and academic institution (and spin-off company). Quite often there are lots of publications freely available that would cover an academics earlier work in this field - they also tend to include them on their university CV page.

There was also an earlier comment about this stuff not being ready for "prime time" (it being TRL5 looking to go to TRL6). I find this type of article ineresting and think it is a fair trade off, not having full details, as that would require a deep dive which would require considerably more time and study for an el-Reg hack [intended as a fond appellation of our hardworking journalists] and difficult to justify at el-Reg's price point. There are certainly clear pointers to follow up on if the topic is of personal interest and one is moved to look into it in more - so a good article for me.

Ubuntu 25.10's Rusty sudo holes quickly welded shut

Re: sendmail.cf

Given that it is not English I would assume it to be inspired by the work of Grunthos the Flatulent rather than Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings.

Windows boss defends 'agentic OS' push as users plead for reliability

Re: Hey, Mr Davuluri

I don't know if this is when it was invented, but it arises in Milgram's papers of the 1970's. The concept of "agency" is an aspect of philosophy so has a lot of writing - whether "agentic" was specifically used I don't know (not my area and I can't be bothered to look it up).

On a technology front, I did do some work (in a research programme many years ago - a company "Lost Wax" was involved) with Agent Based Design/Modelling looking into incorporating AI techniques into autonomous collective systems. So, it is not recently new stuff. I recall it being interesting stuff. I can't recall whether "agentic" was ever used.

Shield AI shows off not-at-all-terrifying autonomous VTOL combat drone

Re: AI-written PR slop?

I thought the Russian re-entry vehicles used retro-rockets in the last moment before touchdown to cushion the landing.

Re: AI-written PR slop?

The usual mode of using F35/Harrier/V22 is STOVL/SRVL. The rolling take-off (which includes assistance from vectored thrust) allows greater payload and reduced fuel consumption (cf pure vertical take-off) during take-off. SRVL is very helpful in allowing a heavier landing weight, meaning unused stores and fuel do not need to be jettisoned. It is also easier to execute.

Tail-sitters can have their uses, but they also have constraints that need to be considered.

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

Linux doesn’t stand a chance with 4000 text editors to choose from.

I'd vote for 4001 if the Notepad++ guys got it running natively on Linux.

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

TVM for the cultural reference - interesting to learn the origins of the term "borked" (I had always assumed it was a some sort of manglement of f***ed and b*****ed [or similar] and had never bothered to look it up).

Every day a learning day on El Reg.

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

... then the empire collapses and the legions depart, leaving your Latin totally useless

C'est la vie!

Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily

Re: You have to lawyer out their claims

... terms and conditions are written by lawyers and riddled with loopholes ...

In some jurisdictions unfair or unreasonable terms and conditions with a general consumer can be unenforceable in law. However, if there are complex terms and conditions a corporate lawyer could keep the whole thing stuck in the court system until your money runs out.

Re: It might be someone else's photograph ...

It might be an interesting legal point.

Whilst the photograph (or copyright in it) may not be yours the information about you might be regarded as your personal data - which is protected in some jurisdictions.

An individual collecting/creating that data for personal use (e.g. a 'friend' using it to catalogue their photo's) could well be exempt, but a corporation or individual using it for business generally would not.

Of course, having rights and being able to enforce them are quite different things.

Ofcom fines 4chan £20K and counting for pretending UK's Online Safety Act doesn't exist

Re: This is a cross party issue

... yes all parties supported it originally, but it's ridiculous to pretend Labour are solely responsible ...

We appear to be in violent agreement.

Re: This is a cross party issue

So a fairly typical Act that says do something and sets a timetable for doing something and empowering the Secretary of State to do it; without saying what is to be done.

Advice from another body is not binding and politicians (of all sides) are quite renowned for either putting the fix in beforehand to get the result they want, or punting stuff into the long grass, or simply not following advice (with or without good reason).

To be clear, I think the OSA 2023 is bad legislation (which all sides supported during prepaaration) and the Tories can add it to their long list of sins. But I disagree with you that Labour had no choice in what they set as the threholds and means. Indeed, during the debate and preparation of the 2023 Bill there was cross-party support with some from the Labour side wishing to strengthen and broaden the Bill (though they were not alone in that respect). Labour has its own puritans driving issues.

The vote then followed party lines (314/216) - which is typical polticking. It is also typical politicking from both sides to leave "hot potatoes" for an incoming government to deal with. All tawdry business which adds to the contempt in which politicians are held by many.

Labour supported this Bill during its preparation and had control of setting the Threshold Regulations (again voting followed party lines 320/178). They are not solely to blame for the mess, but they have earnt their castigation.

This is a cross party issue

repeating comment from Wikimedia Foundation loses first court battle to swerve Online Safety Act regulation

[Link]

The OSA 2023 was drafted, debated and passed under the previous Tory administration - but with little guidance on how the Act was to be complied with. This Labour administration has put it on steroids by the guidance it has established on what organizations need to do in order to comply with the Act, and possible means of compliance.

The Tories rightly deserve heavy criticism for the original OSA 2023, but Labour has earned the opproprium being directed at it for what it has done in beefing up the Act.

(and since you were asking about facts - https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1926)

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: Seething with impotent rage

WTF does one do if one is setting up a new device in a location without any Internet access?

As it is for installing MS-Windows I am sure they would let you borrow the internet for the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg [Link]

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Re: Unless I'm hallucinating...

I have a bridge to sell you.

UK agency makes arrest in airport cyberattack investigation

Re: What I would like to know ...

Why is this a crime that is done by males 100% of the time?

A 20 year old woman was arrested as part of the M&S cyber-crime "gang of four" back in July; so it appears not to be 100%.

There are a whole load of issues and causes that drive disparities between males and females. Toxic attitudes and sub-cultures exist in both but the anti-social behaviours that arise are often different in nature and this can lead to large statistical biases when looking at the outcomes of those behaviours.

But it is always worth remembering the fundamentals of logic: A hypotheses "Most X are Y" does not imply that "Most Y are X".

Check your own databases before asking to see our passport photos, Home Office tells UK cops

Though its use for the Lyons Electronic Office should remain acceptable.

‘IT manager’ needed tech support because they had never heard of a command line

A manager should be able to do the jobs of those immediately below them.

I disagree with this, particularly in a fast paced evolving technology setting.

A good mananger should have an understanding of the jobs of those they manage, and if they have been in their role for a while they should have built a familiarity of those jobs so that they can better support and guide their team. If they have come to their management role though promotion through the ranks they may well have expertise in some, many, or all of these jobs - but that is not their role now; they have new skills they need to develop and hone.

The military have a process for developing new officers, they are supported by an experienced NCO. Technically they outrank their NCO, but it would be a very foolish junior officer that casually disregarded a suggestion from their NCO, or the words "Do you think that is wise, sir".

In a fast paced and evolving technology setting a good manager should be able to identify where there are gaps in their team's skills and may need to bring in those skills from outside the team. They are not going to be able to do that job, and they would not typically be the best choice to become the team's expert. They only need to learn enough to know how the new technology impacts on the overall work of the team and to be able to manage that work. If they have come up from a relevant technical role they may well maintain additional expertise in particular roles, but their job now is to manage the whole team so they need to work with their senior team leaders who should be the SMEs.

KPMG wrote 100-page prompt to build agentic TaxBot

Re: There's that word again

But you need something to describe what you get when a gent has agentized the interaction between agentee and agentor to get the agency your agency wants. It's a gen trick!

Why the UK public sector still creaks along on COBOL

Re: It still works

... it's a simple matter of training people ...

Applying someone else's maxim - in theory there is no difference between the theory and practice of writing COBOL; in practice, there is. Some things are not as simple as one might hope. If you are really lucky the original implementer will have put a comment in explaining why something was done a particular way. Sadly it is often the case that things were considered "obvious" because it was common knowledge at the time (and these might be system specific).

Re: Can someone remind me ...

ISTR that the Charon VAX emulators ran considerably faster than the systems they were replacing. (Which is fine and dandy for pure software processing grunt - but does not necessarily help you if you are interfacing with legacy hardware or have 'special' system architecture requirements [e.g. redundancy/fail-op fail-safe].

Still, a useful solution where you have a great deal of 'value' embodied in your legacy software systems.

Microsoft keeps adding stuff into Windows we don't want – here's what we actually need

Re: First of all...

Quite! The sting is that the government will soon want to use that to police your online activity. OMG, I find myself driven to tears about this sort of low life behaviour.

Wikimedia Foundation loses first court battle to swerve Online Safety Act regulation

Re: Wikipedia is used by every UK kid and teenager doing their homework.

The OSA 2023 was drafted, debated and passed under the previous Tory administration - but with little guidance on how the Act was to be complied with. This Labour administration has put it on steroids by the guidance it has established on what organizations need to do in order to comply with the Act, and possible means of compliance.

The Tories rightly deserve heavy criticism for the original OSA 2023, but Labour has earned the opproprium being directed at it for what it has done in beefing up the Act.

(and since you were asking about Labour - https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1926)

Raspberry Pi RP2350 A4 update fixes old bugs and dares you to break it again

Re: Cheapskate

I recall that even hardware intended for the high-assurance market came with an erratta list, some discovered by customers.

These are complex systems. Heck, even the humble 555 timer originally came with the lovely 'feature' of crowbarring the supply rails.

Copilot Vision on Windows 11 sends data to Microsoft servers

Re: "AI is changing the way we use our PCs,"...

Punch cards. Luxury!

We used to have to type it in by hand from a listing, including typo's, debug it, and if we were lucky we could then save it to a cassette tape.

$380M lawsuit claims intruder got Clorox's passwords from Cognizant simply by asking

"... took over an hour to complete a task ..."

Can't say I am overly impressed by ths claim. If Cognizant were (and should have been) aware that a severe security compromise was in play then it seems reasonable that they would be especially cautious about making any rushed decisions about installing software and this would seem a prudent and proper thing.

Cognizant look to have had some very serious failings, but why load up the legal suit with this sort of trivia? It seems to be the sort of thing that makes lawyers so widely despised.

Quantum code breaking? You'd get further with an 8-bit computer, an abacus, and a dog

Re: Wonderful paper

"factorize" is a perfectly cromulent British spelling (OED - prefers -ize to -ise). It is the spelling that the US prefers but it is not theirs alone. Not sure where the antipodean preferences lie - but if you want to make a protest I guess -ise is one way to do it.

Mozilla's midlife crisis has taken it from web pioneer to Google's weird neighbor

Re: Self-reinforcing

I don't know about the down voting, but perhaps some people feel that for a lot of companies their idea of "... making sure that every customer has a brilliant experience ..." is that you must drink their koolaid and must be some kind of deviant to want to do anything else; such as the "download our app" mentality (no thanks, why don't you make it possible to do that in the web browser interface to your site").