Posts by SCP

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").

US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

However, once everything is actually working as it should - yes, it's just daft that the crew are not allowed to fix things.

This will depend on the maintenance contract. Quite often a supply and maintenance contract will also include quality of service terms - so the equipment will be expected to fulfil specific reliability terms. If a supplier is agreeing to guarantee reliability they are not likely to want any Tom, Dick, or Jack Tar poking around the kit since this could lead to higher failure rates.

Of course,the end user could insist on the right to poke around whenever they wish - but it is unlikely the supplier will agree to guarantee the equipment after this (without it going back for a refurbishment), it simply wouldn't be sensible to do so.

In many cases the problem at the coal face is resolved by pulling the LRU equipment and fitting a replacement from stores. I would guess the ovens in question are a bit large and would require a RTB to replace (which USN might be reluctant to do). A fix might be possible and I would not be surprised if everyone involved knows how to fix it but this might be a corner case in the supply/maintenance contract so discussions are protracted (and with 6/8 ovens down it may well be that there are significant penalty clauses in the offing). If things went hot (unlike the ovens) then I expect a fix would be expedited under "exigent circumstances" or UOR criteria regardless of what any contracts state.

Related Story: There is a tale of an engineering crew being kept busy and trained during a deployment by stripping down and reassembling equipment in stores. Whilst the crew's repair skills were kept finely honed the spares ended up shot to pieces because (for example) connectors don't like being repeatedly pulled and re-inserted.

X's new 'encrypted' XChat feature seems no more secure than the failure that came before it

Re: I wonder

Note: Elon died on the way to his new home planet.

Aboard Ark Fleet Ship B?

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

I am sure that one of those little programs that generate flocking behaviour will do the trick.

No, the horse sh*t tends to be in the middle so you drive straight over it (cattle tend to be kept off the roads, but sheep can be found on the roads in some places).

In these parts of the old country the lanes are just wide enough for one, but have irregular passing places. In the more refined parts the passing places are somewhat official, mostly they are places where the sie of the road has been worn away.

Human Brain ...

and 4. It has learnt/remembered the necessary skills adequately.

All too often there are examples of drivers who appear to have lost (or never really had) key driving skills. A pet hate of mine is coming across another car in the country lanes and the driver is incapable of reversing up 10m to the nearest passing place. It is not a high pressure skill, the cars have already stopped and you can go slowly and even stop and drive forward to re-correct your road positioning and alignment. And for the love of god, do not try and reverse into the passing place - you clearly do not have the skills, back up past it and drive in forwards.

Mind you, dealing with the vagaries of country lane driving is going to be very challenging for AI.

LastOS slaps neon paint on Linux Mint and dares you to run Photoshop

Re: Magazines

... have just enough content to get enough users to pay for / pick up each issue ...

Or, the good old cover disk.

Re: Bloatware Linux

Having dabbled with using Linux as the base of my computing on some spare machines over several years I am, courtesy of Windows 11, trying to make a determined effort to switch to Mint as the everyday workhorse for my new laptop. It is not going as smoothly as I would like.

The basic install and set up was quite straight-forward and had most of the applications I needed. There were some underlying differences in Linux vs Windows that took a little time to sort through, but not a big deal to me and easily resolved with online research. (I would rate this as not necessarily a barrier for a 'non tech' user as they might be unfamiliar with achieving the same thing on Windows anyway and so would need to search online for a solution).

Then there are the frustratingly stubborn problems. Getting the Printer/Scanner connected - thanks for nothing Canon (MX340). Not really Linux's fault, but it is a consequence of trying to switch to Linux. Having still got Windows machines around I switch to them when printing is needed and will get the new laptop sorted over time, but I can see that an 'average' user facing the problem would be heading back to Windows.

My current PITA is setting default icons for file types - an application I am using does not set it up during its 'installation'. Using the file browser (Nemo) I can set the icon for a particular file, but not all files with that extension. So far no amount of playing around with mime.types and such has proved successful and it is getting annoying. I am interested in learning how to get Linux working** - but that is just a side interest, there are things I want to be doing on the computer.

** that might also be part of my problem - rather than simply trying various apps that claim to do the task I am trying to establish what goes on under the hood [to some extent].

Linux distro's out-of-the-box achieve a great deal and, in my experience, are very capable but problems can arise and can be tricky to resolve. The same can be said of Windows - but in many cases the path to sorting out problems is well trodden (though sometimes a bit extreme - reinstall Windows) so solutions can be found. At the moment I am finding myself spending too much of my time relying on old machines. YMMV

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

Re: Is this all Yorkshiremen?

Used to do that all the time until the trouble at t'mill. One of the crossbeams went out of skew on treadle - or summat. Now we have to do it all by hand using jumper cables on the serial IO port.

Pentagon declares war on 'outdated' software buying, opens fire on open source

Re: The mind fair boggles

How is understanding the provenance of the software going into your system an outdated attitude for those concerned with high-assurance systems?

That a lot of OSS is a bit of a free for all certainly makes establishing provenance pretty difficult (if not impossible), and that might make it undesirable to include such software in your system (unless steps are taken to establish that it has not been compromised). However, unless the need for such checks is stated (and given value) it will not happen.

Provenance should not be a sole factor in determining that a piece of software meets the assurance levels needed for the system, but it adds to the evidence that is used to build the assurance case.

The story of the 1980's construction of the US embassy in Moscow illustrates how provenance and control over the origins is important. The initial US belief had been that it was OK to let the Soviets build the embassy as they could sweep it clean when they took possession. This proved to be so impractical (due to a good deal of "mischief") that it ended up with only a specially checked/protected room inside the building being considered secure. (That story is contrasted with the construction of the Russian embassy in Washington - which had a stringent security programme throughout its construction).

[article]

Weeks with a BBC Micro? Good enough to fix a mainframe, apparently

Re: Memories having a secretary

Warning: This post contains material that some may find upsetting.

Concur

Aaargh! Trigger Warning please.

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

Re: And theres

[Footnote: It was a Seagate 7200.11 (ST3750330AS) and I have found the firmware update (SD15) that eliminated the problem - saved with my other 'old' driver collections - but no sign of the fix (which was more interesting from an engineering hacking point of view). I hope I printed the notes and stored them with the cables 'just in case'. Ah, memories of the good old bad old days.]

Re: And theres

I remember [years back] having one of those HDDs that had a notrious firmware bug in which some internal counter wrapping round would brick the drive. There was a fix that involved dimantling the drive and inserting some FTDI cables connected to a serial port on a working PC, then running up a terminal window and typing in various magic incantations. Ended up doing that twice to the same drive as it bricked tself again.

I thought I had filed away the details somewhere [might come in useful one day :-)] - but can't seem to lay my hands on it. Another problem with data recovery - finding the backups.

Dell discloses monster 20-petaFLOPS desktop built on Nvidia's GB300 Superchip

Re: Oh Lord...

...

"New Improved", "Oiginal", "Original Pro", ... ad nauseum (though that might be reserved for the ad based licensing model where the LLM will generate the ads locally based on your use of it. Product placement baked into LLM training data - that's one for Douglas Powers Enterprises).

AI models hallucinate, and doctors are OK with that

Re: On Hallucinations

I'd like an instance of your statement, if you can give me one.

My trusty hammer has never let me down (and it's not called Mjölnir).

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

Re: Something to fear

Err, sorry I'm just not understanding banter at all well today. Give us it again, slower, Squadron Leader.

(I'm guessing it is about some Google things linked into HMRC websites that lead to some tracking/privacy concerns.)

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'

Re: Speed of Transition

There is technical debt in the existing bodies of code, but also some gained value from the years of use and bug-elimination*. Re-writing established code is not without its risks so the decision whether to re-write or not is not always a straight-forward one.

* This is known to be far from perfect as bugs are still found, from time to time, in quite old libraries.

When writing new code the risks of repeating well known** errors is greater and so adopting languages (or as mentioned here - compiler enforced code profiles) that prevent those errors is more desirable.

** Despite some coding errors being well-known for decades they continue to re-occur in new code; people make mistakes. Based on the evidence of continuing repetition of well known coding errors, relying on people to know that they should not do something is not a reliable means of ensuring high quality code.

Having new code written in languages that prevent certain types of error helps prevent the addition of more problems to the code base and allows V&V activities to focus on other error types. Using well-established libraries, even if they are written in a less rigorous language, avoids making other types of error (such as handling corner-cases in the requirements) that might arise during a re-write of the functionality. The hybrid code might not be perfect but will often be the most cost-effective way of reducing overall system errors and provide the best opportunities of delivering effective V&V and high quality code in a constrained development budget.

Signal will withdraw from Sweden if encryption-busting laws take effect

Re: Laws of Mathematics

I understand how key escrow works (or rather - how it is meant to work). My point was that the determined user has options that mean that intermediatories do not get the opportunity to see the private key.

If you rely on the intermediatory's off-the-shelf application to do all your key set-up then, yes, this could include an escrow facility.

Under Trump 2.0, Europe's dependence on US clouds back under the spotlight

Re: Wake up call!

So what is your view on the Eurocopter Tiger and Airbus A400M. MBDA are producing some decent kit as well.

I agree that spending levels and priorities in Europe do not favour military projects and circumstances tend to give different nations different strategic priorities.

Re: Wake up call!

Buying from the US is not without its problems - even if you are buying off-the-shelf. Getting in on future development is even more challenging. The US even has problems with its internal projects with state representatives holding out for more spend in their state. Even European countries on their own have internal politics to contend with as the lamentable state of Germany's armed forces bears witness to.

Collaborative European projects are not without their unique challenges, but there are many successes and Europe does need to sort itself out as a bloc. Spending priorities in Europe have not favoured military spending and that is possibly the biggest challenge.

Tornado was good for dashing off into the skies above the North Sea, launching missiles at some unfriendlies, and getting out of range of any return fire, but it was hardly a fighter. It was a successful programme that satisfied the needs of those that operated it.

Electronics is used to allow relaxed stability/unstable airframe designs which confer a number of advantages. But the electronics requires effective controls in order to do their thing. It can keep you out of the danger zones of the airframe during controlled flight giving you carefree handling. But if you have a problem like engine(s) out you have a limited amount of time before you start losing control due to lack of electrical power, lack of hydraulic power, and/or lack of airspeed. Once you have lost control the airframe will do its own thing, such as finding one of its stable modes (e.g. a flat spin) until the flight ends.

Re: Wake up call!

With that 1979 date it looks like you are including the technology development programmes like the Active Controls Technology Jaguar and Experimental Aircraft Programme.

The French were in and out of the early stages of the programme and had a specific need for a Carrier Aircraft that the other nations didn't - this created compromises that the other nations didn't want. Once they had got all the technical data out of the programme the French left to do their own thing (which some consider to have been their plan all the time) and the remaining partners needed to re-adjust the programme.

The remaining programme also had to deal with the politics of a multi-nation programme - as well as the changing situation brought by the re-unification of Germany which particularly affected that partner.

Most of the Eurofighter nations already had a strike aircraft (Tornado - another programme considered a success), so prioritizing Typhoon's interdictor role was a natural choice, the swing role of Typhoon was always a consideration and not just "tacked on".

Flat spins are a nasty situation to find yourself in. F-14s had a bit of a reputation for being susceptible to this - until they got their Digital Flight Control System upgrade. The double engine flame-out crash of the DA6 Typhoon ended in an inverted flat-spin with the airframe pancaking into the ground. So it is not a totally surprising end to a bad day - the circumstances leading up to it are usually more "interesting".

FYI: An appeals court may kill a GNU GPL software license

Re: There are a lot of legal weeds here

... an argument that once code has been released under (A)GPL terms then it can never been relicensed more restrictively ...

[IANAL] My understanding of things is that a copyright holder can issue copies under whatever [reasonable] terms they choose and it is quite reasonable to license copies given to different parties differently.

Thus making an open/free copy widely available under one set of licensing terms does not preclude them also making it available under other terms. The fact that a copy has been made available under these other terms does not cancel the rights of others to use what they have.

As copyright holders they could also modify the software or use it as a base for another product and provide that under a commercial licence. If the modification has not been made available under an open/free terms then others cannot simply apply the open/free terms to the modified software. They still have the right to use the unmodified software under the open/free terms.

Things like the GPL also have a copyright - so somebody using that licence text as the basis for their licence might run into copyright issues unless the GPL text is itself published under terms that allow it to be used in the way they are using it.

I do not know which points are being argued in the case before the courts, and not being a lawyer maybe I don't just need a legal team, I need the Eagle Team.